One
of the bigger, more aggressive boys steps forward. “You tell him, Harald!” they all shout. “Harald Ruffsnape’ll sort you out.” I have this in-built bully-detector – I don’t
like them – and it goes off as soon as they move or open their mouth. They bring out the worst in me.
“I
know how we can tell,” says Harald. “The
red lock. He ain’t got it and that’ll
prove he ain’t a Baalfire.” With the
crowd baying their agreement, he goes to yank at my hood. I push his hand away.
“Whoa!”
I say, holding my nose. “Body odour! Ever thought of washing?” I can see the wheels in Harald’s head
whirring around.
“Washing? That’s what rain’s for.”
I
wave my hand in front of my face. It’s
the smell of the pig fat in Harald’s straw-colored hair that is so
overpowering. “You may be a belligerent
moron,” I tell him, “and you could do with borrowing a bottle of deodorant, but
I like your hair. You must rub pig fat
into your hair every morning, snatch chubby handfuls of it and pull it up into
spikes.” I nod slowly. ‘Yeh.
Cool.”
While
the belligerent moron is working out belligerent
moron, deodorant, yeh and cool, I reach over. “Excuse me, Harald,” I say and remove the
hand clutching Astryd. The old man can’t
believe he has just been touched by a cursed demon and he stares at his skin
expecting it to start rotting any minute.
“I’d
put something on that,” I growl at him, “before it melts.” I figure this is the moment to pull back my
hood to reveal the red streak in the thick of my black hair. “Vincent of Baalfire.” The petrified man shakes uncontrollably, but
can’t find his voice. No one else
speaks. They all lose control of their
mouths. For there it is, of course: the
unmistakable sign of the Balfour family and, it seems, the Baalfire
family. The red lock of hair. The boy
who was lost, the boy who some said was dead, has come back. Or so they believe. “Say it!
Repeat after me: Vincent of Baalfire!”
One or two find their voices and mutter the words.
Harald
is no longer trying to figure out what I’ve just said to him and whether a belligerent moron is a good thing to be
or not. So he settles for gloating.
“Well,
well, miracle boy. So you got lost and
you got found again. Don’t know where
you been for near ‘nough a whole year.
Maybe them wolves ate you up.
Then I reckon they spat you out again ‘cos you tastes like foul, nasty,
foul stuff. And then them twitchy little
fairy elves got hold of you and dressed you up like a proper bluebell with
twinkletoe shoes, you numkin’.” Other
boys, part of Harald’s gang I suspect, mingling in the crowd, hoot with
laughter and point. But the fun and the
fear is fading. One by one, they
disperse, but not before Harald walks straight up to me again. He looks me straight in the eye. A challenge.
A provocation. And thinking this
is not the moment to flinch, I stare straight back. “Huh,” sneers Harald eventually, and he prods
me in the chest before he walks away chuckling to himself, “Twinkletoed
bluebell. Hah!”
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JPL5SKM
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00JPL5SKM?*Version*=1&*entries*=0
The backstory, explaining how Harald came to be the way he is can be found here:
http://www.amazon.com/Bullying-Harald-Ruffsnape-Reptile-Wars-ebook/dp/B008H4WUV8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402242802&sr=8-1&keywords=the+bullying+of+harald+ruffsnape
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bullying-Harald-Ruffsnape-Reptile-Wars-ebook/dp/B008H4WUV8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402242802&sr=8-1&keywords=the+bullying+of+harald+ruffsnape
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