by Anna James
Then he paused. ‘Oh sorry! Hermia! Hermia! I forgot the code word. Welcome to Washington DC!’
‘Um, thanks,’ said Tilly. ‘I’m Tilly, obviously.’
Orlando stepped back and beamed at them. ‘And … Oskar, right?’
‘Right,’ said Oskar.
‘So, how are you guys doing?’ Orlando said gently, clearly trying to tone down his natural exuberance – and, to her surprise and embarrassment, Tilly burst into tears. At the sight of Tilly’s tears, Oskar followed shortly afterwards. ‘Hey, hey, hey!’ Orlando said, looking a little nervous. ‘Did something happen on the way?’
‘No.’ Tilly sniffed. ‘We’re fine. It’s just … the whole … being tricked into flying to America by your own mum to save bookwandering thing.’
‘It’s quite a lot to deal with,’ Oskar said, wiping away a tear.
‘You bet,’ Orlando said gently. ‘Well, I think you’re doing brilliantly by just getting here. And I know someone else who does too. Come meet Jorge – he’ll be getting stressed about parking in the wrong place for too long, I’m sure.’ He put a reassuring hand on their shoulders and guided them through the airport, to where a battered powder-blue station wagon was idling, a slender, nervous-looking man waiting in the driver’s seat.
‘Come on, Orlando!’ the man called out of the open window. ‘That security guard has been glaring at me ever since I parked up here.’
Orlando grinned, tossed their bags in the car and helped them up into the back seat. ‘This is Jorge,’ he said, gesturing to the driver, who was sweating slightly as he manoeuvred the car into a lane of traffic. He had light brown skin and dark curly hair and was wearing a smart button-down shirt.
‘Hi,’ said Jorge from the front seat, with a gentle accent that Tilly couldn’t quite place. ‘I promise I’ll be much more welcoming once we’re out of this godforsaken airport.’ He gesticulated at another driver and swore out of the window, which prompted a slightly sheepish smile from Orlando. But indeed, once they’d left the maze of roads around the airport, Jorge glanced back at them, a warm smile on his face.
‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘Sorry you had to witness that. I do not enjoy driving this beast of a car in busy areas, but Orlando insisted on us buying it. How are you both doing? Did you manage to sleep at all on the plane?’
‘A little bit,’ said Oskar and Tilly nodded. Although she hadn’t slept much and sheer adrenalin had been keeping her alert until they landed.
‘So you know my mum from university?’ she said. ‘We didn’t get a lot of information before we left.’
‘Yep,’ Orlando said cheerfully, twisting round in his seat so he could look at them. ‘We both worked part time at a bookstore in New York – that’s how we each realised the other was a bookwanderer.’
‘So, you knew Mum when …’ Tilly tailed off, not sure how much they knew about who her father was.
‘Yeah, we knew her when she was visiting A Little Princess and fell in love with your father,’ Orlando said straightforwardly but kindly, showing that he knew Tilly was half fictional without making a fuss. ‘When Bea first moved back to London, we had no idea she was even pregnant, but we kept in touch for a bit until we stopped hearing from her. We thought she’d got new friends in London; of course, it didn’t even cross our minds that she was trapped in a book. But we can chat more about all of that kind of stuff later, if you want?’ Orlando said. ‘I have to admit we’re a little bit in the dark about the plan – Bea made it sound like everything was quite urgent.’
‘Yes,’ said Tilly, who was starting to struggle to keep her eyes open. ‘We need to go to the Library of Congress straight away. She told you about the bookbinding, right …?’
‘She sure did,’ Orlando said. ‘It sounds like a real mess. No wonder things have been off in the book world. I’m glad you guys have a plan to help.’
‘Something like that,’ Oskar said sleepily. Orlando eyed the two drowsy children in the back seat.
‘Okay, well, why don’t you two nap a little on the drive into town? We can drop your stuff off at the bookstore, which is close to the Library of Congress, and go from there.’
‘Sounds good,’ Tilly said, letting the rhythm of the car lull her to sleep.
‘Can we … get some … food … too?’ Oskar added, and it was not long before the two of them were fast asleep, heads resting against the car windows as they drove through Washington DC.
rlando gently shook them awake after about forty-five minutes.
