Hyacinth and the Secrets Beneath Read online

  But what he actually said was “Jessica and I are getting married.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Well, she and I have been together almost two years, and—”

  I shouldn’t have interrupted. Or if I did, I should have just said “Congratulations.” Or if I couldn’t bring myself to say that, at least I should have said something like “Hmm.” But what came out of my mouth was “How could you do this to me?”

  And then I should have said “Sorry,” because that probably wasn’t a fair thing to say. But what I actually did was hang up the phone.

  My dad called right back. Or at least, I assume he did, because the phone rang again, but I just picked it up and then hung up immediately.

  I know, I know. I would absolutely, definitely have handled it much better if my dad had called back a third time, but he didn’t, which was probably just because I was acting like I didn’t want to talk to him and he was trying to respect that, but right then, I thought it proved he was a jerk who didn’t care about me at all.

  Fine. I couldn’t count on my dad; I couldn’t count on my mom; and apparently I couldn’t even count on the stupid plumber. But if I couldn’t fix all the things my parents had screwed up, I sure as heck could fix that stupid sink, and that was EXACTLY what I was going to do.

  I stormed into the bathroom and was surprised to see a toolbox sitting on the floor. The plumber must have left it there. I opened up the toolbox, and I got another surprise. There was only one tool inside, and it looked like no tool I had ever seen before. Or, actually, it looked like all the tools I had ever seen, all at once. It looked kind of like a wrench, and kind of like a hammer, and kind of like a shovel, and kind of like a hacksaw.

  I picked it up and nearly dropped it, because the moment I touched it, I felt an electric shock shoot up my arm. But the shock went away almost immediately, and when it had gone, I had the most amazing feeling, like the tool was part of my arm and I could do anything with it.

  I turned off the water to the sink, and in a matter of moments, I had removed the faucet. I looked inside it, and there was a little copper tube wedged into the tap. That must have been what kept the hot water and the cold water separate. I tried to pull it out; it wouldn’t budge. Then I gave it a tap with the hammer part of the tool, and it popped right out.

  It was a normal copper tube, except that it had an odd design etched into it. It looked like a rabbit with a misshapen arm:

  Weird. I guessed it was the symbol of whatever company made it. But I didn’t particularly care. I threw the copper tube into the trash, reattached the faucet with the wrench-hammer-shovel-hacksaw thingy, and switched the water back on. Then I took a deep breath and turned on the taps.

  Miracle of miracles, warm water came out. Not hot water. Not freezing water. Not water that was burning hot and freezing cold at the same time. Gentle, soothing, warm water. I closed my eyes and let it wash over me. For one brief moment, something in my life was exactly what it was supposed to be.

  Unfortunately, it was a very brief moment, because almost immediately, my hands started to vibrate, like there was a very local earthquake happening only in the sink.

  I opened my eyes. Then I yanked my hands back, because instead of water, fire was pouring out of the tap.

  No, wait. It wasn’t fire. It was still water. But it was glowing with an inner flame. As it plunged down into the sink, it twisted and leapt downwards, in the same way a candle flame twists and leaps upwards.

  Very, very, very carefully, I reached out and touched it. It didn’t burn, but my fingers started vibrating again. I pulled my hand back.

  I was a little freaked out, but only for ten seconds, because that’s how long it took for something really freak-worthy to happen. The weird, fiery, vibrating water started to clamber over the edge of the sink like a chimp escaping its cage.

  This was not good. Fire burns down buildings. Water floods them. I didn’t know which one the firewater was going to do, but either way, Aunt Polly wasn’t going to be happy to come home and find out I had destroyed her flat. Plus, did glowing water mean it was radioactive? Was I downstream from some kind of nuclear meltdown?

  I wanted to run out the door screaming, but I couldn’t just let this freaky wet hazard keep flowing out and onto the floor. What if I saved myself but the water flooded the whole building and killed everybody else in it? I figured I would give myself one minute to fix it, and if I couldn’t, I’d get the heck out of there and let somebody in a radiation suit try instead.

