How to Be Brave

by Daisy May Johnson

  “She promised to call in. Once when she landed, and once when she hit base camp, and she’s done neither. And I was fine when she missed the first, but now she’s missed the second and I don’t—I don’t think I’m fine.” Saying it out loud made it all more horrible somehow and Calla found her hands shaking. Not much, but just enough. Just enough to remind her that this was the longest she’d been apart from her mum in forever. She didn’t like it. “I can’t do six months if she doesn’t call,” she said. “I just—I need to know that she’s okay.”

  Good Sister Christine leaned forward and grabbed Calla’s hands, stilling them. “Hey,” she said softly. “Your mum is Elizabeth North, and meeting her was one of the most remarkable moments in my life. I saw her heal a duck’s wing like something out of a fairy tale. She made it better because she knew how, because her brain “knew things, and I wanted to know the sort of person who could do that. She made a thousand tiny miracles happen, each and every day, and she made me a better person. She hasn’t phoned. Fine. But something might have happened. Not the sort of thing that you’re thinking of, but something … dull. Boring. Her phone might have died. She might have lost it. If she’s anything like the Elizabeth I remember, she might have even forgotten that she was meant to call. The excitement of it all. You know.”

  “She wouldn’t forget me,” said Calla.

  “No,” said Good Sister Christine, “I don’t think she would. I’m sorry I said that.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, before delving into one of her voluminous pockets and producing a small and battered notebook, which she presented to Calla with an air of reverence.

  “I promised you a book when I first met you, so here we are. This is one of your mum’s old notebooks.”

  Calla turned over the first page and read the first sentence: This book belongs to Elizabeth North.

  And something very precise and beautiful came to life inside her heart.

  READING SOMETHING LONG FORGOTTEN

  It is a most precious thing to be given something old, and the notebook was so beautifully old that Calla could not quite comprehend it. It was not as old as some of the most precious books in the library, but it was still old enough to feel as though it held secrets in every word. The paper was thin and fine in places, and tore if you held it too tight. The ink had bled and the staples that held it together were rusty and thick with age, and the book itself had a soft but most pronounced curl to it. But for Calla, that book was like gold because it was a connection to her mother. Reading it helped her survive several more days at the School of the Good Sisters and even though the pranks continued, Calla barely noticed them. She was happy to eat with a spoon one evening because every other type of cutlery had disappeared; she was fine when the headmistress banned any more trips down to the village because somehow the girls ended up bringing cats back with them;120 and she barely noticed when every writing implement in the school was replaced with a carrot.121 Calla had something that connected her to her mum and she would not let that go.

  And so, on the mornings when she woke up too early and yet too late to go back to sleep, she distracted herself by reading the little notebook. She propped it up on her pillow, snuggled down underneath her blankets, and dreamily traced her words over her mum’s writing from so long ago. Elizabeth had been writing about the Amazon even then. She had made notes in English and then some in a different language for some reason before returning back to English. Every now and then, she wouldn’t write anything at all and instead drew a beautiful image of a small brown duck or some part of its anatomy. Calla loved every inch of it, even the strange and incomprehensible bits, and she did so in a way she could not quite understand. The notebook became the first thing she would mention when the others woke up.

  “There’s a map on page ten,” she said when she heard Hanna moving. “At least, I think it’s a map. A bit of it’s in another language. It’s beautiful. She’s been planning this trip all her life. It might even tell me exactly where she’s gone.”

  Normally Hanna would have been very sympathetic toward this sort of thing, but she had an underground library to run. And so she said “Great” and jerked a thumb at the bags at the foot of her bed. “Come and help me with these? I have deliveries to make and Edie is off doing something with the sprinkler system.”

  Calla hadn’t even noticed that Edie wasn’t in the room. She nodded, sliding the notebook down into the hiding place she’d made for her phone before climbing out of bed. She padded over and tested one of the bags. “God, what do you have in here?”

  “Books,” said Hanna. She heaved a big Woe is me but actually I am having the best time of my life sigh. “I have deliveries to make. Sam Penrose wants a Faith Wilson, Heather Kirk wants a Judith Kerr, and Thea de Grazie wants the new KM Peyton and nobody is going to get anything unless I get these books out of here.”

  “But what about Good Sister Christine?”

  “Staff meeting.”

  “At seven in the morning?”

  Hanna rolled her eyes. “It’s the latest idea of the headmistress. It’s good for the mind. Apparently.”

  “It is “not,” said Calla, with deep and definite conviction. She grabbed one of the nearest bags and grimaced slightly before hefting it over her shoulder. “All right,” she said. “I’m ready.”

  “Excellent,” said Hanna. She propped their window open with a copy of I Capture the Castle and smiled at Calla. “Come on.”

  A NOTICE ON THE BULLETIN BOARD

  Dear Girls,

  In light of the continued malfeasance by certain parties, I see only one choice: a revision of the school rules. The following rules are now in session with immediate effect. Should you be found contravening any of them, you will face severe penalties. Think your choices through.

