Prologue
Air rushed past his face as the tiny white imp darted from the room. His heart was heavy but beating fast. How could this have happened? How did they get in? If he only knew one thing at that moment in time it was that he had to get away. He couldn't let them have it. Not this. It would mean the end of everything he and his people stood for. He could not let that happen.
He burst through the heavy wooden door and flung himself down the spiral staircase. Not once did he check to see if he was being pursued. He couldn't risk it. He knew that just a quick glance behind him could lead to mistakes; mistakes that could cost him his life. They had just murdered the King so they wouldn’t think twice about killing him! He had to get away.
Reaching the bottom of the stairway he jumped down the last four stairs and for an imp that's quite a distance. He had no time to change direction. He braced himself. As his right shoulder collided with the cold stone wall there was a dull 'Thud!' and pain shot through his arm. He let out a painful squeak through gritted teeth, almost dropping his burden, but it did not slow him. Using the impact to his advantage he thrust himself forward along the corridor. He was breathing so hard he could see stars. He sped on through the labyrinth of hallways and rooms and courtyards until he came to the secret door. It looked exactly like the rest of the grey stone walls of the royal castle. If you didn't know it was there you would walk straight past it. He pressed the hidden release switch and slid through the opening, hearing it close behind him with a ‘Snap!’ then set off down the tunnel as fast as his weary legs would carry him. Were those footsteps behind him or was it just his own heartbeat pulsing and echoing through his ears? After what seemed like an eternity, he spotted a tiny sliver of light ahead. The light got brighter with every stride, each one harder than the one before. He squeezed through the narrow gap in the rock face and let the warm sunlight bathe his already sweaty face. He took a great big deep breath into his exhausted lungs and fled into the forest.
***
An evil grin of razor-sharp teeth spread wickedly across the face of the wretched creature.
“Leave him,” he chuckled, “There will be plenty of time for us to get him later. I know exactly where he will hide it. Come, let us leave. We have much havoc to wreak. Now I have dispatched their king, this will be easy...........and enormous fun!”
Chapter 1. Revenge
Elliot hated Emily. If only he could find a way to get her back. The thought of revenge was so overwhelming it made his stomach tighten.
“This always happens!” he spat with frustration. “She always manages to get one over on me!”
This was true. Emily did always manage to get one over on her big brother. She was smart. She was cunning. Elliot was hot headed and often let his heart act before his head.
Elliot Hornbuckle was your average nine-year-old boy. He lived at 112 Marquis Avenue with his mother and father, Janice and Tom, his little sister Emily and Giuseppe, the family cat. Their house was a Victorian terraced house and was situated in the small but friendly village of Hogwell on the Hump. It had a very long, narrow garden at the bottom of which, next to the vegetable patch, there was the large wooden shed in which Elliot sat.
Elliot had spent a good couple of hours plotting how he could get his little sister back. After discounting ideas of sneezing in her dinner and filling it with big slimy bogeys or doing horrid things to Jasper (her teddy bear), whom he actually liked, he had come to a satisfying conclusion. Itching powder in her underwear drawer would be a fitting punishment; annoying for her, hilarious for him.
It was an ingenious idea. He had found, however, one big drawback to his master plan: no itching powder.
A dead leg prompted him to readjust his position on the shed floor. He could see his breath as he gave a grunt. The icy winter air tickled at his lungs. The blood began to flow again which gave him pins and needles. Half in pain and half in relief, he rubbed the affected leg and winced.
“There has got to be something in here that I could use as itching powder, something that could produce the desired effect. When I find it she will put on her pants and be overcome by itchiness! She will be scratching her stinky bum for a fortnight!”
Elliot got up as quickly as he could, his leg still tingling and tried to avoid banging his head on the bits and bobs hanging here, there and everywhere above him. His eyes quickly skimmed the labels and brands of all the containers in the large shed. Not one bag, pot, jar or tin went unscrutinised.
