Scatterbungle

by Edrei Cullen

  Don Posiblemente stopped reading. He tweaked his ear and waved the news away again. ‘Do you think there could be truth in it?’ he asked his friend.

  ‘I can’t imagine how,’ said Samuel. ‘It has been two months since he and that Dryad Flitterwig, Ulnus, escaped from the Goobloobin Gaol.’

  Samuel reflected on the transgressions of his former partner. Saul was crazy to believe that he, or any Flitterwig, would ever be granted access into Magus, land of pure Magicals. It was unthinkable that a person with human blood running through their veins would ever be given such an honour.

  Samuel drained his glass. ‘Two months and we can’t find Saul or Ulnus anywhere.’ Samuel rubbed his forehead and a look of exhaustion flittered across his face. ‘So anything is possible. But why would they target the Giants? They are our allies. That seems a folly to me.’

  ‘Arnold McDuff is not an ally,’ said Don Posiblemente, his big face furrowing deeply with memories of this most dastardly of Giants. For as long as Flitterwig history had been recorded, it was well known that Arnold McDuff had always resented Thomas—his cousin—for being the Lord of Gommoronahl, leader of the Giants. Posiblemente had been working tirelessly to find a clue in the Flitterwig Files as to how the villains had made their gaol escape, and today, how the Giants might be involved. He sighed deeply.

  Samuel shook his head, understanding.

  ‘But, Samuel, how is it going with the Magicals and the Giants in general?’ asked Posiblemente.

  ‘It is hard, to be honest,’ Samuel replied. ‘We are all so very different in the way we think and act. And the Elf Queen, as you know, is reluctant to step out of her world, protective as she is of her kind. But I really feel the Giants are excited about working with the Magicals. The colossal creatures don’t like emerging from the ground for air, as everyone knows, and when they’re on the surface it’s hard to keep them awake, but they seem genuinely on side when it comes to environmental protection. With the exception of Arnold McDuff, of course.’

  Posiblemente knew only too well how far they had come in forming an alliance with the other pure breed Magical factions. A strong, loyal relationship was crucial for the future safety of the planet Earth.

  ‘I must be off, old chap,’ Samuel said to his friend, tipping his head graciously. He rose weightlessly from his chair. ‘We meet with Her Royal Majesty the Elf Queen tomorrow to try to find Lord Thomas and Bolgus. Will you be joining us?’

  Don Posiblemente shook his head. ‘Not tomorrow. Can’t be leaving those Flitterwig Files on their own for too long at the moment,’ he said in a low baritone. ‘They are trying to tell me something, I am sure of it but what it is exactly I do not know. I thought perhaps the Third Prophecy might be coming into play already but there is nothing clear to suggest it.’

  Samuel looked at his friend with deep respect. The Flitterwig Files were not easy to read. Magic had a complicated way of making its secrets known.

  The two Flitterwigs rose to leave. Neither noticed a twiggy-looking fellow wearing a hood, approach Samuel Happenstance at the door and tip something into his pocket. If they had spotted him, his protruding Adam’s apple and the woody hue of his skin would have given away his heritage as a Dryad Flitterwig and alerted their suspicions at once.

  chapter 7

  guilt & grudges

  Ella woke up with a jolt. She was in her bed, back at school. Her face was wet with sweat and her hair swirled about her like a whirligig. It was dark in the dormitory and the bodies of her fellow Flitterwigs moved up and down peacefully in sleep. She’d just had another bad dream.

  Since she had read news of that Scottish Giant, Arnold McDuff, she’d been keeping a close check on the news. But there had been absolutely no updates, whatsoever. Lately, however, McDuff was only a fraction of the tangle of images and horrors she saw in her sleep. All the important Flitterwigs in her world were in them, too. Samuel Happenstance, Don Posiblemente, her headmistress, Ms Wheelbarrow… she’d seen them all behaving very oddly. And now the bunch of keys from her earlier dreams had come apart. They zipped this way and that through the images, as if to confuse her, before being sucked down into a watery well.

  She rubbed her eyes and put her hands up to her ears, trying her best to draw out the scattered dream from inside her.

