The Grandest Bookshop in the World

by Mellor, Amelia

  She felt sorry for him then, and her conviction wobbled. Before she could weigh up the decision to undo the spell, the magic wall melted away under her fingers. Her brother’s voice, a good deal less angry now, came back at its normal volume. ‘– anyone hear me?’

  Pearl nodded.

  He looked suspicious, even a little fearful of her. ‘What did you do?’

  She looked at her hands. She didn’t remember ever having done magic like that before – not with that clarity of purpose, nor of the rhythm of her words. Strong, solid. Wall, will. Rise, right. Most of her previous magical experiments had been with orders, like Linda, or rigid rhyming verse, like Ma. The latter never worked very well for her, because finding a rhyme distracted her from imagining the desired effect. ‘Say sorry to Ivy or I’ll do it again.’ That was a lie. Pearl didn’t really want to cut Eddie off again, and even if she had, she wasn’t certain of her success.

  Still, her brother cringed and made a conceding gesture. ‘Ivy, are you OK?’

  Ivy drew away from him a little. ‘You mustn’t take your anger out on other people, Ed.’ It was something their mother often said. ‘You frightened me.’

  Eddie was about to speak, but someone else did first.

  ‘Ah.’ The copy was watching them. Her voice was cracked and strange. ‘Aah …’ She ran her tongue across her front teeth, feeling their ridges, and said with great deliberation, ‘Lah.’

  ‘She’s talking!’ Ivy murmured.

  Vally tapped her arm. ‘Shh!’

  ‘Shhh …’ said the copy. With her mouth in this position, she tried another sound. ‘Eee …’ Her face split in a wide smile – lips stretched tight, all her teeth showing, the rest of her face immobile. ‘Ee-eeechhh …’

  ‘Ruby!’ Ivy shouted, over the hissing. ‘Stop it!’

  The copy tilted her head, and stayed that way, like a wind-up toy whose spring had wound down. The chh continued droning from her half-open mouth, like the hiss of static played through a phonograph.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Linda stiffly. ‘I’m going to be sick.’

  She ran from the storeroom.

  The others were close behind. Vally, the last one out, slammed the door and backed right up to the balcony railing. ‘Right. Does anyone still think that’s our Ruby?’

  Pearl shook her head. To her surprise, Eddie did the same.

  ‘If it is,’ said Linda, ‘then she’s … missing something. Mind or soul or whatever you want to call it.’

  ‘Good,’ said Vally. ‘Then you won’t mind her being gone when this is over. Ivy?’

  Ivy looked away.

  ‘Come on, Ivy,’ Pearl said. ‘She’s cold as ice.’

  Ivy fidgeted with the end of one of her plaits. ‘She might get better.’

  ‘I know it’s hard, Ivy,’ said Vally, with unexpected gentleness. ‘She looks just like Ruby. But you mustn’t fall for it. It’s a trick.’

  ‘I just wish …’ Ivy’s chin crinkled. ‘I just wish we didn’t have to be sad about her anymore.’

  No one could think of anything to say to that. Pearl thought they probably all wished they didn’t have to be sad. They’d spent good years with Ruby, and good years without Ruby. Why couldn’t Pearl hold onto those, without the hook of Ruby’s loss twisting in her chest? It was like hitting her shin on the same piece of furniture in the dark. Why was that in her way, again? Why did it hurt so much, again?

  It was Vally, in a slightly choked voice, who changed the subject. ‘OK, Pearl, you start.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Tell them how you met the Obscurosmith.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SWEET REVENGE

  Less than a quarter of the yellow was left. By Vally’s calculations, he and Pearl had an hour at most to tackle the third round.

  Strike that: he, Pearl and Linda did. As expected, Linda had taken command of the team. She’d assigned Eddie to watching the paper wagtail, or catching it if he could. Ivy was to report on their parents’ movements. As soon as they’d gone off to their respective missions, however, Linda had confessed to wanting them out of the way. Eddie’s rash streak would only be a hindrance, she’d said, and Ivy had to be kept out of danger. Vally could see the sense in that, but he hoped Linda wouldn’t try to do the same to him and Pearl during the challenges.

  Now they were crossing the floor of the Arcade towards Lolly Land – sweetness, according to the magnolia. The bookshop was yet to open for the day. In the soft blue light, it was as quiet and full of promise as the early hours of Christmas. The shelves were tidy, and the only sounds were the Coles’ footfalls and the distant horse-drawn traffic of Bourke Street.

