by Adam Cece
‘Hmmmph,’ he said. ‘I believe you, even though you did temporarily cure my invisibility, which I’m still very grateful for, by the way. But you are still very evil. So I guess I don’t feel bad about what I did.’
Cymphany and Tobias looked at Kipp, confused. So did Al Dark. ‘What you did?’ he said, in a slightly worried voice.
At that exact moment a long black limousine, with a licence plate that read ‘DARKNESS’ drove along the road and stopped beside the group. The driver leapt out, slapped a chauffeur hat on his head, sprinted around to the back door of the limousine, and opened it with a bow so low his nose almost touched the ground. A woman with bright blue hair and a sharp business suit climbed from the back seat, barking at the man for taking so long, even though he’d opened the door about one second after stopping. Also in the back seat, but seemingly not getting out, were two men everyone recognised.
Cymphany shot the biggest, widest smile at Kipp. ‘Kipp, what did you do?’
Kipp smiled back. ‘You’ll see.’
Tobias and Copernicus were smiling too.
The only person who wasn’t smiling was Al. His face had gone whiter than a polar bear that’s fallen in vanilla ice cream. He watched in horror as the woman waited for the driver to unfurl a strip of red carpet for her to walk on.
Al Dark gasped. ‘Mother!’
Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany waved at Felonious Dark, sitting in the back seat of the limousine, although they couldn’t tell which of the two men in the back seat was Felonious Dark and which was Felonious Dark Two, as they were identical. The man they were waving at waved back, so it seemed like they had guessed correctly. ‘Hello, children,’ he said.
‘That’s enough out of you,’ the woman snapped over her shoulder at him. ‘You’re in enough trouble, but not as much trouble’—she turned her attention back to Al—‘as your little brother.’ She fixed him with the sternest of glares.
‘Mother!’ Al Dark exclaimed. ‘You’re noticing me.’ Al Dark puffed up his chest. ‘At last, you’re noticing me.’
This was not the reaction anyone had been expecting. But Mother Dark’s expression did not falter. ‘Of course, I’m noticing you, Al,’ she said.
‘And you know my name.’ Al Dark beamed.
‘Why are you looking so happy?’ Mother Dark boomed.
‘Because’—Al could barely speak through his beaming smile—‘all my life you’ve never noticed me.’
‘Enough!’ Mother Dark rolled her eyes. She put her hands on her hips. ‘I always noticed you, Al. But I didn’t have time to pay much attention to you, or to tell you that I noticed you. I was busy with these two buffoons.’
Just like the creepy scientist and the top-hatted scientist had done earlier, Felonious Dark and Felonious Dark Two turned to see who the two buffoons were—then they realised Mother Dark was talking about them.
Mother Dark shook her head. ‘But, yes, okay. Maybe I could have paid more attention to you. But you were the good one. Always polite and considerate. Which I really appreciated. You were wonderful.’
Al Dark’s mouth dropped open. ‘I am wonderful?’ he said.
‘Were wonderful,’ Mother Dark corrected him, and all hardness returned to her face. ‘Now, I heard you convinced everyone to leave Huggabie Falls with an utterly indescribable thing, making them believe they were missing out so they would all move to Near Huggabie Falls. And why? Because I didn’t tell you I noticed you every day, or that one time we forgot about you for three years. I mean, when are you ever going to stop sooking about that? If you want people to remember you, then get some business cards printed. Don’t concoct evil plans to make everyone move to your silly, boring town forever, and—’ She suddenly stopped talking. Then she said, ‘Oh, that’s one incredibly cute goat.’
Copernicus blushed—and if you’ve never seen a goat blush, it’s quite an unusual sight—and swished his hoof. ‘Aw, I’m not looking that good. Truth be told I’m actually having a bit of a bad-hair day.’
Mother Dark turned back to Al. ‘Did you want to get noticed like your brothers always did for getting in lots of trouble all the time?’ She jabbed a finger at him and fixed him with a furious stare. ‘Well, congratulations. You’ve got your wish. And now you’re going to get noticed, and punished, just like them.’
Al Dark put his arms out. ‘Mother, I didn’t do any of those things.’
