The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst Read online

  ‘EVERYBODY CLEAR? EVERYBODY CLEAR?’ came the same call from the other hotel roofs, one after the other.

  ‘CLEAR!’ came a reply.

  ‘CLEAR!’

  ‘CLEAR!’

  It was the same call from down there, moving along the boardwalk.

  ‘How do they know it’s all clear?’ Imogen demanded, beside me. ‘You can’t see what’s happening in the water!’

  She was right. The wave was still tearing all over the sand, tossing plates, blankets, food, paint pots in every direction, washing right over the platforms of the stages, swirling around the beach huts—their roofs just poked out.

  It was as if the wave was thinking to itself: This is fun up here! I should come more often!

  ‘CLEAR!’

  ‘CLEAR!’

  The voices continued.

  Somehow everybody had got off the sand just before the wave hit.

  A cheer rose up, from the roofs of the hotels and inside the hotels and all along the boardwalk.

  ‘What about those children?’ Astrid asked me. She was squinting and pointing into the distance.

  It was the stage I’d noticed with the built-up staircase, the one I had decided must be for a children’s choir. The wave had encircled the platform itself, but the staircases rose above the water.

  Fifteen or so tiny children still stood there, lined up in rows, as if for a photograph.

  Everyone seemed to notice the children at the same time.

  Shouts from everywhere: ‘THE PRESCHOOL CHOIR! THE PRESCHOOL CHOIR!’

  There was a brief swirl of fury and disbelief that the children had been forgotten.

  ‘Don’t blame,’ muttered the elderly man I’d followed up the stairs. ‘Find a solution!’

  That seemed sensible, but I did wonder why the children’s parents hadn’t noticed they were missing.

  Everyone shouted about getting boats out to rescue the preschoolers, until Aunt Franny yelled: ‘WAIT!’ into her megaphone.

  She was peering into the water. The wave still dashed and thrashed across the beach, white and foamy, agitated and angry.

  She studied the distant preschoolers. They seemed very tiny and still, standing in their rows. Some held hands or linked arms.

  ‘Will that platform hold?’ Aunt Franny murmured. She raised the megaphone, ‘WHO BUILT THAT PLATFORM?’

  From the next roof along, two young men raised their hands. ‘We did!’

  ‘WILL IT HOLD? Aunt Franny called.

  All along the roofs and boardwalk, people were silent, listening to this exchange, craning to hear.

  The two men squinted at Franny.

  ‘WILL IT HOLD?’ she shouted again. ‘IT’S TOO ROUGH! BOATS WILL CAPSIZE! BUT THE WATER IS NOT RISING! EVENTUALLY, THE WAVE WILL RECEDE!’ Franny lowered her megaphone and peered out to sea again. ‘The question is,’ she muttered to herself, then she raised the megaphone again: ‘THE QUESTION IS: WILL THAT PLATFORM HOLD?’

  The men turned to each other. There was a pause.

  ‘DID YOU BUILD IT PROPERLY?’ another voice demanded. That was a police constable down on the boardwalk. Several voices called the same question.

  ‘All the other platforms are holding,’ somebody pointed out. This was true. The other platforms emerged solidly each time the water thrashed against them.

  ‘Exactly,’ Franny nodded. ‘DID YOU BUILD IT PROPERLY?’

  At this, the two men nodded firmly.

  ‘Of course!’ one shouted through his cupped hands.

  Aunt Franny squinted at them. They stared back, gazes steady.

  ‘Right then.’ Aunt Franny raised her megaphone again and blared into it: ‘CHILDREN! STAY WHERE YOU ARE! WE WILL COME FOR YOU SOON! STAY WHERE YOU ARE!’

  Other voices shouted the same instructions. The tiny children remained still. It was not clear if they could hear. A crowd of adults gathered around Aunt Franny, all of them talking urgently.

  ‘They’re lying,’ Astrid said.

  Imogen and I both swung around. Astrid was still staring across at the two men who had built the platform.

  ‘You can tell from this distance?’ Imogen asked.

  Astrid nodded. ‘They didn’t build it properly. There’s something wrong with the platform.’

  ‘You don’t think it will hold?’ I asked.

