The Land of Neverendings Read online

  ‘This has been a fascinating outing,’ declared Sister Pretty. ‘I had no idea that this famous pie factory was started by two enterprising bears and a plastic horse!’

  ‘That’s enough history!’ someone called from the crowd. ‘When can we have our picnic?’

  Martha whispered, ‘Is that the puffin from the bookshop? Wow.’

  ‘Shut up – we’re sticking to the timetable,’ Hugo said firmly. ‘The picnic comes after the pie fight.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Sister Pretty. ‘With all pies included in the price.’

  ‘As many as you can hurl,’ added Smiffy.

  ‘Oh, wow!’ Martha shook with laughter. ‘This’ll look good when we write our reports!’

  Emily was laughing too, though her head felt pleasantly distant and foggy. In a nice, non-painful part of her memory she suddenly saw Holly’s face, shining with laughter.

  The pie fight was your favourite story ever.

  Bluey made the national final and totally thrashed Lord Dogger.

  I blew raspberries on your arm – SPLAT!

  ‘Well, we’re at the end of the tour now,’ Clare told the crowd of oblivious humans. ‘It’s time for you to sample our latest product for yourselves.’

  There was a puff of smoke, and a new sign suddenly appeared on the door behind her: THROWING ROOM.

  ‘I love it!’ Martha scrabbled under the white coat to dig her phone out of her pocket (they had been told to leave their phones behind with their bags, but Martha’s phone was her main birthday present and she couldn’t bear to be parted from it). She began to take pictures. ‘I hope they come out – are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Emily automatically.

  ‘It’s just that your lips have gone a funny colour. Are mine a funny colour?’

  The door opened onto a large, bright room, furnished with three long tables. Each table was heaped with strangely cartoonish pies. How big was this place, anyway? Emily blinked and the tables and pies shrank to the height of the toys – who surged towards them with honks of joy.

  ‘TAKE THAT!’ shouted Toop, and a pie flew across the room into Hugo’s face.

  The throwing room turned into a storm of magic glitter as the toys flung pies at each other. They thought it was very funny to get hit, and took hilarious selfies of their splattered faces.

  And then a real, human pie landed in Emily’s face with a cold, wet ‘SPLAT’ that left her gasping.

  ‘Ha-ha – gotcha!’ yelled Mrs Lewis.

  Mrs Lewis?

  Before she knew what she was doing, Emily found herself grabbing the nearest pie (chocolate custard) and flinging it right back.

  There were pies flying in every direction now, until toys and humans were dripping with blobs of jam, custard and meringue. It was extremely weird – and at first it was huge fun. None of the Hatty Catty girls could resist this golden opportunity to throw a pie at the school’s scariest teacher, and Mrs Lewis gave as good as she got, chucking her pies with the precision of a machine.

  But then – suddenly – everything was different. It seemed to Emily that in the space of one blink, the pie fight stopped being fun. The silly, furry faces of the toys were scowling and nasty; the laughter turned into shrieks of fury, the pies turned into weapons.

  ‘BUM to you!’ the puffin from the bookshop yelled, rubbing Hugo’s beak into a chocolate flan. ‘You LABEL!’

  ‘OW – STOPPIT!’ screamed Sister Pretty. ‘Let me go!’

  Three girl penguins had surrounded the Barbie nun, and were taking turns to flip up the long skirts of her habit – the mean expressions on their faces made Emily feel sick.

  One of them shouted, ‘Let’s see your SCRIBBLES, plastic lady!’ and – to Emily’s horror – she ripped off Sister Pretty’s veil, exposing the terrible scars on her forehead. ‘Hahaha – it says BUM – hahaha!’

  ‘Stop! Stop fighting!’ Emily tried to shout, but it came out as a croak. The horrible sight had stunned her like a blow and her head was reeling. ‘You can’t hurt each other – you’re toys!’

  ‘Give it back!’ Sister Pretty started to cry – and a crying toy was the worst sight of all.

  ‘Leave her alone!’ Emily gasped. ‘Hugo, you’ve got to find Bluey!’ One clear thought suddenly rose up in her scrambled mind – Bluey was in the very deepest part of Smockeroon, and the toad hadn’t got that far (not yet, anyway). ‘He’ll help us, I know he will!’

