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Troubador Publishing Ltd - C.L. Williams

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86 pages

English

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Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Best Overall design (Fiction)Shh! Can you keep a secret?In wild medieval Britain thirteen-year-old Wynn Hoppringle has a big secret of the smallest kind. She has discovered a miniature village hidden close to her family home of Smailholm Tower. When tales of merciless border raiders reach the small folk, they realise they are in danger and must seek a cure to their strange predicament. Can Wynn help her tiny friends or will the scheming King quog have other ideas? Heroes, it seems, come in all sizes."A spellbinding tale of adventure, magic and friendship"- V.F.Sharp, author of The Forest of Arrows

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Children's

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 janvier 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781838597504
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0000€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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SMAILHOLM
Book One

Copyright © 2020 C. L. Williams

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Illustrations © David Rolls
Cover Design by Holly Dunn
Map Design by Joshua Stolarz
Author Photo by Helen Walsh

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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Email: books@troubador.co.uk
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ISBN 978 1838597 504

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

For Ava and Henry

For those who seek adventure away from this place,
Let it be so–always.
Remember though, to look behind you from whence you came,
lest you forget what you might have had if you had stayed,
or turned in another direction.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Historical Note
Acknowledgements

Chapter One
Smailholm Tower 1565
In the great Tower’s shadow the river weaves down to a rocky outcrop covered in brambles—deep purple and green as ever has been known in the late August sun. Here, beneath the flowers of late summer, something is stirring. Quickly I find my favourite spot and lean forwards, carefully placing my ear above the brambles. Prickly thorns scratch against my cheek; the scent of recent raindrops fresh and heady filling my nostrils. The sunlight shines bright in my eyes and I squint to the horizon to check I’ve not been followed.
I crouch down behind the rocks, my hands brushing against a blanket of soft green moss. Finally, I am out of sight of the Tower. The noise of my own breath, so loud about my ears, crowds out all other sound. ‘Shh, calm yourself,’ I whisper.
Placing my hand over my mouth to stifle my heavy breaths, I lean in even closer, so that my face is completely covered by the brambles and my hands claw at the sodden earth beneath.
It is the sound I hear first, surprising me as it always has done. It seems so strange, with no one around, to hear the noise of a busy village in an otherwise silent place. Horses hooves clip against the cobbles that pepper the muddy earth, as the pocket-sized folk make their way into Smailholm’s miniature marketplace.
It is busy today and I wonder what has brought more visitors into the village. Mrs Jetty, the baker’s wife, seems merrier than usual—no doubt pleased at the extra custom. Announcing she is open for trade, she sings a cheerful melody.
‘Baking since dawn,
Whilst Smailholm yawns,
Quick from the oven,
A baker’s dozen’
Despite how tiny she might seem; her voice, which is pitched low, echoes up to my ears perfectly. She is every bit as you would expect of a baker’s wife; her ample waist bursting her apron seams and cheeks red with effort from hard work at the stove. Every bit as you would expect that is, except for her size. For compared to me, she is no bigger than one of my peg dolls. So tiny she is, I could pick her up in the palm of my hand, put her in my pocket and you wouldn’t think she was there at all. She has no wings to make her fly; nor ears that point to a peak. She is neither a fairy nor a spritely elf, as the old folk tales might say. Simply a jolly woman singing a jolly song. In fact, if my size didn’t dwarf her tiny frame you wouldn’t realise she was any different at all.
This place Mrs Jetty calls home is just like any other village, with its inn, stables, church and some ten houses dotted around a central water well. All so perfectly formed, yet in miniature with tiny leaded windows, doors and chimneys where now the grey smoke rises and tickles the back of my nose, making me sneeze. The tiny horses in the stable below neigh at my noisy intrusion and kick their legs at the doors in protest.
