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Canongate Books - Patience Agbabi

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109 pages

English

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Description

It's mid-summer's day and thirteen-year-old Elle and her Leapling classmates are visiting the Museum of the Past, the Present and the Future. But on the day of the school trip, disaster strikes, and the most unique and valuable piece in the museum, the Infinity-Glass, is stolen! And worse still, Elle's friend and fellow Infinite, MC2 is arrested for the crime!To prove his innocence Elle must leap back centuries in time, to a London very different from today. Along the way she will meet new friends, face dangers unlike any she has ever known, and face an old enemy who is determined to destroy her. Can Elle find the missing Infinity-Glass and return it to its rightful home before it's too late?

Informations

Publié par	Canongate Books
Date de parution	06 mai 2021
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781786899910
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0320€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Patience Agbabi was born in London in 1965 to Nigerian parents, spent her teenage years living in North Wales and now lives in Kent with her husband and children. She has been writing poetry for over twenty years, and her first novel for children, The Infinite , the first in the Leap Cycle series, was published in 2020. Like Elle, she loves sprinting, numbers and pepper soup, but, disappointingly, her leaping is less spectacular.
Also by Patience Agbabi
The Infinite

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
canongate.co.uk
This digital edition first published in 2023 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Patience Agbabi, 2021 Extract from The Circle Breakers copyright © Patience Agbabi, 2023 Chapter opener Infinity symbol © Shutterstock
The right of Patience Agbabi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 990 3 eISBN 978 1 78689 991 0
LEXICO’GRAPHER. n.s .
[ λ∈ξιχỏυ and γϕάϕω lexicographe , French.]
A writer of dictionaries; a harmless
drudge, that busies himself in tracing
the original, and detailing the signification of words.
– Dr Johnson

Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
Which hath twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year.
– Anon
To Jeremy, for reminding me that history is not what happened but a story of what happened.
Contents
Chapter 01:00
STOP, THIEF!
Chapter 02:00
ACTION REPLAY
Chapter 03:00
MC 2 MINUS THE SQUARED
Chapter 04:00
CONFESSION OF A CAT BURGLAR
Chapter 05:00
THE LEAPING LAMBORGHINI
Chapter 06:00
THE VICIOUS CIRCLE
Chapter 07:00
CODE-BREAKING
Chapter 08:00
ANNO, ANON AND NONA
Chapter 09:00
MELTDOWN
Chapter 10:00
THE LITERATI
Chapter 11:00
THE LITTERATI
Chapter 12:00
12 SECONDS DEAD
Chapter 13:00
PORTIA
Chapter 14:00
PRIME SUSPECT
Chapter 15:00
FRANCIS
Chapter 16:00
BAMBOOZLED
Chapter 17:00
THE UNEXPECTED EXITING OF EIGHT
Chapter 18:00
ABOUT TIME
Chapter 19:00
MAKING HISTORY
Chapter 20:00
THE 2ND OF SEPTEMBER 1752
Chapter 21:00
CARNIVAL OF THE CALENDAR
Chapter 22:00
THIEF-TAKING
Chapter 23:00
THE PRESENT
Chapter 00:00
THE FUTURE
Acknowledgements
Extract from The Circle Breakers
About the Author
Chapter 01:00
STOP, THIEF!
I t’s summer solstice, the longest day, Monday the 21st of June 2021. The sun rose at 4:43 this morning and won’t set till 9:21 this evening. Today, I’m going on a school trip to the Museum of the Past, the Present and the Future. I’m so excited that I got up with the sun and couldn’t eat any breakfast even though Grandma woke early to cook it.
I place the mozzarella onto the white flatbread, fold it and squeeze it into my white lunchbox. As I close the lid, Grandma stops my hand.
‘Elle, this your cheese sandwich not enough. Pack some fruit-o!’
‘There’s no time to chop the apple, Grandma. We’ll be late.’
I look at my best friend, Big Ben, who is sitting at our table. He’s just finished eating MY breakfast, fish fished from the pepper soup with fresh boiled yam, and he didn’t cough once! He’s already had porridge and two slices of toast at home. He doesn’t usually collect me from The Mush-Rooms before school but today’s a special day and demands the special-day routine. We have to leave at 8:25 exactly. I won an annual poetry competition and I’m going to read my poem at the museum. I’m nervous as well as excited but if we stick to the special-day routine, it will help me stay calm.
Grandma does big-eyes.
‘Leapling never late.’
I smile. She has a point. Big Ben and I are both Leaplings with The Gift, which means we were born on the 29th of February and have the ability to leap through time to any year, date or hour we want. Only a tiny percentage of Leaplings have The Gift. Those Leaplings and their families all swear the Oath of Secrecy to protect us from exploitation. If bad Annuals found out about our Gift, they might kidnap us and make us commit crimes that the normal police would never detect. We must be discreet when we leap and reserve our talent for when it’s absolutely necessary. Leaping takes it out of you.
Grandma pulls a transparent fruit carton out of the fridge.
‘White grapes,’ she pretends to read.
I smile at her joke. Grandma can’t read but she hopes I’ll eat them if it SAYS the grapes are white even though, strictly speaking, they’re green. Only Grandma can get away with that. I’m autistic and she knows wordplay’s one of my favourite things ever. I mainly eat white food, otherwise I get sensory overload from the sight, smell and taste of it. But over the past few months my sensory issues have been less severe and I’ve been a bit more confident trying new things, so I think maybe I’ll let her pack them today. I nod and she begins washing the grapes under the cold tap.
‘My Chronophone says 8:22,’ says Big Ben.
He’s autistic too and loves to time things. Thank goodness he said that – I almost forgot to pack my own phone. I turn from Grandma to run my hand under the sofa bed where I sleep and there it is, my silver Chronophone. It’s just like a mobile phone, but it can send messages across time. Holding it, I remember my leap-birthday celebration at this table last year when Big Ben and I were 3-leap, which is 12, and our friends MC 2 and GMT were 4-leap, 16. That’s when MC 2 gave me and Big Ben these special phones. They weren’t a birthday present. We helped break up a crime ring working under Le Temps, who took orders from the big bad boss, Millennia. Millennia’s old and well-spoken and looks respectable but she’s evil incarnate and threatened to DESTROY me. The Chronophones marked our status as Level 1 Infinites.
I LOVE being an Infinite. The Infinites are a youth group who fight crimes on the timeline for a better, greener future. We work for Infinity but no one’s ever seen her! Our symbol is the infinity sign: ∞ . We each have a code name based on our real name. When you say Elle, it sounds exactly the same as my code name: L. This is all TOP SECRET. Promise you won’t tell anyone!
I pack my Chronophone and lunchbox into my rucksack and Big Ben stands up. He’s so tall and Grandma’s so small, it’s like he’s twice her size. Grandma hugs me extra tight because she’s so proud I won the poetry competition and knows I’m nervous with excitement about reading my poem. She waves at Big Ben. As the two of us walk down the stairs, I hear her voice behind me.
‘Be strong and of a good courage,’ she says.
∞
It’s the first day of Time-Travel Week when we’re off school timetable for five days. We won’t LITERALLY travel through time every day; sometimes it’s workshops where we think outside time and space. Big Ben and I reach school at 8:55 so we’re not late but everyone else attending the trip is already outside on the school field.
We’re the only two day-pupils; all the other children are boarders. Jake and Maria wave us over. Jake’s brown fringe is longer than ever and his freckles stand out more in the summer. Maria’s just had her long black hair cropped short so she doesn’t have to tie it up when she high jumps. We sit down with them on the grass, which is already dry. It’s going to be a very hot day.
I’m in Eighth Year at Intercalary International now. The whole class and three grown-ups are assembled: Mrs C Eckler, Mr C Eckler and Mrs Grayling. Mrs C Eckler, my form tutor, teaches Past, Present and Future (aka PPF) so she arranged the trip and I can tell she’s nervous because she keeps twiddling the flower in her pinned-up ginger hair; Mr C Eckler’s coming to help out, wearing his sunglasses as usual but at least it’s summer; and Mrs Grayling teaches maths, is tall and strong like a javelin thrower and loves the year 1752. She’s been there so many times she keeps bumping into different versions of herself. Which must hurt!
As we’re a large group and it’s sunny and dry, Mrs C Eckler says leaping from the school field is better than leaping from Block T. Block T’s the only school building you can leap from and to. The rest of the school is coated with Anti-Leap, a special material used for the prison and other important Leapling buildings to stop people breaking in or breaking out. It can be activated or deactivated like an alarm. Here it’s supposed to protect pupils from Leapling intruders at all times. It’s also supposed to stop pupils leaping away but I managed to do it last year by mistake!
Mrs C Eckler checks we all have a packed lunch then makes us stand to form a Chrono, a circle for leaping.
‘It’s summer solstice. We can pretend to be the standing stones of Stonehenge.’
Stonehenge is Mrs C Eckler’s favourite place ever. She says it’s best at winter solstice when it’s dark and cold and quiet. At summer solstice there are too many tourists. I check my watch. It’s 9:00. My hair is cornrowed tightly against my head and I’m wearing my long-sleeved white tunic and matching trousers to keep me cool. All eighteen of us hold hands in the Chrono. Big Ben’s on my right; Mrs C Eckler’s on my left. Big Ben sneezes and I feel sorry for him being outside in the field in the middle of summer. His hayfever gets quite bad but thankfully he’s OK when he’s running or leaping. Mrs C Eckler makes sure I’m wearing my leap band so I don’t get leapsickness. It works like a travel-sickness wristband but looks like a gold bangle.
‘Close your eyes, everyone,’ she says, ‘and concentrate on the Museum of the Past, the Present and the Future. Allow us to guide you to the landing spot.’
She means the adults. None of us pupils have been to the museum before. I feel my body go fizzy with energy and squeeze Big Ben’s hand tight. He enjoys the excitement of leaping and so