“No, no,” Hoggle said. “Just a moment of confusion, that’s all.”
“What are you hoping we’ll scare away?” Tess demanded.
Before Hoggle could answer, there was another sneeze from inside the wall.
“Atishoo!”
“What is that thing in the wall?” Tess asked.
“What thing?” Hoggle replied.
“That thing that just sneezed!”
“I didn’t hear any sneeze,” Hoggle said.
Tess narrowed her eyes at him. Why was he lying?
“You know there’s something wrong with the teddy bears, don’t you?” Tess said. “Adults can’t normally tell, but if you didn’t know, then you wouldn’t have said about them locking you out of the factory earlier.”
“My dear,” Hoggle replied. “Please be assured that there is no need to worry about the teddy bears. There are none left in the factory.”
Tess opened her mouth to argue, but Hoggle held up a gloved hand to silence her.
“This morning was my mistake, I admit,” Hoggle said. “I thought I had got rid of all of them, but it turns out there was one left. I found it while you were cleaning the foyer.”
“But … but we’ve been in the Teddy-Bear Room since then,” Tess said. “And it was full of teddy bears. Dozens of them!”
Hoggle gave Tess a startled look, then shook himself and said, “Not possible.”
“I tell you we saw them!” Tess exclaimed. She was starting to feel cross. “Come and look if you don’t believe me.”
Hoggle followed them back down the corridor, where Tess threw open the door to the Teddy-Bear Room.
“See!” Tess said triumphantly. “I told you.”
“Tess!” Niles said. He was tugging at her sleeve, but she ignored him.
Hoggle looked over her head into the room. “Just as I thought,” he said. “Not so much as a whisker.”
“What?” Tess said.
Tess spun around and stared into the room. Hoggle was right. There wasn’t a single teddy bear in sight. Nothing but row upon row of empty shelves.
“But they were there!” she said. “Just a few minutes ago!”
“Children have such wonderful imaginations,” Hoggle commented. “Simply marvellous.” He glanced down at Tess and said, “Still, imagination is not all that helpful in employees. My own fault for hiring children in the first place, I suppose.”
“Why do you only hire children?” Tess asked.
Hoggle shrugged. “Why not?” he replied. “You’d only be wasting your time in school otherwise. Now, I must get on.” He waved the net. “I’ve dragonflies to outwit and you two have rooms to clean.”
And, with that, Hoggle set off down the corridor, whistling to himself once again. Tess and Niles watched him go, while wondering how on earth a roomful of teddies could have simply vanished.
CHAPTER 8The Mermaid Room
Tess was just thinking that it would be hard for things to get much worse when Stacy suddenly came sprinting down the corridor. Tess could tell from her sister’s face that it was not good news.
“Oliver isn’t there!” Stacy gasped, skidding to a stop. “At home, I mean!” She bent over, still panting for breath. “No one’s seen him all day.”
“So he’s still here in the factory then,” Tess said.
She closed her eyes for a brief moment. She had been so afraid that something like this would happen. She should have listened to her instinct. She should have refused to bring her younger siblings here. But it was too late to change that now.
Tess opened her eyes. The twins were both staring up at her, waiting for her to tell them what to do. She couldn’t fall apart.
“We just have to find Oliver, that’s all,” Tess said. “And then we’ll leave. And we won’t come back, no matter what. We’ll just have to find some other way to save the farm.”
And so they continued to explore the factory. First they found a room full of bright yellow rubber ducks that squeaked at them in a panicky sort of way. Then they passed on to a room of jack-in-the-boxes, where they could hear the dolls inside the boxes whispering and weeping to themselves and rapping their knuckles against the wood.
Unfortunately, Niles knocked his foot against a jack-in-the-box as they left the room and it popped open all on its own. A boy doll with a shock of orange hair jumped out, grinning at them wildly as it bounced around on its spring.
Stacy began to wail. “It’s Oliver!” she cried, pointing. “They’ve turned him into a toy!”
“Don’t be daft!” Tess exclaimed, and yet she felt a jerk of unease deep down.
The jack-in-the-box did look a bit like Oliver, with its orange hair and big green eyes …
Tess shook her head firmly. “This toy is really old,” she said. She stuffed the doll back in the box and closed the lid with a snap. “Look how dusty it is. It can’t possibly be Oliver.”
Still, Tess felt deeply troubled as they left the room. After all, this was no ordinary factory and the normal rules didn’t apply here. What if children could be turned into toys?
The idea was too dreadful to think about and Tess pushed it from her mind as they opened the next door. They found themselves in a room that was almost empty apart from some toy soldiers and a few mermaid dolls.
Stacy adored mermaids and had pictures of them painted all over her walls back at home. She forgot her fear of the toys, exclaimed in delight and ran straight over to the mermaids. Their hair was made from blue and green yarn that hung all the way down their backs, so long they could sit on it. And they wore shell jewellery and had sparkly, shimmering scales on their tails.
Tess and Niles joined Stacy and looked at the mermaids on their shelf. They were all slumped together in a dusty heap, as if they’d been there a long time. There was something unloved and forgotten and sad about them. Stacy reached out and began to straighten them up.
Tess was about to warn her against touching the mermaids when suddenly the air filled with the scent of the sea. The children all gasped. They
