The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst Read online

  That surprised even me. I hadn’t known I’d done that. But I knew it now, somewhere deep inside me.

  The displaced sea creatures returned to their homes, and so did the wandering populations of Shadow Mages, and so did the Spellbinders—including Bronte, Aunt Carrie, Hsiang and Georgia. They were exhausted, and needed to rest with their families.

  Now I sat up in bed. I was hungry. As if he’d been waiting right outside the door for me to have that exact thought, the whiskery man swept in with a breakfast tray: bacon, sausages, eggs, toast, beans, fried potatoes, pancakes, waffles, juice, hotchocolate, and a flower in a vase.

  ‘I thank you,’ the whiskery man said solemnly—he’d been saying this each day. ‘My family thank you. The Kingdoms and Empires thank you. You are a hero.’ He blinked away tears and left.

  ‘It’s true but don’t let it go to your head,’ Astrid reminded me.

  That’s when my sisters told me that Tilla Tarpaulin, the director of the K&E Alliance, had called a meeting to discuss just how a Fiend and his daughter, Pelagia, had managed to nearly end us all.

  And that Father had given us permission to attend.

  ‘It’s happening right here in the Old Schoolhouse,’ Imogen said, ‘since you’re here. And you’re so important.’

  ‘But don’t let it go to your head,’ Astrid repeated.

  Tilla Tarpaulin looked like a domino with furious eyes.

  Her eyes might not always be furious, I suppose, but that day, at the secret meeting, they were like flash fires.

  ‘What I want to know,’ she demanded, ‘is why nobody believed Professor Staranise here? He knew it was a Fiend all along! He even knew which Fiend it was!’

  We were in the drawing room off the entryway of the Old Schoolhouse. As well as Tilla, there were ten or twelve adults, mostly wearing suits and serious expressions, and various security guards. One of the adults was Carson Brody, local mayor with important nose. Two of the adults were Whisperers—I knew this because their hair fell to their ankles and because other adults shifted their chairs as far from them as possible. They must be Autumn’s parents, I realised; they had exactly the same calm, quietly-humorous expressions.

  My sisters and I were seated against the far wall. We had promised Father we would be ‘absolutely silent’, but when Tilla arrived, she marched over to me, gripped my hand and said, ‘You are truly a hero.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied (breaking Father’s rule).

  ‘No,’ Tilla said, solemnly. ‘Thank you.’

  Imogen and Astrid both shot me meaningful looks, so I didn’t let it go to my head.

  Father started the meeting by giving a little classical history lesson about Fiends and Weavers. He pointed out the two Whisperers—Soren and Livia Hillside—and said that, as well as been part of the resistance during the Whispering Wars (which made them heroes), they had heard future Whispers about the Fiend and Weaver.

  ‘And you said all this at the Vanquishing Cove conference?’ Tilla checked, glancing at the people nearest her. ‘You heard him say this?’

  People pretended interest in their notepads.

  That’s when Tilla Tarpaulin demanded to know why nobody had believed Father. The other adults cleared their throats, and defended themselves, muttering things like: ‘We thought it was all myth!’

  ‘We thought he was bananas!’

  ‘I mean to say—they were Whisperers.’

  Tilla interrupted with a loud sigh. ‘More on that later. I want to know about this child who helped the Fiend.’

  Father explained that the Ocean Fiend would have adapted so thoroughly to the ocean that he could not leave it, which is why he had needed his daughter to wake the other water Fiends.

  ‘And where is she now? Who’s taking care of her?’ Tilla asked.

  A woman rose, said, ‘That’d be me,’ and turned into Matron from school! She’d obviously been Matron all along but I hadn’t recognised her with her hair so neatly brushed.

  Astrid whispered to me: ‘We forgot to tell you. Matron’s back from the Northern Climes. Got back just after the flood.’

  Tilla, shuffling her papers, asked: ‘You’re Faery?’

  ‘Part Faery,’ Matron agreed, proudly.

  ‘And I take it the child is a young Fiend?’

  ‘Oh no!’ Matron almost chuckled, but stopped herself. ‘The little dear. No, she’s a regular child. She had the scent of Fiendish evil on her, certainly—I assume that’s what the scent was anyway—a lot like Shadow Magic, only stronger. Enough bubble baths and Faery cake and it’s gone now. She’s certainly not the biological child of Jonathan J. Lanyard.’