  For one fraction of a second, she glimpsed it – the black toad, its eyes slits of pure spite, looming out of the doorway like a storm cloud …

  Twenty-two

  A MEETING IN WONDERLAND

  ‘SIT DOWN … DEEP BREATHS … drink this …’ Drink Me.

  Emily tried to explain that she didn’t want to shrink like Alice, but her mouth wouldn’t make the words.

  Mrs Lewis threw a cold, wet pie into her face.

  No – it was a wet wipe.

  The hard world rushed back and Emily found herself sitting on one of the sofas in the Publicity Suite, with a bottle of water being held to her lips and an amphitheatre of faces staring down at her.

  ‘You turned a bit faint,’ said Mrs Lewis. ‘Well, it has been a long afternoon, and you look a lot better now – but I’ll tell your mother to take you to the doctor’s, just to be on the safe side.’

  The embarrassment was colossal. Emily’s cheeks were on fire. ‘I’m fine – honestly …’

  Did any of that really happen?

  She was still stunned by what she had seen, and everyone else seemed slightly stunned too, as if they sensed something important had gone wrong, though they remembered nothing at all about the magic.

  ‘On the coach, everybody!’ Mrs Lewis turned her attention back to the other girls, and the terrible staring stopped when Clare started to hand out gift bags that contained small, plastic-wrapped samples of the latest pie.

  ‘Are you really OK?’ Martha whispered anxiously. ‘Do you swear?’

  ‘I’m fine now. I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘Your face went all weird and you nearly fell over – it was quite scary.’

  ‘You saw them, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, if you mean the toys,’ said Martha. ‘I can’t believe nobody else noticed – they all think we’ve been on a normal school trip.’

  They took their seats on the coach and there was a storm of chatter and pie sampling, which meant they could talk normally, without having to whisper.

  ‘How much did you see?’

  ‘Yum, this pie’s fabulous,’ said Martha, through a mouthful of sweet pastry. ‘You should open yours.’

  ‘You take it.’ Emily never wanted to see a pie again in her life. ‘Did you see the fight?’

  ‘What fight?’

  ‘There was an enormous pie fight – humans as well as toys. Everyone got covered with custard.’

  Martha looked at her uneasily. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘I think that part might have been a dream. The toys disappeared when we went into the tasting room. That’s when you turned green and keeled over.’

  ‘You were taking photos,’ said Emily. ‘I’m sure I saw you doing it during the fight.’

  ‘Photos?’ Martha pulled her phone from the pocket of her blazer and began to search through the pictures. ‘Hey – look! I did take photos – but where’re they going?’

  The pictures that she did not remember taking flashed across the screen and faded into nothing – but not before the two girls had seen them.

  The red balloon, the line of penguins, the door that said ‘Throwing Room’. And one startling close-up of the bookshop puffin, snarling as he attacked Hugo.

  ‘His face!’ Martha was bewildered and starting to be frightened. ‘And that puffin always seemed so friendly. I’ve known him for years and I still give him a pat when I’m in the bookshop. I don’t understand – are all our toys going to turn nasty?’

  ‘I’ve told Hugo to ask Bluey for help
,’ said Emily.

  ‘What can he do?’

  Emily didn’t want to admit that she didn’t know. ‘He’ll think of something.’

  *

  The end of the stethoscope was cold on Emily’s chest and back. It was the next morning, and Mum had insisted on dragging her to the doctor’s.

  ‘Nothing the matter here,’ Dr Brewer said cheerfully. ‘You were quite right to bring her in, but she’s as fit as a fiddle. I’m prepared to bet it was nothing more than being tired and dehydrated.’ He smiled at Emily. ‘You can put your shirt back on – and you’ve earned a boiled sweet.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Emily had known Dr Brewer since she was a baby, and she liked him; he had grey hair and a baggy old tweed jacket, and he always gave you a piece of barley sugar.

  ‘It’s never happened before,’ her mother said quietly. ‘She hasn’t been eating very much since … well—’

  ‘Mum!’ (Please don’t embarrass me!)

