Chapter 3 - Secret Identity Part 3

The Sixteenth of November Two Thousand and Eleven. Wednesday.

Immediately, the golden arrow began to twitch in its cradle.

'It's working!' cried Amber.

It was all very exciting stuff but I was still covered in Amber's snot. 'Has anybody got a tissue?'

Dan handed me one. 'Does she do that a lot?' he asked. 'Is she like a snotty Midas?'

'Yeah!' said Amber enthusiastically. 'My snot turns things into gold! Find me something else to sneeze over!'

Sensibly I ignored my sister's rantings and took a closer look at the Lodestone. As I tilted it the arrow righted itself, always pointing in the same direction. The rest of the cube hadn't changed, although I noticed one curious thing. The writing on the frame now read, 'Country of Origin: Italy'.

'That's clever,' said Dan. 'Disguising it as a fake version of itself. That's a good way to keep something hidden.'

It was an odd thing for him to say but since it was true and his tone suggested the thought had only just popped into his head I didn't fret about it.

'Transmutation,' I said. No-one seemed impressed at this so I said it again. 'Transmutation: turning base metal into gold. The secret of the alchemists.'

'Is pewter a base metal?' asked Dan.

Hah! So it was pewter.

'How do you know which way to go?' asked Amber.

'I'm sorry?'

Amber took the Lodestone off me and tilted it experimentally. With every movement the double-arrow at the centre stayed true to whatever it was pointing toward.

'The arrow's pointing both ways,' she said. 'How do you know which is the right way?'

'Oo, that's a good point,' I said.

'That's two good points,' said Dan. 'Now, I'm going to take a wild guess here. There isn't a play or a Kevin Curtis, is there? Is anybody going to tell me what this is really about?

'No,' said Amber.

We all stood there in silence looking at each other for about ten seconds or so. That doesn't sound like much but you'd be surprised how uncomfortable it gets in that short time with no-one speaking.

I crumbled first. 'Ok, then, yes.' I had already written most of Chapter 1 by then – in freehand in my journal, I've typed it all up by now, of course, and added in the bits that I missed at the time (spoiler alert! I don't die at the end! Shame on anyone reading this who hopes that I do). Easiest thing to do was to hand over what I'd written so far to Dan and let him get on with it. In the meantime Amber and I tried to puzzle out which way we should be going.

'We could split up,' was Amber's suggestion.

I scoffed at this. 'That's not going to work, is it? We can't both take the Lodestone. How would we know which is the right way?'

'I'm not bothered about that,' said Amber. 'I was just looking for an excuse to get away from you.'

'Har, har.'

'Done it,' said Dan, slamming my journal shut with enough noise to nip in the bud any potential argument between Amber and me.

'That was quick,' I said.

'I'm a fast reader,' admitted Dan. 'So you're going to use this Lodestone to find these scrolls that can bring about the end of the world? Cool.'

'Once we've figured out how it works,' said Amber.

'I suppose you'll be wanting to take it with you?' he asked.

'Well, yes, obviously.' I was getting a bit fractious at this point.

Dan smiled. 'Excellent, that'll be £24.99, please.'

'How much? For that?' I think the next category on the dial after 'fractious' is 'crotchety'. ' It's just plywood and string. And anyway, didn't you read the bit about being on a quest to save the world. Don't you think that's more important?'

'I do think it's important,' said Dan. 'I think it's so important that it's not worth carping about the twenty-five quid it's going to cost to save it. Besides, it's worth a lot more than that now, what with the gold and everything.'

'That's true,' agreed Amber. 'I think Daddy's credit card will be coming to the rescue again.'

'Would you like it wrapped?'

Dan and Amber went over to the till to sort out the purchase of the Lodestone, leaving me to ponder what to do next. Why wasn't there an instruction book? It's all very well it pointing toward where these scrolls are but what were we supposed to do? Keep walking in that direction until we bumped in to them? It was only now as we faced this first setback that I realised just how ridiculously under-prepared we were. Cabriatti had cleared off and we couldn't turn to our parents. And there was no point relying on my idiot sister for inspiration.

