The Dinner Men Who Were SEVEN LUCKY GODS

Part One. The Knock

The seven bowls of rice were still warm on Monday morning.

They had been sitting on the dinner hall steps since Friday, in a neat row, steaming. It had rained on them twice. Mr Pickering the lollipop man said that was against science, and that he had not eaten any, although he had thought about it.

The little gold boat was still sailing about on the puddle in the playground, round and round, with nobody pushing it. Every so often a very big laugh came out of it.

Alex noticed the knock first.

It was coming from the front door of the school, which was locked, because it was early. Knock, knock, knock. Then nothing. Then, a long time later, knock, knock, knock again.

"Somebody's at the door," said Alex.

"Why doesn't anyone answer?" said Felix.

"Maybe they're all busy," said Alex.

"Maybe they haven't noticed," said Felix. "It's a very polite knock."

So we went and opened it: the twins, and Maya, and Kenji, and Ollie, who had come to look at the rice. Willow came too, walking slowly, because she had been asleep on the radiator and was not pleased about it.

On the step stood a round, cheerful man with a rosy face and a small pointy hat. He had a fishing rod over one shoulder and a huge red fish tucked under his arm like a baby. He was smiling at the door as if it were the nicest door he had ever seen, and his hand was already lifted for another knock.

When it opened, he looked at us. His whole face lit up.

"Oh," he said. "Somebody came."

His badge said MR EBBIE.

Part Two. Seven Is Too Many

"Good morning!" said Felix.

Mr Ebbie watched Felix's mouth very carefully, and then he said, "Good morning to you too!" in a big, warm voice, and he shook Felix's hand and then Alex's, and then he shook Ollie's, and then, with great seriousness, he shook Willow's paw. Willow allowed it.

That's when the bus arrived.

It came up the road with its engine going pa-pa-pa-pa, and it was shaped like a boat. The front of it was pointy and painted red and gold, with a little flag on top. Ollie said it was the most embarrassing bus he had ever seen. Then it parked across three spaces, and six more people climbed out of it, one after another.

Mr Harris came out of the office with his clipboard to the chest. He looked at the seven of them. He looked at the clipboard. He turned a page, and turned it back.

"Class," he said, "these are our new lunchtime helpers. Mrs Dunn is at her sister's wedding all week. It's her first holiday in nine years, and she has left me a list as long as a scarf. The agency said they would send two people." He counted again. "They've sent seven."

"Will seven be enough?" said Ollie.

"Seven is too many," said Mr Harris, glowing. "But it's a very nice sort of too many! Because on Friday, we have the Thank-You Lunch! A hundred and fifty guests! Neighbours, grandparents, everybody who's ever helped this school, all sitting down together in the dinner hall. We have to make a lot of food. Plenty! Plenty for everybody!"

He wrote PLENTY on his clipboard and underlined it. He looked very happy and a little bit afraid.

We looked at the seven new helpers. Nobody knew what to say. They stood in a row on the step, looking at the school as if it were a very large and surprising ship.

Part Three. The Hatch

On Monday, the dinner was fish. Fish on a Monday is always sad.

We sat down with long faces. Even Felix, who is lucky, looked as if he had lost a pound coin. But then Mr Ebbie appeared at the hatch, with his rosy face and the huge red fish, laughing at nothing in particular. His badge was pinned a bit crooked.

Ollie went to the front of the line. "CAN I HAVE CHIPS?" he said.

Mr Ebbie smiled. "Lovely weather," he said.

"CHIPS!" said Ollie.

"A spoon!" said Mr Ebbie. "Of course!"

A couple of people at the back began to giggle. Ollie opened his mouth, and Alex could see that he was about to laugh too.

Kenji looked at Ollie. It was not a cross look. It was just a very still one. Ollie shut his mouth. And Alex noticed something: Mr Ebbie was not confused at all. He was waiting, with his head tipped, and his eyes were on every face, and he was not smiling the way people smile when they don't understand. He was smiling the way people do when they are being patient.

