by Edrei Cullen
‘Oh, do shut up, Thomas,’ Arnold boomed back. ‘No need to roar. We’re all vegetarians here. She’s only joking.’
Charlie nearly whooped with joy! Thomas the Giant WAS here! Max disappeared through a crack in the wall. The kids followed, side swerving those colossal feet as they ran.
‘Wake up, you! Spew, loo, poooooooo!’ Dixon yelled.
Humphrey came-to slowly. Where was he? What had happened?
‘Oh, thank the heavens! Rhymes with sevens,’ said Dixon, crawling back under Humphrey’s polo neck to stay close to his Key.
It all came gushing back. As far as Humphrey knew, Ella, Gloria, Sam, Max and Charlie had been swallowed up into the soil… and what exactly he was supposed to do about it was anybody’s guess! His heart pumped loudly in his chest.
Night was drawing in and a drizzling rain began to fall. The moon was rising. It would guide the solitary Moglin. Humphrey felt relieved as he stared up at it. He let the glow warm his body and help him think.
Charlie was convinced that this place was the source of the water that had cured the Scatterbungle the last time it had been released. If there were no coincidences in Magic then Humphrey had to start by believing he was in the right place. Even if everyone else was gone—dead even—he had to keep going. But what could he do? On his own?
He could believe in his dreams, at least. That ability had long-ago been knocked out of him by his parents, but hadn’t he managed to conjure up a whirlwind back at school, finally realising a lost skill of his people? Something he could only ever have dreamt about until today?
He stood up decisively. He would make the rain over the valley fall harder, that’s what he’d do. He’d make it rain so hard that there’d be a pond here by morning. For water in the world of Magic reveals all things. Water was what was needed, Humphrey felt certain. The extra glow in his Key confirmed what his instincts knew to be true.
He tweaked his ear, put his hands in the air and closed his eyes.
chapter 27
nemesis & nets
Ella and Gloria weren’t actually gone at all, as it happens. Or not into the ground as Humphrey suspected.
For as the girls watched, open-mouthed, as their friends fell into the dark hole, and Ella’s panic rose, realising Dixon wasn’t with her anymore, a creature, Stretchified beyond recognition, accompanied only by his miniscule Goblin Protector, snuck up behind them and tapped Ella on the shoulder with a wizened, clawing nail.
Before Ella and Gloria could do anything to get away, they were being dragged, kicking and flapping, in a webby net of black elf dust across the rocky terrain, away from the valley.
‘I’ve been expecting you,’ the Duke snarled at Ella. ‘And as for you,’ he hissed at Gloria. ‘Who would have thought you Dryads would be such turncoats? Just like your father. Oooh, my daughter is in danger. Oooh, the trees are in danger. Oooh we’re hurting too many Flitterwigs. No backbone, you lot! How can you expect to be eligible for Royal Court Membership if you’re all so weak about real change?’
Gloria couldn’t say a word. She just stared out of the net, open-mouthed. The creature before her was more horrendous close-up than she could possibly have imagined.
Even Ella was struck by the change from ugly to horrific. Earth had not been kind to the Duke’s Magical features. Through the gasmask he wore it was clear that, Stretchified as he was, the veins pulsing through his skin were now thicker, deeper, bluer than ever. To look at his face was like looking at something radiated or x-rayed. The red veins deeper down created a roadmap of wiggling routes along his neck. His eyes were so red around the edges they were sore to look at, and the whites of his eyes had turned a custardy yellow. Nothing but a few strands of hair remained on his bald head and his teeth had begun to rot so terribly that his breath stank like a cow’s carcass. His shoulders were hunched and crooked, his claws long and unkempt.
If it hadn’t been for the new, rich velvet cloak on his back and the imperious look in his eye, it would almost be impossible to know that the monster before them was any sort of regal (if, wishful thinking) mastermind at all.
Ella’s head raced. How had he known they would be here? He must have found them in the Waterways. But they weren’t working properly? Unless… Ella scrambled up and tried to scrabble her way out of the net.
‘How did you know this is where the well’s meant to be? The source of the fountain,’ she yelled.
The Duke looked momentarily taken aback. And then he threw his head in the air and laughed out loud.
