The Adventures of Lettie Peppercorn Page 14

  When Lettie told him he held it over the cauldron and let it fall into the whirlpool.

  “That’ll spread your song through the water,” said Lettie, as the bell whirled all the way down to the bottom.

  “It will?” said Noah, quite bewildered.

  “Of course! Now keep that fire going!” she ordered.

  So Noah worked the bellows while Lettie dangled the tough leather book covers into the cauldron, one by one, until they went limp and lifeless—then she threw them away.

  “How much longer?” Noah puffed.

  “Nearly done. Although there’s something else to add, but I can’t think what it is . . .”

  Lettie ran her fingers through her pockets and—ouch!—pricked herself on the chandelier shard. With a hiss, she stuck her thumb in her mouth, withdrawing it slowly to look at the damage. A bright bead of blood trembled on the end, and before she could stop it, it fell down into the cauldron, staining the water ruby red. The water whirled faster and faster, until it was just a blur.

  “Oh, no!” said Noah. “Do we start again?”

  “Actually, I think I need a drop from you too.”

  “Why?”

  “Think about it, Noah. We have to be in this alchemy as well. Otherwise it might work too well. We’ll stop being Lettie and Noah . . . we might forget we ever were children.”

  “We wouldn’t care about getting snow back.”

  “We might not even remember our plan,” said Lettie. “We might just want to swim around all day.”

  Taking the shard, she drew a bead of blood from Noah’s thumb and shook it into the cauldron. The whirlpool swallowed it greedily.

  And then stopped.

  The two of them stood, looking at their alchemy. It had turned the color of milk and the consistency of honey.

  “It’s ready, isn’t it?” said Noah. He was hopping from foot to foot in excitement.

  “Not yet. There’s one last thing to add.” Lettie reached for the salt pot from the table, turned it upside down, and shook it all over the cauldron.

  “Even alchemy needs seasoning,” she said.

  Noah sucked his thumb and laughed. “This is just like making soup.”

  “You’re right,” said Lettie. “But who’s going to test it?”

  “Me first,” said Noah.

  “Shouldn’t we toss a coin?” said Lettie, reaching for the shilling by the armchair.

  “Don’t be silly. You’re the alchemist, Lettie. I just worked the bellows. If something goes wrong I’ll need you to change me back.”

  Lettie gulped. Perhaps she should have searched the shelf for a recipe. But it was too late now. She had trusted herself to pick the ingredients and mix them together . . . now she needed to trust Noah. She knew he was right.

  “All right,” she said at last. “You first.”

  “What should I do?” said Noah. “Drink it?”

  “No,” said Lettie. “It probably tastes disgusting.”

  “I could get inside the cauldron?” Noah suggested. “Like it’s a bathtub?”

  Lettie shrugged. “I was in charge of choosing and mixing,” she said. “You’re in charge of testing. You decide.”

  “All right,” said Noah. “I’ll swim in it.” He put out the fire and waited for the cauldron to cool. Then he sat on an armchair and took off his shoes and socks.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m leaving my clothes here, so when you change me back I can just step into them again.”

  “Oh,” said Lettie. “That’s a sensible idea.”

  Noah nodded, put his socks in his shoes, and then sat for a long moment, waiting.

  Waiting for what?

  “Do you mind?” he asked.

  “Do I mind what?” Lettie felt herself turning red, though she couldn’t understand why.

  Now Noah was turning red too. This was all most peculiar. “Do you mind looking over there, or something?” he said.

  “Oh!” said Lettie. “Oh!”

  They both said at the same time: “Sorry!”

  Then: “Don’t be sorry!”

  Then: “No, I’m the one who—”

  Then they both burst out laughing.

  For the next few minutes, Lettie stared very, very intently at the door handle.

  “Don’t look!” came Noah’s voice.

  “Eurgh! I’m not looking,” said Lettie. “I’m having second thoughts.”

  “About what?”

  “About the alchemy, of course!” she snapped. “I didn’t follow a recipe, Noah. I didn’t follow anything at all!”

  “You followed your imagination.”

  “Yes!” said Lettie, panicked. “What a stupid thing to do! I should have followed instructions! I should have followed Ma! I’m not an alchemist, I’m twelve!”

