Alistair Grim's Odd Aquaticum Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Gregory Funaro

  Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Vivienne To

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney•Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney•Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  Designed by Whitney Manger

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  — One —

  The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

  — Two —

  A Most Spirited Guest

  — Three —

  Cheers and Spheres

  — Four —

  The Hell Mouth

  — Five —

  Dreams, Asleep and Waking

  — Six —

  The Rival Bricklewick

  — Seven —

  A Sticky Situation

  — Eight —

  Playing with Fire

  — Nine —

  Maps and Mothers

  — Ten —

  The Moral of the Story

  — Eleven —

  The Guardian at the Gates

  — Twelve —

  A Watch of a Different Color

  — Thirteen —

  An Unlikely Ally

  — Fourteen —

  An Unexpected Reunion

  — Fifteen —

  The Writing on the Wall

  — Sixteen —

  The Return of the Black Knight

  — Seventeen —

  A Resurrection of Sorts

  — Eighteen —

  On the River Thames

  — Nineteen —

  A Change of Plans

  — Twenty —

  Odditoria That’s Given Back

  — Twenty-One —

  Just a Bit More

  Character List

  Glossary of Odditoria

  Acknowledgments

  Again, for my daughter

  —G.F.

  For Ben, who explored the old streets of London with me

  —V.T.

  From an article in The Times, London. October 25, 18—

  * * *

  ALISTAIR GRIM WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE!

  In light of the now notorious events in Bloomsbury, The Times has learned that, in response to numerous lawsuits, all liquid assets and material holdings belonging to Mr. Alistair Grim have been ordered seized by the Magistrate’s Court and are to be sold at private auction. Although this information seems to corroborate earlier reports that Mr. Grim fled London to evade his creditors, it is the opinion of The Times that, unless the unhappy man and his Odditorium are found, all interested parties will have little to show for their efforts.

  Readers of The Times will recall how Alistair Grim—inventor, fortune hunter, and, some say, mad sorcerer—and his long-time associate Lord Dreary partnered with various investors to transform Grim’s Antiquities Shop into the aptly named Odditorium: a flying house of mechanical wonders billed as the most spectacular attraction on the planet. After more than five years of construction and countless delays, the Odditorium gave its first public presentation three weeks ago, upon which Grim and his mechanical marvel vanished amidst what can only be described as the most bizarre spectacle our beloved city has ever seen.

  Readers of The Times are by now familiar with the numerous eyewitness accounts of how, after an unprecedented demonstration of technical prowess, the much-anticipated preview of Alistair Grim’s Odditorium quickly devolved into bedlam. Spectators not only reported seeing a trio of purple-eyed street urchins with superhuman strength, but also a giant, black-winged demon and a flying cavalry of skeleton soldiers—all of which were said to have attacked the Odditorium before its mysterious mid-flight disappearance over the English countryside.

  Although these events lend credence to Mr. Grim’s reputation as a sorcerer, renowned Cambridge University scholar and Regius Professor of Modern History Oscar Bricklewick believes he has a more scientific explanation. “The only sorcery here is a bit of high-tech flimflam,” Bricklewick said upon inquiry from The Times. “Judging from the eyewitness reports of a sparkling green mist emanating from the Odditorium as it took flight, it is clear that Mr. Grim unleashed upon the public a powerful hallucinogenic gas, thus creating both mass hysteria and the perfect cover for his escape.”

  Indeed, it is the opinion of The Times that, if Professor Bricklewick’s hypothesis is correct, it is nothing short of a miracle that no deaths were reported in the wake of Mr. Grim’s escape. However, in light of this blatant disregard for the welfare of his fellow man, Scotland Yard has assembled a special task force charged with capturing Alistair Grim, dead or alive.

  It is also the opinion of The Times that, with debtors’ prisons bursting at the seams, it is inevitable that a few misguided souls will take extreme measures to avoid their financial obligations. However, should one of them possess the criminal genius of an Alistair Grim, Londoners can only hope that he shall refrain from the sort of havoc that the aforementioned has wreaked upon our fair city.

  * * *

  Go ahead,” Father said, and he passed me the Black Mirror.

  The handle was warm to the touch, and I could barely make out my reflection in the mirror’s polished black glass. My eyes narrowed and my lips pressed together tightly. This was not the first time I’d gazed upon this strange black mirror. But unlike on previous occasions, I now knew what to say.

  “There’s nothing to fear,” Father said. “All you have to do is ask.”

  I swallowed hard. “Show me my mother,” I said, and the glass burst to life in a swirl of sparkling colors. I gaped in disbelief, my heart hammering as the colors began to churn faster and faster. The mirror flashed, and in its glass appeared the face of a woman weeping. I recognized her from the portrait in the parlor.

  Elizabeth O’Grady, the Lady in Black.

  “I’m sorry, my love,” she said, her voice hollow and distorted. She turned as if something caught her attention, and then her image dissolved and the glass went dark again. A heavy silence hung about the room.

  “There, you see?” Father said finally. “Among other things, the Black Mirror is capable of holding the last reflection of anyone who gazes into it, words and all.”