‘So that’s why you’re here, little Ella,’ he snarled, flicking his claw through a square in his net and pinning her under the chin. ‘You found out that this was the layline for the waters that washed away the Scatterbungle and you thought you could just rock up here and make the fountain flow again and everything would be all better? You didn’t even question why this is where your mother and your brothers died, huh? Not as clever as I thought you were.’
Ella stared at him. Her green eyes gleamed. But the mention of her mother and her brothers made her falter. What was the connection between this site, Scatterbungle, and the deaths of her mother and brothers? Of course it couldn’t be a coincidence. Nothing in Magic ever was.
‘Well,’ the Duke snarled, stepping away from Ella with a flick of his cloak. His beloved tail slid behind him. ‘I don’t know very much about your mother’s accident but I do know plenty about the Giant responsible for it. Arnold!’ the Duke called out, banging his foot twice on the ground.
Nothing happened.
The Duke flicked his head at Ragwald. Rags was off at once, through a crack in the ground, his tiny body weaving its way into the soil with an uncanny, drilling, gobliny speed.
Ella’s heart lifted up into her mouth. The moon was high in a sky sparkling with stars. Her mind flew back to her dreams, her hidden memories of the day of the crash. She remembered a sudden fog. In her dreams it was like a blackout that came from nowhere. She hadn’t been able to figure it out… but now the picture was clear as day.
Arnold McDuff lived here! It wasn’t a fog, it was the shadow of a Giant—Arnold’s shadow, that had made the car swerve off the bridge that day! He was responsible for the tragedy that destroyed the Montgomery family.
The ground heaved open, and the Giant with the scar across his eyebrow pulled himself up on his massive elbows. A faint whiff of bananas followed him.
‘Oh no,’ thought Ella.
‘We meet again, Ella Montgomery,’ drawled Arnold. He scooped the net into his hand, lifting Ella and Gloria up to eye level. Ella was staring into the eyes of her mother’s killer. ‘You got away last time but you will not escape me now.’
He opened the palm of his other gargantuan hand. In it lay what looked like long, large stretched spirals of an amber coloured stone. Ella’s mind cast back to what Max had been able to Unweave from her dreams. Max had mentioned something about cocoons from his own dreams, too, hadn’t he?
The air from Arnold’s ugly breath blew Ella and Gloria backwards against the webbing. The roughness of his palms against their skidding feet tore a small hole in the net underneath them. The Giant yawned. The fresh air was making his head feel light and fuzzy. It was all the time Gloria needed to slip under the net and fly away but Arnold snapped his fist shut around Ella before she could follow.
The Duke saw Gloria fly away and pointed a claw at her. A spray of Black Dust pierced through the air, mercurial against the backdrop of the night sky. It would have Freezified Gloria at once had a body not dived in front of her, taking the full impact of the hit.
Gloria hesitated mid-flight. It was her father!
He dropped out of the air like a stone.
She dove down towards him.
‘Save yourself,’ she heard him moan just before he turned to ice for the second time in twenty-four hours.
chapter 28
possessification & pomposity
The Duke watched Arnold and Ella triumphantly. SUCCESS WAS HIS AT LAST!
Saul appeared at the Duke’s side.
‘What are you doing here, Saul?’ the Duke asked, turning to belt him with elf dust.
‘I am here to help you, Your Majesty,’ Saul lied through his gasmask. For anything other than this answer would have resulted in his Freezification, too. Or worse.
The deranged Duke stumbled slightly. His power was wavering, in spite of his own gasmask.
Frederick Ulnus was Unfreezifying already.
Arnold peered in at Ella between one of the fingers of his clenched fist. Ella stared out at him. ‘You took my mother and my brothers from me!’ she yelled. The fury inside her welled until she felt she might burst. ‘Why?!’
Her mother had come to this place—the place that had appeared in her dreams—in order to investigate why it was significant to Ella. And she had lost her life in the process. Her mother had walked right into a trap!
‘It was you I wanted, not them,’ Arnold growled calmly, but his voice was like a rumble of thunder.
Ella went to retort but something caught in her nose. There was no avoiding it. This Giant holding her captive, in spite of the peaty, pungent smell of living for years underground, definitely had a faint odour of burnt liquorice and old bananas about him. In fact, more and more of the smell was rising up out of the ground.
