by Dave Butler
Too-whoo, too-whoo! The brass owl mounted over the door betrayed Charlie’s creeping entrance. Charlie’s bap had built the owl, and because it was one of the first things a customer might see when he walked inside the shop, Bap had taken extra care to make it impressive. The feathers were individually sculpted, and when the owl sang to announce the swinging of the door, it opened its beak and eyes and spread its wings out once before settling back onto its brass branch.
Bap’s customer was a troll. Two yellow tusks jutted above a thick, scabby lower lip, and eyebrows hung over his face like furry shop-window awnings. Charlie had never seen a troll outside the pages of Smythson’s Almanack of the Elder Folk and Arcana of Britain and Northern Ireland. It was the Almanack, too, that told him trolls were also called hulders and jotuns.
And here one was. He had nearly run Charlie down in the alley and now he huddled in the reception room of his father’s shop. The troll’s long, matted hair and bull-like ears and horns were surprisingly close to the white plaster and dark oak beams of the ceiling, even though he was sitting. He must be eight feet tall, Charlie guessed. The troll examined a piece of Charlie’s father’s work. Charlie tried to ignore the thick animal stink that filled the room. So that was what cows smelled like.
“Very clever indeed!” the troll bellowed.
Charlie circled around and sat by his father, out of the hulder’s reach and under the big portrait of Queen Victoria. She was dressed in the portrait as the Empress of India and she dripped with jewels, including the famous Koh-i-noor diamond. She frowned at Charlie as he scooted past.
Bap patted Charlie on his knee and pinched him. It wasn’t a hard pinch, just hard enough that Charlie knew that his bap knew that Charlie had been gone too long. Charlie sagged on his stool.
“Clever? It is perfect,” Mr. Pondicherry chirped. He patted Charlie on the knee again to show his pleasure, and that he had forgiven Charlie. “Everything I make is perfect, though that might not always be obvious at first.” He picked up his little round-bowled pipe from the table, sucked on the clay stem, and exhaled a puff of sweet-scented smoke.
“Not sure I can work with a monocle,” the hulder said. “I read a lot of papers.” He held a single round eyepiece up over his right eye. The lens was bound in gear-toothed brass and had inside it other, smaller rings. Charlie’s father had shown him the night before that by rotating the outer ring, the inner rings could be made to move, and the various lenses of the eyepiece could be slid into position or out of the way. This let the wearer control how much the eyepiece magnified.
“The second lens is nearly finished,” Mr. Pondicherry told his customer. “Do not worry; a complete set of Pondicherry’s Close-Reading Spectacles will be ready tomorrow morning when we open.” He smiled. “Patent pending.”
“You should test this one first on an actual document, Mr. Grumblesson.” This new voice was high-pitched and silvery, like a breeze through tiny bells, and suddenly Charlie realized that the troll had a companion. He hadn’t noticed her because he’d been staring at the troll. She was half the height of Charlie, who was not a very large boy, and she had green butterfly-like wings. She was a pixie, sometimes also called a fairy—Charlie knew about pixies from the Almanack, too—and her clothing was boyish and old-fashioned. She wore hose and buckled shoes and a very simple waistcoat and a tricorn hat, as if she belonged in the year 1787 instead of 1887. Poking out beneath the hat, her hair was blond and curly. The pixie rummaged in a satchel at her waist and came out with a letter, which she unfolded and handed to the hulder.
“Thank you, Miss de Minimis.” Mr. Grumblesson twisted the brass ring around the eyepiece with his thumb and squinted through the lens. The sheet of paper had seemed enormous in the pixie’s hands, but it looked like a calling card in the hulder’s. “The party of the first part, ha!” he roared. “You’re right, Mr. Pondicherry, it is perfect!”
“Aye, and just in time, too,” added the pixie. “Can you send your lad round with it tomorrow morning?”
“I’ll go,” Charlie offered.
Charlie’s father shook his head and set aside his pipe. “Oh, no, I’m afraid that will be impossible,” he said. “I may perhaps bring it to you myself, a little later in the day. Yes, I can close the shop down at noon and bring the spectacles. Your office is in Tumblewain Close, yes?”
The pixie arched a little eyebrow. “How old is the boy, then? He’s not tall, but I’ll not hold that against a fellow. I took him for twelve or thirteen.”
