Shock Forest and other magical stories Read online

  Contents

  The House of Coloured Windows

  Rooms to Let

  Shock Forest

  The Bridge Builder

  The Travelling Boy and the Stay-at-Home Bird

  To Alice and Poppy – once again

  The House of Coloured Windows

  Our street had a lot of little houses on either side of it where we children lived happily with our families. There were rows of lawns, like green napkins tucked under the houses’ chins, and letterboxes, apple trees and marigolds. Children played up and down the street, laughing and shouting and sometimes crying, for it’s the way of the world that things should be mixed. In the soft autumn evenings, before the winter winds began, the smoke from chimneys rose up in threads of grey and blue, stitching our houses into the autumn air.

  But there was one house in our street that was different from all the rest, and that was the wizard’s house. For one thing there was a door knocker of iron in the shape of a dog’s head that barked at us as we ran by. Of course, the wizard’s house had its lawn too, but no apple trees or marigolds, only a silver tree with a golden parrot in it. But that was not the most wonderful thing about the wizard’s house.

  The real wonders of the wizard’s house were its windows. They were all the colours of the world – red, blue, green, gold, purple and pink, violet and yellow, as well as the reddish-brown of autumn leaves. His house was patched all over with coloured windows. And there was not just one pink window or one green one, either, but several of each colour, each one different. No one had told us but we all knew that if you looked through the red window you saw a red world. If you looked through the blue window a blue one. The wizard could go into any of these worlds whenever he wished. He was not only the owner of many windows, but the master of many worlds.

  My friend, Anthea, longed to go into the wizard’s house and spy out through his windows. Other people dreamed of racing-bikes and cameras and guitars, but Anthea dreamed of the wizard’s windows. She wanted to get into the wizard’s house and look through first one window and then another because she was sure that through one of them she must see the world she really wanted to live in. The candyfloss window would show her a world striped like circus time, the golden window would show her a city of towers and domes, dazzling in the sunlight, and every child who lived there would be a prince or a princess. The windows haunted Anthea so much that her eyes ached for magic peepholes into strange and beautiful countries.

  One day, as Anthea came home from school she saw on the footpath outside the wizard’s house, sitting by his letterbox, a white cat with one blue eye and one green eye, golden whiskers and a collar of gold. It winked at her with its blue eye and scrambled through a gap in the hedge, seeming to beckon with its tail. Anthea scrambled after it with a twist and a wriggle and, when she stood up, she was on the other side of the hedge inside the wizard’s garden. Her school uniform had been changed into a long, silver dress with little glass bells all over its sleeves, and her school shoes and socks had changed into slippers of scarlet and stockings of green. In front of her stood the wizard, dressed in a white robe with a tiny green dragon crawling around his shoulders. His cat rubbed against his ankles and purred.

  “So, you are the girl who dreams of looking through my windows,” said the wizard. “Your wishes are like storms, my dear – too strong, too strong. At night I am beginning to dream your dreams instead of my own and that won’t do, for wizards need their own dreams to prevent them becoming lost in their magic. Dreams are to wizards what harbour lights are to a sailor. I’ll let you look through my windows, and choose the world you like best of all, so long as you remember that when you walk out of my door you’ll walk out into the world you have chosen, and there’ll be no coming back a second time. Be sure you choose well.”

  Anthea followed the wizard up the path between borders of prize-winning geraniums and in at his door.

  “This is a lovely dress,” she said to the wizard. “I feel halfway to being a princess already. It’s much, much nicer than my school uniform.”

  “But it is a school uniform – the uniform of my school,” the wizard replied in surprise. “I’m glad you like it. Now, here is the red window. Look well, my dear.”

  Anthea looked through the red window. She was looking deep into a forest on the sun. Trees blazed up from a wide plain and over a seething hillside. Their leaves were flames, and scarlet smoke rose up from the forest, filling the sky. Out from under the trees galloped a herd of fiery horses, tossing burning manes and tails and striking sparks from the ground with their smouldering hooves.

  “Well?” asked the wizard.

