The Land of Neverendings

by Kate Saunders

  ‘Hugo!’ Ruth was nearly crying. ‘Oh, please – please give him back!’

  Emily wasn’t scared now, or sad, but furiously angry. Before she properly knew what she was doing, she marched across the floor, grabbed Hugo’s feet and heaved him out of the toad’s mouth. ‘I don’t care what you do to me – leave the toys alone!’

  She gave Hugo to Ruth, who hugged him hard.

  Hugo’s beak opened and shut, but no sound came out; for once, the talkative penguin was lost for words.

  ‘Thanks, Emily,’ said Ruth. ‘I can’t live without … I can’t …’ She sniffed a couple of times, then turned to face the toad.

  ‘You’ve been tormenting me since I lost Danny, but I refuse to let you spoil the one happy place I had left – get out! You don’t belong in Smockeroon, or the Land of Neverendings – or whatever we decide to call it!’

  ‘Not enough!’ moaned the Sturvey.

  ‘Well, what else are we supposed to do?’ Ruth snapped.

  ‘Throw something at it!’ the old bear cried. ‘Some really hard imagination!’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  Emily suddenly had an idea. She shrugged off her backpack, unzipped the secret pocket and pulled out the Bluey book. This was packed with imagination.

  I’ve poured in so much, there’s only one blank page left.

  She threw the Bluey book at the black toad, as hard as she could.

  It hit the toad right between the eyes.

  There was an extraordinary sound – a loud explosion, mixed with a wet squelch like a wellington boot being pulled out of deep mud.

  And then silence.

  The closed gallery was dark again; the museum toys were still and silent in their glass cases.

  Nobody spoke. The four humans stared at each other, and the silence stretched on.

  ‘Your notebook!’ whispered Maze, gaping at the empty space where the black toad had been. ‘It’s gone!’

  Emily thought about this, and found that she didn’t mind. ‘I don’t think I need it now. I only started it because I was scared of forgetting Holly and Bluey – and they were safe in my memory all along.’

  ‘Some things can’t be forgotten,’ said Ruth. ‘Even if you try.’

  ‘Now the Sturvey will be able to answer his messages.’ Emily looked at the old German bear in his case. He was a stuffed toy again, but there was something different about him – an extra gleam in his glass eyes, an expression of wisdom stitched into his face.

  ‘He wasn’t getting enough human imagination,’ Ruth said. ‘We know that’s what powers the whole of Smockeroon. When the Sturvey was locked away down here, with not a single human to feed him, he lost his power and Smockeroon broke out in total chaos.’

  ‘We should break into the museum once a month,’ suggested Maze. ‘Just to top him up if it happens again.’

  ‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ said Ruth, very thoughtfully. ‘I’ve had a rather brilliant idea – we can use Blokey, Mokey and Figinda as bargaining chips. OK, they don’t really belong to me, but nobody else knows that. I’ll offer them to this museum … if they agree to put the Sturvey back on display, where he’ll be seen by as many children as possible.’

  Emily, Martha and Maze looked at each other, thinking about this.

  Maze asked, ‘But will the Museum agree to it?’

  ‘Trust me,’ said Ruth, ‘those toys are legendary – when I pretend to “find” them, it’ll be a sensation.’

  ‘Is this it, then?’ asked Martha. ‘Is this the end of all the magic?’

  ‘I think so.’ Ruth was smiling, but her eyes were sad. ‘I’ll miss Hugo and Smiffy.’

  ‘I’ll miss Pippa.’

  ‘I suppose I’ll miss Prizzy,’ said Maze. ‘Can we go to the cafe now? I could murder a Twix!’

  ‘And I could do serious damage to a piece of cake,’ said Martha, breaking out in giggles. ‘I hope they have chocolate.’

  ‘I’ll settle for a cup of tea,’ said Ruth. ‘My feet are killing me!’ She touched Emily’s arm. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ Emily kept the feeling to herself, but she couldn’t be as happy as the others.

  I didn’t see Bluey.

  *

  It was pitch dark when Ruth’s big, battered Volvo drew up outside Barkstone Bygones.

  The lights were on in the sitting room of Emily’s house. She thought how welcoming the glowing windows looked at the end of the long path.

