by H. L. Dennis
Brodie flicked a toffee from her shoulder and pulled herself up to sitting. ‘Well, it wasn’t clear this time!’
‘No. I see that now. Sorry! Really sorry.’ The boy towered over her, his face ringed by the sun as it broke through a cloud. He looked tall, although it was hard to tell from so far below him. He was perhaps her age, probably a year or two older, and his hair was fairly long, a fringe flopping in front of his eyes and a freckled nose blushed red with embarrassment. He swept his hair back from his face then offered his hand out towards her.
She wanted to yell at him for not looking where he was going; scream at him for making all her books burst out of the case. But he looked so incredibly awkward and his hand shook so much as he offered it, all she could bring herself to mutter was, ‘Thanks.’
The boy knelt down and scrambled to repack her case. His hands hesitated over a nightdress with a rather large rabbit printed on the front, and she thought for a moment he was going to comment, but then as if thinking better of it, he scooped up the books and pressed the case lid shut. ‘There,’ he said purposefully. ‘Like I said. Very sorry.’
Looking down at where he knelt beside her case, Brodie could see a toffee was still wedged in the collar of his jacket. She bent down to remove it then looked across at the unicycle. It was clear now the wheel was completely buckled. ‘Oh, your bike,’ she said, ‘unicycle, thing. It’s all wonky.’
He lifted the unicycle from the ground. The wheel squeaked as it spun. ‘Doesn’t look very well, does it? Oh, well. I can always use my stilts to get around.’
Brodie wasn’t sure if he was joking.
‘My name’s Hunter,’ he said. ‘Hunter Jenkins. And yes, it’s my real name. Why would anyone make up a name like Hunter?’
Brodie considered the question for a moment.
‘It’s a family name. My parents say I’ll grow into it, which makes it sound like a winter coat or something.’ He waited. ‘At least you can take a coat off. I’m stuck with Hunter.’
‘It’s unusual.’ Brodie chose her word carefully.
‘You?’ he asked.
‘Brodie. Brodie Bray.’
‘BB,’ he said. ‘Like it. Got a good ring to it. I arrived earlier. My stuff ’s round the back. And I was just riding around the front here to suss things out, really. Being nosey.’
‘But you’ve been inside the house, told them you’re here?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Oh.’
‘Door’s locked, see. No sign of anyone. I was beginning to wonder if this is all a joke. You know. A sort of set-up.’
‘Perhaps we’re just early,’ she said hopefully, looking down again at her Greenwich Mean Time watch, and then frowning. ‘But they should be expecting us. You’ve rung the bell?’ she added,
turning a statement into a question.
‘Can’t find one.’ He looked back despondently into the gloomy porch where the light from the candle lantern pooled against the door.
Brodie sat down on the front step. She unwrapped a toffee and popped it into her mouth.
Hunter stared rather longingly.
‘Here.’ She passed him the sweet she’d retrieved from his collar.
‘Thanks, I’m starved.’ He sat down and began to chew.
Brodie twisted her toffee paper into a bow. ‘I suppose we just wait,’ she said eventually.
‘Yeah. Well, I can’t ride my unicycle any more. So that little bit of fun’s been taken from me.’
Brodie felt a twinge of guilt. ‘Perhaps we should look back at the document we were given.’
‘Done that,’ Hunter said, reaching into his open backpack. He pulled out his rather crumpled version of the document Brodie had retrieved from the lamppost. ‘What?’ He obviously noticed Brodie’s look of displeasure. ‘My dog sat on it. She’s a big dog.’ He shook the pages out in an attempt to straighten them. ‘I can still read it.’
‘But you didn’t think of ironing it flat again?’
‘Oh yeah. I often go round ironing papers.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘The other thing we could do, rather than just sit here, is open that box.’
‘Box? What box?’
‘That one,’ he said, pointing. There was a small cardboard box tucked inside the porch. The lid was closed. ‘I wasn’t sure,’ Hunter added. ‘Seemed a bit rude. But after nineteen circuits of the lawn, I’m running out of ideas.’
