by Gwyneth Rees
‘OK,’ Percy said in a taking-charge sort of voice. ‘Let’s do this. Saffie, are you ready?’
And my little sister looked very serious as she nodded that she was.
We had to struggle to stay calm as we watched the hedge seagull fly away with Percy on board. Saffie kept her gaze focused on the bird while Dad and I stood beside her. I was animating Percy this time. The bird flew as far as the trees and stopped, hovering there while Percy lowered the ropes down.
I felt really nervous about what would happen next. Would Queenie-May be able to tie on the ropes? Would they hold? How precariously balanced was the plane? Had it been damaged in the crash?
The hedge bird was flapping its green leafy wings furiously, hovering high above the trees as it waited for the signal from Percy to pull out the stranded plane.
‘There it is!’ I exclaimed excitedly as the plane suddenly emerged from the trees.
As soon as she saw it my sister started clutching her tummy, which she always does when she’s animating something very difficult. I really wished I could help, but since I’d never been able to move large objects I knew it would be too risky to start trying now. Soon Saffie was red in the face from the effort of animating both the bird and the plane from such a long distance away.
‘Where are they going to land?’ Dad muttered as they got slowly closer, still connected by the ropes as they flew side by side. ‘The garden isn’t going to be much of a landing strip for the plane.’
Then we saw that Percy was untying the ropes from around the hedge bird. With the ropes no longer holding the two together the plane began to descend, clearly planning to use the field behind the house as a runway, while the bird with Percy on board continued to fly towards the house.
The plane made a very bumpy landing in the field. As soon as it was on the ground Saffie withdrew her power and she did the same to the hedge bird as soon as it had landed. Percy remained very much alive and I felt as if keeping him that way was getting so easy that it was even possible to do it without focusing all my attention on him.
‘Come on,’ Dad said, heading at once for the field. ‘Let’s go and inspect the damage.’
‘Saffie, are you OK?’ I asked, hardly able to believe that my sister had concentrated for so long.
She was no longer clutching her tummy as she smiled up at me and nodded.
‘Come on then,’ I said, helping her up. ‘We don’t want to leave poor Dad alone for too long with Queenie-May, do we?’
CHAPTER 10
By the time Mum got home with Granny and Grandpa late that afternoon, Dad had repaired the plane’s scratched paintwork as best he could and put it back in the garage to dry. But he was still furious with us.
Queenie-May had told him that the plane ride had been our idea and of course we couldn’t go against her since we still didn’t know where Howard was. Dad didn’t know that Queenie-May was a special doll, so it was unlikely that he would bother mentioning her to Mum or Granny. However, he had spent the rest of the afternoon struggling to decide whether to tell them about Grandpa’s plane. In the end he decided to wait until the next day so that he didn’t spoil Grandpa’s birthday, and he even managed to temporarily fix the seagull back on top of the hedge.
Unfortunately Queenie-May wasn’t so easy to fix. She must have hit her face on something in the crash, because several big cracks had appeared on one cheek. She had totally freaked out when she saw herself in the mirror and refused to tell us anything about Howard. ‘You should be worrying about me – not that silly old bear!’
‘Saffie . . . I think we should tell Granny about Queenie-May,’ I said as soon as we were alone. ‘Maybe she’ll be able to help.’
‘No! Then Queenie-May won’t ever tell us where Howard is,’ Saffie protested.
‘Queenie-May isn’t going to tell us in any case,’ I said.
‘But Granny will be really angry if she finds out. I don’t want to tell her, Emma.’ My sister was looking quite upset.
‘Don’t worry – if you like I’ll tell her on my own,’ I said.
I waited until later when Granny was on her own in the kitchen secretly putting the final touches to Grandpa’s birthday cake, which we were going to have at our midnight feast that night. It was a double-layered vanilla sponge-cake with pink icing, strawberries and chocolate flakes on the top, and Granny had made a little aeroplane out of marzipan and stuck it in the middle.
