The Amazing Adventure of Amanderella Gottsnobbler

Chapter 1:

At Home with the Gottsnobblers.

Gottsnobbler Hall was once the grandest mansion in the county. Its gardens, tended by dozens of gardeners, were written about in glossy magazines. The Hall itself had more bedrooms than anyone could count, ready for lords, ladies, princes, princesses, and anyone else who fancied a stay. The drawing rooms glittered with fashionable furniture, and the kitchens produced feasts fit for emperors. Footmen carried silver trays, maids polished every surface, and cooks stirred pots big enough to feed an army.

But that was long ago. The money that paid for such splendour had trickled away, generation by generation, until there was almost nothing left. The gardeners were sent home, the footmen found other houses, and the maids followed them. The cooks packed their pans, and the kitchen boys vanished too. Furniture was sold, land was sold, and the Hall grew quieter and emptier with each passing year.

Now the present Lord and Lady Gottsnobbler lived in a house far too large for them. Its windows stared down the valley like stern old eyes, and its chimneys puffed only when they could afford coal. The carpets were threadbare, the curtains faded, and the silver long gone—yet they still insisted on calling it “the ancestral estate.”

Lord Gottsnobbler was a thin man with a nose like a quill pen, forever writing letters of complaint to people who never replied. Lady Gottsnobbler, taller and grander, wore gowns patched so cleverly that visitors mistook them for new fashions. They were poor aristocrats, but they carried themselves as if the world still owed them respect.

In this echoing house, with its peeling portraits and cold and breezy halls, their daughter Amanderella grew up. She learned early that grandeur could be stitched from scraps, and that pride could be polished even when the silver was gone.

Amanderella herself was tall, slim, and tough. She wore long dresses in single colours, chin to floor, and a pointed hat that made her look pencil-thin. Her friends called her “H.” But Amanderella had bigger dreams than fashion. She wanted to be an Explorer.

One of her great-uncles, Wilburate Gottsnobbler, had once gone to Africa to search for the source of the Nile. He did not find it. Instead, he found a tribe who sent him home with a few bits missing. He spent the rest of his life telling anyone who couldn’t escape about his adventures. Amanderella had never met him, but she had grown up hearing his stories. She was determined to do better.

She devoured every book she could find on expeditions, from Arctic voyages to jungle treks. She attended lectures by returned explorers, scribbling notes until her fingers cramped. And when the house grew too quiet, she strode out into the fields, walking for hours to harden her body against tiredness.  She learned to read a compass, find wild food and cook it, and anything else she thought might be useful. She practised until she could sketch on her pad any of the things that she saw while out and about. Most importantly, she mastered seventeen different ways to disable an attacker with a hat pin—a very useful skill for any lone female to have.

And so, in the faded halls of Gottsnobbler Hall, among patched gowns and empty rooms, Amanderella prepared herself for adventure.

Her parents, Lord and Lady Gottsnobbler, shook their heads at her determination.
“Exploring is for men with maps and money,” they muttered, as if saying it could decide her future.

But Amanderella only tightened her chin-length dress and lifted her pointed hat higher. She would prove them wrong.

One rainy afternoon, Amanderella attended a lecture in the town hall. The speaker was a returned explorer, his boots still muddy from jungles far away. He carried a lantern in one hand and a stack of crumpled notes in the other, which he dropped twice before reaching the podium.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, standing tall, “I bring tidings from the deepest forests of the Amazon basin!” He paused dramatically, only to sneeze so loudly that the lantern flickered.

The audience leaned forward. Amanderella leaned furthest of all.

The explorer spoke of rivers that twisted like snakes, of forests so thick that daylight barely touched the ground, and of creatures that no one had ever seen. He tried to show a map, but it was upside down. He attempted to display a sketch of a jaguar, but it looked suspiciously like a spotted cow.

Most exciting of all were the Whistling Blue Monkeys. No explorer had ever found them, though many had tried. Some claimed they were only a rumour, others swore they had heard their eerie whistles drifting through the trees. The monkeys were said to be as bright as sapphires, with voices that sounded like flutes and whistles, tricking anyone who tried to follow them.

The explorer demonstrated their call by blowing into a tin whistle. Unfortunately, he blew so hard that the whistle squeaked like a mouse, and the audience erupted in giggles. He tried again, producing a sound more like a kettle boiling. “Ah yes,” he said proudly, “exactly like that!”

Amanderella sat forward, her pointed hat casting a long shadow across the hall. Her heart thumped like a drum. This was it. This was the adventure she wanted. Not velvet waistcoats, not gold buttons, not patched carpets or faded curtains. She would be the one to find the Whistling Blue Monkeys.

When Amanderella returned from the lecture, her eyes shone brighter than the lantern the explorer had dropped. She spoke at once of the Whistling Blue Monkeys, of their sapphire fur and flute-like whistles, and of her determination to find them.

Lord Gottsnobbler snorted so loudly that dust fell from a portrait frame. “Imaginary monkeys!” he declared. “Whistling nonsense! If explorers cannot even draw a jaguar without it looking like a cow, how can they possibly discover monkeys that whistle?” He waved his quill-pen nose in the air as if signing the monkeys out of existence.

Lady Gottsnobbler was no kinder. She adjusted her cleverly patched gown and shook her head. “Explorers always catch dreadful colds,” she said firmly. “I once read of a man who sneezed for three years after returning from the jungle. Three years! Do you want that, Amanderella? Sneezing in society? No one will marry a girl who whistles and sneezes at the same time.”

Amanderella only lifted her pointed hat higher. “I will find them,” she said. “And I will not sneeze.”

Her parents exchanged anxious glances. They had no patience for undiscovered monkeys or jungle sneezes.

That made her even more determined than ever. From that day, every step she took, every map she studied, every hat-pin she sharpened was in preparation for the journey that would prove her worth as an explorer.