Believing Is Seeing

ENNA HITTIMS

Anne Smith hated having mumps. She had to miss two school outings. Her face came up so long and purple that both her parents laughed at her when they were at home. And she was left alone rather a lot, because her parents could not afford to leave their jobs.

The first day was terrible. Anne’s temperature went up and up, and the higher it got, the more hungry she became. By the time her father got off work early and came home, she was starving.

“But people aren’t supposed to get hungry with a temperature!” Mr. Smith said, grinning at the sight of Anne’s great purple face.

“I don’t care. I want five sausages and two helpings of chips and lots of ketchup,” said Anne. “Quickly, or I’ll die!”

So Mr. Smith raced out to the chip shop. But when he came back, Anne could not open her mouth far enough to get a bite of sausage. She could not chew the chips. And the ketchup stung the inside of her face like nettles.

“I told you so,” said Mr. Smith.

Anne, who was usually a most reasonable person, burst into tears and threw all the food on the floor. “I’m so hungry!” she yelled. “It’s torture!” Of course it hurt to shout, too.

Mr. Smith was reasonable, too, except when he had to clean ketchup off the carpet. He lost his temper and shouted, “Do that again, and I’ll spank you, mumps or not!”

“I hate you,” said Anne. “I hate everything.” And she sat and glowered, which is the only way to be angry with mumps.

“I think she’s got grumps as well as mumps,” Mrs. Smith said when she got in from work.

It did seem to be so. For the next few days, nothing pleased Anne. She tried wandering about the house—very slowly, because moving jiggled her great mauve face—looking for things to do. Nothing seemed interesting. She tried playing with Tibby, the cat, but Tibby was boring. She tried watching videos, but they were either boring or they made her laugh, and laughing hurt. She tried reading, but that was the same, and her fat, swollen chin kept getting in the way. Everything was boring. Mrs. Harvey next door had kindly agreed to come in and give Anne lunch. But it did not seem to occur to Mrs. Harvey that things like crusty pizza and stewed rhubarb are the last things you want to eat with mumps.

Anne told her parents all this when they got home. The result was that her parents stopped saying, “It’s the way you feel with mumps.” Instead, they said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Anne, do stop grumbling!” every time Anne opened her mouth.

Anne took herself and her great purple face back to bed, where she lay staring at the shape of her legs under the bedclothes and hating her parents. I’m seriously ill, she thought, and nobody cares!

The next minute she had invented Enna Hittims.

It all happened in a flash, but when she thought about it later, Anne supposed it was because the shape of her legs under the bedspread looked like a landscape with two long hills in it and a green jungly valley in between. The long wrinkle running down from her left foot looked like a gorge where a river might run. Even through her crossness, Anne seemed to be wondering what it would be like to be small enough to explore those hills and that valley.

Enna Hittims was small enough. The name was Anne Smith backward, of course. But there is no way you can say “Htims” without putting in a noise between the H and the t, so Enna’s second name had to be Hittims. It suited her. She was a bold and heroic lady, even if she was only an inch or so high. She was tall and slim and muscular, and she wore her raven locks cut short around her thin brown face. There was no trace of mumps about Enna Hittims, and no trace of cowardice either. Enna Hittims was born to explore and have adventures.

Enna Hittims started life on her parents’ farm beside the Crease River, just below Leftoe Mountain. She was plowing their cornfield one day, when the plow turned up an old sword. Enna Hittims picked it up and swished it, and it cut through the plow. It was an enchanted sword that could cut through anything. Enna Hittims took the sword home to where her parents were lazing about and cut the kitchen table in half to show them what it could do.

“I’m leaving,” she said. “I want to have adventures.”

“No, you’re not,” said her parents. “We forbid it. We need you to do the work.”

Then Enna Hittims realized that her parents were exploiting her. She cut both their heads off with the enchanted sword and set off from the farm with a small bundle of food, to look for what she might find.

In this way Enna Hittims began the most exciting and interesting kind of life. For the next few days Anne found it hard to think of anything else. She lay in bed and looked at the landscape on the bedspread and imagined adventures for Enna Hittims to go with it.

