Star Quest Academy

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Chapter one

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When the older kids at the orphanage had called Amelia a witch, she checked on the internet. Okay, being short and skinny with ragged red hair and a single line of green freckles across her nose made her look different. She did like hooded jackets, but that’s about shyness, not witchiness, and things rarely turned out as she planned, so she could seem a bit weird at times. But real witches flew on broomsticks, did magic, and stayed out of trouble. If Amelia could have, she would have, but she couldn’t, so she wasn’t, but she wished she was because she could have zapped the hulk of a man following her.

Clasping her purple pendant, she quickened her step and glared over her shoulder at him.

The man matched her speed.

He’d been hanging around outside the orphanage all day. Dressed in a grey, long coat, wide-brimmed hat, dark glasses, and gloves, he formed a ghostly image in London’s bleak backstreets.

Amelia’s pulse thumped. Men shouldn’t stalk twelve-year-old girls.

A car roared past, startling her and lighting up shabby people sleeping in doorways.

Hoping that the headlights had dazzled the man, Amelia spurted forward to turn a corner and dive into one of her alleys. She’d taken the route hundreds of times and knew every nook, every smell, and every dog toilet.

Easing back against the slimy wall, she held her breath against the stench of cigarettes as a scrabble of rats fought over pizza scraps. At least they were better company than Mr Belcher, the orphanage warden. Mind you, so was the orphanage guard dog, and he had diarrhoea.

She pressed harder against the wall, her lungs bursting, as the man in grey clattered past, his coat flapping around him.

Despite the evening chill, sweat prickled her forehead. Maybe Belcher had discovered her regular night-time trips and hired a security man to follow her. She clenched her fists. The sneak, he was a shiver looking for a spine to run up.

  After waiting several seconds to ensure the man had gone, her instinct was screaming at her to run back home, but her nightly visits were far too important. She crept through a maze of dismal passages, listening for any hint of footsteps until she reached Hampstead Heath. Although it was still within the city, the musty moors made Amelia feel like she’d left London far behind.

Ghostly mist covered her feet as Amelia trudged up Flagstone Hill through a tunnel of trees lit by the moon and stars at the far end. Halfway through, a gnarled trunk of a horse chestnut towered above the others. Amelia broke a small triangle off a mushroom, growing like a small canopy out of the bark. She patted the trunk and placed the morsel in her pocket.

A twig cracked behind her.

She swung around to peer down the hill into the gloom.

Shadows pulsed in the mist. Nothing was moving toward her, but a tingle on her neck warned of prying eyes.

Darkness was closing in, and the detour to lose the strange man had made her late.  Amelia turned and trudged upward, occasionally glancing behind.

Knee-high ferns led to the meadow on the hill's peak at the end of the leafy tunnel.

A warm breeze caressed Amelia’s hair.

Looking down on the vibrant city spread out below, Amelia felt like the queen of the castle. That was fun, but she didn’t want to be royalty; she just longed for acceptance into a normal family. Her despair increased with each rejection. The steady flow of families adopting other kids confirmed how unlovable she must be.

She grabbed a fistful of grass and released it into the breeze with a sigh. Why would anyone want a weird girl with green freckles? Mr Belcher had told her that mirrors never lied. She was just grateful that they didn’t laugh.

That’s why she sneaked out of the orphanage at night to visit Flagstone Hill - to talk with her imaginary, perfect family in the stars. If heaven existed, the parents she’d never known would be up there, and the hill's height offered the clearest view in London of the trillions of diamonds sparkling in a vast unknown.

Her nerves tingled, and she smiled. There it was! Her shining purple star was brighter than ever, even though it had moved farther away from the moon's glow since last night. The star had only been visible for the past two weeks, but Amelia immediately felt empathy for it, not just because it was different but because it seemed out of place. Like it didn’t belong.

A harmony of church bells tolled twice, and Amelia clasped her purple pendant for comfort. It was later than she’d thought.

A movement to her side startled her, and she swung round to face it.

On the brow of the hill, cloaked in the twilight, stood the man in grey.

He edged forward, holding out his hands as if approaching a frightened animal. He wasn’t far wrong.

The absence of any odour on this man was so eerie that Amelia shivered.

 Pulling her short canvas jacket tighter around her, she just wanted him to go away, leaving her to talk to the stars in peace.

‘Did Belcher send you?’ she asked, failing to hide the tremble in her voice.

‘No. I need to talk to you, Amelia. We’re running out of time. Lord Fog mustn’t find out that we’ve found you.’

With a heart-pounding faster than a drum roll, Amelia backed away. ‘How do you know my name?’

The man took a step closer. ‘No time for questions.’

‘That’s convenient.’ Clenching her teeth was making her jaw ache. ‘So, who are we? Who’s Lord Fog? Time for what?’ She slammed her fists onto her hips and stamped a foot to show she was in charge. ‘Why are you following me?’

The man sighed. ‘Your pendant led us to you. Your true home is up in the Cosmos. I come from the purple star, where you must go.’

The word home made her ears twitch, but the man was weirder than a coach load of sightseeing spiders.

It wasn’t just what he said, either. Why was he wearing dark glasses at night? And, close-up, she noticed that his waxen face hardly moved when he talked, like a puppet.

 ‘We thought you were dead,’ the man continued.

Amelia shuddered. ‘Dead? You’re mad!’

‘No, I’m not.’ He reached inside his coat and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. ‘I have this certificate to prove it. You must trust me. Lord Fog is about to conquer your world. You must help us stop him. A star bus is coming for you at three a.m. your time.’

Amelia snorted. ‘Yeah, right! Driven by trolls?’

The man frowned. ‘Possibly, I didn’t check the rota. The bus will take you to the Cosmos. Look, this could be the most important decision you’ll ever make. The star-bus waits for no one.’ He took another step toward her.

She backed up. ‘I’m just a kid; how can I save the world?’

‘By proving that you’re worthy.’

Amelia rolled her eyes and snorted. ‘So, how do I do that?’

‘By being worthy. You can start by accepting that existence is not within the authority of humankind.’

Amelia didn’t know what that meant and backed further away, glancing behind for escape routes. She knew she should run, but the man knew things about her, and she needed to know how. She’d already given him the slip once and was sure she could do it again. ‘What will happen if I’m not worthy?’

‘Lord Fog’s legions will occupy your planet and suppress its inhabitants.’

The man’s words hit her like a brick, and she swallowed hard. ‘So, no pressure then.’

Nausea cramped her stomach; she needed a way out. Holding out her hands to pacify him, she stepped farther back, perilously close to a steep drop. ‘Okay! But I need to get stuff from home first,’ she lied.

‘You can’t go back to the orphanage. You will be in grave danger. You must stay with me.’

Amelia’s anxiety turned to anger. She wasn’t that stupid. ‘You’re trying to kidnap me.’ She aimed a kick at his knee, hitting his shin with a metallic bonk and hurting her toes.

Resisting the urge to hop about in pain, she turned to run, but she slipped and tumbled down the hill, crashing through spiky bushes, which fought back with stinging scratches.

‘This isn’t a kidnap; It’s a rescue,’ shouted the man. ‘The star bus will be outside the orphanage in forty-six of your minutes. It waits for no one.’

 Amelia rolled to a stop and looked back at him, but he was gone, leaving behind a shimmering outline of grey mist.