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

  ‘Here,’ said Gorsebush. ‘We can’t put them in the cells! The police station’s full of sheep!’

  ‘Those sheep are going to be needed on Monday as evidence,’ said Sergeant Bunyan. ‘I’m afraid Dai and Maverock will just have to stay in there with them.’

  And so they did.

  But first all the sheepboys had to come and offer for the sheep which were, of course, still for sale. And how they laughed to see the sheep rustlers in the same pen as the sheep.

  ‘I’ll gi’ ye ten pounds for that critter there!’ Woolley Waistcoat chortled, pointing at the bootless Dai Too, who was struggling to hang onto his last pair of socks while a persistent ewe tried to eat them.

  ‘An’ I’ll see ye the same for that one over there wi’ a chewed waistcoat wrapped around his skinny self,’ Rawhide Evans offered back, pointing at a decidedly sheepish-looking Maverock.

  And all the sheepboys cheered.

  AN ANT CALLED 4179003

  Once or twice upon a time there was an ant called 4179003. He lived in an ants’ nest with a lot of other ants who all looked alike. He didn’t even have any friends, because ant number 4179004, with whom he had been quite friendly, had one day got trodden on by a dog. In the ants’ nest it was dark and every day was just like yesterday.

  Then one day 4179003 was lumping around ants’ eggs with all the other ants and he thought: Why am I doing this? Is this what life is all about?

  He stopped for a moment and put down his load.

  That’s a subversive thought, he thought, shocked at himself. If the Queen finds out I’ll be executed and my number will be given to a new ant. I’m not being loyal to the nest.

  He heaved the ants’ eggs a bit further down the tunnel.

  Yesterday I was carrying eggs and I’ll be carrying eggs tomorrow, he thought. It didn’t seem a very exciting prospect. The more he thought about it the less exciting it became.

  So blow this for a lark, thought 4179003 finally, dropping his eggs and trotting towards the entrance.

  It didn’t take long for his disappearance to be noticed. One of the soldier ants, the ones with great clicking jaws, was watching the column wind by when he noticed the gap in it. Immediately he gave the alarm.

  ‘A defector!’ he screamed. ‘Stop him!’

  But it was too late: 4179003 had gone.

  He was running through the grass stems, peering constantly over his shoulder. It was a good job he did. Soldier ants were swarming out of the nest, jaws clashing in fury.

  He bumped into a blade of grass, and for want of anything else to do sped up it. It shook as the soldiers trampled by.

  ‘Hmm,’ said a voice from right behind him.

  ‘Gah!’ said 4179003, spinning round. A large grasshopper was watching him, and then it peered over the edge of the blade.

  ‘They’re going to a lot of trouble over one ant,’ it said. ‘Done something nasty, have you? Hmmm?’

  ‘It is forbidden to leave the nest without permission,’ quavered 4179003.

  ‘Oh, I won’t turn you in,’ said the grasshopper. ‘We’re all open-minded here, I’m sure. What’s your name?’

  ‘They call me Ant 4179003.’

  ‘That’s a number! I mean, what do you call yourself?’

  ‘Just me,’ said 4179003.

  ‘Well, Me’s good enough,’ muttered the grasshopper. ‘You’ve got to have a name. Still, once an ant always an ant. I knew a bee once that felt the same as you. Wanted to see a bit more of the world. Didn’t work. Got hungry. Got cold. Fed up. No, the likes of you ought to stick in nests. Nip in quick before the soldiers come back and I dare say no one’ll notice you’ve been away.’

  ‘No! I want to see what’s going on!’ said Me.

  The grasshopper eyed him carefully. ‘Another reason you ought to get back in is that sometimes when I’m hungry I eat ants. No offence meant, I’m sure – it’s just in my nature. I mean, if I was to get hungry in the next few minutes I might feel called upon to eat you.’

  Me backed away and slid back down the grass stem.

  ‘You’ll regret it,’ sang the grasshopper from his perch. But Me scurried off through the grass.

  At last he crawled up onto a dock leaf and looked around. There was no sign of the soldier ants who had been chasing him, or of the grasshopper.

