Kylie was holding his goblet in both paws and looking doubtful. ‘Reckon this is that milk stuff,’ he said. ‘Never really fancied it, myself, but suppose it will be all right. The chocolate was.’
He grinned at Evangeline, then lifted the goblet to his mouth and took a tentative sip. Then he downed the lot.
‘Nice!’ he said and turned to Evangeline, who burst out laughing. He had a big white moustache on his top lip.
She leaned over and gently wiped it off, then picked up her own drink and tried to lift it to her mouth, but she couldn’t get it under her trunk. She tried a few times, but there just wasn’t room under there for the goblet.
Kylie was looking at her thoughtfully. ‘Try using your trunk,’ he said. ‘I went to the zoo, once, and I saw elephants drinking like that. They kind of sucked it up through their trunks and then squirted it into their mouths. It looked like heaps of fun, actually.’
Evangeline thought it sounded like very bad manners, but it would be ruder not to drink it at all, so she put the goblet down on the table and lowered her trunk into it as daintily as she could.
The milk was very cold and it made her jump when she touched it, but she did as Kylie said and, after sucking up some milk, carefully put her trunk into her mouth and squirted.
The smooth, cool liquid went straight down her throat and it was absolutely delicious. Feeling bolder, she went back for another big suck and was disappointed to find on her third go that there was hardly any left.
As they were all finishing their drinks, they heard the familiar sound of the Tooth Fairy’s laugh and looked up to see her on the smooth wall of the cavern.
‘Well,’ said the Tooth Fairy. ‘You all seemed to enjoy your milk and that’s good, because there is nothing better for teeth, and teeth are what we deal with here.’
She flew around them, enlarged on the walls of the cavern.
‘Okay,’ she said, stretching out one elegant arm in front as she flew, holding what Evangeline realised was a magic wand. ‘As I mentioned, this is the Tooth Chamber. We actually make the teeth in the first cavern you came into, but this is where we deliver them, via the fountains.’
Evangeline smiled to herself. She’d been right about the teeth!
The Tooth Fairy continued. ‘Because, you see, while taking teeth away is the role that everyone Downstairs knows me for – where do you think tiny little babies get their first teeth from? They’re not born with them, are they?’
Nobody answered and she carried on flying around the walls as she spoke.
‘And then there has to be a completely new second set, when they get to about six and start losing them. So, you see, there’s actually a lot more to delivering teeth than there is to taking them, but as I only visit for the taking – and then there is the fun of the coins I leave – it’s the taking that people really notice.’
The alien put his arm up.
‘What do you do with the teeth you collect?’ he asked.
‘Good question, Sprocket. This is how it works: I bring the teeth I collect from under children’s pillows back here and I drop them all into the big fountain in the next cavern, my inner sanctum. That takes them down into a deep underground stream of milk – which is what you can also see running in the fountains here, by the way.’
Evangeline smiled to herself. She’d been right about that, too, but she was finding all the rest of it quite complicated. She couldn’t help feeling that the more she learned about Upstairs the more she realised she didn’t know.
‘So all the collected teeth travel along the underground stream,’ continued the Tooth Fairy. ‘And as they go, the milk tumbles them over and over until eventually they are ground down into tooth dust. Are you with me?’
The new recruits all nodded, but rather slowly and uncertainly.
‘Blinking ‘eck,’ said Kylie quietly to Evangeline. ‘There’s a lot to it, isn’t there? Do you think they’re going to test us at the end?’
Evangeline opened her eyes wide. ‘I hope not,’ she said.
‘Any other questions?’ said the Tooth Fairy.
Sprocket’s middle arm shot up again.
‘How long does it all take?’ he asked.
‘Oh, a few million years,’ she replied, casually.
Evangeline was about to ask Kylie how long he thought a million years was, when she was distracted by the sound of Derek squeaking and jumping up and down.
‘I have a question, Vara,’ he was saying. ‘Me too! I have a question, too!’
