Edie Amelia and the Runcible River Fever (11 page)

‘Dad,' screamed Cheesy. She looked at Edie, white-faced and with tear-stained cheeks. ‘What have I done?'

‘Is he breathing?' said Edie.

‘Sort of. B-but he's . . .'

‘Unconscious? Chompster! Put him in the recovery position at once. Remember what they told us in the first-aid course?'

‘Yes,' said Cheesy, slapping herself on the cheeks then moving Hogmanay onto his side and checking that his airway was clear.

While everyone else was distracted with matters of life and death, Snuffles made a bee-line for the mashed-up flan and began gulping it down as fast as his little jaws could manage. Mister snorted in protest.

‘Fancy that,' said Edie.

Having done as much as she could for Hogmanay, Cheesy chanced a peek over the side of the basket.

‘Am I hallucinating,' she said, ‘or are we actually losing height?'

When Edie looked, everyone on the ground seemed to be getting more distant, but that was because the wind was blowing the balloon away from the launch site. At the same time, the ground did appear to be getting closer. She looked up at the canopy. Jumpsuits in every colour of the rainbow plugged holes in the once pristine balloon that had been Hogmanay's pride and joy. Each of the jumpsuits had been roughly sewn in place with surgical catgut thread, which made long zigzagging tracks across the polyurethane surface.

What did Hogmanay mean by
short one jumpsuit
? Edie wondered. Then it hit her. He must have bought the box that the Blank Marauder had opened just for her. When the Marauder had resealed the box after giving her the jumpsuit, what had he said? That was it.
They'll never know there's one missing
. The Marauder had let Hogmanay think he was getting a box with exactly one thousand pleather jumpsuits in
it, when the box was short one and she was wearing it.

Edie looked again and saw to her dismay that one of the jumpsuit patches had come unstuck, leaving a size-nine-shaped hole in the canopy. They were losing air and altitude fast. And to make matters worse, she had begun coughing and sneezing almost constantly, and she could see the angry rash spreading up her right arm all the way to her neck.

Her Worries came right to the top. It seemed pretty clear that she, too, was coming down with the Fever. On top of that, she had no idea how to fly a hot-air balloon, especially a recently mended one that had sprung a leak. She wished she had listened a little more carefully to Hogmanay when he had been rabbiting on to her about the principles of ballooning—or was she now suffering from memory loss (Symptom 3)?

But then she had a thought. A hole needed to be plugged, a jumpsuit-sized hole, and she happened to be wearing a jumpsuit.

‘What do you think, boy?' she said.
Mister gave a snort of approval. So she stripped down to her floral vest and big woolly knickers, leaving her with one slightly sweaty red pleather jumpsuit in exactly the right size to plug the hole that was threatening to destroy them. All at once her coughing and sneezing ceased, her rash stopped itching and her head cleared. As she looked at the jumpsuit, the seed of an idea began to grow in Edie's mind.

‘Where's your outer garment?' said Cheesy, who'd been checking on Hogmanay.

Edie held up her pleather jumpsuit. ‘This,' she said, ‘is the one-thousandth jumpsuit and it's in relatively mint condition, give or take a few grass stains. In short, it's our salvation.' She gave it a shake. ‘By the way, Cheesy, it seems at last you and I have something substantial in common.'

‘What's that?' said Cheesy.

‘Allergy,' said Edie. ‘I'm almost certain I'm allergic to pleather.' She took a long, deep breath, feeling a thousand times better without the manmade fabric close to her skin. It was time.

She reached for the duct tape she kept in her detective kit for just such an emergency. When she had got it out she wedged it between Mister's jaws and begged him not to eat it.

‘Not today, boy!'

The balloon seemed to sag and sigh.

With arms outstretched and balancing on the esky, Edie would be just tall enough to stick the jumpsuit on the canopy and close the gap.

‘Quick! Cheesy, get that duct tape from Mister Pants!'

‘What for?'

‘Bear with me, I've got a plan. Peel me off a few strips. We've got to stop the air leaking out. I know your dad isn't in top form, but if we
don't
plug this hole none of us will make it. We're going to crash! Do you hear me? So please. Pass. The. Duct. Tape.'

‘Got it, got it,' said Cheesy, gingerly taking the tape from Mister's slobbery jaws and tearing four large strips from the roll. She gagged a bit at the sight of his doggy saliva.

‘That's good! Now pass the strips of tape to me and I'll patch the tear.'

Cheesy gathered herself up to full height and passed Edie the sticky duct tape. ‘We're heading towards the field fast!' she called, looking at the ground below. ‘Quick, Edie, or we're going to hit really hard. Holy haggis, I can see lights flashing down there.' (Cheesy was not mistaken, because by now the police had estimated where the balloon would come down, and had summoned a fire truck, a rescue van, two ambulances and an enormous trampoline. It seemed a lot of
townsfolk had broken the curfew to witness the spectacle as well.)

