The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  Another image came to me. Aunt Isabelle frowning. ‘You’ve a very strong will there, Bronte!’ she scolded. And another. Aunt Isabelle beaming. ‘You’ve a very strong will there, Bronte!’

  I’d forgotten all about my strong will!

  I swiped the tears away and jumped to my feet.

  ‘No, Aunt Nancy,’ I declared.

  She was waiting for someone to answer the phone. ‘Shhh,’ she told me.

  ‘No, Aunt Nancy,’ I repeated. ‘I am going to the Mountain View Café.’

  Aunt Nancy chuckled. ‘No, you’re not,’ she said. ‘I’m calling you the chair.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You won’t even like it!’

  ‘Yes. As a matter of fact, I am.’

  Aunt Nancy chuckled again. ‘Listen to you! Funny little thing!’

  ‘Kindly do not chuckle,’ I said in a low and crackling voice. ‘My parents might have left me and tied me up with Faery cross-stitch. But I’m sure they had reasons. They want me to go to the Mountain View Café, and I will go there. Right this instant. Arrange for a chair to collect me if you like, but I will not be here to take it.’

  I strode out of the kitchen and down the hall.

  Behind me came an icy silence. The telephone clicked.

  I returned to the kitchen, carrying my suitcase. Aunt Nancy was standing with folded arms.

  ‘Thank you for your hospitality,’ I said, quite formally. ‘Goodbye for now.’

  I walked out the front door.

  I didn’t have a clue where the Mountain View Café was, of course.

  I stood outside Aunt Nancy’s front door. The sky was blue and the snow was bright. I squinted to the left. There, the road ran to Steep Street, and on down to the village. I squinted right. There, the road ran up into the mountains.

  Both directions were silent.

  ‘Mountain View Café?’ I called, very softly.

  It didn’t answer, of course.

  Hmm, I thought to myself. Then I realised something. Even if I knew where it was, it would be closed! Like everything else! Because of the avalanche risk!

  I had just wasted my will.

  Behind me, the door opened. ‘Goodness me!’ Aunt Nancy said. ‘You are the funniest thing. Well, if you must go to the Mountain View Café, it’s up that way.’ She pointed right. ‘They’re open because the avalanche risk is mild there.’ She tilted her head, examining my boots. ‘It’s quite a walk. Can you manage?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘All that way carrying your suitcase! Funny thing. Ask the people at the café to order you the chair to the station. That suit you?’

  ‘Perfectly, thank you.’

  ‘Just follow the road, then,’ she declared. ‘And eventually you’ll see a signpost. It’s quite a famous café. Everybody loves it, although I cannot think why. But don’t blame yourself, dear.’

  I looked at her. ‘I don’t,’ I told her frankly. ‘Thank you again for my stay.’

  Aunt Nancy beamed. ‘As long as you’ve had a really lovely time!’ she said.

  I wasn’t at all sure how to answer that, so I turned around and set off.

  And when I got to the Mountain View Café, of course, I started the avalanche.

  This is how it happened.

  It was a long, steep trek up the road and then a longer, steeper trek up a snowy track through the mountains. By the time I arrived at the café, I was breathing in and out like this: crackle-HUFF! crackle-HUFF!

  A wooden platform, crowded with chairs and tables, rose from the snow on thick wooden stumps. It was empty except for one table, where a rugged-up family sat eating and drinking. They were perfectly silent. A little boy put a spoon into a bowl of ice-cream and it clinked. ‘Shhh!’ hissed his mother.

  I stopped to get my breath. My eyes ran from the platform along a path to a log cabin. Huge block letters were painted on the side of this cabin: MOUNTAIN VIEW CAFÉ, and beneath that: Order Inside.

  I crackle-HUFFed my way to this cabin and pushed open the door. Inside was another little cluster of tables and chairs, a picture window, and a fireplace. No customers at all in here, but a young woman stood behind a counter.

  She pointed to a sign on the counter. BE QUIET! it said.

  I nodded.

  We looked at each other. I set down my suitcase. We looked at each other a little longer.

  ‘Yes?’ the woman prompted.

