by Dave Barry
“Magill,” she whispered, sitting upright in bed. Fumbling in the dark, she found the switch to her reading light and turned it on. She got out of bed and crossed her bedroom to a shelf jammed to overflowing with books. She searched the titles, stopping finally on a fat hardcover book. She pulled it out and began impatiently turning pages; she flipped most of the way through before she found what she was looking for. She read a passage, then read it again.
“I knew it,” she said. She sat on her bed for a few moments, thinking. Then she returned to the bookshelf and pulled out another fat book. After flipping through it as well, she found a particular passage and began reading.
“Yes,” she said. She bookmarked the page and moved ahead to another chapter, reading with growing excitement. She opened the small drawer on her bedside table and withdrew the fragile document they had discovered in the desk. She reread it, standing as she did, too excited now to sit.
She paced her room for a minute, the book in one hand, the letter in the other. Then she collected both books and, holding tightly to the document, quietly left her room and crept down the hallway to Aidan’s room. She eased open the door without knocking and closed it softly behind herself. She switched on the light.
“Psst! Aidan, wake up!” she whispered.
“What?” he said, squinting and blinking at the unwanted light. “Why are you…?”
“Shh,” she hissed. “Not so loud. You’ll wake Mom and Dad.”
“What are you doing in here?” he said. “It’s…midnight.”
She handed him the first book. He reluctantly accepted it from her, rubbed his eyes open, and read the title.
“Peter and the Shadow Thieves,” he said. “I already read this. As in like five years ago.”
“I know that,” she said. “But read this part.” She was pointing to a paragraph on the bottom of page 475.
Aidan read it aloud quietly.
“First thing tomorrow,” said Aster, “I will arrange to send you all back to London. But for tonight you must remain here. I’m going out for several hours with Mister Magill—the man who, ah, greeted you at the gate.”
Aidan looked up at Sarah. “So?” he said. “Magill!” she said, holding up the document from the desk. “I knew I knew that name. He helped the Starcatchers!”
“Are you insane? You woke me up for this?”
“Magill!” she repeated.
“So it’s the same name. Big deal. There’s probably a million Magills. I can’t believe you woke me up—”
“Do you know any Magills?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean—”
“I’m not done,” she said, holding up the second book. He read the title: Peter and the Sword of Mercy.
“Magill’s mentioned in here, too,” she said. “A lot.”
“I still don’t see why—”
“Just wait, okay?” she said, opening the book to a folded page. “Here. Leonard Aster is telling Peter and Wendy to go to a safe place. Look where he sends them.” She presented the book to Aidan, this time pointing to the middle of page 312. He read:
“When you get out of here,” he said, “go straight to a hotel in Sloane Square called the Scotland Landing.”
Aidan looked up. Sarah showed him the document again. “‘In the Landing,’” she said. “It says ‘In the Landing.’ In the book, Magill lives there. In the Scotland Landing Hotel.”
“That’s just a coincidence,” said Aidan. But he sounded less confident than before.
“Wait,” said Sarah, now leafing furiously through the book. “Here!” She was pointing to the bottom of page 325. Again, Aidan read:
The taxicab rumbled through the dark streets for fifteen minutes, then stopped in front of a narrow three-story building on a quiet street near Sloane Square called Draycott Place.
“Draycott Place,” said Sarah. “In this book, Magill was in Scotland Landing, in Draycott Place.” She waved the document. “Magill. In the Landing. In the Place.”
Aidan looked at the book, then the paper, then back to the book again. “So are you, like, saying you think this Starcatchers stuff is for real? That’s crazy.”
“Then who wrote this?” she said, holding up the document.
Aidan thought about that.
“It could be a practical joke,” he said. “Somebody read these books, and then they wrote that stuff on the paper, and then they hid it in the desk so somebody like you would fall for it.”
“Really?” said Sarah. “You’re saying somebody read the books, then found this ridiculously old-looking piece of paper and wrote this stuff on it, then hid the paper in the secret compartment of this really old desk, and it was all some kind of joke?”
“Well…yeah.”
“But how would they expect anybody to ever find it? If you hadn’t hidden under the desk and bumped your shoulder, we’d never have found it. Nobody would have ever found it. Ever, as in ever.”
Aidan thought about that. “Okay,” he said, pointing to the paper. “So what do you think it is?”
“What I think,” said Sarah, “is that it’s…a mystery.”
“Wow. A mystery. Nice work, Sherlock Holmes.”
“I’m not saying I have the answer to the mystery. I’m just saying it is one.” She hesitated, then said, “And I’m going to solve it.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“How, exactly?”
“I’m going to start at Draycott Place.”
“Which is in London. We’re in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”
“Right. And where are we going in two weeks?”
“Oh yeah,” said Aidan, remembering that the Cooper family was taking their summer-vacation trip to England this year.
“So when we’re in London, we’ll go find this Draycott Place,” said Sarah. “Meanwhile, we can do some research on the Internet. And I’m going to ask Dad what he knows about who used to own that desk.”
“Are we going to tell Dad about this?” asked Aidan, pointing at the document.
