by Adam Maxwell
When she passed through the trees and out of the forest Ivy was greeted by a very odd sight indeed. She saw the outskirts of a village; as the forest ended, the streets, houses and shops began. The children could see signs hanging outside; a bakery, a blacksmith and even a little bookshop. But that wasn’t the odd part. An enormous crowd of people, perhaps a hundred or more, were all gathered, waiting, at the edge where the village met the forest. There were men, women and children, tall and short, thin and fat, and they all had the strangest things in their hands.
Some people carried feather dusters, others carried cushions or pillows. Over there was a woman with a pair of slippers, one in each hand. Towards the back of the crowd Ivy could see a tall man with big, wet, fish, which he waved menacingly above his head. There was a woman who looked quite like Oswald’s mum, carrying a pair of bellows. She gave them the occasional squeeze as she stared at the children. Ivy squinted at these crazy people and the more she looked, the more she saw; big, fancy hats, wooden spoons. One old woman even appeared to have a live chicken in her hand and it wasn’t very happy being hung upside down by its feet.
“Weird aren’t they?” said a voice.
Ivy jumped in shock and spun around to see Nina standing next to her.
“Nina!” shouted Ivy. “You’re alright!”
Nina nodded. “That bloke carrying the tiny, pink umbrella grabbed me but I escaped.”
“Grr-woof,” growled Oswald.
Nina looked at Oswald with his glasses perched on the end of his werewolf nose and giggled.
“Well, it turns out I can do this,” she said, and with a sound like the patter of rain on leaves Nina transformed into a tiny little bat.
Oswald nodded, impressed, and his glasses began to fall off. He reached up a paw and pushed them up his wolf-snout. Ivy stared, trying to focus her eyes on the Nina-bat. Nina flapped a little closer to her face and Ivy smiled as she saw that, in spite of the wings and the fact that she was in all other ways bat-like, her best friend’s face could still be seen on the creature fluttering in front of her.
“Good, eh?” said Nina, her voice tiny and really high-pitched.
Ivy nodded, impressed.
The pitter-pattering noise happened again and Nina turned back into her human-self. The crowd of onlookers all shuffled away from the children.
“I think we’re frightening them,” said Ivy.
Oswald nodded and his glasses fell off the end of his wolf-nose. Nina reached down and picked them up before popping them in her pocket.
“Right, here goes,” said Nina, turning to face the crowd. “Hello all of you!”
The crowd grumbled a response. It was low and unfriendly.
“You don’t know us,” continued Nina. “And we don’t know you, but in spite of what you might think, we are very nice and we mean you no harm.”
“We mean you harm,” screeched the woman who was holding the chicken. The chicken squawked.
“Yeah!” a short, fat man who was holding a crumpled up bit of paper in each hand shouted in agreement. “You can’t come to our village you… you… monsters!”
The word ‘monsters’ echoed around the crowd, repeated by people here and there.
“They’ve got a point,” whispered Ivy. “We are actual monsters.”
“True,” said Nina quietly. “But look at them, they’re a bunch of loonies. What are they even carrying?”
“Ra-ruff,” barked Oswald, leaning into the girls huddle so the three of them stood in a mini-circle.
“I wondered that,” said Ivy. “I think they might be a mob.”
“Rawf?” asked Oswald.
“You know,” said Nina. “Like in stories – except usually they’d have flaming torches, pointy sticks, pitchforks, that sort of thing.”
“So this lot aren’t loonies?” asked Ivy. “They’re just a really rubbish mob.”
“We can hear you,” said the old woman holding the chicken.
“Ah,” said Nina. “Erm… sorry.” She turned back to the crowd and raised her voice. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to call you rubbish.”
“Yes you did, I heard you!” a little boy carrying a cushion with an embroidered flower shouted back.
“Shh,” Ivy hissed. “What if they try to attack us?”
Nina shrugged. “If they try to attack us with what? A chicken, a pair of slippers and a comfy cushion?” She grinned, showing her fangs once more.
