by Edrei Cullen
Ms Wheelbarrow’s strong and solid demeanour crumpled unwittingly. She visibly sank in her chair. Charlie gulped.
‘What can you see, dear?’ she asked, clearing her throat to try to hide the tremor in her usually certain tone.
‘There’s another one of those little glass boxes with a key in it,’ said Ella.
Charlie covered his face.
Dixon dropped his celery on the desk and perched himself up on Ms Wheelbarrow’s ink pot in order to see better. ‘Um, there’s no key in there, bear,’ he said, looking at the headmistress with his arms out wide to demonstrate how cuckoo-la-la Ella was acting.
‘Yes there is,’ said Ella, pointing at the glass box on the mantelpiece. ‘Exactly like the one in the pond, exactly like the ones in my dreams… and exactly like the one in my bag.’
‘You have a Key?’ Wheelbarrow murmured.
Ella stood up and peered into the box on the mantelpiece. The key inside was exactly the same, clear as crystal and glowing brightly. She opened the box and tried to touch it but her hand went right through, just like it had in the Portality pond. She turned around, her eyes full of questions.
‘Yes,’ Ella finally answered, ‘I have a key just like this one. I found it at the bottom of the pond. Beneath a rock marked with my mother’s name.’
‘Have you noticed that box on my mantelpiece before, Ella?’ Ms Wheelbarrow asked, drawing her inordinately tall frame up from her chair and placing her branching hands upon her desk, more to keep herself steady than to seem in charge.
‘I suppose I have,’ said Ella haltingly, thinking back to other visits she’d made to the headmistress’ office. ‘But I don’t remember seeing a key inside it.’
Ms Wheelbarrow swallowed so hard that her Adam’s apple ripped up and down her throat most perturbingly. ‘Oh, Magic,’ she muttered deeply.
‘Oh no,’ Charlie whispered.
‘But there’s nothing there!’ Dixon yelled, jumping up and down on the ink pot. ‘Has everyone gone nutty? Rhymes with putty!’
Ms Wheelbarrow turned to Dixon and laid a large hand upon his long cap to stop him bouncing about. She bent down so she was looking him in the eyes. ‘I can’t see it either, Dixon,’ she said, solemn as an owl, her breath blowing the pixie’s eyebrows back. ‘But the fact that Ella can, suggests a breach of security that none of us would have dared believe would come to pass.’
Ms Wheelbarrow’s tone froze the pixie to the spot. And then, everyone in the room turned to the open window in unison.
‘Did you see that?’ said Ella.
‘What?’ said Dixon, a terrible shiver passing up his back and making him want to yelp ‘HELP!’ very loudly.
‘A small, dark shadow?’ whispered Charlie, looking at Ella, his little chin all atremble.
Ella nodded silently and Dixon dissolved on the spot. For like it or not, he had seen it too.
‘Aaaaaaaaargh,’ he hollered, lying on his back, both legs and arms pointing straight up into the air. ‘It’s a ghost! Most!’ he cried. ‘Horrible, host!’
Ella began to tremble in sympathy with Charlie’s chin. They both looked at Ms Wheelbarrow. To see their headmistress so shaken up was not a comfortable sight.
‘We must visit Posiblemente at once,’ said Ms Wheelbarrow, recovering herself as best she could. ‘Take the box, Ella. Tip the Key carefully into the other box you have. Now. For something terrible is most definitely coming to pass in the Flitterwig world today.’
Don Posiblemente stroked his rich beard thoughtfully. He had listened to Ella and Ms Wheelbarrow’s account of events without a single raise of either of his gentlemanly eyebrows. He had watched Charlie try to catch Dixon flinging himself across the velvet chaise-longue, with an unflinching mahogany gaze, as the pixie attempted to re-enact the spookiness of the shadows that had passed outside the window of Ms Wheelbarrow’s office.
Ella and Charlie had never seen Don Posiblemente so still. He was a commanding presence at the best of times but today, as he sat in the familiar armchair of his warm and stately sitting room in Spain, he was still as a trunk. It scared them both to see him so.
‘Please find Samuel Happenstance in the Waterways at once,’ was all he said after everyone had spoken, looking over at Annie Wheelbarrow. It was clear that, despite his stillness, the great man was thrown. His pulsing temples said so. He looked at Ella severely. ‘I have been searching for clues in all the wrong places, Ella,’ he said. ‘I suspected the Third Prophecy would come into play soon enough, but never did I think it would come to pass in such a dark and dastardly fashion. We must move quickly.’
