The Monster in the Lake E-Book

Louie Stowell

• Herausgeber: Nosy Crow
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Kit is a wizard. The youngest wizard in the world, in fact. But her magic keeps going wrong, and all kinds of weird stuff has started happening - exploding fireballs, animals talking when they shouldn't be, and a very strange new arrival in a nearby park. So Kit and her two best friends - along with their local librarian - set off to investigate, and to save the world... again. Brilliantly illustrated throughout by Davide Ortu, The Monster in the Lake is the funny, exciting, action-packed sequel to The Dragon in the Library.

Leseprobe

To my parents. L.S.

To my friend Stella. D.O.

1

THIS NEW NOTEBOOK BELONGS TO JOSH. HANDS OFF IF YOU ARE NOT JOSH. IF YOU ARE JOSH, PLEASE READ ON.

IF YOU ARE ALITA OR KIT YOU CAN READ OVER MY SHOULDER IF YOU LIKE BUT NO ADDING ANYTHING.

AND IF YOU ARE KIT, NO GETTING DIRT ON THIS BOOK. IT IS NEW!

Dear Future Josh,

You will probably have many exciting things happen to you in the future, where you live, so here are a few notes so you don’t forget the exciting things that have already happened.

2By the way, are you prime minister yet? Did you stop global warming? Are you a famous writer? I can’t wait to get to the future to find out!

So here’s what’s happened recently. At the start of the summer holidays, our friend Kit discovered that she’s a wizard – the youngest one in the world as far as I know, and I know a lot. Me and Alita discovered that we aren’t wizards (boo), but we did help to save the world (yay). Here are some other important facts you need to know about wizards, and about our summer so far…

1) Wizards are real but they don’t all have long white beards or pointy hats. They DO have cloaks though, and our local wizard, Faith Braithwaite, wears a lot of dangly star earrings and very3bright lipstick.

2) Every wizard has a second job: running a library. This is because underneath every library sleeps a dragon. If that dragon wakes up, terrible things happen. So when a librarian tells you to “shh” in a library, it’s to save the world from fire and chaos, not because they’re trying to spoil your fun.

3) At the start of the summer holidays, an evil businessman called Hadrian Salt tried to wake the dragon under our library because he wanted to use its power to become a wizard. Me, Kit, Alita and Faith stopped him using magic, books and our brains. My brain in particular.

4) Some books in our library are4magical, and I’m not allowed to read them out loud unless Faith is there – book spells are so powerful that the spells can start working even if you’re not a wizard. There are other magical books too, called portal books. You can use them to travel huge distances between libraries.

Portal books are also really fun because it’s like you’re inside the book. For example, there’s one that’s a book about gardening and you get to walk through all these beautiful gardens. The ones with dangerous animals and monsters in aren’t as fun though, because you have to run, and I don’t like running. My brain is mightier than my legs.

5) Beneath the library is a forest5called the Book Wood. It’s also known as the Stacks, and it’s where all the really magical books are kept. Over time, some of those books turned back into trees, and their pages turned into trunks and leaves, covered in spells. I am DEFINITELY not allowed to read the spells on the book trees. They’re some of the most powerful spells in existence, and apparently I might blow myself up. Kit’s not allowed to read them either because she’s only a trainee wizard. But that’s not much of a risk because she’s more likely to want to climb a tree than read one.

6) I think that’s it. Oh wait, no. I haven’t said anything about the dragon who sleeps beneath our library. She’s called Draca, and it’s part of our job to read to her – it helps her stay asleep6and makes sure her dreams are full of stories. You can climb into Draca’s dream with her to talk to her. She doesn’t always make sense but she’s a friendly dragon, not a scary one.

7) Me and Alita have been helping Kit to train to become a wizard – along with Faith, who’s doing most of the teaching, because Kit is too young to go to the Wizard Academy. Kit’s getting better at magic but she still makes a lot of mistakes. She also doesn’t like reading so it’s up to me and Alita to learn all about how magic works so we can tell her when she’s wrong.

Josh out!

PS: Josh forgot to add that there’s a half-dragon, half-dog who lives7in the library, called Dogon. Dogon is the sweetest little creature that ever lived. He breathes the cutest fire. Also, it’s mostly Josh who’s always telling Kit she’s wrong.

Alita xxx

I TOLD YOU NO ADDING ANYTHING, ALITA! AND I DON’T ALWAYS TELL KIT SHE’S WRONG, ONLY WHEN SHE IS WRONG!

PPS Come on guys, you’ve been riting in that notebook for practically HOURS, let’s go and do something fun. This is the summer holidays not skool!

Kit

KIT, THIS IS MY BOOK. STOP 8WRITING IN IT! YOU DON’T EVEN LIKE WRITING! YOU DIDN’T EVEN SPELL ‘WRITING’ RIGHT! AND WE CAN GO OUTSIDE WHEN I AM DONE.

