As soon as the missile exploded, the Floods got into the school bus and followed its trail. They stopped in front of a castle and climbed out to a scene of devastation.
Every single square inch of every single thing – people, animals, plants, furniture, houses – was covered in a thick layer of congealed porridge. The explosion had been so powerful that it had blown all the windows and doors in and covered everything inside with porridge too.
The porridge was a special Transylvania Waters recipe, which had been used for torturing prisoners in the good old days. Unlike normal porridge, this one set hard like treacle toffee. There were usually enough holes in the porridge to allow the prisoners to breathe, but it set hard enough to stop them escaping. It was also so sticky that if a prisoner did manage to move, they would stick hard to the first thing they bumped into.
All across Shangrila Lakes there were voices calling out for help, but of course there was no one to help them except the Floods children, who were carrying giant water pistols filled with a special dissolving fluid.
The first person they freed was Anorexya’s brother, the gorgeous yet staggeringly stupid Prince Bert Creak.54
‘Where is your sister?’ said Betty.
‘Have I got a sister?’ said Prince Bert. ‘I like your shoes. Hello, shoes.’
‘Yes, you have got a sister,’ Betty snapped. ‘Now, where is she?’
‘Um, er. Oh, wait a minute. I have got a sister and she is called Princess Chocolate,’ said Prince Bert.
‘No, not her,’ said Betty. ‘She’s your nice sister. You’ve got one that’s older than her.’
In the end, they unstuck his mother, Queen Anaglypta Creak, who at first tried to pretend she only had two children.
‘Look,’ said Mordonna, ‘we know you have another daughter and her name’s Anorexya. She kidnapped my husband and we need to find her.’
‘She was banished from here years ago for unspeakable naughtiness,’ said Anaglypta.
‘Yes, and now she’s back,’ said Mordonna. ‘I think it would be a good idea for you to help us find her, because I think she’s planning to kill you, your husband and your son and then put herself on the Shangrila Lakes throne with my husband at her side.’
Anaglypta said she found that impossible to believe, but when Betty showed her Anorexya’s text messages she changed her mind.
‘She used to have a secluded cottage at the far end of the lake,’ she said. ‘If she has come back here, I guess that’s where she would be.’
‘Right,’ said Mordonna. ‘In the meantime, I suggest you, your husband and son go somewhere safe to hide, just in case she comes after you.’
The Floods boarded the school bus and skimmed across the lake to Anorexya’s cottage, and there, stuck upside down to the ceiling with porridge, was Nerlin.
After they had released him, they sat the poor enchanted King in a chair and Winchflat erased his brain with a huge electromagnet, before rebooting him from a backup he had on a USB stick.
‘I had the strangest dream,’ said Nerlin, as one by one the lights inside his head came back on again.
No one had the heart to tell him that the dream hadn’t actually been a dream, but a powerful enchantment.
‘And Geoffrey-Geoffrey?’ said Nerlin. ‘Is he part of the dream, or is he real?’
‘I’m afraid he’s real and he most certainly is not your friend,’ Mordonna explained. ‘He’s very evil and we have to deal with him as soon as we return to Transylvania Waters.’
‘What about her?’ said Betty, pointing at Anorexya. ‘What are we going to do with her, Mother?’
The evil princess was still imprisoned in her porridge coating. When the Floods had arrived she had used all her strength to try and escape and was now stuck solid halfway in and halfway out of the window. She had managed to free her mouth just enough to let it pour out every single rude word that had ever existed and quite a few new ones that she made up as she went along.
‘Well, first of all we’ll remove her magic,’ said Winchflat.
‘Might be a good idea to close her mouth first,’ Betty suggested, which – considering Anorexya’s swear words were now so strong that large cracks were beginning to appear in the walls – was an excellent suggestion.
With her mouth stuck shut, Anorexya grew redder and redder as the swear words built up inside her. Her entire body grew fatter and fatter. Her clothes split and the thousands of wrinkles in her ancient old body filled out like a hot-air balloon being inflated, but still Anorexya kept on swearing.
