Old Gods New Tricks E-Book

Thiago de Moraes

• Herausgeber: David Fickling Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 256

Beschreibung

Trixie dos Santos is always getting into trouble for her pranks. She loves tricks, magic and epic myths - so when the world is suddenly plunged into darkness, Trixie knows exactly what she has to do to bring back the light:STEP ONE: Summon the most mischievous trickster gods of all time.STEP TWO: Convince Maui, Loki and the rest of the gang to steal the electricity back from wherever it's gone.STEP THREE: Save humankind.No problem right? If Trixie can get the gods of trouble and mayhem to behave for once, it'll all be fine . . .

Leseprobe

To Ana, who told me I should write a story about tricksters.

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEDEDICATION1: TROUBLE2: STUCK3: EXÚ4: LOKI5: MAUI6: COYOTE7: MONKEY8: JAR9: ROAD10: PLOTS11: CLIMB12: GOSSIP13: CHAINS14: GODS15: TURN16: BRAWL17: POWER18: LOSS19: HOMEEPILOGUE: GAMEAPPENDIXEXÚLOKIMAUIHUEHUECÓYOTLSUN WUKONGACKNOWLEDGMENTSALSO BY THIAGO DE MORAESCOPYRIGHT

Although her academic record is not irredeemably hopeless, our concern remains that Miss dos Santos’s main efforts in the school environment seem to consist of outlandish schemes that constantly disrupt the lives of both teachers and fellow students. If the energy and endeavour which she applies to these ‘tricks’, as she likes to call them, were diverted to more productive ends, we are in no doubt that she and the school would benefit immensely.

Beatrix Nielsen dos Santos – Disciplinary Record, page 93, various authors

CHAPTER 1

TROUBLE

When the lights went out, Trixie was at school.

So were her parents, sitting alongside her, facing a large pile of coloured folders, all marked Beatrix Nielsen dos Santos – Disciplinary Record. Behind the stack of papers was Mr Porter, the headteacher. He kept looking down as he spoke, fiddling with his tiny reading glasses and shuffling the papers on his desk.

‘… and the fact is, Mr and Ms dos Santos, that we have given Trixie chance after chance to behave better. Sadly it doesn’t seem to work. I’m not saying that placing a bag of, er … WhizzBang Novelty Stinking Fart Powder in the school’s air-conditioning system during final exams week is the final straw, but it is most definitely the straw that fell on to the poor camel’s back right before the final straw.’

‘Sorry, Mr Porter, I’m not sure I’m following you,’ said Trixie’s mother.

‘What I’m trying to say, Ms dos Santos, is that, hmm …’ He stopped, looking genuinely upset. ‘One more prank, and Trixie is out.’

‘Out of what?’ asked her dad.

‘This school, I’m afraid,’ the headteacher explained. ‘I understand she thinks these schemes are amusing, but they disrupt our school life immensely … Miss Hoppitt says her hair still smells rather flatulent even after multiple washes. We can’t be having that.’

Trixie had been sitting between her parents, trying to look as innocent as possible. She stood up, eyes wide at the headteacher.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Porter! I swear I won’t do it again!’

‘I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Trixie,’ Mr Porter replied. ‘One more incident and we’ll have to let you go.’

‘I promise it’s for real this time!’ Trixie said, placing one hand behind her back and another on her chest. ‘Listen: I, Trixie Nielsen dos Santos, swear by Tyr’s missing hand that I will not get up to funny business at school any more.’

The headteacher cocked his head at Trixie and blinked, slowly. He looked like a tired owl who had lost most of its feathers.

‘Teer? Who’s that? Is it one of those people you kids are always watching on your phones? The ones who chat endlessly about playing video games?’

‘No,’ said Trixie. ‘Tyr is the Norse god of justice, war and lots of other things. Great for oaths!’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Porter,’ said Trixie’s dad. ‘She’s a bit obsessed with that old stuff.’

‘I’m not obsessed, Dad,’ said Trixie. ‘I am very interested, like any serious scholar of ancient beliefs should be.’ She turned to Mr Porter, who had remained in a fug of confusion throughout the exchange, and beamed. ‘I would like to pursue a career in archaeology in the future.’

‘There’ll be no career in anything if you get kicked out of school, Beatrix,’ said her mum. ‘Now sit down and listen to what Mr Porter is saying.’

