The Land of Neverendings

by Kate Saunders

  Toys’ TV!

  Giddy with joy, Emily dropped down on the sofa to watch. The jumble of coloured shapes on the screen was toys dancing against a background of trees, flowers and sunlight. Incredibly, she was looking into Smockeroon – and it was even more beautiful than she had imagined. Though there was no sign of Holly or Bluey, Emily knew they were there.

  It’s just like I told you – always summertime, unless it’s Christmas!

  The picture on the screen changed to a close-up of a large blue bottle, and a jaunty voice began to sing:

  I was a bear with a terrible CORF,

  I corfed so hard my ears blew ORF,

  Till a kind friend told me what to do –

  He said BEARCORF is the thing for you!

  And then a smiling bear, who didn’t seem at all self-conscious about the fact that she had a blob of old human’s chewing-gum stuck to one cheek, took a spoonful of blue liquid from the bottle.

  An advert for bears’ cough medicine? That was crazy – toys didn’t get coughs. Emily made a mental note to ask Ruth about Bearcorf and settled back more comfortably. The advertisements (there were a lot of these; the toys seemed to prefer them to actual programs) were hilarious.

  ‘It’s TREACLE WEEK at Pa Hank’s HOUSE OF SYRUP!’

  ‘Get your party GOING – with a pie that’s for THROWING!’

  ‘Do you have WHEELS? Banish those embarrassing CREAKS with THOMPSON’S OIL-OF-BUTTERSCOTCH!’

  The colours were beautiful but the quality was dreadful – toys kept forgetting their words, and sometimes the theme tunes were just somebody humming.

  ‘And now,’ said the announcer, ‘a change to the published programme. It was going to be the popular game show Post Your Arms, but the Sturvey banned it, saying the bank holiday ‘Post Your Head’ challenge was just too silly and the Smockeroon postal service couldn’t cope with all the extra parcels.’

  Emily had been feeling pleasantly dreamy, but she woke up when she caught the mention of the Sturvey.

  If it can interfere with the TV, why can’t it deal with the evil toad?

  ‘Now a brand-new series,’ the announcer went on, ‘showing day-to-day life in an ordinary Smockeroon boarding house – Inside The Sycamores.’

  ‘The Sycamores!’ Emily sat bolt upright. This was beyond her wildest dreams – the famous boarding house.

  The screen showed a dazzling summery garden and a heap of brightly coloured rubbish.

  No, wait …

  After a few seconds Emily saw that the messy structure of painted cardboard and sticky tape was not rubbish at all. This was The Sycamores itself, with its refined clientele and private jelly pond.

  The picture changed to the face of a well-known penguin. ‘Welcome to The Sycamores!’

  ‘Hugo!’ Emily gasped.

  It was very strange indeed to see Hugo’s look of astonishment in close-up. He frowned into the camera for a moment, then he smiled. ‘Oh, hallo Emily.’

  ‘You can see me?’

  ‘Of course I can – you’re on our television in the kitchen.’

  ‘I’m on television?’ This was even stranger. ‘So are you – I mean, that’s how I can see you.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you tuned in,’ said Hugo. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to think of my audience. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Hugo. I’m President of the Penguin Society and Mayor of Pointed End. The bobbly bear is my best friend Smiffy. When our owner left the hard world, we moved to Deep Smockeroon and decided to turn our beautiful mansion into a boarding house for independent toys like us— Good gracious!’ The penguin suddenly looked off camera and his beak dropped open in amazement. ‘This IS a surprise! How did you get here?’

  The camera pulled back to show the whole room, and Emily nearly fell off the sofa. ‘Ruth?’

  It was an incredible sight. Ruth was sitting at a table, in a kitchen that had been decorated with clashing strips of flowered wrapping paper. Ruth was a human and much bigger than the toys, but somehow she had got smaller, or Hugo and Smiffy had got bigger, and she could fit comfortably without bursting the cardboard walls.

  ‘Hi, Emily,’ Ruth said happily. ‘Isn’t this lovely?’

  ‘Ruth … Oh my g— It worked! The spell worked!’

  ‘It certainly looks that way. I went through the whole rigmarole before I went to sleep, and the next thing I knew, I was here!’

  Emily moved closer to the screen, wishing she could dive into it and join Ruth inside the picture. Now that the camera had pulled back to show the whole room, she could see a large window looking out on a beautiful garden.

