The Extincts Read online

  Somehow, in the mad rush for the door, Mintzer blundered into Prudence, who crashed into Mrs. Lind, who bumped into me. Losing my balance, I teetered backward and put my foot in Dido’s dog bed.

  There was a horrible sound of splintering eggshell.

  Oh no! I thought. What have I done? Every single one of those eggs was incredibly rare and special and beyond price. But nobody had noticed. They were all heading for the stable yard, gasping for fresh air. Dido, squawking loudly, was still tucked under Mrs. Lind’s arm.

  Holding my nose, my eyes streaming from the Mingus explosion, I bent down to check the damage. Only one egg seemed to have cracked. There was nothing I could do about it now. I would just have to own up and hope that Mrs. Lind would forgive me in the end, even if Dido didn’t.

  I was about to hurry after the others when I heard something. A pip-pip-pip sound. I blinked hard, staring at the crack. I wasn’t imagining it. Pip-pip-pip. It was more than a crack now. The pipping stopped. Now there was a different noise.

  Weep-weep-weep.

  I stared even harder.

  And the egg stared back.

  Just for a moment, I forgot about Diamond and Mintzer and the danger the farm was in. I felt a burst of excitement, like a firework going off in my stomach. A brand-new baby had just taken its first look at the world, and the first thing it saw was me. But a brand-new baby what?

  Then the excitement fizzled away. It didn’t matter what it was. It was just one more thing that had to be kept out of Diamond’s sight. If I didn’t hide it, and quickly, the poor little thing would get stuffed before it had even scrambled out of its egg.

  Weep-weep-weep.

  It was calling to me.

  “Not now,” I told it. “I’m really sorry. Please understand. I haven’t got time. I have to look after Prudence and Mrs. Lind, and save the other animals. Seriously, it’s a dangerous world out here. I’m going to wrap you up”—I reached for a tea towel—“and put you somewhere safe.” I opened the bread bin. “Just for now. I’ll come and get you when it’s safe. Until I do, please, please, stay in your egg!”

  As I raced across the hall, following the others, I could just hear Mump’s shouts from upstairs.

  “Nnnnghh! Thinggghh!”

  Mump had met the kraken. One down. Two to go.

  FIFTEEN

  OUT IN THE yard, things weren’t going well. In the middle of a whirling cloud of dodo feathers, Mintzer and Mrs. Lind were having a fight. Mintzer was armed with his hook. Mrs. Lind was armed with Dido, whose great curved beak snapped and clicked and tried to tear lumps out of any part of Mintzer within reach. The stable doors all stood open except for the last one—Grissel’s. Prudence was standing in front of it with a stormy look on her face and her arms folded.

  “Get out of my way,” ordered Diamond.

  “No,” said Prudence. “I won’t.”

  “You always were as stubborn as a donkey,” complained Diamond. “Do you know what happened to the last donkey I met? I made it into a rocking horse. Other people have pretty little daughters who do as they’re told. Why did I end up with you?”

  “Because you married my father,” said Prudence. “You didn’t have to. I wish you hadn’t.”

  “Ungrateful girl!” Diamond stamped her foot, catching the high silver heel in the cobblestones and nearly losing her balance. “After I’ve fed you, clothed you, cared for you…”

  “You made Mr. Mump do all that,” said Prudence. “All you did was stuff my hamster.”

  “Your last chance,” said Diamond. “I’ll count to five. And if you’re still in my way…” Reaching behind her head, she pulled a chopstick out of her hair. “One. Two…”

  “No!” I went to stand beside Prudence. “Leave her alone!”

  Diamond shrugged, spinning the chopstick between her fingers. “Suit yourself. There’s enough poison on this to kill a herd of elephants. Two annoying children won’t be a problem. Where was I? Two. Three. Four…”

  “Got you!” said Mintzer.

  The fight was over. He had rammed Mrs. Lind’s hat down over her eyes, so she couldn’t see. And because she was holding Dido, she couldn’t move her arms, either.

  “And you,” he added, throwing a sack over Dido and tying it tightly around her neck. “I’ve bagged your bird, Mrs. Pye. And the old lady, too.”

  “Excellent work, Mr. Mintzer,” said Diamond. “Put them in the van.”

  Mintzer gripped Mrs. Lind’s wrists, dragging her toward the back of the van. He opened it up with a flick of his hook and then went suddenly still. Very, very still.

