War on Whimsy (13 page)

“They've attacked my preschool with a bubble-bomb!” she cried. “There are twenty children in there! Twenty of the most
adorable
small children! We were reading stories when little Camille noticed this yellow buttercup through the window. Well, she loves flowers! They all do! So naturally, I ran straight out to pick it for her and when I turned around—
kaboom
! Bubbles were everywhere! It was impossible to see a thing! It was so frightening! How could this happen?”

She clung to Tyler's arm.

“I—don't know,” stammered Tyler. He seemed overcome by the woman's beauty and the strange scene in front of them.

Through the haze of smoke, Nicola could see an enormous mass of quivering, frothy, white soap bubbles. It was like a giant bubble bath or a washing machine had overflowed.

“My preschool is under all those bubbles!” babbled the woman. “We have to get the children out before those awful soldiers arrive! That's what the Volcomanian Army does! They drop a bubble-bomb from the air, and while everyone is trapped—confused, blinded, and
sticky
!—they send the soldiers in to capture them! It's pure evil!”

Without even looking at one another, as if they were responding to some unheard order, every member of the Space Brigade ran straight into the mass of bubbles.

Nicola was immediately disoriented. All she could see was white froth. It was like being trapped in the middle of a cloud.

“Where are you, kids?” she shouted, batting helplessly away at the bubbles. Her eyes were stinging, and her mouth was filled with the taste of soap.

“We're all still sitting on the story mat!”

“We can't see anything!”

Nicola turned toward the voices and slipped, painfully banging her knee against something.

“I think the entrance is this way!” Nicola heard Sean's voice in front of her.

Nicola got back up to her feet and followed his voice, up what seemed to be a small step and in through a doorway.

“My clothes are all
bubbly
!” The voice seemed to come from somewhere near Nicola's feet. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled slowly forward, calling out, “Where are you?” Suddenly her hand clutched a small foot.

“That tickles!”

Nicola pushed away the bubbles to reveal a cheekily grinning little girl scooping bubbles out of her hair. “This is a fun game!” she said. “Is it like hide-and-seek?”

“Sort of.” Nicola stood up. “Come with me and I'll take you to your teacher.”

The little girl stood up and grabbed her hand. Slipping and sliding, blindly trying to find her way back to the front door, Nicola managed to drag her out of the mass of bubbles and back into the clearing.

She turned to see the rest of the Space Brigade emerging from the school. Sean had a child sitting happily astride his shoulders, while Shimlara, being the tallest, had managed to scoop up two at once. Apart from being covered in bubbles, so they all looked like miniature snowmen, the children seemed perfectly happy.

“Oh! Oh! My darlings! My sweeties!” The preschool teacher tried to hug them all at once.

There were still voices coming from inside the preschool, so Nicola and the others brushed the bubbles from their eyes and ran straight back in to pull out more children.

This time Nicola found a little boy humming happily to himself in the corner.

“I'm staying here,” he told Nicola. “These bubbles are
beautiful
!”

“No, you're not,” said Nicola firmly, grabbing him by the elbow and pulling him outside.

“How many are still in there?” asked Greta, grunting with relief as she deposited a rather plump child at the teacher's feet.

The teacher looked confused.

“Oh, I'm not sure. Let me see, we're still missing dear little Sebastian, aren't we? Oh, no we're not—here he is! Yes, Sebastian, I'm sure we'll find your violin. Have you glorious people come across Sebastian's violin by any chance?”

“That's not important right now!” Greta was exasperated. “We need to know how many more children we need to save!”

“Yes, yes, of course you do,” said the teacher. “Children are far more important than violins! It's just that I can't seem to count the children! They're like marbles, rolling this way and that.”

Greta sighed and wiped a layer of bubbly froth from her face. “Right!” she cried like an army officer. “All children line up in front of me
now
!” The children jumped and immediately ran to obey her orders.

Greta counted them efficiently. “Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.
Nineteen!
So that means we're still missing one child, right?”

“Yes,” said the teacher. “I definitely have twenty children in my class because that's how many strawberry frosted cupcakes I make on strawberry frosted cupcake day!”

The Space Brigade renewed their efforts—running back into the preschool, slipping and sliding, tearing their fingernails, and grazing their knees as they searched through the bubbles for the last missing child.

After ten minutes, just when Nicola was beginning to feel quite frantic, the teacher suddenly cried, “Oh, I forgot Jerry Sweet!” The Space Brigade went back outside.

“Jerry Sweet!” said the teacher happily. “I always make him an extra strawberry frosted cupcake because he loves them so much, so I let you have two, don't I, Jerry?”

The fat-cheeked little boy whom Greta had saved nodded and licked his lips solemnly.

“So that means I must have nineteen children in my class, not twenty!” said the teacher. “Goodness, what a lot of complex mathematics I'm doing today!”

“So we've definitely got everyone?” double-checked Nicola.

“Yes,” said the teacher. “Yes, you do! You're heroes!”

“What's that?” Tyler lifted his head. Nicola couldn't hear a thing. Tyler seemed to have developed superhuman hearing.

And then she heard a pounding of footsteps coming their way like a great herd of elephants.

“Is it Volcomanian soldiers already?” asked Sean.

The teacher looked terrified. “Oh, quick, quick, we must hide, get back under the bubbles, darlings!”

At that moment, a crowd of people poured into the clearing and the teacher's face broke into a smile.

“It's not soldiers!” she said happily. “It's the parents!”

The parents were half-crazed with fear. They stumbled and tripped and shouted. When they saw their children, they grabbed them in suffocating embraces and repeated their names over and over.

“We expected the worst when we heard the preschool had been hit,” said one of the mothers to the teacher. “But you managed to save them all, you clever girl, Rosie!”