‘Thank you, Ms dos Santos. Trixie, it’s lovely to see your interest in other cultures, but I’m afraid that this is quite a serious matter.’ Mr Porter opened his laptop. ‘I’m going to have to file this official report with the education board, and after that happens, the formal procee—’

He stopped talking.

‘Odd … I was about to hit “send”, but my computer just turned off.’

‘So did the lights, actually,’ said Trixie’s father.

‘… And that little desk heater,’ added his mother.

They all turned and looked at Trixie, who was standing very, very still.

‘Beatrix dos Santos! This better not be you again, young lady,’ her mother yelled.

‘It’s not, Mum, I swear,’ she said. ‘I’ve been here with you the whole time, haven’t I?’

Mr Porter had stopped paying attention to the conversation. He got up and walked to the window. ‘It looks like the whole school is out of power. The traffic lights seem to be off too. I’m afraid we’ll have to continue this meeting another time. I have to deal with this.’

‘We’re really sorry, Mr Porter,’ said Trixie’s dad. ‘We’ll talk to her and make sure she behaves from now on.’

‘I’m really sorry too, Mr Porter,’ said Trixie, her worried frown turning into a grin. She waved to the headteacher and skipped out of the room. ‘Thanks, Mr Porter!’

She followed her parents as they walked down the corridor towards the huge glass doors that led out of the school. All around them, students streamed out of their lessons, a bit baffled by the sudden power outage but happy to have an early break.

‘Trixie,’ said her mother as they stepped outside, ‘are you absolutely sure you had nothing to do with this?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ said Trixie. ‘I am absolutely sure I didn’t make the whole school lose power whilst sitting quietly with you and Dad in Mr Porter’s office.’

‘There’s no need to take that tone with your mum, Beatrix,’ said her dad.

‘Well, there’s no need for her to think that I’m behind everything that goes wrong around here.’

‘You usually are,’ said her mother.

‘True, but this time it definitely wasn’t me.’

‘That might be the case when it comes to this power thing, but what Mr Porter told us is still very serious,’ said her dad. ‘I know you think your tricks and games are fun, but they’re not. They’re selfish. Next time you feel like pulling another prank, think about the people you might upset. You’re grounded, no screens and no leaving the house until Monday. That should give you enough time to consider your behaviour.’

‘Aaaaaaaawwwww, Dad …’ moaned Trixie. ‘You know I was just messing.’

‘Don’t “aaw, Dad” me. You should have thought about that before you placed fart powder in the air conditioning. It might have been hilarious to you, but it caused your teachers a lot of grief, and there’s more, you know that …’

Trixie’s head sank between her shoulders. It wasn’t the first speech her dad had given her about trying to be more considerate, and after the first few words she stopped paying attention. She was waiting for the sound of his voice to stop so she could ask for her phone back when a car sped past them, weaving unsteadily along the road in front of the school. All three turned their heads to watch as the vehicle veered on to the pavement, barely avoiding a group of sixth-formers, and hit the side of a pedestrian traffic light with a loud crash. A horrible crunching noise made Trixie wince as the bonnet crumpled like tinfoil, wrapping itself around the light’s metal post, and folding it down like a broken branch.

Trixie and her parents stood completely still for a moment, then ran towards the wreck. A man, his clothes dishevelled and eyes unfocused, was trying to climb out of the driver’s door, helped by some of the students the car had almost hit moments before.

‘Er … I’m so sorry …’ he said, looking around. ‘I don’t know what happened. All the lights on the dashboard went out and then the engine stopped working, I couldn’t control the car …’

‘It’s OK,’ said Trixie’s mother. ‘Luckily no one else got hurt. Why don’t you sit down while I call an ambulance?’

As her dad helped the man sit down on the kerb, Trixie’s mum picked up a mobile phone and dialled a number. After waiting for a long while she hung up. ‘The emergency services number is busy, too many people must be calling them already.’

A crowd had formed around them. Some teachers had left the school and offered to take the driver in as he waited for an ambulance to arrive.

‘Are you sure you’ll be OK?’ Trixie’s dad asked the man.

‘I think so,’ the driver replied. ‘I don’t understand it. It’s a brand-new electric car, I only got it a couple of weeks ago.’

‘Maybe there’s something wrong with it,’ said Trixie. ‘These things are super buggy. Let me check if there’s anything about it online.’

She picked up her mobile to look, but her dad took the phone before she had time to unlock it.

‘No screens, remember?’

