by Lindsey Kelk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020
Published in this ebook edition in 2020
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
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Text copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2020
Illustrations copyright © Pippa Curnick 2020
Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Lindsey Kelk and Pippa Curnick assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work respectively.
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Source ISBN: 9780008292171
Ebook Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008292188
Version: 2020-01-24
For Princess Penny.
If you could wish for anything,
what would it be?
Contents
Cover
Title Page
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
Keep Reading …
Books by Lindsey Kelk
About the Publisher
Cinders was a girl with a lot on her mind. Here she was, trotting through a forest on a horse that used to be a mouse, with her best friend, who just so happened to be a talking dog, and a boy in a green hat named Hansel. But she wasn’t thinking about any of them. She was thinking about her mum, her dad and a little bit about where they were going to get their lunch.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Hansel said from the back of Mouse the horse.
‘Am I?’ Cinders replied.
‘I don’t like it when you’re quiet,’ Hansel said. ‘It’s weird.’
‘Don’t get used to it,’ Sparks piped up from his spot in front of Cinders, his head nestled in Mouse’s mane. ‘I think this is the longest she’s gone without
speaking since she learned to talk.’
‘What if Hansel is right?’ Cinders began. ‘What if my mum was the princess who went missing from Fairyland all those years ago?’
Sparks sighed. There goes my peace and quiet, he thought to himself.
The four friends were on a quest. Cinders had recently found that she could do magic and it turned out it was because her mother had been a fairy. Unfortunately, she couldn’t ask her mother about that because she had died soon after Cinders was born, and she couldn’t ask her father because he was back at home in the kingdom. The kingdom was the one place Cinders definitely could not return to because the king hated magic, and would throw her in the dungeons for sure. Mostly because of an accidental wish-granting incident that saw King Picklebottom bitten on the bottom by a roast pig Cinders had not-at-all-on-purpose brought back to life.
The king hated magic, which meant the king hated Cinders. It was all quite a mess.
‘It was just an idea,’ Hansel said, scratching his hair underneath his hat. ‘Although I am very often right about things.’
(He wasn’t.)
Hansel had joined the quest after helping himself to one too many delicious tiles from the roof of his neighbour’s gingerbread house. Mouse had joined the quest after Cinders turned him into a horse and he found he quite liked it. Sparks had joined the quest because Cinders was his best friend and, even if she was quite loud, occasionally annoying and never packed enough sausages, he loved her more than anything.
‘Besides,’ Hansel said, ‘surely you’d know if your mum was a fairy princess. Wouldn’t you have extra-extra-special powers or something?’
‘You mean something like magical, sparkly fingers that make wishes come true?’ Cinders suggested. ‘And let’s not forget that time I flew.’
‘I’m not sure floating thirty centimetres off the ground counts as flying,’ Sparks said with a gruffly yawn. ‘I’ve got an idea – why don’t you wish up some lunch? I’m getting hungry.’
That was hardly a surprise. Sparks was almost always starving.
‘I don’t think I’ll have to,’ Cinders said. She gave the air a big sniff. ‘Can you smell that?’
‘Freshly baked bread!’ Hansel gasped. His mouth began to water. ‘Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a nice slice of toast.’
‘Come on, Mouse, let’s go and find something to eat.’ Cinders flicked the reins and Mouse picked up speed, galloping through the forest, following the delicious aromas that wafted towards them.
For the first time in ages, the twisted tree trunks of the Dark Forest parted and Cinders could see the blue sky overhead. And not just the sky, but beyond the line of the forest she saw a towering mountain in the distance, fields full of pink grass and colourful houses dotted along a blue-bricked road. At the end of the road was a market.
‘I don’t want to exaggerate,’ Sparks said, sitting up in Cinders’s lap, ‘but this might be the most excited I have ever been. Markets almost always mean sausages.’
‘Agreed,’ said Cinders as they clip-clopped on to the blue bricks. ‘Let’s go and find some snacks!’
In no time at all, they arrived at the market. Even though it looked like any other market from a distance, close up Cinders could tell it was somehow different. The stalls were brightly coloured, gleaming cascades of silk covered the tables and stands, and the air was filled with the sweetest smells. The market stalls in the kingdom all used rough canvas or white cotton to cover their stands and, no matter what day of the week it was, all Cinders could ever smell was fish and Cinders hated the smell of fish.
Neither Sparks nor Hansel were able to do magic themselves, but, if they could have granted a wish or two, they would have magicked something very much like the food they found at the very first market stall. Big, plump, juicy sausages for Sparks, freshly baked cakes for Cinders and, well, Hansel wasn’t fussy. He would happily eat anything.
‘Everything looks delicious,’ Cinders said, her mouth watering.
‘It does,’ Hansel agreed, looking round the marketplace. ‘But are we sure it’s safe to eat? I don’t think these people are quite like us.’
