But this would be the wrong assumption! Very wrong indeed!
~Just go with it.
.THE CLOUD WENT DOWN THE SLIDE.
“No it didn’t!”
Terrence snapped the book shut and stared at her brother’s indignant expression with raised eyebrows.
“Can you read?” she asked condescendingly. Of course he couldn’t, he was only five, but Terrence had two more brothers who required bedtime stories to fall asleep and her head ached.
“It didn’t!” He said loudly, frowning at the end of the bed, “Clouds don’t go on slippery dips. They go in the air.”
Terrence sighed, “Bradley, if you don’t shut up and listen, I’m going to read you Midnight Oranges again, got it?”
Bradley continued staring at the bed, but his frown softened and his bottom lip jutted out in sulky defeat.
“Thank you,” Terrence smoothed her dress over her lap and opened the book. “The cloud went down the slide, for it was very cold that day, and he wanted a fun way to warm up.”
She held open the book for Bradley to see the drawing of the fluffy white cloud sitting on top of a red slippery dip that was surrounded by grass. His frown disappeared when he glanced at it.
“Really?” his face lit up, “Why didn’t he get put on the stick and put in the fire, like the marshmallows?”
Terrence clenched her teeth together, “Because he’s a cloud.”
“But you said he was cold.”
“Nevertheless!” Terrence continued reading, feeling a bit puzzled at why there was such a long word in a children’s book, “The poor cloud hadn’t ever been on a slippery dip before and didn’t realise there were sharp edges!”
She studied the next page before showing it to Bradley. The cloud was drawn halfway down the slide with an expression of horror and there was a mass of fluffy white stuff stuck to the slide edge, as if it had caught itself while going down and been brutally ripped off.
“What’s it doing?” Bradley asked impatiently.
“He’s- he’s having fun… going down the slide,” she turned a few pages and saw more horrific images where the cloud looked as though it was screaming in agony while bits of itself lay scattered around the slide. What was this story- Cloud of Death?
“You’re making it up, you have to show me.”
“Um…” Terrence rapidly flipped to the last page where a tiny puff- presumably the last piece- of cloud sat floating in a teacup, eyes wide in a sort of pained expression with patches of red stains that resembled sponge paint smeared all over him, just like blood. She frowned in disgust. Someone published this?
“So the cloud slid all the way to the bottom where he landed in a giant teacup filled with hot chocolate and little marshmallows that become his friends! The End!”
And she slammed the book closed and was halfway out of the rickety wooden chair before Bradley knew what had happened.
“You have to show me the picture,” he clutched at the bed covers, “You have to!”
“There is no picture, the artist ran out of pencils,” Terrence pushed the chair against the wall and held the book firmly under her arm.
Bradley’s voice took on a desperate tone that made Terrence wish she was still downstairs knitting, “No he didn’t! Mum said- mum said you have to show me every pictures!”
“There is no picture,” she said.
Bradley was clenching and unclenching the bedcovers, “You’re lying.”
Terrence sighed and made her way to the door, “I’m not, now go to sleep. Mum will be in soon.” She felt a stab of guilt for lying and taking away his bedtime story- out of all the boys, Bradley loved stories the most- but reasoned that she would let him eat her dessert tomorrow in payment.
“I want to see the pictures!”
Terrence turned with a retort and saw Bradley scramble out of bed, his face scrunched up and red as though a tantrum was coming, and she did the only reasonable thing for a moment such as this: she ran to the window, yanked it open and threw the book out into the night.
Bradley stopped halfway around the bed.
Terrence breathed out heavily, “I’m sorry, Bradley.”
“What’s it doing?” he asked in a small voice as he stared at the window in shock, all fight gone out of him. In fact, if Terrence had looked a bit closer she would have seen that he had gone quite pale.
“I’ll get it in the morning,” she tensed, waiting for him to yell that he was climbing out the window right now, or for him to race down the stairs, or crunch his hands into fists and hit her, and she was so tired that she may actually let him, but he didn’t.
He stayed staring out of the window. Terrence grabbed his arm and began to lead him back to bed, “Listen-”
“What’s that?” Bradley twisted around, pointing and she sighed.
“Come on-”
“Look!”
