The Adventures of Lettie Peppercorn Read online

  “You led them right to us!” she shouted. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because you have to let me down now,” laughed Blüstav. “You need my help. You need my alchemy.”

  The Ship Sinks

  Lettie was panicking. With no sail, they were dead in the water, and they were running out of options. Was lying, thieving Blüstav their only hope?

  What about the æther?

  She pulled the bottle from her apron and shook it. Nearly empty. She unscrewed the pipette and held it to the light of the burning deck. Three drops left. Three drops weren’t enough: she needed four and a peppercorn if she was to freeze the whaling ship again. It was hopeless anyway—how could she sneeze on the Bloodbucket when she didn’t even know where it was?

  “I’ve been in this situation before,” Blüstav called. “I have other alchemicals, apart from æther, and I know how to use them to escape. Pull me down, girl!”

  THWUNK! Another harpoon hit, starting another fire. Noah was still struggling to put out the other two.

  “Do it, Lettie!” he cried.

  Gritting her teeth, swallowing her anger, Lettie began to haul Blüstav down to the deck. He came from out of the night sky, plucking alchemical bottles from his pockets. Most of his icicle beard had drizzled away, and his hair was plastered all over his forehead. Now the æther had drained out of him, he looked older. His eyes were light brown, and slyer than ever.

  “Tie the rope so I can float just above the deck,” he ordered.

  Muttering curses under her breath, Lettie obeyed.

  “First, we need something to help put out those fires,” said Blüstav, clearly enjoying himself. His voice crackled and boomed like it did when he sold the snow.

  He handed Lettie bottle after bottle. There were six of them in all, and she looked at them with utter bewilderment. There were powders, liquids—even an aerosol with a vaporizer nozzle at the end. There were bottles in blue, green, and gray; in the shape of spheres, cubes, and pyramids. But Lettie didn’t have time to experiment. She needed to know what to do now.

  “You’ll have to mix them all up,” he said.

  “What? But I’m not an alchemist, Blüstav!”

  “Don’t panic, girl. I shall instruct you!”

  “But we don’t have time!”

  And then, Lettie felt the hand of the Wind. It just fell into hers and tugged her toward the mast. Lettie ran there so quick she nearly flew.

  “Come back!” called Blüstav. “I haven’t said anything yet!”

  Lettie ignored him. She didn’t see how the Wind could know alchemy, but she trusted it more than she trusted Blüstav.

  “Help me,” she said to the Wind, closing her eyes.

  And through Lettie, the Wind began to work.

  Her hands moved as if they belonged to somebody else. They sprayed, smeared, and shook alchemicals over the mast. Then the Wind finished its alchemy, Lettie’s hands dropped to her sides and she stood back to watch.

  The wood of the mast began to bubble and bend. It creaked and groaned as it came to life.

  Noah looked over to her desperately, his face black with soot. “I need an extra hand here!”

  “I think that’s what I’m giving you, Noah!”

  Two joints appeared: at the elbow and wrist, and the top of the mast split into five fingers. The wooden mast arm flexed its muscles and ripped off the burning sail, throwing it like a rag to the ocean.

  “I’ve just turned the mast into an arm!” cried Lettie.

  Creaking and groaning, the mast-arm bent over into the sea. With a cupped hand, it scooped a hundred bucketfuls of water and sloshed them all over the deck. Lettie and Noah were instantly drenched, but so were the fires.

  Lettie wiped sea water from her eyes and shouted for joy. The fires were out! She was filled with the wonder that this was her alchemy, and it was actually working.

  The crones on the Bloodbucket had to be watching everything, because now another harpoon fired into the mast-arm, just below the bicep. It made rude gestures into the night.

  “How did you . . . ?” began Blüstav, but he was so flabbergasted he couldn’t finish.

  Lettie felt the Wind again take hold of her. She let it lead her to one side of the ship, then the other, where she sprinkled the wood with alchemicals.

  “What are you doing?” cried Blüstav.

  “I don’t know!” said Lettie, eyes closed. “Trusting the Wind.”

  On either side of the ship, the wood began to ripple and swell. Feathers sprouted from the planks! A great pair of white wings unfolded from port and starboard, stretching themselves out and beating the air with massive strokes.

