by Edrei Cullen
‘Gloria!’ Ella called out.
Gloria turned her ratty face to Ella, but was distracted by the damage done to the trees surrounding her nemesis.
‘Noooo,’ Gloria cried, using her wings to fly her up to the injured elms. She flung her mossy, green arms around them and Ella could see how she was trying to soothe the aching growths with her touch. But it wasn’t helping–the poison was too powerful. ‘It’s all your fault, Ella,’ Gloria seethed.
There was anger in Gloria’s voice, but there was desperation, too. Gloria was a Flitterwig. A Dryad Flitterwig. A protector of trees and bushes and everything growing. She might have been a horror of a girl, but she was clearly hurting to find Nature attacked in this way.
‘Just give yourself up,’ pleaded Gloria. ‘You must, so he stops unleashing the gas and hurting the trees!’
‘He?’ said Ella. ‘But how do you know about—’ Another burst of fire cracked so close to her feet that she had to fly up into the air to avoid it.
Ella tried to shoot some elf dust from her own finger to repel the fire. But it wouldn’t come. She couldn’t splurt a splinter of it! Even her Ponkalucka enchantments were powerless against it.
Charlie called out to her from the next batch of trees. ‘We have to stick close to Max or the fires will overwhelm us. Come on, Ella.’ But Ella wasn’t listening. She was busy telling Gloria she was sorry (again) and that she needed her help.
‘I will never help you,’ Gloria seethed.
Ella’s mind sped. Could Gloria be a part of the puzzle? Surely not. Unless… maybe a Dryad Flitterwig formed part of the team that dispelled the Scatterbungle all those years ago? Why not? Dryads were so powerful. Could Gloria be useful somehow?
But what part of the lessons of the essence of Magic would apply to Gloria in particular?
‘I will never help you, Ella,’ Gloria repeated, ‘and I will never forgive you for what you’ve done to my family… or to Hedgeberry!’
Forgiveness! Gloria was the only person Ella knew in her year who really needed to forgive some stuff! What if Ella gave her one of the Keys? She wished a pure Magical or a Giant would appear about now to let her know if she was on the right track. But at that moment, the wild wind ripped a tree from its roots and Gloria was gone, wailing, to soothe it.
Looking up to see that flying was just not an option anymore in this wind, Ella pulled her skateboard out. ‘I’ll follow behind you and Max,’ she yelled out to Charlie across the whistling winds.
‘Okay,’ called Charlie, zooming along the cleared path behind Max who glided easily through the flames, cooling the air behind him. Along the paths of the school grounds they travelled, dodging fires, seeking out a well.
And then Ella stopped. The words from her mother’s letter streamed through her head again. ‘There are no coincidences.’
Ella breathed in confidently. She trusted those words. She did. She had to. She turned back at once. Dixon screamed up at her from his protected spot in her front pocket. ‘Don’t leave Charlie, barley!’
But Ella wasn’t listening. She flew up in to the air, fighting the winds. He body was tossed about like a feather. But Ella was determined.
She found Gloria soon enough. The poor girl was enveloped in flames. Her arms branched out about her, thrusting them away. The very trees she was trying to save beat back and forth, their trunks cracking to strike the flames back and protect her.
Ella landed. Flames licked at her feet. Dixon screamed at the top of his voice.
Face to face they stood in the whistling wind and the dusty sky, at the top of Pine Ridge. It was lit up like a stage, by the orangey, red and blue glow of the raging magical fires of the Scatterbungle gas. Gloria’s eyes were the same deep, dark, mossy green as her limbs. Elms and oaks and pines and sycamores groaned against the wind, trying to protect her, howling as their barks curled and peeled with the effects of the poison.
Gloria unfurled her arm. It turned into a branch and lashed out at Ella. Ella almost dodged it but the tip of a twig scratched her face and made her falter.
She could hear Charlie yelling out behind her, and she could see the flames slide off Gloria’s frame and slink away, sensing Max’s approach.
‘You are to blame for all of this,’ Gloria hissed again through her gasmask. ‘It’s your fault the trees are dying. It’s your fault Hedgeberry is under attack.’ ‘What makes you think that?’ Ella called out through the bluster.