Ivy stifled a laugh and looked over at the crowd. They didn’t look as fierce. In fact, the longer Ivy the ghost, Nina the vampire and Oswald the werewolf stared at the mob, the more they shuffled and stirred. And the more they shuffled and stirred, the less scary they seemed to be.
“I’m not sure we should let them be scared of us,” said Ivy under her breath. “And I’m not sure wolf-boy and bat-girl are helping.”
Nina looked at Ivy. Then she looked at Oswald. They both looked a little nervous in spite of the fact that they were ‘monsters’ too.
“You with the fire puffers,” Nina said in a loud voice as she turned to the crowd. “Come over here, will you?”
“Who, me?” the woman who looked a bit like Oswald’s mum asked.
Nina nodded. “Don’t worry,” she said. “There’s no need to worry.”
Several of the bigger men behind the woman shoved her towards the children.
“Watch,” said Nina. She pointed to her vampire teeth.
The woman half-closed her eyes, afraid that Nina was about to bite a chunk from her neck. Instead, Nina let the vampire teeth turn back into her normal teeth.
“See,” she added. “Nothing to be afraid of. Oswald?”
Oswald gave a yap of agreement. The woman jumped in fright, then stood wide-eyed and mouth hanging open as the thick hair that covered Oswald’s body disappeared, the dog-ears and wolf-nose receding back into the familiar boy-shape. Nina handed him back his glasses and he put them back on and pushed them up his nose in the way he always did. He stood up straight and stretched, smoothing down his clothes that had begun to rip and tear at the seams.
The woman stared at the two of them for a moment before nodding her head in approval.
“What about her?” she asked, giving her bellows a puff in Ivy’s direction.
“Nothing we can do about her I’m afraid,” said Nina. “That’s the problem.”
The woman raised an eyebrow, interested but still wary of the friends.
“We’re not monsters,” Oswald said. “Well, we are. But not usually. This only happened recently. Less than an hour ago.”
“Yes, it’s true,” added Ivy. “The witch zapped us and all we want is to get turned back to normal again.”
The woman nodded. “Less than an hour ago?” she asked.
Nina, Ivy and Oswald all nodded.
“It isn’t them,” the woman shouted. “They’re not the kidnappers.”
There were groans from the crowd. Some people towards the back wandered off. The woman lowered her bellows and they hissed as she squeezed the air out of them.
“What do you mean, kidnappers?” asked Ivy.
“Just that,” said the woman. “Someone stole two children.”
chapter seven - help is at hand
Now, dear reader, I don’t wish to panic you with this tale of children being transformed into mystical creatures and others being stolen from under the very noses of their parents. These things happen. Not often, of course, but they do happen and as a result you must be vigilant.
If I had a gold coin for every child who’d been magically transformed into a vampire I would be a very rich storyteller indeed. But they usually get turned back.
Well, they sometimes get turned back.
Oh, alright. A friend of mine heard a rumour that at least one of them didn't spend the rest of their life trapped in a storybook terrorising villagers and flying like bats through the night. So don't worry about it.
Stolen children, however, can fetch a pretty penny if you find the right buyer. Wolve
s can be relied upon to pay handsomely for freshly snatched kids (although it should be noted they prefer five year old girls). Trolls, too, are regular customers and have been known to gorge themselves on two or three children a month (again, trolls have their own preferences, apparently naughty children are the tastiest).
Two girls and one boy that were not behaving badly were Nina, Ivy and Oswald. In fact, Nina had explained to the crowd of gathered villagers that, if they wanted to be a proper lynch mob, they would need big pitchforks and flaming torches at the very least. Some of the mob had grumbled in complaint but even they had hidden their feather dusters and comfy cushions behind their backs when they realised how wrong they had got it.
Up close, the woman with the bellows didn’t look as much like Oswald's mum as they had thought. Her name was Sheila and she had explained to the friends that two children, a boy and a girl, had gone missing three nights ago. Search parties ventured deep into the woods but neither of the two children were anywhere to be found.
“Their names are Han and Greta,” said Sheila. “And I’m their Aunty.” She fell silent as she stared off into the darkness of the woods.
