The Music Teacher Who Was SHIVA

Part One. The Little Drum

The first sign of Mr Shah was a drum.

It was a Monday morning, just before the bell, and we were all running around the playground like a bag of spilled marbles. Then, from somewhere high up in the school, came a tiny sound. Dum-dum, dum-dum.

It was not a loud drum. It was more like a heartbeat with a hat on.

And that's when something very strange happened. Everybody stopped. The football stopped. The skipping rope stopped. Ollie, who had been running towards the dinner hall with his mouth open, stopped, and closed his mouth, and said, "That's nice."

Felix noticed it first. "Alex," he said. "Nobody's shouting."

Alex looked around. "Nobody's even pushing."

"That has never happened," said Felix.

"Not once," said Alex.

Then we saw him. In the very middle of the playground, on the grass, sat a man with his legs crossed and his eyes shut. He was wearing a long blue scarf, and he did not move AT ALL. Not when the football rolled past him. Not when Kenji shouted, "HELLO, SIR?" Not even when a pigeon landed on top of his head and stayed there.

Kenji said, "Is he asleep?"

Felix said, "Asleep people fall over."

Alex said, "Statues don't wear lanyards."

Then the man opened one eye, said, "Good morning, everyone," in a voice like a warm blanket, and the pigeon flew off. We all agreed it was the calmest thing we had ever seen.

Part Two. A Scarf in the Heat

Mr Harris came hurrying across the playground, holding his clipboard against his chest like a shield.

"Everyone, this is Mr Shah," he said. "He is our new music teacher. He is going to be teaching us, um, music. Please be kind. And please do not throw anything at his pigeon."

"It isn't my pigeon," said Mr Shah, getting up without using his hands, which Ollie said was a trick you would need a lot of practice for. "But I am happy to share."

Mr Harris was already hurrying on to his next announcement. He always is. "And a reminder," he said, flicking through his clipboard, "that on Friday, to finish Science Week, we are making the BIGGEST SOUP IN THE HISTORY OF THE SCHOOL. Everybody brings one thing. A carrot, a pea, a spoonful of whatever. That way," he said, glowing, "it is EVERYBODY'S soup!"

"Everybody's soup," said Ollie, trying it out. "I'm bringing a sausage."

"Then it's everybody's sausage soup," said Kenji, and for the rest of the week we said EVERYBODY'S SOUP to each other in the corridor, in a very grand voice, like a cheer.

Mrs Dunn, the dinner lady, had come out to watch, with her ladle held against her apron. "I only have a recipe for forty," she said quietly, to nobody. Then Mr Thorley went clanking across the playground, wheeling a huge silver pot on a trolley, as wide as a paddling pool, with a great wooden paddle laid across the top and a coil of rope trailing behind. It looked as if it could hold a lot of soup. We all agreed on that. Mrs Dunn did not look as if she agreed with anything.

"Hurry, hurry," said Mr Harris, hurrying off after it.

"Most troubles are the size we make them by hurrying," said Mr Shah, very softly, watching him go. Felix heard it. He said it over to himself, the way you do with a good new word.

His badge said Mr Shah, Music Teacher. He had a kind, still face, and when he looked at you, you felt like the only person in the whole school. He smiled at Willow, who was sitting on the wall with her tail wrapped round her paws, as she does every morning. Willow is the Bengal Reading Cat, and she is very dignified. She looked at Mr Shah for a long time. Then she blinked slowly, which, from Willow, is a hug.

It was a very hot week. Even the pigeons were panting. Mrs Tibbs, our teacher, fanned herself with a spelling list. But Mr Shah kept the blue scarf wrapped around his neck all day, and he never once looked sweaty.

"Aren't you hot?" asked Kenji at lunch. He is always the first to ask things.

"A little," said Mr Shah. "But I like to keep my neck warm."

He said it like it was a perfectly ordinary thing to say. But Felix wrote it down in his head anyway.

