The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  Another question they liked to ask was why my parents added Faery cross-stitch to their will? Again, I had no clue.

  ‘Maybe it’s because they had no experience of being parents?’ Imogen suggested. ‘So they didn’t realise you can just tell the child what to do, and the child has to do it. They thought you had to use magic.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’

  One day, Esther, the middle sister, came to visit me alone. She sat on the edge of my bed, twisting her hands together and glancing back at the door.

  ‘But you deserve to know this,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I agreed at once. ‘I do.’ I waited to find out what I deserved to know.

  ‘Only, there’s something I have to tell you. I overheard my mother telling my father this, when I was hiding behind the couch one day and listening into their conversation.’

  I nodded.

  Esther checked the door again. She opened the wardrobe, looked under the bed, and lifted my pillow.

  ‘There’s nobody under my pillow,’ I promised. ‘I’d have noticed.’

  ‘It’s just that this is a secret,’ she explained. ‘I mean, my mother should never have known it herself, except that she used to hide behind couches and listen to other people’s conversations when she was young. Terrible habit,’ she added thoughtfully.

  ‘Terrible,’ I agreed.

  Eventually, Esther whispered, ‘You know your father?’

  ‘Not really,’ I replied.

  ‘Well, he was a Spellbinder.’

  That made me jump as if someone had burst a paper bag behind my head. If I’d had the hiccups, it would have cured me.

  ‘No!’ I said.

  Esther nodded. ‘He was. My mother heard him talking to your mother about it when they were still in high school. Nobody else knew. Apparently, he was planning to start the training when he turned twenty-one.’

  I felt a bit floaty. Being born a Spellbinder is very rare and special. It made my father rare and special! He could defeat Dark Mages! Save people! For a moment, I wished I’d paid more attention to his picture in my parents’ wedding photo.

  ‘Anyway, it means it’s in our family,’ Esther continued. ‘Between us, I’m hoping I’ve inherited it myself, but so far no signs. I thought you should know because you could be a Spellbinder, too. If you are, don’t tell me because you’re supposed to keep it secret. Although, if you wanted to tell me, I mean, I’d swear not to tell.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said.

  ‘Well, but are you sure? Sometimes you don’t get any symptoms until you’re sixteen.’

  ‘What symptoms?’

  ‘Your toenails turn blue.’

  I stared at her. ‘But that happened to me once!’

  ‘All of your toenails?’

  ‘No, just the big one. After I dropped a hammer on it.’

  Esther laughed. ‘That doesn’t count,’ she said. ‘That was a bruise. It’s all of the toenails that turn blue, and it happens in a flash. Then the blue fades away. Then you know you’re a Spellbinder.’

  I pulled my feet out from under the covers and Esther pushed off her school shoes. We both sat a while staring at our toes. Nothing happened. Eventually, a school bell rang and Esther had to go.

  Later that day, I tried to remember the Spellbinding movements I had learned at Aunt Claire’s Convention. I’d forgotten them all. But then I closed my eyes, let my hands move through the air, and it turned out my hands remembered what to do. It felt good, like stretches for my neck and shoulders, but not especially magical. Next, I dug out the folder of Spellbinding potions I’d been given at the Convention. I flicked through it, thinking that something in the words might jump out and tell me that I was a Spellbinder. But nothing jumped. The words sat on the page looking exactly like words.

  Actually, they looked like recipes. One, A Potion to Bind the Whispering King, was like a recipe where you had to guess its ingredients. There was a note that explained:

  It certainly was.

  I snapped the folder closed and returned it to my suitcase. Probably you only inherited Spellbinding from fathers who were actually around.

  The cousins also taught me how to play a game called poker.

  One interesting thing was how completely the girls changed whenever we played this game. Usually they giggled, called me ‘darling’ and kindly enquired whether I needed to cry again. But when the cards came out, they were suddenly clipped and fierce, narrowing their eyes, nodding slowly to themselves, and raising sly eyebrows at each other.

  They stopped speaking altogether except to say things like, ‘I’m in,’ or to explain to me in quick sentences how the rules worked. I learned what a full house was, and a royal flush, and how important it is to keep your face blank. That way nobody can tell you’re ‘in the crap without a paddle’, Imogen explained. She meant having useless cards, I think.

