The Book of Mysteries Read online

  ‘The Ordnung has stood the test of time, enabling the Badlander Order to thrive for centuries. I expect this rule of law to stand for all future time too.’

  The Apprentice’s Guide to the History of the Badlander Order

  BY EDGAR HOLT

  ‘As their name suggests, Lucky Drops can indeed change your fortunes. But beware, their ultimate purpose is to teach Badlanders that greed and ambition are not virtues but vices.’

  A Guide to the Rare and Wonderful in the Badlands

  BY CRISPIN BOULTER

  ‘The ælwiht (pronounced a-l-why-t) is a dangerous creature, particularly the pregnant female, for reasons that will become clear as you read on.’

  The Badlander Bestiary

  Pocket Book Version

  For anyone hoping to make the world

  a kinder, more inclusive place

  When the breeze blew a little harder, click-clacking the bare branches of the trees, Jones caught the scent of the ælwiht again. It was eye-watering, like too much vinegar poured over hot chips.

  As the breeze dropped and the trees fell silent, the scent faded and Jones reminded himself to stay focused. The ælwiht had already proved it was extremely dangerous, springing like a trap in the dark to grab him, talons tearing through his overcoat like it was made of wrapping paper and he was the gift inside. He’d only escaped by slipping out of the coat and leaving it behind on the grassy path.

  Shivering in his T-shirt, Jones cursed not only because he was cold but because everything in the pockets of the overcoat was gone too. The one consolation was that he was still alive, for now, at least. The cut on his forearm was starting to sting, making Jones wonder if the ælwiht could smell something of him too.

  It was impossible to know where the creature was or how close it might be. The ramshackle farm buildings had lots of hiding places. In the moonlight, Jones had counted two old barns on either side of the yard as he’d peeked round the wall. He’d seen the deserted farmhouse too, with its black windows.

  ‘Are you okay?’ whispered Ruby, giving his shoulder a squeeze.

  ‘Fine,’ he hissed. Jones had already decided he’d give her a piece of his mind later on, if they survived tonight.

  He’d lectured her before, of course, about how jumping feet-first into any situation without thinking could be fatal when they were hunting monsters in the Badlands. But his words hardly ever seemed to stick. Especially if Ruby thought she knew better. And that had been happening a lot more recently because of the historic vote the Order were preparing to take. So Jones hadn’t been entirely surprised when she’d gone striding off again after the ælwiht this time, despite his protestations about them needing to be very careful about how to proceed.

  A rustle in the undergrowth cut Jones’s thinking dead and Ruby squeezed his arm harder. The night had spun round in the opposite direction now that the ælwiht was hunting them.

  Jones peered back down the farm track towards the small copse where the creature had surprised them. He couldn’t see anything moving. Despite being a regular boy who went to school, he was a Badlander too. It was his job to hunt monsters and keep ordinary people like his mother and father safe as they slept soundly in their beds. And hunting monsters was something he was very good at indeed.

  As the moon crept out from behind the clouds again, he slunk along to the end of the wall with Ruby behind him, shivering as he wondered what to do now he didn’t have his overcoat and all the usual items he kept in its pockets. Some of them would have been pretty useful around about now.

  *

  The farmyard was bumpy with potholes, the largest ones full of black water and stars. On the other side was a line of stables, with most of the doors open or missing. In the weak moonlight, Jones could see enough to know many of them were empty. But it was difficult to be sure about the ones furthest away.

  Ruby tapped his shoulder and pointed to the farmhouse.

  ‘We could set a trap for it in there.’

  ‘One of those stables would be better.’

  ‘It’s more likely to be tricked into the house, isn’t it? It’s not stupid.’

  ‘Yes, I think we already know that, Ruby.’ Jones felt something red hot rising in his belly and he wanted to shout at her but he managed to hold back. ‘All cos of this blooming vote,’ he muttered. ‘You weren’t thinking straight. We shouldn’t have come after it once we found out it was pregnant.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Because now it en’t gonna give up till we’ve killed it or it gets us first.’

