The Windvale Sprites (4 page)

Just then he heard a buzzing noise in the gorse, like a bluebottle trapped in curtains. Asa stayed on his knees and slowly approached the bush. The buzzing stopped, and then started again, and he inched closer. Something was caught in the shrub, trying to get out, but he couldn’t get a clear view. He saw something move towards the top of the bush, it buzzed briefly, dropped and was silent. Asa leaned in and pushed the lower branches aside – a shape had got caught in the thorny twigs and buzzed frantically in panic. Asa reached towards it, parting the leaves and saw what the hobby had been after.

It was unmistakably the same type of creature he had found in his garden, with the huge eyes and long limbs, but this one was very much alive. Asa looked it directly in the eye, and saw in its face an expression of shock and confusion. One of its wings was tangled in the thorns and as it pulled to get free it seemed to scream in pain though it made no sound. Asa extended a hand towards it that made the creature struggle even more violently until the wing tore and it darted out of reach. It flew up and away but immediately tumbled back into the long grass, the torn wing impeding its flight. It reappeared and seemed to find some strength as it flew some way before plummeting again out of sight. Asa glimpsed it a couple more times as it flitted away, zigzagging into the distance.

He looked again in the gorse and found a shimmering triangle of wing snagged on the thorns. He carefully removed the shred and flattened it out on his hand. He wondered if it would grow back. The speed at which the thing had moved, even with an injured wing, was incredible and Asa realised that a butterfly net would be useless if he wanted to catch one. The only reason he had got so close this time, indeed the only reason he saw it at all, was because the hobby had spotted it first.

As he got to his feet and started making his way back to his bike he thought about the missing trunk containing Tooth’s studies. How much had Tooth discovered? Had he managed to catch a live specimen? Maybe he had even befriended them. Asa had to find that trunk.

 

The next day Asa could hardly move his legs. The forty-mile bike ride had caught up with him and he hobbled around like a geriatric. He couldn’t bear to sit on his bike so he caught the bus into town and painfully limped the last stretch to the library.

It was a Trap day. Inside he waited for the surly librarian to finish stamping somebody’s books and then he stepped up feeling like Oliver Twist about to ask for ‘more’.

‘I need to find the chest of Benjamin Tooth,’ he announced.

Trap looked blankly at him.

‘Benjamin Tooth,’ offered Asa, ‘the man who shot the …’

‘I know who Benjamin Tooth was,’ said the librarian.

‘I need to find his trunk.’

‘You mean the trunk containing all his works?’

‘Yes.’

‘The one that has been missing for two hundred years?’

‘Yes.’

‘Certainly, if you wait here I’ll go and get it for you …’ and he turned to go.

Asa could not believe his ears.

As it turned out, he was right not to believe them for Mr Trap was being sarcastic and turned back with a withering look.

‘Oh, I’m afraid the
lost
trunk of Benjamin Tooth is still
lost
at present.’

‘Have you looked in the cellar?’

‘No.’

‘It’s probably in a dark corner where it’s been forgotten. In the cellar.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, can’t you go and look? Or I could go?’

Mr Trap regarded him incredulously.

‘No, I can’t, and neither can you.’ Even though this wasn’t strictly sarcasm he said it in a sarcastic way and turned to stamp the next person’s books. Asa knew he would get nowhere with Mr Trap so thanked him sarcastically for his help and went to leave.

What occurred next seemed to happen in slow motion. As Asa left the reading room and went to walk out of the building his shoe slipped on the marble floor. Clumsily trying to regain his balance he fell against the wooden pedestal and gave an almighty, flat-handed shove to the Mereton Warbler display case, which slid away from him and disappeared over the edge. Then came the unmistakable sound of two-hundred-year-old town history smashing on marble floor. Asa peered over the plinth at the disaster.

The wooden base had split in two, the glass dome had split into a hundred and seventy three, and the bird itself (which, after all these years, was only held together with dust and air) had all but disintegrated. It was nothing more than a small mound of fluff and fibres. But there, on the ground in amongst the bits of dry feather, was a key on a long silver chain. Without thinking or hesitating Asa scooped it up and dropped it into his coat pocket just as the doors burst open and all hell broke loose.

There followed lots of questions like: ‘What were you doing?’ and ‘Whatever were you thinking of?’ and sometimes ‘What do you think you were playing at?’ Questions he couldn’t possibly answer because they didn’t mean anything, and anyway, the fact was, he didn’t feel bad about what had happened, how could he? It was meant to happen. Benjamin Tooth had hidden the key in the bird for the person who was clever enough to find it. Or the person who was stupid enough to fall over and discover it by accident.

 

Asa did a good job of pretending to be sorry about the incident and found himself agreeing to help out at the library, unpaid, for the rest of the week.

This was perfect as far as he was concerned; if the trunk was still in existence it would most likely be in the library, where it was left. If it was as big and cumbersome as the book had described then the furthest they would have taken it would be the library basement. It had to be down there, and Asa’s ‘community service’ was the ideal way of gaining access.

