George Adamson Lives with Apes

No Longer Behind

    No one spoke, a few minutes past. The children held their breath and then, just as the lure of strawberry jam butter and sugar began to tempt the glutton back to her sponge. The law of sneezes, which declares that they must come in at least two otherwise you will explode, made Mildred Potts sneeze again. Before anyone had time to even blink Miss Pratt had marched over to where the unfortunate girl was sat and had begun to crush her beneath the massive cheeks of her big fat bottom. As the poor girl wriggled fruitlessly Miss Pratt's huge appendage merely pressed her harder into the ground. Two minutes later the large round teacher finally got up. Mildred had been squashed as flat as a pancake.

    After home economics the children were sent for lunch. Ruby and George collected their boiled rice and odd watery stew eating quickly as they tried not to think about what kind of animal the sludgy grey meat in the meal belonged to.

    "What did you find out in the dungeon George?" Ruby asked, she had been bursting to find out the answer to her question from the moment George had walked into class.

    "Ah," Replied the smug boy. "so there are some questions you don't know the answer to!"

    "Don't you dare tease me Sparky." Ruby warned. Sparky was one of her nicknames for George because of his description of how his magic worked.

    The eleven year old boy laughed. "It feels nice to have the upper hand Ruby red," He teased her. "this almost never happens."

    "Incorrect you strange little boy," She countered. "it NEVER happens, enjoy it because it will never happen again. You can make note of it, once, the number of times you have had the upper hand since I've known you!"

    George shook his head, his megawatt grin fixed to his face. "All knowing all seeing Ruby the magnificent indulge me please on the one time I will ever have the upper hand. Tell me about the vision you had, the one which made you push me in front of Grimm."

    Ruby sighed then nodded. "Ok, seconds before I pushed you I got a vision of me pushing you in exactly the way that I did. Then I saw both of us, we were in the library. You said, 'this must be what the mad lord asked me to find while I was in the dungeons." Ruby shrugged. "I knew I had to let Miss Grimm find you so that you could get the information from the mad lord. I knew you'd be ok. I saw Sparky in the future and he was fine, NOW SPILL!"

    George grinned, he was really enjoying being the one with secret information.

    "Ok," The mega watt grin was backed up by his twinkling blue eyes. "get ready for a strange tale!"

    Five minutes later George had finished and Ruby was looking at him in awe. "I always knew it, we are way too different to be from this dump you and I. The magic realm! I wonder how we came to be here? And you with your funny ears! Of course you're an elf!"

    "Hey enough about the ears!" Said George rubbing the pointed tips with his thumb and forefinger.

    Ruby shrugged. "I've always loved your ears." She was staring at him again in that funny way she sometimes did. It made George feel really uncomfortable.

    "Right," He said when he could bear it no longer. "we need a plan to get to the library."

    George and Ruby's next lesson was history, it was taught by Mr Moss, another of the obnoxious adults of Slaven. It was going to be tricky but George thought he had an idea of how to get them out of lesson and into the library.

    "Mr Moss forgot to floss, he'll make you sick if you make him cross."

    Mr Moss had been an orphan at Slaven Castle, he had been taken in when Miss Grimm was a child of a similar age and her father had run the school. Mr Grimm, Miss Grimm's father, had been described as stern but fair. Although he had taken no nonsense from the orphans there were no stories of him ever punishing them as Miss Grimm did. No one knew Mr Moss' history or what had happened to him before his arrival at Slaven castle, the gangly teachers had never spoken of his life before he had arrived even to this day.  The young Miss Grimm had been as evil then as her older incarnation was today and Mr Moss it's said was strangely drawn to her. As cruel as she had been to him and the other children who'd lived here then he had always followed her around and took her nastiness without complaint. In the end he had become something of a favourite of hers and she had kept him around, even honouring him with the privilege of being one of her teachers.