'We need to go and see someone who knows about this sort of thing,' was her brilliant idea. She had bought the Lodestone and Dan was handing her an upmarket paper bag decorated with the shop logo. It was far too big for the modest gift box containing the Lodestone inside it. 'I went to a psychic off Oldham Street with Louise Collier a couple of months ago. She was amazing – she knew everything about Louise, even stuff Louise didn't know herself.'

I looked toward Dan for sympathy, shooting him my best 'can you believe this?' look, but he was miles away, gazing off into the distance, blankly. He wasn't listening to a word of what was going on, but something caused him to frown. Then, unexpectedly, he gagged and his face went pale. He didn't speak but he held his hand up and shook his head as if to say 'it's nothing,' and steadied himself. I turned my attention back to Amber.

'There are no such things as psychics!' I said. 'They're just frauds using tricks to con the gullible out of their money. Don't you ever watch Derren Brown?'

'No,' said Amber sulkily. But I know that she does because she kept on harping on about that one where he performed a séance. Then again, if she didn't watch it to the very end she probably thought it was all real, that wouldn't surprise me.

Now you might be wondering why if we've had conataurs, alchemy and time travel, I don't believe in 'psychics'? It's a question of simple proof. Before yesterday I didn't believe in conataurs either, and I will gladly revise my opinion of 'psychics' if – like cone creatures - one of them decides to chase me through my kitchen at night.

'I'm really sorry,' said Dan out of nowhere. 'But I think there was something wrong with that egg custard; I'm going to be sick.' All the colour had disappeared from his face and a slight sweat had formed on his forehead. 'Could you keep an eye on the till for me – Gail'll be back off lunch soon. Sorry!' Without another word he rushed off toward what I presume must have been the toilet.

Don't let any problems with the cakes put you off the pasties. They are fantastic, honestly.

Amber hadn't yet given up on her suggestion.

'You haven't come up with any good ideas recently, have you?' she pointed out, a bit unfairly if you ask me. 'I've had to do all the thinking – I'm sick of it. So unless you come up with a better plan in the next five seconds, we're going to see Miss Booty and get our palms read.'

I can't remember what my reply was going to be because at that point there was an explosion of noise. It sounded like a thousand blackboards being scraped at the same time and it was getting louder and louder. It culminated in an tremendous crash as the glass of the front window shattered and a tram – yes, a tram – smashed into the shop. This all took place in what must have been nothing more than a split-second, but I can recall the order of events perfectly: the noise, the screeching, the window and then the tram, the huge, monstrous tram bearing down on us, going to kill us, going to smash right into us.

I didn't close my eyes. I wasn't being brave. I think I was so paralysed with fear that even my reflexes stopped working. But that's how I saw him, before he disappeared. He wore overalls and one of those reflective jackets that firefighters have so at first I thought he was with the emergency services. Then I realised that he was hanging on to the front of the tram for dear life and the truth of the situation occurred to me. Whoever this man was he'd caught the tram, literally. There was glass and rubble and dust everywhere but you could see that if the man hadn't been there the tram would've careered right through the shop, killing me, Amber and about a half-dozen or so other customers. I grabbed hold of Amber, I wanted to know if she had seen what I'd seen. But she was in shock – I was in shock! - and when I looked over to the tram once more the man had gone. A chorus of alarms assaulted my already battered nerves. I opened my mouth to speak but all that came out was a croak, I couldn't form any words, nor could anyone else in the shop. Until a lone voice, back from the toilet made itself heard above the racket.

'Oh my God,' said Dan. He doubled over and threw up.

More soonliest.

Chapter 3 - Secret Identity Part 2

The Fifteenth of November Two Thousand and Eleven. Tuesday.

