The Key to Rondo

by Emily Rodda

  The Key to

  Rondo

  Emily Rodda

  For Kate, Hal, Alex, Clem and Bob,

  who all have their own Keys to Rondo

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1. Family Treasure

  2. Mimi Comes to Stay

  3. Ugly Duckling

  4. Experiment

  5. The Key

  6. The Note

  7. On the Street

  8. Tom

  9. The Hidey-Hole

  10. Conker

  11. The Red Hooks

  12. The Trouble With Mice

  13. Flitter Wood

  14. The Nesting Tree

  15. Flight

  16. Bertha

  17. The Cottage in the Wood

  18. The Pom-Pom Polka

  19. Good Advice

  20. Tales of the Dark Time

  21. The Forest Way

  22. Deep Wood

  23. Troll’s Bridge

  24. Triple Treat

  25. The House by the River

  26. Mimi’s Bargain

  27. Escape

  28. The Castle

  29. The Plan

  30. The Mirror

  31. Witch’s Tricks

  32. Decision

  33. Wonders

  34. Explanations

  Also by Emily Rodda: The Wizard of Rondo

  Also by Emily Rodda: The Battle for Rondo

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Family Treasure

  The day that Leo Zifkak became the owner of the music box, his life changed forever.

  Leo didn’t know this at the time. His heart didn’t miss a beat as he took the box from his mother and put it on his desk. He had no idea what he was holding in his hands.

  He was pleased, of course. Who wouldn’t be pleased to be the new owner of something that had been a family treasure for hundreds of years? His father said that the music box should be in a museum. But Aunt Bethany Langlander had left it to Leo in her will and so here it was, making everything else in his room look plain and cheap and sort of – childish.

  The music box had been in Leo’s mother’s family ever since a long-ago ancestor called Rollo had brought it home from one of his world trips. (‘Rollo Langlander was a great traveller,’ Aunt Bethany always said, opening her blue eyes wide as if being a great traveller was as remarkable as being a fire-eater in a circus.)

  The box was about as big as a shoebox, and had four short legs. Its lid was smooth, shining black, quite plain except for a narrow, oval-shaped ring of real silver in the centre. Its sides, however, were painted with amazingly detailed scenes, and this was what made it so special, and so interesting.

  The long side at the front was a town filled with houses, shops and people. The long side at the back was green and peaceful, with a castle on a hill, a queen in a long blue gown, a dragon flying high in the sky and a river winding down from misty mountains. One of the short sides was a coast of sea and golden sand. The other was mainly forest, where tall trees rose from a sea of lacy ferns and shadows seemed to flicker with the stripes of tigers.

  Leo lifted the box and turned the winder in its base three times, counting under his breath. One, two, three…

  He put the box down again and opened the lid. The familiar, chiming music began to play. His mother patted his shoulder and wandered out of the room.

  And Leo was left alone with the treasure that might as well have been a bomb just waiting to explode.

  The music slowed, and stopped. Leo wound the box again. One, two, three. As the music began, he heard his mother moving around in the spare room next door, and sighed. He wanted to forget that Mimi Langlander, his least favourite second cousin, was coming to stay.

  His mother wasn’t looking forward to Mimi’s visit, either. She hadn’t said so, but he could tell. And Leo’s father had, as usual, made his feelings very clear.

  ‘Why can’t Robert and Carol take the girl to Greece with them?’ he’d demanded, when the news of Mimi’s visit had been broken to him.

  ‘She won’t go,’ Leo’s mother had said calmly. ‘She doesn’t want to miss her violin lessons. And –’

  Leo’s father gave an explosive snort. ‘Then surely there’s someone else who can take her?’ he demanded.

  ‘No, Tony, there isn’t,’ said Suzanne. ‘Her brothers are both working, and can’t possibly look after her. The twins are still in India. Chris and Kwon live too far away. Martin and Monique can’t take Mutt because of Martin’s allergy–’

  ‘Mutt?’ roared Leo’s father. ‘Who’s –?’

