The Door in the Tree (Magician's House Quartet, Band 2) - Softcover

Corlett, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1442414146 ISBN 13: 9781442414143

Verlag: Simon Pulse, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Thirteen-year-old William Constant and his two younger sisters, Mary and Alice, have come to ancient, mysterious Golden House in Wales for the holidays. Their lives will never be the same once they enter the Magician's House -- and discover their destiny.

The Secret of Magic

It's vacation again -- time for William, Mary, and Alice to return to Golden House. They've made a solemn vow not to speak of anything that happened on their last visit to Uncle Jack's home. Was the magic real? It seems like a dream to William and Mary. Only Alice knows the secret of magic: believing. It is alice who discovers the Dark and Dreadful Path, Alice who is irresistibly drawn to the ancient yew tree. And it is Alice who finds the door in the tree -- leading to the secret hiding place of the Magician. It wasn't a dream!

Soon they've become the Magician's students, led by the kestel, the badgers, and the dog into the most perilous assignment of all....

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

William Corlett, after being educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh, trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He soon started writing plays for the theater, including The Gentle Avalanche and Return Ticket, which were performed in London. Many television plays followed, including the award-winning series Barriers, for which he received the Writers' Guild Award for Best Children's Writer and a Gold Award at the New York International Film and Television Festival. His script for the children's series The Paper Lads won him another Writers' Guild Award for Best Children's Writer.

Between 1978 and 1988, William wrote a number of novels for young adults, including The Gate of Eden, The Land Beyond, Return to the Gate, The Dark Side of the Moon, Bloxworth Blue, and The Secret Line. He also co-wrote The Question Series, which is a series of six books about world religions. His adaptation of the Jill Paton Walsh novel Torch was filmed by Edinburgh Films during 1990 and earned him another nomination for the Writers' Guild Best Children's Writer of the Year Award. In addition, his adaptation of the Elizabeth Goudge novel The Little White Horse was shown on BBC in 1994 and won a Silver Award at the New York International Film and TV Festival. William Corlett's Magician's House Quartet, originally published by The Bodley Head in London recently became a major BBC television series. The Summer of the Haunting, a contemporary ghost story, is his most recent novel for young readers.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1: Hide-and-Seek

Alice ran as fast as she could, up the hill, away from the stump where Mary was counting aloud, with her hands covering her eyes. William, meanwhile, scrambled into the undergrowth along the side of the forest track and, at a distance from him, a flash of white marked where Spot was bounding away from the block, his tail wagging as he tried not to bark with excitement.

It was a bright spring day with a breeze blowing. It shook the branches of the trees and made them sway and move above Alice's head, clattering and swishing. Reaching the cover of a clump of gorse bushes, she paused, gasping for breath, and looked around her. The first green buds had opened along the hedgerows and primroses, wild daffodils and violets pushed up through the moss and dead leaves that covered the bank on which she crouched.

Across the valley, through a gap in the forest, she could just see the top of the dovecote in the kitchen garden and beyond it, the roof and chimneys of Golden House. The familiarity of the view made her feel at home. Although this was only her second visit to the place, she already knew the lay of the land. There was something comforting about recognizing landmarks, she thought. It meant that you couldn't get lost. William was so pompous about having the compass, but really all you needed was to use your eyes.

Down below, Mary's voice rose in volume as she neared "a hundred." Alice pulled back behind the gorse bushes and crouched lower, waiting, with her heart pounding. She hadn't actually wanted to play hide-and-seek, in fact she thought it a complete waste of time, but now that they'd started, she couldn't help getting caught up in the game.

It was the first day of the Easter holidays, or rather, it was the first day of their visit to Golden House. All three children had spent Easter weekend with friends in London and then come on by train, via Bristol, the day before.

Phoebe had been waiting for them at the station and they'd driven back through the early evening haze, reaching the house as the last light finally drained from the sky and darkness settled over the valley.

Jack had been in the kitchen washing his hands at the sink when they'd come in and Spot had appeared from nowhere, rushing toward them, barking and licking and jumping with such enthusiasm that he'd knocked Alice off her feet and then landed on top of her, covering her face with his wet tongue while she happily screamed and protested.

Stephanie, who'd been sleeping in her cot, had been woken by all this commotion and joined in with a strong bellowing so that the whole house, which a moment before had been silent, echoedand reverberated with noise.

