The Wild Huntsboys

by Martin Stewart

Overview

In the spirit of Adam Gidwitz comes a fairytale for the modern reader, but this time, the faeries are the monsters lurking in the shadows.

In a city overrun by war, Luka doesn't have time for games. So when his little sister asks him to care for her faeries as she's sent away to escape the air raids, he dismisses her childish­ness. But it's already more than he can bear to see her go, so he promises to do as she asks.

A promise that Luka quickly breaks. In an empty home, anger and frustration get the better of him. Instead of leav­ing an offering for the faeries, he flings their saucer of milk as far out the window as he can. Big mistake. The faeries are not only very real, but they're more ter­rifying than he could have ever imag­ined. And now they want revenge.

With the aid of his new friends—a savvy techie, a quiet evacuee, and an unlikely ally—Luka has three days to turn his house into a fortress. But his problems are even more complicated than he thought: it's not just the faeries who are out to get the Wild Huntsboys . . .

If Luka fails, those closest to him will pay the price—and time is running out.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593116135
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	03/09/2021
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)
Lexile:	650L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

MARTIN STEWART has previously worked as an English teacher, university lecturer, barman, recycling technician, and golf caddy. A native of Glasgow, he now lives on Scotland's west coast with his wife, two children, and a very big dog. He enjoys cooking with eggs, running on the beach, worrying about the Bears' offense, and buying books to feed his to-be-read pile.

Read an Excerpt

1

The faerie folk are glad to help
They’re glad to lend a hand
They’ll keep the milk and shine the silk
They’re noble and they’re grand!
They’ll gladly churn your butter
Or they’ll polish up the wood
They’ll even buff the silver
Oh! They really are so good!