She turned to the window and almost fainted. There was something white glowing in the darkness heading straight towards them. Terrence made to close the window but she was too slow, and all in a rush she was knocked into the dresser by something rather soft as it zoomed past her and landed on the floor.
“Oh!”
Terrence straightened up and looked down at Bradley who had come over and grabbed her dress, staring at the object. Then she looked at the intruder.
It appeared to be a large cotton ball, that came up to her waist, fluffy and white and, most disturbingly, the owner of that exclamation.
“Oh!”
Terrence wondered if she was going mad, because large balls of fluff couldn’t make noises, or even move around for that matter, and she was thinking it looked vaguely familiar when Bradley spoke.
“That was naughty!” he said in a tone Terrence used when she was reprimanding him.
“Shh,” she murmured, “You can’t scold fluff.”
And you just couldn’t.
“Oh my!” the cotton ball seemed to turn abruptly and Terrence gasped and Bradley giggled. It had two round eyes the size of Bradley’s palms that darted quizzically around taking in the room.
They both stood very still watching it, Bradley breaking into a grin occasionally, Terrence wondering how long it was going to stare around the place. Then its eyes fell on them standing stiffly by the dresser and the cotton ball lit up.
“Oh, hello! Yes, yes. Well! How very… hmm.”
Terrence stared. When it spoke, the fluff under its eyes split open in a mouth form, like the puppet socks Bradley and his brothers played with.
“My name is Bradley,” Bradley said, rather politely, “What’s your name?”
“Shh!” Terrence pulled his arm.
The cotton ball looked as though it was puffing out its chest as it said cheerfully: “Washboard!”
Terrence couldn’t help herself, “Sorry?”
“This is Terrence, she’s my sister.”
“Hello!” It appeared to nod at Terrence, “Hello to you all!”
Bradley watched the cotton ball eagerly. “I’m five,” he said unnecessarily.
Washboard the cotton ball had started to hum the instant Bradley spoke, and it jerked abruptly at the silence when he finished, “Oh that’s very nice, a very handy age to be, five is terribly important, you know.”
Terrence didn’t know. She didn’t know what was going on, but she had to find out. She stepped forwards uncertainly, “Um, Sir- Mr Washboard, Sir…”
“So…” Washboard said as he glanced around, still humming in his own pauses for no reason, “…what place is this?”
“It’s-” Bradley began, but Washboard interrupted him with a bounce, “Oh! Oh no!” It turned around and took in the king-sized bed, the handsome wooden wardrobe and the toy chest in the corner with colour spilling out of one side.
“Goodness, this is terrible!” It turned back to them with wide eyes.
Bradley let go of Terrence’s dress, “This is my room.”
Terrence cleared her throat, “Sir Washboard, um, how- why are you here? In this house, I mean.”
Washboard the cotton ball gasped, “I’m lost!” And she saw tears forming in its eyes, and she wondered absurdly how a cotton ball could possibly produce tears. Maybe little fairies fly up to its eyes, all invisible, and pour buckets of water into them.
Very slowly, but before Terrence could stop him, Bradley walked up to Washboard and patted the clean, white fluff with his small hand in an innocently comforting gesture that only small children possess. “Don’t be scared, we’ll help you.” Then he turned around, “We’ll help him, Terrence?”
Washboard looked at her miserably.
“O-of course,” she said, watching Bradley as he patted the cotton ball. He pulled his hand back and a bit of fluff came away with it. He looked quickly at Terrence who stepped forward and said hastily: “So, how- how exactly can we help?”
The cotton ball named Washboard gave a big sniff, his eyes brimming wet and his fluffy lips trembling. Terrence never thought she’d live to see the day. Then it burst into tears.
“Goodness!” exclaimed Terrence before she could stop herself.
“Don’t cry!” urged Bradley, who was trying to place the piece of fluff back onto the cotton ball unnoticed while Terrence looked on in distaste. Didn’t guests know how to behave? Miserably claiming to be lost was one thing, but bawling ungracefully in a stranger’s bedroom was another.
“Now, see here Mr Washbo-”
“I’m sorry, what?” It looked up at her suddenly with eyes as dry as a bone. Terrence stepped back, startled.
“Oh! It…” she shook her head at the same time Bradley said: “We’ll help you get home!”
