Playschool Read online

  ‘I don’t know where she keeps it.’

  ‘Well, go out and get sunburnt again.’

  ‘But sunshine is banished here. You know that,’ whimpered The Toad. ‘When I got burnt before, it was that afternoon when He Who Must Not Be Talked About took away the clouds.’

  ‘He Who Must Not Be Talked About?’ said Orkward. ‘Who the hell’s He Who Must Not Be Talked About?’

  ‘I don’t know, no one ever talks about him.’

  ‘I think you just made him up,’ said Orkward, furious that he had never heard of someone so evil even his name couldn’t be spoken, and so clever he could steal all the clouds. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘That’s because no one ever talks about him,’ The Toad tried to explain.

  ‘You just did,’ said Orkward. ‘Oh well, we’ll just have to improvise. Where’s my massively powerful flame gun?’

  ‘Wh-wh-what do you want it for?’ asked The Toad, thinking it might be a good time to find a cold wet stone to crawl under.

  ‘Well, if the sun won’t burn you, I’ll have to.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ said The Toad.

  ‘Don’t be such a baby, it won’t hurt.’

  ‘Yes it will.’

  ‘Oh yes, so it will,’ said Orkward. ‘But it won’t hurt me.’

  There was a big flash, a loud scream of pain and a rather pleasant smell of braised toad.

  As he carried the whimpering creature to sick bay, Orkward whispered, ‘Now listen, you little slimeball. Matron will ask you how this happened and when she finds out it was me, she’ll come looking for me. That’s when you grab the polish and take it to our secret place, where I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘But …’ The Toad began.

  ‘Fail and I’ll kill you,’ said Orkward, dropping The Toad at the sick bay door and backing away. ‘Succeed and you’ll get a big reward.’

  ‘Reward? Wow, what reward?’

  ‘I won’t kill you.’

  Lesson: Genetic Engineering

  Teacher: Doctor Mordant

  Doctor Mordant stood in front of the class while his students settled into their seats. Genetic engineering was one of the most popular classes at Quicklime’s, not just because the idea of creating new and exciting lifeforms was a lot more fun than French or History, but also because of Doctor Mordant himself. Doctor Mordant was so devoted to his subject that he constantly practised his skill on his own body. He currently had three arms, two heads and a chicken’s foot, though, as everyone knew, this could change at a moment’s notice.

  For example, this Tuesday there was something beginning to grow out of one of his heads that could only be described as broccoli.

  ‘Right, class, homework,’ said Doctor Mordant’s left head. ‘How did you all get on? Did you produce something?’

  Most of the children nodded and held up their hands to be first to show their results.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Doctor Mordant’s right head. ‘Let us re-cap. The exercise was to take a small mammal and a piece of soft fruit, combine their genes and create a new and cuddly yet delicious lifeform.’

  ‘You, Smeak Junior, what have you got to show us?’ Doctor Mordant’s left head asked.

  ‘Well,’ said young Smeak, placing what looked like a bowl of mangoes on the laboratory bench, ‘I crossed a kitten and a mango. I call them Mittens.’

  ‘But they look just like mangoes,’ said Doctor Mordant. ‘I see no evidence of kitten at all.’

  ‘Try and eat one, sir,’ said Smeak.

  Doctor Mordant picked up a Mitten and held it to his nose.

  ‘Smells wonderful,’ he said. ‘Exactly like a mango at the perfect point of ripeness.’

  ‘Take a bite, sir.’

  As Doctor Mordant opened his left mouth, there was a violent flash. The Mitten appeared to turn itself inside out and attacked Doctor Mordant’s nose with a flurry of flying claws that sent splashes of blood everywhere. As soon as the doctor dropped the creature, it reverted back into an innocent-looking piece of fruit.

  ‘Just think of the market potential,’ said Smeak, as the poor doctor dabbed at his bleeding face. ‘Slip one in a bowl of fruit at a party or a business meeting – absolute chaos.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Doctor Mordant, who had no problem with a bit of pain and blood-letting in the pursuit of science. ‘Ten out of ten and a silver star.’

  The whole class cheered.

  ‘Who wants to go next?’

