Shrunk!

by F. R. Hitchcock

  ‘Five centimetres?’

  He nods. His glasses reflect the fairy lights but I can’t see what he’s thinking.

  ‘We can’t exactly drop a nail and watch Jupiter suck it towards it, can we? I mean, you’ve got to be pretty close already to notice a magnetic pull of five centimetres. That’s about the size of a saucer.’

  Eric nods, his face creasing with disappointment. He removes Jacob from his shoe; gently pulling the laces from Jacob’s tiny hands, and placing him back on the ground.

  ‘Still,’ I say. ‘It was a good idea. Let’s get to school. I’m sure you’re right about the magnetic thing. Anything that helps us find it . . .’

  I wish Eric was right. And I wish I had the courage to tell Grandma. I’m starting to feel so sick about this that I’d like to go back to her house and climb under the duvet with a comic, and stay there for a week.

  Perhaps I’ll wake up on my birthday and find it was all a horrible dream.

  Jacob puts his hands up to be carried like a fat red baby. Eric’s already down by the crazy golf, so I have to pick Jacob up. He sits on my shoulder.

  ‘Gee up, horsy, this is fun!’

  I don’t deliberately give Jacob a bumpy ride, but I’m not as careful as I should be and he quickly clambers down to sit in the crook of my arm.

  ‘Got any sweets?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No toffee squashed in the bottom of your pocket?’

  ‘The only thing I want to find squashed at the bottom of my pocket is you, Squit.’

  No one cares about us as we run along the seafront. They’re all staring at the sky. We stop at the side of the castle. We can cut ten minutes off the walk if we go through the castle grounds.

  ‘It’s a bit spooky . . .’ says Eric.

  Inside, I agree, but I’m not going to confess in front of Jacob. ‘I don’t think so – come on.’

  I climb over the railings and run straight ahead into the darkness. Eric thumps along behind me.

  ‘Whooooooooo, whooooooooo,’ calls Jacob from my shoulder.

  ‘I could just leave you here,’ I say. ‘On your own, in the dark.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘You never know,’ says Eric. And then we’re out the other side and the school’s in front of us.

  Chapter 17

  The playground’s weird at night, really unfriendly. A cat looms up out of the dark and Eric jumps.

  ‘Whoooooo!’ says Jacob, so I drop him in the sandpit.

  ‘But you need me!’ he shouts. I let him lie there for a moment, then, really slowly, I pick him up.

  ‘I’d have left you there,’ he says, clambering up to my elbow.

  ‘Would you really?’ asks Eric.

  Jacob doesn’t answer.

  We stop where the fight happened. Eric holds the torch and I put Jacob down on the ground. He sets off along the beam of the torch, and then stops.

  ‘Nah, it’s no good, I need to hold the torch, get the angle right.’

  Eric lays the torch on the ground and Jacob rolls it round in a big circle. ‘Bingo!’

  ‘What? Can you see it?’ asks Eric.

  ‘No. But it’s fun. Bet I’m having more fun than you two, Scaredy Four Eyes, and Scaredy Model Village.’

  I could just squash him.

  I stare at the ground just in case I can see anything. Glistening, red and fat, like a pair of tiny Edam cheeses, Jacob bounces among the lumps of gravel in and out of the torchlight. He stops and walks towards something. ‘Oh – it’s nothing, just a broken bead. Sorreeee.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Over here. But it’s not Jupiter.’

  Jacob’s standing next to something exactly the same colour as the rest of the gravel. I pick it up. It’s half a brown bead. A dull wooden bead. I close my eyes and try to remember how Jupiter looked the last time I looked inside the capsule. It looked very like this.

  ‘Look – here’s the other half.’ Jacob’s standing at the very edge of the torchlight and I can’t even see what he’s pointing at. He moves it, and I pick it up. It’s the missing piece.

  ‘Coo, so Model Village can put two bits of bead together. He’s a genius. Pity he’s going to kill us all – by messing about with things he doesn’t understand.’

  I really could just step on him, but he’s lucky because my mind’s turning over again. It’s turning over and over on these bits of bead. The other two are still searching for Jupiter, but I don’t think it’s there – I think this is the Jupiter that I took to school, and that it wasn’t Jupiter at all. Somehow, I lost it in my bedroom, and this lousy bead must have been in the capsule all along.

  Jupiter must have rolled out when the capsule was lying on the floor. I must have kicked it somewhere.

  ‘C’mon, Tom,’ says Eric.

  ‘Yes,’ I say in answer, but I don’t really mean it. If this bead was the dead planet in the bottom of the capsule, then perhaps the planet isn’t dead. Perhaps somewhere in Grandma’s house, there’s a little glitter ball going round and round.

  Maybe Jupiter’s back in my bedroom after all.

  Chapter 18

  I turn to run back to the house.

  ‘Hey, Tom, where are you going?!’ shouts Eric.

  But I can’t stop. ‘I don’t think it’s here – I think it’s at Grandma’s.’

  ‘What?’ Eric says. ‘What are we doing here, then?’

  ‘Too difficult to explain. C’mon – no time to waste.’

  I pick up Jacob and stick him on my shoulder. ‘Yeth, come on, Tom, save the planet.’

  Eric doesn’t say anything, just sighs and heads back towards the castle.

  I follow him. It doesn’t take me long to catch up, and we walk next to each other over the edge of the rock that the castle’s built on. It’s not spooky any more, the sky’s bright, and the castle grounds are all lit up. The big rock almost glows in the starlight. I stop for a moment and stare. It’s like it’s reflecting more than the meteor showers. It’s as if it’s got a star inside.

  ‘Weird,’ says Jacob.

  ‘It’s always been like that,’ says Eric. ‘Dad says the castle’s built on a giant meteorite, one that fell millions of years ago. That’s why this is such a special place. The whole town’s full of special people too.’ He prods me. ‘You’re one of them now.’

  ‘How d’you mean? Special.’

  ‘You can do things, weird things. There’s Miss Darling, for a start.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The one who always wears gloves?’

  ‘What can she do?’

  ‘She’s got green fingers.’

  ‘Yuk,’ says Jacob.

  ‘What d’you mean, green?’ I ask.

  ‘I mean, she’s actually got green fingers. Like an alien, but it makes her plants grow really well.’

  ‘Er-ic,’ says Jacob. ‘I’ve never heard such rubbish.’

  ‘Well, it’s true. Ask your gran, Tom.’

  This is all news to me.

  ‘Do you think your dad’s a special person, with special powers?’ I ask.

  Eric stumbles off ahead. ‘Nah – Dad was definitely taken by aliens, otherwise how else would you explain him?’

  I follow, my feet slipping on the glittering rock.

  Chapter 19

  We run back along the seafront to Grandma’s. The air’s warm on my face, I could really enjoy this if I didn’t feel the weight of chaos on my shoulders.

  And Jacob.

  ‘Are we going back to yours then, Model Village? Or are you going to take me home, explain me to my mum and dad? Oh – sorry, Mr and Mrs Devlin, I accidentally on purpose shrank your little cherub.’

  Jacob seems heavier. It might just be that he’s becoming more of a pain. Eric said that no matter how daffy his dad was, there was no way he’d miss a tiny devil living in the house. So I’m landed with him.

  ‘I’ll put you in the model village. You can have your own house.’

  ‘I’m not living there. I
t’s stinky and gross. I want a warm room, with comfy chairs, beds and stuff, and plenty of food.’

  ‘How about Tilly’s dolls’ house?’

  ‘How about your bedroom?’

  We stop to stare at a house in the high street. A load of people are trying to get a dinghy out of the front door. They’ve taken down the mast, but it doesn’t want to fit.

  They joggle it backwards and forwards, and a little bit sideways. It’s really stuck.

  ‘Weird,’ says Jacob. ‘That’s my friend’s house. I didn’t know he had a boat.’

  ‘How did they ever get it in?’ I ask.

  A man takes the front door off its hinges. The dinghy scrapes out on to the front path.

  It’s funny how everyone paints boats the same colours, blue and white. It’s just like the one I shrank in the bay, only smaller – or maybe bigger?

  Chapter 20

  The telly’s on really loud, so we sneak in without Grandma noticing, and find my bedroom smells like a farmyard. It sounds like one too.

  ‘MOOO.’

  ‘EEYORE.’

  ‘BAAA.’

