by R. A. Spratt
‘Yiiiiipeeeeee!’ cried Nanny Piggins as she easily arced 25 feet off the ground, flying towards the clear sky above the wall. That was until something terrible happened. In less than a millisecond a siren went off and a perspex bandit screen (like they have in banks) flew up, adding another 6 feet to the wall. Nanny Piggins slammed straight into the centre of a perspex panel, then slid all the way down the wall before landing hard on her bottom.
‘Are you all right, Nanny Piggins?’ called Samantha as they all rushed forward to check on her.
‘I’m okay,’ said Nanny Piggins a little groggily, ‘although I think I may have broken my chocolate bar.’
Nanny Piggins took a chocolate bar out of her back pocket. Mercifully it was still intact so she ate it before any further harm could come to it.
‘Perhaps we should go home now,’ suggested Samantha.
‘Pish!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We’ll just have to come up with another plan.’
‘Could it be a plan to have honey sandwiches on a picnic rug down by the river?’ asked Boris optimistically. He loved honey sandwiches and picnic honey sandwiches were the best kind of honey sandwiches of all.
‘No, a plan to get over the wall,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I know! Boris, you’ll just have to throw me over.’
‘I can’t do that,’ protested Boris.
‘Of course you can, you used to be the circus’ discus champion every year,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Yes, but that’s because I used to imagine that the discus was a rhubarb pie,’ said Boris. ‘I don’t like rhubarb pie. It’s too rhubarby for my taste.’
‘Well, just imagine I’m a rhubarb pie. Grab me by the trotters and hurl me over,’ ordered Nanny Piggins.
‘You don’t look like a rhubarb pie,’ said Boris.
‘Close your eyes and imagine one,’ suggested Nanny Piggins.
‘All right,’ conceded Boris, ‘but I just want you to know that you are my sister and I love you and I wouldn’t normally throw you 31 feet in the air unless you specifically asked me to and I thought you looked like a rhubarb pie.’
‘Of course,’ said Nanny Piggins.
And so the three horrified children stood and watched as Boris picked up their nanny and spun around and around in circles, building up speed before releasing her into the air. He got the speed and the height right, but all the spinning around made him dizzy and he threw Nanny Piggins in completely the wrong direction, right into the middle of the forest.
When they tried again, and Boris concentrated not just on throwing away the rhubarb pie, but throwing it over the wall, he was successful. Nanny Piggins flew over the wall and the bandit screen.
‘We did it!’ screamed Nanny Piggins triumphantly as she flew through the air. Unfortunately her triumph was again short-lived, because as soon as she passed over the wall, sirens went off, lights started flashing and somewhere in the distance an air raid siren began to wail.
‘Okay,’ called Nanny Piggins from the far side of the wall, where she had landed safely. ‘Now throw the children over.’
‘What?!’ exclaimed the children in horror.
‘Don’t worry,’ called Nanny Piggins. ‘The ground is higher on this side. It’s only a 24 foot drop for the landing.’
‘I don’t want to be thrown over,’ panicked Samantha.
‘I don’t want to throw you over,’ panicked Boris. ‘You don’t look anything like a rhubarb pie. Besides, I’ve just remembered rhubarb pie can be quite nice if you serve it with a really good egg custard and lots of extra honey.’
‘It’s okay,’ called Nanny Piggins from an unexpected direction.
They turned to see her leaning out from the now open gate, just 50 metres down the road.
‘I’ve found the switch for the gate,’ she explained. ‘Come on, you’d better hurry up before it shuts again.’
Derrick, Samantha and Michael scrambled after her. As much as they admired Nanny Piggins, none of them wanted to become ‘The World’s Greatest Flying Children’.
Once inside the gate, the siren seemed much louder, echoing off the long high wall.
‘I don’t like this,’ said Samantha. ‘We’re going to be arrested for breaking and entering.’
‘We haven’t broken anything,’ disagreed Nanny Piggins, ‘and we are following a treasure map. There are laws saying you can follow a treasure map wherever it goes.’