Brodie wasn’t sure it would help. Neither was she sure it was allowed. But a struggle had begun inside her. A wrestling to know what was inside the box even if they weren’t supposed to look. Surely it was better than just doing nothing? ‘I say we go for it,’ she said. ‘Agree?’
Hunter winked and prised open the lid.
It was instantly clear to see what was inside. Stopwatches. ‘Nice,’ mumbled Hunter. ‘Welcome gifts, you reckon? Not sure you’ll really be needing one as you seem to have the whole time issue covered.’
Brodie pulled her cuffs down quickly.
‘But there’s loads here so I guess we can take one each.’ He passed her out a stopwatch and hanging from it was a piece of paper. ‘They’ve all got notes attached,’ he said. ‘Looks like they’re all the same. What’s it say?’
Brodie read the message aloud.
Welcome to Station X. We see you have an eye for seeking out answers and this is impressive. However, before we get down to formalities and welcome you inside the mansion, I think a little puzzle is in order. A game. You must use all your powers of problem solving to retrieve the key in order to open the door before you. The clues you solve will lead you to that key. But keep in mind the very good advice that was given to you before your arrival. Nothing you needed in the past can be forgotten. All the best puzzles rely on what we have already learnt but think we have forgotten. Good luck on your quest.
JS Smithies.
Clue number one: report to the guards.
Brodie turned the note over. There was more to read.
Oh, and by the way, to add to the excitement, there’s a catch. Fail to find the key before the alarm sounds on the stopwatch and the game is over … your adventure finished before it’s even begun. Good Luck!
‘They’re timing us,’ Brodie spluttered. She stared at the stopwatch display and the figures counting down. ‘We’ve got thirty minutes.’ Panic bubbled in her throat. ‘Half an hour to get inside, or we’re going home.’
Hunter’s face had drained of colour. ‘OK. We shouldn’t panic. Let’s take things steady.’
‘Twenty-nine minutes, Hunter,’ Brodie groaned. ‘We don’t need to be calm. We need to be quick!’
‘OK. OK.’ He slipped the cord of his stopwatch around his neck. ‘Guards then. We need to find the guards.’
Brodie knew she should remember something important. A piece of a story perhaps, but she couldn’t work out what it was. ‘Can’t see any guards,’ she said. ‘That’s the problem. I can’t see anyone at all!’
‘To be fair, you couldn’t see a unicycle careering towards you, so we can’t entirely trust your vision, can we?’
Brodie peered in desperation at the entrance.
There was no bell or knocker, just a door between two pillars. At the base of each was a stone animal. Both had the body of a lion but wings like an eagle and Brodie was pretty sure they were griffins, although one of them was looking a little worse for wear, its beak and forehead chipped and weathered. ‘There are no guards,’ Brodie said again. ‘Griffins are supposed to keep watch for treasure seekers but they didn’t stop us getting the watches, did they?’
‘Guards,’ Hunter blurted suddenly.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Guards.’
‘Where?’
‘There, you doughnut. The griffins. That’s what you’ve just said. They’re the guards. I reckon we have to report to these griffins.’
It seemed too obvious to point out the griffins weren’t real, although now she remembered she had thought the statues looked like guards when she first arrive
d. Fact was though, they were really just lumps of stone, but Hunter seemed undeterred and began to inspect the statues like a doctor urgently checking over the body of an accident victim.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘there’s something under its feet.’
Brodie knelt down beside him. ‘Is it the key? Have we done it already?’
Hunter shook his head. Wedged between the talons of the most damaged griffin was a roll of paper. He eased it out and began to read the message aloud.
Well done. I see you’ve made yourself acquainted with the guards. You’re doing well … although I hope you remember the clock is ticking.
Brodie looked at her stopwatch. ‘Twenty-one minutes,’ she said. ‘What else does it say?’
Hunter turned the paper over.
Clue number two: You must demonstrate true northerly direction when riding the winged horse in the shadow of six o’clock.
‘So?’ Hunter re-rolled the message and tapped his knees with the paper. ‘What d’you think?’
‘I think we’ve got twenty minutes,’ she said.
Hunter began to read the clue again. ‘Repetition,’ he said in explanation. ‘Helps the details sink in. It’s to do with numbers.’
