The Gold Thief

by Justin Fisher

  But before Gummy could answer, they were cut off by a knock on the door.

  “Hello? Hello – Ned? Do open up, will you, I would so like to meet you,” came an oily voice through the letterbox. “I know you’re in there – I can smell you.”

  “Barking dogs – that’s him!” cried Archie. “First you go all Gandalf on us and now this!”

  Barking dogs indeed, thought Ned, as the bargeist started pacing down the stairs. And with every step the creature continued to grow. Ned had to make a break for it, but how? If he ran, on his own, the nit inspector might hurt his friends. Or he could allow himself to be captured … No, that wasn’t an option. If his parents had been taken, he needed to be free, so he could try to get them back.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” he whispered to his friends, eyes flitting between door and stairs.

  “We had to. You left your bag and you never go anywhere without it. Besides, if we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have seen the inspector. Is he what all this is about? Are you OK, Ned? Where are your mum and dad?”

  But Ned wasn’t listening.

  “My bag? Please tell me you’ve got it!”

  “There’s hardly anything in it,” said Archie, pulling Ned’s small messenger bag from his shoulder and handing it to his friend.

  “Archie Hinks – I could kiss you!”

  “Just you try it! See, Gummy – he’s not himself, it’s the magic talking.”

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! went the door.

  “Ne-eeeed,” cooed the inspector. “Come on, we both know I’ll find a way in, Ned, I always find a way in. Besides – in a minute or two you and your little friends will most certainly want a way out.”

  To push home his point, the bargeist bared its teeth.

  “Er … Ned?” said Archie. “What’s going on?”

  “What have you done with them?!” shouted Ned, ignoring his friend.

  “Mummy and Daddy? Oh, don’t worry, they’re back in my little hidey-hole. They’re a tricky pair, aren’t they, put up quite a fight once they came round. But I knew my little pet would keep you busy till I returned.”

  And there it was: they’d put up a fight but they were alive. If the nit inspector had wanted them dead, there’d be no point in kidnap. Ned was brought back to the moment by some rattling in the lock of the door. The inspector was trying to break in and his bargeist was now dangerously close, creeping down the stairs one slow paw at a time.

  Ned grabbed the presents from the floor and stuffed them into his bag, before dragging his two friends into the kitchen and its waiting full-length mirror. Both Gummy and Archie were now visibly shaken, though thankfully unaware of the enormous set of teeth approaching from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Ned, what’s going on? How did you make your mouse’s eyes do that in the shed? And why is a nit inspector trying to break into your house?” clamoured Archie.

  Ned cleared his throat as the bargeist prowled into the kitchen, its powerful body readying to pounce.

  “I’m going to ask you to do something that you’re going to find a little bit odd,” he said. “Actually, you’re going to be freaked out as hell. I’m really sorry, but you see there’s a monster standing behind you, a really big nasty monster that you can’t see, and if we don’t walk through this mirror, I think it’s going to hurt you, or maybe just me.” As he spoke, he kept his eyes glued to the bargeist’s teeth.

  “Have you lost your marbles?” spat Archie, now looking beyond freaked out.

  “I promise you, Arch, I haven’t cracked, but you might well think you have in a minute. I don’t want you to worry – there are some nice people waiting for us on the other side and they’re going to take really good care of you.”

  Ned could only hope that he was right. Gummy and Arch had nothing to do with the man outside or the creature in his kitchen. They were simply in the wrong place and at the wrong time and only because they’d wanted to help. If they could just get to the Circus, Benissimo and the others would be able to get Gummy and Archie back home again. Whether Ned would be so lucky was another thing entirely.

  “Don’t be scared,” he said, before placing the One-Way Key in Archie’s hand and then quite forcibly pushing his two friends through the Armstrongs’ kitchen mirror … and, just like that, they were gone.

  Ned had no idea where his parents were or what lay ahead, and yet somewhere deep down inside he felt a small pang of excitement – he was going back to the world of the Hidden.

  He took a deep breath and stepped through his own reflection, till there was nothing left of him at all.

