The Chameleon Shop trilogy

1

Unexpected Message

Once upon a time ... in a little town called Feilding, there was a twelve-year-old girl called Kaylee Browne.

Kaylee hung upside down from her swing, her mousey-brown hair hung, dangling in the grass. Her head throbbed from all the blood rushing to it. The thick tree trunk beside her flowed down into a maze of branches, with the sky a sea of pale blue with white fluffy clouds peeking between them.

As she gazed vacantly, a strange piece of paper fluttered down between the branches to the grass at her nose. Eagerness and curiosity made her let go of the ropes she’d been holding and she slid ungracefully to the grass, bumping her head quite hard on the ground. She sat up rubbing it, annoyed and crossed her long gangly legs, only to have the wooden swing meet the back of her head rudely with a hard ‘thunk’. She scowled and grabbed it, letting go once it was still.

Tuning out on the sounds of grown-ups shouting from inside her house, she began to read the old pale-brown looking paper.

NEW BOOKSHOP OPENING IN THE SQUARE TODAY. IF YOU FEEL LIKE GETTING LOST IN A STORY AND VISITING STRANGE LANDS, JOIN US.

FIRST BOOK FREE TO THE FIRST THREE VISITORS. WE HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE.

‘Hmmm...’ she said.

Kaylee listened to her mother’s boyfriend, Paul, shouting at her mother, Trish, about the tea-set Kaylee had accidently smashed. It was a gift from him and he suspected she had done it on purpose.

Kaylee wished her father was still around. She still hadn’t accepted he was dead after the explosion in the mine six months ago. They had never found the body after all.

She loved her mother dearly but felt so lost and alone sometimes.

With the old piece of paper still in her hand, she grabbed her backpack from where it lay on the lawn and began walking to town. It was only a small town, so fifteen minutes of pounding the pavements with her red Chucks and she would be there.

She had worked up quite a sweat by the time the quaint little shop came within sight. In a dark, narrow street it stood. It had an old stone exterior and looked squashed in there, like a skinny man wedged between two Sumo Wrestlers on a bus. She’d never noticed it before even though she’d lived in this little town since further back than she could remember.

A little bell somewhere out the back of the shop tinkled as she came through the door and that glorious smell of old books ─ organic compounds breaking down and releasing that intoxicating scent of ancient wisdom, paper, ink, glue and sometimes smoke ─ wafted over her, bathing her in its almond, vanilla and floral deliciousness.

As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw ahead of her tall shelves standing in three lines down the centre of the narrow shop, chock full with row upon row of books. She wandered in and gazed around the various spines of the books there. Many books were leather bound, mostly very old and intriguing.

Heaven!

There was no obvious order to separate subjects. Well this is going to be interesting, she mused.

Eventually, she reached up and grabbed the oldest book she could see. She loved ancient books, the ones where you could smell the old leather and the covers were a little cracked and rumpled round the edges, the writing usually in gold lettering and a fancy font.

The title on the cover said Journey to the Five Realms. The book was not overly large but was quite weighty. A musty smell wafted off the pages as she opened it. The first page said:

To find your heart’s desire,

trust in the key of fire...

‘Well, that’s just weird,’ Kaylee muttered to herself. She heard slow shuffling footsteps and looked up to see a hunched old man appear from somewhere out back of the shop. He had sparse wisps of grey hair, which seemed to float on top of his balding crown. Kaylee noticed he walked with a bit of a limp as he made his way towards the front counter ─ a thick dark brown slab, tucked away in the corner to her left.

He gave her the strangest of looks. A smile, but not just a friendly, how are you sort of smile. It was kind of an, I know you from some place, sort of smile.

That is just ridiculous she thought. She was about to say something to him, ‘Ah, excuse m...’, when a small breeze from somewhere out back blew open a few more pages in her book ... revealing a large ancient-looking key.

The key was a little rusty and made from a dark-brown metal, like her mother’s cast-iron pans at home. It sat nestled in a groove cut into the pages of the book, made precisely to fit. The top of it was a beautiful intricate Celtic-knot pattern. No wonder the book had felt so heavy.

‘Can I be helpin’ you at all there, dear?’ the hunched owner asked, causing Kaylee to start as though caught doing something bad. She slapped the book shut and looked up guiltily.

‘Ah, no thank you. I’m quite alright.’ She wanted that book. She couldn’t precisely say why it was so urgent, but she wanted that book, badly. However, she had no pocket-money left to pay for one.

