by Joan Aiken
“Maybe,” said John hopefully, “if you sow it, up comes a tree covered with jewels?”
“That doesn’t sound likely to me!”
They made their way to the office of the estate agents Hard Knox Ltd. in the next street but two. Here they had another disappointment, for the office had closed down, its windows were coated all over with white paint, on which somebody had scribbled: FIMBULWINTER’S COMING.
“What’s Fimbulwinter?” asked John.
“No idea,” said Nonnie, staring behind her with a frown.
“Well, it’s certainly getting cold enough for any kind of winter. What’s up?”
“That ugly little dog. It seems to be following us.”
The little dog was very ugly—small, bandy-legged, white with patches of dirty brown, a spotty face, a sharp nose, and bulging eyes.
“It looks exactly like a dog that used to live in the house next-door to Granny,” Nonnie said. “We always thought the lady who owned it had trained it to shoplift. It used to pinch workmen’s lunch-boxes—”
At that moment the little dog neatly whipped a packet of sausages from a bag perched on a pushchair’s undercarriage.
“Let’s get away from it!” said Nonnie. “Nasty little beast. Someone might think it was ours, the way it keeps following us.”
They raced back to the tube station, but the dog scurried after them pertinaciously, never more than four or five meters behind.
At the station, however, they managed to foil it by nipping on to a train just before the doors closed.
As the train slid away, they saw the dog left behind on the platform, staring up at the indicator as if memorizing the information shown there.
And then, on the grimy glass of the carriage windowpane, Nonnie saw three notes form themselves as if drawn by an invisible finger—three crotchets:
followed by the words: APPLES SAVE UNA.
“Look, John—look!” gasped Nonnie, but the notes and letters faded as fast as they had come; by the time John turned his head, they were gone.
Chapter Six
SOON AFTER NONNIE AND JOHN had left the Sculpin house, a poor old lady, shabbily dressed, with a woolen shawl over her head, came limping along Pond Walk and rang the doorbell of Number Five. Mrs. Sculpin had not yet gone off to her sale of grandfather clocks, so she opened the front door.
“I don’t need any new kitchens or any double-glazing, thank you,” she said at once, “and I’ve got plenty of dusters and silver-cloths and furniture polish,” she was going on, when the old lady interrupted her.
“It’s not dusters or windows, dear, I was going to ask if you have any old shirts you wouldn’t mind giving away for a good cause. The Distressed Old Fairy Persons Home at Earlswood, I expect you’ve heard of it?”
“Old shirts?” said Mrs. Sculpin, caught off balance. “Um—well—yes, there might be an old one of my son’s—if you’ll wait a moment I’ll see.”
Being cautious and prudent, since there had been so many burglaries lately, she left the front door on the chain as she went upstairs. Nevertheless, when she came down again with a terribly ragged and worn blue denim of John’s, she was annoyed to see that the old lady’s nasty little dog had somehow managed to squeeze through the crack and had scurried right through the house to the yard at the back, where the washing was hanging. Mrs. Sculpin had been pegging out kitchen towels and had left the back door open when the front doorbell rang.
“Come out of there, you nasty little beast!” called Mrs. Sculpin sharply. And she was about to go after the dog when it came out of its own accord, in utter and abject terror, ears and tail as low as they would go, and the whites of its eyes bulging as big as poached eggs. Mrs. Sculpin pushed the dog crossly out into the street and offered John’s shirt to the old lady, who took it without much gratitude.
“You’ve not got a white shirt? This one’s—well—rather blue.”
“Only my niece’s, and I don’t think she’d want to part with that—she was talking about cutting off the sleeves so it would be more comfortable—”
“Cutting off the sleeves?” The old lady seemed startled to death at this news. But she went on quickly, “Such a funny thing to do, you know! I don’t suppose you’d have those sleeves—if she really has cut them off?”
“If she did, she probably burned them in the boiler,” Mrs. Sculpin said shortly. She was anxious to get off to her sale. “Well, good day—”
But she paused a minute, before shutting the front door, to stare after the old girl limping away up the street with her ugly little dog and shopping trolley.