  Astrid shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But I know those men are lying.’

  ‘Aunt Franny!’ I called, and I used my crutches to push the adults aside. They seemed irritated by this. ‘The platform wasn’t built properly!’

  Aunt Franny frowned at me. I pointed to Astrid, who repeated what she’d just told us.

  The other adults scowled.

  ‘She always knows,’ I promised. ‘She can tell if people are lying.’

  Father, who had been pressed against the railing, watching the preschoolers, joined us. ‘It’s true,’ he told Franny. ‘Astrid knows.’

  Aunt Franny raised her megaphone and once again shouted at the next roof. ‘LAST CHANCE!’ she bellowed. ‘DID YOU BUILD THAT PLATFORM PROPERLY?’

  The young men hesitated.

  ‘Well …’ one began.

  That was enough for Aunt Franny.

  ‘GET THE BOATS OUT!’ she shouted into the megaphone. ‘GET THE BOATS!’

  Below us, the water churned and sizzled, waves leaping sideways as if surging to catch a ball.

  ‘Is that somebody swimming?!’ a voice beside me asked in wonder.

  And there, in the chaos of white water, a dark head moved steadily through the water.

  ‘Who would do that?’ voices clamoured. ‘She’ll drown! The currents are too strong!’

  Strange coldness gusted up from the bottom of my stomach.

  ‘Imogen?’ I whispered, searching around me. ‘Imogen?’

  Imogen was swimming.

  ‘Imogen!’ Father roared. His face twisted like the roots of ancient trees.

  Four boats had been dragged into the water, but three capsized at once, and one spun in helpless circles, motor shrieking.

  Several men and women stripped down to their bathing suits and struck out towards the platform, swimming hard. Most were swept into whirlpools, or dragged to sea.

  Imogen alone inched towards the platform. Her hands slapped the water, arms rotated—slower and slower.

  She was tiring.

  She stopped altogether.

  Her head reared up, and she trod water. The current dragged her sideways and water hammered her head. Her face splashed down again and she swam.

  ‘Imogen,’ Father breathed.

  Astrid was crying. ‘It’s my fault,’ she said. ‘The platform probably is going to hold. The platform is—’

  That’s when the platform collapsed.

  Clatter! Clatter! Clatter!

  A sound like crockery spilling.

  Whoosh!

  The screams of tiny children sailed to us on the wind.

  Imogen grabbed for a broken piece of platform—a length of timber. She held it steady on the surface, treading water, and she reached out one at a time, plucking children from the waves. She urged them to cling onto the floating timber. One child, two children, three, four, five. Even from the rooftop we could hear her calm, strong instructions.

  She let go of the wood and dove for the sixth child, the seventh.

  She struck out after the eighth.

  The children were like scraps of wet rag draped over that length of wood, and the wood rocked and tossed in the white water, drenched now and then by great splashes of white.

  Imogen wrenched more and more children from beneath the waves.

  ‘RIGHT THEN! EVERYBODY HOLD TIGHT!’ she bellowed. Took a mouthful of water, spat it out.

  By this time, another swimmer—an immense man, shiny with muscles—had almost caught up. At last one of the boats seemed to be tossing its way in the right direction.

  A woman, also muscular, reached them too.

  Between them—the people in the boat, the swimmer
s, Imogen—they towed the children slowly, steadily, back to the boardwalk.

  Back to safety. Into the weeping, grateful, hysterical arms of their parents.

  Some of the preschool children had been injured when the stage collapsed. Many had cuts and bruises and one had a broken wrist.

  A group of doctors took care of these children on the boardwalk. One was Queen Anita. I respected her for setting aside her queenliness to step in. Another was Doctor Eli, who’d set my broken ankle in Cloudburst. Alongside him was a third doctor, a woman, who looked exactly like Doctor Eli.

  ‘Twins,’ the elderly man on the roof told me. He was leaning on the railing, watching along with me.

  ‘Yes, they must be,’ I agreed.

  ‘Not must be.’ The man was annoyed. ‘Are. That’s Eli and Taya.’

  A breeze of realisation blew through me and I half-gasped: ‘Eli and Taya? The Children of Spindrift?’

