The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes Read online

  “And just what do you think you’re doing?” asked a sharp voice.

  Anne spun around, nearly losing her balance.

  A tall, reedy woman stood in the doorway.

  The Matron.

  She strode across the room, her silver cane clanking on the stone tiles with every other step, and her mouth pursed in suspicion. She stopped in front of Anne. Inches away, the Matron’s short-cropped white-gray hair stood out even more starkly against her brown skin. She was so close Anne could count the black threads on her finely tailored, high-collared tunic. So close Anne feared smudging the woman’s brown woolen trousers with her own dirty coat or accidentally scuffing her fine leather boots. A crystal pendant hung from a gold chain around the Matron’s neck and dangled in front of Anne’s nose.

  The Matron pointed to the glass dome with her gloved right hand. “Well?” she said. “Explain yourself.” She didn’t raise her voice, but her coal-black eyes had a way of looking directly into a person’s soul and making it shrivel.

  Anne shriveled accordingly. “I—I didn’t touch anything. I promise.”

  The Matron’s eyes scanned the shelf, as though seeking even a hint of incriminating evidence, such as a stray fingerprint. “Then why are you in here?”

  Anne took a deep breath. “I didn’t receive a ticket for the supply ship.”

  “Residents receive a ticket when they turn thirteen. You are not thirteen yet.”

  “I know,” said Anne. “I just thought, given the regulations about leaving, and what with the ship departing so soon after midnight tonight, that—”

  “There’s been a change in schedule. The ship is now leaving before midnight, which, as I’m sure even you can deduce, means you’ll be staying a little longer than you expected.”

  Anne’s heart beat faster. “Staying? Here? At Saint Lupin’s?”

  “Where else would I mean?” the Matron said, and she turned away, apparently satisfied that nothing had been tampered with, giving Anne space to breathe once again.

  “But… the ship won’t return again for a whole year.” Anne’s future flashed before her eyes: another year in the coal mines, another year polishing every nook and cranny of the orphanage, and all without her best friend to keep her company.

  “And how is that my problem?” the Matron replied. Relying heavily on her cane, the Matron walked over to the desk and eased herself into the high-backed chair behind it. When her gloved hand touched the desktop, it made a distinct clunk.

  Anne moved to the spot in front of the desk where a large X had been painted on the floor. There was a chair to the left of the X, but to the best of Anne’s knowledge, no one had ever been invited to sit in it.

  “But I’m scheduled to leave on this ship,” said Anne. “My name is on the list. My birthday is tomorrow.”

  “Yes, and if the ship were still leaving tomorrow, you would most assuredly be on it. But as I said, there’s been a change.” The Matron leaned forward. “And just so there are no misunderstandings, you are not to go anywhere near that supply ship. I don’t want you on the dock, or at the edge of the dock, or even standing in a place where you can see the dock. In fact, consider yourself restricted to the main compound until the ship has departed.”

  Tears welled up in Anne’s eyes. “C-can’t they wait just a few extra minutes?”

  “No.”

  “Can Penelope stay here with me, then?”

  “Certainly not,” said the Matron in a tone that suggested further discussion was ill-advised. “If that is all, you may begin your chores.”

  Anne couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She and Penelope would be separated—Anne wouldn’t even be able to watch her leave. No adventures together. No pirates. They might never find each other again.

  The Matron cleared her throat.

  Anne looked up.

  “Was there something else?” asked the Matron.

  Anne decided then and there that she wasn’t simply going to give up. “Actually, I just finished my shift in the mines,” she said. “I’m only scheduled to help Penelope rake leaves and then go to bed.”

  “If you’re awake enough to come in here and bother me, you’re awake enough to work the full morning. And by work, I don’t mean wasting time with your friend.” The Matron gestured to the basket in the corner where Dog was laying. “You may start by taking that wretched creature for his morning walk.”

  Anne suppressed a retort and shuffled to the corner. She removed a leash from the hook above the basket and attached it to Dog’s collar. Dog snorted in protest but dragged himself out of the basket. Normally, two people were assigned to walk the fire lizard: One person held the leash, and another did the pushing and prodding and coaxing and begging required to get him moving. But lately he’d been obeying Anne without too much fuss.

