The City of Lizards

by Elisa Puricelli Guerra

  At that thought, they all fell silent.

  How big is an island? Ravi wondered. Too big for his liking. He could already picture himself, dragged by the other two, aboard a tiny boat on their way to confront the monster.

  “It lies asleep at the bottom of the ocean,” Thomasina resumed. “But every hundred years it wakes up. That’s when it emerges and —”

  Minerva shot to her feet. “And when it emerges, it sprays water from its dreadful nostrils,” she cried, splashing her glass of orange juice all around. “And it causes whirlpools so powerful that even the biggest ships are sucked down into the abyss!”

  “And its tentacles are so long and strong,” Thomasina added, “that it can wrap up ships and crush them!” She snapped a stick she had picked up.

  Ravi covered his ears. He didn’t want to hear anything more.

  Thomasina crouched in front of a bookshelf where they kept books about adventures and other spectacular stories. She pulled out a large volume and started leafing through it. “I brought this from Crowley Hall library,” she explained. “It’s the List of Mythical and Extraordinary Creatures.”

  She looked at the table of contents. “Let’s see . . . Terror of the Seas. Here it is! There’s a picture too!”

  Minerva immediately joined her, and even Ravi could not resist. Three pairs of uneasy eyes were gazing at a clawed and long-tentacled sea monster shown crushing a ship. Tiny, terror-stricken sailors jumped overboard and dove into the billows, while the monster dragged the ship down into the abyss.

  Ravi snapped the book shut. “Okay. It’s a deal. We’re going to leave the Terror of the Seas alone!”

  “Huh?” asked Thomasina.

  “What?” shouted Minerva.

  Ravi crossed his arms. Agatha’s words echoed in his mind: If it really is the Terror of the Seas . . . no one will stand a chance. Those two had no sense of danger whatsoever. Therefore, it was up to him to save them. The question was: how? “I’d like to remind you that I can’t swim,” he said finally. “Besides, we have a very important mystery to solve. Or did you forget?”

  Minerva shook her head and toyed with the golden key that she kept around her neck along with the tiny flute she always had with her.

  They had found the key in Lizard Manor behind the portrait of Merrival M., Minerva’s pirate ancestor. Minerva and the pirate looked like two peas in a pod. Almost three centuries before, that red-haired and green-eyed man had plundered and sunk traveling ships along the Cornish coast. He and his crew were known as the Ravagers of the Sea, and they were led by the evil Black Bart. The gang included a mysterious woman named Althea. One day, however, Black Bart had betrayed her and sent her to die in the Tower of London, thus calling upon himself a curse that was supposed to haunt him for centuries.

  The key was believed to open the door to the City of the Ravagers, where a fabled treasure was hidden. To find it, though, the Order of the Owls would have to solve a rather complex puzzle first.

  Ravi took out a crumpled piece of paper from his jeans pocket and read:

  When the owl is cut in half,

  And the lizard loses its tail,

  You have found the City of the Ravagers.

  Go there now or it’ll disappear in one hour.

  The piece of paper was scribbled all over with their futile attempts at solving the puzzle. They had been working on it for a whole week — in vain.

  “We must figure out what it means,” the boy said, and then he was distracted by Pendragon who was trying to eat the piece of paper.

  Thomasina let herself fall back on a pillow. “Rats! This puzzle is driving me crazy!” she snorted.

  Minerva sat next to her. “Well, the more difficult the mystery, the better. Don’t you think?” she tried to console her.

  “That’s right,” Ravi said. He was happy someone was on his side. “Besides, if one of Minerva’s ancestors was one of the Ravagers of the Sea, a share of the treasure belongs to her. So we have to find it! We’ll search every inch of Lizard Manor. If the key was hidden behind a painting in the portrait gallery, then maybe the door to the City of the Ravagers is in the house too,” he suggested.

  “You’re right!” a perky Minerva said. “It could be one of the three I haven’t found yet.”

  Lizard Manor was a huge house with fifty-five rooms, three of which no one could find the door to.

