Playschool

by Colin Thompson

  ‘One more crack from you,’ Orkward snapped, ‘and you’ll get a million cracks with a hammer.’

  ‘Was that meant to be, like, a joke?’ said The Mirror.

  ‘I don’t do jokes,’ said Orkward.

  Lesson: Invisibility

  Teacher: Prebender Glorious

  Prebender Glorious stood in front of the class with his usual Monday morning thought crashing against the inside of his skull. The thought was: I wish I was anywhere but here.8

  Prebender Glorious taught Invisibility and he taught it very badly. He himself had a habit of vanishing without any warning and reappearing just as suddenly.9 It was a talent or curse he had been born with, and he had no control over it. Over the years it had brought him a lot of embarrassment, excitement, six months in prison, several million dollars and a string of failed love affairs. Sometimes just bits of him would disappear, which made going to the toilet and eating very difficult or very hilarious, depending on where you were standing.

  His students, on the other hand, had mastered invisibility on their first day in the class, and now made his life hell. He sighed and took out the class register to mark everyone off.

  ‘Portia Appleby?’ There was a small pop and one of the students disappeared.

  While Prebender Glorious looked around for Portia, Orkward Warlock leaned forward and whispered to Morbid and Silent Flood, ‘You’re all going to die.’

  The twins ignored him. They were used to Orkward’s snide remarks and knew he was all talk.

  ‘Portia Appleby? Where’s Portia?’ Prebender Glorious asked.

  ‘Right here, sir,’ said Portia, appearing out of thin air.

  ‘But I’m not,’ said Bypass Noble, vanishing.

  ‘Now, look, come on, everyone, play fair,’ Prebender Glorious pleaded, on the verge of tears.

  ‘But we’re just doing what you’ve been teaching us,’ said Portia and the whole class vanished, except Howard Tiny, who was horribly good and didn’t count. Actually he did count, really well, but never got past ninety-nine before someone stuffed something in his mouth, because as well as being horribly good, he was also horribly boring.

  ‘Oh God, Tiny, why do they always vanish and leave me with you?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. Would you like me to do some counting?’

  ‘No, it’s all right, thank you,’ said Prebender Glorious. ‘You just sit there and practise your invisibility. Try and make your mouth vanish.’

  ‘Okay, sir. Can I count quietly? It helps me concentrate.’

  ‘If you must.’

  ‘One, two, three, four …’

  Orkward Warlock could do invisibility but he wasn’t very good at it. When you are really good at it, you can see everyone else who is invisible at the same time as you are. Orkward Warlock couldn’t. All he could see when the class vanished was Prebender Glorious and Howard Tiny. For all he knew, everyone else had left the room.

  ‘Going to kill us, are you?’ Morbid Flood whispered in his left ear, while Silent blew hot breath in his right. ‘We’re really scared,’ the voice added. ‘Not!’

  Two very large invisible books whacked Orkward on either side of his head. For a split second he became visible again before collapsing on the floor with his breakfast coming out of his nose.

  ‘Nose blister scumbags!’ he shouted. ‘I really am going to kill you.’

  He staggered to his feet and kicked Howard Tiny, who started to cry. Orkward disappeared again before he could get into trouble.

  The Monday morning thought beat even harder inside Prebender Glorious’s head.

  ‘Eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine …’ Howard sobbed.

  Something snapped inside Prebender. It was his third rib disappearing. He began to wish he could have a heart attack. It would be less stressful than teaching this lot, but he knew that even if he died he would still have to teach the Invisibility class. Being dead, which several other teachers were, just meant the school could stop paying your wages. It also looked very good in the school brochure.

  ‘Ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-sevvv …’ said Howard as Orkward Warlock’s invisible hand stuffed a sock in his mouth.

  There were two words guaranteed to make the students visible again and Prebender Glorious said them.

  ‘Sports day.’

  The entire class reappeared and sat quietly in their seats.

  ‘As you all know, invisibility is totally absent from sports day,’ he began. ‘I mean, have we ever seen any invisible sports? No we haven’t, and I for one think that it’s very unfair. I petitioned the board of governors. I’ve even threatened to take the whole thing to the Wizard Rights Commission, and I am delighted to say that this year we will have invisibility on sports days. It will be there for all to not see.’

