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  ‘Exactly,’ Dad said.

  The pepper orchard had stopped moving. Suddenly, the hill was full of rabbits, all wearing tabards and carrying trumpets with banners decorated with the Duchess’s emblem, a big red nose.

  ‘Order!’

  The rabbits arranged themselves into two rows, trumpets hanging by their sides. A tall black rabbit stepped forward.

  ‘My name is Steve,’ he said. ‘I am the Duchess’s Chief Trumpeter and Best Messenger.’ He took a scroll from an inside pocket of his tabard. ‘I come with an important message from the Duchess.’

  He held the scroll so close to his face, his whiskers made the parchment twitch. We all waited and tried to hold back our sneezes. Steve cleared his throat.

  ‘Her Right Honourable Lady Duchess of Sternutation does hereby lay claim to the allegiance of the curious creatures of High Hedge. It has come to the Right Honourable Lady Duchess’s attention that the Queen of Hearts is a big scaredy-cat cheat who is afraid of losing. This year, the Duchess will win and calls upon every hedgehog in High Hedges to roll for her.’

  He replaced the scroll in his secret pocket.

  Mr Simeon scratched his head. ‘You want us to help the Duchess stop the Queen winning?’

  Steve nodded.

  Mum shook her head. ‘Well, Steve. Please tell the Duchess that we’d love to help, but we can’t. The Queen has too much of a temper. We can’t risk –’ she looked to see if Tuckan and Rockan could hear – ‘our necks.’

  There was a murmur of sneezy agreement. Steve turned to face the rabbits behind him. He waved his paw, and they raced around to the back of the orchard. Steve blasted a note on his trumpet, and the rabbits started playing their instruments.

  The pepper trees shivered again and ambled towards us. A big sneeze started at the back of my nose and burst out. It wasn’t just me. Mr Simeon sneezed so hard I thought his eyes really were going to pop right out. Dad ushered the twins back into the nest.

  Steve lifted his arms, and the trumpeters stopped. So did the pepper trees.

  ‘We have been instructed to keep the pepper trees here,’ Steve said. ‘Until we have word from the Duchess that they can return.’

  The sneezing was getting so bad that none of us could stay out any more. Spring and I looked out of our bedroom window at the dark shape of the trees.

  ‘Don’t worry about the Duchess,’ Spring said. ‘The Queen always gets her way. Just do what our family has always done. Roll for Queen and country. The Queen will make sure we’re all right.’

  Dear Diary,

  I didn’t know that diaries could sneeze too. The pages are a bit damp now, which is making my writing smudgy, but I’ll carry on.

  Today’s the day of the croquet game. I wish it wasn’t. Mum’s made breakfast. It’s snail porridge, my favourite, but I’m not hungry. I poked my nose outside the door earlier, but had to bring it inside again because of the pepper. Mr Simeon was already up with his tapeworm measure, trying to work out if the trees had moved any closer overnight. The tapeworm kept sneezing and making Mr Simeon even crosser.

  OK. It’s time to go. Wish me luck, Diary!

  LATER

  Even as I’m writing this all down, it feels like a dream. But I was there, and it really happened.

  As we were heading to the Queen’s palace, I still had no idea what I was going to do. Should I roll for the Duchess or for the Queen? The hedgehogs from the tulgey wood were wearing caps covered in hearts. So were the hedgehogs from the royal forest, of course. The Queen was going to win no matter what I did. I would do what the Rolls have always done. I’d make sure the Queen would win.

  I hadn’t been to the Queen’s gardens before. Spring did warn me that it was a bit strange. There were fish in wigs and tailcoats and, even weirder, the Queen’s roses leaked. I saw it with my own eyes: little puddles of red around the bottom of the trees. I arrived just as the Royal Family’s procession was marching through the main entrance. I was keeping an eye out for Inigo, but the game stewards, all club cards, sent the flamingos to one end of the field and us hedgehogs to the other.

  ‘Honour!’ It was two voices, Duo and Dua.

  ‘Guess what?’ Duo said. ‘The Queen’s locked the Duchess in her pepper cellar! You know what that means, don’t you?’

  ‘The game’s off?’

