The City of Guardian Stones

by Jacob Sager Weinstein

  One goal to go. Instead of head-butting it, Oaroboarus was attacking it with his tusks. That wasn’t working any better, but for him, it showed a certain degree of flexibility.

  Minnie hurled balls at us faster than ever. WHOOSH! I caught one. WHOOSH! Before I could send it back, another one smacked into my net, doubling the size of the fireball already there. WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH! The ball in my net was now so bright I could barely look at it, and so hot I had to hold it at arm’s length.

  Minnie let out a hoarse scream of frustration. All she said was “AAAAAAIIGH,” but it was enough for me to confirm that the scratchy voice we had heard before was hers.

  I punched my multi-fireball at her. As soon as it left the net, it expanded into something as big as a Hula Hoop. And as it approached Minnie, her expression turned from fury to terror. She could have dodged it easily, but she froze, clearly panicked. It’s going to kill her, I thought.

  I wasn’t her biggest fan – I tend to reserve my fandom for people who did not commit crimes against creativity and then leave me to take the blame. But I didn’t want to kill anybody. So I yelled, “MOVE, Minnie! MOVE!”

  That snapped her out of it. She lurched to the side, and the huge fireball brushed past her. She would have escaped singe-free, but her awkward lurch made the loose end of her scarf belt fly up, right into the fireball’s path.

  Her belt caught fire.

  She screamed that hoarse scream of hers and yanked her belt off, throwing it to the ground.

  Then she looked at me, hatred in her eyes.

  She lifted both hands and pointed them at me. Her tattoos swirled and glowed.

  CHAPTER 50

  I didn’t know what she was going to do to me, but I didn’t think it was going to be pretty. “I just saved your life,” I called.

  She hesitated.

  And as she did, Hungerford sent the last goal (and Oaroboarus) toppling to the ground. The fog tumbled outwards.

  Maybe my words swayed Minnie, or maybe she ran out of time. Either way, instead of blowing me up, she gave me one last dirty look, then scooped up both alcoves and as much fog as she could catch and flew up, disappearing out of sight.

  “She’s heading west,” Little Ben said, “towards the London Stone. We’ve got to get there before her.”

  “No, we don’t,” murmured a voice at my waist. I glanced down.

  I was still holding the flower Mom had made out of bent metal and net, and a little bit of fog had got caught up in it. “There’s really no urgency,” the fog murmured.

  I shook the lie out of the net. It floated down and curled around my ankle. I shooed it away and turned to Little Ben. “How can we beat her? She can fly.”

  “There is one, one, one suitably expedient pathway,” Hungerford said, pounding a manhole cover with his paw. It flipped back, revealing a tunnel that should have been leading down, but somehow led sideways.

  “Let’s go!” Little Ben cried, and leapt down – I mean, left – I mean, leftrightish – anyway, he jumped through the manhole.

  I opened my mouth to explain why we didn’t really need to take the Coadeway, but no good explanation came out, so I shut it and jumped in whatever direction counted as in.

  As my feet hit the ground, wall, ceiling, or whatever it was that I landed on, Hungerford and Mom landed next to me.

  Hungerford trotted off. I focused my eyes on his tail and tried to block out everything else. “Little Ben, tell me about the London Stone. It might be useful.” And distracting, I added mentally.

  “It’s been sitting on the same street in London for thousands of years. Nobody knows what it is. Maybe it’s the very first stone the Romans laid when they built Londinium! Maybe it’s the rock from which King Arthur pulled Excalibur!”

  “The London Stone was a giant’s toothbrush,” a voice at my ankle murmured. That little bit of lying fog was there, rubbing up against my leg and purring.

  I kicked it, but my leg passed right through it. “Shoo! Get out of here!” I said. It gave a hurt sniff and drifted off. “If it really is the first stone ever laid in London,” I continued, “it’s had longer than any other to absorb magic. It would be the most powerful object in the city. Why would Minnie wait until now to grab it?”

  “Ooh, good question. Maybe it was too powerful for her to handle until she had control over all the other stones. Or maybe…”

  He hesitated.