‘Yes he did,’ Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany said in unison.
‘Yes he did,’ said the other one hundred or so Huggabie Falls residents who were watching.
‘I concur,’ said Copernicus.
‘We’ve got video evidence,’ said the top-hatted scientist, and the creepy scientist nodded her head beside him.
‘We’re not from Huggabie Falls,’ said a woman who seemed to be speaking on behalf of the guards. ‘But from what we know of Mayor Dark, those definitely sound like things he would do. In fact, I’d be pretty darn surprised if he didn’t do them.’
‘Oh, thanks. Thanks a lot, everyone,’ Al Dark snapped. ‘Next time your mum is in town, I’m going to totally dob on all of you too.’
Mother Dark lunged, and before Al could make a run for it she had him in the ear pinch to end all ear pinches.
‘I have a multi-billion-dollar company to run,’ Mother Dark said calmly. ‘I don’t have time to be fussing about noticing you all the time.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Al yelped. ‘I’m happy to go back to being not noticed now.’
‘Too late,’ Mother Dark said.
‘What is your company, Mrs Dark?’ Cymphany asked. She stared wide eyed at the old lady’s snazzy business suit, and ludicrously long limousine. ‘It seems to be doing quite well.’
Mother Dark turned to Cymphany and beamed. ‘Oh, hello, dear. Please, take one of my business cards.’
With one of her hands still gripping Al Dark by the ear, Mother Dark clicked her fingers and her driver materialised beside Cymphany and handed her a business card.
Cymphany read the card and looked up at Mother Dark. ‘You make evil products?’
‘Only the absolute evilest,’ Mother Dark said. ‘Like underwear that always rides up your backside—the perfect Christmas present for the person you don’t like—and chip packets that always pop open from the bottom, sending chips all over the floor, and, our most recent invention, the one which we are most proud of: shoelaces that automatically untie themselves ten minutes after being tied. We are very proud to report that Evil Incorporated has been responsible for more trippage in the world than uneven paving and banana peels combined.’
‘Wow,’ said Kipp. ‘No wonder your sons went into the evil business.’
‘Don’t make me laugh,’ Mother Dark laughed. ‘These boys wouldn’t know evilness if it bopped them on the head. They keep trying to be evil, probably to impress me, but all they do is make fools of themselves. I thought Al was the only one who wasn’t completely clueless, but it seems I was wrong.’
Al Dark’s face twisted in pain from Mother Dark’s ear pinch. ‘I’m quite happy to go back to being forgotten about now,’ he said.
‘Too late,’ Mother Dark replied.
‘Actually, Mother Dark,’ Tobias said. ‘Mr Dark, that is Felonious Dark One, was quite good at evilness. But now he’s reformed. He’s not evil anymore.’
‘I don’t care,’ she said, dragging a squirming Al Dark towards the limousine, and throwing him, ear first, into the back seat with his brothers. ‘From now on these three are all going to work in the Evil Incorporated mailroom.’
‘Not the mailroom,’ the three Dark triplets all groaned.
‘Yes,’ Mother Dark grinned evilly. ‘And since we invented paper that has fifty per cent sharper edges, you are all at least fifty per cent more likely to get paper cuts, and the paper has inbuilt lemon, so the cuts are guaranteed to sting.’
‘Wow,’ said the top-hatted scientist, ‘that’s truly evil.’
‘Why, thank you.’ Mother Dark beamed again. ‘Let me give y
ou a customer satisfaction survey.’ She clicked her fingers and her driver materialised next to the top-hatted scientist and handed him a piece of paper.
‘Of course,’ Mother Dark added, ‘we will ignore all your comments in the customer satisfaction survey, as bad customer service is another one of the evil services we provide.’
With that, Mother Dark climbed into the limousine with her three identical triplet children.
Felonious Dark and Felonious Dark Two were grinning at Al Dark, as if to say, welcome to the being-noticed club—you won’t like it.
‘Bye, children,’ Felonious Dark said as he waved through the limousine window.
Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany waved back. ‘Please come back to Huggabie Falls soon, Mr Dark.’
‘This is not over,’ Al Dark yelled at them.
