Compass of Dreams Read online

  “I forget, Locan. I forget!” she said.

  Aiby’s dad smiled. “And if you forget, you lose,” he said.

  The big lady seemed to be getting even bigger. She seemed to be inhaling but not exhaling. “That’s the way it is,” she said. I caught the scent of banana mingled with rotten fish. “So what do we do now?”

  Aiby lined up some dried flowers on the counter. “We managed to prepare four Happy Flowers, one Remember Me Not, ten Flowers of Boredom, and the same amount of Health Flowers.”

  Adele Babele nodded. “A name for every flower.”

  “As for the Flower of Vertigo, you’ll have to wait another five days,” Mr. Lily added.

  “Five days?” she asked.

  “That is the amount of time the Gardener needs to prepare the emossification,” Mr. Lily explained.

  “Five days, Locan? That’s an unbearably long time to wait!”

  “We could always send you the flower inside a book,” Aiby offered.

  “But which book, my dear? Do you have a book I don’t yet possess? I find that hard to believe, as I have almost all the books in the entire world!” She laughed, shaking her veils. “Actually, now that I think about it, there is one book I’d like to have!”

  “The Big Book of Magical Objects is not for sale, Adele,” Mr. Lily immediately replied.

  She made a sour face. “Maybe it will be available soon. After all, people are saying that change is on the horizon. You know, that the old stores don’t exist anymore.”

  “Who says that?” Mr. Lily asked.

  “Rumors from other families,” she said flatly. “I’m surprised you Lilys don’t know about this. There’s a colleague of yours who wants to open the shop to everyone, maybe even sell to department stores . . .”

  “Not a chance,” Mr. Lily said. “We’d rather be dead than let the Enchanted Emporium break from our tradition of discretion, Adele.”

  “But sales are so bad that business is almost dead already,” she said. “Am I right?”

  Mr. Lily blushed. I saw a glint of anger flash in his eyes, but he kept himself under control. “Better to be almost dead than almost alive.”

  Just then, I noticed that a couple of multicolored cockroaches were falling from Adele’s huge hair bun. They scurried down her legs, then hid between the floorboards.

  “We can give you a big discount on your purchase,” Aiby said, returning to the business at hand. “And if we can’t find a safe way to have the flower delivered to you, you can get it yourself next time you visit.”

  Adele Babele turned to look at Aiby. Adele’s big, white face was as pale as the moon and her cold eyes looked like two pieces of jade.

  “A big discount, Miss Lily?!” she cried. “Do you hear your daughter, Locan? She has a better business sense than you do!”

  Adele Babele reached to grab the other flowers with her ring-covered fingers. Aiby grabbed them first, saying, “Advance payment, please. In gold, of course.”

  As soon as Adele Babele had left, Mr. Lily opened all the Enchanted Emporium’s windows to get rid of the horrible smell she’d left behind.

  “Coming back later to get the Flower of Vertigo, is she?!” Mr. Lily growled. “We should ban her from the store — permanently!”

  Outside, on the chalk-white cliffs, a flock of seagulls seemed to be following Madame Babele’s carriage. That’s weird, I thought.

  Aiby sat down on the counter and swung her long legs back and forth. “We don’t have enough clients anymore to be banning customers, Dad,” she said.

  “We’re making ends meet,” Mr. Lily muttered.

  “And what happens if we can’t make ends meet?” Aiby asked.

  “Everything will be lost,” he answered. “Magical objects, spells, enchanted books . . . poof — all gone! But that’s the way the world goes. Everything eventually comes to an end.” He sighed, then left the room.

  From the way they had been talking, I got the feeling Aiby had forgotten I was there. I felt like a spy. Whenever I’d asked Aiby about magical objects disappearing before, she’d just told me that the last maker of magical objects had been killed in 1789 during the so-called “Enlightenment Revolution.” But beyond that, Aiby wasn’t willing to talk about it.

