The Hidden Boy (11 page)

B
ea Flint and Phoebe Lu waited awhile to make sure that Miss Hopkins didn't return. The evening sunlight shone through the tall windows, casting yellow rectangles on the bookshelves. As the sun began to dip below the tree line the yellow rectangles rolled themselves up slowly like luminous blinds.

“Now what?” said Phoebe, still whispering from habit.

“Now you can climb up and get that book,” said Bea. “It shouldn't take long to find out what we need to know; then we can put it back and get out through a window. Nobody will know we've looked at it.”

They tiptoed back to the bookshelf at the back wall. “Wait a moment,” said Bea. She peeped out of the nearest window into the twilit clearing. There was nobody in sight. The Ledbetter boy had finally left his post.
This did not come as the relief she had expected. At least when he was nearby she knew what he was up to. She wondered now what news he was bringing back to Maize Ledbetter, and she felt a sudden shiver. She turned around to see Phoebe perched at the top of the bookshelf.

“How do you spell
Arkadi
?” said Phoebe. Her voice echoed in the empty library.

“A-R-K—,” began Bea.

“Found it!” said Phoebe. She slid a fat volume from the top shelf and dropped it without warning.

“Ouch!” said Bea, as the book dropped into her outstretched hands like a leather-bound brick. “Careful!”

“Sorry,” said Phoebe, who was back on the floor in an instant. “I had no free hands and it wouldn't fit in my mouth.”

Bea blew the dust off the book's spine and placed it on the floor where a patch of dim light filtered in from the evening sky. There were lamps on the reading desks, but she did not want to risk turning one on. She began to flick through the book. She found to her dismay that there were over six hundred pages. She looked first for a photograph of Arkadi, but there did not seem to be any. There were several drawings of him, mostly done from memory by Pearlseeds who had been his pupils or friends. They showed him with
a variety of hairstyles, sometimes with a beard or mustache, sometimes clean shaven. He looked different in each one, and Bea could not decide whether any of them looked like the ice-cream mechanic or not.

Phoebe showed little interest in the book. She prowled around the library looking for places to climb, and took a couple of turns sliding down the long banister from Captain Bontoc's office, until Bea told her irritably to stop.

“Did you find anything?” she asked from the bottom of the stairs.

Bea shook her head. She was squinting at a blurry charcoal drawing of Arkadi. Of all the ones she had seen this one most resembled the ice-cream mechanic. She read the caption with difficulty in the fading light. “‘Arkadi as drawn by Maize Ledbetter the year before her banishment.'”

She began to read from the text. “‘Various accounts have been given of the falling-out between Arkadi and his favorite, young Maize Ledbetter. It was rumored that she had honed her powers to such a fine point that she could predict almost any event with complete clarity, and some Pearlseeds believed that it was a combination of jealousy and fear that led Arkadi to banish her along
with her young husband. It seems more likely, however, that it was the girl's well-known fits of rage and her disregard for the protocols of Mumbo Jumbo that led Arkadi to conclude she was a danger to the entire movement. The place he chose for his former protégée's exile was the secret refuge of Bell Hoot, which Arkadi himself had discovered by accident less than a year previously.'”

Bea rubbed her eyes. At that moment the moon emerged from behind a cloud and lit the open book with a pale blue glow. The smudgy image of Arkadi seemed to spring to life, and Bea was almost sure that it depicted the Arkadi they knew, despite the fact that it must have been drawn some eighty years earlier. She was about to turn the page in search of more information when a familiar phrase caught her eye:
the Hidden Boy.
Where had she heard that phrase recently? She read on. “‘Many of the predictions made by Maize Ledbetter have since come true. Among those that she repeated most frequently was that she would live for a century, and that her successor as head of the Ledbetter clan would be a young child known only as the Hidden Boy.'”

Bea stopped reading. The skin crawled on the back of her neck.
Give us the Hidden Boy.
That was the demand of the Ledbetters when they invaded people's
dreams. Granny Delphine believed that it referred to Theo, and Maize Ledbetter had made no effort to deny it. Bea looked around her. The bookcases loomed over her in the dark, and the library suddenly seemed an unwelcoming place. She closed the book. “Phoebe?” she said. Phoebe was at her elbow in a moment. “Let's put this back and get out of here,” said Bea.

“You'll have to lend me the backpack to carry it up in,” said Phoebe. “But I don't think we'll be leaving here until the morning.”

Bea looked at her with a sinking feeling. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“I've tried all the windows,” said Phoebe. “They're painted shut, every one of them. They mustn't have been opened for years.”

“What about the door?”

Phoebe shook her head. “Locked with a key,” she said. “I think we'd better make ourselves comfortable.”

