The Royal Family

by Colin Thompson

  Then it was Winchflat’s turn.

  The room grew and grew, not dark but enormous and bright with shelves and tables and cupboards everywhere. The place became so large, it was almost impossible to make out where the furthest wall was. And on every shelf there were electronics and gadgets and machines – every single one that had been known to exist. Some of them had been no more than fantasies, made-up things from science-fiction movies, but here they were and here they worked.

  ‘I do not think I have died and gone to heaven,’ said Winchflat. ‘I am in heaven, and please, please, please, lovely dearest auntie, let me keep it all!’

  ‘Later,’ said Gertrude. ‘Remember, this is just a demo.’

  ‘But …’ Winchflat began.

  ‘Don’t worry, dear boy,’ said Gertrude. ‘When the time comes for me to transfer the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers to your sister, she can bring all this back. And that goes for all of you.’

  Not that she nor Betty needed to have worried, but this promise meant that Betty would have one hundred percent support from her siblings forever.

  While this magic had been happening, Satanella had been looking at her reflection in the window. Since her mother had changed her from a small dog into a beautiful girl, Satanella had spent so much time brushing her long dark hair that she now had to wear elastic bandages on both her wrists because of RVI.72

  Having spent many happy years chasing sticks and red rubber balls, Satanella now spent most of her time chasing admirers, though deep in her heart – not that she would ever admit it – it did not have the same excitement she had felt sinking her teeth into a perfect red rubber ball, with or without added squeaky. She now looked down on her brothers and sisters where once they had played together. One night she woke up, and for a few seconds wished she was still a small dog. But she would never dare say this out loud.

  ‘Me, me, me,’ she said to Gertrude.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Gertrude replied.

  ‘Of course I am,’ Satanella snapped.

  ‘OK,’ Gertrude said, raising her hand.

  All the walls turned into mirrors and in front of these were a thousand photographers pointing their cameras at Satanella. Fifty dopey princes and actors and actor-princes and prince-actors surrounded her with over sixty-four brain cells.73 They ‘oooed’ and ‘ahh-ed’ and showered her with roses and diamonds, though some of the admirers had got their bunches of roses the wrong way round and were now impaled on the thorns.

  ‘Out of the way, out of the way,’ Satanella shouted at them. ‘The photographers can’t see me properly.’

  She held up her hand to shoo them off, then screamed and burst into tears.

  ‘I’ve broken a fingernail,’ she cried.

  Satanella’s brothers and sisters felt even more sick than they had been when they were in Valla’s pool of blood, and it was only Gertrude’s quick action in pressing her Undo Button that stopped them from vomiting all over their self-important sister.

  ‘Anyone would think you used to be a cat,’ said Betty. ‘Not a dog.’

  ‘Now, before we do Merlinmary’s wish, everyone should put on a thick pair of rubber wellies and gloves,’ said Gertrude.

  Suddenly, the air came alive. It sparkled and crackled and everyone’s hair stood on end. Outside, far away in space, the sun grew a fraction dimmer as some of its energy was channelled into Merlinmary. Bolts of lightning danced around the room, narrowly missing everyone apart from Satanella’s hair, which it frazzled into burnt charcoal. Satanella burst into tears again and ran from the tower.

  ‘I hope she doesn’t go too far,’ said Gertrude.

  She was about to explain that her Undo Button had a limited range, but stopped herself. It seemed a good idea to keep the knowledge of the Undo Button from the children apart from Betty.

  Besides, Satanella needs to be brought down a peg or two, Gertrude thought to herself.

  She pressed her forehead. The lightning disappeared and the sun grew brighter again. Because Satanella was partly out of range of the Undo Button’s power, the hair on the left side of her head returned to normal, but on the right it was frizzy and burnt.74 Satanella vowed she would stay in her room until it grew back nicely again.

  No one missed her.

  Finally, Gertrude turned to Betty and raised her hand.

  ‘Well, now,’ she said, ‘I know what you want, and I could actually produce a copy of him, but I’m not going to. You are dreaming of a wonderful, mysterious wizard who will come to Transylvania Waters and sweep you off your feet.’

  Betty blushed and nodded. By now everyone had realised that Betty’s true love and future husband was NOT going to be Prince Bert. They grinned and agreed it was better kept as a surprise.

  But deep down, both Gertrude and Betty knew that this really wasn’t what the young witch wanted. The main reason Gertrude could tell exactly what Betty desired was because she knew that Betty was the one true witch to rule all others. Even though Betty looked the most human-like, Gertrude could see herself in her brother’s youngest child. So, ever since they’d met face to face a few days before, Gertrude had been subtly re-programming Betty’s brain so that now the young witch was really keen to become Queen. Not that Betty had needed much mind-bending in the first place.

  Meanwhile, up in the Enchanted Valley, Mordonna and Nerlin were relaxing at their beautiful cottage. Well, Nerlin was, but Mordonna couldn’t. No amount of chamomile tea or deadly nightshade and stinging nettle herbal baths could make her forget Betty’s news.

