by Peter Bunzl
So Lily, Robert and Caddy crowded together on the settee, beside the two of them in their chairs, and Papa dealt them all in to the next hand. Malkin, meanwhile, lay down as close to the fire as he could and proceeded to get beneath everyone’s feet.
As she joined the game, Lily thought of her ma, long gone, and how nice it would be to have her around still. Not just to talk to her about her life and her work, which Lily now knew about thanks to the diary she had found last year, but also just to be with her. To have a mother in her life who understood who she was becoming. Like Robert and Caddy had with Selena.
And here they were, all together.
To anyone looking from the outside, they might’ve been a family. And perhaps, in that moment, they were.
The next day was spent recovering at the hotel, and the day after that seeing the sights of New York that they had missed when they were busy investigating things for Dane and spying on Miss Buckle and Matilda Milksop.
On their last night in the city, they did end up seeing the New York Metropolitan Opera, because when Miss Child understood they had recovered her diamond, she invited them all along as her special guests.
Miss Child was even more shocked when Lily told her she’d rescued the gem from the bottom of the ocean – they declined to explain the rest to her, for fear it might upset her delicate sensibilities. After she had regained her composure, Miss Child rang the opera house from the hotel lobby and made sure to stress that they should be given the best seats in the house – which turned out to be in the Grand Tier Box, right beside the stage.
Dane and his grandma came too and so did Kid Wink and the Cloudscrapers, who’d played such a large part in alerting the police to the location of Dane and the diamond in the first place.
The box was a bit snug with all of them in it, but the view was magnificent and there was plenty to admire in the splendid auditorium. Golden curtains that shimmered in the light and gilded boxes full of people that stretched all around Lily, making her feel like she was in one of those old-fashioned paintings of heaven. Only this heaven was stuffed with people rustling programmes and chatting to each other, rather than angels.
Behind Lily, everyone in the box was talking too. Papa was asking Kid Wink about her Wonderlite and promising to put her in touch with some New York professors who could help her develop it. Caddy had borrowed Robert’s binoculars and was staring at the well-dressed crowd, oohing and aahing as if they were a bevy of brightly-coloured birds with exotic plumage that she was seeing for the first time.
Dane’s grandmom was gossiping happily with Selena, and Dane was stroking Spook, who he had hidden in his pocket. Lily wondered if it was the first time a mouse had ever been brought to the opera. Come to that, she wondered if it was the first time there had ever been a fox at the opera, for they had snuck Malkin in too – hidden in her basket of course.
But soon Lily forgot all that, for the curtain rose and the performance started. It was an operatic version of The Tempest. Lily wasn’t sure she could sit and watch a story with so much shipwreck in it after her time stuck under the sea, but luckily the magic distracted from the tragic parts – that and Miss Child’s enthralling singing. She played Miranda. She even wore the Ouroboros Diamond, now set in a much more low-key brooch and pinned to the lace collar of her dress. It glinted in the limelight, sending sparkling blue stars glittering over the gigantic room full of people, before they darted off and away like bold, luminous fish across the opera house’s cavernous gold ceiling.
Lily could not take her eyes off Miss Child, nor the Ouroboros Diamond brooch. How lucky they were to escape from the Shadowsea alive, to rescue Dane and to be able to bring that magnificent rare diamond back to her.
Their final day in New York was a bright winter’s day. Lily, Papa, Robert, Malkin, Selena and Caddy checked themselves out of the Murray Hill Hotel and took two electrical hansom cabs to Grand Central Depot, a block north.
The snow was melting and rivulets of water ran down the cobbled street and into the storm drains, which hissed with steam and moisture.
In the steam-wagon, Selena flicked through their copy of Appleton’s General Guide to the United States and Canada, reading out various passages about Boston and Harvard and telling them all what they might see from the window of the train on the journey. She was dressed for travel in the outfit she had been wearing on the first day they arrived in New York. The glass beads of her long velvet coat twinkled in the morning sunlight beneath her black woollen winter cape, and her hair was pinned up beneath her large, felt, feather-trimmed hat.