Part Three. Behind the Compost Bin

On Tuesday, Maya Singh 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.

"I have started a list," said Maya, and everybody leaned in.

"It is not as strong as Mr Thorley's list," she said quickly. "Nobody's is. Except for number nineteen, which we do not talk about."

"We do not talk about number nineteen," said Kenji, very seriously.

"But it is getting there," said Maya. She cleared her throat.

"Evidence number one. He sits perfectly still."

"For twenty minutes," said Alex. "And a pigeon."

"Mr Shah did it for twenty minutes and a pigeon," said Felix. Alex wrote it down. It is a good sentence, and we have been saying it ever since.

"Evidence number two," said Maya. "I need somebody to go into the music cupboard."

Ollie said, "Is there food in there?"

"No," said Maya.

"Then I'll go," said Ollie, "because I'll feel brave about it."

He came back four minutes later holding a small wooden drum shaped like an hourglass, with two little knobs on strings that went tik-tik-tik when you shook it. He said it had been sitting on the very top shelf, all by itself, with a little sign in front of it that said PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH. THANK YOU.

"That's the drum from this morning," said Felix.

"It is called a damaru," said Maya, and she wrote it in her notebook, and underlined it once. "Evidence number two."

Part Four. Dripping

On Wednesday, it was Alex who noticed it first.

"Felix," he whispered, "look at Mr Shah's hair."

Felix looked. It was dripping. Little silver drops of water were running down the back of Mr Shah's neck and soaking into the blue scarf.

It was not raining. There was not a single cloud. There was just the sun, and Mr Shah, and the drips.

"Maybe he had a shower," said Kenji.

"Before school?" said Ollie. "That's a lot of effort."

"Maybe the leaky tap in the staff room," said Alex, but he did not sound sure.

Felix put up his hand. "Mr Shah, why is your hair wet?"

Mr Shah touched the back of his head and looked at his fingers, and then he smiled, as if it were an old friend. "Oh, that," he said. "It happens sometimes. Water follows me about."

"Why?" said Felix.

"It is a very long story," said Mr Shah, "and a very long river." Then he went into the music room and the door closed softly behind him.

At playtime, Maya read the words out of her notebook as we huddled behind the compost bin.

"Evidence number three. A blue scarf worn even when hot. Evidence number four. Wet hair, and no rain." She stopped. "And I have been reading about a river."

"What river?" said Alex.

"Not yet," said Maya. "I need one more clue. A big one."

She got one the next day.

Part Five. Brenda

On Thursday, a man came to school with a box of reptiles for Science Week.

He was very serious. He said everyone had to stay in their seats and not touch anything. Then he opened the lid and lifted out a long, stripy snake, and it slid right out of his hands and over the floor of the hall, and every single person screamed.

Even Mr Harris screamed. He had to sit down on a PE bench.

"BRENDA!" shouted the reptile man. "BRENDA, COME BACK!"

Brenda went straight past Ms Fortune. She went straight past the reptile man. She went straight past Ollie, who had climbed onto a chair. And she went up the leg of Mr Shah, who was standing at the back, round and round and round, until she was draped across his shoulders with her chin resting on his neck.

Mr Shah did not scream. He did not jump. He did not even blink.

He said, "Hello, you," and patted her gently on the head.

"She's never done that before," whispered the reptile man.

Alex and Felix looked at each other. Maya looked at both of them. She opened her mouth, and for a moment nothing came out, because she was so excited.

"A snake," she whispered, "on his neck."

Then she opened her notebook, and she said, "Behind the compost bin. NOW."

Part Six. The Great Churning

"He is Shiva," said Maya.

She said it very quietly, with the whole list in front of her. We counted. A very still man, a little hourglass drum, a blue scarf in the heat, water in his hair and a snake on his neck. It was the second-best list she had ever made.

