Excalibur by Colin Thompson

sausage.
    â€˜Be our spy,’ said the Princess.
    â€˜Right,’ said Fissure. ‘What am I going to spy on then?’
    â€˜Everything.’
    â€˜Right. So when do I get the sausage?’
    â€˜Every time you tell us something useful, I will give you a slice.’
    â€˜Right, I’ll get started right away,’ said Fissure.
    â€˜Oh, and one thing before you go,’ said Princess Floridian as casually as she could. ‘It’s not important, but um, er, I don’t suppose you’ve seen a sort of swordthing sticking out of a bit of a rock out in the lake somewhere, have you?’
    â€˜Do you want me to spy on it?’
    â€˜Well, only if you happen to see it,’ said the Princess. ‘It’s not for me, you understand, but I’ve got a friend who absolutely loves swords and he’d be quite sort of excited, well, no, excited is too strong a word. I mean he…’
    â€˜Your friend?’
    â€˜Yes, my friend. He’d be quite interested to know where it is,’ said the Princess.
    â€˜Oh.’
    â€˜So if you happen to see this sort of sword thing, you know, when you’re flying around over the lake around all those lovely little islands, my friend would be rather sort of happy to know where it is. I think it belonged to a friend of his who might have dropped it or something like that.’
    â€˜So it belongs to your friend’s friend then?’ said Fissure.
    â€˜That’s it,’ said the Princess. ‘And he’s a good friend of mine. I don’t mean my friend’s friend – I’ve never met him – I mean my friend. So it would bereally nice if we could find the sword for him.’
    â€˜OK.’
    â€˜I would think he – my friend, that is – would be so pleased if you did find it that he would want me to give you an extra slice of blood sausage, if you found his friend’s sword, that is.’
    â€˜OK,’ said Fissure. ‘Say no more. I’m on the case.’
    And with that he flew off over the lake and all the islands.

 
    A lot of people think that vampire bats were once human beings that were turned into vampires one night while they were asleep and a vampire flew into their room and bit them in the neck. This is both true and completely wrong because there are vampires and vampire bats. 43
    Here are the dictionary definitions:
    vampire n. 1. a corpse supposed, in European folklore, to leave its grave at night to drink the blood of the living by biting their necks with long pointed canine teeth. This then turns their victims into vampires or, worse still, geography teachers or, even worser, geography teachers in corduroy jackets who teach their students about Belgium and nowhere else. 2. See vampire bat.
    vampire bat n. a small bat that feeds on the blood of mammals, birds and humans, 44 using its two sharp incisor teeth and anticoagulant saliva, found mainly in tropical America, Manhattan and Avalon. Contrary to a widely held misunderstanding among book editors and other people, vampire bats do not change into people. They are bats all the time.
    Avalon had both types of vampire, but the ones we are concerned with now are the vampire bats. There are no vampire graves inside Camelot itself. They are all in a small town by the seaside called Byton Bay where people go on holiday to lose weight by having a couple of pints of blood sucked out of them and get a nice tan.
    Vampire bats, on the other hand, do not live in graves because they are not human corpses. They are small furry mammals that hang upside down from beams in the towers of big castles like Camelot. They are actually quite soft and cuddly. It’s just that theydrink blood – and who hasn’t done that now and then? Actually, even if they don’t suck your blood, their bite alone can give you some very unpleasant diseases. There is one called Lyssavirus which kills you and another called Rabies 45 which makes you