Jeffery E Doherty makes up stuff, he's arty and a bit of a nerd. Jeff loves to read, write, illustrate and review stories and books for children. He thinks that writing stories for others to enjoy is the most special thing anyone can do because through books, you can live a thousand lifetimes.
Other Jeffery E. Doherty titles published by IFWG Publishing Australia
Paper Magic
The Adventures of Teddy and Karl: Stories for Bedtime (as illustrator)
The Guardians of
St. Giles Book 1
OLIVIA STONE
and the Trouble with Trixies
by
Jeffery E Doherty
This is a work of fiction. The events and characters portrayed herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places, events or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author do not necessarily represent the opinions of the publisher.
Olivia Stone and the Trouble with Trixies
Jeffery E Doherty
Copyright Jeffery E Doherty/IFWG Publishing Australia 2016
ISBN-13: 978-1-925148-96-1
Version 1.0
Published by IFWG Publishing at Smashwords
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
IFWG Publishing
ifwgpublishing.com
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Gerry and the team at IFWG Publishing Australia for believing in me. My editor Louise Zedda-Sampson, your help made the story so much stronger and tighter. I have to also thank some wonderful teachers, Mrs Kerr, Mrs Barlow and Mrs Arnold who let me share Olivia Stone with their wonderful classes, and to all the students in those classes for your enthusiasm and feedback. To Jenn and Molly for finding my punctuation and spelling failures. And special thanks to Dakota for being the face of Olivia.
To Maria for not allowing being married to me, drive you completely mad.
To all the children who struggle—be strong.
Part 1
Shadow
Chapter 1
Abomination
“Abomination!”
The girls scatter. They flee the courtyard like pigeons from Mouser, the old priory cat. That is, everyone except Olivia. She turns to face Brother Westerman, fists planted on her hips and scowls right back up at the old priest.
“Aarrgggh,” he growls, his Adam’s apple bobbing madly under the loose flaps of turkey-like skin at his throat. Olivia thinks he looks like someone’s crossed a vulture and an emu to create the world’s tallest predatory bird.
Olivia’s heart pounds and she licks dry lips. “It’s been five years, Brother Westerman.” Her voice only cracks the tiniest bit. “There are girls at St. Giles now, so get over it.”
Most people, by the time they reach ninety-two, are bent over with the weight of all those years but Brother Westerman’s spine is long and broomstick straight. At her words, he seems to grow even taller.
Olivia gulps as his dark hooded eyes glare down at her over an enormous beak-like nose.
I’m twelve years old now. I won’t let him scare me!
He opens his mouth to bellow but no words come out. Brother Westerman gasps and steps back, making a sign of the cross with shaky fingers. He is staring at something on the ground in front of Olivia.
The coarse black material of his coat cracks like a whip as he turns and flees the courtyard.
What a strange old man.
Olivia’s legs tremble but she holds her stern look until Brother Westerman disappears inside the school. Finally, she looks down to see what had upset him so badly.
Olivia’s breath catches in her throat. A shadow stretches out before her. Large bat-like wings fan out from her shoulders and sharp, curved horns sprout from her head.
Reaching up, Olivia touches…only hair. She sighs with relief.
Squinting up, she sees bright sunlight blazing around the large demonic-looking gargoyle perched on the roof. She steps aside and the horns and wings separate from her own skinny shadow.
Olivia stifles a giggle…
Now, Brother Westerman will truly think I’m an abomination.
~~~
Lollie Duff and Darcy Steckel peek out from behind the wall to see if the cranky old priest has really gone.
“What did you do to old Westie?” Lollie asks.
“I have no idea.” Olivia glances at the gargoyle’s shadow with a secret smile. She doesn’t want to explain it to her friends. They’d just make a fuss and Darcy would spread the tale to the entire school by the end of the day.
“Looked like he saw a ghost.” Darcy adjusts her glasses.
“There’s no such thing,” Lollie protests, trying to hide a shiver.
“In fact,” Darcy starts counting off on her fingers, “there are at least three known ghosts who haunt St. Giles School. And that’s just the main building. Lots of people have seen dark figures roaming the grounds after dark—”
“Stop it.” Lollie looks down her nose at Darcy like only someone from the Heights can do. “My daddy says there’s no such thing as ghosts or goblins or any of those other things that go bump in the night.”
“Well, why are you shaking?” Darcy hides a smirk behind her hand.
“Am not.” The class bell rings and Lollie uses it to make her escape before Darcy can say another word.
“She was shaking,” Darcy says.
“You shouldn’t tease her like that,” Olivia says.
“I wasn’t teasing. There are strange things here.” Darcy sweeps her hand in a broad gesture around the school. “You and Lollie wouldn’t know. You’re never here after dark. Any of the boarders will tell you.”
Olivia shivers a little at the thought. At least the talk of ghosts has taken Darcy’s mind off her clash with Brother Westerman. Darcy is like a bulldog when she sniffs out a story.
~~~
In class, Olivia takes a seat next to Kellyanne Kazek, happy to have a break from Lollie and Darcy’s constant bickering. Olivia glances at Kellyanne to check what coloured ribbon she has braided into her wild boyish hair.
