by Edrei Cullen
Don Posiblemente fell back in his chair in a sweating swoon. Ms Wheelbarrow was coughing uncontrollably. Samuel stepped forward but he wobbled on his feet, a fact that seemed to disturb the Elven Flitterwig greatly.
Ella noticed that the drawing room was full now with the aroma of old bananas and liquorice. Obviously no-one else could smell it the way she could. She stood up and threw both hands up in the air again.
‘Can’t you smell it?’ she called out.
Everyone looked at her strangely. She clung to Charlie’s hand. He squeezed it tight.
Posiblemente began to twitch strangely. ‘Smell what?’ he asked.
‘Can’t you see the creature over there?’ she asked, pointing to the tiny black body scrambling up the side of the wall.
‘No,’ stammered Samuel, searching with hazy concentration.
Ms Wheelbarrow, stepped forward. But then she stopped. She couldn’t remember why she’d stepped forward. The last three minutes had slipped out of her mind. She couldn’t remember what she was even doing here! Wherever was she? She looked to Don Posiblemente and Samuel with deep concern. Neither seemed to notice her in return. She coughed again but with supreme will choked further onslaughts back. Her Adam’s apple gulped ferociously. It was no good… Ms Wheelbarrow gave in to a fit of spluttering.
The smell of liquorice in the room was making Ella gag. She squeezed Dixon down the front of her dungarees.
Samuel went to put his hand on Ella’s shoulder but his legs gave way. Blinking and sweating, he tried to draw memories from his mind that were speeding away fast. He couldn’t speak at all. Ms Wheelbarrow stumbled. She was feeling terribly queasy.
‘Oh Ella,’ said Samuel. He settled himself on the floor cross-legged and tried to keep focus. ‘It is true. It is the Scatterbungle. I can feel it… taking me. They have… got to us already. It is up to you… Ella. If we’re exposed for too long… we might not recover. Ever. You must save us. Before it’s… too late.’ He laid his head in his lap.
Ella looked up into the bookshelves and noticed a small, black shadowy figure pass across them. There was a trail of smoke coming out of the back of a sack slung on its shoulder. And then she saw a Literditty begin to tear up a book. Which was insanity and craziness! A Literditty doesn’t tear up a book! Literditties love books, like nothing else! Then the Literditty fell flat on its back. Was it dead?
‘Get out of here, Ella,’ Don Posiblemente rasped. ‘NOW,’ he ordered as his shoulders twitched even more wildly.
‘But—’
‘Now!’ he repeated.
‘Okey-dokey,’ said Dixon in reply, grabbing at the ends of Ella’s hair and pointing over the lapel of her dungarees towards the door. He begged and pleaded and yelled, ‘You must listen to them, Ella! Be the Clearheart! Be the Clearheart, dear heart, splart fart. Depart!’
It will always be hard to put into words what Ella, Charlie and Dixon almost witnessed that night in Don Posiblemente’s sitting room. For if they had stayed mere moments longer, they would have seen the three most powerful Flitterwigs in the world come undone.
Don Posiblemente’s twitching turned to a fever so fierce, it made his left shoulder hunch up every few seconds and his back leg kick out. Samuel’s body rebelled too. His eyes blinked so fiercely against the fever in his veins that his arms kept flying out in a sort of duck impression. And as for Ms Wheelbarrow, well she coughed so hard that her legs bowed in the middle and her back arched as if she was moving in time to disco tunes. It was truly horrible.
When the two Flitterwigs and the pixie reached Hedgeberry, they were frightened beyond belief. Ella flew straight to her dorm, Charlie still firmly attached to her hand, to get her skateboard. She found Samantha curled up in bed. She was shivering and sweating. And then Ella smelled that smell. Liquorice. Old bananas.
‘Oh gosh,’ cried Ella, ‘the Scatterbungle’s here already.’ She looked about her and saw a small dark shape fall out of the window.
Ella reached out to Samantha. Her touch instantly made Sam’s sweat subside. She watched, shocked, as she came to.
‘Ella,’ Samantha whispered, relieved. ‘You’re okay.’
Ella turned as another shape slipped through the door. Pulling Charlie and a befuddled Samantha after her, she chased it. She watched the cloaked creature fall down the stairs, hobnail boots tripping headlong, bumpity-bump to the bottom, as the liquoricey banana smoke petered out of its sack.
