The Book of Beasts Read Free Page A

because of him. Killed by his own father, because of him.
    He wiped his tears with his sleeve and charged on through the woods. He would stop this wave, somehow. Stop his father from inflicting any more damage on the monks, the monastery and the future.
    Matt barrelled out of the trees and hit a streaming surge of mud flowing down the hillside. He fell, landing awkwardly on his bottom, slewing from side to side in the wet brown cascade, letting his momentum carry him under one lashing branch, then another, until he got his footing again. Thunder crashed, sending the white tips of the great wave smashing into the tree tops like a thousand angry ghosts and drenching Matt with their spray.
    In the past days, Matt had been beaten and betrayed, abandoned and humiliated. He was so angry with himself and his world that he thought he might breathe fire. He ploughed on through the thick brush. A crooked tree branch whipped in front of his face. He didn’t duck in time and it slashed across his cheek, drawing blood. Matt cursed, slowing his clumsy descent enough to wipe the cut with his other sleeve. Glancing up, he saw the white peryton lift Solon and Carik up into the scudding clouds.
    â€˜Stop this madness, Matt! You can’t control the sea!’ Solon yelled down at him.
    Wanna bet?
    The gale force of the winds whipped through the trees, assaulting Matt from all sides. A branch cuffed the back of his head; another swatted his back. His chest ached from sprinting down the hill. He swerved to avoid a falling pine and, light-headed, grabbed another tree root to steady himself. At once the ground began to tremble beneath him, sending shock waves up his arm and across his shoulder. Shouting in pain, he let go, tumbling backwards into a spindly bush.
    Was his father controlling the sea? How? Malcolm Calder was a Guardian, not an Animare. Guardians couldn’t bring drawings to life. A Guardian’s expertize lay in empathy and communication with the Animare they were sworn to protect. Calming them when their fears exploded, stopping their imaginations from creating terrible things. There was nothing calming or empathetic about Malcolm Calder. Matt had already seen how his father had used his powers of mind control for evil, inspiriting the monks of Auchinmurn to do his will, turning them into his zombie-like minions, forcing them to murder two of their own – all in order to steal a sacred bone quill that would help unleash the fantastical, dangerous beasts locked away in Hollow Earth.
    Matt understood now that a malicious hunger for the dual abilities that his children shared had driven Malcolm to this madness. Surely Malcolm was behind the wave. Because if it wasn’t his father’s doing, whose was it?
    Losing his footing again, Matt landed flat on his back in the hard sand. The fall punched the air from his lungs. Gulping frantically, he stared up at the scorched swathe of hillside where Solon and Carik had last seen Em and his mum alive, before they had burned to death among the trees.
    What he saw there made him forget about the wave, the water, his grief, his dad and his own desperation.
    Dressed in an orange safety vest with her apron underneath, Jeannie, the Abbey’s housekeeper, stood ankle-deep in the muddy earth above the beach, her palms raised to the thundering heavens.
    Matt’s Guardian senses smashed into his brain like a speeding truck.
    The wave had been in Jeannie’s control from the start. She had not initially realized he was on the island. Having created the wave, and having sensed his presence, she was now holding back the sea to give him a chance to survive. But the effort was destroying her. Matt felt her power weakening, her hold over the water fragmenting, her mind closing in on itself.
    A balloon of icy salt water dropped from the wave. When it hit the ground near Matt’s head, it exploded. A fist-sized blue crab appeared, a gaping mouth snapping angrily where its eyes