Caddy wore her velvet jacket with the green glass buttons, and her matching green walking gloves and a scarf, plus a different bonnet, which was a little less Christmassy. Malkin had on his green woollen jacket and Lily her green blouson and tiger scarf. Papa wore a black bowler hat and a new black coat and gloves he had bought on a shopping spree on Fifth Avenue the previous day. Robert, of course, wore his da’s coat and hat, as he always did.
Outside the entrance to the Grand Central Depot, newspaper boys stamped their feet and clapped their gloved hands together, huffing like horses. They shouted out today’s headlines, vying to sell their papers as quickly as possible and come in from the cold.
“BIPLANE BUILT! NEW FIXED-WING AIRCRAFT TAKES FLIGHT!”
It sounded too intriguing a story to miss. Robert bought a paper and stuffed it under his arm. He would read it later, on the journey.
They entered the station, crossed the concourse and climbed the few steps to platform nine, where their train was due to depart. Lily glimpsed their trunks, which had arrived before them, being stowed in the guard’s compartment at the far end of the train. Then she saw something else.
Dane and his grandmom had come to the station. They were already on the platform, waiting to see them off. Dane waved cheerfully as soon as he caught sight of them, and his grandmom, beaming, held Spook up in a cupped palm so he might say goodbye too.
The engine of the train gave a deafening whistle and blew a long plume of grey steam from its smokestack, warning them that it was almost time to leave.
Lily was the last to step up into their carriage. She lingered for a moment in the doorway after Caddy, Robert, Malkin, Selena and Papa had already climbed aboard, and glanced back over her shoulder at Dane. He was holding his grandmom’s free hand and he looked happy.
As all of them shuffled along the couchette car’s corridor, searching for their cabin, Lily was reminded of the last carriage they’d been on – the Cloudscraper Express, kitted out with inventions of Kid Wink and the home-made decorations of the rest of the Cloudscrapers.
When Lily found their compartment, Papa had already stowed their luggage in the overhead racks and Selena was busily stuffing her and Caddy’s cases in beside those.
Robert was pleased his ma and sister were coming on with them. As things had turned out, he hadn’t got to spend nearly as much time with his ma in New York as he would’ve liked, so it was good that they could be together for the next leg of the trip. Hopefully, there would be no more dangerous adventures on that part, but you never could tell…
Selena finished strapping her cases into the luggage rack and sat back down in her seat. Malkin lunged across her lap and pressed his snout to the window, staring out at the station platform. They had checked before they boarded and it seemed that mechanimals were allowed on this train, and so he was going to make the most of it this time.
Papa settled down opposite Selena in the middle of the cabin. He removed his black bowler hat and held it in his hands, seemingly unsure what to do with it, but that was all part of his awkward way. His hair was slicked back, but there was a tuft on top that would not be tamed and stuck up like couch grass, flecked with strands of grey. And that made Lily love him even more. She took the hat from him and hung it on a hook above his seat, before settling beside the window.
Robert nestled into the space opposite Lily, between Caddy and Malkin. He took his cap off and put it in
his pocket. Now the train whistle was blowing and the guard was coming down the platform, closing all the doors. “ALL ABOARD!” he called. “THIS IS A NON-STOP TRAIN TO BOSTON! NEXT STOP SOUTH STATION, BOSTON!”
Selena grinned at all of them. “Well,” she said, “I suppose that means we’re on our way!”
“I suppose it does,” Papa said, getting out his speech and correction pencil once more, which he’d tucked in his increasingly-tattered book of Shakespeare.
“Give me a moment.” Lily stood and ran into the corridor, rushing to the far side of the train.
She pushed down the window and stuck her head out, searching for Dane on the platform. He was still stood there with his grandmom and Spook, only a few feet away.
“Good luck!” she called out to him, over the hiss of steam as the train started up.
“And to you,” Dane shouted back.
