One Beastly Beast Read online

  ‘Indeed I am,’ said the doctor. ‘I’d better grow your old clothes a bit so you can get changed. We’ll have to climb soon. Captain, if I could have a word about the course?’

  ‘Certainly,’ replied the captain. ‘May I say once again, young Peter, that it has been an honour to sail with you. May we meet again!’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Peter.

  ‘Three cheers for the young gentleman!’ shouted the captain. He threw his hat in the air and the cheers of the rats echoed across the water as Peter went below to get changed.

  Chapter Eleven

  All too soon, Peter found himself clinging to the very top of the mast, with the DVDs strapped to his back and the doctor hanging on beneath him. The sea was fairly calm, but even so, the mast did swing at least ten metres from side to side, and the ship and the sea looked very small and far away below them.

  They had already missed the world-hole on their first attempt, with the ship passing the spot a little too far away. This time it looked like they were perfectly aligned. Peter could see and almost touch the rope ladder that hung just below the hole, which looked like a strange circle of darkness in the sky. But with the ship going up and down the waves, and the mast going sideways as the ship rolled, he was really afraid to jump.

  ‘Never fear!’ shouted the doctor below him. The rat’s voice was hard to hear over the wind and the groaning of the mast and the rigging. Peter nodded and gulped, his eyes fixed on the dangling ladder. The ship drew closer and closer and he steeled himself to jump.

  ‘Five… four… three… two… JUMP!’ shouted the doctor, and Peter jumped, his arms thrashing ahead of him in a desperate effort to grab hold of the ladder.

  For a horrible instant he thought he’d missed it; then his hands hit something and he gripped hard and hung on for dear life. The ship kept going as Peter swung on the ladder from the sky, a few rungs from the bottom.

  All the rats cheered and the captain saluted, but Peter didn’t see him – he had his eyes shut tight. It wasn’t until the doctor tapped him on the foot that he opened them again and saw that the rat was only just hanging on by his paws from the very last rung of the rope ladder.

  ‘Be a good boy and start climbing, would you?’ asked the doctor nicely.

  ‘Sorry,’ mumbled Peter, and started to climb. Only then did he think to ask about how Doctor Norvegicus would get back, since he couldn’t imagine trying to jump from this world-hole to the mast of the Tumblewheel.

  ‘Oh, I’m not going back the same way!’ explained the doctor. He turned his body so Peter could see that he had the Ratinci orrery strapped to his back. ‘I’ll use the orrery to find another world-hole.’

  They climbed in silence. From time to time Peter scraped his shoulders on the sides of the hole, which was a weird feeling since it felt both hard like a brick wall and soft like a deep carpet. But the doctor had judged his size well. Soon Peter saw sunlight filtering down through some bars above and knew he was about to return to his own world.

  Carefully, he pushed the grating open and climbed out… but not into the lane next to the supermarket. For a second he felt a terrible fear that he’d ended up in the wrong place and maybe even the wrong time.

  Then he realised that he was on the other side of the supermarket, on the edge of the car park. It seemed to be the right time of day, as far as he could tell.

  ‘I’ll say goodbye here,’ said Doctor Norvegicus. ‘And I’d also better say yan, tan, tethera, methera.’

  With those four words spoken, Peter suddenly grew up to his normal height. When his eyes stopped being blurry, and he was sure he wasn’t going to be sick, he looked down. The doctor was gone and there was only a shallow drain under the metal grating.

  Shaking his head, Peter walked around to the video shop and handed over the DVDs. After that he wondered over to the supermarket, kicking the ground and wondering if any of his strange adventure had actually happened. Had he somehow fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing?

  He was still wondering when he tripped over the mat at the supermarket door. Something fell out of his pocket and rolled across the floor as he got up. Peter caught it before it went under the trolleys and stared at it. It was a coin. A large and very heavy gold coin that showed a crowned rat on one side and a coat of arms on the other. It said Rattus Rex Imp NV around the figure of the crowned rat and Defender of the Rodents around the coat of arms. Peter laughed and put the coin back in his pocket. It might come in handy if he ever went back to the Neverworld.

