The City of Lizards Read online

  The girl’s eyes lingered on a little box. Something was written on the lid. “Take one leaf and stress you will vanquish, take three and memories will vanish,” she read. She opened it. Inside were small leaves that looked like tea leaves.

  Thomasina bent down to smell them. “Mmm, they smell like licorice.”

  “They smell more like mint to me,” Ravi said.

  Minerva dipped her nose in the little box. “I’d say they smell like strawberry!” Then, a playful light flickered in her eyes. She closed the box and put it in her pocket. “This will come in handy for something I have in mind,” she muttered, but said no more.

  Ravi squinted at her. Minerva liked to play the mysterious type. Now that she’s found out that she descends from a witch and a pirate, I wonder how many crazy ideas she’ll come up with! he thought, imagining the worst.

  The girl studied the room, as if she were trying to take a mental photograph. Then she said, “Let’s go back home. We’ve discovered all there was to find down here.”

  They went back to the wharf and got back into the boat. Thomasina untied the lines, while Ravi took his place at the oars. They were all so buried in their thoughts that they became aware of the danger only when it was too late.

  Pendragon sensed something was off and started barking. At that point, however, there was nothing left to do. There was a terrible BANG, and the boat almost capsized.

  “The Terror of the Seas!” Ravi yelled. “It’s attacking us!”

  The water around the small boat gurgled as if they were sitting on top of an erupting volcano. Afraid to drop them, Ravi squeezed the oars. He closed his eyes: he didn’t want to see a giant octopus or a crab-shaped sea creature take aim at them.

  The boat bobbed and shook so violently that it looked like a nutshell at the mercy of a storm.

  The boy squeezed his eyes even tighter. That’s it. We’re done for! he thought. A moment later, though, the water calmed again. “What’s going on?” he asked, keeping his eyes closed. In answer, he was hit in the face by a spray of water. Then he heard someone giggle. “Wh-what …” he cried, opening his eyes wide. His words, however, died on his lips.

  “Surprise!” Minerva said.

  “Look what it is!” Thomasina exclaimed.

  A long, shiny snout popped up next to their boat. The creature’s mouth was opened as if it were smiling over a successful prank.

  “Whoa! It’s a-a wh-whale!” Ravi cried out, amazed.

  “That’s right! It’s a calf, a baby,” said Thomasina.

  Another spray hit Ravi in the face. It seemed like the young whale was trying to introduce itself. The water came from the blowhole at the top of its head.

  “Hey!” the boy exclaimed. “Enough already!”

  The calf wasn’t through, though. It was enjoying some sort of game. It sprung out of the water and dove down again. It reappeared soon after with another spectacular leap that drenched the sailors, including Pendragon, who barked his discontent.

  Ravi wiped the soaked hair off his face. “What’s a whale doing down here?” he asked, amazed.

  Just as if it had understood the question, the baby whale went under once more, not completely though: its tail emerged from the surface and pointed at the opposite way they were going.

  “I think it wants us to follow it,” Minerva said.

  Ravi was skeptical. “You talk whalese now? Why should we follow it?”

  “Maybe it knows another way out,” Thomasina guessed.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Minerva replied. “We’re at sea level now, more or less. There might be a way out to the ocean. After all, the whale must have come from somewhere.”

  Ravi turned to look at the whale, which had stopped a little ways ahead of them, as if waiting. When the whale looked at the kids, it really seemed like it was smiling, as if their presence made it happy. “Okay,” Ravi said, somewhat softened by what he was seeing. He dipped the oars in the water. “Let’s do as you say.”

  Among jerks and abrupt stops (he would need lots of practice to finally learn how to row properly), the boy followed the tail that emerged from the water. In that part of the inland sea, the immense cavity they were in was quite dark, and it was very hard to say where they were going.

  The small whale went on without any problem. At times, however, it couldn’t help itself and would either leap out of the water or shake its tail. The problem was that, though a baby, it still measured more than ten feet in length and its playfulness caused massive waves. Ravi had a hard time steering the boat so as to keep out of the way of their excited new friend.

