“I’m not driving fifty miles to work each day,” Addy declared. “You’ll pull weeds before I submit myself to that.”
“I’m not pulling any weeds,” Terry whined. “Where’s this lot?”
“Right around this bend,” Mr. Hornbackle answered. “I’m sure you’ll find it—”
Mr. Hornbackle’s jaw dropped as he turned the corner and saw the lot. There at the end of the road sat 1712 Andorra Court, a spectacularly beautiful piece of land. The tree was lush and full. Around its base, the ground was covered with an array of dainty white and purple flowers. Chirping birds flitted in and about the leafy tree, which was illuminated beautifully by a shaft of brilliant sunlight.
“That’s it?” Addy asked in amazement. “That’s the unlivable lot?”
Mr. Hornbackle was too busy gawking in disbelief to respond.
“Just as I thought,” Terry bit, wiping his lumpy nose on his sleeve. “Holding out on us, huh? Well, it’s not going to work. We’ll take it.”
“I don’t—” Mr. Hornbackle tried to say.
“I said, we’ll take it.” Terry reached into his wallet and fished out enough for a down payment. “We’ll be back next week with our home.”
Mr. Hornbackle took the money, still gaping at the serene and beautiful lot that lay in front of him. Just yesterday the place had been nothing but weeds and darkness. Today it was a section of land he could have easily charged double or triple price for.
Mr. Hornbackle turned the pickup around and slowly drove back to the office. Once there he stayed in the truck as Terry, Addy, and the small child got out.
“Don’t even think of leasing that out to anyone else,” Terry warned. “We’ll have you in court. Unlivable my eye.” He turned and spat on the ground.
Mr. Hornbackle just stared, his mouth still hanging open.
Chapter Four
Geth
Fate was working splendidly. Geth stood tall, shading with his branches the newly parked trailer house of Leven. He stretched his trunk, creaking as he took on inches. Geth peeked with the tips of his limbs through the windows of the single-wide, looking for Leven. Terry and Addy had finally settled in, but there would now be some wait for the child to grow into his role.
Geth twisted the tips of his branches inward to look at himself. He was a long way from what he had been in Foo. Geth, you see, was a member of the First Order of Wonder. He was also a lithen, a rare species that travels and lives by fate. Lithens know little of fear or confusion because they let fate move them. A true lithen would think nothing of walking off a four-hundred-foot cliff because he would know that if it were his time, he would hit the ground and die. But if it were not meant to be, he would simply be picked up by the wind or rescued by a giant eagle. Lithens were fearless and honest to a fault. They were also the original inhabitants of Foo, given a sacred charge to guard the realm that gives humans the privilege of dreaming.
Geth had grown well where he was planted. At first a tiny shoot, he had emerged through the soil and into the blue sky knowing that there was plenty of time to grow as he waited to accomplish what needed to be done. But by the time he had grown two stories tall, Geth had discovered the power of his limbs. It had happened quite by accident. A family of birds had made themselves happy in his top branches, and he had simply thought about shooing them away. Well, no sooner had he thought it than his branches began whipping around, waving the birds off.
He also had the remarkable ability to see from every tip of his branches. He could see in front, in back, and on all sides continually. There was not a creature or person who could approach without him knowing.
By simply willing it, Geth could also extend his roots hundreds of feet underground, boring effortlessly into the earth to fill it with holes and pock marks. He could collect rainwater in these underground channels and use that water to produce wicked sprouts that sprang out of the earth like angry weeds. Geth knew all of these tools would be necessary for what was coming.
Antsel had known there was no way for Geth to return to Foo without help. He had been well aware that in order for hope to continue, Geth would need a bit of assistance on his return. Antsel also understood that there was only one person who could both bring Geth back and thwart Sabine’s evil plan.
It was that person Geth was now watching over—Leven Thumps. It was only a matter of time before Leven would be old enough to complete the task at hand.
