by Andy Riley
Oh no, thought Edwin. I’ve seen her do this on the dolls, and they’ve got wooden heads. What will it do to a human being?
The princess ran, then jumped. Her top half hurtled through the air—straight toward King Edwin’s head.
I’m finished, thought King Edwin.
“You’re finished,” said the emperor. “Still, better you than me, eh?”
But just as the pointy hat was about to strike Edwin’s face, it stopped. In midair. Gripped by a powerful hand.
The hand of a hero.
“NOBODY hurts Shark Boy! Not when Thundercloud’s around!”
Megan! There she was, wearing her Thundercloud helmet. She’d rescued it from the cardboard recycling bin, so there were loads of rotten banana peels stuck to it. No matter how many times Jill asked, people always threw the rubbish in the wrong bin. But stinky banana peels or not, Edwin couldn’t have been happier to see her.
“You came back!” said Edwin. “What happened, you see, is the toys all had magic hair in their beards, and they came to life and took over, and Emperor Nurbison thought they would obey him but they didn’t, and then— Hey, how about I tell you the whole thing later, after we’ve won? If we win. Let’s try to win first.”
“Let me go! LET ME GO!” the princess yelled.
Megan was holding the top half of the princess like an ice-cream cone, but an ice-cream cone with fists and snapping teeth. Meanwhile, her bottom half was kicking Megan in the shins.
“Shark Boy to the rescue!” said Edwin. He scrambled up Megan’s back, peeled a piece of tape from her cardboard helmet, slapped it on the doll’s chin, and ripped it away.
And Princess Nurbison became a happy, smiling, broken-in-half doll again.
Edwin and Megan hugged like two koalas.
“Megan, you’re my best chum in the world!” said Edwin.
“Can I be your jester again?” said Megan. “I thought up a new joke. How do you keep cool at a football match? You stand next to a fan!”
Everybody laughed—even Emperor Nurbison. But he wasn’t laughing in the nice way.
“FOO HOO HOO HOO! This is just the beginning!”
“Here we go,” said Minister Jill.
Nurbison grabbed Miss Dolly-Chops from the throne.
“She’s still got plenty of hair, and my beard will soon grow back! I shall make new dolls! And this time I’ll fix them so they obey me! And with my invincible legions of dolls I shall—”
Miss Dolly-Chops was suddenly torn from the emperor’s grasp.
“So that’s where she is!” said old Empress Veronica. “What do you think you’re doing, Nurbison? Stealing from your own mother! A frail, helpless old lady!”
The frail, helpless old lady put the emperor in a headlock.
“I’m—I’m sorry, Mom…,” whimpered Emperor Nurbison.
“Sorry’s not good enough!” said the empress. “I’m going to drag you home by the nose and spank you with a candlestick. A spiky candlestick.”
She felt around his face for a few moments. There was no sign of a nose at all. He just didn’t seem to have one.
“Well, an ear will do,” said Veronica.
“Ow! Ow. OWW!” said the emperor as his mom hauled him away.
11.
What We’ve All Learned
After every adventure, King Edwin and his friends would gather on the village green to talk about what they’d learned. So when all the Nurbison dolls had been cleared away, that’s just what they did.
First, one of the peasants stood up.
“We peasants have learned something,” she said. “We’ve learned not to buy toys from evil emperors. From now on, we will get them only from recognized toy outlets with good safety standards.”
Minister Jill stood up.
“I’ve learned something,” said Minister Jill. “I’ve learned that to get the job done, sometimes we need to work with people we don’t always like. Also, I learned that King Edwin is the cleverest and bravest king there is. But I sort of knew that already.”
Centurion Alisha stood up.
“I’ve learned that we palace guards need to be better at defending this kingdom,” said Alisha. “We’ve let it get invaded a couple of times now. That’s embarrassing. Look at me. This is my embarrassed face.”
Everybody looked at Alisha. Her embarrassed face looked just the same as her angry face, or her happy face.
Baxter the Hermit would have stood up at about this time, but he was still in the kitchen, upside down in a pot, pretending to be a plant.
Then King Edwin and Megan the Jester stood up together.
“We’ve learned something really big!” said Megan. “We’ve learned that even the best of friends can sometimes make each other sad.”
“But if they make up,” said Edwin, “they can be best friends all over again!”
“And what’s more…,” said Megan.
Everyone waited for her to finish. But she couldn’t think of anything extra to say. So she did a dance. Then she fell over. The people laughed and cheered.
“Now let’s all play superheroes!” said Megan.
And everybody did …
That night, as Globulus went to bed in his tiny room in the emperor’s castle, clutching a mug of cold spider’s milk, he heard a sharp knock.
“Kind of, like, I suppose, um, sort of, I guess, I reckon, sort of, um, yeah, like, you know, er, so, kind of, like, I suppose, um, er, well, kind of, like, so, er, well, you know, come in,” said Globulus, but Emperor Nurbison had already flung the door open.