  “George. Prue. Close your eyes.” Lo stepped out from behind the van. “Close your eyes now. Do not open them.”

  We did as he said, although it’s really, really hard to keep your eyes shut when something’s happening but you don’t know what.

  I heard Mrs. Lind say, “It’s you! You’re back! I know it’s you—I can smell chicken korma! All the trouble you’ve caused, you bad boy! We’ve missed you.”

  Then I understood.

  Mortifer, at long last, had come home.

  * * *

  I groped around in my pocket for Diamond’s mirrored sunglasses. I put them on, then risked opening my eyes. Prudence had had the same idea. We looked at our reflections in each other’s eyes, then we looked at Mintzer. He was pale and petrified, frozen in stone.

  “Now that’s what I call a hardened criminal,” said Lo.

  Carefully, sideways, I sneaked a glance at Mortifer from behind my shades. He seemed pleased to be home, rubbing up against Mrs. Lind, looping his fat copper coils around her. Stretched out, he’d have reached the length of a swimming pool: a giant serpent, with a beaked nose and mane of golden feathers.

  “How did you get him in the van?” I demanded.

  “Easy,” said Lo. “I hid the keys. While the big fellow was blundering about looking for them, I picked the lock on the shed. The telephone rang, which gave me a couple of extra minutes. I’d already popped into The Star of India, just in case. Mortifer can’t resist a chicken korma. All I had to do was put it in the back of the van.”

  “Everything will be all right,” said Mrs. Lind happily. “Now that Mortifer’s back.”

  She spoke too soon.

  “I knew it!” Diamond’s voice rang out, triumphant. “That’s what I was looking for!”

  Grissel had been dozing in front of Celebrity SuperChef. As Diamond stepped inside, high heels crunching on the carpet of stones, Grissel opened her one eye.

  Diamond brandished her lollipop excitedly. “It won’t be easy!” she said. “The creature looks half-dead. Broken down. Bits of it are missing. Only the best taxidermist in the world could make it look new again. Only me!”

  It’s never a good idea barging in on a dragon empty-handed. Smoke drifted from the back of the stable. Pebbles rattled.

  “Grissel’s not an it. She’s a she,” I said. “And I wouldn’t wave that lollipop around, if I were you. She’ll smell the sugar.”

  Some people just don’t listen.

  * * *

  Maybe it was just the lollipop Grissel was after. Maybe not. It was a long time since she had tasted human meat. Perhaps she was in the mood for a change. Who knows? It happened very quickly, and might have been quite straightforward, in a dragon-eats-evil-stepmother sort of way, if it hadn’t been for Diamond’s chopsticks. The points must have stuck, like fish hooks, inside Grissel’s jaw. Confused, the dragon swung her head from side to side, trying to either swallow what she had in her mouth or spit it out. Prudence and I backed away as sparks jetted from her flaring nostrils. Diamond’s legs, in her high silver boots, were kicking furiously. Her shouts came out muffled, but I could hear enough of what they were about: what she was going to do to Grissel and Mortifer and the rest of us if we didn’t hurry up and save her.

  “Why can I smell fireworks?” inquired Mrs. Lind from under her hat. Lo had rescued Dido, but Mrs. Lind was stuck. Mintzer’s stone fingers still clutched
her arm. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing to worry about,” said Lo. “Grissel’s found herself a human lollipop. The lollipop’s making quite a fuss.”

  At that moment, Grissel, getting panicky, burst out of her stable and took to the air. We watched her climb higher and higher, zigzagging and circling, straining with her damaged wing.

  “She’s heading for the duck pond,” said Lo. “Come on.”

  Leaving Mrs. Lind behind, we raced through the vegetable garden and the orchard and down the slope to the pond. We got there just as Grissel dived. She buzzed low over my ichthyosaur-training tree and, with a cracking of twigs and a furious yell, Diamond and her chopsticks came free and landed in the branches. Grissel hovered for a moment, then soared away.

  “Just you wait!” Diamond yelled, wringing dragon spit out of her hair. “I’ll stuff every living thing in this place! I’ll put the whole lot of you in glass cases! Yes, you—and you!” She had seen Donald and Jemima, peering out from behind the bushes to see what the fuss was about. Then she pointed straight at Prudence and me. “And you and you!”

