The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  And, there would be a party with all the other aunts, and then a holiday with my grandfather. Ice-cream and playing on the beach.

  The coach pulled over again. The driver held the reigns loosely and stared straight ahead. Minutes went by.

  ‘What are we waiting for?’ one of the women called.

  ‘Passenger,’ the driver called back. ‘See?’

  I looked in the direction he was pointing, and here came a large man, pounding along the road. His face was big and soft, with the sort of cheeks that jumble about when you run, and he was running with huge footsteps, his hair flying out behind him. A large black case swung from his hand.

  There was something very familiar about him. I felt as if he was an uncle I’d met long ago, only I couldn’t remember his name or anything about him. Which made no sense. It was very strange. The closer he got, the more sure I was that I knew him very well, yet not at all. Then he stepped into the coach, panting noisily and saying, ‘Thank you kindly for waiting,’ and I knew who it was.

  The trumpeter. From my parents’ wedding photograph.

  The trumpeter sat in the seat across the aisle from me, his case on his knees.

  I stared at him, as politely as I could.

  It was definitely him. The dark skin, the golden-green eyes. Only, his face looked more lined that it had in the photo, and much more serious. His jaw was clenched, and there was a long, fine scar above his eyebrow.

  He glanced across at me, then away again. The coach swayed along, and the trumpeter and I swayed with it.

  Again, he glanced at me, and then again.

  ‘Bronte?’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ I replied, remembering my manners. ‘Yes, my name is Bronte Mettlestone. I believe that your name is Walter?’

  He slapped his hands on his knees. His whole face changed. There were dimples now and lights in his eyes.

  ‘I believe that your name is Walter,’ he mimicked, shaking his head. ‘Oh, Bronte Mettlestone, I am sorry to tease. But you’re a treat. I knew it was you—it just had to be. You’re Patrick and Lida in one. Do you mind if I sit there so we can get acquainted?’

  I nodded and he shifted over. ‘Bronte,’ he said. ‘Let me guess. You’re on your way to your Aunt Franny’s place in Nina Bay? Don’t look so startled, I’m not a mind-reader. I’m heading there myself. To go to Franny’s party for your parents. I was your father’s best friend, you know. But tell me all about you?’

  A difficult question to answer. Should I start with my date of birth and move on to my favourite brand of cheese?

  Instead, I told him about my journey. He was a great listener, often widening his eyes or slapping his knees. When I reached the part about playing trumpet in the Mellifluous Kingdom, he raised his black case and said, ‘Guess what’s in here.’

  ‘Your trumpet?’

  He blinked at that. ‘You know I play trumpet?’

  I explained about my parents’ wedding photograph. Then, because he was so friendly, I admitted that I often looked at him in the photo, instead of my parents, on account of being mad at them.

  ‘Because they ran off to have adventures,’ I explained.

  Three lines folded themselves into Walter’s forehead. ‘To have adventures?’ he said. Then he muttered to himself. ‘Of course. That is what you’d all think.’ And he turned to look through the window. At this point, our trip had become picturesque. Bright blue ocean appeared and disappeared on one side, green fields steady on the other. Sometimes, a dragon glided by.

  ‘Not adventures, Bronte,’ he said, turning back from the window abruptly. He glanced towards the back of the coach, where the only other passengers, the two women, had fallen asleep, their heads leaning together. Then he spoke in a low, slow voice: ‘But trapped in the Whispering Kingdom.’

  Outside the coach window, a girl was riding a midnight blue horse across the fields. My heart seemed to gallop at just the horse’s pace.

  ‘My parents were captured by Whisperers?’ I breathed.

  But Walter shook his head at that. ‘They went to the Whispering Kingdom. Right after they left you in Isabelle’s lobby as a baby.’

  I was annoyed with him now. He had seemed bright, but he was daft. ‘You don’t go to the Whispering Kingdom,’ I scolded. ‘Anyway, it’s surrounded by Spellbinding! You can’t get in!’

  ‘The Spellbinding stops Whisperers from getting out,’ Walter explained. ‘It’s never stopped people going in.’

  I frowned at the window. The girl on the horse was still keeping pace with the coach.

  ‘There are Whispering Gates!’ I remembered. ‘Even if you can go through the Spellbinding, nobody can get through the Gates!’

