Frankie Fish and the Sister Shemozzle

by Helliar Peter

  Still, there was something special about the Olympics. Even Grandad, who hardly ever got enthusiastic about anything (except when tinned sardines were on special at the supermarket) had a dreamy look in his eye.

  ‘Ye know,’ he said, as he puffed along behind the boys, ‘I was quite a talented shot-putter in me day. If I hadn’t gone down the racing-driver route, I probably would have represented Scotland in the Olympics.’

  Frankie wasn’t sure if that was true (he had noticed that sometimes Grandad mixed up what he’d actually done with shows he’d seen on TV) but he let it pass. After all, a man could dream, couldn’t he?

  When the time-travellers arrived at the Academy, they were greeted by a big white building with lots of pillars and sculptures. There were beautiful gardens all around, and groups of people walking through them in their togas, having animated conversations. It was all VERY impressive. Suddenly Frankie could understand why Lou was so into the Academy.

  ‘Come on, boys,’ Grandad said, stomping up a tiled path to an ornately carved front entrance. ‘Let’s see if we can find Lou and clear out.’

  But once they reached the solid wooden door, Grandad looked suddenly intimidated. ‘Ye better knock, lad,’ he muttered to Frankie.

  ‘No way!’ said Frankie. ‘You’re the grown-up. You do it!’

  Drew solved the problem by accidentally kicking his hacky sack into the door. It made a resounding BOOM.

  Frankie, Grandad and Drew froze. Frankie felt his heart beating very fast. What kind of super-smart person would open the door? Would they take one look at him and realise that he, Frankie Fish, currently wearing a bunny-patterned bedsheet, did not even belong on the porch of this building?

  The door creaked open just a touch and a boy – who appeared to be about seven years old – peered out. He looked just as surprised to see them as they were to see him and for a moment everyone just stood there, staring at each other with their mouths open. Then, as the boy began to speak, the padlock buzzed, translating his words.

  ‘Who knocks on the great door?’ the boy asked, obviously trying to sound older than he looked.

  ‘Er, hello there, kiddo. We are looking for a girl. Me granddaughter,’ Grandad stated.

  ‘My sister,’ added Frankie.

  ‘My best friend’s sister,’ finished Drew, unnecessarily.

  ‘And why do you seek her out here?’ the boy asked, still trying to sound regal.

  ‘Well, it’s a long story –’ Grandad started, before the boy interrupted.

  ‘Long stories are often the fault of the person telling the story,’ said the boy pompously. ‘Is this long story worthy of its length?’

  Grandad had never been spoken to like this by an adult, let alone somebody of such a tender age. ‘Well, ah, the story is a rather curly one for many reasons,’ Grandad began, a little flustered.

  The precocious youngster interrupted again. ‘Babies’ hair is curly,’ he said. ‘Stories are not.’

  Drew groaned. ‘This kid is SO ANNOYING,’ he muttered.

  Grandad now looked fit to burst so Frankie leapt in. ‘Grandad, unwrap the sculpture and show him. Maybe he’s seen Lou.’

  As Grandad started untying the string from around the package, Frankie added, ‘What’s your name? I’m Frankie. This is Drew and my Grandad Alfie.’

  ‘I’m Alexi,’ replied the boy, drawing himself up to his full height (which wasn’t very tall), ‘and when I grow up, I shall be the God of Wisdom.’

  Frankie and Drew exchanged a look, but before they could reply, Grandad gave a yell of dismay. ‘I’ve been robbed!’ he yelled, veins bulging in his neck. ‘Look!’

  Sure enough, the sculpture was missing. In its place was a large rock.

  Suddenly, there was another voice from the other side of the Academy door – a deeper, adult one. A moment later the door swung wider to reveal a man in a flowing toga with an impressively long grey beard. He was seriously old, so old that he made Grandad look like a teenager.

  When he spoke, he had the tone of someone who was obviously used to being listened to. The padlock had no trouble picking up his words.

  ‘Alexi, how many times must I tell you?’ scolded the man. ‘This door is not yours to open. Now scram!’ And with that, he aimed a kick at Alexi’s butt, who scrambled back into the Academy.