“Come on, Bap,” Charlie pleaded.
Mr. Pondicherry nodded. He looked impatient. “Yes, but I shall be the one to deliver the Close-Reading Spectacles.”
“The boy’ll not take up his father’s trade, then? He doesn’t work about the shop?” Miss de Minimis asked with a grin. “Every youngster should follow in his parents’ footsteps. ’Tis the natural thing.”
Mr. Grumblesson chuckled.
Charlie’s father patted his leg again. Charlie gritted his teeth. The pat reminded Charlie that his bap was in charge. “Charlie is sensitive to sunlight. Besides, he’s far too clever a boy to spend his life fiddling with gears and valves like his old bap.”
The hulder looked at Charlie through the one lens, his right eye gigantic while his left glittered blue and small. “I’d send my fine-print clerk in the morning,” he said, waving at Miss de Minimis, “only today is her last day. Tomorrow her grand tour ends and she goes home, which is why I need the spectacles. Day after tomorrow I sit the bar exam, so I really need them.”
“Are you not already a solicitor, then?” Mr. Pondicherry asked.
Mr. Grumblesson shook his enormous head. “A lawspeaker,” he said. “That’s a hulder lawyer. But there aren’t enough of us around here to pay my bills, so I need to be able to get human clients.” He sighed, a heavy sound like a wheezing engine. “And of course…mixed-folk families.”
“I see,” Mr. Pondicherry agreed.
“Look, Grim,” the pixie said, “I’ll come round for you in the morning anyway. One last little commission, and if you’ll not have me as your clerk for a few final hours, then I’ll do it for you as your friend.”
“You’re a fine young lady, Natalie de Minimis,” Grim Grumblesson snorted, “and the Baroness de Minimis and Underthames are blessed to have you.” He handed the eyepiece back to Charlie’s father, who took it and wrapped it in soft cloth. “But I won’t be using them before we take you back to your mother, in any case. Mr. Pondicherry, happy to see you tomorrow at noon.”
The hulder picked up his headgear. It was an enormous top hat with holes cut neatly in the brim for his bull-like ears and more holes for the two long horns that sprouted from the top of his forehead. The troll stood—crunch!—and jammed both his horns into the ceiling.
“Loki’s spats!” A chunk of plaster tumbled from the ceiling. It trailed white dust over the troll’s hair and shoulder, and then he caught it in his hat.
“Sorry,” Grim Grumblesson said. “I’ll pay the damages, of course. Add it to my bill.”
“Easy, Grim,” the pixie said. “Just come straight down.”
The hulder let his body sag, and his horns pulled down out of the ceiling. The craggy top of his head was dusted white, which made him look like a snow-covered mountain. He bowed, sheepishly set the bit of plaster on the table, and turned to go. He stooped even farther to exit the front door, the door owl too-whooing and spreading its wings.
Natalie de Minimis swept her own floppy black tricorn past her knees in a deep midair bow that was as old-fashioned as her clothing, then flitted out in the troll’s wake.
“Charlie!” his father snapped the instant the door shut. Charlie hung his head. Bap grabbed him by the shoulders.
Then Charlie’s father hugged him.
“I was only in the alley, Bap,” Charlie lied. “Taking the laundry to Wu.”
“I worry. Don’t you understand?” His father looked him up and down. “And you’re filthy! If it weren’t so dangerous, I’d take you anyw
here in the whole wide world. You’re fragile, and the city isn’t safe for a boy like you.”
Charlie didn’t think he was all that fragile—he’d been kicked and punched by bigger boys in the alley, and the ache was mostly gone already—but he didn’t argue. “He has shirt presses that need to be calibrated,” Charlie muttered.
“Promise me you’ll stay inside and be safe,” Mr. Pondicherry hissed. His eyes were intense, and when he demanded Charlie’s promise, Charlie couldn’t refuse.
“Yes, Bap,” he said, “I promise. But it was only the alley.” He slumped even lower on his stool.
His father hugged him again. “Come on,” Mr. Pondicherry said. “We’ve got some chocolate biscuits; let’s have a little tea.”
Charlie changed his clothes and washed his hands and face. Then he poured the tea and arranged a packet of biscuits on a plate while his father made a few more adjustments to the second lens of the spectacles. The Pondicherry men were bachelors, so although Mr. Pondicherry did most of the cooking (and Lucky Wu did all the laundry), Charlie tried to make himself useful about the shop. Now he arranged the tea, and tried to ignore a vague feeling of being trapped.
