The elemental detectives, p.1
The Elemental Detectives, page 1
PRAISE FOR THE ELEMENTAL DETECTIVES
“A beautifully written book, bristling with magic, set in an ancient London filled with dragons, ghosts, water spirits, and a mysterious, creeping sleeping-sickness that must be fought by the brave young heroes. I loved it”
Cressida Cowell, Children’s Laureate & author of How to Train Your Dragon
“The Elemental Detectives is a rip roaring magical adventure… Patrice Lawrence has done a marvellous job of building an imaginative and creative mythology which lurks just under the city streets”
Catherine Johnson, author of Freedom
“The Elemental Detectives is a richly imagined, inventive and immersive fantasy adventure”
E. L. Norry, author of Son of the Circus
“I loved reading about a re-imagining of London with so much invention and energy. The world-building is well, ... out of this world. Patrice Lawrence is amongst the greatest voices for young people writing today. I’m honoured to be a peer of hers”
Alex Wheatle, author of Cane Warriors
“BRILLIANT … history and fantasy woven magnificently into a thrilling, magical adventure”
Sophie Anderson, author of The House with Chicken Legs
“A fantastic adventure, packed with rich world building and stunning elemental magic”
Peter Bunzl, author of Cogheart
PATRICE LAWRENCE was born in Brighton and brought up in an Italian-Trinidadian household in Sussex. Her first novel ORANGEBOY was one of the most talked-about YA books of 2016 and won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize for Older Fiction and the Bookseller YA Book Prize that year. Ever since, her work has consistently featured on prestigious prize lists and her recent novel EIGHT PIECES OF SILVA has won a number of awards including the CrimeFest YA Prize, the inaugural Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult’s Prize for UK Writers of Colour and the Woman and Home Teen Drama Award. Patrice has been awarded the MBE for services to literature.
BOOKS BY PATRICE LAWRENCE
FOR OLDER READERS
Orangeboy
Indigo Donut
Rose, Interrupted
Eight Pieces of Silva
Splinters of Sunshine
Diver’s Daughter: a Tudor Story
Needle
Rat
TO DREAMERS
CONTENTS
PRAISE FOR THE ELEMENTAL DETECTIVES
About the Author
A ROCK DOVE FALLS
MARY BLACKWELL'S WELL
DREAM PIE
THE SILENT KITCHEN
HISH
DOWN THE WELL
LORD MAYOR
THE CELLAR
FLEET
THE FUMI
THE GHOSTS OF HYDE PARK
THE SERPENTINE
THE SLEEP
A TITHE
FOUNDLINK
THE FORGOTTEN FACE
THE TRAP
CHASE
RESCUE
THE CHILD
TRICKED
PARTING
LAST
TEN STRANGE FACTS THAT INSPIRED
KNOW YOUR ELEMENTALS!
THE FIRE ELEMENTALS – AKA THE DRAGONS
THE AIR ELEMENTALS – AKA THE FUMIS
THE EARTH ELEMENTALS – AKA THE MAGOGS
WHO IS THE REAL
A RIDDLE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A ROCK DOVE FALLS
The rock dove fell from the sky on Sunday. Its slumbering body lay beneath a hedge, hidden from the carriages clattering by on their way to church. As the sun rose towards midday, a cat slunk past. She had failed to catch a single mouse in Mr Browbridge’s grain store – she was too weak and clumsy. But here was food served up and waiting for her.
She nudged the plump bird with her paw. Its heart was beating. It was alive and fresh, even more tasty. The cat batted it again. It rocked sideways but didn’t wake.
Enough. She needed to eat now. She bent towards the bird and—
Something was oozing from it: something she couldn’t see until it was inside her head. It was a yellow mist, as thick as butter. All her thoughts of hunger disappeared. Instead, she remembered her mother and her brothers and sister. She had not seen them for so long. She closed her eyes and she was there again, curled up in a ball, her whiskers twitching against the comforting warmth of her mother’s stomach. Her sister nipped her neck. It wasn’t to hurt her, but just to remind her that she was here too. In a moment, they would peel away from safety and play.