‘That looks yummy, Granny,’ I said as she finally stood back to inspect it.
‘Wait until you see the birthday dessert Donald made. I’ve hidden it in the garage for now. I thought we could keep it for our midnight party too.’
Donald had dropped by half an hour earlier with a birthday card and a present for Grandpa. I hadn’t realized he’d brought a dessert as well.
‘It’s a shame Donald can’t come to Grandpa’s party, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll save him a nice big piece of birthday cake,’ Granny promised.
Mum and Dad and Saffie were all in the living room keeping Grandpa distracted while Granny saw to the cake, so I reckoned now would be a good time to tell Granny about Queenie-May without any interruptions. But first I had a question to ask.
‘Granny, I’ve been thinking . . .’ I began cautiously. ‘Do you know why Queenie-May is so powerful that she can’t be de-animated?’
Granny looked across at me with a bit of a twinkle in her eye. ‘You certainly are interested in that old doll, aren’t you? All right then, I’ll tell you . . . though I warn you, it’s rather an incredible story. You see, when my sister and I were children, Penelope decided we should both try and animate Queenie-May at exactly the same time. We’d been told by our grandmother that dual animation was impossible – that one of us would always make the connection with the doll a split second before the other. Penelope wanted to prove our grandmother wrong – she always liked proving grown-ups wrong – and she became quite obsessed with it. So we tried over and over for a very long time and one day . . . well . . . it actually worked. It must have been a complete fluke, because we certainly never managed it again. But it left Queenie-May with double the animation power inside her and when we tried to de-animate her after that we found we couldn’t. Unless she allowed it.
To start with she would let us de-animate her if we bribed her with a promise of a present or some other treat. She loved new clothes and being taken with us on days out. But gradually it became harder and harder to find something to tempt her with and it got more and more difficult to get her to let us switch her off. And then there was that awful day on the pier and, well . . . you know the rest . . .’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Wow . . .’ It really was quite a story.
‘I suppose I’d better come and deal with her, hadn’t I?’ Granny said.
‘Deal with who?’ I asked in surprise.
‘Queenie-May, of course! I know Saffie found her and brought her to life. I overheard the two of them talking to each other in your room.’
‘Really?’ I was astonished.
‘I was going to jump in and confiscate her straight away, but then I thought it might be good for Saffie to have to face the consequences of her actions for once. So I decided to let her – and you – get on with it. I did wonder how long you would wait before you finally came to me for help.’
‘Oh, Granny, I’m sorry,’ I gushed, feeling guilty and relieved both at the same time.
‘Come on. Let’s go and speak to Queenie-May, shall we? I’m guessing she’s been giving you a hard time. You’d better start by telling me everything she’s done.’ As we went upstairs together I told Granny about Howard, which didn’t seem to surprise her in the least. But when I told her about the accident with Grandpa’s plane, she nearly had a fit and I had the feeling she was struggling not to lose her temper with me.
In our bedroom Queenie-May was lying on Saffie’s bed with her eyes closed, looking very sorry for herself. When she heard us come in, she opened her e
yes, then started to laugh. ‘Harriet, is that really you?’
I realized that Queenie-May probably hadn’t actually seen Granny since she was a girl.
‘My but you’re old,’ Queenie-May continued. ‘Really, really old. Your skin is so wrinkly I wouldn’t have recognized you if it wasn’t for your eyes, and even they’ve got big bags underneath them. But then Penelope always was the pretty one!’
‘Talking of faces . . .’ Granny replied with a glare, ‘you seem to have injured yours rather badly.’
Queenie-May immediately put a protective hand up to her injured cheek. ‘Indeed I have, thanks to your hopeless granddaughter, who can’t even keep a model plane up in the air.’
‘You brought this on yourself, Queenie-May,’ Granny told her sternly. ‘Luckily I know a doll restorer who does very fine work on antique dolls like you, but if I arrange for your face to be repaired you have to give us something in return. You have to tell us at once where Howard is.’
