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Overview
Deep in the walls of a witches' cottage lays an ancient magical kitchen. Dangling over that kitchen's cauldron, pinched between the fingers of two witches, is a toad. And the Toad has no idea how she got there, and no memory of even her name. All she knows is she doesn't think she was always a Toad, or that she's ever been here before. Determined to recover her memories she sets out on a journey to the oracle, and along the way picks up a rag-tag team of friends: an iron-handed imp, a carnivorous fairy, and a few friendly locals.
But the Kitchen won't make it easy. It is pitch black, infinite, and impossible to navigate, a living maze. Hiding in dark corners are beastly, starving things. Worse yet are the Witches themselves, who have sent a procession of horrific, deadly monsters on her trail. With some courage and wisdom, the Toad just might find herself yet-and with that knowledge, the power to defeat the mighty Witches.
Filled with forty stunning pencil illustrations from the author, the Witches' Kitchen is a rich, well-imagined fantasy setting unlike any other.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780316122047 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Little, Brown Books for Young Readers |
| Publication date: | 10/05/2010 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 7 MB |
| Age Range: | 12 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Witches' Kitchen
By Williams, Allen
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Copyright © 2010 Williams, AllenAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780759529120
CHAPTER ONE
Give her to me.” The voice sliced through the silence like a carving knife, and in the total darkness Sarafina imagined her sister’s thin, outstretched hands, grasping, expecting to be obeyed.
Though they were standing face-to-face, nearly nose-to-nose, Sarafina could only just perceive Emilina’s gaunt silhouette as a glow slowly began to emerge from the depths of an ancient cauldron squatting a few feet away.
A book lay spread open on the table nearest Emilina. She would frequently glance at it as if she were reading, but the anemic light did not brighten its pages at all. In fact, the light bent around the book as if afraid of what was written there. Here in the Witches’ Kitchen, the light wasn’t welcome. The foul, creeping things that dwelled here did not enjoy the light. The darkness kept their secrets.
Sarafina obeyed her sister, extracting a small, bloated body from a red velvet sack with her thick, rough fingers. A huge, hulking woman, possessing incredible strength, Sarafina had pale, pink-mottled skin that hosted patches of dark brown freckles across her cheeks and nose.
“Still unconscious? Good. But she’ll wake soon enough, yes, she will,” Emilina murmured. “Step lively, pot.” Tall and as angular as a grave digger’s spade, she considered herself an expert in the crafting of bitter sorrows. Her hair was long, black, and as rigid as piano wire.
The cauldron’s four grotesque legs began to move on cloven hooves. Like a frightened, wounded horse, clipping and clopping in an uneven rhythm, the cauldron lurched to the Sisters’ side and lowered itself, shivering, into a crouch without spilling any of its contents.
Sarafina paused, glancing at the small body held tightly in her meaty fist as she handed it to her sister. Reaching up, she fidgeted with the pearl necklace stretched tightly around her thick neck.
Emilina glanced up, surprised at the sound of soft clicking in the dead silence. By the growing cauldron light, she saw the small skeleton of a bird perched atop Sarafina’s rounded left shoulder. In one eye socket it had a single, raven black eye. The other was empty.
It stared back at Emilina, paused, and clicked its beak again.
“Sister,” Emilina said drily, “did we not agree to destroy all of the disobedient cribs? Are we now wearing them as jewelry?”
The lines of Sarafina’s perpetual scowl now deepened as her eyes sparked a fleeting expression of anger. “It’s not jewelry,” she said with the slightest hint of defiance. “I’m going to experiment on it. I have to see what went wrong with this batch. After that, the crines can have it for all I care.”
“Ahh,” Emilina drew the word out, mocking her sister. “Right. Well, have your fun then.” She paused, and then added, “It’s of no consequence to me.”
Most of the time, most things are exactly as they appear. The thing Emilina was so closely examining appeared to be a toad, and it was starting to wake up.
The first thing the Toad saw when she opened her eyes was a cadaverous pool of green, bubbling slime. Tendrils of putrid steam uncoiled toward her. She stared at it in confusion.
She was dangling upside down over a huge seething cauldron, held aloft as if she were a wishbone by two very odd-looking women, each pinching a hind foot. They whispered to each other and though the Toad could hear them quite plainly, she couldn’t understand the language they spoke. She knew witches when she saw them.
This was not a place she wanted to be.
She wriggled, but she couldn’t budge her legs an inch. Her bizarre captors were oblivious to her. Now quiet, the women stared at each other, slowly leaning closer and closer together, until it looked like their faces were blurring or… melting toward each other.
The Toad only tore her eyes away from the horrific sight when movement appeared nearby. A terrible walking bird skeleton crept up toward the rotund woman’s neck. The little creature turned and looked at the Toad with its one shiny black eye. Then it did something quite unexpected.
The crib pecked. Hard.
Sarafina squealed as the needle-sharp beak of the crib punctured the soft flesh of her neck. Her face snapped back away from Emilina’s as the skeletal bird struck again and again. As Sarafina reeled, frantically swatting at the creature, a tiny rivulet of blood began to trickle down the front of her dress. At last, her hand found the crib and batted it off her shoulder into the darkness as the string of pearls snapped with a pop.
Instinctively, she began snatching at the orbs of her necklace that were cascading down to the floor. She managed to capture a single large pearl; and as she raised it in her doughy fist triumphantly, her left foot unfortunately found another one. She pitched forward, her head smashing viciously into the bridge of Emilina’s nose with a resounding crack.
Emilina landed pinned under her sister’s weight, unable to draw even a shallow breath. The cauldron spun for a moment trying to catch its balance before it tipped up on its edge, legs kicking spastically in the air. Its contents rapidly splashed across the stone floor. Its light extinguished.
Sarafina began to roll her ponderous weight off the uncomfortable lump beneath her. Finally able to inhale, Emilina sat bolt upright and issued a sound like a reverse scream. The air whistled into the vacuum of her lungs and as the darkness closed in around her and became complete, she shrieked…
“Where in the bloody blazes is the Toad?!”
Continues...
Excerpted from The Witches' Kitchen by Williams, Allen Copyright © 2010 by Williams, Allen. Excerpted by permission.
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