"Oh, Lord!" Jack had yelled, covering his ears and laughing. "You're back! I'd forgotten how noisy you brats can be!" and he'd pushed Spot off Alice and yanked her up on to her feet and given her a hug.

Later he'd gone with them up to their rooms at the top of the spiral staircase above the great hall and he'd sat on Mary's bed and talked while they unpacked. He was full of all the work he'd been doing on the house and all the surprises he'd found; "The cellars and the attics and bits of old junk and goodness knows what else," he'd told them excitedly. But they hadn't really been listening to him. They'd wanted to be on their own, to savor the pleasure of being back. They hadn't even wanted to share the moment between themselves. They'd each wished that they were entirely alone so that. they could hug themselves and run to the window and look out or lie on the bed and stare up at the steeply pitched ceilings of their rooms, with the dark wooden beams and cobwebs and white, flaking plasterwork.

Then Phoebe had called them down and they'd had supper round the kitchen table and everyone had started to talk at the same time about what had been happening to them since they were last together. They'd eaten thick bean soup, followed by vegetable stew and baked potatoes stuffed with cheese. After that there was a molasses tart for dessert and Alice had had a second helping and thought for a moment that she was going to burst, but the others, ignored her alarm and so she'd eaten an apple as well. Finally all the excitement of the day and the traveling had got the better of them and the children had crawled back up the stairs to their rooms once more and were tucked up in bed and fast asleep before the clock in the hall chimed nine.

Now, as Alice crouched in hiding, she thought it had been a bit of a disappointment, really. All through the spring term she'd dreamed of Golden House and of the magic and particularly of Spot. There had been no one she could share the memories with Mary was in senior school now and she never saw her, William was away in Yorkshire, and of course, they'd made a Solemn Vow on the last day of the Christmas holiday not to speak about anything that had happened to them while they were at Golden House to anyone but each other.

So the term had come to an end but then, when they were staying with their friends in London, they'd had no chance to talk at all. She'd expected the subject at least to be mentioned when they were on the train yesterday, but the other two had read books and wouldn't be drawn into any conversation about their previous visit to Uncle Jack's house. In fact when Alice had mentioned the Magician, Mary had kicked her on the shin under the table and William had hissed at her to shut up, because people might be listening.

So Alice had sat with her hands under her thighs and swung her legs and hummed a tuneless little song and stared glumly out of the window until they reached Bristol.

While they'd waited for their connection she'd been too busy eating sausages in the station buffet for any conversation. The stockpiling of the sausages was a sensible precaution against Phoebe's vegetarian cooking and she'd planned it well in advance. She thought it was probably the sort of preparation a camel would undertake before making a long journey across the desert -- only she hadn't got a hump and halfway through the third jumbo sausage she had felt a bit sick and left the rest of it on the paper plate.

The little train had been crowded with people so they hadn't even managed to sit together. Alice had got a window seat and stared out at the passing scene. The sausages were stuck like a lump in her stomach and the central heating in the carriage was turned up high. She'd felt hot and a bit depressed. She'd been looking forward to it all so much, but William and Mary seemed to have forgotten everything, which was typical of them and exceedingly boring.

Phoebe had been waiting for them at Druce Coven Halt and once they were in the Land-Rover there had been again no possibility of private conversation. Finally, when they'd reached the house, they'd been with Uncle Jack the whole time until they went up to their rooms. Then Mary did at one point say, almost grudgingly Alice thought, that they should have a conference after supper; but when that-time came, they couldn't any of them keep their eyes open and were almost asleep before they'd each staggered into their beds. Consequently it wasn't until the following morning that they had had any time to themselves.

Soon after breakfast Mary had suggested going out to explore the forest.

"Don't go too far," Jack had warned them. "The paths are pretty obvious, but it can get a bit confusing after a while."

"We won't get lost," William had assured him. "I've been doing orienteering at school. Have you got a large scale map, Uncle jack?"

But Jack had shaken his head and said he'd been meaning to get one, but hadn't so far got round to it. There was an ordinary map, but it wasn't a big enough scale to be useful in the forest.

"You need one that marks the footpaths and tracks," he told...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Simon Pulse
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1442414146
• ISBN 13: 9781442414143
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 306
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande