Kitabı oku: «Starfell: Willow Moss and the Lost Day»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

1. The Girl Who Found Lost Things

2. A Question of Time

3. The Monster from Under the Bed

4. The Portal Pantry

5. The Broom-makers

6. The (Newly) Forbidden City of Beady Hill

7. Amora Spell

8. The Sometimes House

9. The Dragon’s Tale

10. The Forgotten Teller

11. The Lost Spells of Starfell

12. The Moon Garden

13. The Midnight Market

14. The Hag Stone

15. Wait and Forget

16. Calamity Troll

17. The Troll Army

18. The Witch’s House

19. Magic in Wolkana

20. Enough to Make a Kobold Explode

21. Yesterday Again

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

1
The Girl Who Found Lost Things

Most people think being born with a magical power would be a bit of a dream come true. But that’s only because they assume that they’d get exciting powers, like the ability to fly, become invisible or turn an annoying relative into a pig. They think magic is a big feast, where everything is laid out, ripe for the picking.

However, in the world of Starfell, not everyone who is lucky enough to have a bit of magic up their sleeve these days gets the really good bits – like, say, the triple-chocolate fudge cake. Some just get those wilted carrot sticks that no one really wanted to eat anyway. This seemed to be the unfortunate case for Willow Moss, the youngest and, alas, least powerful member of the Moss family.

Willow had received an ability that was, in most people’s opinions, a little more magical scrapyard than magical feast. Useful, but not in a snap, fizzle and bang sort of way. Not even a little snap, or a low sort of bang, though there was almost a fizzle, when you squinted.

Willow’s power was in finding lost things.

Like keys. Or socks. Or, recently, old Jeremiah Crotchet’s wooden teeth.

That hadn’t been fun; the teeth had landed in Willow’s outstretched palm, covered in gooey saliva from the mouth of Geezer, the Crotchets’ ancient bullmastiff.

After the Crotchets paid Willow a spurgle – the standard rate since she was six – Willow decided that an increase was long overdue. She also made a vow from then on to keep a fisher’s net with her at all times to catch the more unsavoury items she was likely to find.

So, while it wasn’t exactly a profitable talent, it did put food on the table – usually a half loaf of bread most days. Which was something at least. Unless you compared it to her middle sister Camille’s talent. Camille had recently lifted a plough, donkey still attached, off Garron Jensen, with her mind.

Yup … Camille’s powers were a bit flashier.

It was at age six, when Willow’s power had finally surfaced, that her father had explained to her that the world was made of different types of people. ‘They’re all necessary, all important. It’s just that some attract a bit more attention than others. There are people like your mother, who commands respect the second she walks into a room. (The fact that she hears dead people speak helps with that a bit too.) Same with your sisters. And then there are people like me and you.’

Which hurt. Just a little.

Willow, despite her name, was short with long, stick-straight brown hair and brown eyes to match. She looked a lot like her father, while her sisters had inherited her mother’s striking looks – tall with flowing black hair and green eyes that were described as ‘emerald-hued’. Although Willow was pretty certain no one in the Moss family had ever seen an emerald close up.

When Willow complained to Granny Flossy that she didn’t look like her striking mother and sisters, Granny had harrumphed. She didn’t have patience for vanity. She couldn’t afford to with green hair. Granny Flossy had once been one of the best potion-makers in all of Starfell, but was now called ‘Batty Granny’ by most people due to a potion explosion in the mountains of Nach that had caused some rather interesting effects, one of which was the colour of her hair.

‘Tsk, child. Your eyes may not be “emerald” like the others, but they’re as good as, ’specially when it comes to spotting things that others don’ seem to see,’ she said with a sly grin, before she stashed a few of her dodgier potions beneath a loose floorboard in the attic that only Willow seemed to know about.

Granny Flossy was right about Willow spotting things other people seemed to miss. It had become a talent over the years. Like today, while she stood in the cottage garden in her usual position, looking at the small line of people that snaked round the low stone wall, all seeking Willow’s help to find their misplaced possessions.