The first heroic deed Enna Hittims did was to kill a tiger at Ankle Bend. Tibby put this idea into Anne’s head by coming to sleep on her bed. After that Enna Hittims climbed on up the mountain, where the landscape grew ever more wondrous. In the giant fern forest near the top of Leftoe Mountain, where monkeys chattered and parrots screamed, Enna Hittims came upon two more intrepid travelers, who were about to be killed by a savage gorilla. Enna Hittims cut the gorilla’s head off for them, and the two travelers became her faithful friends. They were called Marlene and Spike. The heroic three set off to find the treasure guarded by the dragon on Knee Heights.

By this time, Anne was finding Enna Hittims and her friends so interesting that she just had to get out of bed for her drawing book and felt tips and draw pictures of their adventures. Of course, when she got back into bed, the landscape had changed. The green patch which had been the fern forest had got down between Anne’s feet and become the Caves of Emerald, and the Crease River had turned into Toagara Falls. Enna Hittims and her friends realized they were exploring an enchanted land and took it all quite calmly. As the landscape changed every time Anne got in and out of bed, they soon understood that a powerful magician was trying to stop them getting the treasure. Enna Hittims vowed to conquer the magician when they had killed the dragon.

The three friends explored all over the bedspread. Anne made drawing after drawing of them. She no longer minded Tibby’s being so boring. While Tibby was curled up asleep on the bed, she held still for Anne to draw her. Anne intended Tibby to be the dragon in the end, but meanwhile, Tibby made a useful model for all the other monsters the three heroes killed. For the human monsters, Anne fetched snapshots of her parents and her cousins and copied them with glaring eyes and long teeth.

Enna Hittims was easy to draw. Her bold dark face gave Anne no trouble at all. Marlene was almost as easy, because she was the opposite of her friend, fair and small and not very brave. Enna Hittims often had to snap at Marlene for being so scared. Spike was more trouble to draw. Of course he had spiky hair, but his name really came from the enchanted spike he used as a weapon. He was small and nimble, with a puckered face. Anne kept getting him looking like a monkey, until she got used to drawing him. She drew and drew. Every time she got out of bed and the landscape changed, she thought of new adventures. She hardly noticed what Mrs. Harvey brought her for lunch. She hardly noticed whether her parents were in or out.

“Thank goodness!” said Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

And then disaster struck. Just before lunchtime, when Anne was all alone in the house, every one of her felt tips ran out.

“Oh, bother!” Anne wailed, almost in tears. She scribbled angrily, but even the mauve felt tip only made a pale, squeaky line. It was awful. Enna Hittims and her friends were in the middle of meeting the hermit who knew where to find the dragon. Anne was dying to draw the hermit’s cave. Enna Hittims was holding her enchanted sword threateningly at the foolish hermit’s throat. Anne had a photograph of Mr. Smith all ready to copy as the hermit. She was looking forward to giving him long hair and a scraggly beard and a look of utter terror.

“Oh, bother!” she shouted, and threw the felt tips across the room.

Tibby by now knew all about Anne in this mood. She jumped off Anne’s bed and galloped for the door. Mrs. Harvey came in with Anne’s lunch just then. Tibby slipped around Mrs. Harvey and ran away.

“Here you are, dear,” Mrs. Harvey said, puffing rather. She put a tray down on Anne’s knees. “I’ve done you macaroni cheese and some nice stewed apple. You can eat that, can’t you?”

Anne knew Mrs. Harvey was being very kind. She smiled, in spite of her crossness, and said, “Yes, thank you.”

“I should think you’d be well enough to go downstairs a bit now,” Mrs. Harvey said, a little reproachfully. “The stairs are hard work.” She went away, saying, “Tell your dad to pop the dishes back tonight. I’m out till then.”

Anne sighed and looked back at the bedspread. To her surprise, Enna Hittims had killed the hermit during the interruption. Anne had meant the hermit to stay alive and guide the heroes to the dragon. She stared at Enna Hittims coolly wiping her enchanted sword clean on a handy tuft of cloth. “Sorry if I lost my temper,” Enna Hittims was saying, “but I don’t think the old fool knew a thing about that dragon.”