  ‘I worry that she doesn’t seem to have grown since we lost Holly.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Dr Brewer said happily. ‘People grow at different rates – I’ll only worry if that blazer still fits in a year’s time.’

  Emily said, as patiently as she could manage, ‘I really am fine. Honestly.’

  ‘Of course, of course – you’re missing that sister of yours.’ He looked over her head at Mum. ‘Loss of appetite, being quiet and withdrawn – all quite normal in a case like this. Don’t expect her to bounce back all at once.’

  It was nearly ten o’clock by the time they walked out of the surgery. Mum had phoned the school and the office where she worked to say they would be late; she had refused to listen to Emily saying, again and again, that she was perfectly healthy, and now the whole day was out of shape.

  ‘For the last time,’ Mum said wearily, unlocking the car, ‘I promised that bossy teacher of yours that I’d have you checked out.’

  ‘Mrs Lewis was exaggerating. I didn’t faint at the pie factory – I just felt a bit woozy.’

  ‘Emily, do change the record!’ Mum sighed. ‘I needed to put my own mind at rest – OK?’

  ‘I told you there was nothing to worry about. Now I’ll have to walk in right in the middle of geography, and Ms Khan’s really strict.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure she’ll understand when you explain.’

  This was a very parent-ish thing to say; parents didn’t understand that teachers never listened to explanations. Emily gave up the argument. Now that she had got over the worst of the embarrassment and disruption, she felt mean for making her mother anxious.

  Mum said, ‘Gwen was absolutely lovely about it.’ Gwen was her boss. ‘And she’s already said I can leave early next Wednesday.’

  ‘What’s happening next Wednesday?’

  ‘I had a letter from the charity that got us Holly’s bed. They’re coming to take it away.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Holly’s specially adapted hospital bed took up most of the space in her room – the last place in the world where a sense of her still lingered. With the bed it was still recognisably Holly’s room. When the bed was gone, it would be nobody’s room.

  ‘It’s silly of me to mind about it,’ Mum said sadly. ‘I suppose I knew they’d want it back eventually – those beds are terribly expensive. But it’ll look so empty.’

  ‘I’m glad you warned me.’

  ‘Of course I warned you,’ her mother said. ‘You don’t need any more sudden changes in your life.’

  This was the closest she would come to talking about the morning when Emily had woken up to a life without Holly, the greatest change of all.

  I never said goodbye.

  This thought was agony. Emily tried to push it away, but it had a way of leaping out to torment her whenever her guard was down.

  I didn’t kiss you.

  I didn’t hug Bluey.

  I didn’t know it would be the last time.

  *

  ‘I can’t believe I didn’t see anything.’ Maze’s voice was muffled; she was in the middle of pulling her grey school jersey over her head. ‘Not a thing! All I got was a rather boring tour of a factory and a free pie. Why was I left out?’

  ‘Maybe because you were standing too close to Summer,’ suggested Martha ‘She’s always saying stories about magic are stupid. Maybe it rubbed off.’

  ‘And who knew about the puffin from the bookshop? I liked that puffin!’

  ‘Don’t blame him,’ said Emily. ‘He was under the influence of the toad.’

  ‘Well, it’s not fair. I’m the owner of Prizzy. That ought to count for something.’

  ‘I didn’t see everything,’ said Martha. ‘Emily got most of it.’

  ‘So let me get this straight. The toys turned mean, and you asked Bluey to help.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Emily.

  ‘What can he do?’

  ‘I don’t know – I thought the Sturvey might be in his bit of Smockeroon.’

  It was after lunch and they were in the classroom, getting ready for the dress rehearsal of Alice in Wonderland. They had to stop talking about Smockeroon when Ms Robinson came over to do Maze’s make-up. This was their first time in full costume and make-up, and it was so much fun that Emily pushed her worries about the toys to the back of her mind.

  She put on the sky-blue dress and white apron that her mother had made. Ms Robinson combed her hair off her face, fixed it with a blue hairband and curled the ends with electric tongs.