The next morning Asa turned up at the library to find Mr Trap in charge again. As he got to know him a bit better Asa found that Mr Trap wasn’t as annoying as he had first thought. He was far worse – and kept adding to the reasons not to like him. One of those reasons was the endless mugs of tea that he drank. Not normal tea but some foul herbal concoction that smelled like stewed bathmats. Asa overheard him telling an old, uninterested gentleman that the tea helped his blood pressure.

Asa soon discovered that there were really only two jobs to do in the library: stamping outgoing books, and putting the incoming ones back on the shelves. Mr Trap, obviously, did the stamping (it gave him a feeling of power) which left Asa to replace the returns. It was a mindless, repetitive task but Asa didn’t really care, he quite liked mindless, repetitive tasks, they allowed him to think about other things. Right now, for example, he was trying to think of a way or an excuse to get down to the library basement.

Just before lunch Asa came across a large cardboard box of old and damaged books so he took them to Mr Trap.

‘Shall I take these down to the cellar?’ he asked as innocently as he could manage. Trap looked over his bifocal glasses.

‘They’re to be thrown away,’ he said.

Asa was surprised. ‘Thrown away?’

‘Yes. That’s right. Thrown away,’ Mr Trap said, speaking to Asa as if to an imbecile.

‘But I didn’t think old books got thrown away. I thought they got stored somewhere. Like in the cellar.’

Mr Trap stepped up the sarcasm.

‘Exactly which
cellar
are you referring to?’

‘The cellar? The basement where you keep the books?’

‘We tend to keep the books on the shelves so that people can read them.’

‘You mean there isn’t a basement storeroom?’

‘No.’

‘“No” that’s not what you meant? Or “no” there isn’t a cellar?’

‘“No” there isn’t a cellar.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

The librarian nearly spat out his tea.

‘You don’t believe me?’ he spluttered, unable to think of anything sarcastic to say.

‘There must be a basement or something! All old buildings have a basement.’

Trap made a wide, sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘If you can find one, you can help yourself to all the treasure you find therein. But please try not to disturb the other readers.’

Asa spent the rest of the day replacing books on shelves with the silver key nestled in his pocket. He secretly tried it in any lock or keyhole he found but without much hope and without any results.

He was stumped, the library cellar, he now realised, had been his only idea. With two more days of his punishment to serve and the biology field trip starting the day after it did not look like he would get any time to himself for a while.

*

But the very next morning as he left the house Asa intercepted the postman and took the mail from him. Amongst the other letters was one addressed to his parents that he instantly recognised as being from school. There were no outward signs but he knew the envelopes they used and the strange sense of foreboding that accompanied them. He opened the letter on the way into town and was delighted to read that there would be no classes for another week as essential repair work was carried out and that, as such, all school trips were postponed until further notice, including Asa’s biology field trip.

*

Mrs Fields was back at the library, which was a breath of fresh air not least because she didn’t drink smelly tea. She, as always, was very up for talking and soon confirmed what Asa hoped Mr Trap had been lying about; that there was no cellar under the library building.

He decided to tell the old lady the truth about wanting to find the trunk and asked her if she had any ideas where it might be.

‘I don’t think it’s still around, dear,’ she said looking sorry, ‘unless they have it locked away somewhere in the council building. But Benjamin Tooth was seen as a madman so I think they probably disposed of it not long after it was left.’

Well, that’s that, thought Asa and reluctantly accepted that the lost trunk was well and truly lost.

The next day Asa’s legs were recovered enough to cycle into town but he met Mrs Fields getting off the bus and walked the last bit with her.

‘I tried to phone you last night,’ she said, ‘but the phone lines were down again.’

‘What about?’ he asked.

‘About something the workmen found after you left yesterday, something I think you will be interested in. With the Mereton Warbler display gone there was no use for the wooden plinth it stood on so we decided to get rid of it to make more space in the entrance. Well, it seems the pedestal is fixed into the floor. It seems it was constructed on the spot … around something. They think there’s something hidden inside it.’

‘What do you mean “think”? Didn’t they find out?’

‘Well, it was closing time so they’re coming back this morning to have another look.’

By then Asa and Mrs Fields were approaching the library and he ran ahead and up the steps into the entrance hall. There was the wooden plinth in position but one of the side panels had been prised open at the top and now there was a gap of about an inch along one edge. Asa looked in. Too dark. He was pulling at the panel as Mrs Fields arrived and scolded him, telling him to wait until the workmen got here, before he broke something else.

But the workmen didn’t arrive for hours and Asa couldn’t concentrate on anything because he was in no doubt as to what was hidden in the cabinet.

And, he was right. When the builders eventually turned up they did so with crowbars and made short work of the rest of the plinth revealing what was undoubtedly the lost trunk of Benjamin Tooth. But Asa had never imagined it to look like this. The chest was massive, presumably made from wood but covered in riveted metal plates; a sort of homemade armour plating and on the front was a hefty iron padlock. It was so heavy and cumbersome that instead of moving it they had eventually built a box around the trunk and used it to stand the Mereton Warbler on.

Asa squeezed the key in his pocket so hard that, had it been confiscated, he could have taken an impression of it from his hand.