Praise for the Shakespeare’s Moon Series
This first in the new series Shakespeare’s Moon looks to be a great way to get younger teens enthralled by Shakespeare as they’ve never been before
Seeing Sam go on a personal journey rather than just living out the events of Macbeth really helped to bring this book to life, and I think will certainly engage younger readers. I’m certainly interested to see what the rest of Shakespeare’s Moon will be like, as each one is apparently set in the same boarding school as Sam’s, but based upon different Shakespeare plays.
Lucy Russell, Parasol Pirate
I would recommend this title to young children (4th-8th grade) who are interested in Shakespeare but find his work intimidating. The book has good pacing, interesting setting, believable and likable characters
Lisa Baughman, Librarian, NetGalley
Time travel, Scotland and Macbeth? Oooh … yes please!!! I love all three to tiny pieces and was totally interested when I started reading this book
I am interested in seeing how the author will mix in the other plays. I also just realized there’s a prequel set at the school during World War II called Heart of Winter. Gothic tale about the macabre? OK! Let’s do this …
Jacquie Atamanuk, Rattle The Stars
A cute story for a younger audience … Overall, this story is a good start to a series that intertwines modern day mystery and introducing the writings of Shakespeare in a new and refreshing way … I would recommend this book to anyone of a younger age
Jennifer Henderson, Flip Flops and Notebooks
Truthfully, I find the plot amazing. I don’t think integrating any Shakespearean play into the story has been done before. It’s a fresh idea. This story reminds of Sam Sotto’s Love and Gravity. It also has time travel but instead of a historical genius, in here it features a classic play by no other than Mr. William Shakespeare. If time permits, I would like to reread this story. I want to fully grasp it and connect with it. I don’t think I was able to appreciate what it was telling me the first time. I am looking forward to reading the next books
Gurlay Garcia, I Am Not A BookWorm!
Very atmospheric, very readable, and in the best sense very educational
Charles Nicholl, author of The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street
First published by Lodestone Books, 2018
Lodestone Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., No. 3 East Street, Alresford, Hampshire SO24 9EE, UK
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Text copyright: James Hartley 2017
ISBN: 978 1 78535 762 6
978 1 78535 763 3 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944394
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Also Available by James Hartley
The Invisible Hand Shakespeare’s Moon ACT I
(Lodestone Books, 978-1-78535-498-4)
Moods are the weather of the soul, Gillian thought
The car was cresting a steep hill and beyond her elbow, through the open window, the Adriatic twinkled out to the melting sun. The road snaked ahead down the coast in a series of bumps and curves and the dry, olive-tree wind blowing through her hair cooled her sunburn
I am a complete person, always the same, but I can be so different. I can be calm and perfect like the sea tonight or I can be dark and frightening like the sea at home. It all depends on my mood. And sometimes I can’t control my moods. Sometimes everything is fine but I feel terrible. Sometimes the sun is shining but it rains inside. These days it always feels like it’s raining. Everywhere.
Gillian concentrated on the music flooding from her white earbuds: anything except the real world. Anything except the argument she could see going on in the front seat. A hand was waving on one side, arms firmly crossed on the other, faces turning to bark in turn. They looked like animals when they were angry and snarling. Why couldn’t they just shut their mouths and look at the beauty all around them? Or split up if everything was so bad? Why stay together and make each other unhappy?
I feel calm and content in myself. I am a planet moving through space, through the universe, as it should do, made up of many tiny parts. I am a gorgeous, chaotic creature connected to others both bigger and smaller. But the weather here on my planet is terrible. The storms are relentless. It’s hard to enjoy this place in these conditions.
I’m like a beautiful city drowning under tides of melting ice.
I’m like a shimmering coral reef being suffocated by a floating island of plastic.
I’m a peaceful, sleepy town engulfed in the smoke of war.
I used to be happy.
I was happy when I was younger. I didn’t even have to think about it, I just was. What planet was that?
I know I can be happy again. I have been happy once. I know what it is.
Otherwise what’s the point of all this?
Why am I here?
Must I always hide inside? Deep inside, away from the sound of the storms?
Later they sat at a white plastic table in the main square of a small town and had wagon-wheel pizzas. Gillian had never felt so miserable. Was there anything worse than feeling lonely when you were with your family? Feeling lonely when you were surrounded by the people you were supposed to love the most?
No one was talking. Mum was drinking red wine, her face changing only when the waiter approached: suddenly charming and quick to laugh. When he left, all the fake emotion dripped off her chin, her eyes rolled upwards and an ugly blankness swamped her features
Dad sipped his beer, smoked his cigarettes and sometimes tipped up his phone to look at the screen. He seemed to hope Gillian wasn’t noticing anything was wrong and occasionally asked: “Pizza alright, princess?” or “Want a top up?”
