Nadya Skylung and the Cloudship Rescue - Softcover

Seymour, Jeff

 
9780593533758: Nadya Skylung and the Cloudship Rescue
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593533755 ISBN 13: 9780593533758
Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

From debut author Jeff Seymour and bestselling illustrator Brett Helquist (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events) comes this breathtaking fantasy adventure, starring an extraordinary new heroine and set in an unforgettable world where ships can fly.

It takes a very special crew to keep the cloudship Orion running, and no one knows that better than Nadya Skylung, who tends the cloud garden that keeps the ship afloat. When the unthinkable happens and pirates attack, Nadya and the other children aboard--all orphans taken in by the kindhearted Captain Nic--narrowly escape, but the rest of the crew is captured. Alone and far from help, only Nadya and her four brave and loyal friends can take back the Orion and rescue the crew. And she'll risk life and limb to save the only family she's ever known. But . . . this attack was no accident. What exactly are the pirates looking for? Could it be Nadya they've been after all along?

"Nadya Skylung is one smart, sassy, spitfire heroine with gills. I love her!" --Liesl Shurtliff, New York Times bestselling author of Rump

"A stunningly imaginative world unlike anything I've seen before. It is thrilling, it is emotional, and it is wholly original." --M. A. Larson, author of Pennyroyal Academy

"A stunning debut filled with derring-do, surprises, and truly original world building." --J. A. White, author of The Thickety

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jeff Seymour makes his middle-grade debut with Nadya Skylung and the Cloudship Rescue. In addition to writing speculative fiction, he works as a freelance editor. Jeff lives an unexpectedly hectic life with his wife, their son, and two energetic cats. Visit him online at jeff-seymour.com and on Twitter at @realjeffseymour.

Brett Helquist has illustrated many books for children, including the bestselling A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. Learn more at bretthelquist.com and on Twitter at @BHelquist.

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Chapter One: In which we meet our heroine, and a storm approaches.

“Nadya!”

Outside the cabin doorway, a distant rumble calls . . .

“Nadya!”

Outside the cabin doorway, a distant rumble mumbles . . . ?

“Nadya!”

There’s a loud crack and the rumble of thunder, and my whole cabin on the cloudship Orion jumps up a few inches and falls back down. I snag my journal and pen before they can slide off my desk and look out the window again, where the yellow-gold light of afternoon is fading into gray, stormy shadows.

“Darn it,” I mutter.

Tam Ban, my greatest nemesis on the ship and as goody-goody a kid as you’ve ever met, shouts at me through the door. “Nadya! Captain Nic wants you, and he’ll give you stripes this time if you’re not out here in ten seconds!”

I push back from my writing desk and snort. Nic never hits us. Our first mate, Tall Thom, wants him to sometimes, but Nic’s too nice for that. All the same, I open the desk drawer where I keep important stuff and toss my journal into it. I can hear the rumble of thunder, after all, and we’re halfway across the Cloud Sea, six days from the dusty adobe houses, giant walls, and leafy streets of Vash Abandi in the west, and five days till the ironwork cranes, crooked skyscrapers, zip lines, and grungy alleys of Far Agondy in the east. Out here, the storms are big and mean and fast. So if Nic wants me and there’s thunder outside, something exciting’s probably about to happen.

My name’s Nadya Skylung, and I keep the Orion afloat.

I don’t do it all by myself, of course, not yet. Mrs. Trachia’s still teaching me. But I’ll have it figured out soon. I have to. Tall Thom’s leaving the ship when we make port in Far Agondy next week, and Nic’s going to pick one of the kids on the Orion to do his job. I’m gonna make sure it’s me and learn how to run a cloudship, and then someday I’ll be captain of my own ship, and I’ll fly anywhere I want, anytime I want to—Nadya, the greatest skylung of them all!

I’m halfway through closing my desk drawer when the ship gives another huge lurch and there’s an ominous creaking from the deck outside. Tam pounds on my door again. I flinch and jump up.

“I’m coming!” I shout.

I open the door and glare at Tam.

A mop of iron-black hair sits on his head like a grumpy octopus, and he’s got on the same black overalls and white shirt he always wears. He thinks his clothes show off his permanently tan skin and the muscles underneath it. I think they show off how dumb he is.