  ‘That was quick,’ said his mum absently when he joined her at the checkout. As she waited for her change, she looked at Peter more carefully.

  ‘It’s strange,’ she said. ‘You seem taller somehow and sort of more tanned. But you’ve only been gone five minutes.’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ said Peter, with a small and secret smile.

  The Princess

  and the

  Beastly Beast

  Chapter One

  ‘There is a beastly beast on the battlements,’ said Princess Chlorinda. ‘A bloody beastly beast.’

  ‘You mustn’t swear, Rinda,’ said Queen Alba absently. She was sitting at her grand piano and didn’t even look at her daughter. She was too busy composing an opera. She had been a full-time warrior maiden before her marriage, and a part-time one afterwards, but she had recently packed away her weapons and armour and taken up music composition instead. Just for a few years, until it was time to start training Rinda to be a warrior maiden too.

  Being a composer meant the queen hummed to herself a lot and spent hours and hours at the piano.

  ‘I’m not swearing,’ Rinda explained. ‘It is a bloody beastly beast. It’s covered in blood. I expect from its gruesome and ghastly habits.’

  ‘Well, tell the guard,’ said the queen, waving with one hand as she tapped out a few notes with the other. ‘I’m at a tricky part.’

  ‘You’re always at a tricky part,’ complained Rinda. ‘And the guard has locked himself in his barracks and says he won’t come out.’

  ‘Well, tell your father,’ said the queen. ‘He can deal with a bloody beastly beast.’

  ‘If it eats me it will be your fault!’ protested Rinda.

  ‘The trick is to get past the teeth in one leap and go straight down the gullet,’ instructed the queen, to the accompaniment of a few dramatic chords from her latest composition. ‘Then you can cut your way free from the inside.’

  ‘You’re disgusting!’ shouted Rinda as she stormed out of the room.

  The queen sighed and thought about going after her. But Rinda was always making up stories of monsters and beasties and black-hearted dwarves who travelled in company with dragons.

  Outside the queen’s tower, Rinda stopped to check that the bloody beastly beast was still on the battlements. It was, sitting quite contentedly above the main gate. Rinda frowned and stalked across the courtyard to her father’s tower.

  It only took a minute as they lived in a very small castle. There was the Queen’s Tower, the King’s Tower, the Princess’s Tower (smaller than the other two), the Guard’s Barracks (which was a pleasant whitewashed cottage in the courtyard), and the kitchy-store-cellar-thingy, which was a ramshackle house with lots of funny little rooms and a large kitchen. It was wedged between the King’s and Queen’s Towers and half of it stuck out through the castle walls.

  Rinda’s frown set deeper into her forehead as she saw that her father had shut the door to his tower and the key wasn’t in the lock. She threw herself at the solid oak door like a battering ram and hammered with her fists.

  ‘Let me in! Let me in! There’s a bloody beastly beast on the battlements!’

  Chapter Two

  After a few minutes hammering, the door swung open and Rinda fell inside. No one had opened the door, but this didn’t surprise Rinda. Her father, as well as being the king, was a wizard. His tower supposedly had an invisible servant, who opened doors and made tea and washed the floor. A year ago Rinda had thrown
flour in the air to see what the invisible servant looked like and had been very disappointed. The invisible servant looked exactly like her father. He’d sneezed and run away, and then had come back visible, pretending that he wasn’t the invisible servant after all.

  ‘Dad!’ shouted Rinda. ‘I know you opened the door.’

  The air shimmered in front of her and her father appeared. King Victor was very tall and thin. He wore a wizard’s robe adorned with silver stars. That was even taller than he was, so it dragged on the ground and he often tripped over it. It was a bit chilly in his tower so he was also wearing a comfy red cardigan that was missing a few buttons. Both robe and cardigan were a little stained from spilled potions and burned at the edges from misfired spells.

  ‘What is it, Chlorinda?’ the king asked. ‘I’m very busy extracting essence of dragon from a dragon’s tooth.’

