Noah Barleywater Runs Away (5 page)

‘Ah yes,’ she replied, taking them out of Noah’s hands and smiling as she passed them over. ‘But they are
magic
playing cards, aren’t they? They probably leaped in by themselves.’

This was another happy memory. The type Noah tried not to think about. But that had been a very different shop to the one he was in now. There were no security guards here, for one thing. No one to accuse him of doing anything he hadn’t. He bit his lip and looked around nervously, wondering whether he should go back outside and continue on to the next village, but before he could do this he became distracted by the sounds that were coming his way.

Footsteps.

Heavy, slow footsteps.

He held his breath and listened carefully, narrowing his eyes as if it might allow him to hear a little better, and for a moment the footsteps seemed to stop. He breathed a sigh of relief, but before he could turn round, they started again and he froze where he was, trying to identify exactly where they were coming from.

Beneath me!
he thought, looking down.

And sure enough, there was the sound of
footsteps ascending from below the shop, the pounding beat of heavy boots slowly climbing a staircase, each one getting a little closer to where he stood. He looked around to see whether anyone else could hear them, but realized that he was entirely alone; until now he hadn’t even been aware that he was the only person in the shop.

Excluding the puppets, that is.

‘Hello?’ whispered Noah nervously, his voice echoing a little around him. ‘Hello, is anyone there?’

The footsteps stopped, started, hesitated, stopped, continued, and then grew louder and louder.

‘Hello?’ he said again, raising his voice now as every nerve in his body grew more and more tense. He swallowed, and wondered why he felt this curious mixture of fear and safety at the same time. This wasn’t like the time he got lost in the woods overnight and his parents had to come and find him before the wolves ate him – now
that
was scary. And it wasn’t like the afternoon he got trapped in the basement where the light didn’t work because the latch had fallen on the lock – now
that
was just annoying. This was something else entirely. He felt as if he was supposed to be there but had better be ready for what came next.

He turned round and glanced back towards the entrance of the shop but – and this was a great surprise – he couldn’t see the door any more. He
must have wandered so far in that it was no longer visible. Only he couldn’t remember walking that far at all, and the shop hadn’t even seemed particularly big at first, certainly not big enough to lose yourself in. In fact, when he looked back, he couldn’t see any way in or out of the shop, and no sign pointing towards the exit. All that stood behind him was hundreds and hundreds of wooden puppets, each one staring defiantly at him, smiling, laughing, frowning, threatening. Every emotion he could think of, good and bad. Every sensation. Suddenly he felt as if these puppets were not his friends at all and were moving, one by one, in his direction, surrounding him, trapping him inside an ever-decreasing circle.

‘Who is he anyway?’
they were whispering.

‘A stranger.’

‘We don’t like strangers.’

‘Kind of funny-looking too, isn’t he?’

‘Short for his age.’

‘Mightn’t have had his growth spurt yet.’

‘Nice hair though.’

The voices grew more and more numerous, although they never rose above a whisper, and soon he couldn’t make out any of the words at all, as they were all speaking at the same time and jumbling them up together into a language he didn’t understand. They were closing in on him now, and he held his hands up in fright, closed his eyes, spun round and counted to three, thinking that none of
this could possibly be happening and that when he took his hands away and opened his eyes again, he better just scream as loudly as he could and then surely someone would come and rescue him.

One
,

Two
,

Three—

‘Hello,’ said a man’s voice then, the only voice to be heard now, for the chorus of puppets had become immediately silent. ‘And who might you be?’

Noah opened his eyes. It no longer felt as if all the puppets were crowding in on him, preparing to bury him beneath the weight of their bodies. The muttering had gone. The whispers had vanished. Instead they all seemed to have returned to their rightful places on the shelves, and he realized how ridiculous it was even to have thought they were watching him or talking about him. They weren’t real, after all; they were only puppets. But what
was
real was the elderly man who had spoken to him and who was now standing only a few feet away, smiling a little, as if he had been expecting this visit for a very long time and was pleased that it had finally come to pass. He was holding a small block of wood in his hands and was chipping away at it with a small chisel as he stood there. Noah swallowed quickly out of nervousness and, without meaning to, let out a sudden cry of surprise.

