The Uncommoners #2

by Jennifer Bell

  Alexander went pale. “S-sorry,” he stuttered. “Gotta go.”

  Ivy watched him stumble away, clutching his tankards. When she turned back, Seb was flapping a hand in front of his eyes.

  “Why do featherlights always fly so close to my face?” A pale blue feather zipped around his head like a paper plane. It swung from left to right, and then, tip down, it began to scribble a message in midair.

  Ivy and Sebastian,

  I hope you’re both safe and well and have had a good day. Can you please meet me at the House of Bells in an hour?

  With all my love,

  Granma Sylvie x

  “Well, we’re not far from the House of Bells,” Seb said. “We don’t have to rush.”

  Ivy shot a look at the door, wondering if Smokehart and his band of underguards had moved on.

  Valian was drumming his fingers on the table, apparently oblivious. “I’ve been thinking….What if the reason no one recognizes the smoking-hourglass symbol is that it’s really, really old?”

  “Could be,” Seb said. “But if so, how do we find out about it?”

  Ivy thought carefully. It was frustrating that uncommoners didn’t use the Internet. She glanced back at the framed newspaper cutting. “What about one of the newspapers? They must have offices in Lundinor. Maybe we could search through their archives to see if there’s any reference to the symbol in past issues.”

  Valian brightened. “That might work. There are two papers in Lundinor: the Lundinor Chronicle and the Barrow Post, but the Post is older. We should try there.”

  “Ivy”—Seb rubbed his face—“that’s gonna take ages.”

  “Have you got any better ideas?”

  “No,” he admitted, “but the last time I went along with something I thought was a bad idea, I ended up having to eat toenails. Just saying.”

  Ivy sighed and was about to offer a reluctant apology, when she felt Valian’s hand on the back of her head. “Duck!”

  She shielded her face as a man belched out another fireball.

  According to a local street bell, the Barrow Post headquarters was on the edge of Stationer’s Green in the Great Cavern.

  Ivy reached into her satchel for Farrow’s Guide—there was a map inside that she hoped would help them navigate.

  “We can’t waste time walking,” Valian said, marching beside her. “We’re racing against Selena Grimes and Jack-in-the-Green; they don’t even sleep.”

  “And we’ve got to meet our granma in an hour,” Seb reminded. “Can’t we just use the Great Uncommon Bag to get around?”

  Valian shook his head. “If anyone saw us using it, it’d look suspicious—other uncommon bags don’t work within the Great Gates. Somehow, the Great Uncommon Bag can break the rules without being detected. We need a sky stop. There…” He pointed to the roadside, where traders were lining up beside a row of tall metal lockers. Peeking through the doors, Ivy spied various brooms, vacuum cleaners and rugs. A man lifted his leg over a vacuum cleaner, straddling it like a bicycle. The machine made a vroom noise as its engines started and it rose into the air.

  Seb groaned as the rider zoomed over his head. “Is there any way to get around that’s not going to make me feel sick?”

  They crossed the road, keeping a safe distance from the underguards’ black 4x4, still stationed outside the Cabbage Moon. Valian traded a feather with a young man wearing a khaki bomber jacket who was standing at the sky stop. Ivy imagined how momentous it would be to make her first Trade—like taking a step toward being a real uncommoner.

  The man in the bomber jacket turned, took two plastic dustpans out of a locker and passed them to Valian. He approached Ivy and Seb carrying a long-handled mop. “Your friend tells me that neither of you have a license to ride on your own, so you’ll have to travel on the back with me.” He threw a leg over the mop and indicated the space behind him.

  Valian slipped his shoes through a strap on each dustpan, so he was wearing them like slippers. “You’ll be able to use these eventually.” As he extended his arms on either side, he lifted soundlessly into the air.

  Seb mumbled a complaint before swinging a leg over the mop, looking like the kid who had just been humiliated in gym class. Ivy took a seat in front of him.

  The mop made a smooth, vertical takeoff. Seb squeezed Ivy’s shoulders, his fingernails digging in. “When will this be over?”

