The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst Read online

  —Mrs Pollock is awful.

  I stopped.

  Where had that thought come from?

  It was a memory, I realised. I had thought that the morning when the twins cut Autumn’s hair.

  No, she’s not! I argued, strangely panicked. She’s funny! Doctor Lanwish doesn’t mind! Look, he’s laughing!

  But when I studied Doctor Lanwish more closely, I caught flashes of teeny creases, like claw-prints, appearing and disappearing around his cheeks and eyes. He was uncomfortable and was trying to hide this—even, I realised with surprise, from himself.

  I put down my fork, although I’d just pierced three peas.

  ‘Mrs Pollock is awful,’ I announced.

  The girls around me gasped and turned disapproving looks on me. ‘She is certainly not,’ they protested. ‘She’s wonderful!’

  ‘She teases people,’ I said.

  ‘People don’t mind,’ Tatty declared.

  ‘I think maybe they do,’ I began, but Tatty held up a palm.

  ‘Not if they have a sense of humour they don’t,’ she said.

  ‘Where’s your sense of humour, Esther?’ Zoe Fawnwell demanded.

  ‘Esther is only saying that because she’s getting bad marks,’ Hetty informed the others. ‘She’s on the Endiva table. It’s not Mrs Pollock’s fault that you’re not as smart as you used to be, Esther.’

  ‘Just because it’s your birthday, doesn’t mean you’re allowed to be unkind,’ Tatty lectured.

  ‘Look at how nice she was to Tatty and me when we cut off Autumn’s hair!’ Hetty added. ‘Principal Hortense thought we should get a detention but Mrs Pollock only scolded us a little and said we hadn’t meant any harm. We’d only over-thought things, she said, which is a sign of our high intelligence.’

  ‘But,’ I argued, ‘it was because of Mrs Pollock that you did it! She—’ How to explain this? She had manipulated them into cutting off Autumn’s hair. ‘She made you!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Hetty and Tatty demanded. ‘That’s ridiculous!’

  They shifted their chairs away from me, turning their shoulders, and the others did the same. I looked across at the teachers’ table again. Mrs Pollock was holding up her knife, studying her reflection in the silver.

  She’s awful, I thought once again, but more softly.

  The thought faded and dissolved. She wasn’t awful. She was funny and clever. I was the one whose schoolwork was dismal, and I was trying to blame my teacher.

  I felt ashamed.

  The last thing that happened on my birthday was this.

  I was in bed in the dormitory. It was ‘quiet chat’ time. Nobody was chatting with me. The twins were still furious with me, and Dot is as quiet as moonlight.

  I was arranging my cards on my bedside table, but they kept tipping sideways. One slid to the floor, and I reached down for it. It was from Aunt Emma, a handmade card decorated with Emma’s own sketches of little frogs. When I’d opened it earlier I’d admired the frogs and not taken much notice of her message. It was just:

  Darling Esther!

  Happiest of birthdays!

  Love, love, love,

  Aunt Emma

  (She is the most enthusiastic of my aunts.)

  I read it again, finding the love, love, love soothing, and that’s when I realised there was a PS on the other side I hadn’t seen before.

  Here is what it said:

  PS Esther! Darling child, just got your letter! SO sorry my paintings didn’t arrive in time! Don’t send them back; keep them!

  Oh, the picnic painting? Funny you should ask—you are IN that painting! It’s in the region of Wicked & Nefarious Kingdoms. Back when they’d just started running the train. Your mother and I were visiting your Aunt Franny in Spindrift and you and your sisters were tiny. (Your mother was doing research work, and your father was away on a research trip of his own … ) We read about this exciting new train in the paper and decided to take a ride on it! Just for a lark. (We didn’t tell Franny, she’d have forbidden it as too dangerous … but the paper said it was safe! We believed it!)

  Anyhow, the train broke down and we had a picnic. I painted the scene afterwards from memory.

  Your mother was not planning to tell your father about ouradventure,ashe’dhavegotintoastateaboutthedangers. Actually, he’d have been right, too! It’s safe NOW but it was VERY dangerous back then. How did we survive??! Anyway, we did, and I’m sure she must have told your father all about it by now so it’s all right for me to tell you!

