The Wrath of the Woolington Wyrm E-Book

Karen Foxlee

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Children's Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: Miss Mary-Kate Martin's Guide to Monsters
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 178

Beschreibung

'A deliciously thrilling mystery, full of heart, wisdom, wit and ingenuity' Edwina Wyatt, award-winning author of The Secrets of Magnolia Moon 'Easily one of the most charming books for young readers I have come across... A perfect balance of fun, fantasy, humour and innocence' Katrina Nannestad, author of the Travelling Bookshop series _______________ There are those that hunt monsters to harm them and there are those that hunt monsters to help them. Which one are you? Dressed in sparkly red shoes and carrying her strawberry-scented notebook, Mary-Kate accompanies her archaeologist mother to the quiet English countryside to investigate some unusual bones found in an old well. But soon she realises that the village of Woolington is not as peaceful as it seems; the ground trembles beneath them, there are mysterious noises, and the locals are obsessed with a terrifying old legend. Could there be any truth in the myth of the beast who lives in the ancient well? With the help of a new friend, Mary-Kate starts getting to the bottom of this monstrous mystery.

Leseprobe

For Alice May Foxlee. KF

For my nephew, Jasper. May you always be strong and soft. FC

Contents

Title Page Dedication Map of Woolington Well The Wrath of the Woolington WyrmAcknowledgementsMary-Kate’s legendary adventures continue in …About the AuthorAbout the IllustratorCopyright

The Wrath of the Woolington Wyrm

The earth trembled as the creature left its lair at night. It wound its way across the fields and slunk over the town bridge. It slithered across the churchyard and its skin shimmered as it slid past the windows of sleeping children. Its shadow raced along the stone walls by the light of the moon. It glided across the village green and then silently through the narrow cobblestoned streets. It went past the pub and the tiny teashops, past the village library, searching. It had known the place for centuries. In the market square it stopped.

It let out a screech that was wild and full of rage.

That cry echoed down the laneways, through the thatched roof cottages, reverberated over the fields.

It was a noise that had not been heard for many years.

It is a common misconception that monster hunters need much equipment: rope, nets, stun guns, night-vision goggles, cages and lorries. It is important to note that none of these items are necessary.

P.K. Mayberry’s Complete Guide to Monsters of the Northern Hemisphere

Miss Mary-Kate Martin chose from her lucky items collection carefully. First, she chose the lucky silver packet that contained the last seven pieces of gum that her father had left behind before he disappeared on Mount Shishapangma when she was five. She placed it carefully at the bottom of her suitcase.

She also chose the lucky novelty torch shaped like Big Ben and her lucky stress ball, which was a miniature world globe. It didn’t seem nearly enough lucky things for a train trip to somewhere she’d never been, so she added her lucky international coin collection that contained thirty-three coins in a small glass jar.

‘Make sure you pack sensible shoes,’ her mother, Professor Martin, called from her bedroom.

Mary-Kate looked down at the red sparkly shoes she was wearing.

‘Yes, Prof,’ she said. Prof was what Mary-Kate called her mother.

Mary-Kate’s dress and hair bow were black. Her shoes were red and so was her backpack. Both of them were sparkly. It was all perfectly coordinated, with exactly the right proportions of sparkle and colour. It made her feel good. If she changed the shoe colour it would mess things up. She’d be only twenty-five per cent sparkle. She’d begin to worry. She’d worry that by not wearing matching clothes something would happen. Something terrible. Like a train crash. Or an avalanche. Or an avalanche onto a train travelling through a mountain tunnel. Especially the train she was going to travel on that morning. Although she doubted there were any mountains or snow on the way to Woolington Well, she couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure, so she packed her favourite lucky oversized handkerchief as well.

Many things set off these types of thoughts:

Brown colouring-in pencilsBeginnings and endingsFacing backwards on trainsSaying the wrong thing during small talkAnd sudden changes.

That morning had been filled with change.

