by Ged Gillmore
‘I’m Ginger,’ said Ginger. ‘And this is Tuck.’
‘Devil of a night for it,’ said the rabbit.
‘Yes,’ said Tuck. ‘We’re looking for somewhere to shelter. Are there any thicker trees near here?’
‘Trees, old boy? On a night like tonight?’ said the rabbit. ‘Wouldn’t hear of it. Come on in, I insist. I feed enough bally mouths in this household every night. I’m sure another two won’t hurt. Come on, come on, I’ll leave you there to have a good shake and see if I can find each of you a spare jacket.’
And with that he disappeared down the tunnel and around the corner.
‘Jacket?’ said Tuck as Ginger gave herself a good shake and then licked off the worst of the residual raindrops.
‘Oh yes,’ said Ginger. ‘Rabbits are very proper, you know. They always dress for dinner. Just be careful what you say—they’ve got this real thing about etiquette.’
‘Rabbits?’ said Tuck. ‘Are you sure?’
Ginger hissed at him as she could hear Mr Wilkins scampering back up the corridor.
Most of the lights, it turned out, were coming from the Wilkinses’ dining room. It was filled with tiny fireflies, whose humming was the only sound as Mrs M Ginger (formerly of Heatherington Hall) and Mr Spencer Tuck, Esquire, were introduced.
‘Ooh, helloo,’ said Mrs Wilkins in a gorgeous smoky voice as she extended a furry paw. ‘How do you dooo?’ Tuck shook Mrs Wilkins’s paw, while Ginger stood behind him and pushed his head down until it was just above Mrs Wilkins’s tiny engagement ring.
‘Ooh, helloo,’ said Ginger. ‘Hi do ye do. It’s so awfully kind of you to shelter us from the rain like this.’
‘Er … what she said,’ said Tuck, who was a little too scared to say anything else.
The cats were then introduced to the Wilkinses’ twenty-six children, who stood and introduced themselves in turn. Their names were Annabel, Bartholemew Jnr, Camilla, Diana, Edward, Frederick, Giles, Hubert, India, Jemima, Katharine, Lucinda, Margaret, Nigella, Oscar, Primrose, Quentin, Rupert, St John, Tamara, Ursula, Virginia, William, Xaviera, Yolanda, and Zara.
‘Goodness,’ said Tuck. ‘What an awful lot of—’ but Ginger elbowed him hard in the ribs, so he just said, ‘lovely names’, and no one will ever know what he was originally going to say. An awkward silence followed, until the very smallest of the Wilkins children, baby Zara, who was barely more than a ball of fluff, pointed at Ginger and asked loudly, ‘Why’s the saggy moggie soggy, Mommie?’ Well! Poor Mrs Wilkins blushed bright red, but Ginger pretended not to hear and commented on how charming her curtains were.
‘We were about to eat,’ said Mrs Wilkins. ‘Would you join us?’
‘Oh, we couldn’t possibly,’ said Ginger, much to Tuck’s dismay. He looked at her with wide yellow eyes and wondered if her jacket was too tight. Not only was she talking in a very strange way (her mouth made as small as possible and her vowels clipped and snipped and chipped into shape), now she was refusing dinner.
‘Oh, dooo!’ said Mrs Wilkins. ‘I simply insist.’
‘Honestly, we couldn’t impose,’ said Ginger.
‘Bally nonsense!’ barked Mr Wilkins from the other end of the table. ‘I won’t hear another word of it. Sit down and grab yourselves a toastie.’
Well, poor old Tuck thought a plate had never moved around a table so slowly. He was already salivating from the sight of so many tiny fluffy bunnies in a confined space. He knew whatever else he did, he mustn’t mention a game of tick or something very unfortunate might happen. And although he didn’t know how to speak in a funny way and had never worn a jacket for dinner before, he knew it was probably bad form to eat a family that had taken you in from a cold and stormy night. But, oh, he wished those plates of food would be passed around quicker.
They had started in front of him, a huge plate of cheese toasted sandwiches on one and an even huger plate of tomato toasted sandwiches on the other. As Tuck watched, one plate went one way round the table, one went the other. It was only after a good five minutes, and when each plate was significantly lighter than it had started out, that he saw them both arriving back in front of him again.
