I had to obey the instructions at once! Before any more damage could be done! I had to get onto that Cruise Ship!
At this point, I was breathing fast and loud like someone in a race. I heard the voice of my governess in my head. Come on, Bronte! You can solve this problem!
Another voice swooped in. Come on, Bronte! Now it was my swimming coach. Swim!
Of course!
I would swim.
I would swim across the ocean to the ship. I was a good swimmer. Second place in the Gainsleigh Junior Swim Contest.
First, of course, I would have to bust out of this place. If only I had the criminal element from Carafkwa Island to help. Or, even better, Gustav Spectaculo and The Scorpion, former leaders of the Anti-Pirate League! I’d been to plenty of costume balls, dressed up as one or the other of them. I knew they wore black masks and suits, decorated with pictures of exploding skull-and-crossbones. I imagined them knocking on the window, their eyes bright behind their masks. ‘We’ve come out of retirement to bust you out!’
Well, I could be a criminal alone if I wanted. I would need ropes to climb down from the window, and maybe a gun? No, I would never want to shoot anybody. Also, this was a school, not a prison. I would need my suitcase, though! It had the gifts in it! Where was it?
There it was. On top of that wardrobe. A very tall wardrobe.
Well, I would drag the bedside table over, stand on it, and reach up for my suitcase. I looked at the bedside table now. A glass of water stood on it. I would have to move that glass before I dragged the table, of course, or else the water would spill. Actually, a silver puddle sat beside the glass of water now. Somebody had already spilled it.
Now that I looked more closely, it was not a puddle. It was an object. I reached out to touch it. It was my Elvish Medal for Bravery!
I would need that. I couldn’t remember why, and then I could. Uncle Josh at the table in Aunt Sue’s house. ‘And Bronte,’ he had said. ‘I think you ought to wear it all the time from now.’
I picked it up by its ribbon and slipped it over my head. This was when I noticed I was wearing a nightgown. Difficult to swim in. It would weigh me down and get tangled around my legs.
Another easy problem to solve. I would change into my bathing suit.
So. Here was my plan: Move glass of water. Drag bedside table across room. Climb onto bedside table and reach for suitcase. Find bathing suit. Change into bathing suit. Find rope. Climb out of window. Walk through the snow in my bathing suit to the wharf. (Where was the wharf? Figure that out.) Swim across the ocean until I reached the Cruise Ship.
Chilly! But perfectly possible.
Well, I would do it.
Only, now that I thought about it, moving the glass of water seemed like very hard work.
I lay down again to consider this. As far as I could remember, moving a glass of water was usually a pretty simple thing.
Come on, Bronte, I heard Aunt Isabelle say in my mind. You can do it!
I pushed back the covers—and fell out of bed.
Right at that moment, the door swung open and a song burst into the room.
It was sung in one of those rich, deep, dramatic voices that could be someone being very funny, or someone who believed he had extraordinary musical talent and belonged on the stage.
The song stuck halfway through a word.
‘Hold the horses!’ said the voice of the singer, now sounding like an ordinary man. ‘Where’s she got to?’
‘Why, she’s on the floor!’ a woman’s voice replied. The woman’s voice sounded melodious itself, as if she was singing without meaning to.
Two faces looked down at me. A man wearing spectacles and a plump woman. Both had wispy grey hair, and both appeared to be very interested.
‘What was wrong with the bed?’ the man asked. He pushed on the mattress with the palms of his hands. ‘Good springs! Seems a fine bed to me. Why depart it?’
‘Oh, stop now,’ said the woman. ‘She’s fallen out, any fool can see. Come on and I’ll help you up, dear girl.’
‘No!’ I said. ‘I mean, thank you, but no. You see, I’ve got a schedule. I’m just getting my suitcase so I can change into my bathing suit, and then I’ll be climbing through that window there, and down into the snow, so I can swim to the Cruise Ship.’
They both seemed even more interested now. They looked at each other.
‘Oh blast,’ I said. ‘Now I’ve gone and told you.’
But, in a way, I didn’t mind that I’d been sprung. It seemed a lot more relaxing to lie on the floor than to drag a bedside table around.
