The Supply Teacher Who Was LOKI

Part One. Good Luck

On Monday morning there was a note taped to the front door of the school, and Mr Harris was standing in front of it with his clipboard hanging down by his knees.

The note was written in curly writing, with a little curl on every letter, like a smug grin. It said: GOOD LUCK. YOU WILL NEED IT.

"Who would put that up?" said Kenji, reading it over Mr Harris's elbow.

"Nobody," said Mr Harris. He peeled it off the door, folded it very small and put it in his pocket. "It's a joke. Somebody's idea of a joke. Everything is perfectly under control."

Felix noticed that Mr Harris had said "perfectly," and that his voice had gone up at the end like a question. "He always says that when it isn't," Alex whispered.

And that's when we heard a giggle. It was a small, smug giggle, like a hiccup in a bottle, and it came from nowhere at all. We looked up, down and all around. There was only a pigeon on the gutter, and the pigeon looked innocent.

"Now then," said Mr Harris, very fast. "Mrs Tibbs has lost her voice. She sounds like a very sad door. So you will have a supply teacher for a few days."

"What's a supply teacher?" said Ollie.

"It's somebody who comes when somebody else is missing," said Maya, who knows things.

Mr Harris walked us all the way to our classroom. At the door he stopped and looked down at the floor. He said, to his own shoes, "Good luck."

Nobody knew why he said that. We found out soon enough.

Part Two. Hello, My Favourites

Our supply teacher was already standing at the front of the class.

He was thin, with a very long, smiley face, and his eyes were the brightest green we had ever seen, like two traffic lights that had both decided to say go. He wore a green jumper with one gold stripe across it, and a badge that said MR LOCKE, SUPPLY TEACHER.

"Class," said Mr Harris, to the floor, "this is Mr Locke."

"HELLO, MY FAVOURITES!" said Mr Locke, and he did a bow so low that his nose nearly touched the carpet.

"We've never met," said Kenji.

"And yet," said Mr Locke, "I feel I already know you. You, I can tell, are the one who asks things."

Kenji went pink. He did not know how Mr Locke knew. It was quite a good trick.

Mr Harris said something else, which sounded like "I have a meeting," and he left in a hurry, the way a person leaves a bath when the water is too hot. Before he went he told Mr Locke about the whole school photograph, which would be taken on Thursday, in the main hall, with Sir Lionel in the middle. Sir Lionel is the school's toy lion. He lives in the front hall and has a golden mane made of real wool, and every morning the little ones roar at him on their way in, and he never roars back, because he is a gentleman.

"A lion," said Mr Locke, and his eyes twinkled. "How very important."

Then he sat down on Mrs Tibbs's chair, and it went PARRRRRRP.

The whole class gasped. Mr Locke jumped up with his hand on his chest. "Goodness!" he said. "Who did THAT?"

But we all saw his hand go under the cushion first.

Willow was on the windowsill, as she always is on Mondays. She is our Bengal reading cat, and she is very dignified. She looked at Mr Locke for a long time, and she did NOT shut her eyes slowly. She watched him, the way you watch a pan of milk.

Part Three. A Lot of Little Things

By the end of Monday, we had counted all the things that were not quite right.

The labels on the pencil pots had been swapped, so that the PENCILS pot held glue and the GLUE pot held pencils. There was a clock on the wall that said it was twenty to nine, and then we found out it was a mirror with numbers painted on. And Kenji's shoes were on the wrong feet. He checked three times, and each time they were on the right feet. Mr Locke only winked.

"He just WINKS," said Ollie. "At everything. He winked at the door. He winked at a fire extinguisher, and the fire extinguisher looked very confused."

On Tuesday, our class hamster was different.

Biscuit is a small, brown, fluffy hamster, about the size of an apple. He runs on his wheel and sometimes falls asleep in his own food bowl. But on Tuesday morning, there was a hamster on the wheel with very bushy eyebrows. He was grinning. And he was the size of a bigger apple, which is not a size a hamster should be.

"That's not Biscuit," said Alex.