  The old man fixed his eyes on the group. ‘I am Cosmas, a teacher here at this institution. What appears to be troubling you?’ he asked, clearly observing that Grandad was in a right royal huff.

  ‘We are the victims of thievery!’ Grandad said indignantly.

  ‘Let me guess, you were in the marketplace?’ sighed Cosmas. ‘May I ask, what brings you to the Academy? We have no scoundrels on our grounds … other than Alexi,’ he said, rolling his eyes.

  ‘My sister’s run away and we think she might be here,’ Frankie said in a rush. ‘Can we please come in and take a look?’

  Cosmas stroked his beard, which looked like a long cloud floating from his chin. ‘It’s not that easy, I’m afraid. You see, this is the Academy, where Greece’s greatest philosophers come to test their minds. If we allowed just ANYONE through the door, we wouldn’t be the Academy.’ ‘So …’ Grandad frowned. ‘Yer refusing to let us in?’

  ‘Of course not!’ replied Cosmas politely. ‘You just need to answer a question first.’

  ‘What kind of question?’ asked Frankie nervously. He really hoped it wasn’t a complicated maths problem. Or whether he’d brushed his teeth that morning.

  Cosmas’s eyes twinkled. ‘My question is a very interesting one. It only has one right answer. You can ask it all day long and receive completely different answers with each asking. Yet, although different, every one of these answers will still be correct.’

  Frankie, Drew and Grandad waited expectantly for Cosmas to say something more. But he didn’t. Instead, he stood where he was, smiling at them.

  After a while Grandad cleared his throat. ‘So, what is the question?’

  Cosmas’s smile broadened into a delighted grin. ‘Yes, exactly!’ he said. ‘My question is, what is the question? Answer that, or you can’t come inside the Academy!’

  ‘Do we get to phone a friend?’ asked Drew.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE USING OF BRAINS

  Try as they might, neither Frankie, Drew nor Grandad could get another clue out of Cosmas, and finally the old man shut the big wooden door in their faces. ‘Come back another day!’ came his booming voice through the entrance.

  Frankie, Drew and Grandad looked at each other. ‘One of ye boys should be able to work out the answer,’ muttered Grandad. ‘Yer brains are young and quick.’

  ‘But your old brain is stuffed with knowledge,’ retorted Drew quickly, to which Grandad only harrumphed.

  But no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t figure out the answer to the riddle.

  ‘What do we do now?’ said Frankie, worried. The riddle was IMPOSSIBLE, but they couldn’t afford to wait a whole day to return to the Academy – let alone longer! The Sonic Suitcase battery wouldn’t last that long.

  Finally, Grandad insisted that they return to the junk shop. ‘If we can’t solve the riddle, the sculpture is still our only hope.’

  Frankie bit his lip and nodded. But when they arrived, the junk shop was closed and the man was nowhere to be seen. Grandad’s face turned a very interesting shade of purple.

  ‘I know it was a very … er … lovely sculpture, but I’m sure Nanna can make another one,’ said Frankie, trying to calm the old man down. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’

  Grandad rubbed his hand over his face. ‘That’s where yer wrong, lad. It may very well be the end of the world if we don’t find it. I didn’t mention this before because I didn’t want to worry ye. But there’s something ye don’t know about yer Nanna’s sculptures. Something that makes them very dangerous.’

  ‘Do they explode?’ asked Drew nervously.

  ‘No, they don’t explode!’ snapped Grandad.
He drew a deep breath while Frankie and Drew waited on tenterhooks.

  ‘Yer Nanna signs and dates all her sculptures,’ he revealed dramatically, and Frankie groaned.

  ‘Um … what’s so dangerous about that?’ asked Drew.

  ‘Use yer brain, lad!’ said Grandad. ‘What might happen if someone discovers the date on our sculpture and works out it’s an object from the future?’

  The conversation had put Grandad in an even worse temper than before. He stomped off down the road with Frankie and Drew following behind, neither one daring to ask where they were heading, exactly. Around a bend, they found themselves on the edge of a busy produce market. Olives spilled from barrels, and huge rounds of cheese were stacked below garlands of preserved meats.

  Drew clutched his stomach. ‘I’m SOOO hungry!’ he moaned.