“Somewhere I feel I’ve seen that woman before … Now, I do wonder what scared that nasty little brute so much, in the backyard? Can’t have been Euston, for he’s fast asleep on John’s bed …”
Rumbury Tube Station is one of the deepest in London, since at this point the Northern line has to burrow under Rumbury Rise, which soars higher above sea level than any other point for miles around. So, to descend to the level of the train platforms, you have to ride on three very long escalators, each one the height of a five-story house. This was one of the reasons why John Sculpin preferred to travel by bicycle. The advertisements alongside the Rumbury moving stairs had not been changed since 1980 and John had grown very bored with the same old instructions to take out a mortgage at the Rumbury Savings Bank or buy a hamburger at the Bagel Burger Bar (which had closed down more than five years ago).
But as John and Nonnie traveled homewards, he noticed that the advertisements were different. Every single one, all the way up the three flights of moving stairs, carried the same message, one word in each square frame: SAVE—UNA —FIND—THE—JEWEL—SEED.
“When Una was still living at home and going to school,” said John, “did she have a garden or grow plants?”
“Yes, she loved gardening, she used to grow a lot of herbs and sweet-scented things. But Mrs. Wednesday’s horrible little dog from next door used to come through the hedge and scratch up her seeds … I wonder if that was the same dog? It did look just like it.”
As John and Nonnie walked out of Rumbury Tube Station, large flakes of snow were starting to flutter out of a very gray sky.
“Snow already!” said John.
Nonnie was looking at the billboard of the Rumbury Evening News, which said: More Monster Fatalities. Rumbury Canal Problem.
They hurried back to the house in Pond Walk, which was empty, because Mrs. Sculpin had gone off to her sale.
“Let’s have a mug of hot chocolate,” said John, and took the lid off the kettle. A small snake popped its head out. John, with great presence of mind, dumped the snake in the rubbish disposal unit (which Mrs. Sculpin had bought at a church sale) and pressed the switch.
Nonnie had not noticed this. She was sitting at the kitchen table worrying.
“How can we save Una, how can we find her? And I’ve hardly any money, I ought to get a job, I ought to pay your Mum some rent. Maybe if I ask at all the hairdressers in Rumbury High Street I might get news of Una. And one of them might take me on as a trainee.”
“That’s not a bad plan,” said John, pouring the boiling water on to hot chocolate powder. “Maybe we should put an advertisement in a hairdressing journal.”
“Saying what?”
“Saying we haven’t got the Jewel Seed, I suppose. Then they might let Una go.”
“If only we had some idea who they were …”
Nonnie had fetched down her white shirt and now cut off the sleeves, doing the job with Una’s pair of Tibetan scissors, which had serrated teeth, like pinking shears, and cut a zigzag line.
“That’s neat!” said John.
“It ought to mean the cloth won’t unravel, so I shan’t need to hem it,” said Nonnie, poking the cut-off sleeve ends into the boiler, where they burned with a bright green flame. “It’s funny, Granny said s
omething about Mrs. Wednesday and the shirt at the time when I left home, which I didn’t quite take in; something about her being light-fingered; but I know the shirt belongs to Una. I remember her making it, for a school project, when she was in the sixth form; she grew the flax herself, soaked it, pounded it, spun it, wove it into linen cloth, and cut out the shirt, without a pattern. It took her the whole of three terms, she only just finished it before she left school. And after all that she left home without it. See, here’s her initials, I.U.S. for Imogen Una Smith, embroidered on the collar …”
Nonnie put on the shirt, over the green sweater she was wearing.
The doorbell rang.
“I’ll go,” said Nonnie, for John was doing a complicated repair job on the cuckoo clock combined with toaster which his mother had just bought. There was something distinctly wrong with its functioning: the cuckoo kept appearing through the toast slot, while the clock would only strike thirteen, and by that time the toast had been thoroughly burnt.