  Or rather, those should have been the only sounds. Something else was in the Arcade. It was a very low sound, and Vally felt it more than heard it; something creeping, something brewing and boiling under the desks. He could smell its soot. Slap, slap, slap.

  ‘You hear that sound?’ he muttered to Pearl. ‘What is that?’

  ‘What sound?’

  ‘Sort of a … whacking sound.’

  Pearl frowned. ‘I don’t hear anything.’

  ‘Me neither.’ Linda spoke over her shoulder as they passed through the philosophy section. ‘Now, remind me how the first poem goes. The famous rainbows of Cole’s Book Arcade …’

  ‘Count its hours as they fade,’ Vally said. ‘Or something. In every … place … you’ll find a test …’

  ‘Like dancing in a fancy dress,’ said Pearl.

  ‘That’s not it.’ Vally looked at her sharply, assuming she was teasing him – but she didn’t look as if she was expecting a reaction. Maybe she had forgotten. He racked his brains for the line. They had picked up the book from the display. The words had been wrong. The line had been in green. ‘I think it was: you’ll find I reside in the midst of distress.’

  ‘That’s from the other one,’ Pearl argued. ‘In Wonder Land.’

  Linda looked worried. ‘Neither of you remember, then?’

  ‘We do!’ Vally said – but he was imagining a darkness creeping up the back of his skull, like ink soaking up through a page and blotting out the words. ‘The last bit went: As it began, it ends …’

  ‘Be good sports, if not friends,’ said Pearl, joining in.

  Linda clicked her tongue. ‘I wish you’d told me sooner.’

  ‘What difference would it have made?’ said Vally, pushing in a reading chair that one of yesterday’s customers had left askew.

  ‘If you’d told me last night, I would have been able to tell you about the magnolia. If you’d told me yesterday morning, I could have helped you work out a strategy. And if you’d told me as soon as you found out about Ruby and the Obscurosmith, I would have done just about anything other than what you did.’

  ‘Pa got us into this mess,’ Vally retorted. The game had been his idea, after all, and he was proud of having lured Magnus Maximillian into risking his gains. Although, if he was being honest with himself, he was now far less certain of who had lured whom. ‘We’re just trying to get him out.’

  Linda sighed. ‘I know. But did you have to make the exact same mistake he did?’

  ‘We’ve told you now,’ said Pearl, as they emerged from the biography section in the long western aisle. Above them, the Lolly Land sign arced across half a rainbow.

  ‘Yes,’ said Linda. ‘And you should be carrying that Funny Picture Book with you, and writing down everything that has happened so far. That way, when you forget, you’ve got –’

  ‘We haven’t forgotten,’ Vally said.

  ‘Well,’ said Linda sceptically. ‘You haven’t forgotten yet.’

  The window displays of the confectionery shop shone with sugar-bright colours: rainbow-swirled lollipops, rainbow-speckled gobstoppers, rainbow stripes and squares in various jars. At this time of year, the display was especially vibrant, with Easter eggs of all sizes: wren, duck, emu, dinosaur. They made the fading rainbow signs above them look dull by comparison.

  Linda tested the door. ‘It’s unlo
cked.’

  ‘Good,’ Vally said, checking his watch. ‘We’d have a hard time beating the challenge if we couldn’t get in.’

  ‘But the Arcade doesn’t open until nine. It’s, what, just past seven?’

  ‘Nearly half-past.’ Vally tucked the watch back in his pocket. ‘Miss Kay sometimes comes in early, if she’s working on something.’

  The bell tinkled over the door as the Coles came in. Lolly Land was rarely empty, especially on a Saturday. Now, with no customers in the way, Vally could see all of its kaleidoscopic glory. Huge peppermint canes hung above the cash register. Glass display boxes stretched from one end of the shop to the other, their tops open to allow customers to choose as they pleased, and inside, the boiled sweets shone like transparent gems. The light gleamed on the lustrous chocolates: Easter eggs, buttons, bonbons. The whole shop had a polished, rounded look – the smooth glass of the jars and display boxes, the wood of the floorboards and benchtops, as if everything had been sculpted out of smooth fondant and glazed with melted sugar. The air was rich with cocoa and mint, citrus and caramel, and the sparkling acidic tang of Miss Kay’s confectionery experiments.