“Gravel? - no. Compost? - no. Charcoal briquettes? - definitely not. Chicken feed? Why do we have chicken feed when we don’t even have any chickens? Roofing tacks might be overdoing it a bit, even for Emily.” Again, the feeling of defeat began to envelop him. “Oil? - no. De-icer? - no.” What if he failed again? “Paint? - rubbish! Slug pellets? - no. Pumpkin seeds? - no.” Just as he was about to give up all hope his eyes fell upon his winning ticket. There it was; the answer to his problems. On the highest of shelves, tucked into the furthest of corners, almost hidden behind a few rusty old paint pots and covered in cobwebs was a box. It was quite small and obviously very old as it was faded and now mainly brown in colour, and parts of it were beginning to grow furry green mould. Elliot read aloud the dusty label of the battered and dog-eared old box.
“Old Ma Boggerty’s Super Duper Fantastical Genius Multi-Award-Winning Wonder Powder”.
He wasn’t entirely sure what the powder was for, in fact he didn’t have a clue. The part of the box which would have informed its reader what to do with its contents had been either worn away with age or torn off. To Elliot, this wasn’t important. He didn’t care for its uses. It could have turned everything it touched into chocolate and he still wouldn’t have cared. One word had caught his eye. That one word was more important than anything to Elliot at that point in time. That one word was in large, faded red lettering. That one word was “Irritant”.
“This would be perfect for itching powder,” he thought to himself smugly, “Now, how do I get up there to fetch it down?” he wondered.
After a few minutes, he decided that the old rickety shelves that stowed the box would probably take his weight. He hadn’t convinced himself entirely, but if he was quick, he thought, it shouldn’t be a problem. Taking a deep breath and exhaling in a loud puff, he began to ascend. With all the creaking that ensued, the inside of the shed sounded like the rigging of an ancient ship in a high wind.
“This does not sound good”, he thought, and quickened his attempt to scale the shelves. Pots and tins began to fall and fly off the shelves in all directions. As he scrambled upward, his footing gave way with a creak and a snap, sending a cloud of previously undisturbed dust into the air. The shelf and its remaining contents hit the floor with a crash. He leapt, and so did his heart. He aimed, as best he could, for the next shelf above him. His fingertips grasped the wooden plank and he gained a foothold below. Carefully he inched his way towards his prize. Then, at last, he was there. He brushed off the cobwebs which covered the box with one hand and clasped it to him. His whole body relaxed. He had overcome his problems and achieved his goal. Now, to get down ……….?
With a sudden and thunderous boom, the shelf unit gave way. Elliot fell. Down, down, down, with his arms and legs flailing about him. Luckily, his fall was broken slightly by a large bale of compost. With a painful thud, he hit the floor, followed by the rest of the unit which landed on top of him. Thwack! Elliot tried to dodge the falling articles and hit his head on the floor instead.
“Ouch!” winced Elliot. “That hurt!”
He lay, spread out, on the shed floor for a while, surrounded by and covered with an assortment of things, annoyed with himself at his decision to attempt the climb.
“I knew that would happen”, he shrugged. Then he carefully climbed to his feet, brushing various items from his body and legs with one hand and nursing his sore head with the other.
“This is going to take ages to put back” he said regretfully, looking around at the huge scale of his mess. He knew that if he didn’t get the shed back to how it was before his accident, he’d be in serious trouble. His parents would instantly know that it was down to him. He let out another bigger sigh, and started to wade through the bric-a-brac, the itching powder completely forgotten. Now, he had a new task in mind. That was until something shiny caught his eye. Under a pile of garden tools, which had been disturbed during the accident, there lay a box. This wasn’t a cardboard box like the one that had caused all the inconvenience. This one looked completely different.
Chapter 2. What Is It?
Elliot stood and stared unblinking for a minute or two, his eyes fixed on the box.
“What is it?” he murmured to himself under his breath.
