Going for Gold

by Annie Dalton

  First published in Great Britain by Harper Collins Children’s Books in 2007

  This updated and revised edition published by Lazy Chair Press in 2013

  Text copyright (c) Annie Dalton 2001

  The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.

  This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be leant, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form (including digital form) other than this in which it is published, and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A big thank you to Reuben for being such good company on my Egyptian research trip, to Vivian French for suggesting Cleopatra’s time as a setting for Mel’s tenth cosmic adventure and to Jenny Pausacker for a useful talk that eventually led me to Maia. Special mentions to Philip Ardagh and to Roger Morkot from Exeter Museum, who both did their best to keep me on the straight and narrow; any major slip-ups are all mine!

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  About the Author

  Also by Annie Dalton

  Credits

  Chapter One

  Question: What are angels really made of?

  Sorry, I know that sounds like a lead into a cheesy joke, the kind that makes me and my angel buddies snigger weakly into our hot chocolate when we’ve flown one too many missions. Like, How many angel trainees does it take to change a lightbulb?* But I’m not joking. I’m really asking. You see, not so long ago I thought I knew the answer.

  “Light, love and all things lovely. That’s what angels are made of,” I’d have said perkily, like an angel toddler reciting nursery rhymes. If you’d gone on to ask what angels were actually for, I would have had another snappy answer waiting on the tip of my tongue. “We are celestial troubleshooting agents working for a heavenly network of Light Agencies

  known as the Agency,” I’d have reeled off confidently. “Our mission is to wake humans up and remind them what they’re really on Earth to do. We comfort them, support them, watch over and protect them and, if absolutely necessary, we morph into a crack team of highly-trained divine warriors and get right into the mix to save them from the Powers of Darkness.”

  OK, so I might have said that with a few more ‘urghs’ and ‘you knows’! The point is I absolutely KNEW where Mel Beeby, trainee angel, fitted into the Big Cosmic Picture. As an underachieving high school girl, I wasn’t exactly a shining example to humankind, but as a surprise winner of a scholarship to the coolest school in the cosmos, a.k.a. the Angel Academy, I was now one of the Good Guys, no question.

  That was before the Test.

  If you think that sounds harmless, like some little spelling test - think again. You can prepare for a spelling test, you can memorise tricky words, and get someone to hear you spell them the night before. No one has a chance to prepare for the Test. This ancient angelic ordeal is shrouded in such total secrecy that a trainee angel has no way of knowing the Test even exists, until she comes tottering through to the other side with her self-esteem in tatters.

  Anyway, how could you ‘prepare’ to lose a part of your soul - for a minute, let alone weeks or months?

  I’m not sure if I ever used the word ‘soul’ in casual conversation when I was human, but just because I’m able to bandy it about doesn’t mean I totally get what ‘souls’ are about, even now.

  I do know my soul is a LOT more cosmic-minded than my everyday self. I know this because until recently I had pretty much twenty-four hour access to my own ‘soul advice hotline’, a.k.a. Helix my inner angel.

  Helix and I didn’t always see eye to eye, (she could be tres opinionated for an inner angel, I have to say!) but her divine radar had got me out of some unbelievably dodgy cosmic situations. In fact, I was getting to rely on her to the point where I sometimes asked her advice before I got into trouble!

  Then one night - nada. Not even a tiny cheep from inner space.

  It started after my first official angelic birthday.

  Since angels are immortal, our birthdays are a bit different to the human kind. You still get a party and pressies, (this is Heaven!) but the main event is your angelic upgrade. In the long term your upgrade will hopefully make you a more insightful and more effective angel.

  In the short term? You go completely bonkers.

  No, babe, trust me on that, you do!

  In an ideal Universe, you’d be given a few months to adjust to this new super-cosmic you. I got two hours max.

  My headmaster Michael appeared (in the middle of my birthday party would you believe!) to tell me my three best friends from my old human comprehensive needed urgent cosmic support.

  It was, without a doubt, the most absolutely harrowing mission I have ever been on. I came back totally haunted by my failure to help Sky Nolan, a girl who had once been my closest human friend. Just before I left, I found out she’d gone over to the Powers of Darkness - or her skanky boyfriend had -which, if you’re a vulnerable thirteen-year-old girl, amounts to the same thing.

  What got me was the Agency seemed to think my assignment was a big success. Michael and his assistant Sam were waiting for me in Arrivals all smiles. We finished my debriefing at about 2a.m., then they walked me out of the Agency building, put me in a staff limo and congratulated me all over again on my good work.

  Michael popped his head through the window as I was sinking gratefully into my soft plushy seat. “You’ve been through a lot in a short time,” he said, making the understatement of the year. “Your energy system might be a bit erratic for a while. I suggest you skip school tomorrow and catch up on some rest.”

  Our headmaster can be surprisingly human for an archangel, but it’s unlike him to dish out advice. The Agency has a major bee in its bonnet about Free Will, which in practice seems to mean trainee angels are pretty much left to figure out the hard stuff all by ourselves.

