‘Desperately driving and dashing
Hissing and shrieking,
Breathlessly hurtling and lashing,
Seeking and seeking,
What knowest thou of grace or dance or song?’

Wilfred Owen The Swift








1.

The day that Cynthia Lincoln’s life changed forever and that she became Little Miss Clever Clogs, all was not well in the classroom.

All was not well in the classroom because the normal teacher, Mr Samuels, was off with the flu. Mr Samuels was quite a good teacher, but sometimes his breath smelled of coffee and he had a tendency to spray the first three rows of pupils with spit whenever he got excited. Not that this bothered Cynthia. As far as Cynthia was concerned, she would rather be sprayed with spit by somebody who knew what he or she were talking about than be sprayed with spit by a complete idiot.

For instance, it would be really cool to be sprayed with spit from somebody famous, like Leonardo DeCaprio or Frankie Muniz from ‘Lizzie McGuire’ rather than by an annoying pupil like Billy Reynolds, who spoke and chewed with his mouth stuffed full of whatever he could cram into it, more often different varieties of cakes from Tiramisu to Chocolate Truffle Cheesecake and whacking great heaps of Strawberry Trifle that his mum scooped up and plopped into his lunch box, seemingly with a shovel. Cynthia liked Tiramisu and Chocolate Truffle Cheesecake and Strawberry Trifle, but served on a nice plate and not flying from someone’s mouth and hitting your cheeks and upper lip.

The fact that Mr Samuels was off with the flu wasn’t unusual. It seemed as if everyone was off with the flu recently, because some people had been missing for three days now, notably the lollipop lady at the zebra crossing and the man who always shouted at the kids from his bedroom window in the mornings on the route to school, because he worked night shifts at the bakery – probably the same bakery where Mrs Reynolds got her cakes from.

The bell rang for morning registration as it always did at Hillmore Secondary School and then the pupils surged rowdily into the classrooms, where they had their first lesson. Sometimes the noise levels of the pupils at Hillmore got so loud that Cynthia often imagined the roof of the school popping off and soaring into space, the tiles and weather-vane breaking into bits from all that screaming, jabbering pressure, which would be most unpleasant if it were raining outside. But so far, that hadn’t happened, which was something to be thankful for, Cynthia supposed.

As Cynthia sat down and took out her books for the Monday morning English lesson, she noticed there was a vacant spot where Mr Samuels ordinarily sat. The other pupils noticed as well, because Timmy Faulkner immediately leapt onto the worn, tatty cushion that belonged to Mr Samuels and began spinning his chair around, sending the papers stacked on Mr Samuels desk fluttering in a miniature whirlwind.

‘You’re not a teacher!’ Cynthia snapped at him as he began throwing paper balls around the room and one smacked her on the nose.

‘So, what’s it to you, Lincoln?’ Faulkner sneered back at her, about to lob another scrunched up missile her way.

‘You need a teaching degree to sit in that chair,’ Cynthia replied. ‘And that’s something you haven’t got!’

At that point, all the other pupils in the classroom should have started laughing at her and calling her names, but the noise bouncing and booming off the walls had reached sonic proportions and nobody could hear the exchange between them.

Just then, as Faulkner was about to say something extremely unpleasant back to her, Katie Fuller, who’d been shoved against the door as a lookout for approaching teachers, suddenly jerked back as if struck by electricity and ran, flapping her arms, towards her desk by the window that looked out onto the playground.

‘ADULT COMING!’ she warbled at the top of her lungs.

Incredibly, probably because Katie Fuller looked rather like a penguin in distress, the effect this had rippled through the room like a shock wave as a sea of black blazers and stunned faces began fleeing and pitching themselves towards their seats. Timmy Faulkner sprung up from Mr Samuels’ chair, knocking everything within close range to the floor and then tripped over a stapler, banging into Cynthia’s desk.

The classroom door flew open, and a man who Cynthia had never seen before came flying into the room, a terrified look on his face, his shoes airborne and his arms extended, reminding Cynthia of a ballet dancer or a trapeze artist she’d once seen when a Russian Circus had come to town. The trapeze artist had been part of a trio called The Brothers Egorov, and they’d soared gracefully above the crowd in the tent while everyone gasped and clapped and went ooohhh and aaahhhh in amazement.

There was nothing graceful about this strange man though as he flew across the room. His long, dirty blonde hair peeled back from his scalp as he soared across the space in front of the desks, making him look deranged. As he landed, his shoes skidded and he collided with Timmy Faulkner, sending the pair of them sprawling untidily to the floor. Timmy Faulkner squealed and ran to his seat and the man scuttled off in the opposite direction, heading back towards the door.

As he reached it, he began pulling the handle, desperate to escape. Through the frosted glass set into the door, the faces of both Mrs Andrews, the head-teacher, and Mr Brown, the assistant head, could be seen, peering in.

The man wasn’t a ballet dancer or a trapeze artist or even Russian after all. The reason he’d flown across the room was because Mrs Andrews and Mr Brown had shoved him in.

The man was a supply teacher.

He began tugging harder to get out. ‘Please!’ he pleaded. ‘Open the door! I’m not supposed to be here! There’s been a terrible mistake! I’ve changed my mind!’

But both Mrs Andrews and Mr Brown shook their heads and no matter how hard the peculiar man yanked and tugged and clawed at the handle, they held the door closed, their faces pinched with the effort.

Supply teachers were quite mysterious. Supply teachers never seemed to speak directly to anyone, always mumbling and grumbling while they dished out the textbooks, usually flicking them across the desk at you as if to test your reflexes and if your reflexes were particularly slow on that day, then paff, you got a mouthful of GCSE Level One Maths or Key Stage 3 Poetry. Supply teachers rarely made eye contact with anyone, unless it was to tell you off. And supply teachers always, but always made threats to call your parents, even when you were only raising your hand to ask a question.

This supply teacher seemed no different than the rest, apart from the fact that he was considerably younger than your standard run-of-the-mill supply teacher. Now, he slowly turned to face the rows of startled, juvenile faces, the sweat pouring copiously down his cheeks and forehead, his knees shaking like one of those Latin dancers that Cynthia had seen her mum dancing with down at the local Bingo hall on a Saturday night.

All the pupils stared back at him, before Timmy Faulkner suddenly burst out laughing, leaning forward and jabbing his finger at him, his obnoxious face twisted in contempt. Within seconds, all the other pupils had joined in, thrusting their heads forward and pointing and laughing. Cynthia thought they looked like vicious swans as the familiar chorus started up, reverberating round the room.

‘SUPPLY! SUPPLY! SUPPLY! SUPPLY!’

The supply teacher anxiously cleared his throat, while the insolent laughter and shouting continued, growing ever more strident.

‘Ahem,’ he said, struggling to maintain order, his back sliding down the door. ‘Okay, guys, we need to listen…we need to…Can I have some quiet, guys…we need to…Guys, please…’

But the noise began to drown out his words, becoming a deafening crescendo of booing, jeering and heckling. A solitary paper ball hit his shoulder and he flinched, before a torrent began showering down, slapping his trendy pullover and jeans. He sprinted for cover, diving behind Mr Samuels’ desk.

His head popped up and he began flapping his arms and slapping the surface of the desk. ‘We really need to listen,’ he continued. ‘Guys! We have to listen, er, can I have everyone listening…’

A paper ball smacked him square in the nose and Cynthia saw something happen. The odd little man began to change, his face turning pink and then red and then crimson, reminding her of a pan of water left boiling too long. She gulped and slid down in her seat, preparing herself for what was to follow.

The supply teacher thrust himself up to his full height, glaring out against the salvo of insults and paper missiles. His teeth began to show as his upper lip curled nastily and he suddenly grabbed Mr Samuels’ chair, raising it above his scrawny shoulders and bringing it down hard against the wooden floor of the classroom. One of the legs split and shattered, hitting the metal wastepaper bin with a resounding pong!

‘Quiet!’ he yelled, a string of saliva looping out from his mouth and coming back like a boomerang, hitting his chin.

The whole class went instantly silent. At the back, someone tittered nervously before deciding better of it. Cynthia looked at the new supply teacher and saw the colour gradually fade from his cheeks and nose and forehead, receding like a glass of raspberry milkshake being sucked through a straw. The supply teacher’s face went blank, almost as if he couldn’t quite believe what had happened, that the class had suddenly, magically stopped and were listening to him. From outside, Cynthia heard the muffled applause of Mrs Andrews and Mr Brown, mixed with cries of ‘Bravo!’

‘My God, it worked,’ exclaimed the supply teacher, momentarily shocked. He recovered quickly and immediately grabbed and fumbled his way through the books and papers stacked on Mr Samuels’ desk. His hands closed on a thick, tattered textbook and he swung it out in front of his face, opening to a page with a yellow post-it note sticking out.

He cleared his throat again. ‘Now, listen,’ he announced to the room full of muted pupils, ‘I’m a nice, stand-up type of guy, so let’s have a really nice lesson and be good to each other. Okay? Okay! Right, today we’re going to be looking at the playwright, William Shakespeare…’

Cynthia settled herself into her chair. She knew all about William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens and other famous writers of long ago, because she sat at home and read a lot. William Shakespeare was famous for writing lots of different plays about all sorts of things, from ghosts to witches to kings that went mad and wandered around talking to themselves; in fact, nearly everyone in a Shakespeare play seemed as nutty as a fruitcake. That was why Cynthia liked them.

‘Right,’ the supply teacher continued, flicking through the pages of his book. ‘Can everyone pay attention? Okay, good, well, the playwright William Shakespeare was born in 1561 in a place called…’

‘Oh, no he wasn’t!’ Cynthia suddenly called out.

The supply teacher looked temporarily baffled at Cynthia’s outburst. He looked out over the room, trying to locate where her voice had come from. ‘I’m sorry?’ he inquired.

‘Oh, no he wasn’t,’ answered Cynthia. ‘The playwright William Shakespeare was born in 1564!’

The supply teacher lowered the book and stared at her. ‘That’s what I said, didn’t I?’ he asked.

‘Oh, no you didn’t, you said 1561!’

The rest of the class tittered and the supply teacher’s face turned red again. He looked at Cynthia in much the same way that a lion may look at a particularly tasty antelope about to be devoured. ‘Okay,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Thank you!’
Cynthia beamed from ear to ear.

‘You’re welcome…Sir!’ she replied.

The supply teacher raised his book to his face again. ‘So where were we? Oh, yes…Anyway…William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and was the son of Joe Shakespeare, who was also…’

Cynthia’s hand shot up. ‘Oh, no he wasn’t!’

The supply teacher lowered his book. ‘You again!’ he sighed deeply.

Cynthia gave him a captivating smile. ‘Hello!’

‘Stand up,’ commanded the supply teacher.

Cynthia stood and as she stood, she felt the fervent, feverish gaze of all the other pupils in the classroom locked on her, sensing trouble and holding their breaths to see what would happen. She imagined her mum at home, eyes wide and clutching her face in alarm, her mouth clucking up and down at the very thought that her little Cynthia might actually be in trouble.

The supply teacher was now openly looking at her as if he’d eaten something nasty like a wasp-filled chocolate éclair or maybe a rat sandwich. He advanced towards her, skinny with blonde hair and little tufts of growth on his chin where he hadn’t shaved properly.

‘Oh, no he wasn’t what?’ he hissed, leaning over her.

‘Oh, no he wasn’t, Sir?’ Cynthia confirmed.

‘I wasn’t asking you to address me in the correct manner,’ the supply teacher spat. ‘I was asking you what you meant by, Oh, no he wasn’t…what?’

‘Oh, no he wasn’t the son of Joe Shakespeare. He was the son of John Shakespeare…Sir!’

‘Girl, are you being facetious?’ demanded the supply teacher.

‘I don’t believe so,’ Cynthia replied.

The supply teacher’s face suddenly became smug. ‘Girl, do you actually know what I mean when I say facetious?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes, Sir!’ Cynthia said brightly. ‘Facetious means sarcastic or sardonic or ironic…In other words, you think I’m taking the Mick!’

‘And are you?’

‘Am I what?’

‘Am I what, what?’

Cynthia frowned. ‘What?’

‘Am I what, Sir?’

Cynthia frowned even more. ‘Am I what, what…Sir?’


‘Taking the Mickey, girl, taking the Mickey?’ screamed the supply teacher, his voice cracking through the room like a whip.

‘I don’t believe so,’ Cynthia replied.

The supply teacher snapped the textbook closed and strode back to Mr Samuels’ desk. He turned and faced Cynthia, his nostrils flaring and his fingers twitching. ‘Okay, you, girl, step up here, to the front!’ he ordered.

Cynthia did as she was told, standing up and pushing her chair back. As she walked round her desk, Timmy Faulkner poked his tongue out at her, his eyes bright and shining. Cynthia briefly imagined his mouth being scrubbed out with brooms and a bucket of soapsuds and that made her feel slightly better.

She approached the supply teacher, who was now leaning against Mr Samuels’ desk, his arms folded across his pullover, looking high and mighty and superior. She stopped in front of him. The supply teacher examined his fingernails, taking his time, before he looked down at her.

‘Okay, Little Miss Clever Clogs,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d like to take over the rest of the lesson?’

Cynthia looked at him, puzzled. ‘Why would I want to do that, Sir?’

‘Well, seeing as how you know so much about everything, perhaps you’d like to stand up here and show how really clever you are,’ said the supply teacher. ‘In fact, maybe they should stick ‘Little Miss Clever Clogs’ on the classroom door for all the other teachers to bow down to when they walk past. Would you like that?’

‘Not really, Sir,’ Cynthia told him.

No, I didn’t think so,’ he said. ‘Go sit back down!’

Cynthia sat back down, puzzled by all the fuss the silly man was making. Surely it was only right and proper that she should correct him for the mistakes he was making. If nobody corrected mistakes, especially mistakes made by a teacher, then surely the whole world would wander around in a state of confusion, thinking that 50+50 was 5050 and that the Romans invented the car.

The supply teacher picked up his book again and licked the palm of his hand before smoothing down his lank blonde hair. ‘Okay…’ he said, giving Cynthia a warning look. ‘William Shakespeare soon married a woman by the name of Amy Hathaway…’

This was too much! Cynthia couldn’t bear it any longer! This lunatic of a man was saying all the wrong things about everything and just because he was a teacher Cynthia had to be silent and listen to complete hogwash from a book that had obviously been written by somebody who was an even bigger lunatic than the man in front of her. To listen to this was the same as listening to someone telling her that horses moved about on wheels or that a toilet brush was a musical instrument.

Cynthia’s hand shot up. ‘Sir!’ she blurted.

‘Shakespeare loved his wife very dearly…’ continued the supply teacher.

‘Sir! Sir! Sir!’

‘…and they soon had children…’

‘SIR!’

The supply teacher slammed his book down on the desk, his face furious. ‘I don’t need this, I’m a Maths teacher!’ he shouted. ‘What?’

‘Well, Sir, it’s just that his wife’s name was Anne Hathaway, not Amy…’

‘Are you going to let me teach this lesson, or not?’

‘Well, yes, but, Sir, also, Shakespeare didn’t really love his wife either,’ Cynthia insisted.

The supply teacher sagged against the desk. ‘And we know this how?’ he groaned.

‘Well,’ piped up Cynthia, ‘when Shakespeare died he only left her a bed and he had all that money. I don’t call that loving someone…When my Dad left my Mum, he left her a house, all the furniture and a Ford Focus, and they hate each other!’

If Cynthia had believed that it was no longer possible for the little man to get any angrier, she was wrong. The supply teacher shot forward from Mr Samuels’ desk, seeming to explode from within. When he leant forward to shout into Cynthia’s face, she felt his breath blast her like a gust of wind.

‘Girl, do you actually live in the same world as everyone else, or is it some fluffy, bunny-rabbit, fairy-tale place where there’s nobody else but you?’

‘Funny you should mention fairy-tales, Sir,’ Cynthia commented. ‘Because that vein bumping up and down on your forehead looks like a really wicked bolt of lightning.’

Now, anyone observing this would have a great deal of trouble thinking that Cynthia was saying these things quite innocently. In fact, they would believe that she was saying them in order to get herself into deeper trouble with the supply teacher. But Cynthia was the kind of girl who read and studied and examined things rather longer than was considered normal for a child her age, and because she sat and watched and observed, she couldn’t help commenting on the things that she knew and saw to be true.

Now, it was true that the supply teacher did have a rather strange vein that danced and jilted across his forehead when he grew angry and started shouting, and it was also true that it did resemble a flicker of lightning.

‘That does it!’ the supply teacher snapped at Cynthia. ‘You’re going on report!’

Cynthia was aghast and stood up, pushing her chair back. ‘What for?’ she protested.

The supply teacher turned around to face her. Cynthia noticed that one of his eyes had started twitching violently, as if trying to leap free from its socket. At some point his grimy blonde hair had begun to stick up at certain points from his head as if the supply teacher had grabbed big fistfuls of it and pulled as hard as he could, which Cynthia hadn’t seen.

‘I’ll tell you what for,’ the supply teacher said menacingly. ‘For not having respect, for not knowing when it’s your turn to speak, for not knowing when to keep quiet…And, most of all, for being smart, being sharp, being quick with your little mouth, going yap, yap, yappity, yap!’

Cynthia was puzzled. ‘I thought that was the purpose of school, to come here and be smart and sharp!’ she protested.

‘Not when I’m around!’ snapped the supply teacher, thrusting the report card into her hands. ‘There! Now stand outside!’

Cynthia looked down at the report card, her hands trembling. The report cards at Morehills School were a revolting yellow colour, rather like something foul and bad and messy usually found inside a typical handkerchief on a typical flu day. Cynthia had never seen one up this close before because she’d never been given one in her entire school life, not even the time when she’d accidentally mistaken the staff room for the girls’ toilets and wandered in, her nose buried inside a tattered copy of Great Expectations, bumping into Mr Elliot, the strict Maths teacher.

Now she had one, shoved into her hands, for no reason at all. Cynthia stared at it, dumbstruck, wondering if her mother would think the worse of her when Cynthia arrived home and gave it to her to sign. Most likely her mum would hit the roof and start screeching and – even worse – ‘throw a wobbly’, which scared Cynthia even more, because she’d heard of people ‘throwing a wobbly’ all the time, but had never actually witnessed it happening. The thought of her mum, throwing herself around the kitchen, trembling and vibrating like a huge, fleshy jelly, smashing into shelves and plates and knocking the toaster over, filled her with horror.

Cynthia stared down at the report card, feeling sick. Then she noticed something.

‘But you haven’t wrote my name down,’ she told the supply teacher.

The supply teacher snatched back the card, tearing it from her fingers, hastily scribbling something across the front with his pen. When he’d finished, he handed it unceremoniously back to her, smiling triumphantly.

Cynthia stared down at the card and couldn’t believe her eyes, because under the section for Pupil’s name, the supply teacher had written something that was completely wrong. ‘That’s not my name!’ Cynthia objected. ‘You’ve written ‘Little Miss Clever Clogs’!’

Again the supply teacher advanced on her, panting heavily and looking quite wild and fierce. ‘Oh, that’s your name all right,’ he breathed. ‘Smarty pupil, smarmy pupil, oily, slimy, slippery pupil, pupil that won’t let the teacher talk, pupil that won’t let the teacher tell, pupil that won’t let the teacher teach…A right Little Miss Clever Clogs!’

From the back of the class, Cynthia heard a snort of laughter, almost like the sound of a pig snuffling up leftover slops. She bowed her head in shame and began to leave the classroom. From the other side of the door, both Mrs Andrews and Mr Brown glowered at her through the frosted glass like trolls in a cave.

When she got to the door, she noticed something else that was completely wrong. ‘Sir?’ she said, turning around.

‘What?’ the supply teacher snapped.

‘There’s only one ‘G’ in ‘clogs’,’ Cynthia told him.

‘Out!’ he bellowed, his arms flapping and his body shuddering.