Anne was rather shocked. She had not known that Enna Hittims was that unfeeling.

“You did quite right,” said Spike. “You know, I’m beginning to wonder if that dragon exists at all.”

“Me, too,” answered Enna Hittims. She hitched her sword to her belt rather grimly. “And if someone’s having us on—”

“Enna,” Marlene interrupted, “the landscape’s changed again. Over there.”

The three heroes swung around and shaded their eyes with their hands to look at the tray across Anne’s lap. “So it has!” said Enna Hittims. “Well done, Marlene! What is it up there?”

“A tableland,” said Spike. “There are two white mountains, and one’s steaming. Do you think it could be the dragon?”

“Probably only a new volcano,” said Enna Hittims. “Let’s go and see.”

The three heroes set off along the top of Anne’s right leg, walking swiftly in single file, and Anne watched them in some alarm. She did not want them climbing over her lunch while she tried to eat it.

“Go back,” she said. “The dragon’s going to be down by my right knee.”

“What was that?” Marlene whispered nervously as she followed the other two up the slant of Anne’s thigh.

“Just thunder. We’re always hearing it,” said Enna Hittims. “Don’t whinge, Marlene.”

The three heroes stood in a row with their chins on the edge of the lunch tray.

“Well, how about that!” said Enna Hittims. She pointed to the plate of macaroni cheese. “That hill of hot pipes—do you think it’s an installation of some kind?”

“There could be a baby dragon in each pipe,” Marlene suggested.

“What are those shiny things?” Spike wondered, pointing at the knife, fork, and spoon.

“Silver bars,” Enna Hittims said. “We’ll have to find an elephant and tow them away. This must be the dragon’s lair. But what’s that?”

The three heroes stared at the bowl of stewed apple.

“Pale yellow slush,” said Spike, “with a sour smell. Dragon sick?”

“It could be some kind of gold mulch,” Marlene said doubtfully. She looked carefully across the tray, searching for some clue. Her eyes went on, up the hill of Anne’s body beyond. She jumped and clutched Spike’s sleeve. “Look!” she whispered. “Up there!”

Spike looked. He turned quietly to Enna Hittims. “Look up, but don’t be too obvious about it,” he murmured. “Isn’t that a giant face up there?”

Enna Hittims glanced up. She nodded. “Right. Very big and purple, with little, piggy eyes. It’s some kind of giant. We’ll have to kill it.”

“Now look here—” Anne called out.

But the three heroes took her voice for thunder, just as they always did. Enna Hittims went on briskly laying her plans. “Marlene and Spike, you go around the tableland, one on each side, and climb up its hair. Swing over when you’re above the nose and stab an eye each. I’ll go in over the middle and see if I can cut its fat throat.” Spike and Marlene nodded and raced away around the edges of the tray.

Anne did not wait to see if the plan worked. She picked up the tray and pushed it on top of her bedside cupboard. Then she scrambled out of bed as fast as she could go. This of course changed the landscape completely, toppling all three heroes over and burying them under mountains of sheet and blanket. Anne hoped that had done for them. It ought to have done, since they were only part of her imagination.

To give them time to smother, or vanish, or something, Anne went down to the kitchen and got herself a glass of milk. She looked for Tibby to give her some milk, too, but Tibby seemed to have gone out through her cat flap. She went back to her bedroom, hoping the heroes had gone.

They were still there. Spike was up on her pillow, whirling his spike around his head on the end of a rope. He let it fly just as Anne came in, and it stuck firmly into the edge of the tray. It was a tin tray, but the spike was magic, of course, and would stick into anything Spike wanted it to. Spike, Enna Hittims, and Marlene all took hold of the rope and heaved. The tray slid. It tipped.

“No, stop!” Anne said weakly. She had not balanced the tray properly in her hurry.

