The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  Her face twisted oddly, and she wiped her eyes fast.

  ‘Enough chitchat!’ called the ferryman. ‘All aboard!’

  I hugged Aunt Emma as hard as I could, and then Sugar Rixel, too. Barnabas stepped forward and shook my hand. ‘Bronte Mettlestone,’ he said, ‘it’s been a pleasure.’

  ‘It has,’ I agreed.

  At that moment, there was a splash and the water sprite brothers burst from the sea in two great fountains. One golden, one darker, both of them shimmering under the sunlight, both grinning and waving.

  ‘Farewell, young Bronte! Thank you for saving my life!’ cried Serfpio.

  ‘Farewell, young Bronte! Thank you for saving my brother’s life!’ shouted Cyphus. ‘Hello, beauteous Sugar!’

  ‘Hello, beauteous Emma!’

  Aunt Emma and Sugar Rixel waved back madly. Barnabas made a low hmph in the back of his throat and returned to his fishing.

  I stepped onto the ferry.

  By now you’ll be thinking that every visit to every aunt would end with me doing something clever or brave.

  That’s what I was thinking.

  Here we go, I sighed to myself. What’s next?

  But listen what happened with the next three aunts.

  First, there was Aunt Claire in the busy metropolis of Clybourne. From Lantern Island, I took the ferry to Curly Bay, bought a very good caramel-vanilla ice-cream with extra sprinkles (as instructed by my parents), and boarded the Clybourne Overnighter. I slept with my head leaning against the window, which bumped and rattled through my dreams, and when the coach arrived in Clybourne, I looked sleepily out onto the morning.

  A black motor car stood across the street. I had only seen motor cars in the cinema before—we didn’t yet have them in Gainsleigh. Aunt Claire, in elegant hat and tailored suit, leaned against this car and nodded at me. I could see at once that the edge of her coat was caught in the door, so I waved through the window and pointed. She looked down, opened the car door to set the coat free, and nodded at me again.

  Aunt Claire is a professional Events Co-ordinator. She dresses sharply and swings her umbrella as she strides about, and she laughs loudly when things go wrong. But then she turns away, frowning to herself. I already knew her well because she often comes to Gainsleigh to organise events. Whenever she’s in town, she takes me out for lemonade and cakes at the Arlington Tea Room.

  So we were very cheerful to see each other, and she shook my hand firmly and said, ‘Here she is! Hop aboard!’

  Motor cars turned out to make a roaring sound, like tigers, and slid along at a terrific pace. I tried to be nonchalant, but I could not stop watching the road spinning by, buildings and trees skidding sideways like frocks in my wardrobe when Aunt Isabelle is swishing through them.

  We drove directly to a hotel where Aunt Claire was organising an event.

  ‘Here it is,’ she said, hurrying up a flight of stairs. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to sit in on the sessions.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I began—but then I read the sign.

  ‘Perhaps, I could just read a book?’ I suggested.

  But now Aunt Claire was striding along a corridor. She took out a key, opened a door, led me along another corridor, opened a second locked door, and stopped at a third. Two enormous security guards blocked this one.

  ‘I mean, if it was long addition …’ I was saying. ‘That might be one thing, but—’

  ‘Hello, fellows,’ Aunt Claire said, and she gestured towards me. ‘My niece.’

  The security guards stared hard at me and then nodded. One pressed several buttons on the handle of the door, until it clicked. He stood aside.

  Aunt Claire swept through.

  Now we were in an immense room lined with tables and chairs. Men and women sat at these tables, scribbling on notepads. Out the front, a grey-haired man in spectacles stood at a lectern, waiting for the scribbling to finish.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Shall we get on?’

  I sighed.

  Aunt Claire indicated two empty seats. I slumped.

  ‘A radish gnome,’ said the teacher, ‘is a right little bugger with claws like a set of steak knives.’

  I straightened up.

  ‘It’s not actually a Mathematics convention,’ Aunt Claire whispered, leaning close to me. ‘It’s a Convention of Spellbinders. Always top secret. Spellbinders have to keep their identities strictly hidden, otherwise Dark Mages come for them in their sleep. Come after their friends and family, too.’

