Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms (19 page)

And then another object caught in the flashlight beam, and though Stuart had never seen it before he knew exactly what it was. Mesmerized, he walked toward it: the Well of Wishes.

Not a little pixie well with a wobbly bucket and a quaint tiled roof, but something strange and more beautiful, the cold color of moonlight, dusted with stars. A well filled not with water but with silvery shadow.

And as the tap dancers thundered overhead, Stuart stared at the shimmering darkness. Great-Uncle Tony had stood just here. He had wished for his heart’s desire and he had thrown in a coin, and then … what? Where had he gone? Why hadn’t he ever returned?

Stuart felt curiosity seize him so strongly that it was like a hook drawing him onward. He had only half believed before, but he had no doubt now that there was real magic in this place; there was a weight to it, a thickness in the air. He reached into his pocket and took out the last two threepences. They felt heavy in his palm.

The world seemed suddenly limitless. He could wish for anything, he realized, anything at all. He could wish for his
own
heart’s desire.

He could wish to be taller.

Because life would be so much better, so much easier if he could just be the same height as other ten-year-olds. No one would pass him off as a younger brother, no one would call him “little chap.” He wouldn’t get patted on the head or offered books of stickers or junior backpacks to keep him quiet in museums. He wouldn’t have to avoid telling people his last name. He’d never get called “Shorty Shorten” again …

Or perhaps he could be more ambitious with his wish.

Rather than taller, why not
tall
?

Why not be the one in the class who could reach everything, the one who got stopped on buses because he looked too old to travel on a children’s ticket, the one who got picked first for sports, the one who got called “Shorty” just as a joke, not as a description? He imagined having to look down at April and her sisters, leaning his elbow on the fence, laughing at their astonishment when he told them his age.

“Honestly, I’m ten.”

“You can’t be.”

“No, I am.”

And he wouldn’t have to dread starting his new school in the fall. He wouldn’t have his mom and dad
worrying
about him all the time.

He drew a long breath and looked at the coins in his palm.

Was it possible?

Could he change his whole life in a second? Could he alter something so fundamental?

And he felt his insides curl in fear, because the idea was both thrilling and terrifying. He clenched his hand around the coins, and then slowly, slowly, he leaned over the well …

“YO, STUART!” shouted April from the hatch. “CAN YOU PLEASE,
PLEASE
FIND ANOTHER WAY FOR ME TO GET IN? I’M DESPERATE TO SEE WHAT’S IN THERE.”

Stuart took a step back and gulped in air, as if he’d come up from a long dive underwater, and then he pushed the threepences back into his pocket. There would be time later. He had found the workshop now. He had beaten Jeannie to the prize; there was no longer any hurry. From outside, he could hear “Thriller” reaching its thunderous climax.

“ALL RIGHT!” he shouted, stirring himself. On his way around the room, he knew he’d seen two doors, and he went back to look at them. They were identical: set deeply in the wall, almost opposite each other, and firmly shut, with no obvious keyholes. They reminded him vaguely of the doors in a ship.

And halfway between the doors, fixed to the brickwork, there was a metal wheel, three feet across. It had spokes, like a ship’s wheel. A ship’s doors; a ship’s wheel. If he turned it, then the doors might open. It had to be worth trying.

Distantly, over the applause, Stuart could hear the tinny voice of the emcee. “
And now, as a complete contrast, we have a group of budding ballerinas. Let’s hear it for Beeton’s Ballet Babes in the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
.’”

A hideous tinkling tune filtered down through the hatch.

He stuck his flashlight in his back pocket, gripped the wheel, and tried to turn it. He dragged at the spokes until he could feel his face turning red, but it didn’t budge. It must be rusted shut, like the hatch, he thought, and he was just about to shout up at April, when an idea occurred to him. He reached out, gripped the spokes again and turned the wheel the
other
way, counterclockwise. It spun sweetly in his hands, just as the lid of the money box had done all those days ago.

Stuart laughed, and looked across at one of the doors to watch it as it opened, but it was still firmly shut, and then the tinkly music stopped with a horrible burst of static. A small girl screamed, and then a whole load of small girls screamed.

From behind him came a clanking, wheezing noise, and Stuart turned to see a curved crack of light appearing in the ceiling. The tapered pillars were telescoping into themselves.
The whole circular floor of the bandstand above him was slowly dropping down, like an elevator descending!

Stuart watched, frozen, as it sank. A group of pink-clad ballet dancers, all about six years old, were huddled in the center of the stage, arms around one another, screaming wildly. Sunlight flooded into the workshop. A ring of faces appeared over the railing at the top, staring downward, their mouths open in horror.

The pillars grew shorter, and with a hiss and a shudder the stage reached the ground, a few feet in front of Stuart.

The ballet dancers clustered in a terrified group, looking upward. Mothers were wailing, cameras were flashing, a distant siren grew gradually nearer.

Suddenly a clear, crisp, female voice spoke over the loudspeaker, cutting through the chaos. “
There is no need to panic. No one appears to be injured. A fire engine is on its way. I can assure everyone that this situation is entirely under control. Please stay calm
.”

