Free The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer

head in disgust. “Slime makes you sick? What kind of imp are you? The others live for slime.”
    N o 1 took a deep breath and said something aloud that he had known for a long time.
    “I’m not like the others.” N o 1’s voice trembled. He was on the verge of tears.
    “Are you going to cry?” asked Rawley, his eyes bugging. “This is too much, Leon. He’s going to cry now, just like a female. I give up.”
    Abbot scratched his chin. “Let me try something.”
    He rummaged in a cape pocket, surreptitiously fixing something over his hand.
    Oh, no, thought N o 1. Please no. Not Stony.
    Abbot raised a forearm, his cloak draped over it. A ministage. A puppet human poked his head over the leather cape. The puppet’s head was a grotesque ball of painted clay, with a heavy forehead and clumsy features. N o 1 doubted that humans were this ugly in real life, but demons were not known for their artistic skills. Abbot often produced Stony as a visual incentive for those imps who were having difficulty warping. Needless to say, N o 1 had been introduced to the puppet before.
    “Grrr,” said the puppet, or rather Abbot said, as he waggled the puppet. “ Grrr , my name is Stony the Mud Man.”
    “Hello, Stony,” said N o 1 weakly. “How’ve you been?”
    The puppet held a tiny wooden sword in its hand. “Never mind how I’ve been. I don’t care how you’ve been, because I hate all fairies,” said Abbot in a squeaky voice. “I drove them from their homes. And if they ever try to come back, I will kill them all.”
    Abbot lowered the puppet. “Now, how does that make you feel?”
    It makes me feel that the wrong demon is in charge of the pride, thought N o 1, but aloud he said, “Eh, angry?”
    Abbot blinked. “Angry? Really?”
    “No,” confessed N o 1, wringing his hands. “I don’t feel anything. It’s a puppet. I can see your fingers through the material.”
    Abbot stuffed Stony back in his pocket.
    “That’s it. I’ve had it with you, N o 1. You will never earn a name from the book.”
    Once demons warped, they were given a human name from Lady Heatherington Smythe’s Hedgerow . The logic being that learning the human language and possessing a human name would help the demon army think like humans, and therefore defeat them. Abbot may have hated the Mud Men, but that wasn’t to say he didn’t admire them. Also, politically, it was a good idea to have every demon on Hybras calling each other by names that Leon Abbot had procured for them.
    Rawley grabbed N o 1’s ear and dragged him from his seat to the rear of the classroom. A metal grille on the floor covered a shallow, pungent dung pit.
    “Get to work, Runt,” he said gruffly. “You know what to do.”
    N o 1 sighed. He knew only too well. This wasn’t the first or second time he’d had to endure this odious task. He hefted a long-handled gaff from a peg on the wall and pulled the heavy grille from its groove. The smell was rank but not unbearable, as a crust had formed on the dung’s surface. Beetles crawled across the craggy skin, their legs clicking like claws on wood.
    N o 1 uncovered the pit completely, then selected his nearest classmate. There was no way of telling which classmate it actually was because of the slime cocoon. The only movements were small air bubbles around the mouth and nose. At least, he hoped it was the mouth and nose.
    N o 1 bent low and rolled the cocoon along the floor and into the dung pit. The warping imp crashed through the crust, taking a dozen beetles with him into the muck below. A gush of dung stink washed over N o 1, and he knew his skin would smell for days. The others would wear their pit stink proudly, but for N o 1 it was just another badge of shame.
    It was arduous work. Not all the warping imps were still. Several struggled inside their cocoons, and twice demon claws punctured the green chrysalis inches from N o 1’s skin.
    He persisted, groaning loudly in the hope that Rawley or Leon Abbot would