Tam’s six months younger than me. But he’s also six inches taller, six ways wiser, and six times as quick. Or so he tells me, anyway. He’s a stick-in-the-mud about rules and safety and doesn’t trust anything he can’t take apart with a screwdriver. I know the world’s not as scary as he thinks, and that rules were made for reasons and the reasons matter more than the rules. We butt heads over it all the time. Everybody thinks Nic’ll pick him or me as first mate when Thom leaves the ship, but I know it’ll be me.

Above Tam, the big dark egg of the cloud balloon where I do most of my work twists and creaks at the end of long cables secured to the deck. The storm’s not far off now, and it’s getting closer. The wind’s picking up.

“Get your safety belt on,” Tam says. “Nic wanted you ten minutes ago. What’re you doing in there?”

I roll my eyes. It didn’t look like the storm was that close. I was just gonna finish my page. “None of your business,” I say. I like to journal ’cause it reminds me of my mom. I’ve got a page from one of her old diaries tucked away in my desk, and I try to write like she did.

Tam snorts, but right then a huge gust of wind hits the Orion. The whole ship rises up by a couple of feet and slams back down. My stomach jumps into my throat. I just about float off the deck.

Behind me, I hear the thunk of something heavy falling out of my desk. The wind pushes down on the aft of the Orion and up on its bow, so the deck slants and I have to brace myself to keep from slipping aftward, toward Nic’s cabin and the stairway at the other end of the ship.

A black-and-silver flash rolls by my feet through the open door, and my heart tries to swan-dive out of my chest.

I don’t remember much about my parents, see. That’s why my last name’s Skylung, after the way I can breathe the special air in cloud balloons, instead of after their last name. Mrs. T and Nic found me in a crashed ship in the desert outside Vash Abandi when I was three.

Tam says my parents must be dead since nobody’s ever seen them, but I don’t believe him. I remember my dad standing at the wheel of a cloudship in a sandstorm, shouting directions to the crew. I remember my mom letting me run my fingers over fancy etching on a silver safe and telling me how special it was. I think they’re still out there, doing something amazing, and I just have to find them. So I take extra special care of the knickknacks I have left from when Nic and Mrs. T found me.

The most important of all those things is a round, tarnished silver doorknob that I remember my mom pressing into my hands and telling me to keep safe. The same one that just rolled past my feet and is heading for the deck rails, the open sky, and the ocean below.

I elbow Tam out of the way and run after it. There’s another crack of lightning off the port bow. A gust of wind hits the Orion and pushes the doorknob starboard. It skitters toward the rail, where there are little gaps called scuppers that let the rain drain off during big storms. The scuppers are more than big enough for my doorknob to fit through.

“Nadya!” Tam shouts, but I ignore him. I’ve almost caught up to the doorknob when the wind gusts again, and the knob slips through my fingers and rolls farther toward the rail. The Orion levels out, and then her port side lifts, sending everything on deck tumbling starboard again. I get a glimpse into the ocean through one of the scuppers, and the doorknob rolls right toward it. I’m still a couple feet away. I hold my breath, dive, stretch out my fingers, and close my eyes.

I nab the doorknob just as it’s sailing into the air.

Half a second later, my shoulder slams into the railing hard enough to rattle my teeth, but I don’t lose my grip. I snatch the doorknob back up through the hole, open my eyes, and brush my fingers over it. No damage—Goshend be good—it’s the same dusty silver, blackened in some spots with tarnish I can’t get off no matter how hard I polish. It’s about as big as an undersized orange, with a huge, beautiful tree winding its limbs upward on the front like it’s praying and a strange little rod with lots of slots in it coming out the back. I sniff it real quick, just to make sure the smell of home’s still there. It is—a spicy, musty aroma that makes my tongue tingle.

“Dang it, Nadya!” Tam shouts. He shuts the door to my cabin and stomps toward me. The wind calms down, and the Orion stops pitching around so much. I take a deep breath and tuck the doorknob into my pocket, where it’ll be safe.

Tam grabs me by the wrist when he gets to me and dumps my safety belt, which he must’ve nabbed from my cabin, into my lap. “That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen you do,” he says. “What if you...

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Verlag
G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593533755
ISBN 13 
9780593533758
Einband
Taschenbuch
Zeichner
Helquist Brett
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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