When I sat down and began writing this account of the adventures of me and my idiot sister I was determined that it should be a no-holds-barred honest and upfront account of everything that happened to us. I promised myself that I wouldn't compromise and that no matter what I would strive to maintain the integrity of this work. There would be no way I would be swayed by commercial interests or allow anything as crass as product placement. So you can believe me when I say that the vegetable pasties from Patrick the Baker are the finest savoury pastry-based food item on the high street.

Despite my large breakfast I had found room for one when Dan, my inadvertent rescuer, had offered to buy it for me to calm my nerves. Amber had joined us – the hideous noise of the crashing lamp post having brought a number of people out of the shops – and we were sat, with Dan, on a bench outside the branch of Golden Olden Times where he worked. He was on his lunch break and had opted for soup and a roll. Oh, and a small egg custard for afters. Amber had accepted a cheese straw but clearly would have preferred to continue shopping. I had convinced her that we had reached our goal though when I introduced her to Dan.

'Yep, that's the address of the shop,' he confirmed, handing the scrap of parchment back to me. 'And I'm Dan Burdock. Who did you say gave you this?' He took a sip of his soup. It was Broccoli and Stilton. That's another reason to go to Patrick's – they always do good soups.

'He said his name was Kevin Curtis.' This is my sister's idea of a bluff. Kevin Curtis? Where did she get a name like that from? 'He's pretending to be an Italian from long ago in a play or something. For school. We just met him. He's new at our school. He asked if we were coming in to town today and could we get this prop for him. He gave us this address, but he didn't know what the shop was called. He doesn't speak much English. Kevin Curtis isn't his real name. He's really from Europe and has a different name. Kevin Curtis is his English name. He gave us your name off of your Facebook, where it says you work selling old Italian stuff. That's what he said, I don't know if that's true. Do you sell old Italian stuff?'

I'd been mouthing 'shut up!' at Amber all through her babbling but she'd chosen to ignore me. Dan didn't look like he had a problem with anything she'd said, but he couldn't have been that dumb. Could he? His glasses had flown off when he'd bumped into me but he'd got them back on now. Sat there, all hunched over, squinting through them with breadcrumbs all down his front he looked a bit gormless if I'm honest. Maybe he took what she said at face value.

'Nothing in there's really old,' Dan told us. 'It's all repro stuff. Some of it's Italian, I think. I mean it'll say “Made in China” on the bottom but it'll look like it's from Italy. Mostly it's mancala sets and posh bookmarks. Let me have my egg custard and we can have a look.'

Amber cadged another cheese straw. Down the street we could see the police and highways van looking at the smashed remains of the lamp post. It looked like it was an accident – I'd overheard somebody say something about recent work on a gas main that had probably weakened it. Didn't look like a demon attack, but then over Christmas my dad let me see The Omen and there's a really cool bit in that where someone gets their head cut off by a sliding pane of glass and it looks like an accident but really it's the Devil. Maybe it was something like that (hope I haven't spoiled The Omen for you. That's only part of it. There's lots more).

After a decrumbing session we went into Dan's shop. He said hello to Gail, who was his supervisor, and then goodbye to her as she went off to take her turn for lunch. He went over to his till which was one of those touch screen ones with different buttons for different items.

'Give us a second, I'll see if we've got one in stock,' he said. 'What's it called again?'

'A lodestone,' I said. Difficult to say that casually. I don't think I managed.

He tapped the screen a few times, scrolling through a few options then gave an 'ah!'.

'”Chianti Lodestone”: it's in with the ornaments and collectibles. This way...' And off he went to the back of the shop, past candles, necklaces, DVDs and other stuff all piled high and reduced in price as though nobody they'd been stuck there for some time and no-one wanted to buy them.

Amber hesitated before following him. 'I think I'm going to sneeze,' she said. 'Only I'm not.'

'What?'

She wrinkled up her nose. 'There's something tickling my nose. Something in the air. It's like smelling something that isn't there. It's making me want to sneeze, but not letting me.'

