Let Sleeping Sea-Monsters Lie and Other Cautionary Tales Page 3
The Boobrie did not smile because birds don’t but she was very pleased. One sheep would have been good, two would have been better but three sheep – one for each of her chicks – was perfect. She circled once and dived down on to the moor.
This was the moment the Scotsmen had been waiting for. They had got it all planned. As the bird came down they were going to step out from under their sheepskins, point their horse pistol and their blunderbuss and their catapult at the soft underbelly of the bird – and fire!
What actually happened was different. As the Boobrie swooped towards MacDuff, the brave Scotsman tried to lift his gun, got the catch wedged against his wooden leg and let loose a rain of bullets into a frozen cow pat. Tall MacGregor managed to get his arm out and shoot off the blunderbuss but though he had filled it from a tin labelled Black Bullets these were not proper bullets but a dark kind of peppermint which has the same name – and if there is one thing you cannot kill a Boobrie with it is a rain of peppermints. As for fat MacCallum, he had fainted clean away before he could loose off his catapult with the brass bedknob which he had brought to fire at the Boobrie’s heart.
The Boobrie, who was a bit short-sighted, did not notice any of these things. All she noticed were three ordinary, though rather wiggly, sheep.
So first she swooped on brave MacDuff and picked him up and flew with him to the nest by the loch and dropped him down in front of Chick Number One. Then she flew back and swooped down on the skinny MacGregor sheep and dropped him down in front of Chick Number Two. And lastly she went back for the MacCallum sheep which was a very quiet sheep because the fat Scotsman was still in a faint.
After this the Boobrie felt very pleased with herself and waited for the chicks to start eating the sheep she had so kindly brought them.
But they didn’t. The chicks looked down with their goofy pop-eyes at the sheep. They bent their scraggy necks. They pecked at the sheep with their yellow beaks and turned them over with their webbed feet. And then they looked reproachfully at their mother.
“Not nice,” said Chick Number One.
“Smells nasty,” said Chick Number Two.
And Chick Number Three, who was the youngest, just said gloomily: “Legs.”
“Hairy,” explained the first chick to its mother. “Hairy legs.”
“And wooden,” said Chick Number Two, picking at the MacDuff sheep.
“Pink faces,” said the youngest chick, who was taking it hard. It turned over the top end of the MacCallum sheep with its beak. “Horrid,” it said, choking a little.
An anxious look spread over the mother Boobrie’s face. She peered down at the nest, turned over MacDuff and lifted the sheepskin off MacCallum who had come out of his faint and was making a lot of noises, none of which were “Baa!”
The chicks were right. These were not proper sheep. A mistake had been made. And when you have made a mistake there is only one thing to do: put it right.
So the mother Boobrie picked up MacDuff in his sheepskin, carried him high in her beak and dropped him with a splash into the loch.
Next she picked up the MacGregor sheep, carried him high and dropped him into the loch.
Then she went back for the MacCallum sheep and dropped him into the loch too.
And then she went flapping away on her enormous wings to go and look for some proper sheep because a mother’s work is never done.
As for the Scotsmen, they managed to swim ashore and to hobble home, one in his underpants, one in his vest to which a frozen frog had stuck, and one in nothing but a large leaf, and for the rest of the year they had chilblains in places it would not be polite to mention. MacDuff’s wooden leg was lost in the water and so were all the rest of their things, which serves them right for trying to trick a Boobrie bird. Boobries may be a little silly, but if you give them time they can always tell a Scotsman from a sheep.
The Brollachan Who Kept Mum
This is a story about a Brollachan.
You will now want to know what a Brollachan is and I will tell you. A Brollachan is a dark, splodgy, shapeless thing. It has two red eyes, an enormous mouth and absolutely nothing else whatsoever. A Brollachan has no bones and no stomach and no nose. It has no arms and no legs and no feet and no toes and therefore no toenails. And it has no hair. There is probably nothing with less hair than a Brollachan.
A Brollachan, then, is just a squashy and quite frightening blob which rolls about the place. But though it has no shape of its own a Brollachan can take on the shape of things that it meets. A Brollachan lying on a table, for example, might become table-shaped or a Brollachan looking at a round Dutch cheese could become cheese-shaped if it wished. And though it cannot really think it can hear a little through its bulges and it can certainly feel.
The Brollachan that this story is about lived in a house beside a swampy pond with his mother, who was a Fuath. Fuaths are evil and bad-tempered fairies who live near water, so they are often dripping wet. They look almost like ordinary ladies but if you look at them carefully you will find that there is something odd about them. Sometimes they are hollow from behind, and sometimes they have only one nostril.
The Brollachan’s mother had a long nose with a black wart on it, whiskery ears, one frightful long tooth and webbed feet. She was a worrier and she was a nagger. She wanted the Brollachan to be more scary and more shapeless than he was. She wanted him to lure people into the swamp by terrifying them with his vile red eyes. She wanted him to bubble disgustingly in the mud at the bottom of the pond and she wanted him to speak.
