Indeed they did notice her. It was the last day
of school and though most of the kids had left for home a half hour before
there were still a dozen inside the school building waiting for a bus to take
them to a neighboring village. One of them chanced to look out a window and
shouted and all the rest turned to see why and started shouting too.
“A baby with wings! Up in the tree! Up in the
tree!”
“Ah,”
said Miss Stress on the Penultimate Syllable, an aging language teacher, “she
must be from a circus. There are entertainers in town.”
And everyone rushed out to see the winged baby.
Miss Stress sent a boy named Louis who was
always by the teacher’s side, no matter which teacher it was, to find the headmaster.
Mr. Trickster
had left his office in search of some black insulating tape. He thought
Mr. Lamebear, who taught technology, might have some.
“Bear,” he said, “I’m going to take my wife and
kids to my mother-in-law’s beach house. I want to alter the letters and numbers
on my car’s license plate. There’s a spot on the road where they take photos of
people who drive by too fast.”
“You never fail to astound me, Peter,” said Mr.
Lamebear. “I will pretend what I have just heard is a joke.”
“Nope!” said Mr. Trickster, helping himself to a
roll of black insultaing tape.
Just then the boy Louis spotted the headmaster
and called out.
“Mr. Trickster! Come here at once! Your
presence is required immediately!”
Louis was known among the teachers as “the
vindicative kid.” He always had ideas about how to improve everything and make
things work better. If he could have, he would have run the school himself. Needless
to say he was not precisely Mr. Trickster’s favorite pupil.
“Do you know what a holiday is, Louis?” said
the headmaster smiling. “You can go home and hole yourself up in your bedroom
with your mobile phone till September. Enjoy.You’re on one. And so am I.”
“No,” said Louis. “We’ve a crisis outside.”
When Mr. Lamebear and Mr. Trickster arrived at the schoolyard, Miss Stress was trying to distract the kids from climbing up the tree giving a long speech on how she was never bored during the summer holidays. She suggested about fifty things one could do, including help moms with housework and dads with the garden and take out the garbage and, well, about fifty things like that. While she spoke, she swang a bag full of candy and healthier snacks like nuts and berries that were left over from the last day of school party they’d held that morning.
“Take this bag with you in the bus but don’t
eat these things there and be sure to share. Annie, you are responsible. You give
them out wisely. Peter! Thank heavens you’re still here. There’s a child up in that
tree.”
“Help her!” urged the kids. “Somebody
has to bring her down!”
“She’s not old enough to be one of ours,” said
Mr. Trickster.
“Why, this is practically a baby. We have to
bring her down before she falls,” said Mr. Lamebear.
“She’s got wings,” said Mr. Trickster.
“She’s
from a circus!” cried the kids.
“Why didn’t you hire these entertainers so we
could enjoy their show during our party?” asked Vindicative Louis nudging the
headmaster.
Mr. Lamebear looked like a bear and was a
little lame. But he volunteered to climb up the tree and bring the little girl
down.
“But call the firefighters in case I fall or
get stuck up there, Peter.”
Sticks and Stones, the school bullies, were
tired of doing nothing but stare at the baby.
“If we are to wait for that guy to bring her
down... We had better do this ourselves,” they concluded, laughing. And they
threw sticks and stones at the baby to bring her down.
“Ow!”
cried my baby sister, when she was hit full on the forehead by a stone.
“What have you done?” cried the good kids,
trying to stop the bullies.
Sticks and Stones began to lash at them with
branches they had broken off the tree.
“The tree is outside our school and those
pupils picked those stones outside the yard and were on the other side of the
fence when they threw that stone. Nobody can sue us. All we have to do is alert
the police. Hand me your mobile phone, Brigid.”
But before he could call I was in the tree next
to my sister.
“Excuse me, sirs, but I’ve come to fetch my
sister,” I said.
“Are you from a circus?” cried the kids,
pointing at my wings.
One of the nice children, Lily, got on top of a
tall boy, Martin, and they managed to hand me a bag of cheese curls for the
baby. She smiled at them happily, forgetting the bump on her head, which had
moved to the top of it because of how she had rubbed it. I have to say that she
didn’t shed a tear. She was more puzzled that frightened about what was going
on.
“Thank you very much, my sister thinks that’s
sweet of you, but we have to leave right now. The show must go on and all that,
you know,” I said.
“No!” cried Vindicative Louis. “Stay and do us a favor. Sue those two bullies
who stoned the little girl. Maybe they will learn a lesson.”
“I would love to stay and sue everybody, just
as you suggest, but we really have to go,” I said.
“Louis, circus people don’t like to have
dealings with the law,” said the headmaster. “The child is better off with her
family.”
“Even if they make her fly about for her
bread?” said Louis skeptically.
Fortunately, Gregoria Tenoria chose that moment
to show herself and charged at the bullies.
“Roast,
chatâigne!” she screamed, and she spat a long tongue of fire out of her
mouth that licked Sticks’ head.
“Arrrggghhh!” screeched Sticks. For a second
his hair was in flames. And then both the flames and the hair were gone.
Stones began to laugh, shouting “Awesoooooome! The broad burnt off your
hair! Like a dragon! I want to see this show!”
Gregoria turned and spat at him and where her spit landed a little flame caught in
his hair and rapidly grew into a blaze that burnt his hair off too.
And we all flew away as fast as we could.
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