A Hunger of Thorns

Be swept away by a lush, witchy tale about forbidden magic and missing girls who don''t need handsome princes to rescue them. Perfect for fans of Maude is the daughter of witches. She spent her childhood running wild with her best friend, Odette, weaving stories of girls who slayed dragons and saved princes.;Then Maude grew up and lost her magic--and her best friend.; ; These days, magic is toothless, reduced to ;glamour patches and psychic energy drinks found in supermarkets and shopping malls. Odette has always hungered for forbidden, dangerous magic, and two weeks ago she went searching for it. Now she’s missing, and everyone says she’s dead. Everyone except Maude. ; Storytelling has always been Maude’s gift, so she knows all about girls who get lost in the woods. She’s sure she can find Odette inside the ruins of Sicklehurst, an abandoned power plant built over an ancient magical forest--a place nobody else seems to remember is there. The danger is, no one knows what remains inside Sicklehurst, either. And every good story is sure to have a monster.

Autorentext

Lili Wilkinson

Leseprobe
1

Nan is very particular about tea.

She orders a personalized blend from an under-­the-­counter botanica on the wrong side of town, and it gets shipped to her in bulk, a large wooden crate filled with vacuum-­sealed packages. Nan decants them one by one into a floral tin with creaking hinges.

Halmoni bought her an electric kettle years ago, but Nan refuses to use it. She fills an ancient cast-­iron kettle with rainwater from the tank outside the back door and lights the gas burner with a match.

Nan doesn t ask if I want tea. The kettle is already on, with curls of steam and faint whistles escaping from the spout. I have made the journey downstairs from my bedroom, now there will be tea. Tea is nonnegotiable.

I push aside five cross-­stitched cushions, Nan s knitting basket, and two cats to make a space on the couch, and sit down. Princess Bari stalks away, offended, her tail twitching, but Gwion Bach clambers into my lap and starts kneading my thighs. His claws sink through the thin layers of my dress and the brand-­new stockings that Halmoni bought me just for today. I imagine the pinprick holes widening and splitting into ladders, and I feel a brief surge of wicked satisfaction. But these stockings are fancy enchanted ones and will not ladder, so I will remain neat and respectable. Put together is how Dr. Slater would put it. Today, I have to be put together, even though I m falling apart.

Nan takes a pinch of tea from the floral tin and leans out the back door to sprinkle it on the doorstep, over the deep engraved marks of overlapping circles and daisy wheels that keep our house free of mischief. She opens another tin and fishes out a handful of thrupenny biscuits, which she plunks onto a china plate without ceremony.

Orright, Miss Maude? she says to me.

Gwion Bach finally deems my lap sufficiently molded to his requirements and settles himself into a furry brown puddle. I rub behind his ears, and he purrs.

She reaches up to an open shelf cluttered with canisters, vases, and ugly little figurines of big-­headed shepherdesses and frogs playing musical instruments, and takes down cups and saucers, painted with pink and yellow roses. A reading, then. When it s just tea, Nan uses Halmoni s Buncheong stoneware cups, but white porcelain provides better contrast for reading tea leaves.

The kettle on the stove begins to whistle in earnest, a plume of steam billowing to the ceiling. Nan briefly holds each cup over the steam ­to cleanse them of any deceit ­then lifts the kettle and splashes boiling water into the teapot.

Nan s teapot is the stuff of family legend. It s large enough to hold up to ten cups, and it is truly the most hideous thing I ve ever seen. It s pastel-­pink china, in the shape of a soppy-­looking cat s face. Huge baby-­blue cat eyes stare unblinking, fringed with curled painted lashes. An open grinning mouth leers beneath ­feverishly rosy cheeks.

She replaces the kettle, which resumes its shrill whistling, then swirls the water in the teapot to warm it before emptying it over the sink. After that, she takes her tarnished silver caddy spoon, its handle engraved with entwined pennywort and milk thistle, and measures out four spoons of tea leaves ­one for her, one for me, one for Halmoni, and one for luck. She fills the pot halfway with boiling water ­it s too big to fill all the way, unless we have company. Then she pops on the lid and leaves it to steep.

Now, then, she says, smoothing the front of her tweed skirt, which flows neat and somber over outrageously pink Lycra leggings. How you feeling, love?

Her crinkled, watery eyes see too much, so I look away, over toward her workbench, where bunches of dryi