by Paul Stewart
He shook his head sadly and patted the snowman’s furry shoulder.
‘Oh, what a stupid, self-pitying old man I have been. I allowed that rascal Elliot de Mille to take over the institute and bully you and your children into printing that awful Quarterly of his, didn’t I?’
The snowman looked up into the story collector’s grief-stricken face and patted his hand.
‘Wffl mmfll, wffl wfffl, mmph,’ he mumbled softly.
‘I know you only did it for me, old friend. It makes me feel terrible, because I was so wrapped up in my own misery that I just didn’t care. What did I have to live for with Phyllida and Phineas and their beautiful baby lost for ever?’
Wilfred turned back to Hugo with glistening eyes.
‘And now, you, Hugo, my handsome young grandson, have come back to me. It is like waking up from a long, sad, terrible dream. Thank you, Hugo, for telling me your story. You’ve made a foolish old story collector very happy.’
He got to his feet and took his grandson by the hand.
‘Now you must go, Hugo, my boy. Leave at once. The institute is no place for you. Elliot de Mille has poisoned it. It means so much to me that you came back to Harbour Heights, Hugo, but of course I understand that this is not your home. Go back to Harvi and Sarvi in the Frozen North with my blessing.’
The storyteller turned to the little snowman and ruffled the hair on his furry head.
‘Ranulf, here, will take you to the snow chariot. Finoula and he recognized it as a Crane and Sons Aeronautical Snow Chariot – Mark II the moment they saw it on the roof of Evesham’s Workshop,’ he smiled sadly, ‘and brought it to me. They thought it might cheer me up. Go now, Hugo, my boy, before Elliot de Mille returns.’
But Hugo shook his head, his bright, clear blue eyes flashing with defiance. Reaching out, he seized a copy of the beautiful Firefly Quarterly and held it out to his grandfather.
‘This story isn’t over,’ he said, his voice trembling with emotion. ‘And we have all night to give it a happy ending!’ Elliot de Mille dried his eyes with his expensive-looking silk handkerchief and got up.
‘I feel much better for that,’ he said with a thin smile. ‘I can’t tell you how good it feels not having to skulk around the square for fear of being recognized any more.’
‘It’s no more than you deserve, Alfie, love,’ said Cressida Claw, her whiskers quivering moistly. Elliot put on his expensive-looking black overcoat and large silk hat, and was just stepping out of the shop that used to be Neptune’s Nautical Antiques when he stopped, a look of surprise on his thin, mean-looking face. Across Firefly Square, the windows of the institute were all lit up.
Leaving Cressida Claw looking tearfully after him, Elliot de Mille strode towards the institute, his large silver key in his gloved hand of duck-egg blue. He reached the door and hurriedly put the key in the lock, turned and pushed. But the door wouldn’t budge. Elliot de Mille’s eyes blazed with anger as he beat on the door of the institute with fists of duck-egg blue.
‘What is the meaning of this!’ he roared. ‘Let me in! Let me in!’
lliot de Mille sat on the doorstep of the institute with his head in his hands. He’d spent all night trying to get inside. He had hammered on the door and shouted until his throat was hoarse. He had tried to force open the shuttered windows – and ruined his duck-egg blue gloves. The fire escape had been pulled up and the back doors locked. Now, as the first rays of dawn were breaking over Firefly Square, he was just about ready to give up.
The trouble was, Elliot realized, he’d made the institute just too secure during his time as director, bolting the door and shuttering the windows, and now here he was, locked out himself! All night, the lights inside the institute had blazed, and Elliot had heard a sound that filled him with dread – the clackety-clack of the printing presses going at full pelt. Now, as dawn broke, the institute had fallen ominously quiet.
What could it all mean? wondered Elliot de Mille, twisting his silk hat in his hands.
Just then, a curious, stuttering sound started up from the rooftop of the institute above.
Phut! Phut! Bang! Phut!
Elliot looked up and his mouth fell open with astonishment. There, sailing up into the dawn sky was an extraordinary contraption – a sort of cross between a sled and a hot-air balloon. Behind it, attached by a rope, the contraption towed a faded-looking carpet. This was all very curious and yet, to Elliot de Mille, it was not the most astonishing thing about the sight.
