Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms (20 page)
Behind it was a face. Stuart screamed.
The face hung in the darkness, swinging gently: a single oval eye, a flat snout, the skin an oily green. Behind it hung a row of identical faces, all twisting slowly in the drafts.
In a second, before he had even taken another breath, Stuart realized what they were.
Gas masks
, he thought, and then he said the words out loud, because it was reassuring to hear his own voice. “Second World War gas masks.”
He moved the flashlight beam and saw an arrow on the wall, and the words
AIR-RAID SHELTER
. A few feet beyond it, the tunnel widened into a sort of cave, and the space was filled with rows of benches.
Stuart was still breathless from the shock, and his legs felt weightless and feeble, as if they were made of string. He wobbled over to one of the benches and sat down. He shone his flashlight beam at the floor, because he didn’t enjoy watching those sightless masks all quietly swinging, and he recited the five-times table to himself, just to steady his thoughts.
A daddy-longlegs scuttled across the flashlight beam, and then the pool of light between his feet began to flicker rapidly. Stuart turned the flashlight off and on again. For a second or two it shone more brightly than before, and then the yellow light dwindled to an orange glimmer, before blinking out completely.
He sat in the utter darkness, more afraid than he’d ever been before, and the only thing he could think to do was to carry on reciting the five-times table. When he’d finished that, he moved on to sixes, and then on to sevens, and he was just starting on eights when he heard a noise. It was such an incongruous noise here in these dusty, forgotten tunnels that for a moment he couldn’t believe his ears, and then it happened again. It was the sound of a dog, barking. There were footsteps as well, and a sudden, welcome blur of bluish light. He heard a voice that he recognized.
“April!” he shouted, standing up. And there, coming along the tunnel toward him, was April— and Leonora and the guide dog, Pluto. It gave another little “w
oof”
when it saw Stuart, and April screeched with surprise and ran forward, half throttling him with a hug.
“How did you get here?” he asked, when he’d managed to disentangle himself. “And how come you’re with Leonora, and how long have I been down here, anyway?”
“A couple of hours. Maybe three,” April told him. “And you won’t believe what happened. You see, I saw Jeannie climb down the ladder—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” said Leonora calmly, “but Stuart sounds to me as if he might need a little energy boost. We have snacks.”
“Fantastic!” said Stuart. “There are benches here,” he added for Leonora’s benefit, and they all sat down to the oddest picnic he’d ever had, eating shrimp-cocktail flavored potato chips by flashlight, with the row of gas masks swaying overhead.
“As I was saying,” gabbled April, after Stuart had told his own story. “I saw Jeannie go down the ladder, and I was going to follow her, but then the firefighters came and shooed everyone away and closed the park, and then the police turned up too, and someone from the local TV news as well, and I didn’t know what to do. I thought you were probably hiding down there, so I hung around for a while to see if you’d sneak out, and then when you didn’t, I started to get really worried. I remembered you’d said there were
underground
entrances to the workshop, so I went back to the museum and looked at the model and there were three different tunnels to the room under the bandstand.”
“I know,” said Stuart. “I fell into one of them and hit my head.”
“And the tunnels came out in different bits of the town—they were all used as air-raid shelters. One came out under Beeton police station, so I knew I couldn’t get in there. And one was labeled
DISUSED
DUE TO FLOODING IN 1941
, so I knew that was no good. The third came out into the basement of Saint Cuthbert’s Teacher-training College. But there
isn’t
a teacher-training college in Beeton—at least, not anymore. And then I had a brilliant thought—”
“There was a ring at my door,” interrupted Leonora, smiling. “And when I answered it, I heard a young voice say, ‘You don’t know me, but you know my friend Stuart, and
he
said that you trained as a teacher in Beeton, ages ago. So can you tell me where the training college used to be, because he’s in trouble and I’ve got to help him?’”
“Yes, and when I told her all about what had happened, Leonora took me there,” said April. “It’s posh apartments now, but we snooped around and there’s an underground parking garage. Leonora pretended that she was lost and had to sit down and that Pluto was thirsty. The attendant was helpful, and they got into this fantastic conversation about what Beeton was like in the old days, and the attendant said, ‘You won’t believe it, but behind the old generator at the end of this garage, there’s supposed to be a tunnel that goes all the way to the center of town,' and then
I
said—‘
Oh!
’”
The light in the shelter was suddenly half as bright as before.
“Oh, not yours
too
,” said Stuart irritably.
“What’s the matter?” asked Leonora.
“Her flashlight battery’s dying.”
“Then we’d better hurry,” replied Leonora. “Pluto’s a guide dog, not a guide mole. He needs a little bit of light or he can’t see where he’s going.”
Pluto wagged his tail at the mention of his name and stood up eagerly.
“Are we going back to Great-Uncle Tony’s workshop?” asked Stuart.
“Of
course
we are,” said April. “Anyway, it’s
your
workshop now, isn’t it?”
“Try telling Jeannie that,” said Stuart, but he felt invigorated: the combination of potato chips and company was very cheering. It was good to be part of a team, even if one member was blind, and one was a bit short, and one was a dog.
“Is everyone ready?” asked Leonora in a teacherish voice. “Then off we go.”
