Strangeworlds Travel Agency Read online

  Toward the back of the room there was a bookcase, stuffed into a corner beneath the stairs. In front of the bookcase was a desk. There was enough space between it and the bookcase for a leather-cushioned swivel chair. The desk was littered with books and papers and a wrapper from a packet of custard creams.

  Gooseflesh rose on Flick’s arms as she stared at the suitcases, the twin armchairs either side of the empty fireplace to the right, and the mantelpiece with a synchronous of clocks on the top of it. There was a faint smell of blown-out candle and something like damp paper.

  It felt familiar and new at the same time. It felt like somewhere she probably shouldn’t be, and yet Flick didn’t even think once about going for the door. She walked carefully over to the mantelpiece. The clocks on it were all ticking at different speeds. The hands of some were whizzing around the faces; others seemed barely to be moving at all. Each one had a label.

  “Cove of Voices,” Flick read aloud. “Aquata Minor. Crystal Forest…”

  She picked up one of the clocks. The label on it read CITY OF FIVE LIGHTS. It was ticking merrily and quickly. It was small, black, and round like a cartoon alarm clock, but so heavy and greasy that when she turned it over, it immediately slipped from her fingers. She scrambled and bent to catch it just before it could crash onto a couple of leather-bound suitcases that were stacked between two chairs.

  She breathed a sigh of relief and shook her head at the clock, as if it had decided to jump out of her hands on its own. She carefully put it back where it belonged.

  “That was close.”

  Flick jumped like she’d been stung and looked around to see who had spoken.

  The shopkeeper (who was, of course, Jonathan Mercator) stood in the doorway between the travel agency’s front room and the back. He was holding a china cup in one hand and a saucer in the other. There was a custard cream on the saucer. “May I help you?” he asked.

  “Um…” Flick felt herself going extremely red. “I’m sorry about the clock. It didn’t smash, or anything. I was just… looking around.”

  “Well, mission accomplished,” Jonathan said sarcastically. He put his cup and saucer down. “I’ve been suffering from a terrible lack of people coming in to waste my time. Thank heavens you arrived when you did, Miss…?”

  “Flick.”

  “Miss Flick?”

  “Flick Hudson. Well, Felicity, but—”

  “Hudson…” Jonathan narrowed his eyes, and Flick had the impression he was trying to see through her eyes clean to the back of her head and possibly several yards beyond it as well.

  “Any relation?”

  Flick blinked. “Well, I’ve got a mom and dad.” And a brother, she added silently.

  “No, I meant to Henry Hudson, the explorer.”

  “Oh,” Flick smiled, pleased to share a surname with an explorer. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Maybe. Well, that’s as good as a no, isn’t it?” He picked up the custard cream and bit into it. “Did someone send you here for something?” he asked, mouth full.

  “No, I was just walking past and—”

  He waved a hand at her to be quiet. “Very well. Now, if you wouldn’t mind…” He pointed at the door with the remaining half of his cookie, before popping it into his mouth.

  Flick stayed where she was. Her feet seemed extremely reluctant to move. She looked back at the suitcases. “What are all those bags for?”

  “We’re a travel agency,” Jonathan said, in the special slow voice people use when talking to children they think don’t understand them. “The best in the world. Old family firm.”

  “The best in the world?” Flick repeated skeptically.

  “Yes. We send you where you want to go.” He tapped the desk with a finger. “It isn’t cheap.”

  The vague smile evaporated off Flick’s face. No doubt this young man lived in one of the huge posh houses they’d driven past on the way in. He probably had special poor-person detection abilities. She shrugged, trying to look like that didn’t matter to her. “I didn’t think it would be.”

  “So don’t linger on my account.”

  Flick still didn’t move. She looked back at the suitcases. They were very striking, but it didn’t make sense for there to be so many of them in one travel agency. “So you save people’s bags? Until they go on a trip or something?”

  “Oh, no.” Jonathan followed her gaze. “No, these are all mine.”

