Darwen hadn’t expected snow in Atlanta. He had assumed that the South was always hot, as it had been when he’d first arrived in September, but December proved as cold a month as he had ever known in northern England. Even so, the snow had been a surprise, and for a moment, a brief but shining moment, it had almost been like home.
At school they had studied Hanukkah and Kwanza—his teachers constantly looked hopefully for insight from Darwen (whose mother had been black), but he had never heard of it, and details of the holiday had to be offered by Alex and Chip Whittley. The teachers had called the upcoming vacation “winter holidays,” but to Darwen it would always be Christmas. Except that it wasn’t, not without his parents, not in this still strange and vast city so different from the little Lancashire town where he had been raised.
Darwen had not lived in Lancashire since the summer when his parents had died in a car accident and he had been transported to Atlanta to live with his slightly stiff but well-meaning aunt, Honoria Vanderstay. Four months later, they were still getting to know each other, and she was fighting to get Darwen through his lowest point since arriving in the States. That low point began long before the frustration of not being able to find the captured Costa Rican boy took hold.
Two weeks earlier, a series of boxes containing things that had belonged to his parents had arrived. Darwen and his aunt avoided them for a few days, but eventually she opened them, always watching to see how he was reacting to what was inside. It wasn’t easy. Even the most ordinary things were charged with memories. There was a china rabbit his mother had glued back together after Darwen had knocked it off the mantelpiece and a cookbook whose stained pages were covered in scrawled notes added by his father.
“Dad’s hot-pot recipe,” said Darwen, staring at the book so as to avoid his aunt’s watchful gaze. “You’re supposed to use lamb and kidney and stuff, but Dad had this really great way of making it by just stewing beef and potatoes and onions. Mum put the crust on. We had it with piccalilli and red cabbage on Saturdays in front of the telly. Could we try to make it?”
But Honoria didn’t cook.
“I’m sorry, Darwen,” she said. “Every time I turn on the stove, there’s a good chance I’ll smoke the building out. Maybe we can get it at a restaurant.”
They looked but, unsurprisingly, couldn’t find it.
Cooking aside, his aunt had tried almost painfully hard as the holidays approached. She bought and wrapped a mountain of presents, got a real Christmas tree delivered to their spotless apartment, and swept up its fallen needles only when he wasn’t looking. She made a list of everything Darwen wanted for Christmas dinner, including chipolata sausages, which he couldn’t describe properly, and the paper crackers with novelty gifts inside, which she hadn’t been able to find until Christmas Eve. She had revealed them with a delighted “Ta da!” when she got home, and Darwen hadn’t the heart to say that they looked much smaller and fancier than the ones he was used to. He had thanked her for her efforts and returned to his bedroom while she paid Eileen, the dreaded babysitter, singing along with manic determination to the endlessly repeated songs on a twenty-four-hour Christmas-music station.
Darwen closed the door behind him and slumped onto the bed. On his bedside cabinet was a photo album: the blurred and random pictures he had gotten together before leaving England. He had spent more time in the last few days going through them, staring at the images of his parents, than ever before, but the warm feelings he had gotten from the photos when he needed them at Halloween were gone, and they merely left him feeling lost and alone. Two nights before, his aunt had taken him to a place called Calloway Gardens to see a huge display of Christmas lights, and though they had been beautiful—magical, even—he had found himself thinking back to when his parents had driven him to the Blackpool seafront to look at what they called the Illuminations. The lights at that brassy Lancashire resort town were, he knew, pretty tasteless compared with Calloway’s elegantly lit trees, but he would have given anything to see them again, to be there in the backseat, laughing and pointing as his dad drove and his mum glanced back at him, smiling.
But that was all in the past. That portion of his life was over, and Darwen found that all he really wanted right now was to escape the apartment and his aunt’s frenetically perfect Christmas into Silbrica. He gazed at the replacement mirror through which he had crossed over into that strange jungle locus, but Mr. Peregrine had been right. It had worked once, and now it was just a cracked and battered mirror. He couldn’t get inside, couldn’t even see anything more than his own frustrated and miserable reflection. He pictured the nameless boy he had seen pulled from his Costa Rican home by a monster, torn away from his family and everything he knew, isolated and thrust into a new and terrifying reality.
