by Laura Wood
“Food first? Or circus?” asked Ingrid.
“FOOD,” cried Kip and I in one big hungry voice. Then we watched in wonder as Ingrid unpacked the contents of the basket. There were cheese sandwiches wrapped in waxy white paper, golden-brown mini pork pies, and some flaky sausage rolls still warm from the oven. Ingrid pulled out a big flask and three plastic cups, and finally three giant slices of gooey chocolate cake.
“This can’t be what they usually give you for a packed lunch?” I said to Ingrid.
“I just went in and chatted to Mrs Barnfield, the cook,” said Ingrid innocently. “She’s a nice lady. Collects stamps, you know.”
“Ohhhhh.” Kip and I shared a knowing look.
“What is this?” I asked, swigging from the drink that Ingrid poured for me. It was spicy, somehow cold and warm at the same time, and the bubbles tickled my nose.
“Ginger beer,” laughed Ingrid. “Lashings and lashings of the stuff.”
We got to gobbling, and soon only the crumbs of our lunch remained. Kip patted his full stomach with a satisfied smirk on his face. “That was brilliant,” he said, lying back on the grass and staring up at the blue sky.
“Really good,” I said in a voice full of chocolate cake.
“And now—” said Ingrid.
“—circus time!” finished Kip, bolting up.
“All right, all right, I give up,” I said, waving my hands in surrender. “Let’s do it.”
I made them practise walking up and down in a straight line that we chalked on the tarmac path, and then I strung a low tightrope, just a few centimetres off the ground, between two trees for them to practise on. It took a lot of attempts, but eventually they could both make it from one end to the other without falling off.
“Show us what you can do, Poppy,” puffed a pink-faced Ingrid.
“Yeah, go on,” came Kip’s muffled voice from where he had collapsed, exhausted, on the grass.
I moved the tightrope so that it was a bit higher up, somewhere near my waist, and nimbled across it a few times.
“You’re so steady on it!” exclaimed Ingrid.
“You will be too when you’ve had a bit of practice!” I said reassuringly. “You guys were loads better than I was when I first started.”
Kip was sitting on the grass with his arms wrapped around his knees, looking up at me. “Go on, then, clever clogs,” he grinned. “Show us a trick.”
I walked along to the middle of the tightrope and paused for a moment, breathing deeply and making sure my balance was just right, then in a flash I kicked my feet out from under me, flipping myself forward. I landed on the grass to one side of the tightrope and then sprang up again in one swift motion so that my feet were back on the tightrope and I was standing with my arms held high in the air.
“Wooohoooo!!!” yelled Kip, jumping to his feet. “How long before I can do THAT??!”
“Not long at the rate you’re going!” I laughed. “Pym’ll be recruiting you to the circus soon.”
The three of us went in for dinner, tired and happy. Our first circus class had been a success. Growing up in the circus, I had always been the one being taught, but it felt good to be the one doing the teaching. More importantly, Kip and Ingrid didn’t seem to think I was weird at all. In fact, they thought that my circus skills were something special, something they wanted to be a part of. I hugged that thought to myself. It gave me a warm glow in my belly seeing how happy and excited Kip and Ingrid were, and for the rest of the evening there was no more talk of curses or mummies or accidents.
Chapter Seventeen
The next afternoon Ingrid and I made our way towards the dining hall to see if we could find something to feed our rumbling stomachs. On our way back through the entrance hall, Ingrid stopped in front of a long wall of small pigeonholes. There was one for each student, with a brass plaque screwed underneath each one with your name on it. Here you might find a note from a teacher or a club organizing an event, or most importantly of all, it was here that your post went here after it had been sorted.
“Hang on a sec,” said Ingrid. “The post came yesterday. It should have been sorted by now, and Mum said she’d send me some new books.”
Ingrid moved down to one end, pointing her finger along the rows and muttering under her breath. “Berkoff … Bhaduri … Blammel, here I am!” she exclaimed as she pushed her hand inside the space above her name. When it emerged, her hand was grasping a brown paper envelope and a square of white card. On the card was written: YOU HAVE A PACKAGE WAITING FOR YOU. PLEASE COLLECT FROM GERTRUDE AT RECEPTION.
