The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst Page 15

  Monday morning, I woke at 5 am.

  Day 1, I thought. Let it begin.

  Day 1 – Monday

  I crept downstairs, creaked open the front door of the school, and climbed over the gate.

  Then I walked around the brick wall that encircles the school, my sack over my shoulder, skirting the edges of the forest behind it, and all the way back to the front gate.

  Our school includes the main school building, the teachers’ residence, the principal’s cottage, the gardener’s cottage, the gardening shed, the greenhouse, the vegetable gardens, the Old Schoolhouse, the gardens, the hedges, the tennis court, the pond and the community of Elves.

  What I mean to say is: it’s big. A very big school.

  It took about forty-five minutes to walk around the outside of the wall.

  I scattered cinnamon and nutmeg as I walked. (Spellbinders use it in their spells. I thought it might suggest to any approaching Shadow Mages that we had some at the school.)

  I saw nothing suspicious. No sign of Shadow Mages.

  I came back inside

  In class that morning, we finished our speeches.

  Autumn’s speech was on chocolate.

  She spoke much more clearly than she had when she’d introduced herself. ‘How is chocolate made?’ she asked, an interesting question, and then she outlined the method, and told stories about the most popular chocolates in the Kingdoms and Empires. She also asked us to call out our favourites, which we enjoyed.

  After she’d finished, we all smiled. It’s good to spend a few minutes thinking about chocolate. Some people asked her questions and then Mrs Pollock herself raised her hand.

  Everyone giggled.

  ‘Autumn,’ she said. ‘Why chocolate?’

  ‘Well,’ Autumn replied. ‘I feel passionate about chocolate.’

  ‘No, no.’ Mrs Pollock shook her head. ‘I mean, why did you not do a speech about the Whispering Kingdom? Now that would have been fascinating!’

  Autumn scratched her eyebrow. ‘I don’t know. I suppose … well, I’m not just …’

  ‘Not just?’ Mrs Pollock prompted.

  ‘Not just a Whisperer?’

  ‘Autumn, be proud of your heritage! Be proud of who you are!’

  Autumn nodded uncertainly. ‘All right.’

  She sat in her place, and everyone looked at her, remembering that she was a Whisperer.

  At lunchtime, I walked around the school perimeter with my sack again. This was more difficult. (Partly because I was hungry. I was skipping lunch.)

  But the main difficulty was that Mustafa was relaxing on a sunlounge in the front garden, eating flatbread with various dips. I couldn’t climb the front gate. Instead, I sprinted down to the back of the school, then slowly, slowly slipped further and further back, past the pond, around behind the Old Schoolhouse—and scrambled over the wall.

  The wall is high and slippery, but there are crevices between some of the bricks where you can dig in your fingers, and grouty bits between others, where you can press the toe of your shoe to lever yourself up.

  I scattered more cinnamon and nutmeg.

  Once again, no sign of any suspicious activity.

  At midnight that night, I set out to check again.

  Then I crept back to bed.

  Day 2 – Tuesday

  Same perimeter check at 5 am. No signs of suspicious activity.

  During my lunchtime check of the forest behind the school, a bird landed on a branch. I gasped. A mouse scuttled through the undergrowth. I yelped.

  That’s all.

  I felt embarrassed by the gasp and yelp, and scolded myself. I was going to have to work on being braver.

  After lunch, I was feeling a bit dim from hunger.

  Mrs Pollock held up a stack of papers.

  ‘These are the grades I’ve given you for your speeches,’ she explained. ‘I won’t hand them around yet, as I don’t want to influence your voting.’

  That seemed fair. We all nodded.

  Mrs Pollock told us to get ready to write down the name of the person we thought had given the best speech.

  I was trembling.

  I really wanted to be chosen again.

  It’s so much fun getting a day off school and going for milkshakes with Katya’s brother, Stefan—he always gets chosen, and often gets a Special Commendation from the judges. I especially wanted to spend time with Stefan so we could talk about Katya and her treatment.

  People were murmuring my name.

  I wasn’t imagining that.