  “Hey, Aiby,” I said, reminding her I was still there. “Tough client, huh?”

  Aiby turned to look at me. I was right — she had forgotten I was there. I tried to smile at her, but the hand inside my pocket pulling my hand was hard to ignore.

  Aiby rested her face in her hands. “No tougher than other customers,” she said.

  “But everything turned out fine in the end, right?” I asked.

  “We sold plenty of stock and probably retained an important client,” Aiby said. “So, yes, I suppose everything went okay. Thanks for going out with my dad this morning to search for the Flower of Vertigo, by the way.”

  “Oh, sure. It was no problem at all,” I said. After all, I’d only nearly fallen to my death three times. “We should thank Patches instead, though. He found the flowers.”

  “Yeah, the flowers,” mumbled Aiby. “We’ve known we needed them for a week. I kept telling dad to remember to get them for the Gardener of Pages, but he seemed like he had something more important to do.”

  “I understand,” I lied. Truth was, my own dad never had something more important to do. He just did one thing: take care of the farm. Well, he also complained about the weather every other day.

  “Do you want to see it?” Aiby asked. “The Gardener of Pages, I mean.”

  I was more interested in solving the problem of my hand trapped inside my pocket, but I couldn’t say no to her. “Oh yes. Sure.”

  She jumped off the counter and led me to one of the other rooms in the shop. Once again I was surprised how much bigger the house was than it looked. From the outside, it seemed like a simple, small, red house. But once inside, the small space was filled with seemingly endless rooms that looked like they were constantly changing positions. I couldn’t shake the feeling that, if I weren’t following Aiby, I would’ve gotten lost. We passed through a small kitchen with a weird pan boiling on an old stove. From there we went underneath a wooden staircase and into Locan’s lab.

  It was a dark room in a corner of the house with no windows. It looked like a mix between a carpenter’s shop and an alchemist’s toilet: there were saws and hammers hanging on the walls, vases, funnels, stills, syringes, and countless candles of different colors on every surface.

  “There it is,” said Aiby. “The Gardener of Pages. We call him Hyeronimus Bock.”

  At first glance, the so-called Gardener of Pages looked like a small child sitting on a table. As I got closer, I saw it was actually a mechanical dwarf made of wood and metal. It had a big grin, red cheeks, and velvet overalls that went just past his knees.

  Without warning, its head tilted and its mouth opened. “Fraunanken!” it said. “Fuzzlabein! Frallich von Halles!”

  I jumped in surprise. “Is it . . . broken?”

  “I can’t understand him,” Aiby said with a shrug. She placed one hand on the Gardener’s back. “He’s been talking this way since we recharged him, but we can’t fix him since we don’t have the instructions.”

  “Murzen! Hopper, hopper! Vaz!” said the dwarf.

  “It sounds German,” I said.

  “German, Dutch . . . there’s a bit of everything in there,” said Aiby. “As soon as he loses his charge, we’re going to have to find a way to fix him. Maybe Meb knows how.”

  Meb was Applecross’s dressmaker, but she’d also been chosen as the official repair person for the Enchanted Emporium. She was a young woman with a friendly smile who was gifted at fixing things, especially relationships between people.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. I glanced suspiciously at the Gardener. “What do you think, little fella?�
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  “Flock! Dun Grunz!” it said.

  We both laughed.

  “Listen, Aiby,” I said, trying to lift my trapped arm. “I don’t want to annoy you, but I’m having a wardrobe malfunction . . .”

  “Are you really studying the Enchanted Language, Finley?” she said instead of answering me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Are you really trying to learn the Enchanted Language?” she asked. “Are you just joking when you say you’ll never learn it?”

  If there was one thing I was terrible at, it was learning languages. I must have had some kind of sickness, or maybe an allergy, because I couldn’t remember a single rule of grammar or anything like that. Even Welsh and Southern English were tricky for me.