‘It is over,’ Mother Dark said firmly as her driver sprinted around to close her door and then sprinted back to the driver’s seat, and even though this only took him about half a second, Mother Dark still complained that she would ‘die of old age’ as he was ‘as slow as a snail in slow motion’.
The limousine drove off.
Kipp shot Tobias and Cymphany a quizzical look. ‘I can’t believe Mother Dark is responsible for my chip packets always bursting open at the bottom. She is truly evil.’
Cymphany grinned back at Kipp. ‘Kipp, you stopped Al Dark, and by the looks of it you’ve saved Huggabie Falls too.’
‘Yes.’ Kipp puffed his chest out proudly. ‘And ringing Mother Dark was actually my plan.’
Cymphany and Tobias looked at each other, and then at Kipp. ‘What do you mean actually your plan?’ Cymphany asked. ‘Wasn’t all the rest of it your plan too?’
Kipp flinched. ‘Of course! Yes. None of it was Copernicus’s plan.’
‘Who said anything about Copernicus?’ Tobias asked.
‘Anyway,’ Kipp said, quickly changing the subject. ‘Let’s get back to Huggabie Falls.’
It seemed everyone who had watched Kipp’s video, which was everyone who had moved to Near Huggabie Falls, had totally changed their minds about moving to Near Huggabie Falls, especially now that Near Huggabie Falls was a pile of cardboard rubble. Kipp’s video, and Kipp’s speech, had reminded them of all the wonderful and weird things they’d always had in Huggabie Falls. There really was no other place in the world like it.
And as Kipp gazed down at his sparkly visible body he remembered that the sparkles would fade soon, and it reminded him that he wanted to go and talk to the creepy scientist and the top-hatted scientist. He found them about to board a submarine out of Near Huggabie Falls. The Near Huggabie Falls Submarine Station was conveniently parked right next door to the Near Huggabie Falls town limits sign.
‘You haven’t called the authorities, have you?’ the top-hatted scientist said, his eyes darting about as Kipp approached.
‘If you did,’ the creepy scientist said, ‘then I’d like to take this opportunity to say that it was all the top-hatted scientist’s fault. Everybody knows you can’t trust people in top hats.’
‘Hey,’ the top-hatted scientist said.
‘Don’t worry,’ Kipp said, ‘I haven’t called the authorities.’
‘Oh, in that case,’ the creepy scientist said, with a forced laugh, ‘I was just joking about the can’t-trust-top-hatted-scientists thing.’
The top-hatted scientist glared at her.
‘I want you guys to move to Huggabie Falls,’ Kipp said. ‘So you can keep making the silvery glitter dust that can temporarily make me visible. My whole family could use it. My dad could finally achieve his dream of becoming a professional hand model, and my mother would finally have a reason to buy that new mirror she’s had her eye on. And my sister will turn invisible one day too, and…well the only thing she likes doing is watching cartoons, but I’m sure there’ll be something she’ll want to be visible for in the future.’
The top-hatted scientist stopped glaring at the creepy scientist, who was pretending not to notice he was glaring at her, and he stared at Kipp. ‘You want us to move to Huggabie Falls?’ he said. ‘Even after everything we’ve done? I tried to scare people out of town, and the creepy scientist tried to make Huggabie Falls normal.’
‘Yes,’ said Kipp, ‘but if you used your scientific genius for good rather than bad, you could do some really great work in Huggabie Falls.’
The top-hatted scientist and the creepy scientist were quiet for quite some time. Finally the top-hatted scientist looked at the creepy scientist. ‘Well, what do you think?’ he said.
The creepy scientist shrugged. ‘Huggabie Falls does seem like a pretty incredible place. Did you see that fabulous video?’
It occurs to me that Copernicus hasn’t yet told the story of how he, the great mathematician and astronomer who lived five hundred years ago, came to be living as a super-cute goat in Huggabie Falls. And I’m worried Copernicus is not going to get round to telling everyone that story by the end of the book. This is what’s known as a loose end. And loose ends are very frustrating and unsatisfying. I once found a loose end in my woollen suit jacket, and I started pulling on it, and eight seconds later I was standing there in my underwear, with a ball of wool at my feet.
