Charlie Bone and the Shadow of Badlock. Jenny Nimmo

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СКАЧАТЬ didn’t even wait to be entirely revealed. Long before every corner was free of the paper, a dreadful landscape began to seep into the dim cellar. This was not how it should happen. Charlie was mystified. He waited for the familiar tumbling sensation that usually overwhelmed him when he travelled into paintings. It never came. He watched in astonishment as the brick walls of the cellar were swallowed by a vista of distant mountains. Tall, dark towers appeared in the foreground; one swam so close to Charlie that he could smell the damp moss that patched the walls. Ugly scaled creatures scuttled over the surface, pausing briefly to stare at Charlie with dangerous glinting eyes.

      It has to be an illusion, Charlie told himself. He put out his hand – and touched the horny spine of a black toad-like thing. ‘Ugh!’ Leaping away from it, he tripped and fell on to his back. Beneath him he could feel rough stone cobbles, slippery with grey-black weeds. Above him purple clouds rushed through an ash-coloured sky, and all about him the wind roared and rattled, howled and sighed.

      ‘So I’m there already.’ Charlie got to his feet and rubbed his back. ‘Wherever there is.’

      In brief intervals, when the wind died to a low whine, Charlie could hear the tramp of heavy feet and a low muttering of voices. ‘It’s here,’ one said. ‘I can smell it.’

      ‘It’s mine.’ This voice glooped like a sink full of dishes. ‘I know how to catch it.’

      ‘Oddthumb knows,’ came a chorus of low, tuneless voices.

      Charlie backed round the tower as the marching feet drew closer. There appeared to be no windows in the building and Charlie was just beginning to think that it was without a door, when he was suddenly seized round the waist and lifted high in the air. A huge fist closed over his mouth and a voice, close to his ear, whispered, ‘Boy, your life depends on your silence.’

      Shocked and speechless, Charlie was swung backwards through an open door and set down. He found himself on the lowest step of a stone staircase that spiralled upwards before disappearing into the shadows.

      ‘Climb,’ whispered the voice, ‘as fast as your feet will take you.’

      Charlie mounted the stone steps, his heart beating wildly. Up, up and up, never stopping until he had reached a door at the very top. Charlie pushed it open and went into the room beyond. A narrow window high in the wall shed a dismal light on to the sparse furnishings beneath: the longest bed Charlie had ever seen, the highest table and the tallest chair, and . . . could that be a boat, hanging on the wall? He turned quickly as the owner of the room ducked under the lintel and walked in, closing the door and locking it.

      Charlie beheld a giant, or the nearest thing to a giant he had ever seen. The man’s white hair was coiled into a knob at the back of his head, and a fine, snowy beard reached a neat point just above his waist. He wore a coarse shirt, a leather waistcoat and brown woollen trousers tied at the ankle with cord.

      The giant held a finger to his lips and then, raising his arm, pushed open a small panel set between the rafters of the roof. Without a word, he lifted Charlie up to the dark space revealed. Charlie rolled sideways and the panel was immediately replaced, leaving him in a dark, stuffy hole with his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped around his legs.

      ‘They’ll not find you. Trust me,’ whispered the giant, whose head was perhaps only a foot below the rafters.

      There was a tiny hole right beside Charlie’s ear and when he turned his head, he could see directly into the room below. He had just positioned himself as comfortably as possible when he heard voices echoing up the stairwell.

      ‘Otus Yewbeam, are you there?’

      ‘Have you seen the boy?’

      ‘Caught him, have you?’

      ‘He’s ours.’

      ‘Mine,’ came Oddthumb’s husky snarl. ‘All mine.’

      A battery of fists and cudgels began to thump against the door.

      ‘Patience, soldiers,’ called Otus. ‘I was sleeping.’ One step took him to the door, which he unlocked, with much sighing and rattling.

      A crowd of squat, ugly beings rushed in and surrounded the giant. They wore metal breast-plates over their patched leather jerkins, and strapped to their heads were tall helmets like metal top hats. Axes, knives, catapults and cudgels hung from their belts, though some had bows slung over their backs, and quivers bursting with shiny arrows. Most came well below the giant’s waist, but there was one, somewhat larger than the others, who looked familiar to Charlie. Couldn’t be the same carved stone troll that had once sat outside Great Aunt Venetia’s gloomy house?

      ‘Why did you lock the door against us?’ this larger being demanded.

      ‘Not against you, Oddthumb,’ said the giant, ‘against durgles.’

      ‘Durgles!’ spat Oddthumb.

      ‘Durgles are very destructive,’ said Otus. ‘Many a day they have eaten my bread whilst I slept.’

      ‘Liar,’ said Oddthumb. ‘A durgle can no more unlock a door than a diddycock. You have got him, I know it.’

      ‘Who?’ Otus enquired in a mild tone.

      ‘The boy,’ snarled one of the smaller beings. ‘He’s here. The Watch see’d him a’coming from far off. Caught he was, by the Count’s guile.’

      ‘Enchanted,’ said the being beside him.

      ‘Spell-brought,’ chorused the others.

      There was a loud creak as Otus lowered himself on to his bed. He was now out of Charlie’s sight, though he could still see a long leather-bound foot.

      ‘Respected soldiers, I have seen no boy,’ said Otus. ‘Search this room if you must.’

      ‘We will,’ grunted Oddthumb. ‘Up, giant!’

      Otus had barely risen from the bed, when Oddthumb and his crew had pushed it over. They slashed at the blankets, battered the straw mattress, tore off a cupboard door, turned over a thin rush mat, poked up the chimney, pulled charred wood from the fire, and hacked at the floorboards. The frenzied attack lasted no more than ten minutes and, from his hiding place, Charlie saw a growing pile of ash and straw, broken pottery and chunks of bread.

      ‘Squirras!’ cried one of the soldiers suddenly.

      Charlie couldn’t see what he had found. It must have been on the far side of the room.

      ‘Greedy, greedy,’ said Oddthumb. ‘Six squirras for your brekfass, Otus?’

      ‘I’m a giant,’ sighed Otus.

      ‘We’ll leave one – the smallest,’ Oddthumb said spitefully.

      ‘I thank you,’ said Otus.

      A soldier with a warty face came and stood directly under Charlie’s spyhole. ‘No boy here, General,’ he said. ‘In forest maybe?’

      ‘No boy, eh? No boy.’ Oddthumb paced across the room. He stopped beside Wart-face and looked СКАЧАТЬ