“Home?” Washboard looked down at Bradley. He was smoothing over the patch of cotton ball that he had just squished in but could easily pass for stroking it in comfort. “Good heavens, what are you two on about?”
“You’re lost,” Bradley informed it matter-of-factly, as if this was news Washboard had never heard before, “Me and Terrence are going to help you find your home.”
The cotton ball chuckled, “Nonsense of the nuttery kind, I’m afraid.” Then it proceeded to ignore Bradley and Terrence and fly onto Bradley’s bed where it started to bounce. But it wasn’t really bouncing because the cotton ball was just a cotton ball and it was more of a continuous vertical float.
“Don’t you want to go home?” Terrence felt all reason leave. “We’d help you, do you know.”
“Yes!” Bradley ran giggling to the bed. Terrence tried to catch him before he climbed on, “No Bradley, no jumping, remember?”
He pulled out of her grasp with his childish energy.
“Oh!” Washboard stopped in mid-float and stared straight ahead as if it had just seen a ghost. “I’m lost!” It fell on the bed and Bradley started jumping. “I’m lost!”
“You are,” Terrence watched it, and she was overcome with a mad desire to touch the cotton ball herself. But that was silly; only children did such things. “Where did you come from?”
Washboard stared at the wall with its big eyes and looked as if it was trying to remember. And then: “Twiddles!” The cotton ball closed its eyes and seemed to vibrate violently. Bradley stopped jumping and watched with alarm; Terrence reached out but didn’t know what to touch so she let her arm swing back.
“What’s it doing?” Bradley whispered.
Before Terrence could enquire, Washboard became still at
the same moment something white and square-looking fell out from its fluff onto
Bradley’s quilt. “Oh…”
“Yes!” the cotton ball cried, looking around with an expression of excitement and pride, “Right!”
Bradley leaned forwards on his knees, “What is it?”
Terrence also moved forward and, after looking at Washboard for confirmation that he gaily gave with an overly-enthusiastic nod, bent in for a better look.
It was a folded piece of paper.
“Open it!” Washboard said.
Terrence grabbed the paper and unfolded it four times as her head gave a mild throb, smoothed it out against herself and held it up. It looked like a list of ingredients that her mother took shopping every week, except instead of food items next to every dot point there was a sentence. She didn’t like to read it, but words such as ‘three’ and ‘make sure’ and ‘tarry’ caught her eye.
She glanced at the cotton ball that was humming serenely, “Is it a set of rules?”
Washboard beamed, “Read it!”
“Oh, well, it might be private,” Terrence lowered the list, “Mayb”-
“Oh, do! I can’t read myself.”
“I can read!” Bradley exclaimed brightly. “I can read dog, and the duck, and the… mmm… the…”
“Can you? That’s very clever of you, you know.”
Terrence shook the paper but Washboard was looking at Bradley with interest.
“Alright, I guess I can,” she said to nobody in particular because nobody was paying attention.
“Say…” the cotton ball started and Terrence cleared her throat with intent. “…say, can you teach me to read?”
Bradley was bouncing on his knees seemingly lost in his own world. “I can teach you,” he said as he flung himself sideways on the bed, giggling. “It’s easy!”
“Alright!” Terrence called out angrily, quite aware that Bradley was a cheerful boy and that the cotton ball needed tutoring, “I’m going to read this now.”
They both looked over.
“Oh! Oh yes,” Washboard gleefully bobbed his approval. Then he tilted his whole body of fluff to the side, as if thinking, “Whatever are you holding there?”
Terrence frowned, “You can’t have forgotten.”
Its large eyes suddenly shone, “Is it a story?”
“No-”
“A story about ducks!” Bradley chimed in, unhelpfully eager.
“No, it’s-”
“A story about flying,” Washboard bobbed excitedly.
Terrence clutched the paper, “No!-”
“Chickens!” Bradley cried.
“Oh, chickens!” Washboard said, in a rather disdain manner, “You don’t want them.”
But Bradley wasn’t worried about what Washboard didn’t want, “Cows!” he called out happily.
There was nothing for it, Terrence clicked her tongue angrily and studied the paper herself. The top line read: RULES FOR LOSING ONESELF: are your toenails clean?
