by Emily Rodda
A scrawny gnome with a long nose and shiny, slicked-back hair stepped into the firelight and put down the lantern. He was wearing a purple shirt and tight black trousers, both of which looked very new, a black belt with a large gold buckle in the shape of a snake biting its own tail, and patent-leather shoes with pointed toes. A flashy gold chain hung around his neck and a huge gold ring with a purple stone winked on his finger.
‘Oh, my heart and heaving stomach!’ growled Conker in disgust.
‘Scribble!’ Bertha cried. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Wherever you go, I go, dear lady,’ said Scribble, bowing with difficulty in his tight trousers. ‘I just can’t keep away.’
Bertha giggled and blushed. ‘But how did you know where I was?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘We didn’t tell a soul where we were going!’
‘Ah, there’s no stopping an ace reporter on the trail of a story,’ said Scribble, tapping his nose with a bony finger. ‘As a matter of fact, that straw-haired, rather dim-witted new assistant at the tavern was cleaning your room when I popped in to see you this afternoon, and he let me in to wait for you.’
‘Oh, did he just?’ snarled Conker.
‘I happened to see some messages lying on the bed and had a tiny peep at them,’ Scribble told Bertha with a repulsive wink. ‘I saw your team had been asked to Hobnob to investigate the disappearance of Wizard Bing – very exciting! Then I saw your hat was missing, and realised you must have dropped everything and set out at once.’
Bertha sighed with admiration. Conker cursed under his breath.
Bertha’s hat! Leo thought. That’s what’s in the pink bag. I’ll bet Mimi sweetly offered to run up to Bertha’s room for it – so she could pick up the Key at the same time. He winced at the thought of how Bertha would feel when she realised how she’d been tricked.
‘I left for Hobnob at once,’ Scribble was telling Bertha. ‘And it was lucky I did. If I’d delayed I’d be a prisoner in the cloud palace right now.’
‘What a load of old dot mush!’ Conker sneered.
‘A lot you know!’ Scribble retorted. ‘I’d only just left Tiger’s Glen when the palace landed. You’ll read all about it in the Rambler tomorrow morning. What an escape! What a story!’ He blew out his cheeks and fanned his face with his hand in exaggerated relief.
‘But what were you doing in Tiger’s Glen, Scribble?’ asked Bertha in bewilderment.
‘Why, that’s where I arrived,’ Scribble told her. ‘That’s where the Gap ends.’
‘A Gap?’ Bertha gasped. ‘You mean – there’s a short cut from town to Hobnob? You mean we had that long journey and got exhausted and half-killed for nothing?’
‘You came the long way, did you?’ Scribble smiled at her pityingly. ‘What a shame you didn’t take me into your confidence, Bertha, instead of trusting the dot-catcher to guide you! I took two Gaps, to be precise – one from the Black Sheep tavern to Flitter Wood, and the other from Flitter Wood to Tiger’s Glen.’
‘Oh,’ Bertha said in a small voice. ‘Flitter Wood.’
Scribble nodded brightly. ‘Oh yes! Very near your old farm, Bertha. I was in too much of a hurry to stop long in the wood, of course, but I did get a few words with a couple of squirrels, and I know you’ll be happy to hear that Sly the fox is proving to be an excellent replacement for you. In fact, he’s making a huge success of the job. There’s not a dot left in the place.’
‘How nice,’ said Bertha miserably.
Scribble’s long nose twitched. Leo was sure that he knew the whole story of Bertha’s sacking, but was saying nothing for the moment so she would go on giving him interviews.
‘What’s the matter with Bertha?’ Mimi whispered in Leo’s ear, as naturally as if their bitter argument on the flying rug had never happened.
‘Didn’t she tell you?’ Leo whispered back, a little startled by how good it felt to be on friendly terms again. He briefly repeated what Conker and Freda had told him about Sly stealing Bertha’s job. Mimi listened impassively, her eyes hardening as she gazed at Scribble.
‘Both of the Gaps I used are quite secret, but ace reporters have their ways of finding out these things,’ Scribble boasted, with a malicious glance at Conker. ‘It was a very fast trip.’
‘Only authorised persons are allowed to use the Black Sheep Gap, Scribble,’ Conker snapped.
‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll go running to Jolly telling tales on me when you get back,’ Scribble said nastily. ‘But I think you’ll find that he’s quite happy for me to use all the tavern facilities, as long as I keep buying his portraits of Bertha.’
He beamed at Bertha, Leo and Mimi, showing a mouthful of brown, crooked teeth that didn’t match his fine new clothes at all. ‘I hope you don’t mind my dropping in,’ he said. ‘I just couldn’t wait till the morning to find out if Bertha had recovered from her terrible ordeal at the well.’
‘Oh,’ Bertha murmured, looking disconcerted. ‘You know about that, do you?’
‘Of course!’ said Scribble. ‘Mirth, my modest little abode for the night, has an excellent view of the clearing.
I’d love to have your comments to go with the story. If we’re quick, I can send it to the Rambler in time for tomorrow’s edition.’
Ignoring Conker’s growl of protest, he whipped a notebook from his pocket. ‘I’m sure you must hold the Snug caretaker, Master Woodley, personally responsible for your stressful experience, Bertha?’ he prompted smoothly. ‘No doubt you feel that he should be sacked, and the Snug should be closed down until the matter of the cursed well can be dealt with by the proper authorities.’
‘Oh!’ mumbled Bertha, very flustered. ‘Well, I –’ ‘I thought so,’ said Scribble, writing busily. ‘But knowing you as I do, Bertha, I’m sure that despite this frightful episode, not to mention the terrifying presence of the cloud palace in Hobnob, you are still determined to lead the quest to locate Wizard Bing and prove the innocence of Simon Humble, helpless victim of police incompetence and brutality?’
‘Oh!’ Bertha gulped, glancing nervously at Conker. ‘Well –’
‘Say no more, dear lady,’ crooned Scribble, making another note. ‘Don’t distress yourself any further. I have it all down here and as usual I’ll report your statements with perfect accuracy. Trust me.’
His tiny eyes sparkling, he flipped over another page of his notebook and turned to Mimi. ‘And you are Bertha’s little friend Mamie, I presume,’ he said, lowering his voice to a husky croon as if he was speaking to a pet or a small child. ‘Where have you been hiding yourself for all this time, Mamie?’
Mimi glowered at him.
‘It’s “Mimi”, not “Mamie”, Scribble,’ Bertha put in anxiously.
‘Of course,’ Scribble said, making a note. ‘Well, Mimi, I can see that you’re not very happy with the state of affairs here. What a pity to see divisions in the team so early in the quest.’
‘I’m not –’ Mimi began angrily. But Scribble had already turned to Leo.
‘And you must be Leo,’ he said. ‘Or Leo the Lionheart, as you prefer to be called, I understand. How do you feel about Bertha as a quest leader? Do you share Mimi’s doubts?’
‘W-what?’ stuttered Leo in great embarrassment and confusion.
Scribble’s eyes brightened again. ‘Ah!’ he said, making another note. ‘I understand completely. It’s only natural that a fine young man like you might have ambitions to be the leader yourself – very natural!’
‘Scribble, I don’t think Leo meant –’ Bertha began.
‘Of course you’re distressed about Mamie and Leo’s comments, Bertha,’ said Scribble, writing busily. ‘You feel betrayed, after all you’ve done for them. But it’s best to get these things out in the open. And of course the public has a right to know.’
He looked around. ‘I see the fighting duck has abandoned the team already,’ he said. ‘Or was she expelled for laughing during the embarrassing incident at the well?’
‘Freda was laughing?�
� exclaimed Bertha, outraged.
‘Naturally you couldn’t put up with disloyalty like that,’ said Scribble, nodding as he wrote. ‘I presume the duck will try to join a rival team. How would you feel about that? Would you approve?’
‘Well, no, of course not!’ Bertha spluttered. ‘I mean –’
‘You’d warn any rival team not to even consider employing her,’ said Scribble, flipping over yet another page of his notebook. ‘You want her banned –’
‘Scribble,’ said Conker in a low, dangerous voice. ‘If your rag of a newspaper prints one word of this rubbish, I’ll have your guts for garters.’ He lunged forward, drawing his dot-swatters.
‘Conker!’ Bertha cried in fright. ‘Don’t –’
Scrawling a last, rapid note, Scribble skipped backwards, out of swatter range. He squeezed his notebook back into his trouser pocket and picked up the lantern. ‘It’s dangerous to attack the freedom of the press, Conker,’ he said defiantly. ‘You’re seen as a hero now, thanks to me, but public opinion can change very quickly, you know.’