  Astrid was the best player and this seemed to be because she had the talent of knowing what her two older sisters were thinking, even though their faces were like stone walls.

  One day, when we had finished playing and the girls were packing up, I asked how they had learned poker.

  ‘Our mother taught us,’ they said.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Aunt Nancy! Of course. I forgot that she was your mother.’ I tried to keep my face blank, but I must not have learned the ‘poker face’ well enough, because all three threw themselves back onto my bed and said, ‘What? What were you going to say?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘You were! I can tell!’ Astrid crowed. ‘You had a terrible time staying with our mother, it’s all over your face!’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I was not well with a cold, but otherwise, the stay was—’

  ‘Horrible? You poor darling, and you’re trying to pretend you like her!’

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I worked on my poker face by thinking of snow.

  ‘I’ll bet she didn’t come in time to fetch you,’ Imogen said. ‘She’s always late.’

  ‘Well,’ I admitted. ‘I did wait in the village square for a few hours.’

  ‘You didn’t!’

  ‘That’s probably where you got the chill!’

  ‘And she doesn’t notice anything! Once Imogen came home on school vacation with a patch over her eye from an infection and Mother didn’t say a word!’

  ‘And when we mention it now,’ Astrid put in, ‘Mother laughs and says, oh what nonsense, Imogen’s never had an eye infection.’

  ‘It’s the worst when she laughs,’ Imogen reflected.

  ‘She’s very critical,’ Astrid added. ‘And she hides the criticism in her laughter.’ They were all quiet for a bit.

  ‘Dad says she means well, she’s just absentminded without realising she is. He says it’s because she’s so busy, but honestly, Dad’s busy too, running around doing his history research. But he still calls us each week and remembers what subjects we’re doing and which of our friends are annoying and which ones are good at public speaking—that kind of thing. Our mother doesn’t even know we have friends.’

  ‘Poor Bronte,’ Imogen said. ‘You were there in that house all alone with her.’

  ‘I expect she was worse than the avalanche,’ Astrid put in.

  Then the bell rang, and they all hugged me, and ran down the stairs.

  Strangely, after that conversation, I felt better than I had in days.

  ‘You’ve turned a corner, haven’t you?’ the Matron said, coming in with my medicine. ‘You’ll be all right to get on with your journey tomorrow! I can see all that in your eyes. For I’ve a little Faery in me, have I mentioned it?’

  We both laughed then, as she mentioned it all the time. Now she hurried out of the room, promising to be right back with a surprise. When she returned, she gave me a slice of Faery cake. She had baked it herself, she said. It was treacle orange and coconut, and very good.

  ‘That’ll set you right now,’ she said.

  ‘Is it a healing Faer
y cake?’ I asked.

  ‘Indeed it is.’

  I sat quietly in bed, eating the cake.

  ‘You’ll be wondering why I didn’t just give you this cake the first day you arrived?’ the Matron said now.

  ‘Well,’ I said.

  ‘It seemed to me,’ she said, ‘that you weren’t quite ready to be healed, and needed a good rest first.’ There were footsteps on the stairs at that moment, and a song billowed up. ‘Anyhow,’ the Matron added, ‘it’s good for the doctor to practise his medicine.’

  The door burst open and the doctor sang, ‘And how is our young patient today? Are you ready to leave us yet?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said, and I felt both excited and sad.

  The Riddle and Popcorn Cruise Ship was grand and crackling with fun, and so were my Aunt Maya and Aunt Lisbeth.

  ‘Tour of the ship!’ Aunt Maya exclaimed, after they had welcomed me aboard, and instructed me to spin in place so they could appraise me.

  ‘Topnotch niece!’ Aunt Lisbeth concluded. ‘I like her. Also, topnotch idea, Maya! On with the tour!’ She plucked the suitcase from my hand and spun around herself. ‘Games room first.’

  ‘Ripper of a plan,’ Aunt Maya declared. ‘But the games room is this way,’ and she took Aunt Lisbeth’s shoulder and spun her back.

  Aunt Lisbeth blinked. ‘So it is!’ she said, and burst out laughing. Aunt Maya joined her in the laughter, and I laughed, too. Their laughter was the kind that you feel bubbling inside your own chest.

