were following the children’s trail. The bortrekker, a veteran pioneer of the attic, shuddered at the sight of these creatures. Though they looked like pleasant old men in dustcoats with brown buttons they were of course the Removal Firm.
Young people who stayed in the attic, like the bortrekker and the board-comber, were especially fearful of the Removal Firm. They called them the Removal Firm because that was what they were. They didn’t move furniture. They removed anything that was a threat to the attic. Humans who were new needed to checked for spores, insect eggs and seeds in their clothing, which might result in a wood disease. Spores or eggs that might lead to dry rot, or woodworm, or any of those terrible wood-ravaging, wood-destroying blights. Humans were potentially corrosive. Humans were unwittingly destructive. So it was believed by the Removal Firm.
The rumour among the human intruders in the attic was that the Removal Firm imprisoned such criminals in old steel lockers discarded from public changing rooms in the real world. These were never to be opened again. The prisoners would never again see the light of day, or the dark of night. They shared the fate of the boy in the story, who climbed into a trunk during a game of hide-and-seek. They became ghastly secrets.
The bortrekker hid himself in a pile of dried and artificial flowers. He was a tall youth, reasonably strong, but he knew he was no match for the Removal Firm. Those creatures were incredibly powerful and could crush him in their arms if they so wished. He had seen one of them lift a heavy metal safe and place it aside as if it were cardboard. He had witnessed another cracking a thick beam as if it were a twig. The bortrekker was not one to underestimate the strength of his foes. He had not done anything wrong, so far as he could recall, but it was best not to be ‘inspected’.
‘May you rot yourselves,’ he muttered, cursing the Removal Firm. ‘May your noses drop off and your toes turn grey. May your livers turn to mush and your tongues shrivel to boot laces. May you—’ but there he stopped, for they were coming his way.
The bortrekker held his breath as they passed, the dried flowers covering his human scent. Soon they were gone and he laughed to himself, having beaten them once again. In the opinion of the bortrekker it was fear that had given rise to the Removal Firm, and fear that kept them going. Fear, he was often heard to tell his two dancing rats, is a corrosive thing in itself when it leads to prejudice and irrational action.
The bortrekker went on his way. When he was certain the Removal Firm were out of earshot he took his fiddle out of its case and began to play a jaunty jig. The two rats Arthur and Harold leapt out of his pockets in glee and began dancing on their hind legs around his feet. Arthur’s choreography was nothing short of genius, he being the light-footed one with inventive steps, while Harold’s rhythm was vastly superior, as he swayed in time to the music. ‘O what jolly boys are we,’ sang the bortrekker, ‘rattling the boards of a wooden sea …’
Once the storm had abated Chloe and Alex were able to forge ahead. Nelson stayed with them, hopping tirelessly alongside. Without realising it they were approaching the forest of tall clocks from the most difficult side. The weather here was always inclement and the boards showed it. Instead of the landscape being flat it was violently undulating where the boards had become warped. Extreme cold and heat had shrunk and expanded the planks in rapid motion, causing them to twist out of shape. Humps and dips made walking difficult and both children tripped several times when catching their feet on a board that had come loose or had twisted like a rope. There were gaps out there, large enough to fall through, though Nelson skipped between and around them as agile as any tri-cornered cat.
‘Watch out for splinters if you fall over,’ Alex warned. ‘Some of the planks are split and broken.’
Indeed, there were ragged plank ends in places and shards lay here and there. Bare nails protruded like fangs, some by as much as three or four centimetres.
The rough going got worse before it got better. They crossed an area where a water tank had overflowed, flooding the boards. Some of the