Morgan Rice
The Magic Factory. Oliver Blue and the School for Seers—Book One

Morgan Rice

Morgan Rice is the #1 bestselling and USA Today bestselling author of the epic fantasy series THE SORCERER’S RING, comprising seventeen books; of the #1 bestselling series THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS, comprising twelve books; of the #1 bestselling series THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY, a post-apocalyptic thriller comprising three books; of the epic fantasy series KINGS AND SORCERERS, comprising six books; of the epic fantasy series OF CROWNS AND GLORY, comprising eight books; of the epic fantasy series A THRONE FOR SISTERS, comprising eight books (and counting); of the new science fiction series THE INVASION CHRONICLES, comprising four books; and of the new fantasy series OLIVER BLUE AND THE SCHOOL FOR SEERS, comprising three books (and counting). Morgan’s books are available in audio and print editions, and translations are available in over 25 languages.

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“If you thought that there was no reason left for living after the end of THE SORCERER’S RING series, you were wrong. In RISE OF THE DRAGONS Morgan Rice has come up with what promises to be another brilliant series, immersing us in a fantasy of trolls and dragons, of valor, honor, courage, magic and faith in your destiny. Morgan has managed again to produce a strong set of characters that make us cheer for them on every page.…Recommended for the permanent library of all readers that love a well-written fantasy.”

--Books and Movie Reviews

Roberto Mattos

“An action packed fantasy sure to please fans of Morgan Rice’s previous novels, along with fans of works such as THE INHERITANCE CYCLE by Christopher Paolini…. Fans of Young Adult Fiction will devour this latest work by Rice and beg for more.”

--The Wanderer, A Literary Journal (regarding Rise of the Dragons)

“A spirited fantasy that weaves elements of mystery and intrigue into its story line. A Quest of Heroes is all about the making of courage and about realizing a life purpose that leads to growth, maturity, and excellence….For those seeking meaty fantasy adventures, the protagonists, devices, and action provide a vigorous set of encounters that focus well on Thor's evolution from a dreamy child to a young adult facing impossible odds for survival….Only the beginning of what promises to be an epic young adult series.”

--Midwest Book Review (D. Donovan, eBook Reviewer)

“THE SORCERER’S RING has all the ingredients for an instant success: plots, counterplots, mystery, valiant knights, and blossoming relationships replete with broken hearts, deception and betrayal. It will keep you entertained for hours, and will satisfy all ages. Recommended for the permanent library of all fantasy readers.”

--Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos

“In this action-packed first book in the epic fantasy Sorcerer's Ring series (which is currently 14 books strong), Rice introduces readers to 14-year-old Thorgrin "Thor" McLeod, whose dream is to join the Silver Legion, the elite knights who serve the king…. Rice's writing is solid and the premise intriguing.”

--Publishers Weekly

Books by Morgan Rice

OLIVER BLUE AND THE SCHOOL FOR SEERS

THE MAGIC FACTORY (Book #1)

THE ORB OF KANDRA (Book #2)

THE OBSIDIANS (Book #3)

THE INVASION CHRONICLES

TRANSMISSION (Book #1)

ARRIVAL (Book #2)

ASCENT (Book #3)

RETURN (Book #4)

THE WAY OF STEEL

ONLY THE WORTHY (Book #1)

A THRONE FOR SISTERS

A THRONE FOR SISTERS (Book #1)

A COURT FOR THIEVES (Book #2)

A SONG FOR ORPHANS (Book #3)

A DIRGE FOR PRINCES (Book #4)

A JEWEL FOR ROYALS (BOOK #5)

A KISS FOR QUEENS (BOOK #6)

A CROWN FOR ASSASSINS (Book #7)

A CLASP FOR HEIRS (Book #8)

OF CROWNS AND GLORY

SLAVE, WARRIOR, QUEEN (Book #1)

ROGUE, PRISONER, PRINCESS (Book #2)

KNIGHT, HEIR, PRINCE (Book #3)

REBEL, PAWN, KING (Book #4)

SOLDIER, BROTHER, SORCERER (Book #5)

HERO, TRAITOR, DAUGHTER (Book #6)

RULER, RIVAL, EXILE (Book #7)

VICTOR, VANQUISHED, SON (Book #8)

KINGS AND SORCERERS

RISE OF THE DRAGONS (Book #1)

RISE OF THE VALIANT (Book #2)

THE WEIGHT OF HONOR (Book #3)

A FORGE OF VALOR (Book #4)

A REALM OF SHADOWS (Book #5)

NIGHT OF THE BOLD (Book #6)

THE SORCERER’S RING

A QUEST OF HEROES (Book #1)

A MARCH OF KINGS (Book #2)

A FATE OF DRAGONS (Book #3)

A CRY OF HONOR (Book #4)

A VOW OF GLORY (Book #5)

A CHARGE OF VALOR (Book #6)

A RITE OF SWORDS (Book #7)

A GRANT OF ARMS (Book #8)

A SKY OF SPELLS (Book #9)

A SEA OF SHIELDS (Book #10)

A REIGN OF STEEL (Book #11)

A LAND OF FIRE (Book #12)

A RULE OF QUEENS (Book #13)

AN OATH OF BROTHERS (Book #14)

A DREAM OF MORTALS (Book #15)

A JOUST OF KNIGHTS (Book #16)

THE GIFT OF BATTLE (Book #17)

THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY

ARENA ONE: SLAVERSUNNERS (Book #1)

ARENA TWO (Book #2)

ARENA THREE (Book #3)

VAMPIRE, FALLEN

BEFORE DAWN (Book #1)

THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS

TURNED (Book #1)

LOVED (Book #2)

BETRAYED (Book #3)

DESTINED (Book #4)

DESIRED (Book #5)

BETROTHED (Book #6)

VOWED (Book #7)

FOUND (Book #8)

RESURRECTED (Book #9)

CRAVED (Book #10)

FATED (Book #11)

OBSESSED (Book #12)

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Copyright © 2018 by Morgan Rice. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author.  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

CHAPTER ONE

Oliver Blue glanced around the dark, dingy room. He sighed. This new house was about as bad as the last one. He clutched his only suitcase in his hands.

“Mom?” he said. “Dad?”

They both turned to look at him, scowling their ever permanent scowls.

“What, Oliver?” his mom said, sounding exasperated. “If you’re about to say you hate this place, don’t. It’s all we could afford.”

She seemed more stressed than usual. Oliver pressed his lips shut.

“It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled.

He turned, heading for the stairs. Upstairs he could already hear his older brother, Chris, thundering around the place. His mean, heavy-footed brother always tore through every new house in order to stake his claim to the best bedroom before Oliver got the chance.

He trudged up, suitcase in hand. On the landing, he found three doors. Behind one was a bathroom; the next opened to a master bedroom with a double bed; and the third contained Chris, who was sprawled on a bed like a starfish.

“Where’s my room?” Oliver said aloud.

As if anticipating the question, his mother yelled up the staircase. “There’s only one room. You boys are going to have to share.”

Oliver felt a swirl of panic in the pit of his stomach. Share? That was not a word that Chris took to well.

Sure enough, Chris was up like a rocket. He barreled toward Oliver, pinning him to the wall. Oliver let out a loud oomph.

“We are not sharing,” Chris hissed through his teeth. “I’m thirteen years old, I’m not sharing a room with a BABY!”

“I’m not a baby,” Oliver muttered. “I’m eleven.”

Chris sneered. “Exactly. A pipsqueak. So you go down and tell Mom and Dad that you don’t want to share.”

“Tell them yourself,” Oliver grumbled. “Since you’re the one with the problem.”

Chris’s scowl grew deeper. “And tarnish my reputation as the favorite son? No way. You do it.”

Oliver knew better than to provoke Chris any further. His brother could fly into rages over the smallest of things. Over the years of having the bad luck to be Chris Blue’s younger brother, Oliver had learned how to tread carefully, how to tiptoe around his brother’s moods. He tried reasoning with him.

“There’s nowhere else to sleep,” he countered. “Where am I supposed to go?”

“Not my problem,” Chris replied, giving Oliver an extra shove. “Sleep in the kitchen cupboard under the sink with the mice for all I care. But you’re not sharing with me.”

He waved his fist in the air, a threat that needed no explanation. There was nothing else to say. With a resigned sigh, Oliver collected himself from the wall, smoothed down his rumpled clothes, and trudged down the staircase.

His huge brother thundered down the steps after him, shoving him with an elbow as he went.

“Oliver said he won’t share,” Chris bellowed on his way past.

From the living room, Oliver heard Mom, Dad, and Chris begin to argue over the sleeping arrangements. He slowed his pace, less than eager to become embroiled in the fight.

Recently, Oliver had gained a new coping strategy for when the arguments erupted, and it involved sending his mind to a different place, a sort of dreamworld where everything was calm and safe, where the only boundary was his imagination. He went there now, closing his eyes and picturing himself in a huge brick factory surrounded by incredible inventions. Flying dragons made of brass and copper, huge steaming machines with turning cogs. Oliver loved inventions, so a big factory filled with magical ones was exactly the kind of place he wished he could be, rather than here, in this awful house with his awful family.

Suddenly, his mother’s shrill voice brought him back to the real world.

“Oliver! What’s all this fuss you’re causing?”

Oliver swallowed hard and took the final step. By the time he reached the living room, the three of them were gathered, arms crossed, matching scowls on their faces.

“You know there are only two rooms,” Dad began.

“And you’re causing a stink, saying you won’t share,” Mom added.

“What are we supposed to do?” Dad continued. “We don’t have the money for you both to have a bedroom.”

Oliver wanted to scream at them that this was all Chris’s fault, but the threat of harm from his brother was too great. Chris stood there glowering at him. There was nothing Oliver could do except take his parents’ harsh, unjust words.

“So?” Mom finished. “Where exactly is your Lordship planning on sleeping then?”

Chris smirked as Oliver glanced about him. As far as he could see, the downstairs area was the shape of a letter L, with a living room leading to a dining room of sorts—which was really just a corner containing nothing more than a rickety table—and then a kitchen around the corner. There was no extra room downstairs, just an open-plan setup.

Oliver couldn’t believe this was happening. All their houses had been horrible but at least he’d had a bedroom.

Behind him, Oliver saw there was a slight indentation, perhaps from a fireplace that had been removed years before. It was little more than an alcove but what other option was there? He was going to have to sleep in a corner! With no privacy at all!

And what about all his secret inventions, the ones he worked on at night when no one was looking? He knew if Chris found out what he was doing he’d ruin it. He’d probably stamp his inventions to dust. Without his own room and somewhere to keep all his secret bits and bobs, Oliver wouldn’t be able to work on them at all!

Oliver genuinely considered the kitchen cupboard, wondering whether that might actually be better. But he decided mice nibbling on his inventions would be just as bad as Chris stomping on them. So he decided that, with a little imagination—a curtain, a shelf, some lights, that sort of thing—the alcove could almost be a bit like a bedroom.

“There,” Oliver said quietly, pointing at the alcove.

“There?” his mom exclaimed.

Chris let out one of his bark-laughs. Oliver glared at him. Dad just tutted and shook his head.

“He’s a strange boy,” he said flippantly, to no one in particular. Then he let out an exaggerated sigh, as if this whole disagreement had been very trying for him. “But if he wants to sleep in the corner, let him sleep in the corner. I’m beyond knowing what to do with him.”

“Fine,” Mom said, exasperated. “You’re right, though. He’s getting more peculiar every day.”

The three of them turned away, heading toward the kitchen. Over his shoulder, Chris grinned at Oliver and whispered, “Freak.”

Oliver took a deep breath. He wandered over to the alcove and placed his case on the floor by his feet. There was nowhere to put his clothes; no shelves or drawers, and next to no space to fit his bed—assuming his parents even got him a bed. But he would make do. He could hang a curtain for privacy, make some shelves out of wood, and construct a pull-out drawer for under his bed—the bed he hoped to get—so there was at least somewhere safe to store his inventions.

Besides, if he were to look on the positive—something Oliver always tried his hardest to do—he was right beside a big window, which meant he’d have plenty of light and views to gaze out at.

He rested his elbows on the ledge now and gazed out at the gray October day. It was very windy outside, with rubbish blowing across the street. Opposite his house was a damaged car and a rusty washing machine that had been dumped there. It was definitely a poor neighborhood, Oliver decided. One of the worst they’d ever lived in.