  ‘No,’ Dua said. ‘The Queen’s going to play against herself!’

  ‘And the Duchess is more frumious than a bandersnatch with toothache,’ Duo added.

  ‘We’ve still got the pepper orchard on our doorstep,’ I said. ‘And it’s going to be there forever unless the Duchess orders it to go.’

  We couldn’t stay in High Hedges. We’d have to move away from our cosy nest and all my friends. But what could I do?

  The game began. The club steward sent me to a hedge on the far side of the garden. I crouched down next to an abandoned spade sticking out of a hole. All the action was at the other end of the pitch, where the Queen had a crowd around her cheering her every move. It was a lot of cheering because she was doing all the moves.

  ‘So! You think you can hide, do you?’

  A long shadow fell over me. I looked up. Inigo was perched on the spade.

  ‘I’m not hiding,’ I said. ‘I’m waiting to be played.’

  ‘Well, I’m ready to play.’

  Inigo swished her head. Her pink helmet shone. Suddenly, she swung at me. I managed to swerve to my right and her beak plunged into the grass. She freed herself quickly.

  ‘My name is Inigo Flamingo. Your dad quilled my grandfather. Prepare to fly.’

  Inigo came at me again. I tucked and spun forward, landing just by her chest. She looped her neck round between her spindly legs. Her upside-down face grinned at me. She straightened up and flew off the handle, diving towards me. I moved quickly, but the wrong way. I plopped down into the hole. I was stuck – I mean really stuck. My prickles were wedged in the mud, just like Dad’s. I couldn’t move.

  Inigo drew herself up to her full height and tipped back her head. Her grin was so wide, it made her beak look like it had been turned sideways.

  I closed my eyes.

  ‘My name is Inigo Flamingo. Your dad quilled my grandfather. Prepare to – honk!’

  ‘Got you!’

  That wasn’t Inigo’s voice. I opened my eyes again. Inigo wasn’t standing there any more. She was under the arm of – well – I don’t know whose arm it was. It belonged to a girl in a blue dress and a white apron. Inigo’s beak fell open in surprise.

  The girl raised Inigo into the air. ‘You’re a very curious mallet,’ she said. ‘And that’s a very curious ball, but everything is so different here.’

  Inigo started wriggling, but it was too late. The girl lifted Inigo high, and I just had time to curl into the tightest ball before Inigo swung towards me. Then, thwack! I really was flying!

  This is what I saw as I went spinning over the pitch.

  The girl in the blue dress, eyes wide, as I spun away.

  Two club stewards shuffling towards Inigo with a stretcher.

  A giant grinning cat’s head hovering in the middle of the field.

  The King of Hearts nudging the Queen and pointing at me.

  The Queen’s back as she bent over to take a shot.

  The Queen’s back getting closer and closer and closer – until . . .

  I hit her.

  The Queen screamed, and suddenly we were flying together, my prickles stuck into the back of her dress. Her nose skimmed just above the ground as everyone on the pitch made way for us. Everyone, that is, apart from the Duchess, who was rushing up the hill towards us with the executioner by her side. (I later learned that she’d been freed to answer questions about the grinning cat’s head.) But that didn’t matter now. What mattered was that she didn’t get out of our way.

  The Duchess’s mouth dropped open in shock. For a second, I thought she was going to swallow me whole, but with a loud ‘Ooof!’ the Queen thumped into her. Then the thre
e of us were flying together, the Duchess whooshing backwards down the hill.

  I heard a shrill toot on a trumpet and then a clattering and shouting. Steve, the messenger rabbit, was waving his arms at us. When he saw we weren’t stopping, he turned round and raced back to the Duchess’s gardens followed by his musicians.

  And the pepper trees were following, skidding back towards their home. My eyes, my nose and even my ears were stinging with pepper as we flew down the hill after them. We were flying lower and lower until we finally landed, sliding down the grass. Well, not we. The Duchess was sliding backwards on her bottom, and the Queen was sliding on her stomach. I was still stuck to the Queen’s back.

  We landed in a tangled heap against the orchard fence. The Queen gave an enormous sneeze, and I shot into the air and bounced along the grass and carried on rolling until, with a little plop, I dropped into the hollow by a bandersnatch burrow.

