Cinders and Sparks: Goblins and Gold. Lindsey Kelk

      

      

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020

      Published in this ebook edition in 2020

      HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

      HarperCollins Publishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

      The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Text copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2020

      Illustrations copyright © Pippa Curnick 2020

      Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

      Lindsey Kelk and Pippa Curnick assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work respectively.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008292171

      Ebook Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008292188

      Version: 2020-01-24

      For Princess Penny.

      If you could wish for anything,

      what would it be?

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Keep Reading …

       Books by Lindsey Kelk

       About the Publisher

      

      Cinders was a girl with a lot on her mind. Here she was, trotting through a forest on a horse that used to be a mouse, with her best friend, who just so happened to be a talking dog, and a boy in a green hat named Hansel. But she wasn’t thinking about any of them. She was thinking about her mum, her dad and a little bit about where they were going to get their lunch.

      ‘You’re very quiet,’ Hansel said from the back of Mouse the horse.

      ‘Am I?’ Cinders replied.

      ‘I don’t like it when you’re quiet,’ Hansel said. ‘It’s weird.’

      ‘Don’t get used to it,’ Sparks piped up from his spot in front of Cinders, his head nestled in Mouse’s mane. ‘I think this is the longest she’s gone without

      speaking since she learned to talk.’

      ‘What if Hansel is right?’ Cinders began. ‘What if my mum was the princess who went missing from Fairyland all those years ago?’

      Sparks sighed. There goes my peace and quiet, he thought to himself.

      The four friends were on a quest. Cinders had recently found that she could do magic and it turned out it was because her mother had been a fairy. Unfortunately, she couldn’t ask her mother about that because she had died soon after Cinders was born, and she couldn’t ask her father because he was back at home in the kingdom. The kingdom was the one place Cinders definitely could not return to because the king hated magic, and would throw her in the dungeons for sure. Mostly because of an accidental wish-granting incident that saw King Picklebottom bitten on the bottom by a roast pig Cinders had not-at-all-on-purpose brought back to life.

      The king hated magic, which meant the king hated Cinders. It was all quite a mess.

      ‘It was just an idea,’ Hansel said, scratching his hair underneath his hat. ‘Although I am very often right about things.’

      (He wasn’t.)

      Hansel had joined the quest after helping himself to one too many delicious tiles from the roof of his neighbour’s gingerbread house. Mouse had joined the quest after Cinders turned him into a horse and he found he quite liked it. Sparks had joined the quest because Cinders was his best friend and, even if she was quite loud, occasionally annoying and never packed enough sausages, he loved her more than anything.

      ‘Besides,’ Hansel said, ‘surely you’d know if your mum was a fairy princess. Wouldn’t you have extra-extra-special powers or something?’

      ‘You mean something like magical, sparkly fingers that make wishes come true?’ Cinders suggested. ‘And let’s not forget that time I flew.’

      ‘I’m not sure floating thirty centimetres off the ground counts as flying,’ Sparks said with a gruffly yawn. ‘I’ve got an idea – why don’t you wish up some lunch? I’m getting hungry.’

      That was hardly a surprise. Sparks was almost always starving.

      ‘I don’t think I’ll have to,’ Cinders said. She gave the air a big sniff. ‘Can you smell that?’