Casper Candlewacks in the Time Travelling Toaster. Ivan Brett
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Название: Casper Candlewacks in the Time Travelling Toaster
Автор: Ivan Brett
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Детская проза
isbn: 9780007411627
isbn:
“You could be a postman now.”
“Not a proper postman, Casper. In the olden days they rode horses and fired guns at deserts.”
“That’s a cowboy.”
A gasp came from the garage doorway.
Both boys spun round and one squeaked. There stood Anemonie Blight, her greedy eyes wide. She pointed a black-nailed finger at the Time Toaster. “Wassat, then?”
“Nothing,” snapped Casper. “Go away.”
“Not until you tell me what it does,” the girl smirked. “Fly, does it? Will it do yer homework?”
“It’s not finished,” lied Casper, “and even if it was, it still wouldn’t do anything.”
“Actually –” Lamp stepped forward proudly, clasping his hands together and closing his eyes like a museum curator describing Picasso’s bogey – “it’s a time machine.”
Anemonie’s ears pricked up.
Casper’s heart leapt.
Lamp’s tummy rumbled, so he took a bite of toast.
“Time machine, is it?” Anemonie’s body had tensed, her eyebrows raised.
“No!” cried Casper. “You heard him wrong. He said… erm… prime gravel. That’s it! It makes gravel for your garden path, that’s all.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Lamp frowned. “It makes time travel.”
Casper winced. He jabbed his friend twice with an elbow, to the rhythm of Shut up, but by the look on Anemonie’s face, he knew it was too late.
“The things I could do with a time machine,” the girl murmured, inching forward with a wild look in her eyes. “Go back and buy last week’s winning lottery tickets; take a telly back in time and pretend I invented it…” She giggled. “Or I could just sell the time machine. Reckon it’s worth a hundred pounds at least.”
“A hundred pounds?” chuckled Lamp, shaking his head. “Not likely. My Time Toaster’s more valuable than all the money in all the piggy banks in all the world.”
That was enough. Pound signs flashed in Anemonie’s eyes and she launched at the boys, fingernails first.
Lamp spun protectively and grabbed the Time Toaster while Casper stepped forward to block Anemonie’s path. She deftly dodged him, leaping to one side and bouncing at Lamp. Turning away just in time, Lamp found himself holding the Time Toaster at arm’s length as Anemonie pushed into him, screaming with envy.
“Lamp! Over here!” Casper was unmarked at the entrance to the garage, and he’d played enough rugby to know this was a good thing. “Chuck it!”
Anemonie lunged, but not in time to deflect Lamp’s mighty lob as the Time Toaster soared into the air…
…and landed with a CRASH! about fifty centimetres in front of Lamp’s feet.
“You broke it.” Anemonie sneered with disdain at the crumpled heap on the floor. “How’m I gonna sell a big lump of broken metal?” With a huff, she stomped from the garage, spitting on the floor as she left.
Once Anemonie’s steel-toed footsteps had faded far into the distance, Casper began to pick up the shattered pieces of what used to be Lamp’s Time Toaster, and place them on the central workbench. “So… how bad is it?”
Lamp hadn’t spoken yet. In fact, he hadn’t even moved. He was still in the same stretched position as he had been when he threw the Time Toaster, like a statue of the world’s worst ballerina. Slowly, he let his arms drop and his gaze fix on the pile of scrap. At the top of the pile, a single green light was flashing: the bottle cap marked BROKKIN.
Lamp smiled weakly. “At least that bit’s still working.”
And so the boys began the painstaking task of fitting the Time Toaster’s pieces back together. Casper had to pop over to Mrs Trimble’s shop to buy two more pots of glue and a yo-yo. By the time he came back, the queue at the bus stop had mostly filtered away. Sandy Landscape, the village gardener, who’d joined at the very back, was now taking his turn to sniff the brand-new seats and knock on the glass walls. Happy all was in order, he murmured some words of approval and strolled back up the street.
Casper smiled as the muddy man passed.
“Mornin’, Casper.” Sandy Landscape doffed his floppy hat. “You ent seen me goat, ’ave yer?”
“Have you checked your goat pen?”
Sandy looked impressed. “Now that I ain’t. But I shall check there next. Thankee, Casper.” And he trotted off to look in the place where he always found his goat.
Back in the garage, Casper found Lamp doing a little jig. “What’s going on?”
“I did a clever!” Lamp wiggled his hips and waved a spanner around. “Remind me to thank Anenemy for breaking my Time Toaster.”
“Why on earth would you want to thank her?”
“I think I put it back together wrong. Now it sends stuff rather than receives it.”
“That’s good!” said Casper. “I guess. Still just toast, though…”
“Not if you don’t want toast. I can send anything!”
“As long as it fits in the toaster.”
“Not any more.” Lamp waddled across to a dark corner of his garage and returned with a tartan tin full of old biscuits. He stretched two red wires from one of the many holes still left in the Time Toaster and stuck them to the tin with two squares of tape. With a flourish of his hand and a shout of “Let’s TIME!”, Lamp tugged down on the toaster handle and the machine coughed into action.
When the smoke cleared this time, however, there was no toast. In fact, rather than anything new, something was missing. The biscuit tin, and the biscuits inside it, had completely vanished.
At first Casper thought Lamp had scoffed a secret snack under the smokescreen, but then he would have had to eat the tin too, and tins aren’t that tasty.
“Someone in caveman times is gonna have a lovely treat,” smiled Lamp.
The biscuit tin had gone. Through time. Casper found himself short of breath. “But this is… amazing! Will it send anything?”
“So far I’ve tried it with a colouring pencil, that biscuit tin and one of my shoes. I think that covers most things.”
Casper hadn’t noticed until then that one of Lamp’s sponge shoes was missing.
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