Tales of Darkisle E-Book

Dave Rudden

• Herausgeber: Gill Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 124

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

Twelve-year-old Nell Cafferty didn't ask to be the eldest of five children. Acting as babysitter, bodyguard and bouncer all week long while her parents work has left no room for her ambitions of becoming a wrestling star. But when her siblings are taken hostage by enormous were-otters, it's on Nell to save them – and she'll do anything to get them back. Even if that means challenging their monstrous king who has terrible ambitions of his own …

Leseprobe

This book is dedicated to you, you monster.I hope you devour it.

Every seven years the Darkisle comes.

No one knows where it comes from. It never shows up in the same place twice. Islands are supposed to follow rules of science and logic, and the Darkisle follows no rules at all.

Instead, between one moment and the next, it is simply there. Like a spider on your pillow. Like the worst news of your life.

The Darkisle, like evil, is not easily mappable, or detectable or explainable.

But you know it when you see it.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Author / About the Illustrator

About Gill Books

About Conn of the Dead

Praise for Conn of the Dead

1

Monsters change us.

That’s why they’re dangerous. That’s why they’re frightening. It isn’t their savage claws, or their ripping teeth or the way they bonelessly seep into the space beneath your bed, just waiting for you to close your eyes …

(Okay, those things can be frightening too.)

But the scariest monsters? The iconic freaks? The real A-lister abominations who properly get inside your head? It isn’t just about fangs and talons for them. Oh no.

The real danger is that they can make you a monster too.

Vampire stories aren’t really about vampires. They’re about the blood in your veins, and how scary it would be if someone could get into it. Not just to drink it, but to infect it.

Someone who used to be a person.

Someone who isn’t a person any more.

Zombies? Same deal. Just one bite, and everything you are becomes that bite. A hunger infects you. And all you want to do is pass that hunger on.

Someone who looks like a person but isn’t.

Someone who could make you not a person too.

And if we’re talking about blockbuster monsters, the kind with their own movie franchises and action figures, there’s one you just can’t leave out.

Find a globe. Spin it. Pick a place with your finger. Wherever it lands, you can be sure they will have a story about a shapeshifter.

Berserker bear-men in Finland. The nogitsune fox-women of Japan, whose real faces could only be seen in pools of water. The werewolf warriors of the Fianna, and Irish children turning into swans.

Everyone’s afraid of losing control. Of turning into a beast. That’s why there’s no story older than the ‘were’. It’s even in the word. You were a person, and now you’re not.

Imagine it starts in your feet.

Kick off your shoes and give your toes a long, wriggling stretch. Feel that lovely warm elastic feeling that goes straight up your tendons right into your knees. Stretch your hands too; palms out, fingers up, until the backs of your hands turn into peaks and valleys of flesh and bone.

Doesn’t it feel good? Doesn’t it feel powerful?

Now imagine if the stretching didn’t stop.

Imagine your fingers extending. Lengthening like dough under a rolling pin. Imagine feeling every pop and crack from the inside as your body starts to rearrange.

Wrist and spine and elbow and neck – all that complicated machinery, no longer under your control.

New limbs. New nails. New teeth in new jaws.

A new and monstrous you.

That’s the terror of the ‘were’. Your whole life changing, just like that.

2

‘What do you mean, you’re pregnant?’

There’s a thing that happens in wrestling matches sometimes. You let your guard down, or get distracted, and someone bonks you harder than they wanted to. Harder than you wanted them to as well, probably, though maybe that goes without saying.

The wrestlers Nell knows all have different words for it. Nell’s dad calls it punch-drunk. Nell’s trainer Bianca calls it having your bell rung. Nell likes that term the most, because when it happens you can hear a bell, clanging away in your dizzied skull.

She’s hearing that bell now.

‘And we thought we’d tell you first,’ Nell’s mam says, through the ringing in Nell’s ears. ‘Before the little ones. So you can help get them ready.’

They’re in the Castle Café in Trim. It’s a very nice café. Strong lasagne, a proper amount of chips and all the soft drinks are in glass bottles, which everyone knows makes them taste better. The owner, Philomena, has seven kittens, and there are pictures of the kittens over the door, and they are all wearing Meath jerseys, which is a very nice touch.

If I explode, Nell thinks, it will endanger the kittens.