Gillian ate mechanically. As soon as possible she’d retreat back into the world of books or music, but first this. Slapping at nibbling mosquitoes. Wafting a sticky, laminated menu to ward off the stifling summer-night heat. Ignoring the local lads leering from mopeds as they droned by with loud, broken exhausts. “I’m going to the toilet,” she said, walking towards the bar and straight into a noisy party
Pushing through the boisterous crowd, some in fancy dress, Gillian came face to face with a gorilla mask. She stared into the eye-slits for what might have been eternity. Surprise, pleasure, knowledge, confusion, elation and then a gorgeous, warm current of connection passed between her and the eyes behind the mask. She knew him, somehow, the owner of those eyes. And he seemed to know her. She’d never felt as close to anyone as she did to that stranger
Someone shouted: the barman
The music came back: thumping, awful techno. The lights flashed purple, red and yellow and Gillian tasted dry ice. Someone jumped on the gorilla’s back and almost knocked her out with a bottle of beer
The bathrooms were dead ahead and her feet walked her there. When she came out the music was blaring and the bar was empty but for a mute television showing Italian football. Gillian squee
zed by a skinny waiter coming in with a tray of drinks above his head. Outside was sweaty hot. Stars glowed in the night like phones at a concert
Her father was counting out coins, holding them up to work out the denominations. “Your mum’s gone back to the villa in a taxi,” he reported, as if this was perfectly normal. “Do you want anything else before I pay up, princess? An ice cream or something?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
“No. Can we just go?”
As she sat in the car, her father outside, leaning on the roof, making a call, Gillian looked out at the black, bejewelled sea. She couldn’t imagine how it would be to float in the middle of it, lost among all that water, far away from the lights of the land, bobbing in the troughs of a slick, near-silent, liquid world. What loneliness that must be, to be lost in the middle of the sea!
Or to be the sea itself, sucked this way and that, free but bound, wild but trapped
I want to be like the sea tonight, she told herself in her mind, in that same voice she’d spoken to herself with since she could remember. She felt in love and at peace with the calm, dark ocean; a part of it. You are my real family, she thought. Nature is my real family.
Gillian noticed the moon hanging low over the horizon and it seemed to cast a direct, bright-white trail, almost a pathway, across the waves to where she was
For one weird moment she felt the urge to stand up, scramble down to the beach and run along that shining path right out to the moon. For a second it felt possible, as if the moon itself were urging her on. But then her father was climbing back inside the car smelling of smoke, the engine started and the spell was not only broken but well and truly smashed to bits
Monday
1
Although it was July, the weather was awful. It had been since the start of term
The rain dripping steadily from the brown, tattered clouds looked as though it had no intention of stopping. Rivulets trickled off sagging leaves and bored holes in the school rose-beds which spread soily puddles across the car park. The birds were in hiding. Delivery men used free newspapers as rain hats as they raced between their vans and the kitchens
It was so dark they had the lights on in the dorm but Kizzie was smiling. I’m in love, she was thinking. Finally!
Kizzie pressed her nose to the window, her breath steaming the pane, and, looking directly downwards, watched Angela emerge from the Main Building. Her dorm-mate’s dedication was incredible: training in this weather! Angela’s lanky, white-socked, green-hooded figure set off into the drizzle, loped around the black semi-circle of driveway beneath the trees and vanished out through the main entrance
“Who’s nicked my new headphones?” shouted Priya from under her own bed. The dorm carpet, once red, was the colour of cardboard. Priya backed out, careful not to snag her hair on the springs, and held out her glinting, ringed fingers for an explanation
“You’ve still got the price tag on your new shoes,” Kizzie told her
“I need my headphones, guys. It’s not funny.”
Kizzie, yawning operatically, started knotting her tie. “Not me.”
“Athy borrowed them,” came a sleepy Scottish voice from the top bunk by the door. “She left ‘em in your sock drawer. Hid them in your Minnie Mouse specials if I’m not mistaken.”
“Thanks Gillian.” Priya fished out the tangle of white wires and opened the dorm door, wishing the girls a curt good morning. She came face to face with the Housemistress. “Oh. Hi, Miss Bainbridge.”
“Kizzie?” Miss Bainbridge peered at them all from under a helmet of dry-looking, greyish hair. She always seemed to be wearing the same colours, if not the same clothes: frog, dog and an especially horrible shade of budgerigar. “Is she in here?”
“Yes, Miss B?”
“You’re to report to the Headmaster’s study straight after breakfast.”
“Yes, Miss B.” Kizzie nodded and noticed, out of the corner of her eye, Gillian’s rumpled, bed-face peeping over her duvet. Priya was standing in the corridor behind Miss Bainbridge with a puzzled look on her pretty face, mouthing, “What the …?” as Kizzie asked, “Am I in trouble, miss?”
“No idea. That’s for Mr Firmin to know and for you to find out, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Miss B.”
As Kizzie watched Miss Bainbridge slide away in her dirty, novelty slippers, Priya darted back inside the dorm and leaned against the dressing gowns hanging off the back of the door. “So? What was all that about?”
