The astonishing chronicl.., p.1
The Astonishing Chronicles of Oscar from Elsewhere, page 1
First published by Allen & Unwin in 2021
Copyright © Text, Jaclyn Moriarty 2021
Copyright © Illustrations, Kelly Canby 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
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Cover and text design by Romina Edwards, hand-lettering by Kelly Canby
Cover illustration by Kelly Canby
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www.jaclynmoriarty.com
TO MY GODSONS, CONNOR AND LOUIS,
AND THEIR LOVELY FAMILIES
AND TO MY CHARLIE
CONTENTS
THE MONDAY AFTER
MONDAY
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
TUESDAY
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
WEDNESDAY
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
THURSDAY
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
FRIDAY
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
CHAPTER 83
CHAPTER 84
CHAPTER 85
CHAPTER 86
CHAPTER 87
CHAPTER 88
CHAPTER 89
CHAPTER 90
CHAPTER 91
CHAPTER 92
CHAPTER 93
CHAPTER 94
THURSDAY (THREE WEEKS LATER)
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Oscar
Monday morning, I was sent to Mrs Kugelhopf’s office.
She’s the Deputy Principal.
‘Write a report,’ Mrs Kugelhopf commanded, ‘accounting for every day you were not at school last week.’
‘Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,’ I replied, counting on my fingers. ‘Five days.’
Mrs Kugelhopf nodded.
I nodded back.
Mrs Kugelhopf’s office has a view of the wheelie bins. Her walls are the colour of green grapes that have gone slightly mouldy.
She shuffled her chair closer to her desk, hunching her shoulders to do this. She didn’t look well, to be honest, but that was her emotions. She lets them get the better of her. ‘You will sit outside my office today,’ she informed me, ‘and you will write that report.’
I frowned.
She frowned back.
‘What report?’ I said.
‘The report accounting for the days you were not at school last week!’
I gave her a careful look. With teachers, you never know how much education they have.
‘Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,’ I repeated slowly. ‘Five days.’
She nodded. I nodded.
‘Five days altogether,’ I added, to be helpful.
‘That is precisely the point!’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I agreed.
We were stuck then. She looked at me.
Put her elbows on her desk, clasped her fingers together and rested her chin on the thumbs. A little shelf made of thumbs.
‘Do you understand what you are going to do?’ she asked.
Big question, but I gave it my best shot.
‘For my career? Play rugby league for Australia. For lunch today? Bolognese from the canteen. Next weekend? Well, I’m thinking—’
‘Oscar,’ Mrs Kugelhopf interrupted.
Her chair is a big leather palace of a chair. Mine was a spindly little wooden one. Two other wooden chairs were lined up beside me, ready for other kids to get busted.
Right now, those chairs looked nervous. Sitting there, trying to be quiet.
‘I meant now!’ Ms Kugelhopf cried. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘I’m on an in-school suspension,’ I reminded her kindly.
Mrs Kugelhopf sighed. ‘How old are you, Oscar?’
Surprising twist in the conversation.
‘Twelve,’ I replied.
‘Exactly. You are twelve.’
‘If you already knew, why did you ask?’
‘And Oscar—’ she ignored my laser-sharp question, ‘—do you remember the Friday before you decided to take an entire week off school?’
It seemed like a lifetime ago, that Friday, because my mind had been shut down and restarted since then (effectively). Still, I remembered it perfectly.
‘Yes.’
‘You were sitting right there.’ She pointed at my chair.
Actually, I’d been sitting in the middle chair, but I let it go.
‘You had been sent here for snoring loudly in class. Hilarious, I’m sure. Do you remember I spoke to you about the value you contribute to the world? Do you remember I mentioned my own son, Eddie, who is four years old?’
We both looked at the photo on her desk. Cute.
I nodded.
‘And remember how I said—’
I decided to change the subject.
‘What does “accounting” mean?’ I asked, making myself a bit more comfortable.
‘Get your feet off the chair,’ she replied.
I did what she asked.
‘Get your feet off my desk!’ Anger vibrated her voice then, like an electric guitar.
‘So where can I put my feet?’
‘On the floor! Put them on the floor!’
She did some deep breathing. Then remembered my question.