‘Hey, sleepyheads,’ he said. ‘We’ve picked up some breakfast burritos for you. I thought you might like to see some of the sights as we get into the city and you can have a moment to wake up properly before we get to the store.’
He passed back two hot, foil-wrapped burritos full of spicy scrambled eggs, avocado and black beans and two glass bottles of fresh orange juice.
Tilly and Oskar ate and drank contentedly while gazing out of the windows at the cherry blossom trees that lined the road.
‘Once all this bookwandering stuff is cleared up, you’ll have to come back and stay – with your families – and do some proper exploring,’ Orlando said as he pointed out some of the famous sights.
They saw the gigantic Lincoln Memorial – a huge stone structure that looked like something out of a Greek myth, the tall, elegant Washington Monument sticking up into the sky as though it were trying to pierce the clouds and, looking up the hill from that tower, they could just about see the famous shape of the White House itself, where the American president lived.
Before too long, Jorge turned the car into a crisscross of streets lined with Chinese restaurants and coffee shops. They drove past a huge stadium right in the middle of the city and a tall, glass-fronted theatre before Jorge parked behind a large red-brick building, and he and Orlando helped get the luggage out of the boot.
‘Enough history for now,’ Orlando grinned. ‘Time for the important stuff – books.’
They walked round to the front. ‘For the full effect,’ Orlando said proudly as they looked up at a huge building with big windows, through which they could see a busy bookshop. A large sign over the door read ‘Shakespeare’s Sisters’ with a large quill illustration as a logo.
‘Why’s it called that?’ Oskar asked, staring up at the sign. ‘How many sisters did Shakespeare even have?’
‘Well, he had one sister who lived to be an adult,’ Orlando said. ‘But that’s just one of the reasons for the name. You’ll see when we go inside that it’s a pretty special building – it actually used to be a theatre, and we’ve tried to keep as much of the structure as it was – we still have the stage and everything. We’ve added a lot of bookshelves, of course. People come from all over to look at our Shakespeare collection.’
‘So … why is it named after his sisters then?’ Tilly asked.
‘I’m getting there.’ Orlando smiled. ‘I’m just giving you the full spiel as it’s your first time here! It’s because it’s not about Shakespeare’s real sisters; it’s about a made-up one called Judith.’
‘You know the British writer Virginia Woolf?’ Jorge interrupted, with a smile, seemingly used to hearing this explanation and trying to speed Orlando up a little.
The name rang a bell with Tilly, but she couldn’t place it, and shook her head; she had a rule never to pretend she’d read a book that she hadn’t, however tempting it sometimes was.
‘She lived a while ago,’ Orlando went on. ‘And part of the reason I love her is because I was named after one of her characters. But another one of her books was about women and writing, and in it she imagined what life might have been like for a made-up version of Shakespeare’s sister. It’s about what would have happened to a woman who wanted to be a writer in Elizabethan times and the stories she might have written if she’d had the same education and opportunities as good old Will Shakespeare. So that’s what I named the shop for – all the stories that didn’t make it out into the world, for one reason or another.’
/> ‘I like it.’ Oskar nodded approvingly. ‘But it’s kind of complicated. You had to do a lot of explaining.’
‘Well, we like to think it sounds good even if you’re just walking past the store,’ Orlando said. ‘But sometimes it’s worth getting the whole story, don’t you think?’ He gazed up at the shop. ‘You know, bookstores are monuments to writers, in a way,’ he said. ‘Lincoln and Washington have their statues, and Shakespeare has this. It’s a little less grand, but I think he’d like it anyway.’
‘You sound just like Tilly’s grandad,’ Oskar said. ‘He loves a speech about the importance of bookshops.’
Once they were inside, it was obvious the building had previously been a theatre. Although various walls had been removed, there was a huge wooden stage at the far end to where they stood, with heavy scarlet curtains framing it. But instead of actors or lights or props on the stage there were shelves and shelves of books. One wide staircase wound upwards towards a balcony, and another down to another floor. The bookshop was all artfully curated faded glamour, with a kitsch chandelier still hanging from its high ceiling and some old velvet theatre chairs arranged in pockets among the shelves for people to sit and read.