Darwen had to find him. That meant talking to Mr. Peregrine, whose planned trip to Costa Rica clearly meant that he was working on the problem, though in ways Darwen didn’t fully understand. They hadn’t seen each other since school finished for the semester, and Darwen—if he was honest—felt badly out of the loop.
He had Christmas dinner with his aunt, “Jingle Bell Rock” playing incessantly as she processed in with course after course, all supplied by a local restaurant and kept warm in her sleek, stainless steel oven. They pulled their crackers filled with absurdly expensive trinkets—including pieces of real silver and gold jewelry—and Darwen listened as his aunt sang the praises of the turkey, “which is usually so dry.” He said nothing about his father’s famously perfect roast turkey or his mother’s sherry trifle, though he could almost taste them in his mind, and his heart wept silent tears when he thought that he would never taste them again. His aunt gave him a half glass of wine with water in it “since it’s Christmas,” while he played conspicuously with everything she had bought him. And when he did cry, which was only for a moment, he managed to slip into the bathroom before she noticed.
As soon as Darwen heard the door buzzer and saw Aunt Honoria’s feigned surprise at who could possibly be visiting today, he knew she had one more desperate trick up her sleeve. For a moment he was terrified that it would be some department-store Santa come to pay him a special visit, but it wasn’t.
It was Rich and Alex, and—knowing that his aunt had arranged the visit because nothing she could do alone would be enough—he sidled up to her and whispered “thank you” into her ear.
The trio was clearly conscious of Aunt Honoria’s watchful presence and all they couldn’t discuss with her around, so they babbled happily about the weather, their faces flushed, stomping their feet as they slipped out of their snow-spotted coats. Darwen announced that he was “right chuffed” to see them, which Alex translated as “very pleased.” Rich had bought Darwen a guide to American birds, and Alex had framed a photograph of the three of them on a school trip to the zoo. But they had one more package, and it took both of them to lug it into the apartment.
“Did you bring that with you?” asked Aunt Honoria.
“It was in the hallway,” said Alex. “But it’s addressed to Darwen.”
She indicated a faded slip of paper tied with twine to the brown-paper package, on which was written in spidery and unsteady cursive:
For Darwen.
O. P.
Rich mouthed the initials, and Alex rolled her eyes.
“Mr. Peregrine,” she said. “I wouldn’t advertize that our new world studies teacher is sending you a Christmas present, Darwen. Favoritism. Conflict of interests. Bad for both of you.”
Unable to contain his excitement, Darwen pulled at the string, feeling the weight of the thing and its curious shape. It was much too heavy to be a mirror, and he had to lay it on the floor and peel the wrapping paper away. He did so, and they all stared.
“It’s an oven door,” said Rich, bewildered.
“From a junkyard,” added Alex.
It had once been white with a
chrome handle and a heavy glass window in the center, but it was now faded, chipped, rusted, stained, and dented.
“Just what you always wanted, right, Darwen?” said Alex.
“How . . . interesting,” said Aunt Honoria, with slow caution, “only our oven already has a door. See?” She pointed into the kitchen with its matching stainless steel appliances.
“You could drill through the corners and bolt this one right on top of yours,” Rich suggested.
Aunt Honoria’s mouth opened, and her head cocked slowly, as if she couldn’t find the right words.
“The window in the middle is nice and shiny, though, huh, Darwen?” said Alex with a significant look. “Reflective, almost.”
She was right. Darwen shifted in his seat, watching his face in the clouded glass of the door. It was a portal. It had to be. And it meant that Mr. Peregrine hadn’t forgotten him, however much he pretended not to know him in class.
“And this Mr. Peregrine is your new world studies teacher,” Aunt Honoria mused.
“Tough to believe, huh?” said Alex. “And he’s leading a trip to Costa Rica as soon as we go back to school. Our survival chances don’t look good, do they?”
