Ash Bond Peregrine Quinn and the Cosmic Realm

Peregrine Quinn and the Cosmic Realm

1. tempus fugit

Location: Portal Tunnel Nine, Fifty-second Bookcase, Reading Room Three, The Bodleian Library, Oxford. Date: 23rd August [Terran Calendar] Time: 0450 hours

‘Are you very sure she’s asleep?’ Peregrine whispered.

She was peering at the librarian whose forehead rested on the desk in front of her. The woman’s bowler hat had rolled off, and underneath her shower of black curls poked a pair of pointy green-tipped ears.

‘Quite, quite sure.’ Peregrine’s godfather, Daedalus Bloom, picked up the librarian’s limp wrist and checked her pulse against his pocket watch. ‘Apart from being currently unconscious, this young lady is in tippetytip-top health.’ He sighed at an open bag of jelly beans and tutted. ‘But sugar is terribly bad for a dryad’s digestion. She really should know better.’

Peregrine thought this was a little much as it was in fact Daedalus who had planted the bag of jelly beans in the first place; planted them and spiked them with enough herbal sedative to knock out a small kangaroo.

‘A dryad, wow.’ She leant forward and gently placed the librarian’s hat back on her head; it felt a very personal thing to see those vibrant, delicate ears.

Peregrine, though a mortal herself, was now quite the expert in mythological beings. When you find out your godfather is an immortal, you tend

to do your homework and read around the subject. While she’d studied immortals, she had never actually met any apart from Daedalus, and he just looked like your average seventy-something-year-old human, albeit one who ate lots of organic broccoli and went to Pilates twice a week. But a dryad was a tree nymph and, well, that was really something.

As Peregrine readjusted the librarian’s hat, she noticed a golden pin in the shape of an apple attached to her collar. It glittered like a shiny penny in the low lamplight of the library.

‘What’s that?’ She pointed to the pin.

‘Ah. That, my dear, is the insignia of Olympus. Well, the new one. There was some re-branding when old Zeus retired a couple of millennia ago.’ Daedalus set the dryad’s wrist down gently. ‘It used to be a lightning bolt; very flash, very macho.’ He shuddered.

‘Oh.’ She looked at the other items on the librarian’s desk. It was empty except for a pot of pencils, a few odd books and a framed faded photograph of seven laughing girls in what looked like graduation gowns. Peregrine picked up the frame; she saw that the girls in the photograph were almost identical; same hair, same smiles but with slight differences – a mole here, an inch or two of height there. ‘Septuplets,’ she whispered. She looked closer. There was another girl, shorter and younger than the others who was standing a little apart.

‘Now, let’s get this show on the road, shall we?’ Daedalus spun balletically on his brogue heels and pulled back the midnight blue curtain behind the desk with a dramatic swoosh. Peregrine was always amazed at how spry he was for somebody who remembered carving the blue prints for Stonehenge.

‘Ooh.’ She felt the magic before she saw it: her arms prickled like a thousand spiders were tap-dancing across her skin. She shuddered. So, this is what magic felt like. She had always wondered.

Behind the curtain was an intricately patterned metal gate, the kind you might have over the door of a lift in a fancy hotel. The gate was made of silver and gold circles, spirals and lines that zig-zagged their way

across, backwards and forwards. Her head spun a little just watching it.

A rogue strand of hair the colour of a pale golden retriever had fallen from under Peregrine’s tight black beanie, and she tucked it back, eager to see what was behind the gate. She and Daedalus had discussed dress code the previous evening and, as discussed, Peregrine was dressed in a manner befitting a library break-in: black soft-soled shoes, black socks, black t-shirt, black dungarees. Daedalus on the other hand had interpreted ‘stealthy’ slightly differently; he was wearing a dapper three-piece navy-blue suit with seventies-style flared trousers and a bright turquoise waistcoat with a scattering of embroidered silver stars.

