The Swamp Boggles. Linda Chapman

white skin on his squat body. Three other Ink Cap Goblins grovelled in front of him.

      “Numbskulls!” Ug glared at them with his beady black eyes. “Worm brains! The whole lot of you are a useless bunch of maggot heads! Useless!” Jumping up, he marched over to them. “What are you?”

      “Useless, great King Ug – OW!” yelped the three goblins as he kicked each of them in the bottom.

      “It’s been three days since I used my great cunning and cleverness to steal the key.” King Ug pulled a large iron key from his pocket and brandished it in front of the end goblin, who had a nose like a potato. “And yet I still can’t open the gateway because of this!” He pointed to a hole in the key’s handle. “Tell me what this is, Potato Nose.”

      “Um, it’s a hole, King Ug,” stammered the goblin.

      “I know it’s a hole, idiot.” King Ug rolled his eyes. “But what’s so important about this hole, Potato Nose?”

      Potato Nose’s black eyes darted nervously. “It’s… um… it’s… a very round hole.”

      King Ug thwacked the goblin over the head with the key. “A round hole! You caterpillar-brained compost head! It’s not the shape that’s important, it’s what’s missing from it! In this hole there should be a shadow gem. So, why haven’t you found me one yet? Why? Why? WHY?”

      “Um, King Ug?” The goblin next to Potato Nose, who had very big feet, stuck up his hand helpfully.

      “Yes?” King Ug sighed.

      “We did find one, didn’t we, three days ago, but the Guardian beat you up and you let her keep it.”

      “Let her keep it!” King Ug spluttered like he was a volcano about to explode. “I did not let her keep it! I was forced to give it up when you three cowards deserted me! You’re all useless, and so…” He narrowed his eyes cunningly. “And so, I have decided to call in reinforcements.”

      “Reinforcements?” echoed Potato Nose.

      King Ug rubbed his hands together, making black gunge drip out on to the forest floor. “Yes! Sneaky, slimy reinforcements, who will get one of the gems for us.”

      “Who is it?” cried all three of the goblins.

      King Ug smiled craftily. “Just you wait and see!”

      I don’t think I’m ever going to be good enough for Grandpa,” sighed Sophie to her best friend Sam later that afternoon as they sat cross-legged on the floor in her bedroom. An old leather book lay on the carpet between them. Sophie fiddled with its cover with a sigh.

      “I know he wishes Anthony was the Guardian instead of me.”

      Anthony was Sophie’s twin brother. He and Sophie didn’t get on at all. Anthony hated the fact that Sophie was as good at sports as he was, and just as strong. “Anthony probably would be a better Guardian,” added Sophie glumly.

      “No way!” Sam exclaimed.

      “Yes way.”

      Sam shook his head so hard that his red hair stood up. “Anthony would be a useless Guardian. I bet if he saw one of those Ink Cap Goblins we met the other day, he’d scream and look like this…” He pulled a bug-eyed face. “Or this!” He pulled another face, crossing his eyes and pulling his ears out. “You were really brave, Soph. You fought those goblins and beat them. If it hadn’t been for you, they’d have got away with the green gem.”

      Sophie felt much better. “You were braver than me,” she said generously. “I had my Guardian superpowers to help me fight, but you were just you and you still fought them.”

      Sam shrugged. “Couldn’t leave you to fight them on your own.”

      Sophie glowed. When she had first become the Guardian, Grandpa had told her that no one must know, but Sam had found out by accident and since then he’d been helping her. She was very glad. He was incredibly good at figuring things out, and though he might not be the best at throwing and catching things, he was the best friend in the world, and she knew that he’d never let her down.

      “I think we need superhero names,” Sam declared now. “Actually, you’re OK. You can just be The Guardian. But I need to be called something. I’ll be… I’ll be…” He thought for a moment. “I know! I’ll be Book Boy!”

      Sophie looked at him teasingly. “Book Boy? Oh, yes, I can just see those goblins running away, yelling, ‘No, no, not Book Boy! Don’t let that Book Boy get me!’”

      Sam grinned. “They’ll tell their little baby goblins terrifying stories about me and run for their lives when they hear I’m coming! They will live in fear of The Book Boy!”

      Sophie chucked a large stuffed dragon at him. “Stop messing!”

      He threw it back, but she didn’t even have to duck. It sailed past her shoulder and hit the bin.

      Sophie giggled. “Good throw, Sam – not! Now come on. We have to start looking for clues that tell us where the remaining five gems are hidden.” She opened the book on the floor. It was bound in brown leather with its title on the cover in faded gold letters: The Shadow Files. The pages were very thin, and covered with drawings and notes made by all the different Guardians of the Gateway. There was information about the different shadow creatures they’d each encountered, so that any Guardian coming after would know how best to fight them.

      Sophie flicked through the yellowing pages. “Grandpa says the clues will all be in here somewhere, in case the Guardian ever needs to find the gems.”

      Sam frowned. “What I don’t get is how come your grandpa doesn’t know where the clues are. He’s had the book for fifty years and seems to know it inside out, so why doesn’t he know which pages the clues are on?”

      “Oh, I asked him that when we finished training today,” said Sophie, remembering. “I meant to tell you earlier. Every time a new Guardian takes over, the magic moves the gems, so that they’re hidden in places where the new Guardian will be able to get to them. Then new clues appear magically in the book.”

      Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “So that explains why the green gem was in Mrs Benton’s cottage!”

      Mrs B was the Smiths’ housekeeper. She lived just down the road from Sophie, and the green gem had been hidden in her basement. They had found it on the first day Sophie had become the Guardian.

      Sophie nodded. “I know, I wondered about that too. So now we just have to find the rest of the clues and track down the gems.” She looked down at The Shadow Files and shook her head. “I just wish it wasn’t such a very thick book. There are so many pages to read!”

      Sam grinned and beckoned for the files. “Aha, this is where you need Book Boy. Hand it over!”

      As Sophie pushed it towards him, there was the sound of someone coming up the stairs, half singing, half chanting a rhyme:

      “Boys go to Mars to get lots of cars,

      Girls go to Mars to get lots of bras…”

      Sophie and Sam grimaced at each other. There was no mistaking Sophie’s twin, Anthony.

      “Boys go to Jupiter to get a computer…” Sophie’s door was flung open. Anthony stood there, smirking. “Girls go to Jupiter to get even STUPIDER!”

      “Get out of my room!” Sophie shouted. She’d only just managed to throw her dressing