Read Floods 6 for Free Online

of whom had been to the theatre before.
    â€˜Brilliant,’ said Mordonna, Nerlin and everyone else when they showed them the ticket. Noone else in the family, apart from Queen Scratchrot, had ever been to the theatre either.
    â€˜I went to the theatre lots of times when I was young,’ said the Queen.
    â€˜Really, I didn’t know that,’ said Mordonna.
    â€˜It was before you were born,’ said the Queen. ‘In fact, it was where I met your father.’
    â€˜What did you go to see, Granny?’ said Merlinmary.
    â€˜Oh, I didn’t go to see anything,’ said the Queen. ‘I was on the stage. I was one of the actors in a group of travelling players called the Mysterious Monarchs. All the actors were princes and princesses and we performed wonderful magical plays and exotic variety shows.’
    â€˜Wow, Granny, who would have thought?’ said Betty.
    â€˜Well, not me,’ said Mordonna. ‘Why haven’t you ever told us about it before?’
    â€˜Well, it all came to a rather tragic end,’ said the Queen, ‘and I’d rather not talk about it.’
    â€˜Oh go on,’ said everyone, ‘please.’
    â€˜No, it’s too upsetting,’ said the Queen.
    â€˜We’ll polish your bones with linseed oil,’ said Winchflat.
    â€˜And beeswax,’ said Betty.
    â€˜With live bees?’ said the Queen.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Oh, all right then,’ said the Queen, arranging her loose bones as tidily as she could before pulling the zip in the top of the backpack tight around her neck.
    She suspected that she might get quite emotional when she told them all her story and she wanted to make sure it was only her emotions that got carried away and not her ribs or any of those little tiny bones that are always so hard to find again.
    â€˜What none of you know,’ she began, ‘is that my husband, the mean, horrible, fat King Quatorze, was not my first true love. No, my first love,’ and here she blushed as only a skeleton with virtually no skin left on it can blush, ‘was the dashingly handsome, incredibly rich, but not very intelligent Prince Wynegum of Patagonia.’
    â€˜Patagonia? That’s where we go to school, Granny,’ said Merlinmary. ‘I never knew there was a Patagonian royal family.’
    â€˜Prince Wynegum was the last,’ said the Queen sadly. ‘We were to be married and carry on the royal line so that Patagonia could once more claim its place as a leading world power.’
    â€˜So what happened?’ said Mordonna.
    â€˜We were touring small country towns in Belgium,’ the Queen continued. ‘I said no, let’s go to Wales or Tasmania, but I was overruled. I could sense impending doom. Have I ever told you that I have an unerring ability to sense impending doom?’
    â€˜Yes,’ said everyone, beginning to sense impending boredom.
    â€˜Well, we were performing in the little town of Silly 32 on a cold December night. My beloved was about to do his high-wire act, where he walked blindfolded above the stage reciting Shakespeare’s The Tempest and juggling seven pork pies and a Jell-O model of the Eiffel Tower, before leaping into a bowl of custard balanced on a small boy’s head. This was nothing unusual. He had performed this act dozens of times, on several occasions with his trousers on fire, and even once with seven live chickens down his trousers – not at the same time his trousers were on fire, of course – but this night was different,’ said the Queen.
    She fell silent and for a few minutes no one said anything.
    â€˜Go on, Granny,’ said Betty.
    â€˜Well, on this particular night there was a terrible storm in Silly. The thunder and lightning were so loud you could hardly hear yourself speak, even on stage. Prince Wynegum, being right up near the roof on his high wire, could hear nothing but the hail crashing on the roof. But, being a