  And Vally felt, as he always did in the sweetshop, a dark and creeping want. He had the urge to run about to all the vivid jars and trays, grab handfuls of lollies and shove them in his pockets. He wanted to have them now, his own pile of treasure, and savour them later. They were so colourful. There were so many. He was suddenly aware of his empty stomach. Just one couldn’t hurt. Just one. Ma would never know …

  He was too slow. Linda turned as she looked around the shop, and Vally lost his chance and his nerve. Anyway, it wouldn’t do to steal. He ought to ask Miss Kay first.

  Come to think of it, where was the sweetmaker? Would she be on her way to work – or might Maximillian have done something with her, as he had with the Band?

  ‘Miss Kay?’ he called.

  Something clanged in the back room. ‘I’ll be a minute!’

  Linda peered behind the counter. ‘Are you OK, Miss Kay?’

  ‘Very well, thank you! How many of you Coles are there? I’ve made something you might like to try.’

  ‘Nothing strange has happened to you today, then?’ said Pearl. ‘Stranger than normal, I mean?’

  Harriet Kay appeared from the back room, looking like a deranged chemist in her gloves and apron, with unruly curls escaping her bun. She was a tall woman in her thirties, with a warm brown face and strong arms from working the sugar dough. ‘Well, I wouldn’t say it was strange, but someone left me this note on the cash register and I have no idea what it means.’ She pulled a slip of black paper from the pocket of her apron and read it out. ‘Display a dozen in three rows of five. I mean, I have chocolate selection boxes of a dozen, but I doubt it would make a good display if I showed so many of them together. There’d be no room for anything else.’

  ‘A dozen in three rows of five?’ Pearl said. ‘But three rows of five makes fifteen.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Miss Kay passed her the paper. ‘I wanted to ask your father, except I don’t think this is his handwriting.’

  Pearl gasped and jumped on the spot. ‘Vally! It’s the next challenge!’

  She showed him the message. It was written in curly silver script, glittering against the black. Not Pa’s writing – but Vally recognised it, all the same. ‘If that’s the challenge, then there’s got to be a trap around here somewhere.’ He knew that much, even if he couldn’t remember the verse on the picture book.

  ‘Here, let me.’ Linda took the paper without waiting for anyone to give it to her. ‘We ought to think about this less like Coles and more like Maximillians.’

  ‘And our socks should go on before our shoes, I suppose?’ said Vally.

  Linda gave him a withering look. ‘The key word is display. We should do three rows of four to make twelve, then put three more on top of some of the others. That way, you can have an arrangement that looks like it has four in each row, but really has five. Display a dozen with fifteen.’

  ‘A dozen what?’ asked Pearl.

  ‘What, indeed.’ Linda turned on the spot, looking all around the sweetshop. Vally followed her line of sight. The advertisements were the same. Miss Kay was the same. The sweets were divided neatly into their jars and display boxes by colour, flavour and size.

  Almost neatly. A lemon drop had snuck into a jar of vanilla creams. And another one had got into the fire-breathing sour suckers. And a sugar-coated pink jube stood out brightly amidst the golden brown of the butterscotch toffees in translucent paper.

  ‘Look.’ Linda pointed out the spots of colour. ‘Odd ones out.’

  ‘It’s a good thing you came along, Linda,’ said Pearl. ‘I would never have noticed.’

  ‘I would have,’ Vally said under his breath, but his sisters either didn’t hear or didn’t care.

  Linda marched over to the butterscotch toffees. ‘It never hurts to have somebody with an eye for detail on your side.’ She plunged her left hand into the display box, rustling the waxed paper wrappers. ‘I think I’m a bit like Pa in that way. He’s very good – I mean, he’s usually very good at noticing … details …’ As she trailed off, she looked down at her hand. She seemed to be trying to lift it out of the display box, but it wouldn’t come free.

  ‘Linda?’ said Miss Kay. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Linda braced on the serving counter with her free hand and pulled, but it was no use. ‘It’s all melting out of the wrappers. I’m stuck.’

  Inside the display box, with a wet slurping sound, something pulled back.

  Linda squealed, and tried to tug away. ‘It licked me!’

  Dread began to sink through Vally’s chest like a lead ball. People ought to lick sweets, not the other way around. After licking came biting, and after biting …

  ‘Licked you?’ said Miss Kay. ‘What do you mean, it licked you?’