I felt a fizz of excitement bubble up inside me and went in search of my own tiny postbox. When I found the plaque with POPPY PYM written on it, gleaming away between LARA PUJARI and ANDREW QUEST, I paused for a moment, thinking how strange it seemed to see my name here in this grand building. Looking up at the high, stone ceilings, the fancy iron chandelier, and the big, sweeping staircase, I felt very small, but for the first time I also felt like I was really seeing myself here, like there was a way I could truly be a part of this big, scary school. That feeling rushed like a warm hug from my tingling fingers to my wiggling toes.
Inside my pigeonhole was a card just like Ingrid’s, telling me that I had a parcel. I did a little leap for joy, and made the person next to me do a little leap of their own in surprise.
Ingrid and I bustled over to Gertrude’s desk quick sharp and joined the queue to collect our packages.
Once Gertrude had thrust an enormous parcel into my arms, I staggered back to the dining hall with it. As they sat around the other tables, loads of kids were excitedly opening their square brown packages and the room was full of jubilant cries like, “RESULT! A giant bag of jelly beans”, and heartbroken howls of “NOOOOOO! Raisins again!”
Ingrid was tearing the paper from her own parcel in a mad frenzy.
“YESSSSSSSSSSSS!” she hissed. “The new edition of the complete works of William Shakespeare!” She hugged the book, which was the size of a small dog, to her chest.
“I thought you already had a copy?” I said. “I saw it on your bookcase.”
“But THIS one has a new critical introduction,” crooned Ingrid, stroking her new pet book tenderly. “It will change EVERYTHING.”
I left Ingrid in her cloud of joy and turned my attention to my own parcel. It was huge and square and wrapped in brown parcel paper, just like everyone else’s, and I was relieved that my family had done things the same as everyone else for once. I tore the paper away to reveal an enormous cardboard box. I wrestled with the lid for a minute and finally managed to yank it open.
I should have known better.
There was a humongous BANG! and a fountain of glitter and sequins erupted from inside the box, reaching high up, almost to the ceiling. A seemingly endless stream of glitter spewed out of the box; then it drifted down as a glimmering mist, gently covering everything in gold, pink, green and purple sparkles.
I heard a sweet whistling noise and a paper bird rose from the box, flew around the table and then dissolved in the flash of a tiny indoor firework.
I put one sparkling hand to my mouth and peered cautiously over the edge of the box, but was forced to jump straight back when four snakes made of concertinaed paper leapt out and began wriggling across the floor.
I wondered if there was a chance no one had noticed.
Then I looked around, and found myself surrounded by students transformed into piles of glitter, their mouths hanging open. I could feel a deep strawberry blush spreading from top to toe as I tried to stuff things back into the box, but suddenly there was a crackling noise and the room filled with the sound of singing. More precisely, the sound of my family singing. Loudly. “SHE FLIES THROUGH THE AIR WITH THE GREATEST OF EEEEASE, THAT DARING YOUNG GIRL ON THE FLYING TRAPEEEEZE!” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I looked over at Ingrid for support,
but she was frozen in astonishment just like the others.
“Ahem.” I coughed awkwardly into my hand. “Sorry about that.”
All at once, the silence broken, it seemed that everyone in the room swarmed forward excitedly, crowding around me and the box and trying to get a look at what was in there.
Inside was a whole range of the finest food the circus has to offer. There were big boxes of different flavoured popcorn, jars of boiled sweets and three big bags of fluffy pink candyfloss. There was also an enormous stash of modelling balloons.
When Miss Baxter walked into the room a few minutes later, I was standing on a chair, making balloon animals. Around me, a crowd of students were shovelling candyfloss into their glitter-smeared faces.
There were shouts of “Now a LION—”
“No, no, a MONKEY—”
“No, no, me next, a PENGUIN!”
