Explorers on Witch Mountain

by Alex Bell

  ‘What’s a familiar egg?’ Shay asked.

  Drusilla rummaged in her pocket and produced a small, smooth egg that looked like it was made of black marble. It had swirling veins of white shot through it.

  ‘The spells goblin left it in my shoe,’ Drusilla said. ‘Isn’t it marvellous? It’s jolly wonderful being a witch, you know.’

  ‘It’s just a lump of rock,’ Ethan grunted. ‘What’s so marvellous about that?’

  Drusilla rolled her eyes. ‘It’s not a rock,’ she said. ‘It’s an egg. I have to take care of it until it hatches.’

  ‘Hatches?’ Stella exclaimed. ‘But what’s in there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Drusilla said. ‘That’s the best part! A witch’s familiar could be a cat, bat, raven, fox, frog, newt, owl or monkey, but you don’t know what until the egg hatches.’

  ‘You can’t seriously expect a monkey to hatch out of that thing?’ Ethan said, peering at the little egg dubiously. ‘Monkeys don’t come from eggs.’

  ‘Neither do bats, or frogs, or newts, or foxes, or cats,’ Beanie said. ‘Unless it’s the hissing egg-hatching spotted cat from the Floating Island of Munga Munga, and they’re meant to be extremely dangerous. They go straight for the eyes, you know.’

  ‘Witches’ familiars aren’t like normal animals,’ Drusilla explained. ‘They’re magical animals to assist the witch with their spell-making. The spells goblin decides what would be the best fit for you when they give you the egg. I hope I don’t get a newt. My sister, Cordelia, got a newt familiar last year and he’s ever so grouchy. Sometimes he sticks his tongue in your cereal just for the sake of it. Although I suppose that makes sense, because Cordelia is the same.’

  ‘She sometimes sticks her tongue in your cereal just for the sake of it?’ Beanie asked, staring.

  ‘No, I mean she’s grouchy like Herbert. That’s the newt’s name.’ She sighed. ‘I do hope I get a fox, one with a big fluffy tail, that I can cuddle in bed at night.’ She looked at Stella and said, ‘I suppose you’ve got a unicorn you cuddle in bed, haven’t you? What with being a princess and all.’

  ‘I do have a unicorn,’ Stella agreed. ‘But she sleeps in the stable. I’ve got a pygmy T-Rex I cuddle in bed sometimes, though. Buster is an excellent cuddler.’ She reached into her pocket to give his scaly head a rub.

  ‘Goodness, how lovely! A unicorn and a dinosaur!’ Drusilla exclaimed. ‘It must be great being a princess. Well, I’m sure the spells goblin knows what’s right for me and has picked out the very best familiar there ever was.’ She glanced at the broomstick in her hand. ‘I haven’t quite got the hang of this thing yet, though.’

  The words were barely out of her mouth before the broomstick shot straight up into the sky a few feet. Drusilla had kept her grip on it so her feet left the floor altogether, leaving her dangling in the air. ‘Oh drat,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it seems to have a mind of its own.’ The broomstick started to float lazily around the clearing, taking Drusilla with it. ‘I hardly know whether I’m coming or going,’ she complained.

  ‘Well, we need to be going,’ Cadi said. ‘We have a rescue mission to mount.’

  ‘Follow me,’ Drusilla called over her shoulder. ‘I’ll take you through the witch gate, but first we need to get you out of the forest. Don’t worry, I know the best way to avoid the swampy marsh gnomes and the singing hex beasts and the snarling troll-face trees.’

  She was already disappearing from the clearing, still dangling from her broomstick. The others had to scrabble to keep up with her, leaving the teddy bears to finish their picnic in peace.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  As they carried on through the forest, Beanie hopped up onto Nigel’s back to tend to the jungle fairies who were moaning, groaning, clutching their stomachs and generally feeling very sorry for themselves. Beanie fashioned some little blankets out of monogrammed hankies he had in his pocket, and also took out the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club medical kit, which contained two miniature rescue dogs with brandy barrels around their necks.

  ‘We did try to warn you not to eat the enchanted gingerbread,’ he told them. ‘But perhaps a tot of brandy will make you feel better?’

  The jungle fairies didn’t seem too interested in the brandy, but they were happy to cuddle the dogs.