Cynthia rushed out of the classroom, sure that the supply teacher was about to ‘throw a wobbly’ and would soon explode into a trembling mass of tremors, hurtling and smashing into the desks and the windows and the interactive whiteboard, scattering screaming pupils everywhere. As she opened the classroom door, she ran straight into both Mrs Andrews and Mr Brown.

‘Lincoln,’ said Mr Brown, a greasy smile forming on his face. ‘How delightful to see you! Report to my office, now!’





2.



When Cynthia got home that night, she mumbled to her mum that she felt unwell and took herself to bed. ‘I hope you’re not coming down with the flu, Cynthia,’ her mum said, concerned. ‘There’s been three people off work today down at the library and Mr Hoskins wasn’t too pleased about it.’

‘No, Mum,’ Cynthia assured her. ‘It’s not the flu. If it were the flu I’d be hot and have a headache and start shivering.’

‘Well, it must be the flu,’ insisted her mum. ‘Because you’re not feeling well.’

Cynthia wanted to point out to her mum that you didn’t necessarily have to have the flu to be feeling unwell and that there were other illnesses a person could have, including measles, mumps, chickenpox, diarrhoea, gastroenteritis, glandular fever, ear, nose and throat infection, pneumonia and tonsillitis, to name but a few. But it wasn’t any of these horrible ailments that was affecting Cynthia and making her head hurt and her heart feel heavy and forcing her to climb the stairs to her room and creep under the covers of her bed.

It was the appalling events that had happened at school with the supply teacher.

Every time she thought of that small, ghastly man with the filthy blonde hair, her stomach knotted and twisted. It seemed that everyone at school hated her just because she was clever. In fact, on the way home from school, while she crossed the road without the lollipop lady and strolled underneath the window of number 23 without the shouting man, she had wished she was as stupid as Timmy Faulkner. Perhaps then, she would be more popular with the rest of the pupils at Morehills School and nobody would pick on her.

As she lay in her bed, Cynthia thought about the report card and the telling off she’d received from Mr Brown in his office. As she thought about these things, she drifted off to sleep and dreamt of the supply teacher flying high above the roof of the school in a furious gust of wind, clawing and clutching at the clouds as he was blown further and further away. In the dream, all the pupils looked up at him from the playground and began to sing a strange, sympathetic song just for Cynthia, their voices rising into the turning, tumbling sky:

It’s a great shame when you’re not to blame,
For being clever and wise and incredibly vain,
And sensible and rational and sensationally sane,
For Miss Clever Clogs isn’t really her name.

When Cynthia woke up, she expected to see the supply teacher pasted to the ceiling above her, but he wasn’t there. She looked at the alarm clock and saw that she’d slept the whole night away and that it was almost time to get up and go to school again. Down in the kitchen, Cynthia could hear her mum busily making breakfast and banging around and so she got up and began to get dressed.

Down in the kitchen, Cynthia’s mum was dressed in her smartest suit for her job at the library, arranging the toast and the teapot and the cornflakes on the table. Cynthia strolled in and stood by the fridge, feeling gloomy and drowsy, not knowing that this would be the last time she would ever see her mum again.

‘C’mon, Cynthia,’ urged her mum. ‘Get a move on or you’ll be late for school.’

‘Tired,’ mumbled Cynthia.

‘Hurry up and eat your breakfast before the cornflakes get mushy…’ insisted mum, taking out her lipstick and standing in front of the mirror.

‘Tired,’ repeated Cynthia.

‘…and your tea gets all cloggy…’

‘Tired,’ Cynthia said again.

‘…and your toast goes all squelchy…’

‘Tired!’ snapped Cynthia.

Mum jerked in shock at the sound of Cynthia’s voice, smearing her lipstick across her right cheek. She turned around and glared at Cynthia, reminding her of the supply teacher just before he began shouting and banging Mr Samuels’ chair down onto the floor.

‘Well, it’s not my fault you’re not getting enough sleep,’ mum told her. ‘I can’t keep me eye on you, what with me gym class an’ me beauty course an’ me Bingo down the Regal.’

Cynthia slumped miserably down at the breakfast table. She stared down at the bowl of cornflakes in front of her. ‘I don’t like these ones,’ she said to mum.

Mum came over to where Cynthia sat and pinched her cheek between her thumb and forefinger. ‘C’mon, Cynthia, perk yourself up,’ she chirped. ‘You’re like one of those horrible things in those horrible films, where everyone starts shuffling around like this…’

With that, Cynthia’s mum began lurching around the kitchen table with her arms held out in front of her and moaning and groaning like a zombie, bumping into a table leg and knocking the cornflakes box over.

Cynthia picked the box back up. ‘These aren’t Crunchy Nut,’ she told her mum. ‘I only like Crunchy Nut, you haven’t given me Crunchy Nut, it’s Crunchy Nut or nothing.’

Mum backed up a step, looking annoyed. The streak of lipstick was still smeared across her cheek, making her look slightly barmy. ‘Well, excuse me all the way to the ‘Bad Mother’ correction centre,’ she retorted. ‘If you don’t like them, eat your toast!’

She clopped over to the fridge in the corner in her high-heels and bent over to plant a wet, sloppy kiss on her Jamie Oliver calendar stuck to the door with blue tack. This was Mum’s favourite and had dried lipstick stains all over it because it was Mum’s daily custom to kiss it before she went to the library. Apart from the poster, the fridge door was crowded with small notes that said things like:

Friday night – GIRLS NIGHT OUT!
Pick up dry cleaning!
Take car to garage to be fixed!
Ring vets for appointment for cat - DON’T BOTHER! CAT DIED THIS MORNING!

Cynthia sometimes thought that her mum’s whole life was controlled by small messages and reminders and that one day her mum would be stuck in the middle of the kitchen floor, snivelling and howling and buried in piles and piles of yellow post-it notes, completely lost and not knowing if she was supposed to get her hair done or have one of her teeth removed at the dentists. Then Cynthia would have to wade through all those heaps of paper and sort them all out through patience and sheer guesswork and her mum would be so grateful that she’d never shout at her again.

Cynthia felt the yellow report card seeming to burn a hole in her pocket and almost wished her Mum would get herself into trouble right now so that Cynthia could help her and perhaps Mum wouldn’t shout at her when she saw the report card and Cynthia had to explain that she was in trouble with both Mrs Andrews and Mr Brown.

‘A teacher said something to me yesterday, Mum,’ Cynthia said, feeling nervous. ‘He said that I lived in some ‘fluffy’ fairy-tale world. Do I seem that way to you?’

Mum came over and picked up a slice of toast, nibbling at it like a hamster. ‘No, dear,’ she replied, sighing. ‘There’s nobody smarter than my own little Cynthia. Don’t you listen to anybody that tells you otherwise.’

Cynthia gingerly reached into her pocket, bringing out the report card and laying it on the kitchen table. ‘You need to sign this, Mum,’ she said quietly.

Mum put the toast back down on the plate and looked at the report card, wiping her hands on a tea towel. ‘What’s that?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘It’s a card that you have to sign,’ repeated Cynthia.

‘I can see it’s a card, but what sort of card?’ said Mum, still chewing the piece of toast in her mouth. ‘Birthday card, Get-Well card, Congratulations on Passing Your Driving Test card? What sort of card?’

Cynthia felt herself sinking into her chair, dipping lower than the edge of the table and the teapot and the cereal box filled with the wrong cornflakes and the plate of crusty toast. She thought of all the ways her Mum would react when she told her the awful truth about how the supply teacher had yelled at her and sent her from the class and how Mrs Andrews and Mr Brown had also shouted at her, coming at her from opposite directions and attacking her like hungry wolves as she’d sat in the main office. Then she thought of how much she loved her Mum and decided that it might be all right to tell her.

‘I’ve been put on report,’ Cynthia replied meekly.

Mum stopped chewing her toast, staring at Cynthia as if she’d been smacked between the eyes with a pongy slipper. Cynthia stared back, feeling small and defenceless and weak and brittle. As they looked at each other, Cynthia could see the fury building up in her mum’s eyes and was suddenly positive that Mum was about to burst into an airborne frenzy and start to bounce along the walls and ceiling of the kitchen in an insane fit of shaking and trembling, that she would throw a wobbly and all because a stupid supply teacher had given her a stupid report card!

But Mum did no such thing. Instead, she continued staring at the report card as if it would suddenly grow huge, ferocious teeth and leap up from the kitchen table to bite out a chunk of her nose. Cynthia slowly raised herself back up into a more comfortable sitting position on her chair.

‘A report card?’ Mum asked, horrified.

‘It wasn’t my fault!’ Cynthia blurted. ‘There was this supply teacher and he wasn’t very good and he kept saying all the wrong things about Shakespeare –‘

‘A report card?’

‘ – and then he called me to the front of the class and before that all the other kids kept booing him and he called me Little Miss Clever Clogs – ‘

‘A REPORT CARD?’

‘ – and then he said I lived in a fairy-tale world – ‘

‘A… REPORT… CARD?’

‘ – AND THEN HE SPELT ‘CLOGS’ WITH TWO ‘G’s!’

Mum darted forward and snatched the report card from the table, plucking it between her thumb and index finger, flinging her arms out wide at the same time and Cynthia felt sure that this was it, this was the time when her mum would finally and decisively take-off and fly around the inside of the room like a demented sparrow.

Cynthia pushed her chair back, ready to flee the kitchen when it happened.

‘No daughter of mine goes on report, not ever, ever, ever!’ screamed Mum, whirling around and slamming into the fridge door, knocking Jamie Oliver flying. She spun on her high heels and began pacing around the back of Cynthia’s chair, wailing with anger.

‘You don’t go on report! The bad kids from that bad family down at number 14 go on report, but not you! The bad family with the bad kids that run around the streets all night an’ throw things an’ always have snotty noses, that family! But not you! In all the years you’ve been at that school, you’ve never, ever, ever, ever, ever been on REPORT!’

‘There’s always a first time for everything,’ Cynthia replied softly.

‘Don’t you get cheeky with me, my girl!’ Mum exploded.

‘I’m not being cheeky,’ said Cynthia. ‘I’m just saying there’s a first time for everything.’

Mum darted forward again, producing a pen from the inside of her jacket pocket and smartly clicking the nib into place. Before Cynthia had time to realise what was happening, Mum had scribbled her name across the bottom of the report card and was thrusting it into Cynthia’s hands.

‘Well, I’ll tell you what this means, my girl,’ announced Mum. ‘This means no more telly, no more listening to your music and no more having your friends round on weekends.’

‘But, Mum!’ protested Cynthia.

‘No more magazines, no more shopping for shoes, no more pizzas on a Wednesday night, in fact, no more life.’

‘But, Mum, listen – ‘ whined Cynthia.

Mum strode over to the fridge and stooped down to pluck up her calendar from the floor, vainly trying to stick it back where it belonged with her hair hanging down in stringy clumps over her face. Cynthia watched in dismay and thought of all the really bad things that Mum had just said to her and how nothing was fair when teachers and parents didn’t want to listen to what you had to say to defend yourself.

Mum gave up on the calendar and grabbed her jacket from the hook at the back of the kitchen door. As she shrugged into it, she regarded Cynthia with a determined look. ‘I’m going to work now, Cynthia,’ she said. ‘But let me leave you with some advice. If you carry on with this behaviour, then you mark my word, you’ll end up like an Ostrich, my girl…’

Cynthia frowned, puzzled. ‘What do you mean, like an Ostrich?’

‘Permanently grounded!’ snapped Mum and stomped out of the door, her high heels wobbling and the stripe of red lipstick still spread across her face like Indian war paint.

If Cynthia could have known that she was never going to see her mum again, she would have stopped her right then and told her about the lipstick or about the fact that one of her heels was starting to come loose from the back or that she’d thrown her jacket on inside-out, or even that she was sorry and that she loved her, but she was too upset about the report card and the supply teacher to say anything at all.

So, instead, Cynthia merely sat at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands, feeling heavy and sad and hating the supply teacher, not knowing that her life was about to change forever.

And as she sat there, feeling extremely sorry for herself and listening to the continual ticking of the kitchen clock on the wall above her head, Cynthia became slowly aware of a slight change in the air and that the hair at the nape of her neck was beginning to bristle and prickle. This was followed by a curious, tickly, burning smell that reminded Cynthia of the odour that often came from underground tunnels shortly before the trains came hurtling out and spitting sparks.

Then another curious thing happened; the cornflakes box and the teapot began jumping and vibrating along the top of the table and the wall to her left started to coil and soften and shift into the shape of a man.

Cynthia rubbed her eyes in astonishment, catapulting up from her chair and scuttling sideways into the fridge, making it rock and causing all the jars and bottles and glass containers inside to bang and clink. The smell of sparking wheels on metal tracks intensified as the shape of the man became less blurry and grew more solid and that was when Cynthia screamed out in surprise.

The man came into the kitchen as the wall closed behind him and became just a wall again. The man blinked and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand, muttering to himself under his breath and shading his eyes from the summer light coming in through the window. He carried a clipboard and wore a long raincoat with the collar turned up and a black bag slung over his shoulder. Underneath the coat were striped trousers with brown boots. But what was really freaky about the man – apart from the fact that he’d just popped out of the kitchen wall – was his huge mane of fluffy hair that stuck out in every possible direction, reminding Cynthia of an exploded mattress.

The man continued blinking rapidly, mumbling to himself, ignoring Cynthia. ‘Forgot that it was night where I just came from,’ he grumbled.

‘Who’re you and what are you doing in my Mum’s kitchen?’ shrieked Cynthia.

The man blinked a few more times and then shielded his eyes with one hand. ‘Are you Little Miss Clever Clogs?’ he asked her.

Cynthia stared back at him. ‘Who’re you?’ she demanded.

‘Are you Little Miss Clever Clogs?’ he repeated.

‘No,’ Cynthia replied. ‘My name’s Cynthia.’

The man sighed and raised his clipboard before his face, squinting at it like a mole. ‘According to this you are currently known as Little Miss Clever Clogs.’

Cynthia eased away from the fridge, ready to bolt for the kitchen door if this lunatic took another step towards her. ‘My name’s Cynthia,’ she insisted. ‘MUM!’

The man lowered his clipboard and wearily dropped his head. All the energy and force seemed to seep from his body like air from a punctured tyre. Cynthia retreated even further, her hands reaching behind her, searching for the door and hoping against hope that her mum hadn’t left the house yet and had stopped in the hallway to turn her coat the right way round, or had stumbled and tripped on the conked out heel of her shoe.

‘I hope this isn't going to be difficult,’ he said. He looked at his clipboard again. ‘According to this your name is Little Miss Clever Clogs and you’ve got to come with me at once, immediately and without delay.’

‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ said Cynthia. ‘Get out of our kitchen…MUM!’

The man dropped his clipboard onto the table and began slowly pacing around the kitchen, looking at the walls and the windows and the furniture and the clock and the utensils with visible curiosity. Cynthia opened the kitchen door, ready to run.

‘Hmmmm, interesting place,’ he mused. ‘Not made of straw or sticks, but brick; very good for stopping all that ‘huff and puff an’ blow your house down’ stuff. Also, no enchanted mirrors, no talking teacups and no gingerbread men running around…Very strange.’ He stopped to admire the kitchen table, running his fingers along its surface. ‘I like the table, though,’ he smiled. ‘Very ‘Goldilocks and The Three Bears’.’

‘MUM!’ Cynthia wailed out into the hallway.

‘There's no point in fighting what's meant to be,’ the man said. 'Destiny dictates that you've got to come back with me, so don't fight it.'

Cynthia gave him an odd look. ‘Back? Back where?’

Picking up his clipboard from the table again, the man began to read from a sheet of paper. ‘According to sub-section 24, under section 2 of the contravention of ‘Fairy-Tale’ infringement, passed under paragraph 31 of the 19th amendment of the last millennium, you are in the wrong location and I’ve got to take you back to the correct place.’ He gave a frown. ‘Don't tell me you don't recognise a Collector when you see one.'

‘What do you mean my correct place?’ replied Cynthia. ‘My correct place is here. I’m not going anywhere with you…MUM! What's a collector?'

‘I am,' he replied. 'And you are coming back with me. You see, according to my notes your name is Little Miss Clever Clogs and you’ve obviously wandered out of the story you’re supposed to be in and ended up here. My job is to come and collect you.'

Cynthia came back into the kitchen slightly. ‘I don’t belong in any story,’ she frowned. ‘I’m real.’

‘Oh, but you do belong in a story,’ insisted The Collector, looking at his clipboard again. ‘According to my notes, there have been four references to fairy-tales so far, and the name of your character, ‘Little Miss Clever Clogs’ has been mentioned twice, and with some force.'

‘Yeah, well, according to my brain, you’re a nut-nut job, a crackpot and a hare-brained loser!’ argued Cynthia.

The Collector sat down heavily at the kitchen table and sighed, looking around the kitchen again. ‘Where is this place, anyway?’ he asked.

Cynthia was puzzled. How could this man not know where he was? Even though he had just popped out of the wall, surely he must have some clue as to where he was and have a map or something, otherwise, how had he got here?

‘It’s called England,’ Cynthia answered.

The Collector shrugged. ‘Can’t say I’ve heard of it. Who’s in charge here?’

Cynthia was even more bewildered than before. ‘Sorry?’ she asked.

Again The Collector sighed and the sun came through the window, striking his eyes, which were an astonishing shade of green. Cynthia thought that they made him look a little bit like a cat. ‘I thought you were supposed to be clever,’ he mused. ‘Who’s your ruler? Do you have a king, queen, emperor or tyrant?’

Cynthia came a little bit closer to where he sat. ‘Oh, we have both a queen and a prime minister,’ she replied.

Just as she was about to come nearer and was almost at the breakfast table, The Collector threw out his hand with staggering speed, palm open and fingers outstretched, almost snagging her school blazer. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘just grab my hand and we’ll be able to leave and go back to where you belong.’

Cynthia scuttled back from his reach. ‘I told you, I’m not going anywhere with you!’ she snapped.

The Collector propped his chin into his hands and leant wearily against the table. Rainbow patterns of sunshine danced and pranced across his eyes and Cynthia felt unable to move, rooted to the spot. ‘Look, there really is no argument about this,’ he said. ‘You’re not making my job any easier by kicking up a fuss. You're needed.'

‘Needed?’ inquired Cynthia. ‘How am I needed?’

The Collector grabbed the spoon Cynthia had just been using and began to eat the mushy cornflakes she’d left in the bowl. ‘Pig-swill,’ he mumbled, his mouth full and for a moment, he reminded Cynthia of Billy Reynolds, talking with his fat mouth overflowing with strawberry cheesecake and Tiramisu and showering everyone unfortunate enough to be within striking distance.

‘How do you need my help?’ repeated Cynthia.

The Collector wiped milk from his mouth with the edge of the tablecloth, smiling. ‘It's all the problems with a few characters in my world not behaving the way they should, and you being ‘Little Miss Clever Clogs’ need to rectify everything. Put things back the way they should be,’ he said.

‘Characters?’ demanded Cynthia. ‘What characters?’

Again The Collector consulted his clipboard. ‘As if you don't know. Snow White’s disappeared, leaving The Seven Dwarfs’ house like a rubbish tip, Sleeping Beauty’s having trouble sleeping and The Three Bears have become quite dysfunctional, to name but a few.’ He held out his hand once more, rising from the chair. ‘So just grab my hand and if you really belong here and you help me, I’ll bring you back right away, that’s the deal.’ He looked at Cynthia, his hand still outstretched towards her. ‘Are you coming or not?’

‘Not!’ replied Cynthia emphatically, edging around the table. ‘I told you, stay away!’

As she slid to one corner of the table, The Collector almost caught her. Cynthia changed direction, but again The Collector was too fast for her. They both dodged and weaved around the table and Cynthia noticed that The Collector’s bristly, frizzing hair was starting to fizzle and flicker as if suddenly alive and that the faint smell of burning was back. The Collector stopped and looked at her, his face becoming desperate and tricky.

