Charlie Bone and the Hidden King

by Jenny Nimmo

  "What is it?" cried Charlie. "What happened?"

  "We are not - quite sure," said Uncle Paton.

  "She's frozen," Amy whimpered. "Maisie's frozen."

  Even Grandma Bone had risen from her chair. "What's she done, silly woman? She's done something she shouldn't have."

  "For pity's sake, Grizelda," roared Uncle Paton. "Maisie's in trouble."

  "Huh!" Grandma Bone turned her back. "You'd better do something about it. She's beginning to drip."

  Charlie touched Maisie's arm. She was wearing her pink angora sweater and the soft, furry material had turned to bristling, icy spikes. He had a terrible thought. A moment ago he had been traveling into a world full of snow. Had he, somehow, taken Maisie with him? He touched her face. It was as cold and hard as a block of ice.

  "Charlie, don't," sobbed his mother. "Don't touch her, it's too - dreadful."

  Grandma Bone was right. Maisie was, indeed, beginning to drip. A little pool of water had formed around her feet.

  "Perhaps she's thawing out," said Uncle Paton. "Let's speed it up. We'll get her closer to the stove."

  With some difficulty Amy and Uncle Paton maneuvered Maisie over to the stove. Uncle Paton turned up the dial, and heat poured into the room. In a few minutes it was so hot, everyone was flinging off cardigans and sweaters, but although Maisie continued to drip, very slightly, around her shoes, she remained as hard as an iceberg.

  "It's a spell." Charlie's mother covered her face with her hands. "It has to be. But why Maisie? She never hurt a soul."

  "Charlie, have you been visiting that sorcerer again?" Uncle Paton's tone was severe.

  "N-no," said Charlie, a little uncertainly.

  "But you have been 'traveling'?"

  Charlie nodded. He could feel Grandma Bone's eyes upon him. "I didn't visit any sorcerer," he said quietly, "but I did go somewhere very cold."

  "Where?" demanded Grandma Bone.

  "Oh - just into a Christmas card," said Charlie. "Just for fun. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"

  "You shouldn't use your endowment for fun," she snapped.

  "OK. OK," Charlie mumbled. He noticed that the table was set for lunch. The contents of the basket had been shared among them, and each person's favorite food set neatly beside their plates. Pate for Grandma Bone, venison pies for Maisie and Charlie, tuna for Amy, and prawns for Uncle Paton. The lid of the prawn jar had been removed and two large prawns lay on the cloth, as though they had been accidentally dropped.

  "Uncle Paton, have you eaten any prawns?" asked Charlie.

  "No, I . . . Paton saw the prawns. "Good Lord, who . . ." He bent down and peered into Maisie's open mouth. "A prawn!" he cried. "She's been at my prawns."

  "Paton," Amy chided. "Please! You wouldn't begrudge my poor mother a few prawns."

  "My dear, you misunderstand," said Paton. "Maisie was eating prawns when she - when she succumbed to this terrible affliction."

  Amy looked up. "Poisoned?" She gasped.

  "A bit more than poisoned," said Paton. He turned to his sister. "Grizelda, do you know anything about this?"

  "Don't be ridiculous." Seizing her plate of toast and pate, Grandma Bone marched out of the kitchen, growling, "I'm not staying here to be insulted."

  No one else dared to touch their food. They put every last morsel back into the basket, and Paton called the store. Fifteen minutes later, a young man arrived in the van Charlie had seen driving off an hour before. Paton handed him the basket at the front door. "A member of my family has been taken very ill," he told the young man. "We believe your prawns were responsible. I want them analyzed as soon as possible."

  "It's Sunday," said the youth, who looked nervous and confused.

  "Someone may be dying!" roared Paton. "Get it done!"

  "Yes, sir," mumbled the youth. "The hospital, perhaps." He walked shakily down the steps and placed the basket on the passenger seat, before driving off.

  Charlie had an idea. "The Flame cats," he suggested. "They'll help." He flung on his jacket, rushed out, and headed for the Pets' Cafe. The cats were not always to be found there, but he didn't know where else to look.

  Before Charlie had reached the end of Filbert Street, he sensed that the Flames were already near. His gaze was drawn to the roof of a house he was passing, and there they were, at the very apex, their bright forms etched against the gray sky. As soon as they saw Charlie, they leaped one by one into a nearby tree, and climbed neatly down through the tracery of branches, until they stood at Charlie's feet.