"He can't hear," whispered Alex.

"Then how do you ask him?" said Felix.

Alex did not know. But Maya did. She stepped round Ollie, and she rapped on the counter of the hatch with her knuckles. Knock, knock, knock.

Mr Ebbie jumped, very slightly. Then he beamed at her, as if she had given him a present.

"Ah!" he said. "Yes! Hello! Now, what can I do for you?"

"Chips, please," said Maya, slowly, so he could see her mouth. "For him."

"CHIPS!" said Mr Ebbie, and a whole tray of them appeared.

That was how it started. Knock first. Wait until he looks at you. Say it slowly. By the end of the first day the whole school was knocking on the hatch, and it sounded like a hundred woodpeckers. Mrs Tibbs said it was the loudest lunch in the history of the school. But she knocked too, and she asked for seconds, and Mr Ebbie gave her the biggest wink in the world.

Nobody laughed at him again, and I think that was the first luck of the week.

Part Four. Behind the Compost Bin

On Tuesday, Maya called a meeting behind the compost bin.

Maya has a notebook and a very sharp pencil, and she collects evidence. She is the one who works out who the new staff really are. Alex and Felix always share the jobs, so Alex held the pencil and Felix held the notebook, and Kenji and Ollie sat on their upside-down buckets.

"Evidence number one," said Maya. "The badges. Seven badges, and no jobs on them. Just names."

"Mr Ebbie, Mr Daikon, Mr Bish, Ms Benny, Mr Fuku, Mr Jury, Mr Hot," read Felix.

"Evidence number two. A bus shaped like a boat. Evidence number three. A man who knocks and a man who hears with his eyes." Maya took a breath. "And evidence number four is Kenji."

"Me?" said Kenji.

"Your gran," said Maya.

Kenji went a bit pink. Then he said that his gran lives in Japan and has a picture on her wall. It shows seven people sitting in a big ship heaped with treasure, and one of them has a fishing rod and a red fish. "Every New Year she puts it under her pillow," he said. "So that her first dream of the year will be a good one."

Maya opened her notebook. "That is the Seven Lucky Gods," she said, and she said it very carefully, because there is a thing about them that is important.

She told us that in Japan, for hundreds of years, people have told stories about seven gods who travel together in a treasure ship. Each brings a different kind of luck. One brings food, one brings wealth, one brings protection, one brings music, two bring wisdom and a long life, and one brings laughter. Only one of them, Ebisu, began in Japan. The rest sailed in from India and China and joined the crew. People hang their pictures at New Year, and visit their shrines and temples, and say thank you.

"They are not just a story," said Maya. "People still do it. Right now. So we are going to be very careful with them, and not be silly."

"We never are," said Ollie.

"Ebisu," said Maya, pointing at the picture in her head, "is the god of fishermen and honest work. He has a fishing rod and a big red fish called a sea bream. And there is one more thing. At his shrines, there is a wooden board beside the building. People knock on it, so he can hear their thank-yous. Because the old stories say Ebisu doesn't hear well."

Nobody said anything. We all looked at our knuckles. Alex wrote KNOCK in big letters, and Felix said it quietly, to keep it.

"So Mr Ebbie is EBISU," said Felix.

"And there are six more," said Alex.

Part Five. The Sack

That afternoon, we found the second one, because we heard him first. A clunk. A thump. A rattle. And then a short man in a black hat came round the corner of the kitchens, dragging the biggest sack any of us had ever seen. He had a little wooden hammer in his other hand. His badge said MR DAIKON, and three small mice ran behind him, each carrying one crumb.

"Daikoku," whispered Kenji. "God of rice and kitchens and good fortune."

"Hello," said Mr Daikon, which showed he could hear perfectly well. He was a quiet, shy man, who spoke as though he did not want to disturb the air. He opened his sack and gave back a lost glove, two lunchboxes, a recorder, and a cardboard crown that said KING OF THE PLAYGROUND. Ollie said he had been missing that glove since March.