‘Hold these please, Peregrine.’ Daedalus passed her a book on woodland ferns, then one on mushrooms and finally a particularly dusty tome on the life cycle of polar bears. Then he turned back to the gate and traced his finger along the innermost circle until he found a tiny keyhole in the shape of a star, no bigger than the nail of a pinkie toe.

‘Aha!’ He tapped tentatively around the lock, then leaned forward to peer through. ‘Hmm.’ He stood up, plucked a pink satin handkerchief out of his breast pocket and mopped his brow. ‘As I thought. OPS have upped the security a little in the last century or so.’ He popped the hanky back into his pocket and cracked his knuckles. ‘Best to stay back, dear.’

‘What? Why?’ She scowled. She was a patient student, but she’d spent the last three years listening to stories of the portal, and the Cosmic Realm, and now she was so close. ‘Couldn’t I just look? I won’t touch it.’ She gazed up at her godfather with wide brown eyes. ‘I promise.’

Daedalus raised both his eyebrows. ‘I appreciate your enthusiasm, but this is just the door. If you got any closer to the portal itself, well, you might be lucky...’ He twirled his white moustache with a long delicate finger.

‘Lucky how?’ she asked, her eyes narrowed.

‘Tentacles will only sprout from your—’ He stopped mid-twirl, and stared at her ‘—nose!’

Peregrine snorted. Sometimes Daedalus just made this stuff up on the spot.

He chuckled. ‘I’m deadly serious! You Terrans lost your tolerance for the mystical centuries ago. Why, I remember the first time young Arthur tried to pull that sword out of that stubborn stone...’

‘What happened?’

‘Mucus.’ Daedalus sighed. ‘EVERYWHERE.’

The History of Carnivorous Fungi fell to the ground with such a loud thunk, that they both looked towards the dryad to check that she was still sleeping. They needn’t have worried, she’d obviously eaten quite a few jelly beans.

‘Ugh!’ Peregrine picked up the fallen book and placed it to the side with the others, before shuffling backwards. ‘Fine.’

She wasn’t squeamish exactly, but she was rather fond of her nose. It was small, slightly upturned and covered in freckles. Anyway, when there’s a choice of whether to get tentacles or not, she would choose not.

‘Thank you. Now if you wouldn’t mind,’ Daedalus rolled up his jacket sleeves and bent down to click open his leather doctor’s bag, ‘please take a further three steps back.’

He waited until she had done so, and then from the depths of the holdall he took out what looked like a shining golden stethoscope. Peregrine had seen lots of Daedalus’ odd instruments scattered around his greenhouse. This was in fact how she had discovered that Daedalus was not your average godfather. When she was nine, she found the lawn being mown by a clockwork lawnmower, while a mechanical crow read Daedalus the morning papers. After that, she’d noticed a lot more in the way of odd occurrences, but she had never seen an instrument like this.

As soon as Daedalus placed the earbuds into his ears, the golden tubes began moving of their own accord towards the gate. They sprouted tendrils as they grew smaller and smaller until finally they travelled straight through the tiny keyhole.

Peregrine sucked in a mouthful of air; golden sparks were swirling around the bookcase. This was real magic. ‘What are you—?’

Daedalus put a finger to his lips. A faint buzzing was emanating from the portal, like the wings of a hummingbird. He was nodding, and ‘hmming’ like he was listening very intently to something. ‘Interesting.’

‘What? WHAT is interesting?’ Peregrine hissed.

After about a minute, he took the earbuds out and put the stethoscope back into his bag.

‘Tempus fugit.’ His usually jolly tone was etched with worry. ‘But we still have time, I think, old girl…’ He paused, as if considering whether to say anything else. He shook his head and placed a hand tenderly on the bookcase; a few stray sparks licked his fingers. ‘I can’t do any more here.’ He closed the midnight blue curtain gently. ‘We should go.’

‘But what about her?’ Peregrine indicated the dryad, who was starting to drool.