‘Run for it!’ Betty shouted.
She grabbed her father’s hand and dragged him outside, and they were followed by the others. As the Floods ran down to the water’s edge, Anorexya exploded.
Bits of skin and fat flew everywhere. A flying elbow smashed into Betty and threw her into the lake. A knee knocked Mordonna’s hat off and Anorexya’s inside-out left buttock hit Winchflat in the face. Everyone leapt into the lake, where Betty was splashing around washing Old Crone blood and fat out of her hair.
‘At least that’s solved the problem of what to do with Anorexya,’ said Mordonna, after everyone had washed and dried themselves.
Just to make sure Anorexya couldn’t re-form herself, Mordonna called a family of vultures down to take away whatever was left of the exploded princess.
Before they left Anorexya’s wrecked home and went back across the lake to Bleak, the little town that was the capital of Shangrila Lakes, Mordonna sat Nerlin down to establish how much, if any, Doolallyness there actually was inhabiting his brain.
‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ she asked him.
‘Up what?’ Nerlin replied.
‘Who is the prime minister?’ Mordonna asked.
‘Me, of course,’ said Nerlin.
‘Do you know what day of the week it is?’
‘Of course not,’ said Nerlin. ‘I am the King of the wizards, I have servants to handle that sort of thing.’
‘Who is Geoffrey-Geoffrey?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
‘And finally,’ Mordonna said, ‘who do you love more than anyone else in the whole world?’
‘You, of course, my darling,’ said Nerlin with a happy smile.
When Mordonna had told the Creaks that Anorexya was planning to kill them all, the family had hidden in the cellars, except for Prince Bert, who had gone and hidden under his bed.
‘I think,’ said Mordonna, ‘that our two glorious families, the Floods and the Creaks, should form an alliance and see a lot more of each other to stop this sort of thing happening again.’
‘Indeed,’ said King Marmite Creak, who sort of had a vague thought that maybe, perhaps, there might possibly be a kind of possibility that Princess Betty Flood and Prince Bert Creak might, perhaps, kind of, maybe, possibly, sort of fall in love – preferably with each other – and end up getting married. After all, a true Floods princess was a far better bet than a princess who had once been a frog.55
This thought had actually spent a little time in Mordonna’s mind too, though she had dismissed it due to Betty’s great intelligence and Prince Bert’s great stupidity.
This thought had also spent time in Betty’s mind, as she had fallen head over heels in love with the prince as soon as she had seen him on account of him being incredibly handsome and gorgeous. She a witch, he a prince – they were on the same level class-wise.
But then Prince Bert had spoken to Betty, and all her dreams of happiness had come crashing down like an old lady’s knickers with broken elastic. Now they lay in a crumpled heap at her feet.
Winchflat noticed how sad his little sister had become, and when she had told him why, he said that when things seemed too good to be true, they usually are.
‘All that glitters is not gold,’ he said.
Betty nodded in depressed agreement.
‘Unless,’ Winchflat said with a smile, ‘you are a wizard.’
‘Whatever,’ Betty mumbled.
Betty nodded.
‘But if you are a wizard and are stupid, which very few wizards are,’ said Winchflat, ‘then something can be done about it.’
Winchflat explained that as well as the traditional Cleverness Spells that could be used to enhance a wizard’s talents, he had created a Very Clever Hat, which could be programmed to make its wearer as intelligent as the person giving the hat wanted them to be.
‘So, first of all, I would put the Very Clever Hat on you and it would measure your cleverness and intelligence. Then we would put it on Prince Bert and it would program his brain to be five points less clever than you.’
‘Wow,’ said Betty.
‘Or five points more intelligent, if you wanted,’ said Winchflat.
‘No, I think I like the five-points-less option better,’ said Betty.
Before taking the dragon school bus back to Transylvania Waters to get a Very Clever Hat, Winchflat launched a series of Hover Sprays that criss-crossed Shangrila Lakes dissolving all the porridge.
