Warren the 13th and the Whispering Woods Read online

  Copyright © 2017 by Will Staehle & Tania del Rio

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2016941166

  ISBN: 978-1-59474-929-2

  Ebook design adapted from printed book design by Will Staehle

  Illustrations by Will Staehle

  Engravings collected by Unusual Corporation and from Shutterstock.com

  Production management by John J. McGurk

  Warren the 13th is © and a trademark of Unusual Corporation

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-59474-930-8

  Quirk Books

  215 Church St.

  Philadelphia, PA 19106

  quirkbooks.com

  v4.1

  CHAPTERS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  I. In Which the Warren Stumbles

  II. In Which Warren Makes a Pit Stop

  III. In Which Worrin Visits the Warren

  IV. In Which Warren Makes a Deal

  V. In Which a Prisoner Is Captured

  VI. In Which Warren Enters the Malwoods

  VII. In Which Warren Catches a Ride

  VIII. In Which Petula Discovers the Truth

  IX. In Which Warren Has a Sinking Feeling

  X. In Which Petula Is Surrounded

  XI. In Which Warren Is [Nearly] Devoured

  XII. In Which Warren Makes a Dangerous Crossing

  XIII. In Which Petula Encounters a Witch

  XIV. In Which Warren Breaks the Code

  XV. In Which Friends Are Reunited

  XVI. In Which Warren Battles Worrin

  XVII. In Which Petula Enters the Black Caldera

  XVIII. In Which the Battle Begins

  XIX. In Which a Final Secret Is Revealed

  XX. In Which the Queen Faces Herself

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  eep in the Malwoods was a mile-wide crater known as the Black Caldera, home to all of Fauntleroy’s most evil witches. Inside the Caldera were many small and filthy huts constructed of mud and twigs. There were murky watering holes and gardens growing poisonous herbs, and everything was cast into shadow by the crater’s high, rocky walls.

  In the center of the Black Caldera was a large palace made from many thousands of ancient bones, all twisted and woven together by dark magic. And it was here that Calvina, the queen of the witches, rested upon a chaise lounge, gazing at herself in a hand mirror.

  Calvina was very vain. She thought she was the most beautiful witch who had ever lived, and she had lived for a very long time. Calvina blew kisses at her reflection through plump, pouting lips.

  Sitting nearby were five witches from the queen’s coven. Four were busy studying spell books or brewing potions; the fifth was knitting socks. Also standing nearby were two sap-squatch servants. The tall, shaggy creatures watched helplessly from their posts, with stomachs rumbling. The sap-squatches hadn’t enjoyed a good meal in many months.

  “Your Royal Darkness!” announced a voice from the doorway. “The morning gazette has arrived!”

  A young apprentice entered the chamber, clutching a rolled-up newspaper that smelled of fresh ink. Calvina reluctantly tore her eyes away from her mirror and snatched the paper out of the young girl’s hands. Her eyes narrowed as she read:

  THE FAUNTLEROY TIMES • THE EARLY EDITION

  IT’S AN EXTRAORDINARY SIGHT!

  Since its maiden voyage last autumn, the Warren Hotel can be seen crawling over the landscape like an enormous insect as it treks throughout Fauntleroy. However, few people know that this first-class establishment is managed by a twelve-year-old orphan named Warren the 13th!

  Despite his youthful age, and a rather odd and frightful appearance, Warren is a bright and hard-working lad descended from a long line of hoteliers, and he has dedicated his life to the management of this most unusual hotel.

  The previous manager, Warren’s uncle Rupert, was embarrassingly negligent in his duties. Thankfully, young Warren has revitalized the family business, aided by a capable crew of employees, most notably Chef Bunion, who serves three delightful meals a day. Special praise must be given to his celebrated “pudding cookies”—imagine warm and gooey cocoa pudding encased in a crispy, chocolatey, outer cookie shell. Absolutely delicious!

  Also on Warren’s staff is a creature the likes of which I have never seen. It goes by the moniker “Sketchy” and resembles a sort of giant cephalopod with multiple eyes and eight tentacles. I was frightened when I first discovered the [it works in the kitchen, assisting the Chef with meals] but I soon found it to be a charming companion endowed with the intelligence of a well-trained dog.

  Holding court in the library is the elderly Mr. Friggs, another longtime resident of the hotel. He offers weekly book discussions and free tutoring sessions for any youngsters on board. He is wise, well read, and a former adventurer; he regaled me with a fascinating tale of battling pirates on the island of Barrakas! Nowadays, he is a bit of a recluse and is rarely spotted outside the library, where he serves as the hotel’s chief navigator and cartographer. Every week, he does a fine job of charting a new itinerary, selecting the various “ports of call” that the hotel visits on its march around the country.

  And then there is the hotel’s most mysterious employee: Her name is Beatrice, and she serves as Chief of Security, though often she can be found with her violin entertaining guests in the viewing parlor. It would be easy to mistake Beatrice as a member of a traveling circus, for her skin is covered in hundreds of rose tattoos! But don’t let the lovely flowers fool you. I’m told she is a legendary witch hunter known as a “perfumier,” and each bloom represents just one of the many evil witches she has captured.