  ‘Exactly.’ The man was less irritated now. ‘Don’t tell anybody, though. Attention makes them snappy.’

  I was giddy. A Child of Spindrift had plastered my ankle for me. I touched the plaster and felt a zing from the past, from Spindrift, from the Whispering Wars! But that could have been Doctor Eli’s Faery magic. Or my imagination.

  Imogen was whisked away to a hotel room to bathe while Astrid was encircled by people who wanted to know how she’d known the young men were lying.

  They hadn’t meant any harm, those young men, by the way. It turned out they’d built five or six stages before they reached that one, and were tired: melting under a hot sun. When they ran out of nails, they’d decided to take a break for a beer in the town square. They’d got caught up in a drinking game and had forgotten to return.

  They should have admitted this straightaway, of course, but they’d panicked—Aunt Franny can be frightening—and had been trying to recall just how important the missing nails might be, when Astrid had seen through them.

  Astrid was suddenly too shy to explain how she’d read their faces, so I explained about her talent at poker. At once, some friendly local pirates challenged all three of us to a poker game—Imogen was back by now. Astrid won three treasure chests—empty of treasure yet with plenty of sentimental value, the pirates promised.

  Father suggested Astrid return the treasure chests, as the pirates were teary, but the pirates refused, saying she’d won them fair and square. We arranged to have them shipped home, and Astrid planned to keep toys and books in them.

  By now, the party had splintered, with people either going home to get dry and warm, or tidying up the mess. Father was marvelling about how calm everyone had been in the crisis, and Aunt Franny reminded him that Spindrift is a seaside village, and the people of Spindrift had lived through wars, cyclones and hurricanes. ‘It is in the Kingdom of Storms,’ she pointed out. Also, she said, local Shadow Mages and pirates come from lives of great danger and conflict. Spindriftians are not easily afraid.

  We realised we hadn’t yet seen our cousin Bronte, but Aunt Franny told us she hadn’t come to the party at all. She’d been called away on some kind of secret, urgent mission. (She’s an adventurer, as I’ve mentioned.) It was true that we were going to see her when we went to Gainsleigh for the poker competition, of course, but we were disappointed. We love our cousin Bronte.

  We also hadn’t seen Alejandro, the Stolen Prince of Cloudburst. The guards had hustled him away when the wave came, and he never emerged again.

  Altogether it was very strange. We’d been invited to a party yet had never even spoken to the guest of honour. It was as if we’d been to half a party. This, we agreed, during dinner that night, was peculiar.

  ‘It’s like I’ve swum half a lap of a pool,’ Imogen said. ‘And hopped out.’

  ‘It’s like I’ve walked away from a poker game halfway through a hand,’ Astrid said.

  ‘I’ve walked out of a lecture midway through,’ Father contributed, wanting to join in. ‘Although, to be honest, I often do that if I get a new idea.’

  I almost said, ‘It’s like I’ve stopped a story in the middle,’ but it didn’t seem to fit the pattern. My stories aren’t my talent, the way swimming, poker and history lectures are my sisters’ and Father’s talents. They can’t be. They always get C minus.

  Early the next morning, we set off to the Kingdom of Vanquishing Cove so Father could attend his conference.

  The train compartment was small—two double-facing seats, Father and Astrid in one, Imogen and me in the other. Velvet drapes hung in the windows but these had been pushed open and looped into place.

  Sunshine was free to shine through, warming the leather seats. It seemed to glide through my veins and light up my heart. That’s how proud I was of my sisters.

  As the train chugged out of Spindrift Station, we were still chattering about the catastrophic events at the party the day before.

  That rogue wave! The forgotten little children!

  And most importantly, how Astrid had recognised that the young men were lying, and how Imogen had swum in the violent sea.

  My sisters were being modest and shrugging, ‘Oh, it was nothing,’ but Father and I were praising them. Father’s praise of Imogen was more complicated than mine, because he wanted her to know she’d been brave, but he also wanted her to know she ought not jump into a ferocious ocean where she could easily drown.

  ‘You were heroes,’ I told my sisters, and then, reflecting, ‘all I did was stand on the rooftop watching.’