So, to ensure all loose ends are tied up and no one is left standing in their underwear, here is the story of how Copernicus, the famous mathematician and astronomer, ended up as a talking, super-cute goat in a witch’s house in Huggabie Falls, almost five hundred years after he was supposed to have died.
The year was 1543, and it was delightful sunny day, 24 May, in the quaint town of Frombork in Northern Poland. This is the day and place that most historians agree was the day that Copernicus died. This of course proves that historians don’t know everything, because the one thing that historians never tell you is that they were not actually there when any of the things they are writing about actually happened.
Anyway if you had asked Copernicus if he felt in the dying mood on 24 May 1543, he would have said certainly not. Copernicus was a mathematician, lawyer, astronomer, physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist. He was also one other thing. He was tired, because of all the things he was always doing, and he would have probably said, go away and stop asking me if I’m about to die, you clown.
He was doing what I imagine most seventy-year-old great Polish astronomers do in their spare time: he was pushing a little wooden boat around the pond out the front of his house and making little blubbering motorboat sounds with his lips. This was particularly intriguing, as the world’s first motorboat wasn’t due to be invented for another 343 years or so, so one wonders whether Copernicus might have been some sort of time traveller himself.
A young girl skipped up his stony driveway, wearing a shiny silver jumpsuit with aviator goggles, pink sneakers and purple leather gloves, which had the fingertips cut off. She was carrying a large leather-bound book. Copernicus quickly stopped making motorboat noises and stood up. ‘Ah, hello, little girl,’ he said, in the language of Latin, an old language hardly anyone speaks anymore. ‘I was just…errr…checking the fish in my pond.’
‘Of course you were,’ said the girl, in a way that suggested she knew full well he wasn’t.
The man’s eyes fell on the large book. ‘What’s that you’ve got there?’
The girl handed Copernicus the book and his mouth dropped open. ‘It can’t be!’ he said.
But contrary to what he had just said, it most certainly could be, and it was.
The book was the first complete version of Copernicus’s life’s work, which had a fancy Latin name: De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium. If you translate this into English it is On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, which I think most of us will agree is not a catchy title, and he should have chosen the other title he was considering: Everything I Know about Stuff and Then Some.
‘It’s my greatest work,’ Copernicus said, awestruck, as he flipped through the book. He looked about and then leaned in to whi
sper, ‘In it, I show that the centre of the universe is’—he looked about again—‘the sun.’
‘Woah,’ said the girl. ‘Spoiler alert.’
Copernicus laughed, even though he had no idea what a spoiler alert was. He held the book to his chest and smiled. ‘Now I can die a happy man.’
The girl held up one finger. ‘Hold that thought, Copernicus, because I’ve got another plan for you.’
Copernicus was so surprised that he almost dropped his book. ‘What?’ He gasped. ‘Why would you do that? I’m in perfect health, I was just about to go for a walk and—’
‘Make more motorboat noises?’ The girl smirked.
Copernicus frowned at her. ‘Who are you?’
She started walking and motioned for him to follow her. ‘Walk with me, Copernicus.’
They reached a clearing and when Copernicus saw the machine that was in the middle of the clearing, he immediately dropped the book, and trampled over it as he lunged forward to examine the shiny metal exterior and marvel at the flashing lights.
‘What is this stupendous machine?’ he asked. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘You’ll get to find out soon enough,’ the girl said, handing Copernicus a pair of aviator goggles. ‘Here, put these on.’
Copernicus looked at the goggles and at the girl. ‘Not until you tell me what’s going on. Who are you?’
‘My name is Lemonade,’ she said.
‘Lemonade?’ Copernicus said.
‘Yes, and I’m going to take you to the future,’ she said.
‘The future?’ Copernicus blinked.
‘Yes. Look, this is going to take a long time if you just keep repeating every word I say.’
‘Sorry,’ said Copernicus. ‘Please continue.’
‘I’m going to take you to a town,’ Lemonade said, ‘where there are more weird people and weird things than anywhere else on Earth. We have to save it. Actually, I’ve had to save it a number of times already, but you only have to help me save it once.’