  ‘So? That’s what Badlanders do, isn’t it? Hunt monsters?’

  Jones cursed and shook his head. This was not the best time for an argument. But the red-hot feeling kept rising inside him. ‘I knew it. You never read up on the creature like I told you to, did you?’

  ‘Jones, why are you so worried? I can use magic now, remember?’ Ruby pursed her lips. ‘In fact, let’s stop hiding and find out where this thing is so we can go home. I’m freezing.’

  ‘No, Ruby.’

  Jones grabbed her wrist as she pointed a hand at the sky and muttered a couple of words. A silver spark burst out of her finger like a firework, and instead of shooting into the sky, kept low to the ground as it flew across the yard, its shimmering light sweeping back the dark. Crashing into a stable door it pinged back into a puddle, hitting the water with a hiss and sending up plumes of steam.

  Ruby glared. Before she could say anything, Jones glimpsed a tall figure dart out ofa dark corner of one of the stables and sprint through the steam towards them.

  ‘Run!’ he shouted, pointing at the farmhouse. For a split second, Ruby thought about using her magic, but the boy had taken off so quickly, she felt a sudden sense of panic and instinctively raced after him.

  *

  It was supposed to have been a reconnaissance night, exploring a town called Wighton after Jones had found a local news article on the Internet about strange events there. Surfing the web, they’d realized, was a more efficient way of discovering something that required investigation than randomly exploring places the way Badlanders were traditionally used to doing. Neither Jones nor Ruby felt duty-bound to stick rigidly to the Badlander code of conduct called the Ordnung, which followed particular rules such as not using modern technology, because they were a unique team that made their own rules. At least, that’s how they thought of themselves: an ordinary boy, who missed working in the Badlands where he’d trained as an apprentice, and an extraordinary girl who hunted monsters with him, something only men and their boy apprentices had done before.

  The article had described how two horses had been killed a day earlier, the bodies so mutilated their elderly owner had suffered a stroke. The journalist had suggested the savage attack could only have been the actions of a deeply disturbed individual. But Jones and Ruby had their suspicions that what had killed the horses was, in fact, not human at all. The details, or lack of them, were odd. It had not been a full moon. There had been no strange markings in the earth. The date, September the 25th, had not been significant according to the Badlander Calendar in the Pocket Book Bestiary. But there had been reports of an odd smell lingering in the autumnal air, according to the locals who’d been interviewed.

  Jones’s mother had brought them milk and cookies and gently reminded her son about his homework when she noticed the article on the computer screen. Both Jones’s parents knew about the Badlands and the terrors there, having been freed from a Witch’s curse by Ruby over a year before. Ruby had presumed that becoming a Badlander was going to be all about saving people, especially after receiving the gift of magic and being officially allowed into the Order, the first girl ever to be given such an honour. But the High Cou
ncil had been keen for her to catch up on the education any boy apprentice would have been expected to learn. In fact, Randall Givens, the head of the Council, had made it very clear just how much learning she needed to undertake. So, over the past few months, there had been a lot of studying and gardening – growing herbs in particular – in between the supervised hunting trips she was allowed to take with Jones who was supposed to make sure she put all her studying into practice.

  She’d snuck out a good few times on her own, of course, because Ruby was not the sort of girl who liked to be told what to do. These solo hunting trips had increased after Givens had told her about the vote he was proposing, that the Order should decide on whether to allow girl apprentices as well as boys. It was to be his great legacy, changing the Order for the better, despite all its centuries of tradition. So, Ruby was eager to build up a casebook describing all the creatures she’d despatched, and leave as many mearcunga as she could, the special marks that Badlanders left to prove what monsters they’d killed.

  Therefore, as she’d munched on her cookies, listening to Jones talking through possible explanations for the horses’ deaths and recommending she read up on a creature called an ælwiht as part of her studies, she had really been thinking about what an opportunity Wighton might be.