I was twisting the balloons as fast as I could, and even though I wasn’t a patch on Chuckles and BoBo, I had to say that I thought I was doing a pretty good job.
“CHILDREN!” cried Miss Baxter, looking around her in astonishment. “What on EARTH is going on?!”
Silence fell once more, and the glitter-smeared faces turned towards Miss Baxter. “Poppy?” she asked, looking right at me, a frown appearing between her eyes.
“S-sorry, miss,” I said, looking around me at the mess. “It was my parcel. It … sort of … exploded.”
Miss Baxter did not look happy. She clapped her hands together briskly. “Right, everyone get cleaned up and push off. This room needs tidying up before people can eat in it again.” All the students began filing out quietly.
“Hang on a minute, Poppy.” Miss Baxter placed a gentle hand on my arm. “I would like a word with you.”
I hung back, twisting my hands together nervously. Was I about to get in more trouble?
“Now, Poppy. Can you explain what happened, please?” she asked quietly.
“It wasn’t my fault!” I burst out. “I just opened the box and all the stuff came bursting out and I couldn’t do anything to stop it! I didn’t mean to!”
“Right,” said Miss Baxter, looking around her at the glitter all over the floor. “I think I had better have a word with your family about appropriate care packages.”
“Oh, please don’t tell them off,” I cried, tears starting in my eyes. “It’s not our fault we don’t know the rules of this place. It’s so big and strange, and everything’s so different, and they were just trying to send me something nice.”
Miss Baxter stood looking at me for a moment with her arms folded, and then she bent down so that we were face-to-face.
“Oh, Poppy,” she said, sympathetically. “I know it all seems a bit odd right now, but you’ll get there in the end.” She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and handed it to me. “Not everyone has your special talents.” She reached down to pick up a balloon kangaroo that I had made and looked at it with a smile. “Like being able to make this, for example. How lovely.”
“You … you could keep that one, miss.” I stammered. “If you like, I mean.”
“Thank you, Poppy,” she said. “I will put him in my office.”
“What about the mess, miss?” I asked, looking around doubtfully at the glitter.
“Well,” said Miss Baxter thoughtfully, “while I rather like it, it had better go. I don’t suppose there’s a hoover in that box of yours? No, I thought not. You’d better run along and find one, then…”
Chapter Eighteen
It was back to school on Monday and we had our first botany lesson in the greenhouse. Botany is the science of plant life, and Mr Grant, our botany teacher, took it very seriously. One of the great things about Saint Smithen’s is that it doesn’t just teach the boring old stuff like maths and chemistry that you could learn at any old school. The greenhouse was at the end of the long main building of the school, it was a gigantic round building with a high spherical roof. All of it was made entirely of glass, and it was stuffed with frothy green plants, delicate palm fronds and splashy tropical flowers in every colour of the rainbow. The temperature in there was so hot it made you feel as sticky as a piece of Sellotape and Ingrid’s glasses steamed up immediately. Mr Grant himself was a tall black man who wore loose khaki clothes and an explorer hat. Some people said that he had once been a real-life explorer, tearing around in the Amazon, wrestling crocodiles and collecting rare plant samples, and one look at his grizzled face – and the long scar running down his left cheek – was enough to convince me this was true. Despite his fearsome appearance, Mr Grant was softly spoken, and he treated his plants like they were babies.
“Now this here,” he said, gently nudging a pretty white snowflake of a flower with his finger, “is an Amazon lily, or Eucharis grandiflora, to give it its Latin name. I picked it up last time I was in South America. Note the prominent corona, which is sometimes tinted with green.” He gestured to the trumpet shape in the middle of the flower, like the yellow one in the middle of a daffodil. “A very beautiful plant, this one; it likes its shade. Every single part of the plant is highly poisonous if ingested,” he added, mildly, as if commenting on the weather. “As with so much in nature, appearances can be deceiving!” He beamed at us all, the long scar on his cheek scrunching up.
“And here” – he continued walking further into the jungley plant life – “are my bees.”