  But for once Michael was giving me a gentle warning. This crazy cosmic rollercoaster ride, otherwise known as my life, was about to get a LOT more bumpy.

  At the time I just laughed.

  “Yeah right!” We never get to take sickies at my school, not unless we’re injured in the line of duty, and I’m talking hideous flesh wounds, not routine blood poisoning from getting too close to the Powers of Darkness.

  By the time I reached the third landing on the long climb up to my poky little room in our school dorm, post-mission exhaustion was catching up fast. I actually had to lean against a wall, I felt so wobbly. That’s how I came to notice the painting.

  The Angel Academy has quite a collection of old fashioned oil paintings dotted around the school, dating back to the days when angels carried out their missions wearing pristine white robes. This particular painting showed a furious old-style angel banishing a hideous demon back to the Hell dimensions.

  The picture of that calm confident angel doing what angels are supposed to do made me feel more ashamed than ever.

  I dragged myself up the remaining flights of stairs to my room. Lola had pinned a note to my door in shimmery gold felt-tip.

  “Wake me up as SO
ON as you get in and I’ll run you a HUGE smelly bath and you can tell me ALL about it. Huge Love, Lollie.”

  Lola isn’t just my best friend, she’s my soulmate. We tell each other everything. Yet I still didn’t feel able to tell her what had happened to my friend Sky. I can hardly bring myself to tell you now.

  I let myself into my room, dumped my bag in the middle of the floor, fell on to my bed with all my clothes on and started to cry.

  Sky Nolan came from what celeb watchers in magazines love to describe as a ‘troubled’ background. Not that Sky was a celeb (though she could be a right little diva sometimes), but once she trusted you, she was a real laugh - and she had such huge dreams.

  One time my mates all stayed over at my place and we were playing that game, if you could win a night out with a Big Name, who would it be? Everyone named a certain drop-dead-gorgeous singer from a local hip-hop band, except Sky who picked Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile!

  We’re like, “ARE YOU CRAZY? Why would you CHOOSE to go out with a dead Egyptian queen!”

  “I’m betting you never saw that movie where she has herself delivered to Caesar in a carpet!” she snickered.

  We all gawped at her as if she’d sprouted a second head.

  “Why did she do that exactly?” I asked politely.

  “Caesar’s soldiers had taken over her palace,” she explained. “It was the only way she could get back in and regain control of her kingdom.”

  “Oh totally,” Jax agreed, nodding wisely. “I’ve used the old carpet trick myself. Works every time!”

  “Well, I think she had style,” Sky said defensively. “You could learn a LOT from a chick like that!”

  I could see her going all huffy. On a bad day, Sky could have totally sulked for England. I rushed to smooth things over. “Aren’t you all forgetting something?” I teased my friends. “Sky’s a smooth operator. She’d sweet-talk Cleopatra into inviting us back to her place, wouldn’t you, babe?”

  All my mates screamed with laughter.

  “A royal sleepover!” Sky giggled. “How cool would that be! We could rollerblade through her palace and try on her golden shoes!”

  Back in my room at the Angel Academy I could feel new tears welling up and trickling back into my hair. Can you imagine how it feels to see your fragile best friend walk away into the dark, perhaps forever - because YOU didn’t save her?

  At times like these, my inner angel normally comes online to comfort me, reminding me of the Big Cosmic Picture.

  Remember that little thing called cosmic timing, sweetie? Helix might have said that night. Maybe the Universe still has plans for you guys? Maybe you’ll meet Sky again in some totally different time or place, and get a second chance?

  She could well have said something like this. Maybe she did? Maybe she was beaming fabulous cosmic advice at me all night long and I just wasn’t able to pick up?

  I don’t pretend to know the technical ins and outs of Inner Angel Loss, so I’ll try to stick to the facts. Without her divine radar system, a trainee angel is flying blind. When this angel girl, (OK, me) is a total mess of emotions left over from a traumatic mission, plus HUMONGOUSLY unstable from her recent upgrade, she is downright dangerous, to herself and to the Universe.

  I didn’t know any of this. I hadn’t even noticed Helix had gone walkabout, which was disturbing in itself. I could cry when I think how much I didn’t know.

  I was so dumb. It never once occurred to me that a tiny speck of that ugly Darkness we were all so busy fighting was secretly hiding inside me, had been there ever since I started my angelic training, just biding its time.

  And now all this shimmery birthday Light energy was starting to flood my system, flushing out any lurking cosmic impurities like some kind of celestial Draino.

  I’m making it sound like it was really bad timing; the Test and the upgrade coming so close together, my divine radar on the fritz. In fact it happened this way for a reason. That’s what the Test IS: the Powers of Light flushing the Powers of Darkness out of hiding so they can really duke it out. In the open.

  With no inner angel for support, you’re forced to find out what you’re really made of. Now you’re all alone in a dangerous Universe, can you face your own ugly demons and survive? Have you got the guts to dig deep and go for gold? Are you truly an angel? Or was that just a beautiful dream?

  Like I said, I didn’t know any of this, I just knew I felt completely rubbish.