  Free! he thought, doing a little jig on the leaf. No more numbers! No more being bossed around. Whoopee!

  The sun was shining and he felt marvellous. He cartwheeled across the leaf and did all those things he wasn’t allowed to do in the hive – somersaults, whistling and stamping all six feet. After about five minutes of this he’d run out of things to do and was getting hungry.

  Honey, he thought. There must be some way of getting the stuff without going back to the nest. To tell the truth, he had never bothered about where food came from – he’d just queued up in the ants’ canteen, like everyone else.

  Just then there was a buzzing above him. It stopped, there was a cough, and it started again. This happened several times, and then there was a crash and a bee bounced off the dock leaf, cursing.

  The ant peered over the edge. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Only my pride, laddie, only my pride,’ said the bee from where he was lying. ‘Engine’s conked out. Have to walk home now. Are you this ant I’m supposed to be looking for?’

  It dawned on the ant. ‘You must be the bee the grasshopper mentioned, the one who left the hive.’

  ‘That’s me. Thought I’d look you up, y’know. We rebels must stick together. I say, I’d be obliged if you could help me up.’

  The ant levered the bee up with a grass stem, and helped him smooth out his wings.

  ‘That’s better,’ said the bee. ‘Name’s Bottomly. H’d y’do? Fancy a walk? Got a little place up under the hedge. Nothing flash, but homely. Expect you’re hungry. Got honey. Come on.’ And he crawled away, with the ant running to keep up.

  As they progressed, Bottomly explained, in brief sentences, how he’d got fed up with living in the hive and had decided to run away.

  ‘That’s exactly what I thought too,’ said the ant admiringly. ‘I got fed up with doing the same things every day.’

  ‘Too true, laddie. Where’s it all lead to? I asked myself. Nowhere. So I’ve got this deserted mouse hole, which is quite cosy. Sometimes I see a few old friends from the hive, but they’ve never got time to talk. Work, work, work, that’s all they care about.’

  He led the ant up a bank and into the hole. It was small and warm inside, and the walls were lined with honey pots. Bottomly prised the lid off one and offered the ant a drink.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said.

  ‘Cheers,’ said the ant. It looked as though freedom wasn’t going to be too bad after all.

  They were just starting on a second pot of honey when Bottomly glanced out of the mouse hole.

  ‘Here come those soldier ants!’ he cried. ‘They’ve followed us!’

  The ant peered out and saw them marching up the bank. There were hundreds of them. He could hear their jaws clicking, their feet stamping out a tune, which they were chanting as they climbed:

  ‘Us ants go marching left and right,

  Hurrah, hurrah,

  Ten thousand legs is quite a sight,

  Hurrah, hurrah!

  We work all day

  ’Cos that’s our way

  And we all go marching on . . .’fn1

  ‘You don’t weigh much,’ said Bottomly, picking Me up. ‘Hold on – I’m going to try to take off.’

  With his wings going like buzz saws the bee bumped and bounced down the slope, and soared into the evening air just above the snapping jaws of the soldiers.

  The ant looked dizzily down and saw the soldier ants invading the mouse hole.

  ‘They’ll eat all your honey!’ he said. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Never mind about that. I can’t fly far with you, so we’d better look for a landing spot. Fasten your seat belts and no smoking please
.’ He swallowed. ‘You seem to have got heavier.’

  Me looked round – and saw a soldier ant hanging onto Bottomly’s back legs.

  ‘We’ve been boarded!’ he shouted.

  ‘This is a hijack,’ said the soldier ant. ‘Fly to the ant heap, or I’ll bite.’ He clashed his jaws.

  Bottomly soared upwards and somersaulted. He spiralled and buzzed across the sky, with both ants clinging on tightly.

  ‘No tricks—’ began the soldier, but just then Me leaped at him and grabbed his legs, pulling him off Bottomly.

  They tumbled down, with the bee a tiny speck above them. The soldier, being heavier, fell faster, and the small ant was left alone, slowly floating in the breeze.

  There was a whirr of wings and Bottomly soared down and hovered under him. ‘Climb aboard,’ he said.