Toenails? Terrence re-read the title in disbelief. Underneath the title there were six dot points, she counted, all explaining how to find oneself when lost. At the bottom of the paper was a scrawled sentence that made her squint to see it properly. Use to get home.
“I’ve got it!” She called, looking up enthusiastically, and both Bradley and Washboard stopped dreaming of books to read, “A way to send Mr Cotton Ball home!”
“Cotton ball?” Washboard repeated, frowning in a way that only cotton balls without eyebrows could. “Why, I’m not a Cotton Ball!”
“Oh,” she felt a sinking feeling rise in her stomach. Not this again.
“He’s the cloud,” Bradley chimed in.
“Yes,” said Washboard with an air of one who thought himself quite valuable and seemed to swell up, “I’m rather important, you know.”
Terrence gazed at Washboard. “You’re the cloud,” she echoed.
“I very much am.”
Bradley turned his big eyes on Terrence, “From the story.”
Something seemed to be shifting in the room. Terrence blinked, “The children’s book?” She looked from Bradley to Washboard.
“Hmm, yes…” Washboard said seriously, “I’d say you have a slight case of brain addlement, my dear girl!”
Terrence scoffed, “You can’t be, stories aren’t real!” Her brain did feel quite addled, after all, this was the real world where stories stayed in storyland and cotton balls knew proper words. She scrutinized the cotton ball. Where is all the blood? She thought, trying to remember how exactly the horrid story went. He can’t be hiding it all. And he’s still whole!
“What’s adam ment?” Bradley asked.
“I’d say I can be whatever I choose,” said the cotton ball claiming to be a cloud, “Now, where can one get a cup of tea?”
Terrence started, “Tea!” she hurriedly checked the first rule. ‘It says, to get home: ‘Tea of the lukewarm category must be ingested with severity’. That’s the first rule!”
She didn’t much like the sound of ‘severity’, whatever that meant, but at least it was doable.
“Never mind that shibberish dowaddle. It’s all utterly useless, I’d say.” And Washboard flew over to the toy chest with alarming speed. “Oh, look! A train! I do love trains, they’re-”
“No!” Bradley leapt off the bed and ran to Washboard frantically, “You can’t play with them. It’s after bed time.”
Washboard seemed to droop sadly, “What a positively frightening rule! Who came up with that?”
Terrence sighed and hurriedly read through the remaining five rules. Rule two claimed that the lukewarm tea had to be stirred with a tea strainer. Rule three declared that exactly three and two halves of marshmallows were to be put into the tea at various stages throughout the digestion. Rule four jeered at rules one, two and three, proclaiming they were idiocy of the extreme kind, and that the carrier of the six rules should already know its whereabouts and how to extract itself from unpleasant journeys.
Terrence felt her head throb painfully again and clenched her teeth together, the previous excitement fading fast. What IS this? She thought crossly.
Rule five stated that Rule four was jealous and insecure about its own lack of instruction, but seemed to be intimidated by Rule one, and Rule six ignored all of the others entirely by woefully wishing it was seven and complaining bitterly about order, even pairings and banality.
“Ok!” Terrence had never read anything so confusing and unhelpful in all her life. She looked up to find Bradley and Washboard standing at the window, looking out.
“... and my name is Bradley,” Bradley was saying, as if he was introducing himself for the first time.
“What a splendid name! Very strong, I daresay,” Washboard commented earnestly. Then he bounced a little. “That’s where I came out, over there a way.”
Terrence joined them and peered out into the darkness.
“Hello!” said Washboard when she stood next to him, “Lovely to make your acquaintance!”
“Quite,” Terrence said tersely, still put out by her disappointment. Then she remembered what Bradley said about the story and she turned to the humming cotton ball, “Where did you say you came from, again?”
“Oh! It was such a sensation!” Washboard started grandly, and although Terrence had only known it for a short time, she had a feeling that the cotton ball was starting up on a long adventurous tale that she had no time for.
“Yes!” she said in what was hopefully an exclamation of excitement and not impatience, “It does sound rather thrilling. But where did you come from? Do you not remember how you came to be in our world?”
The cotton ball stopped abruptly, its eyes wide and staring. In its pause Terrence heard a noise and realised Bradley had taken up humming absent-mindedly.
