Muddle Earth

by Chris Riddell

  ‘Why?’ said Joe.

  ‘’Cause it was enchanted,’ said the ogre. ‘It sang.’

  ‘Did it now?’ said Joe thoughtfully.

  ‘His mother got it for him when he was a baby,’ the ogre went on. ‘From one of the wizards on the Enchanted Lake. Roger the Wrinkled, his name was . . .’

  ‘Course, that was back before the wizards disappeared,’ the second ogre interrupted. ‘You can’t get anything enchanted these days. That snuggly-wuggly was unique. Irreplaceable.’

  ‘Which is why Engelbert took it so badly when it went missing. It used to lull him to sleep every night.’

  ‘Engelbert loved his snuggly-wuggly,’ said the second ogre. ‘He said it smelled of warm hugs. Took it everywhere, he did . . .’

  Engelbert, who had clearly been listening in, suddenly sat forwards. ‘Until somebody took it!’ he exclaimed. ‘I woke up last week and there it was, gone.’ His face clouded over. ‘Stolen, it was! Someone had stolen my snuggly-wuggly. My lovely singing snuggly-wuggly . . .’

  ‘Steady on, big fellow,’ the other ogres told him. ‘Stay calm.’

  ‘It made Engelbert angry,’ Engelbert continued, his voice trembling and his face all blotchy and red. ‘And sheep are no good. They might be soft, but they make such a horrible sound – even when you hardly squeeze them at all.’

  Henry barked excitedly, and licked Engelbert’s bulbous nose. A broad smile spread over the ogre’s features.

  ‘Not like Henry here,’ he said. ‘He has a lovely singing voice.’

  ‘This snuggly-wuggly,’ said Joe. ‘Did it go la, la, la . . . ?’ he crooned, singing in his deepest, groaniest voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said the ogres excitedly. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I think I may have seen it,’ he said, as he remembered his encounter with Grubley on the road from Elfwood.

  ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter now,’ Engelbert said. ‘I don’t need my old snuggly-wuggly back. Not now I’ve got Henry.’ He rubbed him affectionately up and down his cheek again.

  Henry wagged his tail with pleasure and barked his strange yodelling bark. Engelbert chuckled.

  ‘Just listen to that,’ he said, and tickled him under his tummy. ‘He’s perfect.’

  Joe nodded sadly. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘The thing is, Engelbert, he belongs to me. And I would miss him, too. I’ve had him ever since he was a little puppy.’

  Engelbert looked up. His jaw dropped. ‘You’re . . . you’re not going to take him away, are you?’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t leave Engelbert without a snuggly-wuggly again? I couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘And you know what happened last time,’ the other ogres warned him.

  ‘I know,’said Joe. He turned to Engelbert. ‘But, supposing I could get your real snuggly-wuggly back,’ he said. ‘You’d let me have Henry back then, wouldn’t you?’

  The ogre pouted. ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘Engelbert, I’m talking about your old snuggly-wuggly,’ said Joe softly. ‘Your best snuggly-wuggly. The snuggly-wuggly you’ve had since you were a baby ogre, that sings you to sleep and smells of warm hugs.’ He smiled. ‘The snuggly-wuggly you love as much as I love Henry.’

  Engelbert looked at Joe, then at Henry – then back at Joe.

  ‘All right, then,’ he said at last. ‘It’s a deal.’

  Shortly after teatime the following day there was a loud knock at the castle door. The Horned Baron ran to answer it. Grubley was standing there.

  ‘At last!’ the Horned Baron exclaimed. ‘You took for ever!’

  ‘Singing curtains can’t be rushed,’ Grubley explained. Having passed the greetings-elf halfway between Goblintown and the castle, he already knew how desperate the Horned Baron was to receive them. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘what’s all this stuff about dungeons and wizards and pink stinky hogs?’

  ‘Never mind!’ the Horned Baron humphed. ‘You’ve got them, that’s the important thing.’ He frowned. ‘Where are they?’

  Grubley took off his backpack and opened it up. The sound of two muffled voices singing in discordant harmony filled the hallway. Grubley pulled out the pair of curtains and displayed them over a crooked elbow.

  ‘They look a bit tatty,’ said the Horned Baron. He wrin- kled his nose. ‘And they niff a bit,’ he added. ‘Perhaps you’d see your way to knocking a little bit off the final price . . .’

  ‘You must be joking,’ said Grubley, outraged. ‘These singing curtains are unique. You wouldn’t believe the lengths I had to go to to find them.’