The wind blew, making the glass of the windows rattle, and a breeze came through a gap in the woodwork. Oliver shivered. For October, the weather was much colder than it usually was in New Jersey. He’d even heard a report on the radio of a huge storm coming. But Oliver loved storms, especially when there was thunder and lightning.

He sniffed as the smell of cooking swirled in his nostrils. Turning back from the window, he ventured around the corner to the kitchen area. His mom was standing at the stove, stirring a big pot of something.

“What’s for dinner?” he asked.

“Meat,” she said. “And potatoes. And peas.”

Oliver’s stomach grumbled in anticipation. His family always ate simple meals, but Oliver didn’t mind that much. He had simple tastes.

“Go and wash your hands, boys,” Dad said from where he sat at the table.

From the corner of his eye, Oliver caught sight of Chris’s mean grin and already knew his brother had another cruel torment up his sleeve. The last thing he wanted to do was get trapped in the bathroom with Chris, but Dad looked up again from the table, his eyebrows raised.

“Do I have to say everything twice?” he complained.

There was no way out of it. Oliver left the room, Chris right on his tail. He hurried up the stairs, making a beeline for the bathroom in an attempt to get the hand-washing over and done with as quickly as possible. But Chris was right there in pursuit, and as soon as they were out of their parents’ earshot, he grabbed Oliver and shoved him into the wall.

“Guess what, squirt,” he said.

“What?” Oliver said, bracing himself.

“I’m really, really hungry tonight,” Chris said.

“So?” Oliver replied.

“So, you’re going to let me have your dinner, aren’t you? You’re going to tell Mom and Dad you’re not hungry.”

Oliver shook his head. “I already gave you the bedroom!” he refuted. “Let me have my potatoes, at the very least.”

Chris laughed. “No way. We’re starting a new school tomorrow. I’ve got to be strong in case there are other pipsqueaks like you I need to pick on.”

The mention of school sent a new wave of trepidation washing through Oliver. He’d started so many new schools in his life and each time it seemed to get a little worse. There was always a Chris Blue equivalent who was able to sniff him out, who wanted to pick on him no matter what he did. And there were never any allies. Oliver had long ago given up on making friends. What was the point when he’d just be moving again in a matter of months?

Chris’s face softened. “Tell you what, Oliver, I’ll be kind. Just this once.” Then he grinned and burst into maniacal laughter. “I’ll give you a knuckle sandwich for dinner!”

He raised his fist. Oliver ducked away, missing the flailing fist by mere millimeters. He bolted downstairs for the living room.

“Come back, toe rag!” Chris yelled.

He was right on Oliver’s heels, but Oliver was fast, and he hurried to the dining table. Dad looked up at him as he stood there panting, recovering from the sprint.

“Are you two fighting again?” He sighed. “What about this time?”

Chris skidded to a halt beside Oliver.

“Nothing,” he said quickly.

Suddenly, Oliver felt a sharp pinching sensation at his waist. Chris was digging his nails in. Oliver looked over at him, at the look of triumphant glee on his face.

Dad looked suspicious. “I don’t believe you. What’s going on?”

The pinch got stronger, the pain radiating through Oliver’s side. He knew what he had to do. There was no choice.

“I was just saying,” he said, wincing, “that I’m not feeling very hungry tonight.”

Dad looked at him wearily. “Mom’s been slaving over that stove for you and now you’re saying you don’t want it?”

Mom looked over her shoulder from the stove with a wounded expression. “What’s the problem? Don’t you like meat anymore? Or is it the potatoes that are the issue?”

Oliver felt Chris’s pinch deepen even more, sending an even sharper pain through him.

“Sorry, Mom,” he said, his eyes watering. “I am grateful. I’m just not hungry.”

“What am I supposed to do with him?” Mom exclaimed. “First the bedroom, now this! My nerves can’t take it.”

“I’ll have his extras,” Chris said quickly. Then in a sugary voice, he added, “I don’t want all your efforts to go to waste, Mom.”

Mom and Dad both looked at Chris. He was bulky and getting ever bulkier but they didn’t seem concerned. Either that, or they didn’t want to stand up to the bully son they’d raised.

“Fine,” Mom said, sighing. “But you have got to sort out that brain of yours, Oliver. I can’t be having this sort of fuss every evening.”

Oliver felt Chris’s pinch release. He rubbed his sore side.

“Okay, Mom,” he said, sadly. “Sorry, Mom.”

As the sound of cutlery and crockery clinked behind him, Oliver turned from the dining table, his stomach growling, and walked back to his alcove. To block out the smells that made his hunger even more pronounced, he distracted himself by opening his suitcase and taking out his one and only possession, a book about inventors. A kind librarian had given it to him several years ago after noticing that he kept coming in to read it. Now it was dog-eared, well-worn from the million times he’d leafed through it. But no matter how often he read it, he never got bored. Inventors and inventions fascinated him. In fact, one of the reasons Oliver wasn’t that sad about moving to this neighborhood in New Jersey was because he’d read about a factory nearby where an inventor named Armando Illstrom built some of his finest creations. It didn’t matter to Oliver that Armando Illstrom was included in the Zany Inventors section of the book, or that most of his contraptions failed. Oliver still found him very inspirational, especially his booby trap device which was designed to scare away raccoons. Oliver was trying to create his own version to ward off Chris.

Just then, he heard the sound of clinking cutlery coming from the kitchen. He looked up to see his family sitting at the table, preoccupied with their dinner, Chris slurping up Oliver’s helping.

Frowning at the unfairness of it all, Oliver discreetly took his invention pieces out of his suitcase and laid them on the floor before him. The booby trap was in a state of half completion. It was a kind of slingshot mechanism that would activate when a lever was pressed underfoot, catapulting acorns into the face of the intruder. Of course, Armando’s version was for a raccoon so Oliver had had to scale it up in order to fit the much larger dimensions of his brother, and he’d replaced the acorns with the only thing he had on hand, which was a small plastic statue of a soldier. He’d managed to get most of the mechanism constructed, as well as the lever. But every time he pressed it down to test it, it didn’t work. The soldier would not be flung. It just sat there, gun poised.

With his family distracted, Oliver got to work on it. He set all the pieces out, laying the trap. But he couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t work. Perhaps, he thought, this was the reason Armando Illstrom was considered zany. None of his inventions worked very well. If at all.

Just then, Oliver heard his family begin to bicker. He squeezed his eyes shut to block it out, allowing his mind to take him to his special dream place. Once again, he was in a factory. This time the booby trap device was right in front of him. It was in perfect working order, catapulting acorns left, right, and center. But Oliver couldn’t see how it was any different from his version.

“Magic,” a voice said behind him.

Oliver jumped. Never in his dream land had there been any people!

But when he looked behind him, there was no one there. He swirled on the spot, searching for the owner of the voice, but could see no one at all.

He opened his eyes, bringing himself back to the real world, to the dark corner of the dingy room that was his new home. Why on earth had his imagination conjured up magic as a solution? Magic wasn’t his cup of tea. If it had been, he would have bought a book of tricks, not a book of inventors. He liked inventions, solid things, practical items with a purpose. He liked science and physics, not intangible, mystical things.

Just then, the smell of dinner wafted toward him. From his place on the floor, Oliver couldn’t help but look toward the table. There, eyes locked on Oliver, sat Chris. He shoved a large potato into his mouth and grinned widely as grease dribbled down his chin.

Oliver glared, feeling a sense of fury come over him. That was his potato! A strong urge overcame him, to walk over and swipe his arm across the table, sending everything on it clattering to the ground. He could just picture it now. What a sweet victory it would feel like!

Suddenly, Oliver’s sense of fury was replaced by something different, something new that he’d never felt before. With a whoosh, a strange calmness overcame him, a peculiar sense of certainty. And just like that, a loud crack sounded out, coming from the table. One of its legs had snapped right in the middle. The table lurched suddenly to the side. All the plates started to slide along it, and then they fell right off the end, smashing to the ground one by one. The noise was horrendous.

Mom and Dad cried out, both alarmed by the sudden turn of events. As peas and potatoes went flying everywhere, they leapt up from their chairs.

Shocked, Oliver leapt to his feet too. Had he made that happen? Just with his mind? Surely not!

While Mom hurried to the kitchen, looking for towels to clean up the mess, Dad knelt down to inspect the table.

“Cheap, shoddy thing,” he said gruffly. “The leg’s snapped clean in half!”

From the table, Chris’s gaze fixed on Oliver. Whether Oliver had somehow broken the table leg with his mind or not, Chris clearly blamed him for it.

With his gaze locked on Oliver, Chris rose slowly from his chair. Potatoes and peas rolled from his lap to the floor. His face grew redder and redder. He clenched his hands into fists. Then, like an exploding rocket, he came galumphing toward Oliver.

Oliver gasped and turned quickly to the booby trap. His fingers moved quickly to set it up.

Please work! Please work! he thought over and over again.

The whole thing happened as if in slow motion. Chris loomed up before Oliver. Oliver’s foot stomped onto the lever. Oliver held on to the desire for the machine to work, picturing the soldier flying through the air just as he’d pictured the plates crashing to the ground. And then, sure enough, the mechanism began to whir. The soldier launched into the air, sailed in an arc, and smacked Chris with his plastic, pointy rifle, right between the eyes!

Time sped up back to normal. Oliver gasped, awestruck, not quite believing it had worked.

Chris stood there, perplexed. The soldier fell to the floor. There was a small red mark in the middle of Chris’s forehead, a dent from the hard plastic gun.

“You little jerk!” Chris yelled, rubbing his head in disbelief. “I’ll get you back for that!”

But for the first time ever, he hesitated. He seemed too wary to approach Oliver, to sock him in the ear, or rub his knuckles against his head. Instead, he backed away as if he were scared. Then he stormed out of the room and upstairs. The sound of his slamming door resonated through the house.

Oliver’s mouth dropped open. He couldn’t believe that it had really worked! Not only had he made his invention work at the last second, but he’d literally made Chris’s meal fall to the floor with his mind!

He looked down at his hands. Did he have some kind of power? Was there really such a thing as magic? He couldn’t just suddenly start believing in it because of one little experience. But deep down he knew that he was different in some way, that he had some kind of power.

Mind swimming, he went back to his book and read, for the millionth time, the passage about Armando Illstrom. Thanks to his invention, Oliver had scared Chris away for the first time ever. He wanted to meet Armando Illstrom more than ever. And the factory really wasn’t that far from his new school. Maybe he should visit him after school tomorrow.

But surely he would be a very old man now. Possibly so old that he’d passed on. The thought made Oliver’s heart sink. He’d hate it if his hero had passed before he’d had a chance to meet him, and to thank him for inventing the booby trap!

He read again the passage about Armando’s string of failed inventions. The passage stated—in a rather wry tone, Oliver noted—that Armando Illstrom had been on the cusp of inventing a time machine when World War Two broke out. His factory had ground to a halt. But when the war ended, Armando had never tried to finish his invention. And everyone had ridiculed him for trying in the first place, calling him the “lesser Edison.” Oliver wondered why Armando had stopped. Surely not because of some bully inventors laughing at him?

His interest was piqued. Tomorrow, he decided, he would find the factory. And if Armando Illstrom was still alive, he’d ask him, to his face, what had happened to his time machine.

His parents emerged from around the corner of the kitchen, both covered in food.

“We’re going to bed,” Mom said.

“What about my blankets and things?” Oliver asked, looking at the bare alcove.

Dad sighed. “I suppose you want me to fetch them from the car, do you?”

“It would be nice,” Oliver replied. “I’d like to get a good night’s sleep before school tomorrow.”

The sense of dread he felt about tomorrow was beginning to grow, mirroring the building storm. He could already tell he was going to have the worst day ever. At the very least he’d like to be rested in preparation. He’d had so many horrible first days at new schools he was certain the one tomorrow was going to be another to add to the list.

Dad trudged reluctantly out of the house, a plume of wind roaring through as he opened the front door. He returned a few moments later with a pillow and blanket for Oliver.

“We’ll get a bed in a couple of days,” he said, as he handed the bedding over to Oliver. It was cold from having been in the car all day.

“Thanks,” Oliver replied, grateful for even this level of comfort.

