Humpty Doo and the Imperial Carousel
By Flip Como
()
About this ebook
Humpty Doo... the enchanted city on rails where Nature has the upper hand and nothing stands still, not even the buildings. A place where toys are part of the population, storytellers can be summoned to amuse you, and flying jelly babies guide you through the ever-changing streets.
When the heart of the city, the Imperial Carousel, is damaged, Humpty Doo grinds to a halt and Nature starts to take over. Can Jinx and her new Humpty Dooish friends restore the Carousel before the bush rises up and consumes them?
A Carpathian, a mythical ghostlike horse that runs at 200 km per hour, could be the key to Humpty Doo’s salvation. But how can the children find something thought to be extinct?
Flip Como
Flip Como lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband, a miniature panther, and a coffee machine she adores.
Related to Humpty Doo and the Imperial Carousel
Related ebooks
Strangers in the Lane (The Willow Lane Mysteries #2) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJudy's Journal, Vol 7, August 2022: Judy's Journal, #7 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHumpty Doo and the Coolabah Gully Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNews Worthy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBonded: Sleeping Giants Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Case of Mistaken Identity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCottage Farm Blue Fever Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCindy Lost and the Black Witch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlood Lust Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTony Takes Off - Pet Sitters: Ready For Anything #3: Pet Sitters: Ready For Anything, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSkinny Minny: The Clumsy Alley Cat Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRiding High Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sugar Time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Throne of Hades: A ShortBook by Snow Flower: Hadesians, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMoonlight Monsters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNemezia and the Wooden Sword Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDozey Dog Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHallowed Oaks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPhillip Goodhouse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We Darling Few Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHarvest Moon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRaine in the Underlands: Book One Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings"Tell Me A Scarecrow Story." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEnigmas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDarkness Embraced Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBirthright Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummer Dey: Dare to be Different Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDigweed the Cat Friends and High Places Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRegretfully Invited Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSherlock Sam and the Digital Detectives on Instanoodlegram: Sherlock Sam, #16 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Children's Family For You
Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The One and Only Bob Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: The Classic Fantasy Adventure Series (Official Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Into the Wild: Warriors #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Farmer Boy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ruby Finds a Worry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Harriet the Spy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coraline Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On the Banks of Plum Creek Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fortunately, the Milk Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Number the Stars: A Newbery Award Winner Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Long Winter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silver Chair: The Classic Fantasy Adventure Series (Official Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Amelia Bedelia Gets the Picture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Crossover: A Newbery Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Wolf Called Wander Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Way of the Warrior Kid: From Wimpy to Warrior the Navy SEAL Way: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Little House in the Big Woods Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little House on the Prairie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: The Classic Fantasy Adventure Series (Official Edition) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Secret Garden: The 100th Anniversary Edition with Tasha Tudor Art and Bonus Materials Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wildwood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prince Caspian: The Classic Fantasy Adventure Series (Official Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Graveyard Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sarah, Plain and Tall: A Newbery Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tikki Tikki Tembo Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Horse and His Boy: The Classic Fantasy Adventure Series (Official Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Battle: The Classic Fantasy Adventure Series (Official Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coraline 10th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Humpty Doo and the Imperial Carousel
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Humpty Doo and the Imperial Carousel - Flip Como
Humpty Doo and the Imperial Carousel
Copyright 2020 Flip Como
Published by Doggo Press at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Published by Doggo Press, Sydney, 2020.
Copyright © Flip Como 2020.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or any information storage system and retrieval without permission in writing from the author.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.
1. Children’s Fiction 2. Fantasy
Illustrated by Hanna Mancini
doggo.press@yahoo.com
For all the children who, like me,
would eat a floor cupcake.
For Shirley and Jacinta.
And for my pen pal, Antony.
Table of Contents
ONE
Blue Lamingtons
TWO
A Jelly Baby Guide
THREE
Dendrons
FOUR
Real Time Stories
FIVE
The Imperial Carousel
SIX
The Bolt-Hole
SEVEN
The General
EIGHT
Fate No. 7
NINE
A Confidante Ring
TEN
Bruno
ELEVEN
The Disguise
TWELVE
The Decoy
THIRTEEN
Hassard
FOURTEEN
The Other Confidantes
FIFTEEN
Greystanes
SIXTEEN
‘L’
ONE
Blue Lamingtons
‘I don’t want to eat that Brussels sprout,’ said Jinx, crossing her arms. ‘I’ve had two. There isn’t room for a third.’
‘You haven’t eaten them,’ said her brother. ‘You’ve got one in each cheek.’
