The Legend of Matilda Peppercorn, Toadstone

By Jill Marshall

Tilly and Mattan return to the creepy Runes to find out about lurking crows, exploding frogs and the mystery of the missing black cats. Not that it's too unusual for Matilda Peppercorn - guardian-to-be, ace kick-boxer, and potentially different species. But is she the legend? Someone's too close for comfort - and they have different ideas.

The second in the TLOMP quartet about magical mayhem-creator and soon-to-be legend, Matilda Peppercorn. From Jill Marshall, author of the best-selling Jane Blonde series, TLOMP is also a SWAGG Origin Story. Meet Tilly, Blonde and team in the first in the S*W*A*G*G series, Spook.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jill Marshall
• Release date: May 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781990024610

Jill Marshall

Jill Marshall is the author of the best-selling Jane Blonde series and fiction for children, young adults and adults. Her middle-grade series about sensational girl spy, Jane Blonde,published by Macmillan Children's Books UK, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies around the world, featured as a World Book Day title and reached the UK Times Top 10 for all fiction. Jane Blonde has been optioned for film and TV and is currently undergoing some exciting Wower-ish transformations.Jill has now brought Jane together with her other series in this age group - Doghead, The Legend of Matilda Peppercorn, Stein & Frank - in a fantastic new ensemble series. Meet the SWAGG team, and their first book, SPOOK.As well as books for tweens and teens, Jill writes for young adults and adults, each with a collection of three stand-alone novels. She also writes for younger children, with a Hachette-published picture book for teenies, Kave-Tina Rox.When she's not writing books, Jill is a communications consultant and a proud mum and nana. She divides her time between the UK and New Zealand, and hopes one day to travel between the two by SatiSPI or ESPIdrilles.

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The Legend of Matilda Peppercorn

TOADSTONE

By Jill Marshall

First published by Jill Marshall Books 2020

Copyright © Jill Marshall 2020

The right of Jill Marshall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand

ISBN 978-1-99-002461-00

Cover Design by Katie Gannon

Illustrations by Madison Fotti-Knowles

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Dedicated to my dad, Great-Grandad Marshall (or Gang-Gang, as he’s known by some). Like Peter Peppercorn, he’s a bit of a character.

Lots of love

xxx

Prologue

The three hags upon the heath huddled over the stone plinth on which the fire burned, rubbing their hands together for warmth – although they were not cold - and trying to think of something new to discuss. It had been many centuries since their peace had been disturbed, and they often gazed back nostalgically to that welcome interruption when they had added water to the hollow on the round stone so they could carry out their scrying. But scrying was for seeing the future, not the past.

They were so bored with the past.

‘When shall we three meet again …’ Hecate began half-heartedly.

‘Oh, please, sister. Stop. I can’t stand it even one more time.’

One of the other Hecates wafted a hand over the flames. They sparked briefly into life, then returned to their previous dismal glow.

A previous dismal glow. Hecate the Major shrugged. That summed up their existence now. The three witches on the heath had enjoyed a previous spark of life that was now dismal and dim. All was well with their part of the world – unfortunately. There was nothing like a bit of war or pestilence to liven things up. But there’d been nothing. Nothing for hundreds of years…

But suddenly, the third Hecate sister pointed her ear towards the distant forest.

‘Hark! Someone approaches.’

Hecate the Major leapt to her feet. ‘Someone approaches? But who? Macbeth is long since in his grave.’

The second Hecate laughed nastily. ‘You’d think we’d be better at this, being fortune-telling witches and all. Aren’t we supposed to know ahead of time who approaches us?’

‘Indeed,’ said Hecate the Major with a frown. ‘So this person must possess powerful magic to hide their appearance from us.’

In haste, she scraped up the smouldering embers of the fire with her bare hands, then tipped an earthenware ewer of water into the dip. The liquid merged with the soot and charcoal to create a dark, oily mirrored surface that swam before her eyes. The surface cleared, and upon the glistening water, an image appeared.

It was a man, tall and pale, riding atop an immense black horse that stomped across the heath as if it were the owner of all lands. Hecate stiffened. These people. Always thinking they owned the land, carving it up in different ways, stamping their imprint all over it. It was simply impossible, of course. The earth was a living being, not to be cut up and attacked and possessed in any way. Had history taught them nothing?

