by Garth Nix
‘Odd,’ said Rinda. ‘Suspicious even.’ Her mother had never mentioned finding a kitchen inside any of the monsters that had tried to eat her alive.
Rinda folded her penknife and looked around. Apart from the opening high above, there didn’t seem to be any way in or out of this strange stomach-kitchen. But there had to be.
She opened the cupboards till she found the flour. She took a handful and threw it against the walls wherever there wasn’t a cupboard. It took her only a minute to find two invisible doors and an invisible rubbish chute.
Rinda opened the first flour-coated door and looked inside. A white spiral staircase led both up and down. The steps were thin and kind of bony-looking. Rinda quickly realised that she was looking at the monster’s backbone.
Only it wasn’t really a monster. That was clear too now. Besides the kitchen, strange enough in itself, all around the stairs there were clear tubes full of swirling coloured fluids and she saw metal wires going up and down and little cogs turning, and everywhere there was a faint whirr and zing that Rinda recognised.
Clockwork!
She was inside a giant magical clockwork monster!
Chapter Six
Rinda looked up and down the backbone stairs. Should she go up or down?
Up, Rinda decided. Somebody must be in charge of this monster, and where else would they be but inside the creature’s head? Rinda would sneak up on whoever it was and teach them a lesson. Nobody was allowed to use a giant clockwork monster to eat up a princess!
Rinda ran up the steps three at a time till the stairs suddenly ended and she hit her head on trapdoor. This hurt, but it only made Rinda even angrier. She punched the door, which immediately flipped open so she didn’t even graze her knuckles.
Rinda took a peek through the trapdoor. It led to a room inside the creature’s head. It was fairly dark inside, but she could see big windows where its eyes would be on the outside, and between the eyes at the back of the creature’s nose there were a lot of levers and faintly glowing dials and a whole row of foot pedals. Clearly these were the controls, like the ones in her father’s magical model steam engine that he wouldn’t let her play with.
But no one was driving the monster. Rinda could feel a swaying motion, like being on a boat, and she could see stars going past through the eyes, so she knew they were moving.
She crept up through the trap door and on to the floor. Then she slithered over to the controls. One big lever was pulled all the way back, almost to the floor. It had a cardboard tag tied to the end. Rinda turned the tag so it picked up the light from the dials and read: Follow the road.
There was another smaller lever pulled down as well. It also had a tag. Rinda read that too. It said: Don’t hurt anyone.
Just then, she heard a horrible grunting sound behind her. Forgetting to slither, she jumped up, ready to fight for her life.
There was no one there. Then the grunting sound started again, from somewhere above Rinda’s head. She looked up and saw a hammock stretched right across the top of the room. Two bare feet were poking out of one end. Horrible-looking green and yellow feet that were covered in lumps and hairs.
A troll, thought Rinda. A witch-troll. She knew the troll was female because there was a daisy growing out of her big toe. A ghastly snoring witch-troll driving a magical clockwork monster to attack the kingdom.
But why did she have the lever pulled back that said Don’t hurt anyone?
Rinda thought for a moment and came to the conclusion that the witch-troll wanted to take everyone alive. Maybe she ate people raw and fresh. Or maybe she wanted slaves.
Whatever the reason, Rinda knew she had to defeat the troll and break the clockwork monster. But how could she? Trolls were sword- and arrow-proof, let alone blunt-penknife-proof.
The horrible grunting sound came again, followed by an even more horrible wuffling noise. It was even more horrible because it sounded like the troll was waking up.
Rinda thought very quickly. Maybe she could entangle the troll in her own hammock… She opened her penknife, ran to the rope that held up the hammock and started sawing away. The rope twanged as Rinda cut through the first small thread.
‘Who’s there?’ asked a voice above her. It didn’t sound like a troll’s voice, but Rinda didn’t respond. She knew a witch-troll could imitate a human.
‘Something something lumious,’ said the witch-troll. Rinda knew it was a spell, because it was in the magical language her father used. A second later, the room was as bright as day.