A human yelled. A horse snorted. The metal rims of carriage wheels scraped against a stone close to her – too close!
Her eyes snapped open. She was not a kitten; she was old and alone and hungry. She leaped away from the bird. She would search for food elsewhere.
The rock dove slept on. So did many more. Robert Strong cleared two of the birds from the path of Lady Hibbert’s carriage as they paraded around Hyde Park on Tuesday. He was quick before the horses’ hooves smashed down on the bodies. He had seen the wings twitch and knew they weren’t dead. Even as he scooped them up, they didn’t wake. He hoped they’d be safe on the verge where he lay them.
Further north, in Clerkenwell, Marisee Blackwell noticed nothing. The sickness hadn’t reached her – yet.
Up above, in the murky London skies, the Fumi air elementals were gathering and whispering. What was bringing this new heaviness to the dirty London air? It was more than just the Solid human folk blasting muck from their chimneys into the sky. This was more powerful. The Fumis could weave the air into a hurricane and blast it away, but they had signed the truce and would not be blamed if London was ruined again.
In the wells and hidden rivers, the Chad water elementals felt it too: a strange, joyful weariness seeping into the streams. They didn’t like it. The Solids clogged up the waterways with filth from the abattoirs and manufactories, but this was new and wrong and also a little familiar. They would need to call a full court to discuss it.
The Dragon fire elementals patrolling the City of London took note of the dreaming rock doves, the anxious horses, the merchants complaining of their lazy servants. It would only take one fiery roar to burn this sickness away, but they were still not forgiven for the unfortunate incident of 1666. They would guard their Guilds and merchants and stay vigilant.
The last of the four elementals, the earthbound Magogs, slumbered in the layers of London earth beneath the Thames. Their agents knew what was at stake here, but they could be patient; everything returned to them in the end.
On Friday, the rock dove still lay under the hedge. Its heart had stopped beating three days before and soon its skin would pull away from its bones. Its last dreams had been happy ones.
MARY BLACKWELL'S WELL
Marisee Blackwell’s grandmother looked like a goose. Of course, Marisee had never actually told Grandma that. And she didn’t look like one all the time. But Grandma definitely looked goose-like in the grey Clerkenwell dawn. Perhaps it was her long, slim neck, or her delicate round head, or even the hat with a peak that she pulled low over her brow. In the morning shadows, it could be a beak. Grandma was wearing her cloak too. When she raised her arms, it became wings, and the candles made the black silk lining shine like deep water, because Grandma wouldn’t be any goose. She’d be Queen Goose, majestic, proud and beautiful.
Marisee crouched on her bed and peeked out of the window. Grandma’s arms were stretched over the well. For a moment, she was very still. So was everything else.
The village wasn’t usually a quiet place. If it wasn’t baby Joseph screaming in the room above the chandler’s, it was an early-morning carriage risking a hold-up by highwaymen as it clattered from Hampstead down to London. At least twice a week, there was an argument outside the Fox Inn – often more than an argument. Clashing swords and shouting men would jolt Marisee out of her sleep, and she’d look out of this same window to see lanterns bobbing in the dawn mist hanging over the field beyond the well. Grandma always rushed out to break up the fighting. She wasn’t having anyone bleeding over her land and ruining the water.
Grandma was getting to the bit that Marisee liked and the reason why she looked forward to Fridays. Of course, people came to take the special Blackwell water every day except Sunday, but Fridays were special.
Grandma let her hands fall slowly to her sides, then stepped up on to the low ledge surrounding the well mouth. She raised her arms again, took one step forward and then – she dropped.
It wasn’t a whoosh-bang drop like the time the bell fell out of St Chad’s tower. Instead, a trickle of water rose up from the well, snuffed out the surrounding candles, settled in mists around Grandma and wafted her down into the shaft.