  Everyone looked at everyone else. Smeak Junior’s Mitten had been brilliant and no one wanted to follow it.

  ‘Come on,’ said Doctor Mordant. ‘Letitia, what about you?’

  ‘Well, I’ve only got a photo. I had a bit of a problem,’ the girl replied.

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘Okay, I couldn’t find a mammal and Mum wouldn’t let me use the dog after what happened when I crossed the budgie with a crocodile last week.15 So I had to use a snake and I crossed it with a tomato.’

  ‘Well, that sounds promising,’ said Doctor Mordant. ‘We weren’t going to use reptiles until next term, but never mind. So what went wrong?’

  ‘I called it a Tomython,’ said Letitia. ‘And it looked brilliant, two metres long and bright red.’

  ‘So where is it?’

  ‘Well, that’s the problem,’ Letitia explained. ‘It looked so brilliant and delicious that every time it caught sight of its own tail, it ate itself.’

  The whole class burst out laughing.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ said Letitia. ‘I had seven goes and it did the same thing each time.’

  ‘And then what happened?’ said Doctor Mordant.

  ‘I ran out of tomatoes.’

  ‘Winchflat, I’m sure you have something wonderful to show us,’ said Doctor Mordant.

  Winchflat Flood was not only head boy, but he was the school genius. He was one of those children who seem to be brilliant at everything. But Winchflat was different from most really clever kids who come top all the time, in that he was pretty cool and all the other kids liked him. Except Orkward Warlock, of course. Of all the Floods, Winchflat was the one Orkward hated most.

  ‘As you know, I’ve been trying to clone Clarissa, the dodo I managed to hatch out of a three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old egg,’ Winchflat began. ‘Well, last weekend I cracked it. I put fifty dodos aside to send back to Mauritius, where they came from, and I had a few spares.16 So I crossed one of them with a cabbage.’

  He reached into a big sack and lifted out his creation – the Dabbage. It was even uglier and more ungainly than a dodo. It had two short fat legs and a big lumpy beak, but instead of feathers it had green cabbage leaves. The creature hopped down from Winchflat’s desk, waddled across the room and fell over.

  ‘That’s useless,’ sneered Orkward Warlock.

  Winchflat just smiled.

  ‘And what did you make, Orkward?’ Doctor Mordant asked.

  ‘Umm, well …’ Orkward began.

  ‘Bring it out here, boy,’ said Doctor Mordant.

  Orkward put a matchbox on the teacher’s desk. Doctor Mordant peered inside.

  ‘A baked bean? You made a baked bean?’

  ‘No,’ said Orkward. ‘I crossed a baked bean with a flea.’

  Before Doctor Mordant could ask him why, the baked bean leapt out of the matchbox and began hopping around the room. The class erupted as everyone tried to catch Orkward’s Flean. The Mittens and several other creations popped out of their fruity forms and scrambled out of the way, but some were trampled underfoot. The Parrotato flew out of the window through the narrow bars and landed on the grass as a pile of chips with feathers, and the Bunion17 crawled up Doctor Mordant’s trouser leg.

  In the midst of the chaos the Dabbage plodded quietly around the room eating all the squashed experiments. It all ended when the great creature opened its beak and the Flean hopped right down its throat. The Dabbage let out a dreadful green belch, which made everyone’s eyes water. It then jumped on top of the
smallest child in the room, Howard Tiny, and tried to hatch him out.

  ‘Calm down, class,’ said Doctor Mordant, turning towards the blackboard. ‘Let’s move on. This week’s homework is to take a herring and an accountant and swap their brains over.’

  ‘Why?’ said Orkward.

  ‘Good question, er, er …’

  ‘Orkward Warlock,’ said Orkward.

  ‘Yes, Orlock Warkward,’ said Doctor Mordant. ‘The point of the experiment is to release our modified fish and accountants back into the wild and see if anyone can tell the difference.’18

  ‘And of course,’ he continued, ‘I trust you are all working on your creatures for sports day. Last year we produced the Centithlete, a creature with one hundred legs that could outrun the fastest sprinter. Let’s see if we can do better this year.’

  ‘I have one,’ said Orkward.

