Scatterbungle

by Edrei Cullen

  The waters sparkled and gleamed and shone, clear as crystal. Everything it touched was doused in a shimmering sparkle of silvery freshness. The burnt grasses sprung up under its flow, green and shining. The trunks of bending, ashen trees straightened, flowers lifted their heads, Flitterwigs shook themselves out and the spray that came off them was luminescent!

  Ella flew up high into the air, soaking wet. The rushing sound that filled the air was one of such splendiferous cleansing power that she smiled radiantly. She flew higher and noticed that the water was spreading upwards with her as much as it was spreading outwards across the grounds, as if it was following her. A watery film spread behind her as she moved. It floated as she swooped, cooling the burning air.

  Humphrey moved beneath her, his whole body glowing that steely blue-grey colour, the Key around his neck, bursting with the essence of his magic. The moon seemed to follow him as he settled the winds and stilled the air. He had truly found the lost power of his Moglin people! Ella had willed him to believe in his dreams, as the Dewdrops had willed Ella a few years ago and it had worked!

  Ella could see Gloria shining the sagey green of her Key in the distance. She could almost hear her whispering her soothing words to the trees, nurturing them back to health with a strength she’d never had before she learned to forgive. Just as Ella had learned to forgive in order for the Dewdrops to trust her.

  Charlie appeared on the horizon, whipping about in a frenzy, like a purple bullet amongst the vegetable gardens. As he had learned to rebuild his trust in himself, Nature came to his aid, as it had to Ella’s at the Dewdrop’s behest so long ago. Magically-flaming carrots, flung themselves up out of the ground and into the flow of water streaming by. Tomatoes followed. A bushel of rosemary plunged in, too.

  And Max, smouldering red, passed his hands over the remnants of the fires and sucked the flames to him. He had dared to wish for what he wanted. To believe that he wasn’t useless, as Ella had done before. Believe that he could have friends, as Ella had. She had encouraged him as the Dewdrops had encouraged her.

  And beautiful Samantha, radiantly yellow as a sunflower, laid her hand upon every Flitterwig shaking themselves out from the cleansing spray of the water’s touch, supporting its quenching of the magical illness like a pro. She had thrown herself in harm’s way and, in the process, completed the Dewdrops’ Sacred chain with her unconditional love.

  A tremendous roar of pain burst across the grounds, halting the colourful Flitterwigs on the ground this time. It was Thomas! He was in trouble!

  Ella flew towards the source of the anguished bellow. Sam and Gloria took to the skies with her. Their proximity made Ella shine. Charlie followed on foot, grabbing Humphrey by the collar and dragging him behind. Max glided past them on his skateboard. As the ground-bound Flitterwigs caught up with Ella, she turned even more mercurial, until her entire body was almost certainly the colour of silver.

  Dixon, clinging to her hair, gulped. Ella hadn’t turned this colour since the Dewdrops inhabited her oh-so long ago. Oh my goodness, shmoodness, he thought to himself. Were the Sacred Dewdrops here? In Ella? Again? Or was she just that Magical all by herself now? Pow, wow!

  As Thomas came into view, Ella could see his hulk bent over his brother. Bolgus seemed to have fallen. He had flattened the Ecology and Biology sheds in the process, and didn’t seem to be moving. He had taken the kilted Giant with him, for the great bulksome beast writhed underneath him, struggling for breath.

  Thomas was crying, a river of tears! ‘Noooooooo,’ he roared.

  But it wasn’t his brother Thomas was crying for, Ella realised as she came to land on his great shoulder. Thomas was trying to prise open Arnold’s mouth. Bolgus had two of his fingers plugged up Arnold’s nostrils! Whatever was in Arnold’s mouth was what was making the gargantuan creature holler.

  And then she heard him.

  ‘Swallow, swallow,’ the voice hissed.

  It was the Duke, his decomposing face, sizzling against Arnold’s ear as he attempted to seal the monster’s mouth with slices of Black Dust from his clawed finger. He knew that all was now lost. He knew that Ella had triumphed again. She had conquered the Scatterbungle and furthermore, by gathering more good magic in a team than the dark Duke knew what to do with, Ella’s friends had become what the Sacred Dewdrops were to Magus—the ultimate Magic on Earth.

  ‘Swallow!’ he screamed.