  “Go on!” I said. “If you stop talking, I’ll have to look at the walls.”

  “Well, there’s an old saying: ‘As long as the London Stone stands, so too shall London.’ What if that’s true? What if the city will collapse when she steals it? Maybe she and the Precious Man needed to be sure they could make their getaway before that happens.”

  I nodded. Then I stopped nodding, because moving my head up and down reminded me that “up” and “down” weren’t behaving the way I expected them to. Instead, I said, “If the London Stone is the final thing they need, then this is our last chance. She’s ready to ‘exercise the right of a free man’, whatever that means.”

  “I’ve got it!” Mom said. “I had a personal trainer named Mr Freeman. Maybe she’s going to exercise with him.”

  “That’s it!” Little Ben said.

  “It is?” I asked.

  “Kind of. Ben Franklin wasn’t talking about a free man. He was talking about a Freeman, one word. If London considers somebody particularly worthy, it grants that person the Freedom of the City. Nowadays, it’s mostly ceremonial, but Freemen have certain ancient rights. Like, if they’re sentenced to death, they can demand to be hanged with a silk rope. And the most famous one is: they have the right to drive sheep across London Bridge.”

  Suddenly, the BAA-ing made sense. “Wool soaks up water and keeps you warm even when it’s wet. In a city of magical rivers, umbrellas are powerful because they control water. Maybe it’s the same principle with wool.”

  Hungerford placed his paw on a parallelogram-shaped door on the floor and swung it open. “Cannon Street station,” he said. “Alight here for, for the London Stone. You good people go on. I’m going to, to, to hang back out of sight.”

  Hungerford was learning to be discreet? That was almost as disorienting as the Coadeway itself. We hopped down through the door. Gravity bent at ninety degrees, and we found ourselves standing on the pavement.

  CHAPTER 51

  We stood there, breathing in the straight lines and right angles. And there were a lot of them to appreciate. Cannon Street station was a big, boxy glass building, covered from the first floor upwards with a frame of interlocking metal bars that made it look like it was being held inside a giant cage.

  We crossed the street to where Chapel stood guard next to the most powerful magical stone in London. Stop for a moment and picture it: an ancient and mysterious object, heavy with millennia of enchantment. Can you imagine its glory, and the splendour of its case, and the reverence the passersby would show for it?

  Well, if you can, you’re imagining it wrong.

  Now try picturing a small hunk of rock barely visible behind a scratched piece of glass protected by a battered iron railing with chipped paint, low on the wall of an ugly 1960s office building, going entirely unnoticed by the crowds hurrying past. If you’ve got that image firmly in mind, you’ll know exactly what we were seeing.

  “That’s it?” I asked. “That’s the stone from which Arthur drew Excalibur?”

  “Yeah!” Little Ben said. “Isn’t it amazing?”

  “That’s one word for it.”

  “It’s a much less popular sight than it used to be,” Mom said.

  “Than it used to be when you were a kid?”

  “No, than it used to be thirty seconds ago,” Mom said. “It’s so nice that we finally have it all to ourselves.”

  She was right. Formerly crowded with pedestrians, the pavement was suddenly clear. For that matter, the constant noise of passing traffic had stopped, too. I looked up from the stone and discovered why
.

  At both ends of the block, the intersections were filled with tanks and soldiers with guns. Around the edges of the blockade, military police in riot gear stood with linked arms, keeping the crowd back. Underneath the helmets and the face shields, all the personnel had a familiar orange pockmarked look.

  Atop one of the tanks stood Brigadier Beale, holding a megaphone. “Step away from the stone,” he said. “We’ve got you surrounded.”

  “Don’t be crazy,” I called back. “Minnie Tickle’s going to be here any minute.”

  “And how would you know that,” he megaphoned, “if you weren’t with her?”

  “Because while you’ve been shooting at things, we’ve been investigating. She’s –”

  “Five,” Brigadier Beale said.

  I pressed on. “She’s got all the alcoves now and –”

  “Four,” Brigadier Beale said.

