The Witch's Vacuum Cleaner: And Other Stories Read online

  ‘Right,’ said Rincemangle, looking down at the waiting crowds. ‘Well, this is going to be a tricky business, so let’s get started right away.’

  Featherhead joined him on the platform and hauled up the Teach Yourself to Drive book and a street map of Blackbury.

  ‘On the word Go, the Starter Button party will give it a good press and – er – the Accelerator Pedal squad will press the pedal briefly,’ he said uncertainly. ‘The gnomes working the clutch and gear lever will stand by. Go!’

  Of course, it didn’t work as simply as that. It took quite some time before the gnomes found out how to start up properly. But at last the engine was going, making the cab boom like a gong.

  ‘Headlights on! Clutch down! First gear!’ Rincemangle shouted above the din. There were several ghastly crashes and the great lorry rolled forward.

  ‘Here, what about the garage doors?’ shouted Featherhead.

  The lorry rolled onwards. There was a loud bang and the doors didn’t seem to matter any more. The lorry was out on the street.

  ‘Turn left!’ shouted Rincemangle hoarsely. ‘Now straighten up!’

  For several minutes the cab was full of shouts and bangs as the gnomes pushed and pulled on the controls. The lorry wove from side to side and went up on the pavement several times, but at least it kept going. Rincemangle even felt bold enough to order a gear change.

  Through the dark streets of Blackbury the lorry swayed and rumbled, occasionally bouncing off lampposts. Every now and again there was a horrible clonk as it changed gear.

  Steering was the big difficulty. By the time the gnomes down below had heard Rincemangle’s order it was usually too late. It was a good job there were no other vehicles on the road at that time of night, or there would have been a very nasty accident.

  They blundered through the traffic lights and into Blackbury High Street, knocking a piece off a letter box. Featherhead was staring into the great big mirror, high above them, that showed what traffic was behind.

  ‘There’s a car behind with a big blue flashing light on it,’ he said conversationally. ‘Listen! It’s making a siren noise.’

  ‘Very decorative, I’m sure,’ said Rincemangle, who wasn’t really listening. ‘Look lively down below! It’s a straight road out of town now, so change into top gear.’

  There was a thud and a crash, but the gnomes were getting experienced now and the lorry whizzed away, still weaving from side to side.

  ‘The car with the flashing lights keeps trying to overtake us,’ said Featherhead. ‘Gosh! We nearly hit it that time!’ He craned up and had another look. ‘There’s two human beings in peaked caps inside it,’ he added. ‘Golly! They look furious!’

  ‘I expect someone has got a little angry because of all those lampposts we knocked down. I don’t think we were supposed to,’ said Rincemangle. Unfortunately, while he said this, he didn’t look where they were going . . .

  The lorry rumbled off the road and straight through a hedge. The field behind it was ploughed, and the gnomes had to hang on tightly as they were jolted around in the cab.

  The police car screeched to a halt and the two policemen started running across the field after them, shouting.

  The lorry went through another hedge and frightened a herd of cows.

  Rincemangle peered through the window. There was a wood ahead, and behind that the heather-clad slopes of Even Moor started climbing up towards the sky.

  ‘Prepare to abandon lorry!’ he shouted. They plunged into a wood and the lorry stopped dead in the middle of a bramble thicket. It was suddenly very quiet.

  Then there was a very busy five minutes as the gnomes unloaded their possessions from the back of the lorry. By the time the policemen arrived there was not a gnome to be seen. Rincemangle and Featherhead were sitting high up on a bramble branch and watched as the men wandered around the abandoned lorry, scratching their heads. After poking around inside the cab and finding the little ropes and ladders they wandered away, arguing.

  When they had gone the gnomes crept out of their hiding places and gathered around Rincemangle.

  ‘Even Moor is only a short walk away,’ he said. ‘Let’s spend the day hidden here and we can be up there by tonight!’

  The gnomes lit fires and settled down to cook breakfast. They made cups of tea and handed them round and they all toasted their new home. Many of them were wondering what it would be like to live in the country again after so long in the town. A lot of the little ones, of course – I mean, even littler than the average gnome – were rather looking forward to it. But they all knew that there was going to be a lot of hard work before them.

  Early next morning a poacher, coming home for breakfast, told his wife he’d seen a lot of little lights climbing up the slopes of the Moor.

  She didn’t believe him.

  Perhaps you will.

  About the Author

  Sir Terry Pratchett (yes, he’s a real-life knight!) is one of the world’s funniest and most popular writers. He started writing the stories in this collection when he was just seventeen, and his first full-length novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971. Terry Pratchett has written over fifty brilliant books for children and adults, and is perhaps best-known for his Discworld® series – all about a world that happens to be balanced on the back of a giant turtle floating through space. He is the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal for his young adult book The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. His books have been translated into thirty-eight languages, and have sold more than eighty million copies worldwide (but who’s counting?). He died in March 2015.