  Holly’s not there – but it feels like our proper home again.

  Her mother came to one of the windows to draw the curtains; she’d been pale and tired for the last couple of weeks, but now she was smiling and saying something to Dad over her shoulder. They must have enjoyed their lunch in Wolverhampton.

  I’m coming home to happy people.

  ‘Well, girls,’ Ruth said, ‘it’s been quite an adventure. We found the famous Sturvey, and he’s probably mending that broken door as we speak – but there’s one more thing we need to do before it shuts forever.’

  ‘What thing?’ asked Maze.

  ‘I know,’ said Emily, looking at Ruth. ‘It’s your idea for fixing the fuel supply. I hope we’re not too late.’

  A sudden movement in the shop window made them all jump; it was Notty, waving at them to come inside.

  ‘There’s your answer,’ said Ruth. ‘That door’s not quite mended yet – come on.’

  They all followed Ruth to her back door and into the shop. She switched on the overhead light and picked up her mother’s ancient bear. He was covered with glitter and a pink paper streamer dangled from one of his arms.

  ‘Well done!’ said Notty. ‘I heard all about it on the radio – I came straight from the party.’

  Ruth patted his venerable head. ‘I need to speak to Blokey and Mokey and Figinda – can you fetch them?’

  ‘It’s a bit awkward now,’ said Notty. ‘Blokey’s in the middle of leading a sing-song.’

  ‘This is really important,’ said Emily.

  ‘All right – if you insist.’ The disintegrating bear blinked his glass eyes, and a second later they all heard scrabbling sounds from the box under the counter where Ruth kept the three Staples toys. They climbed out, all trailing paper streamers.

  ‘It had better be important!’ the tin monkey said crossly. ‘I was just about to propose a toast to Bluey.’ He flashed a friendly grin at Emily. ‘You must be very proud of him.’

  ‘Yes, incredibly proud,’ said Emily, with the usual stab of longing for Holly and her bear. ‘His messages were wonderful.’

  ‘Yes – wonderful!’ said Martha.

  ‘Bluey’s a total star!’ said Maze.

  Ruth gazed down at the three small, grubby little figures on the counter. ‘I’m afraid we called you here to say goodbye.’

  ‘No!’ cried Figinda Faraway crossly. ‘I don’t want to go back to that smelly old trunk – the hard world is brilliant!’

  ‘Let me finish,’ said Ruth. ‘You won’t be in the trunk. In the hard world you’ll be in your cardboard box right here – but only until you can start your new job.’

  ‘Job?’ Ms Faraway’s glass eyes flashed beadily.

  ‘Yes, and I think you’re going to love it; you’re going to be in a very posh glass case, where you’ll see thousands of humans …’ Ruth briefly outlined her plan, and it was good to see the delight that was dawning on the faces of the three Edwardian toys.

  ‘This is a dream come true,’ said Figinda Faraway. ‘Though I suppose I’ll have to take off this beautiful dress that Pippa lent me.’

  ‘Your rags will get mended once you’re in the museum,’ said Emily, remembering the immaculate condition of the antique toys they had seen today. ‘The experts will clean you up properly, not just with a J-cloth.’

  ‘You’re priceless antiques,’ said Maze.

  The stitched faces of the three toys were very serious, with the beginnings of great excitement.

  ‘I ca
n have treatment for my rust,’ said Blokey. ‘And a lick of new paint!’

  ‘And I can get my wobbly wheel fixed,’ said the wooden donkey.

  ‘It’ll be fun to be white again, instead of grey!’ Figinda stepped daintily out of her pink dress, and was suddenly wearing her rags once more. ‘And won’t it be nice to see the Sturvey again? I’ve missed our games of Smockeroon Monopoly.’

  ‘You’re going to be famous,’ Martha said, smiling but a little sad. ‘You’ll be on postcards.’

  ‘More than that,’ said Ruth. ‘When I pretend to discover you all, it’ll be a sensation – you’ll probably be on the TV news.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Maze. ‘That’ll be so weird.’

  The stitches of the Staples toys were now smiling radiantly.

  ‘Won’t John be pleased?’ beamed Mokey.