‘You’ve still got a touch of fever,’ the man said, his hand against my forehead.
‘Clearly,’ laughed the woman. Then she got her hands under my arms, and hoisted me up and onto the bed. I fell onto it with a plong! It was good to be back. The woman pulled the covers up and under my chin.
‘I’m the Matron,’ she said, ‘and this is Doctor Saurelis here to check on you. Bronte, you have nothing to worry about except resting.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid you are wrong.’
‘I’m often wrong,’ the Matron nodded. ‘About all manner of things. Here’s an example: I was wrong to advise my husband, Kenneth, to pursue his dream of becoming a ventriloquist. Turns out he’s terrible at it. You can see his mouth move all the time!’
‘Oh, not all the time,’ the Doctor said. He had opened a black bag and was now listening to my heart through a stethoscope. ‘Not when he pauses because he’s forgotten his lines.’
They both laughed.
‘Anyhow, yes, I am often wrong, Bronte, but not today.’ The Matron folded her hands together. ‘I’ve been on the telephone with your Aunt Isabelle. I like her very much. No nonsense, that one. She wanted to swoop in to see you when she heard about the avalanche and your illness, but there’s still an avalanche risk around here. So, no visitors allowed. We persuaded her to leave you in our care.’
‘We’d best not tell her you’ve been sleeping on the floor,’ the Doctor put in. Now he’d taken a bottle of medicine from his bag and was holding it up to the light.
‘I have a schedule,’ I said. ‘Thank you for your concern but I need to be on a ship. I was thinking I’d swim for it but now that seems wrong. Girls don’t swim across oceans looking for ships, as a rule. Or do they?’
‘You’re in a muddle because you’ve been very ill,’ the Matron said. ‘As for the Cruise Ship, we know all about it. Your aunts—don’t tell me—Maya and …’
‘Lis—’ I began, but she snapped her fingers at me.
‘Lisbeth!’ she said. ‘You are supposed to be on a Cruise Ship with your aunts, Maya and Lisbeth. To give them a gift from your parents. You see? You think we know nothing but we’ve been talking to your Aunt Isabelle and we know a great deal more than nothing!’
‘Only a little more,’ the doctor said sunnily. He shook the medicine bottle hard, opened the lid and tipped some into a spoon. ‘Here you go.’
I didn’t like the look of it.
‘It tastes like sunshine and cherries,’ he coaxed.
‘Really?’
‘No. Not really. But drink it anyway, would you?’
I drank it. It was horrible. Like charcoal and soap.
The Matron handed me the glass of water and they both waited while I drank.
‘It’s all been sorted out, Bronte,’ the Matron continued. She pulled the pillow from behind my head, puffed it up a bit, and put it back. ‘You were supposed to spend a month on the Cruise Ship, yes? Well, now you’ll meet it when it docks at Saranchi instead—you can take a wagon there once you’re well. And you’ll spend a fortnight on the ship, not a month, and the schedule will be all right again.’
‘But it’s already broken,’ I said fretfully. ‘Things must have happened to Gainsleigh already!’
‘No, no,’ the Matron soothed me. ‘Faery cross-stitch only breaks if you decide to break it. There are exceptions for accident and misadventure. I mean, it’
s not like Faeries use Shadow Magic. Faeries are very reasonable people. Marvellous people, actually. Remarkable. Gorgeous.’
‘She’s got Faery in her,’ the doctor explained.
‘On my mother’s side,’ the Matron nodded. ‘Not on my father’s. He was a goat.’
‘A goat!’
‘Not an actual goat. I just mean he was a bit of an idiot. Anyway, I’ve been talking to your lawyers too, and they agree that the cross-stitch isn’t broken yet. If you’d started the avalanche on purpose, that could be a different story. As it is, two weeks on the cruise will be fine.’
‘It’s probably for the best,’ the doctor put in, closing his bag with a snap. ‘A month on a Cruise Ship would be far too long.’
‘Oh yes,’ the Matron agreed. ‘Play one game of shuffleboard, you’ve played them all.’
‘Not so!’ said the doctor. ‘Not so!’ and he broke into a bellowing song about all the splendidness of shuffleboard.