Of course! Of course! If this was the layline from which the cleansing waters came, then the Scatterbungle must have been sucked back into the ground here too. That was how the Duke had got hold of it again! Arnold had supplied it to him! The Giant and the Magical had been in cahoots for a very long time!
Gloria flew over the top of the hill and flung herself down the other side. Approaching the Spirit Trees in the bowl of the valley she whispered to them to hide her in their boughs, pausing only momentarily to wonder why it was only raining heavily just above the valley’s pit itself. One of them opened its invisible wooden arms to her and she disappeared as she nestled into them.
‘What’s up?’ she whispered to the tree, sensing its malaise.
‘There are twooooo Giantsssss who are our prisonersssss,’ the tree whispered back, ‘but they ssssshouldn’t be.’ The tree told the truth, unable, of course, to lie to a Dryad Flitterwig. ‘There are othersssss, too,’ it added, grateful for the opportunity to confess.
‘But why are you holding the Giants prisoner?’ Gloria asked.
‘Becaussssse we were inssssstructed by Aaaaarnold to manacle the othersssss. The gentle Giantsssss,’ the tree whispered to her, sadly.
Gloria looked across the valley. This felt like important information, that ought to be shared, but she couldn’t see any sign of anyone. She certainly couldn’t see Humphrey and Dixon, totally Bongled, running across the grass towards her. But Humphrey and Dixon had seen Gloria fly over the top of the hill and disappear somewhere in the bowl of the valley.
‘Gloria?’ Humphrey called out.
‘Who are you?’ Gloria called out in reply. ‘Where are you?’ she added. Small flames flickered and floundered in the drizzle of the night.
‘It’s Humphrey,’ said Humphrey. It was ridiculous. No-one could see anyone. Humphrey and Dixon began to Debongle naturally.
‘Ella’s in danger,’ said Gloria, spotting him. She flew out of the arms of the tree and landed at the foot of it. She was strangely less pointy than she had been a few hours ago. In fact, her face was decidedly less annoying. ‘The Duke and Arnold have Ella,’ she told them.
‘We have to get to Ella, Bella!’ shrieked Dixon, his face popping up out from behind Humphrey’s ear. The pixie sobbed into the air dramatically, casting his arms up to the skies and flinging his head back. Dixon was making so much noise that Humphrey decided to Bongle them all.
‘There are gentle Giants under the ground,’ said Gloria, trying to act as though it was normal that she was completely invisible, in the middle of nowhere, at night, talking to an actual, real life pixie while there were actual, real life Giants underneath them.
Gloria would have noticed Humphrey’s jaw drop if she could have seen him.
‘That’s what the Spirit Trees told me,’ said Gloria into the ether. ‘They are being held prisoner.’
‘It must be Thomas and Bolgus!’ Humphrey yelled. ‘You must tell the Spirit Trees to free them at once!’
‘But they’re Giants, they might try to kill us,’ said Gloria because she knew nothing of friendly Giants in newspapers and dreams and past adventures. All Gloria knew was that it had been forbidden for Flitterwigs or Magicals to have any contact with Giants until recently.
‘It’s Thomas, Lord of Gommoronahl and his brother Bolgus, for Magic’s sake. Don’t you read the news?’ yelled Humphrey, clambering up the side of the hill. A great thunderous noise could be heard over the other side of it. ‘Just tell the trees to release them, please!’
Gloria felt the boy’s urgency, radiating like the Key around his neck. Promptly she gave the order and the Spirit Trees began the business of unfurling their roots at once.
Underground, Thomas opened his eyes. He was being freed! The tight furls of the roots holding him down had released their grasp. Just like that. He roused his brother.
Bolgus looked down. There was a young boy at his feet, with glowing red hair. And a pretty girl. And Charlie Snoppit! He lifted them all into his hand carefully. ‘Hello Charlie,’ boomed Bolgus.
‘Hi Bolgus,’ said Charlie uncertainly. It had been a while since the two had seen each other and last time, it hadn’t been that pleasant.
‘Come on. Get to Ella, Bella,’ Dixon urged above the ground, calling back to Gloria.
