Once upon a time, there was a tiny country called Cornucopia, which was ruled by a team of newly appointed advisors and a Prime Minister, who at the time of which I write was called Gordon Goodfellow. Prime Minister Goodfellow had been elected by the people of Cornucopia because he was a very honest man, and Cornucopia was a country that had learned the value of truth. There was a country-wide celebration when Prime Minister Goodfellow announced that he was going to marry Lady Eslanda, the kind and brave woman who’d given important evidence against Lord Spittleworth.

The king who’d allowed his happy little kingdom to be driven to ruin and despair stood trial, along with the Chief Advisor and a number of other people who’d benefited from Spittleworth’s lies, including Ma Grunter, Basher John, Cankerby the footman, and Otto Scrumble.

The king simply wept all through his questioning, but Lord Spittleworth answered in a cold, proud voice, and told so many lies, and tried to blame so many other people for his own wickedness, that he made matters far worse for himself than if he’d simply sobbed, like Fred. Both men were imprisoned in the dungeons beneath the palace, with all the other criminals.

I quite understand, by the way, if you wish Bert and Roderick had shot Spittleworth. After all, he’d caused hundreds of other people’s deaths. However, it should comfort you to know that Spittleworth really would have preferred to be dead than to sit in the dungeon all day and night, where he ate plain food and slept between rough sheets, and had to listen for hours on end to Fred crying.

The gold that Spittleworth and Flapoon had stolen was recovered, so that all those people who’d lost their cheese shops and their bakeries, their dairies and their pig farms, their butcher’s shops and their vineyards, could start them back up again, and begin producing the famous Cornucopian food and wine once more.

However, during the long period of Cornucopia’s poverty, many had lost the opportunity to learn how to make cheese, sausages, wine, and pastries. Some of them became librarians, because Lady Eslanda had the excellent idea of turning all the now useless orphanages into libraries, which she helped stock. However, that still left a lot of people without jobs.

And that is how the fifth great city of Cornucopia came into being. Its name was Ickaby, and it lay between Kurdsburg and Jeroboam, on the banks of the River Fluma.

When the second-born Ickaboggle heard of the problem of people who’d never learned a trade, it suggested timidly that it might teach them how to farm mushrooms, which was something it understood very well. So successful did the mushroom growers become that a prosperous town sprang up around them.

You might think you don’t like mushrooms, but I promise, if you tasted the creamy mushroom soups of Ickaby, you’d love them for the rest of your life. Kurdsburg and Baronstown developed new recipes that included Ickaby mushrooms. In fact, shortly before Prime Minister Goodfellow married Lady Eslanda, the King of Pluritania offered Goodfellow the choice of any of his daughters’ hands for a year’s supply of Cornucopian pork and mushroom sausages. Prime Minister Goodfellow sent the sausages as a gift, along with an invitation to the Goodfellows’ wedding, and Lady Eslanda added a note suggesting that King Porfirio might want to stop offering people his daughters in exchange for food, and let them choose their own husbands.

Ickaby was an unusual city, though, because unlike Chouxville, Kurdsburg, Baronstown, and Jeroboam, it was famous for three products instead of one.

Firstly, there were the mushrooms, every single one of them as beautiful as a pearl.

Secondly, there were the glorious silver salmon and trout which fishermen caught in the River Fluma – and you might like to know that a statue of the old lady who studied the fish of the Fluma stood proudly in one of Ickaby’s squares.

Thirdly, Ickaby produced wool.

You see, it was decided by Prime Minister Goodfellow that the few Marshlanders who’d survived the long period of hunger deserved better pastures for their sheep than could be found in the north. Well, when the Marshlanders were given a few lush fields on the bank of the Fluma, they showed what they could really do. The wool of Cornucopia was the softest, silkiest wool in the world, and the sweaters and socks and scarves it produced were more beautiful and comfortable than could be found anywhere else. The sheep farm of Hetty Hopkins and her family produced excellent wool, but I’d have to say that the finest garments of all were spun from the wool of Roderick and Martha Roach, who had a thriving farm just outside Ickaby. Yes, Roderick and Martha got married, and I’m pleased to say they were very happy, had five children, and that Roderick began to speak with a slight Marshlander accent.

