by Will Mabbitt
Mabel Jones closed her eyes and waited to die . . .
Everything was silent.
Suspiciously silent.
Mabel Jones opened a single eye, just a little bit.
Then she opened it all the way.
Then she opened the other eye.
Sir Leopold Guppy had been bagged in a suspiciously banker-shaped sack. Next to the sack stood Mabel’s friend, one Omynus Hussh, a silent loris. The silent loris, should you not be aware of such a creature, is a curious species—quiet and faithful like a shadow, sneaky as the SKID MARKS in an assassin’s underpants.
He smiled at Mabel shyly, smoothing a bit of fur that grew in the wrong direction with a licked paw.
“Even without the proper fingers on my proper paws, I ties the knot that keeps the greedy wriggling-pigling safe inside.”
He proudly held up his left arm. Where a nimble-fingered paw should have been, a doorknob was attached, a memento from the day he first met Mabel Jones (as detailed in the amazingly exciting book The Unlikely Adventures of Mabel Jones—available in all good bookshops*).
There was a loud bang and a splintering noise, and a goat’s head appeared through a hole in the door. The goat smiled at Mabel. His crooked, pipe-smoke-stained teeth shone yellow in the lamplight.
“Pelf!” said Mabel with a grin.
She might have been far from home, but it was good to have friends around, and this goat was a friend indeed. They had met on Mabel’s first day in the footure, not long after she’d first been stolen from her own time to begin her most unlikely adventure. They’d shared many adventures since then, and if there was one thing that could be relied upon it was Pelf’s loyalty to his friend Mabel. Well, that and his famously bad breath.
“The battle be won and the loot is to be shared among our fellow pirates . . .”
His voice trailed off as he saw the chest of golden coins.
“Aha! Booty! And lots of it!”
The suspiciously banker-shaped sack wriggled angrily.
“You’ll pay for this, you miserable nobodies!” exclaimed a muffled voice. “I’ll hunt you down. Nobody messes with Sir Leopold Guppy.”
Pelf looked at Mabel.
“Who?”
Mabel shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
Pelf removed his head from the hole, and the door swung open. A hooman boy, a little smaller and a little younger than Mabel, stood beside the goat pirate. His face was smudged with the grime of battle.
“Hi, Jarvis,” said Mabel.
What do we know about Jarvis? His time in the footure is well documented—a sidekick to Mabel Jones on her previous unlikely adventures—but we know little of his life in the past. Perhaps all will be revealed later in the story.*
Jarvis blinked.
“We need to get this money back to the RANCID TILAPIA. The look-out’s spotted the ALBEMARLE NAVY on the horizon.”
Pelf sucked on his pipe and blew out a cloud of thoughtful smoke, which gathered wisely around his head.
“Aye, it does no good hanging around the scene of a crime! If the Albemarle Navy are nearby, we’re farther east than I thought.” He tugged his beard worriedly. “There be a hefty punishment for piracy in their waters. Besides, we’ll be needing to share the booty out, as according to pirate law!”
Mabel pursed her lips. The minuscule spore of inspiration that had drifted on to the mossy floor of her imagination some moments earlier had suddenly mushroomed into a fully formed fungus of a plan.
She smiled at her pirate friends. It was the kind of smile you smile when you’ve just had the kind of thought that starts a new unlikely adventure.
“Actually I’ve got a better idea, and I think you’re going to like it!”
CHAPTER 4
A Bad Idea
“I don’t like this idea. I don’t like it at all,” grumbled Pelf as he leaped from the lifeboat of the OMBUDSMAN and began to drag it up through the shallows and on to the sandy beach of a small cove. The moon was full and lit the JAGGED BLACK CLIFFS that surrounded them on all sides.
He sucked on his pipe and looked around nervously. “It goes against nature, it does. Against nature and against pirate law!”
Mabel jumped overboard to help her friend.
“But don’t you see, Pelf? If the Mother Superior has a book from the hooman age, she might know how the hooman race went extinct!”