  I nodded slowly. I’d never thought about that before, but it made sense. When you see pictures of Spellbinders in the newspaper, they’re always wearing capes with hoods that hide their faces. I used to think they did this to look stylish.

  ‘Mint?’ Aunt Claire whispered next, pushing a bowl towards me. I took one. The day was looking up.

  Over the next three days, Aunt Claire had to hurry away often, to check lists and scold people. (This is called ‘organising’.) Meanwhile, I sat and listened to different professors teach classes on Dark Mages and Spellbinding.

  Some lessons were very technical and dull, so I counted mints or fell asleep in those. Or I looked around at the Spellbinders sitting at their tables. They acted just like regular people, picking their teeth and sighing, or scratching at marks on their trousers or skirts. This seemed strange. Even though I’d always known that Spellbinders were ordinary people who’d inherited Spellbinding powers, I still expected them to be sparkly. Or at least to have extra big muscles.

  Almost every professor talked about ‘the most powerful Spellbinder of all time’, Carabella-the-Great, which was funny. I’d never even heard of this Carabella-the-Great before Aunt Emma mentioned her on Lantern Island, and now she seemed to be flying at me from every direction. It was like when you learn a new word, such as cantaloupe, and suddenly everybody you meet is singing songs about cantaloupes, painting them in grand portraits or wearing them as earrings.

  Nobody showed a picture of Carabella-the-Great, of course, so I had to imagine her. Long, jet-black hair, I decided, and blasts of magic shooting from her nose like fiery sneezes.

  ‘She disappeared right after completing the Majestic Spellbinding of the Whispering Kingdom,’ one professor said. ‘And has never been heard from since. Such a tragedy!’ The students all nodded sadly.

  ‘Majestic Spellbinding would have worn her out completely,’ another professor said, ‘so it made sense for her to take a vacation. But it’s been five years and not a word!’

  This particular teacher was a favourite of mine. She was a very old woman who called herself Prattle, and she snapped her fingers and rolled her eyes as she talked. This made people laugh. Her class was on the binding of Whisperers.

  ‘Why do we need to learn this?’ a skinny girl asked. ‘Aren’t all the Whisperers trapped behind the Majestic Spellbinding?’

  Prattle had been pacing up and down, but now she stopped still. She lowered her voice. ‘Have you no memory of the Whispering Wars?’ she breathed.

  The skinny girl shrugged. ‘Well, they ended fifteen years ago,’ she said. ‘And I was pretty young then. So …’

  Prattle stared at her. ‘And have you never met a parent whose child has been stolen by an escaped Whisperer?’

  ‘But they don’t escape any more, do they?’ the skinny girl frowned. ‘I mean …’

  For a moment, it seemed as if Prattle’s face was going to collapse into its wrinkles, but then somebody dropped a pen and she was suddenly pacing again.

  ‘Nutmeg!’ she cried. ‘Mix nutmeg into your potions! Potions make your bindings stronger and nutmeg is the secret ingredient Carabella-the-Great discovered. Nutmeg! Write that down!’

  Everyone scribbled.

  ‘Underline it!’ Prattle commanded. ‘Put circles and daisies around it! Nutmeg! Remember that!’

  Next, she had the class practise net-making using a shuttle and gauge, a clamp and real, ordinary string. ‘The more you do this,’ she said, ‘the more the movemen
ts of Spellbinding will come to you instinctively. You should all take up fishing and make your own nets!’

  I sat at the table watching, but Prattle suddenly clicked her fingers at me. ‘You too, child! Up you get!’

  ‘But I’m not a Spellbinder,’ I explained. ‘I’m just watching the conference.’

  ‘Who cares?’ she said, which made everybody laugh. So I got up and tried net-making. After that, we had to close our eyes and move our arms, working with imaginary tools and twine. Peculiar at first, but soon the air seemed to turn to water, my hands moving through it like a new swimming stroke.

  It was fun. Prattle gave out folders of Spellbinding Potions at the end, and I packed mine away in my suitcase.