“No, no!” said Rosie. “It wasn't me, it was these wonderful apparitions! It was like magic. I called for help, and they appeared with a puff of smoke and a sprinkle of stardust! They set to work, rescuing the children with the use of their superpowers! Look at them, aren't they lovely! Someone must paint their portraits and sculpt their statues!”

The Space Brigade squirmed with embarrassment as the parents dropped their children and ran to hug them.

“We are forever in your debt!”

“How shall we ever repay you?”

“Shouldn't we get out of here?” asked Tyler. “Won't the Volcomanian soldiers be here soon?”

“See how
intelligent
they are!” beamed Rosie.

“We shall take you to our village and give you a feast in your honor!” cried the parents.

“Oh, that's really not nec—” began Nicola, but the children had already grabbed them with their sticky hands and were dragging them away from the bubble-covered preschool and down a pathway that led out of the forest.

“What magical planet are you from?” asked one of the parents.

Nicola decided it would be best if they stayed undercover. Although these people were clearly not Volcomanians, she had learned from her experiences on the Planet of Shobble that you could never be too careful.

“We're journalists from Earth,” she said. “We're reporting on the war.We don't have any magical powers at all and we're definitely not superheroes—we were just happy to help.”

The parents refused to believe that magic wasn't involved in some way.

“It was magic that put you in the right place at the right time,” they agreed.

“Just good luck,” said Sean.

“Exactly,” said one of the fathers with dark hair, a pale face, and soulful eyes. “Luck. Magic. Same thing. I once tried to write a poem on exactly that topic. It didn't really come together. I must try again.” He wandered off, pulling a small notepad from his pocket and a pencil from behind his ear.

One of the mothers was looking at Shimlara. “You're not from the planet Earth, are you, my dear? You're far too tall. Actually, there's something familiar about your lovely young face.”

“I'm from Globagaskar,” said Shimlara.

“Ah.” The mother frowned. Then her face cleared. “You must be Georgio and Mully Gorgioskio's daughter! You're an exact mix of the two of them. Georgio's nose. Mully's mouth.” The woman looked around excitedly. “Are your delightful parents here, too?”

“Ah, no, they're not,” said Shimlara. “Well, we think they could be here on Whimsy, but, um—”

She glanced at Nicola, obviously not sure how much she should say.

“How do you know Georgio and Mully?” Nicola asked the mother.

“They visited Whimsy the day after Volcomania declared war on us,” said the woman. “They were
so
charming! They gave us a list of things we should do to try and prevent the war. You see, my husband is Henry Sweet—he's the new president of Whimsy, although it does keep slipping his mind. Where is Henry?”

“Right behind you, my love!” A man wearing a beret, with spatters of paint across his face, was walking behind them, carrying the little plump boy who liked cupcakes on his hip. Nicola recognized the man from the pictures that XYZ40 had shown them at the intelligence briefing.

“This is Georgio and Mully's daughter,” said the woman.

Henry nearly dropped his son as he bowed deeply.

“There are no words that can express my gratitude for the gift of my son's life. It plunges deeper than the ocean, it soars higher than an eagle.”

“Ah, that's okay,” said Shimlara. “Um, your wife was saying that my parents were here?”

“Indeed they were. They could only stay for a day. They had to get back to Globagaskar. They said they had a small son who was being babysat by his grandma and a daughter who was away on the Planet of Shobble.” He looked at Shimlara and Nicola, and said, “Well, you must be the Space Brigade!”

Their cover was blown.

“Georgio told us the whole story of how the Space Brigade was formed. He's very proud of you.” He looked confused. “So you're also journalists? As well as undertaking daring missions around the galaxy? Goodness, you're busy.”

Nicola decided she might as well be honest. “We're not really journalists. That's just our cover story for the Volcomanians. We're really here to try and find Georgio, Mully, and their little boy, Squid. After they returned to Globagaskar, we believe they were kidnapped by the Volcomanian government and brought back here to Whimsy. We think they're being held in a prison camp.”

Henry's face went pale beneath the splatters of paint.

“They were imprisoned for trying to help us,” he said. “That's terrible.”

“Yes,” said his wife. Her face crumpled. “And to think that you
lost
their list of suggestions for preventing the war!”

“I did! I thought I put it in my pocket and it disappeared!” Henry gave an anguished cry. “And now their daughter has saved our son!”

“Well, actually, I think it was
me
that pulled out your kid,” pointed out Greta.

Henry wasn't listening. He had curled his hand into a fist and was beating it against his chest. “Those poor, kind people! Imprisoned for helping us!”

It's true
, thought Nicola,
the people of Whimsy are quite incredibly impractical
.

The children were now leading them to the edge of the forest. Nicola could see the shore of the lake and thatched rooftops in the distance. Their village must be close.

“Well,” she said. “Maybe you could help us
find
the prison camp where Georgio and Mully are being held. It's in the northeast of your planet at the bottom of a mountain and it has a name beginning with something like
Grid
.”

“That would be Griddlemill,” said Henry's wife. “The Volcomanians have a prison camp there? But that's terrible! That's where Henry proposed to me! They have the most beautiful roses you have ever seen in Griddlemill. The scent is so exquisite, I once composed an opera about it. Let me sing a little for you.” She threw back her head and a sound like a nightingale burst forth. “Tra la la la!”

She stopped singing abruptly. “And if you suffer from insomnia, simply crush a few Griddlemill rose petals into your tea and you'll sleep past noon. Lovely taste, too!”

“I'll remember that.” Nicola tried not to let her impatience show. The children had now led them out of the forest, through the archway of a moss-covered wall, and onto a cobblestone street. “But perhaps you could take us there? Or at least give us directions? To Griddlemill?”

“Of course,” said Henry. “But first we must feast!” He lifted his arms flamboyantly. “For we are home! Welcome to our village, Space Brigade!”