by Emily Rodda
‘That goose Woodley wouldn’t make those girls scream like that,’ Freda shouted over the sounds of flapping and scrabbling from the chicken yard path. ‘Dabs to dibs it’s Tye. She’s heard them, and gone to –’
‘Tye!’ Conker groaned. ‘Oh, my heart, lungs and gizzards!’
Everyone leaped for the rug, Mimi hurrying to the centre to wrap her arms protectively around Moult’s basket.
‘The Snug!’ Conker bellowed. ‘Fast as you like!’
Its fringe quivering in excitement, the rug shot into the air. Looking back, Leo saw Egbert and the rest of the Flock of Bing arrive at the edge of the lake and stand staring after them in astonishment.
‘I’m flying!’ Moult squawked. ‘I’m flying!’ She stretched her scrawny neck to peer over the basket handle, her eyes wild with exhilaration, her ragged comb pressed flat by the wind.
‘Moult, stay down!’ shouted Mimi, gripping the basket tightly to stop it from being blown away. ‘Leo, what’s happening! I can’t see!’
Leo barely heard her. He was gripping the fringe of the rug, staring fearfully down at the scene below.
The Snug was seething with activity. Everywhere people were running – running towards some girls who were racing into the centre, pointing behind them and screaming in panic.
And beyond the ring of giant trees, in the middle of the little picnic ground that lay between the Snug and the mists of Tiger’s Glen, was Tye. The flower-spangled grass at her feet was littered with abandoned jackets and caps. She was coiling up the long skipping rope. As Leo watched, she slung the coil over her shoulder, ignoring Skip, who was raging at her and trying to snatch the rope back.
‘They moved the game outside the Snug, so Woodley couldn’t stop them!’ Leo shouted.
‘Young fools!’ roared Conker. ‘Don’t they understand–’
‘Tye’s in trouble,’ Freda said suddenly. ‘Those oafs from the Snug – they’re lighting torches – they’re going to hunt her down. Rug! To Tye!’
The rug cleared the Snug treetops and dived sharply. Tye looked up, her face expressionless. At the same instant, a small figure in a purple shirt burst out of the Snug trees and ran heedlessly towards her, shouting questions and waving a notebook.
It was Scribble. The rug was hurtling straight for him.
‘Scribble, watch out!’ Leo yelled.
As if in slow motion, he saw the gnome turn and realise his danger. Scribble froze, his eyes bulging in shock, his mouth opening in a silent yell of fear.
Skip screamed piercingly. Tye sprang forward, seized Scribble and threw him to one side, rolling over with him on the grass. The rug swerved violently. It missed Tye and Scribble by a hair, bumped the ground with a sickening thud and flapped sideways, out of control, tipping its passengers off and ending its disastrous landing by wrapping itself around the trunk of a tree.
Leo hit the ground with a thud and lay stunned for a moment, flat on his back. Spots of light were dancing in front of his eyes. Cautiously he moved his arms and legs. He felt bruised all over, but nothing seemed to be broken.
He rolled awkwardly onto his side and hazily saw Bertha sitting nearby, shaking her head as if trying to clear it. A little further away, Skip was staring, tongue-tied, as Tye hauled Conker to his feet and Mimi limped over to rescue Moult, who was fluttering helplessly beneath the upturned egg basket.
Scribble, the cause of the accident, was lying facedown on the ground. Everyone could see that he was breathing, but he didn’t stir. He was unconscious, or pretending to be.
‘You triple-dyed galoot!’ Conker bellowed at him. ‘Why don’t you look where you’re going? You could have got us all killed! Wake up and fight like a man! Freda, give him a nip!’
‘Forget him,’ Freda snapped. ‘We’ve got to get Tye out of here.’
‘It might be wise,’ Tye agreed calmly, staring over Conker’s shoulder.
Conker looked quickly behind him. The sounds of shouts and pounding feet were growing louder in the Snug, and bobbing torch flames were already visible through the gloom.
The rug had slid down to the base of the tree and was half-hidden in long grass. One of its corners was bent at an awkward angle and not a thread of its fringe was moving.
‘Out cold,’ Freda said. ‘We’ll have to run for it.’
‘You three go,’ Bertha panted, scrambling painfully to her feet with her hat hanging down her back. ‘Leo, Mimi and I will stay here. You’ll move much faster without us and be less noticeable as well.’
