by Alex Bell
“Oh, no, no,” Cadi said cheerfully. “You might find those things in normal caves, but in Witch Mountain caves you’re far more likely to come across flying sharks, hypnotizing white cats, crazed bug-eyed gremlins, suffocating dancing mushrooms, or—”
“All right.” Shay held up his hand. “We get the picture.” He glanced at Beanie, who was shuddering from head to toe and tugging at his pom-pom hat again in agitation. “You never know. Perhaps there’ll be nothing dangerous or horrible in there at all.” He went to clap Beanie on the back, but then remembered at the last moment that the medic wouldn’t like that, so instead, he said, “Just think about narwhals and jelly beans and we’ll be out the other end in no time.”
At the mention of narwhals, Beanie remembered the wooden carving his father had given him and took it from his pocket to clutch for comfort. Stella reached up for Nigel’s reins and lifted the glowing pixie lamp a little higher, and the four children stepped forward into the gaping dark tunnel.
It smelled of damp and cold stone, with green lichen creeping up the walls and slippery moss sparkling in a coat of frost underfoot.
“Well, gremlins have definitely been in here at some point,” Cadi said. She pointed at the wall. “These are gremlin holes, for sure.”
Stella lifted the fire-pixie lamp and they all contemplated the multitude of holes burrowed into the rock.
“Looks like they haven’t been here for some time, though,” Cadi said, gazing around. “There’d be more little bones scattered about if gremlins lived here.”
Gus slid easily over the slippery moss and seemed delighted to be in the tunnel. It was a good thing they’d fashioned him with a pith helmet, though, because he raced happily ahead of them and instantly smashed into a wall in the bend up ahead. He shook his head, looking a little confused but otherwise unharmed.
The tunnel curved around to the right, and as soon as they turned the bend, they found they no longer required the fire-pixie lamp because light flooded in through the walls, which weren’t made from solid rock but from a clear material.
“What is this?” Stella asked, peering at it. “Glass?”
“Witchstone,” Cadi replied.
The witchstone windows took up most of the tunnel, including the roof, allowing them to see that they were surrounded by swamp on all sides.
“How come the swamp is so bright?” Stella asked as they all pressed their noses up against the witchstone window for a better view. “It looked solid green from above.”
“Strange,” Cadi said. “There must be something glowing in there.” She turned to Beanie and said, “You seem to be the troll expert. What do you think? Is there such a thing as a glow-in-the-dark troll?”
Beanie frowned. “I’m not a troll expert,” he said. “There are more than three hundred types of troll in the discovered world, and so far I’ve only memorized the habits and habitats of sixty-two. Perhaps I should ask Uncle Benedict for a troll book for Christmas.”
“Come on,” Shay said. “Whatever’s in there, it’s probably nothing nice. We should push on. Ethan will think we’ve been snatched away by goblins.”
They continued down the tunnel. Every now and then a shape would glide past the window, but it came and went so quickly that Stella wasn’t able to make it out properly. She was sure that Shay was right, though, and nothing good was likely to dwell in a swamp on Witch Mountain.
“There’s Ethan. Look,” Beanie said, pointing through a witchstone window in the roof of the tunnel.
They peered up and saw that the magician was, indeed, directly above them. From their position they could see his boots on the bridge above. It looked like he had almost reached the other side of the swamp.
“The light seems brighter here,” Beanie said.
Stella realized he was right. The water was extremely bright right underneath where Ethan was standing.
“Uh-oh,” Cadi said.
“What?” Shay looked at her sharply.
“I think I know what’s creating that light,” the hunter said. She pointed out the window and said, “Glow-piranhas.”
Stella followed the direction of her finger and gasped. There was indeed an entire hoard of devilish fish directly underneath Ethan. They appeared to be mostly teeth—rows upon rows of them—sticking straight out of the fishes’ mouths, curving over their lips, and giving them a ferocious look. Their fins emitted a silvery light that glowed bright enough to cut straight through the murky swamp. Their attention was fixed on Ethan, and they were all gnashing their teeth in an expectant manner.
