Читать книгу Charlie Bone and the Blue Boa - Jenny Nimmo - Страница 9

Prologue

When the Red King left Africa, he took with him a rare snake, a boa, given to him by a travelling wise man. The boa’s skin was black and silver and its eyes like beads of jet. Sometimes, the shining eyes would close, but this was a deception. In the king’s presence the boa was eternally vigilant. No thief or assassin dared to pass it. The king, who could speak its language, regarded the boa as a friend, a guardian and a wise counsellor. He loved the creature dearly.

One day, while the king was absent on a hunting trip, his eldest son, Borlath, caught the boa in a net. Borlath had the cruellest heart of any man living, and his greatest sport was to torture. Within a week he had turned the wise and gentle boa into a creature that lived only to kill. It would squeeze its victims into oblivion within minutes.

The king’s daughter, Guanhamara, horrified by the boa’s new and deadly nature, rescued the creature and cast a spell, hoping to cure it. Alas, Guanhamara’s spell came too late and merely weakened the boa’s fatal hug. Its victims did not die, but they became invisible.

When Guanhamara died, the boa fell into a deep sleep. It shrivelled into a thing that was neither alive nor dead. Hoping one day to reawaken the creature, Guanhamara’s seven daughters (every one of them a witch) sealed the boa in a jar of liquid made blue with herbs. They also put in a bird with delicate, shiny wings. But the embalmed creatures were stolen by Borlath and passed down through his descendants, until Ezekiel Bloor, using a method recommended by his grandfather, managed to revive the boa whose skin had become a silvery blue. He was less successful with the bird.

Ezekiel was now a hundred years old. He had always longed to become invisible but, as far as he knew, the boa’s hug was permanent, and he didn’t dare to let the creature hug him. The old man still searched for a way to reverse invisibility, while the boa lived in the shadowy attics of Bloor’s Academy, keeping its secret, until someone could bring it the comfort of understanding – and listen to its story.