This man was difficult, she could see it.

She lifted her eyes from the scrying bowl. He was upon them now, the jet stallion rearing and snorting in the mists. The man’s nostrils flickered; he could barely contain his distaste for them. That much was very clear.

Yes. This man was very, very difficult.

Hecate rose to meet him, her feet leaving the ground until her face was on a level with the man’s unpleasant yellow eyes. He looked away quickly, then forced himself to meet her gaze.

Ha. At least he had the grace to be frightened of their power. For powerful they were – ancient and wise, surviving all manner of onslaughts throughout the ages.

‘What brings you here, brother?’

The man licked his lips as if wiping the sour taste of their presence from them. ‘So you do exist,’ he said eventually.

‘Did you doubt it?’

‘You are a myth; a tale of old. Naturally I doubted it.’

‘Yet still you came. Your desire for knowledge must be deep. Tell us what you seek.’

‘Be upon your feet, hag, and I will dismount my stallion and give you my request.’

Hecate frowned. He spoke as if he was doing them some favour, not the other way around.

‘Trust me,’ said the man with a sneer, sensing her hesitation. ‘This will be of interest to you, too.’

Intrigued, she motioned to him to dismount, and sank back onto the sodden grass. She swirled a hand above the scrying bowl so that it cleared again, then looked at him expectantly.

‘Tell us what you seek,’ she repeated.

‘A Guardian has been found.’ The man peered across the plinth, anxious to see whatever she could see. ‘The Guardian of the legend.’

Hecate gasped. She had heard of the legend, of course. All of witchkind knew of the legend. Was this the Guardian before her? That could explain the distinct but terrible sense of power emanating from him.

She chose her words carefully, as she always did. ‘What is the Guardian to you?’

‘An enemy,’ spat the man. ‘Someone who will thwart my plans to rid the world of abom … of aberration. This Guardian – she is but a maid of some twelve years, and yet she fits the legend.’

‘The Legend speaks of three and ten years. You must be mistaken.’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’

The man leaned across the plinth, his immense shadow blocking her view. He was afraid of them, but not afraid enough. With a swipe of her hand, Hecate blasted him backwards towards his horse.

‘I cannot see if you block the moonlight,’ she said pleasantly, but she could tell that her show of strength had achieved an effect. The man was staring at her with a mix of repulsion and awe. That’s more like it, she thought. Yes, agreed her sisters silently. He over-reaches.

‘If you know of this maid already, then what is it you seek from us?’

‘I want to know if she will be the one to thwart me. If she is truly the one from the legend.’

‘Why?’

The man sneered again. He really was unpleasant – even more than their last visitor, the one who would be king.

‘If I know what is coming, I can prepare,’ he said simply. ‘And I believe it is the case that you, hag, cannot withhold information from me.’

It was true. Hecate and her two sisters would have liked nothing more than to send him back to whatever vile pit he had crawled from, but he had asked a question, and they must answer.

However, she didn’t have to answer directly.

Bowing her head, Hecate waved a hand over the scrying pool. The surface shimmered and boiled as an image appeared. The one who could thwart this man. The one who could also save Hecate’s own kind, and so much more besides.

She lifted her head, her eyes as pearlescent and silver as the moonlight, and intoned darkly:

‘Scry pool boil and scry pool bubble,

Here’s a girl who brings you trouble.

Plays the fool and breaks the rules;

Leads with heart and human tools.

But when the end is almost nigh,

Bright and azure lights the sky!’

The man stared at her with his cold, almost demonic eyes. ‘You speak in riddles, hag. Tell me plainly!’

And Hecate rose back into the air in rage, silver fire pouring from three sets of eyes on the three faces of their head, six hands rising from the three sets of arms on their three conjoined bodies. Back-to-back, triangular, triumvirate, Hecate and her two sisters revolved slowly before this imposter, this man of impudence.

‘We tell you this, brother!’ they screamed as one. ‘Leave now, or meet your fate sooner than even the scrying bowl foresees!’