  Also by Terry Pratchett, for children:

  The Carpet People

  The Bromeliad Trilogy:

  Truckers

  Diggers

  Wings

  The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy:

  Only You Can Save Mankind

  Johnny and the Dead

  Johnny and the Bomb

  Dragons at Crumbling Castle:

  and Other Stories

  For young adults and above:

  The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (A Discworld® novel)

  The Tiffany Aching Sequence (Discworld® novels):

  The Wee Free Men

  A Hat Full of Sky

  Wintersmith

  I Shall Wear Midnight

  The Shepherd’s Crown

  Nation

  Dodger

  Dodger’s Guide to London

  A full list of Terry Pratchett’s books can be found on www.terrypratchett.co.uk

  DRAGONS AT CRUMBLING CASTLE

  In the days of King Arthur there were no newspapers, only town criers, who went around shouting the news at the tops of their voices.

  King Arthur was sitting up in bed one Sunday, eating an egg, when the Sunday town crier trooped in. Actually, there were several of them: a man to draw the pictures, a jester for the jokes and a small man in tights and football boots who was called the Sports Page.

  ‘DRAGONS

  INVADE

  CRUMBLING

  CASTLE,’

  shouted the News Crier (this was the headline), and then he said in a softer voice, ‘For full details hear page nine.’

  King Arthur dropped his spoon in amazement. Dragons! All the knights were out on quests, except for Sir Lancelot – and he had gone to France for his holidays.

  The Ninth Page came panting up, coughed, and said: ‘Thousands flee for their lives as family of green dragons burn and rampage around Crumbling Castle . . .’

  ‘What is King Arthur doing about this?’ demanded the Editorial Crier pompously. ‘What do we pay our taxes for? The people of Camelot demand action . . .’

  ‘Throw them out, and give them fourpencefn1 each,’ said the king to the butler. ‘Then call out the guard.’

  Later that day he went out to the courtyard.

  ‘Now then, men,’ he said. ‘I want a volunteer . . .’ Then he adjusted his spectacles. The only other per
son in the courtyard was a small boy in a suit of mail much too big for him.

  ‘Ralph reporting, sire!’ the lad said, and saluted.

  ‘Where’s everyone else?’

  ‘Tom, John, Ron, Fred, Bill and Jack are off sick,’ said Ralph, counting on his fingers. ‘Then William, Bert, Joe and Albert are on holiday. James is visiting his granny. Rupert has gone hunting. And Eric . . .’

  ‘Well then,’ said the king. ‘Ralph, how would you like to visit Crumbling Castle? Nice scenery, excellent food, only a few dragons to kill. Take my spare suit of armour – it’s a bit roomy, but quite thick . . .’

  So Ralph got on his donkey and trotted over the drawbridge, whistling, and disappeared over the hills. When he was out of sight he took off the armour and hid it behind a hedge, because it squeaked and was too hot, and put on his ordinary clothes.

  High on a wooded hill sat a mounted figure in coal-black armour. He watched the young boy pass by, then galloped down after him on his big black horse.

  ‘HALT IN THE

  NAME OF THE

  FRIDAY KNIGHT,’

  he cried in a deep voice, raising his black sword.

  Ralph looked round. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said. ‘Is this the right road to Crumbling Castle?’

  ‘Well, yes, actually it is,’ said the knight, looking rather embarrassed, and then he remembered that he was really a big bad knight, and continued in a hollow voice,

  ‘BUT YOU’LL

  HAVE TO FIGHT

  ME FIRST!’

  Ralph looked up in amazement as the black knight got off his horse and charged at him, waving his sword.

  RHCP DIGITAL

  UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia

  India | New Zealand | South Africa

  RHCP Digital is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  www.penguin.co.uk

  www.puffin.co.uk

  www.ladybird.co.uk

  First published 2016

  This ebook published 2016

  Text copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett, 2016

  Illustrations by Mark Beech © RHCP, 2016

  Extract from Dragons at Crumbling Castle © Terry Pratchett, 2014

  All stories contained in this collection were originally published in the ‘Children’s Circle’ section of the Bucks Free Press in the following publication years.

  All stories were previously untitled, and so these titles have been attributed for the purposes of this collection.

  ‘The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner’ (1970); ‘The Great Train Robbery’ (1966); ‘The Truly Terrible Toothache’ (1973); ‘The Frozen Feud’ (1967); ‘Darby and the Submarine’ (1966); ‘The Sheep Rodeo Scandal’ (1969); ‘An Ant called 4179003’ (1970); ‘The Fire Opal’ (1968); ‘Lord Cake and the Battle for Banwen’s Beacon’ (1968); ‘The Time-travelling Television’ (1972); ‘The Blackbury Park Statues’ (1970); ‘Wizard War’ (1968); ‘The Extraordinary Adventures of Doggins’ (1966); ‘Rincemangle, the Gnome of Even Moor’ (1973)

  Discworld® is a trademark registered by Terry Pratchett

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978–1–448–19715–6

  All correspondence to:

  RHCP Digital

  Penguin Random House Children’s

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL

  The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner

  fn1 And even harder practice in front of people, for not many mirrors shout things like ‘Rubbish!’ And if your mirror does, you probably don’t need to worry about whether or not you can learn to do magic tricks. Knowing how to run away very fast would be a more useful skill.

  fn2 Something that every child in the town knew for a fact, though strangely not known by a single grown-up.

  fn3 Sadly for Mimms, Ron’s skills did not seem to include turning a bowl of sunflower seeds into pizza. Or even bananas.

  fn4 And even his Nanki-Poo Azalea from his Nature’s Mistake.

  fn5 And, sadly, Amir Raj waved his hands and produced a bagful as a special present. If only Mimms had asked for cake . . .

