Читать книгу: «Clash of the Worlds»

Brendan Walker knew this story wasn’t going to have a happy ending.

He stood on the beach near his home on Sea Cliff Avenue with his sisters, Cordelia and Eleanor, and stared out at the San Francisco Bay. Not at the whole bay, but rather at the exact spot in the water where they had just seen their friend, a colossus named Fat Jagger, standing a few moments ago.

Cars were stopped on the Golden Gate Bridge. Several people peered over the edge, likely wondering if they had really just seen a massive, fifty-storey tall, overweight version of Mick Jagger in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, howling at the moon.

But it simply couldn’t have been possible. Fat Jagger wasn’t real, at least not in the same way that he and his sisters were. He was just a character in an old novel by Denver Kristoff. Or so Brendan had thought. Then again, the Walker children had witnessed enough “impossible” things in the past few months to convince them that literally anything was possible.

Most kids would probably run away screaming if they saw a huge colossus wearing a loincloth rise up out of the ocean. Or at the very least, call 911. They certainly wouldn’t try to lure the massive giant even closer. But the three Walker children were definitely not like most kids. At least, not any more. Not since they had moved into Kristoff House and found themselves thrown into the magical world of his books – engaged in a seemingly endless battle with the evil Wind Witch, frost beasts, Nazi cyborgs, bloodthirsty pirates, and a variety of other horrors from the depths of the author’s imagination.

“Well, now what?” Brendan asked. “We could call my English teacher, Ms Krumbsly, to lure him out. She’s still single and almost as big as Fat Jagger. They might make a cute couple?”

His younger sister, Eleanor, slapped his arm. “Bren!” she scolded. “Fat Jagger’s our friend! You should be nicer to him; he did save our lives a couple of times. Ms Krumbsly is way too mean – I wouldn’t even wish her on my worst enemies.”

“Yeah, I know, Nell,” Brendan said. “I guess what I’m saying is that we don’t exactly have a good plan.”

“Since when have you ever worried about having a well-structured plan in place before acting?” Cordelia asked.

She was the oldest of the three Walker kids at nearly sixteen, although she tended to sometimes talk and act like she was at least twice her age.

“Hey, I can make plans and be the leader sometimes too,” Brendan protested. His sisters just looked at him. They knew, as well as he did, that he was much better at making jokes.

The three Walker children were standing on the beach directly below the cliff upon which the Victorian, three-storey Kristoff House was precariously perched – the same house that they would only be able to call home for one more night. Because after once again barely escaping from the fantastical book world with their lives, they had returned to a reality in which their father had managed to gamble away a ten-million-dollar fortune. And so the next morning they’d be moving back into a cramped apartment near Fisherman’s Wharf.

“Come on,” Cordelia said, pulling her coat closed to fend off the biting ocean breeze. “Let’s at least try to get closer to the bridge, in the vicinity of where he surfaced. Standing around talking certainly isn’t going to accomplish anything.”

Brendan and Eleanor followed Cordelia along the beach towards the bridge. There was still no sign of Fat Jagger.

As the three Walkers moved further along the beach, they passed a homeless man with a long grey beard sitting in the brush at the base of the cliff. He watched them walk by, but said nothing. The moonlight seemed to make his eyes shine like diamonds in the darkness of the shadows. For a split second, Brendan thought it was the Storm King, which was what Denver Kristoff had been calling himself ever since The Book of Doom and Desire had corrupted his soul years ago.

But that book was gone now; Eleanor had banished it for ever, using its own magic against it. And so was the Storm King. The three Walker siblings had seen him get hit and killed by a city bus outside the Bohemian Club in downtown San Francisco – killed by his own daughter no less, Dahlia Kristoff, aka the Wind Witch. But in spite of the online news article claiming his body had been buried in a nearby mausoleum under an assumed identity, Brendan wasn’t completely convinced that the crooked old wizard was actually dead.

“Fat Jagger!” Eleanor screamed, shaking Brendan from his thoughts.

For a moment, he thought the colossus must have reappeared. But Eleanor shouted his name again, calling out across the bay like she was looking for a lost dog.

“Fat Jagger, come out, we can help you!” Eleanor yelled.

Cordelia cupped her hands around her mouth and joined in. “Fat Jagger, we’re here now!”