“He’s actually a sort of anthropologist,” Rich inserted, leaping to the former shopkeeper’s defense. “He’s published and everything.”
“He’s a what?” asked Darwen.
“An anthropologist,” said Alex, ever the wordsmith. “Someone who studies people, their origins, culture, social structure. In his case, he has sort of an outsider’s perspective.”
“Outsider?” said Aunt Honoria. “In what sense?”
“Oh, she just means that he’s not from around here, right, Alex?” Darwen inserted.
“And he’s leading us overseas,” Rich mused.
“Why do you keep saying that?” said Alex.
Rich was pink—pinker than usual—and he looked unnerved.
“What’s the big deal?” asked Darwen, feeling a rush of loyalty for the former shopkeeper. “Mr. P. will get it together.”
Rich nodded, but he looked quickly away.
“You’ve never been out of the country before, have you?” said Alex, peering at him.
Rich sighed and shook his head. “I went to Chattanooga once,” he muttered.
“That’s in Tennessee,” said Alex.
“I was six,” Rich explained.
“And that’s the only time you’ve been out of the state?” said Alex.
“I like Georgia,” said Rich weakly.
“And I like SpaghettiOs,” said Alex, “but I don’t eat them at every meal.”
As soon as his aunt went back to the kitchen to clean up, Rich nodded at the oven door.
“You know what that is, right?” asked Rich.
“I hope so,” said Darwen, wishing he could test the idea right there and then.
“When can we try it?” asked Alex. “We should see if we can get close to the place the boy was taken from.”
“Might be good reconnaissance for our rescue mission,” said Rich.
“Our mission?” Alex repeated. “What are you now, GI Joe?”
“That’s what it is,” said Darwen, “a rescue mission.”
“Does it have to be the whole grade?” said Alex. “Does everyone have to come? I mean, this was our thing. We’re the ones who stopped Greyling’s invasion. Us! Not Naia or Barry or Chip Whittley.”
“It’s the only way we can get there while school is in session,” Rich said, shrugging his broad shoulders.
“Costa Rica,” Darwen mused. “You think it will be expensive?”
“You can bet on it,” said Alex.
Darwen’s face fell. His family in England had never had much money, and though his aunt seemed to be doing quite well for herself, he hated costing her more than was really necessary.
“I’m hoping my scholarship will cover it,” said Rich. “If not, then I’m out. There’s no way my dad could get the money together with the way his work has been lately. What about you, Alex?”
“I’ll be okay,” she said. “A present from Dad.”
“That’s nice of him,” said Darwen.
“Oh, he doesn’t know about it yet,” said Alex. “But Mom says that if he hesitates for a second when I call him about it, I’m allowed to ask how much he spent on his girlfriend’s Christmas gifts.”
Darwen wasn’t sure how to react to this, but Alex gave an expansive shrug and grinned brightly.
Aunt Honoria returned, and Darwen quickly started to talk about what great Christmas gifts she had given him.
“I got a puppy!” Alex inserted delightedly. “I got to go down to the pound and pick her out myself. She’s half husky, half shepherd, and half something else with floppy ears.”
“You got one-and-a-half dogs?” asked Rich.
Alex gave him a blank look.
“Three halves,” said Rich, “husky, shepherd, floppy-eared thing. That’s one-and-a-half dogs.”
“I also got a dictionary,” said Alex, “and I’ll be learning a new word every day. Here’s one I already got down. Pedantic. It means nitpicky and too smart by half. And when you look it up, there’s a picture of Rich Haggerty.”
Rich rolled his eyes at Darwen.
“Anyway,” said Alex, “she’s called Sasha, which is like a Russian version of my name, and she’s gorgeous, and loyal, and huge, and fierce, and someone gave her away, if you can believe that. She’s not even a year old and some old lady said, ‘I’m bored with you now, so you can go to the pound.’ And you know what they do with dogs if no one adopts them there?” Alex’s eyes grew wide.
Fearing Alex was about to rant at them for other people’s bad behavior, Darwen tried to redirect the conversation. “Well, you brought her home, so that’s good. She’ll like that.”