Nina, who had been listening intently to the woman, was thinking about how her family would feel if she had been missing for three days. Even the thought of it made her want to grab Sheila and give her a big hug, but she thought she’d better not in case the woman thought she was going to bite her.
“Can we help find Han and Greta?” Nina asked instead.
“What?” asked Sheila.
“What?” chorused Ivy and Oswald.
“Nina, are you sure?” asked Ivy. “I mean, I want to help as much as you but the witch said that if we don’t find Izzy and get the spell reversed by midnight we would be stuck like this forever.”
Oswald nodded in agreement. “She’s right,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” Nina said with a smile. “I’ve got an idea.”
As Nina took Ivy and Oswald to one side to tell them her cunning plan, Sheila took her bellows over to the other villagers to discuss plans of their own. After a few minutes of intense discussion Sheila came back over to the children.
“What’s your plan?” asked Sheila, getting straight to the point.
“Promise not to be scared?” asked Nina.
Sheila took a deep breath then nodded.
Nina stepped back and Oswald edged forward. He took off his glasses and gave them to his friend before, with a little concentration, he transformed into a werewolf once more. Sheila and the other villagers were all nervous, but they stood their ground, staring and frowning as the thick hair covered Oswald’s body and his body changed into the wolf-shape.
“Oswald’s a werewolf, right?” asked Nina.
Oswald made a woof noise in response.
“Not you, Oswald,” said Nina, shaking her head. “Sorry, Sheila. Anyway a wolf’s only a big dog, isn’t it?”
Sheila stared at Oswald, who obediently sat down on his back legs and held out his front paw to shake. Sheila stepped forward and shook him by the paw, a look of panic on her face. Oswald nuzzled the back of her hand with his cold, wet nose.
“He’s trying to say that when he’s a werewolf he has a tremendous sense of smell,” said Ivy with a smile. She was enjoying Oswald being a dog a lot more than she was enjoying being a ghost.
“We were thinking, if you had something that belonged to the missing children…” said Nina. “Something… that smelled of them… he could follow the scent and find them.”
Sheila said nothing for a moment, then two big tears welled in her eyes.
“Come here,” she said, darting forward, her arms thrown wide. She hugged the children.
Except Ivy, of course. Her arm slipped through Ivy and wound up coated in the ghostly ectoplasm.
“That’s so kind of you, strangers,” Sheila said eventually. “You didn’t have to help, there’s no reason you should. Even if you weren’t going to eat us you could have easily run off. But you didn’t and because of that we'll help you.”
“You will?” asked Ivy.
“Ruh-rarr?” barked Oswald.
Sheila nodded. “While you look for the children. We’re going to ask around and see if we can find out about this ‘Izzy’ person you were going on about.”
Nina thanked Sheila, who quickly went to retrieve some of the missing children’s clothes. Han and Greta’s daddy brought over a pair of shorts belonging to his son and a cardigan that was his daughter’s favourite. Oswald shoved his wolf-nose into each of them in turn and gave them a long, snuffling, sniff.
Once he was sure he had memorised the scent of the two children, Oswald put his snout into the breeze that was lightly wafting the leaves and took a deep, deep breath. Nina and Ivy looked on nervously, waiting, hoping that Oswald would catch the scent. They needn’t have worried. Oswald caught a whiff of something interesting and, in a flash, he bounded off into the woods.
chapter eight - where wolf?
Oswald had to admit that he was enjoying some parts of being all werewolfed-up. In P.E. at school he always struggled to keep up with the other children. He wanted to do well, of course, the same as he did with all of his other classes, but no matter how hard he tried he never seemed to get any faster, or to score any more goals, or points. In fact, the whole idea of P.E. seemed like a complete and utter waste of time to him. Time that could be much better used learning something useful. From a book.
Being a werewolf had given him a whole different perspective on P.E. Now he could run at such a speed it felt like he was running as fast as a car. As his four paws thundered across the forest floor the trees were tearing past in a complete blur, but somehow the werewolf part of his brain was making sure he didn’t run into a tree or trip over a root or a rock. Oswald galloped forward, his nose catching scents he never believed possible, the plants, the other animals… even Han and Greta.