  A short while later, they emerged from the broomstick forest and found themselves blinking in the sunlight sparkling off the snow. It had been so dark and gloomy that Stella had quite forgotten it was actually daytime, but now they found themselves out on the mountainside, surrounded by elegant frost trees and more iced pumpkins. After the swampy fumes of the forest, it was rather nice to be breathing in the cold, sharp air once again. Three paths stretched away from them.

  ‘We need to take that one,’ Drusilla said, pointing with her spare hand at the left path.

  ‘What’s down the other two?’ Beanie asked.

  ‘The middle one leads to a field of argumentative mushrooms,’ Drusilla said. ‘They’re extremely nasty, actually, and poisonous too – you wouldn’t want to tangle with them. They’ll fungus you if they get half the chance. And the right-hand path leads to a steep drop into a bottomless chasm so you really don’t want to go tumbling into that, especially given that there are biting rock heads with very sharp teeth on the way down. But the left path leads to the witch’s gate that’ll take you straight to the top of the mountain.’

  ‘And that way is safe, is it?’ Ethan demanded.

  ‘Well, you know, nothing on Witch Mountain is entirely safe,’ Drusilla said. ‘But it’s certainly the least perilous.’

  ‘The least perilous,’ Ethan repeated. ‘Oh good.’

  And, with that, Drusilla’s broomstick set off down the path, with the witch dangling beneath it.

  ‘Are you just going to dangle from your broom like that the whole way?’ Ethan demanded.

  ‘So what if I am?’ Drusilla replied over her shoulder.

  ‘It’s absurd,’ Ethan said.

  ‘Well, personally, I think your ringlets are quite, quite absurd,’ Drusilla replied. ‘Whatever have you done it for? Perhaps you thought to disguise yourself as Little Red Riding Boot, but it won’t work, you know. Any witch would see straight through that.’

  Ethan scowled and tugged his fingers through the ringlets, but they stubbornly refused to uncurl.

  ‘Your arm will get yanked right out of your socket, and it’ll serve you right,’ Ethan sniffed.

  ‘Witches don’t get tired arms,’ Drusilla said cheerfully. ‘It’s one of our many strengths. We could walk around on our hands all day long if we chose. In fact, my sister, Cordelia, once walked around on her hands for an entire week, but I rather think she only did that to annoy me.’

  ‘Witches are a weird bunch,’ Ethan said.

  Shay sighed. ‘You know what, Prawn? You’d make a heck of a lot more friends if you weren’t so antagonistic to people all the time.’

  ‘I have plenty of friends already, thank you,’ Ethan said.

  ‘You’re my friend, aren’t you, Ethan?’ Beanie piped up from the camel. ‘You told me so on our last expedition.’

  ‘That’s right, Beanie,’ Ethan said. He tilted his head in his loftiest manner and said, ‘You’re worthy of being my friend. There’s nothing wrong with being particular about it, though.’ He gave Shay a withering look and said, ‘I expect you’d make friends with a worm given half the chance, but one can’t expect much else from a wolf whisperer, I suppose.’

  ‘You are still coming to my birthday party, aren’t you, Ethan?’ Beanie said. ‘Only you haven’t responded to the invitation I sent.’

  Ethan sighed. ‘Beanie, I’ve told you a million times I’ll be there. Magicians always attend their friends’ birthday parties. It’s one of our golden rules. But your birthday is weeks away. Isn’t it a little early to be sending out invitations?’

  ‘You haven’t told me a million times,’ Beanie said at once. ‘You’ve told me fifty-six times.’

  ‘Well, w
hy do you keep asking me then?’ Ethan grumbled.

  ‘Because you haven’t replied to my invitation,’ Beanie said. ‘You need to fill in the little slip at the bottom and tick the box to say you want to come. That’s how it works. Also, I need your reply to show Uncle Benedict. After Moira said she didn’t want to be my friend any more, Uncle said it wasn’t worth throwing birthday parties for me because no one but Stella ever turns up. He said it was a waste of good cake, and piñatas, and whistles, and balloons and paper hats. Uncle says it’s too pathetic for words, that’s what Uncle says. So unless I can guarantee that at least three people are going to come then I’m not allowed to have a party on my next birthday.’

  ‘What a mean old duffer,’ Ethan grunted. ‘I’ll reply to your invitation the moment I return home.’

