Tilly Mint Tales Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  TILLY MINT TALES

  Tilly Mint and the Leaf-lords

  Tilly Mint Learns to Fly

  When the Cock Crows

  Wonderful Worms

  Lions Are Lovely

  Tilly Mint Sends the Bird of Night Packing

  Tilly Mint Makes a Frog-faced Friend

  The Island of Dreams

  Goodbye, Mrs Hardcastle

  TILLY MINT AND THE DODO

  1. A Message from Mrs Hardcastle

  2. The Hideaway Woods

  3. The Egg from Long Ago

  4. Home Again, and Hunted

  5. The Spell of the Lizard

  6. Down Among the Mole-rats

  7. Danger Everywhere

  8. Beware of the Pirates

  9. The World Belongs to All of Us

  10. The Song of the Dodo

  11. In Memory

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Book

  When Tilly’s mum goes out to work, Mrs Hardcastle from up the street pops in to look after her. There are two special things about Mrs Hardcastle. The first thing is that she’s always dropping off to sleep (she snores too, sometimes). The second special thing is that whenever she goes to sleep, something magic always seems to happen to Tilly Mint!

  Carnegie Medal winner Berlie Doherty’s enchanting Tilly Mint tales are at last available in one complete collection with brand-new illustrations from Tony Ross.

  For Jean and Alan, Ian, Beverley and Charlotte

  TILLY MINT TALES

  Tilly Mint and the Leaf-lords

  I DON’T KNOW if you’ve ever met Tilly Mint. She lives in one of those houses just up the hill from the park. She’s about as old as you, I should think.

  When Tilly’s mum goes out to work, Mrs Hardcastle from up the street pops in to look after her. You must have seen her. She has curly, white hair and pink cheeks. She has shiny, blue, remembery sort of eyes, and fidgety, talky sort of hands, and she’s very old. Very old. She once told Tilly that she was the oldest woman in the world.

  Now, there are two special things about Mrs Hardcastle that you ought to know. The first thing is, she’s always dropping off to sleep. Always. Easy as winking. She just closes her eyes, and opens her mouth, and off she goes. She snores too, sometimes. You should hear her. And the second special thing is this: when she goes to sleep, something magic always seems to happen to Tilly Mint. Tilly never says very much about it to Mrs Hardcastle, and Mrs Hardcastle never says very much about it to Tilly. It just happens, and that’s that. It’s magic.

  Like the time Tilly Mint saw the leaf-lords. It happened on October the fifth.

  Tilly was staring out of the window, daydreaming, and waiting for her mum to come home, when Mrs Hardcastle said:

  “Well, Tilly Mint. Are you coming or not?”

  Tilly jumped from her chair and pulled on her duffel coat. “Where to, Mrs Hardcastle?” she asked. “Where are we going?”

  “Don’t you ever listen, child? We’re going down to the park till your mum gets home from work. Though how I’m going to get that far in these new shoes I don’t know. You might have to give me a piggy-back, Tilly Mint.”

  They walked down the hill towards the park, and as they got away from the road and into the trees, the piles of dead leaves grew higher and higher. Tilly scrunched through them. The noise her feet made in the leaves sounded like fifty fires burning. They sounded like a hundred horses munching hay.

  “It sounds as if you’re walking through a bag of broken biscuits, Tilly,” said Mrs Hardcastle. “What a row. Ah, but will you look at those leaves dancing.”

  And as they stood under the trees, the brown and green and golden and red and orange and yellow leaves floated down around them. Tilly thought it was one of the best days ever. But for some reason, Mrs Hardcastle thought it was one of the saddest days she could remember.

  “I shall have to have a lie down, Tilly Mint,” she said. “It’s no good. I’m feeling right dopey.” Mrs Hardcastle often felt dopey before her tea.

  There was a bench nearby, and she sat herself down on it. She undid her new shoes, and took them off, and put them next to a pile of dead leaves. Then she lay down on the bench, with her handbag under her head, and her feet sticking over the end.

  “I’ll just have five minutes,” she promised, yawning.

  Tilly sighed. “But what shall I do, Mrs Hardcastle?” she asked.