Conker nodded. ‘We’ll make for Bing’s Wood,’ he muttered. ‘We’ll wait there till the hue and cry dies down, then get Tye out of town.’
Tye hesitated, frowning.
‘Don’t think about arguing, Tye!’ Bertha snapped. ‘It would be madness for you to try to go through Hobnob alone, the way things are. Conker and Freda can come back here when they’ve seen you safely away. Don’t worry about Leo and Mimi – I’ll look after them.’
‘Go, Tye!’ Leo and Mimi begged, as the angry shouts from the Snug grew louder.
‘She has to give my rope back first!’ shrilled Skip, finally finding her voice.
Tye glanced at her and hitched the coil of rope more firmly around her shoulder. Then she nodded to Freda and Conker, and the three of them ran swiftly into the trees and vanished.
Chapter
28
A Narrow Escape
And then there were four,’ Moult said dolefully, blinking around at her companions.
‘Conker and Freda will be back soon,’ Leo said, wishing he felt as certain as he sounded.
The shouting of the people crashing through the Snug was very loud now. Bertha hurried to the tree where the flying rug lay and turned to face the sound, lowering her head belligerently.
‘It’s too late to hide,’ she called to Leo and Mimi. ‘We’ll just have to try to bluff our way out of trouble. Get behind me. I’ll do the talking.’
Leo wasn’t confident that anything Bertha might say would pacify an angry mob, but he couldn’t think of a better idea. Still feeling rather wobbly, he shrugged on one of the packs, picked up the other, and joined Bertha by the tree. Mimi, holding Moult’s basket close to her chest, moved to stand beside him.
‘That Terlamaine stole my rope!’ Skip shouted at them in fury. ‘She stopped our game, and I was up to eight, and she took my rope!’
Leo glanced at her with dislike, but didn’t trust himself to say anything.
‘Tye was trying to stop something worse happening to you,’ Mimi snapped. ‘That game’s dangerous.’
‘The Strix isn’t real,’ Skip said scornfully. ‘It’s just a Langlander tale your parents tell you to make you be good.’
‘That is not true, young human!’ Moult squawked earnestly, sticking her head out of the basket and twisting her scrawny neck to look at Skip. ‘I am a witness! The Ancient One swooped down upon my home. It took a great and powerful wizard for its own, and changed my dearest friend into a mushroom.’
Skip stared, her eyebrows climbing high on her forehead, her lips silently shaping the word ‘mushroom’. Then she turned and blinked at the cloud that had taken possession of Tiger’s Glen as if seeing it with new eyes. Almost against his will, Leo looked at it too.
White mist crawled between the dark trunks of the trees at the edge of the little wood. Further in, the cloud massed thickly and smoky grey towers climbed into the sky.
‘The palace is in the centre,’ Mimi murmured. ‘That’s where the magic is strongest.’
Leo glanced at her uneasily, but she refused to look at him and at last he turned to stare at the cloud again. Now that he was so close to it, he found it more frightening than ever.
If I saw something like this at home, he thought, maybe on a trip to the mountains or something, I’d think it looked really interesting, but that it was just low cloud. And Dad would explain what sort of cloud it was, and why it was so near to the ground, and why it shone in some places, because of the angle of the l
ight. And Mum would say, ‘It looks like a castle, doesn’t it?’ And Dad would laugh.
Suddenly he found himself longing for the certainties of home. It was like an ache deep in his chest, and to his horror he felt tears burning behind his eyes.
‘Pssht!’ whispered a voice beside him. He jumped violently and looked around.
A small black circle, rather wobbly at the edges, had appeared on the trunk of the tree. ‘Might you want a hidey-hole, by any chance?’ the black patch asked diffidently.
‘Mimi!’ Leo croaked. ‘Bertha!’
Bertha and Mimi spun round. They stared at the hidey-hole in joyful astonishment.
‘Just say if you’d rather not,’ the hole said, pinching its edges as if bracing itself for a rebuff. ‘I’ll quite understand, honestly.’ Its voice was rather weak and snuffly, as if it had a cold.
‘No! We want you!’ gasped Mimi with a quick glance at Skip, who hadn’t taken her eyes off the cloud palace, and at Scribble, who was still lying where he had fallen.
‘Indeed we do!’ cried Bertha. ‘You’re a lifesaver!’
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ the hole mumbled, and abruptly widened like a yawning mouth.
