www.branfordboaseaward.org.uk

The Times 5/2/11

JP BUXTON, HEARTLESS DARK, HODDER £5.99 11+

SALLY PRUE, ICE MAIDEN, OUP £5.99 11+

All good novels now seem to demand sequels. Ones like Anthony Horovitz’s Alex Rider series, or Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon have become annual treats, but too often many, even ones as good as Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games spoil the brilliance of the initial story.

Both JP Buxton and Sally Prue hit upon new ways of looking at familiar fairy-tales, and both have been recognised by the prestigious Branford Boase Children’s Award. Buxton’s I Am the Blade was a tense, original and funny rendition of the King Arthur myth, and Heartless Dark picks up the story with young Tog (or Artognu) now the High King and the Pictish Jenna his Queen. Nothing, however, is what you’d expect, and the two of them are already having misunderstandings even before Jenna is kidnapped by a remorseless band of child soldiers known as Little Swords.

This is a picture of a Britain as wild and strange as anything in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (on which it’s partly modelled). Not even Tog knows what places lie two days’ travel from his court – so his map, left behind by the Emperor Constantine, seems magical in its ability to show where mountains and rivers lie. What does Jenna have tattooed on her back, and why does the chilling, crazed Dragon who is gathering his army and terrorising people all the way up the Severn River (or Big Straight Way) want her? In this land, where remnants of the Roman Army are seen as men with fire spouting from their heads and priests sacrifice to Odin, it takes time to work out. Packed with enjoyable details, Buxton’s book has child soldiers speak in modern slang, so that a reader not only laughs but understands that everyone is talking a lost, demotic language. Although it begins too slowly, it takes off like a rocket after the kidnap and never lets up. Tog’s unwavering love for Jenna is moving as he suffers to regain her, leading his small band of friends; Jenna’s fear as she realises she may be skinned alive is just as wrenching. Tog’s lack of confidence in himself will strike a particular chord with boys. Fiercely enjoyable, it’s a rip-roaring read about youth, daring, cleverness and passion right up to the brutal fight at the climax.

Ice Maiden follows Cold Tom (though can be read independently to it), and Prue has once again repeated her trick of seeing human beings through the eyes of icily feral, bloodthirsty fairies. Like Sally Gardner and Gillian Philips, she has imagined the dark side of fairyland but Prue’s version is probably the weirdest. Her fairies may look lovely but are lean and lethal as cheetahs.

Edrin is desperate for food, whether animal or “demon”. She must kill or be killed by one of her own Tribe. Humans, who are tied by “invisible vines” of emotion to each other, are contemptible. Lonely Fritz haunts the common where she hunts; he is also an outcast because Nazi parents plot treachery, and local boys bully him. When he collides with Edrin up a tree, he can only feel “a slash of icy air”. She flees, but gradually the two of them are forced together, hunted by the Tribe.

Prue’s writing has the poetry and intensity of a visionary. So startling is her imagery that the dramatic tension of the well-crafted plot is almost secondary. Startling, suspenseful and ultimately very satisfying, Ice Maiden deserves a better cover – and, like Heartless Dark, the readership of a strong sequel …

Sometimes when you’re asleep, you know things are happening but only realize you knew when you wake up and it’s too late. As soon as I opened my eyes I understood a number of things: none of them good.

I had slept through the day and now it was night.

The boat had stopped.

It was riding differently and so was probably empty.

The girl, the captain and my Beauty Thing had gone. My mother always said I’d sleep through the end of the world and now I almost have!

I force myself not to leap up and draw attention to myself then very slowly open an eye, not so far that anyone can notice but just far enough to see out of.

In no particular order, this is what I notice: dark sky, flaring torches, a quayside, the back of a man. Then all these other feelings start hitting me:

sounds – an odd, distant murmur like a far off river in flood.

smells – dirty water, rotting fruit, rubbish tips

feelings – worry, worry, worry.

The back of the man I can see belongs to one of the crew – I’m almost certain of that – and I suppose he’s been left to guard the boat. Very slowly I begin to unbury myself from the sacks, hoping the slap of water against the boat’s sides will cover the slight rustling I make.

