Zeb and the Great Ruckus

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Published by Odyssey Books in 2012

Copyright © Josh Donellan 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.

www.odysseybooks.com.au

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Author: Donellan, Josh

Title: Zeb and the Great Ruckus / Josh Donellan

ISBN: 9780987232533 (pbk)

ISBN: 9780987232564 (ebook)

Target Audience: For primary school age.

Dewey Number: A823.4

Cover artwork and illustrations by Kathleen Jennings

(www.tanaudel.wordpress.com)

A portion of the author’s profits will be donated to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.

This book is dedicated to my uncle Bruce,

who lived his life in glorious defiance of gravity.

1

Of Dreams and Dreamers

This is a story made from pieces of all the dreams that you had when you were asleep, but then forgot when you woke up. Some of the most brilliant ideas occur in dreams: songs, poems, stories, inventions. Although a few of the lucky ones get dragged kicking and screaming into daylight when their dreamer wakes, most disappear into oblivion as eyelids flicker open to greet the morning sun.

Some decades ago, when your grandmother was still in nappies trying to get her head around this whole ridiculous business of ‘walking’, a man named Professor Frederick Van Hausenbrau invented a machine to record his dreams while he slept. He plugged a great mess of wires into his head at night, and connected these to a vast web of crystals, cogs, wheels and windmills. All of this was hooked up to a mechanical arm that held a quill used to transcribe his sleeping thoughts. He named it Hausenbrau’s Marvellous Miraculous Dream Machine™.

On the morning of its first use he was delighted to discover that he had dreamt a scrumptious recipe for applesauce, a concept for a particularly ingenious vegetable peeler and an idea for a children’s story for the notoriously overcrowded seven to thirteen-year-old age group. At first, he was overjoyed and prepared to make his great announcement to the world. However, the next morning when he awoke, he found that his Marvellous Miraculous Dream Machine™ had recorded a dream so embarrassing that reading it made his whole body flush as red as a beetroot from head to toe. Terrified at the prospect of any such dream becoming public knowledge, he took to the machine with an axe and then disappeared into the woods, where it is rumoured that he commenced a career in professional mime. [1]

This story is mostly about a boy named Zeb, who was quite a lot like you are actually, (unless of course you are a girl in which case he was quite different, for obvious reasons). When Zeb had gone to bed he had been eleven, but he had woken up twelve. During the night he had dreamt of a giant porcelain elephant that lived in a pudding tree. Had he the benefit of Professor Van Hausenbrau’s Marvellous Miraculous Dream Machine™ he may have recorded this beautiful dream, but as he woke it disappeared from his head faster than a jar of unguarded cookies in a playground. This would have been quite a tragedy, if not for the fact that the events about to transpire were stranger and more fantastic than anything he could have ever possibly dreamt.

Zeb crawled out of bed and looked in the mirror. His reflection stared back at him and he tried to move fast enough to trick it, but it was too quick and kept up with every movement. Zeb had a floppy bird’s nest of wild brown hair perched upon his scalp; hair that his mother said was large and untidy enough to hide an extended family of guinea pigs. His eyes were blue like the colour of the ocean on a stormy day (the really good kind of storm where there’s lightning and thunder and the rain sounds like a thousand pixies clog dancing on the roof). Zeb waved goodbye to his reflection and walked downstairs. There he found his mother Sarina, holding a curiously coloured cake in her hands. She smiled and said:

"Happy birthday my love,

Twelve happy years!

A day for dancing, rejoicing

And forgetting your fears!"

This wasn’t a birthday poem. Sarina had a rare condition called rhymnociticism that forced her to only speak in rhyme. She was also a terrible cook. This had nothing to do with her condition, she just wasn’t any good at cooking.

What kind of cake is it mum? Zeb asked warily.

"Lettuce! It’s a new recipe I made up just then.

Want to take it to school to share with your friends?"

Sure… Zeb took the cake carefully in his hands. It smelt even stranger than it looked. He wasn’t sure that this was the kind of food he would want to share with his friends. To be honest, he wasn’t entirely certain he’d even share it with his worst enemies.