‘Because,’ answered Gloria, ‘that creature with the slimy tail said so!’
chapter 23
blame & backbone
Ella gasped. Was Gloria talking about the Duke? And was this all Ella’s fault?
She didn’t know what to say. Had the Duke just done this to get to her, knowing she was the only Flitterwig who wouldn’t be affected by the gas, like the Clearheart before her? Ella crumbled as this awful truth dawned on her. Had he only unleashed the Scatterbungle to bring Flitterwiggery to its knees so she would do whatever he asked of her?
She knew it was her tears and her Shrinkifying powers he had always coveted but Don Posiblemente had never had a chance to make the purpose of the Scatterbungle being unleashed clear. Is this why her beloved school and all her fellow students were suffering? Because of her?
Ella’s legs wobbled. How blind she’d been. How arrogant she was, thinking she could figure out how to enable the Keys, find the clues and undo this mess, when she was the reason for it!
Ella’s head buzzed and she couldn’t see straight. Charlie zoomed back and forth, covering the areas that Max had cleared of flames. His feet drew up new grass as soon as he passed across the scorched soil (which Charlie was finding a pretty nifty new power) and it seemed to soothe the trees. They stopped bending and wailing and whistling, which in turn, quieted the wind. He was trusting himself! He was trusting in Nature! He was making green things do his bidding! It was incredible.
And as he did so, the Key around his neck glowed a lilac colour, shiny as an amethyst. Charlie looked down, saw it and whooped. The sight of it drew Ella out of her stupor. She had to pull herself together!
‘Please listen to me, Gloria,’ Ella called out to the prickly, twiny Flitterwig who was thrusting her branchy arms out violently. Ella pointed her finger at an approaching stem and willed elf dust from her finger to cast it away. Nothing but a piddle of white sparkle sputtered out. She ducked instead.
Gloria ignored the Goblin and Salamander Flitterwigs in her midst, despite their effects on her surroundings. Her rage was too fierce.
Gloria whipped at Ella again. ‘To think that you Elves think you’re at the top of the Magical world!’
Ella swerved to the left, her balancing skills from skateboarding coming in handy now, if not her magical prowess.
‘Gloria, we’re all different,’ Ella called out. ‘Don’t you see? And maybe it is my fault the guy with the tail—the Duke of Magus—is doing this to us.’
Gloria scrunched up her nose. Who in Magic’s name was the Duke of Magus?
‘But we have to work together,’ Ella cried across the winds. ‘The Duke wants me to help him overtake Magus, the home of the Magicals. And your dad’s only part of it because he thinks Dryads should be more powerful than Elves. But the cost of that is all this,’ she yelled, throwing her arms about her. She was being as dramatic as Dixon. ‘It’s our job now, Gloria, to come together as Flitterwigs, to fight off this attack! That’s the only way forward!’
Gloria wasn’t listening anymore. She had rushed off to soothe a huge crumbling oak.
Hopeful that Gloria wouldn’t try to spike her again, Ella flew into a clearway created by Charlie and Max. She landed close to Gloria and touched the trunk of the tree that she was trying to soothe.
She set her face to the wind as it lifted again so her eyes watered and, capturing the crystals that tumbled from them, wiped her wet hand on the oak’s sagging side. Gloria raised up almost as tall as an oak herself, her hair and legs spiking into a deadly, woody weapon.
But the tree clearly rallied under Ella’s touch. It heaved itself up, straightening a little in the middle. Ella kept wiping her eyes and stroking the side of the tree with her tears. Gloria’s mouth dropped open in shock and amazement and she shrank down to her normal size.
‘You can help them too?’ she said.
‘I hope so,’ said Ella. ‘I hope I can do better than that, actually. But I need you. I need you to be on my side. Here, take this,’ she called out, pulling the last Key on its string from her skateboard bag and handing it to Gloria. ‘It will protect you from the gas so you can take your mask off. The trees will hear you better then!’
Gloria took the string from her (which was all she could see), mystified, and wrapped it around her wrist. She looked at Max and Charlie clearing the space around them, keeping them safe from the flames. Why were they helping her? Why were they protecting Ella? Why were they working together and not with their own kind?