"The sack," said Mr Daikon, "gives whatever you ask it for. But you must stop it. When you have enough, knock three times on the sack, and say thank you. Knock first. It likes to be sure."

"I'll try!" said Ollie, who had not stopped looking at the sack. "Crisps, please!"

Crisps began to pour out. It was like a golden waterfall. They piled up, and up, and up.

"Thank you!" said Ollie, and nothing happened. The crisps kept coming.

"You must knock," said Mr Daikon.

Ollie smacked the sack as hard as he could. Three times, bang bang bang. The crisps went on.

"Not like that," said Alex, who was knee-deep.

"Slower," said Felix, and he knelt down, and watched Mr Daikon's hands, and he thought about Mr Ebbie. "Like when you're waiting for someone to answer."

Ollie knocked. Slowly. Once. He waited. Twice. He waited. Three times. "Thank you," he said.

The crisps stopped. The sack gave a little sigh, like a dog lying down.

"Exactly," said Mr Daikon. He was smiling. "It is only rude to rush a sack."

We spent the rest of the afternoon eating crisps. The mice got most of them.

Part Six. Three More

On Wednesday we found three more, all in one day, which felt like a bargain.

The third was at the school gate, standing perfectly straight, holding a long pole, with a very fierce frown. On his head was a small gold tower, like a toy pagoda, and around his belt was a row of tiny orange cones. He did not say a word. He guarded the road as though it were a castle. His badge said MR BISH.

"Bishamon," said Kenji. "Warrior god. He guards against bad things, and he is VERY serious."

"He looks like he'd fight a bus," said Ollie.

A bus came round the corner. Mr Bish raised his pole, and the bus stopped so fast that every passenger fell forward.

The driver said, "Sorry!"

Mr Bish said, "THANK YOU."

It was the only thing he said all week.

The fourth was in the music room. She had long, shining hair and a lute, which is like a guitar but rounder, and when she played, the whole room went floaty and still. Even the hamster stopped running on its wheel. Her badge said MS BENNY. The tap in the music room, which had dripped all term, no longer dripped.

"It was dripping out of time," said Ms Benny.

The fifth was in the library. He had a very tall, round, shiny forehead, a long white beard, and a very small body, and a crane stood still beside him like a statue. His badge said MR FUKU. Elfine had come in with her cousin Marion to return a book, and she looked up at his forehead, and said, "Did you know that you spell 'necessary' with one C and two S's?" Marion said, "Elfine," and Elfine said, "I'm only being helpful."

"One collar and two sleeves," said Mr Fuku, without looking up from his scroll. Elfine wrote it down. She did not say anything else for almost a minute, which was a record.

The sixth was sitting on a bench in the playground, feeding a small, embarrassed deer. He was very old and very slow, with a white beard and a long wooden staff. His badge said MR JURY. He and Mr Fuku had a polite argument across the playground about who was older.

"I'm older," said Mr Fuku.

"I'm older than that," said Mr Jury.

"Not by much."

"By ENOUGH."

Part Seven. You Are Felix

We could not find the seventh.

We looked in the hall, the gym, the car park and under the climbing frame. We looked for two whole days. That was when Alex stopped, and said, "Wait. Listen."

"I can't hear anything," said Felix.

"Exactly," said Alex. "Which is odd. Because it's Thursday playtime, and that is the loudest corner of the whole school."

So we followed the sound that wasn't there, and found a crowd of Reception children sitting under the big tree at the edge of the playground, all of them very quiet and all of them staring.

In the middle sat a man with an enormous round belly and a huge cloth sack over his shoulder. His badge said MR HOT. He was not saying anything. He was laughing so hard, and so silently, that his belly bounced up and down like a beach ball, and the children were watching him with open mouths. And then one of them started to giggle. Then the rest did. Then we did. And then the playground was the loudest in the world again.

