Well, I nearly have.
Anyway, I know it can happen.
Me and Biddy stay quiet as the king and the other man walk past us. They go through the alcove of gold and flowers, into the king’s private chamber. The door shuts behind them, and the sound echoes briefly around the Great Hall. Then everything is silent.
‘We’re inside a fairy story,’ Biddy whispers.
‘Yes, Biddy! We are in a fairy story,’ I yell. ‘That man is a dangerous king with a magic ring. We are in a very scary situation. Let’s get out of here!’
But of course Biddy can’t hear me so she just ignores me.
‘The king said that Princess Rapunzel must stay gagged and hidden in the tower,’ Biddy whispers. ‘The princess is locked in there so she doesn’t run away. She has got tape around her mouth to stop her from screaming. That’s what “gagged” means. And I bet she’s wearing a blindfold, too. I’ve got to rescue her!’
‘Rescue her?’ I say to Biddy. ‘No way! Are you mad? Do you want the king to turn us into pieces of infinity?’
What am I going to do? I’ve got to make Biddy understand. But she can’t hear me.
What if I went right inside her ear? Perhaps I could talk straight into her thoughts. I don’t want to do that, though. I don’t like dark places. But I don’t want to get turned into a piece of infinity either. So, it’s my only chance.
Okay. I take a deep breath and dive into Biddy’s ear.
Yukki-poo-la-drop-kick!
It’s dark. And—eeuu! The walls and floor are sticky with earwax. I make myself run as fast as I can, down, down Biddy’s ear canal, right to the end. There is a huge piece of skin stretched between the floor and the ceiling. It must be Biddy’s eardrum.
I lean against the eardrum and whisper, as quiet as thoughts, ‘Biddy. We’re in big trouble. We should run away. Quick! Let’s get out of this place now, and go and find Mum.’
I listen. I can hear the words echoing around in Biddy’s brain. ‘Run away … away … away. Quick … get out … out … out.’ And then I hear Biddy talking.
‘Quick, I have to go,’ she says, and I feel her stand up straight.
Yes! It worked! I run as fast as I can out of Biddy’s earhole. I am so happy. But then I hear Biddy say, ‘I bet Princess Rapunzel ran away from home to do fun stuff in the city. And the king didn’t want Princess Rapunzel to have fun, so he sent his army to catch her and bring her home.’
Biddy goes on, ‘And now he has locked up Princess Rapunzel in his tower.’
Biddy starts running down the stairs. ‘I’ve got to let the princess out,’ she says.
‘What?’ I cry. ‘No, Biddy! You heard me wrong. That is not what I said. This is not play-pretend like a storybook. This is a real-life fairy tale.’
I run onto the top of her head, and tug on her fringe. ‘Biddy, listen,’ I say. ‘We could be killed properly dead. Don’t touch the door to the tower! The king will have used his magic ring to put an evil locking-spell on it.’
But Biddy just keeps running tink, tink, tink! across the stone floor to the door with the sign that says ‘Tower Staircase’. Then she takes the key from behind the tapestry, and uses it to unlock the door.
As soon as she opens that door, we will be struck down by an evil spell.
‘Noooo!’ I cry, and burrow down inside one of Biddy’s plaits. I close my eyes and wrap my arms around my head. My whole body is shaking.
Chapter eight
the monster stairwell
Click! The door to the tower staircase unlocks. Creak! It opens. And, clunk! The door closes ever so quietly behind us. I open my eyes.
We are still alive.
We are standing in a tiny room. There is a stone staircase spiralling up above our heads. It’s like a cave that has been dug out from beneath the surface of the earth. Like, you know, where trolls live!
I don’t like it. Not that I’m a scaredy chicken-heart lacy-petticoat or anything. It’s just that stairwells are very dangerous places. All sorts of goblins and scoriaks and terrible beasties live in stairwells.
I even know why monsters live in stairwells. It’s because old stairwells like this are lined with ancient humanness.
Over hundreds of years, the humans who worked in this building have climbed up these stairs to see to the prisoners at the top. And, as each human passed, they left something behind, a hair, a flake of skin, a tiny piece of toenail, a dribble of sweat.