  After a while, their guide swam into a tunnel. It was very narrow, but the small boat fit smoothly, even though the passengers had to duck to avoid bumping their heads against the ceiling. Less than half a yard farther down, they caught a glimpse of the exit and of the sun’s shiny reflection on the water.

  “Hooray! We did it!” Minerva cheered, hugging Thomasina, who was sitting next to her.

  Ravi said nothing. He was doing his best to maintain control of the boat in that tight space, but he felt relieved when he saw the open sea. He even thought he heard the seagulls cawing, and that familiar sound made him feel rejuvenated. He rowed decidedly until the tunnel started getting even narrower.

  At that point, they had to pull in the oars and make their way out by pulling on the protruding stones. They were lucky for once, since the tide was going their way.

  Minerva glanced around. “I bet the cliff collapsed here and opened a passage. It probably wasn’t here when the Ravagers of the Sea were around.”

  When they finally got out of the tunnel and into the open water, they were almost blinded by sunlight. A gentle salty breeze tickled their skin, and the rhythmic sound of the waves soothed them. They were in the middle of a small nook between Admiral Rock and the cape where Pembrose stood.

  Ravi finally felt the tension leave his body and smiled at the sight of the familiar surroundings. The wind-lashed cliffs, the ocean, the sky, and the clouds had never looked more beautiful to him. “Wow! What a journey!” He sighed.

  “Bravo, Ravi!” Minerva complimented him. “You’ve been a great captain!”

  “You could even sail in the open sea now,” Thomasina said.

  Ravi stiffened: he was done with boats as far as he was concerned.

  “Look up there! It’s Lizard Manor!” Minerva exclaimed, pointing at the cliff behind their backs. “Once we reach the shore, we can walk up to it.”

  Ravi let out another sigh of relief and dipped the oars in the water. The boat, however, stopped abruptly. “Aw, what’s happening now?” he grunted, annoyed.

  Minerva shaded her eyes with her hand and scanned the water surface. “We’re stuck in fishing nets,” she said. “There are lots of them around here.”

  “Hey! Our friend has stopped too,” Thomasina said. They turned to look at the baby whale.

  “It can’t reach the open water,” Minerva said. “It’s trapped in the nets. You know, I heard sailors down at the harbor say that the nets pose a real danger for small whales.”

  Before they could do anything, another surprise greeted them.

  “Whoa! Wh-what is that?” Ravi shouted, jumping to his feet and rocking the boat as he did so.

  Out in the distance, a spray of water so high and powerful that it looked like a geyser shot up from the surface. Then a huge gray whale jumped out of the water, and for a moment, it seemed to be pulling the whole ocean up with it.

  The children, who had never seen an adult whale before, felt very, very small at the sight of that amazing creature.

  “Oh, b-boy!” an overwhelmed Ravi stuttered.

  Minerva grinned. “That must be the mommy whale.”

  The humongous animal resurfaced in front of the nets and started pushing with its snout.

&n
bsp; “It’s trying to free its baby,” Ravi observed. He stopped in mid-sentence and his jaw dropped. “That means …”

  “That’s right,” Minerva continued for him. “We have found the Terror of the Seas.”

  “You mean it was the mother whale then who ripped the nets trying to free its baby?” Thomasina asked.

  Minerva looked at the calf. “The baby must have found a way to get up to here, but then it couldn’t get back to the open water.”

  “And all this time its mommy never left it …” Thomasina added.

  “The fishermen saw the mother,” Minerva continued, “and mistook it for the Terror of the Seas.”

  “Come to think of it,” her friend interrupted her. “I read somewhere that whales migrate north during summer.” She shifted her eyes from the mother to its baby. “How are they going to do that?”

  Minerva ran her fingers through her hair, which was practically one big knot at this point. “We’ll help them,” she decided.

