CURIOUS MRS CRANE’S SHOP OF EVEN CURIOUSER Curiosities was the most special shop in all of London, though few people knew the real reason why. Behind its multicoloured awning and twinkling wind chimes, it was home to the most weird and wonderful objects which couldn’t be found anywhere else. There were mirrors that, if you stared at them for long enough, gave you a glimpse into another world. Magical books whose ink whispered words from the pages and which jumped from shelf to shelf when you weren’t looking. Snow globes with scenes that changed with the seasons and clocks that spun backwards. But what made it truly unique wasn’t something that could be found inside the shop – it was outside of it.
For there slept a young boy with the most extraordinary story, though he had no memory of anything at all.
For Casander, every day was a new day. A scrubbed slate. A blessing and a curse which meant that each day could never be anything like the last.
He could remember the basic things, like his name, Casander, and his age, twelve, but everything else that happened to him slipped from his mind, like mist through open fingers, overnight.
Each morning, he would wake up, rub the sleepy-dust from his eyes and stretch out his legs – with no memory of what he had done the day before or whom he had seen the day before that. Casander didn’t know how he had wound up sleeping outside the shop. Or if he had a home elsewhere, with parents who were missing him. It wasn’t like he had anyone who could help him figure it out, either.
Most of the customers who trickled in and out of the shop thought it was such an odd place that they rarely came back. The only people who took particular notice of Casander were the shop’s owner, Will, and the little raven-haired girl who occasionally helped him stack the shelves. Neither thought it was polite to pry and stick their noses into someone else’s business, so they simply kept a watchful eye on Casander from a distance. He didn’t bother them, and they didn’t bother him.
Until the incident with the bird happened.
And then the mysterious boy outside became very hard to ignore.
It all began on a wet, miserable Tuesday.
Casander didn’t know much about himself, but he knew that he had always hated Tuesdays. Tuesdays were the nothing days. Not like dreaded Mondays, with the slog of a long week ahead, or Wednesdays, with their happy dance feeling when half of the week was already done. In fact, the only good thing about Tuesdays was that Crane’s Curiosities was usually quiet, meaning there were fewer snooty stares from customers and Cas didn’t get a headache every time the bell above the door tinkled when somebody entered or left.
On this particular Tuesday, it was raining cats and dogs.
Perhaps if Cas had been able to remember something – anything – then this would’ve been the first sign that something was going to be different about this day.
Not that it was literally raining cats and dogs, of course – that would have been a worrying sign to ignore – but that Crane’s Curiosities was filled to the brim with people. Usually on rainy days like this, the howling weather deterred people from venturing to the shop. They preferred to stay cosied up at home or wait out the storm in the nearby Natural History Museum. But instead, something was propelling people into the shop in droves.
Trinkets and titbits were flying off the crooked shelves in a frenzy. People seemed to be buying just about anything and everything to avoid going back out into the drizzle. As the shop’s owner, Will should’ve been delighted. But every time a customer came or went, the open door revealed Cas shivering outside.
By late afternoon, the guilt became too much.
“Hold the till,” Will finally sighed, turning to the girl who helped him and heading towards the door.
Even before he had pushed it open, Will was already having doubts. He’d had a funny feeling about the mysterious boy from the first time he saw him, though he couldn’t remember exactly how long ago that was. Will had only caught glimpses of him at first; a flash of a dark silhouette or unusual-coloured eyes peering through the windows. The boy had been popping up randomly here and there throughout the summer, but Will had caught him snoozing outside almost every day recently. It was practically like he had become part of the shop. Luckily, the boy always showed up when Will’s assistant was around, so the raven-haired girl could make sure he wasn’t causing trouble.
But Will couldn’t very well let the poor boy sit out there like a scolded puppy now.
“Look, kid,” said Will, holding open the door. “I don’t know who you are or where you’re from, but you’ve been lurking around long enough that you’ve basically become my responsibility. You’ll freeze to death in this rain, so come inside quickly before I change my mind.”
