The Curse of the Werepenguin

by Allan Woodrow

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2019

  Text copyright © 2019 by Allan Woodrow

  Art copyright © 2019 by Scott Brown

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  Ebook ISBN 9780451480453

  Version_1

  To M & Em

  I know you both don’t normally read books like this—scary books, monster books—but I’m dedicating this book to you anyway, and someday, when you have children, many years from now, you can take this off the bookshelf in your house and say, “Look at what your grandfather dedicated to me!” And your children will respond, “Did he write this when he still had hair and teeth?” And you’ll answer, “He still had teeth.” —A.W.

  For my three girls,

  Melissa, Ellen, and Emily, and the amazing Maria Fernanda. —S.B.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue: The St. Aves Zoo

  PART ONE

  The Journey to Brugaria

  1 Purple Pens

  2 A Propensity to Bolt

  3 Of Bushy Hair and Horns

  4 The Dead Penguin Inn

  5 The Fortune Teller’s Warning

  6 Penguins Calling

  7 Robbers in the Night

  8 Midnight Loomsss

  9 Chordata Manor

  PART TWO

  The Transformation

  10 A Break in the Action

  11 The Story of Vigi Lambda

  12 The Stroke of Midnight

  13 The Baron Cometh

  14 Questions without Answers

  15 BFFs

  16 Fun and Games

  17 Nighttime Barking

  18 The Night of the Penguin

  19 Awakenings

  20 One of Us

  21 A Nightmare Awake

  PART THREE

  The Curse

  22 Another Break in the Action

  23 The Runaway

  24 A Chant and a Chance

  25 Escape from Chordata Manor

  26 The Day of the Penguin

  27 The Prince of Whales

  28 Sack of Rice

  29 The Tunnels

  30 Decisions, Decisions, and Indecisions

  31 You Don’t Want to See Me Very Angry

  32 The True Story of the Baron and the Great Bird Battle

  33 Another Penguin

  PART FOUR

  The Attack of the Werepenguin

  34 Really? Another Break in the Action? This Is Getting Annoying.

  35 The Greatest Bandit Who Ever Lived

  36 A Light from the Darkness

  37 A Storm Approaches

  38 Forsooth, the Tooth!

  39 Brothers in Arms, or Fins

  40 If You Listen Carefully, You Can Hear Nothing

  41 A Housekeeper Adrift

  42 The Final Break in the Action, We Promise

  43 The Story of the Lowly Housekeeper’s Mother

  44 Reunited

  45 The Bandit’s Daughters

  46 Fire and Ice

  47 The Battle along the Blacker Sea

  48 The Family That Fights Together

  49 The Return of the Whale

  Epilogue: Midnight at the St. Aves Zoo

  Excerpt from The Revenge of the Werepenguin

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue: The St. Aves Zoo

  Fourteen penguins glared at me with haunting yellow eyes. They seemed disturbed, disdainful, disgruntled, discombobulated, and disagreeably disquieting. They squawked—loud, roaring barks—beaks frowning.

  A chill rose up my back.

  I sneezed.

  It had been foolish to visit the famed penguin exhibit at the St. Aves Zoo without my handkerchief. My allergy to penguins was even worse than my allergies to zebras, giraffes, monkeys, elephants, emus, tigers, bears, otters, snakes, sheep, cows, various reptiles, and pandas.

  Perhaps being a zoo animal procurer had not been the best career choice.

  Then again, if I hadn’t come to that zoo, on that particular day and at that particular time, I would never have heard the story of the werepenguin. And then, neither would you.

  It was late and the zoo was closing soon. I leaned against the railing of the penguin enclosure, twirling the small glass penguin figurine I kept as a good-luck charm. I also carried three rabbits’ feet, ten four-leaf clovers, and a framed number seven. Not that I was superstitious, but it never hurts to be prepared.

  I sneezed again and needed somewhere to wipe my nose. My sock? My shoelaces? Unfortunately, I was not very flexible.

  “Care for this, sir?” asked a man with a large handful of tissues. I yanked one from his grasp.

  “Thank you,” I said, and then sneezed anew, a tremendous sneeze that sounded like a truck’s honk. The man jumped. He seemed nervous, and perhaps bothered by loud noises. I was glad I had left my tuba at home.

  “I am the caretaker of the penguins.” The fellow was short and round, with an oversize nose and a balding head. He wore a long black overcoat, a black scarf around his neck, and a white shirt. If I squinted, he almost looked like one of the penguins beyond the railing. He slouched, as if he carried a lifetime of worries on his shoulders, and those worries were heavy. Or perhaps he just had weak shoulders.

  “I’m here on business,” I explained. “Zoo business.” The man arched his eyebrows. “I represent a new zoo. A large zoo. A zoo of immense proportions. I have been traveling far and wide, near and thin to purchase animals for the zoo. Your penguins are magnificent. I will buy half of them.”

  The short, round man frowned. “A kind offer, but I’m afraid you’ve wasted your travels. The St. Aves penguins are not for sale. They are comfortable here. This is their home.”

