The Magical Fruit

  “Where are we going to get the money to fill a baby carriage by tomorrow morning?” Lisa asked. “If we’re supposed to be in the park by nine, the banks won’t even be open yet!”

  Nilly clasped his hands behind his head and contemplated his toes. “Relax, I have a solution. Just trust Tartan-Sherl, people!”

  Doctor Proctor blushed and said, “Aam sorry about that, Nilly. I was trying to call you T-O-R-D-E-N-S-K-J-O-L-D, after the most famous Norwegian naval hero of all time. But, hech, ever since I took that multilingual pill, my tongue just cannae handle some of the Norwegian sounds anymair.”

  Lisa popped her head out of the bathroom door and stopped brushing her teeth for a minute. “Did you just say you have a solution, Nilly? Great,” she said sarcastically. “The only thing we can count on is that it’s probably a plan where you have all the fun and get to be the hero!” She disappeared back into the bathroom, and they heard more brushing noises.

  “Lisa,” Nilly said. “Of course it will be fun for you, too. You get to play the lead part tomorrow.”

  “I do?” Lisa called, and for a bit it was quiet from the bathroom. Until she called, “What if something goes wrong tomorrow?”

  “Relax, this is a watertight, bulletproof plan,” Nilly said. “Nothing’s going to go wrong! Because there’s nothing that can go wrong!”

  And after that Nilly didn’t think there was much more to discuss. And neither did Big Ben, apparently, because it struck eleven times. And fifteen minutes later they were all in their beds. They may not all have fallen asleep right away. But by the time Big Ben struck twelve, then they were all asleep.

  The Itty-Bitty Little Robbery

  THE MORNING SUN shone on the large park in the middle of London named Hyde Park, and it was exactly—no, not exactly—it was about nine o’clock. An old woman was walking with a baby carriage along one of the paths that crisscrosses the park.

  You could see someone sitting on a bench holding a newspaper in front of him- or herself. The strange thing was that when you looked more closely, the hand that was holding the left side of the paper was large and hairy, while the hand holding the right was tiny, hairless, and very pale. The newspaper was the Daily Observer of Times, the thickest, widest newspaper in the Western Hemisphere. And if we had had X-ray vision and could see through all the pages about British politicians who’d done something wrong, floral decorations in Harrogate, and the Rotten Ham team’s soccer coach, who was actually a krill fisherman who had never played soccer before, we would see that there weren’t just one or two, but four, people hidden behind the paper.

  They happened to be sitting in alphabetical order. Alfie, Betty, Charlie. And Maximus Rublov. Wait! Rublov was here? Well, at any rate, it was a tiny little guy who was the very spitting image of Rublov.

  “Is that them, Sherl?” Alfie whispered.

  No response.

  “Sherl!”

  “Oh, right, that’s me,” the tiny little guy said, adjusting his Rublov mask.

  “I asked if that odd woman over there with the baby carriage is her!” Alfie said.

  Rublov—who actually was Sherl (who actually was Nilly)—peeked out from behind the newspaper. “Yes, that’s them. Synchronize your watches!”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s . . . uh, good to have synchronized watches. . . .”

  “Get on with it, shrimp!” Alfie ordered.

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  Nilly let go of the paper, hopped down off the park bench, and ran toward the baby carriage, yelling so that everyone around them could hear his words loud and clear: “This is a masked robbery in broad daylight! Give me the baby carriage right now, or it doesn’t look good for you! Or your grandchild!”

  The odd woman adjusted her dress, bonnet, and swim goggles, and then called back just as loudly and clearly, “Terrible! Awful! Don’t shoot me with that . . . uh, pistol.” And then added in a much quieter voice, “Where is the pistol you were supposed to have?”

  “They didn’t have a gun I could borrow,” Nilly whispered back. “Just pretend to faint!”

  And with that the odd old woman collapsed in the grass, her skirt sliding up to reveal a pair of unusually thin and hairy legs.

  Nilly leaned over the baby carriage and looked down at Lisa’s face. She was wearing a baby bonnet and sucking on a big pink pacifier. She looked furious.

  “You call this the lead role?” she hissed.

