Orlo and the Big Open Wide

Orlo was a small lion with a mane that grew mostly on top, like a dandelion. He had a roar, but it was a small one. It sounded a bit like a kettle thinking about boiling. On Tuesday morning, at ten o'clock exactly, Orlo was going to the dentist for the very first time.

The waiting room smelled of mint and floor polish. There was a fish tank with one orange fish in it, and a basket of books with chewed corners. Orlo sat on a chair that was much too big for him and held his mother's paw. His tail twitched. His tummy did a small, wobbly somersault.

Then the door opened, and in came a tortoise in a neat brown cap. He carried a clipboard, and a rubber stamp in a velvet bag. "Inspector Ambrose Slowcombe, Office of Brave Deeds," he said, very slowly. "I have come to observe a brave deed in progress."

Orlo looked all round the waiting room for the brave deed. "Is it a knight?" he whispered. "It is you," said the inspector.

The inspector climbed onto the chair beside Orlo, which took some time. Then he licked his pencil and read from his form: "Form BD-7, Observation of a Brave Deed. Item one, arrived at appointment." He made a tick, the slowest and neatest tick Orlo had ever seen.

"But I haven't done anything yet," said Orlo. "Arriving counts," said the inspector. "Arriving is on the form." And he made another tick, for sitting nicely in the waiting room.

Then a nurse called, "Orlo, please," and Orlo followed her into a bright room with a big blue chair in the middle. Beside it stood Dr Bellweather, the largest hippopotamus Orlo had ever met. She wore a pink coat and a smile so wide you could have parked a bicycle in it.

"Hello, Orlo," she boomed, very kindly. "I hear there is a small roar in there. Shall we have a look at the teeth behind it?" Orlo climbed into the blue chair. It hummed and rose gently, like a lift in a very slow hotel.

There was a lamp above him, round and warm. Inspector Slowcombe settled on a stool by the window with his clipboard on his knee. "Item three," he murmured. "Climbed into big chair." Tick.

"Now," said Dr Bellweather, "I need your biggest open wide. Not a medium one." Orlo opened his mouth. He opened it a bit more, and then so wide that his ears went back and his whiskers spread out like the spokes of an umbrella.

"Magnificent," said Dr Bellweather. She took out a tiny round mirror on a stick and began to count, in a voice as deep and steady as a big drum played softly. "One, two, three, four." Orlo's tail stopped twitching. He listened to the counting and looked at the lamp, and by number twenty he had nearly forgotten to be nervous.

"Twenty-five, twenty-six," said Dr Bellweather. "Every one present and correct, and very well brushed." Then she polished his teeth with a little buzzing brush that tickled. It tasted of strawberries, which surprised him so much that he made a sound. It might have been a giggle, or it might have been a very small roar.

Inspector Slowcombe wrote that down too. "Item four," he said. "Laughed during polish. Exceptional."

When it was all over, the chair hummed back down and Dr Bellweather gave Orlo a sticker of a smiling tooth. Inspector Slowcombe took the rubber stamp out of its velvet bag, breathed on it, and pressed it onto a certificate with great care. It said: Certificate of Bravery, awarded to Orlo, for an excellent open wide. "I shall take a copy to the Commissioner of Courage myself," said the inspector. "I should be there by Thursday."

That night, the certificate was pinned above Orlo's bed, next to a drawing of a fish. Orlo brushed his twenty-six teeth slowly, the way Dr Bellweather had shown him, round and round in small circles. His mother tucked the blanket under his chin and turned the lamp down low.

Orlo lay in the soft dark and thought about the humming chair, and the strawberry polish, and the slow, neat ticks on the inspector's clipboard. Then he gave the biggest yawn of the day. It was so wide that his ears went back and his whiskers spread out like an umbrella. Nobody was counting this time. His eyes closed, his tail curled round his paws, and the small lion slept.