  “Try not to think about it,” she told him. “Valian’s right—we’re up against people who can walk through walls; we have to take the fastest route.”

  She peered down as the thatched roofs of Lundinor shrank below her; a patchwork quilt of fields rolled off into the distance. She could see uncommoners below: families going in and out of shops, children tumbling down hills and picnicking on the grass. Three times a year, when the undermart opened, this was their life.

  And now it’s mine.

  As they passed over the Great Cavern Memorial, Ivy noticed that the smoking hourglass still hadn’t been removed. She considered what each element of the design might signify—an hourglass represented the passing of time, but smoke was a warning of fire.

  “Here’s your destination, folks,” the sky driver said with a smile as they came to an abrupt halt. He lowered the mop so that Ivy and Seb could clamber off.

  They had landed on a patch of grass opposite a huge white windmill painted with the words BARROW POST, EST. 1598. Its crisscross sails creaked as they turned, sending shadows sweeping over the gravel drive in front. Behind the windmill, a vast meadow filled with poppies and checkered black-and-white tents stretched into the distance.

  The sky driver collected his dustpan hover-shoes from Valian and shot back off under the cave roof on his mop.

  “What shall we say when we get inside?” Seb asked. “They might think it’s suspicious if we tell them we want to search the archives for a smoking hourglass.”

  “Let’s pretend we’re looking for photos of Granma Sylvie when she was younger,” Ivy suggested. “I don’t think anyone will question that.”

  “Nice idea, but I don’t think that’s our main problem.” Valian pointed to a set of automatic doors at the base of the windmill. Standing in front were two hard-faced underguards. “Must be an extra security measure because of Jack-in-the-Green or the murders at the memorial. Probably best to avoid them.”

  Ivy studied the windmill for another way in. A group of scruffy-looking boys and girls stood on the grass beside it, holding dark bundles under their arms. As the sails turned, a child at the front of the line hopped onto one of the lower blades and used it to hitch a lift up to the roof. “Who are they?” she asked.

  “Newspaper delivery kids,” Valian replied. “Copies of today’s edition are expelled from the building through chutes on the roof and the kids distribute them around Lundinor riding on those doormats.”

  Ivy narrowed her eyes at the slate tiles. “These chutes…they go right into the building?”

  “I guess so,” Valian replied.

  She grinned. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Hoping their rolled-up coats would pass for doormats, the three of them joined the line beside the windmill. Ivy calculated the time between each rotation. There was only a short window when the sails were close enough to the ground for each child to jump on safely.

  “I’ll go first,” she offered. She waited till the sail was only three feet from the ground, then sprang aboard, hanging on until it reached the windmill roof. She unhooked her legs and dropped down with a scratchy thud. Seb and Valian followed at intervals.

  “So which one do we take?” Seb asked.

  There were two openings in the gray slate tiles. The Barrow Post logo—an old-fashioned cart with a megaphone in the center—was stenciled in white between them.

  Bunched around the farther hole, the delivery kids all st
epped back as a newspaper came flying out. One of them jumped to catch it.

  “That must be the evening Post,” Valian said. “Which means, if we want to avoid being hit in the face by the headlines, we should use the empty chute.”

  Ivy peered in. The shaft was about the width of a wheelie bin, ending in a white fabric surface.

  Valian sat on the roof and swung his legs over the edge. “I’ll see you two down there.”

  “Come on,” Ivy told Seb. “It looks safe.”

  At the bottom of the chute she found herself caught by a soft linen hammock. With help from Valian, she climbed down onto a thin wooden balcony constructed under the gables.

  She blinked, unable to believe what she was seeing.

  Strung between the beams of the windmill were hundreds of hammocks. Some were perfectly still, but most bounced up and down with great force, making a sound like a twanging rubber band. Newspapers were being tossed between them in a steady stream. Ivy followed the path of one as it sprang from hammock to hammock, making its way toward the base of the opposite chute.

  “They must be carried like this up from the printer,” Valian said. “I didn’t even know uncommon hammocks did that.”

