The Great Pea Escape

Rafi was not eating his peas.

He was moving them. Round the plate, through the mashed potato, over the mountain of fish fingers, back again. Peas, in Rafi's opinion, were for moving.

Three of them had an opinion of their own.

"Now," said the first pea, whose name was Pip, and the three of them rolled to the edge of the plate, over the rim, across the table, and off.

Rafi saw them go. His mum did not. His mum was looking at her own dinner and saying, "Rafi, eat your peas," which was a thing she said about as often as she breathed.

The peas landed on the kitchen floor with three tiny bounces and set off.

"Where are we going?" said the second pea, who was called Pod.

"Adventure," said Pip.

"Is it far?" said the third pea, who was called Small, because she was.

"Everywhere is far," said Pip, "when you're a pea."

This turned out to be true. The kitchen floor, which Rafi crossed in six steps, took the peas the whole length of a fish finger to cross, and that was just the bit between the table leg and the fridge. The fridge hummed at them like a sleeping giant. They rolled under it. It was dark under there, and dusty, and there was a lonely raisin who had been under the fridge since March and had a lot to say about it.

"Don't stay," said the raisin. "You'll end up like me."

"We're on an adventure," said Pip.

"That's what I said," said the raisin.

They rolled on. They crossed the mat by the back door, which was like rolling through a forest. They climbed the dog's bowl, which was empty, and looked out from the rim as if from the top of a mountain, and the dog came in and sniffed them and decided that peas were not worth it, which was a relief and also slightly insulting.

"I'm tired," said Small.

"Adventurers don't get tired," said Pip, but he was slowing down too, and Pod had stopped rolling altogether and was just lying on his side under the kitchen chair, looking up at the enormous ceiling.

"It's very big out here," said Pod. "On the plate, everything was close."

The peas lay still. From under the chair they could see the table, far above, where the plate had been. They could hear Rafi's mum saying, "Right, bath," and Rafi's chair scraping back, and feet, enormous feet, going away up the stairs.

"Pip," said Small, in the smallest voice a small pea has. "I want to go home."

Pip looked at the table. It was very high. Then he looked at the floor, where a spoon had fallen during dinner and lay with its bowl tipped up like a tiny bed.

"Nearly home," he said.

The three peas rolled over to the spoon and climbed in, one, two, three, and fitted exactly, side by side, in the curve of it. It was smooth and cool and it held them the way the plate used to, close, with no faraway in it anywhere.

"Better," said Pod.

"Much," said Small.

Above them, the kitchen light went off. The fridge hummed its giant's hum. Somewhere upstairs a bath was running and a boy was being told, for the last time that day, about peas.

"Pip," whispered Pod, "did we have an adventure?"

Pip thought about the fridge and the raisin and the dog and the mountain of the dog's bowl.

"Yes," he said. "That was it. That was the whole thing."

And the three peas, who had gone everywhere a pea can go, fell asleep in a spoon, and in the morning Rafi found them, and for reasons he could never explain, he ate them first.