Beautiful Lies Anthology

MA Writing for Young People

2014 Bath Spa Anthology

Copyright Š 2015 retained by contributors.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the contributor.

Published by the Bath Spa University Presses, Newton Park, Bath BA2 9BN, United Kingdom, in April 2015.

All characters in this anthology, except where an entry has been expressly labelled as non-fiction, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Catriona Morgan Illustrations by BA Hons Graphic Communication students, Bath Spa University Project managed by Caroline Harris for Harris + Wilson Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire Sponsored by the Bath Spa University Research Centre for Creative Writing.

2014 Bath Spa University MA Writing for Young People Edited by Alyssa Hollingsworth and Irulan Horner

foreword by David Almond Professor David Almond’s novels for children include Skellig, My Name Is Mina and Song for Ella Grey. His major awards include the Carnegie Medal, two Whitbreads and the Eleanor Farjeon Award. In 2010, he received the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the world’s most prestigious prize for an author of children’s fiction.

I

was once asked after a reading, ‘Is it the case that you begin by writing for children, and then you grow up and write for adults?’ I laughed and said that I took the opposite path. I only grew up as a writer when I began to write for the young. I never expected it to happen. I was an intelligent, educated adult and I thought I should write books for intelligent, educated adults, which is what I did, or tried to do, for several years. Then I was ambushed by a story, Skellig, that changed me forever. As soon as I began to write it down, I knew it was the best thing I’d ever written, that it was somehow the culmination of everything I’d written before, and, to my amazement, that it was a book for children. I was liberated, energised, and I became the thing I thought I’d never be but which I’m very proud to be – a children’s author.

The children’s book world is a place of great creativity and experimentation. Children’s literature, like young people themselves, is in a state of continual growth and change. It is playful, troubled, hilarious, serious, adventurous, ambitious. And of course, despite what the pessimists tell us, children read. They read with passion, intelligence and excitement. They read with their bodies and their senses as well as with their brains. They ask the most perceptive questions and give the most vivid responses. For children, our ancient world is brand new. For them, the ancient much-told dramas of being born, growing up, falling in love, discovering death are experienced for the very first time. What better audience could an author ask for?

I’m also proud to be part of this wonderful MA programme, Writing for Young People, which is given such importance by Bath Spa University. It’s ten years old this year, still a child, yet it’s developing a worldwide reputation

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for the quality of its teaching, for the way it discovers and fosters new talent, for the stream of alumni who have gone on to gain contracts from our major publishers and to win prizes. This fine anthology is yet another showcase for the splendid writing that is being produced here. It’s not just about individual success. The programme, and all of the people who teach, study and write within it, contribute to and draw strength from the wider culture. We are part of the age-old human quest to tell stories, to nurture the young, to try to create a better world.

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introduction by Julia Green Julia Green is Programme Leader for the MA Writing for Young People. Her latest novels for young people are This Northern Sky (Bloomsbury, 2013) and Seal Island (Oxford University Press, 2014).

T

he MA Writing for Young People celebrates its tenth birthday this year.

It’s wonderful to look back over those ten years and see how far we have come. So many of our former students are now successful, published authors writing their exciting, magical, scary, thrilling, beautiful stories for young people and making a significant contribution to this vibrant section of the literary world. In 2015, debut novels by Sarah Benwell (The Last Leaves Falling, Random House), Sophie Cleverly (Scarlet and Ivy, HarperCollins), David Hofmeyr (Stone Rider, Penguin), Lu Hersey (Deep Water, Usborne) Laura James (The Story of Pug series, Bloomsbury) and Eugene Lambert (The Sign of One, Egmont) will join the ranks of our published authors, and I am sure more will soon follow.

The publication of the annual anthology from the MA Writing for Young People marks a landmark for each student writer represented. The students have worked closely with each other and their tutors in workshop week by week, over a year (or two years, for our part-time students), developing characters and story ideas, honing their writing and making each story the best they can. They know that rewriting is a crucial part of their work, that the process involves seeing their work in new ways – ‘re-visioning’ – and many hours of hard work. But our writers for young people also understand the need to play, experiment, take risks and have fun. These things are an essential part of the process. The MA provides a very supportive community of writers who share the first stages of the writing journey.

Now, these stories must seek their fortune in the wider world of children’s and young adult publishing.

This anthology provides a snapshot of the writing from the class of 2013−2014. I hope you enjoy dipping into all these story worlds, in settings as varied as a contemporary Norwegian wilderness, or France in 1916;

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Tibet; snowy North America; Cornwall; Whitechapel, London in 1851; a New England island and the High Himalayas. You can travel on board ship in Triannukka, climb the crags at Wailing Edge or attend a masked ball in magical Venice. Your companions might be an edgy young adult or a faerie, a shape-shifter or an online gamer, a boy with OCD, a surfer, a brave girl determined to find her dad, or a boy detective. We cross genres too: fantastic and magical stories, tense psychological thrillers for young adults, detective and adventure stories for younger readers, love stories, tales of growing up, growing things, stories set in the past, in the future, in our real world and in fantasy ones. There are different kinds of stories for different kinds of readers, as diverse as the writers themselves. Stories can do so many wonderful things. Writers for young people really do believe that stories can change lives and make a difference.

So now, it’s over to you. Please turn the page. Find the stories that will speak to you. And do let us know how you get on ‌

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beautiful truths from the tutors

‘From the snowy Adirondack landscape, to a craggy hillside in the north of England, to the Himalayas, to the great magical city of Ambre: this year’s MA students take us on a magic-carpet trip around the world of story. Get inside the heads of twelve-year-old yak-stealing Tash or fifteenyear-old scaly shapeshifter Robin. Dance at a masked ball with wide-eyed Perl, battle sea monsters with brave Mouse on The Huntress, and feel the rush of the Cornish waves with teenage Sam. And there’s so much more.

The variety of talent in these pages just can’t be summarised: read on – and enjoy!’

Janine Amos ‘It's been a privilege to teach this year’s crop of students. Inside these pages is some of the most wonderful and talented student work I have ever seen.

This is no light compliment − I believe the Bath Spa MA Writing for Young People is the very best course of this type in the world. This anthology succeeds in doing the course proud.’

Lucy Christopher ‘Each of these stories gets up off the page and beckons you into a new world; every one distinct and enticing. I wanted to read them all.’

Marie-Louise Jensen ‘Bath Spa has done it again − another coterie of horribly talented and irritatingly accomplished writers. I’m torn between cheering and cursing their imaginations, voices and lines so delicious you want to steal them for your own.’

Joanna Nadin

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‘Each year, the MA Writing for Young People course produces a fine crop of exciting new writers, all of whom have been through the process of sharing their work and taking on criticism to make it stronger. This year I think has been one of the strongest yet. Each of these writers has a gift for creating worlds that envelop a young reader like a warm blanket. I've loved getting to know these wonderfully passionate people and I wish them safe and fruitful journeys as their little ships set sail onto the publishing sea.’

C J Skuse

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contents Middle Grade 8−12

14 24 34 42

Jasbinder Bilan Philippa Forrester Sarah Henderson Lindsay Schiro

Song of the Mountain Beautiful The Missing Hounds of Baskerville Park The Quest for GameCon

Tween 10−14 52 60 68 76 84

Jenny Baker Jess Butterworth Sarah Driver Jak Harrison Irulan Horner

Kite x Noel Fire Walker The Huntress: Sea The Silence of Secrets Feral Faerie

Young Adults 14+ 94 102 110 120 128 136 146 156 166 10

Carlyn Attman Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea Christina Christoffersen Facing Dragons Eden Endfield White Night Anneka Freeman Hollow Bones Rebecca Harris The Hills Are Silent Alyssa Hollingsworth Illuminate Rowena House The Butterfly’s Wing Emily Morris Pasco Krash and Maddy Lucy van Smit Hurts So Good

176

Chris Vick

Kook

185 Acknowledgements 187 Illustrators

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Middle Grade 8–12

jasbinder bilan

J

asbinder was born in Northern India and moved to Nottingham when she was one-and-a-half. As a young girl, she listened in awe to her grandmother’s stories about the grumpy camel and wonderful monkey, Oma, who lived on the family farm.

Jasbinder has always written stories and doing the MA Writing for Young People at Bath Spa has finally set them free. Song of the Mountain is her first manuscript for eight- to twelve-year-olds.

Jasbinder is currently working on her second novel for this age group, a ghostly Anglo Indian tale set on the Scottish coast. She lives in Bath with her husband, two sons and their dog, Enzo.

About Song of the Mountain

What would you do if your family and way of life were threatened? Asha has always had visionary powers that she doesn’t understand. But when her father suddenly stops sending letters from his factory job in the city, she has to learn to trust them fast.

Asha’s instincts tell her that only a visit to the village witch will reveal her destiny. Together with her childhood friend, Jeevan, she is now ready to make the perilous journey that is written in her palms.

But how can they survive the High Himalayas, where danger waits at every turn? Or escape from crooks in the city, who want to use them for their own gain? Just when Asha thinks she is about to find her father, a devastating twist of fate leaves her totally bewildered. Will they ever return home? jasinbath@gmail.com

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Jasbinder BILAN

song of the mountain Chapter 1

T

he sudden clang of the spare cowbell startled me. It was swinging from its hook on the wall, even though the air was still. A shiver rippled down my spine, despite the shed being thick with heat. The bell made the same hollow sound again. I watched as it moved from side to side. It was steady, rhythmic … as if someone was pushing it. Then it stopped as suddenly as it had started.

Strange things were happening. Last Sunday my paints went missing and then turned up in the mango tree; yesterday a cotton reel flew off the table while I watched, and now this. I couldn’t explain. I didn’t understand.

My hands shook. Beads of sweat prickled across my forehead. The smooth wooden planks of the shed dug into my back as I leant against it.

The bell rang one more time, then stopped.

I wanted to run and tell Ma, but instead I sat back on my heels and carried on milking.

Nothing was the same, since Papa left.

Why hadn’t he written? He’d been working in the city of Zandapur for eight months now. I knew letters took a long time to get to our village. His last one arrived on the half moon. That was in January. Four whole months ago.

Papa said working in the factory wasn’t so bad. He’d sent money for Ma and kind words for me. He promised he’d be back for my birthday.

I screwed my eyes tightly, trying to picture his face. It wouldn’t appear.

I would be twelve on 1st November. This year it was going to be on Divali, the same as when I was born.

Shouts echoed up from the valley. What was it? I left the milking and 16

ran out of the shed, shielding my eyes against the blazing sun. I could just see a group of people gathered around our gates. Ma’s green dupatta flew through the air, like it did when she used it to swat flies. What was she doing?

Did someone call my name? ‘Asha.’

I ran as fast as I could towards her. The path from the cowshed was steep. Bits of loose stone kept making me slip. Air shot into my lungs in big gulps. It felt like ants were crawling through my stomach.

What was this all about?

The wind cooled my burning cheeks as I ran past the mango tree. I turned left at the bottom of the hill, where the ground flattened out. People were spilling out of our garden. Who were those strangers in the middle of our friends and neighbours?

My breathing slowed as I got closer to the house, but my heart carried on beating.

I pushed my way through the crowd.

‘Ma!’ I shouted. ‘What’s going on?’

‘One more month!’ she said, pulling at the stranger’s arm with all her strength. My twin brother and sister Rohan and Roopa clung to Ma’s legs.

One of the men kicked our door open. ‘If you borrow money, you have to pay it back,’ he said.

‘Hey,’ said Jeevan’s papa. ‘Stop that! It’s Sunday. A holy day and look what you two are doing.’

‘You can’t just walk into our house!’ I shouted.

He laughed. ‘Can’t I?’ We all followed him into the kitchen.

‘There must be something here we can take,’ he said, opening the cupboard. He knocked my favourite blue cup off the shelf. It smashed against the floor.

I kicked him in the shin.

Ma pulled me back. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Please.’ She tuned to face the men.

‘There’s nothing in here.’

The other man dipped his hand into a brass pot on the shelf. He brought out the key to the old tractor. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go. She’s right. It’s just full of old tat.’

‘Not Papa’s tractor,’ I cried, running in front of him into the garden.

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Jasbinder BILAN

One of the men climbed up. He twisted the key. The other one stood on the footplate. The engine started with a loud rumble.

‘No!’ I shouted. ‘No!’ ‘You still owe money,’ yelled one of them. ‘We’ll be back.’

Grey smoke chugged out of the exhaust. Ma didn’t move. She held the dupatta up to her face and cried into it.

‘Ma, do something!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t let them take it.’ My words were lost.

Rohan and Roopa wailed. Roopa picked up a handful of dirt and threw it at the men.

I ran past Ma, following the men out of the yard. My lungs were burning and my legs ached but I pushed myself on. ‘Stop!’ I shouted. ‘Stop! You can’t take our tractor!’

They didn’t look back. They didn’t stop. They drove away.

Ma’s face was streaked with tears. She shouted after them. Words I’d never heard her say before.

‘What heartless thugs,’ said Jeevan’s papa.

All the neighbours gathered around. They talked in low voices now and shook their heads.

‘Take Rohan and Roopa to the sugar-cane fields and back,’ said Ma, struggling to get the words out. ‘I’ll clear up the mess.’

Jeevan’s ma went inside to help. I was shaking. Tears waited to spring out but I had to swallow them. I held the gold pendant that Papa’s ma, Nanijee, gave me when she died. It was warm. I felt a rhythm sweep through my body. As if it was telling me to be strong.

The twins wrapped their arms around my waist. ‘It’ll be OK,’ I said. I held their hands and squeezed tight. They were only six.

‘I’ll tell you a story,’ I said, even though I didn’t feel like it.

The mountains, far beyond the grazing grounds, made a dark, jagged ridge against the setting sun. At the very top it was still icy with snow.

‘There was once a raja who lived at the summit of the highest mountain in the world.’ I tried not to let my voice wobble.

‘Was there a rani as well?’ asked Roopa, pulling on my arm.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There was a rani. It was her job to collect the orange marigold petals and give them to the sun …’

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We walked as far as the fields and then turned back. Ma would have had enough time to sort things out. I wanted to get home. I needed to talk to her. I was so confused.

A bicycle bell tinkled behind us. I knew it was Jeevan. I twisted round as he skidded and stopped beside me. He blew the long fringe off his forehead.

‘I came as soon as I heard,’ he said, speaking in a quiet voice over Rohan and Roopa’s heads.

‘Will you meet me later?’ My voice was beginning to tremble. ‘I can’t talk about it now.’

He touched my arm. ‘In the mango tree?’

I nodded. Jeevan fiddled with the collar on his shirt. For a moment he looked older than twelve.

Maybe I’d feel better in our secret place.

Jeevan searched in his bag. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Look what I’ve got here.’

He brought out two orange twirly jelaybia.

Rohan and Roopa looked at me. I nodded. They grabbed the shiny sweets and crunched them loudly, dribbling juice down their chins.

‘We haven’t had these for ages,’ said Roopa.

‘Thank you,’ I said to Jeevan. ‘See you later.’

Who were those men? Why had they taken our tractor? Why had they upset Ma so much?

I swung open the gate that led into our garden. The solar panels reflected the huge monsoon clouds. They were dark grey and full of rain.

The blue and white beaded curtain rattled as I walked into the kitchen. Ma’s pile of sewing that had been knocked onto the floor was neatly stacked on the table again. Everything was back in its place, except my blue china cup.

Ma had piled the broken pieces one on top of the other. I picked up a small chunk. It was rough against my skin where the edges had cracked. I put it in my pocket.

‘When’s Mama coming?’ asked Rohan.

‘Not long, Rohi,’ I said, trying to sound cheerful. She must have gone to see a neighbour. ‘Have some warm milk.’ I lifted the terracotta jug. It was empty.

‘Can you both do some drawing?’ I said. ‘I have to go and get the milk.’

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Jasbinder BILAN

I met Ma in the garden. Her face was puffy and her eyes were red.

Her long hair that was usually so neatly tied back, was loose and wild.

‘Ma,’ I said. ‘What was that all about?’

‘Don’t worry, Asha,’ she said. Her voice was hoarse. ‘We’ll talk later.’

She smoothed her hair. ‘Where are you going?’

‘The milk’s still up at the cowshed,’ I said. I wanted her to tell me everything right now. But she looked so worried.

‘I’ll go,’ she said.

‘It’s OK, Ma, I’ll get it. Rohan and Roopa want you.’

She forced a smile.

The sky grumbled and looked darker than ever. Big drops of warm rain splashed onto my head. They trickled down my neck. I pushed myself back up the steep path.

I was out of breath by the time I got there. I leant against the sheesham tree. Rosefinches dived and chased each other. The wind whistled down from the mountain, shaking the leaves. It mingled with the low sound of cowbells and mooing.

Nanijee used to say that I had a gift. Ma told me that when I was born she said, ‘This girl with her mountain green eyes will see things that others can’t.’

I wished Nanijee was here. She believed that the spirits of our loved ones lived through animals. Had she been reborn yet?

The shriek of a Lamagaia, a bearded vulture, made me jump. It landed on a rock right next to me. Even though its wings were closed, it was huge.

They usually kept away from people.

If I leant forward I could almost touch its golden head. I didn’t feel afraid of it. I’m not sure why.

Its eyes were dark. They held my gaze for another moment, then its smooth dark wings opened, and away it flew.

I watched as it soared higher and higher above the mountain, until it was nothing more than a speck in the sky.

The little white dots of the village houses spread out in clusters in the valley below. The moon peeped through the grey clouds as if someone had chopped it in half.

I walked into the shed. The cows jostled towards me, just like they 20

always did. The thick rope scratched my hand as I passed it loosely round their necks.

‘Come on, girls,’ I whispered, smoothing their silken ebony backs. I tied them to the metal hooks. Sunny, the calf, stuck out his rubbery tongue and licked my hand. He trotted back to his ma.

‘You can stay here,’ I said, as he looked for a last drink before bedtime, ‘next to your mama.’

I stood on tiptoe and felt for my sketching book on the high wooden shelf behind the coils of rope. I blew the dust off. I hadn’t used it since Papa had gone.

I opened the pages. The sketch of the spotted scops owl was the last one we did together. You usually only heard them. But that night Papa and I had seen one swoop low across the sheesham tree.

I closed the book and slid it back in place. I lifted the pot onto my head and carried the milk home. The rain had cleared the air. I breathed in the scents of early evening: warm soil, grass, the sweet star-shaped bakul flowers.

Ma had my food ready on the table. The pot made a soft thud as I put it in its usual place. I covered it with a cold green tile to keep it fresh.

‘I’ve just put the twins to bed,’ said Ma. ‘Come and eat.’

‘What about you?’ I sat down on the low bench.

‘I ate already,’ she said.

I wasn’t sure if it was true. She hardly ever ate with us anymore.

‘I don’t feel like it,’ I said, stirring the small bowl of yellow dhal with my spoon.

‘Come on, Asha. You have to eat. It’s Monday tomorrow and you’ve got school.’

How could I think about school after what had just happened? I tore the warm roti and trickled the melted butter into the dhal. I dunked a piece and put it in my mouth. It stuck in my throat.

‘That’s it,’ said Ma. ‘You need your strength.’

‘Ma? Why did those men take the tractor?’

She came and sat down. Her eyes had dark circles round them.

‘I didn’t want to tell you,’ she said. ‘I had to borrow some money from someone in the town, in Sonahaar.’ Tears fell onto the table. ‘They said I could have a few months to pay it back. But I couldn’t, so they came to get 21

Jasbinder BILAN

what they could. They’ll sell the tractor.’ Ma wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. ‘I’m sorry. Your papa hasn’t sent a letter or any money for four months now.’

‘Will they come back?’ I asked.

Ma started crying again.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said stroking her hand. ‘Don’t cry, Ma.’ I’d never seen her like this before.

There was a small shrine that we kept on a shelf in the kitchen like most families in Moormanali. I struck a match and lit the clay deeva. The flickering yellow flame shone under the golden statue of Shiva. He looked so calm sitting there with his hand raised in peace. This morning Ma had put a long strand of jasmine around his neck.

‘Maybe this will bring us some luck,’ I said. I put my hands together and said a prayer for us all.

Ma looked up. ‘I’m so sorry, Asha.’ She sighed and pushed her hair back. ‘Bedtime.’ She kissed me on the forehead. ‘I’ll just finish some of this stitching. I said I’d get it done by tomorrow.’

I left Ma alone in the kitchen. How long before those awful men were back? What would they take next?

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philippa forrester

P

hilippa's career as a television presenter began with Children's BBC and spans almost three decades of primetime. She created Halcyon Media with her husband Charlie Hamilton James, has written and produced award-winning natural history programmes for the BBC, including Halcyon River Diaries, and published two books.

She is currently living in Wyoming, where grizzly bears join children in the playground. Her three sons are wearing cowboy boots and learning to lasso, and her husband is one step away from chewing tobacco. Meanwhile, she sits in ‘Cowboy Coffee’ amongst the stetsons – and writes.

About Beautiful

A young girl, an old lady and a giant cat sneak around in the middle of the night, planting bulbs, artfully placing flowering plants, growing runner beans up lamp posts and lobbing seed bombs.

Beautiful – How Grace Became a Guerrilla Gardener and Changed the World is an empowering, exciting read, with a bright, determined heroine.

Grace has lost her father and worries about her overworked, single mum. She is trapped in a lonely, urban life. Running from bullies, she finds sanctuary in an abandoned garden; its beauty lifts her out of the prison of dreary concrete life so she sets to work to restore it. Determined that beauty is a feeling worth spreading, Grace is inspired, and arms herself with a trowel to transform her world and spread a little happiness. It's borderline illegal – but who cares? philippa@halcyon-media.co.uk / philippaforrester.com

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Philippa FORRESTER

beautiful Chapter 30

A

t exactly nine o’clock, Grace rolled her black sleeve back over her watch and pulled the old balaclava over her head. It was a bit tight. She had hated it when she was little. She could still remember pulling it straight off every time Mum put it on her head. But she was only little then, now she knew it would keep her warm.

She slung the big bag of bulbs over her shoulder, staggering a little.

Actually, she may have overfilled it.

Cat stood up and did cat yoga, stretching out his full length across the shed bench before dropping off it with two thuds as his front and back paws hit the wooden floor. Grace loved that noise.

‘Whoops. Almost forgot.’ She thought of Lily and George as she turned off the paraffin lamp. Then she thought of Jack. Actually, no point in doing that. Butterfly heart. She got it as she shut the shed door behind her. She shivered; she was nervous. Cat walked beside her to the end of the brick path.

This was where they normally said goodbye, but to her surprise, he leapt ahead of her onto the wall then the gate, balancing for a moment before looking back at her and then jumping to the other side. Was he coming with her?

Grace tried to do the same, as she usually did. But it didn’t quite work out like that. The heavy bulbs made her clumsy, not at all agile as she clambered over the wooden gate, which rattled with irritation at the extra weight.

Last time she was out in the streets at night, in a catsuit, it was Halloween.

She had been nervous then too.

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Now though, with Cat beside her, she realised she wasn’t nervous anymore. In her black suit and balaclava (no whiskers this time), she began to feel more like a cat herself.

They stuck to the shadows, skirting the edge of pools of light on the pavement.

No one was around. No pumpkins or Halloween lights in the window.

No gangs wearing masks.

‘This is going to be great, Cat. We’re going to be fine.’

It would be busy on the high street but she had already thought about that. They turned before they got to it, into an alley which ran down the back of all the houses right the way to school. They were going to cut through school. She could climb the fence and cross the playground, nip down the back alley round the back of the garden centre and then over the back wall into the old people’s home.

The only thing she really needed to worry about was how on earth she was going to get all these bulbs planted. It would be worth it if she could, it could be amazing, but it would take for ever – there were so many.

Tall fences on either side of the alley made it dark. She could see the light from a television in a second-floor room and hear the rumble of traffic, but other than that it was lifeless and unfriendly. She passed an old motorbike, chained to a fence post. She shivered again, but Cat was still beside her, walking close to her legs, huge and bright ginger in the darkness.

They walked quickly and reached the back fence of the school. It was taller than Grace had remembered. Praying that no one from the house would see her, she heaved herself onto the nearest garden fence and scrambled up to the top of the school wall. Cat followed easily and sat beside her.

The playground looked so different in the darkness. She threw down the bag of bulbs. It was a relief to be free of it, and it would be easier to jump without it. She looked at Cat and smiled.

‘Are you going first, or am I?’ Just as she was about to jump, a huge clatter came from the alley behind her. The noise of an alarm sounded. Grace looked around. The motorbike was on its side, flashing and whining as if it had just been attacked.

How had that happened?

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Philippa FORRESTER

Racing towards them came a scruffy old tramp. They were being followed.

Grace jumped.

Chapter 31

B

est to get out of here quickly. She picked up the bag of bulbs and pulled the strap over her head. The noise from the motorbike alarm would soon get people curious. She looked around her for Cat but he was still up on the wall.

‘Cat,’ she hissed.

He looked down at her.

‘Come on.’

But he looked back into the alley and didn’t budge. Suddenly, Grace felt very alone in the darkness of the playground. Wasn’t he coming with her after all? She had loved having him with her: he made her feel strong.

‘Please come,’ she said.

But he ignored her, and continued staring into the alley as if he were watching the tramp. A tramp who could be scaling the wall behind her even now.

She turned to go. She couldn’t hang around for Cat; she was going to have to do this alone.

‘Grace?’ It was an all-too familiar voice.

‘Grace?’ With a sense of rising panic.

‘Oh Marmaduke,’ said the voice, ‘how on earth am I going to get up there?’

Lily.

Grace couldn’t believe it. That was no tramp, it was Lily back there in the alley. She must have been following them, and in typical fashion it must have been Lily who knocked over the motorbike that was now drawing the attention of the whole street.

Not that they were doing anything wrong.

Well, actually, now that Grace thought about it, perhaps they were.

She was standing in the dark, in the locked school playground in her 28

catsuit. That looked suspicious. Lily, meanwhile, was setting off motorbike alarms.

‘Lily, go home.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You have to. Go home.’

‘I can’t. I locked myself out. Besides, the lights have all started going on in the houses. Grace, you’ll have to help me. I’ll never get over this fence on my own …’

With a sigh Grace dropped the bag of bulbs again. The wall was too high to climb. She remembered the bench that the dinner lady always sat on; she could just about make it out in the darkness. It was hard to drag it but she managed to get it right under the wall and soon she was standing on the very back of it. She had just enough height to pull herself up and see over. She could only see Lily’s sparkling eyes.

‘What are you wearing?’

‘A balaclava. The same as you. And I’ve managed to fit loads of bulbs in my shopping trolley. Seemed a shame to leave them in the shed after you spent all that time getting them out of the skip.’

‘Never mind that now.’

Grace jumped down, and crouched.

‘Stand on my back.’ Lily was surprisingly light, like a bird.

A rattling sound came from inside one of the back gates. Someone was unlocking it.

‘Quick.’

Lily was struggling to hold onto the wall, Grace pushed her legs.

‘What about my shopping trolley?’

‘Don’t worry about the shopping trolley now.’

Someone called out of a window.

‘What’s going on, Dave?’

‘Not sure, I’m just going to check it out,’ came the reply, along with the clanking sound of the chain being removed from a padlock.

‘Lily, there’s a bench on the other side. Take it steady.’ Grace whispered, and then with a heave pushed her legs.

Lily landed on the other side of the wall with a thud. Grace hauled herself up onto the fence, her adrenaline pumping. Balancing like Cat, she 29

Philippa FORRESTER

stood and leapt to the wall. What was she thinking? Lily was an old lady with agoraphobia; she hated going out. She shouldn’t be shoved over walls at her age. How on earth was she going to get her home?

Two seconds later she had dropped into the school playground and was standing next to Lily, who had landed rather inelegantly on the bench.

But judging by the massive grin on her face, she was OK. Cat stood next to her, waving his tail.