His parents left, turning off the light as they went, plunging Oliver into darkness. Now the only light in the room was from the street lamp outside.

The wind began to roar again and the window panes rattled. Oliver could tell the weather was building, that something odd was in the air. He’d heard on the radio that the storm of a lifetime was coming. He couldn’t help but be excited about it. Most kids would dread a storm but Oliver was only dreading his first day at his new school.

He went over to the window, leaning his elbows against the ledge as he had before. The sky was almost completely dark. A spindly tree blew in the wind, angled sharply to one side. Oliver wondered if it might snap off. He could just picture it now, the thin bark snapping, the tree launching into the air, carried away by the fierce winds.

And that’s when he saw them. Just as he was transitioning into his daydreaming state, he noticed two people standing by the tree. A woman and a man who looked remarkably like him, like they could easily be mistaken for his parents. They had kind faces and they smiled at him as they held one another’s hands.

Oliver jumped back from the window, startled. For the first time, he realized that neither of his parents looked anything like him. They both had dark hair and blue eyes, as did Chris. Oliver, on the other hand, was the rarer combination of blond hair and brown eyes.

Oliver wondered, suddenly, if perhaps his parents weren’t his parents at all. Perhaps that was why they seemed to hate him so much? He looked out the window but the two people were now gone. Just figments of his imagination. But they’d looked so real. And so familiar.

Wishful thinking, Oliver concluded.

Oliver sat back against the cold wall, tucking himself into the alcove that was his new bedroom, pulling the covers up over him. He brought his knees up to his chest and clasped them tightly, and was struck by a sudden strange sensation, a moment of realization, of clarity—that everything was about to change.

CHAPTER TWO

Oliver woke with a sense of trepidation. His whole body ached from sleeping on the hard floor. The blankets hadn’t been thick enough to keep the cold from getting right into his bones. He was surprised he’d slept at all, considering how anxious he was feeling about his first day at school.

The house was very quiet. No one else was awake. Oliver realized he’d actually woken earlier than he needed to thanks to the dull sunrise seeping through the window.

He heaved himself up and peered out the window. The wind had wreaked havoc through the night, blowing down fences and mailboxes, and throwing trash all over the sidewalks. Oliver looked over at the spindly, crooked tree where he’d seen a vision of the friendly couple last night, the ones who had looked like him and made him wonder if perhaps he wasn’t related to the Blues at all. He shook his head. It was just wishful thinking on his part, he reasoned. Anyone with Chris Blue as their older brother would dream they weren’t actually related!

Knowing he had a little bit of time before his family woke up, Oliver turned from the window and went to his suitcase. He opened it up and looked inside at all the cogs and wires and levers and buttons he’d collected for his inventions. He smiled to himself as he looked at the slingshot booby trap that he’d used on Chris yesterday. But it was just one of Oliver’s many inventions and it wasn’t the most important one, not by a long shot. Oliver’s ultimate invention was something a little more complex, and a whole lot more important—because Oliver was attempting to invent a way to make himself invisible.

Theoretically, it was possible. He’d read all about it. There were actually only two necessary components to make an object invisible. The first was bending light around the object so it couldn’t cast a shadow, similar to the way swimming pool water bent light and made the swimmers inside look strangely squat. The second necessary component to invisibility involved eliminating the object’s reflection.

It sounded simple enough on paper, but Oliver knew there was a reason no one had achieved it yet. Still, that wasn’t going to stop him from trying. He needed this in order to escape his miserable life, and it didn’t matter how long it took him to get there.

He reached into his case now and took out all the bits of fabric he’d collected in search of something with negative refractive properties. Unfortunately, he hadn’t found the right fabric yet. Then he took out all the coils of thin wire he’d need to make electromagnetic microwaves to bend the light unnaturally. Unfortunately, none of them were thin enough. In order to work, the coils would need to be less than forty nanometers in size, which was an unfeasibly small size for the human mind to comprehend. But Oliver knew that someone, somewhere, someday, would have a machine to make the coils thin enough, and the fabric refractive enough.

Just then, from upstairs, Oliver heard his parents’ alarm clock jingle. He quickly packed away his items, knowing all too well that they’d go and wake Chris up next, and if Chris ever got wind of what he was trying to make, he would destroy all his hard work.

Oliver’s stomach groaned then, reminding him that Chris’s bullying and torment were about to begin anew, and that he’d better get some food in him before they did.

He passed the still broken dining table and went to the kitchen. Most of the cupboards were empty. The family hadn’t yet had the chance to go grocery shopping for the new house. But Oliver found a box of cereal that had come over in the move, and there was fresh milk in the fridge, so he quickly made up a bowl and scarfed it down. Just in time, too. A few moments later, his parents emerged into the kitchen.

“Coffee?” Mom asked Dad, bleary-eyed, her hair a mess.

Dad just grunted his yes. He looked at the broken table and with a heavy sigh, fetched some packing tape. He got to work mending the table leg, wincing as he did so.

“It’s that bed,” he muttered as he worked. “It’s wonky. And the mattress is too lumpy.” He rubbed his back to emphasize the point.

Oliver felt a swell of anger. At least his dad had slept on a bed! He’d had to sleep on blankets in an alcove! The injustice stung him.

“I have no idea how I’m going to get through an entire day at the call center,” Oliver’s mother added, coming over with the coffee. She placed it on the now tentatively fixed table.

“You have a new job, Mom?” Oliver asked.

Moving house all the time made it impossible for his parents to keep full-time work. Things at home were always harder when they were unemployed. But if Mom was working that meant nicer food, better clothes, and pocket money to buy more gizmos for his inventions.

“Yes,” she said, letting out a strained smile. “Dad and I both. The hours are long, though. Today’s a training day, but after that we’ll be doing the late shift. So we won’t be around after school. But Chris will keep an eye on you, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Oliver felt his stomach sink. He’d prefer Chris to not be in the equation at all. He was perfectly able to look after himself.

As if summoned by the mention of his name, Chris suddenly bounded into the kitchen. He was the only Blue who looked refreshed this morning. He stretched and let out a theatrical yawn, his shirt riding up over his round, pink belly as he did.

“Good morning, my wonderful family,” he said with his sarcastic grin. He flung an arm around Oliver, pulling him into a headlock cleverly masked as brotherly affection. “How are you, squirt? Looking forward to school?”

Oliver could hardly breathe, Chris was holding on so tight. As always, his parents seemed oblivious to the bullying.

“Can’t… wait…” he managed to say.

Chris let Oliver go and took a seat at the table opposite Dad.

Mom came over from the counter with a plate of buttered toast. She placed it in the center of the table. Dad took a slice. Then Chris leaned forward and snatched up the rest, leaving nothing for Oliver.

“HEY!” Oliver cried. “Did you see that?”

Mom looked at the empty plate and let out one of her exasperated sighs. She looked at Dad as if expecting him to step in and say something. But Dad just shrugged.

Oliver clenched his fists. It was so unfair. If he’d not preempted such an event he’d have missed another meal thanks to Chris. It infuriated him that neither of his parents ever stood up for him, or ever seemed to notice how often he had to go without because of Chris.

“Will you two be walking to school together?” Mom asked, clearly trying to sidestep the whole issue.

“Can’t,” Chris said through his mouthful. Butter dribbled down his chin. “If I’m seen with a nerd I’ll never make friends.”

Dad raised his head. For a second, it seemed as if he was about to say something to Chris, to chastise him for calling Oliver names. But then he clearly decided against it, because he just sighed wearily and let his gaze drop back down to the tabletop.

Oliver ground his teeth, trying to keep his growing fury at bay.

“Doesn’t bother me,” he hissed, glaring at Chris. “I’d prefer not to be within a hundred feet of you anyway.”

Chris let out a spiteful bark-laugh.

“Boys…” Mom warned in the meekest voice ever.

Chris shook his fist at Oliver, indicating quite clearly that he’d get him back for it later.

With breakfast over, the family quickly got ready, and left the house to start their respective days.

Oliver watched as his parents got into their battered car and drove off. Then Chris stalked away without another word, hands in his pockets, a scowl on his face. Oliver knew how important it was for Chris to establish immediately that he was not to be messed with. It was his armor, the way he coped with turning up at a new school six weeks into the school year. Unfortunately for Oliver, he was too skinny and too short to even attempt to cultivate such an image. His appearance only ever added to how conspicuous he was.

Chris stormed ahead until he had disappeared from Oliver’s sight, leaving him to walk the unfamiliar streets alone. It was not the most pleasant walk of Oliver’s life. The neighborhood was tough, with lots of angry dogs barking behind chain-link fences, and loud, beat-up cars swerving along the potholed roads with no regard for the children crossing.

When Campbell Junior High loomed up ahead of him, Oliver felt a shiver run through him. It was a horrible-looking place made of gray brick, completely square, and with a weather-beaten facade. There wasn’t even any grass to sit on, just a large asphalt playground with broken basketball hoops on either side. Kids jostled each other, wrestling for the ball. And the noise! It was deafening, from arguments and singing, to shouting and chatter.

Oliver wanted to turn around and run back the way he’d come. But he swallowed his fear and walked, head down, hands in pockets, across the playground and in through the large glass doors.

The corridors of Campbell Junior High were dark. They smelled of bleach, despite looking like they hadn’t been cleaned in a decade. Oliver saw a sign for the reception area and followed it, knowing he’d have to announce himself to someone. When he found it, there was a very bored, angry-looking woman inside, her long red fingernails typing away into a computer.

“Excuse me,” Oliver said.

She didn’t respond. He cleared his throat and tried again, a little louder.

“Excuse me. I’m a new student, enrolling today.”

Finally, she turned her eyes from the computer to Oliver. She squinted. “New student?” she asked, a look of suspicion on her face. “It’s October.”

“I know,” Oliver replied. He didn’t need reminding. “My family just moved here. I’m Oliver Blue.”

She regarded him silently for a long moment. Then, without uttering another word, she turned her attention back to the computer and started typing. Her long fingernails clacked against the keys.

“Blue?” she said. “Blue. Blue. Blue. Ah, here. Christopher John Blue. Eighth grade.”

“Oh no, that’s my brother,” Oliver replied. “I’m Oliver. Oliver Blue.”

“Can’t see a Oliver,” she replied, blandly.

“Well… here I am,” Oliver said, smiling weakly. “I should be on the list. Somewhere.”

The receptionist looked extremely unimpressed. The whole debacle was not helping with his nerves one bit. She typed again, then let out a long sigh.

“Okay. There. Oliver Blue. Sixth grade.” She turned in her swivel chair and dumped a folder of paperwork on the table. “You’ve got your schedule, map, useful contacts, et cetera, all in here.” She tapped it lazily with one of her shiny red nails. “Your first class is English.”

“That’s good,” Oliver said, taking the folder and tucking it under his arm. “I’m fluent.”

He grinned to indicate that he’d made a joke. The side of the receptionist’s lip twitched up, just barely, into an expression that might have resembled amusement. Realizing there was nothing more to be said between them, and sensing that the receptionist would very much like him to leave, Oliver backed out of the room, clutching his folder.

Once in the corridor, he opened it up and began to study the map, searching for the English room and his first class. It was on the third floor, so Oliver headed in the direction of the staircase.

Here, the jostling kids seemed to be even more jostly. Oliver found himself swept up into a sea of bodies, being pushed up the staircase with the crowd rather than of his own volition. He had to fight his way through the swarm to get out at the third floor.

He popped out onto the third-floor corridor, panting. That was not an experience he was looking forward to repeating several times a day!

Using his map to guide him, Oliver soon found the English classroom. He peered through the little square window in the door. It was already half full of students. He felt his stomach swirl with anguish at the thought of meeting new people, of being seen and judged and evaluated. He pushed down the door handle and walked inside.

He was right to be scared, of course. He’d done this enough times to know that everyone would look over, curious about the new kid. Oliver had felt this sensation now more times than he cared to remember. He tried not to meet anyone’s eyes.

“Who are you?” a gruff voice said.

Oliver swirled to see the teacher, an old man with shockingly white hair, looking up at him from his desk.

“I’m Oliver. Oliver Blue. I’m new here.”