One end of the tray came down into the bed. Down slid the macaroni cheese, and down slid the stewed apple after it. The heroes saw it coming. They leaped expertly for safety up on the pillows. They were used to this kind of thing. While Anne was still staring at macaroni and apple soaking into her sheets, Spike was dashing down and rescuing his spike.

Enna Hittims walked around the marsh of stewed apple and sliced at a macaroni tube with her sword. “It’s not alive,” she said. “Don’t just stand there, Marlene. We’re going up that ramp to find that giant and finish him off. It’s obviously the giant that’s been changing the landscape all the time. No giant’s going to do that to me!”

They started scrambling up the sloping tray. Anne hoped it would be too slippery for them. But no. Spike used his spike to help him scramble up. Enna Hittims used her sword one-handed to hack footholds and walked up backward, dragging Marlene with her other hand and snapping, “Do come on, Marlene!”

Even before they were halfway up to the bedside cupboard, Anne knew that the only sensible thing to do was to pick the tray up and tip them back into the stewed apple. And then put the tray on top of them and press. But she could not bring herself to do anything so nasty. She stood and watched them climb on top of the cupboard. Enna Hittims stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the bedroom.

“We’re in the giant’s house now,” she said confidently.

“And he’ll be a mountain of cat food before long,” said Spike. Marlene laughed with pleasure.

Anne ran out of the bedroom and shut the door with a slam. She ran down to the living room and stood with her hands together and her eyes shut. “Go away, all three of you!” she prayed. “Go. Disappear. Vanish. You’re only made up!”

Then she went back upstairs to see if the prayer had worked. Her bedroom door was still shut, but there was some kind of purple tube sticking out from under the door. As Anne bent down to see what it was, she heard Enna Hittims’s voice from behind the door. “Well, what is out there, Marlene?”

“A huge passage,” Marlene’s voice replied. The tube was the mauve felt tip with its inside taken out. It swung sideways as Anne looked. “Oh!” said Marlene. “There’s a giant out there now! I can see its toes.”

“Great!” said Enna Hittims. “Let’s get after it.” There was a burring, splintering noise. The tip of Enna Hittims’s enchanted sword, together with a lot of sawdust, made a neat half circle in the bottom of the bedroom door.

Anne ran away to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath, wondering what to do. She heard the voices of the three heroes out in the passage after a moment. She shut the bathroom door, very quietly. Nothing happened. After a while she felt she had better go and see what the heroes were doing.

There was a hole like a mousehole in the bottom of her bedroom door. The heroes were on their way downstairs. Anne could hear Enna Hittims saying, “Come on, Marlene! Just let yourself drop and Spike will catch you.” They seemed to be halfway down. Anne went down cautiously to see how they were doing it. They seemed to be letting themselves down on the rope tied to Spike’s magic spike. Marlene was dangling and spinning on the rope. To Anne’s surprise, she was wearing a new dress of a pretty harebell blue.

“Ooh! It’s so high!” she said.

“Don’t be so feeble!” said Enna Hittims. “We’re halfway down.”

Spike was keeping guard. “There’s a giant on the stairs above us,” he said quietly.

Enna Hittims glanced up at Anne. “You two go on,” she said. “It’s only a small one. You two get down and look for the big giants, while I slice off a few of this one’s toes to keep it busy.”

Anne was forced to run back to the bathroom again, rather than lose her toes. Then she realized that her bedroom was safe now and went back there. It was in the most awful mess, even if you did not count the lunch in the bed. The heroes had pulled books and jigsaws and games out of the shelves. Enna Hittims had slashed Anne’s piggy bank to bits with her sword, but she obviously had not thought that 50p in pence was much of a treasure, and she had cut some of the money up, too. Spike had pulled out Anne’s records. She could see the scratches his spike had made, right across her favorite ones. One of them had scribbled with a mauve felt tip across most of Anne’s drawings. But it was Marlene who had done the worst damage. She had cut a ragged circle out of Anne’s best sweater in order to make herself her new dress.