  Much Love, Aunt Emma

  I dropped Aunt Emma’s card, took the stack of paintings from the back of my closet space, found the picnic painting and brought it back to my bed.

  I studied it.

  Imogen must be the little girl pointing towards the sky, I decided, and Astrid was the baby in the pram. The woman gazing at the trees was probably Aunt Emma, and the other woman, standing by the pram, resembled my mother.

  So I was the small child lying on the rug.

  Actually, Aunt Emma, I thought suddenly, I don’t think my mother has told my father all about this picnic by now.

  Eventually, I fell asleep. I only had the dream once, but I woke with a more powerful pain in my chest than I ever had before, and with the single, searing question: Where was everyone else?

  In the painting, my mother is there, and Aunt Emma, and my sisters.

  In the dream, there is nobody but me.

  There is a telephone in Principal Hortense’s office.

  No student or teacher is allowed to use it. In an emergency we may request to send a telegram, but Principal Hortense is the only person in the school permitted to use that telephone.

  On my sixteenth day back at school, a Wednesday, I woke up very early, crept down the stairs and into the Principal’s office, and telephoned my mother.

  Mother’s voice sounded muffled. I had woken her.

  ‘Esther!’ she cried, sharpening up. ‘Whatever is the matter?’

  ‘Did we take a train through the Wicked and Nefarious Kingdoms when I was little?’ I asked.

  ‘What on—?’ Mother laughed. ‘What a suggestion! Of course not! That imagination of yours!’

  I heard water running then. Our telephone is in the kitchen, and its cord stretches as far as the sink. She must have been getting herself a glass of water.

  ‘Aunt Emma told me we did,’ I said.

  The water stopped running.

  ‘Oh, Emma,’ she said. ‘Her imagination is almost as wild as yours.’

  ‘Aunt Emma sent me a painting,’ I continued, ‘of us all having a picnic. The train broke down, she said, and we had a picnic. I saw the exact spot on the train with Father.’

  There was a pause. The sound of Mother drinking her water, and then a clink as she set it down.

  ‘Oh, well, that sounds vaguely familiar,’ Mother said. ‘I’m not at all sure why you had to telephone at this hour to tell me though: that was years ago. Funny thing that you are. All right then, off to class now, goodbye dear—’

  ‘Mother,’ I said.

  A thumping noise. I think Mother was tossing wood into the fireplace.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Was I left alone? At that picnic? Did you all … go for a walk or something and leave me on a blanket?’

  A pause. Then Mother shouted with laughter.

  ‘Of course not! The idea! You were two years old! Do you believe I would leave you alone? In a shadow realm? The idea!’

  ‘It’s just—I’ve been having these dreams—and—’

  ‘DREAMS!’ I had to hold the telephone away from my ear. ‘Oh, this is the limit. I really must get ready for work, Esther, I—’

  ‘It was my birthday yesterday,’ I said.

  ‘Of course it was,’ she agreed at once. ‘Happy birthday.’

  ‘Did you forget?’

  ‘Forget! Of course not! What an idea! I sent you a gift and I left a message for you. All right? I must get on! Goodbye!’

 
‘I didn’t get a gift or a message,’ I began but there was a click and Mother had gone.

  I crept upstairs to the dormitory, washed and dressed and was at the reception desk waiting when Ms Ubud arrived.

  ‘Are you sure there were no messages for me yesterday?’ I asked.

  ‘As I said yesterday, Esther,’ Ms Ubud snapped, ‘if there had been, we’d have let you know!’

  Later that morning, Mrs Pollock said we were going to write stories.

  I straightened up.

  Something good at last. I love writing stories. It was raining outside again, and our classroom glowed in the dim light. Perfect.

  ‘Use your imagination!’ Mrs Pollock said. ‘It’s free choice! Entertain me!’

  Around me people grumbled: ‘I don’t know what to write about.’

  It always confuses me, people saying that. My head brims with stories waiting to be told.

  I picked up my pen and smiled to myself.