  Heads swung towards her.

  ‘No, she believes he’s her father, but it seems to me, she was taken into the sea when she was very young, perhaps an infant, and raised by him.’

  A silence.

  ‘He stole the child?’ somebody breathed.

  ‘She must have been young enough to adapt to ocean life,’ Matron continued, ‘—he’s given her bioluminescence and the power to breathe under water—and to forget her life before. He told her tales of how evil Weavers destroyed his friends, so of course she believed him. It’s a marvel she found the courage to defy him near the end.’

  Tilla nodded thoughtfully. ‘I wonder how the Fiend managed to capture a little—’

  That’s when I broke my promise a second time.

  I jumped to my feet and shouted: ‘The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst!’

  Everyone stared at me, of course.

  ‘Prince Alejandro of the Kingdom of Storms! He was paddling on a beach at Spindrift when he was taken by a Water Sprite! That’s in the region where the Fiend lived! Maybe the Fiend put the Water Sprite in a trance and made him steal Alejandro, meaning Alejandro to be his child? Only he never got to collect Alejandro from the water lily because pirates picked him up! So he stole Pelagia instead!’

  There was a short silence. Then:

  ‘Well, perhaps’—went flitting around the room. Everyone looked at me, admiringly.

  Father said, ‘Hmm,’ and people swivelled to look at him instead. They were very respectful to Father generally, I noticed, feeling guilty for being so disrespectful before.

  ‘Yes,’ Father said. ‘It makes sense. But listen, Pelagia had clothes and stories and was enrolled in a school. Somebody else must have helped the Fiend.’

  Matron was nodding as they spoke. ‘They did,’ she said. ‘Pelagia told me there was somebody else. Jonathan would take the child to see this person on the shore, and she’d have lessons in ordinary life. Pelagia says she loves this person and she refuses to give their identity away. She simply can’t, she says. It’s curious because there is definite love for the person—but also there is fear.’

  Tilla gazed at the ceiling. She was thinking.

  But then a gruff voice spoke up. It was Carson Brody. ‘All right, let’s think about who this person is. Who do we know who, one, lives fairly close to where the Fiend was living, two, has a habit of stealing children, and three, can control minds?’

  To which several voices chorused, ‘Whisperers!’

  ‘Now, hold up there,’ Autumn’s parents protested in unison.

  ‘Let’s not jump to blame the Whisperers!’ Father joined in. ‘Ten years ago they were still behind the Spellbinding! They can’t have been running errands for an Ocean Fiend back then!’

  ‘Who knows what powers the Fiend had?’ Tilla pointed out. ‘He could have infiltrated the Spellbinding. And it was broken a couple of years ago.’

  ‘The Whisperers Whispered Water Sprites to steal the children—first Alejandro, then Pelagia,’ Carson Brody declared. ‘They Whispered the Water Sprites to forget why they’d done it. They prepared Pelagia for life on land and Whispered Pelagia to love them and fear them! THE WHISPERING KINGDOM HAS BEEN WORKING WITH THE OCEAN FIEND!’

  After that, I don’t know what happened.

  All the adults were shouting at once.

  Father was ranting abo
ut prejudices against Whisperers, and trying to give a history lesson; the Hillsides were protesting that Whisperers would have no reason to help a Fiend to cover the Kingdoms and Empires in water; Matron was advising everyone to take a breath; Tilla was commanding silence; and everybody else was screaming for the Whispering Kingdom to be placed under a Spellbinding again.

  When a chair got thrown against a wall, Imogen stood up quickly and said ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  We closed the door behind us, and there was Pelagia.

  She was standing by the coat rack in the entryway, eating a sticky bun.

  ‘Want some?’ she asked, with her mouth full. She tore the bun into pieces and handed them around before we’d answered.

  Her eyes darted between us, nervously.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry I’m the daughter of a Fiend.’

  Imogen, Astrid and I all exclaimed that it was not her fault, and that she’d actually been stolen away to be his daughter and brought up to believe his stories, and she’d been so brave sending those light signals out the day of the flood.

