Neil Gaiman Young Readers' Collection

by Neil Gaiman

  “Actually,” I said, “we are about three hundred years in the past.”

  “Do you like hard-hairy-wet-white-crunchers?” he asked.

  “Coconuts?” I guessed.

  “I named them first,” said Professor Steg. He picked up a coconut from a basket and ate it, shell and all, just as you or I might crunch toast.

  He showed me his Time Machine. He was very proud of it. It was a large cardboard box with several pebbles on it, and stones stuck to the side. There was also a large, red button. I looked at the stones. “Hang on,” I said. “Those are diamonds. And sapphires. And rubies.”

  “Actually,” he said, “I call them special-shiny-clear-stones, special-shiny-bluey-stones, and, um—”

  “Special-shiny-red-stones?” I suggested.

  “Indeed,” he said. “I called them that when I was inventing my Really Good Moves Around in Time Machine, one hundred and fifty million years ago.”

  “Well,” I told him, “it was very lucky for me that you turned up when you did and rescued me. I am slightly lost in space and time right now and need to get home in order to make sure my children get milk for their breakfast.” I showed it to him. “This is the milk. Although I expect that one hundred and fifty million years ago you called it ‘wet-white-drinky-stuff.’”

  “Dinosaurs are reptiles, sir,” said Professor Steg. “We do not go in for milk.”

  “Do you go in for breakfast cereal?” I asked.

  “Of course!” he said. “Dinosaurs LOVE breakfast cereal. Especially the kind with nuts in.”

  “What do you have on your cereal?” I asked.

  “Orange juice, mostly. Or we just eat it dry. But I shall put this in my book: In the distant future, small mammals put milk on their breakfast cereal. I shall write a wonderful book, when I return to the present.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I think this is definitely the past. It has pirates in it.”

  “It’s the future,” he said. “All the dinosaurs have gone off into the stars, leaving the world to mammals.”

  “I wondered where you all went,” I said.

  “The stars,” he told me. “That is where we will have gone.”

  “So,” I said. “Can you take me home?”

  “Well,” he said. “Yes and no.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Yes, I would love to take you home. Nothing would make me happier. No, I cannot take you home. In all honesty, I do not believe that I can take me home. My Time Machine is being temperamental. I need a special-shiny-greeny-stone. I have pressed that button many times but nothing happens.”

  “Button? Don’t you mean ‘big-red-flat-pressy-thing’?” I asked.

  “I most certainly do not. It is a button. I named it after my Aunt Button.”

  “Can I press it?”

  “If you wish.”

  I pressed the button. The sun shot around the sky, and the sky started to flicker in nights and in days, and the balloon began to rock and lurch and zoom around like an angry fly.

  I held on to the ropes as hard as I could. Fortunately, I was still keeping tight hold of the milk in my right hand.

  When we stopped being blown all across the sky, it was night and, according to Professor Steg, we had only gone back about a thousand years. The moon was nearly full.

  “I am even further from my children and our breakfast,” I said.

  “You have your milk,” he said. “Where there is milk, there is hope. Ah, over there. That looks like a perfect landing platform for time-traveling scientists in Floaty-Ball-Person-Carriers.”

  We landed on the platform and got out. The platform stuck up out of the jungle and had flaming torches on each side. There were people standing on it with very black hair and sharp stone knives.

  “Is this a balloon-landing platform?” I asked the people.

  “It is not,” said a fat man. “It is our temple. We had a very bad harvest last year and we had just asked the gods to send us a sacrifice, to make sure that this year’s harvest is better, when you floated down in that thing, with your monster.”

  “Thank you, by the way,” said a little thin man. “I was going to be the sacrifice if no one else turned up. Much obliged.”

  “So now we will sacrifice you and your monster.”

  “But my children are waiting for their breakfast,” I said. “Look!” I held up the milk.

  “Why did they all just fall to their knees?” asked Professor Steg. “Is this usual hairless mammal behavior? Perhaps I should hold up some hard-hairy-wet-white-crunchers and see what happens.”

  “Coconuts!” I told him. “They are called coconuts!”

  “What is that you are holding?” the fat man asked.

  “Milk,” I said.

  “MILK!” they exclaimed, and they prostrated themselves on the ground.

  “We have a prophecy,” said the fat man, “that when a man and a spiny-backed monster descend from the skies on a round floaty thing—”

  “Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier,” said the little thin man.

  “Yes. One of those. We were told that when that happened, if the man held up milk then we were not to sacrifice them, but we were meant to take them to the volcano, and give them, as a present, the green jewel that is the Eye of Splod.”

  “Splod?”

  “He is the god of people with short, funny names.”

  “It is,” I said, “a remarkably specific sort of a prophecy. When did you receive it?”

  “Last Wednesday,” said the fat man, proudly. “The priest of Splod was woken in the night by a voice whispering from the heavens. And when he went to look and see who it was, there was nobody there. Also, he was sleeping on the top of the temple, and nobody else could have been up there with him. So it must have either been Splod himself talking, or one of his angelic messengers.”