"Shiva is one of the most important gods in Hinduism," said Maya. "That is a religion that is very old and that lots of people follow today, so we have to be careful and respectful. He is the god of stillness, and also of dancing. He is calm, and he is kind, and he looks after people. He lives on a snowy mountain and sits so still that rivers flow out of his hair. That's the Ganga, the great river. And he has a snake around his neck, because snakes like him."

"Brenda likes him," said Ollie.

"Brenda definitely likes him," said Maya. "And I'm going to tell you why his throat is blue. It is the best story. Ready?"

We were ready.

"A very long time ago, the gods and the demons both wanted amrita, a magic drink that would make them last forever. It was hidden at the bottom of the ocean. So they took a whole mountain, twisted a giant snake round it for a rope, and pulled, the gods one end and the demons the other, back and forth. They were churning the ocean like a giant pot. A great big turtle sat underneath to hold the mountain up."

"Is that a real turtle?" asked Kenji.

"It is a god turtle," said Maya, "and it was extremely patient."

"The churning went on for hundreds of years. And the first thing out of the ocean was not treasure. It was poison. Black, smoky poison, spreading across the sky, strong enough to hurt the whole world."

We all shivered.

"And everybody ran away," said Maya. "The gods said, 'It's not ours.' The demons said, 'It's not ours either.' They all pointed at each other, and the black cloud kept growing. Until Shiva came. 'I will hold it,' he said. And he scooped it up, and he drank it."

"ALL OF IT?" shouted Ollie.

"All of it. And his wife Parvati put her hand on his throat, quite gently, so that it would stay there and go no further. His throat turned blue, and it stayed blue. They call him Neelakantha, the Blue-Throated One. After that, the churning went on, and wonderful things came up out of the ocean."

She put the pencil down. Alex had given it back to her without being asked.

"So there's the big idea," said Maya. She underlined it three times.

SOMEONE HELD THE HARD THING, SO IT DID NOT SPREAD.

Part Seven. The Dance That Shook the Floor

On Friday morning, there was a special assembly, and Mr Shah was asked to play the music.

He sat down on a cushion on the stage and began to tap his little drum, very softly. Dum-dum, dum-dum. Then a bit louder. Then faster.

And all of a sudden, he stood up and began to dance.

He lifted one foot. He spun round. His arms went in every direction at once, and the blue scarf swirled out behind him, and his feet went THUMP, THUMP, THUMP on the stage. We could actually feel the floor wobbling. Ms Fortune's earrings jingled. Ollie said the whole hall was shaking like a jelly.

Nobody spoke. Mr Harris stopped looking at his watch. Mrs Tibbs forgot she was holding a register. Even Willow, who sits at the very back and has seen everything, sat up.

When the dancing finished, Mr Shah bowed with his hands together, very slowly, and the whole school clapped for about three minutes.

"That," whispered Maya, "is called the Dance of the Universe. It is how Shiva dances all the worlds into being, and it's also how he dances them to sleep."

Felix said, "It was a very good dance."

Alex said, "It was a REALLY good dance," and they both nodded, and neither of them said what we were all thinking, which was that the whole school had been holding its breath, in a good way.

Part Eight. The Family

At break, Maya said the final job was to look for his family.

"Shiva has a wife called Parvati," she said. "And two sons. One of them has an elephant's head and loves sweets."

"Please do not stare at anybody," said Maya. "We are being respectful."

"What if they have an elephant head?" whispered Kenji.

"Then we say good morning," said Maya, "like normal."

So we checked the staff list on the wall outside the office. Mr Harris, Mrs Tibbs, Mr Thorley the caretaker, Mr Shah. And there, in the office, sitting behind the desk with a great big stapler, was the school secretary.

Her badge said MRS PARVATI RAO.

Everybody took a deep breath.

Mrs Rao looked up and smiled the way you smile when you know that someone is about to ask you a question and you already know the answer. She had a little photo on her desk of a snowy mountain, and a plant on her windowsill that was somehow still alive from last winter.

"Hello, you lot," she said. "Can I help?"

"We were just looking," said Alex.

"For the stapler," said Felix.