‘All right?’ Some one calls out from the quayside. There’s a row of buildings, wood piled up in front of them. Half the buildings are falling down, some have been patched up.

‘What’s it to you?’ my sailor boy calls back.

‘Looking lonely,’ the voice says. ‘Thought you might want to see the action. He’s got a nerve, your captain.’

‘That’s why he’s a bloody captain.’

‘He’s bitten off more than he can chew with this cargo.’

‘That’s why he’s selling it quick. Let someone else deal with the pain. He just wants cash and then we’re off to Powys for a while.’

‘So when’s the sale?’

‘Tonight. In the old circle.’

The sound of air being blown through cheeks. The conversation went on. I crept to the side of the boat. Had they forgotten about me? It sounded as if they had. So, to find my Beauty Thing I had to find the captain, and to find the captain, I hd to find the circle. Simple. I felt inside my tunic where the last of Girta’s rock like bread was digging into my ribs. I hoped it would get me as far as the port and it had. I stuffed it into my mouth and slipped over the side, between my boat and the one next to it.

The water was freezing and filthy. Rotting driftwood, a dead rat and more stuff I didn’t even want to think was bobbing around my head. I ducked under it and swam a few feet out where the current could move the rubbish about a bit. The water tasted funny – not just bad but funny – and it took a while for me to work out that it was salt. Of course! The Port was by the sea and people always said the sea was salt but I never saw how it could be so decided they were making it up. I know all the stories – that there’s a giant on island of salt somewhere in the middle of the ocean who’s been tricked by some clever boots that treasure’s buried somewhere on it, so he starts to dig and the only place to throw the shovelfuls of salt is over his shoulder into sea. The story never seemed that likely to me but now, I’m not so sure. I reckon it would take a giant digging away at an island of salt to turn all the water briny, which just goes to show that what my father said was right: travel broadens the mind. It’s broadened mine already.

I’m shivering already in the water and not looking forward to being cold and wet for the rest of the night. I swim in the darkness away from the quayside to a muddy beach upstream. The water’s clearer here and I crawl up past some old fishing nets. I’ve been cold and wet before so I know what to do: strip off, however horrible it sounds, wring out the worst of the wet from your clothes, put them on and try to keep moving. Whatever you do, keep moving, so I run around on the muddy foreshore, then hop and skip my way towards the buildings that cluster behind the actual docks.

The port isn’t fortified but all the buildings have guards. Big men with mean faces carrying clubs and swords. A light drizzle is falling and there’s a sort of ring of light around each hissing torch. I wrap my arms around my chest to try to stop shivering into pieces, and scuttle past.

And then I notice the noise I woke up to. It’s a sort of roar that rises and falls like water and it seems to be coming from behind a huge curved wall, as high as tree, that blocks off the end of the alleyway from the sky.

Curved. A curve that goes all the way round and meets itself makes a circle. Could the captain be behind that wall?

In some places old homes and shacks are built against the wall, leaning like drunks. In other places there’s a rough path. There are more people here: some dressed like me, others in brightly coloured robes. They’re mostly heading in one direction so I follow, but the crowd gets thicker and thicker and I hear shouting. I’m so small and, to be honest, unsavoury, that I soon get to the front thanks to pushing and people getting out of my way.

This is what I see.

There’s a gate in the wall and through it I can see rows and rows and seats, stacked up into the air, all facing inwards. The seats are crowded with people and they’re all looking into the arena, and shouting.

The problem is what’s happening at the door where a bunch of men, all wearing furs, are milling around and jostling each other. They’re huge in their shaggy clothes, armed with clubs and swords and axes and there’s a sort of hard crackle to the atmosphere.

Two men are standing off to one side, one from each group, and they’re draped with gold chains like old trees are draped in ivy and each one is carrying an axe. The two men are so big the axes look small. One has gold chains woven into his beard, the other has bird skulls plaited into his hair. They’re glaring at each other while their men barge and argue about who’s going in first or who’s going in last – I can’t tell which – and the point seems to be that whatever one side wants, the other does too.