  If he had to live eternally miserable, without machinery and progress in Magus, well Ella too would live in misery for the duration of her life.

  ‘What’s in there?’ Ella asked Thomas, hovering by his colossal cauliflower of an ear.

  ‘I can’t even tell you,’ Thomas sobbed, prying at Arnold’s jaw with all his might. ‘It is too terrible. It was meant to be a wonderful surprise. Instead, it is a horror.’

  Ella couldn’t bear to see Thomas so distressed. She flew down towards the Duke, dodging spears of his ever-weakening elf dust. A laser hit her in the chest.

  And it went right through her, as if she had absorbed it.

  It

  had

  absolutely

  no

  effect.

  The Duke fell back, stupefied. With the release of the Duke’s Dust, Arnold opened his mouth and heaved in a breath. Thomas’s fingers were down his throat in an instant.

  Ella was on the ground before the Duke, as fast and as silver as a shining bullet. Her friends approached from behind, each of them glowing their magical colour.

  Imagine it. A shining, silver Elf Flitterwig, her oversized wings flying out behind her, glittering in the moonlight, buoyed on either side by a burning-red Salamander Flitterwig, a blasting-purple Goblin Flitterwig, a glowing steely-blue Moglin Flitterwig, a bursting-green Dryad Flitterwig and a sparkling-yellow Sprite Flitterwig. It would make anyone have to catch their breath.

  Even Arnold, struggling as he was to breathe, found his eyes bulging out of their ginormous sockets. Dixon planted himself on Ella’s head and flung his arms and legs out in a great star of defiance.

  ‘Yooohooooo,’ his teeny striped frame taunted the Duke. ‘The game’s up, pup!’

  The Duke pointed his claws at Charlie and shot a laser of Dust. It simply bounced off him, onto Ella, and disappeared through her. He tried the same on Max. The same thing happened. Samantha, Gloria, Humphrey. Nothing but a zigzag of black, bounding off the Flitterwigs and into Ella.

  He looked over his shoulder to Ragwald, but he was not moving. He had never seen such Magic. He never believed that Flitterwigs could be more powerful than the most powerful of pure Magicals. This dazzling rainbow of colour, one of them Ulnus’s own daughter, had him spellbound, enraptured, entranced… beaten.

  And then Ella closed her eyes. To be honest, she was feeling a little queasy now with all that bad Magic inside her. When she opened them though, and blinked, she knew what to do. She would give it all right back to him! Her eyes shone. Her ears steamed. Her wings flared. Her hair stood on end, sending Dixon flipping right up into the air. She pointed one finger back at him.

  Boy oh boy. What a walloping of Dust the Duke was hit with. All of it so mighty, so bright, so gazollompingly white that Dixon and every single one of Ella’s Flitterwig friends, never mind Ulnus, Saul, Thomas, Bolgus and Arnold, had to shield their eyes against its glare.

  The Duke shot back a hundred metres with its blast and his body shrinkified and shrinkified and shrinkified… until he was no bigger than Dixon.

  The tiny figure landed with a ‘pop’ on his feet. He flew up in the air, screeching into the skies, like a miniature crow. Thomas flung his hand out and scooped the Duke into it in a single swoop.

  Ella turned to her friends. The cocoons—where were they? Was what the Duke had told her true? Her friends stood like blazing statues, staring, mouths agog. She looked about for Dixon but couldn’t see him. She followed the direction of her friends’ gazes.

  Rising up out of the pond, was a most magnificent star of light on the crest
of another fountain. Crystal-clear and clean as spring rain, a tiny, dazzling elf appeared. On her head she wore a crown. She flew forth, settling on the bank of the Portality pond. The fountain she travelled on sprayed the Flitterwigs and the Giants as it soared over them and across the grounds. Ella could feel its healing waters cover her beloved school, backing up the Flitterwig wave. And right underneath it, was Dixon, lying flat on the bank, his hands moving up and down off the moss in homage to the marvel before him.

  A tiny, glimmering, perfect form stepped up next to him, her wings sparkling like the most exquisite gossamer web. It was the Queen of the Magicals. So miniature, so fragile, yet so potently pure. Wrinkles followed her, flattening out his spiky hair.

  The Queen flew up and over to Ella. Dixon swooned with delight. Samantha nearly fell over. Humphrey almost smiled!

