WILLE

Wille is an eleven-year-old boy, almost 12. During a bank robbery, the monstrous Miss Halitosis melts his father, after which he ends up in a foster family. Three scumbags of foster brothers have no mercy and bully him until he breaks. Wille flees, desperate and with Miss Halitosis hot on his heels. At the height of his misery, he meets Imogen, a mysterious girl who drives around in a London double-decker bus full of books. She takes Wille under her wing and helps him to find his lion’s heart.

In this short extract Wille and Imogen have just met, but Wille soon notices that something very strange is going on with Imogen…

They have been on the road for a week or two when they stop along a dirt road, which winds its way up the side of a steep hill. Wille suspects it is a Sunday afternoon, but he can’t be sure. Imogen steers the bus on a narrow strip of grass next to a wide hairpin bend, where it can stand without tilting. The bus is only a few centimeters from the edge. A river meanders in the depths. Imogen pulls a lever in the side of the bus and a sun lounger pops out. She settles on it with a book.

“Maybe it’s time for an afternoon nap?” she says. ‘I’m going to do some studying, because I’ve got an interesting case under my wing and I certainly don’t want to make any mistakes.’

“An interesting case?”

‘Mmmm?’ says Imogen, already engrossed in her book.

“What are you studying?” insists Wille.

“You,” Imogen says absently. She turns the page.

Wille sighs. He can’t make head or tail of that girl. He gives up and looks for a spot in the grass that is suitable for a nap.

For a long time it is perfectly quiet. Wille is sprawled out. Between the blades of grass and dandelions, he sees Imogen, engrossed in her book. Then a metallic screech tears the silence apart. A man comes cycling down the dirt road in a cloud of dust and stones and needs to squeeze his brakes desperately to avoid flying out of the hairpin bend. Skidding and swerving, he comes to a stop just next to the bus. The man is wearing a black cycling suit with an ad for a pub on the back. In accordance with the absurd laws of cycling fashion, his shoes and gloves are bright blue on the left side and baby pink on the other. He takes his cycling glasses off his nose and puts them in the holes of his helmet. The glasses leave a white imprint on his dust-smeared face, featuring two beady black eyes. With his forearms leaning on his handlebars, the man looks at Imogen.

“Hey!” he shouts.

Imogen doesn’t react and turns a page.

“Hey!” he says again. “Who parks a bus in the middle of the bend? I almost crashed into your flank.”

Imogen doesn’t budge.

The man shuffles his bike forward until he can poke the front tire against Imogen’s lounger. The bed shakes and squeaks. The filthy tire leaves a perfect imprint on the blanket. Imogen sighs and throws an exasperated glance over the edge of her book.

‘It doesn’t say anywhere that I can’t be here, but we’ll be gone soon anyway. Sorry for the inconvenience,” she says. She lowers her eyes again, the conversation ended.

The man pokes the bed again with his front wheel, harder this time. Imogen shakes back and forth and grabs the edge to keep from falling out.

“Bloody hell!” she shouts. “What’s wrong with you?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me. But wouldn’t it be better to apply some sunscreen? Your skin has turned completely black already!’ The man laughs loudly.

Imogen rolls his eyes. “Witty,” she says. ‘I’ve never heard that one before. Listen, I told you we’ll be gone right away, so do me a favor and go fly a kite. Cheerio.’ She dives back into her book.

The man colors.

“If there’s anyone here who needs to get lost, it’s you. Your kind doesn’t belong here. And look at me when I’m talking to you!” he shouts. He snatches the book from Imogen’s hands and throws it into the dust. The pages come off and spread out in a large fan across the road, until the wind blows them into the verge.

“You… shouldn’t have done that,” she says softly.

“Or what?” the man replies scornfully.

“This,” says Imogen. “Get him, Murphy.”

The bright green ring in Imogen’s eyes becomes visibly wider and wider, until it has swallowed the entire iris, the pupil a tiny black dot in the middle. She looks the man straight in the eye.

The man’s swagger evaporates like snow in the sun. He backs up with his bike, turns it onto the dirt road and stands on the pedals. After only two revolutions, his chain snaps and his pedals snap off. With an audible thump, the man falls with his legs spread onto his frame, right at the angle between the crossbar and the handlebars, tilts over his front wheel and falls on his chin. Breathless with pain and with wide-open eyes, he clasps both hands between his legs. Like an accomplished breakdancer, his kicking feet describe a large circle in the sand, with his head at the center.

“Again,” Imogen whispers.

A heron sails down the hill in a long glide and aims a huge, white quack into the man’s eye with deadly precision. “It burns! It burns!” he screams, taking one hand from between his legs to press against his eye.

“Again,” Imogen whispers.

The man rolls his back over a pointed stone and reflexively throws his hips up. He falls to the side, over the edge of the steep hill. He tumbles through a long strip of thorn bushes, leaving patches of black fabric on the thorns, and then rolls with flapping arms and legs through a thick layer of nettles, which slows down his speed just enough to avoid disappearing into a ditch.

