The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  ‘What I can’t figure out,’ Esther said, ‘is how the pirates knew that Billy was on board the Cruise Ship.’

  Aunt Isabelle sighed. ‘Who can tell?’ she said. ‘Nobody knew he was hidden there except us sisters. And we certainly would not have told a soul.’

  At that moment, I happened to glance at Aunt Nancy. Her face had turned as white as paper. I suddenly knew that she had mentioned Billy’s hiding place to somebody. She probably had been gossiping with her various subcommittees, laughing at the foolishness of her sister, Alys, for being a queen.

  I also knew that she had done this thoughtlessly, not callously, never realising that the story would be passed on and would somehow make its way to the pirates.

  And I knew that Aunt Nancy herself knew that her mistake could have ended in the deaths of her sisters, the captains, her nephew, her niece, and of every other person on board. I don’t know if all this knowing was my being wise, or if it was the Whisperer in me.

  Either way, I decided not to speak up. It was enough that Aunt Nancy realised exactly what she had done, and who she was, for just that moment.

  There are only a couple more things to tell you.

  Not long after we all came back to Gainsleigh, I was having breakfast with Aunt Isabelle, the Butler, and my parents one day.

  My parents were telling more of their story, and it suddenly occurred to me that I’d been in danger my whole life. If the Whispering King wanted me, he didn’t need to send an invitation. He could have sent pirates to kidnap me the same way he sent pirates to capture Billy.

  My mother seemed to guess my thoughts—she often does that, I think it’s a Whispering thing—because she suddenly leaned forward. ‘Whisperers sometimes know things,’ she said. ‘Secret things. And I knew you’d be safe with Isabelle and the Butler.’

  I blinked. As much as I loved Aunt Isabelle and the Butler, I could not imagine them grappling with pirates.

  But all four adults were exchanging quick smiles.

  ‘They got close once or twice,’ the Butler said. ‘Remember when they broke my nose?’

  ‘And I broke my ankle,’ laughed Isabelle, ‘when it connected with a pirate’s elbow.’

  ‘Oh, and that day when they managed to get in through the drawing room windows! Remember that stormy day? We dispatched them though, like lightning.’

  They both made ket-sham! noises, imitating lightning.

  I had no idea what they were on about.

  And then the Butler reached for a sugar cube and flicked it high, so that it somersaulted through the air, and landed with a faint splash in Aunt Isabelle’s coffee cup. Suddenly, ket-sham! I saw the truth.

  Anyway, that is why they are travelling so much these days. I can’t say any more here, except that the incident with Billy had reminded them how much they’d liked their work. So, to the great joy of all the Kingdoms and Empires, and especially the Anti-Pirate League, they’ve come out of retirement.

  You might have been wondering what I said to my parents when I first met them.

  I did not say a word.

  For some time, actually, I hardly spoke except to be polite. I had no idea what you are supposed to say when you haven’t seen your parents since you were a baby and you think they’ve been killed by pirates, and then they turn up, dusty but alive. Neither Aunt Isabelle nor my governess had taught me.

  So I only stared. They looked at me with eyes that seemed filled with sadness and love, but they were careful to give me space. Once, not long after we’d returned to Gainsleigh, my father said, ‘When you are ready, Bronte, we would like to hug you and never stop.’

  I nodded politely. I wanted to tell him that this would be pretty inconvenient. I wanted to thank them both for trying to protect me and ending up in prison, or to apologise for having felt crankily towards them. But none of those things seemed quite right.

  And then a thought occurred to me.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, and I ran to my room and found it.

  Remember the book that Sugar Rixel gave me on Lantern Island? If you are ever at a loss for words, she had said. You give it a good shake and the words you need will fall out.

  I carried it back to the drawing room. My parents, Aunt Isabelle, and the Butler, looked at me with interest. I shook the book hard. Words fell out. They lay in the palm of my hand. Only three words.

  Not much of a book, I thought. But not all books can have 109 chapters.

  I read the three words to myself and they did not seem true. So, instead of speaking them, I spoke the truth: ‘Mother? Father? I’ve been perfectly all right without you, all this time, because I’ve had Aunt Isabelle and the Butler.’

  My parents’ smiles were beautiful.

  This was a shock. I had expected them to look disappointed. However, something about their smiles made me realise that, in some ways, the three words were actually true.

  ‘But,’ I said, and I spoke the words: ‘I missed you.’

  My parents took this as permission to gather me into their arms and weep. Both the Butler and Aunt Isabelle reached over and ruffled my hair at the same time.

  All of this, I allowed.

  Everything about the publication of this book has been preposterously pleasurable and fantastically fun and that is because Anna McFarlane and Radhiah Chowdhury are magnificent publishing rockstars. Thank you so much, Anna and Radhi, and thank you to your brilliant team at Allen & Unwin (especially Jess Seaborn, Deb Lum, Vic Brown and Kristy Rizzo) and to Liz Seymour for perfect text design.

  Every time I saw one of Kelly Canby’s illustrations for this book I burst into tears of happiness and ran up and down the street shouting. Thank you, Kelly, for such beautiful, magical art.

  Thank you also to: my agent, Tara Wynne, for being smart, funny and always-enthusiastic; my parents, Diane and Bernie, easily the best parents imaginable; my aunts, Maureen, Rae, Julie, Pauline, Elizabeth and Julie (again) for being complete yet mysterious people; my sisters, Liane, Kati, Fiona and Nicola, for reading, proofreading, tea, cake, chocolate, conversation, and for being very fine aunts themselves; Steve Menasse, for online genius, art consultation, and for being one of the first & best readers of this book (and a fine uncle); Rachel Cohn, for reading and being delightful; Michael McCabe for sailing and pirate advice & general wisdom; to Laura, Corrie, Jo, Elizabeth, Suzy, Hannah, Natalie, Jayne, Sandra, Melita and Jane, for friendship and inspiration.