It’s iridescent purple.
Each day, Kellyanne wears a tiny coloured braid at her right temple—a small protest against the schools draconian uniform policy.
Kellyanne is the only person Olivia knows who can get away with using words like ‘draconian’ and ‘supercilious’. Supercilious is what she calls Lollie when she is being more ‘Lollieish’ than usual.
Olivia’s not brave enough to break the rules, even the small ones. But every day Kellyanne comes to school with a protest ribbon, it makes Olivia smile.
Chapter 2
Little Bait-Fish
The child walking the dark, narrow streets of Old Haven looks no older than five or six. Her pale hair glows silver under the moonlight. She steals glances over her shoulder as she walks. The soles of her small shiny black shoes click on the cobbles with every hesitant step.
Clatter-scrape. Stone claws skitter across brick.
The girl spins around. Large, forget-me-not-coloured eyes peer up into the night.
Mortar dust sifts down from high on the wall where the creature hugs the shadows. “Careful,” the creature chides itself. Its small piggish tail flicking in frustration.
The girl turns and hurries on.
A face rises into a sliver of moonlight. It looks part Chinese dragon and part snuffling pug dog, but has none of the redeeming features of either. S
litted yellow eyes blink and corded muscles slide under rough grey stony skin. It scuttles spider-like across the wall, trailing after the child. Each time the girl glances back, the creature goes statue-still, becoming just another shadow.
When the child turns into the blind alley by Fat Jorge’s Curio Shop a nasty fanged smile appears on the creature’s ugly face. There is no way out for the child. No escape.
The creature pushes off the wall and stone wings snap open. The Grotesque glides through a cone of dirty-yellow light to land. Claws crack into the cobblestone street, at the entrance to the alley.
Hisssss!
The child spins to face the noise, backing over the spider web like shadows until her spine touches the high stone wall at the alley’s end. Slivers of moonlight streak her face, her Hello Kitty tee-shirt and skinny knees.
“I have you, trixie,” Yip says, moving toward the child-thing.
The terror Yip expects to see in its eyes isn’t there. Something’s not right. If Grotesques know anything, they know about shadows. And the shadows in the alley are all wrong. Yip looks up into the Trickster Imp’s own fanged smile.
Yip’s heart turns cold.
Its eyes change from powdery blue to glowing red as the glamour that hides its true nature is released. A second set of glowing eyes appear and then a third. Other Trixies step into view.
Four, five, six…Yip snakes his head toward a noise behind him. Four more Trixies block the entrance to the alley.
Ten Trixies working together. Unheard of! Yip’s mind races. Trixies are loners, nothing but nuisance pests. This isn’t right.
All pretence of the child disguise is gone from the first Trixie as it stalks forward. Its thin arms and legs are too long and don’t work quite like the human child it was pretending to be. Slender fingers jitter in anticipation, like a bony spider stalking a trapped fly. The other Trixies crowd in, tightening the circle around Yip.
“Oh, little Guardian.” Hello Kitty laughs and makes mocking ‘tisk-tisk’ sounds.
Another Trixie claps, ravenously impatient like a child about to tear open a birthday present.
I’m no one’s birthday gift. Yip flares his wings and launches skyward. Wings tangle in a web of the fine cables criss-crossing between the buildings above the alley. His laugh at escaping is cut short.
Yip hits the ground with a crunch of stone-on-stone. He rolls aside just as a metal bar slams into the space where his head had been an instant before. He jumps up, eyes widening at the sight of the split cobble stone.
“Stronger than we look,” Hello Kitty says.
“Stronger than stone,” a second Trixie teases.
Yip lets out a high keening cry and leaps for a second floor window sill. He scrambles up the wall, trying to squeeze through the tangle of cables.
“Tricked you,” Hello Kitty says. “You have just set the trap.”
“Tricked.” Yip stops, just for a second, looking down.
A stone the size of a fist punches into his lower back. His talons spasm and he falls. Pain lances through him as his rump hits the ground with a splintering snap.
Yip looks up into a ring of Trixie faces. Ten ghastly smiles. Nine fade back into the shadows.
“You are such a tiny prize, little bait-fish.” A shiny black child’s shoe slams into Yip’s head with more force than it has any right to. “Which one of your friends will come to your rescue?”
Yip’s mind reels dizzily. The Hello Kitty picture on the Trixie’s shirt blurs and he blacks out to the sound of the Trixies complaining about stone fish.
Poisonous…
you can’t eat them…
should just…
Darkness.
Chapter 3
A Trixie Trap
A high-pitched keening startles Olivia from her sleep. She rubs tired eyes and looks to the empty spot at the bottom of her bed where Rum-Tum should be curled up asleep.
“Rum-Tum,” she says, shoving off the covers and stalking to the window.
The shadows in the small courtyard at the rear of their terrace make the cubbyhouse look sinister. Its cross-paned windows are angry black eyes and the door, a sneering mouth.