‘Daaad …’ whinged Trixie. ‘This is an emergency.’

‘You can have it back on Monday,’ said her mum, scrolling through her own phone. ‘There’s nothing here about faulty electric cars, but lots on the power outage. Apparently it’s happening across town.’

‘That’s weird,’ said Trixie’s dad. ‘I can’t remember the whole place being without power once since we moved here.’

‘Was that before or after the dinosaurs moved out?’ asked Trixie.

‘It was before this particularly horrid little dinosaur hatched,’ said her dad, putting his arm around her shoulder.

They waited until the man was safely escorted into the school, then walked home as the low autumn sun began to set. Trixie felt that the town, where she had lived all her life and which she knew every single corner of, looked odd, faintly menacing, like a person one momentarily mistakes for a friend before realizing they are actually a complete stranger. The small playground where she usually met her friends was empty, swings creaking slowly against the wind; the newsagent across the road, usually full of kids buying sweets, was also oddly silent, a grey emptiness brooding behind the brightly coloured windows. Trixie could see that her parents felt the same as they walked in silence, leaving the tiny town centre behind, slow steps taking them through a jumble of winding streets where closely packed brown buildings hid behind plastic bins which had been left scattered to block the narrow pavements.

By this hour, the rows of neat little terraced houses that lined the road leading to Trixie’s home would usually be lit up, full of dinners being made and little kids watching cartoons by front-room windows. Now all she could see was the street coloured a deep red and purple by the setting sun – a giant bruise, spreading and darkening as evening took hold. Inside some houses the dim, insufficient lights of mobile phones, torches and candles wavered and flickered as people tried to find ways to keep the dark away.

Trixie and her parents walked up the hill to their house, which was at the very top of the road. Behind it the lane narrowed and sloped down into a messy, winding valley speckled with dwindling buildings, last outposts of the town as it sunk into the countryside beyond.

With the streetlights out, the road was very dark; Trixie’s dad had to turn his mobile phone torch on to fit the key into the front door. Behind it, they could hear frantic scratching.

The door had barely begun to open when a small, dark figure sprang from the gap towards Trixie, hitting her straight in the chest.

Then Odin All Father called for the children of Loki to be brought to him, and all three he cast into bondage.The serpent he threw into the sea that edges the worldof men and there he sank, and there he grew, his body wrapped around the whole earth, head biting his owntail.

The Wolff-Rämmer World Mythology Collection, vol. 3

CHAPTER 2

STUCK

‘Iorgi!’ Trixie cried, picking up the little creature and stroking it gently. ‘You must have been so scared. It’s OK now, I’m here.’

Iorgi was Trixie’s pet ferret, best friend and the reason why the dos Santos’s house existed in a state of near-total chaos. When her parents had told her she could have a pet a few years earlier, Trixie saved her pocket money for months and got the tiny kit from a pet shop, raising him on milk, baby food and ham. Now he was fully grown, a long string of fur and mischief. Trixie’s parents, who had regretted their decision almost immediately, had long given up on trying to place Iorgi in a zoo or rescue centre.

He seemed to spend most of his time snoozing on Trixie’s lap, curled up in a lazy circle, tail touching his nose. When she had first seen the ferret like this, Trixie’s mum had named him Jörmungandr, after the serpent from Norse myth whose colossal body circles the ocean that engulfs the world of mankind. Trixie had liked the idea, but the name, yor-moohn-gahn-der, was not the easiest to say, and sounded very formal, so her friend’s name ended up as Iorgi.

‘OK, let’s hope we have some batteries, or else this will be a long night,’ said Trixie’s dad, rummaging through a box of cables and electrical odds and ends in the cupboard under the stairs as her mother checked her phone again.

‘This is weird …’ She frowned. ‘Your grandmother says her place in Norway has also lost all power.’

‘There’s never any electricity in that old farm,’ Trixie’s dad chuckled. ‘A goat probably chewed through the cable or something.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Trixie’s mother. ‘I’m scrolling through the news and it says the lights are out everywhere.’ She paced around the kitchen table, narrowly avoiding one of the many piles of books and comics that Trixie regularly left lying around.

‘The whole country?’ Trixie asked. She couldn’t remember a time when the electricity had gone out.

‘No,’ said her mum, still staring at the screen in her hand. ‘Everywhere.’

‘I’m not sure I’m getting this,’ said her dad, finally putting three large batteries into a dusty old torch.