  The class cheered with delight. Maybe they had misjudged poor old Prebender Glorious.

  ‘What invisible events will there be, sir?’ asked Bypass Noble.

  ‘Throwing the javelin, for one,’ said Prebender Glorious.

  ‘So what exactly will be invisible?’ asked Morbid. ‘Us or the javelin?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Wow. So how will anyone know how far the javelin’s gone or even where it’s gone?’ said Portia Appleby.

  ‘By the bloodstains on the grass,’ Prebender Glorious explained.

  ‘I like it,’ said Orkward Warlock. ‘Can we practise on each other?’

  ‘No, Orkward, you cannot. Now we will practise our invisible maths for the rest of the lesson.’

  Everyone except Howard vanished again but, as the end-of-lesson bell rang, they all reappeared.

  ‘Right, children, homework …’ Prebender Glorious began to say, but they all vanished again. ‘Okay, we’ll … we’ll skip homework again. Class dismissed.’

  At which point the whole class reappeared and ran out of the room, except Howard Tiny, who was lying under his desk going purple as he tried to pull the sock out of his mouth, which would have been a lot easier if his foot hadn’t still been inside it. Prebender rolled his eyes and went to help him, the Monday morning thought crashing around his skull with the force of a jackhammer.

  From a distance, and especially when he was sitting still, Narled looked exactly like a very old suitcase. Up close you could see he had two little stubby legs at the front, two wheels at the back and a pair of arms. He appeared to have neither eyes, nor ears, nor a mouth. Where his mouth should have been was a wide leather flap that closed with a zip. Everyone assumed that Narled was once a human who had been changed into a suitcase by a spell that had been interrupted or put on him by some particularly cruel wizard, but despite all the teachers’ attempts, no amount of magic had been able to undo the spell.

  All day long Narled trundled round Quicklime’s picking up things. Not just rubbish, but anything that wasn’t nailed down. He scooped it up with one hand, stuck it into his mouth and closed his zip. No one knew where he took all the stuff he collected, but if you left anything lying around for more than a few minutes, Narled would appear and take it away. He seemed to arrive from nowhere, and he had a strange way of being able to give people the slip. He would turn a corner into a dead end, but when you turned after him, he had vanished. There were rumours that he had a vast treasure house somewhere in the valley where he’d stashed all the things he had collected over the past six hundred years, but no one had ever found it.

  ‘He must have stuff that’s worth a fortune,’ said Orkward Warlock. ‘Gold and jewels and things that have become really valuable just because they’re so old.’

  ‘Shall I follow him?’ said The Toad.

  ‘Better people than you have tried,’ sneered Orkward. ‘In fact, anyone who’s tried was better than you, you piece of dehydrated camel snot.’

  The Toad worshipped Orkward, no matter how vile he was to him. Just the fact that Orkward spoke to him made The Toad happy. He looked up adoringly at Orkward, which made the boy so angry he did the yellow oozing pimple spell all over The Toad
’s face. This only made The Toad even happier.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Orkward, ‘we need to work out a way to kill the Floods on sports day.’

  ‘Poison,’ said The Toad.

  ‘They’re wizards, idiot. Poison doesn’t work on wizards.’

  ‘Concrete,’ said The Toad.

  ‘Shut up. Or would you like me to throw something hard and smelly at you?’ said Orkward.

  ‘Ooh yes,’ cried The Toad. ‘Can I have the big brick? Please, go on, go on, please, please …’

  ‘Paper. Get me paper and a pen,’ Orkward ordered. ‘We are going to write down every single possible way you can kill a bunch of wizards.’

  An hour later the paper looked like this:

  ‘I know,’ said The Toad. ‘You need a big explosion.’

  ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’ shouted Orkward, stamping his foot on The Toad’s lunch. ‘Actually,’ he added, as The Toad licked bits of wasp sandwich off the bottom of Orkward’s shoes, ‘even though you are fifty billion degrees more stupid than a fly-speck, that is a brilliant idea.’

