Barnaby was still tied to his chair, however. No one had even thought of saving him.
“Help!” he cried, pulling at his cords, but the more he did so, the tighter they became. “Help me, someone!”
The flames were growing larger now, and one entire wall of the classroom was eaten up by fire. Barnaby started to cough, feeling the smoke getting caught up in his throat and choking him as his eyes began to stream with tears.
“Help!” he cried again, his voice barely audible now. He realized that this might be the last word he ever spoke, that he would die here in the fire and never see Alistair, Eleanor, Henry, Melanie, or Captain W. E. Johns again. He gave one more mighty pull on the ropes around his wrists and ankles, but nothing he did could make them loosen. Looking down, he realized that it would be impossible to set himself free and that he would have to face up to the next horrible few minutes with as much bravery as he could muster. Even if someone came back for him now, the knots had been pulled too tight for any human hands to unpick them.
Which is why it was very lucky that the only person who came to help Barnaby didn’t have human hands at all: he had a rather fine set of hooks instead.
“Sit still, Barnaby,” cried Liam McGonagall, coughing too and trying to keep his eyes focused on the ropes as he used the tips in a pincer movement to undo the knots. “Stop pulling at them—you’re making it even harder for me.”
Barnaby did as he was told and soon began to feel a definite looseness round his left ankle; in a moment he was able to pull his leg free. Then another at his right. Then his left arm, followed quickly by his right. Liam had done it—he had untied the knots.
“Oh no you don’t,” he said, locking his hooks around Barnaby’s ankles as his friend started to float up toward the ceiling, which was a flaming orange sea of fire by now. “Jump on my back, Barnaby, and hold on tight.”
Barnaby did as he was told, and the two boys made their way toward the window, jumped out, and slid down the drainpipe, landing on the ground with an almighty bump that knocked them off their feet. Barnaby came very close to floating away again, only Liam was too quick for him and made sure to keep a tight hold.
“There she goes,” said Barnaby, looking up at the ancient building as it gave in to the flames and collapsed in upon itself.
“They’ll never be able to reopen it now,” said Liam.
The two boys looked at each other and broke into wide smiles. It was probably the best day of Barnaby Brocket’s life so far.
Chapter 5
The Magician on the Bridge
Two weeks later, Barnaby was tied to the living-room sofa reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped when Eleanor walked in, dragging behind her a heavy parcel with a tag attached that read: For Barnaby, from Eleanor Brocket (Mrs.).
“For me?” he asked, looking up at his mother in surprise.
“Yes, it’s a special present,” she told him. “You’ll like it, I promise.”
Barnaby pulled the wrapping paper off to discover a brand-new rucksack inside. It was a little too large for his small body and had a pair of strong shoulder straps dangling from the side.
“It’s for school,” said Eleanor, who had given up trying to find a school that none of her friends might have heard of and had settled, reluctantly, for a local primary.
“But I already have a bag,” he said.
“Yes, but that’s to keep all your schoolbooks in. This one, this new one …,” explained Eleanor. “Well, just put it on your back and you’ll see what it’s for.”
Barnaby reached down to pick it up and, to his great surprise, found that it was almost impossible to lift. “It’s so heavy,” he said. “It feels like it’s full of rocks.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Eleanor as Captain W. E. Johns drifted into the living room to check on his master. “Just put it on, all right? I want to see whether it works or not.”
Barnaby struggled to lift the bag off the ground, but eventually he managed to get his left shoulder into one of the straps. He almost fell over when he did so, but somehow he managed to get his right arm in too, and then everything balanced out. His feet hovered off the ground for a few seconds and he started to float, but after a moment the weight of the bag was too much for him and he came back down to the floor, his shoes landing on the carpet with a satisfying thump.
Captain W. E. Johns, dissatisfied, barked.
“It works!” cried Eleanor, clapping her hands together in delight. “I got some sandbags from the council after I told them that I was worried about flooding. I put two inside to balance out your weight. It’s perfect, isn’t it?”
“But I won’t be able to walk with this on my back,” protested Barnaby. “It hurts too much.”
“Oh, don’t be such a baby.”
Barnaby, anxious to please, did as he was told, but it wasn’t easy. During the first week his shoulders turned black-and-blue from the weight that he was being forced to carry, but in time they grew stronger and he didn’t notice it quite so much. As every month passed and he grew a little more, Eleanor put extra sand in the bag and the whole painful process began all over again. The curious thing, however, was that whenever he was forced to stay on the ground, his ears hurt a little.
In the classroom, Barnaby’s ankles were secured to his chair by a pair of handcuffs and he was able to keep his hands and body free in case an important visitor, like the prime minister or one of the Minogue sisters, happened to stop by on an official visit; the school, like Alistair and Eleanor, was not keen on anyone who stood out from the crowd.
The only thing that made Barnaby sad was that his friend, Liam McGonagall, had not been sent to the same school. His family had moved to India, where his father had been offered a job designing computer accessories, and they fell out of touch, as sometimes even the closest of friends do.
A year passed, and then another, and then two more, and Barnaby turned eight. He still slept in the lower bunk in Henry’s room and had been given the top shelf of the bookcase in order to store his growing library. It made a lot of sense, as he could float around the ceilings as much as he liked, reorganizing the volumes, moving all his Three Musketeers books into one place and keeping his treasured orphan collection—Oliver Twist, The Cider House Rules, Jane Eyre—close at hand.
Barnaby Brocket felt a special affinity with orphans.
And then, one fine February morning, his teacher, Mr. Pelford, announced to the students that they were leaving the school grounds on a special excursion.
“What’s the most famous attraction in Sydney?” he asked, looking around the room for the sea of hands that never appeared. “Katherine Flowers?”
“The Westfield mall?” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Mr. Pelford. “Stupid girl. Marcus Foot, the most famous attraction in Sydney, please?”
“The Opera House,” replied the boy, who had seen a play there once and had dreamed ever since of playing a great Shakespearean hero on the Opera House stage. Preferably someone who wore tights and carried a sword. Marcus Foot, an unusual boy in many respects, thought there could be nothing better in life than prancing about in a pair of tights while brandishing a sword.