Rumblestar

by Abi Elphinstone

  Casper was having trouble letting all this talk of marvels and magical scrolls override the scientific facts about weather he’d learnt back home. ‘How come I’ve never seen a weather scroll?’ he asked.

  ‘Because dragons are clever and secretive, so they leave them in the overlooked corners of your world – like cracks in the wall, hollows of trees and deep inside caves – then, just as you are waking up, the scrolls vanish into thin air, leaving you your weather for the day.’

  Casper thought about all this happening without the people in his world knowing a thing. ‘I know you said the magic here has to be shared with my world, otherwise it turns bad, but four kingdoms’ worth of Unmappers working away to create weather for us – what do you all get in return? Money or something?’

  ‘Money?!’ Utterly spluttered, then she threw back her head and laughed. ‘We get to live in a kingdom filled with magic, Casper – dream choices on our bedposts, exploding gobstoppers in our banqueting halls, skies full of dragons – and the wonder and joy of all that counts for more than any money ever could.’

  Casper wondered what Candida and Leopold would have to say about money coming second to wonder and joy. He straightened himself up. The key to keeping sane in Rumblestar, Casper decided, was probably allowing himself to believe a few impossible things every hour. So, to manage the extraordinary statements that Utterly kept coming out with, Casper conjured up a timetable in his head for just that; Utterly’s explanations about the weather scrolls could sink in from now until sunrise, then he’d brace himself for the next hurdle. And to balance all that out, he would also spend an equal amount of time focusing on the task ahead as the impossible things. Most importantly, he needed to work out who the familiar face was that he was meant to find. Could either of his parents have followed him into Rumblestar through the grandfather clock? Or Candida? He shuddered at the thought, then he realised that the Midnights – whatever they were – would be a far worse threat than a girl with a love of custard creams.

  ‘What kind of winged creatures do you think the Midnights are?’ Casper asked quietly.

  ‘Won’t be dragons,’ Utterly replied. ‘They never bend to the command of dark magic. And definitely not unicorns – they’re an endangered species and far too responsible to get mixed up with Morg. Maybe manticores?’

  At the word, Arlo choked on his toffee.

  ‘Manti-whats?’ Casper asked, although he was almost afraid of the answer.

  ‘Manticores. Tail of a scorpion, body of a lion, bat-like wings and shark teeth.’

  Casper swallowed several times. The thought of being dragged into Everdark by a manticore was almost enough to make him cry there and then. He swivelled round in his armchair to check their surroundings again and his eyes caught on dozens of lights burning in the sky around the castle. They weren’t stars – these were brighter and bigger somehow – and they were moving.

  ‘What are those?’ Casper whispered.

  Utterly spun round and Casper could tell then that behind all the bravado there was a girl just as frightened as him. Utterly peered out through her maze of hair, then she breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Good job we left when we did. Those are Ballooners returning to the castle on the Lofty Husks’ orders. Their hot air balloons are powered by dragon fire and that’s what you can see burning.’

  Casper tried not to dwell on the fact that experienced Ballooners were abandoning The Beyond and here he, Utterly and Arlo were sailing out into it. ‘How old do you have to be to fly a balloon?’ he asked instead.

  ‘When you’re ten you decide whether you want to be a Bottler or a Ballooner – or, if you want something with a bit less pressure, there are castle jobs, too, like running the kingdom’s newspaper, researching spells in the library and liaising with the magical creatures who come to stay. But with Bottlers and Ballooners, it’s a lot of classes with the Lofty Husks – and far too much homework – then you qualify at the age of eighteen. And that’s when you can start flying balloons solo or manning all the incredible machines inside the Mixing Tower.’ Utterly’s eyes lit up. ‘There are cauldrons the size of cars, chimneys so long and twisting it takes the wind days to travel down them and bottles every possible shape and size you can imagine. I once saw one the shape of a pineapple.’

  ‘And before you’re ten years old,’ Casper asked, ‘what do you do then?’

