Bookweirder (9 page)

“Then someone else must have brought you here,” Todd declared, as if that were the end of it.

Norman leaned over the edge of the desk and stared. “Did you do it?” he demanded.

“I doubt it,” Todd replied, unperturbed.

As usual, the man’s attitude was testing Norman’s patience. “What do you mean you doubt it? Why don’t you ever answer a question simply?”

“I am a lawyer, after all,” he replied with a smile.

“And a fox and … and sometimes a librarian.” Norman sputtered. He took a deep breath and changed his tack. “I saw Malcolm here. Did you know he was here? Did you bring him?” He watched for a flicker in Todd’s eyes, a twitch in his sideburns, but the lawyer was inscrutable.

“Perhaps the young king brought himself here. He was becoming something of a bookworm.”

The lawyer and former fox abbot didn’t seem at all surprised to hear that Malcolm was here in London.

“You’re saying
he
ate some of the Intrepids book?” Norman asked, incredulous. “How would an Intrepids book get there in
his
book? That makes no sense at all.”

“I’m not suggesting anything of the sort,” Todd protested, “but if, as you say, the stoat is here, then it can only be the bookweird at work. There are ways into the bookweird other than that nasty little consumption
ingresso
of yours.”

Norman ignored the comment about his
ingresso
. The man he knew as Fuchs had told him there were other ways to get into books, but as usual he hadn’t explained them.

“But he’s been caught and injured, probably by the same poacher George was telling you about.” Norman pounded his fist on the desk. On television this was the sort of thing that got a lawyer’s attention. Todd did look a little shocked, or at least offended, as he reordered the papers that Norman had disturbed.

“Then you’d better stick with George,” he replied. “If I remember my Intrepids books correctly, he rarely stays out of trouble, but he usually stumbles onto a solution.”

Norman just stared at him. As usual, he felt that there was a lot he wasn’t saying. As if to illustrate the point, the lawyer now opened a drawer in his desk and removed a small leather change purse.

“You’ll be needing this,” he said, sliding it across the desk towards Norman. When the boy looked up questioningly, the lawyer finished his sentence with a small smile: “For train fare.”

A
t midnight Norman was sipping warm tea from a Thermos cup while he lay behind the fortifications of the Kelmsworth Folly and surveyed the forest edge through the lens of George’s brass telescope. It didn’t seem at all strange to be sitting there next to a dozing George Kelmsworth and the dog, Nelson. It felt strangely normal, and that was possibly more disturbing. Not believing in the bookweird had been difficult for Norman. It had made him anxious. His experiences in Undergrowth and in the horse book
Fortune’s Foal
had been so real, it had been a struggle to convince himself that they were dreams. So though this morning when he’d woken up the last place he’d have expected to be by evening was at the top of the Kelmsworth Folly on the watch for poachers, there was really no place he’d rather have been.

If Malcolm was in trouble, then Norman needed to be here right now. Malcolm was no ordinary talking medieval stoat prince. Malcolm was Norman’s friend. In Undergrowth, Norman had saved Malcolm from a raven ambush. He had carried him in a sling across his chest for days as the little stoat recovered. It sent a rush of protectiveness through him as he recalled the warmth of the animal’s body and the beating of his tiny heart against his own. Norman had never felt that connected to any human person. Their experience in
the forest had bound them together. They had fought together and fled for their lives together.

When wolf assassins pursued them, it was Malcolm who got them through it. The stoat prince had always been sure that they would make it out of the wolf lands, and that if it came to a fight, his arrows would settle the matter. He was smarter and funnier and better company than any human friend Norman had ever had, and if he was lying now on the floor of a cage injured or sick, Norman had something to say about it.

They had been watching for hours now, but each time he felt the slightest drowsiness during his watch he needed only to conjure up that image of Malcolm and he snapped to full vigilance.

George Kelmsworth had made them soup and they’d dozed by the fire in his little cottage while waiting for nightfall. Pippa and Gordon had returned to the house “for tea,” as they called dinner, but the Cooks were taking turns on watch from the house itself. They used a flashlight to blink a signal every half hour from their bedroom window on the third floor. Three short flashes meant that all was clear. Two long ones would mean that the poacher had been spotted and the chase was on.

Norman wasn’t at all sure that he and the Intrepids could bring down the poacher. If the poacher was the same man he’d seen in Dodgeworth’s, it might take more than a few plucky kids, but Norman was willing to try, for Malcolm’s sake. George assured him that capturing villains was something they did all the time, and that what they lacked in brawn they made up for in guile. In the previous days George had laid a series of tripwires and snares along the paths leading to and from Kelmsworth Hall. All they needed to do was chase the poacher towards one of these traps and he’d be theirs.

“What if he doesn’t run away from us?” Norman had asked.

George had replied quickly, as if he’d already thought of this. “Then we’ll have to make sure that he chases us.”

It was all so simple to George. The plan didn’t sound crazy at all to him. Norman just hoped that it would come off better than the mouse fiasco at Todd’s office.

George was stirring beside him now. He had been sleeping soundly, since Norman had committed to the first watch. Now he rolled from his side to his back and was almost instantly awake and chipper.

“Well done, Norman,” he said breezily as he glanced at his watch. “Old Gordon would have been sound asleep by now. Have you spotted anything?”

“Nothing so far,” Norman replied, checking his own watch as a reflex, “and Gordon’s been on time with his signals from the house.”

“Nah, that’ll be Pippa with the signals,” George said, rising from his sleeping bag to a crouched position. “She’s a brick.”

Norman guessed that being a brick was a good thing. He handed George the Thermos of tea.