For a long moment the shopkeeper and the boy simply stared at one another. Whereas Will was about as ordinary-looking as an ordinary person could be – brown hair, a wonky nose and a small smudge of dirt on one of his dimples being the most interesting thing about him – Cas was the opposite. He was a scrawny runt of a boy, with dark, curly hair and grey eyes, which had little flecks of violet in them. He was slightly knock-kneed too, since he was very leggy for his age. His gangly legs were swamped by a pair of ratty jeans, and he always wore mismatched trainers. Today one was bright orange; the other was polka dot green.
“Thanks,” said Cas brightly, smiling a too-wide smile that he hadn’t quite grown into yet. “But forget about freezing in this weather; I’ll probably end up swimming in it first.”
The lashing rain was so bad that Cas had considered the idea of using the street as a slip ’n’ slide, but he figured this probably wasn’t the time to mention that.
“W-welcome to Crane’s,” stammered Will, his eyebrows shooting up into his hairline upon hearing the boy speak for the first time. “What did you say your name was again?”
“I didn’t,” replied Cas. “I’m—”
But just as he moved to shake Will’s outstretched hand, the second sign of something different happened.
Casander lost control of his arm.
The thrashing motion came on out of nowhere. One minute, Cas was holding his hand out in greeting, and the next, he had lost all control other than what general direction he wanted to poke it in. The energy that seized his limb was almost indescribable, yet at the same time, Cas had a feeling that this wasn’t the first time this had happened. It felt like his body was being gripped by an invisible force. Tingling, sparking energy shot up and down his arm, slowly spreading to his leg too, as if something were stuck inside him and desperately trying to burst out.
Behind the counter, Will’s assistant looked up. The girl observed him with an interested but unsurprised expression, as if this had happened many times before.
“I’m – I—” Cas began to say again, but then just as quickly as the tingling energy had come, it disappeared. He had full control over his limbs once more. “I’ll only be in here a minute or two,” he muttered quickly, “to get out of the cold.”
Before Will could ask what was wrong or offer help, Cas rushed into the shop. He briefly met the gaze of the girl at the counter, before promptly looking away.
Embarrassment and confusion swelled in Cas’s stomach like a gnawing monster with tentacles, as he weaved his way between display cases and tables. He passed twisted staffs, exotic plants and jewellery made from the scales of some great beast, but none of them intrigued him. Spotting a quiet corner by a bunch of creepy taxidermized animals, Cas crouched behind a shelf. He pressed his forehead against the misty shop window. Leftover sparks of energy still made his arm twitch – but even though he didn’t understand it, for some reason he wasn’t afraid of it either. The feeling was like an old friend saying hello again. Whatever it was – whatever had happened to him – had clearly been a part of him for a long time.
Why did it have to happen in front of those people, though? thought Cas.
He could deal with being out of the ordinary – he was an impossibly forgetful nobody boy who slept outside a curiosity shop, after all. But if the shopkeeper and the girl didn’t think he was a freak before, they certainly must now.
He sighed. “At least you don’t have to worry about being a weirdo,” he muttered to a stuffed raven on the shelf. “Your last dilemma was probably whether to have worms or bread scraps for breakfast.”
It might have been a trick of the light, but Cas could’ve sworn he saw the bird blink in reply.
Shaking his head, Cas reached out to stroke the raven’s cool feathers, trying to ignore the uncomfortable feeling still swirling in his belly. He needed a distraction. As it happened, two loud women were gossiping away like geese on the other side of the shelf.
“This place is an absolute hovel, Lupina!”
“Well, I know, Maggie. It wouldn’t have been my choice of shop either, but we had to get off the streets.”
“It’s terrifying out there and I don’t just mean the weather! Strange folk in purple-and-white cloaks, traipsing up and down Oxford Street, clearly searching for something…”
“Or someone… Honestly, some of us just want to go out and buy a new pair of knickers!”
