The Book of Stolen Dreams Paperback Launch

 

One of my favourite books last year, The Book Of Stolen Dreams is out in paperback on the 1st September.  Today, you can read the introduction of the book here.

You can also find my full review here: here

Introduction  

If you are reading this book, or if someone is reading it to  

you, you will know we are living in strange times. A shadow has passed over the land of Krasnia. And  people are afraid. 

The shadow has a name. It is President Charles Malstain.  He came from nowhere and now he is in control of  everything. 

You cannot fight him. Not if you value your life. You cannot persuade him. Not if you value your tongue. You can only stay and suffer – or flee. 

Look up!

High in the night sky there is a great silver airship. The  airship is heading west over the ocean. It is called the Pegasus.  It is taking desperate fugitives away from Krasnia, from the  cruel control of Charles Malstain to the welcoming arms of  a foreign city – Port Clement. 

Look closer, through the windows into the airship’s  first-class compartments. Those sad, lonely faces. They are  leaving loved ones behind. Will they ever see them again?  

Now move your gaze lower. Down through the shadows,  past steel girders and ladders, to the second-class deck. It is  open to the winds and bitterly cold. A single lantern at each  corner barely produces a glow to ease the darkness. Thin  grey blankets drape over thinner shoulders, hats are thrust  down over ears.  

Look closer still. Can you see a figure standing alone on  the far corner, looking out into the night?  

A girl! 

She is twelve years old. She is skinny, she has dark hair  and a freckled nose. She has fingerless gloves, carries a  strangely elegant small travelling bag and she wears a worn  woollen coat, under which is a red checked shirt, a grey  jumper, and trousers that seem more likely to belong to a  boy. Her black leather shoes are a size too big and could do  with a clean. 

And now look. There is another figure approaching her  across the deck. Oh no. Is she in danger? 

The man is slight, dressed in a shabby suit that no longer  fits him. In his left hand he carries a battered violin case  wrapped in a blanket. 

And unless Rachel Klein is very much mistaken, he  seems to have a penguin on his head. 

 On the Lower Deck  

of the Pegasus 

“Excuse me. I couldn’t help noticing you are alone.  

Please, my dear girl, you have no reason to fear.”  Rachel said nothing. The scruffy man stood in the frozen  darkness and smiled. His suit jacket was missing several  buttons. His eyes twinkled but were sad at the same time. He  looked the way a kind uncle would - if Rachel had a kind  uncle. What age was he? Rachel wasn’t sure.  

He spoke again, words tumbling from his mouth like  laughter. 

“You will want to know my name. Quite right! Who am I?  Why am I talking to you? Why am I here on this huge airship  travelling across the night-sky to Port Clement? How did I  get my ticket away from that miserable city of Brava? Why is my ticket for this trip pink and yours blue? Is my moustache  real? Why am I wearing a hat in the shape of a penguin?” He stopped for breath. Rachel stayed silent and looked  down at her shoes. They were so obviously too big. Would he  notice? Would he see the little bulge in her sock? She must  be careful. He might have followed her from Brava. From  Meyer’s House of Illustration. These days you could trust  no one. 

“And you, my dear? How old are you?” 

“Twelve.” Rachel could tell him that. That was safe. “Good Lord! You don’t look a year older than eleven!  Your name?” 

Rachel Klein thought fast. Remembered her false name.  “Isabella von Gurning.” 

“An utterly charming name. Do you live in Brava? Which  side of the city are you from?”  

Rachel took a deep breath and lied again.  

“From the west? A charming area. Full of the best-dressed  women.” He studied her. “And yet I sense in you a different  spirit.” 

Oh no. He had seen through her! How could he tell?  The man scrutinized her carefully. His breath was visible  in the dim glow of the deck’s lighting. 

“No. I suspect you come from the poorer north of the  city, from a family of artists. Your eyes are musical, and your  nose gives me the strongest impression that you have a piano  in your living room.” 

How did he know? How could he possibly know…? “You do? Ha! I knew it!” He jumped in delight. “Where  are your wonderful parents? Are they getting you a hot  chocolate from the cafe? I’m afraid to say it isn’t very good.”  Why was she nearly crying? Was it lack of sleep? Was it  the mention of the hot chocolate? Memories of muffins in  the old family apartment?  

“But, my dear – why do you look so sad? Is it the poor  quality of the hot chocolate? No, I see now. Your parents  aren’t here with you. You are alone. Where are they?”  

Rachel looked into his sad eyes, and told him the truth:  “My mother is dead.” 

The man’s face fell. 

“Oh, my poor girl. How tactless I am. I could beat myself  with a stick! I should have thought that there might be a  sadder reason for you being on this journey. Oh, you’re  shaking! Please take my blanket. It smells slightly of salad  cream due to an unfortunate accident with a baguette earlier  today. You will find out in time why it is flea-bitten and why  the design is of watermelons.” 

Rachel shivered and took the rather grubby piece of old  rug that he had unwrapped from around the violin case. “And your father? Where is he?” 

“He’s in prison. Soldiers took him.” 

“Oh, my dear Isabella! But it’s an all-too-common story  these days. Did he put up a fight? No? It was probably wise  of him. You don’t mess with Charles Malstain’s state police. 

In the days of the Emperor, if soldiers came to arrest you,  they offered a polite smile, a bunch of flowers or a box of  chocolate hearts. But these days the police have neither  reason nor manners. And there are no chocolate hearts.” 