‘I just can’t seem to find them. I’ve looked everywhere …’ said Prudence Foghorn from behind the open gate.

‘Did you try on top of your head?’ asked Willow.

‘Oh my!’ said Prudence, feeling the top of her head only to discover her missing rhinestone spectacles. ‘Silly me,’ she said with an embarrassed giggle before turning away.

‘That’ll be one spurgle,’ said Juniper, Willow’s oldest sister, coming out of the cottage and witnessing the exchange.

‘But she didn’t do any magic,’ complained Prudence, eyes popping in surprise.

‘She still found your glasses, didn’t she? You got the same result that you came here for, didn’t you? It’s not her fault you’re too blind to look in a mirror.’ Juniper was relentless, and under her glare Prudence conceded and handed over the spurgle.

‘I heard witches weren’t meant to ask for money in the first place,’ whined skinny Ethel Mustard from near the back of the queue. ‘They’re not meant to profit from their gifts,’ she said rather piously, gimlet eyes shining.

Ethel Mustard, it has to be said, was the sort of person who secretly wished that their village, Grinfog, had been granted Forbidden status by the king. This would ensure that people like Willow and her family – magical people, really – would have to go and live Somewhere Else.

‘Who told you that?’ said Juniper, rounding on Ethel, who appeared to shrink under Juniper’s dark frown. ‘When a carpenter makes you something, you pay him, don’t you? My sister supplies you a service, so why would it be any different with her?’

‘Well, because she’s not like everyone else,’ whispered Ethel, two high spots of colour appearing on her cheeks.

Juniper’s eyebrows lowered. ‘Well,’ she drawled, ‘perhaps then you should pay her more?’

There was collective grumbling from all around.

Juniper’s power – besides getting money out of people – was in blowing things up. So no one grumbled too loudly. No one wanted to anger someone who could blow them up.

Willow sighed. She was planning on raising her price to a fleurie and a Leighton apple, but she wasn’t convinced that using her scary sister to bully it out of people was the best way to go about it. It wasn’t that she was overly fond of Leighton apples, but Wheezy the Jensens’ retired show horse was. Willow passed the old horse every Thursday when she went to the market. The children from the village had labelled him Wheezy because every time he came trotting to the pasture his chest made asthmatic wheezes. Considering that he went to the trouble to come greet her, Willow liked to have his favourite treat.

‘The trouble with you, Willow,’ said Juniper, who Willow couldn’t help noticing had failed to hand over the spurgle, ‘is that you don’t place enough value on your skills – such as they are.’

‘Skills! What skills?’ came Camille’s mocking tones as she emerged from the cottage, dressed head to foot in a long black robe made of rich, shimmery material.

‘Oh, you mean as a magical bloodhound?’ She smirked. Ignoring Willow’s protests, she turned to Juniper and said, ‘Ready?’ The two were heading off to join their mother for the Travelling Fortune Fair.

Willow closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing deeply. When she opened them she saw that her sisters had sped off down the lane, their black hair and cloaks flowing in their wakes.

Resignedly she turned back to her queue of customers and jumped.

The queue had vanished, and in its place stood a lone woman. She was tall and reed-thin, with black hair framing a pale, slender face marked by high arching eyebrows. She wore a long dusky gown with purple pointed boots, and an expression that made Willow’s spine straighten before her brain could muster an objection.

The woman raised a brow and said, ‘Good morning?’

‘G-good morning …?’ managed Willow in response, wondering who the woman was.

There was a small part of Willow’s mind that held its breath. It was the part that seemed to be listening to her knees, which had begun to shake, as if they knew a secret her head did not.

‘Moreg Vaine,’ said the woman with casual nonchalance, as if declaring yourself the most feared witch in all of Starfell was an everyday occurrence. Which, to be fair, for Moreg Vaine, it probably was.

‘Oh dear,’ said Willow, whose wobbling knees had proved correct.

Moreg Vaine’s mouth curled up.