Pelf shrugged.
“But, snuglet, Captain Sicklesmear will be angrier than an orca in a duck pond! What happened in the past be of no interest to us pirates. It’s gold that be interesting!”
Mabel frowned. “This money was stolen from the poor. We should give it back to the poor.”
Jarvis unrolled a map stolen from the OMBUDSMAN. “Here it is: ST. HILDA’S CONVENT AND HOME FOR THE ORPHANED YOUNG OF THE GROTLEY TIN MINES. They’ll be glad of the money!”
Pelf shook his head mournfully. “The fourth of the seven pirate sins: charity! The only graver sin is bathing!”
For those of you unfamiliar with the seven pirate sins (usually handed down from pirate to pirate in hushed and fearful voices), they appear written for the first time ever below.
Pelf looked up at the craggy black cliffs and shuddered.
“Dry land! I hate it. I’ll have no part of this. I’ll be waiting for ye here, once yer foul deed be complete. I’ve a pouch full of Bumbeard & Sons tobacco that I’ve been looking forward to popping into my pipe.”
Omynus Hussh looked at Mabel with his big brown eyes.
“Can I comes, Mabel?”
“Of course you can,” said Mabel Jones, smiling and scratching the top of his head. Then she stopped and peered at him through squinty eyes. “As long as you don’t steal anything. We’re giving the treasure back, remember?”
Omynus blinked.
“I promises. I is doing my bestest to stop my stealings.” He puffed out his little chest. “Even if I is the bestest thief ever!”
Pelf sat in the lifeboat and watched as Jarvis, Mabel, and Omynus lugged the chest of doubloons toward a steep and winding path that led up the cliff face. He shook his head sadly.
“Mark my words: no good will come of this. No good at all . . .”
Hold tightly to that rusting weathervane, for this storm shows no sign of stopping! The convent to whose roof you currently cling has stood for hundreds of years against the ravages of the wet winds that sweep across the desolate moor. But times are hard in this part of ALBEMARLE, especially for poor nuns. The tiles flap in the breeze and the guttering hangs loose from its fixings.
Why are we here, you ask, clinging on for dear life?
The answer lies in the darkness, wandering toward us across the moor: a tiny light in the gloom. A whale-fat lamp stolen from the cabin of Sir Leopold Guppy illuminates the most silent of creatures as he picks his way through a treacherous mire, cautiously testing the firmness of the ground with each step.
It is Omynus Hussh!
Behind him the two snuglets, Mabel and Jarvis, struggle with a box. A casket full of doubloons is a heavy load, and one wrong step in the darkness could send both of them down to a
slow
and
terrible
death,
sucked deep beneath the surface of the bog. Slowly, step by step, they reach the firmer ground at the foot of the crumbling stone walls of ST. HILDA’S CONVENT AND HOME FOR THE ORPHANED YOUNG OF THE GROTLEY TIN MINES. A bell rope is pulled and a small figure welcomes them in from the storm.
Quickly, slide down the roof. It’s been a week since the last lightning strike upon this spire, and I wouldn’t want to bet against it happening again tonight. See that drainpipe? The one with the rusting brackets that pull away from the crumbling wall? Climb down it.
Halfway to the ground is the fourth floor. If you stretch across
to that ledge, it will give you access to the broken window. Put your arm through the jagged hole and open it from the inside. Now carefully climb inside the room. And you’re here! In the office of the Mother Superior, MOTHER AGNES, an aging duck with eyes as bright as her feathers are dull.
Me?
Where am I?
Oh, I’m here already. I took the stairs.
Silence your whining words! For there are footsteps outside, and the door is beginning to open . . .
Mother Agnes peered over the top of her spectacles at the open casket of gold that sat on her desk.
“Well,” she said, “in all my time as MOTHER SUPERIOR I have never received a donation as generous as yours.”
Mabel jigged in excitement.
