Wed Wabbit

by Lissa Evans

  ‘Will your sister mind about not getting Ella back?’ Asked Graham.

  Fidge shook her head. ‘She’s got hundreds of other soft toys and I think the Wimblies need Ella more than Minnie does. What about you – do you mind losing Dr Carrot?’

  ‘A bit. But back home she’s not a doctor, is she? She’s just a very small plastic toy I got free from the supermarket.’ He glanced at Fidge. ‘You always thought I was completely useless, didn’t you?’

  Fidge hesitated and then nodded. ‘But you haven’t been completely useless here,’ she said. ‘You’ve been helpful. And brave.’

  ‘Thanks. And I always thought you were incredibly boring and stupid.’

  ‘Incredibly boring and stupid?’ repeated Fidge, outraged.

  ‘But you’re not.’

  ‘I know!’

  ‘In fact you’re really quite clever.’

  Fidge rolled her eyes. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’m just trying to be honest. Hang on,’ he added. ‘What on earth is that?’ He was pointing towards the silver bus.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That thing. That black-and-white thing behind the steering wheel.’

  ‘Oh that.’ Fidge grinned. ‘Minnie decided that the bus needed a driver so she wedged in a wind-up bath toy.’

  ‘It’s a whale.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A killer whale.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a pause. ‘Well,’ said Graham, ‘I hope it’s passed its diving test.’

  Fidge snorted. ‘That’s quite funny.’

  From behind them came another cheer, and they turned to look back. The early evening sky was a delicate violet, and a huge moon was rising behind Wimbley Hill. Silhouetted against it was a conga line of Wimblies, headed by Ella, with Dr Carrot skidding along in the rear.

  A faint cry of ‘Bye, darlings, send my love to Minnie,’ wafted towards them on the warm breeze.

  Fidge turned round again, and shouted with shock.

  Above her, standing in the bus doorway, was Auntie Ruth.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘Graham!!!’ screamed Auntie Ruth.

  A light snapped on, and Fidge saw that her aunt was actually standing in the doorway at the top of the basement stairs in Graham’s house, looking down at the two of them with an expression of disbelief.

  ‘We’re back!’ said Fidge.

  She climbed the stairs, Wed Wabbit still tucked under her arm. Graham followed more slowly.

  ‘Hello Mum,’ he said, as he reached the top.

  ‘You went down into the basement,’ she said, her voice trembling with amazement.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the dark.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In a storm.’

  ‘Yes. Oh, hang on—’ Something had caught his eye: the pop-up Land of Wimbley Woo book was still lying at the bottom of the steps, and he hurried back down to pick it up.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Fidge as he returned.

  His mother looked from one of them to the other. ‘And you’re both filthy,’ she said, faintly.

  ‘Yes, it’s quite dusty down there,’ said Fidge. ‘Please could I go and see my sister at the hospital now? I mean, straight away?’

  ‘And I’ll come too,’ said Graham. ‘Could we bring something to eat in the car?’

  ‘Of course. What would you like?’

  ‘Anything really. Toast?’

  Graham’s mother went pink, and tears sprang into her eyes. ‘Oh, Graham,’ she said, proudly, and then hurried out of the room, pausing only to dial a number on her mobile. ‘Simon, you’ll never believe it,’ they heard her say. ‘Graham’s been down some steps and he’s going to try some toast!’

  Fidge nudged her cousin. ‘Good thing she couldn’t see you dangling upside down from a tree,’ she said.

  Outside, the storm had broken, and rain was coming down in sheets. Auntie Ruth moved the car so it was right beside their front door, so that Graham could get in without being touched by a single molecule of water, but at the hospital, they had to park a long way from the entrance and despite sharing an umbrella, they were all fairly damp by the time they got inside.

  ‘She’s on the eighth floor,’ said Fidge, brushing the raindrops off Wed Wabbit as they entered the lift.

  ‘I wonder if I can buy a towel in the hospital shop,’ said Auntie Ruth. ‘And you probably ought to have a hot chocolate to warm you up, Graham. And maybe some throat pastilles just in case. And we should get some antiseptic wipes.’

  ‘I think I’m all right,’ said Graham. He was moving his weight from one foot to the other, entertained by the squelching sound his shoes were making. He kept thinking about the pond at the bottom of his garden; he kept wondering what it would feel like to wade right across it.

  ‘And there’s a strange little mark on the back of your neck,’ continued his mother. ‘It looks like green paint. Where did that come from?’

  Fidge peered at it. ‘Your mum’s right,’ she said. ‘I think you must have got splashed during the explosion. Green for Daring,’ she added in a whisper.

  The lift eased to a stop, the door opened and directly ahead, waiting outside the children’s ward, was Fidge’s mother.

  ‘Hey!’ Said her mum, astonished, as Fidge shot out of the lift and hugged her fiercely. ‘That’s the best greeting ever – I’ve missed you so much.’

  ‘Is Minnie going to be all right?’ Asked Fidge, her face buried in her mother’s jumper.

