Beside her, Prince Jakob spoke warmly. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that any son you have, Anita, would indeed make a very fine King.’
I happened, at that moment, to swing sideways to see if Bronte and Alejandro were listening to this. They were talking feverishly.
‘In our time, the Kingdom of Storms is ruled by King Jakob,’ Alejandro said.
‘Yes, and his wife is a famous doctor—a Doctor Anita!’
‘And I remember reading somewhere that said both of them were—’
‘—sad.’
‘Because their son had vanished when he was a baby…’
‘And here they are thinking of naming their son Alejandro.’
‘From a story about a Kingdom called Joya Amarillo…’
‘Joya Amarillo!’ they both hissed at the same time. ‘J-A!’
Their eyes widened, and they were gone.
Disappeared.
Back to the future.
‘Golly!’ said Hamish. ‘Where have they gone then?’
I stared at the space where they’d been standing.
‘I think,’ I said, ‘they just got the truth.’
‘They know who Alejandro’s parents are going to be!’ Hamish cried.
‘Who?’ Victor enquired.
‘Prince Jakob and Anita,’ Finlay frowned. ‘You daft git.’
I suppose he has not quite forgiven Victor yet.
Look, as I conclude this tale, I must admit not everything is perfect.
We now know that Alejandro’s parents are Anita and Prince Jakob. But we also know that he will somehow be stolen from them as a baby and spend his childhood on a pirate ship. (Finlay and I want to warn Anita about this but will a warning help to change the future, or only make her worry until it happens? Or turn history topsy-turvy again—oh dear.)
We have rescued the children from the Whispering Kingdom—most of them have been carried home to their own Kingdoms and Empires by dragon now—but some had died in the Whispering Kingdom and so those parents have broken hearts.
The puzzle of the super-charged Whispers has been solved—wristbands made from ancient shadow threads—and Waratah Teevsky, Director of the K&E Alliance, has sent us telegrams of congratulations saying we’ve basically won the thing for them. But I rather think the Whispering Wars will continue for some time yet. And that more and more people will forget that Whisperers are truly a good and gentle people. Also, Great-Uncle Arthur Lam, the Witch who told Glim the secret of how to get through a Witch-made shroud, agreed to reveal the secret—but of course the Whispering Kingdom had already reinforced its Witch-made Mist Shroud with an upgraded version, so that vinegar and bicarbonate of soda no longer work.
Finally, Rosalind is back. She didn’t come to the Party today because she ‘doesn’t like to get sandy’, and she is very moody about not getting a medal from the Queen. ‘But I was part of the team!’ she complains, tying her hair ribbons tightly. ‘If I don’t get a medal, history will forget about me! I might turn out not to be a Child of Spindrift! Preposterous! It’s not my fault I got sick! And look how much prettier my hair is than yours, Honey Bee? No offence.’
So, as I said, it’s not perfect.
However, there is some marvellous news!
Hamish’s wealthy father, Liam Winterson, came into town last week and snapped up the Boarding School! (That means he bought it.) Sir Brathelthwaite is in the Dungeons of Cloudburst, of course, so he can hardly run it. His stash of diamonds from the Whispering King has been confiscated as they were ‘ill-gotten gains’ so he had to sell the school for cash to pay his lawyers.
Mr Winterson is exactly like Hamish.
‘What?’ he cried, when Hamish mentioned that Uncle Dominic sometimes horsewhips children. ‘What? He actually uses a horsewhip? And what, whips children!? But that’s horrid! Or have I got that wrong? No, no, I’m sure it is horrid. I had a horse once, you know. Funny, isn’t it, the way the words horse and hoarse sound the same, but they’re quite different, I mean to say, one is the animal and one is when your throat is scratchy, which makes your voice— but anyhow, enough of that. Uncle Dominic is fired!’
He seems a likeable chap, Mr Winterson. He has already made plenty of other changes, in addition to firing Uncle Dominic. For one thing, he has invited the orphans to come and live at the school!