  As for the hotel itself, some guests have remarked on the dark and rather eerie atmosphere of the interior, which is filled with many winding corridors and spooky passageways. I’ll confess to getting lost more than once. If you are sensitive to noise, its clanging footsteps might seem distracting on your first visit.

  In my estimation, however, these are minor quibbles. The Warren Hotel offers an attentive staff, beautiful vistas, fine dining, and varied company. It is a most marvelous place, indeed!

  The newspaper shook in Calvina’s trembling hands.

  she hissed. “I’ve found you at last!” A crazed expression crossed Calvina’s face, and she rose to her feet. “Pay attention, girls! If we find this hotel, we can capture Beatrice and avenge all of our sisters she’s captured over the years! We’ll smash the bottles they’re trapped in and free them all!”

  The other witches cackled with glee before they remembered that Beatrice was the most feared perfumier of all time. They liked the idea of having her in their clutches…as long as another capturer did the clutching.

  “Post a bounty throughout the Malwoods!” the queen ordered. “I want Beatrice, her bottles, and her amazing walking hotel!”

  “The hotel, too?” asked Calvina’s young apprentice.

  “That’s right. I need a new palace!” the queen declared. “A building like that walking hotel would be the most fearsome palace in the land! I could use it to stomp villages! I could take over the world!”

  “Most excellent, Your Royal Darkness,” the apprentice said, taking notes on parchment with a quill. “And what kind of bounty will you offer?”

  The queen smiled and gazed back into her hand mirror.

  A BOUNTY IS POSTED

  This promise captured the attent
ion of every witch present in the chamber. They exchanged hungry glances, practically falling over one another as they hurried out the door, eager to be the first to earn the queen’s reward.

  t was a warm summer afternoon, and the Warren Hotel trundled over the countryside upon its enormous metal legs. The steady CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! of its footfalls were loud enough to be heard for miles, but Warren the 13th hardly noticed; the deafening din had become as comforting and familiar to him as the gentle ticking of a grandfather clock.

  Warren knelt on the hotel roof, repairing a broken tile with a hammer and nails. The six crows who lived in the rooftop birdhouse poked their heads out of its windows, croaking for food. Warren set down his hammer and removed a sketchbook from his pocket; he always kept a few slices of cheese tucked between its pages. He tossed them to the birds, who promptly began squabbling over the pieces.

  “Share, share!” Warren admonished. “There’s enough for everyone.”

  The crows were lazy and wouldn’t leave the birdhouse to search for their own food, but Warren didn’t mind. He enjoyed caring for each and every guest of his hotel, even the ones with feathers.

  As the birds ate, Warren leaned back against the chimney and flipped through his sketchbook. Its pages were filled with charcoal drawings: doodles of his friends and family at the hotel, and portraits of the fantastic landscapes he’d seen on his travels. But Warren had no time for sketching today; there were too many other problems demanding his attention. He turned to a fresh page and began jotting down a lengthy to-do list, based on all the calls to the front desk he’d received that morning:

  A LENGTHY TO-DO LIST

  Warren was very busy, yet he had no complaints. In fact, he felt like the luckiest boy on earth. He ran the world’s first—and only—traveling hotel, and it was so popular that every room was filled! On top of that, the hotel was generating so much money that Warren was finally able to make some much-needed improvements to the antiquated structure. He’d installed a viewing room lined with panoramic windows for the guests to enjoy the scenery as the hotel went along its way. He also added a large window to the control room, so he no longer had to rely on a tiny periscope to navigate the terrain.

  Perhaps the biggest advancement was a hidden feature that Warren had discovered inside the control room. It turned out that one of his ancestors, Warren the 2nd, had had a few tricks up his sleeve when he designed the walking hotel, including a special autopilot feature. This option ensured that the hotel would dutifully continue along the road following the precise coordinates input by Warren each morning. Placing the hotel on autopilot spared Warren from having to drive the hotel all day long. Instead, he had the freedom to roam about, mingle with guests, and head up to the roof to repair broken tiles and make to-do lists.

  Suddenly, Warren’s concentration was broken by the sound of a sputtering engine and a HONK! HONK! HONK! He dropped down on his hands and knees and scrambled to the edge of the roof. Far below, an odd-looking automobile was weaving dangerously between the hotel’s enormous legs. It had oversized wheels and was painted in garish colors. Its carriage was cluttered with crates, bags, and jugs. On the side were fancy, curlicue letters proclaiming:

  A CARELESS CAR

  The car continued to honk as it screeched around the hotel’s crashing footfalls. “Be careful!” Warren yelled, even as he realized that yelling was pointless; the car had already passed the hotel and was now branching off the main road, following a dustier and narrower path that offered a direct route to the Malwoods. Warren watched until he couldn’t see the car anymore, wondering why anyone would drive toward such a spooky place.

  Over the past few months, Warren had piloted the hotel to many unusual destinations, but one place he swore he’d never go was the Malwoods—a shadowy and twisted forest teeming with witches and other, even more dangerous creatures. Because Warren took the safety of his guests very seriously, he hesitated to travel within five miles of the Malwoods. He opened his sketchbook and added yet another item to his to-do list: Rewire autopilot to avoid this intersection altogether.