‘My time here is running out,’ he told her. ‘You need to grab my hand before it’s too late and I’m gone!’

‘No chance!’ Cynthia told him.

‘Look, you're starting to annoy me. And this is becoming tedious and boring,’ warned The Collector.

‘Oh, yeah, well, let me liven things up for you,’ replied Cynthia. ‘HELP! HELP! MUM! HEEEEELLPP!’

Suddenly, The Collector darted swiftly to the left, trying to come around to where Cynthia stood, but Cynthia ducked to the right, her pulse racing and her heart sprinting. The Collector changed direction, trying to head her off, his thorny hair standing out even more prominently and the reek of subway trains growing ever more potent. The Collector dipped towards the right and Cynthia shrieked, changing direction again, knocking the cornflakes box over and sweeping cereal across the surface of the kitchen table. The room started to shiver and shake again as if it were cold and Cynthia knew that if she could just stay away from this funny man’s grip for a few more seconds, he would just burst back through the wall and she would be safe.

Then The Collector abruptly stopped and looked towards the kitchen door, his amazing green eyes popping open in shock and surprise. ‘Mum's back!’ he exclaimed. 'Damn, I'll have to go!'

Cynthia whirled around to see Mum for herself, her mind flooded with relief and that was when The Collector grabbed her wrist and she realised that she’d been tricked and that Mum wasn’t back at all. She had a brief moment to think of how unfair it was that she’d been fooled before she was suddenly and rudely whisked around and the whole kitchen seemed to fold in on itself like a crumpled up photograph.

The kitchen disappeared completely and Cynthia screamed and held on tight, as they both flipped and turned and tumbled, blown like autumn leaves through a vortex of wind and sound, and then abruptly they stopped as something rushed towards them and they seemed to fall out of a dull, colourless sky like stone.


3.

They had come to a stop outside a log cabin in the middle of some woods and Cynthia found herself on her knees in deep, freezing snow. All around them it was turning dark and more snow fell in frosty lumps that made Cynthia wish that she’d dressed in something warmer than her school uniform. The Collector was beside her and he was on his knees, head down and shrugging off clumps of snow from his thick, congealed hair. Cynthia scooped up a huge chunk of the stuff and shoved it into his face, rubbing it furiously into his eyes and nose and mouth, making him splutter and cough violently.

'This isn’t my house! This isn’t my kitchen! Where are we?’ Cynthia wailed at him. ‘You tricked me! You're a lunatic! A lying lunatic!'

He raised his head, looking at her with his bright eyes as the snow around his forehead and chin and cheeks slid and dripped off. ‘I never lied to you at all,’ he replied.

'Yeah, you did!',’ she shrieked, pelting him with another snowball. ‘You pretended that my mum had come back into the kitchen!'

‘Keep your voice down,’ he coughed.

‘Why should I keep my voice down? You give me one reason why I should keep my voice down just to please you?’

‘Because these woods are full of walking, talking bears,’ he replied. ‘And not all of them are pleasant.’

‘You’re a head-case!’ Cynthia screamed. ‘You should be locked up!’

‘I assure you that there is nothing wrong with my sanity,' he replied, giving her a sour look.

‘Oh, yes there is!’ Cynthia shouted. ‘I have been to London Zoo and seen plenty of bears and none of them talk!’

The Collector sighed and stood up, brushing snow from his coat and trousers. He walked over to a window in the side of the log cabin that had a rosy glow coming through the glass. ‘Get over here and take a look inside this window,’ he instructed.

Cynthia got up, also brushing snow off her clothes. ‘What for?’ she asked sarcastically. ‘Are you gonna grab my hand and take me flying off to somewhere warmer, like maybe Spain or The Bahamas?’

He frowned. ‘Are they anywhere near England?’

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘They’re nowhere near England and you’ve got to jump on a plane to get to them.’

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a long quill and began writing on his clipboard. ‘What’s a plane?’ he inquired.

‘It’s something that flies and takes off from a runway,’ replied Cynthia, watching him closely. ‘It takes people to far-off places for their holidays.’

The Collector stopped and stared at her. ‘So you climb on top of it while it flies?’ he asked, fascinated.

‘No!’ Cynthia snapped. ‘People sit inside it!’

‘Dear me,’ replied The Collector, shaking his head. ‘That must be messy when it regurgitates you back up.’

‘It doesn’t sick you back up!’ Cynthia said. ‘It’s not alive. It has doors and huge turbine engines and people sit on seats by windows and if you’re a child you drink orange juice and if you’re an adult you drink gin and tonic!’

Suddenly from inside the woods there came the sound of an ear-splitting howl. Cynthia jumped and grabbed The Collector’s sleeve and hid behind his coat. The roar sounded again, this time further away and Cynthia thought about all the things that could have made a noise like that and how a mouth belonging to a thing like that would perhaps be capable of gulping down a schoolgirl like her in two or three bites, like cheese on crackers or marmite on toast or maybe even a bowl of Crunchy Nut cornflakes.

Just when Cynthia thought things couldn’t get any weirder, she began to hear the sound of somebody singing from inside the walls of the log cabin.

‘Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s home from work we go, heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-ho…’ sang the voice, sounding jolly and cheerful and bright against the freezing cold of the falling snow outside.

Cynthia moved closer and peered in through the windowpanes, wiping the frost away with her hand.

Inside the cabin was a table covered with a filthy tablecloth with three chairs around it. All the chairs were made from wood and were of different sizes and looked bumpy and shaky and not a bit like the furniture that her mum bought from the huge warehouse where everybody smiled and spoke in a Swedish accent.

At the far side of the room there was a log fire blazing fiercely up a chimney, filling the room with colour and warmth and smoke. But that wasn’t what caught Cynthia’s attention. What made her gasp and cling even tighter to The Collector’s coat was the sight of a dwarf with a red nose parading around the table and singing whilst a family of three bears stood and watched him, looking annoyed.

Cynthia looked at the face of the largest bear, thinking that there were lots of frowns and expressions that told when a face was annoyed for whatever reason, and all them unpleasant. For instance, the frown on the face of the postman when he started emptying the post box outside Cynthia’s house and sometimes fished out sweet wrappers or a squashed hamburger carton instead of letters, or the frown of the man who walked past Cynthia’s house in the morning, carrying his briefcase on his way to the station, looking at his watch and realising that he’d missed his train. But although the expressions of the postman and the man walking to the station were pretty bad, Cynthia had never seen anything as bad as the sight of a huge, grizzly bear with that same expression on his face.

‘Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s home from work we go…’ continued the dwarf.

Cynthia clutched at the sleeve of The Collector’s coat again, gaping at the way the biggest bear glowered at the dwarf as he marched around the table, singing his song and swinging his mining bag, dressed in a bright orange tunic and hat with brown trousers and dirty work boots. She’d never seen anything more wacky or bloodcurdling in her whole life.

‘Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s home from work we go, heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s home from work we go…’

The dwarf paced around the table a few more times until he suddenly realised that the three bears were staring maliciously at him. One of the bears was a cub, hardly bigger than the dwarf himself, yet Cynthia could still feel and hear the low rumble of their combined growling reverberating through the sides of the cabin and thought that she’d never seen a creature more stupid than this silly little midget in the orange vest.

The dwarf slowly stopped walking around the table and glanced at the three bears. He noticed the furrowed brow and the malevolent twinkle of possible murder across the eyes of the biggest bear and he stopped singing, his own eyes becoming large as saucers.

‘Sorry,’ he croaked.

The three bears stared hard at him for a few seconds more and then visibly relaxed. The dwarf retreated into a far corner and sat down, shuffling as far against the wall as possible, watching the bears closely. The biggest bear ambled over to the table and sank heavily into a chair, whilst the other one reached out and grabbed hold of the cub, vigorously licking its fur and scrubbing its ears.

‘Gerrof me!’ squealed the cub, trying to pull away. ‘Gerrof!’

Cynthia’s mouth dropped open and she stared at The Collector in disbelief. The Collector ignored her, peering through the window with the snow patting off his nose, looking grim. His hands began fumbling absently through his bag, searching for something.

‘Oh, no, not again!’ suddenly exclaimed the big bear, looking down at a wooden bowl in front of him. ‘I don’t believe it!’

‘Don’t believe what, dear?’ inquired the other bear in a female voice, still tugging and rubbing and scrubbing at the cub.

The big bear stood up, his ears pinned back and his face like thunder, pointing at the door, his colossal chest heaving. ‘I’m definitely sticking a huge lock on that door!’ he bellowed.

‘Why’s that, dear?’ the female bear politely asked, ignoring him whilst she began plucking insects from the cub’s fur and stuffing them in her mouth.

‘Every time – and I mean every time – we go for a walk in the woods and come back, someone’s been at the porridge!’ roared the big bear.

‘Oh, really?’ mused the female bear, crunching through a termite. ‘That’s nice, dear.’

‘The other week it was the beds,’ continued the big bear.

‘That’s too bad,’ commented the female bear, squashing a flea.

‘The whole neighbourhood’s gone to rack and ruin, rack and ruin, I tell ya!’ ranted the big bear, turning and pointing a long, arched claw at the dwarf in the corner. And it’s ever since he moved in and put his feet up!’

The dwarf gulped fearfully and looked at the table with the wooden bowls. ‘Do you mind if I have some of that porridge?’ he asked. ‘I am rather hungry.’

‘Help yourself, dear,’ offered the female bear, sifting through the struggling cub’s scalp.

‘Yeah, make yourself at home, why don’t ya?’ growled the big bear, calming down and easing back into his chair.

The dwarf sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, his face brightening and his rosy cheeks shiny and sparkly in the luminosity of the fire. Cynthia heard The Collector sharply draw in his breath beside her and when she glanced at him he was shaking his head.

‘I really hope he doesn’t do what I think he’s going to do. If he does, it’ll be most unfortunate for him,’ he muttered.

‘What’s he going to do?’ asked Cynthia, staring back through the window and gulping in a cold lungful of air.

‘Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to work we go…’ warbled the dwarf at the top of his lungs, marching over to the vacant chair and plonking himself down.

The effect was instantaneous as the biggest bear launched himself up, sending his chair flying into the side of a dirty, unbalanced chest of drawers where it smashed into splinters. The dwarf took off, bolting back into his corner, where he hit the wall and crumpled into a cowering heap. The big bear hit the floor on all fours, skidding on a rug with its fur bristling and standing on end as if electrocuted and its teeth curled back from its upper lip, baring them ferociously at the dwarf.

Cynthia heard herself start to scream, until The Collector’s hand clamped firmly over her mouth.

‘Will you stop singing that song every time you go to do something!’ roared the bear, as the dwarf’s knees buckled in fright. ‘It’s driving me up the wall!’

‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,’ babbled the dwarf.

The female bear suddenly stopped cleaning the cub, shoving him to one side. She slowly approached the dwarf, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Remind me again, just who you are?’ she said to him.

Before the petrified dwarf had a chance to answer, the cub bolted across the floor of the cabin and ran behind the rear legs of the biggest bear for protection, poking his head out. ‘He’s some stinky weirdo with no dress sense, that’s who he is!’ he cried out.

Cynthia began backing slowly away from the window and the cabin and The Collector, until her foot caught a nearby tree stump and she toppled over backwards, sitting down heavily in the snow.

The Collector turned and looked at her, his shaggy hair blowing in the wind. Cynthia picked herself up and turned to run, but there was nowhere for her to go. She was surrounded on all sides by dark, impenetrable woods and she whirled around in panic until she became dizzy and fell back into the snow in a disheveled heap.

‘What's the problem?’ The Collector rudely asked, helping her up. ‘Why are you running? Where do you possibly hope to go?'

‘I don’t belong here!’ Cynthia wailed. ‘I’m supposed to be at school by now and not here with crazy dwarfs and talking bears! I haven’t even brought my mobile phone to ring my mum!’

The Collector crouched down beside her, his eyes green pools in the fading light. ‘Shut up your whining,’ he said. ‘You’re Little Miss Clever Clogs, and because you are, you’re the only one that can solve this mess.’

‘What mess?’ Cynthia cried. ‘I still don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘The mess concerning the dwarf and what he’s doing here,’ explained The Collector. ‘Every single Collector is puzzled as to what’s going on and your name came up and so my superiors sent me to fetch you to get the dwarf back to his rightful place.’

‘I don’t want to,’ stressed Cynthia, trying to pull away from him. ‘I refuse to help you!’

The Collector straightened up and looked Cynthia in the eyes. Cynthia saw the same look on his face that she sometimes saw on her mum’s face whenever Cynthia had done something stupid and mum was sadly disappointed in her. ‘‘You’re the only person who can help,' he said.

‘What do you mean I’m the only person who can help?’ argued Cynthia. ‘I’m just a normal pupil from Morehills School!’

The Collector’s eyes became stern again as they regarded Cynthia in the falling snow. ‘Toughen up,' he ordered. 'You’re Little Miss Clever Clogs.’

From inside the cottage there came a stifled crash followed by another roar of rage from one of the bears. Both Cynthia and The Collector turned towards the building, the snow blinding and obscuring their eyes. Cynthia shivered both from the cold and the total fear that she felt in front of this peculiar man with his abnormal hair and angry bears that threatened and bullied defenseless dwarves. She thought of cozy memories and cheerful smiles and the normal world that she’d been pulled away from and felt like crying.

The Collector hurried back towards the window and peered in again, cupping his hands against the glass. ‘That little idiot really is pushing his luck and we’ve got to get him out of there and quickly.’

Despite herself, Cynthia got to her feet and approached the window. Inside the cabin, the dwarf was sitting at the table again, his eyes large and horrified, as the biggest bear once more leant forward, baring his teeth and growling at him.

‘What did you just say?’ demanded the bear.

‘All I said was ‘how come every time I eat or drink anything in this house, it’s neither too hot nor too cold, but always just right?’ whimpered the dwarf.

‘That’s because you’re always nicking my stuff!’ shouted the little bear from across the room.

‘Excuse me, but are you complaining?’ the female bear asked the dwarf, a furious scowl on her face.

‘Of course I’m complaining,’ gulped the dwarf. ‘I’m called ‘Grumpy’.’

The big bear craned his neck, forcing his colossal, foreboding snout against the tip of the dwarf’s burgundy nose. ‘Well if you don’t like it, you know where the door is,’ sneered the bear. ‘Nobody’s keeping you here!’

‘Well, I would leave,’ groaned the dwarf, ‘but I don’t know how I got here and how to get back.’

‘Back to where?’ growled the bear, its eyes rheumy and runny and brutal.

‘Back to where I’m from!’ babbled the dwarf, retreating as far back into the chair as possible. ‘I mean, one minute I’m hanging out with me six mates and then the next minute I’m here, lumped with you three, which by the way is not my idea of a treat! The woods are full of you lot picnicking, the furniture stinks and this place is a hovel!’

‘He shouldn’t’t have said that,’ groaned The Collector, from his place outside the window.

Now it was the female bear’s turn to explode across the room and because she was so much lighter than the biggest bear, she was able to move quite fast. Cynthia watched through the window, marveling at the speed with which she crossed the room with her jaws open, snapping and dripping saliva along the coarse, faded rug. The dwarf fell backwards onto the floorboards, his arms flung out in terror and his face stretched like fleshy elastic. The female bear landed with a thump, her front paws pinning the dwarf’s ears to the floor. Cynthia thought that she had never seen anything quite so extraordinary yet so fearsome in all her life.

‘I work my claws to the bone to keep this place right!’ she boomed down at the dwarf.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ stammered the dwarf. ‘It’s just that where I came from everything was better, I mean, you’re good-looking for a bear, but the woman who did the housework at the last place was as sweet and fresh as the air on a spring morning!’

Now it was the bigger bear’s turn to address the dwarf, and when he did, Cynthia thought that she detected something hidden in his voice. There was something artful and sneaky about it, reminding Cynthia of the way that Timmy Faulkner sometimes spoke to her when he was after her sweets or the time when he’d said he was really interested in all the stuff she’d written about The Communist Revolution and the fall of the Tsar for her history project, because he was trying to copy the project for himself.

‘Was your last housekeeper that nice?’ the big bear inquired.

‘Considerably so,’ replied the dwarf from his position on the floor.

‘Nicer than me?’ asked the female bear, her voice and expression softening.

‘Oh, yeah, without a doubt,’ answered the dwarf. ‘I mean, you’re the fairest here, ‘tis true, but Snow White’s a thousand times lovelier than you.’

With that, the baby bear dashed forward and lashed out with his foot, kicking the dwarf violently in the leg. ‘You apologize, right now!’ he bleated.

The dwarf howled in pain and managed to squirm out from underneath the female bear’s grip. Springing to his feet, he ran around the table, knocking over plates and cups and sending them crashing and smashing to the floor while the baby bear began chasing him.

Cynthia watched in amazement as the cub threw its snout forward and nipped at the dwarf’s work boots, tearing out a sizable chunk of leather and spitting it to one side, before lunging onto the table and jumping onto the dwarf’s brightly coloured back. The other two bears howled in a panicked frenzy, trying to stop the confusion and chaos, the mummy bear roaring and swatting at the cub whilst the biggest bear chewed the rug on the floor in anger and frustration.

‘Time to put a stop to this nonsense,’ commented The Collector, rummaging through his satchel again. Through the light thrown out from inside the cabin, he looked remarkably calm, his eyes sharp and shimmering.

‘How do you propose to do that?’ Cynthia asked, frowning at him. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, there are two massive, fully-grown bears in there that are far from jolly.’

‘Have faith,’ commented The Collector, stepping up to the front door of the cabin. ‘Have faith.’

Before Cynthia could utter another word, The Collector took his clipboard out of his satchel and began squinting at it in the measly light of the darkening day. Cynthia began chewing her bottom lip, which was something that she often did when she was thinking hard and trying to figure things out. The Collector held the clipboard closer to his face, flipping through the papers attached to it as they blew and fluttered in the wind and snow.

‘Ah, here we are!’ he exclaimed. ‘According to sub-section 33, under paragraph 104 of the contravention of ‘reasonable conduct’ infringement, passed under paragraph 58 of the 19th amendment of the last millennium, it is perfectly acceptable to use ‘forced entry’ to stop anything threatening or potentially dangerous from happening to any or all characters.’

And with that, The Collector shoved his clipboard back into his satchel, stood back, raised his boot and kicked the front door wide open.

4.

Inside the cabin, all movement stopped suddenly, as the door bashed against the inner wall and one of the hinges cracked and splintered, coming away from the doorframe. The dwarf and baby bear both squealed. Daddy bear stiffened, staring at the door in shock, a large wedge of rug hanging from his jaws. Mummy bear yelped, retreating to the far corner, rigid and astounded at the sight of her front door, hanging and blowing and letting in flurries of snow.


‘Excuse me!’ declared The Collector in an extremely loud voice. ‘But I feel I must intrude!’

Daddy bear stared at The Collector, his face becoming ever more menacing and unfavourable to Cynthia’s eyes. Cynthia felt her legs starting to wobble and quiver and wished she hadn’t said all the things that she’d said to the supply teacher and hadn’t made him call her Little Miss Clever Clogs in the first place, because then she wouldn’t be standing here, in the middle of an enchanted forest, about to be pounced upon and ripped to shreds by an exceptionally aggressive bear.

‘He’s smashed our door to bits!’ wailed the mummy bear, bringing her paws up to her face in anguish and horror.

‘Who on earth are you?’ thundered the daddy bear at The Collector, before lowering his head and charging towards him. His paws skittered and thumped sturdily across the rough, wooden floorboards and his snout shovelled through a chair, sending it tumbling over.

‘Yeah!’ squeaked the baby bear. ‘Who’re you and get out of our house!’