‘Archaeological digs require sensible shoes,’ said Professor Martin, coming to stand at the door. She was wearing her sensible tan trousers, brown boots and brown utility jacket. Brown was a problem for Mary-Kate, but at least all the colours matched. ‘Are you feeling anxious?’

She sat on Mary-Kate’s bed and looked at the pile of lucky things in the suitcase.

‘No,’ lied Mary-Kate.

‘I think it will be fun to have you along on a work trip with me. And exciting! I’ve heard it’s a darling little village and you will have lots to explore.’

‘What about my geography project? It’s due on Wednesday,’ said Mary-Kate, hopefully. Maybe she could stay at home alone. It was only two nights.

‘You can do it on the train.’ Professor Martin smiled.

‘It’s not that I don’t want to go with you,’ said Mary-Kate, picking up her lucky stress ball and giving it a forceful squish. ‘It’s just, well …’

‘A bit out of the ordinary?’

Professor Martin was always catching trains and planes to faraway places for archaeological work. Mary-Kate had never been with her before.

‘I’m used to staying with Granny,’ Mary-Kate said apologetically.

‘I know. But Granny is on one of her bus trips; you know how she loves them. So, it hasn’t worked out this time.’

Besides her mother, Mary-Kate’s granny was her favourite person in the world, even if she wore colourful mismatched clothes. Granny loved spicy international cuisine and when Professor Martin was away, she ordered takeaway and let Mary-Kate stay up late to watch the shopping channel, which Mary-Kate found soothing. They would go for long walks together around the park, side by side, comfortably silent.

Lately, though, Granny had discovered bus trips. She’d been to Scotland and then to Stonehenge, and now she was going in the Channel Tunnel to Paris. She seemed to be forever packing up her zebra-print suitcase with floral scarves and leopard-print tracksuits and heading out the front door.

Mary-Kate squished her globe stress ball again.

‘It will be fun, Mary-Kate. A few days off school. I know it’s been tricky for you there lately,’ said Professor Martin kindly.

‘Tricky’ was not the word Mary-Kate would have used to describe how she’d been feeling at her school, Bartley Towers. If she used the H scale of how Horrid it had been there lately, she would be registering a triple H. Some days were one H days. Horrible. Others were double H days. Horrible and Horrendous. Lately they’d been triple H days. Horrible, Horrendous and Hideous.

La-la-la, she said to herself, because this sometimes helped to get rid of bad thoughts. She squeezed the globe stress ball extra hard.

‘Why don’t you pack some sensible clothes, Mary-Kate?’ said Professor Martin, hopefully. ‘And remember to pack your lucky stress ball too.’

Mary-Kate’s mother went back to her own packing. Mary-Kate knew the Professor’s hard-shell suitcase would contain nothing but sensible clothes in shades of brown. There would also be lots of digging tools, torches, brushes and special sprays. Professor Martin had been going away on archaeological digs for as long as Mary-Kate could remember and she’d watched her pack many times.

Mary-Kate looked wistfully at the lucky items she’d packed and added her second-favourite lucky oversized handkerchief as well. Into her backpack she placed her geography homework, her unused strawberry-scented notebook and unopened glitter pens, and her mobile phone. She placed her lucky stress ball on top. She’d need it on the train.

‘Are you nearly ready?’ called Professor Martin. ‘The taxi will be here any minute.’

On the train, Mary-Kate was glad that her seat faced forwards. She tried not to think about the fact that she was going on a work trip with her mother to a place she didn’t know. The only place they’d travelled to together was their annual holiday to the seaside. Each year they went to the exact same hotel with Granny and ate the exact same breakfasts and dinners, and played the exact same games of cards at night. Mary-Kate closed her eyes and wished that this was where they were going. Perhaps if she kept her eyes closed long enough that could actually happen? A whole season could pass, and she’d open her eyes and it would be summer and there would be Granny eating crisps and playing solitaire on her phone as familiar countryside whizzed past.

