Hugo and the Bird

Jeff Mills

Description

Kadavera, the witch, was dead. This should mean a celebration, but for nine-year-old Hugo, his schoolmate, Emma and their strange magical friend, Bird, it is the start of another dangerous adventure. Her death has precipitated the regeneration of not just one but both of her sister witches - and they are both far worse than she ever was.Conscripting the Cornish goblins, the witches capture the gnomes from the Gnome Reserve to use as guinea pigs in their experiments to be able to exist in daylight.This would allow them to fulfil their dying vow; to kill and destroy all those and their descendants, who were responsible for their own and their mothers' unjustexecution 300 years before. They are determined not to let anyone stand in their way, especially two interfering children and a stupid bird.A chance finding of a small amulet leads Hugo and his friends into realms of King Arthur and to the magic power of his sword, Excalibur. Emma receives someterrible news, which ultimately takes her on a journey from which there may be no return and pits her against her friends. Can Hugo and Bird, rescue the gnomesand prevent the witches from achieving their lethal goal and how can an inquisitive journalist make everything far worse? Set in North Devon, the heart-poundingadventure continues and is based on historical events.Hugo and the Bird: Gnome Warsis a tale of fantasy, revenge and friendship that readers from nine years to ninetywill identify with and love.

Sujets

• Children's

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 20 octobre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789012187
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Also by Jeff Mills

Hugo and the Bird (The Tooth Fairy)

Hugo and th e Bird
Book Tw o

Gnome Wars



Copyright © 2018 Jeff Mills

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


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ISBN 978 1789012 187

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd



To my mum, Joan Mills
For the love and support she has given me
throughout my life.
Contents
Acknowledgements
About the Author