  “– she’s got sheep, and –”

  “Three,” Brigadier Beale said.

  “Hyacinth…” Little Ben said.

  I ignored him. “And she’s after –”

  “Two.”

  “HYACINTH!” Little Ben hissed. “Those are regular tanks and guns. They’re not the pebble-shooting kind. We do NOT want him to get to —”

  “One.”

  “We surrender,” I said, stepping back with my hands in the air. Little Ben and Chapel did the same.

  Only Mom stood there, gazing at Brigadier Beale with the same detached look she had aimed at the broken bits of goalpost metal. “He hasn’t tied his shoes very carefully,” she said. “You should never go into battle with loose shoelaces.”

  I lowered my hands long enough to yank Mom away from the London Stone. “She surrenders, too.”

  “Excellent choice,” Beale said. “Take them into custody.”

  Led by Beale, a group of Corkers approached us. Some of them had handcuffs, but one of them had what looked like a large torture device. As he got closer, he squeezed a trigger on it, and it roared to life.

  Chapel’s face clouded with the thunderous fury of chivalry insulted. “Probably shouldn’t torture people who surrendered,” he said mildly.

  “It’s not for you, mate,” said the Corker who was carrying it. It was the first time I had heard a Corker say anything other than Pop!, and now that I came to think of it, he looked trim and fit in his uniform, rather than massive and hulking. He must have been not a Corker but a human – but unlike the others, his face shield was tinted black, stopping me from seeing his face.

  Before I could place his voice, Chapel pulled his sword from his crocheted scabbard (shredding it yet again) and smashed the flat edge of his blade into the torture device, sending it crashing to the ground.

  The black-masked non-Corker jumped back out of the way as a mob of actual Corkers bounded in.

  “Enn brauzt bryggjur Lundúna,” Chapel yelled. He leapt into the air and, in a single whirling strike, sliced off a dozen cork arms as they extended to grab him. He landed on a Corker’s head and bounced up with a sproing, somersaulting onto a second-storey window ledge.

  He might not have been much of a talker, but he was awfully impressive as a fighter.

  Undeterred by the loss of their arms, the Corkers swarmed together into a pyramid, rising up to Chapel’s height. As they rose, they swelled together, forming a single mass of cork. It flowed over Chapel until only his head was visible, and then flowed off, carrying him away. Every muscle on his face strained with effort as he struggled to escape, but all he said, quietly, was “Bother.”

  When he was gone, the human Corker bent down and picked up his torture device. He carried it to the iron grille in front of the London Stone, pushed the tip of his device into it, and unscrewed the bolts that held it in place.

  So it turned out it was less of a torture device and more of an electric screwdriver. I wished Chapel had waited to get all the information before getting himself carted off.

  With the iron grating gone, I could finally get a good look at the London Stone, and it was more impressive than I had realized. It was about two feet tall, longer than it was wide, and the top had been carved into a series of purposeful curves – although what that purpose was, I couldn’t say. Along the sides, it was rough and uneven and pocked with holes, some as deep as a skeleton’s eye sockets. I could feel power emanating from it.

  “We’ve had emergency backup plans in place for years,” Beale said as two Corkers lowered the stone into a wheeled cart, “but my supervisor refused to implement them unless there was a theft attempt. Now that you’ve engaged in one, I can finally move it somewhere safer.”

  “We are NOT stealing it,” I told him. “But Minnie is going to be here any minute. And by taking off the railing that was protecting it, you’ve only made her job easier.”

  “He knows that,” a voice called from the corner. I looked over to see a fireman trying to break free of the Corker who was holding him back.

  No, not a fireman – it was Dasra, wearing the oversized fireman’s uniform he had borrowed from the Brethren’s office as a disguise. “My grandmother told me the name of the man behind the last plot against London Bridge. It was Valentine Beale, Senior.” He pointed at Brigadier Beale. “It was your father.”

  CHAPTER 52

  Beale’s eyes narrowed. “Bring him here,” he said.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Dasra said. “This man is a traitor.”