Elliot was used to seeing strange and exotic objects in the shed. On occasions, his mother, Janice, let the local amateur dramatic society use it as temporary storage for a random selection of unused costumes and props. Approximately one third of the shed was currently crammed with all sorts of odd items. Countless costumes hung from rails all around him, some covered in shrink wrap, others in dust jackets, and yet others left uncovered to the elements and the ravages of moths. Costumes ranging from cowboys and spacemen, to medieval kings and queens: World War 2 military uniforms to Zulu warriors and wizards’ robes cluttered the rails. Bags and bags of various hats, helmets and wigs were piled high in one corner, almost touching the ceiling. Boxes of fake chain mail and armour, swords and shields and spears were spilling out all over the place, but not one item among any of these things was anything like as intriguing as what was before him. Elliot reached down and picked it up.
From above, the box was hexagonal in shape, smooth, with rounded corners. Around the bottom was an elaborate gold rim, carved with an assortment of strange creatures, none of which were familiar to Elliot. It was a beautiful deep shade of green, changing to turquoise, then blue, and then back again, depending on the light, as he turned it in his hands. Covering the top of the box was an ornately carved golden dragon. It had wonderfully detailed wings held flat to its sides and a long crested forked tail, coiled up behind it. It looked as if it were in a deep sleep as its eyes were shut and its chin was resting over the edge of the box. Its mouth though, was wide open, and filled with rows of razor-sharp teeth, housing what Elliot thought might be a keyhole. It was beautiful. The harsh winter sunlight made it gleam and sparkle as he turned it over, this way and that, in his hands, trying to find a way to open it.
“Nothing on the bottom, nothing on the sides,” he said to himself.
There was no obvious way to open it. No secret buttons or switches to be found, so he turned his investigation to the mouth of the dragon.
“This has got to be a keyhole,” he said quietly “but where’s the key?”
Elliot looked around him, and down by his feet, turning carefully around so as not to miss anything. He began to rummage through the mess of his earlier mishap in search of the missing key. The longer he spent looking, the quicker he hunted. Faster and faster he searched until it became a frenzied scramble. All sorts of bric-a-brac flew this way and that in the name of potential discovery. Still, no key.
After about half an hour of mess-making and fruitless searching, Elliot gave up. He knelt upright, his hands down by his sides, panting.
“How annoying” he growled, his eyes and fists screwed up with anger, and let out a very long sigh.
“How am I supposed to open the stupid, smelly box, if I can’t find the bum-stinking, stupid, smelly key?!!!" he groaned, and let out another sigh, which went on almost as long as the first. He wasn’t famous for his patience!
Elliot, frustrated in his search, decided that the key was lost, and that this was just a minor inconvenience. After a few minutes, he began to calm down.
“If I can’t find the key, I will have to use something else to open it,” he said with determination.
It was nearly lunch time. He could feel his belly rumble and he needed a quick solution. He decided that picking the lock was the next best plan.
He remembered seeing a small glass jar of paper clips, while plotting his revenge, so over to the collapsed unit he marched, taking the box with him. Luckily, he found the jar unbroken among the objects scattered on the floor. Picking it up with one hand, he placed the box on a wooden workbench with the other.
“Right”, said Elliot, “this should be a doddle.”
Elliot had seen people pick locks on television and thought it couldn’t be that difficult.
Taking a paper clip from the jar, and bending it back on itself, he leaned purposefully over the workbench. Steadying the box with his left hand, he took a deep breath, inserted the end of the paperclip in the hole and started to wiggle it from side to side in an attempt to free the lock. Then suddenly… ‘SNAP!’
Elliot recoiled, not seeing what had happened, but with half the paper clip still in his fingertips.
“What the…? These paper clips are a bit brittle!” exclaimed Elliot, taking out another one and bending it for a second try.
“They must be pretty old,” he said, fitting the next one into the hole.
“SNAP!” went the paper clip.