Queenie-May snorted. ‘Don’t tell me you’re still worried about that useless old lump of scratchy fur! Well, I can tell you what happened to him if you want, but you’re not going to like it!’
And she told us she had stuffed Howard into the passenger footwell of Grandpa’s plane. ‘He was there for the flight – though he didn’t know anything about it of course. After we crashed into the trees I was terrified the plane was going to fall, so I decided I’d better try and lighten the load. After all, it’s not as though Howard is a lightweight sort of bear. I imagine he fell straight to the ground, being the dense lump that he is!’
‘How could you . . . ?’ I was almost too appalled to speak.
Queenie-May looked amused as she said, ‘Well, I did warn you that you wouldn’t like it!’
CHAPTER 11
Granny said she wanted to talk to Queenie-May on her own for a bit, so I went downstairs to find Saffie.
My sister was in the kitchen with Dad, and both of them were licking their fingers after dipping them in the icing on Grandpa’s birthday cake.
‘Just tidying it up, Emma,’ Dad said, giving me a wink as my little sister started to giggle.
‘I thought you were meant to be distracting Grandpa,’ I said.
‘He’s fallen asleep in his chair,’ Dad informed me.
‘Snoring away as usual!’ Saffie added with another giggle.
She soon stopped giggling when I told her about Queenie-May’s confession.
‘Oh no, poor Howard! We have to go and rescue him right now!’ she exclaimed, looking all set to put on her wellies and go marching off into the woods to search for him straight away.
‘What’s going on?’ Mum asked as she joined us.
Saffie and I looked at each other nervously, not knowing what we should tell her.
Granny came downstairs then and Saffie and I found the matter being taken out of our hands as she recounted everything to our mum. By the time Granny had finished talking both Saffie and I were flushing as Mum gave us her most furious glare.
It was all too much for Saffie. Having Mum angry with her as well as hearing the terrible news about Howard seemed to tip her over the edge and she suddenly started to cry.
‘Don’t worry, Saffie. We can go and look for Howard in the woods tomorrow,’ Mum said, her stern expression softening a little.
Dad was frowning. ‘It will be a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack, won’t it?’
Granny looked thoughtful. ‘Not necessarily. Marsha, is your father still asleep in the other room?’
Mum nodded.
‘Good! Henry would sleep all night in his armchair if I let him, so I doubt he’ll wake up before the party.’
‘Shouldn’t we wake him up anyway to tell him about his aeroplane?’ Mum asked.
‘Goodness no! It’s best if he doesn’t know what happened to it until tomorrow or he’ll spend the whole night in the garage checking it over for damage. Now . . . start putting up the decorations everyone, while I go and have a word with Walter about Emma’s bear.’
While Granny spoke quietly with Walter, Dad put up the fairy lights in the garden and the rest of us blew up the balloons Granny had bought saying HAPPY 70th BIRTHDAY! Eventually Granny came to report back to us.
‘It’s just as I thought,’ she said briskly. ‘Walter is willing to organize a search party to look for Howard tonight. But they’ll need our help, so listen carefully while I tell you what we have to do . . .’
‘This could work I suppose,’ Mum murmured as we stood in the back garden half an hour later watching Granny’s gnomes being flown towards the woods. ‘Though I think it’s a bit of a long shot.’
‘Aren’t all your mother’s crazy ideas?’ Dad whispered back.
Mum and Dad kept quiet after that as we watched Granny and Saffie at work. Granny was sitting on a deckchair in the garden, facing the woods. She had closed her eyes to concentrate better, totally absorbed in keeping all her gnomes animated now that they were tiny specks in the distance, huddled together on the backs of the two flying hedge birds. Saffie was sitting next to her, keeping the hedge birds animated – the duck had been recruited now along with the seagull – as they hovered above the wood.
The light was fading and it was difficult to see clearly, but we could make out two long ropes being dangled down into the trees. Then one by one we saw Granny’s gnomes climbing down the ropes. They looked just like mini commandos being dropped into the jungle to carry out some top-secret mission.