‘How exciting. I’ve never been a cat burglar before. I heard you talking to Cat in the shed earlier and the more I thought about it, the more I thought I couldn’t have you prowling the streets on your own at night. It really is quite dangerous, you know. And since I don’t know your parents, or even have any idea who they are, I suddenly realised that I would have to come too. I mean, why not? I’ve been out and about quite a bit lately. And it’s about time I did get out. “You stupid old woman,” I thought, “you can’t stay in here all your life feeling sorry for yourself.” And I quite enjoyed our little jaunt to the end of the garden. So, I dressed up in George’s old coat and here I am. Where are we now? Is this where we plant the bulbs?’

‘We’re in the school playground and we are not planting the bulbs, Lily, I am,’ Grace whispered, pulling her away from the wall. ‘But we need to be quiet.’

The alarm stopped. For a moment, all was still.

‘I’m sure I heard something, Dave,’ called the voice from the window.

‘Coming from the school end.’

Grace put her bag over her shoulder.

‘Run!’ ‘Don’t wait for me, Grace, save yourself, you go on ahead.’

Grace looked back. She had so much wanted to do this on her own, to spread a little magic without anyone knowing. Grace rolled her eyes, walked back and took Lily by the arm.

‘OK, Lily, come on, at least let’s walk fast.’

‘Wait! What about my shopping trolley?’

‘We’re going to have to come back for it.’

‘OK. Isn’t this wonderful?’

‘Shhh!’

‘What an adventure!’ Lily continued. ‘I can’t believe I’ve been stuck 30

inside for so long. You do realise this isn’t really the best time to plant bulbs?

George and I used to love planting bulbs. We did do it earlier, of course, we never left it till December; it’s always easier in the autumn. Still, I’m really looking forward to getting my hands dirty again.’

Grace sighed.

It looked like she had a partner, whether she wanted one or not.

Chapter 32

I

t wasn’t easy getting her there, but once they arrived Grace was glad she had Lily. Doing it on her own had seemed like such a great idea at first.

Now, standing in the street having nearly got caught, she wasn’t so sure; together they would work much faster.

Grace stood for a moment to catch her breath. She gazed at the old people’s home trying to imagine it as it had once been; a huge family house with a massive garden. ‘It must have been beautiful,’ she said.

‘It was,’ Lily said. ‘I remember the garden especially. It stretched all the way over to the supermarket there. I was so sad when they sold it off and turned it into a car park.’

All that was left was a neglected strip between the house and the car park fence.

It was dark, each bulb had to be planted separately, and they couldn’t risk using a torch. So they had to feel the depth of each hole, move the bulb around till it was pointed side up, and place it in the bottom of the hole.

They had hundreds of the things with them and at least another two loads back at home. Alone, it would have taken Grace all night.

The only problem was that Lily didn’t stop talking.

That was why Grace liked being on her own. She didn’t want to waste time chatting – she just wanted to get on with her work, to focus on making something beautiful, even if right now she was covered in mud and it didn’t look like anything beautiful could ever come from what she was doing.

‘My goodness, it is back-breaking work, isn’t it?’ called Lily after approximately four minutes of silence.

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Philippa FORRESTER

‘Yes,’ Grace replied. ‘Look, Lily, we have to be quiet.’

‘Eh?’ Grace raised her voice so that Lily could hear.

‘Lily, we have to be completely silent.’

‘What dear?’ Lily cupped her muddy hand behind her ear as if it might help her to hear better.

Grace practically shouted: ‘We have to work in silence, otherwise we will get caught.’

A dog barked a few houses away.

‘Oh yes, dear, of course, dear. Mum’s the word, eh?’ Lily flashed her a huge smile and went back to digging industriously.

Two minutes later she was at it again.

‘The thing is, dear, I don’t really understand why we are doing this in the dark. Why not just volunteer to plant some bulbs?’ Lily carried on digging.

‘Because it's not our property, it’s illegal, against the rules and there isn’t anyone to ask. No one cares about this place. So I don’t really want anyone to know. You see, I just want the place to be suddenly beautiful as if it were magic. To remind people of the seasons, that this place can be lovely.

I just want to make it feel good again. To make people happy.’

Lily looked up at her and smiled.

‘What was that, dear, did you say something?’

Early the next day, Grace went to collect the abandoned shopping trolley from the alley. The bulbs were still inside it. The place looked so different in the daylight, not at all menacing, just another sad and neglected spot.

She spotted the trolley as soon as she turned the corner but as she walked past the dustbins towards it, Grace couldn’t help noticing how the morning sun shone brightly at that end of the alley, warming the brick wall. It would be the perfect place to grow runner beans.

32

33

sarah henderson

S

arah lives near Bristol. She is old enough to have been a criminal lawyer (which gave her loads of ideas for great plots) and to be married with three children, but not quite old enough to have used a quill at school, as her daughter suggested.

She gets about twenty-seven new ideas for stories every day and, despite completing the Bath Spa MA, the best writing advice she has been given came from a ten-year-old boy she met on a school visit: ‘Write quirky and funny and try not to write apsaloot garbidge.’

Sarah is represented by Gill Mclay from Bath Literary Agency.

About The Missing Hounds of Baskerville Park

Josh’s detective-mad twin sister Izzy is even more annoying as a ghost than she was when she was alive and that’s saying something.

Izzy has been haunting Josh for almost two years. She follows him everywhere but no one else can see or hear her.

Events take a disastrous turn when Josh loses Agent One, Izzy’s spaniel and Mum’s constant companion. Mum falls apart and Josh knows that he must get Agent One back.

Izzy persuades Josh that Agent One and her best friend Martha’s dog, Sherlock, who is also missing, must have been stolen but no one believes them. If they want to find the dogs, they will have to do it themselves – and that means working together. henderson.sarahlouise@gmail.com

35

Sarah HENDERSON

the missing hounds of baskerville park Chapter 1

I

jump back bum-first onto the armchair with the remote in my hand just as the smoke alarm screeches into life. It’s like the dinner gong in our house these days – goes off every single night. About five minutes before tea.

‘Not again,’ I sigh.

‘It’s not Mum’s fault,’ says Izzy, hovering over the sofa.

‘It’s all right for you,’ I say. ‘You’re a ghost. You don’t have to eat the charcoal she calls food. That pizza yesterday almost broke my teeth.’

‘I guess being dead has its upsides,’ says Izzy.

‘But her cooking used to be awesome before. Remember her roast chicken.’

‘Yeah and her apple crumble,’ says Izzy. ‘That was lush.’

The kitchen door opens and Mum emerges from the smoke, balancing two plates. I guess that means Dad won’t be home for tea. But then he never is these days. Agent One, Izzy’s black spaniel, follows Mum so closely he’s almost between her legs.

Suddenly he senses Izzy. He whimpers and runs back into the kitchen.

‘Agent One!’ says Mum, sidestepping him in a move Ryan Giggs would be proud of. ‘That dog. I don’t know what’s got into him. He never used to be like that.’

She hands me my tea – shrivelled sausages that look like mummified fingers and burnt baked beans, then sits down on the sofa, right on top of Izzy.

I shiver. It still totally freaks me out when people do that, touch Izzy, even sit on her, without noticing. I feel freezing, like I’ve stepped into an 36

ice bath. But Mum doesn’t react at all. She can’t see Izzy or hear her. No one can. Well, no one except me. Izzy’s my twin sister. Or should I say, the ghost of my twin sister. Apparently ghosts only get to haunt one person. And she chose me.

I suppose I should feel honoured. But the truth is, she’s even more of a pain now she’s dead than she was when she was alive. And that’s saying something.

She follows me everywhere. And now she’s learnt how to walk through walls, there’s no escape. She even comes to school with me. I mean, who’d go to school if they didn’t have to?

She first started haunting me the day after her funeral. I tried to tell Mum and Dad, but they just thought I’d lost the plot. Blamed it on the shock and the ‘special twin bond’ and made me see a counsellor. She was called Angela and her perfume was so strong, I literally couldn’t breathe.

Had to keep puffing on my inhaler. And she had this sing-songy voice that went up at the end of every sentence. They made me spend hours in her hot, stuffy office, talking about Izzy and our relationship and how I felt about her death. After seven sessions, I’d had enough so I told my first big lie. Said I couldn’t see or hear Izzy now, that I felt much better and that I didn’t think I needed any more counselling.

As I left the room, Angela squeezed my hand so tightly my fingers hurt, stared into my eyes and said, ‘Don’t worry, Josh. Izzy will always be with you.’

Yeah, I thought. That’s the problem. But I just smiled and said, ‘I know. Thank you.’ Then got out of there as fast as I could.

So now, I have to make sure that no one hears me talking to Izzy, otherwise I’ll be sent back to the nightmare Angela.

Mum picks up the cutlery that she’s balanced on the arm of the sofa. She’ll need more than a knife and fork to get into those sausages. More like a hacksaw or a chisel.

‘Were you talking to yourself, just now?’ she asks.

‘No,’ I say. Strictly speaking, it’s not a lie.

‘Ketchup?’ she asks. She stands up and walks into the kitchen. I flick on the TV. 37

Sarah HENDERSON

‘Murder, She Wrote,’ says Izzy, who’s moved to the other end of the sofa.

‘I love this. Can we watch it?’

‘Let me think about that for a second,’ I whisper, just in case Mum can hear. ‘No.’ ‘But I haven’t seen it for ages.’

‘Well, that’s tough,’ I whisper. ‘Because I want to watch Top Gear and you don’t get to choose because you’re dead. I guess being alive has its upsides, too.’

‘Murder, She Wrote,’ says Mum, walking back into the living room.

‘Yeah.’ I look at Izzy. ‘It was Izzy’s favourite programme. Remember when she was so excited that she’d solved the crime before that detective woman, she actually wet herself?’

Izzy glares at me and I grin, but Mum suddenly puts her hand to her mouth.

Idiot. Why do I always have to open my stupid mouth? I don’t do it on purpose. It’s just I forget, because to me, Izzy hasn’t gone. She’s still here.

I don’t know what to say to make Mum feel better, so I just change the channel and go and sit next to her on the sofa so that Izzy has to jump out of the way.

Mum gives me one of those trying-to-smile faces that she’s got really good at since Izzy died. ‘Oh look, it’s the news,’ she says. ‘Let’s watch this.’

I hate the news even more than Murder, She Wrote. It’s so boring. The woman is droning on about some scientist called Dr Stapleton, who got sent a letter bomb because he does research on animals.

‘Serves him right!’ says Izzy. ‘I wish they’d blown him up. Into a million little pieces. If I had his address, I’d send him one myself. Have you seen what they do to those poor animals?’

Can’t be worse than what Mum’s done to these sausages, I think.

Chapter 2

‘W

hat did you have to say that for?’ Izzy shouts as soon as I walk into my bedroom, making me jump so that I stub my toe on the wardrobe. I keep forgetting she can walk through stuff now.

38

It’s her new trick. She only learnt how to do it last week and now she does it all the time, just to show off. It’s really annoying. Before, when I didn’t want to see her, I could just shut my room door and because she can’t move things she couldn’t turn the handle, so there was nothing she could do about it. But then one of the other ghosts taught her how to walk through stuff. She spent weeks practising. Watching her was hilarious. To start with she kept walking into walls and doors and furniture and falling over. But last week, she finally mastered it, so now nowhere’s safe. Well, almost nowhere.

She still won’t go into our old wooden fort in the garden because it’s full of spiders. Izzy’s not scared of anything except spiders. She’s terrified of them.

‘Say what?’ I whisper, getting up from the floor.

‘You know. About me wetting myself.’

‘But it was hysterical,’ I say. I shut my room door just in case Mum’s listening.

‘I couldn’t help it and anyway you didn’t have to bring it up. It’s embarrassing.’ Izzy’s pacing up and down which isn’t easy. My room’s tiny and the floor’s covered in piles of textbooks, school uniform and muddy football kit.

Looks like a bomb’s hit it. That’s what Mum says, or what she used to say in the days when she came in here.

‘I didn’t think ghosts could get embarrassed,’ I say.

‘Well, they can,’ says Izzy, still pacing. ‘I can’t believe I chose to haunt you. You’re so mean.’

‘Yeah. Bad choice. Anyway, if you’re going to keep pacing about like that, can you go and do it in your own room? It’s way bigger than mine, which is totally unfair. What do you need a massive room for? You’re dead.’

I type a text to my best mate, Alex, about our football game on Saturday. If we win this one we might just win the league for the first time ever and I heard someone at school say that the other team’s striker had sprained his ankle.

When I look up again, Izzy has stopped pacing and she’s hovering over the chair, her shoulders hunched. Crying.

There I go again. Me and my stupid mouth. I walk over to her. What I really want to do is put my arms around her pale shape and give her a hug.

But I’ve tried that before. It’s just icy cold and there’s nothing there. And she can’t feel anything anyway – I’ve asked her.

39

Sarah HENDERSON

So I just say, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Thanks,’ she says, trying to catch her breath. ‘It’s not you. It’s just so frustrating. I can’t do anything. Can’t play my violin. Can’t put my music on. Can’t even turn the pages in a book. I’m bored out of my skull. It’s all right for you. You’re still alive. You can do all these things.’

‘Why don’t you go and hang out with the other ghosts?’ I suggest.

According to Izzy, ghosts don’t sleep, so at night they all hang out together, until the people they’re haunting wake up.

‘They won’t be around ’til later,’ says Izzy. ‘And anyway they spend most of their time in the graveyard. And you know I hate it there. Too many spiders.’

‘You can stay if you want,’ I say. ‘But I’ve got to do this homework.

Actually I need your help. It’s maths.’

Izzy’s like a brain on legs. Even though she died at the end of Year 5, she can do my maths easily and I’m in Year 7 now. I suppose it’s because she still comes to school every day. When she was alive, it was massively annoying, her being so much cleverer than me, because Mum and Dad used to compare us all the time. They said stuff like, ‘Izzy knows her seven times table; how come you don’t even know your threes?’ and ‘Izzy got ten out of ten in her spellings. What did you get?’ Back then she refused to help me because it made her look good, being so much better than me. But now that she’s dead, she helps me all the time. For a price.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘As long as you play Cluedo with me after.’

I hate Cluedo, always have. But now that Izzy’s a ghost, it’s even worse.

I have to shake the dice and move the pieces for both of us, because she can’t. And I’m sure she cheats because she always wins.

But if it means she’ll help with my maths homework, it’s worth it. If it wasn’t for Izzy, I’d be in the bottom set and then I’d have to stay in at lunch for extra lessons. And that would mean missing my lunchtime footie game with Alex and the others, which is the only thing worth going to school for.

‘Deal,’ I say.

I sit down at my desk, shivering as Izzy leans over my shoulder. Soon she’s engrossed in my homework and I’m writing down the answers as she calls them out. Result.

There’s only one question left when she says, ‘What time is it?’

40

I look at my watch. ‘6:50. Why?’ ‘Oh no,’ she says. ‘Got to go, sorry.’

‘Go where?’

But it’s too late. She walks through the wall of my room.

‘I thought you wanted to play Cluedo?’ I call after her.

Seconds later, Agent One scratches at my door to get in. ‘Hello boy,’ I say, opening the door. He comes and sits next to me, resting his head in my lap. ‘It’s OK, you’re safe. She’s gone.’

But where does she go? A ten-year-old girl out on her own all night.

And what does she do?

41

lindsay schiro

L

indsay Schiro grew up in a strange town in Southern California filled with haunted bath houses, UFO sightings, and lake monsters. Though she could have easily become a conspiracy theorist, she decided to become a writer instead.

She loves video games, conventions, and her online friends, so she decided to throw all three of these things into a novel.

About The Quest for GameCon

Noah’s mom is always telling him to go outside and make friends, but Noah has plenty of friends online in his guild on the best online game around: QuestWars. When Startech, the company who make QuestWars, announces they’ll be holding a tournament at GameCon, the coolest video game convention ever, Noah has to enter. But his mom’s too busy and Noah doesn’t know anyone in real life who will take him all the way to California.

Plus, their guild kind of sucks.

Enter Gary, the fourteen-year-old Mage with a pick-up truck, who lives only a few states over. Noah convinces him to be the driver for a crazy crosscountry road trip to pick up all the members of their guild before hitting the convention. The plan should be simple, but between demon farmers, potential catfish, and a betrayal, how will they ever make it to the convention? lindsay.schiro13@bathspa.ac.uk

43

Lindsay SCHIRO

the quest for gamecon Chapter 1

T

he Beast of Raven’s Wood slumbers.

A large, hog-like brute with wicked tusks and a spiked tail, the Beast lies in a nest of bones in its dank, dark cave. Its massive chest heaves with every inhale; it snorts with every exhale. No one has woken the Beast for centuries.

A whispered incantation floats through the cracks in the stones, but the Beast does not wake. It lifts a long, brown ear at the scraping of rock on rock, but it isn’t until a blast shudders through the cave that the Beast’s glowing yellow eyes pop open.

The Beast squeals, high and terrible, as it lumbers to its feet in the sudden brightness that follows a man with a double-handed sword nearly as long as he is tall: a Berserker. He charges the Beast. Bones snap under his boots, his cloak streams behind him. He leaps.

The first blow bounces off the Beast’s hide with a dull thud. The man stumbles back as his companions thunder into the cave.

A Healer leads the group. She is clad in white with a ring of vivid flowers in her dark hair. Behind her is a female Mage in deep-blue robes. The others are men. One wears dark clothes with his hood drawn up and the other is tall and elven with a bow slung over his shoulder.

They spring into action. The Mage throws up her arms and her hands glow blue. The Bowman notches an arrow. The hooded man, the Assassin, slips into the shadows.

But it is too late. The Beast has awoken.

It lunges forth and ensnares the Berserker between its huge, drooling jaws.

The man flails. His sword glances off the thick hide but the Beast does not relent.

44

The Mage blasts the Beast and the man falls from its jaws into a crumpled heap. The Healer rushes forward, hands outstretched, but stops short as the Beast lowers its head.

Doom follows when the Beast lowers its head.

The party scatters, leaving their fallen friend in the path of the Beast’s rampage. The Beast charges forward, trampling the prone man and barrelling towards the Healer. She tries to step aside, but it is too late.

The Beast dispatches the rest quickly. It bellows and rages as they fall, powerless against the monster.

The world fades to black and two bright, white words float into the air: Game Over ‘Come on, guys, what the heck was that?’ I groan into the mic as I lean against my chair and tip my head back. That’s the third time this week we’ve lost that boss battle.

‘You weren’t doing any better,’ retorts xMidnightJulesx, the Mage. She has some high-quality mic so she always sounds like she’s sitting right next to me. ‘The Leroy Jenkins strategy never works.’

Somewhere around my feet, the clunky body of my computer whirrs with effort as the screen shifts. The stone walls load first, then the long table and flickering torches. Venom Assault, the name of our guild, appears at the bottom of the screen in big letters. Our avatars all blip into existence around the big table. This is our spawn site, our guild castle’s great hall.

I purse my lips, even though I know no one can see me. ‘Well, at least I was doing something. You weren’t even paying attention back there.’

Another voice cuts in and NoobHunter’s name lights up over his avatar, the girl Healer with the flower crown. I give him so much crap for that. ‘Chill out, guys. We just need to level up some more.’

‘Man, I’m sick of grinding,’ FalconPunch whines. He’s the elf Bowman, which is the most unoriginal species and class pairing ever. ‘Let’s just go again, yeah? We almost had it.’

Good idea. I’m just about to agree when PopsicleKitty’s name lights up. She’s the dude Assassin and I always get a kick out of her soft, girly voice coming out of her buff avatar. ‘I think we need a better strategy.’

I roll my eyes and click my left mouse button so my avatar swings 45

Lindsay SCHIRO

his epic sword. ‘This is QuestWars, not StarCraft. We should just get back in there.’ xMidnightJulesx does the yawn animation. ‘Not today though, this is getting boring. I’m out.’

Ugh, I definitely need a better guild. I’ve been with these guys for almost a year and, in all that time, I don’t think we’ve improved even a little.

I almost tell them I’m out too when FalconPunch’s name lights up.

‘Wait, have you guys heard that Startech’s gonna be at GameCon?’ I sit up as a jolt of excitement goes through me. ‘No, seriously?!’

Startech almost never go to conventions. I mean, they’re so cool, they don’t even have to go to conventions. When you invent QuestWars, the greatest massive multiplayer online game of all time, you don’t need to put yourself out there.

‘I’m looking it up right now,’ PopsicleKitty says. ‘Startech will be at GameCon holding a live QuestWars tournament. Winners will get exclusive access to their new game, Dragon Spell, and be the first people in the world to play it.’

I almost jump out of my seat as everyone makes impressed noises. I’ve been waiting for Dragon Spell for ever and it doesn’t officially come out for three whole months. ‘Guys, we need to enter!’ xMidnightJulesx does the face palm animation twice to let me know just how stupid she thinks I am. ‘We just got trashed by a low-level boss and now you want to enter a tournament? Seriously? Remember how much we got owned by Screaming Nightmare last time we did PVP?’ Ugh, Screaming Nightmare. Those guys are a bunch of jerk campers.

Whenever we go into the PVP (player versus player) zone, they’re always waiting at the spawn site to slaughter us and take our stuff. Everyone complains about people who do that, but there’s really nothing Startech can do, except kick them out. But they can’t kick out Screaming Nightmare.

They buy all the good gear and spend loads of real money for it. No way you can kick out people like that.

‘It says they’re not doing online entries anyway,’ NoobHunter says.

‘And the convention’s all the way in California.’

‘We should go then.’ I jump onto the table in the middle. No one else moves, except FalconPunch, who does the pelvic thrust animation.

46

xMidnightJulesx sits her avatar in one of the chairs. ‘Yeah, sure, we’ll just all teleport there.’

Of course xMidnightJulesx is being difficult. ‘I’m serious. Come on, who’s in?’

‘How would we get there?’ NoobHunter asks in a ‘I’m humouring you’ way that drives me crazy.

‘I don’t know, I’ll figure it out. Just tell me you’re in.’ I take my hands off the keyboard and lean back into my seat, leaving my avatar motionless in the middle of the table.

‘My parents aren’t going to take me to a convention on the other side of the country.’ Again, it’s xMidnightJulesx, ruining my plans before I’ve even started them.

‘Same …’ PopsicleKitty says.

NoobHunter’s avatar shakes her head. ‘Sorry, buddy, but it’s just not possible.’

‘I want to go,’ FalconPunch says, and I get all hopeful. ‘But, yeah, I just don’t see how.’

Great. Not even FalconPunch is backing me up. I bite my lip and start running some tactics for getting there in my mind, but a creak at my bedroom door jolts me right out of it.

‘Noah?’

It’s my mom and it’s waaay past my bedtime.

I rip off my headphones and jam the off button on my computer with my toes. I already have my PJs on in case I have to do an emergency dive into bed, but it’s too late.

I swivel around in my chair and the real world slams right back into me. My mom’s standing in the doorway, frowning with her eyebrows knitted together. Her eyes travel down the line of dirty clothes and stray Legos to my unmade bed and then, finally, to me.

‘What have I told you about staying up so late?’ Mom has her hands planted on her hips and her mouth set in a thin line. She’s in her pyjamas too and her hair is a snarl of curls. I wonder if I woke her up. ‘Were you playing that silly game again?’

I twitch when she calls QuestWars ‘silly’. It’s not any more ‘silly’ than football or soccer, both of which she has tried to force me into playing in 47

Lindsay SCHIRO

the past. ‘No. I was just about to go to sleep.’

My headset’s still hanging around my neck, so it’s an obvious lie that my mom hones in on right away.

‘Don’t lie to me. Honestly, what is it going to take to get you to sleep at a decent hour? It’s nearly one in the morning!’ She steps into my room, over my backpack, which has been lying there since school let out last week.

That’s not something I want to answer, so I shrug. ‘I was just talking to my friends.’ She’s always telling me I need friends, so I hope she’ll lighten up a little bit.

But she doesn’t. Her eyebrows get scrunchier and her lips thinner.

‘People you meet online aren’t your friends, Noah. You aren’t giving them personal information are you?’

‘No.’ I’m not an idiot. I want to tell her they are my friends, but I don’t want to argue while I’m already on thin ice.

‘Good. Now go to bed. I don’t want to have to take your computer away, but I will if this keeps up.’

A shiver runs through me as I stare up at her. That is a fate worse than death.

‘Yeah, OK,’ I mutter. ‘Goodnight.’

Mom picks her way across the mess that is my floor. ‘Goodnight.’ She kisses me on the forehead and I try not to flinch away. ‘And clean your room.’

When she leaves, I turn out the lights and fall into bed. I know she would never in a million years let me go all the way to the West Coast for a convention, especially not to play a ‘silly game’. But I need to go to that convention. I’m going to win that tournament, even if have to enter it all by myself.

48

49

Tween 10 –14

jenny baker

B

ased in the UK, Jenny is a children’s writer and freelance journalist who is passionate about two things: stories that spark emotion and role-playing video games. Her first novel, Kite x Noel, is the result of these two passions colliding, and of a note on her bucket list that reads: ‘Write something meaningful’. Prior to completing her MA in Writing for Young People, Jenny graduated from Bath Spa University with a first-class honours degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. She now works at Console to Closet, a unique fashion blog inspired by video games.

About Kite x Noel

Enter the vibrant world of Mirror – the first I-MMORPG (Intelligent Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) ever created – where an avatar is nothing more or less than the virtual reflection of a player. It is in this world that two fourteen-year-olds, Charlie and Briony (aka Kite and Noel), come to share their lives. Charlie is trying his best to take care of his six-year-old sister, Rachel, following the loss of their parents in a tragic accident; Briony is desperately searching for the strength to visit her mother’s final resting place. Will they find the answers they’re looking for through the virtual looking-glass? Or will reality step in first? jenny.baker1@live.co.uk

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Jenny BAKER

kite x noel Kite Chapter 1

I

t’s late June and the sun is beating down on the empty playground like a spot lamp. I stand in the dappled shadows of the trees, leaning against the blue plastic slide with the big crack down the middle. In front of me thick blobs of hardened yellow paint ooze across the grey tarmac in lines of nearperfect symmetry. To my right the red rails of the bike rack curve in and out of the chipped bark like metal earthworms.

Oh, and behind me – beneath the slide – is my little sister. Her name is Rachel.

‘Charlie, I need to borrow your bag again,’ she says.

I sigh, but I don’t argue. Ever since the accident I haven’t been able to refuse her anything. I remove my backpack and swing it to the ground, where I crouch down and unzip it for her.

‘What have you found?’ I ask.

‘I think this one’s an ice dragon.’ She holds up a white pebble and places it inside the bag on top of my maths textbook. ‘And this one – this is another fire one.’

I look over my shoulder to check that no one’s watching.

‘You have to pick one now, Charlie.’

I reach under the slide where there are hundreds of pebbles, pick one at random and hand it to Rachel.

She inspects it carefully; everyone in the family has already agreed that she’ll be an archaeologist when she grows up. They aren’t too sure about me – an accountant maybe.

54

‘This is another ice one, Charlie. You have to pick a different one.’

I close my eyes and pick up another pebble; it’s cold and smooth. ‘Last one,’ I say, even though I know I’ll do it again if she’s not satisfied.

‘Wow!’ she says. ‘That’s a really good one. It’s a dream dragon. I have four already. You have to put it under your pillow, OK Charlie?’

I take back the grey-pink pebble and shove it into my trouser pocket with the others I’ve collected this week.

‘Don’t forget, OK?’ she says, clearly worried that I’m not taking proper care of my dragon eggs.

‘I won’t. Now let’s go. I promised I’d be online by four.’ Ever since Mum and Dad died I’ve been playing a game called Mirror. I’ve always played games but before it was just for fun. Now it also helps me to stay awake at night so that I can keep Rachel’s nightmares at bay.

On the walk home, Rachel skips a few metres ahead of me. She reminds me of our old elk-hound, Jeff. She looks back every thirty seconds or so to check that I’m still following.

‘Rach, I’m going in here. Hurry up.’ I signal to the glass door of the newsagent, which slides open automatically.

Rachel grabs at the waist of my trousers and I give her my hand to hold. I consciously avert my eyes when we walk past the lads’ magazines on the upper shelf, and make a beeline for MMO Monthly. I manage to get the last copy in the stand.

The past, present and future of I-MMORPGs: Is Mirror just the beginning?