‘Oh dear,’ said the man, looking up from his work. ‘There’s no need for that, surely.’

‘But there was no one here a moment ago,’ said Noah, looking around in astonishment. The door through which he had entered the shop was still nowhere to be seen, so where this man had appeared from was a mystery to him. ‘And I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘I didn’t mean to startle you,’ said the man, who was very old, even older than Noah’s grandfather, with a mop of yellow hair that looked like porridge mixed with maize. He had very bright eyes that Noah found himself staring into, but the skin on his face was as wrinkled as any the boy had ever seen. ‘I was downstairs, working, that’s all. And then I heard footsteps. So I thought I’d better come up and see whether a customer needed my attention.’

‘I heard footsteps too,’ said Noah. ‘But I’m sure they were your footsteps, climbing the stairs.’

‘Oh dear me, no,’ said the old man, shaking his head. ‘I could hardly have heard my own footsteps, then come up to investigate, could I? They must have been
your
footsteps.’

‘But you were downstairs. You said as much.’

‘Did I?’ asked the old man, frowning and stroking his chin as he thought about it. ‘I don’t remember. It’s all so long ago now, isn’t it? And I’m afraid my memory isn’t what it once was. Perhaps I heard the bell over the door ring.’

‘But there was no bell,’ said Noah, and at that precise moment, as if it had just remembered its job, a cheerful
ping
sounded from above the door,
which had now reappeared a few feet behind him.

‘It’s old too,’ explained the old man with an apologetic shrug. ‘You wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t the only thing it had to do all day, but it forgets sometimes. That might not even have been you it was ringing for. It could be for a customer from last year.’

Noah turned round, open-mouthed, and stared at the bell in surprise before turning back and swallowing loudly, unsure what he could possibly say to make sense of what had just taken place.

‘Anyway, I’m sorry I kept you waiting for so long,’ said the old man, ‘but I’m afraid I move like a snail these days. It’s not like it was when I was a young man. You wouldn’t have seen me for dust back then. Dmitri Capaldi had nothing on me!’

‘It’s all right,’ said Noah, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I haven’t been here for very long at all. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock when I came inside and— Oh!’ He glanced at his watch, which told him that it was almost noon. ‘But it can’t be!’

‘I’m sure it can,’ said the old man. ‘You just lost track of time, that’s all.’

‘A whole hour?’

‘It happens. I lost track of a year once, if you can believe that. I put it down here somewhere, and when I went looking for it later, it was nowhere to be found. I always feel it will show up one of these days though, just when I least expect it.’

Noah frowned, not sure he’d heard this
correctly. ‘How does someone lose track of a year?’ he asked.

‘Oh, it’s easier than you might think,’ said the old man, putting down the block of wood he’d been holding in his left hand and the chisel he’d been holding in his right as he took his glasses off and wiped the lenses with a rainbow-coloured handkerchief. ‘Although perhaps it wasn’t a year at all; perhaps it was an ear.’ He pressed both hands to the side of his head and tugged on his earlobes. ‘No, all in place there,’ he said, sounding satisfied. ‘It was definitely a year. Not to worry.’

Noah stared at the old man and tried to understand what he was talking about. None of it made any sense to him and he suspected that asking questions would only make matters even more confusing.

‘It must have been all the toys,’ said Noah, pointing at the walls around him. ‘I was looking at them for a long time, I suppose. And all the puppets. There are so many of them, they distracted me.’

‘That’s right,’ said the old man with a sigh. ‘Blame the puppets! People always do.’

‘I’m not
blaming
them,’ said Noah. ‘I just mean that I got caught up looking at them, that’s all. They’re so lifelike. And time ran away with itself.’

‘The important thing is that you’re here now,’ said the old man, a great smile spreading across his face. ‘Do you know, it’s been so long since I had a
customer, I’m not even sure I know what to do with one. I’m afraid we have no official greeter any more.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Noah, who always felt sorry for people who had to stand outside shops saying,
Welcome to … Welcome to … Welcome to …
It seemed like such a miserable way to pass the time.