Willow had come in through the window. She sat in front of the cage, and she looked at the hamster for a very long time. The hamster stopped running. He gulped. Then he winked at her, a very small, nervous wink, as if to say: please, ma'am, I'm only joking.

Just then, Mr Locke walked in with a cup of tea. "Good morning, favourites! Did I miss anything?"

We all looked at Mr Locke. We looked at the hamster. And from behind the cage came the real Biscuit, looking very small and very confused, and he ran straight up Ollie's arm.

The hamster with the eyebrows was gone. Nobody saw him go.

But Felix saw one more thing. When Mr Locke said, "Did I miss anything?" a tiny thread of gold, like a single golden hair, slipped out of his sleeve and floated down onto the carpet. He did not notice. Felix picked it up and tucked it inside Maya's notebook, to keep it safe.

Part Four. Behind the Compost Bin

At break, Maya called a meeting behind the compost bin.

Alex held the pencil. Felix held Maya's notebook, because the twins always share the jobs, and then they swap. Kenji and Ollie sat on their upside-down buckets.

"I have been collecting evidence," said Maya.

"Evidence number one," she said. "He knew Kenji asks things. Number two. His eyes twinkle in a way that does not feel like ordinary twinkling. It feels like a TROUBLE twinkle. Number three. At eleven o'clock he was marking spellings in our room. At one minute past, Ollie saw him through the staff room window eating a biscuit."

"It was a ginger one," said Ollie. "I checked."

"Number four. His hair was dark in the morning, a bit red at lunchtime, and by home time it was short and he had glasses. And number five." She stopped. "He turned himself into a hamster."

"A bigger hamster," said Felix.

"And six." Maya took the notebook out of Felix's hands, very gently, and turned back to a page from the week before, the week of the clouds. At the bottom of it, in her own handwriting, it said:

Who is his brother?

And underneath it: Unknown.

"Do you remember the clouds?" said Maya. "The little rain clouds that sat over Mr Harris's car and rained on Ollie's chips? They had a curly edge. Like a smug grin. Look."

She took the folded note out of her bag. She had got it out of the bin when Mr Harris wasn't looking. GOOD LUCK. YOU WILL NEED IT. Every letter had a curl.

Then she held it next to the gold stripe on Mr Locke's picture on the staff board, and next to his very long smile. They matched. They matched all over.

"He's the one who sent the clouds," said Alex.

"And Mr Thorley called him 'brother,'" said Felix.

"Exactly," said Maya. "So I think that Mr Locke is not a Locke at all. I think Mr Locke is LOKI."

Part Five. The Cutting of the Golden Hair

Nobody said anything, because the compost bin smelled the way it always does.

"Who is Loki?" said Ollie.

Maya said that a long time ago, in the cold north, there was a place in the sky called Asgard, where the Norse gods lived. She said that some people still honour those gods today, so she was going to say the names carefully. Loki was one of them. He was clever, and quick, and he could turn himself into anything: a salmon, a mare, a fly, an old woman, a bird. He was a god of tricks.

"Is he bad?" said Kenji.

"He's more like a friend who goes too far," said Maya. "Thor and Loki are not really brothers. Loki was the blood-brother of Odin, who is the leader of the gods, but they all lived together like a big, odd family. So the stories sometimes call them brothers. Sort of. Not exactly. It's complicated."

Then she told us the story of the golden hair.

Thor had a wife, Sif, and she had the most beautiful hair in all of Asgard. It was long and golden, and it shone like a field of wheat. And one night, Loki crept in and, just for a joke, snipped it all off.

In the morning, Sif cried. Thor was so angry that the whole sky shook. He found Loki, and he held his big hand out, and he said, "Fix it."

And Loki did. He was not wicked, and he did not want Sif to cry. He went down into the mountain, to the clever little smiths called dwarves, and he asked them for help. And the dwarves made Sif a new head of hair, spun from real gold. It was so fine and so alive that it grew, like real hair. It grew all the way down her back.

"So he fixed it," said Alex.

"He made it better," said Maya. "But he did take it first." She wrote one line in her notebook and underlined it once. If you make a mess, you can still make it right. But you have to start with sorry.