Two other people got married, as well. I’m delighted to tell you that on leaving the dungeon, and though no longer forced to live next to each other, those old friends Mrs Beamish and Mr Dovetail found that they couldn’t do without each other. So with Bert as best man, and Daisy as chief bridesmaid, the carpenter and the pastry chef were married, and Bert and Daisy, who’d felt like brother and sister for so long, now truly were. Mrs Beamish opened her own splendid pastry shop in the heart of Chouxville where, in addition to Fairies’ Cradles, Maidens’ Dreams, Dukes’ Delights, Folderol Fancies, and Hopes-of-Heaven, she produced Ickapuffs, which were the lightest, fluffiest pastries you could possibly imagine, all covered with a delicate dusting of peppermint chocolate shavings, which gave them the appearance of being covered in marsh weed.

Bert followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Cornucopian army. A just and brave man, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he ends up at the head of it.

Daisy became the world’s foremost authority on Ickabogs. She wrote many books about their fascinating behaviour, and it is due to Daisy that Ickabogs became protected and beloved by the people of Cornucopia. In her free time, she ran a successful carpentry business with her father, and one of their most popular products were toy Ickabogs. The second-born Ickaboggle lived in what was once the king’s deer park, close to Daisy’s workshop, and the two remained very good friends.

There was a museum built, in the heart of Chouxville, which attracted many visitors each year. This museum was set up by Prime Minister Goodfellow and his advisors, with help from Daisy, Bert, Martha, and Roderick, because nobody wanted the people of Cornucopia to forget the years when the country believed all Spittleworth’s lies. Visitors to the museum could view Major Beamish’s silver medal, with Flapoon’s bullet still buried in it, and the statue of Nobby Buttons, which had been replaced, in Chouxville’s biggest square, with a statue of that brave Ickabog who walked out of the Marshlands carrying a bunch of snowdrops, and in doing so saved both its species and the country. Visitors could also see the model Ickabog that Spittleworth had made out of a bull’s skeleton and some nails, and the huge portrait of King Fred fighting a dragonish Ickabog that never existed outside the artist’s imagination.

But there’s one creature I haven’t yet mentioned: the first-born Ickaboggle, the savage creature who killed Lord Flapoon, and who was last seen being dragged away by many strong men.

Well, in truth, this creature was something of a problem. Daisy had explained to everyone that the savage Ickaboggle must not be attacked or mistreated, or it would hate people more than it already did. This would mean that at its Bornding, it would bring forth Ickaboggles even more savage than itself, and Cornucopia could end up with the problem Spittleworth had pretended it had. At first, this Ickaboggle needed to be kept in a reinforced cage to stop it killing people, and volunteers to take it mushrooms were hard to find, because it was so dangerous. The only people this Ickaboggle even slightly liked were Bert and Roderick, because at the moment of its Bornding they’d been trying to protect its Icker. The trouble was, of course, that Bert was away in the army and Roderick was running a sheep farm, and neither of them had time to sit all day with a savage Ickaboggle to keep it calm.

A solution to the problem arrived at last, from a very unexpected place.

All this time, Fred had been crying his eyes out down in the dungeons. Selfish, vain, and cowardly though he’d definitely been, Fred hadn’t meant to hurt anyone – though of course he had, and very badly too. For a whole year after he lost the throne, Fred was sunk into darkest despair, and while part of the reason was undoubtedly that he now lived in a dungeon rather than in a palace, he was also deeply ashamed.

He could see what a terrible king he’d been, and how badly he’d behaved, and he wished more than anything to be a better man. So one day, to the astonishment of Spittleworth, who was sitting brooding in the cell opposite, Fred told the prison guard that he’d like to volunteer to be the one to look after the savage Ickabog.

And that’s what he did. Though deathly white and trembly-kneed on the first morning, and for many mornings afterwards, the ex-king went into the savage Ickabog’s cage and talked to it about Cornucopia, and about the terrible mistakes he’d made, and how you could learn to be a better, kinder person, if you really wanted to become one. Even though Fred had to return to his own cell every evening, he requested that the Ickabog be put into a nice field instead of a cage and, to everyone’s surprise, this worked well, and the Ickabog even thanked Fred in a gruff voice the following morning.

