A Grimm Warning (The Land of Stories, #3)(50)

The teenagers aboard the bus pointed to the landmarks they recognized as they drove past them—Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the Tower of London, and Tower Bridge.

“This is the most proper place I’ve ever been in my life.” Conner nudged Bree. “Just being here makes me feel like I should be dressed up.”

The bus stopped in a place called Trafalgar Square, near the passengers’ hotel. The square was filled with tourists taking photos of the impressive statues and fountains in front of the National Gallery, which stretched across the back of the square like a grand backdrop. The teenagers raced off the bus to be amid the tourists outside and Conner and Bree exited with them.

Once they were on the street, the first thing Conner did was find an ATM.

“Forgive me, Bob,” Conner said as he looked down at the credit card Bob had so kindly given him. He stuck it into the machine and took out the maximum amount of pounds in the maximum amount of transactions it would allow at a time.

“That’s a lot of money—in any country,” Bree said. She covered him from any onlookers as he stuck the money in the pockets of his jacket and pants and then put the rest of it in his suitcase. “But it’s smart of you to take out a bunch of cash so no one can use your transactions to trace you. They do that to find suspects in the crime books I read.”

“Oh, I never thought about that,” he said with a shrug. “I just took out as much as I could because it was my first time using an ATM.”

The first thing Conner bought was a map from a street merchant. He opened it up and scanned the tiny print depicting the streets and attractions around them.

“There’s one!” he said happily, pointing at something on the map.

“What were you looking for?” Bree asked him.

“A library,” Conner said. “We’ll go to the library and look up where to find the Red Lion Brewery.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to look it up on the Internet with my phone?” Bree asked.

Since Conner had never had a smart phone before, he hadn’t considered this possibility. “No, I don’t trust those things,” he said. “I’d rather do it the traditional way—we’re in London after all.”

“Suit yourself,” Bree said.

They followed the map a few blocks west, to the closest library, which was tucked away in the corner of St. James’s Square. Conner and Bree walked up the front steps and pulled open its wooden doors. Conner had always found libraries intimidating and that feeling was heightened by being inside one in another country.

“Are you members?” a librarian at the front desk asked them. She glared at them over her thick-framed glasses. Conner always thought librarians could read minds and was afraid this one was going to prove his theory correct.

“No, but we’re interested in joining,” Bree said calmly. “May we have a look around?”

The librarian granted her request with a gesture for them to continue inside.

“Baggage is not allowed inside the library,” the librarian said when she saw their suitcases.

“Oh, of course,” Bree said. “May we leave them to the side here?”

She put her bag down near the front door and Conner placed Betsy beside it. The librarian permitted it with a nod and they continued inside. Conner and Bree found a table in the back of the first floor.

“I’ll be right back; I’m going to find some books,” Conner said, and disappeared into the rows of shelves. Bree sat down and made herself comfortable, looking at her phone while she waited. Conner returned twenty minutes later with a stack of heavy books.

“Look what I found,” Conner said. He showed Bree the first book in his stack.

“Breweries of Britain,” Bree read. “That’s great, Conner, but I looked up the Red Lion Brewery on my phone and apparently it was demolished in 1949.”

“You can’t trust anything the Internet says,” Conner said. He frantically flipped through the book until he found a page written about the Red Lion Brewery. “Oh no, according to this, the Red Lion Brewery was demolished in 1949.”

“Shocking,” Bree said sarcastically. “I don’t mean to be a downer but I don’t think the lion we’re looking for is around anymore.”

Conner let out a defeated sigh but he wasn’t ready to give up just yet. He pulled out another book from his stack, titled The Statues of London, and began flipping through it. After a couple minutes Conner started fidgeting with excitement as he read.

“Check this out,” Conner said, showing Bree the section he had just read.


The South Bank Lion

13 tons, 13 feet wide

As silly as it would be to say a statue has lived, of all the statues in London the one known as the South Bank Lion has lived many different lives. The statue was created in 1837 by W. F. Woodington, and was constructed of artificial Coade stone. The lion lived his first life as a symbol, guarding the Red Lion Brewery facing the River Thames in Lambeth, London. An intriguing aura of mystery surrounds the lion as it was one of the only sculptures in the area not severely damaged in the bombings of World War II, and when the Red Lion Brewery was eventually demolished in 1949, the lion was recovered from the demolition completely unscathed. King George VI took a liking to the lion and had him moved to Waterloo station. He spent his second life on display at the station for several years before being moved to his current resting place on Westminster Bridge in the South Bank area of central London. The remains of a secondary lion statue were also found in the demolition of the Red Lion Brewery. It was pieced back together and painted gold, and can now be seen at Twickenham Stadium.