  We walked together down a jungle path. Professor Steg carried the rope in his mouth that led up to the balloon, and he dragged the balloon along. After half an hour we reached the volcano.

  It was not a very big volcano. There were wisps of smoke coming from the top of it.

  On the side of the volcano there was a carving of a big scary face with one eye in the middle of its forehead. The eye was the biggest emerald I had ever seen.

  “A special-shiny-greeny-stone!” said Professor Steg, with his mouth full of rope.

  The fat man clambered up the side of the volcano.

  “It is a good thing that Splod himself told us to give you the Eye of Splod,” said the little thin man who had narrowly avoided being sacrificed, “because there is another prophecy that if the Eye of Splod is ever removed, Great Splod will awaken and spread burning destruction across the land.”

  “Here you go,” said the fat man.

  He handed us the emerald. Professor Steg nipped up the rope ladder into the balloon’s gondola and began to install the emerald in the Time Machine.

  “Hang on. He was a stegosaurus?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how could he just nip up a rope ladder?”

  “He was,” said my father, “a large stegosaurus, but very light on his feet. There are fat people who are excellent dancers.”

  “Are there any ponies in this?” asked my sister. “I thought there would be ponies by now.”

  I was standing on the ground, holding on to the rope ladder, when the ground shook and the very small volcano began to belch smoke and lava.

  “Splod is angry!” shouted the little thin man. “He wants his eye back.”

  There was a rushing wind, and the balloon jerked me up into the air, high above the splurting lava.

  Unfortunately, I dropped the milk. I wasn’t holding on to it tightly enough. It landed on the top of Splod’s head.

  Professor Steg hauled the rope ladder up with his tail.

  “I’VE LOST THE MILK!” I told him.

  “That’s not good,” he admitted.

  “But I know where it is. It’s on top of Splod’s head, on the
side of the volcano.”

  Professor Steg said, “Good Splod! What on earth is that?”

  Before our eyes, another balloon, just like ours, appeared, over by the volcano. A man hurried down the rope ladder. He placed a large emerald in Splod’s eye, picked up the milk from Splod’s head, ran up the ladder, and the balloon vanished.

  The very small volcano stopped erupting as suddenly as if it had been turned off.

  “That was a bit peculiar, wasn’t it?” said the professor.

  “It was,” I agreed, gloom and despair and despondency overcoming me. “That man in that balloon stole my milk. We are lost in the past, with jungles and pirates and volcanoes. Now I will never get home. My children will never have breakfast. We are doomed to float forever through the dusty air of the past in a hot air balloon.”

  “It is not a balloon,” said Professor Steg. “It is a Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier. What nonsense you do talk. Now, I think that should do the trick.”

  He finished attaching the emerald to the box, using string, mostly, and also sticky tape, and he pushed the red button.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. It seemed like the sun was zooming across the sky, as if nights were following days in a flickering strobe.

  “The far, far future!” said Professor Steg.

  The machine stopped.

  We were hanging in the air above a grassy plain, with a very small grey mountain beneath us.

  “There,” said Professor Steg. “It is now an extinct volcano. BUT LOOK!”

  On the side of the extinct volcano was carved the face of Splod, still recognizable, even though it was much eroded by time and the weather, and in the single eye was a huge green emerald, a perfect twin to the one that we had attached to the Time Machine.

  “Right,” said Professor Steg. “Grab me that special-shiny-greeny-stone.”

  I went over the side of the gondola and down the rope ladder. I pulled the emerald out of the eye socket.

  Below me, on the plain, a number of brightly colored ponies were gathered, and when I picked up the emerald, one of them shouted up at me. “You must be the man without the milk. We have heard about you, in our tales.”

  “Why are you a pink pony with a pale blue star on the side?” I asked.

  “I know,” said the pony with a sigh. “It’s what everybody’s wearing these days. Pale blue stars are so last year.”

  Professor Steg leaned over the side of the balloon’s basket. “Hurry up!” he called. “If the volcano is going to go off, it will do it any moment.”

  The volcano made a noise like a huge burp, and the middle of it collapsed into itself.

  “We thought it would do that,” said a green pony with a sparkly mane.

  “There was a prophecy, I suppose,” I said.

  “No. We’re just very clever.” All the ponies nodded. They were very clever ponies.

  “I am so glad there were ponies,” said my sister.

  I got back into the balloon basket. Professor Steg unhooked the first emerald from his Time Machine and replaced it with the one that I had just taken from the weathered face of Splod-in-the-Future.

  “Do not, whatever else you might do,” said the professor, “touch those two stones together.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, according to my calculations, if the same object from two different times touches itself, one of two things will happen. Either the Universe will cease to exist. Or three remarkable dwarfs will dance through the streets with flowerpots on their heads.”

  “That sounds astonishingly specific,” I said.

  “I know. But it is science. And it is much more probable that the Universe will end.”

  “I thought it would be,” I said.

  “You look so sad,” Professor Steg told me.

  “I am! It’s the milk. My children are breakfastless—”

  “The milk!” said Professor Steg. “Of course!” And with that, Professor Steg pressed the red button with his heavily armored tail.

  There was a ZOOM, a TWORP, and a THANG, and we were hurtling through the cosmic void.