Geth stood tall in the Oklahoma soil, growing stronger each moment, and behaving like the lithen he was. He had no worries, no concerns, and no panic. Fate had put him where he was, and if he did his part, fate would get him back home.
Geth uncurled the tips of his branches and gazed into eternity. The waiting had begun.
The Ratbridge Chronicles,
Vol. I:
Here Be Monsters!
by Alan Snow
BEWARE : Skulduggery is afoot!
When the outlaw, Snatcher, learns that young Arthur has overheard his plan to destroy the town of Ratbridge, he seals shut every entrance to Arthur’s underground home. Arthur enlists the help of Underlings (boxtrolls, cabbageheads, and the pirate rats from the Ratbridge Nautical Laundry) to thwart Snatcher’s evil plans, but the Underlings are mysteriously disappearing, while something massive is stirring inside an abandoned building. With over five hundred black-and-white drawings, this not-to-be-missed debut novel will entrance anyone who appreciates the unusual and the extraordinary.
ALAN SNOW has worked in design and animation, and is the illustrator of Here’s What You Do When You Can’t Find Your Shoe by Andrea Perry and the author and illustrator of How Dogs Really Work!, The Truth About Cats, and How Santa Really Works.
Here Be Monsters! is his first novel and is the start of an incredible illustrated journey into the weird and astonishing world of Ratbridge. He, however, lives in Bath, England.
Visit www.simonsayskids.com to watch a video on The Ratbridge Chronicles and www.here-be-monsters.com for a guess-the-monster game, maps of Ratbridge, and more!
AVAILABLE JULY 2006
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
New York London Toronto Sydney
Chapter 1
Coming Up!
Ratbridge.
It was a late Sunday evening and Ratbridge stood silver gray and silent in the moonlight. Early evening rain had washed away the loud of smoke that normally hung over the town, and now long shadows from the factory chimneys fell across oily puddles in the empty streets. The town was at rest.
The shadows moved slowly across the lane that ran behind Fore Street, revealing a heavy iron drain cover set among the cobbles.
Then the drain cover moved. Something was pushing it up from below.
One side of the cover lifted a few inches, and from beneath it, a pair of eyes scanned the lane. The drain cover lifted further, then slid sideways. A boy’s head wearing a woven helmet with nine or ten antennae rose through the hole and glanced around. The boy shut his eyes, and he listened. For a moment all was quiet; then a distant dog bark echoed off the nearby walls. Silence returned. The boy opened his eyes, reached out of the hole, and pulled himself up and out into the lane. He was dressed very oddly. In addition to the helmet, he wore a large vest knitted from soft rope, which reached the ground, and under that a short one-piece suit made from old sugar sacks. His feet were wrapped in layers of rough cloth, tied with string.
A pair of eyes scanned the lane.
Fixed about his body by wide leather straps was a strange contraption. On his front was a wooden box with a winding handle on one side, and two brass buttons and a knob on the front. A flexible metal tube connected the box to a pair of folded wings, made from leather, wood, and brass, which were attached to his back.
The boy slid the drain cover back into place, reached inside his under-suit, and pulled out a toy figure dressed just like him. He held the doll out and spoke.
“Grandfather, I am up top. I think I’ll have to go gardening tonight. It must
be Sunday; everything is shut. The bins behind the inn will be empty.” He looked at the doll.
There was a crackle of static, then a thin voice came from the doll. “Well, you be careful, Arthur! And remember, only take from the bigger gardens—and only then if they have plenty! There are a lot of people who can only survive by growing their own food.”
Arthur smiled. He had heard this many times before. “Don’t worry, Grandfather, I haven’t forgotten! I’ll only take what we need, and I will be careful. I’ll see you as soon as I am done.”