Bertha stepped inside it and vanished into blackness. Mimi followed quickly with Moult. Leo went last, dragging the second pack behind him and only remembering as the familiar warm, thick darkness closed in around him how much he hated being inside hidey-holes.
This hidey-hole, moreover, was not only far less confident than the holes he had met on his first visit to Rondo, but much smaller too. As it shrank beneath the bark of the tree, he, Bertha and Mimi were so tightly pressed together that they could hardly breathe.
‘What a marvellous piece of luck!’ Bertha said. ‘I never dreamed we’d find a hidey-hole way out here.’
‘This must be what it’s like to be still in the egg,’ said Moult in wonder.
‘It might be better if you didn’t speak,’ the hidey-hole suggested, its snuffling voice coming from all around them. ‘Just a suggestion. I mean, speak if you like, it’s up to you, of course, but –’
‘Sshh!’ Bertha warned. ‘They’re coming!’
In acute discomfort, with Moult’s basket jammed against his chest and his nose filled with the smell of straw and feathers, Leo held his breath as the sound of running feet pounded past the tree. Then there was a yell of joy.
‘Skip!’ a man called. ‘My dear child! Are you all right?’ ‘Yes, Father,’ squeaked Skip, her voice muffled as if she had been enveloped in a joyful hug.
‘There’s a dead gnome here,’ another man said grimly.
‘It’s that reporter fellow from the Rondo Rambler,’ cried a woman. ‘Killed trying to save the little girl, I suppose. What a terrible tragedy!’
‘He’s not dead, Candy,’ someone else called. ‘He’s just been knocked out. I’ll see to him. Here, Stitch, give me a hand.’
‘That’s Clogg’s voice!’ Mimi breathed in Leo’s ear. ‘And Candy Sweet and Stitch are here too! Oh, I wish we could see what’s happening!’
Leo would have liked to see too, but more than anything he wanted to move. He was finding the cramped conditions in the hidey-hole almost unbearable. He felt himself starting to sweat.
‘Well, there’s no sign of that wretched Terlamaine,’ said a bossy female voice Leo recognised as Bodelia Parker’s. ‘It ran off when it heard us coming, I suppose. We should have crept up on it – I said that from the first.’
‘We’ll get it this time for sure,’ an unfamiliar man’s voice replied. ‘It can’t have gone far. Which way did it run, girlie?’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘Skip?’ prompted Skip’s father. ‘Tell the kind gentleman. Where did the Terlamaine go?’
‘There,’ said Skip, and Leo groaned to himself as he imagined her pointing to where she’d last seen Tye. We shouldn’t have hidden, he fretted. We should have stayed out there and tried to delay them …
‘The creature went into Tiger’s Glen?’ Bodelia exclaimed. ‘Into that – that cloud monstrosity?’
Leo felt a wave of astonished relief. Bertha breathed out gustily.
‘Well, I’m not going in there after it, I can tell you that,’ the man said, and there was a general murmur of agreement.
‘But why in Rondo would the Terlamaine have run into the cloud palace?’ Stitch asked in his squeaky voice.
‘If you ask me, that’s where it came from,’ Bodelia said darkly. ‘If you ask me, it’s the cloud monster’s servant.’
There were exclamations from the crowd.
‘Sent out to carry off children and other strange creatures for its master, I’ve no doubt,’ Bodelia went on, raising her voice. ‘And to steal anything it can lay its hands on!’
Oh, no, Leo groaned to himself.
‘But most of the thefts happened before the cloud palace arrived, Bodelia,’ called Stitch. ‘All except Woodley’s sausages.’
‘Don’t split hairs, Stitch,’ snapped Bodelia. ‘Mayor Clogg, you’ll have to declare this picnic area out of bounds. As you should have done long before this, I might add.’
‘Yes, yes, Bodelia,’ Clogg said fretfully. ‘As soon as I’ve had a chance to explain things to Woodley.’
‘I doubt Woodley can stand any more bad news,’ said a hollow voice Leo recognised as Master Sadd’s. ‘That pig calling for his dismissal from the Snug has just about finished him off as it is.’
Bertha gave a muffled squeak.
‘It’s a scandal that the newspapers would print such rubbish,’ Bodelia declared. ‘On the front page, too!
I knew Woodley would be devastated.’
‘I suppose that’s why you didn’t waste any time rushing out here to show it to him, Bodelia,’ Stitch said mildly.