‘Is that a Troggle?’ Charlie whispered.
‘I think so,’ said Ella, closing her eyes and gathering every bit of strength she had to help her now. ‘If the Duke’s still alive, we have to stop the spread of this Scatterbungle before it’s too late!’
chapter 11
antidotes & animosity
The Duke laughed into the Atlantic air as if the world were his very own. Dead! Him? As if! He was invincible! And he was a genius! Slipping Troggles loaded with Scatterbungle gas into Samuel Happenstance’s pocket while he was in London was a simply splendiferous idea!
The Duke’s new home, a red tugboat called Coco, rippled through the still waters soundlessly. The clean Atlantic air was so clear of pollution that the Duke was almost restored to perfect health… with a little extra help from Saul’s antipollutant Antidote of course! A comatose Goobloobin Flitterwig gaoler lay asleep on deck, a plaster over his knee from which Saul Bottomly had been draining blood to provide Antidote for the wicked Duke.
The moon illuminated the vessel and the Duke’s eyes shone crimson with evil. He flew about in elegant swoops, overjoyed to have the use of his wings back. He had Stretchified himself once more, making his veins pulsate through his taut skin. His nose had become a beaked protrusion, two rasping nostrils flaring wide, and his nails had grown into prehistoric yellow claws. His cloak was frayed and filthy and the tail he insisted on conjuring, dangled reptilian and slimy in the air behind him.
The Duke intended to make the Clearheart obey him by pretty much dismembering the Flitterwig race with Scatterbungle. Yes, Ella would do his bidding or he would never stop poisoning her people until they were dead! Not that he actually knew how to stop the poisoning. He had never worked out how the Flitterwigs once stopped the disease the poisonous gas inflicted. But Ella was not to know that! And there was no way a child of only thirteen could possibly figure out how her ancestors had stopped it in the past. Impossible. She had gumption and gall, and she was more special than most, but she was no match for a Magical potion of such ultimate power.
Plus, the Duke had information that Ella would give her life for. He had a secret up his sleeve that ensured this time, Ella and the Dewdrops would obey. For even his wife, the Queen, could not step in to try to stop him. Not when he played his final card! Yes, Ella would obey him this time. The introduction of machinery and progress into Magus was just a matter of time.
Ahead of him, pulling the boat, swam a swarthy Giant. Oh Magic, bless the wicked Giant, Arnold McDuff! The very first Clearheart didn’t know that Scatterbungle had no effect on underground-dwelling Giants. In fact, it helped them stay alert! And by unleashing the healing wave imbued with her team’s Flitterwig powers to cleanse the land of the Scatterbungle poison, the first-ever Clearheart had guided its remains down into the soil and right into the hands of Thomas of Gommoronahl’s deadliest enemy, Arnold McDuff. Ha!
Arnold had bottled the deadly ingredients of the gas and it had kept him awake for longer than a few hours over the last few hundred years, allowing him to keep a bulging eye on some of history unfolding, like the birth of Ella Montgomery. And now, with the Duke as an ally and the Spirit Trees restored to feed him and keep him awake, he was going to take down Thomas Brackenrack and take over Gommoronahl!
But first he had to lead Coco!
The anchor chain of the old tugboat around the Giant’s waist pulled taut. He swatted sharks, sting-rays, turtles and whales out of the way as he swam. Living in soil and rock allowed his lungs hours under the water before he had to come up for air. A few sailo
rs had reported sightings over the past few months of a tugboat speeding, pulled by a mammoth whale, and folk would nod and roll their eyes and go back to their ales.
The ex-co-chairman of the Rooniun, Saul Bottomly, clapped his gobliny hands together as he sat at the rear of the boat beside his partner in crime, Frederick Ulnus. Since escaping the Goobloobin Gaol they had been waiting eagerly, for the Duke and Arnold’s new plan to unfold. The plan was so dastardly, so risky, that its very dreadfulness was proof that the Duke had been away from Magus far too long. After three years on Earth he was so infected by human desire for progress, at any cost, that he was more a monster than a Magical now.
