“IT’S F-TILL F-TEALING,” I say to Vi the next morning, as I struggle to get my teeth through my very stale breakfast. “Whateffer else you want to call it.”
“Is it really stealing, though?” says Vi, turning the egg-shaped pebble in her hand. “Two days ago, it was just lying on the beach with no owner at all.”
“A lot has happened in those two days, Vi.”
“I know. But Herbie,” Vi says, holding her prize up to the light, “what if this is a real malamander egg?”
“It’s too small,” I snort. “Besides, the malamander chased Captain K across the Atlantic to get its egg back, and wrecked a battleship doing it. Do you really think it would just leave its egg lying about on a beach? Or allow Dr Thalassi to wander about with it in his dressing-gown pocket?”
“No, but…”
“Vi,” I say, giving her one of my most discouraging looks, “what you have there is just a lump of sea glass. A stolen lump, at that. I’m not really sure why you took it.”
Vi glares back at me, then slips the red pebble back into her pocket. “Because,” she says, “whether it’s real or not, Dr Thalassi was using it last night to attract the malamander. And I don’t think that’s something anyone should be doing, do you?”
“Maybe not, but I’m expecting the doc to come hammering on my cubbyhole any moment now, demanding it back.”
“Then we’ll just say we found it.” Vi gives me a beaming smile. “And you can return it to him, Herbie. That’s your job, after all.”
Through the cellar window, I see that it’s snowing – properly snowing this time, with great fat flakes that fall like marshmallows. I’ve got my burner fired up, and it’s nice not to have to go out just yet but to sit instead in the warm glow and chat with Violet about mysteries and magic. And, for the first time in a long time, not feel quite so alone.
“Anyway, I haven’t exactly had any of my wishes come true,” says Vi, looking sadly at her rock-hard croissant. “Have you?”
I glance at her again but decide to say nothing.
Once breakfast is finished, I straighten my uniform and pop my Lost-and-Founder’s cap on, managing not to ping the elastic this time.
“I need to work, Vi. Lost things were handed in yesterday, and I’ve got to look busy in front of old Mollusc or I’ll be for the chop. You should stay down here where it’s safe, and give the whole strange business a good thinking over. I’ll be back around lunchtime and we can talk then.”
But when I get up to my cubbyhole, I find that old Mollusc is already there. He leers in over my desk, twitching his horrible moustache. “Who were you talking to, Lemon?”
I say the bad word again, only inside my head this time.
“Just to myself, sir,” I say. “Sometimes it’s the only way I can get an intelligent conversation round here.”
The hotel manager glares at me, his mouth pursed like a cat’s bum. Then he jerks open a tape measure and lays it across the opening to my Lost-and-Foundery.
“Pah! Too small,” he mutters. “I had plans to fit a toothbrush dispenser in here, but it looks like I’ll just get it boarded up after all. With you and the rest of the rubbish still inside.”
“Have you lost something, sir?” I say. “Your marbles, perhaps?”
“I am about to lose something, yes.” Mr Mollusc grins, and snaps the tape measure shut. “For good. You’re out, Herbert Lemon. Fired!”
And with that, he drops a letter onto the desk in front of me and stalks off, chuckling to himself.
I look at the letter. He can’t fire me – only Lady Kraken can do that. And as Lady Kraken says herself, there has always been a Lost-and-Founder at the Grand Nautilus Hotel. But I can see Lady K’s spidery writing on the envelope. I go to tear it open and find it’s been peeled open already. Mr Mollusc has read it.
I pull the note out and read it myself.
Herbert Lemon,
I know what you did last night. I am extremely disappointed in you. Come to my rooms immediately.
Lady Kraken
I reach the door to the Jules Verne suite. Along the corridor behind me, I can feel the painted eyes of the Kraken family glaring down from their picture frames.
How could I have been so stupid? How could I have forgotten the cameraluna? I reach out and pull the cord, and hear the distant ding of the bell. The COME IN light flashes on immediately, and the door swings open.