  I tried to turn off the taps, but they wouldn’t budge. In desperation, I grabbed the wrench-hammer-shovel-hacksaw thing and slammed it into the hot water tap.

  The tap whirred around rapidly and shut itself off.

  I slammed the tool into the cold water tap, and it whirred around, too. The water was off. Now all I had to do was mop up the puddle on the floor before it leaked down into Lady Roslyn’s flat.

  Unfortunately, the puddle didn’t want to get mopped up. I grabbed one of Aunt Polly’s fancy Egyptian cotton towels and threw it onto the floor—and the water dodged it. It just slithered over to the left.

  Okay. I didn’t know what was going on, but it was definitely not radiation. Maybe there were microscopic minnows in the water, which would explain why it was a funny color, and when they darted around, they kind of sploshed the water around. And maybe the tingling was the fish nibbling my skin, like the time Aunt Mel took me to the spa where you put your feet in the water and fish nibbled off the dead skin. Yeah. That was the most logical explanation I could come up with.

  I grabbed another towel and threw it at the puddle, which made the puddle jump out of the way again, so I threw another towel, and the puddle dodged that, too, but fortunately, I was smarter than a puddle of water, and I had planned my throws carefully. The water was now trapped between three towels. It seemed to know it, too, since it started trembling nervously, darting helplessly around.

  With one last frantic effort, the puddle picked itself up off the floor and tried to jump over the wall of towels I had built. It turns out puddles can’t jump very far. It landed on a towel and got soaked up with a loud SPLOSH!

  Well, almost all of it did. One single drop managed to spatter over the side. It slid along the floor, then skidded to a stop, stood up for a moment, and turned back towards me. It didn’t have eyes, but I swear, somehow I knew it was looking at me. (But no, that was impossible. It’s just little minnows sploshing around, I reminded myself. Right?)

  Then the drop turned back the other way, as if it were looking at the wall.

  I followed its gaze (or, at least, where its gaze would be, if it weren’t a drop of water). It was looking at a crack in the wall. It wasn’t a big crack, but it was just big enough for a drop of water to squeeze through.

  We stood there for a moment, the drop of water and I.

  And then we both leapt at once.

  I leapt towards the drop, grabbing one of the towels off the floor as I flew through the air, like an action hero grabbing a gun in the middle of a big shootout.

  And the water leapt for the crack in the wall.

  What happened next felt like it was in slow motion. As I moved closer to the drop, the drop inched closer to its escape route. I was almost there—I stretched out the hand holding the towel—another split second and I’d have it—

  —and just before I reached it, it slipped into the crack.

  I slammed into the wall and slid down onto the floor.

  As I lay there, the bathroom door swung open. But it wasn’t my mom. It was our downstairs neighbor, Lady Roslyn. She stared at the towel that had soaked up most of the puddle. It was writhing around like there was a rabid raccoon under it.

  The funny thing was, she didn’t look baffled at the sight of a wriggling wet towel. She looked scared.

  “Did any water escape?” she asked.

  “No! Not at all! Except for one little drop. Maybe. Definitely.”

  “You foolish girl,” she sai
d. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just unleashed?”

  “Um…minnows?” I said.

  Ignoring my answer, Lady Roslyn ran over to the sink and examined it. “You mixed hot and cold water?”

  “I just didn’t want my hands to be chapped,” I said, although somehow, saying it out loud made it seem much less reasonable.

  “I see,” Lady Roslyn said. “And I suppose you thought we English were too simple to have thought of mixing hot and cold water?”

  “No! I just thought—”

  “After all, why should the nation that discovered evolution, produced the works of Shakespeare, and conquered the entire globe be able to master basic bathroom plumbing? Who would imagine that we’d have a good reason for keeping the hot water separate from the cold?”

  “The shower mixes hot and cold water—”

  “Exactly!” she said. “And you do your best thinking in the shower, don’t you?”