‘Welcome to Shakespeare’s Sisters!’ Orlando said proudly. ‘Let’s store your stuff somewhere safe and then you can come see our Shakespeare balcony quickly before we head up to the library.’
Orlando looked so proud of his bookshop that Tilly didn’t have the heart to insist that they go straight to the library to start the hunt for the Archivists.
They were already here, so what was an extra ten minutes to see the shop properly? Good bookshops are hard to resist after all.
hey left all their luggage in Orlando’s locked office, but Tilly made sure that she kept the small backpack with the clues in with her.
Then they followed Orlando and Jorge up the stairs, passing an archway that revealed a small room hung with more colours and patterns of wrapping paper than Tilly could count, as well as reams and reams of ribbons and tissue paper and other accoutrements. A petite woman with warm amber-coloured skin was standing at a desk piled high with books. She had at least five different brightly coloured ribbons woven through her black hair, and was focused intently on wrapping a large hardback book in brown paper.
‘Ah, that’s Deepti, and our wrapping room,’ Orlando said. ‘If customers need a book wrapped for a special occasion, then we bring them here where they can choose how they want it.’
The woman looked up and grinned widely at them. ‘Friends of yours?’ she said.
‘The best of friends,’ Orlando said. ‘This is Matilda – the daughter of one my closest friends at university. And this is Matilda’s best friend, Oskar.’
‘Are you guys over on vacation?’ Deepti asked, and Tilly said no at the same time as Jorge said yes and Deepti raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, either way, if you buy a book while you’re here, be sure to come get it wrapped. I’m certain it will be on the house. By the way, Orlando, have you caught up with Candy? She was looking for you – a couple more books have gone missing over the last few days, and she thinks maybe it’s a shoplifter? Although they’re choosing strange books, if that’s the case – anyway, you should go find her when you can so she can tell you about it.’
‘Thanks, Deepti, I will,’ Orlando said.
‘Is Deepti a bookwanderer too?’ Tilly asked as they continued up the stairs to the balcony.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said.
‘Haven’t you asked?’ Oskar said, surprised. ‘I thought there was some kind of record of bookwanderers at the Underlibrary.’
‘I’m sure there is, but I wouldn’t go check up on my booksellers,’ Orlando said. ‘If she is, I’m sure we’ll work it out at some point. I think the Pages family might have given you a false impression of how common bookwandering is! But there’s probably at least one more here – booksellers are, of course, particularly likely to be bookwanderers.’
By this time, they had reached the balcony that stretched all the way round the bookshop. The shelves were full of plays by Shakespeare, in every sort of edition from cheap paperbacks to beautiful, ornate hardbacks, as well as books about Shakespeare, about the time he lived in, and lots and lots of Shakespeare merchandise.
Tilly wondered if she had time to buy a calendar full of Shakespeare’s best insults as a peace offering for Grandad before she forced herself to focus. As tired as she was, and as much as she wanted to spend hours exploring the bookshop, they had to keep going.
‘It’s a beautiful shop, Orlando,’ she said, ‘but we—’
‘Thank you!’ said Orlando, cutting her off. ‘We’re pretty proud of it. We have the best customers in the world as well. What do you think of this Shakespeare balcony, eh? Balcony, get it?’
‘Huh?’ Tilly said, thrown.
‘Balcony!’ Orlando said, delighted by his own joke. ‘“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo …”?’
‘Ohhhh,’ Tilly said, the penny dropping. ‘Yeah, I get it. Cool, but the thing is we really need to …’
‘Have you seen this?’ asked Orlando, pulling a particularly lovely edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream off a shelf. ‘Have you ever read it?’ He opened it and put it in Tilly’s hands, and she could see a beautiful illustration of the forest where the play was set.
‘We read bits of it at school,’ Tilly said. ‘But I’ve not seen it on stage before. I think our teacher said it was on at the Globe, though, so I might get to see it soon. But anyway how far away did you say …’
‘It’s one of my favourite places to bookwander,’ said Orlando dreamily. ‘“I know a bank where the wild thyme …”’ He looked embarrassed. ‘I always forget if it’s “blows” or “grows” – what is it?’