“Say ‘Mummy’,” she would yell at him. “Go on, say it. Say ‘Mummy’.”
But the Brollachan couldn’t say “Mummy”. He couldn’t say anything. His mouth was big but he used it for eating, not for talking. So he would roll away sadly and suck in a large turnip or a dead rat or a ham-bone and you would see them – the turnip or the rat or the ham-bone – lying inside him sort of glowing a little until they gradually became part of the Brollachan because that is what happens to the things that Brollachans eat.
All day long the Brollachan’s mother followed him about, flapping a wet cloth at the furniture and dripping water on him.
“I don’t know what will become of you, Brollachan. Why aren’t you outside drowning someone? Why are you sitting in that bucket? Why don’t you do something with your life? And why don’t you say ‘Mummy’?”
The Brollachan tried hard to please her. But however wide he opened his mouth, all that came out was a kind of gulp or a sort of glucking noise.
Sometimes the Brollachan’s mother invited her friends round; ladies like Black Annis who was a cannibal witch with a blue face or the Hag of the Dribble who was covered all over in grey slime, and then she would start.
“You don’t know how I worry about him,” she would say to these ladies, prodding the Brollachan with her webbed foot as he lay politely on the floor. “I can’t sleep for worrying about him. He’s so backward; he doesn’t even try to frighten people into fits. And he won’t say ‘Mummy’!”
“You should punish him,” said the cannibal witch, burping rudely because she always swallowed people whole and this gave her wind. “Make him kneel on dried peas – nothing more painful than that!”
Which was not only a cruel but a silly thing to say since the Brollachan did not have any knees.
One day the Brollachan and his mother went for a walk in the forest. The Brollachan liked the forest very much. It was not wet like the swamp where he lived and the leaves felt pleasantly tickly under his body. He stretched himself out more and more and became bush-shaped, then tree-shaped, and then just Brollachan-shaped but extra large. He felt happy and he felt free.
But the Brollachan’s mother was still talking. “Why don’t you learn the names of the trees, Brollachan?” she said. “Why don’t you at least try to give off an evil mist? There’s a Brollachan in the next valley who has a whole village gibbering with fright every time he shows himself. And he can say ‘Mummy’!”
The Brollachan’s mother did not notice this at first because she was so busy talking. “It’s all right for you,” she said. “You can’t have a stomach ache from worrying because you haven’t got a stomach. You can’t have a headache from worrying because you haven’t got a head. You can’t – Brollachan, where are you? Brollachan, come here at once, I’m talking to you. How dare you hide from your mother! I can see your vile red eyes behind that tree. I know you’re just pretending to be that smelly toadstool. Now come to your mummy, Brollachan; come at once!”
But the Brollachan was a long, long way away and he was well and truly lost. He rolled on, however, until he came to a little wooden house in a clearing and because he was very tired by now, he oozed through the crack under the door and went inside.
It was a very nice house. There was a fire in the grate and a painted stool and a rocking chair in one corner. In the rocking chair, fast asleep, sat an old man with a kind face and a long white beard. Everything was quiet and everything was dry and the Brollachan liked it very much. And becoming more or less the shape of the hearthrug he lay down by the fire, closed his vile red eyes and fell asleep.
He slept for one hour and he slept for two while outside in the forest his mother, the Fuath, roared about on her webbed feet, searching and scolding and calling him. Goodness knows how long he might have gone on sleeping but just then a burning coal fell out of the fireplace and landed on one of the Brollachan’s bulges.
Now the Brollachan couldn’t talk but he could scream – and scream he did!
Everything then happened at once. The old man woke, saw that there was a Brollachan on his hearthrug and jumped from his rocking chair. The Brollachan’s mother heard the scream and rushed in at the front door, dripping and shouting as she came.
“What’s happened to you, Brollachan? How did you get here? Who hurt you? Has that nasty old man hurt you? Have you hurt my Brollachan, you stupid old man? Because if you have I’ll turn you into a bat with bunions. I’ll turn you into an eel with earache. I’ll claw you into strips of raw beef, I’ll make newts come out of your nostrils, I’ll . . .”
On and on she raged. The old man did not know how to bear so much noise. He took his long white beard and stuffed the left half of it into his left ear and the right half of it into his right ear but still he could hear the Fuath’s voice. Feeling quite desperate he got a broom and tried to shoo the Fuath out of doors.
But the Fuath would not be shushed and she would not be shooed. She just dripped and she threatened and she talked.
The Brollachan by now was very upset. His burn did not hurt any longer but he felt that things were not as they should be. His red eyes were wide with worry and his shapeless darkness shivered at all this unpleasantness. What he wanted more than anything was to make things all right.
So he made himself very big and he opened his mouth and he went right up to his mother, who was still talking and scolding and waving her arms. If only he could do it! If only he could do the thing she wanted so much! Wider he opened his mouth and wider . . . and closer he went to his mother and closer . . . and harder he tried and harder . . . harder than he had ever tried in his whole life.
And then at last he did it. He actually did it!
“MUMMY!” said the Brollachan. “MUM – gluck – gulp!”