Slowly, over the months and years that followed, Fred became braver and the Ickabog gentler, and at last, when Fred was quite an old man, the Ickabog’s Bornding came, and the Ickaboggles that stepped out of it were kind and gentle. Fred, who’d mourned their Icker as though it had been his brother, died very shortly afterwards. While there were no statues raised to their last king in any Cornucopian city, occasionally people laid flowers on his grave, and he would have been glad to know it.

Whether people were really Bornded from Ickabogs, I cannot tell you. Perhaps we go through a kind of Bornding when we change, for better or for worse. All I know is that countries, like Ickabogs, can be made gentle by kindness, which is why the kingdom of Cornucopia lived happily ever after.

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When Daisy entered the palace courtyard, at the head of the people’s procession, she was amazed to see how little it had altered. Fountains still played and peacocks still strutted, and the only change to the front of the palace was a single broken window, up on the second floor.

Then the great golden doors were flung open, and the crowd saw two ragged people walking out to meet them: a white-haired man holding an axe and a woman clutching an enormous saucepan.

And Daisy, staring at the white-haired man, felt her knees buckle, and the kind Ickaboggle caught her and held her up. Mr Dovetail tottered forward, and I don’t think he even noticed that an actual live Ickabog was standing beside his long-lost daughter. As the two of them hugged and sobbed, Daisy spotted Mrs Beamish over her father’s shoulder.

‘Bert’s alive!’ she called to the pastry chef, who was looking frantically for her son, ‘but he had something to do… He’ll be back soon!’

More prisoners now came hurrying out of the palace, and there were screams of joy as loved ones found loved ones, and many of the orphanage children found the parents they’d thought were dead.

Then a lot of other things happened, like the thirty strong men who surrounded the fierce Ickaboggle, dragging it away before it could kill anyone else, and Daisy asking Mr Dovetail if Martha could come and live with them, and Captain Goodfellow appearing on a balcony with a weeping King Fred, who was still wearing his pyjamas, and the crowd cheering when Captain Goodfellow said he thought it was time to try life without a king.

However, we must now leave this happy scene, and track down the man who was most to blame for the terrible things that had happened to Cornucopia.

Lord Spittleworth was miles away, galloping down a deserted country road, when his horse suddenly went lame. When Spittleworth tried to force it onwards, the poor horse, which had had quite enough of being mistreated, reared and deposited Spittleworth onto the ground. When Spittleworth tried to whip it, the horse kicked him, then trotted away into a forest where, I am pleased to tell you, it was later found by a kind farmer, who nursed it back to health.

Lord Spittleworth was therefore left to jog alone down the country lanes towards his country estate, holding up his Chief Advisor’s robes lest he trip over them, and looking over his shoulder every few yards for fear that he was being followed. He knew perfectly well that his life in Cornucopia was over, but he still had that mountain of gold hidden in his wine cellar, and he intended to load up his carriage with as many ducats as would fit, then sneak over the border into Pluritania.

Night had fallen by the time Spittleworth reached his mansion, and his feet were terribly sore. Hobbling inside, he bellowed for his butler, Scrumble, who so long ago had pretended to be Nobby Buttons’s mother and Professor Fraudysham.

‘Down here, my lord!’ called a voice from the cellar.

‘Why haven’t you lit the lamps, Scrumble?’ bellowed Spittleworth, feeling his way downstairs.

‘Thought it best not to look like anyone was home, sir!’ called Scrumble.

‘Ah,’ said Spittleworth, wincing as he limped downstairs. ‘So you’ve heard, have you?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the echoing voice. ‘I imagined you’d be wanting to clear out, my lord?’

‘Yes, Scrumble,’ said Lord Spittleworth, limping towards the distant light of a single candle, ‘I most certainly do.’

He pushed open the door to the cellar where he’d been storing his gold all these years. The butler, whom Spittleworth could only make out dimly in the candlelight, was once again wearing Professor Fraudysham’s costume: the white wig and the thick glasses that shrank his eyes to almost nothing.

‘Thought it might be best if we travel in disguise, sir,’ said Scrumble, holding up old Widow Buttons’s black dress and ginger wig.