Bodelia sniffed. ‘I know my duty, I hope,’ she said. ‘And speaking of duty, you’d better get that gnome back to the Snug.’
‘Is the poor, brave fellow very bad?’ Sadd asked mournfully.
‘He won’t need your services yet awhile, if that’s what you mean, Master Sadd,’ said Clogg. ‘He groaned a minute ago. A bucket of water should bring him round all right.’
People began to tramp back the way they had come. Every muscle in his body twitching with the urge to move, Leo waited in a fever of impatience as the last stragglers drew level with the hidey-hole’s tree.
‘Ooh!’ Candy Sweet’s voice cried suddenly. ‘Look!’
She sounded dangerously close. It was as if she was leaning towards the tree, peering directly at it. Leo gnawed nervously at his lip. Was this hidey-hole inefficient as well as cramped? Was part of it still visible?
‘It’s the flying rug those ruffians were tearing about on in the square,’ exclaimed Master Sadd. ‘And it’s damaged, by the look of it.’
‘There!’ Bodelia cried triumphantly. ‘They crashed it and abandoned it. That proves they stole it! Well, we can’t leave it here. Pick it up, Master Sadd. Candy, take the other end.’
There was a series of grunts and sighs, and the sound of the rug rasping against the tree’s bark.
‘We’ll really have to call Officer Begood now,’ Candy gasped.
‘Yes, we will,’ said Bodelia. ‘Hobnob is in the grip of a crime wave! A Terlamaine carrying off children for a cloud monster is bad enough – but the theft and damage of valuable property is a very serious matter. Come along, then!’
They moved on. Gradually their voices faded away. ‘They’re gone,’ Bertha whispered.
‘I think so,’ snuffled the hidey-hole. ‘You could get out now, if that’s what you’d like to do. Or you could stay. It’s up to you, of course.’
‘Aren’t you going to check there’s no one left out there?’ Mimi asked. ‘Just in case?’
‘Oh yes, of course!’ fluttered the hidey-hole. ‘I forgot. Silly me!’
A pinpoint of light appeared in the blackness. There was a very long silence.
‘Well?’ Leo burst out, by now almost frantic to escape into
the open air.
‘Oh, sorry, sorry, I was waiting for you to say one way or the other,’ said the hidey-hole. ‘I can’t see anyone, but I didn’t like to take the responsibility –’
‘Let us out!’ Leo roared, unable to wait a moment longer.
The hidey-hole gave a trembling little gasp. The next moment Leo was sliding onto the grass beneath the tree, blinking in the light. Mimi tumbled on top of him, with Moult’s basket still clutched in her arms. They scrambled to safety just before Bertha came crashing to the ground closely followed by the second pack.
‘Oof!’ squealed Bertha as the pack bounced off her stomach.
‘Oh, sorry, sorry,’ mumbled the hidey-hole, drawing its flabby edges together in a flustered sort of way. ‘I’m hopeless at the expelling side of things. I’ve just never really got the hang of it. My last client broke his glasses when he fell out.’
‘Glasses?’ Mimi and Leo gasped.
‘Lawks-a-daisy, I think I’ve sprained a trotter,’ Bertha groaned.
‘Oh, I feel dreadful now,’ mumbled the hidey-hole. ‘I’ll just go, shall I? Yes. That would be best. Sorry again.’
‘Wait!’ Leo panted, crawling to his knees.
But already the hidey-hole had shrunk to inkblot size and disappeared beneath a loose piece of bark. Leo tried desperately to call it back, but it was clearly too downhearted to return. Mimi moaned in frustration.
‘It probably wasn’t Spoiler anyway,’ Leo said. ‘Lots of people wear glasses.’
Still, the coincidence had made him jittery. He looked quickly around, but could see nothing suspicious. At first he couldn’t even see any blue butterflies. Then, with a little shock, he saw that there were, in fact, dozens of them, perched motionless on the small blue flowers that spangled the grass. His skin crawled.
‘Bertha’s with us,’ Mimi said in a small voice. ‘She’s a match for Spoiler any day. And you’ve fought him before, Leo.’
Leo nodded, strangely touched.
Moult stuck her head out of the basket, her small eyes bright. ‘What now?’ she asked.
‘In my opinion,’ Bertha said, getting up painfully, ‘we should sit down at one of these picnic tables and have a bite to eat. Food settles the nerves, I always find. Leo, could I trouble you to adjust my hat?’
