Poor man. The surge in the lights must have distracted his performance, Woe thought. Whimsy on the other hand thought that perhaps what made Cyril stop his performance was the realisation that ‘delightment’ was most certainly not a word.
Cyril cleared his throat and smiled again before continuing. ‘There will be stories told of characters both young and old! There will be hearts pulled by their strings, horrible creatures and beautiful things!’ Flicker, flicker went the lights again. Cyril pushed on. ‘You will be beguiled by the best! And there will be absolutely no time to rest. All on —’ Flicker. Flicker. Cyril stopped once more, looking around. Audience members peered at the lights also. The drums in the orchestra pit stopped playing.
Suddenly there was a shout from behind the curtain. Whimsy, Woe and Markus sat up straight in their seats. What was that? They heard people in the audience begin to murmur. Whimsy and Woe shared a worried glance. Were their parents behind that curtain? Were they backstage? Whimsy couldn’t help but hold her breath. Woe and Markus inched closer in their seats. Something was wrong.
Cyril glanced behind him before motioning quickly to the orchestra below. The drums returned, louder this time and they were accompanied by violins.
‘Uh . . . all on . . . on one stage,’ Cyril finished hurriedly. ‘Now, ah, please won’t you join me in welcoming our judges to the stage.’ Cyril held out a hand and to his left the curtain behind him opened slightly. ‘The author of How Many Thespians Is Too Many Thespians: A Memoir, Mr Bernard Fox!’ From the opening in the red curtain came a small man with a long beard. Woe had never heard of Mr Fox but the audience seemed to know him. They cheered for him and he waved politely.
‘Out of retirement and back into our hearts,’ Cyril said, ‘the famed theatre critic, Mrs Elanora Blackwood!’
Whimsy and Woe froze in their seats. Had they heard Cyril correctly? Elanora was in Boole with Isaac and Samuel. Wasn’t she?
Then from behind the curtain, dressed in orange, stepped Elanora Blackwood.
72
In which something smells fishy
The audience cheered loudly for Elanora as she came out onto the stage. Whimsy and Woe noticed that she walked with a slight limp. They couldn’t remember her ever having a limp before. The Elanora that they’d met in Boole was vibrant and full of life. The Elanora that stood before them on stage, however, was the opposite. She looked exhausted and unhappy as she curtsied indifferently to the audience.
‘What happened to her?’ whispered Woe worriedly. He watched Elanora move to stand next to Mr Bernard Fox on the stage. It couldn’t be the same woman. And where were Samuel and Isaac? Had something happened when Whimsy and he left Boole?
Whimsy could only shake her head. What had happened to Elanora? Her mind swirled with questions, some more outrageous than others. Had she come out of retirement? Was she limping because she slipped on some rubbish outside her house? Was the woman on stage even the real Elanora? Constance had told her a story once about someone she knew who stumbled upon their own look-alike on the other side of the world. Could the woman on stage be Elanora’s look-alike?
‘Do you smell something?’ whispered Markus to Whimsy and Woe. ‘Something like cooked fish?’
The siblings didn’t have time to respond to their friend as the audience’s applause died down and Cyril’s voice boomed into the microphone once more.
‘However a judging panel wouldn’t be complete without a third judge,’ said Cyril. ‘So without further ado, the last judge but certainly not at all the least,’ he said with a nervous laugh, ‘is a man that certainly needs little introduction.’
Flicker, flicker went the theatre lights once more.
‘Our wildcard judge,’ said Cyril, ‘all the way from a small town called Boole . . .’
Whimsy and Woe looked sharply at one another. They only knew a handful of people from Boole and one of them was already standing on the stage. A sinking feeling Whimsy and Woe had felt many times before uncurled itself and stretched in their stomachs.
‘The politician . . .’ Cyril continued.
‘No,’ gasped Whimsy with a shake of her head.
‘ . . . avid theatre-goer . . .’
‘It can’t be,’ said Woe, gripping his seat tightly.
‘ . . . and general upstanding member of the community . . .’
‘Who?’ asked Markus, confused.
‘Mr Ignatius Solt!’
Whimsy and Woe could do nothing but watch helplessly as the man they had spent days running from, the man who had threatened to feed them to poisonous plants and wanted to buy them from their aunt, the man who had chased them through a crowded square and stuck really, really wanted posters with their faces on them around an entire beachside town, appeared on stage to a round of applause. The tall and thin Mr Solt was still dressed in his green suit and matching gloves as he waved humbly to the crowd.
