Silent Fred gestured at her backpack. Nicola handed it over and he stowed it carefully on a ledge under the sleigh. He did the same for everyone else, and then helped them all climb aboard.
There were two seats on either side of the sleigh facing each other. Once they were all sitting down, Silent Fred spread a soft white rug across their knees. He produced a red thermos and poured each of them a mug of creamy hot chocolate.
'That smells so good!' said Katie.
Silent Fred beamed at her and then produced a plastic container full of pale pink, squishy marshmallows. He popped one into each mug.
Finally, he lifted his top hat again, gave another little bow and walked back around to the front of the sleigh. He waved his big white feather high in the air and brought it down softly on the backs of the ShobGobbles. The sleigh slid gently through the snow with a jingle of bells.
'Oh!' Sean's head fell back against the seat. His eyes were glazed and dreamy.
'What's the matter?' asked Nicola.
Sean said, 'I just had some hot chocolate. Taste it. It's . . . it's just . . . taste it!'
Nicola took a sip. It was like nothing she'd ever tasted in her life. It was as if all the hot chocolates she'd ever had before had only been pretending to be hot chocolate. This was so much richer and creamier, but it was more than that - it was an entirely different sensation of drinking. Nicola imagined her tastebuds throwing streamers in the air and dancing in the streets.
She looked around and saw similar expressions of dazed bliss on everyone's faces - even Greta's.
Shimlara smacked her lips. 'If you think this is good, wait till you taste your first bar of ShobbleChoc!'
Soft flakes of snow began to fall. Nicola cradled her mug of hot chocolate in her hands, snug and warm under the white rug. She looked around at a strange world awash with the colours of the rainbows and thought about her great-grandmother. Grammy said she had some memories from the year 1930 that were as clear as yesterday. Nicola thought: I'll remember this when I'm one hundred years old.
8
'Here come some people!' said Tyler.
They'd been travelling in the sleigh for about twenty minutes without seeing a single thing other than large, flat, snow-covered fields.
Now, in the distance, they could see a crowd of people walking towards them. As the people saw the sleigh ahead they obligingly stepped off the track to let them pass. Nicola could hear their excited shouts as they watched the sleigh approach.
The first thing Nicola noticed about the people of Shobble was that they were extremely dirty.
Some of them were splattered with a pink gooey substance that clung to their clothes and faces. They were wearing hard hats and carrying tools. Others were drenched in a shiny, dark brown liquid, so only the whites of their eyes and their teeth were visible.
'They must be the marshmallow miners and chocolate drillers on their way home from work,' said Shimlara.
The people looked quite similar to Silent Fred. They all had fuzzy hair and round chubby faces. Their shoulders were slumped with exhaustion, as if they'd been working very hard. However, when they caught sight of the Space Brigade, their faces broke into friendly smiles. They waved enthusiastically and called out words of welcome like, 'Warm Shobble Greetings, strangers!' and 'Shobble Joy to you and yours!'
The Space Brigade smiled and waved back. The people of Shobble really did seem especially nice.
They had travelled for another ten minutes when Silent Fred turned around and showed them his board. He'd written: Marshmallow mine coming up on your right.
They could hear the distant clanking of machinery. A divine smell filled their nostrils. It was like a mixture of strawberries, honey and rain on a summer's day. Nicola could see the other members of the Space Brigade lifting their noses high and sniffing the air like dogs.
As they got closer to the mine, the smell became even stronger, until Nicola's head was swimming. She looked out and saw a hive of activity. There were hundreds of miners busy at work. A foreman yelled instructions at a miner driving a forklift. A group of miners appeared at the top of a mineshaft, drenched in marshmallow, and were immediately replaced by another group. 'Look,' said Sean, as one of the forklifts lifted a huge vat of bubbling pink marshmallow and poured it into a waiting container on the back of a truck.
'It's amaz -' began Tyler.
A huge explosion drowned out the rest of his words.
The ShobGobbles reared up in terror and the sleigh rocked violently. Nicola clung to the side, spilling what was left of her hot chocolate on the white rug. She could see a massive ball of red smoke right where the forklift carrying the vat of marshmallow had been. Gradually it cleared and Nicola saw that the vat had been overturned in the explosion. The miners who had been standing nearby were covered head to foot in marshmallow. Those who had been further away were removing their helmets and scratching their heads.
Nicola looked back at her friends in the sleigh and saw that they were all covered in tiny pink shreds of marshmallow. Sean was busy peeling them off his clothes and eating them.
Silent Fred turned around again with his board. You all okay?
'We're fine,' answered Nicola. 'What happened?'