Then he stopped. His mother was not there.
The Brollachan was puzzled. He looked under the stool and behind the door but there was no sign of her. But though he was puzzled, he was not worried. He felt very close to his mother. And because it made him tired to be so clever he lay down again – but further from the fire – and fell asleep.
The old man took half his beard out of his right ear and half his beard out of his left ear and came over to have a look. He could see the Brollachan’s mother inside the Brollachan as clear as clear. He could even see the wart on the end of her nose. She was still talking and talking and talking but Brollachans are soundproof so he couldn’t hear a thing.
So he smiled and nodded at the Brollachan as if to say, yes, you can stay, and went back to his rocking chair. The next day he made a fireguard so that the Brollachan wouldn’t get burnt. And then he and the Brollachan lived together very happily. Because both of them had said all they were ever going to say and each was happy to let the other be the kind of person that he was.
‘We must kidnap some children,’ announced Aunt Etta. ‘Young, strong ones. It will be dangerous, but it must be done.’
Three children are stolen and taken to a bizarre island, which is home to some extraordinary creatures – including mermaids, selkies and the legendary kraken. The island is the base for a very mysterious mission, but the adventurers find themselves in perilous danger when it is suddenly under siege. Can they save themselves and their new friends?
To read an exciting extract from Monster Mission just turn the page . . .
Chapter One
Kidnapping children is not a good idea. All the same, sometimes it has to be done.
Aunt Etta and Aunt Coral and Aunt Myrtle were not natural kidnappers. For one thing, they were getting old and kidnapping is hard work; for another, though they looked a little odd, they were very caring people. They cared for their ancient father and for their shrivelled cousin Sybil who lived in a cave and tried to foretell the future – and most particularly they cared for the animals on the island on which they lived, many of which were quite unusual.
Some of the creatures that made their way to the Island had come far across the ocean to be looked after, and lately the aunts had felt that they could not go on much longer without help. And ‘help’ didn’t mean grown-ups who were set in their ways. Help meant children who were young and strong and willing to learn.
So on a cool blustery day in April the three aunts gathered round the kitchen table and decided to go ahead. Some children had to be found and they had to be brought to the island, and kidnapping seemed the only sensible way to do it.
‘That way we can choose the ones that are suitable,’ said Aunt Etta. She was the eldest; a tall, bony woman who did fifty press-ups before breakfast and had a small but not at all unpleasant moustache on her upper lip.
The others looked out of the window at the soft green turf, the sparkling sea, and sighed, thinking of what had to be done. The sleeping powders, the drugged hamburgers, the bags and sacks and cello cases they would need to carry the children away in . . .
‘Will they scream and wriggle, do you suppose?’ asked Aunt Myrtle, who was the youngest. She suffered from headaches and hated noise.
‘No, of course not. They’ll be unconscious,’ said Aunt Etta. ‘Flat out. I don’t like it any more than you do,’ she went on, ‘but you saw the programme on TV last week.’
The others nodded. When they first came to the Island they hadn’t had any electricity, but after his hundredth birthday their father’s toes had started to turn blue because not enough blood got to his feet and they had ordered a generator so that he could have an electric blanket. After that they thought they might as well have an electric kettle, and then a TV.
But the TV had been a mistake because of the nature programmes. Nature programmes always end badly. First you see the hairy-nosed wombats frisking about with their babies and then five minutes before the end you hear that there are only twelve breeding pairs left in the whole of Australia. Or there are pictures of the harlequin frogs of Costa Rica croaking away on their lily leaves and the next minute you are told that they’re doomed because their swamps are being drained. Worst of all are the rainforests. The aunts could never see a programme about the rainforests without crying, and last week there had been a particularly bad one with wicked people burning and slashing the trees, and pictures of the monkeys and the jaguars rushing away in terror.
‘What if we became extinct?’ Aunt Coral had wondered, blowing her
nose. ‘Not just the wombats and the harlequin frogs and the jaguars, but us.’
The others had seen the point at once. If a whole rainforest can become extinct why not three elderly ladies? And if they became extinct what would happen to their work and who would care for the creatures that came to the Island in search of comfort and of care?
There was another thing which bothered the aunts. Lately the animals that came to the Island simply wouldn’t go away again. Long after they were healed they stayed on – it was almost as if they knew something – and that made more and more work for the aunts. There was no doubt about it, help had to be brought in, and quickly.
So now they were deciding what to do.
‘How do we find the right children?’ asked Myrtle as she looked longingly out at the point where the seals were resting. One of the seals, Herbert, was her special friend and she would very much rather have been out there playing her cello to him and singing her songs.
‘We shall become Aunts,’ said Etta firmly, settling her spectacles on her long nose.
The others looked at her in amazement. ‘But we are aunts,’ they said. ‘How can we become them?’
This was true. There had been five sisters who had come to the Island with their father many years ago. They had found a ruined house and deserted beaches with only the footprints of sandpipers and dunlins on the sand, and barnacle geese resting on the way from Greenland, and the seals, quite unafraid, coming out of the water to have their pups.