In years to come Willow would still wonder how it was possible that she had managed to keep her feet on the ground when a whisper would surely have knocked her over.

Yet never in Willow’s wildest fantasies of meeting the infamous witch Moreg Vaine could she ever have imagined for a moment what happened next.

‘Cup of tea?’ suggested Moreg.

2
A Question of Time

Willow followed Moreg Vaine into the cottage, staring in bafflement as the witch went about lighting the coal in the blackened stone fireplace, and filling the old dented teakettle with water. Moreg patted down her robe, withdrew a package and nodded to herself as she poured something into the pot.

‘Hethal should do nicely,’ she said, drumming a finger against her chin. Seeming to remember herself she said, ‘Take a seat,’ offering Willow a chair at Willow’s own kitchen table.

Willow sat down slowly. Somewhere deep inside she clung to the faint hope that this was all just a dream, or perhaps the witch had come to the wrong house by mistake? Even so, her manners soon caught up with her and she mumbled, ‘Er, Miss Vaine … I-I can do that if you’d like …?’

Moreg waved her hand dismissively. ‘No matter – I remember where everything is.’

Willow’s mouth popped open in surprise. ‘You do?’

Taking down two cups from the old wooden dresser, Moreg shrugged. ‘Oh yes. It’s been a long time, of course, but Raine and I go back many years.’

‘You know my mother?’

Moreg placed a chipped blue mug decorated with small white flowers before Willow and sat down opposite with a dainty teacup for herself.

‘Since we were young girls. Did she never mention it?’

Willow shook her head a bit too vigorously.

Willow knew, logically, that her mother – and she supposed Moreg Vaine – had once been a young girl, but it was a concept her brain couldn’t fully grasp. Like trying to understand why anyone would willingly choose to spend their time collecting postage stamps. All she could manage was a polite, puzzled frown.

Moreg said offhandedly, ‘It was a long time ago, I suppose, long before you were born. Like many of our people – magical people, that is – our families lived in the Ditchwater district. Your mother was great friends with my sister, Molsa, you see. As children they did everything together, setting bear traps to catch the local hermit, holding tea parties with the dead, dancing naked in the moonlight … but things changed – they always do, and many of us have moved on … It’s safer that way, and Molsa is gone now.’ Moreg cleared her throat. ‘Never mind that, though, drink your tea.’

‘Um,’ was all Willow managed in response, trying really hard NOT to picture her mother dancing naked in the moonlight.

Willow looked at the witch, then away again fast. Moreg’s eyes were like razors. Willow’s throat turned dry as she remembered one of the scarier rumours about the witch. And they were all rather scary to be sure. It was said that Moreg Vaine could turn someone to stone just by looking at them … Willow glanced at her mug and wondered, Why IS she here? Making me tea? She took a sip. It was good too. Strong and sweet, the way she liked it. And the cup was hers – one of the few items in the cottage that was. It stood alone among the haphazard collection of cups and saucers that bowed the Mosses’ kitchen dresser.

She supposed that senior witches made it their business to know which mug was yours. At some point I’m going to have to actually ASK her why she is here, Willow thought with dread. She took another sip of tea to stretch that moment out just a little longer.

Maybe, Willow wondered, Moreg is here to visit Mum? That seemed the most likely explanation.

Willow hadn’t taken more than two sips before Moreg dashed her hopeful musings. She looked at Willow, with her eyes like deepest, blackest ink, and said rather worryingly, ‘I need your help.’

Willow blinked. ‘M-my help?’

Moreg nodded. ‘It’s Tuesday, you see. I can’t quite put my finger on why or how … but I’m fairly certain that it’s gone.’

‘G-gone?’

Moreg stared. ‘Yes.’

There was an awkward silence.

Willow stared at Moreg.

The witch stared back.

There seemed to be no other explanation. The witch must have gone mad. Granny Flossy said it happened to the best of them sometimes. She’d know, of course, having gone mad herself.