Outside the front door stood a very elegant lady looking superciliously up and down Pond Walk. She wore a black riding-hat, a short slender black car coat with yellow trim, and black-and-yellow striped culottes. She had stepped out of an electric wheelchair and leaned nonchalantly on a Malacca cane.
“My dear!” she said to Nonnie. “I do believe that you are wearing my grandmother’s shirt! May I ask a boon of you? May I ask for it back? It is such an heirloom—otherwise, naturally, I should not trouble you over such a trifle—”
“Mrs. Wednesday!”
“Ah—you recognize me!” the lady laughed musically. “That, of course, makes everything so much more comfortable. My love, when I was away on a lecture tour, I do believe that your darling grandmother—such a sweet, wayward old soul!—must have removed the shirt from where it hung on my clothesline. My own grandmother made it, you see—and when it is washed it has to hang out for thirty-nine days for a reason which I won’t go into on the public street.”
“I’m afraid you are quite mistaken,” said Nonnie with great politeness. “And if it was on your clothesline I can’t think how it got there, for my sister Una made it at school, and she embroidered her initials on the collar; see, here, I.U.S., so I know it’s hers.”
“My darling grandmother’s initials—Indira Undine Saturday—but why, child, have you cut off the sleeves—how could you have done such a thing—what have you done with them?”
“Burned them in the boiler,” said Nonnie.
“What?” The lady turned the color of pistachio ice cream.
At this moment Colonel Njm arrived home unusually early. In general, he remained at the Unwelcome Institute until after dark.
At the sight of the Colonel Mrs. Wednesday behaved oddly; she uttered a faint shriek, sprang into her electric wheelchair, and whirred away in it so fast that she almost seemed to vanish. Her little dog went whimpering and scuttering along the street, some way behind her.
Colonel Njm did not observe any of this. He seemed put out, frowning and preoccupied; he hardly noticed when Nonnie politely held the door for him.
“Have you seen my cat?” he snapped.
“No,” said Nonnie, puzzled. “I thought it was shut up in your room—”
“I forgot to administer its pill.”
The white lump he held in his hand was about the size of a ping pong ball.
“Is that a yeast pill?” said Nonnie, interested. “I bet Euston would love one too. He’s crazy about yeast, Aunt Daisy says.”
“No, it is not. And he certainly may not have one.”
The Colonel strode upstairs, calling, “Puss! Puss!” in a loud, threatening tone.
But no reply could be heard from his room.
Chapter Seven
THAT EVENING EVERYONE WAS TIRED: Mrs. Sculpin, because she had pushed a grandfather clock full of apples all the way from Vicars Green in her wheeled shopping trolley, John because he had erased Objectionable Inscriptions from five different tube stations, Nonnie because she had walked the length of Rumbury High Street and asked for news of her sister Una at seventeen hairdressers’ shops. None of them could help her, and none of them offered her a job.
Mrs. Sculpin, though tired, was triumphant because the clock she bought had been a great bargain, only five pounds fifty pence, and the apples had been offered her, practically free, from a sinking barge.
“We’ll have fish-and-chips for supper and apples after,” she announced. “John, you can go down to the Cheery Sole and get us all a nice portion of plaice. Buy some for the Colonel too, he’s partial to fish-and-chips.”
“Okay, Ma,” said John.
Nonnie said she would go too, and help carry.
It was not quite dark when they started, so John said to save time they might as well go the quick way to Rumbury High Street, along the canal path.
The town was very quiet as they walked along the towpath; even the starlings had nothing to say; and the reflections in the middle of the canal hung clear and still and sharp as razor cuts. Near the bank the water was beginning to freeze.
“People will start skating on the canal soon, I shouldn’t wonder,” said John. “And that ought to make it harder for the Bootlace Monster to grab anyone—if there really is a Bootlace Monster—”
A short cobbled alley, Fishermen’s Way, led from the canal to Rumbury High Street. In the middle of the cobbled track stood a red telephone kiosk, glowing like a beacon through the foggy dusk.
As John and Nonnie passed the phone box, the phone inside started to ring.