  The Great Train Robbery

  fn1 Anyone looking for it on a map needed very good eyesight, as to fit the name on meant it had to be printed in very tiny letters.

  fn2 Putting them down his trousers didn’t seem like a very good idea.

  fn3 Son of the famed outlaw Dai Orribly, who had lived up to his name, and brother to Dai Too, who was trying not to live up to his.

  fn4 Hiding, actually.

  fn5 If you think tracking cowboys by the tracks of their horses is hard, well, you should try following bikes over the Welsh mountains by the light of the moon.

  The Truly Terrible Toothache

  fn1 He looked a right silly too.

  fn2 It would also be fair to say that many of the local men did not look very comfortable wearing tights and bloomers in the High Street.

  fn3 These are surprisingly magical, so must be handled very carefully.

  fn4 ‘The Tale of the Rogue Carpet Sweeper’ and ‘My Narrow Escape from the Demon Lawn Mower’ both became much-told future local legends as a result.

  Darby and the Submarine

  fn1 An earwig will actually make a lot of meals if you are only one centimetre high.

  The Sheep Rodeo Scandal

  fn1 Not that easy, since Dai Too’s feet were two sizes smaller than Big Dai’s, so he had to wear three pairs of socks.

  fn2 One day a man called Plimsoll had fallen off it, so people thought the least they could do was name it after him.

  An Ant Called 4179003

  fn1 They were good soldiers, but not very good at making up songs. I expect you could make up a better one.

  The Fire Opal

  fn1 A bit sadly. He had especially been wondering what ‘that sort of thing’ might mean.

  Lord Cake and the Battle for Banwen’s Beacon

  fn1 This was a lot of money. A typical labourer might only earn £30 in a whole year.

  fn2 A claim jumper is what miners used to wear to keep them warm.

  fn3 Tommy Taten’s great-grandfather, as it happens.

  fn4 Lord Cake had a particularly nasty laugh, the sort that makes your teeth tingle.

  fn5 ‘She’ll Be Coming Through the Sheepdip When She Comes’ was a particular favourite.

  The Time-travelling Television

  fn1 An old music-hall song about a woman from the Isle of Man looking for her boyfriend.

  fn2 Very true. She couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

  fn3 Though also sometimes fatal, since time-travel doesn’t necessarily mean travel without risks, and a hungry T. Rex often likes nothing better than a snack on an unwary tourist.

  The Blackbury Park Statues

  fn1 And to the fact that almost everyone in the park was fully dressed, while the angels were lacking any clothes. And Lord Palmerston was a very proper gentleman who did not think it right to see an unclothed body.

  fn2 The Suffragettes were an inspirational group who successfully campaigned for women’s rights to vote.

  fn3 A sixpence – often called a tanner – was an old coin used when British money was divided into pounds, shillings and pence and you really did have to know your twelve times table to work out how much things cost. I used this coinage when I was a young boy, and I still sometimes long for the days when I could jingle a couple of tanners in my pocket along with a chunky thrupenny bit or two. Today’s pound coins don’t jangle in the same way.

  fn4 Often confused with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Menuenchi was nowhere near as famous, but had been a very fine fiddler indeed for the Blackbury Pit Band.

  The Extraordinary Adventures of Doggins

  fn1 And neither do I, so I think we will have to leave it at that.

  fn2As your parents might remind you on a regular basis.

 
fn3 Actually, Doggins planted it when he got back to the airship, and it grew into a small bush with white and purple flowers. It never grew any money, but it smelled nice.

  Rincemangle, the Gnome of Even Moor

  fn1 If you look carefully in the gardens of houses around where you live, you might see an example of what people think gnomes should look like. They often seem to be carrying fishing rods. Which wouldn’t be much use in a tree.

  fn2 He had taught himself to read by looking at bits of paper that had blown over by his tree, most of which had pictures on them too. It meant he knew a lot of useful words like TEAR HERE and FULLY ORGANIC and EXTRA-TASTY WITH ADDED COLOURINGS but he wasn’t very good at simple things like ‘The dog sat on the mat.’

  fn3 Especially those who had been driving the model cars in the toy department. After all, how much harder could a big lorry be? Some of those model cars fought back on corners!

  fn4 There were odd signs saying things like ROADWORKS AHEAD. Well, why wouldn’t a road work?

  Sneak Preview

  fn1 In the days of King Arthur, this was a lot more money than it seems today – it would buy, oh, at least a cup of mead and a hunk of goat’s meat.