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘Where are the coins?’ said Derek, his ears bouncing up and down as he joggled from foot to foot. ‘Can we see them? It’s just my little girl was very proud of her coins and I would guard them for her while she was at school, it was one of my special jobs. And then she’d put them in the piggy bank and I always guarded that, too, even without being asked to and once …’
‘Yes, Derek,’ laughed the Tooth Fairy. ‘I’ve heard what a busy dog you were when you lived Downstairs, and it is a good point about the coins. But I can’t show them to you, because I don’t keep them here. I find them when I’m Downstairs.’
Derek yapped again, in a muffled enquiring kind of way. He had his tooth stone back in his mouth.
‘Humans are always losing coins,’ said the Tooth Fairy. ‘Half the time they don’t even realise how many coins they drop down the back of sofas, lose in the linings of handbags, or leave in the pockets of winter coats that have been put away for summer. So I find the coins in the houses where I am collecting the teeth and just swap them over.’
‘Neat,’ said Kylie, nodding to himself.
‘Right,’ said Nancy, after a moment. ‘I think that’s all here, isn’t it, Vara?’
‘Yes,’ said the Tooth Fairy. ‘Except, of course, I have to choose my new helpers.’
Evangeline sat up very straight. So some of them were going to be chosen to stay here, just as Robert and Tiny Ted had been chosen by the Easter Bunny to stay with him. She was wondering which of them it would be, when she had an amazing thought: whoever was picked would be given wings!
Imagine that, thought Evangeline, being able to fly … She turned to Kylie, her eyes shining with excitement, but he was shifting uneasily on his stool.
‘I hope she doesn’t pick me,’ he said quietly, looking very nervous. ‘I’ve got no head for heights. It’s like the travel sickness. I would have made a rotten real koala, because I could never have sat up a gum tree. I feel giddy just standing up on the ground.’
As he spoke, Evangeline felt the unmistakable swish of fairy wings around her ears. Her trunk twitched and she realised the Tooth Fairy had landed on it.
She screwed up her eyes and tried to see her, but she couldn‘t, and then she felt a flutter across her face as Vara flew off again. Sprocket’s eyes started spinning as she landed on him. Then Derek yipped as she flew past him and finally on to Geraldine, whose ears moved quickly backwards and forwards.
Finally the Tooth Fairy’s face appeared again on the crystal wall.
‘I’ve decided,’ she said, brightly. ‘Sprocket, Twinkle and Derek.’
And as she spoke, she waved her wand and wings immediately appeared on their backs. Derek rose straight into the air yipping and yelping, seeming to be propelled as much by his wagging tail as his sparkling new wings.
‘Yippee!’ he shouted. ‘I’m a flying dog and I’m going to be the Tooth Fairy’s Constant Companion. Hurray!’
Sprocket was a bit slower taking off, rising sedately into the air before setting off on a careful lap of the cavern. But Twinkle seemed born to it, hovering at table level, doing tiny circuits of each goblet, her little tutu fluttering from the beating of her wings, and beaming with delight.
Evangeline heard a strange noise beside her. She turned to see Kylie wiping his eyes with a furry paw.
‘I’m really going to miss the little fella,’ he said, sniffing loudly. ‘I’m happy for him having wings and all, but I’ll really mi
ss his cheery chatter.’
‘So will I,’ said Evangeline, suddenly very sad that she was about to lose one of her new friends, so soon after meeting him.
At that moment, Derek appeared in front of her, hovering at face height. ‘Watch this, Evangeline.’ He proceeded to loop the loop several times before coming back to face level. ‘I’m sorry we won’t be here together, Evangeline,’ he continued. ‘I will really miss you, but I’m so happy I’m going to have a little girl to look after again – well, a little fairy – and I will guard her just as carefully as I did when I was a Constant Companion before.’
‘I know you will,’ said Evangeline, patting his head. ‘Have a wonderful time here with the Tooth Fairy. And the Easter Bunny did say we’ll all see each other at parties, didn’t he?’
‘That’s right,’ said Derek. ‘I’ll see you at the next party.’ Then he kissed her cheek and zoomed off, following the image of the Tooth Fairy round the curved walls of the cavern.
‘Goodbye, everyone!’ she called, disappearing from sight into the inner cavern, with Derek and Twinkle close behind her and Sprocket following at a more stately pace.
Evangeline was gazing towards the inner cavern, when she felt something warm round her waist and looked down to see it was Kylie giving her a hug.
