Leif Frond and Quickfingers (3 page)

Gerd's face lit up. “Oooo – it's just like the one the Widow Brunnhilde wore at the Midsummer Festival – I was so jealous! How did you know?”

“Because it is just the very colour of your eyes, of course.”

I leaned over to Queue and whispered, “He should sell it to Thorhalla – it's just the very colour of her hair!”

How was I to know Thorhalla had pushed her way through the crowd too and was standing right behind me? The expression on Queue's face was my first clue – so like a flash, I ducked, managing to just miss getting walloped, and scuttled over to stand, looking innocent, beside my father's chair. I got a clear view from there of Thorhalla and the way her angry red face clashed with her streaky blue hair. It was pretty scary.

“Who else has a dream in their hearts that needs to come true today?” the Pedlar was saying meanwhile. “Who longs for a brooch or a blade, a cloak or a – my good gods!”

He'd seen Thorhalla.

But the old man rallied magnificently. As others swarmed forward to look over his wares, he rummaged out a small package and beckoned to Thorhalla. I couldn't hear what he said to her, but it was clear from the way he kept pointing, first at the package and then at her head, that it was some sort of hair colouring he was offering her. He actually managed to make her smile – and part with her money!

This old Pedlar was evidently a genius.

He darted back and forth, demonstrating to some, sweet-talking others, bartering and bargaining. There was a knife I quite fancied, but I had no money of my own – I wondered what I could use to buy it with. While I was still puzzling over that, I noticed something else. Queue had come to the front of the crowd, and was idly turning things over when suddenly his hand darted forward and he pulled out an object from where it had lain, half-hidden behind the Pedlar's pack.

It was a little model of a dragon, about two hands long, curiously jointed and with an opening in its side. Queue immediately opened the door and I could see that there were wood and metal workings inside.

It looked wonderful and intriguing to me, and I knew it would be irresistible to Queue.

“Ah, no, that's not for sale,” said Quickfingers, reaching out for it. “It's just a toy. A work in progress, you might say.”

“I like work in progress,” said Queue. The Pedlar tried again to take the toy out of Queue's hands, but the Artificer wasn't letting go. “What's it supposed to do?” he asked.

“Well, I don't know if it's
supposed
to do anything,” said Quickfingers, who was clearly not comfortable with a stranger handling his belongings like this. “What I'd
like
it to do is scuttle across the floor belching flames and entertaining children, but you don't always get what you'd like, now do you?” Again he held out his hand for the little dragon, but Queue acted as if he didn't even notice.

“Well?” he said. “Do you know why it won't do what you'd like?”

The Pedlar sighed. “I haven't yet found a way to get the spinal cogs to connect with the limb latchets there and there, and so, obviously, they don't mesh with the head.” He paused here, as if expecting the Artificer to lose interest, not realising that technical talk was meat and drink to Queue.

The Artificer said, “Hmmph.” And then he thought for a moment. And then he said, “You want to add a slide block. There. You'll bypass the whole fulcrum question and then you can attach the differential mechanism direct to the leg levers. That's what I'd do.”

I have to admit – when Queue starts talking technical, I get left behind at practically the first word. As I glanced around I could tell that nobody else understood what he was saying either.

“Of course,” Queue continued, “what would be
really
good, is if you could get it to fly.”

And he handed the dragon back.

You have never seen a more gob-smacked Pedlar in your whole life. Quickfingers' mouth was hanging so far open he was likely to trip over it if he tried to walk.

“You… the… what…
fly?
” was all he managed to say, but the Artificer wasn't listening any more.

“Bring it along to my workshop when you're done peddling your frippery here, and I'll show you what I mean,” he said. “There's a diagram of something similar to what you'd need in The Book.” And he turned on his heel and walked away.

There was a stunned pause. (Queue tends to have that effect on people.)

Then Quickfingers began to stuff his remaining goods back into the pack any which way. “That's it for today, friends,” he babbled. There was a surge of protest from his customers. “Don't worry, don't worry,” he continued. “I've changed my mind about a short stay. I ask myself – how could I leave such lovely people in a hurry? And I answer myself, I couldn't. See me again, same time tomorrow, same place, same fabulous selection of delights, same – please! Wait!” he called after Queue in a strangled voice. “Where…? Wait! What book?”

“Don't worry,” I said before anyone else could volunteer for the job. “I can look after you. The workshop's this way.”

And the Pedlar gave me a big, excited grin that suddenly made his whole face look young.

For a moment I thought,
What's odd about that face?
But then I was too busy clearing a way through the crowd.

“He'll show you tomorrow,” I reassured them all as we passed. “I know you didn't get a turn. Don't worry – he won't leave you empty-handed.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Testing Times

I
showed the Pedlar where Queue's workshop was, but I soon wished I hadn't. That stupid dragon toy formed a bond between those two old men that made me crazy. They were obsessed. The Pedlar should have been on his way – he kept saying he was going to leave, he absolutely must, he was heading off the very next day – but the next day would come and there would be no sign of him leaving. And now that Queue had somebody to talk cogs and levers to, he just wouldn't shut up.

