The Puppet Master Read online

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This third volume of Charlie Small’s journal was handed in to the publisher’s office by a strange man in a long, scruffy black coat. He found it, he said, in a skip outside a large Victorian mansion in the Deep South. The man seemed very keen to find Charlie Small, and asked if we might know of his whereabouts. We couldn’t help him and even if we could, we wouldn’t have told him anything. There was something about this man that sent a shiver through the room.

  We don’t know if there are any more notebooks out there, but if you do come across a curious-looking diary, or know where Charlie Small is, please do contact us via the Charlie Small website. If you come across a man in a long black coat, be very careful. He is not to be trusted.

  A DAVID FICKLING BOOK

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Charlie Small

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Originally published in Great Britain by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of the Random House Group Ltd., in 2008.

  David Fickling Books and the colophon are trademarks of David Fickling.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at

  www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Small, Charlie.

  The puppet master / by Charlie Small. — 1st American ed.

  p. cm. — (The amazing adventures of Charlie Small; notebook 3)

  Summary: The continuation of the purported journal of a young adventurer who must defeat the cruel Puppet Master and still try to make it home in time for tea.

  ISBN 978-0-385-75139-1

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-79289-1

  [1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Puppetry—Fiction. 3. Diaries—Fiction.]

  PZ7.P42742008

  [Fic]—dc22

  2008046502

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Invisible Enemies

  Taking Stock

  Into White

  The Chase

  Dinner!

  Safe And Warm

  The Trapper

  The Map

  The Icicle Arches

  Icicles … And Other Things!

  Bat Attack!

  Scooting Through The Night

  Shifting Snows

  Saved By My Pyjamas

  A Huge Swallow

  In The Beast’s Belly

  Is Anybody There?

  Under The Ice In The Hydro-Electric Whale

  Trapped

  The Pressure Builds

  Hubble And Bubble And Here Comes Trouble!

  A Warning!

  I See The Light

  A Terrible Bedtime Tale

  The Village Learns The Truth

  The Puppet Master Speaks

  The Old Lady’s Granddaughter

  Sweet Dreams

  Much Later

  Sleepwalking Into Disaster!

  Answering the Call

  In The Petrified Forest

  Taken Alive!

  My Dancing Debut

  A Silent Show

  On Tour With The Puppet Man

  Silent Conversations

  What Can I Do?

  I Go On A Special Mission

  Message Received

  Fanlight Charlie

  A Fool’s Gold

  A Crowning

  A Friend At Last

  Back Inside The Lion’s Den

  The Meeting Of My Enemies

  A Broken Man

  I Have A Plan Ha Ha!

  Chipping Away

  The Puppet Master’s Home

  The Puppet Master’s Purpose

  Showtime!

  A Snap Decision!

  An Unwelcome Surprise!

  Time For A Song!

  The Great Puppet Pack

  Time To Go

  Some Hero!

  Charlie Small, Superstar!

  Walking The Rock-Rope

  Out Of The Frying Pan And Into …

  A huge roar, like the howl of some gigantic beast, woke me with a start and made my heart hammer against my ribcage. I tried to open my eyes, but they were glued shut and I couldn’t see a thing.

  ‘Help!’ I cried. ‘What’s going on?’ The monster roared again, sounding very close and very angry, and I started to panic. I rubbed my eyes and felt something cold and gritty. What was it? I know … ice! My eyelashes had been fused together with ice.

  I rubbed harder until, painfully, the ice started to pull away, taking most of my eyelashes with it. At last I could open my eyes. I expected a huge grizzly bear or a slavering giant lizard to be bearing down on me with wide, open jaws; but when I looked round all I could see was white. Everywhere and everything was completely white! The world was as blank as an empty piece of paper.

  What was going on? Where was I? I could still hear the roars of an invisible animal all around me. My heart beat fast as I tried to work out what to do.

  Then I noticed what looked like a pale sun above me. It was glimmering weakly, as if from a trillion miles away. Instinctively I reached out towards it, and was amazed to find that I could touch it! I giggled nervously. I could touch the sun; surely that wasn’t right? What’s more, it was freezing cold and … then I realized where I was. I was in a cocoon of snow and ice that had formed around me while I had been sleeping. What I thought was the sun was really just the daylight shining through the thinnest part of the roof of my ice shell!

  I punched upwards through the false sun and stuck my head out of the hole. The roar of the mystery animal was the roar of the wind; a violent wind, full of tiny shards of ice that stabbed my cheeks like needles. I ducked back down into my shelter. I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere until the storm had died down so I decided to spend the time checking myself for any injuries I might have picked up during my escape from the pernicious Perfumed Pirates of Perfidy.

  I still can’t quite believe that I finally managed to escape my life aboard the pirates’ ship, the Betty Mae, and leave behind my double-crossing, deadly shipmates! I’d tried and tried again to get away, but had always been thwarted at the last minute. I was forced to go on pirate raids, helping them steal bucketloads of treasure, and in the process I made a deadly enemy of the chief thief-taker, Joseph Craik.

