Instalment 7 of The Blight of Beacon

end of Chapter 3 - The Chase

“Hi!” Katie told them breathlessly before disappearing upstairs.
Miranda and David both jumped up to follow her, their curiosity piqued by the trail of dirt Katie had left behind her.
“Hey – where are you two going?” Mr Crundle asked quickly.
“To listen to my new album,” David said, at the same time as Miranda said, “To feed my hermit crab.”
“The album can wait. Herman can wait,” Mr Crundle told them as sternly as he knew how. “You know that you must do your homework before anything else when you get home.”
They sank back into their chairs unwillingly and tried to focus on their homework, seething with impatience to get upstairs. Finally, with one very sloppily written History essay, and one extremely poorly completed set of algebra problems, they stuffed their books back into their satchels and raced up to Katie’s room. David banged on the door and was rewarded with a face-full of talcum powder. A moment later, Katie opened the door a crack.
“Come in,” she said, scanning the hallway beyond them for bystanders.
“What on earth are you doing?” asked Miranda, staring around Katie’s room as she locked the door behind them. David was having a sneezing fit, creating a cloud of talcum powder.
The bedroom looked like a gardener’s hut. Plants had been uprooted and lay amongst scattered dirt over Katie’s desk. She had dissected the roots of some, mashed the petals of others using Mr Crundle’s mortar and pestle, and cracked open seeds and nuts of still other plants. Miranda investigated a chair upon which a selection of powders and liquids had been placed, from baking soda to soft drink. David flopped onto Katie’s neatly made bed with a chuckle.
“I’ve got to hand it to you, Pickerwick,” he told Katie. “You’ve got a good set-up here, all right. You can do anything you want in here. I might get a lock put on my door and tell Dad I’m “finding my way in my own environment” too.”
“So,” Miranda cut in impatiently, “tell us what it is you’ve got hidden in here.”
“Sorry?” Katie said absently, using a t-shirt to mop up something sticky that had spilled on her desk.
“Come on,” said David. “We saw something moving about in here under the door earlier. What is it?”
“Oh.” Katie looked at them guiltily.
“Yes – ‘oh,’” said Miranda. “It nearly scared us to death. What sort of animal is it?”
“I promise I have no animals in this room,” Katie said brightly, as though she thought they might leave her alone if she said this.
“Well, there’s something in here. Cough it up.”
Caught, Katie could only give a resigned sigh. She turned and addressed her bedroom. “Breasil,” she called softly. “Breeeeaaasil!”
Nothing stirred. David and Miranda waited.
“Breasil!” Katie called more sharply.
Again, nothing. Katie turned to them apologetically.
“He only comes out when he wants to,” she told them.
“But what is he?” Miranda persisted.
“A leprechaun,” said Katie.
“You what?” David exclaimed incredulously.
“Where did you find it?” Miranda goggled.
“Him, not it. And I didn’t find him – I hired him,” Katie told her. “For luck. I wasn’t sure how I’d go in Commonwold, so I hired him before I left home. I didn’t tell anyone,” she added. “Leprechauns can be troublemakers and I thought they might not let me bring him. But he’s really been very good.”
“Has he brought you luck?” David wanted to know.
“Oh, yes,” smiled Katie.
She didn’t say anything else, but just went back to clearing up the mess. Miranda picked up a half-empty soft drink can and sat beside David, taking a sip.
“Mum would have a fit if she saw all her poppies and roses chopped up on your desk,” she remarked. “What exactly are you making?”
“It’s a While-I’m-Away potion,” Katie told them, using her hand to sweep dirt onto the floor. “It makes it so that people won’t miss me while I’m back in Oldenwold. Things will go on as though I’m not even gone.”
“Brilliant,” said David, taking the can off Miranda for a swig, and then burping loudly.
“What’s in it?” asked Miranda.
“I’m quite pleased with myself actually,” said Katie. “I’ve managed to put the potion together out of things I’ve found around the house and in people’s gardens. The ingredients are slightly different, but the effect should be the same. The only difference I can find is that it tastes a bit stronger than the one I’d normally make. I think it’s the clover seeds that’ve done it.”
“How does it work?”
“Well, I just drink it. It works on everyone I come in contact with over the next day or so. The Crundles, our teachers, our schoolmates. So, I’ll have to make sure I’ve seen everyone who might miss me within the next twenty four hours.”
She went back to brushing dirt into her wastepaper bin.
“How do you undo the spell?” Miranda wanted to know. “So that people notice you again.”
“Oh, it wears off in around four or five days,” Katie told her.
“So, even we won’t think about you for those few days?” asked David, impressed.
“That’s right. It’s very useful stuff. The only way you’d know I was missing would be if you were to drink the potion too. It has a kind of group effect – it includes anyone who drinks from a single batch in the spell.” She glanced at Miranda and David as she spoke, then she stopped. “Where did you get that can?” she asked slowly, staring at the soft drink can in David’s hand.
“Off the chair. Why?” frowned Miranda. “Oh!” she added, realizing.
David looked at the can resignedly. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “We’ve drunk your potion, haven’t we?”
“You have,” said Katie. “How much did you drink?”
“Just a sip or two,” said Miranda.
“That’s all it takes,” Katie replied. “That’s all I drank, too. It doesn’t really matter. It just means that no one will think of you whenever you’re not about. What about you, David? Did you take much?”
“Erm…” He shook the can ruefully. “I finished it.”
“Ah.” Katie watched him with an alarmed expression.
“Katie?” squeaked Miranda. “Is it dangerous?”
“Oh, no, it’s not dangerous!” exclaimed Katie reassuringly. “But I think David has probably had far too much. You might cause some strange reactions. People might forget you even while you’re still around.”
“This could be fun.” David was grinning.
The first indication that Katie’s potion was working properly was when they went in search of a meal later that evening – only to find that Mr and Mrs Crundle had not only eaten their dinner, but washed and dried the dishes and were settling in to watch the late movie.
“Where’s our food?” David demanded indignantly.
Mr Crundle stared at them with total perplexity.
“Oh, blimey – I’m sorry, you lot!” he exclaimed, jumping up. “I don’t know what happened – I must have thought you were having dinner at your friends’ houses or something.”
He bustled into the kitchen and started scrambling eggs for the three of them.
“We’d better stand where he can see us,” muttered Katie. “Or he’ll forget what he’s doing it for.”
“We missed a nice vindaloo,” mourned David, sniffing the air.
“Have you done your homework?” Mrs Crundle asked them, also looking a little dazed, as though she had not expected to see them. “Katie, you really ought to take your school uniform off when you get home, dear.”
“Want sausages, you two?” Mr Crundle asked, appearing at the doorway.
“There’s three of us, Dad,” Miranda said gently.
“Oops, so there is!” Mr Crundle started, noticing David standing behind her.
“Oh, David!” said Mrs Crundle, also becoming aware of him for the first time. “Be a love and take out the dustbins for me, will you?”
David scowled. “Forget my dinner, but they don’t forget to give me a job, do they?” he muttered darkly as he left the room.
It wasn’t to be the first time people in David’s life would forget about him over the next couple of days. But this was unexpectedly pleasant. He gloried in freedom from homework – no one ever asked to see his – and grinned in class as teachers passed straight over him, calling on his classmates to answer questions. But there were clear disadvantages to the While-I’m-Away spell too. His parents continued to forget about him at mealtimes and when it came to washing his underwear. Mr Crundle forgot to pick him up from football practice every day after school, and David had to walk home in the early evening drizzle, arriving sour-faced to find that a place was not even set for him at the dinner table. Miranda and Katie could not help smirking as they ate their share of the nightly meal. The spell was working quite well for them. Miranda found that they were much less of a target for Elspeth’s nasty plots, as she simply didn’t think about them when they weren’t there. It made a nice change to only have to listen to her snide whispers when they were actually in Elspeth’s line of sight. Even Miss Goody would leave Katie alone if she sat hunched down in her seat and remained mostly out of view for the duration of their history lesson.
“Well, I think you’ve seen everyone you need to work the While-I’m-Away spell on,” Miranda told Katie on the following Monday. “We’ve had all our classes since you took the potion, obviously you’ve seen Mum and Dad, we’ve popped into Lizzie’s Lunches, chatted with the neighbours, the social worker from the foster agency visited, thank goodness, and you even made up that rubbish about wanting to redesign the Oodles uniform so you could see Ms Lycaon and all the school office ladies.”
“It was a nice design I made up too,” Katie said regretfully. “Yellow and purple stripes and a sweet little peaked cap. I’m surprised they weren’t more interested, actually. Yes,” she added with some satisfaction. “It’s a pretty thorough job I’ve made of it. Funny how much hard work it is when you really put in the effort. My cousin and I tried to use a While-I’m-Away so we could go and see a touring goblin show once. But we didn’t bother to really cover ourselves and we were missed before we’d even gone one mile out of town.”
“How long did you say it lasts for?” asked Miranda.
“Just under a week,” Katie replied.
“That only gives you until Thursday, if we count from the day we drank it. Friday at the latest.”
“Yes,” sighed Katie. “I hope I see a Shimmer soon. It would be a nuisance to have to make up another batch of the potion.”
“Let me help you, if you do need to make some more,” Miranda told her. “I want to see what goes into it. Besides, we can use some of the equipment I’ve got. I have a scalpel and some petri dishes and test tubes and stuff.”
“All right.”
“Where did you learn to make the potion?” Miranda asked, secretly impressed.
“My cousin Tieran,” Katie answered. “He’s a bit of a whiz with potions.”
“You’re close to your cousin, then?” Miranda asked. “Any brothers or sisters?”
“No, it’s just me,” said Katie. “I live with my aunt and uncle and three cousins.”
“What about your mum and dad?” Miranda couldn’t restrain her curiosity any longer.
“My mum disappeared a few years ago,” Katie told her sadly.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Well, she’s not necessarily dead,” Katie added quickly. “She’s missing. They say she fell into a bottomless pit. But the witnesses were unreliable.”
“Did they search the pit?” frowned Miranda.
“It’s bottomless,” Katie reminded her scathingly.
“But –” started Miranda, but Katie went on, ignoring her.
“I don’t know,” she sighed. “Maybe she is dead. Maybe she did fall into the pit.”
“Oh.” Miranda watched Katie reflectively, rather at a loss. She hadn’t meant to stir up sad memories, and now she didn’t think she ought to ask about Katie’s father. “Er…what do we do now?”
“Now?” Katie shrugged grimly. “Now we just sit tight and wait for a Shimmer.”It was not to be a long wait.

Dear readers, please be patient for a little time now while I do a significant rewrite. I'm going to change my novel by relocating it in Australia and cutting out a substantial amount of words, in order to make it more appealing to Australian publishers. It is currently 95,000 words and the accepted figure for young adult fiction is more like 70,000. So I'll be working hard and ruthlessly for the next month or so. I'll let you know as soon as I'm posting again. In the meantime, if you absolutely cannot live without reading the rest, let me know and I'll email you the manuscript to read at your leisure.
Thanks for your support!
Sasha