The teacher frowned. His beady eyes were black and suspicious. He regarded Oliver for an uncomfortably long time. Of course, this just added to Oliver’s stress, because now even more of his classmates were paying attention to him, and still more were streaming in through the door. A greater and greater audience watched him with curiosity, like he was some kind of spectacle at the circus.

“Didn’t know I was getting another one,” the teacher said, finally, with an air of disdain. “Would’ve been nice to have been informed.” He sighed wearily, reminding Oliver of his father. “Take a seat then. I suppose.”

Oliver hurried to a spare seat, feeling everyone’s eyes following him. He tried to make himself as small as possible, as unobservable as possible. But of course he stood out like a sore thumb no matter how much he tried to hide. He was the new kid, after all.

With all the seats now filled, the teacher began his class.

“We’re carrying on with where we left off last class,” he said. “About grammar rules. Can someone please explain to Oscar what we were talking about?”

Everyone started to laugh at his mistake.

Oliver felt his throat get tighter. “Um, sorry to interrupt, but my name is Oliver, not Oscar”

The teacher’s expression turned instantly cross. Oliver knew immediately that he wasn’t the kind of man who appreciated being corrected.

“When you’ve lived sixty-six years with a name like Mr. Portendorfer,” the teacher said, glowering, “you get over people pronouncing your name wrong. Profendoffer. Portenworten. I’ve heard it all. So I suggest you, Oscar, ought to be less concerned about the correct pronunciation of your name!”

Oliver raised his eyebrows, stunned into silence. Even the rest of his classmates seemed shocked by the outburst, because they weren’t even tittering with laughter. Mr. Portendorfer’s reaction was over the top by anyone’s standards, and for it to be directed at a new kid made it even worse. From the grumpy receptionist to the volatile English teacher, Oliver wondered if there was even a single nice person in this whole school!

Mr. Portendorfer began droning on about pronouns. Oliver hunkered down even further in his seat, feeling tense and unhappy. Luckily Mr. Portendorfer didn’t pick on him anymore, but when the bell rang an hour later, his chastisement was still ringing in Oliver’s ears.

Oliver trudged through the halls in search of his math classroom. When he found it, he made sure to beeline straight for the back row. If Mr. Portendorfer didn’t know he had a new student, maybe the math teacher wouldn’t either. Perhaps he could be invisible for the next hour.

To Oliver’s relief it worked. He sat, silent and anonymous, throughout the whole class, like an algebra-obsessed ghost. But even that didn’t feel like the best solution to his problems, Oliver thought. Being unnoticed was just as bad as being publicly humiliated. It made him feel insignificant.

The bell rang again. It was lunch, so Oliver followed his map down to the hall. If the playground had been intimidating it was nothing compared to the lunchroom. Here, the kids were like wild animals. Their raucous voices echoed off the walls, making the noise even more unbearable. Oliver bowed his head and hurried toward the queue.

Smack. Suddenly, he slammed into a large, foreboding body. Slowly, Oliver raised his gaze.

To his surprise, it was Chris’s face he was staring into. On either side of him, in a sort of arrow formation, were three boys and one girl all scowling the same scowl. Cronies was the word that sprang to Oliver’s mind.

“You’ve made friends already?” Oliver said, trying not to sound surprised.

Chris narrowed his eyes. “Not all of us are antisocial loser freaks,” he said.

Oliver realized then that this wasn’t going to be a pleasant interaction with his brother. But then, it never was.

Chris looked over at his new cronies. “This is my pipsqueak brother, Oliver,” he announced. Then he let out a belly laugh. “He sleeps in the alcove.”

His new bully friends started to laugh too.

“He’s available for swirlies, wedgies, headlocks, and my personal favorite,” Chris continued. He grabbed Oliver, and pressed his knuckles into his head. “Noogies.”

Oliver wriggled and thrashed in Chris’s grasp. Locked in the horrible, painful headlock, Oliver remembered his powers from yesterday, the moment he’d broken the table leg and sent potatoes into Chris’s lap. If he only knew how he’d summoned those powers he could do it now and break free. But he had no idea how he’d done it. All he’d done was visualize in his mind’s eye the table breaking, the plastic soldier flying through the air. Was that all it took? His imagination?

He attempted it now, picturing himself wrestling free from Chris. But it was no good. With Chris’s new friends all watching on, laughing with glee, he was just too tuned into the reality of his humiliation to shift his mind to his imagination.

Finally, Chris let him go. Oliver staggered back, rubbing his sore head. He patted down his hair, which had become frizzy with static. But more than the humiliation of Chris’s bullying, Oliver felt the sting of disappointment from failing to summon his powers. Maybe the whole kitchen table thing was just a coincidence. Maybe he didn’t have any special powers at all.

The girl who was hovering next to Chris’s shoulder spoke up. “Can’t wait to get to know you better, Oliver.” She said it in a menacing voice that Oliver could tell meant quite the opposite.

He’d been worried about bullies. Of course he should have anticipated the worst bully of all would be his brother.

Oliver shoved his way past Chris and his new friends and headed for the lunch queue. With a sad sigh, he grabbed a cheese sandwich from the fridge and headed, heavy-hearted, to the restroom. The toilet cubicle was the only place he felt safe.

*

Oliver’s next lesson after lunch was science. He wandered the corridors looking for the correct room, his stomach churning with the certainty that it would be just as bad as his first two classes.

When he found the classroom he knocked against the window. The teacher was younger than he’d been anticipating. Science teachers, in his experience, tended to be old and somewhat strange, but Ms. Belfry looked completely sane. She had long, straight, mousy brown hair, which was almost the same color as her cotton dress and cardigan. She turned at the sound of his knock and smiled, showing dimples on both cheeks, and beckoned him in. He opened the door timidly.

“Hello,” Ms. Belfry said, smiling. “Are you Oliver?”

Oliver nodded. Even though he was the first one there, he felt suddenly very shy. At least this teacher seemed to be expecting him. That was a relief.

“I’m so pleased to meet you,” Ms. Belfry said, holding out a hand for him to shake.

It was all very formal and not at all what Oliver was expecting considering what he’d experienced of Campbell Junior High so far. But he took her hand and shook. She had very warm skin and her friendly, respectful demeanor helped put him at ease.

“Did you get a chance to do any of the reading?” Ms. Belfry asked.

Oliver’s eyes widened and he felt a little hitch of panic in his chest. “I didn’t realize there was any reading.”

“It’s fine,” Ms. Belfry said reassuringly, smiling her kind smile. “Not to worry. We’re learning about scientists this term, and some important historical figures.” She pointed at a black-and-white portrait on the wall. “This is Charles Babbage, he invented the…”

“…calculator,” Oliver finished.

Ms. Belfry beamed and clapped her hands. “You already know?”

Oliver nodded. “Yes. And he’s also often credited as the father of the computer, since it was his designs that led to their invention.” He looked at the next picture on the wall. “And that’s James Watt,” he said. “The inventor of the steam engine.”

Ms. Belfry nodded. She looked thrilled. “Oliver, I can already tell we’re going to get along famously.”

Just then, the door opened, and in poured Oliver’s classmates. He swallowed, his anxiety returning in a huge rush.

“Why don’t you take a seat?” Ms. Belfry suggested.

He nodded and hurried to the one closest to the window. If it all got too much, at the very least he could look out and imagine himself somewhere else. From here, he had a great view out over the neighborhood, at all the bits of trash and crispy fall leaves blowing in the wind. The clouds above looked even darker than they had that morning. It didn’t really help with Oliver’s sense of foreboding.

The rest of the kids in the class were very loud and very rowdy. It took a long time for Ms. Belfry to settle them down so she could start her lesson.

“Today, we’re carrying on from where we left off last week,” she said, needing to raise her voice, Oliver noticed, in order to be heard over the din. “With some amazing inventors from World War Two. I wonder if anyone knows who this is?”

She held up a black-and-white photo of a woman whom Oliver had read about in his inventors book. Katharine Blodgett, who invented the gas mask, the smoke screen, and the non-reflective glass that was used for wartime submarine periscopes. After Armando Illstrom, Katharine Blodgett was one of Oliver’s favorite inventors, because he found all the technological advances she’d made in World War Two fascinating.

Just then, he noticed Ms. Belfry looking at him expectantly. She could probably tell from his face that he knew precisely who was in the picture. But after his experiences today, he was afraid to say anything aloud. His class would work out he was a nerd eventually; Oliver didn’t want to hurry the process.

But Ms. Belfry nodded at him, eager and encouraging. Against his better judgment, Oliver piped up.

“That’s Katharine Blodgett,” he said, finally.

Ms. Belfry’s grin burst onto her face, bringing her lovely dimples with it. “That’s correct, Oliver. Can you tell the class who she is? What she invented?”

Behind him, Oliver could hear chuckling. The kids were already cottoning on to his nerd status.

“She was an inventor during World War Two,” he said. “She created lots of useful and important wartime inventions, like submarine periscopes. And gas masks, which saved lots of people’s lives.”

Ms. Belfry looked thrilled with Oliver.

“FREAK!” someone shouted from the back.

“No, thank you, Paul,” Ms. Belfry said sternly to the boy who’d shouted. She turned to the board and began to write about Katharine Blodgett.

Oliver smiled to himself. After the librarian who’d gifted him the inventors book, Ms. Belfry was the kindest adult he’d ever met. Her enthusiasm was like a bulletproof shield Oliver could wrap around his shoulders, deflecting the rest of his class’s cruel words. He settled into the class, more at ease than he’d been in days.

*

Sooner than he was expecting, the bell rang for the end of the day. Everyone hurried out, running and shouting. Oliver collected his things and made for the exit.

“Oliver, I’m very impressed with your knowledge,” Ms. Belfry said when she ran into him in the hallway. “Where did you learn about all these people?”

“I have a book,” he explained. “I like inventors. I want to be one.”

“Do you make your own inventions?” she asked, looking enthusiastic.

He nodded but didn’t tell her about the invisibility coat. What if she thought it was silly? He wouldn’t be able to cope with seeing anything resembling mockery on her face.

“I think that’s fantastic, Oliver,” she said, nodding. “It’s very important to have dreams to follow. Who is your favorite inventor?”

Oliver recalled Armando Illstrom’s face in the faded picture in his book.

“Armando Illstrom,” he said. “He’s not very famous but he invented lots of cool things. He even tried to make a time machine.”

“A time machine?” Ms. Belfry said, raising her eyebrows. “That’s exciting.”

Oliver nodded, feeling more able to open up thanks to her encouragement. “His factory is near here. I was thinking about going to visit him.”

“You must,” Ms. Belfry said, smiling her warm smile. “You see, when I was your age, I loved physics. All the other kids teased me, they didn’t understand why I wanted to make circuits instead of play with dolls. But one day, my absolute favorite physicist came to town to record an episode of his TV show. I went along and spoke to him afterward. He told me to never give up on my passion. Even if other people told me I was weird to be interested in it, if I had a dream, I had to follow it. I wouldn’t be here today had it not been for that conversation. Never underestimate how important it is to receive encouragement from someone who gets you, especially when it seems as though no one else does.”

Ms. Belfry’s words struck Oliver powerfully. For the first time that day, he felt buoyant. He was now completely determined to find the factory and meet his hero face to face.

“Thanks, Ms. Belfry,” he said, grinning at her. “See you next class!”

And as he hurried away with a spring in his step, he heard Ms. Belfry call out, “Always follow your dreams!”

CHAPTER THREE

Oliver trudged toward the bus stop, fighting against the gusting winds. His mind was focused on his solace, on the one ray of light in this dark new chapter of his life: Armando Illstrom. If he could find the inventor and his factory, life would at least be bearable. Perhaps Armando Illstrom could be his ally. The sort of man who’d once attempted to invent a time machine would surely be the sort of person who’d get along with a boy trying to become invisible. Surely he, of anyone, could handle some of Oliver’s idiosyncrasies. At the very least, he’d be a bigger nerd than Oliver was!

Oliver rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the slip of paper that he’d scribbled the factory address on. It was farther away from his school than he’d originally thought. He’d have to take a bus. He checked in his other pocket for some change and discovered he had just enough left over from lunch to pay for the journey. Relieved and filled with anticipation, he headed toward the bus stop.

As he waited for the bus, the wind around him roared. If it got any worse, he wouldn’t be able to stand up straight. In fact, people who passed him were fighting to stay upright. Had he not been so drained from his first day at school, he might have found the sight amusing. But his focus was solely on the factory.