‘I’ll tell you what I like,’ the Matron mused, once the song was done. ‘A game of quoits.’
‘Then I shall sing about that!’
‘No, you shan’t,’ the Matron replied. ‘For we must let Bronte rest.’ She stroked my hair a moment, and touched the medal that was lying against my chest. ‘I see you’ve put your Elvish Medal for Bravery back on. A very good idea, child. We had to take it off for fear you would strangle yourself in your fever.’
‘Yes, you were right to put it back on,’ the doctor told me. ‘You should always wear those things if you’ve got one. Only, I don’t know why. Do you know, Matron?’
‘Of course I do,’ she replied. ‘Didn’t we just discuss my Faery blood? I can tell you about your medal if you like, Bronte. Only not so the doctor can hear.’
‘Then I shall stand over here by the window,’ he declared, ‘and sing very loudly.’
And this is what he did. He sang about chandeliers and swimming pools while the Matron knelt by the bed and murmured the secret of my Elvish Medal for Bravery to me.
After that, they both suggested I not make any plans to climb out of windows, nor swim across oceans, nor even fall out of bed. They wished me sweet dreams and closed the door behind them, and I fell into a deep and lovely sleep.
After that, I was free to be happy in a big white bed by a fireplace for a week.
Once or twice I tried to get up and then I felt a strange, misty swirling in my head, and my whole body ached, so I was glad to lie back down.
‘No wonder you ache!’ the Matron said. ‘You were that bruised and battered by the avalanche!’
She came in all the time, holding her palm against my forehead or stoking up the fire or standing at the window and chatting to me about her husband, the ventriloquist, or about the ways of the Faery folk. She brought me croissants and hot chocolate each morning. For lunch, I would get something like a hearty, flavoursome soup with crusty bread, and for dinner, roast chicken with mashed potatoes, followed by ice-cream.
From my bedroom, I listened to the sounds of the school: bells clanging and footsteps running up and down the stairs, and teachers shouting, ‘No running, girls!’ I drew pictures in a big sketchbook that Matron gave me one day, along with a box of fine-quality crayons. Also, I wrote to Aunt Isabelle, working my way through a stack of Katherine Valley Boarding School for Girls postcards.
One day, the school principal sent me a handwritten note:
‘I think she’s got you mixed up with a princess or something,’ Imogen told me, when I showed her and her sisters the note.
‘Yes,’ Esther agreed. ‘Otherwise, why’s she so honoured? No offence, Bronte. There’s a family of girls here called the Rattlestones and they’re always on about relatives who are royalty. She must have heard Mettlestone and got it mixed up.’
‘Just enjoy it,’ Astrid advised. ‘Act like a princess and she’ll never know the difference. Hold your nose when you speak so you sound snooty.’ She demonstrated, holding her own nose.
‘And be bossy with Matron,’ Imogen added. ‘Say things like, This hot chocolate is hot! Whoever heard of such a thing! Hot chocolate is ALWAYS served cold! Bring me another at once!’
‘It’s a good plan,’ Esther agreed. ‘But Principal Hortense may as well be honoured to have Bronte here. And us, too. I mean, we’re related to royalty too, aren’t we? Aunt Alys is a queen! So our cousin William is a prince! We just don’t go on about it.’
‘Which is more noble of us,’ Imogen said.
‘Have you visited Aunt Alys yet, Bronte?’ Astrid asked. ‘Did you know some pirates want to steal William? Aunt Alys sent our mother a telegram asking her advice.’
I told them I had heard about the pirates.
‘Our mother wrote back that if Aunt Alys wanted to avoid her child being at risk from pirates, she ought never to have become a queen,’ Esther put in.
‘Helpful,’ murmured the others, and snickered.
‘Aunt Alys is next on the list,’ I said, ‘after the cruise with Aunt Maya and Aunt Lisbeth.’
This led to a long conversation about whether they, as sisters, would ever want to captain a ship together. They decided it would be all right for a week, but after that, they’d need space to be their own true selves.
In a family, they explained to me, you get a sort of identity. ‘Imogen’s the bossy sister, and Esther’s quirky, and I’m the scatty one,’ Astrid explained, and her sisters nodded wisely.
