by M. C. Badger
So he was very surprised when Mila said, ‘We would LOVE to play Ludo!’
What was going on?
‘Well, come inside then,’ said Mrs Splatley.
But Mila shook her head. ‘First I need a tray. A big one, please.’
‘What for?’ asked Mrs Splatley.
‘We have our own special way of playing Ludo,’ said Mila. ‘I’ll show you.’ Then she winked at Marcus.
Ah, thought Marcus. Mila has a plan after all.
Mr Splatley went and got a tray. It was a nice big metal one.
‘Perfect!’ said Mila. ‘Now, can you please put it on the ground?’
Mr Splatley put the tray on the ground. ‘This is a very unusual way to play Ludo,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Mila. ‘It is very unusual. But it’s the best way.’
Mila looked at Marcus. She spoke to him in a very quiet voice. ‘When I count to three, jump from the banister onto the tray. OK?’
Marcus nodded.
‘One, two, three – JUMP!’
Mila jumped onto the tray, then Marcus hopped on behind her, with Turtle still balancing on his shoulders. The tray began to slide down the stairs. Most children would fall off. But the Tinklers didn’t even wobble.
‘Stop!’ boomed Mrs Splatley as the tray zoomed off down the stairs. ‘That is NOT how you play Ludo!’
But the Tinklers Three did not stop. They WHOOSHED down and down, around and around.
‘You told a lie to the Splatleys,’ Marcus said to Mila as they whooshed along. ‘Isn’t it wrong to lie?’
‘Oh no,’ said Mila. ‘It’s fine to lie when it’s about playing Ludo with the Splatleys.’
Marcus was just thinking what a good rule this was when they crashed into a wall on the third floor.
The Tinklers Three did not fall off the tray. Not even one finger or toe touched the ground.
But the tray was now very bent.
‘It’s too bent to ride anymore,’ said Marcus. ‘What do we do next?’
The clock tower was a long way away. And they were not getting any closer to it.
‘We go out there,’ said Mila. She pointed to a window in the stairwell.
ON THE OTHER SIDE of the window was a very tall tree. The Tinklers Three often climbed it. But they had never climbed it by going out the window. Marcus got his tin-can stilts out again and clumped across to the window. Mila clumped up beside him. They looked out at the tree.
‘If we climb to the top we can get onto the roof of that building,’ Mila said, pointing to a building just behind the tree. ‘Then we will be well on our way.’
‘But how do we get to the tree?’ asked Marcus.
‘What about if we use this?’ said Mila. Out of her backpack she pulled a bow and arrow with a rope attached to the end. This was something Marcus had invented to collect the Tinklers’ mail. The postman just needed to stand on the street holding out the letters. Then Marcus could shoot an arrow out the window, hit the letters and pull them back up to the thirty-third floor. (But, so far, the postman had not agreed to this.)
‘We can shoot the arrow across to the tree and then walk across the rope. Just pretend the rope is a tightrope,’ said Mila. ‘Unless you’re too scared?’
Marcus shook his head. ‘Of course I’m not too scared!’ he said. ‘I’m a Tinkler, after all.’
Here is a secret: Marcus WAS scared.
But he was not going to tell Mila that!
Mila aimed at the tree. She drew back the bow and . . .
The arrow flew through the air.
The rope curled around and around one of the tree’s branches.
Then Mila pulled it tight. ‘Now for the easy part,’ she said. ‘We just have to walk across the rope.’
Marcus watched Mila walk across. It didn’t look easy to him. It looked very scary. Sometimes Marcus wondered if he had less circus blood than Mila did.
‘I don’t think I should do that,’ said Marcus. ‘Turtle is scared.’
‘No, I’m not,’ said Turtle. ‘It will be fun. We’ll be like monkeys in the jungle.’
‘You’re a turtle, not a monkey,’ said Marcus.
‘You are scared,’ said Turtle. ‘Here. I will spray the rope with circus glue.’ She got out the can of glue and sprayed it. But she missed the rope and got the windowsill instead.
‘Don’t do that, Turtle,’ said Marcus. ‘You’re wasting the glue. And you are making the windowsill super sticky.’
Just then there was a noise on the stairs. Someone was coming down. Marcus heard a laugh. It sounded like chickens gargling. Only three people in the world could make a laugh sound so bad. THE SPLATLEY THREE!
‘Marcus,’ said Turtle. ‘What is more scary? Walking on that rope or getting stuck here with the Spatleys?’
‘You’re right,’ said Marcus. ‘Let’s go.’
So Marcus carefully stepped over the sticky patch on the windowsill and started to walk across the tightrope.
Marcus was halfway across when he heard the sound of chickens gargling again. This time it was much louder.