We followed him, hearing a low, murmuring buzzing noise. At one end was a glass case with panels of honeycomb inside, and hundreds of bees buzzing all over it. From the glass case, a tube that led outside ran to a hole cut into the glass wall of the greenhouse. It was a clever contraption because it meant the bees could fly out of the hive to collect pollen, but that from the safety of the other side of the glass you could stand right up close and watch the process. We all crowded round to have a look at the bum-wiggling bees.
After a few minutes’ lecturing about the bees, it was time to move on, and Mr Grant led us further into the greenhouse, to a couple of tables covered in small black plant pots containing curling green plants.
“Now here,” he said, “I have a collection of medicinal herbs. Each one has a reputation for healing in different ways…”
I felt a tug on my arm. It was Kip’s red-headed pal – the one who had given me the thumbs up in the dining room.
“Psssst,” he hissed loudly, clearly sharing in Kip’s talent for being quiet and sneaky. Kip and Ingrid turned around too.
“Oh, Ingrid, Poppy, this is Riley,” whispered Kip like a booming earthquake.
“Shhhhh!” said Ingrid, panic in her eyes. She cast a sideways glance at Mr Grant, clearly not wanting to get in trouble again.
“Is it true you grew up in a circus?” Riley asked me. I nodded.
Annabelle appeared at Riley’s side. “Yeah, Riley, that’s why she’s so strange,” she said, running her eyes over me and making me feel very small.
“Well, I think that is seriously the coolest thing EVER,” Riley said loudly.
Mr Grant looked over. “Thank you, Riley, I think so too.” He smiled.
Riley blushed and nodded. Then when Mr Grant started talking, he tugged my arm again. “Is it true that you three saw it? The beetle, I mean.”
We all nodded.
“Yeah,” whispered Kip, “it was so cool. But really spooky.”
A little crowd was forming around us; everyone wanted to hear more about the ruby.
“What’s going on over here, then?” A gentle voice interrupted us, and I turned to find Mr Grant standing right in front of us.
“Sorry, sir,” muttered Riley. “It was my fault. I heard that these three” – he pointed at us with his thumb – “saw the ruby scarab this morning and I wanted to ask them about it.”
Mr Grant sighed. “And you thought now was the right time to ask? In the middle of a botany lesson?”
> “No, sir. Sorry, sir.” Riley hung his head.
“Did you, in fact, hear what I had to say about the healing properties of lavender?” Mr Grant asked with a frown.
“N-no, sir,” said Riley again.
“I would prefer it if I had your full attention during our time together,” said Mr Grant, giving Riley a warning look. “One never knows when this information may come in useful.” His frown relaxed into a smile. “Well, now that you have asked about the ruby, why don’t you tell us a bit more about it, Kip?” he continued. “I myself do love a good ancient artefact … I remember one time on the Nile where I had to wrestle an ancient stone out the jaws of an enormous…” He trailed off, realizing we were all staring at him, open-mouthed. “Well, anyway.” He smiled. “Enough of that, Kip; tell us what it was like.”
“It was really cool,” said Kip. “Er … it was big, and shiny and, er … cool.”
“Most illuminating, Kip,” said Mr Grant, shaking his head.
“Well, I think Ingrid or Poppy could do a better job of explaining, actually,” muttered Kip, going a bit pink around the edges.
“It was like magic,” breathed Ingrid. “It was all sort of lit up from the inside, and it sparkled in a funny way that made it hard to look at, but at the same time it was really hard to look away. It was smaller than I thought it would be, about the size of a tennis ball, but even then you could see what all the fuss was about – why that Ankhenamun had wanted it so badly.” Her huge owl eyes shone like the ruby itself, and I found myself nodding, agreeing with her description.
“It was spooky, like Kip said, though,” I added slowly. “Like, it was almost … hypnotizing you.” I blinked slowly and rubbed my eyes, trying to rub away the feeling that the ruby scarab had stirred up inside me. This time Kip and Ingrid were nodding in agreement.