The Extincts Read online

  “Bring her to see me tomorrow,” said Mrs. Lind. “We’ll have a Grand Depetrifaction Day.”

  * * *

  It was late. Mum was going to be cross. Prudence didn’t have anyone left to be cross with her. That was a good thing, obviously—and certainly better than being locked in a cage—but I thought it might feel a bit lonely.

  “If you want,” I told her, “you can sleep over at my house. Mum won’t mind. We’ll tell her Diamond’s … had an accident. Then she can’t say no.”

  We didn’t want to leave until the Whatever-It-Was had come out of its egg, but Mrs. Lind said that might take ages.

  “A big egg like that has a tough shell,” she explained. “It’s hard work, chipping your way out. Dido will help. She’s had plenty of practice. She hatched out Donald and Jemima, you know, as well as all those archaeopteryx. Come back tomorrow. It’s been a long day.”

  So Prudence and I set off on our bikes, leaving Mump to eat another bowl of ice cream before driving home in the van.

  * * *

  “Death to the Wyrm. Kill the Wyrm. Kill! Death! Kill!”

  Prudence and I heard it at the same time, and braked. We could see the light from the blazing torches, flickering between the trees.

  I had forgotten all about the Great Wyrm Hunt. They must have been searching the woods, and not found anything. Now they came spilling out onto the lane, still shouting and waving their weapons. They wanted blood. And they were much, much too close to Wormestall.

  “Death to the Wyrm,” shouted the man in front. It was Spike Hardman, their leader. “You two shouldn’t be out on your own. It’s not safe. Don’t you know there’s a dangerous Wyrm about?”

  “Not around here,” I said. “Haven’t you heard? It’s been seen.”

  “Where?” demanded Spike.

  “Kill it! Kill it!” growled the mob behind him.

  “That way.” I pointed down a path that would take them in the opposite direction from Wormestall. There was a sign: LOWER DOWNTON THIS WAY. It would take them a while, there and back. “Somebody definitely saw it in Lower Downton very recently. It’s still there. You had better hurry, or you’ll miss it.”

  “Death to the Wyrm!” shouted Spike, raising his pitchfork above his head.

  “Kill it! Kill it!” shouted his loyal followers, and they went pouring down the lane to Lower Downton.

  “That got rid of them,” I said with relief.

  “Yes, for now,” said Prudence. “But they’ll be back when they don’t find anything in Lower Downton. They’ll keep coming back, and sooner or later they’ll get as far as Wormestall. And then what?”

  Mrs. Lind was right: it had been a long day. I wanted to be at home, in my pajamas on the sofa, having the usual arguments with Frank about who would watch what on TV.

  “We’ll think of something,” I told Prudence. I hoped I was right.

  * * *

  We coasted down High Holly Hill on our bikes. Prudence’s house was in darkness. I shivered as we passed it, remembering the Stuffing Room and wondering what would have happened if Lo hadn’t come to our rescue.

  We took the shortcut through the bus station, past the recycling bins and the public bathrooms.

  Just outside the ladies’, Prudence stopped.

  “Can’t you wait?” I complained. “We’re nearly home. Anyway, look.” I pointed at the sign: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

  “I didn’t stop for that,” said Prue. “I know they’re shut. So why’s there somebody in there? Listen!”

  “Kill the Wyrm. Kill the Wyrm. Death to the Wyrm. Death to the Wyrm.”

  “It’s a Wyrm Hunter,” I said. “They must have gotten left behind.” But there was something not quite right. This wasn’t the bloodthirsty chant of the mob.

  When I was very little, my gran used to sing me nursery rhymes.

  “I know that tune. It’s ‘Three Blind Mice,’” I said, surprised. “Hey, what are you doing?”

  Prudence had scrambled up on top of the recycling bins. “That’s not a Wyrm Hunter! I’m going to see.”

  The window was high and narrow, and only open a crack. Prudence reached an arm through the gap and felt for the catch, then slipped through. “Aren’t you coming?”

  Reluctantly, I followed.

  Prudence was balanced on a sink. She put her finger to her lips. “Listen.”