  “Remember,” said the Matron, “no leaving the compound until after the supply ship has departed. I need not remind you of the consequences for disobeying orders.”

  Anne exited with Dog in tow. The eyes of the statues in the long hallway didn’t bother her one bit this time. Instead, each step only strengthened her resolve. Anne didn’t care what the Matron said. She wasn’t going to be left behind. One way or another, she was leaving Saint Lupin’s.

  Even if she had to break every one of the Matron’s rules to do it.

  THE ADVENTURER’S GUIDE TO SUCCESSFUL ESCAPES OFFERS THE FOLLOWING TIPS:

  1) Wait until after dark when everyone is asleep—unless, of course, the place from which you are trying to escape is patrolled by walking suits of armor that never sleep. If that’s the case, sorry, but you’re out of luck.

  2) If you require a partner, choose someone quiet. Loud, talkative people who chatter on and on about pirates and castles they intend to buy are likely to get you caught.

  3) Before you try to swim across the moat, check first to make sure it isn’t infested with sharks.

  Fire Lizards and Fireballs

  A fifteen-foot-high outer wall surrounded the main compound of the orphanage in a very haphazard fashion, and a lone iron knight walked along the top of it very haphazardly. Anne led Dog out of the Manor and along the wall, in the opposite direction from that of the patrolling knight. The fire lizard worked himself into a low, heel-dragging hover and only required the occasional nudge every now and again to correct his flight path. While Anne walked, her gaze drifted to the other buildings inside the walls. As she had with the orphans under her care, the Matron had turned a once-bustling estate into a shadow of its former self: The boarded-up bakery smelled only of mice and mold; the abandoned forge had a cold chimney and rusted tools; and the library’s dusty shelves were full of neglected books. The only building outside the compound, an old observatory on a nearby hill, sat equally ignored.

  Anne stopped Dog in front of the main entrance, which was little more than a curved archway in the wall located beneath a crumbling clock tower. A set of rusty iron gates hung open, dangling half off their hinges. Beyond the archway, a drawbridge extended over a moat filled with sharks (zombie sharks, in fact, since the Matron was far too cheap to pay for feeding live ones). In the middle of the moat, the drawbridge came to rest on the edge of a stone ramp. The ramp covered the rest of the distance to the opposite side. In a few hours, every thirteen-year-old orphan would cross the drawbridge, descend the ramp, and walk two miles down the sloping forest path to the dock. Anne hoped to be with them, but so far it wasn’t looking good.

  Penelope jogged over with a rake in hand. “There you are! Did you get a ticket?”

  Anne shook her head.

  “What!?” exclaimed Penelope.

  Anne explained what she’d learned in the Matron’s office: how the supply ship was now scheduled to leave before midnight, so Anne would have to stay at Saint Lupin’s another year.

  “That’s completely unfair!” said Penelope, swinging her rake at a nearby pile of leaves and scattering them in all directions. “What are we going to do?”

  “Well
,” said Anne, looking around to make sure they couldn’t be overheard, “I was thinking I’d leave anyway, if you feel like helping.”

  “Yes!” said Penelope. “We’ll storm the castle!”

  “Er, I’m pretty sure you only storm a castle when you’re trying to get into it. Technically, I’m trying to get out.”

  “Fine. We’ll call storming it Plan B.”

  Since there were other orphans busy working around the grounds, they ducked beneath the archway and over to the edge of the drawbridge for more privacy as they plotted. The surface of the moat was calm, although every once in a while the rotting fin of a zombie shark crested the water, causing Dog to growl.

  “You could try a disguise,” suggested Penelope.

  “I would still need a ticket,” said Anne. “But maybe I could stow away in one of the cargo crates after it’s unpacked but before they return it to the ship.”

  Penelope shook her head. “They always check the empty crates. I’m sure I could throw you onto the ship from the dock, though.”