  I hardly saw Aunt Claire, she was so busy. But on the last day, I gave her the gift from my parents. We were in the hotel lobby café, and had just shared a slice of cake. She studied the card for a while. Then she opened the box in her neat, careful way, and lifted out a little packet filled with tiny red flakes.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Aunt Claire replied, raising her eyebrows. She turned the packet over and read the label: Dried Chilli. ‘Ha!’ she chuckled. ‘Spicy! Of course! When we were young, your father and I used to compete to see which of us could eat the spiciest food,’ she explained to me. ‘I once consumed an Empress Black Chilli. My finest hour. Ever tasted one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t. Took me a month to get sensation back in my mouth. Patrick drank a jar of Sartorial Tabasco in response. His finest hour. Most impressive. Not long after that, he and your mother, Lida, started dating. I took the pair of them out to dinner one night. They were in low spirits that day, as Lida had received a message from home. You know your mother was a teenage runaway, I suppose? We knew nothing about her family, so I was that curious to find out. I thought if we had a blast, they might tell me. But not a word. Never even found out what the message was.’

  I told her that I was going to visit my grandfather at the end of my journey, after Franny’s party in Nina Bay, and perhaps he would tell me?

  ‘Perhaps,’ she agreed. ‘Anyway, they cheered up and we ended up having a fine and hilarious night. One of the best. Turned out Lida could take us both on. She munched on a Vast Diego Pepper without batting an eyelid!’

  Aunt Claire stood, placed the chilli flakes in her handbag, and said, ‘Right then! Best skedaddle!’ Which was her way of saying, ‘Let’s go.’

  And that was the end of my visit with Aunt Claire. I hadn’t done a single thing that was clever or brave.

  I suppose it had been helpful of me to point out that Aunt Claire’s coat was caught in her car door when I arrived. But she would’ve noticed that herself in a moment, anyway.

  Next, I took a dray cart to visit Aunt Sophy in the outskirts of Straw Bridge. Sophy is my youngest aunt, and is a veterinarian—she lives in an animal hospital. I already knew that, as she had visited us in Gainsleigh before and told me.

  After she hugged me in welcome, we stopped outside the animal hospital. It was huge, like a barn. Aunt Sophy turned to me. ‘You know how certain things are famous throughout Kingdoms and Empires for being dangerous and wicked?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘And you know how it often turns out that, in fact, they are perfectly lovely?’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘No. No, I’ve never heard that.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Well, trust me. It often does.’

  Then she told me that her animal hospital specialised in dragons.

  All enormous creatures, like whales and tamarind elephants, have a magical impossibility about them. Your heart flares with astonishment to see them. They are so big, like buildings, and yet warm and alive, which is not like buildings. Dragons have that big-creature magic, of course, but they also ripple and glimmer with colours, on account of the gemstones in their scales.

  So, yes, they are beautiful.

  On the other hand, they have teeth like daggers, tails that can crush, and breath that could burn you alive.

  I was petrified.

  But Aunt Sophy was so kind and bossy with her dragons, moving quickly between them, spooning medicine into one dragon’s open mouth, scratching the chin of another, scolding the next for having torn up its pillow, that I soon forgot to be afraid. It helped that some of the dragons could speak human language. Once you start chatting with a monster about the weather, you begin to forget that it’s a monster.

  Aunt Sophy speaks fluent Dragon, of course, which is a curious language. You make sounds that are sort of crunchy, or sometimes a bit like bicycle bells: brrrring! brrring! But you combine the sounds with gestures.

  So if you want to say, ‘Sleep is the best thing for you, Dragon Sayara, and when you wake, your throat will feel much better,’ you make these noises: grrrrr eek! eek! brl, grl, brl and at the same time, you bend, touch your toes, straighten up, then punch yourself in the stomach.

  At night, Aunt Sophy and I had cocoa and cinnamon toast and slept in bunk beds. I don’t know if you have ever slept while dragons sighed and snuffled; if so, you will know that, on the first night, you have terrifying nightmares about dragons ripping you to pieces in your sleep. But, on the second and third night, there is a deep and comforting earthy smell, and the air glows and flashes with the warmth of their dreams.

  During the day, Aunt Sophy set me to work shovelling dragon poop, boiling potatoes and peas (works wonders for dragons with flu, Aunt Sophy told me), cutting up bandages and disinfecting needles.