"It's right here," said Mrs Rao.

Just then, someone walked up behind us eating a laddoo. It was Ganesh Rao, who is a few classes above us. He was big, and gentle, and he had a very ordinary head, and he looked at all five of us staring at him and said, "Why are you staring?"

"No reason," we all said.

Maya had a quiet word with us afterwards. She said that the elephant-headed god, Ganesha, is the one who removes obstacles. Ollie said he had a lot of obstacles, mostly in his lunchbox. Alex said that was not what an obstacle was.

Ollie asked if he could have a bit of laddoo, because it looked REALLY good, and Ganesh looked very pleased.

Part Nine. Everybody's Soup

At lunchtime on Friday, the hall was full of people, and in the middle of the room stood the silver pot, wide as a paddling pool, with the great wooden paddle beside it and its long rope wound round.

"WELCOME," said Mr Harris, standing on a chair, "to the end of Science Week! Today we make the BIGGEST SOUP IN THE HISTORY OF THE SCHOOL! And whose soup is it?"

"EVERYBODY'S!" shouted the whole hall, because we had been practising all week.

Mrs Dunn stood beside him with her sleeves rolled up, holding her ladle like a sword. "I thought pea and mint," she said, as if she were not sure that was enough.

So one by one, we all went up to the pot. Mr Thorley put in a very large turnip. Mr Pickering put in two leeks. Kenji put in a handful of grass, which was not allowed but nobody stopped him. And somebody, we never found out who, put in a small brown jar with the label rubbed off, which Ollie said might have said ADD and might have said DO NOT ADD.

Then everybody took hold of the rope. Mr Harris and the staff took one end. Elfine and Marion, who are big kids and twins like Alex and Felix, took the other, with a long line of children behind them. Elfine wears glasses and tells facts, and she said, "Did you know that you can stir a pot of soup three times faster with a rope than with your hands?"

"Did you make that up?" said Marion.

"No," said Elfine, "but I might have."

"HEAVE!" shouted Mr Harris. And they pulled one way, and then the other. The paddle began to turn, round and round and round, and the soup began to swirl.

Alex looked at Felix. Felix looked at Alex. We both had the same strange feeling, and neither of us could say why.

"Isn't that a bit like the churning?" whispered Maya.

Part Ten. The Green Bubble

It started with a gloop.

The soup was a lovely pale green, and then it was a less lovely darker green, and then it was a colour somewhere between a swamp and a crayon. It smelled like a wet sock that had been left in a fridge.

"Is it meant to smell like that?" said Kenji.

"It's very FRESH," said Mrs Dunn, but she stepped back.

The paddle kept turning. And that's when a bubble began to rise up in the middle of the pot. It was a huge green bubble, as big as a beach ball, and it wobbled and shone and got bigger and bigger, until it nearly touched the lights.

Mr Harris said, "That's, er, unexpected."

The bubble went POP.

It was a very big pop. Mr Thorley jumped so high that a small BOOM went off in the rafters, and his hammer fell out of his belt. And out of the pop came a slow, thick, shivering green fog, which rolled across the pot, and over the edge, and across the hall floor.

It smelled like a hundred wet socks. A hundred wet socks that had been left in a hundred fridges.

Mrs Tibbs breathed in. "Oh dear," she said, and she sat down on the floor with a silly smile.

"Mrs Tibbs?" said Kenji.

"I'm quite all right," said Mrs Tibbs, and fell over sideways.

Part Eleven. Nobody's Soup

"EVERYBODY OUT!" shouted Mr Harris.

Nobody listened, because it was already too late for that. The fog was spreading fast. Everywhere it went, people went wobbly and slow and sat down with a smile, like they were about to have a nap. Mr Pickering was snoring against a wall. Mr Harris himself got as far as the door, and then he sat down on his clipboard.

Elfine and Marion were wonderful. They took the little ones out in a line, holding hands, and Elfine told facts to keep everybody's mind off it. "Did you know an octopus has THREE hearts?" And Marion walked at the back, counting every head, and she did not stop once.