  “You’re Lettie Peppercorn,” said Noah simply. “Alchemy is a part of you. It’s in your blood. And that’s good enough for me.”

  And before she could say another word, his feet pattered across the floor and he splashed into the cauldron.

  “Noah?” she cried, whirling round. “Did it work?”

  It took Lettie only a second to pivot on her heel and shout, but in that tiny moment it had already begun.

  There was a blinding FLASH, a deafening SCREECH, and the cauldron tore in two. The alchemy whirled up in a spout, and Noah inside it grew, and grew, and grew.

  Lettie let out an exhilarating shout. The alchemy had worked spectacularly. Her alchemy! She had picked, mixed, and made a potion, and now Noah was changing in front of her eyes. . . .

  Changing into what, though?

  Something big. Big enough to squash her flat if she didn’t move quick.

  Lettie Peppercorn, RUN!

  A Mighty BOOM Interrupts Dinner

  On the Bloodbucket, the Goggler and the Walrus were dining on the deck. Captain McNulty lifted a crate from below and laid a rancid tablecloth over it. The crones sat scowling as Grot-Nose Charlie tried for the hundred and fifteenth time to pry open Blüstav’s mouth with a hammer and chisel.

  “How much longer will this take?” spat the Goggler.

  “Grot-Nose Charlie will have that cloud out but momentarily,” said Captain McNulty. “Else I’ll be giving him a piece of my wrath and the point of my harpoon. In the meantime, dinner is served!”

  “I’ve had enough of sea biscuits,” muttered the Walrus.

  “Then feast yer eyes and yer appetites on this,” the captain said to the crones, giving them his biggest, bloodiest smile. He called Blubber Johnson from the kitchen, who arrived carrying a large tin platter, lidded and steaming.

  The captain lifted the lid and there, on a bed of seaweed, lay a lobster.

  “Lovely and fresh!” he exclaimed. “Still twitchin’, just the way it should be.”

  The Goggler looked at the lobster, her eyes as big as plates. The Walrus smacked her lips. They had been upon the sea for days, with nothing to eat but stale water and biscuits. But here was a meal fit for royalty. They seized their forks and began to guzzle the poor thing, shell and all.

  “They’ve the manners of a pair of seagulls,” murmured Blubber Johnson to his captain.

  “Aye. But it keeps them off our backs for a few moments longer.”

  “Do you think they’d be guzzling it so, if they knew where we got it from?”

  Captain McNulty grinned. The lobster had been cut from the belly of the last whale they had caught. “Let’s not tell them that, shall we? Grot-Nose!” he shouted. “Are ye any closer to cracking that there clam?”

  For the hundred and seventeenth time, the whaler smote the hammer upon the chisel, but Blüstav’s jaws stayed firmly shut. Grot-Nose Charlie dropped the chisel and sat, wiping his weeping nostrils. “I got no more hammering in me,” he wheezed.

  “Yer a tough one,” said the captain, kneeling beside Blüstav. “I give ye that. But if you don’t open those jaws of yours, I’ll fetch me my bazooka. I ain’t never seen a crack that can’t be conj
ured with dynamite.”

  He waited on the clam, but the clam stayed shut.

  “That’s it decided, then,” growled the captain, standing and striding toward his bazooka. “I’ll swear it right now, there’s about to be a mighty BOOM around here!”

  Captain McNulty was right, in a way. There did come a mighty BOOM that rolled over the ship like a wave and shook the crones from their guzzling.

  “What was that?” said the Walrus, bits of shell quivering on her chin.

  Above the Bloodbucket, part of the iceberg had exploded in a firework of colors, and a small boy was tumbling from an iceberg window, along with the two halves of an iron cauldron.

  The crones and crew of the Bloodbucket watched him falling. He slid and tumbled down the ice peaks and the broken spires.

  “That’s him!” said Blubber Johnson. “The small lad with the twig.”

  “Rot,” said Grot-Nose Charlie. “He’s a big-’un.”

  “He looks bigger than ’e did a second ago,” said Blubber Johnson.

  “That’s cos he’s closer,” said Captain McNulty. “They call that prospective.”