  Oh no – they’ve changed. They’re much bigger than I remember, more like blueberry muffins than popcorn, and they’ve pooed all over the carpet. They’ve also eaten every scrap of grass and they’ve chewed a hole in my duvet cover. I didn’t know sheep grew that fast. Perhaps they were lambs?

  Whoops.

  ‘Wow!’ says Eric.

  ‘Woah!’ says Jacob. ‘Now that’s weird. What you got them in your bedroom for, Model Village? Shouldn’t they be outside, running around in the mini haystacks?’

  ‘It’s not like you, worrying about something else,’ says Eric.

  ‘What d’you mean – not like me? Anyway – I don’t like cruelty to animals,’ says Jacob, rubbing one of the sheep between the ears.

  ‘But,’ Eric says, ‘you don’t care about cruelty to people?’

  ‘I’m not cruel. That’s just mucking about.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ says Eric.

  ‘Quick, while Grandma’s watching the news, let’s stick them in the model village,’ I say to Eric.

  I bundle the donkey and the cows into a plastic policeman’s helmet, and Eric picks up the cardboard box full of sheep.

  ‘Am I coming?’

  ‘No, you stay here,’ I say, ‘and look for Jupiter.’

  Jacob looks at the room. ‘Where’s the telly, then?’

  ‘Downstairs. Anyway, you don’t need it, you’re looking for a planet.’

  ‘What – no TV? What d’you play your games on, then?’

  I shake my head. ‘No telly, no games console, no laptop. There’s Dad’s catch-the-baby-from-the-burning-building thing, but Tilly’s got the games. Otherwise, the radio. You’ll have to read a book, Jacob.’

  ‘Or look for Jupiter,’ says Eric.

  ‘Got any comics?’

  I put the radio on, and we leave Jacob on the floor, measuring himself against the cartoons, and tiptoe downstairs.

  Outside in the model village, we let the little animals free. They mix in with Grandma’s lumpy resin sheep. Mine are a bit smaller, but they look fantastic skipping through the tiny houses.

  ‘Seems a shame to let them go, really,’ says Eric.

  We’re caught in a square of yellow light that spills across the grass. I jump, dropping the policeman’s helmet. ‘On your way home, Eric?’ asks Grandma, from the doorway. ‘Your dad rang – he’s cooking.’ She holds the gate open for him.

  ‘Baaaaa.’

  ‘Oh – um, yes, I suppose I was, Mrs Perks,’ he says, raising his eyebrows.

  I pretend I can’t hear the sheep.

  The gate squeaks as he opens it. Eric sort of hesitates on the threshold, but Grandma waves him away.

  ‘Go on, dear – home now,’ she says.

  ‘Baaaaa.’

  Eric waves and heads off along the road to his house.

  ‘Mooo.’

  She doesn’t even blink. ‘Now, Tom – something on your mind?’

  I could ask her: can you shrink things? But I daren’t. I could ask her: how do you put things back? But I’m too scared. Perhaps there’s a way of getting her to tell me what I want to know, without me telling her what she wants to know.

  ‘Why didn’t you want me to wish?’ I ask.

  ‘Didn’t I, dear? When was that?’

  A tiny sheep wanders out from the model village. It’s standing by the church, looking up at Grandma, like she’s a really big bit of grass.

  ‘Baaaa.’

  Oh no. I’ll have to take emergency action. ‘No, Grandma, you didn’t – and you didn’t want me to find this.’

  I take the meteorite out of my pocket and Grandma’s eyes widen. I walk back towards the front door, so that she’s looking towards me, and not towards the sheep.

  ‘Did you wish?’ she says.

  ‘No,’ I lie, ‘but what would have happened if I had?’

  She doesn’t say anything for a minute, just follows me up the step and into the house.

  ‘Moooo.’

  Chapter 21

  ‘In this village, Tom, dear – you have to be careful what you wish for. When I was a little girl I wished on a shooting star.’

  ‘Did you?’

  Grandma’s spooning oxtail soup into a mug. There’s a big ladle hanging on the wall, but she’s using a little one. Grandma’s always using things that are the wrong size.

  The soup’s kind of purple and sticky. I hope she’s not thinking of giving it to me. I take an apple from the sideboard. It’s huge, but delicious.

  ‘Yes – I wished something silly, really.’ She’s filling another mug now.