He stepped out the front door and saw his neighbour’s dog, Thelonious. Thelonius tilted his head and padded over.

Zeb placed the cake in front of him. Here Thelonious, do you want a big green treat?

Thelonius gave him a look that said, quite clearly, "Listen, I know I’m a dog and all but I do have SOME standards, you know?"

Zeb decided to leave the lettuce cake in the park in the hope that some less discerning birds would devour it. His mum sang out to him as he left:

"Have fun at school dear, there’s much to learn.

I have a present that awaits you upon your return!"

Zeb walked to school as he did on most days, except for the days when he didn’t. He was careful to skip over the cracks in the cobblestone streets of Chromata, the town where he had been born and had hardly left in all the twelve years he had been breathing. He walked through the town square, over the bridge that spanned Olmar’s river and past Mr Federson’s shoe shop.

As he turned down the road that took him towards his school, he passed a particular shop that had always made him feel uneasy for reasons he could never explain. Settled in amongst the Butcher, the Baker and the Candlestick maker was the World Famous Trojun Emporium. It sold Trojuns of all shapes and sizes: imported Trojuns, hand made Trojuns, classic Trojuns, new model Trojuns, family size Trojuns, travel Trojuns as well as the latest Trojun accessories such as carry bags and polishing cloths.

The thing that troubled Zeb as he stared into the window of the magnificent-looking shop at the townsfolk browsing with wide and eager eyes was that no one really knew what Trojuns were. Zeb had once asked the shopkeeper, a cheery young girl with hair that looked as though it were trying rather hard to be a small castle, what the point of Trojuns was, other than looking pretty of course.

She just smiled at him, patted him on the head as though he were a confused puppy and said, Oh, you poor, silly boy, don’t you know? He had replied no, he did not know, which was rather why he had asked in the first place. At this point she looked quite confused and replied, Oh dear, I think I hear a customer calling for my assistance. Run along now!

Not only were the Trojun Emporiums by far the most profitable stores in the entire land of Bravura, they were also the only place that music was allowed to be played. Many years before Zeb had been born, the Czar of Bravura had introduced the Prohibition of Public Cacophony (also known as the PPC), which had officially banned all music and large gatherings in public places.

This had supposedly been in the interest of maintaining the Czar’s mandate of ‘Obedience, Civility and Tranquillity’. Why the Trojun Emporiums alone had been granted permission to use music within their walls was anyone’s guess. Of course, ‘music’ was a fairly inaccurate description of the dull, repetitive ringing sound that filled the stores.

The back wall of each Emporium was covered in a complex web of pipes, bells and hammers, all linked to a central stove that heated the interior of the store. As the steam rose up the pipes it raised levers that caused a team of tiny hammers to chime bells of various sizes, producing a cycled pattern of warm, ringing tones. It appeared to lull people into a calm, glassy-eyed state.

Often they would remark as they exited the store that they really hadn’t intended on buying anything at all, but as soon as they had heard that delightful ‘music’ they just couldn’t resist the urge to pick up a new Trojun or three. Nearly everyone in the village had at least one. Some houses even had several dozen adorning various walls, ledges, nooks and crevices, like an infestation of ornamental mice.

Zeb wanted to sit and think about this particular problem, because a quiet voice at the back of his head told him it might all be rather important, but he was running late for school. He wandered off towards the school grounds with his ears buzzing with the mysterious notion that his twelfth birthday would be a day of most peculiar surprises.

And indeed it would be.

[1] Some scholars believe that this is a spelling error in the village’s public records that should read ‘professional crime’.

2

Surprises

When the school day ended Zeb walked home with his best friend, Flip. Flip’s real name was Florintina, (but only her mother called her that). Her head was covered in a stream of astonishingly red hair that, in the right light, made her look like she was on fire. Flip had a face decorated with a storm of freckles and a pair of luminous green eyes that were usually looking in the direction of mischief.

Do you want to come over to my house and see what Mum has got me for a surprise? asked Zeb, filled with that particular type of excitement that is reserved especially for birthdays.

Sure! I love surprises! Except when the surprise is that you’ve just been licked by a dog infected with the great dog flu.

The ‘great dog flu’ was an epidemic that had terrified the