“It’s not the first time, either. According to the news, these cloaked strangers have been spotted about for months… Paris, Madrid, Berlin… But did you see how many of them were in this area of London today?”
“Must be something to do with the government. Or the secret service…”
“Perhaps they’re hunting a fugitive…”
“Or it’s a live theatre performance. And you know how much I hate drama troupes!”
Strange men. Purple-and-white cloaks. Looking for someone.
Now, this was intriguing.
At first, Cas was so busy craning his neck to hear the chattering women that he didn’t notice the bird’s feathers growing warm under his touch. It was only when something hard and sharp bit his finger that Cas jumped and looked at the bird. The one that was now sitting with its head tilted, proud as punch, on its perch.
Alive.
“ARGH!” Cas threw his arms up defensively and stumbled backwards into a bookcase.
“KRAA!” squawked the raven. With a ginormous flap of its wings, it took off into the air, smashing a blue vase and sending a grandfather clock swan-diving to the floor.
Immediately, the shop erupted into chaos.
The two gossiping ladies started screeching and frantically waving their arms, batting the bird away from their bouffants. Several others ran shrieking from the shop, whilst a little old man sprinted in circles screaming, “CALL THE POLICE! CALL THE POLICE!”
“KRAA! KRAA!”
Hurriedly, Will and his assistant scrambled behind the counter, searching for something with which to catch the creature. Meanwhile, the bird was now crashing into porcelain ornaments left, right and centre. Covering his head, Cas crawled out from his hiding spot, wincing amongst the torrential downpour of shattering ceramic. He cast a glance over his shoulder to check that the shopkeeper and the girl were still distracted, before spotting his chance to escape and darting towards the open door.
But just as he reached it, Cas skidded to an abrupt halt.
Two men, their faces hidden under the heavy hoods of their purple-and-white cloaks, blocked his way.
“Gotcha,” one of them snarled, reaching out a strong fist and grabbing Cas’s shoulder.
Cas didn’t have time to react. Before he could shout or struggle, the first man closed his arms around Cas and lifted him off the floor. Cas bucked, kicked and squirmed as hard as he could. “Let go!”
“Hold still,” the second man growled, trying to shove a black sack over Cas’s head. Terrified, Cas desperately lashed out, but he couldn’t break free until…
“RUN!”
In one swift motion, Will’s assistant grabbed a twisted staff from one of the stands and swung it at the first man’s knees. He released Cas with a crippling yelp and collapsed, whining and clutching his leg. The second man dropped the sack and sprang forward, but tripped over the first.
“Come on!” the girl urged, grabbing Cas’s hand and tossing the staff aside.
Together, they barrelled out of the shop into the rain.
The grey pavement was slick with puddles as they ran. They splashed around bemused pedestrians and nipped between buses, until another set of footsteps joined theirs. Cas chanced a look behind. The hooded men were gaining on them. Fast. Cas had no idea what was happening, and even less of an idea where they were going. Thankfully, the dark-haired girl seemed to know the way. They took a sharp left at a red telephone box. A right turn at the cinema and another when they passed the toy shop. People gawked at them as they sped by, bumping into rowdy shoppers’ bags and scattering pigeons in their wake. But the girl didn’t stop until they reached a bridge overlooking the River Thames.
Without hesitation, she climbed up onto the railings. “Come on!” she said, breathless.
She leant down, reaching out her hand.
Cas balked. “Are you mad?!”
“Not as mad as those men will be if they catch us. Trust me.”
“Trust you to drown.”
Cas dared one final glance over his shoulder. The cloaked men were at the end of the bridge now, running towards them with unbelievable speed.
One look down at their reflection in the grey, choppy river.
One more look at the girl’s waiting fingers, and the hooded figures, closing in.
He took her hand.
Cas’s foot had barely touched the top railing when the girl leapt off, taking him with her. Wind rushed past them in a cacophony of chaos. Passers-by on the bridge gasped and cried out in shock.
But Casander barely heard anything before they hit the river, the grimy water swallowing them whole.