Cynthia began to smell that same blistering, tickling stench that she’d experienced in her kitchen, shortly before The Collector had popped and shoved his way out of the wall; the smell of trains and tunnels and sparks on tracks. She stared at The Collector in amazement, as his hair once again started to wriggle and squirm and fizzle, making him look as if he’d been electrocuted. His green eyes blazed intensely.

‘Stop right there!’ he roared, raising his finger and pointing it at the huge, rushing bear. ‘I am a Collector and will be treated with respect!’

A spark leapt from The Collector’s index finger and hit the daddy bear in the chest, sending him flipping and somersaulting backwards with a yelp of fear and surprise and crashing through the lopsided cabinet against the far wall. Both the dwarf and the baby bear jumped and squeaked on the kitchen table, hugging each other in fright.

The Collector glared at everyone in the room for a second, before gradually calming down again. The forceful gleam remained in his eyes as he regarded every creature within the cabin.'Does anyone else feel the need to challenge my authority?' he asked.

Cynthia looked at The Collector in awe and wonder. ‘I don’t think they’re gonna be breaking out the tea and biscuits for us after that entrance,’ she said meekly.

‘That’s not the purpose of our visit,’ he replied. ‘Tea and biscuits have a time and place. The reason we’re here is to put things right as quickly as possible and be on our way.'

Cynthia’s heart soared. ‘You mean you’ll take me back to my kitchen?’ she asked hopefully.

The Collector’s expression changed slightly and he quickly turned away from her. ‘All in good time,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ Cynthia asked, feeling nervous, but for a different reason. ‘That’s not a very good answer.’

‘Yes, it is,’ replied The Collector. ‘I think it’s a perfectly practical answer, a perfectly sensible answer, a perfectly clear answer.’

‘No it’s not,’ protested Cynthia, pulling on his coat as he tried to turn away from her. ‘It’s about as clear as mud!’

‘The mud in the land of Dadroo is very clear,’ The Collector informed her.

‘Where’s the land of Dadroo?’ asked Cynthia, frowning.

The Collector ignored her, focusing his attention once more on the occupants of the cabin. ‘As you can see, a complete mess,’ he said. He walked over to the dwarf, his long coat swishing as he went. The dwarf cowered on the table as he approached, quivering all over, his funny face all blubbery and rubbery.

‘Take this one, for instance,’ said The Collector, pointing at him. ‘One minute, he’s out mining for gold as part of a team and now he’s stuck here.’

‘So explain to me how this happened,’ demanded Cynthia. ‘How did one of the seven dwarfs end up living with the three bears?’

The dwarf forgot that he was supposed to be scared for a minute, fixing Cynthia with a hostile glare. ‘So you know me, but I don’t know you!’ he challenged.

Cynthia stepped forward slightly, her voice cynical. ‘You know, it wouldn’t exactly crack your face to smile once in a while.’

‘He can’t, his name’s Grumpy,’ replied the mummy bear morosely from the corner.

‘Yeah, he’s name’s Grumpy, so there!’ piped up Baby Bear, jumping down from the table and trying to make himself as tall as possible by standing on his hind legs.

‘Look, there’s obviously been some terrible misunderstanding,’ Cynthia exclaimed. ‘I really need to get home otherwise I’m gonna miss school and I’m already on report!’

'Quiet, girl,' snapped The Collector.

'No I won't be quiet,' she answered.

The Collector glowered down at her.‘If we don’t sort this out’, he said to her, ‘the whole existence thing that we know and love could be wiped out. The last time something like this happened, The Giant from Jack In The Beanstalk starting slapping and kicking everyone, and a Wicked Witch sent a comet down on everything. That means every world being destroyed eventually, including the one you claim to be your own...Would you like that?'

Cynthia was aghast. ‘No!'

‘Then if you can't help, keep quiet,’ he ordered.


Cynthia began to feel very apprehensive and anxious. Now she could see that every creature in the cabin was staring at her closely like she was something weird or exotic, like a big, bizarre bird with shaved feathers and a bald, purple head, or something that vibrated up and down on rubbery tentacles and spoke gibberish as its first language. This was the way that most of the pupils at Morehills School often looked at Cynthia whenever she answered a difficult question in class and so she should have gotten used to being stared at like that, but she never did and never would.

The Collector began pacing around the room. 'I was given direct orders from the Circle of Accumulation to grab you and bring you here,' he told Cynthia. 'And now it looks like the elders were wrong about you.'

He gave her another sour look, shook his head and reached into his satchel. When he withdrew his hand, he was holding an intensely coloured book of some sort. Cynthia thought that it looked as if it belonged in some batty library from a nutty world, where all the books and shelves and walls and tables and chairs were splashed with astounding tins of paint and the librarians stomped around and blew trumpets and crashed cymbals together whilst people tried to translate far-fetched words from implausible books.

The Collector blew dust from the cover of this gaudy book and leant against the kitchen table again. ‘I need to try to fix this as soon as possible, he told everyone. ‘Just be quiet and listen.'

Reluctantly, every creature in the cabin grew deathly silent. Cynthia shifted uncomfortably, her nose wrinkling at the offensive pong coming from the collective fur around her.

The Collector riffled through the book, stopping at a page with words and pictures on it. Cynthia edged closer to have a look. The first one was a drawing of The Seven Dwarfs marching home from work and carrying pickaxes and shovels over their shoulders, and the second drawing showed Snow White stepping into a cottage, watched and flanked by fluffy animals.

‘According to this, the dwarf should be living in a cottage with six other of his kind,’ said The Collector. He stopped and rested his finger on something within the book,underneath the drawing of Snow White. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Listen to this quote: ‘Inside the cottage, all the furniture and floors and windows were tidy and warm. A snow-white cloth was laid for seven people and there were things to eat and drink. Along one wall were seven little beds, laid with snow-white blankets…’ Unquote.’

‘Bunch of losers!’ squeaked Baby Bear.

'That's what I've been trying to tell everyone,' snapped the dwarf.

The Collector snapped the book closed. ‘Everyone should be where they’re supposed to be, in the proper setting, with the proper characters, with the proper beginning, middle and end.'

No sooner had The Collector closed the book, than Mummy Bear did a very odd thing indeed; she suddenly staggered over to one of the chairs over by the table and collapsed, in a useless, craggy, quivering heap. Throwing her head back, she began to moan and howl in anguish, her mouth flung open and her eyes rolling.

‘Oh, it’s just so terrible!’ she wailed, huge, drizzling tears spurting and gushing from her eyes.

Cynthia stared, fascinated, unable to move, faced with the sight of a grizzly bear sitting and bawling its eyes out in a fractured, rickety chair inside an insect-infested cabin. Not for the first time, she wondered if maybe she had caught the flu after all and was shivering under the covers of her bed, suffering from some awful dream.

Daddy Bear and Baby Bear padded quickly to her side, alarmed at this sudden outburst of distress. Daddy Bear tried to place a comforting paw on her shoulder, but she shoved him violently away.

‘What on earth’s the matter, dear?’ he asked, concerned.

‘Don’t ask me what the matter is!’ she shrieked at him. ‘Just looking at that pretty little cottage with the seven little beds made me realise what a tip we’re living in!’

Daddy Bear looked around, casually sniffing. ‘It’s not that bad,’ he commented.

‘Not that bad?’ screamed Mummy Bear. ‘Are you blind, or just plain mad?’

‘I’m neither, dear,’ protested Daddy Bear. ‘Just tell me what it is that you think needs doing?’

‘I want some snow-white sheets and some snow-white curtains for a start!’ she screeched, blowing the fur back from his face.

Cynthia swiftly ushered The Collector into an opposite corner. He squatted on his knees, watching her, his green eyes razor sharp. From the other side of the cabin, there came the sound of a loud crash! When Cynthia and The Collector both turned in that direction, they saw that Mummy Bear had smashed a vase over Daddy Bear’s head.

‘Okay,’ said Cynthia. ‘Why don’t we just grab the dwarf and get out of here, before this gets any worse?’

‘And take him where?' he frowned.

‘Back to where he's from,' she hissed. 'You must know how to get there! You found your way into my kitchen alright. Why can't you just shunt through another wall and reappear in Snow White's cottage?'

He waved a dismissive hand. 'Girl, you know nothing about me,' he muttered.


This infuriated her. ‘Now listen, Mr Bad-Hair-Day,’ she told him. ‘You’re the one who came pushing and shoving his way through the kitchen wall of my house first thing in the morning and kidnapped me…You’re the one with that stupid clipboard that tells you everything and anything you need to know…You’re the one who can fire stuff from his fingers and send grizzly bears flying…You work something out!’

The Collector ingored this outburst, looking over his shoulder at the commotion going on behind him. ‘Okay,’ he said, turning back to Cynthia. ‘We grab Grumpy and pull him out of here. But we have to be careful when we do.’

‘Why?'

The Collector drew her closer and lowered his voice. ‘It could be dangerous,' he said. ‘If we take him, the other three are liable to follow us, then they’ll be in the wrong place too, and another setting will have a surplus of characters that aren’t needed or wanted.’

‘Why can’t we have a snow-white cloth on our table?’ cried Mummy Bear from the other side of the cabin.

‘Getting him out of here without them seeing him, isn’t a problem,’ Cynthia said. ‘Mummy Bear’s lost the plot and is throwing a wobbly, so that should create a distraction. I’ll grab Grumpy and you just be ready to fling us somewhere else.’

‘What happens then?’ The Collector wanted to know.

‘I’ll figure something out,’ Cynthia told him.

The Collector looked at her for a long moment. 'Agreed!’ he eventually said, shaking her hand. Cynthia stared at his eyes for a second, mesmerized, then stepped away towards Grumpy, but slowly, lest the bears spot her.

‘We haven’t even got any decent furniture!’ Mummy Bear wailed. ‘It’s all scratched to bits!’

Cynthia edged ever closer towards Grumpy, feeling as if she should just bolt for the door and dash from the cabin. But that would mean running through dark, wintry, woods that were overrun with bears and other unfamiliar creatures; she imagined herself stumbling and toppling and falling, looking wildly around while terrible, guttural sounds of howling and growling loomed in on her from the nearby trees. She imagined herself being crunched and crushed like a tasty piece of chocolate or a hard-boiled sweet, and that was something she could do without.

Her only hope of getting home and making it back in one piece rested solely on her trying to help The Collector; not shouting at him or arguing with him or struggling with him. If she failed to do that, then she would be stuck here forever and never see her mum or go back to school or shop for clothes or shoes or listen to her favourite CD’s ever again.

She gently touched the dwarf’s arm and he jumped. When he turned to stare at her, his eyes were globular balls of panic and his odd, rosy face was pasty with fright.

Cynthia held a finger to her lips, her own eyes wide and alarmed. ‘Shhh,’ she told him. ‘We need to get out of here.’

His eyes darted over towards the three bears, seeming to swell in his head. Cynthia was afraid that if anything else happened, the dwarf would suddenly explode and go off like an unstable firework, his eyes popping out and his stout body banging and fizzing against the rafters of the cobwebbed ceiling; something that would be a lot worse than throwing a wobbly.

‘Get me out of here?’ whimpered the dwarf. ‘How can you possibly do that?’

‘Do you need to pack anything?’ Cynthia asked him, pulling him closer and whispering into his ear.

‘No,’ answered Grumpy. ‘There’s only my mining bag, over there by the table.’

‘Look, we’re going to try to take you back where you belong,’ Cynthia told him. ‘But we need to do it quickly and quietly so they don’t see us. Can you do that?’

‘Of course,’ replied the dwarf, looking offended. ‘Do I look retarded?’

‘No,’ answered Cynthia. ‘Just Grumpy.’

The dwarf gave her a sour look and began tiptoeing over to where his mining bag lay, shoved and bunched up against one of the table legs. The nearer he got to the bag, the more Cynthia held her breath. His boots creaked across the floorboards, causing The Collector and Cynthia to look nervously at each other. When he reached the bag, he bent down to pick it up, moving very slowly and not making any sudden movements.

Mummy Bear was still wailing her head off with her family around her, when Grumpy pulled his bag up bit-by-bit and raised it to his shoulder little-by-little and started turning around inch-by-inch, his eyes screwed shut and his face drawn with the humungous effort it took to remain quiet. Cynthia turned towards The Collector and offered him a triumphant thumbs-up.

‘Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to work we go!’ Grumpy suddenly started singing at the top of his voice. He straightened up and flung his arms out wide and starting marching around the kitchen table.

Cynthia threw herself at the dwarf, clamping a hand over his mouth and sending them both tumbling and sprawling across the mucky floorboards. They hit the floor hard, skidding into the table and sending one of the chairs toppling loudly over. Grumpy bucked and kicked beneath her like a fat fish pulled out of water, his nose snorting and wet above the palm of her hand.

‘Mmmmppphhhh!’ he grunted, staring up at her with wide, malicious eyes.

‘Shut up, lamebrain!’ she hissed down at him, trying to get up and shooting a glance up at The Three Bears.

But it was too late. Cynthia looked fearfully up from her position on the floor, just in time to witness The Three Bears glaring down at them with a terrible, deplorable fire burning inside their eyes that made Cynthia feel quite sick and faint in her heart.

‘What were they doing?’ squeaked Baby Bear, pointing to where they both knelt, their faces slack with terror.

Cynthia could feel Grumpy quivering against her like a blancmange plonked down on a plate. She turned to The Collector for help, and was relieved to see his untidy tresses starting to smoke and curl in discontinuous puffs and waves.

‘You’re not leaving, are ya?’ Mummy Bear snarled, towering over Grumpy like a vast slab of fuzzy fury, her nose wrinkling and her jaws dripping and foaming with saliva.

‘I think he is!’ fumed Daddy Bear, shoving his way forward, his fur bristling.

‘He owes us for food and lodging!’ roared Mummy Bear.

‘And he ate all my porridge!’ screamed Baby Bear.

‘Grab him!’ ordered Mummy Bear. ‘Find out where him and his mates got those curtains from!’

Cynthia sprang to her feet, pulling the dwarf with her. Grumpy had just enough time to snatch up his hat, which had fallen off his head when Cynthia slammed him to the ground, before Daddy Bear landed right on the spot where he’d just been, gashing out chunks of floorboards with his claws and smashing the breakfast table to bits. Cynthia screamed in terror and Grumpy shouted in alarm as they both sprinted towards the other side of the cabin.

‘RUN!’ bellowed The Collector, holding out his hand for Cynthia to grab, his hair spiking and frizzing all over the place. The heady, pungent smell of subway trains was back.

Mummy Bear was the fastest, sailing across the room in vast, hurdling bounds, her jaws snapping and her eyes blazing with murder. She saw Cynthia grab The Collector’s hand and pull Grumpy along with her and she took one vast, final jump, stretching out and soaring across the space between them, just managing to snag Grumpy’s tunic, before all three crinkled in on themselves like bunched up paper and were sucked through the far wall.

Mummy Bear hit the wall where they’d just been, snarling in anger and confusion. Daddy Bear and Baby Bear collided straight into her back moments later, and all three of them starting spitting and snarling and fighting with each other.

‘STOP!’ roared Daddy Bear, finally pulling himself free and staring at the blank wall where Cynthia, Grumpy and The Collector had vanished. ‘Where’d they go?’

‘My curtains,’ wailed Mummy Bear, wide and fat tears tipping down from her eyes and saturating the rug.


5.


As they flew, twisting and turning and tumbling through a gushing, chaotic whirlpool of sound and images, Cynthia held on as tight as she could to Grumpy’s hand. All around her she could hear screaming and wailing as everything shrunk to the size of a pin. Grumpy was screaming beside her, his face and hat flapping from the force and pressure of the vortex they were in. Strange faces appeared, pressing in and staring at them and Cynthia imagined that this was what clothes must feel like as they were bashed and thrown about inside a tumble-dryer.

Then, as before, something rushed towards them and they were tumbling out of a vivid, blue sky filled with warmth and the sounds of summer.

Cynthia found herself kneeling amongst flowers with damp grass on her palms and knees and the cheerful sound of birds singing all around her. She heard the sound of a splash behind her and turned around, just in time to see Grumpy landing in a shallow river. The Collector was standing amongst some Golden Rod and what looked like a bed of Red Clover, brushing off his striped trousers and looking slightly baffled.

‘I don’t think I’ll ever get used to travelling like that,’ Cynthia told him.

‘Stop complaining,'said The Collector. ‘I do it all the time.'

‘How do you stop from throwing up?’ she asked him, trying to get to her feet even though her head was spinning.

‘Shut your eyes next time,’ he replied, pulling her up. ‘It’s even worse when you have to do multi-cyclonic, inter-dimensional gale riding.

‘What?’ she asked, puzzled.

‘We’ll try it sometime,’ he replied sardonically. ‘As a special treat.’

‘No, thanks,’ Cynthia said. ‘Not if it’s anything like what we’ve just gone through.’

‘I’m wet!’ whined Grumpy, standing up in the water, covered to his neck. He raised his hands, slapping them petulantly back down into the water. ‘I’m wet and dizzy and miserable and I don’t like it here!’

‘Yeah, well, tough banana,’ Cynthia said, standing on the bank and looking down at him. ‘Join the club, mate.’

‘And I don’t like you,’ he shouted, flicking splashes of water towards where Cynthia stood. ‘And I don’t like your friend, either!’

‘He doesn’t like you,’ Cynthia told The Collector, turning to face him.

‘Tell him to stop his flapping,’ replied The Collector absently, looking around. ‘

Cynthia frowned, walking over to where he stood. ‘Where are we?’ she inquired.

The Collector chewed his lip, peering at the surrounding woods and countryside. ‘I haven’t got the foggiest idea,’ he answered.

‘What?’ Cynthia gasped. ‘That’s no good!’

‘My most sincere apologies,’ The Collector replied sarcastically.

‘You must have some idea,’ she insisted. ‘Even a small idea is better than a foggiest idea. Foggiest ideas are the worst kind. They’re even worse than murky ideas or shadowy ideas or even cloudy ideas.’

‘I hate the both of you!’ protested Grumpy, from his position in the water.

‘I don’t plot destinations, I merely jumped us out of the bears’ cabin quickly.‘ said The Collector. ‘I can only go where I’m needed, and because of that there’s no way of planning or knowing where we’ll go to.’

Cynthia prodded him with her finger. ‘Well, you’d better find out where we are, fast,’ she scolded. ‘I’ve had just about enough of this!’

‘I’ve had just about enough of the both of you!’ piped up Grumpy.

The Collector began pacing up and down, hands behind his back, thinking hard and fast. As he walked, his satchel bumped against his hip and his long coat swished out behind him, reminding Cynthia of those really brainy professors that stalked down university corridors in books and films.

At last he stopped, whirling around to face Cynthia. ‘Got it,' he announced. ‘I know what to do!’

He produced his clipboard from his satchel and began scribbling down onto a sheet of paper with his quill. As he worked, his brow knitted together and he began mumbling to himself, his green eyes fluttering over the lines he wrote.

‘Now, if we calculate overall normal velocity with mass and momentum conversion mixed with dynamics from turnover curve,’ he muttered, ‘we should be able to work out where we are.’

‘Sounds complicated,’ Cynthia told him.

The Collector stopped writing, peering at Cynthia over his clipboard. ‘I thought you were supposed to be clever,' he said.

Cynthia turned away, walking towards Grumpy. ‘Just wait until I get my hands on that supply teacher,’ she said under her breath.

‘Could somebody help me out of here?’ the dwarf begged, looking angry and sulky and wet.

‘Okay, hold your horses,’ replied Cynthia, sliding precariously down the bank of the river to help him. As she slid, a cluster of horrible weeds and plants clutched and clawed at her ankles.

Just then, something huge erupted from the water, with thorny gills and silver scales and two heads and two, huge, globular eyes that popped out from both heads on a stalk.