  There was a lot of striding after that, and I had to run to keep up. We went out onto the deck, below all the full, white sails, and passed a heated swimming pool, crowded with people—both adults and children—dive-bombing and hooting, tossing balls and riding on big inflated toys. We passed a thrumming dance floor and jazz band, a class of women doing energetic calisthenics, and any number of games of quoits and shuffleboard. These were played so closely together that they kept getting tangled up, which led to good-natured arguments and jokes.

  People made zippy comments to each other and laughed at the sky. People waved at my aunts as we passed, or tipped their hats and said, ‘Hello, Captain! Hello, Captain!’ and my aunts called back, ‘Whoa! Nice shot, Lolly!’ or ‘Sweet dance moves there, Garry!’ And to some, they said: ‘Look, it’s our niece, Bronte, come to sail with us!’

  ‘Welcome aboard!’ people said to me, and a man in a striped swimsuit called, ‘Ahoy there, Junior Captain!’ That got taken up by everybody and I spent the entire two weeks of the cruise being referred to as Junior Captain, which I enjoyed.

  Inside the Cruise Ship, there were swooping staircases, men in black tie gazing fiercely at machines with jangling lights, and elegant women sipping colourful drinks. The aunts showed me my cabin, which they called a ‘stateroom’. I was very pleased with the dark walnut walls, the big bed beneath a swinging chandelier, the neat little bathroom, and the large porthole looking out to sea.

  ‘This room is all for me?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ll be all right on your own?’ Aunt Lisbeth worried. ‘Our rooms are right along the passageway there, and see the telephone by your bed? You only need to lift that receiver and there’ll be a voice.’

  ‘Not just a voice,’ Aunt Maya elaborated. ‘But a person, speaking with a voice. And the person will answer any queries you may have.’

  ‘Let’s say you’re wondering about the price of purple grapes? Or the most daring feat of Gustav Spectaculo and The Scorpion when they headed up the Anti-Pirate League? Pick up that receiver there and ask.’

  ‘Although,’ Aunt Maya put in, ‘if you ask too many general knowledge questions, they might get impatient with you.’

  ‘But do,’ Aunt Lisbeth urged. ‘If you want to.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  We left my suitcase on the bed, and went striding along the passageway again, until we found the Games Room. Through the door of this enormous room, I could see ping pong tables, billiards tables, colourful charts on the walls and giant stacks of board games in snazzy boxes. We were about to enter, when I noticed, right alongside the Games Room, a door festooned with balloons. KIDS’ CLUB, said a multicoloured sign.

  ‘Hold your horses!’ Aunt Lisbeth had followed my gaze. ‘You’re a kid yourself, aren’t you, Bronte?!’

  ‘Why, I believe you might be right!’ Aunt Maya said. ‘Ma’am, may I enquire your age?’

  ‘Ten,’ I replied.

  ‘Ten!’ Aunt Maya turned to Aunt Lisbeth. ‘Now, just refresh my memory. If a person is ten years old, is the person a child?’

  ‘Undoubtedly.’ Aunt Lisbeth nodded. We all laughed.

  Aunt Maya raised an eyebrow and jutted her thumb towards the KIDS’ CLUB. ‘Want to get acquainted with the kids in there? Only, we couldn’t come in with you, I’m afraid. Kids’ club. Adults not allowed.’

  ‘Apart from Randwick,’ Aunt Lisbeth said. ‘His job is to take care of the kids.’

  ‘Speaking of jobs,’ Aunt Maya put in. ‘I suppose you and I should get on with the business of sailing this ship,’ and Aunt Lisbeth said, ‘Knew there was something we were forgetting.’

  I was a little bewildered by this, as the ship seemed to me to be sailing already. We were cruising along the coast of the Oski Empire, and blue water rushed by the windows, patterned with white foam. In the distance, beaches and woods appeared and faded, appeared and faded. So wasn’t this rather dangerous? To be sailing without any captain? Were my aunts completely mad?

  ‘It’s okay,’ Aunt Maya smiled at me kindly. ‘We’re kidding. We have co-captains! I recommend them! They do all the work.’

  They both chuckled at this, and then Aunt Lisbeth clicked her tongue and said, ‘Oh, but I suppose we do have to deal with the whatsit.’