They did another complete circuit of the library, double-checking the windows in case they had missed one that could be opened. They searched the desk for a spare key to the front door, but without success. “Pa will come looking for us when we don't arrive home,” said Bea.

“We'll be in trouble,” said Phoebe.

Bea shivered. “I'd rather be in trouble than spend the night in here,” she said. “Anyway, we can pretend we got locked in by accident.”

They released Nails from the backpack and put in the book instead. Phoebe climbed the bookshelves and replaced it among the other books. They looked out into the clearing again, but it was deserted. Bea turned on a table lamp so that if anyone came looking for them they would see the library was not empty.

They dragged two large armchairs out into the middle of the room and settled down to wait. Phoebe had found a large jotter and a pencil behind Miss Hopkins's desk and she began to draw a world where volcanoes spewed chocolate and people turned into dragonflies. Beside the things she drew she wrote the anagrams that popped into her head—nailed frogs and darling foes for
dragonflies
, coal ovens and oval cones for
volcanoes
. Bea took out the Squeak Jar and listened for Theo's voice. It took a few minutes to locate him. He was whispering for once.

“I can't talk now,” he said. “The Tree People are listening. They were pretty annoyed when I tried to start a fire.”

“Are you okay?” whispered Bea. She saw Phoebe glance up at her.

“I'm fine. We'll talk later, okay?”

“Okay,” said Bea. She could try to find him in her dreams. She put the Squeak Jar down and went looking for a book about bees, then seated herself in the comfortable armchair with the jar and the book in her lap. Nails returned from his explorations, disappointed at the lack of insect life and the total absence of worms, and climbed into the backpack of his own accord. Bea began to read about the complex life of bees, trying to distract herself from the creeping sense of foreboding in her bones.

Outside the library window the blue moon shone down on clearing and forest. It shone on the churning pool of Cambio Falls, and beyond it on the still waters of Mumpfish Lake, dark as midnight and cold as last week's soup. It shone on the rickety wooden causeway that ran from the bare island to the lakeshore. It shone on the blank-eyed, straggle-haired Ledbetter clan, who ran silently along the causeway and slipped into the shadows of the forest, drifting from tree to tree like blown ash, heading for the Bell Hoot Library.

B
ea Flint sat in the armchair and struggled to keep her eyes open. The book lay on her lap, words crawling over the pages like bees. She looked up at Phoebe, who had her head down and was drawing busily.

“We can talk now,” said Theo's voice in her ear. “I promised them I wouldn't set fire to the trees again.” Bea tried to look around, but she could not turn her head. She realized she must be dreaming.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Right beside you. What's the book about?”

“Bees,” said Bea.

Theo clucked scornfully. “Bees! That'd be like me reading a book about Theos. Is there such an animal as a Theo?”

“No. I'm only—,” began Bea; then she stopped with
an effort. This was no time for silly arguments. “We went looking for you,” she said.

“Oh, yeah,” said Theo, “that reminds me: I figured out where I am.”

Bea's eyes opened wide and she struggled to sit up. It felt as though an elephant sat on her chest. She frowned and tried to concentrate on Theo's words. “Tell me!” she said.

“Well,” said Theo casually, “you know the way I said the trees were thin and wavy?”

Theo's voice itself seemed to be going thin and wavy, and Bea struggled to grasp what he was saying. Phoebe had abandoned her drawing and seemed to be squatting on the floor, staring hard at her. Her eyes had grown bigger and her armchair had evaporated. The library walls were moving closer, and there were fewer bookshelves. No, Bea corrected herself, there were no bookshelves at all.

Panic rose in her chest. She looked closely at the figure in front of her. Something was wrong. “You're not Phoebe!” she said. How could she have mistaken this blank-faced person for her friend? It wasn't even a girl. It was…She couldn't remember the name. He squatted before her. With an enormous effort Bea
managed to turn her head and look around her. There was no sign of anyone else. “Theo?” she said. Her voice was deadened by the damp white walls, and there was no answer. She turned back to face the stranger, her eyes pricking with tears. “What have you done with Theo?” she choked.

The pale eyes stared at her, neither friendly nor hostile. She remembered who it was now. Ike Ledbetter, the boy who had been following them, the boy who had fallen into the thornbush. He had looked slightly helpless then, but he did not look helpless now. He looked right at home, squatting there before her. He had been in her dream only minutes—or was it hours?—but already she could tell that he would never leave.

Ike Ledbetter opened his colorless lips. “Give us the Hidden Boy,” he said.

Bea felt a hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake. She was back in the library, dimly lit by a table lamp. She struggled from her chair, desperate to escape the traces of her dream. She felt a weight slide from her lap and heard the dull thump of the book and the clunk of the heavy jar hitting the wooden floor at the same time. She gasped with fright, but the Squeak Jar rolled away unbroken and came to rest beneath a bookshelf.