  ‘What did you wish for?’

  She ignores my question. ‘The meteorite landed in our garden, just like the one you’ve got there, and I picked it up, just as you did. It was by the castle.’

  ‘Here – this castle? In the model village?’

  Grandma nods. ‘They say the real castle’s built on a giant piece of space rock, one that fell millions of years ago. This was just a small one. Perfect, really. It fitted in the palm of my hand.’

  ‘And you saw it fall?’

  She nods. ‘Just like that one you’ve got there. It banged, as it came down – a real thunderclap – and then whacked into the lavender, right in front of me.’

  She carves a chunk of her homemade bread, and crashes it into a battered old tray as if it was the meteorite.

  ‘The thing is, after that – I found I could shrink things.’ She stares really hard at me, and I nearly choke on the apple.

  ‘Shrink? How – extraordinary.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She bangs one of the mugs of soup on to the tray and reaches into a drawer in the dresser. ‘Here you are.’

  She pulls out a cloth bundle and unwraps it on the table. A small, ordinary, smoothed stone rolls out from a bundle of ancient, crumbling lavender.

  ‘Woah, Grandma.’ I pick it from her hand. It’s very heavy, just like mine. So I put them side by side on the kitchen table. We both stare. They’re about the same colour and size. Both are odd shapes.

  ‘They could come from the same rock,’ she says, stroking mine with her cracked old fingers. ‘Extraordinary, extraordinary.’

  ‘What’s extraordinary?’ I ask.

  ‘The cosmos, dear. It’s quite extraordinary, for example, that the night your meteorite fell, Jupiter vanished.’

  ‘Is it?’ I say weakly.

  ‘Yes – you wouldn’t know anything about it, I suppose?’

  Chapter 22

  Did you know that stick-on Dracula teeth look exactly like plastic dinosaur claws?

  I know that, because Mum and Dad and Tilly save me from Death By Grandma by bursting back into the kitchen, and Dad’s false teeth shoot out of his mouth all over the floor.

  Mum scrabbles about picking them up and it turns out that one of them is a plastic dinosaur claw.

  Grandma stuffs her meteorite back in the drawer. I stick
mine in my pocket. She snaps me a look that says the subject won’t be forgotten, that she’ll be asking again before the evening’s out.

  ‘How did it go?’ asks Grandma.

  ‘Fabulous – fantastic – they loved us.’

  ‘And did the disappearing cupboard work?’

  Mum and Dad look at each other.

  ‘Not exactly,’ says Mum.

  ‘It was really funny,’ says Tilly. ‘Mum lost Dad, and the rabbits got stuck in the middle, and ran out all over the stage. The audience couldn’t stop laughing, they thought it was on purpose.’

  ‘So did you enjoy it?’ I ask.

  ‘Have a good fight?’ she asks, without even looking at me.

  ‘Have a good time dressed as a pumpkin?’

  ‘You must be really stupid choosing Jacob Devlin.’

  ‘Thanks. Do you know where the games for Dad’s catch-the-baby-from-the-burning-building thing are?’

  ‘They’re not in my room and you can’t go and look for them.’

  ‘I’ll be careful.’

  ‘No – and I’ll know if you’ve been in there, and I’ll kill you if you have. Anyway, they’re not there.’

  ‘If they’re not there, why would I go in and look for them.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Most of the time, I don’t understand Tilly.

  Carrying a mug of oxtail goo, I escape upstairs, only to find Jacob and the squirrel standing nose to nose on either side of an empty cereal bowl. Oddly, they’re almost exactly the same height, and probably, the same weight. The squirrel’s tail is all fluffed up. It looks really angry.

  They’re circling round the bowl, first to the left, then back to the right.

  The squirrel’s got evil-looking claws, and with its lips pulled back, a nasty sharp-toothed scowl.

  Jacob’s holding his toasting fork, but I don’t think much of his chances against the squirrel.

  ‘Stay st—’ I shout, but Jacob jumps on the side of the bowl, flicking the other side up and cracking the squirrel on the underside of his jaw.

  The squirrel yelps and leaps back into the corner. I throw myself forward to catch it, but it hides in a pile of socks. Jacob stands and brushes his hands together. ‘See – no problem – I can deal with anything. I’m a genius, see? Have you got the games?’