Alexander Graham Bell: Master of Sound #7 (5 page)

“This is my secret,” she whispered.

Hadley cocked her head, puzzled.

“What do you think this magnet is for?” Rayne asked, holding out a horseshoe-shaped magnet with metal reeds attached to each end.

“Put that down!” Felix said, scrambling to his feet and moving quickly toward Rayne.

Grinning mischievously, Rayne hid the magnet behind her back.

“No,” she said.

“Seriously, Rayne,” Felix said, “we can’t touch anything in here.”

“What good is having your own private…what did you call it, Maisie?”

“The Treasure Chest,” Maisie said.

“…your own private treasure chest if you can’t play with the stuff?” Rayne continued.

Felix lunged for the magnet, but Rayne stepped away before he could reach it.

“Put it back,” Felix said.

Rayne lifted the magnet close to her face. “It looks like a science experiment,” she said.

“Let me see,” Hadley said.

In an instant…

Hadley grabbed the magnet for a look.

Felix grabbed the magnet to try to get it away from Rayne.

And Maisie grabbed it because she knew, just like that, what was going to happen.

“Hey!” Rayne cried.

“What the…?” Hadley said, stunned, as the four children were lifted higher and higher off the ground.

A warm wind whipped around them, carrying with it the smells of cinnamon and Christmas trees and ocean air; fresh lemons and hot chocolate and flowers in bloom.

Maisie watched Hadley’s curly black hair flying as she tumbled; and Rayne’s big blue eyes, wide open with surprise; and Felix’s look of confusion.

They somersaulted.

Then everything stopped for the briefest instant. No smells. No sound. No motion.

And then, they dropped. Fast.

F
elix landed with a splash.

Not a big, water-spraying splash like when he landed in the Caribbean. No, this time he landed with a small, muddy splash, smack into a puddle on a patch of soggy grass.

“Ugh!” Felix groaned, because it hurt his behind when he hit the ground and because he was now not just wet but also muddy.
Lucky I have on this rain slicker and boots
, he thought, staring up at the slate-gray sky.
Because it is raining here, too.

In the distance, he could see a crowd of people in fancy clothes was gathered in front of a building that looked like a library: brick and imposing and serious looking.

A small voice cut through the dusk.

“What in the world…?”

“Rayne?” Felix called.

“Felix?” Rayne answered, a hint of panic in her voice. “Where are we?”

Felix got to his feet and followed Rayne’s voice across a small nearby knoll.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, helping her to her feet.

She, too, had landed in a puddle. She wiped at the mud on her jeans.

“We’re not in Newport, are we?” she asked him.

Felix shook his head.

Rayne turned and watched the people milling about in front of the building ahead of them.

“Are they…in a play?” she asked finally.

“I would say no,” Felix said. “It looks like they’re going to a party or something. In there.”

Now Rayne turned to face Felix, her pretty face crossed with worry.

“Why are they dressed all old-fashioned if they’re not in a play?” she asked.

Felix spotted a stone bench beneath a tree.

“Come on,” he said, taking Rayne’s damp hand in his. “I have a lot to explain.”

She let him lead her to the bench, and the two of them sat on the cold damp stone, shivering. The rain was not falling hard. Rather, it was like a relentless mist that covered everything.

“Well,” Felix said, trying to figure out where to begin, “you know the room we broke into?”

Rayne nodded.

“It’s full of things that my great-great-grandfather collected,” Felix continued.
How
, he wondered,
do you tell someone that she has just time traveled? Or that you yourself have time traveled six other times?

“Uh-huh,” Rayne said.

“And somehow…I know this sounds ridiculous…but when Maisie and I both touch one of the objects, we…”

Rayne looked around again, her gaze focused on the people.

“You…?” she began, but her voice broke.

“We kind of…”

Wonder washed across Rayne’s face.

“Felix,” she said, “have we
time traveled
? Are those people dressed old-fashioned because we’re back when that’s how everyone dressed?”

Felix watched what Rayne was watching. The men wore what almost looked like riding clothes—tight pants with tall boots and a long coat over a vest. They all had beards and held canes like Great-Uncle Thorne used. The women created a sea of blue velvet and silk long dresses and hats with feathers sticking out of them. Everyone had an umbrella, and every umbrella was black.

“Yes,” Felix said, “we’ve time traveled.”

“Where are we?” Rayne whispered, squeezing his hand—out of excitement or fear, Felix wasn’t sure.

Felix stared at the people and the rain and the serious-looking people.

“I think maybe England,” he guessed.

“I love England!” Rayne said, clapping her hands together. “Let’s go see what the big fuss is over there, shall we?”

Felix agreed, wondering if Rayne was talking slightly British on purpose. She seemed so happy to be here that he didn’t mention that they’d lost Maisie and Hadley. Or that neither of them had the magnet, and that the magnet was also the way back home. He just walked with her over to the crowd of people as if they belonged there.

Sure enough, as they got closer, everyone was speaking with a British accent.
Kind of,
Felix thought. It was British-
y
, but thicker and more garbled, harder to understand.

“They don’t sound like people from England,” Rayne whispered.

Before Felix could answer, a man walked out of the building and began to ring a bell, calling everyone inside.

“The show is about to begin,” the man announced.

Rayne and Felix joined the crowd moving up the stairs and inside.

