“Now, just you keep back,” Violet declares, wagging her finger at the light. “I’m not so easy to shock.”
The light retreats a little, but then it surges forward again, spitting sparks into Violet’s hair.
“Get away!” she shouts, swatting with her free hand and retreating into a corner.
“Hey!” I yell, grabbing up the fish-shaped bottle and holding the stopper end towards the light. “Over here! Get back in your bottle!”
The light flutters around to face me. There’s a flash and a boom as it emits another miniature bolt of lightning. An old teddy bear in my lost-toys box explodes in a puff of stuffing and smoke, right beside my head.
I let out a squeak, and the bottle slips from my hands, dropping to the floor and rolling away.
And now the light is advancing towards me, brighter than ever, like a tiny wronged sun, burning to have its revenge.
“Can’t we talk about this?” I gasp as I step back, trip over some lost shoes and fall into a basket of brollies. “I’m too young to fry!”
The light blazes as it closes in.
Then it sputters.
There’s a flicker and a crackle, and the light fades.
The thing falls from the air, a tiny ember once again, and bounces on the rug.
And lies still.
Cautiously, I crawl towards it.
“Careful, Herbie!” Violet calls from across the cellar.
“It’s OK,” I say, though there’s no way I can know that for sure, is there? “I think … I think maybe it’s worn itself out. Whatever it is.”
I lean forward and try to get a better look at the strange thing that escaped from the bottle. Now that it isn’t blazing with fierce light, I see that it’s actually a tiny figure, ember-bright, crouching on the floor as if exhausted. I watch, amazed, as two electrical arcs flicker out from the figure’s back, forming shapes that look for all the world like wings. These arcs flutter for a moment, as if trying to fly, but then wink out again.
“It’s OK,” I say again, though this time in a softer voice and not to Violet. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m … I’m Herbie. I’m the one who let you out of the bottle.”
Down on the rug, a tiny pixie face stares up into mine.
“You don’t want to go back in that bottle, do you?” I say. Then I add, because I suddenly know it’s true, “I think you’ve waited a long, long time to be let out.”
There’s a brief electrical crackle that feels a lot like an answer to me. Then the little thing falls over, and its light goes out completely.
So I pick it up.
This probably seems like a brave thing to do, but really, I don’t even think about it. I know a lost soul when I see one.
“Is it hot?” Violet whispers, coming to join me. “Does it burn?”
“No,” I reply, cradling the tiny fairy figure in my cupped hands.
“It’s amazing!” Violet’s eyes are as big as scallop shells. “What do you think it is?”
Before I can answer, there’s a tingling in my hands. The little figure starts to glow again.
“Herbie?”
“It’s fine,” I say. “I think. It’s just … warm. A nice, cheering warmth. Like the little thing’s getting strength from me and is grateful.”
The light brightens, and soon it spills from my hands to gently bathe our faces. The pixie sits up, gazes up at me again and smiles!
“Hello,” I say, grinning back, because I can’t help it. “Feeling better?”
There’s a crackle of light, and the tiny electrical wings reappear, this time beating with a strong, fizzing flutter. The figure vanishes from view as the light intensifies. Then it rises from my hands and flutters here and there before coming to settle just over my head.
Carefully, I get to my feet. The light remains just above my head. I take a step to the right, and the light follows. I step left, and the light moves left too. Something tells me it’s here to stay.
“Wait!” Violet cries, pointing at our miraculous little guest. “Over your head like that, it looks like … could that be…?”
I turn and stare in a mirror. I see myself standing in my crumpled Lost-and-Founder’s uniform, an expression of amazement on my face as a crackling point of light hovers just above my head, showering me with tiny sparks.
“Bladderwracks!” I whisper.
“Just like on the statue of Saint Dismal,” says Vi. “In the photo.”
We look at each other.
“The Gargantic Light!”
HOODWINKS
“SHE SEEMS TO LIKE YOU,” Violet says, and grins.
“She?”
“Well, she seems like a she to me,” says Violet. “With all the lightning.”