‘Accounting,’ she said, and rubbed at her forehead quickly. ‘Accounting is to do with financial records. Why do you—?’ Her face grew wide like a balloon into which someone has just blown a huge gust of air. ‘When I say account, I do not mean I want you to count up the days you were not at school! I want you to describe what you were doing on those days. We know that your father dropped you at the school gate before the bell rang each morning last week, Oscar, but then what? You didn’t come through that gate, did you? So kindly explain why the valuable time your father spent driving you here—and he is so concerned about you, Oscar, what a lovely man he is—’
‘The loveliest,’ I nodded. ‘And he’s my stepdad.’
‘All right, so Oscar, explain to me why the valuable time of your stepfather in bringing you here, and the valuable time of your teacher in preparing lessons, have been wasted? Because instead of coming into the school, you chose to spend your time … doing what, Oscar? Tell me what!’
All those words came flying out of Mrs Kugelhopf’s mouth in a rush, as if the gust of air was screaming back out of the balloon.
‘You should have just said that,’ I suggested.
I’d known what she meant all alon
g, to be honest.
Just messing with her.
Also, listen, my teacher was fine without me last week. He had other kids to teach. I was not wasting his valuable time being gone. In fact, I waste a lot more of his valuable time when I’m there.
I told Mrs Kugelhopf that it was going to take a bit of time to write this ‘account of Monday to Friday last week’, and also that I’d need the help of a new friend of mine named Imogen Mettlestone-Staranise.
And that’s how I came to write this. (Or half of it, anyway.)
Anyhow, here it is.
Oscar
Monday morning, 9.45 am, I went to Cam.
That’s the skate park at Cammeray.
It’s always quiet mid-morning.
When I skated in, there was a dad with a little kid. Kid had a scooter; dad had a skateboard. The dad skated around a bit, showing off for his kid. The kid scootered, ignoring the dad. The dad attempted a trick right when the kid happened to glance at him. Trick failed. Kid stared at the dad kind of blankly.
‘Right,’ the dad said. ‘Time to go home for a snack.’
And off they went.
That was when I realised there were two other people in the skate park. Murmur, murmur. Skated over to see.
They were sitting close together on the ground up the back. On the tufty grass that runs between the skate park and the soccer field.
Two guys. Older than me. About fifteen maybe. T-shirts, hairy arms. Their boards were lying in the grass and they were hunched over something.
It was a hot day.
Hazy air. Cicadas.
I coughed. They looked up at me.
One of the boys was holding a little round mirror in his palm. He closed his fingers over it, but not before it caught the sunlight.
I frowned.
‘What ya doing?’ I asked. ‘Killing ants?’
‘You do that with a magnifying glass,’ mirror-boy told me. ‘Got a magnifying glass?’
‘I don’t want to kill ants,’ I said.
‘Well then why did you just mention it?’ he pounced.
That was unfair, and made no sense.
‘What ya doing?’ I asked again.
The other boy turned and looked at me more closely. He had a long, thin nose with flaring nostrils, like a jet plane. ‘You’re Oscar,’ he said.
‘Yeah.’
Mirror-boy glanced up again. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’ve had a haircut,’ he told me. ‘Didn’t recognise you. I’ve seen you skate here before. You’re good.’
‘Cheers.’
I didn’t tell him he was good. I’d seen both of them skate here before and to be honest, they’re pretty average.
They were both studying me now. They glanced at each other, super swift, and mirror-boy raised an eyebrow.
The other one nodded.
‘Thing is,’ he said, and his eyes went shiny. ‘There’s meant to be another skate park. Size of a football field.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Where?’
‘Right here.’ He thumped his fist on the grass.
‘Yeah, good on ya.’ Dropped my board, ready to skate away.
‘No, Oscar, wait.’
‘We’re serious.’
‘Trust us.’
‘It’s real. It’s right here.’
Both of them were talking at once.
‘There’s a secret way to get there,’ jet-plane-nose boy explained.
‘You hold a mirror in just the right place—’ The other boy’s hand darted around like a little bird, fingers still closed over the mirror.
‘Only,’ his friend put in, scratching his jaw, ‘we can’t find the right place. And we’ve gotta go.’
They both stood up slowly, kind of groaning like old men.
‘Keep trying if you want.’ Nose-boy looked over at mirror-boy.