“Come on out, Fat Jagger! It’s us, the Wallllk-errrrs!” Eleanor shouted, drawing out the pronunciation of their last name the way he always did.

“Nice Fat Jagger impersonation,” Brendan said as he looked around the beach. “Let me try.”

Brendan stepped up to the water and began to sing,

“You can start me up, if you start me up I’ll never stop …”

“Just because you were a rock star when we travelled to ancient Rome doesn’t mean you’re a great singer back in the real world,” Eleanor said.

“You’re just jealous of my sterling pipes, Nell.”

Eleanor didn’t bother responding.

A young couple jogging along the beach slowed and watched the three kids warily. They kept a safe distance from the Walkers as they passed.

The water lapped gently at the kids’ feet as they continued to shout, but there was still no sign of their friend. Several other people taking an evening walk on the beach were now looking at them with a mixture of curiosity and confusion.

“Guys, let’s take it easy with the shouting. People are going to think we’re a few noodles short of a spaghetti dinner,” Brendan said, borrowing one of his dad’s favourite lame jokes.

The first few times Dr Walker useAd that line, Brendan had groaned. But after hearing it at every holiday and birthday party for so long, he had come to love it. Those had been simpler times back then, though. Back before the Walker family was in financial ruins, before they had gotten themselves tangled up in the dark magic and secrets surrounding Kristoff House. Back before the three kids had to spend their evenings on a beach trying to lure a fifty-storey colossus named Fat Jagger out of the San Francisco Bay.

“What are we going to do?” Cordelia asked. “Why won’t Fat Jagger surface again?”

“Maybe he can’t hear us?” Eleanor suggested, fighting tears. “Under all that water.”

“Maybe we never even saw him at all?” Brendan said. “Did we just imagine him?”

“You’re not helping,” Cordelia scolded. “We all know what we saw. Even if one of us imagined it, there’s no way we all did simultaneously. Three people don’t just randomly have the same hallucination!”

Brendan sighed. She had a point.

“Well,” he said, “we know Jagger can hold his breath for a really long time. So he probably won’t drown.”

“That’s right,” Cordelia said, turning towards Eleanor’s panicked face. “Remember? The first time we were sent into Kristoff’s books, Fat Jagger walked all the way across the huge sea to Tinz … just to save us.”

Eleanor nodded and took a few deep breaths, still struggling to fight back her tears. She didn’t quite know what it was about Fat Jagger that she connected with so much, but she had truly come to view him as one of her best friends, in spite of the fact that they’d never really had a conversation longer than one or two words.

“I mean, we could try to go fishing for him or something,” Brendan suggested, only half kidding. “We could use one of Mrs Deagle’s cats as bait …”

“That’s horrible!” Eleanor shouted.

“But she’s got like twenty-seven cats,” Brendan said. “She’ll never miss one!”

“Not funny, Bren,” Cordelia chided.

“Sorry, comedy is in my blood.” Brendan shrugged. “I can’t just switch it off.”

“I would hardly call it comedy,” Cordelia muttered.

Eleanor wasn’t really listening to her older siblings squabble. She was lost in her own thoughts. And then the solution suddenly hit her – she knew how they could lure Fat Jagger out of the bay.

“I’ve got it!” Eleanor said. “I just need to get to a Safeway.”

“Nell, we can eat later,” Brendan said, but then put a hand on his stomach. “On second thoughts … now that you said it, I could go for a couple of Lunchables.”

Neither Cordelia nor Eleanor had the chance to respond, because their mother’s voice called out from behind them.

“Kids, there you are!” she called. “Don’t sneak off like that, I’ve been looking everywhere for you three! Let’s get back home. Our plans have changed.”

“We can’t yet!” Eleanor said. “We’re, uh … not finished saying goodbye to the neighbourhood!”

Eleanor knew she needed to buy more time to execute her plan to lure out Fat Jagger and get him away from the city, to head north up the coast where he’d be less likely to get spotted. She had seen enough movies to know that a colossus running loose in San Francisco would not end well. She could already envisage Fat Jagger chained up and on display as a part of some sort of travelling freak show. Or even worse, swatting at fighter jets as they swooped in to destroy him.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, there’s no time!” Mrs Walker said, crushing Eleanor’s hopes. “Things have changed and we need to move into the apartment tonight. The moving truck is waiting for us. We’re leaving right now.”