‘Good idea,’ said Spittleworth, hastily pulling off his robes and pulling on the costume. ‘Do you have a cold, Scrumble? Your voice sounds strange.’

‘It’s just the dust down here, sir,’ said the butler, moving further from the candlelight. ‘And what will Your Lordship be wanting to do with Lady Eslanda? She’s still locked in the library.’

‘Leave her,’ said Spittleworth, after a moment’s consideration. ‘And serve her right for not marrying me when she had the chance.’

‘Very good, my lord. I’ve loaded up the carriage and a couple of horses with most of the gold. Perhaps Your Lordship could help carry this last trunk?’

‘I hope you weren’t thinking of leaving without me, Scrumble,’ said Spittleworth suspiciously, wondering whether, if he’d arrived ten minutes later, he might have found Scrumble gone.

‘Oh no, my lord,’ Scrumble assured him. ‘I wouldn’t dream of leaving without Your Lordship. Withers the groom will be driving us, sir. He’s ready and waiting in the courtyard.’

‘Excellent,’ said Spittleworth, and together they heaved the last trunk of gold upstairs, through the deserted house and out into the courtyard behind, where Spittleworth’s carriage stood waiting in the darkness. Even the horses had sacks of gold slung over their backs. More gold had been strapped onto the top of the carriage, in cases.

As he and Scrumble heaved the last trunk onto the roof, Spittleworth said:

‘What is that peculiar noise?’

‘I hear nothing, my lord,’ said Scrumble.

‘It is an odd sort of grunting,’ said Spittleworth.

A memory came back to Spittleworth as he stood here in the dark: that of standing in the icy-white fog on the marsh all those years before, and the whimpers of the dog struggling against the brambles in which it was tangled. This was a similar noise, as though some creature were trapped and unable to free itself, and it made Lord Spittleworth quite as nervous as it had last time when, of course, it had been followed by Flapoon firing his blunderbuss and starting both of them onto the path to riches, and the country down the road to ruin.

‘Scrumble, I don’t like that noise.’

‘I don’t expect you do, my lord.’

The moon slid out from behind a cloud and Lord Spittleworth, turning quickly towards his butler, whose voice sounded very different all of a sudden, found himself staring down the barrel of one of his own guns. Scrumble had removed Professor Fraudysham’s wig and glasses, to reveal that he wasn’t the butler at all, but Bert Beamish. And for just a moment, seen by moonlight, the boy looked so like his father that Spittleworth had the crazy notion that Major Beamish had risen from the dead to punish him.

Then he looked wildly around him and saw, through the open door of the carriage, the real Scrumble, gagged and tied up on the floor, which was where the odd whimpering was coming from – and Lady Eslanda sitting there, smiling and holding a second gun. Opening his mouth to ask Withers the groom why he didn’t do something, Spittleworth realised that this wasn’t Withers, but Roderick Roach. (When he’d spotted the two boys galloping up the drive, the real groom had quite rightly sensed trouble, and stealing his favourite of Lord Spittleworth’s horses, had ridden off into the night.)

‘How did you get here so fast?’ was all Spittleworth could think to say.

‘We borrowed some horses from a farmer,’ said Bert.

In fact, Bert and Roderick were much better riders than Spittleworth, so their horses hadn’t gone lame. They’d managed to overtake him and had arrived in plenty of time to free Lady Eslanda, find out where the gold was, tie up Scrumble the butler, and force him to tell them the full story of how Spittleworth had fooled the country, including his own impersonation of Professor Fraudysham and Widow Buttons.

‘Boys, let’s not be hasty,’ said Spittleworth faintly. ‘There’s a lot of gold here. I’ll share it with you!’

‘It isn’t yours to share,’ said Bert. ‘You’re coming back to Chouxville and we’re going to have a proper trial.’

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And now several things happened at almost the same time, so nobody watching could possibly keep up, but luckily, I can tell you about all of them.

Lord Flapoon’s bullet went flying towards the Ickabog’s opening belly. Both Bert and Roderick, who’d sworn to protect the Ickabog no matter what, flung themselves into the path of that bullet, which hit Bert squarely in the chest, and as he fell to the ground, his wooden sign, bearing the message THE ICKABOG IS HARMLESS, shattered into splinters.