Willow had jumped up on the compost bin. She does not hold with tricksters. But she stayed where she was, to listen to the end.

Part Six. Not in My School

On Tuesday afternoon, we saw Mr Thorley and Mr Locke meet in the corridor.

Mr Thorley was coming one way with a ladder. Mr Locke was coming the other way, carrying a stack of reading books on his head. They both stopped, and for a moment the whole corridor went still.

Then Mr Thorley said, very quietly, "Locke."

"THORLEY!" cried Mr Locke, and the books wobbled. "Long time. How are you? You look well. Have you been working out?"

"It was you with the clouds."

"They were funny," said Mr Locke. "You can't say they weren't funny. Mr Harris stood under that one for ten whole minutes holding up his clipboard."

"You are not to touch anything in this school," said Mr Thorley. "Not the children, not the cat, not the lion in the hall. Not one thing. You promised me. A long time ago, on the bridge."

We held our breath. A small spark of lightning fizzled at the end of Mr Thorley's finger. A light bulb flickered. Mr Thorley is not a man who likes to be startled, and neither is the weather.

Mr Locke put a hand on his heart. "I promise it's safe," he said. "I'm only here for the week. And then I'll be gone, and nobody will remember I was here. They never do."

He said it with a bright smile. And that smile was the odd thing. Because underneath it, just for one second, his face looked as if somebody had let the air out of it.

Felix noticed that. And Alex noticed that, as Mr Locke said "I'm only here for the week," another tiny thread of gold fell out of his sleeve. This time, Alex caught it.

He had two golden hairs now. He did not know what they meant. He put them in the pencil case, next to the pencil.

Part Seven. Everyone Forgets the Supply Teacher

On Wednesday, Mr Harris made an announcement at the start of the day.

"Tomorrow," he said, "is the whole school photograph, and Mrs Tibbs will be back, with her voice, or most of it. So thank you, Mr Locke, for your... enthusiasm."

"My pleasure," said Mr Locke. His eyes did not twinkle at all.

"And please," said Mr Harris, "everyone be on your very best behaviour, because the photograph is very important, and Sir Lionel is very, very important to me. Everything is perfectly under control!"

We noticed that a thread of gold was trailing from Mr Locke's sleeve again, but this time it was a little longer.

At lunchtime we saw Mr Locke standing by himself in the front hall, looking at Sir Lionel. Nobody else was there. The little ones had already gone in to eat. He stood so still that you would have thought he was a statue of a very thin man. The toy lion looked back at him with its two glass eyes. Its golden mane was fluffy, and bright, and every hair was soft.

Felix went over. He is not scared of grown-ups, and sometimes he is not scared of anything. Alex went with him, because they always go together.

"Mr Locke," said Felix. "Are you all right?"

"Perfectly!" said Mr Locke. "Perfectly, perfectly. Fine as a fiddle. Never better."

The golden thread slipped out of his sleeve, longer than all the others, and curled up on the floor like a tiny, shining snake. He stepped on it quickly.

"People always forget the supply teacher," he said, in a very small voice. "I come, and I teach, and I make everyone laugh. And then the real teacher comes back, and everybody says, 'Oh, was there somebody? What was his name?' I only wanted..." He stopped. "Never mind."

"What did you want?" said Alex.

But Mr Locke only winked, and said, "To see the lion, of course," and he walked away.

Behind him, in the dark of the hall, we thought we heard something very soft go snip.

Part Eight. Sir Lionel Has No Mane

On Thursday morning, Sir Lionel had no mane.

It was gone. Every single hair of it. He was just a small, round, bald, yellow lion, with the same two glass eyes, looking surprised.

One of the little ones started to cry, and then another one did. Mrs Tibbs, who had come back that morning with a scarf and a rasping voice, sat down on the bench and said, "Oh no," in a creaky whisper. Mr Harris held his own hair in both hands, as if it might fall off too.

"The photograph," he said. "The photograph is at one o'clock. And the whole school is in it. And he's... he has... he has no..."

"Hair," said Ollie, helpfully.