  Now I was confused. I pointed to the sign.

  ‘Oh!’ she smiled. ‘You’re allowed to speak. Just don’t shout. We need to be careful of loud noises around here, because of the avalanche risk. Got a pair of cymbals in that suitcase? Whack them together, why don’t you? And then we’ll have a show!’ She grinned, and then shook her head quickly. ‘But don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t do that.’

  ‘I haven’t got any cymbals,’ I assured her.

  She smiled. I ordered my hot chocolate.

  ‘Inside or outside?’

  Now, on this particular day I made three bad decisions. The first one was now. I looked at the fireplace in the corner, and then I looked at the big blue sky in the window and thought of the platform and its tables. ‘Outside,’ I said.

  ‘Leave your suitcase in here then,’ she suggested kindly. ‘Sit anywhere you like, and I’ll bring you the hot chocolate.’

  I thanked her and turned to the door.

  ‘Would you mind taking these along with you?’ the woman called softly.

  I turned around. She was holding a tray of teacups. ‘The family out there have ordered a pot of tea,’ she said. ‘I’ll make it now but it would be a huge help if you carried the cups out for me?’

  I hesitated.

  ‘Don’t worry if it’s too much trouble,’ she added.

  This was my second bad decision. ‘Not too much at all,’ I said. In fact, I was pleased that she trusted me with the job. I reached for the tray.

  The empty teacups sat elegantly on their saucers, each painted with matching flowers. They jingled a little as I walked along the path. From up on the platform, the family looked across at me. I slowed down.

  Here came my third decision.

  I could feel a cough in my chest. It rose slowly to my chin. It wanted me to cough, but I kept my mouth firmly closed. No, I thought to the cough. I will not make a sound.

  That was the bad decision. I should have just coughed.

  As it was, the cough grew steadily. It billowed and surged inside me. It pulsated in my cheeks. It grappled at my scalp, and plunged its nails into my knees.

  If you haven’t had a serious cough for a while, you’ll think I’m talking a lot of nonsense. But that’s exactly how coughs feel when you refuse to let them cough.

  Steadfastly, I walked on, the tray held out before me.

  You MUST let me cough, the cough commanded.

  I replied, I will NOT!

  The cough got its shoulders right up against the inside of my chest and shoved as hard as it could. I pressed my mouth tightly closed and then, without me making a decision, the cough exploded into being.

  It turned out it didn’t need my permission after all.

  By now, of course, it had grown so big and powerful that it was a shouting cough, a bellowing cough, the kind of cough that takes you by the shoulders and shakes you wildly. I stumbled. I hit a patch of ice on the path. My feet flew up beneath me and the tray of teacups soared into the air.

  People ask me, ‘What was it like to be tossed down a mountainside in an avalanche?!’ They are so eager to hear, but I don’t have a clue how to describe it.

  So I tell them about the curtains.

  Once, a great storm blew through Gainsleigh, and the windows in the drawing room were open. Aunt Isabelle and I ran in to close them, but we both paused a moment, struck by the chaos. The rain was splattering the carpet but, more than that, the curtains were under attack. The terrible wind was dashing them, wringing them, slamming them up against the glass, against the wall, ag
ainst the ceiling. It was beating them, tossing, slapping and twisting them. I always remember those curtains and how desperate and helpless they were, how they swung towards us and seemed to cry, help! but the wind plucked them back again, away from us at once.

  That was me on the mountain. I coughed, hit a patch of ice, the teacups flew—and then I was the curtains in the wind.

  My teeth rattled, my cheeks ached, my arms and legs twisted and flailed. Help, I cried, reaching out to Aunt Isabelle, for there she was in the doorway of the drawing room, watching me. Help! I called, but I was flung back against the glass. Help, Aunt Isabelle! I sobbed.

  Help! I called to my parents. But they were very busy.

  What shall we do with her? my father asked. Just drop her here with a note?

  The wind slammed me up against the ceiling. Help, Aunt Isabelle, I whispered deep inside me.

  The wind took a fist and punched me quite through.

  Oh, just drop her here in this ditch, said my mother, with a note.