  Leutha’s Wood sped through the water, almost sweeping Lettie off her feet. She let out a cheer as the Wind roared past.

  “They should have known better than to pick a fight with a master alchemist like me!” Blüstav gloated.

  Lettie scowled. It was just like him to take all the credit.

  Faster and faster the boat’s wings flapped, a thousand times bigger and whiter than a swan’s. Leutha’s Wood shuddered, groaned, and began to lift clear of the water. The mast-arm turned back and waved good-bye in the direction of the Bloodbucket. Lettie felt the ship lurch as it rose into the air.

  “Up, up, up!” Lettie cried. “Come on!”

  “I have to say, this will go down as one of my easiest escapes ever,” boasted Blüstav’s voice over the sound of beating wings.

  But then a well-aimed harpoon shot through the air, pinning one of the wings to the hull, and Leutha’s Wood plunged back into the sea.

  Lettie stumbled into a tangle of old nets as freezing water swelled and swept over her. She staggered to her feet, coughing and shivering. The broken wing twitched feebly. White feathers smoldered to black, then burst into flames.

  “I told you to follow my instructions!” shouted Blüstav. “This is all your fault!”

  “What else can I do?” Lettie whispered to the Wind. “Help!”

  But the Wind had fallen silent. It was out of ideas.

  Lettie looked to Noah as feathers and harpoons fell like rain around them, and fresh fires burned. Leutha’s Wood was being eaten alive by flames.

  “Noah,” she said. “Your boat . . . I’m sorry.”

  He wiped something from his eye, shrugged, and said nothing.

  “What do we do?” said Lettie.

  As the fires blazed, they lit up the sea, and Lettie and Noah could finally see the Bloodbucket, a hundred yards away. As they watched, its engines sputtered to life and it began to move toward them.

  Lettie gulped, reaching for Noah. Just half an hour before she had felt safe and free. Now this. Now the adventure was to end like this.

  Leutha’s Wood groaned like it was dying and began to pitch into the sea. Noah wept softly next to Lettie, and never in her life had she felt so terrible, because she knew that to him this ship was his freedom, home, and ancestor. She felt all this was her fault.

  The Bloodbucket drew alongside them. From above, whalers threw down harpoons with ropes attached. They clambered onto Leutha’s Wood. There was Grot-Nose Charlie, with his weeping nostrils and a dagger between his teeth. There were the Creechy twins, each with a cutlass, a flaming torch, and seven fingers between them. There was the Goggler, her silver pistol tucked into her skirt. Finally, there was the Walrus, slopping tea everywhere and holding on to a bazooka—a huge blunderbuss rifle from the Orient that fired tiny sticks of dynamite.

  “Here’s something Captain McNulty had hanging in his cabin,” said the Walrus, patting the bazooka fondly. “Without it, we might still be trapped in that iceberg of yours.”

  “It was more a snot-berg,” said Lettie, and the Walrus scowled.

  “I believe you have something that belongs to us!” she snapped.

  The Goggler’s eyes flicked around the deck and spied the empty suitcase. “Where is it?”

  “Help!” cried Blüstav, tugging at the knot tethering him to the ship.<
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  The Goggler’s beady eyes fixed on him. “Ah,” she said, with a wicked grin. “There it is.”

  The Creechy twins sniggered and one of them scratched a C into the decking.

  Noah narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you graffiti my grandma,” he warned, but they ignored him.

  “Will ye be wantin’ us to pry it out of him, miss?” the twins asked the Goggler in unison.

  Blüstav whimpered, and Lettie felt suddenly fierce. Her old landlady instinct came back: I am in charge and it’s up to me to sort it all out.

  “You leave him alone!” she shouted. “What’s he done to you?”

  “I beg your pardon?” cried the Walrus, steam rising from under her wig. She hooked her finger round the bazooka’s trigger and pointed it at Blüstav, who cringed in terror. “This man turned my head into a pot of tea!”

  The Goggler turned to the whalers. “Get us that cloud from under his coat, you miserable sea vermin, and we’ll fill up your hold with diamonds.”

  The Creechy twins laughed and Grot-Nose Charlie grinned.

