Mabel Jones and the Forbidden City

by Will Mabbitt

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  First published in the United Kingdom by Puffin, an imprint of Penguin UK, 2016

  Published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2016

  Text copyright © 2016 by Will Mabbitt

  Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Ross Collins

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-698-17632-4

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Mabbitt, Will, author.

  Mabel Jones and the Forbidden City / by Will Mabbitt; illustrated by Ross Collins.

  pages cm—(Mabel Jones ; 2)

  ISBN 978-0-451-47197-0 (hardback)

  [1. Witches—Fiction. 2. Kidnapping—Fiction. 3. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Collins, Ross, illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.1.M24Mab 2016

  [Fic]—dc23

  2015016655

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  MAP

  CHAPTER1: Fetch Her, My Foul Creepers

  CHAPTER2: The City of Broken Dreams

  CHAPTER3: Spirits of the Dark and Fetid Undergrowth

  CHAPTER4: The Collector of Beaks

  CHAPTER5: Fluffy Bunnies

  CHAPTER6: Bogdan’s Offal Stop

  CHAPTER7: Old Friends

  CHAPTER8: The Brown Trout

  CHAPTER9: A Poisonous Silence

  CHAPTER10: The Journal of Sir Timothy Speke

  CHAPTER11: Captured

  CHAPTER12: Skoo Cossin

  CHAPTER13: Maryvale High

  CHAPTER14: A Lovely Picnic in the Park

  CHAPTER15: A Sight Best Left Unseen

  CHAPTER16: A Moment’s Silence

  CHAPTER17: The Principal

  CHAPTER18: The Exam Room

  CHAPTER19: The Journal of Sir Timothy Speke (Cont.)

  CHAPTER20: The Last Known Whereabouts of Gideon Scapegrace

  CHAPTER21: The Last Words of Gideon Scapegrace

  CHAPTER22: Plummet to the Death

  CHAPTER23: The Forbidden City

  CHAPTER24: Tiffany’s

  CHAPTER25: The Dreaded Thunk

  CHAPTER26: Ramifications of the Dreaded Thunk

  CHAPTER27: The Tower

  CHAPTER28: Bad News

  CHAPTER29: Earthquake

  CHAPTER30: Within the Chasm

  CHAPTER31: The Gathering

  CHAPTER32: Candy

  CHAPTER33: The End

  CHAPTER34: After the End

  CHAPTER35: The Ultimate Sacrifice

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Chapter 1

  Fetch Her, My Foul Creepers

  Mabel Jones scratched her armpit thoughtfully and peered at the extraordinary creature before her.

  It’s a funny-looking thing, all wrinkled and fat and helpless. Like a beetle grub. Kind of slimy, but kind of cute too.

  Her baby sister, Maggie, snored gently and blew a snot bubble from her left nostril.

  Babies can be quite disgusting, thought Mabel, absentmindedly picking her own nose and wiping her finger on the wall. Especially when you have to share a bedroom with one.

  She yawned, climbed into bed, and fell asleep, totally unaware that something quite dreadful was about to occur.

  Which (of course) is why we are here.

  Slide open the window and squeeze inside.

  I think we’re just in time. We wouldn’t want to miss any dreadfulness.

  Creep silently to the wardrobe and press your gristly earhole trimmings to the door. Can you hear the distant sound of drumming?

  A frenzied beat.

  It grows louder and louder still!

  What’s this? Chanting too?

  Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse. This must be some kind of witchcraft.

  I don’t like this. I don’t like this one bit.

  Far, far away, a long fingernail scrapes along the words of a letter—a letter written during a previous most unlikely adventure by the very same Mabel Jones we see safe and snug, asleep in her room. A letter bottled and corked and thrown over the side of a pirate ship into the rolling seas. For months it bobbed on those waves, years maybe, until it washed up on a faraway beach to be found, swapped, sold, stolen, then lost and found again, before it finally reached the hands of this strange and wicked creature.

  Cracked and painted lips silently mouth the words of the letter. Then the fingernail pauses as it reaches the end of the final sentence, where an accidental memento has been left.

  A single hair—a Mabel hair—is carefully removed from the letter and sniffed.

  Fresh snuglet . . .

  Fresh enough for dark magic.

  The grim smile widens to reveal ancient crumbling teeth. The drumming has stopped. The chanting has died to a soft murmur. And now a voice speaks, in soft yet cracking tones—like honey poured thick on burned toast—whispering an incantation:

  “Fetch her, my foul creepers. Bring me the one called Mabel Jones. . . .”

  So brace yourself—for a wicked seed has been planted and, though its roots are firmly embedded in the future, its shoots and vines are winding through the hot and steaming mists of time into the present.

  Quickly! Press your puny weight against those wardrobe doors, child. You must prevent this foulness from occurring.

  Alas, it is futile. Your scrawny body is no match for the strength of dark magic.

