The Other Mrs Stricks drained her teacup and slammed it on the crate with a hollow thud. “We’ve been through this, Twyla. Now is not the time to bring in outsiders.”
“I’m not an outsider,” said Lucy. “I’m from Sticky Pines, for cripe’s sake. I’m on your side. Especially if Fisher’s on the other side. All these questions are eating me alive. Please,” she begged. “Someone just tell me what’s going on!”
The cuckoo emerged once more, eyes glowing red this time to match its plumage. Its wooden head flicked from side to side. A rumble of thunder punctuated its insistent squawks.
“Your clock’s broken,” said Lucy.
“That’s the alarm,” said Mrs Stricks.
“Since when do cuckoo clocks have alarms?” asked Lucy.
“Since when are telephones maps and magazines?” the Other Mrs Stricks retorted. She stood and stretched, twisting her upper body, her joints popping satisfactorily. “Oh, maybe you’re right, Twyla. The girl has proven she can keep a secret, hasn’t she?”
Mrs Stricks’s eyes grew wide. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“What’s she saying?” asked Lucy.
Another clap of thunder struck, this time closer.
“Come, Twyla.” The Other Mrs Stricks fanned out her rainbow shawl like the wings of a macaw. “It’s time to go.”
“Esther,” said Mrs Stricks, alarmed. “Maybe we should wait.” She glanced anxiously at Lucy. “She’s not ready.”
“Oh, the girl’s on to us,” said the Other Mrs Stricks. “Look at her. She won’t let up now. Not after all she’s seen.”
“She’s only a child,” said Mrs Stricks, lowering her voice.
“I’m practically a teenager,” Lucy interjected.
“Precisely,” said the Other Mrs Stricks. “She’s a child. If she talks, nobody will believe her. What better way to test the consequences of new knowledge on the dominant species?”
The dominant … what?
“We have all agreed that now is not the time to take such risks,” hissed Mrs Stricks. “The humans are larval.”
Larval?
“And highly volatile, I know.” The Other Mrs Stricks stroked Mrs Stricks’s forearm. “But their abilities have caught up to us. They’re on the precipice of a new phase of existence, whether they, or we, are ready.”
Lucy raised her hand. “Um. What?”
“Oh for goodness’ sake, Esther,” wailed Mrs Stricks. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“What are you doing?” The conversation seemed to have left Lucy behind entirely.
“Sometimes,” the Other Mrs Stricks smiled sweetly at her wife, “all we can do is act and hope for the best.”
With that, she tossed her shawl into the air, the hand-knit cloth billowing around her. There was an odd piney scent that seemed to emanate from her body. Her skin swelled, shuddered and jellified. The cloth hit the floor as colourless goopy slime dripped down her body like sap on a sticky pine.
Lucy yelped and leapt behind a stack of folding chairs. The Other Mrs Stricks continued to sweat slime until her entire body was as transparent as water, as though she were made of the ooze herself. Suddenly, her shape lost form and she splashed to the floor in a thick puddle.
Lucy gaped in shock as the woman vanished. Atop the crumpled rainbow shawl sat a barred owl with a grey-ringed face. The same owl that had followed Milo and Lucy through the woods on the day of the carnival. It cocked its head mischievously at Lucy and kicked the shawl with its taloned toes. It hooted at Mrs Stricks, who was wringing her hands anxiously across the room. The bird flapped its powerful, silent wings and took off through the open window.
Lucy ran over and gawped as the owl soared higher and higher, the storm swirling overhead. Before the Other Mrs Stricks could reach the clouds, a bolt of lightning shot down from the heavens. BXOWM! It struck her, and she disappeared in a burst of feathery empyreal radiance. Errol ran in circles below, barking at the sky.
Lucy fell back to the floor. She pulled the rainbow shawl towards her, leaving a trail of rapidly evaporating goop in its wake. She looked up at her teacher.
“Th-the Other Mrs Stricks,” Lucy stammered. “What is— How did she…?”
“I’m so sorry to spring all this on you, my dear,” said Mrs Stricks. She chewed her bottom lip. “But you did ask…”
“Mrs Stricks,” said Lucy, every cell in her body tingling with wonder, “what are you?”
