Free Floods 6 by Colin Thompson

are really angry,’ she whispered. ‘They were all taken away from their families when they were babies and have never seen them since. This will take a bit of sorting out.’
    â€˜Will it be difficult to find their parents?’ said Betty.
    â€˜No, that bit’s easy,’ said Mordonna. ‘I can do a quick DNA test, transport it to a laboratory in the Congo and get them to do comparison tests on the International Chimpanzee DNA Database. We can do that before the first custard pie falls inside the first pair of clown trousers.’
    â€˜So what’s the problem?’
    â€˜None of them want to go back to the Congo,’ said Mordonna. ‘They want to stay here and get revenge and they want to get it over and over again.’
    She clicked her fingers and the oldest chimp came over and climbedinto her lap. As chimp and witch communicated telepathically, one of the clowns came marching over with a very angry look on his face.
    â€˜What do you think you are doing?’ he snapped and, under his breath, he added, ‘Just you wait until later, you little troublemaker.’
    As he reached out for the chimp it screamed at him and bit him on the hand. The clown jumped backwards, tripped over his big silly clown shoes and fell flat on his back. Two other chimps raced over and threw custard pies at the fallen clown. Then the first chimp wiped them all over the clown’s face…
    â€¦with her bottom.
    The audience exploded with laughter. They all thought it was part of the show. As the two other clowns ran over, Mordonna clicked her fingers again and their trousers fell down, making them fall flat on their faces. The five chimpanzees ran round the circus ring grabbing all the ice-creams off the audience and throwing them at the three clowns. When the children saw what the chimpswanted them for, they were only too happy to hand them over.
    Now, what most people don’t realise is that chimpanzees can actually talk and are a lot more intelligent than many human beings. They just pretend they can only grunt and aren’t very bright to avoid the millions of problems that speaking with mankind would bring them. So while Mordonna was tempted to get the leading chimp to speak, she didn’t. She sent her thoughts out into the fairground and searched through all the people working there until she found one with a kind heart. There were quite a few people with kind hearts, but Mordonna needed just the right one. She found the perfect person: Carla Divine, a girl of eighteen who wanted to be a clown, but wasn’t allowed to because she was a girl.
    While the five chimpanzees kept the three human clowns pinned to the floor with biting, bottom wiping and screaming, Mordonna cast her spell. Carla Divine left the coconut shy where she was working and went back to her caravan.She locked the door and put on the secret clown costume she had made herself, but never told a single soul about. Whenever she put on the big, baggy red silk trousers and the huge spotty bow tie and the funny shoes, she was overcome with a feeling of extreme happiness. Once she had completed the picture by putting on the makeup with the big red clown grin, a little voice inside her head kept saying, It doesn’t get any better than this , over and over again.

    Then she marched into the circus tent and into the middle of the ring. Instantly the five chimps rushed up to her and kissed her hands. The chimps adored her because she had always treated them as her equals and preferred to be with them than most of the humans in the circus. This was because chimps, like labradors, spend huge amounts of time thinking, It doesn’t get any better than this. 42
    The audience cheered and cheered.
    Carla drank in the applause for a few minutesand then held up her hand. You could have heard a pin drop.
    â€˜Well, boys and girls,’ said Carla Divine. ‘What do we have here?’
    The chimps jumped up and down and