Noah Barleywater Runs Away Read Online Free PDF

just any old colours either, like the toys hehad at home, which had surfaces that cracked and peeled if he so much as looked at them for too long. These were colours he’d never even seen before; ones he couldn’t possibly begin to name. Here, to his left, was a wooden clock, and it was painted, well, not green exactly, but a colour that green might like to be if it had any imagination at all. And over there, beside the wooden pencil holder, was a wooden board game whose overriding colour was not red, but something that red might look at enviously, blushing with embarrassment at its own dull appearance. And the wooden letter sets, well, there were those who might have said that they were painted yellow and blue, but they would have said this knowing that such plain words were an outrageous insult to the colouring on the letters themselves.
    But as curious as all this was, as surprising and unusual as all this felt to Noah’s eyes, it was as nothing compared to those toys that dominated the walls of the shop in such numbers.
    The puppets.
    There were dozens of them. No, not dozens, scores. Not even scores, but hundreds, perhaps more than a person could count in one day, even with the help of one of the multi-coloured wooden abacuses that were placed on a nearby counter top. They were crafted in different shapes and sizes, varying heights and widths, dissimilar colours and shapes, but every single one was made of wood andpainted with bright colours that filled them with life and energy and a sense that they were fully alive.
    They don’t look like puppets at all
, thought Noah.
They look too real for that.
    They hung in rows along the walls of the shop, wires fastened to their backs to keep them all in their places. And they weren’t just puppets of people either; there were animals and vehicles and all sorts of unexpected objects. But they all had strings attached to them to allow their different parts to move.
    ‘How extraordinary!’ muttered Noah under his breath, and as he looked around, he began to experience a curious sensation that the puppets’ eyes were following him wherever he went, keeping a close watch on his every movement just in case he picked something up and broke it, or tried to run off with a toy that didn’t belong to him in his back pocket.
    An incident just like that had happened a few months earlier when his mother had taken him on another of her unexpected days out – something she had started doing with such a sense of urgency that they should spend time together that Noah had found it all a little confusing. On that occasion, a pack of magic playing cards had mysteriously found its way into his pocket while they were walking through a shop together, but how it had happened was anyone’s guess because he certainly hadn’t stolen them. In fact, he couldn’t even rememberhaving seen them on display in the first place. But just as they were leaving the shop, a rather large, rather heavy, rather sweaty man in a pale blue uniform approached them and asked in a very serious voice whether they could come with him please.
    ‘Why?’ Noah’s mother had asked. ‘What’s the problem here?’
    ‘Madam,’ said the security guard, using a word that made Noah wonder whether they had suddenly upped sticks and moved to France, ‘I have reason to believe that your little boy might be leaving the shop with an item that has not been paid for.’
    Noah had looked up at the man with a mixture of indignation and contempt. Indignation because he was many things – many things, indeed – but he was not a thief. And contempt because there was nothing that annoyed him more than grown-ups referring to him as a little boy, particularly when he was standing right there in front of them.
    ‘Why, that’s ridiculous,’ his mother said, shaking her head dismissively. ‘My son would never do such a thing.’
    ‘Madam, if you could just check his back pocket,’ said the security guard, and sure enough, when