And that's when we heard the door at the end of the corridor open, and a deep voice, so deep that the floor shook, said, "WHO. HAS. DONE. THIS?"

It was Mr Thorley. He was standing in the doorway with his hammer in his hand and his red beard bristling like a bush in a gale. A small spark of lightning crackled on the end of his finger. Behind him, the sky outside had gone a mean, grey colour, and a tiny cloud with a curly edge was creeping across the playground.

"He's going to make it rain," whispered Ollie.

"He's going to do more than that," said Kenji.

Everybody looked round. Everybody looked at everybody else.

Mr Locke was leaning on the wall, whistling. He had a big green bag over his shoulder, and it was bulging, as if it were full of cushions. He looked exactly like a man who had nothing to do with anything.

Part Nine. I Promise It's Safe

"Locke," said Mr Thorley.

"Thorley!" said Mr Locke. "What a lovely surprise."

"Did you take the mane?"

"Me?" Mr Locke put a hand on his heart. "I would NEVER. I have been standing here for ages. I haven't seen a single hair. I couldn't tell you where it is. I'm as surprised as anyone."

Everyone saw the thread of gold slide out of his sleeve. It was as long as a skipping rope. And the green bag on his shoulder gave a big, slow wobble, and got a little bit bigger.

"What's in the bag?" said Alex.

"Lunch," said Mr Locke. "Just my lunch. It's nothing. It's perfectly tame."

The bag grew another inch. It made a faint, soft sound, like wool rubbing against wool.

We could see Mr Thorley counting, in his head, to ten. A light bulb above him popped. Then another one. Then he said, very low, "You have until the photograph. And if that mane is not back on that lion when the camera goes, brother, I will not be holding the hammer. I will be using it."

"Use it all you like," said Mr Locke, brightly. "I won't be needing it. Because I am absolutely... entirely... one hundred per cent innocent."

Behind him, in the dark of the green bag, the gold grew.

Maya looked at the notebook. She looked at the thread on the floor. She looked at the bag, which was now the size of a beanbag, and she said, quite quietly, "Felix. When did the gold start?"

"The first time he said something that wasn't true," said Felix. "On Tuesday. When he said, 'Did I miss anything?'"

"And every time since," said Alex.

Maya went very pale. "Oh," she said. "Oh dear."

Part Ten. Say ROAR

At one o'clock, the whole school went into the main hall for the photograph.

There were big kids at the back, in rows on the benches, and middle kids in front on chairs, and the little ones sitting cross-legged on the floor. Elfine and Marion were at the end of the back row. Marion was counting the Reception class with her finger, and Elfine was explaining to Willow, who did not ask, that a group of cats is called a clowder. Sir Lionel was in the middle, on a stool, with his bald yellow head. Somebody had put a paper crown on it. It did not help.

Mr Harris had a camera on a tripod and a very large button. Mrs Tibbs stood next to Mr Thorley at the side. Mr Thorley's arms were folded. He was not looking at Mr Locke. He was looking at the door, as if he were waiting for something.

At five to one, Mr Locke came in through the double doors.

He was carrying the green bag. It was as big as an armchair now. It rolled on a trolley, with its top tied shut, and it rustled and sighed as it came.

"Here it is!" he said, in a ringing voice, and he put it on the stage. "Your mane! Safe and sound! It's a little bit... bushy. It's perfectly fine. Nothing to worry about at all."

The bag gave a huge golden shudder.

"Mr Harris," said Mr Locke, quickly. "Would you like to say a few words?"

"Everything," said Mr Harris, who was very relieved and very flustered, "is perfectly under control."

And that's when the string on the bag went PING.

Part Eleven. The Gold

The mane came out like a fountain.

It was not wool. It was HAIR. Golden, silky, bouncy hair, in great thick waves, and it poured out of the bag and over the stage and across the floor like a tide. It went round the legs of the chairs. It curled up the bars on the wall. It went across the windows and turned the whole hall dark gold, like the inside of a honey jar.

"It's all right!" cried Mr Harris. "It's perfectly all right! It's completely under control!"