She approached the counter, raised the book above her head and said, ‘First three people get their books free, the flyer said?’

He nodded, ‘Yes, that’s correct. And before you ask me, yes, you are the lucky third person in today. If that’s the book you’ve chosen, there is no charge my dear.’

She smiled, ‘Thank you.’ Now that he had said she could have it, she was burning with unanswered questions about the key within those old pages. ‘You don’t by any chance happen to know what the key opens.’

‘A key you say? No, sorry, can’t really say that I do. But if you get your parents,’ he paused and looked at her a little strangely when he said this, as though he knew she had no father now, ‘to take you along to Mitchell’s cottage on the weekend; the tour guide Fred is an old friend of mine. He’s a blacksmith, familiar with old keys and such. He might be able to help you with it.’

Kaylee thanked the strange man once again, tucked the new, old book in her backpack and hurried home to ask her mother if they could go to Michell’s cottage this weekend. She was sure her mother would take her. After all, the original owners of the cottage had apparently been some ancestor-or-other of theirs, way back in the 1800’s.

She was in such a good mood now, she doubted even Paul could dampen her spirits when she got home.

How wrong she was.

2

Evil Step Father

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Paul roared when she walked in the back door.

Kaylee was bombarded with questions and accusations ─ mainly from Paul, about where she had disappeared to without telling them.

Her mother was also upset, but mainly more worried for her safety, than angry. Trish, Kaylee’s mother, couldn’t get a word in sideways with Paul ranting on and on.

Kaylee did what she usually did, when things got hairy at home. Without a word, she headed straight for her room and slammed the door, plonking down on the bed with her school backpack clutched under her arm. She lay there trying to calm her breathing, because if she didn’t she’d probably end up screaming at Paul, which would only upset her mother even more. She put her headphones on and turned her favourite song up really loud.

Suddenly her bedroom door flew open so hard; the door handle dug a handle-shaped hole in the wall behind it.

Paul pointed his finger at Kaylee, about to start lecturing her again when she yanked the headphones off and shouted, ‘Out! Get out of my room! You aren’t supposed to come in here!’ She was now doing some pointing of her own.

‘I pay the bills and I’ll go in whichever damn room I want to!’ He thundered back at her.

Kaylee burst into tears and hid under the blankets trying to block out his yelling. From beneath the blankets, she heard a different muffled voice. Her mother’s.

She slowly pulled the blankets down and was relieved to find that Paul was no longer there. She could hear her mother telling him off down the hall, ‘That’s her personal space, Paul. I know she was wrong in going off like that, but you will just have to talk to her later about it. Her room is the only place in the house where she can get away from....’

Kaylee was sure her mother had been about to say ‘from you’ meaning Paul, but that would have lit him up like a firecracker, so her mother tactfully changed it to ‘... from everything.’

Eventually the dust settled and Kaylee explained to her mother about the new bookshop. She apologised for worrying her so and asked if they could go see Mitchell’s Cottage, without Paul. However, Paul was not one to be excluded from anything concerning her mother.

Still the weekend rolled around two days later and there they were.

The cottage was actually quite cool. It had been built way back in 1880, from a special rock called schist, by Andrew Mitchell for his brother John, his wife Jessie and their ten children.

Aye ... ten kids! Kaylee thought the woman was mad. One child gave her mother enough trouble.

Her mother and Paul were outside looking at some big rock sundial thing-a-me Andrew Mitchell had carved from solid schist, so rather than tag along where Paul could annoy her, Kaylee decided to have a nosey round inside the main house by herself.

The tour guide’s name was Gerald. She had no idea what had happened to Fred, the bookshop owner’s friend. Still, she had the mysterious key in her backpack, which she took everywhere with her. It usually carried a couple of books (yes, Kaylee was a bit of a nerd) and a snack or two, a warm jersey if her mother could force it on her and a drink bottle of water, among other things.

A very funny thing happened when Kaylee walked through the cottage doorway. She felt a strange vibration run through her, almost like a tiny electric shock; not the sort that scared the bejesus out of you, just the sort you get when you whip your polar fleece off too fast and all of your hair stands out crackling.

‘That’s weird,’ she said to herself.

She wandered around inside the old stone cottage, rubbing her arms vigorously to generate a bit of warmth. It was exceedingly chilly out on the windy plains and not long past winter. She had unfortunately ignored her mother’s request to stuff a jersey in her backpack.

All the while, as she wandered around, she could hear what sounded like a low humming noise; almost like a beehive somewhere. She hoped not. Flying bugs really freaked her out!