“I was playing Fluffy Golf-”
“Terrence! Look!” Bradley said suddenly. He was propped up with his arms poking out of the window ledge and his forehead pressed against the glass, and he was gazing at something down below. Terrence leaned out and saw something lying on the grass.
“Oh, the book,” she said quietly. She had been hoping for something belonging to Washboard that would take him back, maybe a spaceship or a magic carpet made out of cotton balls.
“The pictures…” Bradley jumped away from the window and Terrence spun around and caught his arm just in time. “No-”
“Terrence…” Bradley argued urgently in his high voice, “… he needs it. That’s Washboard’s home.”
Terrence hesitated, “His home?”
“Where he came from.”
“Home?” Washboard turned towards them and Terrence let go of Bradley, who ran immediately out of the room humming loudly in delight.
“Of course!” she breathed in triumph. It all made sense, everything, except that wretched list of rules. Washboard had appeared at the same time she had thrown the book out of the window. “You came out of the book, didn’t you, Mr Washboard?”
Was it Terrence’s imagination, or did the cotton ball suddenly look sheepish? Its eyes lowered to the neatly vacuumed carpet and its humming grew a notch louder, and she was sure that if it had hands they would be clasped behind its back.
“Um, Mr-”
“Oh, who’s to say?! Really, very complicated business. Now, tea… that is a warming subject, don’t you agree?”
Terrence sighed, “Please, Mr Washboard, our mother will be in soon and-”
But the cotton ball didn’t seem to be interested as it was still talking, only now to itself, “… although I don’t know why I’m supposed to remember. Rather a bother! Tea, and a tea strainer, and the four feet jump... Oh!... Oh do tell… What’s it on!”
And the cotton ball who called itself a cloud burst into tears once more. Terrence felt a stab of pity mixed with curiosity, which wasn’t a pleasant sensation, so she hurried forwards and held out the paper.
“It’s all here! All on this paper, the list of rules you need to get back.”
“Oh! No, no, no…” Washboard chuckled and Terrence stepped back in alarm. She studied its big dark eyes that were dry and clear as they fell on Terrence, “A load of tosh!”
“Terrence!”
She turned to see Bradley running through the door with the book in his hand. He rushed up to her side, beaming as if he’d just won a brilliant prize, “I’ve found it.”
“Well done!” she took the book from his wet hand. The cloud and his friends. There on the cover was the title, and underneath was a drawn picture of the cloud smiling brightly in the middle of all his cloud friends. Terrence glared at the book before looking up. “We have everything now, Mr Washboard.”
“Nonsense!” said the cotton ball sternly.
“Yes we do,” Bradley argued serenely.
“You have nothing, and nothing has you!”
A sound down the hall caught Terrence’s attention. “That’s our mother,” she said quickly, trying to send Washboard signals with her eyes but failed because she had never learnt how.
The cotton ball sniffed, “What an untimely manner! Sending a marvellous cloud on its way, no tea or sprinkling of magical sparkles!”
“We don’t have sprinkles,” Bradley reported sadly.
“Sparkles,” Terrence corrected.
“That’s right,” Bradley nodded, “Sprinkles.” Then he looked up with a smile, “We’ll have sprinkles next time, ok?”
“Oh!” the cotton ball appeared to glow with delight and Terrence thought she may need sunglasses, “Next time, yes, why… of course!”
“Ok,” Terrence sighed, the pain her head not entirely gone, “Ok, then-”
“What a thought!” Washboard gleefully bobbed up and down, taking no notice of anybody else, and there seemed to be tears in its eyes once more. Terrence was surprised at how easily cotton balls turned.
They’re rather emotional, she thought precariously.
“And we’ll eat tea,” nodded Bradley, “and cake, and play Peppermint Spray, and-”
“And play on the trains?” Washboard stared intently at Bradley, wide-eyed and hopeful.
Bradley flung his arms out as if he’d just let a thousand doves loose at a wedding ceremony, “Of course!”
“Oh!” Washboard cried happily, “It’s rather a date, it is!”
“Rather,” said Terrence, “Are you ready now?”
Washboard turned and beamed at Terrence, “What a majestic place this is! I’d say it’s been quite a pleasure.”
“What’s madresstic?” Bradley asked.