Furious, Jinx ran to her secret spot in the backyard. She spat the two Brussels sprouts into the palm of her hand and tossed them into a hydrangea bush. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like three or four birds were congregating there, hoping for a snack.
Jinx Valentine was a good girl, but you couldn’t rely on her to be good like you can rely on the sun to rise each morning. She was, like all children, a work in progress.
It was true Jinx had once dressed her cat in a pair of long boots and a cavalier hat tied on with elastic, and it had run away wearing them. It was also true that a concerned neighbour had returned the animal hours later, with the hat now positioned under its chin, and both boots missing.
As well as roller skating and watching cartoons, Jinx loved to prank people. I don’t know how many of you are accomplished pranksters. I’ve been at it for years and I still find it difficult not to dissolve laughing moments before I pull off the prank.
Jinx faced the same dilemma. As soon as her target walked into the room, she had the urge to laugh out loud. Once, she tried to distract herself from laughing by thinking about something dull, like a science test. However, the memory of her science teacher, Mr Jonathan P. Bentley (aka ‘Bentz’), who lost both eyebrows and a silk necktie in a Bunsen burner accident, set her off laughing again.
Not everyone enjoyed Jinx’s pranks. One of those people was Henry, her younger brother. Jinx wondered if Henry appreciated her at all. Sometimes she made him appreciate her. This she achieved by putting a cushion on him, and sitting on it.
In turn, Henry enjoyed burying things in Jinx’s two untidy hair buns, which he called birds’ nests. The things included: pencils, icy-pole sticks, beetles, and bubble gum.
On this particular evening, Jinx and Henry were being babysat. There’s one thing I know about babysitters and it is this: not all of them know the rules. Therefore not all of them are strict.
Mrs Lindsay, whom Jinx thought was at least one hundred years old, was one such babysitter. With very little effort, Jinx had persuaded Mrs Lindsay, not only to let her bake lamingtons after dinner, but to colour them electric blue. Night baking was something Mrs Lindsay turned a blind eye to. Ditto the disposal of unwanted dinner vegetables.
Once the blue lamingtons were done, Jinx went straight to her upstairs bedroom. She wanted to mess around with her favourite possession, an eighty-millimetre telescope. It sat haughtily on its tripod as if the leafy Randwick landscape was unworthy of its penetrating eye.
Using her telescope, she had monitored a pair of currawongs that were nesting in a tree across the road. She had watched that nest on and off for a fortnight, eagerly waiting for the clutch of pinkish-brown eggs inside it to hatch. She wanted to know if the chicks would be born with or without feathers and if they would look weird.
At 8pm, Mrs Lindsay stuck her head around Jinx’s half-open bedroom door. ‘May I come in?’ she asked.
Jinx, who was reading cross-legged on her bed, waved her in. Mrs Lindsay strode into the room carrying a glass of chilled pineapple juice and some blue lamingtons on a plate.
‘In case you get hungry, dear, in the night.’
Jinx took them and thanked her. Suddenly, something caught Mrs Lindsay’s eye. She walked to a low bookcase. Sandwiched in the middle of a row of horse-riding novels stood a toy clown. It was threadbare and dirty. The name Fazzini Pom-Pom was embroidered on its jacket in blue cotton.
‘My dear, why is Fazzini Pom-Pom facing the wall?’
Jinx’s cheeks flushed. ‘He gives me the creeps, that’s why. His eyebrows are like whips and I don’t like the way he stares at me while I’m sleeping. His grin is…’
‘Deranged!’ said Mrs Lindsay, studying Fazzini Pom-Pom’s grotesque features.
‘Smell him,’ said Jinx.
Mrs Lindsay did so. ‘How unpleasant! He’s smoky, like he’s been up a chimney.’ She returned the clown to its position. ‘I don’t blame you for making him face the wall. I used to do the same thing to a doll I disliked when I was a little girl. It worked. For a while.’
‘For a while?’
Mrs Lindsay’s face became animated. ‘One night, I woke up to find the doll bent over and staring at me through her own legs, like this.’ She paused to demonstrate the position. ‘She looked terrible upside down. Gravity did not do kind things to her face. She did it every night for a month, just to frighten me.’
‘Really, Mrs Lindsay, surely she just fell forward? Dolls can’t move. Not on their own.’
‘Of course she did it on purpose!’ said Mrs Lindsay so shrilly that Jinx jumped and knocked the glass against the plate of lamingtons. ‘I never liked that doll. I liked her even less when she eloped with my Liberty of London Winston Churchill doll. Well, good-night.’