The hair gave a big, delighted ripple, and got thicker. It reached the doors and slid under them. A moment later we heard the doors click, as if the hair had locked them.

Mr Thorley strode forward. "STAND BACK!" he shouted, and lifted his hammer.

"Don't!" shouted Maya. "It's HAIR. You'll hurt it, and it'll hurt us!"

He put the hammer down. He took hold of the nearest golden wave with both hands and pulled. The hair stretched, like toffee, and then it wrapped itself round his arms and gave a cosy squeeze, and he stood there, tied up like a parcel, saying, "Hm."

"Don't panic!" cried a little one. "I'm not scared!"

The hair grew.

"I'm NOT scared," said another little one, sniffing.

The hair grew some more. It was up to our knees now. It was warm and soft and not at all frightening, except that it was everywhere, and getting higher, and we could not see the doors. A gold wave tickled the ceiling. The light went from honey to amber to a thick, dim brown.

"Everyone STAY CALM," shouted Mr Harris. "Nobody is panicking!"

The hair rose past his chin.

Somewhere at the back, Marion counted again, out loud, to make sure all the little ones were there. She said, "Twenty-two. Twenty-two. All of them. Hold hands, all of you. Hold on to the person next to you."

Everybody held on.

Part Twelve. Catching Our Breath

It was very quiet for a moment in the golden dark.

The hair was up to our shoulders, but it had stopped growing, just for a second, like a cat that was thinking. We were sitting on the floor in a ring, in a pool of warm light, with the little ones in the middle. Nobody was crying any more. We were all holding on.

Alex was holding Felix's hand on one side, and Maya's on the other. Willow had walked into the middle of the ring without a sound. She curled up in the gold with her tail round her paws, and she looked about her, calmly, as if she thought that a hall full of hair was a perfectly good place for a nap.

"I'm scared," Felix said, in a very small voice. He had not meant to say it. It just came out.

And something odd happened. The hair around his feet loosened. It let go of his shoe, and slid a little way back, as if it were tired, and then it lay still.

Alex noticed it first. He looked at the loose gold round Felix's feet. He looked at the thread that had been caught in his pencil case.

"Felix," he said. "Say it again."

"I'm scared," said Felix.

The hair slid back another few inches.

"It's not the fibs only," said Alex slowly. "It's not just that it grows when somebody says something that isn't true. It SHRINKS when somebody says something true. Especially something hard."

"Mr Locke made it do that," said Maya, and she stood up in the gold. "Mr Locke! Come out! We know it's you!"

Part Thirteen. The Rule

There was a sad little cough from underneath the stage.

A very long, very thin shape crawled out, with a golden curl stuck to his ear. It was Mr Locke. He had been hiding there since the bag went off. He looked very small.

"I only meant it as a joke," he said. "A joke on Mr Harris. He says 'perfectly under control' about forty times a day, and it is never true. I thought, wouldn't it be funny if the lion's mane grew every time anyone told a fib? I only wanted a little bit. A tiny tuft. I thought, he'd say it, and the mane would grow, and everyone would laugh. And then I'd put it back. I was going to put it back, I promise." He stopped. "I think I said that already."

"But you took it," said Felix. "You took it first."

"Yes," said Mr Locke, very small. "I did."

"So the rule is," said Maya, with her notebook open and her pencil trembling, "it grows when somebody fibs. And it shrinks when somebody says something true."

"It's the fibs that feed it," said Mr Locke miserably. "I fib all the time. It's how I talk. And then it had all of Mr Harris's, and all of the little ones' 'I'm not scared,' and everyone saying it was fine. It had a feast. It's my fault."

Alex put up his hand. He did not know why. It was only that he had an idea. "Then we say true things," he said. "All of us. Out loud. In the dark."

"Like what?" said Ollie.

"Like anything," said Alex. "As long as it's true."

Ollie thought. Then he said, loudly, "I AM NOT HUNGRY."

The hair gave a huge golden shudder, and grew.

"That's a fib," said Kenji.

"It was an EXPERIMENT," said Ollie.

Part Fourteen. True Things

We tried again.