Closing my eyes, I smell the soot of burning coals as Caen the blacksmith bangs, turns and moulds his molten metal. The shrill sound of metal against metal startles me and I open my eyes to see another visitor enter the marketplace. One that I know better than any other—my dearest friend Jimmy. Even though he is so tiny to my eyes, I can still make out the beads of sweat that trickle down his brow, dampening his messy white blond hair at the tips. His turquoise blue eyes glisten in the sun and his cheeks carry a rosy blush. His neck is taut from the effort of pulling water from the well and he mops the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his loose white shirt. Untucked from his simple linen breeches, his shirt billows in the breeze, loose at the sleeves yet clinging slightly to his torso. Clanging the pail of water down in exhaustion he finally looks up at my giant-like form. After all, to Smailholm folk I’m hard to miss.
‘Morning lass, I thought you were busy today with your uncle, visiting ‘n’ all,’ he says, shading his eyes with his hand from the glare of the sun to look up at me, as if nothing is amiss. How can it be that these tiniest of folk don’t even blink when they see a giant like I, peering down into their tiny world?
‘I’m avoiding it, nay dreading it,’ I reply, as I always do, in a whisper. My voice, at normal volume, is hundreds of times louder than theirs, and must sometimes hurt their tiny ears. Yet other than my hushed conversation with Jimmy, life goes on in Smailholm just as it always has. The presence of the giant girl ignored.
You see for many years a secret has been kept beneath my family home—Smailholm Tower, the wild brambles hiding a big secret of the smallest kind. It is a secret which only I seem to have discovered—that of the miniature folk of Smailholm. They say they were once the same size as I, but they were shrunk by some other-worldly curse.
When Jimmy first told me tales of a faceless sorceress casting a curse on all those who lived beneath Smailholm Tower my ears burned hot, yet my body chilled cold. Why would any of my clan be banished to live beneath these thick brambles? Such curses always seem a little hard to believe until you see them for yourself. Even though such tiny folk are regularly before my very eyes, I cannot imagine what cruelness could have made them so. Besides, I hope in my heart that there’s no such beings as witches or faceless sorceresses. Whilst my nightmares are often plagued by such creatures they have no place in Smailholm on this fine sunny day.
‘I know what you mean, we too have unsettling news today. Laird Falmouth has called a meeting of all in the village,’ Jimmy says, suddenly interrupting my thoughts. ‘I don’t know how he dares order us about, for he’s not to be seen here most of the time. Off on some frivolous pursuit. Hunting he calls it, but I’ve never seen him bring much meat back of any kind. He’s too busy lying under an oak tree in Ettrick lamenting his small place in the world.
‘If it weren’t for my sister and I hunting and farming the land I dread to think what we would eat. Some Laird of Smailholm he calls himself!’
‘Do you know what the meeting is about?’ I ask.
‘Aye lass. Some worry about Smailholm being discovered. There are rumours that he’s prepared to take a hunting party out to find a cure for our strange predicament.’
‘Oh Jimmy, what unexpected news this day brings,’ I say, bubbles of excitement popping in my tummy. ‘Just imagine how different it would be if we were to be the same size!’
‘Hmm. I’m not so sure lass. We’ve been happy enough, haven’t we? Just look around at this place,’ Jimmy says, his hand gesturing towards the miniature stalls and folk bustling about the marketplace. Indeed, there appears nothing strange or unhappy to be found in this tiny world. As the sun warms my back and the smell of fresh bread still wafts up my nose, making my mouth water at the very thought of it, I wonder too if anything at all should change. For small or large Smailholm will always be my favourite place.
‘I don’t see many wishing it could be different. Seems to me we are just right as we are,’ Jimmy says, ‘after all most folk here don’t know any different. The last of our men to know a normal-sized world have died—along with any great desire to reverse the curse. In fact, it was Laird Falmouth’s father himself who was the last to know both sized worlds, and who urged, with his last breath, his son seek a cure to our tiny size. A quest that seemed to be peacefully unheeded, until now at least. What change it will now heap upon this place I dare not think,’ he says, his brow wrinkling with lines of worry. ‘I, for one, am happy with my place in this world, tiny though it may be.’
Jimmy may only be fifteen, yet his shoulders, despite their broadness earned from farming the land, seem to have the weight of his tiny world upon