This time Elliot did see what happened. The jaws of the dragon had bitten the paper clips in half! Then, to his utter amazement, the dragon opened its eyes, which were made of gleaming emeralds, and spat out the bits of broken metal.
Elliot stood, aghast, his mouth wide open and his eyebrows so far up his forehead they nearly flew off all together!
“Do NOT”, bellowed the dragon, “put anything other than the key in my mouth, if you don’t mind.”
Elliot froze with shock, unable to move or speak, even if he had dared.
“How rude,” said the dragon. “You wake me up by stuffing bits of horrible tasting bent metal in my mouth, and you don’t even apologise! Really, I have never been so insulted in all my days.”
“But……but……but, but you’re alive?” stuttered Elliot.
“It speaks!” said the dragon sarcastically. “It speaks, so it can apologise.”
“Sorry” whispered Elliot, not believing what was happening.
“A bit louder please”, prompted the dragon. “I can’t quite hear you.”
“I am very sorry,” said Elliot. And he meant it. If the dragon could bite through a piece of metal, he didn’t want to find out what it could do with his fingers if they got too close. He put his hands in his pockets.
“Apology accepted,” said the dragon politely. “My name is Dragold. It is my duty to guard the contents of this box. And you are?”
Elliot had to think for a moment what his name was, but he answered as soon as he remembered.
“Elliot, sir,” he said sheepishly. He thought it best to give the dragon a bit of respect.
“Pleased to meet you I’m sure,” replied Dragold.
“Mr Dragold? What is in the box, if you don’t mind me asking?” enquired Elliot politely.
“I can’t possibly tell you that young man, can I? You obviously haven’t got the key to open it; hence you don’t have the authorisation to know of its treasures.”
“Treasures?” repeated Elliot, imagining piles of gold coins and gem stones.
“Oh..., ah…., erm…., Well, that’s not what I meant,” said Dragold uncomfortably, trying to backtrack. “It’s a figure of speech. And anyway, you can’t open it to find out, so it’s not important.”
“Oh,” sighed Elliot, full of disappointment.
“Anyway,” exclaimed Dragold, cross with himself for saying too much, “nice to have met you Elliot. It’s awfully tiring guarding this box.”
And as quickly as he had awoken, Dragold returned to his previous position on top of the box, closed his eyes, and was still.
Elliot rubbed his eyes and then his head. It still throbbed with pain, but then he had given it a rather hefty wallop.
“Ell-i-ot!” he heard his mother calling him from the back door of the house. “Lunch is ready!”
Elliot took the box in both hands and wrapped it in his jumper. He would have to find a good hiding place for it when he returned to his bedroom: somewhere safe, where Emily wouldn’t find it.
He walked to the door and looked back over his shoulder at the mess behind him. He would sort that out another time.
Chapter 3. A Surprise Guest
The weather outside was now bitterly cold. All the leaves had fallen from the trees that were dotted along the side of the road at regular intervals. Assorted fairy lights and decorated trees had appeared at the windows of most of the houses along Marquis Avenue, as everyone got ready for Christmas, which was just around the corner.
Mrs Hornbuckle stood behind Emily, who sat on a stool at the upright piano in the living room. She was busy teaching her daughter to play and sing Christmas songs.
Elliot was looking forward to decorating their tree. Elliot loved Christmas. He loved everything about it. He loved the decorations, the presents and especially the food. He loved watching old films on the television and sitting in front of the big open fire. It was a great feeling to be all snug and warm and cosy, knowing that it was cold outside. He didn’t, however, like the fact that, since he was now deemed old enough, he was almost always nominated to go outside to the coal bunker and refill the coal scuttle when required. He had replenished the stocks earlier that day, so the bucket was full. He had even been allowed to help build a fire with the close supervision of his father. Layers of coal, kindling and rolled up newspaper filled the grate.
