Verwandte Artikel zu Ista Flit and the Impossible Key (TideMagic, 2)

Ista Flit and the Impossible Key (TideMagic, 2) - Hardcover

Buch 2 von 2: Tidemagic

Harlow, Clare

 
9780593806784: Ista Flit and the Impossible Key (TideMagic, 2)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593806786 ISBN 13: 9780593806784
Verlag: Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

In book two of this middle-grade fantasy trilogy, Ista Flit -- a daring heroine with the magical ability to look like anyone she's ever seen -- must help her father escape from an enchanted trap.

In her first adventure, Ista Flit and her friends saved the town of Shelwich from a monstrous foe—but her father is still missing. 

She has a new clue though: a key, engraved with mysterious symbols, and a note saying "any door with a keyhole will do."

This key transports Ista, Nat, and Ruby to Glass Island—where creatures Ista thought were mythical turn out to be very, very real. A sinister wraith haunts the reed-beds, and deviously seductive, fairy-like marsh spinners lure people in to dance at their revels—and never let them go.

Ista is sure her father must be trapped in the marsh spinner's lair. She's determined to devise a plan cunning enough to infiltrate the revels and rescue Pa.

When the tide is high and magic is at its peak, Ista and her friends will face off with the trickiest creatures imaginable. Can they win Ista's father's freedom? Or will the revels claim three new dancers forever...?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

After studying English at university, Clare Harlow went to drama school and became an actor. A few years ago, she turned her love of storytelling from stage to page and became a writer too. She lives in south-east London, where she spends a lot of time walking by the river in the hope that a little Tidemagic might rub off on her.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

The Door

Ista Flit stood with her left foot in the city she had just begun to think of as home and her right foot in a patch of shadow belonging to . . . somewhere else entirely. Somewhere that smelled of wet soil and witch hazel and pine.

A forest, overlooked by a gauzy predawn sky.

Impossible, part of her insisted. Well, it was almost dawn. The kitchen door, how-ever--a door she had used without incident every day since Pa’s disappearance had brought her to Shelwich almost three and a half moons ago--should have opened onto the narrow street that ran behind the Fabulous Fletwin restaurant. She should have been looking at the woodstore and the mailbox and the moss-covered stone trough where Padley and Giddon had planted bulbs that they said would sprout in-to crocuses when the weather grew warmer.

But now . . . no street, no trace of the snow that had been dusting the city since yesterday evening. Behind her, the Fletwin’s kitchen was as solid and cozy as ever, but through the doorway in front of her, unquestionably, was a forest. Rain-freckled creepers hung like garlands between white-barked silver birches, sturdy oaks, and elegant pines. A carpet of fallen leaves was spread in invitation, drawing her attention to a glade a little way ahead.

Fortunately, impossible was exactly what Ista had expected.

Impossible was going to help her find Pa. Finally.

And yet she hesitated, leaning into the magic that whispered around her. At not quite two hours past Low Tide, most people wouldn’t have been able to hear it. When it came to magic, though, Ista was not most people. She could read the Tide’s ebbs and flows as easily as she could sniff out the ingredients of a soup or a sauce, which was to say, with almost unfailing accuracy.

Over the past few days, she’d accidentally sniffed out rather a lot of trouble in her search for Pa, too. Now she felt the telltale prickle of wrongness in her stomach and down the backs of her legs.

A breeze stirred, ruffling her short brown hair. Not an ordinary breeze but one that reached out in tendrils, tugging at her limbs as if imploring her to get a move on. Ista glanced down at the key winking up at her from the Fletwin’s doormat. It was a small silver key, with nothing remarkable about it except for the engraved sym-bols that almost resembled musical notes.

Well, and the fact that her using it had made a forest appear at the doorstep.

Any door with a keyhole will do, Pa’s message had said--the message he’d hidden in his clarinet case, along with the key, where no one but Ista would discover them.

Ista hadn’t questioned his instructions. And she’d had no doubt that the key would work. Less than two days previously, she’d watched a boy called Tamlin use an al-most identical key to open a doorway very like the one in which she now stood.