‘Numbers?’ Brodie was totally confused.
‘Numbers,’ he said again. ‘They’re my thing. Like books are obviously yours,’ he said pointing back to her case. ‘Based on the fact you had twenty-four of the things packed in there. And as numbers are my thing we need to hone in on the use of the number six.’
‘Brilliant.’
‘Yes. Maybe brilliance is actually my thing.’ He read the clue again.
It was on the third reading aloud that Brodie sank down dejectedly to the ground.
‘What’s the problem, BB? Beaten already? We haven’t even tried to solve it.’
‘It’s no good,’ Brodie mumbled. ‘We’re late.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Late. We’re late.’
‘But we’ve got eighteen minutes,’ Hunter said, clutching at his stopwatch.
‘That’s not important.’ Brodie rolled up the sleeves on both her arms to reveal each of her two watches. ‘Whichever time zone we use, we’ve missed six o’clock.’
‘Oh.’
She kicked a pebble with her foot. She couldn’t believe she’d failed already. Her granddad would be so disappointed. How could she tell him it had all gone wrong so soon?
‘So that’s it then?’ asked Hunter. ‘All over. Just like that?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘So what? We just wait here for them to come and ship us home? My parents aren’t going to be happy about me bowling back a failure already, I can tell you.’ His voice was quite high, as if he was scared.
‘What can we do? We didn’t get the key in time.’ Hunter looked so sickened by the thought of defeat Brodie scrabbled to find something which could make things sound better. ‘We could go round and get your stuff and then we can try and tell this Smithies guy about the accident. We can tell him the story of what happened and maybe he’ll feel sorry for us? Let us try again?’
‘I don’t think we can make it sound like a multi-vehicle pile-up, B. But they might feel bad for us. We can give it a go.’
They rounded the corner at the back of the mansion and stopped.
Brodie could hear the sound of heavy breathing coming from above her.
‘What the cream cake’s that?’ gasped Hunter.
Brodie tried to shield her eyes from the sun and peered up at the roof. A girl about her age seemed to be clinging to the metal base of a wrought-iron weather vane swinging slightly in the breeze. And she definitely didn’t look comfortable. In fact, Brodie was sure now she was hanging on for dear life.
Hunter grabbed a heavy wooden ladder propped against the wall behind him. ‘It’s OK! I’ll save you,’ he called.
An indignant voice called down from the turret. ‘I don’t need saving, thank you very much.’
‘Doesn’t look like that to me!’
‘You think just because you’re a boy you can rescue me!’
‘No. I think just because I’ve got a ladder I can rescue you.’
Brodie tried her best to calm things down. ‘Why are you up there?’ she shouted, glaring first at Hunter in a way she hoped showed him she didn’t want him to speak.
‘Pegasus,’ the girl yelled, waving one arm towards the weather vane, causing a loose tile to skitter across the roof and come crashing down. ‘I got here at six and saw the winged horse and climbed up. That was a while ago.’
‘She’s trying to ride the winged horse,’ Brodie hissed.
‘Well, she’s not doing a very good job of it, is she?’ Hunter hissed back. ‘And I’m not being funny, but do you really think the note meant anyone should actually ride the thing?’
‘Got that right!’ came the voice from the tower.
Hunter craned his neck upwards.
‘You’re not being funny, I mean.’
‘Surely she knows it’s after six and the game must be over,’ said Brodie, a weird tightening growing in her stomach. Was there a chance they’d misunderstood the clue? A possibility that the game wasn’t over at all? That they still had time? ‘Six o’clock,’ she blurted. ‘Maybe it doesn’t matter where we were at six o’clock but where the winged horse was.’
‘Well, I’m here to tell you,’ called a voice from the roof which was becoming more than a little strained, ‘that the weather vane was here at six, firmly attached to this roof – that is why,’ she appeared to be spitting now, the words sharp and furious, ‘I’m up here!’
Brodie was trying to organise her thinking but ideas and words were crashing together in her mind. ‘Read the clue again, Hunter.’
‘You must demonstrate true northerly direction when riding the winged horse in the shadow of six o’clock.’