  “Nonsense,” I said, and snorted. It was a purposeful snort. “Everything is for sale. May I buy your shoes?”

  The man looked down at his black loafers—they looked to be ten sizes too large for him—and shook his head. “No, I’m wearing these. But even if the penguins were for sale, and they are not, I could never sell half of them. They are a family, you see. Families should never be split up.”

  I scoffed, and then snorted again. “Home? Family? They are birds, sir. They do not need an exhibit as big or as comfortable as this one. You pamper them. All a penguin needs is a cage and some newspapers on the floor.”

  “Penguins can’t read.”

  “Even so, tell me your price. I must buy your penguins.”

  I noticed the penguin caretaker was staring at the penguin figurine in my hand. I held it up for him to see more clearly. “Where did you get that?” he asked.

  “
At a flea market in Katmandu. They had run out of fleas, so I bought this instead. The man who sold it to me said it was handmade in Brugaria.”

  “Yes, that penguin is Brugarian. I’ve seen others like it.” The penguin caretaker turned away and looked over the railing. He sighed loudly. “You’ve heard about the werepenguins of Brugaria, of course.”

  “Werepenguins? You mean werewolves. Humans who turn into wolves during a full moon.”

  “Werewolves get all the attention. You don’t read as much about the were-aardvarks of Tanzania, or the were-termites of Brazil. Some people call them myths. Who knows? But the werepenguin—now, that’s a story.”

  “Fairy tales,” I said with a dismissive wave of my hand. “There’s no such thing as were-anything except underwear. And that’s spelled differently.”

  “May I tell you a story? You may find it even more valuable than our penguins. But I warn you, the tale is long.”

  “Everyone knows penguin tails are short,” I replied, and then chuckled at my joke.

  “This is not a story to be taken lightly,” he warned. “In fact, I will make you a deal. Listen to my tale. If, at the end, you are still interested in half my penguins, they are yours. For free.”

  “Free?” I looked at him carefully, to see if he was mocking me. Who ever heard of free penguins? But one look at the man’s sunken eyes and saggy cheeks convinced me that he was not someone who told jokes. If he ever had a sense of humor, it had likely been buried long ago. “You have a deal, my friend. Tell me your tale—short or no.”

  “I warn you, it’s a disturbing story. Also, disquieting and discombobulating, like the penguins watching.” He gestured to the exhibit, where the waddle of penguins continued to glare at us.

  I sneezed, and the man gave me the rest of his stack of tissues. “The story,” he said, “starts in a home for abandoned boys. Bolt Wattle was twelve years old, with no family and no prospects for anything except a disappointing future. But his life was about to be changed forever.”

  “I hate children’s stories,” I snapped.

  “There is nothing childish about this story, I assure you.”

  PART ONE

  The Journey to Brugaria

  1.

  Purple Pens

  The sun had already set while Bolt Wattle waited outside the door of the headmistress’s office, afraid to enter. Boys were not often summoned to the office of Headmistress Fiona Blackensmear, and never in the evening.

  The headmistress sat in deep concentration at her desk, her forehead knotted, as she examined the sheets of paper atop the open manila folder. Her lips were pursed. Her hair was pinned tight into a bun. Her fingers tapped her desk: pinkie to thumb, pinkie to thumb.

  “Have a seat, Humboldt,” she said without looking up, her voice as firm as her hair. Her fingers ceased tapping.

  Bolt cringed at the sound of his real name. His parents, the parents he had never known, had only left him two things: the name Humboldt, and a stuffed penguin he simply called “Penguin.”

  He liked the stuffed animal.

  Bolt rustled across the floor in his orphanage shoes, two sizes too small and made of burlap, and sat in the green and cracked plastic chair across from the headmistress’s desk. He fidgeted. Like his shoes, Bolt’s pants were too tight, so he often fidgeted when he sat. The Oak Wilt Home for Unwanted Boys didn’t have many clothes for twelve-year-olds.

  Nothing else in the room moved. The spiders and moles that roamed the Oak Wilt Home for Unwanted Boys knew better than to enter the office of Headmistress Fiona Blackensmear.

  On the desk sat pens nestled inside three clear penholders. The pens were grouped by color: red, black, and blue. Bolt lifted a blue pen and tried to be interested in it but failed. He put the pen back into a penholder.

  “Does that belong there?” Ms. Blackensmear growled, her eyes darting up and glaring at the blue pen standing amid the red ones. Bolt was small for his age, and under the headmistress’s glare he felt much, much smaller. He moved the pen into its proper holder.

  “Better.” Ms. Blackensmear slammed her folder shut. “Pens are much like boys, you know. A blue pen is happiest with blue pens like itself. But when that pen is placed incorrectly, such as with red pens, it is distraught.” She cleared her throat. “But you are not a blue or a red pen, Humboldt. You are a broken purple pen almost out of ink, one that has only a few more lines left to write before being discarded forever.” She tapped each of her fingers again, stared at the folder on her desk, and then back up at Bolt. “But that has now changed.”