Warlords, I think.

Kekklin was always going on about them. More money than sense, he says, and when I see the gold on them, I know what he means. Now I look closer, they’re both wearing fine tunics or undershirts with patterns deep in the weave but the cloth is covered with stains: food or blood or whatever and they don’t look magnificent – just flashy. At least that’s what I think. I wouldn’t say it, of course, and whether they look as good as they think they do doesn’t really matter because I still reckon they’d kill me as happily as they’d kill an ant.

I slide past them and walk down a wide tunnel. It smells of wee and rotten fruit and there’s a hollow booming sound coming from all around that I don’t understand until the tunnel ends at a wooden barrier just too high for me to see over and I look around.

Then I get in. Row upon row of benches rise like steps all around. They’re crowded with people and the booming sound is them stamping. The rows of seats are broken by stairs and I climb until I find a spare seat, high up and right at the back. From here I can look down over the low wooden barrier and see what all the fuss is about.

In the middle, two men are going at each other with wooden clubs. One’s long and thin and the other’s short and squat. They’re stripped to the waist, carry small circular wooden shields on their arms and are taking it in turns, as far as I can see, to whack each other as hard as they can. Their heads are down, their chests are heaving and both have blood pouring from cuts in their heads. For each massive blow, the crowd cheers.

Whack! Cheer. Whack! Cheer. Whack. OOOH. The tall man has broken his club on the shorter man’s shield. He stands, rocking on his feet, just manages to fend off another exhausted blow and then, with a roar, launches himself at the other man, grappling him round the waist. The crowd starts to shout louder and louder. He takes a couple of blows on the back and then lifts the smaller man into the air.

The crowd screams with delight as he holds other man in the air, high about his head. He turns once, twice and then staggers. OOOH! the crowd goes as he staggers again and collapses onto his back with the smaller man lying across his body.

For a moment all is still. Then very slowly the smaller man gets to his feet and looks around, looks down and in a dazed sort of way lifts his arms high into the air. Then he collapses and the crowd cheers again.

And then, on the other side of the arena, I see the captain. And next to him I see the girl. She’s got her hands tied in front of her and a rope halter round her neck and a gag in her mouth but the worst thing about her is her eyes. They’re like two, shocked holes torn in her white face and now I understand all about the cargo he’s selling.

It’s the girl from the boat.

The crew’s rowing: big oars shoveling the water, coming up silver fringed, dipping down again. I’m sitting in the back , tied up while up on the platform, the captain is standing all manly and jutting jawed holding the steering oar and I can tell he’s trying not to look at the contents of the sack but is very much hoping that the contents of the sack is looking at him.

Because the contents of the sack is a girl.

And not just any girl. A clean girl. A girl wearing fine clothes. A girl wearing shoes. A girl with gold braid in her hair. More importantly than any of that though, a girl who so different that she doesn’t even know she’s different.

This is what happened. As soon as we were out of sight of the town, the captain slits open the sack and sees the girl. But instead of lying there, all meek and frightened, she leaps to her feet.

‘Who’s the idiot who dropped me?’ is the first thing she asks.

‘That would be me,’ I say. ‘I …’

‘Have you no idea how much that hurt?’

I mutter something and she says: ‘You really are an idiot. And I suppose it was you that decided it would be a good idea to crush me into the bargain?’

‘There were people …’

‘There were people, there were people,’ she jeers, mimicking my accent. Her voice is sharp and fine, like the ring of a good blade. Mine sounds rough and wooden. ‘Who’s in charge here?’

The crew’s all gathered round to laugh and one of them nods to the captain, who’s standing back, hand on the steering oar.

‘You?’ the girl says. ‘Then would you be so good as to give me a place to sit, decently separated from the people, and take me to the Port as quickly as possible. Speed is everything. You will be amply rewarded on my safe and timely delivery, my good man.’

‘Her good man, eh?’ one of the crew says and she shoots him a look that shuts him and makes the rest of then hoot and whistle for bit. When they stop, I’m reminded of dogs, resting in their play. There’s a narrow-eyed quality about them, a red-tongued pantingness. And they’re watching and ready to kick off again.