Very like, but not the same--and this was the root of her hesitation. The doorway through which Tamlin had vanished had led to a garden, not a forest. A garden promised a house, and people--people who might know where Pa was. The forest in front of Ista made her think of stories about travelers who took wrong turns and lost themselves among the trees. . . .

She shook off the unsettling thought. Pa wouldn’t steer her wrong. He simply wouldn’t.

Then again, Pa hadn’t come back. That fact had scuttled after her like a spider all night as she’d planned and packed. Pa’s message had claimed that he would return “in good time,” that the key was just in case she needed him sooner. Yet almost a complete season had passed since he’d disappeared, and there had been no trace of him.

The impossible breeze seemed displeased that she was dithering. It twined around her ankles, nuzzling like a cat. Adjusting her grip on her bag of supplies, Ista cast a look over her shoulder to the kitchen counter and the three envelopes waiting up-on it.

One for Giddon and Padley, proprietors of the Fabulous Fletwin and as close to family as she had in Shelwich.

One for quick-thinking Ruby Mallard, who always landed on her feet--quite literal-ly, when the Tide was high.

One for Nat Shah, who was as bossy as a beagle but who never gave up on any-thing, especially the people he cared about.

She pictured a swarm of jewel-green beetles click-clacking across the rooftops--the glass-bugs--hurrying to deliver the fourth envelope to Alexo Rokis on Nimble Lane.

Four envelopes, and four identical letters, explaining in Ista’s scratchy handwriting what she was doing, and that she’d left them the key--as Pa had left it for her, alt-hough in plain sight, rather than hidden away.

If I’m not back in two days, please send help, she’d written, knowing her friends would have tried to delay her if she’d asked for their advice on how to proceed. Ruby would have been skeptical that the doorway wasn’t a trap. Padley would have said it was too dangerous to even consider. Giddon would have wanted to go in her place. Alexo would have insisted on devising one of his clockwork plans. As for Nat . . . Ista thought of his searchlight stare, of the notebook that barely left his hands. He would have had a thousand questions, and she wouldn’t have had an-swers to any of them.

But Nat and Ruby had both had their missing loved ones returned to them. Pa was still missing--and no matter how confident his message had sounded, some piece of his plan had clearly crumbled. Which meant that Ista couldn’t afford to waste time. He might be waiting for her, counting on her, precious minutes falling through his fingers like grains of sand through a timer.

She felt a pinch of doubt about leaving the key. Perhaps that had been Pa’s mis-take. What if the doorway sealed itself up after her and couldn’t be opened again?

The impossible breeze whirled impatiently, as if it really didn’t want her thinking about that. It gave Ista a nudge, knocking her off balance, and she stumbled for-ward, her left foot landing beside her right one.

That was that. She had crossed the threshold.

Ista spun back. The doorway remained, framing a neat rectangle of the Fletwin’s kitchen like a painting, the key still winking on the doormat.

Everything else was forest.

Then, with stomach-sinking inevitability, a curl of wind looped round and swung the door shut.

For a second, the shape held, as if all Ista had to do was turn the handle and the Fletwin and Shelwich would welcome her home. She reached out . . . but it was too late. The door became ghostly, its outline wavering, then it disintegrated into dusty fragments that a final lick of wind swirled away into nothingness.

2

The Path of Footprints

Its work done, the impossible breeze stilled. Quiet settled like a blanket, disturbed only by the murmur of magic.

I can’t have gone so very far, Ista told herself. The Tide and the cold both felt the same as they had only moments ago in Shelwich, and it was the same time of day.

But there was an oddness to this place. An absence. No insects, no birds.

Ista refused to panic. Just breathe, Pa would have said, and though it was because of him that she was in this mess, the advice still stood. She closed her eyes and counted to five, taking in the richness of rain-drenched earth, the lemony smell of the witch hazel, the sharp green cleanness of the pines.

She opened her eyes again, turning toward the glade she’d spotted earlier. That was where the doorway had pointed her, so that must be where Pa meant for her to go. Something stood at the center of it. An archway, perhaps double the height of the doorway through which she’d come, and...

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Verlag
Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2025
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593806786
ISBN 13 
9780593806784
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
326
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Knopf
https://knopfdoubleday.com

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