  Scrunching myself up into a ball of pure misery, I fell into one of those black sleeps that is so much more tiring than being awake. Even in my sleep I felt totally alone - final proof that the most dangerous part of my training was about to begin.

  Chapter Two

  Just three hours later I was like a completely new angel girl!

  I woke up to find celestial sun beams dancing on my eyelashes, feeling happy, rested and ready for anything.

  Cosmic upgrades will do that; drop you down into the depths one minute, send you soaring high as a kite the next. You’d think I’d make the connection, but no; I just yawned and stretched, mildly surprised that I could still hear the same spellbinding sounds I’d heard inside my dreams.

  It sounds like diamonds, I thought drowsily, if diamonds could sing. I giggled at myself. “Singing diamonds, that’ll be it, Mel!”

  Very gradually it dawned on me that these crystal clear sounds were real. They appeared to be conning from right outside my window. I padded across the room and pulled up the blind.

  Three little birds gazed back bright-eyed from my windowsill. Next second their tiny chests puffed out, their beaks opened wide, and the Mystery of the Singing Diamonds was solved!

  I heard excited knocking at my door and ran to let Lola in.

  “Lollie, the weirdest thing—!”

  We ducked as a flock of tiny humming birds swooped in through my open window, wings whirring at the speed of light.

  “Lala-lalala!” my friend sang out teasingly. “Melanie’s had her upgrade!”

  “My birthday was weeks ago,” I objected. “I was using my new powers the whole time I was away.”

  “Ah, that was just a tiny taster, carita. Upgrades are a major deal.”

  I felt a flicker of alarm. “Major in what way?”

  “Like it takes months to get back to normal. Meanwhile, you’re walking around with a seriously spangly aura - that’s what attracted your little bird dudes!”

  As we were talking my little bird dudes were happily redecorating my room with tasteful greenish-white splatters.

  Lola got a good look at me for the first time. “Boo, please tell me you didn’t sleep in those crusty clothes?” She pointed me sternly towards my bathroom. “Soap, hot water!” she commanded. “Then I’m taking you out to breakfast!”

  My soulmate and I are so in tune, no one ever believes we grew up in totally different time periods, not to mention on completely different continents! Lola was born in a vibey third world country, one hundred years in my future, and I lived in London’s gritty inner city one hundred years in Lola’s past.

  The spooky thing is I always knew I was going to meet her.

  I didn’t know that we’d meet up at angel school, or that one day we’d be watching each other’s backs in the never-ending war between the Light and Dark agencies, but I knew she was out there, and I TOTALLY knew we were going to get together. Meanwhile, in a drastically different cosmic post code, Lola was feeling exactly the same about me!

  Twenty minutes later my soulmate and I were hurrying through the buzzy streets of Ambrosia (the boho studenty area of the Heavenly City) on our way to Guru. Mo’s cafe is really pretty much our second home.

  Mo himself was placing fresh flowers on our usual table as we rocked up. “Good timing!” he beamed. “Can I interest you girls in the breakfast special?”

  We didn’t have time, so Mo went smoothly to plan B. He was back in minutes with two blueberry shakes (ideal for cosmic stress, if you believe Mo) and a huge plate of freshly-made
peach and passion fruit muffins.

  I waited till Mo left to serve some customers.

  “Lollie, I feel really dumb asking this, but why don’t I remember birds serenading you after your upgrade?”

  “Maybe because it wasn’t birds with me, it was butterflies.” Lola saw my face and giggled. “They didn’t serenade me, silly! They were just, like, magnetically attracted to me. Once a crowd of tiny blue butterflies literally followed me into class.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t have been here. I definitely would have remembered that.”

  “No, you were,” she said calmly. “I think it’s one of those things that probably slips under your radar, until it happens to you.”

  Lola’s explanation made me feel a teensy bit paranoid. What else might I be missing, simply because it wasn’t on my radar yet?

  “Unless you’re a bird or a butterfly - or a preschooler!” Lola added, starting on another muffin. “They notice everything]”

  “Obi does for sure!”

  Obi is a preschooler at the angel nursery where I help out. It’s wrong to have favourites, but if I did, Obi would be a serious contender!

  “Talking of sweet angel boys,” Lola smirked, “Reuben said to tell you ‘Hi!’”

  “Why can’t he say ‘hi’ himself?” I felt like I hadn’t seen my boy buddy for aeons.

  “He signed up for a field trip while you were away to - where was it again? Atlantis, I think it was.”

  “Is that even real?”

  Some angel boys at the next table were watching us. They seemed amazed that Lola and I could consume huge quantities of muffins, and chat like we were speed dating, all at the same time!

  What can I say? We’re girls. We had no choice! We had urgent catching up to do. While I’d been away, Lola had been rehearsing for a concert she had coming up. My friend literally has an angelic singing voice - one thing we don’t share, I’m sorry to say. Obviously Lola wanted to hear all about my emotional reunion with my mum and my little sister on Earth.

  “Oh, how did things work out with Sky?” Lola remembered suddenly. “You sounded so worried last time you called.”