“What have you done, Kiz?” Gillian asked, upright on her bunk, her bare feet dangling from her too-short pyjama bottoms. Her short, dark hair was standing up in tufts. She’d been in such a deep sleep that all her features seemed to have crowded into the middle of her face. “Something bad. Has to be.”
“Don’t think so.”
“You look guilty, to be honest, babe,” noted Priya, bracelets jangling as she searched the tracks on her phone screen. “Your body language, I mean. Oh God, now that I say it, it’s so obvious. You look so guilty.”
“I feel guilty!” Kizzie replied, giggling. She always smiled when she was in trouble or nervous. When she was really nervous, on the verge of tears say, she had a habit of bursting into laughter. Like now
“Well don’t worry ‘til you know, eh?” said Gillian. The bell for breakfast sounded in the corridor and Gillian groaned. “Oh, is that rain for real? What happened to summer?”
“Good Scottish weather that is, Gil,” Priya told her, winking as she left. “You should feel right at home. I’ll save you a place downstairs, girls. If it’s the last time I ever see you, Kiz, it’s been nice knowing you, all right? I’ll send you the tenner I owe you to your new school, OK, babes?”
2
Angela took her usual route, jogging out through the main gate of the school and up the gravel lane directly opposite before turning right at the track which ran adjacent to the pony field
Careful not to snag herself on the barbed wire, she skirted the field where the beehives where before stopping to walk through the graves in St Catherine’s. At the far end of the churchyard, soaked to her knees with dew, she hopped the old, mossy stile and jogged up through the dripping bracken to where the footpath ringing the school known as The Gallops began
Up above the first treeline, where tufts of cloud trailed off the leaves and branches below like smoke, Angela started her run proper. She set herself a decent pace and tried not to think about the rain or the niggling tightness in her left calf which had started during yesterday’s run. The weather wasn’t too much of a problem, she had the right gear on, but it made conditions underfoot slippery and unpredictable and she spent more time watching the ground than simply enjoying the run
The path was slick with running water and sometimes the roots of the great oaks and elms that towered over were submerged or buried. The higher she went, the harder the rain pelted down and she ran with her arms stretched out, always ready to break her fall if she did go over. Somewhere in her mind she knew she should stop and walk but she couldn’t bring herself to listen. It’ll be fine, she thought, wiping a screen of rain off her face. I’ll be fine.
This is wet rain, Angela thought, glancing up at the dull sky, remembering a phrase of her grandmother’s. Wasn’t all rain wet? But she understood what her grandmother had been getting at. It was horrible, thick, driving rain which worked its way up your nostrils and trickled down your collar and made you do that weird, jerky thing when it ran down your spine towards the small of your back
At the top of the hill where the fences were, Angela went left rather than right, thinking she might cut the run short. A few minutes later she heard a train whistle from somewhere occluded but close by and realised she hadn’t taken the path she thought she had. She’d run The Gallops many times so didn’t panic but, checking her watch, she did worry about getting back in time for Assembly. She was only allowed out alone on condition she came back at the agreed times
The mist and rain w
as too thick to be able to see far ahead – it was really chucking it down now – (her father’s phrase, that one) – so when she spotted a narrow path darting off downhill she took it, ducking under a broken, dripping bough and slithering side-footed through soaking green ferns and nettles. Cold droplets sprayed up into her eyes and she felt twigs and loose stones whip her ankles
Any way down is good, Angela thought, mildly out of control. I’ll get to the bottom, find the bypass and jog back to the school. Stupid to come out in this weather. What was I thinking?
Angela spotted something in her juddering, peripheral vision further down the steep path, blocking her way. She couldn’t look up long enough to see what it was. A sixth sense warned her of danger
It’s a person. A man.
This didn’t immediately register: it seemed impossible that she could come face to face with someone up here, in the rain, in the middle of nowhere
But it was someone: a balding man in a sopping, white, baggy shirt with a leather waistcoat and straggly, long hair. The stranger opened his blue diamond eyes with surprise as Angela came hurtling towards him. As they collided Angela put both hands to her head, closed her eyes and screamed
She felt a coldness, like the wind when a train passes close by
Eyes still closed, blind, screaming, Angela ran on as fast as she could. She was shivering all over, from the inside out. Panting, frantic, she blinked her eyelids open and narrowly avoided a spiked tree trunk, bounding around it, out of control, unable to stop even if she’d wanted to, careering ever onwards down a hill which seemed to steepen in gradient with every wild, bouncing step
Oh no.
And after a moment’s silence – a moment of flight – she crash landed, hitting the ground with a nasty crunch, falling hard. She felt and heard scratching and thrashing as the uneven ground stopped her dead
Ow.
Fear and adrenalin got Angela upright: she examined her own hands as though she were a robot, opening and closing her fingers in front of her wide eyes. She knew from somewhere that the fact she could move them meant they weren’t broken
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