"Hotei," said Kenji. "The happiest of them all. He loves children."

Every time a child asked for something, Mr Hot pulled it from his sack: a sticker, a sweet, a toy, a balloon. He gave each one out, still laughing. When he saw us, he beckoned, and rummaged, and handed us each a sticker, and we stuck them on our jumpers.

Alex's said YOU ARE ALEX.

Felix's said YOU ARE FELIX.

"Is that all?" said Felix, a bit disappointed. He had been hoping for YOU ARE LUCKY.

Mr Hot looked at him kindly. He pointed to the sticker, and then at Felix, and he said, very slowly, in a surprisingly small voice, "It is plenty."

Felix thought about that for the rest of the day.

"Lucky is something you do," he said at last. "But I think being yourself might be the first part."

"That's what it says," said Alex. And they both felt rather good, although neither of them could have said why.

Part Eight. The Pat on the Sack

On Thursday afternoon, three small things happened, and we didn't think about any of them until later.

The first was that Mr Daikon told us he'd be gone before breakfast on Friday. He was taking the boat-bus to a wholesaler, a very long way off, to fetch paper plates for a hundred and fifty. "Proper ones," he said. "Not too thin." He put his sack on the counter in the kitchen, by the hatch and the brass dinner bell, and he left it open. "It only gives when it is asked," he said. "Who would ask a sack?"

The second was that Mr Harris came through the kitchen with his clipboard, very fast, as he does on a Thursday. He stopped. He patted the sack, absent-mindedly, as you might pat a horse.

"Plenty, please," he told it. "For Friday. Plenty for everybody. As much as they like."

"Mr Harris," said Felix, "did you just talk to the sack?"

"I talk to everything on Thursday," said Mr Harris. "The photocopier is a very good listener." And he hurried off.

A tiny trickle of white grains ran out of the sack, and over the edge of the counter, and onto the floor.

The third was Ollie's shoe. At the end of the day, he took it off, and about forty grains of rice fell out.

"That's funny," he said. "I haven't even been near the kitchen."

"Rice," said Alex. He had a feeling. It was in his tummy, like a button done up wrong.

All the mice looked very round.

Part Nine. The Porthole

On Friday morning, there was rice at the front door.

There was rice in the corridor. It was in drifts. Ollie slid on it. There was rice in the hall, along the bottom of the stage, and in the corner by the kitchen door in a heap as high as a cat. Marion was standing at the front with a clipboard of her own, counting guests off a list, and she did not even look up. "It's the Thank-You Lunch," she said. "We've got a hundred and forty-nine coming. I'm counting."

"Where's it coming from?" said Felix.

It was coming from under the kitchen door.

The kitchen door has a round window in it, like a porthole. Alex looked through. He did not see the kitchen.

He saw rice. It was pressed up against the glass, white and tight and rustling, like the inside of a washing machine, right to the top. In the middle, in the gloom, a few little shapes were drifting. Mice. They looked like they were enjoying it.

"The kitchen's FULL," said Alex.

Behind the glass, something went thump.

We all went very quiet.

"Mr Ebbie goes in at six," said Kenji slowly. "Every morning. To start the fish."

Nobody said anything. Willow had walked up and sat by the door with her tail curled round her feet, and she had her ears pointed at the rice.

"He's in there," said Felix.

Part Ten. How to Talk to Somebody Who Can't Hear

The door would not open. We pushed with all of us. Rice pushed back.

"MR EBBIE!" shouted Ollie. "ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?"

"MR EBBIE!" shouted Kenji and Maya. We all shouted. It was the loudest noise we could make. The hall rang with it. Behind the porthole, there was a pause.

Nothing came back. Of course nothing came back. You cannot shout at somebody who can't hear, and shouting only makes the rest of you feel better.

Ollie started to bang on the door with both hands, fast, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.

There was an answering thump. Then another, and another, and another, very fast.