  ‘Gosh, it sounds like a smashing party, though, if there’s to be cake, and piñatas, and whistles, and balloons and paper hats,’ Cadi exclaimed. ‘Could I come, do you think?’

  Beanie gaped at her. ‘Would you?’

  ‘I’ve never been to a birthday party before,’ she replied. ‘Witch hunters don’t tend to have too many friends. Nor do witches. That’s why Drusilla and I were very glad to make friends with each other.’ Cadi strained forwards in Gus’s saddle to call to the little dangling witch. ‘What about you, Dru? Have you ever been to a birthday party?’

  ‘I’ve been to a lot of teddy bear picnics,’ Drusilla said. ‘Does that count?’

  ‘Well, you’re both welcome to come to my party,’ Beanie said.

  ‘I think the jungle fairies want to come too,’ Stella said. Mustafah was tugging at Beanie’s sleeve and pointing at himself and the others in an energetic fashion. ‘Looks like they’re feeling better,’ she said. ‘And if the jungle fairies were to come as well as Cadi and Dru, then you’d actually have nine people at your birthday party.’

  Beanie looked as if he literally couldn’t think of anything more wonderful in the whole world. He glanced back at the pumpkin strapped to Nigel’s back and said, ‘And if this pumpkin makes Moira like me again then it’ll be ten!’

  Stella sighed and shook her head.

  They travelled on up the mountain for the whole morning, stopping only briefly to snap up the magic fort blanket for lunch. Stella hated having to stop at all – she simply wanted to get to Felix as quickly as possible. Every time her thoughts turned to him she felt an awful tangle of worry, and fear, and guilt, deep down in her stomach.

  The moment the fort sprang up around them, however, Ruprekt was there with packed lunches lined up on the table for each of them, including the jungle fairies, and nose bags for Nigel and Gus.

  ‘I would have made a proper table lunch but I guessed you’d prefer to keep moving,’ he said. ‘Explorers just need to keep going sometimes, don’t they?’

  ‘Oh, Ruprekt, you’re marvellous!’ Stella said, throwing her arms around the genie in a tight hug. ‘Simply marvellous!’

  The genie flushed to the tips of his pointed ears. ‘It’s really no problem at all, Miss Stella,’ he said. ‘I’m only too glad to help.’

  They collapsed the tent down and continued on their way. Their boots crunched in new snow, and more flakes started to fall as they went, so they were all glad to find that the genie had packed flasks of piping-hot soup in their lunch bags. The jungle fairies seemed to have fully recovered from the gingerbread incident, because they wolfed their lunches and then had to be constantly batted away from Gus and Nigel’s nose bags.

  The path wound quite close to the side of the mountain in places and Stella saw that they were now incredibly high up. High enough to make your head spin, in fact. It was a good thing that none of them were afraid of heights. The mountain dropped sharply away in places, while in others it sloped out more gently, covered in snow and frosted pumpkins.

  ‘There’s Weenus’s Trading Post, look,’ Stella said, pointing it out to the others. They could see the striped awning all the way at the bottom, with the Jungle Cat Explorers’ Club dirigible floating above it.

  The dirigible made Stella think of Gideon, so she turned to Shay and said, ‘You’ve still got that bag of frogs, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yep.’ Shay hoisted the bag more firmly on his shoulders. ‘They’re wriggling around like anything in there. It’s rather nice, actually. They keep kicking at my back and it feels like I’m having a massage.’

  ‘Oh, could I carry it for a while?’ Cadi asked. ‘My back muscles are terribly stiff.’

  Shay handed the bag over. The hunter slipped it on her shoulders and then sighed with pleasure. ‘Gosh, you’re right,’ she said. ‘This is lovely. And not even that heavy. You should go into business selling frog massage bags, you’d make a fortune.’

  ‘Just don’t lose it,’ Shay said. ‘One of the frogs in there is an explorer. Probably.’

  ‘How are we going to escape from Witch Mountain once we find Felix?’ Beanie asked, suddenly joining the conversation. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m a bit worried seeing as we had to trade away our dirigible, and we’re surrounded by dangerous, monster-infested oceans on all sides.’