Marisee knew that not everybody’s grandmother stepped into a well on a Friday morning. But hers did, and she’d been doing it for as long as Marisee could remember. Grandma, whose name was Mary-Ay; Mama, who was Mary-Bee; and she, Marisee, had all grown up on this land – and they were just the new Marys. Grandma said that Mama used to watch from the very same window where Marisee was now. Grandma herself had watched her own grandmother many years before that. Marisee tried to imagine her mother’s hands pressed against the cool panes and her breath smearing mist across the glass. It was hard. She couldn’t remember Mama at all.
Grandma said that Mama had always been restless. When Marisee was two, Mama had taken a boat to Europe to search for plants that would help water stay clean. She’d told Grandma that she’d be away for six months, but that was ten years ago. No on
So it was just Marisee and Grandma, for as long as she could remember. She knew other children who lived with their grandmas. But none of their grandmas were the Keeper of the Wells of London. It was a duty that Grandma said came with great responsibilities, but, even though Marisee was twelve, Grandma always wouldn’t say exactly what they were. Marisee begged to go down the well with her, but Grandma always insisted that there was no need for Marisee to bother herself with all that tiresome elemental business just yet. All Marisee knew was that Grandma looked after the Chads, the water elementals that guarded the watercourses of London and made sure that the wells were full and the ancient hidden baths were brimming with sweet, clear water. Mostly, it seemed, she had to stop the Chads getting into trouble.
Most Chads were steady sorts, but some of the old rivers didn’t like the modern world – or Solid humans – and kept sending Grandma off to the Lord Mayor to demand new laws to keep the rivers clean. And she seemed to spend a great deal of time sorting out arguments between the Chads and the other London elementals.
Marisee often wondered who else knew about Elemental London. If Grandma hadn’t told her about it, would she know? Even though it was there all around her.
The Fumi air elementals were supposed to keep the air fresh but seemed to have given up long ago. London’s chimneys belched dark, stinking smoke all day and night. Grandma complained that the Fumis just wafted between the belfries, ringing church bells and twisting weather vanes. They used to have a Keeper who lived in a windmill on the Isle of Dogs, but apparently he’d come to a bad end and nobody else wanted the job. Certainly, nobody else wanted to live in that windmill. Grandma said that it wasn’t just wheat that it liked to grind.
The Dragon fire elementals stayed in the City of London, watching over all the gold and money that passed between the Guilds and the merchants. When Marisee was little, she had wondered if the merchants were annoyed at having to step over giant fiery lizards all the time. Dragons always looked as if they took up so much room. Not so, Grandma had said. All the pictures of dragons were out of date now, even the ones they used as boundary markers in the City. The Dragons had stopped using their old forms several hundred years ago. (They’d grown tired of knights trying to hunt them down all the time just to impress the Ladies.) Dragons were now much smaller. Much, much smaller. But they had big voices, or had done until the Great Fire of 1666. These days they kept themselves to themselves. They believed that they were the true rulers of London and hated the Fumis with a fiery fury. Dragons may have – accidentally – started the fire, but it was the Fumis who blew it down to a dock full of ships heavy with barrels of pitch and oil and made it tear through crowded streets of wooden houses. Did they ever get the blame? No, they didn’t. Grandma reckoned that the Dragons would be sulking far into the next millennium about that.
While the Dragons declared that they only answered to the Guilds, the earth elementals, the Magogs, never answered to anyone. They never spoke to anyone. They were named after the giant wooden statues Gog and Magog that were kept in the Guildhall, and the rumour was that the real life giants slumbered in the green-grey clay at the bottom of the Thames, waiting to be woken when the time came. The time for what, Grandma didn’t know, but a couple of years before Marisee was born, Fleet Street had trembled and cracked apart. The roads were jammed with Londoners fleeing to the countryside. Grandma once admitted that it was the Magogs who had done that, to remind the other elementals that they were still watching – and waiting. They had eyes all over London.