I flick straight to the feature article on page sixty-two where there is a large screenshot of the city of Mirror’s market square. Today at four o’clock it will be packed with players waiting to take part in the game’s first anniversary festival.

Since the release of Mirror one year ago, I-MMORPGs (Intelligent Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) have become more popular than ever. Leaving behind the traditional MMORPG model, I-MMORPGs use personal information to ensure that every 55

Jenny BAKER

avatar is nothing more or less than the virtual reflection of a player.

In the present, an avatar represents a real person – their physical appearance, their personality, their weaknesses – who is capable of choosing their own path. Unique as snowflakes, players don’t have to play anymore – they can live.

I think about the large number of new players that I’ve seen entering the city recently for the upcoming festival, and the article is right. Everyone in Mirror is unique – even me.

The cashier – a middle-aged woman wearing thick stripes of black eyeliner – makes me buy a strawberry lollipop for Rachel.

‘That’s what brothers are for,’ she says, before handing me the white carrier bag.

I’m starting to think I might be a pushover in the real world.

When I get home the first thing I do is switch on my computer. I leave my bag open on the floor so that Rachel can start depositing her dragon eggs around the house. I’m pretty sure I’ve found them everywhere: in the freezer, in my school shoes, on the radiators – I’ve even found them under the plant pots in Chris and Nicole’s garden. Chris and Nicole took us in after the accident. Nicole was my mum’s best friend and Chris is her husband; they are passionate about tropical plants.

‘Charlie, I’m thirsty!’ Rachel calls out.

‘I’ll be there in a minute.’ I sign in to Mirror to read my messages.

They’re usually from my best friends, Luke (aka Skywalker) and Laura (aka Pixie-Princess). The font in the first message is a dull black.

Hi Charlie, I can’t make it to the festival tonight. Sorry.

Laura PS I need three Rainbow Fish for my next recipe.

Laura is a Level 52 Chef and Level 17 Merchant. She is a paper player, which means that she is constantly analysing the in-game market whilst writing down numbers and doing calculations; she doesn’t have to worry 56

about gearing up and slaying monsters because she has enough money to pay for an escort if she wants to travel – it’s usually me.

The font in the second message is a vibrant green – it’s from Luke.

Hey, I’m waiting in the city centre. Where are you?

Luke is a Level 57 Warrior. He plays for fun, which means that despite having played the game for just as long as me, he still hasn’t reached the level cap; he spends most of his time showing off to girls and most of his money on useless novelty items – I’m used to paying for his in-game meals.

I can hear Rachel opening the cupboards in the kitchen.

‘Rachel, wait for me,’ I call out.

I check the clock in the top-right corner of the screen: 15:54.

‘Charlie!’ Rachel is getting impatient.

‘I’m coming,’ I sigh.

As I walk past the glass doors in the entrance hall I catch sight of my reflection. It’s the same as always – average height, slim build. My black school trousers look as if they have just been ironed. If it weren’t for the corner of my white shirt hanging out, you might think I’m just your cookiecutter grade-A student. I tighten up my belt; it’s navy blue with a grey stripe through the middle. My mum thought it made me look cool in the first year of high school.

Rachel has always been the one that attracts the most attention, being that she’s the youngest and is generally thought of as cute by relatives and strangers alike. She has short black hair too; she won’t admit it, but I’m certain she got it cut because I got mine cut – she likes to do everything I do. After the accident I had to sit in the bathroom with her every day whilst she had a bath – she hated being alone, so I’d just sit on the floor and read a magazine. When we first moved into Chris and Nicole’s place she never left my side; even if I was just cooking our evening meal she would stand beside me at the counter the whole time.

When I get into the kitchen I can see that she has a packet of animalshaped biscuits at the ready. She smiles; it feels like a wave of sunlight passes over me when I see her smile – she’s spent so much of her time crying.

I grab two bottles of green tea from the fridge – their pale green labels 57

Jenny BAKER

are decorated with cherry blossom petals – and lead the way back into our room. It’s long and open-plan like the rest of the house, with two single beds spread far apart, and wood and glass everywhere like you’re in a chalet. At the end is another set of glass doors, which are nearly twice my height – they lead out into the garden just like the ones in the entrance hall. The garden reminds me of a tropical rainforest as it is populated with palm trees and banana leaves. It is in fact a large greenhouse enclosed by panes of glass, but it feels like a garden. There is a single crimson curtain that I pull across the door at night.

‘I’m going to meet Luke online now. Do you want to read again?’ I ask.

Rachel nods.

I take her favourite book – There’s a Unicorn in the Chimney – off the shelf and pass it to her, before unscrewing the lid on her bottle. She looks happy enough sitting on her bed looking at the pictures – I’m not sure if she’s mastered reading in her head or not yet. Sometimes I catch her sounding out the words under her breath so I guess she hasn’t.

I take a sip of green tea – it’s refreshingly bittersweet – and log in at the bottom of a small hill leading up to Mirror’s city centre. Several market stalls with twinkling lights line the route ahead of me, leaning at odd angles up the slope. I note the occasional shooting star streak across the sky; the game must be on its clearest night setting especially for the festival.

To my left I spot two girls – clearly beginners judging by their gear – buying some Toasted Marshmallows from a sweet foods vendor. One has a pair of small daggers inserted into her belt, the other a decorative fighting fan. To my right I see that the basic items stall has a new display; a multicoloured array of semi-translucent medicines sparkles on the counter beside a basket of Wayfarer Gems and bundles of common herbs tied up with string – they look inviting in the starlight.

I walk up the hill slowly, taking in the sights as I head for Mirror’s market square. You can spot it from almost anywhere because it is marked by a Teleport Point – a tall, unembellished pillar of stone. The clock reads 15:59; I’d better hurry up and find Luke. Laura’s Rainbow Fish will have to wait.

58

59

jess butterworth

J

ess is a British/New Zealand writer of 8–12 and tween adventure stories.

Her books are set in the wild places that exist within our world. She has also written picture books and shorter stories for younger readers.

Jess loves to travel, with her notebook tucked under her arm everywhere she goes. An intriguing setting always sparks a new story as she imagines the characters that inhabit it. Jess has lived in India, Australia, the US and the UK. She has completed a BA and MA in Creative Writing, both at Bath Spa University. Jess is currently writing her next adventure novel, set in the swamps of Louisiana.

About Fire Walker

Twelve-year-old Tash lives in Tibet, where she secretly protests against the presence of the soldiers and the rules and regulations. But then a man sets himself on fire in her village and everything changes. Her parents are accused of assisting the man to dowse himself in flames and they are dragged to prison.

Tash is plunged into an adventure as she steals two yaks with her best friend Sam and travels over the harsh Himalayas, seeking help from the Dalai Lama in India.

Can she make it past the border control, the secret Wujing Police?

Will she get to the mountain passes before they close for the winter?

And will Tash ever be able to rescue her parents? jessica.butterworth09@bathspa.ac.uk

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Jess BUTTERWORTH

fire walker Tibet: 2009 Chapter 1: Running

T

here are many rules in Tibet and there’s always one that I end up breaking. My feet pound against the gravelly path as I dash through the barley fields enclosed by the mountains. The wind bites, stinging my nose and cheeks. After being stuck in school all day, racing Sam home is my favourite thing to do. It always shakes Mr Lee’s scolding face from my thoughts.

I stick my arms out and soar like the golden eagles. My fingers rustle the barley stems. It disturbs the stink bugs and they fly out, buzzing into the air. My school bag thuds against my back.

‘Tash,’ shouts Sam. ‘Stop!’

I’m not falling for that one again. I focus on the uneven ground, dodging the stones and leaping across the dips in the earth. Falling over now would be the ultimate defeat; this is the first time in ages I’ve beaten Sam. He’s just behind me.

‘Soldiers,’ hisses Sam. ‘Please stop, Tash!’

His voice pierces the cold wind, urgent and worried. He’s not joking.

I raise my head and my stomach drops. Thirty yards in front are three soldiers, marching away from me. One is half the height of the others.

There’s only one troop it could be: Spaniel, Wildface and Dagger.

I dig my heels into the earth but my right foot slips and I crash to the ground in a cloud of dust. My palms graze over stones.

Sam’s footsteps slow behind me.

‘Are you all right?’ he whispers, next to me.

62

I nod and hold my breath, willing the soldiers to keep walking, praying that they didn’t hear me. The army doesn’t like us to run.

Spaniel turns his head towards us, his hand on his rifle. He spots me and taps Dagger on the shoulder. Wildface turns too and whispers to the others.

They stride towards us, getting closer and closer until three pairs of hard eyes glare at me. I look away, staring at their black boots, fighting the urge to look up.

Rule Number One: Never Look at a Soldier.

The pebbles crunch under their heavy boots as they step forwards. I hug my knees to my chest.

‘Get up, Tash,’ whispers Sam. I can’t get my body to move. I’m frozen to the spot. All I can think is that I’ve broken Rule Number Two: Don’t Draw Attention to Yourself.

The footsteps stop. The soldiers bend over me. I taste their mouldy breath.

‘You’re Karma’s girl,’ says Spaniel. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘What’s going on here?’ asks Dagger, in a low snarling voice.

Sam’s hand is gripping my arm, yanking me off the ground. It jolts my instincts back into action. I stand on shaky legs before them.

‘Going home,’ I say, wiping my scratched hands against my school uniform. ‘I tripped.’

Rule Number Three: Say as Little as Possible. They always try to catch you out.

‘Were you running?’ asks Dagger.

I shake my head and sneak a glimpse at them, spotting Wildface’s bushy beard and Dagger’s ripped ear.

‘You must be stupid then,’ says Wildface, ‘if you trip over your own feet when you walk.’

The others laugh.

Prickly heat creeps up my neck.

‘You know it’s against the regulations to run?’ Spaniel’s nose twitches.

His rifle points straight at me.

Everyone at school says he can sniff out anybody who has broken the rules.

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Jess BUTTERWORTH

‘Maybe we should take you to the Wujing and you can tell them where you were running to?’ he says.

I gasp. People taken to the Wujing Police never return.

Sam’s eyes dart left and right and I know he’s hunting for an escape route. We could dash into the fields but with all the checkpoints everywhere they’d soon find us. My head’s dizzy. I’ve never been this close to getting caught before and for the first time I’m scared. It no longer feels like a game.

‘What about you?’ asks Spaniel, squaring his shoulders and pressing his face close to Sam’s. ‘You think you can run and get away with it?’

Sam’s breaths are heavy.

Hang in there, Sam. Don’t speak.

Spaniel stays rooted to the spot for what feels like for ever. I look upwards. The wind dies down and the clouds pause in the sky, waiting for something to snap.

A golden eagle, wings outstretched, swoops down from above.

‘Ka-kaa,’ it cries, circling around us.

Spaniel glares up at it.

Muffled voices suddenly blare from the satellite phone slung onto Dagger’s belt. He unlatches it and raises it to his ear. ‘On our way, Sir,’ he says and puts it down. He turns to the others. ‘The crowd’s too big at the market today. They need back-up.’

‘We’ll be watching you,’ Spaniel says to Sam, jabbing him in the ribs with his gun.

Sam winces.

Wildface and Dagger sneer.

‘Come on,’ Spaniel says to the others. ‘Let’s go.’

They turn and march back down the path into town. I want to run and scream and kick at them. But I stay silent, clenching my fists and glowering after them. I think about what Dagger said on the satellite phone. I don’t know why there are more people than usual in the main square right now but I’m thankful for it.

A gust of wind ruffles the eagle’s feathers and it drifts upwards and soars away to the clouds.

‘We can’t say a word to our parents,’ says Sam, rubbing his side.

‘Are you OK?’ I ask.

64

Sam nods. ‘You?’ ‘Yeah,’ I say, hearing my voice quiver.

We all have our ways of secretly protesting against the soldiers being here. Mum sings songs about what it was like when she was a child, before they arrived. Dad scribbles cryptic leaflets for the resistance movement.

As for me? There are two words that are banned in Tibet. Two words that can get you locked in prison without a second thought. I think these words often. Sometimes, I even say them.

I watch the soldiers tramping away from us and say the words at them.

‘Dalai Lama.’

The syllables come out in little puffs of condensation as if I’m breathing life into them. They melt into the air, swept up to the snowy Himalayas around us. My skin tingles. The Dalai Lama is the leader of my people.

When I say his name it’s as if he’s peacefully protecting me, all the way from India, where he lives in exile.

‘I can’t believe you just said that,’ Sam says, glaring at me.

‘What?’ I ask, snapping a piece of barley in half and picking at the kernels. ‘You say it too.’

‘Never with soldiers near!’ He raises his hands and flings them back down. ‘Do you know how close that was?’

‘Look how far away they are,’ I say, pointing at the soldiers as they disappear around a corner. ‘They didn’t hear me.’

‘You need to realise that this is serious,’ Sam says, storming off in front of me, his body stiff with anger. ‘I’m always getting you out of trouble.’

I kick at the pebbles, scattering them. Sam doesn’t look any different but recently he’s changed. I sigh, still shaking from our run-in with the soldiers. Sam’s the only friend I tell everything to. He’s the only one I can talk to.

Chapter 2: Fireball

T

he winding path home takes for ever. Sam’s fuming silence makes it drag even more. I want to run but don’t dare risk it again. Shivering, I cross my arms in front of my chest. There’s a rip in the arm of my uniform 65

Jess BUTTERWORTH

and the edges are coated with dried blood from my fall. I pinch it together but it pings apart again. Mum’s going to be mad.

We’re almost at the checkpoint before the corner into the main square. Everyone going in and out of town is monitored. I reach in my pocket for my school papers. If I have everything ready, maybe we won’t have any more trouble.

Sam halts in the path and sticks his hand out.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘There’s no one there,’ he says.

The checkpoint stands at the edge of the path: a corrugated iron shelter under the juniper tree. There are always two soldiers sitting down on metal chairs, playing cards, guns slung over their shoulders.

I creep closer.

Sam’s right. The chairs are empty. One of them has fallen on its back.

The cards are still on the table divided into two piles.

‘Where did they go?’ I ask.

‘Hello?’ calls Sam, tiptoeing around the tree.

There’s no answer.

I scan the land around us, spotting the purple skirts of the women bent over in the fields picking out the weeds. A yak herder whistles beside the stream trickling down from the glaciers. There are no khaki uniforms.

No sign of any more soldiers.

‘Should we wait?’ asks Sam. The mining trucks growl in the distance.

‘Let’s go,’ I say, crossing in front of the checkpoint. ‘I want to get home.’

Sirens blare close by.

I jump.

Did we set them off?

The whirring alarm seesaws in pitch.

‘It must be coming from town,’ shouts Sam, his forehead creasing with panic. He grabs my hand, pulling me past the checkpoint.

We race round the corner and into the main square. Shouts join the sirens. I swallow, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that something has gone very wrong.

66

‘Do you think this is because of us?’ Sam asks.

‘All we did was run!’ I say.

The main square is stuffed full of people. We stop at the edge of the crowd next to the vegetable shop. People scramble onto the shelves to get a better view of something. Someone knocks over a box and carrots tumble across the dirt. Everyone is whispering, pushing and shoving.

‘What’s happening?’ I ask and stand on tiptoes. A man shakes his head.

I still can’t see.

I look next to me for Sam. He’s gone. Lost in the mass of people.

‘Sam?’ I shout, throwing myself into the crowd. I push past a group of women, grasping at the rough material of their striped dresses.

‘Let me through,’ I say as I weave in and out of the bodies.

Please don’t let it be Mum or Dad. Please don’t let it be anyone.

I smell something. It smells like kerosene. Finding an opening, I burst out of the crowd. A wall of heat rushes against my face. I see a fireball moving down the street. In the middle of the flames is a man. He leaves a trail of thick smoke which hangs in the air.

I choke with shock and horror.

Soldiers are all over him in seconds, smothering the flames under blankets. They shove the onlookers back, bundle him up and steal him away in an army truck.

The crowd is alive with whispers.

‘He did it to himself.’

‘He doused himself in flames.’

And I’m thinking and questioning, why would anyone set themselves on fire?

67

sarah driver

S

arah grew up on the south-east coast of Britain. Her granny taught her to swim in the seas of England and Spain, and when she got over her fear of being underwater, she loved pretending to be a mermaid. She is a qualified nurse and midwife, but she still listens hard for the whispers of dark tales and strange creatures, waiting to be discovered, just beyond the realms of what can be seen.

About The Huntress: Sea

In the world of Trianukka, terrodyls plague the skies, and the sea crawls with savage gulpers and merwraiths. Thirteen-year-old Mouse lives aboard The Huntress, a trading galley captained by her one-eyed grandma. Ever since Ma died giving birth to Mouse’s sickly brother Sparrow, she has looked after him as she promised. But now Da’s gone missing and Mouse feels like her world is falling apart. When a new navigator called Stag comes aboard Mouse must find out what he wants with The Huntress before she loses the ones she loves the most. sarah.driver10@googlemail.com

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Sarah DRIVER

the huntress: sea Chapter 1: Terrodyls

T

he beasts are coming.

I’m below decks in the gloomy kitchens, helping Pipistrelle salt raw reindeer steak, when the first call hacks through the air. As the sound dies away, my fingers stop dead and cold chunks of salt dig into my skin.

My bones have turned to water but I stand fast, won’t let my knees buckle.

Pip stops his tuneless whistling and scowls. My heart barely thuds before the frantic clanging of the alarm bell shatters the silence.

Grandma always tells me I’m not to go out on deck when the great winged terrodyls come near. Two summers gone, they killed Grandpa. But this time I’m waiting for them – I’ve got to keep our ship safe.

I stick my knife in my belt and splinter the air with my fiercest battle-howl.

‘Mouse!’ Pip grabs for me but his hands are slimy with blood and I wriggle free. I run from the kitchens and tear through the murky passageways.

In the armoury, I grab my yew longbow and a quiver full of arrows dipped in poison-frog venom for added bite. I burst up the stairs onto the storm-deck.

The moan of the battle-horn thunders through the air. ‘To arms! Bows and bills!’ Grandma shouts, from the fore-castle above.

The shadows thicken as the sun drops towards the horizon. I press myself small against the timbers and watch the crew seek cover. Grandma’s black-cloaks stand along the port and starboard sides, drawing their bows. The oarsmen have left their benches so The Huntress sits swaying in the sea, buffeted by the roiling waves. Dark clouds sweep across a 70

blood-red sky. I’ve not been on deck longer than a few heartbeats when a freezing shock of seawater smashes over the rail and drenches me, the salt stinging my eyes.

Again the ripping sound comes, a hideous whip-crack caw that threatens to wrench the dusk in two. It makes me stagger and throw myself flat onto the wooden deck with my hands over my ears. My bow clatters to the deck. A shadow falls across me, cast by a pair of mammoth, leathery wings.

My bones shudder as something scrapes along my spine.

I freeze like hunted prey. I’m pinned to the deck by something that feels pointed and sharp, something that must be about to cut me in two. My skin crawls. Eyes squeezed shut, I wait for the pain to tear into me. Wingbeats throb the air in time with my heart.

‘Mouse!’ a thin, shaky voice cries. The sharp pressure on my back is released and a terrodyl scream pierces the air. The wood of the deck presses against my cheek, damp and cold. Keeping my body flat, I slowly turn my face towards the stern. The captain’s hatch is open a sliver and Sparrow’s teary brown eyes peer out.

‘Sing! Sing to the whales!’ I call to my brother, my voice tight and fear-scratched. Sparrow’s gifted with the whale-song. Grandma says it’s an offering to the gods of the seas and skies, to keep us safe. Might be it’s the only thing that can save us, out here with no other ships close by.

As I watch, he opens his mouth and pours his song, like melted silver, into the night’s prowling gloom.

Another scream comes from the air and strikes deep into my brain, making my toes curl. A hunting pack of three terrodyls circles overhead, close enough for the breeze stirred by their wings to brush my face. Their beast-chatter is so hate-twisted that all I can hear is killdeathdiepaindrownstrikedeathscuttlekill, all tangled up in one cry.

There’s a thud as the hatch bangs closed. Sparrow must have let it fall shut. I still hear his voice, but it’s muffled. Will the whales come?

Arrows fly at the terrodyls and skitter off the razor edges of their wings. Tawny bodies stretch out ten-feet long, arms and legs blending into wings prickled with hair. Thick blue vessels pulse deep within their almost see-through flesh. Their beaks are three times as long as my arm and cruel, blood-red points crown their mottled heads. The black edges 71

Sarah DRIVER

of their wing tips can slice a person’s head off in a single angled stroke. I should know. I still hear the sound of Grandpa’s head rolling around the deck in my nightmares.

Grandma’s voice cuts through the air. ‘Stave the monsters off, but see you don’t bring them down on us!’ she commands from the castle deck.

She’s Captain Wren to everyone but me and Sparrow. Her long, silvery hair billows around her head as she strides, garbed in merwraith-scale armour that glints darkly, rusted with streaks of old blood.

More arrows fly and the terrodyls snap their jaws and screech, pulling further away from me as they wheel towards the black-cloaks. Stealing my chance, I scramble onto my knees, ripping my breeches open.

I hurry along the starboard side, silent and sure-footed. Salt spray strikes me hard in the face and the wind whips my hair into my eyes. Grandma doesn’t spy me. If I stick to the left of her she won’t, neither, ’cause of her glass eye. I run up the steps to the aft-castle, keeping to the shadows.

The tumbling grey sea stretches into the distance, with no other ships in sight. A waxing yellow half-moon crawls slowly up the sky, lighting the crests of the waves as they roll and crash around us. Only Grandma and her archers stand on the storm-deck – she’s banished everyone else below.

The arrows have chased the beasts off, to spiral higher in the sky, and the silence makes my skin creep. I can feel The Huntress holding her breath, waiting for the next onslaught.

Chapter 2: Alone at Sea

C

lose to the rail I glance out to sea and my heart lurches when I see a huge, pointed grey fin gliding stealthily along by our side. Must be the fourteen-foot bigtooth shark that’s been circling our ship for days. Pip reckons it’s the same rogue that munched a whole crew when terrodyls sent their ship down, thirteen moons back. The wreck of their ship must be lurking deep in the silence of the seabed, riddled with merwraiths and gulpers. But it ent today that we’ll be joining them, I swear it. I promised Ma I’d keep Sparrow safe for always.

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As the thoughts of her nip at me, Sparrow’s voice rises up again, high and pure.

Gods of the sea, Ice-bright, Moonlight, the lighthouse on the shore …

The next great screech of the terrodyls makes me drop to my knees with my head in my hands. I can’t hear my heartbeat in my ears. I can’t feel my blood rushing. But then the shriek dies and my heart skip-skitters and I can breathe again.

Staggering, I grab my bow and haul myself up into the rigging.

Waves explode over the side and crash against me. I climb higher, heading for the main-mast, the greatest of the three. The wind grasps and claws, trying to throw me into the sea, but I cling on, the ropes cutting deep into my hands.

At the top of the main-mast I leap into the crow’s nest and look down at the deck far below. The crew shout and scramble to gain the best position to shoot at the beasts, as they loop and plunge back down through the air, towards us. My lungs suck greedily at the air as I wipe salt-sticky strands of hair out of my mouth and eyes. With shaking hands I take an arrow from my quiver and draw, the feathers brushing my ear. Closing one eye, I try to still my breath.

Suddenly there’s a mournful groan, a sad old song that echoes through the air. The whales have come! The whale’s voice joins with Sparrow’s and it’s the strangest thing, but spooky-beautiful.

Drumbeats, Snow peaks.

Stare into the fire, see battles of yore …

A dusk-blue shape lurches clear of the water, just visible in the moonlight. If the whale is alone, its song might not be enough to save us … my heart sinks as the largest terrodyl jerks its head towards the shape and dives for the surface of the sea.

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Sarah DRIVER

‘No!’ I scream, half losing my wits.

Grandma looks up at me. ‘Mouse!’ I’m too high up to see her face, but I know it must look frightful-fierce. ‘Get down from there or I’ll shoot ye down, little fool!’

I can hardly watch as the terrodyl rakes its claws across the flesh of the bowhead whale, leaving a ragged, bloody tear. ‘He can’t die for us!’ I bellow into the wind. Sparrow summoned the whale with his song, to keep us safe, and I won’t let the terrodyls hunt him.

As the terrodyl hovers in the air above the sea, I take aim and loose. My arrow slams into its wing. The beast screams, the most sickening sound I’ve heard in my life. Below, tribesfolk fall to their knees and moan, clamping their hands over their ears to block out the wrenching noise. What if the sound stops our hearts, like the legends say it can?

My gut leaps but I grab another arrow and nock it to my bow. The creature draws close on huge, tilted wings, wobbling and crazed, with my first arrow lodged up to the fletching. The ragged wingbeats twist The Huntress’s sails into knots and knock me back into the corner of the nest, breathless. The bitter stench of blood plugs my mouth and nose.

Suddenly, oarsman Bear heaves himself into the basket, towering over me. ‘Get out of here, quick!’ he shouts, fear etched across his kind face. I stand fast, blood beating hard in my ears.

‘I won’t!’ The words fly unbidden as I sink to one knee in the nest. I angle my bow straight up to the sky. The terrodyl shrieks again and Bear stumbles, yelling, but I focus on my breath, sighing in and out like the tides.

The creature’s wing slashes at me but I duck low and loose my arrow.

It flies straight into the terrodyl’s sinewy neck and pierces a thick, dark blood vessel. Black blood hails down on us, hissing as it strikes the wood.

I almost drop my bow when a droplet of inky blood fizzles on my arm, forming an angry red pit in my flesh.

Bear’s huge hands grab my waist and he throws me from the crow’s nest into the rigging. I half-fall, half-climb, the rope burning my palms.

Then The Huntress shudders under the bulk of the terrodyl as it crashes down onto the crow’s nest, smashing it with a great crunch of splintering wood. I jump the rest of the way and roll when I hit the deck, Bear landing beside me. Most of the nest falls away, showering jagged splinters down 74

around us, until all that remains is part of the mast and the stabbed and bleeding body of the sky lord. It twitches and finally stills.

The two remaining terrodyls scream in fury as I lie curled on the deck, all the wind knocked from my lungs. Tribesfolk stagger, tormented by the noise. Black blood rains down from the broken mast, devouring the wood with a smoky crackle.

‘Mouse, get below decks, now!’ Grandma booms above the din. ‘And someone send for Pipistrelle – we need his cauldrons to stop that filthy slime from eating The Huntress whole!’

Bear grabs my hand and starts to drag me away. I pummel him with my fists, not ready to stop fighting, but Bear tugs me along until my boots slide across the soaked wood.

The captain’s hatch has fallen closed again. When Bear opens it, Sparrow’s voice reaches us, louder, through the gloom. With it comes a low, sad song from far across the water. I twist to look over my shoulder and in the distance, lit by the yellow moon, the dark shapes of whales swim towards us in great numbers. They’re a mass of giant tails and fins, gliding and breaching and blow-holing jets of water up into the air.

Bear stops dragging me and watches the horizon. I fight for a better view but he won’t let me go. Terrodyl screeches rip at the air as they reel away from our ship, recoiling from the whale song. The song makes tears stream down my cheeks; tears of ancient sadness mixed with heart-glad relief, but I swipe them away with the back of my hand – it’s nearly my thirteenth Hunter’s Moon and I ent some child.

75

jak harrison

W

hen Jak was about nine years old she used to stand outside and look in awe at the very quiet and stuffy libraries, afraid to go in. But Jak knew that thousands of exciting worlds lived amongst the pages of books – if only she dared to go inside and take a look. So when Jak was a little older, she did dare and libraries weren’t a scary place at all. In fact, Jak spent ten years working in libraries, including a children’s mobile one, which was her particular favourite.

Jak dreams of owning her own mobile library one day – maybe one on the River Thames!

About The Silence of Secrets

Whitechapel, London 1851. A week before the opening ceremony of the Great Exhibition, fourteen-year-old Abby finds her lodger Mac dead in his room. Realising that Mac is a wealthy aristocrat, Abby’s brutal step-pa sends Abby to the Great Exhibition to lure Mac’s son, Henry, away, with the intention of blackmailing Mac’s family.

