Authors: Shane Hegarty

Darkmouth (25 page)

T
he door swung open so suddenly that Finn almost sprawled across the floor. He righted himself just as his mother, Emmie, and Steve pushed in behind him.

The room was S3âa storage room down the Long Hall. Near the entrance to the main house, it had a thick wooden door, with iron rivets studded across it from top to bottom and a fat brass lock. It was sandwiched between E1, an equipment room, and A2, where some of the family's hundreds of years of archives were kept.

But otherwise it appeared unremarkable. Even the fact that neither Finn nor his mother had ever been in it was not unusual. There were many doors along the Long Hall. Many rooms they had never set foot in.

Steve tried the light switch. The single bulb in the room flared, sparked, and died.

The room was narrow, with only a slit of a window
high on the far wall, through which a single stream of moonlight fell on the only object in the empty space: a tall, thin table halfway along the right-hand wall.

On the table was a brown wooden box. Finn walked over to it and the others followed, his mother first, but slow in her movements, shock still dulling her senses.

Finn examined the simple box, which had no markings, no patterns, not even a keyhole, just clean, rounded edges. Dust scattered from it when he touched it, dancing in the pale light. Finn worked his fingers around the rim of the box, searching for a lid. Finding it, he gently prized the box open.

Inside was a piece of paper, clean, folded. Finn looked around at his mother for consent to pick it up. Exhausted, frail, still suffering from the atmosphere of the Infested Side, she simply nodded.

He took it in his fingers, unfolded it gently. It was obviously stiff with age, fragile, and he was careful not to tear it at the folds.

He looked at it, then back to his mother, his uncertainty clear.

“What?” she whispered.

“It's not a map. It's a sentence. Just one sentence. And it's not even in Dad's handwriting.”

“What does it say?” asked Emmie.

Finn read it aloud: “Light up the house.”

T
hey turned on every light, every lamp, in every room and every corner of every room, illuminating the house in the early morning before the sun had yet peeked through the windows.

“Where do we even begin?” Finn asked Emmie. “Where would someone hide a map?”

“At least we'll get a day off school for this,” said Emmie.

The corridor stretched ahead of them. Behind them, in the library, Steve was standing amid debris, examining the long curves of shelves while holding an atlas in his hand. “The good news is that there's a map here,” he called out to Finn and Emmie. “The bad news is that there's another, oh, couple of thousand alongside it.”

Finn's mother approached down the Long Hall, opening her mouth to speak when she reached them only to get caught on a cough. “I guess it'll take a few days still,” she said when she finally cleared her throat.

“You need rest, Mam.”

“I'll rest when we find your dad.” She placed her arm around Finn's shoulder and he snuggled into her, briefly forgetting to be embarrassed in front of Emmie. His mother gave him a kiss on the head and walked into the library.

“Clara, I know we've only just met,” said Steve, “and you might not exactly trust me, but I want you to knowâ”

“Let's just find this map, okay?”

“Okay.”

Emmie leaned in to Finn. “Does your mam know about the prophecy?”

“I haven't told her. She has enough to worry about. Don't you tell her either.”

“My spying days are done, I promise,” said Emmie.

“No more secrets, please.”

“Agreed,” said Emmie, with a nod of her head. “Except for that one we're keeping from your mother, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Emmie looked at the line of doors in the Long Hall. “Which room should we try first?”

“I don't know. The nearest one, I suppose,” said Finn.

“And then?”

“Look for a pattern maybe. Anything that seems like it
could be a map. If it was obvious, Dad would have told me where to find it. It must be hidden somewhere.”

Emmie hesitated. “Do you think he's going to be okay?”

“I do,” said Finn. “I really do. Even when he was our age, he was doing incredible things, fighting Legends five times our size. Did I ever tell you about the time heâ?”

“Yes.”

“And the day heâ?”

“That too.”

“Well then, you know he's going to be okay.”

“And what happens when we find the map?”

“Then we go after him,” said Finn, with more confidence than he actually felt.

“I'm not sure I'll be much use,” said Emmie.

“I don't know. I could teach you a couple of moves. Do you know MacNeill's Limb Severer?”

“Whose limb did he sever with that?”

“His own, actually.”

Emmie eyed Finn for a moment, then gave him a poke in the shoulder. “I told you, don't try and scam this city girl.”

She moved to the first door and turned the handle. Finn followed her. “But it's a real move, I swear.”

Behind them, Niall Blacktongue looked down from
his portrait, head bowed, eyes refusing to meet anyone who might look at him. Instead, fixed in crusted paint, he gazed downward, toward a red table at his side, on which were scattered a few items: a compass, a feather in an ink pot, a magnifying glass, some coins, a couple of unnamed books, and a small square mirror propped upright.

And in the mirror was the reflection of a piece of paper, no bigger than a thumbnail yet bright and detailed, at the center of which was painted a tiny but very distinguishable X.

About the Author

Photo by Roisin Macken-Price

SHANE HEGARTY
was born and raised in Skerries, Ireland, where he now lives with his wife and four children but no pets since an unfortunate incident with the family goldfish. He is a journalist with the
Irish Times
, and this is his first novel.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
hc.com
.

Credits

Copyright

DARKMOUTH #1: THE LEGENDS BEGIN
. Copyright Â© 2015 by Shane Hegarty. Illustrations copyright Â© 2015 by James de la Rue. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

www.harpercollinschildrens.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hegarty, Shane.

The Legends begin / Shane Hegarty. â First edition.

pages Â Â Â Â cm. â (Darkmouth ; book 1)

Summary: “Darkmouth is the only village in the world where the fierce magical creatures known as Legends still attackâand it's up to twelve-year-old Finn, the worst Legend Hunter in Darkmouth's history, to uphold his family's legacy and save his hometown”â Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-06-231125-2 (hardcover)

EPub Edition Â© March 2015 ISBN 9780062311313

[1. Animals, MythicalâFiction. 2. PropheciesâFiction.] I. Title.

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