“Someone got a wrong number,” said John. But, as the phone continued to ring and ring, he said, “Oh well, I may as well tell them they’ve only got through to the phone box.”
He pulled open the door and picked up the receiver.
“John? Cousin John?” said the voice. “Please, I must talk to Nonnie!”
“Is that—Una?” John gasped.
“Una? It’s Una?” cried Nonnie, listening outside the box. “Oh, quick, quick—let me talk to her!”
She squeezed into the box with John and took the phone from him.
“Una? Is that truly you? Have you really been kidnapped? Where are you?”
“Listen, Nonnie,” said her sister’s voice. “They’ve got me shut up—and they say they will put me in a Black Hole for ever unless you hand over the Jewel Seed. And they will keep Julius Caesar and Mozart and Jane Austen shut up as well—so she can never write Pride and Prejudice and Caesar can never invade Britain. There’s a kind of cupboard in time—”
“But who are they? And where are you? And, Una, why do they want you?”
“They are the Winter People. I am in Nifleheim—deep, deep down. Wrap me in white, wrap me in white … Find the apples … Apple seed and apple thorn … Without the Seed, no life can be born … All they want is the Seed …”
Now Una’s voice faded away and was replaced by what sounded like hurricane force winds.
“Oh, Una!” wailed Nonnie. “Where have you gone? What is the Jewel Seed? Where is it?”
But no other message came through, though they waited by the phone box for twenty minutes.
“Well, this is no use,” said John sensibly at the end of that time. “And Ma will be worrying. She’ll think we’ve been swallowed by the monster. And it’s getting awfully cold. We’d better get home and ask Marcus Magus for his advice.”
So they hurried on to The Cheery Sole, which was doing brisk business on such a dismal cold evening, and stood in line, and bought large, hot, savory-scented parcels of plaice and chips.
Returning home, they were so absorbed in talking over the mysterious call from Una, arguing over whether it really had been Una, and if so how she could possibly have known the number of the phone box, how she could have known they would be outside it just at that moment, how she could have got hold of the money for the cal
l, who the Winter People might be, and what was the name of the place where Una was imprisoned—Nonnie thought it was Niffle-hime and John thought Nivv-lime—that they clean forgot about the night-time dangers of the towpath and went back by the same way they had come. By now it had become quite dark and very foggy. Occasional street lamps threw only a very faint light along the towpath. Something small quietly scurried along the path behind them.
Nonnie was saying, “John, I’m sure it’s my turn now, you’ve carried the shopping bag quite far enough—” and John was saying, “That’s O.K., Nonnie, I’ll take it as far as Barrel Wharf—” when Nonnie let out a sharp cry.
“Help! John! Something’s got hold of my arm. Ugh! Let go! Help!”
John was a few paces ahead of her on the path. He turned, and saw his cousin struggling and bent almost double, as if she were being pulled violently backward by both elbows.
Chapter Night
“MURDER!” GASPED JOHN. “I’M COMING, Nonnie, here—”
Hastily dumping the bag of fish-and-chips on the grassy bank, he sprang back to help Nonnie tackle whatever had grabbed her. He found that a number of tendrils, like striped, lumpy rubber bands, were wrapped tightly round her arms. As he dragged at these, trying to loosen and pull them off, more and more of them came reaching out of the darkness; they started twisting and twining round his arms as well. They were cold and stretchy and strong as steel cable. Both he and Nonnie were being dragged with deadly and almost irresistible force towards the cold dark waters of the canal.
“What in the world are they? Horrible tangly things—!” Nonnie gulped. “Like wires—”
One of them flicked across her face and fastened round her neck. “Ugh! Aargh! It’s throttling me!”
“We need a knife—to cut through them—”
But, alas, John’s beloved Swiss Navy Knife, with its ninety-nine blades and its corkscrew, had been left at home, among the innards of the cuckoo clock.
“Pl—ugh—och—ochit—” mumbled Nonnie, through the tendrils that were now masking her mouth.