Whilst he was alive, Mac was Abby’s sole protector and she feels she has to try and warn Henry. When things go horribly wrong at the Exhibition, Abby is brutally punished.

Desperately unhappy and afraid for her life, Abby has to make an agonising decision – to protect Mac's son, Henry, and save his family, or look after her own ma and two little sisters?

Is there a better life, like Mac said? Or is it all just a dream? jakharrison@me.com

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the silence of secrets Prologue {Abby}

I

f I were to tell you that I’m all but dead, would you believe me? It’s the truth, I swear, but no one cares about no truth, even though they jabber about justice. Well, there in’t no justice; not around here there in’t. Kidnapper and thief they say I am – lured him away from his poor old grandma, and her grievin an’ all. But I swear, as God is my witness, I didn’t do it.

The Beak pulls out the kibosh, and places it on his head. He says I’ll be hung by the neck until I’m dead, and let that be a lesson. You can’t hang me I said, ’cause who’d care for the little-uns? But he don’t give a damn. Be grateful, he says, that I don’t hang you today instead of a week from now.

So the little-uns will be off to the workhouse with my ma, but she’ll probably be dead before me, ’specially if Pa gets hold of her.

If only I’d done what I was told, this story might have a different endin.

Chapter 1 The Darkness {Abby}

M

ac’s dead.

I’d fetched the iced buns, like he said. A birthday tea for him and me. Not every day you turn fourteen, he said. That was Saturday last, the final time I saw him alive.

And to think: all I could dream about all week was iced buns.

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Now he’s dead.

When I went to Mac’s room that afternoon, the door was locked and I couldn’t get no answer. I was afraid to tell Ma in case Pa – who in’t my pa – made me entertain one of the other visitors. I was worried for Mac though; he never bolted the door, so I jimmied the lock. And there he was.

Ma wouldn’t fetch the peelers until Pa was home. So she shut the door and left Mac all alone.

Then Pa came home. Drunk.

Ma told him about Mac and he went crazy. Sayin it was my fault. He said I’d upset Mac, otherwise why weren’t I in his room? I said the door was bolted and I couldn’t get no answer. He said I was a liar. I in’t.

After Pa had rifled through Mac’s chattels, the peelers were called. But not before he threw me into the ‘punishment room’, with a warnin to stay silent.

‘Are you sorry yet?’ Pa thumped on the door at the top of the cellar steps. ‘If you’re sorry for lyin I might let you out before the rats get ’ungry.’

I heard him walk across the floor above, into the parlour, his heavy footsteps stoppin directly over my head. He said somethin to Ma, but I couldn’t hear what it was.

I could hear the rats scratchin and gnawin at the sacks though, and was glad it was too dark to see nothin. I’d been in the cellar all night, but I still couldn’t make out the shapes of the rubbish that littered the mouldy, damp room.

‘I’m sorry,’ I shouted up through the floorboards. ‘Can I come out now?’ I tried to sound tough, but inside I felt sick, ashamed that I couldn’t fight back, that I couldn’t smash the cellar door from its hinges and run away from everythin, everythin ’cept my sisters that is.

Pa wasn’t always like this; some days he was really kind to me. But those were the days that the little-uns suffered the most from his gibes.

‘Please let her out, she’s learnt her lesson.’ I could hear my ma in the distance, pleadin. ‘I’ll make sure she’s punished, I promise.’

I made my way up the cellar steps and sat on the top tread with my ear pressed to the door, waitin for him to answer. I tried to look through the gaps in the wood, but could only see the cold, bare wall opposite. The rats had stopped scratchin and all, as if they were waitin too – and then it came.

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Ma hit the door with such force I was almost thrown down the steps.

‘What’s happenin?’ I yelled at the top of my voice. ‘If you’ve hurt her again I’ll kill you!’

‘Don’t make me laugh, you scrawny rat …’ He thumped the door with his huge fist. ‘I’m goin out! And I in’t comin back.’

I waited, holdin my breath. Then the front door slammed, and another piece of glass fell from the shattered panes.

‘I hate you!’ I shouted after him, even though I knew he was gone.

‘You’ll never be my pa!’

Ma was cryin. ‘Ssh,’ she whispered through the door. ‘You’ll only make him worse. It was an accident, see …’

‘Are you all right?’ I placed my hands on the cellar door, my palms flat and fingers spread wide, tappin gently with my fingertips. After a few minutes, I heard my ma start to tap and I knew she’d placed her hands on the other side. We were touchin each other through the thickness of the oak cellar door. These were the only times that Ma showed me any kindness these days – when he’d beaten her bad.

I must’ve fallen asleep, because when he unbolted the door I fell out onto the cold flagstone floor. The room was pitch black. His sour breath settled on my face, tellin me that his wages were spent and that Ma would have to send me beggin again.

‘Your sister’s pissed ’erself. You’d better clear it up.’ He fell against the wall opposite the cellar so I took my chance and ran past him, through the house and up the stairs to where my two little sisters slept huddled together.

I felt the waddin beneath them. It was soakin wet.

I shook my sisters. ‘Wake up. You’ve wet yourself again.’

Lily sat up, her hair hangin over her little face.

‘You best sleep in my bed,’ I said. Bed! That’s a laugh – some old sackin stuffed with rags. I pulled the blanket back and lifted them out one by one; Rose clung to me, still fast asleep. The girls were cold and damp and smelt of pee. We didn’t know which one was still wettin the bed ’cause they were always clingin to each other in their sleep. After I changed them I put them both into my bed and covered them up with the only dry blanket between us. There weren’t enough room for me as well, so I slept on the floor, curlin myself into a ball to stay warm.

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All I kept thinkin about was Mac; I couldn’t get the picture of him out of my head. The thought of him lyin there, all alone, for God knows how long.

The next mornin Ma had another bruise on her face; this time her eye was completely closed. He was sittin at the table, smilin like an idiot and fillin his face with lardy bread and fried eggs.

‘Your ma must’ve taken a fall last night, look what she’s gone an’ done to ’erself,’ he said, grabbin Ma’s skirt and pullin her onto his lap. ‘I keep tellin ’er to make sure she takes a candle when she goes wanderin in the night. But ’er won’t listen.’

I wanted to ask about Mac, but Ma gave me one of her don’t say nothin looks and got up to fill Pa’s mug. ‘Those girls up yet?’ she asked. ‘If they’re quick they can ’ave this last bit of porridge.’

‘They’ll be down in a minute,’ I said, pourin out the last dregs of cold tea. ‘They’re g’ttin dressed.’ Which was a lie. I’d already helped them dress, they were waitin for him to leave the house.

‘About time an’ all. Girls their age should be helpin your ma in the kitchen. Not still pissin the bed and makin more work!’

‘They’re still little …’ I said.

The chair scraped across the floor as he got up. I stopped talkin. I thought he was goin to belt me, but he was in a cheery mood, for some reason. I was safe.

‘Got a kiss for a workin man then, eh?’ He put his arms around Ma and pulled her to him. ‘Make sure you’re ready when I get ’ome. And those girls better be in bed.’

Ma smiled. But I could tell she was in pain.

Chapter 2 The Great Exhibition {Abby} 1 May 1851 felt like a halfwit dressed up in the birds’ feather and flowered hat Ma had nicked. But Pa said I ’ad to fit in otherwise the game would be up. All the toffs would be wearin hats, he said, even Queen Victoria herself. Whatever

I

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else I did, I’d to make sure I got the newspaper in the boy’s hands. You’d think it would be easy enough, the way Pa said it. Now here I was fittin in, so why was everyone starin at me? And no matter how hard I looked I couldn’t see Mac’s boy anywhere. Everyone looked the same – top-hatted men, and ladies with huge skirts. The syrupy smell of ladies was worse than at home.

‘Oi Miss, can I see your ticket?’ A peeler blocked my way. I tried to dodge past him, prayin he was speakin to someone else. ‘I said, T-icket!’ He held onto my arm.

‘Um, my ma has the ticket,’ I lied. ‘She’s over there.’ I pointed to a space over his shoulder. ‘I’ll fetch her.’ As he turned to look at where I was pointin, I dashed off in the other direction.

As I wove through the crowds, the twattlin suddenly stopped and a woman’s voice said: ‘The exhibition is now open …’

The deafenin sound of cheerin and clappin was followed by a great surge of movement. I felt crushed. I would never find Mac’s boy now. But I daren’t go home until I did.

My feet started to bleed, the shoes Pa had filched were too small and my heels were rubbed raw. I sat down by the fountain to shove a hanky in my shoe when he walked straight past me. It was definitely Mac’s boy; Pa had pointed him out a few days previous – I would recognise that red hair anywhere.

‘Shall we see the diamond, Nana?’

‘Yes, Henry, that would be lovely … I read … Lahore …’ His grandma’s voice faded as they hurried by.

I jumped up and followed them. Not too close, Pa had said, keep them in your sights and then strike when the time’s right. The boy looked taller close up, which unnerved me. What if he grabbed hold of me, then handed me over to the peelers? Pa’s voice whispered in my head: If he tries to talk, you run. If he tries to stop you, you kick him hard. If the old woman screams, you thump her one.

You don’t get caught. If you do, you don’t come back here. Got it? Got it!

I dropped back, so as not to draw attention to myself. The newspaper was creased and damp from my sweaty hand; I tried to straighten it out but the dirt from my palm made a dark streak across the image of the beautiful lady. So this was the boy’s ma? Poor Mac, to be so close to his home and family. The boy turned and looked at me – had I spoke his name out loud? I looked away and pretended to be with a family close by. But I could feel his 82

eyes on me, watchin. Why was he watchin me? I hadn’t done nothin – yet.

I followed the family round towards the refreshment area, stayin as close as I dared, tryin to keep an eye out which way the boy went, without being spotted. I jus’ needed to get rid of the damn paper.

I followed the boy to near the diamond display, which was crawlin with peelers. All the toffs in London were queuein to get a gander. I pushed through the crowd, the large crinoline skirts and cologne nearly done for me, but then I spied the boy’s ginger hair. If I could just squeeze through …

‘Thief! Stop, thief!’ shouted someone.

I ran. I don’t know why. Everyone was lookin at me. I felt guilty; it was because I didn’t belong. I knew it, they knew it. Now I was goin to get the blame for stealin.

I dropped the newspaper and ran.

‘Oi, stop! You, girl …’ I turned to look. It was Mac’s boy. Where’d he come from? I kicked off my shoes; I could run faster barefoot. Snatches of words smashed against my ears.

‘What on earth?’

‘Not the Queen’s diamond!’

This was it; I was goin to be thrown in gaol. Pa would kill me. He’d more than likely kill Ma too. The boy was closin in. I prayed. For the first time in my life I really prayed. Dear God, I promise to be good. I’ll even go to church on Sunday. Just let me get away.

Crash.

I turned again; the boy was on the floor. The peelers were holdin him down; he looked hurt. I stopped. Should I go back? Then he looked at me, his face redder than the rug he was lyin on. I ran, out into the blazin sunlight.

83

irulan horner

I

rulan was named after a princess and raised in a magical land full of faeries, where life was simple and everyone lived happily ever after. Aged twelve, she accidentally found her way into the real world and grew up leading a totally different life to the one she was intended for.

Rubia, a feisty faerie, persistently pestered Irulan to tell her story, so she finally took fingers to keyboard and translated the faerie’s impatient babble into a magical adventure tale. The MA Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University helped Irulan to flourish as a writer and put into motion her dream of sharing her stories with the world.

Feral Faerie is Book One of a quartet entitled The Circle.

About Feral Faerie

Fifteen years old and nine inches tall, Rubia lives with her clan in an ancient beech tree. As the Elisi-in-waiting, Rubia is expected to behave like a leader, but she longs to be free from the binds of duty and focus on hunting, flying and having fun with her friends.

When the current Elisi’s life fades and her vital magic disappears into the night sky, Rubia knows she must find the missing magic and bring it back to the home-tree – a quest that will take her far from comfort and safety, deep into the unknown realms of the Outside.

To succeed, Rubia has to harness the power of her own darker forces and balance them with the light magic. Close to destruction, she struggles to save her clan and everything that she loves. mailbox@irulanhorner.co.uk / www.irulanhorner.co.uk

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feral faerie 27th Snow Moon

R

ubia closed the door behind her, shouldered her yew bow and snuck across the empty clearing. If she could bring down a rabbit on her own, she would prove that she was more than just the Elisi-in-waiting – she was a fully fledged hunter.

She walked away from the home-tree and entered the forest on the other side of the clearing. The shadows cast by tall trees blocked out the early morning light. White mist swirled above Rubia’s head and the moisture in the air stuck to her eyelashes.

She emerged from gloom and looked down across the meadow beneath her. She breathed in the smell of damp earth, fungus and wet grass.

On the far side of the meadow she could see the fine silk-like strands of the Protection that marked the boundary of her clan’s Circle and the edge of their safety. Heavy with morning dew, the shield looked dull and lifeless without the sun to pick out its silver sparkle.

She sensed that something wasn’t right, so she climbed up onto the roots of an old oak tree to get a better view. The shield was closer than it should have been.

Confused and uncertain, Rubia headed towards the rabbit warren.

The relentless rain had flooded the meadow, and her twisty route around the stagnant pools of water meant it took ages. Her boots became heavy with water and mud splattered her green leggings and tunic, leaving her well camouflaged, but dirty and exhausted.

It started to rain again. Any winged faerie would be running for shelter, but as she didn’t have her wings yet, Rubia let the big fat drops of 86

rain wash the mud from her arms and face.

She could see the Protection clearly now, in line with the edge of the meadow. She ran towards it. Her fur boots weighed her down as they stuck in the mud, so she flung them off and carried on running in bare feet. She stopped when she reached the magical barrier. The warren was just beyond it, just out of reach. The last time she’d been out here the warren had been inside the barrier.

She instinctively looked above her to check no one was watching, but of course the sky was empty – it was raining. She took another step. She was so close to the Protection that she could feel its magic vibrate the air around her. The pull of the Outside was so strong.

Too strong to resist.

She leant forward, closed her eyes, and slipped her face into the barrier.

Its gentle strands caressed her and the Source magic coursed through her body, making her skin tingle and her own magic stronger. She became aware of all the life around her: insects clicking their wings, drops of rain falling on the earth, the smell of new grass, and the wind rattling the leaves on the trees.

The Protection lets the animals come and go, so why not me?

She pushed her face all the way through the barrier and then opened her eyes.

On the other side she reached out with her magic, a thin green tendril which felt its way across the ground. Soft images appeared inside her mind: a beetle crawled through the long grass and a thrush sang high up in a tree, but there was no sign of any wingless-giants. Rubia slid the rest of her body through the magical barrier.

She felt different out here. More alert. More alive.

Crouching low, so the grass above her head hid her from sight, she crept forwards.

All of a sudden her magic tendril snapped back into her body, alerting her to danger. There was something up ahead.

A rabbit!

She took her bow off her shoulder and nocked an arrow, then moved towards her prey. She came to the edge of the tall grass, beyond which the rabbits had cropped it short.

The grassland was empty apart from one solitary rabbit, a kit, not yet 87 

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fully grown. She waited patiently for the kit to face in her direction. She pulled the bowstring taut and looked along the arrow. This was the first time she’d tried to kill a rabbit on her own. She wanted to make a quick, kind kill.

The kit stood up on its hind legs and looked straight at her. She held her breath and aimed for the spot between its eye and the base of its ear, the weakest point of the skull.

As she let the arrow fly, something leapt out from behind her and knocked her flat. She dropped her bow, rolled over and scrunched into a little ball, arms raised to protect her head. A large rabbit loomed over her with dark eyes full of anger.

Rubia sent out a wave of blue magic to try and calm it, but the rabbit didn’t respond. Its anger was fuelled by an instinct more powerful than Rubia’s magic.

A mother’s love. She must be protecting her young.

Yellow teeth snapped. Rubia rolled out of the way and scrambled to her feet. The rabbit turned and, grunting, kicked out powerful hind legs, knocking Rubia face down in the mud. Spitting dirt, Rubia got on all fours and groped around for her bow. Just as her hand wrapped around the familiar warm wood, another kick came from behind. A searing pain shot up her spine as she crashed into the ground again.

Rubia rolled over to face the rabbit and reached for an arrow from her quiver. But it was empty. Her arrows were scattered out of reach across the grass. The rabbit lashed out at Rubia’s legs with its sharp claws. Rubia kicked out, hitting the rabbit on the nose. It recoiled and shook its head, as if Rubia were only a bothersome fly. Rubia panicked, her magic tendrils shooting out in all directions, a clear sign that she was desperately in need of help.

The rabbit went for another strike. Rubia felt the warm trickle of blood down her left leg before she felt the pain. She screamed at the rabbit, more out of frustration than with any hope that she might scare it away. The rabbit stared past her. Then, in a flurry of dark grey and light brown, it tumbled away across the grass. Wrapped around the rabbit was Eyebright, the otter.

He pinned the rabbit to the ground and screeched a warning right in its face.

The rabbit scrambled free, turned tail and hopped off to its burrow.

Rubia picked herself up and inspected the damage: a sore back, a bleeding wound and dented pride.

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‘Glad you heard me, Eyebright.’ With her mind she directed gratitude towards him.

Eyebright gave one more hiss in the direction of the rabbit and then came to Rubia. At her full height of nine acorns, she could look directly into his pure black eyes. Eyebright placed his warm wet nose against her cheek and she scratched him behind his ear.

‘That taught me a lesson.’ She bent down to pick up her arrows. ‘Guess I’m not the big brave hunter I thought I was.’

Eyebright tilted his head to one side and looked at Rubia. She laughed.

‘I know, you think I’m the best!’

Eyebright blinked before turning away and bounding off a little way.

He stopped and turned, indicating she should follow.

‘What is it?’ Rubia shouldered her bow and stuffed her arrows back into the quiver. ‘What do you want to show me?’

She walked over to join the otter. Eyebright moved aside and there was the kit, perfectly still, with her arrow in its temple. Rubia dropped to her knees next to the young rabbit and felt for its heartbeat. Nothing. She’d killed it with one shot.

She buried her face into its soft fur and whispered, ‘Thank you for your life. May your energy return to the Source, from where we all come and to where we all return.’

She stroked the kit. She didn’t like taking a life, but it was her duty as a hunter. She tugged at the arrow until it came out, wiped it clean on the grass and put it back in her quiver with the others. She sat back on her heels and gave thanks to the grass that fed the kit and the rain that watered the grass. She looked up to thank the sun, but all she could see above her were threatening dark grey clouds. They reminded her where she was – Outside.

Her heart sank.

She’d made a kill, but there was no way she could get it back inside the Protection on her own. And there was no way she could tell anyone she’d been Outside.

‘Oh, Eyebright, what now?’

The otter sniffed at the dead kit and recoiled in disgust.

‘I know, it’s not fish.’

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Eyebright took one of the kit’s hind legs into his mouth and started to pull the rabbit back towards the Protection.

‘Thank you, Eyebright.’ Rubia stood up, grabbed the kit’s front leg and pulled. Together they dragged the heavy body across the cropped grass.

Once they got to the safety of the taller grass they rested. Eyebright lay down panting. Behind him Rubia caught a glimpse of the glistening protective shield. ‘Not far now.’

They pulled the kit through the barrier and into safety. Now she could tell the others about her kill without anyone knowing she’d been Outside.

Grandma would be furious if she knew.

She was forever warning Rubia about the dangers of being seen by the wingless-giants.

Eyebright released his hold on the kit’s leg, wiped his paw over his nose a few times and sneezed. Rubia sensed his happiness.

‘I couldn’t have done it without you,’ she told him.

Eyebright blinked, then turned away and headed off towards the river.

Rubia rolled the kit onto its side, took her knife from its sheath and made the first cut along the young rabbit’s stomach, so she could remove the internal organs. The guts would be used to make bowstrings and the fat to fuel the lanterns.

She worked for hours, carefully butchering the kit and removing its pelt. She picked dock leaves and wrapped the fresh meat into neat bundles, securing each one with a thorn from a hawthorn tree.

She dug a hole in the damp earth with her hands and placed the wrapped meat inside. On top of that she placed the guts, then a layer of dock leaves, before laying the bones and skull on top. Every bit of the animal had a use: the brains for softening the pelt and the bones for making needles, blades, beads and flutes.

Rubia covered the carcass with a layer of earth and scattered some dried rabbit droppings over it to distract the foxes from the smell of fresh meat.

She hoped it would be safe until she could return with the other hunters to retrieve it. It was hard and dirty work; by the time she’d finished it was almost dark and she was tired, hungry, thirsty and covered in blood.

She rolled up the pelt and tied it securely with grass to carry it on her back. One piece of the meat went in the bag slung across her body, and 90

she hung her bow and quiver on her shoulder.

Tomorrow the pelt would be treated and then pegged out to dry.

The soft brown fur of the kit would be perfect for the new pair of boots Rubia so badly needed. She would have first pick, of course – hunter’s rights. The rest would be shared amongst the clan.

She trudged bare-footed across the meadow, avoiding the deeper pools of water, each muddy step bringing her closer to home.

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Young Adult 14+

carlyn attman

C

arlyn is interested in unearthing the uncomfortable things that make us human. She grew up in Baltimore, graduated from Vassar College, and has since lived in Washington DC, New York City, Los Angeles, and now London. She once created and ran a story-reading radio show. She also once played Gretl in a Hebrew version of The Sound of Music. The double macchiato is her drug and writing is her forever-love.

About Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Sixteen-year-old Lucy Pritchett is afraid of herself. She can’t control her violent daydreams and worries what will happen if she crosses the line between fantasy and reality – again.

She heads to Copse Isle, a wealthy New England island, for winter break. There she attempts making friends and researches the story of Rowan Cutter, a boy who drowned a century ago, for a school project. Rowan’s voice washes in and out as he shares his own take on things, describing his brutal childhood as an underwater fairy tale. Wave by wave, Lucy uncovers Rowan’s truth and rallies up the courage to face the darkness lurking inside her.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a story about the nature of violence and the (im)possibility of redemption. carlyn.attman@gmail.com

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between the devil and the deep blue sea Prologue Rowan

I

am going to tell you a secret and you may not believe me and that doesn’t matter. I am a fish. My mother is a whale, my daddy is a king and my brother is named Catlin. He is also a fish, and by fish I mean Prince of the Sea.

Chapter 1 Lucy

M

y palms sweat on the steering wheel. I wipe them off on my jeans.

Keep my foot light on the gas. I’m fine. We’re all safe and fine. The tires bump over the start of the bridge and my stomach drops. I’m too scared to blink. I check the rear-view mirror. The minivan behind me switches lanes to speed past.

Two cars ahead now, one behind and three coming the other way, one freight truck. What would it feel like to collide with that? The clouds are low and rippled but the snow’s holding off. Breathe. People pass out when they forget to breathe.

‘It’s only a bridge, Lucy. Pray to God this is the scariest thing you come up against,’ Mom says from the passenger seat.

I flick my gaze to her. Hair in a low bun, brown lipstick, black cashmere jumper. Her long fingers wrapped around a coffee cup, her favourite pearl ring topping her wedding band. She’s relaxed back, soaking in the winter sun through the frosty windows. It splays warm over my cheek too.

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I wish I could relish the freedom of winter break and new adventures, that I could turn up the music and sing like a fun teenage girl letting loose.

Instead I clench my jaw, knotting it up so tight I’ll feel it tomorrow.

I could flip us over the barrier into the water. The heavier you are, the higher up, the more the water slams you. Like people jumping from rooftops onto New York City sidewalks, skulls busted open like watermelons. Some Wall Street suit with a dead man’s hippocampus on the toe of his shiny black shoe.

I veer and floor the gas, breaking through the barrier. We hover in the air. Silence in the space between falling and crashing. Wham. Shattered glass slices my skin; water strangles me with icy fingers. Mom’s unconscious beside me, her hair floating up like black smoke.

It’s a fantasy. I shake my head, muddling the images. Get a grip.

My imagination’s always been intense. I had an invisible friend until I was eight, a ballerina named Tucker. We climbed trees together. My parents said it was the sign of a true creative, maybe I’d be a photographer like Dad or an actress like Mom. But my fantasies have turned.

Sometimes when I’m in the kitchen chopping vegetables for dinner, Dad flipping a fish in the pan beside me, I imagine running my knife through his stomach. The thought plays out before I can stop it. It’s so real, his blood along my wrist. I have to place the knife down and walk to my room to curl up foetal, holding my baby blanket to my chest.

Lots of people think messed-up things when they’re angry or sad or bored. There’s a line between thought and action. Only the crazy ones cross that line. I thought I was all right until earlier this year. The secret swells in my throat. I swallow hard and focus ahead. Water in my lungs. The brush of Mom’s soaked sleeve against mine.

‘Jesus,’ I whisper.

‘May He rest,’ Mom says. ‘You’re doing great. You could even go a little faster, maybe hit the speed limit for kicks.’

‘Whatever,’ I say.

‘I just think you could experiment, switch a lane or two. I have faith in you.’

That makes one of us.

‘Want me to turn up the radio? It’s that dancey song you like. Listen.’

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Carlyn ATTMAN

I grit my teeth. ‘No,’ I say.

Mom sighs.

I should be safe at home in Owl Creek right now, spending winter break working at the barn and completing my impressive Buffy the Vampire Slayer-watching run. I imagine waking with the sun to tack up Colo, riding her through the snowy forest trails – the smell of ice and damp bark, her furry brown coat coming up on my fingers as I stroke her neck. My jaw relaxes a bit. The truck rumbles past, spraying last night’s sleet across the windshield. I tighten up again, my knuckle bones white through my skin.

‘Copse Isle, huh?’ Mom says, leaning over to rub my back.

I flinch and shake her off. ‘Yeah,’ I manage.

We pass under the middle of the bridge. Heavy wires scale the archway and dip alongside us.

I could have said no when Mom barged into my room a few days ago.

‘Guess what?’ she said, sitting on my bed, beaming.

‘What?’

‘I got a friend request from Viv Wood! Vivian Everly now. Remember?

My best, best friend growing up.’

‘Oh yeah, sure.’

‘She’s living on Copse Isle and invited us to stay in her guest house for the holidays. What do you think? She’s dying to meet you,’ Mom said. ‘She’s got two kids about your age.’

The thought of being trapped on an island with people I’d never met made my heart race. I wanted to stay home, bike on the ice to the barn to muck out stalls and ride. But maybe the salty air will clear out my messed up head, I thought. Maybe I can make a friend or even two in a colony of kids who haven’t heard the rumours. I used to be quite good at that.

I could get my assignment done on the island too, with all the graveyards to wander and an archive to scour for research. I have to spend my holiday tracking a dead person’s story – a family member, celebrity, or long-gone nobody – to share wordlessly with the class. Like how a statue tells the story of a whole world war. Some kids compose fiddle laments, I’m taking pictures.

The ‘Winter Break Memorial Project’. It counts for a fraction of our grade, but Ms Carter said she’ll adjust it for me if I create the special presentation she 98

knows I’m capable of. When your social dignity falls away, your grades tend to tumble with them.

‘OK,’ I’d said, lightly.

The car’s stuffed with fat pillows, a balled-up fleece blanket, three suitcases – two of them Mom’s. We stocked up on gifts for Viv and her family, filling up tote bags with apples and cider from the nearby orchard, maple syrup and candies, and homemade cookies. Mom found their final yearbook, middle school class of ’76, the faux leather spine peeling away. I check the mirrors again. Frost edges the back window.

‘You excited to meet everyone?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ I say.

There’s no one behind me. I flick on my turn signal and glide over to the middle lane.

‘Well done,’ Mom says. ‘Will’s handsome, did I show you? He was tagged in one of Viv’s pictures.’

I nod. Yes, he is handsome for a gangly sixteen-year-old. There’s something intelligent about the way he smiles, at least in that one photo, and that other one, and that other one. I was a click away from friending him when I wrenched my hand back.

The bridge groans under me. It crumbles and takes us down.

‘And Hannah. What a knockout,’ Mom says, turning up the heat. It’s blowing full blast at our feet. I’m sweating under the collar of my hoodie.

