Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy by A. F. Harrold Page B

sleep is a leg that starts to wake up again. And Fizz’s leg was beginning to do that just about now.
    There was a tingling, numb, buzzing feeling all along his muscles and nothing would make it go away. He tried stretching as much as he could and he tried squeezing as much as he could, but it wasn’t helping with the pain. And now it was going through that bit when the pins and needles feel like they’re on fire and after that it sort of settled down to a dull numb throb, before it finally felt like a real leg again.
    Fizz managed to not go, ‘Ow!’ or to moan or to make any noise at all. He did really well, right up until the point when his leg had finally woken up.
    It was then that he shifted to get more comfortable. He only moved an inch or two, but in the pitch darkness his shoe banged quietly against the side of the trunk, just gently, but enough that . . .
    ‘What was that?’ said Lady Barboozul.
    ‘What was what?’ said Wystan.
    There was a pause as the three bearded saboteurs listened.
    Then there was a Lord Barboozul-shaped silence.
    ‘Well, I don’t care what you think. I definitely heard something,’ his wife barked.
    ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ Wystan muttered.
    ‘Hmm,’ Lady Barboozul said. It was the noise someone makes when they don’t agree with what you’ve just said, but can’t be bothered to argue the point. ‘Very well.’
    Fizz heard the noise of chairs scraping on the floor and Lord Barboozul said something. Plates were put on table. Wystan groaned.
    ‘Tuna sandwiches again?’ he said.
    They were having lunch. It surprised Fizz that even amongst all the planning and scheming and plotting and arguing that wicked people do, they still had to sit down at the table with sandwiches and lemonade (this was a guess from the fizz of the bottle opening, it might well have been cola or ginger beer, but it didn’t matter) and just . . . well . . . have lunch.
    And then Fizz sneezed.
    It was a dusty trunk, after all, and those old beard-wigs were all hairy. It was bound to happen. And of course, when a boy sneezes loudly in a trunk in the kitchen of his enemies while they’re having their lunch, it can only mean one thing.
    The end of the chapter.

Chapter Ten
    In which questions are asked and in which a boy is dangled
    As soon as the sneeze was out Fizz clamped his hands over his nose.
    Fizz wasn’t a stupid boy and knew he should have done it before the sneeze escaped, but this one hadn’t given him any warning.
    (Some sneezes creep around for a bit first, have a little tickle, have a little sit down, have a little think, while others just jump out feet first without even waving. It is these sneezes, I have had occasion to note, that make the most mess and the loudest noise and require the most apologies.)
    As soon as he sneezed a silence fell outside the trunk.
    Fizz could imagine the sight. The bearded Lady Barboozul holding a long slim finger up to her fur-framed lips (a flake of tuna caught in the bristling blue-black hair) to tell her two men to keep quiet. And the three of them tiptoeing soft-footed over to where the trunk sat, squat and impossible to ignore against the caravan wall. They’d bend over, wouldn’t they, and slowly open the lid. (Did it squeak? Fizz couldn’t remember, but knew he’d soon find out.)
    It didn’t.
    The crack of light appeared as he’d feared and was brighter than he expected.
    After so long in the pitch dark the light hurt his eyes. For a moment he couldn’t see anything but a pair of dark shapes looming above him, and then there were claws round his neck and he was being picked up, lifted into the air.
    ‘You!’ hissed Lady Barboozul.
    As his vision de-blurred and slowly returned to normal, her beautiful ice cold eyes drilled into him, and her black-blue beard tickled his hands, dangling limply in front of him.
    ‘I suppose,’ she said, leaning so close to his face he could smell her beard, ‘that you heard our little . . . discussion just