“I hope to see you again soon,” Lily called, but her words were drowned out by pistons pumping and wheels turning beneath her as the train began to move.
Soon the carriage was speeding away from platform nine.
Lily glimpsed Dane one last time. He was talking animatedly with his grandmom three-quarters of the way down the platform, grinning and waving wildly after the rapidly departing train.
And then he was a blur.
And then he was masked by a streaming line of buildings.
And then he was gone.
She stepped back to their cabin and stood for a moment in the open doorway, looking at her family and Robert’s. Selena had the Appleton’s Guide open and was flicking through more pages about Boston and Harvard. Caddy was reading the book they had given her: The Secrets and Techniques of World-Class Spies. Papa had his pencil out and was checking through the speech one last time, before he had to give it at the university in a couple of days.
“Shall I read you the new title?” he asked the rest of the cabin’s occupants. “It’s called: Concerning the dangers of clockwork and electrical technology in the modern commercial world.”
“It’s not very catchy,” Selena said, looking up from her book.
“My dear Mrs Townsend,” Papa replied. “It’s not meant to be. It’s a scientific paper!”
As Lily returned to her window seat, she thought she could probably give Papa and the other professors at the conference a few warnings about the dangers of both electrical and clockwork technology, but she didn’t say so, not just then.
She glanced at Robert, who was stroking Malkin’s ears and looking through the glass with his binoculars. When he felt her eyes on him, Robert dropped the lenses and gave her one of his biggest, cheekiest grins.
They had come so far together, seen so many adventures, and now they would be travelling on to somewhere new. Lily was glad he was still with her. She hoped that Dane would be able to find a friend as loyal and true in his new life and she wished him the courage to begin to trust people again so that he might. But she knew such bravery took a long time – it had with her. Dane would never stop missing his lost parents, not really. All this time later, she still missed Mama more than she could say. Not a day went by when she didn’t think of her in some small way. She knew that Robert felt the same about his da, for they had talked about it many times. But there were ways to remember and look back with love, while still moving on.
Papa had told her once that people didn’t change, but that wasn’t true. People changed too much. They woke up different every day. Learned new things, forgot others. You couldn’t hold on, not really, not to the dead or memories, or the past, or even to your childhood, when you were growing up so fast. But wasn’t that the joy of it? Not the stillness, but the growing. The changing adventure of each day…
To walk a little taller. To see from a higher angle. To grow and change and learn and experience new things – the endless good and bad that shaped your path. And, after all, wasn’t that what being alive was all about? Brackenbridge may have been home, but home would always be there, waiting. It was just that sometimes you had to leave it to find out what you were missing.
She wiped a stinging feeling from the corner of her eye.
“Are you all right?” Robert asked her.
“I think so,” she said. “I was wondering about Dane. I hope he can be happy now he and Spook are with his grandmom. But, just in case, I asked Kid Wink and the others to look in on him from time to time.”
“Good idea,” Robert said. “He’ll need their help.”
“And their friendship,” Malkin added. “Like we three need each other.”
“We four,” Caddy added. She’d been listening from her seat across the carriage. “We six, in fact, because there’s your papa and ma.”
Lily laughed. “You’re right. Friends and family together.” She smiled around the carriage at all of them, but especially Robert. “Wherever in the world you are, that’s my home. And wherever in the world I am, I hope you’re with me. Because that’s the best way to see the world, with the ones you love.”
“There’s so much world out there to see,” Robert replied. “Big blue skies that stretch for miles and miles, and a million things to experience and do. And, along with Malkin and your pa and my sister and Ma, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather see them with than you, Lily.”
“Me neither,” Lily said. “I wouldn’t miss a moment of it. Wherever you go, I’ll be there with you, along for the ride.”
Lily gazed out the window, past Malkin, who was still pressing his forepaws against the glass. She stared at the strange new country as it unfurled before her: the gilded city, interspersed with blurring flashes of bright green leaves. Nature and the man-made.