“There’s loads in there. You can have it all!”
The old duck smiled. It was a kind of favorite-teacher smile, crinkly around the eyes and beak, which made Mabel feel all warm inside.
Mother Agnes looked at Mabel. Then she looked at Jarvis. Then she looked at Omynus Hussh who was hiding behind Mabel’s legs.
“But will one of you please explain how you came to be in possession of such enormous wealth?”
Mabel shuffled her feet guiltily and looked at the floor in silence.
The nun turned to Jarvis, who was coincidentally looking out of the window.
Finally she turned to Omynus.
“Well?”
Mabel felt a cold, sweaty paw slide into her hand.
Mother Agnes frowned.
“Is this gold yours to give?”
Omynus rubbed the back of his head with his doorknobbed stump.
There was a long pause.
Then . . .
“We stoles it!” he blurted. “We stoles it!”
Mother Agnes pursed her beak disapprovingly.
“Stolen gold! Well I never!”
Jarvis stepped forward.
“Twice-stolen, technically. Once from a crooked banker, then again from a pirate captain. There was a lot of fighting involved the first time; the second time was more sneaky . . .”
His voice trailed off as he noticed Mother Agnes’s steely glare.
“It was Mabel’s idea,” he added.
Mother Agnes pursed her beak even more.
“We took it from Sir Leopold Guppy,” explained Mabel. “He stole it from the poor and needy, so we thought we ought to give it back.”
Mother Agnes unpursed her beak.
“Sir Leopold Guppy, you say? That horrible hog! He’s been squeezing money out of the convent for years. Well, even if your means were naughty, I can see that your motives were true. And your donation could, no doubt, help the poor orphans of the Grotley Tin Mines. It could even pay to fix the convent roof. We might even be able to afford some new novices . . .”
She looked sadly over at a pile of empty habits and wimples in the corner.
“It seems no one wants to be a nun these days. No one apart from Sister Miriam, that is. She arrived just last week and is tending to the orphans as we speak.”
Mother Agnes sighed, removed her glasses, and looked Mabel in the eye.
“Thank you for your donation, child. I’m delighted to accept it.”
“There was one other thing,” said Mabel as Mother Agnes locked the gold in a safe. “Guppy also had an old piece of paper. From an ancient book or something. It got burned in the battle, but he said he’d taken it from you.”
Mother Agnes sighed.
“Yes, he did. And may ST. STATHAM forgive me for handing over something so sacred to that foul banker. It was the last remaining piece of an ancient book. That page had been held in the convent for hundreds of years. Alas, I had no choice but to give it to Guppy to pay our debts. Stale bread doesn’t come cheaply, you know.”
Mabel nodded sympathetically. “He said it was from the hooman age. Is that true?”
Mother Agnes waddled to the window, hopped on to the window ledge and stared out across the rainswept moor.
“Yes. It was from an ancient book about the extinction of the hooman species. The book was entrusted to this convent many hundreds of years ago by a wandering missionary who’d found it in his tour of The Unknown. The name of that book was—”
Lightning flashed across the sky, followed swiftly by a roll of thunder.
“The name of that book was
THE
DOOMSDAY
BOOK!”
“So, if we can find that book, then it will tell us what happened to the hooman race!” exclaimed Jarvis excitedly.
Mother Agnes nodded sadly.
“Yes—but, alas, the book is not here. It was not kept at the convent for long. A year after it arrived, an outbreak of beak droop swept these parts and many of the nuns had to leave. The book was taken from here for safekeeping by the convent librarian. Only a single page was kept as a relic, until that horrid warthog took it.”
She took a
deep breath.
“Forgive me, I am forgetting my manners. I guess you three little ones must be needing refreshment. I’m afraid we’ve not much to offer, but we will find something.”
Mother Agnes pulled on a bell rope suspended from the ceiling and a rabbit nun shuffled into the room. She glanced at Mabel with strangely bulging eyes.