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because we found it, and I think we should have the first chance to figure out what it means. We’ll tell him about it later, okay?”
“No,” said Aidan. “It’s Dad’s desk, so he owns the documents in it. We have to tell him.”
“No, we most certainly do not. That desk is in our house.
That makes it just as much ours.”
“Absolutely not,” said Aidan. “We have to tell Dad. You are not going to change my mind about this.”
“I’ll introduce you to Amanda Flores,” said Sarah.
“Deal,” said Aidan immediately. He yawned. “Now please, can I go back to sleep?”
“Okay,” said Sarah. “Just don’t forget our deal.”
“I won’t. Don’t you forget your part.”
“I won’t.” Sarah turned off the light and opened the door.
“For the record,” Aidan whispered in the darkness, “you are completely insane.”
“Pleasant dreams.” Sarah quietly shut the door. Holding the books and the document, she tiptoed back to her bedroom. It was well past midnight now, but she was too excited to sleep. She sat on her bed and looked at the covers of the books, which were illustrated with scenes of a flying boy and a heroic girl menaced by cruel pirates and hideous, evil creatures. Sarah knew these stories well; she had read and reread them over the years. But to her they had always been make-believe; there was no flying boy, she knew, and no magical island.
She set the books on her bed, then went to her window and looked out. The backyard, bathed in moonlight, was dominated by a massive oak. A gust of wind shifted its twisting branches; their shadows writhed on the ground. Sarah looked at them for a moment, then back at the books. A persistent thought kept bubbling up in her mind; she knew it was ridiculous, but somehow she could not completely dismiss it.
What if it’s not make-believe?
CHAPTER 2
LETTERS IN STONE
IN LONDON THE COOPER FAMILY stayed at the Cadogan Hotel, a stately brick building on Sloane Street. Sarah and Aidan’s father, Tom, had picked the Cadogan because, in his words, “it has some history.” He loved history.
Aidan, whose idea of the ancient past was sixth grade, was less enthusiastic about the hotel, especially when he saw the television in the room he was sharing with his sister.
“It’s not even high definition!” he complained. “What is this, the Middle Ages?”
His mother, Natalie Cooper, stood in the doorway; she had come from the room next door to check on her children. She was basically an older version of Sarah: tall, slender, and olive-skinned, with wide-set, dramatically dark eyes. And like her daughter, Natalie had a black belt in sarcasm.
“I know!” she said, gesturing at the children’s elegantly furnished room. “It’s so primitive. We’ll probably have to kill our own food.”
Sarah, lying on her bed, snorted.
“Go ahead, laugh,” said Aidan.
“Thanks, I will,” said Sarah.
“Tom,” Natalie called over her shoulder. “Did you bring the squirrel gun?”
Her husband appeared in the doorway behind her, a tall, rumpled, bespectacled man with a prominent chin and nose. He looked vaguely distracted, as he always did except when he was examining antiques.
“Did I bring the what?” he said.
“Never mind,” said Natalie, exchanging eye rolls with her daughter. She turned to her son and said, “Aidan, we didn’t come to London to watch television. We’re here to do things.”
“Not now, I hope,” said Sarah, sitting up and looking at herself in a wall mirror. “I have airplane hair.”
“Your hair does that,” said Natalie, “because you—”
“I know, I know,” interrupted Sarah. She imitated her mother’s lecture voice: “‘You use too much hair spray, young lady.’”
“Well, you do,” said Natalie. Sarah had taken to wearing her hair in a retro style that she sprayed constantly from a can of intensive-hold hair spray she carried with her everywhere. Natalie hated the hairstyle; currently this was the topic of eighty percent of all conversations between mother and daughter.
“So what are we gonna do?” said Aidan, who was sick of the hair debate.
“Well,” said Tom, “we’re going to start this afternoon with a tour of London on a double-decker bus. Then we’ll…”
He went on for several minutes, giving a detailed schedule of tours, museum visits, and excursions. When he finished, Natalie said, “So you see, there won’t be time to watch television.”
“There won’t be time to go to the bathroom,” said Aidan.
“Will we have any free time?” asked Sarah. She and her brother exchanged glances.
“Sure, you’ll have some time on your own,” her father answered.
“As long as we know where you are,” added her mother.
“Of course,” said Sarah, with another glance at her brother. Both of them made a point of not looking at Sarah’s backpack, which contained the mysterious document they’d found in the desk.
“All right, then,” said Tom. “We leave for the bus tour in a half hour.”
“My hair!” said Sarah, heading for the bathroom.
Tom and Natalie returned to their room to continue unpacking. Aidan flopped on his bed and turned on the TV.
“Hey!” he said. “They have Family Guy!”
“Finally!” said his mother from the other room. “A sign of civilization!”
After three busy days filled with planned activities, Sarah and Aidan were finally able to get some time on their own. Telling their parents that they were going to explore the neighborhood—which was technically true, as Sarah pointed out to her brother—and promising to be back for dinner, they set out from the Cadogan in the late afternoon. It was a sunny and unusually warm day for June in England; the sidewalks were crowded with sightseeing tourists and Londoners trying to get home.