That made Anne so angry that she almost ran downstairs. By now she hated all three heroes. Enna Hittims was bossy and bloodthirsty. Spike was a vandal. And Marlene was so awful that she deserved the way Enna Hittims ordered her about! Anne wished she had never invented them. But it was plain she was not going to get rid of them by just wishing. She was going to have to do something, however nasty that might be.

As she arrived at the bottom of the stairs, quaking but determined, there was a ringing SMASH! from the living room and the sound of smithereens pattering on the carpet. Anne knew it was the big china lamp her mother was so fond of.

The heroes came scampering around the living room door into the hall. “Too many hazards in there,” Enna Hittims announced. “Now let’s see. We’re sure the small purple-faced giant is only a servant left on guard. Where can we go to kill the big ones when they come back?”

“The kitchen,” said Spike. “They’ll want to eat.”

“Us, probably,” Marlene quavered.

“Don’t moan, Marlene,” said Enna Hittims. “Right. To the kitchen!” She held her sword up and led the other two at a run around the open kitchen door.

Something in the kitchen went ching-BOING! and there was the glop-glop-glop of liquid running out of a bottle. “Oh, no!” said Anne. She had left the milk bottle on the floor while she was looking for Tibby. Worse still, she remembered the way Tibby always knew when there was milk on the floor. She could not let Tibby get in the way of the enchanted sword. She ran across the hall.

“My new dress is soaked!” she heard Marlene whine. Then came the sound of Tibby’s cat flap opening. Marlene gasped, “A monster!”

“What a splendid one!” Enna Hittims cried ringingly. “You two guard my rear while I kill it.”

By the time Anne got to the kitchen, Enna Hittims was standing in a warlike attitude facing Tibby, barring Tibby’s way to the pool of milk on the floor. And Tibby, who had no kind of idea about enchanted swords, was crouching with her tail swishing, staring eagerly at Enna Hittims. It was clear she thought the hero was a new kind of mouse.

Anne charged through the kitchen and caught Tibby just as she sprang. “Oh-ho!” shouted Enna Hittims. The enchanted sword swung at Anne’s right foot. Spike sprang at Anne’s left foot and stabbed. Tibby struggled and clawed. But Anne hung on to Tibby in spite of it all. She ran out into the hall, kicking the kitchen door shut behind her, and did not let go of Tibby until the door was shut. Then she dropped Tibby. Tibby stood in a ruffled hump, giving Anne the look that meant they would not be on speaking terms for some time, and then stalked away upstairs.

Anne sat on the bottom stair, watching blood ooze from a round hole in her left big toe and more blood trickle from a deep cut under her right ankle. “How lucky I didn’t invent them poisoned weapons!” she said. She sat and thought. Surely one ordinary-sized girl ought to be able to defeat three inch-high heroes, if she went about it the right way. She needed armor really.

She went thoughtfully up to her bedroom. Tibby was now crouched on Anne’s bed, delicately picking pieces of macaroni cheese out of the stewed apple. Tibby loved cheese. She looked up at Anne with the look that meant “Stop me if you dare!”

“You eat it,” said Anne. “Be my guest. Stuff yourself. It’ll keep you up here out of danger.” She got dressed. She put on her toughest jeans and her hard shoes and her thickest sweater and then the zip-up plastic jacket to make quite sure. She tied the covers of her drawing book around her legs to make even more sure. Then she collected a handful of shoelaces, string, and belts and picked up the tray. It had little regular notches in it where Enna Hittims had carved her footholds. Mrs. Harvey would not be pleased.

She shut her bedroom door to keep Tibby in there and went down to the living room. She stepped over the pieces of the china lamp to the dining area and fetched out the tea trolley. Then she spent quite a long time tying the tray to the front of the trolley, testing it, and tying it again. When she had it tied firmly, so that it grated along the carpet as the trolley was pushed, and nothing an inch high could possibly get under the bottom edge of the tray, Anne picked up the poker. She was ready.

She wheeled the armored trolley out through the hall. By lying on her stomach across the top of it, she managed to reach the handle of the kitchen door and open it quietly. She looked warily inside.