Rinda didn’t look up. She just sawed even harder. She was through half a dozen threads, but there were plenty more and her penknife was very blunt.
‘Something something frosty-osty,’ said the witch-troll. Rinda stopped sawing. She couldn’t move her arms or legs or turn her head. But she could roll her eyes and she was still breathing.
She heard a thump as the witch-troll jumped down and landed behind her.
‘Well, well, what have we here?’ said the witch-troll. She sounded quite friendly, but Rinda knew that was a t rick. ‘Come to join me for dinner?’
‘Come and be dinner,’ was what Rinda heard.
There was only one thing to do. Rinda took a very, very deep breath and let out the special scream her parents had taught her. A screaming spell that her father had made, that Rinda’s mother and father would always hear no matter where she was. A scream that she knew could only be used in matters of life and death.
Things happened surprisingly quickly then. The witch-troll said something and Rinda fell to the floor, but only because she hadn’t expected her legs to unfreeze. She landed on her hands and immediately did a backflip – a standard warrior maiden move – and tried to kick the witch-troll in the head, even though she knew it wouldn’t do any good.
But instead of bouncing off iron-hard troll flesh, Rinda felt herself caught by soft hands, just like when her mother was teaching her backflips. The surprise made her pause for a fateful second. At least it would have been fateful if the witch-troll really had been a witch-troll. But she wasn’t. She was a nice-looking old lady who was wearing a purple night-dress and troll-foot slippers.
‘You must be Princess Chlorinda,’ said the nice old lady. ‘I’m—’
Whatever she was going to say was lost as the clockwork monster suddenly lurched to one side. The old lady dropped the princess and they both fell over.
Before they could get up there was a tremendous booming sound from somewhere below. A shower of arrows clattered like hail across the eye-windows of the monster, followed a second later by jagged streaks of lightning that jumped all over the place. There was shouting and screaming and oinking and banging and clanging and small explosions.
The clockwork monster shuddered under these attacks, stumbled and fell on its knees. Rinda and the old woman were thrown against the levers. As she tried to stop herself, Rinda accidentally pulled up the small lever that was marked Don’t hurt anyone.
Bells rang inside the monster’s head. An ominous red light flashed out from its eyes and it raised its mighty claws.
Chapter Seven
‘No!’ cried the old woman. She lunged forward and pushed the lever back down, then quickly pulled another one and pushed a button. The clockwork monster gave out a long, mechanical hiss and its head sagged forward till its nose touched the ground. The old woman touched another button and the top of the monster’s head lifted open like a big hatch.
They had stopped right outside the castle and a large crowd had gathered in a semicircle around the monster.
‘Surrender!’ ordered King Victor sternly, a jar of
jumping-spark ointment in one hand and a teaspoon for throwing it in the other.
‘Release my daughter!’ added Queen Alba, her two-handed sword held high above her head, ready for action.
‘Don’t move!’ shouted the guard, who had an arrow nocked on his longbow.
‘Or we’ll hook you!’ shouted the shepherds, making menacing moves with the
ir crooks.
‘And stick you,’ yelled the farmers, shaking their pitchforks.
‘Oink!’ added Horace the pig.
Rinda ran out of the monster’s head. The jumping-spark ointment and two-handed sword were thrown aside as the king and queen embraced their daughter.
‘I did it!’ said Rinda. ‘I leaped past its teeth in one go and went straight down its gullet. Only it wasn’t a normal monster, it’s a clockwork monster, and there’s a witch-troll inside, only she’s not a witch-troll, she’s a… I don’t know what she is…’
‘Mmmm,’ said King Victor as he looked past Rinda at the old woman who was gingerly climbing out of the monster’s head.
‘Uh-oh,’ said Queen Alba as the old woman marched towards them.
‘Got to go and polish a helmet,’ mumbled the guard as he tried to hide his longbow behind a small tree.
‘That the sheep calling?’ muttered the shepherds as they milled about, while trying to get further away without turning their backs.