“Are you all right, child?” said Granny Delphine's voice. Bea barely heard her. She scrambled after the jar, feeling Ike Ledbetter's stare clinging to her skin like a damp cobweb. She reached for the Squeak Jar in the shadow of the bookcase. It was reassuringly whole. Her fingers brushed against something round and flat on the floor beside it. It took her a moment to realize what it was. The lid! It must have come off with the impact. Bea's heart sank.

She grabbed the lid and fumbled it back into place, screwing it tight. For how many seconds had the jar been open? Would a voice escape like a puff of air, or linger in the jar like smoke? She remembered Captain Bontoc's urgent shout when Ma had tried to unscrew the lid at Cambio Falls, and she felt a tightness in her chest as she picked up the Squeak Jar and rose unsteadily to her feet. What if Theo were gone for good?

Granny Delphine took the jar gently from Bea's hands and placed it on a table. She held Bea's shoulders and looked into her face. “Are you all right?” she asked again.

Bea nodded numbly. She could see Pa over Granny Delphine's shoulder, shoving the armchairs back against the wall, and Miss Hopkins hovering nervously with a
set of keys dangling from one plump finger.

She did not want to tell her grandmother about Ike. It had been her foolish idea to hide in the library without checking that escape would be possible. She did not know how she would make things right, but she was sure it was something that she alone would have to do. With a huge effort she smiled and looked straight into her grandmother's eyes. “I'm fine,” she said. “We got locked in by mistake, that's all.”

“Just as well you were locked in,” said Pa, dusting his hands. “That weird bunch were staring in the windows when we got here, all wrapped up like deranged carol singers. Don't know what they'd be wanting to steal from a library. Can't exactly see them running a book club.”

“The Ledbetters were here?” said Phoebe, and Bea knew at once from her wide-eyed look that no Ledbetter had managed to invade her dreams.

“They looked like they were trying the windows,” said Pa, who obviously had no idea what the Ledbetters were really up to, “but we soon sent them packing. Then your granny went off to get Miss Hopkins here to open the place up.”

“Which would not have been necessary,” said Granny
Delphine frostily, “if Miss Hopkins would think to check her library for stragglers before locking up for the night.”

“It wasn't her fault,” said Bea quickly. “We—”

“We went back at the last minute to look for another book,” said Phoebe.

“And we didn't hear the door closing,” finished Bea. She closed her tired eyes for a moment, but Ike Ledbetter's stare appeared in the darkness, and she opened them straightaway.

“Come,” said Granny Delphine. Bea picked up the Squeak Jar and slipped it into the backpack beside the sleeping meerkat. Her bones felt like lead and she wanted nothing more than to be picked up by Pa and carried home, but she was determined to hide at least one thing from her grandmother's sharp eyes. If the Squeak Jar really was empty and her dreams were squatted by the Ledbetters, she no longer had any way to speak to Theo, and she was afraid that Granny Delphine would lose confidence in her. She made up her mind that she would have to confront Arkadi first thing in the morning. She was as sure as she could be that he was the real Arkadi, and she would threaten to expose him unless he could help her find her brother.

She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that they were halfway home before she realized they had left the library. Pa and Phoebe were some way ahead, and Granny Delphine seemed to be walking deliberately slowly so as to be able to speak without being overheard.

“I suppose you knew we were in the library,” said Bea.

“Of course,” said Granny Delphine. “You were reading more about Arkadi. That showed initiative, although you should know that Mumbo Jumbo cannot be learned from a book.”

“How did you know—,” began Bea.

“That you were reading up on Arkadi?” said Granny Delphine. “Why don't you tell me?”

Bea tried to imagine herself in Granny Delphine's place, sitting on the verandah of the Millers' house as the evening light faded. She knew that Granny Delphine used her eyes more than her ears in practicing Mumbo Jumbo, and she tried to visualize what her grandmother would have seen. “You saw it was getting dark and we weren't back yet,” she began.

“Skip the obvious, child,” said her grandmother curtly.

“You didn't see the Ledbetters,” said Bea. “They
would have come from the direction of the lake.” She hesitated. “I'm not sure how you knew we were in the library.”

“I didn't,” said Granny Delphine.

Bea frowned. “Then you were heading for Cambio Falls to look for us,” she said. “You knew a Ledbetter would be spying on us, and that we could talk there without being heard.”

“Correct,” said her grandmother.

“Then you saw the Ledbetters at the library window and the light on inside, and you guessed we were in there. You knew Miss Hopkins wouldn't have locked us in by mistake, so we must have tricked her, which meant we were looking for something we weren't supposed to have.” She thought for a moment, but she had reached a blank. “There's a whole shelf of restricted books. How did you know we wanted a book on Arkadi?”