The man staggered backwards in terror, then without another word, he flung his long body across the horse’s saddle and raced away until the mists swallowed him up.

Hecate descended to the ground once more, and all three hags brushed their hands in satisfaction.

‘Plain enough, do you think?’ asked one of the sisters.

‘I think he got the message,’ said Hecate.

The third sister let out her usual shrill laugh. ‘What message was that then? I’m not sure even I understood it.’

And Hecate just smiled enigmatically. That had been fun. Now, what could they do next?

‘When shall we three meet again …’ she began once more.

‘No, no, no, no, no,’ blurted her sisters together. ‘Do the new one!’

So across the chill moors that had lain silent for centuries, an eerie cry rang out into skies that were very far from bright and blue, about the girl of heart and human tools. The one who would cause trouble …

Chapter 1

It was Christmas Day and we were up extra specially early, at what the parentals called the ‘Official Crack of Dawn’.

Ian and Caroline (or Mum and Dad, as they insist on me calling them) were still in their fluffy jammies and trying to remember where they’d hidden their presents for each other. I opened one of mine. It was a brand-new leathery diary for the coming year, with a pen on a swingy string and a picture of a pair of boxing gloves on the front.

‘It’s perfect!’ I squeaked, which truly it was, as:

1: I ruined my last diary by scrawling nasty pictures on it and then poking through the eyes of the nasty pictures with the nib of my pen and making holes right through nasty December and most of January, and;

2: I am a big fan of kickboxing. I am not just a fan, in fact, I am an actual kickboxer and quite a good one at that, which just recently had led to all sorts of weirdiness like...

Okay, more of that later. Back to Christmas morning, with Ian-Dad and Caro-Mum cooing over me and looking misty-eyed at each other.

I knew what those expressions meant – Oh, our darling girl has a diary for the next year which will be a whole new year she gets to spend all safe and soundy with us in our gorgeous loved-up home in Brambridge, instead of in a Russian orphanage tied to a cot and fed on gruel.

If only they knew the truth about safe and soundy Brambridge...

Anyway, just as they were moving in for a Christmassy smushy hug with their darling girl ie moi, there was a knock at the door, and a loud voice cried, ‘Meow!’ in a secret message about our recent adventures.

I slid down the hall in my slippers and collided with the door, so excited to welcome my friend that I banged it right back against the wall.

‘Mattan!’ I yelled.

I’m not sure why I was so excited and yellsome. I knew it was going to be Mattan. At least, I was pretty sure. Just occasionally in the last few months I’d opened the door to find some rather strange characters lurking there, but this time it was definitely Mattan, looking all Christmassy and Swedish, with reindeer antlers balanced on her pile of fluffy white hair.

‘Merry Christmas!’ shouted the Lundquists (that is the family of Mattan, made up of cup-cake-making Mrs Lundquist and tall reedy Mr Lundquist, who looks like Mattan with a beard).

Mrs Lundquist peered over my shoulder as my parentals appeared behind me.

‘Caroline, Ian, are you sure this is okay with yourself and yourself?’ she said Swedishly. ‘Mattan will not be disturbing your family plans?’

‘It’s better than okay,’ said my mum and I at the exact same moment.

Mum laughed. ‘It will be lovely for Tilly to have company for the day,’ she went on, ‘and it will keep our daughter out from under my feet while I’m wrestling with the turkey.’

Hmmm, wrestling with a turkey ... could be a new sport I could take on after kickboxing. I could already picture it - sizing up the enormous bird with my fighter instincts, working out how to take the turkey out at the knees (if a turkey has knees? I would have to consult with Mattan later and possibly investigate the one in the oven for knees and other pointy joints).

‘Are you quite sure it’s all right with you, though?’ Dad’s forehead was all wrinkly with concern. ‘It is Christmas Day, after all. Don’t you want Mattan with you?’ He clutched me to his side, just to show how much he wanted his own daughter with him on Christmas Day.

The three Lundquists all laughed. With all that white hair, it was like watching a trio of cheery snowmen on a Christmas card.

‘It isss fine,’ said Mr Lundquist, getting quite carried away with his S sounds as he Swedishly does. ‘Ssswedish people celebrated Christmasss yesterday, so Mattan isss actually lucky. She iss having two Chrisstmassses thiss year.’