She bent down and rested her head on top of his. For a moment they just stood there, happy to have each other, then Evangeline gave Kylie’s furry shoulder a squeeze and stood up again, wondering what would happen next.
She looked over to where Nancy had been sitting, but there was no sign of her there.
Glancing round the room, she saw her over by one of the fountains, standing on tiptoe, trying to see inside it.
Evangeline was wondering what she was doing when, with no warning, the cave went dark. The pink crystal walls turned a brooding red and then an incredibly loud noise resounded through the cavern.
‘Woo-ooo-ooo …’ it wailed, and Evangeline’s front legs sprang up automatically to hold her ears shut trying to block it out. She looked down to make sure Kylie was all right and saw he was doing the same thing. He looked up at her with a big questioning frown on his face. What was going on?
ALL the flying toys who had been working at the fountains rushed towards the inner sanctum. And then the toys from outside started streaming in towards it, too.
Evangeline looked back towards Nancy and was relieved to see her rushing towards them.
‘Code Red!’ she shouted, beckoning them over with one short arm. ‘Code Red! Quickly! Follow me and RUN!’
As she spoke the wailing noise got louder and the walls of the cavern started glowing like the embers of a fire. Evangeline was very frightened and snatched Kylie up, holding tight to his warm furry bulk for reassurance as she ran.
‘Go for your life, Vangie!’ he said. ‘But I think you might need to help Nancy, too.’
Looking back, Evangeline could see the little doll was finding it very hard to run properly on her tiny feet. She could trot on them, Evangeline realised, but when she tried to run faster, she kept stumbling, and as all the recruits were following her, it was seriously slowing their progress down.
‘Carry her!’ whispered Kylie, urgently. ‘Or we won’t make it.’
Evangeline rushed to scoop Nancy up and, as she did, she noticed something fall out of the little doll’s pocket. It was a very small black pebble. She didn’t have time to ask Nancy if it was important, she just grabbed it, dropped it into her own pocket and took off.
‘Oh, good, yes,’ said Nancy as she found herself in Evangeline’s grasp. ‘You’re fast. Good. Quickly, to the other tunnel over there at the back. Fast as you can!’
Evangeline let her long legs go and was soon striding along at high speed, with Geraldine and Senior Bear keeping pace beside her. It was lucky, she thought, that all the other small toys had already been assigned their jobs, or they might have got left behind.
‘Yee haw!’ said Kylie, waving his fist in the air as they reached the tunnel opening. The moment they entered it, they found themselves safely back in the walled garden. Evangeline flopped down on the ground, taking him and Nancy with her.
‘Phew!’ said Kylie. ‘That was close. I’m not sure what we were running from, but I’m glad to be out of there. That was really scary.’
‘Yes,’ said Nancy, looking uncharacteristically nervous. ‘That was close. Alarming. Very.’
‘What was it?’ asked Geraldine, quietly.
Nancy didn’t answer immediately. She was sitting with her eyes closed, taking deep breaths. Evangeline waited until she opened them again and then asked the little doll the question that was troubling her. ‘Will Derek be all right?’
‘Yes,’ said Nancy, straightening her hat and snapping back into her usual efficient manner. ‘All the flying toys will be fine – well, as long as they made it into the inner sanctum in time, which he, Twinkle and Sprocket did, so they’ll all be safe.’
They all sat quietly for a few moments, and then Kylie spoke again, in a very serious voice. ‘What exactly were we running away from then, Nancy?’ he asked. ‘Was it what I think it might have been?’
‘Yes, it was the Kybosh,’ said Nancy, sighing. ‘He got in.’
All the toys went very quiet. It was Senior Bear who spoke first.
‘I don’t wish to be impertinent, Miss Nancy,’ he started, in his very formal voice. ‘But didn’t the Easter Bunny prevent that when he found the, er, unwish in the wish floss and ate it? That was how I understood it.’
Nancy nodded, but she looked sad. ‘He stopped that one,’ she said. ‘But the Kybosh is so cunning. He’s always finding other ways to try and stop us doing what we do.’
As she spoke, her hands were going in and out of her pockets. She looked very worried.
