11 The Flying Parret

The Flying Parrot Claudette's left eye was still shining black when they got to the sweetshop, but she was no longer smirking strangely. She seemed to be back to her normal self. "You mustn't let the rejections get to you," she said to Bethany. "This is all just a small hiccup—I promise." The sweetshop was mostly empty, but it was throbbing with noise—because heavy-metal music was blaring, booming, and rattling from the speakers. The young, blue-

haired Miss Muddle was hunched over a worktop, trying to inject a miniaturized chocolate bar into a strawberry. She looked up from her experiment in a confused fashion. "Oh, jingling Jelly Babies, you're here! I was hoping to save your sweets as a surprise for Friday," said Miss Muddle, blinking at Claudette through her safety goggles. "Sweets? What sweets?" asked Claudette as Miss Muddle led them into her laboratory. "Why, the ones for your show, of course! The Cussocks commissioned me this morning because they thought some themed treats might help ticket sales," said Miss Muddle. She removed a flour-coated sheet from a table and showed off her creations. "Sooo, what do you think?"

The table was groaning from the weight of all the sweets on display. There were lollipop trees, which resembled the Wintlorian forest where Claudette and Patrick had grown up, and Elvis-shaped bonbons to mark the time that Patrick had spent on tour with the King. There was even going to be a sweet to reflect the jaunty joy of "Hurricane Picnic," because Miss Muddle was halfway through swirling some vats of frozen candy floss into the shapes of hurricanes. "This is all wonderful, but it's far too much," said Claudette, rubbing her talons nervously together. "I really want to keep the show as small as possible." Miss Muddle was too caught up in showing off her wares to take notice. She opened up a jar of purple Gobstoppers

(decorated with cartoonish pictures of Patrick's face) and offered them to Bethany and Claudette.

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"I rolled these in a variation of popping candy," she explained. "Most popping candy is designed to fizzle your tongue, but this one does fizzly things to your ears instead. When I get them right, they should make you feel like you've just heard someone sing a beautiful song. I thought I'd give them out to the audience after the show—so they can suck on them whenever they want to think about the concert again." Bethany and Claudette tried the Gobstoppers, and true to Miss Muddle's words, they both felt a pleasing tingle in their ears—the sort of feeling you experience when you hear someone sing live. "Thank you, Miss Muddle," said Claudette. "It's all far more than I was expecting, but… well, Patrick would love it."