Casper followed Utterly over the first bridge while frantically composing a to-do list in his head to try and keep himself together:
1. Try not to make Utterly angry (could end in throttling)
2. Speak calmly to Lofty Husks (beg and scream only if they bring out dragons)
3. When home, sit in dark room and breathe slowly
The sun was dipping behind the castle now and the torches scattered amber on the water in the moat. Casper gulped. How long had he been gone? And would his parents have noticed and started searching the school for him by now?
They passed two boys about Casper and Utterly’s age, both with gold stars dotted across their cheekbones and clad in dungarees with spanners and screwdrivers poking out of their pockets, but their dungarees, Casper noticed, were a great deal cleaner and less crumpled than Utterly’s. The boys gaped at Casper in surprise but they gave Utterly rather than him a very wide berth as they passed on the bridge – almost as if they were afraid of her.
Utterly glanced over her shoulder at them and for a second, Casper thought he saw something in her expression that he recognised but couldn’t put a finger on, but then her face closed up again, Arlo cuddled into her neck, and she ran on towards the castle.
On the fourth bridge they passed a woman in a leather jacket on which a large silver badge had been pinned with the word BALLOONER inscribed on it. Gold stars twinkled on her cheeks and she wore a leather hat lined with fur that did up under her chin and a pair of goggles pushed up onto her forehead. Her eyes widened as she took in Casper, then she looked at Utterly with the kind of look that comes from a woman who has had children but definitely doesn’t want any more.
‘Who is that, Utterly?’
At her words, Casper felt the bridge beneath him shift – like sand underfoot as the tide comes in – and, realising that she was seconds away from waking a cloud giant, the woman darted over the bridge, then disappeared into a tower. Utterly grabbed Casper’s arm as they fled from the bridge and nipped beneath a stone arch leading into the castle. At the same time two enormous white arms carved from cloud stretched out in what looked like a yawn, knocking the roof of a nearby tower clean off.
Utterly winced. ‘Probably Slumbergrot; he’s the lightest sleeper. But that was the Ballooner’s fault, not ours.’
She tugged Casper into a large courtyard. The dragon statues that lined it were now silhouetted against the twilight, and in the middle of the courtyard there was a fountain spouting golden water and a group of girls – some dressed in dungarees like Utterly and others in leather jackets and flying goggles like the woman they had just seen – were clustered around it. They were scooping mugs into the fountain and drinking the liquid pooled inside it but they looked up on seeing Utterly and Casper.
One of the girls squinted. ‘He’s not from Rumblestar . . .’
Another girl rubbed her flying goggles and peered through them at Casper. ‘You’re right! He’s not a Ballooner or a Bottler – he doesn’t even have starlight scattered on his cheeks . . . And I’ve taken flying classes over almost all of Rumblestar and he definitely doesn’t look like anything out in The Beyond either!’ She looked at Utterly, wide-eyed. ‘Is he from one of the other kingdoms? But then how did he manage to get here?’
Even though the girls were obviously curious, like the boys they had passed on the bridge, they didn’t come any closer. Casper got the distinct feeling that they were keeping Utterly very much at a distance.
Utterly swaggered forward and the girls scuttled back a few steps. ‘While you lot have been sipping sunlight smoothies, I’ve been busy capturing a criminal.’ Utterly snatched Casper’s arm and raised it high. ‘Here he is! The villain behind all the faulty marvels!’ She puffed out her chest and Arlo did a victory dance on her shoulder. ‘Captured by yours truly.’
An awkward silence followed, then one of the girls looked at Utterly. ‘Are you sure, Utterly? Didn’t the Lofty Husks say the marvels were damaged because of faulty pipework in the Mixing Tower?’ There was no malice in her words but something about her tone made Casper wonder whether this was the first time Utterly had taken matters so completely into her own hands.
‘The Lofty Husks just don’t want to panic you with the truth!’ Utterly shot back. ‘They—’
Casper sensed there could be an opportunity to be rescued here, so he forced his voice out over Utterly’s. ‘I’m . . . I’m not a criminal,’ he spluttered. ‘I’m just a boy from Little Wallops School who’s got very lost indeed.’