‘Are there?’ asked Michael.
‘Well, if there aren’t, there should be,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It’ll be the first thing I see to when I become mayor.’
‘Which way do we have to go?’ asked Derrick, desperate to get moving before they could be attacked by trained dogs, or worse, trained snipers.
Nanny Piggins consulted the map. ‘The quickest way is through the bog of quicksand, across the rickety bridge and over the tumbling stream.’
‘What?!’ exclaimed Samantha, who was now seriously considering having a full hysterical attack on the ground.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘This map is hundreds of years old. I’m sure the quicksand has been filled in and the tumbling stream has dried up due to global warming.’
Unfortunately Nanny Piggins could not have been more incorrect. There was definitely a bog of quicksand. Nanny Piggins easily ran across and the children were able to dodge around the worst bits and wade through the others without much trouble. But a 700-kilogram bear in a bog of quicksand is never going to do well. In the end, Nanny Piggins had to make a stretcher out of water reeds so they could all drag Boris through. (She refused to let him run around it. She did not want to be defeatist.)
Then they came to the rickety bridge over the tumbling stream. For a start, to call it a tumbling stream was a gross understatement. A more accurate term would have been a raging river. And the rickety bridge would have been better described as a few pieces of tangled string. Boris just sat down and wept.
‘Why on earth would Mr Dulsford keep such dangerous things in his garden?’ wondered Samantha.
‘Perhaps so he can have things to do with his unpleasant relatives when they come to visit,’ guessed Nanny Piggins. ‘Maybe if I climb this tree I’ll be able to figure out some way to rig up a flying fox.’
‘What with?’ asked Derrick.
‘Perhaps a real fox!’ said Nanny Piggins, ever the optimist.
But as she leapt up and grabbed the first branch, the strangest thing happened. The branch clicked down, revealing that it was really a lever. Then the entire 30 metre high tree bent over the river, and the trunk folded out to form a flat platform. ‘A secret bridge!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins.
‘Those pirates must have been very advanced for their time with their knowledge of electrical engineering,’ said Michael.
‘Come on, let’s get the treasure,’ said Nanny Piggins.
They all ran across the bridge, except for Boris. He had to be dragged still weeping because he was worried about getting his paws wet.
‘There it is, up ahead!’ said Nanny Piggins, pointing towards the opening of a cave. ‘According to the map the treasure is buried in the Cave of Great Despair.’
‘That doesn’t sound like a very happy cave,’ sniffed Boris. ‘Couldn’t we just have a picnic on the riverbank instead?’
‘No, we can’t,’ said Derrick, behind them. ‘Look! It’s Mr Dulsford!’
The others all looked around to see a very elderly man speeding towards them on a quad bike with a pack of vicious-looking dogs running ahead.
‘Oh dear,’ said Samantha. ‘Crazed dogs.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Boris. ‘Crazed old man.’
‘Come on, we’ve no time to lose,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Perhaps they will have buried some pirate swords with the pirate treasure and we can use that to fight them off.’
Nanny Piggins disappeared into the long winding tunnel and the others, not wanting to be too far away from their best source of protection (the crazed pig with an eighth dan blackbelt in Taekwondo), disappeared
after her.
Fortunately Nanny Piggins had brought her miner’s headlamp with her. She often carried it, just in case she stumbled across King Solomon’s Chocolate Mine (a legendary underground abundance of naturally occurring chocolate that all pigs believed in).
‘There it is! Look! ‘X’ marks the spot!’ said Nanny Piggins triumphantly. And there was indeed a large X marked on the ground in neatly aligned stones.
‘That’s odd,’ said Derrick. ‘Pirates don’t usually literally put an X on the ground. It’s not very secret. The X is just supposed to be on the map.’
‘Perhaps they were very considerate pirates,’ suggested Nanny Piggins. ‘They knew in the future that we would not be very good at map reading due to an over-dependence on GPS technology.’