Whimsy and Woe sunk discreetly down into their seats as Solt stared into the audience. Then he, Elanora and Mr Fox moved off the stage. Elanora and Mr Fox sat in their allocated seats in the front row but Mr Solt didn’t sit down with them. Instead, he paused at the bottom of the stage steps.
‘The first thespian troupe that will be performing tonight formed over two decades ago,’ continued Cyril, ‘and will be performing Skeins of Pain, a play about the hardship of knitting . . .’
As Cyril spoke, Whimsy’s and Woe’s eyes remained on Mr Solt. He walked past his seat in the front row and straight up the side aisle, slipping through the door into the foyer. Where was he going?
Flicker, flicker.
Then Woe smelt it. It wasn’t cabbages like he was expecting to smell at the sight of Mr Solt or even cooked fish as Markus had described it. It was worse. Much worse. It was unmistakably —
‘Fire,’ said Whimsy as the smell hit her too. They had smelt it many times before at the Idle Slug. It usually meant that Apoline was in the kitchen. But they weren’t in a kitchen. And Apoline wasn’t anywhere in sight. Which could only mean that . . .
Thick grey smoke billowed out from underneath the red curtain. Cyril took a step forward at the sight of it, a hand covering his mouth.
Then every light in the theatre went out. The audience was plunged into total darkness. People cried out in panic and started to cough as the distinct smell of smoke filled the air. Then amidst the darkened theatre, the stage in front of them caught alight.
73
In which the theatre burns
The Broken Leg Theatre was full of screams. People scrambled over seats and other patrons in a rush for the doors as flames began to engulf the stage. Whimsy, Woe and Markus held tightly to one another as they were pushed and wrenched forward towards the exit.
CRACK!
A wooden beam fell to the theatre floor nearby, glowing menacingly with red heat. Woe coughed and spluttered as thick, black smoke blanketed the room. Whimsy held on tight to Markus’s shirt and Woe clung to Whimsy’s dress. They kept their heads down, away from the swirling ash and the heat that radiated from the stage. It was already so strong that it felt like it was burning Whimsy’s skin.
In front of them, Markus had pushed his way towards the foyer doors. A group of men struggled to get it open.
‘They won’t budge!’ said one.
‘Make them budge!’ said another.
There were bangs as men threw their shoulders into the door.
Sparks flew and zapped overhead. With the doors closed, there was nowhere for the crowd to move but the people behind them continued to push forward in a panic, trying to get as far away from the deadly flames as possible.
Woe remembered a story Constance once told them about a stampede at the circus. The bigger animals made it out unharmed but the smaller ones . . . and Whimsy, Woe and Markus were the small animals here. Much smaller than the adults in the crowd. A new fear entered his heart.
Suddenly, Whimsy and Woe felt themselves pressed into the backs of those in front of them. Whimsy’s grip on Markus
slipped as she tried her best to stay upright. With her chest compressed in the crowd, breathing became even more difficult. Woe hurriedly used his arms to try to create a small space between them and the people in front but the adults around them were too strong. His outstretched arms buckled.
Then with a whoosh of air, the doors in front of them broke open. The crowd surged forward. Whimsy lost her footing. Visions of falling to the ground beneath orange-clad feet swam before her eyes. But Woe saw her misstep. He grabbed her, holding her up and guiding her through the doors with the fleeing crowd. He kept his eyes ahead of them on what he hoped was Markus’s back. They moved quickly into the smoky foyer and then out onto the chaotic Whitby City street. Ahead of them Markus turned around, eyes searching. Woe lifted an arm in the air so their friend would see them.
‘Are you all right?’ he gasped heavily.
Whimsy and Woe could only nod. The three of them hurried to the other side of the street, away from the burning building and pushing bodies. They breathed in deeply, gulping down the clean air. Around them people ran about, helping those who had fled the theatre. Horrified onlookers and soot-covered faces embraced their loved ones.
‘Do you think everybody made it out?’ Whimsy asked between breaths. She looked around in the crowd for Elanora but could barely make out any faces in the smoky night. Then Whimsy realised something that froze her in place. That made her stop looking for Elanora. Something, that amongst the confusion and smoke and crushing bodies, they hadn’t even considered. ‘Woe, w-what if our . . .’ she could barely bring herself to say it. ‘What if . . . Mum and Dad . . .’
Woe saw his sister turn sharply towards the smoking building, eyes wide with fear. Their parents. He turned towards the theatre too, his stomach tight with dread. Had they been backstage?