  And beyond that garden – Bluey? Holly?

  ‘I haven’t been outside yet,’ said Ruth. ‘The magic – or whatever – won’t let me. Every time I try to go out, I end up back here. But I’m having a lovely time – Smiffy picked me some fresh marshmallows from the marshmallow tree.’

  She broke off and coughed loudly.

  ‘Have some Bearcorf,’ said Smiffy. He opened a cupboard, took out a blue bottle and put it on the table. ‘I know you’re not a bear, but it might work on a human.’

  ‘Bearcorf? Good grief – another of my inventions!’ Ruth was chuckling now. ‘I invented it when Danny was seven and he had a bad cough. Smiffy had to have a cough too, to keep him company – even though toys don’t get coughs. Danny hated the taste of his medicine, so he decided that Smiffy’s medicine had to be the most delicious thing in the world: a wondrous compound of chocolate, golden syrup, candyfloss – all his favourite flavours.’

  She coughed again, and Emily felt a stab of uneasiness.

  ‘Ruth, where are you – really?’

  ‘I’m in Hugo and Smiffy’s kitchen,’ Ruth said happily – and rather breathlessly. She patted Smiffy’s head. ‘It’s gorgeous here, Emily. And next time you can come too!’

  ‘I mean … where’s your body? Are you asleep at home?’

  ‘Shhh!’ said Ruth. ‘We mustn’t forget we’re on TV.’

  Hugo took a step closer to the camera. ‘Ruth is a human from the hard world,’ he solemnly told his television audience. ‘I don’t know how she got into our house.’

  ‘Hey, Hugo!’ a shrill voice called out. ‘It’s ten past four!’

  The voice came from a large cuckoo clock on the wall. Emily’s granny had a cuckoo clock and she knew that the cuckoo was supposed to pop out through a pair of little doors, calling out the hour in musical tones. This cuckoo only put his little wooden head through the doors, and he wasn’t bothering to sound musical.

  ‘Ten past! You’re late again,’ Hugo said crossly. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Stuck in traffic. It’s the rush hour.’ The cuckoo disappeared, slamming the little doors behind him.

  ‘I’m going to fire that useless bird!’ fumed Hugo. ‘I told him, four EXACTLY!’

  ‘At least he came himself this time,’ said Smiffy. ‘I don’t like it when he sends his friends to do it instead. A completely strange plastic lizard popped out last week, and I was so shocked that I dropped my trifle.’

  ‘Quick, I’ll sweep the floor – you tidy up those colouring books and crayons.’ The fusspot penguin suddenly had a broom. ‘Our German lodger is awake – you know he always wakes up for his tea!’

  ‘He’s very important,’ Smiffy explained to Ruth. ‘We don’t know exactly what he does because it’s a secret. Although truthfully, he spends most of his time sleeping.’

  Hugo and Smiffy hurried to finish the last bit of tidying.

  Emily had wondered about the German lodger, and was fascinated to see, in a corner of the screen, an ancient bear coming slowly down the stairs.

  And a moment later he was in the kitchen – a tall bear with a long snout and reddish-brown fur. He was in perfect condition, not a stitch missing, but Emily quickly saw that he was very old indeed. His fur was patchy and faded.

  The German lodger yawned and said, ‘Good evening.’

  Hugo and Smiffy said, ‘Good evening.’
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br />   ‘I will have supper in my room – a small boiled dark-chocolate Easter egg, with two thin slices of toasted fudge cake.’ Suddenly and disconcertingly, the German lodger looked directly into the camera. ‘And tell Ruth her house is on fire.’

  Eleven

  FIRE

  THE SCREEN WENT BLANK, the sitting room plunged into shadowy darkness.

  ‘Ruth!’ Emily jumped up, and for a hideous sick moment she didn’t know what to do first. Wake up Mum and Dad? No, there wasn’t time, not if this was really happening – but was it really happening? She was barefoot, but her slippers and all her shoes were upstairs. She dashed out of the house into the dark street, moaning and ouching to herself at the coldness and lumpiness of the ground.

  She had expected to see flames shooting out of Barkstone Bygones – but everything in the street was quiet and still.

  Emily peered into the window of the shop, which looked completely normal.