  ‘You’re a true hero,’ I said. And then automatically: ‘But don’t let it go to your head.’

  ‘Oh, she can if she wants,’ Imogen allowed generously.

  Pelagia pointed at the drawing room door—the shouts carried on in there, but muffled by the closed door—and asked, ‘Do they need me to come in yet? I was supposed to answer questions.’

  We said we didn’t really recommend that, and told her about the argument.

  ‘Was it a Whisperer helping your father?’ I asked.

  Pelagia shook her head. ‘I can’t really tell you anything about the person.’

  ‘Can you try?’ Astrid suggested. ‘Just give us some clues?’

  Miserably, Pelagia murmured: ‘Please don’t ask me.’

  We sat on the floor, leaning up against the wall, eating the sticky bun.

  ‘What’s it been like, pretending to be a regular person?’ Imogen asked her. ‘You’re good at it. Fooled me.’

  ‘Well, at first, it was exciting,’ Pelagia answered. ‘An adventure. I had a whole invented personality and a suitcase full of chocolate boxes to share.’

  We stretched our legs out on the entryway floorboards and listened to the THUMPS! and CRASHES! from inside the drawing room.

  ‘Should we be worried about Father?’ Astrid wondered.

  ‘They’re just tossing things around for emphasis,’ Imogen said. ‘If an actual fistfight breaks out, the guards will stop it. Keep going, Pelagia. It was exciting at first and then—’

  ‘I started to feel homesick,’ Pelagia admitted. ‘I missed water so much it was like toothache. I was so happy about the swimming tournament because it meant I could do swimming training but even that wasn’t enough. I spent as much time as I could with my feet in the pond here. My father would send me messages while I was there.’

  I nodded, remembering the flashes of light.

  ‘And then I started to make friends,’ she finished. ‘And to like people—like you, Imogen. And Esther. Sorry, Astrid, I never really got to know you. And the responsibility of helping to cause a flood! Of drowning people! It was too much!’

  Astrid patted her shoulder. ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ she said. ‘It was the Fiends. Not you.’

  Again, we were quiet, licking treacle sauce from our fingers, listening to ROARS! and angry HA HA HAs! from the drawing room.

  ‘Are you sure you can’t tell us who packed your suitcase for you?’ Astrid checked. ‘And gave you the chocolate? And brought you here?’

  Pelagia’s voice trembled. ‘I can’t let that person get into trouble,’ she said. ‘I really care about that person. I promise: that person is a good person.’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t shouted about the Stolen Prince of Cloudburst,’ I said. ‘That seemed to lead to them blaming the Whisperers.’

  ‘Someone would have thought of it anyway,’ Astrid said comfortingly.

  ‘Yes, the Whispering Kingdom is so close to where the Fiend was,’ Imogen agreed. ‘So there’s—’

  But I don’t know the rest of what Imogen said because that’s when I stood up, mumbling that I had to go, and ran out the front door of the Schoolhouse.

  I ran through the gardens.

  It was strange to be outside again, strange to be running under a warm sun. I took deep breaths of fresh air.

  I reached the school and flung open the door.

  Inside, I ran along empty corridors—everyone was in class for the first day of term—and clattered up the stairs to the library.

  ‘Esther!’ Carlos, his beard at its bushiest, leapt up from his spinning chair with such speed the chair began to topple backwards. He swung around to catch it before it crashed.

  ‘Hi, Carlos,’ I said once he’d straightened up again. ‘I need information on Horseshoe Ogres, please.’

  ‘Of course, but first, can I say congratulations on being a Rain Weaver and saving all the Kingdoms and Empires?’

  ‘All right,’ I agreed.

  ‘Congratulations!’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, nodding seriously.

  Carlos saw the urgency of my quest.

  ‘Let me help,’ he said. And he emerged from behind his desk, hurried to a shelf, and began picking and choosing volumes until he’d gathered a stack. He handed this to me.

  He rarely does that. He usually requires us to do our own research, only calling out the section of the library we should search.

  It almost made me cry.

  ‘We don’t have any books that are just on Horseshoe Ogres,’ he apologised. ‘But if you check the index of these ones, there’ll be a few paragraphs in each.’

  I thanked him again, sat at a table, and read what I could about Horseshoe Ogres.