  It’s time for the secret weapon. Have you brought the powdered beak of a heartbroken swan? Quickly mix it with your vial of hedgehog tears to make a paste, then mark the sacred sign upon—

  What?

  You don’t have either of these things?

  Really?

  Really, really?

  Then all is lost!

  A thin white shoot sprouts through the gap between the wardrobe doors. It grows fast and strong, and splinters the wood. A vine has formed.

  The vine branches.

  Its branches branch.

  Then those branches branch some more branches.

  And the branches of the branches of the branches branch once more until the room is filled with curling vines that wrap and twist around bookcases and chair legs, pulling all they find closer to the open doors of the wardrobe, like the tentacles of a starving octopus.

  Up the walls they creep . . .

  Across the ceiling they wind . . .

  All searching for one thing.

  Fetch her, my foul creepers.

  They reach the bed.

  Bring me the one called Mabel Jones!

  A vine curls beneath the quilt, questing for the sleeping Mabel contained within.

  Gripping around her ankles.

  Tightening around her wrists.

  Then with evil purpose the creepers tuck the quil
t into place. Mabel is wrapped up, still snoring, like a sausage roll made with girl instead of pig parts. And slowly but surely the bundled snuglet is pulled toward the wardrobe.

  Who knows what lies in store for a young girl stolen from her bed by the foul creepers of an evil enchantress?

  Could this be the end for Mabel Jones?

  A toe poking from beneath the quilt catches on a line of thread stretched tight above the floor, looped around a nail hammered into the baseboard, then stretched upward and tied to a precariously balanced can of pennies.

  A booby trap! Set by clever, resourceful Mabel Jones. She has had some experience with unlikely adventures such as these. If you have been snatched from your bedroom once, then it pays to take great care it never happens again.

  Mabel Jones was woken by a sudden noise.

  She had been having a strange dream that she was being dragged into the wardrobe by the tendrils of an evil creeping vine. Then she realized it wasn’t a nightmare.

  It was really happening.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but a thick vine covered her face, smothering her cry for help. Mabel, a skilled vegetarian, bit down hard and tore off a fleshy chunk of plant with her teeth.

  Vile and bitter sap filled her mouth, like she had just swigged on a bottle of nit lotion. The bitten vine recoiled, spilling sap on the bedroom carpet.

  Mabel bit another vine and her arm was free. Free enough to grab a nearby shoe and use it to hammer at the vines that dragged her toward the wardrobe. Vine by vine she fought the plant, until she was sitting in a pool of mushed and mangled stems. The creepers were retreating now, shrinking back into the wardrobe. The spell was broken.

  Mabel sat panting in the remains of her bedroom.

  My name is Mabel Jones, and I am not scared of anything.

  But something is wrong, Mabel.

  Something precious is missing.

  Something very precious indeed.

  “My matchbox full of toenail clippings!”

  Four years’ work—gone.

  And something else, Mabel?

  “Oh, and the crib is empty.”

  MAGGIE IS GONE!

  Mabel’s sister, sleeping soundly, stood no chance. Plucked from her crib and dragged into the wardrobe, along with a Tupperware box of Legos, Mabel’s recorder, and, of course, the toenail-clipping collection.

  Look!

  The final vine is disappearing back into the wardrobe! Mabel leaps to stop it. Maggie Jones may well be a slightly inconvenient and annoying baby sister, but she is Mabel’s slightly inconvenient and annoying baby sister.

  She grabs the vine and for a moment she holds it fast.

  “GIVE. ME. BACK. MY. SISTER!”

  Then the vine tugs, sudden and swift, and Mabel falls forward into the wardrobe—into a hot, steaming mist, her fingers still gripped around the end of the tendril.

  Somewhere in the distance, the familiar sound of a wailing baby can be heard.

  MAGGIE!

  Then the vine snaps, weakened by the earlier bites of the desperate Mabel Jones.

  Falling away from the cries of her baby sister . . .

  And then, with a thump, she is back in her wardrobe!

  Actually, this isn’t my wardrobe . . .

  This is the inside of a completely different wardrobe!

  Chapter 2

  The City of Broken Dreams

  If you sail across the Wild Western Sea until the water warms and turns an emerald green, you will eventually reach a land that stretches as far north, and as far south, as the eye can see.

  Welcome to the NOO WORLD.

  So anchor your ship, drop a dinghy in the gentle waves, and row to the beach.

  And when you’re there let us wallow in the warm shallows together.

  Let us paddle among the reefs, collecting the shells of conches and giant clams.

  Let us frolic on the white beach and climb the palms to pick green coconuts and forage for plump dates.

  Let us lie in the dappled shade of the lush forest that lines the shore and watch as this rare turtle breaks the surf, preparing to flap up the beach to gently lay her eggs in the same sun-warmed sand where she herself hatched all those years ago.

  The circle of life is complete!

  Well, almost complete.

  Start the barbecue. Pull up a log. For there will be enough turtle for everyone! I call dibs on a flipper.