  ‘Emily, you’ve stepped right out of the book!’ Ms Robinson pushed her gently towards the long mirror she had brought in. ‘Take a look at your transformation.’

  It was startling to see how much she looked like the pictures of Alice in the book, and the classroom was suddenly crowded with famous characters. The long red Tudor dress that Mum had made for the Red Queen looked fabulous, especially when Ms Robinson had painted Maze’s face dead white, with big, frowning black eyebrows. Martha looked brilliant too, in her huge, furry white rabbit’s ears, and Amber Frost had an amazing caterpillar costume made of green cardboard. The classroom was in chaos, every chair and desk piled with discarded clothes and bits of costume and every girl talking at the top of her voice.

  At last, when everyone was ready and more or less quiet, Ms Robinson led them all down the small back staircase and onto the stage. There was real stage lighting today; the wings were thrillingly dark.

  ‘Don’t forget to treat this as a real performance!’ Ms Robinson called to them from the auditorium. ‘If anything goes wrong, just carry on!’

  The music started, loud and boisterous, and Emily had to concentrate on not tripping over her feet when she ran out onto the stage with the other girls who were in the opening scene.

  Summer Watson stepped forward to read the opening poem, ‘All in the Golden Afternoon.’

  And then Martha the White Rabbit ran out, looking hilarious in her ears and whiskers, and holding a huge watch made of cardboard.

  ‘I’m late! I’m late!’

  This was the part of the story everyone remembered, when Alice chases the White Rabbit and falls down the rabbit hole. Ms Robinson had made a large hole in a piece of cardboard and put a black curtain behind it, so that Martha and then Emily would look as if they were being swallowed into the darkness.

  Martha climbed through the hole and Emily went in after her, exactly as they had rehearsed.

  And this was when Emily noticed something was different. She was supposed to run back onto the stage as soon as she heard the swirling, electronic music that Ms Robinson had written for Alice’s endless fall down the rabbit hole. When all the noises of the play suddenly went silent, she thought at first that the sound system had gone wrong, and turned to say something to Martha.

  But everyone backstage, including Martha and the crowd of animals waiting to run on for the Caucus Race, was strangely still and quiet, like people in a stopped film.

  And then she saw a pale light glowing around the nearby fire extinguisher, and a hu
ddle of small shapes on the floor.

  ‘Hello, Emily!’ It was Hugo, looking very pleased with himself. ‘Sorry to interrupt – it won’t take long.’

  ‘Hugo, what’re you doing here?’

  ‘Bluey’s sent you a message.’

  ‘Bluey?’ Pain and joy whipped through her; she’d been wondering if she’d fainted again, and now she didn’t care. ‘Is he here?’

  ‘He can’t come Hardside any more,’ said Hugo. ‘And it’s a complicated message about the Sturvey, so he turned it into a catchy song and sent his choir – he still keeps it for special occasions.’

  The toys around the fire extinguisher shuffled into three tidy rows, with the tallest at the back. They coughed and rustled their sheets of music, and then burst out singing:

  It starts with an E and Entrance is free!

  Then comes number TWO, which rhymes with Pooh!

  And next is NINE; that’s just fine!

  Followed by P, in time for tea!

  Last comes A, which is a new experience for A because A is usually first!

  Emily clapped politely at the end, not wanting to hurt the choir’s feelings – but the song sounded like total nonsense.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Hugo happily. ‘He’ll send you another message when you get there.’

  ‘Get where?’

  The toys vanished, the light vanished.

  Behind her, Martha giggled and whispered, ‘I’ve lost one of my whiskers!’

  It was an ordinary dress rehearsal again.

  The electronic music began and Emily ran back on stage without missing a beat. The rest of the performance went perfectly, but the fact that Bluey had answered her cry for help warmed her like a hot-water bottle.

  Afterwards, when they were back in the classroom, she pulled Maze and Martha behind the costume rail, to whisper, ‘Come back with me – you won’t believe what just happened!’

  Twenty-three

  THE MESSAGE

  RUTH WAS INTRIGUED by Bluey’s message. She made Emily sing it several times and wrote the words down on a piece of paper. ‘Now it makes even less sense! Do you have any idea what it means?’