Charlie and his father sat down across the reception-room table from each other. Queen Victoria hung on the wall as the third point of the triangle, almost as if Her Majesty were having tea, too. Almost as if Her Majesty were Charlie’s mum.
Mr. Pondicherry poured. Charlie served half a biscuit to himself and three to his father.
“Have I told you the story of the little mermaid?” Mr. Pondicherry asked.
“I read it, Bap,” Charlie said. “Hans Christian Andersen.” He had read every book in the house, every page, more than once.
“A mermaid fell in love with a prince whom she had saved from a terrible storm.” Mr. Pondicherry gazed fondly at Queen Victoria, as if he were telling the story to her. Her Majesty looked fascinated. “She wanted to be with him, so she went to a sea witch and struck a bargain. The sea witch gave the mermaid legs. But walking on those enchanted legs felt like walking on sharp swords, and her feet bled all the time. And if she failed to get true love’s kiss from her prince, and he married someone else, she would dissolve into sea foam.”
“Also, the sea witch took her tongue.”
“You remember the story.”
Charlie nodded. He liked the story, but he knew it well enough that his mind could wander a bit during the telling.
“So the little mermaid danced for her prince, though it made her feet bleed.” Charlie’s father gestured at the wall beneath Queen Victoria, as if she were the one dancing on bleeding feet. “And the prince loved her, but sadly, he loved another girl even more, a girl who wasn’t mute. She was the princess of a neighboring kingdom, and the prince mistakenly thought she had saved him from the sea.”
“He married the other girl,” Charlie said, and then movement beyond the shop’s window caught his eye. The window was filled with brass slats that could be rotated vertically in order to form a solid wall at night. Right now they were horizontal so a customer could look in the window, and through the slats Charlie saw a man. Mr. Pondicherry’s back was turned to the stranger; Charlie squinted to get a better look.
“That’s right,” Mr. Pondicherry agreed. “He married the other girl. And do you remember what happened next?”
The man outside leaned close into the window, and Charlie saw his sneering face clearly. It was the stranger Charlie had met in Irongrate Lane. Charlie shifted in his seat. The man didn’t belong; he was up to no good. Sinister was the word to describe him, Charlie thought. The Sinister Man.
Should he say something to his bap?
“Yes,” Charlie said. “The mermaid’s sisters tried to convince her to murder the prince.”
Charlie’s father chuckled. “Yes, and she didn’t do it. But that’s not the part I meant.”
Charlie couldn’t be sure because of the shadows, but he thought the man outside was looking directly at him. “She threw herself into the sea,” Charlie said slowly. “She jumped into the water and drowned.” He looked up at the portrait of Queen Victoria. It was a trick of his imagination, he knew, but she looked afraid of drowning.
“Yes,” Mr. Pondicherry agreed. “She threw herself upon the rocks of the sea and drowned. She wanted to see the great wide world…and it killed her without a second thought. She was a fragile and special person, and the world showed her no mercy.”
The Sinister Man pulled away from the window and disappeared. Just before he vanished from view, just as Charlie’s bap said the words upon the rocks of the sea, Charlie saw again the cogwheel at the man’s throat. In his mind’s eye he and Queen Victoria fell together onto the teeth of that wheel and were shattered into a thousand pieces.
Charlie wanted to tell his bap about the Sinister Man. But he didn’t know how he could say anything without either admitting that he had gone out to Irongrate Lane or lying. He shook his head over and over as he cleared the table.
Just as Charlie finished washing up, the door owl announced two more customers. These were ordinary humans—boys, though bigger than Charlie.
Charlie followed his bap into the reception room.
“You will be Masters Micklemuch and Chattelsworthy,” Mr. Pondicherry greeted his customers. “Welcome!”
“Sir Oliver Chattelsworthy,” the first of the two boys said, with long, educated-sounding vowels and ghostly r’s. “Baronet.”
He was freckled and ginger under a dented bowler hat. Both boys wore navy peacoats and striped trousers that might have been smart except that they were frayed at the cuffs and dark with filth. The one named Micklemuch had black grease smudges about the face and wore an oversized airman’s leather cap with its chin straps flapping about his ears. Even the baronet, though his neck and cheeks were pink and clean, left a black smudge on the corner of the calling card that he handed to Mr. Pondicherry.