  It wasn’t real. I listened to a bear from an imagined land.

  The relief was huge. She could even smile at herself for being such an idiot.

  Just to make sure, she went round to Ruth’s back door and looked through the letterbox.

  And at that very moment, the smoke alarm began to beep upstairs.

  ‘RUTH!’ Emily hammered at the door, shouting as loud as she could. ‘RUTH – WAKE UP – FIRE! RUTH!’

  She dashed back home to call the fire brigade and wake her parents. Two huge fire engines and an ambulance arrived a few minutes later. It was like one of Holly’s emergencies, with flashing lights in the street, except that this time the drama was happening next door.

  They found a small fire spitting inside Ruth’s upstairs boiler cupboard, which had made the whole house hazy with smoke.

  Ruth was unconscious from inhaling the smoke, but she woke up while she was being carried downstairs by two firefighters in one of her kitchen chairs. She was foggy and befuddled, and amazed to find herself sitting on the pavement outside her shop.

  She coughed for a few minutes and took great gulps of the cold night air.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Emily knelt down on the pavement beside her.

  Ruth croaked, ‘The German lodger!’

  ‘What was that?’ Emily’s mother asked. ‘Something about Podge? Don’t worry about him, he’s sulking behind our shed.’ Mum was good at emergencies. She had draped a blanket over Ruth’s shoulders and brought her a mug of sweet tea. ‘Just carry on taking big breaths of fresh air. I can’t get over how lucky you’ve been – if Emily hadn’t been awake to hear your smoke alarm …’

  ‘Thanks, Emily,’ said Ruth. ‘I believe you’ve just saved my life.’ She pulled her closer and whispered, ‘It wasn’t the boiler – we can’t ever do this again!’

  They were surrounded by firefighters and paramedics (and the Barkstone police car and several neighbours with trays of tea) and she couldn’t say more; though Emily’s tongue positively itched with questions, she knew she would have to wait until Ruth managed to catch her on her own.

  *

  Ruth tapped on the glass pane in the back door the next afternoon, while Emily was doing her homework in the kitchen.

  ‘Are your parents around?’

  ‘Mum’s gone shopping in London,’ Emily said. ‘And Dad’s doing something in the garage.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Totally fine – especially now I know the insurance will cover my boiler.’ Ruth was carrying a large flowerpot, overflowing with greenery. She put it on the kitchen table and it filled the room with the fresh scent of outside. ‘This is a small thank-you present for last night. It’s the mini herb garden I started to make for Holly.’

  ‘I remember,’ Emily said. ‘The indoor smelling garden.’

  ‘That’s it – everything has a smell. There’s lemon thyme, basil, rosemary, mint.’ Ruth picked off a mint leaf, crushed it between her fingers and held it out under Emily’s nose, giving her a whiff of toothpaste. ‘I carried on with it after she died and it looked so pretty in my greenhouse this morning that I thought I’d give it to you. I’ll help you with the upkeep. I suggest you put it here on the windowsill.’

  The leaves were of every shape – round, spiked, oval – and every shade of green. Ruth was a famously good gardener, and she had often brought in leaves and flowers for Holly to sniff. Her smelling garden was beautifully set out, like a miniature enchanted forest.

  Big enough for Bluey to get lost in.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ Emily said. ‘But you don’t have to thank me for anything.’

  ‘You listened to the German lodger. Some people would’ve dismissed it all as a dream and gone back to bed. If you’d done that last night, I’d have died and my shop would have burned to the ground.’

  This was a sickening thought. ‘Is the shop OK?’

  ‘Fine – I’m only shut today because of the smoky smell upstairs.’

  ‘It’s odd that the smoke alarm didn’t start until just after I got there,’ Emily said. ‘I had to tell a few lies to explain how I just happened to be there when your boiler went wrong.’

  ‘We both know it wasn’t a coincidence.’ Ruth was very serious. ‘It was all because of that wretched spell.’

  ‘Did the spell start the fire?’

  ‘I don’t know. But this morning I remembered one of the books I collected for research. It used to be a children’s classic, though nobody’s read it for years – At the Back of the North Wind. It’s a Victorian story about a little boy who visits a magical land behind the North Wind. The point is that he can only go back to that land when he dies.’

  ‘But … you visited The Sycamores in your dreams, and you didn’t die.’