The invisible threesome made their way up to the ridge of the valley.
What they saw over its edge confounded them. The source of the thunderous sound came from a GIGANTESCUAN and fabulously UGLY Giant, with his tunnel-like elbows spread across the turf and his massive head and shoulders poking out of the ground. He laughed amidst the circle of magical flames.
And standing on the Giant’s shoulder, if they weren’t much mistaken, was Ella. It was hard to see her—she was so small compared to the gargantuan brute whose shoulder she sat upon. And what they couldn’t see in the dark was that her honey-coloured hair, streaming about her, was striped with black, making her look like a wild hyena, and her arms were stretched up into the air in a most overbearing manner… and she was cackling like a witch.
Humphrey edged a little closer. Gloria flew up. Dixon began to hyperventilate from his spot down the neck of Humphrey’s jumper. Claws were springing from Ella’s fingertips. A long tail was tearing through the back of her dungarees.
What in Magic’s name was going on?
It should have been impossible for Ella to be Possessified by the Duke. He had never in the last three years ever managed to take hold of her. But Arnold and the Duke had disclosed something to Ella that had knocked all the strength out of her, and for the first time ever, there was nothing inside her instinctual clearhearted parts that could fight him.
For what he had told her made everything she had journeyed towards seem insignificant. The effect of the words had felled the Clearheart, turned her to jelly, and opened her up to Possessification. The Duke had swiftly taken control.
And then the soil ripped from under them. Gloria was forced to fly high up into the air to avoid the streams of dirt spraying out of the ground. She could see her hands. She was Debongling! Humphrey was flung in to a ditch. He was Debongling too. Dixon was thrown from Humphrey’s shoulder and his reappearing body could be seen catapulting through the air (if anyone had a magnifying glass handy). Flames leapt up around him.
Humphrey scrambled to get the pixie. Two Giants appeared. They heaved their ginormous selves up so their elbows were resting on the surface of the soil, like Arnold’s.
It was Thomas and Bolgus. In Thomas’s hand he held Charlie, Sam and Max.
‘Ella,’ Thomas cried out and went to snatch the Elf Flitterwig from Arnold’s shoulder. But she dodged his touch and, pointing a finger at Thomas, zapped
him with a spray of soot-coloured elf dust. The shot gave the Giant such a shock that his beanie flew right off his bulbous, bald head.
‘Ella?’ Bolgus echoed. ‘Ella, are you alright? You look different! What’s happened to you?’
From his perch in Thomas’s electrified hand, Charlie saw the state Ella was in. He almost had a heart attack! ‘She’s been Possessified by the Duke!’ he cried. ‘Put me down! Quick!’
And then the earth’s crust was cracking open again and another Giant surfaced. This one was female. Or so it would seem from the bow in her crusty hair, the fluffy, soiled shirt she was wearing, and the pink nail varnish on her coarse, cracking nails. There was absolutely nothing about her nobbly nose, warty chin or hairy eyebrows that helped strengthen this fact, however.
Thomas, recovering himself, growled at Arnold. A Giant’s full growl is like an earthquake. It reverberates for miles.
Arnold growled at Thomas. The valley vibrated. The four Giants pulled themselves up to full height above ground and squared on one another, all of them tottering a little with the fresh air. Thomas tried to set Charlie, Sam and Max down but in his hurry, his clumsy hands dropped them. They spun through the air and crashed to the ground.
They bounced across the broken moor like tennis balls.
Only the greenery saved them from being smashed to smithereens.
Sam shook her head. Ouch, she thought before she scrambled straight over to Charlie and Max to heal their bruises and breaks. Tiny flames popped about them.
Charlie had landed on his arm and couldn’t move it. ‘You’ve dislocated your shoulder again,’ she said gently, easing it swiftly back into place. Her Key glowed brighter again. Yellow, like sunshine.
Charlie’s head was whirring, his stomach churning. Ella screamed into the air, commanding Arnold and Mabel to attack Thomas and Bolgus. Her voice had the crazed resonance of the Duke. Not a bit of it sounded like a thirteen-year-old Clearheart’s. Not a bit of it sounded like Charlie’s Protectee or his friend.