  ‘Mimi’s dog,’ said Suzanne, lifting her chin. ‘Mimi won’t go anywhere without him.’

  Tony stared, speechless. Then he turned to look at Einstein, the dignified black cat dozing in a puddle of sunlight under the window.

  ‘Oh, Mutt won’t bother Einstein,’ Suzanne said confidently. ‘Mutt’s a tiny little thing. And he’ll sleep upstairs with Mimi.’

  Tony had groaned, and Leo had gloomily faced the fact that the matter was settled.

  Tony Zifkak was a scientist. He was a big, untidy, funny, impatient man, who had no living relatives except his wife and son. He liked his home to be a comfortable refuge, and he loathed any kind of intrusion. But he loved his wife very much, and he knew that, for her, blood was thicker than water. She had been born a Langlander, and Langlanders stuck together.

  And if Mum hadn’t been so determined, Leo thought later, wondering at the mysteries of fate, if Mum had caved in and told Dad, okay, if it upsets you so much we won’t have Mimi after all …

  Then maybe Aunt Bethany’s music box would have kept its secret for another eighty years.

  Aunt Bethany, Leo’s Great-Aunt Bethany, had been a plump, fussy old lady with faded blue eyes, soft, powdery cheeks and crinkly white hair. She had looked the same for as long as Leo had known her – which was all his life.

  Aunt Bethany was the oldest surviving Langlander, and lived in the old family home. Every year she gave an afternoon tea to which all her nieces and nephews and their families (except children under five years old) were invited.

  Leo’s mother went every year, but his father never did. Tony flatly said that his marriage vows didn’t include agreeing to be bored out of his mind.

  The afternoon teas were held in Aunt Bethany’s front room, where a table covered with a white lace cloth was always waiting. On the table were asparagus rolls, tiny sandwiches sprinkled with shredded lettuce, a sponge cake with jam and cream in the middle, small pink and white meringues and gingerbread men from Aunt Bethany’s local cake shop, one for every child.

  For the adults there was tea, in cups as delicate as eggshells. For the children there was lemonade. The lemonade was always warm and a little bit flat, as if it had been poured into the thick green glasses quite some time before everyone arrived.

  The routine never changed, just as nothing ever changed in Aunt Bethany’s dim house, with its smell of curtains and furniture polish, its dried flower arrangement on the table by the front windows, and the slow, loud ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall.

  Aunt Bethany had lived in the house all her life, and liked everything to stay just as it had always been. Mr Higgs, her regular gardener and handyman, had even had trouble persuading her to let him replace the ancient garden shed, which was so rotten that it leaned sideways. She’d agreed in the end, but she’d mourned ‘the dear old shed’ for years afterwards.

  ‘I hated to see it go,’ she would say tearfully, ‘but I couldn’t disappoint Mr Higgs. He’s very loyal, and scrupulously honest. And he’s so good with the camellias.’

  Every year, while the children furtively clean
ed up the last of the meringues and the adults restlessly sipped their lukewarm second cups of tea, Aunt Bethany meandered through a few favourite tales from her huge repertoire of old family stories. Then, without fail, she lifted the music box down from its usual place on the mantelpiece to a low, polished table where everyone could see it.

  ‘Now, we wind the box three times, no more,’ she always said, speaking especially to the children. ‘We never turn the key while the music is playing. We never pick up the box while the music is playing. And we never close the lid until the music has stopped.’

  Then she’d lift the box, turn the key three times, put the box down again, and open the lid. The chiming music would begin – soft, sweet and strange. And when Leo was little, it always looked to him as if the tiger shadows were moving, and the painted people were dancing to the tune.

  ‘Why can you only wind it three times?’ he remembered whispering to his mother the first time he went to one of Aunt Bethany’s afternoon teas, the first time he saw the music box.

  ‘I suppose it might break, if it’s wound too far,’ his mother had whispered back. ‘We wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?’

  And Leo had shaken his head solemnly.

  But little Mimi Langlander, who was also visiting Aunt Bethany for the first time that afternoon, had said in a loud, piercing voice, ‘How do you know that three times is all you can wind it, Auntie Bethany?’