  I did learn some useful skills, though. I am now a dab hand with a cutlass, I can tie a hundred different knots and have become such a good cook that if I could only find my way back home, I would surely be offered my own TV series; there can’t be many chefs who know how to cook Seagull Beak Broth!

  I then escaped with the help of a pompous, puffed-up puffer fish. The ridiculous fish had inflated itself into a hot air balloon, and we drifted across the wide Pangaean Ocean for a whole year. When we finally reached land, the puffer fish ran out of breath; we shot crazily over a mountain range and I landed, somehow fast asleep, in a drift of snow. I have no idea where the puffer fish is now, and can only hope that he is somewhere safe.

  I’ve just opened my rucksack and emptied out its contents. I need to check my explorer’s kit to make sure I haven’t dropped anything on my long and precarious flight from the pirates. Luckily it all seems
to be there. My rucksack contains:

  1) My multi-tooled penknife

  2) A ball of string

  3) A water bottle

  4) A telescope

  5) A scarf

  6) An old railway ticket

  7) This journal

  8) My pyjamas (now rather tatty)

  9) A pack of wild animal collector’s cards

  10) A glue pen (to stick any interesting finds in my book)

  11) A big bag of Paterchak’s mint humbugs (three quarters empty)

  12) A slab of Kendal mint cake

  13) A glass eye from the steam-powered rhinoceros

  14) The remains of a huge slab of smoked whale meat that I took to eat on my journey

  15) The hunting knife, the compass, the jungle map and the torch I found on the sun-bleached skeleton of a lost explorer

  16) The tooth of a monstrous river crocodile

  17) My mobile phone and wind-up charger which I managed to sneak back off Captain Cut-throat

  18) A map of the Pangaean Ocean, useless to me now, but unquestionable proof of my fantastic journey!

  So now I’ve finished checking my supplies, brought my journal up to date and repacked my trusty rucksack. Sticking my head out of the shelter again, the raw wind hit me like a slap in the face; but it has died down a little, and I really think it’s about time I got moving.

  Well, here goes; the sooner I start, the sooner I’ll get home! I’ll write more just as soon as I can.

  It’s been a long, wearying day, a day of complete terror and terrible confusion. But at least I can warm my frozen fingers and feet in front of an old wood-burning stove that I’ve found in a deserted hunter’s lodge.

  I had kicked away the ice shell that had formed around me and stood up … Ooof!

  The cold wind hit me like a fist, knocking me straight back down again, but I struggled to my feet and then looked around. Oh no! It was no different from being inside my ice shelter!

  Everything was covered in a thick layer of snow, with no tree or rock in the landscape to give me any idea of distance or scale. I pulled my coat tight around me and, glancing at the compass in my hand, set out in a westerly direction.

  Perhaps my home was just a few miles away in the other direction, I don’t know, but I had to go somewhere and west seemed as good a bet as any. At least I knew that by following my compass I wouldn’t be trudging round and round in circles, trapped on a featureless expanse of ice forever!

  I trudged through knee-high snow and across huge frozen wastelands, watching my compass needle all the while. The air was filled with a billowing dust of snow and ice that battered me constantly as I leaned into the ferocious wind. My ears froze and my fingers throbbed painfully with the cold. I was really hungry after my year-long journey by puffer-fish balloon, but I knew that if I stopped to open my meagre rations, I might well freeze to the spot. If I was ever discovered, I would look like a perfect ice-statue of a small eight-year-old boy!

  I kept moving for hour after hour and mile after mile until my brain was too cold to make any sort of decision. I didn’t have the sense to stop and dig myself another shelter, and I do believe that my journey would have ended there and then in that ice-bound landscape if, all of a sudden, the wind hadn’t dropped and the air cleared to reveal a weak and watery sun. I would have cheered if my jaw hadn’t been frozen stiff, but I raised my snow-encrusted arms in the air and shook them in triumph. Safe at last!

  It was then that I heard a low and threatening growl coming from behind me. And this time it wasn’t the wind!

  I turned round slowly. I was afraid that any sudden movement might startle whatever was behind me into making an attack.

  Inch by inch I shuffled around on the spot, until I found myself staring into the eyes of a huge, hunch-backed, pure white arctic wolf! It paced the ground restlessly, back and forth, about ten yards away. A low, constant growl rumbled in its throat as if it were powered by a diesel engine.

  I took a tentative step forward, hoping to approach quietly and gain the wolf’s trust by stroking its mighty white mane; but as soon as I moved, the wary creature slunk back and its growl erupted into a terrifying, deep-throated barking. The wolf pulled back its lips, exposing a mouthful of impressive teeth, the sort designed for ripping flesh – it was, without any doubt, a wild and dangerous predator. How was I going to get out of this?

  ‘Good dog, nice wolf,’ I stuttered, backing slowly away. With every pace I retreated, the wolf took a pace forward, eyeing me warily. Great drools of saliva dripped from its jaws. It looked awfully mean and awfully hungry. I shuffled back and the wolf shuffled forward. This was hopeless; it was getting me nowhere. So I tried a different approach.

