The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst Page 6

  Most of us had finished our laps and were sitting on the benches, safely across the pool from the shattering glass, but some girls had been waiting to swim their laps, some were in the pool—

  And three tiny girls, about six years old, had been walking along the opposite side, heading towards the changing rooms.

  These three crouched, arms wrapped around their heads as shards, fragments, sheets of glass rained on them.

  Everyone else swarmed back towards the benches, to safety.

  The glass stopped falling.

  The three little girls remained frozen.

  Knee-deep in a river of glinting silver.

  There was a powerful silence. Next, the eerie sound of the wind outside—now that the wall had vanished—and the sudden trill of a bird’s song.

  Many girls started screaming then, or burst into sobs.

  This was not helpful. I mean, I understood it—we’d just had a terrible shock. But it wasn’t helpful to the three little girls over there.

  One of these girls was shaking her head slowly, side to side, trying to shake glass fragments from her hair. Lines of bright red appeared on her arms and legs. She had been cut and was bleeding.

  The second girl brushed glass from her own shoulders. She was also bleeding.

  The third remained perfectly still. A shard of glass had pierced her thigh. She stared at it.

  ‘EVERYONE, STAY PERFECTLY STILL,’ Mr Dar-Healey boomed over the screams. I’d forgotten he was beside me. He rose now, his face a greyish colour.

  He leapt down the steps of the benches—I could see he was shaking, his whole body trembling—and it made his leaps awkward. He skirted around the pool, skidding on the wet pool tiles. Raelene, the head swim teacher, seemed to blink back into herself, and she also rushed over. But both paused at the carpet of glass, and began to tread carefully through it towards the girls.

  Through the blankness where the glass wall had been, the blue of the sky and green of the town park were visible. A group of townsfolk, about ten or twelve adults, were running across the park towards us—worried expressions, voices calling to each other. ‘Did you see that?’ ‘The wall’s come down! The swimming pool wall!’ ‘Is everyone all right in there?’

  Just as Mr Dar-Healey reached the little girl with the shard in her thigh, she plucked it out herself. At once, bright red blood streamed down her leg. Mr Dar-Healey caught her up in his arms, turned to Raelene, and lunged for the towel over her shoulder. He bound this around the little girl’s leg, around and around, speaking to her gently all the while. You could see her eyes staring up at him, and you could hear the crunch of the glass under his feet.

  This is when I noticed that Katya from my dormitory was skidding towards the other two little girls. I remembered that they were both on her junior chess team.

  I looked around for my sisters, and caught Imogen’s worried glance a few benches away. Astrid shuffled up to sit beside me. She’d been in the pool when it happened, and had scrambled out without a towel. She was shivering, her lips a violet colour, and I wrapped her in my towel, pulling her close to me to warm her up.

  The townsfolk crossing the park were closer, but had slowed to a more cautious pace. Glass had splashed out in both directions, scattering the grass outside, so they were carefully picking and weaving amongst the glints.

  ‘Is one of you a doctor?’ Mr Dar-Healey called to them. He took a step in their direction, the little girl still in his arms. ‘Can someone get her to the hospital?’

  At which point, a voice behind me screamed, ‘NO!’

  It was Autumn Hillside.

  She had leapt up onto a bench and was gesticulating wildly. Her long braid flew about behind her.

  ‘NO!’ she screamed. ‘MR DAR-HEALEY! GET AWAY! GET THE GIRLS AWAY!’

  Everyone turned and stared at her. People muttered things like, ‘Lost her marbles.’ Mr Dar-Healey’s brow crinkled and he took another careful step towards the approaching townsfolk, the little girl still in his arms. Blood was already seeping through the towel around her leg.

  But Autumn hadn’t finished. ‘RUN!’ she bawled.

  I wondered if I should go and gently sit her back down again. ‘It’s already happened,’ I would say. ‘The glass wall has come down. It’s too late to run.’ Things like that.

  ‘HURRY!!’ Autumn bellowed. ‘GET AWAY!!’

  Many people sighed. Some covered their ears with their hands.

  It was as if she was a few moments back in time—as if she was living her life the way I swam, turning back into the bubbles of the stroke before.

