Sita, Snake Read online

  Sita, Snake-Queen of Speed

  Sita, Snake-Queen of Speed

  Franzeska G. Ewart

  Illustrated by Helen Bate

  Sita, Snake-Queen of Speed copyright © Frances Lincoln Limited 2007

  Text copyright © Franzeska G. Ewart 2007

  Illustrations copyright © Helen Bate 2007

  First published in Great Britain in 2007 and in the USA in 2008 by

  Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 4 Torriano Mews,

  Torriano Avenue, London NW5 2RZ

  www.franceslincoln.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available on request

  ISBN: 978-1-84507-779-2

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-90766-660-5

  Printed in the United Kingdom / China / Singapore

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Thrill Ride to End All Thrill Rides

  A Truly Massive G-Force

  The Fly In The Ointment

  A Fearless Band Of Snake-Warriors

  A Treasure Quest

  Big Matt McBain

  An Absolute, Unmitigated Disaster

  Desperate Measures

  A Terrible, Tempting Idea

  The Entrance Exam

  Bilal Saves The Day

  Sita, Snake-Queen of Speed

  To Balqees Ul-Hassan, with grateful thanks

  The Thrill Ride to End All Thrill Rides

  There’s a feeling I get when I’m excited – I wonder if you’ve ever had it?

  It’s like an electric current rushing up my back, and when it reaches my head it makes my face go hot, and it feels as if my hair is standing on end. It only happens when I’m really excited, and it happened the very moment I heard about Sita, Snake-Queen of Speed.

  Even the name thrilled me through and through, but there was more. For Sita, Snake-Queen of Speed had a Thrill Ride the likes of which I’d never dreamt about, not even in my wildest dreams.

  It was my best friend Kylie Teasdale who told me about it, and, even before she’d finished telling me, I knew I had to see Sita for myself. Not just see her. I knew I had to ride with her on the Thrill Ride to end all Thrill Rides.

  That was tricky though, because Sita, Snake-Queen of Speed was one of the rides at Thrill City. And unfortunately, Thrill City is not the kind of place my family (that’s Mum, and Dad, and Nani, and Bilal, my baby brother) would ever go for a holiday.

  Bradford – yes. Thrill City – no.

  Anyway, Kylie told me about Sita and her amazing Snake Ride after she came back from Thrill City in the Spring Holidays. She talked about nothing else for four entire days.

  “It’s fabulous, Yosser,” she said, as we waited for the morning bell to ring. “Utterly, mind-blowingly, fabulous.”

  By the way, Kylie says she gets the electric-current thing up her back too, and her hair feels like it’s standing on end. And since Kylie’s mum lets her get her hair streaked yellow and orange and red, it’s a real shame that it doesn’t really stand on end – because how cool would that be!

  Kylie’s mum also let Kylie get her tummy button pierced. I once asked my mum if I could get my tummy button pierced and she said – ‘Not while I have breath in my body and blood in my veins’. Which is her way of saying no.

  Kylie’s great at describing things. She uses such good words that she makes pictures appear in your mind. One day she’s going to be a famous writer, but for the time being she’s practising on me.

  So I shut my eyes and listened to Kylie telling me about Sita, Snake-Queen of Speed, and the more she told me, the more I pictured her. And the more I pictured her, the more I knew I had to go to Thrill City.

  “You get strapped into this thing called a Snake Pod,” Kylie explained. “The outside’s painted to look like snakeskin, and the front is a snake’s head.

  “Even the seats are snakeskin,” she went on, “and the bit you hold on to is…” Kylie paused and took a big breath, “… a blood-stained fang.”

  I shivered. I wanted to ask Kylie if the fang was actually wet and sticky with blood. I didn’t though, because I knew deep down they wouldn’t be allowed real blood; in fact, they probably wouldn’t be allowed even wet and sticky fake blood.