Suddenly their conversation was interrupted as the wild dogs burst into the far end of the tunnel. The barks were deafeningly loud as they echoed about inside the enclosed space.
‘We’re doomed!’ shrieked Samantha, which is something she had often thought but this was the first occasion when she’d had genuine cause to say it aloud.
‘Pish!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Boris is very good with dogs. He knows how to talk to them. You’ll take care of it won’t you, dear.’
‘Of course,’ said Boris. ‘I don’t have anything against dogs personally but they really do need to learn a manners lesson, making all that noise.’
Boris drew himself up to his full height (which was actually ten and a half feet when he stood up straight and on his tippy-toes), stretched out his arms wide and then, just as the dogs came streaming around the corner and all caught sight of him, Boris bellowed the most terrifying roar: ‘GGGGRRRRRRRAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH!’
The dogs slid to a stop on the dirt floor and scrambled off desperately in the opposite direction, whining with fear.
The children were frozen with fear themselves. They had never known their dear and sensitive friend to sound so terrifying.
‘I do hate having to raise my voice,’ said Boris, ‘but with some animals it is the only way to communicate.’
The children all made a mental note not to hesitate next time Boris asked them to pass the honey pot.
‘I’ve found it!’ yelled Nanny Piggins.
The children turned. While they had been watching Boris’ confrontation with the dogs, Nanny Piggins had made an impressive start on the digging. She had disappeared entirely into a hole, five feet deep. They peered over the edge to see their nanny standing on top of an old wooden chest.
‘Could you help me pull this up, Boris?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s very heavy – partly because it’s heavy and partly because I’m standing on it.’
Boris reached into the hole and easily pulled up both his sister and the chest. There was a huge old-fashioned lock on the front of it.
‘You’ll never get that open,’ said Derrick.
‘Hmm, I think I will,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘After all, they didn’t have hairpins back in the olden days so they wouldn’t have thought to make this lock hairpin proof.’
Nanny Piggins plucked a hairpin from her hair (that she wore specifically for breaking into locks, which she found herself having to do with surprising regularity), and in a matter of seconds the lock sprang open. ‘Gotcha!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins with delight.
‘Not so fast!’ barked a voice from behind them.
They all spun around to see Mr Dulsford, a formidable looking man in his late seventies. Formidable because he had an enormous amount of wrinkles on his face and also because he was wearing a tweed jacket and tie even though it was quite a hot day. (It is odd how we can be intimidated by well-dressed people.)
‘You can’t stop me from opening this chest,’ declared Nanny Piggins. ‘Yes, it is on your property. And yes, we are trespassing. And yes, technically, in the eyes of the law, anything on your property is yours. But I found it. It’s my treasure map so I say it’s mine!’
‘Of course it’s yours!’ said Mr Dulsford, a big smile breaking across his face. ‘That’s why I’ve been throwing treasure maps out of my car window all these years.’
‘What?!’ exclaimed the children.
‘Because you’re the great-great-great grandson of a pirate with a very specific will?’ guessed Nanny Piggins.
‘No, because when I was a young man I explored the world – the Arctic, the Antarctic, the Amazon . . .’ said Mr Dulsford.
‘Really?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Did you meet my friend Barry? He’s a boa constrictor from Brazil. A tremendous fellow. He can open a baked-bean tin just by squeezing it. Not that anyone in their right mind would want to open a tin of beans, but Barry was just the chap to have around if you didn’t have a can opener.’
‘Can’t say that I did,’ said Mr Dulsford.
‘That’s a shame,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Anyway, you were explaining this ridiculous charade?’
‘Yes, well, I’m old and don’t get out much now. So I wanted to meet some fellow adventurers,’ said Mr Dulsford, getting a wistful look on his face. ‘People who know how to face down fear, overcome obstacles and break the pole-vaulting world record to get over a 31 foot solid wall.’
‘That is us,’ conceded Nanny Piggins.
‘So you put the treasure here and you left the map by the side of the road?’ asked Michael.
