Battle of the Beast

Contents Cover Title Page Dedication 1. The Feathery Feast 2. The No-Beast and the Bethany 3. The Panic and the Muddle 4. The Close Calls 5. The Wintlorian Warning 6. The Puddle of Chaos 7. The Better Kind of Beast 8. The Reluctant Beast-Keepers 9. The Long Night 10. The Sweetshop Sleepover 11. The Rude Awakening 12. The Warlike Wintlorian 13. The Very Good Dog 14. The Thorny Rose 15. The Vomit for the Whole Neighborhood 16. The Battle of Bethany and Ebenezer 17. The Belly of the Beast 18. The Sinister Sandwich 19. The Midnight Raid 20. The Ultimate De-Beasting 21. The Murderous Mortimer 22. The Beast and the Parrot 23. The Soured Sweetshop 24. The Return of the Beast 25. The Poisoned Praise 26. The Cry of Claudette 27. The Gifts That Wouldn’t Stop Giving 28. The Party Pooper 29. The Enthusiastic Victim 30. The Battle Inside the Beast 31. The Feathery Farewell 32. The Changed Mind 33. The Bethany File About the Author and Illustrator Copyright Guide Cover Start of Content Title Page Dedication About the Author and Illustrator Copyright I V VI 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 
 
 The Beast and the Bethany
 Book 3
 Battle of the Beast
 By Jack Meggitt–Phillips
 Illustrated by Isabelle Follath
 
 
 
 
 Praise for THE BEAST AND THE BETHANY
 
 “Delightful from the first sentence, reminiscent of Roald Dahl and Neil Gaiman at their cleverest.”
 —SLJ
 “Meggitt-Phillips’s ability to make readers squeal with delight, squirm in discomfort, and squawk with laughter make classical comparisons inevitable.… Bound to whet appetites.”
 —Kirkus Reviews
 “I loved it! (Was that okay, Jack? Please don’t feed me to the beast!)”
 —James Riley, New York Times bestselling author of Story Thieves
 
 Praise for REVENGE OF THE BEAST
 
 “Wickedly funny and surprisingly relatable.”
 —Kirkus Reviews
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 For my beloved sister, Kitty, and her beastly bear, Rufus; you can battle it out to see who’s more deserving of this dedication
 —J. M.-P.
 For Nani and Fefe
 —I. F.
 
 
 
 
 The Feathery Feast
 The only thing left of Wintloria was the forest, and there wasn’t much of that left anymore.
 The trees were said to possess an ancient and beguiling form of magic—leaves that could wipe away scars, fruit nourishing enough to sustain an entire family for a week, bark that could scratch any itch, no matter how irksome or inconveniently located. As a result, the forest attracted much unwanted attention from the sort of people who couldn’t appreciate beauty unless they could chop it down and make it their own.
 As the forest grew smaller and the trophy hunters grew greedier, many of the animals deserted its branches. However, there was one group of creatures who stubbornly refused to leave.
 
 There were only nineteen Wintlorian purple-breasted parrots left in the world, and nearly all of them lived in the Wintlorian rain forest. They were a noisy and deeply impractical species, constantly searching for opportunities to sing another song or host another feathery fashion show, when they should have been worrying about their own existence.
 On this particular day, the parrots had gathered in the hollow trunk of the largest tree to celebrate their third feast of the week. The first feast had been thrown to mark the queen’s favorite corgi’s half-birthday, while the second had been to celebrate the fact that one of the parrots had finally found the piece of string she had been looking for all afternoon. This third feast, however, promised to be a very special one indeed.
 Every parrot was dressed in their featheriest finery. They were all laying delicious egg-shaped meals for one another, and the volume of their songs was already approaching a level that some may have termed “rowdy.” At the top of the tree, a young male parrot named Mortimer was hanging up a banner that read: WELCOME HOME, CLAUDETTE.
 “Spiffy-whiff sign, Morty!” said Giulietta, an extremely well-dressed older parrot. “Need a spot of help hanging the thing up?”
 Mortimer grimaced. For one thing, the only person he allowed to call him “Morty” was Claudette. For another, he hated his species’ obsession with always having to do things together.
 “I’m fine,” he snapped. “I don’t need anyone’s help.”
 “I know you don’t need the help,” said Giulietta, “but it’s nice to have it all the same, what-what? If we only focused on the things