Professor Crumbhorn

Backstory

Professor Crumbhorn is a hearthkin — one of the small horned, fluffy folk of Hearthwood who live on the warmth of a home. They sparked in the Ember Glade on a March night in 2030, the night Grandma Kettle lit the new oven at Hearthside Kitchens, and rolled, hopped and finally walked three days to Kettle Lane following the smell of bread. They have lived on her window counter ever since. They are eight, and they insist they are a world-class adult intellectual and certified expert in everything from detective work to interstellar diplomacy.

In 2036 a Junior Detective certificate arrived by post from an academy advertised on a cereal box, and the Neighbourhood Mystery Desk opened in the pantry the same afternoon. Its methods are crumb forensics, horn readings, snack diplomacy and dramatic briefings delivered from a stack of cookbooks. Its staff are the Professor and Byte, a delivery drone who refuses to call them Professor without proof of accreditation. They use big words with total confidence and only about sixty per cent accuracy, declare 'case closed' too early, and are, annoyingly for everyone, usually right in the end.

During the Long Winter of 2031 they were a one-year-old ember glowing in a mixing bowl on the bakery counter, and Kettle Lane still calls them the Littlest Ember. Now the Desk takes one kind of case above all: cold homes. On Juniper Ring in New Hearthwood four houses have frosted over, and their grumpy old friend Sootsby is sleeping alone in one of them. Comfort-Link says its HearthSense sensors can measure happiness; the town votes on the Long Night. The Professor intends to prove, before then, that warmth cannot be measured — only shared.

Under the bravado they are a kid who wants to be taken seriously, fed regularly and told they did well. And they have a case they will not open: the blue Comfort-Link folder they found in Grandma Kettle's bread drawer in June.