  Signed,

  Headmistress DeWitt, April 10th

  Girls shall remain in their own bedrooms after hours.122

  No girl or member of staff shall leave the school without permission.123

  If you are found on the roof, you will be expelled.124

  Girls will practice silence during all communal meals.125

  The optional spirulina smoothies for breakfast are now no longer optional.126

  A TELEPHONE CALL IS ANSWERED BY SOMEBODY UNEXPECTED

  It was not that there was anything unusual about the concept of a Friday at the School of the Good Sisters, or that anything particularly unusual happened on the day itself. Edie woke up early to remove all the vowels from every computer keyboard in the school, and as Good Sister Christine was still caught up with extra staff meetings, Hanna had to go and deliver her books before the first bell and potential discovery. This meant that Calla was left all by herself in the North Tower bedroom and so she spent that time with her mother’s notebook, and tried to ignore the fact that she had not yet heard from Elizabeth in person. The notebook was all very well and good (and oddly full of recipes for Victoria sponge) but it was not her mum.

  And for some reason on that Friday, Calla’s hand reached out to pick up her phone and dial her mum. She did not quite realize what she was doing until she was dialing the number.

  The number for her mum’s satellite phone was a long one, and it took a moment for her to check that all the numbers were in the right order. When it cut out almost straight away, she stared at it and wondered if she’d made a mistake. She rarely made mistakes with things she had memorized. Unlike Elizabeth, Calla always knew when the bills were due and just how long they could take before people got upset at them Not Paying Things. The number was right. She’d dialed it correctly. It was probably just her mum trying to remember how to work the phone.

  Calla took a deep breath and dialed again.

  And this time, somebody answered.

  THANK YOU FOR YOUR CALL

  “Hi there!” said a perky voice. “The individual you’re calling—”

  “Elizabeth North,” said Elizabeth North.127

  There was a brief pause, and then the othe
r voice continued. “… has been kidnapped by one of our operatives. We’re so sorry if this causes you any inconvenience! Now, you may be thinking about going to the police but we can assure you they cannot help. We can resolve this ourselves. Okay! So let’s do that! Please press one to reply to a ransom note, press two to tell us that we won’t get away with this, or press three to speak to a member of staff in person. Have a nice day!”

  IN WHICH CALLA NORTH DOES NOT HAVE A NICE DAY

  Calla realized several important things during the course of that phone call and, as you are not inside her head, nor inside mine, I shall help you out by putting these Important Things in bullet points. You might think this is because I have just discovered how to make bullet points on the computer and you would be right but that is beside the point. However, let’s also consider this as an opportunity for you to be reminded of the three most important things you need to know right now:

  Calla’s mother had been kidnapped.

  The police could not be involved.128

  It was up to Calla to rescue her.

  TO THINK IS TO ACT

  I am aware that you may not have had to rescue your mum from the clutches of kidnappers recently,129 and because I am a helpful type, here are a few other facts that you ought to know before we go any further. Calla had spent her life rescuing her mother. Of course she had never rescued her from a kidnapping because they are not typical sorts of affairs that happen to people who mostly think about ducks, but she had rescued Elizabeth from a thousand other things. Burnt cakes, unpaid bills, and trying to pay the bus driver with a handful of sweets as opposed to actual currency. She had rescued Elizabeth from reading less than glowing school reports,130 from having to participate in the parents’ race,131 and from having to act as a chaperone on a school visit to the local museum.132 If there was a problem in Elizabeth’s life, Calla solved it. Sometimes she did this with tact, sometimes she did it with the subtlety of a brick, but she always did it.

  And so she would solve this.

  Calla North disentangled herself from the bedding and pulled some clothes on over her pajamas. She grabbed her mum’s notebook and her phone off the floor and rammed them into her pockets,133 before heading out of the North Tower bedroom.

  Hanna was coming up the staircase as Calla marched down. She had the contented air of somebody who had delivered books before dawn and denied the oppressive regime another day of victory, and so she looked deeply surprised to see Calla out of her bed. If Hanna had learned anything during her time with Calla, it was that Calla was not a morning person, let alone a galloping-grimly-down-the-stairs sort of person.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the head’s study,” said Calla.

  Hanna’s surprise turned to concern. It was the sort of concern that said But why would you do such a thing are you really sure? and normally, Calla would have paused to explain Yes I am sure this is a good idea trust me but she didn’t have time and so she dodged Hanna and raced down the last few stairs. And then, when she hit the ground, she began to run.

  She was going to rescue her mum. Elizabeth was going to come home, and even though Calla was somewhat unclear on the practicalities of how that might work, she was clear on one thing, at least: She would need help. Rescues were complicated things and she was in England and her mum was somewhere in the Amazon. Actually kidnapped. And to solve that, Calla would need an adult. An adult with money,134 potentially some sort of flying thing, and a lot of biscuits.135 An adult who was in charge.

  And it was because of all these thoughts that Calla found herself banging on the door of the headmistress’s study at seven a.m. that Friday morning.

  DISCOVERING THE TRUTH OF MAGDA DEWITT

  “My mum’s been kidnapped,” said Calla, and because her heart was already flying across the Atlantic, she did not realize the terrible situation she had put herself in.