‘Rather more luxurious here,’ he told Lili-Daisy, ‘and plenty of space! What ho! What do you think? Pop along over to live here instead?’ Lili-Daisy thought popping over was a brilliant idea, and Mr Winterson found her smile so charming he appointed her as head teacher. She’s planning to let the students vote on a new school name, and to scrap their school chant. She’ll replace it with a song that she makes up as she goes along each day. Mr Winterson has also hired Aunt Rebecca as our science teacher, and advised Madame Dandelion to quit smoking cigars and cheer up.
And that is the end of our story.
I fare you well, dear readers, with tears in my eyes and a heart full of joy. Farewell! Have a most marvellous life!
FINLAY
No, it’s not the end of the story, because Honey Bee didn’t say the most important changes Hamish’s dad is planning for the Boarding School.
I sat him down the other day. ‘If I’m going to live in this boarding school,’ I said, playing hardball, ‘I’m going to need a couple of modifications. Otherwise the deal is off.’ Then I told him my required modifications.
‘Cracking ideas!’ he said. ‘Consider them done!’
So the Boarding School is now going to serve those twisty pastries-with-melting-chocolate-inside for breakfast every single day and, when it’s safe to travel, the Raffia rugby team are going to come visit us. Also, there’s going to be a specially-made wardrobe with pillows on top where Jaskafar can sleep when he likes.
And a laundry chute, four storeys high, which children will be welcome to ride.
Page from THE HISTORY OF THE WHISPERING WARS
THE REMARKABLE CHILDREN OF SPINDRIFT
The course of the Whispering Wars was dramatically changed as the result of the remarkable Children of Spindrift. These seven children—Honey Bee, Victor and Hamish (Boarding School students), Finlay, Glim, and twins Eli and Taya (residents of the local Orphanage)—joined forces to plan and stage a most daring expedition.
Bravely, some of the friends allowed themselves to be captured by Whisperers so that they could rescue children then held captive in the Whispering Kingdom. They solved the mystery of how the Whisperers had super-charged their Whispers: wristbands woven of shadow thread, and staged a dramatic rescue. Back in Spindrift, Glim took the astonishing step of befriending dragons and learning their language, a decision that would have far-reaching repercussions for dragon–human relations in years to come.
Glim also engineered the release of the local Shadow Mages and Whisperers in Spindrift. The expert knowledge of these locals was of central importance in saving Spindrift from multiple attacks during the remaining years of the war.
Indeed, many historians are convinced that it was the exploits of the Remarkable Children of Spindrift that (eventually) won the Whispering Wars.
The seven children are today celebrated as heroes all across the Kingdoms and Empires. Young folk like to dress up as the Children of Spindrift. Statues have been erected in their honour, and films made based on their exploits. Meanwhile, ever since that time, the seven children have
FINLAY
Ever since that time, the seven children have—carried on fighting each other.
That’s my guess.
Honey Bee
That was meant to be the end, Finlay! We were leaving it for readers to guess!
Anyhow, I think it’s this: Ever since that time, the seven children have—been firm friends.
FINLAY
No, I’ve got it.
Ever since that time, the seven children have competed in athletic tournaments all across the Kingdoms and Empires, the twins winning plenty of medals for shot-put and discus; now and then Honey Bee wins a r
ace, often Glim does too, as does Hamish, even Victor (just once, in an obscure tournament in a tiny Kingdom where most of the competitors forgot to turn up), but MOST OFTEN OF ALL, THE WINNER IS FINLAY!
Honey Bee
Oh, Finlay.
MEMO
To: The K&E Board of Time Keepers
From: Genie #45278
Re: The Children of Spindrift Catastrophe
Dear Members of the Board,
I attach the full manuscript of the tale of the Children of Spindrift, as completed by FINLAY and HONEY BEE.
Based on an exhaustive study of this manuscript, I can see exactly where history went awry. It was somewhere around chapters 25 and 26. Both Finlay and Honey Bee came up with the idea of joining forces with the other children and volunteering to help with the war effort, as per the original history. In this history, however, they were both distracted by the sudden realisation that ‘the spies’ (Bronte and Alejandro) might actually be Whispering children. So then: kerpow! Volunteering idea forgotten.
Oops.
