Voices, she discovered, were the key, and if she could swallow the voice of every man, woman and child in Erkenwald before the next midnight sun rose she would possess the eternal life she craved. By midwinter, a new sound rang out from Winterfang: an anthem played on an organ made of icicles, accompanied by a choir of voices that once belonged to the Ice Queen’s prisoners.
The anthem called some children out of hiding, so desperate were they to be reunited with their parents whose voices they could hear above the music, but most knew better than that. They realised that the stolen voices were a trap and they vowed to lie low until they could form a plan to defeat the Ice Queen and rescue their parents.
But some people are not very good at lying low. They have wandering limbs and fierce hearts and more often than not they have heads full of wild ideas. Our story follows two such children – an unlikely pair, some would say, but you cannot pick and choose who adventures happen to. They pounce when you are least expecting them, then they hurtle forward with surprising speed. In fact, once an adventure digs its claws in, there is not an awful lot you can do about it.
Especially when magic is involved . . .
Eska sat, knees tucked under her chin and head bowed, on the pedestal inside the music box. Its glass dome curved around her, fixed tight to the silver base, and with her flimsy dress and bare feet she might easily have passed for a mechanical ballerina. But Eska was no clockwork figure. She was a twelve-year-old girl with darting eyes and a pulse that trembled every time the Ice Queen drew near.
Eska closed her eyes and tried to wiggle her toes. They didn’t move. She made to arch her back and then stretch her neck. Again, nothing moved. Even her hair – a tumble of red so full of knots it seemed to grow in circles – lay absolutely still down her back. But it was a ritual she attempted every morning in case, by some miracle, the Ice Queen’s hold over her limbs had weakened. It never did though. Not for a second. The music box had been Eska’s prison for months and she could only blink wide blue eyes at the horrors that unfolded in Winterfang’s vaulted hall.
She looked beyond the dome, through the ice arches in front of her which faced out over Erkenwald. The first sunrise in six months spilled across the horizon. Frozen rivers shimmered, the snow on the tundra sparkled and the sea was a dazzling jigsaw of ice and meltwater. It was mid-March then, Eska thought. That was when the light returned to the kingdom – she’d heard the Tusk guards talking.
Her chest tightened as she thought back to the day she’d awoken in the music box, her body locked under the Ice Queen’s spell. The midnight sun had been burning and she had watched it for two whole months before the dark stole in. Eska swallowed. With the light returning now, she knew she had to have been the Ice Queen’s prisoner for nine months, but even more frightening was the knowledge that she didn’t have a single memory of her life before Winterfang. There must have been something else once – a home, a family, friends perhaps – since the spell the Ice Queen uttered every morning spoke of her as the stolen child. But stolen from where? From whom? It was all a terrible blank. Because the Ice Queen didn’t only steal people and voices: she stole memories, too, if it suited her.
At the sound of footsteps, Eska snapped out of her thoughts, and from the corner of her eye she watched a familiar scene unravel. The Ice Queen sat, very still, before an organ made of icicles in the middle of the hall, then she raised her hands to the keys. Eska waited. She knew what came next because it was the same every morning.
Chords drifted through the palace – up and down the snow-strewn staircases, into the towers surrounding the palace domes, across the bridge connecting the iceberg to the mainland and then out over the miles of frozen tundra beyond. The chords were solemn, like the groaning of a faraway glacier, and as they swelled and throbbed Eska winced. The Ice Queen was getting ready to feed on her stolen voices . . .
To Be Continued . . .
Abi Elphinstone grew up in Scotland where she spent most of her childhood building dens, hiding in tree houses and running wild across highland glens. After being coaxed out of her tree house, she studied English at Bristol University and then worked as a teacher in Africa, Berkshire and London. She is the author of THE UNMAPPED CHRONICLES, SKY SONG and THE DREAMSNATCHER TRILOGY. When she’s not writing, Abi volunteers for Beanstalk charity, speaks in schools and travels the world – from the Arctic Circle to the mountains of Mongolia – looking for her next story.
You can find more about Abi at www.abielphinstone.com or follow her on social media:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/abi.elphinstone;
Twitter: @moontrug;
Instagram: @moontrugger
Also by Abi Elphinstone
The Dreamsnatcher
The Shadow Keeper
The Night Spinner
Sky Song
The Unmapped Chronicles
Everdark
Calling All Young Eco Warriors!
Rumblestar might be safe now but with
Morg on the loose, the rest of the
Unmapped Kingdoms - Jungledrop,
Crackledawn and Silvercrag - are in
danger and the consequences for
The Faraway, which is already on the brink
of disaster as a result of global warming,
could be devastating. In the next books in
The Unmapped Chronicles, you’ll see
The Faraway’s animals and plants nearing
extinction, its oceans drying up and its
ice caps melting. I wish these were imagined
scenarios but they’re not. From climate
change to plastic waste, from overfishing
to deforestation, our planet is in trouble
and it needs YOU to help it. So, here you
go for my Top 3 Eco Warrior Tips!
1.
Visit www.Authors4Oceans.org and sign the pledge which lists simple ways in which you can help protect our oceans and the beautiful animals that inhabit them
2.
Host a ‘Go Wild with Born Free’ fundraiser. You can download free posters to promote your event from www.bornfree.org.uk. Every penny you raise will help Born Free care for endangered animals
3.
Bring eco living into your home: recycle, drink tap water, turn off lights, power down computers, donate rather than throw away old toys
Note for teachers: full scheme of work on Rumblestar – created by Ian Eagleton from The Reading Realm
– available to download for free from:
http://www.abielphinstone.com/schools
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
A CBS COMPANY
Text Copyright © 2019 Abi Elphinstone
Cover illustration Copyright © 2019 Carrie Ann
Unmapped Chronicles logo and Map Copyright © 2019 Patrick Knowles
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of the author and illustrators to be identified as the author and illustrators of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor, 222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB
www.simonandschuster.co.uk
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Special edition ISBN 9781471187568
PB ISBN 9781471173660
eBook ISBN 9781471173677
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset in the UK by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) L
td, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Rumblestar Page 24