  ‘There’s a bloody beastly beast on the battlements,’ said Rinda.

  ‘Don’t swear—’ her father started to say. Then he saw Rinda’s frown deepen even more and he caught on. ‘Oh, you mean it is bloody, as in actually bloody. In that it has blood upon it. Is it dripping or just a sort of stain?’

  ‘Dripping, in bucketloads,’ confirmed Rinda. ‘Mother won’t deal with it and the guard won’t come out, so you’ll have to.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ countered the king.

  Rinda rolled her eyes. Didn’t anyone ever pay attention to what she was saying?

  ‘It’s summer break,’ she said. ‘It started three days ago! I’m supposed to be on holiday, but I’m not having any fun. And there’s a bloody beastly beast—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know, on the battlements. Look, Rinda, I really am very busy. Why don’t you come back at lunchtime and we’ll take a look at this beast together? See it off with a few jumping sparks or a spot of agonising ointment?’

  ‘It might eat me for its lunchtime first,’ said Rinda darkly.

  ‘If it does, the trick is to get past its teeth in one leap and go straight down its gullet,’ said the king. ‘Your mother’s done it once or twice—’

  But he was talking to empty air. Rinda had run outside. The king sighed and thought about going after her. But Rinda was always making up stories about ghastly ghosts and toothy termagants. So he turned himself invisible and shut the door, for a king cannot be seen to shut his own doors.

  Chapter Three

  Rinda stalked angrily away from her father’s tower and went to sit on the battlements with the bloody beastly beast. It was actually her pet pig, Horace, that she’d covered with strawberry jam. Horace had managed to lick his legs and the front half of himself free of jam, but he couldn’t reach the jam on his back. He kept squealing and chasing his curly tail in an effort to get to the last bits of sweet strawberry.

  ‘Stop that, Horace!’ commanded Rinda, but the pig paid her no attention.

  Rinda stared out across the lands beyond the castle as Horace chased himself round in a circle. The lands beyond weren’t very interesting. Across the moat and up the road there was a small shallow river with a short narrow bridge across it. Rinda had hoped a troll might move in under the bridge, but so far none had. There were several farmhouses inhabited by cheery farmers, none of whom appeared to be werewolves. There were fields of crops, all boring stuff like wheat and barley, without a screaming mandrake root anywhere. There were cows, none of them with two heads or flaming eyes. There were sheep, which were just… sheep.

  ‘It’s boring here and everyone hates me,’ said Rinda. ‘I’m going to run away and have an adventure.’

  Horace grunted, which was not the encouragement Rinda had hoped for.

  ‘I am going to run away,’ Rinda repeated. ‘Right now!’

  ‘I really am going to run away!’ shouted Rinda. She was hoping that someone else might hear. But no one paid her any attention. Not even Horace. He’d finally managed to get some more jam into his mouth.

  Rinda looked over the wall. It was supposed to be twelve feet high, but only the back wall of the castle had actually been finished properly. Here the wall was just a few feet taller than she was.

  ‘I’m running away right now!’ Rinda announced.

  She lowered herself over the battlements, hung by her hands for a moment then splashed into the moat. She trod water for a little while, waiting to see if a crocodile or a moat monster had moved in. But the moat was calm, clear, cool and empty. Not even a duck floated on its mirror-like surface.

  Rinda sighed and swam ashore. She would have to find her adventure somewhere else. Fortunately, the sun was shining so she would not be a soaking wet adventurer for long.

  After drying out on the grassy verge, Rinda wandered down the road, squinting at the sheep in case they were particularly cleverly disguised monsters. Then she checked under the bridge again, because a troll might have moved in since she’d last looked, yesterday afternoon. But there was no troll, only the slow flow of the river.

  ‘Boring, boring, boring!’ said Rinda. She crossed the bridge and kept going. She passed the farmhouses and more sheep. A shepherd waved at her. Rinda scowled, because until he’d waved and smiled she’d thought he might be an ogre in disguise.

