The Smoking Hourglass

by Jennifer Bell

  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 chequered 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 three 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 dishevelled-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 queue 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 a metre 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 grey slate tiles. The Barrow Post logo – an old-fashioned cart with a megaphone in the centre – was stencilled in white between them.

  Bunched around the further hole, the delivery kids all stepped 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 inside.’

  ‘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 towards 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 to a crouch behind them, before standing. ‘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 a six-stone 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 coloured liquid and labelled 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 colour. Ivy wondered what they didn’t have an ink for. They must all be products of mixology.

  Seb disappeared round 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 windscreen, 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 grey feather. It read:

  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 grey hair and a rollneck 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. 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?’<
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  ‘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 punchlines to jokes. Observe.’ He waved a hand in front of Stanley’s bewildered face. ‘Why did the banana go to the doctor’s?’

  ‘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 punchlines to his favourite 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. ‘Yuch!’ 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 grey stone walls and a single uncommon lemon squeezer mounted on the ceiling. It bloomed into brightness as they entered.

  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 for ever 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 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 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 returning.’ He signalled to the matchbox. ‘But don’t listen to me go on; ask the box for what you need.’

  Ivy’s mind was still whirring about this mysterious researcher, but she slowly raised the matchbox to her lips. ‘Sylvie Wrench.’

  The matchbox made a sound like a cat yowling and then bounced out of Ivy’s arms and hit the empty stone floor with a surprising metal clang.

  ‘Give it some space,’ the archivist advised, stepping back.

  They edged away, staring as the matchbox unfolded itself again and again, growing bigger all the time. A neat stack of papers appeared in the middle, followed by a brown cardboard box.

  ‘Articles your grandmother is mentioned in will be in that pile,’ Stanley explained. ‘Journalistic evidence that was kept will be in the box. Take as long as you need examining it all; it’s forbidden to remove anything.’ He scratched his head. ‘I’ll go find that marble; might be able to tell you more about the gentleman who was here.’

  As Stanley left the room, Ivy knelt on the floor. She could understand now why the place was empty – you needed as much space as possible to give the matchbox room to expand. As she picked up the box of photos, she speculated about who might have been snooping on Granma Sylvie. All at once this ‘pretend’ look at her files didn’t seem so pointless.

  Valian flicked through a batch of papers while Seb examined several documents on the floor beside him. ‘Lot of stuff about the Twelfth Night Mystery,’ he muttered.

  Ivy opened the cardboard box. There were two photos inside. The first showed a rosy-cheeked Granma Sylvie in a neat school uniform standing outside the Wrench Mansion, holding hands with her mother. ‘Seb, look.’ Ivy passed the photo across before picking up the next one. When she saw it, she tensed.

  In her hand was a black-and-white picture of a grinning teenage Granma Sylvie wearing a white petticoat and silver go-go boots. Linking arms with her was another young girl with slanted cheekbones and long dark hair.

  ‘Selena Grimes,’ Ivy blurted. ‘I don’t believe it – they’re in this picture together.’

  ‘What?’ Valian shuffled closer.

  Selena Grimes looked fresh-faced and glowing, smiling with straight teeth instead of the needle-like ones she had now. ‘You don’t think Granma was friends with her, do you?’ Seb asked.

  Ivy didn’t know what to think. The thought that her granma had even had a photo taken with Selena left her feeling nauseous. ‘I guess it explains why Selena appears in Granma Sylvie’s new memory of the black door and the smoking hourglass – they must have known each other.’ Her heart sank. She didn’t want to believe that they were friends. They couldn’t have been …

  ‘Wait,’ Valian said. ‘I think there’s someone missing from the photo – there.’

  Ivy studied the edge of the picture. Beside Granma Sylvie’s go-go boots was the toe of another shoe: a black leather brogue. The paper was crisp, brown and flaky. Ivy held it under her nose. ‘It smells like it’s been burned.’ She examined the inside of the box; there were traces of ash in the corners. ‘Stanley said that he caught the last man in here smoking. He might have set fire to this.’

  ‘There’s writing on the back,’ Seb said, indicating underneath. ‘I think
it might be a postcard.’

  Ivy turned the picture over. Seb was right. There was an address in London that she didn’t recognize, and a short message inscribed in impossibly neat handwriting:

  The tone of the message was so sad, it made Ivy’s throat tighten. It was signed at the bottom with a strange squiggle, but as half of it had been burned away, she couldn’t discern what it said. ‘Who do you think sent it? Surely not Selena.’

  Valian scratched his head. ‘It’s got to be the person who’s missing from the photo. Whoever they are, they must be in danger and worried about your gran.’

  Ivy considered what might have happened to them. There was a stamp affixed to the postcard. Last winter she had discovered that featherlight messages could be intercepted by the mailmaster; perhaps the sender wanted to keep the message away from uncommon eyes.

  ‘Maybe this would trigger Granma Sylvie’s memory.’ She thought about stowing it in her pocket, but then remembered the fridge-magnet security door. ‘If only we could smuggle it away.’

  ‘I can take a picture of it,’ Seb suggested, fishing his phone out of his rucksack.

  Valian shook his head. ‘Common cameras won’t work in Lundinor. The pictures always come out blurry so that you can’t leave with evidence of what’s here. Special Branch have something to do with it.’ He reached under his leather jacket and pulled out the tatty Great Uncommon Bag. Then, checking that Stanley wasn’t around, he stuffed the photo inside and said, ‘Sylvie Sparrow’s pocket.’

  Ivy recalled what Valian had said earlier – that the bag could break the rules of Lundinor without being detected. She hoped it would work now.

  Just as the photo disappeared, Stanley came back into the room, throwing a small blue marble up and down in one hand. ‘Got it!’ he said, sounding pleased with himself. ‘The gentleman in here before was a distinctive fellow – smart uniform, curly golden beard and a white line through his eyebrow.’