  Put my pen to the paper.

  A Story, I wrote, by Esther Mettlestone-Staranise.

  Smiled again.

  Tapped the pen against my forehead, ready for the idea.

  Smiled.

  Tapped my pen. Tapped the paper.

  Around me, people were writing busily.

  I put my pen down.

  Use your imagination! Mrs Pollock had said. Entertain me!

  But I wouldn’t entertain Mrs Pollock. She would write:

  This is very disjointed.

  Or

  Please try to use common sense

  Or

  Please try to use logic and reason.

  Or

  Don’t try so hard to impress.

  And then she would write:

  C–

  I sighed so deeply that Dot, beside me, glanced over.

  Then I coughed to clear away my thoughts.

  Picked up my pen again.

  Waited for an idea.

  That imagination of yours!

  I stared at the paper, and stared.

  Nothing happened.

  I looked up in surprise.

  Mrs Pollock was watching me. A tiny smile. She held my gaze. Lowered her eyelids slowly, and opened them again.

  I shuffled about in my chair.

  Picked up my pen—

  My hand was shaking.

  I wrote:

  There was once—

  And stopped.

  For the longest time, I stared at the words.

  There was once …

  There was once—

  What was there once?

  That’s when I stood up, ran from the room, along the corridor, through the back door and out into the grounds, where I threw myself into a muddy garden bed, and the rain hammered my face, and I sobbed.

  I sobbed because I had no stories left to tell.

  And because my mother had forgotten my birthday, my sisters were away, my best friends gone, my new friend Autumn was playing poker instead of me, my new friend Pelagia was not to be trusted, an oceanographer with curly hair had died, I dreamed about a picnic blanket each night—

  And so on.

  I found plenty of reasons.

  The rain crashed against my face, bounced off my nose, slid down my neck, clattered against my arms and legs.

  I don’t know how much time passed.

  Actually, that’s not true. I’m just trying to be dramatic again. I know exactly how much time passed because I heard the bell ring for morning tea, for the end of morning tea, for lunch, for the end of lunch, for the end of class, and for afternoon tea.

  Eventually, I stopped sobbing. You can’t keep that up for five hours and thirty-seven minutes. Now and then the rain paused, as if it also needed a break, but then it started again. Meanwhile, I lay in the mud and stared at the low grey sky through the splash and blur.

  The rain slowed to a faint drizzle. I closed my eyes.

  ‘Esther!’ came a voice.

  A boy’s voice.

  I opened my eyes.

  Stefan stood holding an umbrella and staring down at me. His shoes and socks were mud-splattered.

  Dot Pecorino and Arlo hovered behind Stefan. Neither of them held umbrellas. They also stared, rain sliding down their cheeks.

  I sat up in the mud.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ I asked. I was a bit annoyed. I knew I was muddy and bedraggled, but honestly. Their eyes were the size of giant squids.

  ‘We were in dance class,’ Stefan explained quickly. ‘Dot asked me to help her find you. She was worried. Said you ran out earlier today and never came back inside.’

  I looked at Dot in surprise, but she was busy goggling.

  ‘Arlo wanted to help,’ Stefan continued steadily, ‘as he’s your partner. Said he can’t dance without a partner. So we slipped out of the auditorium into the grounds—and here you are—but Esther …’ Deep lines ran across Stefan’s forehead.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve gone peculiar,’ Arlo announced.

  ‘Mmhm,’ Dot murmured.

  ‘What?’ I looked down at myself, opened my palms. ‘Oh!’

  It was as if a colourful spider had spun a web and imprinted it on my skin. Silver, blue, gold and green lines intersecting. My palms, my hands, my wrists.

  ‘Esther,’ Stefan said. ‘I’ve read about this. If the book is right, it means—’

  ‘It means what?’ I pushed myself up to my knees.

  ‘It means nature has chosen you to—well, to become a Fiend.’

  Arlo and Dot both swung to look at him.

  ‘What’s a Fiend?’ Dot asked.