There were two large rooms and three smaller ones. Someone had put some plain furniture in there: a wooden table, four chairs and a few beds. They were there for the tourist’s benefit, as the originals had perished long ago. The old hearth was still there though, undamaged by time although blackened by years of soot.

Mum should come and see this. Kaylee popped her head out the door to call her mother to come have a look. No one was there.

‘What the bloody hell?’ She said, confused and a little peeved. ‘Well, that’s just nice isn’t it? Maybe they’ve gone to look at the chook-house or something.’

It was starting to snow lightly, so Kaylee sat on one of the old wooden chairs nearest the empty fireplace and closed her eyes, wishing there was a nice warm fire in that hearth.

She heard a whoomph! and felt warmth creep up her legs. She opened her eyes and there in the hearth, which had been previously damp, cold and most definitely empty, there now roared a hearty fire! Close enough to singe her socks, in fact.

Kaylee leapt out of the chair so fast it fell with a crash to the floor. ‘Holy cow! Where’d that come from?’ The humming she’d been hearing ever since she came through the doorway grew louder, as if it was coming from her clothes. Her backpack, that’s where it was coming from she realised with alarm.

When she opened the backpack, she could see a green glow emanating from the dark depths within. With a bit of hesitation she reached in and gingerly picked up the glowing object, not surprised to find it was the key. It was an unearthly green, like a glow-stick and it was strangely warm, almost too hot to touch.

Standing in front of this fire from nowhere with a strange key, Kaylee wondered when her mother would come back because something really weird was going on and she didn’t think she was capable of dealing with it alone.

Hot on the heels of thoughts of her mother, followed thoughts of Paul. She closed her eyes again and wished with all her heart she could get away from him, as far away as possible, so she never had to see his angry face again...

3

Not in Feilding Anymore

When Kaylee opened her eyes again, the cottage had vanished. Instead, she found she was now standing atop a mountain rather close, excessively close for her liking, to the crater of an active volcano. Smoke and hot steam rose up around her cheeks, making her break out in an instant sweat and she could hear the sounds of rumbling below her. It sounded like hot rock stew!

She leapt back again with a cry of absolute terror, clutched the glowing green key to the front of her sweatshirt and looked around in total disbelief.

What had happened? Where was this place? Surely it was not the top of a mountain; a live and very angry looking mountain. She must have fainted or something and be dreaming all of this.

However, as she gazed around her and saw the smaller hills surrounding her, the blue sea on the horizon in the distance, islands floating in front of the two moons up in the sky...

Wait, what? Two moons? Floating islands?

There was a solitary mountain in the distance, jutting out of the landscape, surrounded at present by a blanket of mist, but at its peak, she could just make out what looked to be possibly a castle.

To her left she could see floating islands, complete with grass covered hills. They had flowing waterfalls, tumbling over the sides until they vanished as mist. They were the shape of inverted teardrops, with dirt, rock and root covered points at the bottom, as if they had been plucked out of a giant’s garden.

To her right, beyond the solitary mountain, she could see an ocean of dark blue, which led who knew where in these strange lands. White foamy waves lapped at the beaches of a few lonely islands, far out in the Bay. Near the shore of the mainland a row of galleon ships bobbed at a small Port.

We’re not in Kansas anymore, Kaylee ... a line from The Wizard of Oz came to mind.

‘Oh, hell, how do I get out of this mess?’ Kaylee murmured. She turned to what appeared to be a shingle-covered path winding down the volcano to surrounding fields below. Fields bursting with flora and fauna, but oddly, becoming more brown and barren as they neared the distant Mountain.

Kaylee started walking, fast. That hot, bubbling rock stew looked set to bubble over and she didn’t mean to be hanging around when it did.

She was glad she still had her backpack. At least she had some food and water for the walk. She realized she was still clutching the strange key, so stuffed it back inside the pack and set off.

Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed what at first appeared to be a black bird flying towards her. As it grew nearer though, she saw with complete amazement, it was a horse; a huge, black, flying horse, a Pegasus to be precise.

‘Think I hit my head on that swing harder than I thought? Mum’s never going to believe a word of this.’

The black Pegasus landed gracefully not far from Kaylee. His shiny muscles glistened in the sunlight and his beautiful ebony wings spread as wide as a truck. He trotted majestically up to her, lowered his nose and nudged her outstretched hand, snuffling a friendly ‘Hello’. He knelt on one knee and waited patiently for her to climb on.-