The Light switch

Chapter Eight

When Jane woke up, she was lying in a warm comfortable bed under a blanket that like the duvet whales seemed to be stitched together from hundreds of different patterns. She felt dizzy and tired, her head hurt, and it looked as though a big bump was growing there. Soon all her pain was to be forgotten however, as beside her in an explosion of noise Tilly announced herself.

"Jane your awake! We have been so worried we thought you would never wake up, everyone quick come over Jane has woken up!" Cried Tilly hugging and kissing her friend.

Coming into the room that Tilly explained was her own room as she would not let her friend be looked after anywhere else, came Tilly's family.

There was Elias who was grinning from ear to ear despite having an arm bandaged in a sling, his sister Winnie who was crying and blowing her nose like a trumpet as she was so happy to see Jane awake. The twins John and James stood smiling and each carrying a box of chocolate one for Jane and one for Tilly. That, however, was not all of Tilly's family that had come to visit her and their brave relative.

Seventeen brothers and sisters stood around the bed all smiling, clapping, and telling Jane how brave and clever her and Tilly had been. But there was one other blanketsnatcher who particularly stood out to Jane.

She was very round for a blanketsnatcher and had a smile like sunshine. Her hair was bright blue like her sparkling kind eyes, and she glowed with kindness.

"Jane, this is my mum." Said Tilly gently holding her hand.

"Hello Jane, Tilly has told me all about how you have had such a brave adventure. I cannot say thank you enough for your looking after my daughter and for saving not just my family, but all of us."

"Well we really saved each other." Said Jane with a smile, "I could not have done it without Tilly." And she gave Tilly's hand a little squeeze.

"How did you manage to do it Jane?" Asked Elias, "Tilly says that when she passed out everything was still in mayhem?"

"Well I remembered the question I asked you about the electric light and the goblins, and then about when I was trying to escape the terror troll and it all just clicked. The goblins were not real like the monster the terror troll made was not real, they were made up only of shadows that used to dance on walls because firelight flickers. I didn't need to be scared of shadows and so I didn't need to be scared of them. Something I can't understand though." Said Jane, "Why did they not disappear in the light like the terror troll? Or vanish once I realised what they were?"

Elias scratched his mess of red hair.

"Well terror trolls vanish because they only feed off your fear for a short time. These goblins have been around since humans first had fire, maybe all those years of children's imaginations, fear of the dark, and being scared by shadows, can't just be taken away in one go."

"Maybe." Said Jane, going to suck on the rubber of her pencil only to discover it must have been lost on the adventure.

"Oh one more thing, where do the gnomes live?"

Tilly's families faces looked confused but the face of Elias and Alice, Tilly's mum, dropped.

"Gnomes? Surely you must have seen them on the Duvet whales when you released them?" Asked Elias.

"Lord Tuskmouth when he had me, and Tilly captured in the tent with the terror troll, said he had to go and get some gnomes and recapture the duvet whales. I know what the whales are, but I never came across any gnomes and I had so many questions when we last spoke it slipped my mind?"

Alice whispered something to Elias and quickly left the room followed by some of her older children. Jane was beginning to get worried; she was afraid she had said or done something very wrong asking about the gnomes.