Finally, the bus arrived. It was an old, beat-up thing that had seen better days.

Oliver climbed aboard and paid for his ticket, then took a seat right at the back. It smelled on the bus, of greasy fries and onions. Oliver’s stomach growled, reminding him that he’d probably miss the dinner that would be waiting for him at home. Maybe spending money on a bus instead of some food was a foolish decision. But finding Armando’s factory was the only ray of light in Oliver’s otherwise bleak existence. If he didn’t do this, then what was the point in any of it?

The bus hissed and juddered along the roads. Oliver looked out wistfully at the passing streets. Trash cans had been knocked on their sides and some even skidded along the roads, pushed along by the winds. The clouds above were so dark they were almost black.

The houses began to thin out and the view from his window became even more deserted and dilapidated. The bus stopped, letting off some passengers, then stopped again, this time to bid farewell to a tired mother and her wailing baby. After several stops, Oliver realized he was the only person left onboard. The silence felt eerie.

Finally, the bus passed a stop with a rusty, faded sign. Oliver realized that this was his stop. He jumped up and hurried to the front of the bus.

“Can I get off please?” he said.

The driver looked at him with sad, lazy eyes. “Ring the bell.”

“I’m sorry, you want me to—”

“Ring the bell,” the driver repeated monotonously. “If you wanna get off the bus, you gotta ring the bell.”

Oliver let out a sigh of exasperation. He pressed the bell button. It dinged. He turned back to the driver, eyebrows raised expectantly. “Now can I get off?”

“At the next stop,” the driver said.

Oliver grew infuriated. “I wanted that stop!”

“Should’ve rung the bell sooner,” the bus driver replied in his lazy drawl.

Oliver clenched his fists with exasperation. But at last, he felt the bus begin to slow. It halted beside a sign that was so old it was nothing more than a square of rust. The door slowly creaked open.

“Thanks,” Oliver mumbled to the unhelpful driver.

He hurried down the steps and jumped down to the cracked sidewalk. He looked up at the sign but it was too rusty to read anything. He could just about make out some letters, typed in that old 1940s font that was popular during the war.

As the bus pulled away, coughing out a cloud of exhaust fumes, Oliver’s sense of loneliness began to intensify. But as the fumes dispersed, a very familiar-looking building appeared before him. It was the factory from the book! Armando Illstrom’s actual factory! He’d have recognized it anywhere. The old bus stop must have served the factory during its heyday. The bus driver’s stubbornness had actually done Oliver a huge favor, dropping him off at the exact spot he needed to be.

Except, Oliver realized as he peered up at the factory, it looked much the worse for wear. The large, rectangular factory sported several cracked windows. Through them Oliver could see that the inside was completely black. It appeared as if no one was inside at all.

Fear took hold of Oliver. What if Armando had passed? An inventor working during the Second World War would be very old now, and the chances of him having passed on were quite high. If his hero had indeed passed away, then what would there be to look forward to in life anymore?

A sense of desolation overcame Oliver as he walked toward the dilapidated warehouse. The closer he got, the more he could see. Every window on the ground floor was boarded up. A huge steel door was secured over what he recalled from the photo was the grand, main entryway. How was he supposed to get in?

Oliver started to skirt around the outside of the building, trudging through tangles of nettles and ivy growing around the perimeter. He found a small crack in one of the boarded up windows and peered inside, but it was too dim to see anything. He kept going, walking the perimeter of the building.

Once he was around the back, Oliver found another door. Unlike the others, this one had not been boarded up. In fact, it was standing partially ajar.

Heart in mouth, Oliver pushed the door. He felt it resist against his force, and it let out the distinctive loud, creaky sound of rusted metal. That was not a good sign, Oliver thought, as he winced against the unpleasant noise. If the door was in even semi-frequent use it shouldn’t feel so stuck with rust, nor make such a sound.

With the door open just enough for him to squeeze through, Oliver wedged his body through the gap and popped into the factory. His footsteps echoed as he was propelled forward a few steps from the effort of shoving himself through the small gap.

Inside the warehouse, it was pitch black, and Oliver’s eyes had not yet adjusted to the sudden change in light. Practically blinded by the dimness, Oliver felt his sense of smell heighten to compensate. He became aware of the odors of dust and metal, and the distinctive smell of an abandoned building.

He waited with bated breath for his eyes to finally adjust to the light. When they did, though, it was only enough to see a few feet in front of his face. He began to step carefully through the factory.

Oliver gasped with wonder as he came across a huge contraption of wood and metal, like an oversized cooking pot. He touched the side and the bowl began to swing like a pendulum in its metal frame. It spun as well, making Oliver think it had something to do with mapping the solar system and the movement of planets around it, spinning on several axes. What the contraption was actually for, though, Oliver had no idea.

He stepped on further and found another strange-looking object. It was made of a column of metal but with a type of mechanically operated arm coming out the top of it and a claw in the shape of a hand at the bottom. Oliver tried the turning wheel and the arm began to move.

Just like an arcade game, Oliver thought.

It moved like the ones with motorized arms and a claw that you could never catch a stuffed toy with. This was much bigger, though, as if it had been designed for much more than just scooping up objects.

Oliver touched each of the fingers on the claw-like hand. Each had the exact number of joints as a real hand would have, and each part moved when he pushed it. Oliver wondered if Armando Illstrom had been trying to make his own robot, but decided it made more sense that it was his attempt at an automaton. He’d read all about them; wind-up machines in human form that could perform specific preplanned actions, like writing or typing.

Oliver kept walking. All around him, great machines stood still and imposing, like giant beasts frozen in time. They were made of a combination of materials like wood and metal, and consisted of many different parts, like cogs and springs, levers and pulleys. Cobwebs hung from them. Oliver tried some of the mechanisms, disturbing a variety of insects that had made home in the shadowy crevices of the machines.

But the feeling of wonder started to wear off as it began to dawn on Oliver, with a horrible sense of despair, that the factory had indeed fallen into disrepair. And not recently. It must have been decades ago by the looks of the thickness of the dust and the build-up of cobwebs, by the way the mechanisms creaked, and by the vast number of bugs that had taken up residence within them.

With a growing sense of distress, Oliver hurried around the rest of the factory, peeking with diminishing hope into side rooms and down darkened corridors. There were no signs of life.

He stood there, in the dark, empty warehouse, surrounded by the relics of a man he now knew he would never meet. He’d needed Armando Illstrom. He’d needed a savior who could lift him out of his gloom. But it had just been a dream. And now that dream was dashed.

*

Oliver spent the entire bus journey home feeling wounded and deflated. He was too miserable to even read his book.

He reached his bus stop and stepped out into the drizzly evening. Rain beat down on his head, soaking him through. He hardly even noticed, so consumed was he with his misery.

When he reached his new home, Oliver remembered that he didn’t have his own key yet. Going inside seemed like an extra cruel blow to an already desperately sad day. But he had no choice. He knocked on the door and braced himself.

The door was opened in one swift motion. There, in front of him, grinning demonically, stood Chris.

“You’re late for dinner,” he said, glowering, flickers of delight behind his eyes. “Mom and Dad are flipping out.”

From behind Chris, Oliver could hear his mom’s shrill voice. “Is that him? Is that Oliver?”

Chris shouted back over his shoulder. “Yeah. And he looks like a drowned rat.”

He looked back again at Oliver, his expression one of glee for the approaching confrontation. Oliver shoved his way inside, pushing past Chris’s big, meaty body. A trail of drips came off his sodden clothes, making a puddle beneath his feet.

Mom hurried into the corridor and stood at the opposite end staring at him. Oliver couldn’t work out if her expression was relief or fury.

“Hi, Mom,” he said meekly.

“Look at you!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been?”

If it was relief to see her son back home then she didn’t follow it up with a hug or anything like that. Oliver’s mother didn’t do hugs.

“I had something to do after school,” Oliver replied, evasively. He peeled his soggy sweater off.

“Nerd class?” Chris piped up. Then he laughed raucously at his own joke.

Mom held her hand out for Oliver’s sweater. “Give that here. I’ll need to wash it.” She sighed loudly. “Now get inside. Your dinner’s going cold.”

She ushered Oliver into the living room. Immediately, Oliver noticed that the things in his alcove had been messed with, moved around. At first he thought it was because a mattress had been dragged into place, and everything dumped on top, but then he saw the slingshot lying on his blanket. Beside it was his suitcase, the locks busted, its lid sitting ajar. And then he saw with horror that all the coils for his invisibility coat had been strewn all over the floor, bent out of shape as though they’d been stomped on.

Oliver knew instantly that this had been Chris’s doing. He glared over at him. His brother was watching expectantly for his reaction.

“Did you do this?” Oliver demanded.

Chris shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, in a picture of innocence. He shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said with a telling smirk.

It was the final straw. After everything that had happened over the last two days, with the move, and the horrible school experience, and the loss of his hero, Oliver just didn’t have the reserves to cope with this. Fury exploded inside of him. Before he’d even had a chance to think, Oliver went barreling toward Chris.

He slammed into his brother, hard. Chris barely even staggered backward from the force; he was so big and had clearly been expecting Oliver to lash out at him. And he was clearly relishing Oliver’s attempts to fight him, because he laughed maniacally. He was so much bigger than Oliver that all it took was for him to place a hand on Oliver’s head and shove him backward. Oliver flailed helplessly, none of his swipes coming even close to connecting with Chris.

From the kitchen table, Dad called out, “BOYS! STOP FIGHTING!”

“It’s Oliver,” Chris shouted back. “He attacked me for no reason.”

“You know exactly what the reason is!” Oliver yelled, his fists flying through the air, unable to reach Chris’s body.

“Me trampling on your weird little coils?” Chris hissed, quiet enough so that neither of his parents could hear him. “Or breaking that stupid slingshot? You’re such a freak, Oliver!”

Oliver had exhausted himself fighting against Chris. He backed off, panting.

“I HATE this family!” Oliver cried.

He rushed to his alcove, picking up all the damaged coils and broken bits of wire, the snapped levers and bent metal, throwing them into his suitcase.

His parents thundered over.

“How dare you!” Dad shouted.

“You take that back!” Mom cried.

“Now you’ve really done it,” Chris said, grinning wickedly.

As they all screamed at him, Oliver knew there was only one place he could escape to. His dreamworld, the place in his imagination.

He squeezed his eyes shut and muted out their voices.

Then suddenly he was there, at the factory. Not the cobwebby one he’d visited earlier, but a clean version, where all the machines gleamed and glistened under bright lights.

Oliver stood there gawking at the factory in all its former glory. But just like in real life, there was no Armando there to greet him. No ally. No friend. Even in his imagination, he was completely alone.

*

Only once everyone had gone to bed and the house was in complete darkness did Oliver feel able to work on fixing his inventions. He wanted to be optimistic as he fiddled with all the pieces, trying to get them to fit back together. But it was useless. The whole thing had been destroyed. All his coils and wires were damaged beyond hope. He’d have to start all over again.

He threw the pieces into his suitcase and slammed it shut. With both the locks now broken, the lid bounced up before falling back again and standing ajar. Oliver sighed heavily and slumped back against his mattress. He pulled the blanket all the way up over his head.

It must only have been from sheer exhaustion that Oliver was even able to fall asleep that night. But sleep he did. And as he drifted off into his dreams, Oliver found himself standing at the window looking out at the spindly tree across the road. There stood the man and woman he’d seen just last night, holding hands.

Oliver banged on the window.

“Who are you?” he cried.

The woman smiled knowingly. Her smile was kind; nicer, even, than Ms. Belfry’s.

But neither of them spoke. They just stared at him, smiling.

Oliver heaved the window open. “Who are you?” he shouted again, but this time his voice was drowned out by the wind.

The man and woman just stood there, mute, their hands clasped, their smiles warm and inviting.

Oliver began to crawl through the window. But as he did, the figures flickered and juddered, as if they were holograms and the lightbulbs were flickering out. They were starting to disappear.

“Wait!” he cried. “Don’t go!”

He fell through the window and hurried across the street. They faded more and more with every step he took.

As he drew up ahead of them, they were barely visible. He reached forward for the woman’s hand, but his went straight through hers, like she was a ghost.

