When the World Falls Down , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - Jon Bolitho-Jones

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76 pages

English

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Meet Bethany Hannah Morgan. She's an ordinary girl living in an ordinary world. Well, not quite... When Bethany's best, and only, friend dies, her life is shrouded in grief. But when she discovers a mysterious new world through her cupboard door, she sees the chance to escape to Edimor, a galaxy of pirates, wizards, nightmarish monsters, space travel and mystery.Bethany quickly befriends Grollp, a troll pirate who has in his possession a locket said to harness great power. Edimor is under threat from a mysterious child and his carer, and Grollp intends to use this locket to save the world from certain ruin. With no intention of staying in her own world and desperate to escape events she does not quite understand, Bethany joins the fight, determined to save Edimor from its imminent demise.Can these dark and sinister forces be overcome?

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Children's

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	24 janvier 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781838597856
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 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.

Extrait

Copyright © 2020 Jon Bolitho-Jones

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.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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ISBN 9781838597856

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
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Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Dedicated to my amazing wife Beth, and in
memory of my grandad, Victor Jones.
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
One
Dear readers, you are about to go on an adventure. Through the pages of this book, you will be transported to a world of magic, space pirates, and adventurers; a place rarely visited by humankind. I must warn you, though, this journey is not for the faint hearted: we are heading for a place inhabited by monsters, orcs, evil villains, and beings that can rip a planet apart with a single word. Do not worry – I will make sure you are safe on your voyage. But before we depart, we must start at the beginning, with our hero, Bethany Hannah Morgan.
It was a cool and quiet night, and all was peaceful at 1½ Cordling Drive. This was a house unlike any other. With its eight floors and twisted structure, it looked as if it was on the verge of architectural impossibility. It was a house that looked as if it had come from another world entirely. On the seventh floor, Bethany was struggling to sleep, her mind racing, tangling itself into a mess – as was her long black hair. She shivered in her Star Wars pyjamas as she held her duvet up to her nose, with only her gleaming green eyes and pixie ears poking above it. Yet it was not cold – the spring air was rather warm. No, there was something bothering her, and she could not shake it from her mind.
You see, she had spent the day in mourning, dressed in black, at the funeral of her best and only friend. Bethany had never really had many friends; she enjoyed her own company. Indeed, she found her best conversations were always with herself. But there was one person she couldn’t do without, and that was Grandpa Vic. He was gone, and as she lay there trying to sleep, all she could do was think about him. Every last detail raced through her head: he was born in the first half of the twentieth century, and he had worked in a steel mill. He had served in the Second World War, though his only contribution had been crashing a rickshaw taxi into the barracks swimming pool on a drunken night out with his friends, a story that Bethany always found hilarious. She knew him as a jolly old man, with wide-framed glasses, a big smile, and a big belly, who liked to get up to mischief. Bethany’s parents, both being miserable sorts, did not like that one bit, but she didn’t care. He would sing songs, most of which were rude, while joining his granddaughter on her many imaginary adventures. Otherwise, during the day they’d spend their time in the garden, telling stories or drawing pictures. At night they’d put on plays, eat pudding, and sing. School got in the way, but when the holidays came, he made her gingerbread dinosaurs and they got back to their usual fun. For the two of them, there was never a dull moment. When she finished secondary school, it was her grandpa she took to her leaving prom. They danced all night, oblivious to the world around them. It was a night she would never forget. She was then sent to boarding school for her A-Levels, and she missed him dearly. They wrote to each other every week. When she returned during her holidays, Grandpa Vic would always seem to change. At first it was only physically; he got slower and weaker, but he quickly ended up in a wheelchair or his favourite armchair. This didn’t stop them, though, and they still had great fun together, Bethany sitting on the carpet in front of Grandpa Vic and listening to his stories, supplying him with tea during any intermissions. But then he began to change mentally; his memory started to go and he became argumentative, easily frustrated. Still Bethany would go to him, finding him in his usual chair every day. She told him stories, made him gingerbread, and drew him pictures, giving him all of her love. In spite of this, he ended up worse, but still she’d come to him, see him in his favourite chair, and put a smile on his face.
Then one day she returned from college for her Easter holidays to find the chair empty. Grandpa Vic had exchanged it for a hospital bed, and so she went to see him there instead. But that did not last long. He was in a bad state and so spent all his time asleep, and eventually it was a sleep he didn’t wake up from. Her last word to him was goodbye. Whether he actually heard her, she never knew. What was certain was that Grandpa Vic had left her and that her life felt very empty indeed.
The funeral had been a grand affair, largely because many of his old friends had attended, sad to say goodbye to a very good man. It had rained all day, save for a brief moment when the sun had shone through the clouds, illuminating his coffin as it was lowered into the ground. When the whole thing was over, Bethany had returned home and gone straight to bed. And this is where the story begins, our skinny little hero doing her best to sleep; the house deathly silent, save for the gentle rustling of leaves; and the ticking of the Morgan family grandfather clock.
This clock had been with the family for generations. A tall, rather grand piece, it was claimed by Mr Morgan that it had never faltered or been damaged throughout its entire existence. It was, to him, an example of “perfect engineering, a constant and implacable certainty in a world of chaos and disorder”. He loved that clock, perhaps even more than he loved his wife and daughter. But he was very much correct – the old clock was incredibly accurate and could show the exact time to the millisecond (well, if it had possessed the hand to do it with). Each second would be heralded by a click, each minute by a clonk, and each hour by a thunderous cacophony of twangs, dongs, and plonks. The noise itself was constant and would easily drive someone unaccustomed to it stark raving mad. The Morgans, however, were entirely used to the racket, and only when it stopped would they suspect something was amiss. The clock itself, of course, had never been so chaotic as to halt in its duty.
Bethany had had enough of the day and had proceeded to her room with the briefest of words to her parents, refusing to accept that her dear grandfather had passed away. Surely after she had awoken from her nightmare, she would run downstairs and find him in his usual cheery state, sat in his favourite chair, chuckling. The problem was that to awake from something, you normally have to be asleep first, and this was something entirely elusive to her that evening.
She tried everything: counting sheep, singing to herself, reading a book, and the classic method of simply closing her eyes. But it seemed that both her mind and body had forgotten how to fall asleep. Despite every attempt, she lay there in her messy, colourful room, staring into the darkness, doing her best not to think of her grandpa. At first she blamed her restlessness on her parents; they were still active and entertaining guests downstairs. This not only kept her awake but infuriated her too – how could people drink, chat, and laugh after such a day? She had every intention of charging downstairs and in her loudest and angriest voice telling them to shut up. But the potential of not seeing her favourite person in his favourite chair terrified her. And anyway, she didn’t want to spoil her morning surprise of a smiling and very much alive Grandpa Vic. So she continued to lie there in bed, with her eyes clasped shut, desperately trying not to listen to the voices coming from downstairs.
Time, however, has a habit of rolling on and making things change. Before she knew it, the guests downstairs had bidden their farewells, jumped in their cars, and driven off into the night. The seconds ticked away and the minutes clonked ever on at their steady pace, announcing the lateness of the evening. Her parents, though, continued to chat on downstairs. They clattered crockery, clicked on the television, and munched on the snacks that had survived the day. But at last, they too headed upstairs to their beds, switching everything off, and putting away dishes. With everyone gone, Bethany half expected to hear her parents weeping, or mourning Grandpa Vic. But they didn’t, and they, seemingly, effortlessly went to bed and quickly fell asleep. Still Bethany was restless, driven now by a frustration and anger aimed at her parents apparent calm. Everything was quiet. It was a silence that could only exist in the remotest of villages. One