  “Yours? Why are there so many?”

  For the first time, Jonathan paused, searching for a believable lie the way one searches for their keys in an overstuffed bag. “They’re atmospheric.”

  Flick folded her arms.

  Jonathan folded his arms right back, and he did it with a great deal more style. “Was there anything else, miss?”

  There wasn’t, of course. But Flick still didn’t leave. She went over to one of the smaller suitcase piles and reached for the one on the top.

  “Don’t touch that,” Jonathan snapped.

  “Why?” she asked, instantly wanting to touch it, maybe write her name in the dust. “Is it old?”

  “It’s—yes. They all are. Look, I don’t mean to be rude—”

  Flick pulled an incredulous face.

  “—but this is my business, and I really don’t see how I can help you.”

  “Seems to me like you’re the one who needs help,” she said, closing her mouth quickly after the words had escaped.

  Jonathan stared, his eyes boggling behind his glasses. “I beg your par—”

  “Are you here on your own?” Flick blurted out. “Or looking after the place for your dad, or something?”

  “I am here by myself. This is my travel agency. I inherited it.”

  Flick wasn’t entirely sure that sounded right. “Don’t you need to be eighteen to inherit things?”

  “I am eighteen,” Jonathan said indignantly.

  “Really?” asked Flick, disbelievingly. He didn’t seem more than a couple of years older than she was. He was white, and his black hair seemed to be a stranger to combs and brushes; the soft dark curls coiled haphazardly over the arms of his glasses. He wasn’t very tall, and he didn’t look like he was shaving yet, but—now she really stared at him—there was a sort of oldness in his eyes. She’d seen her mom’s eyes like that, not long after Freddy was born. They were the eyes of someone who wasn’t sleeping and had too much to think about. He was wearing a suit with a plum tie and a blue waistcoat that needed an iron.

  Jonathan bit his bottom lip for a moment. “If you must know, I’m the only one the shop could go to. I’m not awash with family.”

  Flick didn’t quite know what to say to that. She suddenly felt rather guilty about her questions. “That makes sense,” she risked. “So… I’m sorry.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Well, if you inherited it…” The implication hung in the air.

  Jonathan let her words fester for a moment, before nodding. “Thank you.”

  There was an uneasy silence.

  Flick took her hand off the suitcase. “It must be tiring,” she said, stepping carefully around the implication that he looked tired. “Taking care of the place on your own.”

  “I suppose it can be.”

  Flick could feel her heart beating very fast. She wanted to say something, but also didn’t want to speak. For some reason, she felt as if she had to stay in this travel agency. And if she couldn’t be a customer…

  She brightened, a solution popping into her head. “You could do with an assistant.”

  “An assistant?” Jonathan spluttered. “I don’t employ people; no, not even for a summer job, and especially not some—some child who’s wandered in from goodness knows where. And another thing…”

  Flick’s face burned with embarrassment. She hadn’t necessarily expected a delighted “Yes!” and a handshake, but this boy seemed to enjoy going out of his way to be hurtful and rude. She focused on her shoes to hide her face, concentrating on the dusty floorb
oards and the spilled ash coming from the fireplace.

  Then something caught her eye. She blinked in surprise. In the grate of the fire, she could see several pieces of broken glass. Smashed. She knelt down to see them more clearly.

  Jonathan was bustling around his desk, still jabbering away. “… perfectly capable of running this place by myself, and more to the point, this isn’t a child-friendly environment. I appreciate that you think we’ve formed some sort of deep sentimental bond in the last four minutes, but…” He trailed off as Flick stood, a piece of glass between her fingers.

  The room seemed to have gone very, very still, as if even the dust motes were frozen in the stuffy air.

  “What’s this from?” she asked, turning the glass over in her fingers. It was very thick and smooth and there was something pleasing about holding it.

  “Be careful,” Jonathan said. “It’s sharp.”

  “It feels nice.” Flick lifted it up to see better.

  In the fractured triangle of glass, something glittered.