‘Mr Tuck, my dear,’ said Mrs Wilkins kindly. ‘Do help yourself. Would you like a cheese toastie or a tomato toastie? Or one of each?’
‘Ooh, both please!’ said Tuck, somewhat excitedly after such a long wait. ‘I really love mixing my toasties!’
A horrible hush descended upon the dining room. Every one of the little Wilkins bunnies turned at Tuck with a horrified expression, apart from little Zara, who sat giggling in the corner with a paw over her mouth. Mrs Wilkins looked horrified, and Mr Wilkins muttered, ‘Bad taste, bad form’ under his breath. Even the fireflies hushed their buzzing for a while, and the light in the room faded as if during a power shortage. Tuck had no idea what he’d done and maybe you don’t know either? If not, go and ask an adult why you should never say to a rabbit ‘I love mixing my toasties’ and you might learn something. Adults do have some uses, after all. Unfortunately for Tuck, there was no one for him to ask.
‘Toasties,’ said Ginger, ‘are what the French call toasted sandwiches, I believe. Is that right, Mr Tuck?’
Tuck sat silently and stared at Ginger, his eyes huge and yellow and uncertain. He watched her nod very slowly and eventually stuttered out, ‘Y-y-yes?’
‘Yes. You see, Mr Tuck and I summered in Paris this year,’ Ginger continued, smiling benevolently at the crowded table, ‘and the dear French always talk about mixing their toasted sandwiches. It’s a funny expression although—’
‘Indeed!’ said Mrs Wilkins, brightening slightly and allowing Ginger to engage her in a witty discussion on the price of carrots. Tuck was so terrified he didn’t speak another word all evening. He let the children talk instead, listening carefully to their conversations about grass and the forest and the weather, and wondering what on earth he had done wrong.
Unfortunately, he never got to ask Ginger that night (their rooms were in separate wings of the burrow), and the next morning he forgot. By the time he remembered again, there was a far more important question that needed answering.
A BIT OF BLOOD AND GUTS
The next day the Burringos’ apartment was silent but for the sound of Rodney and Janice’s drunken snoring. And I hope you like big buts because that was a HUGE one. The apartment wasn’t silent at all. It was rollicking and rolling and trembling and tremoring to the sounds of their snoring.
‘It’s a flippin’ urfquake!’ screamed Minnie when it first started. ‘It’s de end offer wurld! Gawd, listen to them ’ooters gowing! Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah!’
She was clearly excited. She and Major had spent all night preparing for their prison break, and now she was to have her big moment. Her ‘Big Bang’ as she’d referred to it seventeen times that night. Now there was nothing to do but wait. Wait for the Burringos to fall asleep (that bit was easy) and then wait some more until she and Major could hear someone in the corridor calling the lift. That bit wasn’t so easy, at least it wasn’t for Minnie.
‘Bleeding ’eck’ she said. ‘What’s keeping ’em? ’Ow many people is there on this floor?’
‘Six apartments,’ said Major, who had counted the doors on the way in despite his scruff-held state. ‘Patience, Minnie-man, They generally go out after breakfast.’
But telling Minnie to be patient was like telling a patient to feel better. Not gonna happen.
‘Dude,’ said Major, ‘why don’t you double-check all the arrangements while I get a bit of shut-eye. I’m really tired.’
And with that he curled up on the arm of the sofa and lay the end of his tail over his nose. But in reality he was too nervous to sleep. He was worried about all the things that could go wrong and how angry the witches would be with him and Minnie if they did. So Major lay there with his eyes wide open, chanting an om under his breath whilst he watched Minnie check the arrangements. Which basically meant sniffing all along the wool she’d stolen fro
m Janice’s knitting basket the night before.
While Major was looking for baking powder, she’d unravelled it and rubbed Rodney’s missing firelighter along it a hundred and twenty times until she’d created a perfect fuse wire. One end of it was now connected to the gas hob in the kitchen, and the other lay in a two-litre bottle of explosive liquid just inside the front door. Try as hard as they could the cats had not been able to disable the sprinkler system in the flat so they had opened all the umbrellas they could find over the carpet near the door. Here lay the rest of the firelighters surrounded by a strange assortment of cooking oils.
‘I’m worried about the sprinklers,’ said Minnie, who could see Major was still awake. ‘What if dey put the fire out straightaway, eh? Who has a sprinkler system in their ’ouse anyway?’