  ‘Not to mention the hoozit,’ Aunt Maya agreed. They nodded at one another solemnly, and turned to me.

  ‘Want to follow us around while we work, Bronte?’ Aunt Lisbeth enquired. ‘Or would you prefer some time with the kids?’

  I said that I’d be glad to meet the children, please, so they opened the door of the ‘Kids’ Club’. It must have been tucked into the very front of the ship—you call that the prow—because it was shaped like a curving triangle, and it had portholes all around, lined with window seats. A gathering of children, many around my own age, were crowded together in the middle. ‘Randwick!’ my aunts called ‘Come and meet Bronte!’

  I thought that Randwick sounded like a noble name, and I straightened my shoulders, ready to be polite. But then Randwick popped up from the circle of children. He was bouncy, bright-eyed and his hair stuck up in pointy bits all over his head.

  ‘You will love it here,’ he promised me, springing over and shaking my hand vigorously. ‘These kids are hip to the jive! And I can tell right away that you are, too!’

  As I didn’t have a clue how to be ‘hip’ or what ‘the jive’ was, I tried to smile politely.

  ‘Now, this one’s been terribly ill,’ Aunt Lisbeth told him. ‘So she ought to take it easy.’

  That was a relief. A reprieve from being hip to the jive.

  ‘Holler if you need us, won’t you?’ Aunt Maya told me, tousling my hair. ‘We’ll see you at dinner at the Captain’s Table, Junior Captain Bronte!’

  They both saluted, and strode from the room. The children all looked at me with interest, and Randwick explained that I was just in time, as they were about to begin a treasure hunt.

  ‘Teams of three,’ he said. ‘Everyone form into threes! Here, Bronte, you team up with Taylor and Billy.’

  Taylor was a girl with narrow eyes and long black hair, which she’d scooped up into a very high ponytail. It was like a fountain on the top of her head. She held her palm in the air and said, ‘High five.’

  ‘Oh, Taylor,’ said Billy, who turned out to be a boy in a starched white shirt with a crisp accent. ‘Nobody ever knows what you mean by that, and yet you persist, what?’

  Taylor shrugged, took a hold of my wrist and raised u
p my arm. ‘You just slap my palm,’ she explained. ‘It’s like a way of saying hello.’

  Randwick, meanwhile, was bouncing between groups, handing out clues on little squares of cardboard.

  ‘On your marks!’ he cried out, and the other children jostled excitedly. ‘Get set! Go!’

  There was a stampede for the doorway.

  ‘Let’s not run,’ Taylor said comfortably. ‘Let’s take a leisurely approach to this thing.’

  Overhearing this, Randwick laughed. ‘At least have a look at the clue,’ he suggested.

  So we did.

  Oh my, I thought.

  I suddenly remembered a conversation between Aunt Isabelle and the Butler over breakfast one morning, long ago, back when I was at home. Aunt Isabelle was frowning at a newspaper headline. ‘Foundation Laid for New Shopping Mall Complex,’ she read aloud, and then she tched: ‘For goodness sake, whatever is a shopping mall?’

  The Butler stepped forward and replied, ‘A shopping mall? It’s the place where dreams go to die.’

  Aunt Isabelle had snorted at that, and the Butler had gotten the little dimple he gets sometimes to the right of his mouth, and stepped back. That was after he had broken his nose, I remember, having run into the pantry door, and it was good to see the twitch of a smile beneath the large white plaster.

  Anyway, so I had heard the expression, where dreams go to die. But where did dreams go to play the guitar?

  ‘That’s an easy one,’ Billy declared, brushing the collar of his fancy shirt. ‘The band that plays in the Checkers Club on Deck 5 are called The Dreams. They play guitar, what?’

  ‘This way.’ Taylor set off, her ponytail splashing around on her head.

  ‘Welcome aboard, what?’ Billy said to me, as we strolled along beside her. ‘Which deck are you on?’

  ‘You might be wondering why he keeps saying what?’ Taylor put in.

  ‘Oh, am I doing it again?’ Billy stopped, crestfallen. He looked at me earnestly. ‘It’s an affectation. I add what? to the end of practically everything I say. People find it infuriating, and I truly don’t blame them. I’m trying to stop it.’