Grumpy screamed and thrashed back, trying to escape from its nipping, shuddering teeth. Cynthia reared back, squealing in distress as the monstrous fish butted Grumpy in the chest and pulled him under in a churning explosion of water. Cynthia felt The Collector brush hurriedly past her as he stood on the edge of the stream, his hands planted firmly and calmly on his hips. ‘Oh, I know where we are,’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s a Bibsi Fish!’

‘Help him!’ screamed Cynthia.

‘Madtri, perponic retzi!’ intoned The Collector in a firm and strict voice. ‘Madtri, perponic retzi!’

‘What’re you doing?’ babbled Cynthia, staring at the place where Grumpy had just been. ‘You’ve got to help him!’

‘I’m telling it to let him go,’ replied The Collector.

‘Yeah, well I think there’s a bit of a language problem!’ cried Cynthia.

The Collector remained unruffled as he stooped down and tore out one of the weeds that had tangled itself around Cynthia’s ankles. Cynthia watched, petrified for Grumpy’s life, as The Collector stuck one corner of it in his mouth and began to blow. A high-pitched, agreeable sound filled the air with a mesmerising, hypnotic power that seemed to slow the beat of Cynthia’s heart and stop the birds singing in the trees.

Abruptly, the grotesque fish resurfaced, bringing a sodden and gasping Grumpy with it, throwing out droplets of water and bobbing and balancing on its silvery tail. Its black eyes waggled about like teasing fingers, glistening horribly as it tried to locate the source of the sound that The Collector was making. When it spotted The Collector, it became rigid, hovering on its stalk and staring at him.

‘Madtri, perponic retzi,’ The Collector repeated gently. ‘Tusomi rafiza congragi teti.’

The fish contemplated The Collector for another few seconds, its eyes wavering and its body quivering, and then it flipped backwards in a shiny curve and disappeared beneath the surface of the water, leaving Grumpy coughing and spitting out water.

‘What just happened?’ asked Cynthia, staring up at The Collector, fascinated.

‘It was kissing him,’ explained The Collector, wading through the water to collect Grumpy. ‘I asked it to stop. It’s one of the most affectionate creatures that swim these streams.’

‘Yeah, well it wasn’t my idea of a dream date!’ Grumpy spat. ‘The awful thing tried to attach itself to my face!’

‘Well, count yourself lucky, my little friend,’ The Collector told him, pulling him up out of the water. ‘If she had liked you, she would’ve simply kissed you to death.’

‘Pardon me if I’m not gushing with gratitude!’ Grumpy shouted back.

‘You said you know where we are,’ Cynthia reminded him. ‘So, where are we?’

‘We need to find a small cottage that should be around here somewhere,’ he replied, glancing around.

‘What’s inside the cottage?’ Cynthia wanted to know.

‘Two extremely ugly sisters, with no home help,’ he told her.

‘Couldn’t have been uglier than that horrible fish just now,’ grumbled Grumpy as he stood there, drenched and dripping.

The Collector turned to look at the dwarf. ‘My little friend, you’re sadly mistaken,’ he told him, his eyes glinting joyfully. ‘Just wait until you see them.’


6.

They set off in no fixed direction, but The Collector instructed them to keep their eyes peeled for any signs of a cottage anywhere. As they walked, Grumpy dried off under the warm sun but constantly complained about how tired he was and how hungry he was and how miserable he was. Cynthia and The Collector chose to ignore him and as they walked through fields and wooded areas, Cynthia put her face up to the sky and actually felt good. This place seemed a lot better than the land where the three bears had lived, with the strange animal noises coming from the snow-drenched woods.

Here, it was very pleasant indeed, with lovely plants and trees such as Western Hemlocks, European Larch, Elder and Oak. Off to one side, Cynthia could also see mountains that seemed to scrape the surface of the clouds that ran along the rim of a sapphire horizon and birds that resembled eagles rode and soared in the distance. There were also none of the white streaks in the sky often left by planes, and again Cynthia wondered just where it was that she’d been brought to. Everything was incredibly beautiful, and she wished that she’d brought her mobile phone with her so that she could’ve taken photographs to show Mum when she eventually returned home.

Eventually they skirted a small hill and came to a clearing with a cottage nestled amongst some Silver Birch with fungi, moss and lichens encrusted along the walls and gray smoke curling from its chimney. The Collector raised his hand to stop them, and they hunkered down in the bushes, peering down at the dwelling like an Indian scout party. From somewhere inside the surrounding trees Cynthia heard the call of a bird that sounded like a Willow Warbler.

‘This looks like the place,’ whispered The Collector.

‘Why are we whispering?’ Cynthia wanted to know.

‘Because we’re idiots!’ replied Grumpy.

‘Cease your stupid comments,’ replied The Collector testily. ‘The reason why we’re being so quiet is because the two women currently living inside that deceptively peaceful cottage are quite hurtful and vile individuals, who have no respect and regard for any other living thing apart from themselves.’

‘Wow,’ replied Cynthia. ‘You take me to the loveliest places. Just the sort of people I enjoy popping over to see for a visit and a chat.’

The Collector slowly stood up, reaching into his satchel and rummaging around for a minute. Cynthia decided to stand up with him, casting a nervous look all around her, even though the little clearing was quite picturesque. Grumpy stayed where he was, mumbling away wretchedly to himself.

Suddenly, from inside the cottage, from an open window with curtains fluttering in the summer breeze came the most distressing, spine-chilling sound that Cynthia had ever heard.

‘CINDERS!’ screeched an appalling voice. ‘CINDERELLA!’

‘Oh, my,’ muttered Cynthia, shooting The Collector an aggrieved look. ‘Sounds like an air raid siren gone wrong.’

The Collector continued fidgeting around in his satchel, pulling out a handful of what looked like jewels and necklaces. They gleamed dully in the sunlight, throwing off glittery flecks of colour and light. The Collector closed his satchel and held them out, watching them dangle and twist and twirl in his hands.

‘What’re those for?’ Cynthia asked him.

The Collector smiled grimly. ‘Those are charms designed to mesmerize the two women in that cottage,’ he stated. ‘Without them, we’d be lost.’

‘You’re gonna give that jewellery to the two women in there?’ Cynthia asked incredulously, pointing towards the cottage.

‘That's right,’ The Collector said.

‘They look pretty cheap,’ Cynthia declared, watching the trinkets trickling through his fingers like water. ‘They’re not gonna be impressed.’

The Collector’s eyes sparkled, looking markedly wealthier and more captivating than the beads and necklaces he was holding. ‘To the likes of you and me, this stuff is quite tasteless,’ he told her. ‘But to the two hags we’re about to meet, they will appear as priceless works of art that will beguile and entice them.’

‘Really?’ asked Cynthia, dubiously.

‘Yes, really,’ The Collector avowed. ‘The creatures living in that cottage are the most petty things you will ever meet and are easily swayed and wooed over with even the most blandest of trinkets.’

‘You mean they’re a pair of Chavs,’ added Cynthia.

The Collector frowned, looking puzzled. ‘What does that mean?’ he inquired.

‘Oh, they’re a type of person that are amazed by cheap objects. Stuff like teddy bear pendants and fake sovereign rings.’

‘Intriguing,’ commented The Collector, hefting the jewellery in the palm of his hand and walking towards the cottage. ‘It seems all the different worlds have a lot in common.’ He stopped halfway, peering at Cynthia and Grumpy over his shoulder. ‘Are we ready?’ he asked them.

Cynthia looked down at Grumpy, who was now sitting on the grass with his arms folded securely across his chest and his forehead creased in irritation.

‘Are you gonna sit there all day?’ Cynthia asked him.

‘Got no other plans!’ he grumbled.

‘Are you getting up or not?’ Cynthia asked, prodding him with her foot.

‘Not!’ came the reply.

‘Come on, Mr. Sulky Features,’ Cynthia said. ‘You might as well come with us. Who knows, it might set us on the path to finding your six mates.’

Grumpy remained where he was for a moment longer, staring balefully at a tree in front of him, his bottom lip shoved out like a diving board, arms resolutely crossed. Cynthia stood above him, offering her hand to help him to his feet. By the cottage, The Collector cleared his throat loudly, looking at them both expectantly. Through the open window came the sound of braying laughter that sounded more like agitated donkeys than the sound of women.

‘Do we really have to go in there?’ asked Grumpy, glowering.

‘We really do,’ Cynthia confirmed.

For a split second, his face cleared, becoming timid and bewildered. ‘But I’m scared,’ he admitted, looking up at Cynthia. ‘Just listen to that noise.’

Cynthia smiled down at him. ‘Come on,’ she assured him. ‘I’ll hold your hand.’

Reluctantly, Grumpy allowed himself to be pulled up and Cynthia smiled, thinking that she was growing fond of the little fellow. After all, it wasn’t his fault that he was so sulky and testy. Asking Grumpy not to be grumpy would be like instructing a spider not to devour a juicy bluebottle snared in its web, or like ordering an anaconda not to crush and squeeze the life out of its captured prey.

She thought of the Bibsi Fish, back in the stream, puckering up and trying to plant a kiss on the dwarf’s bulging cheeks and nose, and she giggled.

‘What’s so funny?’ snarled Grumpy.

‘Just the thought of you being kissed to death,’ Cynthia replied, grinning.

Grumpy was about to say something in reply, when The Collector placed his palm onto the surface of the front door of the cottage and pushed gently. The door creaked open, showing a welcome mat on the threshold and a dusky interior. Cynthia and Grumpy sprinted across the clearing, catching up with him just as he stepped gingerly over the doorsill, holding the inexpensive jewellery out in front of him.


7.


‘Yoo-hoo!’ he called out cheerily. ‘Are there any ladies in the house?’

Something scurried and shifted within the darkness, moving with cautious haste, making Cynthia think of rats and cockroaches and ugly, threatening, sinister things that slithered and crawled and spread disease. This was followed by dreadful, chuckling and cackling sounds that sounded like dry wood being snapped into pieces.

The Collector disappeared into the shadows and Cynthia and Grumpy hurried to come catch up, not keen to see what had made the noises inside the cottage, but also not ready to be left behind by themselves. As they entered through a small archway into the main part of the dwelling, Cynthia could see the leftovers of a smouldering fire with ashes speckled all over a dusty hearth. Alongside the remains of the fire, a few bowls of stale food were overturned and covered with fur and crawling with what looked like maggots.

As Cynthia stared at the disgusting disarray of filth and fungus-ridden food, three shapes nipped across the room in front of her eyes, followed by that same, abysmal, giggling sound. Cynthia turned and looked at Grumpy, who was quivering with fear and looking back at her with timid eyes. She shuffled forward in the dim interior, pulling Grumpy with her and grabbing hold of The Collector’s arm for safety. The Collector was peering straight ahead, his face friendly and alert and his green eyes searching the gloom, holding the fistful of trinkets out in front of him and jiggling them up and down.

‘Hell-lo!’ he cooed. ‘Come on, girls, don’t be shy!’

When there was still no reply from within the darkness, The Collector surged brazenly forward and reached out with his free hand, snatching at the curtains across the room and ripping them violently away from the window, flooding the room with sunlight and revealing a foul and poky kitchen with rumpled walls and greasy tiles.

There, in the middle of the kitchen, standing on a scruffy rug speckled with dirt and cooking fat, stood three of the most revolting creatures that Cynthia had ever clapped eyes on. They wore women’s dresses and women’s earrings and carried women’s handbags, but that was where the likeness ended and Cynthia had to avert her eyes from the queasy, dreadful sight of them before she was sick.

‘Don’t look away from them,’ whispered The Collector in her ear. ‘We have to make-believe we’re captivated by their charm and beauty.’

‘I can’t!’ Cynthia moaned softly.

‘Try!’ hissed The Collector.

Cynthia forced herself to look at the three creatures again, feeling her eyeballs sticking to their sockets like glue and her head creaking like an ancient door being forced open. When she had managed to rotate her head all the way around, she saw that all three of them were looking at her and grinning through lips that were split and hairy and covered with sores.

‘Oooohhhh, she’s shy!’ one of them cackled, showing a mouthful of broken teeth and a purple tongue. It began to prance around the room, throwing its flabby arms out, dressed in a pink tutu and tights and hobnail boots.

The second one joined in, hurling itself towards The Collector with its arms flung wide, wearing a sequined dress and a red feather boa. It landed on one foot, striking a pose and wriggling a wart-covered tongue at him. ‘Give us a kiss for me birthday!’ it squealed.

The third one flounced around on the rug as if it were at a Paris fashion show, hands on hips and its boots clomping up dirt and dust, eyeing up the competition from the other two. It wore a ball gown and matching scarf and had hairs sprouting from the nostrils of its hooked nose like bristles from a toothbrush. This one was perhaps the most ugly of the three and Cynthia turned away, feeling Grumpy trembling beside her with nausea and fear.

‘My, don’t you look good!’ it warbled at the other two.

‘You always say the right things!’ screeched the one beside The Collector.

‘Oh, stop, you’re making me blush!’ giggled the third one in reply, still prancing around the room.

Just then, to Cynthia’s absolute horror, all three of the ugly sisters ran towards each other, colliding and falling and rolling around on the rug in an insane fit of hideous, guffawing laughter. The Collector watched them for a moment with a blank expression on his face, the fake jewellery limp in his hands and his green eyes dancing in the firelight. Then he began to slowly approach them and as he did he began to swing the beads and trinkets from side to side, slowly at first, but gradually increasing the momentum.

‘Ladies,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve brought something for you.’

All three of the hags stopped what they were doing and stared up at The Collector, seemingly spellbound by the sight of the jewellery hanging from his hand. They stared at the beads and the pearls and the brooches for a moment longer, and then all three began to strut around the floor, breaking into song.

‘Isn’t it a crime to look so fine!’ wailed the first ugly sister.

‘Especially with looks like yours and mine!’ joined in the second ugly sister.

‘Isn’t it a treat to look so neat!’ warbled the third ugly sister.

‘With all the men a-swooning at your feet!’ they all sang at once and fell about laughing like lunatic hyenas, grabbing and clutching at each other with jagged, ferocious nails.

‘You can’t help your beauty, it’s preordained!’ screeched the first ugly sister to the second one.

‘Your crimson lips, your raven mane!’ screamed the second ugly sister to the third one.

‘I hear that a lot, but thanks all the same!’ squealed the third ugly sister in reply.

Then, to Cynthia’s distress, all three began to hop and dance and perform a horrifying jig, kicking up the fungus and maggot-ridden bowls into the air and spraying ashes and embers from the fire.

‘Isn’t it a bind to look so refined!’ yelped one.

‘Faces like ours are simply divine!’ howled another.

‘Isn’t it funny to look so sunny,’ screamed the third. ‘With men taking you shopping and spending their money!’

‘You light up the room like a zinc-carbon battery,’ sang the third ugly sister to the first one.

‘Your face should be hung in a fancy, posh gallery!’ sang the second ugly sister to the first one.

‘I hear that a lot, but thanks for the flattery!’ replied the first ugly sister to the other two.

The Collector loudly cleared his throat, and the ugly sisters suddenly stopped and looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. He slowly bent on one knee, frantically motioning for Cynthia and Grumpy to do the same thing. Then he bowed his head, still holding out the inexpensive jewellery, offering it to the three atrocious hags as they looked at him suspiciously. Cynthia swiftly knelt, pulling Grumpy down with her, not sure what was going on and watching The Collector closely.

‘I give myself over to your breathtaking beauty,’ he announced. ‘And may I offer these riches as a token towards your eternal magnetism.’

The first ugly sister drifted over, moving like something slow and awful and horrible and reminding Cynthia of spilled oil. It reached out with a crusted palm with hairs growing from it and grabbed a handful of beads from The Collector’s fingers, making a creaking, clucking noise as it did, sounding like a chicken being strangled.

The second ugly sister rambled over, looking haggard and dry and ancient. It shoved the first one out of the way, digging its claws into the pink tutu and shredding the material like tissue paper, eager to get its own share of the treasure that The Collector was offering them. Cynthia watched as they scrapped and tussled, gouging at each other and screeching in their dire voices. That was when the third one came scurrying over and snatched the rest of the jewellery from The Collector’s palms, looking jubilant and disgusting and beastly.

‘Aha!’ it screamed. ‘Mine, all mine!’

‘Hang on,’ said the first ugly sister, pulling away from fighting the second one. ‘Who the heck are you?’

‘I beg your pardon!’ replied the third ugly sister.

‘Yeah,’ joined in the second ugly sister. ‘Where on earth did you come from?’

The third ugly sister clasped the trinkets proudly to her chest, standing upright and puffing out her cheeks. ‘I live here,’ she announced.

The first ugly sister launched herself at the third ugly sister, pulling at her scarf and trying to throttle her with it in a most brutal and savage manner. Cynthia looked on in amazement as The Collector watched everything through calm eyes, his face emotionless, as the fetid beasts clawed and gouged at each other.

‘Well, excuse me all the way to the manicurists, but you do not live here!’ screamed the first ugly sister. ‘There’s been two of us living here for years and we would know if there was supposed to be three of us!’

The second ugly sister came marching over and hit the third ugly sister square in the jaw, knocking her flat on her rump and very nearly into the fire.

‘I knew when we first got out of bed this morning, there was something wrong!’ she howled down at her. ‘Everything just seemed out of place!’

The ugly sister on her backside flitted backwards like a crab about to be stomped on by a particularly nasty and vindictive foot. Her back hit the fireplace and she leapt forward, bawling in sudden distress as she burnt her skin and bony shoulder blades. The other two pointed at her and shrieked with laughter. Cynthia had never seen anything like it, and she wondered again if this whole affair were just some peculiar, manic dream caused by the flu.

‘What do you mean by that little comment?’ yelled the burnt ugly sister, springing to her feet like some awful Jack-In-Box. ‘There’s nothing out of place here that’s got anything to do with me!’

The second ugly sister looked her up and down, her nose wrinkling as if she’d just smelled something foul and stinking. ‘Well, just look at the state of you,’ she sniffed. ‘I’m not being funny, dear, but with looks like yours, you could haunt houses for a living.’

‘Well, I’ve never been so insulted!’ replied the third ugly sister, readjusting her scarf.

The first ugly sister pranced around her, lightly drawing one long, barbed nail across her spotty, riddled cheek. ‘Stick around, dear,’ she crooned. ‘She’s just getting warmed up.’

‘And as for that dress!’ continued the second ugly sister, smirking a slimy smile that reminded Cynthia of a shark’s grin. ‘They look like somebody’s used curtains!’

‘I bet it’s that wretched girl’s fault,’ screeched the first ugly sister, suddenly looking around the cottage. ‘Where is she anyway?’

Cynthia grew worried. ‘Who’re they talking about?’ she asked The Collector in a hoarse whisper. ‘Do they mean me?’

’CINDERS!’ bawled the second ugly sister, cupping her hands to her vile mouth and pushing away from the other two. It clomped over to the darkest corner of the room, twirling the feather boa and puffing up dust and dirt with its boots.

’CINDERELLA!’ it bawled, peering into the shadows.

The first ugly sister began to join in, picking up one of the bowls of decomposed food and holding it out towards the depressing, unhappy shadows, jiggling it up and down and scooping some out with her finger. She stuck it in her mouth, licking a concoction of maggots and mould from the tip as if it were some scrumptious treat.

’Cinder-rella,’ she crooned. ’Come out, come out wherever you are. Here’s your lovely dinner!’

’If you’re talking about that scruffy, bedraggled girl who was mopping the floor earlier, she disappeared a little while ago,’ piped up the third ugly sister.

’Disappeared?’ echoed the second ugly sister. ’Disappeared where? Scullery maids do not disappear, they scrub and clean and cook and sweep, they do not disappear!’

‘Well, when I last saw her, she was sleeping by the fire as normal,’ retorted the first ugly sister in a sulky tone. ‘Useless girl that she is!’

The third ugly sister lunged forward, her bushy eyebrows knitting together furiously and her hairy nostrils blowing out steam.