The archives show that in the original history Finlay suggested the volunteer idea to Honey Bee the day after he came up with it. Honey Bee exclaimed that she’d had the same thought the night before. Finlay said that was nonsense and she was a copycat. Honey Bee angrily said she’d had the idea separately. And so on. The key point is this: in the end, Honey Bee agreed, and went off to persuade the other Brathelthwaites to join this volunteer team, promising them likely medals from the Queen. Their first volunteer outing was at the Junkyard where they got into a huge brawl during which Hamish tripped over a rusty frying pan filled with rubber bands. He was so taken by the various colours of the rubber bands he took to wearing them around his wrists.
At each of the following volunteer meetings, the children fought violently until one day Mayor Franny caught them at it. She looked around at their black eyes and bloodied noses and threatened to tell both Lili-Daisy and the Queen. They begged her for another chance, promising to agree on just one thing.
The one thing they agreed on was that they should try to rescue Jaskafar and the other children from the Whispering Kingdom. Things then unfolded more or less as in this history except that, while he was in the Whispering Kingdom, Hamish spent so much time twanging at the rubber bands around his wrists that Victor became incensed, demanding that he ‘throw away those ruddy wristbands’. This led to Hamish riffing on ‘wristbands’ until he realised that all the Whisperers wore red-and-black wristbands, put two and two together and figured out the secret to the super-charged Whispers.
Now, it seems to me that Bronte and Alejandro have done a great job nudging history back on course. I had them keep Honey Bee and Finlay writing their history right up until the day when the time travel quest was done, and Bronte and Alejandro couldn’t accidentally cause any more time disasters.
Again, I apologise for this catastrophe, and I humbly request that you now lift your restrictions on my genie magic so that I can carry on with a life of granting wishes and making magical, life-sorting-out dreams.
Thank you in advance.
Warm regards,
Genie #45278
These acknowledgments should be filled with all-caps, italics and long lines of exclamation marks, but I am trying to be more sophisticated, so I will avoid them. (Please just imagine them here anyway.) I cannot begin to express my gratitude to the following people: my publisher, Anna McFarlane, and editor, Radhiah Chowdhury (insightful, incisive, inventive, lovely, lively, passionate, patient, and many other positive adjectives); everyone else at Allen & Unwin, especially my brilliant publicist, Jess Seaborn, talented designer, Romina Panetta, and the marketing team of Deb Lum, Zoe Knowles, Carolyn Walsh and Tami Rex; my fantastic agent, Tara Wynne; my extraordinary parents and sisters, Liane, Kati, Fiona and Nicola (with special mention to Kati, who proofreads all our books and who has been remarkably brave and strong this last year); my brother-in-law, tech-support and web designer, Steve Menasse; my lovely friends at Coco Chocolate (Rebecca, Maria and Deborah); Michael M, Rachel, Laura, Corrie, Jo, Elizabeth, Hannah, Jane, Natalie, Sandra, Melita, Jayne, Ildiko, Katherine, Michael K, Sara, and Anna for friendship and listening-to-me-babble; and Dee (and Patrick), Suzy (and Lucie), Lesley (and Ethan), Libby (and Miranda), Alison (and Rose), Gaynor (and Isabella), Kirrily (and Declan and Sophie), Beejal (and Anya), Rebecca (and Finlay and Alice), Melita (and Violet), Maria (and Anita and Eli), and all the other mother-child reader combinations amongst my magnificent friends.
I need to start a new paragraph to thank Kelly Canby, whose illustrations are a dream and a delight, and make me shake my head with wonder and admiration.
To Nigel: thank you for your beautiful enthusiasm, story-telling, listening, and for being part of our family.
To Charlie: thank you for making me laugh, and for running, jumping and climbing through life, never mind about the furniture; I’m sorry for not calling this book Spindrift.
Finally, to all the children who read Bronte’s story and wrote to me about it, or asked their mothers to write to me about it, or drew pictures, or even just quietly liked it, without saying a word—you are all magical to me.
Jaclyn Moriarty is the Queen of the minor Red Velvet Kingdom, smack bang in the middle of Various Nefarious Kingdoms. Lost at sea as a small child, Jaclyn was raised by water sprites, and had no idea she was actually a land-dwelling person until the water sprites sat her down and explained it to her the day after her twenty-first birthday. She burst forth from the sea, took a gasp of air, and realised she’d been holding her breath her entire life. It was quite a relief.