  “Don’t ye mean perspective, Captain?” asked Blubber Johnson.

  “Shut yer trap!” bellowed Captain McNulty, and he coughed up a glob of red spit right in Blubber Johnson’s eye.

  “He looks massive now,” said Grot-Nose Charlie.

  “Aye,” said the captain. He licked the blood off his gums and grinned. “That’s prospective for ye.”

  “Thirty feet tall.”

  “An’ he’s got himself a flipper.”

  “What are you talking about, idiots?” said Captain McNulty. He held up his telescope for a closer look, but all he saw was a splash as Noah hit the sea.

  “That was a big splash for one small boy.”

  “He weren’t a boy when he hit those waves,” said Grot-Nose Charlie nervously.

  “What was he then?” said Blubber Johnson.

  They might have stood and pondered the question a good while longer, but the whalers’ attention was drawn to the iceberg as the tip of it toppled and slid smoothly into the sea.

  “Take us back!” called Captain McNulty to Stoker Pete, and the propellers began to hum in reverse. The Bloodbucket reversed away from the falling, crashing, splashing ice.

  “That boy is drowned for sure,” said Blubber Johnson.

  “And what of the girl?” Captain McNulty asked. “No one saw her.”

  Grot-Nose Charlie shrugged. “If she isn’t crushed by the ice, she’ll be swallowed by the sea.”

  “You are sure?” said the Goggler.

  “Sure as I can be. The sea is a thirsty thing. It gulps down whatever it can.”

  The Goggler grinned and wiped the lobster flesh from her lips. “How excellent! That is the last of the witnesses. We are done here. Take your time prying open that clam, gentlemen. Captain McNulty, set us on a course back to Barter!”

  Noah Will Come

  The laboratory slid down the iceberg in one big chunk and struck the surface of the sea like a hand slapping a drum. Water poured in. All Lettie could hear was ringing and all she could see was darkness and bubbles, and she could taste nothing but salt. And which way was up? Which way was up? Oh it was cold, so cold, like swimming in æther.

  Lettie Peppercorn, don’t you drown. Swim up and find something to hold on to. Noah will come. Noah will come.

  Her fingers found the rim of the open window and she swam through. The currents were swirling and tossing her up to the surface, then back down. Playing with her.

  Then she broke the surface, gulping air and kicking with all her might to stay afloat and alive. Wiping the hair from her eyes, she looked for something to cling onto while she waited for Noah—or whatever Noah had become. But there was nothing but foam and rolling waves, and all the while her legs were growing weaker and Da in her coat pocket was heavy, and each breath was harder to take.

  Lettie sank underwater again, the sea churning in her ears and eyes and mouth. She flailed her fists but the cold had taken all her strength. Bit by bit the surface grew farther and farther away. Her legs were numb and gone and she no longer knew if they were still kicking or whether they had given in.

  That was when Noah found her, lifting her up with a great blue fin to the surface of the water, where she lay still and cold until, at last, she coughed and spluttered and breathed.

  Lettie floated, catching her breath for a long time. Glass bells and bits of armchair bobbed past among the floes of ice. Lettie looked at the fin and then she gazed up, startled, into an eye that was bigger than she was; verdant green and somehow shy, despite its size.

  “Noah?” she said. “Is that you?”

  But she already knew it was, for sprouting from the top of his gigantic body was his stalk, only now it had become a fully grown tree.

  “Just look at you!” she said, hugging the trunk. “You’re a whale! And your shoot’s become a tree! Now we can do something!”

  Noah crooned low and swam forward. They rounded the iceberg in a moment, and Lettie saw the Bloodbucket in the distance, sailing away.

  “They think they’ve won!” she said furiously. “They think they’ve beaten us. Well, we’ll show them! Let’s get them, Noah! Let’s smash that rusty ship to bits!”

  He surged toward the Bloodbucket.

  “What can I do, Noah?” said Lettie as he swam. “You can swipe your tail and butt your head, but I’m still twelve.”

  In reply, Noah rustled his branches. Growing among the leaves were coconuts and prickly pears. Lettie clambered up the trunk and into his canopy. The Bloodbucket was only a few hundred yards away. Lettie steadied the jitters running through her. She had to be the quickest, fiercest, and luckiest she had ever been. The crones would shoot their terrible guns and the whalers would throw their harpoons. There was no Ma to take her hand and rescue her.