  ‘Whisperers can,’ Walter said.

  ‘So what?’ I began, but then my eyes widened. ‘Do you mean my parents had a Whisperer help them in?’

  Walter’s head tilted, a sort of sideways nod.

  ‘I knew where they were going,’ he said. ‘I swore to them I wouldn’t tell a soul. But months went by, and they didn’t return, so I guessed things had gone wrong. I tried to find out. Whisperers are friends with pirates, of course, so I asked them. I went to some shady places, I tell you, in search of information.’ He touched the scar above his eyebrow. ‘Years went by and it was dead ends everywhere. Eventually, though, I learned they were in prison. I wrote to them. They replied.’

  ‘You can send mail to and from prison?’

  ‘Of course. Prison guards check it closely though, so you can never say much, and they couldn’t have contacted any of Patrick’s sisters. But Patrick and I had a secret language from our childhood so he used that.’

  I considered. ‘But can mail get out of the Whispering Kingdom itself?’

  Walter nodded. ‘The Spellbinding has always had a postage chute,’ he said. ‘It’s lightly spellbound so Whisperers can’t post themselves out—or send Whispers through—but it means they can carry on trading with the rest of the Kingdoms and Empires. Couldn’t cut them off completely, or leave them without supplies.’ Walter sighed. ‘Your parents’ letter asked me to go see your Aunt Carrie. I don’t know why they thought she could help, but when I did track her down, she was so ill she hardly even recognised me.’

  I nodded. ‘I’ve just come from visiting her.’

  ‘I was desperate,’ Walter continued. ‘Tried to find pirates willing to help them escape.’

  His face settled back into its grim expression, jaw clenching again.

  ‘And then, a few months ago, your parents sent me their will, and asked me to get it to the family lawyers. I figured they were planning an escape themselves, and knew how risky it would be. They didn’t want to leave you with no word at all, Bronte.’ His own words had slowed down again. All the spark had gone from his eyes. ‘They were right about the risk,’ he said. ‘They must have escaped with pirate help and been … it must have happened on their way home to you, Bronte.’ He covered his face with his hands. ‘I’m so sorry, little one.’

  I looked through the window again. Outside, the girl on the horse was jumping fences, but she was doing this very blurrily.

  That was my tears. I blinked hard and swung around again. This was a sad story, but it also made no sense.

  ‘But why?’ I demanded. ‘Why would anybody go to the Whispering Kingdom!’ Had they decided they needed a holiday? Had they read that old travel book and not noticed it was old? Had they forgotten the Whispering Wars?!

  Just how barmy were my parents?

  Walter dropped his hands from his face. He played with the buckles of his trumpet case, snapping them open and closed.

  A new idea came to me. ‘They went to the Whispering Kingdom to rescue stolen children!’ I said. ‘Back then, Whisperers were still escaping, weren’t they? And capturing children? My father was a Spellbinder—I don’t know if you knew that, Walter, but he was—so he planned to spellbind Whisperers while my mother found the children!’

  Of course, I reflected, their plan
had failed drastically. But at least it had been a good and noble plan.

  ‘Is that what happened?’ I checked.

  Walter chewed his knuckles. ‘My stop’s coming up soon,’ he said, peering through the window. ‘I’m staying in a hotel just outside Nina Bay. Bronte, it’s not quite what happened. I’ll explain when I see you at Franny’s party.’

  I remembered my strong will again. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Explain now.’

  Walter raised an eyebrow. ‘You know that your mother ran away from home when she was young?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she arrived in Gainsleigh with nothing, her hair down to her waist.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But nobody knew where she had come from?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Shall I tell you where she had come from?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘From the Whispering Kingdom. Your mother was a Whisperer, Bronte. And her father summonsed her home.’

  Then Walter stood, slapped the side of the coach and called, ‘Driver! This is my stop!’

  I sat on a bench in Nina Bay Square and waited to meet Aunt Franny.

  She was late. The third aunt to be late.

  The sky was busy with swooping dragons and the square was a mess of painted billboards, tobacco smoke, and food and drink stalls. Angry, squabbling people crowded around these stalls.

  They seemed angry, anyway. It might just have been their loud, rough voices. The men had whiskery faces and the women were missing teeth.