  And then it was dark.

  Very dark.

  “Oops,” said Professor Steg. “Overshot a little. Only by a week, though. Hold on. . . .”

  Professor Steg leaned over the side of the basket.

  “Excuse me?” he said. “Is there anyone around?”

  “Only me,” said a very surprised-sounding voice from below us. “The priest of Splod. Who is that up in the sky? Is it a bird? You do not sound like a bird.”

  “I am not a bird,” said Professor Steg. “I am a marvelous yet mysterious and prophetic voice, telling you a mighty prophecy. So mighty that . . . Um . . . Very mighty indeed. Listen. When a huge and good-looking spiny-backed individual—”

  “Monster,” I told him. “The prophecy said monster.”

  “Accompanied by a scrawny human being of revolting appearance—” said Professor Steg.

  “That was not necessary.”

  “—lands in a Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier, you must not sacrifice them. You must instead take them to the volcano and give them the Eye of Splod. And this shall be the way that you shall know them. The human being will hold up some milk.”

  “Is that the prophecy?” said the voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anything about crops in it?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Oh well. Thank you anyway, prophetic and mysterious voices from the air.”

  I pressed the red button.

  Daylight. We were in the middle of a very familiar volcanic eruption. “Quickly!” I said. “Give me the emerald!”

  A little way away I could see a balloon being blown through the sky, while fire and ash were swept around it by the wind. I could see me in the balloon, standing next to Professor Steg, with my mouth open. I looked miserable.

  Professor Steg—MY Professor Steg—gave me the emerald.

  I raced down the rope ladder and placed the emerald back into the face’s eye. Then, as the volcano stopped erupting, I looked around for the milk. I knew it had landed on Splod’s head when it fell.

  Fortunately, the milk had fallen into a small drift of volcanic ash, and was unharmed. I picked it up, brushed it off, and started back up the balloon ladder. Professor Steg pressed the button.

  The sky went dark.

  We were FLOATING above a landscape of ominous towers and disquieting castles. It was not a friendly place. Bats flew across the sky in huge flocks, crowding out the waning moon.

  “I don’t like this place,” I told the professor.

  “I don’t see why not,” he said. “It looks as if it would be very nice when the sun comes up.”

  There was a loud FLUT!, and where the bats had been fluttering, several pallid people were now standing. The man in front had a very bald head.

  THEY ALL HAD

  SHARP TEETH.

  “Ve are wumpires,” they said. “Vot is this? Who are you? Answer us, or ve vill wiwisect you.”

  “I am Professor Steg,” boomed the Stegosaurus. “This is my assistant. We are on an important mission. I am trying to get back to the present. My assistant is trying to get home to the future for breakfast.”

  At the word BREAKFAST all the wumpires looked very excited.

  “Ve have not had our breakfast,” they told us. “Ve normally have vigglyvorms, vith orange juice on them. Orange juice makes vorms ewen vigglier. Like vandering spaghetti. But if ve cannot eat vorms ve vill eat assistant, or ewen roast professor.”

  One of the wumpires took out a fork, and looked me up and down in a hungry sort of way.

  The baldest, most bulging-eyed, rattiest of the wumpires said, “Vot is this box?”

  “It is my finest invention,” began Professor Steg proudly, but I interrupted.

  “It is to keep sandwiches in,” I said.

  “Sandviches?” said the wumpire.

  “Sandwiches,” I said, with as much certainty as I co
uld muster.

  “Ve thought it vos a Time Machine,” said the head wumpire, with a sly, sharp smile. “And ve could use it to inwade the vorld!”

  “Definitely sandwiches,” I told him.

  “Vot happens if I press this button, then?” asked a lady wumpire. She had long black hair that covered most of her face, and peered out at the world with one suspicious eye.

  She pressed the button. We went forward six hours in time.

  “See?” said the professor happily. “All this place needs to brighten it up is a little bit of sunshine.”

  The head wumpire said, “Vot?” and dissolved into a cloud of oily black smoke. So did all his friends.

  “Yes,” I said. “It is a nice place here, after all. In the daylight.”

  The professor tinkered with the jewels and the string and the buttons. Then he said, “I think I’ve got it properly fine-tuned, now. This next press should bring you back to your own time, place, and breakfast.”

  But before the tip of his tail could touch the button, a voice said, “I’ll explain later. Fate of the world at stake.”

  A hand grabbed, and the milk, which I had carried safely for so long, was gone. I turned in time to catch a glimpse of a fine-looking gentleman with his back to me, holding my milk, and then the hole in space through which he had reached was closed.

  “MY MILK!”

  “He said he’d explain later,” said the professor. “I’d be inclined to believe him.”

  The hole in space opened again. A voice shouted, “Catch!” and the milk came rocketing through.

  Fortunately, the milk struck me in the stomach, and in clutching my hands to my belly I caught the milk.

  “There,” said the professor. “Everything is back to normal.”

  “He did say he’d explain later,” I pointed out. “And that wasn’t much of an explanation.”

  “But it’s not later yet,” said Professor Steg. “It’s still now. It won’t be later until later.”