“Great Scott!” Shay exclaimed. “If he falls in the swamp, he’s toast.”
“He won’t be toast,” Beanie said, frowning. “He’ll be a dead magician if he falls in the swamp, that’s what he’ll be. A shoal of glow-piranhas can strip the flesh off a fully grown man in under a minute.”
Just when they thought things couldn’t get any worse, a large white shape suddenly slapped down onto the roof of the tunnel, making the explorers jump back in alarm. They found themselves staring up into the eyes of a pale troll with gangly limbs, narrow eyes, wild seaweedy hair, and webbed fingers that suckered down onto the witchstone like an octopus’s tentacles as the awful thing hissed through the water at them, displaying rows of needle-sharp teeth.
“And that’s a web-fingered vampire troll,” Beanie said. “They feed off blood and are often found living in close proximity to glow-piranhas.”
“Cripes!” Stella exclaimed. “The swamp is crawling with monsters! Quick! We’ve got to warn Ethan!”
They set off at a run, the camel’s hooves clattering noisily on the stone floor as Nigel bleated indignantly at being forced to move above a sedate trot. As they raced along they saw more and more of the pale vampire trolls flitting about in the water, which was bright with piranhas.
They tumbled out of the end of the tunnel in a panic just as Ethan stepped off the bridge. He looked astonished to see them. “How the heck did you—”
“Tunnel!” Stella gasped. “Beanie found it.”
“Well, you might have told me,” Ethan huffed.
“Perhaps if you’d waited a moment rather than racing to be the first person to cross the bridge then you could have traveled safely with us instead,” Shay replied. He reached his hand down to Koa, who nuzzled the air around his fingers. “It doesn’t always pay to be selfish, you know, Prawn.”
Stella pointed at the swamp and said, “The water down there is absolutely crawling with monsters. You were very lucky!”
The magician gave her a withering look. “It’s got nothing to do with luck and everything to do with my excellent balance and sure-footedness.” He glared at Shay. “And don’t call me selfish! If anything, I was doing you lot a favor. If the bridge was unsafe, then I would have been the first to find out.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now, so let’s not argue about it,” Shay said with a sigh. He reached out for Ethan’s elbow and said, “Let’s just concentrate on getting away from this monster-filled swamp.”
Rather than accepting the steadying hand, Ethan snapped, “Don’t touch me! I don’t need your help!”
He batted Shay’s hand away, but unfortunately, the movement caused his heel to slip in the soft mud at the edge of the swamp. Shay lunged forward but managed only to snatch at Ethan’s fingertips, which immediately slipped from his grasp as the magician fell backward, straight into the green slime.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ONE MOMENT THE MAGICIAN was there, the next he had been sucked down beneath the surface of the water with a glugging noise. Stella heard Beanie’s words from the tunnel: He’ll be a dead magician if he falls in the swamp, that’s what he’ll be. A shoal of glow-piranhas can strip the flesh off a fully grown man in under a minute. …
She had the terrible image of plucking a skeleton from the green waters and that being all that was left of Ethan. Zachary Vincent Rook would not be at all happy if they presented him with a bag of bones when they got home. But th
ere was no time for panic or running around in a flap. Felix always said that the first rule of exploring was not to lose your head in a crisis.
“After all, if explorers panicked every time a member of their expedition got washed over a waterfall, snatched away by a yeti, or buried in an avalanche, then we’d be in a state of mayhem all the time, wouldn’t we?” he’d said.
However, it was a little difficult to stay calm when one of your expedition had just fallen into a glow-piranha- and vampire-troll-infested, noxious-smelling swamp. Beanie, unfortunately, completely lost his head and started reciting piranha-related explorer deaths while tugging at his pom-pom hat, and Cadi put both hands to her mouth and stared in horror at the surface of the water, but Shay and Stella sprang into action at once.
