Reeve Utterly Dark and the Tides of Time

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-78845-289-2
Verlag: David Fickling Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten

Utterly Dark promised the sea she would return. And when she does, she learns the ocean is hiding more secrets than she could have ever imagined. About herself, about her past, about the possibility of travelling through time . . .Another stunning novel from the unique imagination of master storyteller Philip Reeve, about nature, magic, friendship and found family.

Philip Reeve grew up in Brighton. He has been writing stories since he was five years old, but the first one to be published was Mortal Engines which won the Nestle Smarties Book Prize and Blue Peter Book Award, and was made into a blockbuster film. Philip has also provided cartoons and jokes for many books, including Horrible Histories, and co-created young fiction with illustrator Sarah McIntyre including the Roly-Poly Flying Pony books, Oliver and the Seawigs, and their newest series Adventuremice.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Reeve, Philip

Leseproben

2

The Promise

Utterly had been preparing herself for this moment all winter.

‘When spring comes again, I will go to you,’ she had told the Gorm the last time they had met. And now spring was here again, with blizzards of blackthorn blossom and bleating, bouncing crowds of lambs, and Utterly knew the Gorm would be expecting her to keep her promise. For although she had lived all her thirteen years at Sundown Watch, Utterly was the Gorm’s own daughter.

But, now that the time of her departure had arrived, she realized she must have been secretly hoping all winter that she would not really have to say goodbye to Sundown Watch, and Wildsea, and her friends. Why, Uncle Will, and Aish, and Egg, and Mr and Mrs Skraeveling were far more like family to her than the terrible old Gorm, who had let her wash ashore here in a mermaid’s purse when she was just a baby.

But it was because she cared so deeply for Uncle Will, and Aish, and Egg, and Mr and Mrs Skraeveling, that Utterly knew she had to go. Because the Gorm was a fickle and tempestuous sort of person; quite literally tempestuous at times. Utterly, leaning closer to the window and peering to north and south along Wildsea’s rugged coast, saw the wave waiting there, and knew that if she broke her promise, the Gorm might let the wave break too. The Gorm cared nothing for the land, or for the small lives of those who lived there. The Gorm would think nothing of drowning the farms and cottages of Marazea, and washing away the new vicarage which had only lately been built to replace the one she had destroyed on a previous visit. So Utterly knew she had to leave her friends, for their sake.

She washed her face, then quickly dressed, and packed the little bag she had hidden under her bed. She did not think she would need very many things among the Hidden Lands, because the last time she visited, the Gorm had made her all sorts of fine clothes out of magic. But she packed her comb and hairbrush, because she thought the Gorm might not know about such things and would expect her to brush her hair with a sea-urchin or something, which would be a disagreeable experience both for Utterly and the urchin. And she took the pocketknife that Uncle Will had given her for Christmas, and a length of string her friend Egg had given her because he said you should always have a good piece of string about you. And she took a slice of Mrs Skraeveling’s fruit cake, wrapped in a muslin handkerchief, which she had borrowed from the pantry. (However magical the Gorm was, Utterly doubted she could conjure up a fruit cake half as good as one of Mrs Skraeveling’s.) Then, putting on her cloak and tying her bonnet ribbons very firmly under her chin, she went out of her bedroom for the last time.

Uncle Will was spending the night at Aish’s house on the Dizzard, as he often did now that he trusted Utterly to keep the Watch for him, so she did not need to worry that he would hear her creeping about. Mr and Mrs Skraeveling were snoring softly in their room a little further along the hallway. Utterly wished she could wake them and say goodbye. She wished she could say goodbye to all her loved ones, but she knew she could not, for they would only tell her not to go, and she had to go. So she crept past Mr and Mrs Skraeveling’s door as quietly as a mouse. But when she reached the foot of the stairs she darted half-way up to plant a farewell kiss on the nose of the little wooden tortoise on the landing newel post, the one friend whom she knew would make no fuss. Then she went down again, and the stairs let out the softest creak beneath her small weight.

Egg, asleep beside the kitchen range with Tab the cat curled up on top of him, opened his eyes at the sound. ‘What’s this?’ he wondered, rising up all tousle-headed. Tab slid off him with a complaining little miaow. ‘Hush, puss,’ Egg whispered. ‘There’s shenanigans afoot …’

From the far end of the house came another sound; the snick of the back-door latch as someone quietly closed it. Egg narrowed his eyes. ‘Utterly,’ he said.