  “It’s beautiful,” breathed Anthea, “but it’s much too hot.”

  The next window was a silver one. A princess, with a young face and long white hair, rode through a valley of snow in a silver sleigh drawn by six great white bears wearing collars of frost and diamonds. All around her, mountains rose like needles of silver ice into a blue, clear sky.

  “Your silver window is beautiful,” Anthea sighed, “but, oh – how cold, how cold! I couldn’t live there.”

  Through a candyfloss-pink window, sure enough, she looked into a world of circuses. A pink circus tent opened like a spring tree in blossom. Clowns turned cartwheels around it, and a girl in a pink dress and pink slippers rode on a dappled horse, jumping through a hoop hung with pink ribbons.

  “That’s funny!” Anthea said in a puzzled voice. “It’s happy and funny and very, very pretty, but I wouldn’t want to live with a circus every day. I don’t know why not but I just wouldn’t.”

  That’s how it was with all the windows. The blue one looked under the sea, and the green one into a world of treetops. There was a world of deserts and a world of diamonds, a world of caves and glow-worms, and a world of sky with floating cloud-castles, but Anthea did not want to live in any of them. She began to run from one window to another, the glass bells on her sleeves jingling and tinkling, her feet in the scarlet slippers sliding under her.

  “Where is a window for me?” cried Anthea. She peered through windows into lavender worlds full of mist, worlds where grass grew up to the sky and spiders spun bridges with rainbow-coloured silk, into worlds where nothing grew and where great stones lay like a city of abandoned castles reaching from one horizon to another.

  At last there were no windows left. The wizard’s house had many, many windows, but Anthea had looked through them all and there was no world in which she wanted to live. She didn’t want a hot one or a cold one, a wet one or a dry one. She didn’t want a world of trees or a world of stones. The wizard shrugged his shoulders.

  “You’re hard to please,” he said.

  “But I wanted the very best one. I know I’d know the best one if only you’d let me see it. Isn’t there one window left? One little window?”

  “Funnily enough there is one window, but I didn’t think you’d be interested,” the wizard said. “You see…”

  “Please show it to me,” begged Anthea.

  “I ought to explain…” began the wizard.

  “Please!” cried Anthea.

  The wizard pointed at a little blue-and-white checked curtain. “Behind there,” he said.

  Anthea ran to pull it aside and found herself looking through a window as clear as a drop of rain water. She saw a little street with little houses on either side of it. Smoke went up, up, up, stitching the street into the autumn sky, and up and down the footpath children ran, shouting and laughing, though some were also crying. There was a woman very like Anthea’s own mother, looking for someone very like Anthea, because dinner was ready and there were sausages and mashed potatoes waiting to be e
aten.

  “That’s the one!” cried Anthea, delighted. “Why did you keep it until last? I’ve wasted a lot of time on other windows when this one was the best all the time.”

  Without waiting another moment, she ran out of the wizard’s door, squeezed through the hedge and found herself in the street wearing her own school uniform again.

  “Well, that’s funny!” said the wizard to his cat. “Did you see that? She went back to the world she came out of in the first place. That’s her mother taking her home for dinner. I must say they do look very happy.”

  Ten minutes later the white cat with the gold collar brought him a tray with his dinner on it. The wizard looked pleased.

  “Oh boy!” he said, because he was having sausages and mashed potatoes, too.

  And that night the wizard dreamed his own dreams once more, while Anthea dreamed of a racing-bike. And in the darkness, the wizard’s house of many windows twinkled like a good spell amid the street lights that marched like bright soldiers down our street.

  Rooms to Let

  Mr Murgatroyd hung a sign on the front door of his house: ROOMS TO LET.

  He was small and shrivelled and as bitter as medicine because of the mean, hard life he had led, and he talked to himself because of his loneliness.

  “How much shall I charge for my rooms?” he asked himself. He chuckled. “Too much!” he declared so sharply that the key rattled in the lock, probably from fear.

  One day Mr Murgatroyd heard an unusual-sounding knock on the door. It was a light, soft knock, as if a bird was tapping with its claw. Mr Murgatroyd listened, turning down the corners of his mouth. Finally he went to the door and opened it.