  ‘Like from those stories in classical history?’ Arlo said at the same time. ‘That you talked about in your speech, Stefan? The evil monsters? That’s what that pattern means? But it’s—’

  ‘It’s all over her,’ Stefan agreed.

  I stumbled to my feet, smacked my hands together, rubbed at my arms and face.

  ‘Go away! Get off me! Go away!’ I shouted.

  Unexpectedly, the fine lines on my hands began to fade.

  Stefan was solemn. ‘Look, the book might be wrong. Remember that it’s generally believed that those were just stories, not real. But if it is real, and you have been chosen, you’re going to turn into an evil monster, Esther. We need a Spellbinder or a Faery to help you. Can your school nurse find one?’ His forehead creases deepened. ‘Oh, but the pattern’s completely gone now.’

  ‘Nurse’ll just laugh at us,’ Arlo pointed out.

  I looked at their faces.

  And into my mind came my father’s face as he spoke to his research assistant on the telephone: his startled eyes, the colour draining.

  Fear, like a jagged lightning strike, tore through my body.

  Classical history is real.

  And I was about to be a Fiend.

  I wobbled. Almost tipped sideways. Straightened up.

  Think, Esther.

  Who could help me?

  Not Mrs Pollock. Not Nurse Sydelle. Not Principal Hortense.

  Stefan was right, I needed a—

  I spun around and marched through the squelchy grass, around the pond, and up the stairs of the Old Schoolhouse. I waited while the others caught up, then I reached for the knocker.

  The door opened almost immediately.

  ‘Come in!’ exclaimed a large woman, ushering us into the lobby.

  Scratched and dented floorboards. An umbrella stand crowded with umbrellas. A coat stand heavy with overcoats. A telephone sitting on a little round table. High ceilings. Staircase running up to the next floor.

  The large woman’s hair was swept into a butterfly clip.

  She was smiling at me.

  I smiled back, astonished.

  I knew who she was.

  Carabella-the-Great, the most powerful Spellbinder in all the Kingdoms and Empires.

  You know how I mentioned earlier that I know a secret about Carabella-the-Great?

  I will now tell you the secret.

 
She is one of my mother’s sisters.

  ‘Aunt Carrie!’

  ‘Hello, Esther,’ Aunt Carrie said. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Oh, your aunt is here,’ Stefan said, relieved. ‘I thought you’d lost your mind, Esther. I knew there were filing clerks having a convention here so I couldn’t understand why you were—I mean, what possible use a—no offence, Mrs—er. I’m sure filing clerks are very … It’s just—anyhow, good afternoon!’

  Stefan reached out and shook Aunt Carrie’s hand vigorously.

  ‘Call me Carrie,’ she suggested.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Carrie. I’m Stefan, Esther’s friend from Nicholas Valley Boys, and this is Dot, my dance partner. Here is Arlo, also from Nicholas Valley.’

  He was well brought-up, Stefan, and had apparently just remembered this.

  But he was also worried and his voice hurried on, speaking over Aunt Carrie’s invitation to come into the—she didn’t finish.

  ‘This is a bit hard to explain,’ Stefan said. ‘But I recently read a book about classical Fiends and well, I’m worried that they were real … and that your niece has been … chosen. Now, I realise that …’ Stefan took a deep breath, ready to explain, but Aunt Carrie’s smile had vanished.

  ‘Yes, I know about classical Fiends,’ she interrupted. ‘What makes you think Esther’s been chosen?’

  Stefan became even graver. ‘Just now, her skin was covered in a web pattern.’

  Dot and Arlo nodded.

  ‘It’s gone now,’ Stefan admitted. ‘But it was all over her. The book I read said that people chosen—’

  ‘Yes,’ Aunt Carrie interrupted again. ‘I know.’ She was looking hard at me in a way that made ropes of fear loop around my knees, as if keen to topple me.

  Stefan continued, clearing his throat: ‘If Fiends are real, they’re pure evil. So, if you know a Spellbinder or Faery who might help your niece, I think that could be … her only hope.’

  Arlo whistled through his teeth, and leaned up against the coat stand. It wobbled. He jumped away from it muttering, ‘Sorry.’