With a push of a button, her lantern came on. Warm yellow light cast a fairy circle around her feet. She followed the cobblestone walk to where it wound around the house, then past the garden gate.
Back when she’d lived with Sean, she’d spent a little time among the rich and famous. She’d visited her fair share of country estates and mansions and seen their overly manicured lawns with their infinity pools, fake Roman statues, and massive fountains. Nothing like that here. No infinity pools. No Roman fountains. No weird shrubs trimmed to look like no trees in nature should ever look.
There was nothing there but a forest, a real forest, deep and dark.
She was shivering, but Lucy followed the path into the trees toward the center of the island. She felt like Astrid with her flashlight, sneaking around Clock Island. At thirteen she would have killed to be here. She wished she could go back in time and tell her younger self to just wait, she would get her chance someday.
On her left, sudden movement…A small herd of deer dashed through the woods. The lantern light revealed that a few were spotted white all over. The piebald deer Hugo had mentioned. It was like seeing a fairy in the forest.
She stepped back to give them room to run and nearly tripped when her foot hit something hard. Lucy lowered her lamp to see what she’d stumbled over. She expected to see a rock or tree branch.
Iron. An iron rail. And connected to it was a wooden plank. A crosstie.
Train tracks? Was there a train on Clock Island? She thought that was just in the books. Who installed a train on a ninety-acre island? The rails were narrow, however. These weren’t for Amtrak, that was for sure. Lucy followed the tracks for about a hundred yards or more until she came upon a wooden sign staked into the ground. Painted on it were the words Welcome to the City of Second Hand. Population: You.
Lucy smiled. She’d found it. She passed the sign and stepped onto a cobblestone road. The trees were sparse, so the stars and the moon illuminated the town as she walked deeper into it, waiting for someone to come out and ask her a riddle or give her a challenge to complete. But it seemed she was alone in the little city.
On her left, she found the little red post office where you could send a letter anywhere in the world. The stamps were all clocks. One of the books even came with a sheet of clock stamps. But the window was dark and the red door locked. On her right stood a narrow three-story building, which tilted a little to the left. The Black & White Hat Hotel, said the sign on the awning. Oh yes, she remembered this place. Sometimes the kids in the stories would have to go there to meet someone who could help them on their quest. The one rule of the Black & White Hat Hotel was that you had to wear a black-and-white hat at all times. According to the books, they served delicious gossip and even better chocolate-vanilla-swirl ice cream.
But it, too, was dark and locked up tight. And so was Redd Rover’s Treasure Hunt Supply Store (free shovel with purchase of one bucket) and the Clock Island branch of the Library of Almost Everything. Kids could go into the library and check out anything they might need for their adventure, including but not limited to Ms. Story, Clock Island’s seemingly immortal librarian. She was always happy to help if she wasn’t too busy feeding Darles Chickens, the library’s resident rooster.
Lucy peered into the windows of the library. She saw books turning to dust on the shelves, but sadly, no Ms. Story behind the counter. No rooster perched on a stack of overdue books.
The whole place was a ghost town. Could a town be a ghost town if no one had ever lived in it? The paint was peeling. The windows were clouded. Why had Jack given up on this place?
As she went deeper into the ghost town, she finally saw the train station. The building looked like the picture on the book cover, a pale green rectangle with The Second Hand Depot painted on the side in large block letters. The train was parked at the station—a black-and-yellow miniature locomotive with a couple of passenger cars hooked to the engine. It reminded her of those trains at children’s parks, only big enough for a dozen kids and their parents. The poor train was covered in bird droppings. A destination sign pointed down the tracks. Samhain Station. In the stories, a child might board the Clock Island Express for Samhain Station, where the Lord and Lady of October reigned and it was Halloween every day.
But the train didn’t look like it was going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, it appeared the track had never been finished. The whole place had the feel of a lost cause about it.
It reminded her of the night her grandparents had taken her to live with them. She’d been at the hospital for hours by the time they finally arrived. Since she’d had no extra clothes with her, they’d had to run back to her house to pack her bags. In her attic bedroom, a puzzle lay unfinished on the floor—two kittens in bow ties. One of Angie’s cast-off toys. Lucy could have put the pieces into the box and taken it with her, but she didn’t. Her sister was going to be in the hospital for a long time, and Lucy had to go live with her grandparents. Kittens in bow ties suddenly seemed so stupid and childish.
That’s what this place reminded her of, that puzzle left behind, never finished. Lucy knew something bad had happened here. Jack Masterson hadn’t retired from writing because he was so rich he never had to work again. No, for some reason, he’d lost heart.
She wanted to leave, to go back to the house. But who had left that note? Lucy was about to give up when she spotted lights on in a quirky-looking cottage, painted white and gray with a circular front door like a hobbit house. The painted sign by the front door read, The Storm Seller.
Even though she knew it would be locked up like the other buildings, she turned the doorknob anyway. Surprisingly, the door opened. Ten thousand tiny fairy lights illuminated the shop like ten thousand winking stars.
Walking through the Storm Seller made her feel like she was stepping into the temple of her childhood dreams. She’d always wanted to come to this strange little store where a peculiar little man sold storms inside jars, bottles, and boxes. Just like in the books, here was a crystal triangle in a glass vial claiming to be The Tip of the Iceberg. A white ceramic jug on the shelf next to it held A Rain to Hide Your Tears.
Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to get the Storm Seller just right. It was like being in a medieval apothecary’s shop. Jars, bottles, and carved wooden boxes sat here, there, and everywhere on shelves and tables and racks. Handwritten paper labels revealed what was inside. Lucy picked up one jar and read, The Storm Seller at Clock Island—Snow Day in a Jar.
The blue glass jar was eerily cloudy as if there were a real snowstorm trapped inside, and if she were to open the lid, snow would cover the island, and no one would have to go to school tomorrow. She looked at the other jars on the shelves, so lovingly re-created from the stories.
The Wind in Your Sails.
Stolen Thunder.