  No—everything glittered.

  A tight feeling of excitement clenched between her ribs. She forgot to breathe.

  She raised the glass to her eye.

  Through the glass, the world sparkled and shone, shimmered and blurred. It was like looking through a kaleidoscope made of brightly colored lights. Golden and white droplets floated randomly through the air like snow, drifting this way and that, up and down, left and right. The golden-white flakes twisted as Flick raised a hand to brush through them. The sparkles clung to her skin as she moved her hand, then drifted away again, like fireflies.

  Flick felt something like static electricity crackle beneath her skin, and anticipation rose for a moment in her chest, before softening into gentle wonderment.

  “What is it?” She lowered the glass and turned slowly, on the spot.

  Jonathan was staring at her in openmouthed astonishment. “What can you see?”

  Flick hesitated. “It was like… like glitter. Shining stuff. What is it?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  The excited feeling in her chest spiraled quickly down her arms and legs. “A secret?” Flick raised the glass to look through it again. She laughed softly, delight making her feel giddy as the sparkling flakes gathered on her palm before taking off again. It was like catching snow that didn’t melt. Like glitter underwater, swirling against an invisible current.

  “It’s beautiful.” She stopped. Outside the shop, in the yard beyond the bay window, among the gentle shimmer of the air, was something else… something more. It made her pause and take a step closer, for a better look.

  It looked like a crack in some invisible midair rock, except that it was glowing, like a frozen bolt of lightning. Glowing the same gilded white as the flakes in the air. The jagged bolt hung a few feet off the ground as drops of the glittering stuff floated into it and away from it at the same time.

  Flick lowered the shard of glass.

  The line in the air vanished.

  She raised the glass, and once again the line was there, like a jagged scar in the middle of the street. As she watched, a man walked past, head down as he looked at his phone, and brushed against the glowing line. Flick gasped. The lightning bolt glowed brightly for a moment, but then settled again into soft luminescence. The man didn’t seem to have noticed—he didn’t even flinch.

  Flick turned around to look at Jonathan. “There’s something out there.”

  He was staring at her as if she’d fallen through his ceiling. His mouth was still hanging open. He shut it, and seemed to shake himself. “Out there? More… shining stuff?” he said.

  “No.” Flick shook her head. “Well, yeah, there’s a lot of that, but there’s something else as well. It looks like a lightning bolt in the air. It’s a crack. A glowing crack.”

  The effect of her words on Jonathan was instantaneous. His hands slipped on the polished wood of the desk, and he almost fell clean out of his chair as he tried to stand up, his legs apparently forgetting how to work. He steadied himself on the desk and took a deliberate deep breath. “A crack? In the air?” His voice sounded as though he’d been punched.

  Flick nodded, uncertainty taking hold of the excited feeling and squashing it. “Right there.” She squinted through the glass again and pointed. “Out in the street.”

  Jonathan swallowed audibly. He came over to the window and fished around in his inside pocket before taking out a very small magnifying glass. He raised it to his own eye, in front of his glasses, and squinted through it. “Right out there, you say?”

  “Right there. Above the manhole cover.” Flick watched him, her nerves prickling as he moved the magnifying glass back and forth.

  Eventually, he lowered the magnifying glass, and a blank look settled over his face. “That piece of glass in your hand is from a curiosity. Broken, now. Unfortunately.” He held his hand out for it. “Swap?”

  Flick handed the shard of glass over, and he put the little brass magnifying glass into her palm. It was the size of something you might get out of a Christmas cracker, except when Jonathan put it in Flick’s palm she could tell it was made of glass, not plastic. The handle was swirled tortoiseshell and trimmed with brass. The lens itself was shining and yet cloudy at the same time, without a single scratch on it.

  Jonathan nodded at it. “See if that works any better,” he said.

  Jonathan was quiet for a moment. There was a tiny frown between his eyebrows, as though he was thinking. “You can honestly see something in the street?”