  But it was no good. It wouldn’t budge. She couldn’t do it alone.

  Dixon rubbed his eyes, rolling about until he was upright on Ella’s pillow. His feet waded up and down, moving as if he was treading water, to avoid tipping over in the squishiness of it. He’d taken to sleeping on Ella’s pillow recently, rather than tucked up under her chin. It was just getting too exhausting being thrown into the air every time she woke in panic.

  ‘More Giants in quilts?’ he asked, blinking to wake himself up.

  ‘Kilts,’ said Ella, feeling about on her dresser for her asthma inhaler. She sucked in a long puff. ‘Yes, Giants and all the other usual stuff,’ she said.

  Dixon tugged at her hair to get her to lie down again. He clambered onto her chest and lay, straddled like a starfish, cuddling her as best he could. ‘It’s okay, hey,’ he muttered.

  ‘It’s just that they seem so real…’ she whispered into the dark. ‘They seem so… um. Dixon?’ she whispered. ‘Dixon, are you listening?’ But she knew from the puttering honk he was making that the pixie had fallen back to sleep already.

  Ella sighed. Why oh why was she having these horrible nightmares? And what was that memory with the notebooks about? Or the ‘diaries’ as her father had called them. Where were they now?

  She closed her eyes and wished for a moment that her mother was still around. The distant memory of her long, swirling hair and her lavender smell was soothing, but Ella knew she wouldn’t sleep again that night.

  At dawn, Ella peeled Dixon off her chest and settled his sleeping body in the shadows of her pillow. Slipping herself out of bed, she padded to the bathroom to wash her face.

  She looked in the mirror above the sink. Her eyes were red and she had big, grey bags under them. She splashed the cool water on her cheeks and ran it through her hair.

  She had to do something about the dreams. Charlie was right. Every instinct inside her told her something was amiss and she really had to take some sort of affirmative action. If she was too shy to talk to the other Salamanders, she would have to talk to Max Pepper. Yes. She would go and approach him after classes today.

  The bathroom door squeaked open. Ella turned. Gloria stood in the doorway, staring at her coldly. For a moment Ella was struck by the fact that Gloria wouldn’t be quite so pokey looking if she wasn’t such a madam. If only she would relax those tight lips of hers and stop sticking her pointy nose in the air. And as for the crease in her forehead from so much frowning… Ella almost wanted to throw her arms around the girl and beg her to relax, for Magic’s sake.

  But she knew why she shouldn’t and wouldn’t and couldn’t. Ella was responsible, after all, for the fact that Gloria’s father had been sent to gaol. It was Ella who had uncovered the plot revealing that Mr Ulnus, Gloria’s father, had become an ally of the Elf Duke.

  It was true Gloria hated Ella anyway, even before all that. Still, it seemed silly to Ella that such grudges should exist in a world where really, all that mattered was keeping the planet alive.

  ‘So you can’t sleep, hey?’ said Gloria, her dark eyes flashing with a supercilious satisfaction. She flicked her lank, black hair out of her face. ‘My guess is it’s because you feel guilty,’ she added, not for the first time, pushing past Ella’s slight, sleepy frame and marching into the toilet booth.

  Ella was almost going to contest but she stopped herself. All she said, for the umpteenth time, was, ‘Gloria, I’m sorry about your dad. I’m sorry he’s not around for you.’

  Gloria just turned back, and gave Ella a dirty look, before slamming the booth door.

  chapter 8

  diving & discoveries

  ‘Look, I don’t mean to go on about it,’ said Cha
rlie, sprinting ahead of his friends and turning about, so he was pretty much wheeling backwards on his bare feet. They were on their way to the Portality and Mirrority pond as the sun shone down on their backs and summer bounced across the buttercup hills of Hedgeberry. ‘But I really need you to agree with me Ella, that if we find out Max can’t help us, you’ll go straight to Wheelbarrow.’

  Ella closed her eyes and scrubbed her face. Why oh why couldn’t life be simpler for her? Samantha nudged her in the side.

  ‘How about you give Ella a break and go get some potatoes to uproot themselves?’ Samantha teased Charlie, changing the subject. ‘Or, I know, get some grass to grow!’