But the fog went with them. And the grown-ups began to argue.

"It's not MY soup," said Mr Harris, from the floor. "I only said everybody could put something in."

"It was your idea," said Mrs Dunn.

"I was doing pea and mint!"

"Somebody put in the little brown jar!" said Mr Pickering.

"I only put in a turnip," said Mr Thorley. "A turnip is a perfectly honest vegetable."

"Then whose is it?" said Mrs Dunn.

And nobody said anything, because that was the trouble with EVERYBODY'S soup. When it all goes wrong, it turns out that it is NOBODY'S soup.

The fog crept on. It went under the doors and along the corridor. It went round the corner by the library. It was heading for the classrooms, and for the whole school.

Part Twelve. Stand Still

Alex and Felix hid behind a stack of chairs, with Maya, Kenji and Ollie. It was chaos. Grown-ups were running up and down, waving their arms and flapping their clipboards. They were fanning the fog in all directions. And every time somebody fanned it, it spread a bit further.

"Most troubles are the size we make them by hurrying," whispered Maya, and she looked at Felix.

"SOMEBODY SHOULD DO SOMETHING!" shouted Mr Harris.

"WHO?" shouted everybody else.

Felix was watching very carefully. He is good at that when it is his turn. And what he saw was something quite odd.

"Alex," he said. "Look at the fog."

Alex looked. "It's not moving there," he said.

It was true. Over by the stage, where Mr Shah was standing very still, with Brenda on his shoulders, the fog was thin and slow. It curled around him but didn't go past. And near Willow, who had settled on top of the piano as if nothing was wrong, it was the same.

"It goes where we go," said Felix. "It goes where the running goes."

"Then everybody has to stop," said Alex.

Felix took a deep breath. He did not feel brave. He felt wobbly. But he thought of what Mr Shah had said, and he climbed onto a chair, in front of all the grown-ups, and he said, in the loudest voice he had:

"EVERYBODY STAND STILL! YOU'RE HURRYING IT BIGGER!"

It was very quiet. Mr Harris stopped. Mrs Dunn stopped. Mr Thorley stopped with his turnip arm still raised.

Alex climbed up next to him. "Please," he said.

"Please," said Felix.

And one by one, the grown-ups stood still.

The fog stopped rushing. It hung in the air like a big green curtain. And in the middle of the hall, Mr Shah opened his eyes and looked straight at the twins, and said gently, "Thank you. That was very wise."

Part Thirteen. The Cat and the Paddle

But the paddle was still turning.

Nobody had let go of the rope, and the great wooden paddle kept going round and round on its own, slow and sleepy and steady, making more green fog every time it passed. Mr Thorley tried to grab it, and the fog got him, and he sat down with a very surprised face.

"It's churning more," said Maya. "That will be endless."

Nobody could get near it. The fog was too thick, and every grown-up who tried was sitting down with a smile before they got there.

Then something small and golden-spotted stepped down from the piano.

It was Willow.

She did not hurry. She walked across the hall with her tail straight up, right into the fog, and she did not sneeze. Then she stopped at the edge of the paddle's swing, and her tail went thick.

The loose end of the rope was whipping round with the paddle, low along the floor, like a giant skipping rope. Whoosh, round. Whoosh, round. One slap from it would have sent her flying.

Willow crouched. Her bottom wiggled, the way it does before she jumps at the curtains. Whoosh. She waited. Whoosh. She waited. Then, in the gap, she sprang over the rope and up onto the top of the paddle as it came round.

Her claws skidded. She slid. Her back legs dangled in the air, and the whole hall gasped. But she dug in, and hauled herself up, and hugged the paddle with all four legs and her tail, like a very determined cushion.

Willow is not a heavy cat. But she is a stubborn one. The paddle groaned. It went round slower, and slower, and stopped with a creak, so suddenly that Willow slid gently off the end, landed on her feet, and began to wash her paw, as if she had meant it all along.

