Furthermore, the locked box that contained all the treasure collected from the Brook Tribe warren had been broken open and the contents taken. The only physical evidence of their existence was the wooden statue that I held in my hand.
Outside the front door on the step was the basket of bread and supplies left by the baker’s boy and atop it a letter the sight of which grieved me still further. It was the letter I had written to Izzy, returned unopened. On the back was a note explaining that Mrs Viggers (née Butterford) and her husband Dr Benjamin Viggers had left England and emigrated to the newly United States of America. Their exact whereabouts were unknown and so my letter had been sent back, with compliments, to Church Street.
I threw the letter on the fire and as I watched it burn I heard a voice. It said my name clear and gently: ‘Benjamin Tooth’. The voice did not come from a direction but was all around me and within me, ringing like the chime of a bell. I turned slowly and there, hanging in the air in the middle of the room, was a single sprite. But this was no ordinary sprite (if such a thing is possible) and its like I had never seen before. It was large, perhaps half as big again as any I had witnessed, and instead of legs its lower body tapered to a beautiful swallowtail with vivid eye-markings at the tips. Its wings and the thorns on its arms were elongated into fine filaments which rippled in the air as though underwater. On its chest was the familiar tattoo.
It reached out its arms towards the statue in my hand and again I heard the strange crystal voice: ‘This belongs to us’.
I felt a knot of anger and injustice rising inside me. ‘No!’ I shouted. ‘I found it, it’s mine! It is all I have left!’
The voice came again, calm and clear. ‘It does not belong to you.’
‘It does!’ I screamed. ‘It does belong to me and you will never take it back!’ and I darted to the table where I had left the sword and swung it towards the sprite. Despite its many tendrils and tails it was as nimble a sprite as any I have seen and easily dodged my blade, moving up to the ceiling and out of reach.
‘Never!’ I cried, incandescent with fury against the sprites, against the people of Mereton and Inglesea, against the universities that spurned me, and against Izzy Butterford. ‘You will never have it back, I will burn it before I give it back to you!’ and I moved towards the fire. It hesitated as if weighing up whether I was serious and then, in a move almost too fast to see, it was gone through the broken windowpane. I went over to my desk and sat down heavily, thoroughly exhausted.
I sat a long time. I poured myself a glass of Mad John Long’s bacon and elderberry wine (but only took one sip for it tasted foul, like damp gloves and sealing wax) and thought about what was to be done.
*
Here is what I have concluded:
The fight is gone from me and my anger is evaporated.
That the Grand Sprite spoke to me, not in audible words but by using some mysterious energy, means there is more to them than even I had imagined.
I have discovered, in these strange and beautiful creatures, a jewel of the natural world. The only way to keep that jewel safe is to keep it a secret. The more that know of their existence, the more likely the sprites will suffer the fate of the dodo a hundred years ago.
I will leave the Windvale Sprites in peace. I have been cruel and they deserve no more persecution from me.
But I cannot return the statue. I must keep it and use its powers to bring some good to the world. It grants long or even eternal life, I am certain of this, but what other powers of healing might it hold? Just to be in its presence might cure disease.
For too long I have been chasing the wrong thing. Fame and adoration is not the answer, but to further mankind’s understanding of this fragile orb that we have been granted lease upon.
*
So where do I go? I am not welcome on Windvale Moor or in Mereton.
I will follow Izzy to America. There I will reinvent myself and, with the aid of the statue, make my fortune and found my own university. The New World is mine oyster and I have all the time on Earth.
I will make a completely new start, take nothing with me. I have packed all of my collected works into my trunk and have left a note for Hetty Pepper to have it transported to Mereton and left to the people of that town. Once I have done writing this entry I will put the journal with the rest and hide the key within the body of the stuffed warbler (which I will also donate to the town) for whosoever is clever or stupid enough to find it.
*
But now I am tired. I cannot risk the sprites taking back the statue so I will sleep in my chair in the basement. Only a short nap. There is much to do.
THIS WAS THE LAST ENTRY IN
BENJAMIN TOOTH’S JOURNAL.
The silver statuette belonging to or stolen by Farley Cupstart has never been found. Some say it never existed, others that it was melted down not long after it was bought from Hetty Pepper. A few say it is hidden somewhere in the English countryside and that the clues to its whereabouts are to be found within the pages of The Lost Journals of Benjamin Tooth.
