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Hannah Clark and the Mummified Cats

by Sally Moore

148 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-0438; ISBN 1-4120-2610-5; US$16.50, C$18.29, EUR14.00, £9.50

Hannah Clark is a three hundred or so year old witch. Back from the realm of hungry ghosts can she and brainy Oliver save planet earth from extinction in 29 and a half days?

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about the book     about the author     excerpts     catalogue info

About the Book Hannah Clark is a three hundred and thirtiesh-year-old witch, brought back from the Realm of Hungry Ghosts to the present day - her mission - to save planet earth from extinction in the time it takes for the moon to complete one revolution! Hannah is thrilled to be back in old Hastings and her sole wish is to bring her mummified cats back to life from where their cadavers are displayed on the wall of the Stag pub in a glass case. Hannah meets her friend and future accomplice Oliver Fisher the star physics student on the moment of her reappearance on earth, and he dubiously agrees to help her raise her cats from the dead and save the planet from being blown apart by a mighty magnetar. The Destroying Angel has a plan to take over earth along with the entire galaxy, and all too soon Hannah and Oliver realise they are mere pawns in his cosmic aspirations, only after Oliver has been nearly swallowed by a soul sucking Lamia! The intrepid pair, along with the revived black cats and Oliver's little sister Annie, are now on a mission of life and death. On their journey to the Crystal Pyramid the D.A sends a Realm Patroller to eat the gallant warriors alive, they escape by the skin of their teeth and reach the mystic pyramid where Thoth the God of Wisdom warns them their quest is all but impossible. Thoth pledges his support but after Hannah invokes the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, she demands young Annie to return to her time as a priestess, as her price for revealing to them the means of locating the ancient Akashic Cedar, the only tree in all history with the ability to fly through outer space. On the moon, the Great White Spirits appear to have forgotten about planet earth, and with Hannah tied to a stake over a fire, Oliver's help comes from the rusty Egyptian crocodile god Sobek and the warlike but outnumbered Lion headed goddess, Sekhmet. Can Hannah and Oliver save the world from being blown to smithereens? Or will the Destroying Angel rule supreme over a million burnt out fragments of our green and lovely planet? Only time and a lot of oldy worldly magic will tell. Reviews: Kaz, Behind the Scenes, G4Mag.com Children and adults alike will adore this novel entitled ŒHannah Clark and the Mummified Cats*. It*s just been released by author Sally Moore who is a part-time journalist and has written five yet-to-be-published adult fiction novels. This is her first novel for children. It*s a fantastic story which is set in Hannah*s favorite haunt of Hastings, Old Town, including Œthe Stag Inn*, where she returns as a 300-year-old witch. Lots of local reference are made and some ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses appear in the tale too. It*s got the lot- all mischief-makers interested in purchasing the story for either themselves or children can get this book direct from Trafford Publishing.

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About the Author Sally Moore is a part-time journalist and has written five yet-to-be-published adult fiction novels. This is her first novel for children.

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Excerpts

'Come on, Annie,' Oliver whispered to her. They were all three in front of the closed Stag door now, Hannah peering through the window clutching her broom and silver-tipped whitethorn wand, her blue hair garish in the bright moonlight. They all three looked up at the cracked smiling face of the full moon over the old town harbour.

'It makes me want to follow it, to sail out to sea on its path,' Annie said, still missing Vanessa and feeling a bit sad. Hannah smiled and stroked Annie's hair with her broom-free hand.

'I know Ann, that's called moon magic. But we're much better off down here using its power to get my cats breathing again. Make haste Oliver, get the door open.'

Oliver was struggling with his lock-picking paper clip, twiddling at the Chubb key. He had already secured the bolt lock back after he had given Art his bottle of tangerine brandy. Hopefully Arty was fast asleep and having celestial pleasure-dreams of winning the lottery and marrying the girl of his dreams. Art often referred to the 'girl of his dreams', but never seemed to describe her either in looks or character. Then Ollie had done it. The key clanged onto the piece of tissue paper he had slid beneath the door. Moments later they were all three safely inside the empty pub room.

Hannah instructed Oliver and Annie to light the candles, whilst she quickly and skilfully drew a five-pointed star on the wooden floor with the several pieces of chalk from her pocket. Annie put the incense burner on the table nearest the cats, and carefully heated the charcoal over a candle, dropping a pale crystal of frankincense on the tiny coal.