Lady Kraken’s enormous curtain-shrouded sitting room is lit with cold light from an open French window. In the window, her back to me, Lady Kraken herself sits in her bronze wheelchair, wrapped in a shawl. Beyond is a balcony, white with the snow that falls and swirls around the old lady.
I step forward into the icy cold room and try a cough – a small here-I-am one.
After a moment, Lady Kraken lifts one claw hand and beckons me over. The door behind me swings shut with a coffin-lid thud.
“See how clean the town looks,” says Lady Kraken, as I reach her side. “The snow covers all the grime, all the strangeness of the place. It makes everything seem new again.”
I make a small, polite noise. It’s a step up from the cough, but not a big one.
“But it wasn’t snowing last night, was it, Mr Lemon? Last night there was a beautiful full moon. I could see –” and she turns her wheelchair sharply – “I could see everything!”
“I can explain!” I blurt out.
The claw hand is raised again, as the lady points to my face.
“You saw it, didn’t you?”
“Yes!”
“Face to face! Saw the full horror of it.” Her eyes are flashing. “Saw the monstrosity that haunts our town with your own eyes.”
I step back, clutching my cap to my chest. “Lady Kraken, Your Grandness, I was going to tell you, I promise…”
“You did promise, didn’t you, Mr Lemon?” Lady Kraken’s chair whirrs into electric life as she advances towards me. “Promised to be my eyes and ears. So, tell me now! Why was the creature at the museum? Why were you there?”
“I-I don’t know,” I manage to say, backing into a table. It’s the very table Lady K uses to display the images from her cameraluna. “That is to say, I do know. I just don’t really know what it all means…”
Lady Kraken creaks to a halt right in front of me.
“Are you always such a dunderbrain, boy?” she croaks. “Surely this means that Dr Thalassi is up to something.”
I manage a shrug.
“And how about that other one?” says Lady Kraken. “The girl. Oh yes, Herbert Lemon, I know all about the girl. Something else you were going to tell me, I suppose?”
I grin, though the grin must look a bit desperate. The cap in my hand is crushed now, my knuckles white.
“So, why haven’t you reported back?” Lady Kraken says. “Something is stirring in this town, plots are thickening, threads are coming together, and I am just a frail old lady with a cameraluna. I need you to help me, Herbert Lemon. I need you to help me before it’s too late and someone else gets the egg!”
“What?” I say, blinking. “You want the egg too?”
I wasn’t expecting this.
“I bet they are in it together,” says Lady K, ignoring my question. “Dr Thalassi and the girl. Working hand in glove, no doubt. A great conspiracy of scheming and plot, to take what’s rightfully mine.”
“The egg is rightfully yours?” I say. I’m still blinking.
“Have you cloth for brains, boy?” Lady Kraken croaks. “Haven’t you worked it out yet? Of course it’s rightfully mine. It destroyed my grandfather, then destroyed my whole family as we fought to end the curse and put things right. It has taken everyone I loved: dear father, my brothers, my sister even, when she too tried her hand at claiming the monster’s egg.”
She pauses for a gasp of breath. Then continues, “But if Grandfather has returned, then there is hope again. Maybe, finally, we can regain the malamander egg and I can use its power to wish my family back to life! That egg is rightfully mine. No one has paid a higher price for it than I. And with its power I could end my grandfather’s curse and set the Kraken family free.”
“Your grandfather?” I say, light slowly dawning in my poor rattled brainbox. “You mean…?” I gulp. “You mean the Boathook Man is your grandfather?”
“Captain Kraken is my grandfather.” The old lady narrows her eyes at me. “This, this Boathook Man, as you call him, is merely the wisp that remains on earth, growing thinner every year, destined never to die because he lost the egg. But with the power of the malamander egg, I could make him a real man once again. He can be set free!”
“But,” I can’t help saying aloud, looking at the wizened old woman in her antique electric wheelchair, “how are you going to get the egg?”
Lady Kraken grins her turtle grin. “I’m not, Mr Lemon. You are going to get it for me.”