These small pieces of humanness fall and settle in corners. They pile up, layer upon layer, along with the rat poo and cockroach feelers.
It is true! Look. See that grey film against the wall? The one that looks like dust? Well, that dust is really flakes of humanness. There is enough there to feed a whole tribe of terrible beasts.
Biddy stretches out her hands to touch the walls.
‘No, Biddy!’ I scream. ‘Don’t touch the walls. There are terrible gnashing monsters in here!’
‘Monsters?’ Biddy whispers. She pulls her hands back from the walls.
Yes! Finally she is listening to me, I think.
‘Biddy, come on,’ I yell, poking my head out of the end of her plait. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
But, she doesn’t. She just tells herself firmly, using Mum’s voice, ‘Now, Biddy, don’t be silly. There are no such things as monsters. And even if there were, you can’t just run away. You’ve got to be brave and save Princess Rapunzel.’
‘No! Biddy, please!’ I scream. ‘Let a grown-up save Princess Rapunzel.’
But Biddy just purses her mouth, balls her hands up into fists and starts skipping up the stairs. She sings in a determined voice, ‘I am bra-ave. I am strong. I am big-ger than a, a, a, tyr-anno-sau-rus.’
‘You are not brave and strong,’ I yell. ‘You are just a little girl! And, anyway, tyrannosaurus doesn’t rhyme with strong!’
But she won’t listen to me, so I have to give up. I duck into Biddy’s hair and hide.
The monsters are going to trip Biddy up, or bite her feet, or jump on her and gobble her up whole! I don’t want to see it.
But, what about me? If they eat Biddy, they will eat me, too!
I’ve got to save Biddy, or that will be the end of both of us. I jump out of her plait. But I don’t have a weapon. I must have a weapon to fight the monsters.
Then I remember Biddy is wearing a hairclip, to keep the hair above her plaits in place. Yes! The hairclip has a sharp, pointy end. I can use it for a sword.
I grab the hairclip, bend it straight to make a sword and run down one of Biddy’s plaits. Then I slip into the hair elastic at the very end of the plait. With the hair elastic around my waist, I can’t fall out of Biddy’s hair.
As Biddy runs, her plaits swing around her head.
I slash! and switch! and slice! and gash! with my sword in the air.
My sword is ripping through the air so fast that the monsters are too scared to come out of the walls.
And Biddy never stops for a minute, so they can’t grab her. Even when she gets a stitch in her side from running too much, she doesn’t stop. She just breathes in deep, down into her stomach. Then she skips to change the rhythm of her running and keeps going.
She is still singing that silly song, ‘I am bra-ave. I am strong …’
Finally, we get to the top of the stairwell, to safety.
I raise my sword at the monsters. ‘Stunned you!’ I say. And, ‘How’s that!’ And, ‘Victory!’
Chapter nine
the secret room
Biddy runs into the room at the top of the stairs. ‘Princess Rapunzel?’ she calls. ‘We have come to save you.’
But there is no one there. There’s no princess tied up in the corner, with tape around her mouth to stop her from screaming. There is just a small, empty room, with a huge copper bell in the middle of it. The ringer inside the bell is tied against the bell’s edge so it can’t make a sound.
I skip up right on top of Biddy’s head so I can see and hear everything.<
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‘They must have hidden Princess Rapunzel in an invisible room,’ Biddy says, patting the walls.
Then Biddy makes up magic words to open the secret doorways.
‘Spell-in-cous-cous!’ she says.
And, ‘Try-la-men-ia!’
And, ‘Wocca-woo!’
And, ‘Stru-ta-lu-ta!’
And, ‘Till-gäng-lig!’
She stops and listens after each magic word for the creak! crack! rumble! sounds the stone wall would make as it pulled back to reveal the secret doorway. But the only noise either of us can hear is the sound of Biddy’s footsteps echoing on the wooden floorboards, and a strange hum.
What is causing the hum?