‘Don’t you threaten me, you worm!’ Conker spat. ‘Who do you think you are? Until you made a fortune out of Bertha you were sneaking around the forest with your trousers tied up with string, scratching out a living by picking up gossip from squirrels!’
Scribble smirked at him and flicked a speck of ash from his purple shirtsleeve. ‘All that’s in the past,’ he said. ‘The public loves me, so my boss does too. These days I can name my price for a juicy story. And just wait till my readers hear what’s going on at Hobnob! It will curl their hair! It will line my pockets with –’
He broke off with a start as Freda walked out of the shadows, her wings half-raised, her eyes gleaming coldly behind their black mask.
‘Everything all right here?’ Freda asked mildly, and snapped her beak.
Scribble turned and ran.
Chapter
15
Bliss
Dinner that night was not a great success. After Scribble’s abrupt departure it was discovered that during his visit all the liquid in Conker’s stew had boiled away, leaving only a scorched brown sludge at the bottom of the cooking pot.
‘I told you it was done, Conkie,’ the pot whined as Conker lifted it from the fire and began scraping out the sludge in silent rage. ‘I told you! Ow! Ow! It hurts!’
‘Good!’ snarled Conker. He divided the frizzled mess between the five tin dishes he’d laid out in readiness for the feast. The servings were very small, and looked more like little heaps of crushed beetles than helpings of beef and onion stew.
‘We’ll fill up on bread and cheese,’ Conker muttered, looking at no one. He crammed a spoonful of sludge into his mouth, grimaced, and chewed determinedly.
‘Oh, I’m fine with this,’ said Freda, pecking at the scraps on her plate without much interest. Conker looked at her resentfully. Freda’s beak shone with grease, and a spicy odour hung about her. Leo wondered how many of Woodley’s sausages she had stolen. She wore the satisfied expression of a very well-fed duck.
For Conker’s sake Leo ate what was on his plate, except some really blackened bits that he managed to tip onto the ground while Conker was looking the other way. He had hoped that some of the dots scuttling around Bliss’s roots would dart in and carry the fragments away, but none of them seemed interested. Mimi didn’t even pretend to eat. She passed her dish straight over to Bertha, who had finished her share in one gulp and was only too glad to have more.
‘I itchy, Conkie,’ complained the cooking pot. It began scratching uselessly at its sides with its toes, making a horrible rasping sound that set everyone’s teeth on edge.
‘Its insides are covered in burned-on stew,’ Freda told Conker. ‘You’d better soak it. You’ll never get it clean otherwise.’
‘I’ll soak it, all right,’ growled Conker, throwing his dish aside and grabbing the pot’s handle. ‘I’ll throw it in the well, that’s what I’ll do!’
The cooking pot screeched, shattering the silence of the night. All around the clearing branches creaked and leaves rustled in indignation.
‘Quiet in the Snug if you please!’ called Woodley’s disapproving voice from the distant shadows.
‘Oh, shut up,’ Conker muttered. But he stomped away from the fire and began rummaging in Leo’s pack, pulling out bread and cheese and pretending not to notice as Leo half-filled the cooking pot with warm water from the kettle.
‘All better,’ the pot sighed gratefully as the blackened stew scraps began to loosen and float to the surface of the water. It snuggled more deeply into the dust, gently lowered its handle, and appeared to go to sleep.
‘It’s rather sweet, really,’ said Bertha gazing at it sentimentally as Conker, looking thunderous, doled out chunks of bread and cheese. ‘You shouldn’t be cross with it, Conker. After all, it’s very young, and this is its first job.’
‘You wouldn’t be making excuses for it if it had ruined all the food we had!’ snapped Conker.
‘Possibly,’ Bertha agreed with her mouth full. ‘But fortunately it didn’t. Could I trouble you for the pickles?’
After the bread and cheese had been eaten, Leo washed the dishes while Conker scribbled a note telling Hal where they were. The note was collected by a mouse so old and shaky, and so grey about the nose, that it had obviously been brought out of retirement to help during the staff shortage.