‘It’s talking about the shadow made by the vane!’ Brodie scrabbled for her stopwatch.
‘How long have we got?’ said Hunter.
‘Thirteen minutes.’
‘OK. It’s not over. So let’s focus. What else is in the clue?’
‘Northerly,’ said Brodie. ‘That’s got to be important.’ She peered up at the vane and the arrows below the horse pointing in each direction of the compass. ‘We need to think about where the shadow from that northern arrow was when it was six.’ Brodie glanced over in the direction of a low-roofed building to the left, where a shadow from the clock tower and the weather vane above it was stretching across the brickwork.
‘Perfect,’ said Hunter, following her gaze. ‘The shadows are on the wall. But they must have been a bit further back along the wall when it was six, don’t you think?’
‘Erm. Hello. Still up here.’
‘Thought she didn’t want rescuing,’ sniffed Hunter. ‘I say we leave her there.’
‘I simply meant you shouldn’t presume I couldn’t get down without you,’ the girl snapped.
‘Oh, this is ridiculous,’ said Brodie, dragging the ladder along the wall herself and propping it in reach of the girl’s feet. ‘You two haven’t even properly met. How can you be so mean to each other already?’
It was a question neither of the others seemed prepared to answer.
The girl worked her way down the ladder and reluctantly Hunter held out his hand to her as she neared the bottom rung. She seemed to take great delight in rejecting his offer of help and jumped the last few steps instead. Brodie sighed. ‘Look, you two, we have a clue to solve. And twelve minutes to do it in.’ She looked at the girl from the roof. ‘Are you with us or not?’
The girl appeared to be thinking.
‘It’s not a difficult question,’ snapped Hunter. ‘Are you in or out? Eleven minutes. Have to hurry you!’
‘OK. We’ll work together. I’m Tusia.’ She made a noise which sounded remarkably like a sneeze. ‘It’s Russian. Well, I’m Russian. Fourth generation. It’s said “Too shka”.’
Hunter struggled for a while tryi
ng to make his mouth form the word as Tusia wanted. He gave up. ‘We’ve got ten minutes. I’ll call you Toots,’ he said. ‘She’s BB.’
‘Brodie actually. And he’s Hunter. And it’s best not to ask about that now. We haven’t got time.’
‘Nine and a half minutes,’ pressed Hunter. ‘Let’s get solving. The shadows are changing all the time. They’re moving along the wall of that building. If we leave it too long we’ll have no idea where the shadow was falling at six o’clock.’
The arrows on the base of the weather vane worked like a sundial, and the shadow of the northern arrow was like a line against the bricks.
‘Well? We’ve got nine minutes, people!’
Brodie ran her hands along the brickwork, moving in the opposite direction from which the shadow was travelling fraction by fraction as the moments passed. ‘We have to go backwards and work out where the shadow was at six o’clock.’
Hunter scrabbled to his knees beside her. ‘What the cheese cracker are we looking for, exactly?’ he asked. ‘On a brick wall, I mean. Even if we do work out where the shadow was, it’s just a line of bricks, surely?’
Brodie’s mind was whirring. ‘Where are the arrows on the weather vane?’ she snapped.
‘Erm. Under the winged horse,’ suggested Hunter tentatively.
‘So. We’ve got to find where the shadow of the vane arrow was at six. And look under it,’ said Brodie. She wished she was as confident as she sounded.
Tusia was waving her hands around, pacing up and down.
‘Erm, Toots. Not helping.’
‘Actually, I’m calculating. About a third of a brick per minute, I reckon, and so …’ She moved Brodie’s hand along the wall. ‘There. Six o’clock the shadow would have been about there.’ She looked at Brodie. ‘Anything?’
Brodie’s fingers locked on a loose brick wobbly in the grouting. With a tug she pulled the brick free. Underneath was a small rolled-up note.
‘Perfect!’
‘What’s it say?’ urged Hunter.
Well done, my careful code-crackers. It seems you are not to be deflected in your quest for the truth. So now for the final task, in order to gain entry to the Station that seeks to welcome you.
Clue number three: At the end you must return to the beginning.