  ‘SIT!’ I yelled, and to my utter amazement the huge wolf parked its rear end in the snow and sat there. Fantastic! ‘NOW STAY!’ I ordered and took another pace backwards. The wolf stayed where it was! I took another step and another and still the wolf stayed put. When there was a good hundred yards between us, my nerve finally failed and I did what I had wanted to do from the very start. I turned and ran! I ran as fast as I could through the knee-deep snow. And the minute I started to run, the wolf was up off its haunches and streaking through the snow after me, howling like a banshee!

  I knew that I’d had it as soon as the great white wolf ran after me. He was bigger, meaner and faster and as I clumsily stumbled through the ever-deepening snow, the wolf streaked through the drift as if he didn’t exist.

  ‘Help!’ I cried as the wolf pounced, his front paws hitting me in the back, knocking me face down in the snow and pinning me to the ground. ‘Ooof!’

  The wolf snarled and growled, ripping at the rucksack on my back in a mad frenzy. I closed my eyes, dreading the snap of bone as he bit into the back of my neck. Then the wolf’s snarls subsided into a happy whimpering as he climbed off my back and dragged something a little distance away. Nervously I raised my face from the snow and turned to look.

  Oh my goodness! The wolf was hunched over a large slab of pink meat, tearing at it greedily and keeping a suspicious eye on me at the same time. Oh, help! I thought. The wolf had sliced me open and removed a huge chunk of my insides and was gobbling away as I watched! But then why didn’t I hurt anywhere?

  Cautiously I felt my back and my neck. There were no obvious wounds, so what on earth was the wolf eating? I turned over and saw that my rucksack had been opened and its contents scattered across the snow. I gave a huge sigh of relief when I realized that the wolf wasn’t eating my liver; he was eating the slab of smoked whale meat that I had pinched from the Betty Mae.

  Although that had been over a year ago, there was still quite a lot of the meat left, for the simple fact that it tasted disgusting; it was like a fish-flavoured, chewy jelly, and I had preferred to eat seaweed and cormorant’s eggs on the long journey. The wolf seemed to be enjoying it, though, and had obviously been starving, because he was swallowing large chunks without even bothering to chew.

  I cautiously reached forward to where my animal collector’s cards had been scattered across the snow. Maybe they would have something to say about the arctic wolf. Sure enough, I soon found the relevant card. This is what it said:

  I finished reading just as the wolf swallowed the last chunk of whale meat, and as he looked across at me with his fierce, yellow eyes I couldn’t see any sign of a bond between us. The wolf gave one gruff bark and raced towards where I sat in the snow. Once more he leaped, sailing through the air and knocking me onto my back. I screwed my eyes shut to block out the horror of his large, slavering jaws.

  ‘Ugh, stop! That’s disgusting!’ I cried. I was covered in warm, smelly slobber as the wolf licked my face, emitting small quizzical yelps.

  I opened my eyes and the wolf sat back and looked at me expectantly. What was going on? Why was I still sitting in the snow and not filling the belly of this wild and wicked wolf? It was then I noticed something around his neck – a collar!

  I stretched out my hand an
d the wolf got up and walked cautiously towards me, until I could run my hand through his thick, white mane.

  ‘Hello, boy,’ I said, patting him on the flank. ‘What’s your name?’ I felt for his collar through the thick mane of hair and discovered a small metal disc; scratched onto it was the word Braemar. ‘Hello, Braemar, good lad,’ I said, ruffling his coat, and the wolf sidled up to me and laid his large head on my lap. ‘You were just hungry, weren’t you, boy?’ I said. ‘You weren’t going to harm me. Now, if you have a collar, you must have an owner. Where’s your owner, Braemar? Take me to your owner.’

  The wolf got to his feet, barked at me and walked a few paces away. I quickly gathered my things from the floor, stuffed them back into my tatty rucksack and followed the wolf as he led me through the deep snow towards the featureless horizon.

  We travelled for many hours, and as we walked, the snow started to fall again in large soft flakes, filling the air so completely that it was difficult to see Braemar as he trudged along ahead of me. Scared that I might lose him, I grabbed hold of his collar and let him lead me through the deep drifts.

  The snow had blanked out the surrounding landscape so completely that I didn’t notice the wooden shack until I tripped over its doorstep. Braemar had stopped and was looking from me to the hut, barking and whining. I scrambled to my feet as the wolf started pawing at the door. I was so cold that I didn’t even bother to knock but ran into the hut as if I was bursting through my own back door at home.

  ‘Hello,’ I called, but there was no one home. A wood-burning stove stood against one wall of the hut and I rushed over and opened the metal door. The fire was out, but there was plenty of kindling wood stacked nearby, and a large box of matches sat on a shelf that was neatly stacked with tins of food.

  I quickly laid a fire, hugging myself for warmth, and then touched a match to the kindling. It was very dry and the flames took hold immediately, crackling and spitting as I carefully piled on more wood. Soon I could feel the air start to warm and my frozen fingers and toes throbbed with pain as they began to thaw and the blood pumped through them once more.