“What did you do when you took down the book?” said Granny Delphine. “Think, Bea.”

“I put it on the floor to read it.”

“Before that?”

“I…I blew the dust off it,” said Bea. “You looked on the restricted shelf and saw that it was cleaner than the others.”

“Well done.”

“But it was dark in the library,” said Bea. “There was only a lamp on the table.”

“I've got very good spectacles,” said her grandmother.

Bea glanced at her. She wondered whether to mention the fact that she had tried out her grandmother's spectacles before they left for their holiday, then thought better of it. “Do they help you to…to see more?” she asked.

Granny Delphine threw her a sharp look. “Of course, child. That's what spectacles are for, isn't it?”

Bea changed the subject hastily. “How is all this going to help me find Theo?” she asked. She would have hesitated to ask Granny Delphine such a direct question only a few days before, but she no longer feared her grandmother's tongue. She was afraid now that Theo was slipping from her grasp, and getting to him as quickly as possible was the only thing that mattered.

“I can only give you the groundwork, Bea,” said Granny Delphine. “I've been hiding for much of my life, and my powers are not well developed.” She sighed. “Your ma has far more natural aptitude for it than I will ever have.”

“
Ma
has?” said Bea, surprised.

“Certainly. I could see it from the moment she was born, but the Gummint was cracking down hard even then, and in school they taught her to fear even the mention of Mumbo Jumbo. She never became what she could have been. There are Pearlseeds here who are far more advanced in Mumbo Jumbo than either of us.”

“Couldn't they find Theo?”

Granny Delphine shook her head. “You have a close connection to your brother. That is why you can hear his voice when even Captain Bontoc could not. It will take the combined efforts of the Quorum to teach you what you need to know, but you must find him yourself.”

“But I don't have time for lessons,” said Bea. “You can tell so many things just by looking and listening. Isn't that what I need to learn?”

“Learning to read the world is only the foundation of Mumbo Jumbo,” said Granny Delphine. “It's like learning what all the lights and levers in a cockpit are for. That's all very interesting, but then you must learn to fly the airplane.”

Bea thought about this for a moment. “Is that why things seem to do what Mrs. Miller wants them to,
without her having to touch them?”

“Precisely,” said Granny Delphine. “There's more to Gladys Miller than serving food and talking incessantly. She is a very powerful Pearlseed, but looking after Willow saps all her energy at the moment.” She lowered her voice as they approached the bottom of the ladder. “Every Pearlseed has their specialty. Hers lies in manipulating objects with her thoughts. Maize Ledbetter can manipulate thoughts themselves, if she is close enough to see her victim.”

Bea shuddered. That would explain why the Ledbetters liked to peer in through windows at night.

“I have pointed out to the Quorum that the Ledbetter problem is tied up with Theo's disappearance, since it appears to be him they are after. I have been trying to persuade them that they must pool their skills to help you in your search.”

“Isn't there someone who knows all the skills?” whispered Bea as she climbed the ladder behind her grandmother.

Granny Delphine stopped at the top of the ladder and looked down at her. “Only Arkadi knew them all,” she said.

Bea climbed the last few rungs, her heart thumping.
She felt that she would faint from the weight of Ike Ledbetter's stare. She threw herself down in a chair. She could hear Granny Delphine and Mrs. Miller talking in the kitchen, and she realized she hadn't eaten for hours.

Clockwork Gabby emerged ticking onto the verandah. She seemed to have acquired some of Mrs. Miller's whirlwind qualities, and within seconds the low table was piled with an assortment of foods. Phoebe filled her plate and attacked her supper with gusto. Bea sat up with effort and picked up a plumegranate. It felt cold and waxy. She put it to her lips, but could not bring herself to take a bite. She noticed Willow staring at her from the chair opposite. She smiled weakly and put down the untouched fruit.

Phoebe stretched and jumped up from her seat. “I'm going to bed,” she said, and she crawled through the window behind her chair because it was more interesting than using the door.

Bea lay slumped in the wicker chair, staring at the lamp that hung in the far corner. Around the house the crickets kept up a constant chirruping, like a thousand tiny sewing machines working at full tilt. The lamps burned on, their wicks hissing quietly, and in the
distance the bees wound down their operations for the night. Bea felt unable to move.

Presently Gabby came back to clear up the dishes. She looked at Bea and shook her head sadly. “Dream-shut,” she said, and she ticked back into the house under a tower of plates.

Bea saw Willow get up from her chair and walk over to her. She felt the girl's limp hand on her shoulder. “She
knows
,” said Willow. Her dark eyes looked searchingly into Bea's for a moment; then she turned and disappeared into the house without another word.