  The tune had changed to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Whoever it was, they only knew the words to the first two lines.

  “Bluh-bluh, bluh-bluh, bluh-bluh-bluh.”

  Prue slid down from the washbasin. I was doing the same when my foot hit the hot tap. Water gushed and gurgled. The bluh-bluhs stopped.

  “Is that my mum?” The voice came from one of the cubicles. “Because I’d like to go home now.”

  Prudence met my eyes, then knocked on the cubicle door.

  “Hello—are you all right?”

  “No,” said the voice. It sounded sniffy, as if its owner might start to cry. “I’ve eaten all the candy and the cookies and I’ve finished the soda and my tummy hurts and I’m all wrong.”

  “Why don’t you open the door?” suggested Prudence.

  There was a lot of rustling, then somebody fumbled with the lock and the door swung open. Standing in a sea of candy wrappers was a little girl with a round face and a runny nose, holding a floppy yellow elephant. There was a ton of graffiti on the walls, mostly scribbled by schoolkids. Ryan4Amy, Katie-loves-Ben sort of stuff. Some of it must have been there for years—and some of it, in big red crayon letters, looked very new.

  “Hey, have you been drawing on the walls?” I asked the little girl sternly.

  The letters were all different sizes, with the capitals in all the wrong places:

  L iLy 4 sA ntA

  L iLy LUV s cHok LiT

  “Is your name Lily Lamprey, by any chance?” asked Prudence thoughtfully.

  Lily nodded. “And I don’t love chocolate anymore. It just pretends to be nice. Then it gives you a tummy ouch.”

  “How much did you eat?” I looked at the candy wrappers all around her. “How long have you been in here?”

  “Ages. Since I ran away. You have to take stuff when you run away. I know that. I’m not stupid. So I took lots to eat, and my crayons, and Yellow Elly.”

  “What did you want to run away for?”

  Lily gave a long, wet, bubbly sniff. “They were mean to me.”

  Prudence handed her some toilet paper for her nose. “I know what it feels like when people are unkind to you. What did they do to you, Lily?”

  “They wouldn’t buy me a Princess PrettyPants Party Palace,” complained Lily, and blew a big hole in the toilet paper. “They said I had to wait till my birthday. And that’s not for ages.”

  “Is that all?” I stared at her. “I thought it was going to be something bad—like they gave your puppy away, or fed you slugs or something. Do you realize the whole town’s been out looking for you? An innocent creature was nearly cut into a thousand pieces—all because of you!”

  “I was going back,” said Lily, looking sulky. “The candy was all gone and I’d eaten all the cookies. Even the ginger ones, and I don’t like them. And I was bored of coloring, and Yellow Elly’s not much fun. I wanted to go home, but the door to the outside was stuck.”

  “How did you get in to begin with?” asked Prudence.

  Lily shrugged. “There was a lady cleaning. She wasn’t looking. And she was listening to music, so she didn’t hear me. I hid in here and shut the door and sat on my feet so she couldn’t see. Then she went away.”

  “Well, if you ask me, you’re very silly and you deserve to be locked in.” I was tired and hungry, and not in the mood for whiny little kids. “It would serve you right if we left you here.”

  “We can’t,” said Prudence. She looked at me. “Don’t you see? As soon as people find out Lily’s safe, the Wyrm Hunt will be called off. We have to get her home as soon as possible.”

  “Goo
d luck getting her through that window,” I said, “after all that chocolate!”

  * * *

  We did get Lily through the window, although we had to squash her a bit and she squealed louder than both ends of a Ping Feng put together.

  “You can shut up now,” said Prudence, helping her down from the recycling bins. “We’re going to take you home. Where do you live?”

  “Number one four,” said Lily. “With a red door.” But she didn’t know which road, so that didn’t help much.

  “They put her address in the newspaper,” I remembered. “It’ll be in here somewhere.” I began pulling papers out of the recycling bins.

  It didn’t take long to find it. Lily stopped crying when she saw her photo in the paper.

  “I’m a silly-ebrity!” she said importantly.

  “Don’t get bigheaded,” I told her. “Lots of people get their pictures in the newspapers. You live on Blackberry Terrace. I know where that is—it’s not far.”