The Stag was turning from a social bar into a place of alchemy. The tall candles shed shadowy light on the glass case holding the cats. Annie moved towards them. The cats looked very dead to her, and rather grotesque. The smaller one, frozen in flight by the airless chimney in which it had been preserved, had half its left paw missing. 'Goodness,' she thought, 'if it came to life it wouldn't be able to run properly!'

Hannah had begun to recite her Names of Power, loudly:

'Re-Horakhti, Thoth, Amenhotep ...' without drawing breath she chanted on, moving into her circle and nodding at Oliver who was supposed to be the bell ringer. He was half asleep and weak from lack of food, so Annie went and nudged him in the ribs. '... Horemheb, Ani and Liakhte, accept these tokens on behalf of my cats, who are not at everlasting peace.' Hannah glared furiously at Oliver and Annie rang the bell sharply. '... Adonai, Alpha, Asmodeus and Heroth ...' Hannah was throwing candied angelica into the centre of the circle; she had not even looked at her cats once since starting her spell, but Annie twisted her head round to see if they were listening and waking up. They looked as stiffly dead as always.

On and on Hannah went with her long and elaborate cat-raising ritual, summoning Ann and Oliver into the magic circle. As soon as they were standing next to her the whole room became filled with a greyish mist, and it was getting cold, Hannah noticed Annie shivering beside her and came out of her spell-making trance a bit. These mortals were her responsibility, and she had almost let dear Oliver be killed just the other night.

'Great Goddess!' Hurriedly she switched from a soul-raising incantation to a protection spell '... to thee I call, in thee I believe, help me to ...' but her voice was drowned out by a terrifyingly loud roaring.

'I never thought your cats could purr so loudly,' Oliver said dryly.

Annie clutching Hannah's arm, petrified as a very large and snarling lion-headed goddess appeared at the edge of their chalk circle.

'Oh no,' cried Hannah in horror, 'it must be Sekhmet, the Goddess of Time. How on earth did I get her to appear?' The enraged Sekhmet roared again and, lowering her head over the circle, almost took Oliver's arm off in her massive jaws. The shaky circle glowed protectively, and Sekhmet, high as the ceiling, shook her head furiously.

Candles went out, and a row of glasses fell off the bar, shattering on the floor.

'How dare you summon the Devourer of Time from the dawn of civilisation, you tawdry little witch? I have a good mind to send you right back where you came from!' She roared again and the room began spinning, wooden floor twirling like a playground roundabout. Annie and Oliver swayed and fell on their knees to keep from sliding off the airborne circle.

'I don't believe it,' Hannah rapped on the floor with her wand, to no avail, 'Sekhmet is taking us back through time!'

Too rapidly the modern bar room became a wartime pub, bustling with men and women in uniform, the sound of a bomb exploding somewhere in the old town, and an air raid siren's ghostly wail. Annie felt sick as the circle ran her back to Victorian times, now a quiet family residence, a gas lamp dimly illuminating a child and her mother, sitting in high-backed chairs, sewing samplers whilst a stern man with a curved moustache read aloud from a grim sounding book.

'I must stop this.' Hannah tried a holding spell, nearly falling off the circle into a band of rough eighteenth century smugglers, pushing their barrels up through a trap door into a very ramshackle tavern.

'Wait ...' Oliver suggested, fascinated by the smuggler's booty, flagons of wine and brandy, perfumes, exquisite foreign rolls of silk and lace, but they had spun on before he could look closer, the room blurring yet again. '... if we stop when you were alive, we can grab the cats and go back again.'

'Only if Sekhmet permits us to ... oh, how can I appease her?'

Through all this activity and flashing changes of scene the Egyptian lion-headed goddess's roar of fury could still be heard.

Hannah concentrated harder than she could ever remember, until her head was splitting. She had to flatter the enraged Sekhmet, and somehow get her on their side, not an easy task, especially standing on a flying circle that was making them all feel seasick.

'Great Mistress of the Double White Palace ...' The circle was settling once more and Hannah saw that it was in her own former lifetime. There was her own humble hearth and her cauldron boiling. Her eyes blurred with tears for she could hear Lilith mewing, calling for her beloved long-lost mistress, who had run off and left her cat to be killed as a failed ratcatcher.