  ‘Autumn?’ I called. Yes, I decided, it probably was my job to calm her. After all, I’d walked here with her. She was in my dormitory. And most importantly, I’d decided to be her friend—you have to take your friends as they are, even if they turn out a bit odd.

  Two people outside had almost reached Mr Dar-Healey and both were reaching out for the little girl. The woman wore jangling bracelets and a sundress printed with daisies. The elderly man was in a suit and tie.

  Autumn ignored me, only shrieking more loudly. And then, most astonishing of all, she began to laugh.

  A shrieking, hammering laugh.

  The two people outside paused and looked across at her. Their arms dropped. Mr Dar-Healey spun around.

  ‘Hey!’ he called.

  Autumn carried on laughing.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing?!’

  She ignored him.

  He turned back to the townsfolk—frowns creased their foreheads. The other townsfolk outside had also paused, a little distance away.

  Mr Dar-Healey looked down at the girl in his arms—and then, quite suddenly, his head snapped up.

  He cleared his throat.

  ‘Ho!’ he said, ‘Ho!’ He paused. ‘Ha!’ he said. ‘HA HA HA HA HO HO HO!’

  And he was laughing too.

  The woman in the daisy dress stepped back. The elderly man pressed his fists to his ears.

  Autumn breathed in, then cackled again.

  I looked from Autumn to Mr Dar-Healey to the townsfolk outside.

  The townsfolk winced. They pressed forward a step, and stopped. Sunlight dazzled against the broken glass, and sprang from the jewellery of the townsfolk: bangles, necklaces, anklets—

  And with an ice-cold surge through my veins, I understood.

  These were not townsfolk at all.

  They were Sterling Silver Foxes.

  Like regular people, but with tiny differences: ears slightly pointed. Plenty of jewellery.

  And if one gets close to you?

  Your only chance is to laugh.

  When you’ve had a shock—such as when a great glass wall crashes down and a gang of Sterling Silver Foxes approaches—it’s difficult to laugh.

  At first, I couldn’t do it. I stood up on the bench, gave it a shot, and barked like a strangled walrus.

  But other girls had also understood and were trying to laugh. More and more stood and laughed. Over amongst the glass, Raelene let loose a high-pitched giggle.

  That was good because it was funny in itself. Surprising. She seemed too large and strong to giggle. My little sister Astrid burst into chuckles that sounded real, and I found myself joining her.

  As you probably already know, laughter is more contagious than the common cold—its sound lights a spark in your chest. It’s like a feather at your chin.

  Soon the entire place was roaring—hooting, guffawing and chortling.

  The elderly Sterling Silver Fox in the suit scowled. So did the one in the daisy-print dress. Both took several steps back. The others behind them tried to push forward instead, and one—a huge man, very muscular, fists to his pointy ears—crossed right into the building. He trod amongst the glass in a fearless way.

  But Mr Dar-Healey backed cautiously away calling ‘Ho! Ho!’ and Raelene intensified her shrill giggle. Each time the big guy took his fists from his ears, ready to work his Shadow Magic, he grimaced and shoved them back again.<
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  The rest of us bellowed with laughter. Lee Kim, who has the hyena laugh, threw her whole body into it.

  The big guy took his fists away again, right as Katya, still shielding her chess team girls, let forth a magnificent scoffing howl, as if she found him ridiculous. At the same time, Lee Kim’s laugh became a shriek, like something clawing at the air.

  The big guy quit. He shot Katya and Lee Kim ugly looks and retreated. Once he was on the grass, he began to jog and then run.

  They all ran.

  All the Sterling Silver Foxes fleeing from the sound, then pausing, turning, and watching us from a safe distance across the park...

  We carried on laughing.

  Mr Dar-Healey and Raelene gathered the little girls and hurried, stumbling, back through the glass, around the pool, and up through the pool’s entryway. As he left,Mr Dar-Healey lifted one hand high in the air, then higher still, meaning we should keep it up—keep up the laughing.

  In all my life, I’ve never laughed so hard, so loud or so long.