  “Yes,” she said, starting to get annoyed. “What is it?”

  Jonathan took the tiny instrument back, his eyes unfocused. “You can see.” He shook his head as if dislodging the thought. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”

  “I’m Felicity Hudson,” Flick said uncertainly. “Like I said. We just moved here. We’re up at the new estate. I only came in to look around. What’s wrong? Is that crack something important?”

  Jonathan nodded to himself, as if coming to a decision. “You will have to take my word for it that it is nothing to be concerned about.” He stood and held out his hand. “I, er, don’t believe I’ve properly introduced myself. My name’s Jonathan Mercator. It’s an absolute delight to meet you, Felicity, it really is.”

  Flick shook his hand. “Nice to meet you too.”

  “Absolutely,” he said, still shaking her hand. “You’re… Well, you’re…”

  She stared.

  “You’re brilliant,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m making a mess of this. I’ve never actually had to welcome anyone new before. I never thought… Well, there’s all sorts of formalities, you see. There’s things to give you, things to go through, and—”

  “What do you mean?” Flick stared.

  Jonathan stepped back and held his arms out, as if trying to show off the whole shop at once. “Welcome”—he grinned—“to the Strangeworlds Society.”

  The what society?” Flick stared at Jonathan. “Are you winding me up? Is this going on YouTube?”

  Jonathan looked insulted. “This isn’t a joke, I promise you. Not at all. Please, let me explain.” He indicated one of the armchairs for Flick and sat in the other himself. “You gazed through the lenses and you saw glittery-ness, correct?”

  “That’s right.” Flick sat on the edge of the cushion, hands gripping the seam. She wondered if she ought to feel nervous, but really she was practically vibrating on the seat with excitement. “It was everywhere. What is it—a filter?”

  “The glass doesn’t create the glitter,” he said. “The glitter is already in the air. The glass merely reveals it.”

  Flick glanced around the quiet travel agency. “Reveals what?”

  Jonathan gave a tiny smile. “Why, magic, of course.”

  Flick didn’t say anything for a good few seconds. Then she burst out laughing.

  Jonathan simply sat there, watching her laugh at him, waiting patiently for her to finish, before shrugging
. “You don’t believe in magic.” It wasn’t a question. His eyes sparkled behind his spectacles.

  Flick instantly felt bad about laughing. “Magic isn’t real,” she said. “I’m not a kid. You can tell me the truth, you know.”

  “Actually, it’s adults who often require lies,” he said. “You’ve probably been told that magic isn’t real because the average person wandering the world believes that to be true. But I can assure you that it is extremely real. It’s what you saw through the magnifying glass.”

  Flick felt as if she’d missed a step going down the stairs. She shook her head. “If it was real, everyone would know about it. Everyone would know about those magnifying glasses. They’d be on the news.”

  “Not everyone can use them.” Jonathan took the tiny instrument out from his pocket and twirled it in his fingers. “You see—anyone can walk into this travel agency. The door is opened at nine and locked at five. But not everyone can become a member of the Strangeworlds Society.”

  “And what does the society do?”

  “We travel.”

  “Oh.” Flick stared up at the cases in their pigeonholes. “So that’s what the cases are for? They really are people’s luggage? But what does that have to do with, um, magic?” She tried to sound pleasantly curious, but she was starting to wonder if Jonathan was entirely sane. She glanced at the door, half wondering if she should get up and leave. Even saying the word “magic” out loud made her want to squirm.

  Jonathan patted a case that was stacked in a tower to the height of the side table. “You saw magic in this very room, didn’t you? That’s because the suitcases are magical.”

  “Magical?”

  “Indeed.” Jonathan leaned forward, his fingers in a steeple. “The Strangeworlds Travel Agency doesn’t send you to the seaside, or indeed to anywhere you can get to by boat, train, or air. We send you to other worlds.”

  Flick fought down the temptation to laugh again. “Other worlds,” she repeated.

  “Yes. Each of these suitcases can send you to a different magical world.”