Hannah decided she had to try the Awakening Isis prayer from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. If she got one single word wrong they would all perish, or be trapped in a substanceless limbo for ever ... 'You are the knot where two worlds meet ...' she tossed a handful of frankincense onto her incense burner '... Red Magic courses through you like Blood of Isis ...' the mad roar softened, to a thoughtful rumble.

Sekhmet was beguiled by being compared to her contemporary Goddess. 'Where time and death merge in an eternity of millions of years. You are proof of the power of gods, magic of magic, spirit of spirit.' Hannah cried the invocation louder and louder and both of her two black cats appeared at the edge of the circle, tails waving. Hannah was so overwhelmed to see their dear faces that she promptly forgot the rest of the incantation. Bastet, never one to hang around, jumped high into the circle and landed in Oliver's arms.

'Get on with it!' he yelled at Hannah, for the roaring was getting angry again and the circle slowly spinning up off the floor.

'... You are proof of the power of gods, water and dust walking. Be it your will that we should return to the twenty-first century and help protect the cord tying the moon to the earth.' She looked at Oliver desperately for inspiration. Bastet was spitting at him - he was too regal to be held so tightly - and scratching his arm, but after a lion's head had nearly hacked it off completely a large cat was not going to bother Oliver.

'Oh, here sweet kitty.' Ann was coaxing little Lilith into the circle.

Neatly she jumped the low rim of violet fire, sat down near to Hannah and began rather self-consciously to lick her fluffy tail clean.

'Yes, oh devouring Goddess! We must adjust the wheel of life,'

Oliver thought this sounded impressive, he wondered exactly how much Sekhmet understood of modern astronomy. He clutched Bastet more tightly, getting worse scratches up his arm. 'It is not correct, as great Ptolemy believed, that our earth is fixed at the centre of the universe, in fact it is the sun's gravitational pull that keeps the planets in orbit, and our moon circling this planet.' With a furious snarl Sekhmet had re-appeared, a huge solar disc glowing on her head.

'I know of all this and more, I hold time upon my head, you senseless boy.' Oliver went to the edge of the circle, and knelt before the furious goddess. This very rash gesture impressed Hannah and Annie, and Sekhmet herself was slightly dazzled by such bravery.

'Only let me serve you, fair goddess of time, and realign the moon to her rightful orbit, thus preserving your heavens in all their glory ...' He was bluffing madly. Sekhmet blinked, raised her arm and Hannah skipped a breath. She was going to swipe Oliver off the circle into the void, the bubbulum ... they would never see him again. Instead the huge goddess lowered her arm, and very lightly touched Oliver on the top of his head. He felt it glow oddly, as if someobody had turned a hot hair dryer on him, just for a second and then the warmth stopped.

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Thoth as the sacred ibis flapped down, his head, already on a long neck, stretched all out of shape from the torture board, and owl beside him, dark all-seeing eyes looking through the Destroying Angel, fathoming all that was to come. Sekhmet and Sobek, still fighting savagely, were heartened to see their fellow Egyptian ancient god, and knocked out a few more thoroughly nasty souls, getting nearer to the fire and the D.A., who suddenly realised he needed his nagarana to fly into battle properly, and couldn't recall what he had done with the useful beast.

'Your behaviour is so outrageous,' Thoth cried, flapping down and managing to pull some of the cords binding Hannah's waist to the stake. He gasped when he saw the dead angel at the D.A.'s feet and Hannah scrambled onto his scrawny back, Lilith scratching his skinny crane neck. They flew a few feet above the fire, but Hannah was really too heavy for Thoth, and the comets were raining deadly flares onto the moon, starting little fires everywhere.

They were all going to die, thought Oliver dismally, perhaps he would suffocate before the flames burned him to a cinder. If the D.A. had a magnetar up his sleeve, like the one that had roared past Earth from the depths of the Milky Way when he had been ten or eleven, there was no hope at all. Owl flew by his ear, twittering at him with his haunting hoot.

'Lose fear, feel love, believe, believe , believe ...' His cry was echoey and soothing, but what could a magic owl know about a compressed ball of matter, invisible to a telescope, only a few miles wide, yet denser than the sun?

