Chapter 3

Back home, in the privacy of my own bedroom, I tried suspending the hook in the statuette’s head from a thread. I was surprised at how well balanced the artefact was. As far as I could tell, the pointer hung exactly vertically below the hook, an impressive feat of engineering from any time period. And the artefact felt very, very old.

Over the next couple of years, I found opportunities to try out the artefact a few times. I had drawn up a floorplan of our house in readiness, and when Dad misplaced his car keys and when Mum misplaced her wedding ring, I accurately located them on the floorplan using the artefact. I pretended to ‘discover’ the missing objects and returned them to their owners, passing off the discoveries as no big thing since retrospectively their locations were pretty obvious and my parents would have found them on their own eventually.

I often wondered about the artefact’s origins. Who could possibly have made it, and how did it function? I didn’t rate my chances of ever finding out. Eileen, the shop owner, had said she’d asked several supposed experts about it but none of them could tell her what the artefact was or what language the legend on the plinth was in, even though it looked like English to me. And Eileen worked in the business, so to speak, so she must have known the right people to ask.

I made a wooden holder for the statuette so it could sit upright on top of the bookcase in my bedroom. Elize was the first person to comment on it. She was in my bedroom talking about trivia, the way you do when you want to share someone’s company but feel you need an excuse.

“What’s that?” she asked, indicating the statuette.

“There was a cloudburst at the seaside resort. I dashed into the nearest shop. It turned out to be some sort of new age hippie place selling tat and potions. I was sort of press-ganged into buying it as the price for staying out of the rain.”

“How much did it cost you?” asked Elize, as she picked up the artefact and studied it.

“Five pounds,” I admitted.

“You were robbed,” laughed Elize. “What’s it supposed to do? And what does this writing say?”

So Elize wasn’t a Seeker.

“The woman who sold it to me didn’t know,” I replied. Okay, it was an omission rather than an outright lie, but I still felt guilty about deceiving my sister.

“You were definitely robbed.” Elize laughed again. “Wait, she’s got no clothes on. I think I can see why a teenage boy would buy it. Do Mum and Dad know you’ve got it?”

“I don’t see how they couldn’t,” I replied. “I haven’t pointed it out to them but it’s on open display and they both come in here quite often.”