“Again,” Imogen whispers.

Balancing on the edge of the ditch, he is hit amidships by a rolling boulder that he had detached in his fall. With a soggy splash, he disappears into the water. Snorting and spitting, he resurfaces. He immediately tries to climb onto the bank.

“Again,” Imogen whispers.

A loud bang resounds, followed by a scream from the man that reverberates throughout the valley. He grabs onto the grass along the ditch and manages to pull himself onto the slippery side. Around his lower leg is a vicious-looking rat trap. “Help! Help me!” he shouts, trying to undo the clamp.

“And again,” Imogen whispers again, after which a snarling lion comes running along the sandy path, making its way through the thorn bushes and nettles and, after a mighty jump, falling into the ditch with the man. Wille can just make out a waving tail above the edge, but the splashing, the growling and the cries of horror tell him exactly what is going on in the ditch.

Imogen, who hasn’t moved in all this time, turns around and lets the lounger disappear back into the bus. She doesn’t seem surprised at all to find an angry lion so far from the savannah.

Just as Wille tries to draw Imogens attention, a panting and sweating woman appears in the hairpin bend. She wears a red uniform jacket with tight white pants, which she has tucked into leather boots. She wears her long black hair in a tight braid.

“Motoguzzi!” she shouts. “Motoguzzi!”

She catches sight of Wille and Imogen. “Have you seen a lion?” she asks. “He escaped from the circus in the valley.” The woman seems to be at her wit’s end. “A tree fell on his cage just now, and now he’s gone!”

Wille points to the fluffy tail in the depths. A long, drawn-out moan resounds from the ditch.

The lion tamer’s face brightens. “Motoguzzi! Finalmente! Come to Mama Francesca! Come!’

The lion jumps onto dry land and calmly walks up the mountain, meanwhile munching on a baby pink shoe. Over the edge of the ditch appears a trembling hand, shrouded in shreds of a bright blue glove. The hand claws in the mud and is joined by a bare foot trying to find a foothold on the bank.

Francesca grabs the lion firmly by the mane and leads him back down the mountain, cursing in fast Italian.

Imogen ignores Wille’s questioning look. She turns around so quickly that her braids are lashing Wille’s face. She immediately climbs into the driver’s seat and starts the engine. Wille is just able to jump on the bus before the swinging doors close.

“Wille,” Imogen says, as she slowly reverses. “Call an ambulance for the gentleman there, will you? Tell them he needs urgent help after a trailer with horse manure knocked him into a ditch.” She throws Wille a worn-out cell phone.

“What do you mean? There was no—” Wille begins. Then a trailer with ‘Riding school Jolly Jumper’ on the side thunders past the bus. It misses the bend in the road and crashes right in front of the cyclist, who had just hoisted himself back onto dry land. The contents splash in all directions. A wheelbarrow load hits the man full in the face, after which he splashes backwards into the ditch.

“How did you know?” asks Wille, dumbfounded.

“Not now Willie-boy, I’m too busy getting out of here. Or there will be trouble.’

Imogen guides the bus laboriously through the hairpin bends and pushes the pedal to the metal as they enter the main road below. The dead straight asphalt road cuts through a dense forest.

“Shitshit!” shouts Imogen suddenly. She hits the steering wheel. ‘Moenen! We’ve forgotten about Moenen!’

Imogen makes an emergency stop and is already halfway up the spiral staircase before the engine has completely stalled. Wille hears her stumbling on the roof of the bus, after which she descends the stairs again, with Moenen in her arms. The tomcat looks like it was sucked up by a tornado. Not a hair in his fur that doesn’t stand on end. Deep in the fluffy ball, two yellow, particularly indignant eyes gleam.

‘Here you go,’ says Imogen, and she hands Wille the cat and a fine pink comb. “He was on the roof the whole time. His hair will lie down on its own, but comb out the dead flies first.’

Imogen gets back behind the wheel. Wille makes a half-hearted attempt to pull the comb through Moenen’s exploded fur, but when the thing gets stuck behind the remains of a bumblebee, he gives up. Moenen stretches and jumps off Wille’s lap, to go and sit in the back of the bus and do nothing at all.

Wille can no longer contain his curiosity.

“How could you know that the manure cart was coming? Just when that scumbag slithers out of the ditch? You can’t explain that, can you?’

Imogen looks at him out of the corner of her eye, smiling.

“I am part of a family of witches, remember?”

“Come on Imogen, seriously now. Please.’

“Am I ever not serious, then?”

Wille hides his face in his hands and moans.

“I’m just teasing you, Willie-boy. We’ll stop for the night and then I’ll tell you one thing and another. Pinky promise?’

She wiggles her little finger in front of him. On her nail, she has drawn a smiling face, with cross-eyed eyes and rabbit teeth. Wille chuckles and hooks his little finger through hers.

‘Pinky promise’, he says. ‘But you’re combing Moenen.’