‘Most witches,’ said Major tiredly through the end of his tail. ‘It’s a cultural thing. They’ve got this big thing about fire. People used to burn witches.’
‘Lack of wood?’ said Minnie.
‘Who knows?’ said Major.
Then they both heard a noise in the corridor. It was the little old lady next door (the same little old lady who by not-that-big-a-coincidence-really had helped Tuck and Ginger’s escape). She had opened the front door to her apartment, closed it behind her, and was now making her way towards the lift. Major stood bolt upright. He and Minnie looked at each other, and then they both ran to the kitchen.
Lighting the stovetop was relatively easy. They simply had to push and turn at the same time. They’d practised it a hundred times on the bleach bottle, but now their nerves got in the way. Major chose the biggest knob, leant on it hard and twisted. But he slipped, a thin veil of sweat on the pads of his paws.
‘Hurry,’ said Minnie. ‘We’ll miss the lift!’
Major tried again, and again he failed to light the stove. He sat back, closed his eyes, and let out an especially deep and gingery sigh. ‘Be the flame,’ he said to himself. He leant on the knob once more, and it was as if it turned itself. Click, click, click went the ignition, and boof! The flames around the biggest element sprang to life.
‘Now we’re cooking wiv gas,’ said Minnie.
The wool that was tied around the stovetop caught the flame immediately, and the cats watched eagerly as the little flicker of fire burnt along its length. Within ten seconds it had reached the floor, and within another thirty it had reached the kitchen door.
‘Eeez gonna make beeg bang,’ said Minnie in her best Mexican accent.
But she spoke too soon. She and Major sat with their paws in their ears, but a minute later they were still there and nothing had made beeg bang at all.
‘No,’ said Minnie. ‘No! What’s wrong?’
And she jumped down to see what could have happened.
‘No!’ said Major. ‘Wait!’
But it was too late. Minnie stepped outside of the kitchen door just as the massive explosion rocked not only the apartment but the entire apartment building. BO … Oh, I’ll run out of vowels if I even try to describe it. It was big, got it? No, bigger than that. Bigger. Bit bigger. No, much bigger. Bit bigger still. OK, that’s it. Really, really big. KERRBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
‘Minnie!’ shouted Major.
He jumped down from what was left of the kitchen work surface and ran out into the hall. Where there had once been a front door was a massive gaping hole. What was left of the door was halfway down the corridor towards the elevator, leaning against the wall at an angle and burning in bright yellow flames. Beyond it stood a somewhat braised little old lady, soot all over her face, her hair in the air like Einstein’s, and her hat hanging down under her chin. Inside the apartment was a scene of carnage. The sofa was smoking, the carpet inside the front door was blazing, the floorboards were warped. And there, squashed onto the television screen like roadkill, was Minnie. Major had never seen her so still. No one had ever seen her so still.
‘Minnie?’ said Major, walking towards her. ‘Minnie, are you … are you—’
Just then the elevator at the other end of the corridor went ping. Minnie raised her head, gave Major a massive wink and said, ‘I tell you, meester. It make beeg bang! Look at me, Major, I’m on television! Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah! Oops, elevator!’
And with that she peeled herself off the television screen and sprang towards the front door. ‘WHOOPEE WOO!’ she screeched as she jumped headlong over the burning carpet and into the smoking corridor. ‘Hold that lift!’
Major ran after her and he didn’t do it a moment too soon, for just then Rodney Burringo appeared at the top of the stairs. He was green and warty and had death in his eyes, not to mention one of the top ten hangovers ever recorded. He flew down the stairs, literally, stopping only when he reached the flames at the bottom. Just then the sprinkler system kicked in, and within a damp minute the flames were out.
But a damp minute was more than Major and Minnie needed. They raced past the little old lady who was (a) getting used to pairs of cats tearing out of the Burringos’, and (b) in catatonic shock at the huge explosion, and into the lift. Minnie hurried to the back corner, turned, and ran full speed at Major. She sprang onto him and bounced up to the >|< button with another ‘Whoopee-woo!’
But before she could press her nose to the button, Rodney Burringo came flying out of his apartment on his fastest broomstick. ‘Kill!’ he yelled, and pointed an evil finger at the lift.