Egg had sensed that something was troubling his friend since back before Christmas, maybe ever since they had come home from Summertide. He did not have any very clear recollections of the events that had unfolded there, for they had been events of a magical sort, and magic has a way of fading from human minds like the dew from summer lawns. But Egg was pretty sure Utterly had met the Gorm upon the downs of Summertide, unlikely as that sounded, so far from the sea. And it seemed to him the old Gorm had laid some heavy burden on her, and that this burden had been growing heavier and heavier as the months went by.

Egg would have liked to help her carry it, but whenever he asked what was amiss, Utterly had told him it was nothing. But Egg had kept his ears and eyes open all the same. He had heard her sigh, and seen her run her fingers over the chair backs and stair rails, and gaze sadly at Will Dark and Aish, and even at his own self when she thought he was not looking at her. It was as if she had been privately bidding them all farewell and trying to fix them in her memory.

‘And now she’s sneaking off,’ he told the cat. ‘Sneaking off to go a-swimming with that old Gorm, and not even a goodbye! Well, it won’t do, Utterly Dark! It won’t do at all!’

A late frost lay thickly on the lawn, which sloped down to a hedge and a gate. Beyond the gate, where the land ended and the path led down the cliff to Blanchmane’s Cove, the great wave stood frozen like a painting, and the black ship waited, balanced on its crest. The ship had swung side-on to the house, presenting its rows of rotted gun-ports for Utterly’s inspection. She had no name that Utterly could see, and no crew.

Utterly went down the lawn and through the gate. She gathered up her courage and stepped from the cliff’s edge on to the slimy wooden slope of the ship’s flank. She climbed cautiously up the row of steps let into the timbers. Soon she stood on the deck, between two shapeless lumps of rust and barnacles, which she suspected had once been cannons. The ship was full of small low-tide sounds; drippings and tricklings and the tiny creakings and crackings of wet things drying out. The rigging made thin, inky shapes against the sky, crisscrossing lines and triangles all blotted with clumps of weed, like geometry exercises drawn with a spattery pen. Utterly went carefully up the wet stairs to the quarterdeck, half expecting to find the Gorm herself there, but it was empty.

‘Utterly!’ shouted a voice, but it was only Egg, dashing across the frosty lawn. He hurdled the gate and came to stand at the cliff’s edge, staring up at her. ‘I thought you was up to something, Utterly Dark,’ he panted. ‘The way you’ve been sighing and sorrowing about, like you was off on some journey and thought you might never come home …’

‘I am off on a journey,’ said Utterly. ‘I won’t ever come home. Oh, Egg, the Gorm is calling to me and I have to go!’

‘No you don’t!’ Egg stretched out his hand to her. ‘That aquatic old article can’t follow you on to dry land. She can weave up her Men o’ Weed and her storms and hurricanes if she wants, but we’ll keep you safe from her, Utterly.’

‘You don’t understand, Egg,’ said Utterly. ‘I promised.’

And then, knowing that her mother was not the most patient person, and fearing what might happen if her patience wore thin, she turned away. The wave seemed to know of her decision, and subsided. It did not break, but simply sank back down into the sea, carrying the black ship with it. The ship turned too, the wheel spinning as if at the touch of an invisible helmsman. Then, although the wind was set against it, it began to move swiftly away from Wildsea, out across the Western Deeps towards the Hidden Lands.

‘Utterly!’ shouted Egg, descending the steep cliff path to Blanchmane’s Cove on his bottom, in an avalanche of dislodged stones. The ship was black against the moonlit levels of the sea. ‘Utterly!’ he shouted, clattering down the shingle, pounding across the sand, splashing into the shallows. He could see Utterly standing on the ship’s high stern, but she did not turn at his call. The waves, which had been small till then, suddenly grew huge. They shouted ‘Utterly’ too as they crashed down all around Egg. One knocked him flat, a second came down on him as he surfaced, a third turned him upside down and threw him back upon the beach.

He lay on the sand, soaked through and shivering, listening to the triumphant laughter of the surf. He felt unstrung; almost too weak to pull himself together and stand up. When he finally did, the cove was empty, except for the big waves heaving and plunging in the moonlight. Way out upon the western sea the Hidden Lands showed dark, like silhouettes of islands cut from black cardboard, and the sails of the Gorm’s strange ship glowed faintly as it sailed towards them. The little windows of its stern reflected the...