Traditional song, anonymous  

“How do you make a plane out of a frying pan?” said Elena, leaping onto the pavement.
   Luka caught up to her, gripping Hugo’s collar.
   “You melt it down,” he said, “then when it’s all runny you turn it into something else: plane, tank, bomb. Whatever.”
   “What about the handle?”
   Luka brushed at his jacket. It was thick with demolition dust—just like the rest of him. There had been more raids in the last week, and the fog of broken bricks was everywhere.
He checked his phone, then dropped it in his pocket as an army jeep buzzed past.
   “What?” he said.
   Elena wrinkled her nose. “Like, our frying pan’s got a plastic handle, so—”
   “God, Ellie, I don’t know. The Government’s run out of metal, so they’re taking ours, all right?”
   They looked at the trucks that lined North Street—their deep, clattering bellies piled high with pots, pans, spoons, knives, benches, bathtubs, and bikes. There were even radiators, sticking out of the heaps like broken teeth.
   “It’s scary,” said Elena.
   Luka shrugged. “It’s just stuff.”
   But his sister shook her head, bouncing her dark ponytail against his elbow. “It’s not,” she said.     “It’s people. People lived with these things and painted them and . . . hung their pants on them! Imagine if we—”
   A City Warden stepped into the road, the winter sun shining white behind his square helmet.         Elena shuffled under Luka’s arm while Hugo growled, deep in his chest.
   The Warden banged a passing truck’s flank like he was spurring a horse. As the thing rumbled off in a clank of dust and fumes, they saw the bomb-damaged house it had emptied out gaping like a ribcage: stairs leading nowhere, pictures hung on half walls, hallways like torn throats.
   Luka shivered.
   “I wonder what the Islands will be like,” said Elena, lowering her voice and watching the Wardens crawl through the guts of the ruined home.
   “Quiet,” said Luka, grabbing his jeans to pull his weak leg onto the pavement. “They don’t get bombing raids. There’s no army there. It’ll be quiet.”
   “I hope there’s rabbits and deer and things.”
   “It’s the countryside.”
   “So?”
   “So of course there are. What do you think you’re going to eat?”
   She hit his arm. “I never would.”
   Hugo stopped to sniff a lamppost, then cocked his leg.
   “You will if you get hungry enough,” Luka said over the rattle of dog pee. “You promised Mum.       You need to eat, even if—”
   “I know. But there’ll be enough veggies for me. I’m only little—and they must have powdered avocado and things.”
   Luka shuddered.
   “Even real avocado was yuk. It was green. You won’t remember.”
   They walked a moment in silence, footsteps shadowed by the rasp of Luka’s dragging foot.
   “I wish you could come with me,” Elena said.
   Luka bit the inside of his lip.
   “I know. But I’m too old—ten was the cutoff. I missed it by miles.”
   “By a year.”
   “You’ll be fine. You’re always fine.”
   “I hope so,” said Elena softly.
   Luka touched the top of her head, then checked his phone.
   “I’m out of minutes—how long till the train leaves?”
   “You always use your ration straightaway,” said Elena, her eyebrow curving in a way that  reminded Luka of their mother.
   “I know, but I can’t get used to it. Or the curfew. I mean, switching off data and Wi-Fi at sundown. It’s not fair.”
   “You never know who’s listening,” said Elena, imitating the voice from the advert as she checked her own phone. “It’s fine,” she said, “we’ve got four minutes, so we don’t need to—” “Four? We need to run—come on!”
   He pushed her gas mask and bag into her hands and ran unevenly behind her into the old town, slipping on the slobber of a window-cleaner’s wash as he landed on the cobbles.
   “Luka!” shouted Elena, turning to wait for him as Hugo barked and ran in circles. “Come on!”         “No, you keep going!” said Luka, scrambling to his feet. “You can’t miss it!”
   They ran toward the clock tower, Hugo bounding ahead as they weaved through greasy food stalls and sign-waving protestors, between cables pooled behind the pop-up barracks and finally—gasping so much the air felt like thumbs pressing into their windpipes—down the train station’s big, wide steps.
   Elena stopped so suddenly Luka ran into her.
   “Ow!” he said. “Why did you—”
   Central Station was a hive of neat soldiers and nervous children, their energies swirling under the glass roof in a shrill, piano-wire pitch.
   He took his sister’s hand.
   “You’re on platform nine,” he said stiffly.
   She nodded, and they moved into the throng.
   All the parents had been called up to fight or pressed into service, so the farewells had fallen to the older children, who—prematurely aged by the War’s strange freedoms and responsibilities—had become a colony of miniature grown-ups in the City’s great hive. Government flags hung from the old clock, ration posters plastered the chicory coffee shop, and a thousand children cried and stared and babbled into phones, bug-eyed gas masks hanging around their necks.
   They stood under the vast departures board, bathing in the pale light of distant places: the Highlands, Islands, and Lakesides to which they were being sent, as far from Bellum City’s bomb-stinking chaos as could be imagined.
   An official War Effort message pushed the time- tables aside on the board: be careful with the posts you make— your family’s fate could be at stake. Luka felt his pocket buzz with the matching text as they pushed toward Elena’s platform.
   He wanted to say something, to say everything, but his thoughts were too hot and too fast and the words stuck in his neck in a solid, painful lump.
   “Ellie,” he managed, as they arrived at Elena’s platform. “I wanted to—”
   “You need to promise me something,” she cut him off, glancing over her shoulder.
   “Anything, of course, I—”
   “You need to feed the faeries when I’m gone.”
   Luka closed his eyes. “We’ve talked about this. You’re eight, it’s time you—”
   “I’m not making it up!” Ellie whispered, grabbing his arm. “You do magic too, so—”
   “Mine’s not magic,” said Luka. He pressed his coin into the palm of his right hand, then appeared it from behind her ear. “They’re tricks. I make them happen. If I could do real magic, I’d stop the War and you could stay.”
   Elena let out a single sob, but wiped her cheeks and pulled him close.
   “Feeding the faeries is the same thing! My offering makes the magic happen—and they get so angry if they don’t get their food.”
   “Maybe it’s different now there’s a war on.”
   She shook her head. “They don’t care what’s happening in our world, they just want food. You have to feed them—you have to. Promise me!”
   “Ellie, I don’t—” Luka pulled at his hair.
   “Promise!” she hissed.
   Luka opened his mouth to protest—then he saw the look in her eyes. “All right,” he said. “I will. If it makes you happy.”
   She gave him a quick, strong hug.
   “Tonight, then,” she whispered, bending to scratch Hugo’s ears. “Put a bowl of bread and milk outside my window.” She threw her arms around him. “I love you.”
   “Ellie,” he said, blinking away the light-headedness that tingled up from his feet.
   Elena pushed through the barrier, where a Warden held a scanner under her thumb.
   As she boarded the train, the screen above Luka flashed bright red, and he gripped his coin so tightly that he gasped with the pain. In a few seconds the world had changed: he’d become a boy whose sister had been evacuated, whose family was incomplete—a boy the War had begun to squeeze with all its might.
   Elena was gone. He would walk back through the City alone.
   Luka felt the first prickle of the realization that she really was being taken away, that he would not see her or hear her voice.
   What if he never saw her again?
   Elena turned from the top step. Her skin was olive, like his; her hair dark and straight, like his; and she seemed, to Luka, to be as perfect and small as she had ever been.
   She looked at him and mouthed Feed the faeries.
   “I will, I promise—but you be safe!” shouted Luka, ignoring the heads that turned in his direction and the tears that sprang to his eyes. “Just . . . be safe!”
   She climbed on board, and a moment later the door clicked shut. Hugo whined.
   Luka opened his phone and read the War Effort text, focusing on the words your family’s fate.
   The train slid under the station’s roof of iron and glass, and he waved the palmed coin over his left hand, appearing the silver disk as if by magic—then passed his right hand back across his palm.
   The coin vanished.
   Luka plunged his empty hand into the fur on Hugo’s neck and watched until the train disappeared between domino tower blocks, its windows bright with the hard winter sky.

