21
The Curious Thing about the Otherwhen
‘This can’t be the place.’ Boo’s voice was only a whisper. He gave himself a shake and tried again. ‘The Ghastly Otherwhen is terrifying, deadly, insane. This place is…’
‘Nice,’ finished Yesterday.
‘Oh, that’s very descriptive. Nice. In my last essay I used three hundred and seventy-eight descriptive words, forty-six similes and twenty-one metaphors. And I never used nice once. Mrs Kerfuffle said…’
Princess Princess was chattering because she was nervous, Boo realised. He was nervous too. And he was even more nervous because there didn’t seem to be anything to be nervous about.
The Ghastly Otherwhen looked like a drawing in a pup’s fairy-tale book. The grass was green as a carpet after someone had spilt a barrel of dead slugs. The trees were green too, round as fat rats doing somersaults, dotted closely across the grass, each one hung with different coloured fruits, oranges and reds and yellows. Tiny red flowers lay in tufts in the grass. Boo sniffed. Yes, they were flowers, not little bloodstained skulls. They smelt like…
He frowned. They smelt like raspberry iceblocks. The grass smelt like fresh bread, the freshest, crustiest bread in the universes. He sniffed again; there was no scent of bogeys at all.
Then why did his fur prickle? Why did something whisper Danger! Danger! Danger!
He looked around again. A road wound through the trees a little way away. It was neat too, and paved with yellow cobblestones. Beyond the trees were fields outlined with fences that looked as though a giant had drawn them with a ruler, and there was a village, in the distance, of neat buildings with pointed red roofs.
‘Where bogeys?’ rumbled Mug.
Where’s Mum? thought Boo.
A breeze began to rustle through the trees. A whispering breeze…
And Boo felt himself relax. This was a nice place!
He really was going to be able to rescue Mum! He hadn’t let himself really believe it till now. Not when everyone had said it was absolutely impossible. Not when everyone had said the Ghastly Otherwhen was so horrible, that the Greedle was a monster…
‘Nice Greedle,’ whispered the wind. ‘Poor misunderstood kind Greedle, who only wanted nice things to eat.’
The Ghastly Otherwhen even looked like the sort of place where Princess Princess might find a handsome prince!
And he’d see Mum. Soon! The shop would be filled with its old familiar scents of ice cream and dried rat. She’d be there every afternoon when he came home from school with his homework—maybe the whiskers of some bogey he’d defeated…
Something was making a noise. Boo turned round dreamily. It was the poodlesaurs. They had clustered around Yesterday again, and were squeaking at her, bumping her. Yesterday blinked, then suddenly closed her eyes into her Finding trance again.
Why was she doing that? thought Boo. There was no danger to Find here. Not with the nice Greedle in charge…
‘Boo!’ Mug shook him. Hard.
‘What’s wrong? I MEAN WHAT’S WRONG?’ he yelled. Mug’s ear was hanging half off again.
‘You gots funny look on face. So’s her.’ Mug pointed at Princess Princess. Her face looked dreamy, as though she too listened to the song of the wind.
Boo grinned up at Mug. ‘We’re just happy, that’s all. It’s so beautiful. Beautiful smells, the beautiful Greedle in charge of it all…’
It was as though a flea suddenly nibbled behind his ear. But it wasn’t a flea. It was every wolf instinct trying to yell at him: ‘This is wrong!’
‘This is wrong,’ he whispered.
‘Yes.’ Yesterday’s voice had the flat tones of her trance, though her eyes were half open. ‘Somehow the Greedle’s trying to hypnotise us, even though it’s dead. Maybe it has set up this whole universe to hypnotise everyone who comes into it.’
Boo shook himself, just like he would after a bath. The remnants of the spell seemed to fly away like drops of water.
This place was evil.
‘Mug,’ he ordered. ‘Don’t sew your ear back on properly. I SAID DON’T SEW YOUR EAR BACK ON PROPERLY. THE BREEZE IS HYPNOTISING US.’
Mug nodded. ‘Can me sew on toes if they fall off?’
‘YES. ANYTHING BUT EARS. Yesterday, can you stay in your trance?’
She nodded. The smallest poodlesaur rubbed itself reassuringly against her legs. ‘What about Princess Princess?’
‘It’s so lovely to be all here together!’ Princess Princess looked up with a vague smile. ‘It’s all lovely, isn’t it? So lovely of the Greedle to get us to come here. You’re all so lovely too…’
He had to break her out of the trance. Boo let instinct take over again.
‘Ow!’ Princess Princess glared at him, her hands rubbing her bottom.
‘You bit my bum again!’
‘I never bit your bum before,’ said Boo, exasperated. ‘And I had to this time. You were in a trance. Listen to that breeze. I mean don’t listen to it,’ he added hurriedly. ‘It’s hypnotising us.’
‘What?’ Princess Princess lifted her face to the breeze. For a second her eyes grew dreamy again, then her face grew furious. ‘How dare it?! No one hypnotises me, especially not some bogey. Who does the Greedle think he is?’
‘The greatest monster in the universes,’ said Yesterday dryly.
‘Well, I’m a Royal Hero. Royal Heroes outrank monsters any day. And if the Greedle thinks it can hypnotise me—’ Princess Princess glared around at the forest as though daring it to contradict her ‘—it can think again.’
She’s right, thought Boo incredulously. She really wasn’t going to let the Greedle hypnotise her. He wasn’t going to let it hypnotise him, either. But despite Princess Princess’s other Heroic talents he had never expected she had the strength to do this.
‘Right!’ Princess Princess looked ready to stride into battle. ‘Watch out for any other traps. Now we’d better find someone and ask the way to the Greedle’s place.’
‘What if them a bogey?’ offered Mug.
Princess Princess tossed back her hair. It looked particularly Heroic in the soft light of the forest. ‘Then the dinosaurs can take care of it. What are you doing?’
Yesterday had shut her eyes again.
‘Her Finding bogey.’
‘No, I’m not,’ Yesterday opened her eyes, though they still looked vague from her trance. ‘I was Seeing if we can eat the fruit. We can,’ she added. ‘I’m hungry.’ She raced up and plucked a big round red fruit from a tree.
‘Be careful,’ said Boo quickly. ‘It might have some secret deadly poison.’ He stopped, as Yesterday swallowed.
‘No, it hasn’t,’ she said. ‘It’s wonderful! The best thing I’ve ever tasted!’ She threw the fruit to the smallest poodlesaur. It caught it in its claws and swallowed the fruit whole.
Spluurt! Snneet! Whish! Bits of squishy fruit flew back out of the dinosaurs’ mouths and through the air.
‘Oh, yuck!’ Princess Princess picked a lump of red
fruit and dinosaur dribble out of her hair.
‘Dinosaurs no like fruit,’ suggested Mug. ‘Them looks hungry,’ he added.
‘They’re always hungry,’ said Yesterday quietly. She picked another of the red fruits, looked guiltily at the poodlesaurs, then bit into it again as though she were starving. ‘Come on. We need to find them something to eat.’
‘I need to wash my hair!’
And I need to find Mum, thought Boo.
If there were a map of the universes, the Ghastly Otherwhen would be the bum.
THE UNIVERSES: A SOCIO-GEOGRAPHICAL SURVEY BY GO SPLOTT