‘Perhaps you could do your project?’ suggested Professor Martin, who always knew when Mary-Kate was anxious.

‘That might help,’ said Mary-Kate, taking out her homework notebook and her pens.

Only it didn’t.

It was the pens that were the trouble.

Twelve glitter pens in a plastic case, unopened.

Back in the safety of her bedroom with all her lucky things packed, she’d added the pens, thinking, This is definitely the kind of day that I will be able toopen my pens. Number 1: I will have no choice. I haveno other pens packed. Number 2: Today feels like a penpacket-opening day.

Here on the train, she held them in her lap unopened.

They looked so perfectly pristine nestled in their clear plastic case. Once she opened them, they’d never be perfect again.

Mary-Kate, you have trouble with beginnings andendings, her granny always said kindly, but you’re verygood with in-betweens. Mary-Kate took a deep breath and closed her eyes again. Maybe she could just keep them closed for the rest of the day.

‘Mary-Kate,’ said Professor Martin, who’d looked up from the Archaeology Monthly magazine she was reading. ‘I know you can do this.’

Mary-Kate opened her eyes.

Did her mother mean go on an unexpected archaeology trip, or open the pens? Or something else? Professor Martin had the determined gleam in her eyes that she often wore. She was a strong woman, always disappearing on adventures to strange locations: jungles and deserts and remote mountain ranges. Mary-Kate wished she was like her mother.

The Professor must mean the pens.

‘Yes, I know I can,’ Mary-Kate said and tried to add that same determined glint to her eyes as she opened the pens with a small click. The train did not suddenly crash. London, grey and miserable, kept sliding past the windows in a blur.

The geography project was to draw and name the peaks of the Swiss Alps. The Swiss Alps were very jagged in the image Mary-Kate had copied from her mobile phone, so she attempted to make them look a little neater, rounding off the pointiest parts. She coloured them in purple and yellow because those were complementary colours. Outside, the grey city gave way to green fields. The train rushed through the countryside, little towns passing fleetingly.

‘So, this town is called Woolington Well?’ she asked tentatively, once she was satisfied that the alps looked much better. The train still hadn’t crashed since she’d opened the glitter pens, so that was a positive. It had kept speeding on through the countryside.

‘Yes, it is,’ said Professor Martin. ‘And a large shopping centre is to be built there. A small action group have applied for a stop work order because they believe a place of historical significance has been partially destroyed. An old well. They believe that there are bones present.’

‘What kind of bones?’

‘I can’t be sure until I’ve looked at them. They also reported pottery in the same location, so maybe it was once a burial ground. Or maybe it could be something more mysterious,’ she said. ‘You know how I like mysterious. Now wouldn’t that be exciting on your first trip!’

Mary-Kate smiled but she secretly hoped it was a very un-mysterious type of trip. She didn’t think she’d be very good at mysterious. She was better at facts. Facts made her feel almost as comfortable as the shopping channel and thirty-minute infomercials on vegetable slicers. Still, something about those words bones and burial ground had given her butterflies.

Maybe going on a work trip with her mother would be interesting.

‘Will I get to watch you?’ she asked.

‘Well, you can,’ said Professor Martin, ‘or you might like to go exploring too. I think the country air will do you the world of good.’

Mary-Kate tried to picture herself exploring but had to stop. A lot of things went wrong for explorers. They became lost. They ran out of water. They were chased by tigers. They went up mountains and never came back.

She took a deep breath, unzipped her backpack and retrieved her lucky globe stress ball. Everythingwill be fine, Mary-Kate, she said silently to herself. She picked up a glitter pen and added a raspberry glitter outline to each alp.

‘Oh, and I forgot to say,’ said Professor Martin, lifting her magazine again and sliding her glasses back up her nose, ‘the man who is building the shopping centre, Lord Woolington, has invited us for lunch. At his country house. Apparently, it has its own maze!’