It is very difficult to turn around on a tightrope, but Marcus needed to see what was going on. And it was just as well that he did!
The Splatley children were leaning out the window. Sarah was holding a big pair of SCISSORS.
‘It’s naughty to walk on tightropes!’ called Simon.
‘So we’re going to cut the rope,’ said Sarah.
Susie stuck out her tongue.
That tongue gave Marcus an idea. ‘Did you know,’ he said to the Splatleys, ‘that this windowsill is made of sugar?’
‘Don’t be dumb,’ said Sarah. ‘That’s not true.’
‘Oh really?’ said Marcus. ‘Then why don’t you try it? Then you can prove me wrong.’
The Splatley children loved nothing more than proving someone wrong. They all stuck out their tongues and licked the windowsill together.
Of course, it is a very silly idea to lick a windowsill at any time. But it is even sillier when the windowsill has been sprayed with circus glue. Soon all three Splatleys had their tongues stuck to the windowsill.
‘Helth!’ cried Sarah.
‘We’ll thee thtuck here thorether!’ Simon said.
‘Not forever,’ said Marcus. ‘Circus glue wears off after a few hours.’
‘What a pity,’ sighed Turtle.
Suddenly Marcus wasn’t scared any more. He was sure he had lots of circus blood. Only a true circus kid could trick those Splatleys so easily! Marcus turned around on the tightrope and ran carefully across to the tree, with Turtle clinging to his neck.
‘IT IS YOUR TURN to carry Turtle,’ said Marcus to Mila once he was in the tree.
‘Look, I would love to,’ said Mila. ‘But I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s against the rules, remember?’ said Mila. ‘Sorry.’
She started climbing up the tree before Marcus could argue.
So Marcus climbed up the tree with Turtle on his shoulders. All the Tinklers could climb very well. Even Turtle, when she was not being a turtle.
But this was a very big tree.
It went up and UP and UP.
As they climbed, the tree trunk got narrower. Then it began to lean to one side. The higher the Tinklers climbed, the more the tree leaned. Finally the Tinklers ran out of tree to climb. But by now the tree had bent so much that it was touching the roof of the next building.
‘Oh good,’ said Mila. ‘Now we can easily get onto that building.’ She started to step across onto the roof.
‘Stop!’ cried Marcus. ‘If you step onto the roof and let go of the tree, the tree will spring back, and Turtle and I will go flying!’
‘Oh. Good point,’ said Mila. ‘I’ll hold onto the top of the tree until you and Turtle are safely on the roof.’
‘Well, OK . . .’ said Marcus slowly.
The problem was that sometimes Mila forgot what she was supposed to be doing. She would go out to buy oranges and come back three hours later with an orangutan instead.
Marcus hoped she would not forget the plan right now. He did not want to go flying across the sky like a stone from a slingshot!
But luckily Mila did not forget.
She climbed onto the roof and held on tight to the top of the tree so it didn’t spring back. Marcus climbed across and looked around him.
Everywhere he looked he could see rooftops. They looked like the squares of a patchwork blanket. And in the distance he could see the clock tower. Some of the roofs were bare. Some of them had gardens. A few of them had swimming pools.
The best bit was that most of the roofs were very close together. So close that Marcus and Mila could jump from one building to the next. Of course, most children would not be able to do this. It was only possible because circus children have extra-springy feet and no-one to tell them off.
The Tinklers Three ran and jumped from one roof to another. They ran around chimneys and satellite dishes.
They ran through rooftop gardens. And when they needed to cool down they swam through swimming pools. They ran and they jumped until Turtle said she was hungry.
‘Me too,’ said Marcus. ‘Let’s have lunch.’
Mila and Marcus looked in their bags. ‘What about an apple?’ said Mila. ‘Or a tomato sandwich?’
‘No,’ said Turtle. ‘I want lettuce.’
‘What about some salami?’ Marcus suggested. ‘Or some yak cheese? Or a seagull egg? Hard-boiled of course.’
‘No,’ said Turtle. ‘No, no, NO! I want lettuce!’
Mila and Marcus looked at each other. ‘We will have to get her one somehow,’ said Mila.
‘Yes,’ agreed Marcus. ‘If we want to finish our mission.’
Mila walked over to the edge of the building and looked down below. ‘Hey!’ she said. ‘I can see someone’s vegetable garden. There are rows and rows of lettuces.’
Marcus frowned. ‘If we go down there we will touch the ground,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll have failed our mission.’ Marcus thought for a moment. ‘How about we use the grabby hand?’ he said. ‘I brought it with me.’
This was another reason why the Tinklers were lucky to live alone. Adults would have told Marcus it was useless to bring the grabby hand. But the Tinklers Three knew that a grabby hand was always useful.