  They swooped across a wood and Bottomly hovered over a stream.

  ‘Hold tight,’ he called. ‘I can’t go on much longer.’

  They landed in a clump of watercress, and sat panting on the broad damp leaves.

  ‘This looks a nice place,’ said the ant, as they scrambled up the bank. ‘Homely. And a nice long way from the ants’ nest.’

  ‘That looks an interesting hole over there,’ said the bee.

  The hole had belonged to a rat, but was now deserted except for an earwig, who scuttled away as they approached.

  ‘Room for lots of honey here,’ said Bottomly. ‘Roomy sort of place. Nice view of the water. Peaceful.’

  And there they stayed, doing nothing at all most days but gathering a bit of honey and watching the stream go by, while the other ants and bees worked hard and never had time to watch anything.

  THE FIRE OPAL

  Long before there were men on Earth there was a mountain so high that its top was forever hidden in the clouds. It was called Whitehelm, and at its tip, in a tiny hollow in the black rock, was a peaceful valley.

  There the mountain people lived. Trolls, they were called. They were half as tall as houses, and their skins were harder than stone.

  Their king had a crown of iron and lead. In its centre was the Fire Opal.

  The Fire Opal came from the centre of the Earth. It shone with all colours, even at night, when the clouds around the mountain reflected the glow. The trolls said that their ancestors had brought it with them when they came up from the centre of the Earth.

  One day the old king crumbled away as old rock falls into dust, and the new prince was to be crowned. His name was Tyran Ogg.

  He didn’t particularly want to be a king – he wanted to lead an expedition to explore the lands down below the mountain.

  To tell the truth, he was bored with the valley too. He wanted to go to the moon. He used to look up at it on clear nights and wish he was there, because it was bleak and rocky, the kind of place that trolls love. And of course, as trolls were half stone, they could talk to rocks and mountains, so he felt sure that it would be wonderful to have a chat with the moon.

  If only we could go there, he thought.

  Then, just as the archbishop troll was placing the crown on his head, the Fire Opal fell out with a plop! and started to roll down the valley.

  ‘Quick! Stop it!’ cried the archbishop, and the prince and his soldiers dashed after it. It bounced and rolled and, at the very edge of the valley, stopped.

  ‘Don’t nobody breathe,’ said the Sergeant of the Guard, tiptoeing towards it. He reached out – and next moment all they saw were his toes, swinging on the edge. Ogbuff, the palace cook, jumped forward and grabbed at the guard’s ankles.

  Prince Tyran Ogg caught the cook’s collar. Then the edge, with three weighty trolls on it, gave way. Those who dared to look saw three figures getting smaller and smaller until they disappeared into the clouds, with the Fire Opal glittering among them.

  ‘They’ll be killed!’ said someone.

  ‘No,’ said the archbishop. ‘Trolls can stand anything. But I don’t think they’ll be able to get up again. The Fire Opal will go on rolling until it reaches the centre of the Earth, where it came from.’

  Down through the clouds tumbled the trolls. Ogbuff saw the ground coming towards him uncomfortably fast.

  Thud! Bonk! Crash! The three trolls bounced and tumbled through the pine woods beneath Whitehelm Mountain, smashing trees and leaving large dents in the ground. Luckily, trolls are almost indestructible, so Prince Tyran only had a slight headache when he reached the bottom and crawled out of the crater he had made.

  His crown of iron and lead had been knocked over his eyes, and he stumbled around for a while, wrenching at it. Then he found the Sergeant of the Guard, hanging by his heels from a tall tree.

  They discovered Ogbuff, the cook, sitting up to his ears in a pond, blowing bubbles.

  But no one found the Fire Opal.

  ‘I thought it bounced over that way,’ said the sergeant, pointing towards a thick forest. They were still quite high up, and the countryside was spread out like a map before them.

  Prince Tyran peered up through the clouds around Whitehelm and shivered. ‘Now we’re here we’d better go after it,’ he said. ‘I don’t think a troll has been this far down since we came from the centre of the Earth. Come on.’

  They tramped gloomily through the dark wood, three shadows against the trees. Their great heavy feet boomed like drums.