  He had barely finished writing when the air beside him shimmered. A swirling portal materialized, and out stepped his best friend, Petula. She wore a grave expression. Behind her the pool of silvery-looking liquid vanished.

  “The guest in Room 204 just called to complain,” she said. “Something about a leaky ceiling.”

  Warren sighed. “Sometimes I wish there were two of me,” he admitted.

  He tucked away his sketchbook and Petula helped him to his feet. The first time Warren had met Petula, he’d mistaken her for a ghost. She always dressed entirely in white, and her skin was so pale that it looked nearly translucent. He’d since learned that this was just one of her many unusual traits, along with her ability to draw magical pathways between short distances. She was a young perfumier-in-training, and she was learning the fine art of witch capturing from her mother, Beatrice.

  Petula glanced down at Warren’s to-do list. “Maybe you should hire a maintenance person,” she suggested. “So you don’t have to do everything yourself.”

  Warren shook his head. “My dad always said that a good manager doesn’t sit behind a desk and bark orders. A good manager pitches in and helps with the dirty work.” He grimaced. “Even if it means unclogging a toilet.”

  “You might be taking your father’s advice a bit too literally,” Petula said.

  “Maybe,” Warren said, “but someone has to do the work.”

  Tucking his sketchbook in his pocket, Warren started to stand up but lost his balance, landing with a hard thump.

  “Ow!” Warren cried. He felt as if the roof had slipped out from under him.

  Petula looked alarmed. “What was that?” But before Warren could answer, the hotel lurched again, harder, and this time Warren fell face-first. He realized he was rushing forward—in fact, the entire hotel was rushing forward. Warren scrabbled against the slick tiles, trying to grab something—anything—but his fingers were too short to get a good grip. He found himself sliding on his belly, headed for the edge of the roof. And so was Petula!

  “Warren!” she cried.

  Warren’s stomach flipped as he picked up speed. The edge of the roof zoomed toward him—but there, at the end of the tiles, was a skinny tin gutter. If he timed it just right…

  Squeezing his eyes shut, Warren flung out an arm. His fingers met metal. He grabbed hard. And he held on tight.

  Warren opened his eyes just in time to see Petula tumbling past him. Her hand missed the gutter by inches, but at the very last moment she managed to grasp Warren’s ankle.

  “Hold on!” he yelled. He saw Petula dangling from his foot by one hand, the ground rushing up behind her. “Because here comes the—”

  And with that, the building smashed into the earth with a loud crash.

  Somehow, the hotel had fallen.

  “Are you okay?” called Petula.

  “I—I think so,” Warren called back. Clouds of dust rose around them and the air was eerily still. Warren’s arms started to shake from the effort of holding on to the gutter.

  The weight on his ankle disappeared and a portal materialized on the side—well, now the top—of the hotel. Out jumped Petula. She grabbed Warren by both wrists and yanked him upright next to her.

  “What happened?” he said.

  “I think the hotel tripped,” Petula said. She looked even paler than usual.

  “Tripped?” Warren said. “But that’s impossible!” In the past six months, the hotel had marched up hillsides, forded streams, and crossed chasms, all without a single misstep. “There are seven different safety features to keep the hotel from falling over!”

  “Well, all seven of them must have failed,” said Petula, “because the hotel fell right on its face. See?” She pointed at their feet.

  Sure enough, instead of the roof, Warren’s shoes were resting on a pane of glass—a window! On the other side, two angry guests lay crumpled on the floor—well,
actually the wall, which was now the floor—shaking angry fists in his direction.

  “We’d better get to the control room,” Warren said.

  “Do you want me to draw a portal?” Petula asked.

  “No, thanks.” Ordinarily, a portal would be welcome, since the control room was all the way down in the basement. But after falling and rolling off the side of the building, Warren was way too dizzy for the head-spinning side effects of magical travel. “Let’s take the long way.”

  Of course, the long way was now extra long, thanks to the topsy-turvy state of the hotel. Carefully, Warren picked his way over to the window of his attic bedroom, sliding it open and dropping through the gap as if it was a trap door. He landed with both feet on a wall he’d decorated with sketches and drawings. When he realized he was standing on one of his favorite illustrations, he quickly hopped off.

  TOPSY-TURVY!

  Petula climbed down after him, then looked around in astonishment. “Weird!”

  It was weird. Normally, Warren accessed his bedroom through a trap door in the floor, but now the trap door was in the middle of a wall. Warren pulled it open like a porthole, pushed himself up, and wriggled his way headfirst to the other side. The long hallway was familiar but mixed-up, with doors in the ceiling, doors in the floor, and miniature chandeliers dangling from either side of the trap door like a pair of earrings. Warren felt dizzy and confused just looking at them.

  Clearly he wasn’t the only one. Behind the floor-doors and the ceiling-doors, Warren could hear the muffled voices of guests. And they were not happy.

  “What’s going on?” one angry man shouted.