‘Um, thank you, sir.’ Boo stretched his jaws around the banana. ‘Sir, I’m not sure I am a Hero, really,’ he admitted.
Dr Mussells shrugged his tiny furry shoulders. ‘Well, if you’re not a Hero this is the place to find out. But the Werewolf General is rarely wrong. Except the time he thought that skeleton bogey was just a tasty bone. Lost his leg to that one … Now, you’ll start off in Class 1.’
Boo put the banana down. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘What I really want is to rescue my mother! The Greedle took her, and …’
Dr Mussells began to peel another banana with one furry hand. ‘Hold it right there, Boojum. Students often have particular causes they want to fight for. They want to save their world from giant squid, or warm it during an ice age, or rescue a princess from a tower. I’m always amazed how many princesses are dumb enough to get trapped in towers. And I have to tell them all what I’m telling you now.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Boo.
Dr Mussells swallowed his banana in one gulp. ‘You’ll have to wait. A beginner Hero isn’t even much good at rescuing a princess — likely you’d get her halfway down the tower and drop her. Then all you’d get would be a bit of a squash. Get it? A squashed princess. A bit of a squash. He-he-he.’
‘Ha-ha, sir,’ said Boo. ‘So, when can I start hunting for my mother?’
Dr Mussells grabbed another banana with his foot, threw it up into the air, caught it with his other foot, tossed it to his hands and began to peel it. ‘If she’s in the Ghastly Otherwhen? Never, if you have any sense. But if you still want to, well, Heroes can choose their own assignments when they reach Level 4. You’ll start as a Level 1, like everyone else. You need to complete your first bogey assignment to get to Level 2.’
‘When will I get to Level 4, sir?’ Boo asked urgently.
‘Can’t tell you. Some Heroes never make it past Level 2. Good for frightening off mutant earwigs and not much more. But I’ll tell you this, lad. No Hero has ever managed to get into the Ghastly Otherwhen — or out of it, anyway. If your mother is there she’s gone for good. Accept it and move on,’ said Dr Mussells flatly, throwing the banana peel into the air. The peel circled the room twice, then landed in the bin by his feet. ‘By the time you are in Level 4 hopefully you’ll have given up all ideas of tackling the Ghastly Otherwhen.’
‘No, I won’t, sir,’ barked Boo firmly.
‘We’ll see.’ Dr Mussells took a bite of his banana. ‘By the time you’ve tackled a few Insane Monster Silverfish and learnt how to stop a giant pus hole from erupting you may think differently.’ He shook his tiny furry head. ‘Wish I knew how the Greedle gets pus to erupt like that. Now, off you go. Assembly is in three minutes. Turn right and follow your cute little furry nose. Any other questions?’
Boo did his best to ignore the ‘cute’ word. ‘Um, I met a giant chicken a few minutes ago. She was yelling out, “Doom, doom”. I wondered if there was a problem.’
‘Doom?’ Dr Mussells screwed up his furry face. Then his expression cleared. ‘Ah, that will be Miss Cassandra. She’s our Finder.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Boo.
‘She Finds the bogeys for us. You’ll study with her when you get to Level 2. If you get to Level 2. All Heroes have to learn a bit of Finding. How can you defeat a bogey if you don’t know it’s there? Of course, mobile phones have made a great difference, but the Greedle mostly sends out its bogeys to places with no communications towers. No, nothing beats a good crystal ball or a set of entrails when it comes to locating a bogey.’
‘But the doom?’ asked Boo hesitantly.
‘Probably just the likely netball results for next weekend. Staff versus the Old Students.’ Dr Mussells shook his head sadly. ‘I’m afraid the team is going to be sadly defeated.’
‘Which one?’
‘Does it matter? Anything else?’
‘No, sir,’ said Boo.
‘Good boy, I mean, wolf. Have another banana. Don’t wolf it down all at once. Get it? He-he-he.’
‘Ha-ha. Thank you, sir,’ said Boo. He took the second banana in his teeth, added the first one and headed out the door.
12
A Wee Problem
Boo had just hidden the bananas in a small hole in the corridor’s stone walls when suddenly he knew …
He needed a widdle.