  ‘Esther,’ people said, clearly. ‘Esther’s was the best.’

  Esther. Esther. It’ll be Esther. I’m voting for Esther.

  I’m trying to be modest but that is what I could hear. I was pretty sure the class had laughed more at my speech than any other. And almost everybody had told me that the speech was ‘so interesting’ or ‘really dramatic!’

  ‘Wait until everybody is ready,’ Mrs Pollock called. ‘All right, pens up, and … oh, wait, I need to tell you this.’

  She shuffled papers on her desk. ‘Yes, here it is.’

  She looked up again.

  ‘Now, there are new rules this year. At the district level, certain topics are forbidden. Therefore, if your speech was on one of these topics, nobody may vote for you. All right?’

  There was a lengthy silence.

  ‘Righto, let’s start voting!’ Mrs Pollock cried.

  ‘Um …’ Durba said. ‘Which topics are forbidden?’

  ‘Oh! Of course!’ Mrs Pollock dove towards her papers again. Everybody laughed. She really was a character. ‘Right. Ants,’ she read out.

  Ants!

  Why would they be forbidden?

  Everybody laughed. Nobody had done a speech on ants.

  ‘Orange seeds,’ Mrs Pollock said next, running her finger down a list. ‘Pomegranate seeds. Pumpkin seeds.’

  Again, we giggled. Nobody had talked about seeds of any kind.

  ‘Toenail clippings.’

  By now, we were laughing loudly.

  Toenail clippings!

  ‘And … where is it? Yes. Here. Magic. No speeches may refer to magic of any kind. Right then?’

  She looked up.

  The class had stopped laughing.

  The light hit Mrs Pollock’s glasses so I could not see where she was looking. Her face was expressionless.

  Tatty raised her hand. ‘We can’t vote for somebody who did a speech about magic?’ she asked.

  ‘No speeches may refer to magic of any kind,’ Mrs Pollock nodded.

  Faces turned to look at me. Sympathetic faces. Sad shrugs.

  ‘Sorry, Esther,’ somebody whispered. ‘I was definitely going to vote for you.’

  My face felt like it was burning from the inside.

  No magic of any kind? But why?

  Why would they have banned speeches on that topic? Ants, seeds, toenail clippings and magic? Why had the judges chosen that strange list?

  Why had Mrs Pollock approved my speech topic?

  By now, everybody was writing.

  I wrote down Autumn’s name. I’d enjoyed her speech on chocolate.

  We handed in the cards.

  Mrs Pollock read them and divided them into little stacks. The stacks all seemed similar in height to me. She studied these stacks, testing them against one another

  Meanwhile, we all sat silently.

  People carried on glancing at me. I could feel it.

  ‘Right,’ Mrs Pollock said at last, swooping up one of the stacks. ‘This person had the most votes, so this person gets to represent the school at the speech competition! Ready?’

  Nobody spoke.

  ‘It’s Hetty Rattlestone! With her marvellous speech on her family tree!’

  ‘What!’ Hetty exclaimed, leaping up from her desk, bright pink spots on her cheeks.

  ‘Congratulations!’ Tatty cried.

  Zoe Fawnwell hugged them both, and the three girls bounced up and down on the spot toget
her.

  Around me were many quiet sighs.

  After that, Mrs Pollock handed out her own score sheets for our speeches. I heard both Hetty and Tatty shriek, ‘A plus! Could this day get any better?’

  Here’s what mine said:

  Esther, your speech made the important subject of Shadow Magic much too frivolous. Your cartwheel was also very clumsy: you are no gymnast and only embarrassed yourself.

  Don’t try so hard to impress your audience.

  C-

  Day 3 – Wednesday

  By the third day, I was starting to wonder if the school actually needed my protection.

  As far as I could tell, there were no Shadow Mages around. Or if there were, the Spellbinding Katya had created was still keeping them away, even though she was gone. It would probably last for the next four weeks! She’s very clever at schoolwork, Katya, so she was probably a better Spellbinder than she realised, too. It’s very common for smart people to say, ‘Oh, I failed that exam,’ and then get 100 per cent.