  A very special mention to Deborah, Maria and Rebecca, my dear friends at the divine Coco Chocolate Kirribilli, where much of this book was written. I’m pretty sure that if you melted down the pages, you’d end up with a mug of hot chocolate.

  And finally, an extremely special mention to my boys, the (sort of) grown-up one, Nigel, and the (technically) young one, Charlie, for listening, reading, suggestions, inspiration, bike rides, ski trips, being hilarious, and making life a proper adventure.

  Jaclyn Moriarty is the Queen of the minor Red Velvet Kingdom, smack bang in the middle of Various Nefarious Kingdoms. Lost at sea as a small child, Jaclyn was raised by water sprites, and had no idea she was actually a land-dwelling person until the water sprites sat her down and explained it to her the day after her twenty-first birthday. She burst forth from the sea, took a gasp of air, and realised she’d been holding her breath her entire life. It was quite a relief.

  While travelling the Kingdoms and Empires, Jaclyn noticed a gap in authority in Red Velvet. She put up her hand for the job, and has been very happily queening ever since. Jaclyn has one son, the young Prince, who runs with the dragons, plays rugby with radish gnomes, and jams on his electric guitar with the wild local elves. In her spare time, Jaclyn likes to exchange witty repartee with the Termite King, a relatively harmless dark mage famous for his skills at insect hypnosis. She has also reconnected with her long-lost sisters, a family of Fire Sirens, and they enjoy singing together. Or they did, anyway, until the neighbours got up a petition asking them to stop.

  Jaclyn met Bronte Mettlestone on
a recent holiday in Gainsleigh. Jaclyn was in a bit of a pickle at the time, having promised the Empire of Witchcraft a brand-new tale, having completely forgotten to write the tale, and having now heard from the witches that they planned to bury her kingdom in broomstick crochet as punishment. By lucky chance, Bronte had just finished writing the story of her own extremely inconvenient adventures. Jaclyn asked Bronte if she might publish the tale, please, and Bronte, being very well brought-up, kindly handed it over. Jaclyn is very grateful to Bronte, as are all her subjects in Red Velvet.

  Kelly Canby is neither a Queen nor Princess—in fact, no noble blood flows through her veins whatsoever and how she ended up in the Kingdoms and Empires is a complete mystery to anyone who stops to ponder the thought. Some say she snuck in on the back of a delivery truck in the dead of night, others say she was dropped in by dragons as a child, landing firmly on her head. The truth may never be known, as after 137 years not even Kelly can remember how she got here. With graphite-stained fingers and inky nails, Kelly spends her days scratching at paper while uttering madnesses to herself. ‘All of the work done. All of the work done,’ she repeats like a chant…or a spell. ‘Must get. All of the work done.’

  Then at 3 pm, she stops for tea, dusts off her sleeves and wanders out into the town to greet the locals like nothing at all unusual has happened. This has been the routine for 137 years, and for 137 years, the townsfolk have been completely unaware of her wizardry. To them, she is wide-eyed and colourful. Mother of Will, wife of Neil, quick with a joke and always ready for a dinner party.

  At first, Kelly was intimated by Queen Jaclyn’s witty way with words and wondered if she was worthy of approaching the Queen, a simple woman like herself who was probably dropped on her head by dragons as a child. But then she saw it, the crazed little glint in Queen Jaclyn’s eye. The same glint she saw reflected in her own eye and the eye of her mother and in the eyes of her eight aunts, collectively known as The Whelans, and she knew. She knew that they were kindred spirits—conjurers and illusionists—and together, mostly between the hours of 9 am and 3 pm, they were destined to make magic.

  RETURN to the KINGDOMS and EMPIRES in

  SPINDRIFT

  COMING IN 2018

  CHAPTER 1

  Finlay

  I was taken by Whisperers at two pm, so I never pulled the lever for the laundry chute.

  That’s what bothered me most.

  I live in the Orphanage, see, and the laundry cart comes once a week to collect our dirty laundry. If it’s your birthday that week, you get to pull the lever.

  Some of the children stand back and watch the clothes slide down the chute into the cart, little smiles on their faces. When it’s done, they walk away still smiling. They have hearts that are dead easy to please, those kids.

  Some children pretend they are the clothes themselves. I mean, they pull the lever then they squawk and screech: Where am I going? Oh, I’m just a simple nightdress belonging to Avril, and I never thought to have such an adventure!

  SPLAT!

  Waaah!

  WHERE AM I?

  Is this a LAUNDRY CART?! Oh woe! It is!! But I don’t WANT to be clean!

  And so on. They’re pretty funny.

  But one child? Well, here is what he does on his birthday.

  He jumps into the chute. Rockets down, along with the skirts, dresses, stockings and drawers, and hits the cart with a THUD. (It’s a soft thud, since the clothes are like a pillow, so don’t worry.) The carthorse, Clodswald, twitches his nose and says pfft, but Matron, who stands on the pavement supervising—well, she sees this kid hit the laundry cart and she screams.

  She screams like the Sirens. Or like the dentist has his pliers clamped around her favourite tooth.

  The whole thing is crackerjack. The ride down the chute, the thump into the cart, Matron’s screams. Doors open up and down the street and everyone runs out in a fright. ‘What is it? What’s happened? Oh Matron, for goodness sake, he does this every year. Would you hush?’

  Better laugh than the cinema.

  Anyhow, that’s me. I’m the child who rides the laundry chute each year.

  But not this year. Not my eleventh birthday. The Whisperers got us at two, and the laundry cart doesn’t come till three.