It wasn’t a simple full bladder. The first thing a wolf did in a new place was to wee on the doorposts — as long as a Top Wolf hadn’t widdled on them first — just to mark out a tiny bit of territory that was his. In the last half-hour he had seen more new things than he’d ever come across in his life — and he hadn’t widdled on a single one of them!
If only things didn’t smell quite so strange. It wasn’t just the scent of the heat, smoke and molten rock. There were so many other smells too. Strange chicken stinks, strange gorilla and monkey stinks, strange people stinks … and even stranger ‘not quite people’ stinks. The scent of lots of different lunches, and the scent of school bags and shoes …
He had to have a widdle!
But not on a doorpost. The Werewolf General had been very clear about that. All right, so he hadn’t managed to stay in human form! And he’d forgotten to yell ‘Student approaching!’ But at least he wouldn’t lift his leg on a doorpost. He had to find a … what were they called? A bathroom! That was it. Then he could have a nice enormous widdle and … and maybe then the urge to widdle a few drops on the next door post wouldn’t be quite so strong.
There had to be a bathroom somewhere, he decided. Even Heroes have to wee. He lifted up his nose and sniffed.
Hot rock, hot smoky air. But no smell of fresh widdle, or even old fading widdle. Nothing! Boo sat back, puzzled. Surely a werewolf would be able to smell where a whole school full of Heroes is widdling?
So where were all the student Heroes widdling? Maybe … maybe when you were a proper Hero you learnt not to widdle at all. But then you’d burst. And the Werewolf General widdled, and he was a Hero.
No, he just needed to sniff some more.
Boo lifted his nose up again. Yes, there was something now. Not a wee smell exactly. But a concentrated people smell — a lots of people smell.
That must be the bathroom! At last!
Boo trotted down the corridor, and followed his nose into a small passage. The rocky ceiling was lower here, and there were no windows either. But the smell of people was even stronger.
Boo frowned. It still didn’t smell like widdle. There was a door at the end of the passage. It was even narrower than the corridor, and the room inside was dark, too. Maybe the bathroom was up there. Boo padded inside and up three stairs.
The smell of people grew stronger. It still wasn’t a toilet smell. Maybe, he thought, Hero wee doesn’t smell like ordinary werewolf wee.
It was really urgent now. He wished wolves could cross their legs like humans could. But one of the first things a pup learnt at Changing class was never to Change with a full bladder. Not if you wanted dry legs.
He looked around desperately. All he could see was an empty floor, with a shiny rock wall on three sides, and a long curtain on the other. Was this really a bathroom? Where were those toilet things?
He should have asked the Werewolf General exactly what toilets looked like.
It had to be a bathroom, decided Boo desperately. What else could a bare room like this be?
Do all Two-Foots have black curtains in their bathrooms? Boo wondered.
He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to widdle now! Toilet or no toilet. But at least it was private in here. No Heroes could see him widdle and get offended. Now to find something to lift his leg against. That thing would do, he thought — a stand of some kind, over by the far curtain.
Boo padded over and lifted his leg. Ahhh! he thought, as the puddle grew on the floor. That’s better! How had he managed to hold on so long? Another two minutes and he would have burst —
The long black curtain rose.
Boo stared, his leg still raised.
&nbs
p; Two hundred curious faces stared back from the giant cavern of an auditorium. Human faces, furry faces, faces with fangs or blue flaming hair.
‘Ahem.’ It was Dr Mussells, who had suddenly appeared at the other end of the stage. Boo watched, horrified, as the Principal knuckled towards him and peered down at the puddle.
‘You appear to have a wee problem,’ said Dr Mussells. ‘Wee problem? Get it? He-he-he.’
Someone giggled in the audience. And then the laughter started. It boomed around the giant cave, louder even than the glop of lava from outside.
Boo lowered his leg.
‘I think perhaps you need a wee mop too,’ said Dr Mussells gently. ‘Wee mop. Get it? Jones the Janitor will give you one. But it can wait till after assembly, lad. Now if you’d like to sit down — in the audience this time — I’ll get on with the announcements.’
Boo slunk off the stage. His life as a Hero was not going well.
13
A Mate named Mug
One classroom: a round cave with smooth stone walls and a high grey ceiling, and a faint stench of rock and burning.
Eleven desks of dark, charred-looking wood.
Two bats, fluttering around the ceiling.