  I was tramping around the forest behind the school wall at lunchtime thinking all this, and decided that I should eliminate lunchtime checks from now on. I was so tired and hungry. And I wasn’t a Spellbinder. Katya was. This was—

  That’s when I heard voices.

  ‘I tell you,’ said one, a growly, gruff voice. ‘Spellbinding ring is well gone. This is the time.’

  I stopped still.

  Slid back into shadows, and crouched at the base of a tree.

  ‘Agree,’ said another voice. ‘Claw attack?’

  So it was Radish Gnomes.

  To attack, they release their claws. The claws fly at ankle height and slice open your skin, often cracking the bone. The Radish Gnomes carry away the injured and extract their teeth. These are ground down to enhance their shadow spells.

  ‘Let’s have a look then,’ a third voice grunted.

  A small figure, stocky, shaggy hair, approached the school wall. He pressed his large hands flat, the claws clattering into place. Then he scrambled almost to the top.

  Peered over.

  Slid back down.

  He returned into the shadows of the woods.

  ‘Plenty of girls outside having their lunch break,’ he said. ‘Perfect.’

  Slowly, slowly, I reached into my hessian sack. I fumbled around until I found what I needed.

  Green apples. I gathered as many of these as I could hold. Pulled them to my chest.

  What if the book was wrong?

  My heart thudded, as if somebody with strong, fast fists was using it as a punching bag.

  I took in a deep, silent breath, held it—and rolled the apples straight towards the voices.

  ‘Oi!’

  ‘It’s not!’

  ‘It is! Watch your feet! Watch your feet!’

  ‘Yech! One just touched my toe!’

  ‘Where are they coming from?’

  ‘There must be apple trees around here! They’re falling on us!’

  I drew out another handful.

  This time, I flung them strong and straight.

  ‘There’s more! There’s more! Nasty!’

  ‘That’s it. I’m outta here. Not worth it.’

  ‘Let’s go!’

  Thud-thud, thud-thud, and seven or eight Radish Gnomes trotted right by the tree where I was hiding, vanishing into the forest.

  I held the last apple in my hand.

  It’s a phobia, apparently. I’d read about it in Astonishing Facts. Radish Gnomes are terrified of small, green apples. Nobody knows why. Some think it’s because a Radish Gnome King once grew ill after eating too many, and spread the word that they were dangerous.

  I waited until I was sure they were far away, then I climbed over the wall again and returned to school.

  That afternoon, I was so tired that I danced very badly at our class with the boys from Nicholas Valley.

  I kept bumping into people. My dance partner, Arlo, thought I was doing this on purpose to be funny, and he laughed his head off. He kept getting into trouble from Ms Potty for laughing—she was taking the class while Mr Dar-Healey was away at the swimming tournament—but this never affected Arlo for long. So at least somebody was having a good time.

  At the end of the class, I found Stefan and asked for news of Katya. He was grim and serious.

  ‘It’s not good,’ he said. ‘She’ll live, but she’ll always be weak. And always sad.’

  I found that irritating. I wanted good news about Katya.

  I know this was unfair, as it was not Stefan’s fault. I just really wanted Katya to be okay.

  Stefan asked if I’d been chosen for the speech competition.

  I shook my head.

  He looked sorrowful again and I had to stop myself stamping my foot. Stop looking so sad about everything!

  ‘How about you?’

  He nodded—still sad. ‘I’ll miss seeing you on the day.’

  ‘What’s your topic?’ I asked. His speeches are usually about ancient battles with dragons or trolls. He likes old stories: his eyes brighten when he discusses them.

  ‘Fiends.’ He turned slightly as he spoke—Ms Potty was bellowing for the boys to get moving, and he was keeping an eye on her.

  ‘Oh, those stories from classical history? From the time before magic? I thought about doing something about them too!’

  Stefan checked on Ms Potty again. She was distracted by students wrestling on the floor, so he continued. ‘In my speech, I compare the powers of some famous Fiends from the stories with the power of today’s Shadow Mages. At first, I was going to just do my usual topic—you know my usual topic?’

