A

AJAY CHOWDHURY

h

a h s e y and the Firefis

PUFFIN BOOKS

AYESHA AND THE FIREFISH Ajay Chowdhury is a dad. A long time ago, he started making up bedtime stories for his two daughters. Many years passed, during which he ran numerous successful tech start-ups (including Shazam), made short films, wrote articles and directed Shakespeare plays. Now, he has just finished his first children’s book, based on one of those bedtime stories from long ago. He hopes you enjoy it as much as his daughters did.

AJAY CHOWDHURY

a h s e y A and the iF refish Illustrations by Devangana Dash

PUFFIN BOOKS USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia New Zealand | India | South Africa | China Puffin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com Published by Penguin Random House India Pvt. Ltd No: 04-010 to 04-012, 4th Floor, Capital Tower -1, M G Road, Gurugram -122002, Haryana, India

First published in Puffin by Penguin Books India 2016 Text copyright © Ajay Chowdhury 2016 Illustrations copyright © Devangana Dash 2016 All rights reserved 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. ISBN 9780143334309 For sale in the Indian Subcontinent only Typeset in Minion Pro by Manipal Digital Systems, Manipal

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. www.penguin.co.in

For Eva and Layla, with all my love

Contents

The Voice from the Sea

1

The House under the Sea

11

Mrs Davenport’s Double

18

The Indigo Child

27

The Sophisticated Snail

34

Getting to Rome

38

Mollusc Humour

42

Shape Shifters

46

Xander

53

A Secret Revealed

57

Starry Messenger

63

Night at the Museum

70

Trapped!

80

Star Stuff

87

Contents

Wormholes

97

Stormpearls

102

Schemes and Stratagems

111

Delhi

119

Dharamshala

126

The Gyatso Lama

133

Soul Music

137

Poison

145

Casa Batllo

150

The Visitation

161

Dragons and Swords

168

Alone in Space

176

Aynsof

181

Dreams

189

Tapas

193

A Meeting on the Beach Epilogue: Winter

198 206

Thanks . . .

213

viii

The Voice from the Sea

Ayesha sat in her hotel room and stared glumly at the moonlight as it cast a silver trail across the dark, breathing sea. She was bored. Really mind-squelchingly bored. This holiday had turned out to be nothing like she’d imagined in the months and days leading up to it. Sure, the hotel was lovely, the beach was beautiful, the sea was warm and the chocolate croissants were delicious. But there was Nothing To Do. And No One To Do Nothing With! Her dad spent all day in the spa, getting facials and massages and playing tennis and goodness knows what, and her mum spent all day in the room, on the phone or on her laptop, just emerging in the evening for their family dinner at the Blue Turtle. ‘This is such a beautiful place,’ they’d tell her. ‘Go have fun! Enjoy yourself!’ Easy enough to say, but there were no other kids at the hotel. And the other beautifully tanned 1

Ajay Chowdhury

men and women looked at her oddly, as though wondering why she was there. It was really weird; they lay by the pool all day in their swimsuits but never seemed to get in—they just got browner and browner  .  .  . like chickens roasting in an oven. Ayesha had been tempted to creep up behind them and douse them in olive oil to see if they would sizzle. Ayesha and her family had been in Italy for three days now. She had been really excited about taking a break from cold, rainy London, and the flight to Rimini had been quite enjoyable. She’d watched an unsuitable movie (rated 15— her parents hadn’t noticed!) and made faces at the boy in the opposite row until he’d started crying. She’d pressed her nose against the window to gaze at the deep blue sea below her and daydreamed about swimming with sharks. Once they’d checked into their hotel, and after the initial excitement at seeing their fancy room—tons of DVDs, a minibar with Maltesers and Doritos, a hidden safe in the wardrobe (which she promptly changed the combination to and hid some chocolates in), a huuuge bath with a TV on the wall—subsided a little, Ayesha went exploring. That’s when she’d realized there were no other kids around. ‘Well, this really isn’t a hotel for children,’ said the snooty concierge, looking down at Ayesha and twitching her nostrils as if she had just noticed a bad smell. ‘But we made an exception for you.’ Great, Ayesha had thought, doing a mental eye-roll. I’m an exception. In her opinion, this definitely wasn’t the same as being exceptional. 2

Ayesha and the Firefish

So she’d gone back to her room to watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on the DVD for the fifth time, catch the odd cartoon on BBC World and play games on her phone. She swam in the pool, looking at the chickens roasting their fronts by the pool. And she swam in the sea, watching the chickens flip over and roast their backs on the beach. After three days of contemplating these chickens roast themselves silly, she was bored. She almost wished she was back home in London. She missed hatching teachertormenting plans over spaghetti bolognese and jam roly-poly with Eva, her best friend (always excluding their dear English teacher, Mrs Davenport, from these evil schemes, of course). She missed making different-shaped chapatis with her grandmother (she was working her way around the world, she’d tell Gran when they came out wrong—so far she’d made them in the shape of India, of England, of Spain . . .). She even almost missed horrible Neil, who always teased her about her dad staying at home while her mum went out and worked. Ayesha wasn’t entirely sure about exactly what her mum did. She ran something called a ‘hedge fund’, but it had nothing to do with gardening or with fun, as far as she could tell. Dad used to work with her mum at the hedge fund but then gave up his really good job when Ayesha was born—to look after her full-time and become a ‘house husband’ (as Dad kept reminding her, Ayesha should be grateful she had been so lucky, even though most of the looking-after had been done by Franny, her nanny, while 3