"WILLOW!" shouted Ollie, and everybody cheered, but quietly, in case the fog heard. Willow gave him a look that said it had not been a cheering sort of moment, and carried on washing.

Part Fourteen. Alex Goes for Mrs Rao

But the fog was still there, and the pot was still full of poison green soup. "Somebody has to take it away," said Maya. "Like in the story."

Mr Shah was already walking towards it. He took slow steps, and Brenda rode on his shoulders. But when he reached the pot, he paused.

"This is too big for one person," he said, very quietly. "Somebody must hold my throat, so that it goes no further."

"Mrs Rao!" said Alex.

"She is in the office," said Mr Shah. "But the corridor is full of fog."

Alex looked at Felix. They didn't need to say anything. In the whole of their lives, they have never needed to say anything in a moment like that.

"I'll stay with Mr Shah," said Felix.

"I'll get her," said Alex.

Mrs Dunn gave him a wet tea towel, to hold over his nose. Alex held it tight. Then he walked out of the hall and into the green.

It was strange in there. It was quiet and warm and sort of squashy, like walking inside a pea. People were sitting on the floor in the corridor with sleepy smiles, saying, "Hello, Alex," and "Isn't it nice." A chair had fallen over in the doorway. And Ganesh Rao was already there, moving the fallen chairs and helping the sleepy people to the sides, so that the path would be clear. "Don't worry," he said. "Straight on."

"Thank you," said Alex.

"That's just what I do," said Ganesh. He was the only one in the whole corridor who wasn't sleepy.

At the end of the corridor, the office door was shut. Alex knocked.

"Mrs Rao?" he said. "Mr Shah needs you. Please."

She opened the door before he had finished the word. She had a scarf over her face and a very calm look in her eyes, as if she had been waiting for this since a very long time ago.

"Of course," she said. "Take my hand, Alex."

They went back through the green together.

Part Fifteen. The Ladle

When they got back to the hall, it was very quiet. The paddle was still. The fog hung in the air without a breath of wind to move it, and the sun came in through the high windows in long, dusty stripes. Alex let out a big breath he had not known he was holding. Felix took the wet tea towel from him and folded it, very neatly, because he did not know what else to do with his hands.

"You're back," said Felix.

"I'm back," said Alex. That was all. It was enough.

Mr Shah was standing by the pot with his eyes closed.

"Thank you, Alex," he said. "Thank you, Mrs Rao. I think we are ready."

Mrs Dunn picked up the big ladle. It was so heavy that it took both twins to hold it up, Alex on one end and Felix on the other, with their arms shaking. They scooped it into the very middle of the pot, where the worst green was, a great, thick, shivering ladleful that smelled like a hundred wet socks.

"This is the whole of it," whispered Maya. "The poison. It's all in there."

They lifted it up together, very carefully, the way you carry a cup of water that is too full. Mr Shah bent down, and he took a very deep breath.

And then he drank it.

The whole hall held its breath. Mr Shah stood there with his eyes closed. He did not swallow. He did not breathe. For one long moment, nothing happened at all.

Mrs Rao stepped up beside him, and she laid her hand gently on his throat. Brenda lifted her head and rested it next to Mrs Rao's hand.

"He's holding it," whispered Maya. "In his throat. So nobody else has to."

The fog began to go thin. It faded from green to pale green to nothing at all, and the smell went with it, as if somebody had opened a window in the inside of the world. Mr Thorley, who had woken up, shook his head, flung open every window in the hall with one big sweep of his arms, and the last of the green rolled away outside and was gone.

At last, Mr Shah opened his eyes.

He cleared his throat. It came out a bit raspy, and for a moment the scarf looked a little bluer than before. And in a very calm voice, he said:

"Everyone, please. Do not eat the soup."

Ollie, who had been creeping towards the pot with a spoon, said, "I wasn't going to." Then he put the spoon down, very slowly.