"He's banging back," said Kenji.

"He thinks we're playing a game," said Maya.

"Stop," said Alex. He stood very still. "Stop. Listen. Everybody. Remember what Mr Daikon said to Ollie? Knock slowly. Like you are waiting for someone to answer. And remember what we did on Monday." He swallowed. "Knock. Then wait."

He put his knuckles to the door, and knocked. Three times. Slowly. Then he counted five in his head, and he did not knock again.

For a very long time, nothing happened.

Then, from the other side, came one knock.

"He felt it," whispered Felix.

"Ask him things," said Alex. "One knock is yes. Two knocks is no."

So Felix asked, slowly, with his face right up to the porthole. "Are you hurt?"

Two knocks. No.

"Is the rice coming from the sack?"

One. Yes.

"Can you reach the sack?"

Two. No.

"Is it still going?"

One knock. And then a very small one, afterwards, like a person saying sorry.

Felix swallowed. "He's all right," he said. "But it isn't stopping."

Alex put his hand flat on the door. He didn't say a word, but we all knew we'd just done something we had never done before. We had talked to a god without making any noise at all.

Part Eleven. Who Asked

"Somebody asked it," said Alex. "It doesn't pour on its own."

"Mr Daikon said it gives whatever you ask," said Felix.

"But somebody has to stop it," said Maya, and she opened her notebook, and went through it in a rush. She stopped on a page. "Mr Daikon said you knock three times and say thank you. But that was to Ollie, and Ollie was the one who asked."

"And Mr Daikon's not here," said Kenji. "He went to get the plates."

Alex felt the button in his tummy come undone.

"Thursday," he said. "In the kitchen. Mr Harris patted it."

"Plenty, please," said Felix, slowly, in a Mr Harris voice. "As much as they like."

"He asked it," said Alex. "He asked it for plenty. And he never said when."

Nobody had to say what that meant. At that moment, the front doors opened, and the hall filled with the sound of a Friday morning getting going: voices, and walking sticks, and a whole crowd of guests coming up the steps. In front of them was Mr Pickering, with his mum on his arm. And, behind them, with his clipboard against his chest, and a great big smile, was Mr Harris.

"Welcome!" he said. "Welcome, everybody! The kitchen's all ready. Plenty for everybody!"

Behind him, a long way off, the boat-bus was pulling into the car park. Mr Daikon was home. But we were not going to have time for that.

Because the kitchen door had begun to creak.

Part Twelve. The Wave

The door bent. Then the round window cracked from side to side, and the whole door went BANG, off its hinges, across the hall.

And the rice came out.

It was not loud. It was almost worse than that. It came in a great white hush, a slow, thick, rustling wave, pouring out of the kitchen across the floor of the dinner hall, toward the tables, and toward the stage, and toward all those people on the steps.

"EVERYBODY ON THE TABLES!" shouted Marion.

She and Elfine were already moving. Elfine had the Reception children by the hand in a line, and she was shouting facts as loudly as she could, to keep their minds busy. "Did you know that rice is mostly little bits of starch? Did you know you can float on it? Climb up! Climb up!"

"You can NOT float on it!" said Ollie, going past, sideways, on a chair.

Kenji and Maya pulled little ones up onto the stage. Mr Pickering's mum was in the middle of the hall. She was very old, with a stick, and a very bright hat, and the rice had got to her knees. Alex took one arm. Felix took the other, and between them they walked her, one slow step at a time, to a bench, and up on to it, and she patted both of them on the head and said, "Thank you, boys. How very kind," as though it were an everyday thing.

Mr Bish was already in the double doors. He had planted his pole in the floor, and set his feet, and the wave went up against him and stopped, like a bus. "THANK YOU," he said, through his teeth. Behind him, a line of guests was getting back down the steps. He had the biggest frown we had ever seen.

The wave stopped.

It stopped, because the kitchen was empty of rice at last. The rest of it lay across the floor like new snow. The air was full of dust and a warm smell of dinner.

Nobody had been hurt. We sat on the tables, and nobody moved, and the quiet came down like a blanket.

Part Thirteen. The Quiet After

We sat very still.

Ms Benny had come out of the music room with her lute. She sat down on the stage, in the rice, and began to play, very softly. It was a slow tune, like water going round a stone, and it made every shoulder in the room come down an inch.

Mr Harris sat on a table with his clipboard in his lap. He looked small.

"It's my fault, isn't it," he said. "I said plenty. I said it to a sack."

Nobody said anything. It was not a sentence that needed an answer. Felix climbed down off the stage, and across a table, and across another, and sat down next to him.

"It's still coming," said Alex, quietly. From the empty kitchen came a faint steady hiss, like a tap left on. "It hasn't stopped. It's slower, but it's still going. And it will only stop for you."

"For me?"

"You asked it," said Alex. "You have to say when."

Mr Harris looked at the black doorway, where the door had been. The lights in the kitchen had gone out. Rice moved in there, in the dark, with a whisper. His face went the colour of porridge.

"I don't like the dark," he said, very quietly. "I never have. I've never told anybody."

"That's all right," said Felix. He held out his hand. "I don't like it either. I'll come with you. You don't have to not be scared. You just have to go."

Mr Harris looked at the hand. He took it.

"Thank you, Felix," he said.

Part Fourteen. Willow

The kitchen was darker than we expected.

It was darker than the library, and darker than the tunnels would have been. The windows were covered with rice, and the only light came in at the door, in a slanting line. The rice was up to our knees. It moved when we did, with a sound like a hundred tiny whispers. We could not see the sack. We could not see the counter. We could not see anything.

Mr Harris's hand was shaking. Felix held it very tight. Alex had gone in first, with his arms out, feeling his way along the shelves. "It's along the wall," he said. "By the hatch. By the bell."

"I can't see it," said Mr Harris.

That's when Willow walked past us.

She does not like the dark. She does not like rice, or being hurried, or having wet whiskers. But she stepped up onto the counter, and walked along it with her tail straight up, and when she looked back, her eyes were two small green lamps, shining in the black.

She waited for us. Then she went on, a little further, and waited again.

We followed her, a step at a time, across the rice, along the counter, past the cold pans and the stacked trays and the brass bell, and she led us all the way to the end, where the hiss was loudest, and there she sat down.

The sack was open beside her. It was still pouring rice, gently, in a steady white thread, like an hourglass.

Willow looked at Mr Harris and blinked once.

"I'm sorry," said Mr Harris, to the sack, in a very small voice. "I should have said when. I didn't mean to ask for so much. I wanted everyone to have plenty, and I forgot that plenty has a stopping place."

He put his knuckles on the sack. He knocked. Slowly. Once. He waited. Twice. He waited. Three times.

"That will do," he said. "Thank you."

The rice stopped.

The sack gave a long sigh, and settled, and went flat. Somewhere in the dark, from the pantry, there came three slow knocks, and then, a moment later, a very large, relieved laugh.

Part Fifteen. The Man on the Crate

We found Mr Ebbie in the pantry.

He had been sitting there since six o'clock, on an upturned fish crate, with his legs crossed, and his rod over his knee. The rice had come up as far as his chest and then stopped, and it lay across him like a very large blanket. He was perfectly calm. A mouse was asleep on his hat.

When Alex opened the door, he looked up, and he beamed.

"Ah!" he said. "You came!"

"Weren't you scared?" said Felix.

"A little," said Mr Ebbie. "At first. But then I felt somebody knock." He tapped the crate. "And I thought, somebody is coming. Somebody always comes, if you knock, and wait. If you rush it, you miss them."

We helped him up. It took some time. Mr Harris took one arm, and said "Sorry, sorry," and Mr Ebbie patted his hand, and said he was always glad of a visit.

