Chapter Seven

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‘I say, old fruit, this could be a snafu,’ said Ummm. ‘They’ve got the wood. They’ve got the tin foil. We must foil all attempts to snaffle the ruby.’

But Too Cool was busy scrabbling in a bag cunningly hidden under the top layer of his fairy dress. He pulled out an oblong of silver. ‘Ruby detector,’ he said, holding it up and rotating it.

‘East by north west. Six tonkies away.’ He looked at Remy and Lewis, his eyebrows raised so that they disappeared under his tilting tiara. ‘Are you familiar with that destination?’

Remy shrugged. ‘How would we know?’ He was beginning to wonder how such thickos had the know-how to travel intergalactically. ‘This could be a dream,’ he whispered to Lewis.

‘You wish,’ Lewis said.

Remy sighed. Yeah.

‘No time to lose,’ Ummm said. ‘Let’s be off.’ He picked up Remy and Too Cool grabbed Lewis.

‘Where are we going?’ Lewis yelled as the fairies sprang into the air, leveling off at a comfortable cruising altitude.

Remy squinted his eyes. ‘We’re going to Mum’s work?’ Then he gasped (sucking in a fly so it was a few moments before he could talk again.). ‘The ruby! The fairies are chasing Miranda and Giles who are after the ruby in Mum’s ring.’

‘A reasonable guess, old man,’ said Too Cool, preparing for landing.

Lewis didn’t want to look at where Too Cool might dump him so he looked to the side instead. ‘Oh no! Houston, we’ve got a problem.’

‘Where is this Houston,’ Ummm demanded. ‘I will dislocate his wingnuts.’

Remy looked where Lewis pointed and groaned. Big trouble in the shape of Blake, Errol and Lockie Jones was biking in a southerly direction. ‘They’ll be going to my house,’ Remy said.

‘And they’re carrying buckets of mud,’ said Lewis. ‘Ugly, my friend. Very very ugly.’

‘They are the enemy?’ Ummm asked. ‘We shall exterminate them.’

‘Tempting,’ said Lewis.

‘Better not,’ said Remy but he was sorry. ‘Can we just – er – inconvenience them? You know – slow them down or something?’

‘My pleasure indeed,’ said Too Cool whose brain power Remy was slightly suspicious of. He watched with a mix of dread and excitement as Too Cool swished his finger at the three Jones.

‘Pity it’s not a wand,’ said Lewis then he and Remy hollered with laughter.

The mud in the Jones’ buckets leapt out and poured itself all over them, sticking to them as if they’d mixed it with glue. Which, thought Remy, was highly possible. They dropped the bikes. They hopped and hobbled around heehawing fit to bust a gasket all the time swiping at their eyes but that mud had top notch sticking power.

‘Oh, well done, my trusty companion,’ said Ummm. ‘Now let us proceed with the matter of high to extreme urgency.’

‘Suits me,’ said Remy. He wondered if the Jones gang would give up, or would today’s happenings make them more dangerous than ever.

Ummm held up the ruby detector. ‘Five of the gems are present within the target building,’ he said. ‘We will need to adopt battle formation.’

‘We?’ Lewis whispered to Remy.

‘I don’t think he means just them. Unfortunately,’ said Remy. They’d have to do what the fairies wanted, otherwise – heehaw heehaw. Or worse.

The fairies nose-dived to the roof of the building. Thoughts bucketed through Remy’s head: My mum’s somewhere under my feet. Along with five rubies. And maybe two intergalactic crims.

‘Your task,’ Ummm told the boys, ‘is to case the joint. You must discover the exact location of all five rubies. We will assess their quality and select the finest.’

Easy peasy heehaw sneezy. Not. The boys looked at each other, wondering where to start with the explanations.

Lewis said, ‘The gorillas might have got one of them already.’

Ummm shook his head. ‘No. Do you think we are dunderheads?’

The boys chose not to answer that.

‘We have laid a false trail. We have sent the gorillas to the dwelling of your enemies. Clever, eh what?’

Remy had a vision of two gorillas ransacking the Jones house. It was a good vision, and a very bad one. An angry Jones was a dangerous creature. Still, no use worrying about that right now.

‘Um,’ said Lewis – and none of them knew if he was just saying um or if he was saying Ummm. ‘Um, what if there’s a ruby in the Jones’ house?’

Ummm drew himself up and the jewels on his tiara sparkled dangerously. ‘Do you think we are dunderheads? Well? Answer me! I demand satisfaction.’

Lewis shrank and began stuttering apologies, but Remy pointed at Too Cool who suddenly wasn’t looking too cool at all. ‘Look at him! He didn’t check for rubies at the Jones house.’ He stretched up on tiptoe the better to see Too Cool. ‘Did you?’

Too Cool shook his head. ‘A thousand apologies. I may have overlooked that small point.’