Ella shivered but looked wide-eyed at Don Posiblemente, ready for whatever he had to tell her.
‘Tell me,’ he said, motioning to Ms Wheelbarrow to hand him a small glass box from one of his many bookshelves. She passed it to him. Literditties, scattered amongst the bookshelves here and there, sat with their oversized spectacles perched on the ends of their curious noses, looking up from the books they were cleaning. ‘Can you see anything resting in this box?’
Ella’s ears burned as a clear old-fashioned key revealed itself to her, glowing brightly. It was the third she’d seen in one day! She nodded, nervously.
Don Posiblemente put his hands to his face. ‘I’m afraid Ms Wheelbarrow is right. Hedgeberry is in mortal danger,’ he said simply. ‘Indeed Flitterwiggery’s very future is perilously threatened if the school is under attack.’
‘B-b-b-but w-w-w-why?’ asked Charlie, stuttering again for the first time in absolutely ages. ‘W-what do the keys m-m-m-mean?’
‘The fact that Ella can see these Keys means that they are needed once more,’ said Posiblemente, ‘which can only mean one thing.’ Dixon fell flat on his back in a swoon, unable to manage such drama. ‘The Duke must still be alive,’ he continued, rising to his feet. ‘For only Magicals know the recipe and the Queen would never do such a thing.’
Charlie and Ella gasped. The Duke? Still alive? But no-one had seen or heard from him in over a year! The Daily Flitterwig said he was presumed dead, from too much exposure to Earthly pollution!
And the recipe? The recipe for what?
Don Posiblemente’s broad, solid shoulders were tense and his face dark. ‘The unthinkable has come to pass. The unspeakable must have been unleashed,’ he continued, striding across the room to the Flitterwig Files on his desk. ‘We are in danger beyond all dangers,’ he said, shaking his head and passing his hand through his beard as he sat down and drew the Files to him with a tweak of his floppy ear. ‘I never thought it could happen again.’
The Keeper of the Flitterwig Files let the pages flutter from one to the next like a breath before his eyes. They settled with certainty on a particular page. He stared for a long, long while at the words before him.
Ella shuffled over to Dixon, lying on his back on the sofa, and gave him a little shake. He looked up at her and his eyes were positively teary. Danger beyond all dangers? A recipe? What was Posiblemente talking about?
‘Oh me, oh my,’ Dixon whimpered. ‘It can’t be so. Rhymes with blow.’ Dixon climbed slowly up Ella’s front. He thrust his arms about her neck and wept inconsolably against her chin. Not that he had a clue as to why!
Ms Wheelbarrow was about to speak when Samuel Happenstance appeared out of a barrel of water in the corner of the room. She passed him a spray of pussy willow to dry himself off. He nodded in thanks and looked about him. He didn’t expect to see Posiblemente so soon after their brief meeting at the Slug & Lettuce, and yet here they were, together again, joined by Ms Wheelbarrow, Charlie Snoppit, Ella Montgomery—the Clearheart, and a trembling pixie.
‘But what in Magic could be the matter?’ Samuel asked, shocked by the seriously solemn mood in the room. He glanced around at the panicked faces of his dearest friends and colleagues. Nobody noticed the four little black creatures slip out of his pocket, with sacks on their backs, and scramble into a dark corner.
‘Ella can see the Keys,’ Don Posiblemente utt
ered.
Samuel turned white as a sheet. He bent down, nimble and fast and pulled up a leg of his green corduroy pants. He pulled down an orange and blue striped sock. He had a leather band tied around his ankle. He shook it and looked up at Ella, enquiringly.
She could see a key hanging from it, falling over his sock as he shook his ankle, clear and sparkling. Samuel couldn’t see it himself, but Ella’s widening eyes told him it was there.
‘No!’ he breathed, unwinding the band from around his ankle. As he handed it to her shakily, he looked at Don Posiblemente in horror.
Posiblemente nodded. ‘It must be the Scatterbungle,’ he confirmed, covering his face with his hands.
chapter 10
shell-shock & shambles
Ella’s heart beat at a hundred miles an hour. She tucked the leather cord into her pocket absently, looking about her at all the important Flitterwigs in her world (in THE WORLD), as they stood there, utterly shocked. Clueless as he seemed, she was gladder than glad that Charlie Snoppit was with her.