  “You could look for the leaf-lords,” Mrs Hardcastle yawned. “Only don’t tread on them, will you, love? And see if you can find some of their treasure . . .”

  And then, as she said that, her voice sort of fizzled out into an enormous yawn, and then into a snore, and then into a lovely long whistle. Mrs Hardcastle was fast asleep. And Tilly Mint was bored.

  Leaf-lords? she thought. What are they? She sat for a long time listening to Mrs Hardcastle whistling away like a blackbird, and watching the leaves, and she said:

  “What a lovely day it would be, if only something would happen!”

  It was then that she thought she heard a whispery sort of voice saying,

  “Spin around, swing around,

  Float and flutter down,

  Swirl around, twirl around . . .”

  over and over again, in a crackly sort of crunched-up-paper-bag way.

  It couldn’t have been Mrs Hardcastle, could it, talking in her sleep? No. She was much too busy snoring and whistling to say anything like that. It couldn’t have been the blackbird, could it, hiding in the branches at the top of the tree? No. He was much too busy singing up to the sunshine to say anything like that.

  Tilly listened. There it was again!

  “Spin around, swing around,

  Float and flutter down,

  Swirl around, twirl around . . .”

  Tilly jumped off her bench in great excitement. It couldn’t be the leaf-lords, could it? Could it?

  She followed the sound of the paper-bag voice to the pile of dead leaves that were at the side of Mrs Hardcastle’s bench, and just underneath her sticking-out feet. She poked about in them, and then pushed them to one side, and it was there, in the middle of the pile, that she found the leaf-lords.

  Do you know what they looked like? They were seven little men; one in a brown cloak and one in a red one; one in an orange cloak and one in a green one; one in a golden cloak; one in a yellow cloak, and the littlest one of all was in a cloak of all these colours.

  “Are you the leaf-lords?” whispered Tilly.

  For an answer they leapt up, one by one, and as Tilly lifted the dead leaves away from them they began to dance, and they danced and sang to a wonderful whistling tune, and the amazing thing was that the wonderful whistling tune seemed to be coming from Mrs Hardcastle, lying there fast asleep in the bench.

  “Leaf-lords leaping,

  Spin around, swing around.

  Leaf-lords leaping,

  Float and flutter down.

  Leaf-lords leaping,

  Swirl around, twirl around.

  Lovely leap-lords leap.”

  Tilly wanted to dance and sing with them! Then she noticed that the leaf-lords were dancing in a ring round Mrs Hardcastle’s new, brown, lace-up shoes. Tilly put them on, without even taking her own off, and before she’d had time to fasten them she was leaping and jumping round with the leaf-lords, as high as them, and as fast as them, and singing the leaf-lords’ song to the wonderful whistling tune that seemed to be coming from Mrs Hardcastle’s mouth. Spinning and swinging and dancing and prancing and swirling and twirling and whizzing and whirling . . .


  Tilly noticed that everywhere the leaf-lords danced there were little prickly balls in the grass, like spiky apples, like tiny, round, green hedgehogs, and every green spiky hedgehoggy ball had a slit in it, and something as brown and warm and shiny as an eye gleamed inside the slit.

  “Lovely!” said Tilly, bending down to have a closer look, and as she did so an ice-cold shadow fell across her. She looked up, shivering.

  The leaf-lords were still dancing, but in a tearing, miserable, hunched-up sort of way. The whistle still whistled, but in a sharp, shrill, howling sort of way. The sun still shone, but it was as cold as winter. And all the colours of the sky and the trees and the leaves and the grass seemed to have slipped away into grey.

  “What’s happened?” asked Tilly. “Where’s the lovely day gone to?”

  The leaf-lords scurried round Tilly’s feet.

  “The Cold Queen of Winter!” they screamed. “Too early! Too soon! Send her away! Send her away!”

  Tilly could hear the Cold Queen of Winter cackling like broken twigs. She could feel her icy fingers and the chill of her damp breath on her skin.

  “Too early! Too early!” the leaf-lords screamed. Tilly could feel all the brown eyes in the grass watching her.

