Lucy and the Magic Loom Read online

  “I’m starting to think I’ve been sent here to help you, Sallee. You didn’t answer my question just now. Are you waiting for a package?”

  All this time the magic loom in its ebony and mother-of-pearl box had been quiet. Now that Sallee had calmed down, it seemed to think it was time to join the conversation. Ever so softly, a sweet gentle hum began. The box glowed, and color leaked from its corners, floating above the girls’ heads before transforming into multicolored bubbles—almost like bath bubbles—above their heads.

  “Good gracious,” Sallee said, startled. “What on earth is that?”

  Lucy laughed. “It’s the magic loom trying to get our attention. I thought it was mine, but now I think it may have been looking for you all this time! Tell me your story. Have you always lived here?”

  “Oh my, no! I’ve been trapped here by mistake. I live in London, on Terrier Square, with my mum and dad. They’re inventors.”

  “But so do I! I live at 163 Terrier Square. Which house is yours?”

  “That’s my house, silly! And I want to get back there right this minute!”

  The magic loom was having fit inside the ebony box. Finally it pushed at the lid with a huge shove and tumbled out at Lucy’s feet.

  Lucy barely noticed. She was thinking so hard she wondered if smoke was coming out of her ears.

  “What year is it, Sallee?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What year is it? Today! Who is the queen?”

  “What a ridiculous question. Queen Victoria, of course. She’s been Queen since before I was born.”

  “What year is it, Sallee? Tell me right now!”

  “It is 1884. And yes, it’s Saturday and it’s November. What is this all about? Have you figured it all out?”

  “Sallee,” Lucy said very quietly, “please tell me everything—and quickly if you can. What exactly happened to you today?”

  “As you wish. Here’s the whole sad story in a nutshell: My friend Liza moved to America last week. Her ship sailed on Tuesday and I have been horribly lonely ever since. This morning it was raining very hard. I went for my walk in the park anyway, even though a gale was blowing. The tea shop was closed, but I saw old Mrs. Gloucester waving at me from her bay window overlooking the park. I love her and her dog—the two of them always manage to make me feel better. Why not pop in for a quick cup of tea?”

  Lucy interrupted: “Is her dog Mr. Poppins, a gray Bouvier? Are Mrs. Gloucester’s spectacles brown tortoiseshell?”

  “Yes on both counts.” She could tell Lucy was getting excited so she continued. The words tumbled out of her at breakneck speed. “Mrs. Gloucester is sweet and cheery but so absentminded. While we were drinking tea and eating sweets, she asked if I could return a library book to my father’s shelves without him noticing. She said she had borrowed the book from my father last year and simply forgotten to return it. Now she was too embarrassed to do it herself. I was happy to do it, of course. The book was a huge tattered antique thing and she told me it lived on the fourth shelf of the second bookcase. She wrapped it in a striped cotton sheet before I left so it wouldn’t get wet on the walk home. Abbey, our housemaid, opened the door at 163 when I knocked—with the old book in my arms I couldn’t reach the bell—and I ran up the stairs to my father’s library. He and my mum spend most days working at the British Museum around the corner, so I didn’t knock—I just charged in. I unwrapped the book, found the fourth shelf, stood on my tippy-toes and slid the book into one of the open spaces on the shelf. Suddenly the bookcase began to tilt and dust exploded everywhere. I began to sneeze, fell over backward—and that’s the last thing I remember. The next thing I knew I was in a field of flowers, surrounded on all sides by a herd of colorful zebras. One of them woke me up by licking my arm. It was sort of gross.”

  Lucy wanted to ask a question, but Sallee shushed her with a quick wave of her hand. “There’s so much more to this story so let me finish. This is what the zebra told me: I’d managed to place the book in the wrong opening on the bookshelf. When the spines of these two old alchemy books touched, an unprecedented chemical reaction was created—Mrs. Gloucester was sure of it. It turns out Mrs. Gloucester is a complicated and very old soul. She and Mr. Poppins are from this world, and not from London. She flitters between this place and Terrier Square through a secret door in her attic. She thought hers was the only entrance that existed until the explosion in our library revealed another one. When I messed up the order of the old books and the entryway in our library appeared, the passage in her house snapped shut. For a few hours she could chat through her closed door to the terrified old zebra, but after I set off an allergic reaction by stepping in the forest by mistake, even that line of communication clogged up. The zebra explained everything she could before pointing me to this castle. The bridge was down over the moat when I arrived and I just wandered in. I have been here all day wondering what to do next. And then you arrived.”