Instalment 6 - The Blight of Beacon

second part of Chapter 3 - The Chase

They talked as long into the night as they were able before the Mr and Mrs Crundle separated them and sent them firmly to their respective bedrooms. Afterwards, Miranda lay awake for many long hours. She had a lot to try to make sense of. Katie tended to forget that neither she nor David knew anything at all about Oldenwold. She had chatted on about people, places, events and all sorts of things they’d never even heard of. As a result, Miranda’s recollection of her story was fuzzy and incomplete. If Miranda didn’t know that her parents would storm in immediately, she would have turned the light on. She would have loved to write it all down – just to put Katie’s story together properly.
Katie had told them she had come to Drivell – to Commonwold – through a Shimmer. A Shimmer, it seemed, was a kind of wobbly translucent doorway that only the trained eye could spot. Miranda wanted to know much more about these doorways between their world and Katie’s, but Katie had been dismissive. It was as though Shimmers were no more special than a simple revolving door. On the other hand, Katie had raved rather a lot about Falken, the leader of the Resistance. Miranda suspected Katie had a slight crush on the bloke. Falken had sent her to Drivell for her own safety, although Miranda was not completely clear on why Katie was in danger. Katie had mentioned something about being harder to track down in Commonwold. Miranda still wasn’t sure why anyone wanted to track down jolly, plump thirteen year old Katie Pickerwick.
Miranda realized that she didn’t even know whether Katie lived with her parents or Falken or someone else in Oldenwold. She had mentioned an aunt and uncle, but Miranda couldn’t remember her saying anything about a mum or dad.
Once in Drivell, Katie had been under Falken’s instructions to look for the Polish. The Polish were, apparently, trained to deal with appearances and disappearances. This was rather an astonishing statement to both of them, but David had soon realized that Katie was talking about the Police. Katie quickly insisted that police was what she’d said, and then muttered, “Police – Polish, Polish – Police,” under her breath several times. Miranda had tactfully hidden a grin. She’d often noticed that Katie got words wrong. Now she understood why.
Katie’s story was fantastic – unbelievable, even. The scientist in Miranda whispered that sorcery and magic were not possible, and that Katie could not be right in her head. It was quite apparent that she was in earnest. If Katie wasn’t telling the truth, then at least she herself thought she was. Miranda had never known anyone who was truly bonkers before, but she wondered now if Katie was unhinged. She didn’t really fit the description. Miranda looked closely at Katie for signs that she had been dribbling, gibbering, or tearing at her hair. There were none. When Miranda looked at David, she could see that he also believed what Katie was saying. And they had both seen enough of Katie’s “weak” Commonwold magic to be convinced.
Miranda was pretty sure that Katie was somehow a member of the Resistance she talked so much about. How a child came to be part of a Resistance was beyond her. She had no idea what exactly a Resistance did, but the word conjured images of spies, weapons and dangerous secret missions. Of course, in a magical world such as this Oldenwold place was supposed to be, there would probably be less in the way of swords and guns, and more in the way of wands and spells. But it still sounded very grown up and unpleasant to Miranda.
Miranda rolled over in bed fitfully. The next part of the conversation with Katie had disturbed her. She pictured David’s enthusiastic face as he’d asked, “What can we do to help the Resistance?”
“Whoa,” Miranda had exclaimed. “Just wait a bit, David. We don’t have any magical powers – except perhaps for attracting odd people,” she added. Fortunately, Katie had failed to catch her meaning. “There’s no way we could defend ourselves against sorcery if we were to try to help.”
“Actually,” Katie put in, “you probably do have some magic. Most people do.”
David’s jaw dropped.
“No way!” he breathed. “Are you serious? Even me?”
“Very likely.”
David had promptly pointed his hands at a pile of books on the table and waggled his fingers as he squinted at the books furiously, hissing “Abracadabra!” Miranda winced, but Katie had laughed uproariously.
“What was that?” she spluttered. “Abracadabra? You call that sorcery?”
“Well, I don’t know, do I?” he muttered, reddening.
“We can work on your sorcery another time,” she said kindly, repressing her laughter. “We’ve got more important things to worry about right now. The Resistance is trying to save Oldenwold from being swallowed up by Commonwold.”
“How ghastly,” Miranda said, her mind racing over the idea. “Think of all the magic that will be lost forever…”
“Think of all the lives that will be lost!” Katie interrupted. “You think wee folk will survive in Commonwold? Not likely! Faeries, elves, goblins, leprechauns – they’ll all die out. They’re already endangered species in Oldenwold. Not to mention the sorcerers who just couldn’t live in Commonwold. They wouldn’t know where to begin without their sorcery. Trying to get a job, make money, go shopping – it would be a disaster. They’d end up out on the street, homeless, sick, miserable…” Katie’s eyes were full of anguish.
David and Miranda glanced at each other.
“Well,” David said again, ignoring Miranda’s expression of alarm, “what do we need to do to help you?”
“Right now, I’ve got to do one thing only, and that’s get a message to Falken.”
“Falken?” said David blankly.
“Really, David, keep up,” snapped Miranda. “The leader of the Resistance.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said quickly. “What message?”
“I need to tell him that I saw Wendyn Wallow and she saw me.”
While this conversation had gone on, Katie had played absently with her wand. David had dropped a pile of crumbs into the Fix-it pouch and pull out a good sized chunk of biscuit with a triumphant grin. Miranda felt quite rattled inside just remembering these details. Then they’d been interrupted by Mr Crundle, calling them downstairs to dinner. Miranda hastily asked Katie how she intended to get her message to Falken. Katie had admitted that there had really been no thought that she would need to send a message to Oldenwold.
“Falken said they would come for me when they were ready. Everyone just expected I would be safe and sound here. I don’t have any of the things I need to get a message to him – securely. I’m going to have to go myself,” she’d added bravely. She told them that Shimmers appeared quite regularly around Drivell, and she could be ready to go at a moment’s notice. Miranda had unpleasant visions of trying to explain Katie’s absence to their parents.
“Pull your fingers out, you lot!” Mr Crundle called. “This tofu and lentil loaf isn’t going to eat itself, you know!”
“Don’t we know it,” David had muttered as they went down to dinner.

* * *

At school the next day, Miranda found it impossible to concentrate. Her head was full of Katie’s story. In the very normal daylight, sitting in the very normal school classroom, the whole thing felt like a strange dream. When she saw Katie slip a broken pencil into her Fix-it pouch and pull it out whole and sharpened, Miranda felt a kind of nasty shock to remember that the events of yesterday had really happened. She felt the strap of her shoe under her desk. There were the neat little stitches where yesterday there had been a clean, unbroken strap. It was no good denying it – there was indeed a magical place called Oldenwold and Katie did indeed plan to return there.
Miranda found herself wondering more about one thing than anything else – and that one thing was why Katie had been sent to Commonwold. As soon as Katie had told her that she was in Commonwold for her safety, Miranda had smelt a rat. Her instincts told her that there was another reason Katie was there. Her questioning mind switched into high gear as she scrawled down possibilities in her file, pretending to copy Miss Goody’s neat script off the chalkboard. As far as Miranda could make out, there were only two real reasons the Resistance might want to send Katie to Commonwold. One was that she was a spy. However, Miranda could not think of even one thing that Katie might learn from living with the Crundles or attending Oodles that would be useful in Oldenwold. She quickly discarded that possibility, and turned to her next reason – namely, that Katie was a danger to the Resistance. Perhaps she had information which could endanger the work of the Resistance. Or perhaps she knew something about this Edistein that he did not want anyone to know. That might put Katie herself in danger. Miranda thought the latter was more plausible. She circled it once or twice with a thoughtful air.
It felt like the day dragged on for weeks. Miranda could hardly wait to see David and discuss her ideas with him and Katie. They managed to get through Miss Goody’s lesson with only two reprimands – one for Miranda when caught staring fixedly out the window, and one for Katie’s suggestion that the Battle of Hastings was called such because it was fought “with haste.” At last the bell rang for the final time and Miranda and Katie were released from the gates of Oodles.
“I’ve got some things I need to do,” Katie told Miranda as they crossed the road. “Will you tell the Crundles I’ve gone to the library?”
“Yes, all right, but what about Wendyn Wallow?” said Miranda, dropping her voice. “What if she comes after you again?”
“I don’t think she knows where to find me,” Katie answered. “It was just an unlucky chance that we ran into her at the park yesterday.”
“You know, we were wearing our school blazers, so she could find us if she wanted to,” Miranda reminded her, but Katie was already setting off. “Be careful,” Miranda called after her.
She met David at the gate and wasted no time sharing her theories on why Katie was in Commonwold. He considered her words thoughtfully.
“I don’t think she’s a spy,” he said at last. “She’s not the type.”
“Well, I think that’s the point of being a spy, though,” Miranda replied. “Not looking like a spy, I mean.”
“Yeah, okay, but come on, Miranda – Katie? A spy? Spies are supposed to notice things. Katie wouldn’t know if her own backside was on fire. Spies are supposed to blend in. She doesn’t come anywhere near blending in.”
“All right, what about my other idea? That she knows something that makes her dangerous to the Resistance?”
“I like it,” nodded David. “Good thinking.” Miranda beamed. “But what would she know, do you think?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Miranda,” said David slowly. “Is this real? I keep thinking I’m going bananas. Did we really see what we thought we saw yesterday?”
“I saw a stone…” began Miranda.
“Yes!” exclaimed David. “Jumped off the ground, didn’t it? So, it did happen?”
“Yes,” said Miranda. “And there’s her bag too. The Fix-it pouch.”
“That thing is definitely real. So we can safely say we’re both still sane.”
“I think so. Or both crazy.”
“I want to get another look in Katie’s room,” mused David. “Where did you say she’d gone?”
“She didn’t say,” Miranda replied.
“But she’s not there to guard it, is she?”
“You think we should break in?” Miranda looked doubtful. “She’ll be furious.”
“She doesn’t have to know,” said David. “We’ll be careful. We can leave everything the way it is.”
They had reached home by this stage, and they went inside thoughtfully. Mr Crundle was banging around in his studio in the back garden. When he made a lot of noise like this it meant he was really involved in his sculpting. Miranda could picture him slapping layer after layer of clay enthusiastically onto a deformed-looking figure in the centre of the room, muttering to himself.
“Come on,” decided David. “Let’s go.”
They made their way to Katie’s bedroom and inspected the locks she had on the door. There was a latch and padlock, which David made short work of using one of Miranda’s paperclips. Then they tried the doorknob. Using Miranda’s lunchbox, they caught most of the stream of sauce – this time tomato – that shot out of the keyhole. Of course the door itself was locked, but all the doors in their house could be unlocked with the same key, so Miranda went to fetch the key hanging in the kitchen. She successfully unlocked the door, but when she turned the handle and pushed, the door wouldn’t budge.
“She’s put something behind it,” said David.
“How?” Miranda asked pointedly. “How could she push something behind it when she’s locked it from this side?”
David tried to heave the door open, but it was as though the door were glued shut.
“What on earth…?” he muttered.
He lay on the floor and peered underneath the door.
“I can’t see anything blocking it,” he said, and then suddenly he scrambled up and backed away from the door.
“What?” asked Miranda, surprised.
“There’s someone in there!” he whispered breathlessly.
“Are you sure?” Miranda crouched down and peered under the door. Sure enough, a shadow was moving about in Katie’s room. She could even hear a faint shuffling.
Silently, the two crept onto the landing to confer.
“Could Katie have got home before us?” whispered Miranda.
“She would have come storming out the minute we undid the latch.”
“Well, who could it be, then?”
“What if it’s that woman – Wendyn Wallow?” said David, his face even paler than usual.
Miranda stared. “Do you think it could be, really?” she stuttered. “But how would she have got in?”
“She’s a sorcerer, Miranda,” David reminded her. “I don’t think a couple of poxy locks are going to keep her out.”
“It didn’t sound like a person,” Miranda said slowly. “More like a small animal. And I’ve heard noises at night. Scuffling sounds, all night long. I assumed it was Katie snoring or…I don’t know…building a teepee, or something. But now I wonder if she’s got a pet in there.”
David was visibly relieved.
“I’m surprised Dad hasn’t clocked to it,” he remarked. “He’s allergic to everything hairy known to humankind.”
“Maybe it’s an animal we haven’t seen before,” suggested Miranda. “Something from Oldenwold.”
“I wonder,” mused David.They didn’t have long to wonder. While they were doing their homework at the kitchen table, Katie arrived home.

Stay tuned for instalment #7 next Friday!