Having seen what Prince Bert was like, Betty decorated the hat with daisies and jelly babies. Then she went upstairs to the prince’s bedroom, where he was still hiding under the bed having a conversation with his slippers. He had been asking the slippers if they wanted to go for a walk in the garden and he was a bit upset that they wouldn’t answer him.
‘I would like to go for a walk in the garden,’ said Betty, kneeling down and peering under the bed.
‘Hello, pretty lady,’ said Prince Bert.
‘Hello, pretty prince,’ said Betty. ‘Would you like to come for a walk with me? I’ve got the most wonderful hat you can wear.’
‘I like hats,’ said Prince Bert. ‘But I can’t come out because Mummy said my evil sister was going to come and hurt me and make me dead.’
‘You don’t have to worry about that anymore,’ said Betty. ‘Your mummy sent me to tell you that your evil sister has exploded and it’s safe to come out now. And to come down now, because it’s tea time.’
‘What day is it?’ Prince Bert asked.
‘Thursday. Why?’
‘On Thursdays we have orange cake for tea,’ said Bert. ‘I don’t like orange cake very much. Couldn’t I stay here until Friday, when it’s chocolate cake day?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you what,’ said Betty. ‘Why don’t you come out, put on this lovely hat that I’ve brought you, and then we could go for a walk by the lake, and if we walked really slowly, by the time we get back it will be Friday and we could have chocolate cake.’
OK,’ said the prince. ‘Bye, bye, slippers, see you later.’
He wriggled out from under the bed and whispered to Betty that he had decided he would no longer speak to his slippers because they’d been so rude and he wouldn’t be seeing them later either.
‘When we go downstairs,’ he said, ‘I’m going to ask someone to take the slippers and put them in the dustbin. That will teach them.’
Then he saw the hat in Betty’s hands. ‘Oh, wow!’ he said. ‘That is the most beautiful hat I have ever seen.’
He took it from Betty and put it on.
Then he stood perfectly still while every single expression it is possible to have moved in an orderly fashion across his face. And hundreds and hundreds of tiny doors inside his brain opened for the first time.
Five minutes later the transformation was complete.
Prince Bert, the most handsome wizard in the world, was now full of incredible cleverness, nearly, but not quite as full as Betty was.
He took Betty’s hand and stared deeply into her eyes, making her feel weak at the knees.
‘Hello, beautiful lady,’ he said in a voice that was now as handsome as the rest of him. ‘If I were to ask you to walk beside me by the lake, what would your answer be?’
Betty’s knees got so weak it was all she could do to stay standing up.
‘My answer,’ she began, ‘my answer would be, well, um, er, well, all right then, but only for the rest of our lives.’
The two lovers left the castle, drift ed hand in hand through the town and walked right around the entire lake very slowly, only stopping seven hundred and fifteen times to kiss each other. This took so long that by the time they got back to the castle, Friday with chocolate cake had become Saturday with strawberry tarts, which only goes to show that even when life seems perfect, there will always be some tiny little thing that’s not quite right.
‘It’s all right, darling,’ said Queen Anaglypta to her son. ‘I saved you a big slice of Friday’s chocolate cake.’
The scene was almost set for everyone to live happily ever after. In fact, quite a few people had already started doing so.
A lot of people had the nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right, though they couldn’t put their finger on it. Gruinard could and did put her finger on it.
‘And what about Geoffrey-Geoffrey?’ she said. Gruinard had stayed and waited at Castle Twilight while the Floods had gone off to Shangrila Lakes.
‘Where is he?’ Mordonna asked.
‘According to our tracking device,’ Gruinard said, ‘he is on a remote rock called …’
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Nerlin. ‘Rockall.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Gruinard replied. ‘How do you know of such an insignificant and remote place?’