  * * *

  Lily’s grandmother was the only person at home. Everyone else was on the Wyrm Hunt.

  “Our little princess!” she said, hugging Lily over and over again.

  “If you squeeze me like that,” said her little princess, “I’m going to be sick.”

  Telephone calls were made, and the Wyrm Hunt was called off.

  “You can’t leave until they get here,” Lily’s grandmother told us. “Everybody wants to say thank you.” She made us cheese on toast while we waited, so it could have been worse.

  When the Hunters got back, they all wanted to kiss and hug Lily, and then they all wanted to kiss and hug us. It can be very hard work being thanked. After a while, you wish people would stop.

  Lily’s dad said we deserved a reward. He took a wad of cash out of his wallet and started peeling off bills.

  “We can never repay you for finding our princess,” he told us. “But here’s a token of our appreciation.”

  I had never held so much money before. I said thank you very much, and hoped that Lily would never tell him I’d threatened to leave her locked in.

  The police arrived and wanted to ask us questions, then a man from the newspaper arrived and took pictures of us and asked more questions. We must have been yawning a lot by then, because somebody said, “They’re dead tired, those two. It’s time somebody took them home.”

  It was the washing machine repairman, who turned out to be Lily’s uncle. Since he knew where I lived, he said he’d take us in his van.

  “How’s your lovely mum?” he asked me as he drove us home. He’s been to our house so many times he knows us quite well.

  “Washing machine’s broken again,” I told him.

  “Not surprised,” he said. “It belongs in a museum, that thing. Time she got a new one. I’ve got a nice one in the back of the van she could have. Nearly new—hardly been used. Seeing as it’s your mum, I could let her have it for a hundred.”

  “I don’t think she has that much money.” Then my head filled up with a thought. “But … I do.”

  The repairman raised his eyebrows. “Your reward money? Are you sure?”

  Was I sure? I thought of all the things I could spend it on. Then I thought of Mum standing on one leg in our flooded kitchen, looking tired and sad and Dad-less. I didn’t need the money. I had my Wormestall wages. And I’d gotten my bike back, so the Emergency Bike Fund didn’t matter anymore.

  “Yes,” I said, before I could change my mind. “Yes, I’m sure.” I didn’t really deserve that money anyway. It was Prudence who had found Lily.

  “Tell you what,” said the repairman. “I’ll knock twenty off the price. Call it eighty. And I’ll install it for free. I can do it tomorrow, if you like.”

  “Tomorrow would be perfect,” I said. I had just remembered Mum’s birthday.

  * * *

  Mum was furious when we got home.

  “Look at the time! I’ve been worried sick! I called Prue’s house hours ago to see if you were there!”

  So that was the phone call Mump took. The one that gave Lo time to get Mortifer into the van.

  “I thought you’d been eaten by that terrible Wyrm!” Mum sounded as if she really minded, which was nice.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “There’s no such thing as the Squermington Wyrm. Haven’t you heard?”

  Then the repairman told her about us finding Lily, and after that she had to stop being angry. Frank didn’t believe us.

  “Nonsense,” she said. “You’re making it up.”

  But Harry turned on the local news and there were our pictures on TV. We were celebrities. Mum, Harry, and Frank sat in a row on the sofa and stared, their mouths hanging open.

  “I’ll be off, then.” The repairman gave me a wink as he was leaving, and mouthed the word “tomorrow.”

  When the news was over, Mum told Prudence she looked just like her mum.

  “Same hair,” she said. “And the same eyebrows.”

  “I know.” Prudence sighed. “They meet in the middle when I frown. At school, they say I’m a werewolf.”

  “It would be good if you were,” I said. “You could eat Miss Thripps. Mum, can Prudence sleep over? Her stepmother’s … not very well.”

  “I don’t see why not,” agreed Mum. “I’ll have to call the house, just to make sure.”

  We heard her explaining everything over the phone.