Editorial Reviews

★ 02/08/2021

Stewart (The Sacrifice Box) mixes a heady brew of faerie lore, unusual tech, and a setting recalling the London Blitz in this solid speculative middle grade debut. Putting his eight-year-old sister, Elena, on a train to be evacuated from war-torn Bellum City, olive-skinned Luka Maldini, 11, promises that he’ll feed the faeries. Angry at the world and the war, however, he throws away the milk and bread offering when a bombing raid begins, unknowingly bringing a faerie curse on the household. Joined by muscular, pale-skinned Max, who has been placed in Luka’s house by government officials, and Hazel, a dark-skinned tech genius who is hiding from them, Luka seeks to avoid an excruciating death at the hands of vengeful faeries; the kids’ only hope is to ward the home’s windows and doors with iron, which is scarce due to the war effort. In addition to conflicts historical and otherworldly, Luka runs afoul of local gang the Lost Boys, finding an unlikely ally in a ferocious faerie scout. Martin consistently ups the book’s tension, layering discrete characterization, close friendship, modern technology, and uncanny elements to create an action-packed adventure with plenty of room for future installments. Ages 8–12. Agent: Molly Ker Hawn, the Bent Agency. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Raves for The Wild Huntsboys:

* “An action-packed adventure.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
 
“A breathless, adventure-filled combination of fantastical and futuristic.”—Kirkus Reviews

"Stewart’s brilliant eye for sardonic humor smoothly woven into tragedy works just as well for this younger audience as in Riverkeep and The Sacrifice Box."—BCCB

From the Publisher

2021-01-12
Can a motley crew of tweens survive merciless faeries and wartime dangers?

Luka promised his younger sister, Elena, that he would feed the faeries when she’s evacuated to the Islands to escape wartime raids and bombing. Too late Luka realizes that the faeries, bloodthirsty and dedicated to upholding the lore, are as real as the war devastating Bellum City. Now Luka and his unlikely band of two other human boys, Max and Hazel; a rogue faerie; and a loyal dog have just three days to save themselves, Elena, and the entire City. This futuristic fantasy, set in an alternate Britain, blends historical elements of World War II, such as air raids and the evacuation of children, with cellphones, texting, and countless tech gadgets. Fueled by an endless stream of thrilling chases, fistfights, and perilous close calls, the plot’s urgency is ratcheted ever higher as each action-packed plot twist unfolds. In addition to threats from faeries and the war, Luka finds himself on the wrong side of a gang of ruthless Lost Boys led by the gleefully mad Junkyard Knight. The action is exciting, each seemingly impossible escape from certain death more incredible than the last. The strong camaraderie between Luka and his friends counteracts some sentimental and implausible changes of heart. The tidy conclusion clearly leaves the characters primed for a sequel. Olive-skinned Luka’s family speaks Italian; Max is White and Hazel is Black.

A breathless, adventure-filled combination of fantastical and futuristic. (Adventure. 10-13)

Kirkus Reviews