  “Right ahead of you,” Kylie went on, “there’s this huge model of Sita, and you have never in your life seen anyone so cooool. She’s got green snakeskin boots, and green snakeskin gloves, and round her neck she has a little golden snake. Her eyes are yellow, and her hair is long and black and…” Kylie clutched my arm hard, “… there are snakes writhing about in it!”

  “Oh my goodness!” I breathed. “But not really writhing?”

  I couldn’t believe they’d really writhe – like, actually move back and forth and from side to side.

  Kylie was nodding though. “The model’s a kind of Virtual Reality computer thing,” she said, “so Sita walks about…”

  “… and the snakes writhe?” I said, just to make quite sure.

  Kylie nodded. “Writhe like anything! Sometimes, a snake’ll writhe down towards you and open its jaws, so you can see its forked tongue and its fangs.”

  “Does deadly venom drip from the fangs, Kylie?” I asked.

  I know quite a lot about snakes, you see, because I’ve got snakes at home, though they’re not alive. They belong to my nani and they’re stuffed, like a lot of Nani’s things. She’s got a huge collection, mostly birds and lizards, which she keeps in her bedroom.

  Nani knows all about snakes, which is how I know that snakes’ fangs are hollow, and they inject deadly venom through them into their prey.

  “Deadly venom and blood, Yosser,” nodded Kylie. “It’s awesome.”

  She didn’t have to tell me. I had the clearest picture of Sita, Snake-Queen of Speed inside my head.

  And it had awesome written all over it.

  A Truly Massive G-Force

  It was nearly time for the bell to ring, but Kylie hadn’t finished describing Sita, Snake-Queen of Speed and her amazing Thrill Ride.

  “Then there’s a really loud hiss,” she said, “and the Snake Pod tips forward so you’re hanging upside down. All the blood rushes to your head and you can hear your heart beating in your ears!”

  I bent over and stuck my head between my knees to see if I could hear my heart beating in my ears. The blood certainly rushed to my head. Then there was a high-pitched buzzing sound, and for a moment I thought my ear-drums had burst. Then I realised it was just the bell.

  “Then this incredible hi-i-i-i-s-s-s-s-s-y voice booms out,” Kylie said, as we lined up to go in, “and it says I am S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-sita, S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s snake-Queen of S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-speed. Do you dare to ride with me?’”

  Kylie’s great at voices. She made Sita’s voice hiss like anything. In fact, she hissed saliva all over my face.

  “What if you didn’t?” I asked.

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Dare to ride with her?” I said.

  Kylie gave a snort. “It’d be a bit late to decide you didn’t dare when they’d strapped you in and hung you upside down. And anyway,” she gave another snort, “anyone who’s chicken doesn’t go to Thrill City.”

  Now, I know Kylie wasn’t meaning to suggest for a moment th
at I was chicken. It’s not something Kylie would do. But all the same, it made me even more determined to go, just to prove to myself I wasn’t.

  Ms Albright, our teacher, was standing in front of the school door, staring out towards the football pitch, looking for stragglers. She always did that, and it was great because, if you were lucky, you could manage another good five-minutes’ worth of chat while she shouted at them.

  “So then what happens?” I whispered, keeping my mouth rigid. Ms Albright’s hawk-eyes could spot your lips moving a mile off.

  “Sita does a countdown from ten,” Kylie whispered back, “and everybody joins in, and when you get to eight you feel a judder and on nine the Snake Pod starts to move, and…”

  “On ten you’re off?” I said.

  “You never get to hear ten,” Kylie whispered, “because a Truly Massive G-Force shoots you into Sita’s Snake-Kingdom.”

  She paused dramatically.

  “What’s a Truly Massive G-Force?” I asked.

  Kylie thought about it for a while.

  “That’s what it said on the brochure,” she said finally.

  Ms Albright was holding a football above her head and telling our class to walk smartly in. I sneaked a glance at Kylie. She was still thinking hard.

  “Truly Massive G-Forces are hard to explain,” she muttered as we passed Ms Albright.