Ajay Chowdhury

her dad was on his computer, diligently doing his research on how to be a house husband—by watching something called The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills). She didn’t miss all the tuition and exam practice her parents insisted on, though. The pressure to get into the ‘right’ school when she turned eleven next year sometimes made her want to scream. Her life was so dull! Where was all the adventure she had read about in the Harry Potter books? Why can’t I be more like the awesome Hermione Granger, she thought, as she continued to stare into the distant moonlit sea, tossing forbidden Maltesers into the air and trying to catch them in her mouth. She looked ruefully at the clock—it was almost midnight. As she caught the third Malteser, she suddenly saw, out of the corner of her eye, a white streak on the beach, but when she jerked her head to look, it was gone. She stared up at the sky and noticed thousands of stars and, on the horizon, the moon, now glowing red, getting ready to set in a few hours. The night sparkled with magical possibilities, almost like a scene from Finding Nemo. The TV was still on in her room and she half heard the low murmur of the BBC presenter: ‘Something unusual is happening in the skies tonight that has astronomers perplexed. An unpredicted and very intense meteor shower is lighting up the skies over southern Europe. Let’s find out more from renowned astrophysicist Professor Eagleton in Cambridge.’ 4

Ayesha and the Firefish

Ayesha was gripped with a sudden urge to smell the sea, feel the wet sand squelching between her toes and see the stars. She had never been out of her room this late—but Mum and Dad were asleep in the next room . . . She silently slid into her swimsuit and carefully crept out of the room, shutting the door softly behind her. And there she was, feeling the cool night breeze over her skin, the sand soft beneath her feet. She looked up and, to her surprise, saw a shooting star! And then another! They were so beautiful. She walked on and, as she left the lights of the hotel behind her, the sky filled with millions of stars. She could make out some of the constellations she had learnt about in school: the Great Bear (or ‘the Pan’, as her mother called it); Orion and his belt . . . and then she saw something she had never seen before—the stars getting reflected on the wet sand, glistening and winking as she walked. She followed the trail of stars to the water and—that was odd!—the waves seemed to be glowing as they broke! As she moved closer, she traced a bright, starry line of light on the wet sand with her toe. She looked back and saw glowing footprints behind her, the farthest ones slowly disappearing. Ayesha was spellbound! Then, little gleams of yellow appeared at the ends of the waves as they crashed, like tiny streaks of trapped lightning. Now she made a circle with her bare feet on the wet sand and it glowed around her for a while, before gently fading. Ayesha was thrilled to bits—she could make patterns! 5

Ayesha and the Firefish

‘They’re like fireflies in the water!’ she exclaimed in delight. ‘Firefish! That’s what I’ll call them! They’re firefish! Hello, little firefish . . .’ She ran up and down the beach, leaving glowing marks wherever her feet touched the damp sand. And up above, she could see more shooting stars. She was in the most beautiful place on earth; her heart was singing and she felt like she was flying. And then, an eerie high-pitched voice pulled her back to earth. ‘Ayeeesha . . .’ ‘Yes?’ She looked around, but she couldn’t see anyone. ‘Who is it?’ ‘Ayeeesha . . .’ came the voice again. ‘Who’s there?’ she asked. She looked up and down the beach once more but still couldn’t spot anyone. This is seriously weird, she thought. All at once, she shivered and realized she couldn’t see the lights from the hotel any more. And again, ‘Ayeeesha . . .’ Someone’s playing tricks on me, she thought. I’d better go back to the hotel. ‘You looking wrong way, Ayeeesha,’ the voice interrupted. ‘Look to sea.’ She turned and looked out at the sea but didn’t see anyone there. ‘I can’t see you!’ she shouted. ‘Where are you?’ Out in the distance she heard a watery whoosh. A dolphin jumped gracefully out of the starlit water, hung 7

‘A terrific fable about the planet’s future and the power of children, written beautifully with an infectious warmth and momentum’ Amit Chaudhuri

‘Ayesha thought for a bit. Her parents had told her never to talk to strangers. But they hadn’t mentioned anything about strange dolphins.’ Ten-year-old Ayesha has everything an adventurer needs—courage, cleverness, creativity and a complete lack of caution. But even Ayesha has to admit that the mission Shekina (the Queen of the Seas, no less) has charged her with may be slightly out of her league. After all, it does involve saving the world. Of course. And it’s not like she has a fire-breathing dragon or a super-smart android as a sidekick. Try a snarky surfboarding snail instead. Join Ayesha as she jumps headlong into an extra-extraordinary adventure that takes her halfway across the world (and a little beyond) . Cover illustration and design by Devangana Dash

ISBN 978-0-143-33430-9

Fiction

9+

MRP `250 (incl. of all taxes)

For sale in the Indian Subcontinent only