  ‘Who did this to me?’ the Queen shrieked. ‘How dare they interrupt my game! Off with their head!’

  I decided that my head and I would stay where they were for a while.

  ‘If your game isn’t finished,’ the Duchess said, ‘that means no one’s won.’

  There was silence. I risked peeking over the top of the burrow. The Queen was frowning.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ she said grumpily. ‘But, next year, beware. I will win!’

  She shook a mist of pepper out of her skirts and stomped sneezily back up the hill.

  ‘I think it’s time to go home,’ said a soft meowy voice.

  The cat’s head was hovering by the side of the Duchess. Slowly, more of its body appeared. Its paw patted the Duchess’s back, and together they went through the gate to the orchard and closed it behind them.

  It may be my imagination, but I’m sure the cat’s head turned towards me and winked.

  Dear Diary,

  I was exhausted after yesterday, and I fell asleep with my quill in my paw. Thank you for staying open on the write page.

  I’m going to put you back in the drawer for a little bit, as all the curious animals in High Hedges are throwing a tea party for me, and that’s definitely not to be sneezed at.

  The Tweedle Twins and the Case of the Colossal Crow

  by Chris Smith

  The Tweedles have been among us a rather long time – in fact, they were already over one hundred years old before Lewis Carroll corralled them into Wonderland.

  They first appeared sometime in the 1700s (and I often feel the same myself on a Tuesday morning). Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee – back then – represented the bickering supporters of two rival musicians. Eighteenth-century fandoms, if you like. Fighting each other not with social media but with kitchen utensils, which strikes me as a good deal more civilized.

  Alice seemed to warm to these two hotheads immediately, and so did I. Because – let’s face it – there is a pair of Tweedles living inside each and every one of us. And dashed uncomfortable that can be too. I hope you enjoy their adventure as you go in search of your own personal crows and ride them unswervingly into the Pool of Ensmallment.

  Chris Smith

  In the middle of a field, in the rain, underneath two hats and a large black umbrella, and inside two shirts and two pairs of trousers (four trousers in total) stood two little men. They were as cold and soggy as a pair of abandoned trifles.

  ‘I thought you said we would have an outstanding day today,’ complained Tweedledee, shaking his right boot, which had filled with water.

  ‘And so we are,’ countered Tweedledum. ‘We are out, standing in this field. And we are outstanding at it.’

  ‘Contrariwise, we are terrible at it.’ Tweedledee sneezed with a sound like wet cabbages being vigorously shaken.

  ‘We must stand in the middle of the field,’ his twin explained patiently, ‘because it is our job. You told me yourself only this morning. We are scarecrows.’

  Tweedledee sighed like an angry steam engine, rolling his eyes together. ‘Scared of crows!’ he retorted, his voice going up a full two octaves and scaring a robin that had been hanging around nearby. ‘We are scared . . . of crows. Not scarecrows. Is that why we’ve spent the last four hours out here in the rain?’

  Tweedledum looked slightly embarrassed, fiddling with his collar, upon which the word ‘Dum’ was embroidered in red thread. He coughed in the way that means, ‘Errrrm . . . yes,’ but is slightly less awkward to say.

  ‘I don’t want to!’ screeched Tweedledee abruptly and at an even higher pitch, snatching the umbrella and squelching away through the mud. ‘I don’t want to be out standing in this field any more! I don’t want to be a scarecrow!’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to be scared of crows,’ said Tweedledum, hurrying after him. ‘Nohow.’

  ‘I demand a battle!’

  ‘I’m too wet to battle!’

  ‘I demand satisfaction!’ Tweedledee’s voice was now so-high pitched that it sounded like a kettle coming to the boil. His face was red and shining with fury – he looked like the angriest, ripest, most smartly dressed tomato you ever saw.

  ‘We could battle the crow,’ Tweedledum suggested suddenly.

  By now, they had reached the fringes of the wood at the edge of the field, and they both stopped to shelter under the overhanging branches.

  ‘Battle . . . the cr—argh?’ his brother asked, so terrified to even utter the word out loud that he choked on the last syllable as if a small duck of fear had flown into his mouth.