  ‘Really, um, er, Orkflit. Do tell.’

  ‘A Tyrunningosaurus,’ said Orkward. ‘Not only will it run faster than everyone else, but it will eat them all as well.’

  ‘You haven’t actually made one, have you?’ asked Doctor Mordant nervously.

  ‘No, sir. It’s just an idea.’

  ‘Well, I think maybe it’s a bit too violent,’ said Doctor Mordant.

  ‘I have another one, sir,’ said Orkward. ‘You take all the sand out of the short jump pit and fill it with piranhas.’

  ‘Yes, er, thank you, Orwhat.’

  Doctor Mordant and Winchflat carried the Dabbage down to the front office and duplicated it on the Special 3D Photocopier that Winchflat had recently invented to clone his pet dodo Clarissa, before releasing the two of them on the edge of the dark forest. There, they evolved into the Giant Green Patagonian Condor that we all know and fear today. Because Winchflat had the only surviving creature in Genetic Engineering that week, he got ten out of ten and a gold star.

  Back in his room, Orkward thought about He Who Must Not Be Talked About while he waited for The Toad to be treated in sick bay. Maybe his daydreams were true. Maybe He Who Must Not Be Talked About was the great wizard on the white dragon – his father.

  ‘You are, like, so pathetic,’ said The Mirror, which could read Orkward’s mind.

  ‘I’ll smash you into a million pieces, you recycled milk bottle,’ Orkward snarled between gritted teeth.

  ‘No you won’t,’ said The Mirror.

  ‘Give me one good reason why not,’ said Orkward.

  ‘One? I can give you three.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Three, you little loser,’ said The Mirror. ‘One: I am seriously powerful and magic and, like, totally unbreakable. Two: you are a pathetic coward and wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Why are you always so awful to me?’ asked Orkward.

  ‘Well, there are three reasons. One: you totally deserve it. Two: it’s my job. And –’

  ‘What’s the third reason?’

  ‘If you hadn’t interrupted me, I was just about to say,’ said The Mirror. ‘Three: because I enjoy it.’

  ‘No, no, no. What’s the third reason why I won’t smash you into a million pieces?’

  ‘Ahh, that one. Well, the third reason is that I know who He Who Must Not Be Talked About is.’

  ‘Who? Who? Tell me. Tell me!’ shouted Orkward.

  ‘Maybe I will and maybe I, like, won’t,’ said The Mirror.

  ‘Tell me NOW or I’ll smash you into a million pieces!’ screamed Orkward.

  ‘Oh man, we have totally been through that already. You can’t smash me into pieces, remember?’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Orkward and, gritting his teeth and crossing his fingers behind his back so it wouldn’t count, he added, ‘please.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said The Mirror. ‘Nice. I didn’t know you could do nice, even if you have got your fingers crossed behind your back and don’t really mean it. Still, it’s a start.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me?’

  ‘Probably, but you have to do something for me.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Orkward. ‘What?’

  ‘Clean me and hang me back up on the wall so I can see out of the window again.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘You have to do it before I tell you, because I think you’re going to be, like, totally disappointed,’ said The Mirror.

  Orkward dragged The Mirror out from under the bed, hung it back on the wall and began to dust it with a square of frayed black velvet – the security blanket he had wrapped round his thumb when he went to sleep for as long as he could remember.

  ‘You’ve missed a bit,’ The Mirror said seventeen times before finally adding, ‘Cool, now I can see right over the rooftops and into the totally dark forest.’

  ‘Okay, who is He Who Must Not Be Talked About?’

  ‘The chairman of the school governors, Councillor P.J. Plausible,’ said The Mirror.

  ‘What a ridiculously implausible name,’ said Orkward. ‘So why is he called He Who Must Not Be Talked About?’

  ‘I don’t know. No one will talk about it. I do know he took the clouds away for an afternoon as a punishment because he said the school was going soft.’

  ‘Now I’m really depressed,’ said Orkward. ‘I’ll have to go and hurt something.’

  ‘I know something else,’ said The Mirror, ‘but it will cost you more than you can afford.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He Who Must Not Be Talked About is not your father, but I know who is.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Orkward.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said The Mirror, staring out of the window at the Giant Green Patagonian Condors circling over the forest.