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Acknowledgements
Firstly, I must give my grateful thanks to Ann Atkin, proprietor and owner of the real Gnome Reserve at West Putford, near Bradworthy, Devon; where a great deal of the action takes place. Without her co-operation and input, I would have had to rewrite much of the book which would have detracted from its authenticity.
In my original draft, I made the pixies the enemy but she pointed out that pixies are in fact a happy and friendly society. The real villains are the goblins, hence the change in the final copy.
Secondly I must thank Lorraine Matthews and my sister, Jacqueline Hyde, also a published author ( Secret Whispers ), for taking the time and effort in ploughing through the draft, highlighting the many mistakes that I had made, both in grammar and continuity.
I am very grateful to Brian Collins for his cover design.
Finally, I would like to thank the MV Magellan of Cruise and Maritime Voyages for giving me the ‘At Sea’ days on my wife’s (Anne) and my cruise to New Zealand in January 2017. With only the splash of the waves and almost imperceptible rolling of the ship to distract me, this second book would have never seen daylight.
About the Author
Jeff Mills is a retired dentist who has lived with his wife, Anne, for over forty years in North Devon in the South West of England, close to the village of Westward Ho! where much of the scene is set.
He has two children, now both grown up, and it was to entertain these when they were small that he started to tell them stories during the frequent long car journeys to visit their relations.
Where ‘Hugo’ popped up from, he does not know but Bird was loosely based on the ‘Big Bird’ character from Sesame Street, a television programme popular with children at that time.
As they were driving along, Jeff would try to introduce into the stories, items or places that they were passing, to give a greater sense of reality. He has tried to continue this theme with this book and the previous one, which was the first in the potential trilogy (Hugo and the Bird, The Tooth Fairy, published by AuthorHouse).
Periodically, as they grew up, his children would remind him of the stories he told but could not remember much of the detail, with the exception of the main characters: Hugo, Bird and the Witch.
Nothing was done until the spring of 2014. It was a time when it never seemed to stop raining. More out of boredom, he sat down and tried to write what he himself remembered of the stories he had told his children those many years before. He admits it was very strange writing because the story seemed to write itself. He had no plans as to plot or characters; they just evolved from thin air. Even he was curious to know what was going to happen. What he did know, was that he would like to bring the story alive by making its roots and its location real. For this, he based the series on the gross miscarriage of justice involving the hanging of the three Bideford witches in 1682; the last people to be legally hanged for witchcraft in England, and the places around his home in North Devon.
At the end of writing the first book he realised that in order to complete the story he would have to write at least another two books, of which this is the second. Here again, the plot wrote itself.
So sit back, put your feet up, smell the sea air coming off the Atlantic Ocean and read about the further adventures of Hugo and his strange friend, Bird as they battle against the dark forces that inhabit the North Devon village of Westward Ho!
Chapter 1
The cave was silent, except for the continuous dripping of the water from the grime-covered stalactites that hung from the rough-hewn roof. The light, though never bright, was rapidly growing dimmer. One by one, the candles and soot-caked lanterns sputtered out, leaving only the glow of the open fire from under the dead witch, Kadavera’s, cauldron. A spark leapt from the hearth to illuminate a pair of bright orange eyes. Snatch, Kadavera’s cat, was like a large dark panther, with its head likened to that of a sabre-toothed tiger. It cowered in the corner of the cave restlessly beating its tail back and forth.
Another spark fought its way out of the ashes of the diminishing flames to momentarily light up a shadowy figure, moving silently towards and along the bench where Kadavera had worked and stored her array of jars, bottles and vials. Some were still steaming or emitting puffs of foul-smelling smoke.
The figure stopped moving beside a collection of small glass bottles that held liquids of various colours, though these were difficult to see in the dimming light. From under the tattered black cloak that the figure wore, emerged an emaciated hand. Draped between the bone-like fingers was the fine chain and pendant of the necklace that had, hours earlier, been hidden under the white quartz stones that Hugo had used to mark the entrance to Kadavera’s cave. The fingers moved, stroking and caressing the locket attached to the chain. Slowly and carefully, they threaded onto the chain the gold ring, embedded with the large green stone that had been buried with the necklace. It fell adjacent to the locket with a faint clink. A small weary moan and snuffle came from beneath the black hood, and the hand withdrew back into the depths under the cloak.
No sound or movement occurred for several minutes, until there was a loud crack and a flurry of sparks from the dying embers of the fire. This broke the spell of silence that had pervaded the cave. The figure jerked upright and moved to the far end of a shelf of bottles. Again the withered hand emerged from beneath the cloak and hovered over the array. After tracking up and down the line of jars, it seized one, and held it up to the firelight to examine the contents. An eerie blue glow shimmered from the flask, which illuminated the hand holding it. On the ring finger of the hand, which was bent and skeletal, was a similar large gold ring to the one that had been threaded onto the necklace moments earlier, but this one bore a large blue stone, itself giving off a faint blue iridescence. The hand rotated its dusty prize, turning and twisting it in the firelight glow, closely examining the contents, and then, both bottle and hand disappeared into the folds of the cloak. Silently, the figure melted back into the darkness. Silence returned, except for the constant dripping of water from the roof and the distant growling of the angry pet.
* * *
“ One more week left ,” thought Hugo, as he propped himself up in his bed and looked out of the window of his bedroom to see what the weather was like outside. The sky was heavily overcast and dark clouds scudded across, with only the occasional hint of blue. The wind had risen during the night and was making weird howling sounds as it tried to squeeze through the fine gaps in the window frame. Trees and bushes bent and waved. Salt spray, whipped up from the nearby sea, left odd patterns on the glass as it evaporated.
The previous weeks of the long summer school holiday had been eventful to say the least. While out walking his dog, Jake, Hugo, an adventurous nine-year-old boy, had stumbled across an unusual zigzag shaped stone which turned out to be a sort of coffin for an extremely strange and colourful animal. It had the neck and body of an ostrich, but with strange purple and blue colouration, the ears similar to that of an elephant, though much smaller, and the legs and feet of an eagle.
As Hugo later found out, it had originally been a Cassowary, a large bird native to New Guinea and North Eastern Australia, which had been captured and kept in a zoo. At that