Some said Moreg Vaine lived alone in the Mists of Mitlaire, the entrance to the realm of the undead. Willow supposed that would be enough to drive anyone round the bend. Mad and powerful seemed a rather dangerous combination, so she gave the witch a slightly nervous smile, hoping that she’d just misunderstood. ‘Gone? The d-day?’

Moreg nodded, then got up and took the Mosses’ Grinfog calendar from its peg behind the cottage door and handed it to Willow.

Willow looked.

She wasn’t sure what she was meant to be looking at; she was half expecting to see that the week just skipped from Monday straight to Wednesday. She was mildly disappointed to find that it had not. Tuesday was still there. Along with the Leightons’ advertisement for apple cider to cure all ailments.

‘But it’s still …?’

Moreg nodded impatiently. ‘It’s there – yes – but look closely.’

Willow looked. Printed on each day of the calendar were fairs, village meetings, harvest schedules, phases of the moon and other events. Each day had at least one item – except Tuesday.

She frowned. ‘But that could mean any—’

‘—thing. Yes. I thought that too. But, still, I can’t shake this feeling that it means something. Something bad.’ Moreg paused before explaining. ‘Do you remember what you did on Tuesday?’

Willow frowned. She closed her eyes and for just a second a big moth-eaten purple hat with a long green feather sticking up jauntily to the side swam before her eyes, with Granny Flossy’s face turning away from her, and for a moment she felt her stomach clench with fear. But then, just as fast as the image had appeared, it was gone, taking the momentary feeling of disquiet along with it.

She thought hard, the way you think about a dream that feels so real when you just wake up but is gone within seconds and is almost impossible to recall. On Monday she helped farmer Lonnis find his lease. Without it he would have lost his rights to grow oranges, but luckily Willow had been dispatched, and all was well with Lonnis Farms now – she’d got a whole bag of oranges for that. Then she’d come home and helped Granny Flossy to repot the grumbling Gertrudes. The sweet purple fruits were used for masking some of the nastier flavours from her potions (it didn’t really work, just like most of Granny’s potions didn’t really work since her accident). On Wednesday she’d gone to the market – helping the housewives of Herm find their misplaced household goods. Thursday, her mother left for the fair, and then it was today …

‘Not really – I can’t seem to remember what I did that day.’

Moreg nodded, then sighed. ‘I was hoping it may be different, but it’s the same with everyone I’ve spoken to – they seem to recall most of what they did this week, but Tuesday is a real blank.’

Willow bit her lip, hesitating. ‘But isn’t that …?’

‘Normal?’ supplied Moreg, waving her hand dismissively. ‘Yes, of course. Most people struggle to remember what they had for dinner the night before. Usually, though, if they put their minds to it, something will come up. But the thing is, when it comes to Tuesday, not a single person I have questioned can remember what happened. Not even me.’

Willow frowned. She had to admit that it was strange. ‘How many people have you asked?’

Moreg gave her an appraising look. ‘All of Hoyp.’

Willow’s eyebrows shot up. That was surprising: an entire village. Okay, a small village that was really more like one long road, but still, that was around fifteen families at least.

Another thought occurred to her. She hesitated, but asked anyway. ‘Why did you say even me?’

A ghost of a smile crossed Moreg’s face. ‘You’re sharp – that’s good. I meant only that it was strange, as it had never happened to me before.’

Willow was taken aback. ‘You’ve never forgotten what you’ve done before?’

‘Never.’

Willow’s eyes popped. She didn’t really know what to do with that information. She felt equal parts awe and dismay at the prospect.

Moreg changed the subject. ‘I believe that you are a finder?’

Willow hesitated; she’d never been called that before. Mentally she cringed. The closest she’d ever come to being called that was when her sister Camille took to calling her ‘Fetch’ for a large portion of her childhood. She’d stopped that now. Mostly.

‘Yes. Well. No. Not exactly. I mean … I find things … things that are lost.’

Moreg said nothing.

Willow filled the silence in a rush. ‘I mean … I could find your keys if you lost them, but I don’t think I could find an entire day … even if it was lost.’