‘I know a bank where the wild thyme blows …’ Tilly read out loud, stopping as she felt something move against her arm. She brushed it away, thinking to herself that she hoped Washington didn’t have any particularly horrible types of spiders – but, instead of a spider, her hand met a thin rope of vine.
‘How do you get them to move like that?’
‘We don’t,’ Orlando said, staring at the foliage as it kept growing.
‘Oh no,’ Tilly said, realisation dawning on her as the vines snaked over the books, leaves rustling. ‘It’s happening again. And I barely even read anything!’
‘It’s happening … again?’ repeated Orlando.
‘Yeah,’ Tilly said nervously. ‘Sometimes … I seem to … Well, a couple of times, when I’ve been reading a book, the scenery has sort of, well, escaped the book a bit.’
‘Ah,’ Jorge said, his eyes widening. ‘And this just … happens?’
‘Well, it’s only happened a few times,’ Tilly said, a little defensively. ‘And never this quickly. I’m not exactly in control of it.’
‘And does it just keep coming?’ Orlando said, taking a step backwards as he eyed the ever-expanding forest and looking to see if any customers had noticed.
‘Not usually,’ Tilly said. ‘But it doesn’t normally happen this quickly or this much!’
‘And that doesn’t usually happen either, right?’ Oskar said, pointing down at Tilly’s ankle where a vine was curling itself round her leg.
‘Uh, no,’ Tilly said, panicking and shaking her leg, trying to free herself. ‘They’re not usually so …’
‘Alive?’ Jorge said, pale-faced. ‘Are they hurting you?’
‘No.’
‘But I kind of think that’s beside the point at the moment,’ Oskar said, bending down and trying to pull the vine off Tilly’s ankle, but another one crept out from a bookcase and wrapped itself round his wrist.
‘Why is a tree trying to eat us!’ Oskar said through gritted teeth, fighting a losing battle against the increasingly strong vines.
‘I don’t think it’s the tree,’ Tilly said. ‘I think it’s the book.’
Orlando stared at her, then down at the book in her hands. He grabbed it from her and shook
it, as if that might stop the vines.
‘Put it down!’ said Oskar. Orlando panicked and threw it behind a bookcase instead, which did nothing to stop the twisting plants from getting a tighter and tighter hold on Tilly and Oskar.
‘Sorry!’ Orlando said desperately, going to retrieve the book.
‘Um, a little help?’ Tilly said to Jorge, who was watching all of this, mouth open in shock.
‘Yeah, sorry, of course,’ Jorge stammered. ‘I’ll go get some scissors!’
‘Grab a knife too!’ Orlando yelled after him while scrabbling for the book. And then, before Orlando could work out what to try next, Tilly felt a pull around her tummy button and the unmistakable smell of toasting marshmallows
he majestic ceiling of Shakespeare’s Sisters dissolved away into nothingness, its bookshelves collapsing down until Tilly and Oskar found themselves, free of vines, in a forest glade that seemed too lovely to be real. They stood up and dusted themselves off, glancing around for any characters.
‘That was weird,’ Tilly said. ‘And I feel like I’m saying that a lot at the moment.’
‘Too much,’ Oskar said, rubbing his wrists where the vines had got hold of him. ‘But hey! At least we can bookwander!’
‘That’s … Well, that’s weird too, isn’t it?’ Tilly said. ‘Because isn’t the Source Edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the British Underlibrary, locked up with book magic?’
‘Maybe they forgot this one,’ Oskar said optimistically. ‘Or it’s because the book ate us and that doesn’t count as proper bookwandering?’
‘Can we think of a different way of describing it, please?’ Tilly said. ‘Rather than books eating us.’
‘Sure,’ Oskar said. ‘I wonder why the book kidnapped us. I wonder why it … No, I’m out. I’m sticking with ate.’
‘At least Orlando has the book,’ Tilly said. ‘So he can come and get us. Unless …’
‘Unless the book is bound, then he won’t be able to bookwander in it, will he?’ Oskar finished. ‘So, what do we do?’