Edie stretched up as high as she could and stuck the pleather jumpsuit in the hole left by the one that had become detached. By a combination of true bravery and sheer good luck (which often comes in handy) she was able to fasten it in place just in the nick of time. The balloon stabilised and their descent slowed, and Edie reflected that her calmness in the emergency had undoubtedly paid off.

Mister barked not once but three times, to warn the crew that the ground was too close for comfort. Snuffles, having glutted himself on the flan, climbed under the tarpaulin to be sick.

‘Hold on to something,' said Edie. ‘We're going to hit!'

Hogmanay began to wake up. ‘D'ye nae ken . . .' he began, but Cheesy put an arm around him and held on to the side rail of the basket for dear life.

WHAM!

When they hit the ground, Edie was clinging to two of the ropes and Mister
Pants had his jaws clamped round the wickerwork of the basket. The esky and its contents showered down on some rogue alpacas who had escaped the confines of the refuge, and who scorned with equal disdain the caviar, shortbreads and cream cheeses which Hogmanay had hoarded for his flight.

Edie had been thrown clear and was lying on the ground. ‘It sort of worked,' she muttered as a policeman shooed away some alpacas and Mister licked her face. He had lost his eye patch. Cheesy was half out of the basket and calling for help as two paramedics lifted Hogmanay onto a stretcher. Snuffles ran to Trudy Truelove, who was furiously taking photos and yelling tomorrow's headline into her phone.

‘Hold the front page. It's
Fever Cure Hoax: Scotsman's Plot Unravels
. Got it?'

‘Uh-oh,' murmured Edie, just as they were putting her into an ambulance. ‘I wonder what the Mayor will say.' Then everything went hazy.

T
he emergency ward at the Royal Runcible Hospital was abuzz. As she'd been wheeled in on a stretcher, Edie had seen Doctor Arabella Stuart and Doctor Dogwatch eating packets of crisps they had bought from one of the vending machines in the foyer. The Blank Marauder, now fully recovered from
being sprayed with woodworm repellent, was hovering by the entrance, biting his nails. Mister Pants was hiding behind the triage nurse with his tongue hanging out.

The ambulance officers had brought Edie through some flapping plastic doors, and had parked her stretcher in a quiet corner. She had blacked out for a few minutes and had a deep cut which needed stitches. Cheesy had been luckier, sustaining only minor contusions (which is just a medical way of saying bruises). The police, though sympathetic, were concerned about a motorised pram being driven at high speed on a public road.

Hogmanay had not fared so well. His Fever symptoms were so alarming that he had been placed in an isolation ward and attached to a breathing apparatus. It seemed his collapse in the basket amounted to Symptom 8: falling over and not being able to get back up.

Edie closed her eyes and felt someone touch her hand.

‘Child. Thank heavens you're alright.'

She looked up and saw Michaelmas and Cinnamon sitting by her bed. ‘Mum, Dad . . . I'm sorry,' she began. ‘We never meant to get out of control on the hill in the pram or go up in the balloon . . .'

‘The paths of scientific enquiry never did run smooth,' said Michaelmas.

‘At least you had your woolly knickers on,' said Cinnamon.

‘Where is Mister? Is he okay?' said Edie.

‘Apart from the three teeth that came out when the balloon hit the ground, yes,
he's fine,' said Cinnamon, ‘but has there ever been an unluckier animal?'

‘Dad,' said Edie drowsily, ‘I think I've solved the mystery of the Runcible River Fever. I don't think it was a virus at all.'

Michaelmas's eyes lit up behind his glasses. ‘Go on,' he said.

‘I think . . . I think we're all
allergic to pleather
,' said Edie. ‘The idea came to me as soon as I took off my own pleather jumpsuit and stopped coughing.'

‘I see,' said Michaelmas inscrutably (which is just a clever way of saying that he knew something important but was not giving it away just yet).

‘You see,' said Edie, ‘I used my jumpsuit to patch the balloon.'

‘Good heavens, it's a wonder you're not—' said Cinnamon.

‘Go on, Edie,' Michaelmas interrupted.

‘Well,' Edie began, ‘we tailed the Blank Marauder, who led us to Hogmanay. Hogmanay has been behaving very mysteriously of late . . .'

‘Indeed,' said Michaelmas. ‘I suspect
that he had his sights set on my scientific theories. He's been pestering me about them for days.'

‘I think Hogmanay
took
your theories on the cure for Runcible River Fever, but I have to admit, all I could see him holding up were the sketches of the doggy-lifter.' She felt gingerly for the bump on her skull. ‘I know I've just fallen on my head,' she said, ‘but I'm a little confused.'