The Complete Ruby Redfort Collection

by Lauren Child

  ‘You’ve gotta warn the Wichitinos! OK Clance? Now scram, would ya? You’re gonna mess everything up.’ He turned on his heel and he ran; he ran like he was running for Twinford Junior High, he ran like Vapona Bugwart was after him, he ran like he had a forest fire at his back which of course he did.

  He ran and he ran until he reached Emerald Lake and when he made it to the Wichitino camp he found the troupe leader and he made sure he understood just how fast that fire was moving.

  He helped round everyone up and he got them out on their canoes and paddled out right into the middle of that Emerald Lake and only when he had organised every one of those Wichitino kids and only when he was sitting on Emerald Lake, safe in the middle of it, did Clancy Crew take a breath, and that’s when he knew he had been fooled.

  Ruby Redfort was not going to make it.

  No one could survive a fire like that.

  She might be tough, but she was no superhero, she was just a schoolgirl, a kid from Twinford Junior High. He turned and looked at the inferno blazing around him, snapping, spitting red-hot ash and flaming sparks, tongues of fire, devouring trees; he watched on as he saw the forest he had come from turn red and knew that was the last he would see of the friend he cared for more than any other living soul, the girl who was Ruby Redfort.

  Chapter 67.

  What to do when there is nothing to be done

  RUBY RAN THROUGH THE FOREST FIRE SURVIVAL RULES and came to Survival Suggestion 11, the one that dealt with emergencies.

  SURVIVAL SUGGESTION #11:

  Emergencies

  1. FIRE

  The last resort: when all other options have run out, dig a shallow trench in the earth, take off your coat or jacket, cover it in leaves, get into the trench face down and pull the coat over your head.

  Ruby looked at the ground: no earth to dig, it was solid rock. The fire in front of her was blazing, the fire behind was nearly with her. She had done one good thing and that good thing was worth a thousand others: she had saved Clancy Crew, the best friend a person could have, and that was a thought that made her smile.

  She reached into her pocket for a cube of bubblegum and pulled out the mini locator. Not even that could save her now.

  She shifted the tiles just for old times’ sake; she looked down at the word HELP and thought what a tiny word it was.

  Chapter 68.

  HELP

  RUBY REDFORT WAS NOT EXPECTING TO SEE ANY LIVING CREATURE EVER AGAIN, not an ant or a beetle: every breathing thing was dying, consumed by the fire.

  She looked to the sky, gasping for one more lungful of air, and what she saw was a giant fly hovering overhead directly above where she crouched. Then the strangest thing happened: a man appeared, dangling on a silver rope.

  Batman? she thought.

  Her mind was giving up on her.

  He spun down and down until he was beside her on the ledge, head to toe in silver.

  It must be way more than 106 degrees on that ledge and the air had clearly reached the temperature of insanity.

  Not Batman, she thought, Batman wears black. So which superhero wears silver?

  The silver figure removed the mask And Ruby squinted up through the shimmering heat.

  Hitch.

  Those brown eyes belonged to Hitch.

  ‘You look like you could do with a little rescuing kid.’

  She stared up at him and smiled. ‘Boy, do you know how to embarrass a kid.’

  ‘Just sometimes, Redfort, looking cool is not the number-one rule of survival.’

  He pulled her up and over his shoulder, the fire cape covering them both, grabbed the cable and they rose through the dragonlike flames that were licking up towards the sky, right up to where the helicopter hovered. And then they flew through the clouds of smoke and the burning forest and up into blue, to where the air was fresh, and on home to Twinford.

  * She is surprised because this sounds a whole lot like Nancy Drew, a very famous girl detective who featured in a long series of successful American children's books from the 1930s right up to the present day.

  A little silver key

  CLANCY CAME DOWNSTAIRS IN THE MORNING, three days after the forest fire rescue, to find a card from his father sitting on the hall table. It said:

  In recognition of your quick thinking in rescuing your fellow Wichitinos. Well done son, I’m proud you survived.

  Fondest regards,

  your father

  Wow, this was something! A well done from Ambassador Crew was not so easy to come by, but an I’m proud was rare indeed. Ambassador Crew might have been less proud had he known Clancy hadn’t actually been on camp with the Wichitinos, but thankfully no one was going to enlighten him on the matter.

  Next to the card was a small box. Clancy opened it and took out a bicycle bell engraved with the words hard work will get you what you want in the end. The words struggled to fit round the bell and in any case what good was a bell without a bike? How much hard work was it going to take if rescuing a whole bunch of kids only earned you a bicycle bell?

  Clancy was just about to dip into a sort of resigned despondency when he was yanked back out of it by the buzzer; someone was obviously leaning on it. He went to the intercom and saw a blurry figure he recognised well.

  ‘Rube?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s me. Let me in.’

  ‘How come you’re out of bed?’ he asked. ‘I thought Mrs Digby would keep you locked up for at least the next two months.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I gave her the slip. Now open the gate, would ya?’