“This is Sister Miriam. Sister, would you be a dear and warm some rum for the children? There may be some gruel left from the orphans’ supper too.”
Sister Miriam nodded. “Of course, Mother Agnes.”
The rabbit shuffled from the room, pausing to look at Mabel, Jarvis, and Omynus once more, before slowly closing the door.
Mother Agnes smiled.
“In the meantime let me show you around. We do some tremendous work here with the orphans of the GROTLEY TIN MINES. I’m sure—”
A loud ringing interrupted her sentence.
Then banging.
Mother Agnes clasped her wings together anxiously. “Two sets of visitors in one night. Whatever next?”
There was more banging, then the sound of angry voices and an even louder
sound. You’ll be familiar with the particular type of splintering sound, I’m sure. It was exactly the kind of sound a heavy studded oak door makes when it is broken down by a squad of musket-wielding soldiers.
Now the sound of angry voices was joined by the sound of howling winds.
“Search the building!” a voice commanded. “Three smugglers are in here somewhere and I want to see them hanging from the gibbet by dawn!”
It was
A
RAID!
CHAPTER 5
The Mystery of the Three Nuns
You have, of course, heard of the might of the ALBEMARLE REDCOATS, the greatest army in history. You will, I’m sure, have studied their immense global influence in your military warfare classes at school.
No?
Your teacher must be slacking. Too busy filling their face with cookies in the teachers’ lounge, I’ll warrant. Maybe, just maybe, with their last ounce of willpower, they have pried themself away from the cookie jar and are actually reading this to you now. Unlikely, I admit, but, if they are, take the opportunity to look at them with your most cherubic, innocent face and say:
Please, miss/Please, sir. We long to learn, and you are the one to help form us into worthy and knowledgeful hoomans. Please, we implore you, from the bottom of our pure and childlike hearts, to give up those cookies and return to teaching.
And then add:
All your cookies can be sent to the address at the back of this book, whereupon they will be eaten safely destroyed by the narrator.
Anyway, allow me to fill the gap in your woefully malformed education. It seems like a good time to unfold a mini-map of the KNOWN WORLD. It’s in my pocket
somewhere . . .
<
br /> Not those. I’m sure I put it in here this morning . . .
Or these. I know it’s here somewhere . . .
For heaven’s sake, it must be in here . . .
Aha! Here it is!
Allow me to unfold it across the next two pages.
War is on the horizon.
And not just any war, but a war between the two great superpowers of the footure. A war that started over a curious and unclaimed smell.
Whether it was LADY MILLICENT POLECAT, wife of the ambassador of ALBEMARLE, who released the scent, or her opposite at the dinner table that fateful night, the Crown Princess Helga of Alsatia, we will never know—for both ladies, globally admired for their refined beauty and stately graces, denied the expulsion of foul-smelling gas.
An official transcript of their discussion is available below.
Lady Millicent: There appears to be a strange smell originating from the Alsatian side of the table.
Princess Helga: To be correct, it appears to be wafting on the breeze from the side upon which the good lady of Albemarle sits.
Lady Millicent: I am sure an aroma of such perturbing distinction could only be the work of a foreign bottom.
Princess Helga: Is the good lady aware of the phrase “Whosoever smelled it, dealt it?”
Further accusations were made.
Voices were raised.
And one hundred years of peaceful diplomacy were undone, all due to a
Now the two great empires of ALBEMARLE and Alsatia stood at the brink of war.
The ALBEMARLE EMPIRE was once respected across the seven seas for its culture, imposed far and wide by its particularly ruthless and well-trained army, nicknamed Redcoats after their brightly colored jackets. Alas for ALBEMARLE, its position in today’s world is uncertain. Technological advancements have led to the rise of other powers and ALBEMARLE seems stuck in the past. For example, their red coats, once the pride of the brave soldiers who wore them, are now more widely praised by their enemies, who use them to spot ALBEMARLE soldiers from far away and pick them off with the latest model of long-range muskets.