We spend the rest of the day bowling …

swimming …

skating …

driving …

pillow-fighting …

inventing …

swinging …

comic-reading…

marshmallow-eating …

lemonade-drinking …

chocolate-waterfalling …

baby-dinosaur-petting…

X-raying …

dancing …

recording …

mud-fighting …

not-so-merry go-rounding …

and rollercoastering!

We go around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around so many times that I start to feel a tiny bit dizzy.

‘I don’t think I can take any more rollercoastering,’ I say.

‘How about we go trampolining instead?’ says Terry.

‘Great idea!’ I say.

And so we do …

which is a lot of fun, until …

The Trunkinator climbs up and starts jumping on the trampoline with us.

I don’t know if you’ve ever bounced on a trampoline with an elephant, but if you have you’ll know it’s not easy. Not only are elephants very clumsy, they’re also very heavy. As heavy, in fact, as … as … as … well, … as an elephant!

He bounces on top of us …

he bounces underneath us …

and then double-bounces us both right off the trampoline!

We fly up into the air, up over the forest and far, far away.

And then we start to fall down, slowly at first then faster and faster and faster …

until we land with a huge splash in a big hot whirlpool of gooey, stinky, molten cheese.

‘Where are we?’ I yell, trying desperately to keep my head above the surface.

‘I think we’re in Cheeseland!’ says Terry.

‘I didn’t realise Cheeseland was a real place,’ I say.

‘Of course it is,’ says Terry, ‘but it’s not as much fun as I imagined.’

‘How do we get out of here?’ I say.

‘I don’t know,’ says Terry. ‘If only we had a dry biscuit, or a toast finger.’

‘How about a real finger?’ says a familiar voice.

We look up.

‘Superfinger!’ says Terry. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Superfinger is my name,’ he says, ‘and solving problems requiring finger-based solutions is my game. Climb up onto me and I’ll fly you back to the treehouse as fast as I can!’

So we do … and he does …

well, after stopping at the gift shop to buy souvenir hats, of course.

‘Thanks, Superfinger!’ we say as he drops us off back at the treehouse.

‘No problem,’ he says. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d better get back to rehearsing for my concert with Jimi Handrix. We’re playing at your opera house tomorrow night.’

‘We know,’ says Terry. ‘And we can’t wait!’

‘Neither can The Trunkinator,’ I say. ‘He’s a big fan—and when I say big, I mean really big!’

Superfinger takes off into the sky at super-finger-sonic speed.

I turn to Terry. ‘Do you think the Once-upon-a-time machine will be finished yet?’

‘No,’ he replies, ‘not quite. There’s still about another hour to go.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘Let’s turn it off and do the rest ourselves. I’m really in the mood for some writing.’

‘Great,’ says Terry, ‘because I’d really like to do some drawing.’

I try to open the front door but the handle doesn’t move.

‘That’s weird,’ I say. ‘Did you lock the door?’

‘No,’ says Terry. ‘Did you?’

‘No’, I say.

‘But if you didn’t lock it … and I didn’t lock it …’ says Terry, ‘then who did?’

A long arm with a creepy eyeball in the middle of the hand snakes out of the tree and hovers above us.

‘I did,’ booms the voice of the Once-upon-a-time machine.

‘Well,’ I say, ‘could you unlock it?’

‘Well, I could,’ it says, ‘but I won’t.’