‘That is right,’ said Mrs Lundquist. ‘And it means I can get ahead on some baking for the Cup-Cake Extravaganza on New Year’s Day.’

Mr Lundquist nodded wisely. ‘Sssso many cupcakes, you cannot imagine.’

‘And anyway, it’s brilliant, because I get to spend the whole day and Boxing Day with Mattan!’ I cried.

Mattan looked as pleased as me, to be honest, and pretty soon we’d shuffled her Swedish self in through the door, taken some leftover, gross-smelling pickled fish from Mrs Lundquist (their Christmas dinner, apparently. Weird, huh?) and packed her parentals off to Love-in-a-Cup for their baking frenzy in preparation for the New Year Bake-Off in London.

So that was why Mattan was getting to spend Christmas Day with me: she is Swedish and celebrates on Christmas Eve, and her parents are into cup-cakes in a big way - so big they’d entered a contest in London.

I, meanwhile, am a Russian orphan whose adoptive parents don’t have siblings, so I don’t have much in the way of cousinage, which means Christmas can be a bit quiet. Plus, Mattan is also my utterly best friend and the sharer of my recent weird adventures - and the ones still to come, which I could now note down in my new diary if I knew when they were going to happen. That was the thing I’d discovered about adventurous weirdiness: you just never know quite when it’s going to occur.

I opened a few more of my presents (hand-knitted gloves, which I think Dad made); a couple of DVDs, carefully chosen to avoid all mention of orphans and so on, which rules out all the Harry Potters and pretty much everything that Disney ever made; and my favourite of the lot, an amazing helmet for my kickboxing.

I finally gave in and hugged each of the parents in turn.

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ I said. ‘You are the best ever pretend parents that anyone ever had, and I lo ... you know ... think you’re the bomb. Mum and Dad. Dad and Mum. My mumsy and dadsy.’

Okay, so I was going to tell them that I love them (and I do tell them lots, honest), but I wasn’t going to get totally mushy in front of Mattan, although she herself is a total goo-ball and was sighing and blinking away tears at the sight of us all hugging. Mum and Dad were actually sniffing in each of my ears, and I was pretty sure I even felt a drip down my right cheek, so I removed myself from the hugginess and grinned at Mattan.

‘Let’s go and try out my kickboxing helmet,’ I said.

‘Yes!’ squeaked Mattan, so excitedly that Dad actually looked worried.

‘It’s okay, Dad,’ I told him, reading his face which said Why is my daughter’s best friend so keen to kick my daughter in the head? Surely that isn’t natural? ‘Mattan is just a fluffy ballerina with freaky feet who couldn’t possibly hurt me. Anyway, we’re just going to natter, really.’

Dad looked relieved. ‘Oh. Good. Of course. We’ll call you down when lunch is ready.’

‘And don’t forget your most special present is still to come,’ said Mum. ‘Grandpa Peppercorn’s bringing it with him.’

‘Yay! I had forgotten!’

Actually apart from the fact that Mattan was coming, I’d forgotten pretty much everything, including the arrival of Grandpa Peppercorn. I hadn’t seen him in ages, so that was going to be fun, AND he was bringing the most special present...

I dragged Mattan up the stairs before Dad could change his mind about us being left on our own for two hours, and peered out of my bedroom window to see if Grandpa was lurking out there with my gift. I mean, with Christmas cheer. A large black bird watched me frostily from the beech tree beyond the shed, so just in case it was actually something weirdy, being weirdier than usual up a tree, I closed the curtains.

‘I wonder what Grandpa’s special present is.’

Mattan was trying out my new gloves. On her freaky feet. Ew. ‘What does he usually bring you?’

‘Socks,’ I said. ‘Maybe they’re extra special socks this year. Maybe they’re amazingly special socks with ...’

I stared at Mattan’s gloved foot for inspiration, knowing that beneath her stripey tights there were three freakishly long toes and two tiny mutant ones. Well, six and four if you count both feet. For some reason she thought they were perfectly normal, but no socks on earth could make them look right to me, so I hoped she hadn’t got any footwear as pressies...