‘Yes, I’ve been doing it for years,’ explained Mr Dulsford, ‘but you are the first people to make it this far. Usually people get stopped by the wall, or they get savaged by the dogs while they’re waist deep in quicksand. Perhaps I need to add some more obstacles.’
‘So you’re a crazy old man with more money than sense?’ summarised Nanny Piggins. ‘Does that mean we can keep this treasure?’
‘Of course, it’s all yours!’ said Mr Dulsford happily.
Not needing any further invitation, Nanny Piggins flipped open the lid to reveal a huge pile of gold coins.
‘Hurray!’ yelled Nanny Piggins triumphantly, before grabbing a handful of coins and tossing them in her mouth.
The others were shocked for a second until Nanny Piggins spat them back out. ‘Pah! Pah!’ spat Nanny Piggins. ‘They’re made of real solid gold!!!’
‘Of course,’ said Mr Dulsford. ‘What were you expecting?’
‘Chocolate coins,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You know, the type you get in Christmas stockings.’
‘Well, I naturally assumed –’ began Mr Dulsford.
‘Who’d want a pile of silly old gold?’ interrupted Nanny Piggins. ‘If I wanted to dig for gold I’d be a gold miner. When I go digging for treasure I expect to dig up something good.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t have any chocolate,’ said Mr Dulsford, taken aback.
‘No chocolate!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘No wonder you’re so eccentric. How about a nice chocolate cake? I’d settle for that.’
‘I don’t think I have any cake in the house,’ said Mr Dulsford.
‘How can you be a rich eccentric old man and not have chocolate or chocolate cake in your house?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘What’s the point of having all that money if you don’t spend at least some of it, preferably most of it, on cake?!’
‘Er . . .’ began Mr Dulsford. He had never thought about it this way.
‘Never mind,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I can see I’ll just have to take you in hand. Because let me tell you, there are a lot better and less elaborate ways to make friends than forging pirate maps and setting up impossibly dangerous obstacles in your own garden.’
‘There are?’ asked Mr Dulsford. While he was a great adventurer, he was socially clueless.
‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘and baking chocolate cake is one of them. Come along, let’s leave this rubbish here. I’ll take you back to the house and show you how to make some real priceless treasure.’
And so, in one afternoon, Nanny Piggins transformed Mr Dulsford’s life with cake.
‘Are you sure this is going to work?’ asked Mr Dulsford as he took his very first pi
ping hot chocolate cake out of the oven.
‘Trust me, no-one with a cake that smells this good is going to be lonely for long,’ said Nanny Piggins.
And at that exact moment, to prove her right, the doorbell rang.
DING-DONG.
‘There, you see,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘But surely no-one can smell this cake from right out on the street,’ said Derrick.
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but even some super sensitive humans have a touch of what we pigs call our sixth sense – the ability to sense the presence of cake.’
Mr Dulsford clicked on the monitor displaying a security camera feed. It showed a mousy woman waiting by the front gate.
‘But it’s only the woman who comes around collecting clothes for charity,’ said Mr Dulsford.
‘Invite her in for a slice of cake,’ urged Nanny Piggins. ‘If you do, I guarantee she’ll be back again next week, perhaps even tomorrow.’
And so thanks to Nanny Piggins, the richest (and most eccentric) man in Dulsford made a new friend. (Something that is always a lot harder than it sounds.) Word quickly spread about his chocolate cake-making ability and soon all the widows and spinsters of Dulsford were finding excuses to pop by and visit him.
Mr Dulsford was so grateful he tried to make a large donation to Nanny Piggins’ mayoral campaign. But naturally she refused him.
‘I don’t need money,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘When you are as glamorous and talented as I am, there are very few things that money can buy.’
‘But there must be some way I can help,’ protested Mr Dulsford.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You can give me something of real value.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Mr Dulsford.
‘On election day, you can bake me a cake to celebrate my election victory,’ declared Nanny Piggins.
‘It would be my honour,’ said Mr Dulsford.
‘But Nanny Piggins,’ said Samantha. ‘What if you lose?’