  "Flames, I need your help!" Charlie turned and raced back to number nine, and the cats ran with him, Aries slightly in front, as usual, Leo and Sagittarius at either side.

  When all four bounced into the hall, Grandma Bone shouted, "Not those vile creatures. Get them out!"

  The Flames marched up to the open living room door and gazed in with their fabulous glittering eyes. Grandma Bone stepped back, bleating, "Take them away."

  The Flames growled at her, and she pushed the door shut with the toe of her shiny black shoe.

  Charlie grinned. He led the cats into the kitchen where they immediately saw what had to be done. They ran to Maisie and surrounded her, mewing softly.

  "Oh, Charlie, can they really help?" Amy clasped Charlie's hand.

  "Those cats can work miracles," said Uncle Paton confidently.

  The cats seemed perplexed. What could only be described as a frown passed over their furry faces. Their golden eyes traveled up the length of Maisie's motionless form until they came to her astonished frozen eyes. They mewed again.

  For a full minute the cats studied Maisie's stiff fingers, her plump legs, her icy pink sweater, and her neat gray curls. They stepped closer and sniffed, their black noses wrinkling in distaste.

  Charlie held his breath. Could the Flames melt Maisie? He watched Aries stand on tiptoes and arch his back. The copper cat began to pace around Maisie's feet in her new red sneakers. She had been so proud of them, Charlie thought. Hopefully, she still was.

  Leo and Sagittarius followed Aries. The cats' gentle pacing became faster. Soon their bodies resembled leaping flames. Maisie appeared to stand inside a circle of fire. Tiny, glowing sparks flew up to the ceiling and Charlie could hear the hiss and crackle of flames.

  "She blinked!" Amy's voice was hoarse with excitement. "Did you see that?"

  Charlie looked at Maisie's face. She blinked, twice.

  "I saw it!" cried Charlie. "She blinked."

  "She did, indeed," Uncle Paton agreed.

  "She's melting." Amy sighed happily.

  "Clever Flames. Hooray!" said Charlie.

  Maisie closed her mouth and something like a smile crinkled each corner.

  They waited for more. Nothing happened. The blinking stopped, the mouth remained closed, and the rest of Maisie's features stayed stubbornly frozen.

  The whirling Flames began to lose their brilliance. The frenzied leaping slowed, and the three cats, taking on their true forms, walked once, twice, three times around Maisie's sturdy legs, and then sat down. They looked exhausted.

  Aries lifted a paw and licked it gingerly. Leo and Sagittarius sprawled side by side and looked up at Charlie, as if to say, We tried. We can do no more.

  "You did your best," said Charlie. "I know you did."

  "She nearly came back," said his mother. "If only they could try, just once more."

  "They can't," said Charlie. "They gave it everything. They can't do any more." He went to the fridge and got out some ham, which he chopped into cubes and placed on a saucer. He put the saucer close to the cats and they gobbled it hungrily.

  Uncle Paton sat down and grimly folded his arms. "It was meant for me," he said bitterly. "I'm sure of it.

  I'm the one who eats prawns. Someone tampered with them, and it must have been one of them - or should I say one of us, the endowed. Why else . . . ?" He raised his hands and let them fall into his lap.

  "We must get a doctor," said Amy. "Now. Before it's too
late."

  Uncle Paton nodded. "We must. But it will have to be someone we can trust to be discreet."

  A ray of hope lit Amy's face. "I know someone. He looks as if he's used to keeping secrets. He buys a lot of vegetables and one day he gave me his card. He's Doctor . . . something unusual."

  "Could be a doctor of math or music." Charlie didn't want to raise his mother's hopes.

  "But it's worth a try." Amy ran to the phone in the hall.

  While Amy was on the phone, Grandma Bone shouted, "Have they gone, those beasts?"

  The Flames growled at the sound of her voice. Leo gave the saucer one more lick before leaping after his brothers into the hall. They held their tails high and their heads erect. They might have failed this once, but they still had their pride. Charlie quietly thanked them, and let them out.

  "He's coming." Amy replaced the receiver. "His name's Doctor Tanaka."