Instalment 5 of The Blight of Beacon

from Chapter 3 - The Chase

“Where are we going?” panted David. “She’s barmy!” he exclaimed over his shoulder to Miranda.
“Slow down!” gasped Miranda.
“Keep running!” cried Katie.
For a stocky girl, Katie could run impressively fast. They ran through Golder’s Common – the playing field across the road from the school – and headed for the woodland beyond. Once they were in the woods, Katie ducked behind a fallen tree. The other two followed suit.
“Who on earth is she?” puffed Miranda.
“Shh!” said Katie, checking to see if the woman had followed.
“Okay, Katie, what’s going on?” demanded David, standing up.
“Get down!” hissed Katie.
“Not likely,” David said firmly. “I’m sick of all this weird, secret stuff you keep doing. What’s it about?”
“Okay, I’ll tell you – just get down, please!” begged Katie.
David crouched down. Katie took a deep breath. Her eyes were still flicking back and forth across the woods.
“I’m not from here,” she whispered at last.
“What do you mean here?” asked David. “Drivell? England?”
“No, here. Your world. This world.”
Miranda and David glanced at each other. Miranda went to stand up and leave in disgust, but David caught her sleeve. Something about Katie’s voice made him want to hear more.
“Well, where are you from then?” he asked Katie.
“I come from the Oldenwold,” Katie told them solemnly.
A little bell of remembrance tinkled in Miranda’s head, and she thought of the strange book Katie had dropped at home.
“I knew it!” said David triumphantly. “She’s an alien!”
“It’s not a planet,” said Katie. “It’s the world – the same world that we live in here, but it’s like the flipside of a coin. You can’t see it. And Oldenwold can’t see this world either.”
There was silence.
“Huh?” was David’s eventual reply.
“Look, I don’t care what planet you’re from,” said Miranda in an exasperated tone. “All I care about is why that woman’s chasing us.”
“There’s another world you don’t know about,” Katie said urgently, her frustration obvious. “The world where you live is called the Commonwold. It’s mostly non-magical. But Oldenwolders are sorcerers. That woman who’s chasing us? She’s from Oldenwold too.”
This was the kind of thing Miranda would usually scoff at. Her scientific mind made her skeptical of anything supernatural. She absolutely refused to believe in the ghosts and mystical powers David liked to talk about. But somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to laugh at Katie as she normally laughed at David. Either Katie was the most convincing actress she’d ever seen – or she really did believe in this Oldenwold business.
“Is this some kind of game you two are playing?” David frowned suddenly. “Because if it is, I’m gonna be so mad…”
“Shh!” Katie said.
The woman had appeared on the path into the dim woods. She looked more menacing than ever. She was holding a stick in her hand and seemed to be muttering quietly. She flicked the stick and a little spatter of purple sparks fizzed into the air. At the same moment, a light appeared at the end of the stick. The light stretched in length and width to become a searchlight – beaming out of what Miranda suddenly realized was a wand.
“Hey, how did she do that?” asked David, his eyes wide.
“I told you, she’s a sorcerer!” snapped Katie. “Now shut up, will you?”
The woman shone her searchlight around the trees. The three ducked down behind the fallen tree and held their breath. For an agonizing instant the light shone right on their tree, and Miranda wasn’t sure whether to wait or run. Then it flicked away to another part of the woods, and she started to breathe again. Katie peeked through some dead leaves cautiously.
“She’s heading the other way,” she said with relief.
Miranda was staring at her.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” she said slowly. “She did … magic to make that light. And you can do it too. What happened today with Elspeth’s plaits – that was you, wasn’t it?”
“Actually, I didn’t think it was,” Katie replied earnestly. “I didn’t do a spell to make it happen. I was just thinking how good it would be if you would grab hold of those prissy plaits and give them a good hard pull, when blammo! It really happened.”
“So, you can…you think you can do magic?” David asked Katie.
In answer, Katie pulled a wand out of her satchel and pointed it at a stone on the ground.
“Bring thee to my hand,” she said quietly.
The stone lifted about three inches, and then fell back to the ground.
“Ugh,” she said disgustedly. “Sorry. My sorcery is very weak in Commonwold.”
It was enough to convince David, who had jumped violently when the stone moved.
“All right,” he said, not taking his eyes off the stone. “Why is that woman after you?”
“It’s a long story,” warned Katie.
“Well, we need to hear it, so start talking,” said Miranda. “You can start by telling us about that place you’re from.”
“Oldenwold. You honestly haven’t heard of it?” Miranda and David shook their heads.
“Where is it?” asked David.
“It’s hard to explain. It’s here, we’re probably in it right now, but we can’t see it because we’re on its other side.”
“That’s impossible,” said Miranda.
“You Commonwolders really do know nothing about Oldenwold, don’t you? Listen carefully. Oldenwold is ancient. Much older than Commonwold.”
“How would you know it’s older than our world?” Miranda interrupted rather defensively.
“Because,” Katie said darkly, “Commonwold didn’t even exist for a time. Oldenwold was the only world.”
Again, there was silence.
“Huh?” said David at last.
“There was only Oldenwold,” Katie repeated firmly. “Commonwold came later.”
Miranda turned red. She didn’t like what Katie was implying.
“Are you trying to tell me,” she said hotly, “that our world is less important than Oldenwold? That it’s a minor world?
“Well,” mused Katie, “not so much minor. Not anymore, anyway. Commonwold’s sort of an…effect of Oldenworld. A consequence.”
“Our world is a consequence of Oldenwold?” spluttered Miranda.
“Miranda, stop being stupid,” David told her impatiently. “Katie’s not blowing her nose on the Union Jack – she’s trying to make us understand. Just shut up for a bit and let her explain.”
Katie resumed.
“A long time ago, the whole world was Oldenwold. Most people had some magic. Some could tell fortunes; other could heal. And some had more powerful magic, like conjuring. But as time went on, some people chose not to see the magic anymore. We don’t really know why. They started to believe in other things that replaced magic – things like science, or religion. As the number of people who belonged to Oldenwold shrank, Oldenwold shrank too. It started to wither at the edges, and Commonwold grew over the bits that had shrunk away. Sort of like mould grows on cheese –” David restrained Miranda – “That’s why you used to hear mention of the wee folk and magic in old legends and books, and so on – but not anymore. Folk tales, fairy stories – most of them are about things that happened for real a long time ago. Even nursery rhymes.” Katie looked at them keenly. “You know that Ring-of-Roses is about people with the plague?” David nodded, and Miranda blinked.
“It’s true,” said David. “I saw it on a telly documentary about the Black Plague. Ring of roses means the red rash that people sick with plague would get. The pocketful of posies were for their sickbed, and a-tishoo was the sneezing. Then they would all fall down dead.”
“Lovely,” said Miranda, her eyebrows raised.
“Well, there are other nursery rhymes that are about things that happened in the history of Oldenwold,” Katie went on. “That one about the cat and the fiddle? And the cow jumping over the moon? That was all about a magical accident at a farm. Spilled duskworm paste and an ejector hex. That poor cow came back a bit the worse for wear – what with no oxygen on the moon. As for the five little piggies going shopping and so forth,” she added, shaking her head, “you really don’t want to know the story behind that.” David and Miranda watched Katie, mesmerized. She continued. “So Commonwold has patched over the bits of Oldenwold that people chose to give up. Only the ones who continued to use magic stayed in Oldenwold. It’s very small now, and shrinking every day.”
“Shh!” said Miranda suddenly.
They had all heard it – a cracking noise like a twig snapping underfoot. Katie stuck her head up to check the path.
“She’s coming this way!” she said quickly.
“We’re going to have to leg it,” said David.
“Where?”
“Head for the playground,” David told them. “There are kids and parents everywhere – she wouldn’t dare come after us in there.”
“On three,” whispered Miranda. “One.”
“Two,” said Katie.
“Three!” cried David.
All three of them sprang up and started to run. Over her shoulder, Miranda saw the woman spot them and begin to pursue.
“Faster!” she shouted. “She’s seen us!”
This time, Katie tired more quickly than either of the Crundles and she started to lag behind. Miranda fell back and grabbed Katie’s hand, dragging her along behind her. The woman was gaining.
“Come on, Katie,” puffed Miranda.
“Look – Dad’s car!” shouted David. “Let’s go!”
By now, Miranda felt like her lungs were going to give way, and her legs were growing more jellylike by the moment. She fixed her eyes on the car, running for it with every bit of strength she could muster. She heard her shoe snap one of its straps but didn’t pause to fix it. She simply converted her pace to a kind of Olympic stagger. Katie was flagging badly, and Miranda felt herself slackening too as Katie became heavier to drag. Finally, David took pity on them and slowed down to grab Katie’s other hand.
At last they reached the car park, pulling Katie between them. They threw open the car doors, hurling themselves in and landing in a great tangle on the backseat. Miranda and David pulled the doors shut and locked them. Mr Crundle looked around, his face surprised under the pumpkin hat he was wearing to celebrate the coming of autumn.
Miranda heaved herself up and peered out the window.
“Hey!” she panted. “Where’d she go?”
David and Katie gazed out of the window. It was true – the woman had disappeared completely.
“Vanished!” gasped Katie, collapsing back onto the seat. “Went through a Shimmer – there.”
David and Miranda strained to see what her finger was pointing at. Miranda thought she saw something that resembled a heat haze on the road. It faded quickly into the clear autumn air.
“What game is this?” Mr Crundle asked brightly.
“Er . . . there’s a witch after us,” David told him.
“Sounds like a good laugh,” chuckled Mr Crundle as he started the car.
No one answered him.

* * *

When they arrived home, they dropped their schoolbags and looked at each other. It was as though they didn’t even know Katie. Miranda thought she even looked a bit different. Less silly and mad, somehow. Mr Crundle gave them a plate of biscuits to share and disappeared into his studio.
“Let us into your room,” David told Katie. “No more secrets.”
Katie unlocked the door, quite meek. Miranda and David stepped gingerly over various alarms Katie had set up beyond the doorway. They planted themselves on Katie’s bed.
“Can’t you put the light on?” asked David, glancing at the blacked window. “I can’t see a thing.” Katie switched on a bedside lamp reluctantly.
“Look at my shoe,” moaned Miranda, inspecting it in the dim light. “Mum and Dad won’t be able to afford new ones. I’m going to have to wear it to school like this.”
“Give it here,” said Katie, sitting between them with her leather bag.
She took Miranda’s shoe and squashed it into the front pocket which, on close inspection, looked as though it had been stitched onto her satchel. A moment later, she pulled it out. Miranda exclaimed with shock and delight. The strap had been repaired – sewn together with perfect black stitches so the break was almost invisible.
“Brilliant!” grinned David.
“It’s a Fix-it pouch,” said Katie. “It repairs anything repairable.”
“So that’s why your snow dome came out of the pocket fixed!” Miranda was enormously relieved to have that mystery explained. “What do the other pockets do?” she asked, poking at them curiously.
“They just hold my pens and things. It’s a common bag other than the front pocket.”
“Come on, spill it,” David interrupted impatiently. “What are you doing here? Who was the creepy woman and why was she after you?”
“Her name is Wendyn Wallow,” Katie told them. “But I don’t know why she was chasing me. It’s supposed to be a secret that I’m here in Commonwold.”
“Who is she?”
“She’s one of Edistein’s followers,” Katie said darkly. She finished this baffling remark with a short, knowing nod of the head.
“Who or what is Edistein?” was David’s question.
“Of course – you don’t know,” said Katie, her face somewhat bemused.
Miranda’s head was buzzing with all the new ideas. Meanwhile, David was happily snapping biscuits into pieces. He was sticking them into Katie’s Fix-it pouch to see how it would repair them.
“There’s so much to explain,” said Katie. She stood up and paced the room as though looking for a place to begin. Miranda waited impatiently. “Edistein is the Great Mage,” Katie told them at last. “His full name is Edison Einstein but he’s known as Edistein. You’re probably wondering about the name,” Katie added when David nearly choked. “He took on the names of the two scientists he considers the most important. Albert Einstein gave humankind loads of theories to explain magic and mysteries. Like energy, and time travel. Thomas Edison gave humans loads of inventions – gadgets and machines – that replaced sorcery. Lightbulbs, for instance. And motion pictures.”
“Why would he take their names?” Miranda wanted to know.
“Well, Edistein says that science is replacing magic, and we’ll need science to get by when Oldenwold is gone. He thinks sorcery ought to be regulated … controlled, so that people can learn how to live Commonwold lives.”
“What did you call him – the Great what?” asked Miranda.
“The Great Mage. The head honcho. There’s always been a Great Mage,” said Katie. “They are the most powerful sorcerers of the time. There can’t not be a Great Mage. A successor is born before the every Great Mage dies.”
“Are they a kind of royalty?” asked Miranda.
“Not really,” said Katie musingly. “Kings and queens rule a place, don’t they?”
“They used to,” said David. “That’s the idea.”
“Well, the Great Mage doesn’t rule, as such. And it can be a man or a woman. They don’t hold any actual power – not like in Parmesan, or anything.”
They both stared at Katie.
“Parmesan?” repeated Miranda. “As in, parmesan cheese?”
“Maybe I’ve got the wrong word,” she said self-consciously. “You know where they make all the laws and such?”
“Parliament?” inquired David, mastering his amusement carefully.
“Yes, Parliament,” she nodded. “The Great Mage doesn’t have any parma…parliamentary power. But he’s very important. Everyone respects his wisdom and skill. That’s why Edistein has followers. He is the current Great Mage.”
“Hang on,” Miranda objected. “If he’s a Great Mage, how can he be opposed to magic?”
“That’s just the point,” nodded Katie. “That’s why so many people respect him. He has untold magical power, but he won’t use it. He says he’s showing the kind of self control all magical folk should have. He says sorcery is too dangerous to use unrestricted because it’s not understood. Too much superstition and bunkum. He thinks that if we restrict magic then we’ll all be able to adapt to our new Commonwold lives.” Katie’s voice was rising angrily. “He treats magic like a kind of illness to be cured, instead of the wonderful thing that it is –”
“Okay, okay,” soothed Miranda. “Calm down, Katie.”
Katie gulped down her rage. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just all so frustrating. There are so many Oldenwolders who can’t see that what Edistein’s saying is wrong. Science won’t help us. Restricting sorcery won’t, either.”
“Well, what will?” David prompted.
Katie’s face fell slightly. “We’re not totally sure but we think that, the less people use magic, the more Oldenwold shrinks,” said Katie. “So regulating sorcery is the last thing we want people to do.”
“So,” David put in skeptically, “it’s sort of like, every time a child says I don’t believe in fairies, a fairy somewhere dies? Come off it, Pickerwick!”
“I don’t understand how it works,” she retorted. “I only know that’s how it is. And if we don’t stop it, Oldenwold will disappear completely.”
“Katie,” Miranda said quietly. “Who do you mean when you say ‘we’?”
Katie lowered her voice to a whisper. “The Resistance,” she said.