‘Yes,’ said Don Posiblemente, the Files resting open on the inevitable page before him. ‘I should have understood the clues. We don’t have much time. I think we are safe for now, but we must make haste together to Hedgeberry.’
‘Jeez, Louise,’ said Dixon, whispering right inside Ella’s ear. ‘What in Magic’s name is Scabbermungle?’
Ella patted Dixon on the shoulder with her thumb, and shrugged. The air felt close and Ella was finding it hard to breathe. She took a puff on her inhaler. In fact, the air smelled like something really weird. It was the faintest whiff of old bananas and liquorice.
And then Don Posiblemente gestured for Ella to come closer, and began to read out loud.
‘This is the Prophecy, child,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Oh if only these Files were not so secretive.’
There are no perfect unions,
Some lines cannot be crossed,
Alone, the chosen one, and kind,
Could find the future lost.
And sooth, there is no other way,
Unless the Elven child,
Unleashes all she holds within,
To seal the true divide.
Should pestilence embrace the Land,
And loss be all you know,
The test remains with Her, at End,
For Magic’s trust to grow.
A team must band together,
And unite like once before,
To come full circle and reseal
The broken ways of yore.
The three powerful Flitterwigs watched Ella, their eyes desperate and kind, until Don Posiblemente’s voice cracked.
‘Pestilence,’ he said, ‘this is talking about the Scatterbungle! Ella, for Magic’s sake, keep Charlie close to you if you are around the Scatterbungle. Dixon, too. They MUST NOT leave your side! Only you have immunity from the toxic fumes.’
‘Toxic fumes?’ blurted Charlie. ‘What do you mean, toxic fumes? And pestilence? What does this have to do with Ella? Or her dreams? Why is she the only person who can see the Keys? And what in Magic’s name is Scatterbungle?’
Don Posiblemente didn’t reply. He was gathering pages from the Files. With a flick of his ear and a speedy enchantment, he set about duplicating them. Ms Wheelbarrow stood up. Ella just stared.
‘Scatterbungle is a Magical potion. A gaseous poison really,’ she said taking Ella’s hands in hers. ‘It was created by the Magicals to scatter and bungle Flitterwig powers.’
‘But why?’ asked Ella, coming out of her silence. The Magicals were a loving race. It made no sense to her that they would do such a thing.
Don Posiblemente put a finger up to Ella’s mouth as he slipped the duplicated pages, rolled and tied with a purple ribbon, into Charlie’s hands. ‘Protect her,’ he urged. He took the glass box Ms Wheelbarrow was holding and, with great care, handed it to Ella. She now had four keys.
‘Place them carefully into one box to keep them together. Protect them with your life, Ella,’ he said. ‘The Keys are your guides. You will need to gather all five of them—you simply must find the final Key. I wish I knew where it was… and, then, perhaps most importantly of all, you must find who they each belong to. You are the chosen one the Files speak of. You must lead the chosen five.’
‘Me? But—’ said Ella. But she didn’t get any further for she was distracted by something passing along the floor. She opened her mouth to say something, but Don Posiblemente rushed on.
‘Oh Ella,’ he said, wishing he had thought to keep gasmasks at the ready so that they would all be protected, should the poison have reached Hedgeberry already. ‘Listen carefully.’ Posiblemente paused to take a sharp breath. Something was catching in the back of his throat. ‘As I am sure you have been told, there was once a time when pure human beings had enough faith in the unbelievable to see and know the Magicals.’ The something in his throat compelled him to talk faster. ‘It came to pass that the Royal Elf Princess, the Duke and Queen’s only daughter (for they are as old as time itself) fell in love with a simple human farmer. It was agreed, for relations were good between the two races, that the Elf Queen would Stretchify her daughter to human size and allow her to marry the farmer and stay on Earth, giving up eternal life and Magus in the process. The worry of pollution affecting Magical lungs in those days did not exist, you see, for the world was not polluted as it is now. Everyone respected Nature then.’
Ella nodded as she watched Posiblemente rifle through his drawers and throw stuff into a bag as he spoke. Ella understood that this union, between pure Magicals and humans, was how Flitterwigs came to be.