“Please tell me who you are!” he pleaded.

The man opened his mouth to speak, but his voice was drowned out by the roaring wind. Oliver grew desperate.

“Who are you?” he asked again, shouting to be heard over the wind. “Why are you watching me?”

The man and woman were rapidly fading. The man spoke again, and this time Oliver heard a small whisper.

“You have a destiny…”

“What?” Oliver stammered. “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

But before either of them had a chance to speak again, they faded out entirely. They’d gone.

“Come back!” Oliver yelled into the emptiness.

Then, as if speaking into his ear, he heard the wispy voice of the woman say, “You will save mankind.”

Oliver’s eyes fluttered open. He was back in his alcove bed, bathed in the pale, blue light coming in through the window. It was morning. He could feel his heart thrumming.

The dream had shaken him to the core. What had they meant about him having a destiny? About saving mankind? And who were the man and woman anyway? Figments of his imagination, or something else? It was all too much to fathom.

As the initial shock of the dream began to wear off, Oliver felt a new sensation take over. Hope. Somewhere, deep inside of him, he felt that he was about to experience a momentous day, that everything was about to change.

CHAPTER FOUR

Oliver’s good mood was elevated further when he realized his first class of the day was science, and that meant he’d get to see Ms. Belfry again. Even as he crossed the playground, ducking beneath basketballs that he suspected were deliberately being aimed at his head, Oliver’s sense of excitement only grew.

He reached the staircase and succumbed to the force of the children, who pushed him like a surfer all the way up to the fourth floor. Then he pushed his way out onto the landing and headed for the classroom.

He was first. Ms. Belfry was inside already, in a gray linen dress, setting up a row of small models across the front of her desk. Oliver saw there was a little biplane, a hot air balloon, a space rocket, and a modern airplane.

“Is today’s lesson about flight?” he asked.

Ms. Belfry startled, clearly not having realized one of her students had entered.

“Oh, Oliver,” she said, beaming. “Good morning. Yes, it is. Now, I suspect you know a thing or two about these kinds of inventions.”

Oliver nodded. His inventors book had a whole section on flight, from the first balloons invented by the French Montgolfier brothers, through to the Wright Brothers’ early airplane design, and all the way up to rocket science. Like the rest of the pages of the book, he’d read this section so many times he had most of it committed to memory.

Ms. Belfry smiled like she’d already guessed Oliver would be a fountain of knowledge on this particular subject.

“You might have to help me explain some of the physics to the others,” she told him.

Oliver blushed as he took his seat. He hated speaking out loud in front of his classmates, especially since he was already a suspected nerd and confirming it felt like he was flaunting more than he really wanted to. But Ms. Belfry did have a very calming way about her, as though she thought Oliver’s knowledge was something to be celebrated rather than ridiculed.

Oliver chose a seat near the front of the class. If he was going to be forced to speak aloud, he’d prefer not to have thirty pairs of eyes gawking at him over their shoulders as he did. At least this way he’d only be aware of the four other kids in the front row looking at him.

Just then, Oliver’s classmates started filing in and taking their seats. The noise in the room began to swell. Oliver never understood how other people had so much to talk about. Though he could talk about inventors and inventions forever, there wasn’t much else he felt the need to chat about. It always baffled him how other people managed such easy conversation, and how they shared so many words on what, in his mind, sounded like next to nothing of importance.

Ms. Belfry began her class, waving her arms in an attempt to get everyone to shut up. Oliver felt terrible for her. It always seemed like a battle just to get the kids to listen. And she was so gentle and soft-spoken that she never resorted to raising her voice or shouting, so her attempts to quiet everyone took ages to work. But eventually, the chatter began to die away.

“Today, children,” Ms. Belfry began, “I have a problem that needs solving.” She held up a popsicle stick. “I wonder if anyone can tell me how to make this fly.”

A ripple of hubbub went around the room. Someone shouted out.

“Just throw it!”

Ms. Belfry did as was suggested. The popsicle stick traveled less than two feet before falling to the ground.

“Hmm, I don’t know about you guys,” Ms. Belfry said, “but to me that just looked like falling. I want it to fly. To soar through the air, not just plummet to the ground.”

Paul, Oliver’s taunter from last class, called out the next suggestion. “Why don’t you just ping it on an elastic band? Like a slingshot.”

“That’s a good idea,” Ms. Belfry said with a nod. “But I haven’t told you something. This stick is actually ten feet long.”

“Then make a ten-foot-wide catapult!” someone shouted.

“Or put rocket launchers on it!” another voice chimed in.

The class started to laugh. Oliver shifted in his seat. He knew exactly how the popsicle stick could fly. It all came down to physics.

Ms. Belfry managed to get the class to settle down again.

“This was the exact problem facing the Wright brothers when they were trying to create the first airplane. How to mimic the flight of birds. How to turn this”—she held up the stick horizontally—“into wings that could sustain flight. So, does anyone know how they did it?”

Her gaze flicked immediately to Oliver. He swallowed. As much as he didn’t want to speak aloud, another part of him desperately wanted to prove to Ms. Belfry how smart he was.

“You need to create lift,” he said, quietly.

“What was that?” Ms. Belfry said, although Oliver knew full well she’d heard him perfectly.

Reticently, he spoke a little louder. “You need to create lift.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than Oliver felt a blush creep into his cheeks. He felt the change in the room, the tenseness of the other students around him. So much for not having thirty pairs of eyes gawking at him; Oliver could practically feel them burning into his back.

“And what is lift?” Ms. Belfry continued.

Oliver wet his dry lips and swallowed his anguish. “Lift is the name of the force that counters gravity. Gravity is always pulling objects down to the center of the earth. Lift is the force that counteracts it.”

From somewhere behind, he heard Paul’s whispered voice in a mock whine, mimicking, “Lift counteracts it.”

A tittering of laughter rippled amongst the students behind him. Oliver felt his muscles stiffen defensively in response.

Ms. Belfry was clearly oblivious to the quiet mocking Oliver was experiencing.

“Hmm,” she said, as if this was all news to her. “Sounds complicated. Countering gravity? Isn’t that impossible?”

Oliver shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. He really wanted to stop speaking, to have a small respite from the whispers. But clearly no one else knew the answer, and Ms. Belfry was watching him with her sparkling, encouraging eyes.

“Not at all,” Oliver replied, finally taking the bait. “To create lift all you have to do is change how fast air flows around something, which you can do just by changing the shape of the object. So with your popsicle stick, you just need a ridge on the top side. That means that as the stick moves forward the air flowing above and below it have different-shaped paths. Over the humped side of the wing the path is curved, whereas beneath the wing, the path is flat and uninterrupted.”

Oliver finished speaking and immediately pressed his lips together. Not only had he answered her question, he’d gone above and beyond in explaining it. He’d gotten carried away with himself and now he was going to be mocked mercilessly. He braced himself.

“Could you draw it for us?” Ms. Belfry asked.

She held out a board pen for Oliver. He looked at it, wide-eyed. Speaking was one thing, but standing in front of everyone like a target was a whole other!

“I’d prefer not to,” he muttered out the side of his mouth.

He saw the flicker of understanding in Ms. Belfry’s expression. She must have realized she’d pushed him to the edge of his comfort zone, beyond it even, and what she was asking him now was an impossibility.

“Actually,” she said, withdrawing the pen and stepping backward, “maybe someone else would like to try drawing what Oliver’s explained?”

Samantha, one of the brash kids who craved attention, leapt up and snatched the pen from Ms. Belfry. Together they went over to the board and Ms. Belfry helped Samantha draw a diagram of what Oliver was describing.

But as soon as Ms. Belfry’s back was turned, Oliver felt something hit the back of his head. He turned and saw a ball of screwed up paper at his feet. He reached down and picked it up, not wanting to open it, knowing there’d be a cruel note inside.

“Hey…” Paul hissed. “Don’t ignore me. Read the note!”

Tensing, Oliver opened up the paper ball in his hands. He smoothed it on the desk before him. Written in terrible spider-crawl handwriting were the words Guess what else can fly?

Just then, he felt something else hit his head. Another paper ball. It was followed by another, and another and another.

“HEY!” Oliver cried, leaping up and turning around angrily.

Ms. Belfry turned too. She frowned at the scene before her.

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

“We’re just trying to find things that fly,” Paul said innocently. “One must have hit Oliver by accident.”

Ms. Belfry looked skeptical. “Oliver?” she asked, turning her gaze to him.

Oliver sat back down in his seat, hunkering down. “It’s true,” he mumbled.

By now, the boisterous Samantha had finished her diagram, and Ms. Belfry was able to turn her attention back to the class. She pointed at the board, where there was now a diagram of a wing, not straight but curved like a sideways stretched teardrop. Two dotted lines indicated the paths of air passing above the wing and below it. The flow of air going over the humped wing looked different in comparison to the flow going directly under it.

“Like this?” Ms. Belfry said. “But I still don’t understand how that produces lift.”

Oliver knew all too well that Ms. Belfry knew all this, but having just been pelted by paper balls had made him reluctant to speak again.

Then he realized something. Nothing he did was going to stop the teasing. Either he sat there silently and got picked on for doing nothing, or he spoke up and got picked on for his intelligence. He realized then which he’d prefer.

“Because with the air following in different paths like that, it creates a downward force,” he explained. “And if we take Isaac Newton’s third law of motion—that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction—you can see how the resulting reaction to that force, to the downward force, is that the air traveling under the wing creates lift.”

He folded his arms and sat back against the chair.

Ms. Belfry looked triumphant. “That’s quite right, Oliver.”

She turned back to the drawing and added arrows. Oliver felt a paper ball hit his head but this time he didn’t even react. He didn’t care anymore what his classmates thought of him. In fact, they were probably just jealous that he had brains and knew cool stuff like Isaac Newton’s laws of physics when all they could manage was screwing up a ball of paper and aiming it at someone’s head.

He folded his arms more tightly and, ignoring the paper balls smacking him in the head, focused on Ms. Belfry’s image. She was drawing an arrow pointing down. Beside it she wrote downward force. The other arrow she’d drawn pointed up with the word lift.

“What about hot air balloons?” a voice challenged from behind. “They don’t work that way at all, but they still fly.”

Oliver turned in his seat, searching for the owner of the voice. It was a grumpy-looking kid—dark, bushy eyebrows, dimpled chin—who had joined Paul in throwing the paper balls.

“Well, that’s a completely different law at play,” Oliver explained. “That works because hot air rises. The Montgolfier brothers, who invented the hot air balloon, realized that if you trap the air inside some kind of envelope, like a balloon, it becomes buoyant due to the lower density of hot air inside compared to cold air outside.”

The boy just looked more angry at Oliver’s explanation. “Well, what about rockets?” he challenged further. “They’re not buoyant or whatever you just said. They go up, though. And they fly. How does that work, smarty pants?”

Oliver just smiled. “That comes back to Isaac Newton’s third law of motion again. Only this time the force involved is propulsion, not lift. Propulsion is the same thing that moves a steam train. A big blast out one end produces an opposite reaction of propulsion. Only with a rocket it’s got to get all the way to space, so the blast has to be really massive.”

Oliver could feel himself growing excited as he spoke about these things. Even though all the kids were staring at him like he was a freak, he didn’t care.

He turned back in his seat to face the front. There, smiling proudly, stood Ms. Belfry.

“And do you know what all these inventors had in common?” she said. “The Montgolfiers and the Wrights and Robert Goddard, who launched the first liquid-propellant-fueled rocket? I’ll tell you what. They did things they’d been told were impossible! Their inventions were crazy. Imagine someone saying that we could use the same principles of ancient Chinese catapults to launch a man into space! And yet they became groundbreaking inventors, whose inventions have changed the world, and the whole trajectory of humankind!”

Oliver knew she was speaking to him, telling him that no matter what people did or said, he should never be cowed into silence.

Then something remarkable happened. In response to Ms. Belfry’s passion and enthusiasm, the class fell into stunned silence. It wasn’t the tense silence of a poised attack, but the humbled silence of having learned something inspiring.

Oliver felt a swell in his stomach. Ms. Belfry really was the most awesome teacher. She was the only person who’d shown anywhere near the level of excitement he had for physics and science and inventors, and her excitement even managed to silence his rowdy classmates, if only temporarily.