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Instalment 4 of The Blight of Beacon

end of Chapter 2 - Standing up to Elspeth

“You shouldn’t even be here, you needy brat,” she hissed. “Sponging off the money of the girls who really deserve to be at this school.”
Miranda reddened. “Perhaps I can’t afford to pay full fees for Oodles,” she said quietly. “But at least I don’t have to pay for my friends.”
Star and Mishka stopped giggling immediately and Elspeth’s nasty grin faded.
“You don’t even have any friends—” she started, but Miranda had won. The class seemed to have rallied behind her without moving an inch.
“All right, girls,” Mrs Huffington said, stepping closer to Miranda and Elspeth with a patient smile. “I’m sensing a little bit of hostility between you. Let’s use some listening skills. Miranda, why don’t you tell your side of things and Elspeth, you can use your listening skills. The we’ll swap over. Go on, Miranda – remembering to use “I” language to talk about your feelings, of course.”
Miranda didn’t want to speak, but she was still so angry at Elspeth that the words seemed to spill from her mouth of their own accord.
“I believe,” she said, “that Elspeth is a snobbish, pampered git who gets whatever she wants at Oodles because her mother is always ready to pull out her cheque-book.”
“And I believe,” Elspeth snapped, “that Miranda is a pathetic charity case who is dragging Oodles’ good name down into the mud!”
Mrs Huffington coughed uneasily into the silence that followed. None of the other girls could believe what was happening. They sat watching the scene in collective fascination.
“Well, both of your opinions are important, of course, but you could use slightly different language to express yourselves. You’re aiming for assertiveness. We don’t want to be aggressive now, do we?”
“What I meant, Mrs Huffington,” Elspeth simpered, “was that certain people without a decent family name shouldn’t be allowed to ruin to reputation of a fine school.”
“And what I meant,” scowled Miranda, “was that it seems some people can get through a good school without needing any actual intelligence, just because their parents have bucket loads of dosh!”
By this time, both girls were standing up, facing one another across Elspeth’s desk. Miranda, tingling with anger, looked longingly at Elspeth’s long, blonde plaits, wishing she could give one of them a good, hard yank. To her utter astonishment, Elspeth’s plaits suddenly stood straight out on either side of her head. As Miranda watched in stunned silence, the plaits came around to the front of Elspeth’s face and twisted together. As though held by an invisible hand, the twisted hair pulled sharply forward, dragging Elspeth across the desk and leaving her sprawling upside down, her legs flailing frantically and leaving her somewhat bulbous bottom in its bright floral knickers exposed for all the class to see. The class erupted in a burst of laughter as Miranda blinked at the sight in front of her, trying to decide exactly what it was she had just seen. Mrs Huffington looked similarly bewildered. Elspeth clambered up off her desk and glared at Miranda.
“Did you see?” she spat at Mrs Huffington. “Did you see what she did? She pulled me over the desk by my hair!”
Mrs Huffington looked as though that was not precisely what she had seen, but she did not say so. Instead, she attempted to gather her wits and looked sternly at both girls.
“I think it would be best if you both went to see Ms Lycaon immediately,” she said. “Katie, you can go too, since you started this hullabaloo.”
The Headmistress had her office door open, rather as though she had expected to see them. Elspeth marched in importantly after a brief rap on the door, followed by the frantically whispering Miranda and Katie.
“How did you do it?” Katie was asking Miranda urgently.
“I didn’t touch her!” Miranda hissed in reply. “You saw what happened! It was like magic.”
Katie continued to stare at her with deep distrust. Ms Lycaon cleared her throat and both girls looked at her instantly.
Even sitting down, Ms Lycaon was tall and awe-inspiring. Her eyes gleamed darkly under bushy eyebrows that nearly met in the middle. Her great mane of dark grey hair was swept elegantly away from her face, and when she smiled, something about her teeth made you feel uneasy.
“Well, girls,” she was saying in her deep, gravelly voice. “Somehow I don’t think Mrs Huffington has sent you here so I can congratulate you on your excellent behaviour in class…”
“She wanted me to come and tell you that Miranda pulled me over the desk by my plaits!” announced Elspeth.
“I didn’t touch her!” shouted Miranda. “Clumsy ox must have fallen.”
“Liar!” hissed Elspeth.
“It’s true, Ms Lycaon,” Miranda insisted desperately.
Ms Lycaon looked from one to the other in the deepest reflective silence. Finally, she glanced across at Katie.
“What did you see, Miss Pickerwick?” she asked.
“It was strange,” Katie told her earnestly. “Elspeth was pulled over her desk, but I promise you that Miranda did not touch her, Ms Lycaon.”
Ms Lycaon was silent for some moments more.
“Hmm, inconclusive. To be safe, I think I’d better put you all in detention.”
Elspeth’s mouth fell open.
“Detention?” she repeated, disgusted. “I really don’t think that’s fair, Ms Ly—”
“What a pity, Miss Richman-Snood. However, detention it is. This afternoon, straight after school. Forty-five minutes should do it.”
Elspeth brightened. “I’m so sorry, Miss,” she said gleefully. “I have a ballet lesson this afternoon at three-fifteen.”
“Well, tomorrow will do just as well for you, Elspeth,” Ms Lycaon assured her with a toothy smile. “Back to class now, all of you.”
“Typical,” muttered Elspeth on the way back to the classroom. “I should have expected you leeches to stick up for each other. You both know I didn’t fall.”
“Don’t blame me if you can’t stand up properly without Star and Mishka propping you up on either side,” retorted Miranda, still seething.
“You wait, Miranda Crundle,” Elspeth whispered at the classroom door. “I’ll get you.”
Miranda sighed. Katie’s face was as unconcerned as ever. She had no idea of the battle she kept fuelling. Miranda, however, could only foresee Elspeth’s nastiness for the rest of their Oodles career.
At least some of the other girls in the class seemed friendlier all of a sudden. Felicity shot Miranda a quick smile, and Ellie winked and promised, “We will go for an icecream tomorrow,” before Mrs Huffington’s class was over. Nobody actually came right out and congratulated her, but Miranda enjoyed the status of a semi-hero for the rest of that day. She was even able to go to detention with a tolerably cheerful outlook.
She sent word to David, waiting as usual at the gate, that she and Katie would be late. They did their homework during detention and Miranda felt that, on the whole, the punishment was well worth showing Elspeth up in front of the class. She did not, however, feel that it would be a particularly clever way to deal with Elspeth in future. The recollection of Elspeth’s narrow eyes as she’d said “I’ll get you” was still fresh in Miranda’s mind.
After detention, she and Katie sauntered across the car park, looking about for David. It was sprinkling lightly and the sky was dark, although it was still quite early.
“Looks like a storm is coming on,” observed Miranda as they stopped to wait on the verge.
David emerged from Lizzie’s Lunches, walking towards them with his long black coat and laceless boots flapping.
“I hear you got detention,” he called with a grin. “Not like our well-behaved little Miss Miranda, is it?”
“That poxy Elspeth Richman-Snood started it,” Miranda told him, and he snorted in disgust.
“That whole family needs hanging out to dry,” he claimed. “It’s about to rain, so I phoned Dad to pick us up. Want to kick a football around the common till he gets here?”
Miranda shrugged and glanced at Katie. Katie did not appear to have heard David. She was peering hard across the road. Miranda followed her gaze to a woman who had just climbed out of a sleek, silver car in the school car park. She was a squat figure, with a square body and an oddly heavy look about her. She was very plain, with dull, mousey hair and an unpleasant face, and she was clothed in brown tweed from head to toe. When she looked up Miranda saw the abnormal potato shape of the woman’s nose. It sat on her otherwise bland face, rather like a hunched rock climber clinging to a cliff. By now, Katie seemed to be trying in vain to hide behind Miranda.
“Wallow!” she whispered, her eyes wide with horror.
“Wallow? In what?” asked Miranda.
But now the woman appeared to have spotted Katie too. She perked up like a cat that had seen a small furry animal – standing stock still and gazing unblinkingly at Katie. A moment later, she was striding towards them. There was a menacing look on her face, and Katie lost no more time.“It’s Wendyn Wallow!” she exclaimed in terror. “Run!”

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Instalment 3 of The Blight of Beacon

from Chapter 2: Standing up to Elspeth

Even when the second form was not in the Miss Goody’s history class, they knew where she was. The sound of her shrieking furiously at some other unfortunate Oodles girl would often cause them to shudder. Miranda reflected that it seemed every school must have at least one utterly horrid, nasty and spiteful teacher. Oodles had Miss Goody. When second form played sports on the school common, her distant screeching was like the whiff of a sewage plant on the wind.
When they were in the same classroom, Miranda watched Miss Goody with fearful admiration. She thought the way Miss Goody shouted at pupils was almost artistic. Miranda had seen even the most poised sixth formers shrink before Miss Goody’s rants. She never ceased to be amazed at the enormous amount of volume Miss Goody managed to force out of her tiny, lipsticked mouth.
On one dismal Thursday morning it was Katie, as usual, over whom Miss Goody was exercising her lungs.
“That’s just the kind of smarty-pants answer I’m starting to expect from you, young lady!” she bellowed. “It’s pupils like you that make the teaching profession a misery! You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said since you started in this class, Miss Pickerwick – nor have you, to my knowledge, opened any of the books I set you for this subject. Do you want to be a dunce? Do you? Don’t speak!” she snapped when Katie opened her mouth to reply. “Because if you continue this way, my girl, you will find yourself a dunce. You will have no knowledge of history. You will shock people with your ignorance. You will amuse people with your ridiculous blunders. But let me assure you, missy, they won’t be laughing with you! Oh, no, Miss Pickerwick, they will be laughing at you! But you seem to be just the sort of fool that doesn’t mind when people are laughing at her. Yes, I can see that you are of the kind that will do anything for a cheap laugh.” She took a deep breath and patted her poodle-curled perm for a moment. “So. Now we’ve established that time travel is not a good way to learn about history, I would appreciate a sensible answer to the question.”
Miranda put her hand into the air, partly to answer the question, and partly to rescue Katie.
“Looking at old photographs,” she suggested when Miss Goody finally called on her. Miranda was generally one of her last choices, but no one else looked willing to venture an answer after the latest bout of wrath.
Miss Goody hesitated as though she would dearly have loved for Miranda to be wrong. But eventually she had to admit that Miranda had given a correct reply. She turned to write the words ‘photographic records’ begrudgingly on the chalkboard after a resentful, “Looking at photographs, Miss.”
“Photographs, Miss,” Miranda echoed obediently.
Miranda wished she didn’t always feel the urge to rescue Katie. Secretly, she was beginning to think that Katie didn’t deserve a scholarship to attend Upper Drivell Young Ladies’ School. That Katie had only been given one because Miranda herself attended. Perhaps the Headmistress had felt sorry for Katie. Katie was doing so badly in almost all of her classes, that Miranda expected Ms Lycaon to call her parents up to the school any day. Miranda herself was doing well – at least in her schoolwork. She had now given up hope of becoming good mates with Ellie Manjuli and Felicity Van Hoeven. She knew that Elspeth made it unpleasant for anyone to spend much time with Miranda these days. In fact, as a result of Miranda’s good marks, Elspeth hated her more than ever. She was making quite a hobby out of subtly bullying Miranda with Star and Mishka. Miranda was unwilling to suffer the mortification of being abandoned by Ellie and Felicity. So she’d abandoned them first.
When the bell rang at the end of Miss Goody’s class, Miranda gathered her books. Elspeth pushed past with Star and Mishka. Deliberately bumping hard into Miranda’s desk, Star apologized mockingly when Miranda’s notes fell to the floor in a scattered mess.
“Never mind it, Star,” advised Elspeth. “Katie and Miranda can simply pop back in time to just before it happened. Right, Katie?”
That was Star and Mishka’s cue to laugh as though they had never heard anything so funny. Miranda glowered at all three of them as Katie appeared by her side.
“You couldn’t travel back in time to stop an accident from happening,” Katie told Elspeth earnestly. “You could watch it happen over again. You could even check who the clumsy person was who knocked the books off, if there was any doubt that it was Star. But you couldn’t do anything to change it. Once it’s done, it’s done.”
Elspeth rolled her eyes at Katie.
“Weirdo,” she muttered. She stalked away with Star and Mishka in tow, sniggering as usual.
Katie stooped to help collect the papers. She stuffed them into Miranda’s satchel with a cheerful lack of care.
“Well!” she said with a grin. “That was an interesting lesson, wasn’t it? Poor old Goody got herself into quite a state again, but then she does seem to do that a lot, I always think.”
“She does when you’re in the room,” remarked Miranda, leading the way to the lower school Common Room. “And Katie, you ought to be careful what you say to Elspeth. She is a powerful force in this school,” she reminded Katie darkly as they turned into the Common Room. “If you cross her, you’ll regret it.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Katie said firmly. “How can one girl be a powerful force in a school? She’s not even very bright. Look at what she said just then about changing the past. I mean, what sort of an imbecile would seriously believe that you could go back in time and change things? Once something has happened, it’s happened, for goodness’ sake!” Katie laughed heartily at Elspeth’s ignorance.
Miranda watched Katie with puzzlement. Sometimes when she talked about these crazy things it sounded as though Katie really believed what she was saying. Miranda suspected for the umpteenth time that Katie wasn’t quite right in the head.
“Katie, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but listen here. The more odd things you say in history, the more Miss Goody will shout at you. Perhaps you are just imaginative or whatever, but it sounds like you’re trying to make her cross. Do you want to get kicked out of Oodles? As for Elspeth, she’ll jump on anything silly anyone does or says and tease them about it for weeks on end. She’s just like her mother, that Cynthia Richman-Snood. Mrs Richman-Snood’s a fancy lawyer. Mum’s always coming up against her in court. She says Mrs Richman-Snood is like a terrier after a rat – she just won’t let anything go. That’s what Elspeth does. She obviously doesn’t have the imagination to think up her own insults, so she just latches onto anything you do that’s a bit odd. And, well, let’s face it Katie, you do odd things quite a bit.”
Miranda caught a muttered comment behind her about “leeches.” She glanced around to see Elspeth glaring at her from across the Common Room. Obviously, she’d overheard Miranda saying her name, but didn’t have quite enough evidence to cause a scene. Katie waved at Elspeth cheerfully.
“She’s all right,” she said to Miranda. “She’s just a little moody from time to time.”
“Well, you ought to watch yourself, that’s all,” Miranda told Katie somewhat helplessly. “Elspeth can make your life a misery.”
“Oh, it’ll take more than knocking a few notes off a desk to make me miserable,” Katie grinned carelessly.
“They weren’t your notes,” muttered Miranda.