By the time they had walked back to the workshop entrance, April’s flashlight was about as much use as a luminous watch dial. Stuart had to feel around the edges of the door to confirm that it was still closed. He gave the springs at the bottom a fruitless tug. “So, what do we do now?” he asked.
“The Horten Ready Release,” said Leonora.
“The what?”
“Every sealed cabinet that Tony made had a safety catch. It meant that Lily could open it if there was a problem. Feel around behind the springs. There should be a little knob on both sides.”
There was.
“Now push them away from each other.”
There was a quiet
click
, and the back of the cabinet lifted silently, like a car hood. Stuart found himself looking directly into the workshop through the open front cover of the book. And staring straight back at him was the round, hamsterish face of Clifford.
“Oh!” said Clifford. “Er …”
There was a camera slung around his neck, and he was holding a pen and a notepad. Behind him, the late-afternoon sun was slanting through the opening in the ceiling and everything in the workshop was bathed in golden light, including a solid-looking fireman’s ladder that now bridged the gap between the bandstand floor and the outside world. There was no one else in sight.
“Hello, Clifford,” said Stuart brazenly. “Can I come in?” Without waiting for an answer, he climbed through the book cabinet and then turned to help Leonora.
“Thank you so much,” she said graciously. She had unclipped Pluto from his harness, and the dog jumped neatly over the threshold, closely followed by April.
“Er …” said Clifford again, his eyes darting between them. “I’d better go and tell Jeannie. She’s talking to a newspaper about selling the pictures,” and he turned and began to hurry toward the fireman’s ladder.
“Don’t!” said Leonora. Her voice wasn’t loud, but there was a calm authority to it, and Clifford hesitated and looked back.
“All we want is a little time in here,” said Leonora. “What harm could we possibly do?”
Clifford puffed out his cheeks, undecided, and then he glanced toward the ladder again. The white dove was perched near the top of it, preening its feathers.
“I’m supposed to be guarding the place as well as cataloguing,” he said. “Jeannie’s made it a grade-two requirement. She says I’m within a whisker of the top mark.”
“She’ll never let you pass that exam,” said Leonora.
Clifford stared at her. “What?”
“Jeannie will never let you pass Grade Two Basic Magic Skills,” repeated Leonora slowly. “She will keep on failing you until your savings run out, and then she will get rid of you and take on another student who, like yourself, has spent his whole life longing to be a magician. She doesn’t care about your ambition. She simply wants your cash.”
Clifford’s hands gripped the clipboard. “But she told me I had genuine talent,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“And perhaps you have,” replied Leonora. “But you’ll never find out while she’s using you as an unpaid servant. I think that she was once truly interested in stage magic, but I have heard the change in her over the years, and now all she thinks about is money and power. For Jeannie, this place isn’t a house of wonders, it’s a checkbook. Her road isn’t your road, Clifford. You must find your own way.”
There was silence for a moment. The dove clattered its wings, and settled on a lower rung.
“Tony Horten cared about magic,” said Leonora. “Will you show me around his workshop? Will you describe for me what you can see?”
She held out a hand, and after a moment Clifford came toward her. His face had lost some of its eager silliness. He smiled a little sadly, and linked his arm in hers.
“The Pharaoh’s Cabinet,” he said, leading her away toward the pyramid. “Five sides and at least ten doors, all of which fold in on themselves …”
Stuart let out the breath that he realized he’d been holding.
“Wow!” said April. “She’s
good
. So what do we do now?”
Stuart gaped at her.
“I know.” She smiled. “I normally do the telling, not the asking. But it’s your workshop.”
Stuart put a hand in his pocket and felt for the coins again. They seemed to burn in his palm.
“I could make a wish,” he said.
To be taller
, he thought. He could do it. This time, he could really do it. His mouth was dry.
“But will it work?” she asked. “Is the magic for real?”
“Oh, yes,” said Stuart. He could still feel the tug of it.
He walked over to the well, and after a moment April joined him. “What if something goes wrong?” she asked. “What if you can’t get back again, like your uncle?”
Stuart took the threepences out of his pocket and clenched his hand around them.
“What would I tell your parents?” asked April.
He could feel himself trembling. He swallowed and took a deep breath.
“Don’t,” said April. “Don’t go.”
There was a nudge on the back of Stuart’s leg. He looked down to see Pluto sniffing around, and behind him were Clifford and Leonora.
“… And this is the Well of Wishes,” Clifford was saying, and Leonora stepped forward, quickly reaching out her hands. She touched the parapet, at first tentatively, and then with a fierce grip.
“It’s a bit hard to describe,” continued Clifford. “I don’t know how it was made, but there’s an odd sort of shimmer to it …”
Leonora gazed down. Her face was patterned with light and her eyes seemed to be searching for someone who wasn’t there. She looked both happy and infinitely sad. “Lily,” she said very quietly. “Where are you?”
Slowly, slowly, Stuart unclenched his palm.
He looked at what was in it—one coin bent, the other perfect—and then he touched Leonora’s arm. “Here,” he said, slipping the undamaged threepence into her hand. “Take this.”
She lifted her head and fingered the coin.
“No,” she said. “No, that’s yours.”
He shook his head. “It’s yours now.”
“And anyway, he’s got another one,” said April, butting in.
Stuart shot her an irritated look. “Take it,” he insisted, turning back to Leonora. “Please. It’s for you to wish with.”