The girls whispered to one another. ‘Er . . . Utterly, do you think perhaps—’
‘No time for chit-chat, I’m afraid.’ Utterly shoved Casper on through the courtyard before he could get another word out. ‘So long, girls!’
She marched towards the castle door and barged it open. Once again Casper looked on with gaping eyes. The hall was lined with doors but none of them were the same size or shape. Some were round, others were rectangular but so large giants could have strolled through quite happily, while others still were so tiny perhaps only Arlo could’ve entered – and even then he would have had to stoop. Casper blinked. How could all this exist up amongst the clouds?
Utterly followed Casper’s gaze. ‘When you live in a kingdom full of magical beasts it’s important to have doors for everyone. No point asking a cloud giant to enter a door fit for tiny river imps.’
Casper tried to apply a shred of logic to the situation to keep himself sane. ‘Couldn’t the river imp just go through the cloud giant’s door instead?’
Utterly gave him a withering look. ‘That would hardly be polite. And when you’re this high up in the sky, manners are very important. Without them, there would be all sorts of pushing and shoving and people tumbling to their deaths.’
Casper thought it pointless to bring up the fact that Utterly seemed to have done a lot of pushing and shoving since they’d met, so he turned his attention to the enormous painting above the fireplace: a phoenix with magnificent ruby-red wings. There were Honours Boards surrounding the painting which, in large silver lettering, listed various awards for Ballooners (Biggest Marvel Haul, Most Daring Flight, Fastest Balloon) and Bottlers (Most Ingenious Engineering Feats, Most Knowledgeable Blending, Quickest Bottling). And Casper saw that down the ‘Junior’ columns on the Bottlers’ boards one name kept appearing time and time again: Mannerly Thankless.
‘Thankless . . . That’s your name, isn’t it?’ he said, after a while.
Utterly glanced up at the boards, then back to Casper. ‘Shut up.’
And Casper did. Because he knew, from experience, that there was a very fine line between ‘shut up’ and being sat on or hurled into a bin. He tried to concentrate on the walls which went up and up and up, past dozens of landings lining the floors, until eventually a glass dome roof closed over the top – but it only made him feel even more disorientated. How had climbing into a grandfather clock meant him straying so far from the comfort of his timetable? He watched the paper aeroplanes which now and again drifted down from above, disappearing beneath doors or slipping through letter boxes carved into them, but when one landed at Utterly’s feet, Casper chanced a look as she smoothed it open. The contents were short and to the point.
You’re late for dinner (again).
Mum
Utterly tore the note up and strode across the flagstones. ‘Right, we’ll want the seventeenth floor. Most people will be having dinner in the banqueting hall on the twelfth, but the Lofty Husks usually meet in The Precipice at the end of the day.’
Utterly led the way to an old-fashioned bathtub at the far end of the room. It was raised on two bronze feet, with matching bronze taps, and when Utterly clambered inside it and Arlo followed, Casper was relieved to find that it wasn’t full of water.
‘In you get, Criminal,’ Utterly snapped. ‘It’s the fastest way up.’
Throwing a wary look at the electrical pulley system the bathtub seemed to be attached to, Casper did as he was told and climbed i
n. ‘I presume there are various health and safety rules for travelling in a bathtub?’
Utterly thumped her fist against a button on the wall, sending the bathtub shooting upward. Casper clutched the sides and screamed as the tub hurtled past numerous floors in seconds before jolting to a halt in front of a gap in the bannisters circling the seventeenth floor.
Utterly climbed out and Casper, feeling nauseous and terrified in equal measure, followed. Various passageways led off from the landing but only one was lined with carpet. Utterly hastened down it with Arlo and after adding one more item to his to-do list (4: Use stairs on descent from castle) and giving it a purposeful title (Ways to Survive Today), Casper made his way, rather shakily, after them.
‘Oooh, what have we here?’ cooed a female voice. ‘Important visitors for the Lofty Husks?’ There was an excited giggle.