Together they grabbed one of the overhanging hairy branches and started to pull it down. The tree groaned in protest, and they had to tug hard to get the branch beneath the surface, but the plan worked, because Ethan grabbed hold of it at once, and when they let the branch go, it flew back with a snap that yanked the magician from the water in an explosion of green slime. He landed on the bank covered in the horrible stuff, as well as, oddly, dozens of wonky squish-squish frogs, which were hopping and crawling all over him. Once they realized they were on land, however, they jumped off the magician and headed straight back toward the swamp.
“I didn’t know there were wonky-squish-squish frogs in there!” Cadi said.
“Those aren’t frogs!” Beanie gasped. He pointed at the nearest one. “That one’s got teeth sticking out of its mouth. And that one over there has a dorsal fin on its back. I think they’re piranhas. Ethan must have used a spell on them.”
“Didn’t Ethan have Gideon in his pocket?” Shay asked.
A panic followed as everyone scrabbled to collect the frogs before they could disappear. Some of them did have a sort of piranha look about them still—whether this was teeth, fins, a glow, or just a general savageness—but others looked like perfectly ordinary frogs, and any one of those could easily be Gideon.
Stella collected some up in her skirt, wrinkling her nose against the smell—for the frogs were, of course, all covered in swamp water as well. Cadi whipped off her hat to deposit some in; Shay stuffed some into his bag, and Beanie used his pom-pom hat. By the time they tipped their amassed frogs into Shay’s backpack, they were all pretty covered in slimy swamp goo. But not as much as Ethan. He was drenched with the stuff and still lying in a gasping heap on the mossy grass.
As Shay zipped up the bag of frogs, the magician staggered to his feet, looking rather like a swamp monster himself, and tried to wipe the green goop from his eyes. It was in his hair, dripping from his fingers, and sliding down the back of his neck.
“Oh my gods, that is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me!” he gasped, almost crying in outrage. “I can’t believe you’re messing around with frogs at a time like this!”
“If you hadn’t been such a stubborn idiot, then you wouldn’t have fallen in the swamp in the first place!” Shay said. “I’ve never met anyone who’s their own worst enemy as much as you are!”
“I was going to share them, but just for that you can find your own magic bath bubbles!” Ethan snapped.
He scooped the purple bubbles he’d stolen from Munch out of his pocket.
“Oh, are those bath bubbles?” Cadi said, peering at them.
“They’re mine!” Ethan snarled.
“Okay, but I wouldn’t use ten of them together like that if I were—”
“They’re mine!” Ethan said again. “If you lot wanted some, then you should have stolen them from Weenus’s Trading Post back when you had the chance.” He glared at Shay fiercely and said, “You can accuse me of being my own worst enemy all you like, but it seems to me that I’m the only one of us who’s got any foresight.”
“The thing is, though, that if you use more than one at a time, then the results can be a bit—” Cadi began, but Ethan cut her off again.
“You’re not tricking me into sharing! How stupid do you think I am?”
And with that he lifted his hand and slapped all ten of the bubbles against his forehead at once.
Stella remembered how Munch had used one of the bubbles on Nigel and the camel had been transformed into a sleek, glossy, immaculately groomed version of himself. But that had been one little bubble for an entire camel. The result of ten bubbles used on a boy was rather different. Stella expected Ethan to be himself, except cleaner, but in fact, he disappeared altogether. They thought he had actually vanished at first, but then Beanie spotted the purple object lying on the grass, and they all hurried over to inspect it.
It was a soap—about the size of Stella’s palm—and it was fashioned in the shape of a magician, complete with pointed wizard’s hat, flowing robes, and even a wand and an impressively bushy beard. For a moment they all stared at it in silence. Then Shay said, “He’s actually turned himself into a soap, hasn’t he? Using nothing more than his own stupidity.”
“You can only be so clean without being soap, I guess,” Cadi said. “I’ve never seen someone use ten bubbles together before. That was a daring move, for sure. A friend of mine used three of them once and he blew soap bubbles every time he spoke for an hour afterward.”
“It’s not permanent, though, is it?” Beanie asked anxiously. “I mean, is he still alive in there?” He reached out and prodded the magician soap cautiously. There must have been a bit of magic fizzing around it still, because the act of touching it instantly caused Beanie to become spotlessly clean—all traces of swamp gone from his clothes and skin.