  Doctor Tanaka was a young man with a broad smiling face and a neat gray suit. At first glance he didn't seem to be at all the sort of person who could deal with anything out of the ordinary. But Amy hadn't been wrong. When he saw frozen Maisie, Dr. Tanaka merely lifted an eyebrow. "Ah!" he said. "Cryogenics. Reducing a person's temperature to below freezing, but in this case, supernaturally."

  "Will she die?" asked Amy, hardly able to say the last word.

  "Not necessarily," replied the doctor in his light, efficient voice. "When the power is broken, she will return."

  "The power," Charlie murmured.

  Doctor Tanaka turned to him and smiled. "The power," he repeated. "Someone in this city is extraordinarily, supernaturally powerful. I know, of course, that there are quite a few unusual people about. Children of the Red King, I believe they are called. In fact, I am probably standing in a house where one - or two - are living?"

  Paton inclined his head.

  "In my experience there is no power on earth that cannot be broken," the doctor went on cheerfully. "And two endowments are better than one."

  "In the meantime," said Amy, glancing at Maisie, "what should we do with my mother?"

  "Make her comfortable," said the doctor.

  It was decided that the bathtub would be the best place for Maisie, owing to the droplets that still continued to pool around her feet. Before he left, Dr. Tanaka helped Uncle Paton carry the icy body upstairs. They had to wear gloves and it was no easy task to maneuver her into the tub. Charlie gently pushed a cushion under Maisie's head, and Amy covered her with a blanket.

  "I hope I will have the pleasure of buying many more vegetables at your excellent shop," the doctor told Amy before he left.

  "I hope so, too," said Amy, returning the doctor's elegant bow.

  No sooner had the doctor gone than a phone call from the store informed Paton that the prawns held no toxic substances whatsoever. They had been fed to laboratory rats with no ill effects. In fact, the rats had thoroughly enjoyed them and, if anything, had become slightly bushier and brighter after eating them.

  "They were probably starving," muttered Charlie.

  "It only took one prawn," Uncle Paton declared. "And Maisie had to eat it. My money's on Venetia."

  "But Great-aunt Venetia only poisons clothes," Charlie reminded him. "Why should she change to prawns?"

  "No idea," growled Paton.

  Charlie felt uncomfortable using the bathroom with Maisie in it, so he went up to the top floor, where his mother and Maisie slept, and used their toilet. So did Paton.

  That night, Grandma Bone grumbled that it was too cold on the top floor and she needed a bath. "Kindly remove the frozen person," she demanded.

  Paton refused and Grandma Bone had to use the toilet next to the cellar. She went without a bath.

  Charlie felt his eyes closing as soon as he got into bed. He sleepily ran through the day's events and suddenly remembered Naren. Was it only that morning he had crossed the bridge into the wilderness?

  What had she said? Don't close your curtains tonight. So what could her endowment be? Could she fly, or send messages on moonbeams? Wearily, he staggered out of bed and went to the window. The white moth drifted onto one of the curtains as he drew them back. Outside a dusting of frost already glittered on the branches of the chestnut tree. It was going to be another cold night.

  Charlie climbed back into bed and fell asleep. He awoke to find the room bright with moonlight. As he glanced around him he saw thin black shadows snaking toward his bed. Charlie shrank against the pillows, as the shadows climbed the bedpost and crawled across the covers. Like tiny, oddly formed creatures, they swarmed over Charlie's hands and ran up his sleeve, but he could feel nothing.

  Shadows, he thought. Only shadows.

  He watched the tiny shapes move onto the wall behind him. They began to jostle one another, almost as though they were seeking the right place in the swirling crowd. While Charlie gazed in amazement at the moving shadows he became aware that the shapes were letters. Gradually, their feverish activity began to slow and Charlie could make out the words of a message.

  It's me, Narew. This iswhat I can do. Were you scared when you saw my little shadows? If you whisper at the wall, I shall hear you.

  "Hello, Naren," Charlie whispered uncertainly. The letters rearranged themselves and Charlie read:

  Hello, Charlie. Ihope you got back safely. If anything troubles you, let me know and I can tell my father. Although he hates to come into the city, he will help you.

  Where to begin? wondered Charlie. He decided to tell Naren about frozen Maisie. When he had whispered every detail of his grandmother's terrible misfortune, the shadows on the wall remained perfectly still for a full minute, as though Naren was trying to make sense of the message.