  Beside me, an elderly woman sat hunched forward, a bag of sweets on her lap. She kept reaching into this bag, pulling out a sweet and sucking noisily.

  The sucking annoyed me, but I was glad that Aunt Franny was late. It gave me time to think about what Walter had just said.

  My mother was a Whisperer, he’d said.

  Could this be true?

  No!

  Well, but it was true my mother had come to Gainsleigh from somewhere mysterious just after the Whispering Wars ended, which is when the Spellbinding was still weak. So she could have escaped.

  It was also true she had long hair when she arrived. But long hair doesn’t mean you must be a Whisperer! You could also be a runaway who hadn’t had the time to cut your hair!

  I tried out the idea of my mother as a Whisperer, juggling it like a ball between my hands. Maybe it was exciting? Having a Dark Mage for a mother! It gave her another dimension. One moment she was prancing around picking lavender, the next she was using her evil powers to control minds!

  On the other hand, the travel book suggested that Whisperers had once been a gentle people, and my Uncle Nigel’s history book said they became Dark Mages only after wearing the shadow bands. What if my mother never wore the band? Perhaps she refused the King’s order, and that’s why she’d run away?

  That made her more of a hero than a villain, which was also something.

  I craned my neck, searching for Aunt Franny, but I only saw a woman toss a beer mug high, the beer spilling out in a wild froth. The mug shattered on the cobblestones.

  If my mother was a Whisperer, then I was a half-Whisperer. Did that mean I had the power to whisper ideas into people’s minds? Or sense people’s thoughts? Or even hear Whispers from the future? Handy!

  I glanced at the old woman beside me. Give me a sweet, I commanded her, inside my mind.

  Nothing happened.

  Were you supposed to literally whisper?

  ‘Offer me a sweet,’ I whispered softly.

  The woman swung her head around. ‘Did you say something?’ she frowned.

  I stood up, extremely embarrassed, and looked for Aunt Franny again. There were billboards advertising cough medicines, the Razdazzle Moonlight Circus Coming To Town, and a new sort of horsewhip ‘for use on wayward children’. I decided not to be wayward while in Nina Bay (whatever wayward meant). But there was no Aunt Franny.

  Why had my mother been summonsed home, anyway? And why had she and my father ended up in prison?

  I slumped back onto the seat. This entire journey was wearing out my brain. I couldn’t wait for the party to be done and for my holiday with my grandfather to start. Nothing to worry about then, except playing on the beach and eating—

  I felt as if ice-cream were melting down my chest and into my stomach. Her father had summonsed her home, Walter had said.

  So my grandfather had summonsed her home? He was a Whisperer, living in the Whispering Kingdom?

  But it wasn’t true! He lived in Colchester! He had invited me to stay with him there!

  Unless he did not live in Colchester.

  Outside of Colchester, he always said when he invited me. We thought that meant that he was just outside the main town, somewhere by the sea. What if it meant he was way, way outside Colchester? So far outside that he was in a whole other Kingdom, say?

  I am elderly and cannot travel, he always said, but I can send a friend to collect you. We thought that meant he was too old to travel. What if it meant he could not travel on account of being inside a Spellbinding?

  Honestly, there was nothing to do except wonder.

  ‘Razdazzle Moonlight Circus in Nina Bay!’ shouted a newsboy. ‘First show sold out! Read all about it!’

  Razdazzle Moonlight Circus, I thought. That’s the circus Taylor planned to join.

  There was a clattering and shouting in the square. A horse was weaving between stalls and drinkers, and people were cursing it loudly.

  It was the midnight blue horse I’d seen galloping alongside my coach. The rider leaned forward as she trotted closer to me. Her dark hair was tied into a very high ponytail, like a fountain streaming in the wind.

  ‘Taylor!’ I shouted.

  ‘Junior Captain Bronte!’ she shouted back. ‘I’m here to fetch you! Climb aboard! Something terrible has happened!’

  Thundering hooves and rushing wind made it impossible to talk as we rode through the streets of Nina Bay on Taylor’s horse, my suitcase jammed between us. We wheeled into the front yard of a big, old ramshackle house. Two constables stood at attention either side of the front door.

  Taylor talked fast as we dismounted.