Terrence smiled tightly, remembering her manners in a tense fashion, “Yes, it-”
But the cotton ball had begun humming to itself once more, quite ignorant of Terrence and Bradley standing and watching. “Book on the floor, if you will!” It commanded happily.
Terrence obliged, placing it neatly on the carpet in front of the cotton ball.
“Open it!” the cotton ball ordered gaily, and Terrence remembered with a stab of irritation that it had no hands. How very unproductive. She bent down and opened the cover. “To which page?” she asked.
“The middle!”
She flipped a clump of pages at once, but stopped almost immediately when she felt them to be heavier then when she had previously turned them. The pages appeared to sag in the middle as if weighed down by something stuck in between them. She glanced up at the cotton ball that was watching her brightly, then looked back down and slowly, carefully, pulled the two top pages apart with shaking hands.
“Oh!” Terrence gasped.
“Mmmm,” she heard the cotton ball declare, “A mess, if I’ve ever seen one!”
And it was.
Terrence stared at the two pages that were smeared with a red paste, rather unpleasantly like blood.
“What’s it?” Bradley bent down next to her. She turned the next page and found more red paste.
“What is it,” she corrected Bradley quietly, automatically, and turned the rest of the pages to reveal the unsightly red stuff on every one. It looked as though someone had tried their hand at finger-painting with too much paint so that most of the pictures on the pages were blocked out, although in this case it was blood. Or was it? Terrence’s relief at the lack of injured cloud pictures was replaced with curiosity as her nose picked up on a smell.
In quick succession, she ran her finger through the alleged blood and licked it.
“It’s tomato sauce!” she exclaimed.
“Oh do tell me something new!” the cotton ball cried in a weary tone that made Terrence stand up angrily.
“Why don-” she stopped abruptly. The cotton ball had a pink china tea-cup filled with tea floating in front of its face, with a long stripy straw protruding from the cup to its mouth. She counted one and a half marshmallows, both white and fairly fat, floating cheerfully in the tea.
Terrence gasped, “You’re drinking tea!”
“I have been known to drink many a liquid, you know,” and it proceeded to slurp a mouthful of tea in a surprisingly pompous and loud manner.
“And there’s marshmallows in the tea!” she exclaimed. Does this mean the rules are real? Or half of them, anyway. Terrence searched the cotton ball for signs of the tea strainer but found none.
Washboard slurped once more, “How else does one enjoy tea?”
“No, silly…” Terrence heard Bradley say with a giggle as something wet touched her leg, “…marshmallows are for chocolate.”
Terrence glanced down. “Bradley!” He was wiping his hands all over the pages, wiping them clean, revealing the pictures and then licking his fingers. Terrence bent forward quickly as the cotton ball declared: “Everything needs marshmallows!” and she squinted because the pages didn’t look the same.
“Oh.”
“We have to clean every one,” Bradley said matter-of-factly. Underneath the tomato sauce there was the cloud, smiley and bright, happy to be warming up on the slippery dip. But there was no blood. Bradley turned to the next page and wiped. There was the cloud, once again happily going down the slide with a gigantic smile and glowing eyes.
What happened to the blood? What happened to the screaming and the bits of cloud? Terrence frowned. Bradley hummed. Washboard slurped.
“Extraordinary!”
Terrence looked up and blinked. The teacup was gone and the cotton ball looked as though it was miserably trying to remember something. “Oh dear, there’s something in it…”
“The pictures haven’t any blood on them,” Terrence said, forgetting Bradley was in the same room.
“Heavens!’ Washboard’s eyes widened, “Blood? You must be a pirate.”
“Pardon?”
“This is the blood,” Bradley piped up, “and we’re cleaning it away.”
The cotton ball chuckled and Terrence tried not to sigh while her brain raced to come up with a plausible explanation or story, but Bradley looked up with a knowing expression. “Because the cloud is happy, see?”
Terrence glanced at the picture and saw the cloud beaming out from the sandpit at the bottom of the slide. It did look happy.
“But-”
“Quite the stern one, you are! Namsy Pamsy!” The cotton ball smirked, seemingly finding itself amusing, and then focused on Bradley. “Couldn’t hoist a few pages, could you?”
“Hmmm?” Bradley stared up at Washboard.
“Turn a few pages, please,” Terrence said to Bradley, “To the middle?”
The cotton ball nodded its enthusiasm, “Precisely!”