  At last the letters began to move. This time the words were formed very slowly,

  What you say about your grandmother is so bad. I will talk to Bartholomew tomorrow Perhaps he can send advice.

  "But I'll be at school tomorrow night, how can you . . . ?" Charlie heard footsteps in the hallway outside his room. Suddenly the door opened, and he whispered rather louder than he intended, "Good-bye!"

  Grandma Bone walked in. "Who were you talking to?" she demanded.

  "No one, Grandma," said Charlie. "Maybe I was talking in my sleep."

  "But you're not asleep. You're sitting up in bed. What's that on your wall?" Grandma Bone peered at the wall above Charlie's head.

  Charlie glanced over his shoulder, hoping desperately that Naren's letters had disappeared. Luckily, she must have understood his hurried good-bye, because the tiny shapes were beginning to fade.

  "They're shadows, Grandma," Charlie said quickly, "from the branches of the chestnut tree."

  "Stupid boy! You've left your curtains open. How can you sleep with the moon pouring in like that?" Grandma Bone strode across the room and pulled the curtains tightly together. "Now, go to sleep."

  Charlie lay down and closed his eyes. When Grandma Bone had gone, he opened them briefly. The room was so dark he couldn't even see the wall. In another second, he was asleep.

  The next morning Charlie was so tired he completely forgot about frozen Maisie, and then he walked into the bathroom and saw her lying there. Her face looked bluer than the day before, or was it his imagination? He found he couldn't even brush his teeth with Maisie's icy stare at his back, so he ran up to use the bathroom on the top floor.

  Amy was still in the kitchen when Charlie went down to breakfast. "I'm not going to work," she told Charlie. "I can't leave with Maisie like she is. Oh, Charlie, what are we going to do?"

  A pot of parsley sitting on the windows ill gave Charlie an idea. "Vervain," he mumured. "Do you remember, Mom, when Uncle Paton was bewitched last year?"

  "As if I could forget," she said.

  "And I stole some vervain from Great-aunt Eustacia's garden, and we made some tea and . . ."

  "Uncle Paton was cured!" cried Amy.

  "Well, Fidelio's mom put some in a pot for future use," Charlie went on excitedly. "If you we
nt to Gunn House, I bet Mrs. Gunn would still have some. Fidelio says she puts it in his sandwiches, sometimes, as a kind of pick-me-up."

  "Charlie, you're a genius!" His mother gave him such a squeeze, he swallowed half a slice of toast at once.

  "I'll go straight over to Mrs. Gunn's after breakfast," said Amy happily. "In fact, I'll go right now." She looked out the window. "Billy Raven's outside. You will keep Maisie's little problem a secret, won't you?"

  "Of course," mumbled Charlie. As if he'd want anyone else to know his grandma was permanently occupying the bathroom.

  Amy dashed into the hall and flung on her coat.

  As she let herself out, Charlie could hear Billy's small voice asking if it was all right for him to come inside.

  "Of course, Billy, of course!" said Amy.

  The front door slammed and the next minute Billy was standing in the kitchen, looking sheepish.

  "Benjamin doesn't have to go to his school for another half an hour," Billy said dejectedly, "so Mrs. Brown said I'd better come over to you, so we could catch the Bloor's Academy bus together."

  "Couldn't she take you?" Charlie spread honey on his second piece of toast.

  Billy shrugged. "Don't think she's going in today."

  "Well, we've got another three minutes," Charlie said cheerily. "Do you want some cereal? It's got strawberries in it."

  "No thanks." Nevertheless, Billy came and sat at the kitchen table. He was wearing a blue coat that looked several sizes too small for him.

  "Did you have a good weekend, then?" Charlie asked.

  Billy gazed sadly at Charlie's toast. "Well, yes, in a way. But Rembrandt wasn't very happy. Can I stay with you next weekend, Charlie?"

  "OK." Charlie swallowed his last bit of toast and licked his fingers. "We'd better get going."

  Billy got up and made for the door. "Can I use your toilet?"

  "NO!" cried Charlie. "That is, yes. Use the one next to the cellar."

  Billy stood motionless beside the door. "What's wrong with your upstairs toilet?"