Finally it was the last lesson of the day. It seemed unfair that the class Miranda most enjoyed – science – should be ruined by Elspeth’s presence. Miranda liked the science master, Mr Dirger. He was extremely keen on animal biology and often lent Miranda slides of liver flukes and other unpleasant parasites for her microscope. He had a bristly beard and occasionally, when he was particularly excited about the study of some animal or another, his eyes would cross. Elspeth loathed him, and made no secret of it, but Mr Dirger was too deeply in love with teaching his subject to notice.
Miranda found this lesson engrossing. She was listening to Mr Dirger happily, and had almost forgotten Elspeth was even in the room.
“The survival of the fittest,” he was saying, “means that the best equipped animals survive and breed, and so build up the strength of the species. Just say you have a pride of lions. Lions use their size, strength and speed to hunt successfully. If two lions are born – one large, strong lion, and one small lion, then the smaller, weaker lion is not as likely to get enough food, is it? So, one might expect it to die before it gets a chance to breed. On the other hand, the bigger lion will hunt well, prosper and breed. It might work in the opposite way with an animal like a squirrel. Squirrels depend on being small and agile to escape from their predators. So a bigger, fatter squirrel has got a lower chance of surviving. Yes, Elspeth?”
Elspeth had raised her hand to ask a question. She smoothed her long, blonde hair composedly.
“I was just wondering, Mr Dirger,” she said sweetly. “Does it work the same way with people? I mean, are the small, runty, inferior humans less likely to survive?” She shot a nasty look at Miranda as she spoke, and Miranda reddened. “And what about the big fat ones?” Elspeth added, glancing over at Katie.
Mr Dirger answered the question unsuspectingly. Star and Mishka smirked at Miranda while she stared furiously down at her textbook. She longed to raise her hand and ask Mr Dirger if the pampered, soft humans were not the ones who were more likely to die out. But she didn’t dare. She knew that if she were to provoke Elspeth, the taunts and teasing would become much, much worse.
The lesson wore on and Miranda tried to put Elspeth and her friends out of her mind while she did her work. She was writing answers on a worksheet thoughtfully when a piece of folded paper arrived at her elbow. She glanced around to see who had thrown it, but all heads were bent over their work. Miranda unfolded the paper.
“Dear Miranda,” said the note. “Do you want to go for an ice cream at Lizzie’s Lunches after school? From Ellie.”
Miranda’s spirits rose. Ellie was good fun, after all. Maybe it was better to keep what friends she could while Elspeth was being so nasty. Ellie had shown over and over that she wasn’t scared of Elspeth. She looked at Ellie now, but the girl was frowning down at her worksheet. Miranda went back to her own work feeling rather better, and quite able to forget Elspeth’s unpleasantness.
At the end of the lesson, the girls all crowded through the classroom door. Miranda hung back a little, waiting for Ellie. When she appeared, Miranda grinned at her.
“I’ll just need to let my brother know,” she told Ellie.
“Huh?” Ellie looked blank.
“That we’re going for ice cream,” prompted Miranda.
Ellie stared. “Huh?” she said again.
At that moment, Miranda heard an explosion of giggles behind her. Without even turning around, she knew who it was. She also knew, in that instant, exactly what had happened. Ellie had not invited her for ice cream. Elspeth had written the note. She and her friends were by now howling with laughter at Miranda’s expense.
“What’s going on?” demanded Ellie in utter bewilderment.
Miranda didn’t answer. Her cheeks burning, she dropped the note and pushed past Ellie, refusing to look at Elspeth and her cronies. She scolded herself silently for being stupid enough to think anyone would want to be friends with her while she was Elspeth Richman-Snood’s chosen prey. Better to keep quiet, go it alone, and hope that Elspeth would eventually decide she wasn’t worth picking on.
David was made to walk the girls home every day upon their mother’s insistence. Today he was eating a sausage roll from the local lunchbar. David spent his entire pocket money allowance on food from Lizzie’s Lunches each week. When he wasn’t eating, he was hungry, and the only time he wasn’t hungry was when he was eating. Despite his constant eating, he was a beanpole. Miranda found it quite incredible. Once, she had secretly recorded everything David had eaten in one day. It had started before breakfast with a snack of two apples and half a bag of crisps (only half because their mother had confiscated the crisps as soon as she had seen them). Breakfast itself, being on a weekend, had consisted of three fried eggs, several pieces of bacon, four of Mr Crundle’s coconut-tofu pancakes (and it would have been five except that Katie had stuffed the last one into her jacket pocket as he reached for it). Not to mention three pieces of toast, a glass of milk and a glass of orange juice. Almost immediately afterwards, he set to work on morning tea, which had been six scones with jam and two cups of sweet tea. His pre-lunch snack had been a muesli bar, an orange, several chocolate biscuits and a thick slice of cheese. And so it had gone on all day. Miranda was left quite in awe of David’s powers of digestion. After watching him eat like that for a full day, she hadn’t felt quite able to stomach her dinner.
He grunted a greeting to them and shouldered his school satchel. All three turned for home.
“Old Goody gave us a ton of homework, didn’t she?” remarked Katie.
Miranda hmm’ed her agreement but she didn’t feel like chatting with Katie. David swallowed the last of his sausage roll and countered that she couldn’t possibly have as much homework as he did. He and Katie argued good-naturedly for the rest of the walk home.
Miranda kept her eyes on the footpath. Today, she felt irked by the friendship between David and Katie. It seemed very unfair. Katie had sent all her new school friends scurrying – and now she was even taking over Miranda’s privileged position as most-teased little sister at home. Indulging herself in a comforting wallow, Miranda tried to think of other ways Katie had made her life hard. She wondered if even her parents were favouring Katie over herself. Unfortunately, she couldn’t thinking of any such instances. She had to be satisfied with only David playing favourites. As they went through the front door, Katie bumped her leather satchel roughly into Miranda’s shin. Then she climbed the stairs obliviously, still yelling parting toppers to David as she went. Miranda scowled, rubbing her injured leg, and clumped up the stairs behind her.

* * *

The next morning, Miranda knew it was going to be another bad day. She woke up and dressed, still feeling grumpy from the memories of the day before. Her mood did not improve when she walked into a patch of pointy landmines – including dissected toy cars, fishtank stones, and burrs – that Katie had placed in the hallway outside her barricaded bedroom door.
“Owww!” screamed Miranda. “You’re a menace to society!” she yelled through the crack in Katie’s door.
As soon as her nose touched the door an alarm started screeching. Something that smelt suspiciously like Worcestershire sauce began squirting out of the keyhole. Before Miranda could jump out of the way, her school uniform was covered in splatters of brown. Katie had obviously run out of Mr Crundle’s shaving foam. As she gazed down at her Oodles pinafore in dismay, Katie appeared in the hallway behind her.
“Are you trying to get into my room?” Katie demanded with deep suspicion.
Miranda turned on her. “Get in? Get in? I was trying to walk past it! You know, to get to the lavatory? Where normal people go? I do have to walk past your room to get there, unfortunately!” she hollered.
“So you weren’t trying to get in?” Katie said doubtfully.
“Why would I want to get into your stupid room? What have you got in there – a nuclear weapon? Mum!”
Miranda stormed past Katie to her parents’ room. Mrs Crundle appeared from her wardrobe with a look of surprise.
“What on earth have you done to your uniform?” she asked Miranda sharply.
“Mum, she’s booby trapped that blimmin’ door again. Worcester sauce! And this is my last clean school shirt!”
“Just give it a wipe,” Mrs Crundle told Miranda tiredly.
“Aren’t you going to talk to her?”
“Well, you’re both big girls, darling.” Mrs Crundle disappeared back into her wardrobe, and emerged a moment later wearing an aged but neat jacket and skirt. “Can’t you talk to her yourself? I have to get to work – I’m in court this morning.”
“Mum, I smell like a roast beef dinner,” wailed Miranda. To her horror, her eyes were filling with tears. “I can’t stand this,” she shouted, to cover her embarrassment. “She gets away with murder!”
Mrs Crundle was surprised to see the typically wooden Miranda in tears. She immediately put her arm around her daughter.
“All right, Miranda, calm down. I get the message. I’ll talk to Katie tonight. You go and see what you can do about that shirt. The pinafore doesn’t matter – it’s dark enough to hide the stain, but you’ll need to give that blouse a really good mop. I’m sure you can clean it up beautifully, darling,” she added as Miranda stomped away.

Miranda felt like a storm was brewing all that day. First she received a poor mark in Miss Goody’s class. Then she dropped a library book into the puddle beneath the water fountain while she was taking a drink. And the Worcestershire sauce had not cleaned up beautifully. It had cleaned up just as Miranda had expected, which was not at all well. After catching sight of Miranda’s blouse, Elspeth commented that, “some of the leeches obviously need lessons in hygiene if they can’t wear clean clothes to school.” A steady stream of similar snide remarks had kept up all morning. Elspeth’s jokes, of course, kept the ever-present Star and Mishka in stitches. Miranda tried to ignore them, her face flushed with resentment and shame. Katie made matters a hundred times worse by assuring Elspeth that Miranda was, in fact, very hygienic, and explaining how thoroughly Miranda washed her hands after dissecting earthworms to view under her microscope. Elspeth had never heard anything so hideous, so revolting, or so vulgar, and she made no attempt to hide her feelings. But all of this was nothing compared to the events of the pre-lunch period. It happened in Mrs Huffington’s English class, as the teacher handed back marked written reports.
“These are the essays I asked you to do on real life situations in which you have used listening skills,” she told the class.
Mrs Huffington was very enthusiastic about teaching the Oodles girls to communicate well. She was always asking the girls to make up plays or write stories about listening skills. She also talked a lot about being assertive, reading body language and showing respect for others. Miranda didn’t mind Mrs Huffington, although she sometimes felt that she expected rather too much from a group of twelve and thirteen year olds in the way of being civilized.
As the teacher placed Katie’s paper on her desk, she commented, “Lovely work, Katie, and you seem to understand what listening skills are, but I asked for a situation from real life.”
“It was from real life, Mrs Huffington,” Katie replied, and Miranda groaned inwardly, waiting for Katie to dig herself into a hole again.
“Really, Katie, have you forgotten what you wrote? It was a fascinating composition about an argument with a cousin over a practical joke he played on you.”
“I remember it perfectly well, Mrs Huffington. It did happen, I promise.”
“Miss Pickerwick, are you trying to tell me your cousin somehow used magic to make your ears grow to the size of an elephant’s?”
Katie seemed suddenly at a loss for words.
“Er…” she started, reddening, and then fell silent, looking quite panicky.
“I think what Katie meant, Miss,” Miranda broke in, her sympathy getting the better of her, “was that …er, her cousin really does play practical jokes on her – and that she was using real life as inspiration for a fictional story. Maybe.”
“Maybe her cousin did play a magical joke on her – and made her body the size of an elephant’s!” muttered Elspeth, upon which Mishka and Star both sputtered and coughed to hide their cackles.
Katie, who hadn’t heard the comment, glanced around at the sound of the three girls’ giggles and smiled brightly at them all. At that moment, something inside Miranda snapped. She was sick of Elspeth’s comments. Sick of her false smiles and sham kindness in front of their teachers. Sick of her digs about being poor, and her sly jokes about Katie’s size, hair, and weird ways. She was sick of everything, but mostly sick of Elspeth. Before she could stop herself, she had turned around and was saying sweetly, “If you had a magical cousin, Elspeth, I would say that he had played a practical joke that had turned you into a scheming, snotty teacher’s pet. But since you don’t, I have to assume that you were just born that way.”

The rest of the class fell silent in disbelief. After what seemed like a dreadfully long pause, a couple of the other girls in the class, including Ellie and Felicity, started to snort and squeak as they attempted to stifle their giggles. Elspeth turned white with fury.