  Nilly grabbed hold of her and tried to lift her out.

  “Put up a little resistance, would you!” he whispered.

  Lisa hit him on the head hard and started bawling.

  “Not that much resistance!” Nilly moaned. “And help me get you out of the carriage, you weigh half a ton!”

  With that they both tumbled over backward, and Lisa rolled away across the grass, screeching at the top of her lungs.

  “Hey there!” they heard a man’s voice call out. “What’s going on?”

  Nilly got up onto his feet, grabbed the baby carriage, and started walking.

  “Stop!”

  Nilly turned around. There was a man in a black uniform. At first Nilly thought he must be a knight who had misplaced his horse, since he had a black helmet on his head and a riding crop in his hand. But then he realized this was serious and started to run.

  “Stop in the name of the law!” the man yelled.

  It was a policeman!

  Nilly’s heart started beating just as fast as his short legs were drumming against the ground behind the baby carriage.

  “Coppers!” he hissed as he ran past the park bench. The Daily Observer of Times was flung up into the air, and three men in jeans and suspenders came running up alongside Nilly and the baby carriage.

  They heard a whistle blow behind them.

  “He’s got reinforcements,” Charlie panted.

  Nilly turned to look, and sure enough, now there were three policemen running behind them. And the police were gaining on them. And yet the Crunch Brothers started slowing down.

  “Faster!” Nilly said. “What are you guys doing?”

  “We’re bank robbers,” Charlie wheezed. “We’re out of shape.”

  They were approaching a downhill slope, and the policemen were only six or seven yards behind them.

  “Hop in!” Nilly said, jumping into the baby carriage.

  “Huh?” Charlie said.

  “Hop in, now!”

  And with that, the three brothers jumped into the baby carriage, and they started careening down the hill. Alfie and Betty were each clinging tightly to a side, while Charlie was sitting in the baby carriage with his legs dangling off the back. Nilly was sitting in front, trying to steer by leaning left or right. They were moving faster and faster, and the wobbly little baby carriage tipped ominously each time Nilly had to turn to keep them on the narrow asphalt path. Eventually the path widened a little, and Nilly looked back at the policemen, who were getting smaller and smaller, and finally gave up running.

  “Yippee!” Nilly cried, closing his eyes and enjoying the feel of the wind and the sun through the holes in his rubber mask.

  “Uh, Sherl . . . ,” Alfie said.

  Delightful wind, delightful speed, delightful freedom.

  “Sherl!” Alfie said with more urgency.

  “Oh, right, that’s me, isn’t it?” Nilly said, opening his eyes. The baby carriage had slowed. They were at the bottom of the hill, and there were five policemen blocking the path ahead of them with their arms crossed.

  “Hang on!” Nilly said, hopping over to the left side and up onto the top of Alfie’s bowler hat, jamming it down over Alfie’s eyes.

  “I can’t see!” Alfie wailed, flailing his arms as the baby carriage suddenly veered left. So suddenly that Nilly and the bowler hat were about to fly off, when Betty grabbed the lapel of Nilly’s tweed jacket at the very last instant and held on to him.

  They raced out of the park, onto a paved pedestrian square. The crowd leaped aside, and th
ey almost knocked down a man who was standing on top of a crate, screaming that the end of the world was coming. Nilly couldn’t have agreed more, because just then they rolled into a street, quite a busy street, with cars and buses speeding toward them, every last one of them on the wrong side of the road! This was England, after all.

  They were one second away from being mashed by an enormous white Rolls-Royce!

  Nilly took a deep breath and leaped over to Betty’s head, frantically clawing at his smooth, bald head, and just as he was losing his hold, he managed to grab Betty’s nostril with both hands. He heard the middle brother groan as the baby carriage turned to avoid the oncoming traffic at the very last moment, careening over to the opposite side of the street. Where they rolled right over to the back of a red double-decker bus and came to a stop with a gentle bump.

  “Phew!” said Nilly.

  “Phew!” said Betty.

  “Where are we? What’s happening?” Alfie cried, tugging at his bowler hat, trying to pull it back up so he could see.

  “We have to get out of here!” Charlie said.

