Creatures Like Us

By Jessi Hammond

Ro is determined to help Kalara the troll girl travel home from Australia to England – but it's not going to be easy … Caught in Stone

Nara is the last of her kind living in Loch Ness, but now the humans she's so interested in are getting closer to finding her… Monster

Kyle has a secret that makes school a place he doesn't want to be. Until he meets the Electric Gnome… ... The Electric Gnome

When Carly finds a dragon statue in the garden of her new home, she has no idea he's a Wish Dragon. … The Wish Dragon

Can sisters Alanna and Brenda put aside their differences, or will they be caught in the banshee's song of death?… A Song of Fear and Freedom

Five short stories about kids and not-so-scary creatures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kincaid Publishing
• Release date: Apr 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223411055

Book preview

Introduction

I love fantasy stories.

I grew up reading books by Emily Rodda, Diana Wynne Jones, Sally Odgers, Victor Kelleher and so many more. I went to several primary and high schools, and read through all the fiction section of all of their libraries – except one, because I was only there for nine months.

When I ran out of books to borrow, and I didn’t have enough pocket money saved up to buy a new one, I started writing my own.

Fantasy – both on our world and other worlds – was what I wrote first. And no, those superhero stories and magic cat tales will never, ever see the light of day, although one of the stories in this book is based on one of those.

It could be Caught in Stone, where Kalara the troll girl wakes up from her stone state in a totally unexpected place and has to find her way home.

Or maybe it’s Monster, where Nara, a Loch Ness Monster, has to make a tough decision about her own home.

Or The Electric Gnome, where Kyle too needs to make a tough decision about whether to tell his secret or not – and finds out that some secrets are magical.

Carly’s secret in The Wish Dragon is magical too, but it’s not really hers. She does find a dragon, but it’s not your regular kind of dragon.

And in A Song of Fear and Freedom, both Brenda and Aislin have secrets. Not that Aislin’s stays a secret for long – not after she reveals what she is to Alanna.

Have fun guessing which story is based on one I wrote when I was a teenager (and if you really want to know, the answer is at the end of this book).

I hope you enjoy reading my stories as much as I enjoy writing them.

Jessi Hammond

Caught in Stone

When Kalara the troll girl finds herself sent to Australia as a statue, she is sure she will never see her family in England again.

Ro lives with her grandparents. She still feels odd and isolated after the death of her parents, and finds it hard to trust people.

So she knows exactly how scared and alone Kalara feels, lost among strangers.

Ro is determined to help Kalara get back to England – but it’s not going to be easy…

One

Awareness came back to Kalara little by little.

First it was the rustling of leaves and the clean, fresh scent of vegetation all around her… except those scents were not quite familiar. That alone set her instincts on alert, and the seconds that passed before she could peel open her eyelids seemed endless.

It was dark, but she’d guessed that already, otherwise she’d still be caught in her stone form. She was standing, ready to run, her head turned away from the sudden searing purple-white light. One arm was shielding her eyes and the other was flung out defensively.

Except now there was nothing to defend against. The harsh light was gone, replaced by the soothing glow of moonlight beyond the lush plants crowded around her. But even in the darkness she could see they were nothing like the plants she knew.

And she was stiff all over, as if she’d been caught in stone for a long time.

The humans’ light – it must have triggered the change. But how? She’d never heard of any human-made light being as powerful as the sun…

No. Think about it later. Now she needed to get home before the sun came up and trapped her in stone again.

Keeping still, she listened carefully. Rustling leaves, water bubbling somewhere close. Safe noises, natural noises. But beyond those were different noises, sounds she’d heard only when she’d dared to creep close to Anglesea-on-Wye. Cars. Televisions. Humans talking and yelling and laughing in their houses. And they were everywhere, all around her.

She was trapped in the town.

Kalara’s heart hammered in her chest. Why would the humans catch her in stone and leave her in a garden in the middle of the town? Surely they knew she would run as soon as the moonlight shifted her back to her troll form?

She had to get home, warn her family, warn the clan.

But first she had to escape from the town unseen.

Slowly Kalara moved, her feet silent on the grass. Her large ears swivelled back and forth and her eyes darted everywhere. She knew she could hear and see far better than the humans could; she would sense one long before they even knew she was there.

Up ahead there was light, the artificial light humans needed to see when the sun went down. Cautiously she went toward it until a wall of square stones as tall as her shoulders blocked her way. Folding her short, thick fingers across the top, she pulled herself easily up and over the wall and dropped noiselessly to the hard, lifeless strip of ground beyond. Footpath, the humans called it, and the dark, wider strip separating their houses was called a road. If she followed the road, it should take her out of the town and then she would know exactly where she was.

Breaking into the loping run she could keep up for hours if she needed to, Kalara headed to the right, where the glow of human lights against the sky seemed less.

Two

Ro saw the girl sneak out of the Franzens’ house across the road and knew she didn’t belong there.

Ro didn’t feel like she belonged here either, even after almost three months. Gram and Gramps were