The captain thinks, then beckons her with his head. She follows him to the back of the boat, goes and sits on the platform he’s standing on, and starts to talk. I follow and out of bravado sit by her side, although I can tell she doesn’t really want me there.

I’ve never heard anything like it. There’s nothing she doesn’t have some opinion on: the trade of goose feathers (when we passed a duck); the price of oats (when we passed through oat fields); what a chicken was and how it tasted (when we passed a goose); the prospects for the harvest (inspired by more fields); a comparison of Frankish and Iberian wine (inspired by nothing at all except a desire to show off). After the wine talk, she seems to dry up a bit.

‘Well?’ she asks me. ‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘What have you got to say? I mean, you’re just sitting there like some … like some lump. Surely you must have something to say.’

‘About what?’

‘That’s the point. YOU have to think of something to say, then I say something back. It’s called: having a conversation.’

‘When I’m with Girta, I don’t have any problem finding things to say.’

‘And who is this … Girta? You sister?’

‘Girta lives in the hut downriver from us. Her father’s a …’

‘Oh, Girta lives in a HUT downRIVER,’ she says, in such a way as to make it seem like it’s stupid for Girta to live in a hut and it’s stupid for me to say think that she would be interested in her living downriver from anyone, let alone me. ‘Do tell me more,’ she says.

But the words have dried up.

‘Typical,’ she says. ‘That would never happen at home. At home I have people who are able to make conversation, who know how to entertain me, who … ’

‘What? That dump we just left?’ I say. ‘That dump I HELPED YOU ESCAPE FROM?’

‘You think that’s my home?’ she says. ‘You think THAT’s my home. Can’t you tell where I’m from? In my father’s court…’

But she’s shut up by a harsh “hsst” from the captain. I look over the side where a long, narrow boat is being punted upstream by a single man who looked as if he was dressed in otter skins.

‘Best not tell the world and his wife where you’re from,’ the captain says quietly, when he’s past. ‘He’s heading for the settlement with an empty boat and if he’s got no eels to sell, he might want to sell them news.’

The girl blushes, but whether it’s from anger at being told to shut up or embarrassment at being too gobby, I don’t properly know. But she stops talking a while and that’s a relief.

After a while the captain says: ‘So, your father’s court. Tell us more, princess.’

I glance up at him. He’s looking right past us, all casual-like but too casual at the same time. This is what he really wants to know. The girl has gone all quiet and it looks like she’s eaten a rotten walnut. She knows she should never have given away that she’s from a court. Her eyes are wet all of a sudden, and her face has that sudden, puffy teary look and suddenly I feel sorry for her. I shuffle closer to her, and take her hand.

She stiffens. Looks at my hand. Looks at me in horror and jerks her hand free so violently I swear the boat rocks.

‘Well,’ she says, almost in her own voice but not quite: ‘Well, I certainly don’t talk about that but if you help me, captain, I can certainly make it worth your while.’

The captain nods. Some sort of bargain’s been struck that I don’t understand. All I know is that she can go and rot for all I care. I go and lie down on the sacks in the middle of the boat and wonder how I can get my Beauty-Thing back from the captain. All I want to do now is get away.

‘What are you doing?’ is the sense of what he asks, although the words he uses are somewhat ruder.

I jump.

My face goes red.

I point at myself and realize how stupid I must look with the pouch still dangling out of my mouth. I whip it out, put it behind my back, remember that I’m supposed to give it to the captain, then hold it out to him.

He takes a step towards me. I step back, half falling over a jar of something and jam my hand down on the sack to break my fall. I hear a muffled squeak and feel the sack writhe so I jump to my feet again, making a squeak that’s supposed to sound like the noise that came from the sack.

‘What the…?’ The captain says. I make the squeak again to establish it as the sort of noise I’m inclined to make at odd times and say: ‘I’m supposed to give you this. Eek.’

I hand him the purse. He tosses it into the air and catches it. ‘Good. What it’s for?’