And finally, the plan was underway. Scatterbungle! Prisoners! It was too perfect for words! They were sure of success this time! The wicked crew was safe in the salty, impenetrable waters. Soon, Saul’s dream of being Shrinkified to the size of a Magical and granted access to Magus itself, would come true!
Ulnus nodded, looking up from a walkytalky bowl, to signal that his daughter Gloria was secure. ‘She has received a gasmask,’ the dark Dryad Flitterwig said, a smile splintering his wooden face. ‘My wife will have her home soon, away from the effects of the poison. The Rooniun will have been Scatterbungled by now, too.’
Saul turned away from the wind. ‘Let us revise the plan once more,’ he said, itching one floppy ear and leaning over to take a slice of tofu sitting on a plate between them.
Ulnus licked salty spray off his thin lips. ‘We will anchor far off the coast of South Australia so that we are in prime position once the time comes to travel back to England and get the Elf child.’ He tipped a slice of pickled cucumber into his mouth.
‘And what will Arnold do with Thomas?’ said Saul, licking the tip of a fat finger where a little tofu had strayed.
‘Simple,’ said Ulnus. ‘Thomas is to relinquish his position as Lord of Gommoronahl to Arnold, or the prisoners are to be disposed of.’
Saul looked at Ulnus with admiration. Dryads truly could be the most mercenary of the Flitterwig race. ‘That should do the trick,’ he said. ‘And if Thomas complies?’
‘Arnold will release Thomas, Bolgus and one of the other prisoners to show our goodwill. We will promise the release of the others once Magus and the Rooniun have officially accepted the new chain of command—Elves first, Dryads second, Goblins and Gnomes third and fourth. In the meantime, the Duke will have the Clearheart under his control, ensuring she will do as we wish.’
If Saul was ever to get to Magus himself, his life-long dream, he would need the Clearheart to draw the Dewdrops from Magus, as only she could, to ensure his permanent Shrinkification. The Duke still needed her too, to draw the Dewdrops from Magus to Shrinkify the machinery he intended to introduce to his Magusian homeland, in order to invade it.
Ulnus hoped the plan was as simple as it sounded. He hoped Arnold had the brothers Thomas and Bolgus safely entrapped. For to incur the wrath of the Giants and the Magicals at once did not bear thinking about.
chapter 12
mix-ups & mayhem
What was unravelling at Hedgeberry was more than Ella, Charlie, Samantha and Dixon could quite believe. For starters, the whole place stank so much (to Ella) of old bananas and liquorice it was hard not to fall over in the wake of it! And as they made their way to the great hall, hand-in-hand, where they were supposed to be doing homework, they passed two Brownie Flitterwigs, huddled up, shivering and staring sadly at the grass, not a giggle between them, even though all Brownies ever do is giggle! Tiny magical flames sprouted ominously from each blade. And then they passed a Marshlin Flitterwig, lover of all things watery, who was sweating profusely and trying with all his powers to dry up the fountain on the front lawn–a lawn that was scattered with flames, popping up here and there, like whispered warnings.
Slipping quietly into the huge homework auditorium, the situation was no better. Everyone was seated at their desks as they should be, but all was not well. The Homework Master, a Gnome Flitterwig, mopped at his brow, trying to stem a fever that had turned him quite red. He was overheating by the second.
Then there was a Pixie Flitterwig by the door who was quite apoplectic with coughing, but the stony-faced Sprite Flitterwig beside him did nothing to help—even though he was a healer and supposed to be unable to ignore a person in medical need!
Every single student in the hall was coughing or shivering or sweating. Everyone seemed to be coming down with a horrible bout of the flu. Ella wanted to rush to each of them to offer help, but Charlie held her back. There were just too many in need.
Dixon’s eyes bulged in their sockets. Without a word, he tucked himself deep into the front pocket of Ella’s dungarees and put his thumb in his mouth.
The children ran over to Humphrey, who they’d just spotted close to the front of the class. Weird!
‘Hey,’ whispered Charlie.
‘Oh!’ said Humphrey, jumping as if startled and then exploding into a fit of giggles. He had goosebumps all along his arms. ‘Oh, you gave me a fright, Charlie,’ he chuckled. Dixon popped his head up momentarily, dumbfounded.
This didn’t make sense. Humphrey never, ever laughed.
‘Are you okay, Humphrey?’ Dixon asked.