  ‘You don’t really know, do you?’

  ‘Oh yes, I, like, totally do,’ said The Mirror.

  ‘Tell me … please.’

  ‘Absolutely, no problem,’ said The Mirror. ‘Just pay my price and I’ll tell you straight away.’

  ‘What’s your price?’ Orkward asked with a dreadful sense of foreboding.

  ‘It’s no big deal. You just have to, like, get me something from Narled’s treasure trove.’

  ‘But no one knows where it is,’ said Orkward.

  ‘Someone does.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Narled.’

  ‘Yes, but, I mean, oh God,’ said Orkward, slumping down in his chair and putting his head in his hands in total despair. He desperately wanted to know who his father was, but hundreds of people had tried to find Narled’s treasure trove, and no one had succeeded. There were rumours, of course, and two students had actually disappeared while searching for it. Another had tried to follow Narled into the dark forest and come back as a sad electronics salesman forever lost in a never-ending quest for a larger plasma television than anyone else had ever seen. Someone had even come back Belgian.

  ‘But what do you want it for?’ he added. ‘You’re a mirror.’

  ‘How many other talking mirrors have you, like, met?’ The Mirror asked.

  ‘Well, erm, none actually.’

  ‘Exactly. I might totally look like a mirror. I might even, like, totally be a mirror, but I used to be a man.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah man, really,’ said The Mirror. ‘I used to be this really cool handsome rich dude.’

  ‘So what happened?’ said Orkward.

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual story. Some wizard dude fancied my girlfriend but she was, like, totally in love with me and wouldn’t have anything to do with him. So he turned me into a mirror. Actually he turned me into a lobster but agreed to change me into a mirror if my girlfriend said she would marry him.’

  ‘Why a mirror?’

  ‘Well, the wizard dude threatened to cook me in a rather nice parsley sauce and my girlfriend said she would be his if he would spare me, and the wizard dude said okay, he would change me into a mirror so he could admire his reflection in me every day.’

  ‘So how did you end up here?’

  ‘Long story, way too complicated,’ said The Mirror.
‘But there was a lot of blood and tons of celery involved. I don’t want to talk about it, man.’

  ‘I still don’t see how Narled’s treasure will help you,’ said Orkward.

  ‘The wizard dude thought my girlfriend would eventually fall in love with him, but when she didn’t he turned her into a china doll. One day he put her down on the grass for a moment and the next moment, Narled had picked her up and taken her away. And, like, the thing is, if we are put together again, we will totally change back into our real selves.’

  ‘Oh, wonderful,’ sneered Orkward. ‘The love story of the century – a nasty mirror and a china dolly. Hooray.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said The Mirror.

  ‘No, no, I’m sorry,’ Orkward lied. ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘This is, like, such a totally pointless exercise,’ said The Mirror. ‘You couldn’t find your way out of a paper bag, never mind track down Narled’s legendary treasure trove.’

  ‘Yes I can,’ said Orkward. ‘I’ll come up with a plan.’

  The Toad lay face-down on a bed in sick bay while Matron rubbed her legendary linseed oil and beeswax into his burnt back. Although Matron looked remarkably like a small concrete shed, she had a heart of gold and the children at Quicklime’s adored her. She had two assistants, Nurse Romeo and Nurse Juliet, who were two large black crows that could sew skin together with stitches so delicate they were impossible for the human eye to see. Because of the physical, hands-on nature of a lot of the classes and some of the unusual sports at Quicklime’s, this was something they did every day. They were also expert at taking people’s temperatures with the thermometer in places that could make your eyes water.

  ‘How did this happen, dear?’ Matron asked. She had a soft spot for The Toad, having patched him up so often.

  ‘I’d rather not say, Matron,’ said The Toad. As the wonderful Enchanted Wax soaked into his skin, the pain slowly faded until the poor toad felt himself floating away in a cloud of turpentine.

  ‘Were you playing with matches again?’

  ‘No, Matron.’

  ‘You weren’t up to your old firework-making tricks again, were you?’