The Chads complained that the Magogs had deliberately silted up their streams, the Fumis had deliberately dropped soot in their ponds and the Dragons had deliberately instructed the Guilds to cover over rivers to build their new halls and warehouses. Grandma reckoned that she had the calves of a circus strongman from rushing backwards and forwards between the Guild Masters and the architects and the engineers. In her eyes, it was about time the Lord Mayor did some proper mayoring to sort out Elemental London instead of leaving it all to her. They hadn’t built that shiny new Mansion House just for Lord Mayors to idle around enjoying the view. Still, she always sighed, if all that running around kept the truce in place, then she’d carry on doing it.
The last time there’d been an elemental battle was during Roman times. The Romans had had to abandon London and leave it in ruins. It was centuries before anyone would live inside those walls again. Elemental rage had burnt into the very stones of London and drawn something strange out from them.
Again, Grandma wouldn’t – or couldn’t – say what. It was another item on the long, long list of What Grandma Might Tell Marisee One Day. For the moment, though, the truce held. Elementals had agreed not to wage war against each other. They had also promised to leave the Solid folk of London well alone. Marisee tried to imagine what could happen if it was broken. It would be like the Great Fire but with a furious Fumi wind driving the flames even quicker. Roads would split apart and swallow the Londoners as they fled. Rivers would burst through their banks and sweep everything away. And if Gog and Magog really did sleep on the riverbed, well…
Marisee sighed. Today was Friday and she needed to forget all this and get ready. The best thing about being Keeper of the Wells was that Madam Blackwell’s was the best well in London with healing water that actually healed. It didn’t make Grand Claims about fixing broken ribs and draining stinking wounds of noxious liquids in double time so that they healed and left no scars. No, their water healed eyes. Sore eyes, itchy eyes, sticky eyes, eyes with cysts and carbuncles and cataracts. Fashionable women bought it to make their eyes brighter, though they didn’t come to collect the water themselves. They sent footmen to queue outside the pump room.
Customers were probably on their way this very moment. Marisee yawned. She’d need to get up soon to organize the flasks and set out her little table. She’d need a pen, new ink and paper, and string for the labels. There’d been an outbreak of red eye at the Foundling Hospital. She and Grandma were going to be busy.
She stretched and slowly unwrapped the blanket. Whoo! It was cold. Her breath steamed out of her nose. Which reminded her – she had better get the fire going. Grandma was never wet when she returned, but she was always cold. She said that the clay down there hadn’t seen the sunlight for thousands of years and the chill could really get into an old woman’s bones.
Marisee eased herself off the bed and rummaged through the drawer. Today was a day for thick woollen socks and gloves to stop her fingers going stiff from filling the flasks and writing so many labels. What would they say today?
Madam Blackwell’s
Exceedingly Effective Eye Cure
Or
Madam Mary Blackwell’s,
The Site for Sore Eyes
When they were busy, of course, she’d just end up writing “Water” on the label and tell customers how many sips to take and how many drops to apply to the infected area.
Marisee took one last look out of the window. It was definitely getting lighter. Even the stupid cockerel up by the tollhouse had stopped crowing, probably because he’d realized that everyone already knew it was morning.
She headed down to the kitchen, her woolly feet sliding on the stones. Good! Grandma had already set the fire. All Marisee had to do was light it. Breakfast was easy too. There was a loaf from yesterday that could be sliced for toast, with butter and plum preserves. The kettle would be full of water for tea. It always was. Constant fresh water, wherever and whenever they needed it, was one of the benefits of being the Keeper.
Marisee unhooked two cloths from behind the door. The yellow one was for her face, folded into a triangle and wrapped round and tied at the back of her head. The blue one was for her hand. She bound it carefully, tucking the corner in firmly. It must not fall off. She used her padded hand to pick up the polished red jar from the dresser in the alcove. How could this thing be so heavy? It was hardly bigger than her hand! Grandma said it was because it held a year’s supply. Even so, be careful, Marisee. I can tell you that getting a refill is a serious trial! Marisee bent over the firewood and gave the jar a good shake. It went straight from stone cold to tingling hot beneath the cloth. She took a deep breath in and held it. The cloth filtered out most of the smell but not all. One. Two. Three. Now! Holding the flask tight with one hand, she popped out the cork with the other and flicked the jar backwards and forwards twice.