OK. I AM DONE.

Josh out again, with this notebook going in a SAFE place this time.

9

CHAPTER 1

MISS-SPELLINGS

In the Book Wood beneath the library, Kit Spencer was practising spells. She was a stocky girl, with red hair, pale skin and more mud than you’d usually see on a person who wasn’t a professional pig wrestler.

At that moment, Kit was wearing her (not-yet-muddy) wizard’s cloak and hovering a ball of fire above her head. Her tongue was out, and her face was screwed up in concentration. The goal was to raise the fireball above her head, then lower it to the ground. So far, so good…

Faith was guiding her through the spell. The librarian was a tall, dark-skinned black woman, 10with ever-so-slightly-sarcastic eyebrows. She was wearing a long, fluorescent-yellow dress and a chunky blue necklace. Her hair was in long locs, and her elegant nails were painted the same electric blue as her necklace. Unlike Kit, she wasn’t wearing a cloak: mostly wizards only wore those for ceremonies and parties. But as a wizard in training, Kit wore hers to track her progress. Each time she learned a new spell, her cloak gained an extra stripe of yellow at the bottom. She currently had a band of yellow about the width of her hand.

She was hoping that, any moment, she’d be getting her Controlled Fireball spell stripe. She was so close!

Faith was standing beside Kit, watching the fireball intently. “Now, slowly … use the gesture I showed you … and slowly, slowly lift the ball a few inches. That’s it. Gently…”

Kit was concentrating so hard that her forehead was a wall of sweat. This was the hardest spell she’d tried so far. The words of the spell weren’t 11hard: just a quick “Feuer, oben” at the beginning. But after that, you had to focus your mind so hard it felt like you were going to burst a blood vessel somewhere deep in your skull.

Now, in this moment, Kit could feel the magic flowing through her as she focused on the fire, keeping it in its ball shape, keeping it steady…

She lifted her hands just a little. The fireball wobbled and dipped.

But then it rose, slowly, slowly…

Kit felt something new building inside her. She’d never managed to get this spell to work properly. Was this what it was supposed to feel like? It was intense! Almost painful…

“I’m doing it!” Kit cried. “I can feel it worki—”

At which point the fireball flew up into the air and exploded like a firework over the treetops, scattering light of every colour.

“AAAAAARGH!” Kit shrieked, shaking her hands as if they were on fire, then tripping on a root and tumbling backwards on to her bottom with a 12bone-jarring BUMP.

“Are you OK?” Faith rushed forward to help her up, checking her over for injuries. “You’re not burned, are you? Or in any way broken?”13

14“No, I … don’t think so.” Kit’s bottom was bruised, but the heat of the spell had all flown upwards. She peered up above the trees to where the fireball had exploded.

“Where did it go?” she asked.

Faith waved a hand above them. “There are protection spells above the trees, to stop any rogue magic damaging the library above. They absorbed your fireball spell.” She smiled. “So don’t worry, it’s safe to make mistakes down here.”

Kit screwed up her brow. “The thing is, I thought the spell was working. I mean … it was working. I just don’t know what went wrong. Something felt … weird.” She looked down at her cloak. No new yellow stripe. Her heart sank.

“Well,” said Faith, “it’s a bright sunny day out there – maybe you got distracted? I’m guessing you actually want to be outside? Maybe you need a break?”

Kit felt annoyed. Sure, yes, she did have a habit of getting distracted. And yes, it was a sunny 15August afternoon and every other child her age was outside in the park or at the swimming pool. But she hadn’t got distracted. Not this time.

Faith picked up the pile of books they’d been using and ushered her towards the exit of the Book Wood. “Come on. I think that’s enough work for today. Break time.”

“I didn’t just get distracted, though,” said Kit, not wanting Faith to think she was lazy. “I felt something. Just before it went wrong, I had this … this rush, here.” She put her hand to her chest.

Faith gave her a curious look. “That doesn’t sound right,” she said. With the books balanced on the crook of one arm, she pulled something out of her pocket. It looked like a tiny silver flute but had a little blue gemstone at one end, instead of a mouthpiece. She pressed some little keys and the gemstone glowed red.

“What’s that?” asked Kit.

“Thaumometer,” said Faith. She held it away from her and waved it around, back and forth, in 16front of Kit. “It measures magic. Hmmm… The wild magic readings in the air are a bit high, even for down here near the dragon.” She shook the thaumometer, and looked at it again. Its gemstones were lit up like a Christmas tree, and it emitted a faint hum. “Hmm… Perhaps it picked up the extra magic in my pocket. Too many magical objects in there; I must have a clear-out.” She patted a large pocket in her dress, which lay flat against her hip and didn’t appear to have anything in. But it rattled as she slapped it. Faith’s pockets were like that. Infinitely full of stuff, but always looking empty. Kit had begged to learn the spell that made them like that, but Faith had told her it wasn’t a specific spell – just 17what happens if you stuff enough magical items into a normal pocket, over time.