  Beside me, Prudence was trembling. “She’s coming for us! She’s so angry.… George, she means what she says!”

  “Don’t panic.” I sounded calmer than I felt. An idea was flapping about in my head. I looked at the silver boots dangling over the water, glinting in the very last rays of sunlight. Glinting like fish scales. I wasn’t sure whether it was a totally brilliant idea, or an absolutely catastrophic one. I wasn’t even sure if it would work. I took a deep breath. And whistled.

  Nothing happened, except that Prudence and Lo both turned their heads to stare at me as if I’d gone mad.

  Diamond was pulling herself along the branch. Soon she would be out of reach. Was it my imagination or did the water ripple? I whistled again.

  “There’ll be nothing left!” shrieked Diamond. “I’ll catch you and bag you and—”

  A fin broke the surface.

  My beautiful, intelligent, ever-so-well-trained ichthyosaur.

  Leaping into the air, as graceful as any dolphin, deadlier than any killer whale, it opened its jaws to claim its reward.

  “STUFF YOU.…”

  For an instant in time, the words hung in the early evening air.

  Then everything went quiet.

  * * *

  Prudence and I walked back to the house, leaving Lo to wait and see what, if anything, floated to the surface of the pond. Neither of us spoke. We didn’t know what to say.

  Mrs. Lind was sitting on the basilisk’s coils, still locked in Mintzer’s stone grip, with Mortifer’s feathered head resting in her lap. Blindfolded by her hat, she cocked her head when she heard our footsteps.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “The ichthyosaur happened,” I told her. “It won’t need feeding tonight.”

  “That will save on fish,” said Mrs. Lind practically. “What about Grissel?”

  Where was Grissel? I looked up at the sky. A long, long, long way up, a black dot was circling.

  “The chopsticks!” Prudence’s hand flew to her mouth. “They’re dipped in deadly tree frog juice. Oh no…” Her eyes had filled with tears.

  “You can’t poison a dragon. It doesn’t work. The poison burns up inside them,” said Mrs. Lind. “But there are sometimes side effects. Can you see her? What’s she doing?”

  I peered upward. “I think she’s just loop-de-looped.…”

  “It won’t do,” said Mrs. Lind. “We can’t have a grown dragon turning cartwheels up there. She’ll be chasing airplanes next. Lo will have to go and get her.”

  I was about to say I didn’t quite see how when Lo appeared holding one high-heeled silver boot.

  “I guess the ichthyosaur must have swallowed the other one,” he said. “What are you all looking so serious about?”

  “It’s Grissel,” I told him. “She’s up there, out of her head on frog juice.”

  We all looked up, except for Mrs. Lind, who couldn’t. The dot in the sky was behaving weirdly: stopping and starting and doing mad zigzags, like flies do when you spray them with fly poison.

  “It’s not safe,” said Mrs. Lind. “You’ll have to go after her, Lo.”

  High up, a low hum sounded. Lights tracked across the sky. An airplane. The black dot that was Grissel hung motionless for a moment, then shot after it.

  “She’s catching up,” I said.

  “Oh, do hurry!” begged Mrs. Lind.

  “It’s cold up there, you know,” grumbled Lo. “And, unlike the ichthyosaur, I haven’t had any supper. But I suppose I don’t have any choice. I wouldn’t say no to a cup of hot chocolate when I get back, if anybody feels like making one.”

  He disappeared inside. A moment or two later, we saw his face at an upstairs window. Swinging his leg over the sill, he pulled himself up onto the roof.

  Prudence grabbed my arm. “Look!”

  For the first time since I had known him, Lo shrugged off his heavy hooded jacket. He twitched his shoulders. Left. Right. Both together. Then he did something I wasn’t expecting.

  He stretched out his wings.

  SIXTEEN

  BLACK FEATHERS. THERE were always a few of them floating around Wormestall, drifting in corners, rocking in the breeze. I’d sometimes wondered if Lo had been cooking crows. I’d never imagined this.

  “The A word,” I breathed, watching him dive upward into thin air until he was just a period on a page of sky. “That’s what the A stands for! He’s an a—”

  “Amazingly-useful-person-to-have-around-at-a-time-like-this,” said Mrs. Lind. “He’ll bring her back. He has a way with dragons.”