  Seb dropped down behind them. “Please tell me that’s not how we’re continuing this journey.”

  Ivy ventured to the edge. A long way below, she could see a white marble floor scattered with desks.

  “I can’t see any other way down,” Valian said, pushing his arms into his leather jacket. “I’ll go first if you want.”

  Seb gave a deep sigh and pulled on his hoodie. “You know your life’s really messed up when sliding down a giant hose becomes the most appealing way to get around.”

  Hammock travel, Ivy discovered, was easier if you were a newspaper rather than an eighty-five-pound girl. The first few bounces were OK, but eventually the hammocks seemed to give up trying to toss the three of them around and just rocked them limply. They ended up having to climb down the ropes, landing in an empty corridor.

  “Look for a floor plan or something to tell us where the archives are,” Valian said.

  Ivy’s nostrils twitched from the acrid smell of chemicals in the air. She wasn’t sure where it was coming from. A cupboard against one wall housed a set of old-fashioned chemist’s jars. Each one was filled with a different colored liquid and labeled in large letters. HEADLINE INK looked thick, dark and murky, while TAGLINE INK was striped and swirling. NOTE-TAKING INK, SPEED-WRITING INK and 24-HOUR TIME-DELAY INK all kept changing color. Ivy wondered what they didn’t have an ink for. They must all be products of mixology.

  Seb disappeared around a corner and called back to them. “Over here.”

  Fixed to the wall was a list of departments with arrows. Valian tapped the word ARCHIVES and pointed. “That way.”

  They hurried past an open door. Ivy caught sight of a massive printing machine constructed from a jumble of different objects—a silver dustbin lid, a car windshield, two wooden spoons, a squeaking balloon pump and a toaster among them.

  In another room, Hobsmatched uncommoners sat at messy desks with their heads down, jotting featherlights or studying photographs captured in uncommon snow globes. A blackboard on the far wall was being scribbled on by a scraggy gray feather. It read:

  Today’s top story—GRAFFITI MURDER: Mysterious vandal kills two underguards.

  They came at last to a glass door etched with the word ARCHIVES. Attached to the doorframe were several fridge magnets.

  “Careful,” Valian warned, eyeing them. “Uncommon magnets attract stolen property. They’ll scan us as we go in, and then again when we leave, to prevent us from taking anything.”

  Beyond the door was a flight of wooden stairs that led down to a small, dimly lit room filled with metal cupboards—the kind used to store flammable materials at school. From the dank smell in the air Ivy suspected that they were in some sort of basement.

  “So now we’re underground underground,” Seb mused.

  Behind a cupboard door Ivy spotted the back of a man’s head: thin gray hair and a roll-neck sweater. A swarm of tiny floating balls orbited his ears. Marbles. She shook her head. “Excuse me, sir?”

  The man flinched. “Wha—!” “Oomph!” He whacked his forehead on the cupboard door, winced and staggered back. Ivy was pretty sure that one of the marbles had zoomed straight into his mouth.

  “Oh—sorry!” she said.

  He swayed as he turned to face them. He had speckled brown skin and a cheerful face with sharp green eyes. A name badge clipped to his sweater said STANLEY, ARCHIVIST.

  “Unidentified Fried Object,” he said, smiling.

  Ivy raised her eyebrows. Whatever she had been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that. “Er, we’re here to find some information about our granma. Can you point us in the right direction?” Perhaps the steel cabinets contained the beginning of the archives.

  Stanley looked dazed. “Because the lettuce was a head and the tomato was trying to catch up!”

  Ivy turned to Seb and Valian for reassurance. “Any help?”

  “To get to the other side!” Stanley continued. “Max no difference, just open up and let me in! When it’s ajar!”

  Valian tilted his head like he’d been asked to solve a complicated algebra problem. Seb, on the other hand, was grinning. “Don’t you guys get what he’s saying? They’re the punch lines to jokes. Observe.” He waved a hand in front of Stanley’s bewildered face. “Why did the banana go to the doctor?”