  Anne pointed to a scar on her elbow. “Are you forgetting the ‘I’m sure I can toss Anne up into the oak tree’ incident?”

  Penelope grinned. “I was so close. And anyway, you healed up nicely, didn’t you?”

  “I’d like to avoid the need to heal this time.”

  “We should at least call it Plan C.”

  “You call it Plan C,” said Anne. “I’m calling it Plan of Last Resort and Even Then Probably Not. Or at least not until I learn how to fly.” She shuddered. “How about we make it simple? You board first, cause a commotion, and I’ll sneak aboard while everyone is distracted.”

  “What sort of commotion?”

  “I don’t know. Start an argument with the first mate or something.”

  “Which one is he again?”

  “Just a second. I think I have a sketch of him.” Anne emptied her pocket to get her drawings. “Here, hold this for a minute.” Anne handed the book with the red cover to Penelope.

  “What book is this?” asked Penelope.

  “It’s the same one I had earlier. I haven’t had a chance to exchange it for a new one yet.”

  “No it’s not. This one is The Adventurer’s Guide to Clandestine Travel.”

  Anne looked at the cover and frowned. “That’s weird.”

  Penelope opened the book, and they both gasped. Printed on the first page, in crisp dark lines, was a passenger ticket. With Anne’s name on it.

  Anne took the book with shaking hands and stared at the ticket incredulously. “But… how?”

  Penelope shrugged nonchalantly. “Eh, it’s probably just magick or something.”

  Anne gaped at her friend. “Just magick?”

  “Yeah. We read about magick stuff all the time in those books you get from the library.”

  “I know, Pen. But reading about it is one thing. This… this is incredible!”

  Penelope laughed. “I know. I’m just kidding! This book is amazing! Quick, tear out the ticket before it disappears.”

  Anne clutched the open book tightly against her chest. “What!? We can’t tear a magick book.”

  “Says who? It made the ticket for you, didn’t it? Why would it do that if it didn’t want you to take it?”

  Anne glanced at the page again. “I suppose that makes sense, but… what if we break it or something?”

  “Just tear it a little. If something goes wrong, we can always stop.”

  “What if ‘something going wrong’ means it explodes?”

  “Then we’ll definitely stop.”

  Typically, Anne preferred to think things through from all angles, but Penelope was right: She couldn’t risk losing the ticket. She gripped the page as close to the spine of the book as possible and pulled until the smallest of tears formed. Nothing happened. She tore it a little more. Everything continued to remain fine. Anne kept tearing until the page separated completely from the book. The ticket was still clear and legible, and the rest of the book seemed otherwise unaffected. Anne sighed with relief.

  Penelope clapped her on the shoulder. “Fantastic! I can practically smell the pirates.”

  “I think that might be the moat,” said Anne.

  As they stared at the ticket in wonderment, Dog turned in the direction of the forest. His ears perked up and he sniffed the air.

  Penelope pointed to the sky. “What’s that?”

  Anne shielded her eyes. “It looks like… a ball of fire… or something.”

  Indeed, a burning “something” arced across the sky—a bright green burning object—and dropped steadily until it disappeared into the forest. While they stood staring at the smoke trail, Dog shot forward, snapping the leash out of Anne’s hand. The fire lizard rocketed across the drawbridge, down the stone ramp, and into the trees.

  Oh no.

  No, no, no, no, no.

  Anne sprinted across the drawbridge but stopped short when she reached the ramp. She glanced back at the iron knight patrolling high up atop the wall. Had it seen the light in the sky? Or watched Dog run off? Would it notice if Anne left?

  Penelope ran up beside her. “Are we going after him?”

  Anne chewed her lip. The Matron had given her strict instructions not to leave the main grounds. Skipping out on chores might earn a double shift in the mines, but disobeying a direct order was worth a week scrubbing the dungeons—while being locked up in them. Then again, showing up without Dog wasn’t likely to win her the orphan of the year award, either.

  “Okay, I’ll go,” said Anne. “You stay here on lookout. Make some noise or something to warn me if the Matron or one of the knights shows up.”

  Penelope nodded.

