The Bamboozling of Bazalob and The Flying Shoes Read online

The Bamboozling of Bazalob

  and

  The Flying Shoes

  by Linda Talbot

  Illustrations by Linda Talbot

  Copyright Linda Talbot 2014

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  Table of Contents

  The Bamboozling of Bazalob

  Illustrations:-

  Katie and the Bazalob

  Derry and Jude with Mikono

  Blodder

  Gingali

  Sydney

  The Flying Shoes

  Illustrations:-

  Sissy and Sam

  Moll and Milly

  Wendy in the Wheel

  Slobsky

  Thank you for reading this book…

  Author’s Note

  The Bamboozling of Bazalob

  Katie climbs a green clinging vine and looks over the Land of Lairs. She does not know it is the land lived in by a host of curious creatures that have tumbled from people’s imagination through time. She does not even know how she got there.

  Suddenly the thick leaves below her rustle and stir. Then a fierce face with an enormous mouth full of sharp teeth, gazes up at her. Its eyes are red and its white face is striped red and green, as though with war paint. Black spines rise stiffly from the top of its head and, very slowly, it raises a skinny arm with three black claws that restlessly open and close.

  Katie freezes with fear. The creature growls and heaves itself from the bushes. Its huge body is red, green and black; part fish, part bird, part goodness knows what!

  “Aha! A child! Delicious!” it mutters. Katie opens her mouth but nothing comes out.

  “I’m Bazalob - next best being to the Devil!” he introduces himself. “What’s your name?”

  Katie and the Bazalob

  “K-K-Katie!” says Katie in a tiny voice. “Please don’t eat me!”

  “Oh no. At least not until supper time!” replies Bazalob, with a great grin. He reaches his black claws up into the vine and his arm grows longer, so he easily reaches Katie and plucks her out. She screams and wriggles but cannot break free. Bazalob drags her through the wet grass, lifts a thick veil of dark green ivy and with his other arm, pulls Katie into his lair full of shadows and nasty smells. Katie thinks of Derry and Jude, her cousins. She had been on holiday with them at their home in the hills. Where are they now?

  Derry and Jude are still on holiday. With Katie they had been reading about mythical monsters and now decide to explore the attic.

  “You never know - there may be one or two up there!” says Derry.

  “I hope not!” Jude laughs, half hoping there will be.

  They climb the creaky stairs and place the old ladder left on the landing against the dusty flap. Derry steps up and pushes. The flap is stuck. No one has been up there for years. Then it suddenly moves, groans and slowly opens. Jude follows her brother up the ladder through the flap. Darkness. The rustle of mice. A clammy cold.

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  Derry and Jude with Mikono

  “Hang on, there’s a light here!” says Derry, fumbling for the switch. The light reveals piles of cardboard boxes, two broken chairs and, in one corner, an enormous red and brown pot, gleaming in the low light.

  “Where on earth did that come from?” says Derry.

  “Perhaps Ali Baba came in the night!” Jude jokes.

  Suddenly an extraordinary head rises from the top of the pot. At first it is folded like a concertina, then it spreads into a black face with white stripes, draped in a red, yellow and green cloth.

  “Welcome. I have a mission for you two!” it announces in a deep voice.

  “Who are you?” asks Derry.

  “Mikono. Spirit of the Travelling Pot.”

  “How can it travel in here?” asks Jude.

  “By going outside,” replies Mikono.

  That makes sense. But how?

  “Just step inside. Katie is about to be eaten by Bazalob!” says Mikono, floating out of the pot and settling on a broken chair.

  “We wondered where she was. We haven’t seen her since breakfast,” says Jude.

  “Climb inside!” Mikono repeats.

  “Where are we going and who is Bazalob?” asks Derry.

  “You will see!” replies Mikono, “Don’t worry. You may not see me but I shall be with you.”

  The children scramble into the pot. It is cramped inside. Then they feel the pot begin to breathe. Gently, it lifts from the attic floor and floats through the solid brick wall into the open air, above the garden.

  Now the pot has become transparent. Derry and Jude can see clearly right through it; the red roofs of Brackleham, where they live, boys playing football in the park and the rolling fields with black and white cows in the water meadow by the river.

  Silently they drift below the clouds. The hills vanish, a soft silver sea spreads below. A fishing boat bobs like a toy. Then land appears. Strange bushes and trees - green and grey - shiver in a light mist. There is no wind. No leaf stirs.

  The pot drifts lower. A musty damp lifts from the leaves. The Land of Lairs. Home to creatures not found in any of the children’s books.

  Mikono’s deep voice echoes above the leaves. “To rescue Katie you must find the poisonous Fozy Fruit - which nevertheless tastes delicious - and feed it to Bazalob. Sydney will help. But to find Sydney, you must first seek Blodder who lives on the Blodder Estate - much too grand for a blue blob like him!

  “He will direct you to Gingali, a swift-footed being with the shell of a tortoise. He lives on a beach by a river and he will take you to Sydney. But only after you steal his shell while he sleeps. You’ll find it lifts off quite easily! He will do anything to retrieve it. It stops him being pecked by seabirds.”

  Mikono’s voice fades. Derry and Jude try to remember all that he said. Who is Sydney? they wonder.

  The pot floats on, until the trees and bushes cease and a stretch of close-cut grass spreads like a carpet below. Small trees grow here and there, clipped into strange shapes that might be animals with long snouts, big ears and bristly bodies.

  Then Blodder’s house appears; one big reflection of coloured glass that seems to hover on the grass. The pot descends. Flowers raise bright faces in alarm. The pot lands lightly on a sandy path.

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