‘You weren’t given a map, sweetheart,’ Grandad said gently. ‘You found a collection of items that you think are linked together because you want to be able to help. And we love you so much for that, but it’s too great a risk to follow those clues … Well, we couldn’t follow them. Where would we even start?’
Tilly rolled her eyes. ‘We’d start at the Library of Congress, in America,’ she explained as if speaking to a child who wasn’t paying attention. ‘That’s where the first clue said to go. It had a … what did Mum call it, an American postcode?’
‘A zip code,’ Grandad said.
‘Right, a zip code! And it had a library classmark – you said yourself that classmarks are like maps – that’s how I knew!’
‘We can’t fly all the way to America to find a book, Tilly,’ Grandad said. ‘Now, give me a few moments of quiet so I can look through these sales figures again. Why don’t you go and find your mum, there’s a good girl?’
One of the things that Tilly loved most about her grandparents was that they almost always spoke to her as if she were a proper person who understood things, and felt things, and had good ideas. But that meant it stung even more when they spoke down to her, as though she were just too young to understand what they were dealing with.
She stood up without saying anything else, meaning to go and find Bea and talk to her about the map, but, before she could wander over to the stairs, the phone behind the counter started ringing.
‘Good morning, Pages & Co.,’ Grandad said. ‘Archie speak— Oh, Seb, hello, any news? Oh … Right …’ He looked up to check Tilly hadn’t gone and held a hand out to tell her to stay put. ‘I’ve got her here,’ he said down the phone, and Tilly felt a wave of fear crash over her. Grandad slammed the phone down and dragged her towards the door that connected the bookshop to where the Pages family lived.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, trying to wriggle out of his grasp. ‘You’re hurting me, Grandad!’
‘I’m sorry, Tilly,’ he said, ‘but we need to get you hidden. Right now. That was Seb. The Underwoods are on their way here – and it’s you they want.’
hat do they want me for?’ Tilly asked as they ran through the kitchen and up the stairs.
‘I dread to think,’ Grandad said, ‘considering that the last time you saw them they were trying to steal your blood.’
‘But it’s not like they can do anything here at Pages & Co.,’ Tilly said, out of breath as she jogged after Grandad right up to the top floor where her bedroom was. ‘And it’s not as though they’ve got anything to bargain with now they’ve already stopped us bookwandering.’
‘I’m not taking that risk,’ Grandad said. ‘As far as they’re concerned, you are at a friend’s house for tea. Your grandma and I will speak to them and find out what they want, and I’ll send your mum up here to wait with you. I’ll lock the door to the shop, and you must promise me that you won’t come downstairs. Yes?’
‘I promise,’ Tilly said sincerely.
‘This is the first time I’ve been glad that you can’t bookwander, so you won’t be able to disappear off somewhere,’ he said grimly as he shut the door behind her firmly.
Tilly listened to his footsteps fade as he headed back downstairs, and realised she’d left her phone in the bookshop and couldn’t even text her best friend, Oskar, to tell him what was happening. She had her bookcase, of course, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to sit and focus on reading when she was so anxious. Although, judging by the pile of only-just-started books by her bed, her concentration had been all over the place for a while. Tilly realised she hadn’t finished a book for nearly a week – a seriously long time for a reader of her commitment.
Tilly ran her fingers along her shelves, trying to summon that faith she had always had in the serendipity of a bookshelf – that you often ended up finding exactly the right book at the right time. Maybe there was something there that would distract her. Usually, her bookcase was so full that it took quite a yank to even get a book out, but Tilly noticed there were a couple of gaps at the moment. She couldn’t quite place what was missing – she must have left them downstairs or lent them to Oskar.
On one of the shelves was a curious selection of objects: the items that she was sure were clues to lead her to the Archivists. Even though Grandma and Grandad thought the Archivists were nothing more than a bookwandering fairy tale, Tilly just knew it was too much of a coincidence that these particular items had all ended up with her.
A slim book and a ball of red thread given to her by a librarian at the French Underlibrary, a key from The Secret Garden, a bag of breadcrumbs from ‘Hansel and Gretel’. All of them had found their way to her over the course of a few days. Surely they had to mean something? But, when she looked at them lined up like this, she couldn’t ignore a small inkling of doubt. It was hard not to see them as Grandad did – a row of unrelated objects she’d picked up while bookwandering, smothered in wishful thinking.
Tilly sighed. Not for the first time, she wished she could bookwander – to try to find some more clues, to get Anne Shirley’s take on the situation, or just to take her mind off whatever was going on downstairs in the bookshop. All of them had, of course, tried to bookwander after Seb told them what Melville had done, but it just didn’t work. There was a flash of a moment where you felt the familiar pull of the story, the leap in your stomach and even the faint smell of toasting marshmallows, but then there was a feeling like an elastic band that had stretched as far as it could and you were bounced back again.
Tilly grabbed a book at random off her shelf and stared at it in frustration. It was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It was one of Tilly’s favourite places to bookwander, and Alice often used to pop into the bookshop to say hello.
Tilly opened the book and, thinking about what Grandad had told her about bookbinding, stared at the first word. She could see that there was the suggestion of a shadow across it. She tried to scratch or rub it off, but nothing happened. There was still a slight mark there, echoing the book magic that had bound the Source Edition at the Underlibrary. She flicked through the pages, stopping at the familiar scene of the Mad Hatter’s tea party, the first place she had ever bookwandered to.
She sat on the edge of her bed and read it aloud, trying to conjure up the feeling of awe that she’d experienced the first time she had been pulled inside the pages of a book.
‘There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head.’
Tilly kept reading and let herself be swept away by the story. A few moments later, she sneezed.
‘Stupid hay fever,’ Tilly said to herself, brushing away the flowers that were too close to her face – before realising they had not been there a moment ago.
‘Where have you come from?’ she said, looking up to realise that it wasn’t just flowers that had appeared. Instead of her wooden floor, there was a carpet of grass, fragrant and slightly damp from the dew. More brightly coloured flowers were sprouting up in the corners of the room, and there was even the unmistakable sound of birdsong in the air, even though her skylight window was firmly closed against April showers. The wooden legs of a table seemed to be growing up out of the grass, creaking as they shimmered into existence.