adventures

Bernice put a hand to her brow. She'd forgotten. If her theory was right, she was going to have
to fight a war against a massive, well-armed, highly advanced army with a force consisting of ten
soldiers in cardboard armour, an Arab boy with a flying carpet, a troupe of comedy outlaws, seven
dwarves and a pantomime horse. At least they weren't all speaking in rhyme at the moment. She
slapped her thigh, which always seemed to impress people, and forced a jaunty smile. 'Do not be
fooled by my simple garb, sire. I am your long-lost son, the Prince abandoned in the woods. I was
saved by a kindly woodcutter, a sweet old woman, a wolf, and –' Bernice tried to remember her
pantomimes '– a family of bears who fed me on porridge.'
'Son!' The King ran to Bernice and embraced her. 'You come to us at the most opportune time.
A great genie has come upon us.'
The dwarves all looked at Candy. 'You're making up your own jokes,' she muttered.
'Nobody else?' Bernice asked, surprised. 'It's just genie grief you're having at the moment?'
'Well, behind him there marches an army. But surely the genie is more important.'
'The genie is just a servant of the army.' Bernice glared sternly at the characters around her.
'And if we're going to win this battle, you're going to have to give up that habit of withholding vital
tactical information if it gets in the way of a bad joke.'
'I didn't even get to make the joke,' Candy sulked.
'Is this army really the Audience?' asked Wolsey.
'We think so.' King Rupert lifted up one of the maps and pointed to a dark line, the path of the
invading army. 'They come from the fabled land beyond the sky, where the big lights shine.'
'You know about the audience?' The world of pantomime continued to surprise Bernice.
'Oh yes.' The Vizier nodded. 'They loom large in our legends. They're the ones who – oh.' He
looked a little disappointed. ' 'Ere, they're not hissing me any more!'
'So that was where that sound was coming from.' Bernice resisted the temptation to slap her
thigh again. It was going to end up bruised at this rate.
'In our great myths,' the King continued, 'the Audience appear only infrequently. One or two of
them sometimes appear and help us to sing a song. We are told that, if they are angry, sweets
will appease them. When this threat to our land first became apparent, I ordered an aerial bombardment
of the enemy.'
Despite the grim nature of the threat facing them, the idea appalled Bernice. 'You dropped
bombs on them?'
'No.' The King frowned. 'Liquorice toffees. But if their aggression persists, I can see no option
but to deploy our most terrible weapon.'
A hush fell over the room. Bernice folded her arms and tapped her foot. It was finally Gushy
who realized that nobody else was going to say the cue line. 'You don't mean –?'
'Yes.' The King walked to an alcove where a large shape was covered with a black cloth. He
pulled the cloth away. Revealed was a shiny, black, egg-shaped object. There was a gasp from
everybody present except Bernice. The King nodded grimly. 'The A-bonbon. The most terrifying
sugared confectionery ever developed by mankind.'
Laddish raised his hand, looking like he was salivating over the prospect of the bomb's use.
'What does the A stand for?'
The King paused dramatically. 'Aniseed.'
Before everybody could make more horrified noises, Bernice grabbed the cloth from the King
and dropped it back over the big sweet. 'All right.' She started to tick off the possibilities on her
fingers. 'I don't want to hear about how the scientists developing the bomb caught aniseed poisoning.
I don't want to hear about the potential threat of an Aniseed Winter. I don't want to hear
speculation about what sort of goose could drop this thing, or whether or not the enemy have
developed a cruise gobstopper. There are to be no calculations of how much an ounce of aniseed
would cost in a "black sweetshop", and if I hear so much as a single mention of aniseed fallout, I
shall scream.'
The assembled inhabitants of pantoland looked at each other and said: 'awwwww . . .'
Bernice remained stern. 'In short –'
'Stop messin' about?' volunteered the Vizier.
'Exactly. Now let's get up on to the battlements and have a look at the enemy.'
***