‘It’s just very sudden,’ she croaks.

‘We just found out ourselves,’ Dad says. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

He says it a bit too firmly, and that makes the sizzling pressure in Nell’s head worse.

‘Yeah,’ she says faintly. ‘Great. What are your parents going to say?’

‘What, Gran and Grandad?’ Mam says, raising her eyebrows. ‘Probably they’ll be delighted. Like everyone else. Nell, are you—’

‘How are you going to afford it?’

Nell says it so loudly that an old lady with enormous glasses glances over curiously at their table. Dad goes bright red. He is a very large man, which means an awful lot of red.

Nell’s mother never goes red at all. But her espresso cup is trembling, just a little, as she places it on her saucer.

‘Nell, I think the word you’re looking for is congratulations.’

Nell’s left eye is twitching. Her short, blunt nails are the same colour as her hair – an electric, chemical blue. Try as she might, she cannot stop them going ratatatat on the table, like an army’s marching boots.

‘I’m. Very. Happy. For. You.’

‘I know it’s a bit of a shock,’ Mam says sympathetically.

No, Mam, Nell wants to say. Nell’s younger brother Frankie – that was a shock. Three years after that, her younger sister Cait was a bigger shock. Three years after that, Peadar arrived.

Nell isn’t sure what this is, but when she takes a sip from her glass, she’s surprised the water doesn’t start to boil in her hand.

For Nell, anger has always felt like an animal. Something huge. Something packed with muscle, padding back and forth inside her skull, hot breath leaking between sharp, yellow teeth. What kind of animal, exactly, she isn’t sure. That’s why she tries to keep her frustration behind bars most of the time.

She’s not sure who she’ll be if she lets it out.

‘Everyone in work said congratulations,’ Dad says, sounding a little hurt.

Nell’s dad runs a gym in Trim. It is called the Trym.

‘Of course they did,’ Nell mutters. ‘They all love kids, because it means another person to spot them when they’re deadlifting.’

Nell’s being unfair, and she knows it, and that just makes her madder.

‘And you don’t?’ Nell’s mam asks quietly. ‘Love kids, I mean.’

Wrestling, like most combat sports, is as much about knowing when to stop as when to keep fighting. You’re not actually trying to hurt your opponent, after all. You’re trying to win. That’s not the same thing at all.

And winning is about being focused. About being strategic.

Nell knows all about strategy. Strategy is when you wait until your opponent is distracted and then you hit them with a steel chair.

‘I love the goblins. You know I do.’

And this is true. Nell treats being the oldest child like a competitive sport. She packs her siblings’ lunches. She cooks dinner twice a week – nothing fancy, but the exact kind of tasteless beige pasta that even a picky toddler will eat. She remembers vaccination appointments and crèche dress-up days and where Cait hides her scrunchies just before school.

Nell’s parents do too, of course. But Dad has the Trym and Mam is running a Save the Boyne environmental campaign, and so Nell has always picked up the slack. It’s just that, with three other kids in the family, there’s quite a lot of slack to pick up.

Four. Four other kids now.

‘It is wonderful,’ Nell says. She forces a smile, knowing there will be a time when she means it, and so what’s the point in being cross now? Being cross makes you a problem, and the Connolly family, whether they’re in the wrestling ring, or at a green protest, or just trying to get four kids to agree on a takeaway order, are problem solvers. ‘Congratulations.’

Mam’s expression softens.

‘I know it’ll be hard. But we’re Connollys. And that means—’

‘We do what we have to do,’ Nell finishes. It’s as close to a motto as the Connolly family have. ‘Whatever it takes.’

She stands up.

‘Can I … go? I’ve got training, and then I have to go pick up the goblins from swimming.’

Dad and Mam look at their watches at once.

‘Oh!’ Dad says. ‘You’re right. I’m sure I can—’

‘No,’ Nell says tiredly. ‘You have physio later for your shoulder. And Mam, you have that meeting with the volunteers and then you have to print the flyers for Saturday’s rubbish pick up.’

‘Yes,’ Mam says, already waving for the bill. ‘Well remembered.’

Nell shrugs on her coat. The animal of her anger is growling, low and deep.

‘Oh, and Nell? One more thing.’

Nell knows what Mam’s going to say before she says it.