Ten kids, mostly human shaped, though one had green skin and three eyes, one looked like a furry lump of fungus, and another looked like a small ferocious pink bird. But even the bird only had two feet, as well as two tiny hands on the end of each wing.
One teacher, who might have been human 500 years before. She wore tight purple lycra, a necklace of small daggers, a wrinkled face like a half-empty balloon and a frown. Or maybe she only looks like she’s 500 years dead, thought Boo.
Was she a Zoom!er or a Wham! Bam! Pow!er or an Aaaagh!er? Or something else? wondered Boo warily, trying to stop his tail drooping between his legs.
It had taken ages to mop up the widdle, and then to find Jones the Janitor (who had two legs, one hand and a patch over his eye and a belt full of the sharpest screwdrivers Boo had ever seen) again to give the mop and bucket back. By the time he’d finished that and gone back for his bag and fetched the bananas Dr Mussells had given him, everyone else was in their classes.
Twenty-three eyes, all staring at him.
Boo gulped. He was a Hero, wasn’t he? Then he needed to behave like one.
‘Woof! I mean, hi!’ he barked, forcing his tail to stand up straight — or as straight as a naturally curly tail could go.
‘It’s that dumb puppy-dog again.’ It was Princess Princess’s voice. ‘The one that widdled in assembly. I told Yesterday to take him to the kennels, Ms Snott.’
Ms Snott raised an eyebrow, though the rest of her wrinkles stayed where they were. ‘Quiet, you bits of decomposing slug vomit,’ she ordered the giggling class. ‘Yesterday is not your servant, Princess,’ she added calmly, her lips barely moving. ‘Even if you are a hereditary hero princess. There are no servants on Rest in Pieces. I’ve told you that before.’
‘Well, excuse me. ‘And it’s Princess Princess, by the way.’
‘Nor will any of you bits of stray donkey slime use royal titles here. The only titles at the School for Heroes are the ones you earn. Which means that if I want to call you a nasty piece of slimy earwax, I will.’ The small black eyes stared expressionlessly at Boo. ‘We’ve been expecting you. Sit down.’ She gestured at the only vacant seat.
Boo could see why the seat was vacant. It shared a desk with the giant lump of fungus. Though the blob didn’t smell like a simple fungus, thought Boo. There was something else under the green fuzz. But none of it looked fierce or heroic.
‘But he’s a dog!’ protested Princess Princess.
‘Werewolf,’ said Ms Snott and Boo together.
‘What?!’ Princess Princess stared at him. ‘Werewolves are strong and ferocious!’
Boo grinned, showing his fangs.
Princess Princess looked at him critically. ‘Maybe a were-puppy,’ she decided.
Boo’s grin vanished. He tried even harder to keep his tail up. ‘I can go on two feet too,’ he offered.
Ms Snott started to nick bits of what looked like tentacle from between her teeth with one of her daggers. ‘Two feet?’
‘I can Change so I look human.’ I should have Changed on the way here, he told himself, as the class kept staring at him. But there’d been too much new stuff going on to think about it.
‘Oh, sure,’ said Princess Princess.
‘No, I can. Really.’
The tip of Boo’s tail began to wag. Surely Princess Princess would be impressed by him as a human. Muscles, fangs, lots of shaggy black hair in just the right places … what more could a Princess Heroine want?
He concentrated.
PLUNG!
The desk grew smaller. The ceiling grew closer. The room’s smells grew much fainter and less interesting. Boo stretched out to his full height and turned to Princess Princess, grinning.
‘Aaaagh!’ screamed Princess Princess.
Boo blinked. What was wrong with her? Had she seen another pit trap? Or maybe a bogey had invaded! He’d save her! He glanced around the room, ready to attack. No traps to be seen. No strawberry-jamoozing bogeys either. And why was everyone staring at him like that?
‘He’s … he’s naked!’ cried Princess Princess.
‘Here. You take this.’ It was the lump of fungus in the next desk. A few flies buzzed round his head. He handed Boo a textbook. The Nasty Book of Nasties, the cover read. And 1001 fun things to do about them.
Boo stared at the book. ‘Um, I don’t think I can read this now …’
‘Not read it, Boojum.’ Ms Snott’s voice still seemed expressionless. Or was there just the faintest hint of a smile in it? ‘I think Mug means for you to hold it.’