‘But the union was not peaceful for long,’ continued Posiblemente, coughing violently. As he struggled to speak, Ella felt something rise inside her. Something that made her want to let Don Posiblemente know that he didn’t have to worry so, that she knew stuff, that she could… she could… she didn’t know what she could do exactly but she felt, as Ms Wheelbarrow and Samuel tried to speak up but found themselves choking too, that she must intervene.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, looking about for Charlie. He drew up by her side and took her hand. Dixon, perched near her ear, kissed its tip. ‘I know the story,’ she said. ‘I know that a few Flitterwigs decided they wanted to Shrinkify themselves and infiltrate Magus, but only Royal Magicals with the help of the Dewdrops or a Clearheart could do such a thing. I know that the Queen was fearful for Magus. She didn’t know whether the Magical land could tolerate the presence of humans, because she’d noticed they’d become more and more intent on progress at the expense of the health of the planet.’
The three most powerful Flitterwigs nodded. It was all they could do.
Finally, Posiblemente was able to continue. ‘The Queen,’ he rasped, ‘felt compelled to impose a Ban against any further relationships between Humans, Flitterwigs and Magicals. This was the very Ban that your actions lifted three years ago. But this Ban, sadly, was not enough to stop the dangerous ambitions of certain Flitterwigs. And so Scatterbungle was created by the Queen and the Duke’s best Gnome potionmaker, under their orders, to scatter and bungle the Flitterwigs’ Magical powers.’
Ella listened wide-eyed. She didn’t know that bit! She wanted to say that she could see a shadow in the corner of the drawing room, struggling to open the sack on his back but she didn’t know how to interrupt Posiblemente now that he seemed to have his breath back.
‘This gaseous potion was unstable however,’ Posiblemente managed. ‘Intended only to nullify the Magical skills of its victims, it had a peculiar effect on Earth’s atmosphere cough, cough, cough, cough. On contact with grass or trees cough it erupted in wild magical fires that spontaneously burnt across the lands cough, cough. Within four weeks cough, the Royal Court of Magus cough had a catastrophe on its hands cough splutter, cough. Every Flitterwig stronghold burned with these magical fires cough, invisible to the pure human eye cough and no-one could do anything to stop it.’ The poor man collapsed on the ground, succumb
ing to his constricted lungs.
Ella went to speak again. But Don Posiblemente wouldn’t let her interject. He stood up again.
‘The Magicals cough tried to stem its spread but it transpired that the gas was actually lethal to Pure Magicals.’
Don Posiblemente couldn’t go on. Samuel stepped forward and spoke for him as best he could. ‘They were forced to stay in Magus,’ he said clearing his throat constantly, ‘and watch the Earth’s magical energy burn. The more Magical one was, the more Natural something was, the more lethal the gas seemed to be. And yet, it had absolutely no effect whatsoever on pure humans.’ Samuel paused for a moment to clear his clogging throat. ‘Are you following me, child?’
Ella wanted to ask questions, or at least point out the struggling shadow in the corner, but she found herself nodding instead. And now Ms Wheelbarrow piped up. She was sweating and a little shaky on her feet but her voice was clear.
‘In the end, the Queen was so sorry for this terrible event that she sent five Magical Keys (unbeknownst to her husband the Duke), dipped in the waters of the Sacred Dewdrops, to Earth, in the hope that they might help the Flitterwigs by whatever means possible. It was a group of five Flitterwigs, led by a descendant of the Royal Elf Princess, the first-ever Clearheart, who stemmed the tide of this terrible pestilence. The team gathered together all the healing humanity and magicality their skills allowed into a pool of water—for water is the greatest healer of all—and as a combined force, they unleashed their powers in a magical wave that washed through the land and extinguished the fires, absorbing what was left of the Scatterbungle in the process. Within two days, every Flitterwig had recovered.’
Ella just had to stop Ms Wheelbarrow here, with a raise of her hands. For the shadow in the corner seemed to have managed to open its sack and there was an overpowering smell of liquorice and old bananas spreading across the room. Could no-one else smell it?
‘Ella,’ Posiblemente said suddenly, tears in his eyes. He held onto his desk to hold him up. A terrible sweat had broken out all over his body but the coughing had passed. ‘I thought the recipe for Scatterbungle had been destroyed. I hope the Duke did not hold onto the recipe but he was, then, the Queen’s husband, so I must think the worst. You’re the Clearheart and you must find the final Key, and pull a powerful team together again.’