  Aunt Bethany’s blue eyes widened. ‘Well, my Uncle Henry told me so, dear,’ she said.

  ‘But how did he know?’ Mimi persisted, as her mother suppressed a sigh and her brothers and sisters made faces at one another and rolled their eyes.

  ‘Well, I’m not –’ Flustered by this startling break in her usual routine, Aunt Bethany eyed Mimi nervously. Then she seemed to recover.

  ‘Uncle Henry left the music box to me because he knew I’d take care of it,’ she said. ‘He told me the rules. They’re even written down. I’ll show you, in a minute.’

  They all waited awkwardly while the music box ran down. When the last chime had struck, Aunt Bethany carefully shut the lid.

  ‘The tune didn’t end,’ said Mimi. ‘Three winds aren’t enough.’

  ‘Mimi!’ her mother murmured, in a tired sort of way.

  ‘But the tune played all the way through, then it started again, but it stopped before it finished,’ Mimi insisted.

  What’s she talking about? Leo remembered thinking, staring at the small, skinny girl who had put her hands on her hips and was frowning quite fiercely. She’s so weird.

  Her cheeks very pink, Aunt Bethany lifted the box high so everyone could see the yellowed strip of paper stuck to the bottom, just above the key. The paper was covered in cramped, faded writing.

  ‘Important!’ read Aunt Bethany impressively. ‘Turn the key three times only. Never turn the key while the music is playing. Never pick up the box while the music is playing. Never close the lid until the music has stopped. So there you are.’

  With a mildly triumphant air, she carried the music box back to the mantelpiece and put it down exactly where it had been before.

  Mimi looked mutinous, but before she could say anything else her mother got up hurriedly and started saying that they really had to go.

  Leo had seen Mimi Langlander a couple of times a year since then – whenever his mother’s family got together.

  Though they were the same age, they hardly ever spoke to one another at these events. Mimi’s brothers and twin sisters, who were all much older than she was, were very friendly, but Mimi herself just skulked at the edges of the crowd looking superior and bored. Sometimes you’d even see her reading a book in a dim corner, her thin shoulders hunched, her knees drawn up to her sharp little chin.

  Mimi played the violin, Leo’s mother said. It had been discovered that she had an extraordinary musical talent. As if that makes it okay to act like she’s better than anyone else, Leo thought sourly.

  This year, he hadn’t seen Mimi Langlander since what turned out to be the very last of Aunt Bethany’s afternoon teas. He scowled at the thought of it.

  As usual, Aunt Bethany had rambled on happily about Langlanders of the past, including Rollo Langlander the world traveller, and glamorous, scandalous Alice Langlander, who had played the harp and ended up joining a circus, while everyone else fidgeted, smiled politely or stared into space. When at last she lowered her voice and moved on to her wicked Uncle George, however, most of the children, including Leo, started paying attention. They all liked hearing about Uncle George, the family disgrace.

  Wicked Uncle George was the eldest of three brothers. The middle brother was Henry, the famous Uncle Henry who had left Aunt Bethany the music box. The youngest, born twelve years after Henry, was John, Aunt Bethany’s father.

  George was a charming, handsome boy, and his parents’ favourite. ‘They doted on George,’ Aunt Bethany said, shaking her head. ‘He could twist them around his little finger.’ She spoke as if she’d seen it all, though she hadn’t even been born at the time.

  Uncle George grew up selfish and lazy, Aunt Bethany said, her gentle voice shocked and disapproving. He spent money like water, began to gamble on horse races, and couldn’t keep a job. There were even rumours of trouble with the police! Soon after his father died, George ran away, leaving a trail of debts, and was never seen again.

  ‘He broke his poor mother’s heart,’ Aunt Bethany sighed. ‘She passed away not long after that. My father was just a boy then, still at school. But his brother Henry promised to look after him, and he did.’

  She paused and stared mistily into space. With all his might, Leo willed her to forget about Uncle Henry for once, and start talking about something else.