‘Of course, if I’d made it upstairs quicker, then I could have invited you to lunch, but it’s too late for that now.’

Noah’s face fell. His stomach was rumbling audibly and he had to cough to cover the embarrassing sounds it was making. Then he changed his mind, thinking that if the old man heard it rumbling, he might change
his
mind and feed him after all.

‘Anyway, now that you are here,’ continued the old man, ‘I’m sure there must be a reason for your visit. Did you want to buy something?’

‘Probably not,’ said Noah, looking down at the floor and feeling a little ashamed. ‘I don’t have any money, I’m afraid.’ A wooden mouse was sitting at his feet, painted grey and pink, sniffing a little at the toes of his shoes, but the moment he caught its eye it jumped a little, squeaked in surprise, and ran away to hide beneath the legs of a wooden giraffe in the corner of the shop.

‘Then might I ask what brought you in here? Shouldn’t you be in school?’

‘No, I don’t go to school any more,’ said Noah.

‘But you’re just a boy,’ said the old man. ‘And boys should be in school. Or have they changed the law since I was your age? Not that I’m one to talk, of course. I spent very little time there myself. I was always running off. I can’t tell you the amount of trouble I got into because of it.’

‘What kind of trouble?’ asked Noah, intrigued now because he always liked to hear about the trouble other people got into.

‘Oh, I never talk about the past on an empty stomach,’ said the old man. ‘I haven’t even had my lunch yet.’

‘But you said—’

‘Anyway, I want to know what brought you in here.’

‘Well, at first it was the tree,’ replied the boy. ‘The one outside your door. I was standing on the opposite side of the street, just looking across at it, and I thought it was quite the most impressive tree I had ever seen in my life. I don’t know why exactly. I just had a feeling about it, that’s all.’

‘I’m glad you like it,’ said the old man. ‘My father planted it, you know. The day we moved here. He was very fond of trees. He planted several others in the village but I think this is the best of the bunch. People tell the most extraordinary stories about it.’

‘Yes, I think I heard one,’ said Noah enthusiastically.

‘Really?’ asked the old man, raising an eyebrow.
‘Might I ask where from?’

‘There was a very helpful dachshund across the street,’ replied Noah. ‘And a very hungry donkey. He said that the tree is stripped bare every few nights and somehow manages to sprout new branches within a day or two. He said that no one knows how or why it happens.’

‘Oh, he’s full of stories, that one,’ said the old man, laughing. ‘He’s an old friend of mine. I wouldn’t mind what he says though. Dachshunds make up the most extraordinary tales. And as for that donkey … well, don’t get me started. Where most people settle for twelve to fifteen meals a day, he needs to have three or four times that number or he gets weepy.’

‘Twelve to fifteen meals a day?’ asked Noah in surprise. ‘I can assure you that I never have—’

‘Anyway, for all the people who tell some tale about this shop,’ said the old man, interrupting him, ‘I can promise you that not one has ever set foot inside it.’

‘Really?’ asked the boy.

‘Well, until now, that is,’ said the old man, smiling. ‘You’re the first one. Perhaps you were sent here for a reason. Of course, my father died many years ago so he never got to see how tall and strong the tree grew.’ A shadow fell across his face as he said this, and he looked away, unsettled for a moment, as if an unhappy memory had come over him.

‘My father is a lumberjack,’ said Noah immediately. ‘He cuts down trees for a living.’

‘Oh dear,’ said the old man. ‘Doesn’t he like them then?’

‘I think he likes them very much,’ replied Noah. ‘But people need wood, don’t they? Otherwise there’d be no houses to live in or chairs to sit on or … or …’ He tried to think of something else that was made of wood and, looking around, broke into an immediate smile. ‘Or puppets!’ he said. ‘There wouldn’t be any puppets.’

‘That’s very true,’ said the old man, nodding slowly.

‘And for every tree that he cuts down, he plants ten more,’ added Noah. ‘So it’s a good thing really.’

‘Then maybe one day, when you’re as old as I am, you’ll be able to walk past them and remember your father in the same way that I remember mine.’

Noah nodded but frowned a little; he didn’t like to think of things like that.