‘Well, I’m telling you that I saw her disappear,’ she snapped. ‘She said something about going to a castle where everyone was asleep and there was a promise of a prince on a horse. She said that, as far as she was concerned, her days of scraping her knees on a stone floor and wearing rags were over, and then she left with a weird looking fellow who grabbed her hand and pulled her through the wall.’

‘What do you mean, ‘weird fellow’?’ demanded the first ugly sister.

‘The same ‘weird fellow’ who brought me here and told me I could start a new life,’ snapped the third sister.

‘I think you’ll have to be more specific than that,’ spoke up Cynthia. ’What did he look like?’

’He looked like him!’ declared the third ugly sister, coming forward and pointing directly at The Collector.

At the mention of this, Cynthia looked at The Collector, who looked momentarily baffled. He turned and gave a concerned look to both Cynthia and Grumpy, pursing his lips in thought.

’Well?’ demanded Cynthia.

’Sounds like the work of a Disperser,’ he replied in a shaky voice. ‘But that’s impossible!’

’A what?’ she enquired.

’A Disperser,’ he repeated. ’It means to break things up, to divide things, to split things…’

’I know what it means,’ said Cynthia. ’But what does it have to do with all this?’

The Collector gently pulled Cynthia to one side as the three ugly sisters stood and watched them with mean, despicable eyes, making Cynthia feel like an insect about to be squished.

’A Disperser is the opposite of what we do,’ he quietly told Cynthia. ’They were our sworn enemies, but there shouldn’t be any of them left. They were all killed off during the Great War of Ollonworn.’

’Ollonworn?’ repeated Cynthia. ’Where’s that?’

’It’s where I’m from,’ replied The Collector. ’There were two races of people living in Ollonworn. The Collectors and The Dispersers, and we waged war against each other for three years without stopping, each race trying to destroy the other.’

’But, why?’ asked Cynthia.

’The Dispersers were a harsh, insane race, spreading chaos and destroying order and regularity wherever they travelled,’ said The Collector. ’It was their sole reason for living. They had to be stopped, and we were the only ones who could do it, and so we did, wiping them all out. We won the war.’

’Wow,’ exclaimed Cynthia. ’Seems pretty extreme. You mean you wiped out a whole race of people, just because they did the opposite of what you did?’

’It wasn’t that simple,’ said The Collector. ’You don’t understand the sheer evil that was involved. They started the war against us. The Dispersers were merciless wherever they went, damaging whole cultures and eradicating complete histories from the lives of characters unfortunate enough to be visited by them. They couldn’t stand the fact that we stood for the reverse of everything they tried to do.’

‘Well, if what that ugly sister is telling you is true,’ Cynthia said. ‘It looks like you missed one of them.’

‘That’s impossible,’ mused The Collector. ‘They’re all dead.’

‘Then why is everything all wrong?’ Cynthia asked. ‘If one of these Dispersers is running around, that would explain a lot.’

‘It certainly would,’ mused The Collector.

’Is that what happened to you?’ Cynthia asked Grumpy. ’Did somebody come and snatch you from the other six dwarfs?’

’Dunno,’ replied Grumpy, in an odd, lethargic voice. ‘ I was asleep an‘ then woke up in the that bear place.’

‘Anyway, whatever happened,‘ Cynthia said brightly, turning to The Collector. ‘You don’t need me anymore. You know what the problem is and how to fix it. All you have to do is find him and make him stop and then everything will be back the way it should.’

The Collector slowly shook his head, passing Cynthia a sad, gloomy look. She felt her heart starting to beat rapidly in her chest, knowing that he was about to pass on bad news.

‘Sorry,’ he told her. ‘It doesn’t work that way. Until we know what this person looks like and if he is a Disperser, you must help me stop him. You’re the only person who can. You’re Little Miss Clever Clogs and you can set everything to rights, put things together again, collate all the contrary components, fuse all the elements of…’

‘Will you stop calling me that!’ Cynthia demanded, her face growing hot and making the ugly sisters laugh. ‘’It’s a case of mistaken identity! It’s a ludicrous name made up by a ridiculous supply teacher! My name’s Cynthia! Cynthia Lincoln!’

The Collector leaned in towards her, his green eyes glistening and reflecting the dull fire by the hearth and his face suddenly filled with a luminosity that Cynthia had never seen before. She backed away, slightly in wonderment at such a glow. ‘I know what your name is,’ he said to her. ‘But you are also Little Miss Clever Clogs, despite what that ridiculous man at your place of learning might or might not have called you. It’s been written that you would be called here to do this. It’s your destiny.’

’What?’ she gasped.

‘You are part of a privileged group of people from your world chosen to come to this one,’ added The Collector in a low voice. ‘There have only been two before you.’

’You mean, you’ve pulled two people here before me?’ asked Cynthia, hardly able to believe it. ’Who were they?’

’They were two brothers,’ said The Collector. ’But enough talking. We’ll have to discuss it some other time. We can’t say to much in front of these harpies.‘

‘Who’s he calling a harpy?’ demanded the first ugly sister.

‘Well, it wasn’t me, that’s for sure,’ replied the second ugly sister.

‘Oh, no?’ asked the third ugly sister. ‘Have you taken a look at yourself!’

‘I can’t believe Cinderella’s run off with some strange man,’ whined the first ugly sister, stomping around the cottage and kicking bits of furniture.

‘Ungrateful girl!’ exclaimed the second ugly sister.

‘I don’t know,’ sighed the first ugly sister. ‘You give them everything, and what do they do at the first hint of something bigger and better?’

‘They go and leave you in the lurch!’ answered the second ugly sister.

The second ugly sister suddenly turned to the third ugly sister, looking her up and down again, her mouth working soundlessly, as if she were having trouble trying to digest something that hadn’t quite slid down her gullet properly. Cynthia decided that she didn’t want to be here anymore, regardless of what The Collector said, as she’d just about had enough of this fetid cottage and the three wasters that lived here.

‘Speaking of leaving,’ the second ugly sister told the third. ‘We think you’d better go too!’

The third ugly sister wrapped her scarf around her emaciated neck, the cheeks of her face wobbling and the hairs in her nostrils quivering in indignation. ‘Where am I supposed to go?’ she enquired haughtily.

‘I don’t know, but you’re not welcome here,’ said the first ugly sister, folding her arms and decisively turning her back on her.

‘Why don’t you go off and find your own prince on a horse,’ scoffed the second ugly sister.

And then, something happened that made Cynthia remember being back at school only yesterday, with the Hillmore pupils crowding into the classroom, only to find that Mr Samuels was off with the flu and that they had a supply teacher for that lesson. The first and second ugly sister began to swarm in on the third ugly sister, moving around her in an intimidating circle with their faces contorted and their hideous necks thrust forward like hissing snakes, verbally assailing her.

’GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!’ they chanted, their faces swollen and bulbous and bulging.

The third ugly sister stood where she was for a minute, seemingly at a loss for words and looked towards The Collector for help. He merely watched the events unfolding, his face composed and set and not giving anything away as to how he might feel on the subject. The third ugly sister moved her eyes towards where Cynthia stood, a dismal, pleading look on her face and all that Cynthia could do was give a small, inadequate shrug of her shoulders, even though she began to notice that the third ugly sister’s eyes had grown large and wet with tears. Cynthia thought that it was like watching one of those wildlife documentaries on the television, where some poor animal was suffering and none of the film crew were allowed to interfere or save it.

‘GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!’

The third ugly sister darted forward and grabbed one more handful of jewellery from The Collector’s hand, her bottom lip trembling and her legs shaking. She flounced to the door with what little dignity she could muster, looking tiny and fragile and crushed.

‘Well,’ she blubbered, flinging open the door and letting in a shaft of sunlight, ‘I’ve always been one to know when I’m not wanted, so I’ll be off then.’ And with that, she departed, slamming the door shut hard enough to shake the cottage to its foundations and crack the door in two.

‘Honestly, some people!’ exclaimed the first ugly sister. ‘That one had some cheek on her!’

The second ugly sister gave a shudder. ‘Oooh, I’m not saying she was ugly, but I bet her mum used to feed her by catapult!’

Cynthia couldn’t stand it any more and strode forward, raising her hand with the palm open and bringing it down across the cheek of the second ugly sister hard enough to make everyone jump, including The Collector. Behind her, Cynthia heard Grumpy take a sharp hiss in through his teeth just as the first ugly sister began to cackle with insane laughter.

‘That’s for being self-centred, nasty and perhaps the most vindictive individual I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet!’ Cynthia shouted, tears of anger welling in her eyes.

The first ugly sister reeled back, holding her stomach and snorting bursts of laughter like a pig, her mouth open and blasting out fusty, stinking breath. It collided with the table, going cross-eyed and ripping one of its tights.

Cynthia advanced on her, boiling with fury. ’And if you don’t stop that idiotic braying, you’ll be next!’ she warned.

‘Oh, will I?’ hissed the first ugly sister, turning serious. ‘You and who’s army?’

‘I don’t need an army to deal with a bully like you,’ replied Cynthia. ‘You’re like any low-life yob that ever throws their weight around in a school playground. You’re basically a coward.’

The Collector came forward and gently laid his hand on Cynthia’s arm, standing beside her. ’There’s also the fact that my friend is not alone here,‘ he told the first ugly sister, ’That being the case, I think it might be wise not to make anyone else angry for today.‘

The two ugly sisters considered what The Collector had just said for a moment, each one twisting their lips horribly and throwing him a gaze so frosty and disturbing, that it turned Cynthia’s blood to ice just to look at them. Then, the first ugly sister suddenly jerked her head up, glancing around the cottage quickly and nervously.

‘Shhh, I can hear something!’ she told her sister. ‘Listen!’

The second ugly sister followed her lead, turning her head this way and that, but also started to sniff, as if she could smell what the first ugly sister could only hear.

‘It’s coming from underneath the floorboards!’ she stressed, pulling the other one’s arm in urgency. ‘I bet it’s those white mice again!’

The first ugly sister threw herself onto the ground, ramming her left ear into the floorboards and screwing her face up in concentration. To Cynthia, she looked like some a particularly repulsive hog that was intent on getting the last fatty morsel of food that had been pitched down on the floor of the pig-sty.

‘I can’t hear anything!’ she insisted, running her ear up and down the floorboards and embedding it with splinters.

As she did this, the second ugly sister lifted up the hem of her sequined dress and bolted across the room, her warty tongue protruding from her lips as she focused on something in the corner, just by the fading light of the fire. As Cynthia watched, she hurled herself onto a rickety old chair, her face twisted in glee, plucking up a dazzling, elegant shoe that looked like it was made from solid gold and far outshone anything that Cynthia had ever seen at Gucci’s or Jimmy Choo. Cynthia fell in love with it instantly and made as if to walk towards it, before The Collector gently held her back.

‘It’s not for you to try on, ‘ he said softly. ‘It only fits one person, and, sadly, she’s no longer here.’

It was then that Cynthia understood and stopped herself, watching as the second ugly sister struggled to stuff her foot into it, but to no avail. As much as she shoved and bent her toes and forced her ankle further down into the shoe’s golden and striking depths, she got no further than the start of her big toe, which annoyed her so much that she began to spit and drool from her stippled tongue. She sweated and cursed under her breath, cramming and forcing her foot into different positions and angles and flaying the skin from her outer toes.

Something fluttered through the open window, just behind Cynthia, making her jump. She whirled around, just in time to see a pigeon appear with feathers that were the spotless, unsullied white of freshly fallen snow. She gasped out in shock and surprise, just as the bird settled on the windowsill, its dusky eyes peering out through its head in the direction of the shoe.

‘Rook di goo, rook di goo!’ it cooed, sounding strangely gratified. ‘There’s blood in the shoe. The shoe is too tight. This bride is not right.’

The ugly sister struggling to drive her foot into the glistening shoe, raised her head and hissed at the white bird, throwing one of the bowls of polluted food at the window.

The bird took off in a ripple of feathers and the bowl hit the window frame, causing the first ugly sister to raise her head from the floor and to jump up, jostling speedily over to her sister, her face enraged.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she snarled. ‘You’re trying that useless shoe on again! Get it off!’

‘Get off me!’ protested the second ugly sister, fighting her off by thrusting the flat of her palm into the other one’s nose. ‘It’s mine, and don’t you come anywhere near it!’

’You’ve been trying to shove your foot into that thing for the past week, and the only thing you’ve managed to do is stink the whole place up!’ screeched the first ugly sister.

The second ugly sister stood up, red and bustling and gripping the shoe like a fiend. ’Have you taken a whiff of your own sweet tootsies, lately, oh, sister of mine?’ she enquired in a smooth, icy voice.

With that, the first ugly sister curled back her arm as far as it would go and launched her fist in a sloping, slipshod arc, straight into the other one’s nose, knocking her back into the chair and causing the shoe to fall into the sputtering embers of the fire. Both sisters howled and grappled with each other, clawing and gouging in a slovenly heap across the floor, each one trying to rescue the shoe from burning. The Collector grabbed Cynthia’s arm and pulled her towards the door.

‘Where we going?’ she asked.

‘Outside,’ came the terse reply. ‘We need to evaluate the situation


8.


Once outside, The Collector sat Cynthia down on a log and began pacing up and down, pursing his lips and thinking hard.

‘This is far worse than I originally thought,’ he muttered. ‘Far worse. We don’t know where Cinderella is, and if there’s a Disperser at work behind all this, she could be anywhere. She needs to be here to try on the shoe that fits her foot so that the young prince can marry her.’

‘Yeah, I know the story,’ added Cynthia. ‘Cinderella couldn’t go to the ball with her ugly sisters, so a fairy Godmother came along and changed some mice into horses and a pumpkin into a carriage that took her there. But she had to be back by midnight otherwise everything would change back and she wouldn‘t be glamorous anymore.’

The Collector stopped pacing and looked at her. ‘That is completely the wrong information,' he stated.

Cynthia was puzzled. ‘That is the story. Mrs Sinclair once read it to me.’

‘Who was she?‘ asked The Collector. ‘Some sort of ancient scholar?’

‘Well, she was ancient, but she wasn’t a scholar,‘ Cynthia replied. ‘She was my nursery school teacher.’

The Collector sat down beside her, his eyes shining and benevolent. ‘In the real story, Cinderella went to a hazel tree,’ he said to her.

‘A hazel tree?’ echoed Cynthia.

‘That’s how she was able to go to the ball,’ smiled The Collector.

‘That’s not the way I’ve heard it,’ challenged Cynthia.

’I assure you, that’s the way it happened,‘ said The Collector. ‘According to the history, Cinderella visited her real mother’s grave under a hazel tree. The tree grew from a branch that was given to her by her father and the poor girl planted it by the grave and watched it grow over the years.’

‘How was the hazel tree able to let her to go the ball?’ frowned Cynthia.

The Collector peered off into the distance, at the trees shifting in a fitful breeze and the surrounding mountains and the indigo sky smeared with white clouds. His voice dropped as he spoke, as if saying the words out too loud would shatter and break something fragile. ‘She approached the tree and cried out: Shake and quiver, little tree, throw gold and silver down to me,’ he recited.

‘Wow,’ muttered Cynthia. ‘What happened then?’

‘The tree had birds nestling inside it,’ said The Collector. ‘They were guardians of Cinderella, and one of them threw down a dress and a pair of shoes down to her from the branches, made from gold and silver. Cinderella went to the ball.’

’The same bird that appeared in the window?’ asked Cynthia, becoming astounded at the story.

’Exactly,’ smiled The Collector. ’That’s why that shoe can only fit Cinderella. Every time somebody false tries on the shoe, the bird emerges from the woods and cries out its indignation. Anyway, Cinderella went to the ball and danced with the prince and then ran away. The prince was upset at this, because he’d fallen in love with her.’

’And that was when she lost the shoe?’ Cynthia said.

’No, there was a second ball that she attended,’ said The Collector. ‘For this ball, Cinderella went to the tree again and this time one of the birds threw down an even better dress, and so she went to the ball again and this time the prince recognised her and grabbed her by the hand, but again Cinderella ran away from him and the prince was even more upset.’

‘Perhaps she didn’t fancy him,’ remarked Cynthia.

The Collector was puzzled. ‘What does that mean?’ he enquired.

‘It means that perhaps she didn’t love him back,’ Cynthia said.

The Collector chuckled and it was a sweet, silvery sound that Cynthia liked immensely. It reminded her of wind chimes in a summer breeze. ‘My, dear,’ he laughed. ‘of course she loved him back. He was the most desirable prince in the land. The reason Cinderella kept running away was because she was secretly ashamed of who she was. Ashamed of what her ugly sisters had turned her into.’

‘Nothing but a filthy, grimy servant that ate rotten food and maggots,’ Cynthia said.

’Exactly,’ he replied. ’There was lots of these events, and every time one was announced, Cinderella felt compelled to attend, until eventually, there was a magnificent festival that she couldn’t stay away from. Again, she visited the tree and this time the birds threw down a gold dress and gold shoes and Cinderella went to the festival.’

’Did she run away from the prince again?’ asked Cynthia.

’Yes, she did,’ came the reply. ’But this time, the prince was ready for it and laid a trap for her. He covered the entire stairway leading into the palace with mud, and when she fled this time, one of her shoes got stuck in it. The prince picked the shoe up and announced that: ‘No one shall be my wife except for the one whose foot fits this golden shoe.’’

‘That’s why the ugly sisters are so intent on trying the shoe on,’ Cynthia said.

‘And that’s why it’s so important that we find out where Cinderella’s been taken,’ added The Collector. ‘If we don’t find her and bring her back, the shoe will rot and fester inside that awful cottage and the prince will never marry. That’s why we’ve ended up here rather than where Grumpy belongs. I can only travel to where I’m needed.’

’Really?’ asked Cynthia. ’You can’t go anywhere else?’

The Collector looked off into the distance, and Cynthia thought that she saw a weary longing etched on his features. ‘Such is the curse of being a Collector,’ he said softly.

‘Never mind, cheer up, Cynthia said brightly. ‘All we’ve got to do is find a castle and a prince on a horse. Once we find them, we’ll find her.’

The Collector looked at her, a subtle smile on his lips. ‘I wish it were as simple as that,’ he replied. ‘But if you knew how many princes and castles and horses there are out there, you wouldn’t be so confident about solving this problem.’

’There can’t be that many,’ Cynthia said. ’Maybe she’s actually run off with the right prince.’

Again, The Collector smiled a somewhat tolerant smile. ’If that were the case,’ he stated simply. ’Then we wouldn’t be here. It’s all wrong, and as you’ve seen yourself, the characters are all confused and muddled and…’

‘Dispersed?’ Cynthia finished.

The Collector stopped, looking discernibly bamboozled and giving Cynthia a strange, meditative look. ‘Yes,’ he mumbled. ‘You’re absolutely right…Dispersed.’

‘Okay, we need a plan of action,’ said Cynthia. ‘We’ve got Grumpy, and even though, technically speaking, we’re still not in the right place, time or location, we need to get him reunited with his friends before we do anything else.’

The Collector suddenly stood bolt upright. ‘Speaking of Grumpy,’ he said. ‘We’ve left him in there by himself with those two crones.’

‘I’d completely forgotten about him,’ said Cynthia, also standing up and brushing dirt and bark from her school uniform. ‘He’s been really quiet for a while, I wonder if he’s alright.’

They both walked back through the door of the cottage, and were greeted with the inconceivable spectacle of Grumpy chasing the first ugly sister around the room and trying to kiss her. His lips were puckered up farcically and his cheeks were rich in colour, almost flushed with the effort of trying to plant a smacker on the monstrous face of the thing wearing a pink tutu and tights and hobnail boots.

The ugly sister that he was pursuing, screamed in a primitive and rude tongue, her features twisted in revulsion, turning and running and dodging, her feet skidding on the grimy rug as Grumpy tried to snag her clothing with his small, clutching hands.