  ‘I know how to make explosions,’ said The Toad. ‘My father owns the biggest firework factory in the world and I know how to make gunpowder. I blew up the toilets when I was in kindy. That’s why Professor Throat made me into a toad.’

  ‘You mean you’re a real toad?’ said Orkward. ‘I thought you were just a really ugly boy. Yuk, a real toad, that’s gross.’

  ‘Well, I’m not one hundred per cent toad,’ said The Toad. ‘Each year I get a bit less toady and a bit more humany, unless I do something really bad again. Now I’m seventy per cent toad. If I’m good for the next seven years I’ll be all human again.’

  ‘You colour-blind septic-tank bog rat,’ said Orkward suddenly, and kicked The Toad under the bed. ‘I was sitting on those toilets when you blew them up! I couldn’t sit down for two months.’

  Lesson: Special Breeds

  Teacher: Miss Phyllis

  The Toad placed a lily pad on his seat, sat on it and waited for the class to begin. It was his favourite lesson of the week: ‘Flies and Their Place in Everyday Life’. Being a toad, he knew exactly where a fly’s place was. It was inside his stomach. You might think there’s not much to learn about eating flies, but if you’ve ever swallowed a wasp you’ll know it’s not that simple.

  Most of the other class members were less interested in today’s lesson. The dogs, for example, thought flies were just a nuisance that kept trying to eat their bones and sniff their bottoms. The cats simply thought flies were beneath contempt.10

  The Special Breeds class at Quicklime’s was for those children who, for one reason or another, had been turned into animals. Because there was such a wide variety of animals it wasn’t so much about learning things as about keeping the children occupied all day. The classes were held in one of the outbuildings because the smell could get a bit overpowering at times – especially by Friday, when the sawdust hadn’t been changed all week.

  Some children, like The Toad, had been turned into animals as a punishment. Lucretia De Lager had bitten the head off the sugar plum fairy and eaten it. She had been turned into a cat. Squire Nutkin had been changed into a squirrel simply because he had such an awful name.11 Brian Lowflush had been turned into a bird of paradise as a reward, and others, like Satanella Flood, who was a small black dog, had been changed by accident.12

  Everything was different in the Special Breeds class. Animals know that there are a million more interesting, exciting and useful things than learning how to add numbers up.13 Dog numbers are easy. There are only two numbers for them: ‘some’ and ‘none’. And that’s two more numbers than snails need. Of course, the teachers tried to teach the animal-kids things they thought would be useful, but statements like ‘Hello, children, today we are going to learn about French verbs’ were usually greeted with replies like ‘Grrrr’ or ‘Hiss’ or ‘Bark off’.

  In the end, they reached a compromise, which basically meant no boring stuff like Maths and Belgian and History, and lots of very interesting stuff like eating flies and spiders, catching red rubber balls and chasing small defenceless animals. Each day focused on the interests of a different type of animal and Tuesday, The Toad’s favourite, was amphibians day. The favourite activity that day was playing with the dress-up box. Everyone enjoyed that, though they got annoyed when the octopus kept taking all the high-heeled shoes.

  ‘Right, children, spider juggling,’ said Miss Phyllis. ‘Now we all know what happened last week when Nigel tried to juggle six tarantulas, and I’m happy to tell you that he is now out of the coma. So this week we are going to start off by juggling ants.’

  The only child who enjoyed this was Kevin Flamboyard, who had been turned into an anteater by an ant he had eaten who was a leprechaun in disguise and not an ant at all. Kevin flicked his tongue round the classroom and swallowed every single ant.

  ‘Okay, children, moving on,’ said Miss Phyllis. ‘Sports day is coming up and, as you know, the Special Breeds class always puts on an event. Last year we did underwater juggling, though unfortunately we did lose a few students like Norma Jean Gorgeous the butterfly. This year we need to come up with something safe that the whole class can be in without anyone drowning or exploding. Any ideas?’

  ‘Tail chasing,’ said Satanella.

  ‘Some of us haven’t got tails,’ said The Toad.

