The Ickabog(62)

Seeing that Bert was alive, Daisy now buried her hands in the hair on either side of the Ickabog’s face again.

“I didn’t see my Ickaboggle,” whispered the dying Ickabog, in whose eyes there were again tears like glass apples.

“It’s beautiful,” said Daisy, who was also starting to cry. “Look … here …”

A second Ickaboggle was wriggling out of the Ickabog’s tummy. This one had a friendly face and wore a timid smile, because its Bornding had happened as its parent was looking into Daisy’s face, and had seen her tears, and understood that a human could love an Ickabog as though it was one of their own family. Ignoring the noise and clamor all around it, the second Ickaboggle knelt beside Daisy in the road and stroked the big Ickabog’s face. Icker and Ickaboggle looked at each other and smiled, and then the big Ickabog’s eyes gently closed, and Daisy knew that it was dead. She buried her face in its shaggy hair and sobbed.

“You mustn’t be sad,” said a familiar booming voice, as something stroked her hair. “Don’t cry, Daisy. This is the Bornding. It is a glorious thing.”

Blinking, Daisy looked up at the baby, which was speaking with exactly the voice of its Icker.

“You know my name,” she said.

“Well, of course I do,” said the Ickaboggle kindly. “I was Bornded knowing all about you. And now we must find my Ickabob,” which, Daisy understood, was what Ickabogs called their siblings.

Daisy stood up and saw Flapoon lying dead in the road, and the firstborn Ickaboggle surrounded by people holding pitchforks and guns.

“Climb up here with me,” said Daisy urgently to the second baby, and hand in hand the two of them mounted the wagon. Daisy shouted at the crowd to listen. As she was the girl who’d ridden through the country on the shoulder of the Ickabog, the nearest people guessed that she might know things worth hearing, so they shushed everyone else, and at last Daisy was able to speak.

“You mustn’t hurt the Ickabogs!” were the first words out of her mouth, when at last the crowd was silent. “If you’re cruel to them, they’ll have babies who are born even crueller!”

“Bornded cruel,” corrected the Ickaboggle beside her.

“Bornded cruel, yes,” said Daisy. “But if they’re Bornded in kindness, they will be kind! They eat only mushrooms and they want to be our friends!”

The crowd muttered, uncertain, until Daisy explained about Major Beamish’s death on the marsh, how he’d been shot by Lord Flapoon, not killed by an Ickabog, and that Spittleworth had used the death to invent a story of a murderous monster on the marsh.

Then the crowd decided that they wanted to go and talk to King Fred, so the bodies of the dead Ickabog and Lord Flapoon were loaded onto the wagon, and twenty strong men pulled it along. Then the whole procession set off for the palace, with Daisy, Martha, and the kind Ickaboggle arm in arm at the front, and thirty citizens with guns surrounding the fierce, firstborn Ickaboggle, which otherwise would have killed more humans, because it had been Bornded fearing and hating them.

But after a quick discussion, Bert and Roderick vanished, and where they went, you’ll find out soon.





This one had a friendly face.

By Violet, Age 9





When Daisy entered the palace courtyard, at the head of the people’s procession, she was amazed to see how little it had altered. Fountains still played and peacocks still strutted, and the only change to the front of the palace was a single broken window, up on the second floor.

Then the great golden doors were flung open, and the crowd saw two ragged people walking out to meet them: a white-haired man holding an axe and a woman clutching an enormous saucepan.

And Daisy, staring at the white-haired man, felt her knees buckle, and the kind Ickaboggle caught her and held her up. Mr. Dovetail tottered forward, and I don’t think he even noticed that an actual live Ickabog was standing beside his long-lost daughter. As the two of them hugged and sobbed, Daisy spotted Mrs. Beamish over her father’s shoulder.

“Bert’s alive!” she called to the pastry chef, who was looking frantically for her son, “but he had something to do … he’ll be back soon!”

More prisoners now came hurrying out of the palace, and there were screams of joy as loved ones found loved ones, and many of the orphanage children found the parents they’d thought were dead.

Then a lot of other things happened, like the thirty strong men who surrounded the fierce Ickaboggle, dragging it away before it could kill anyone else, and Daisy asking Mr. Dovetail if Martha could come and live with them, and Captain Goodfellow appearing on a balcony with a weeping King Fred, who was still wearing his pajamas, and the crowd cheering when Captain Goodfellow said he thought it was time to try life without a king.

However, we must now leave this happy scene, and track down the man who was most to blame for the terrible things that had happened to Cornucopia.

Lord Spittleworth was miles away, galloping down a deserted country road, when his horse suddenly went lame. When Spittleworth tried to force it onward, the poor horse, which had had quite enough of being mistreated, reared and deposited Spittleworth onto the ground. When Spittleworth tried to whip it, the horse kicked him, then trotted away into a forest where I am pleased to tell you, it was later found by a kind farmer, who nursed it back to health.