  ‘Explore the castle and have fun, really. There are go-karts on the twenty-third floor, haunted turrets, a vanishing library (it appears on a different floor every week) and apparently there’s even an ice-rink somewhere, though I’ve never found it.’ She paused. ‘But maybe that’s because it’s in the west wing and no one goes there any more because all the magic’s dried up.’ She looked at Casper. ‘What do you lot do before you’re ten?’

  Casper considered. ‘Spelling tests, mostly.’

  Utterly grimaced, then she settled Arlo into her lap, lifted her spanner from her pocket and began using it to twist all the nuts and bolts that scored the length of the suitcase in front of her. A minute later, the suitcase sprang open.

  ‘Told you I was great at unlocking things,’ she said smugly. ‘That would’ve taken my classmates ages.’

  Utterly drew out the only two objects inside the suitcase: an old-fashioned telephone with a round dial and a notepad.

  ‘Are you calling a grown-up?’ Casper asked hopefully.

  Utterly looked horrified. ‘No, I am most certainly not.’

  Then Casper realised that actually there was no hope of calling anyone because the telephone wasn’t even connected to any sort of wiring. ‘Would’ve been helpful if the suitcase contained a working telephone.’

  ‘It’s not a suitcase,’ Utterly replied. ‘It’s a just-in-case. And it’s incredibly helpful, actually.’

  She opened the notepad and over her shoulder Casper read the following words:

  • For food, whisper a secret

  • For drinks, share a memory

  • For dry clothes, state the time (and your size)

  • For scented candles, decorative pot plants, side lamps and other furnishings, crack a joke

  Utterly closed the just-in-case but Casper saw that she didn’t bolt it all up again. She squinted at the sky, then lifted the handset and said: ‘The time is seven stars past moonrise. And we’re eleven-year-old sized. Bigger than sun scamps but smaller than snow trolls.’

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Utterly hung up.

  ‘That went well,’ Casper muttered.

  And it turned out it did. Because when Utterly knocked three times on the just-in-case, then lifted the lid again, a jumble of clothes that definitely hadn’t been there before – duffel coats, dungarees, woolly jumpers, boots and a tiny knitted waistcoat for Arlo – lay inside.

  Casper was too stunned to speak, so he just accepted the dry clothes Utterly chucked at him and put them on. It felt strange peeling off his blazer and slipping into dungarees. Even outside school hours Casper liked to keep his blazer on; it made the gap between childhood and adulthood a little less depressing.

  Utterly buttoned up her duffel coat, then slumped into her armchair. ‘I suppose when the Lofty Husks realise I’m not in the castle they’ll assume I’ve run away out of guilt because I meddled with the marvels.’

  ‘But when they discover Frostbite has gone, they’ll know there’s more to it, won’t they?’

  Utterly shrugged. ‘I don’t exactly have a good track record with behaviour, Casper. They’ll probably think Frostbite has left, out of concern, to bring me home.’

  ‘But when Frostbite doesn’t come back, and doesn’t message, and seems to have vanished altogether, then the Lofty Husks will know that something’s afoot and that you’re innocent.’ Casper’s eyes lit up. ‘And then they’ll rush out to help us.’

  ‘Or tell us off.’ Utterly turned away. ‘We should get some sleep. It won’t be long before the Midnight pretending to be Frostbite has reported back to his demo
n pals and the whole lot of them are on our tail.’ She propped Arlo up on the bow of the canoe. ‘Wake us at the first sign of any danger.’

  The dragon straightened his knitwear, then looked out over the river.

  Casper bit his lip. ‘How will Arlo know what to look for?’

  ‘Arlo is extremely clever so if the slightest danger comes our way, he’ll let us know.’

  Casper watched despairingly as Arlo scampered round in a circle, chasing his own tail. ‘I think I’d feel better about the whole situation if I wrote a to-do list, so please can you ask the just-in-case for a pen and paper?’

  ‘Why do you need to write a to-do list?’ Utterly said, baffled. ‘Isn’t it obvious what we’ve got to do? Find the drizzle hags and ask them where in the kingdom you’ll find a familiar face.’