  “Because it wasn’t peeling well!” Stanley replied.

  Seb’s grin widened. Ivy considered the marbles still orbiting Stanley’s head. “I think he might have swallowed one by accident. What do uncommon marbles do?”

  “They’re like extra storage space for your brain,” Valian said. “You can offload ideas into them.”

  Like an external hard drive…Ivy wondered if Stanley had banked the punch lines to his favorite jokes in the little red marble that had sailed into his mouth. She stepped closer and gave the archivist her most disarming smile before reaching up on tiptoe and slapping him on the back.

  Stanley coughed, and something red shot out of his mouth. “Yuck!” he spluttered. “Tastes awful.” He batted the other marbles away from his ears, sending them whizzing into the cupboard. Then he shut the door, exasperated. “So sorry about that. Those little things have a mind of their own.” He fingered his chin. “Come to think of it, I guess they have my mind…Ha, oh well!” He looked down at the three of them, smiling warmly. “Information, is it, you’re after? Of course—follow me. It’s nice to see people your age down here.”

  He led them past the wooden stairs and through a heavy metal door into an empty room with gray stone walls and a single uncommon lemon squeezer mounted on the ceiling. It bloomed into brightness as they went in.

  Seb paused. “Er, are the archives really in here?” he asked, his voice echoing. Ivy wasn’t convinced either. Stanley didn’t seem like the most reliable curator.

  Even though the room appeared to be empty, Ivy could sense several uncommon objects close by. The constant din of broken souls was beginning to give her a headache.

  “Certainly are,” Stanley said. “The Barrow Post has been in print for over four hundred years. A century ago we had to move the archives down here, where there’s more space.”

  Seb frowned at the empty room and lowered his mouth to Ivy’s ear. “It’ll take forever to find what we’re looking for.”

  Stanley handed a small matchbox to Ivy. She could tell it was ancient, because the packaging was crinkled and brown and she didn’t recognize the brand name.

  “Sorry,” she said. “What’s this?”

  “The archives, of course,” Stanley told her. “Just ask the box what you’re looking for and it’ll find a match.”

  Valian gave a
smug smile. “Uncommon storage has its uses.”

  “There’s a leaflet somewhere on how to use it,” Stanley added. “Stay there—I’ll go and get it.”

  Ivy waited till the archivist had disappeared back into the first room. “Quick—let’s ask it about the smoking hourglass before Stanley comes back.” Holding the matchbox close to her lips, she said, “We’re searching for a symbol: a smoking hourglass.”

  The matchbox wobbled in her hand and, after only a few seconds, burst open so that Ivy could peer inside.

  “A burnt match?” she exclaimed. “That’s it?”

  Footsteps sounded behind her; she slid the matchbox closed.

  “Here we are, then,” Stanley said cheerfully. He was holding a thick yellowed pamphlet. “Instructions for using a matchbox archive.” He handed it over to Seb with a smile. “You’re more than welcome to give it a read, but it’s fairly simple: the matchbox will find articles relating to your search in ascending chronological order. If there are no matches in the archive, it returns a burnt match.”

  A burnt match. So there was nothing at all about the smoking hourglass in the archives….

  “What are you researching again?” Stanley asked.

  “Anything on our granma,” Seb replied hastily.

  Ivy shook her head clear. “Oh, yes, right. Sylvie Sparrow. Although back when she was a trader, her surname was Wrench.”

  The archivist threw them a sidelong glance. Ivy tried not to cringe. Would there ever be a time when the name Wrench got a normal reaction?

  He shrugged. “Oddly enough, that’s what the last gentleman was looking for too.”

  Ivy jolted. Someone else had been searching for information on Granma Sylvie? “The last gentleman…,” she said carefully. “Who was he?”

  “Never seen him before,” Stanley replied. “I can’t say I’d want to again either. I caught him smoking down here and had to ask him to leave. I popped his face into a marble so the guards upstairs could stop him from coming back.” He signaled to the matchbox. “But don’t listen to me go on; ask the box for what you need.”