Cynthia stared, dumbstruck at this spectacle, thinking to herself that the madness she had sensed lurking in every nook and cranny of this awful place, had suddenly leapt out and declared itself in a jingling, joyful outburst.

’I’m in love!’ cried the dwarf, tears of longing spilling from his eyes. ’Marry me!’

’Shoo! Shoo!’ wailed the first ugly sister, running with her knees pumping and her arms flapping. ’Go on, get away!’

The second ugly sister stood and watched, hands planted on her hips, cackling hysterically. ’Oooh, dear, you’ve got yourself an admirer!’ she laughed.

’Ooooh, no, no, get rid of it!’ protested the first ugly sister, jumping onto the chair in the corner and heaving her tutu up. ’Get rid of it!’

’What on earth’s he playing at?’ Cynthia gasped.

’This is all my fault,’ said The Collector grimly. ’I’d completely forgotten about the Bibsi Fish.’

Cynthia stared at him. ’What’s the Bibsi Fish got to do with it?’ she asked.

’Anyone who survives the kiss of a Bibsi Fish, goes into slow hypnosis,’ said The Collector, bending down and rummaging through his satchel. ’Once the hypnosis takes effect, the person who was kissed by the fish instinctively and hopelessly falls in love with the first person he sees.’

‘I wondered why he was so quiet!’ exclaimed Cynthia. ‘Do you mean to tell me that all this time he’s been staring at these two halfwits and falling under some sort of love-spell?’

‘I’m afraid that’s correct,’ replied The Collector, still thrusting his hand into his satchel and burrowing around, his face set in a mask of determination.

‘I don’t believe this,’ she said, exasperated. ‘This morning I was sitting at my breakfast table arguing with my Mum about Crunchy Nut cornflakes and being put on report, and now I’m stuck in some horrible nightmare, where talking bears bicker and cry about not having lace curtains and a raving lunatic of a dwarf chases somebody dressed in work boots around a room! Talk about your average day going completely wobbly! Wait till I get that supply teacher!’

‘He’s smitten with you, dear!’ cackled the second ugly sister, as Grumpy fumbled and clawed at the first ugly sister’s tutu and she tried to kick him back down from her perch atop the chair.

‘Why is everything in your world so wobbly?’ asked The Collector casually, as he began to pull something from the satchel. ‘And are there certain times when it becomes more wobbly then others?’

‘My world isn’t wobbly at all,’ declared Cynthia. ‘It’s just an expression that we use to describe things when they go wrong.’

‘You mean like now?’ asked The Collector, holding something in his hand that looked like a compact mirror with intricate patterns around the oval frame. As Cynthia looked at it, the surface moved with a supple quality, as if she were peering into water.

‘Yes, like now,’ she verified. ‘What’s that?’

The Collector held it up to the light coming in through the window, making the surface ripple. ‘It’s an authenticity indicator,’ he said. ‘It shows what a person’s truly like inside rather than what their outward appearance may suggest.’

Cynthia was puzzled at this. ’Hang on,’ she said. ’The ugly sister that Grumpy’s in love with really is ugly on the outside. How’s seeing her through that thing gonna make him come to his senses?’

‘My girl,’ he replied. ‘The authenticity indicator will allow him to see her soul.’

‘That’s a handy device to have, but when do you decide to use it?’ challenged Cynthia. ‘I mean, you’re saying it’s the Bibsi Fish that’s done that to Grumpy, but how do you know he really hasn’t fallen in love, that it’s not a normal, behavioural response?’

The Collector mused over this, chewing his lower lip and pacing in a tight circle, one hand thrust into his pocket and the other hand holding the mirror.

’Do you really think that might be the case?’ he asked, looking troubled.

Cynthia cast a glance over to where Grumpy grovelled on his knees, gripping the ugly sister’s hobnail boot and recklessly trying to plant passionate kisses onto it.

’He seems happy enough,’ she observed. ’In fact, he’s not grumpy anymore.’

’This is an interesting problem,’ he said, stopping his pacing and holding up an index finger. ’But if you’re truly in love with someone, then the authenticity indicator won’t make any difference. You’ll continue loving them, no matter what. But if it’s the work of the Bibsi Fish, then the spell will be broken when he sees how ugly she is on the inside as well.’

It was then that Cynthia began to sense something wrong inside the cottage, announcing itself in the form of a bubbling, fermenting swirl of crackling noises and an overpowering pong of smouldering metal, like burning tracks. Her heart began to race and she felt a strong sense of distress inside her. She glanced up at The Collector, staring at his profuse mane of hair and his emerald eyes and saw that they were still normal. For some reason, this began to frighten her.

‘Is that you?’ she asked him, her voice quivering. ‘Please tell me that’s you!’

The Collector grabbed her arm and began scanning the walls, his face no longer friendly but alert, his eyes piercing through the sunless gloom like bayonets. ’It’s not me!’ he said. ’But whoever or whatever it is, it’s coming through fast!’

Just then, the wall directly in front of them began to blister outward, swelling forward in a vast, contorted bubble that made Cynthia think of Timmy Faulkner with his face puffed out, just before he was about to do his vile impression of a boil being squeezed by disgorging custard from his mouth by slapping his cheeks together. For some reason, she hadn’t thought of it that way when The Collector had come through her kitchen wall, and she wondered why she was thinking of it now and started to feel bothered that it was somehow important, but couldn’t think why.

The first ugly sister turned from atop the chair and watched their wall billowing out towards them, screaming and throwing up her arms in horror. The second ugly sister stopped laughing, obviously not finding this new development funny at all, and screamed even louder than her sister. Grumpy merely continued focusing on the dirty boots, trying to caress them with his lips.

Something small and fast came hurtling out of the wall, moving at a dangerous and savage speed and leaving a gaudy trail in its wake like a comet. The Collector laid his hand over the top of Cynthia’s head and shoved her down as the missile skimmed over them, narrowly missing the top of her skull and bouncing off the opposite wall with a loud bang.

‘STAY DOWN!’ roared The Collector, lifting his head slightly and inspecting the wall and the rest of the room for any more unexpected projectiles. He threw off the burden of his satchel and Cynthia felt him tense up as he stared at the spot where the object had come from.

Cynthia stayed where she was, feeling quite sick and scared. Her heart was hammering and battering harder even than when she’d won the 100 metres last year at the Hillmore School Sports Day, sprinting past the winning post amidst the cheers and smiles and claps of the PE teachers.

The pressure from The Collector’s palm kept her forced against the oily floorboards and she felt the sting of a splinter in her left cheek.

Through the rush of blood to her head and the ringing in her ears, she could vaguely hear the ugly sisters crying and sobbing in a corner and she wondered if Grumpy was with them, still trying to plant his kisses. Then The Collector slowly eased the pressure on the back of her head and gently lifted her to her feet.

’Are you hurt?’ he asked, anxiously searching her face with his green eyes. ‘Did it make contact?’

’No, I’m fine,’ muttered Cynthia, feeling anything but fine and feeling quite queasy and woozy and sick, but thinking that she didn’t want to wimp out and go all panicky and jumpy, because if she started to do that, then she might altogether lose the plot and start yelling her head off.

The Collector gave her one more look over and then strode to where the missile had landed, plucking it up from the floor. He brought it over and looked at it, obviously perplexed by the sight and presence of it. Cynthia plucked the splinter from her cheek and flicked it away.

The object appeared to be a sheet of paper wrapped around something small but heavy. The Collector pulled the paper away, unwrapping it from the object, which turned out to be a lump of rock. Cynthia gasped and absently rubbed the top of her head, thinking of what might have happened if he hadn’t grabbed her in time.

‘Thanks,’ she told him. ‘That could’ve been nasty, cos I don’t think there’s any hospitals around here.’

But he wasn’t listening, and as Cynthia looked at his face, she saw it turn as pasty as dough or as white as something that lived in darkness and wasn’t used to coming out into the sun, like a Water Vole or a Lion’s Mane Jellyfish or her Mum’s boss at the library, Mr Hoskins. The Collector had unfolded the sheet of paper and was reading something that was written on it, his green eyes focused intently.

Cynthia stood beside him and stared down at the sheet which was horrible and damp and encrusted with dirt and dust, and saw a message scrawled across it that looked like it had been scribbled by a lunatic. She opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it in shock as she read the message.

So you got to her first, did you?
Well, hooray, bravo, congratulations and bully for you!
And gosh! and wow! and gee! and gee! again!
That doesn’t mean that you’re the King of the Castle and I’m
the dirty rascal!
We’ll just see who comes out laughing and grinning and
doing a happy dance and wearing the King’s crown at the
end of all this, shall we?
So, it’s goodbye, farewell, au-revoir and cheerio from me!
Signed,
Guess who!
P.S. I’ll give you a teensy-weensy clue, shall I?
The brat was right! You did miss one!

Anger flared within The Collector’s green eyes and Cynthia thought it was a very scary thing indeed, making her think of the way a cat’s gaze went just before it pounced on an unsuspecting pigeon or mouse. He went to screw the sheet of paper back into a ball again and hurl it to one side, when Cynthia began to think of something that she couldn’t quite remember.

‘Wait,’ she said, grabbing the rumpled sheet from his hand and looking at it closely.

‘What is it?’ asked The Collector, studying her closely. ‘Is there something you see? Something I haven’t noticed?’

She frowned. ‘I dunno,’ she said, puzzled. ‘There’s something about this paper that reminds me of something else, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.’

She stared hard at the note as something familiar tried to get inside her head, desperately wracking her brain to think what it could possibly be that she was missing, but finding that no matter how hard she tried to concentrate, nothing occurred. It was as frustrating as having the answer to something on the tip of your tongue, something that you knew the answer to, but couldn’t quite say because the answer kept skipping away and teasing you with the wily speed of an annoying fly.

The Collector stood above her, looking pensively at the spot on the wall, before marching over to it and running his hands up and down the surface, just beside the fireplace.

Over in the corner, the ugly sisters shrieked again and the second ugly sister came running over to slap The Collector across the back of his lengthy coat. ‘Don’t you dare bring that hole back!’ she wailed. ‘We don’t want any more unwanted objects chucked in here, thank you very much!’

‘Why don’t you stop your bleating and go back to your sister,’ he said casually. ’Your voice is beginning to feel like a distasteful blob in my stomach.’

Well, I never!’ she gasped, outraged, her purple face wobbling. ‘Of all the cheek!’

‘One…’ began The Collector, still exploring the wall, ’…two…three…four…’

’What the hell d’ya think yer doing?’ squawked the ugly sister. ’I’m talking to you and you’re IGNORING ME!!’

’It’s called counting,’ replied The Collector, stopping at a specific point on the wall and tapping it with his finger. ’You’ve got up to ten to go and stand in the corner…five…six…seven…’

Cynthia watched as the ugly sister turned crimson, a ferocious, murderous light flaring in her eyes that made Cynthia think of all of the mad, angry things that could come exploding out of every adult that she’d ever come across at one time or another, from her Mum to the teachers at her school and how sometimes she didn’t understand where that anger came from or what it meant.

Then the ugly sister obviously thought better of confronting The Collector any further and retreated back to where she’d been standing with her sister.

‘What’re you doing?’ Cynthia asked The Collector, watching as he rubbed his palms vigorously over the same spot on the wall.

‘He’s made a crucial blunder,’ The Collector frowned, patting the wall. ‘If he is a Disperser, he travels and can pass things from one place to another in the same way that I do. I’m trying to isolate his exact heat and energy signature. If I can fasten onto the particle properties of the electromagnetic field he used, we should be able to get to where he is. But we’ve got to hurry, because it’s fading fast.’

‘Sounds like you work with photons,’ mused Cynthia.

The Collector beamed down at her, still touching the wall, his fingers roaming and searching. ‘Similar,’ he said. ‘but not exactly the same. Whereas a photon has no rest mass, ours stays for approximately two minutes after we arrive somewhere. And I’m happy to say that he seems to have been rather brash in throwing something directly at us from wherever he is, because that means I can latch onto him.’ He stopped and gave her a quick glance. ’Where did you learn about photons?’ he asked.

’Oh, from a science book,’ replied Cynthia. ’A famous person called Albert Einstein wrote about them.’

‘Fascinating,’ commented The Collector, suddenly stopping, his face looking happy and delighted. ‘Ah, here we are!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve pinpointed his source coordinates! We’ve got him!’

Something suddenly occurred to Cynthia. ‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘What’re you gonna do when you catch him.’

The Collector looked bemused. ‘Why, kill him, of course,’ he told her.

Cynthia was aghast. ‘What?’ she spluttered.

‘My dear,’ The Collector sighed, looking sad and sorry. ‘You have to understand, it’s either him or us. That’s the way it works between The Collectors and The Dispersers. That’s the natural law of things. There is no other way.’

‘I won’t help you to murder someone just because they think differently from you!’ Cynthia told him, becoming angry. ’That’s wrong, no matter what you say about how you might’ve had this huge war with each other, and about how he wants to change the history and natural order of things. I won’t help you do that! You can count me out!’

For a moment The Collector stared at her, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Again, Cynthia started to wonder about this curious man and his unusual powers and what he had done to her, all under the incorrect certainty that she would be able to help him and put things to rights. But if part of his vague way of life and values included killing others, then Cynthia couldn’t help him do that at all and she never would.

‘My girl,’ said The Collector. ‘If we don’t kill him, then he most certainly will try to kill us, would you prefer it if he did that?’

‘What makes you so sure that he’ll kill us?’ demanded Cynthia. ‘How can you know that?’

The Collector gave her that same, weary smile that he’d given her before. ‘Because that’s what Dispersers do to Collectors,’ was the decisive reply.

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Cynthia. ‘Well I’m not a Collector, am I? So I should be all right, shouldn’t I? So, if I’m not a Collector and I’m not gonna be killed, why should I help you to do away with him?’

Again the answer came quickly and resolutely. ‘Because, my dear, you’re Little Miss Clever Clogs,’ he said.

‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ cried Cynthia. ‘This is infuriating! It’s like listening to a scratched CD!’

‘What’s a Cee-Dee?’ asked The Collector, focusing his attention back to the spot on the wall and pressing his fingers down hard onto the surface. Before Cynthia could utter a sarcastic answer, he slowly closed his eyes and his hair started to crackle and crease, followed by the pungent, electric stink of subways. ‘Better grab my hand,’ he remarked. ‘I’ve hooked in and we’re going and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

Cynthia started to panic as she looked at Grumpy, still enthralled by the sight of the first ugly sister and trapped in the corner with her, his pupils dilated with fondness and devotion.

‘What about Grumpy?’ she asked, suddenly feeling scared and concerned about bursting off through the wall and running into this Disperser fellow. ‘We can’t just leave him here like this? I thought our job was to take him home. If we don’t do that, then you can’t leave, because if you do that means you’re a failure and if you’re a failure, imagine what they’ll say back at Collector headquarters or the office or Ollonworn, or wherever it is you come from? You’ll be a flop and everyone will talk about you behind your back!’

But it was too late, as The Collector started to sizzle and crackle and spit sparks out from his snarled heap of hair, his green eyes wide and furious. Cynthia grabbed his hand without thinking, sparing a last, despondent glance at Grumpy and that was when a huge, rattling bang issued forth from The Collector’s body, hitting Cynthia with a violent surge of power.

‘Owww!’ she yelped. ‘What was that?’

‘His electromagnetic field’s the opposite to mine,’ snarled The Collector, his face tense and rigid. ‘It’s trying to cancel me out! But I’m fastened into the particles of his signature and I can’t release myself from his frequency even if it kills me, so hang on, my girl, because for better or for worse, something's about to happen.'

Cynthia held his hand, scared and thinking of everything that Miss Williams, her science teacher, had told her about electromagnetic fields and how she had produced a length of rope in one lesson and tied it to the door handle of the classroom, while the pupils took turns in holding the other end and moving it up and down, and Miss Williams had explained that the movement of the rope was the same as the waves generated by a electromagnetic field. As Cynthia watched The Collector’s face twisting with effort, she realised that he was attached to The Disperser in much the same way that the piece of rope had been attached to Miss Williams’ classroom door and there was nothing he could about it.

‘You mean you’ve never tried this before?’ she screamed, appalled.

‘There’s a first time for everything!’ he yelled back, giving a contorted, artificial smile.

‘You’re insane!’ shouted Cynthia. ‘You should be shoved away in a home for deranged people!’

And then they were gone, in a rushed and vicious distortion of air particles, bulldozing through the wall and making it crumple inwards in a blinding, buffeting implosion of stone and mortar, before it puffed back out to its normal dimensions, leaving no sign of them whatsoever. In the corner, the ugly sisters yapped like hysterical puppies, clinging to each other, unified in their anguish and concern.

‘Where’d they go?’ screamed the first ugly sister.

‘Don’t ask me!’ wailed the second ugly sister. ‘I’m as baffled as you are!’

‘No need to be snappy!’ replied her sister, in a frenzied voice. ‘I only asked a flaming question!’

They both shoved away from their embrace in a single, impulsive movement, glaring at each other, their fists clenched at their sides and their eyes blazing with renewed contempt. Over by the fireside, the wall continued to crunch and rustle and crackle while it returned and shifted to its conventional solidity, filling with the room with an eerie and caustic reek. The ugly sisters continued to look each other up and down with hostile eyes while Grumpy slouched against the wall, his face lit up.

‘God, you’re ugly,’ said the first ugly sister to the second one.

‘Same goes for you,’ the second ugly sister replied sulkily.

‘Marry me,’ Grumpy sighed to the first ugly sister, a simpering smile on his face.



9.


This time they came to rest at the foot of a mountain, with birds twittering all around them and the smell of fresh air and flowers. Cynthia shook her head, on her hands and knees, trying to clear the memory of the awful journey that they’d just had. In Cynthia’s opinion, that had been the worse one of their excursions so far, even worse than the one when The Collector had pulled her from her kitchen and she hadn’t known what was going on. She felt incredibly sick and when she tried to stand up, she felt rather like she did when she’d been riding the Twister at the local fair earlier this month. The whole landscape around her lurched and wobbled, and Cynthia had to sit down again, coming down hard on her bottom and causing her teeth to clack together like castanets and her knees to crack painfully.

Raising her head from her chest, she looked around and saw that the whole countryside around them was indeed stunning, with ancient forests stretching away as far as the eye could see, bordering a huge lake with fells and mountains forming a glorious backdrop.

Right before her eyes, a red squirrel scurried out of the trees, bounding onto a rock and nibbling at an acorn, watching Cynthia with its fervid eyes. Far above, what looked like peregrines wheeled and cawed above the trees, and that was when Cynthia also felt quite lonely, despite the splendour of everything that was going on around her, because she knew that there were hardly any people here in this eccentric and exquisite world she’d been brought to.

The Collector was lying a few feet away, perfectly still and silent, his satchel flung open and showing part of his annoying clipboard sticking out like a tongue. Cynthia began to feel quite alarmed at this, rising unsteadily to her feet and stumbling over to him. When she reached him, she saw that he had his eyes closed and that one side of his face was burnt.

She staggered back, suddenly afraid that he might be dead and that she might be stuck here forever with no way to get back to her own world. She dropped to her knees beside him and started to shake him forcefully and as she did, something told her that she shouldn’t be doing that and that made her feel feeble and weak and she almost started crying.

She didn’t know what to call him, or even if he had a first name, like George or Freddie or Richard and realised that she only knew him as The Collector, and then she began to wonder if everyone on Ollonworn was called the same thing and whether married couples were called Mr and Mrs Collector. She stared down at him, timid and uncertain.

’Mr Collector,’ she stammered, touching him slightly. ’Wake up, please!’

When there was no response and The Collector didn’t move, she began to panic again. Then she remembered her basic first aid training with the Girl Guides and how a member of The St John’s Ambulance Brigade had taught them what to do if someone was unconscious and how to check if they were seriously injured or not. Cynthia looked around her, at the forests and the hills and mountains and at the cheeky red squirrel perched and gnawing at his acorn and realised that she was perhaps the only living human being around and that it was up to her to do something.