No, the most astonishing thing to Elliot, was the sight of Wilfred McPherson, a small boy and a crowd of snowmen on board, seated next to piles and piles of what could only be Firefly Quarterly magazines. Elliot gulped like a stranded goldfish as the snowmen each took a bundle of the journals and threw them into the air.
The contraption disappeared over the rooftops of Brimstone Alley, heading for the grand squares of Harbour Heights. A moment later, one of the magazines fluttered down and landed at Elliot’s feet. He picked it up with trembling hands and looked at the cover.
‘GREAT STORIES ARE BACK!’ he read, before opening the Quarterly and looking at the first page. There, in large letters, was a title that left him trembling from head to toe.
‘THE SAD TALE OF ALFIE SPANGLE, THE BUTCHER’S BOY.’ He read on. ’ Once upon a time, there was a butcher’s boy called Alfie Spangle …’
Elliot de Mille dropped the Quarterly, threw back his head and howled.
‘ Noooooo!’
High above Harbour Heights, the snow chariot sailed, towing the flying carpet behind it. And everywhere it flew – from the grand squares of the Heights, to the alleyways and warehouses of the lower town – copies of the new Firefly Quarterly came fluttering down to earth. There, the people of Harbour Heights picked them up as they went about their business.
Soon, there were groups of people from Montmorency Square to Pudding Bowl Row reading and giggling and laughing out loud. But not all were so happy …
Bernard Bumble, the meat-pie magnate, wasn’t pleased to read about how Elliot de Mille had discovered that his buns were full of sawdust. And at Pingle, Pingle, Duff and Pingle, the bailiffs, a nasty fight broke out. In fact, there were many in the bustling city of Harbour Heights who would have cheerfully wrung the director of the institute’s neck if only they could have found him.
But they couldn’t, for he, and his accomplice Cressida Claw, had vanished. There was, however, one thing that all the residents of Harbour Heights could happily agree on. The new Firefly Quarterly was a great improvement on the old one.
As the moon rose over Firefly Square, the snow chariot came in to land in the gardens, where a small reception committee had gathered. The lamplighter, Daisy and Lily Neptune, Meena Dalle, Edward Evesham and the Camomiles broke into delighted applause as the skis of the chariot touched down on the grass, and Wilfred McPherson and Hugo climbed out. Behind them, small furry snowmen with enormous feet tumbled head over heels as the flying carpet glided down to earth.
‘I’m delighted to see you all,’ said the old story collector, shaking each of the small group by the hand. ‘I’m only sorry I allowed things to go so wrong.’
‘Oh, Wilfred!’ trilled Daisy and Lily Neptune, embracing him. ‘It’s just so lovely to see you again. That nasty Elliot de Mille spread the news that you’d retired to the Sunny South!’
‘Now we can get back to the way things were,’ said Edward Evesham.
‘Things can never be quite the way they were,’ said Meena sadly, thinking of her best friend. ‘But at least now Hugo can return to Harvi and Sarvi in the Frozen North.’
Hugo smiled.
‘And we’ve seen the last of Elliot de Mille,’ said Diego Camomile. ‘Cleared out of Firefly Square this morning – but not before clearing out all our shops of everything we own. All he left was a dirty teacup.’ He pointed to a chipped cup with an anchor design on it which his wife, Freda, was holding.
‘ Tear-Drop tea, by the look of it,’ she said, before giv
ing a little ladylike shriek. ‘Oh, Diego, I can see it again …’
‘See what?’ said Daisy and Lily Neptune, gathering round as Freda gazed into the bottom of the teacup.
‘I see a one-eyed giant,’ she said, ‘staring at a one-eared cat pointing the way to the sea-bed’s treasure.’
‘One-eyed giant?’ said Daisy.
‘One-eared cat?’ said Lily.
‘Sea-bed’s treasure!’ said Hugo, excitedly. ‘I think I might know what that means!’
A little while later, a flying carpet ridden by a young woman with a moth-dog on her lap dropped an old lamplighter and a mechanical wizard off at the top of the old lighthouse at Cyclops Point and flew off. Back in the gardens of Firefly Square, an extraordinary collection of people waited by the old fountain with the statue of a one-eared cat holding a curled scroll in its paws.