  “Try,” I said.

  “Lips,” said Ms Albright. She raised her eyebrows pointedly at us, and we marched silently in.

  Even when we were half-way down the corridor, Kylie still didn’t dare try to explain the G-Force thing. When Ms Albright said lips, she meant lips.

  Actually, I was pretty sure Kylie didn’t have the first clue what a Truly Massive G-Force was. Which was a bit of a let-down, because I really wanted to know what it looked like, and whether it had snakes dangling from it.

  And I wasn’t sure even my nani would know that.

  The Fly In The Ointment

  At this point I have to put Sita, Snake-Queen of Speed and the Truly Massive G-Force on hold, because there’s something else you need to know.

  It’s what my dad calls a fly in the ointment – the ointment being your life, and the fly being something that utterly ruins it. And the fly in my particular ointment that summer was Our Lady of the Sorrows.

  My mum and dad, you see, had always had a bee in their bonnet about me going to a private school when I left Primary. They said a private school, with just girls, would be ‘much more conducive to study’ than the local comprehensive and, after surfing the Net and examining every league table under the sun, they’d hit on Our Lady as the best school in the area. So off we went, my mum and my dad and me, to see it. (Nani stayed at home to look after Bilal and make sure he didn’t eat the furniture.)

  When I first walked into Our Lady of the Sorrows, I must admit I liked the atmosphere. OK, there were statues everywhere, but they had lovely faces, so I knew I’d get used to them. And it was really quiet and calm – not like our school at all.

  But it was when we were in the Head’s office that the bee in Mum and Dad’s bonnet began to turn into a horrible buzzy fly in my ointment. It began to turn, in fact, the very moment I set eyes on Sister Mary Ignatius.

  It wasn’t that Sister Mary Ignatius was huge and scary-looking. Not a bit of it. She was shorter than me, and her face reminded me of Nani’s stuffed canary with a little hooked beak, and a neat grey veil in place of yellow feathers. But there was something about her eyes and the determined way she said, We’ll make a first-rate scholar out of Yosser if it’s the last thing we do… that made a horrible stomach-curdling feeling of dread wash over me.

  Sister Mary Ignatius’s eyes were black and sparkly, and the lenses in her glasses were so strong they made her eyes look absolutely enormous.

  That was a bit scary, but not nearly as scary as her voice. It was very quiet indeed, but it had that edge to it that let you know she’d get her own way no matter what. And when she listed all the school rules (of which there were about ten million) she kept turning to me and giving me that ultrasonic stare as though she thought I’d be breaking every one of them as soon as I crossed the threshold.

  Finally, at rule number nine million nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine (School uniform must be worn at all times) she leaned over her desk, glared at me with her huge eyes, and sniffed.

  “Positively no jeans,” she said, aiming the sniff in the general direction of my legs. I was about to point out that actually they weren’t jeans, they were combats, but one look at Sister Mary Ignatius’s eyes and I decided an in-depth discussion of fashion was not appropriate. I just bit my lip and shook my head, as though I’d never really liked combats anyway.

  But I was truly miserable. I’d seen some girls as we came in, all identically dressed in bright green jumpers. Some had jaunty tartan skirts and neat black stockings, and others had jaunty tartan trousers, and at the time I’d thought they looked quite cool. Now it was beginning to dawn on me that I could be one of those girls, and that Sister Mary Ignatius and her teachers could be making a first-rate scholar out of me for the next six years …

  And in that moment I realised I didn’t want to be at Our Lady of the Sorrows at all.

  Not without Kylie.

  I looked pleadingly at Mum, but she and Dad were shaking Sister Mary Ignatius’s hand, and they were all smiling happily.

  “Good day to you, Mr Farooq,” Sister Mary was saying in a business-like voice, “and we look forward to seeing Yosser in the very near future, for her entrance exam …”

  That did it. I didn’t think I could feel worse, but I instantly did.