‘She’s fifteen,’ I say. ‘You can’t call a fifteen-year-old girl a knockout.’

‘You’re a knockout, sweetheart, and you’re barely a year older.’

‘Mmhmm,’ I say, stealing a look at myself in the rear-view. Wide black eyes, flyaway strands curling from my temples. My mother’s either deluded or a liar.

One car ahead of us. I lift my gaze and let it settle on the view, just enough to take it in. A murder of crows pools together and spreads apart overhead. I strain to hear their throaty calls. Tree skeletons huddle at the other end of the bridge. Licks of ice set against the shoreline hundreds of feet below us, thinning like spider webs into the rush of the river. Now, winter – she’s a knockout.

Mom sips her coffee – black, her third today – in the biggest cup the last corner shop had. The place smelled like cinnamon and butter, better 99

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than the last two gas stations; they’d ringed the ceiling with tinsel. My drinking chocolate’s still sitting in the console, the lip of the lid sticky with sugar from the one sip I’ve managed to take.

Both sets of tires bump over another ridge and we’re back on solid ground. I merge us safely into the deserted single lane. Eight miles to the ferry, that’ll be fifteen minutes, forty-three on the ferry and not even ten minutes from there to the Everlys’. I stretch out my neck and look at the clock. 10:13 a.m. We’ve been on the road for five hours.

My muscles unwind and I can actually hear the music playing. It’s a boy band I wish I didn’t like but do. I reach out and turn it up then grab for my drink. Sip number two. I miss my mouth, the chocolate sinks into the seam along my zipper. I rub at it with my sleeve but it’s no use. Do the Everlys ever miss their mouths?

The ferry is packed with cars, vans, and freighters. I park behind a beamer, nicking our side-mirror on a pillar as I pull in. Mom says it’s no big deal but I run my fingers over the chipped green paint, shame welling in my gut.

I bury my nose under my collar to buffer the smell of exhaust and rotting shellfish. It thins as we climb to the decks. Mom goes straight for the heated dining area, a Cleopatra biography tucked under her arm. I stay outside.

The ferry growls against the slap of the water. It’s colder here than it was at home. The front railing is slick with ice, a cold sheen over the metal.

I grip it and my finger pads stick.

Clotted seaweed clings to the prow. The sea froths white. I look for life under the surface, for schools of gold fish or a lurking whale, but the water’s thick as the clouds and just as withholding. I press my belly against the railing and open my arms like a movie heroine. The sleeves of my sweatshirt snap, my braid loosens, strands of hair slide over my eyes. Nose in the air, I breathe for the sea but return only the sharpness of winter.

There’s one other person out on deck. An older boy with a lopsided beanie and a lit cigarette. His breath puffs from him, I can’t tell if it’s smoke or from the cold. He smiles at me. I look away fast.

Then I see it: the island spreading out before me. Dead brown, emerging like a ghost ship. The land stretches in a jagged line, covered in bare trees – the forest they named it for – sloping upwards towards the far edge, where 100

the cliffs must be. Smoke rises from hidden chimneys and plumes over the sky so that it looks like the forest is on fire.

A colony of covered yachts sits untouched at the harbour. Two tall wooden ships lean into each other, their paint peeling, twisted ropes wound up at the edges of their decks. White clapboard and aged brick buildings line the streets, eaves draped in fairy lights. I catch salt on the wind and lick my lips, tasting for it.

‘Time to go,’ Mom says, coming up behind me.

I don’t even nick the mirror on the way out.

101

christina christoffersen

C

hristina hails from high above the Arctic Circle, in the land of the midnight sun and northern lights. She grew up surrounded by folk tales and fantasy, and her parents made sure she believed in dragons, fairies and trolls.

When she was nineteen she packed her bags and went off to Aberystwyth University, and three short years later she graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing. Thirsty for more writing inspiration, she then went to Bath for an MA in Writing for Young People.

About Facing Dragons

Fifteen-year-old Nella has spent her entire life learning to keep her emotions at bay, hiding herself and her powers from others. But when her mother dies Nella must confront her fears and build a new life for herself.

Nella travels to Ambre, the great magical city where she was born, in the hopes of finding people who can help her understand her past.  When Nella stumbles upon a dark secret that has the potential to unravel the magical world, she must rely on her newfound friends for help as she fights to control the elemental forces within her before it’s too late. chrchristoffersen@gmail.com

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facing dragons Chapter 1

I

looked around at the familiar walls, my heart beating fast. Tomas would be here soon. He’d knock on the door and that would be the beginning of the end.

‘You could stay,’ my mother had said, on one of her last days. ‘Chira would welcome you into her home, you know that.’

‘I know, Mama,’ I had answered. We’d been sitting in the garden and around us the flowers stretched out to catch the dwindling light of a late summer evening. She couldn’t quite get warm anymore, no matter how many blankets I wrapped around her, but the sun always seemed to help and on that day she was almost herself again.

‘But you want to go?’ She looked at me, smiling weakly, her eyes looking tired but still full of light and love.

I nodded and looked down at my feet dangling off the edge of the bench, barely touching the ground. They were small feet; my mother always said so. ‘Such dainty feet,’ she had used to hum and then she had picked me up and we had twirled, twirled, twirled through the room.

I had revelled in my smallness, but now I longed to be taller. I wanted to be seen as a young woman, but instead I was easily mistaken for a child.

‘I wish I could go with you – that I could see Ambre again,’ she said.

Then in a whisper she added: ‘That I could see Caiden again.’

I looked away, to the lazy bees buzzing in the garden. It was a lovely summer, warm days and flowers in bloom, but I felt the cold grip of autumn around my heart.

‘I hope you find each other, Nella,’ she said, and took my hand in hers.

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‘I’ll look for him, Mama,’ I said, looking down at her thin fingers wrapped around mine. She was a shadow of herself, but on days like this I could almost fool myself into thinking that she would recover somehow. I joined our hands and looked up at her, tears in my eyes. ‘One more time,’ I said, my palms glowing softly against hers. ‘Maybe this time it’ll work.’

‘Oh, Sweetheart,’ she said and broke my grip, wrapping her arms around me. ‘It’s going to be OK.’ She passed away two days later, just as the skies broke apart. I heard her last breath and then the soft patter of rain.

Everything since then had been a blur of putting into motion the plans we had made and people offering their condolences. My mother had been well-liked, she had always known what to say, how to act – people loved her warmth and her spirit.

I’d always wished I was more like her and maybe I could have been if I wasn’t different … if I didn’t have magic. I was nine when we arrived in Rovermaund and by then I had learned to control my emotions, never letting my magic surface. I preferred to keep to myself and people respected that. At least if I kept them at a distance I couldn’t hurt them. And they couldn’t hurt me.

As I listened to the soft tapping of raindrops on the roof I wondered if it would always remind me of my mother’s last breath.

A dull emptiness pressed into my chest. Without her this was just a house: it no longer felt like home. The dust swirled through the dark space, already settling on our worn wooden furniture. The old chairs looked grey, as if they had been drained of life. The hearts carved into their backs seemed out of place now. The house felt cold and unwelcoming, almost as though it, too, was grieving.

My mother’s apron was still on its peg by the door and the faded yellow fabric held the smell of cinnamon and honey. I reached out for it, running my hands over the fabric before pulling it close to me. I couldn’t leave it. I had spent days trying to figure out what I would be able to bring and now my life was packed into a large travelling trunk and a shoulder bag. Fifteen years of me and my mother never being apart. I could feel the carefully built barriers in my mind cracking, small fissures letting emotion seep into my thoughts.

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I leant against the door and let my body sink to the ground, curling up around her apron. The emptiness replaced by pain, by anger, by sadness.

My emotions pressing harder against my chest, making it feel constricted.

I sobbed, my tears mingling with the cinnamon. Surely the world was playing some cruel trick on me, taking away my mother, yet convincing me that at any moment I would see her walk in that door again; that I would be able to cuddle up to her warmth again and listen to her stories about my father and Ambre. I looked down at my hands, trying to focus on something else. As I clenched and unclenched them I could see them tremble and glow, red and purple rising from my skin in soft swirls, pushing into the clouds of dust. Pushing outwards, into the walls around me, making them creak and tremble.

I closed my eyes and started singing, slowly, quietly, like my mother had done so many times before.

‘You’ll be all right, my darling,’ I could hear her say and I could almost feel the pressure of her hand on my hair.

Chapter 2

T

he damp smell of rain still clung to the air, softening the perfume of blue lilies, dahlias and yarrow. Tomas was standing outside the door, his left hand rubbing the back of his head, looking at me with an awkward smile on his face.

‘Hi Tomas,’ I said, offering him a smile in return. At least I think I did.

My face felt stiff and blank.

‘Hi Nella,’ he said and then he picked up my trunk as though it weighed nothing and made his way to the carriage where his dad was waiting. They were heading to the port town of Ronas for a market and had offered me a lift there. From there I would find passage to Ambre and then I would be on my own.

The house seemed so small when I looked back at it. It was just a little cottage with a red door and garden full of flowers. I turned away, my heart beating fast, and walked the rest of the path until I was in front of the wagon.

‘Got everything then?’ Farmer Twerr asked, looking down at me with 106

furrowed brows. His face was tanned by the sun and looked as though someone had meticulously carved it out of soft wood. It was a serious face, but not an unkind one. He was a burly man of few words, and being himself the father of three young girls I expect he felt some sort of fatherly responsibility for me.

‘I …’ I took a deep breath. ‘I think so.’

Tomas lifted me up to the back of the wagon, where they had made me a seat out of sheep’s skins and blankets. ‘I hope that’s OK,’ Tomas said.

‘Oh yes, thank you.’

The wagon rattled over the gravelly road. I could feel my stomach swirling. It was really happening; I was leaving.

I pulled my cloak around me, shivering a little in the cool morning air.

I tried taking everything in, looking around at what had been our home. I watched our house, keeping my eye on the familiar red door and thatched roof until they disappeared behind the leafy branches of an elm as we passed a corner. The mountains that usually loomed in the background could hardly be seen through the silver mist that seemed to spread across the land, twisting itself through the forests and around the wooden houses.

In between the patches of mist I could see the green of the hills where the animals grazed and once in a while I spotted the glittering mountain creeks and small farms. I watched the familiar landscape dwindle and let my mind wander. Was I doing the right thing? Was I really ready to leave all this behind?

I looked at the two men sitting at the front and let out a sigh. They knew exactly where they were going, and had done for generations. Tomas was probably going to marry Jenna, have five kids and take over his father’s farm. Even though he was only sixteen – one year older than me – he had his life mapped out for him. I had never dreamt of that life, but as I left the safety of Rovermaund, I wished I knew something of what my future would hold. There was excitement ahead, of that I was sure, but like the hills around me everything was covered in mist and shadows. I was walking in blind, and that scared me.

As they chatted about things not known to me, their voices low and quiet, I thought of my mother. Her gentle smile was still vivid in my mind and I could picture her standing in the kitchen with her apron on, cheeks 107

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rosy from the heat of the oven. In the stories she had told me as I grew up, the characters – the heroes – had always seemed so certain of their calling; that they were on their true path. She had always tried to convince me that they would be unsure and afraid at first, just like she or I would be, but I wouldn’t believe her. I’d say that no ordinary person would be able to slay a dragon or defeat wicked witches and as I rambled on she’d look at me with her knowing smile, as though she held all the secrets of the world.

‘My darling,’ she would say, her face turning serious. ‘Everyone must face a monster or two at some point, and I think that when the time comes for you to fight one off you shall do so most admirably.’

‘But there aren’t any monsters,’ I’d say. ‘They don’t exist.’

Then she would smile, wrap me in her arms and kiss me on the head.

‘I hope that will always be the truth for you, my treasure.’

I looked back towards the town but all I could see was mist and green leaves. I could still go back. Tell Twerr that I had made a mistake. Who would lay flowers on her grave? Who would make sure she had someone to talk to?

I shook my head. If I went back now she wouldn’t be there. I’d open that familiar red door and there would be no smell of honey and cinnamon swirling through the air. I wouldn’t see her, sitting by the table sewing together some old work shirts or baking my favourite pastries or twirling as she sang. She was gone and I needed to go as well. There were too many emotions in Rovermaund. I needed to stay in control and I could never do that in a town that would only ever be our town, never mine.

I put my arms around my legs, hugging my knees closer to me and then started quietly singing the song my mother had sung when I was upset, trying to not cry, trying to contain the energy I could feel crackling underneath my skin.

Oh there once was a girl and she fell for a boy, And the boy he was special, and lit up her world And he wooed her in sunshine, and she fell and she fell, For this boy made of magic, she was under his spell.

My hands felt cold and when I looked down I could see a faint glow coming off them, like moonlight on a pond, the shimmering light dancing 108

on my skin. I hid them underneath my cloak, and tried to empty my mind, to not feel.

Oh there once was a boy and he fell for a girl, And the girl she was pretty, and knew how to dance, And she stole him with laughter and he fell and he fell, For this girl under moonlight, he was under her spell.

Warm tears soon turned cold as they mixed with the air and I could feel them stick to my skin. My heart ached with longing and grief. She would never again be there to sing away my troubles. I would never again be comforted by her warm embrace.

My mother had been my world and now only memories remained. I wanted to wrap up each precious moment, each day of laughter and dancing, and store them safely in my mind, like jewels in a treasure chest.

109

eden endfield

E

den grew up in London, equally at home reading classic British children’s fiction, Dr. Seuss stories and Mad magazine sent over the Atlantic by her American grandmother. After graduating from Oxford with a BA in Modern Languages, she worked as a script reader, story researcher and for Acorn Pictures, the independent film production company behind Educating Rita. She later gained a Higher Diploma in painting at the Slade.

Her MA novel, White Night, was inspired by her family connections to the East Coast of America. Eden lives in Shoreditch with her husband and teenage daughter.

About White Night

When Jack, a disillusioned American high-schooler, accidentally runs away with Chloe, a mysterious English girl, they escape their troubled family lives.

Hiding out in a remote mountain cabin their fragile relationship blossoms, until a sudden heavy snowfall imprisons them in the frozen Adirondack landscape, cutting them off from the outside world. As hunger and cold start to bite, Jack discovers Chloe may not be all she seems.

White Night is a contemporary Young Adult love story which explores emotional and physical hunger, with the themes of guilt, self-delusion, and madness. eden@lochore.com

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Eden ENDFIELD

white night Day 8

H

ungry and freezing, I pushed open the cabin door. After the clean air outside, the stink of burnt fat hit my nostrils hard. The fire had gone low. It was barely alight. Ollie lay curled up by the stove. He stood up and yawned, then came over to greet me, wagging his tail.

‘No food, boy, sorry,’ I murmured, patting him on the head. He shook himself. Then, as if he knew there was nothing doing, he wandered back over to the stove and lay down again. Resting his head on his front paws, he watched me with his almond-brown eyes.

Chloe was just a shape in the top bunk. She didn’t move. I could hear her breathing gently. I went over and touched the back of her head, but even then she didn’t stir.

I took off my jacket and rolled up my sleeves. It was time for more pancakes. I was so hungry, even roe fat pancakes seemed like a good idea. But when I opened the cupboard, the jam had gone and the flour was pretty much used up. Hardly an inch of white powder remained at the bottom of the tin.

The frying pan was in the trashcan, cold shreds of burnt pancake sticking to the bottom and lumps of roe fat stuck to the sides. We had nothing to eat and I was starving. I picked up the pan and held it out.

‘What the hell?’

Chloe stirred, mumbling in her sleep.

I went over and shook her. ‘What’s wrong with you? Wake up.’ I stood holding the frying pan over her.

‘How did you burn the pan?’ I said, raising my voice. ‘Chloe?’

She sat up, her long, dark hair tangled around her pale face. She looked 112

blankly at the burnt pan and blinked. ‘It caught fire. It was meant to be a surprise. I thought you’d come back hungry. Sorry.’ She lay down again and turned her back on me, pulling the bedclothes up.

I stared at her, not knowing what to say. I felt my heart hardening, my face growing hot, the skin tightening across my forehead. I wanted to cry.

‘We’ve got nothing to eat and you wasted what little we had!’ I yelled, yanking the covers off her. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

She sat bolt upright. She was only wearing a T-shirt, and for the first time I noticed white scars on one arm.

‘It’s not my fault,’ she said, glaring at me. ‘The pan caught fire, OK? You can be so horrible sometimes.’ Turning away, she buried herself back down under the covers.

‘Oh gimme a break,’ I said. ‘The pan didn’t catch fire; there’s no flame.

You let it burn.’

I stood over her, holding the greasy frying pan with one hand, pulling my fingers through my hair with the other, feeling like she didn’t give a shit about me or anyone else. She was just a dumb, selfish kid. I wanted to hit her. I wanted to say something that would really scare her. I needed her to have a normal reaction.

‘Don’t you understand? We could be here for weeks, unless you feel like walking twenty miles in the snow. We have no gun, no food and the fish aren’t biting – we’re going to starve.’

I waited for her to say something but she didn’t move. She lay completely still, her eyes squeezed shut, her fingers in her ears.

‘Well, I’m not freezing my ass off for you anymore. You can figure out what to do for food. You may be some sicko into making yourself feel bad, but I’m not.’

I built up the fire and sat there bitterly chewing on some blueberries, and cracking open dry, dusty nuts. Occasionally one would come out good, but mostly they were just shrivelled brown. Ollie sat by my side, and after a while I felt real bad. I kept thinking about those scars on Chloe’s arms, wondering if she’d done that to herself, and what kind of a person would do that.

The longer I sat there, watching the snow coming down and the light fading, the worse I felt. I was still mad at her for being so careless, and for 113

Eden ENDFIELD

lying, and I was still hungry, but even in the blackness of my heart I knew she’d been trying to do something nice. She hadn’t meant to screw up. She’d tried her best, but it just hadn’t worked. I thought about Pop, and then suddenly I knew exactly how I’d made her feel. Like she wasn’t good enough.

I stared at the shrinking orange and blue flames flickering around the last of the wood in the stove, the long shadows on the wall. Chloe slept on, murmuring a few words in her sleep. The snow came down thicker, sealing us into the cabin, a freezing white sarcophagus. We were being buried alive.

‘Chloe?’ I whispered. She didn’t answer. I climbed up the ladder and crawled in beside her, cupping around her body with mine. She moved in her sleep and when I stroked her hair, her icy fingers gripped mine.

Even though she was there beside me, I felt alone.

Day 9

I

woke before daybreak with Ollie whining to go out. Chloe was fast asleep.

As I sat up my stomach squeezed in tight – a fist clenching around my guts – reminding me we’d had no food all day yesterday. Climbing out of bed, I stumbled across the room and opened the door. Ollie shot outside and disappeared into the forest silently, like a black ghost. I crawled back under the covers shivering, waiting to hear him scrabble at the door to come back in.

The next thing I knew Chloe was shaking me, firing questions, her voice full of panic. My body jerked awake, but my head felt thick with sleep and my eyes wouldn’t focus. The sheet was drenched in cold sweat.

‘Ollie’s gone,’ she said. ‘How did he get out? Did you let him out?’

‘Shit. I must have fallen asleep,’ I said, blinking in the light. ‘He was asking to go out.’

Chloe stared at me, chewing her lip. ‘How long ago?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. It was still dark.’

‘Why did you let him out on his own? Why didn’t you let him back in, Jack? How could you fall asleep?’

I got up feeling sick and lightheaded. Chloe stood by the window frowning, her skin bleached by the harsh, white light. She’d been crying.

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Her pale face looked thinner than ever, and although she’d done nothing but sleep the day before, she had dark circles under her eyes.

‘He … he must have gone hunting,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find him.’ But I was numb with fear. In my dreams I’d heard the coyote howling as they hunted him down. I’d seen their fangs. I’d heard his screams as they bit into his flesh and tore him apart. I’d seen the snow turning red.

I shuffled over to the stove, threw on a log, then pulled on my clothes.

‘How could you?’ Chloe looked at me, her eyes brimming.

I went over and put my arms around her, holding her close. Stroking her long, tangled hair, I whispered, ‘Sorry,’ then hugged her again. She pulled away.

‘What if he’s dead?’ she whispered.

‘He’s not dead; he’s looking for food,’ I said. But I wasn’t sure.

‘Will you help me find him?’

We set out, shivering in the cold, misty morning air. Faint, almost imperceptible tracks edged with frost here and there told me that Ollie had been the same way through the forest. When we got to the creek they stopped.

We walked upstream for a while, but the trail had gone dead. We stood, gazing at the thin, clear ice and the water running and churning over the sandy, pebbly bottom.

Only a few days ago, this was where we’d first kissed.

‘Let’s try this way,’ Chloe said, grabbing my arm. We walked through the maze of trees, seeming aimless. From time to time we called out, ‘Ollie!’ then waited in silence, straining to hear a faint barking.

There was no sign of him anywhere.

After an hour or more we turned back towards the cabin, walking side by side in silence. Chloe was hunched up in her jacket, her chin buried deep in her muffler. She wouldn’t look at me.

‘You OK?’ I said, touching her sleeve.

‘He’s dead,’ she whispered.

‘He’s just looking for food,’ I said again, trying to sound convincing.

‘He’s hungry. If we don’t get something to eat soon, we’re all going to starve.

We’re going to have to leave, with or without the car.’

‘I’d rather starve than leave Ollie behind. I’m going to keep looking.’

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‘I’ll come with you,’ I said. Chloe held my gaze for a moment, her eyes scouring my face for the truth. ‘Chloe, please,’ I said, ‘I swear it was a mistake.’

She shook her head and looked away. ‘We don’t both need to go. I can manage on my own.’

I didn’t know what to say. I could feel her pulling away from me. And there was nothing I could do.

‘I’ll go check the rabbit snare,’ I said. ‘Don’t go too far. If he can’t hear you he could be miles away. He’ll come back when he’s done hunting.’ I was trying to sound confident, but I was worried.

‘Ollie!’ His name echoed through the forest, until the sound of Chloe calling grew fainter.

When I went back to check the snare, it had sprung, but was empty. A small piece of white fur dangled from the wire. Tiny, almost invisible tracks led away into the forest. I looked around, wondering if a rabbit had crawled away, injured, and was lying in the snow, or if it had been eaten by some other animal. But there was nothing. I set the snare again, knowing that if something was out there it would be back, and that I’d need to keep checking if I wanted to be first. It was a clear competition for food. I returned to the cabin empty-handed, and waited for Chloe to come back.

Two hours later, there was a loud rattle as she kicked at the door. Chloe stood on the threshold, holding Ollie’s bloodied body in her arms.

‘Christ,’ I said. I put my hand out and touched Ollie’s head. I could see he was still breathing, although his eyes were shut tight. His fur was matted with blood. I put my hand against his ribcage to feel his beating heart. He was frozen cold.

‘Get a sheet,’ Chloe commanded, not looking at me. She was still mad I had let him out of the cabin and gone back to sleep. She laid him down gently by the stove and sat with him while I boiled some water and tore one of the sheets into a long white bandage. He’d been in a fight with a coyote by the looks of it. His flank was cut open, as though he’d been bitten or clawed. It was hard to say which.

Kneeling beside him, Chloe tried to clean his wounds. Her face was rigid, full of pain. Ollie flinched, but his eyes stayed shut. He had scrape marks on his abdomen and a deep cut where the flesh had been torn open.

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It needed stiches, but all we could do was put antiseptic cream on and bandage it up. His leg was a bloody mess, but when I’d cleaned it up it didn’t look so bad. At least the coyote hadn’t ripped his foot off or anything.

‘Where’d you find him?’ I asked.

‘In the woods, about twenty minutes from here. I heard him whining.

He’d crawled into a space between two stones. There was a tiny slit and he managed to squeeze through. Whatever it was couldn’t get to him there. But …’

She started shaking, gulping in breaths of air as if she were choking.

‘The snow all around was really messed up, like they’d been waiting for him to leave so they could tear him apart.’

I felt hot tears pricking in my eyes. Just thinking about Ollie being trapped, trying to defend himself, made me want to cry. It was like no matter where you turn, there’s always someone waiting to get you. It’s a waiting game.

Chloe tried to give him some water. His tongue lapped feebly at her hand. She covered him with a blanket. ‘He’s starving,’ she said. ‘He needs food.’

I went out to check the snare again. It was still empty. When I got back they were huddled together on the floor. Chloe lifted her head to see if I had anything. I felt so useless.

‘This is crazy,’ I said. ‘We’re going to have to leave.’

Chloe stared at me. ‘We can’t,’ she said, ‘not now.’ And she turned away.

That night I heard howling and scraping in the woods nearby. Later, they came right outside the cabin, like they could smell us, like they knew we were there. They were waiting for us. They’d smelled blood and wanted more.

I sat up in bed, listening to the howls, yips and barks going on right outside the window. It sounded like a ravenous wolf pack. I imagined their lean, rock-solid bodies and sharp teeth tearing into flesh as they attacked. I imagined Ollie being carried off, hanging out of a she-wolf ’s mouth as she loped away through the woods.

By then Chloe had gotten out of her bunk and was standing beside me. ‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered.

As if they could hear us, the coyote fell abruptly silent.

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Eden ENDFIELD

Ollie gave a whimper as he lay on Chloe’s bed. She leant over to hush him, resting her hand gently on his muzzle.

‘You’re OK,’ she whispered. ‘You’re OK. They’re not going to hurt you.’

Arching her back, she sat down beside me on the bunk, then folded herself into me under the covers. She was shaking with fear or cold, I wasn’t sure which. I could feel her thin body trembling, her delicate bones and hard muscle more defined under her skin. She turned her face up to mine, pressing herself into me.

‘Hold me,’ was all she said.

We lay together, babes in the wood, scary screams and strange ululations filling the air.

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119

anneka freeman

A

nneka was raised in Northern Virginia, in a Pre-Revolutionary log cabin that creaked and groaned and was full of untold stories. She earned a BA with Honors in Creative Writing from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, during which time she first studied in the UK. Desperate to come back, she was delighted to stumble upon Bath Spa’s MA Writing for Young People.

Hollow Bones was inspired by the marvels and dangers of internet anonymity, which prompted Anneka to create a character who had no fixed shape, but still possessed a decided sense of self.

About Hollow Bones

Underneath fifteen-year-old Robin’s apparently normal life lurks a bizarre secret. Robin is a shapeshifter who can take any shape: male or female, human or animal, or a mix of all. Robin’s adopted family are the only ones who know and the terror of discovery looms constantly.

Then Robin starts sprouting scales in the middle of a history exam.

Something is very, very wrong. The list of symptoms grows daily. Though Robin is worried about people finding out, the danger of dying is more terrifying still. In the hope of finding other shapeshifters, Robin decides to risk everything. anneka.freeman@gmail.com

121

Anneka FREEMAN

hollow bones Chapter 1

W

hen I wake up, my bed is ruined. Which is a pain in the ass, but not unexpected. There are claw marks in my sheets and a peppering of coarse brown hairs poking through the white cotton. My money’s on bear.

Must have been one helluva nightmare.

There are 10 Important Rules for My Life as a Shapeshifter, and this is Rule #9: You will probably change shape in your sleep. Rule 9a: Always have extra sheets. Rule 9b: Sleepovers are a big no-no, though this last one is purely hypothetical as I’ve never been invited to a sleepover.

At least I’m human now – well, no. I’m never human, I’m always a shapeshifter, but I’m in a human shape. Although …

My hands are bigger than I usually prefer. And I’m totally flat-chested.

Checking lower now and yes, it seems I’ve woken up with boy parts.

Spectacular.

I strip the sheets off my bed, trying not to be freaked out by the long, violent gashes. Shifting in my sleep may be normal for me, but that doesn’t make it any less disturbing. I get a new set out of the closet and re-make the bed in nice clean white sheets. It’s almost like the nightmare never happened.

And at least it wasn’t tiger shape. I can’t stand taking tiger shape, not since that godawful mess ten years ago.

‘Robin!’ Dad hollers down from the kitchen. ‘Light of my life, apple of my eye, are we awake? Are we human? Are we decent?’