  Here, said my father, wrap this cross-stich all around her so she can’t escape the avalanche.

  Over and over, I whispered or sobbed, help me, help me, twisting and flailing in a thicket of trees, somewhere in a ditch, on the mountainside, lost.

  Until something fell upon me like the window slamming fast: the curtains dropped, lifeless and still.

  I dreamed that I was warm.

  I remember being warm! I thought. I decided to stick with the dream.

  But then I opened my eyes and saw the warm orange glow of a fireplace, overlapping rugs on warm wooden floorboards, a tall, warm clock saying tick, tock, tick.

  I am warm, I thought in amazement.

  I fell asleep again.

  The next time I woke, three girls stared down at me. Each had dark-gold braids.

  ‘Are you awake?’ said one.

  ‘Shush,’ said the second. ‘You’ll wake her.’

  ‘Not if she’s already awake,’ the first countered.

  ‘Are you awake now?’ enquired the third, archly. ‘I mean to say, have my sisters woken you?’

  I stared up at each face in turn.

  ‘It’s so warm!’ I said.

  ‘You’re too hot!’ one cried, and the second bellowed: ‘Turn the fire down!’ The third rushed to the fireplace. ‘How do I do it?’ She seized a poker.

  ‘No, please!’ I said. ‘I like being warm!’ I tried to sit up.

  ‘Lie down!’ they all cried in horror. The girl holding the poker dropped it with a clatter, rushed over, grabbed my shoulders and pushed me back down. Bounce, went my head against the pillow.

  ‘Don’t be so rough!’ the others scolded her.

  ‘I was being firm,’ she explained. ‘Not rough, just kind and firm.’

  The others swung to look at me. ‘Was she rough?’

  I considered. They waited patiently.

  ‘I’m very confused,’ I said eventually.

  The three girls looked at one another. They widened their eyes. Then they beamed.

  ‘Of course,’ said one. ‘She doesn’t know where she is!’

  ‘She probably doesn’t know who we are!’

  ‘She might not even know who she is,’ breathed the third.

  The others scoffed. ‘I’m sure she knows who she is.’

  I thought about it.

  ‘Bronte Mettlestone,’ I said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  They beamed again. ‘Well done,’ they said warmly.

  ‘And do you know what happened to you?’ one girl enquired gently.

  Up until that point, I had only been happy to be warm. But instantly, I remembered. The warmth fled like scattering mice. Sobs rushed at me. I was nothing but a tangle of sobs.

  ‘Oh no!’ the girls exclaimed. ‘Don’t cry! Darling, don’t cry!’ All three of them clambered onto the bed, all their hands and arms wrapped round me. ‘Hush now,’ they murmured, all at once.

  ‘I’m getting very wet,’ one said, politely.

  ‘The avalanche!’ I wept.

  ‘No, darling, from your tears.’

  The others hushed her. ‘Yes,’ one said. ‘You were in an avalanche! It must have been so scary!’

  ‘No wonder you’re crying. Poor thing.’

  ‘But the people! The people!’ I was sobbing again.

  They patted me and smoothed my hair until I quietened down again.

  ‘What people?’ one murmured, eventually.

  ‘The people at the Mountain View Café! The family! The waitress! I caused an avalanche! I killed them all! They’re all dead!’

  ‘Oh, they’re fine,’ the three girls scoffed. ‘The avalanche thundered down right between the cabin and the platform. It took you with it.’

  ‘It carried you for miles! It’s astonishing you’re alive!’

  ‘And a night out in the snow? It’s miraculous! You nearly died you know. You had a terrible fever.’

  ‘When the doctor brought you in, he said, I don’t like her chances.’

  ‘He did say that. We specifically heard him: I don’t like her chances.’

  ‘And when he came back the next day, he said, well, she’s proved me wrong! He sounded a bit annoyed with you for proving him wrong.’

  ‘No, he didn’t, Imogen. You’re inventing. He sounded very pleased.’

  ‘And then you just slept. You’ve been sleeping this whole last week!’

  I stopped crying. ‘The people are all right?’

  The three girls nodded vigorously.