  ‘Yes, really all right. She’s asleep again, but we can tiptoe in and put Wed Wabbit into the bed with her.’

  ‘And take this too,’ said Graham, holding out the pop-up book. ‘Though it might have got a bit wet.’ He opened it to check, and a limp ring of dancing Wimblies flopped out.

  ‘Oh that’s a shame,’ said Fidge’s mother. ‘The colours have all run together. You can’t tell whether those are supposed to be Yellows or Blues or Pinks.’

  Fidge and Graham looked at each other.

  ‘Honestly,’ said Fidge, ‘I think it’s an improvement.’

  Minnie stirred slightly as Wed Wabbit was slipped into the bed beside her. Without opening her eyes, she reached out and contentedly curled her fingers around one of his ears.

  Mum smiled at Fidge. ‘It doesn’t take much to make her happy, does it?’ she whispered. ‘Thanks for bringing him in.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Fidge.

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  It had snowed on and off for three days, but now the sky was a clear, frozen blue. Graham stood by the open back door. Fidge, who’d come to visit his house with her mum and Minnie, was waiting for him just outside, her breath fogging the air.

  ‘Now are you wearing your fleecy boot liners?’ asked Graham’s mother.

  ‘Yes,’ said Graham.

  ‘And handwarmers in your mittens?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did you put on both thermal vests?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do you have the special nose warmer?’

  ‘No, because it makes me look like an idiot.’

  ‘And you’ll come back in if you’re the tiniest, tiniest bit cold?’

  ‘Mum, I’m only going out to the back garden.’

  She smiled, radiantly. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘And it’s marvellous!’

  Outside, the sunlit snow glittered like a sheet of Christmas wrapping paper.

  ‘Perfect weather for snowman construction,’ said Fidge, starting to roll a snowball along the ground.

  ‘I’ve been researching the best way of doing that,’ said Graham. ‘It’s actually ergonomically superior to make a cylinder rather than a ball.’

  ‘You know I’ve got no idea what “ergonomically” means.’

  ‘More efficient,’ said Graham.

  ‘Well let’s do an experiment,’ said Fidge. ‘I’ll do my snowball and you do your snow cylinder and in five minutes we’ll compare them, and we’ll make the one that’s biggest into a snowman.�
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  The cylinder won. It looked like an enormous barrel, lying on its side.

  ‘Impressive,’ said Fidge.

  ‘It wasn’t my idea,’ said Graham, modestly. ‘I read about it on a snow sculpture website.’

  ‘It reminds me of something,’ said Fidge.

  They exchanged a look, and then wordlessly hauled the barrel upright. Fidge smoothed the top of the cylinder so it was flat, and Graham took the round handwarmers out of his mittens and stuck them onto the front of it. Two sticks formed the arms, and Fidge carefully scooped out a long, letterbox mouth.

  ‘It’s a Wimbley Wooooooo!’ shouted Minnie, rounding the corner from the house. She was dressed from head to foot in a rainbow-striped snowsuit, and was pulling a sledge, laden with toys.

  ‘We could build a whole load of them,’ said Fidge. ‘And – how about this for another experiment – we could build one on the frozen pond, and then when the ice thaws it should drop straight into the water. Might look quite funny. It’s only about a foot deep, so we’ll be OK if the ice breaks when we’re making it.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Graham, feeling incredibly brave. ‘And once it’s built I could take a photo of it every few hours as it melts and then put them all together to make an animated film. We’re doing that at school.’

  ‘Is it going all right?’ asked Fidge. ‘Your school, I mean.’

  Graham shrugged. ‘It’s OK. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s boring.’

  Fidge nodded. ‘Yup, that’s what school’s like,’ she said.

  Minnie took an armful of toys from the sledge. For Christmas she had received three fluffy Wimbley Woos – a Pink, a Yellow and an Orange – and they were her new favourite toys; she placed them side by side on top of the snow Wimbley.

  ‘Where’s Wed Wabbit?’ asked Graham.

  ‘It wasn’t his turn to come,’ said Minnie. ‘He’s got to stay at home and tidy the bedroom. And anyway, you don’t say it like that,’ she added, loftily, ‘because you spell it with an “r”. Red Rabbit.’

  ‘Oh right,’ said Graham. He raised an eyebrow at Fidge.

  She grinned. ‘Things change,’ she said.

  He nodded and grinned back.

  Together, they crunched through the snow towards the pond.

  Minnie’s fifth birthday was a month later.

  ‘It’s a book,’ she said, inspecting the wrapped present from Grandma.

  ‘Open it, then,’ said Mum. ‘I think you’ll be pleased.’

  Minnie tore off the paper, and let out a shriek.

  ‘Wimbley Woooooooooooooos! A new one.’ She studied the front cover and picked out the words she could read: ‘A … of … in Wimbley Land.’

  ‘A Festival of Theatre in Wimbley Land,’ read Fidge.

  Minnie flicked through a couple of pages and then tossed the book to Fidge. ‘Read it to me, please.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Mum. ‘Unwrap some of the others first and I’ll get you your birthday breakfast.’ She caught Fidge’s eye and beckoned her into the kitchen.