  “Don’t worry, leaf-lords!” she said. “I’ll get rid of her for you!”

  She saw the Cold Queen of Winter’s shadow flickering towards the trees, sending all the birds away in fright. Tilly bent down quickly and scooped up handfuls of the prickly green balls and flung them at the shadow.

  “Scram!” she shouted. “We don’t want you here yet!”

  The leaf-lords danced round her, guiding her to where more of the green prickly balls lay. The Queen’s shadow dodged through the trees, growing smaller and smaller as Tilly pelted her.

  “And don’t come back till November!” Tilly cried.

  One by one, the birds flew back into the trees, and began to sing again. The sun and the sky and the trees and the leaves and the grass glowed with colour. As the howls of the banished Queen grew fainter and fainter, the lovely whistly tune started up, and the leaf-lords danced with joy. And everywhere on the grass, wherever Tilly had thrown them, all the prickly balls had split right open. Inside every one of them was another ball, gleaming brown and bright and beautiful.

  Tilly danced round, scooping them up to put in her pockets, when suddenly . . . the wonderful whistle turned into a snore. Then a yawn. Mrs Hardcastle sat up on the bench. Tilly stood still. The leaf-lords lay like old brown leaves on the ground. Not a sound. Not a sound.

  “Tilly Mint! Just what do you think you’re doing in my shoes?” said Mrs Hardcastle. “Just look at my toes! They’re like a bunch of frozen sausages!”

  Tilly took the shoes off, and gave them to Mrs Hardcastle.

  “I saw the leaf-lords, Mrs Hardcastle,” she said, as they trudged back across the grass to the park gates.

  “’Course you did.” Mrs Hardcastle held Tilly’s hand very tightly. “Come on, Tilly Mint. Your mum will be wondering where we’ve got to, won’t she?”

  They climbed slowly back up the hill, and Tilly thought it was one of the nicest days she’d ever had. But Mrs Hardcastle was a bit sad, because it was a long time since she’d danced with the leaf-lords. A long, long time.

  “Look,” said Tilly, suddenly remembering what she’d found. “These will cheer you up, Mrs Hardcastle. Look what I’ve got in my pockets.”

  “Conkers!” laughed Mrs Hardcastle. “Tilly Mint! Conkers! You’ve found the treasure! Ooh, just wait till we get home. We’ll thread them on string . . . and we’ll have a conker-fight. Come on! Quick!”

  She was so excited that she started running, in her new shoes. Tilly Mint smiled to herself, because she’d already had a conker-fight that day, hadn’t she?

  And she had won.

  Tilly Mint Learns to Fly

  ONE WILD AND windy day, when Mum was taking Tilly Mint round to Mrs Hardcastle’s for a couple of hours, the wind was so strong that it nearly blew them away. Tilly Mint clung onto Mum’s hand as tight as she could, and Mum pulled her as hard as she could, but they didn’t seem to get very far at all.

  “Come on, Tilly!” Mum kept saying. “We’ll never get there at this rate.”

  Tilly pushed with all her strength against the wind, and the wind pushed with all its strength against Tilly.

  “I wish I could push the wind away!” gasped Tilly, when she had enough breath left to speak. “What good is it anyway?”

  “Never mind,” Mum said. “We’re here now. You’ll be nice and cosy in Mrs Hardcastle’s kitchen, and I’ll see you at tea time.”

  But Mrs Hardcastle didn’t think much of that idea at all.

  “We’re not staying indoors on a day like this, Tilly Mint,” she said. “Oh no, we’re not wasting this wind!”

  And Tilly had to put her duffel coat back on, and her scarf and her gloves and her bobble hat, even though she’d only just taken them off.

  “Tie my laces up for me, Tilly,” said Mrs Hardcastle. She couldn’t bend down that far these days. “Will you just listen to the wind in the chimney!”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice to stay in and listen to it?” said Tilly hopefully.

  But Mrs Hardcastle shook her head. “Never,” she said. “Never, never, never.

  The specialest thing in the whole world wide

  Is the whistling wind when it’s blowing wild.