  “Um…Yes, I guess…”

  She grinned triumphantly, as if she had just proven some incredibly important point. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I felt like I needed to take charge of the conversation, so I said, “And what are you doing in my flat, anyway?”

  “When my ceiling started glowing, I thought it best to investigate.”

  “How’d you get in our front door?”

  “Locks are easy, little girl. At least, mechanical locks.”

  “First of all, I’m not a little girl. I’m twelve. Second, all locks are mechanical.”

  I thought those were both excellent points, but she didn’t bother responding to either of them. “Have you had your kettle read recently?”

  “My kettle?”

  She sighed. “Yes, your kettle. To boil water in? To make tea?”

  “Oh! You want to read my tea leaves? I don’t—”

  “Nonsense,” Lady Roslyn said. “Only superstitious idiots read tea leaves. They change with every cup, don’t they?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And do you suppose your fate changes that often? Awfully convenient, wouldn’t it be? ‘Oh, dear, I’ve just been convicted of murder and I’m about to head to the gallows. Let me just drink a different cup of tea, and suddenly I’ll be king of Sweden.’ Poppycock. Now, where’s your kettle?”

  “It’s in the kitchen, but—”

  Before I could finish the sentence, she had swept out of the room. I followed her into the kitchen, where she picked up the electric kettle on Aunt Polly’s counter. She flipped up the lid and peered in. I looked over her shoulder, but there wasn’t much to see—just a pattern of white curves on the bottom of the kettle, left behind when the water had been poured out.

  At least, that’s what I thought it was. To Lady Roslyn, it must have seemed a lot scarier, because when she looked up at me, there was fear in her eyes. “Good God,” she murmured. “Sweet God in Heaven, have mercy on us all.”

  She kept staring at me. Finally, just to break the silence, I said the only thing I could think of, which was “It’s not actually my teakettle. My aunt is letting us stay.”

  “I see. And this aunt said you should make yourself at home when it comes to the walls and the ceilings and the floors and all the furniture and all the plates and everything else, but not this particular teakettle?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Then it’s your teakettle. And you have no idea how much trouble you’re in. How much trouble we’re all in.”

  “I don’t underst—”

  “How many rivers are under London?”

  I actually knew the answer to this one. “I read that in a history book my grandmother gave me. There are a dozen or so rivers. They used to be above the ground, but—”

  “A dozen? Pah. There are nine that matter. And by now, that drop of water you so carelessly lost could be in any one of them. And we are going to have to find it and get it back.”

  I was getting pretty tired of being interrupted. I decided that my best chance to finish a sentence was to try one that consisted of a single word: “Why?”

  “Because if we don’t get it back, it will mean the end of civilization. Every one of those rivers is—”

  This time, it was Lady Roslyn who got interrupted, because somebody started knocking loudly on the front door. Whoever it was called out, “Postman. Sign for a parcel?”

  Well, actually, they said, “Possssssssstman. Sssssssign for a parsssssel?” I thought the way they stretched out the Ss was a little weird—but Lady Roslyn seemed to find it much worse. She looked even more terrified.

  “The Saltpetre Men!” she cried out. “They’ve found us already. We’ll have to run.”

  I tried to stay calm. After all, this was a woman who’d just been frightened by a teakettle. I did not exactly have full confidence in her risk-assessment skills.

  There was another loud knock on the door, which made us both jump. “Posssssssstman. Ssssssign for a parssssel?”

  Lady Roslyn shook her head frantically. I hesitated. Should I listen to her?

  But then she said, “Where does your mother keep her cleaning supplies?” and when I pointed under the sink, she pulled open the cabinet there and started rummaging through it frantically.

  Okay, I thought. Question answered. She’s crazy.

  I went to the front door and opened it.

  And I immediately wished I hadn’t.

  Standing in the hallway was a shambling, stinking monstrosity. It was wearing the red uniform the postman usually wore, but there wasn’t much else human about it. It must have been seven feet tall. It had a perfect red circle running all the way around its bald head, but other than that, its skin was lumpy and pale gray with white drippings that looked like bird poop. In place of eyes, it had two bits of glittering rock, like the mica chips my aunt Rainey had once given me.