  ‘I can’t wait to tell him,’ said Blokey, creaking his tin tail. ‘Of course we’ll keep our house in Deep Smockeroon, but I’m looking forward to all the delicious imagination we’ll get in our new job – especially from children.’

  Mokey gave Ruth’s hand a friendly flick with his tail. ‘Thank you for keeping us in your shop.’

  ‘It was my pleasure,’ said Ruth. ‘I’ll miss you all terribly. It’s going to be far too quiet without you.’

  ‘We’re leaving you with a thank-you present,’ said Figinda Faraway. ‘It was going to be for Christmas. I wanted to get you a novelty fart with a pretty tune. Unfortunately that wasn’t possible, so we found something for you in the hard world.’

  ‘In your cellar,’ said Blokey. ‘Look in the bottom drawer of the old filing cabinet.’

  ‘The filing cabinet?’ Ruth was puzzled. ‘It’s full of old gas bills, and buried under about a ton of junk – are you sure?’

  ‘Wait and see!’ giggled Figinda Faraway.

  ‘We’ll be off now,’ said Mokey. ‘Best wheel forward!’

  Emily was glad the problem of the Staples toys had been solved, but tears sprang to her eyes when she kissed them all goodbye.

  ‘I hope you’ll come and see us in the museum,’ said Blokey. ‘We won’t be able to move about like this, of course. You’ll have to imagine that we’re trying to wave and sing to you.’

  The three soon-to-be-famous toys jumped off the table and scuttled into the kitchen. The humans dashed after them in time to see them climbing through the cat flap into the dark garden. For one second the tiny figures stood in the cold night air, smiling and waving.

  And then they were gone.

  Twenty-six

  INVITATION TO A POSH BALL

  THE NEXT MORNING was Monday. Emily woke early, and lay in bed thinking about yesterday’s adventure. They had found the mysterious Sturvey, who had already started to fix the broken door. The black toad had been driven out of Smockeroon. It was a perfect happy ending – but she couldn’t shake off her disappointment that she hadn’t seen Bluey.

  The magic couldn’t stretch that far.

  She didn’t sense the change until she was eating Weetabix at the kitchen table, listening with half an ear to the news on the radio.

  ‘Finally, the Prime Minister has announced that as part of National Play Week, there will be a series of picnics for children and their toys. She added that children of all ages, from one to a hundred, would be welcome; she has promised to attend the picnic in Hyde Park with her teddy bear, Belinda.’

  ‘That’s nice!’ Mum turned off the radio. ‘The Prime Minister’s old bear!’

  Was the madness leaking out again? Emily was alarmed – until Dad snorted rudely and said,

  ‘She should ask Belinda to do something about the economy – a stuffed bear can’t be any sillier than her cabinet.’

  Her parents were perfectly happy, but they did not have the air of dreaminess that had been so disturbing on the night of the book group. And there was nothing particularly strange about the fact that the Prime Minister had an old teddy bear – didn’t everyone? People put their old toys in lofts and garages, but they never forgot them or threw them away. So everything was back to normal.

  And yet …

  Maybe it was because she was thinking about toys that Emily kept seeing them. On the way to school, babies’ buggies seemed to be festooned with more stuffed animals than usual. They passed a dustbin lorry with a large pink bear fixed to its radiator, and nearly every car seemed to have a small toy dangling behind the mirror.

  There was nothing magic about any of this, but Emily had a sense that the awakening of the Sturvey had made toys so happy that the happiness had somehow spread to their owners.

  Stuffing-waves.

  When Holly was sad, Bluey had sent special invisible stuffing-waves to cheer her up.

  Thanks to Bluey, the whole town had been engulfed by a vast stuffing-wave.

  She was sure of it when she went into her classroom and saw both Maze and Martha huddled around Summer Watson and staring into her bag.

  Maze – very excited and trying not to laugh – grabbed Emily’s sleeve to pull her over to Summer’s desk.

  Summer barely noticed Emily; she was in the middle of describing a row with her mother. ‘She was the one who decided I wanted a grown-up bedroom. She just took my toys away and put them in the loft without asking me. So I told her I wanted my things back. She said my toys were just rubbish, so I said, “OK, I want my rubbish back.” And I went right up to the loft and found my favourite Barbie from when I was little. I mean, OK, I’d let her get into a bit of a state – but I still like her and she’s still mine.’