  They turned around and saw the five policemen running across the street toward them. Three of them had lost their comical helmets, but none of them had lost their batons. They were blowing their whistles, their angry faces bright red, and they generally did not look anything like the policemen Nilly had seen in the London tourist brochures. There was exactly zero chance that he and the out-of-shape Crunch Brothers were going to get away.

  The bus started, and Nilly coughed from the exhaust. Then, to his surprise, he felt them starting to move again.

  He turned and saw Betty Crunch grinning at him. Betty had grabbed hold of the pole that served as a handrail by the back door of the bus, which had now suddenly become their tow truck.

  A voice came over the loudspeaker in the bus ceiling. “Welcome to this guided tour of London. If you’ll look to your right, you’ll see Speaker’s Corner and Hyde Park. We’ll be driving past Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, and . . .”

  The policemen behind them had stopped running and were standing, doubled over forward with their hands on their knees, huffing and puffing so their backs went up and down.

  “Yippee!” Nilly yelled for the second time that day, even though it only ten past nine in the morning.

  A face appeared over the roof of the bus. “Forget about Speaker’s Corner! Look who’s down there, everyone! It’s Maximus Rublov!”

  More faces appeared over the edge of the roof. Apparently there were seats on the roof deck up there.

  “Hi, Rublov!” another tourist called. “What’s the matter? Can’t you afford a bus ticket?”

  “Not if I’m going to buy Ibranaldovez!” Nilly yelled, standing up in the baby carriage and bowing gallantly.

  Nilly suddenly lost his balance as the baby carriage swung to the left and disconnected from the bus.

  Now Nilly and the Crunch Brothers were racing down a cobblestone alley that got narrower and narrower and darker and darker the farther down it they went. The cobblestones made Nilly’s teeth chatter in his mouth.

  “W-h-e-r-e a-r-e w-e?” he managed to say.

  Just then the baby carriage whipped to the right, right into the brick wall of a building, and just at the very instant Nilly was sure they would crash, a trapdoor opened and they rolled down a walkway, coming out on the floor of a cellar, bumping right into a big, black pile of coal.

  “We’re home!” Charlie announced.

  Nilly coughed, climbed out of the now overturned baby carriage, and rubbed the soot out of his eyes. And as he stood there rubbing, he noticed how quiet it had gotten. No one said a word. There must be something in the room that was keeping the otherwise very chatty brothers from . . .

  Nilly opened his eyes. He was looking right at a pair of legs that were at least as hairy as the ones he’d just seen in the park, but thick like tree trunks. Nilly slowly looked up, higher and higher, as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

  “Mama,” Charlie whispered.

  She whose name could only be whispered had some humongous arms on her, which were crossed over her humongous chest, and above that there was a woman’s head, which looked like it had come out of a waffle iron, because it was as wide as a snowplow and covered in layer upon layer of superfluous, wrinkled skin. And a pair of staring, glowing hunk-of-coal-like eyes in between the wrinkles.

  “Mama,” whispered Betty.

  There was a little pop sound as Alfie finally managed to pull the bowler hat back off his head and see again.

  “Mama,” he whispered.

  But the woman wasn’t paying any attention to them. Her eyes were focused on the little redhead.

  “So,” she said, her voice sounding like an average dragon with a slightly above average anger management problem and an ugly, advanced case of laryngitis. “What are you?” she croaked.

  “I’m—I’m—” Nilly began, his voice trembling, “I’m Nil—Sherl! I’m Sherl! And I’m a bandit. But not one of those trustworthy bandits. A regular bandit down to the core, actually.”

  “Good for you,” the woman said, leaning down toward Nilly. And what do you know if she didn’t have dragon breath, too. “Because I’m . . . ,” she began, and then lowered her voice to a crackling whisper right next to Nilly’s ear, “Mama Crunch.”

  “Gulp!” Nilly said, quite involuntarily.

  “And I hope you’re not a sissy, Mr. Sherl, because it’s time to eat now. Got it?”

  Sherl looked around at the other three, who looked really terrified.

  “Uh . . . I wonder what we’re going to be eating, Mrs. Crunch?” Nilly said.

