Vetta Mindal placed the straw boater with its blue and yellow ribbon atop her short blonde hair, tilting it to just the right angle. She then slipped a blazer over her blouse, smoothed down the grey pleats of her skirt and straightened the wrinkles in her socks. They were of such a luminous white the contrast made her pale pinkish legs seem lightly tanned as if they had caught something of the autumn sunshine that characterised the summer-all-year-round climate of Frangea.

Standing before a full length mirror Vetta appraised her regulation uniform and looked down at her shoes a little apprehensively. For they were not regulation white with blue trim. Indeed she had seen some older girls wearing shoes with blue uppers and yellow soles that seemed the very height of conformity, but today Vetta was a rebel. Her shoes were pink.

"Are we to be demoted, promoted or commuted?" Meresinth Woodbine joked as she stood next to her in front of the mirror. "You look as if you have been summoned to the presence of our august leader Miss Plazenby for a dressing down, hence the prior act of dressing up."

"I am about to embark on an adventure," Vetta replied with a smile. "It is always very exciting to walk down this great mountain to where the people of Frangea gather in settlements of such variety and fascination."

"You're off on a trip down to Cherryball Flats?" Meresinth said. "Shopping spree? I'll come with you as I need to stock up on some bottles of fizzy lemon so I can perfect my belching technique. Oh, yes, and there's one more thing."

"And what is that?" Vetta asked in all innocence.

Meresinth reached out and tilted Vetta's straw hat a little more to the right.

"Now you're ready."

Meresinth did not bother with a hat or blazer and let her long black hair flutter freely in the breeze that met the two girls on the steps of Miss Plazenby's Extremely Exclusive Seminary for Girls. It was a mild afternoon as usual and lessons were done for the day. This was free time for everyone and pupils were milling about the grounds of the school intent on their own adventures. Some were even like Meresinth and Vetta, preparing to tread the wide and sloping pathway down the side of Mount Syzywyg towards the lower foothills where Cherryball Flats could be found. The breeze was strong enough to make the signature braid in Meresinth's hair dance around her shoulders as the girls walked, ignoring the others around them, for they were on their own exclusive mission.

"I recall," Vetta said softly, admiring the way the other girl's hair caught the sunlight with glossy dark tints, "the sudden and audible expulsion of air from within may be a transgression of rules. Section thirty seven, paragraph nine says something of this. The expulsion of trapped air is a healthy exercise but caution in the manner of it is advisable. A sudden and loud explosion of sound as the result of said expulsion could be deemed unseemly, especially in company. It is recommended when not alone to discreetly expel unwanted gases by small and careful increments," she quoted with uncanny exactitude.

"Where's the fun in that?" Meresinth exploded into rule-threatening indignation. "Besides, why does this school have rules?" gesturing backwards for they had left the great main building behind them among the trees by this time and were now well on their way down the embanked path that ran alongside the roadway. From such a height they could see the bright blue line of ocean in the distance as they walked. "Are we not being taught to make our own rules, for we are the elite girls of the world, pupils of Miss Plazenby's. This is where the daughters of nations are gathered to plan the future of Winkels near and far."

"Effective ways to belch are significant in this?" Vetta countered bravely and the other girl laughed. There was an extended period of silence after this as the two girls trudged down the slope, their shoes kicking up a little dust in the compacted earth that formed the path. Then Vetta stopped.

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"Well, here we are," she said brightly. Meresinth looked around her at a scattering of trees, a turn in the road and a sign upon a grassy mound advertising chocolate in novelty shapes.

"Well, here we aren't," she stated in a doubtful voice.

"Don't you think it would be more exciting to take the other track into Cherryball Flats, the path less frequented?" and Vetta indicated a narrow clearing that split off from the main pathway away from the road. It certainly looked less frequented as patches were green with untrod grass and pink daisies. Rustling bushes nudged at the track here and there making it seem a dead end in places and from where Meresinth stood it even seemed to go upwards and away from the settlement in the valley below.

"Uh, that kind of passes through the less affluent parts of the Flats, so I'm told," she said with increasing doubt. It must be the shoes, she thought, those daring pink shoes of Vetta's egging her on to adventurous journeys. "Less frequented for a reason."

"And what might that be?"

"Fewer people go that way," and Meresinth shook her head hopelessly. "Come along, hope you don't mind steps, as there are more precipitous drops than along Pinecone Boulevard."

"Really? We only have those in buildings usually or at artificial lookout points in Poldorama." Vetta's homeland was as flat as a sheet of paper where altitude was a mere metaphysical concept. Contour maps simply did not exist. If it were not for the curvature of Winkel World's globe one could have communicated with any part of the country over its million square miles at the speed of light, through a telescope of course, and providing a cow did not pause along the line of sight to munch on a particularly tasty cluster of buttercups during an interesting point in the conversation.

This really was going to be an adventure for the poor girl, Meresinth thought with detached amusement, and an education too, which should sit well with her. After all she was often saying education was one of the five well-springs of joy.

The girls walked amid ferns and grasses that tickled their legs as they meandered along the uneven track, seeing through gaps in the trees every now and then the roofs of houses and shops lower down in Cherryball Flats. Some of the properties they passed looked a little neglected and gardens attached to them seemed to attract all sorts of discarded junk, including the rotorless fuselage of a small flitter in one backyard. Deflated inflatables, swingless swings, wheels without tyres and tyres without wheels added to the variety.

"This is all very picturesque," Vetta said optimistically as she peered through a fence at a growling dog as it guarded what appeared to be runaway cabbages, lidless boxes and at least three cushions without stuffings. Then she squeaked in excitement as farther along she came across her first significant drop, namely stone steps down to a lower pathway that turned towards the sea and a narrow alleyway shaded from the sun.

"Mind how you go," Meresinth warned for broken glass covered a part of the stairway as if placed there by malicious imps the previous night. "Don't want your nice pink shoes to be ruined."

Another set of steps were safely negotiated at the end of the alleyway and they were back out in sunshine again, looking across at more carefully maintained properties. Some stores even appeared as if they had customers on occasion. Cherryball Flats was best likened to a shiny shell all iridescent and beautiful on the surface most usually seen. Turn it over and there were strange excrescences on the underside, dark little crannies and places where unsavoury things burrowed and made their homes. Pupils of an Extremely Exclusive school were not often seen passing along such hidden ways so that a few stares met the youngsters as they dodged around merchandise littering sidewalks and pavements.

"Such lovely clapboard," Meresinth commented loudly at a storekeeper as he watched them pass his door while stroking a ginger cat. He was a fishmonger and the cat looked quite content with things, but the man seemed rather perplexed at the sight of blue and yellow striped girls sauntering past in the dusty way. "Awesome handmade nails," she added, flicking her long black braid over a shoulder for emphasis.

A sloping cobbled path between two tall buildings were a hopeful sign they were about to join the land of the living, those that actually managed to earn a living to be more precise, when the girls were stopped in their tracks by a body lying in their way, the body of a boy.