Read on for an exclusive first chapter of
The Windvale Sprites
Shortlisted for the
Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2011
1
The Storm
When Asa Brown thought back to the actual night of the storm he found he couldn’t really remember it very well. He’d had a busy day previously and had fallen into bed exhausted. There he slept fitfully through noisy dreams of howling beasts and old steam trains until, eventually, he was woken by the sharp rap of a stick hitting his window. He vaguely remembered peering through the curtains but not being able to see anything clearly. It was so dark, unusually dark, there were no streetlights, no cars on the road and the rain was coming straight at the windowpane. He lay back down and listened, for a while, to the tempest.
The raging wind was playing the houses and trees like the instruments of an orchestra, producing extraordinary noises. It whined and whistled, changed direction and dropped an octave, turned to the window and rattled the glass. Then it dropped silent for a second and crept back across the road to start again. Each time the wind slammed into the house it seemed to get louder until it reached a crescendo, when a terrifying bass note would kick in and make the house vibrate to its very foundations. Beneath this noise, Asa could make out the smashtinkle of greenhouse glass and toppling terracotta pots, with fence panels and gates banging out an idiotic rhythm.
Strange though it might sound, these noises eventually lulled him back into a deep sleep. The house was old and prone to making unearthly noises, which he was used to and the drone of the wind was not unlike being on a train. So he went back to dreaming of locomotives thundering through tunnels and slept that way until morning.
*
The next morning was calm by comparison. The hurricane was now a mere gale and was carrying out its final checks, seeing that everything was dislodged that could be dislodged, uprooted or simply repositioned.
Many power lines across the area had been blown down and so, as there was no electricity, school was closed. Asa lost no time in exploring the damage outside.
There was a large pampas grass deposited in the middle of the lawn like a giant, stranded jellyfish. It had probably been blown there from Mr and Mrs Singer’s front garden at number 72. A television aerial was trying unsuccessfully to get a signal at the top of the Hawthorn.
*
Then he saw it. Floating amongst the duckweed at the edge of the fishpond was a small figure. Asa assumed that it was a toy that had been blown from somewhere else, why wouldn’t he? But as his fingers closed around it he jumped back in horror for what he touched was not plastic or wood. It was skin.
He sat down with a bump on the wet grass with his back to the fishpond and tried to calm down. His heart was pounding and he felt shaky. Thank goodness there was nobody around to see him, he thought, he must have looked pretty silly. Slowly he turned back to the pond and looked over
the tall iris leaves.
There it was, floating face up just a few feet away.
It had big eyes. Huge black eyes that were all pupil. It was skinny like a stick with extraordinarily long legs that were bent back unnaturally. Its slender arms ended in delicate hands and fingers that tapered to fine points.
It was hard to tell exactly how tall it was but it couldn’t have been more than six inches long.
Asa crawled closer.
The creature had olive-brown skin with a seam of sharp-looking thorns running up the outside of each limb. It had dark wispy hair on its head from which sprouted two long antennae and pointed ears.
As Asa looked more closely he could see that the surface of its eyes were made up of countless facets that glittered in the light. The tiny face had a sharp chin and framed a small nose and an even smaller mouth. On the creature’s chest was tattooed a design like a Celtic knot and its skin was covered in bruises and scrapes.
With heart thumping, Asa dipped his fingers into the water and underneath the creature. It was all he could do to stop freaking out as he lifted it out of the pond and deposited it on the bank, quick as he could.
It flopped on to its front on the grass and Asa saw, with amazement, that sprouting from its shoulder blades were four, slender, transparent wings. An intricate network of veins divided each like a stained-glass window.
That is when the thought struck him. I’ve found a fairy. Just like that with no exclamation mark.
It’s dead, but I am almost certain that I have found a real-life dead fairy. It suddenly all made sense. This is what ‘fairies’ are. Not wand-waving Tinkerbells but sinewy insect-men: wild creatures that must be very secretive and hardly ever spotted. This one must have been blown in the hurricane from the remote place where he lived and ended up in my fishpond.
About the Author
Mackenzie Crook is a hugely diverse actor who has played a wide variety of roles, from Ragetti in the first three record-smashing, swashbuckling Pirates of the Caribbean films, to the wonderful character of Gareth in The Office and the critically acclaimed Konstantin in the Royal Court’s version of The Seagull.
The Lost Journals of Benjamin Tooth is his second book for children.
By the Same Author
The Windvale Sprites
Copyright
First published in 2013
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
© Mackenzie Crook, 2013
The right of Mackenzie Crook to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–29560–9
The Lost Journals of Benjamin Tooth Page 9