Trixie’s mum walked over to him, pointing at her phone’s screen. ‘The whole world is out of electricity,’ she said. ‘The news says all power went out at the same time, across the globe.’

Trixie stopped tickling Iorgi’s belly, placed him on the battered living-room sofa and walked up to where her parents stood. ‘That’s impossible,’ she said.

‘It could be a solar storm,’ said her dad. ‘I read somewhere that they can affect electromagnetic fields and whatnot. I think … I didn’t read the whole article. Maybe that’s why that car stopped working.’

‘If that was the case, wouldn’t mobiles have stopped too?’ said Trixie. ‘Or the torch. This makes no sense.’

Suddenly, all their phones buzzed at the same time. Trixie looked around her father’s shoulder at the message that appeared on his screen:

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT MESSAGE REGARDING THE CURRENT ELECTRICITY OUTAGE. WE STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO STAY AT HOME. DO NOT WASTE ENERGY. FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS WILL BE SENT SHORTLY.

‘This doesn’t look good,’ said Trixie.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ said her mother, failing to force a smile. ‘But there isn’t much we can do about it right now besides wait. Let’s eat something before everything in the fridge goes off. Hopefully they’ll fix this soon … I’m sure it’ll be fine.’

As her mother and father talked in the kitchen, Trixie found an old hand-cranked torch she had been given during a trip to the Science Museum and curled up in the sofa with Iorgi on her lap, a warm, furry comfort in the cold of the night. She found one of her favourite books, a collection of tales of African gods her grandmother had sent over from Brazil last Christmas, read so many times the pages were falling out of the binding. By the second legend she had completely forgotten about the telling-off at school, the car crash and the sudden blackout.

She was right in the middle of her favourite story, about a hunter who kills a monstrous, invincible bird with a single arrow, when her father called her for dinner. The small table in their kitchen was completely covered in food. Although the electricity had gone, the gas still worked, and her mother had cooked everything from the fridge that might have spoilt.

‘What a spread, eh?’ said her dad.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Trixie. ‘I think I’ll have a couple of boiled eggs with chips, hummus, prawns and a few slices of ham … some cheese too.’

‘The ham and cheese will last a few days,’ said her mother, ‘we should save them.’

‘Why? Won’t they fix this quickly?’ asked Trixie. ‘Using generators or something?’

‘I don’t know, dear,’ her mother answered. ‘I imagine they could if it was only around here, but this has happened all over the world, so it must be quite serious.’

‘Any news, Dad?’ asked Trixie, noticing her father was looking at his mobile phone as they ate.

‘Nothing on why this is happening, but it looks like people are starting to panic a bit. Looting, that sort of thing. The internet seems to be really slow too.’

‘That doesn’t sound great,’ Trixie’s mum said.

‘Let’s hope it’s all fixed by morning,’ said her father.

They finished dinner in silence. Usually at this time they’d all huddle on the sofa and watch TV together, or play a board game if there was nothing on. Tonight, Trixie felt quite tired, so she excused herself, hugged (it was more of a reluctant shoulder-barge) her mum and dad, then climbed up to her bedroom with Iorgi, her small torch and her book. She made her way around the masses of books and drawings that covered the floor of the small room from wall to wall, leaving only space for a small desk and a bed (currently also covered in books), above which hung a pinboard filled with photos of Trixie and her friends from school. She shone her light at the photos, looking at their faces, some dressed in Halloween costumes, others in school uniforms that had become too small, and wondered if they were also alone in their rooms, waiting for the lights to come on. Lying on the bed, Trixie propped her book against the windowsill and began to read.

She had barely got halfway through the story about the god who tricks two friends into killing each other before falling asleep.

Trixie woke up the next morning as sunlight spread slowly through the open curtains in her room. The sky outside was a bright grey-blue and she could hear all sorts of noises in the woods behind the house. For a moment, she didn’t remember anything about the day before, until she saw the torch.

She tried turning her bedroom lights on. Nothing happened. She got up and went downstairs, with Iorgi weaving between her feet and nipping at her ankles. Her parents were already up, dressed and talking around the dining table.

‘Good morning, darling,’ said her father, but he didn’t sound like he thought it was a good morning at all.

‘Hi, guys,’ said Trixie. ‘No news, then?’

‘Not much, just more government text messages about staying home and sitting tight,’ said her mother.

‘That’s annoying,’ said Trixie. ‘What are we going to do, then?’