  Linda inhaled, making an effort to compose herself. ‘There’s something in here. Some kind of animal.’

  ‘An animal?’ Pearl approached her slowly. ‘Like a rat?’

  ‘Like a – a warm, slimy fish. It’s got my hand in its mouth.’ Linda grasped the air with her free hand. ‘Someone give me a pull.’

  Pearl went to take Linda’s hand, but Miss Kay waved her aside. ‘Don’t panic,’ she said to Linda. ‘The Arcade’s been a bit cheeky this week. Stop giving it a reaction and it’ll let you go.’

  Linda shook her head. ‘Miss Kay, you don’t understand …’

  ‘Come on,’ the confectioner said. ‘Nice big tug. Show the Arcade you mean business.’

  The display box sucked Linda’s arm deeper, to the elbow. She cried out again and pulled back with all her strength. Her arm came free of the glass box with a squelch – but a huge brown mass came out with it, stretching and oozing like dough. Its flesh was covered in the white lumps of lolly wrappers. It appeared to have no bones and no eyes. What it did have was a loose bulbous body and a wet mouth, soaking Linda’s sleeve with drool.

  Miss Kay shouted in revulsion. ‘What in the world is that?’

  ‘It’s the third trap,’ Vally said, thinking aloud. ‘Don’t eat the lollies, or they’ll eat you.’ And he had almost fallen for it. If he’d given in to that first temptation when he entered the sweetshop, he would have been the one with his arm in the creature’s mouth.

  But Miss Kay looked at him as if he’d sprouted an extra nose from his forehead. ‘What?’

  The blob of living butterscotch reached into the neighbouring display cases. From the left, it drew a mass of raspberry drops into itself. From the right, it slurped up the saltwater taffy.

  ‘Linda, wait right there!’ Miss Kay said, and ran out to her kitchen laboratory.

  ‘I can’t do much else!’

  ‘Your knack, Linda,’ Pearl suggested. ‘Come on – tell it to get off.’

  Bracing her feet for strength, Linda held her arm out straight. ‘Now, listen here, you – you … sorry, I have to try again
! I don’t know what it is!’

  Magic and panic were a bad combination. Anger could be passionate and purposeful, but terror was apt to disrupt a spell. It scattered imagination with dreadful possibility. It shook the caster’s confidence, as well as their voice and hands.

  Linda tried again. ‘Stop that at once, you greedy … thing.’ Articulation was letting her down again. ‘You will get off me, you beast. When I click my fingers, you will release me at once, and you will return to your jar, do you hear?’

  She clicked her fingers. The sugar blob overflowed like magma from its case, oozing up her arm. Wrappers twisted and crackled in its molten mass. Her free hand fell to her side. She was normally so precise and in control – but she was halting and stuttering. She was only able to cast half a spell, which was as useful as half a clock.

  ‘It’s no use!’ She pulled back again, digging her heels into the floor. ‘Vally! The challenge?’

  ‘Oh!’ The range of sweets and nuts and confections suddenly seemed overwhelming. The three long benches, arranged in a horseshoe shape, walled him in. The shelves held more jars than an alchemist’s laboratory. Only a few showed the pink or yellow trespassers. ‘What are you thinking, Pearl?’

  ‘I’m thinking, if we try to fish them out, the same thing will happen to –’

  A wild battle-cry interrupted her. Miss Kay was running across the shop, brandishing a broom. She thumped it down like an axe on Linda’s attacker.

  The sugar monster surged around the bristles and expanded, bloated rolls tumbling out of the display cases. It caught Miss Kay’s shoe. She raised her foot and kicked at it. It sucked her boot from her foot.

  ‘Stop, stop,’ said Linda. ‘It’ll get you, too.’ She struggled against the warm oozing grip. ‘Pearl’s right. You mustn’t touch them or you’ll end up like me.’

  Miss Kay looked from Linda to Pearl and Vally. ‘Can anyone tell me why any of this is happening?’

  ‘In a minute!’ Vally snatched a pair of tin scoops from above the display boxes and thrust them at Pearl and Miss Kay. ‘There should be a dozen odd ones out.’ He grabbed a third scoop for himself and ran across the shop to the striped humbugs. He dug his scoop deep, spilling sweets over the benchtop, and carefully picked out the stranger. It was a lemon drop. ‘One!’