Then a baby Ickabog, which was already taller than a horse, came struggling out of its Icker’s belly. Its Bornding had been a dreadful one, because it had come into the world full of its parent’s fear of the gun, and the first thing it had ever seen was an attempt to kill it, so it sprinted straight at Flapoon, who was trying to reload.

The soldiers who might have helped Flapoon were so terrified of the new monster bearing down upon them that they galloped out of its path without even trying to fire. Spittleworth was one of those who rode away fastest, and he was soon lost to sight. The baby Ickabog let out a terrible roar that still haunts the nightmares of those who witnessed the scene, before launching itself at Flapoon. Within seconds, Flapoon lay dead upon the ground.

All of this had happened very fast; people were screaming and crying, and Daisy was still holding onto the dying Ickabog, which lay in the road beside Bert. Roderick and Martha were bending over Bert, who, to their amazement, had opened his eyes.

‘I – I think I’m all right,’ he whispered, and feeling beneath his shirt, he pulled out his father’s huge silver medal. Flapoon’s bullet was buried in it. The medal had saved Bert’s life.

Seeing that Bert was alive, Daisy now buried her hands in the hair on either side of the Ickabog’s face again.

‘I didn’t see my Ickaboggle,’ whispered the dying Ickabog, in whose eyes there were again tears like glass apples.

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Daisy, who was also starting to cry. ‘Look… here…’

A second Ickaboggle was wriggling out of the Ickabog’s tummy. This one had a friendly face and wore a timid smile, because its Bornding had happened as its parent was looking into Daisy’s face, and had seen her tears, and understood that a human could love an Ickabog as though it was one of their own family. Ignoring the noise and clamour all around it, the second Ickaboggle knelt beside Daisy in the road and stroked the big Ickabog’s face. Icker and Ickaboggle looked at each other and smiled, and then the big Ickabog’s eyes gently closed, and Daisy knew that it was dead. She buried her face in its shaggy hair and sobbed.

‘You mustn’t be sad,’ said a familiar booming voice, as something stroked her hair. ‘Don’t cry, Daisy. This is the Bornding. It is a glorious thing.’

Blinking, Daisy looked up at the baby, which was speaking with exactly the voice of its Icker.

‘You know my name,’ she said.

‘Well, of course I do,’ said the Ickaboggle kindly. ‘I was Bornded knowing all about you. And now we must find my Ickabob,’ which, Daisy understood, was what Ickabogs call their siblings.

Daisy stood up and saw Flapoon lying dead in the road, and the first-born Ickaboggle surrounded by people holding pitchforks and guns.

‘Climb up here with me,’ said Daisy urgently to the second baby, and hand-in-hand the two of them mounted the wagon. Daisy shouted at the crowd to listen. As she was the girl who’d ridden through the country on the shoulder of the Ickabog, the nearest people guessed that she might know things worth hearing, so they shushed everyone else, and at last Daisy was able to speak.

‘You mustn’t hurt the Ickabogs!’ were the first words out of her mouth, when at last the crowd was silent. ‘If you’re cruel to them, they’ll have babies who are born even crueller!’

‘Bornded cruel,’ corrected the Ickaboggle beside her.

‘Bornded cruel, yes,’ said Daisy. ‘But if they’re Bornded in kindness, they will be kind! They eat only mushrooms and they want to be our friends!’

The crowd muttered, uncertain, until Daisy explained about Major Beamish’s death on the marsh, how he’d been shot by Lord Flapoon, not killed by an Ickabog, and that Spittleworth had used the death to invent a story of a murderous monster on the marsh.

Then the crowd decided that they wanted to go and talk to King Fred, so the bodies of the dead Ickabog and Lord Flapoon were loaded onto the wagon, and twenty strong men pulled it along. Then the whole procession set off for the palace, with Daisy, Martha, and the kind Ickaboggle arm-in-arm at the front, and thirty citizens with guns surrounding the fierce, first-born Ickaboggle, which otherwise would have killed more humans, because it had been Bornded fearing and hating them.

But after a quick discussion, Bert and Roderick vanished, and where they went, you’ll find out soon.

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