Nerlin explained that Rockall was where he had banished the evil ex-King Quatorze and Countess Slab, and that only last week he had sent a hailstorm there made of the minced-up frozen remains of the Hearse Whisperer.
‘So when Geoffrey-Geoffrey arrived there, it was raining his mother?’ said Mordonna.
‘It would appear so,’ said Nerlin.
‘If he is only half as evil as his mother, he will probably have collected enough of her to recreate her,’ said Mordonna.
Gruinard was flown by turbo broomstick to her remote valley, where she raced down to her controls and turned on the tracking device.
‘He has re-entered the drain and is nearing the coast of Scotland,’ she reported down to the castle.
‘Then we must act immediately,’ said Nerlin. ‘We have to block the drain, seal it shut with something that no one will ever be able to remove.’
‘In the meantime,’ Winchflat said, ‘I’ll organise a flush-through of a radioactive senna-pod56 mucus cocktail. It won’t stop them, but it will make them very uncomfortable and at least slow them down. Then I’ll flush down what they will think is a gentle cleansing fluid to wash out the drain but will actually be nitro-glycerine syrup, which will hopefully blast them into millions of tiny little bits, and even if they don’t drink the syrup, it will still explode all around them.’
‘Do you really think they’ll fall for that?’ said Mordonna.
‘Doesn’t really matter whether they do or not,’ said Winchflat. ‘If they turn and run for it back to Rockall, they’ve got no chance of outrunning the flushes.’
‘Stop,’ said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘I think I can hear something.’
‘Sorry,’ said Geoffrey-Geoffrey, ‘it must have been those decomposing seagulls I had for breakfast.’
‘No, not that,’ said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘I said hear, not smell.’
Geoffrey-Geoffrey tilted his head to one side and concentrated.
‘Do you mean that very faint roaring noise that sounds like a massive amount of liquid coming down towards us, all the time getting louder and louder?’ Geoffrey-Geoffrey said after a while.
‘Oh no,’ said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘I meant the gentle song of skylarks. Of course, I meant the roaring noise, you idiot!’
The noise had changed from very faint to faint, and was now on the verge of beginning to be quite loud.
Without making a noise, the Hearse Whisperer tried to turn and run towards Rockall, but Geoffrey-Geoffrey was perfectly aware of what his mother was doing and ran after he
r.
The drain, being very narrow, hacked out of rock and in total darkness, was probably the worst type of place to try to run in. The two of them kept smashing into jagged bits, slipping and tripping and falling over each other. Bleeding, bruised and cursing, they progressed slowly and most definitely a lot slower than the noise, which had now become very loud followed by almost silent as the liquid enveloped the Hearse Whisperer and her son and carried them down the drain at an increasingly rapid rate.
Every now and then one of them stuck their head above the water, just long enough for them to take a breath before being thrown back into the torrent. There was nothing to grab hold of, and besides they had no way of knowing how much liquid there was still behind them.
And then salvation appeared.
A light sparkled through the mucus, getting bigger and brighter as mother and son were carried towards it. It was the end of the drain. The two drowning villains tore and clawed at each other to try to reach freedom first, which was very stupid and would lead to their downfall.
As they reached the opening they were side by side, arms and legs all tangled together, and they only realised, when it was too late, that the gap was barely wide enough for one of them.
Their heads both went through but no more. The massive force of five million litres of radioactive senna-pod mucus wedged them immovably in the opening.
The Hearse Whisperer tried tearing her son’s skin off, but her arms were pinned so tightly that all she managed to do was break her fingernails on her own hip bones. Geoffrey-Geoffrey tried ripping his mother’s arms off, but only succeeded in tying their four arms together in a very complicated knot that most boy scouts never even learn.
Meanwhile, back in Transylvania Waters, the Fruit-Pulp Pool had sent down the last of the radioactive senna-pod mucus and Winchflat’s team was now carefully pouring the highly explosive nitro-glycerine syrup into the drain. This was followed by a small remote-control device and then finally hundreds of tonnes of quick-set concrete.
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