Nolan and Sebastian would often go over to play at each other’s houses, but if he was being honest; Nolan preferred going to Sebastian’s house the most. Because in his garden, Sebastian had the most incredible treehouse - easily the best that Nolan ever seen.
If you looked from the back door of the house, it looked quite small and simple. Just a ladder going up into a square wooden hut in the lower branches of the large oak tree. But once you’d climbed up into that, there was another passage leading off the far wall of the room which led to a higher room at the back of the tree. And from there, you could climb up through the ceiling into a wooden shaft - with slats on the inside for your hands and feet to grip onto - into another higher room right in the middle of the enormous oak. And from there, a rope ladder took you up to an open platform near the top of the tree which was SO high that you could look over Sebastian’s house in one direction, and far, far over the fields towards the Meadows in the other direction.
It had been so complicated to build and Bense and Elsie Higherground, the best builders in Horsmarlonerpool, had been asked to do it. And Sebastian knew that he had the most wonderful place to play in the whole town.
On this particular day, when he and Nolan were in the middle room just up from the from the small hut on the first level, they saw a balloon drift past the window. They climbed through the ceiling and up the wooden shaft to the higher room, and then up to the open platform on the roof to try and catch it.
The balloon was drifting towards them and they both leaned over the edge of the platform to try and grasp it when Nolan tipped himself too far over the barrier and cried out as he began to feel himself fall. Sebastian reached over to try and grab him, but they both toppled over the edge, into some branches, and then - very painfully - crashed down through them to the grass below.
They both cried out in pain, and Sebastian’s mummy and daddy ran out of the kitchen to see what the matter was. They both looked aghast!
“Your arms!” said Mummy. And sure enough, Nolan and Sebastian had both broken their arms in the fall.
An ambulance arrived only three minutes later, driven by nurse Clive, and took them out to Purewell Hospital to the west of town. In the emergency room, Professor Renata looked at them both and shook her head with a smile.
“Two broken arms, one each. That seems fair doesn’t it?”
But neither Nolan or Sebastian smiled.
“Well I think you’re both very lucky,” said Professor Renata. “After a fall like that I think you must be very tough indeed to only have a couple of broken arms. And I have some very good news for you - anyone with a broken arm gets to go inside a very special machine.”
Sebastian and Nolan looked at each other.
“Inside a machine?”
“This way!” said Professor Renata and led them into the X-Ray room where Doctor Aashi was waiting in front of a huge machine with a large hole through it that looked a little bit like a space ship.
“In you go!” said Doctor Aashi, and Nolan and Sebastian took it in turns to lie on their back and slide into the machine which glowed red and green.
When they got out, Doctor Aashi pointed to a screen on the wall which showed the bones of both their arms with a nasty crack in each.
“These will be simple to fix!” said Doctor Aashi. “Nurse Clive, please take our two adventurers to the ward and put on the casts.”
Nolan and Sebastian had beds next to each other, and within a few minutes were sat up in them with both their right arms covered in thick plaster.
“Now, the most important thing is, you drink plenty of water,” said Nurse Clive.
“But water doesn’t fix broken arms,” said Nolan.
“Ah. But the water here at Purewell Hospital does,” said nurse Clive. “Why do you think this wonderful hospital is called Purewell? Because the water comes from a well so pure, and so magical, it can fix just about anything.”
And nurse Clive wasn’t making it up. The water at the hospital came down a special pipe that started at the top of Lomberstack Mountain and gathered in a well beneath the hospital. The snow at the top of the mountain had lots of special crystals in it, and when it melted and flowed down the pipe, it really was just like medicine.
But after two days of being in the hospital and drinking the water, Nolan and Sebastian didn’t feel any better. In fact, they both had a fever and their arms hurt even more. And not only that, all the other patients in the hospital were all feeling worse too.
Professor Renata, Doctor Aashi and Nurse Clive just couldn’t understand what was going on. It was as if their beloved hospital was making people iller and not better.
So when Ben and Emily came in to visit Nolan and Sebastian and saw everyone in the ward feeling so sick, they decided to investigate. If the water comes from the top of Lomberstack Mountain, a place they know very well because their friend Belvedere lived there, then that must be where the problem was.
That afternoon, Ben and Emily trekked up Lomberstack Mountain, past the pastures, past the lake, past the forest, all the way to the snowy top where the pipe that fed the well started. They hid behind some trees and watched. There was the problem!
Pebbles and Crater, the two only really naughty people in Horsmarlonerpool, were tipping lots of rotten food and muck into the pipe. They were poisoning the well!
Ben and Emily ran up to Belvedere’s house and breathlessly told him the problem. He stormed down to the pipe, and ran up to Pebbles and Crater.
“Criminals!” he bellowed.
Pebbles and Crater looked around in sheer terror!
“That’s my snow pipe!” growled Belvedere, and roared. Pebbles and Crater ran and tumbled and fell all the way down to the lake and fell in with a splosh. Freezing cold, they had to trudge all the way back to their house in wet clothes and spent the next two weeks indoors with streaming noses and the most awful shivers.
For the next few days, up at the top of the mountain, Belvedere gathered all the snow he could hold in his huge furry hands and shoved it down the pipe. Gallons and gallons, thousands of gallons, of the magical crystal snow flooded down the pipe and into the well below the hospital.
Soon, the water at Purewell hospital was running as clear and flawless as it ever had done. And before too long, Nolan and Sebastian were ready to go home.
Their arms were still in a cast, but already felt stronger. And they sat in the kitchen of Sebastian’s house whilst Sebastian’s daddy made tomato soup.
“I suppose they told you at the hospital that their water was all magical?” said Daddy.
“Well it IS,” said Nolan. “It comes from the top of Lomberstack Mountain. Belvedere puts the snow into a pipe and it goes down into a well.”
“That’s true enough,” said Daddy. “But what they probably didn’t tell you, is that it’s not just the hospital that gets the magic water. The whole town does! They just say that at the hospital to make you feel better. It’s all in the mind!”
“Do you mean,” said Sebastian. “That the water from the tap in this house, or in Nolan’s house, is magic water too?”
“Of course!” said Daddy.
Nolan and Sebastian rushed to the tap and filled two large glasses of water for themselves.
“I’m going to drink four glasses of water a day,” said Nolan.
“I’m going to drink five!” said Sebastian.
“I’m going to drink six!” said Nolan as they both finished their glasses and filled up another.
Sebastian’s daddy winked at mummy. They were always trying to think of ways to get Sebastian to drink more water, and this time they might just have found it.