‘Human!’ My voice cracks like a fifteen-year-old boy’s. (Rule #5: You can change your shape, but not your age.) ‘Not decent, though.’

‘What’s this? A son to carry on my name? Gemma!’ he calls to my 122

mom. ‘The family fortune is saved!’ I hear her reply with an undignified snort of laughter. Distantly, I can also hear Dad laughing because Dad is a jerk. ‘Hurry up and get dressed. I made pancakes.’ Dad is the best kind of jerk. My very favorite jerk, actually.

Time to get dressed.

The first thing I put on is my human shape – my usual human shape, that is. I close my eyes and concentrate. A tingling numbness, like pins and needles, spreads from the base of my skull through my whole body. Bones crunch and I am four inches shorter. Fat bundles on around my thighs and tummy and chest. My pelvis groans and reshapes itself. But it’s not like I need to rearrange any major organs, so this doesn’t take long. The tingling fades.

I end up having to redo my nose three times, the cartilage crunching and grinding until I’ve got just the right snub. When I finish, there’s a dull ache building behind my eyes. You try breaking every bone in your face without getting a headache.

I pop a couple of Tylenol and start grabbing clothes out of the closet. I grab my backpack and rummage through it to make sure I’ve got everything I need for the exam today. Where are my history notes? I don’t have time to go hunting through every drawer in my desk. My morning routine now takes fifteen minutes. It used to take five.

But that’s nothing to worry about. Probably just another puberty thing. If my parents have noticed, they haven’t said anything. Maybe they think it’s some kind of beauty regimen.

Ha. Beauty. I crack me up. Beauty is decidedly Not The Point. My entire modus operandi revolves around being unseen and invisible. That’s how I settled on the details of my current human shape: there’s nothing more invisible than a plain-faced teenage girl.

I finally find the notes under my computer and shove them in my bag.

Thankfully Mom has not eaten all the pancakes by the time I get to the kitchen. But that’s probably because she’s too busy giggling with Dad glued to her back, pressing kisses against her neck.

I groan. ‘Aw come on, guys. It is way too early in the morning for that shit.’

‘Good morning to you, too,’ Mom says cheerfully. They’re both cheerful. Suspiciously cheerful. I decide that I don’t want to know why.

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Anneka FREEMAN

Mom is still talking as Dad lays the table. ‘Did we really wake up with a son this morning?’

‘Unfortunately.’ I wrinkle my nose. ‘I’m hoping it’s a one-time thing.

Not that I object to being a dude, but I don’t think I could stand that squeaky voice on a regular basis. Plus, I feel like someone would notice if your daughter turned into a son.’

The pancakes are too perfect to interrupt with conversation and my family falls quiet except for the clink of forks on plates and the singing of birds outside.

I wish I could understand what they are saying. I mean, I understand the theory, the general gist of it. They’re staking out their territory, and sometimes they’re calling out warnings to each other, but I know it’s more than that. If I could only take bird shape, then I could learn …

No, focus. There’s the exam today, and I’ve got to pass it or I’ll be completely screwed for sophomore year.

‘So, what exams have you got today?’ Dad asks.

I wrinkle my nose. ‘Just the one.’

‘You mean … The Dreaded Exam?’ He imitates the screeching violins from Psycho.

The Dreaded Exam is for World History II, which is not the fun world history where you learn Greek mythology and build models of the pyramids at Giza. No, this is world history starting with the Industrial Revolution and including famous hits like: Child Labor, World War (parts One and Two), The Great Depression (Spoiler Alert: it wasn’t so great) and The Holocaust.

I am just bursting with joy at the idea of spending the afternoon wordvomiting everything I know about the most depressing world events since the Black Death.

It’s afternoon by the time I shuffle into the gym for my exam. I come in behind a group of apathetic students who will probably get Cs. The students who will probably get As are already taking up all the desks in the front row.

It feels even more cavernous and empty than usual in here. Every cough and step echoes around the steel rafters. My shoes squeak on the shiny hardwood, the noise unnaturally magnified. I cringe a bit and make my way to an unobtrusive seat in the middle.

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I don’t want to draw attention to myself because World History II: The Revenge of Terrible Shit, is taught by Mrs Sterndale. She’s perched at a long table at the front of the gym, guarding the exit to the nearest bathrooms like a modern-day bridge troll. Her gaze falls on me. I hate being stared at, and Mrs Sterndale is always staring with her baleful predator eyes. I sink down behind my desk as best I can. Eventually she moves on to other prey and I breathe a little easier.

If I don’t pass this exam, I’ll probably have to take her class again, and that is a truly horrifying thought. There would be no chance of going unseen, of being invisible. Sterndale would make me an example to the rest of the class; hold me up as a humiliating picture of what can happen if you don’t study hard enough. It hasn’t even happened and I’m already squirming with embarrassment.

The students who don’t care and will probably fail are straggling in now. They are followed by Holly Singer, the girl who couldn’t care less and will almost certainly get an A anyway. She sits down two desks in front of me and one row over, her butt hitting the seat just as the bell rings, barely in time to avoid detention. Mrs Sterndale’s grey eyes twitch angrily in her direction. Holly just tosses her bouncy cloud of black hair and slouches.

‘Nice of you all to turn up,’ Mrs Sterndale says into the ringing silence that follows the bell. She rises from her seat, picks up a stack of papers and stalks towards us. ‘This exam represents a quarter of your grade. Don’t even think about cheating.’ One by one, the test papers slap face down on our desks. They look awfully thick. Did we even learn enough this year to fill one of those? ‘Do not open the booklets until I say so.’ When the paper smacks on my desk, I tuck my hands under my arms like I might … what?

Accidentally open it? Ridiculous. ‘There is to be no speaking during the exam.’ I bite down on my bottom lip. Like I’ve ever so much as squeaked in her class. She hands out the last paper and strolls back to her desk. ‘You may not leave the exam room until you have finished your exam.’

She takes her seat and we all wait tensely. ‘There is no acceptable reason to fail a history class. After all, history is the human story. History is your story.’

Sometimes I wonder if teachers even hear the stuff that comes out of their mouths.

‘You have ninety minutes. Begin.’

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Anneka FREEMAN

I scramble to get my No. 2 pencil out of my hoodie pocket and flip over my exam.

So here’s my problem with history: it may be the human story, but that’s got very little to do with me. I’m not human; I just live with them.

So every time we learn something about human empires and human wars, I can’t help wondering whether there were any shapeshifters then, and what they were doing. It always leaves me with more questions than answers.

But none of those questions will help me pass this class, so I force myself to focus and dig into the multiple-choice section. It does not go well.

Twenty-five multiple-choice (multiple-guess more like) and ten shortanswer questions (also known as short BS sessions) later, I come at last to The Essay. I flip the page and my stomach jolts unpleasantly.

There are two pictures there – for decoration, I guess? One is a black and white photo of a dark-haired man with a slightly gap-toothed smile. My dad has a gap in his teeth just like that. But this is not a picture of my dad.

Circa 1930s: The infamous Dr Mengele reads the caption.

On the other side is a picture of a poster. Some People Are Born To Be A Burden To The Rest. Underneath, Mrs Sterndale has captioned it: Circa 1926: A piece of US propaganda advocating eugenics. Below the pictures, the essay question itself stares up at me in stark black and white.

Essay (50%): Discuss the relationships and similarities between Nazi Germany and Pre-War America. Explore how these links affected US involvement in WWII. In a way, this is lucky. In another way entirely, this is a nightmare. I vividly remember this chapter. I can clearly picture the grainy photos and unsettling descriptions of Mengele’s experiments. I can probably repeat verbatim the section on the eugenics movement in America. There was a facility not far from here where deformed and ‘feeble-minded’ patients were sterilized and worse without their consent.

I can’t help wondering what would have happened to any shapeshifters who ended up in facilities like that.

I try to put the grainy photos out of my mind and focus on the actual content of my essay. Never mind that if I had lived in that day and age, if 126

people had found out what I was, they’d have had no qualms at all about locking me up and experimenting on me. Never mind that I probably would have been Dr Mengele’s favorite test subject.

That is just melodramatic, morbid thinking, I reason with myself. I do my best to pull a coherent essay together and rattle off some kind of hopeful conclusion. Something about how the lessons of the past will change the world of the future. It had better, for my sake. I close the test book and press the heels of my hands into my eyes. I’m exhausted. My writing hand is seizing up, my legs have gone completely numb.

This has been a disaster. I just know it. If I could turn into a dog right now I’d eat my own test paper just so no one ever has to read it.

I’m going to fail. I’ll be one of the poor fools who has to take Sterndale’s class twice. Just the thought of it makes my heart race and my palms sweat.

I rub them against my thighs.

Something hard and lumpy is pressing back through the denim. I freeze.

That is not human skin. It’s not bear fur either. It’s not any kind of fur, tiger or deer or dog. It’s not quite right for alligator or any other kind of hide I know. And I wasn’t even thinking about changing shape, but the evidence is there, under my palm, through my jeans.

What am I turning into?

127

rebecca harris

R

ebecca grew up in a ramshackle house full of books, deep in the Northumbrian countryside. She studied History at the University of York, but quickly realised that she was less of an academic historian and more of a storyteller in search of good stories.

Her search has taken her to lots of interesting places. She’s travelled in India and Japan, and lived in Italy and on the Isle of Skye, but for her real inspiration she always ends up back where she started, in her little corner of the north.

About The Hills Are Silent

Summer 1940. Spitfires fly across clear blue skies, Britain prepares to be invaded and, on a lonely northern hillside, Kit Cavendish digs up a skeleton – and a 3,000-year-old mystery.

For years, Kit, her sister, and their silent, haunted mother have lived under her father’s tyranny, but when he goes to fight in the war, they face a bewildering new freedom. As the bones find their way into Kit’s dreams and an ancient magic stirs in the hill, Kit discovers secrets from her mother’s past too – secrets that could bring their fractured family together or tear them apart for ever. Can Kit take control of her future by uncovering the past? becca333mh@yahoo.co.uk

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Rebecca HARRIS

the hills are silent

I

found the bones at the foot of Wailing Edge crags.

It was the end of June, I was fifteen, and the summer was hotter than any I could remember. The boggy patches on the moor had turned to dry, yellow sponges, and the soil cracked and crumbled in the sun. Beneath day after day of blue skies, we waited for the invasion they told us could come at any moment.

Waited for the end of our world.

The end of my world did indeed come that summer, but not beneath the crushing boots of an army and the roar of artillery fire. It came like the slow crumbling of ancient things beneath the earth, like a single heart ceasing to beat.

And it began with the bones.

There’s a dip in the ground under Wailing Edge, half-hidden by a tangle of trees. In ordinary weather, it’s where the burn comes rushing over the crags and into the pool at the bottom. That year, though, the drought had dried it to no more than a trickle. I’d been through the tree-lined hollow a thousand times before, with no idea that the bones were buried there, until the day a fall of earth pulled the cracking soil away from the bottom of the crags, taking the remnants of dead leaves and a few small saplings with it.

And there they were underneath. Waiting to be found.

Chapter 1: Earth Fall

I

’m out early. Sleeping late on the first Saturday of the holidays would be a horrible waste, and besides, Father’s taken the car and gone off somewhere; I heard it go bumping out of the gate and down the track towards the village as I got up. Where he’s gone and why, I don’t know, but until 130

he comes back, I’m free to do what I want. Mother’s sitting by the fireplace when I pass the open drawing-room door, but she’s in her own world of silence as always. Maybe she notices me go and maybe she doesn’t; you can’t tell with Mother.

I climb the wall and head off in the opposite direction from Father, up towards West Edge Farm to see if Tam and Bess are around. Tam’s a farmer’s son and he’ll have been awake since dawn. It doesn’t feel quite like the first day of the holidays, or not like the first day ought to feel. Six whole weeks with no algebra, I tell myself, as I cross the old stone bridge over the burn and set out along the bottom edge of the trees. But the argument last night has left a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach, and the drone of a Spitfire engine from the RAF base the other side of the hill reminds me of what happened just a few weeks ago at Dunkirk. It all twists together inside me: Father’s shouting, Helena’s anger, the war, three more endless years at school, the German army waiting across the Channel to invade. I wish I could run away into the hills and never come back.

At the farm I find Tam washing down the old tractor in the yard, his dog Bess lying patiently in the shade of the wall, so I sit down beside her in the dust to watch him. Her plumy tail thumps out a greeting and I scratch her little black and white head. Tam’s my best friend, has been since we were tiny. He’s nearer Helena’s age than mine, but Helena’s never wanted to go out on the hill, only sit in her room and read. So it’s always been Tam and me, for as long as I can remember.

‘Heard there was a row at yours last night,’ he remarks, dipping the garden broom in his bucket of water and taking it to the earth-caked wheel of the tractor. I sigh. Of course he’s heard. Jane would have heard everything from the kitchen, and her father is the Godwins’ ploughman.

‘Just Helena and university again.’ I don’t want to talk about my own part in the argument.

‘What’ll she do if he doesn’t let her go?’ he asks after a moment or two.

‘Not go.’ I lean back against the stones of the wall. ‘She’s got no money, so she can’t. She’ll probably stay here and moulder away until she gets old, since she says marriage is a bourgeois institution designed to keep women in their places.’

Tam has his back to me, but I can tell he’s grinning just from the 131

Rebecca HARRIS

movement of his shoulders. In spite of the topic, I begin to feel better. Being with Tam does that.

‘That sounds like Helena, all right,’ he comments. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Do I ever know what Helena means?’

I hope he won’t ask what I’ll do myself. I can’t imagine myself getting married any more than Helena, though not for the same reasons, and I can’t imagine living anywhere other than this hillside. On the other hand, the idea of spending the rest of my life with Father and Mother is horrifying.

Either way, all I really want to do is leave school when I turn sixteen, and Father won’t hear of it. Tam doesn’t ask, though, just keeps scrubbing away at the tractor wheels.

‘The invasion might come before she’s old enough to go anyway,’ I add after a pause.

‘Aye,’ Tam agrees, glancing over his shoulder at me. ‘Reckon it probably will. My dad was saying they’re building gun placements along the coast here, same as they’re doing in the south.’

I bite my lip. ‘D’you think we can beat them, Tam?’ ‘I don’t know.’ He glances at me again and gives me half a grin. ‘But we can give it a bloody good try. They won’t win easy when they get to us.

We’ve fought plenty wars up here before. I’ve found the old musket balls in the ground.’

‘Hundreds of years ago.’ I shake my head at his optimism. ‘Tam, it’s mostly farmers round here. What are you going to do – take a pitchfork to them?’

‘Why not? Pitchfork through you’s got to hurt.’

I shake my head again, but I don’t bother to point out what I’m thinking: that a pitchfork’s not much use against a rain of bullets. He’s right – we’re close to the border with Scotland, and not all that far from Hadrian’s Wall, so there must have been dozens of battles here, all through the past.

But now they’re just dates in a history book and a few old ballads written by people who died long ago. It’s impossible to imagine war coming here again.

We all heard the news bulletins though, after Dunkirk, when Churchill announced the end of the battle for France. We will fight in the fields, he said.

We will fight in the hills. And maybe we really will have to.

‘I don’t suppose the hills will really notice,’ I say, half to myself. ‘It’ll 132

feel like old times to them if the Germans come, just with tanks and barbed wire instead of swords or bows and arrows.’

‘You don’t half talk a load of rubbish, Kit Cavendish,’ Tam remarks.

‘How’s a hill meant to feel anything?’

I ignore him, and pull myself out of my imaginings.

‘It’s the holidays. We should do something. When are you free?’

He thinks for a moment.

‘I’ve got this to do, and the yard to wash down, then the pigs to see to.

Renie and Teresa are ploughing up Low Pasture, like them government men said we had to, but I reckon I can get out of that. How about this afternoon?’

I make a big show of sighing, but it’s the answer I expected. Since Tam left school two years ago, he’s been doing the same work as any man on the farm. It’s only because of Renie and Teresa, the land girls, that he gets any free time at all.

We vaguely discuss fishing in the river or climbing up to the ancient fort that sits on top of the hill, but we don’t come to any decision. I could offer to help with his work, but it’s the first day of the holidays, so I leave him to it in the end, telling him I’ll come back after lunch.

Heading straight home again isn’t that appealing when the sun’s getting higher and hotter all the time, so I leave the path to take the long route through the woods. In among the trees, there’s a coolness to the air that’s almost a relief after the warmth outside. The ground is shaded as I make my way along the bottom of the hollow, jumping over the barbed bramble tripwires that cross my way.

To my right, the ground slopes steeply up to the bottom of Wailing Edge crags. Why they call it Wailing Edge I don’t know. I asked Mr Godwin, Tam’s dad, once. He said he didn’t know either, but that when he was a little boy, his mam told him it was a sad place, where folks had gone to their deaths. He said he’d always supposed the wailing was the crying of their families, but he didn’t know of anyone who’d fallen there in his lifetime.

I’m just coming to the place where the burn comes down and I have to jump across the stepping stones, when I stop. A fall of earth has tumbled across the path, taking down half the bank above me, and turning my peaceful way through the woods into an unfamiliar mess. Soil smothers the moss and brambles, roots and branches sticking out from it, and new rocks are 133

Rebecca HARRIS

exposed at the bottom of the crags. I’ll have to climb, or else go a different way. I frown, somehow annoyed, as if the hill has done it on purpose.

This is my private path, though, and I’m not going to be stopped from using it. The fresh earth’s soft, and sinks under my feet as I scramble up, and I brace my knee against a rock to stop myself stumbling. Using a beech branch as a hand-hold, I clamber to the top of the loose mound and pause for a moment, close to the bottom of the crags. My shoes are half-buried in sandy soil, but I have a moment of triumph. I can still get through.

And then I see the edge of it, sticking out just an inch or two from the earth.

The broken edge is worn and it’s covered in dirt, but I’ve seen enough dead animals to know a bone from a stick. I can see the fine mazy web of the inside of it, and my first thought is that it must be a long-dead sheep. I almost leave, to slide down the other side of the landslip and carry on over the burn, but something stops me.

It’s my imagination and I know that, but it’s as if there’s a sudden shiver in the earth. My fingers grip the branch a bit tighter. The smell of warm soil and leaf mould is strong, and the sun filters through the leaves, glancing off my shoulder.

Slowly, I reach out with my other hand and brush the loose stuff away from the bone. There’s no sound of aeroplanes now, nor even birdsong. And yet it isn’t silent: the shiver has become a hum, and I feel suddenly that I’m touching something that’s been buried in that hillside for a very long time, so long that it’s become part of the roots of the hill. For a moment, there’s a warmth, a flicker of a connection, like touching the hand of someone you know very well, or catching your friend’s eye with a smile. And I know that I have not found a dead sheep, but a person.

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135

alyssa hollingsworth

A

lyssa was born in small-town Milton, Florida, but life as a roving military kid soon mellowed her (unintelligibly strong) Southern accent.

Wanderlust is in her blood, and she’s always waiting for the wind to change.

Stories remain her constant.

Alyssa received her BA in English and Creative Writing from Berry College in Rome, Georgia. In 2013, she won a prize from the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity for her creative non-fiction essay, ‘Naan in the Afghan Village’. She has been previously published in Lunch Ticket, Berry Magazine and Letter to an Unknown Soldier.

Illuminate is a companion piece to another completed Young Adult fantasy, Blessings, and could work as a sequel or as a debut novel.

About Illuminate

Perl’s world is full of masks, blood-thirsty mermaids, and now a plague.

When her cousin, Princess Elatha, falls ill, Perl is forced to give up dreams of freedom to take her place. Her task: to court the royal fiancé without letting anyone suspect she isn’t the princess. He seems charming, but in a city laced with as many secrets as canals, no one is what they appear.

If Perl can’t unravel the truth, she’s going to lose her cousin – and her heart. alyssamhollingsworth@gmail.com / www.alyssahollingsworth.com

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Alyssa HOLLINGSWORTH

illuminate Chapter 1

P

erl lifted the mask to her face, closed her eyes, and waited while the mask-maker tied the ribbon under her hair. She held her breath.

Only a few hours left until the Betrothal Ball, and there was no time to have another made. Perl just knew that if her mask was imperfect, a fraction too wide-set or unbalanced, Elatha would cock one pale eyebrow and the whole evening would go wrong from there. Elatha’s own mask had been completed two weeks ago.

‘Look at you!’ the mask-maker, widow Alis, said as she finished the knot. ‘Like something right out of Princess Elatha’s illuminated manuscripts, if I may say so.’

Perl opened her eyes, first one, then the other. The widow was holding up a mirror, and Perl’s reflection stared back at her, wide-eyed under a magnificent mask in the shape of a bird.

Alis sighed with a smile. ‘Ah, just think, you will be wearing this very mask when your future husband sees you for the first time.’

‘Mmhm.’ Perl attempted to tune out Alis’s romantic ramblings – who had pre-arrangements with whom, which newspapers would print the engagements soonest, the quality of the young men in attendance this year – and bent forward to examine the mask closer. The bottom edge caressed her cheeks and dipped a little below her cheekbone. Conservative, but not too modest. The bird’s head, over her nose, was a bright, canalgreen colour, which blended to dark teal and purple toward the wingtips.

The bird’s tail fanned out across Perl’s forehead, with slivers of lapis lazuli in the feathers.

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She touched the deep blue stones, imagining the journey they had taken to reach her, across deserts and mountains and seas. The five slivers of lapis had cost the same as her entire ball gown.

The mask covered her eyebrows well; Perl raised and lowered them to be sure. She smiled, and the material didn’t lift over her eyes like some of the cheaper masks she owned. It shifted with her every move, an extension of her face.

‘Look, see how close the colour is?’ Alis said, breaking off mid-rumour.

She gave the silk square to Perl. Despite being left in the shop for the past week, the cloth still smelled of old spices and seawater. Perl held it up beside her face.

The mask was a perfect match. Even Elatha would not be able to find fault in it.

‘You’ve outdone yourself, Madame Alis,’ Perl said. Her nerves eased, and a giddy excitement made her giggle. It was all becoming real: the Betrothal Ball was tonight. She would follow in the 200-year-old tradition, set by the Fair King Larkin’s daughters: dance with the carefully selected men, choose her best partner, court during the festivities of Vati Solsta, and be married in a month.

Just a month before she would be free of Hartford’s Finishing School for Girls.

Only a month to know – and maybe, maybe, maybe fall in love with?

– the man who would be her husband.

The nerves returned full force, and her stomach knotted again. She wished she hadn’t eaten breakfast.

Mustering a smile, Perl added, ‘The mask is beautiful.’

‘A mask is only as beautiful as the face beneath.’ Alis gave an exaggerated wink. Bare-faced, her blue eyes seemed unusually bright and big. ‘And I’m sure all the men will agree, in your case. You won’t have Lady Cosima’s problem, oh no. Husband took one look at her face and decided to become a merchant. Hasn’t been home since!’

‘Heh.’ Perl made an attempt to laugh but it came out as a squeak. Her gut couldn’t decide if she was elated or going to be sick.

Alis smiled and put the mirror aside. ‘I have something else for you, before you go.’

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Perl took out her coin purse while Alis walked to a table against one of the walls. They were in her shop’s backroom, set aside for noblewomen only, a curtain drawn over the door for privacy. Masks covered every surface, many of them in progress, half-painted or still drying. Plaster casts of noblewomen’s faces – some of which Perl recognised – sat frowning beside their custom-made masks.

‘You’ll need to be tying your masks with these once you’re engaged.’

Alis lifted a box from under her table and set it on an empty corner. She opened the lid and took out a few long strands of golden ribbon. ‘I remember when Mistress Olwynne brought you for your first fitting, when you were a young quivering thing of eight.’ She held the ribbons out for Perl, and Perl, suddenly feeling shy, moved forward to take them. ‘And now here you are, sixteen! Sixteen already!’

Perl nodded and curled the ribbons in small spirals around her fingers, her mind on that little black mask eight years ago. Her first mask by a master, just after her mother’s death; just after her father entrusted her to the guardianship of her aunt, Queen Honoria.

‘Thank you.’ Perl took out the last of the payment for her lapis mask and handed it to Alis. The widow did not have a clock in her workroom, but Perl knew it must be high time she got back to the school. Queen Honoria would be arriving to oversee Elatha’s preparations, and the only thing the Queen hated more than anarchy was tardiness. ‘I’m afraid I should go if I have any hope of getting dressed in time for the Ball. I’m sorry, again, that I got the details to you so late – with the mermaid problem, the silks took longer to arrive, and I wasn’t sure of the colour—’ ‘Nonsense, Lady Perlita! It is always a pleasure.’ With a pointed look at Perl’s coin purse, she added, ‘However, your lapis mask did require quite a bit of extra work. Competition has been very difficult this season, and I’ve thought more than once that I might lose the shop.’

A generous exaggeration. The sheer quantity of masks around Perl was one of many indications that Alis’s business was thriving. But she also appreciated Alis’s hard, rushed work. She dipped into her funds for canal crossing to give her a few more coins, and Alis beamed.

‘Oh, you are too kind, milady, too kind.’ Alis pocketed the coins and pulled her widow’s mask on – sheer black lace that left no opening for her 140

eyes – before leading the way to the front of the shop.

Perl followed, stepping around the cheap, ready-made masks for commoners and city visitors. She wondered again what she would do tonight, how she would choose. Unlike Elatha, Perl was not bound up by politics, but she also did not have a prior understanding with any of the men. Some of the other girls’ mothers passed the attendee list down to them, so that almost half the girls went to the Ball with a good indication of whom they would select, despite the strict rules against pre-arrangements.

All parents were forbidden from meddling with the selection, but Perl wished she had the support of a mother.

‘Take care on your way home, milady,’ Alis said, opening the shop door.

Perl flashed a smile and hurried out to Palace Square. Noise enfolded her. Someone played a harp, and merchants shouted their artisan wares from the stalls packed across the square. Ordinarily, Perl would have been here for the market day to buy pigments for Elatha’s paintings, but today she hurried past the gold-beater and the ebony trader, and only paused for a moment by the lapis lazuli merchant.

The man was stocky and dark-skinned – a sandy dark, not quite the same as the Bhàtarians. Sometimes, when a south wind blew and he grew talkative, the merchant would tell her the lapis’s stories. But no south wind blew today, and the twist to his mouth spoke of homesickness without words. Perl recognised both the expression and the yearning. He didn’t belong here – and, she’d always suspected, neither did she.

When Perl turned the corner to the last bridge between her and the school, fist clenched around her remaining two coins, she stopped in dismay.

Three mermaids circled under the clear water, scales flashing in the sun.

Normally they weren’t this active – normally there weren’t more than two in one place.

No other people were in sight. This bridge had been built long before mermaids became a problem, and was only a half-foot above the water. Perl could go further down the canal, cross somewhere else, but it would take her an extra half hour to find her way through the bent alleys back here.

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Alyssa HOLLINGSWORTH

mask. She wished she hadn’t bought a newspaper, or given charity to the flower girl. She wished she were more selfish, less sympathetic. More stubborn, less nice.

Two coins. It would have to be enough.

Perl sucked a deep breath and ran. She threw the coins. Fins splashed as mermaids took off after them. She had almost made it when a wet hand closed around her ankle.

The bag with the lapis mask flew out of her hold as she fell. It slid across the cobblestones and came to a stop against the far side. She kicked, cursing, and her boot collided with bone.

Her foot came free and she scrambled for the bag. Before she could get to her knees, nails dug into her shoulder. The sudden yank banged Perl’s head against the wooden railing, and for a moment she sat stunned.

Humid breath pulsed against the back of her neck. She smelled putrid fish and rotten seaweed.

‘Let go!’ She squirmed, and the world twisted with her. Claws tore through her sleeve, and blood – warm and thick – dripped down to her elbow.

For all her struggle, she barely managed to turn. A purple-haired mermaid clung to her, bright amber eyes fixed on Perl’s, pupils gleaming white one moment, black the next. The creature’s skin was covered with washes of gold and blue. It curled back its lips to reveal sharp teeth and leered, using Perl's shoulder to drag itself higher. The pain made Perl’s head spin again. Bright spots burst across her vision.