‘We’ve got food for a few more days and everything else we might need,’ said her father, ‘so I guess we will stay home and sit tight. It looks like there’s a lot of trouble out there right now, and I don’t want any of us near it.’

‘OK, Dad,’ said Trixie. ‘Can I have my phone back, then?’

‘No,’ said her dad. ‘I said Monday and Monday it is. Besides, you’d waste all the battery in half an hour then complain you can’t charge it.’

‘Fine, then …’ she sulked.

The next couple of days were weird. They stayed in most of the time, reading or playing games during the day and chatting at night until it was time to go to bed. ‘Keeping busy’, her mum called it, but Trixie found staying in tough, even if it meant she could spend as much time as she wanted with Iorgi and the sprawling library of books, most on mythology and archaeology, that her family had accumulated over the years. Some were thin, dull-looking volumes, academic works from her parents’ jobs teaching anthropology at the local university, others great dusty, leather-bound tomes they had inherited from her grandparents. She dipped in and out of them, sometimes stopping to draw something that seemed particularly exciting, sometimes making notes on a pad, copying the best bits so she could remember them later.

When being cooped up in the house became too much, they went for walks in the woods nearby, meeting some neighbours who, like Trixie’s parents, all seemed to be worried but oddly comfortable with the fact the whole world had no power.

Everyone might have been making an effort to pretend things were fine at home, but the snippets of news Trixie’s parents allowed themselves to read in the few moments they turned their battery-depleted phones on did not sound fine at all.

They could barely get a phone signal and when they managed to, it seemed like most news websites were not being updated. From the little they could find out, it seemed like things were getting even worse: engines, generators, batteries and charged devices stopping working, cities and towns slowing to a halt. People thronged outside dark hospitals, waiting for help that couldn’t come. Nothing was being transported: cars and trucks stood abandoned on motorways, ships full of cargo drifted at the mercy of the seas, crews powerless as cliff-high waves turned them over, splitting their hulls. No aeroplanes cut thin white scars across the sky.

The world had gone totally dark.

When her parents finally returned her phone, Trixie tried to check if her friends were OK, but was unable to get any service. The screen still flashed with dozens of day-old, worried messages and news alerts, so she made her way through them. The situation was much worse than her mother and father had let on.

Fear had grown, and with it, superstition.

The lack of power wasn’t the only problem. The weather was behaving in ways no one had seen before, something that was barely noticed at first amidst the chaos that was gradually taking hold of society.

Storm clouds were gathering. Huge, swirling masses of inky black vapour, rolling slowly over the same areas, filled with lightning, which fizzled and crackled but never came down to earth.

Although most people still waited patiently in their homes, some had begun to panic, looting and damaging city centres, shops and public transport. Others, desperate for a solution, began believing the storm clouds to be signs from greater powers, and looked to the heavens for help. There were sightings of large groups massing under the tempestuous skies, chanting around old stone circles, climbing the steps of ruined temples, leaving sacrifices to wooden totems in dark forests. All over the globe, ancient places of power were filled with throngs of people looking for an answer to the darkness.

Reading an old alert from a little-known archaeology group she followed, Trixie found something that made her stop. The post listed the places where the clouds were gathering; sites as far flung as the slopes of Mount Olympus, the stone-lined grave of Newgrange in Ireland, the great ash forest in Norway, the misty waters of the Niger river delta, the ancient circle at Stonehenge, the wooded shores of the North American Pacific Northwest, the great rock Uluru in Australia, the stepped-pyramids of Mexico’s Chichén Itzá and many more.

She knew all these places.

Places of belief. Of worship. Of power. Places where the ancient gods lived, from where they ruled and bestowed their grace and anger upon mankind.

Trixie had read about them in her books, dreamed of visiting them one day. She understood why people might be going there. To her, it made perfect sense to ask the gods, who had given everything to humanity, to give electricity back as well.

Wait …

Give back? You can only give something back once it’s been taken away.

That was it, she thought. Someone must have taken electricity away from humans! Not just anyone, though. Someone with enough power to make it all disappear from everywhere at the same time. Gods!

