skipped and danced over the floorboards. In their tiny hands they carried pens like spears, the brass nibs gleaming wickedly in the gilded attic light. On they came, in their tens, their hundreds, their thousands. These coloured demons swarmed over Jordy, who let out one cry of despair before being overwhelmed. Their weapons stabbed at his bare skin and exposed flesh relentlessly. He cried out in anger and pain.
‘We must help him,’ cried Chloe, looking round for a weapon. ‘Alex, we’ve got to help him.’
But there was nothing to hand. Alex too started forward, but then stopped again, fearful for his own life. There seemed to be millions of the horrible creatures, bearing down on Jordy, attempting to force him to the floor.
True to his determined nature, Jordy fought back at the vicious ink imps, who were now pinching his flesh with niblike claws. He flailed and raged at them, sending them flying in all directions. Struggling, with them hanging many-hued from his limbs and body, he fought to cover the distance between himself and the golden bureau. To the watchers it seemed a miracle that he was still on his feet with the sheer weight of numbers trying to topple him. But Jordy had a sportsman’s competitive nature. He was damned if he was going to go down: not without a terrible fight. Even as he staggered forward he picked handfuls of the ink imps from his body, flinging them away with force.
Some of them were thrown so hard they splattered against the bureaux from which they had emerged. Under such force their skins no longer held and contained them. They smacked into woodwork and metal and burst like ink-filled balloons. Red, green, blue and black ink dribbled down the sides, fronts and backs of the bureaux in a gory show of colour. This seemed to enrage even more those who remained. They crawled over Jordy’s body en masse, absolutely incensed with his actions. Some tried to reach his eyes, to attack them, to attempt to blind him. Jordy was quite aware of this change of tactics, for he covered his eyes with one hand, peering through the cracks between his fingers. With great effort he finally reached the golden bureau and fumbled around with the catch to open the front.
‘He’s doing it!’ cried Alex. ‘Go, Jordy, go.’
‘Oh, I do hope he doesn’t get hurt,’ whispered Chloe. ‘Look what they’re doing to him. He’ll be bruised all over.’
Nelson, who had been watching curiously, now dashed forward on his three legs and began attacking those funny little creatures which were scuttling over the boards. However, after the first two or three ink imps had burst in his claws, he loped slowly back to Chloe. Nelson was not fond of being showered with liquid of any kind, be it water or ink.
The bureau door dropped open, held up like a desktop by two side catches. Jordy’s free hand scrabbled around inside the opening. There were paperweights in there, and stamps for franking letters, and all sorts of paraphernalia. His searching hand worked like a spider among them, searching for that elusive chart of the attic. Finally his hands came upon a roll of parchment. He took it out, flipped it open, unrolling it. ‘A diploma,’ he yelled in frustration. ‘A bloody teaching diploma for some bloke called Potterswaite.’ Again his free hand went inside and all the while the ink imps nipped and tugged away at him, trying to get him to submit.
He found another roll of parchment. He clutched it. This time he could not unroll it with one hand because it was tightly bound with a red ribbon. They could see he dare not take his protective hand from his eyes and so he had to hope that this time he had the map in his hand. Jordy turned from the golden bureau and thrashed his way back towards the two who were waiting for him. Chloe rushed forward and began picking imps from his shoulders and flinging them into the bureaux forest. Alex, seeing her do this, followed suit. Together they snatched red and blue, green and black imps and cast them away.
Finally all three began running away, turning the corner, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the imps.
Unfortunately in doing so, Jordy tripped. The roll of parchment threatened to get away from him. In trying to retain it he fell heavily, his right arm underneath the full weight of his body. There was