The Collector was already lying on his back, which meant that Cynthia didn’t have to move him and so she placed her right hand on his forehead and gently tilted his head back. After she’d done this, she placed her fingertips under the point of his chin and lifted it up to open his airway. Then she checked his chest for movement, but couldn’t see anything beneath his heavy coat and so she put her ear to his mouth and listened to see if he was still breathing, putting her left cheek against his face.

His breathing was normal and so Cynthia pushed against him and, with a grunt, managed to roll him onto his side, remembering that this was called ‘the recovery position’. Then she sat back, sweating and puffing strings of hair out of her face and began to cry.

The journey from the cottage of the ugly sisters had indeed been ghastly, with both of them being assailed by noises too dreadful to dwell on, coupled with violent, blustering blows, although it had been The Collector who had taken most of the brunt of their hurtling pitch from one place to the other. And as she’d gripped his hand, squeezing her eyes shut and holding on for dear life, Cynthia had heard him hollering in pain and then had felt him go slack, just before they’d landed here on the grass under a warm sun and a clear sky.

Cynthia stopped crying and shivered and sniffled, remembering the way it had felt, almost like being crammed into a blistering, blazing tube full of rude and aggressive shouting, where nothing was nice or stable or sane.

Cynthia thought that if that was how this Disperser bloke moved, then he must be as crazy and as cranky as a broken down cuckoo clock. That was when a vague memory struggled to the top of her brain and Cynthia knew it was something important but she couldn’t remember what it was, because The Collector started mumbling and moving and that made her forget.

He slowly sat up, his face twisting in pain. He looked around, his green eyes unfocused at first, before he saw Cynthia, then his eyes cleared.

‘Won’t try that again,’ he murmured, and then fell back unconscious once more.

The hours passed slowly by and Cynthia sat, huddled and watching The Collector closely. And as she watched, the sun began to slowly set in the west, just as it did in Cynthia’s world, even though she knew that the sun didn’t really set in the west and that the sun always stayed still and it was really the earth that moved, spinning on its axis.

This thought made her incredibly homesick and she missed her mum, wondering what she’d be doing now and if she’d be home from work and calling up to her bedroom, telling her that tea was ready and waiting for her to come bounding down the stairs.

It began to get dark and as it did, the red squirrel hopped back into the woods and the air started to turn chilly. Cynthia wrapped her arms around herself and as the land sunk into darkness and thick shadows crouched and stooped around her, Cynthia peered up at the stars. She saw something that looked remarkably like The Great Orion Nebula and could also see stars similar to Rigel and Saiph, but the rest of the lights twinkling in the sky didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen before.

She thought about all different worlds hovering and turning side by side and as she thought of this she nodded off to sleep and dreamt of her mum clomping about the house with one high heel broken and her lipstick still smudged across her cheek, frantically looking for her in the kitchen and living room and bedroom and under her bed and in all the cupboards. Then just as Mum reached the last cupboard and yanked it open, something smiling and smirking and dangerously jovial came snapping and snarling from within, wearing the same coat and trousers as The Collector and yelled ’Disperse!’ before it grabbed her.

Cynthia woke up, crying out in terror and finding herself in darkness, before she realised where she was.

Across from her, she could hear The Collector mumbling something to himself, and so she crept forward, feeling her way in the gloom to see if he was awake again. But when she reached him, she found that he was still asleep, lost and shivering inside his own dream.

‘I can’t…’ he mumbled. ‘Grand Curator, she’s just a girl…not right…can’t just take her…time’s not right…not right…’

Then he moaned and started trembling, hit with tiny spasms and Cynthia thought that she’d better try to keep him warm, even though she was still a little bit scared of this strange man and he wore his long coat, so she pulled off her school blazer and laid it gently over him. That seemed to do the trick, because he settled down and was quiet.

Cynthia still wore her thick Morehills School jumper over her white shirt and tie and so she remained relatively warm, despite the frostiness that had crept over the environment. The Collector let out one more wavering sigh, before she crept back to where she’d been sleeping, still wishing that she had the guts to venture into the forest to gather some wood to make a fire, but going all spineless and weak when she thought of the things that she’d heard in the woods around the cabin where the three bears had lived.

Cynthia curled herself into a ball, listening to the deathly quiet surrounding her and trying to ignore the deceitful shadows and how they turned into all manner of creatures and ghostly apparitions. She felt lonely and frightened and hoped that The Collector would wake up soon and get better.

Just before she fell asleep again with her mind restless and squirmy, she thought she saw a light spring into life, embedded within the dark and towering mass of one of the hills, winking down at her.

10.

When morning came, Cynthia woke up to find The Collector on his feet, crouching by a freshly lit fire and watching her. Cynthia blinked, remembering where she was and yawned. The Collector was cooking something and the smells coming from it were delectable, making her stomach rumble greedily. The Collector looked scary with his burnt skin, and his green eye on the side that was scalded flared out of his face, but then he smiled his peculiar, quirky smile and everything was okay.

‘Did you sleep well?’ he enquired, poking whatever it was on the fire with a stick.

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Cynthia. ‘I had awful nightmares. What about you? How d’ya feel?’

‘I feel a bit sore,’ he replied, ‘and I’ll probably have a permanent scar where I’ve been scorched, but apart from that, I think I’ll live to see another day.’ He reached behind him and held up her school blazer. ‘I think this belongs to you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for being so considerate.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ she told him, standing and taking it back. She peered attentively at the fire. ‘What’s that you’re cooking?’ she asked.

‘Fish,’ he replied, giving it another tentative poke with the stick. ‘I trust that you’re hungry?’

‘Famished,’ she replied, shrugging into her blazer. She suddenly had an awful thought. ‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘You’re not cooking a Bibsi Fish, are ya?’

The Collector considered this gravely, his face pinched in thought. ‘Now there’s something to consider.' he said. 'I've never tasted a Bibsi Fish. I’ve eaten a Filt Fish and a Xur Fish and even an Opret Fish; I’ve tasted fish from the shores of Nolignee and from the lakes of Rexcutananla, but I’ve never tasted a Bibsi Fish.’

‘So what’s that?’ asked Cynthia, pointing to the fish that was cooking on the fire.

‘Oh, that’s a Kipper,’ said The Collector. He beckoned to a spot opposite him. ‘Sit,’ he instructed. ‘It’s nearly ready.’

‘Good job it’s not a Bibsi Fish,’ commented Cynthia, sitting down. ‘Otherwise, I’d fall in love with you, you’d fall in love with me, and we’d end up chasing each other up and down these hills like idiots.’

‘Indeed we would,’ he agreed, sitting down.

Cynthia looked at him, turning serious. ‘So what happened?’ she asked him. ‘Why did that last journey turn so bad?’

He looked at the fire, the burnt side of his face looking craggy and rutted. ‘His electromagnetic field tried to resist mine,’ said The Collector. ‘When I locked onto it, it recognised me for what I was and tried to stop me from coming through after him.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Cynthia. ‘If he’s the opposite to you, how come his electromagnetic field tried to stop you? I was taught in my science classes that opposite fields attract each other, not resist.’

‘We're the same,' he replied. 'We were born the same and have the same powers and the same appearance and we come from the same place.’

‘But, you said - ‘ Cynthia began.

The Collector held up his hand, stopping her. ‘It’s our beliefs that are different and that’s all.’

‘Oh, I see,’ exclaimed Cynthia. ’So you mean to tell me that if you’d tried to travel locked onto a Collector’s electromagnetic field, the same thing would’ve happened?’

’That’s most likely, yes,’ he replied, reaching into his satchel.

’You mean, you don’t know?’ enquired Cynthia.

’No,I don’t,’ he replied, pulling something out from within. ’As I told you, it was the first time something like that has ever been attempted.’

The Collector produced two crude, rudimentary wooden ovals that looked like plates and placed them carefully by the fire. As Cynthia watched, he speared the fish with the stick he’d been using and flung it onto one of the plates, then he used the same stick to cut it in two, plonking one half onto the other plate and handing it to Cynthia.

‘How much stuff have you actually got in that satchel?’ asked Cynthia, bringing the plate to her nose and giving it a perfunctory sniff.

’It’s my travelling bag,’ said The Collector, picking up his own plate and prodding his half of the fish with a finger. ’There’s everything in there that’s essential for survival. Oh, by the way, you might want to wait for a while before eating…It’s hot.’

Cynthia put her plate down. Something had begun to occur to her, and it was something that she hadn’t realised until now. ‘Can I ask you a question?‘ she said.

‘Certainly,' he replied.

‘There’s something I’ve just thought of,‘ Cynthia said to him. ‘Something that’s just popped into my head.‘

‘I’ll help if I can,‘ he told her.

‘Okay,‘ she said. ‘How come The Disperser knew about our conversation, back at the ugly sisters’ place?’

The Collector looked puzzled. ‘I don’t follow you,’ he said.

‘When you were telling me about The Collectors and Dispersers and The Great War of Ollonworn and how all the Dispersers had been killed off,‘ Cynthia said. ‘And then I said to you that it looked like you’d missed one?’ How did he know I’d said that to you?’

The Collector frowned, his eyes vague. ‘Did he know that you’d said that to me?’

‘Yeah,’ Cynthia exclaimed, standing up. ‘I’ve still got the note that he chucked through the wall in my pocket.’

She fished around inside her blazer, retrieving an unwrapped lollipop, the yellow report card, a pink Tamagotchi, and finally the rumpled sheet of paper with the madcap message squiggled across it, which she held out for The Collector to see. ‘Look what he’s written,’ she told him.

The Collector scanned the note, his brow furrowed.

So you got to her first, did you?
Well, hooray, bravo, congratulations and bully for you!
And gosh! and wow! and gee! and gee! again!
That doesn’t mean that you’re the King of the Castle and I’m
the dirty rascal!
We’ll just see who comes out laughing and grinning and
doing a happy dance and wearing the King’s crown at the
end of all this, shall we?
So, it’s goodbye, farewell, au-revoir and cheerio from me!
Signed,
Guess who!
P.S. I’ll give you a teensy-weensy clue, shall I?
The brat was right! You did miss one!

‘‘The brat was right! You did miss one!’ Cynthia echoed.. ‘How could he know I’d said that if he wasn’t there at the time?’

The Collector handed the note back, a series of diverse emotions going over his features. ‘Upon my soul,‘ he muttered. ‘The slippery rogue performed a timeline-intrusion.’

’Come again?’ enquired Cynthia.

‘Time travel,’ he announced simply.

‘Time travel?’ she repeated incredulously.

The Collector took a bite of his fish, smacking his lips and frowning. ‘Our Disperser friend obviously went to the ugly sister’s cottage after we left, and before he sent the note,‘ he surmised. ‘The ugly sisters told him that we’d been there and what we’d talked about, and then he simply disappeared through the wall, came here, wrote the note and sent it back through time to when we were there. It‘s his way of showing off and proving he‘s one step ahead of us.‘

‘But how?‘ she demanded. ‘That’s impossible!‘

‘Not for a Collector or a Disperser,’ he disclosed. ’The concept of time travel is as natural to us as is the act of walking.’

‘This is incredible,’ Cynthia muttered, sitting down because her legs had suddenly gone numb. ‘How can you possibly travel through time? I mean, all my science lessons at school tell me that the possibility of going back into the past or moving ahead into the future is rubbish.’

‘To you it might seem like something magical and ridiculous,’ remarked The Collector, still eating his fish. ‘But there are certain things that occur where you’re from that seem just as astonishing to me, such as this thing that flies with people inside it. What did you call it? A plaid?‘

‘No,‘ replied Cynthia. ‘Plaids a pattern that you find on clothing. It was a plane. But there’s nothing mystifying about a plane. It runs on turbine engines and that’s it. Nothing magical there.’

The Collector gave his beguiling, dry chuckle again and it was a sound that Cynthia was beginning to like. ’Can you imagine if I was to appear where you came from and tell everyone that I could transmit myself using photons which are faster than the speed of light and tell them there was nothing magical in that? Can you imagine the reaction I would get?’

’Is that how you do it?’ she asked, shoving her own portion of fish into her mouth, her eyes bulging and fascinated.

The Collector leaned forward, a bright twinkle in his green eyes. ‘Yes it is,‘ he said. ‘But it takes incredible power and intensity and can be quite dangerous, as you’ve already seen.’

’Is that where the awful smell comes from and why your hair does that mad dance?’ Cynthia asked, munching vigorously and hardly tasting anything.

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said, standing up and brushing down the surface of his striped trousers. ‘To achieve time-travel, I have to accelerate myself from being a slower-than-light object to that of a faster-than-light object. That’s the trick to it. ’

‘Like revving up a motorbike,’ Cynthia observed.

’If you’re talking about a sudden increase in power revolutions, then you’re right.’ he said. He opened his satchel and turned to her, giving a dry smile. ’Let me ask you a question,’ he said. ’When do you think the incident with The Three Bears happened?’

She thought about it, ’Yesterday,’ she replied. ’Why?’

’It wasn‘t yesterday,’ he told her, coming over to the fire and holding out his hand for her now empty plate. ’It was fifty years ago.’

Cynthia felt as if someone had flung ice cold water into her face or rubbed a mushy pair of socks up her nostrils. Her eyes popped open in shock and she stared at The Collector. ‘Run that one by me again!’ she gasped.

The Collector looked confused, the burnt side of his face dropping comically. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

‘Say that again!’ she demanded.

‘Say what again?’ he enquired.

‘Say what you just said about the time travel bit to do with The Three Bears!’ she hissed.

‘Oh, that,’ he answered. ‘Yes, that was fifty years ago. Didn’t you notice the difference in the weather conditions? It was snowing outside the bears’ cabin and there’s no snow here.’

‘Fifty years? spluttered Cynthia, suddenly unable to get all this lavish and eccentric information into her brain. ’Do you mean to tell me that I’ve been missing from my home for half a century?’

The Collector’s face became glum and miserable at the possibility that he might have upset Cynthia all over again and he stepped back a little. Cynthia stood up, marching around the fire, her fists balled determinedly at her sides and her cheeks flushed with anger.

‘You’ve gone and pulled me through time and you didn’t even ask me if that was alright?’ she exploded, jabbing him harshly in the chest with her index finger. ’How dare you hoist me fifty years away from my Mum and my school and all my family and friends!’

’It was not within my power to prevent that from happening,’ he stressed.

’What do you mean by that?’ she cried. ’It’s perfectly within your power to do whatever you wanna do! Do you realise that the police have probably given up looking for me by now? Do you realise that my Mum probably thinks I’m dead? Do you realise that I’ve probably failed my end of year exams? Fifty years is a long time to be lost and gone and not there any more!’

‘But you will be there,’ he stated mildly, stopping her hand and holding it gently, his face easy and tolerant and oddly lopsided because of the burn. ‘Once we complete our task, I can take you back. It’ll be as if you were never gone!’

Cynthia stared at him, momentarily lost for words, her anger simply running out of steam and making her feel all deflated and rundown and feeling as if somebody had just slapped a huge muffler over her mouth.

The Collector looked down at her, his charred face looking all unhappy and wretched, and that was when Cynthia remembered the words that he’d muttered in his dream; something about not wanting to take her.

‘You mean you’ll be able to drop me back into the kitchen?’ she asked him. ‘Just after Mum left to go to work, just after I showed her the report card?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, his face becoming bright and cheerful. ‘Mere moments would have passed between your mum walking out of the kitchen and you reappearing.’

Cynthia pushed herself away from him and began pacing around the fire, thinking hard. The Collector watched her warily, ready for another flare-up; instead, she stopped striding and looked at him with a frown on her face.

‘But, hang on,’ she said. ‘If you can shove yourself back and forth in time, just like him, what’s to stop you from going back and stopping him from starting all this? Wouldn’t that be the easy thing to do? The reasonable thing to do? The commonsense thing to do?’

The Collector smiled and scratched his chunky mane of hair. ’What’s done is done,’ he told her. ’At least in this world.’

’Are you saying that wouldn’t work?’ Cynthia queried.

‘The time lines are strong and hard to change,’ he explained. ’Once something is done, it requires great effort to make it different. It would need me to go back and make a vast change to stop him.’

’When you say vast -’ began Cynthia.

‘Merely stopping him would be too small a change,‘ he sighed. ‘It would only alter the immediate future and events would soon go back to the way they’d been. To alter everything, I would have to go back to The Great War and make sure that he never survived and that he was killed along with all the other Dispersers.’

‘But what about when he sent that note back?’ Cynthia asked. ‘Surely that’s altered the course of events because we’re here. If he hadn’t thrown it back in time through the wall, we’d never have been able to follow him here. Surely he’s changed the future by doing that.’

‘Not at all,’ The Collector said, coming around the fire and picking her plate up. ‘Merely sending a note back through time isn’t enough to change the future. I would have eventually come here anyway. As I’ve told you before, I go where I’m needed. The only reason I risked latching onto his electromagnetic field, rather than coming here naturally, was because I thought I might’ve had a chance of catching him quicker.’

Cynthia lowered her head and sighed a deep and weighty sigh, her heart sinking like a rock in a pond. It seemed as if she were stuck in this lunatic and idiotic world until they could actually catch this Disperser fellow and put everything to rights again. She looked up at the vast cluster of hills and mountains around them, feeling glum, and that was when she saw the castle.

‘Look,’ she said, pointing. ‘Up there!’

She shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand so as to see it better. The castle was just a distant object, high up and vivid against the stippled greens and browns of the hill it rested in; Cynthia could see its square towers stacked against the main body and its flags flapping in the breeze and that was when she remembered the remote light she’d seen just before drifting off to sleep.

‘Yes, I know,’ said The Collector, turning to her and smiling. ‘I saw it first thing this morning. I thought I’d let you eat first before telling you.‘

‘D’ya think anyone’s inside it?‘ she asked him.

‘Let’s get cracking and find out, shall we?’ he said, stomping down on the embers of the fire with his boot and slinging the satchel over his shoulder. ‘That seems like an awfully long and gruelling climb.’

‘We’re going up there?’ she asked, peering up at it buried in the side of the hill. ‘Why?’

‘The first reason is because that’s where we’ll find Cinderella,‘ he replied. ‘And the second reason is that The Disperser’s been up there and his trail will be smeared all over the walls.’

Cynthia cringed inwardly, thinking of slimy and squirmy things like snails and snakes. Then she remembered her dream from last night about The Disperser jumping out of a bedroom cupboard.

‘I don’t mind meeting Cinderella,’ she said. ’I’m not too sure about bumping into him, though. He sounds like a very unpleasant guy.’

‘Oh, he is,’ agreed The Collector, musing it over for a while. ‘But there’s no need to worry about him, because he’ll run for cover us soon as he senses we’re anywhere near him.’

‘Why?’ Cynthia asked, puzzled. ‘If his race fought against your race in The Great War, then surely he’s not a coward.’

’You’re absolutely right, he’s not frightened in the slightest,’ said The Collector. ’But he’ll want to continue causing disorder and confusion and changing things for as long as he can, it‘s what he lives for. He lives to disperse, and he knows that we’ll try to stop him.’

’Okay,’ she replied meekly. ’Let’s go then.’

The Collector flashed her his agreeable grin and then turned and started walking, his satchel banging at his side.

Cynthia looked back up at the castle and steeled herself, not only for the climb ahead, but for the likely battle that lay waiting for them, between The Collector and The Disperser. It made her think of all the foul and unpleasant pushing and shoving that sometimes happened outside the classroom while pupils were queuing for lessons and it made her think of all the vile and sickening fights that often broke out in the school playground. But most of all, it made her think of the prospect of death and assassination and murder and all the things connected to misery and gloom and utter sorrow.

She swallowed hard, feeling slightly queasy, staring at The Collector’s back as he started striding towards the base of the hill, and then, with a heavy heart, she began to follow him.

(Chapter 11 to follow)