  ‘You’re probably wondering how it is that I know your Aunt Franny,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose,’ I agreed. ‘But I’m wondering more what terrible thing has happened.’

  ‘I joined the circus,’ Taylor said, deciding to answer her own question instead. ‘And we’ve been touring, as circuses do. Got here to Nina Bay a few days back, and we open tomorrow. Turned out your Aunt Franny had bought out opening night for a party. Came by to see us the other day and told us the party was in memory of Patrick and Lida Mettlestone. So I recognise the name and I figure she’s your aunt. Introduced myself. She invited me over to be here when you arrived. Which is why I was here earlier when … Well, go knock on the door while I see to Midnight.’ She scratched the horse’s ear. ‘Just ignore the constables there.’

  ‘Taylor,’ I said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Go knock,’ she repeated. ‘Franny will tell you.’

  I ran to the front door, tried to smile politely at the two constables, and knocked.

  The door opened. Aunt Franny flipped the carrot from her mouth and tousled her wild grey hair. ‘Bronte,’ she said. ‘Thatta girl. Come on in. We’ve got a situation here. It’s your cousin, Prince William. The pirates have got him.’ She swung around before I’d finished gasping. ‘Dump your bag there,’ she said, pointing to the floor just inside the door.

  ‘Pirates?’ I asked, or squeaked really. ‘When?’

  ‘Around lunchtime today. William was on his way here to meet his mother, under care of royal guards. Pirates from the Dagger and Serpent attacked.’

  ‘But weren’t those pirates taken by the Anti-Pirate League?’

  ‘Escaped,’ Franny said. ‘Cut the throats of half the royal guard. Gutted the other half.’

  I was glad she was the kind of adult who doesn’t try to hide thin
gs from children, but also wished she was that kind of adult.

  ‘Come through.’ Aunt Franny led me into a huge living room, where I stopped, startled. People large and small sat on couches, or on the worn carpet, and I knew them all.

  There was Aunt Sue, Uncle Josh and their boys, Aunt Nancy, Uncle Nigel (perfectly bald, as Aunt Nancy had promised) and their girls, Aunt Emma from Lantern Island, Aunt Claire from her conferences, Aunt Sophy from her dragons, Aunts Maya and Lisbeth from the Cruise Ship, and—huddled between the arms of Aunts Maya and Lisbeth—a tear-streaked Aunt Alys.

  Everyone, even the children—even Uncle Josh, who was always funny—looked either serious or frightened.

  ‘Most of the family arrived today,’ Aunt Franny explained, ‘ready for the party tomorrow. Take a seat, Bronte.’

  ‘At least we’re here,’ Aunt Emma put in. She was kneeling on the floor by Alys’s feet, hugging Alys’s ankles. ‘For darling Alys. The water sprites came along with me too, for a lark, and they’re swimming in the bay. They’ve promised to help in any way they can.’

  ‘I can’t think what help they could be,’ Aunt Nancy muttered, ‘in the water.’

  ‘And the rest are due tomorrow morning,’ Aunt Sue put in quickly. ‘Aren’t they due tomorrow? All the sisters will be here, Alys—’

  ‘Even Carrie?’ Aunt Nancy interrupted. ‘I thought she never left her cottage!’

  ‘She telegrammed this morning to say she’d take the overnight coach,’ Aunt Franny said firmly. ‘Plenty of Patrick and Lida’s old friends are coming too. Between us, we’ll figure what to do.’

  Aunt Alys nodded slowly.

  ‘There’s not much we can do, is there?’ Aunt Nancy asked. ‘Except wait to hear what they want. No doubt they’ll demand a ransom and we can decide whether to pay it.’

  ‘Decide?’ cried Aunt Alys.

  Other aunts made soothing sounds and hissed at Aunt Nancy, then Aunt Franny spoke in a big, strident voice. ‘A prince has been abducted by pirates,’ she said. ‘That is a serious matter to authorities. The K&E Security Force has been called. The Chief is taking personal charge of the case. He says he’s contacted Gustav Spectaculo and The Scorpion, urging them to return to the Anti-Pirate League on temporary assignment. If anybody can rescue the prince, they can. They have unique experience with the most brutal and cutthroat pirates.’