It really annoys me in films and books and on the telly when something like this happens and the person involved says something like 'oh, it's probably not important. Forget about it,' and they carry on about their business and you scream at the screen 'of course it's important! Are you not paying attention! Weird and dangerous things have been happening to you all day, why have you chosen to ignore this when it's clearly connected!' Well, you probably don't scream all that, but you go 'Arrgh!' anyway.

But that's the weird thing. When you are actually in that situation that's exactly what you do! I know! It's stupid, isn't? But I said to Amber, 'It's probably nothing. Come on.' Even as I'm writing it I can't believe I said it, but I did. I was so into what was going on I didn't want to get sidetracked and I strode off after Dan. Amber came right after me, and that should have been a clue of sorts because she almost never does anything I say without making a fuss about it.

'I should have guessed this is what you were talking about.' Dan was unlocking a glass case that was bolted into the wall. Inside were all sorts of knick-knacks: pendants, brooches, figurines, even tie-pins and cuff links. All mimicking designs from ancient Egypt or the Aztecs or the Celts. Except for one. There, in the centre of the case, as if whoever had placed it there had decided it was more important than all the other items, was the cube frame that Cabriatti had described. It was definitely the Lodestone – there was the metal double-arrow at its centre, dangling from threads attached to each corner of the cube. It looked brand new, like all the other items in the case. I remembered what Dan had said, about everything in the shop being a reproduction and I could feel disappointment arriving before I'd even had the chance to get excited. There was no way this thing was 500 years old. Then Dan said something that perked me up again.

'You're not the first people to be interested in this. There was a woman with a cat in here yesterday who wanted to take a look at it. A lodestone, so that's what it is. I never knew.' He removed it from the case and passed it to me. 'She must be doing the same play,' he said without the slightest hint of irony. He really had believed Amber's story. 'She said she was looking for something authentic, though. This wasn't good enough for her. Look.'

He turned the Lodestone over and showed me, just as he had mentioned earlier, the words 'Country of Origin: China'.

I swore then. Sorry about that.

'I don't think I've ever seen a woman with stubble before,' said Dan.

'I beg your pudding,' said I.

'The woman looking at your lodestone. She had a proper five o'clock shadow. That's not something you see everyday.'

I was thirteen when all this was taking place so it's fair to say I didn't know much about women or demons at this point. But I had a really horrid sinking feeling (no, worse than when I heard they were going to do a movie version of The Space Carpenters and I knew they'd make a right hash of it and miss all the stuff that makes the original cartoon funny, clever and brilliant) that the woman Dan was talking about – and her cat – were exactly who Cabriatti had warned us about. What if they'd come today instead of yesterday? We could have bumped right into them! Looking at this knock-off of the Lodestone I didn't know whether I was disappointed we hadn't found the real one or relieved that the demon sisters hadn't found it either. I turned to Amber.

'Achoo!' Amber sneezed right on top of me.

It was disgusting! She didn't even cover her mouth. Half of her spit and snot combo went on me and the other half on the Lodestone.

'I'm sorry, but you're going to have to pay for that now,' said Dan. I'm not sure if he was joking or not. Because before I had time to shout at Amber or challenge Dan another one of those bizarre things happened that seemed to be cropping up with more frequency these days.

Amber's foul mucus had dripped from the threads within the frame of the Lodestone onto the metal hanging at its centre. Now I hadn't thought about what that metal arrow-thing was made of. I want to say 'pewter' because that seems to be what these sort of things are usually made of and it's a really good word – 'pewter' – but I haven't the first idea. But what I can tell you is that when the remains of Amber's sneeze reached it, it began to glow. Dimly at first, but then with an incredible brightness that reminded me of when they set fire to magnesium in chemistry at school. With that thought, for a second, I believed that was what was happening – the Lodestone was burning up. But the glare soon died down and revealed that the arrow, and the threads about it, were still intact. With one crucial difference.

I might not have known what metal it was before, but there was no mistaking what it was now.

Gold.

More soonliest.

Chapter 3 - Secret Identity Part 1

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 16^th 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