  Entrance exam. The words were like a great bell booming out my fate, as Kylie put it when I told her later. And as usual, Kylie was spot-on.

  I’ve always been terrified of exams, you see. Even Ms Albright’s regular Friday Mental Maths and Spelling combo used make me feel sick. The thought of sitting an exam in Our Lady of the Sorrows’ big hall was more than I could stand.

  As soon as we were outside, I told Mum and Dad I didn’t want to go, but I could see there was absolutely no point. They were hooked. They thought Our Lady of the Sorrows was perfect and Sister Mary Ignatius was wonderful.

  “I could see the way she was looking at you, Yosser,” Mum said, her eyes moist with happiness. “She was looking right in at your Hidden Potential…”

  “… and planning how to unleash it,” added Dad, smacking his lips as though my Hidden Potential was a tasty meal. “Our Lady of the Sorrows will be the making of you, Yosser. You mark my words.”

  I clambered miserably into the car, took out my mobile, and texted Kylie to tell her what had happened. Then I sat in silence all the way home, thinking about my fate, and even Kylie texting back a smily-face didn’t cheer me up.

  A Fearless Band Of Snake-Warriors

  Nani,” I asked, “what’s a Truly Massive G-Force?”

  Mum and Nani and Bilal and I were sitting round the table, having tea. Dad wasn’t there, because he always works very late in our shop (which is called Farooq’s Fruits). Mum and Nani and I were eating chicken pakora. Bilal was eating the tablecloth.

  Nani rolled her tongue round her mouth several times, which is what she does when she’s thinking. “I think it’s a kind of underwear…” she said at last, but I could see she wasn’t sure.

  “I don’t think it can be, Nani-jee,” I said as politely as I could. “Because Kylie says it shoots you into Sita’s Snake Kingdom. Underwear couldn’t do that.”

  We went on eating in silence for a while. I tried to stop myself imagining a huge pair of pants pushing a Snake Pod along a track. Then I took a big breath in, gritted my teeth, and asked:

  “Can I go to Thrill City this summer? Please?”

  Mum and Nani looked at me with puzzled expressions. Bilal spat the tablecloth out.

  I explained in vivid detail all about Thrill City, and how cool it was, and how everybody goes there, and when I’d finish
ed Mum said, like I knew she would, “Wait till your Dad gets home, Yosser, but the answer’s probably ‘No’. It would cost too much and anyway, we always go to Auntie Rosina’s in Bradford.”

  A big lump filled my throat then, and my eyes went prickly. I knew there was no point saying anything more till Dad was there, so I went to my bedroom, where I lay on my bed and made two mental lists: one of my chances of getting Dad to agree, and the other of my chances of not getting Dad to agree.

  The second list went on and on … and the first item on it was, Think how much money we’ll be spending on you if you pass the entrance exam for Our Lady of the Sorrows.

  I couldn’t think of a single item for the first list.

  To take my mind off it I drew the best picture of Sita I could, remembering Kylie’s brilliant description. I drew her in a short dress made of red and yellow flames, and I gave her green snakeskin boots and green snakeskin gloves, and masses of snakes writhing about in her hair, and a little golden snake round her neck.

  In the background I drew a Snake Pod, with a glistening-red fang to hold on to, and then I drew myself, strapped down in the Pod, waiting for countdown.

  I decided to miss out the Truly Massive G-Force till I knew what it was.

  Then I pinned the picture above my bed and lay down and looked up at it, trying to think what Sita would do if she wanted something very, very much. Sita wouldn’t lie on her bed and cry, I was sure of that. She wouldn’t throw a temper tantrum either. What would she do?

  I was racking my brains when there was a tap at my door and Nani poked her head in. “Yosser,” she said softly. “I have something to show you – may I come in?”

  “Sure, Nani-jee,” I said, and she sat beside me with the thing she had to show me on her lap. It was a funny shape, and it was covered in a large woollen vest.