  The pair were terrorized on an almost-daily basis by a huge black crow, which came flapping and squawking at them like a bad memory – only one with wings and claws. Involuntarily they both looked fearfully at the sky, then Tweedledum steeled himself.

  ‘Yes, battle the crow,’ he said decisively. ‘For too long, we have been afraid of it. I say, let’s go and find its nest and give it a good old scare. It’s just a bully. And you know what they say about bullies?’

  ‘You should run in zigzags to escape them because they can’t turn corners very well?’

  ‘No – that’s crocodiles.’

  ‘You should punch them in their sensitive noses?

  ‘Mmm, you’re thinking of sharks there.’

  ‘You should wait until they’re a nice yellow colour, then peel and eat them?’

  ‘Bananas.’

  ‘Ah. Well, in that case, no, I don’t know what they say about bullies.’

  ‘You should stand up to them!’ declared Tweedledum, striking a dramatic pose, which made rainwater run off his cap and down the back of his neck. ‘Let us gird up our loins, and all the other bits of us as well, and prepare for the Battle with the Colossal Crow!’

  ‘Let us arm ourselves!’ agreed Tweedledee, thinking that, if nothing else, it would warm him up a bit. ‘Bolsters! String! Tanks!’

  ‘We don’t have tanks,’ his brother told him sadly. ‘But the rest we can do! To arms!’

  ‘And legs!’

  It took the Tweedle Twins some considerable time to prepare themselves for their dangerous quest. But eventually they were ready – both with thick blankets tied round their middles with string, and saucepans set firmly atop their heads.

  ‘Onward,’ ordered Tweedledum, ‘and upward.’

  ‘How do we know the crow is up there?’ asked Tweedledee, peering through the tree trunks that marched away up the hill like thin green-haired soldiers with squirrels on.

  ‘Anything worth questing for is always uphill,’ explained the other. ‘Nobody ever won a famous victory going downhill.’

  ‘It feels like cheating, somehow,’ agreed Tweedledee, and they started up the slope together, each jostling for second place in case the crow should suddenly appear.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ urged Tweedledum, pushing his twin in front of him. ‘You know what they say – a faint heart butters no parsnips. He who dares . . . is worth two in the bush.’

  ‘I would like to be worth two in the bush,’ said Tweedledee uncertainly. ‘And butter the parsnips
too. But it’s not easy being brave. Not when the crow is so very, very big. And I heard that many strange animals live in these woods.’

  There was a sudden clap of thunder. Somewhere a cow barked. He was right about the strange animals.

  ‘The woods are full of enemies, but never fear – I shall recite a poem to lift your spirits,’ his brother reassured him. And, clasping his hands behind his back, he began:

  Elephant, Elephant,

  Wilt thou be mine?

  Thou shalt not fling fishes,

  Nor yet count the kine.

  But sit in a bathtub,

  With bells in your hair,

  And feast upon clams,

  Like a millionaire.

  ‘That is not how the poem goes,’ complained Tweedledee.

  ‘Possibly not, but it is how it comes. To me at least,’ explained Tweedledum.

  By now, they were nearing the top of the hill, and the trees had begun to thin out as they approached a large clearing. The silvery glisten of water was visible through the undergrowth. Without warning, there was an apocalyptically loud ‘KARK! ’ from somewhere ahead.

  (If you think about it, it’s not that surprising that it was without warning. Crows don’t gently clear their throats before they kark – not even giant ones. Or politely say in a soft voice, ‘I’m about to utter an apocalyptically loud kark. I’m just letting you know in case anyone might be startled.’)

  The ‘KARK ’ was indeed without warning, and it operated on the Tweedles like an electric shock. They both leaped into the air with their hair standing on end. It was lucky that they were both wearing saucepans on their heads because they were standing underneath a low-hanging branch at the time.

  Clang! went the saucepans as they hit the branch.

  ‘KARK!’ went the distant crow once again.

  Clang! went the saucepans a second time.

  This process was repeated for several minutes.

  ‘How long are you going to be jumping into the air and hitting your heads on that branch?’ asked a voice eventually from behind the Tweedles.

  They both spun round and jumped again in surprise.