Kenji said, "Two plus two is four," and the hair shrank a very small bit, like a sigh. Elfine, in her glasses, said, "Fact. A snail has about fourteen thousand teeth." It shrank a little more. Elfine said fourteen more facts, one after another, and every time the gold went down, down, down, an inch at a time.

"It works!" shouted Kenji.

"But it's slow," said Marion. "We need more than facts. It's only shrinking a bit each time."

Felix thought. He is the one who asks, so he asked the room. "Everybody say what's true about you. Not facts. True things. About YOU."

Alex held the pencil, and he kept the tally, scratching on the back of his hand, and Felix went round the ring, one by one, like a teacher who didn't mind asking.

The little ones went first. One said, "I like the dark but not this dark." The hair slid back. Another said, "I'm scared my mum won't know where I am." The gold dipped a whole hand. Kenji said, "I'm scared too, actually." The hair sank to our waists, and the light turned back to honey.

Then Felix turned to Mr Harris, who was still standing in the middle with golden curls up to his chin.

"Mr Harris," he said. "What's true?"

Mr Harris opened his mouth. He said, "Everything is..." He stopped. He looked at the little ones, holding hands. He shut his mouth, and opened it, and said in a very different voice, "I don't have it under control. I never do. I just say I do because I want you all to feel safe. I'm very sorry."

A great chunk of golden hair fell off the stage like snow off a roof.

Mr Thorley, still tied up like a parcel, said gruffly, "I'm cross with my brother. And I've missed him. Both. It's a lot."

The hair went right down to our ankles.

Everyone laughed, and the laugh was not a fib, so it did not feed it either.

All round the hall, the gold lay in loose soft heaps. But in the middle of the room, around the foot of the stool where Sir Lionel sat, there was one knot of golden hair left, as big as a beanbag, and it was not shrinking at all.

Part Fifteen. The Mouse

"It's the last one," said Maya. "It's tied round him. It's his."

Everyone looked at Mr Locke.

He was standing right beside the knot, with the gold curling round his ankles. He had gone very still. Then, quite slowly, his shoulders began to shrink. His long face began to go furry. His green eyes went round and bright and small.

"He's running away," said Kenji.

And there, where Mr Locke had been, stood a small brown mouse with very bushy eyebrows, getting ready to dart.

That was the moment. Everyone saw it. The little mouse looked at the gap under the stage door, and the little mouse put one paw forward.

And a small striped shape stepped in front of him.

Willow did not pounce. She does not do pouncing when somebody is sad. She sat down, as neat as a loaf of bread, in front of the mouse hole. She put her tail round her paws. She looked at the mouse, with her big, steady eyes. And she waited.

The mouse looked at the cat. The cat looked at the mouse. It was the longest staring match in the history of the school.

Then the mouse gave a very big sigh, and sat down, and shrank, and grew, and became Mr Locke again, sitting on the floor with his knees up and his head in his hands.

"I can't," he said. "I can't say it. I'm no good at it. I only ever make jokes."

Alex sat down next to him on one side. Felix sat down on the other.

"We'll stay with you," said Alex.

"All the way through," said Felix. "Go on. What's true?"

Mr Locke took a very deep breath.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry I took Sir Lionel's mane. I'm sorry the little ones cried. I'm sorry I fibbed, and I'm sorry I nearly ran. I wanted somebody to remember me. I thought if I made everyone laugh, they'd remember me. I thought they'd want me to stay. But I didn't think about who was crying."

The last knot of gold came loose, thread by thread, like a ball of wool being unwound. It lifted into the air, and floated to the stool in the middle of the hall, and settled gently on the little lion's head. It shrank to its proper size. It was soft, and bright, and fluffy. It was Sir Lionel's mane again.

There was silence. Then every little one in the hall cheered.

"A true thing makes room," said Mr Locke, in a husky voice, wiping his eyes. "That's what I forgot. A fib fills up all the space. But a true thing, even a scared one, makes room."

"Even a sorry one?" said Alex.

"Especially a sorry one," said Mr Locke.

"So being scared and saying so is brave," said Felix.