‘Bedtime already,’ the farmers confirmed to each other as they hastily stepped off into the darkness
‘Uh-hoinch,’ muttered Horace.
‘You’ve broken my clockwork monster,’ said the old woman.
‘Sorry, Aunt Daisy,’ said Queen Alba very quietly.
‘Our apologies, Aunt-in-Law,’ said the king in his most formal voice.
‘Uh-oh,’ said Rinda.
‘As I was saying, before we were so rudely interrupted,’ the old woman said to Rinda, ‘you must be Princess Chlorinda. I am your Great Aunt Daisy, Consulting Witch-Engineer. I have come to visit for the school holidays.’
‘I’m sorry I broke your clockwork monster,’ said Rinda. ‘I just wanted to have an adventure.’
‘Perfectly understandable,’ said Great Aunt Daisy. ‘Your mother was just the same, though I don’t believe she managed to get past the teeth of a monster and go straight down the gullet until she was at least ten.’
‘Ten and a half,’ said Queen Alba. She smiled at her daughter. ‘And it was only a monstrous slug beetle, not a giant clockwork mechanical monster.’
‘And you managed to find the secret doors in the stomach,’ said Great Aunt Daisy. ‘I am impressed.’
Rinda looked at her father, who glanced down at her flour-stained hands. He winked and smiled. Rinda smiled back. She wasn’t going to reveal his secret.
‘Now,’ said Great Aunt Daisy, ‘I think we should all go and have dinner. Rinda and I can come back in the morning to fix my monster. If you don’t have anything better to do, that is, my dear.’
Rinda looked across at the monster. She’d only seen a little bit of its insides, and not much of its outsides at all, in the dark. There would be all manner of interesting corners and mechanisms and tunnels and secrets in the clockwork monster.
‘I don’t exactly have anything better to do,’ she said. ‘But there is one thing that I need to take care of first.’
‘What?’ asked Queen Alba and King Victor.
Rinda stared at them. Had they forgotten already? She pointed at her pet pig.
‘There’s a beastly beast on the… well, it was on the battlements, now it’s… lurking in the darkness. A bloody… well, it was bloody… now it’s a muddy beastly beast and we have to sort it out!’
‘Of course,’ said Great Aunt Daisy. She strode over the road, grabbed Horace by the ear and pointed him towards the castle. ‘We’ll wash him in the moat on the way in. Anything else?’
Everyone looked at Rinda. She opened her mouth, took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then slowly shook her head. So they all went happily into the castle for dinner.
Bill the Inventor
Chapter One
When Bill was a very small baby, he was found on the street, wrapped in a really big banana skin.
The man who found him was hungry. So he was very disappointed to find a squirmy baby inside the banana skin instead of a tasty piece of fruit.
The man tried to find Bill’s parents.
He went to the supermarket to see if anyone had bought a really big banana recently. He tried the hospital to see if anyone was missing a baby boy.
He put an ad in the newspaper, which unfortunately got mixed up so it said, ‘Found: small banana inside baby boy’.
But he couldn’t find Bill’s parents.
So he decided he’d better put him in an orphanage, which is a home for children whose parents have died or disappeared.
So Bill was sent to the O’Squealin Home for Lost Children. It was called the O’Squealin Home because that was the name of the lady who managed it – Mrs O’Squealin.
Why it was called the Home for Lost Children no one knew. The children weren’t lost. It was their parents who were mislaid.
Chapter Two
Bill was very happy at the O’Squealin Home. Mrs O’Squealin was basically good at heart and there were lots of children to play with.
But as he grew older, he did think that he might like a home of his own, with two well-behaved parents to buy him presents and pay for his experiments. Because Bill, you see, was an inventor. He liked to invent things, and the things he liked to invent nearly always needed expensive bits and pieces.
Every now and then, children from the O’Squealin Home did get new parents. This was called adoption. If you were lucky enough to get picked, then you would be adopted.
Sometimes the new parents weren’t good enough for the children, so there was a special thirty-day guarantee. If not completely satisfied, the child could come back to the O’Squealin Home and wait for some better parents to come along.