  “Remember that, Tilly Mint.” Then she banged on the side of the budgie cage so that sleepy Mr Feathers fell off his perch and fluttered his wings in surprise. Two little blue feathers floated down.

  “It was a day like today,” Mrs Hardcastle said, “a day just like this, that I learned to fly. But that was years and years and years ago.” She looked a little bit excited, and a little bit sad, because she was the oldest woman in the world, and she’d done so many things, so long ago.

  “Anyway,” she said, giving Tilly one of the little blue feathers from the bottom of the budgie cage, and keeping the other one for herself, “just you hang onto that, Tilly Mint. You might just need it. You never know what might happen, on a day like this. Remember what I told you.”

  “The specialest thing in the whole world wide

  Is the whistling wind when it’s blowing wild,”

  whispered Tilly to herself. And out they went.

  The wind grabbed them by the hair. It pulled their arms up the street. It pushed their legs down the street. Then it let go. Tilly sat down with a thump. The little blue feather was still safe in her hand. She clung onto Mrs Hardcastle’s coat with the other hand, and pressed her bobble hat down with her fist. She closed her eyes, and battled on. Sometimes her legs went backwards, and sometimes they went forwards, and sometimes they didn’t go at all. But Mrs Hardcastle staggered on till they got to the very top of the hill.

  “This is just the sort of thing we need!” shouted Mrs Hardcastle excitedly. “A bangy whizzy whistly wind like this. This should do it.

  “The specialest thing in the whole world wide

  Is the whistling wind when it’s blowing wild.

  Spin in a circle, spread your arms high,

  And see if the wind will make you fly!”

  She started running round and round on the top of the hill, holding her blue feather high up in the air. You should have seen her! Her coat was flapping up right above her knees, and she didn’t care! Her scarf wound itself off her neck and blew away, and she didn’t care! Her hair flopped like a bush round her face, and she didn’t care! Round and round she ran, and round and round ran the blue feather in her fingers.

  “Come on, Tilly Mint!” she shouted. “Hold up your feather, and run!”

  So Tilly Mint ran round and round after Mrs Hardcastle, holding her blue feather up in the air, and all of a sudden two things happened. Mrs Hardcastle stopped running round, and sat down very suddenly on the bench by the bus shelter; and Tilly Mint . . . started to fly!

  She wasn’t just floating; she was really f
lying! Over the bus shelter, over the trees, over her street, over her house, over her park, and away, and away, and away.

  The specialest thing in the whole world wide

  Is the whistling wind when it’s blowing wild.

  Spin in a circle, hold your arms high

  And see if the wind will make you fly.

  Spin in a circle, spin in a ring,

  Spin like a bird with your little blue wing,

  And you’re up where the clouds are,

  You’re tossed and you’re twirled,

  You’re up where the birds are –

  You’re over the world!

  When Tilly looked down again, she couldn’t see her house, or her street, or even the hill. She was somewhere else! She was floating down, down, down towards sparkling blue rivers and bright green trees.

  She could see brown children splashing in the water. She could hear a harsh grating sound, like the sound of someone sawing wood, and as she floated closer she could see that the sound was coming from a big-eared teddy-bear that was climbing slowly up a tree.

  Tilly landed with a bump at the bottom of the tree, and one of the children ran to her, laughing, to help her up.

  “Tilly Mint’s come!” he called to the others.

  “I saw a bear in that tree,” Tilly told him.

  “Koala!” the boy said. “He’s a sleepy old thing. Don’t bother about him. Come and play.”

  The children ran out of the trees and into a clearing. The ground was hard and yellow, like baked sand. The sun was hotter than Tilly had ever known it to be. No wonder these children don’t wear many clothes, she thought. I do feel silly in my duffel coat and gloves and bobble hat.

  “Take them off,” the boy said. “Chunk them away.”

  “I’d better not,” Tilly told him. “I’ll need them for . . . when I go.”

  A terrible feeling was slowly creeping over her, like it does sometimes when you’ve done something wrong, or when you’ve forgotten something very important.

  “My feather!” she gasped. “I’ve lost my feather! Now what do I do?”