The First Unicorn Rider: A World of Skandar Story - Hardcover

Buch 6 von 8: Skandar

Steadman, A.F.

 
9781665981170: The First Unicorn Rider: A World of Skandar Story
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1665981172 ISBN 13: 9781665981170
Verlag: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

Meet the adventurer who first discovered the Island in this thrilling novella prequel to the Skandar series from New York Times and internationally bestselling author A.F. Steadman—featuring black-and-white illustrations throughout!

George Penhaligon has only ever wanted adventure. And when he finds himself shipwrecked and alone on a mysterious island, he makes an incredible discovery. Unicorns are real—and they’re bloodthirsty.

Slowly, George gains one unicorn’s trust, and together, they explore the island’s magical secrets. But there is a dark presence lurking in his new home, more deadly than any unicorn.

Can George fulfill his destiny and free the island from a terrible fate?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

A.F. Steadman grew up in the Kent countryside, getting lost in fantasy worlds and scribbling stories in notebooks. Before focusing on writing, she worked in law, until she realized that there wasn’t nearly enough magic involved. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling Skandar series.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One: The Storm CHAPTER ONE The Storm
GEORGE PENHALIGON WAS HAVING A very bad day. It wasn’t unusual for George to have bad days, but so far this one had been exceptionally terrible, and it had barely even started.

“Get out of the boat, George.”

George pretended not to hear his oldest brother and stayed very still in his hiding place beneath the tangled fishing nets. Once he became an official member of the Penhaligon crew, the nets would never get so tangled.

In the half-light of the early morning, Locryn’s head of black curls appeared over the side of the small red fishing boat that belonged to their family. Ma said all four of her sons looked like her eldest—hair as black as night, curls as wild as the Cornish sea, eyes as green as an emerald wood. What she really meant was that they all looked like Da. But Ma didn’t like talking about Da, not since the sea had taken him.

“Stop messing around, George. We need to get going.” That was Jago, the second oldest. He was always worrying about how many fish he caught and what they would fetch at the market. He also liked rules, way too much. And currently George was breaking the biggest one.

“Your thirteenth birthday is tomorrow.” Piran’s face appeared over the side of the boat too. He was closest in age to George, and the one who annoyed him the most.

George untangled himself from the nets and sat up, spoiling for a fight. Okay, so he was not supposed to be in the boat, not yet. The older Penhaligon brothers had insisted for as long as George could remember that a person could not become a fisherman if he was still a fisherboy. And this miraculous change, which George absolutely did not believe in, happened at the age of thirteen.

He crossed his arms. “How does one day even matter?”

“It matters to Ma,” Locryn said severely. “And that’s the end of it. Tomorrow you’ll be old enough to come out fishing with us. Today you aren’t.”

George wanted to argue, but he had become a little wiser in the last few years. He’d begun to suspect that the rule that kept him away from the sea had, in fact, been invented by Ma. He supposed he could wait one more day for her. Just one.

“You can go and fish off the rocks like a good little fisherboy.” Piran sniggered, his green eyes cruel.

Defeated, George did indeed spend most of the day fishing off the rocks and trying not to stare out to sea too much. It wasn’t easy watching his older brothers getting to have all these adventures without him, especially when George was the one who was always dreaming of what lay beyond the horizon. Ma often said he was her “restless child,” which sounded like a bad thing, but George thought he understood what she meant. Sometimes he felt like the wind was churning waves inside his chest. Even though he tried to convince himself every day that becoming a fisherman would change everything, he was beginning to suspect it wasn’t the fishing he really wanted. And he worried that his brothers would never let him sail as far as his heart wanted to take him.

Even so, tomorrow something would change. George was so sick of every day being a more boring version of the previous one. Tomorrow would be different.

Cheered by this thought, George began plotting exactly how he was going to transport the crabs he’d caught that day right into Piran’s underpants. He knew there wouldn’t be presents for his birthday tomorrow, which was okay, but by dinnertime he’d decided that he would be happy with two things: catching his first fish from the Penhaligon boat and Piran waking up with a crab-pinched bum.

Then dinner happened, and the day got even worse. He had been hoping Ma might tell them another one of her tales about Cornish magical beasts. George loved to hear the stories that had been passed down through their family. But instead, to his horror, the Penhaligons started a conversation about the weather. It was a topic George found so boring that he had—more than once—fallen asleep right in his stew and burned the end of his nose. He’d never been embarrassed by this. It was always worth it, just to make the conversations about fog, mist, wind direction, and seasonally low temperatures stop. And then this dinnertime, on the eve of his birthday no less—

“Old Mrs. Trewithen up at the dairy says there’s a storm coming in,” Ma said ominously. “She’s rarely wrong.”

George crossed his arms, worried about where this was going. “You can’t listen to her, Ma. Last week when I went to collect the milk, she confused me for you.”

Locryn swallowed his mouthful of fish stew. “Mrs. Trewithen does have an eye for the weather.” George began to argue back, but Locryn was insistent. “It’s true. And she’s right. All us fishermen could feel it brewing when we brought in our catches today.”

George winced at the words “all us fishermen” as though his brother had shouted.

“Even Uther isn’t taking his trawler out in the morning,” Jago said, his spoon midway to his mouth. He looked up at the ceiling, as though already imagining the rain pouring through the old, leaky roof.

“Well, that’s settled, then.” Relief threaded through Ma’s words. “Tomorrow morning, all you boys will stay here until this storm passes.”

“Won’t that be cozy, Georgie boy?” Piran ruffled George’s hair roughly. “All of us in the cottage for your birthday.”

And that was the moment George snapped. He was so furious that those waves he tried to keep calm inside himself thrashed against his chest. He couldn’t stay at the table a second longer, or even in this cottage with its boring conversations about the weather and each tedious day no different from the previous one. He pretended to go to bed in the small room he shared with all his brothers, but then, as quietly as he could in his sturdy boots, he snuck out the back door while his family was still eating. He knew they would be up late tonight, making the most of not having an early start in the boat tomorrow.

All the way to the sea, George shouted rude things about each of his brothers, though not his ma. Nobody was rude about Elowen Penhaligon.

Finally, he reached the floating jetty where all the boats of the local fishermen were moored. The water was inky and still. George continued shouting as he walked along the planks, telling the sea that he didn’t believe for one minute that there was a storm coming—that it was just Locryn, Jago, and Piran trying to stop him from joining the crew on his birthday. To stop him from joining them on their adventures.

“Well, you can’t stop me forever!” he yelled at the darkening sky.

Hours later, George was still lying in the red boat tied to the jetty—Da had named her Penny—with his head resting on his brothers’ bag of dry clothes. But an idea was brewing. Those restless waves inside his chest began to churn like the sea in the imaginary storm that was supposedly on its way. The sky was so dark now that George was sure it had to be past midnight. And that meant it actually was his birthday. Technically, he...

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2025
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1665981172
ISBN 13 
9781665981170
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Zeichner
Šumberac Manuel
Anzahl der Seiten
256
Kontakt zum Hersteller
webstar
casetta@mondadori.it

Via Mondadori 1,
Segrate Milano
20090
Italien

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