  Lucy’s eyes were as wide as two harvest moons. Mrs. Gloucester had always been very nice to Lucy, but she was having trouble accepting the sweet little old lady she knew was a time-traveling adventurer from another world. That said, it almost made a tiny bit of sense. Mrs. Gloucester hadn’t been in the park this morning, and she was always in the park that time of the day. Mrs. Gloucester also knew Lucy well enough to know she would be enchanted by a mysterious package. Perhaps only girls could travel through the new passageway whereas old ladies could travel through the old one? That made some sense. That also meant Mrs. Gloucester needed Lucy’s help to sort out the mess. Sending Lucy the magic loom had been a good idea. Mrs. Gloucester knew how much Lucy loved weaving, because Lucy made Mr. Poppins a stunning and intricate Rainbow Loom leash last summer. But how had Lucy and Sallee slid through the portal on the very same day—but in two different centuries? This was all very mysterious!

  Sallee and Lucy shared just one more problem in common: what were they going to do now?

  Chapter Ten

  Lucy and Sallee were still sitting side by side in the center of maze. The magic loom was out of its box and humming expectantly by Lucy’s side, waiting for the next set of instructions. Both girls looked the worse for wear. In the excitement of telling her story, Sallee had lost one of her bows and she still had dirt on her nose. Lucy had scraped holes in the knees of her leggings crawling around on the floor of the castle wall. Both girls should have been exhausted, but instead they were re-energized and excited to tackle the problem. Two was definitely better than one.

  They had a zillion questions to ask each other. Sallee wanted to know what had changed at Terrier Square over the last hundred years. She suspected Lucy could tell her what the future held in store—would she invent something that cured sick children? Would she live in London her whole life? Would she enter Oxford and study math? Was she going to have children? Who would be her first love? Could Lucy tell her all these things and more? And then, as suddenly as Sallee realized Lucy might know the answers to all of these questions, she realized she didn’t want to know the answers to her questions. Not knowing what wonderful thing might happen next was one of the things Sallee loved most. Just this afternoon she’d been about to give up, when all of a sudden, Lucy was there to save the day. There was no way she wanted to live her whole life without ever being surprised again. She decided not to ask.

  Lucy on the other had was filled with grand plans: Sallee was going to be a great resource for Lucy’s next history test. Lucy enjoyed hearing people tell their stories about the past out loud much more than reading history—she remembered everything so much better. She could learn so much from Sallee.

  More than anything else right now though, the girls needed to get home … and to the right century. And Lucy had a plan.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do. In the ebony box is an envelope labeled Catapult. I noticed it earlier this morning. And that is what I am going to make right now.” She grabbed Sallee’s arm with one hand and picked up the magic loom w
ith the other.

  “Where are we going?” Sallee asked, confused by sudden flurry of movement.

  “We’re following the elastics I dropped out of the maze and heading into the larger courtyard. We need more room. Then I am going to get to work.”

  Lucy had only ever seen a catapult once before, one day last summer when the Stillwater-Smiths took Lucy, Alyssa, and Abigail to a medieval fair in the countryside near Oxfordshire. They saw a play, watched maypole dancers, and ate the most delicious raspberry pudding. Near the end of the afternoon, there was a competition between local towns. Two amateur carpentry clubs had built catapults from a set of antique plans a librarian had discovered in the stacks. That afternoon the clubs had competed to see which town’s catapult could toss a large rock the farthest. Lucy’s plan was to switch things up in an interesting way—she was going to create a catapult sturdy enough to toss Lucy and Sallee all the way over the sunflower meadow, through the forest, past the peonies to the fir tree and the doorway to home. “How hard could that be?” Lucy whispered to herself, gulping down her doubts. Any plan was better than no plan, right?