A cobblestone tore through the air and collided with the side of the mermaid’s face. Screeching, it let go and dove below the water. Before Perl could think to move, a large hand closed over her arm and all but threw her off the bridge and onto the street.

‘Go, go,’ said a rough, male voice. ‘Get away from the canal!’

‘My lapis—’ Perl gasped.

Three mermaids burst out of the water, throwing themselves at her and screaming their high-pitched wail – a human wail, like the women they had once been, but insane and full of agony. For a wild moment, their magic bound Perl, an invisible spider web around her limbs, dragging her towards them. Throw yourself in, filled her mind. Then they’ll stop.

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Perl clenched her hands and concentrated on her own magic – on her blood warming against the enchantment. She was Perlita Battalia and she certainly was not going to sacrifice herself to dead fish-women on the night of her engagement. The tingling webs released and she came free. She turned and saw the man an arm’s length away, face shaded by a tricorne hat, her bag in his hands. He took an unsteady step towards the water.

‘Don’t!’ Perl grabbed his wrist. His skin was strangely cold. She tried to concentrate on the warmth within her to break the spell. ‘Come on!’

She felt the moment the enchantment gave way under her magic – a gentle pulse through the air, a snapped string. He shuddered, and when she pulled him away from the edge he moved with her. She tightened her hold and ran to solid ground, and he followed a step behind.

When they reached a safe distance, Perl steadied herself with a hand against a house wall. She glanced back at the writhing water and took deep breaths.

‘Are you all right?’ the man asked. His fingers grazed her wound, and she flinched away. ‘Your shoulder—’ ‘I’m fine.’ Perl’s face burned and she fixed her gaze on his hands. He was dark-skinned. He wore a fine green coat, a cravat and scuffed boots.

‘Really, I’m fine.’

‘You’re bleeding,’ he persisted. ‘Let me look.’

‘Absolutely not.’ Perl pushed off the wall and tried to pull up her tattered sleeve. She blushed harder when she realised how much of her shoulder had been exposed.

She heard the smirk in his voice. ‘You overestimate my interest.’

‘You underestimate my propriety.’ She sniffed, still focused on his hands. Dirt caked his fingers. A quick touch to her face reassured her that her mask was tight, so at least all he could have seen was her shoulder.

‘Thank you for your assistance, but I am fine now. Kindly give me back my bag.’

He gave in with an irritated sigh. ‘You’re welcome, by the way.’

‘I saved you, too, so we’re even.’ Perl slid the bag over her arm, nodded curtly without looking in his direction, and hurried down the road towards her school.

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much lighter than it had been before. She opened it. A newspaper. A few bruised flowers.

No mask.

Her lapis mask was gone. It must have fallen out, or— When she turned around, the man had vanished.

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B

orn in London, Rowena is a journalist, as well as a writer. She lived and worked in France, Africa and Brussels as a Reuter’s foreign correspondent before returning to England to start a family.

Now based in Devon, she tried her hand as a coastguard, crew on a fishing boat, a biological surveyor and took an MSc in rural economics, then returned to journalism as a freelance editor.

In 2013 she won the Bath Spa-Andersen Press WWI short story competition with ‘The Marshalling of Angélique’s Geese’, which was published in War Girls, a collection of First World War stories seen through the eyes of young women (Andersen, 2014). The Butterfly’s Wing is her novelisation of that story.

Rowena has previously completed a contemporary gothic thriller for the 10–14 market and is interested in writing non-fiction, as well as fiction.

About The Butterfly’s Wing

France, 1916. Angélique Lacroix is haymaking when the postman delivers the news: her father is dead, killed on a distant battlefield. She makes herself a promise: the farm will remain exactly the same until her brother comes home from the Front. ‘I think of it like a magical spell. If I can stop time, if nothing ever changes, then maybe he won’t change either.’ But a storm ruins her harvest and her mother falls sick, then a mysterious soldier appears … Forced to cross war-torn France to save the farm from bankruptcy, Angélique encounters a danger more deadly than World War One. rowena.house12@bathspa.ac.uk

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the butterfly,s wing Chapter 1

I

’m turning hay in the top meadow when I hear the squeak of rusty wheels and look up to see Monsieur Nicolas, the postman, pedalling up the lane.

I stiffen, suddenly afraid that I know the reason why he’s here.

Please God, let it not be Pascal.

Soft summer sounds surround me now that I’m still. Grasshoppers.

Distant birds. The eternal hum of bees. The creaking of the bicycle is like some infernal machine, let loose in the Garden of Eden.

Please God, not my brother Pascal.

I think about that other hot August day when the church bells chimed on and on. Pascal and I were stacking hay at the time. We dropped our pitchforks and ran to the village square, and heard the mayor announce: ‘Men of France! To arms!’

Father went straight away but Pascal stayed long enough to show me how to gather in the harvest, how to scythe and how to plough. I was twelve years old and so excited. Now I’m fourteen and my hands are calloused and my back aches like an old woman’s.

Monsieur Nicolas clatters slowly past the orchard, waking the geese.

They flap and hiss as they waddle towards the fence. Mother appears at the kitchen door, wiping her hands on her apron. Her back is very straight.

Monsieur Nicolas stops. He clambers awkwardly off the saddle and pushes his bicycle up the hill towards our gate. I hold my breath.

Please God, not Pascal.

He stops again and rests the bike against our fence. The geese clamour and shriek as he opens the gate. I pick up my skirts and run.

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*

It’s Father. Mort pour la France on some distant battlefield. Mother sheds silent tears as we close the curtains and change into mourning black.

I cry a little, too, but in my heart I’m glad it isn’t Pascal. I’m happy he’ll run up the path some day and hug Mother and make her laugh, and tease me and demand to see King George, the finest pig in all of France who deserves a name whatever Father says … Whatever Father said.

I think about him as we walk to Mass that evening. I try to remember something nice. But I can’t. All I recall are his fists and his belt and his leather razor strop. Pascal got the worst of it, but sometimes late at night I heard Mother whimpering as well.

Outside the church the other widows flock around Mother like crows.

There’s Madame Villiard, Madame Arnauld, Madame Calvet. And there’s Madame Besançon, whose husband died of gangrene after his leg was blown off at Verdun.

Old Madame Malpas draws me aside, wringing her bony hands and crying, ‘What’s to become of you, Angélique? You’ll very likely starve! La Mordue will go to rack and ruin without Monsieur Lacroix.’

‘Pascal will be home soon,’ I tell her. ‘Mother and I can manage till then.’

‘Manage, child? When your corn’s still in the field in August?’

I glare at her. How can we start cutting corn when the hay’s not stacked, and the cow needs milking, the geese need tending, King George needs feeding …?

‘The farm-men have been promised leave,’ I say. ‘There’ll be time enough to make a start when Pascal gets home.’

Madame Malpas sniffs. ‘And you expect the generals to keep their promises? That’ll be the day.’

I stick out my tongue as she stumps off. The trouble is she might be right. The farm-men were promised leave last summer too, but couldn’t be spared from the Front. With a sigh, I follow Mother into the silent church.

The clicking of my Sunday best boots echoes off the cold stone walls, and the stays of my dress dig into my ribs as I sit on our allotted pew. I don’t listen to the service – I never do – but when I hear Father’s name mentioned I bow my head and pray out loud so our neighbours won’t hear Mother’s sobs.

Afterwards we walk home through the warm, rosy dusk. Bats flit 149

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overhead and glow-worms glimmer in the hedgerows. Through a gate on our left I hear the rattle of over-ripe corn, disturbed by an evening breeze.

Madame Malpas was right: our harvest is late.

I glance at Mother. Her shoulders are shaking and tears glitter on her cheeks, but no sound escapes from her mouth. I reach out and take her hand.

‘We’ll be all right,’ I say. ‘Pascal will be home soon.’

She squeezes my fingers. ‘Of course he will, my angel.’

Owls hoot across the valley and a fox barks from the woods at the top of the hill. From the shadows of the orchard the geese hiss in reply.

A thought strikes me, a happy thought for once. The geese belong to Pascal now. The house and land, King George and the cow: everything is his.

Hiding a smile from Mother, I make myself a promise. When my brother comes home from the Front he’ll find the farm exactly the way he left it. I’ll clean his tools and put them back in their proper places. I’ll make his bed and lay his bowl and knife on the kitchen table.

I think of it almost like a magical spell. If I can make time stand still, if nothing ever changes, then maybe Pascal won’t change either, and everything can go back to normal after this war is over.

No! It’ll be better than before because Father won’t be here.

Chapter 2

N

ext morning I wake before dawn with a fluttering in my stomach. I’m fatherless. Hurray! I’ll never have to be frightened again.

I lie still for moment, listening to the sounds of the house. The ticking kitchen clock. A patter of rats in the rafters. I’m surprised I can’t hear Mother yet; she’s usually up before me.

Sitting up, I cock my head.

Still nothing.

Then I remember it’s Friday, market day. She must have left already.

What a pity she couldn’t have missed it for once; it’s such a long way through the woods. But then it occurs to me that if Mother has gone to Monville, she can’t mind me meeting my friends at the lavoir. Friday is wash day as well, after all.

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Jumping up, I reach for my work clothes, a patched shirt and an old brown skirt, but then I spot the mourning dress hanging from a nail.

I stare at it, hating the idea of putting it on, the lie of wearing it.

But Mother would be so ashamed if I’m seen in the village without it.

Reluctantly, I tidy my everyday clothes away and disguise myself in black.

Outside the cobbles are silver with dew and the air tastes clean and cool until I enter the dung-heap warmth of the little stone barn, which nestles against the house.

King George is snoring in his straw and the cow stands patient in her stall. I milk her, let out the hens and then fill a pail with grain for the geese.

We have twenty-seven Toulouse geese. Tall, greyish-brown birds with dusty orange beaks. We call the big gander Napoleon Bonaparte because he’s so fierce. He hisses at me when I open the orchard gate, and waggles his head and cranes his neck till his beak is level with my chest. He could take my eye out with one peck – or so Pascal once said.

Back in the kitchen, I eat a crust for breakfast, then gather our dirty clothes and put them into a basket. Next I slip into Pascal’s room and open up his shutters. Dust tumbles in the sunlight and a scent of honeysuckle rushes in. I take a musty shirt from his cupboard and a pair of his trousers, and put them into my basket as well. Then I strap the basket onto my back and walk into the village.

My best friend, Béatrice Lamy, is already standing at the big stone lavoir, scrubbing away with her sleeves rolled up. She’s taller than me with darker brown hair. She’s pretty and clever too, and thinks Pascal is delectable – her word, not mine; she says it means delicious. Waving, I hurry across the sunlit square.

But Madame Malpas spots me first.

‘Angélique,’ she cries. ‘Have you heard the news? Monsieur Labrette and his youngest have both been killed at Verdun! Poor Madame Labrette has gone quite out of her mind.’

Stunned, I stop. Poor André Labrette! And his father! Making the sign of the cross, I bow my head and walk slowly across the square, then put my basket next to Béatrice’s.

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‘Isn’t it awful,’ she whispers as Madame Malpas talks on. ‘Oh! And Angie, I’m so, so sorry about your father, too.’

I look down at my hands, wishing I’d told her the truth before, but Mother always said we had to keep the beatings a secret; otherwise they’d be worse next time. And now it’s too late. I can’t speak ill of the dead, condemn a soldier Mort pour la France. What would Madame Malpas say?

‘Thank you, Bee,’ I say, forcing a smile.

She smiles sweetly back. ‘That’s the spirit, Angie.’

Madame Malpas is talking about Pascal’s friend now, Henri Chevalier, who breathed toxic gas and is confined to a hospital bed.

‘His lungs are in a terrible state,’ she says loudly. ‘His mother doesn’t know if he’ll ever come home again. And did I mention Monsieur Cousin?

No, I don’t think I did. Well, two of his nephews are missing-in-action … ’ Béatrice bends her head close to mine and whispers, ‘At this rate there won’t be any boys left.’

Just then Claudette Danton elbows her way between us and dumps her bulging laundry sack on the edge of the lavoir.

‘Darling Bee,’ she says with a grin. ‘You don’t have to worry about that.

We all know who you’re going to marry. And Angie’s got her secret admirer.

Haven’t you, you lucky girl?’

Her eyes flash towards the corner by the bakery where René Faubert, the baker’s son, is watching us from the shadows.

‘Stop it, Claudie,’ I hiss, starting to giggle as Béatrice smothers a smile and Claudette laughs out loud.

‘What is it, girls?’ asks Madame Malpas.

‘Nothing,’ we chorus. ‘Nothing at all, Madame.’

The morning passes quickly, too quickly, and soon we’re packing away and making plans for next Friday when we’re certain we’ll have more time.

‘How about going swimming?’ Claudette says. ‘We haven’t been to the river in ages.’

‘And whose fault is that?’ Béatrice replies. ‘You always say you’ll come and then you never make it.’

‘So tell my mother!’ Claudette cries. ‘She’s the one who treats me like a slave.’

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Rolling her eyes, Béatrice turns to me.

‘Look after yourself,’ she says, kissing me on both cheeks. ‘And don’t work too hard.’

‘I won’t.’

We linger another moment while Claudette walks away. Then, quietly, she adds, ‘Any word from Pascal?’

I shake my head. ‘You know my brother. He never writes.’

‘Poor Angie.’

We hold each other’s gaze for a while, then, with a smile, I whisper, ‘I’ll tell you as soon as I hear from him.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

We kiss once more and then part.

The sun blazes down as I cart my basket out of the square and into a narrow lane between houses that all look the same, with four stone windows each and pots of red geraniums. The lane ends by the schoolhouse, in a sandy square shaded by ancient plane trees. Their crumpled yellow leaves lie everywhere. On cool afternoons old men come to play boules here, but in the heat of midday the place is still and empty.

I sit on the playground wall to adjust the straps of my basket, which is heavier now that my laundry is wet. Through an open window I hear the school children chanting.

‘Two twos are four, three threes are nine … ’ It seems such a long time since we learnt that lesson.

I’m bent double, fighting with a rusty buckle, when René Faubert’s big laced boots clump into view.

‘Want a hand?’ he asks.

‘No. Thanks. I can manage.’

With a grunt, he sits on the wall next to me.

I try not to stare at his boots or his twisted leg. Not that I was always so careful. Once upon a time I chased after him with the best of them, throwing stones and shouting cruel, hard, spiteful names.

One time, Pascal, Henri Chevalier, Claudette and I stole his walking stick and threw it into the duck pond, and when it sank and we couldn’t find it again I thought Pascal and I would get the beating of our lives. But René 153

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told his father he’d thrown it away because he wanted to learn to walk without it. We never thanked him for that. Not once. Not one of us. Poor René.

He didn’t ask to catch polio.

‘There,’ I say, straightening up. ‘All done. How are you today?’

He shoots me a look. ‘Fine. You?’ ‘Fine.’

I look away as the air between us fills with awkward silence. It’s always like this whenever we meet: uncomfortable and difficult. Though it is a little bit nice that he always comes to find me.

At last I say, ‘You can walk me home if you like. Mother wants me to find where our silly hens are laying their eggs.’

‘They’re not silly. They hide them because you take them.’

I glare at him but he looks back calmly, his dark eyes shaded by his tar-black fringe.

Turning away, I say, ‘They are silly because they forget where they’ve put them, and then the eggs go rotten and we can’t sell them anymore.’

‘So go find them yourself.’

There’s another, longer silence, deeper too this time, and I realise the chanting has stopped. Then the school doors burst open and a horde of screaming, hair-pulling, hoop-playing children spills into the sunshine.

‘Please help me,’ I mumble.

‘Pardon?’

I give him a rueful shrug. ‘I can’t find the stupid things. The hens hide them too well.’

‘Outsmarted by chickens, huh?’

‘Shut up, René.’

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emily morris pasco

E

mily was made in Taiwan – the proof is on her birth certificate and not stamped on the back of her neck.

Emily left college when she was twenty so that she could find herself; thirty years later, she found herself moving to England to attend Bath Spa University.

Emily obtained a degree in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and then stayed and got an MA in Writing for Young People.

Her current work, Krash and Maddy, is a novel for young adults and looks at life through the eyes of socially challenged teens.

About Krash and Maddy

His online name is Krash and he has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder because he feels responsible for his father’s death. Her online name is Maddy and she has Tourette’s syndrome; the irony of her real name is just too much: Echo. Seriously.

Krash and Maddy meet because of their differences, but they are drawn together by their similarities. The two of them embark on a mission to expose landlord, Nigel ‘Dickweedious’ Dickson, for the dangerous fake that he is.

Their stint as private eyes would be easier if Krash didn’t compulsively tidy and Maddy didn’t uncontrollably tic. thurylime@yahoo.com

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krash and maddy Chapter 2 Krash

‘J

ake, please talk to me.’

‘Mum … ’ She should know that a strange man – anyone – in my room is equivalent to a system crash, a blue screen of death. Too bad I can’t just replace my motherboard. Ha! It’s going to take time for me to reboot and process.

It has taken over two years for Mum and me to ‘fall into a routine’, as she likes to say. I hate that saying because the word ‘fall’ implies accidental.

I prefer that it has taken two years to organise our lives logically into a reasonable routine.

Why is she watching me eat? She is directly opposite me at our small table and sits posture-perfect. I look up from my meal and she smiles.

‘What?’ That’s what I say.

‘Nothing, baby. Your hair, your eyes … I’m just thinking about your dad.’

He looks at his mobile phone. Something mumbled about responsibility.

An explosion of red. Mum’s snot and tears on my neck.

‘Sweetie? Hello?’

Her hand is waving in front of my face. I blink and look at her concerned expression, realise my food is halfway between my plate and my mouth, gravy coagulated mid-drip from the bit of chicken on the back of my fork. Why does she bring up Dad when she’s staring at me like that? It’s like she knows I killed him, but she can’t come right out and say it. I eat the chicken, then stab my Yorkshire pudding, wipe up the last of the gravy 158

and finish the food rotation. Today’s has been: potatoes at twelve o’clock, chicken at three o’clock, green beans at six o’clock and Yorkshire pudding at nine o’clock. Gravy is always in a small bowl in the centre of the plate so I can dip each individual bite into it.

I constantly try to convince Mum that this is the most efficient and sensible way to arrange and eat food and she agrees – in theory. However, she insists on pouring gravy directly onto her own food and eats it willynilly – she may take a stab at six o’clock, then mop over to three o’clock, then back to six o’clock again. It drives me crazy to see it, so I just stare at my own plate when we eat.

Mum clears her throat. ‘Tell me something interesting, why don’t you?

Have you met anyone new on that chat site of yours?’

I carefully place my knife and fork on the plate, wipe my mouth with the napkin, then neatly fold it and lay it on top of the empty gravy bowl.

I lean against the back of the chair, fold my arms and look her straight in the eyes.

‘Something interesting is that you let a creep into my bedroom when I wasn’t here – a violation of my personal rights, I might add. And as far as (air quotes) that chat site, I keep telling you, it’s not a chat site, it’s a freaks’ forum.’

‘So have you met any new freaks then?’ Mum looks down to her lap where she’s slowly folding and unfolding her napkin. It’s easier to manipulate an inanimate object, isn’t it? If I were that napkin, she could wash out my stains and iron out my wrinkles.

‘No. Same freaks, different day. That is,’ I snarl, ‘unless you count the one I discovered rooting through my stuff.’

Mum takes a deep breath and slowly exhales. ‘Look, I know it was disconcerting to find Nigel in your room … ’ ‘Nigel? We’re on a first-name basis with Dickweedious, now, are we, Lauren?’

Mum immediately stands up. ‘Less of the cheek,’ she scolds.

I look blankly at the wall, instead of at her. The light overhead is at the perfect angle for me to see the dried paint-drip marks, a couple of centimetres below the bottom corners of the light switch.

I am listening to Mum, who has begun a lecture, but I’m also trying 159

Emily MORRIS PASCO

to figure out how to sand down the little teardrops of paint and even out the texture. ‘ … owns this flat. He is well within his rights … ’ But would that mean painting the entire wall? ‘ … any damage or breach of contract whenever he wants … ’ I start to scan the wall for more imperfection. ‘ … hoped he’d be finished before you got home.’

The realisation hits me. I push away from the table and stand, glare at her. ‘So you knew he was coming over, ahead of time?’

‘What? Of course not.’ Mum steps towards me. ‘Jake-’ I shake my head. ‘I cannot believe you.’ I back away from her and turn, shaking my head as I storm down the hall to my room. Once inside, I carefully close the door and turn the handle so that the latch just clicks.

And that means that you will never slam that door again.

I pull on the handle to make sure the latch has properly caught and the door is securely closed. Then I push it, in case I accidentally unlatched the door when I pulled on it. Then I pull on it to make sure I have, in fact, latched it when I pushed on it. And then I push … Finally, I slide the bolt into place and touch it with both hands. I can still feel his essence. I try to convince myself that I’m just angry, that there is no way any trace of Dickweedious is still here. That makes me think about trace evidence and that makes me think about DNA and that makes me think I’m going to need more disinfectant.

I walk to my desk and begin the process of fixing my room. Again.

Chapter 3 Krash

I

open my laptop and make sure the front edge of the keyboard lines up perfectly with the strip of tape that runs horizontally 6¼ inches from the edge of my desk. I touch the computer with both hands to anchor its placement. I know it’s irrational, but if I don’t anchor it, I will slowly start to obsess until I can’t think about anything else. I’ve tried to ignore it; it’s just easier to go with my freaky flow.

I type my password and hear Mum in the kitchen washing the supper dishes. Supper: a bad ending to a bad day.

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A banal musical flourish signals the awakening of my computer. I click on a link and am directed to the home page for effmylife.org. I log on.

Username: Krash Password: 05112012 I click on the link for the General Forum, even though I hardly visit the OCD area anymore. There are only so many pages of how to get perfect hoover patterns in the carpet or where to buy the best hand sanitiser that I can stand. I accept that I am obsessive compulsive. I perform what they call, ‘rituals’, even though that sounds religious. I have routines. I like order. But I’m just trying to be responsible.

People hear OCD and they think hand-washing and panic attacks about germs. No one understands that I live the way I do for a reason: not because I’m afraid to venture out of the house and touch things, but because I have to protect Mum. The only reason I even bother to visit the site is Maddy.

There are three new Private Messages in my inbox since my last visit.

Two of them are from the site’s moderator and both messages are exactly the same. His OCD requires him to do everything in even numbers.

OCD Moderator: Hi Krash. Have not seen you in a long time. Hope you are well!!

OCD Moderator: Hi Krash. Have not seen you in a long time. Hope you are well!!

Poor nutter. I’m careful with my response.

Krash: Thanks for checking. Been busy. All good, mate.

I click Send and repeat the process.

Krash: Thanks for checking. Been busy. All good, mate.

The third message is from Maddy.

Maddy: haven’t seen you here since yesterday. not even a pm. bit rude. x I feel my mouth curve into a grin and move the cursor over the Reply button. Before I can click it, I hear a ping! A small tab flashes at the bottom of the page with Maddy’s name on it. I move the arrow and click the tab to pull up a small chat window. Maddy’s avatar is a picture of Mozart. She once told me that he is rumoured to have had Tourette’s syndrome, like her.

Maddy: you all right?

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Emily MORRIS PASCO

My reply automatically shows my online name, Krash, and my photo is Neil Armstrong – the first man to walk on the moon.

Krash: I’m OK. You? Maddy: i’ve been better. dad’s girlfriend, mutton, came over for tea last night and i ticked. again.

I briefly think how great it would be to blurt out something rude when I’m anxious – like today when Dickweedious was here. I glance around my room, thinking about that man touching my stuff. Knob! I refocus and type.

Krash: What this time?

Maddy: without going into detail, pretty much every word for the female anatomy, but spread throughout the entire meal. that’s probably how her legs are most of the time anyway – spread.

Krash: lol. How did she take it?

Maddy: like always, with a smile. i’m sure dad’s told her about his spastic daughter. mutton’s mouth may smile, but her eyes don’t always. lol.

The house phone rings. Weird. The third ring is cut short; Mum’s voice is muted because of the closed door. The only reason we even have a phone is because it came with the flat and we need it to get the internet. We use our mobiles for calls and texts. Who even knows our number?

Maddy: hello? is this a bad time?

Krash: Sorry, got distracted. So her name’s Mutton?

Maddy: lol. may as well be. it’s patricia, but you know … ‘mutton dressed like lamb?’

Krash: Ha. So, did you even try to hold back?

Maddy: let’s just say, i let me be me. don’t you do that?

Krash: Do what?

Maddy: when your mum has a date over, don’t you have an urge to fix things? like his tie, for instance?

I tense and a knot forms in my stomach. I think about Mum with another man. I think about my room and Dickweedious inside of it.

Krash: No. She doesn’t date. Next subject.

Maddy: ummm… ok, where you been lately?

Krash: I walked to the chemist this morning. When I got back, I found a big dick in my room.

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Maddy: i have no idea how to respond to that. was it yours? lol

Did she just write that? I blush, grateful no one can see me.

Krash: Very funny.

Maddy: sorry. explain?

Krash: It was the landlord. He was doing an inspection. I freaked.

Maddy: he was inspecting your room? wth? for what?

Krash: Mum said it was to check for a breach of contract or something.

I wait, but the screen doesn’t show the dots that indicate her typing a reply.

Krash: Hello?

I see the dots.

Maddy: sorry. that just sounds weird.

Krash: He IS weird.

Maddy: so, what happened after you freaked?

Krash: I fixed my room.

Maddy: for how long?

Krash: Until just before tea. Then, again, after.

Three taps on the door.

‘Jake? It’s nearly time for X Factor. You coming?’

I glance at the clock on my computer. Half seven. Mum’s heads-up gives me time to finish whatever I’m doing so I can make it to the sitting room before the show starts.

‘Yeah.’

‘OK, good.’

Maddy: the dick must not have made too much of a mess then?

Krash: Define ‘mess’. Look, I got to go. Talk later?

Maddy: ok. 10?

Krash: Perfect. Bye. x Krash: Ta. x At exactly 9:59, I log onto the site. To kill the remaining minute, I wipe dust off the monitor. Just because it’s not visible doesn’t mean it’s not there. Ping!

Maddy: hiya.

Krash: Hi. Right on time. What’s up?

Maddy: not much. dad’s out with the slag.

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Emily MORRIS PASCO

Krash: How do you know she’s a slag?

Maddy: a woman knows. for one thing

there’s that dressing

up like a lamb thing.

Krash: I love lamb.

Maddy: plus she looks like a two-kilo bag of rice stuffed into

a one-kilo bag.

Krash: I love rice.

Maddy: n*b.

Krash: lol. So this is the same woman from last night?

Maddy: yep. she insisted on coming over before

out. she told dad she wants to get to know me better.

Krash: She must like you.

Maddy: right. she likes Krash: So how did it go?

Maddy:

they went

<eye roll>

dad’s bank account.

it went to my kitchen with me when i made a cuppa

for it and dad. then it walked out when i started ticking like a clock. a very rude clock.

Krash: Nice. Wish I had an excuse to say things to people’s faces and

get away with it like you do.

Maddy: ts

has its advantages. not good when i see a cute guy

and blurt out p*nis! or scr*tum! though.

Krash: Why do you keep editing your words? I know what a ***** and

******* are.

Krash: Hey! What happened???

Maddy: welcome to internet site controls! lol Krash: That’s stupid. Those aren’t even curse words.

Maddy: there are ways around it if you can

be bothered:

pines, scrutom, fcuk, siht. see? people on here with dyslexia must cuss with no problems.

Krash: lol Still, stupid.

Maddy: i wish when

i saw a cute guy i ticked pines! be less

embarrassing.

Krash: Pines! Elm! Oak! Walnut!

Maddy: lmao. you know you went from soft to hard, right? lol

I look at what I’ve written, close my eyes and groan. How the hell 164

do I respond to that? I’m talking about wood to a girl I don’t even know.

Maddy: hello? sorry, my tourette’s sometimes makes me say stuff.

Krash: Nice try.

Maddy: thanks. usually i can use it as an excuse.

Krash: Do you ever fake it?

Sheesh. Please don’t make that nasty, too.