  ‘Oh Ella,’ the Queen said, hovering close. ‘You didn’t save us this time, don’t you see? You saved yourselves. Not a one of my wisest Magicals understood what the Clearhearts before you began to recognise. Not a one of Us understood that unity is the answer to everything. That togetherness is the real key. That it takes a team. That everyone has a part to play.’ She looked over at Ella’s father who was just beside himself with seeing nothing other than crazy people running about in ever decreasing circles. ‘Including humans,’ she said. ‘For you have changed the course of history. You have brought us back to the beginning. You have understood what the Clearhearts before you understood, what I myself brought asunder—that humanity is as much a part of the future of this planet as Magic. Mix that with love, and anything is possible.’

  Mr Montgomery approached his daughter and touched her forehead, oblivious to the Queen. He was truly concerned about Ella now. She lived in a very strange world and was acting particularly erratically. He blamed himself, of course, for her odd behaviour. Although, he had seen the mirage of a well in the lake. And he thought he’d seen his daughter fly. And, if he wasn’t totally mistaken, he had just been sucked into that well and wound up at her school, miles away from the Scottish Highlands. Was it possible that the world had changed that much while he was lost in grief?

  Ella looked at her own big feet, then up at her father, then over at her friends. ‘I had a lot of help along the way, Your Highness,’ she said shyly, stepping one dirty converse shoe onto the other and looking up mildly.

  ‘Oh I think it is you who drew strength out of everyone, Ella,’ said the Queen. She nodded her perfect, miniature head. A line of white elves who had followed her out of the pond, flew up to Thomas’s hand and, saluting politely, waited for him to release the Queen’s husband, the Duke, to their care. ‘You have saved us too,’ she said. ‘We are forever, as always, in your debt.’

  The Queen fluttered closer and planted a tiny kiss on Ella’s cheek.

  The Queen fluttered back, gracefully, before speaking again. ‘I know you have been without our help as this Prophecy played out,’ she said. ‘I am afraid that is what Magicality, indeed Humanity, demanded.’ She paused momentarily. Earth’s environment was toxic to the Queen even without the presence of Scatterbungle. Even with all the healing waters flowing by, the Royal Elf was feeling its effects. ‘However, we Magicals have one power beyond all other creatures in the universe,’ she continued quietly, ‘and that is the power of eternal life. Enchanted amber will hold souls for as long as they need to be held.’

  Ella shivered.

  And then the Magusian entourage was gone. All but Dixon, who lingered at the side of the pond, hesitant. He looked lovingly at Ella and then longingly after the Queen. Then back at Ella, then after the Queen. Then back to Ella until his neck was turning so fast, he had to clamp his head in both hands to stop it.

  Thomas the Giant leant down and laid his other hand on the ground. It was clamped shut, but the smell of cinnamon and rain and orange coming from it was quite something.

  ‘This is what I was trying to get out of Arnold’s mouth,’ he boomed, as gently as he could, although the strength of his breath sent Ella and her friends careening backwards.

  Ella flew up to see what he held. Charlie zipped over and, swinging himself up on Thomas’s pinkie finger, slipped into his massive palm. Gloria and Sam flew up a little higher so that they hovered over Ella’s head. Max watched on, a few quiet steps away. Mr Montgomery stared at the children up in the air and scratched his head. He couldn’t see Thomas or the children’s wings or anything magical at all but he was certainly seeing something pretty special. Kids floating in the air is a pretty magical sight.

  He couldn’t see the amber of the cocoons either but as he approached his daughter landing on the lawn as Thomas displayed the contents in his great hand, he caught his breath, for he could see what was inside them.

  He fell to his knees.

  Three amber cocoons rolled across Thomas’ palm, glowing like embers. The very cocoons that had sent Arnold to distraction for ten years, for he had been unable to smash them, despite all his strength.

  He had entrapped the mother and the brothers, the day he had struck their car from the bridge across the valley in the Highlands. He had snatched them from their burning car and soothed them in soil. Solidified them, thinking he would keep them as prisoners for the future to use as hostages when the time came for him to blackmail the Clearheart. For that had been his real mission. The Duke had approached him all those years ago and instructed him to kidnap the Clearheart in return for the Duke’s help stealing Thomas’s place as the leader of the Giants. But he had failed. Ella had escaped. And despite the Scatterbungle in the soil about him, waking him now and again, whenever he awoke, his prisoners were always encased in unbreakable amber cocoons. How or why, he did not know. He could not remember.

