Mum was frantically calling her name over and over.

Dad was pacing up and down the kitchen floor, then round the small garden, then up and down the road, and then back to the kitchen again. Teddy Blue watched knowing that Dad could pace till the soles on his shoes were worn and Mum could call till her voice failed but they couldn’t reach Tilda.

‘Yes police’ Mum said faintly into her phone, as if for the first time she faced the fact that Tilda wasn’t playing hide and seek she was missing missing, as in not anywhere.

Dad ran his hand through his hair. “I could have sworn she was upstairs in her room” he muttered over and over. Mum shot him a savage look as if to say it was all his fault.

Teddy Blue quietly shuffled upstairs, every time a grown up looked his way he froze or fell to the floor. Over years he had perfected the technique and the grown ups never clued up to his abilities to understand, to move or even to talk. Tilda knew of course, but no matter how often she told her parents that Teddy Blue had turned on the TV, drawn on the walls or spilt the drink but grown ups never believed her and even scolded her for lying.

Teddy Blue closed the bedroom door and sat for a moment thinking. Tilda needed him. Usually he liked to cause a bit of mischief and light up her smile with his antics but this was serious. He looked under the bed and all he could see where the whites of his eyes, ‘Hey’ said Teddy. The MUTB just blinked. ‘Tilda’s in trouble’ he said. MUTB growled and edged nearer the light at the edge of the bed.

‘Do you need help?’ A faint tinkly voice in a halo of light that seemed to float round the room reached them.

Teddy Blue nodded. And the monster shuffled into the light and stood next to the floating light. When he was out from under the bed MUTB looked small and helpless not like the terrifying entity Tilda believed him to be.

‘She’s stuck’ Teddy said and nodded sadly. ‘Stuck in the mirror. She was putting on her princess wig and tiara when the mirror grabbed her and now she’s gone. The grown ups are sick with worry and so am I’.

The Guardian Angel appeared now, no longer just a twinkly light, and the monster growled. ‘How can we help? He asked his voice dark and raspy.

The mirror looked darkly at them and laughed. And on it’s face appeared the words YOU MUST TRADE - I WILL TAKE ONE OF YOU FOR THE GIRL.

‘I will go’ said the Guardian Angel ‘It is my job to look after her’.

‘No’ said Teddy Blue ‘She needs you now and in the future - it must be me she is too old for me now’

There was a low growl and MUTB stepped forward and into the mirror. As he disappeared his thoughts appeared in lipstick on the glass. Tilda needs you two but she has outgrown me now.

Tilda fell into the room, into the arms of her Guardian Angel and her best friend Teddy Blue. But the one who loved her most of all was gone.