  “So that’s how you knew,” I said in amazement. “Because I’d looked into the mirror before, you saw my reflection when you asked to see your son.”

  “An excellent deduction, my young apprentice.” Father took the mirror and slipped it into a wooden case upon the desk. It was nighttime, and yet, in the soft blue glow of the library’s lamplight, I could see his eyes had grown misty.

  “Begging your pardon, Mr. Grim—”

  “Father,” he said gently. It had been nearly a month since I learned that the man sitting across the desk from me was my father. But still, I hadn’t gotten used to saying it out loud.

  “Begging your pardon—Father—but how did you come by this mirror?”

  “It was a gift from Elizabeth O’Grady upon our engagement. Legend has it one of her ancestors stole the Black Mirror from a sorceress, after which it was handed down in her family for generations. What you saw was your mother’s last message to me before she died.”

  A long silence passed between us. “I wish I’d known her,” I said finally.

  “I wish you had too,” Father said.

  I stared down at my shoes. There were still so many questions I wanted to
ask, but Father was not the sort to talk about such things. Besides, we were on an adventure. And when one is on an adventure, there is little time to get gobby-eyed about the past.

  “Now, on to more pressing matters,” Father said, “the first of which is preparing you to inherit the Odditorium.” He pointed to the notebook of spells on the desk before me. “Let’s hear it, then.”

  “Sumer…te…sulumor,” I read aloud, slowly, and Father snapped his fingers.

  “The correct pronunciation is suh-meer teh suh-loo-mahr. It’s ‘Romulus et Remus’ in Latin, spelled backward.”

  “Of course!” I exclaimed, the light dawning, and I uttered the spell again, this time properly.

  Father nodded, then crossed to the hearth and pressed a secret button on the mantel. Above it, a large lion’s head with glowing red eyes swung open to reveal a hidden compartment in the wall. At the center of the compartment was a small crystal conductor sphere with a tangle of pipes branching out from it in every direction. And inside the sphere floated the light source for the lion’s eyes: a fiery glass ball called the Eye of Mars.

  Standing on his tippy toes, Father opened the conductor sphere’s porthole and removed the Eye.

  “There are essentially two types of magical objects in this world,” he said. “Ones that are activated by simple physical actions or verbal commands, such as the Black Mirror; and ones that can be activated only by the precise utterance of a magic spell, such as the Eye of Mars.”

  Father waved his hand over the glowing red ball. “Sumer te sulumor,” he said, and the light went out. I’d seen him do this dozens of times, and yet the simple act of turning the Eye of Mars on and off never ceased to amaze me.

  “Go ahead, lad,” Father said, passing it to me. I swallowed hard and waved my hand over the Eye.

  “Sumer…te…sulumor,” I said—but nothing happened.

  “Try it again. A magical spell is only as strong as the belief of the person who utters it.”

  I took a deep breath. “Sumer te sulumor,” I said with conviction, and the Eye of Mars ignited, its red glow warm in my hands.

  “I done it, sir!” I cried, and Father mussed my hair.

  “That you did. Now do it a hundred times more and we’ll move on.”

  “Cor blimey, sir! A hundred times?”

  “Consistency is everything in sorcery. Whining is not. Thus, if you wish to inherit the Odditorium someday, I suggest you carry on with your lesson.”

  Father winked and, raking his fingers back through his long black hair, stepped out through the library’s wide-open archway and onto the balcony.

  “Sumer te sulumor,” I said with a wave of my hand. And as the Eye of Mars went dim again, Father sat down at his pipe organ and began to play. I could barely see him out there in the dark—his long, slender back just a smudge of shadow against the starless sky. And yet the tune he played—“Ode to Joy,” I believe it was called—was so festive and cheerful, I could tell how proud of me he was just the same.

  My heart swelled, and I tried to carry on with my lesson as best I could, but as Father shifted into a series of expertly fingered flourishes, my eyes began to wander about the library’s fantastic contents.

  Not much had changed since my arrival at the Odditorium, and yet I could hardly believe that someday it would all be mine. The countless books and clocks and mechanicals. The priceless antiquities. The suits of samurai armor and the lion’s head above the hearth—not to mention the Eye of Mars and all the other magical objects about the place.

  And yet, for all the wonders I’d encountered, none was nearly so wondrous as the tall, dark man playing the organ out on the balcony.

  I suppose every lad thinks his father special—save, of course, for the poor wretch with a father prone to drink and beating him now and then. My father was prone to neither, thank you very much, but to me he was much more than special. In fact, I’d wager there wasn’t another father like mine in the whole wide world.

  Since when did you become an expert on fathers? you might be asking. And for those of you who know me, I must say I can’t blame you. After all, when last we left each other, I’d only known my father a short while—not to mention that I caused him quite a bit of trouble back then. However, for those of you joining me on this adventure for the first time, I suppose a bit of catching up is in order.

  You might say that it began with a pocket watch and ended with a prince. And somewhere in the middle, a runaway chimney sweep learned that he was the secret son of an inventor, fortune hunter, and sorcerer all rolled into one. That son, of course, was me, and my name is Grubb. That’s right, Grubb. Spelled like the worm but with a double b, in case you plan on writing it down. And my father was none other than Alistair Grim.