  Noah sank deeper in the water as he closed in on the whalers, until the only thing left above the waves was his tree—with Lettie in the branches.

  Her hands shook as she picked coconuts into a pile in her lap. And ahead the Bloodbucket drew closer. Closer.

  Lettie Peppercorn, don’t you tremble.

  The Walrus was on deck, savoring her last scraps of lobster, when the wind brought her something impossible.

  It blew a flat, green leaf onto her plate.

  She trapped it with her fork before it could be carried off again. She stared at it with her black, piggy eyes. Finding a leaf out here in the middle of the ocean, thought the Walrus, was like finding a sunset in the middle of the night, or mustard in the middle of a Victoria sponge cake. It just didn’t belong.

  Where had the leaf come from?

  “Look at this,” she said to the Goggler.

  The Goggler stared, long and hard. “A leaf? Miles from land? We must be hallucinating. That can happen when you eat too much lobster.”

  “Perhaps,” said the Walrus, knowing this was not the case because she was still hungry.

  “How did it get there?” said the Goggler, glaring at the leaf.

  “The wind brought it,” said the Walrus. “From behind us—”

  They turned around just in time to see the coconut.

  Justice Is Served

  The coconut flew through the air and hit Grot-Nose Charlie right on his grotty nose. He fell on the deck sobbing and swearing, while the little girl who had thrown it laughed and cheered on her tree branch.

  The crones gawped. It was their landlady, sitting in the branches of a leafy green tree whose roots vanished into the water. And, even more unfathomable, this tree was moving alongside the ship.

  “We’ve got cabin fever!” cried Blubber Johnson.

  “We’re going mad!” yelled Captain McNulty in terror.

  “We were mad days ago,” said the Walrus. “Now, we are furious.”

  “You should have drowned when you had the chance,” snarled the Goggler, whipping out her silver pistol and sidestepping a coco
nut.

  Lettie didn’t answer. Noah did. He reared from his hiding place below the sea and butted the Bloodbucket with all his strength. The ship screamed and buckled and tossed everyone onboard in the air like salad leaves.

  While they were dazed, Noah swam up beside the ship and Lettie jumped aboard from her branch. The crones lay beside her, groaning. The Walrus had spilled tea from her head all down her dress and the Goggler was squinting and searching for her scopical glasses that lay on the floor by her feet.

  Lettie ignored them. Only Blüstav mattered. There he was, on the far side of the deck! She ran but tripped on something: the Goggler had her boot in a bony grip.

  “Just look what I’ve caught!” She cackled.

  Lettie squirmed but couldn’t get free. She shouldn’t have tied her laces so tight! The Goggler pulled her closer and closer, until Lettie could smell the perfume on the old woman’s neck and the lobster on her breath. She threw Lettie to the floor.

  “I won’t need my glasses from this distance,” she hissed, the silver pistol in her hand.

  Noah was wrestling with the Bloodbucket’s crane: Blubber Johnson had made it to the controls and wrapped the iron claw around Noah’s tail. Noah strained and twisted but the crane held—it was bolted to the deck. Now it had Noah trapped, and slowly Blubber Johnson began to hoist him from the water!

  In desperation, Noah the whale threw his whole weight at the ship again. It was then that the Goggler aimed her pistol. The Bloodbucket rocked, and the old crone teetered off balance. Lettie saw her chance, and kicked. The Goggler staggered back, trod on a rolling coconut, and sat down in a heap. Lettie heard the CRUNCH of glass as she hit the deck. The Goggler screamed a steady stream of Bohemian curses that dissolved into a steady stream of salty tears. Underneath her, the scopical glasses had splintered into one hundred pieces, and each piece was horribly jagged and ever so pointy.

  Lettie left her weeping and wailing and carried on searching for Blüstav. She knew she had to be quick. The whalers were busy fighting Noah, and by the looks of things they were winning. Though Noah was rocking the Bloodbucket back and forth, he was trapped by the crane. Just one shot from the bazooka would blow him to smithereens.