‘So if I ever want to be scatty,’ Imogen said. ‘Take a break from being bossy? I’d need a Cruise Ship all to myself.’
I wondered what my identity would have been if my parents had been my parents, rather than running off to have adventures.
‘Well, but you had Aunt Isabelle as your family, didn’t you?’ Esther asked.
‘Yes,’ I realised. ‘And the Butler.’
‘So what’s your identity?’
I thought about it. Those two were the ‘adults’ and I was the ‘child’, and that was it really.
‘Oh, that sounds perfect, darling,’ Esther said. ‘You can be what you want. Bossy, quirky, scatty. Anything. As long as you’re a child.’
‘What about when she’s had enough of being a child?’ Astrid pointed out. ‘And she might be lonely? Are you lonely, darling? Do you want to have a cry?’
I didn’t, but thanked her for the offer.
Sometimes my cousins brought me books to read. Most were storybooks, but one day, they gave me a history book written by their father. They seemed quite proud of their father, so I thought I should try reading it to be polite. It was called The Origins of the Whispering Wars, and I thought it would be boring enough to put me to sleep.
However, the first two sentences startled me awake:
What many people do not realise is that Whisperers have not always been Dark Mages. They were once a gentle, private people.
Here it was again! Just like that old travel guide I’d found, the idea that the Whisperers were gentle! I shook my head and kept reading. My Uncle Nigel seemed to write in a very chatty way.
But when the current King took the throne, it turned out that he was more ambitious than other royals. Right away, he sent people out searching for MORE diamond mines! They already had five, but oh no, that wasn’t enough. He wanted to be SUPER wealthy.
So off they went digging. But they didn’t find more diamond mines. Guess what they found?
Go on. Guess.
Well, I will tell you.
They found something remarkable. Something you would not BELIEVE.
An ancient trove of shadow thread, buried beneath the Whispering Kingdom!
Now Whisperers were not Dark Mages, so the shadow threads seemed useless to them. Couldn’t do the knitting and sewing etcetera, could they? The King nearly sold them to the nearby Empire of Witchcraft.
But then he discovered something incredible. The shadow threads could be woven into wristbands.
Guess what happened when the King wore one?
Go on. Guess.
His Whispers were magnified many thousand times!! His Whispers became a force that was impossible to resist!! Now, around this time, the King lost his beloved wife—she died not long after the birth of their daughter—and he was WILD with grief. Furious with it. He ordered every Whisperer in the Kingdom to wear shadow wristbands.
So now they ALL had super-charged Whispers. Next thing, he’s sending out teams of Whisperers to infiltrate major Kingdom & Empire associations, security forces and military organisations. He’s annexing neighbouring principalities. And with the incredible power of shadow-strengthened Whispers? This was easy. A piece of cake.
Of course, if you wear shadow threads close to your skin, the dark magic seeps into your bloodstream. Before you knew it, every Whisperer had become a Dark Mage. Did the King know this would happen? Not sure.
Shadow threads get frayed and worn over time, so the King needed people plucking the shadow threads from the trove and weaving them together day and night. Well, doing that REALLY hurts. You get blisters and burns. It’s also very tricky unless you have small fingers.
And that’s why the Whisperers began stealing children. All across the Kingdoms and Empires, children were taken and brought back to the Whispering Kingdom to work.
This practice continued even AFTER the Whispering Wars, right up until the Majestic Spellbinding was put in place by Carabella-the-Great.
I stopped reading there. Or anyway, I tried to keep reading, but I was upset about the children’s burnt and blistered hands. Plus, the next bit had words like negotiations, escalations and alliances. My uncle tried to make it fun with ‘guess who?’ bits, but I quickly fell asleep.
Another thing my cousins brought me was Cendra Delite chocolate, which was my favourite back then. They sat on my bed and made me tell them stories about my journey so far, as payment for the chocolate.
Their favourite story was the one where I rescued the baby, mainly because they were fascinated by the boy across the river with no shoes. ‘Why did he have no shoes?’ they kept asking. I had no clue, of course, and the question seemed to miss the point.
The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone Page 15