Archer opened the curtain wide, hoping to get a better look, but the truck squealed off down Willow Street.
That was the first stranger to lurk outside Helmsley House, but it wasn’t the last. No more than an hour later, reporters began incessantly knocking on the front door. It was like the constant drip of a leaky faucet.
“Only a moment of their time!” a reporter pleaded. “A glimpse of the insanity within—”
Mrs. Helmsley slammed the door in his face. That was the sixth knock of the morning.
“Do you have any idea where our trunks are, Archer?” Grandpa Helmsley asked, straining to see behind a couch in the sitting room. “A friend said he’d brought them home.”
“I used one when I went to Raven Wood,” Archer answered. “The rest are down in the cellar. In a hole.”
“In a hole! Who would put our—”
Mrs. Helmsley stormed into the room and shrieked. Two reporters had managed to climb the facade and were taking pictures through the windows. She nearly yanked the curtain from the rod as she wrenched it shut.
“It’s a deluge!” she cried, eyeing Archer’s grandparents as she marched off. “We’re all going to drown unless you speak to someone!”
Archer couldn’t believe it, but for what had to be the first time in his life, he actually agreed with his mother. His grandparents still hadn’t explained the iceberg to him. And while he wasn’t sure what they’d told his parents, it clearly wasn’t enough to satisfy.
“Why won’t you say something?” he asked.
“Telling the truth is not always easy,” Grandma Helmsley replied. “Telling the truth can make you sound unhinged.”
“And that’s exactly what he wants,” Grandpa Helmsley muttered, peeking through the curtain at the horde of reporters gathered outside. “I’ll bet he’s having a good laugh right now.”
Mrs. Helmsley flew by clutching a sign.
DO NOT DISTURB
NO REPORTERS
NO INTERVIEWS
NO ANYONE
Archer heard the reporters booing his mother as she furiously nailed it to the front door.
“Follow me,” he said to his grandparents, leading them into the cellar to retrieve their trunks.
♦ ANOTHER PIECE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE ♦
“Your grandfather’s shirts go in the top drawer, dear.”
Archer tucked them inside as his grandfather lifted a wooden crate from a trunk. Archer remembered that crate. Oliver had found it the day Adélaïde discovered that the trunks were hidden in the cellar hole. It was filled with corked jars of colorful powders and liquids.
“What are those?” he asked, dragging an empty trunk to the closet and returning to his grandfather.
“Something we should have thrown overboard on our way to Antarctica,” Grandma Helmsley said, glaring at the crate.
Grandpa Helmsley gave Archer an odd sort of smile. “I suppose you could say they were something of a parting gift. I’m surprised they’re still here. Each of these bottles does something different.” He set the crate on the floor and removed a jar that was filled with dark blue powder and pink specks.
“Take that one, for example,” he continued, handing it to Archer. “That’s Doxical Powder. One pinch of that, and you’ll find yourself behaving the opposite of how you normally would. Temporarily, at least.”
Archer brought the jar close to his eyes. “But that would be like magic.”
“It’s not magic, but it is powerful. Did you know there’s a berry that grows in tropical West Africa called the miracle berry? When you eat it, the juices coat your tongue and, for a time, make sweet things taste sour.”
Archer had never heard of such a thing.
“A botanist at the Society, a man named Wigstan Spinler—he told me Doxical Powder works from a similar principle, but with your brain’s receptors instead of your tongue’s taste buds.”
Archer moved the jar from his face.
“It’s strong, yes. But harmless.”
“Harmless?” Grandma Helmsley questioned. “Honestly, Ralph, after everything that… What I mean is, in the wrong hands, Archer, that jar could do a great deal of harm.”
Archer gently shook it and watched the fine powder shift. Could such a small thing really do so much?
“It’s made from plants,” his grandfather explained. “It should say on the back which ones.”
“Slate leaf, yellow hotus, and pugwort.” Archer lowered the jar. “Pugwort?” Benjamin had a plant of the same name.
“I believe pugwort gives it those pink specks,” Grandpa Helmsley said, and stuck out his hand. Reluctantly, Archer passed it back.
“Curiosity is natural, Archer,” his grandmother said. “But those jars are not to be played with. I’m not sure they should even exist.”
“And best not talk about them publicly, Archer,” his grandfather added. “Mr. Spinler’s research is something of a secret.”
“My roommate at Raven Wood would’ve liked that,” Archer said, watching his grandfather set the crate next to a hedgehog high atop a wardrobe. “He loved plants and told me I would, too, if I knew what they could do.”
“Is that so?” Grandma Helmsley said, digging in her trunk. “What was his name?”
“Benjamin Birthwhistle.”
Grandma Helmsley stood straight up. Her arms were filled with sweaters, but from her expression, you’d think they were explosives. “Did you say Birthwhistle, Archer?”
Archer nodded. His grandfather’s expression was the same. “Do you know Benjamin?”
“Mostly we know his father,” Grandpa Helmsley explained, staring across the room at Grandma Helmsley. “A man named Herbert Birthwhistle. Or I suppose it’s President Birthwhistle now. He took over at the Society after we vanished.”
Archer shook his head. That couldn’t be right. “Benjamin’s father is a travel guide.”
“A travel guide?” Grandpa Helmsley’s laugh was filled with something bitter. “That’s what he told you, is it? Well, I suppose at a certain point that was almost true. But he’s one travel guide we’ll never use again.”
Archer was becoming uneasy. He had a vague idea where this was going. His grandfather stood before him and became very serious.
“You want to know more about the iceberg, Archer, and it’s only right that you should. Above all things, a true explorer desires to make the unknown known.”
“Ralph.”
“The first thing you need to know is that when I was president of the Society, I made decisions that Mr. Birthwhistle disagreed with. But there was one decision in particular that Mr. Birthwhistle hated me for—a decision he wanted to reverse. And sometimes, when you want something bad enough, you’re willing to do something terrible to get it.”
Archer’s mouth fell open.
“Now that’s quite enough of that,” Grandma Helmsley said, dropping her sweaters into her trunk. “Your grandfather and I have a few