Then he sat down on the counter, in the light from the door, and he looked at us, one at a time, very carefully, so that he could read our faces.

"I have been knocking for a very long time," he said. "On shrines, and boats, and walls, and doors. Do you know what I have learned?" He smiled. "Knock, and then wait. People are worth waiting for. And when somebody knocks on you, open the door, and wait for them too."

"Knock, and wait," said Felix, slowly, to fit it in his head.

"And be worth waiting for," said Alex.

"Both," said Mr Ebbie, and he laughed, and his belly shook, and all the rice on his hat slid down his back.

Willow, who was sitting on the counter, blinked slowly at him. It was a very long blink. It is how she says, I approve of you.

Part Sixteen. Plenty

The Thank-You Lunch was an hour late. It was the best one anyone had ever been to.

Mr Daikon had come in with the plates. When he saw the kitchen, he did not say a word, he just stood in the doorway, with a mouse in each pocket, and then he laughed, a very small, surprised laugh, like a door creaking open. "That," he said, "is a very great deal of rice."

Mr Fuku came down from the library and looked at the floor for some time with his hands behind his back. "A hundred and forty-nine guests," he said. "Plus the children. Plus the staff. Plus the neighbours who have not come yet. That is, if we put it into bags, about four hundred bags."

"We don't have four hundred bags," said Mr Harris.

"I do," said Mr Hot, and he turned out his sack. Out came bags. Hundreds of them. Paper bags, string bags, a cloth bag with a picture of a cat on it, which Willow looked at for a long time.

So we scooped. The whole school scooped, with bowls and spoons and hands. Mr Pickering's mum scooped from her bench. Elfine said, "Did you know that rice feeds more people than anything else on Earth?" and Marion said, "Not now," and passed her a bowl. Everyone who came to the Thank-You Lunch went home with a bag of rice. There were bags for the church hall, and for the food bank, and for people who hadn't been invited but lived up the road.

Mr Jury sat in the middle of it with a cup of tea. He did not scoop a single grain. He said he had been scooping for a thousand years and it was somebody else's turn.

And Mr Ebbie fried up forty fish pies and put them on the counter. Every one of them went. We knocked on the hatch to say thank you, and he knocked back, and nobody had to say anything else at all.

Part Seventeen. The Bow

On Friday evening, the boat-bus was waiting in the car park, with the engine running, pa-pa-pa-pa.

The Seven were getting on it. Mr Bish held the door. Mr Fuku and Mr Jury argued over who should sit by the window. Ms Benny gave the music-room tap a last small pat. Mr Hot waved, and laughed, and tossed a sticker to every child still left in the car park.

Mr Ebbie was last. He stopped at the step, and he turned, and he knocked three times on the side of the bus, and then he waited and smiled at us. We knocked back, on the gate. He nodded, as if that were exactly right, and climbed aboard.

The bus pulled out. It did not drive, exactly. It went up and down, up and down, like a boat on waves. The little flag on the roof grew into a big bright sail, filled with a wind that was not there. Seven small hands waved from the deck, and then they were over the top of the hill, and gone.

Our stickers were still on our jumpers.

"I'm going to put the picture under my pillow," said Felix.

"Me too," said Alex.

We went inside to get our bags, and stopped.

Every spoon in the dinner hall had been tied in a bow. Every single one. Hundreds of them, all along the tables, each with a neat loop of ribbon that had not been there ten minutes ago.

The brass dinner bell was ringing by itself. Ding. Ding. Ding. Above it, a green feather duster hung in the air, tickling the clapper, and it was not being held by anyone.

On the whiteboard, in curly writing with a gold, swishy tail, somebody had written:

Good luck. You will need it.

And from nowhere at all, very faintly, behind us, there was a smug little giggle.

Willow narrowed her eyes at the empty air.

Maya was already writing. Alex looked at the bow on the nearest spoon. Felix looked at the feather duster.

And at exactly the same time, they said, "Monday."

The End.