  He buzzed her through and went out to meet her. She looked both terrible and wonderful, but Clancy Crew could only see the wonderful.

  ‘You look pretty good for someone who was almost burned to a crisp.’

  ‘Yeah, well, my hair’s not the same, but it’s nothing a good conditioner and six months’ growing time can’t fix.’ Ruby was standing by the huge iron gates, her arm in plaster, her foot all bandaged up and a nasty bruise on her cheek.

  ‘So how’s your cold?’ asked Clancy.

  ‘Completely gone,’ said Ruby. ‘I woke up this morning and I could smell the roses. . well, Wildrose shampoo anyway.’

  She reached into her satchel. ‘I got something for you,’ she said.

  ‘You have?’ Clancy decided it was probably a donut or maybe an éclair, though most likely a donut since she had one of Marla’s bags in her hand.

  But what Ruby handed him was a little silver key.

  ‘It’s for my bike,’ she said, nodding over to the wall where the bike was leaning. ‘It’s a little beaten up. Hitch picked it up in the helicopter before the fire reached it.’

  It looked exactly like Ruby’s bike, but for the fact that it was blue, Windrush blue. Clancy could only stare, his mouth ever so slightly open, but no words forming.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘You painted your bike blue?’

  ‘No, I painted your bike blue buster,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Clancy, who really didn’t get it.

  ‘Look bozo, you need to have a really cool bike, cool, as in reliable and tough, which my bike is, right? And I know you have a thing for blue bikes and so rather than have you act all crazy again trying to get your hands on one, I thought I’d better make my bike you know, blue.’

  ‘Jeez Rube. . ’ He couldn’t think of much else to say; this was Ruby’s bike, the one she was nuts about, the one she said she would never give away, ever. He began to flap his arms. ‘Rube, I can’t take this.’

  ‘Yes you can bozo because what am I gonna do with a blue bike? I don’t even like blue bikes.’

  She turned to go. ‘It’s nice to see you alive Clance, you know that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Clancy, ‘nice to see you alive too Rube. You’re quite the survivor.’

  All as it should be

  RUBY LIMPED BACK TO WHERE HITCH WAS WAITING IN THE SILVER CAR. She got in and he started the engine. A second later, a call came
through. Hitch flicked the switch on the dashboard and out of the speakers came LB’s gravelly voice.

  ‘So Redfort, I hear you made it.’

  ‘Well, some of me did – my hair doesn’t look so great,’ said Ruby, ‘and I suppose, if you’re gonna get picky about it, I broke my arm too, plus I missed taking the survival test.’ Ruby was not going to whine about it – she wasn’t going to give anyone the satisfaction; she would take failure fair and square on the chin. Just like someone wise had recently told her: ‘The only thing you control is your reaction to what’s beyond your control.’

  LB said nothing.

  ‘So. . . I’m guessing that’s a fail as far as Spectrum goes,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Survival doesn’t sound like failure to me Redfort,’ said LB.

  ‘Sam Colt was pretty impressed with your determination and I have got to admit that your uncovering of the Cyan wolf plot deserves recognition, even though you let the wolf escape.’ She paused. ‘I’m putting you forward for stage three of the Field Agent Training Programme, we’ll see you in September. Try to work on that smart mouth of yours Redfort.’

  Ruby was about to give a smart mouth reply, but Hitch gave her an eye signal that Ruby interpreted as quit while you’re ahead. So she did.

  ‘Oh, Hitch, one other thing,’ said LB, ‘might you be able to throw any light on how my Paris paperweight went walkabout and then several weeks later made it back onto my desk?’

  ‘Sounds like quite the mystery,’ said Hitch, ‘you want me to look into it?’

  ‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ said LB dryly.

  Ruby glanced at him and thought she saw the faintest of smiles play on his lips, but she couldn’t swear to it.

  They drove home in silence. As they turned the corner into Cedarwood Drive, Ruby made to get out of the car, then stopped, turned to Hitch and said, ‘By the way, thanks for rescuing me out there.’

  Hitch just smiled. ‘It was nothing kid. Everyone needs rescuing once in a while.’

  THINGS I KNOW:

  ...................

  Why Dr Harper owes Hitch – it all has to do with a paperweight.

  Which mushrooms will kill you and which ones won’t.

  THINGS I DON’T KNOW:

  ...................

  Who the woman in the floral dress is working for.

  What she is planning to do with the Alaskan Cyan scent.

  Where Lorelei von Leyden is now.

  Where the Lapis bowerbird is now.

  Whether the Cyan wolf made it out of there alive.

  Whether the Count has anything to do with this.

  Ruby Redfort

  The lost perfume of Marie Antoinette

  There really was a lost perfume of Marie Antoinette. A gift from Louis XVI to the young French queen, it was created by royal perfumer Jean-Louis Fargeon and contained notes of rose, jasmine, bergamot, cardamom, incense, cinnamon, sandalwood, patchouli, tonka bean and amber, as an homage to the queen’s beloved Trianon gardens.

