Explosive Tales for Children Read online

  “But we would have helped you if you’d asked!” said the High Tollin, indignantly. He tried to rattle his chains in fury, but they were made of wood and the sound was actually quite pleasant.

  “Would you? Perhaps you would. This way is more certain. Your tunnels are mine, your people are mine. Everything you have learned will be mine as well. Now do quiet down, or I’ll find a gag for you.”

  The High Tollin glared at him. He had thought of the Dark Tollins as simple folk, yes. The ones who stood ready to answer Wangle’s orders did not look simple at all. They looked large and bony and they glared at him. In turn, he glared at his two guards, who were chained and gagged in the corner. They glared at each other.

  Wangle smiled at the High Tollin’s frustration as he turned to his Dark advisors.

  “How is the new Hall coming along?” he said.

  “Very nicely, my lord. They’re hard workers, I’ll give them that. It should be finished in a week.”

  “Excellent. When it is complete, I will be appointed High Dark Tollin for Chorleywood.”

  “Or…the ‘Dark High Tollin’ if you like.”

  “Is this important now, do you think?”

  “No, my lord.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LOW PLOTS AND HOT WATER

  HE TUNNELS UNDER THE STATION were damp and echoey as Sparkler, Wing and Grunion crept along them, bowed almost double by their burdens.

  “Keep an eye out for guards,” Sparkler whispered. He was still limping after twisting his ankle as the balloon came down, but he ignored the pain.

  Grunion groaned under the weight of equipment. Sparkler had been like a Tollin possessed ever since the windbag had come down. Grunion’s small workshop had become the center for the resistance, which seemed to be just the three of them.

  Each night, Wing had crept back to the tunnels under the station and watched in horror as the Dark Tollins forced her people to keep working by torchlight.

  As the days passed, Grunion had put up with a constant fog of boiling water while Sparkler experimented with his new pump. At last it was finished and Grunion was sure he had all the heaviest bits on his back.

  They came to the old Hall of Tollins, where the tunnels were still flooded and crumbling into the muck.

  “This will do, Grunion. Put it all down now, but gently,” Sparkler whispered. They had practiced many times in the workshop and even in darkness, the machine slotted together quickly.

  “This is the most dangerous part,” Sparkler said to Wing. “If the Dark Tollins smell the fire and come looking, we’re sunk.”

  “Don’t worry, they’re over at the new Great Hall, preparing,” she muttered back. “We should have been prepared for them, you know. How could they just walk in and take over the whole community? If Grunion didn’t live out by the pond, we’d have been lost.”

  “We trusted them, but that is a problem for another day,” said Sparkler firmly. He took a shuttered lantern and removed the candle from it, casting odd shadows on the walls of the tunnel. With that, he lit the boiler for his pump and nodded in appreciation as he closed the opening.

  “That should do it. When the steam rises, it will hit the second chamber and condense once again. The inner tube should be sucked up into the outer one, drawing floodwater into the hosepipe.”

  “The hosepipe!” Grunion said suddenly. “I’ve left it behind!”

  “Run and get it, then!” Wing snapped. The tension was unbearable. They could already feel the pump getting hot from within. Grunion set off, the tap-thump of his wooden foot echoing from the walls.

  “This is bad,” Sparkler said. “Without that pipe, we have no plan.”

  In the new Hall of Tollins, Wangle walked slowly, dressed in a long robe that trailed on the floor behind him.

  “Then I will make a speech, welcoming a new age of Tollins and so on and so on,” he said. “You will hand me the crown and Albert here will put it on my head. That will be official.”

  The High Tollin shook his head. He hated to be called by his real name and his eyebrows quivered in indignation.

  “I won’t do it! You are traitors, all of you!”

  “You will do it, Albert.” Wangle turned to his advisors. “He has a daughter, does he not?”

  “Oh yes, my lord. Girl with a mole.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “A brown one, my lord. It’s vicious, if you want to know the truth. It nearly had my fingers off when I tried to stroke it.”

  Wangle blinked as he considered this.

  “I see…” he said. “High Tollin, if you do not do as I say…Is it a pet, then? Are we talking about a pet?”

  “Yes, my lord,” said the advisor.

  “Right. Clear at last. High Tollin, if you do not do as I say, I will have your daughter fed to an owl. Is that clear enough for you?”

  For a moment, Wangle heard a peculiar sound, like a man running past the open door with some sort of wooden clog on. He peered out into the darkness.

  “And get some more candles lit. This is meant to be a joyous occasion,” he said.

  “I have it!” Grunion hissed from the darkness. “I have the hosepipe!”

  He handed it over. Sparkler breathed in relief as he screwed it to the pump.

  “It’s almost ready,” he said. “I just wish I could know how fast the water is going to come out. Wood and pottery is not good enough for this. If I had iron…”

  “There’s something else,” Grunion said. “It’s your father, Wing. He’s in the new Hall, with the Dark Tollins. I’m sorry.”

  Wing gasped.

  “I can still throw cold water on the boiler and shut it down,” Sparkler said. “We’ll think of something else, Wing.”

  “No,” she said softly. “No we won’t. I know what my father would say if I asked him.”

  “Are you sure?” Sparkler said. “It could mean his life…”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Good, because I think the pump is just about to…”

  With a whoosh, water started spurting out of the hosepipe. In just moments, it went from being a long tube made from the intestines of an unlucky field-mouse, to a writhing snake. All three of them grabbed it and held on as it bucked, sending a torrent of water blasting down the tunnel with a noise like a little boy sucking a gobstopper.

  In the distance, they could hear cries of alarm, but the water kept coming, emptying out the old Hall of Tollins and pouring the water down the tunnel into the new one.