The others hurried to touch the magician soap too, and Stella was pleased to find that the yucky swamp disappeared from her cloak, leaving her coated in a pleasant gooseberry smell.
“Hopefully it’ll wear off,” Shay said, squinting at the magician soap. He reached up and put it on Nigel’s saddle, securing it there with one of the tassels. The jungle fairies all grouped around the soap in interest, but they backed away pretty hurriedly when Humphrey touched it and found his blue hair instantly in ringlets, his nails free from dirt, and his feet newly pedicured.
“We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed that he turns back eventually,” Shay said. He glanced at the others. “For now we really need to concentrate on getting out of this enchanted forest.”
After the swamp incident, everyone was in agreement about this. Shay picked up the bag of frogs, and they continued on their way, eager to put as much distance between themselves and the swamp as possible.
They followed the path, and soon enough the swamp was behind them and the broomstick trees had gone back to being tall and straight once again. They continued on through the forest, and after a little while Cadi said, “I think we might be coming toward the edge. I can see light up ahead. Goodness knows what’s become of my witch! I hope you’re keeping an eye out for her.”
Cadi was right about there being flickers of light on the path, but as they traveled farther they saw that this wasn’t daylight, as they had hoped, but more jack-o’-lanterns. The pumpkins lined the edge of the path on both sides, gazing at them with their grinning, gaping faces.
“It’s almost like they’re leading the way to something,” Beanie whispered to Stella.
“The way out, perhaps?” she replied hopefully.
It turned out, however, that the pumpkins weren’t leading the way out of the forest, but straight into another clearing. The explorers turned a corner and came upon it quite suddenly. It was full of red and white spotted toadstools, moss, dozens of flickering jack-o’-lanterns, and … teddy bears.
There must have been a dozen teddy bears before them, all different shapes and sizes. Stella saw an enormous pink bear with long whiskers, a tiny white teddy with delicate jointed limbs, a black bear with bright blue eyes, and even a fuzzy green bear with enormous paws. Every single teddy was wearing a pointed witch’s hat. They all were sitting around an orange blanket decorated with black cats
. And on this blanket was spread one of the most lavish picnics Stella had ever seen.
There were chocolate broomsticks, toffee cauldrons overflowing with hard candies, marzipan cats, licorice bats, candy-floss frogs, and sugar mice. Hollowed-out pumpkins served as cups filled with hot chocolate, finished off with broomstick-shaped marshmallows.
Stella remembered what she had thought on first entering the forest—about this not being the sort of place where teddy bears would come to have their picnics—but, of course, these were no ordinary bears. Normal teddy bears couldn’t move on their own, for a start, or blink, or stand up. But suddenly all the bears were on their feet, all had little wands in their paws, and all were pointing these toward the explorers in a distinctly threatening manner.
“Sorry.” Stella held up her hands. “Don’t mind us. We didn’t mean to disturb you. We’re just passing through. Please do go back to your picnic.”
The bears said nothing, but there was something quite sinister in the way the light from the jack-o’-lanterns flickered in their staring glass eyes. And the fact that they all wore witch’s hats wasn’t very comforting either.
“We’re just going to leave, okay?” Stella said. “No need to hex us or anything.”
She began to walk slowly around the edge of the clearing, and the others followed her lead. The bears kept their eyes trained on them, turning their heads to stare but not making any move to stop them.
Stella was just starting to think that it might be okay when, with a loud soapy pop, Ethan turned back into a real-life magician. He looked almost entirely like his usual self, except for the fact that his hair—which was usually brushed straight back and immaculately gelled—fell around his ears in tight little ringlets that did, unfortunately, make him look rather like a girl.
The sudden transformation startled Nigel, who reared back in alarm, bleating loudly. This panicked one of the teddy bears, who threw a fire spell from the tip of its wand. Fortunately, it missed the camel, but the spell went sailing past him and hit a nearby tree, which smoked and smoldered.