Arthur replaced the doll inside his suit, then started to wind the handle on the box. As he did, the box made a soft whirring noise. For nearly two minutes he wound, pausing occasionally when his hand started aching. Then a bell pinged from somewhere inside the box and he stopped. Arthur scanned the skyline, crouched, and then pressed one of the buttons. The wings on his back unfolded. He pressed the other button and at the same moment jumped as high as he could. Silently the wings rushed down and caught the air as he rose. At the bottom of their stroke, they folded, rose, and then beat down again. His wings were holding him in the air, a few feet above the ground.
Arthur reached for the knob and turned it just a little. As he did so, he tilted himself a little forward. He started to move. Arthur smiled…. He was flying.
“Grandfather, I am up top.”
He moved slowly down the lane, keeping below the top of its walls. When he reached the end, he adjusted the knob again and rose up to a gap between the twin roofs of the Glue Factory. Arthur knew routes that were safe from the eyes of the townsfolk, and would keep to one of them tonight on the way to the particular garden he planned on visiting. When it was dark or there was thick smog, things were easy. But tonight was clear and the moon full. He’d been spotted twice before on nights like this, by children, from their bedroom windows. He’d got away with it so far, as nobody had believed the children when they said they had seen a fairy or flying boy, but tonight he was not going to take any chances.
He was flying.
Arthur reached the end of the gap between the roofs. He dipped a little and flew across a large stable yard. A horse started and whinnied as he flew over. He adjusted his wing speed and increased his height. The horse made him feel uneasy. At the far side of the yard he rose again, over a huge gate topped with spikes. He crossed a deserted alley, then moved down a narrow street flanked with the windowless backs of houses. At the far end of the street he slowed and then hovered in the air. In front of him was another high wall. Carefully he adjusted the knob and rose very gently to the point where he could just see the ground beyond the wall. It was a large vegetable garden. Across the garden fell paths of pale light, cast from windows of the house. One of the windows was open. From it Arthur could hear raised voices and the clatter of dominoes.
He adjusted the knob.
A horse started and whinnied as he flew over.
That should keep them busy! he thought, scanning the garden again. Against the wall farthest from the house was a large glass lean-to.
He checked the windows of the house again, then rose over the wall and headed for the greenhouse, keeping above the beams of light. He came to rest in front of the greenhouse door.
Dark leafy forms filled the space. As Arthur entered, he recognized tomato plants climbing the strings, and cucumbers and grapes hanging from above.
He moved past all these and made his way to a tree against the far wall.
It was a tall tree with branches only at its top. Dangling from a stem below the branches was what looked like a stack of huge fat upside-down spiders. It was a large bunch of bananas. As Arthur got closer, he caught their scent. It was beautiful.
Arthur could hardly contain his delight. Bananas! He tore one from the bunch and ate it ravenously. When he finished, he looked over at the house. Nothing had changed. So, he reached inside his under-suit, pulled out a string bag, then grabbed a hold of the banana bunch and gave an eager tug. It wasn’t as easy to pick the full bunch as it had been to pull off a single banana, and Arthur found he had to put his full weight on the bunch. A soft fibrous tearing sound started, but still the bunch did not come down. In desperation Arthur lifted his feet from the ground and swung his legs. All of a sudden there was a crack, and the whole bunch, along with Arthur, fell to the ground. The tree trunk sprang back up and struck the glass roof with a loud crack. The noise sounded out across the garden.
“Oi! There is something in the greenhouse,” came a shout from the house.
Arthur scrambled to his feet, grabbed the string bag, and looked out through the glass. No one was in the garden yet. He rushed to collect up as many of the bananas as possible, shoving them into the bag. Then he heard a door bang and the sound of footsteps. He ran out of the greenhouse.
It looked like a stack of huge fat upside-down spiders.
Clambering toward him over the rows of vegetables was a very large lady with a very long stick. Arthur dashed over to one of the garden walls, stabbed at the buttons on the front of his box, and jumped. His wings snapped open and started to beat but not strongly enough to lift him. He landed back on the ground, his wings fluttering behind him. Arthur groaned—the bananas! He had to adjust the wings for the extra weight. He wasn’t willing to put the bananas down and fly away empty-handed—they were too precious. He grabbed at the knob on the front of the box and twisted it hard. The wings immediately doubled their beating and became a blur. Just as the woman reached the spot where Arthur stood, he shot almost vertically upward. Furious, she swung her stick above her head and, before he could get out of range, landed a hard blow on his wings, sending him spinning.
