Title: The Hidden City
Author: Sherry Thornburg
Author's Email: Thornburgs77 at gmail
Feedback: Yes, please
Permission to Archive: Privately only, with notice to me and where it is.
Category: Adventure
Rating/Warning: K
Main Characters: Phileas and Rebecca Fogg, and Passepartout.
Disclaimer: SAJV and original characters copy write Tailsman/Promark/etc., and the Harry Potter Universe copywrite, J.K. Rowling. No infringement is intended.
Summary: Both SAJV and Harry Potter fandoms will step back in time, when Phileas Fogg stumbles onto a mystery, discovering a section of London swallowed by a warehouse district. But he knows that isn't true. He saw streetlights on the other side of the wall. Investigating the hidden district makes Phileas and Rebecca pay dearly for being curious cats.
Author's notes: This was written for my sons who asked me to write a story using both the SAJV and the Harry Potter universes. Due to the timeline differences I decided to have SAJV visit Daigon Alley in Victorian times.
Chapter 1
In late winter, a Mister Phileas Fogg walked down the damp London streets to the train station. Inside, he was to meet his cousin Rebecca Fogg on platform ten. Phileas was a tall, slim gentleman of about forty. His hair was half gray and his eyes, tabby cat green. He dressed well in a gray suit with a long, black topcoat, matching top hat, and ebony cane in his white-gloved hand. He looked every bit the perfect town gentleman of 1862.
Phileas spent most of his days visiting friends at his club and doing whatever he wished. For many years, he didn't have the freedom to do such fun, simple things. Phileas was the son of the Director of the British Secret Service and had followed his father into that work, along with his brother and cousin Rebecca. Being a spy for England had been dangerous work. Phileas had traveled all over Europe and to China to keep England safe by finding trouble for his country and stopping it before it could happen. In one such mission, he lost his brother. He resigned from the Secret Service after that, having spent twenty years in Queen Victoria's service.
His cousin Rebecca, the service's first female agent, was still serving. She was a tall, red-headed lady with blue eyes. She loved her work and was always ready for an adventure. Rebecca came to live under Phileas's father's care when orphaned at six. They were very close, like brother and sister, and Phileas worried about her whenever she went off on the queen's business. This time, her mission wasn't dangerous. Rebecca's homecoming would be a quiet dinner together at his house.
Something odd caught Phileas's eye on another platform as he waited for the train. A man and boy were heading down the platform of number nine. There was nothing unusual in a father and son catching a train together, except that the father held a birdcage in his hand, containing an owl. Owls weren't normally expected as pets.
A train's whistle sounded, distracting him. Phileas turned momentarily to see Rebecca's train enter the station. He returned his gaze to the owl in the cage and couldn't find it. Father and son, with their unusual pet, had vanished. Losing two people in such an open area was puzzling, but he had no time to think about it. The train came to a stop in front of him, and Rebecca was the first person off.
Some days later, Phileas walked down the dark, damp streets, going home from a late-night card game. He saw an odd movement in the shadows. Instinctively, he tightened his hold on his cane, lest it be a thief.
The shadows sorted themselves out as two small figures, children perhaps. London had no shortage of homeless children, sad to say, and only the homeless would wander the streets at this time of night. However, this wasn't an area where he would expect to see such unfortunates.
An angry voice called out, making him pause. The adult voice was addressing the children. The words he could hear were of concern for their being out on the streets. A large shadow came out of the alley near the children and took them roughly by their collars. Their elder dragged them deeper into the alley. Phileas stayed, waiting for a door to close. Instead, he heard the grinding of heavy stones moving over each other and saw an odd flickering light. The alley went dark again in less than ten seconds' time. The lights, the voices disappeared.
The investigator in Phileas got the better of him. Silently warning himself about walking into dark alleys after midnight, he followed the path of the three people he had observed. What he found made him scratch his head in confusion. The alley led to nothing. There were no doors here into the buildings on either side of him. Phileas found himself in a dead end facing a high brick wall.
Where did you go? What made the lights I saw?
Phileas came out of the alley curious, but unable to do anything about it, right then.
Several times in the next month, Phileas Fogg left his club late at night and walked home in the pleasant evening air. When he came to the alley where he had seen the children and their elder, he would observe for a moment while continuing to walk, always passing that alley slowly.
One night, his guarded observations were rewarded. A tall man in a long cloak walked into the alley after looking both ways down the street. He saw Phileas but didn't give him much attention.
Knowing that there was nothing in that alley to attract anyone, Phileas stealthily crossed the street after the man. Looking around the corner, he saw his man walk up to the high back wall and touch it. His eyes grew wide as the bricks of the back wall rearranged themselves into an entrance.
The man walked through it to a street on the other side with gaslights shining his way.
Phileas waited for the man to turn the corner before following. Before he could get two steps, the bricks moved again to their former positions. Phileas slowly walked to the wall and hesitantly placed his cane on the bricks. They were as solid as they looked. He tapped the bricks in several places, but nothing happened. Finally, he left the alley, as puzzled, confused, and burning with curiosity as he had the first time.
Two days later, on his way to the Reform Club, Phileas confronted the alley in the light of day. It wasn't overly impressive. He walked into the alley to find it just as it had always been, a narrow space between a bookshop and a store selling musical instruments. The alleyway was roughly forty feet long and only seven feet wide. At the end of the shots, six feet of wood fencing finished the walkway to the brick wall.
Odd? A walkway between buildings, leading to nothing? Has that wall always been there? If there is a neighborhood behind the wall, why is it blocked off?
Phileas walked around the buildings to see if he could get to the other side. His purpose was defeated. This was an older part of London, which had been built, burned down, rebuilt, and rebuilt again over many centuries. New structures went up with little rhyme or reason, except possibly for the reuse of ancient foundations. Buildings were set, sometimes one on the other, and often using an existing building's outer wall as a sidewall to save money on bricks. Because of this, there was no getting to the other side of his mystery. There seemed to be a continuous structure of buildings along the wall for a four-city block length of Charing Cross Road.
Very odd.