  She explained to Sallee what would happen next: “I imagine in intricate detail what I want to create with the magic loom. Then I close my eyes and almost fall into a sort of trance. When I wake up, the thing I have imagined is real and sitting right in front of me, made out of magic Rainbow Loom elastics. I have discovered the trick is to use every drop of imagination I can muster—my imaginings need to be intricate, detailed, and as compelling as possible. Does that make any sense?”

  “Not really,” Sallee said with a smile. “But if it means I’m going to sleep in my own bed tonight, I support you one hundred percent.”

  “I have never done this with anyone watching me before,” Lucy said. “I think you should close your eyes when I do. I don’t want anything to mess with the magic.”

  Lucy pulled an envelope from the ebony box labeled Catapult. Lucy squeezed Sallee’s hand and they both closed the eyes. Then, Lucy set to work. She pictured every specific detail of the massive machine she imagined. The magic loom hummed eagerly, channeling Lucy’s vision. Lucy’s hands slowly picked up speed until they tore over the loom with determination. Back and forth, over and under, the hook made the sharp, musical clicking sound Lucy loved. Lucy’s heart pounded loudly as the trance took over. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was done.

  “May I open my eyes?” Sallee asked. Lucy laughed and said yes.

  In front of them was exactly the magnificent, magical contraption Lucy had envisioned—a catapult worthy of the Romans. Sallee gasped, truly impressed. Lucy reached for her friend the magic loom. She patted it and it made a low, proud rumbling sound. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Lucy didn’t want to waste a minute more. She whistled, calling the flock of birds from the castle wall. She quickly explained the task she needed them to do: Lucy and Sallee would climb into the small seat area and hold tightly to each other. At the same time, all together, the flock would pull back on the massive elastic lever. When Lucy shouted “Now!” the birds would let go. With just a little luck, Lucy and Sallee would catapult over the forest and the river. They would land safely back where Lucy had begun the afternoon.

  “Are we ready?” Lucy shouted. Sallee hugged her close in response, the birds chirped nervously, and the magic loom glowed under her arm where she had tucked it safely. “Ok. Let’s do this. One, two, three … Now!” With a loud, hard snap, the magic loom catapult shot the girls high into the sky. Together they were flung wildly through the clouds, past the dark forest, and over the river. They landed with a big bump right in front of the old fir tree.

  The door was open.

  “Come quickly, girls—I have been waiting for you two forever,” said an impatient voice. “I think I’ve placed everything back in the correct order on the bookshelf, but we need to move quickly here.” There was Mrs. Gloucester, poking her head out from the doorway in the tree. “I’ve left Mr. Poppins upstairs in the Stillwater-Smith library and I don’t want Abigail to find him when she wakes up.”

  Lucy was astonished. She couldn’t believe she was actually seeing Mrs. Gloucester in the doorway, but she knew better than to spend time worrying about it. Sometimes you simply needed to trust what you saw in front of your eyes. Sallee was sitting in an awkward jumble on the ground. Lucy leaned over and gave her a hand up. “Let’s go, Sallee,” she said happily. “I think we are heading home.”

  All the while Mrs. Gloucester was tossing a mix of instructions and random thoughts in their general direction. “I think I’ve managed to jam both portals open, but I am not entirely sure. In any case, I need you two to close your eyes and think seriously about where you want to go. Do you have the magic loom, Lucy? Make sure you have it! We can’t afford for it to go missing again.”

  “Yes, I’ve got it safe. No worries,” Lucy reported back.

  “Now say goodbye to each other, young ladies. If this works, you won’t be seeing each other again anytime soon.”

  “Wait,” shouted Lucy. “One more minute, please; I need one more minute.” She pulled the exquisite magic loom ring off her finger and handed it to Sallee. “This is for you. If you are ever in the twenty-first century, please come and visit. You have a friend there.”

  “I would like that very much.” Sallee began to sniffle. Lucy sensed she was trying with all her might not to cry full out. Worried an ocean of tears would spoil the magic, Lucy shouted for Mrs. Gloucester to begin. The old lady took her cue without hesitation. She leaned over the heads of the two girls and slammed the door of the fir tree shut.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Are you awake, Lucy?”