  It was the strangest thing, because laughter billows a sort of joy in you even as it hurts your belly, and makes tears run down your face, and you feel reckless with it, but also sometimes you feel alarmed, when you can’t get a hold of the laughter, and here we were, all of us, shouting and shouting, screaming out our laughter in absolute, mind-numbing terror.

  Eventually, Spellbinders arrived in their hooded black cloaks, bound the Shadow Magic, and rounded up the Sterling Silver Foxes.

  It still took some time before we felt safe enough to stop laughing, and by then other teachers had arrived to lead us back to school.

  Principal Hortense addressed us during dinner. First, she was silent, just sort of gazing down at her own hands, which were pressed against her chest. We all waited.

  At last she looked up and started to cry. She does this sometimes. Stands out the front sobbing. The first time it happened I was a bit horrified, to be honest, but now I’m used to it. Most of us are—we just sigh quietly.

  (However, I noticed Mrs Pollock half-choked on a mouthful of food and had to be slapped on the back. She wasn’t used to it.)

  Eventually, Principal Hortense wiped her eyes with a handkerchief and smiled tearily. ‘What a day you’ve had,’ she murmured. ‘What a day.’

  Then she led us all in stretching exercises. We had to hop up from our seats, reach towards the ceiling then touch our toes.

  ‘To ease the tension,’ she said, ‘of your very trying day.’

  She told us that the three little girls who’d been hit by falling glass were back from the hospital already, and recovering in the infirmary. ‘All patched up,’ she said. ‘A few bruises, a few stitches here and there.’

  ‘It seems,’ Principal Hortense continued, ‘that the gang of Sterling Silver Foxes were from a settlement of Shadow Mages in the Ranciford Empire—two Kingdoms away from us.’

  They’d used their Shadow Magic to crack the glass, she said, and it could have been a catastrophe if it was not for the quick thinking of—

  She paused.

  Some of the older girls started a drum roll, banging their palms on the table.

  I smiled over at Autumn—everyone was grinning in her direction—but she had ducked her head down, to hide behind her long hair.

  More and more people joined in with the drum roll, until all of us were thwapping our hands on the tables and the sound built and built—

  ‘AUTUMN HILLSIDE!!!’ cried Principal Hortense.

  We erupted into applause.

  Autumn tipped her hair to the side for a second so we could see her face and she smiled shyly. This made everyone cheer more loudly. She hid again.

  ‘A mind like lightning,’ Principal Hortense continued. ‘Somehow, Autumn recognised that the strangers approaching were Sterling Silver Foxes! It would not have occurred to me, had I been here! But Autumn knew, and used the only defence we have: laughter! Mr Dar-Healey was full of praise for her actions!’

  Mr Dar-Healey nodded. ‘Still am.’

  Principal Hortense went on a bit about how the rest of us had also been brave, joining the laughter, so that the girls could be taken to hospital and the Sterling Silver Foxes repelled and captured.

  I think that’s the gist of what she said. I got bored around there.

  At last, we were allowed to eat our dinner.

  I know this might seem strange to you, but it wasn’t until I was up to the apple crumble that I realised: Autumn must be the Spellbinder!

  Not Pelagia at all.

  That was how she’d recognised the Sterling Silver Foxes. Of course, she hadn’t been able to spellbind them herself—Principal Hortense had said that the Spellbinder in our school wouldn’t be strong enough to do that—but she’d figured out how to save us anyway.

  And she was saving us right now by keeping a Spellbinding around the school which, it turned out, was much more important than Principal Hortense and Mustafa had imagined. There were Shadow Mages in the mountains.

  Later, we were given extra time in the recreation rooms, as well as a supper of hot chocolate and waffles with ice cream to ‘calm our nerves’.

  Ordinarily, we might have made a joke or two, but I noticed that nobody—not a single girl in the school, I mean—laughed that night. It took a few days before we remembered how to do that again.

  Each morning I went to Mrs Pollock’s classroom excited to see what she would write in reply to our letters. I imagined how I might reply to her reply. I could tell her about the time Imogen found a duckling wandering in our vegetable patch. And how we took it for walks in the hills and it would quack angrily whenever a dragon flew over but quickly hide in one of our pockets if the dragon flew too low.

  But days went by, and nothing.