  There stood a little, wispy woman, vague as thistledown, her hair green and blue and her nose pink at the tip. “I would like to live in one of your rooms,” she said shyly.

  “Come this way,” said Mr Murgatroyd.

  Shuffle, shuffle, went the old woman’s footsteps.

  “I should warn you that I’m going to charge too much,” Mr Murgatroyd said crossly.

  The woman sighed a rustly sigh. “That is what I always have to pay,” she said.

  Mr Murgatroyd showed her to her room and left her there. As he was going back down the stairs, he heard another knock at the door (just an ordinary knock, this time). He grinned and slid like a wicked shadow to open it. There stood a man and a mermaid in a wheelbarrow.

  “Have you rooms?” the man asked.

  “I have,” said Mr Murgatroyd.

  The mermaid smiled at him through her net of yellow hair, and Mr Murgatroyd blushed.

  “We will take one,” the man said. “We will have a room with a bathroom. My wife likes a bathroom.”

  “You have to share the bathroom,” said Mr Murgatroyd quickly. “There’s only one.”

  “Then we’ll have a room right next to it,” declared the mermaid triumphantly.

  Mr Murgatroyd shuffled his feet uneasily. “I ought to mention that the rent is too much,” he said nervously.

  “My dear fellow, it’s always too much, isn’t it?” the man replied.

  Mr Murgatroyd went back to his room. He did not look so sure of himself any more. A crack in the ceiling grinned down at him. The wind outside laughed and rattled his windows. “Things aren’t going to be as easy as I thought,” Mr Murgatroyd said to himself.

  “Knock, knock,” went his front door again. Mr Murgatroyd got wearily to his feet and went back to open it. Outside stood Mrs Piper looking like a rainbow, all patched and stitched, while behind her, hanging on to her left hand and her right hand and stretching far down the street, were twenty children, all stitched and patched too.

  “Ah, Mr Murgatroyd, dear,” said Mrs Piper, “I see you’ve rooms to let.”

  “No children allowed!” cried Mr Murgatroyd, seizing the door handle anxiously. “Anyhow, I charge too much!” he warned her.

  Mrs Piper blinked.

  “Not even if I pay much too much?” she asked. Mr Murgatroyd could not resist the thought of much too much.

  “All right,” he said. “All right! But you see that you keep those brats of yours in order, Mrs Piper, or the house won’t be worth living in.”

  “Oh, a few children make a house homey,” said Mrs Piper, and she shooed her scrambling, rambling family, with Mr Murgatroyd leading, to the big rooms at the back of the house.

  Finally there was only one room left. Who would come for that? Mr Murgatroyd scrunched his head down between his shoulders.

  Now he had: a wispy little woman with green and blue hair; a man who pushed his mermaid wife in a wheelbarrow; Mrs Piper and her twenty children.

  There’s nobody much left who could surprise me, thought Mr Murgatroyd.

  “Knock, knock,” went the door.

  Mr Murgatroyd opened it only a crack.

  There stood a large, black bear.

  “Good evening,” said the bear.

  Mr Murgatroyd wanted to shut the door but he was afraid the bear might beat it in with his huge paws.

  “What do you want?” he whispered.

  “A room,” said the bear. “I’m learning to play the flute. I need a small, quiet, plain room suitable for fluting in.”

  “I charge too much,” Mr Murgatroyd said, still in a whisper.

  “Curious!” the bear remarked. “I always pay too much.”

  He marched inside and peered with small bear-eyes at the faded carpet and the dull, dingy staircase. In one of his paws he carried his flute in its case. “This house suits me,” he said. He pointed down the hall. “I’ll take that room.”

  “A bear!” declared Mr Murgatroyd in disgust. “A bear! Mrs Piper and her twenty children, a man and a mermaid, a wispy little woman with green and blue hair… What sort of tenants are these?” A slow smile spread over his face. “Think how they’ll fight!” he muttered. “All I’ve got to do is wait, and then they’ll fight each other out into the street again, and then I’ll get new tenants. I don’t fancy this group, even if they are all paying too much.”