“Either way, at least she’s not zapping things right now,” I reply, opening my cellar window and pointing outside.
“OK, you can go,” I say to the light over my head.
The light crackles some more and then plops down into my hair.
“Oi!” I cry. “Didn’t you hear me? You’re free.”
But the tiny electrical fairy shows no intention of going anywhere. I look again at the mirror and see light streaming from my head as the little thing settles down deep in my scrappy blond locks.
“I can’t go around with this over my head,” I say to Violet. “People will notice. Mr Mollusc will use me as a standard lamp!”
“Try this.” Violet hands me my cap.
Very carefully I lower the cap onto my head, trapping the light beneath it. Then I start working the elastic strap around my chin with only a minimum of pings. I take a step to the left, and then two steps back. The light remains where it is, hidden beneath the royal-porpoise-blue-and-gold trim of my official Lost-and-Founder’s cap.
“There!” says Violet. “How does that feel?”
“Strange,” I reply. “And a bit fizzy.”
From up above, we hear the sounds of the hotel beginning to wake up: the clatter of suitcases, the murmur of voices and the tinkle of breakfast cutlery in the dining room.
“There’s a plate of stale pastries up there with my name on it,” I say to Vi as I straighten my uniform front. “I’m going to test out just how well hidden this light thing is by going up and getting our breakfast. Then we can work out what on earth to do about it.”
With that, I climb up the stairs to my cubbyhole.
“Good morning, Herbie,” says Amber Griss, the hotel receptionist, as I slowly cross the lobby towards the kitchen. “Why are you walking in that funny way? It’s almost as if you have something hidden under your hat.”
My scalp starts tingling.
I do a grin.
“Morning, Amber. Nothing hidden under my hat. Nothing at all.”
“Well, just be sure to keep your head down today.” Amber leans towards me and lowers her voice. “Mr Mollusc is still fuming about what happened last night. And he blames everything on you.”
“Me!”
“I’m afraid so. He’s not happy about that bottle being here, not happy at all, and he seems determined to make you pay for it. If I were you, I wouldn’t do anything to draw attention to myself today.”
There’s a small explosion, and I feel the elastic stretch as my cap is lifted for a moment with the force of a miniature blast of lightning. I shout, “YOWZERS!” and then clap my hand over my mouth as smoke and the unmistakable pong of singed hair drifts out from under my cap.
“OK!” I say to Amber, who is now staring at me in amazement. “Nothing to draw attention to myself. Got it. Thanks!”
Then I run.
I find my plate of leftover pastries in the kitchen, and I leave by the back passage without having any more exploding-cap incidents. But then I hear something that brings me to a skidding halt: the brisk, busybody footsteps of Mr Mollusc.
I duck into a shadow as the hotel manager turns a corner in the company of someone.
“I have already told you, sir,” I hear him say in a panicky voice. “I aske
d Her Ladyship, and she refused to see you…”
The man beside Mr Mollusc swings around, blocking the manager’s way. Even though he has his back to me, I recognize him as the tall stranger in the overlong coat and deep hood, the one who left the shell on my counter.
The stranger leans forward menacingly and murmurs something to Mollusc, something I can’t hear.
“But … but…” I hear the manager protest. “I can hardly do that…”
Then Deep Hood raises his hands, takes hold of his hood and begins to pull it back. From my hiding place all I can see are the hotel manager’s eyes bulging from his head. He goes so white he’s almost see-through, as he shrinks back at the sight of whatever is revealed in the shadows of the hood.
“I’ll do it!” he cries. “I’ll ask her again!”
Satisfied, the stranger lets the hood fall over his features once more. He turns back in my direction.
I hastily reverse back into the kitchen, then run around to the hotel lobby the other way, pastries bouncing on my plate. I don’t stop bouncing till I reach my Lost-and-Foundery.
It’s half an hour later, and Violet and I have wiped the breakfast crumbs from our chins and pulled on coats and scarves.
“Are you bringing that, too?” I say as I watch Violet fold a large sheet of paper and slip it into her pocket with a pen.