‘Yeah,’ said the lump of fungus, helpfully. ‘You hold it like this!’ The fungus made a vague gesture over its lower fuzzy front. ‘But you be careful,’ the fungus added. ‘Books is Heroes too!’
‘Oh,’ said Boo. How could books be Heroes? He grabbed The Nasty Book of Nasties and held it over his private bits. ‘Thank you,’ he said to the fungus. ‘Woof!’ he added, as the book suddenly wrapped his legs in a leather lassoo.
‘A word of warning, Bark,’ said Ms Snott. ‘You’ll find that the books at this school are about some pretty heroic subjects. And that means the books need to be heroic too. And now,’ Ms Snott added, ‘I think perhaps you’d better go and get some clothes. And then the rest of you bits of pus-filled toe-jam can get on with the lesson.’
14
Ms Snott and Dr Hogg
Boo felt like mud. Not even mud. Goose droppings. Green, sloppy goose droppings, the sort that were so loose they didn’t even smell any good.
Cat guts! How could he have been so dumb? You have to stay in human form till they get used to you, the Werewolf General had told him. Wear clothes, the Werewolf General had said. Use a bathroom. So what did he do? He went mouse-hunting as a werewolf, widdled on stage in front of a large audience, and ended up naked in the middle of a classroom.
He hadn’t even been able to sniff out a bathroom!
From now on I’ll stay in human form, he decided. All the time, too! Soon everyone will forget that Boojum Bark was ever a fluffy puppy widdling in the school hall. I’ll be the most heroic Hero they ever saw!
The stench of the volcano filled his nostrils now that he was outside again. Down below the school the magma went glop, glop, glop.
What would happen if the ledge collapsed? Boo wondered. Would the School for Heroes go toppling down into the boiling rock? Or was there some kind of magic holding everything together?
No, he reminded himself. Not magic. The School for Heroes wasn’t about magic. It was about perfectly ordinary skills. Ha! thought Boo. As though anything about the School for Heroes could be ordinary.
A bat peered at him briefly, then flapped down into the lava pit. It seemed to be hunting sparks.
His clothes were still at the entrance to the wormhole where
he’d stepped out of them. He picked them up and looked at them sadly. They had looked so fine when he’d left home. Now they were wrinkled, and covered in fine white ash. He must have torn them when he was struggling with the mouse, too. They also smelt of mouse.
But they were all he had to wear. Boo pulled them on, brushed off the ash as well as he could, and stepped out of the wormhole again.
It was funny, he thought, as he began to walk back along the smoky ledge, carefully avoiding the now covered-up pit trap. The tiny earthquakes from the volcano felt a bit like Sleepy Whiskers had, when the Zurm was digging the wormhole. But he was being silly. This was the one place in the universes where you didn’t have to be scared of bogeys. He was just feeling hypersensitive, because everything was so strange and new.
‘Doom! Doom!’
Boo stared. It was the chicken again, the weird Finding teacher. (Well, weirder, he decided.) Miss Cassandra, that was it.
Her tiny chicken eyes rolled as she stared at him. ‘Flee! Flee!’ she clucked.
Boo shook his head. ‘I don’t have any fleas. I used Mrs Bigpaws’s flea powder this morning.’
Miss Cassandra’s eyes stopped rolling for a moment. She looked down her beak at him, annoyed. ‘Not that sort of flea. “Flee” as in run! Escape! Hide!’
‘Oh. Why?’ asked Boo cautiously.
Miss Cassandra’s tiny black eyes blinked at him. ‘Why? Why what? Or was it who?’ She blinked again. ‘Ah yes, I remember. I had a vision. A werewolf puppy and a hundred bogeys, and danger to the entire school! Doom! Doom! Flee!’
For a moment Boo felt like running for the wormhole and never coming back to the School for Heroes again. And then his werewolf stubbornness took over.
‘No!’ he said.
‘What?!’
‘I’m staying here. I don’t care if I’m not a real Hero. I don’t care if there’s doom and all that stuff either. Just as long as I can learn enough Hero stuff to rescue my mum and keep Sleepy Whiskers safe!’
Miss Cassandra stared at him. ‘Er, exactly who are you again?’ she asked, her voice quavering a little.
Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior Page 7