  Without warning the water died to a trickle.

  “What’s gone wrong?” Wing said desperately. She could hear Dark Tollins running towards them, determined to stop this strange machine.

  “Don’t worry, it’s just the second stage,” Sparkler said. “The machine sort of sucks in a breath, you see, then…”

  He was interrupted by the Dark Tollins, all yelling. They yelled a bit more when the water came on again, washing them back down into the new Great Hall.

  The Hall filled with extraordinary speed as the pump groaned and creaked and spat hot droplets of water. Half the chambers under the station were flooded and one by one, the water was drawn away from them, pouring into the Dark High Hall, or the High Dark Hall, if you like.

  Quickly, the waters drained from the flooded new Hall. Its earth walls could not hold water like the polished clay of the old one and as the flood dribbled away, there was no sign of the Dark Tollins.

  Sparkler and Wing entered the muddy chamber. Behind them, the other Tollins were coming out of hiding, understanding that at last the terror was over.

  “I suppose they were washed away, down other tunnels,” Sparkler said. He saw Wing looking around desperately, but there was no sign of her father. The mud was almost too deep to wade through and the chamber would take weeks to dry out. Sparkler thought he heard her sob and he put his arm around her.

  “We’ll find him, Wing. Of course we will. They won’t be back, you know. They couldn’t take us by surprise another time a
nyway. Not now we’re ready.”

  Behind him, a shape stirred in the mud, rising up like a monster from the beginning of time. Wooden chains clicked and slithered as it shuffled forward, its eyes red and blinking.

  “Wing?” said the monster.

  “Dad!” she cried, rushing to embrace him.

  “Have you seen my guards?” he asked. “They were chained up and gagged when the flood came. I do hope…”

  “Gag fell orf, sah,” came a voice from a pile of sludge. “Which was a shame, as I was almost finished biting through it.”

  “And your companion?” the High Tollin asked, still dazed.

  “Under me, sah, but it’s all right. I can still feel him wrigglin’. I do believe the chains saved us, sah. Kept us afloat, sah.”

  “Splendid. Will you be able to report to the executioner this afternoon?”

  “Dad!” Wing said, shocked. Her father sighed and spat a bit of mud out.

  “Oh all right. It’s been a difficult day.”

  A week later, Sparkler looked round for Wing as he walked through the old Great Hall of Tollins. It was dry as a bone and the floor had been polished specially. On all the galleries above, the crowd went “Berserk!,” with perfect timing, showing that you can take instructions too literally. They tried going “Wild!” as well, but after that, they just cheered in their own time.

  The High Tollin was in an expansive mood as he patted the air for quiet. His daughter’s mole lunged at his fingers and had to be pulled back on its leash.

  “We are gathered here to honor a fine young Tollin. He saved us from slavery. Sla-avery! He cured my gout. He saved us from the Dark Tollins. He made a pump. He is truly an extraordinary Tollin. Accordingly, I have created the Order of the Owl in his honor. Step forward, that brave Tollin.”

  Sparkler stepped forward, blushing, and bowed his head as Wing’s father put a small ribbon around his neck. He did not look at the medal on the ribbon, as he knew it very well already. It was the first metal item made in the new blast furnace. As he had said to Grunion, the future was bright. The future was metal.

  THE END OF

  BOOK THREE

  Author’s Note

  During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Industrial Revolution was responsible for huge advances in science that transformed life in England and eventually throughout the world. Steam trains, child labor and the invention of the bicycle vastly improved the way people lived and worked.

  From 1910 to 1936, George V was the bearded king of England and emperor of India. The First World War was fought during his reign. He was grandson to Queen Victoria and grandfather to the current Queen Elizabeth.

  In England today, as in America, fireworks are still used to mark important events. The exception is Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night, where fireworks are used to celebrate the execution of a man who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament four hundred years ago. Child labor is just a distant memory and it is a happy time. Young children play with golden leaves as the sun sets, singing and laughing as they cheerfully set fire to an effigy of Guy Fawkes.

  —Conn Iggulden

  THE END

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Despite finding time to write historical novels and THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS, Conn Iggulden is in some ways better known as a trainer of Tollins. His Tollin troupe, “Small and Mighty,” are famous in Tasmania, where they often play to packed houses. “It used to be just a hobby,” he says, “but when you’ve seen a display of Tollin synchronized flying, you realize it’s your life’s work. Also, they can be transported in shoe boxes, so it’s pretty cheap to get around.”

  Lizzy Duncan, with her trademark blue glasses, was a founding member of the “Tollins in Art” program, where inner-city schoolchildren are taken to the countryside by bus and encouraged to paint and observe Tollins in their natural habitats. This is her first illustrated book.

  Lizzy’s abstract paintings of Tollins are much sought after whenever one appears at Sotheby’s auction house, and she is very active in promoting Tollin rights and registering them as a protected wetland species—or as a dryland species, if the weather’s been good.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Credits

  Cover art © 2009 by Lizzy Duncan

  Copyright

  TOLLINS: EXPLOSIVE TALES FOR CHILDREN. Text copyright © 2009 by Conn Iggulden. Illustrations copyright © 2009 by Lizzy Duncan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  * * *

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2009927738

  ISBN 978-0-06-173098-6

  * * *

  09 10 11 12 13 LEGO 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First American Edition, 2009

  Originally published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2009

  EPub Edition © MARCH 2012 ISBN 978-0-06-210638-4

  About the Publisher

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  * Some people have suggested that Chinese Tollins were used in fireworks more than a thousand years ago. This is NOT that story.

  * Surprisingly, this is true.