  Casper shifted in his seat. ‘Yes, but there are several other things on our agenda—’

  ‘What’s an agenda?’

  ‘Like a plan.’

  ‘Can’t we just wing it?’

  Casper quivered at the thought. ‘We should be writing down the things we’ve got to do so we don’t forget them. Things like, sorting out accommodation, sourcing multivitamins and hand sanitisers . . . buying umbrellas . . .’

  Utterly considered. ‘You’re right about the umbrellas, Casper. No point being in dry clothes if we’re out in the rain, but no need to buy them.’

  She rummaged beneath her armchair. There was a click and a metal rod shot out the back of her seat then opened above her as an umbrella. Casper peered beneath his own armchair to find three labelled buttons:

  SWIFT EXIT

  SHELTER

  SLEEP

  He guessed Utterly must have press SHELTER, and although he was tempted by SWIFT EXIT, he wasn’t altogether convinced that would get him back to Little Wallops, so he pressed SHELTER to activate an umbrella of his own and then SLEEP, which made his armchair recline a little and begin a gentle massage which seemed to dry the fabric of the chair as it moved. But Casper found that he was too hungry to sleep – lunch in the dining room back in Little Wallops seemed a long, long time ago.

  ‘We need to dial in for some food, Utterly.’

  There was a snort from the armchair in front. ‘You should’ve eaten at the castle instead of messing around in the dungeons. Canoe food is only to be used in an emergency.’

  Utterly rooted through her discarded dressing gown, pulled out a toffee and lobbed it back to Casper. Casper briefly considered launching over Utterly to make a grab for the telephone, but then he calculated the risks involved and settled for the toffee instead. He closed his eyes and thought about his parents – he missed them more than he would have ever thought possible – and while the canoe sailed on down the Witch’s Fingers, further and further into The Beyond, Casper did, finally, drift off to sleep.

  But past The Edge and across the Boundless Seas, in the heart of a tangled forest, there was somebody who was very much awake. Not a magical firefly – the last of those had left Everdark many years ago. Not a diamond tree – the forest no longer shone at night. And not a silver panther – they were all long gone.

  No, only the harpy named Morg remained in Everdark, and now she was clawing her way out of a nest draped in cobwebs. Her talons were cracked, her body was grey and shrunken – only a few feathers still hung from her puckered skin – and her wingless arms drooped either side of the pointed skull she wore over her head.

  She dragged herself down through the branches, stumbled across the clearing and drew her hunched body up in front of a tree that held a dozen doors carved into its trunk. Morg reached out a spindly hand towards the one that bore a plaque reading TO FINAL ENDINGS and held her precious wings, but no matter how many times she clawed at the handle it wouldn’t open. It never did.

  But every night Morg visited the tree because although the girl, Smudge, and her wretched monkey had trapped the harpy in the forest, Morg was slowly gaining strength and while she couldn’t reach her wings, she had worked out a way to summon the feathers from her wings to life as followers – her Midnights. Morg couldn’t beckon the creatures out into Everdark because the door in the tree was hexed shut, but she had commanded her followers to find another door, one that might lead on to the Unmapped Kingdoms. And, in the last few weeks, they had . . .

  Morg wanted nothing more than to find a way through this door so that she could follow her Midnights out into Rumblestar, but no way opened up for her, so through the tiniest of cracks in the door marked TO FINAL ENDINGS, the Midnights updated Morg on their progress.

  The harpy listened eagerly as they spoke of wreaking havoc with Rumblestar’s marvels tonight, but at the news that a boy from the Faraway had found his way into this kingdom, Morg cackled in delight. Because here, suddenly, was someone who could cross the links between worlds and kingdoms, someone who could free her from Everdark and lead her into Rumblestar!

  The harpy pressed her cracked lips up to the hole in the door. ‘Bring me the boy from the Faraway but do not turn your back on the marvels. Ruin them, every last one, because when I join you in Rumblestar I want the kingdom on its knees so I can steal all its magic and begin my rule.’