  Anne looked up again: The patrolling knight was heading away from them. There would never be a better opportunity. She shoved the book, ticket, and sketches back into her pocket, and then she raced down the ramp, across the path, and plunged into the undergrowth, hoping to find Dog just on the other side. Unfortunately, the fire lizard was already at the bottom of a long slope, and Anne watched as he disappeared into the thick of the forest. Heart thumping, Anne sped up.

  After several minutes of running, Anne began encountering patches of scorched earth and blackened branches. She must be getting closer to the bright, burning object that had landed. As she hurried through drifting clouds of sparks and ash, her feet kicked up smoldering piles of leaves. Smoke stung her lungs and blurred her vision, becoming thicker the farther she went, until she was coughing and gasping for a fresh breath of air. There was no sign of Dog.

  Anne was about to turn back when she stumbled past a dark opening on a hillside—a mine shaft entrance. It was Shaft Eleven, which had experienced a cave-in many years ago, around the time Anne herself was born. Various accounts had circulated among the orphans over the years as to exactly what had happened there, with some claiming it had been an army of tunneling coal worms and others making dubious reference to a firebrand and an angry canary. Regardless of the truth, everyone avoided it, since the Matron assigned extra chores to anyone who went near it. Anne ducked inside the mine’s still-intact entrance and sucked in a lungful of cool, smokeless air. Several paces farther in there was a boarded-up door with the words STAY OUT (THIS MEANS YOU) painted across it.

  While contemplating whether to press on or return to the compound, Anne heard a rustling noise from a nearby clump of trees. Thinking it must be Dog, Anne slipped quickly out of the mine entrance and went from tree to tree, hoping to sneak up on him by surprise. Just as she was about to jump through the undergrowth, Anne was stopped by a deep, teeth-rattling roar.

  That wasn’t Dog. It was something else entirely. Something big.

  Perhaps that “something big” was friendly, and its roar was simply its way of saying “Hello, small person,” but it was equally possible that the “something big” was hungry for a tender orphan snack. Rather than find out which, Anne retreated as quietly as possible, thinking she could hide back inside Shaft Eleven. Yet as
she stepped around a rock, a twig snapped under her heel. This brought another tremendous roar, followed by a crash, which convinced Anne it was time to run, and she bolted straight for the mine entrance. However, she had to veer away suddenly when the tree in front of her exploded in green flames. To the best of Anne’s knowledge, the only creatures who breathed fire were dragons, but she’d never met a dragon, and why one would come to Saint Lupin’s and shoot fireballs at the trees, Anne had no idea.

  Her heart pounding from the near miss, Anne kept her legs pumping. She was headed directly into the area where the falling object (or dragon?) must have landed, but she had no choice. She jumped over blackened stumps, skirted more piles of burning leaves, plunged blindly through a thick cloud of smoke—

  —and ran straight off the end of the world.

  Prologue Addendum

  Technically, there is another way to leave Saint Lupin’s:

  4. Walk out the front door, proceed for roughly two miles in any direction, and fall off the end of the world.

  This happens not nearly as infrequently as one might think.

  THE UNCONTESTED AUTHORITY ON DRAGONS IS THE THREE-VOLUME SET ENTITLED DRAGONS I HAVE KNOWN AND WHY NOT TO POKE AT THEM WITH SHARP OBJECTS BY THE WELL-KNOWN WIZARD AND HISTORIAN ONE-ARMED HENGEZ THE OVERLY-TRUSTING.

  THE INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST VOLUME, THE INS AND OUTS OF BECOMING LIVE DRAGON BAIT, READS AS FOLLOWS:

  Dragons are curious creatures, by which I mean people are curious about them and not that they are curious about people, except possibly when by “people” one means “lunch.” Dragons can be identified by size, color, and class, and so the difference between, say, a large, green Three-Eyed Rhino dragon and a small, purple Slobbering Kiss-Me dragon should be readily apparent—although both should be given a wide berth. The careful observer will use these categories to quickly classify any dragon they meet and assess any potential threat. The less-than-careful observer should reread the part about people being lunch.