MARCUS LEANT over the edge of the roof. He stretched out the grabby hand as far as it would go. But looking down below made his head spin. He shut his eyes. That stopped him feeling dizzy. He moved the grabby hand around until it grabbed onto something. Then he lifted it up.
Mila and Marcus and Turtle looked at the thing Marcus had grabbed.
‘That is not a lettuce,’ said Turtle. ‘That is a carrot.’
‘Oops,’ said Marcus. He leant back over the edge and put the carrot back in the ground. Then he tried again.
‘That’s also not a lettuce,’ said Mila when she saw what he had grabbed this time. ‘That’s a cat.’
The cat did not look happy.
Turtle didn’t look happy either. ‘Where is my lettuce?’ she asked.
‘Here. Let me do it,’ said Mila.
She took the grabby hand from Marcus and leant over the edge. A moment later she pulled up a lettuce. Turtle ate it.
‘Another one, please,’ she said.
So Mila pulled up another lettuce for Turtle. Then another one.
‘There are a lot of holes in that vegie patch now,’ Mila said. ‘The gardener might be upset.’
‘How about we put some of our things in the holes as payment?’ said Marcus.
Mila nodded. ‘That’s only fair.’ She picked up the salami and planted it in one of the holes. She planted the sandwich in another. The third hole she filled with the seagull egg. ‘Maybe they will grow,’ she said. ‘Maybe the salami will turn into a salami tree.’
‘Maybe,’ said Marcus. But he didn’t really think that would happen.
After lunch the Tinklers were full of energy. They ran even faster and jumped even further. Marcus didn’t feel like he was even running anymore. He felt like he was FLYING. The clock tower got closer and closer.
‘We’re going to do it!’ Mila shouted happily. ‘We’re going to make it to the clock tower by dinner time.’
By now they were in the very fancy part of town. Some of the roofs had playgrounds, and one even had a big trampoline! Of course the Tinklers Three could never pass a trampoline without trying it out. And this one was a very springy trampoline. So springy that the Tinklers could use it to jump across two rooftops in one go!
‘Look!’ said Marcus when he landed. ‘We’re almost there.’
This was true. There were no more rooftops to run over. No more chimneys. No more satellite dishes. The clock tower was right in front of them.
The only problem was that there was a very big gap between the last roof and the clock tower. And it was almost dinner time.
When three children stand at the edge of a building, a lot of people notice. So it wasn’t long before a big crowd was gathered, looking up and pointing at them.
‘We’ll have to hurry,’ said Mila. ‘An adult might come up and try to stop us from finishing our mission.’
Marcus knew she was right. But he also didn’t know what to do.
‘Bird!’ said Turtle.
She was right. There was a pigeon standing on the edge of the building.
Lots of people don’t like pigeons. They think they are dirty. But the Tinklers liked them. Marcus liked feeding them bits of seed bread out of the window. Mila liked wearing their nests as hats.
‘Maybe that bird will fly us across to the clock tower,’ said Mila. ‘If we ask it politely.’
Now, of course, most people know that you can’t talk to birds. But no-one had ever told the Tinklers this.
Marcus nodded. ‘That’s a good idea.’ He turned to the pigeon. ‘Excuse me, bird. Could you fly
us over to the clock tower? If we don’t get there in ten minutes we’ll fail our mission.’
Most birds would just fly off if a kid asked them something as crazy as this.
But this pigeon knew the Tinklers. It often flew past when Marcus was handing out seed bread with the grabby hand. In fact most of the pigeons in the city knew the Tinklers.
Unfortunately, this pigeon had plans for that afternoon. First he was going to fly to a park and sit on the head of a sculpture. Then he was going to poo on someone’s clean washing. He didn’t really have time to help the Tinklers.
But then the bird thought about the tasty seed bread. Pigeons like eating seed bread even more than they like pooing on clean washing.
Here is what that bird thought:
The bird flew off.
‘Oh no!’ said Marcus.
‘Now we won’t be able to finish our mission,’ sighed Mila.
But she was wrong.
BY NOW, most of the people in the city were on the ground, looking up at the Tinklers. There were fire engines and police cars. There were people with nets and people with megaphones shouting things. But they were all calling out at the same time, so all the Tinklers could hear was: ‘BLRRGRBH! SHIRIFSBST! ZZT!’
Marcus looked down. ‘Maybe we could jump down onto those nets,’ he said. ‘We might bounce back up to the clock tower.’
‘That could work,’ said Mila. ‘Or maybe we could wait for a cloud to come past. Then we could float to the clock tower on that.’
‘That could work too,’ said Marcus. ‘But there are no clouds today.’