  Bolt blinked, confused. “It has?”

  The headmistress stood up, holding the manila folder and waving it with forceful enthusiasm. “Yes! We had a visitor today.” Her voice rose in excitement. “A messenger. And he brought this!” She smacked the folder on her desk as if spiking a football after scoring a touchdown. “Do you know what this is?”

  “A folder?”

  “It is opportunity. We have a request for you. Yes, you specifically. This gentleman doesn’t even want to meet you, which is probably for the best.” Her eyes wandered to Bolt’s neck, where a large bird-shaped birthmark poked out of his shirt collar. Bolt tilted his head slightly to the left, to obscure the mark, as was his habit.

  The headmistress looked away, coughed, and then picked up the manila folder once more. “He was quite intrigued by how you ended up with us.”

  “But I don’t know how I got here. I was left at the doorstep as a baby.”

  “That’s what he found so intriguing. It was almost as if you were meant to be together. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  Bolt shivered. He did not think that was wonderful. In fact, he thought quite the opposite. Bolt had always been thankful he was unwanted by prospective parents. He was certain that his family, his real family, was out there somewhere, and would soon return for their long-lost son.

  If Bolt left the orphanage, they might never find him.

  “But now you can count your chickens,” said the headmistress. “They have hatched. For you are to live with a Baron!” If she noticed Bolt’s frown, she didn’t acknowledge it. “His name is Baron Chordata.” After Ms. Blackensmear said his name, Bolt thought he heard a scream, or perhaps a loud squeak from one of the orphanage vermin. He then heard a muffled thud as if the animal, after screaming, had fainted or dropped dead. The headmistress looked down and tapped the folder on her desk. “Yes, a Baron. I don’t believe there is a Baroness. A shame, but still, he is practically royalty.” She looked back up and smiled. “Your luck runneth over, much like our toilets. I need to get those fixed.” She pointed to the door. “You must leave immediately.”

  “But why would a Baron want me?”

  “Maybe you have some royal blood in you.” She peered closely at Bolt. “No, that’s highly unlikely. Never mind. Perhaps the Baron needs someone to do lab experiments on. Or a houseboy to do his chores. Who knows? Who cares? It’s strange and mysterious, but so are many things. Grab your belongings and then you are off to Brugaria.”

  “Brugaria? Where’s that?”

  “Far away from here.” She jabbed her finger toward the door. “Now, shoo. Assistant Headmaster Smoof is waiting to escort you and ensure you arrive in one piece. Or, at least, that all your pieces arrive at once.”

  Bolt took a few steps toward the door, his stomach flipping and flopping like a hooked fish. He glanced back at Ms. Blackensmear, who was rubbing a string of pearls she held in her hand. Bolt was quite sure he had never seen her with pearls before.

  “It’s almost too good to be true,” said Ms. Blackensmear, talking to herself. “Of course, if something seems too good to be true, then it probably isn’t good at all.”

  And with that, Bolt walked out the office door, never to return.

  2.

  A Propensity to Bolt

  Bolt peered out the train window and int
o the inky blackness of the night as the train squealed along rusted tracks. The moon’s faint glow revealed a thick but dead forest outside. Tree branches reached out like distorted arms and hands. Ice hung from their fingertips and bits of snow dotted their forearms. They scraped against the train car window as if trying to grab Bolt or poke him in the eye.

  Strong winds howled. Somewhere, an animal barked.

  Bolt squeezed his stuffed penguin, the one left by the parents he never knew. It had only one wing, with a slight rip and a long char mark where the other wing should have been, as if it had been burned and yanked off. Such had it always been.

  Bolt knew he was far too old to be hugging a stuffed animal, but it brought him a small amount of comfort—a very small amount, like using a string for a blanket. Still, it was better than no comfort at all.

  They had been traveling for a night and a day; Bolt had hugged Penguin for most of the trip. First, he and Mr. Smoof had caught a plane to New York. Then they’d hopped on a second plane to London, another back to New York when they discovered they were on the wrong plane, and then after two more plane rides, they’d finally climbed aboard this train to Volgelplatz, a fishing village in Brugaria.

  Bolt hated every second of the voyage. If people were meant to fly, he felt, they would have been born with wings. The rickety train was just as bad as the planes. It rattled and creaked as if threatening to break in half.

  Bolt squeezed his stuffed bird tighter.

  Worse, with every click and clack of the rails, and with every takeoff or landing of the planes, Bolt was carried farther and farther away from Oak Wilt. His parents were probably looking for him at that very moment: they had probably arrived at the orphanage mere minutes after Bolt had left.

  Across from Bolt slept Mr. Smoof. When awake, the man had been a grumpy companion. Apparently, he was missing his favorite television show, which had something to do with wild animal hunting. Bolt couldn’t imagine Mr. Smoof hunting—he was far too large to sneak around unnoticed, and he smelled like sausages. Surely animals would see him, or sniff him, from miles away.