TEST DRAFT 3 With LLaregub footnotes The Boy Who Shot Flimzy Bubbletrumpett- macbook 2

Well, the old man continues, you all know I used to be a woodsman. Once a long, long time
ago, when I was much younger, I was sent with a team of timber fellers to cut down a
mulberry tree that was growing in somebody’s bedroom. When we came into the room we
found there was a boy of about your age asleep in his bed. But we cut the tree down anyway,
sawed it up into logs and carried it away. My job was to sweep up the sawdust and wood
shavings and leave the room as clean as it was when we arrived. And that’s what I did, and the
boy in his bed slept on right through it all.
That sounds like a dream, says the little girl.
I used to think so too, said the old man, but now that I am much older I’m not so sure. You
had better eat your pie before it gets cold.
And then old man turns his head, looks straight at you and winks.
Twenty years later, continued Mr Mangabey, you are at home watching television. There is
nothing much on and you are hopping between channels. You pause at a programme about
agriculture in Eastern Europe. A group of women in brightly coloured aprons and head
scarves are gathering mulberries. A young fair-haired woman looks straight at you from out of
the television and stretches out her arms to offer you a blue and white bowl full of wine red
mulberries. There is a fizzle and a pop and the screen goes blank.
Sixty years later. You are an old, white haired man now. You have been called Ewan so long
that you have forgotten that you have ever been called You. You have been living on your own
since your wife died, you have been ill and depressed. In an attempt to cheer you up your
daughter has taken you on holiday with her husband and two children, boy and girl, aged
about ten. They take you to the South of France, driving down from Calais. To, let’s say Arles
again, to a small family hotel in Arles. It has been a long and tiring day. You have been sitting
in the back of the car with the two children who have been in turns quarrelsome and cheerful,
cheerful and quarrelsome, quarrelsome and cheerful, cheerful and quarrelsome. In the end you
did not know which you preferred, cheerful was noisy and restless, quarrelsome was just
exasperating. You arrive at your hotel in the early evening and skip dinner to go straight up to
your room. You drag your aching body up the stairs; you are so tired you can barely crawl
into bed, and when you do you fall straight to sleep.
You are woken by sun streaming into your room from a clear blue Mediterranean sky. You
wake feeling confused, disorientated and aching with tiredness. The clock on the bedroom
wall says five minutes past midnight. You look at your watch and that too says five minutes
past midnight. Yet your room is flooded with morning light. Then you notice that there is a
blue and white bowl full of mulberries on the bedside table.
And that there is sawdust in your hair.
Mr Mangabey looked at me.
So now you understand?
No. I shook my head.
He sighed. Well, I’ll just have to put it like this. Things are a lot more complicated and
confused than we can ever imagine. Now let’s get on with finding your sister. Have you ever
wanted to be an assassin? No, that’s a pity, but never mind. I’m sure you will do your best.
Just think of it as being some kind of computer game. All you have to do is kill the Demon
Empress and everything will be as it should be. How can I kill a Demon Empress? Isn’t that
what you’re thinking.
Mr. Mangabey opened his bag and took out an old and rather rusty looking revolver.
I was horrified. I can’t kill anyone! I protested.
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