Ah! It is the great bell. The footstep-echoes are bouncing up against the wall and back onto the bell. And the sound has set the whole room vibrating with the most amazingly wonderful humming. I love it way past the furthest edge of impossibility.
‘Maybe Princess Rapunzel’s already escaped,’ Biddy says, suddenly standing still.
‘But how could Princess Rapunzel get out?’ I ask, closing my eyes to help me think. How could she have possibly escaped from this tower? What happened in the story?
Oh yes! I remember.
‘Biddy! The window!’ I yell. ‘She climbed out through the window.’
‘Rapunzel climbed out through the window, and down her long hair!’ Biddy says. Then she runs to the window so fast that I fall backwards.
And, before I can get my balance again, Biddy’s head jerks forwards out through the tall slit-of-a-window.
Ahhh! I’m sliding.
Grab! Scrabble!
I catch a strand of Biddy’s fringe with my hands.
But Mum has brushed it smooth. There are no knots to hang onto. The hair is slipping through my fingers. I’m falling! I’ll be dead. Splat! Like a bug on the concrete below.
Suddenly, a rope is flying towards me. No … it’s one of Biddy’s plaits!
I grab onto it, wrapping my legs and arms around it. Then I tuck my hands and feet into its tight folds. I’m dangling high in the air, swinging through empty space. I feel a bit sick. But I’m safe.
‘Holy-mog-olie!’ Biddy is yelling. ‘Look at that.’
I look down. The whole city is spread out below us. Everything on the ground looks tiny. Cars and people are rushing past, stopping at the traffic lights, and going on again like ants.
Right across from the tower, a lady is running backwards and forwards across the pavement. Her red coat is flapping behind her, and she is holding her high-heeled shoes in her hands.
‘Mum!’ Biddy yells.
And she is right. The running lady is Mum!
But Mum never runs. She always tells Biddy off for running on busy streets.
What is wrong? Something terrible must have happened.
There are other people running with Mum, back and forth. Police cars are pulling up at the side of the busy road with their sirens blaring. And policemen and policewomen are stopping people on the street, and asking them questions.
What do they want?
I bet Matilda wandered off on her own! She is always letting go of Mum’s hand and getting lost. Matilda is such a silly, little, not-very-careful kid.
No … Matilda isn’t lost. She’s down there, too, holding a policeman’s hand. Well, who are they looking for?
‘Uh-oh!’ Biddy says. ‘They are looking for me!’
She leans further out the window and screams, ‘Here! I’m up here. Mum! Police-people! It’s okay. I’m here. Don’t worry.’
Mum and the policemen and all the other looking-for-Biddy people are just over the road from the Princess Tower. But they can’t hear Biddy yelling because she is so high up, and the traffic on the ground is so noisy.
‘I’m up here!’ Biddy yells again. She pulls off her shoes and waves them out of the window.
But still no one notices.
Then Biddy remembers the bell.
She pulls her head back through the window, and runs across the room to the bell. Then she undoes the rope, and swings the bell-ringer as hard as she can.
BOING! BOING! BOING! goes the bell.
It makes the loudest noise in the whole universe. My ears are ringing, nearly to bursting.
Then Biddy runs back to the window and throws her shoes out. They flutter down and bounce onto the ground, right next to a policewoman.
The policewoman looks up, sees us, waves, and calls to Mum.
Then Mum sees us, yells to the police-people, and runs straight across the road. She doesn’t even look-to-the-left-to-the-right-to-the-left-again! Cars blare their horns and people scream. The policemen and policewomen put their hands up to stop the traffic.
And over the top of it all, Mum is screaming, ‘Brigid Lucy!’
And, ‘Stay-where-you-are!’
And, ‘Get-back-from-that-window!’
And, ‘Don’t-you-dare-move.’
Well, we can’t actually hear what she’s saying, but I bet she is saying something just like that. She always does.
Chapter ten
in trouble again
Me and Biddy can hear Mum’s voice yelling all the way up the stairs.
When she bursts into the bell-room, she grabs Biddy in the biggest bear hug ever. Then she cries and laughs and yells. She is nearly squash-suffocating me and Biddy to bits.