  If you were going to make a list of Adults Who Are Most Likely To Take Orders From a Kid, you’d find “military police who have just got an entirely different order from a high-ranking officer” pretty close to the bottom. The only thing lower would be “enchanted beings who were probably created with some sort of spell of obedience”. So I wasn’t very surprised when one of the Corkers grabbed Dasra by the elbows and pushed him over to us.

  “Cuff them,” Beale said. The Corkers obeyed that order, too.

  “You’re despicable,” Dasra said.

  “You’ll never get away with this,” I said.

  “You really should tie your shoe better,” Mom said.

  Only Little Ben was silent, gazing thoughtfully upwards. He poked me with his elbow and gestured towards the sky with his head. A distant dot was rapidly approaching us, growing bigger all the time. Minnie.

  “Get these children and their accomplices out of here,” Beale said. “We’ve got work to do.”

  As one group of Corkers carried the stone across the street, towards Cannon Street station, another dragged us to a police van. They swung open the back doors and were about to throw us in when one of them finally spotted Minnie zooming towards us.

  Pop! he yelled, pointing.

  Beale spun around and saw her, too. She crashed to the ground in front of the building where the stone had been on display. She didn’t have the alcoves any more; she must have stopped somewhere along the way to drop them off.

  “Bulldog one – fire!” Beale yelled. The tank spat smoke and thunder, but flames bloomed from Minnie’s fingers, and she blasted out of the way, leaving the tank’s shell to crash into the wall, which collapsed into rubble.

  “Formations!” Beale yelled, and the Corkers surrounding us ran off to join their comrades.

  Of course, when you’re battling a girl who has the power to command stones, reducing a building to rubble only gives her more ammunition. Did that mean Dasra was right, and Beale was really in cahoots with Minnie? Or was it just another example of his shoot-first-think-later style?

  Either way, it worked out beautifully for Minnie. She whirled her hands and the pile of debris began whirling, too, like the winds of a tornado.

  Then she pointed at the Corkers, and the tornado shot towards them, pulverizing tanks and smashing machine-gun placements. We ran, but the Corkers stayed by their weapons – for about three seconds, until the tornado spun them into the air, bouncing off walls as they went.

  By now, the group that was carrying the London Stone had made it into Cannon Street station. Beal
e ran in after them. “Lockdown!” he yelled, and the massive metal cage that surrounded the top floors of the building plummeted down, blocking off the entrance. Minnie pointed, sending the tornado whirling towards it, but no matter how hard the storm of stones crashed against the metal bars, they didn’t budge.

  Safely inside, Beale yelled, “Gas!”

  One of the few Corkers who hadn’t been blown away lifted up a riot gun and squeezed the trigger. A canister shot out, hitting the pavement below where Minnie floated. Gas poured out, billowing towards us.

  “This way!” I yelled, running in the opposite direction with Little Ben and Mom close on my heels. We turned down a side lane, where that one Corker with a black glass mask was crouched. He ignored us as we ran past.

  I peeked back around the corner. Where Minnie had been, all I could see was a massive white cloud of smoke. In moments, it was going to reach us.

  “You don’t have a gas mask in that carpetbag, do you?” I asked Little Ben. He shook his head.

  “You don’t need one,” a voice at my ankle murmured. The little patch of lying fog was back.

  Great. Just what I needed.

  Wait: maybe it was what I needed.

  I reached down with my still-cuffed hands and scratched the fog like I would a cat, although usually when I scratched cats, my fingers didn’t pass right through them. Still, the fog purred.

  “There’s a big cloud coming our way,” I said. “Do you speak tear gas? Can you convince it to leave us alone?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that,” the fog whispered. Then it swirled off, right into the billowing mass of gas.

  The tear gas stopped in place. It hovered there, billowing white, and then a streak of yellow appeared and began to spread, turning every colour of the rainbow as it went.

  Then it swept down to us, but now instead of tear gas, it was lie fog. As the multicoloured dampness swept past, voices echoed around us: “It wasn’t me… I meant it in a nice way… No, I don’t know who broke your vase.”

  The fog swept past us and vanished into the distance.