  “Don’t you dare!” said Lettie in a panic. “This is against the law! And no one’s above the law!”

  One of the Creechy twins stopped and put his cutlass to his lip in an expression of deep thought. “That be true,” he said.

  “But then,” said his brother, “the law belongs to Barter, not to the sea.”

  And they both leaped forward.

  Lettie shut her eyes and screamed, and the Creechy twins screamed too.

  That’s strange, she thought, opening her eyes.

  One of the Creechy twins was gone: vanished. His brother was pointing at the mast-arm.

  “Man overboard!” he yelled.

  They all looked up at the mast-arm, just as it reached down and flicked the second Creechy twin off the deck as if he were something disgusting, like a booger. He flew into the air and, with a shout and a scream and a splash, he was gone.

  “God’s beard!” said Grot-Nose Charlie. He yelled up to the Bloodbucket. “Get the crane! Get the crane!”

  The mast-arm balled into a fist and tried to splat Grot-Nose Charlie on the deck, but he jumped aside, stabbing with his dagger.

  The Goggler stomped her feet and fired her pistol, but the tiny bullet couldn’t hurt the mast-arm. It tried squashing her underneath its thumb, but nimble as a flea, the Goggler jumped backward. “Shoot!” she roared. “SHOOT!”

  The Walrus aimed the bazooka and fired. A miniature dynamite stick flew through the air. The mast-arm caught it and tossed it back. It landed a meter or so from the Goggler, its tiny fuse sizzling down to nothing.

  “Idiot!” she shrieked at the Walrus. “Foo—”

  BOOM!

  The blast formed a huge crater in the deck, catapulting the Goggler toward the rail. She rolled under it, clean off the ship, and splashed into the water.

  “Granny overboard!” bellowed Grot-Nose Charlie, as the Walrus tried to help the drowning jeweler out.

  Blubber Johnson lowered the crane, swung it around, and began to grapple with the mast-arm.

  “GET THE ALCHEMIST!” raged the Goggler as the Walrus fished her from the sea. “I WILL DIP HIS FINGERS IN ÆTHER AND SMASH THEM!”

  With sounds of splintering wood and screaming metal, the crane tore the mast-arm in two, and it fell, burning, across the deck, separating Lettie, Noah, and Blüstav from the old crones. Leutha’s Wood might sink at any second.

  The Walrus motioned to the crane, and Blubber Johnson came and plucked her and the Goggler from the sinking ship, back to the safety of the Bloodbucket.

  “We need to go,” said Lettie. “Now.”

  Noah just stood numbly, fires burning in his eyes.

  “Noah,” Lettie said, gently as she could. “Time to abandon ship.”

  He nodded, blinking back tears and blowing his nose on a leaf.

  Lettie brought out the pipette of æther, and with the last three drops she froze the water around Leutha’s Wood into a patch of ice, big enough for them both to stand on. They dragged Blüstav and his suitcase onto their frozen lifeboat and pushed themselves out to sea.

  “Wait!” Lettie cried in horror. “Da! I’ve forgotten about Da!”

  She jumped back aboard Leutha’s Wood and bundled into the cabin. It was full of smoke and icy water. She waded through, searching for Da. She’d never forgive herself if he sank to the bottom of the sea, never ever ever.

  There he was! Still on the shelf above the stove.

  Lettie cradled him in her arms. Her feet were numb from cold and her eyes prickled with smoke as she turned and burst outside, and threw herself back on the ice raft.

  When the little wooden ship sank forever, Noah choked out an agonized sob, as if part of his heart had just been drowned. His stalk grew a tiny weeping willow and he sat looking out at the dark. All that was left to light the night were burning pieces of wreckage that flickered and rose and fell on the waves like will-o’-the-wisp.

  What now? thought Lettie.

  What now?

  A Little Imagination Is Required

  An old length of rope and a suitcase with holes: that was all that was left on the little raft of ice. Somehow, from those things, Lettie had to shape an escape plan, and shape one quickly: she had only minutes before the Bloodbucket spotted them.

  “Any ideas?” she asked, to no one in particular.

  “We’re doomed!” wailed Blüstav. “We’re dead in the water!”