  “That’s all sorted out,” she told us, when she had said good-bye. “I talked to a very nice man. He didn’t say much. Just nngghh.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Mum had a birthday breakfast. It was exactly the same as every-other-day breakfast, except that we took it up to her in bed, along with her presents. Prudence had rushed out with her reward money and bought all the nutty whirls in the Candy Shop. Mum loves nutty whirls. Mrs. Filling had been so surprised, she had even let Prudence take the big glass jar to bring them home in.

  Harry’s present was a pair of dangly earrings and bubble bath in a bottle shaped like a mermaid.

  “To make up for the one in the window,” she explained. “I know you miss it.”

  Frank gave her a very small pot with a carnivorous plant in it.

  “It eats meat,” Frank explained. “Isn’t it sweet? When it grows up, we can teach it to eat flies.” She helped herself to nutty whirls. “It’ll be useful. Where’s your present, George? I bet you don’t have one. You forgot. You’re hopeless.”

  “I didn’t forget, actually. It’s coming by special delivery,” I said grandly. “You’ll see.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Frank, but she couldn’t be too rude because her ankle still hurt and she needed me to take care of Sir Crispin. (I didn’t tell her he had been turned into stone. She thought he was safely at home. Why spoil her day?)

  Mum was in the bath when the repairman arrived with the washing machine. Frank’s face was worth every cent of the money I paid him. The washing machine was too big to wrap up, so we tied a bright red ribbon around it and used up a whole bottle of Harry’s nail polish writing HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MUM!

  When Mum came downstairs, she sat down at the kitchen table and stared at it.

  “Oh, George,” she said. “Oh, George.” Then she started to cry.

  Which almost made me wish I’d just given her a chocolate bar, like last year.

  “Prue and I have to go,” I said hurriedly. It was true. I needed Sir Crispin depetrified before Mrs. Poker-Peagrim came home.

  And I wanted to see what had come out of that egg.

  SEVENTEEN

  BIG NIGEL WHICKERED when he saw Prudence, and came trotting up to the gate. He had company in his field today.

  “It’s the Vietnamese potbellied pig!” I said as it oinked and grunted and butted the fence with its bristly snout. “It’s been depetrified!”

  It wasn’t the only one.

  The stable yard was full of life and noise—and animals. Dogs of all shapes and sizes were wagging their tails and barking their heads o
ff. Cats of every color were licking green slime out of their fur up in the branches of the tree, or on the stable roof, out of reach of the dogs. A family of guinea pigs was shrieking wink-wink-wink from inside a wooden crate, and an African gray parrot had taken over one of Mrs. Lind’s hanging baskets, stamping his feet and squawking, “Give us a kiss! Give us a kiss!” over and over again.

  Something small and fat with a curly tail came waddling through the throng. It was Sir Crispin. He seemed pleased to see me, which was generous of him, considering it was sort of my fault that he had been turned into stone and used as a blunt instrument. I looked anxiously at his ear, but you could hardly tell where Mump’s skull had chipped him.

  Something else brushed against my leg. Next-Door’s Cat. He purred when I stroked him, before spitting at a yappy little Yorkshire terrier and leaping onto the roof of a familiar black van. Mump was sitting on the doorstep, eating a slice of cake.

  “Nnngghh! Cake!” he said, waving at us.

  “Hello!” said Mrs. Lind, poking her head around a stable door. She was wearing an apron and had green smudges on her cheeks and on the tip of her nose. “We’re a bit overcrowded today. It seemed like a good idea to use the ointment before the smell got any worse. It’s already put the ouroboros right off his porridge.”

  “Where’s Mortifer?” asked Prudence. We were wearing our sunglasses, just in case.

  “In his stable,” said Mrs. Lind. “Sleeping off his adventures and quite a lot of curry. He was looking a bit thin, so Lo made a trip to The Star of India and ordered all his favorites. He’s eaten a korma, a madras, a vindaloo, five helpings of peas pilau, sixteen onion bhajis, and twenty-three poppadoms. The longer he stays asleep, the better. We can’t let him out until we’ve gotten rid of all these.” She waved a hand at the pack of animals. “Some of the cats have already left. Cats always know where they’re going. Lo will make sure the rest get home safely. It’s best if he does it after dark. We don’t want any awkward questions.”