‘But will you be able to keep all the gnomes animated when you can’t see any of them, Granny?’ I had asked her uncertainly when she had first told us Walter’s plan.
‘Oh yes! I know my gnomes like the back of my hand, so don’t worry about that,’ Granny had said. ‘But that brings me to your task, Emma. It would be helpful if Howard was animated too, so that he can call out to attract the search party’s attention . . .’
And so I had promised Granny that I would take on the task of bringing Howard to life.
‘Are you OK, Emma?’ Mum whispered now as I prepared myself to begin.
I nodded, though in fact I was still scared that I wouldn’t be able to do this.
‘Just do your best,’ Mum said. ‘That’s all Granny wants.’
I closed my eyes and tried to picture Howard in my mind just as I’d done when Granny was teaching me ‘blind’ animation before. It was harder now though, because he was so much further away. Then with enormous relief I felt the ‘ping’ inside my head that I was sure meant he had come to life wherever he was. I just hoped I could keep him that way for long enough and that he wasn’t too frightened. And above all else I hoped that the gnomes would find him.
Eventually, after what seemed like forever (although in fact it was no more than half an hour), my concentration began to wane and I suddenly felt the sort of releasing feeling inside my head that happens when an animation is over. I was almost too exhausted to speak and my head was pounding so hard I felt like it might explode.
Mum said, ‘I think you should go to bed now, Emma.’
‘What time is it?’ I croaked.
‘Nine o’clock. The hedge birds aren’t needed any longer so Saffie has already gone.’
I realized then that my sister wasn’t in the garden with us. I hadn’t even been aware of her going upstairs. Granny was still sitting in her deckchair with her eyes closed and her brow furrowed in concentration.
‘What about Grandpa?’ I asked.
‘He was still asleep in his chair the last time I looked,’ Dad said. ‘Come on. I’ll take you to bed. Don’t worry, we’ll wake you up for the party.’
At a quarter to midnight Saffie’s alarm clock rang out. She must have set it before she went to sleep.
‘Turn it off, Saffie,’ I mumbled groggily, putting my hands over my ears.
As she jumped out of bed I saw she was back in her Supergirl outfit, newly washed and ironed by Granny. ‘I wonder if the gnomes are back yet,’ she said enthusiastically as she t
urned off the alarm.
That thought made me wake up properly too. ‘Wait for me,’ I called out as I climbed out of bed to go with her. At least Queenie-May wasn’t in our room any more. (Granny had decided to move the doll to her room to keep her away from Saffie.)
Mum and Dad were in the kitchen sipping mugs of tea and murmuring to each other when we got downstairs.
‘What are you two doing up?’ Mum asked when she saw us.
‘Saffie set her alarm for the midnight feast,’ I explained. ‘But why didn’t you wake us?’As I spoke, I looked out of the window and saw that Granny was still sitting in the garden. ‘Aren’t they back yet?’ I asked in surprise.
Mum shook her head, looking worried. ‘That’s why I think you should go back to bed. I don’t think tonight is the right time to have a party.’
Saffie scowled. ‘But it’s Grandpa’s birthday today! It won’t be a birthday party if we don’t do it now! And we’ve still got his special present to give him and his birthday cake!’
I was just about to ask Mum what the special present was, as we still didn’t know, when we heard a noise outside. Granny was standing up and making her way to the open gate at the bottom of the garden. The moon was half hidden behind a cloud, but there was just enough light for us to make out the group of small figures shuffling through it.
‘Where’s Howard?’ I murmured. Then I saw that the gnomes were carrying a small stretcher between them. ‘Oh!’ I rushed out into the garden.
The gnome rescue party had placed a homemade stretcher – which was made from twigs and leaves cleverly woven together – down on the grass. Howard was laid out on top of it.
‘Is he all right?’ I asked anxiously, going to pick him up. Even though he wasn’t animated I still wanted to give him a hug.