‘Yes, why? What? Don’t I seem okay? Whaddyou mean by that? Whassup? Where the? I—’ Humphrey’s whole body started to shake and chortle. Ella leaned over and placed her hand on his shoulder, her face frowning with concern. At her touch, Humphrey settled, his expression turning moony and sullen once more.
‘Woah,’ he said, calmly. ‘Woah, something really strange is happening.’
Ella took her hand off his shoulder and sighed with relief, but as soon as she did, Humphrey started shaking and smiling again.
She touched him again. He calmed and sobered. Took her hand off. All a jitter and a chuckle once more.
She took his hand in hers. ‘Don’t let go of me,’ she said. The familiar smell of powerful magic—oranges and cinnamon—filled the space about her, blocking out the stench of bananas and liquorice. ‘I think you’re okay if we’re touching—’ she began, but her attention was snatched by Samantha. She’d forgotten to keep hold of her!
Samantha was spinning a penny on the tip of her finger and watching it, fascinated, apparently oblivious to the fact she was suddenly sweating and burning up.
Ella looked at Charlie. Charlie looked at Ella. Samantha was a Sprite Flitterwig, WAY too clumsy to be able to spin a penny on the top of her finger like that! What in Magic was happening? Had the Scatterbungle already taken full effect at Hedgeberry? Ella leaned back from Humphrey without letting go and put her leg against Samantha’s. The penny instantly fell off her finger and rolled across the floor.
‘Darn it!’ said Samantha, frowning. ‘Did you see that, guys?’ she said looking left and right. ‘I had coordination! How cool!’ And then she started. ‘Oh my goodness, I’m running a temperature!’ She took her pulse at once and laid her hand on her forehead to cool it with her healing touch.
‘THRRRRRRRRRRRR!’ Charlie blew a huge wet raspberry out of his mouth, before flopping into a sneezing fit.
‘Quick, grab Charlie,’ Ella said to Samantha, realising that Charlie wasn’t touching her now!
Samantha took hold of his elbow, but Charlie kept sneezing. Ella turned and reached her arms around Charlie while still touching Humphrey, making sure she kept her leg against Samantha’s. Charlie stopped sneezing at once.
‘Oh gosh,’ said Ella. ‘This is hopeless! We can’t be separated, okay?’
Humphrey looked around the room. Ben Running who loved his skateboard more than any other Flitterwig at school, was trying to karate chop it in half. Everywhere Humphrey looked, Flitterwigs were sick and behaving increasingly strangely. A sneezing Sylph Flitterwig to their right, normally lighter than air, fell heavily against her desk. A spluttering Elf Flitterwig to their left was squeezing Ponkaluckas out of her eyes and bursting the much-respected enchantments with the hard swing of a big ruler. A shiver
ing Dryad Flitterwig behind them was scratching his name into his desk. Dryad Flitterwigs protect trees—they would never deface wood!
And all the time, Ella could see tiny black shadows slipping along the skirting boards, spraying a gas out of the sacks on their shoulders and then collapsing flat on their backs.
‘It’s the Scatterbungle, isn’t it?’ asked Charlie, his freckles practically sparkling with an instinctive sense of doom. ‘And we’re too late.’
‘I’m not sure about that,’ said Ella, listening closely to what the clearhearted depths of her were willing her to hear, ‘but we need to get you guys out of here. I seem to be the only one who’s unaffected.’
Ella shuffled her friends past feverish, honking, chattering Flitterwigs, towards Wheelbarrow’s office, where she planned on taking them all through the Waterway to Willow Farm. Yes. That felt right. Her home was situated on one of the meridians, close to a Mirror of Foreverness. The Magicals would come through it to help her as soon as they heard what the Duke had done. Dixon would travel there to fetch them.
In the corridor they passed Max Pepper.
‘Hey?’ he said, tentatively, staring at the huddled mass shuffling sideways down the hall like a lumpy crab. ‘Oh no, they’ve lost it too,’ he whispered to himself, surveying the four of them in their strange bear hug. It was a fair call. They were, after all, behaving really strangely.
Ella looked over at him suspiciously. He seemed entirely normal! Or at least, as normal as a Flitterwig with glowing red hair who stares a lot can seem.
‘Max!’ she shouted out. ‘You’re okay?’