‘They would have made it out,’ said Markus, a little too quickly. ‘Grandfather has a keen sense of smell.’
Whimsy and Woe didn’t reply.
‘Backstage has its own exit,’ Markus continued. ‘And we don’t know the troupe was here. At least . . . not for certain. It was just . . . one of Fry’s theories.’ But as Markus finished his sentence, he knew that even he didn’t believe what he was saying.
Whimsy couldn’t think of anything else but her parents. What if they were backstage? What if they were still inside? What if this was the final act Vincent was talking about in Apoline’s letter? What if this is what he wanted them to see? Then Whimsy did the only thing she thought she could do.
She ran.
‘Whimsy!’ Woe cried as his sister suddenly dived into the crowd.
Pushing herself through the gaps in the people around her, Whimsy headed for the theatre doors. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Let me through.’ She was almost all the way past the patrons still gathered outside. She could see the thick, grey smoke billowing steadily out of the doors. Just a little further.
Suddenly, a loud bang followed by a heavy groan came from ahead. The crowd surged back and Whimsy stopped abruptly. Then with an almighty slump, the round roof of the theatre in front of her collapsed.
Whimsy watched hopelessly as a fountain of red sparks flew up into the night sky in front of her, any and all chances of her going inside to search for their parents now spectacularly extinguished.
Woe and Markus came to a sudden stop next to Whimsy. Woe didn’t want to think about what could have happened if Whimsy had made it a few more steps to the theatre doors.
‘I hope you’re right, Markus,’ said Whimsy, her tear-filled eyes still on the theatre. As the fire took hold, their faces were slowly illuminated in an orange glow.
As they stood there, Whimsy and Woe couldn’t help but feel despair return to their hearts. They had nowhere to go. No more clues to follow. No friends to help them. There was no sign of Detective Fry. No sign of the Purple Puppeteer. No sign of their parents. They were right back where they had started at the Idle Slug.
They could do nothing but watch silently as the Broken Leg Theatre, and their hopes of finding their parents, went up in flames.
to be continued ...
Up in flames.
WHIMSY AND WOE BOOK 2
The exciting conclusion . . .
As the fire in Whitby City rages out of control,
Whimsy and Woe continue their search
for the mysterious Purple Puppeteer, and their
missing mother and father.
Accompany our intrepid pair on their adventures
as they cross deserts, climb mountains
and join the circus.
Nothing will stand in the way of Whimsy and Woe
in the quest to find their parents.
Coming in 2018
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to all the wonderfully talented people at HarperCollins. A special thanks to my editor, Eve Tonelli, and publisher, Lisa Berryman, for believing in this strange little story filled with whimsy and woe.
Chrysoula Aiello, thank you so much for being my second pair of eyes and a reassuring mentor throughout this process. A big, big thank you to Sonia Kretschmar for bringing this story to life with your beautiful illustrations.
Thank you to my agent Tara Wynne at Curtis Brown Australia and Dan Lazar at Writers House.
And thank you to my family (and Steven) for putting up with me spending long hours at the computer and mumbling to myself.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
REBECCA MCRITCHIE would love to tell you that she was raised by wolves in the depths of a snow-laden forest until she stumbled upon and saved a village from the fiery peril of a disgruntled dragon. But, truthfully, she works as a children's book editor and lives in Sydney.
SONIA KRETSCHMAR is an award-winning illustrator and artist who also lectures in Communication Design at Billy Blue College of Design in Melbourne.
As well as illustrating, Sonia has also worked for many magazines, including Rolling Stone, been a finalist in the 2011 Archibald Prize and created stamps for Australia Post. Sonia combines a variety of traditional and digital techniques in her work, which she also occasionally animates.
COPYRIGHT
Angus&Robertson
An imprint of HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks, Australia
First published in Australia in 2017
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Text copyright © Rebecca McRitchie 2017
Illustrations copyright © Sonia Kretschmar 2017
The rights of Rebecca McRitchie and Sonia Kretschmar to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work have been asserted by them under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, USA
ISBN: 978 1 4607 0768 5 (ebook)
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
McRitchie, Rebecca, author.
Whimsy and Woe / Rebecca McRitchie ; illustrated by Sonia Kretschmar.
For primary school age.
Parents — Juvenile fiction.
Children’s stories.
Kretschmar, Sonia, illustrator.
Cover and internal design by Hazel Lam, HarperCollins Design Studio
Cover and internal illustrations by Sonia Kretschmar
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Rebecca McRitchie, Whimsy and Woe
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