Two different energies fused together, like they were inside her. The regimented ticking rhythm of the Cogheart and her fizzing, bubbling mind, whose thoughts soared every day to new heights. The mixture had for so long seemed imperfect to Lily, a grating mismatch, but she knew now that was not the case. Its combination had helped her overcome so much adversity, made her who she was. Strong and unique. A beautiful blend of contradictions. Alive and, with those she loved, travelling on to see new sights.
The train clacked along it rails, its movement an incessant call to adventure, but a sudden and complete calm had descended on Lily. She felt whole and one at last and that feeling flooded everything around her, inside and out, until it became as deep and still and silent as a winter’s day.
Lily pressed her freckled nose to the glass and watched the world glide by in all its gabbling, scrabbling, screaming, complicated glory, streaming towards her in one great river of life and light, and her heart went out to meet it.
1. What is the name of the Hartmans’s (and Robert’s) house?
2. Which lesson in Miss Octavia Scrimshaw’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies required Lily to carry books on her head to improve her posture, and what was the name of Lily’s teacher for this subject?
3. Robert’s da owned a shop in Brackenbridge; what did he do and what was the shop called?
4. What surname did Lily and her father first use in Cogheart to avoid being discovered by some nasty villains?
5. How many mechanicals live with Lily, Robert and Papa, and what are they all named?
6. In Cogheart, Robert and Lily make friends with a reporter from The Daily Cog, who also happens to live in a ramshackle zep. What is her full name?
7. Which notorious criminal broke out of Pentonville Prison in Moonlocket to come after Robert?
8. What organization is Papa, a mechanist, part of, what is their symbol, and in which Cogheart Adventure do Lily and Robert visit their headquarters in London?
9. In Moonlocket, Lily, Robert and Malkin escape from a moving zep…but what ingenious method do they use to get out safely? (Even if they do end up a little damp at the end!)
10. Which theatre were Selena and Caddy working in when Robert first met them in Moonlocket?
11. Which queen did Robert, Lily and Malkin meet at the end of Moonlocket – and on the back of
which animal?
12. What is inside Robert’s Moonlocket that he wears around his neck?
13. Where in the world did Lily and Robert find themselves after breaking out of the circus which had kidnapped them in Skycircus?
14. Who was Lily’s governess in Cogheart, and what false name did she use in Skycircus?
15. Name the nasty mechanical from Skycircus who is described as having arms as “big as brick pillars”?
16. When is Lily’s birthday? (Clue: she celebrates it at the beginning of Skycircus!)
17. What does Malkin avoid doing because he’s worried it’ll make his insides rusty?
18. Can you remember the names of all the police that the gang have encountered across the Cogheart Adventures? (Clue: they’re all mentioned somewhere in Shadowsea…)
19. What magazines, full of daring adventures and terrifying tales, do both Lily and Caddy love to read?
20. What presents does Malkin receive for Christmas in Shadowsea?
21. Lily loves the scarf that Mrs Rust made for her; what colours did Rusty knit it in?
22. What is the name of the fancy hotel that the Townsends and Hartmans stay in in New York?
23. Kid Wink comes up with a brilliant invention that helps the gang see on the Shadowsea Submarine Base; what is it?
24. Which platform on which railway line does the ransom drop take place on in Shadowsea?
25. Lily’s Papa loves reading Shakespeare, so he’s delighted to find that Miss Aleilia Child has invited them to the opera in Shadowsea! But which Shakespearean play is the opera based on?
26. At the end of Shadowsea, Lily, Robert, Malkin, Papa, Selena and Caddy are all headed off to explore America… Where is their next stop?
ANSWERS: You can find the answers after the glossary and Cogheart Adventures…
A glossary of words which may be uncommon to the reader
Bioluminescence: when Lily encounters the school of fish glittering in the undersea dark, she’s found what are called “bioluminescent fish” – fish that can produce their own light. Bioluminescence can either be due to chemical reactions inside the fish or bacteria in them which glow themselves.