Ella took the girl’s hands in hers. She felt that recently familiar bolt of energy fly through her and her eyes snapped shut. Speeding through memories she went, pausing for only an instant at one.
Gloria was no more than two or three and her mother was reading from a picture book, pointing to the Elven Flitterwigs on its pages.
‘Bad,’ Gloria’s innocent voice declared.
‘Good girl,’ said her mother.
Ella’s eyes opened. She moved her hand.
‘You don’t have to like me, Gloria, but somewhere you have to find the strength to forgive me so we can save ourselves and save us all.’
Gloria was speechless.
‘You won’t need that anymore,’ said Ella, helping to ease Gloria’s gasmask off her face. ‘Quick, follow me,’ Ella yelled out as she sped down the hill back toward the shuddering school building. ‘I’ll explain everything, but we have to hurry. Max, can you clear the way?’
Gloria watched Max steer the flames clear and create a path back to the Hedgeberry edifice. A Key flying out behind his neck glowed as red as his hair and Gloria could almost swear he had grown taller since the last time she saw him. Her thin mouth opened and closed like a frog’s.
She looked up the hill to her trees, torn between listening to Ella and staying to soothe their boughs and yet, really the decision had already settled in her heart. Flying up into the sky, she followed the three rushing Flitterwigs back to school.
chapter 24
invaders & inevitability
Ella felt a shiver of horror as they approached the entrance closest to Wheelbarrow’s office. Something else was up. She could feel it in her bones. Dixon peered up at her from her front pocket. He’d never been so quiet and well behaved in his whole, entire life!
Her mother’s words came to her again. ‘There are no coincidences.’ She took a deep breath.
Inside the office, it took her a moment to hear Humphrey and Samantha call out to her. They were hiding in Wheelbarrow’s big stationery cupboard. Hearing her reply, they peeked out and beckoned her and Max and Charlie in urgently. Ella grabbed Gloria’s wrist and pulled her in, too. It was a tight fit, six Flitterwigs, all squashed together in amongst pencils and rubbers and paperclips!
‘There are two Flitterwigs and some other kind of creature that is too horrible to describe, all wearing gasmasks, looking for you,’ Samantha whispered, as soon as they closed the door. She smiled uncertainly at Gloria and looked at Ella questioningly, then trod on Humphrey’s foot before he could say anything rude to the Dryad Flitterwig. ‘We’re lucky we managed to hide in time! They came in here, made a lot of noise and left.’
Ella’s heart stuck in her throat. It was the Duke. It had to be. And Saul and Ulnus. But they weren’t ready for this! They were meant to be figuring out how to draw a healing fountain of water out of a well, not fighting the worst Magical in the world!
She had to get everyone as ready as she possibly could! Fast!
‘Okay,’ she whispered quickly, as she felt the burn in her ears and the swirl of her hair. ‘Your turn,’ she said, looking at Humphrey. Centering herself as best she could in the tight space, she tweaked her ear and took Humphrey’s hands in hers. The bolt of energy closed her eyes.
Memories flipped through her mind. A family of five, with pale, moony faces sat sullenly around a table eating dumplings. Humphrey was there too, about six years old. Every single one of them was wearing a black polo neck jumper and had a dark bowl of hair on their heads.
‘But I want to be a volcano-tamer,’ Humphrey was saying through his long fringe.
‘It will never happen though, son. It’s simply the way of things,’ a man, who must have been Humphrey’s father, said.
‘There’s no point chasing pipe dreams,’ said the woman, who must have been his mother, in a resigned tone. ‘It’s just not possible. That’s simply the way of things for our kind.’
‘No choice,’ said his father.
‘None at all,’ said his mother. ‘Fated to be nothing.’
The whole family sighed and returned to their dumplings.
Ella’s eyes shot open and she fell back, breathless. She shook her head. Wow. ‘You have to learn to dream again, Humphrey! That’s your challenge. That’s how you’re going to help undo the Scatterbungle!’ Humphrey looked at her and shook his head, unbelieving.
‘It’s true,’ said Ella. ‘That’s why Gloria’s here. Her part to play has something to do with forgiveness and Max had to learn to believe in himself again. So…’
SSSSSSSSSSSLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAASH!!!!!
A laser of black elf dust whipped through the cupboard door straight at Ella’s head.