  One of the older dragons, Dragon Great Damian, taught me some words and phrases in Dragon. He had a sprained hoof, and was reclining, his hoof propped on a mattress with an icepack the size of a flour sack. He chuckled often at my Dragon, sometimes cackling so hard that steam snorted from his nostrils. But each time that happened, he apologised and said, ‘No, but you’re doing very well, Bronte! Very well!’ Afterwards, he told Aunt Sophy that I had given him the best laugh he’d had in years, and quite taken his mind off his throbbing hoof.

  Dragon Great Damian had grown up in Nina Bay, he said, and I told him I’d be visiting my Aunt Franny there at the end of my journey.

  ‘Watch out for Whisperers,’ he said to me. ‘They steal children, you know.’

  ‘It’s safe now!’ Aunt Sophy called from the baby dragon pen. ‘They’ve got a Majestic Spellbinding all around the Whispering Kingdom, Damian.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ muttered Dragon Great Damian. ‘My memory is not what it was.’ He chuckled. ‘As a young dragon, I used to fly over the Whispering Kingdom, you know, trying to see what it was like.’

  ‘And what is it like?’ I asked.

  ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘You can’t see a thing. Wild ocean on one side, Impenetrable Forest on the other, and a witch-made Mist Shroud stops you getting in—or seeing anything at all—from the air. The road, of course, is blocked by the Whispering Gates. They’re a very secretive people—plus they have several diamond mines and need to keep out thieves.’

  ‘I think there are three Whispering Gates?’ Aunt Sophy enquired, coming to join us, a baby dragon in her arms.

  ‘Correct,’ the big dragon nodded. ‘Only Whisperers can get through the Whispering Gates—they Whisper them open. I have heard pirates speak of a legend that there are keys to the Gates hidden somewhere—pirates and Whisperers were allies in the Whispering Wars—but otherwise, nobody can enter.’

  ‘Why would anybody want to get through the Whispering Gates?’ I asked.

  ‘Excellent point,’ Aunt Sophy agreed. ‘Come, Bronte, would you like to learn how to feed this little guy?’

  Bottle-feeding the baby dragon was my favourite part of the visit. He snuggled into my lap and slurped on the bottle, staring steadily up at me. Newborn baby dragons are only about the size of a cat, and their scales are still soft. They haven’t even got their milk gemstones yet.

  On my last day, I gave Aunt Sophy the gift from my parents. It turned out to be a tin of s
ugar cubes.

  She smiled in the same soft way that she smiled at the baby dragons, and she told me that she and my mother, Lida, had been great friends as teenagers.

  ‘Lida arrived in Gainsleigh with nothing but her shoulder-bag,’ Aunt Sophy told me. ‘Not even a pair of shoes, and hair that fell into her eyes and all the way to her waist. She and I became the best of friends.

  ‘We both loved animals. We used to visit wild forest horses on the outskirts of Gainsleigh after school,’ Aunt Sophy continued. ‘We held sugar cubes out on the palms of our hands, hoping to win over the horses. Eventually, the horses began coming to us for sugar every afternoon. One day, we noticed that a horse had red nettle poisoning. Well, the only cure for that is blue chrysanthemums, but those are deep in the forest. Do you know what your mother did, Bronte? She persuaded another wild forest horse to carry her into the forest to find it!’

  I blinked at that. As far as I knew, nobody had ever ridden a wild forest horse and lived to tell the tale.

  ‘Another day, my brother, Patrick—your father—asked if he could please come along on the visit to the forest horses? He began to come all the time, bringing funny stories to tell the horses, glancing often at Lida’s face as he told them to see if she might smile. She did. Your father was hilarious. Lida would practise her cartwheels and high flips in the forest, and she would glance at Patrick to see if he was impressed.

  ‘In such a way, I was the first person in the family to know that your parents were falling in love,’ Sophy told me proudly.

  At that moment, a great wind blustered in through the open door of the hospital. We hurried outside, Sophy pressing the sugar cubes into her pocket. An immense dragon hovered, scales alight in the afternoon sun. Aunt Sophy shouted greetings while the dragon landed and folded his wings. ‘It’s Dragon Carpy,’ Sophy said to me, ‘here to visit his wife. He’ll have to come back later, I’m afraid. I’ve given her a sleeping dram that’ll last the day.’