A very large lady with a very long stick.
“You little varmint! Come down here and give me back my bananas!” the woman cried. Arthur grasped at the top of the wall to steady himself. The stick now swished inches below his feet. He adjusted the wings quickly and made off over the wall. Shouts of anger followed him.
Arthur felt sick to the pit of his stomach. Coming up at night to collect food was always risky, and this was the closest he’d ever been to being caught. He needed somewhere quiet to rest and recover.
I wish we could live aboveground like everybody else! he thought.
Now he flew across the town by the safest route he knew—dipping between roofs, up the darkest alleys, and across deserted yards, till finally he reached the abandoned Cheese Hall. He knew he would be alone there.
The Cheese Hall had been the grandest of all the buildings in the town and was only overshadowed by a few of the factory chimneys. In former times, it had been the home of the Ratbridge Cheese Guild. But now the industry was dead, and the Guild and all its members ruined. The Hall was boarded up and deserted. Its gilded statues that once shone out across the town were blackened by the very soot that had poisoned the cheese.
The Cheese Hall.
Arthur landed on the bridge of the roof, and settled himself among the statues. As he sat catching his breath, it occurred to him that maybe he should inspect his wings for damage. The woman had landed a fairly heavy blow, but Arthur decided it would be too dangerous and awkward to take his wings off high up here on the roof, and besides, they seemed to be fine. Then something distracted him from his thoughts—a noise. It sounded like a mournful bleat, from somewhere below. He listened carefully, intrigued, but heard no more. When he finally felt calm again, he stowed the bananas behind one of the statues, climbed out from his hiding place, and flew up to the best observation spot in the whole town. This was the plinth on the top of the dome, which supported the weather vane and lightning conductor.
A complete panorama of the town and the surrounding countryside, broken only by the chimneystacks of the factories, was laid out before him. In the far distance he could just make out some sort of procession in the moonlight, making for the woods. It looked as though something was being chased by a group of horses.
The plinth on the top of the dome.
North East Bumbleshire.
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Chapter 2
The Hunt
Three large barrel cheeses broke from the undergrowth.
Strange sounds were filtering through the woods—scrabblings, bleatings, growlings, and, strangest of all, a sound closely resembling bagpipes, or the sound bagpipes would make if they were being strangled, viciously, under a blanket. In a small moonlit clearing in the center of the woods, the sounds grew louder. Suddenly there was a frantic rustling in the bushes on one side of the clearing, and three large barrel cheeses broke from the undergrowth, running as fast as their legs would carry them. Hurtling across the clearing, bleating in panic, they disappeared into the bushes on the far side of the clearing, and for a moment all was still again.
Suddenly a new burst of rustling came from the bushes where the cheeses had emerged, along with a horrid growling noise. Then a pack of hounds burst out into the open. They were a motley bunch, all different shapes and sizes, but they all had muzzles covering their snouts, and they all shared the awful reek of sweat. The hounds ran around in circles, growling through their muzzles. One small fat animal that looked like a cross between a sausage dog and a ball of wire wool kept his nose to the ground, sniffing intently. He gave a great snort, crossed the clearing, and dived onward after the cheeses. The other hounds followed.
They were a motley bunch, all different shapes and sizes.
The weird bagpipe sound grew closer, accompanied by vaguely human cries. Then there was a louder crashing in the undergrowth, and finally the strangest creature yet arrived in the clearing. It had four skinny legs that hung from what looked like an upturned boat made from a patchwork of old sacking. At its front was a head made from an old box, and on this the features of a horse’s face were crudely drawn. A large, angry man rode high on its back.