And there the conversation ended.
Before getting into her pyjamas, Jinx decided to do a final check on the currawongs. She had always liked currawongs. She thought they were like magpies, but nobler. The nest was partly lit by a street light. With the help of her telescope, it was easy to see the three eggs it held. Just then, one of them jiggled. Jinx felt anxious. If the eggs are hatching, she thought, shouldn’t a parent bird be present?
Suddenly, the apish form of Fazzini Pom-Pom appeared over the nest’s rim. With a lit cigar wedged in the corner of his mouth, he loomed over the eggs. Then he roughly shoved all three into his clown hat and tossed it over his shoulder like a sack. In one swift movement, as if he knew he was being observed, he glared at Jinx and pointed a grubby finger at her.
Jinx stood up so suddenly her telescope rocked on its tripod. She ran to her bookcase. The wicked toy clown was gone!
As she turned to go back, something jagged and made of metal hit her in the face. Reeling, she saw that it was a razor sharp fish hook, about the size of a dinner plate. The hook was attached to a thick rope which extended up towards the ceiling and then disappeared into some mist.
Jinx clutched her face with her hands, soothing the spot where the hook had struck. Luckily its point had not broken the skin. She felt her cheeks turn red. Then a man’s voice drifted down from the mist.
‘So, I told her Koaly is pronounced Ko-Lee. Ko-lee. The ‘a’ is silent.’
‘I bet that shut her up,’ said a boy’s voice.
‘You bet it did,’ said the man’s voice and then both of them laughed.
A wet lollipop fell from the mist and rolled across the floorboards in a sweeping arc. Jinx stopped it with the sole of her shoe. Her eyes shot back up again.
‘Who did that?’ said the man’s voice.
‘Sorry, sorry!’ came a second boy’s voice. ‘It fell out of my mouth.’
‘Well, don’t do it again! It makes ripples.’
From what Jinx could deduce, the three speakers were male. The first voice belonged to a man. His two companions were definitely boys.
‘Why are we fishing here?’ asked one of the boys.
The man’s voice said, ‘Because we’re desperate, that’s why. You want to eat, don’t you?’
Throughout the conversation, the fish hook continued to dangle from the ceiling. Poor Jinx faced a dilemma. What should she do about it?
Her gaze fell on the blue lamingtons. She got the plate and, for a moment, considered the situation. Then she selected one and gently guided it over the hook’s point. To this there was no response. The speared lamington just hung there, motionless. So she gave the rope a single hard yank.
‘Here we go!’ said the man’s voice.
The rope twitched and was hastily reeled up, after which nothing happened. The three voices fell silent. The mist remained, but no rope with a fish hook attached dropped down out of it.
Finally, the voices returned and Jinx could tell there were more of them. She could even make out girls’ voices. She waited to see what would happen, staring at the mist with her hands on her hips.
A girl’s voice said sarcastically, ‘Well, thanks so much for saving us some.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said a boy’s voice. It was one of the boys Jinx had heard earlier. ‘We’ll get more.’
Slowly, five thick ropes descended through the mist and at the end of each one was a fish hook.
Jinx’s eyes shone as she stepped forward and stood amongst the shiny hooks. Smiling crookedly, she grabbed the one nearest to her and wedged it through the fabric of her pink tartan dress. She did the same with the other four hooks, making sure they were evenly placed, front and back, at chest level. Out in the street, a car alarm wailed.
Jinx chewed her bottom lip. What am I doing? she thought.
With three in one hand and two in the other, she yanked hard on the five ropes.
Again, the man’s voice said, ‘Here we go!’
Jinx immediately felt herself being hauled upwards. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Fazzini Pom-Pom. He had returned to his place on the bookcase and was facing the wall, like nothing had happened.
However, it was too late for Jinx to do anything about it. Within seconds the mist had engulfed her head. Her body followed. Then her shoes. She was gone.
TWO
A Jelly Baby Guide
Up and up Jinx went. Then darkness enveloped her and she felt herself falling. She landed, sitting bolt upright, on a shabby sofa in a dimly lit room. When she stood up, the lights brightened, as if she had tripped a sensor. There were paintings on the walls. Dozens of them. They were masterful in technique, but repetitive in subject, for they all featured the same copper-coloured dog. It looked a bit like a red setter.
‘Hooks off! Hooks off!’ squeaked several high-pitched voices.
Before Jinx could react, some flying somethings – she initially thought they were bees – dislodged the five hooks that were embedded in her dress. Then they flew off down one of the many corridors,