Bloodhoney
Page 26
‘You sure it’s only been a week since you last ate?’ he asked. ‘I swear them carrionwyrmes couldn’t have done a better job than you two at stripping the bones.’
Cody shrugged, and Ethan laughed good-naturedly. ‘Might as well make the most of it,’ he said. ‘Don’t know when we might eat again.’
The younger brother was open and friendly, quick to laugh and eager to talk. The older was silent and brooding, and had hardly spoken the whole time they’d been sitting there.
‘We’ll manage,’ he told Ethan gruffly. ‘Somehow . . .’
Micah and Cara exchanged looks in the flickering firelight.
‘So how long have you been in the weald?’ Cara asked.
‘It’s been nigh on two moons now,’ Ethan said, throwing a leg bone that he’d picked clean into the fire. ‘There was still snow upon the ground when we got up here. Ain’t that right, Cody?’
Cody grunted, but added nothing.
‘I swear I ain’t never been so cold in my life,’ Ethan went on. ‘It was springtime down on the plains, and we thought it would be the same up here,’ he explained. ‘We were soon disabused of that notion.’
Micah nodded grimly. He knew all about the bite of fullwinter.
‘And what do you plan to do, now you’re up here?’ Cara persisted.
No one spoke. There was the sound of windsough. Carrionwyrme chatter. The cracking of the fire.
Micah drew his legs up and hugged them tight to his chest. He looked across at the brothers. Their clothes were threadbare, their boots near worn out, and as for their kit – it was nothing more than an old saddlebag and a couple of rolled blankets for a pack, and the net the splaywyrme had been caught in. The two of them had been lucky so far, that much was clear, but the chances of them surviving much longer were slim at best.
Ethan looked at Cody, who shrugged again.
‘Travel on, I guess,’ said Ethan. ‘Further into the weald. Seek our fame and fortune,’ he added with a desperate grin. ‘Ain’t that right, Cody?’
Cody sighed. ‘Bit of fortune would be welcome enough,’ he conceded. ‘I ain’t bothered about the fame.’
The two brothers suddenly looked forlorn and grim in the firelight.
Micah unclasped his hands and reached out for a greenwood stick that lay beside the fire. He poked the embers absentmindedly, sending clouds of orange sparks billowing up into the air. He glanced at Cara, who seemed to have read his thoughts with those blue-green eyes of hers. She nodded encouragingly at him, and Micah saw Cody read her look in turn.
Cody’s face coloured and he stared down at his battered boots.
‘If you had a mind to,’ said Micah at length, looking at Ethan, ‘happen the four of us could always travel together.’
Ethan’s face lit up with relief and expectation, and he was about to speak when a cough from his brother stilled him. Ethan turned to Cody, his eyes filled with hope. Cody kept his gaze fixed to the dusty ground before him, his brow creased like he was thinking things through. Ethan looked at Micah and Cara, then back at his brother.
Finally Cody looked up. He nodded. ‘Happen we could,’ he said.
Buy The Bone Trail Now!
A Biography of Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
Chris Riddell and Paul Stewart lived curiously parallel lives before they met. Both went to South London grammar schools in the seventies, moved to Brighton in the eighties, and had children in the nineties. They have sons, as well as daughters, who are the same age. Paul and Chris could have met at any point during these years.
As a schoolboy, Chris played rugby on school playing fields directly behind Paul’s childhood home in Morden, a suburb of London. In 1982, both of them attended a gig in Brighton by an obscure post-punk band called Young Marble Giants. The band didn’t show up and Paul might have been standing behind Chris in the queue for refunds. They can’t be sure. They also both spent the summer of 1987 in New York with their wives, though strangely, in a city of eight million people, they didn’t run into each other.
But one thing is certain. After years of almost crossing paths, the two finally met at the gates of the Early Years nursery school on the Ditchling Road while picking up their two-year-old sons.
Chris was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1962, and was immediately whisked off by his parents to live in a succession of large, bitterly cold vicarages in remote corners of England. His career as an illustrator began in a church pew in Bristol where, each Sunday during his father’s sermons, he would draw pictures of fire-breathing dragons and knights getting their heads cut off in exchange for winegum candies fed to him by an elderly member of the congregation, Mrs. Stock.
Twelve years later, Chris turned down a place at an ancient university and enrolled in a foundation course at a small art school in Epsom, Surrey. His parents were remarkably understanding, but his headmaster never forgave him. A year later, riding a Vespa and wearing a secondhand Italian suit, he arrived at Brighton Polytechnic where he would study illustration.
Several years after that, Chris found himself in the offices of a London publisher, trying to get a commission based on his portfolio of giant charcoal drawings. Through clouds of black dust, the kindly publisher asked him a life-changing question: “Do you have any stories?” That night, in his artist’s garret in an unfashionable part of Southeast London, Chris tried to figure out if he had any stories. It wasn’t easy, but he began to write picture-book texts, which he illustrated, and persuaded the publishers to buy them (with money rather than winegums).