The train rushed through the countryside. The sky was a brilliant blue and Mary-Kate leaned her cheek against the window to look up at the sun. She would not think of exploring. Or being lost on mountain sides. Or her father. She would not think of Bartley Towers or the jaggedness of the Swiss Alps. She would not think of beginnings and glitter pens that had lost their perfectness.

She breathed in and out the way she’d been taught.

She listened for five things that she could hear, an exercise her counsellor, Meg, had taught her. The sound of the train. A man opposite them opening a can. A page turning. The compartment door opening. A cough.

Five things she could feel. Her feet in her favourite red sparkly shoes. Her black woollen stockings on her legs. The window glass against her cheek. The raspberry glitter pen in her hand. The little lucky ring her granny had given her, which she wore on her finger.

Five things she could see. The sun. A distant church spire. A flock of sheep. A stone wall. One lone dark cloud far on the horizon. She noticed her own reflection, right there in the window, staring back at her. Her favourite black hair bow, her long brown hair.

There, that felt better.

‘I’m going to try to look forward to visiting Woolington Well,’ she said softly, and Professor Martin smiled at her.

There are, though, several small items that a monster hunter finds indispensable. The first of these will be useful in numerous situations: an umbrella.

P.K. Mayberry’s Complete Guide to Monsters of the Northern Hemisphere

Professor Martin held her large black umbrella over them as they trudged with their suitcases along the muddy lane. They had arrived at an empty train station, the representative from the shopping centre absent, and when they both checked their phones, they discovered there was no mobile service. A flock of damp sheep watched them in a bored fashion.

‘Well, I said it would be exciting, didn’t I?’ laughed Professor Martin, as they set off towards a distant collection of buildings nestled in the fields.

Apart from the misty rain, which showed no sign of abating, the countryside was very pretty, and Mary-Kate was glad for it. It really didn’t look like the sort of place where anything could ever go wrong. It was postcard perfect. They crossed a little arched bridge that spanned a small burbling stream and passed the village green, surrounded by peaceful spreading oaks. A little church spire peeked through the thatched rooftops and the cottages had yards filled with tumbling roses and hollyhocks.

Behind the village a large round hill rose, covered in boulders, but Mary-Kate decided it didn’t look like the sort of hill there could be an avalanche on. Nearby it, there stood a large old stately home. Even from a distance Mary-Kate could tell it was very grand. It had many windows and great stone pillars at its entrance and a driveway flanked by manicured gardens.

‘I guess that’s Woolington House,’ said Mary-Kate, pointing.

‘I think you guess right.’ Professor Martin checked her phone. ‘Still no service. The hotel is called the Hook and Worm. The village is tiny so I’m sure it won’t be too hard to find.’

Mary-Kate looked up and down the entrance to each lane that they passed. There were several tiny teashops, all of them closed. A bakery with a sign on its door that read, ONLY OPEN ON SATURDAYS. An art gallery that was closed too. It was charming and perfect, but as they walked, Mary-Kate was beginning to notice something else.

Woolington Well was very quiet.

The birds were singing and the river chattering beneath the bridge they’d crossed, and faraway there was the sound of traffic on the M1, but Woolington Well itself seemed very still. Not a single person to be seen. Nothing open. Mary-Kate’s red sparkly shoes clicked loudly on the wet cobblestones.

And even stranger, Mary-Kate noticed by the front door of every dear little cottage there sat a saucer of milk.

‘Prof, why’s there a saucer of milk on every doorstep?’ asked Mary-Kate. Her voice sounded loud in the stillness.

‘Well-spotted, Mary-Kate,’ said Professor Martin. ‘Why do you think there might be?’

Mary-Kate’s mother liked her to think critically.

‘Cats drink milk from saucers, I guess,’ said Mary-Kate. ‘There must be an awful lot of cats in Woolington Well. Oh, look, here! It’s the Hook & Wyrm Inn, only they’ve spelled worm strangely.’