Then some of the police-people come in, too. The policewoman who spotted Biddy in the tower is here.
She walks over to look out of the slit-ofa-window. ‘What a view,’ she says. ‘You can see the sea!’
When Mum stops crying and laughing, she wipes her face and starts telling Biddy off.
‘Brigid-Lucy-what-were-you-thinking?’ she says. And, ‘You-worry-me-to-death.’
Then, when Mum gets tired of telling Biddy off, a big policeman comes over.
He kneels down, wearing a very serious face, and tells Biddy all about ‘danger’ and ‘strangers’. And then he tells her how little girls should never, ever run away from their mums because terrible things can happen to them.
‘Tell me about it!’ I say. ‘We just nearly got turned into a piece of infinity by a king’s magic ring. And then we were almost gobbled up by a huge pile of monsters in the stairwell.’
But Biddy patiently waits till the policeman stops talking.
Then she asks him in her most polite voice, ‘Mr Policeman, are they allowed to keep little girls prisoners in towers, even if they are princesses?’
‘Of course not!’ the policeman says.
‘Well, the king is keeping a little girl prisoner here right now,’ Biddy says.
‘What king?’ asks the policeman.
‘That one right there,’ Biddy says, pointing at the king and the other man from the Great Hall. They have just come puffing up the stairwell.
The policeman stands up and steps towards the king.
I dive behind Biddy’s ear. There is going to be a battle. The policeman will try to capture the king. The king will pull out his magic ring and cast us all into the dungeon, or feed us to a dragon.
Or perhaps he’ll lock us all up here in this tower. We’ll have only the terrible monsters with the gnashing teeth and sharp pointy claws for company, until the end of infinity.
But the policeman just says, ‘That gentleman is not a king. He is a bishop.’
‘Well, even if he is not a king,’ Biddy says, ‘I heard him say he was going to keep Princess Rapunzel gagged and locked up as a prisoner in this tower until the time was right.’
The policeman looks at the king-bishop person and asks him if what Biddy says is true.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know what the young lady is talking about,’ the king-bishop person says. Then he looks at the huge bell. ‘Ah,’ he says and smiles at Biddy. ‘Princess Rapunzel, you say?’
He walks over to the bell, and adds, ‘You may have heard me talking about our new bell, Pristus Repastelle.’
‘Pree-stuss Re-past-el?’ Biddy ask
s, following him.
‘Yes. Isn’t she beautiful?’ says the bishop. (Who perhaps isn’t a king after all.) He points to the edge of the bell. ‘See, her name is written right there.’
And he is right. Pristus Repastelle is engraved in delicate writing along the bell’s rim.
‘Pristus Repastelle,’ Biddy reads. ‘So, why did you say she had to be gagged, and that no one could see her, if she is just a bell?’
‘She is not just a bell,’ the bishop says. ‘This is a cathedral bell. It is normal for a cathedral bell to be kept gagged, so it can’t make a sound until the day it gets consecrated.’
‘What does con-se-cra-ted mean?’ asks Biddy.
‘It’s like a very special blessing,’ says the bishop. ‘And then the gag is taken off the bell, and she is rung so loudly, she can be heard all over the city.’
‘Like she rang today, when I undid the rope?’ Biddy asks, smiling proudly.
‘Yes,’ says the bishop. ‘We were trying to keep her a surprise. But you let the cat out of the bag.’ He looks at the policeman and the policewoman and laughs. ‘Or, rather, the bell out of the tower,’ he adds.
Then the bishop, the policeman, and the policewoman all look at Mum and laugh.
And Mum smiles back. Which makes me and Biddy think that perhaps Mum realises that everything that happened wasn’t all Biddy’s fault.
And we also think that Mum might have forgiven us for getting lost and found at the Princess Bell Tower.
But she hasn’t.
Biddy’s shoes are lost at the bottom of the tower. We can’t find them anywhere.
And Mum is still so worried-half-to-death that we have to catch a taxi home instead of the train. So we don’t get to see the Princess Bell Tower through the train window again.
Brigid Lucy and the Princess Tower Page 3