Then I suddenly remembered. ‘Oh, Mattan, I forgot to ask! Did you get what you wanted for Christmas?’

Saying nothing, Mattan smiled her wicked pixie grin and drew something out of her bag – a new pair of tiny little pointed shoes. She had got footwear as pressies. Yikes.

‘They’ve got blocks,’ she sighed as if that was a divinely brilliant thing.

‘Never mind.’

‘No, dufus. That’s good. That’s how I dance on points.’

I stared at her toes. ‘Do they know about your feet?’

‘I’ve got perfect ballerina feet, thank you very much.’

‘But I thought you just got some?’ She’d been given some ‘pointe’ shoes at the end of term.

‘I wore them out,’ she announced joyfully. ‘A professional ballerina can go through a hundred pairs of shoes in one season! I’m going to need lots.’

Well, we were both happy. I had a helmet for my perfect kickboxing head, and she had nasty shoes for her perfect ballerina feet.

And of course it was essential then for us to drop our helmets and blocky shoes and other presents on the floor, and jump around hugging each other, squeaking ‘yes!’ and ‘yi-isss’ and ‘get in there’ and ‘mind your freaky feet’ at intervals.

‘Everything okay up there?’ yelled Dad.

‘We’re fine, Ian,’ I called as Mattan fell about, giggling. ‘Just Mattan beating me up.’

‘O-kay,’ he said uncertainly, and then I heard Mum say, ‘Ian, stop fussing and come and help me with these sprouts.’

‘Mattan, thank goodness you’re here,’ I said. ‘Otherwise the sprouts would be my job, and as you know I don’t even like them.’

That’s because I am a meatitarian and don’t eat vegetables if I can avoid them.

‘Nobody likes sprouts.’ Mattan threw her bag down on my bed.

‘Do Swedes have to eat them for Christmas? Or even worse, do Swedes eat swedes for Christmas? Because that would be like Swedish cannibalism.’ I chortled madly at my own joke and Mattan shook her head at me.

‘Be quiet, Russian girlski,’ she said. ‘We do not eat swedes or sprouts for Christmas. We eat pickled herring and Jansson Frestelse and pickled gherkins and so on, and something called dopp i grytan. And yesterday I got the mandel in the julgrot!’

‘You got the who-y in the whatty?’

Honestly, sometimes it’s like she’s speaking a whole different language.

‘I got the almond in the Christmas porridge - the mandel in the julgrot.’ Mattan laughed and her eyes sort of misted over. ‘It’s a Swedish tradition. Whoever gets the mandel in the julgrot will be married in the coming year.’

Hum. Now I knew what the filmy eyes were about. She was planning her wedding to Alyx Smuggity Sundaland.

‘Mattan, do I have to remind you that it is illegal to get married here until you are sixteen? It might be possible in Swedeland to get married the moment you are an actual teenager, but here you would get arrested and sent somewhere horrid, and in fact it would ruin all your plans because you’d never see Al ... anyone again.’

But she’d thought of everything, of course. Folding her arms floatily across her chest, she grinned like a smug thing. Rather like Alyx Sundaland, in fact.

‘It’s fine. If the finder can come up with a rhyme the instant they find the almond, then they don’t have to get married.’

‘And you came up with a rhyme? On the spot, just like that?’

This was almost harder to believe than Mattan getting married. Beautiful and ballerina-ish she may be, but artistic and singy and rhyming she most definitely is not.

‘You don’t even remember the words to Happy Birthday. On your own birthday. How did you come up with a rhyme? And anyway, what rhymes with almond?’

‘Mandel,’ she corrected.

‘Bless you,’ I said.

Mattan rolled her big blue eyes at me. ‘It doesn’t have to rhyme with mandel. It just has to be a rhyme. And there’s one I know very well.’

And with that she stood up, did an arm-flourish left and an arm-flourish right, then chanted:

‘Defender of the Trinity,

And all the sisters’ legacy,

A child of unknown birth will be

Selected by the Guardian Three.’

‘Upon the feat of three harsh tests,

The Sisters’ choice performs the best.

Defend, and fight and nimbly