“Globulus!” said the emperor. “I really don’t know why I did this, but I made you a doll of my handsome self.”
He delved into his flapping cloak and pulled out a little Nurbison doll.
“It isn’t magic. Mother has all the magic hair now. But here it is anyway. And with it, this.”
Nurbison placed a little Globulus doll next to it.
“Wow, like, a matching set!” said Globulus. “You and me! That’s like, kind of amazing, and sort of just what I wanted, and thank you.”
“Now sleep,” said the emperor. “You have to get up and work for me again in half an hour.”
The emperor left Globulus, then prowled through the dark passages of his castle, back to his own room.
Then he stopped. And thought.
I just gave Globulus a present. I did something nice for someone. How did that happen? That’s not me. I never do anything nice for anybody. I am the evil emperor!
Then he realized: All those weeks of pretending to be nice had changed him, ever so slightly. There was now a tiny, teensy-weensy bit of good in him.
“Well, you mutant part of me that is good, I shall defeat you!” spat Nurbison. “Yes, I shall! By becoming even more evil than ever before! SQUEE HEE H— Ahem, I mean, FOO HOO HOO HOO!”
In Edwinland, King Edwin was going to bed, too. Playing superheroes had made him super tired. Minister Jill tucked him in.
“I’ve had a lot of surprises on our adventures, Jill,” said the young king. “But none as big as the first time I saw a living doll.”
“You sleep now, Edwin,” said Jill.
“Toys that come to life!” said Edwin, yawning. “Can you imagine a bigger surprise than that? I can’t. And I’ve got a big imagination. Any time my imagination doesn’t feel big enough, I just imagine it’s a bit bigger, and then, ta-da! It really is.”
“Night night,” said Jill.
“But, Jill, you never said if you could imagine a bigger—”
But she was already gone.
In the hallway, Minister Jill looked through a window to the moonlit ocean far away. She could think of something that would surprise Edwin even more than dolls that come to life. But she had never told anyone about it.
What is Jill’s secret?
We will find out.
In another book.
Q. Dear Globulus,
I have to wear glasses, but every pair of glasses I buy breaks when I hit it
twelve times with a massive hammer. What can I do?
A. Hi, um, maybe you could try, you know, not hitting them twelve times with a massive hammer. Cut down to three or four times, yeah? And if you’ve still got the problem then maybe … you know … try not hitting them with the hammer. Like, ever. Sounds crazy, I know, but give it a go, sort of thing.
Q. Dear Globulus,
I grow lettuce in my garden, but the slugs keep eating it in the night. How can I stop them?
A. Slugs, yeah? Yeah. Thing about slugs is, they’re not very good at, you know, jumping. Ever see a slug jump? No. Me neither. So I reckon, right, you should kind of like, put a line of hurdles in front of the lettuce patch, and there’s, like, no way a slug is going to clear more than one of them. Hurdling slugs? Not going to happen. Or you could eat the slugs. Bit slimy, sure, but no worse than worms and, you know, we all eat worms, don’t we?
Q. Dear Globulus,
My brother won’t let me play with his football. What can I do?
A. You’re sort of going, “I want the ball,” yeah, and your brother, he’s going, “I want the ball.” But you got to think, yeah, about what the ball wants. Let the ball choose. And maybe you think balls don’t have a mind and can’t choose, but that’s when you’ve got to draw a face on the ball, okay? ’Cause, you know, if you draw a face on something, then you give it a mind. That’s how it works. Pretty sure, anyway. I once drew a face on my own face, yeah? And that sort of gave me an extra mind and my brain got double clever. Wait, what were we talking about?
Q. Globulus!
Why are you still answering letters? I need a custard cream cookie! NOW!
A. Hello, Emperor. Sorry, Emperor. Coming, Emperor.
About the Author
ANDY RILEY has done lots of funny writing for film and TV, and he’s even won prizes for it, like BAFTAs and an Emmy. For TV, Andy cowrote the scripts for David Walliams’s Gangsta Granny and The Boy in the Dress, and Robbie the Reindeer. The films he’s written for include Gnomeo and Juliet and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! Andy really loves cowboy hats, and he can do a brilliant “FOO HOO HOO.” You can sign up for email updates here.
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Just Imagine How Exciting All These Chapters Must Be
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Map
1. The Ninth of Janvember
2. The Cottage and the Cupboard
3. A Month Later
4. Grand Opening
5. Big Pouty Face
6. Find the Princess
7. Hairy Magic
8. So … Many … Nurbisons
9. Teamwork
10. The Princess Will See You Now
11. What We’ve All Learneda
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Andy Riley
Henry Holt and Company, Publishers since 1866
Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
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All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Control Number 2018936449
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eISBN 9781627798143
Originally published in 2017 in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton
Design by Jennifer Stephenson
First American edition 2018
eBook edition November 2018