He decided to see precisely how fast he could run. Faster and faster he galloped, his paws pounding quicker and quicker as he ploughed forward through the trees until first his trousers, then his t-shirt caught on branches and tore off his body…
He skidded to a stop, panting, his long, pink tongue hanging from between pointed teeth. He looked back at his human clothes and gave himself a shake, the same way he’d seen dogs shake when they came out of the sea. His fur felt even better uncovered and he pushed his nose into the air, sniffing for the scent of the children. It had grown more faint. He had run too far. Oswald knew that he had to be careful but he also knew now, more than ever, that P.E. really was a complete and utter waste of time. Once he got back to being a boy again he would never be able to run as fast as a car. And if he wasn’t running as fast as a car, what was the point?
Catching the scent of the children once more, Oswald gave a little woof then set off, not quite as fast as a car, in the direction his nose told him the children had gone. It was odd, he thought as he hurtled headlong through the undergrowth, that the more the wolf blood pumped through his veins, the more hungry he was becoming and the more he had to keep reminding himself that he was a boy who had turned into a wolf and not a wolf who’d dreamed he was a boy.
The boy Oswald came crashing back in control when the wolf skidded to a halt. He was back where he, Ivy and Nina had all first appeared, in the clearing next to the witch’s gingerbread house. His nose was telling him that Han and Greta were somewhere close by and, if they were, he had to find them before they encountered the witch and something terrible happened to them too.
“I’m sure no-one would mind if we broke off a tiny piece of the window,” said a boy’s voice. “Just for a little taste.”
“I’m so hungry,” said a girl’s voice. “I’m certain it would be fine.”
Oswald gave a mournful howl and the two voices fell silent. He sniffed the air before trotting around to the side of the house, where he saw two children.
That’s them! He thought. Now all I need to do is turn back into myself, explain
and I can take them home.
Oswald trotted forward and concentrated hard but, try as he might, he couldn’t become a boy again. He stepped closer to the boy and the girl, who were dressed in the same old-fashioned clothes that the villagers had been wearing, and dipped his nose towards the ground, trying to show them he meant them no harm. The problem was that he wasn’t a cute little dog, he was an enormous, hairy, wolf and it was difficult to be cute and cuddly when you looked like you might very well chomp someone’s arm off and wander off with it into the woods.
“I think he’s friendly,” said the girl, reaching towards Oswald.
“No, Greta!” the boy grabbed her hand, pulling it away. “He might bite!”
Oswald tried once again to turn back into a boy but with every passing moment it became harder and harder. For now, at least, he was stuck as a wolf, so he did the only thing he could think of doing that would make the children trust him.
He ran off into the trees, grabbed a stick in his mouth and scampered back to the brother and sister, dropping it at their feet. The children looked at the stick as if it might explode, so Oswald gave it a little nudge with his nose and then took a couple of steps away from them.
“You… you want me to throw it?” asked Greta.
Oswald gave the friendliest bark he could muster.
Han tentatively grabbed the stick and waved it in the air above Oswald’s nose. Oswald wagged his tail and waited then, suddenly, Han threw the stick. Oswald’s wolf-instincts took over and he bounded to the stick, bringing it back and dropping it at the siblings’ feet once more.
After a few minutes playing fetch, Oswald knew that he had to get the children to go with him, so he rolled over onto his back, throwing his paws in the air. Greta dove straight in, rubbing his tummy, and was quickly followed by Han, who tickled Oswald under his chin. Oswald rolled over and over, wagging his tail harder and harder, and with each wag the thought that he had to take the children back to their parents seemed to float further and further away.
He had to do something, and do it quickly. And then he remembered the white stones that he, Ivy and Nina had followed. Hopping back on to all four paws, Oswald galloped into the woods and came back with a white stone, about the size of a gobstopper, and dropped it at Han and Greta’s feet.