  ‘Grandma told me that it’s not very good,’ she whispered.

  ‘What isn’t?’ asked Fidge.

  ‘The new book. Apparently the rhymes are dreadful, and the colours are all mixed up and they’ve introduced new characters – an elephant and a … a vegetable of some kind.’ Her mother’s mouth twitched. ‘But she thinks Minnie will still love it. So I just wanted to say, you know, try not to be too critical when you’re reading it to her. Fidge, you’re already grinning.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Fidge, grinning.

  ‘Stop it!’ Said her mum, fighting back laughter.

  ‘What are you two giggling about?’ Shouted Minnie.

  ‘NOTHING!’ They said simultaneously.

  ‘Hurry up then!’

  ‘Go on, Fidge,’ said her mum, giving her a gentle shove. ‘And I’ll come in with the cake and we’ll all cuddle up on the bed together.’

  It was lemon cake, with pink icing. Fidge took a mouthful, settled Minnie on her knee, and started to read.

  ‘In Wimbley Land live Wimbley Woos

  Who come in many different hues

  And also here are helpful friends

  With fine advice that never ends.

  So all these talents make a team

  And Wimbley Woos can build their dream

  By listening to others, taking deep breaths and speaking from the chest rather than the throat, being polite, trusting their innermost feelings and celebrating the arts,

  And caring for each other’s farts.’

  ‘It’s “HEARTS”!’ shouted Minnie.

  Also available by Lissa Evans:

  Read on for an extract from Small Change for Stuart, published by Penguin Random House Children’s Books

  And the brilliant sequel, Big Change for Stuart

  Stuart had seen the box almost every day of his life, though he’d never taken much notice of it. In the old house it had lived on his father’s desk, and in the new one it sat on the windowsill of the study.

  As soon as he got back from the walk, Stuart ran upstairs to get it. It was cylindrical and made of tin, painted with a pattern of red and blue interlocking rings, although half the paint had worn away so that crescents of bright metal showed between the colours. He flipped open the hinged lid, tipped out the paperclips and looked into the empty tin. He didn’t know what he’d expected to see, but there was nothing, just a blank, shiny interior. He slapped the lid back on again and stared at it for a moment. ‘Dad!’ he shouted.

  There was no answer. Stuart took the tin downstairs and found his father gazing out of the kitchen window with the kind of slack-jawed expression that he always wore when thinking up crossword clues.

  ‘Dad, why did you say this was a money box?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘There’s no slit in the lid. Money boxes have a slit in the lid to put the coins in. So why did you call it a money box?’

  ‘Oh …’ His father peered down at the tin as if he’d never seen it before. ‘I think it was written somewhere. On the side, perhaps?’

  Stuart looked hard at the worn pattern, and saw something that looked a tiny bit like a curly w. He turned the tin the other way up and the w became an m. But there were no letters after the m. He started to rotate the tin in his hands.

  ‘Now that I remember …’ began his father.

  ‘It’s not just upside down,’ said Stuart. ‘It’s written back to front.’

  The O and the N of the word MONEY had completely worn away, but he could just about see the E and the Y.

  ‘Now that I remember,’ Mr Horten repeated, ‘there’d been some kind of error in the manufacture of the box. The word money was printed upside down and back to front.’

  ‘I just said that,’ said Stuart. ‘But I bet it wasn’t a mistake.’ He put the lid back on again and weighed the tin in his hand. The bottom felt heavier than the top. ‘It’s a trick box,’ he declared, with sudden certainty. ‘Great-Uncle Tony was a magician, and he gave you a puzzle to solve.’

  His father was gazing out of the window again.

  ‘But unfortunately not a crossword puzzle,’ added Stuart under his breath. He up-ended the tin, and tried to unscrew the bottom. It wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Sorry?’ said his father. ‘Did you just say something? I lost the thread …’

  Stuart stopped what he was doing. The thread. It was a word with two meanings: not just a piece of cotton, but a spiral path, cut into metal.

  Cautiously, he started to turn the bottom of the tin the other way – and it opened in one smooth movement. He was so startled that he dropped both pieces, and suddenly there were coins all over the floor, gold coins (a sort of dull gold, anyway), bouncing all over the place. Stuart scrabbled to pick them up.

  ‘Good Lord!’ said his father, switching his attention from the window. ‘Where did those come from?’

  ‘There was a little compartment in the bottom,’ Stuart told him.
‘They were packed so tightly that they didn’t even rattle.’ The coins were small with an irregular edge, a picture of a man with a beard on one side, and something that looked like a grid on the other. ‘Are they worth thousands?’

  Copyright

  Wed Wabbit

  First published in 2017

  by David Fickling Books, 31 Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2NP

  This ebook edition first published in 2017

  All rights reserved

  Text © Lissa Evans, 2017

  Cover Illustration © Sarah McIntyre, 2017

  Map Illustration © Tomislav Tomic, 2017

  The right of Lissa Evans to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ISBN 978-1-910989-45-6