  Lucy blinked her eyes open slowly, ever so happy to hear Dr. Smith’s voice.

  “Is Dad with you, Mum?”

  “Yes, I’m here, peaches. I hear you had an interesting day.”

  “Yes, Dad, it was a very interesting day. I’m so sorry, Mum. Are you still mad at me?”

  “I couldn’t stay mad at you for more than an hour, Lucy. Now go to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “One more thing, Mum—Mrs. Gloucester brought Mr. Poppins by to play this afternoon and she picked up the package. Turns out it was hers all along. Oh, and I left a letter on the kitchen table for Alyssa. Will you mail it for me in the morning?”

  “Of course, my beautiful girl. Now go to sleep.”

  Dear Alyssa,

  You won’t believe all that has happened since this morning. I miss you right now more than I ever have since the day you left. Really. That’s 100% true and no lie. I HAVE SO MUCH TO TELL YOU. But it’s all a secret. I can’t send the news by text or tell you over the phone. Write me back at once and promise me you won’t tell anyone anything NO MATTER WHAT. If you do, I will write at once and tell you EVERYTHING! Promise.

  All my love,

  Your true best friend forever,

  Lucy Stillwater-Smith

  A sneak peek of Lucy’s next adventure,

  Lucy and the Magic Loom: The Daring Rescue

  Chapter One

  Lucy Stillwater-Smith was sitting on her bed, puffy-eyed and sniffling. Her very best friend, Alyssa, had moved to America just one year ago and was visiting Lucy for the summer. But today was the day Lucy had been dreading, when Alyssa would fly back across the wide Atlantic Ocean to New York City. Lucy knew that the old white stone town house at 163 Terrier Square would not be the same.

  The door creaked open. Lucy looked up and saw two big brown eyes and a splash of gold hair peering at her through the crack in the door. “Alyssa?” Alyssa came into the room and flung her arms around Lucy. The two girls had spent the summer visiting all of Alyssa’s favorite spots in London; one night they got dressed up and went to a fancy musical, and they took day trips to hilly parts of the countryside. They gorged on their favorite snacks, like curry chips and chocolate biscuits, and every night they stayed up late, giggling under an elaborate fort made of sheets in Lucy’s
bedroom.

  “I’m going to miss you, too!” Alyssa said before Lucy could try to explain her puffy eyes. They hugged each other tightly, and suddenly Lucy felt a pinch on her head.

  “Ouch! Your bracelet is stuck in my hair!” They had made each other elastic friendship bracelets, which were the best and by far the most beautiful of any they had ever seen. But they could get caught on things. Very carefully, Alyssa unhooked the bracelet’s plastic clasp and removed it from the tangles in Lucy’s brown hair.

  Alyssa fiddled with the clasp to get the friendship bracelet back on her wrist. “Just make a knot, it’ll be faster,” said Lucy. She tied a knot and the two girls put their bracelets next to each other and smiled. “You can never take yours off, got it?”

  Alyssa’s eyes widened. “Like that would ever happen! Every day we’ll look at our wrists and know the other person is looking too, and we’ll be friends forever.”

  “Knock, knock, ladies—incoming!” Miss Abigail Sanders bustled into the bedroom and dropped a pile of clean laundry onto the bed. “Oh, you darlings,” Abigail said with a frown when she noticed the pile of tissues that Lucy had collected on her bed. “I know you’re going to miss each other, but just think of all the fun you’ve had this summer!”

  “I don’t want Alyssa to go, Abigail! It’s not fair—can’t she stay?”

  “Can’t I? Can’t I stay?” Alyssa chimed in.

  Abigail’s eyes twinkled. “I think Alyssa’s parents might have something to say about that. How about some tea and biscuits before you get ready for your flight? Will that help?” The girls’ moods instantly shifted and they nodded approvingly. Abigail always knew how to make everything better. She had taken care of Lucy for Lucy’s whole life, and while Lucy could now do basically everything on her own, Abigail was still wonderful for all of the little things, like knowing which snacks to buy, and big things, too, like making sure the Doctors didn’t forget to go to Lucy’s recitals.