  Hide Park

  ed had not known what to expect. The mirror was as cold as ice, though thankfully not as hard. His reflection started to bend around him, or was it the glass? In the blur of streaking light that followed he could see an altogether different room from the one he was leaving. Movement was slow at first, as though he were pushing through a spider’s web of jelly, till something in the jelly pulled.

  Shluup.

  What had initially resisted now yanked him from his kitchen and through the mirror. In that brief instant between places, every fibre, every speck of dust had been removed from his body, his skin left as smooth as glass. A hand as large and strong as a metal spade now held him by the shoulder.

  “Nied – Nied! De boy, da! De boy is comink!”

  Ned stumbled through, on to grass, by a canvas wall. He didn’t understand. This couldn’t be a safe house. This … this was the Circus of Marvels.

  Towering over his two friends and staring at him closely was a large ruddy-red face. Rocky, the Russian mountain troll, in his human form, was waiting to greet him. But Ned was not the last to step through the mirror.

  There was a bone-shaking ROARR! behind him.

  He felt a gust of wind as the two slobbering jaws of the bargeist snapped at his back. One of its front teeth grazed his shoulder just enough to draw blood with a fiery sharp sting of pain.

  “Agh!” Ned yelled, and rolled to the floor.

  The creature tried to follow through the portal, but its shoulders were now too bulky to edge their way along. The great Russian tank that was Rocky might not have been able to see the bargeist, but the size of his fists left little room for error.

  “Niet, little monster!” bellowed Rocky, before dispatching the bargeist with a heavy crunch of his fist and sending the yelping creature back to the Armstrongs’ kitchen. A second later he whipped off his coat and threw it over the mirror, preventing anything else from coming through.

  Ned exhaled with relief. An enlarged alpha male bargeist was one thing. Clearly, Rocky the Russian mountain troll was quite another.

  Ned tried to get his bearings. He was in the Glimmerman’s hall of mirrors, he realised. Beside Rocky were the two shaking figures of Gummy Johnston and Archie Hinks – they had gone through the mirror first, and it looked very much to the wounded Ned as though their brains had somehow remained in his kitchen. It was Archie who spoke first.

  “See, Gummy? I knew he was a blooming wizard.”

  Which was when his two friends fainted into a pile of overwhelmed limbs.

  With the creature dispatched and the Glimmerman’s mirror safely covered, Ned was hoisted on to the excitable troll’s shoulders. The graze that he’d been given would have felt like little more than a scratch from a normal dog, but the bargeist’s spit burned like a hot coal.

  “Rocky?! Wait – Gummy and Arch, I need to look after them!”

  “Niet, niet! Jossers stay sleep for moment, de troupe look after.”

  “My mum and dad, Rocky, they’re gone!”

  “Da, we know. But don’t worry – de boss, he always have plan and your parents are tough cookies.”

  Ned could only hope he was right. The nit inspector – whoever he really was – had somehow managed to take them from their home, away from Christmas, away from their safe suburban hideaway; but more importantly than any of that – he’d taken them away from Ned.

  A moment
later both troll and wounded cargo were out of the Glimmerman’s tent and parading around the Circus of Marvels encampment.

  “Come see, come see!” bellowed Rocky. “We have de boy and he brought little jossers with him!”

  Ned didn’t understand how he’d wound up at the circus instead of the expected safe house, but he couldn’t have been more grateful. A blur of fairy lights and campfires, sawdust and bunting filled his eyes. The pain of his throbbing shoulder gave way to relief and no small amount of hope. He had been forced to leave one home and been transported to quite another. His parents might well be missing, but the circus would have answers and if Rocky was right, the ever-commanding Benissimo would have a plan.

  At first sight the troupe were just how he remembered them. Some were wearing bowler hats with ruffled shirts, others resembled gypsies of old – no two were dressed the same or even in clothes from matching eras. But that wasn’t the wonder that was the Circus of Marvels. What set it apart, what made it a spectacle to behold, was that very few of them were actually human.

