Jens Hoffmann - Simon Knox and the Prophecy of Asragur

Jens Hoffmann

Simon Knox and the Prophecy of Asragur

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel Jens Hoffmann Simon Knox and the Prophecy of Asragur Dieses eBook wurde erstellt bei

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Impressum

Chapter 1

"Simon, rise and shine you sleepyhead. We're running late. Breakfast is in fifteen minutes". Patricia Knox flung open the door to her son's room; in no time the curtains were pulled aside and the window opened. It was the start of a beautiful summer day and a mild breeze came in through the window from the harbour, which neither impressed nor encouraged Simon to stir, whose tuft of red hair peeked out from under the bed covers.

A bit unnerved, Patricia ran her fingers through her disheveled blond hair, straightened her robe and snatched her son's blanket off him and let it fall to the floor next to the bed. "Don't forget to brush your teeth. Now shake a leg! You haven't even packed yet, you know", she commented through gritted teeth when she saw the t-shirts she had ironed the evening before still on the dresser where she had put them.

She rushed out of the room and Simon listened to the creaking of the stairs as she hurried down to the kitchen.

"Just five more minutes", he thought and turned over again to the other side. The banging of dishes, the smell of freshly-toasted bread, eggs and bacon finally woke him up. He sprawled and stretched before slowly opening his eyes. Sea air found its way to his nose through the open window. He listened to the goings-on of the harbour and the sporadic cries of the ever-hungry seagulls, who fought for the fish scraps thrown into the water by the fishermen each and every day.

"Summer holidays, at last", he rejoiced.

Simon had passed the fifth grade without any trouble. He was eleven years old with fiery red hair, freckles and perky brown eyes. He was perhaps a bit small for his age and also a bit chubby which he was teased about at school sometimes. The fact that he liked to daydream, not always paying attention like he should have, didn't exactly make him popular among the kids. Actually he only had one good friend: Richard Dawson, Richie for short, who was himself a bit different than others. Richard was also eleven years old, in the same grade as Simon and wore thick horn-rimmed glasses. What's more, Richie was just about the tallest in his class and had dark, neatly parted hair. He was lanky and sometimes a bit clumsy, well-nigh scatterbrained. But he was Simon's best friend.

While most of their classmates got together after school to play soccer, cricket or something like that, the two friends loved walking through the port. Both had a passion for the ships that docked at the Portsmouth harbour everyday. They took snapshots of every newcomer and pasted the pictures in an album while spinning their own stories about where the ships were from and the exciting journeys of the yachts, cutters and container ships.

But now summer vacation had begun and Simon and Richie wouldn't be pasting any new pictures into their album, since Simon was to spend the summer with his great-aunt Abygale. She lived five hours away from Portsmouth in a small village at the seaside, in the county of Devon. Little did Simon know that he would be seeing his friend Richie again very soon and that the adventure of their lives was about to begin.

"Simon, these eggs are getting cold", sounded the slightly irritated voice of his mother from the kitchen. She must have burned her finger on the pan, for suddenly she cursed loudly.

"Are you awake?", she called up the stairs from the hall. "How can it take so long to get out of bed", Patricia sighed, returning to the kitchen to pour herself another cup of coffee.

She really didn't feel so good about sending Simon to Aunt Abygale for the first weeks of school holidays. But ever since her separation from Eduard Knox, Simon's father, two years before, nothing was the same as it used to be. They had moved to Portsmouth and Patricia had gone back to work last year as an editor for a London publishing house. Basically she had plenty of time for herself and her son, since she was able to do a great deal of her work at home. However, there were important seminars and book reviews scheduled for this summer that she could not simply postpone. Aunt Abygale didn't hesitate to invite Simon to spend part of this school vacation at her place. She liked the boy very much, all the more because she’d never had children of her own.

Patricia looked out of the kitchen window at the front garden of her small cosy house. Simon would be spending a nice summer at the seaside. He loved the water, the beach and of course the harbor with its small, colorful houses and fishing boats.

She took a deep breath, got over her guilty conscience and went about making sandwiches for Simon's train ride.

Simon reached up and stretched, sat up, tousled his red hair and rubbed the sleepers out of his eyes. He yawned and looked around in his room. He had absolutely no desire to think about what to pack and what not. “Just a few t-shirts, shorts, his favorite jeans and a jacket”, that should be enough”, he thought.

"Should I tidy up", he wondered, as he crawled out of bed and looked around his room, which was a bit messy. Actually things were scattered all over the place: small parts to model ships not yet completed, comics under and next to the bed, numerous snapshots of ships that he and Richie hadn't yet put into the album, and so on. Even his desk under the roof window could have used some order. But he could also take care of it after his vacation, he decided, and climbed onto his desk to look out of the window in the direction of the harbour.

Something was different than usual on this Monday morning. Sure, it was the first day of the school holidays. But that wasn't it. Hadn't he seen a face at his window last night? Or had it only been a dream? He couldn't remember. He let his view of the harbour wander back over the roof. Something was glistening in the morning sun and drew Simon's attention - a small, round object stuck under his window between the roof shingles. Maybe it’s a coin? No, it's probably not a coin. He liked letting marbles roll down the roof gutter, only to fish them out of the rain barrel down in the garden later on. But a coin?, no chance! He didn't have so much pocket money that he could simply throw it out the window.

He became curious, reached out dangerously far over the windowsill and tried to grab the glittering object. But in vain! He slid forward just a bit. He stretched his arm more and more and after some effort, he was holding a strange glittering platelet in his hands. It was elastic but solid, too. Similar to the nacre that forms inside a shell, it shimmered in his hand. Perhaps it could be the scale of a big fish? But how did it end up on the roof? He couldn't make any sense of it and crawled back into his room, deep in thought.

"Simon, I hope you're finally up. Your hot chocolate was warm once upon a time", he heard his mother's voice say, no longer quite so full of understanding, breaking up his thoughts.

"Yes, Mum, I'll be down there in five minutes!", Simon hollered and trudged down the hall to the bathroom.