  Thomasina propped herself on her elbows. “That is probably a good idea,” she admitted, a bit more enthusiastically.

  Minerva flashed an encouraging smile. Then she looked at Ravi: a feisty light was shining in her green eyes. “I’m warning you, though, if the Terror of the Seas threatens Pembrose,” she said with conviction, “he’s gonna have to deal with the Order of the Owls!”

  The boy sighed. “Okay,” he promised. He glanced at the ocean outside the window and made a silent plea to the waves. Terror of the Seas, whoever you are, please stay away from Minerva, or we’re all going to be in big trouble!

  WHOOOSH!

  A cloud of soot puffed out of the fireplace in the Red Dame Room and covered the members of the Order of the Owls, plus Pendragon, who had joined them to help with the search.

  “Achoo!” Minerva sneezed, shaking her curls that were now completely black.

  They were all as black as coal now.

  “Achoo!” Thomasina echoed.

  “Achoo!” Ravi replied.

  They looked at each other and couldn’t help but burst into laughter. Their teeth were still white at least.

  Minerva wiped the golden key clean. “Well, I’d say there are no doors in this chimney,” she said.

  “We’ve been looking all day,” Thomasina moaned, “and we haven’t found it yet!”

  “Of course we haven’t. This house is so big!” Ravi reminded her. “We could try the basement.” By no means was he going to let Thomasina give up and start thinking about the monstrous squid that haunted the waters around Pembrose.

  At that exact moment, someone knocked on the door. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The ancient house shook with the sound of three strong knocks.

  “Who could that be?” a surprised Minerva exclaimed. Nobody ever showed up at Lizard Manor.

  Reaching the front door meant walking through many rooms, and since the electricity did not work properly, they had to do it in the dark. They each took a candle and went down the creaking stairs.

  Keeping a big house clean was not an easy task. And clean it definitely was not. Huge and intricate cobwebs made it difficult for them to move around. Ravi closed his eyes to block out the sight of the little eight-legged creatures that scurried around, as well as the portraits of Minerva’s ancestors — portraits that made him feel more and more uncomfortable. He swallowed as he listened to the eerie sounds around him. Lizard Manor was cloaked in a weird mystery. It had not one, not two, but many secrets, and it guarded them very closely.

  The hallway was tight; it was filled by a huge suit of armor that was missing an arm and a leg. While he was rushing to get to the door first, Pendragon bumped into the armor, causing the other arm to fall. It clanged and rolled outside as Minerva opened the door.

  A tall, bulky woman picked up the metal arm. In spite of the hot weather, she was wearing a Scottish tweed dress and thick wool socks. She laid the arm next to a small statue of a lizard that sat on the edge of a water fountain just outside the front door.

  “Good morning. My name is Amelia Broomstick,” she said. She peered at them from behind the shiny lenses of her glasses. “Hmph, you’re as dirty as dishwater,” she said solemnly, showing her disgust.

  “We had a little problem with the fireplace,” Ravi explained.

  “Humph. Is that so?” the woman said. She reached into her briefcase, took out a crocodile-skin notepad, and jotted down some notes with a fountain pen.

  Her steel gray hair was
pulled back so tightly on top that it looked like she was smiling. When she looked at the children, though, she was not smiling at all. “Who of you three is Minerva Mint?” she snapped.

  Feeling left out, Pendragon let out a long howl.

  “Humph,” the woman snorted. “Dirty animal. No muzzle,” she muttered, taking notes. “Are there more?”

  Minerva thought for a moment. “Do fourteen snowy owls on the roof count?” she asked.

  At that moment, a large fox darted through the door, followed by four smaller ones and another bigger one.

  “Humph. Foxes?” Mrs. Broomstick snorted. “Were they given anti-rabies shots?” she inquired.

  “Who are you?” Thomasina asked in that haughty tone that was typical of the members of her upper-class family. Her family was of noble birth.

  The woman stood at attention like a soldier. “Amelia Broomstick. First-class social worker. London Office, Good Manners Alley, age 51. I am looking for Minerva Mint.”

