by Linda Talbot
The Trial of Green Toby
by Linda Talbot
Illustrations by Kathy Beaumont
Hand Coloured by Linda Talbot
Copyright Linda Talbot 2013
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Table of Contents
Toby wakes - his feet are green!
Toby in the bath
On the way to school
Toby is surrounded by little green men!
He is arrested
Toby in court
Stared at in Kew Gardens
The Trial of Green Toby
Toby wakes one morning, jumps out of bed and frowns in amazement at his feet. They are long and lean. They each have five straight toes. But they are not the feet he took to bed because now they are GREEN.
Not a deep, drowsy summer green or the dreamily lilting green of a clear sea, but an alarming electric shade of green, bright as a beacon.
Toby wakes up one morning to find his feet have turned green!
BACK TO THE START!
Toby puts both feet flat on the blue bedroom carpet. There they glow even brighter. He blinks and looks again. Each moment their greenness grows.
Slowly he places one foot in front of the other, directing them carefully towards the bathroom. He turns on the hot water tap, runs the water into the bath and steps in.
His feet swim beneath the surface like two lazy fish. Toby reaches for the soap and sponge. Lifting one foot he scrubs it hard. The greenness remains. Lifting the other, he scrubs harder, then puts the foot back in the water - as green as ever.
Toby tries in vain to scrub the green from his feet
BACK TO THE START!
Toby has heard of people waking up with warts, with frogs in their throats or pimples in awkward places. But he has never met anyone who woke up with green feet.
And why green? Why not red, orange or even blue to match the carpet? But what use are feet of any colour when the rest of one's body is off-white?
Toby dries his feet and goes back to the bedroom. Afraid that his mother will be alarmed if she sees his green feet, he pulls on his grey school socks and black school shoes and goes downstairs to breakfast.
All through the meal he can feel his feet glowing. It does not seem the sort of greenness that runs and seeps through shoes, but what if the colour SHOULD dissolve and trickle out onto the dining room carpet before he leaves for school?
Toby gets up. He looks at the carpet. It is mottled yellow and grey. No sign of green.
He walks to school. He can feel his feet inside his shoes wanting to take him along faster. But not towards school. They are....TURNING HIM ROUND.
Toby is alarmed. He tries to turn them back. He does not like school but neither does he like the idea of being carried away by his feet in the opposite direction. He can feel them pulling hard inside his shoes. He has to follow. The strides they take grow longer. Toby can barely keep up.
Soon they are leaving behind shops, houses and the Monday morning traffic. They are taking him towards the woods where everywhere glows green, from the bright green of grass still winking with dew to the deeper shades of long leaves on thick trees through which the early sun drops sharp arrows of light.
Suddenly Toby's feet stop short so that he almost topples over. No amount of effort will persuade them to move. Then Toby sees why. Swinging from a tree in his path is a little man who is GREEN from head to foot.
On the way to school Toby meets a little green man
BACK TO THE START!
"Hello!” he says brightly, "We've been waiting for you. Welcome to the woods."
"But I have to go to school," objects Toby.
"Oh no!" retorts the little green man, "If that was the case you would have gone by now. Your feet - by any chance - have not changed in any way since you went to bed last night?"
"Yes,", replies Toby, frowning and feeling uncomfortable. "Last night they were - well - ordinary feet. This morning they would have nothing to do with me and they are every bit as green as yours."
"Ah, I thought so," says the little green man. "You are very fortunate. Not many boys are so lucky. It won't be long now."
"Long before what?" asks Toby, alarmed.
"Why, before the greenness reaches the very roots of your hair." The little green man gives a grin to reveal a row of bright green teeth. "Come with me."
"But -", Toby's objection is no use. His feet are hurrying on once more.
The wood grows thicker; the leaves and trailing branches more troublesome and tangled. Toby's shoes are wet and with toes that let in water, his socks are getting damp too. But his feet plunge on behind the little green man.
Suddenly the trees and bushes thin and there, in a large clearing, all talking at once and taking occasional leaps in the air, are at least twenty identical green men.
Toby is surrounded by little green men
BACK TO THE START!
"Green you see means mingling, so you don't have to go to school, eat rice pudding or wash behind the ears," says the little green man.
"But I don't like green," objects Toby, "I liked being off-white."
The little man raises green eyebrows in surprise and says, "That's a pity because you are now green up to your knees."
Startled, Toby looks down and sure enough, the colour has crept up to his knee caps.
The green men stop chattering and springing in the air to stare at Toby's legs. Then they begin to clap, so their hands look like a flurry of leaves whirled carelessly about by a summer storm. They join hands. Two grab Toby's hands and they start to jog and sing in thin voices:
"Mingle, mingle,
Who will twingle
We are here at all?"
"That doesn't make sense," says Toby, trying to remember how it felt to be a schoolboy, "There's no such word as twingle."
"Twingle, twingle," they echo and laugh.
"Oh do let go!" Toby cries as they whirl faster. He is afraid of being whisked off his feet.
At last, like leaves dropped in a careless heap they slow and slump into the grass. But every eye is turned on Toby.
Then he sees why. His hands have turned green. He pushes up his shirt sleeves to find each arm the same shade.
"Can't you stop it - please?" he pleads.
"Mingle, mingle,
And no one will twingle," sing the little green men. "Come with us and we will show you what we mean."
They have joined hands again. But this time one leaves the clearing with little leaps, lifting the others along behind. Toby is in the middle, his feet barely touching the ground. As he turns greener, he grows lighter and more like a leaf. He feels the wind whistling round his green legs and through his hair. Is that green yet? he wonders. If not, when it is, will he talk nonsense like the rest of them?
On the common the wind is stronger. "Mingle, mingle," the voices are tossed carelessly towards the clouds and their bodies become more buoyant. Their feet close together, they pull their arms into their sides and they whirl towards the road.
On the edge of the common stands a windmill. The leader of the little green men grabs hold of a sail and round they all flutter after him, like flags on a string.
“Round, round
Without a sound
Nobody knows we're here at all," they sing.
But they are wrong. A tall policeman is standing on the edge of the common, rocking to and fro in his thick black boots. He moves towards the windmill and grabs at a green leg as it whirls round. But
the little green man takes a long leap over the policeman's head and is lost at once in the grass. The policeman grabs at a green arm but that little green man turns a somersault and lands several metres away, safely on the other side of the windmill.
Toby is less lucky. The policeman lunges at both his legs and suddenly Toby is upside down being dangled helplessly in the policeman's hands.