  Charlie frowned and Ella managed a giggle.

  ‘Can’t you get back to obsessing about Carnival, Charles?’ said Humphrey, flicking absently at Dixon who was hidden on his head, pretending to swim through Humphrey’s way-too-black, way-too-shiny, way-too-long hair.

  But Charlie’s words rested heavily in all of their ears, truth be told. They could feel in their tummies that Carnival was going to be the last thing on their minds until Ella could get some sleep and find some answers.

  Today the Flitterwigs in Ella’s class were going to practise heading back and forth between the Hedgeberry pond and the stream at the other side of the school grounds. Portality and Mirrority is an important part of a Flitterwig’s training, as all communication and travel is undertaken through water in the Flitterwig world. Portality is the art of travelling through water from one place to another, while Mirrority is a skill that requires seeing and finding people and places through reflections conjured up in water. It is how Flitterwigs communicate, rather than by the human ways of telephones or paperwork or online social networking.

  Humphrey paused at the bank of the pond and gave a slight shiver at the thought of having to jump in. ‘After you,’ he said to Samantha and Ella, reaching his hand out to the water politely. Dixon ran swiftly along his arm and leapt onto Ella.

  Ella smiled and tucked Dixon into the front pocket of her dungarees.

  Mr Frollick, the P & M teacher, a Marshlin Flitterwig, bounced about on the bank of the pond, manic as a hungry monkey. ‘All into the water, that’s the way,’ he instructed, doing a few knee bends that made his tight, bright purple lycra bodysuit ride up his bottom in a most unseemly fashion. ‘First Flitterwig to the stream gets an eco-cuddle!’ he called out.

  The Flitterwigs slipped, jumped, dove and splashed (or in Samantha’s case, tripped) into the pond. There had been a time when travelling through waterways was done in a line, one after the other, but now everyone was getting so good at it, it had turned into more of a race. Ella was in no hurry though. She had an uncanny ability to travel through water, atomised in an instant and spiralled through the magical membranes of the earth to another destination as if it were the easiest task in the world. She could have won every race, hands down. But her speed was a display of very advanced magic indeed and would only raise suspicion. She sighed. It was so annoying to be good at stuff that had to be kept secret and not good enough at things that wouldn’t be odd at all. Like elf dusting!

  She ducked her head under the water and enjoyed the refreshing coolness of it on her tired body. She dove down and kicked her legs. Her dungarees stuck tight to her legs. She was just about to close her eyes and hold her ear and wish herself to the stream when her gaze alighted on something out of the ordinary.

  There was a big, smooth stone at the bottom of the pond with something shining behind it.

  Ella dived down towards it with a couple of strong strokes.

  Upon the rock Ella read the strangest message, scratched into its side.

  Rosemary

  was here

  Ella’s heart missed a beat. Rosemary? That was her mother’s name!

  She was running out of air. She kicked back up to the surface of the pond to get a fresh breath.

  ‘Ella, what in Magic’s name do you think you’re doing?’ squealed Mr Frollick. ‘Get back down and Portalise yourself at once!’

  Ella waved to him (because she had no idea what else to do), made sure Dixon had caught his breath, too, and dove back down to the stone, her way lit most clearly this time by the increasingly shining something behind it.

  She turned to Dixon and pointed to the stone. Dixon put his hands up like a Bollywood dancer and squinted at her, perplexed, his little legs kicking doggy-paddle style. Ella carefully lifted the stone.

  Underneath was a small glass box holding a key, shining bright as a star in the murky depths. It was an old-fashioned key with a long stem and an ornate oval handle and seemed to be made of glass or crystal itself. Ella lifted the lid off the box and went to touch it but her hand went clear through! She drew her hand back in shock.

  Dixon was pulling at her dungarees, pointing to the surface. She quickly snatched up the box, stuffed it into her big, loose pocket, and followed him back up for air.

  ‘I said, get back down there!’ Mr Frollick ranted when she reappeared, jumping into the water himself. ‘Right now,’ he spluttered as he came up for air, his mouth full of water. Ella felt Dixon squirm down the side of her lapel in a hurry and this time she obeyed her teacher. Diving down and, with only the barest glimpse at the stone, she closed her eyes, tweaked her ear and was gone.