  Marie Antoinette carried the scent in a black jade vial, which she kept with her at all times – even when imprisoned in the Temple Tower during the French Revolution. Just before her execution, she handed the perfume to her closest friend and confidante, the Marquise de Tourzel, for safe-keeping. The original vial is still in the possession of the Tourzel family, locked away in their Burgundy château.

  The formula for the queen’s perfume was written down by the royal perfumer’s apprentice, Pierre François Lubin, under the coded name of ‘jardin secret’ (or ‘secret garden’). Discovered two hundred years later in the archives of the Lubin perfume house, the long-lost perfume was finally released under the name ‘Black Jade’ in 2012.

  The rare animals

  The Siamese Crocodile, Pygmy Hippo, Sumatran Tiger and Black-tailed Python are all real species, and all are rare or endangered.

  Siamese Crocodiles are relatively small freshwater crocodiles from South-east Asia. Adults average three metres in length but can grow to four metres. They are now virtually extinct in the wild, apart from some areas of Cambodia.

  Pygmy Hippos are nocturnal, which is why Ruby never saw the one in her garden.

  Sumatran Tigers are one of the smallest of all tiger subspecies, with darker, thicker stripes than those found in other parts of the world. There are fewer than 500 in the wild, living exclusively on the island of Sumatra.

  Black-tailed Pythons live predominantly in the Indian subcontinent. They are endangered as a result of being hunted for their beautiful patterned skins.

  Bowerbirds are also real. Native to Australia and New Guinea, they are songbirds known primarily for their extraordinary courtship behaviour. To attract a mate, the male bowerbird builds a complex nest structure called a ‘bower’, decorating it with sticks, acorns, leaves and shiny or brightly-coloured objects and flowers.

  The extinct ‘Lapis Bowerbird’ was invented for the purposes of this book. However, there is a real bird – the Satin Bowerbird – which, like the imaginary bird in this story, almost exclusively decorates its bower with blue objects.

  A note on Lorelei von Leyden's secret perfume code

  by Marcus du Sautoy, supergeek consultant to Ruby Redfort

  Our noses actually work like a code cracker. Inside them we have things called olfactory receptors. In humans there are about 1,000 different sorts of receptors. When molecules enter the nose, some of these receptors will be turned on when they react with the molecule. Once the receptors are turned on they send information via nerves to the brain. The brain then interprets the information and registers whether you are smelling a strawberry or a fish or something else.

  Because the smell turns some of the receptors on and the rest remain off, this means that each smell is like a piece of binary code made out of a sequence of 0s and 1s. Because there are so many different receptors in the nose, humans can detect up to 10,000 unique smells.

  Lorelei von Leyden’s smell code is based on the fact that each time you register a smell your nose is using these receptors to identify the molecule that corresponds to that smell. Each molecule is made up out of a combination of atoms from the periodic table, and as Ruby learns from the book she reads within this book, often substances that smell contain benzene rings.

  For example, if you smell almonds then your nose has probably detected the molecule called benzaldehyde. This consists of 7 carbon atoms, 6 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom. It is written C7H6O. But it is the shape of the molecule which is key to von Leyden’s smell code.

  Benzaldehyde

  Note that there is a carbon atom at every point where two or more lines meet and five invisible hydrogen atoms too – it’s just a convention of chemical notation not to show them.

  This particular molecule is arranged with 6 carbon atoms in a hexagon – the benzene ring – and then there is one interesting twig sticking out of the ring which is made up of the seventh carbon atom joined to an oxygen atom and a hydrogen atom. It is this twig that corresponds to a letter in von Leyden’s code. In this case the letter T.

  Benzaldehyde is a very simple molecule, but it is possible to have quite a complicated system of twigs sprouting out of these carbon rings and each molecule will have its own smell. For example five different smells (thyme, vanilla, anise, cinnamon and orange) were used to encode the message WHY THE DELAY.

  Working backwards, you could, if you wanted to, change your name into a combination of smells that encode your name, giving you your very own personalised perfume.

  If you want to play around with making molecules and seeing what they might smell like, there is a tool that allows you to do this at www.chemspider.com

  Not every chemical has been made by chemists so the smell you come up with might not be known yet!

  Marcus du Sautoy.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Rachel Folder for some very good plotting ideas, and for writing them on big sheets of paper in very neat handwriting and sticking them up
on the walls. Thank you to AD for chatting through the story and helping me sift out the not so good bits. Thank you to my editor Nick Lake for untangling a tangled book, David Mackintosh for beautiful design and illustration, Lucy Vanderbilt for her American-speak. Thank you to Le Labo for letting me sniff their delicious smells and scents and explaining how they become perfume, and thank you to Marcus du Sautoy for his brilliance in sniffing out a very tricky code.

  Thank you to HarperCollins for providing me with a warm glassy office to work in when my central heating failed me.

  And as always thank you to my publisher and editor Ann-Janine Murtagh, for her late-into-the-evening editing, advice and kind words.

  Dedication

  For cousin Phoebe

  and cousin Lucy

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Fall

  An Ordinary kid

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32