Moreg raised a brow. ‘But you could try, couldn’t you?’

Willow considered. She could. There was nothing stopping her from at least trying. She took a deep, nervous breath, closed her eyes, and raised her arm to the sky, concentrated hard on Tuesday then –

‘STOP THAT THIS INSTANT!’ thundered Moreg, jumping out of her seat so fast she overturned her chair, which hit the flagstone floor with a deafening clatter. Willow gulped, while Moreg watched her lower her arm as if it were a dangerous viper. Clutching her chest, the witch took several sharp, shuddery breaths.

‘SUCH A FRIGHT! MY HEART!’

Willow’s voice shook as she spoke in a tone trying its absolute best not to make an accusation. ‘I don’t understand – you asked me to … try?’

Moreg rubbed her throat, and after a moment her voice went back to almost normal, though there was a faint squeak if you listened closely enough.

‘Q-quite right, quite right,’ she repeated. ‘Yes, I did. I do want you to try, just not quite yet. Dear Wol, no! Not without some kind of a plan first – we can’t just go in and get it. One can only imagine the consequences …’ she said with a violent shudder that she shook off. ‘Bleugh!’

At Willow’s frown Moreg explained. ‘I believe,’ she said, her black marble-like eyes huge, ‘that had you succeeded in finding the missing Tuesday and brought it into our current reality, the result would almost certainly have been catastrophic – it’s possible that the very structure of our universe would have split apart, creating a sort of end-of-days scenario …’

‘Pardon?’ asked Willow.

‘I believe it may have ended the world.’

Willow sat back, heart jack-hammering in her chest. Finding out that she could have ended the world was, to say the least, a sobering thought.

Moreg, however, seemed back to normal.

‘The thing is, until we know what happened we could just make things worse. Worse than it already is now, and right now it’s about as bad as can be imagined.’

Willow frowned in confusion. ‘What do you mean? I know it’s not … um, great that Tuesday has gone missing, but it’s not the end of the world, surely? It’s just one day …’

A day that no one seems to have missed anyway, so what was the harm, really? thought Willow.

Moreg blinked. ‘Actually, it might be the end of the world if we don’t find it. Whatever happened to last Tuesday may affect the very fabric of Starfell, causing it to unravel slowly, thread by thread.’

Willow’s mouth fell open dumbly as she gasped. She hadn’t realised it could be that serious.

Moreg nodded. ‘Which is why we will have to start at the beginning. We can’t very well proceed until we know for sure what happened. Or, more importantly, why.’

She looked out of the window, frowning slightly, then blinked as if she were trying to clear her vision. ‘There’s someone I think we’re going to need, someone who can help us … which might prove a little tricky as we need to find him first.’

‘Oh, why’s that tricky?’ asked Willow.

Moreg turned to look at her, a faint smile about her lips. ‘He’s an oublier, you see, one of the best in Starfell, no doubt, coming from a long line of them. The problem is that finding an oublier is almost impossible unless you know where to look.’

Willow looked blank. ‘An ouble— A what?’

‘An oublier. It’s in the Old Shel, you see.’ Which Willow had always taken to mean when words had more bits in it. Modern-day Shel was the language most people spoke in Starfell, apart from High Dwarf that is, but the latter was mostly because of all the colourful ways one got to swear. ‘It’s pronounced oo-blee-hair, or – as they are more commonly known today – forgotten tellers, people who see the past.’

‘Like the opposite of a seer?’

Moreg drummed her chin with her fingers. ‘Sort of—’

‘Like my mother,’ interrupted Willow, whose mother was a well-known seer, and took her travelling fair all across the kingdom of Shelagh telling fortunes.

Moreg seemed to have something stuck in her throat because she answered with a strained voice. ‘Er, yes, like your mother. Though most people who call themselves “seers” and say that they can see the future have no idea how it is really done, and often claim to have some connection to the “other side”, to the dead, who supposedly let them know when things are about to occur,’ she said with a disbelieving sniff. ‘True seers are, of course, very rare. But they have been known to read patterns in the smallest events, allowing them to see possible versions of the future. For instance, if they see a particular flower blooming in winter when it usually blooms in spring they can work out that a typhoon is coming in the summer.’

