What a grand spectacle greeted them in the Exhibition Hall! Everyone was now ready, and such a sight had never been seen! Everything sparkled, shone and gleamed—it was a wonderland of festooning. The cats quickly assembled themselves in their assigned place, near a large skylight that was left open to let in the lovely autumn air.
If you’ve been reading about Miss Petitfour’s adventures—and of course you have since you’re reading this sentence—then you will know how handy a coincidence can be. A coincidence is something that happens at just the right moment. Say, for example, just at the very moment you find a dollar on the sidewalk, the ice-cream truck stops in front of you. That’s a tasty coincidence. Or say, just at the very moment your hot cocoa is ready, a marshmallow falls out of an airplane and lands in your cup. That’s also a tasty coincidence. Stories use coincidences all the time to fix up tricky tangles. You can usually tell when one is coming because, COINCIDENTALLY, the story will use the word COINCIDENTALLY. And similar words such as: IT JUST SO HAPPENED, IMPOSSIBLY or INCREDIBLY. Now, just to make sure all these special words work, let’s try them out!
IT JUST SO HAPPENED that the confetti tornado above the factory, consisting of Extra-Shimmery and the very first batch of Super-Sticky, had begun to move. Slowly at first, then picking up speed in the breeze, the swirling confetti began to race across the sky toward the village, and then past the village, toward the outskirts and the Exhibition Hall. And, INCREDIBLY, the confetti ran smack into a cross-breeze that smashed into it with such force that the twister broke apart and cascaded straight down to the ground in a storm of glistening powder. And, IMPOSSIBLY, the exact spot of the collision in the sky was directly above the open skylight of the Exhibition Hall! And INCREDIBLY, IMPOSSIBLY and COINCIDENTALLY, Mr. Coneybeare JUST SO HAPPENED to be standing directly beneath the deluge!
In a trice, Mr. Coneybeare was a statue once more.
For a single, startled moment, the cats and Miss Petitfour just stood there, blinking with surprise. Then, all at once, Minky, Misty, Taffy, Purrsia, Pirate, Mustard, Moutarde, Hemdela, Earring, Grigorovitch, Clasby, Captain Captain, Captain Catkin, Captain Clothespin, Your Shyness and Sizzles sprang into action. They circled Mr. Coneybeare and, all of one mind, the cats turned to Your Shyness, whose glowing fur was as bright and shiny as a gold coin. In a single leap, she jumped on to Mr. Coneybeare’s head, where she looked just like a sparkling gold crown.
At that very instant, Judge Patel reached them and was struck by what she thought was an amazingly lifelike statue of the confetti king. “Why, that’s positively extraordinary!” she said. “I could swear it was Mr. Coneybeare himself!” She paused. “And what a singularly simple festoon!” And then she placed the silver trophy in Miss Petitfour’s hand.
The crowd went wild. They picked up Mr. Coneybeare and carried him out the door to the garden, where there was to be a huge party to celebrate the winning festoon. They deposited him near a fountain, and there he stood, indeed looking just like a fine piece of sculpture.
Shy Mr. Coneybeare, the confetti king, was dumbfounded. What with the shock of being exploded into a vat, and airlifted into a festooning festival, and being mistaken for a statue, and helping to win first prize for Miss Petitfour and the cats, and being carried off by a cheering crowd, he was completely undone.
Mr. Coneybeare began to totter.
Miss Petitfour, who was a very good noticer, saw that the events of the afternoon had been all too much for Mr. Coneybeare, who was not used to such excitement, and she thought perhaps a quick getaway was best. So, gathering the cats around her and readying her tablecloth, she held out her hand to Mr. Coneybeare for their getaway flight.
Sometimes a story depends on finding something—a key to a secret door, a magic ring, a hidden passageway. Sometimes you have to look down to find it (like your slipper under the bed) and sometimes you have to look up to find it (like a balloon caught in a tree) and sometimes, if you’re really lucky, what you’re looking for, finds you.
As soon as Mr. Coneybeare took Miss Petitfour’s hand, his feet began to lift off the ground. And exactly then, he understood: sometimes, all you must do is reach out your hand for something wonderful to happen.
The cats quickly linked themselves and, forming a furry circle with dear Miss Petitfour and the new-to-flight Mr. Coneybeare, they all ascended together. Soon the noise of the exhibition grounds grew dim and was far behind them as they flew back toward the village.
Miss Petitfour always thought of the autumn air as “deliciously” cold, and it was delicious, up in the sky above the village. The kind of cold that makes everything bright and clear. For a long while, Miss Petitfour, Mr. Coneybeare and all the cats hovered in the deepening sky. They watched as, one by one, and then by twos and threes, the lights came on in the village.
Cozy Mrs. Carruther turned on the reading lamp with the big orange lampshade, next to the sofa where her four children gathered every night for their evening story. She slid the baby’s chair next to her, and the other children fell into a heap to listen. Even the baby, who didn’t understand a word but loved to hear the sound of his mother’s voice, listened the way we all do when we’re being read to and we’re just about to fall asleep, the words floating in the air. And cozy Mrs. Carruther stopped reading for a moment and looked about her at the beautiful faces of her children, each of them eager to find out what would happen next in the story.