  “That’s me,” Minerva responded. She tried, without success, to wipe the soot off her hand and politely held it out to the woman.

  After looking at Minerva as if she were a rotting worm, the woman ignored her. “I am here on behalf of the London Central Office. Unfortunately, your file has never been processed, because it was stuck in a narrow gap between the wall and a file cabinet in Section 4B: Child Custody. Therefore, nobody bothered with it for nine years. However, I am now here to make up for that,” she concluded. “May I please speak with Mrs. Flopps?”

  Minerva hesitated for a moment. Mrs. Flopps had gone to the farmers’ market in Truro to sell her homemade jams. She planned to be away for a couple of days. Something, however, told Minerva that she better not mention that to Mrs. Broomstick, first-class social worker.

  “She can’t see you now,” she replied. “She’s cleaning the chimney. It’s going to take a while.” She felt a familiar tickle at her feet (telling lies always made her feet feel funny), but she managed not to laugh.

  “Humph, I see,” Mrs. Broomstick said. “In that case, I shall begin my inspection without her.” She held up her bag. “I have your file here. At the moment, it’s the only copy. When I am finished with this inspection, I’ll save all the data on my computer,” she explained. “May I come in please?” Without waiting for an answer, she pushed the kids inside and closed the door behind her.

  “Humph,” was her first reaction as she glanced around the entrance hall. Lizard Manor never made a good impression on its visitors. This time, however, it made a very bad impression.

  “Why is it so dark in here?” she asked.

  And that was just the first of an endless series of questions.

  With a military-like attitude, Mrs. Broomstick explored room after room. The shiny crocodile-skin boots she wore creaked eerily with every step she took, echoing throughout the house.

  Nothing escaped the eyes behind the lenses of her glasses. And whenever she saw something she did not like, she would snort, “Humph,” which meant no good news at all. Her notepad was soon filled with notes as black as the night itself. Ravi managed to catch a couple of words here and there: hovel, extremely dangerous, and spiders the size of an onion.

  When Mrs. Broomstick ran into Hugo the badger, one of the other tenants of the house, she let out three gruff humphs in a row. A very bad sign. And when she saw the yellow tent Minerva slept in, she let out an extremely loud HUMPH!

  “Humph, that’s enough for one day,” she said finally, snapping her notepad shut.

  “About time,” Ravi whispered to his friends. When the lady had entered the house, their search had been put on hold.

  “I’ll have to come back tomorrow,” the social worker added. “This house is enormous.”

  Three pairs of desparate eyes met each other. Mrs. Broomstick was a real pain in the neck!

  “Humph, I do hope Mrs. Flopps will grace me with her presence …” The lady snorted, wiping a piece of cobweb off her sleeve. She turned on her heel, walked out, and headed for the village, marching to the military creaking of her boots.

  “What are we going to do now?” Ravi asked. They looked at each other. They were all still as black as coal.

  “When I go back home today, I’ll have to climb up the wisteria tree to get inside,” Thomasina said. “If my parents see me like this, they’re going to have a heart attack!”

  “Yeah,” Minerva sighed. “And this is how I looked when that social worker found me!”

  Ravi looked at her. “You think she’ll take you to London?” he asked, concerned.

  Thomasina opened wide her big blue eyes. “Oh no! Is she going to say that this house is not suitable for a little girl and send you to stay with someone else?”

  Minerva was silent for a moment. Then she shook her tangled curls, spreading soot all around. “She might want to do that …” she said with a smirk. “But I won’t let her!”

  Ravi was keeping watch behind a large flower bush next to Lizard Manor’s rickety gate. It was so hot that July morning that he had dozed off, but an eerie creaking suddenly woke him up.

  SQUEEEAK! SQUEEEAK!

  “Shoot, here she comes!” Ravi exclaimed as he scanned the path that came up from Admiral Rock.

  He took a hand mirror from his pocket and with shaking fingers pointed it toward the sun.