  The dancing girls in their fur and feathers were cartwheeling towards him, and there was general whooping and hollering as the Tortellini brothers, with their satyr-horned heads and enthusiastic backslapping, spread the word. Several bearded gnomes from the kitchen ran to take care of Gummy and Arch, laden with oversized tubs of popcorn and hotdogs the size of ostriches. Everyone dropped everything, wet clothes were left unhung, a half-constructed tent left to topple, and through all the clamouring and colour Ned saw the unmistakable figure of Alice, the circus’s white winged elephant, in a full charge.

  “Alice!” pleaded Norman, her ineffectual trainer, who was as ever chasing behind.

  “AROO!” she trumpeted happily, before coming to a sudden halt right by Ned and licking him clear across the face.

  The passing of many months had done little to change her feelings for him, it seemed, nor had it done anything to improve her breath.

  “Hello, girl!” grinned Ned, doing his best to push away her trunk without hurting her feelings.

  “She’s right happy to have you back, Master Ned, haven’t seen her this sprightly in months,” wheezed Norman.

  “Oh, stop pesterin’ ’im, you lumps – he’s been through enough for one day!” chimed in the sing-song voice of Rocky’s wife.

  Abi “the Beard” looked as cheery and plump as ever, as she waddled over to greet Ned.

  “Come on, you big cossack, put ’im down so I can have a proper look at him.”

  Ned was unceremoniously placed on the grass before Abigail, and she gave him a rib-cracking hug; it put pressure on his graze but that was a small price to pay for one of Abigail’s best.

  Even though Ned had missed them all, for a brief moment he was quite overcome. The Circus of Marvels and its band of oddities had been, till just now, a memory. Up close in the flesh they were brighter, shinier and more strange and noisy than a hundred memories jumbled together.

  “You poor love, don’t you worry, you’re with us now and we’ll have your ma and pa back in no time. Now what’s all this about jossers comin’ with you?” Abigail grinned.

  “I couldn’t leave them at home! I had a bargeist in my kitchen, I think it was an alpha.”

  “Bargeist, is it? Nasty blighters. You send ’em my way next time and I’ll give ’em a wallop they’ll remember,” Abigail winked back, before she noticed the way he was holding his shoulder. “Oh, Ned love, you’re hurt! Lucy’ll want to take a look at that, she’ll have you fixed up in a blink.”

  “Could have been a lot worse, if it hadn’t been for Rocky.”

  “He has his uses,” grinned Abigail. “Though to be fair, they’re mostly about givin’ folk a thump.”

  “It’s good to see you again, Abigail. But … where are we?” Ned could see small lights in the distance, but closer by there were only trees, and grass, and darkness.

  “Hyde Park, dear, central London.”

  “Hyde Park?”

  “Yep. If you’re in the capital and need to hide, Hyde Park’s your best bet. Been a fair-folk stronghold for donkey’s, and as good a place as any to lay low. It’s off the radar, see? But large enough to conceal a small army and with good access to the rest of the city. The woods here are full o’ sprites, kindly little things and always ready to help when it’s needed. It’s lucky we were in the area when the Olswangs messaged us. Soon as we got here, Bene sent Couteau and his best blades to find you.”

  “I must have stepped through the mirror before they got there.”

  “Yes, dear. Still, you’re with us now and this Park will keep you hidden till we figure out what’s what.”

  Ned peered through the darkness. Sure enough, in the canopies of the trees he now recognised the tell-tale glow of sprite light, dancing in the branches. Behind Abigail, the Guffstavson brothers, Sven and Eric, were letting off a celebratory bolt of electricity, for once without needing to be angry, when they were unceremoniously barged out of the way by the most welcome sight Ned had seen all day. A giant mound of furred gorilla in the shape of dear George the Mighty, his friend and protector, who in turn was jostling for position with Lucy Beaumont. She was more than a friend or even family, and the bond between them as unbreakable as the rings they both wore at their fingers.

  A swift crack of the elbow saw Lucy get to Ned first.