Part Sixteen. A Brave Soup

Mrs Dunn stood by the empty pot with her ladle down and her face a very deep red.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I only wanted to try something new."

Mr Shah bowed to her, with his hands together. "It was a brave soup," he said. "Nobody is angry. It was not anybody's fault. It was only nobody's, and so nobody could pick it up."

"I'm sorry I said it wasn't my soup," said Mr Harris, who had finally managed to stand.

"And I'm sorry I pointed my ladle at you," said Mrs Dunn.

Then everyone said sorry all at once, and Mr Thorley said sorry for the turnip, and the hall was full of sorries for about a minute, and after that it was all right.

"Everybody's soup is nobody's soup," said Felix slowly, working it out.

"Unless we all hold it," said Alex. "Then it's ours."

Mr Harris looked at his clipboard for a long time. Then he crossed out EVERYBODY'S and wrote OURS, in capitals, and underlined it twice.

"OURS!" said the whole hall, much louder than the first time.

"Next year," said Mrs Dunn, "with a recipe, and a lid."

Then she made toast for the whole school. It was the best toast we had ever tasted, and she was very proud of it. The pot went out to Mr Thorley's shed, where he said he would think about it.

Part Seventeen. One Whole Minute

Afterwards, the twins went to find Mr Shah. He was sitting on the grass in the middle of the playground with his eyes shut, Brenda asleep on his knee, and a pigeon on his head.

Alex and Felix sat down either side of him, without a word, and tried it.

They sat perfectly still for one whole minute. A ball bounced far away. A door banged. A bird went by. It was the longest minute of their lives. Ollie came and lasted forty seconds, and then lay down in the grass and said he was resting his stillness.

"Mr Shah," said Felix, with his eyes shut, "were you scared of the poison?"

"Oh, yes," said Mr Shah. "Very. You can pass a fright on, or you can hold it still until it goes quiet. Calm is a kind of strong."

Felix thought about that. "So when Alex takes my pencil," he said, "I could hold it still, and not throw it."

"I do not take your pencil," said Alex.

"You do," said Felix, very calmly.

Alex opened his mouth. Then he held it, very still, for three seconds, and he closed it again. Mr Shah smiled with his eyes shut, and the pigeon on his head did not even ruffle a feather.

At home time, we all went up to him and said "THANK YOU!" He looked surprised. "What for?" he said.

"For the soup," said Kenji.

"Oh, that," said Mr Shah. "It was only a bit of soup."

Then he picked up his little drum and walked away down the corridor with Mrs Rao beside him, and Ganesh walking behind eating something sticky, and Brenda going home with the reptile man in a box, very reluctantly.

Ollie said that none of the grown-ups would ever admit it.

Kenji said that Mr Shah had only been wearing a normal blue scarf.

And Maya said, "Yes. Exactly. Normal."

Part Eighteen. The Straight Line

When we collected our coats, the school was very quiet. The sun was low in the windows. Alex was the first one to see it.

"Felix," he said. "Look at the floor."

There was a line along the corridor. It was perfectly straight, as if somebody had used a ruler. And on the line, one after another, were lost things. A left glove. A single stripy sock. A lunchbox with a sandwich still inside it from some time before Easter. A very small hat. A shoe.

At the end of the line, a sleepy hamster in a sock lay curled up, fast asleep. And the line pointed all the way along the corridor, straight to the library door.

The door was open a crack, and it was dark inside.

Felix swallowed. "Did anybody put these here?" he whispered.

"Nobody was here," whispered Alex.

Maya had stopped writing. Willow, on the window sill, had sat bolt upright, with her ears flat. And on the wall beside the library door, where the last of the sunshine lay, there was a shadow.

It was tall. It had a long, thin nose. It had two big pointed ears. And it was walking on two legs.

We heard a very small sound, from the dark behind the door. Somebody was sniffing. One long, slow sniff, like someone finding something.

Alex looked at Felix. Felix looked at Alex.

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

The End.