Chapter Three
One day, when Bill was inventing a new way of spooning cornflakes into his mouth using six rubber bands, a spoon and four of the attic mice in a treadwheel, Mrs O’Squealin came in and said, ‘Finish up quickly, Bill. There are some parents here to have a look at you.’
Bill had never been picked for adoption before. He was so excited he drank his bowl of cornflakes in one gulp and ran down to the special room where new parents waited.
A strange sound inside the room – like a squawking parrot – made Bill stop and look through the glass panel in the door.
The room was full of people, far too many for just one set of parents. They looked pretty strange too, with their coats of red and black, and their wide leather belts holding cutlasses and pistols. One even had an eyepatch, and he saw a pegleg and a parrot.
‘Pirates!’ Bill whispered. They must have done away with the parents who had come to adopt him!
Quickly, Bill turned to run to the phone to call the police. But before he could move, a strong bony hand gripped him by the shoulder. For a second he thought a pirate had him, but then Mrs O’Squealin spoke.
‘You were quick, Bill,’ she said. ‘Now come along and meet Captain and Mrs Blood and their charming crew.’
‘What!’ exclaimed Bill, unable to believe his ears. ‘You can’t mean they’re the parents who I’m supposed to go with? They’re PIRATES!’
‘Stop yelling, Bill,’ said Mrs O’Squealin calmly, as she opened up the door and pushed him in. ‘You don’t want the Bloods to get the wrong idea and think you’re a naughty boy.’
They would probably be pleased, thought Bill. How could Mrs O’Squealin possibly give him to pirates? She must have been bribed with gold doubloons or a piece of sunken silver treasure.
Inside the room, the pirates looked at Bill. He stared back suspiciously, wondering what on earth they wanted with a boy. They probably needed him for some terrible scheme. Perhaps a tunnel, dark and secret, through which only a boy could crawl – to get inside a fortress and open up the gate. Or to be a spy in some merchant’s ship, signalling to the pirates with a lantern when the night was dark and starless.
All exciting stuff, no doubt, if you happened to have a pirate heart. But Bill was an inventor and there are things an inventor just doesn’t do.
‘Here’s the boy,’ said Mrs O’Squealin to Ca
ptain Blood, the biggest, meanest, nastiest looking pirate of them all. ‘He goes by the name of Bill.’
Captain Blood had a red beard divided into seven sections, each one bound tightly with a bright red rubber band. Every now and again he’d flick one of the bands and scream as it snapped him in the face.
Bill thought that was a very stupid thing to do, but then pirates weren’t known for being smart.
‘Ah-har,’ said Captain Blood, smiling to show that his teeth had been filed to extremely nasty points. ‘Look here, Mrs Blood. It’s our new son!’
Mrs Blood was even taller and meaner looking than the captain. She wore a grimy leather dress hung with long chains of tiny shrunken heads that even Bill could see were fake and made of rubber. Her eyes kept crossing and she hissed with every second word.
‘Come here-ss, my boy-ss,’ she said, reaching out to hug Bill in her rubbery-skulled embrace. But he ducked in
under her arms and tried to squeeze himself through the window, only to be caught by Mrs O’Squealin, with one strong hand around his ankle.
‘I’m an inventor!’ shouted Bill. ‘Not a pirate. I’ll never go with them.’
‘What!’ roared Captain Blood. ‘What kind of boy are you? We sail at dawn to cross the seven seas in our ship the Salty Sally. A hundred adventures lie in wait, including tons of buried treasure. There’s cutlass fights and cannons roaring and the wind fierce-blowing in our sails. Why, when I was a lad I’d have sold my own parents to have the chance of joining up with pirates!’
‘I heard you did,’ said Mrs O’Squealin, dragging Bill back in and sitting him on a chair. ‘But we do have rules here at the O’Squealin Home. If Bill doesn’t want you for his mum and dad, then he doesn’t have to go. And if he does go, he still has thirty days to change his mind.’