While I was upstairs, Violet used a crayon to make a rubbing of the strange writing on the sides of the bottle.
“It’s a clue, isn’t it?” she replies. “Even if we can’t read it.”
Then we climb out through the window and find ourselves blinking in the winter sun.
Eerie-on-Sea is battered and broken. The cobbles are strewn with smashed roof tiles, drifts of beach pebbles and splintered bits of boat that have been flung up by the storm tide. Windows are smashed, chimney stacks have collapsed, and all around, townspeople are sweeping and nailing and doing their best to make things right. Gusts still whip and snatch at our clothes, but the sky above has been wind-blasted free of cloud, and is filled with the pterodactyl cry of seagulls.
The storm isn’t over, but it has moved on. It can still be seen out on the horizon – a vast mountain range of flickering cloud and angry shadow, rumbling across the bay. Twice before it has retreated like this, and twice it has returned, stronger than ever. Looking at it now, it’s easy to imagine that it will be over the town again soon.
“Look at that!” Violet gasps, pointing to the cliffs. A section has collapsed, and there’s a scar running along them, as if something gargantuan has gouged into the rock.
“Er…” I squeak. “Never mind that – look at that!” And I point behind us.
Across the side of the hotel, and rising up one of the towers, is another gouge mark – four jagged lines in the shattered brickwork. It looks for all the world as if a giant claw has raked the wall of the Grand Nautilus Hotel.
“Did lightning do that?” Vi asks. “That’s one terrific storm!”
“I’m not sure ‘terrific’ is the word I would use,” says a man sweeping broken glass near by. “Even the sea wall is cracked.”
Sure enough, a fissure has appeared in the mighty stone wall and spread across the ground, creating a step in the promenade where there didn’t use to be one.
“Gargantis wakes, Eerie quakes,” Vi replies, quoting the old saying. It draws a sharp look from the sweeping man.
“A bit less of that talk, if you don’t mind,” he snaps. “If we get another pasting like last night, Eerie Rock really could fall into the sea – and take the whole town with it.”
“You actually think that might happen?” I ask, feeling a twinge of anxiety in my scalp.
But the man just tuts at me and heads off, sweeping his heap of ruin away with him.
“I told you people are scared,” says Violet. “Come on, let’s find Blaze Westerley and get some answers.”
So we make our way along the chaotic promenade towards the harbour, while Erwin leaps along the sea wall beside us. On our left loom the half-timbered gables of the Whelk & Walrus Pub, leaning more crazily than ever, its grubby sign creaking in the wind. Outside the pub, a number of fishermen are struggling with a rowing boat that has been lifted by the storm and deposited on the promenade. They sing one of their famous shanties as they work, but they stop what they’re doing to glare sea-hardened stares at me as we pass.
“Good morning,” says Violet brightly. “Rough night!”
The fishermen respond with a discouraging silence.
“It’s good that the storm’s gone,” Violet tries again. “What’s the weather forecast like?”
“Dismal,” a fisherman replies grudgingly. “The storm will return.”
We hear steps behind us, and two more fishermen come out from the shadows, lifting a rope net between them. One mutters, “It’s the Lost-and-Founder,” and the other replies, “Aye, Herbert Lemon is here.”
Yet more fishermen appear, some from the pub itself, others climbing the slimy green steps from the beach, blocking our way. In a moment, without any real warning or chance to prepare, we are surrounded.
WIDDERSHINS CAT
THE THING ABOUT THE FISHERMEN of Eerie-on-Sea is that they all look the same to me. Think heavy-knit pullovers, waterproof jackets and beards you could hide hedgehogs in, and you’d be most of the way there. The only one who really stands out is Boadicea Bates, and that’s mostly because she has a less impressive beard than the rest, being a woman and all. But what she lacks in chin whiskers she more than makes up for with a wiry black mane that probably eats hairbrushes for breakfast. As head of the Bates family – the biggest fishing clan for miles around – she’s also the nearest thing the fishermen have to a leader. It’s Boadicea Bates herself who steps out of the pub last and fixes me with a sailor’s salt-sore eye.
