CHAPTER ONE

It was late in the evening and I was soaring majestically through the air, whizzing around like an acrobatic bumblebee. Somewhere below I could hear a crowd of people chanting my name as I tumbled into a particularly impressive mid-air pirouette. Madame Pym, ringleader and trapeze-artist extraordinaire, swung back and forth in front of me, her short legs hooked over the trapeze and her arms held out waiting to pull me to safety. Reaching forward, I stretched out as far as I could, ready to grab on to Pym and to hear the humongous roar of applause fill my ears. Instead, I felt my fingertips brush Pym’s before they slipped away, leaving me grabbing at nothing but thin air. Then I was falling. Down.

Down.

D

O

W

N.

It was as if the world went into slow motion. The sound of the crowd disappeared and all I could hear was the thundering beat of my heart. With a sickening lurch of my stomach I saw the ground rising up to meet me. I opened my mouth to scream but no sound came out. Instead there was Pym’s voice, full of fear and pain, shouting one word over and over again.

“POPPY!”

With a gasp I sat up in bed. My heart was hammering but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I made out the reassuring shapes of my dorm room, and heard the gentle breathing of my two sleeping room-mates. I fumbled around on my nightstand and grabbed my torch, then I shuffled down under my bed covers and sat up so that I was inside my own little tent before turning on the light. I’d had the same dream a few times now, and sometimes the only thing that gets rid of those dark pesky nightmare feelings is a big shining light bulb.

*

Wasn’t that a good beginning? I like it when a book starts right in the action with something scary like that. Don’t worry though, there’s lots of exciting non-dream stuff coming right up, and if you think about it, it wouldn’t have been much good if that dream bit had been real. I mean, this would have been a very short book indeed – what with me being a total Poppy pancake. My favourite books are the Detective Dougie Valentine books by H.T. Maddox, and they’re about this kid-detective, Dougie Valentine, and his dog, Snoops, and those books always start with him hanging off the side of a mountain staring helplessly into the evil face of the world’s most dangerous criminal. Or something like that. They’re so exciting, and I want my book to be exciting as well.

I have actually already written one very exciting book about my own adventures but my best friend, Ingrid – one of the snoring shapes next to me in the dorm – says that in a second book you still have to introduce everyone at the beginning in case someone hasn’t read the first book. (But if you haven’t read the first book you really definitely should. It got five out of five stars in my book group. I suppose I should say that my book group is just me and The Magnificent Marvin, but still, you have to admit a top score like that is pretty impressive. We’re quite picky, you know.) Anyway, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Poppy Pym and I’m eleven. When I was a baby a magician called The Magnificent Marvin pulled me out of his magic hat. I know how it sounds, but it’s true! The only clue about where I had come from was a note pinned to my blankets that read:

Well, whoever E is, they were right. I have been happy, because The Magnificent Marvin was a part of Madame Pym’s Spectacular Travelling Circus, and I have lived there with my family of funny and eccentric performers ever since. There’s Madame Pym herself, of course, who also has psychic abilities (she has one good eye that seems to notice everything and one bad eye that screws up a bit and can see into the future. Pym says that’s one eye for looking out and one for looking in), and The Magnificent Marvin, but a circus wouldn’t be any good without a few more entertainers – and Madame Pym’s circus is the best in the world. Marvin’s wife Doris is his assistant, but she’s also a tightrope walker and inventor, then there’s Luigi the lion tamer and his lion, Buttercup; Tina and Tawna the horse-riding gymnasts, BoBo the happy clown and Chuckles the sad clown, Sharp-Eye Sheila the knife thrower, Boris Von Jurgen the strongman and last of all, Fanella the Italian snake-charmer and fire-eater, and her long orange snake, Otis. Still snuggled under my sheets I shone my torch on a photo of us all that had been taken a few weeks ago, after we recovered a priceless ruby scarab, and that took pride of place on my bedside table. I’ll stick in a copy here so that if you haven’t read about them before you can get to know everyone a bit better.

Now, you might be wondering why I was waking up in a dorm room if I grew up in a circus. (I knew you’d spot that, you beady-eyed brainiac.) What happened was that I recently started going to a swanky boarding school called Saint Smithen’s. When I first arrived school felt huge and scary – I mean, it’s a pretty big change, going from worrying about getting up in time to feed the lion, to getting up in time to attend a maths lesson – but Saint Smithen’s had started to feel like home. Well, almost.

I shivered under my blankets, remembering my dream. It felt so real every time I had it. In the beginning I was always so happy to be back home at the circus, but by the end I was relieved to wake up and find myself at home at Saint Smithen’s. (It’s a funny word, “home”, isn’t it, when you’ve got more than one of them?) The dream was always the same – I would be performing high up on the trapeze and everything would be going brilliantly, the crowd would be going wild. Then, in the middle of the trick, I’d reach for Pym, miss and then fall to my certain death. (I don’t like to think about that bit too much.) I wasn’t sure why I kept having the dream, but in all of my favourite books it seemed like mysterious dreams usually came before big adventures. Well, maybe some of Pym’s psychic powers were rubbing off on me, because as I turned off the torch and squished my eyes tight shut, trying to get back to sleep, I had the tingling feeling that a fresh mystery might be just around the corner.

And guess what? I was right.

(And I’ll warn you right now . . . it’s a pretty spooky story. So maybe read it with the lights on.)