Trixie had been reading old legends her whole life, knew them so well she could remember many of them by heart. Most people, including her parents who studied this sort of thing for a living, only thought of myths as just that – old legends – but Trixie had always felt there was something more to them, something solid, something real. At times she could feel something different, something more, beneath the surface of things; hidden, passing below everyday life like the shadow of a fish swimming in the waters of a murky pond. Where most people felt the wind pass through their hair and thought nothing of it, Trixie saw a woman blowing the forge of an old lover, an angry demon opening his bag on top of a cloudy mountain, a many-armed man searing across the sky on his horned mount. She never spoke about this to anyone, she knew how crazy it sounded, but now she might be able to prove it. A huge smile spread across Trixie’s face as she ran downstairs to tell her parents, sending a pile of books tumbling down the stairs and frightening Iorgi from his sleep.

‘Mum, Dad, I’ve got it!’ she cried, sliding into the kitchen.

‘Got what?’ asked her dad, barely looking around as he rummaged for batteries in one of the kitchen drawers.

‘Got this,’ Trixie said, holding her arms out wide. ‘I know why we have no power.’

‘Er … do you, sweetie?’ asked her mother.

‘I do, and don’t you “sweetie” me, Mum,’ Trixie continued. ‘Now I finally have my phone back I managed to do some reading and worked out what’s so weird about the weather. All the giant storm clouds are over places where people used to worship ancient gods. Some still do.’

‘There are clouds everywhere, Trixie,’ said her dad. ‘It’s just a coincidence.’

‘Don’t you see?’ said Trixie. ‘There are thousands, maybe millions of people standing in these old temples, woods and all sorts of other places right now, asking the old gods for help. It must’ve been them!’

‘Them who?’ asked her mother.

‘The old gods!’ exclaimed Trixie, triumphantly. ‘They took electricity away from us so we’d worship them properly again.’

Her parents didn’t say anything for a moment. Her father just looked at the floor and shook his head slowly.

‘Trixie, darling, that’s a bit too much, even for you,’ he said.

‘Dad, you don’t understand!’ she said.

‘No, Trixie,’ said her dad. He looked sad and tired. ‘You don’t understand. We have no power, and very soon we’ll have no food. This is really serious, not one of your silly stories.’

‘But … they’re not just stories!’ Trixie yelled.

‘That’s enough now, Beatrix,’ said her mother. ‘Think about others for a change. Your father and I are trying to figure out how we can make our way through this, we don’t need you shouting at us about superstitions right at the moment. Please go to your room.’

‘But …’ Trixie began to say, but she understood it was pointless to argue.

Shuffling back upstairs, she shut her bedroom door with a bang, getting a funny look from Iorgi. If her own parents reacted that way, she knew no one else would believe her. Still, it didn’t change her mind, she knew she was right. From the moment the realization had come to her it had felt absolutely, inarguably real, solid, like the walls around her room or the warm weight of the little ferret fussing around her feet.

‘They don’t understand, Iorgi,’ she said. ‘They never will. No one will. But I do. It doesn’t matter if no one will listen to me; I still have to do something. I’m going to find a way to show everyone that these stories are real … and get the electricity back, of course. Then they’ll see.’

The little ferret turned his head sideways and blinked at her.

‘We can’t just ask for it back. That’s what all those people gathering under the clouds have been doing for days and the gods haven’t helped at all,’ said Trixie. ‘Why would they? In most legends, humans weren’t given fire by gods, anyway. Someone had to steal it …’

A grin spread across her face.

‘… trick it out of the gods.’

Iorgi let out a worried whimper. Trixie began walking in circles between her bed and her desk, waving her index finger in the air. ‘That’s what we are going to do, Iorgi. Trick electricity back from the gods.’

She stopped and looked across her room, scanning her shelves for books she might need. ‘This is epic!’ she said to the ferret. ‘Literally, in fact. We get to go on an adventure and sort this mess out.’ Trixie started to pull books from shelves, spreading them open over her bed.

‘My parents might think I’m crazy, Iorgi. They might even be right, but I’m not stupid,’ she said. ‘I know I’m still just a kid and you’re a little lazy ferret, no offence intended. We’ll need some help to pull this off. Some proper help.’

She picked up a small notebook and a pencil and began to read through the books, underlining sentences, making notes, pushing some volumes to the floor when she was done, and getting new ones from the shelves.

Trixie kept at it the whole afternoon. By the time the sun had made its way over the house and began to set behind the hills she had filled over half the notebook. She looked at what she had written and smiled, riffling through the pages and waking up Iorgi.

‘This is it, Iorgi. I think I worked it out. We’re going to get some help from the people who already know how to get things out of gods: tricksters! As many as we can convince to help us!’