The Great Big Big George Book of Stories by Eric Pringle

Author:Eric Pringle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2011-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

The bear came willingly.

‘I’ll chase it while you’re asleep,’ Walter warned her.

‘Yous can say goodbye to your eyes, then.’

‘Zwifnnbwww,’ said George. ‘Let the bear come.’

Even in the dark George had felt Jo’s longing, and he realised that behind the tough exterior that was her defence against a dangerous world, there hid a lonely girl who wanted a friend above all else.

Now, once again, they lay quiet.

Jo ruffled the bear’s dirty fur and sighed contentedly. ‘Now we’re four outlaws, en’t we?’ she whispered.

‘I’m leader,’ Walter said arrogantly.

‘No you en’t. Nobody’s leader. We’re all equal.’

‘You’re my equal?’ gasped Walter, trembling with indignation.

‘Yiss, I am.’

‘And the bear, I suppose? The bear is my equal, too?’

‘Yiss.’

‘And the grolyhoomp?’

‘The grolyhoomp most of all. He’s more equal than any of us.’

Walter knew she was right.

While his friends bickered, George – who was used to one day lasting nine hundred earthly years – was trying to come to terms with a world where night seemed to fall with every blink of an eye.

And he was listening to the stars.

Why did it always seem as if they were speaking to him? What were they saying? He lay on his back in the little walled town, watching galaxies spin overhead, and he heard their song like wind lyres.

‘Gardey-loo! Gardey-loo!’ cried a woman’s voice, as she emptied a chamber pot out of a window. The splash echoed round the square, and a surprised and sodden cat ran scampering down Watery Lane.

Then a timid voice whispered, ‘Who g-goes there?’, and a candle lantern wavered into view, shaking nervously in the hand of the Swineytown nightwatchman.

He stopped at the edge of the pitch-black square. ‘Does anybody go there?’ he croaked. ‘Show yourselves if you do.’ He raised the lantern but all it illuminated was his own face – the haunted face of Citizen Martin carrying out his last duty of the day.

‘Grolyhoomp,’ George said.

Martin nearly dropped his lantern. He peered towards a ghostly green glimmer in the middle of the square. From where he was standing it looked like the biggest glow-worm in creation.

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