The kill spell, which all witches have at their disposal, left his dirty fingernail and travelled down the corridor at high speed. It passed the broken and smouldering apartment door as Minnie pushed the >|< button with her nose. It passed the little old lady as the elevator doors began to close. It reached the elevator doors just after they had closed. Then it bounced off the reflection of the elevator doors and started on its journey back along the corridor just as the little old lady said, ‘Oh hello, Mr Burringo. Did you—’ But that was as far as she got because that is as far as the kill spell got. It hit the little old lady square in the back, and before Rodney Burringo could cover his eyes and mouth, the little old lady exploded all over the corridor. Splat. Gulp.
‘What was that ‘orrible noise?’ said Minnie.
‘No idea,’ said Major. ‘Let’s not wait around to find out. Quick—let’s go again.’
And so again Minnie hurried to the back corner, again she ran full speed at Major, who in his early years had been bottom-left in a cat pyramid touring troupe, and again she bounced off him up to the buttons. This time she hit the ‘G’ button, and quicker than you could say ‘Goodness, I bet Tuck and Ginger wish they’d thought of that’, the two cats were travelling down to the ground floor.
Talking of Tuck and Ginger, they too were once more on their way. It took a good forty-five minutes for them to say their goodbyes to the Wilkins family. It was worth it, though, as they were fed a huge breakfast, and as if that weren’t enough, each of them was given a little basket full of sandwiches and chocolate eggs which were left over from Easter. Ginger told Mrs Wilkins she and Mr Wilkins really must look them up next time they were on the other side of the Great Dark Forest, and Mr Wilkins told Tuck something about rugby, which Tuck didn’t understand. At last, fed and happy and struggling to carry their baskets, the two cats trotted off even further into the forest whilst the twenty-eight rabbits waved them out of sight.
Of course, as soon as they were out of sight, Ginger and Tuck dropped the baskets, emptied the contents onto the ground and scoffed their way through all the sandwiches and all the chocolates, although not necessarily in that order. Oh, can you imagine the purring, chomping sound they made? You can’t? Try harder.
‘You know,’ said Ginger, picking silver paper from between her teeth. ‘You can say what you like about rabbits, but they are very generous hosts. I reckon we could have stayed there another week.’
‘Really?’ said Tuck, his mouth still full of grass paste, crusts, and chocolate. ‘Why didn’t we, then?’
It was a tough question for Ginger to answer. She too was tired of walking, and the idea of sitting out the stormy season in a nice warm burrow had been tempting. Truth be told, though, she wasn’t sure she could have resisted helping herself to a little baby bunny for that long. She found herself drooling and tried to think of something else.
‘It’s still thundering in the distance,’ she said to Tuck. ‘We should press on. These willows won’t give us much shelter.’
And so on they pushed. Soon the ground rose up from the flat valley floor, and the willows gave way to thick pine trees bigger than even Ginger had heard of. Here the forest floor was almost bare. Plants need water and sunlight to thrive, but down here little sunlight and less rain made it through the thick pine branches overhead. There was little to see but for old pine needles and endless tree roots crissing and crossing in a spaghetti of half-buried wood. After the breezy trees and waving grass of the floodplain, it was eerily quiet. The distant rumble of thunder was the only sound.
‘Maybe we should sit out the storm in here?’ said Tuck.
‘Maybe,’ said Ginger.
But they both carried on walking, padding quietly across the carpet of pine needles. Neither of them could explain why they carried on. It wasn’t as if they’d find a better shelter. But there was something about this part of the forest that felt different from any they’d found before. There was a different energy, nothing you could see or smell but something indescribable you could feel. At least, you could if you were a cat.
As Tuck and Ginger walked, they looked up occasionally into the trees, trying to work out if the storm was coming closer, but the trees were too thick to let them know. Certainly, the thunder was louder than before. It never stopped, not for a minute, and as they got higher and higher up the hill they discussed if maybe it wasn’t thunder at all but a huge river or a mighty waterfall. Soon they were referring to it not as ‘the thunder’ but as ‘the noise’. The closer they got to it the less comfortable they felt. They tracked to the left of their true path thinking maybe they could avoid it, and then they backtracked back and had a crack from the right. But no matter how far they walked to one side or the other, the noise remained in front of them.