  ‘Only everyone’s annoyed with that waitress for asking you to carry a tray of teacups. She says she thought you were older than ten. Because you seemed so sophisticated. And self-assured.’

  I was quite happy about that. Sophisticated and self-assured. I still feel happy now, remembering.

  ‘Everyone’s all right?’ I whispered again, and the three girls whispered, ‘Yes.’

  Then I began to laugh. I laughed until I cried, and at once the girls began their patting and smoothing and hugging again.

  After a while, they sat back and regarded me again.

  ‘You are to rest for at least another week,’ one told me. ‘And we are not to upset you.’

  They raised their eyebrows at each other then. ‘So much for that promise,’ one said. ‘She’s been crying her eyes out.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ I assured them.

  I leaned back against the headboard. I felt tingly with cheerfulness now. Everyone was okay! I looked at the room more carefully.

  There were lamps lit, and arched windows. On the wall were paintings: a jester juggling coloured balls, a woman on a picnic rug with a slice of cake on a plate. A white feather quilt lay on my bed, and this was covered, at a diagonal, by a patchwork blanket.

  For the first time, I wondered where I was.

  ‘She still doesn’t know who we are,’ one of the girls whispered.

  ‘We should introduce ourselves,’ whispered another.

  ‘I’m too shy,’ said the third.

  All three giggled. The bed shook.

  ‘I’ll start,’ one said boldly, and she shook my hand. ‘My name is Imogen,’ she said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘I’m Esther,’ said the second.

  ‘I’m Astrid,’ said the third.

  ‘Imogen, Esther and Astrid,’ I said. I shook their hands in turn.

  Imogen was the tallest, and her forehead was quite high. Esther was the middle one and her nose had a tilt. Astrid was the smallest and liveliest.

  They gazed at me. I gazed back.

  ‘Imogen, Esther and Astrid,’ I repeated. Something went click-click-click as if the names were the cogs in a turning wheel. ‘Imogen, Esther and Astrid! I have cousins with those names!’

  The girls smiled.

  ‘Do you indeed?’ Imogen enquired.

  ‘The funniest thing,’ Esther added. ‘We have a cousin named Bronte.’

  Astrid bounced on her knees. ‘It’s us!’ she said. ‘We’re your cousins! This
is our boarding school!’

  ‘The avalanche carried you all the way to the woods by the school gate! The groundskeeper found you!’

  ‘Your suitcase was still in the café!’

  ‘That’s how they figured out who you were. Your name is on the suitcase! The café sent it down for you.’

  At that moment, a bell jangled somewhere in the distance and Astrid said, ‘Whoa, that’s the time?’

  Then they sprung from the bed and ran from the room, blowing kisses. ‘Don’t sob again,’ Esther called over her shoulder, ‘or not until we’re back, anyway.’

  Let me be honest with you. My week at the Katherine Valley Boarding School for Girls was one of the most pleasant of my life.

  But let me be honest with you again. That first day, I fell out of bed.

  After the bell rang and the girls ran from the room, I lay down smiling, pulled the covers higher, then sat straight up with a gasp.

  The instructions!

  My heart tumbled out of place. Or that’s how it seemed, anyway. It was probably still right where it belonged.

  I have been here for a week?! I thought. I need to stay another?!

  Impossible!

  What was I supposed to be doing right now? Not lying in a bed, that was for sure! But what? My mind flew around like a bird trapped in a classroom. Then I remembered. The ship! I should have boarded it at the Jumian Wharf! I should be sailing the seas right now!

  The Riddle and Popcorn Cruise Ship, it was called. It was captained by two of my aunts, Aunt Maya and Aunt Lisbeth.

  ‘Two aunts for the price of one,’ the Butler had remarked with approval, when we talked about this part of the itinerary. ‘Handy!’ Aunt Isabelle and I had laughed.

  But the ship would have sailed by now and I was not on it! I did not have two aunts for the price of one, I had NO AUNTS! For the price of none! Which was not funny.

  I had broken the Faery cross-stitch.

  What would happen? What had already happened? Was Gainsleigh in pieces? Were Isabelle and the Butler clinging to cobblestones, swept along streets that had been torn in two?