  The droning song grew louder. It echoed round the vaulted ceiling and floated up the stairs.

  ‘Walter!’ came a strident, yet hopeful, voice. ‘Is that singing I can hear? Have my singing curtains finally arrived?’

  ‘Y . . . yes, they have,’ the Horned Baron called up. ‘If you can call that tuneless cacophony singing,’ he muttered under his breath.

  ‘Course, you don’t have to have them,’ said Grubley, folding the curtains up. ‘If you don’t want them, I know plenty who do . . .’

  ‘Oh, Walter,’ Ingrid replied. ‘You wonderful Horned Baron, you! I knew you wouldn’t let me down. I never doubted you for a moment.’

  ‘But if you do want them,’ Grubley continued, as he opened his backpack, ‘then, as you well know, you owe me a pouch of silver pipsqueaks.’

  ‘Daylight robbery,’ the Horned Baron complained. ‘One pouch is more than enough . . .’

  ‘WALTER!’ Ingrid shrieked. ‘I am a patient woman. But you are trying that patience, Walter. You are pushing it to the very limit.’ She paused. ‘I WANT MY SINGING CURTAINS NOW!’

  ‘Right away,’ the Horned Baron said. He turned to Grubley and thrust the pouch of silver pipsqueaks into his hand. ‘I take it hanging the curtains up is included in the fee.’

  ‘Not normally,’ said Grubley. The Horned Baron’s eyebrows drew together menacingly. ‘But for such a valued customer,’ he added in an oily voice, ‘I’d be only too happy to oblige.’

  Just then, there was a furious hammering at the door. Grubley jumped. The Horned Baron spun round.

  ‘What now?’ he said.

  ‘WALTER!’

  ‘Coming . . . I mean, going . . .’ the Horned Baron called back, as he headed first for the staircase, then back for the door, not knowing for a moment whether he was coming or going.

  The hammering resumed, louder than ever, and accompanied by a loud voice shouting, ‘Open up! Open up! It’s a matter of life and death!’

  The Horned Baron raised his eyebrows to the ceiling. ‘If it isn’t one thing, it’s another!’ he said.

  ‘WAL-TER!!’

  ‘You take the curtains up,’ the Horned Baron told Grubley. ‘I’ll see who’s at the door. It’s probably another case of badly squeezed sheep.’ He shook his head. ‘When I get my hands on that Randalf character . . .’

  As Grubley disappeared upstairs, the Horned Baron crossed the hallway. Before he arrived at the door, however, it burst open and slammed back against the wall behind. Silhouetted in the doorway, the Horned Baron saw a wiry, dishevelled youth with matted hair, dusty clothes and one wellington boot.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘You’re here to complain that your sheep have been squeezed. Look, for the hundred-and-first time . . .’

  ‘Horned Baron,’ said Joe, as he strode into the hallway. ‘Just the person I wanted to see.’ He held out his hand. ‘It’s Joe. Remember? Joe the Barbarian? Warrior-hero?’

  ‘Barbarian? Warrior-hero?’ said the Horned Baron distractedly as he glanced past Joe and up the stairs. ‘Joe . . . Ah, yes. I didn’t recognize you without the saucepan on your head. How are you and how did you get on? And where’s that wizard?’

  From upstairs, there came the enthusiastic sound of oohing and aahing. ‘Oh, Walter, they’re divine!’ Ingrid called. ‘No one else has got anything like them. Wonderful! The very height of fashion!’ There was a pause. ‘They are the very height of fashion, a
ren’t they, Walter?’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ he replied wearily. ‘And the pinnacle of good taste.’

  Joe smiled.

  ‘New curtains,’ the Horned Baron explained.

  ‘La, la, la. La, la, la . . .’

  ‘Singing curtains,’ he explained. ‘Ingrid’s set her heart on them. Apparently, they’re all the rage.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘That’s what Grubley said, when I saw him.’

  ‘Singing curtains!’ Ingrid trilled. ‘My very own singing curtains!’

  ‘Very rare,’ said Joe. ‘Very hard to come by – you don’t find enchanted material every day.’

  ‘And what if they are?’ said the Horned Baron, suddenly defensive. ‘I dare say a Horned Baron’s entitled to buy his beloved wife a little gift now and then. More to the point, what are you doing here?’

  Joe breathed in and pulled himself up to his full height. This was the part he’d been practising. ‘I, Joe the Barbarian, have performed the task you bade me carry out.’

