The Fourteenth of November Two Thousand and Eleven. Monday.
Chapter 3 Secret Identity
I usually like to have a quiet Sunday. As a rule I will try and get all my homework done on a Friday night or Saturday morning. This isn’t because I’m a brainiac – ok, maybe I am a little bit – just the sooner I get it all out of the way I know that whatever time I’ve got left then is my own. Saturday afternoon I’ll probably go in to town with Sohil or Kyle and trade in a game or DVD and have a bit of a mooch around – that’s what all three of us did yesterday. But Sunday I like to do nothing.
I remember Winnie the Pooh stories from when I was little. When Christopher Robin told Pooh that his favourite thing was doing nothing I completely identified with that. And when he went on to tell Pooh that when you grow up they don’t let you do nothing any more I remember being horrified.
For a Sunday I have a heck of a ‘to-do’ list.
I have to make sure a bloke from 16th Century Italy gets back to his own time so that he can make a device that will help save the world.
I’ve then got to help my sister find where this device is hidden in the present day because she’s the only one that can use it to do this saving of the world thing.
And then I’ve got to figure out a way to save my parents and get them back to normal because a pair of demon sisters has turned them in to conataurs – creatures with the bodies of humans and the heads of, well, traffic cones.
At least we had time for breakfast.
‘I don’t know how you can eat all that.’ Amber wrinkled her nose in disgust as she nibbled at her toast. Every now and then she’d decide to be a vegetarian and she was in the middle of one of those phases now. To give her her due, she did look properly annoyed at the bacon and sausage of my full English. Cabriatti had very specifically asked for beans on toast, and was tucking in to them with some relish. He told me he’d hoped he’d have the opportunity to sample British cooking. He was overjoyed when he saw they had brown sauce.
We were sat in the cafeteria of the Holiday Lodge Express where we had spent the last night. I’d had a room to myself! We all had. Cabriatti had paid for it all from a huge wad of £20 notes he’d been carrying around.
‘Where did you get all that money,’ I asked him between mushrooms.
‘It isn’t money,’ he confessed. ‘It’s ordinary paper. It’s coated with an oil that dulls the senses on contact. It's then very easy to suggest to the holder that they're holding something much more valuable. It’s one of the first things they teach you at alchemist school. So you’ll never have to look for a proper job when you graduate.’
‘Could you teach me how to make that?’ asked Amber.
‘I think you’d be able to create it very easily, Chosen One,’ replied Cabriatti.
‘Don’t call her that,’ I said, sighing. ‘Even if she is, don’t call her that. Her head’s big enough as it is.’
‘Jealous much?’ she said.
‘Speak properly,’ I said.
‘Can I have that toast if you don’t want it?’ said Cabriatti. Amber sulked and handed over the unwanted slice.
I think we all needed an ordinary morning like this after the bizarre goings on the previous night. When we had first discovered Mum and Dad with their cone noggins we had half expected to have to go through with the whole pitched battle with the green death rays scenario again. But Mum and Dad went through the paces as if everything was perfectly normal. Everything – they didn’t even seem to notice the damage from the battle with the first conataur or that it was still bright daylight outside. It was creepy to say the least.
‘Isn’t it time you were in bed, Carl?’ Dad had asked as he poured tea down his conical face, aiming for a mouth that wasn’t there.
'They're taunting you,' explained Cabriatti. 'The sisters. Effectively your parents are being held hostage against your good behaviour.'
'Turning my mum and dad into conataurs isn't much of a threat if they're planning on destroying the world as we know it anyway,' I pointed out.
'True,' said Cabriatti. 'But never forget your adversaries are demons. Whether they think you will pit yourself against them or not they will delight in tormenting you along the way. This may not be the last thing sent to test you.'
'I don't care, I just want Mum and Dad back.' Amber said this very matter-of-factly. I was surprised. She's usually more whiny than that. But although I wasn't going to admit it to her I felt exactly the same way. The end of the world? That was too big to even begin to have an idea of what was involved. But saving Mum and Dad – that made perfect sense. 'If I'm supposed to be this “Chosen One”,' continued Amber, 'then tell me what I have to do to get Mum and Dad back.'
'Destroy the demon sisters,' said Cabriatti equally to the point. 'All the spells, curses and hexes they put in place will then be lifted.'
'Let's go then,' said Amber. 'Where's this thing you said we had to find?'
'In a shop run by half a man,' answered Cabriatti. 'Come on, we can't stay here.'