“Yeah,” said Rich. “A year or so with you and she’ll probably learn to talk.”
“I wish she could talk,” said Alex. “’Cause then she could tell me the name of the lady who abandoned her. I’ve got some things I’d like to say to her. When I grow up, I’m going to set up an animal shelter where pets that don’t get adopted can live forever.”
“I thought you were going to be a singer,” said Rich, grinning.
“Or a dancer,” added Darwen.
“I can be those things as well,” said Alex. “Oh yeah, I’m going to be an actor too. Strictly theater—no movies, unless they pay me so much that I’d be crazy not to do it.”
“Four careers is a lot for one person,” Aunt Honoria observed. “How will you find time for cooking and cleaning?”
“I’ll pay people to do that for me, like you do,” she said. Aunt Honoria flushed and looked out of the window, but Alex just kept talking. “My mom used to do that. When I was a baby, we had a nanny called Consuela. Why do you think my Spanish is so awesome? ’Course, we don’t have a nanny now. Mom insists on looking after Kaitlin all by herself. But yeah, when we had more money—before my dad left—we had maids and gardeners and who knows what else. That’s how I’m gonna live—with staff.”
She paused to consider this, and a new idea dawned.
“Heck, I could pay you two,” she exclaimed. “Rich, do the yard. Darwen, make me supper. Something with a bit of spice: some blackened catfish, maybe, with a bowl of gumbo on the side. Or some Brunswick stew. The good kind, not that dog-food-in-water mess they serve at school with leaves sprinkled on it, like that will make it good. Garnish, they call it. Serve up any old slop with a few cilantro leaves on top and they think it’s high class. Hockey-puck steak cooked for about four hours until you can carve glass with it? No problem, we’ll put a sprig of parsley on it, and everyone will think they’re in some restaurant in Paris, France, because of the garnish.”
Darwen
grinned at Rich. Same old Alex.
“I thought the meals at Hillside were good,” said Aunt Honoria, a familiar note of anxiety creeping into her voice.
“They are,” replied Darwen quickly. “Kind of fancy, but good. Right, Rich?”
Rich, who would probably eat pulled pork and chicken wings at every meal given the chance, met Darwen’s eyes and got the message. “Sure,” he said. “They’re great.”
Alex rolled her eyes. “You just don’t have my delicate palate,” she said. “I have very sensitive taste buds.”
“Sensitive as a battering ram,” muttered Rich.
“I heard that,” she said, unoffended. She gazed around the apartment. “Nice tree,” she said to Aunt Honoria. “Could use more lights, though.”
“Oh yeah,” said Rich. “Real sensitive.”
After they had gone, Darwen sat beside his aunt on the couch in front of the gas fire, watching the snow fall on Atlanta’s towers of offices and condos.
“Good Christmas, Darwen?” she asked.
“Good Christmas,” he said.
Clearly relieved, his aunt patted him on the head awkwardly and then got ready for bed. It had been a long day. Darwen said good night, then spent a minute gazing into the fire, listening to the sounds of his aunt preparing for bed. The moment things went quiet, he dragged the battered old oven door into his room, careful not to make too much noise. He was propping it up against the back wall of his closet when his fingers found something taped to the back: a scrap of paper. On it were numbers inked in Mr. Peregrine’s untidy hand and a thumbprint, not in ink but in a dark brownish red.
Blood?
Darwen frowned, but then he noticed the image that had appeared in the glass pane of the oven door. He had known that it would be a portal by now, since the sun had been down for hours, but it wasn’t at all what he’d expected.
It was dark inside the oven-door portal, a tight, square tunnel made of metal. In fact, it looked a lot like the inside of an oven except that it kept going back as far as Darwen could see. Darwen reached in tentatively, and the surface rippled where the glass should be, just as his old mirror had. Still, this wasn’t the beautiful forest he had been looking forward to, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to get into that cramped passage, no matter where it might lead him.
Darwen Arkwright and the Insidious Bleck Page 3