‘Dunderhead,’ snapped Ummm. ‘Hand me the detector.’ He held it up, rotated it and swore. ‘Blister me, there are three of the blooming things in that dwelling.’ He snarled at Too Cool. ‘Three rubies and two intergalactic criminals.’

‘Um,’ said Lewis, ‘best we get moving, don’t you think old chums?’

Ummm didn’t answer but he did snatch up both Remy and Lewis, saying, ‘I do not trust my companion right now. Not even with a simple transportation task.’

The boys didn’t reply. They were too busy hanging onto Ummm’s wrists. Ummm was big but his hands weren’t quite large enough to hold a boy securely.

Remy shut his eyes and inside his head he chanted, ‘Hang on for another minute. Just one more minute.’

Ummm tipped his head down for the landing, the boys dangling from his hands so that they hit something solid with a thump. ‘Ouch!’ said Lewis.

‘Where are we?’ asked Remy.

‘On the roof of the target house, of course,’ Ummm said. He gave the roof a quick scan. ‘We will open it here on the low side.’

‘What?’ Lewis screeched. ‘You can’t do that! You can’t blow holes in people’s roofs! It’s not . . . it’s not cricket!’

‘Of course it isn’t cricket,’ said Too Cool who had recovered from being told off. ‘It’s warfare, and do I need to remind you that the fate of the entire human race is at stake here. Do you want to turn into gorillas?’

Remy could think of at least three people he’d happily turn into gorillas but he got the point. ‘No,’ he said.

‘Speaking of gorillas,’ said Lewis, ‘where are they?’

Too Cool lay down on the roof, his eyes shut. Ummm lay face down so maybe he had his eyes shut but maybe he didn’t. The fairies made an eerie humming noise. Remy and Lewis stepped back. That noise could get into your bones. Too Cool sat up. ‘Our targets are inside the dwelling. They are hungry and they are searching for food. As yet the rubies remain hidden from them.’

Ummm kept up the humming for another half minute before he stopped. ‘Ah yes, I see them. They are in a large, empty room. They are standing in front of a wall covered in shelves. They are sampling the contents of containers on the shelves but don’t appear to enjoy the taste.’

‘Are they spitting it out?’ asked Lewis. He was puzzled. What room fitted a description like that. Then he realised. ‘The garage! They’re in the garage but the car isn’t there.’

Remy tried to work out what could be in the containers in the garage. With a bit of luck there’d be a tin of highly toxic spray. What did his dad keep in the garage? Oil. Paint. ‘Paint!’ he shouted. ‘Ummm what colour is the food they’re eating?’

‘Orange. Blue and a bright yellow,’ Ummm said.

Mum always said the Jones had no taste, but Remy bet they’d never tried to actually taste the paint they put on their walls. ‘They’re spitting it out?’ he asked.

Ummm nodded. ‘It is making a pattern. You would call it art.’

‘I’d call it a beaut mess,’ Lewis said. The boys fell about, laughing.

It was well known that Mrs Jones kept a perfectly tidy and immaculately clean house. Remy’s dad said if she put the same effort into bringing up her boys they wouldn’t be such thugs. Remy wasn’t so sure, but he was sure that Mrs Jones was going to go ape (kind of appropriate if only she knew it) and then she’d blame Remy and Lewis because every Jones in that house always blamed Remy and Lewis.

‘They are giving up the search for food,’ Too Cool reported. ‘They are now about to embark on the search for the ruby.’

Ummm snapped into action. ‘We need decoys inside the house. We won’t yet open the dwelling because that will alert them to our presence.’ He pointed at Remy and Lewis who backed away to the edge of the roof. ‘You will be our decoys. We will slide you down this handy chimney and you will distract the targets while we open the roof, drop in and extract the rubies.’

‘No!’ said Remy stepping back one more step into thin air. A fairy hand caught him and he knew he ought to be grateful but all he could feel right now was terror. Mixed with a smidgen of panic.

‘We can’t go down the chimney,’ Lewis said, trying to sound calm and reasonable.

‘Yes you can. This we know about.’ Too Cool sounded sure of himself. ‘Small boys often go down chimneys. They sweep them but we do not require such work from you.’

Remy choked back a few words, among them were idiot, dunderhead, thicko. ‘That hasn’t happened now for at least a hundred years,’ he said. ‘Boys never go down chimneys now. They’d get stuck.’

Too Cool shook his head. ‘That is an untruth. I am disappointed in you. There are also many well-documented accounts of a fat man going down chimneys. He always wears red but we do not consider that to be relevant. He has no trouble. You will have no trouble.’

The boys groaned. ‘Father Christmas! You’re talking about Father Christmas.’

But Ummm had done with the talk. He picked up Remy and threw him up onto the top of the chimney. Too Cool hurled Lewis up to join him. ‘Down you go, lads,’ said Too Cool. ‘The future of the human race depends on you.’

 

- Illustration by Ross Kinnaird