The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst Read online

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2020

  Copyright © Text, Jaclyn Moriarty 2020

  Copyright © Illustrations, Kelly Canby 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76087 506 0

  eISBN 978 1 76106 045 8

  For teaching resources, explore www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Cover and internal design by Romina Edwards

  Set by Romina Edwards

  www.jaclynmoriarty.com

  To Michael and Jane

  for their friendship

  CONTENTS

  Maps

  Part 1

  The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst: A Narrative Account

  Part 2

  Chapter 01

  Chapter 02

  Chapter 03

  Chapter 04

  Chapter 05

  Chapter 06

  Chapter 07

  Chapter 08

  Chapter 09

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Part 3

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Part 4

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Part 5

  Chapter 137

  Chapter 138

  Chapter 139

  Chapter 140

  Chapter 141

  Chapter 142

  Chapter 143

  Chapter 144

  Chapter 145

  Chapter 146

  Chapter 147

  Chapter 148

  Chapter 149

  Chapter 150

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Other Books

  The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst: A Narrative Account

  by Esther Mettlestone-Staranise,

  Grade 6

  ong ago, far away, on a damp and sniffly day—

  This happened.

  A little prince, not yet two years old, played upon the shore.

  ‘Hoopla!’ said his nanny, and the boy leapt over a frothy wave. Nanny and boy giggled.

  ‘Hoopla!’ the nanny repeated, and again the tiny boy leapt. He wore a little romper suit and his name—Alejandro—was embroidered on the collar. His little feet were bare, for the nanny had removed his shoes.

  If you are wondering where the shoes were, well, I think they were probably just off to the side somewhere, on the sand.

  ‘Again!’ said little Alejandro.

  ‘Hoopla!’ the nanny obliged.

  The child leapt.

  This could have gone on for hours, days—maybe even years! Well, perhaps not years, they’d have gotten hungry—but the nanny’s gentleman friend happened to stroll byalong the boardwalk. He spotted the pair on the beach.

  ‘Ahoy there!’ called the gentleman friend.

  The nanny straightened, raised her hand to wave, and that was all the time it took.

  A Water Sprite burst from the waves and stole the child.

  The nanny saw him. She felt a whoosh, a splash, turned at once and saw. The gentleman friend up on the boardwalk, he saw too.

  The Water Sprite had broad shoulders. He gathered Alejandro into his arms, leapt into the waves and swam away. ‘Right before my eyes!’ said the nanny. ‘I chased him! Into the waves, I dove! Ruined my good pinafore! But the Water Sprite—and darling Alejandro—were gone!’

  By the way, all this happened in the town of Spindrift, in the Kingdom of Storms, about ten years ago. Ordinarily, the royal family of Storms live in the city of Cloudburst, but they were on holiday by the sea.

  Everyone searched the sea for the prince, even the lighthouse keeper: his lighthouse beam swept ba
ck and forth like a duster on the sideboard.

  King Jakob and Queen Anita were distraught. Well, of course they were. (They were the little boy’s parents, if you haven’t figured that out.) They were also bewildered.

  ‘Why should a Water Sprite steal a child?’ they asked each other, over and over. ‘Water Sprites don’t steal children!’

  Meanwhile, the Water Sprite was asking himself the same question.

  His name was Caprito, and he had swum far out to sea, little Alejandro babbling beneath his arm, and then paused, treading water. Carefully, he’d placed the little prince on an ocean lily.

  Then he had swum down to his home beneath the sea, and—

  ‘What have I done?’ he asked himself. ‘Why did I steal a child?’

  For it was true that Water Sprites do not steal children. Not ordinarily, they don’t.

  The Water Sprite swam directly to his own king, King Khalid, and confessed.

  ‘You stole a child?’ cried King Khalid. ‘Well, give him back at once!’

  ‘I can’t,’ replied Caprito. ‘I placed him on an ocean lily.’

  (Ocean lilies, in case you don’t know, are just like the water lilies you see on ponds, only bigger and stronger. They spread themselves over the surface of the ocean like floating picnic blankets.) (That was a helpful aside.)

  ‘Then fetch him back from the ocean lily!’ ordered King Khalid, exasperated. ‘At once!’