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Instalment 2 of The Blight of Beacon

end of Chapter 1: An Invitation to Oodles

Miranda and Katie had only to wait three more days until the school term started. Soon enough, they were standing in their almost-new uniforms at the door of their first class. Miranda was small with fair hair and serious grey eyes. She looked neat and cautious as usual. Katie somehow managed to make a stiff blazer and skirt look scruffy. Ellie and Felicity greeted them both in a friendly way. While they stood in line, Ellie pointed out a girl with long blonde plaits. The girl had a snub nose and an air of complete poise and confidence.
“That’s Elspeth Richman-Snood,” she told Miranda in a low voice. “And those two girls with her are her flunkies. Mishka Moylan and Star Kennedy. They think they’re the in crowd at Oodles.”
“I don’t even want to think about it, Star,” Elspeth was saying airily. “It’s enough for me to get Best Girl once. I’ve done my duty by my family. It doesn’t really mean anything, and truly, I don’t mind who gets it this year. As long as it’s not one of the leeches.” Elspeth looked around herself suspiciously.
“What does she mean, leeches?” asked Miranda.
“Well,” Ellie said rather reluctantly. “Don’t worry about it, but that’s what she calls the scholarship girls. Honestly, Miranda,” Ellie added when she saw the dismay on Miranda’s face, “don’t even give it a second thought. That’s just Elspeth.”
“I think you’re really clever to have gotten a scholarship,” Felicity said, her eyes round. “It’s ever so hard to get into Oodles on scholarship.”
“Elspeth says she doesn’t care,” Ellie added in a mutter, “but she’d burst a blood vessel if she didn’t get Best Girl this year as well. And her mum’s just as bad. She’s a shoo-in, too. She takes all the extras and does ballet at the Exhibition Night each year. And she sucks up to the teachers like nobody’s business. I know, because one of the girls from ballet told me all about it. I think it’s nauseating, personally.”
“How do you win Best Girl?” Katie wanted to know.
Felicity knew the answer. “You have to win the highest number of points out of all the girls in your form. But before they even add up your points you need to get at least a hundred points in three different categories. The first one is Academic – you know, schoolwork, the second one is The Arts and the last one is School Spirit.”
“What’s that?” asked Miranda. “School Spirit, I mean.”
“Who knows?” chuckled Ellie. “All I know is Elspeth got her points for that category last year by having her mum donate the money to do up the staffroom. They got cushy new chairs and a coffee machine.”
Miranda curled her lip in disgust.
“You should try for Best Girl, Miranda,” Katie told her earnestly. “You could win it easily.”
Miranda laughed. “Thanks Katie, but I think I’d have to hold up a bank before Mum could donate new furniture to the school.” She said this without thinking, and then she looked anxiously at Ellie and Felicity to check their reactions. They didn’t seem to be exchanging meaningful glances, but Miranda couldn’t be sure. She hadn’t meant to let on to the other girls at school about how little money her family had. Miranda scolded herself silently for slipping up.
By recess, Elspeth had sniffed out who was a scholarship girl and who wasn’t. She and her friends started to snub Miranda and Katie immediately. Miranda thought that the unconventional Katie was a more obvious target for Elspeth’s snide remarks, so she was surprised to find herself the victim of choice. They had history with Miss Goody after recess. Miranda saw, to her intense scorn, how Miss Goody simpered over Elspeth and her friends. It seemed Elspeth could never get into trouble with the history teacher, no matter how she sniggered with her friends or passed notes around class.
The first few days merely increased Elspeth’s dislike of the scholarship girls. On Thursday, she managed to ruin Miranda’s day before the end of lunchtime. Oodles lunches were held in the dining hall, where the girls sat in their forms at old varnished wooden tables. Miranda was thrilled to see that the food actually looked edible. She’d endured a year of limp fish fingers and cold peas at Drivell Comprehensive. On this day, she was carrying a tray of food carefully back to the second form table. When she walked past Elspeth and friends, Elspeth pushed back her chair suddenly – and Miranda, small and thin as she was, nearly went flying. She managed to save her tray of food, but only by clutching it to her chest. A good portion of gravy and mash ended up on her school blazer. She gazed from her dripping blazer to Elspeth in angry astonishment.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Elspeth said sweetly as Mrs Huffington hurried over to help Miranda clean herself up.
“Do be more careful, Elspeth,” Mrs Huffington told her evenly.
When the teacher had gone and Miranda was sitting in her place with her blazer stuffed under her chair, Star and Mishka let out the peals of nasty laughter they had been suppressing. Still pretending to be sorry, Elspeth said in a fretful voice,
“Clumsy me! Gravy all over your brand new blazer!”
“Oh, it’s not brand new,” Katie piped up innocently. “We got it second hand. Mine too. They look just like new, though.”
The entire second form stared. Then the giggling began. Miranda gazed at Katie in complete amazement, hardly able to believe that she had said such a thing. She thought she would shrivel up under the embarrassment. Didn’t Katie realize that Elspeth was not their friend? Or that cheap second hand clothes were not something to be proud of? Miranda, glowing a bright pink, stared at her food furiously. Elspeth, Star and Mishka muttered and tittered together about leeches not even being able to afford their own school uniforms.
“Belt up, you lot,” Ellie told them authoritatively. She continued to eat her lunch, making a determined effort at conversation with Miranda.
Miranda was grateful but still mortified. She could barely reply to Ellie’s remarks. She hated to be pitied. What was more, she knew that it was a only matter of time until Ellie would abandon her as well. It was too much to expect from any friend to keep sticking up for her with the likes of Elspeth Richman-Snood determined to make her look pathetic. Katie was eating her lunch obliviously. She was unaware of Miranda’s suffering.
More was to come. Miranda tried to be quiet and inconspicuous. She avoided all the other girls in her form in hopes that they would forget about her. She even steered clear of Ellie and Felicity. Ellie tried to talk to her a few times, but she hardly answered. Ellie eventually gave up. It was a week after the blazer incident, during art class, that Miranda next drew Elspeth’s attention.
The art teacher reminded Miranda of her father. She wore an enormous rainbow coloured shirt and countless pieces of mismatched jewellery, and had great enthusiasm for things like dead leaves and the shape of a puddle. As the teacher raved about a pine cone, Miranda reflected gloomily that Miss Spotswood would probably have considered the gravy stain on her blazer an absolute masterpiece.
Miss Spotswood had the girls working on self-portraits with charcoal. They all sat drawing with mirrors in front of them, most of them giggling. Felicity’s portrait was very amusing – she had made the eyes too low on the forehead, and the shoulders too high. These, combined with an attempt to draw her hands folded, made her look rather like an evil hunchback plotting revenge – or so Ellie remarked. Star Kennedy’s attempt to capture her light blue eyes had simply resulted in a rather stupid expression. Miranda thought it was actually a pretty close resemblance. Much to Ellie’s amusement, Katie’s self-portrait appeared to have two noses. Miranda looked into her own grave grey eyes and pale thin face in the mirror rather unhappily. Drawing was about the last thing she felt like doing at that moment. The thought of drawing a picture that Elspeth was likely to ridicule was even less appealing. She heard Mishka Moylan’s voice raised in fawning enthusiasm.
“Elspeth, that’s absolutely brilliant. Gosh, you’re so talented! How on earth do you do it? You ought to use your art folio instead of your ballet for the Arts category of Best Girl this year. Your art is even better than your dancing.”
Mishka had meant it as a compliment, but Elspeth narrowed her eyes.
“You obviously don’t know a thing about ballet, Mishka, if that’s what you think,” she snapped.
“Oh, I didn’t mean – I mean, I just meant…” stammered Mishka.
“You’d better get on with it, Miranda,” Katie chose this moment to say quite loudly. “If you want to use an art folio for the Best Girl award, you’ll need to have something to put in it.”
Elspeth stared at Katie, and then Miranda, with cold eyes.
“You’re trying to win Best Girl, are you, Miranda?” she asked nastily.
“Of course not,” muttered Miranda, cursing Katie silently.
“Oh, she’ll win it no problem at all,” Katie told Elspeth. “She’s very smart and arty – well, her dad’s a sculptor, so it runs in the family. And the School Spirit category is a bit of a doddle, from what I’ve heard.”
Elspeth went an unsightly shade of purple.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said between clenched teeth.
“Oh, you know – your mother paying for those things in the staff room last year,” Katie said blithely.
For once, Elspeth had no reply. Ellie barely concealed a snort of mirth.
“Go on,” Elspeth told Miranda with a tight smile. “You just try for Best Girl, leech. It will be a good laugh to watch you fail.”
“I’m not trying to win Best Girl,” Miranda insisted desperately. “Katie’s the one who said it, not me.”
Elspeth wasn’t listening. She had already turned back to whisper with Star and Mishka. Mishka looked quite grateful for the distraction. It had taken Elspeth’s attention off her own blunder for the moment. Miranda thought that she would give Katie a good ticking off when they got home. Didn’t she care how much trouble she was getting Miranda into? Did she even realize?

* * *

Miranda and David had been adopted by the Crundles. Miranda was adopted before she was two years old, and David was taken in as a foster child at eight. She had taken the Crundles’ name, as they were the only family she had ever known. David did remember his family, but it seemed he would rather forget them. He too became a Crundle by name when he turned ten years old. Now, he was fifteen. David was scrawny, but he was tall. He had dark hair that he often wore in huge spikes all over his head. He was pale and always wore black, he listened to depressing music, and he loved anything supernatural. Sometimes Miranda suspected that he only talked about ghosts, vampires and aliens as much as he did to annoy her, especially as she absolutely refused to believe in anything of the kind.
One Saturday morning a couple of weeks after school had started, David appeared in the kitchen with a book in his hand.
“Look at this, M,” he said, slapping it down in front of her.
“Is this another one of those true ghost stories things?” she sighed, rescuing her toast from underneath the book.
“No, just look at it.”
She did so. It was a curious-looking book, with soft, thick pages and a cover made of cloth. It was entitled Dragoon’s Guide to Commonwold, and had a drawing of a woman smiling as she pressed buttons on what appeared to be a microwave oven. But it was the oddest microwave oven Miranda had ever seen, being made of wood and nails, with an hourglass instead of a digital clock. She opened the book and looked at the contents page.
“Clothing and dressing,” it read, “Manners and gatherings; Work and school; Home and household science; Glossary of terms.”
“What is this?” asked Miranda. “Is this a library book?”
“No,” said David. “It fell out of Katie’s bag as she was going upstairs.”
“David, you ought to give it straight back!” Miranda admonished. But she was already flicking through the pages, her amazement growing.
“For the…the Oldenwolder who wishes to clean his clothes, there are a number of options,” she read aloud. “Washing machines operate by adding water and soap to a tub into which one places one’s clothing. The tub uses Science and Electricity to slosh the clothes until they become clean. Do not be alarmed if the machine becomes very noisy. Then the clothes can be hung on a line suspended from two posts. Oldenwolders should note that these washing lines do not move the clothes out of the way when one walks underneath the line. What on earth?” Miranda exclaimed.
“Do you think Katie might be from another country?” David said doubtfully.
“How could she be?” Miranda answered bluntly. “Okay, she’s a bit odd and sometimes she doesn’t seem to know what’s going on. But how could she be from another country? And her accent – well, it’s just like ours.
“I know,” said David. “Hey, perhaps she’s from one of these little communities that don’t use any technology. They’re always building barns with ropes and wood – you know.”
“I suppose it’s possible.” Miranda said absently. She was still reading as she flicked through the pages of the book. “Listen, David. Children in Commonwold are generally regarded as neither useful nor knowledgeable. Many consider them a nuisance. They are sent to large buildings called Schools for much of their lives, where they are taught how to be adults and introduced to concepts of Science.”
At that moment, Katie came into the kitchen. When she saw what Miranda was doing she leapt across the room and onto her book with astounding speed and an ear-splitting shriek. Miranda jumped up in shock.
“What’s all this?” exclaimed Mr Crundle, hurrying into the kitchen. “Katie, are you all right?”
“She stole my book!” Katie gasped, her face white as a sheet. “Out of my satchel!”
“No, I didn’t!” protested Miranda.
“No, keep your hair on, Katie,” David put in quickly. “You dropped it on the stairs. I showed it to Miranda.”
Katie was trembling. Miranda couldn’t tell if it was with fear or anger. She gazed from Miranda to David as though she expected them to turn her in to their father at any moment. They simply stared back, mystified. Miranda had no idea what exactly she was supposed to be turning Katie in for.
“Sorry,” David added belatedly. “It’s just a book, though, Katie. It’s not like it’s your diary or anything. And I was going to give it back.”
Katie stormed off. Mr Crundle looked at his children sternly for a moment. But their obvious bewilderment made him think twice.
“It seems that Katie is very protective of her private things,” he said after a minute’s thought. “Perhaps this is something to do with her memory loss. We’d better be respectful of the way she feels. Try not to touch anything of hers.”
Miranda rolled her eyes at David. Their father’s approach was to encourage all his children in their interests and support them in their actions, no matter how bizarre. Mr Crundle returned to his studio. David helped himself to the remainder of Miranda’s toast and sat down opposite her.
“Something odd’s going on with Katie,” he said knowingly.
“Really?” said Miranda in mock amazement. “You should try going to school with her. All my new friends have done a runner already.”
“Bad luck,” he said sympathetically. “That’s the problem with girls,” he added. “They’ll abandon the one who hangs about with the oddbod – not just the oddbod herself.”
“It’s worse than that,” said Miranda. “Katie keeps saying stupid things in front of Elspeth Richman-Snood. She absolutely hates me now.”
“You haven’t got Cynthia’s daughter in your class, have you?” snorted David. “I met her once. James Dufty brought her to the school formal last year. Stuck up little nouse.”
“She’s awful to us,” Miranda confessed glumly. “Because we’re scholarship girls.”
“Hah! Because you actually had to show a glimmer of intelligence to get into Snootles, you mean?”
Miranda didn’t reproach David for mocking her school because at least he was being kind to her. She didn’t dare tell her parents that she wasn’t enjoying Oodles. Not after the fuss she had made about wanting to go there in the first place. Although David teased her constantly, at least she could be honest with him. She knew he wouldn’t betray her to their mum and dad.
“What do you think that book was, really?” he asked Miranda thoughtfully.
“Probably just a joke,” she answered. “One of those books that pretends to be serious, but it’s really just poking fun at something.”
“A satire, you think?” he said.
“Yes, that’s it.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I wonder.”
“What else could it be? There’s no country called Common… Common-whatever it was.”
“Commonwold,” David supplied. “It almost sounds like the name of a planet—”
“For goodness’ sake, David!” Miranda cried impatiently. “Katie is odd, I’ll give you that. But she’s not an alien. Don’t you think it’s hard enough for the poor girl? She’s lost her memory – and here you are saying she’s from another planet. Leave it out, will you?” Miranda surprised herself by defending Katie.
“All right, all right.” David shrugged. “But I wish she’d blinkin’ well remember who she was. It would solve a lot of mysteries around here.”
“I suppose she will remember eventually,” Miranda said. “Until then, we just have to put up with her being a highly imaginative individual.” This is what their father called Katie whenever they described her odd behaviour.
“If she was an alien,” David said cheerfully, “she could just vaporize that Elspeth Rich-and-Snotty.”