They stood before an old country inn, its name on a small sign near its heavy wooden front door: THE HOOK & WYRM INN. And there wasn’t just a saucer of milk near the front door of this establishment. There was a large pail of milk instead.

‘That’s very strange,’ said Mary-Kate.

‘Maybe the mystery of the milk is something you can solve while in Woolington, Mary-Kate.’

The mystery of the milk.

That doesn’t seem too daunting, thought Mary-Kate. She could probably do small mysteries.

‘Challenge accepted,’ she said as Professor Martin pushed opened the front door.

Mary-Kate was thinking about saucers of milk and why someone had spelled ‘Wyrm’ with a ‘Y’. She was glad she’d packed her strawberry-scented notebook because a notebook would probably be helpful when solving problems. She’d continue using the glitter pens now that she’d succeeded in opening them.

It was a cosy pub filled with the aroma of polished wood and a warm fire burning in the corner of the small dining room. It was also empty. Or at least it appeared to be. Professor Martin coughed politely and when no one appeared, she rang the bell at the counter. It echoed in the silence.

To their surprise, a bald head appeared from behind the counter. The man stood up, looking very nervous, eyes darting to the door and windows and back again. His name tag said ‘TERRY’ and despite his bald head he had a bushy red beard.

‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘I thought it was …’

He stopped, wrung his hands anxiously, laughed a nervous laugh.

‘You must be Professor Martin,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Woolington Well. We are so glad you are here.’

‘Thank you,’ said Professor Martin. ‘We’re very pleased to be here.’

‘You have the Woolington suite for two nights,’ he said, handing over a key. Mary-Kate noticed his hands were trembling. ‘I hope it will be comfortable for you.’

‘I’m sure it will be most comfortable,’ said the Professor.

‘And Ms Honey, the village librarian, says she will be here at eleven,’ he added, looking like at any moment he was going to disappear behind the counter.

‘Oh, I didn’t know I was meeting the village librarian,’ said the Professor, glancing at the clock on the wall behind the counter. It was almost eleven.

‘She hopes to catch you before Lord Woolington arrives. I’m sure she wants to talk to you about the …’ He twitched violently as a cloud cast a sudden shadow over the doorway behind them. ‘About the you-know-what.’

‘Of course,’ said Professor Martin, very kindly.

As they climbed the narrow creaking steps to their room, Mary-Kate whispered to her mother:

‘Do you know what he was talking about?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Professor Martin. ‘Although I feel we are about to find out.’

The Woolington suite at the Hook & Wyrm Inn was the most luxurious room that Mary-Kate had ever seen. There were two large four-poster beds draped in gold velvet curtains, sumptuous deep red carpets and two chairs before a roaring fireplace. A huge tapestry hung on the wall.

‘Well this is something, isn’t it?’ said Professor Martin.

‘Do you always stay in places like this?’ said Mary-Kate.

‘Unfortunately not,’ laughed her mother.

Mary-Kate moved slowly in awe around the large suite. There was a tea stand in one corner, filled with small cakes and sandwiches and, nearby, a teapot in a cosy. There was a bookshelf that reached to the ceiling, containing hundreds of old books, encyclopedias and histories and famous novels. She ran her finger along the spines. She’d never been in a hotel room that had its own library. The bathroom contained a deep bath with golden claw feet. She touched the little toiletries in pretty glass bottles. She unwrapped the chocolate on her pillow, popped it into her mouth and flopped onto the bed. She would be happy to stay and be an explorer, right here in this room.

From the window beside her bed there was a view of the strange round hill and the grand country house, and she noticed that this view was repeated in the tapestry that hung on the opposite wall. It was richly woven in blues, greens and golds, and showed a scene of the village. There was the church spire she’d seen, and the little arched bridge over the winding stream, the round hill and the country house. She had just spotted a small figure in the foreground standing on the little arched bridge with a fishing line when there was a frantic rapping at the door.

A small dark-haired woman leaped into the room when the door was opened by Professor Martin.