The Mistmantle Chronicles
Book Three
First published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005.
Now published by Purple House Press.
ISBN 9781948959230, 293 pages, 6 x 9 inch paperback.
A baby girl has just been born…
…to King Crispin and Queen Cedar. She is Catkin, the heir to the throne of Mistmantle. Everyone on the island gathers for the joyful celebration of the Naming Ceremony. But that night the princess mysteriously disappears.
All clues point to her caretaker, Linty, a mother squirrel who had gone mad with grief because of a tragedy that occurred during Husk’s evil reign. The islanders fall into crisis as a mysterious illness takes hold and begins to spread. Tensions mount as strange sightings are reported—could Husk still be alive?
In this next thrilling entry of the Mistmantle Chronicles, the islanders will have to overcome their greatest fears to save Princess Catkin and bring stability back to their beloved home.
Praise for The Heir of Mistmantle
“Filled with action, suspense and adventure.”
—Stories for Children
Read extract
‘Look at the riding stars, look at your dreams,’ said Sepia, stretching her paws to the fire. ‘I remember now.’
‘All I dream of is having my own boat,’ said Fingal. ‘Get looking and get dreaming, everyone!’
They smiled, but their hearts were with the stars. Urchin and Needle thought of the new life before them as full members of the Circle with all its responsibilities and demands. Urchin thought, too, of the parents he had never known. He folded his paw over the squirrel-hair bracelet that was all he had of them.
Juniper gazed up steadily. There were two hopes and dreams for him. One was to serve the Heart and the island as the best priest he could be. The other was to find out who he really was.
Like Urchin, he was a foundling. Damson the Squirrel had found him as a baby and brought him up in secrecy in the days when any animal with a twisted paw, like his, was put to death. He was sure that Damson knew more about him and who he really was than she had ever told him. Brother Fir had called him ‘Juniper of the Journeyings’, and he knew it wasn’t just because of his journey to the Isle of Whitewings. On Whitewings, Urchin had discovered who his parents were. That was what Juniper wanted for himself, too.
A star twirled down, so fast and bright that the flash of it made Juniper turn and squeeze his eyes shut. Suddenly he shuddered, swallowed hard, and pressed a paw against his stomach to keep himself from feeling sick.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Urchin.
‘I don’t know,’ he whispered.
Behind his closed eyes, with the imprint of the star still before him, he had seen with intense clarity. For a split second he had seen claws, very white, outstretched claws. There had been something blue, something that he felt he should have recognised -then the silver flash of a knife.
‘I’m fine,’ he said to Urchin. There was no claw any more, no flash of blue, no knife. But he had seen them.
Nobody noticed the gull that flew over the island that night, with a fish in its beak. It meant to land and gobble it down, but the fish was diseased and foul-tasting so the gull dropped it and flew on, beyond the mists, without anyone seeing it at all.