  Rinda kept walking and walking and walking. She walked for so long and went so far that the castle and the farmhouses disappeared out of sight behind her. Fields gave way to forest and trees closed in on the road. The sun began to sink behind the distant hills and the sky shifted colour from a cool blue to a warm and rosy red. Night was falling. Soon it would be dark.

  Chapter Four

  ‘This is more like it,’ said Rinda bravely, though she had to admit that she preferred daytime adventures to night-time ones. It was much easier to deal with monsters when you could see them clearly.

  To be completely prepared for the adventure, Rinda picked up a fallen branch. It was almost as long as she was tall and made a hefty club. Then she turned around and started for home because it was getting very dark. Rinda knew she would be in big trouble when she got home and there was just as much chance of having an adventure on the way back.

  The sun slipped away very quickly as the little girl walked along the road. It must be tired and unable to hold itself up, Rinda thought. She was a bit tired herself, and hungry as well. It was very unfair that she’d had to go so far and get so tired and hungry and she still hadn’t had an adventure!

  Rinda was almost back to the last farmhouse when the sun finally disappeared. Day became night, a night without a moon. There were some stars scattered across the sky, but they shed little light. Rinda could hardly see the road and had to tap the cobblestones with her stick so she didn’t lose her way.

  To make matters worse, someone had left a cart or wagon piled high with hay parked across the road. It was hard to tell in the dark, but she couldn’t think of anything else about thirty feet high and fifteen feet long that might be on the road. It made her mad that someone had just left it there, blocking her way home. So she went right up to the cart and hit it with her stick.

  Whack! Whack! Whack!

  That’s what it should have sounded like. A stick hitting wood. But it didn’t. It sounded completely different.

  Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!

  That was the sound of a stick hitting something like leather, and carts weren’t made of leather. So it wasn’t a cart…

  Before Rinda could do anything, whatever it was suddenly moved!

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Rinda.

  The thing that blocked the road reared up until it was at least forty-five feet high, far too high to be a cartload of hay. It spread its two huge furry paws wide and its great long claws caught the starlight and shone blue and silver.

  It opened its great big mouth and its sharp white teeth gleamed in the darkness.

  ‘Mum!’ screamed Rinda. ‘Dad!’

  She hit the monster with her stick, but the stick broke on the monster’s side. Then a paw closed round her and Rinda went up and up and up, and the huge mouth opened wider and wi
der and wider. Rinda looked down at the gleaming teeth, the big red tongue and the pulsating tonsils at the back of the monster’s throat.

  Rinda pushed and kicked and bit, but the monster’s mouth gaped even wider, releasing a strange oily stench from deep inside.

  Rinda wasn’t put off. She knew what to do. ‘One leap!’ she said to herself as she kicked her way free and dived straight past the monster’s teeth and into its gullet!

  Chapter Five

  Rinda slid like a dollop of ice cream down the monster’s tongue. She flew over its tonsils, did a corkscrew turn through its cavernous throat, then continued straight down the long, slightly icky slippery dip that was its gullet.

  She opened her penknife – the one she wasn’t supposed to have – on the long slide down, ready to cut her way free. Rinda knew it would take a long time, since the knife was very small and very blunt and wasn’t even any good for cutting goose feathers into quill pens.

  This might be a problem, Rinda thought. Her mother had told her often that a monster’s stomach was a very unpleasant place to be. Full of stinks and smells and acids that could dissolve you in a few hours, just like a human stomach dissolved food. She would have to try very hard to get out as soon as possible.

  But when she slid out of the end of the gullet, the monster’s stomach was nothing like any stomach she’d ever heard about. In fact, it looked exactly like a very nice kitchen, the kind that her mother would have liked to have at the castle, but didn’t.

  The floor of this kitchen was lined with polished flagstones. There was a lovely old kitchen table with a checked blue and white tablecloth and a basket of fruit on top of it. A two-oven stove fired by magic stones sat in one corner. A hollow miniature iceberg stuck up out of the floor, magically preserving a whole lot of yummy-looking food. Crystal-fronted cupboards around the walls showed tins and boxes of food, shining silver cooking utensils, and gleaming brass pots and pans.