‘Don’t tell the others. Not yet.’

‘Course not,’ Nell says. ‘Just like last time.’

3

This is Nell Connolly at 12 years old.

She has the design and proportions of a character from a 2D beat-’em-up – short and squat and blocky as a pixel –

(‘Low centre of gravity,’ Dad said with delight, the first time he saw Nell stand up on her fat little baby legs and suplex her teddy bear into the floor.)

– and, just like one of those characters, she is never truly still.

Nell is always cracking a knuckle, tapping a foot, stretching her calves. Her hair is gas-flame blue, short and swept up into a peak. She left her two front teeth on the mat two years ago at the Under-12s Leinster Girls’ Wrestling Championships and has so far refused replacements because she likes how it makes her smile look like fangs.

She’s not smiling now.

‘Do I love them?’ she mutters under her breath, as she strides straight up the stairs of the Swift Cultural Centre like she has a grudge against them, gym bag banging off the wall with every step.

‘Course I love them! I just didn’t love having to move into the attic so Mam can have my room! I don’t love having to take two years off family holidays because they’re impossible with new babies!’

It’s five in the evening. Already dark. There are always a million things going on in the Swift – classes, workshops, theatre shows – but if anyone notices the raging 12-year-old with blue hair stomping into Eddie MacMillan’s wrestling practice on the second floor, they pass no remarks.

That’s Trim all over. Being surrounded by so much history makes you a little hard to impress. Kids sit and gossip on millennium-old walls. You can eat your bag of chips in the shadow of a castle. The town has been burned and rebuilt and burned and rebuilt so many times that, like a retro video game, there’s a lot of fight under the cute.

Nell likes that about the place. She’s a fighter too.

‘Alright, sprog!’

Eddie drops the mat he’s laying out and gives Nell a huge wave. He’s so lanky and beardy he looks like a mop with abs, and the little room he rents for their training is barely big enough to contain his enthusiasm. The other five girls wave too.

Eddie’s wife Bianca gives Nell a solemn nod. She plays bass and kick-boxes, and all the girls in the class agree that it should be illegal to be as cool as her.

‘You ready to spar?’ Bianca asks.

The thud of Nell’s bag hitting the floor is like the full stop on the end of a text.

‘You look ready,’ Bianca confirms.

Anybody who’s ever been angry before might be forgiven for thinking that Nell fights because she has a temper. It makes a kind of sense. Like a were-creature from myth, you’re not as in charge of your body as you think. There are all sorts of chemical reactions happening under the hood that you don’t control at all.

And when someone’s hurt you, or scared you, your body is wired to want to do something about it.

But when Nell squares off against Marcella Ryan (11, blonde, looks like a Disney princess on day release), all Nell’s frustration at her parents drains away. There is no annoyance. No overwhelm. Out in the real world, there are all sorts of ways people can treat you, and it’s on you to somehow make sense of it.

In the ring, there are rules. There is strategy. It’s simple. Peaceful. Or as peaceful as things can be when you’re trying to get another kid in a headlock.

Forty seconds later, Marcella is down.

‘Nice,’ Marcella gasps, and then taps the mat to signal she’s had enough – another thing Nell wishes you could do in the real world.

Nell lets her out of the pin, and the two girls sit grinning beside each other as Bianca explains what they did right and what they did wrong.

‘I wanted to tell you,’ the older woman says, when training is over and they’re all cleaning up. She sits down beside Nell and lowers her voice.

‘We’ve been chatting. Myself, Eddie, some of the higher-ups in the Irish Amateur Wrestling Association. We want to put a team together. See if we can send someone to compete in Europe. Maybe even the Worlds. Maybe even the Olympics someday.’

Nell’s eyes go huge.

‘That’d be amazing! We’ve never sent any girls to—’

‘Not yet,’ Bianca says, because that’s what she always says, and the two of them share a grin.

‘It’d be a lot of work. Not just training, but planning, organising, representing us and the sport …’

‘Of course,’ Nell says. ‘Whoever you’d choose would have to really commit …’ She looks around. The other girls have gone. Eddie waits by the door, a hopeful grin on his face.

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t say anything now,’ Bianca says gently. ‘Talk to your parents. Have a think. It is a big commitment.’

Nell’s smile disappears.