Willow stared blankly.

Moreg continued, ‘Unless they somehow encourage the last tree sparrow to build its nest before midnight on the spring equinox, for example. Do you understand?’

Willow made a kind of nod, mostly because it seemed like it was expected. But she didn’t really understand at all.

Moreg continued, not noticing Willow’s confusion. ‘Forgotten tellers, on the other hand, read people’s memories of the past, which come to them like visions when other people are around. They are, alas, rather unpopular compared to seers, and have very few friends, as you can imagine …’

Willow was puzzled. ‘Why’s that?’

‘Well, seers should be unpopular too. No one wants to be around someone who can predict their death … Yet so very few of them really can predict such things – so they make excellent friends as they always tell you just what you’d like to hear. Forgotten tellers, on the other hand, seldom, if ever, tell you what you’d actually like to hear. They tell things most people would prefer to forget, things you may wish to pretend never happened …’

Willow’s eyes bulged. ‘Really?’

Moreg nodded. ‘Oh yes. Take poor old Hercule Sometimes, a powerful forgotten teller. He was found drowned in a well after he walked past the Duke of Dittany and embarrassed him in front of the captain of the king’s army. The duke had been boasting that he had fantastic natural archery skills, and that the very first time he’d used a bow and arrow he’d hit the bull’s-eye. Apparently Hercule stopped in his tracks, slapped his knee, started chortling and said, “You mean when you fell over backwards in a field after you’d released the arrow and poked a bull in the eye with your bow?”’ Moreg chuckled. ‘See, he’d seen the duke’s memory of the day and, well, the duke was less than impressed, as you can imagine …’

‘But why did he tell the duke?’ gasped Willow.

Moreg’s lips twitched. ‘Couldn’t help himself – forgotten tellers see things as if they just happened. And they often blurt it out before they realise. They aren’t stupid – they’re just not always aware of what happens to them when they’re having a vision. Making for rather awkward social situations. As a result very few oubliers have lived to tell their tales and have an alarming capacity for turning up buried beneath people’s floorboards or at the bottom of wells. They often carry their own food for fear of being poisoned. They’re deeply suspicious of gatherings of people, partly because they get flooded with other people’s memories, and partly because the more visions they have the more chance they have of getting themselves into trouble by offending people. So the few that have survived are virtually hermits, who start running the minute they see anyone approaching …’

‘Oh,’ said Willow with a frown. ‘How are we going to find one, then, if they’re impossible to find?’

‘Tricky, I said,’ grinned Moreg. ‘But not impossible, if you know where to start.’

‘And you do?’

‘Oh yes. I’ve found in life that sometimes it’s useful to look back a little, to see when you need to go forward.’

‘Huh?’

‘We’re going to visit his last known address.’

‘Oh,’ said Willow, blinking at the ominous use of ‘we’.

‘I think you may need to pack a bag.’

‘Oh dear,’ Willow whispered.

Meanwhile, far away in a hidden stone fortress, where no magic had been able to penetrate for a thousand years, a figure stood alone in the tower and waited.

Waited for the raven, and the message that could lead to his downfall, betraying his plans before he was ready to seize power.

There were shadows beneath his eyes; sleep was a tonic he could ill afford.

But no raven came this day. Just as it hadn’t come the day before.

At last he allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief; at last he allowed himself to believe. It had worked.

He put the box inside his robes, keeping it close to his heart. It had done its job well. Never again would he let the witch get the better of him.

He left the tower, and found his faithful followers waiting on the winding stone staircase for the news. ‘She can’t remember?’ asked one, his face dark, hidden behind the hood of his robe. ‘Does that mean she won’t be coming?’

He gave a low, mirthless laugh. ‘Oh, she will. I have no doubt of that. But this time I will be ready.’