Cinders looked up from a particularly appealing sweet stall that sold seventeen different flavours of fudge.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Look,’ Hansel whispered, nodding at a man walking by. ‘They’re weird.’
The person in question was much shorter than Cinders or Hansel and his skin was a very pale purple colour. His spiky hair was bright green and his big, smiling eyes were such a bold yellow that Cinders was certain she’d be able to see them in the dark.
‘They just look different to us, that’s all,’ Cinders said, her own eyes again fixed firmly on
the fudge. ‘Not everyone’s the same.’
‘I suppose so,’ Hansel replied. She had a point. Up until a couple of days ago, he’d never met a dog that could talk, but Sparks wasn’t weird. A bit rude sometimes, but that was just Sparks.
‘Excuse me,’ Cinders said to the blue-haired lady behind the fudge counter.
She turned and gasped, looking Cinders up and down in surprise.
Hmm, Cinders thought, Hansel isn’t the only one who thinks certain people here look odd. They’re as confused by us as we are by them!
‘How much is your vanilla-strawberry-chocolate-chip fudge?’
‘All the fudge is one gold piece per bag,’ the lady replied, eyeing the group curiously. It wasn’t often they saw people from the kingdom beyond the Dark Forest. In fact, she had only ever met one person from there before in her entire life and she hoped never to run into him again. She shivered, thinking of his big black hood and big black boots.
‘Thank you very much,’ Cinders said with a huge smile before turning back to her friends. ‘Okay, the fudge is one gold piece per bag. Hansel, how much money have you got with you?’
‘Absolutely none,’ he replied.
‘And I’ve got –’ Cinders dug her hands deep into her pockets – ‘a button. Flipping fiddlesticks! How are we going to buy something to eat if we don’t have the money to pay for it?’
‘Um, Cinders,’ Sparks said, pointing to a poster with his front paw. ‘I think we might have a bigger problem right now.’
Cinders gasped.
Nailed to the tree behind her was a wanted poster.
A wanted poster with her picture on it!
Even the bravest prince in the entire world might have been a little bit nervous riding through the Dark Forest on his own, and Prince Joderick Jorenson Picklebottom was the first to admit he was hardly the bravest prince in the entire world. Joderick was the kind of prince who would much rather spend his days baking a perfect chocolate soufflé or playing video games. But here he was, riding his horse, Muffin, through the darkest part of the Deep Dark Very Incredibly Scary Forest, looking for his friend Cinders.
‘So … which way do you think we should go?’ Joderick asked Muffin as they came to a fork in the trail.
Muffin snorted in response. She wasn’t magic like Sparks, so she couldn’t tell him what she thought. And, if she could, she didn’t think he would appreciate her response very much anyway.
Joderick looked down at the map he had secretly borrowed-without-asking from his father’s private desk, and frowned at the big tear that ran right down the edge. Joderick must have ripped it when he pulled it out of the desk, and now he had reached the end of the trail marked out on the parchment. He had no idea where to go next.
‘Why is it, whenever I bump into people from the kingdom, they’re always hanging around like spare parts?’
Joderick looked up from his map to see a woman standing right in front of him. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. Where had she come from? She wasn’t there a minute ago. And he couldn’t help but notice that her hair was very red and her skin was very pale and, if he wasn’t much mistaken, she had a pair of quite impressive wings sprouting out of the middle of her back.
‘Giddy gumdrops,’ Joderick whispered. ‘You’re a fairy.’
‘I’m not getting anything past you, am I?’ she replied. ‘What’s wrong with you? Never seen a fairy before?’
‘A-actually, n-no,’ he said, stuttering over every word. ‘Fairies are banned from the kingdom. Are you going to eat me?’
That did it. The fairy started laughing as though Hansel had said the funniest thing she’d ever heard. She laughed so hard, she fell to the ground with a hard tears streaming from her eyes and fogging up her glasses. (Yes, some fairies do need glasses. Just because they can grant wishes and fly doesn’t mean they have perfect eyesight.)
‘Eat you?’ the fairy gasped, clutching her sides. The prince had made her laugh so hard, she’d given herself a stitch. ‘I shouldn’t think so.
Can you imagine the mess? And there’s hardly any meat on those bones anyway. I’m a fairy with a good appetite, and you wouldn’t fill up a flea.’
‘Right,’ Joderick said, still wary of the red-headed lady.
Ever since he was a teeny-tiny little baby, his mother and father had told him stories of how evil the fairies were. How they stalked children at night, how they crept around with long claws and sharp teeth, and how they were determined to take over the kingdom. But this fairy didn’t have long claws or sharp teeth, and she certainly didn’t seem very interested in eating him. In fact, she’d already pulled a cupcake out of her bag and was happily tucking into that instead.
‘I’m looking for a girl,’ the fairy said, a dollop of icing on the end of her nose. ‘About your height, fair hair, very messy, probably covered in muck and with food all over her face.’