The ring of faces at the top had all turned to look at the speaker, and now they clustered together to make room as she appeared at the railing. It was the lady mayoress, microphone in hand. She was wearing a fur-edged red robe, a dark hat, and a heavy gold chain of office—but it was her face that Stuart goggled up at, scarcely able to believe his eyes.

A sharp, bright-eyed face.

It was Jeannie.

CHAPTER 29

Jeannie peered over the railing, and her gaze swept across the room beneath the bandstand. Stuart ducked into the shadows, but he could still see her slow, triumphant smile.

“
As your mayoress
,” she continued, raising the microphone again, “
I give you my word that as soon as these talented young performers have been safely rescued, this entire area will be sealed off and I shall personally work night and day to investigate the incident, and to clear out any dangerous machinery and other items that may have been exposed by the subsidence of the bandstand floor
.”

“Oh, I bet you will,” muttered Stuart. He felt as if he’d been knocked sideways. All that planning and thinking and hunting and hiding, and now Jeannie was ready to whisk in and take everything away. He gnawed at a fingernail, his mind blank apart from one sure and certain thought: April would know what to do.

He looked across at the ladder. Could he creep over and hope that the sugar plum fairies wouldn’t notice him?

“Look, there’s a
ladder
!” shrieked one of the ballet dancers at that very moment. Terror forgotten, she scampered across to it and began to climb.

Stuart saw April’s anxious face darting out of sight at the top. The rest of the Beeton Ballet Babes formed a giggling line at the bottom.

Well, that’s that
, thought Stuart.

He stared at the two doors again, but they were still shut. And then he frowned. Why only
two
doors? Both the model in the museum and the neolithic tomb had had
three
entrances to the underground room: three entrances, evenly spaced. He looked from one door to the other, and then he let his eyes travel the same distance again along the curving wall. Where they rested he saw, not a door, but the giant book, leaning against the wall.

OPEN AT YOUR PERIL

The cover was deepest black, but he could see the glint of the key.

Crouching, he inched around the circumference of the room. The last two ballet dancers were lining up for the ladder. Jeannie had disappeared from view.

As the last dancer began to climb, Stuart sprinted across to the book, turned the key, and then tried to lift the cover. It was heavy, but he heaved it open a few inches and peered in. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but then he saw a dull reflection of his own face and realized that the cover concealed not a doorway but a cabinet with a metal back.

A loud noise made him turn. The last dancer had disappeared through the hatch, but now a series of thuds were coming from the same place, and a shower of rust flakes caught the light as they fluttered to the floor. With a screech of metal, the door of the hatch opened fully, and a smartly shod foot came through the gap and groped for the rung of the ladder. The foot belonged to a woman. Stuart hesitated just long enough to see the bottom of a fur-edged mayoral robe, and then he squeezed through the narrow opening into the book. He tried to keep the door very slightly open, but there was nothing to grip, and it closed behind him with a sharp
click
. There was an instant of suffocating panic, and then the back of the cabinet swung open and Stuart sprawled into darkness.

His head hurt, and for a long time he didn’t feel properly awake. And when he did wake, there was no light at all, so that he wasn’t even sure whether his eyes were open or not. He lifted a hand and felt a lump on the side of his head, where he must have hit it on the ground as he fell. He’d been lying on the floor knocked out, he realized.

He sat up, slowly and carefully, and then— suddenly fearful—checked in his back pocket for the flashlight. It was gone. He patted the floor all around him but felt nothing but a fine layer of grit. He moved his arms in a wide circle, and found that at fullest stretch he could just touch a wall on either side.

Cautiously, he stood up. The ceiling was high, too high for him to reach. He started to walk forward, arms extended in front of him. He’d only taken a couple of steps when his foot caught something that rolled across the floor and he pounced down (quite a slow pounce, given the pain in his head) and scrambled after the object. His fingers closed over a small metal cylinder, and he let out a squawk of joy. It was his flashlight!

He turned it on. Immediately ahead was a metal door. There was no handle, just a pair of jointed rods at the top and two large springs at the bottom. It was firmly closed. Through the fog that seemed to fill his head, he tried to think.

It was the book, he realized. He was looking at the back of the
OPEN AT YOUR PERIL
book. It was a stage illusion, a disappearing trick, with a back door that opened when the front cover was closed. And presumably, the reverse was true: the back was now closed which meant that someone must have opened the front cover.

Jeannie
, he thought.
Jeannie’s inspecting the workshop
.

Hastily, he turned around and shone the flashlight in the other direction. A long, straight tunnel stretched away, the walls featureless, the floor thick with wooly dust. Stuart began to walk, and the dust rose in soft clouds and drifted like sparks across the flashlight beam.

He kept walking; the only noise his own muffled footsteps. He wondered how much time had passed since he’d shut himself in the book. Had he been lying on the floor for hours or only minutes? He plunged a hand into his pocket to check that he still had the final two threepences, and the coins chinked in his hand. He felt a jolt of regret. He should have made a wish when he had the chance; he had hesitated and now the moment had gone …

He was shaken from his thoughts by a fork in the tunnel. He shone his flashlight beam to the right and saw nothing but a continuation of the corridor. Then he shone it to the left. Oddly, a heavy curtain blocked the way. Stuart started to lift it aside, but there was a soft ripping noise and the whole thing fell to the ground in a flurry of moths.