The Shadow of Malabron (45 page)
Read The Shadow of Malabron Online
Authors: Thomas Wharton
“As much as you were here?”
Will laughed. “Not quite.”
“I think you will be all right now, Will Lightfoot.”
“What about you, Shade? Will you travel with the Hidden Folk?”
“Yes, for a while. But there must be others like me, somewhere. Other Speaking Creatures. I want to find them, if I can.”
“There are no others like you,” Will said, and he knelt and sank his arms into the wolf’s warm fur one last time.
Reluctantly he rose and walked into the clearing. There was the cloven tree on the hill. And beyond it, through a screen of flickering leaves, red and blue lights pulsed in the gloom. The motorcycle would be there, he knew, as if he had left it just a few moments ago. Dad and Jess were not far away, and at that thought his heart lifted: he would soon see them. He looked back once at the dark forest. He thought he glimpsed Shade slipping away like a faint silver-grey gleam amid the shadows, but he couldn’t be sure. Then he turned and set out gladly for home.
T
RISKELLION
Rachel and Adam are sent from their New York home to stay with their grandmother, following their parents’ bitter divorce. But the quiet English village where their mother was born is a sinister and unsettling place. Is there a genuinely dark heart beating beneath the thatched roofs of the picturesque village of Triskellion?
Against a brooding background of very real danger, the two young outsiders follow an incredible trail on an archaeological adventure with a startling paranormal twist. In a community that has existed in the same place for centuries, many terrible secrets lie hidden, and the villagers of Triskellion have a great deal to protect…
B
Y
W
ILL
P
ETERSON
T
HOMAS
W
HARTON
is an award-winning writer for adults whose work has been translated into several languages.
The Shadow of Malabron
is the first book in The Perilous Realm, a fantasy sequence for young people. He says of the Realm, “It is not just a world with stories in it. This world is Story. It is the place that all of the tales in our world come from. Whatever you might find in a story, you will find here. Adventures, strange encounters, riddles. Heroes and monsters. Bravery, goodness, and terrible evil. And many other things that have yet no name in our world. And you are here now, and that means you are in a story, too.”
The author is an assistant professor of English at the University of Alberta, and lives in Edmonton, Canada, with this wife and three children.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously.
First published 2008 by Walker Books Ltd
87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ
Text © 2008 Thomas Wharton
Cover design by Walker Books Ltd
The right of Thomas Wharton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-4063-4255-0 (ePub)