Some time later, for reasons that never became clear, the Economist employed Chris to draw political cartoons. He thinks this may have been due to the advanced socioeconomic theories contained in his picture book The Trouble with Elephants. Whatever the reason, Chris went on to become the political cartoonist for British newspapers including the Independent and, most recently, the Observer, a post which he still holds.
At around this time, Chris had a number of frustrating experiences illustrating other writers’ stories. He found himself wishing that he could advise them against including characters with names like Hushabye Brightwing, and instead introduce a fire-breathing dragon in chapter thirteen. Then, complaining about his busy schedule and moaning about egotistical writers, Chris went to pick up his son, William, from nursery school …
Paul was born in 1955 and brought up in Morden (or “Morden Likely,” as one graffiti artist named it), a beige neighborhood at the end of the underground line in Southwest London. After years of trying to climb through his wardrobe and into another world, Paul decided that stories would be a better means of escape. He read avidly and, inspired by some of the authors he loved, started to write. Then, at the age of eighteen, he ran away to a retreat in the wilds of Yorkshire, where he developed a lasting interest in hillwalking and potholing.
After he had completed a BA in English at Lancaster University and an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, where he studied under renowned writers Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter, Paul’s first short story, a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen called “Ice,” was published. Elated by this success—and the resulting fifty-pound check—Paul decided to travel, and took the Magic Bus to Athens.
He soon discovered that there was a whole world out there, and spent the next few years on the road—in the Greek islands, picking grapes and whitewashing hotels; in Heidelberg, Germany, teaching English and learning German; in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he developed a taste for hot curries and eating with his hands. Kenya. Australia. India. Thailand. The United States … And everywhere he went, he recorded his experiences in notebooks, in diaries, and on the reams of paper that passed through his Olivetti Lettera 32. It was on this portable typewriter that he wrote what was to be his first novel for children, The Thought Domain.
After his years of travel, Paul decided to s
ettle down and, in an effort to prove that it hadn’t all been a waste, made use of some of those experiences. He moved to Brighton and set to work. Paul turned his hand to all kinds of books, both fiction and nonfiction: soccer stories, puzzle adventure books, fantasy novels, and collections of short stories, plus a true account of an ill-fated 1955 trek that should have taken its protagonists from Nairobi to London, but instead led to tragedy in the Sahara.
In addition to writing, Paul was teaching English as a second language. He was married in 1989, and his teaching days came to an end in 1990 when his first child was born.
Instead of returning to the language school, he stayed at home to look after his son—and continue writing. It was going well, although sometimes he suspected his illustrators of not having read the texts. One afternoon, his latest book arrived from the publisher. The character on the cover, described in chapter one as having “long fair hair,” had been drawn with a dark brown crewcut. Complaining bitterly about illiterate illustrators, Paul went to pick up his son, Joseph, from nursery school …
Since then, Paul and Chris have produced over thirty books together. These include the Rabbit & Hedgehog series; the award-winning Far-Flung Adventures; the TV-adapted Muddle Earth books; the critically acclaimed Barnaby Grimes novels; the bestselling Edge Chronicles, and, of course, the three books that they consider their best to date: the Wyrmeweald Trilogy.
Paul at one year old in 1956.
Chris at age four (second from left) with his siblings, Lynn, Stephen, and Bradley, in 1966.
Twelve-year-old Paul (middle row, second from left) with his first rugby team at Mitcham County Grammar School in 1967.
Six-year-old Chris (back row, fourth from right) at Westbury Park Primary School in Bristol in 1968.
Chris’s father outside his old church, St. John-on-the-Wall, in Bristol in 1967. During his father’s sermons, Chris would draw pictures in exchange for winegums.
Paul at twenty-four on a beach in Greece in 1979.
Paul in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1980. His travel typewriter, the Olivetti Lettera 32, went everywhere he did.
Chris at nineteen at Brighton Art School in 1981.
Paul working at his Olivetti Lettera 32 in his home in Brighton in 1986. He was writing The Thought Domain at the time.
Chris and his wife, Jo, on their wedding day in Norfolk in 1987.
Paul and his wife, Julie, at the Brighton registry office where they were married, in 1989.
Chris drawing with his newborn son, William, at his home in Brighton in 1989.
Chris and Jo in New York in 1988.
Paul and his children, Anna (two months old) and Joseph (three years old), in 1993.
Chris with his daughter, Katy (two years old), at their home in Brighton in 1995.
Chris (at left) and Paul (at right) at the Edge Chronicles’ million-sales party at the Royal Society of Arts in London in 2005.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
ISBN: 978-1-4804-1576-8
Published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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