  For a long moment it seemed that his wish would be granted. Then:

  ‘Your Uncle Henry put your father through school, and then university, didn’t he, Aunt Bethany?’ prompted Mimi Langlander, her air of innocent interest totally at odds with the malicious, sidelong glance she shot in Leo’s direction.

  And, her eyes suddenly clearing as if she’d been freshly wound up, Aunt Bethany nodded, smiled, and launched into the tale of Wonderful Uncle Henry.

  Thanks, Mimi, Leo thought, as he sat through the depressing story of Henry working selflessly to care for his brother John and pay all his wicked brother George’s debts, never marrying but being a kind uncle to John’s children (especially Bethany herself) then tragically drowning just three days after receiving an engraved chiming clock for working twenty-five years at the bank.

  Aunt Bethany sighed sentimentally and reached for the silver-framed photograph of Uncle Henry as a child that stood with dozens of other ancient family photographs on the cabinet by her chair. Leo’s gloom deepened.

  ‘There,’ said Aunt Bethany, holding up the photograph and nodding placidly. ‘Even when he was young, you could see what sort of man he was going to grow up to be. A true gentleman. And Leo is the image of him. The spitting image.’ She beamed at Leo approvingly.

  Leo’s cousins tittered and nudged each other. Leo squirmed and felt his face grow hot. He didn’t think he looked anything like that long-ago boy staring seriously out from his oval frame in old-fashioned buttoned-up clothes, his ears sticking out a little and his slicked-down hair parted in the middle. He certainly hoped he didn’t. But as usual his mother murmured that perhaps there was a similarity, and Aunt Bethany insisted there was a strong likeness.

  ‘It’s the eyes,’ she said. ‘The steady, responsible eyes.’

  Mimi Langlander gave a harsh screech of laughter.

  Leo groaned softly, just thinking about it. Why did he have to look like poor old Uncle Henry, who’d obviously never had a moment’s fun in his life? If he had to look like someone, why couldn’t he look like handsome, charming Uncle George?

  Yet he knew in his heart that he and Uncle George had nothing in common. It wasn’t just a matter of looks. Leo knew that he was steady and responsible, just like Uncle Henry. He worked fairly
hard at school. He never missed soccer training. He wasn’t impulsive or reckless. People were always saying how mature and sensible he was.

  Either he’d been brought up to be like that, or he was like that naturally. Anyway, he couldn’t help it.

  That was why he’d always found Uncle Henry’s story so depressing. He knew how he would have felt, if he’d been in Henry Langlander’s place.

  He would have felt trapped. But he would have acted exactly as Uncle Henry had, all the same. Except for the getting drowned part, he hoped.

  Naturally, Leo had never said a word to Aunt Bethany about all this. He’d never protested when she compared him to Wonderful Uncle Henry. She wouldn’t have understood his feelings at all.

  Aunt Bethany had never had a job, and she’d never married. She didn’t have any pets, because looking after a pet might worry her. She’d never learned to drive. She’d never been interested in travel. She didn’t read books, because reading made her head ache.

  Leo’s father said her life would drive a normal person crazy, but Aunt Bethany was clearly quite content to spend her days looking at old photograph albums and watching quiz shows on television.

  It was while she was watching television, in fact, that she had quietly stopped breathing, aged ninety-four, her plump little hands peacefully folded on her lap, and tea growing cold in a delicate cup on a table beside her.

  Aunt Bethany had had the quietest, most boring life that it was possible to imagine. She’d never taken a risk, or allowed herself to be worried by anything. Leo’s mother said that was why she’d lived so long, outliving both her brothers, though she was the eldest of the three. She said that Aunt Bethany hadn’t so much died, as just rusted away.

  So there was no reason for Leo to think that anything that had been owned by his Great-Aunt Bethany would be in any way dangerous or surprising. He knew everything about her, so he thought the same applied to the music box she had left him.

  But, of course, it didn’t.

  Chapter 2

  Mimi Comes to Stay

  Mimi Langlander arrived just after lunch on Sunday with her violin case and her little mustard-coloured dog clutched in her arms, and her mother hurrying behind her with two bags and a pillow.