Down the street, outside Mrs. Collarwaller’s shop, the great wooden sign in the shape of a book creaked on its hinges in the wind. Mrs. Collarwaller heard the creaking and went to the window to look out at the blustery night. It was very snug looking out from inside. Soon she made a cup of tea and was sitting in the ho-hum half of her warm shop and, almost just as soon, she was having a nap, safe and peaceful as a picture in a book.
Above the bakery, the giant wooden cupcake swung back and forth outside Pleasant Patel’s bedroom, where Pleasant was sunk in her favorite beanbag chair reading and, as she always did, eating her late-afternoon baguette, freshly baked and with just the right crunchiness on the outside. If Miss Petitfour and Mr. Coneybeare and all the cats hadn’t been quite so high up above the village, they might have heard Pleasant Patel’s favorite sound—the lovely sound of baguette crunching—as Pleasant turned the pages. She always crunched faster when the story turned exciting, and that evening she was just at the part of the story where the hero hides himself (crunch) in a barrel (crunch) and rolls himself into the river (crunch crunch crunch) in a grand and daring (crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch) escape.
A few doors down from Mr. Patel’s Bakery, Clemmie was teaching her dog how to rip the Velcro open on her running shoes, so she wouldn’t have to bend down when she was in a hurry or when her hands were full.
And, almost at the edge of the village, in their house next to the river, Colonel By and his wife were just settling down with a pot of tea to listen to a symphony on the radio, as they always did on a Sunday afternoon. Mrs. By gently walloped her husband to make sure he was listening to a particularly beautiful bit, and Colonel By smiled at the thought of how much he might have missed in this world had she not been there to show him.
For a long moment, everyone in the village, and the village itself, with its sounds of crunching, ripping and walloping, and with its swaying signs of cupcakes and books, hammers and tap shoes, and with lamplight in the windows, seemed to be content.
Minky gently brushed Miss Petitfour’s cheek with her fluffy tail to remind Miss Petitfour that it was getting dark—which it was—and, well, as everyone knows, when it begins to get dark, it’s time to head for home. (It’s very difficult to navigate when you can’t see where you’re going.) Skillfully, Miss Petitfour leaned into the cold October wind and slowly began to gather in her sail. Mr. Coneybeare, learning by the minute, had soon got the hang of flying, and together, with the furry streamer of cats, in no time at all, they were making their gentle descent into Miss Petitfour’s garden.
It was even
ing now, and a lovely path of orange light from Miss Petitfour’s kitchen window poured out across the lawn. The cats jumped up onto the windowsill, and they all peeked in. They saw that the table was laid out, just as Miss Petitfour had left it all those hours ago, before the excitement of the afternoon, all set and waiting there, as if it hadn’t been the most astoundingly thrilling day, with the platter of leaf biscuits still sitting calmly in the center of the table. And all the cats—littlest Minky and Misty and Taffy and Purrsia and Pirate and Mustard and Moutarde and Hemdela and Earring and Grigorovitch and Clasby and Captain Captain and Captain Catkin and Captain Clothespin and Your Shyness and, the longest cat of all, Sizzles—licked their lips at exactly the same moment and crowded around Miss Petitfour’s ankles, looking up at her. And, with everyone gazing at her—Mr. Coneybeare smiling, and the cats all mewing—with everyone around her very happy and suddenly very hungry, Miss Petitfour gathered her tablecloth, stretched out her arm and opened the door.
It was good to be home.
The fire was soon lit, the kettle was soon whistling, and everyone sat around the table—or on the table or under the table—and Miss Petitfour and Mr. Coneybeare and Minky warmed their toes contentedly in their stocking feet. There would be many wonderful adventures to look forward to, once the treats had all been devoured, adventures of just the right size, as wonderful as that very day, from its leafy beginning to its leaf biscuit END.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Prodigious thanks to Tara Walker for her acuity, kindness and care,
to Ellen Seligman and Liz Calder for embracing this book from the start,
to Emma Block, for bringing Miss Petitfour’s world to the page,
to copyeditor Jennifer Stokes and designer Kelly Hill for precision and panache,
to Eve, David and Viva for joyful camaraderie.
A lifelong thanks to Janis and Rosie Bellow and the whole wonderful Freedman family.
And above all to Rebecca and Evan … for everything and always …
ANNE MICHAELS is the internationally award-winning author of Fugitive Pieces, which was made into a feature film, and The Winter Vault, as well as several volumes of poetry. Her work has appeared in translation in over forty countries around the world. The Adventures of Miss Petitfour is her first book for children.
EMMA BLOCK is the illustrator of Tea and Cake and several books for children. She has worked with clients including Anthropologie, Uniqlo and Hallmark. Emma likes thrift stores, tea and very sharp pencils. Visit her online at emmablock.co.uk.
Anne Michaels, The Adventures of Miss Petitfour
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