Holy Macaroni! , livre ebook

Andrews UK - Maureen Sleeman

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66 pages

English

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Macaroni, an Italian mongrel, lives with the Fettuccine family in a pizzeria near the ancient town of Pompeii. Content to snooze in the shade from one feed to the next he is stunned to find himself carried back 2,000 years to Pompeii in the reign of Caligula. There, in the forum, he is befriended by Quickuswittus, a boy slave whose father is to be fed to the lions in the arena. Plunged into a madcap world of slaves, gladiators and a lunatic emperor, Macaroni becomes a dog with a cause, sniffing out treachery, pitting his wits against villains and saving Pompeii from the Emperor's wrath.

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	10 mai 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780722350515
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Holy Macaroni!
Maureen Sleeman

Published in 2021 by
A H Stockwell
www.ahstockwell.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2021 Maureen Sleeman
The right of Maureen Sleemanto be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Thanks to Tina Beckett, a dear friend, for carrying out an edit prior to submitting to the publisher.
Thanks also to Cara Cox-Webber for her work on the original illustrations.

In the Dog House
The pasta sauce lay scarlet and glistening on the floor. Macaroni licked his lips and sniffed. Mmm. Bolognese – his favourite. He took three enormous slurps.
“Macaroni!”
Macaroni’s nose skidded on tomato.
“Where is that stupid dog? I don’t trust him one little bit.”
Macaroni froze. Mama Fettuccine would explode when she found him. The sauce was slithery on the floor. Any dog in Italy would have eaten it.
“He is up to no good. Where is he?”
Macaroni’s legs trembled. Every hair in his shaggy grey-and-white coat quivered as Mama Fettuccine stomped through the empty pizzeria. She whisked up tablecloths, searching him out with her long-handled broom.
BANG! The door flew open. A pair of stout black shoes marched towards him. She glared at him, hands on hips, eyes sparking. His ears drooped. His long plumy tail drooped.
“Yes, I was right. Just like I always am.” She seized a newspaper off the kitchen counter and brandished it. “Alberto! This dog of yours, he is a thief and a scoundrel. Why couldn’t you get us a proper dog instead of this stupid animal?”
Her husband, Alberto, small and skinny, approached the kitchen creeping close to the walls. Mama Fettuccine caught sight of him, and whacked him with the newspaper.
“Faithless man! I spend my whole morning making the wonderful pasta sauce, the pride of Pompeii. And your stupid dog goes and eats it.”
Macaroni licked a red blob off the end of his nose and slunk into the yard, the baking concrete scorching his paws.
The pizzeria opened on to the street: square tables with crisp, white tablecloths under a bright blue-and-white-striped awning. Macaroni nosed his way through, snaffled stray crumbs, flopped down on the cool marble shady step, and sank his head on to his paws. He gazed at the hazy outline of Vesuvius. Bellissima . Peace at last.
Spoon-rattling and saucepan-banging echoed from the kitchen.
“Alberto, it is nearly twelve o’clock and there are still no glasses on the tables. Do you want anyone to eat our pizza and pasta today? Hurry, Alberto, hurry! Faster pasta is what we want.”
“Yes, dear, yes,” Alberto nodded and scurried into the pizzeria with a tray full of glasses. “Faster pasta, faster pasta,” he repeated, scuttling along the polished marble floor towards the street.
He tripped, and the tray sprang from his hands; glasses flew through the air like soap bubbles and tinkled to the ground. Macaroni found himself embracing his master on the floor.
The kitchen door burst open in a flurry of arm-waving.
“ Mama mia , you are as stupid as your dog! I am surrounded by idiots and fools.” Madam Fettuccine snatched up her broom and strode towards the heap on the floor. She swept her husband and his dog on to the pavement. “Out! Get out! I will serve the pizza alone today. Never let me set eyes on that animal again!”