Just then, a huge gust of wind made the window panes rattle. Everyone jumped in unison and turned their eyes toward the gray skies outside.

“Looks like the storm is going to hit soon,” Ms. Belfry said.

No sooner had she spoken, than the voice of the principal came over the speaker.

“Students, we’ve just received a warning from the National Weather Service. This is going to be the storm of the century, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. We really don’t know what to expect. So to be on the safe side, the mayor is canceling classes for the day.”

Everyone started shouting excitedly and Oliver strained to hear the final words of the principal’s announcement.

“The storm is due to hit within the next hour. There are buses outside. Please head straight home. The official warning is to not be outside when the storm hits in approximately one hour. This is a city-wide warning so your parents will be expecting you home. Anyone caught truanting will face suspension.”

Around Oliver, no one seemed to care. All they’d heard was that school was out and they were going to make the most of it. They grabbed their books and hurried out of the classroom like a stampede of buffaloes.

Oliver collected his own things more slowly.

“You did great today,” Ms. Belfry told him as she placed all of her little models into her bag. “Are you okay getting home?” She looked concerned about his welfare.

Oliver nodded to reassure her. “I’ll get the bus with everyone else,” he said, realizing as he did that that might mean enduring a journey with Chris. He shuddered.

Oliver swung the strap of his backpack over his shoulder and followed the rest of the school kids outside. The sky was so dark, it was practically black. It felt very ominous.

Head bowed, Oliver started walking toward the bus stop. But just then, he caught sight of something behind him, something far more scary than a black tropical storm cloud: Chris. And running alongside him were his cronies.

Oliver turned and bolted. He headed straight toward the first bus in the queue. The bus was crammed with kids and clearly ready to leave. Not even checking to see where it was going, Oliver threw himself onboard.

Just in time as well. The mechanism hissed and the door shut behind him. A split second later, Chris appeared on the other side, glowering menacingly. His cronies drew up beside him and they all glared at Oliver through the door, which was really nothing more than a thin shield of protective glass.

The bus set off, moving Oliver away from their fierce faces.

He peered out the window as the bus moved away and began picking up speed. To Oliver’s dismay, Chris and his cronies barged their way straight onto the bus waiting behind. It, too, pulled away from school, following closely.

Oliver gulped with dread. With Chris and his friends just one bus behind, he knew that if they saw him get off, they would too. Then they’d pounce and he’d be in for a pummeling. He chewed his lip with worry, not knowing what to do next. If only his invisibility coat really existed. Now was the time to use it!

With a huge crack, the sky seemed to open. Rain cascaded down and lightning streaked across the sky. So much for an hour before it hit, Oliver thought. The storm was already upon them.

The bus wove perilously along the road. Oliver gripped the metal pole and bumped shoulders with the kids standing around him. Things had gone from feeling ominous to feeling suddenly quite scary.

Another bolt of lightning jagged across the sky. Kids on the bus yelped out in fear.

Oliver realized then that perhaps he could use the storm to his advantage. Since getting off at his own stop was out of the question with Chris’s cronies watching on, he’d have to get off unexpectedly. Blend in with the crowd. And with the pounding rain and general disorientation, that might just be possible.

At that exact moment, the bus slowed to a halt. A large group of kids surged forward for the door. Oliver looked around and saw they were just on the outskirts of the good neighborhood, which appeared to be where the majority of Campbell Junior High pupils lived. Oliver didn’t know the neighborhood particularly well, but he had a vague idea of where it was in relation to his own.

So he followed the crowd, hopping off the bus at an unfamiliar stop. Rain lashed down on him and the others. He tried to stick with the crowd, but to his despair, everyone dispersed in different directions, and quickly too, to escape the weather. Before Oliver could even blink, he was left standing on the sidewalk completely exposed.

Not even a second later, the second bus pulled into the stop. Oliver saw Chris through the steamed up window. Then Chris clearly saw Oliver, because he started pointing excitedly and shouting something to his friends. Oliver didn’t need an interpreter to know what Chris’s gesticulations meant. He was coming for him.

Oliver ran.

He didn’t have much of an idea where he was, but he ran anyway, heading in what he was certain was the vague direction of home.

Without looking behind, Oliver ran and ran. The rain and wind beat him, making it hard going, but this was one of the few occasions where being small was an advantage. Chris would struggle to drag his lumbering body around, Oliver knew, whereas he was sprightly.

But, Oliver realized, Chris wasn’t his only problem. All his friends were with him. The girl in particular was a very fast runner. Oliver stole a glance over his shoulder and saw that she was gaining on him.

Oliver passed some stores, then turned into an alleyway leading to their back streets. He dodged and weaved through obstacles such as abandoned shopping carts and empty boxes that had been swept up in the winds.

Then he rounded a corner. For a brief moment, he was out of sight of the approaching bullies.

As a strong blast knocked over a garbage can, Oliver had a sudden burst of inspiration. Without a moment’s hesitation, he leapt inside the can, crawling over rotten food and empty wrappers until he was completely out of sight. Then he curled into a ball and waited.

The girl’s feet appeared on the strip of sidewalk he could see. She stopped and paced in a full circle, as if looking for him. Then Oliver heard more pounding footsteps and saw that she’d been joined by Chris and the other cronies.

“Where did he go?” he heard one of them shout.

“How did you lose him?” came Chris’s distinct voice.

“He was here one second and gone the next!” the girl yelled back.

Oliver stayed very still. His heart was hammering and his limbs were shaking from all the exertion.

“He’s done one of his spells,” Chris said.

In his stinky, shadowy trash can, Oliver frowned. What did Chris mean?

“That’s so creepy,” the girl said. “You mean he made himself disappear?”

“I told you, didn’t I?” Chris replied. “He’s some kind of freak.”

“Maybe he’s possessed,” one of the boys said.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Chris shot back. “He’s not possessed. But there’s something wrong with him. Now do you believe me?”

“I do,” the girl said, but Oliver noticed that her voice was coming from farther away.

He peered to where her feet had been and saw they’d now disappeared from sight. Chris and his cronies were leaving.

Oliver waited. Even after their disparaging conversation about him faded to nothing, he didn’t want to leave the safety of the trash can. There was still a chance one of them was waiting, just in case he was about to reveal his hiding place.

Soon, the rain started to really come down. Oliver could hear it pounding heavily against the metal trash can. Only then did he accept that Chris would definitely have left. Even if he did want to beat Oliver up, he wouldn’t stand in the pouring rain in order to do it, and Oliver was quite certain his cronies wouldn’t be convinced to either.

Finally deciding he was safe, Oliver started to leave the trash can. But just as he wriggled toward the front of it, a huge gust of wind started up. It battered him right back inside. Then the wind must have changed direction, because suddenly Oliver felt the can lurch beneath him. The wind was so strong, it was making him roll!

Oliver gripped the edges of his metal prison. Filled with terror, disorientated, he started to go round and round and round. He felt sick with panic, sick from the motion. Oliver willed it to end soon but it seemed to go on and on. He was thrashed about, jerked around.

Suddenly, Oliver’s head thunked the side of the trash can very hard. Stars appeared in his eyes. He closed them. Then everything went black.

*

Oliver’s eyes fluttered open and took in the sight of the spherical metal prison around him. The spinning motion had stopped but he could still hear the roaring sound of the storm all around him. He blinked, disorientated, his head pounding from the blow that had knocked him out.

He had no idea for how long he’d been unconscious but he was covered in stinking garbage. His stomach swilled with nausea.

Quickly, Oliver shuffled toward the front of the can and peered out. The sky was dark and rain lashed down like a sheet of gray.

Oliver scrambled out of the trash can. It was freezing and it took barely seconds for him to become soaked through. He rubbed his arms in an attempt to get some warmth into them. Shivering, Oliver looked around, trying to discern his location.

Suddenly it dawned on him where he was, where the can had rolled him to during the storm. He was at the factory! Only this time, Oliver noticed, there were lights glowing inside.

His mouth fell open. Was he seeing things? Maybe he’d gotten a concussion from the blow to his head.

The rain continued to lash against Oliver. The lights in the factory glowed like some kind of beacon, drawing him to it.

Oliver hurried forward. He reached the grass around the factory, and it squelched beneath his feet, turned swampy from the downpour. Then he skirted around the side of the warehouse, trampling on the ivy and nettles in his haste to get to the back door, to shelter. He found the door just as he’d left it; ajar, and just wide enough from him to squeeze through. Quickly, he did, and found himself in the same darkened room, with the same smell of dust, the same echo of abandonment.

Oliver paused, relieved to be out of the rain. He waited for his eyes to adjust. Once they had, he saw that everything was just as it had been last time he’d been here, with dusty, cobwebbed machines disused and in disrepair. Except…

Oliver noticed a very thin, straight yellow line running across the floor. Not paint, but light. A shard of light. Well, Oliver knew that a shard of light needed a source, and so he hurried to it, following it like it was a trail of breadcrumbs. It ran all the way up to a solid brick wall.

How bizarre, Oliver thought as he stopped and pressed his fingers against the wall. Light isn’t supposed to travel through objects.

He fumbled around in the dim light, trying to work out how light could pass through a solid object. Then suddenly his hand touched something different. A handle?

Oliver felt a sudden surge of hope strike him. He heaved the handle and jumped back as a huge creaking noise sounded out.

The ground shook. Oliver wobbled, attempting to stay upright as the very ground moved beneath his feet.

He was turning. Not just him, but the wall too. It must have been built on a turntable! And as it turned, a huge shard of golden light burst out.

Oliver blinked in the sudden, blinding brightness. His legs felt unsteady beneath him from the motion of the turning floor.

Then, no sooner had it started than the movement stopped. There was a click as the wall found its new position. Oliver staggered, this time from the sudden deceleration.

He looked about him and was stunned by what he saw. He was now standing in a whole new wing of the factory. It was filled with incredible, fantastical inventions! Not the cobwebbed, creaking, rusted relics from the warehouse before, but instead, floor to ceiling, as far as the eye could see, stood bright, gleaming, new, ginormous machines.

Oliver couldn’t help himself. Filled with excitement, he ran up to the first machine. It had a moveable arm that spun right over his head. He ducked just in time, and saw the hand on the end of the arm deposit a boiled egg into an egg cup. Just beside it, two disembodied automaton hands bounced along the keys of a piano, while beside them a very large brass clockwork metronome ticked out the beat.

He was so preoccupied and delighted by the inventions around him, Oliver didn’t even notice the strange bowl-shaped item from yesterday, nor the man tinkering away with it. It was only when a clockwork cuckoo took flight, making him stagger backward and bump straight into the man, that Oliver even became aware that he was not alone.

Oliver gasped and spun on the spot. Suddenly he realized who he was looking at. Though many years older than the picture in his book, Oliver knew he was staring into the eyes of Armando Illstrom.

Oliver gasped. He couldn’t believe it. His hero was really here, standing before him, alive and well!

“Ah!” Armando said, smiling. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Oliver blinked, stunned by what he was seeing. Unlike the dusty, cobwebbed part of the factory that existed on the other side of the mechanized wall, the factory this side was bright and warm, glistening with cleanliness and brimming with the signs of life.

“Are you cold?” Armando asked. “You look like you’ve been in the rain.”

Oliver’s gaze flicked back to the inventor. He was shocked to actually be standing face to face with his hero. Even as the seconds ticked by, he was completely tongue-tied.

Oliver tried to say, “I have,” but the only sound that came from his throat was a garbled kind of grunt.

“Come, come,” Armando said. “I’ll fix you up a hot drink.”

Though unmistakably the Armando from his inventors book, his face had been ravished by time. Oliver made some quick calculations in his head; he knew from his inventors book that Armando’s factory was up and running during World War Two, and that Armando himself had been a young man of barely twenty years old during the factory’s heyday, which meant he had to now be well into his nineties! He noticed for the first time that Armando had a walking stick to support his frail body.

Oliver began to follow Armando across the factory floor, the lighting too dim for him to work out what exactly the large shadowy shapes around him were, though he suspected they were more of Armando’s glorious inventions, working ones, unlike those on the other side of the mechanized wall.

They went down a corridor and Oliver was still unable to really believe that any of this was real. He kept expecting to wake up any moment and discover this was a dream caused by him knocking his head in the trash can.

