Eating Things on Sticks Read Online Free Page A

LOOK FOR ANGELS
    Next morning for breakfast Uncle Tristram and I had more pork pies. Morning Glory had barley and mushrooms.
    â€˜Let’s go and look for angels,’ she suggested.
    I gave Uncle Tristram a glance that said: ‘She is completely insane . You got us into this. You get us out of it.’
    He totally ignored it. ‘Yes,’ he said weakly to Morning Glory. ‘Let’s go and look for angels.’
    I glowered at him. I knew that he was only saying it to try to wheedle his way into her good books. ‘Are you quite mad?’ I hissed. ‘You know as well as I do that there are no such things as angels. And even if there were, you would not find them just because you go to look for them. Even the people who believe in them know they live in a different—’
    I couldn’t think of the word.
    â€˜Universe?’ Uncle Tristram suggested.
    â€˜ Realm ,’ Morning Glory said. But I could tell that she had overheard and I had hurt her feelings. She went all quiet and started gathering up the pork pie wrappers and her bowl.
    I tried to repair the damage. ‘Well, I suppose there’s no harm in just going to look . . .’
    Her eyes went bright again. ‘So you will come?’
    â€˜Not half!’ I said enthusiastically. ‘All my life I’ve longed to see an angel.’
    â€˜I have my own,’ she told us.
    Even Uncle Tristram looked startled at this claim. ‘Really? Your very own angel?’
    â€˜Yes. She’s called Dido and she hangs about at the top of the hill behind this house.’
    â€˜Hangs about?’
    â€˜In the air,’ explained Morning Glory.
    â€˜Can anyone else see Dido?’ Uncle Tristram asked cunningly.
    â€˜Only real true believers,’ Morning Glory admitted.
    â€˜Oh, well,’ said Uncle Tristram. ‘Still worth the trip, I expect. Though it’s a very steep hill.’
    â€˜Very,’ I echoed.
    It was, too. It took at least an hour to reach the top. Uncle Tristram and Morning Glory spent a lot of the time kissing and giggling on the narrow path. She’d come out wearing some sort of leopardskin tablecloth that trailed on the ground, but he had sent her back to change into the silver tube that barely covered her bottom. (‘It’ll get tangled in the undergrowth a whole lot less.’) He made me walk in front, so I climbed very fast to spite them both.

    I reached the peak. Only a little way down on the other side, water was bubbling out between stones. I reckoned it was far too high up the hill for any sheep to have got near enough to poo in it, so I knelt down to cup my hands and drink.
    Finally, those two staggered up behind me.
    â€˜That is The Source,’ said Morning Glory, pointing to where I was kneeling at the very start of the stream. We had studied rivers in school, so I looked down to see how it widened and deepened, and how one or two other streams joined it. Then I looked around for angels.
    â€˜Is Dido here yet?’
    â€˜Not yet,’ said Morning Glory. ‘Not till we call.’
    She sat cross-legged and sang her Calling Angels Song. It went on quite a long time, so I wandered back to The Source and pushed stones around with my feet. When I came back up, Morning Glory had risen to her feet to start her Calling Angels Chant. That went on a bit as

    well, so I drifted back to The Source and packed some mud around my new arrangement of stones. (If I was four , you would have called it spending my time building a dam in the stream. But I am well past four.) When I got bored with that, and came back up to the top for the third time, Morning Glory had stretched out her hands and embarked on her Calling Angels Entreaty. I can’t remember much about the song, the chant or the entreaty, except that there was quite a bit about ‘beloved feathered ones’ and ‘winged treasures of the world’ and such stuff.
    In the end, it was Uncle