“Now, you go out into the sun and have fun. I have a meeting at the Wizards’ Council to attend.” She pulled some sunglasses out of the flat pocket. “Mustn’t forget these.”

The Wizards’ Council were in charge of magic in England, Wales and Scotland, and all librarians had to attend meetings with them at least once a year. They were very old, very grumpy, and their meetings were so long and dull that Faith admitted she sometimes took a nap halfway through.

“The trick is wearing sunglasses,” Faith had said. “They don’t know you’re asleep if they can’t see your eyes.”

Kit escaped into the sunshine, glad that she was only a trainee wizard for once.

18

CHAPTER 2

THE PARK

Once out in the warm, free air, Kit went to find her friends Alita and Josh. As she expected, they were lying underneath a tree, reading. Alita was curled up round her pile of books like a neatly-dressed dragon guarding a papery hoard. Her black hair was, as always, perfectly plaited, and her skin had the healthy brown glow of someone who always ate their fruit and vegetables without having to be bribed. In fact, she had a little container full of mango that her mum had packed her. Kit wasn’t sure how it was physically possible, but Alita was managing to eat the mango while she read without getting yellowy-orange stains all over her pale blue dress.

19Tall, skinny Josh had tight dark curls, brown skin, and an expression of extreme concentration. He was taking notes as he read. Josh never went anywhere without a notebook. He had an amazing memory, but insisted he needed to write everything down “for posterity”. Kit wasn’t sure, but she thought posterity had something to do with your bottom.

Josh was reading a book on Arthurian legends and wizard history, which Faith had found him from the Stacks. He’d put a blanket on the ground to lie on, partly to keep himself from getting grass stains, but also to protect the book.

Alita had her own rug and had spread out several books. She had the latest Danny Fandango – Danny Fandango and the Crown of Bones, which she’d just read for the fourth time that summer – and now she’d moved on to another, even fatter book, The Lord of the Rings. Kit thought a book that long would give you a permanent wrist injury. Trying to read it over Alita’s shoulder certainly made Kit’s 20brain feel injured.

“Hi, Kit!” said Josh. “Did you know King Arthur was actually a wizard, and Merlin wasn’t?”

Kit told him she did not know that. She wasn’t a hundred per cent sure she needed to, either.

“So,” Josh went on, full of excitement about his new discoveries. “Merlin was a fake, who tried to steal Arthur’s power! And Guinevere was a wizard too, only her story got covered up by history because back then people thought only men should be wizards.”

“History sounds annoying,” said Kit. “What are you reading, Alita?”

“I’m just up to the bit where Frodo arrives in Rivendell with the other hobbits and Strider,” said Alita, as if Kit should know who any of those people or places were, or what a hobbit was.

“What’s wrong?” asked Alita, seeing Kit’s gloomy expression.

“My spell blew up,” said Kit. “Big fireball, boom.” She threw herself on the ground next to 21them, gaining some new grass stains on her knees, shorts and T-shirt in the process. “And now Faith probably thinks I’m lazy.”

“What went wrong with the spell?” asked Alita.

“Did you get the hand gestures right?” asked Josh. He demonstrated the correct way of performing the gesture to lift the fireball.

“Yes!” said Kit. “I swear, I did.”

“Even the bit where you lock your elbow?” asked Josh.

Alita nudged him. “Kit knows what she’s doing, Captain Cleverclogs,” she said.

“I do! I did it all right!” said Kit, with a grateful look at Alita. “But it was like the magic was misbehaving.”

“Are you sure you didn’t pronounce the words wrong?” asked Josh, giving her a sceptical look.

Kit rolled her eyes. “Fine, don’t believe me. Let’s go for a walk.” She picked up Alita and Josh’s books. “Wow, these are heavy.”

“Not if you’re sitting down reading them,” said 22Josh hopefully, not getting up.

But Kit stared until Josh and Alita reluctantly left their reading spot and picked up their blankets, and strolled down towards the lake to look at the ducks.

A dog walker was coming towards them. Kit 23thought it looked like the best job in the world, just walking around the park with a pack of dogs. There was a German shepherd, a sausage dog carrying a stick in its mouth, a tiny Chihuahua, a big pit bull with the sweetest face that Kit had ever seen, and, all in all, more dogs than Kit could keep count of. 24Alita was grinning even more widely than Kit.

“So. Many. Dogs,” she whispered.

A large dog broke away and squatted down for a wee, and the pack came to a halt. The dog walker gave the children a toothy smile. “Would you like to say hello?” He gestured to the dogs. “They’re all very friendly.”