‘What?’
‘Give him the mirror.’
‘Why?’
‘So he can try!’
They carried on arguing a while. Turned out mirror-boy had bought the little mirror at the discount store for two dollars, so he wanted to keep it. He was pretty sure I could use anything reflective, he said. It didn’t have to be this mirror. Switch my phone to selfie mode? Or did I have one of those foil bags of chips?
The other boy kept urging him to give me the mirror, explaining that if they couldn’t go to the ‘killer skate park’, I should be able to go.
In the end, he tried to grapple the mirror out of his friend’s hand, and next thing, they were wrestling.
I started laughing. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, holding up my hands. ‘You can keep your mirror.’
They looked back at me from their wrestling hold. Mirror-boy sighed and tossed the mirror onto the grass at my feet.
‘Try it,’ he said.
‘Trust us,’ his friend added.
The two of them grabbed their boards and skated away.
‘Good luck,’ they called over their shoulders, heading out of the skate park, onto the path, and off down the road.
A car droned by. Another one.
Helicopter someplace in the sky.
Nobody around.
I went and got my backpack.
Brought it with me to the patch of grass again, sat down, and unzipped my bag.
Nope. No food.
Stood up, picked up my board and my bag, ready to go. Looked down at the mirror, still lying on the grass, facedown. Of course, I didn’t believe them. A skate park you could reach with a mirror? Lost the plot, the pair of them.
All I did was, I turned over the mirror with my foot, caught a glimpse of my eyes staring back—
My eyes?
Wait, were they my—
And then, there I was.
Standing at the foot of the best skate park I ever saw.
Imogen
Only, it wasn’t a skate park, was it, Oscar? It was the Elven city of Dun-sorey-lo-vay-lo-hey.
But you didn’t know that at the time.
Hello, my name is Imogen Mettlestone-Staranise, and I am thirteen years old. I have been asked by Oscar Banetti to help him write this account.
At first, I said: ‘No thank you, Oscar, I have no wish for additional homework.’
I was only joking. Of course I would help him. (Although, to be clear, I definitely have no wish for additional homework. In case any overexcited teachers are about to jump in.) The fact is, Oscar is quite clueless. This is not his fault of course, but it would cause him difficulty in describing Monday to Friday of last week.
And so would the fact that Oscar himself was dead for most of Monday.
Before I begin, though, you should know that I don’t really believe in ‘descriptive language’. My teachers are always saying things like, ‘Well, start believing, Imogen!’ I take no notice. A thing is a thing. Who cares what it’s like or how shiny it is?
As long as we’re clear on that, I’ll get on with it.
Monday morning, 6.35 am, I woke to a loud knocking on the front door.
I was home from boarding school for the holidays, along with my younger sisters, Esther and Astrid. We live in the mountain village of Blue Chalet. It’s said to be picturesque. Our cousins, Bronte and Alejandro, were staying with us at the time. We planned to spend three weeks together swimming in lakes and climbing mulberry trees. (Alejandro is not technically a cousin, by the way, in case somebody is about to jump in and correct me. But he went to live with Bronte’s family after escaping life as a pirate. So he’s practically a cousin. Even if he has recently discovered that he’s a prince and returned to live with his own royal parents.)
All five of us had been sleeping on mattresses on the living room floor, so we could chat through the night and have midnight feasts. When the loud knocking sounded early Monday morning, I stepped over the others’ snoring bodies to reach the front door.
It was the postmaster. ‘Urgent letter!’ he said, and handed it over. ‘It arrived last night and I’ve just discovered it, so I rushed it up here.’
He waited then, clearly wanting to watch me open the letter, but I said, ‘Thank you,’ and closed the door on him.
The letter was addressed to my sister Esther anyway. I turned it over to see the return address:
King Maddox HRH, Elven city of Dun-sorey-lo-vay-lo-hey
‘Esther,’ I said. ‘Wake up.’
My sister Esther is a Rain Weaver. This means she can cure people who’ve been affected by Shadow Magic. She only discovered she’s a Rain Weaver quite recently and she’s been in pretty high demand ever since.
However, this was the first time, as far as I knew, that she’d had a request from an Elf. Certainly the first time she’d heard from an Elven king.
The letter was a bit hysterical.