“If only it were that simple,” Miranda sighed.



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Welcome to the first instalment of Crossover Chronicles

Book 1 - The Blight of Beacon

from Chapter 1 "An Invitation to Oodles"

It was the letter Miranda had been waiting for.
“Dear Miss Crundle,” it said. “The Upper Drivell Young Ladies’ School is pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to the school on scholarship—”
That was all Miranda needed to read. She let out a cheer and threw the letter in the air, and then did a victory lap of the kitchen. Mrs Crundle caught the letter, beaming, while Miranda’s brother David watched his sister with disbelief.
“I’ve never seen anyone so happy to be going to school,” he remarked sourly.
“It’s not just a school, David,” Mrs Crundle reminded him, catching Miranda for a hug. “It’s the best girls’ school in the county.”
“Don’t you start,” he groaned. “It’s all she’s talked about these holidays. ‘Oh, I hope I get into Oodles,’ ‘I must get into Oodles,’ ‘oh, whatever shall I do if I don’t get into Oodles?’ She’s just about driven me bonkers.”
“Congratulations, Miranda,” said Katie, their foster sister, shaking Miranda’s hand enthusiastically. “I knew you’d get in – you’re awfully brainy.”
“Thanks,” puffed Miranda, sinking breathlessly into a kitchen chair. She didn’t usually run about like that – serious and tranquil was more her style. “I can’t believe it! This is going to be fantastic.”
“I suppose the one advantage is that you don’t have to go to Drivell Comprehensive anymore,” said David with a slight grin. “So you won’t end up doing your A-levels in swearing and petty thuggery.”
“Oh, David, your school isn’t that bad,” admonished Mrs Crundle. “Anyway, you have no right to complain. We gave you the chance to try out for Guilderton Boys’, and you said you’d rather…well, rather not go.”
“Rather use a dog turd for toothpaste, I think he said,” Katie put in.
“Yes, thank you, Katie,” Mrs Crundle replied, sounding faintly ill.
“I think it will be lovely,” Katie assured Miranda. “After everything you’ve told me about this Oodles place, personally, I’d love to go there.”
Mrs Crundle looked at Katie in surprise.
“Would you, dear?” she asked with interest.
“Of course!” said Katie. “All those plays, fairs and open days. It sounds like good fun.”
Mrs Crundle sat thoughtfully for a moment. “Miranda had already applied to get into the Young Ladies’ School by the time you came to live with us, Katie,” she said, “so we didn’t think about your putting in an application. We can’t afford to pay the school fees, and Miranda’s only going because she got a science scholarship, but you never know…perhaps you could get a scholarship too. Would you like to apply?”
“I’ll give it a bash,” said Katie. “Why not?”
Miranda watched her mother and Katie silently. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted Katie at her new school. A moment later, she remembered how hard it had been to win a scholarship, and shrugged off her concerns. The chances of Katie getting in were practically non-existent.
“Aren’t you going to miss your friends at Drivell Comp?” David was asking her.
“What friends?” Miranda returned sceptically. “Most of the girls there are only interested in fogging up the locker room with spray deodorant, or pretending to think all the boys at Drivell Comp are complete muppets.”
“You’ll be walking through the swanky part of Drivell to get to Oodles,” David remarked. “‘Upper Drivell,’ they call it. Like they want to be a posh little village somewhere. But really, they’re just in good old Drivell like the rest of us.”
“You can rag on it all you like, David; I’m still over the moon I’m going there!” Miranda told him.
“Well, you’re a nutter,” David shrugged. “But you’re a smart nutter.”
This was a high compliment from David. Miranda, still bursting with joy, went outside to her father’s studio to tell him the news.
“That’s wonderful, chickpea!” he exclaimed, hugging her warmly and covering her with clay off of his apron. “And it was on the science scholarship, you say? Well, they had to accept you. There’s not many twelve year olds about who know as much as you do about insect anatomy or the atomic composition of sulphuric acid.”
“H-two-S-O-four,” grinned Miranda, picking semi-dried clay out of her short, fair hair. “And, Dad, they’ve got a science club for the older girls, and they do real field trips out to ponds and drains and so on. I heard that, last year, they did testing on mud from a pig farm!”
“Sounds amazing,” Mr Crundle told her with rather blank enthusiasm.
“Oh, it was. Apparently they found a species of micro-organism which is normally only found in South America. It was absolutely brilliant.”
“Well, it sounds like just the right place for you,” her dad chuckled, returning to his sculpture. “Pass me that scraper, will you, Miranda?”
Miranda passed the scraper and then went to wander through the back garden and daydream about her new school. She had a moment’s discomfort when she remembered that her mother would be putting in an application for Katie but her logical mind took over almost immediately. They’ve already handed out the scholarships for this year, she said to herself, so she really doesn’t have a hope of getting in. And if she gets in next year, well, I will have been there for a year and I’ll have sorted out some friends by then, I’m sure. With these thoughts, Miranda was able to put the idea of Katie coming to Oodles almost completely out of her head.
In the coming fortnight – the two weeks before term started – Miranda was far too busy to think about anything but the whirlwind of preparation. She was out every day with her mother or father, getting things ready to start in second form at the ancient and prestigious Upper Drivell Young Ladies’ School. One day she was buying a second hand uniform from a local ex-Oodles girl who seemed very relieved to hand it over. The next day she was at the Drivell educational bookstore purchasing what seemed like an enormous amount of ridiculously expensive books. She was most disappointed by her father’s response when she wondered aloud which extras she should take.
“I really don’t think there will be any after school photography or Italian lessons, chickpea,” he said. He was wearing a hat he’d carved from a stale loaf of bread to celebrate the pagan harvest festival.
“But Dad!” exclaimed Miranda. “Everyone takes extras. I’ll be the only girl who doesn’t.”
“I doubt it,” he answered cheerfully. “I’d be surprised if the other scholarship girls can afford any extra classes.”
Miranda grumbled quietly to herself but she didn’t have the heart to complain too loudly. She knew the books and uniforms alone were stretching her parents’ finances.
“You need to sell a few sculptures, Dad, to fund Miranda’s swish hobbies,” David said helpfully.
“Oh, the art market’s dead on its feet,” Mr Crundle said airily. “I’d be lucky to sell one or two pieces a year with the collectors so reluctant to buy.”
Miranda couldn’t help but reflect that her father might sell more of his sculptures if they were remotely pleasing to look at. But they were frightening things – grotesque and gnarled looking shapes that didn’t resemble anything Miranda had ever seen. Once, when Miranda had been going through a horsey phase, Mr Crundle had sculpted her a clay horse. It really had looked like a horse. Miranda often wondered why her father didn’t make more things like that horse.
On the Tuesday before school was due to start, Miranda attended an orientation tour at Oodles. She found that most of the other girls on the tour were first formers. However, she swallowed her shyness and asked around the group until she unearthed a couple of girls who were also starting second form that year.
“Ellie Manjuli,” said one of them, grinning at Miranda. “And this is Felicity Van Hoeven. We met at the admission interviews.”
“Did you just move to Drivell?” Felicity asked her shyly. She had white-blonde hair and enormous frightened eyes.
“No, I’ve lived here all my life,” Miranda told Ellie. “I started at Drivell Comp last year, but I got into Oodles for this year.”
“I didn’t want to come here,” Felicity whispered confidentially. “But I didn’t do well enough at my old school, so mum forced me, in the end.”
“I wanted to come,” Ellie shrugged. “Mainly to see what all the fuss was about.”
“I’ve wanted to come to Oodles since I heard it existed,” Miranda said raptly, then she blushed a little. “I mean, it’s got to be better than Drivell Comp.”
“Why do they call it Oodles, anyway?” asked Ellie. “No one I’ve asked seems to have a clue.”
“My sister says it’s because they give you oodles of homework,” sighed Felicity.
“I think it’s something they’ve got from the school acronym,” said Miranda.
“Acro-what?” demanded Ellie. “Is that some kind of gymnasium apparatus?”
“It means the initials of the school,” said Miranda, unable to help smiling. “U.D.Y.L.S. Sort of sounds like Oodles.”
“Ohhh!” Felicity and Ellie both sounded enlightened, and they looked at Miranda with admiration.
Suddenly, Miranda felt on top of the world. She had a new school, a scholarship, a second-hand uniform that would pass for brand new, and she had already made two friends. She felt like nothing could go wrong. However, her delight turned to embarrassment when she turned around and saw her mother arriving with Katie.
“Mum,” she said, puzzled and very self-conscious. “You’re too early. The tour runs for another hour.”
“No, darling.” Her mother was beaming. “I’ve brought Katie to join the tour. We’ve just heard – Katie got into the school too! One of the scholarship girls had to decline at the last minute – her father got a job in Greece, or something. So Katie was given her place!”
Miranda stared. Her heart sank while she tried to prepare a face of pleased congratulations for Katie. Ellie and Felicity were looking on with interest.
“Uh, this is my…sister…my foster sister, Katie.” Miranda introduced Katie warily.
Ellie and Felicity welcomed Katie. Miranda worked valiantly to hide the dismay that was trying to show itself on her face. She didn’t want Katie at Oodles.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like Katie. In fact, she did like her, in a way. But she was so odd. A lot of things had changed since Katie had entered Miranda’s world, carrying all her possessions in a single, small, battered leather satchel from which she was inseparable. She didn’t want to blame Katie, but when the girl had arrived in the Crundle house, it felt like Miranda’s life quickly became something just short of chaos. Katie had blockaded herself in the Crundles’ third bedroom, blacking out the window with paint. In addition to the ordinary lock, she had placed a latch with a padlock on her bedroom door, and wouldn’t allow anyone in there. Each night at the dinner table Katie openly pocketed leftover food, either for late night snacking, or to add to the stash Miranda suspected she had in the locked room. Katie never turned on her light, but did all her homework, reading and dressing in her pyjamas by torchlight. Miranda thought she must have brought a lorry load of torch batteries with her from the home, because the pocket money the Crundles gave their children certainly wouldn’t stretch to cover them.
And Katie wasn’t just puzzling. Miranda was, in fact, a little suspicious of Katie. Something strange had happened just a couple of weeks before, when Mr Crundle had taken the three of them to the seaside for a summer holiday treat. At the end of the day, Katie had nipped into a souvenir shop and bought herself a cheap snow dome with an unnaturally happy-looking plastic seagull inside. She gave it to Miranda to hold while she went to change out of her swimming costume. Unluckily, Miranda dropped it on the grass and, while it didn’t smash, the dome part broke off the base. She examined it in vexation, thinking she would have to go and buy Katie a new one, but Miranda cheered up when she saw it was simply that the glue holding it together had crumbled – it would be easily mended. She put the pieces carefully in the front pocket of Katie’s satchel.
This in itself was not suspicious, but what happened on the drive home was.
“Oh, Katie,” she said casually. “That snow dome you bought came apart when I dropped it on the lawn – sorry. But it’ll be fine. I’ll fix it at home, I promise.”
Katie didn’t seem unduly concerned. “I thought it seemed a bit loose after I bought it,” she said. “Where is it?”
“In the front pocket of your satchel,” Miranda replied, glad that Katie wasn’t cross with her.
But now Katie’s face changed. She looked suddenly alarmed and her gaze flew to her bag.
“Don’t worry,” Miranda reassured her hastily, reaching into Katie’s satchel to retrieve the snow dome. “I’m sure I can glue –”
Later, Miranda wasn’t sure what had startled her more – Katie’s dismayed gasp when Miranda plunged her hand into the pocket or the fact that the snow dome came out in one piece – whole and unbroken. Miranda stared at it in amazement.
“But … it was in two bits,” she puzzled.
David glanced into the backseat. “It’s probably just slipped back into the base,” he commented.
Miranda tried to pull the two pieces apart again. But they were stuck together – utterly and completely stuck. She could no more pull them apart than she could understand the look of guilty horror on Katie’s face. She’d often thought about that incident, wishing she could get into Katie’s room to take a better look at that snow dome.
Add to all these things the scuffling noise from the girl’s bedroom that started late at night and only finished with sunrise, and Miranda couldn’t decide whether she felt more exasperated or curious about Katie. However, when she complained to Mr Crundle, he told her patiently that the social worker had advised them to let Katie “find her own way” in their household.
“What does that mean?” Miranda asked Mr Crundle crossly.
“It means that we should pretend it’s normal for her turn the spare room into some kind of secret military headquarters,” put in David.
“It means,” said Mr Crundle, chuckling slightly at David’s remark, “that we let her make the small changes she sees as necessary to make this house her home.”