  I nodded. ‘Ancient battles with swords.’

  ‘Right. So I was in the archives of the town museum looking through boxes of old books of military history. And this classical history book was stuck between the pages of one. I found myself getting absorbed in the stories of these Fiends. Professor Lillian Joyce Armstrong would sit up in a tree, tilt her head, and crush passers-by—exactly as if they’d been crushed by falling logs. Jonathan J. Lanyard clicked his fingers and drowned a thousand people instantly. Anyone came near him? Dead. Caleb Vincenza, a Desert Fiend, suffocated people—they felt like they were choking on sand. Marjery—’

  ‘Boys! Line up at the door!’ Ms Potty called.

  Stefan glanced towards her then back at me. ‘The intriguing part? In the preface of the book it said the classical stories were true.’

  ‘The book said that Fiends were real?’

  ‘More real than my hand.’ He held up his hand, and I checked that it was real. It was. ‘It also said that today’s Shadow Magic is literally just a shadow of the true original evil of the Fiends.’

  A shiver zigzagged down my spine.

  ‘Anyway, probably not true,’ Stefan shrugged, at the same time as Ms Potty bellowed: ‘NICHOLAS VALLEY BOYS, WE ARE LEAVING THIS INSTANT!’

  He raised an eyebrow at me and loped off towards the door.

  ‘Bye,’ I called. ‘Congratulations on your speech.’

  Stefan turned. ‘Thanks!’ he said, and smiled.

  At least that was one smile from Stefan, although Ms Potty thwacked the back of his head as he passed—’Get a move on!’—and the smile vanished again.

  Later that night, after I’d completed midnight check of the school perimeter, I had the dream.

  I woke up with my usual, post-dream rapidly-beating heart and just-trampled chest.

  Then a word jumped into my head: Magic.

  Stefan had said his speech mentioned magic. It compared the Fiends of before-magic to the magic of Shadow Mages today.

  And magic was a forbidden topic.

  Day 4 – Thursday

  After the encounter with Radish Gnomes, I decided I’d better increase my checks, rather than cutting out the lunchtime one.

  Throughout the day, whenever I could, I pretended I needed to go to the bathroom, or to fetch a cardigan. I ran, ran, ran, all the way to the top floor of the schoo
l, creeping past the teacher’s lounge, and peering through each of the windows up there. I scanned the road, the forest, the mountains as far as I could see. Then I ran back to class.

  We were all working hard preparing for the Fundraising Weekend by now. It was in just over a week. Our class had finished our weather paintings and Mrs Pollock had promised to glue them to—’What was it? A balloon? A cat?’ Everyone laughed and reminded her to glue them to corkboard.

  But we still had to make decorations: paper chains and streamers. These were strewn, half-made, across every classroom.

  Every grade also had to perform a song at the twilight picnic and, whenever I ran up the stairs for my checks, I’d hear classes breaking into song.

  Then I’d hear teachers shouting, ‘No! Together!’

  Day 5 – Friday

  Around dawn, as I was heading out for my morning check, I glanced through an upstairs window and saw a crew of Fire Sirens was gliding up the road towards the school.

  I could tell they were Fire Sirens because they were tall, elegant women, and trees kept bursting into flames as they passed.

  For a moment, I considered pounding on doors, waking teachers, shouting: ‘Look! Fire Sirens!’ But I’d read about Fire Sirens attacking shopping malls and police stations, and nobody had been able to stop them. The malls and stations had burned to the ground.

  I crept out, splashed ink all over the front gate, then hid and watched while the Fire Sirens pushed on the gate. Almost at once, they began to shriek: ‘It’s ink! I’m coming out in hives!’ and hurried away to get ointment.

  Fire Sirens are extremely allergic to wet ink. I’d read that in Astonishing Facts, too.

  Days 6 and 7 – Saturday and Sunday

  On Saturday morning, I came up with the idea of hanging my black coat over the back wall. I thought it might look like a Spellbinder’s cloak—they wear these when they’re working in public, to hide their identity—and make Shadow Mages hesitate. (I was very sleepy by now, and not thinking clearly.)