  ‘You, what?’ said the Horned Baron.

  ‘I have brought you the head of Engelbert the Enormous.’

  The Horned Baron’s jaw dropped. ‘You have?’ he said, then frowned suspiciously. ‘Where is it, then?’

  ‘WAAAARGH!!’

  The screeching shriek of terror was quite the loudest noise Ingrid had emitted all day. It was deafening. It made the windows rattle and the staircase shake.

  ‘WAAAAAARGGHH!!!’

  Even the Horned Baron, who was used to Ingrid’s hysterical response to spiders, bugs and not getting her own way, realized that this time, something was definitely not right. The poor woman sounded terrified out of her wits. Something was up there and, for the first time since Joe had burst in, the Horned Baron was pleased to have a warrior-hero in the castle.

  ‘Follow me,’ he said, turning and heading up the stairs.

  As they burst into Ingrid’s bedchamber, the door to her en-suite bathroom slammed shut.

  ‘Get rid of it!’ shrieked Ingrid from behind the door. ‘It’s hideous!’

  The Horned Baron looked round to see the great, knobbly, three-eyed head of Engelbert the Enormous sticking in through the window. ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ he demanded.

  ‘The head of Engelbert the Enormous,’ said Joe. ‘As you requested.’

  ‘But it’s still attached to his body!’ thundered the Horned Baron. ‘This is an outrage! What kind of a warrior-hero are you?’

  ‘And what kind of a Horned Baron are you?’ Joe retorted. ‘Stooping so low as to buy curtains made out of an ogre’s snuggly-wuggly!’

  ‘An ogre’s snuggly-wuggly?’ said the Horned Baron with surprise.

  ‘La, la, la . . .’ sang one curtain tunelessly.

  ‘La, la, la . . .’ its neighbour droned back.

  The Horned Baron’s eyes widened. ‘Are you telling me that these singing curtains have been fashioned from an ogre’s snuggly-wuggly?’

  Joe nodded. At that moment, a huge hairy hand thrust its way through the window and seized first one, then the other curtain, and whisked them away.

  ‘Grubley!’ roared the Horned Baron. ‘Grubley, I demand my money back.’

  But Grubley was not there. As his name echoed round the castle walls, Grubley was already on the road and hurrying back to Goblintown as fast as his legs would take him.

  ‘One snuggly-wuggly,’ Engelbert was saying as he rubbed it up and down his left cheek. ‘Another snuggly-wuggly.’ He rubbed the second one up and down his right cheek. ‘It’s even better than before.’

  ‘Twice as good,’ said Joe, relieved that the ogre didn’t seem to be upset that his snuggly-wuggly had been cut in two. ‘But remember what you promised, Engelbert,’ he said. ‘It’s time for you to keep your side of the bargain.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Engelbert, then winked (with his middle eye) just to show that he was joking. ‘Here we are then, Joe the Barbarian,’ he said and, reaching into the bed chamber again, placed Henry gently down on the rug. ‘Look after him,’ said Engelbert. ‘He’s one in a million!’

  ‘I know he is,’ said Joe, as Henry raced across the room and jumped up at him, tongue lolling and tail wagging. He looked up at the window to see Engelbert smiling back at him. ‘Goodbye, Engelbert,’ he said. ‘And thank you.’

  ‘Goodbye, Joe,’ boomed the ogre as he stomped away. ‘Goodbye, Henry,’ his voice floated back.

  Henry barked.

  ‘Walter!’ screeched Ingrid from the bathroom. ‘That lumpy great ogre is stealing my singing curtains! Walter!’

  ‘La, la, la . . . La, la, la . . .’ sang the curtains – softer and softer as they were carried off, until the sound of their tuneless discord faded away completely.

  ‘There,’ said Joe to the Horned Baron. ‘He’s gone. And now he’s got his snuggly-wuggly back, there won’t be any more sheep squeezing. I can guarantee it.’ He smiled. ‘And now to the matter of my fee.’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed the Horned Baron.

  Henry growled. The Horned Baron eyed him warily.

  ‘Ah yes, your fee,’ he said. ‘A handful of brass muckles, wasn’t it?’

  ‘A pouch of silver pipsqueaks,’ said Joe. ‘That was what we agreed.’

  ‘I most certainly . . .’

  Henry growled again, not loudly, but just enough to remind the Horned Baron he was still there.