  The headmistress was sitting at her desk, looking at some papers. She studied Calla with an odd expression. She did not seem surprised to see her, nor was she particularly upset about being disturbed at so early an hour. In fact, the headmistress was showing no emotion whatsoever and this, more than anything, should have told Calla that something was deeply wrong. Calla was, however, her mother’s daughter and somewhat incapable of seeing what was happening right in front of her while possessed of a Great Idea. “I need to leave to go and rescue her. If we take a plane now, we can get to Manaus by tomorrow night. We can start looking for them there. Somebody will know something. They have to. My mum never goes anywhere without buying a lot of biscuits, so if we ask in all the shops…”

  “I’m very fond of a fig roll, myself,”136 said the headmistress, reaching over the desk and picking up the receiver on her phone. She dialed a number and said, “Gareth, can you come to the study, please? Immediately. Thank you.” She was smiling when she hung up and turned back to Calla. “How do you know that your mother has been kidnapped?”

  “I rang her,” said Calla. There was no point now in pretending that she didn’t have a phone, so she took it from her pocket and placed it on the headmistress’s desk as proof. “There was a weird message on her phone. It said that I couldn’t call the police, and that she had been kidnapped.”

  The headmistress rested her head on her hands. “And what makes you think that Manaus is the best place to start the search? Wasn’t your mother headed somewhere … else?”

  “Yes,” said Calla. She felt as if she might explode from tension. “But the kidnappers wouldn’t have known where she was going, as she always kept it secret. Even from me. They must have gotten her in Manaus. She was starting there before going off to find this duck.” She paused for breath before continuing. “But even if she got farther than Manaus, we can still find her. Save her, I mean. There’s this book—Good Sister Christine gave it to me—and it’s full of my mum’s work. Drawings. And a map, too. I can’t read all of the directions, but we can figure it out on the plane. It’ll tell us where she is. There’s time—but we have to go now.”

  The headmistress didn’t move, but stared at Calla with a fierce, almost triumphant look on her face. “I need to know exactly where Elizabeth was headed,” said the headmistress. “Show me this map of yours.”

  Calla rammed her hand in her pocket and pulled out the notebook, placing it open on the desk. “There’s a bit here where she goes on about pink wafers and she loves a pink wafer but they’re not her favorite and then there’s this bit that’s in a language I don’t understand but it mentions Mallardus Amazonica—”

  The headmistress cut her off. “Calla, I speak sixteen languages.137 This doesn’t look like any of them. It has to be a code. Do you think you know your mother well enough to break it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Calla. “I can try.” She began to hop from one leg to another, unable to wait a moment longer. “Please, we have to get to Manaus—”

  “How much do you know about this duck?”

  “I know it’s important, but that’s it,” said Calla, in the way that one might speak to somebody who really wasn’t picking up on the fact that this was an emergency. “Look—it doesn’t matter. We have to go now. Good Sister Honey has her pilot’s license. She could fly us—”

  “That duck is everything,” said the headmistress. A curious light began to burn in her eyes. “Mallardus Amazonica is resistant to some of the worst illnesses in the world. It could carry a disease that might kill you and me, but the duck itself would be fine. People could use it—the whole world could be deliberately infected with something before anybody even thought of checking that little brown duck. Can you imagine the power that gives somebody? Can you imagine how much we could sell this duck and this knowledge for, if we found it first? That’s what we’ve wanted all along. And your mother is the only person standing in the way of us having that.”

  Calla stopped hopping.

  She stopped breathing.

  Us, she thought. Us.

  IN WHICH A VILLAIN’S SPE
ECH IS MADE

  “You,” Calla said slowly. “You.”

  The headmistress nodded briskly. “I work for a company known as the Malus Organization.138 We’re the ones who kidnapped Elizabeth. We wanted her to tell us where to find Mallardus Amazonica. We’ve wanted that for a long time. But she was always more concerned with studying and protecting it than with how much money could be made from it. So we sent her off to the Amazon and when she arrived there, our Malus operatives were waiting for her.”

  Calla made a small, tight sound of worry. She said, “If you hurt her—”

  “If only life were that simple,” said the headmistress. “If our plan had worked, Elizabeth would have led us straight to the duck. But then—I don’t know how—she figured out what was happening and managed to escape us. Did you know she could fly a plane?139 She took one of our supply planes and managed to take off before we’d even noticed she’d gone. She disabled the onboard tracking system140 and we lost her somewhere over the rainforest. She’s still there, somewhere under the canopy. We think she’s gone to find Mallardus Amazonica and ensure its safety.” The headmistress paused. “I rather hope she crashed.”

  “You won’t find her,” said Calla. “Or the duck. You’ve lost.”

  The headmistress smiled. “Oh, no,” she said. “I haven’t. Shall I tell you why?”

  Calla didn’t say anything, but the headmistress continued regardless. “Elizabeth didn’t have time to pack. She may have a plane but she doesn’t have anything else. No phone, no money, no luggage, and only enough food to last a week. Once she’s eaten it, there’s nothing left. No way to restock, not enough fuel to fly back to Manaus for help. So that leaves us with quite the pickle, doesn’t it?”