“Excuse me,” Rayne asked the woman walking beside them. “What show is this?”

The woman cocked her head as if she couldn’t quite hear her.

“Eh?” she said. “What did you say?”

“The show,” Rayne said in that slow, loud way people talk when they can’t be understood. “What. Is. It.”

The woman smiled. “It’s Professor Bell performing
David Copperfield
,” she said. “You two are in for a treat. The professor reads it better than Dickens himself.”

Rayne smiled at her in thanks.

The answer seemed to satisfy her, but Felix couldn’t stop wondering where they were, and who they were supposed to meet.

A branch tickled Maisie’s cheek. She brushed it aside and saw, across a stone stoop, Hadley sitting in a large bush, looking surprised. Maisie realized she, too, had landed in a bush. Prickly needles pressed into her legs as she tried to pull herself out. A gloved hand reached across the greenery.

“May I?” the boy attached to the hand asked.

Maisie grabbed hold, and he yanked her free.

The boy looked amused. “Didn’t want to pay?” he said.

“Hey! How about me?” Hadley called.

The boy put his hands on his hips and surveyed Hadley in the bush.

“Did you think we wouldn’t see you there?” he asked as he marched over to help her out.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hadley told him.

Across the street was a park, all soggy and gray in the drizzle. A group of boys stood there, holding a little dog by its collar.

“Haven’t you come to see the talking dog?” the boy asked. He narrowed his eyes at Maisie and Hadley. “What in the world are you two wearing?”

The boy lifted the corner of Maisie’s rain slicker and examined it. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “Why, it’s keeping you dry from the rain!”

“Well,” Maisie said, “it’s a raincoat. That’s why.”

He nodded. “But what is it made out of?”

“Vinyl, I think,” Maisie said, realizing that vinyl had probably not yet been invented in a time when boys walked around wearing gloves and breeches and horse-drawn carriages lined the streets.

“Aleck!” one of the boys called from the park. “Hurry along now. We have to go to hear Father shortly.”

The boy—Aleck—grinned at Maisie and Felix. “I won’t charge you,” he said. “This time.”

As they followed him across the street to the park, Hadley grabbed Maisie’s arm.

“Where are we?” she whispered, her voice shrill with excitement.

“The question,” Maisie said, “is
when
are we.”

The two girls reached the park, and Hadley took in the boys with their breeches and boots.

“Is it…?” She swallowed hard. “Are we…?”

Maisie nodded. “This is my secret,” she said. “We’ve gone back in time.”

Hadley’s eyes shone under the lamplight.

“I always wondered if that was possible,” she said. “My mother told me that my—”

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Aleck announced.

The other boys snickered.

“I shall now endeavor to have my faithful dog, Trouve, talk,” he continued, ignoring them.

“He sounds British,” Hadley whispered to Maisie.

“Ha!” one of the boys said, turning to her. “You’re in Edinburgh, lassie. He’s Scottish.”

“Not after tomorrow,” another boy added.

Aleck had started the dog growling, and Trouve continued without pause.

“This is talking, you say?” the tallest boy said dismissively.

At that, Aleck reached into the dog’s mouth and seemed to shove his hand all the way down his throat.

“
Ow a oo ga ma
,” the dog uttered.

“How are you, Grandma?” Maisie shouted. “That dog did just talk!”

“By Jove,” the tall boy exclaimed. “This is much
more impressive than the automaton.”

Aleck beamed at the small group before him. “After the success of that,” he said, “I had to try it on a live subject.”

“We built an automaton head that talked,” the older boy explained to Maisie and Hadley. “I constructed the throat and larynx, and Aleck built the lips and skull.”

“Melly left the hardest part for me,” Aleck said.

“You see,” Melly continued, “when we forced air through the windpipe with bellows, our man said
Mama
.”

“That it did,” the tall boy agreed. “I heard it myself.”

“Just wait,” Aleck said. “Some day I’ll invent something that will even let Mama hear.”

As if on cue, a woman holding a black umbrella over her head entered the park.

“We’re going to be late,” she said in slow, overly pronounced syllables.

“I’ll bring Trouve upstairs,” Melly said.

“Don’t dillydally,” their mother warned.

Aleck pressed his lips to his mother’s forehead and spoke carefully. “May I bring my new friends along?”

His mother’s gaze landed on Maisie and Hadley.

“Peculiar clothing,” she said.

“Vinyl,” Aleck said, his lips moving against his mother’s skin.

Maisie slipped her cold hand into her pocket, and touched the magnet there. She had a feeling that this magnet belonged to the boy standing in front her, the boy who could make a dog talk.

As soon as Felix saw Maisie and Hadley enter the theater, relief washed over him. He tried to catch his sister’s attention, but she was too busy talking to the boy walking beside her. Hadley was distracted too, but not by a boy. Instead, Felix could tell by the look of wonder on her face that she was too awed by being back in time to even think about him or her sister. He saw that same look on Rayne’s face as the idea of time travel settled over her.

Felix sighed, watching Maisie and Hadley, three boys, and a woman he guessed was the boys’ mother make their way to the front row. He supposed there was nothing he could do now except enjoy the show.

The theater was opulent, all red velvet seats and fancy gold trim on the walls. Felix let the Scottish
brogues in the air buzz in his ears. The people here were hard to understand, and for now he stopped trying and let himself sink into the plush seat.

The lights flickered.