While travelling the Kingdoms and Empires, Jaclyn noticed a gap in authority in Red Velvet. She put up her hand for the job, and has been very happily queening ever since. Jaclyn has one son, the young Prince, who runs with the dragons, plays rugby with Radish Gnomes, and jams on his electric guitar with the wild local Elves. In her spare time, Jaclyn likes to exchange witty repartee with the Termite King, a relatively harmless dark mage famous for his skills at insect hypnosis. She has also reconnected with her long-lost sisters, a family of Fire Sirens, and they enjoy singing together. Or they did, anyway, until the neighbours got up a petition asking them to stop.
Jaclyn met Bronte Mettlestone on a recent holiday in Gainsleigh. Jaclyn was in a bit of a pickle at the time, having promised the Empire of Witchcraft a brand-new tale, having completely forgotten to write the tale, and having now heard from the Witches that they planned to bury her kingdom in broomstick crochet as punishment. By lucky chance, Bronte had just finished writing the story of her own extremely inconvenient adventures. Jaclyn asked Bronte if she might publish the tale, please, and Bronte, being very well brought-up, kindly handed it over. Jaclyn is very grateful to Bronte, as are all her subjects in Red Velvet.
Kelly Canby is neither a Queen nor Princess—in fact, no noble blood flows through her veins whatsoever and how she ended up in the Kingdoms and Empires is a complete mystery to anyone who stops to ponder the thought. Some say she snuck in on the back of a delivery truck in the dead of night, others say she was dropped in by dragons as a child, landing firmly on her head. The truth may never be known, as after 137 years not even Kelly can remember how she got here. With graphite-stained fingers and inky nails, Kelly spends her days scratching at paper while uttering madnesses to herself. ‘All of the work done. All of the work done,’ she repeats like a chant…or a spell. ‘Must get. All of the work done.’
Then at 3 pm, she stops for tea, dusts off her sleeves and wanders out into the town to greet the locals like nothing at all unusual has happened. This has been the routine for 137 years, and for 137 years, the townsfolk have been completely unaware of her wizardry. To them, she is wide-eyed and colourful. Mother of Will, wife of Neil, quick with a joke and always ready for a dinner party.
At first, Kelly was intimidated by Queen Jaclyn’s witty way with words and wondered if she was worthy of approaching the Queen, a simple woman like herself who was probably
dropped on her head by dragons as a child. But then she saw it, the crazed little glint in Queen Jaclyn’s eye. The same glint she saw reflected in her own eye and the eye of her mother and in the eyes of her eight aunts, collectively known as The Whelans, and she knew. She knew that they were kindred spirits—conjurers and illusionists—and together, mostly between the hours of 9 am and 3 pm, they were destined to make magic.
‘Jaclyn Moriarty charms, thrills and delights in this delightfully unpredictable, unique and modern novel, while also brilliantly evoking echoes of Diana Wynne Jones and Joan Aiken.’
— GARTH NIX, author of The Keys to the Kingdom series
I was ten years old when my parents were killed by pirates. This did not bother me as much as you might think—I hardly knew my parents.
Bronte Mettlestone’s parents ran away to have adventures when she was a baby, leaving her to be raised by her Aunt Isabelle and the Butler. She’s had a perfectly pleasant childhood of afternoon teas and riding lessons—and no adventures, thank you very much.
But Bronte’s parents have left extremely detailed (and bossy) instructions for Bronte in their will. The instructions must be followed to the letter, or disaster will befall Bronte’s home. She is to travel the Kingdoms and Empires, perfectly alone, delivering special gifts to her ten other aunts. There is a farmer aunt who owns an orange orchard and a veterinarian aunt who specialises in dragon care, a pair of aunts who captain a cruise ship together and a former rockstar aunt who is now the reigning monarch of a small kingdom.
Now, armed with only her parents’ instructions, a chest full of strange gifts and her own strong will, Bronte must journey forth to face dragons, Chief Detectives and pirates—and the gathering suspicion that there might be something more to her extremely inconvenient quest than meets the eye…
The Slightly Alarming Tale of the Whispering Wars Page 32