  I say “none other” because, had you lived in London at the time, you no doubt would have heard of Alistair Grim. Had you lived in some other place, you might have heard of him there too. Or at least caught a glimpse of him flying about in his Odditorium—a house of mechanical wonders that looked like a big black spider with a tail of sparkling green smoke.

  If you didn’t see the Odditorium flying about, you most certainly would have heard it. Where’s that organ music coming from? you might have remarked, upon which (had I been on the ground with you) I’d have replied, The Odditorium, of course. You see, that’s how Alistair Grim used to fly his house of mechanical wonders: by playing its pipe organ.

  The organ sat upon the Odditorium’s balcony and faced outward so that its massive pipes twisted up and down the front of the building like dozens of hollow-steel tree roots. I must confess, I found it very difficult to play the organ properly at first, but eventually I learned how to make the Odditorium go where I wanted it to—except when traveling underwater.

  Good heavens! There I go getting ahead of myself. I suppose if I’m going to tell you about all that underwater business, I best back up and tell you how we got there in the first place. Come to think of it, for those of you unfamiliar with my tale, I best back up to the beginning. Otherwise you might get confused and abandon this adventure altogether.

  All right, then: the beginning.

  Twelve years before I arrived at the Odditorium, Alistair Grim’s bride-to-be, Elizabeth O’Grady, fled London under mysterious circumstances and drowned in the North Country. Before she died, however, Elizabeth gave birth to a son and entrusted him in the care of Gwendolyn, the Yellow Fairy. That son was yours truly, and the Yellow Fairy dropped me off on the doorstep of a kind childless woman by the name of Smears. Unfortunately, she passed away when I was six or thereabouts, and for the next half of my life I had the miserable lot of being apprenticed to her nasty chimney sweep husband, Mr. Smears.

  Unbeknownst to me at the time, while I was busy collecting soot for Mr. Smears, my father, Alistair Grim, was busy gadding about the world collecting Odditoria. Not to be confused with his mechanical marvel the Odditorium (which, as you can see, ends with an um), the word Odditoria, at once both singular and plural, is used to classify any object—living, inanimate, or otherwise—that’s believed to possess magical powers.

  In other words, the Odditorium is the place, and Odditoria are the magical things inside the place.

  Out of all the Odditoria Alistair Grim collected over the years, there are only three from which he harnesses magical energy to power his Odditorium. The first is none other than the Yellow Fairy herself, whose magic yellow dust enables the Odditorium to fly. The second is the red Eye of Mars, which powers the Odditorium’s lightning cannons. The third is a mischievous banshee by the name of Cleona, who provides the Odditorium with a blue spirit energy called animus.

  Cleona’s animus is by far the most important of Alistair Grim’s colored energies; for it’s the blue animus that gives life to the Odditorium’s various mechanical functions.

  However, there was someone else gadding about the world collecting Odditoria too: a wicked necromancer by the name of Prince Nightshade. And not only did this Nightshade bloke ha
rness power from his magical objects just as Alistair Grim did, but he’d also gathered about himself an army of nearly every evil creature imaginable: dragons, trolls, goblins, and, most terrifying of all, the Black Fairy.

  But for all the prince’s success at collecting Odditoria, there remained one magical object that continued to elude him: a source of the animus from which he could create an army of the walking dead.

  I suppose that’s where I come in. I got into some trouble while sweeping chimneys at an inn with Mr. Smears and, fearing for my life, hid myself in a trunk belonging to one of the guests. That guest turned out to be Alistair Grim, who whisked me away on a flying coach and took me on as his apprentice. My entire life had changed in an instant—not to mention that I made loads of new friends, including Father’s right-hand man, Nigel, and an animus-powered pocket watch named Mack (short for McClintock). An odd one, that Mack is, for not only does he never run out of animus, he also stops ticking now and then for no apparent reason.

  In fact, it was Mack who kicked off this entire adventure. My first day on the job, I accidentally brought him outside the Odditorium, whereupon Prince Nightshade picked up on his animus and came after us with his army of skeleton Shadesmen. However, Nightshade didn’t have many of those bone bags left, so he wanted the animus to turn flesh-and-blood people into Shadesmen too. I’d seen him do it myself—to Judge Hurst, Father’s old enemy from London—and let me tell you it was not a pretty sight.

  So that’s the nub of it, and right about where you found me during my lesson. Cleona and I had narrowly escaped captivity in Nightshade’s castle a few weeks earlier, and Father had since come up with a plan to defeat him. The only catch? He wouldn’t tell anyone except Nigel what he was up to. The fewer people who knew about his plan the better, in case the prince caught up to us before we arrived at our final destination.

  Our final destination. I hadn’t a clue where it was, but I got the sense that if we didn’t get there quickly, Father’s secret plan to defeat Prince Nightshade would fail. After all, the evil prince was still out there, plotting his next move to steal Mack’s animus and create his army of purple-eyed Shadesmen.