Free Hazel by A. N. Wilson Page B

silent.
    ‘I heard her. I really heard her out here,’ said the girl.
    ‘You’re making such a noise yourself, how could you hear her?’ her brother asked crossly.
    ‘She was squealing,’ said the girl.
    ‘I can’t see her,’ said the boy.
    Hazel heard him kick the hall chair and scrape its legs on the tiles. The children were looking underneath the chair. Then they opened the cupboard under the stairs and called Hazel’s
name. They had no idea that she was just under their noses, stuck in the Wellington boot.
    Inside the boot it was still very dark. It also felt hot and Hazel was beginning to find it difficult to breathe. There was another strange thing. The longer she stayed in the narrow tunnel, the
narrower it seemed. She felt the sides of the boot grow tighter and tighter against her sides. Surely she was not actually getting fatter inside the boot? By now she was ravenously hungry, and she
could not remember when she last saw a decent cabbage stalk or a bowl of bran. It was a sorry state that Hazel had got herself into, and the thought of it made her start squealing again. This time
she was not squealing to alert the children. She was just squealing in despair.
    ‘I heard her that time,’ said the boy. ‘I suppose she hasn’t got underneath that pile of boots and shoes by the back door?’
    No sooner had these words been spoken than Hazel felt the tunnel heaving and shaking and shuddering.
    Thump!
    Something had fallen on top of the tunnel.
    Bang!
    To the right and left of her, boots, shoes, roller-skates, trainers, tennis balls, and rubber flip-flops were being thrown.
    And then Hazel got the feeling you get in a fairground if ever you are brave and silly enough to go on the roller coaster. Her stomach heaved and jumped. And although she was still squeezed
tight in the blackness of the tunnel, she felt the tunnel being lifted into the air.
    ‘She’s in the Wellington boot!’ the boy cried aloud from the back door.
    ‘Where? Where? Give her to me!’ shouted his sister.
    ‘Don’t be rough.’
    ‘I’m not being rough.’
    ‘You are.’
    ‘Give her to me,’ said the girl crossly.
    While these words were being exchanged, Hazel could feel the tunnel swaying about in the air and being dragged to and fro. And then she heard the girl say, ‘We’ll put you on the
kitchen table, Hazel dear, and we shall have you out in a jiffy.’
    ‘A jiffy, eh?’ thought Hazel. ‘Well, I’d rather be in a jiffy than in a tunnel. Just as long as it isn’t what I would call a
narrow
jiffy.’
    But before she had time to ask herself what a jiffy
was
, Hazel was screaming with violent agony and terror. The girl’s hand had reached inside the Wellington boot and was pulling
Hazel by her hind legs. It felt as if she were having her legs pulled off. However much the girl pulled at the back, the front part of Hazel’s body still remained stuck in the boot. And the
more the girl pulled, the more Hazel screamed and the more she wanted to get away from the pain by burrowing deeper and deeper into the toe of the boot.
    ‘You’re hurting her,’ said the boy.
    ‘I’m trying to get her out. Come on, Hazel.’
    And once more, the girl thrust her hand into the boot in an attempt to extricate the captive.
    But Hazel was stuck. She was more stuck than ever. And by now her screams could have been heard half a mile away. She sounded like a big farmyard pig just about to be made into bacon.
    ‘Let’s have a go,’ said the boy.
    But the boy’s hand was bigger than his sister’s, and he was afraid to get hold of Hazel lest he squash her altogether. He tried, as gently as he could, to hold the boot upside down
and to shake Hazel out. Her screams did not grow any quieter.
    ‘There is only one thing to do,’ said the girl. ‘We will have to cut the boot with some scissors, the way some babies are born.’
    ‘Mum will go spare if you cut my boot,’ said the boy.
    ‘But Hazel is
stuck
,’ said the girl.
    Hazel,