‘I was sure …’ she said as she turned the pockets right out and leaned down to look at them more closely through the round lenses of her specs.
Evangeline suddenly realised what she might be looking for.
‘Oh,’ she said, getting the little black pebble from her own pocket and holding it out to Nancy. ‘Are you looking for this?’
Nancy clapped her hands together and then took it from Evangeline, holding it tightly in her fist and clasping it to her chest.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said, looking amazed. ‘Wherever did you find that?’
‘It fell to the ground when I picked you up just now, when we were running away …’
‘You are a very sensible elephant,’ said Nancy. ‘Excellent. Really excellent. Well done.’
She held the little black stone up between her fingers to show everyone.
‘This is another kind of unwish,’ she said, smiling.
Evangeline was puzzled. The unwish in the Easter Bunny’s area had made her shudder it was so sinister, but this one just looked like any old pebble – and how come Nancy was being so casual about it?
‘Isn’t it dangerous?’ asked Kylie, inching slowly backwards.
‘Not any more,’ said Nancy, and turning round, she threw it into the big fountain in the middle of the garden. ‘That’s the end of that. You see, that was a Tooth Fairy unwish – it was a bad tooth – and it can only do harm in her area.’
She brushed her hands together, as if cleaning any remains of the unwish off them.
‘If that bad tooth had fallen into one of those milk fountains,’ she continued, ‘and had gone down into the milk stream, it would have been really dangerous, but out here in the Wish Keeper’s Garden it’s just a little bit of black rock. So, well done, Evangeline, for picking it up after I dropped it. Top marks.’
All the toys broke into spontaneous applause and Evangeline looked down at her feet. All she’d done was pick up something Nancy had dropped. But even as she glowed with pleasure that she’d apparently done the right thing, something else occurred to her.
‘Nancy,’ she said, tentatively, hoping she wasn’t going to sound stupid. ‘Can I just ask something? You say we stop
ped that unwish getting into the Tooth Fairy’s system by bringing it out here – so how come there was a Code Red anyway?’
Nancy looked more serious again. ‘Very good point,’ she said. ‘While it was very lucky that you picked up that bad tooth I’d dropped, I think some others had unfortunately already made it into the system, and that’s how the Kybosh got in.’
They sat in silence until Senior Bear asked the question they all wanted to know the answer to. ‘Can you tell us, Miss Nancy,’ he said, ‘what, exactly, the Kybosh is and what it looks like? We know it’s very unpleasant, but it would be helpful to know a bit more about it. Where it came from, what exactly it does, that kind of area of information.’
Evangeline nodded in agreement and glanced over at Kylie, who gave her the thumbs up.
‘We try to protect our new recruits from the full story, which is quite upsetting. But, very well, Senior,’ said Nancy, ‘it is time to tell you more. Well, the Kybosh is a dark force, now, but it used to be a perfectly nice toy.’
The toys all gasped in shock and disbelief. The Kybosh was a toy? Surely this couldn’t be? The news was extremely upsetting. Geraldine began to shake.
‘What kind of toy was it?’ asked Kylie. ‘And why did it turn bad?’
‘I hate to tell you this, Kylie, but the Kybosh was a kangaroo,’ said Nancy.
‘Oh, why did it have to be a marsupial?’ said Kylie, looking disgusted. ‘That’s just not right. There used to be a beaut kangaroo in my nursery – and a wombat. Top toys all of them …’
‘Well, the Kybosh was perfectly nice when he was still a kangaroo, Kylie,’ said Nancy. ‘He didn’t start bad – he turned bad. You see, his little boy had taken him away on holiday and then …’ she paused for a moment ‘he deliberately lost him.’
The toys all shuffled a bit where they were sitting, taking in the horrible story.
‘He’d seen another toy he liked better in a toy shop window and his mother wouldn’t buy it for him because she said he already had his lovely kangaroo. So when he was playing in a park with some other children, he made sure his mother wasn’t looking and then he stuffed the kangaroo under a bush and left it there. Later on he pretended he’d lost it and cried until his mother bought him the new toy. He wasn’t a very nice little boy, but the kangaroo loved him, as we toys always do.’
Evangeline Wish Keeper's Helper Page 6