A Way Out
Alberto hurried down the street and every few seconds checked over his shoulder. Macaroni trotted after him.
Out of sight of the pizzeria, Alberto slipped his fingers through Macaroni’s collar and tugged him into an alley.
“What have you done, Macaroni? You know she wants rid of you and now you’ve given her the perfect excuse.”
Macaroni thumped the ground with his tail.
“There is just one last hope.” Alberto crouched beside his dog. “My sister.”
‘Please, no,’ agonised Macaroni, ‘not the one with fingernails as long as chilli peppers that fancies herself a witch.’
“We must go to her at once.”
Alberto grabbed Macaroni’s collar and dragged him along the alley. Macaroni dug in his claws.
“Come, my friend. Leonora promised me, if ever Mama Fettuccine threw you out, she would give you something to help you.”
Macaroni plonked his rear end on the stone stairs. Sweat trickled down Alberto’s forehead. In desperation, he scooped up Macaroni and staggered through the sweltering streets and eventually on to some steps. His scrawny legs bowed under the weight.
“We are here, Leonora,” he gasped, sagging against a wall. “Come to throw ourselves on your mercy. Save us, save us, we beg you.”
A cloud of musky incense wafted over Macaroni through the bead curtain hung in the doorway. Dressed in purple, Leonora sat cross-legged in the middle of the room. Candles flickered around her, lighting up her rings and bangles like tinsel, as if she floated above the floor.
“Athummmbra. Athummmbra,” she droned in a faraway voice. Leonora raised her hands. “The universe speaks in the voice of Alberto. Speak again, unearthly powers, so that I may know your will for him. Athummmbra. Athummmbra.”
Macaroni felt like there was a bee in his ear. With a frightened howl, he cowered against Alberto.
Leonora shrieked. Alberto rushed to her side and dropped Macaroni on the floor.
“Leonora, it is not the universe speaking, but I, your brother, Alberto.”
“Stop! Stop!” Leonora pressed her hands to her head. “My cosmic aura has been bruised. I sense bad vibrations, brother. They tell me your dog is in trouble.”
“The very worst,” wailed Alberto. “Mama Fettuccine never wants to see him again.”
“Shh-h. I said I would help you.”
Leonora glided to an enormous cupboard and opened the doors to reveal rows of identical earthenware pots. Her fingers fluttered along the top row and down to the second. Halfway across she stopped.
“Of course.”
She lifted a jar off the shelf, took out something small enough to cup in her palm and drifted to a stove in the corner. Macaroni shifted uneasily.
“My most powerful brew.”
She dipped a rook’s feather into a brass pot and stirred.
“I take the symbol of the ancients, the symbol of courage and protection, wrap it in the skin of the cobra and seal it with my secret elixir.”
Macaroni stared.
“To complete the spell, I tie everything with three strands of my hair.”
Her red fingernails sliced through auburn roots.
Macaroni wanted to run. He wanted to hide. In a second, Leonora was beside him, unclipping the metal barrel from his collar. She unscrewed it, tossed away the folded piece of paper with his address and replaced it with her charm. Her green eyes gleamed.
“All will be well. All will be well.” She hooked the barrel back on his collar and flashed him a smile. “Learn that loyalty matters more than filling your belly and all your troubles will be over.”
Macaroni glanced at his address lying scrunched on the floor. No one would know where to take him if he got lost.
“Thank you, Leonora, thank you.” Alberto was like a mouse with a kilo of cheese. “You know I couldn’t bear to lose Macaroni.” He kissed his sister three times on each cheek. “I will return to the pizzeria and be extra-specially helpful; and you, Macaroni, will stay away until Mama Fettuccine is in a better mood.”

Where On Earth?
Back on the street, Macaroni sighed. He padded down the hot, dusty street towards the ancient town of Pompeii, where he could flop in the shade of a ruin.
In the road up ahead was a hole. It had been there for the last six weeks. The workmen preferred chatting to digging, but they didn’t get into trouble, and they didn’t have un lucky charms hooked around their necks. There they were, laughing and swigging from water bottles.
“Hey, Macaroni,” – one of the workmen ruffled his head – “you want to have some lunch with us?”
Macaroni glanced round warily.
“You must have lunch with us today. We’re having ma-car-oni!”
“Ma-car-oni, come and have some ma-car-oni,” they sang, slapping Macaroni’s rump in time with the music.
Gloomily, Macaroni sniffed round the edge of the hole. At the bottom there was a puddle of water. He leant over, the sides gave way, his paws slipped and, legs flailing, head spinning, he was upside down, then right way up. Falling . . . falling . . . falling.
He spiralled through all the skies there had ever been: cloud-snatching skies, star-sparkling skies, black, velvety nothingness with a sliver of crescent moon. Day whirled into night. Night catapulted into day.
THUMP. He landed, head whizzing.
He felt hot, smooth stone under his paws and heard the murmur of human voices.
He opened his eyes. Where were the roadworks? Where was the pizzeria? Where was everything he knew?
A vast paved rectangle stretched away from him, flanked by rows of white marble columns that soared skywards. At the far end, a flight of stone steps led to a massive square building surrounded by pillars. On either side colossal bronze gates were thrown open to a stream of people, strolli