The teacher shrugged apologetically. “I must be off. You can show yourself out, can’t you, Lucy dear? I trust you’ll keep all this between us.” With that, she liquefied into an owl, smaller than the first, and flew out the window.
Outside the cabin, Errol watched the horizon as a second bird disappeared in a bolt of lightning. Then he noticed something even weirder. It was that buzzy flying machine, the one that had been zooming around the forest for weeks. It was hovering over the cabin, level with the chimney. Errol growled, baring his teeth menacingly. The machine darted downward, and the dog yelped and low-tailed it under the porch. The unidentified flying object was close enough now that any human observer might recognise it for what it was: a high-tech drone, controlled remotely from afar. Attached to its base were four blue lights and a small video camera.
Not so very far away, in a dungeon-like tunnel made of spiralled stones, a man in a tie sat at a desk in front of a computer.
Behind Mr Fisher, Doctor Quittan was busy writing various combinations of abnormal DNA sequences on a large whiteboard.
Doctor Vink sauntered into the Nu Co. surveillance office. “The factory rebuild is continuing apace,” he said. “Unfortunately, the FDA says we’ll have to run more tests before we can sell Nucralose to the general public.”
Mr Fisher pointed at his laptop screen. “What do you make of this?”
Doctor Vink watched the events recorded by the drone. “Did I just watch a couple of birds get electrocuted?” He chuckled. “Planning on releasing a viral video, are we?”
“That is not natural animal behaviour,” said Doctor Quittan. “You should consider getting a zoologist down here in addition to the chemical engineers.”
“And an arboriculturist,” Doctor Vink nodded. “I still can’t make head or tail of the trees.”
“I think we’re going to need more than that.” Fisher directed the drone over the roof of the log cabin as a girl with purple hair ran outside, jumping and waving her arms at the spot where the owls had disappeared.
“What are you going to do about the Sladan girl?” asked Quittan, adding letters to a genetic sequence on the whiteboard. “The brat keeps getting in the way.”
“She’s just a child,” said Vink.
“Is she?” asked Fisher. He watched as Lucy turned and spotted the drone. She jumped in alarm, squinted at the video camera attached to its base and yelled something Fisher couldn’t hear. He flew the drone closer, hovering it tauntingly, a couple of metres over her head.
“Either way,” said Fisher, a smirk creeping across his face, “she knows we’re watching.”
Lucy picked up a shoe-sized rock from the Strickses’ dirt driveway, took aim and chucked it at the drone. The picture on Fisher’s screen vanished, his smile along with it.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing this book has been quite a journey, and I’ve met many fellow travellers along the way. I offer my deepest thanks to the following: my wonderful editor Kirsty Stansfield and agent Laura West, for believing in this story and delving deep into the world of Sticky Pines; the intrepid team at Nosy Crow who worked so brilliantly to make this series fly; my first reader and first fan, Anna Tullis, who cares about Lucy and Milo as much as I do; Sara Grant and Linda Buckley-Archer, for their wise instruction and enthusiastic hammering of my prose; readers, friends and family members Adam, Paula, Clare, Katie, Asya, Marek, Reeve, Shami, Gwynne and Sadie for being an honest and encouraging early audience; Ash, the first kid to explore Sticky Pines, whose excited response gave
me the confidence to keep going; Lara Downie, for her beautiful photography and general awesomeness; the Swaggers, for making sense of the mad world of publishing in the most amusing way possible; my mother and brother, for their love and support through the delightfully thick and impossibly thin; Monkey, the most adorable and entertaining companion a human could ask for; and JGR, for too many joys to share – thank you for being there, in all your exacting glory. Finally, thanks to all the imaginary worlds I’ve visited, which have been indispensable to my reality.
Copyright
First published in the UK in 2020 by Nosy Crow Ltd
The Crow’s Nest, 14 Baden Place,
Crosby Row, London SE1 1YW
Nosy Crow and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Nosy Crow Ltd
Text © Dashe Roberts, 2020
Cover and chapter opener illustrations copyright © Bill Bragg, 2020
The right of Dashe Roberts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved
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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of Nosy Crow Ltd.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Typeset by Tiger Media
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ISBN: 978 1 78800 686 6
eISBN: 978 1 78800 725 2
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