  All the quietness of Mr Murgatroyd’s house had gone. Up and down the stairs the children ran and slid and shouted and laughed. The little wispy woman’s sloppy-slippered feet went flup-flup-flup. The bear played strange bear tunes on his flute, and in the bathroom the mermaid made a sound like a musical gurgling, and sometimes she sang weird, watery songs and splashed water everywhere with her tail.

  “Just wait! Just wait!” Mr Murgatroyd muttered. “They’ll be fighting soon.”

  But this was not all. Miss Wispy brought home potted plants and had a window-box put up outside her window, and planted it with parsley, radishes and petunias. Flup-flup-flup she went as she tended her garden every day, watering and weeding.

  Mrs Piper and all her twenty children took up painting and filled the house with pictures of hills and oceans and the wild, leftover bits of the world. Besides, they painted the kitchen door blue and the staircase pink, and they painted bright pictures on the wall all the way up the stairs.

  The mermaid sat in the bath and gurgled or sang, depending on her mood. Her husband spread crumbs and honey on the windowsill so that the birds and butterflies came from far away to sit and feast in his room.

  And a brown bear with a violin came to play duets with the black bear who played the flute. Mr Murgatroyd did not know what to do.

  “They’ll be fighting,” he promised himself. “Soon they’ll be fighting!”

  But they didn’t fight: the mermaid and her husband loved the pink staircase and the bright pictures on the wall. The twenty children laughed to see the birds and butterflies flying around in the house and stood quietly to listen to the bear’s flute. The bear loved to play the flute accompaniments to the mermaid’s songs, and Miss Wispy made sandwiches for everyone.

  At night Mr Murgatroyd would creep into the hall and listen. “They’re all in the mermaid’s room singing,” he’d guess. “Or is it Mrs Piper’s? Anyhow, they’re all happy… When is the fighting going to begin
?” He wandered up and down peering at the pictures on the wall. “They’re just pictures of hills,” he said. “What’s so special about them?” He blinked and turned his back on them.

  But one day Mr Murgatroyd woke up and there was a new feeling in the house. There was noise and moving as usual, but it felt and sounded very purposeful, as if all the moving was in the same direction. It was like the rustle of a river or the roaring of the sea. Mr Murgatroyd looked out into the hall and saw it was filled with bags and bundles. The bear’s flute lay there in its case. Miss Wispy’s best potted plant was there. The mermaid’s wheelbarrow was parked by the door.

  “What’s going on?” asked Mr Murgatroyd.

  Mrs Piper, who was coming down the pink staircase, her arms full of clothes and toys and satchels and books, smiled at him. “Oh, Mr Murgatroyd – we’re all moving out. We’ve grown tired of paying too much and we get on so well together we thought we’d be up and off and find some other living-place. It may be a forest, it may be a hill, it may be a cave by the sea – where we can sing and watch the birds fly and the plants grow, or listen to the music of flute and fiddle.”

  Mr Murgatroyd blinked at her and went back into his small, ugly room.

  “Good!” he said. “That’s good. I’m getting rid of all of them at once. Now I’ll get some ordinary tenants – ones I don’t have to worry about. I wonder where they’re going?”

  He squinted through the keyhole and saw his strange household milling and moiling in the hall, rather like a hive of bees about to swarm. Then the bear struck up a tune on his flute. They all hoisted their baggage and off they went – Mrs Piper and her twenty children, all with their bright bundles, the man wheeling his mermaid wife in the squeaky wheelbarrow, Miss Wispy carrying a potted plant almost as tall as she was, and the bear fluting a silver march for them to walk to.

  Mr Murgatroyd saw them go. “Good!” he said. “Good!” But he didn’t feel as happy as he expected he would.

  Mr Murgatroyd began to prowl over his newly emptied house. It was very, very quiet, but still bright with pictures on the walls and the pink staircase. Ivy had grown all over the walls of Miss Wispy’s room. The bath was filled with sand and shells and seaweed. Only the bear’s room was just the same as it had ever been.