Cinders and Sparks: Fairies in the Forest. Lindsey Kelk

      

      

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2019

      Published in this ebook edition in 2019

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

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       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Text copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2019

      Illustrations copyright © Pippa Curnick 2019

      Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

      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: 9780008292140

      Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008292157

      Version: 2019-09-30

      For Penelope Rose Nancy Clay.

      May all your wishes come true and may you never have to do the dishes.

      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

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Read on for an extract from book one …

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       Books by Lindsey Kelk

       About the Publisher

      

      ‘Hansel!’ Cinders squealed. ‘If you don’t loosen your grip, you’re going to be walking the rest of the way to Fairyland.’

      ‘Perhaps you ought to let me be in front for a while,’ Hansel replied, slackening his arms just a little. ‘I’m very strong and I wouldn’t mind if you needed to hold on to me to feel safe.’

      ‘You’re going to need more than something to hold on to to feel safe in a minute,’ Cinders muttered back. ‘My horse, my quest, my rules.’

      Cinders was on a very important mission to find out some very important things, and it was bad enough having to listen to Sparks, her magical talking dog, rattle on about sausages, or lack thereof, without a boy in a silly hat giving her grief. Every time Mouse the horse (Mouse was a mouse whom Cinders had accidentally turned into a horse, but that was another story altogether) took a sharp turn to avoid running into a tree or off the edge of a cliff, Hansel would let out a terrible shriek and squeeze Cinders’s waist so tightly she thought she might snap in two.

      ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have invited him along in the first place,’ Sparks suggested from his comfortable position curled up in front of Cinders, his muzzle resting in Mouse’s mane.

      ‘Excuse me, you were the one who said he should come along when he offered you those chipolatas,’ Cinders reminded him. ‘Honestly, Sparks, I don’t think there’s anything you wouldn’t do for a sausage.’

      Sparks considered this for a moment, decided there was a good chance that she might be right, and so said nothing.

      It felt as though they’d been riding for days, but really it had only been a few hours since Cinders had escaped King Picklebottom’s guards and fled the palace. But, as they rode deeper into the forest and the air grew chilly, she was starting to wonder if they’d made the right decision. Long, spindly branches wove themselves together overhead, blocking out the sun, and the further they went, the darker and darker and darker the sky became until Cinders could barely see her hand in front of her face.

      Thankfully, she was very, very brave. Most of the time. She wasn’t afraid of anything – King Picklebottom, the Dark Forest, munklepoops, gadzoozles or nobbledizooks. Not that she’d ever been in the Dark Forest before, or met a munklepoop, gadzoozle or nobbledizook in real life. All she knew was that she had to get to Fairyland. Just a week ago, she’d been living in the countryside with her father and her stepsisters and her really rather awful stepmother. An ordinary girl with an ordinary life. And then one day, out of nowhere, her fairy godmother had arrived and Cinders had started to develop magic powers, and everything had changed.

      ‘Cinders.’ Hansel ducked his head to avoid getting slapped in the chops by a low-hanging branch. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

      ‘Yes, Hansel.’