  ‘Well, you could all chase mine,’ said Satanella.

  ‘It’s an idea,’ said Miss Phyllis.

  ‘How about tying a time bomb to her tail,’ suggested one of the rats, ‘and if we don’t catch it in time, it explodes?’

  Satanella reminded the rat what small dogs could do to rats. In the end it was agreed that they would chase Satanella’s tail around the running track but there would be no time bombs involved.

  ‘How about a firework?’ said the rat.

  ‘Everyone has their price,’ said Orkward, ‘even a crappy old suitcase.’

  ‘But Narled can’t hear you,’ said The Toad.

  ‘I think he can,’ said Orkward. ‘You just watch him closely. Don’t forget that I’m here in the holidays when there’s no one around. I’ve seen him. I think he can hear and I think he can see.’

  Orkward put on his silent shoes and went down into the quadrangle, where he hid behind a small tree and waited. The quadrangle was the central point of Quicklime’s. Almost everyone in the entire school passed through one of its thirteen arches at some time of the day or night, including Narled.

  Sure enough, fifteen minutes later, the tell-tale squeak of his little wooden wheels told Orkward he was coming. The creature entered the quadrangle from the ninth arch, criss-crossed the grass and cobbles, picking up odd bits of rubbish and another forgotten iPod, and left through the seventh arch. Orkward followed him, his silent shoes completely silent even when he trod on a sheet of bubble-wrap containing a squeaky rubber bone.14

  But Orkward knew that Narled knew he was there. He didn’t know how, and the creature certainly gave no sign that he was aware of Orkward following him, but he knew. Orkward knew and he knew that Narled knew he knew and that Narled knew he knew he knew.

  Narled went through the main gate, across the bridge over the black moat, where a class of year 5 students were being taught Underwater Japanese, and turned left along the dirt track that led down into the bottom of the valley. As he rounded a corner, he turned suddenly and slipped between two bushes.

  But Orkward had seen him and followed into the dark forest that surrounded the school. When they had gone a few hundred metres into the gloom, the path ended in a small clearing and Narled stopped.

  ‘I need your help,’ Orkward said. ‘I’ll make it worth your while.’

  Narled turned and faced the boy.

  ‘So you can hear me,’ said Orkward.

  Narled sat back on his wheels and tilted his handle to one side. Orkward thought he saw the sides of the suitcase move slowly in and out as if Narled was breathing. He looked old
and tired, as only a very well-travelled suitcase can look.

  ‘If you help me,’ said Orkward, ‘I’ll polish you.’

  Narled’s handle quivered.

  ‘I’ll polish you with the finest linseed oil and beeswax,’ Orkward continued.

  Narled’s whole body quivered and gave a great sigh. ‘All you have to do is carry a small box from A to B and leave it there,’ said Orkward. ‘You could do that, couldn’t you?’

  Narled frowned, which meant the bit of leather above his zip wrinkled a bit. He began to open his zip as if to speak, but then closed it again.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Orkward. ‘Just to show I mean it, I’ll meet you here tomorrow and I’ll bring the polish and a very soft black velvet cloth.’

  Narled un-frowned, quivered, and turned away. The dark forest opened its branches and Narled trundled off into the darkness. Orkward tried to follow him, but the branches locked together again, barring his way. Although he wanted to go after Narled, he was, like all bullies, a terrible coward and was quite relieved that he could go no further.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes then,’ he said and hurried back to the college.

  ‘Where the hell am I going to get some linseed oil and beeswax polish?’ said Orkward, pacing up and down in his room.

  ‘Matron’s got some,’ said The Toad, hopping back and forth out of Orkward’s way. ‘She put it on my back when I got sunburnt.’

  ‘Well, go and get it, you pee bottle.’

  ‘She won’t just hand it over,’ said The Toad. ‘She said it’s priceless, Matron’s Enchanted Wax, been in her family for generations, the same magical self-filling tin. It was given to her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother by Merlin himself to polish King Arthur’s round table.’

  ‘Well, go and steal it then, twit brain,’ Orkward ordered.