After that, there seemed little to do but to put out the campfire and go to bed. Mimi and Leo were yawning. Bertha was very obviously ignoring Freda. Conker was too dispirited by the night’s events to talk about plans for the morning.
‘Time enough for that tomorrow, when things will look brighter,’ he said. Leo nodded, gloomily thinking that the quest so far had been nothing but a series of disasters, and a good night’s sleep couldn’t change that.
The flying rug, very tired after its heroic effort at the well, managed to rouse itself enough to carry everyone up to the huge branch on which Bliss’s cabins grew side by side. They took all their belongings with them except for the cooking pot. It was sound asleep, making tiny, tinny snores, and Conker refused to wake it.
‘Someone might steal it in the night,’ Bertha fretted, looking down at the pot sleeping all alone beside the twin fireplaces.
‘We can only hope,’ snarled Conker.
It was agreed that Bertha would sleep in the smaller of the two cabins with the luggage, while the rest of the team shared the larger cabin.
‘I just know I won’t sleep a wink!’ Bertha sighed. ‘I never do in a Snug, whatever my brother says – and this time I have that awful cloud palace practically on my doorstep as well. I’ll toss and turn all night long, and I don’t want to keep anyone else awake. Just be sure and call me if there’s a fire, in case I happen to drop off towards dawn.’
Bliss’s leaves rustled in agitation.
‘Don’t worry, there won’t be any fire,’ Mimi said reassuringly. Leo thought she was comforting Bertha, and was surprised and touched by the gentleness in her voice. Then he saw that Mimi was looking up at the trembling leaves above her head, and realised that she was talking to Bliss.
Typical, he thought, shaking his head. Mimi wouldn’t dream of comforting Bertha, who’s her friend, but she’s happy to comfort a tree she hardly knows! Then, as Bertha began loudly worrying that the snake hiding in Glee’s cabin would somehow find its way to her cabin and bite her during the night, he sighed and made himself admit that, after all, Mimi was right. Bertha’s babblings about fire were just Bertha’s usual fussiness, whereas to Bliss, who had probably seen the horror of forest fires at first hand in her long life, the fear of fire was very real.
It annoyed him that he hadn’t realised this at first. It annoyed him that he hadn’t thought of reassuring Bliss. It was just so hard to think of trees as beings you could talk to, but he should have remembered that everything was different in this world. It still embarrassed him to think of that time in Flitter Wood, during his and
Mimi’s first visit to Rondo, when he had thought the flying fairy creatures called Flitters were green moths. If it hadn’t been for Mimi he might never have seen what they really were.
Mimi only recognised them because she was carrying the Key, he told himself grouchily. That’s how she knew to talk to Bliss, too. The Key makes her more sensitive to magic.
But as he watched Mimi murmuring to Bliss, lightly stroking a small branch in a perfectly natural way, he wondered if the Key was the only explanation. It was quite possible that Mimi had always talked to trees – and maybe watched for fairies, too, while he, of course, would never have dreamed of doing either of those things. In that sense, he thought rather bitterly, Mimi was more fitted for Rondo than he was. She understood it in a way he didn’t, and maybe never could.
He found this idea very irritating. It seemed very unfair that he wasn’t as competent in this world as he was in his own, just because he was sensible and normal instead of being a dreamy loner like Mimi. After all, he was the owner of the music box, not her.
She’s got the Key though, he thought resentfully. And it definitely does make her more sensitive to magic. For sure it’s because of the Key, for instance, that she’s so fascinated by the Strix’s palace, and that’s dangerous for all of us. I’ll have to tell the others about the Key first thing tomorrow. I’ve got no choice.
As Mimi went on murmuring to Bliss, and Conker and Freda saw Bertha safely into her cabin, Leo moved to the cabin he was to share. He felt jittery and overtired, and the knowledge of the troublesome secret he had to tell in the morning was like a large cold stone in his stomach.
He wished he didn’t have to share a room with Conker, Freda and Mimi. Conker would snore. Mimi would complain about Conker’s snoring. Freda, her stomach full of Woodley’s sausages, would probably wake up with indigestion. And Leo would be expected to keep the peace.
But I’m sick of keeping the peace and making everyone else feel better, Leo thought. I’m sick of disasters and fights. All I want is to be alone! If only we’d gone to a tavern instead of this place! If only I was home in my own room, my own bed!