  Emily looked inside Summer’s backpack, and suddenly understood why Maze and Martha were shaking with suppressed laughter.

  Squashed between two textbooks was a battered old Barbie doll. She was naked, her long blonde hair was a scruffy tangle – and she had ‘BUM’ written across her forehead in blue biro.

  Sister Pretty!

  Emily managed not to yelp this out loud, but the amazing discovery that the strong-minded toy nun belonged to Summer Watson was yet another sign of the explosion of happiness in Smockeroon.

  Emily woke up in the middle of Tuesday night, and her first, muddled thought was that Holly was crying. The end of the sound echoed in her mind – the high, thin wailing sound that Holly had made when she was frightened, or in pain, and nothing would comfort her except Emily stroking her cheek with Bluey’s soft paw.

  She sat up in bed and switched on the lamp. The house was silent, there was no sign of magic, but she had a sudden impulse to go into Holly’s bedroom.

  The emptiness was as sad as ever, and when they took away the special bed, the room would look even more desolate. It had once been the beating heart of home, where Holly’s face shone out from the pillow and Bluey smiled beside her.

  In my stories it was a magic flying bed.

  Now it’s just a lump of metal.

  A single sheet of paper fluttered down from the ceiling. Emily grabbed it eagerly and smiled to see the mad, toyish writing: the door had been closed, but a few last scraps of magic were still getting through.

  INVITASHUN!

  You R perLitely inViTedd to

  A CAUcus race and POsH BALL

  This WENsdy afTER Tea

  ThE SyCAMores

  POInted ENd.

  The Caucus Race came from Alice, and Emily saw why the toys would enjoy it – a race that nobody won, and at the same time, everybody. She couldn’t get to the ball, but was very touched to be invited.

  The writing on the paper was fading away while she looked at it, but there was just enough time to read the line at the bottom of the page before it vanished: ‘PS No pane here.’

  Of course not. How kind of Hugo to remind her. Wherever in the universe Holly had gone, the one thing Emily knew for certain was that there was no more pain. It was a good thought; she was almost cheerful when she went back to bed.

  Twenty-seven

  EVERYBODY WINS

  WEDNESDAY WAS THE DAY of the final performance of Alice; the glamorous evening
performance for family and friends. It began like a birthday. Emily came down to a ‘Good Luck’ card, with a picture of Alice on the front. Inside, Dad had written, ‘Break a leg!’ (which is what people say to actors, for some reason).

  Mum said, ‘We’ll make sure we get there early, to grab the best seats. Ruth’s coming, and Neil and Mandy from the pub.’

  ‘Half the town’s coming,’ said Dad. ‘You’ll be performing before the cream of Bottleton society.’

  ‘Stop it – you’ll make her nervous.’ Mum smiled at Emily. ‘All you need to remember is that the audience is full of your friends.’

  Emily had been in plays at her old school, but only one of her parents (mostly Dad) had come to see her because Holly couldn’t help making her loud noises and someone had to stay at home. This evening, for the very first time, they were both coming, and after the show they were all going out for supper at the pub.

  The Caucus Race was the funniest scene in Ms Robinson’s version of Alice in Wonderland. A group of small animals, led by Amber Jones in a mouse mask, held their silly race which had no rules and no losers; they did a brilliant dance to a song Ms Robinson had written called ‘Everybody Wins!’ and the applause at the end went on for ages.

  Emily tried not to look at her parents and Ruth in the second row, though it was nice to know they were there. She was concentrating on being Alice and knew she was acting better than she had ever done in her life – it was lovely to hear the warm waves of laughter from the audience, in all the right places.

  And then the world flipped inside out.

  The audience, the stage, the school vanished; there was soft grass under her feet, and warm, golden light around her, soft as velvet. Emily took a deep breath of the sweet air and was filled with happiness.

  SMOCKEROON!

  She was here at last, dazzled by the colours of the flowers, the deep blue of the sky, the rainbow chaos of toys in their finest clothes.

  ‘Emily! I’m so glad you could come!’ honked Hugo. ‘I knew the Sturvey could do it!’