  They had started their reconnaissance that Monday night, walking around in the evening gloom to see what snippets of information they could pick up. The pubs and bars were busy, so there were punters on the streets drinking and smoking and chatting away. No one paid attention to two kids. Ruby made sure the gun in her waistband was covered up so it couldn’t be seen or indeed heard, since it was charmed to speak and liked to give an opinion on most things.

  Ruby and Jones had paused after hearing two men discussing the murdered horses in hushed tones. Apparently, the mutilations had been very extensive, the hind legs pulled off and never found. Ruby and Jones had exchanged glances and decided to go straight to the field. It had yielded no clues except for a tuft of coarse animal hair snagged on a hedgerow ripening with big blobs of blackberries. Any ordinary person might have presumed it to have belonged to one of the horses. But an ordinary person would not have held it up to the moonlight to check for a blue sheen like Jones had done.

  ‘Definitely an ælwiht,’ nodded Jones as he put the hair in the pocket of his trousers. ‘A pregnant one.’

  ‘How about over there?’ said Ruby, pointing across the field to a small copse.

  ‘We’ll come back tomorrow night,’ said Jones. ‘An ælwiht like this needs careful—’

  ‘Preparation, I know!’ groaned Ruby. But she turned and started to walk across the field towards the copse.

  ‘Oooh,’ said the gun, as she pulled it out of her waistband, ‘that dark and rather scary-looking set of trees looks interesting.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ said Ruby, tramping over the grass as Jones muttered something behind them.

  ‘What’s got into him?’ asked the gun.

  ‘No idea.’ Ruby walked on towards the trees, focused on the tingle of magic in her veins and flexing the fingers of her free hand to keep them warm and sharp.

  *

  Jones banged open the door to the farmhouse and smelt something foul. He wondered what must have died here, before a nasty growl rose outside in the yard.

  ‘We wouldn’t be in this situation if you’d done your reading on the ælwiht for your studies like I’d told you to.’

  Ruby folded her arms. ‘I did some.’ She stared defiantly back at Jones and tried not to wilt under his glare. ‘Enough to get the general idea, anyway,’ she continued. ‘It’s a very dangerous creature. Vicious. Smelly. But one I can take out if you give me the chance,’ she said, flexing magical sparks around her fingers. ‘I could have sorted out everything back there if you hadn’t run off.’

  Jones grunted and produced the tuft of hair from his trouser pocket and held it up to the window so the moonlight caught it. The blue sheen reminded Ruby of a kingfisher she’d seen once flashing upstream as she’d walked down a towpath. She’d been with her parents, who had been arguing, of course. Or at least the drink in them had been. That had been a long time ago in a different life. She whirled the sparks faster around her fingers to prove it. ‘Let’s find out what spell works best on this particular creature.’

  ‘Be my guest.’ Jones dropped the tuft of hair to the floor.

  Ruby muttered some Anglo-Saxon words she’d been practising and fired magic at the hair. It bounced away. She muttered some different words but the same thing happened again. And then again.

  Ruby frowned. ‘The Pocket Book Bestiary said a fireball, death-shot or blood-boiler are the most common ones to use.’

  ‘I guess this pregnant ælwiht is an unusual one, then?’ said Jones as he glanced out of the window into the yard, watching closely for any movement, listening for any sound.

  When he looked back at Ruby she snuffed out the sparks at the ends of her fingers and sighed.

  ‘Okay, so I didn’t do all of the reading. I skimmed some of it.’ Jones seemed to bristle in the murky dark as he gave a snort. ‘Fine, I skimmed all of it. What’s your bigger point here? Because there obviously is one.’ She pointed a finger at the tuft of hair on the floor.

  ‘When an ælwiht is pregnant, its hair gives off a blue sheen in the moonlight, its stench increases and, if you’d read up like I told you to, you’d also know . . .’ He paused and rubbed his forehead as though there was something painful lurking there. ‘The creature becomes immune to magic too.’

  Ruby opened her mouth and then closed it.