“What’s hoist?” Bradley asked without conviction and did as he was told; wiping them clean and revealing more children-appropriate images of merry clouds and sandcastles that Terrence couldn’t fathom. She heard a noise from the next room.
“So, have you completed the rules?” she asked Washboard urgently.
“Oh?” the cotton ball paused, and then appeared to remember what it had previously forgotten because its whole ball of fluff brightened as if someone had flicked a ‘cotton ball that wants to be a cloud’ switch. “Oh, oh yes, right!” it turned to Terrence. “Rules, if you will.”
Terrence gazed, bemused. How does it want them? She thought, rather alarmed. “Where shall I put it?”
“Through the chimney!” Washboard swung forward in the air until the top of the cotton ball was facing Terrence.
“In your head?”
“Certainly! Isn’t that where you keep all important information?”
Terrence wasn’t sure how to reply. Bradley stood up next to her and watched on seriously. Her hands shook as she folded the paper four times and slowly slid it into the fluff that was Washboards head, rather like slipping a letter into a mailbox. It was the oddest experience of her life. The fluff made a faint rustling noise as the paper sank gracefully into the cotton ball, until her fingertips touched the top.
“Oh!”
It was like touching magic. Terrence pulled back quickly, aware that she was now a changed woman.
“Salutations!” Washboard said dramatically.
“Salushins!” Bradley repeated to himself.
The cotton ball started humming as it floated closer to the ground in a preparing-for-battle kind of way. It was certainly the most serious Terrence had ever seen it.
“I bid you all much ado!” It called suddenly, like they were yards apart, and Terrence took hold of Bradley's hand. Washboard looked at each of them fondly.
“Goodbye!” Bradley called loudly. “Shhh,” Terrence warned. She smiled at the cotton ball in a mixture of relief and happiness, “Thanks for coming!”
“Until the next time!” the cotton ball squeezed its eyes closed, as if having a strenuous and pointless air-arm-wrestling match, and then: “Frobish!” it cried theatrically and flew about four feet upwards, before falling spectacularly downwards right into the middle of the book, and disappearing.
Terrence gasped.
“Whoa,” Bradley bent over the book inspecting the pictures of the cloud nearing the end of the slippery dip and the cloud falling into the sandpit. “Goodbye.”
Terrence winced at a sharp jolt of pain that pierced her head. “Okay, it’s bed time,” she picked up the book and closed it.
“Put it here!” Bradley commanded, running to the window and looking back over his shoulder.
“Why not on your bedside table?” Terrence asked.
“No! He has to know how to get back.”
“Oh, okay,” she felt herself sagging with tiredness, but followed and let him set up the book on the floor while she slid the window closed.
“Now he can come back everytime he wants,” Bradley patted the book affectionately and then ran to his bed and jumped on, scrambling under the covers with unexplained energy.
Terrence smiled wearily, “Every time,” she corrected, “Two words.” She tucked the covers around his shoulders and leaned in to kiss his forehead but it was wrinkled with worry.
“What’s wrong?” she looked into his wide, suddenly anxious eyes.
“He will come back?” Bradley asked and Terrence said: “Of course! It wants to play trains, did you forget?”
“Oh…” his face relaxed, “He will come back!”
Terrence nodded, kissed his cheek swiftly and made her way to the door. Bradley started humming.
“Good night, Bradley.”
“Good night,” he replied in a well-rehearsed way with his eyes closed, and Terrence could tell he was thinking about the cotton ball.
“Mum will be in soon,” she said quietly, turned out the light, closed the door, and stepped on a fat, squishy marshmallow that happened to be lying in the hallway. Oh. How odd. Terrence picked it up. She could hear her mother’s laughter coming from the next room and her head suddenly gave a mighty pang. What a dreadfully absurd evening, she thought, walking quickly down the hall to her bedroom. Opening the door gingerly and peeking in, she half-expected to find a dragon sitting on her bed smoking a pipe. A purple one, because that was her favourite colour. But her room was empty.
Terrence smiled to herself, amused at her own notions and sad at the same time because she really did want to meet a dragon. Don’t be silly, she placed the marshmallow on her bedside table, they’re only stories!
Or are they?
>Did life steal your oranges, too, when you were looking at your shoes?
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