‘Oh, she’ll be alright.’ He stood up and looked at his pocket watch again. ‘She’ll think it was merely a snooze, she won’t notice a thing.’

2. rowan strong

Location: Portal Tunnel Nine, Fifty-second Bookcase, Reading Room Three, The Bodleian Library, Oxford. Date: 23rd August [Terran Calendar] Time: 0520 hours

Twenty-three minutes later, Rowan Strong woke up and noticed something. In fact, she noticed a series of things. First, she noticed that drool was dribbling down her chin; second, that her hat was on at a jaunty angle that was completely against Olympus HQ’s Agent attire regulations, and third, that she had fallen asleep.

ASLEEP.

She snapped her head up, then slammed her hands down onto the table and pushed her chair back so it squealed like sharp nails on a blackboard.

She, Rowan Strong of the Seven Strong Sisters had fallen asleep on the job; she had snoozed on her sacred duty; she had dozed by the door to the Cosmic Realm. Shame washed over her like a bucket of icy Styx-water.

‘The three golden rules of being a Portal Librarian.’ Her Academy professor’s voice boomed in her head. ‘Vigilance, vigilance and vigilance!’

‘Flooharght!’ She swore.

She had always been the baby of her family, the youngest of her sisters. She always got the worst shifts, the hand-me-down hats, and now she would be the first Librarian ever to have been fired from the sacred guardianship of a portal. Her sisters would disown her; she would be sent back to Olympus in disgrace.

She gulped. She could see her future now: wearing the ill-fitting lilac uniform of a Mountain Mall security guard or carding teenage nymphs at neon-lit forest raves.

No, she was getting ahead of herself. She pulled back the portal curtain in panic; the door looked exactly as it always did. She checked her CosPad, scanning for any incoming transports that she had missed. None. Any messages? None. All portal readings were coming back within acceptable limits.

Everything looked absolutely, well, fine.

Breathing hard, she slumped back into her chair and readjusted her bowler hat. She had made a mistake. OK, a BIG mistake, but there seemed to be no harm done. She had gotten away with it, this time.

She still had most of her shift left, maybe she could wash away some of her guilt by cleaning the Librarian’s desk. She looked around her. It could definitely do with a tidy; there were sweet wrappers and old portal arrival tickets scattered across the floor. She sighed. As much as she loved her big sister, Hazel was kind of a slob.

She took her key chain out and flicked through the keys; CosPort, Portal Gate… Ah, there we go. Cleaning cupboard. As Olympus’s front-line operatives on Earth, only Librarians had access to these keys, and they were DNA-melded too. It had been a rush to imprint them, as Rowan

wasn’t even supposed to be here really. She’d interned with Hazel once or twice, but she was officially still in training. But then Hazel had called in sick and she was the only replacement available at the time. It had felt like such a huge opportunity.

‘Yeah, a huge opportunity to mess up,’ Rowan muttered as she opened the cleaning cupboard, and took out the mop. Something shiny caught her eye by the CosPort door.

Something that had been dropped.

Melissa Bowen

Professional daydreamer and superhero in training, Melissa Bowen is a Midlands based author with a thirst for adventure. A recent graduate of Bath Spa MA Writing for Young People, she is always on the hunt to learn something new.

With a background in Youth Community and Play Work and a refusal to grow up, Melissa has a strong passion for supporting libraries and reading for pleasure, she enjoys nothing more than sharing stories and meeting young readers both virtually and in person.

Melissa has attended events across the UK, including for Animal Planet, Bournville Book Festival, Brentwood Book Festival and even the National Pet Show, sharing stories and engaging with readers of all ages!

www.bbtaylor.co.uk / @bb_taylor_

About Chronicles of Allegra

When Orphan Allegra ends up at the house on the hill, she never thought she’d find herself living with a veggie werewolf or a witch with a flair for baking. This Middle Grade adventure, with hints of the Adams Family meets Miss Peregrine, follows Allegra as she discovers the true meaning of family and unlocks the dark secrets of her past