“There's a drawing in The Book on mechanical flight and I've a few ideas of my own,” the Artificer burbled. “First we'll build a full-scale version of my flier and then consider modifications… miniaturization… mumbo-jumbo…”

Well, that's what it sounded like to me. Over the next week, you could barely get Queue or the old Pedlar to leave the workshop, even to eat or sleep. And you couldn't get either of them to pay any attention to
anyone
else.

Like me, for example.

All right, so I was jealous. How heroic is that? Not very.

Now, did all this jealousy and uncomfortableness mean I decided to stay away from Quickfingers and, oh I don't know, go and help my dear troll-sister Thorhalla with her laundry?

Not likely.

Besides, there was something that I knew I could do better than anybody else. Don't forget, I was the Official Frondfell Tester. The two old men might be inventing up a storm without me, but I still stuck to them like a burr. When the ideas were all out there, they'd need me to check they worked. All I had to do was wait patiently for my moment of glory – and stay out of my family's way in the meantime.

My heart sank, though, when I overheard Queue and the Pedlar talking about the flying machine. It was the day it was ready to be tested.

Quickfingers was grumbling, “But I could do it. You should let me have a go.”

Oh no – NO! I yelled inside my head. Now he wants to take over my job as the Willing Volunteer and Official Frondfell Tester? Queue, don't let him!

Fortunately Queue was having none of it.

“No, no,” he said. “You know how it is in the stories – the clever old dwarves create the magic sword, but it takes some young hero to try it out.”

I let out a big sigh of relief and then breathed in again fast, expanding my practically heroic chest in pride.
Some young hero
. That was me. I didn't care what death-defying contraption those old men had invented – just bring it on.

There are, of course, dangers involved in being an Artificer's tester. Danger of broken limbs, multiple bruising, having your shirt set on fire, being shaken and stirred until you can barely remember who you are or where you live. I was aware of all these, but I hadn't anticipated that another, far greater danger would be added to the list that day.

And that was… danger of cow.

Every settlement has one eccentric animal – a sheep that thinks it's a duck, or a horse who thinks the main Hall should be its stable. Ours is a cow, and her name is Wandering Nell. I was something of an expert on Nell, because I'd been landed with the job of watching her for a number of summers past. One advantage of this was that it gave me plenty of time to lie around in the grass thinking about how unfair life can be. Whenever I mentioned these thoughts out loud, Nell always had a look in her lovely brown eyes that suggested she absolutely understood. In fact, we had a great deal in common. Like me, Nell longed for adventure, excitement and the far horizon. If cows could sail, I swear she would have stolen a longship years ago and gone off to discover brave new worlds. If cows could fly, she probably would have escaped over the highest mountains and tried to colonise the clouds. Since cows can neither sail nor fly, her great escapes were always on foot, but she didn't let that discourage her.

So Frondfell had a cow who kept escaping and a boy – me – who had to keep bringing her back. What did that have to do with the dangers of being an Artificer's tester?

I was about to find out.

Quickfingers was all fired up about the idea of making his toy dragon fly. Queue's plan was to start with a large, Leif-sized version of a flying machine and only make it smaller – the size of Quickfingers' toy dragon – when all the glitches and wrinkles had been fixed. (There always seemed to be a lot of those.) So we three went out to the top of a long, steep, grassy slope outside the settlement that the Artificer had chosen as his launch site. He explained his new Kite-Cart-Flight machine to the Pedlar as he strapped me in to it. (Quickfingers was still looking distinctly grumpy about not getting to be the Tester.)

“The boy, see, stands in the cart wearing the kite on his back like this.” He tugged the straps tight across my back. “We tie the cart to this big boulder at the top of the hill by this long coil of rope that pays out as the cart rolls, faster and faster, down the slope.
Then
, when the cart is going as fast as possible, it reaches the bottom of the hill
and
the end of the rope at exactly the same time.
Sproing!
The cart jerks to a halt.
Whee!
The boy keeps going, launched into the air. Whoosh! The wind catches the kite and off he flies. Simple,” said Queue.

“Foolproof,” said Quickfingers.

I tried to agree but there was a strange knot in my throat that was stopping me from talking. I nodded instead.

Queue tightened the last kite strap and he and the Pedlar took hold of the back of the cart.

“Ready. Steady. Heave!”

With a lurch, the cart – with me in it – started down the slope, slowly at first, but rapidly picking up speed. Very rapidly.
Too
rapidly!

As my ears began to be pinned back by the rushing wind, I suddenly wondered,
Maybe I should have been more generous about letting Quickfingers have the first go?
The cart was hitting every hummock and bump on the hill and my teeth were rattling like a scared skeleton.

“Go! Go!” yelled Queue and Quickfingers from the safety of the hilltop. “Go! Oh –
no
!”

They weren't the only ones yelling “Oh no!” I was too. For there, clomping gently along the bottom of the hill, was Wandering Nell. She'd chosen today of all days to escape from the cattle enclosure. She'd chosen this moment of all moments to arrive at our launch site. And then she made one more unfortunate choice. She chose to stop, directly in the path of the thundering cart and me, to have a leisurely mouthful of grass.