  “I say, that’s dashed rude,” grumped George, who in truth had barely felt the jab she’d given him. “Hello, old bean, I—”

  “Shut it, monkey – Ned!” shrieked Lucy. “I’ve been worried sick!” She closed her eyes briefly and paused for a moment. “And with good reason: the bargeist managed to get a tooth on you, didn’t it?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “It’s kind of my job, I’m the troupe’s new medic,” smiled his friend, before putting her hand gently on his shoulder and blinking. Abigail was right, it literally took a blink and Ned felt Lucy’s healing powers flooding through the wound like warm honey. A second later and the small cut had completely healed itself, as though it had never been there at all. Ned had seen Lucy work her gifts, but never so quickly or effortlessly.

  “Wow, thanks, Lucy. You’ve got better at that.”

  “You’re welcome. It’s all in the way you do the blinking,” and she followed it up with a wink.

  Of everyone in the circus, from the satyr-horned acrobats to the feather and leopard-skinned dancing girls, it was George and Lucy that Ned had really needed to see. He had forgotten how vast and intimidating the oversized gorilla actually was, but no two sets of eyes or smiles could have done more to ease the pain of a missing mum and dad. And if Ned was happy to see them, his semi-loyal wind-up mouse was not far behind. Whiskers unfurled himself from Ned’s trouser leg for the first time since they’d heard the bargeist and made a bee-line straight for Lucy. In a second he’d scampered up her jeans and found a comfortable spot on her shoulder.

  “Hello, Whiskers, I’ve missed you too,” she said.

  “Don’t be nice to him, he’s behaved shamefully,” teased Ned, at his cowardly and now turncoat mouse.

  The Debussy Mark Twelve promptly responded by sticking its tongue out at its master before nuzzling into Lucy’s neck.

  “So what happened?” Lucy asked.

  “I don’t know, really. A bargeist and a man turned up at my house and they’ve got Mum and Dad.”

  She looked stricken. “I knew about the man, but I hoped they’d got away.” In that moment, all the goodwill, the excitement at their reunion, drained from Lucy’s face.

  “But we’ll get them back, right?” said Ned.

  Lucy smiled weakly. “I hope so. I mean … your mum … she’s kind of my …” Her voice broke.

  Ned closed his eyes for a moment, feeling like a fool. “Oh, Lucy, I’m so sorry. I – I know she raised you at the convent, you must be as upset as I am. I didn’t even think, I—”

  “Shh,” said Lucy, giving his arm an awkward punch. “You’ve had a pret
ty bad day as days go.”

  She smiled, and Ned hugged her, as a shadow fell over them both.

  George was at least twice the size of a normal gorilla and loomed over them like a great weathered oak, his face knotted with concern.

  “We’ll find them soon enough,” he rumbled. “And when I find out which rotter is responsible, I’ll make them pay, pound for pound, for what they’ve done.”

  As Ned watched the great ape’s fur bristle, he had no doubt that George would, just as surely as he felt his heart plummet. This was the Circus of Marvels, the greatest troupe on earth. If they didn’t know who was behind his parents’ kidnap – who actually would? And that was when he noticed. Even under lamp and fairy light, Ned saw beyond their gathered grins and realised there was something different about them. They were worn and battered, one or two of them had arms in slings and Enrico, the youngest of the Tortellini brothers, was walking with a noticeable limp.

  “What’s … what’s been going on here?” said Ned.

  George shrugged. “Ned,” he said, “you have a lot to catch up on.”

  New Recruit

  ut before Ned could ask anything else, they were joined by the man who would likely have most of the answers. His gaze was as fierce as ever and his moustache had lost none of its twitch. He wore a crooked top hat, a beaten military jacket with gold braiding, and red and white striped trousers. At his hip, as always, was a coiled whip that slithered ever so slightly and with a will of its own.

  “All right, all right, I think the boy’s had enough hair-ruffling for one day.” It was Benissimo, the circus’s Ringmaster and leader. Behind him, hanging back, was a man Ned had not seen before. He seemed at odds with the rest of the troupe. He wasn’t wearing any of the more flamboyant circus garb. He had short cropped dreadlocks, wore a black evening jacket, worn Adidas trainers and a faded green and yellow “I LOVE JAMAICA” T-shirt. He smiled at Ned but said nothing.

  “So this is him and here he is,” said Benissimo, squaring up to Ned. “Let’s get a proper look at you. Still not particularly tall, face not outwardly bright – hello, pup.”