  * * *

  It was not easy, but with a lot of patience and with Ravi manning the oars, Minerva and Thomasina managed to move the nets aside enough to let the baby whale through.

  Then, they stood and watched mother and baby swim out into the open water. The pair had almost reached the end of the bay, when the small whale stopped, turned toward them, and flashed that funny smile that Ravi knew so well by now.

  “Goodbye!” he cried, waving.

  “Have a nice trip!” Minerva yelled.

  “Say hi to Greenland for me,” Thomasina shouted. “And please, watch out for fishing nets!”

  Even Pendragon barked three times.

  The little whale caught up with its mother, and they both breached out of the water, almost touching the sky. When they fell back down with a huge splash, they disappeared from their sight forever.

  Feeling a bit lonely, Ravi put Pendragon on his knees and rowed to a narrow shore just below Admiral Rock. They beached the boat far enough inland so that the tide would not drag it away, then they started walking up the hill toward Minerva’s house.

  They looked like four castaways. Their clothes were tattered and soaked, but, all things considered, they felt happy.

  “The Order of the Owl has done a great job today!” Thomasina said happily as they lumbered along the stony path. “We have solved two mysteries. Number one — we found the City of the Ravagers, and number two — we revealed the real identity of the Terror of the Seas.”

  “We also saved the baby whale!” Ravi chimed in.

  “And we also found out that Althea is my great-great-great-grandmother,” Minerva added, glancing over her back, toward the boat that was named after her mysterious ancestor.

  “We still don’t know where the treasure is, though,” Thomasina remarked. A complete success would have made her much happier.

  Trying to distract Thomasina from her disappointment, Minerva made a suggestion. “Hey! The last one who gets to the house will fix snacks for everybody!”

  At the mere thought of snacks, Ravi’s stomach started growling like a bear (after all, they hadn’t had lunch), and he took off like a rocket. He got there first, but when he reached the back of the house through a hole in a garden hedge, he stopped in his tracks.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Thomasina, who was right behind him with Pendragon. But she needed no answer. She immediately understood why Ravi had stopped.

  SQUEEEAK! SQUEEEAK! went the boots of first-class social worker Amelia Broomstick.

  “Oh no!” Thomasina whispered. “I almost completely forgot about her.”

  “I didn’t,” Minerva muttered. “Come with me — we can’t let her see us like this.”

  They snuck into the house through the back door. Minerva opened a storage bench and fished out some clothes. “Put these on,” she said quietly.

  The clothes were out of fashion, but they were clean and in fine condition.

  They quickly slipped into their new outfits and looked at each other to judge the outcome: Ravi looked like an eighteenth-century knight, with his knee breeches and buckle shoes, while Minerva’s cute dress was completed by a ribbon-adorned hat.

  Thomasina did a quick twirl: she looked lovely in her Empire-waisted dress. “Perfect! I’m ready for my parents’ ball,” she whispered.

  SQUEEEAK! SQUEEEAK! The boots echoed through the corridor that led to the entrance hall. All of a sudden, Mrs. Broomstick appeared before them. She looked somewhat sweaty in her wool dress, but the bun in her hair was perfect.

  “Humph, there you are at last!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you all day!”

  Minerva gave her a big smile. “Oh, we’re really terribly sorry, but we were helping Mrs. Flopps … she’s uh … she’s repairing the rainwater well today.” Minerva tried to ignore her tickling feet while she made up her story. “To apologize for disappearing like that, we’ll make you some tea,” she suggested. “Would you mind waiting for us in living room number four please?” she said, gently pushing her toward the door.

  There were no foxes in living room four, and the furniture was even intact, even though the sofa was sagging a bit.

  Minerva and her friends vanished to kitchen number three before the woman had a chance to say anything.

  “What do you have in mind?” Ravi asked Minerva, as she put the kettle on the stove and got the strawberry jam from the refrigerator.

  “Wait and see,” Minerva said mysteriously. She warmed the last of the scones that Mrs. Flopps had made.