Charlie threw himself before the shot, to protect his friend. It flew right at him and Freezified him, with a fizz and a zip, into something icely.
Ella had only ever seen black elf dust once before.
There were six of them squished up together in this cupboard and the evil Duke of Magus was standing right outside the cupboard door. They could hear him bossing Mr Ulnus about.
Gloria began to glow a really, really deep green. Her body was pulsing strangely. She stepped impulsively between Charlie and the door and her body branched outwards until the woody protrusions from her body covered the door completely.
‘I’m in front of the door. If you do anything,’ she said, hardly believing her own stupidity, ‘I’ll be the first to get hurt,’ she called out. The Flitterwigs inside couldn’t believe their ears. Nor could Mr Ulnus outside! Max threw his arms around Charlie and his body burned so bright, it hurt Ella’s face. Charlie melted under his touch.
This was really, a super bizarre moment for Ella and Sam and Humph to watch. Gloria, who had never been more than an enemy to Ella had become a wooden wall protecting the clan from the enemy outside. And Max, who had only ever made Ella dreadfully uncomfortable was Unfreezifying her Protector!
The Duke raised his hand again and pointed his finger at the door.
‘Noooo,’ screamed Ulnus. His arm became a bough that smashed the Duke sideways.
The Duke turned on Ulnus and spun Dust at him from his finger at a very short distance. Ulnus’s branching arm attached to a far wall and yanked him sideways. The sofa behind him took the full impact of the attack.
The Duke lifted both arms and pointed all ten fingers at the door. Just as he went to unleash an almighty blast of Dust from every finger at the barrier before him, he disappeared. Sucked out the window of Wheelbarrow’s office by an almighty whirlwind.
Humphrey, who had pushed Gloria roughly out of the way, stood at the open door of the cupboard with his arms in front of him, palms facing forward. He’d turned the most glowing steely blue. He moved his arms sideways. The whirlwind came at the Duke sideways, flinging him across the lawn of Hedgeberry’s burning school of Flitterwiggery.
Saul was clambering out the smashed windows and lumbering across the lawn on his Gnomic Flitterwig legs as fast as they could carry him.
‘I have absolutely no idea how I did that!’ said Humphrey, shaking h
is head.
Ulnus looked over Humphrey’s shoulder. He could see his daughter there. He had to do something to stop this! His branched arms grabbed the sills and pulled him out the window in a second. He flew after Saul. They were upon the dazed Duke at once. Saul thrust Ragwald, the Duke’s Protector, out of the way. Ulnus’s arm was the size of a trunk now. He bashed the Duke over the head, knocking him out cold. Between them they dragged the Duke over to the fountain on the front lawn and Portalised him back to the Ulnus Estate.
Ten fingers of Black Dust would have blown the building to smithereens, never mind the cupboard, along with everyone in it. Ulnus’s daughter was in there! Ella was in there! Was the Duke seriously about to kill the Clearheart?
He was completely out of control.
The children fell out of the cupboard one by one. The Key around Gloria’s wrist shone the deepest of greens and everyone could see it. In turn, each of them hi-fived her. ‘Thanks,’ said Charlie. Gloria shrugged, embarrassed and unsure.
Humphrey’s Key shone visibly to everyone now, too. It was a steely grey blue, the colour of the moon. ‘I think I just rediscovered my kind’s affinity with the weather,’ he managed.
‘You don’t say. Rhymes with hay,’ said Dixon, popping his head up momentarily out of Ella’s pocket. His eyes were bigger than his whole face!
Ella looked around her. The office was destroyed. Wind whipped through the smashed windows and flames sucked at the sills. They had to get out. And there was only one obvious place to go. To the coordinates in the Files Don Posiblemente had given them.
Samantha looked at Ella, crestfallen. Her Key was still invisible. She wasn’t a part of the team…
Ella’s mind raced. What had she needed to learn in order to gain the Dewdrops’ trust three years ago? She had to believe in her dreams—Humphrey. She had to believe in what she wanted—Max. She had to learn that Nature was her ally—that was Charlie. Then she had learnt forgiveness—which was Gloria. And she had loved her darling Dixon unconditionally. Surely that essential part of magic belonged to Samantha?