  ‘There is a key!’ Ella whispered to the pixie, as she dried herself off after class and looked in her locker for her shoes and her skateboard in its bag. She was dodging Charlie’s watchful gaze. She’d have to tell him about the key soon enough but he was going to go off his protective rocker! ‘Just like the keys in my dreams, Dixon! Didn’t you see it?’

  ‘Yet again Ella, Bella,’ said Dixon quite matter-of-factly. ‘No, I did not. Could not. A trick of your imagination my dear, don’t be weird.’

  Ella sighed. Was she seeing things now? Was she so tired that her eyes were deceiving her? Her instincts told her not. Indeed, every instinct inside her told her that Charlie was absolutely right. Something very odd was going on that required immediate attention. First the dreams, then the Giant in the headlines, then her mother’s name on the rock… and now a key. She glanced around her as she ducked down and slipped the glass box and key into her skateboard bag. Forget Max, it was time to talk to Ms Wheelbarrow. Right now.

  Ella pulled on her shoes, shut the door of her locker and locked it with her pinky.

  When no-one was looking, Dixon launched himself out of Ella’s pocket and onto Charlie’s shoulder. He dotted his finger about Charlie’s face, poking at his freckles as he whispered in his ear. ‘She’s gone a bit mad, Charlie. Bit of a fad, lad. Seeing things. Rhymes with dings.’

  Charlie listened, sheltering the pixie from view with his hands so it looked like he had an earache. He wanted to believe Dixon, but his Protectorly instincts knew better. Ella wasn’t crazy. Something strange was happening, no doubt about it. He shivered with a mixture of excitement and worry as memories of their past adventures together flitted through his mind. Whether he liked it or not, he sensed another adventure was on its way and his friend was going to require Protection!

  chapter 9

  shadows & shivers

  Ms Annie Wheelbarrow, Hedgeberry’s headmistress, one of the wisest and most influential Flitterwigs in the world (even if she was alone in wearing wellington boots all year round), took Ella’s concerns very seriously indeed, much to Charlie’s relief. She knew full well that Ella was the Clearheart and kept this secret close to her chest, wishing only a normal Flitterwiggerly education for the girl. The fact that Ella had come to see her with such grim concerns, however, was nothing to be flippant about. She rapped her finger on her desk and peered over her spectacles at the elegantly scruffy Elf Flitterwig before her. Ella looked back at her, hands in lap.

  Ms Wheelbarrow, a Dryad Flitterwig of great distinction, tucked her long, tawny hair behind her dark, veiny ears and swallowed seriously. Her very prominent Adam’s apple bopped up and down in a trice.

  Dixon sat upon the des
k grinning at Ms Wheelbarrow as he munched his way through a stem of celery that she’d given him. Ms Wheelbarrow knew all about Dixon—it was she, after all, who had given him permission to spend his nights with Ella. As long as he kept himself hidden! Wheelbarrow peered at him momentarily, her eyes affectionate. And then Dixon remembered to frown, for they were actually sitting in the office on Serious Magical Business. The fact that Ella was seeing odd things all over the place, whether she was awake or asleep, was very serious business indeed. Her marbles were at stake, in fact.

  ‘You are a fine Protector, Charlie,’ she said to the anxious boy sitting next to Ella. ‘I’m proud of you. But please do try to keep your leg still.’

  Charlie thumped a hand on his quivering knee obediently. Thank Magic there’s a grown-up on board, was all he could think!

  ‘Is there anything else, Ella, that you haven’t told me?’ asked Ms Wheelbarrow, peering over at her mantelpiece curiously.

  Ella thought about this. She was about to mention the fact that she thought she’d seen strange, small, scrambling shadows moving across the school grounds that afternoon, too, when she found herself inexplicably drawn to Ms Wheelbarrow’s distracted gaze.

  Her hair flared and her shoulders burned. A smell of cinnamon and orange filled the room.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ella breathlessly, pointing at the mantelpiece. ‘Look!’ she said. Dixon stopped mid-crunch with his celery stick and followed her finger.