'Nothing can stop me now,' the Destroying Angel sneered, 'my magnetar approaches, and only I know its secret course, so you did nothing by replacing the locking crystal, Master Fisher, except get yourself an exceedingly painful death. Now I am going to gas you as well as burn you. Have a whiff of volcanic poison from my Great Red Spot munitions plant!' He pulled out a pistol and fired a shot of foul smelling liquid straight at Oliver's face. There was a burning stinging pain in his eyes and everything went black. He slumped against the stake, lifeless.

'Oliver! ... we must save him.' Hannah banged her arm on the sacred ibis's wing and squeezed him like a horse with her knees. Thoth fluttered down, almost losing his balance and falling onto the incinerating mound, singeing his wings as Hannah dragged an unconscious Oliver behind her onto poor Thoth. 'Up, great lord of wisdom,' she whispered to Thoth as the D.A. took aim with his gas pistol again.

'I am trying, Hannah! Try to remember I have just flown back from Jupiter where I was being slowly tortured to death ... you and Oliver are as heavy as pyramid blocks ... oh how ordered existence was in ancient Egypt!' Owl had flown down to the D.A., fearing nothing, as he could see all, and was tooting warningly in his ear.

'Twit, tuwoo and who are you to harness this universe for your personal crew?' The D.A. shot a jet of green gas at the hovering owl, which hit the dark eyes and went straight through them, as the black orbs were windows to another realm. 'Damnation! Where is my realm patroller? He could swallow this lot up.' Sekhmet was now advancing on the D.A., roaring in terrible anger and determined to fight him to the death. Prong the Impaler decided the lion-headed goddess was too powerful an adversary and turned tail to run, taking most of the nasty souls with him. The D.A. simply muttered another hellborn curse and knocked Sekhmet's solar disc off the top of her mane, sending her staggering into a moon crater, dizzy and disorienated. Sobek raced after her and hurled himself at the D.A. opening his long deadly jaws and clamping them around his skinny waist and whirling him around in the moon dust as if dragging him to the depths of the river.

The D.A. howled in pain but once again remembering his angelkilling curse he sent the crocodile god flying off him with a bolt of lightning coming from his mouth. This shocked Sobek so badly he went stumbling off to pass out in a scaly heap near the foot of the funeral bonfires, shuddering with electrical volts. Thoth had landed near the crater, completely exhausted and letting Oliver and Hannah tumble to the moon ground without ceremony.

'Wake up, dear Ollie.' Hannah began to clean the poison from Oliver's eyes as Thoth looked up at the stormy comets and deadly meteorites whizzing around in space. Then he stood up and pointed his curved beak towards Mars.

'Can you hear that?' he asked Hannah so solemnly that she stopped in the midst of cradling Oliver on her lap and followed his gaze into outer space.

'No. What is it? Dearest Thoth, you have saved Oliver, for he is still breathing.'

'It is the magnetar. I passed it when I escaped from the Great Red Spot. Humans will not see it. It will destroy everything in its path, so I have only saved you to die again, Hannah and Oliver. Forgive me. I must go to Sobek and Sekhmet, they have battled so bravely for the glory of ancient Egypt, I cannot understand why ..?' Hannah guessed he had been going to say he did not understand how the Great White Spirits could permit such an end to the blue planet, precious Earth, but she just nodded and thanked the fearless Ibis, keeper of the Akashic Records, for all he had tried to do.

She just sat with Oliver still unconscious in her arms, watching the massive comets and asteroids sparking around the moon's orbit. Lilith mewed piteously, reminding Hannah she was hungry but all she got was a scratch behind her ear. Hannah wondered where Annie and Bastet were; hopefully if Ishtar was in her own time and realm they might not perish with everything and everybody else.

At once a starry white light came curving high as the heavens, and Hannah blinked as the noises of comets and nasty souls wailing and hurtling rocks died away, like the final notes of a very noisy symphony. She blinked again as a rainbow as wide as the Sea of Tranquillity appeared from the end of space, arching in perfect colours to dip down to the end of the moon crater. The smoke and fire disappeared and along with the white starry light that made her want to cry with its soothing peace came a smell of roses. The dead air of the moon became fragrant, and rays of gold spilled over the surface that had never seen the sun.

Hannah had once dreamed of the greatest White Spirit, when she had been a hundred years in the Hungry Ghost Realm, and one night all hope had just died within her.

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Catalogue Information

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