  ‘So now we’re trapped, Ruby. No magic, no weapons . . .’ Ruby raised the gun and it coughed loudly. ‘No decent weapons. And no Slap Dust because the bottle we used to get here was in my overcoat pocket along with everything else that would have been useful ina situation like this. And all because you thought you could handle a creature like this on your own, without reading up on it, just like you always do. There’s nothing wrong with books, you know!’

  Something dripped from the ceiling and landed with a PLOP! beside the toe of his boot. It glistened like a spot of ink. Jones bent down to have a look and then stood up quickly when he saw that it was blood. ‘We have to go—’

  Another few drops came through the ceiling, spotting the floor like raindrops.

  ‘Jones, what’s happening?’

  ‘A pregnant ælwiht will usually band together with others to make a nest.’ He pointed up at the ceiling. ‘And I think we now know where one might be, and where the horses’ legs are too, what’s left of them.’

  He was about to say something else but a large creature burst through the ceiling and he was smashed to the floor.

  Time paused for Ruby, like watching a shooting star, as an ælwiht came through the ceiling and landed on Jones.

  And then she was aiming the gun at the creature which was still struggling to stand up, one leg having plunged through the rotten floor up to the knee.

  ‘Aim, squeeze, shoot!’ announced the gun as Ruby glanced at the pale-faced Jones, so white, in fact, the blood on his forehead looked black.

  Ruby pulled the trigger but the bullet pinged into the wall behind the ælwiht as the creature lost its balance and toppled over.

  Ruby felt the chamber spin as the gun locked and loaded again.

  ‘Ready!’

  Ruby took a step back to steady herself as the ælwiht reared up in front of her. She immediately wished she hadn’t because this time her foot went through the rotten floor and she fired into the ceiling, bringing down more dust and plaster.

  ‘What are you doing?’ shouted the gun.

  ‘Sorry, I—’

  Ruby didn’t have time to finish as she heard the window pane shatter behind her and a long rangy arm reached in and wrapped around her waist. She was yanked backwards, through the window, and out of the house into the cold dark night, the gun dropping out of her hand into the long grass as she was hoisted up onto a hairy blue sho
ulder.

  *

  The nest was cobbled together from furniture. Old wardrobes and chests of drawers had been broken up along with tables and chairs, the splintered pieces of wood jammed together to make a shallow saucer-shaped structure. Metal bedsteads had been bent around the outside to keep it all together.

  The ælwiht, perched on the edge of the nest, growled its displeasure every time Ruby even thought about moving. Finally, when she had no option but to shift her legs because they were turning numb, the creature lunged forward and snapped its toothy mouth inches from her nose. She stared into the red eyes and saw nothing in them that gave her any hope. It was large and powerful and she was powerless, given her magic was useless against it. She was sure the creature smiled at her before glancing over at the other ælwiht which was pacing around the room, agitated for some reason.

  Ruby had no idea why she and Jones were still alive. She was sure Jones would know but he was still out cold beside her, a dull red crust around the cut on his forehead. Ruby wondered if she would get the chance to apologize for getting them into this mess.

  When the other creature gave a sharp yelp, Ruby’s eyes darted to their corners to see what was happening. The ælwiht had slumped to the floor and rolled into a ball, its cries growing louder as its whole body spasmed. Suddenly it opened its arms wide and threw back its head. Ruby saw the belly start to swell. The bulge grew quickly, like a balloon being blown up, and then detached itself neatly from the abdomen of the creature and rolled off, dropping to the floor.

  Ruby guessed what was happening even before she saw the furry ball burst open. Out gushed a milky substance that ran across the floor and with it came a baby ælwiht, flip-flopping like a fish. The mother bent over its young, licking clean the dark fur on its face, as the baby took its first jerky breaths.

  Ruby watched with a mix of fascination and disgust. Then a little spark fired in her brain as the fur on the female caught the moonlight. It was no longer shining blue but was dark, like its baby’s. Ruby’s first instinct was to raise her hand and conjure magic but the other ælwiht was in her face again, its hair still blue in the moonlight. Its eyes stared at her, bright with an intelligence that scared her much more than the teeth and the claws. It knew exactly what she was thinking.