  Lettie looked to Noah, but he just sat huddled up on the ice, hugging his knees. He had not said a word or grown a leaf since Leutha’s Wood had sunk. Lettie was desperately worried about him. She wanted to cheer him up, somehow. If only she could grow things from a stalk, like he could. When she had been frozen, he had made Blazing Pip soup. What did she have to cheer him up?

  An old length of rope and a suitcase with holes.

  Sliding over the ice, she sat down next to him. Gentle waves lapped against the sides of the ice raft. Far away, the sun was rising.

  “Noah.”

  His eyes closed.

  “I know Leutha’s Wood meant so much to you. I know she reminded you of your home and your family.”

  He sniffed and nodded.

  Lettie looked down at the waves by her feet. “You must miss home more than ever now.”

  “Yes,” said Noah. “But I love the sea too much.”

  “I don’t know why. I look at it and I just feel cold.”

  “You can feel the Wind, though. That’s what the sea is: freedom. A million invisible roads to everywhere. Before I get planted in the ground and turn into a tree like my grandmother, I want to see the world. And the sea is the only place I know where you can’t put down roots.”

  Lettie smiled. At least she’d got him talking. “But it must be lonely, always traveling.”

  “The only thing lonelier than traveling,” said Noah, “is standing still.”

  Lettie pondered on that for a long time. “I think,” she said slowly, “that before you came, I’d spent my whole life standing still. In a way, I mean. I didn’t go into Barter, I didn’t have adventures, I didn’t laugh much, or imagine much, or hope much. I was stuck in my inn, trying to keep my Da”—she touched the glass beer bottle in her pocket—“out of trouble. And I’m sorry about your boat, Noah, I really am. But I’m not sorry about anything else that’s happened, because you’re my best friend now, and I’m not standing still anymore.” She brushed strands of hair from her face. “I’m moving.”

  Noah didn’t look up. For a moment, Lettie thought her words had been useless, but then she looked at his stalk and saw that his weeping willow was starting to blossom.

  “Are you all right now, Noah?”

  He shrugged and nodded at the same time. Lettie felt happy, cheering him up. That was what best friends were for.

  “I’m cold,” he said suddenly.

  “Me too.” She shivered and burrowed her chattering chin into her coat. “Now a little fire wouldn’t be s
o bad.”

  Noah smiled a bit and turned his green eyes toward her. “What are you thinking, Lettie?”

  “I’m thinking two things,” she said. “Number one is that we can’t stay on this raft.”

  “Yes.”

  “And number two is that the Wind is being very mysterious indeed.”

  “Yes.”

  “It knows alchemy, Noah. It helped me on the ship. I made an arm and a pair of white wings. But that’s impossible.”

  “It’s not impossible,” he answered. “Not if the Wind’s being controlled by an alchemist.”

  Lettie got goose bumps at the thought. “You don’t mean Ma?”

  “Why not?” Noah shrugged. “It would make sense. Maybe she’s controlling it, from wherever she is. Helping you to find her.”

  “Oh, Noah,” said Lettie. “If you’re right, then Ma never left. She’s always been there with me, every day.”

  “And if I’m right,” said Noah, “then following where the Wind blows is leading us to her.”

  Lettie tilted her head this way and that, as if her head were a cauldron and Noah’s idea had to slosh around inside it for a while before it made sense.

  “It might,” she said eventually, heart swelling.

  “It has to,” said Noah. “There must be some connection between your mother’s disappearance and the Albion Wind . . .”

  “Noah, you’re brilliant!” Lettie exclaimed. “You’re an utter genius! Now I know what we have to do!”

  Blüstav, who had stopped his whining to eavesdrop, said: “What’s that?”

  “Find a way to follow where the Wind blows!”

  “How?” said Noah. “Using an old length of rope and a suitcase full of holes?”

  “No,” said Lettie. “Using something else.”

  “Impossible!” called Blüstav. “There’s nothing here!”

  “There is,” said Lettie. “With a little imagination. Noah, can you grow vines? Really strong vines?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ve never tried before.”

  “Try now,” said Lettie.

  After a few minutes, Noah’s brow was knotted with effort, and vines were tumbling down his shoulder in thick coils.