"It's the bravest thing there is," said Mr Locke, and for once he was not winking.

Part Sixteen. Better With Tinsel

When the doors clicked open, the hall went bright with daylight, and all the children blinked. Mr Thorley shook off the last of the hair and dusted himself down, like a large, damp dog.

"Locke," he said.

Mr Locke stood up. He did not run. He looked Mr Thorley in the eyes.

Mr Thorley said, gruffly, "That was a true thing."

"Yes," said Mr Locke.

"That was not bad. Brother."

Then Mr Locke did something that surprised us. He put his arms round Mr Thorley's middle and hugged him, as far as they would go, which was not very far. Mr Thorley said, "Hm," like thunder, a long way off and rather pleased.

Maya opened her notebook to the old page. She crossed out Unknown, neatly, with one line, and next to it she wrote: Sort of. Not exactly. It's complicated. Felix held the book open for her, and Alex wrote the date.

The mane was back on Sir Lionel, but the stitches had come undone, so Mrs Tibbs, with her scarf and her croaky voice, took a needle and some thread from her bag. "I'll sew it," she whispered. "Hand me the scissors. Not you, Mr Locke."

"I'd like to help," said Mr Locke humbly. "Please."

So she let him. And Mr Locke fetched three rolls of gold tinsel from the art cupboard, and he plaited it all along the edge of the mane, so that the little lion glittered from ear to ear. It took the rest of the lunchtime, with a lot of children helping, and Ollie holding the thread. When they had finished, Sir Lionel had the most magnificent mane that any toy lion had ever had.

"It's better with tinsel," said Mr Locke, with a sniff.

At one forty-five, Mr Harris took the photograph. Everyone was in it. The little ones sat at the front, and Willow sat on the lion's stool next to the paper crown. Mr Thorley stood in the back row, and Mr Locke stood next to him, a little bit stooped and a little bit shy.

"Everyone say ROAR!" said Mr Harris.

And the whole school roared at the lion, and the lion, being a gentleman, didn't roar back. But we all agreed afterwards that he smiled.

Part Seventeen. Good Luck

At home time, Mr Locke was standing on the front step with his green bag over his shoulder. It was empty and flat, like a thin, sad pancake. Mrs Tibbs was better, and Mr Harris had told him, "Thank you very much for your help this week."

"Well," said Mr Locke, to nobody in particular. "That's me, then. Off to the next one."

He sounded as bright as a button. But it was a fibbing kind of bright, and we all knew it, and the thread of gold fell out of his sleeve, about as long as a finger.

Mr Harris came out of the front door with his clipboard. He stopped on the step. He did not look at the floor.

"Mr Locke," he said. "We always seem to need somebody. When somebody is missing, or ill, or when something needs mending. I've been thinking that we should have a name on the list. Somebody to ring on those days. If you wanted. If you didn't have anywhere else to be."

Mr Locke stood very still. His green eyes had gone very bright.

"You'd remember me?" he said.

"I'd remember you," said Mr Harris. "That's true. You can check." And the string of gold hair that fell out of Mr Locke's sleeve did not grow, because nothing was fibbed at all.

"Good luck, Mr Locke," said Mr Harris. He said it warmly this time, and he meant it. "I mean it kindly."

Mr Locke gave us a very low bow, and then he walked off down the lane, whistling. When we looked back, a little green fish with bushy eyebrows was swimming in the water fountain, and Mr Thorley, watching from the caretaker's door, put one hand over his eyes. "Hm," he said. But he was smiling.

On Friday morning, when we got to school, something was wrong with the dinner hall.

The menu board had been rewritten in the night, in beautiful, curly, bird-like handwriting, with every word perfectly spelled and some of them in tiny pictures. Every name on the register, from Alex to Zara, had been written out again in perfect black ink. And across the dinner hall door lay a long, thin, curved shadow, exactly like the shadow of a very long beak.

From somewhere in the kitchen, a voice was reading a very long list. It was reading it slowly, and carefully, one word at a time, and it was not in any hurry at all.

Alex looked at the shadow. Felix looked at the register.

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

The End.