  ‘Too bad! We haven’t got any money,’ snapped Grandad. ‘And we need to figure out that damned riddle if we’re going to find Louise.’

  ‘But my tummy keeps gurgling,’ complained Drew. ‘I can’t think on an empty stomach!’

  ‘Well, distract yerself with that paddy-whack thing of yers,’ said Grandad.

  Obediently, Drew began to kick his hacky sack from foot to foot and then from knee to foot. And then suddenly, there was the sound of something metal hitting the paving stones of the market square.

  ‘Hey!’ said Drew. ‘Someone just threw something at me!’

  Grandad stooped and picked up the small disc that had landed near Drew’s feet. ‘It’s a coin, ye numbskull!’

  The boys looked around and noticed a woman, a man and two young kids watching them and smiling.

  ‘Keep playing with the hacky sack,’ urged Frankie. ‘I think they’re paying you.’

  Drew was not the type of person to let an audience down (in other words, he was a showoff) so he obligingly performed all his best hacky sack tricks. The family clapped appreciatively and threw down another coin. Other people began to watch and toss coins too. Frankie hurried around, gathering them up.

  Finally, Drew ran out of tricks and did a deep bow. There was quite a circle of people around him by that point, and they cheered and clapped enthusiastically.

  ‘How much did we get?’ Drew asked Frankie.

  Frankie showed him the pile of coins he’d collected in his toga. ‘I have no idea,’ he said, ‘but I’m sure we can buy something with it.’

  It turned out that they could buy a lot with it. Frankie, Drew and Grandad walked around the market, pointing to things they liked the look of (which was basically everything except the dried fish) and handing over coins from their stash. When they had as much food as they could carry, they staggered out of the market and found themselves in a park.

  The park was nice even by olden days’ standards. The scent of pine needles hung in the air, reminding Frankie of Christmas. He began to wonder if he’d be spending this Christmas without Saint Lou, but thinking about it too much made his stomach feel weird. So he concentrated on eating instead, trying not to think about where his sister was and what she was doing and whether she was OK.

  When the group had finishing gorging themselves on olives, sausages, cheese and bread, Drew collapsed onto his back. ‘I need a nap!’ he groaned.

  ‘There’s no time for napping,’ Frankie protested as the sun began to set. ‘We’ve got problems to solve.’

  As much as he was worried about his sister, Frankie couldn’t even imagine the kind of world-altering troubles that might follow if someone figured out what the date written on the sculpture meant. Which seemed extremely likely as Ancient Greece was full of smartypantses (or smarty-togas).

  ‘I can’t figure out anything right now,’ Drew said, closing his eyes. And Grandad, despite his anxiety about the missing sculpture, was soon competing with Drew in a loudest-snore competition. (It has to be said that Grandad, who snored like a farting giant, had an unfair advantage.)

  Frankie shook his head in disbelief. How could they be sleeping at a time like this? Yet, as the sun lowered on the horizon, Frankie’s eyelids began lowering too. With a yawn, he sprawled out on the ground.

  I’ll just close my eyes for a moment and think on it, he thought, trying to ignore the worry churning in his stomach. Maybe the answer to the riddle would come to him as he slept.

  CHAPTER 9

  HULA HOOPS AND CRIME RiNGS

  Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, and more than TWO THOUSAND years later … Lisa Chadwick, professional teacher’s pet, was plotting.

  Until recently, she hadn’t given much thought to Frankie Fish. To her he was just ‘Fish Guts’. But that had all changed after Frankie won the Halloween Parade costume competition. It was the first time Lisa had lost anything in her life – and she didn’t like the feeling one bit.

  A few weeks had passed since the Halloween competition and most people had completely forgotten about it. But not Lisa Chadwick. She brooded about it every single day. It was bad enough that Fish Guts had beaten her totally cool hula-hooping zombiefied Margaret Thatcher costume with a lame-o ghost costume. But what made Lisa really furious was that she was sure Fish Guts had stolen her hula hoop so she’d lose.

  Ever since that day, Lisa had started paying a lot more attention to Frankie. And the more she watched Frankie, the more suspicious she became. He acted so innocent that she was sure he was up to something.