Maddy: mostly it just comes out. but, i can’t say i haven’t used it to my advantage sometimes.

Krash: Yeah, I think my mum uses my OCD sometimes.

Maddy: i totally get that. it would be nice to have you come over and watch you tidy my room. if you’re cute, you’d even get to hear me impulsively insult you while i jerk off.

Did she just say that?

Maddy: omg! i didn’t mean that like it sounded. when i tic, my head/neck usually jerks, too. ffs! i. am. not. a. perv!

I laugh, but I’m tired. The day’s events have been unnerving so I end our conversation, careful not to tell Maddy that I just want to go to bed.

165

lucy van smit

A

Catholic childhood is great for a thriller writer: inexplicable rules, a huge family, and survival by any means. Lucy decamped to art school, got a BA Hons in Fine Art, lived in New York, talked her way into NBC News, and travelled worldwide. An arts producer for Canadian Broadcasting, Lucy made TV documentaries on writers, including Martin Amis and Ian McEwan. She studied with Sophie Mackenzie at City Lit, and went on to the renowned MA at Bath Spa University.

She loves the strong support from her wonderful fellow writers. Lucy lives in London with her husband, and young son. Her 10-plus thriller, Invisible by Day, won the first Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) SlushPile Challenge.

About Hurts So Good

Set in Norway, Hurts So Good is a contemporary twisted love story for Young Adults. Abandoned at birth by her mother, songwriter Ellie doesn’t believe in love, until she meets Ethan, the son of her dad’s enemy. It is love at first sight for both of them, but Ethan tricks the infatuated Ellie into abducting his baby half-sister. Ellie discovers her beautiful, dynamic Ethan is a monster, and one she helped to create. She must choose between the love of her life, and being able to live with herself. On the run with the baby, lost in the Norwegian Wolf Reservation, Ellie encounters a nursing wolf and her cubs, and discovers the fierceness of a mother’s love. This story is a Nordic Noir psychological thriller about first love, obsession, and sacrifice. lucyvansmit@gmail.com

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Lucy VAN SMIT

hurts so good ‘To sacrifice what you are, And live without belief, That is a fate more terrible than dying.’

Joan of Arc

Chapter 1

I

stole a baby.

The words rattle round my head, as I climb high above the fjord, and stand on Sermon Rock, my eyes watering in the cold mountain air.

I stole a baby.

Does that make me a bad person?

Yeah. It does.

I listen to the cries coming from her baby carrier. I heave the contraption off my sweating back, jam it upright between my feet, and flip out the stand. The stench of her dirty nappy makes my stomach heave. Once the carrier is stable on the flat rock, I straighten her baby cap, and her pink boot falls off again. I give up trying to get it back on, and grab the camera. Her muffled cries build to a crescendo. And my legs shake like they’re possessed.

Tiny stones twist and screech under my feet. I kneel, and crawl over the overhang, and make myself look down, but the steep mountain track, dotted with jagged red rocks, and pines, is deserted.

I wiggle back and check the camera works. The beauty of Norway stuns me. Mountains drop into the sea like emerald icebergs. Naerøyfjord is so clear I can see all the way to the bottom. I grew to love how the bones 168

of the mountains fuse together, into underwater cathedrals. The wind blows my tangled red hair into my mouth. I lift my arm, and sniff. And I know it’s shallow, but I don’t want to die looking like this. I want one more day.

One more day. It’s not much to ask. To do all that ordinary stuff again. Hot showers. Shampoo. See my family. Sweet Jesus, I never said I loved them. I binned my life like toilet paper, and never noticed.

I film my last words. ‘I’m Ellie Jones,’ I say. ‘Tell my dad … ’ The camera flies out of my fingers. It spins in an arc over the dead drop and then snaps back and forth on the strap. It’s snagged on the diamond bracelet. Holy crap. I lose her camera, and it’s game over. I can’t catch my breath. The air is full of pine gum, and birdsong, but I’m gasping, and only getting snippets of air. What if I bottle it again? What if this doesn’t work?

What if he finds her?

Breathe louder than your thoughts, dear. Nan’s voice is so clear in my head, I half turn round to hug her. It must have been a trick of the wind.

I’m alone on Sermon Rock. No one will save me. No one will listen. I hear a robin bragging to the other birds, and stare across Naerøyfjord. The midnight sun casts silvery shadows on the water. The Midnight Sun. They call it the Black Sun here. The Black Son. That’s him all over. Can I really stop him? Yeah, maybe, if I keep my head.

‘I’m Ellie Jones,’ I say to the camera. ‘I’m sixteen. If you’re watching this, I guess I’m dead already. Don’t freak out on me. It’s way worse for me, and I need you to listen. I die, and she gets to live, but only if you listen.’

It sounds horribly wrong. Like a stupid snuff-selfie. Will they believe me after what I did? This has to count. But what if I’m too late? Purple shadows lengthen on the path between the rocks. I shiver. Then I notice the robin has stopped singing.

He’s here.

He strides over the mountain like he owns it. His image blurs in and out of focus. So he seems real and not real. The full-length sheepskin coat swings around his legs. His black hair is longer, and curls over the turquoise eyes. How can someone so beautiful be evil? I still don’t get that. I concentrate on keeping the lens steady.

‘Recognise him?’ I say, on camera. ‘Close your eyes to his beauty. Don’t listen to his voice. Every word he says is a sodding lie. He’s got no heart. No 169

Lucy VAN SMIT

soul. Stop him, next time.’

‘Ellie,’ he calls. ‘You have to give her back. She’s not your plaything.

You don’t know what you are doing. Give her up. We can start over. You and me.’

His deep voice is more hypnotic than ever. He could charm the birds out of heaven. My body betrays me, and I can’t tear my eyes away from his face.

He was all I ever wanted.

‘No,’ I say. ‘It ends here. You got to get through me. I promised her.’

The wind lifts and I glance down at the rucksack. Her crying has gone back to a gulping sound. I hold the camera steady, keeping it between me and those eyes.

‘That’s your big plan?’ he laughs. ‘A home movie? They’ll never believe you over me. I know, let’s ask your God who’s in the right.’ He holds up the 20-kroner coin. ‘Tails, she’s yours. Heads, she’s mine.’

I film him as he flips the Norwegian coin high into the air. We both watch it spin, and blink, in the dim sunlight. The coin lands in his hand, and he opens his fingers, one by one, holds it up, and smiles his big easy smile.

‘Heads,’ he says, ‘I win. Hand her over.’

He leaps over the fissure in Sermon Rock, surefooted as a wolf, and strolls up to me. From habit, I step between him and the baby carrier. Her cries are weaker now, and I’m shaking so bad I lower the camera. His breath warms my face, and his turquoise eyes stare into mine. For a moment, I think he sees me too. Remembers us. Then the hunting knife is in his hand.

I stare right back in his eyes, and call his bluff.

‘You won’t hurt me, or her, not with that. Blood’s not your thing.’

He raises one black eyebrow, laughs, and clips the knife back on his belt. ‘Yeah. Blood phobia. You know me too well. Hell of a weakness. Never mind, hey?’

He is so beautiful. Then his eyes go empty. One minute he’s laughing, the next, he’s a cold monster. The change terrifies me. He reaches down, snatches up the carrier by the metal frame, and swings it over the edge. I scream. I know I can’t stop him. Can’t reach him. So I film him. I capture the moment when the baby blue eyes blink at him. Her cries build to a howl. He stops, drags the baby carrier back, and rips off her hat.

‘What the …’

170

He rummages through the baby carrier, and pulls out my old doll, Honey, padded out in her baby clothes. Then he finds my phone. It’s still playing. Her dear voice catches at my heart. She cries, like she’s begging for my life, not hers.

‘That how you did it?’ he says. ‘Her voice, played on your phone? You wrapped her stinking nappy around one of your dolls? Gross. That’s all you got? You thought you could fool me, with a doll? Don’t you know who I am?’

‘Yeah I know you. I recorded her on a loop, to lure you, away, far from her.’

‘You’re on the road to nowhere with this.’

His fist crushes my phone into the rock, and her crying stops. He gives the baby carrier a vicious kick over the edge. It flies into the air, and drops down into the fjord. Her clothes spill out. Nappies tumble. And her pink shoe. It seems like forever before they hit the water. The doll floats on the surface, and then sinks. I film her pink shoe as it bobs up and down.

He balances on the edge of Sermon Rock, dead still. His long sheepskin coat seems frozen in time. The robin starts up again. I hear each note in his birdsong. I wish I could sing like that. I always wanted to be on the cover of New Music Magazine.

‘Where is she?’ he says, at last. I know he hates to admit he can’t work it out.

‘Safe, for now,’ I say. ‘She forgives you. We both do.’

‘You forgive me?’ He glares at the camera. ‘For what?’

‘I know what you did.’

‘You think, really?’ He holds his hand out. ‘Don’t make me hurt you.’

I toss the camera to him. He cradles it in his hand. I know he’s thinking of her, not me, and then he lobs it into the fjord, and I try not to cry.

‘No one believes a word you say, Ellie. Not the police, my father, not your own family,’ he says. ‘You’re a liar.’ The sheepskin snaps around him as he walks back to me. ‘You don’t get to betray me. I make the rules.’

‘No. I do,’ I say. ‘Game over.’

The memory card is wafer-thin. It shakes in my fingers as I place it on my tongue. Part of me dies in that moment, before I swallow, then I remember, this is my legacy. This film. It’s him, and me, and her. Our story.

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Lucy VAN SMIT

Chapter 2

Three months earlier

I

t’s Ash Wednesday. The first day of Lent. That means forty days of no fun in our house, especially now, with my grandmother living in my bedroom. I don’t get a minute to myself. The cottage in Norway is too small and dark. We’re living like snails under a bucket. And Lent was bad enough last year, no telly for forty days. I was totally out of the loop at school. And my best friend was no help.

Dom’s TV fix is wall-to-wall air crash investigations, and they freaked me out for the flight over here. I kept thinking we’d drop out the sky. Now I’m trapped here.

‘Ellie love, I could do with a hand,’ Nan says. ‘You up for a spot of picture hanging? We’ll have this room lickety-spit in no time.’

‘In a minute,’ I say.

I’m hiding out in the window seat in our bedroom, with my phone.

The screen cursor blinks in time with my panic at Dom’s message.

Ellie. U lazy git. Where r the effing lyrics? Stop being a tourist.

We need that love song. Today. Or yr out.

Back home in Manchester, Dom and the band are mixing the album, in a proper studio, without me. No amount of begging to stay at home worked on Dad. He said he didn’t trust me out of his sight. My panicky breath mists up the window, and the dark reflection of my new red hair vanishes. I draw a cross in the condensation, and look out at the mountain. I’ve not written anything decent since we upped sticks here for Dad’s new job. Yeah, Norway is stunning, but I can’t write love songs about fjords. Who am I kidding? I’ll never write a killer love song. I’m not into love. Dom knows that better than me. Knows that loving me is a cosmic joke. But I’m so jealous I’m not there with them. I press record, and sing into the memo folder on my phone.

I don’t believe in true love.

That’s celebrity hype and lies.

This girl’s got her eyes wide open I’ll write my own life in the skies.

I won’t believe in love.

172

It’s not exactly what Dom had in mind for the album, but the more I try to be lovey-dovey, the worse it gets. Would the band really dump me?

Where r the effing lyrics? Yeah. They would. And that would make Nan’s day.

I nudge the curtain open with one finger. The wall opposite me looks like a police incident room. Nan is papering my bedroom with pictures of Christ’s face from the Turin Shroud. Even I know it’s a complete fake. I told her it’s been carbon dated and everything, and there’s no way it can be real.

But Nan is having none of it, and it’s bad enough sharing a room with her, without Jesus moving in too.

‘It’s Ash Wednesday,’ Nan says. ‘Forty days to practise sacrifice, Ellie.’

I hear the smile in her paper-thin voice. She’s all blissed out, like the first day of Lent knocks spots off Christmas. Nothing makes Nan happier than us giving stuff up for God. Especially me. Sometimes I think she’s training me to be a nun. I told her the Star of Bethlehem would park itself over our house if that happened.

‘Nan. I’m giving up sod all for Lent this year,’ I say. ‘Dad’s taken my dream life.’

‘Well love,’ says Nan, ‘your dad and I think you’re best out of all that nonsense. No good can come of it. It’s the wrong path for you.’

Before I edit the blasphemous response in my head, Nan knocks into her bedside table, on the way to the bathroom. Great. Her army of medicine bottles crashes to the floor. She’s on about thirty pills a day now. I keep worrying she’s going to die in my bed. Our bathroom door creaks open.

There’s a loud shriek. Holy crap. I forgot about my stuff. I’m off the window seat in a flash. Thirty-eight pairs of Christ’s brown eyes reproach me. I turn my back, and pull on my dress. I leap on the window seat with my plimsolls and jerk the curtain across. Nan falls back in the room, wheezing, her arms full of blood red towels, like she’s carrying a small body.

‘Ellie!’ she says. ‘It looks like someone’s been murdered in the bathroom.’

‘It’s only hair dye,’ I mutter from behind the curtain. ‘Sorry about the mess.’

‘Mess? It’s a bloodbath. That colour never washes out of towels.

Come out.’

Nan shoves her head through the curtain. My grandmother looks like a religious train-spotter in her turquoise fleece and chrome crucifix, but she 173

Lucy VAN SMIT

can outstare a tiger any day. There’s a long, long silence. Is my red hair really that bad?

I smooth the flowery fabric over my thighs. I know it’s too short. And my legs are a bit cold. But the vintage dress was my last flea market find in Manchester, with my mates. It smells of chips and songs, and the life I had before Norway and Nan’s cancer nuked it out the water. My phone bleeps.

It’s Dom again. I bluff, and tell him the lyrics are on the way. Nan is still staring at me when I look up.

‘Will you ever learn?’ she says. ‘Give me that phone of yours. Your dad and I are decided. It’s a blessing, us living in the Norwegian wilderness. You can do without your infernal phone, and bloody internet, for forty days, like the good Lord himself.’

‘What? No way. That isn’t sacrifice,’ I say, horrified. ‘It’s persecution.

You can’t take my phone. I got to send Dom my lyrics. I can’t decide which song to choose.’

‘You’re just like your mother. Obsessed.’

‘Mum?’ I say, taken off-guard by the sudden hurt in my heart.

We never talk about my mother. No one does. Not Nan. Not Dad. Not my half-sisters. They said it was my fault. I was the baby who ruined everything. Self-sacrifice wasn’t in my mother’s bags when she left. And nor was I. Her devil baby. I don’t even have a photo of her. Dad won’t have one in the house.

Then Nan whips the phone out of my hands before I can move.

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175

chris vick

C

hris has worked in marine conservation and been a surfer for many years. His job and search for the perfect wave have taken him all over the world.

Before the MA he wrote articles on conservation and mythology for various magazines, as well as a book about Cornish legends. On the MA he wrote about the things closest to his heart: surfing and the wild, Cornish coast. He lives near Bath, with his wife and daughter, but spends a lot of time in, or on, the water.

Chris is represented by Catherine Clarke at Felicity Bryan Associates.

Kook will be published summer 2016 by HarperCollins.

About Kook

Kook: (surfer slang), a learner.

It’s going to be a long winter for fifteen-year-old Sam. His family has moved to far-west Cornwall. The ‘edge of nowhere’. Then he meets beautiful – but damaged – surfer girl, Jade. She’s trouble. But trouble’s fun; trouble’s addictive.

Sam learns to surf with Jade and her mates. He gets his kicks in new and dangerous ways. Life in Cornwall is good. Then the winter storms arrive … and the waves get bigger.

Soon, Sam is following Jade into situations he can’t handle, and a storm he might not survive. chrisvick7@icloud.com

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Chris VICK

kook Jade

J

ade got me in trouble from day one.

We moved back to Cornwall one Saturday, early last September.

Mum, my kid-sister Tegan and me.

It was a sunny day, with a cool wind. The first day of autumn, or maybe the last of summer.

We drove through the village of Pendeen, and after a five-minute drive over the moor, bounced our way down a broken track. When we got there I saw why the rent was cheap. There were two cottages – stormbeaten old things, with moss on their roofs and rotten wood windows, nested between the clifftops and the moor. There were stone walls to keep the sheep away, a few brush trees bent into weird shapes by the wind and not much else.

Half a mile downhill, the land ended in a sharp line at the clifftop.

We were going to live in one cottage, Jade and her dad already lived in the other. They came over in the afternoon when Mum was arguing with the removal guy about how it wasn’t her fault the track had knackered the van’s suspension. They had a sheepdog with them and were carrying gifts of milk and fruitcake.

Her dad introduced them both. Jade hung back and let him do the talking. He said about borrowing a cup of sugar any time and other neighbourly stuff, but I didn’t pay any attention. I was working hard trying not to stare at Jade.

Her hair was long and black. Her eyes were sea-blue and green, shining out of a honey-brown face. She had muscles and curves too; a body shaped 178

by years in the water. And Jade had a glow about her, something no scruffy old T-shirt and denim jacket could hide.

She took one look at me with those sea eyes and curled her lips into a half-smile.

‘How old are you, Sam?’ her dad asked.

‘Sorry, what?’ I said.

‘How old are you?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Right. You’ll be going to Penwith High with Jade then. You can help each other with homework, hang out and stuff.’ He was over-keen. I think it was awkward for Jade as well as me. I found out later he’d checked me with one look and reckoned I’d be A Good Influence on Jade. Different from the type she normally hung out with.

We went into the kitchen to drink tea and eat the cake. Her dad – Bob – and Mum chatting away about Cornwall, me and Jade competing at who-can-say-the-least. She liked Tegan, though; she gave her bits of cake to feed to the scruffy sheepdog.

When they stood to go, Bob said, ‘Jade was going to take Tess for a walk. You could go with her, Sam … Oh, daft aren’t I? You’re unpacking.

Another time.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Mum. ‘You go, Sam, but not too long. If it’s all right with Jade?’

‘OK,’ said Jade. She was out of the kitchen before I could say a word.

Jade made a line for the nearby hill, pelting straight up the path like she was on a mission.

‘What’s the hurry?’ I said, catching her up.

‘I need to check something.’

At the top we climbed up onto a large, flat rock and sat down. She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket, and using me as a wind shelter, lit one.

Beyond the moor was the sea; blue and white and shining. The light of it hit me so hard I had to screw my eyes up tight. I hadn’t seen the Cornish sea in years, not since I was four, and we left, after Dad died. I couldn’t even remember it much. I hadn’t expected that just looking at it would make my head spin. It was as big as the sky.

179

Chris VICK

‘Great view,’ I said.

‘Yeah, right. Hold this,’ she said, passing me the cigarette. She pulled a tiny pair of binoculars from her denim jacket. She fiddled with the focus, pointing them at the distant sea. Along the coast was a thin headland of cliff, knifing into the Atlantic. Jade didn’t move an inch, she just stared through the binocs, reaching out a hand for the cigarette once in while. The dog lay beside her, its black and white head on her lap.

Then, suddenly, she sat upright, tense, like she’d noticed something. All I could make out was a thin line of white water, rolling into the distant cliff.

‘What are you looking at?’ I said.

‘Signposts.’

‘What?’

‘That’s the spot’s name.’ She sighed, and pocketed the binocs. ‘I can see the waves there; that’s why it’s called signposts. Swell’s about three foot.

Do you surf, Sam?’ ‘No.’ ‘Shame. I do.’ She jumped off the rock leaving me holding the smouldering fag butt. Oh, right, bye then, I thought. But …

‘Come on, let’s go!’ she shouted over her shoulder, as she ran down the hill.

‘Surfing?’ I shouted. But she’d already gone too far to hear me.

Tin Mines

M

e and Jade ran down the hill, and I was thinking, shit! This is already nothing like London.

The moors in the sun were nothing like the flats that filled up the sky in Westbourne Park. Running off to the beach with a girl was nothing like heading to the dog turd-littered park for a kick around. And Jade was nothing like … any girl I’d ever met. She radiated energy. Not just beautiful.

There was something about her. Something raw and naked. Something you wanted to look at – had to look at – but felt you shouldn’t.

We went past our place and straight to their cottage. They’d built a wooden barn-garage right next to it. It was full of junk: an old washing 180

machine, bikes, crates of books. I clocked the surfboards stacked against the wall, but she walked straight past them to a ladder leading up to an attic. I was going to follow her, but she said, ‘No, wait there.’

After a minute she climbed back down, carrying a wetsuit and towel.

‘What’s up there?’ I asked. She didn’t answer. She stood by the surfboards, eyeing them up before choosing the middle one of the three, a blue, beaten-up old thing about half a foot taller than she was, with a V-shaped tail.

‘Love this fishtail,’ she said, stroking its edge. ‘Flies in anything.’ She balanced the suit and towel over her shoulder and stuck the board under one arm. Then she took an old bike from where it leant against a fridge.

‘You can borrow Dad’s bike,’ she said.

‘But I don’t surf.’

‘You said. Come anyway. Don’t be a kook.’

‘What’s a kook?’

‘It’s what you are,’ she said, getting on the bike.

‘Do you want me to carry … ’ I started. But she was already out of the door, riding the bike with one hand, and holding the board under her arm with the other. The dog followed, jumping and wagging its tail.

‘How d’you do that?’ I said.

‘Practice!’ she shouted.

It was making me dizzy. One minute we’re eating cake, then we’re up a hill, then we’re off to the beach. And she was bossy. That annoyed me. But I was dead curious, and yeah, she was that pretty, you wouldn’t not follow her. I grabbed her dad’s bike and pedalled after her.

After ten minutes we took a path off the road and cycled down a stony trail, with the dog running behind us, stopping where the ruined towers and walls of an old tin mine hung to the cliff edge.

We dumped the bikes. Jade led us past a ‘Danger – Keep Out’ sign by the mine and down a steep path that ended by a huge granite boulder, right on the cliff edge. She walked up to the large rock and put the board on top of it, stretching, nudging it over the top with her fingertips. She left it there, balancing. Then, placing her body tight against the rock, and still with the towel and wetsuit over her shoulder, she moved around the rock, till she disappeared. A few seconds later the board disappeared too, pulled over the rock’s edge. The dog ran up the cliff and over the boulder.

181

Chris VICK

It was like they’d just vanished.

I stepped up to the cliff edge and looked down. The sight of the sea hit me in the gut. It must have been a thirty-foot drop. She’d shimmied around the rock, casual as anything, along a ledge inches wide. A misplaced foot, and you’d fall. If you slipped you’d fall. If you were lucky you’d grab a rock and hold on. Chances were, you’d go over. And die.

‘Coming?’ said her voice, from behind the rock, teasing me.

‘Sure,’ I said. I knew that without the drop I could do it easy, so why not now? I wasn’t going to bottle it in front of this girl.

I pushed my face against the cool stone and edged around the rock.

The volume of life was turned up. I could hear every shuffle of my feet, every breath echoing around my head, every beat of my heart. I couldn’t see my feet. I just had to trust they were going in the right place.

It only took about ten seconds, but they were long ones.

When I came round, I was panting and she was smiling, with a raised eyebrow and half of her mouth curling, like she was amused. That smile put a hook in me.

The path – totally hidden from the other side of the rock – hugged the cliff, with sheer rock on one side, and a steep drop on the other. It was no more than two-foot wide, and steep; a tricky climb. But like with the bike and carrying the board, Jade made it look easy. I guessed she’d done it a hundred times before.

There was no beach when we reached the bottom, just a flat ledge of reef, rock pools and seaweed. Far out to sea, the wind was messing up the ocean, chasing white peaks across the bay, but here the water was still, dark, glass. Somewhere between the open sea and this secret cove, were two surfers, sat on their boards, still as statues.

‘Tell anyone about this place and they’ll kill you,’ said Jade, pointing at them and sounding like she wasn’t kidding. Surrounding herself with the towel she started to change. She had a swimsuit on under her hoody. She must have changed into it when she was in the garage attic.

And there I was again. Staring. I don’t think I was dribbling, or had my mouth open or anything. But I might have, the way she glared at me.

‘Oh! Sorry.’ I looked away. ‘There’s no waves,’ I said. It was flat-calm, apart from a gentle lapping at the rock’s edge.

182

‘Long wave period. Watch.’

After a couple of minutes, like a clockwork doll coming to life, one of the surfers flipped his board round and started paddling towards the shore. At first I couldn’t see why, but then, behind him, hard to see against the sea-glare, was a wall of water. It jacked up, rising out of the blue till it formed a feathering edge. The surfer angled his board, paddled a stroke or two, pushed up with his arms and swung his feet beneath him, landing on the board, and in one swoop was riding down and across the wave, gliding in a long line before weaving the board in a series of snake shapes. The wave broke perfectly, carrying the surfer one step ahead of the white chaos behind him. Then the other surfer did the same thing on the wave behind. Their whoops echoed around the cliff.

And I got it. Even then, I got it.

It looked like freedom.

183

acknowledgements

T

he MA Writing for Young People co-editors would like to thank all the generous and talented people who contributed to the tenth version of this anthology.

• Professor David Almond, for being a legend.

• Julia Green, for balancing her Programme Leadership with Mother Hen to perfection.

• Our tutors – Lucy Christopher, Julia Green, Marie-Louise Jensen, Joanna Nadin, C J Skuse, Mimi Thebo and Steve Voake – for their inspiration and belief.

• Our publishing module tutors Janine Amos and John McLay. • All the staff at Corsham Court.

• The illustration team from the School of Art and Design at Bath Spa University, led by Tim Vyner.

• Front cover illustrator Catriona Morgan.

• Laura Hollingsworth for early ‘Save the Date’ and website artwork.

• Caroline Harris, who coordinates this project through Harris + Wilson Ltd, for her invaluable advice.

• Victoria Millar, copyeditor, and Jenni Moore, typesetter, for their attention to detail.

• Beth Mann and Eimear Noone, our fellow co-editors on the Creative Writing MA, for their conspiratorial support with our dastardly plans.

• Lucy van Smit and Eden Endfield for their venue-finding expertise and resilient negotiation skills.

• Sarah Driver, Rebecca Harris, and Jess Butterworth for filling the room.

• Lindsay Schiro for making sure our social media was as cool as our real-life party.

• Our fellow-students, the class of 2014, for all their hard work and input into making this anthology a team effort.

Alyssa Hollingsworth and Irulan Horner Co-editors of the MA Writing for Young People anthology, 2014

illustrators Cover by Catriona Morgan catriona.morgan12@bathspa.ac.uk • Song of the Mountain (page 14) by Greta Makarskaite gret.illustration@gmail.com / www.cargocollective.com/gretillustration • Beautiful (page 24); Hollow Bones (page 120); Krash and Maddy (page156) by Niamh Smith niamhalexandra93@gmail.com • The Missing Hounds of Baskerville Park (page 34) by Yuan Qian 341597981@qq.com • The Quest for GameCon (page 42); The Silence of Secrets (page 76); The Butterfly’s Wing (page 146); Facing Dragons (page 102)

by Benjamin Goldfinch hello@benjaminillustration.com • Kite x Noel (page 52); Kook (page 176) by Maria Gajate Molina mariajoilustrajo@gmail.com / www.mariajoilustrajo.com • Fire Walker (page 60); Illuminate (page 136); Hurts So Good (page 166) by Amy Whiting amywhiting2@btinternet.com • The Huntress: Sea (page 68); Feral Faerie (page 84)

by Deborah Vickers deborah.v@hotmail.co.uk • Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (page 94)

by Aisling Cooter aisling_cooter@hotmail.com / cooterillustration.com • White Night (page 110); The Hills Are Silent (page 128)

by Rowan Styles mountainash123@hotmail.com

“All truth, when you write it down, becomes enriched by lies.

We make beautiful lies.”

Professor David Almond “From the wilds of the Himalayas to the beaches of Cornwall, from the world of online gaming to the farms of yesteryear, these stories contain a host of characters — surfers, psychopaths, faeries and mermaids ­­— all of them memorable and all of them with a tale to tell. So open the book, turn the pages and hear for yourself the many voices of our talented writers. Their stories are only just beginning . . .”

Steve Voake, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Bath Spa University