  Ah, this is the life! Do you mind greasing my back? The bald bits need special attention, for I am cursed with mange and my patchy fur does not fully protect me from the sun’s harmful rays. I actually have very delicate skin.

  But what is that awful smell that taints the salty breeze?

  Look! A slick in the Sparkling Emerald Sea—a swirling mass of greasy water and floating scraps, brought to the beach courtesy of the gentle waves. The turtle pauses, then returns to the sea. Her sacred birthing beach has been spoiled. And our delicious main course has left.

  So let us follow this slick to its source, some miles along the coast, where the jungle gives way to the stench, sickness, and hot, dry smog of a city—a sprawling mess of narrow litter-strewn streets and hastily constructed houses that lean against each other for support.

  Its population? A motley mix of adventurers, romantics, and criminals, all arriving to seek their fortune in the NOO WORLD.

  See them at the docks, wheeling their suitcases from the tramp steamers and cargo vessels that have sailed across the Wild Western Sea. Whether they be fox, or deer, or bear, or shrew, all have the same dream: to start anew in a land of limitless opportunity.

  And the sparkling light that draws them in? Why, it is the twinkle of ! For it is whispered in the cities of the OLD WORLD that this distant shore positively rattles with the wonderful stones.

  And so these hopeful travelers stream from the ships’ gangways, funneled to the city’s numerous boardinghouses, hotels, and taverns. Places such as the HOTEL PARADISO—the filthiest muck-hole in the whole rotten manure-heap of a city.

  Press upon the bell if you dare. Push past the cat that opens the door. Be careful not to brush against him, for he is ridden with tropical fleas and prone to uncontrollable bouts of spraying. Step over the drunken porter. It is best that he does not help us with our bags, for the young whippet is a dishonest sort and light of paw. He’d suck the mayonnaise from your tuna sandwich given a moment alone with your lunch box.

  DO NOT

  TAKE THE

  ELEVATOR!

  It has been deliberately stopped between the second and third floors by a rabid shrew who refuses to pay his board. He screams blue murder through the night.

  Instead, climb the rickety stairs to the third floor.

  Step carefully over the cowpat that has been deposited upon the landing carpet by a disgruntled guest—a dirty protest at the bad service received during his unhappy stay—and then into room 16b (the King Charles Honeymoon Suite), where we wait for the story to continue. For contained within this room, inside a badly constructed and wormholed wardrobe, is poor, confused, sisterless Mabel Jones. . . .

  The wardrobe door opened out onto a small and wonky-looking bedroom with a double bed and a small broken window. Mabel cautiously stepped into the bright sunlight that shone through the dirty glass. Some cockroaches that had been basking on mildewed and dribble-stained pillows scuttled under the filthy sheets for safety.

  There was a knock on the door and a bleary-eyed young whippet looked in. “Post for Room 16b.”

  He held out two envelopes.

  Mabel blinked. “Thank you,” she said.

  The whippet shrugged. “No money or nuffin’. I shook ’em to check.”

  Mabel blinked again. Then she smiled to herself. “I think I’m on another unlikely adventure.”

  She had returned to the future. A future with
no humans. A future with talking animals! A future she knew well, for she had been here before. In fact, last time she was here . . .

  Well, that’s a different story.

  But the fact remained: Mabel Jones was alone. The only reminder of her own time was a half-empty paper bag of sugar-coated gummies in her pajama pocket.

  Mabel looked at the envelopes. Maybe they could give her some clue to where in the future she was?

  Mabel’s brow furrowed.

  The Noo World? I don’t even know where the old one is!

  A noise came from outside: a ragged and tuneless voice raised in song.

  “I took a fancy to pox-ridden Nancy but she . . . errr . . .”

  The voice tailed off as the singer tried to remember the next line.

  Mabel absentmindedly pocketed the envelopes in her pajamas and walked over to open the window.

  The first thing she noticed was the heat—a dry, dusty heat that clung to the inside of her mouth as if she’d just drunk a glass of sand.

  The second thing she noticed was that she was on the third floor of a rather badly built building, in a narrow street of similarly badly built buildings. One end of the street merged into a sprawling mess of a city, while the other opened out onto a view of a beautiful green sea.

  The last thing she noticed was that on a balcony across the street stood a beaver in dirty underpants. He grinned a gap-toothed grin and saluted her with a half-drunk bottle of grog that sloshed onto the filth-strewn street below.

  “Good morning! Guten Tag! Bonjour! Buenos días!”

  Mabel shielded her eyes from the bright sunlight. “Hi, I’m Mabel. Have you seen a plant carrying a baby?”

  The beaver laughed. “I have never seen such a sight! There are no plants here anymore, for the jungle has been burned down to make space for the , where the gutters are strewn with !”

  He waved a paw around wildly, indicating the ramshackle building and filthy streets.

  Mabel looked down. Some rats scampered across the road to forage for scraps from an upturned bin. She couldn’t see any diamonds.