  For one thing, there was that weird suitcase he always carried around. He kept a tight grip on it – like he really didn’t want anyone else to get their hands on it. But WHY? It didn’t look valuable. In fact, it looked really beaten-up and old. Lisa Chadwick wouldn’t have been caught dead carrying such a thing. It must be what was inside the case that Frankie wanted to protect.

  Then there was the way he kept disappearing and reappearing. One minute there was no sign of him and the next there he was, strolling around the corner giggling with that annoying friend of his, Drew Bird.

  The final suspicious thing was that recently Lisa had overheard Frankie whispering to himself. At least, that’s what she’d first thought, but then she realised he was wearing an earpiece to talk with his sister.

  That was when Lisa Chadwick realised what was going on.

  Frankie, Drew and Lou were running a CRIME RING at school!

  The more Lisa thought about it, the more it all made sense. Lou used the earpiece to let Frankie and Drew know when the coast was clear. Then Frankie and Drew went and stole things from other kids’ bags and lockers – hula hoops, for instance – and they stashed them in that ugly suitcase.

  (Of course, a hula hoop couldn’t fit inside something the size of the Sonic Suitcase, but obvious facts like that didn’t matter to Lisa.)

  Then they took the stolen items home and sold them online!

  She had even worked out how Drew and Frankie managed to keep appearing and disappearing. There must be secret tunnels under the school. The boys had discovered the entrances and were using them to sneak around undetected.

  One thing was for certain: now that she was onto them, there was no way Lisa was going to let those three get away with this. She was going to expose their crime ring and hopefully get all three of them expelled from St Monica’s.

  As she walked to class that day, she remembered something else about Frankie Fish. He had a grandfather with a hook instead of a hand. Frankie seemed to spend a lot of time with him, even though the old guy seemed really grumpy. Maybe the grandfather was the ‘big boss’ of the crime ring? She had once heard Frankie say something to Drew about his grandad’s ‘forbidden shed’. Maybe that was where all the stolen goods were stored …

  Lisa smiled to herself. First thing after school, she was going to find out where Frankie’s grandparents lived. Then she was going over there to look for clues. With a bit of luck, Fish Guts, Drew and Lou would be expelled by the end of the week – or better yet, ARRESTED.

  CHAPTER 10

  RiDDLE ME THIS

  Frankie was having a strange dream. In it, he was being
chased around a marketplace by a giant clock that kept saying, ‘When are you going to solve the riddle?’ Then he heard Drew say, ‘I feel weird,’ and when he turned around he saw a giant hacky sack dressed in a toga. ‘Is it time to wake up yet?’ asked the hacky sack, in Drew’s voice.

  With a start, Frankie woke up. The sky was still dark, but he could see a faint glimmer of pink light behind the trees. He sat up, rubbed his face and looked over to where Drew was sleeping against a tree. He looked like himself and not like a hacky sack, which was a relief.

  Frankie frowned, remembering his crazy dream. Did it somehow contain the answer to the riddle?

  ‘What question can get a different answer whenever you ask it, but each answer is always correct?’ muttered Frankie to himself.

  And then, from nowhere, the answer came to him. Of course!

  ‘What time is it?’ he cried in triumph.

  Drew Bird opened one sleepy eye. ‘I don’t know,’ he grumbled, ‘but it’s too early to be waking me up, that’s for sure.’

  ‘No, that’s the answer to the riddle!’ exclaimed Frankie. ‘Every time you ask someone what time it is, you’ll get a different answer. But all those answers can be right.’

  Drew nodded. ‘That makes sense,’ he yawned before adding, ‘now its time to go back to sleep.’

  Grandad struggled to a sitting position, a rare grin on his face. ‘Ye cracked it, Frankie! Now help me up.’

  Frankie and Drew hauled Grandad to his feet, a few stray olive pips rolling down his toga as they did so. ‘Right, lads,’ said Grandad, grabbing the suitcase. ‘Let’s go to the Academy straight away!’

  They dashed up the tiled path to the entrance of the Academy just as the morning sun was starting to heat up.

  Frankie was buzzing. Solving riddles or mathematical equations wasn’t exactly his strong point, which made working out this one feel especially good.