  ‘. . . did,’ the Horned Baron said. ‘A pouch of silver pipsqueaks it is.’ He reached into the folds of his jerkin, pulled out a jangling leather pouch and, with a long, miserable sigh, reluctantly handed it over.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Joe. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to see a wizard about a journey home.’

  He turned, whistled for Henry and strode back to the entrance to the bedchamber.As he reached the door, Ingrid let out a tremendous screech of rage, followed by an even louder, ‘WALTER!’

  The Horned Baron blanched. ‘I’ll see you out,’ he said, as he trotted after Joe.

  ‘WALTER!’

  ‘That is, if I can’t tempt you to stay,’ he said. ‘How would you like to be my personal bodyguard?’

  ‘Errm . . . No thanks,’ said Joe. He quickened his pace, taking the stairs two at a time and hurrying across the hallway. Henry kept close to heel.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ puffed the Horned Baron. ‘I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse . . .’

  ‘By-eee!’ Joe called back. He slammed the door shut and dashed off.

  Behind him, Ingrid’s voice rang out. ‘Call yourself a Horned Baron!’ she shrieked. ‘You’re pathetic! A disgrace! I’m opening the cupboard, Walter. I’m getting the green dye out, Walter – and the wire brush . . .’

  Joe smiled to himself. What with Engelbert getting his snuggly-wuggly back and the Horned Baron getting his comeuppance, things were going rather well. Now, all he had to do was persuade Randalf to send him back home, and then everything would have reached a satisfactory ending.

  And as for the story he had to get done when he arrived back, after his time in Muddle Earth, ‘My Amazing Adventure,’ would be the easiest essay he had ever had to write.

  ‘Come on, Henry,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if we can’t make it back to the Enchanted Lake before daybreak.’

  The sun had already risen by the time Joe and Henry arrived at the Enchanted Lake. As the low, bright rays of light cut through the early-morning mist, a broad, shimmering fish flopped down through the air and into the gaping beak of a waiting lazybird.

  ‘Another day in Muddle Earth,’ Joe murmured and shook his head. ‘I’m almost getting used to it.’ He turned to Henry. ‘Almost,’ he said, staring up at the great lake of water hovering high above his head. ‘How on earth do we get up there?’

  Henry barked and wagged his tail.

  ‘Clever boy,’ said Joe, for there, beside Henry, was a small bird-box on top of a pole, with a bell hanging from it on a hook. A notice said, Ring for attention. Joe rang the bell.

&n
bsp; A lazybird flew out of the box, a small elf clinging to its back, and flapped upwards.

  ‘Ding-dong,’ droned the elf, disappearing over the lip of the lake. ‘Ding-dong. Ding-dong . . .’

  Joe and Henry waited, and waited. Then a loud voice came from above. ‘Grab on to the rope!’

  Joe scrambled to his feet and looked up. ‘Norbert!’ he exclaimed.

  The ogre was far up above his head and leaning precariously over the side of the water’s edge. A long rope, with a basket secured to its end, was dangling down from his great fists. Joe reached out and grabbed a hold.

  ‘That’s it!’ came Norbert’s voice, encouragingly. ‘Now climb in, both of you, and I’ll pull you up.’

  Trembling with unease, Joe climbed into the basket, sat cross-legged and pulled Henry on to his lap. He wound the lead around his arm, and gripped the sides of the basket tightly with both hands.

  ‘Ready?’ shouted Norbert.

  ‘Yes,’ Joe shouted back. ‘As ready as I’ll ever b— Whooah!’ he cried out, as the rope jerked, the bowl wobbled and he found himself rising up, up, up into the air. He’d forgotten just how high the Enchanted Lake was.

  ‘This is terrifying!’ he shouted.

  ‘Be thankful you’re not getting up here the way the others had to,’ Veronica’s voice floated back. ‘It took several flocks of lazybirds to lift Norbert off the ground – and you should have seen the state of his shirt when they’d finished!’

  Henry whimpered. Joe hugged him and whispered that everything was going to be all right.

  With a last grunt of effort, Norbert pulled the basket up over the edge of the lake and held it next to a small flotilla of kitchen sinks. Randalf and Veronica were in one, Norbert was squashed into the second, while the third was empty. All three were roped together.

  Randalf leaned forwards. ‘Joe!’ he said.

  ‘Randalf!’ Joe replied.

  ‘Am I glad to see you,’ said Randalf.

  ‘Not half as glad as I am to see you,’ said Joe.