Joderick’s eyes widened.
‘You wouldn’t be talking about Cinders by any chance, would you?’ he asked.
‘How do you know my goddaughter?’ the fairy replied.
‘She’s my friend. I’m looking for her too,’ Joderick said, completely gobsmacked. ‘You’re Cinders’s godmother?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re a fairy!’
‘Sharpest knife in the drawer, aren’t you, clever clogs?’ Brian muttered to herself. ‘Yes, I’m Cinders’s godmother and yes, I’m a fairy and, as I mentioned, I’m looking for her. Have you seen her or not because I’m in something of a rush. There’s a very large man with a very large axe roaming around these woods who is also looking for her and I’d much prefer it if I found her first.’
All the colour drained from Joderick’s face.
‘I really, really, really, really hope you aren’t talking about the Huntsman,’ he said, holding Muffin’s reins a little bit tighter.
‘That’s him,’ Brian said with a chuckle. ‘Fancies himself a bit, doesn’t he?’
Joderick was very pleased to be up on his horse because he was shaking so much that, if he’d been down on the ground, Brian would have seen his knees knocking together.
‘The Huntsman is the most feared man in the entire kingdom,’ he said in a wobbly voice. ‘He has never failed to complete a mission. Whatever he hunts, he catches. He isn’t scared of anything.’
Brian shrugged. ‘Everyone is scared of something. For me, it’s guinea pigs. I don’t like their little hands …’
‘I’m serious!’ Joderick told her, trying not to sound too wibbly. ‘Anything you tell him to find, he finds it. And I don’t think he always asks nicely.’
He knew his father would say it wasn’t very becoming for a prince to sound so scared, but they were talking about the Huntsman, and he was after Cinders.
‘I don’t know what you’re so worried about,’ Brian said, fluttering her wings until she was up on her feet once again. ‘Like I said, everyone is afraid of something, and I happen to have an inkling of what will scare him.’
‘What are you, some sort of mind-reader?’ Joderick asked.
‘Yes,’ she replied confidently.
Joderick wasn’t sure if she was being serious or not, but she very much looked like she was.
‘The bigger they come, the harder they fall,’ Brian went on. ‘Besides, all we have to do is find Cinders first and then we needn’t worry about him.’
‘And how are we going to do that?’ Joderick asked.
She looked at him with a little smile on her shining face.
‘Magic,’ she said, snapping her fingers.
And, just like that, they both
‘Okay, here’s the plan.’
Cinders, Hansel, Sparks and Mouse all huddled together in a circle.
‘I’m going to wish for some gold. As soon as it appears, Hansel, you grab it and go to the sausage stall and buy us all some lunch,’ Cinders instructed, wiggling her fingers to warm them up. ‘Sparks, you go with Hansel and make sure he gets the right stuff and doesn’t draw attention
to himself while me and Mouse hide back here.’
‘Oi,’ Hansel said, looking a little hurt. ‘I can be trusted to buy a sausage, you know.’
Sparks and Cinders shared a look.
‘Are you even sure you can wish up some gold?’ Hansel asked. ‘Your wishes haven’t always gone according to plan …’
He wasn’t exactly wrong. There was the pig that had bitten the king on the bottom, and that one time she’d accidentally magicked up a munklepoop when they were lost in the forest, not to mention the time she’d accidentally frozen Sparks in mid-air.
‘No time to worry about that,’ Cinders said, ignoring Hansel. She was getting quite good at ignoring Hansel.
She crouched down behind Mouse who shook out his mane in a very nonchalant manner. Or as nonchalant a manner as possible for a horse that used to be a mouse. It was quite hard not to draw attention to yourself when you looked different to everyone else, and Cinders, Mouse and Hansel looked very, very different.
She was still really quite new at doing magic and, every time Cinders’s fingers started to tingle, she got a little bit excited and a tiny bit nervous. What if something went wrong? What if Sparks turned to gold? What if a giant gold bar appeared out of nowhere and squished them all flat like pancakes? But they needed to eat, and to eat they needed gold, and this was the only way she could think to get some. Cinders could hardly offer to do chores in exchange for food when there were wanted posters all over the market with her face on them. Plus, she really, really hated doing chores.
‘Here we go,’ Sparks said, crouching his head down low and sticking his doggy bottom up high, ready to leap up and protect his best friend.
Hansel, Mouse and Sparks all watched as shimmering shots of silver and gold began to flicker from Cinders’s hands before glittery sparkles ran all the way up her arms and down her back, until her whole body was glowing.
‘I will never get used to this,’ Hansel gasped.
‘How do you think I feel?’ Cinders asked him as she began to float up off the ground.
Just when she thought she was going to fly all the way up to the sky, a tiny white cloud appeared over her head and it began to rain. It began to rain shiny gold coins.