“So, Herbert Lemon, I hear you have been entrusted with something that belongs to us.”
“Er…” I begin.
“An ancient stoppered bottle,” Boadicea continues, as if there might be some doubt over what we’re talking about, “in the shape of a fish.”
“Ah!” I reply, switching on my best grin. “Well, the thing is—”
“And you have come to do the right thing,” Boadicea states, nodding to the others. “You have seen the danger to the town, and you are here to return to us what is ours according to our ancient rights.”
“Um…”
“Except we don’t see it about your person, Herbert Lemon.” Boadicea Bates’s brow lowers threateningly. “Our bottle. Though I expect you’ll be home to fetch it presently, isn’t that right?”
“…” is all I can say now. The grin is coming loose and wobbling badly.
“In fact,” adds Boadicea, beckoning to the fishermen holding the old net, “I expect we could speed things up mightily by carrying you straight home to get it now.”
The curved wall of fishermen closes around us, with a grumble of leathery scowls. The net is raised over our heads.
The grin, which was probably a bad idea from the start, finally falls off my face and curls up to die somewhere between my feet. I feel Violet press in beside me as we are backed against the wall.
I’m just about to try the “Look over there!” trick and make a run for it when Erwin does something strange. He jumps off the sea wall, walks into the space between us and the fishermen, and then slowly – but very definitely – turns a complete circle, anti-clockwise. There’s an intake of breath from the fishermen, and they shuffle back, lowering the net. Erwin doesn’t even look up at them as he begins to turn a second leisurely circle, in the same direction. I glance at Violet. Her face lights up with understanding as she watches the cat.
“A second turn!” cries Boadicea Bates as Erwin does indeed come back around to face the sailors again. “Bad omen is upon us!”
For a moment it looks as though Erwin has had enough of circles and is going to sit. He lowers his fuzzy bottom slowly towards the cobbles, and we can almost hear the straini
ng lungs of the fishermen as they prepare to breathe a sigh of relief. But then, just as the tension reaches its peak, Erwin raises his backside again and – very carefully and deliberately – begins to turn a third anti-clockwise circle.
The effect on the sailors is electric.
They begin smacking their lips and making “Here, kitty, here!” noises.
They begin winding their hands around clockwise, in a way that’s clearly meant to coax Erwin to change direction.
Those who have pieces of rope in their hands begin twitching them on the ground, saying, “Ahoy, cat!” and, “Moggy want a mousie?”
Erwin pauses in his turning and flicks one ear at this extraordinary pantomime. At this the fishermen double their efforts, their lips smacking and ropes twitching, and I really wish I had a camera – I’ve never seen anything like it.
“Come on!” Violet hisses to me. With all the fuss around Erwin, the threatening circle of seafarers has broken up, and there’s a gap for us. We dart away and out onto the harbour wall, and in a moment we have run down half its length.
Looking back, we see that Erwin has begun moving along the promenade, away from us. The knot of fishermen, still doing all they can to stop the cat from completing his third anti-clockwise circle, go after him.
“What was all that about?” I say. But Violet can’t answer because she’s laughing too hard.
“Clever old Erwin!” she manages to get out eventually, when she gets her breath back. Then she puts on an exaggerated old sailor voice: “When Eerie cat turns widdershins thrice, ’tis dreary luck for men and mice.”
“What?”
“Or something like that, anyway.” Violet grins. “It’s another old Eerie saying. I know because with so many fishermen coming up to the book dispensary over the last few days, I’ve heard every old wives’ tale going. That’s why I started reading up about it. The fishermen are extremely superstitious.”
“But what was Erwin doing? And what’s a widdershin?”
“Widdershins is just an old word meaning anti-clockwise,” Violet replies. “Erwin was about to bring bad luck crashing down on us all, and the fishermen will do anything to stop that. They’ve probably gone to get a bucket of sardines to bribe him. As I said, clever old puss.”
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