“Small changes?” Miranda raised her eyebrows. “Dad, she’s put booby traps in the hall outside her room! I got squirted in the face with your shaving cream when I stopped to tie my shoelace yesterday.”
“Brilliant,” grinned David, impressed in spite of himself.
“Things will settle down with Katie soon,” Mr Crundle said mildly.
Observing Katie looking brightly around at the school buildings, Miranda sighed quietly. Mrs Crundle was explaining to the girls breathlessly that the Headmistress of Oodles had said she saw “something of a creative genius” in Katie.
“All right, Mum,” Miranda broke in. “The rest of the group is waiting for us. You’d better go.”
Mrs Crundle left, smiling proudly at Katie and Miranda.
“Mums, eh?” said Ellie, nudging Miranda. “My mum made aloo tikki for me to share out at morning tea time.”
Miranda grinned weakly. She was watching Katie closely, just waiting for her to say something peculiar. Katie regularly said something peculiar.
A moment later, Miranda forgot Katie altogether. They had arrived at the school’s science laboratories.
“This is Science One,” announced Mrs Huffington, indicating the gleaming white classroom. “Science Two is next door, but that is for the fifth and sixth form girls. The Upper Drivell Young Ladies’ School has the newest and most elaborate school science laboratories in the country.”
Miranda gazed around herself with delight. Science One was truly a thing of beauty – gleaming sinks, rows of Bunsen burners, glittering glass flasks, and test tubes in their dozens. Cabinets and cupboards promised probes and microscopes and scalpels. Miranda thought that she could live out her whole life quite happily in Science One. Her own most treasured possession was a microscope – a twelfth birthday present from her parents. Miranda was awfully proud of it because it wasn’t one of those play microscopes with a measly two or three hundred times magnification. This was a high-powered microscope – the kind used in real laboratories. It had cost the Crundles a small fortune and Miranda had traded not only her birthday, but also the following Christmas and Easter, in exchange for the present.
Mrs Huffington led them on down the school corridor and Miranda followed her somewhat reluctantly.
“Now I will show you your Common Room. First and second form girls share a Common Room. As you can see, there are some lovely comfortable chairs here for you, and a collection of books and magazines. You may add your own magazines to the collection, if they are appropriate. There is also a kettle so you can make yourselves tea, if you wish.”
“What, no jacuzzi?” whispered Ellie, making Miranda snort.
“We expect you to take care of your Common Room,” added Mr Huffington, “and if you don’t, you lose your privileges until further notice.” This was about as close to being stern as Mrs Huffington had come, and Miranda reflected that if all the teachers were like her, school at Oodles was going to be a walk in the park.
“So, unless there are any questions, we shall move on to the Great Hall,” finished Mrs Huffington. “Yes, er…?”
“Katie Pickerwick,” Katie replied, lowering her hand.
Miranda winced, waiting.
“I was just wondering,” Katie continued, “will we have somewhere to keep our things?”
“Each girl is given a locker,” Mrs Huffington told Katie. She led the girls into a small room just outside the Common Room. “Here is the locker room.”
Miranda relaxed. She felt quite proud of Katie for asking such a normal question.
“Oh, good, a locker,” Katie was saying, looking round herself in a slightly puzzled fashion. “And our lockers live in these little metal boxes, do they?”
For a second, Mrs Huffington frowned disapprovingly, but covered her irritation with a tolerant smile. Some of the other girls were tittering uncertainly. Miranda at looked at Ellie and rolled her eyes, hoping to distance herself from Katie’s peculiarity a little.
“Very funny, Miss Pickerwick. Come along now, young ladies.”
Miranda sneaked a look at Katie as they walked. She looked thoroughly bewildered as she glanced back at the locker room, and then hurried after the teacher. Miranda wondered for a moment if it could be that Katie genuinely did not know what a locker was. A moment later, she dismissed the thought. It simply wasn’t possible that a thirteen year old girl could be that ignorant.
The group of chattering girls fell silent upon entering the Great Hall behind Mrs Huffington. Clearly, the Great Hall was designed to inspire terror in disobedient schoolgirls. It was grand and highly decorated, with many pillars and even more arches. The walls were covered with wooden honour boards.
“Best Girl plaques,” whispered Felicity, awestruck. “Every year, there is a Best Girl chosen for each form. They’re all here for the last couple of centuries.”
“There’s hundreds!” Miranda whispered back.
“Look at all the Richman-Snoods up there,” muttered Ellie.
Miranda glanced sharply at Ellie. She was right – the boards were littered with the name “Richman-Snood.” Miranda knew the name well. Her mother was a lawyer. She was not a high-priced flashy lawyer, but a lawyer who was paid not very much by a community welfare organisation to help people who couldn’t afford lawyers. There was another lawyer in Drivell – and this one was a highly-paid, flashy lawyer – called Cynthia Richman-Snood. Mrs Crundle often came home from work complaining about Cynthia Richman-Snood. By all accounts, the woman was ruthless and sneaky. Miranda spotted her name on a plaque suddenly: Cynthia Richman-Snood, Best Girl, Sixth Form. It was on an honour board from about twenty years ago.
“There’s one in our form,” added Ellie. “Elspeth Richman-Snood. I used to go to ballet lessons with her.”
“What’s she like?” Miranda wanted to know.
“Don’t ask,” Ellie said darkly.
“Look,” said Felicity in a whisper, nodding her head towards a woman who was crossing the hall, “there’s the Headmistress, Ms Lycaon.”
“Who?” frowned Miranda. “At my interview, the headmistress was Mrs Gabbins.”
“Yes, she left suddenly,” Felicity replied. “She had an ill relative or something. This is the new one.”
“Is she all right?” asked Miranda.
“A bit scary,” said Felicity.
Miranda reflected that that might not mean much, coming from Felicity. Felicity seemed perpetually terrified. She suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be listening to Mrs Huffington.
“—and the annual school Exhibition Night is also presented here, of course. Do remember, girls, that the Great Hall is to be treated with veneration. There is no larking about in here – or there will be consequences,” she added warningly.
After a moment, Katie’s hand went up again.
“What consequences, Miss?” she asked meekly when Mrs Huffington nodded at her.
Mrs Huffington looked at Katie keenly, obviously deciding that Katie was one to be watched.
“What do you think, Katie?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “What do you think might happen if you lark about in here?”
“Um…” Katie looked around at the austere hall carefully. “I might be turned to stone? Or die a grisly death?”
The other girls giggled again and Ellie whispered to Miranda, “She’s got bottle, I’ll give her that.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Miranda replied, shaking her head.
Mrs Huffington chose merely to give Katie a stern look and resume the tour.
“Come along, girls. Now we shall go to the staffroom, where you will meet your other teachers and be our guests for morning tea. But wait – if you look up here, right to the top of the highest tower of the building, you will see the school’s pride and joy – the famous Box Hedges. These hedges sit right out on the ramparts of the North Tower, and it is the first formers’ duty to water them in the summer. The hedges are very old and we are fortunate enough to have a listing in Great Gardens of Great Britain because of them.”
The girls stared at the hedges dutifully, and then followed Mrs Huffington again. In the staffroom, the teachers were sitting at tables with cups of tea. Miranda caught some of the tail-ends of conversations before they went quiet for the introductions, and it seemed that the teachers were mostly complaining about the weather at various holiday locations they had visited for the summer.
“This is the teachers’ staffroom, girls, and this is the one time you will be permitted in here,” smiled Mrs Huffington. “This is Miss Byron, the sports teacher, Mrs Underly, the Home Economics teacher…”
Mrs Huffington rattled off a long list of teacher’s names and subjects – far too many for the overwhelmed new girls to remember. Miranda noted one or two: Mr Dirger, the science master, who seemed quite harmless, and Miss Goody, the history teacher – because she looked thoroughly nasty. It was impossible to forget Ms Lycaon, the new Headmistress. With her exceedingly straight posture and air of utter capability, she stood out. After the introductions, the girls were split up and seated at tables with the teachers. Miranda, along with Ellie, Katie and Felicity, was led to the table where Miss Goody sat with old Miss MacWhirter, the music teacher.
“Well,” said Miss Goody, smiling with a tight mouth around at the girls. “Isn’t this nice? Isn’t this nice, Wendy?” she shouted suddenly.
“Eh?” frowned Miss MacWhirter.
“I said, isn’t this nice?” Miss Goody shrieked even more loudly while the girls tried not to wince.
“Oh, yes, yes,” said Miss MacWhirter, who looked much more interested in the cake trays that were coming around.
“She’s a little deaf,” Miss Goody whispered to the girls.
“Not in the least bit deaf,” Miss MacWhirter snapped, which seemed to surprise Miss Goody.
“Well, and have any of you had older sisters at the Young Ladies’ School?” Miss Goody asked brightly. It seemed that she had to work very hard to be nice.
Miranda, Ellie and Katie shook their heads silently, but Felicity gave an unwilling, “Yes, Miss.”
“And what is her name?”
“Belinda Van Hoeven, Miss.”
“Violin,” said Miss MacWhirter with a nod. “Didn’t practice enough.”
“That girl didn’t spend nearly enough time on any of her homework,” Miss Goody added with an unpleasant smile. “I hope you’re not like her,” she told Felicity.
Felicity gazed at the table, unable to reply.
“I give more homework than any of the teachers at this school,” Miss Goody announced rather proudly and Miss MacWhirter harrumphed in agreement, biting into a scone. “I hope you girls like homework.”
There was nothing that could be said to this. The girls all pretended to be chewing and therefore unable to speak.
“Now, which schools did you attend before the Young Ladies’ School?” asked Miss Goody.
“Beaton Towers, Miss,” said Ellie.
“Hmm, not bad,” said Miss Goody with an air of superiority.
Felicity’s old school was begrudgingly announced to be “fair,” whilst Miranda’s old school got a decided, “oh, dear me.” Katie did not know where she had last gone to school.
When the Crundles had fostered Katie, the social worker told them that she was suffering from memory loss. Apparently Katie had been found alone, without any idea of where she lived or who her family was. She only knew her name and age. At first, Miranda had found this a little too hard to believe, and David had spent hours trying to make Katie recall her past. All he ever got out of Katie, however, was a cheerful, “sorry, I really can’t remember, David. But thanks awfully for trying to help me.” When Miss Goody heard this story, relayed brightly by Katie, she sat with her lips pursed for some time. Moreover, she seemed just as disapproving of Miranda, now that she knew they lived together.
“On scholarship, are we?” she sniffed, and Miranda and Katie nodded meekly.
It seemed that being on scholarship was not always a wonderful thing. Miss Goody seemed to regard it as positively shameful.
“Never mind,” she said, sipping her tea. “Perhaps you shall make something of yourselves nevertheless.”
“Nothing wrong with being on scholarship,” Miss MacWhirter broke in suddenly, spraying scone crumbs across the table. “Some scholarship girls end up as Best Girls, if they work for it.”
Miss Goody nodded curtly, but her real opinion was plain on her face: scholarship girls ought not to be made Best Girls at any time. She patted her neat perm and looked around at the other tables as though she felt she had been given a somewhat disappointing group of girls.
This was actually better, because with Miss Goody looking around for a higher class of girl and Miss MacWhirter engrossed in her fifth scone, the girls could chat quietly among themselves.
“This aloo tikki is pretty good, actually,” Miranda told Ellie. “My Dad makes it from time to time, but your mum’s is better.”
Ellie beamed when she heard this. “You should taste her cashew nut chutney,” she answered.
After morning tea, the tour was over and Miranda went to wait with Katie at the front gates for her mother. David was right – it was as though Upper Drivell did not want to be considered a part of the busy smoky town of Drivell. On this summer’s day, the lawns were bright and green, the footpaths spick and span, and the birds twittered at just the acceptable volume. Attractive houses lined the streets, and dotted here and there were little shops that sold useless crafts and didn’t seem to have any customers except tourists. Some of the tourists were even taking photos of the school’s shining old towers.
“Do you think you’ll like going to Oodles?” Katie asked her, sounding slightly worried.
“Of course,” said Miranda. “You?”
“I hope so,” Katie replied.
“Just…be normal,” Miranda said, feeling a little mean as she said it.
“What do you mean?”
“You know – don’t feel like you have to stand out from the crowd all the time,” she said gently.
“Do I stand out from the crowd?” Katie asked. She sounded genuinely astonished.
Miranda looked at Katie. Where Miranda was organised and calm, Katie was terribly, wildly messy. Where Miranda was thin and serious, Katie was stout and cheerful. She had a great bush of red-brown hair that was daily forced with little success into two frizzy braids. She had a wide mouth and a mass of brown freckles that looked as though they had been splashed out of a mud puddle onto her face. Her eyes were an uncannily bright orange-brown. Miranda sighed.
“No – look, just forget about it,” she told Katie.

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