There was the stooped old story collector with the careworn face and sad eyes. There were the little furry snowmen, the toes of their enormous feet tapping with barely concealed anticipation, and the tall elegant mermaids, whose tails tapped also, beneath the silken folds of their long walksuits. Beside them, the tea blenders from the Sunny South stood arm in arm, their eyes fixed on the Cyclops Point lighthouse in the distance. The small boy dressed in the costume of a reindeer herder from the Frozen North, and clutching a large shovel, turned and gave them all a dazzling smile.
The next moment, the great lamp at the top of the lighthouse burst into life for the first time in many, many years. All over Harbour Heights, people leaned over balconies, or peered from open windows, or looked up from their copies of The Firefly Quarterly as they sat in cafés or on park benches.
High over the rooftops of Montmorency Square and Clifftop Row, of Archduke Ferdinand Boulevard and Harbour Side, of Sleeping Horse Lane and Brimstone Alley, the one-eyed giant sent its dazzling beam of light.
Down it shone, cutting through the darkening sky from the distant lighthouse, directly into the small overgrown gardens at the centre of Firefly Square. There, the beam of light struck the curled bronze scroll held in the claws of the one-eared cat that perched on top of the old disused fountain.
Bouncing off it, the light shot across the gardens like a glowing finger, pointing the way. It fell on a patchy piece of grass directly beneath a tall, spreading tree in the corner of the gardens: the very tree that Hugo Pepper had landed in just a few short days before.
Hugo rushed to the spot and began to dig. A few moments later, the edge of his shovel hit something hard and metallic – something like a very, very large treasure chest …
CLINK!
From the Montmorency Gazette:
From the Harbour High Society magazine:
From a theatre poster outside the Archduke Ferdinand Theatre:
From The Harbour Heights Grocer:
From the school magazine of the school ship Betty-Jeanne:
Hugo Pepper’s Family Tree:
Message received by flying box by Edward Evesham of Evesham’s Workshop:
PAUL STEWART is a highly regarded author of books for young readers – everything from picture books to football stories, fantasy and horror. Several of his books are published by Random House Children’s Books, including The Wakening, which was selected as a Pick of the Year by the Federation of Children’s Book Groups. Together with Chris Riddell, he is co-creator of the bestselling Edge Chronicles series, which is now available in over thirty languages. Fergus Crane, the first in their Far-Flung Adventures sequence, won a Smarties Prize Gold Medal and Corby Flood won a Nestlé Prize Silver Medal.
CHRIS RIDDELL is an accomplished graphic artist who has illustrated many acclaimed books for children, including Pirate Diary by Richard Platt, for which he won the 2001 Kate Greenaway Medal, Something Else by Kathryn Cave, which was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal and the Smarties Prize and won the Unesco Award, and Castle Diary by Richard Platt, which was Highly Commended both for the l999 Kate Greenaway Medal and for the V&A Illustrations Award. Together with Paul Stewart, he is co-creator of the bestselling Edge Chronicles series, which is now available in over thirty languages. Fergus Crane, the first in their Far-Flung Adventures sequence, won a Smarties Prize Gold Medal and Corby Flood won a Nestlé Prize Silver Medal.
WILFRED MCPHERSON, renowned academic explorer and story collector, has travelled to the farthest of far-flung places in his pursuit of myths, fables and extraordinary tales. Published in The Firefly Quarterly, the esteemed journal of travellers’ tales, they are loved the world over. Wilfred McPherson is also the patron of the P.S.P.P.S. (Pygmy Snowmen Printers Preservation Society).
A DAVID FICKLING BOOK
Published by David Fickling Books an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc. New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text and illustrations copyright © 2006 by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
Cover art copyright © 2006 by Chris Riddell
All rights reserved.
Originally published in Great Britain by Doubleday, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, in 2006.
DAVID FICKLING BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of David Fickling. www.randomhouse.com/kids
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stewart, Paul.
Hugo Pepper / Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell. — 1st American ed. p. cm. — (Far-flung adventures)
eISBN: 978-0-307-49542-6
[1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Orphans—Fiction. 3. Tabloid newspapers—Fiction. 4. Yeti—Fiction. 5. Storytellers—Fiction. 6. Fantasy.] I. Riddell, Chris. II. Title. III. Series: Stewart, Paul. Far-flung adventures. PZ7.S84975Hug 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2006009013
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