  As Ella watched, the cocoons began to melt, their orangey liquid seeping onto Thomas’ fingers and across the grass, casting a glow from beneath, like the flickering flames in a hearth at the end of a night.

  And then Ella saw a hand stretch up and a scent of lavender filled the air.

  ‘Rosemary?’ croaked Mr Montgomery, unable to straighten his legs, they were shaking so. His wife had just sat up in midair! And now his sons, his dead sons, were doing the same!

  ‘Mum?’ said Ella.

  ‘Ella?’ her mother whispered back.

  chapter 32

  tricks & tomorrows

  There was no end to the chatter shared over the next few days at Hedgeberry. Not least of which, was Charlie’s account of how he helped save the day. But nobody, certainly not Ella, minded. Her mother was alive! And her brothers too! She had a mum!

  She listened, looking up occasionally, as she moved her porridge around her plate (Ella was missing Dixon, who was back in Magus, so she didn’t have much of an appetite), while Charlie and Humphrey and Samantha playfully argued over who did what on that cold, cold night in the Highlands of Scotland, and during that fresh, strange, wondrous evening back at Hedgeberry.

  ‘Who’d have thought that trying to save Mr Montgomery from the Duke’s Dust even though he didn’t need me to is what made my Key glow,’ said Samantha, tipping the honey pot over. She said it with absolutely nothing of the show-off about her, just an honest amazement at how simple it had been. There was no way she could have let Ella lose her father too! Her comment set off a stream of reactions.

  ‘Yes, I know that, and you’re the best, but how incredible was it when that magic carpet of grass and stones rose up to help me!’ said Charlie, scratching his freckled nose and buttering his toast. ‘I mean, fancy that! I couldn’t even grow a carrot before! Who’d have thought that all I had to do was just stop feeling guilty, trust myself and Nature would come and help me! With Ella’s help, of course,’ he added as he spread his strawberry jam.

  ‘I know, that’s so amazing,’ said Samantha, knocking her knife out of the honey pot and leaving a sticky mess on the table. ‘And how totally cool is it that we got to see real life Giants?’

  ‘Dudes,’ said Humphrey, leaning forward. ‘I’d li
ke to point out that I made it rain.’

  ‘Yes, which was totally incredible,’ said Charlie, ‘But not as incredible as that whirlwind thingo. And did you see what Gloria can do with her arms?’

  Everyone smiled, including Gloria. Charlie seemed quite taken with the Dryad which was pretty hilarious as he hadn’t liked her one bit just a few days ago.

  ‘And how about Dixon?’ Ella interjected suddenly. Everyone looked at Ella respectfully. She gave a little sigh. ‘Wasn’t he a valiant pixie? And guess what?’ she whispered. ‘My mum’s okay!’

  Sam’s eyes welled up. So did Humphrey’s and Charlie’s, actually. It was, indeed, a miraculous thing.

  And yet, the revelation that it was time for humans to start knowing about the Flitterwigs, starting with her dad, had come at a price. Although not every human would be let into the secret of Flitterwiggery, the fact that the news would inevitably, responsibly, have to filter into the world meant that the Magicals would no longer be visiting Earth regularly. They were unseeable to the pure human eye, but still. It was too risky, and the Queen was still the Queen after all! Which meant Ella would only be able to see Dixon on very, very rare occasions.

  She took solace in the fact that he had gone back to Magus and his family, very happily. Now she had her family back, it seemed, he was ever so happy to return to his. Ella sighed again, her heart full as a balloon, yet a little deflated at losing him.

  ‘I stayed while I needed to look after your heart, fart,’ Dixon had told her very matter-of-factly before he took off after the Queen and her Consort. ‘But you don’t need that anymore Ella, Bella.’ She swallowed down the lump in her throat when she thought of how happily he’d followed the Elf Queen back to Magus for, perhaps, ever…

  Ella blinked and tried to take on board the enormity of the wonders of the last few days. Her mum was safe! It was incredible. There was so much to catch up on. And yet, Ella was still spellbound by the fact that she’d been hugged by a lady with wild honey-coloured hair that got all caught up in hers. A lady who promised to show her how to shoot elf dust. A lady who smelled of cinnamon and oranges… and lavender.