  It started to grow dark, and a big orange moon rose above the forest. The prince gazed up at it, his dreams still filling his head.

  Ogbuff was the last in the line, trying to look all ways at once. After a while he began to hear things. There were the trolls’ footfalls – and something else.

  Tramp, tramp, tramp. Tramp, tramp, tramp, thud! Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, thud! Thud!

  ‘Argh!’ he cried and cannoned forward into the sergeant, who tripped up and fell onto Prince Tyran. ‘There’s something behind us!’

  ‘Good evening!’ said a voice that seemed to come from very high up.

  The prince peered up and saw a tall shape. It looked very much like a pine tree, until he got used to the light and saw that what he thought were pine needles were really whiskers around a gnarled face. ‘Don’t you know your history?’ he said to Ogbuff, who was trying to burrow in the leaf mould. ‘It’s a wood troll, a dryad. They’re practically related to us.’

  ‘I’m sorry I startled your fat friend,’ said the dryad in a voice like branches creaking in a high wind. ‘My name is Arcantrellhyrodollomenemon. I saw you land.’

  ‘We didn’t see you,’ said Tyran. ‘I’m Tyran, Prince of Whitehelm, and this is Ogbuff, and this is the Sergeant of the Guard.’

  ‘I know the sergeant,’ said the dryad. ‘He landed upside down in my beard. You thought I was a tree, I think. Are you by any chance looking for a large shiny object?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Tyran. ‘Have you found it?’

  ‘A large shiny thing dropped through my roof just before you landed,’ said the dryad. ‘We can’t have this, you know, damaging people’s property . . .’

  ‘It’s the Fire Opal from my crown,’ said Tyran. ‘Have you still got it?’

  The dryad scratched his beard with a noise like distant thunder. ‘Well now,’ he said. ‘A funny thing, it bounced out of the door and rolled down the valley.’

  ‘Which way? Which way!’ chorused the trolls.

  The dryad pointed, and as they hurried off they heard him call: ‘Don’t damage any trees! I’ll tell my relatives down the valley to look out for you!’

  ‘What’s he worried about trees for?’ puffed Ogbuff, as they pounded over the pine needles.

  ‘He’s half a tree himself,’ said Prince Tyran. ‘The dryads herd trees like cattle, and they can talk to them, like we talk to rocks.’

  As the three trolls hurried after the Opal, creaking noises sounded from the forest around them, and once or twice they saw eyes high up in the trees. The dryads were taking no chances of having their precious trees harmed.

  Eventually they came to a place where
two paths crossed. ‘I wonder which way it went,’ said Tyran.

  What looked like a perfectly ordinary tree stretched out a branch to point, and said, ‘That way!’

  ‘Thank you!’ said the prince.

  They were very glad to get out of the forest just as the sun was rising. Ahead of them were soggy green meadows, pierced with tall rushes, and in the middle of the valley was a wide brown river.

  ‘I say, you people!’ bellowed a voice from out in the middle of the water.

  ‘It’s a water nymph,’ said Tyran.

  ‘Um,’ said the sergeant. ‘I always thought they were – well, girls, with long hair and that sort of thing.’fn1

  Indeed, the nymph was nothing like that. His head and shoulders and beard were all rush green, and he held a stem of mace in one hand. In the other was a fish, which he bashed around in the water to attract their attention.

  ‘You stone people!’ he bellowed. ‘Come here!’

  Tyran and the others splashed out to the nymph. He smelled of river banks.

  ‘Are you looking for a large shiny pebble?’ he said.

  ‘That shiny pebble is really our Fire Opal,’ said Prince Tyran. ‘Have you got it?’

  ‘It bounced straight into my private pool, nearly knocking me over,’ said the nymph angrily. ‘I don’t know where it is now – it rolled on down the river, I suppose.’

  ‘Look, it’s very important to us,’ explained Tyran. ‘We’ve been following it all day. It’s our Crown Jewel, you see.’

  ‘In that case I might be able to find it,’ said the nymph. He squinted at them. ‘I suppose you’re the kind of people who have to breathe air all the time?’