Time-Travel Bath Bomb Read Online Free PDF Page B

he could reach his coat, which was hanging from a coat hook on the wall.
    The other girls huddled together, whispering and snickering. Then the bravest one turned to face Lisa and Nilly, while the others hid behind her and laughed.
    “So, do you two turtledoves have anything exciting planned for the weekend?”
    “First of all, my dear girl, you have no idea what turtledoves are,” Nilly said, buttoning up his jacket, which he did quickly since there was room for only two buttons on it. “But, if you do have space in your brain, you can of course try to store the information that turtledoves are owl-like doves with turtle shells that live by scratching out the eyes of their own young. Second of all, we were invited to some horrifically boring party here in town that we just can’t be bothered to attend. Oslo is such a boring little city,” Nilly yawned.
    “Boring like you,” the girl said, lowering her hands, but it didn’t seem like she quite knew what else to say. So she said, “Hello!”
    “Yeah, HELLO!” the other girls repeated behind her back. But one of them just couldn’t stop herself from asking, “So . . . so what are you guys going to do then?”
    “We . . .” Nilly said, hopping down off the bench to stand next to Lisa, “are going to the Moulin Rouge in Paris to dance the cancan. Have an exciting weekend here in town, kids.”
    Lisa didn’t look at them, but she knew that the girls were standing there gaping as she and Nilly turned their backs and walked out into the glittering autumn sunlight.
    NILLY AND LISA walked over to the bus stop and caught the number seventeen to Oslo City Hall. There they got off and found their way to Rosenkrantz Street, which is a heavily trafficked and rather narrow street with lots of shops and plenty of people on the pavements. On one of the narrowest stretches of Rosenkrantz Street, above a door painted bright red, there was a little display window crammed full of clocks and, sure enough, a sign hanging out front that read TRENCH COAT CLOCK SHOP .
    It turned out that the springs in the closing mechanism on the front door were so tight that they had to push against them with their full weight. And, even then, they only just barely managed to force the door open. The springs squeaked in protest, as if they really had no desire to let Nilly and Lisa in. Once the two had finally made it inside and let go of the door, it slammed shut behind them with an angry bang. In an instant all the noise from the street behind them was gone and all that could be heard were clocks ticking. Tick-tock-tick et cetera. They looked around. Although the sun was shining outside, it was strangely dark inside the deserted shop. It was as if they’d suddenly walked into a different world. There seemed to be hundreds of clocks in here! They were everywhere – on the walls, on shelves and tables.
    “Hello?” Nilly called.
    No one answered.
    “These clocks all look so old,” Lisa whispered. “And so strange. Look at that one over there, the one with the second hand. It’s running . . . backwards.”
    Just then, a groaning, screeching squeak, like from an ungreased wheel, became audible through the ticking.
    Nilly and Lisa both stared in the direction the sound was coming from, the other end of the shop, where there was an orange curtain with an elephant on it.
    “What’s—” Lisa started to whisper, but just then the curtain was yanked aside.
    Lisa and Nilly gasped. A figure came careening towards them. It was a tall woman – taller than either of them had ever seen before – and everything about her was thin, elongated and sharp. Apart from her hairdo, which looked like one of those tumble-weeds that rolls around in the desert and takes root wherever the wind blows it. This specific tumbleweed had taken root over a face whose skin was stretched so tight it was impossible to say how old it was. The face was also decorated with plenty of black make-up and bright red lipstick