George took the Thermos from his hand. “I say,” he enthused, “that’s a cracking watch you have there.” Norman hadn’t thought of it when he’d pressed the button to illuminate the digits. “I suppose it’s an American thing. Brilliant, all the same. I’ll have to have one sent over.”

Norman smiled, not wanting to burst his bubble.

“I’ll take over now,” George declared, placing the empty Thermos aside. “I’ll wake you in a few hours.”

Norman still had not removed the telescope from his eye. He did not want to miss anything.

George didn’t insist. “I should like to go to America when all this business here is done with,” the older boy continued. Something about his tone at this moment was less convincing than before. The confidence and maturity for a moment became bluster. George was just a kid, too. And Norman realized that “this business here” wasn’t just the poacher or even the legal issues about the house. This was happening only because his father was in prison. Norman wanted to say something, but he had no idea what.

A movement at the edge of the forest stopped that thought dead. “George,” he whispered hoarsely, “there’s something there.” He handed the telescope over and pointed towards the treeline.

George raised the telescope to his eye and trained it on the spot
Norman had indicated. He was silent and still for a moment, adjusting the scope for a better look before announcing, “That’s our man, all right. Send the signal.”

Within moments they were in motion. Norman and George hurried down the Rook’s spiral staircase and sprinted across the lawn in the shadow of a low stone wall. The border collie, Nelson, bounded silently ahead of them. Summoned by Norman’s signal, Pippa and Gordon were letting themselves out the kitchen door. Norman and George caught up to Nelson at the forest’s edge.

George drew the spyglass from his coat and confirmed that their quarry had not moved from his spot at the end of the forest path. “He’s setting a trap,” George told Norman as they watched and waited for the Cooks to come into view. “But he’s falling into ours,” he added dramatically.

He handed the telescope to Norman and crouched down to set up the flashlight on the ground, fixing it on an angle behind the wall so that when they flicked it on, the light would just clear the top of the stones.

Through the telescope Norman watched the progress of the poacher. From the dark silhouette he looked like the man from London, but it was impossible to know for sure. Pivoting to the side Norman trained the telescope on the two smaller figures of the Cooks creeping along the path.

“Okay,” Norman murmured, “Gordon and Pippa are behind him now on the main path.”

George waited, crouched down on the ground, and stared grimly into the dark like an action hero.

“George,” Norman whispered more loudly.

George raised his head sharply and flicked on his flashlight. Its beam shone upwards on an angle over the stone wall. In unison George and Norman leapt onto the wall and shouted in the deepest voices they could muster:

“You there, stop!”

Nelson backed them up with a frenzy of barking.

The poacher turned and stared towards them. With the flashlight lighting them up from behind, he could not see their faces. He could not tell that they were only kids. Standing on the wall, and with the light elongating their shadows, they appeared much taller than they were.

The poacher froze for a moment, staring back at his pursuers. It was him, all right—the man from Dodgeworth’s. Norman gritted his teeth. This was the man who had Malcolm. The poacher seemed to regain his senses, turned and ducked clumsily into the woods.

Norman and George gave chase. They could hear the big man crashing heavily along the path up ahead. Nelson made sure that their pursuit was noisy. They wanted the intruder to know they were after him. The plan depended on driving him towards their trap. Norman hoped that Pippa and Gordon had been quick enough to get in position ahead of them on the trail.

Up ahead there was a fork in the trail. They needed the poacher to take the right turn. Pippa and Gordon were supposed to make sure of that.

“Nearly there,” George said huskily, almost out of breath. “The fork is at that big oak.” They kept running. Where were Pippa and Gordon? If they didn’t spring their surprise soon, the poacher might take the left fork and escape.

The beams of four flashlights suddenly snapped on up ahead to the left. The silhouette of the poacher froze. Perhaps he was calculating his odds. Was he better to face the four new pursuers who had cut him off, or the two with a dog behind him?

Norman aimed the beam of his flashlight directly at their quarry’s face. It was him, all right. The same bristly bald head, the same mean, squinting eyes, the same ragged red bandana. The poacher blinked back angrily into the light, then made his decision, careening down the right fork.

The four children set off in combined pursuit. The trail narrowed, angling down the side of a ridge, forcing them to run in single file. Soon they were all hurtling down the ridge as fast as they could. Norman could hear the ragged breathing of Gordon Cook
behind him. Up ahead, George had stopped shouting encouragement, saving his breath for the chase. Norman could just keep up, but the Cooks were falling back quickly. It didn’t matter to Norman. All he could think of was rescuing Malcolm. It probably didn’t matter to George, either. George had never met a criminal that he could not take on single-handedly.

Ahead of them all, the big man smashed through the forest, his heavy boots crushing twigs and brush beneath him, his bulk whipping and snapping branches as he ran.

Suddenly there was a shout or a surprised grunt. He had fallen into the trap.

Norman and George skidded to a halt. Both boys lifted their flashlights to illuminate the huge old pine tree that spanned the path. The big poacher should have been up there. He should have been dangling by his foot from the thick rope they’d tied to the overhanging branch—but there was no overhanging branch.

They dipped their flashlights, swinging their beams across the forest. There in front of them, lying across the path, was the branch. Beside it lay the poacher, who looked as though he was just recovering his senses after a nasty fall. The branch had snapped under his weight.

“Stop there, you!” George commanded in his usual tone of offended authority.

The big thief pulled himself to a sitting position and began tugging at the rope around his ankle.

“I said stop. Stay where you are!” George repeated haughtily.

The man in the red bandana looked up. His eyes wild with anger, he spat out an insult that Norman had heard once or twice on the playground but never in a book. The poacher was nearly loose from the trap now—a few more tugs and he would be free.