‘Eek Because I was told to?’ I try.

‘Ok. Off you go then and take that squeaking sack with you.’

I stare at him, horrified. ‘No, no. I was supposed to give you the sack and the money and you were supposed to …  take it somewhere, I suppose.’

‘And do what with it?’ the captain asks. ‘Leave it somewhere, squeaking? Throw it overboard to stop it squeaking? Give it to those angry looking men on the quayside and see if they can stop it squeaking?’

‘What angry men?’ I ask. He points. There are four of them: one fat, one thin, one with a long greasy pony tail  and one with his head shaved. They’re marching through the crowd, grabbing anyone who looks old and picking up every sack they can find. It doesn’t take me long to work out that they’re looking for the old man who gave me the sack – and the sack. And they’re coming closer to the boat.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Don’t do that. You see I think the old man that gave me the sack…’

‘I know,’ the captain says. ‘What else have you got? Quick.’

‘What?’

‘What else have you got to give me? Or should I give you and the sack to those men? Come on. It’s just business. As far as I’m concerned, the men mean increased risk. It’s only fair you pay me extra. What have you got in the bag around your waist? Quick, or I hand you over.’

I open the bag and pull out the last of Gerda’s bread. It looks like a rock, it feels like a rock and to all intents and purposes it might as well be a rock. The captain drops it on the deck.

‘There’s something else in there,’ he says. ‘Weighing the bag down. Give. Give or I call them over.’

The men have knocked some farmer over and are emptying out his bags of grain onto the quayside. He’s scrabbling to pick it up but they’re in a hurry and move on to a cart. Us next.

‘I…’

‘Very well then.’

He fills his lungs and stands.

‘All right, all right,’ I say. I reach into my bag and show him my beauty thing.

‘Is that…’ he begins. Then: ‘Oh my. Oh my. Give.’

It’s hard and I hesitate but I know that if I don’t he’ll just grab it off me and hand me and the sack over. So I hand it to him and whatever power that thing has, it starts working on him as soon as it’s in his hand. He goes all dazed and feels the beauty thing in his hand, turning it, holding its incredible smoothness.

‘Oi! You there. Boatman. We’re looking for an old man with a sack. You seen him?’ The four thugs who were searching the quayside are looking down into the boat now. The one with the pony tail is talking to us. He talks oddly because he’s lost all his front teeth.

If the captain hadn’t been in so much of a daze, I think he might have handed me and the sack over and had done with it. But he waits and while he waits, his crew have seen what’s happening and saunter over. They’re not big but they look mean and a couple of them have got knives and the others  have got clubs and the men that were searching back off.

‘What’s going on, Skipper?’ one of the crew asks.

‘No idea,’ the captain says.

‘We’re in charge here,’ Pony Tail says. ‘This is Gebbo’s town and we’re Gebbo’s men. We’re looking for an old man. Criminals. Stole … something very precious.’

‘Who are you calling an old man?’ The thing is, the crew man who’s talking is quite old with no hair and white eyebrows but he’s got a long knife and a wicked gleam in his eye like working on the boat is just a way of getting around so he can pick fights with strangers.

‘Not you,’ Pony Tail says.

‘Why’s he a criminal?’ The wicked old crew man sounds contemptuous.

‘Can’t say.’

‘Get lost then. What’s this place good for? Dried fish and sour beer?’

The man from the settlement says: ‘You’ve no idea. You’ve no idea. We’ll be back. You won’t get off that easily next time.’

And he nods to the three others and leads them back into the town.

When they’re through the gates, the captain says: ‘Right then. Cast off.’

‘But Skipper –we haven’t shifted those barrels yet.’

‘Leave them. Cast off. We’re got better cargo than that on board.’

And he smiles at me and he looks at the sack and he holds the beauty thing even tighter in his hand. And I sort of dimly know what he means but I can’t quite say it. All I know is that this is danger, real danger and trouble that’s far more serious than anything Kekklin could dream of.

The Times called it “wholly compelling and very funny.”