  Caprito thought that was genius, and he streaked through the water to the place where the ocean lily had been.

  But it was gone.

  And so was the child.

  Caprito returned to his king. ‘Gone,’ he said.

  The Water Sprite King was very upset and got stuck on the issue of why Caprito had stolen the child in the first place.

  ‘Why would you do such a thing?’ the King complained.

  ‘I cannot say,’ Caprito replied.

  ‘Yes, you can,’ the King snapped. ‘Say!’

  But Caprito sadly shook his head. ‘I cannot say,’ he said, ‘because I do not know.’

  Eventually, King Khalid summonsed a shore’s-edge meeting with King Jakob and Queen Anita. Caprito confessed all.

  It was a heated meeting, as you can imagine.

  Everybody asked the Water Sprite why he had done this: King Jakob, Queen Anita, constables, guards, the nanny, the nanny’s gentleman friend. But Caprito’s answer was always the same:

  ‘I cannot say.’

  And then, more quietly: ‘I cannot say because I do not know.’

  Caprito wept and apologised, begging forgiveness.

  The king and queen did not much feel like forgiving him.

  However, they did not throw him in a dungeon or declare war on the Water Sprite Kingdom, for they believed his regret and confusion.

  While many thought the prince must have fallen from the ocean lily into the sea and drowned, others said that the lily could have floated across the Kingdoms and Empires, washing ashore in a distant land.

  And so the search for little Alejandro continued, year after year, and King Jakob and Queen Anita grew ever sadder, sorrier, thinner and older. Sometimes they sat side by side on the beach, staring at the waves, taking turns with the spyglass, looking for their lost little prince.

  Meanwhile, what of the little prince?

  This is what.

  He floated about on the ocean lily a while. Perhaps he fell asleep? I do not know. I was not there.

  What I do know is this: the currents carried the ocean lily a fair distance, but it did not wash up on a shore.

  Instead, pirates spied the child, and scooped him aboard their ship. They did not know he was a prince, of course, or they’d surely have demanded a mountain of gold for his return. They’re all about mountains of gold, pirates.

  All they knew was that his name was Alejandro, for that was embroidered on his collar.

  The pirates thought him as cute as a baby otter, gave him a parrot to play with and let him splash about with dolphins now and then.

  As Alejandro grew older, however, they began teaching him things: how to fight with a sword, for instance, or to shoot with a bow and arrow, and how to load and fire a musketoon.

  He excelled at these, and the pirates cheered and congratulated themselves on their forethought in fishing him out of the waves.

  But then?

  When he was eleven years old?

  Well, they sat him down and told him that now he must become a pirate.

  ‘And what must I do as a pirate?’ Alejandro enquired.

  ‘You must steal gold and treasure from other ships!’ one pirate exclaimed, very excited to tell him. (They loved their work.)

  ‘Use the sword, the arrow and the musketoon, to kill any who try to stop you!’ a second cried.

  ‘Set the ships alight and watch them sink!’ all the other pirates bellowed.

  Alejandro was eleven, as I said, and very shocked to find out that this was how his pirate friends spent their days. How they ‘earned a crust’, as they put it. (They’d kept him below deck while they pirated up until now.)

  He had a golden heart and did not want to steal, destroy and kill!

  The pirates were furious.

  ‘Not angry so much as disappointed,’ one of them said, which hurt Alejandro’s feelings, but then the others said, ‘Not angry?! Why, I’m angry enough to rip apart a sharkwith my bare teeth! I’m furious! Livid!’

  They were also very disappointed. ‘All the work we put into bringing him up!’ they complained. ‘This is how he repays us?’ And they squabbled about who had been too soft, so that he was raised to be nice. A milksop.

  They began to beat him then, and to inflict punishments upon him, trying to make up for years of kindness. Trying to un-milksop him.

  ‘We will make a pirate of you yet!’ they swore.

  Poor Alejandro. He was very unhappy.

  He used his wits and cunning, and escaped from the pirate ship!

  They recaptured him.

  He escaped again!