She was in luck. The three heroes thought they had defeated her. They were relaxing, filling their waterskins at the edge of the pool of milk. “Now remember to go for the big giants’ eyes,” Enna Hittims was saying. “You can hold on to their ears if they have short hair.”

“No, you can’t!” Anne shouted. She shoved off with one foot and sent the trolley through the pool of milk toward them. The tray raised a tidal wave in front of it as it went. The heroes had to leap back and run, or they would have been submerged. They ran across the kitchen, shouting angrily. Anne followed them with the trolley. This way and that, they ran. But the trolley was good at turning this way and that, too. Anne pushed with her foot, and pushed. Whenever the heroes tried to run to one side of the tray, she leaned over and jabbed at them with the poker to keep them in front of it. Spike’s spike tinged against the tray. Enna Hittims carved several pieces off the poker. But it did no good. Within minutes, Anne had pushed and prodded and herded them up against the back door where the cat flap was. She let them hew angrily at the tray, while she leaned over and pushed the cat flap open with the poker.

“There’s a way out!” squeaked Marlene.

“Stupid! It’s just tempting us!” shouted Enna Hittims.

But Anne gave the heroes no choice. She held the cat flap open and shoved hard with her foot. The tray went right up against the door. The heroes were forced to leap out through the cat flap or be squashed.

“We’ll get in another way!” Enna Hittims shouted angrily as the flap banged shut.

“No, you won’t!” said Anne. She left the trolley pushed against the door, and she overturned the kitchen table and pushed that up against the back of the trolley to keep it there.

She was just setting off to make sure all the windows were shut when she heard a car outside. It was the unmistakable, growly sound of her father turning the car around in the road before he backed down into the garage. A glance at the kitchen clock showed Anne that he was back almost two hours early.

“I can’t let them stab his eyes!” she gasped. She raced through the hall, her head full of visions of the heroes standing on the garden wall and climbing up Mr. Smith as he walked back around from the garage. She dragged the front door open and made warning gestures with the poker.

Mr. Smith smiled at her through the back window of the car. The car was already swinging round backward into the driveway. Anne stood where she was, with the poker raised. She held her breath. The heroes were standing about halfway up the drive. Marlene was pointing at the car and gasping as usual. “Another monster!”

“Go for its big black feet!” Enna Hittims shouted, and she led the three heroes at a run toward the car.

Mr. Smith never saw them. He backed briskly down the drive. Halfway there, the heroes saw the danger. Marlene screamed, and they all turned and ran the other way. But the car, even slowing down, was moving far faster than they could run. Anne watched the big, black, zigzag-patterned tire roll over on top of them. There was the tiniest possible crunching. Much as she hated the heroes by now, Anne let her breath out with a shudder.

Before Anne could lower the poker, there was a sharp hiss. The enchanted sword, and perhaps the magic spike, too, could still do damage. Mr. Smith jumped out of the car. Anne ran across the lawn, and they both watched the right-hand back tire sink into a flat squashiness.

Mr. Smith looked ruefully from the tire to Anne’s face. “Your face has gone down, too,” he said. “Did you know?”

“Has it?” Anne put up her hand to feel. The mumps were now only two small lumps on either side of her chin.

While she was feeling them, her father turned and got something out of the car. “Here you are,” he said. He passed her a fat new drawing book and a large pack of felt tips. “I knew you were going to run out of drawing things today.”

Anne looked at the rows of different colors and the thick book of paper. She knew her father hated going to the drawing shop. There was never anywhere to park, and he always got a parking ticket. But he had gone there specially and then come home early to give them to her. “Thanks!” she said. “Er—I’m afraid there’s rather a mess indoors.”

Mr. Smith smiled cheerfully. “Then isn’t it lucky you’re so much better?” he said. “You can tidy up while I’m putting the spare wheel on.”

It seemed fair, Anne thought. She turned toward the house, wondering where to start. The macaroni, the china lamp, or the milk? She looked down at the pack of felt tips while she tried to decide. They were a different make from the old lot. That was a good thing. She was fairly sure that it was her drawings that had brought Enna Hittims and her friends to life like that. The old felt tips would not have been called Magic Markers for nothing.