  “Can I have just one?” Ravi asked after a while, yearningly eyeing the trayful of warm scones. “I’m starving.”

  “Later,” Minerva replied. She rummaged in her pocket and dug out the little box that she had taken from Althea’s writing desk and dropped three leaves into the teapot. “Mmm,” she said, savoring the scent that the leaves gave off. “All right! Tea’s ready!” she announced, picking up the heavy tray loaded with treats. She served the tea in the living room, on a wobbly coffee table.

  The social worker slumped down onto the couch and put the bag, where she kept her crocodile-leather notepad and Minerva’s file, on the floor. “Humph …” she said, sniffing at the puffy cloud of steam rising from the cup of tea. “It smells like peppermint,” she remarked and had a sip.

  Minerva watched her closely, and so did Ravi and Thomasina, who were still wondering what their friend was up to.

  “Humph, delicious,” Mrs. Broomstick finally said. “Why … who are you?” she asked a moment later, looking a bit confused.

  Minerva glanced mischieviously at the other two and secretly showed them the label on the cover of the little box.

  Ravi silently read the instructions: Take one leaf and stress you will vanquish, take three and memories will vanish.

  “You’re a genius!” Thomasina whispered.

  “Some more tea?” Minerva asked the social worker, refilling her cup.

  “Humph, thank you,” she said, drinking it up. “Why am I here?” she asked, looking around.

  “You came to look at the house. You were thinking of buying it,” Minerva reminded her, grinning politely.

  “That’s correct. You said it’s not really your kind of house, though,” Ravi continued, playing along.

  “Because it’s too big,” Thomasina added.

  Minerva gently patted the tweed-covered shoulder pad. “We were enjoying a cup of tea all together before you headed back home …”

  “To Good Manners Alley, in London,” Ravi reminded her, snatching three scones.

  Once they had finished their tea, they quickly showed her to the door, under the yellow eyes of fourteen snowy owls that spied on them suspiciously.

  “You’ll get your memory back soon, don’t worry,” Minerva comforted her.

  “It must have been the heat,” Thomasina
said.

  “The village is at the bottom of the hill,” Ravi said. “Look for the Fishbone Inn.”

  “Have a nice trip!” Minerva shouted, while the woman lumbered down the path. Then she showed her friends something that she was hiding behind her back.

  “Your file!” Ravi cried. “How did you manage to take it from her?”

  “I just slipped it out of her bag while she was drinking her tea — piece of cake,” Minerva replied, winking at them. She held it to her chest and said softly, “Thanks, Althea …”

  “What are you going to do with it?” Thomasina asked.

  “Well, it was hidden behind a file cabinet for so many years,” Minerva said with a spark in her eyes. “I guess no one was meant to find it.” She tore it up into a thousand little pieces and threw them up in the air like confetti. “There you go. No more trouble from London Central Office!”

  With Pendragon following behind, they chased the tiny pieces of paper as the wind scattered them across the garden and over to the edge of the cliff. They stood there, watching the pieces of paper flutter over the open sea and then head north, just like the whales had done.

  “Hooray!” Minerva and Thomasina cheered in unison.

  Ravi squinted at his curly, red-haired friend and felt a wave of relief flow through his body: she would not be sent away!

  “Ow! I’m gonna explode!” Ravi moaned, rolling over on his back and slapping his stomach. “I ate like a pig,” he said and let out an extremely loud burp. “Oops! Pardon me!”

  His friends burst into laughter.

  “You’ve also got the manners of a pig,” Thomasina remarked. She was perfect, as usual, in the sea-green dress they had found at Lizard Manor along with a matching pair of satin shoes.

  On the other hand, Minerva’s mouth was all smeared with jam. She also had some on the tip of her freckled nose.

  They were all lying on the grass after finishing a huge snack. Their picnic blanket had been covered with all kinds of delicious food: jam and whipped cream scones, saffron cake, and rye bread slices topped with fresh butter and sugar.