  “Oh,” I mumbled. “Let’s just say I’m making progress. Of course, it’s taking me forever, but I have lots of other stuff to do too. Did I tell you that they fired me from my mail route?”

  “No. And what will you do to make money now?” she said while digging through the papers on her dad’s desk.

  “Fraaatz! Wragger!” the Gardener of Pages said.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “But hopefully Reverend Prospero does.”

  Aiby handed me a label. At the top was a coat of arms depicting a tree with gemstones as fruit. Below that was an inscription:

  SCARSELLI FAMILY

  THE MAGNIFICENT ONES

  Florence – Buenos Aires

  Since 1571

  On the back, there were ten lines written in the Enchanted Language that I couldn’t read.

  “Why did you give me this?” I asked her.

  “It’s the instructions for how to get your hand out of your pants,” Aiby said.

  “Listen, I don’t have time for this,” I said. “Can you please just help me out?”

  “Really, Finley?” Aiby said. “I’ve been begging and pleading for you to learn to read the Enchanted Language for three weeks. Three whole weeks!”

  “I’ve been trying!” I insisted.

  “Well keep trying! And free yourself.”

  I waved the label with my free hand. “But this is ten lines of text! I’m not that good yet!”

  “If I hadn’t known you before now, Finley,” Aiby said, “I’d think you were as dumb as a rock.”

  “I think you’re confusing me with my brother,” I said.

  “Oh, really!” Aiby said, then she bit her lip. She seemed like she wanted to tell me something.

  I tried to explain once again that I was practicing every night with the vocabulary she’d given me, but the letters still looked weird. Aiby just stared at me and listened. I felt like I was back in school again, and she was one of my teachers.

  I tried to change the subject. “I have to go get my bike and head home,” I said. “Otherwise my parents will start to worry about me.”

  Aiby smiled. It was so beautiful and cold at the same time. “It’ll be tough to ride a bike with just one hand . . .”

  “So you’ll help me, then?” I asked.

  Careful what you’re asking, a voice in the back of my head suggested.

  “Not a chance,” Aiby said.

  “What? Why not?! That’s so not fair!” I said.

  “Fair? Really?” Aiby said. “Is it fair that I have to put up with all your lies and excuses, like I’m one of the other people you make fun of?”

  Warning! the voice in my head whispered.

  I took a step back. I just couldn’t understand why the conversation was going this way. I knew that girls were more complicated than boys, but this was even more confusing than normal. Instead of helping me out, she wanted to lecture me on lying, or something.

  “Look, just give it a try,” added Aiby. “Read the Scarsellis’ instructions.”

  “Who are the Scarsellis?” I asked.

  Aiby took the label out of my hand and waved it in my face. “The Scarsellis are one of the seven families of shopkeepers who take turns running the Enchanted Emporium. It’s one of the very first things I taught you!”

  “Oh, right, of course — the Scarsellis!” I said, trying to remember the names of the other families. “And the Tiagos, or maybe Tios, the Van de Mayas . . . Oh, and the Askells — the worst of all of them. See, I remember!”

  Aiby handed the label back to me with a smirk. “Good luck, Mr. Smarty-pants.”

  I pulled helplessly at the hand inside my pocket. “Please, Aiby,” I begged. “Help me.”

  She made a zipping motion in front of her mouth. “You’ll have to beg someone else, or do it yourself.”

  I nodded. “Okay then, I’ll just go ask —”

  “My dad wouldn’t help you,” she said. “Besides . . . he can’t read the language anymore, anyway.”

  “Then why should I?!” I spat back.

  “Because you’re only thirteen!”

  “I’m almost fourteen.”

  “And he’s almost forty,” Aiby said. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “See, you start to forget the Enchanted Language when you get older . . .”

  “If I’m just going to eventually forget it,” I said, “then why should I even bother to learn it?”

  “Whatever,” Aiby said. “I’m getting a snack.”