The IoS said: “Known as Tog, a Cornish woodcutter’s assistant, the boy Arthur talks in reassuringly 21st century terms while fighting off ancient dangers at every turn… Its sequel next year should be well worth waiting for.”

The first night’s all right for a while. I’m thinking evil thoughts about Kekklin, wondering why Fa always sides with him against me and convincing myself that getting away from them is the best thing to do. I’ve got the beauty-thing and he hasn’t, I think to myself.

I hold it in my hand.

When an owl swoops low I wave it and shout Yah!

That starts a dog barking and I shut up. Although I still know where I am, it feels different because I know I’m not going back. I’ll never walk into the hut and see my mother hunched over the fire, and my father sitting with a hand on each knee, like he’d collapse if he took then away. I’ll never smell our smoke and I’ll never sleep in my corner ever again.

That’s it. I can’t sleep anymore. I get up and sob my way along the path by dawnlight until the sun rises behind me. Pretty soon I’m further away from my home than I’ve been before. My heart beats a little bit faster. My head feels a little bit clearer. When I look at the land in front, it’s with a different eye: an eye that’s trying to guess how dangerous it’s going to be.

Mostly the land’s flat. Flat as Girta’s bread. The air’s still and I see smoke rising from a couple of hillocks and further on, the river passes through a notch on a long ridge and I reckon there’ll be a decent sized settlement there because that’s where I’d settle if I had the inclination.

Our hut’s too near the river. In winter we get surrounded by water so we’re stuck on this tiny island and the only thing you can see are half sunk trees and the bump of land that Girta lives on. If you lived on the long ridge, you’d have room to breathe all year round, even when the land floods for weeks at a time so you can’t see where the sides of the river begin or end.

But when I get to the ridge, it’s not like I expect at all and I begin to think that maybe Fa had a point. For a start, there’s a wall of wooden stakes all around the settlement. Inside, all the houses are jumbled together so the smoke from their fires makes a sort of dark mist over them. In the middle of the stockade, at the highest point, there’s a big roundhouse and all the other houses seem to huddle around it. Down on the river, there’s about half a dozen boats tied up and I can see two streams of people carrying bundles from the boats into the stockade and from the stockade to the boats.

Like ants.

I get closer, and now I can smell the place: smoke, dead fish, old meat, people. Outside the stockade, spilling down the slope, is a collapsing pile of rubbish and there are people picking over it. I walk on. More paths join mine like streams joining a river, and soon I’m in a stream of people, some carrying heavy sacks, others travelling light like me, all heading in the same direction.

It’s my plan to walk straight on. I’ve no business with the place and I don’t like the look of it and I don’t like the smell of it either. It’s Kekklin’s sort of place. A coin-y sort of place. On a pile of timber, there’s a gang of boys my own age and when they look at me they laugh and throw earth at me. I walk on, face feeling tight and pickled, then suddenly:

‘You boy!’

I turn. There’s an old man and he’s got a sack at his feet and he’s panting and his face is grey and sweaty. My heart jumps. I point at myself and say: ‘Me?’

‘Of course you, boy’ he pants. ‘Help me with this.’

When I get closer I can see he’s nervous but I can’t see why.

‘What’s taking you so long,’ he hisses. I can tell from the way he holds his head that he’s listening out and sure enough, from the behind the high gate in the settlement’s wooden walls, I can hear shouting. I can also see there are armed men by the gate and heads, proper dead men’s heads, stuck on sharpened poles above it.

‘Take this bag to that boat and give this to the captain.’ He hands me a little leather pouch. ‘Don’t argue. Close your mouth and just do it!’

I take the pouch and put one hand round the neck of the sack and try to lift it. Too heavy. I put the pouch between my teeth, put both hands round the neck of the sack and swing it round behind me.

I look around. The old man’s squared his shoulders and is walking back through the gate, like he’s got to face something bad. Whatever’s in the sack is heavy and hard and bumps against my back. I lurch one way, then another and head for the boat. I can’t talk with the pouch between my teeth so I don’t ask: I just walk step down into the boat, and drop the sack onto a pile in the middle of it.

And the sack says: ‘Ow!’