Rachel looked up at him. His ragged suit. His funny  facial hair. He spoke again. 

“Why are you going to Port Clement, may I ask?” “My brother is there. I have to find him.”  

“Is he doing well there?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“You haven’t heard from him? Do you know where he  lives? You don’t even have a telephone number? Then how  will you find him? Now don’t cry, I was only asking a question.  Of course you will find him, even though Port Clement is a  city of seventeen million people and he has no idea you’re  coming. Why are you crying again? Here I am trying to cheer  you up and I only make things worse! My problem, Isabella,  is I speak before I think. My mother – a marvellous woman  – was very critical of this flaw of mine. Forgive me.” 

Rachel wiped her eyes and said she would. She looked  out across the darkness. It was endless and unknowable.  As if sensing what she was thinking, the little man stood  beside her at the rail and spoke quietly. 

“My dear, listen to me very carefully. Your brother will  find you – or you will find him. I promise you.” “How do you know?” 

“Because he will hear your heart beating.” 

For a moment their eyes met. Rachel felt a little spring of  hope deep inside her. 

And with that the little man slapped her on the back. “Now how about a cup of dreadful cocoa?”

 Josef Centurion  

They walked together to the sad little kiosk at the  

opposite corner of the Pegasus’s deck. A woman with  long earrings dispensed thin dark liquid into plastic cups.  The little man paid for two. He handed Rachel hers. 

“I’m afraid it tastes of dead moths,” he whispered. He was  right. But it was warm, and that was something. Together they sat in the bowels of the airship’s huge lower  deck. The little man wound the watermelon blanket tightly  around her. It did indeed smell of salad cream – with a hint  of gherkin. Rachel’s hands clasped the warm cup like a  friend. 

It was a long flight over the ocean to Port Clement. She  didn’t want to be alone. Yes, the man was odd, he dressed like a shabby clown, he smelled of something unpleasant – was it  vinegar or soil? – but he had such a kind smile. And she did  want to know about the weird hat. 

So long as she didn’t tell him her real name, nor the  secret she was keeping – the REAL reason why she was  travelling to Port Clement to find her brother Robert.  Meyer’s House of Illustration. The piece of paper that was  hidden in her left sock. That was a secret she would not tell  to any stranger, no matter how kind. That was a matter of  life and death. 

“What is your name?” she asked. 

The man smiled. “Ah, well done! There I was squeezing  information from you like a lemon and told you nothing of  myself! My name is Josef Centurion. You pronounce the  Josef with a ‘y’, like yoghurt. You pronounce the Centurion  quietly, in case someone overhears you – a tax collector or a  shampoo salesman. One should never tell a shampoo  salesman anything!” 

Rachel laughed. It felt like the first laugh in years.  He went on: “I was brought up in the East of the country.  Ah, my childhood. Wonderful! All potato fields and folk  music. Let me straightaway tell you about my sister Lotte, an  angel whom I loved with all my heart. You remind me of her  in so many ways, even though you are completely different.” So Josef Centurion chattered on about his childhood,  his wonderful sister Lotte with her bright blue eyes and little  mole on her left cheek, his kindly mother and funny father. 

“My first memory in life was of a country doctor with  ginger hair crying as he looked at me. This was apparently a  reaction to my extremely ugly face.” 

And as he talked and laughed and twinkled, Rachel  started to feel safe. Maybe she could let herself catch a little  sleep. She’d been awake for so long and she would need all  her energy for Port Clement and the search for Robert. 

She felt her hand loosen on the cup of chocolate, then  saw, through half-closed eyelids, Josef rescue it from going all  over her and place it carefully on the deck beside them.  

“My father was a terrible farmer but rather a good small time thief…” 

Rachel’s eyes dimmed. She could hear the deep hum of  the airship’s engines. She felt the fires from the ship’s  cylinders blow gusts of warmth across her face. And the heat  of the fires and Josef ’s lilting words warmed Rachel’s frozen  bones and slowly sent her into a kind of dream. 

“Josef?” She spoke his name perfectly, saying Josef with a  y like in yak’s milk. 

“Yes, my dear.”  

“Will you wake me when we get close to Port Clement?” “Of course. You sleep now.” 

And so Josef started on a story about a brown cow that he  and his sister Lotte had chased until it fell into a river.  And as the cow entered the river, with Josef running after  it and Lotte in tears of laughter, Rachel Klein’s eyes closed.  And she slept for the first time in days.

Josef Centurion heard the gentle breathing of the sleeping  child, felt her head resting against his shoulder. Her little  mouth was nibbling something invisible as she dreamed, like  a hamster checking a nut. Josef stopped talking and smiled  to himself. His chatter had done its job. The little girl, so  lonely on the deck, was now sleeping warm and safe beside  him.  

Which was exactly what he wanted. 

For when, earlier that day, a tall, elegant woman had  approached Josef Centurion at Brava airfield while he was  playing his violin, she had tasked him with a simple mission.  

To board the airship Pegasus. To get to know a young girl  who was travelling under the name Isabella von Gurning,  but whose real name was Rachel Klein. To appear kind and  harmless. To ensure Rachel reached Port Clement safe and  sound. To offer to pay for her to stay in a hotel for her first  night in the strange new city. To take her to the legendary  Hotel Excelsior. To leave her there alone in Room 341.  

Where she would easily be found. 

And then to return home to Brava using his pink return  ticket. To earn himself two hundred groschen. To ask no questions why. 

And then to forget he had ever met Rachel Klein.