Sarah studied the Google map directions she’d printed out back in Pennsylvania.
“This way,” she said, pointing south on Sloane Street. “Half a mile.”
Less than fifteen minutes later they reached the north end of Draycott Place, a four-block street lined on both sides with red brick buildings.
“Okay,” said Sarah. “In the book, the hotel was called the Scotland Landing. But according to Google there’s no Scotland Landing here now.”
“So why exactly are we here?”
“Because maybe one of these buildings used to be the Scotland Landing.”
“How are we gonna find it?”
“We’ll just walk down the street and see…whatever we see,” said Sarah.
“Wow,” said Aidan. “Clever.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “I’ll take the left side of the street,” she said. “You take the right.”
They set off, one on each sidewalk, studying the buildings. They all looked pretty much alike; most appeared to be residences. After two blocks Sarah was starting to become discouraged. As they neared the end of the third block, her discouragement was turning to embarrassment.
What was I thinking? she wondered. Getting all excited about a stupid story…
“Sarah!”
Aidan’s shout interrupted her thoughts. She looked across the street and saw him standing in front of a building with flags hanging from two poles jutting out over the entrance. A plaque on the wall to the left of the door identified the building as the Spanish consulate. Aidan, looking excited, was motioning for her to cross the street.
Sarah waited impatiently for a break in traffic and trotted across.
“What?” she said.
“Check this out,” he said, pointing to the set of worn, white stone steps leading up to the consulate door.
“Steps,” said Sarah. “Yeah, so?”
“Look at the top one.”
Sarah moved nearer and studied the top step more closely. It had been worn down by countless footsteps, but Sarah could make out a faint design carved into the stone consisting of two interlocking letters.
“An S and an L,” she whispered. She turned to Aidan. “Scotland Landing!”
“Could be,” he said.
“You found it! How’d you even see this?”
“Keen powers of observation.” He tapped his temple.
“Seriously,” said Sarah.
“Okay,” he said, “there was this really hot girl going in, and she had this ankle chain thingie, and I happened to be looking at her legs, and—”
“Okay, okay!” Sarah said. “Anyway, you found it.” She started up the steps.
“Wait,” said Aidan. “You can’t just walk in there.”
“Why not?” said Sarah. “Nobody’s stopping me.”
But somebody did stop her. In the consulate lobby, a uniformed guard manned a metal detector at a security-screening station. Beyond that was a counter where a dozen people waited in line.
“May I help you?” asked the guard, in accented English.
Sarah thought he was quite handsome, not at all like the security people at airports.
“Yes, I…that is, we…” Sarah stammered. “We’d like to, uh, come inside.”
“Smooth,” said Aidan, standing a few steps behind her.
“May I ask the nature of your business with the consulate?” said the guard.
“I…uh,” said Sarah. “Just a moment please.”
She turned and walked back to Aidan.
“Way to think on your feet,” he said.
“Shut up,” she snapped. “I’ll think of something.”
“Whatever it is, it’s going to have to get you up to that counter in the next room.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Take a look, Sherlock.”
Sarah turned around, peering past the guard, who was watching them intently.
“I’m looking,” she said. “So?”
“The archway.
See it?”
“Yeah,” said Sarah, looking at the stone archway above the counter.
“Look at the top of the arch.”
Sarah looked. Then she gasped.
At the top of the arch, carved in stone, was the image of an eagle.
“‘In the Place,’” said Sarah softly. “‘In the Landing.’”
“‘Beneath the eagle,’” said Aidan.
“We have to get in there,” said Sarah. She stood for a moment, frowning in thought. Then she marched determinedly back to the guard.
“I’m studying Spanish in school,” she said.
“¿Sí? ¿Usted habla Español?”
“What?”
Aidan snorted.
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“No…I mean, not yet. I just started.”
“I see,” said the guard, smiling slightly.
“And…I…I thought maybe I might get extra credit if I talked to a real Spanish person who works for the government. Of Spain.”
“An interview,” said the guard. He seemed quite amused.
“An interview! Exactly!” said Sarah.
“And do you have an appointment for this interview?”
“Ah, no.”
“Unfortunately, you must have an appointment.”
“But how do I make the appointment if I can’t get inside?”
“You go there,” he said, pointing to the line of people at the counter.
“Okay!” said Sarah. She glanced up toward the eagle. “We’ll just get in line, then.”
The guard held out a hand. “Your passports, please.”
“What?”
“You must have passports to go inside.”
Sarah, batting her eyes, smiled brightly at the guard and said, “Maybe you could let us in just to book the interview? And then we’ll come back with our passports next time to actually do the interview.”
“I am sorry,” said the guard.
Sarah’s shoulders slumped. “All right,” she sighed. “We’ll come back with the passports.”
“I look forward to it, señorita,” said the guard, with a slight bow.
In a moment they were back out on the sidewalk.
“Well, that went well,” said Aidan. Mimicking Sarah’s voice, he said: “Oh please let us in, Mister Handsome Spaniard!”