  Aiby went to a cupboard and pulled out a big jar of chocolate. With a knife, she spread it across two slices of bread. Then she left the Emporium while munching.

  I called Patches, then started walking down the path next to the cliffs. When I turned to look back, Aiby had a big chocolate mustache on her face. Patches started to lick my ankle.

  “Please, Aiby,” I said.

  “By the way, Finley,” she said. Her smile made me nervous. “Don’t you think I look tan?”

  Red alert, red alert! a voice in my head said. Don’t answer that question, Finley.

  “And how did you get a tan?” I asked, immediately regretting it.

  Aiby’s smile was triumphant. “I went on a trip.”

  “A trip?” I asked.

  “That’s right. And I went with someone who knows languages much better than you do.”

  “Meb?”

  “Try again.”

  I shrugged.

  “I’ll give you a hint,” she said. “He’s a boy, and he’s really strong. And he actually listens to me once in a while. Unlike you.”

  I gaped at her. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why she was provoking me like this. “No,” I said suddenly. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You should,” she said, and bit a big chunk of her bread. “Bye, Finley! And have a nice ride back home!”

  I biked home as fast as I could with one free hand, left Patches some water in a bowl in the kitchen, and then raced upstairs.

  “DOUG!” I yelled in front of his bedroom door and opened it without waiting for a reply. My brother jumped out of his chair and hit the edge of his desk with his knees, sending a bunch of papers flying.

  “Finley!” he howled, massaging his knees. “Are you crazy? You almost gave me a heart attack . . .”

  Something isn’t right, I thought. When did Doug get a desk? And what were those pieces of paper that went flying? And that big book . . .

  “So it’s true,” I said through clenched teeth.

  On the walls, where his favorite movie posters used to be, there was a big piece of paper. The sheet had a long list of letters written in the Enchanted Language and was stuck to the wall with tape.

  I walked toward the piece of paper and touched it with my free hand.

  “How did you . . . ?” I muttered.

  As I ran my fingers over the strange letters, I couldn’t decide if I felt shocked, jealous, betrayed, angry, or all of the above.

  “Who taught you those words?” I finally asked.

  “Which ones?” he asked.r />
  “What does that word mean?” I said, pointing to a group of shimmering letters.

  “It means that you should stop asking all these questions or I’m going to smack you,” Doug said.

  “Stop joking, Doug. I mean it.”

  Doug pointed at the sheet. “It’s my name, doofus. And yours is beneath it.”

  Oh, right, I realized. Those were ten lines of “Doug” and “Finley” in the Enchanted Language. And then ten lines for “Aiby.” Now I knew what that big book on Doug’s desk was.

  “You stole Aiby’s vocabulary from me,” I said. “You thief!”

  “Relax,” Doug said. “I didn’t steal anything from anyone.”

  “It was in my room!”

  My brother smirked. “Actually, it was underneath the bed in your room,” he said. “And I didn’t steal it, I just borrowed it. Permanently. Without asking you.”

  That was wittier than I thought Doug was capable of being. “You jerk — how would you like it if I snuck into your room and looked underneath your bed?”

  “Be my guest,” he said. “And while you’re at it, you should tidy things up a bit.”

  I got right up in his face. “It was mine, Doug! MINE!”

  Doug stood slowly. With him towering over me, my courage vanished pretty quickly. “So?” he said.

  I tried to think, but all I could imagine was his fists smashing into my stomach.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Doug asked. He glanced down at my waist. “And why do you have your hand in that pocket?”

  “Never mind,” I said.

  “Hey, listen up,” he said. “If you don’t get to the point here real fast, I’m going to throw you out the window. Got it?”

  I decided not to call his bluff. “I just want to know why you chose to learn that stuff in my book,” I said.

  “Why do you think, Einstein?” he said, pointing at the top part of the paper on the wall.

  I looked up to see Aiby’s name written in the Enchanted Language.

  “Did you guys go on a date?” I asked quietly.