  ‘Think about it,’ Ruth said. ‘I wasn’t dreaming, was I? When you saw me on television, my real body was already unconscious from the smoke. I was still alive, and that’s why I couldn’t get out of the toys’ kitchen to explore Deep Smockeroon.’

  ‘But if you’d died—’

  ‘Exactly! Just like the land at the back of the North Wind, it’s a place you can only get to if you’re dead.’

  They were both quiet for a moment, thinking about this.

  Emily said, ‘Like … heaven.’

  ‘I was enormously happy,’ Ruth said softly. ‘And I felt somehow that Danny was very close. So it does sound rather heavenly.’

  ‘Were you sorry to come back?’

  ‘Was I sorry?’ Ruth was startled. ‘Yes – for the first few seconds I was very sad to find myself back in real life.’

  Emily’s mouth was dry; her next question was so daring that she could hardly shape the words. ‘When your son died, did you ever wish you could die too?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Ruth narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. ‘You have to swear never to repeat this to anyone.’

  ‘I swear!’

  ‘The honest answer is … yes. I was very afraid of death, but at the same time I wanted to die just to end the pain.’

  Emily understood about the pain, which was so much worse than any sort of physical pain. She knew that she didn’t want to die herself – but would it be different if she knew for certain that she would see Holly again?

  There were voices outside on the front path; a moment later the front door slammed and Emily’s mum breezed into the kitchen.

  ‘Ruth!’ Mum bent to kiss her cheek. ‘How are you?’ She was laden with glossy carrier bags and smiling dreamily. ‘I’ve done some wonderful shopping – Em, I know your friend Martha wants a book token for her birthday, but I couldn’t resist buying a little present for Pippa.’

  ‘What?’ Emily shot a look of alarm at Ruth.

  ‘I’m sure these will fit her.’ With a satisfied air, Mum produced a plastic box of tiny frocks for teddy bears. ‘The orange one will look nice with her yellow fur.’

  ‘Mum! She’s going to be twelve – not four!’

  ‘Yes, but you told me how much Pippa means to her.’

  ‘No I didn’t!�
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  Mum ignored this – or possibly didn’t hear it. But Emily was absolutely certain that she had never told her about Martha’s yellow bear.

  Had Mum been seeing things from Smockeroon, too?

  Twelve

  AN OLD FRIEND IN A STRANGE PLACE

  ‘LAST NIGHT I HAD my craziest dream ever,’ said Martha. ‘I actually woke up laughing.’

  Emily didn’t know how it had happened, but she was well and truly part of Martha’s lunch group; today Amber Frost had even saved a place for her. It felt very good to be part of a group, and to have people who wanted to be her friend. The only drawback was that there was less time for writing in the Bluey book, just when there was so much to report.

  ‘I love your dreams,’ said Amber Jones. ‘What was it about this time – that bear again?’

  ‘Her name is Pippa,’ Martha said, pretending to be strict. ‘Don’t just call her “that bear”. You’ll hurt her feelings.’

  They all giggled at this.

  ‘So what was the dream?’ Emily tried to sound casual and not burning with curiosity; what was going on? Her mother was buying little frocks for teddy bears, and this was the third time Martha had dreamed about Smockeroon. The magic was spreading.

  ‘I wasn’t at a tea party this time,’ said Martha. ‘I was in a lovely sort of park with very bright colours. And Pippa was there – wearing a sweet little hat – telling me something about a factory where she worked.’

  (Seam-Rite!)

  Amber Frost asked, ‘Like Norton’s?’

  ‘No, much nicer. More like a garden than a factory. There was a brass band, and lots of toys dancing.’ Martha frowned suddenly. ‘And I’ve just remembered something else. This doll barged in – a really dirty rag doll, with a mad face and plaits made of red knitting wool – and she yelled something about her right to be something or other— Emily? Are you OK?’

  Emily had gasped aloud and now pretended to be coughing.

  It couldn’t be!

  Here was another sign – partly thrilling and partly creepy – that the imaginary world was leaking into the real one, and the only person she could talk to was Ruth. It was Monday, not one of her afternoons at the shop, but Emily was sure she could find an excuse to run next door. She spent the rest of the school day simmering with impatience, and so distracted that Mrs Lewis had to shout at her twice before her attention was dragged back to reality.