  The whole thing looked like somebody had dug up the dirt underneath a pigeon-filled tree and poured it into a Royal Mail uniform and brought it to life and aimed it at me.

  When Grandma’s words had changed in the book she’d given me, I’d figured it was just my memory playing tricks. When a glowing drop of water ran away from me, I’d convinced myself it was just radioactive minnows. But there was no scientific explanation possible for this mushy, smelly monster. It was magic. That meant everything I had believed about how the world worked was wrong.

  I stumbled back in horror. The monster took a step forwards and lifted up its arm, which bent in a bunch of places no arm should ever bend. For a moment, I thought it was going to grab me, and I held up my hands to protect myself—

  —but it just held out a clipboard. “Ssssssssignature, pleassse,” it burbled.

  Since my hands were already up, I took the clipboard. There was an old-fashioned parchment attached to it, with an elegantly calligraphed message:

  I, Hyacinth Hayward, do hereby pledge to return the lost drop of water to the nearest Royal Mail office by midnight, on pain of death. (Visit our website to find a Royal Mail office conveniently near you!)

  Since the clipboard was the only weapon I had at hand, I threw it at the Saltpetre Man. A corner of it sank into the monster’s forehead and just stayed there. The Saltpetre Man didn’t seem to notice. “Sssssssignature, pleasssssse.”

  Wait. Was there an echo in the hall? I craned my head to the side, looking past the monster’s bulk.

  It was no echo. There were a dozen other Saltpetre Men behind it, all burbling, “Sssssignature, pleassssse.”

  Run, I thought, but my legs wouldn’t move.

  “Have no fear,” whispered Lady Roslyn’s voice in my ear. “There are only two things that can hurt a Saltpetre Man, and one of them is ammonia.”

  I got control of my muscles enough to turn my head and look back at her. She was clutching a bottle of window cleaner. With a gleeful cackle, she pointed at the closest creature and squeezed the trigger frantically, filling the air with mist.

  Nothing happened.

  I tried to talk, but no words came
out. All I could do was point a trembling finger at the little label on the environmentally friendly window cleaner Mom insisted on buying: MADE WITH PLANT-BASED CLEANERS. AMMONIA-FREE!

  Finally, I got a word out. And that word was “RUN!!!”

  I ducked under the Saltpetre Man’s arm. He swatted at me, but he moved so slowly that I could dodge him. Behind him, the others started bunching together to block me, but they were slow enough that I managed to dive between them.

  As I did, I brushed against one of their legs and shuddered. It was slimy, but with a weird warmth. I was so freaked out that I stumbled a little, which gave it enough time to reach down and grab my arm. Its touch was wet and slippery and muddy, and when I jerked my hand back, its fingers crumbled slightly around the edges, which was absolutely disgusting, but it let me break free.

  I caught my balance and ran down the steps, with Lady Roslyn close behind me.

  We made it to the foyer and out the door and we were half a block away before they even lumbered out of the building.

  I stood there, bent over, trying to catch my breath. When I straightened up, I noticed that Lady Roslyn didn’t even seem winded. That was a little weird, but it wasn’t even in the top ten weirdest things that had happened to me that day.

  Fortunately, it seemed like we could both outrun the Saltpetre Men, whatever they were, so everything was going to be okay. We’d just run a few more blocks and lose them, and then I’d forget I had ever seen glowing water, and everything would be back to normal.

  As I was thinking that, a cab pulled up in front of our building. Mom got out. Instead of noticing the gigantic mud monsters standing three feet behind her, she noticed me and waved cheerfully.

  “MOM!” I yelled, running towards her. “Watch out for—”

  “Mrrrghmrrgh,” Mom said as one of the monsters clamped a crumbling hand over her mouth. She struggled frantically, but she might as well have been wrestling a mountain. The Saltpetre Man picked her up and threw her into the back of a Royal Mail van that had parked nearby, as the other Saltpetre Men climbed into the front.