  Mama Crunch straightened up and laughed a laugh that sounded like someone trying to start a car when it’s minus twenty degrees outside.

  “Yes, I bet you do.”

  The Truth About Monopolynesia

  NILLY AND THE Crunch Brothers were sitting around the dining table. It turned out the room had tilted a little to the northwest ever since a bomb had gone right through the roof during World War II. The bomb hadn’t exploded, but it crushed the coffee table and had broken both lenses of Grandpa Crunch’s eyeglasses and his almost-full whiskey glass. He’d nodded off on the sofa after a little afternoon looting. Not much had changed in the living room since then. Even the windows were still covered with the blackout curtains that had been hung up to keep German soldiers from spotting any lights from the buildings to help them aim. Now the blackout curtains were to keep anyone from Scotland Yard or anyone else from looking in and figuring out where the Crunch Brothers lived. The only light in the leaning living room came from the coal-burning stove.

  “Act like you like it,” Charlie whispered, stuffing a mouthful of food into his mouth and jabbing Nilly, who was sitting still, staring at the plate Mama Crunch had slapped down in front of him and told him was bottom fish and toenail chips.

  “Uh, what’s the sauce?” Nilly asked, poking his fork into something gray and slimy that was covering the fish.

  “That’s called Grandfather’s Cough,” Charlie said, and then made a face as he took a bite. “But I don’t think grandfather’s actual sputum tastes so—”

  “Shh!” Alfie said.

  They were listening to the sounds from the kitchen, where Mama Crunch was still boiling and sizzling away.

  “It was worse yesterday,” Charlie said. “We had hot dogs.”

  “Hot dogs?” Nilly asked. “Like in a bun?”

  “More like a heated-up bulldog with cauliflower and rickets. This tastes like—”

  They were interrupted by Betty leaning over and vomiting under the edge of the table.

  Alfie nodded toward Nilly’s plate. “There’s no way out, Sherl. It’s better for you to eat Grandfather’s Cough than to have to deal with”—he dropped his voice to a whisper—“Mama.” He raised his voice again. “Believe me.”

  “I see,” Nilly said, staring at his plate. “Well, then I guess I’d better get it over wit
h. . . .”

  “That’s it exactly,” Charlie said.

  “That’s what exactly?” Nilly asked.

  “Unfortunately, it’s not over with when we eat this up.”

  “It’s not? What happens after that?” Nilly asked.

  “The worst part,” Alfie said in a deep, funereal voice that made the water glasses rattle.

  “The Birmingham pudding,” the brothers all said in unison.

  “Shh,” Betty said. “She’s coming. . . .”

  The kitchen door opened, and Mama Crunch’s enormous body came in. She was marching straight toward Nilly.

  “What is this?” she wheezed, dragon stench pouring out of her enormous mouth.

  Nilly quickly stuffed his fork into his mouth.

  “I had to admire the way the food looked first, Mrs. Crunch,” Nilly said, chewing slowly. “Delightful bottom fish, Mrs. Crunch, melts on the tongue! And you simply must tell me how you got the toenail chips so crunchy and the Grandfather’s Cough so . . . uh, slimy.”

  “I mean, what is this?!” the woman whose name shall only be whispered screamed, slapping a wad of bills onto the table. “The baby carriage was full of Monopoly money!”

  All chewing and plate clinking suddenly stopped. And everyone stared at Nilly.

  “Monopoly money?” Alfie hissed, squeezing one eye shut and slowly licking the long, black-handled knife he was holding in his hand.

  “Ahem, yes, isn’t it great?” Nilly said, reveling in his packing brilliance. “Real Monopoly money.”

  “But that’s not worth anything!” Betty said.

  “It’s not?” Nilly said, looking at Betty in surprise. Then he lit up. “Oh, you’re thinking of the money they use in that game . . . what’s it called again?”

  He looked around but did not receive an answer, just threatening looks from dark-red faces all around.

  “Monopoly!” Nilly exclaimed. “Oh, but that’s fake Monopoly money. This is real Monopoly money.”

  “What’s the difference?” Charlie asked.

  “Well, obviously these authentic bills have watermarks in them,” Nilly said.