Utterly groaned. ‘Ignore the Red Carpet. She’s a real social climber – only ever nice to wealthy, important people – and let’s face it, you’re just a measly criminal.’
Casper looked down, aghast. Between his feet there was a tear in the carpet and it was moving uncannily like a mouth!
The carpet sighed. ‘Oh, it’s just an ordinary little Bottler-in-training and –’ there was a sniff ‘– a shoeless nobody.’ Casper wriggled uncomfortably in his socks. ‘How dreadfully common,’ the carpet added. ‘When royalty walk along my silken threads – like the aristocratic river nymphs who passed this way last week – I can feel their class. They ooze glamour. But with you two – it’s like being trampled on by a couple of ungainly hippopotamuses.’
Utterly scowled. ‘Actually, Red Carpet, you’re being trodden on by one of the most dangerous criminals known to Rumblestar.’
Casper didn’t catch the carpet’s reply because he and Utterly were long past the tear in the fabric now. They were standing in front of a very tall, very narrow door which bore a plaque with the following words:
KNOCK ONLY IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING TERRIBLY IMPORTANT TO SAY
Casper thought about the doors in the hallway – how the shape reflected whoever walked through them – and he eyed this tall one nervously. ‘I . . . I thought the Lofty Husks would be like you,’ he said to Utterly. ‘A bit of glitter on their faces, maybe a few more miniature dragons, but really just the same sort of thing – only older.’
Utterly looked at him, her head cocked to one side, then she eyed the door in front of them before turning her attention back to Casper – and had Casper known this girl a little better he would have realised that there was a flicker of doubt in her eyes now. She’d got this far – right up to the Lofty Husks’ door – and yet the criminal really did seem to know next to nothing about her kingdom. He could be bluffing, of course, but then there had been that episode in the Neverlate Tree, too, when he was just sitting there, undisguised, waiting to be captured. Would a criminal really act so foolishly?
Utterly shook herself. This was to be her moment in the spotlight – her chance to make her parents proud after . . . everything that had happened – and she wasn’t going to back down now. But seeing as the boy really was proving to be a pretty hopeless criminal, she felt she could, at the very least, offer a begrudging explanation of what lay behind the door in front of them.
‘The Lofty Husks are folk born under the very first eclipse and marked out by the very first phoenix as rulers of the Unmapped Kingdoms,’ she muttered. ‘They take a different form in each kingdom, so we’re told, and up here in Rumblestar they’re—’
Casper winced as he thought of all the tall and terrible creatures he’d seen in the book of fairy tales he’d come across when tidying his mum’s bookshelves. ‘Oh, don’t tell me. They’re trolls, aren’t they? Or ogres?’
‘I wish.’ Utterly knocked on the door. ‘They’re wizards. But they’re stern as you like, especially if you forget to laugh at their jokes or you don’t listen properly in class. They wear robes made from enchanted parchment and hats encrusted with fallen stars and apparently –’ she lowered her voice ‘– they have starlight bubbling through their veins, which is why they’re so wise.’ She raised an eyebrow at Casper. ‘What’s running through your veins, Criminal?’
Casper’s knees wobbled. ‘Common sense.’
‘Is that so?’
Casper and Utterly jumped at the voice. While they had been talking the very tall, very narrow door had opened to reveal a very tall, very narrow man. His robes were indeed made from parchment – ancient paper covered in scripted words that seemed to be there one minute then gone the next. His hat was tall and pointed and glittering at the base, where the fallen stars glowed, and on his little finger a mirrored ring flashed. Casper looked at the Lofty Husk’s face. It was heavily wrinkled, like the skin of an apricot, and his nose was long and crooked.
Arlo slid back into Utterly’s dungaree pocket while Casper focused on the second item on his to-do list. Speak calmly.
‘G . . . Good evening, sir. My name is Casper Tock and . . . and I’m from England . . . In the Faraway?’ he said hopefully. ‘I would very much like to go home. Can you help me?’
The Lofty Husk was silent and still. Only his eyes moved, two pale orbs looking Casper up and down.