Annoyingly for Elliot, he had not been allowed to light the fire. He had been told that he had to wait for his father to return with the Christmas tree, before the fire could be lit. Even then he had doubts on whether he would get to light it himself, so he just perched with his feet on the settee, his chin resting on his knees, staring at the grate. He glanced occasionally at the clock above the fireplace, hoping it would not be long until his father returned. The clock seemed to be working in slow motion and he began to get restless, rocking to and fro, while his sister and mother sang carols and played the piano. Elliot was just about to go to the kitchen to fetch a drink of cream soda, when he thought he heard a noise coming from the chimney. It was a kind of scuffling noise. He sat very still and listened.
“It’s a bit early for Santa Claus,” he thought. “Maybe it was nothing.”
But he heard it again. He could just make it out over the tuneless warbling of his mother and sister.
There it was again. And again. As still as a statue, Elliot listened harder than he had ever listened before, staring at the fireplace.
“Mum?” said Elliot, his eyes not daring to blink.
“Not now Elliot” said his mother while Emily continued to sing an ear-splitting rendition of “Silent Night” at full volume.
“I will talk to you after this song dear,” she said between verses and began to sing along with Emily once more.
“Yeah, but……,” said Elliot without getting a response from anyone. He began to protest but thought better of it. He knew it would be useless to argue.
“Could be a trapped bird?” pondered Elliot.
Again, he heard the noise from the chimney. This time he could have sworn he also heard a cough. Then quiet.
A few moments passed and Elliot turned his head slightly, attempting to catch the sounds again. And there it was; a scuffling and another cough. Then, taking him completely by surprise, it happened.
A small man, the size and shape of a three-dimensional gingerbread man, off white all over, with patches of black from the soot, fell down the chimney and landed on top of the coal covered hearth. He wore nothing but a large white Jacobean ruff around his neck. His face filled with alarm as he noticed Elliot’s eyes were upon him. Some of the pieces of coal that he was standing on gave way and he stumbled, fell back, and landed on his bottom. He gave a yelp and scrambled to his feet, looking around him frantically searching for a quick escape route.
Both Mrs Hornbuckle and Emily, unsurprisingly considering the noise they were making, remained completely oblivious to what was going on and continued to yowl like strangled cats.
Astonished, Elliot got slowly to his feet in order to get a closer look. He and the small man made eye contact. They stood staring at each other, as still as statues, their gazes locked. After what felt like an age Elliot blinked. It was only for a split second but when his eyes refocused the man had gone. Elliot swung his head to the right just in time to catch a blur of white disappear through the door. Before he knew what was happening, he was on his feet in pursuit. He might have been small, but the little man was incredibly fast on his feet. Elliot bounded up the stairs three at a time. As he neared the top, he dived full length up the last few steps and stared left along the landing. A corridor ran the full length of the house, with a single step down to the back two rooms; the box room, which was Elliot’s bedroom, and the bathroom at the far end.
The little man jumped down the step and span around in time to see Elliot diving around the corner of the stairwell after him. Shocked, he let out a scared “Eek!” quickly dropped to one knee, then on to his belly and out of Elliot’s view.
Elliot sped to the step but the man was gone. He had simply vanished!
Elliot searched hard for a possible escape route but to no avail. There was no trace of a secret button or lever to a hidden trapdoor or entrance of any kind on the step. Puzzled and confused, Elliot stood up.
“What on earth is going on?” he thought. “Am I going mad?”
He retraced his steps, back down the stairs and into the lounge, stopping in front of the fireplace. Getting down on his hands and knees he put his head inside, trying to look up the chimney. He could only see for a metre or so above him before it went pitch black. Withdrawing his head and sighing, he stared back at the hearth.
Something glistened and caught his eye. It looked like a tiny gold chain sitting among the lumps of coal and paper. Taking it between his finger and thumb, he carefully lifted it free. As it lay in the palm of his hand, he saw that it wasn’t only a gold chain that he had found. Attached to the chain was a small key.......