  My family reminded me that I had a broken ankle and was therefore exempt from being heroic, and then the door to our compartment opened and a waiter wheeled in a breakfast trolley. With a flourish, he invited us to help ourselves.

  Nobody would ever enter the region of Wicked and Nefarious Kingdoms.

  Nobody who was not a Shadow Mage, I mean. Not if they wanted to live.

  But a single train line runs through this shadow realm. It connects the Kingdom of Storms, where we had attended the party, and the Kingdom of Vanquishing Cove, where we were headed.

  Which meant our train would soon enter the most dangerous shadow realm of them all.

  The train has a regularly updated Spellbinding ring around it and strict treaties require the locals to refrain from attacking it.

  So it is perfectly safe.

  But as the train whooshed through the Kingdom of Storms, ever-closer to the border of the shadow realm, my sisters and I found ourselves staring at the signs affixed to our compartment walls. In large red lettering, the signs said:

  ‘Why especially not at night?’ I asked.

  Father looked up. He’d taken out a stack of folders and papers from his case, and was preparing for his conference.

  ‘Especially what at night?’

  I pointed to the sign: At no point should a passenger attempt to get off the train but especially not at night.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about the rules,’ Father said, his eyes roaming from notice to notice. ‘That’s just lawyers getting carried away. It’s perfectly safe, this train ride.’

  ‘But what do they mean: especially not at night?’

  Father scratched his chin. ‘Well, it’s not at all safe at night,’ he admitted. ‘Not remotely. Night is when the rules collapse. Night is when Shadow Battles take place. Night is also when wolves, bears, Wild Radish Gnomes and outcast Witches emerge. The ponds turn to swamps, the mud boils and the Ghouls rise, multiply and look for human spirits to consume.’

  ‘Oh, is that all?’ Imogen asked a bit acidly.

  ‘Well, that’s enough, isn’t it?’ Father seemed cheerful. ‘You’d never survive the shadow realms at night. Certainly not if you got off the train. No chance! I doubt the Spellbinding around the train would even hold if we ended up stuck here at night!’

  Father looked back down at his papers and then, realising that all three of us were staring at him, he straightened up again. ‘Don’t worry, though,’ he said. ‘We arrive in Vanquishing Cove long before nightfall. It’s not that far r
eally, you could walk there from Spindrift in a couple of days.’

  ‘But if we break—’ I began.

  ‘If the train breaks down, they’ll fix it before night,’ Father promised. ‘If they can’t fix it, they’ll tow the train out of the region.’

  Imogen pointed at another of the signs. ‘What do they mean by “Shadow Mage of any size”—how big do Shadow Mages get?’

  Father glanced through the window. Fields rushed by, and occasional rundown farmhouses. ‘We’re coming to the border now,’ he told us. ‘I think you’re going to love it, girls. It’s so special to see this region. Very educational.’

  A pause.

  ‘As to how big Shadow Mages get,’ he continued, clearing his throat. ‘Well, you know the regular Shadow Mages—the type that look most like us, and sometimes roam about in our regions?’

  ‘Witches, Sterling Silver Foxes, Radish Gnomes and Sirens?’ Astrid counted them off on her fingers.

  ‘Right,’ Father agreed. ‘But there are hundreds—thousands—of other types. Pillboxes, Cantalops, Sandweeds, Seafloss, Backpedallers, Pocketdwellers, Chimney Reds. Some are tall and thin like beanstalks, some as heavy and large as a house! Then there are tiny little critters that get into your fingernails, or live in the seams of your pockets. They pierce your fingertips if you happen to put a hand in there. The Kwilligus takes the form of lukewarm water—looks like weak tea—and swims in a poisonous stream down gutters. If you happen to step into that water it’ll burn through your shoes and your feet right to the bone. Spit-lolly Vacancies are the size of snails. They leave a trail of poisonous stripes wherever they go—if your dog tastes the stripe, it will die. So many different ways of being evil, you see, even while appearing tiny and harmless. The sign means we should sound the alarm if a Shadow Mage breaks in, even if it seems harmless. Even if it fits into your palm. All right?’

  We all nodded.

  ‘But nothing will get in,’ Father concluded. ‘Spellbinding ring around the train, remember? Here, share these crisps.’