The London Pride by Charlie Fletcher Page B

little boy in the wig with the flounces and the cartoony German accent was just not computing. Or at least if it was computing it was coming up with a big error message, and he did not know how to reboot his head and get back to normal. Maybe normal was now like the past, a place you can never go back to. The thought chilled him and he actually shivered, though that might have been the fight-or-flight surge of hormones flushing out of his system.
    ‘Oh, that’s Wolfie,’ said Tragedy, as if that explained everything.
    ‘And, er, what is he?’ said Will.
    ‘Well, he thinks he’s a bit Austrian. Or German. Or both. He’s not too fussy. Some of the statues say he’s a child prodigy, and some say he’s a wunderkind, which is why he talks funny, but I don’t really know what either of those is, truth to tell.’
    ‘I am a wunderkind !’ giggled the boy. ‘Everyone agrees. And maybe also I will be prodigy, though I don’t know vot it is either, except it sounds fun!’
    ‘He likes fun, does Wolfie,’ said Tragedy.
    ‘This isn’t fun …’ said Will, who was desperate to find Jo.
    ‘I know,’ said Tragedy. ‘Hang on and I’ll fill you in.’
    And he quickly explained how he had been on the way back to meet Jo and Will when the animal statues had begun to step from the plinths and unpeel from the walls where they normally stood and stream towards the museum. He’d sent Selene, who he’d whistled out of the sky, to go and get them, while he went to fetch Wolfie.
    ‘Because we need a secret weapon,’ he added.
    ‘And Wolfie’s it?’ said Will, voice dripping with disbelief as he stared at the boy, who must only have been nine or ten. He didn’t look like a secret weapon.
    ‘Just you wait,’ said Tragedy. ‘We get into a tight corner with them animals out there in the streets, Wolfie’s going to buy you a lot more time than a couple of normal soldier-statues.’
    ‘He doesn’t look like a soldier,’ said Will.
    ‘Thank you,’ said Wolfie, and bowed.
    ‘You don’t have a gun. Or even a sword,’ said Will.
    ‘No,’ agreed Wolfie. ‘I have better.’
    And he raised his hand, which had been hanging below the counter so that Will had not been able to see what it held.
    ‘A violin?’ he said, choking. ‘Are you serious?’
    ‘I am better zan serious, my friend,’ said Wolfie, winking at him. ‘I told you: I am prodigy.’
    Wolfie may have been a prodigy, and Tragedy may have believed he was a secret weapon, but Will noticed they both moved very slowly and silently as they eased out of the back door of the basement and crept down the alley.
    The downpour was heavier now, and the glowing blue people on the street beyond the mouth of the alley seemed to acquire a haze around them as the driving raindrops refracted their light as they hammered past. It was the kind of rain that hits the ground so hard that it bounces back up your trouser legs and soaks your ankles. Within a few steps Will was drenched. He put his hoodie up and kept his right hand on Filax’s back as they went along.
    When Filax stopped, he stopped. A large silhouette of a lion slunk past on the street, backlit by the blue glow of the pedestrians.
    Tragedy and Wolfie seemed to melt into the wall, and Will lowered into a crouch behind a parked scooter.
    By the time the lion had moved on, Will’s hoodie was so wet and heavy that it deadened his hearing and flapped on either side of his face like a pair of blinkers, severely narrowing his field of vision, so he pushed it back and resigned himself to getting thoroughly soaked. Creeping around with blinkers on seemed a suicidal thing to do in the circumstances. He needed all his wits about him.
    It took them five minutes to creep to the end of the alley.
    What they saw there was dispiriting – four lions in view, and Selene, broken, lying across her plinth on the face of the hotel above the door, arms hanging lifelessly as a gold bug fluttered on her face. All her stars lay in a