  Ever since the friends had learned Morse Code, the members of the Order of the Owls had been using it as their secret code to communicate from a distance. They used mirrors to send signals.

  A reflection that lasted a very short time meant a dot, while a reflection that lasted three times as long was a dash. The alphabet was made up of various combinations of dots and dashes.

  The message that Ravi was now desperately trying to send was “Danger.”

  How many dots are there in a D? he wondered. Are there two dots or two dashes in an R? He was trying so hard to remember that he forgot to point the mirror toward the third-floor window, where Minerva was keeping watch. He pointed it at the lawn instead.

  SQUEEEAK! SQUEEEAK! The crocodile-skin boots were getting closer.

  Ravi’s head was so full of dots and dashes that he completely stopped watching where he was pointing the mirror.

  Meanwhile, perched upon the roof, fourteen snowy owls observed the unusual scene.

  Like a bunch of wise old men, they rolled their yellow eyes and shook their fluffy heads. Something bad was about to happen.

  Sure enough, smoke had begun to rise from a narrow patch of dry grass that had been hit by the sunlight concentrated by the mirror.

  Ravi, however, was looking at the window where Minerva was keeping watch. He did not realize what was happening. “Come on, Minerva,” he begged. “Why can’t you see my signal?”

  A little flame flickered out of the smoking grass.

  Augustus, the biggest among the owls, took off, flapping his majestic wings.

  The tiny flames multiplied, and the lawn was soon ablaze with a crackling fire.

  The owl zeroed in on Ravi’s head. Frightened, the boy dropped the mirror.

  “Augustus!” the boy moaned. “I can’t play with you now!” That was when he finally saw the fire. He darted toward the lawn, screaming like a madman, “Fire! Fire! Help! Minerva, Thomasina! Fire! Heeelp!”

  The two girls rushed to the scene of the disaster, followed by a woofing Pendragon.

  “I set the lawn on fire!” Ravi screamed, horrified.

  And that is how Mrs. Broomstick found them when she finally walked through the gate and stopped to observe the show, her hands on her large hips.

  “Humph, this is going from bad to worse!” she grumbled. Calm and collected, she took off her heavy tweed coat and tossed it on the flames, smothering the fire. Then she examined the coat to assess the damage and let out a resigned hmph. The coat was as good as gone. �
�Where is Mrs. Flopps?” she asked Minerva.

  The eyes that stared at Minerva from behind the spotless glasses were terrible, but Minerva was afraid of nothing.

  “She is polishing the basement floor,” she responded, wriggling her toes inside her boots to suppress her laughter. “She does it every month.”

  “Humph,” Mrs. Broomstick said suspiciously. “In that case, I’ll have to proceed without her.” She marched into the house.

  Thomasina scowled at Ravi. “Well done! Now we’re in really big trouble!” she said.

  They had agreed to take turns watching for the social worker so that they would be ready for her. But they had been anything but ready when she appeared.

  Ravi blushed. In spite of her haughty and unbearable attitude, Ravi had a huge crush on Thomasina, and his heart ached whenever she yelled at him. “The Morse Code is too difficult …” He was scrambling for some kind of excuse. “And dangerous,” he added, looking at the strip of scorched lawn.

  “Sure,” the girl said sarcastically. “Especially if you can’t point the mirror in the right direction …”

  “CHILDREN!” Mrs. Broomstick called. “Where is the light switch in this house?”

  * * *

  The next two days were the same. The social worker came to the house both in the morning and in the afternoon. When she wasn’t there, she could be found at the Fishbone Inn. Unfortunately, she seemed totally unaffected by Timothy’s fish stew, which was known for causing instant diarrhea. That woman had a cast-iron stomach!

  Every time she showed up, Minerva scrambled to find a new excuse to justify the absence of Mrs. Flopps.

  “No, she can’t see you, she’s fixing the bed …”

  “No, she’s busy. She’s redecorating the attic …”

  “No, she’s picking raspberries on the slopes of Traitor’s Rock …”