“Get a grip, Olivia Stone,” Olivia tells herself. She pushes open the window. “Rum-Tum…Are you out fighting again?”
She scans the top of the high brick fence, the roof of the playhouse and the fork in the tree, just below the bird-feeder—all of Rum-Tum’s favourite places—but the old tom is nowhere to be seen.
“Rum-Tum.” She sighs and slips her feet into soft bunny slippers.
Olivia hears her dad’s snores as she creeps past her parents’ room and down the stairs. She grabs the torch from the hall table and opens the back door.
“Rum-Tum.” Olivia sweeps the beam of the torch across the yard. “If you get hurt again, Dad says he’s not going to take you to the vet.” She searches every corner of the small yard, in the playhouse and even behind the garbage bins near the low wooden door in the tall back wall. Olivia covers a yawn and rubs her eyes again.
“Oh suit yourself you naughty cat.” She stomps toward the house. “Don’t come crying to me if you get hurt.”
A shadow cuts across the moon. Olivia swings the torch light up as something large and black flashes past. Olivia shudders, cold shivers trailing down her spine. She hurries back into the house, latching the door and sliding the security bolt.
As Olivia rushes up the stairs, a louder yowling chills her blood.
Please, don’t be Rum-Tum, she wishes, jumping into bed and pulling the covers up to her chin. There’s a sound like hammers smashing rocks followed by a third high and pain-wracked yowl. It’s an hour until dawn but there is no way she is going back to sleep tonight.
~~~
Yip hears the flap of wings an instant before a large grey shape lands in a crouch at the entrance to the alley. He turns his head to see the looming shadow of one of the Guardians stretching toward him. Hazy yellow light silhouettes a round bat-eared head, curved horns and broad muscular shoulders.
Cygnet! Yip’s heart sinks. Cygnet is the last guardian he wants to see right now. None of the Grotesques take Yip seriously but Cygnet is by far the worst. Why did it have to be him to come to his rescue?
“Tra—”
Yip’s warning is cut off as Hello Kitty’s foot crunches down on his face.
Cygnet stalks forward, shaking his head. Yip sees the disappointment in the gesture. “Useless little Yip is in trouble again…and from a Trixie.”
Yip rakes stone claws into the Trixie’s spindly leg. Its foot comes off his face. “Trap!” He grunts as the shoe thuds into the side of his head again.
The alley becomes a mass of darting movement, flickering shadows and dancing lights as the Trixies spring their trap. Yip blinks his vision clear as a mob of spindle-limbed almost-children swarm over Cygnet.
The little Grotesque staggers up, reeling unsteadily. Before he has time to even think about helping Cygnet, three Trixies are on him. Yip tries to get past them but has to back away from their swinging clubs of wood and metal.
A Trixie sails through the air, smacking into the wall. It spills to the ground but untangles itself. It glances around nervously then takes several shaky steps toward the deep shadows at the end of the alley. The Trixie freezes, eyes wide with fear, then hobbles back into the fight.
Cygnet’s stone fists smash into the smaller creatures. Each time he knocks one down, two more rush in to attack.
What scares a Trixie more than an angry Guardian? And Cygnet is definitely angry now. Yip decides he doesn’t really want to find out. Yip’s three attackers dart in again. He turns and runs away.
Away from Cygnet.
He can hear them closing in as he reaches the dark end of the alley. Yip grins, leaps up the wall, twists and springs back, just out of their reach.
I might not be big but I’m fast. Yip gives four furious flaps of his wings. At the last second, he angles toward a red-haired Trixie creeping up beh
ind Cygnet, crashing into it with the force of a cannon ball. They tumble—a tangled pinwheel of pale and dark limbs. They hit the wall with a sickening crunch and the Trixie dissolves in shadowy tatters.
“I got one!” Yip snarls but two more Trixies attack him and his triumphant shout turns into a high pain-wracked yowl. Chips of stone fly from each blow. He squeals when the little finger of his left hand snaps off and skitters across the rough ground to stop near Cygnet’s clawed foot.
Cygnet has one of the Trixies by the throat. He lifts and squeezes. As the Trixie begins to dissolve, a metal bar slams down on the huge Grotesque’s wrist. The crack sounds like a gunshot.
Something whacks into the back of Yip’s head and darkness swallows him again…
Chapter 4
Racing the Sun
Yip jolts awake and immediately wishes he wasn’t. Pain flares in places he never knew existed and something keeps pounding rhythmically into his guts. He chokes back the urge to vomit and begins to wriggle.
“About time,” Cygnet snaps. His voice is harsh, strained.
Yip is slung over the larger Grotesque’s shoulder—and they are running. Yip tries to see. One of Cygnet’s big bat-like wings hangs limp— limp as stone can be—and his right arm is tucked in tight to his chest.
Cygnet is the leader of the Guardians, the most powerful Grotesque since The Lady gave herself to the sun. But the Trixies have left him battered, broken and on the run.
Trixies aren’t dangerous…
Cygnet grunts and stumbles as something smacks into his lower back. They crash into a clutter of metal garbage cans.
Olivia Stone and the Trouble with Trixies Page 1