We left for the hotel, leaving our conataur parents to continue their oblivious lives. Cabriatti made his plans to return to his own time, using a disposable digital camera he'd bought to take photos of the seed heads of several dandelions. He'd already taken an egg timer from our kitchen and it was this along with the pictures of the dandelion clocks that would form his 'time machine.' The Holiday Lodge Express was situated off the roundabout that led to the motorway than ran past Eccles on its way to the centre of Manchester. It was a ten minute walk to get there and within another ten minutes we were all checked into our own rooms.
I didn't sleep a wink that night.
After breakfast Cabriatti prepared to make his departure. We found a secluded corner of the hotel car park. Cabriatti lay down a circle of the photos he had taken of dandelions and then stood in the middle of them.
'Why don't you come with us now and help us find the sisters?' I asked.
He shook his head. 'If I fell during your quest and failed to return to make the second Lodestone then your efforts would be rendered useless before you even began. No, my task lies in my own time. There are years of toil ahead – it is now time that I met them.'
He then handed me a small piece of parchment with a name and address scrawled on it in biro.
'I have calculated where the second Lodestone will be found in this time. Here is its location and here is the name of the man guarding it.'
I read Cabriatti's appalling handwriting. I suppose alchemists are like chemists when it comes to bad penmanship.
'Dan Burdock? Is this where he lives?'
'It is where he is. Whether he still lives? That will be down to if Lucia and Lisa have found him first. Seek him out, find the Lodestone and save the world.'
Cabriatti punctuated his command by throwing the egg timer to the ground, smashing it to pieces and scattering the blue sand that was inside it. Nothing happened.
'I was hoping it would be a little more spectacular than that,' he said, promptly disappearing and leaving behind a fake lemony scent like you get from furniture deodorant. One by one, in an anti-clockwise direction, the dandelion photographs crumbled to dust, blowing away in the breeze much like the real seeds would.
Amber and I stood there for a moment, lost for a little while in the emptiness of the car park. We didn't look at each other, but if she was thinking the same thing I was the enormity of what lay ahead was just beginning to strike her.
'Have we got time to pop into New Look?' she asked.
We got the tram in to town. The address Cabriatti had given us was in the centre of Manchester. I wondered if it was a museum or gallery, somewhere where antiquities might be kept. We got off at the closest stop and made our way to the street in question. Nothing but shops.
'There's an H & M there, I'm just going to have a quick mooch while you find the place,' announced Amber.
'You did hear that bit about the end of the world, didn't you?' I asked her. 'You're supposed to be the only person who can get this Lodestone thing to work. What if I find it right away?'
'Look, I'm already getting stressed out about this whole enterprise!,' said Amber. 'If I've got ten minutes before everything becomes all about life and death then I'm going to use it to shop. I may never be able to again. And while my dad is living with a cone for his head he's a lot less bothered about his credit card bills.'
She held up my dad's Platinum Card.
'What's the betting his PIN is Mum's birthday on this one too.' All dad's cards used Mum's birthday as a PIN. It was an open secret in our family. That way he remembered Mum's birthday because it was the same as his PIN and he remembered his PIN because it was the same as Mum's birthday.
'All right, all right! I'll text you when I find the place.'
'You haven't got my number,' she informed me.
'Yes, I have,' I replied.
'No, that's a fake one. I didn't really want you texting me, if I could help it so I made a number up. Here's my real one.' She sent me a short text. It read :
'Ur a pig. Byee!'
When I looked up from my phone she had gone. I was about to set off when somebody bundled me to the ground. It didn't seem deliberate, whoever it was was yelling as if they had come a cropper and it was more like they were falling on top of me than grappling me. I wriggled to free myself and my accidental assailant promptly jumped off me muttering embarrassed apologies. He stood, then offered me a hand up which I gladly took. He was about to speak when there was a creaking sound followed by an almighty crash as a lamp post toppled over like a felled tree. Everyone in the street froze at the noise of it and a couple of car alarms went off in sympathy with the juddering vibration. Miraculously, no-one was in its path and no-one seemed injured other than perhaps a few shredded nerves and some upset children. There would have been though if this man hadn't bumped into me and knocked me out of the way...
He was in his early twenties with messy brown hair that didn't look like it got on well with brushes. He was wearing a branded burgundy polo shirt and the sort of neat trousers that nobody would ever buy – a shop uniform. The brand said Golden Olden Times and above it was a name badge that read 'DAN'.
'Blimey, that was a bit of luck!' he said.
More soonliest
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