Jenny Nimmo - Charlie Bone and the Wilderness Wolf

They heard the lock click as they walked away from the canteen door. Charlie felt for the gingerbread in his pocket, glad that he’d managed to grab something before he was caught.

Matron looked in on the boys when she came to turn off the light. ‘Your uncle will pick you up tomorrow,’ she said coldly. ‘What a nuisance you are, Charlie Bone.’

‘Billy’s coming home with me,’ said Charlie.

The matron pursed her lips but she didn’t argue. Uncle Paton had forced the Bloors to sign a document, promising that Billy could spend the weekend with anyone he wished.

It was a bitterly cold night and they huddled under the blankets to eat the food they’d taken from the kitchen. Charlie soon fell asleep. He dreamed of his parents, riding the waves in their sturdy boat, while whales sang in the ocean. ‘They do sing, you know,’ his mother had said. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come?’

Charlie had found himself shaking his head. His parents needed their time alone. They had lost ten years of being together; besides, instinct warned Charlie that he must remain in the city, the place where so many people had wanted his father ‘out of the way’, where plots were hatched and where Charlie’s friends were constantly in danger.

In Charlie’s dream the whales’ song gradually changed into a sad lament, and as he listened to it he became aware that he was awake, and listening to the distant, desperate howl again.

‘Billy, can you hear it?’ Charlie whispered.

‘Yes,’ said Billy. ‘It keeps repeating the same words, over and over. “Help me!” It kind of knocks against my heart, Charlie. What are we going to do?’

‘Help it,’ Charlie replied, though he had no idea how.

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