Hyacinth and the Stone Thief by Jacob Sager Weinstein

Author:Jacob Sager Weinstein [Sager Weinstein, Jacob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2018-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

If I had had more experience being assaulted by magical glowing cricket balls, I might have had a rational plan in place. Instead, I acted instinctively and did something moderately crazy:

I pulled the umbrella out from my belt, opened it swiftly, and shielded myself and Little Ben.

The cricket ball smashed into the umbrella with enough force to send me staggering backwards—

—and then the ball exploded into a dozen flaming shards, which shattered into hundreds of flaming snowflakes, which hung in the air, twinkling, before fading away.

I lowered the umbrella.

Roger Lock was staring at me. He was speechless. His jaw had dropped. His eyes had grown wide. His eyebrows had stayed exactly the same.

“Excalibrolly,” he whispered, in an awestruck tone. “That umbrella was the very first item to end up here, decades ago. Nobody knew who turned it in—it just showed up, moments after our doors opened. The ninety days’ period passed, and no one claimed it, so my predecessors tried to remove it, but it wouldn’t budge. It became a rite of passage for all new employees to try to pull it out. A legend grew up that it could only be removed by one who was worthy to wield it. Who are you?”

“I guess I’m Excalibrolly’s rightful owner,” I said. “Does that mean we’re on the same team?”

“I can’t be on anybody’s team. I took a vow of neutrality. But I do know somebody who might help: my husband Chapel is a Brother.”

“What’s a husband chapel?” Little Ben asked, at the same time I said, “You married your brother?”

“Not my brother,” Lock said. “He’s a Brother of the—”

He was interrupted by a loud explosion from somewhere above us. The lights flickered off and on.

The ancient segments of Roman wall, the giant stone sphinx, the tiny scattered pebbles, and all the rest began to vibrate. At first, I thought it was the aftershock of the explosion, but they kept on shaking. Then, like metal shavings moving towards a magnet, they slid towards the door.

“Minnie is here,” I said.

“You must have been right about her buying them,” Lock said. “They know their rightful owner.”

“They know their legal owner,” Little Ben said, shoving away a stone bench that pressed up against his leg like an overfriendly cat. “That’s not the same thing.”

“I can’t make that distinction,” Lock said.

Maybe I was just distracted by the stone elephant that was trying to run me over, but I could kind of see where Lock was coming from. Anyway, I was only going to convince him by arguing on his terms. So I said, “I understand. You have to play by Red Cross rules. But Excalibrolly has chosen me as its owner, and Minnie takes things away from their owners, and it’s your sworn duty to help people keep things they own. So don’t you have to help me, at least a little?”

He pointed to a stone sarcophagus, quivering eagerly in the far corner. “Let’s get the lid off that. You can hide in there while…” He gritted his teeth and looked almost dismayed.

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