Читать книгу The Gold Thief - Justin Fisher, Justin Fisher - Страница 11

ed sat in a half-broken deck chair in Mr Johnston’s shed. It was the perfect place to hang out and, as George’s dad never did any actual gardening, it was always free of grown-up ears. Term had ended and his two pals, George Johnston and Archie Hinks, were in high spirits. Ever since his time at the circus Ned had developed a problem with calling his friend “George” – it just reminded him too much of the lovable ape he’d left behind – and had forced him to go by “Gummy” on account of his large teeth, though he’d never, obviously, told him the real reason for the nickname. Either way, both his friends loved teasing Ned about his parents and “Gummy Johnston” was busy describing his evening at Ned’s house and the frightening mess that was Olivia’s cooking.

“You should have seen it, Arch! Unrecognisable!” exclaimed Gummy, clutching at his throat. “Oh and the smell, like rotting pigeon in old vinegar.”

“A Waddlesworth special?” asked Archie.

“A Waddlesworth super-special, if you ask me,” grinned back his friend.

“She is bad, isn’t she?” Ned said in agreement.

At this point, the walls of Mr Johnston’s garden shed rattled with their combined laughter.

Yet another layer of lies that had become Ned’s life. No one on this side of the Veil knew about Ned’s powers, let alone what his real name was, not even his two best friends. But that was what he really loved about Gummy and Arch. He could be the “Waddlesworth” Ned with them, the old one he had been before the Hidden had come knocking. There were moments, when the three of them were together, when the laughter flowed freely enough, that he let himself forget about Amplification and training. And sometimes, if he really tried, Ned even forgot about the voice.

Whiskers, Ned’s pet mouse, remained perfectly still on his favourite seed bag, knowing full well that Gummy and Arch wouldn’t be nearly as chirpy if they’d seen what Ned’s mum could really do with a carving knife, or sword for that matter.

“All right, Whiskers?” asked Gummy.

But Ned’s mouse remained completely motionless, because unbeknown to Gummy, Whiskers was not really a mouse. At least not a real one.

“Ned?” asked George.

“Yep?”

“You do know Whiskers is a bit weird, right?”

“Yes. Actually, he’s about as weird a mouse as it gets, but he’s my weird mouse and I wouldn’t have him any other way,” replied Ned rather proudly, at which point Whiskers deigned to give him an acknowledging twitch of the nose.

“Talking of weird, did George tell you about the bloke who turned up at our school?” asked Arch.

“No.”

“Well,” started Arch. “So this is even weirder than your mouse and your mum’s cooking. This inspector from the school board comes into class, says he’s there to do a spot inspection, looking for nits. And he has this nose, all long and pointy.”

“Nits?”

“Nits,” agreed Gummy, with a knowing nod.

“Yeah,” said Arch. “Nits on the last day of school, and he said he only needed two candidates, me and Gummy.”

Ned’s ears pricked up, closely followed by the ears of his pet rodent. There were several things that his two pals had in common. They were Ned’s only close friends outside the Circus of Marvels, and they had both lived on the same street as Ned, until the Waddlesworths (or Armstrongs – depending on which side of the Veil you lived) had decided to move to the neighbouring suburb.

“Only you two, out of the whole class?”

“Yup. He kept asking questions about how long we’d lived on our street; he had a really oily voice, sort of creepy. He said there was a very rare type of nit he was trying to track down and that he thought it had come from Oak Tree Lane.”

“That is weird,” said Ned, who did not like where the story was going at all.

“It gets weirder. So Gummy’s waiting outside and I’m sat on a chair in the school’s old meeting room. The inspector guy takes these plugs out of his nose and then shoves said nose right into my hair. Finally he pulls away, staggers backwards and looks like he’s going to be sick.”

“Well, who wouldn’t?” grinned Gummy.

“Then he looks at me and starts blathering on about the awful smell of children and how he finally has a lead. A second later he’s flying out the door past me, then Gummy, and clutching his nose like it’s been stabbed.”

Behind the Veil, there were many creatures, with many “gifts”. Ned had read about Folk with a sense of smell so acute they could follow a target, any target, for miles and once they had a scent, they never forgot it. He could feel beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

“So after that, you went home and you and your mum and dad came over to mine, right?”

“Yeah. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You’ve led him straight to us, Gummy!”

At that moment, something inside Ned changed. The mistletoe and wrapping paper, the thin veneer of an ordinary life with its ordinary joys and its run-up to Christmas, all, suddenly, faded away.

Behind Ned’s friend, the two bulbs in his extraordinary mouse’s eyes started to flash a brilliant white. Cold fear ran up and down Ned’s back. His mouse, a Debussy Mark Twelve, had been top-of-the-range spy gear in its time, a mechanical marvel of spinning cogs and winding gears. It would never blink like that on this side of the Veil, not in front of “jossers” who did not know about the Hidden. Not, of course, unless it was a serious emergency.

The mouse had been adjusted by the Circus of Marvels’ resident boffin and could now communicate with Ned, albeit in simple Morse code. Longer flashes of the eyes were a dash, shorter blinks a dot.

Ned wondered who was sending him a message. Only a few people knew the correct frequency to contact Whiskers: Ned’s parents, the Circus of Marvels and the Olswangs at number 24. His dad had insisted that if they were to return to a “normal” life, they would have to have friendly agents to watch over their son. “Fair-folk” used glamours outside the Hidden’s territory to remain human in appearance, but Mr Olswang clearly had dwarven blood in his veins and “Mrs” had to have been elven to be anywhere near as tall as she was. Either way, neither Ned’s parents nor the Olswangs had ever had cause to use the system until today, in Mr Johnston’s shed.

Ned’s friends looked at Whiskers in complete and utter horror.

“What in the name of everything is your mouse doing?” marvelled Archie.

“Shh, it’s blinking,” said Ned.

“DON’T GO, H, O, M,” he translated.

A single dot.

“E.”

There are few things less likely to make a boy stay where he is, than telling him not to go home. Especially when it means that his parents might be in danger.

“Y-y-you need to do some explaining,” stammered Gummy. “I mean, that’s just not right, not a bit! Your … your blinking mouse, Ned, what on earth is it?”

Archie leapt to his feet.

“It’s magic, innit?” said Archie. “You’ve got some weird magical rodent, you’re like blooming Gandalf or something. O,M,G, that is AWESOME!”

But when Ned spoke it was in a whisper. A whisper so cold that it stilled his friends to their cores.

“Say nothing, not to anyone. Promise?”

Whether because of Whiskers’ flashing eyes, or the look on Ned’s face, both of his friends remained silent.

“PROMISE!” forced Ned with a shout.

“Promise,” they murmured back sheepishly.

And with that, Ned was on his bicycle and pedalling away from the Johnstons’ as fast as its wheels would carry him.

“Ned, wait! You forgot your bag,” called Gummy, but Ned was already gone.