  She was right. They spiraled downward out of space, growing bigger and bigger. Talons scraped on stone as Grissel skidded on the cobbles. A moment later there was a thud and a rude word, and Lo was on the roof. Black wings folded with a whisper of feathers.

  “She’s frothing at the mouth.” Prudence stroked Grissel’s neck. “The chopsticks hurt her. And the poison must taste horrible. Shouldn’t we give her a drink of water?”

  “Never give dragons water,” said Mrs. Lind. “It makes them fizz. She’d prefer ice cream. I don’t like this horrid man holding my hand. Lo, can you set me free?”

  “We’ll have to break him,” said Lo, sliding feetfirst through the upstairs window. “I’ll need tools.”

  A few minutes later he came out of the house, swinging a toolbox.

  “You’re not the only one who’s stuck,” he told Mrs. Lind. “The other man—the big fellow. The kraken’s roped him to the toilet and won’t let go.”

  Mump. I’d forgotten all about him.

  “Oh, poor Mump!” said Prudence. “We should rescue him.”

  “And then what?” inquired Lo. “We can’t just let him go. He’s seen too much. He’ll talk.”

  Prudence shook her head. “Not Mump. He doesn’t really do talking. He won’t say anything if I tell him not to. He’s good at doing what he’s told. And … I need him.” She bit her lip. “I don’t want to live in that house all by myself. It’s full of dead things. Mump’s all I have left.”

  * * *

  Prudence settled Grissel back into her stable while Lo chipped away at Mintzer’s fingers with a chisel. Mortifer was dozing snake-style, with his eyes open. Lo didn’t seem worried about avoiding them. I guessed that getting petrified wasn’t something that happened to his sort.

  It was left to me to call off the kraken, so I headed for the freezer to arm myself with fish sticks. The kraken would do pretty much anything for a fish stick. It was Prudence who had found this out. She didn’t enjoy watching goldfish being nibbled to death any more than I did, so she had gone shopping at Eezy-Freezy Foods on her way to Wormestall one day and done some experimenting.

  Dido was in the kitchen, fussing over her eggs. She tapped each one in turn with her beak, almost as if she was counting them, then cocked her head to one side, listening. A muffled weep-weep-weep came from the dire
ction of the bread bin. There were fragments of eggshell on the floor. Dido stared at them, very hard, then glared at me.

  “All right,” I owned up. “It was me. I stepped on it. But it was hatching anyway. You can have it back now.”

  I lifted the egg out of the bread bin and put it carefully back in the dog bed. Through the hole in the eggshell, the ruby eye fixed on mine and wouldn’t let go.

  “There’s your baby,” I told Dido. “Look after it.” And I hurried away to rescue Mump.

  * * *

  It took six fish sticks to get the kraken back in the bath. Mump slid off the toilet seat, crumpling up in a heap on the floor, with his hands over his face, making little nnghh nnghh moaning sounds. I patted him on the shoulder. I hadn’t forgotten my own first meeting with the kraken.

  “It’s safe now,” I told him. “Come downstairs. Things have been happening while you were … busy. Prudence will explain. But you might want to pull your pants up.”

  * * *

  In the kitchen, Mrs. Lind was giving the Ping Feng piglet its bottle. There was a red circle around her wrist where Mintzer’s stone fingers had squeezed her. Prudence was spooning ice cream into a bucket to give to Grissel, while Lo sprawled on a chair with his feet on the table, eating a banana.

  “Guess what!” said Prudence, when she saw me. “One of Dido’s eggs is hatching. It’s an egg surprise—we don’t know what’s in it!”

  Mrs. Lind tut-tutted over Mump’s pale face and bloodstained bandana.

  “Alicorn,” she said, passing me the piglet and reaching for the first aid box. “For the bleeding. Prue, put some of that ice cream in a bowl for Mr. Mump. It’s the best thing, after a Nasty Experience.”

  Twenty minutes later, Mump had had his face washed, his bandage changed, and a large bowl of ice cream. He sat stroking Next-Door’s Stone Cat and looking much more cheerful.

  “It’s going to be just you and me now,” Prudence told him. “It’ll feel a bit odd to begin with, I expect, but it’s all going to work out fine. We’ll have fun. And ice cream, whenever we want. And if you promise not to say a word, not a word to anybody about Wormestall and what you’ve seen here, then Mrs. Lind will make Smelly Betty better.”