“You can stop it with the ‘master’ right there an’ call me Bob,” said the other, while Mr. Pondicherry examined the card. “An’ if you’ve got to extinguish me from other Bobs, I’m ’Eaven-Bound.” Bob’s th sounded awfully close to his f.
“Distinguish, Bob,” Chattelsworthy hissed.
“Yeah,” Heaven-Bound Bob agreed. “ ’Eck, I thought that’s what I said.”
“Raj Pondicherry, and this is my son, Charlie.” They all shook hands.
“Clockwork Pondicherry,” Chattelsworthy said. “You’re very nearly famous in Whitechapel.”
“An’ Clockwork Charlie, too.” Bob winked at Charlie. “Not so famous, but ’andsome.”
“Just Charlie,” Charlie told him.
“You must be the aeronaut,” Charlie’s father said to Bob.
“Yeah,” Bob admitted. “We talked with the kobold before. Clockswain, ’e said ’is name was.”
Too-whoo!
“Goodness gracious, I did say that indeed,” admitted Henry Clockswain as he scuttled in through the front door, juggling brown paper parcels. “Raj, I believe I mentioned these lads to you. They’re likely young gentlemen, and they’ve paid their deposit.”
Mr. Clockswain was Rajesh Pondicherry’s partner, and he was a kobold. He was Charlie’s size, pale, beardless, and balding. He smiled and blinked as he came in. Then he pushed a stool up beside Charlie’s and climbed onto it. After opening the parcels, he proceeded to precisely remove their contents.
“Look ’oo’s ’ere, then,” Bob said. “Mr. Cheerful ’imself.”
“Who are you calling likely?” muttered the baronet.
The kobold looked up from his precisely arranged objects. “I only mean, er…likely. I mean you show promise.”
“The ’eck, Ollie…Sir Oliver.” The aeronaut, Bob, plucked at his companion’s elbow. “No need to pick a fight right ’ere at the old auntie.”
The baronet harrumphed.
“Auntie?” Charlie asked.
“Aunt Mabel, table,” the aeronaut said, as if that were an explanation.
> “Yes, you mentioned the gentlemen!” Charlie’s father exclaimed, rubbing his hands together. “The Pondicherry Articulated Gyroscopes!” He looked down his round nose and over his thin spectacles at the two boys. “Patent pending. Not content with montgolfiers and zeppelins, gentlemen?”
“That isn’t a very discreet question,” the baronet objected.
Heaven-Bound Bob ignored his comrade and kept talking. “ ’Ot-air balloons work well enough, but I reckon the old Greeks ’ad it right,” he said. Charlie liked the rough and jolly accent of the boy in the aviator cap. “You wanna ’ave the freedom of a bird, you got to ’ave its wings.”
Henry Clockswain had removed everything from the parcels and ordered it all neatly on the table. He faced rows of small gears and valves, one spanner, two brass tubes, six plums, and a hard sausage, the results of his shopping expedition. He had also flattened the brown paper wrapper, piled it together and folded it once, and wound all the wrapping twine around the fingers of his left hand. Now he plucked stray bits of twine and paper from his jacket, clucking softly.
“But Icarus flew too close to the sun, and his wings melted,” Charlie’s father observed sagely. “Inventions of all sorts must be handled wisely, or disaster may follow.”
Bob shrugged. “If I ain’t got old Icarus beat for brains, which I reckon I ’ave, then I’ve got ’im beat for pluck.” He poked his chin up. “I’ve got everybody beat for pluck.”
Mr. Pondicherry smiled. “Come back tomorrow morning, gentlemen,” he said, “first thing.”
Bob grinned, and Charlie wished he knew how to fly.
The baronet smiled too, but more slowly, and looking only at Charlie’s bap. “We’ll pay the balance tomorrow, of course,” he said. “Are you sure the gyroscopes will be ready in the morning? First thing?”
“Are you going be in the Jubilee aeronautical display?” Charlie asked. “The queen’s progress flotilla from Waterloo and the London Eye to the palace? Isn’t Her Majesty going to be followed by a procession of airships, to show the great advances that have been made during her reign?”