  Upon the shore, he made friends with a girl his own age named Bronte Mettlestone, who was an adventurer. She invited him to live, happily ever after, with her family in faraway Gainsleigh.

  And that, as I said, was the happily ever after …

  But was it?

  No!

  We are forgetting the parents!

  One night, Alejandro dreamed that his long-lost parents were sad.

  The dream told him to have an adventure to find out who those parents were. (He’d forgotten.)

  The story of this adventure is too long to put here, especially as it’s nearly midnight and my candle is almost completely burned down, and the other girls in the dormitory are snoring beneath their feather quilts.

  So I will only say this: he did find his parents!

  And he returned home to Cloudburst in the Kingdom of Storms to be reunited with King Jakob and Queen Anita! As we speak, they are planning an enormous party to officially welcome him.

  And that is the end of the story.

  (One last thing. Guess what? The girl in the story named Bronte Mettlestone? The adventurer?

  She’s my cousin!!!

  My sisters and I have even met Alejandro, the Stolen Prince of Cloudburst!!!

  It’s true that we only met him for a short and busy time two years ago, so he might not remember us. But I remember him.)

  The End

  Esther, yes, I have read much of this story, or its basic facts, anyway, in the newspapers. You have not made them more interesting here. Worse, you have tried to put yourself in the story. You might be related to one of these interesting people, but that does not make you interesting. Do not put yourself in stories where you do not belong.

  Also, do not begin sentences with the words ‘And’ or ‘But’. Do not break your sentences and paragraphs into pieces; your tale is very disjointed. Do not boast by saying that your asides are ‘helpful’—that is not becoming.

  I see that you
stayed up past midnight to do your homework. Dreadful behaviour. DEMERIT. As this is your third demerit, please attend Detention on Friday evening as punishment.

  Finally, you began this story with the words, ‘Long ago, far away, on a damp and sniffly day’. Please write out the following, 100 times:

  A DAY CANNOT BE ‘SNIFFLY’

  C–

  A day can be sniffly, you know. My father told me it could.

  He had a cold last summer. Father, I mean. He had a cold and sniffles the day I overheard the telephone conversation.

  I was in the kitchen at home, underneath the table with a glass of lemonade. (That’s why I was underneath the table—the lemonade. It was meant for Mother’s work colleagues, not for you girls, I do not want to see you drink a drop of that! So I was very kindly hiding, to save Mother from seeing me drink a whole glassful of drops.)

  I was also reading Dragon Detective: The Shadow in the Wind, a new novel by my favourite author in all the Kingdoms and Empires, G.A. Thunderstrike. It was 9.42 am, and I was happy.

  When the telephone rang, I quickly pulled my legs in and curled them underneath me. I held myself still and waited.

  Father’s footsteps approached. Slower, more considering, than Mother’s.

  I relaxed. If Father caught me drinking lemonade under the table, he’d only murmur, ‘Lemonade! Nice one! Where is it?’ And pour himself a glass too, keeping an eye out for Mother.

  Father’s slippers shuffled by the table. He blew his nose. It made a sound like a panicking cow. He picked up the phone.

  ‘Morning,’ he said, a bit croaky.

  The sound of a distant voice.

  ‘Gordon!’ exclaimed Father, his voice gathering strength. ‘How’s the summer treating you?’

  Gordon is one of Father’s research assistants. Father teaches history at Clybourne University, although mostly he doesn’t teach at all, he travels about collecting information and stories for his books. His research assistants do the teaching.

  More chittering from Gordon’s distant voice.

  ‘Steady on,’ Father said.

  More chittering.

  ‘But if you—’

  Chitter, chitter.

  Father laughed. ‘Well, that sounds just like Jonathan J. Lanyard, of course, but—’

  The volume of the chittering rose. I still couldn’t make out the actual words.

  Father blew his nose again. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘did I hear you say—?’

  Chitter.

  Chitter.

  Chitter.

  Father had been silent so long that I peeked out from under the table to check he hadn’t fallen asleep.

  He was leaning up against the kitchen sink, holding the telephone to his ear. In his other hand he held his handkerchief, and he was twisting this between his fingers. His cheeks and nose were bright pink from his cold, and his eyes seemed a strange mix of amused and irritated.