  ‘Perhaps we could steal that hot-air balloon we saw?’ Stella suggested. ‘Remember? The big black one with the Be gone! Witches only! sign hanging from it? Actually, I’m surprised we can’t see it by now – I would’ve thought it should be right here.’

  ‘Oh, it is,’ Drusilla said from her broomstick. ‘It’s just around this corner, actually. You can’t see it because the mountain is blocking it from view but it’s here – in fact, the balloon marks the witch gate.’

  The explorers turned the corner in the winding mountain path and suddenly found themselves face-to-face with the witch gate, set right into the rocky wall of the mountain. It was a looming, formidable thing, all black iron and frosted metal. The iron bars were so tall that they would have kept out even a yeti, and images of broomsticks and bats twisted around on themselves in the curling metal. As Drusilla had said, the hot-air balloon floated high above the gates, tethered to one of its vast posts by a long rope. Any one of them could simply untie it if they wanted to.

  ‘There isn’t even anyone guarding it,’ Shay said, looking around. ‘We could take it on the way back down.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to escape in that,’ Drusilla said.

  ‘Why not?’ Stella asked. ‘It looks perfect.’

  ‘No, that’s the Balloon of Death and Madness,’ Drusilla said. ‘Anyone who flies in it will go mad and die, you know.’

  Everyone stared at her.

  ‘Why on earth would anyone invent such a depraved thing?’ Ethan demanded.

  ‘It was Mad Agnes who did it,’ Drusilla said. Then she added, ‘Oh dear, you’re not after Mad Agnes, are you? She really is completely mad – even madder than that bag of frogs you’re carrying around. And any witch who’s madder than a bag of frogs is probably better off left alone, I’d say.’

  ‘You can all come back with me in my father’s ship,’ Cadi said. ‘It’s moored just off shore. You probably saw it when you arrived? I’ve got a flare gun to signal when I’m ready to be picked up.’

  ‘That’s great,’ Stella said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So are you after Mad Agnes?’ Drusilla pressed.

  ‘No, we’re after a witch called Jezzybella,’ Stella replied. ‘Have you heard of her?’

  Drusilla tilted her head. ‘Is she the one who turns children into matchsticks?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Or the scarecrow queen? She’s the one who gave life to all the scarecrows, which then went on a rampage.’ Drusilla shuddered. ‘Gosh, the night of the rampaging scarecrows was pretty awful, from what I hear.’

  ‘No, she didn’t do that either,’ Stella said. Then she frowned and added, ‘At least, I don’t think she did. But I don’t really know much about her except for the fact that she murdered my parents.’

  ‘Why did she do that?’ Drusilla asked.

  ‘I don’t know for s
ure,’ Stella replied. ‘My parents were very cruel to her. And the magic mirror in my castle said she did it because she was evil.’

  Drusilla frowned. ‘There must have been more to it than that. Even bad witches don’t go around murdering people without a reason. The thing is that a bad witch doesn’t believe they’re bad, you see. To them, everything they do makes perfect sense and is quite reasonable.’

  Stella would have liked to protest this and say that her parents couldn’t possibly have done anything bad enough to give a witch reason to kill them, but she’d seen the iron slippers and the burnt feet of the puppet.

  ‘Nothing excuses murder, though,’ she said. ‘And my parents were the snow queen and king, so this witch must be very powerful.’

  Drusilla stared at her with big eyes. Then she glanced at the gate and said, ‘Look, are you sure you want to go after her? Just because not all witches are evil, doesn’t mean that some of them aren’t very dangerous.’

  ‘I don’t want to go after her, really,’ Stella said. ‘In fact, I didn’t choose this at all. She’s the one who came after me with a vulture. So Felix went chasing after her and I can’t let him face her alone. If anything happened to him, I don’t know what I would do.’

  She could feel all her fear and panic rising up in her chest at the thought, and was glad of Shay’s comforting hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Nothing will happen to Felix, Sparky,’ he said. ‘Not when he’s got such a superb rescue party racing after him.’

  ‘Well, this might be your last chance to reconsider,’ Drusilla said. ‘Once we go past the witch gate, there’s no knowing what will happen or what we might come up against.’

  Stella glanced back at the others and said, ‘Listen, I’m so grateful to you all for coming with me this far,’ she said. ‘But if anyone wants to stop and wait here I really will completely understand. There’s no obligation to carry on.’

  But the boys were already shaking their heads.