  Hours went by.

  I turned page after page.

  Nothing seemed helpful.

  And then I read a line that, for a moment, made my heart scramble to its feet, spin in place and then sit back down again and carry on as before.

  That’s how it felt, anyway. It was odd.

  Principal Hortense bumped into me as I was emerging, slowly, from the library.

  She was striding by, dressed in a beaded evening dress with a feathered headband.

  ‘Oh my lucky stars!’ she cried. ‘Esther! Here you are!’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

  ‘What a relief! You did give me a scare! I was crossing fingers and toes we’d find you in time! The gymnasium is decorated! People have been arriving all afternoon! I do worry about you, Esther, as you always forget to raise your hand when you speak and now you’ve disappeared for the afternoon. But what a good girl you are! Bumping into me just in time! Lucky I didn’t cancel!’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said faintly. ‘Cancel what?’

  ‘We’ve all been looking. Your sisters say I forgot to invite you three girls, which is funny, as you are—anyway, what are you going to wear? No time to change, actually! It’s starting now! Come along.’

  And she led me firmly into the dining hall.

  The hall glowed with candlelight, and gleamed with silver cutlery, crystal glassware, and white linen napkins. It had been completely rearranged, crammed with extra tables, and it swarmed with elegant waiters, trays held high. They moved about between men, women and children, all got up in suits, gowns, tizz and silk.

  Amongst the chatting strangers, I began to see familiar faces. Girls from my school, and boys from Nicholas Valley High. What were they doing here? Many of the adults from today’s meeting were also there—Carson Brody, Tilla Tarpaulin, some of the other officials. Only a few hours earlier, they’d been shouting and throwing things at each other. Now, they were reaching for champagne, chuckling gently as they tapped each other’s elbows. It was very strange.

  ‘Just a moment, dear,’ Principal Hortense said to me, and she disappeared into the crowd.

  I felt both shy and confused. For one thing, I was wearing my blue sailor dress, which was not ne
arly shimmery or flouncy enough. I hid in the back corner and watched, hoping to understand what was happening.

  Eventually, I realised that a cluster of girls from my own grade were standing quite near me. I hadn’t recognised them with their shiny frills. They were circled around Mrs Pollock—herself in a pink, drop-waist dress with two strings of pearls—and were concentrating fiercely as she performed their high fives, one at time, at rapid speed. There was a brief pause as Autumn approached the group, leading the Whisperer couple from the meeting.

  ‘Excuse me, Mrs Pollock,’ Autumn said politely. She looked very elegant, her short hair tucked beneath a beret, her dress spangled and knee-length. ‘I’d like to introduce you to my parents: Soren and Livia Hillside. From the Whispering Kingdom.’

  Autumn’s parents had wound their long, long hair into tidy loops, but the group hushed and some girls stared openly at these loops, retreating slightly.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Autumn’s mother said to them calmly. ‘See? We’re not wearing wristbands. We can only Whisper in the old way. You are safe.’ She held out bare arms, and the girls nodded, embarrassed. Then she turned to Mrs Pollock.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ she said, in her soft, polite voice. ‘Thank you for taking such fine care of our daughter this last year.’ There was the faintest twitch in the corner of her right eye as she said this. Curious, I thought.

  Autumn’s father nodded. ‘Yes, we have heard much of you from Autumn. But surely we have met before, Mrs Pollock?’

  ‘Yes,’ Livia Hillside nodded. ‘I was thinking the same thing. You are very familiar, Mrs Pollock. Perhaps we have crossed paths?’

  Mrs Pollock pulled one of her hilarious clown-faces. ‘I think not!’ she said. ‘But let me show you what your daughter chose for her personalised high five!’

  Then she and Autumn carried out their high five, and the game began again, with Mrs Pollock moving around the circle, high fiving everyone, faster and faster. Other girls from my grade, and then from other grades, and boys from Nicholas Valley, various teachers and adults—moved closer to watch, and Mrs Pollock, not pausing, called to them to join the circle and invent their own high five. Soon, she was spinning in place, high fiving everyone who approached, the circle growing ever larger, roars of laughter filling the room. She began to spring about the room slapping every hand she saw! Girls ran after her, laughing.