  For a moment there was silence and Morg looked at the door with haunted eyes, then there was a fluttering, whirring, whirling sound inside the tree and the harpy’s fingers twitched. Next came a scratching of talons and claws and a high-pitched screech, then that din faded, too, and only a quiet ticking – like that of a clock – ate into the silence.

  But at this, Morg smiled. The Midnights were stirring inside the tree and soon they would be tearing through Rumblestar again.

  ‘Fly forth, my winged ones,’ Morg screeched. ‘Fly forth.’

  Casper woke to a short, sharp jab in the stomach. His eyes shot open. Was the canoe crawling with Midnights? Were they being ambushed by drizzle hags?

  It was neither of these things. Utterly had twisted round in her seat and she was wielding a paddle like some sort of trident to poke at Casper. And although he could think of many more restful ways to be woken up than having an oar rammed into his intestines, Casper was glad of Utterly’s presence – not because of the conversation (she was far too fierce to say anything sensible) and not because he harboured any sort of hope that they might become friends (their spending time together was purely practical), but because her being there, along with Arlo, meant Casper felt ever so slightly less alone.

  For a moment, as his brain cleared the fog of sleep, Casper thought of his parents and prayed hard that they were both still safe from the winds. Then he turned his attention to Arlo, who, true to Utterly’s word, was still faithfully watching the river for danger.

  It was a cloudy morning and the rain was pattering onto the umbrellas. There were no longer weeping willows lining the river; instead reeds and rushes grew alongside it and now and again a flash of fur or feathers could be seen between the foliage. The animals, it seemed, were on edge, and though they tried their best to stay hidden, Casper glimpsed a kingfisher tucked under a branch and blinking at the front page of a tiny newspaper, a cluster of ducks hiding in the reeds dressed in miniature wellington boots and a heron wearing spectacles as it poked its head up above the reeds then vanished from sight.

  Utterly followed Casper’s gaze. ‘The animals here can’t talk but they’re pretty civilised, unlike the magical creatures who jabber away but are often far from polite.’

  Casper shrank into his duffel coat at the mention of magical creatures. He looked around him. This was the first time he had ever woken up outside, and the absence of walls, doors and alarm clocks made his pulse skitter.

  Utterly reached inside the just-in-case for the telephone and, after whispering a secret into it (Casper caught the words banana skin, Lofty Husk and unconscious), Utterly closed the case, knocked three times on it then pulled out a piping-hot breakfast.

  Casper crossed his arms. ‘So, this is an emergency, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Utterly replied. ‘But mis
sing breakfast would be. It’s the most important meal of the day, according to my mum, so although she’ll be furious with me for supposedly messing up the marvels and running away, at least I’ll be able to tell her I ate breakfast if the Lofty Husks come for us and we’re dragged back to the castle.’

  Utterly passed Casper one of the plates. It was piled high with scrambled eggs, buttered toast, crispy bacon and sausages then, after sharing a memory with the just-in- case (something about handling cometwhirl in the Mixing Tower for the first time) and taking collection of two freshly squeezed orange juices, she and Casper ate breakfast.

  ‘Best to keep a low profile when passing these rushes,’ Utterly said through a mouthful of food. ‘I’ve only been to these parts once, on a field trip, and though sadly things look a lot less magical around here than they did last year – the reeds used to play music when the wind stirred and there were stepping stones that made you laugh when you trod on them – the boy I was partnered with ended up being held captive by a jailbird for an entire day. It wasn’t technically my fault, but then again I don’t suppose the jailbird would’ve left its nest if I hadn’t hollered at it.’ She looked back at Casper. ‘They’re incredibly vain, so if you end up catching a jailbird’s eye, pay it a compliment, then you’ll be fine. I learnt that trick after Rudi got captured.’

  Casper scanned the reeds. ‘What’s a jailbird and does it have claws?’

  ‘They’re a bit like a swan, but angrier and more antisocial – they hate being disturbed. And yes to claws. Big ones, I’m afraid.’