wrenched from her shoulders. Reaching back to grab it, she fell to the ground, hitting her funny bone on the pavement and badly bruising her hip. She flipped to her back and squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the giggling toothy thing to attack. She could smell his hot breath, stinking of trash and bones and rot.
“Nice?” said the thing. She opened her eyes to see him standing over her, cradling the backpack in one arm. He lifted the umbrella and sniffed the air with a nose that seemed unusually long and mobile, like the nose of a rat. And that’s when she felt the tingling in her hands, in her face, across her whole body, and knew that it had happened again. That the thing couldn’t see her any more.
Slowly and as quietly as she could, Gurl got to her feet. Noodle poked her face from the top of the pack and mewled. Burbling absently, the thing pulled the flap down, sniffing the air. Then he started to shamble back the way he came. Slapdrag, slap-drag. Gurl tiptoed behind him and gave his overcoat a rough tug. The thing grunted and twirled on its short leg, almost stumbling itself. “Bad,” he said. “Bad, bad, bad.”
He clutched the cat tighter and Gurl could hear Noodle’s plaintive mews through the canvas.
“Give me my cat!” said Gurl and she ripped the umbrella out of his hand.
The thing gasped and covered his red eyes with his forearm, as if against a strong light. Gurl dropped the umbrella and grabbed the backpack, which promptly disappeared in her grip. The thing gibbered and wailed, “Kitty! Kitty! Kitteeeee!” She could still hear him wailing two, three, five blocks away. And then she was standing at the gates of Hope House, chest heaving like a bellows, and she couldn’t hear him any more. But she could see herself again, her own arms and legs plainly visible in the dim light. She hugged Noodle close and the animal’s low purr filled her with joy.
“It was you,” she whispered in Noodle’s ear. “Every time I changed it was because I was afraid—not for me, but for you.”
Armed with this realisation, she opened the gate and crossed the yard. She had just slipped around the side of the dormitory when a hot white light blinded her. Someone snatched the backpack and then grabbed the lapel of her jacket.
“Hello, my dear,” Mrs Terwiliger said, reeling Gurl in close.
Chapter 6 Mrs Terwiliger’s Monkeys
MRS TERWILIGER HAD ONE HAND on the strap of the backpack and one hand on Gurl’s arm in a death grip as she half flew, half dragged Gurl across the yard to the main building. “I don’t know what gets into you children. After all I do for you, to just run off like that! And you can stop struggling,” she said. “I might lose sight of you, but I won’t lose you altogether.” She lifted the backpack so that Gurl could see it. “I won’t lose your little friend either.”
More worried for Noodle than herself, Gurl stopped struggling. “Where are you taking us?” Gurl squeaked.
“Where do you think?” snapped Mrs Terwiliger.
Another orphanage? The animal shelter? Jail? Gurl couldn’t imagine. Because of her fear, she tingled all over. It seemed that her body was as confused as her head and flashed an alarming array of colours and textures. One arm was striped like Mrs Terwiliger’s coat, the other arm seemed to be made of red brick. Both her legs somehow mimicked the shadows behind them, so that it appeared she had four instead of two. She kept silent until they reached the front door of the main building.
“Open the door and be quiet about it,” Mrs Terwiliger said. “We don’t want to wake anyone else now, do we? Children need their rest.”
Gurl clutched the brass door handle, noticing that her hand immediately turned the same bright yellow colour. Mrs Terwiliger noticed too. “That’s quite a talent. Better than flying, that talent is,” she said, not talking as much as muttering to herself as she led Gurl down a long dark hallway. At the end of it was a black door, upon which were five separate locks and the words Matron Geraldine Terwiliger in looping golden script.
“Reach into my right pocket,” said Mrs Terwiliger, “and remove the keyring.” Gurl did as she was told, the keys making a faint jingling noise as she pulled them from Mrs Terwiliger’s jacket.
“The silver key opens the top lock,” Mrs Terwiliger told her. “The red key opens the second, the blue key unlocks the third, the gold key opens the fourth and the tiny little key you use on the doorknob.”
Gurl fumbled with the keys, not because it was too dark to see, but because sometimes her hand would turn the colour of the key or the key would turn the colour of her hand.
“I’m waiting,” said Mrs Terwiliger, tapping her high-heeled shoe impatiently. Noodle mewled and Gurl’s hands shook.
Gurl finally managed to unlock the five locks and open the door. “Now,” said Mrs Terwiliger as they stepped inside, “close the door and return the keys to my pocket. Good. Use the chain to turn on the lamp. Ahhh, that’s better, isn’t it?”
The small lamp cast an eerie glow around the office and Gurl gasped when she saw a hundred pairs of eyes gaping at her from all around the room. “What are they?” Gurl asked. Mrs Terwiliger’s overlarge teeth flashed in a wicked smile, but she didn’t answer the question. “Have a seat,” she said, pushing Gurl into a chair next to a huge marble desk. She set the backpack on the desk and produced a set of handcuffs from her left pocket. As soon as she saw them, Gurl tried to rip her arm from Mrs Terwiliger’s grasp, but because of the bruised hip and elbow, she couldn’t move fast enough. One click and Gurl was cuffed to the chair, unable to get away. Mrs Terwiliger sighed, walked around to the other side of the desk, and sat in her own chair, a red velvet one the size and shape of a throne.
“Well,” she said. “Here we are. At least, here I am. If I didn’t know what you were capable of, I might think I was the only one here. I saw that you were starting to…er…fade this afternoon in the hallway. I got curious, so I kept an eye on you. I saw you sneaking in and out of the dorm to bring this animal”—she gestured to the backpack on the desk—“some of your dinner. And then I watched you sneak out this evening, and I waited for you to come back. Did you know that you simply appeared out of nowhere, right in front of the orphanage gate? Astonishing! And you’re nearly invisible right now. You blend right in with that chair. You’re like a chameleon. Or a stick insect. Have you ever heard of a stick insect?”
Gurl didn’t respond to this speech. Her eyes had adjusted to the light, so now she could see that every shelf, every filing cabinet and every surface was covered with monkeys. Hundreds of mechanical monkeys. Some of them were no bigger than a fist; others were as high as a foot. On the end of the marble desk, facing her, sat a monkey wearing a little gold fez and holding tiny gold cymbals. Gurl wondered if its fur was real, and worried all the more for the fate of Noodle.
“A stick insect is a type of insect that appears to be a stick, yet is not a stick but an insect,” Mrs Terwiliger was saying. “Isn’t that fascinating, dear? Gurl? Are you admiring my monkeys? They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
Beautiful was not the word that Gurl had been thinking of. Creepy, bizarre, freakish—those were the words that she had been thinking of. And now that she was thinking of it, those words sort of summed up the whole night. What was that thing that chased her down the street? And here, all these ugly monkeys, some with hats and waistcoats, some with bugles or drums, some grinning very unmonkeylike grins—no, they were not beautiful. Noodle