Making matters feel even more fantastical and unreal to Oliver was the factory itself. It was designed like a rabbit’s warren, a labyrinth filled with doors and arches and corridors and stairs, all leading away from the main factory floor. Even when he’d walked the entire external perimeter of the factory the previous day he hadn’t noticed anything odd in its architecture, no signs of external staircases and the like. But the factory itself was so huge, he reasoned, that from the outside it just looked like an enormous brick rectangular prism. No one would guess from the outside how the interior was designed. Nor would anyone expect it. He knew Armando was supposed to be zany, but the way his factory was structured was downright bizarre!

Oliver glanced left and right as he walked, seeing through one door a huge machine that resembled Charles Babbage’s early prototype computer. Through another door was a room with a steepled roof, like a church, and a mezzanine level, upon which, directed toward a huge glass window, was a row of enormous brass telescopes.

Oliver continued following the doddery inventor, his breath continually catching in his throat. He peered into another room they passed. It was filled with eerily human-looking automatons. Then the next contained an entire military tank, which was mounted with the strangest-looking weapons Oliver had ever seen.

“Don’t mind Horatio,” Armando said suddenly. Oliver jumped, breaking once again from his reverie.

He looked about him for the so-called Horatio, his mind conjuring up all kinds of machines that may have earned the name, until he noticed a sad-looking bloodhound lying in a basket by his feet.

Armando continued speaking. “His arthritis is worse than mine, poor thing. It makes him very grouchy.”

Oliver gave the dog a quick glance. Horatio sniffed the air as he passed, then settled back down to sleep with a weary sigh.

Armando hobbled stiffly into a small kitchen area, leading Oliver in after him. It was a modest space and very messy; the sort of kitchen you’d expect of a man who’d put the last seventy years of his focus into inventing zany machines that didn’t work.

Oliver blinked under the flickering fluorescent lights.

“Do you like tomato soup?” Armando asked suddenly.

“Uh…” Oliver said, still too tongue-tied to actually speak, to even really comprehend the fact that his hero was offering to make him soup of all things.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Armando said, smiling kindly.

Oliver watched him fetch two cans of soup from a cupboard whose door was barely still on its hinges. Then he took a contraption from a drawer that resembled a can opener in design but was so big it required two hands to operate.

“There’s a reason why they say there’s no need to reinvent the wheel,” Armando said with a chuckle when he noticed Oliver’s curious expression.

Finally the cans were open and Armando set to work simmering the soup in a pot on the little gas hob. Oliver found himself completely frozen, unable to speak or even move. All he could do was stare at this man, at the real, living, breathing version of his hero. He even pinched himself a couple of times just to make sure. But it was real. He was really here. Really with Armando Illstrom.

“Please sit,” Armando said as he came over and placed two bowls of soup on the rickety table. “Eat.”

Oliver at the very least could remember how to sit down. He took his seat, feeling very odd indeed. Armando lowered himself slowly into the seat opposite. Oliver noticed the misty quality in his eyes and the patches of discolored skin on his face. All the telltale marks of old age. When Armando laid his hands on the tabletop, all his finger joints looked red and swollen from arthritis.

Oliver’s stomach growled as steam from the soup wafted into his face. Even though he was so shocked and befuddled by everything, his hunger drive took over, and before he’d even had time to think, he’d grabbed his spoon and taken a huge mouthful of hot, flavorful soup. It was very tasty and nourishing. Far better than anything his parents ever cooked. He took another spoonful, not even caring that the soup was burning the roof of his mouth.

“Nice?” Armando asked encouragingly, eating his own soup at a much slower pace.

Oliver managed to employ a modicum of restraint and paused between mouthfuls to nod.

“Hopefully you’ll warm up soon,” Armando added, kindly.

Oliver couldn’t be sure if he meant warm up from the chilly rain or warm up socially. He hadn’t really said much since he’d gotten here, but he was so muddled from the storm, then so surprised to see Armando in the flesh, that his faculty for speech had completely failed him!

He tried now, to speak, to ask one of his burning questions. But when he opened his mouth, instead of words, the only thing that came out was a yawn.

“You’re tired,” Armando said. “Of course. There’s a spare room you can nap in, and I’ll get some extra blankets since the weather is quite cold at the moment.”

Oliver blinked then. “A nap?”

Armando nodded, then qualified his offer. “You’re not planning on going back out into the storm, are you? Last message from the mayor said we should expect to stay inside for hours.”

For the first time, Oliver’s thoughts turned to his parents. If they’d heeded the mayor’s instruction to return home, what would have happened when they discovered only one of their sons had made it back from school? He had no idea for how long he’d been knocked out in the trash can, nor how many hours had passed while he was being batted around inside it. Would they be worried about him?

Then Oliver shook his worry away. His parents probably hadn’t even noticed. Why should he give up the opportunity to rest in an actual bed, especially when the only thing waiting for him at home was a dingy alcove?

He looked up at Armando.

“That sounds really nice,” he said, finally managing a full sentence. “Thank you.” He paused then, deliberating over his words. “I have so many questions to ask you.”

“I’ll still be here when you wake,” the old inventor said, smiling kindly. “Once you’re warm, fed, and rested, then we can talk about everything.”

There was a knowing look in his eye. For some reason, Oliver wondered if Armando knew something about him, about his freakish powers, his visions and what they meant. But Oliver quickly pushed those thoughts away. Of course he didn’t. There was nothing magical about Armando. He was just an old inventor in a strange factory, not a magician or wizard or anything like that.

Suddenly overcome with fatigue, Oliver had nothing left in him to even ponder. The storm, the days of stress from the move and starting a new school, the lack of sufficient food, it was all suddenly too much for him to handle.

“Okay,” he conceded. “But it’ll just be a quick nap.”

“Of course,” Armando replied.

Oliver stood, rubbing his weary eyes. Armando used his walking stick to help lift his frail body to standing.

“Along here,” Armando said, gesturing down the narrow, dimly lit corridor.

Oliver let Armando lead the way, trudging wearily along behind him. His body felt very heavy now, as though he’d been holding in so much stress and unhappiness and was only now aware.

At the end of the corridor stood an odd wooden door that was lower than a normal door and curved at the top like it belonged in a chapel. There was even a little window in it, framed with burnished iron.

Armando opened the door and ushered Oliver inside. Oliver felt a sense of nervous anticipation as he stepped over the threshold.

The room was bigger than he’d been expecting, and much neater considering the state of the kitchen. There was a large bed covered in a soft, white duvet and matching pillows, with an extra woolen blanket folded at the end of it. There was a wooden desk covered in small war figurines, beneath a window with long blue curtains. In one corner of the room was a fabric-covered chair, next to a bookshelf crammed with exciting-looking adventure stories.

It looked, in every way, like the kind of bedroom an eleven-year-old boy like Oliver ought to have, rather than an alcove in the cold, shadowy corner of an unfurnished living room. He felt a sudden surge of grief for his life. But stronger than that was the gratitude he felt for this sudden opportunity to escape it all, even if it was only for a few hours.

Oliver looked over his shoulder at Armando. “This is a very nice room,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t mind me staying in here?”

He became very aware then of his sodden clothes and the muck he must have trailed into Armando’s factory. But rather than chastise or berate him—like his parents had yesterday with his soggy sweater—Armando just smiled a knowing smile.

“I hope you sleep well and feel rested when you wake,” he said. Then he turned and left the room.

Oliver stood for only one more awestruck moment before realizing he was far too exhausted to even stand up. He wanted to think about the strange events of the day, to try and make sense of them, to replay them and order them and catalogue them in his mind. But there was only one thing his body demanded right now and that was sleep.

So he peeled off his clothes, put on a pair of too big pajamas he found hanging in the closet, and crawled into bed. The mattress was comfortable. The duvet was warm and smelled of fresh lavender.

As Oliver snuggled into the big, warm bed, he felt safer than he ever had before in his life. Finally, he felt like he was somewhere he belonged.

CHAPTER SIX

The world was very quiet. Bright sunlight warmed Oliver’s eyelids. He let them flicker open. There was a shard of light coming through a gap in the curtains.

Oliver suddenly remembered where he was. He sat up, blinking, taking in the sight of the bedroom in Armando’s factory. It was all real. He really was here.

It suddenly occurred to him that it was morning. His nap had turned into a deep sleep that had lasted all through the night and into the next day. He shouldn’t be surprised; the bed was the warmest, most comfortable bed he’d ever slept in. In fact, Armando’s factory felt more like home to Oliver than any of his previous houses ever had. He snuggled under the duvet, feeling content and completely in love with the place. He never wanted to leave.

But what of his family? Oliver wondered with a growing sense of anguish. By now they must have noticed that he was missing. He hadn’t come home for an entire night. Maybe they thought he’d been swept away by the storm. They must be worried.

Though the thought concerned Oliver, there was another side to the coin. If they did think he’d been swept away by the storm, that meant he may never have to go home at all…

Oliver grappled with his thoughts, caught somewhere between anguish at causing them any distress and excitement at the opportunity fate had apparently presented him. He decided, finally, that he’d address the issue with Armando.

Feeling rejuvenated from his sleep, Oliver leapt up and hurried out of the room to find Armando. He rushed through the rabbit warren of corridors, trying to find his way back to the main factory floor where he suspected Armando would be. But the place was a maze. Doors he’d been certain were there yesterday now seemed not to be. It was only when he found the kitchen and Horatio the dozing bloodhound in his basket that he was able to work out where he was and which direction he needed to go.

Finally, he emerged out onto the factory floor. In bright daylight it was even more magnificent than it had been in the dim, stormy light. Now he could see all the way up to the ceiling—which was as high as a cathedral’s—and see that upon the wooden joists perched several mechanical birds. Others fluttered about in the rafters, moving in every manner like real birds, except for the fact their wings were made of brass and their eyes of little lights that glowed red. He noticed bats as well, sleeping upside down with their huge metal wings folded across their chests.

“How on earth…?” Oliver muttered aloud, gazing up at the myriad of flying machines above his head.

“Ah, Oliver, good morning,” came Armando’s voice.

Oliver’s gaze snapped back down to the factory floor. There was Armando, straightening up from where he’d been bent over a machine, tinkering away. Immediately, Oliver lost all courage to ask him whether he could stay on at the factory.

“Did you sleep well?” the old inventor asked.

“I did,” Oliver said. “In fact, better than ever. But it was only supposed to be a nap. Why didn’t you wake me after the storm finished?”

Armando chuckled. “I tried, dear boy, but you were in a deep, deep slumber. My guess is you really needed that sleep.” He smiled. “Now, I promised to tell you all about my factory and my life as an inventor, didn’t I? Would you like some breakfast first? A shower? A clean change of clothes?”

It was only then that Oliver realized he was still wearing pajamas. He hesitated, mulling Armando’s offer over in his mind. Breakfast and a warm shower and clean clothes were not things his parents would offer him if he returned home. It wouldn’t hurt to stay a little longer, he persuaded himself. At least to go on Armando’s tour.

“If it’s your family you’re concerned about, perhaps you ought to call them?” the old inventor added, picking up on his hesitation.

That was the last thing Oliver wanted to do. He just shook his head. “That’s okay. I can go on the tour first.”

The old inventor reached forward and placed a firm but reassuring hand on Oliver’s shoulder. He peered down at him with his misty eyes. Oliver could see the deep kindness and warmth within them. They were trustworthy, imploring him to relax. Not for the first time since arriving at the factory, Oliver got the sense that Armando knew more than he was letting on.

The old man gestured with his arm to the factory floor.

“Please, this way,” he said.

Thoughts of his family shifted to the back of Oliver’s mind as curiosity took over. He walked slowly alongside Armando, matching his pace.

“I was a similar age to you, Oliver,” Armando began, “when I started to make my own inventions. Nothing that worked, mind you.” He chuckled. “I think I managed a mechanical slingshot but that was about it.”

Oliver remember the slingshot he’d created and used on Chris. The coincidence struck him, and the sense of it lingered, mixing with all the other emotions coursing through him.

“I excelled at school,” Armando continued. “Although I didn’t get along very well with any of the children.”

“You and me both,” Oliver added.

They reached a room and Armando strolled inside. It was a library, Oliver saw, with high ceilings and wooden floorboards. A spiral staircase led to a second level where there was a comfy-looking floral armchair and a large reading lamp.

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