  I also hadn’t received replies from Georgia and Hsiang, and this time I couldn’t blame my mother. We passed the mailroom on the way to breakfast every day and always checked the boxes. Mine, so far, had been empty.

  Mrs Pollock carried on teaching us regular classwork, somehow making her lessons entertaining. She was so unexpected!

  For example, we did the history of the Whispering Wars by acting it out. First, she divided us into groups. Some people were Whisperers, some Shadow Mages, some Spellbinders, and some ‘regular people’. I was disappointed to be a regular person.

  Next, Mrs Pollock had the Whisperers say, ‘We live in the Whispering Kingdom! We can whisper thoughts into people’s heads!’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Mrs Pollock enquired. ‘Let’s see!’

  Each Whisperer had to choose a ‘regular person’ and whisper, whisper, whisper into her ear. I want cake, they whispered. I’m tired. I feel like dancing.

  ‘Now what can you do about these Whispers?’ Mrs Pollock asked us regular people.

  We shouted back at the Whisperers: ‘I don’t want cake! I’m not tired! I don’t want to dance!’

  Mrs Pollock swung back to the Whisperers.

  ‘So what did you do, Whisperers?’

  The Whisperers acted out digging. ‘We found threads of Shadow Magic in an old mine,’ they said. They pretended to weave threads together and place these around their wrists. ‘We used them to weave shadow bands.’

  ‘What happened to your whispers when you did that?’ Mrs Pollock asked.

  Then the Whisperers had to whisper to us regular people again: I want cake, I’m tired, I feel like dancing.

  Only this time, instead of shouting back, we had to clutch at our foreheads and wail as if in agony. (Pelagia was good at that, shrieking so wildly Mrs Pollock had to tell her to hush in case she disturbed Grade 3 next door.) The Whisperers carried on whispering: I want cake, I’m tired, I feel like dancing! And us regular people pretended to eat cake, sleep on the classroom floor, or dance, all while looking very sad.

  ‘So your whispers became super-powerful when you wore shadow bands?’ Mrs Pollock checked.

  Gleefully, the Whisperers cried, ‘Yes!’

  ‘Then what did you do
?’ she asked.

  ‘Stole children from across the Kingdoms and Empires to help us dig out more shadow thread! For more shadow bands!’ they replied, and began running about, taking us regular people prisoner. We had to pretend to be children digging in mines.

  ‘What else?’ Mrs Pollock demanded.

  ‘We joined with the Shadow Mages!’ the Whisperers replied. They linked arms with the girls playing Shadow Mages. ‘And set out to take over all of the Kingdoms and Empires!’

  We acted out various battles.

  ‘Oh no! Who can defeat the Whisperers and Shadow Mages?’ Mrs Pollock cried.

  That was the cue for the Spellbinders to march in and wave their hands about, as if weaving Spellbindings in the air.

  ‘We are defeating Whisperers and Shadow Mages!’ they cried. ‘We are creating a Spellbinding ring all around the Whispering Kingdom!’

  ‘Which of you is the greatest Spellbinder of all time?’ Mrs Pollock asked.

  Hetty Rattlestone replied: ‘I am! I am Carabella-the-Great!’

  (Most of us were pretty annoyed that Hetty had been cast as Carabella-the-Great. Well, I was annoyed, anyway.) (By the way, I know a secret about Carabella-the-Great.)

  The Spellbinders, led by ‘Carabella’, marched around and around the group of Whisperers, who huddled together, looking crestfallen.

  The Spellbinders cheered in triumph.

  ‘And that was the end of the Whispering Wars!’ Mrs Pollock crowed. ‘The entire Whispering Kingdom was locked away inside a powerful Spellbinding! Nobody could get out! But what kept happening for years after the Whispering Wars had ended?’

  ‘Some of us Whisperers escaped!’ the Whisperers replied. A few demonstrated, by pushing through the Spellbinders. ‘And kept stealing children!’

  Most of us shuddered a little. Although the Whispering Wars had ended before we were born, we’d all grown up being warned by our parents of the dangers of escaped Whisperers. You could recognise a Whisperer because they grew their hair down to their ankles. I used to have nightmares about getting tangled in a Whisperer’s hair.