Utterly coughed. ‘Um, sir—’
The Lofty Husk raised his hand and Utterly fell quiet. ‘You found an object from the Unmapped Kingdoms somewhere in the Faraway, did you not? That is how you managed to get here . . .’ His voice was low and soft, like the first stirrings of thunder.
Casper gave an enormous sigh of relief because here was someone, at last, talking almost sensibly and who seemed to believe that Casper was somewhere he definitely didn’t want to be. His words tumbled out at the prospect of being shown a way home. ‘I was hiding in a grandfather clock and the gemstone in the key for it glowed and then . . . then . . . everything changed. Utterly just appeared out of nowhere and when I stepped out of the clock I found myself on a staircase in the sky!’
Casper drew the key out from his pocket and the Lofty Husk’s eyes stilled on the gemstone in the centre. ‘It seems that you have found one of the immortalised phoenix tears.’
‘Phoenix tears?’
The wizard reached out a long, spindly arm and took the key from Casper. He turned it over in his hands.
‘Interesting,’ he said quietly. ‘Very interesting. And where—’
A female voice interrupted from the room behind him. ‘Whom, pray, has decided to call upon us, Frostbite? And what, pray, do they want?’
Frostbite nudged Casper out of the view of those in The Precipice, but not before Casper caught a glimpse of a room lined with old-fashioned street lamps burning blue. There were all sorts of weather-measuring instruments hanging from the walls – thermometers, barometers, hygrometers and anemometers – as well as a huge telescope in one corner, then a large table scattered with leather-bound books. Around this sat men and women in pointed hats and parchment robes, and beyond them lay the open sky and a sheer drop down to the moat. The Precipice, Casper thought. It made sense . . .
Frostbite turned his head back towards the room very slightly. ‘Do not be alarmed, Blustersnap, it is only Utterly Thankless.’
‘Oh, what is to be done with that child?’ Blustersnap muttered. ‘If we are to issue the –’ she paused, as if choosing her next words carefully in Utterly’s hearing ‘– warning across the kingdom, then we must do so in the banqueting hall immediately rather than waste our time disciplining Bottlers-in-training. Send her away at once; we have important work to do now we know –’ another pause ‘– what we know.’
‘But—’ Utterly started.
Frostbite closed the door, then he turned to Casper, and as he did so, Casper’s skin crawled. Because he realised that he had stumbled across something more dangerous than a girl with explosive hair and an oversensitive dragon. This was one of the rulers of Rumblestar, but he had lied to his fellow wizards about Casper’s presence as coolly as if he had been declining a cup of tea.
Frostbite turned to Utterly. ‘I hope that you are able to produce an excuse for neglecting the curfew?’
Utterly reached into her pocket and drew out Arlo by mistake. She pushed him down, fumbled for the note from the Neverlate Tree and held that up instead. ‘I know that we’re living in uncertain times with Morg still alive in Everdark and that you and the rest of the Lofty Husks want to avoid scaring everyone but, well, what if there’s more to this business with the marvels than faulty pipework? What if someone, a criminal working for Morg, has found their way into Rumblestar and has been tampering with the marvels? The Neverlate Tree certainly seems to think so –’ Utterly glanced at Casper ‘– and so, sir, I present to you the criminal I captured.’
Frostbite was silent for a few seconds and then, to Casper’s surprise, he smiled thinly. ‘Congratulations, Utterly. The rest of the Lofty Husks will be delighted when I tell them that there has indeed been an intruder but that you have skilfully captured him.’
Utterly grinned, then high-fived Arlo who had peeked up from her pocket, then grinned again.
Casper, meanwhile, stared at Frostbite. ‘But . . . but you know I’m not a criminal! You said you believed I was from the Faraway earlier!’
Frostbite raised one wiry eyebrow. ‘I considered the possibility,’ he said coolly. ‘But then I decided . . . not.’
He smiled at Utterly and she smiled back, and Casper knew then that there wasn’t a chance Utterly would question what was going on; she had earned the praise she wanted and now she was basking in the spotlight.
‘We shall have a feast tomorrow, Utterly,’ Frostbite added. ‘In aid of your magnificent capture—’
Rumblestar Page 4