  There’s nothing for it, Mordonna thought. I’m going to have to talk to him.

  She decided to take some precautions to lessen the chance of Nerlin freaking out again. First of all, she would wait until it was night time to ask him, so that if he did do the Total Darkness Spell, no one would be able to tell.

  Actually half the world would know, but they’ll all be a long way away on the other side of the globe, so who cares? Mordonna said to herself.

  Mordonna would get Nerlin as relaxed as possible with a huge mug of mandrake and chamomile tea, followed by a bowl of his favourite festerweed and scrubble ice-cream, which always put him in a dreamy mood. But what Mordonna hadn’t realised was that for all his freaking out and fainting, Nerlin had been completely aware Mordonna had spoken his sister’s name. He knew it would only be a matter of time before she would bring it up again.

  So when Nerlin was full of ice-cream and mandrake and tucked up in bed in his favourite rat-skin pyjamas, Mordonna said as gently as she could:

  ‘So, my darling, I, umm, er …’

  ‘Want to know who Gertrude is, I expect?’ said Nerlin.

  ‘Oh, umm, yes.’

  ‘She’s my sister,’ said Nerlin.

  He then spent several hours explaining why he had never told Mordonna about Gertrude and that included the fact that his sister was older than him and should really, under wizard law, be the ruler of Transylvania Waters, but she had stayed behind when Nerlin had escaped, and then later on when Nerlin and Mordonna had come back with their children and rescued the rest of his family from the drains and overthrown Mordonna’s evil father, who had taken control of Transylvania Waters, Gertrude had still not appeared so Nerlin had told himself that she must be dead, otherwise why would she not want to come up into the beautiful paradise that was Transylvania Waters?

  Some of the sentences that Nerlin spoke were so long that he fainted from lack of oxygen five or six times.75

  ‘So I sort of hoped she was dead, but I knew in my heart that she wasn’t,’ he continued. ‘I told myself that if she had chosen to live in the drains for so long she must have gone completely Doolally and probably thought she was a teapot and would be declared insane, which would disqualify her from being Queen, unlike in human royal families where being Doolally is considered one of the qualifications.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid to tell you that she is neither dead nor Doolally,’ said Mordonna. ‘And she is no longer living in the drains.’
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br />   ‘I suppose now she wants to claim her rightful inheritance,’ said Nerlin. ‘Not that I would really mind. I mean, it’s not like any of our children want the job.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but technically we have stolen the throne from her,’ said Mordonna. ‘We have committed treason and could be thrown in gaol or even have our heads chopped off, like what happened to your cousin Perlin in Barvarania.’

  ‘It didn’t do him much harm though, did it?’ said Nerlin. ‘Apart from the headaches.’

  ‘I can’t spend the rest of my life in gaol,’ said Mordonna. ‘I’m too beautiful to get slowly eaten away by mould.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘I think we have to kill your sister,’ said Mordonna.

  ‘You can’t,’ Nerlin replied. ‘She’s got the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers.’

  ‘So your beloved daughter Betty has mentioned,’ said Mordonna. ‘I don’t believe in those powers. I think the story’s just made up to frighten people.’

  ‘No, it’s real,’ said Nerlin.

  ‘How come your sister got the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers and not you?’ Mordonna asked.

  ‘Our Great, Great, Great plus twenty-seven more Greats Grandfather Flood liked her more than me,’ Nerlin explained. ‘She used to take him hemlock cordial when he became old and bed-ridden.’

  ‘Hold on, hold on,’ said Mordonna. ‘If he had the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers, why couldn’t he just cast a spell on himself and become young and healthy again?’

  ‘You really don’t know anything about the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers, do you?’

  ‘You mean, apart from the fact that there’s no such thing?’ said Mordonna.

  ‘The holder of the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers cannot perform spells on themselves,’ Nerlin explained. ‘If they did the wrong thing and the spell turned out to be a disaster, they might not be able to reverse it, and not only would that have seriously dangerous consequences, it could probably destroy the powers themselves forever.’76

  ‘Yes, well, it all sounds like a load of fairy floss,’ said Mordonna. ‘I think we should kill your sister.’

  ‘Perhaps it might be a better idea to go talk to her?’ Nerlin suggested.

  ‘I don’t know where she is,’ said Mordonna.

  ‘Ask Betty.’

  ‘She won’t tell me,’ said Mordonna. ‘And Betty already warned me not to have her followed. Maybe she’ll tell you. You could let her know that you would love to see your long-lost sister.’

  ‘All right,’ said Nerlin. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘And then we’ll kill her,’ said Mordonna.

  Killing things – unless they were things you were going to eat, like snakes, slugs and things that didn’t begin with ‘s’ – was not something Nerlin thought Mordonna would do. As the world’s top witch, Mordonna had never seemed to have any vicious killer characteristics, but perhaps the threat Gertrude presented was just too powerful for his wife to ignore.

  ‘It’s about survival,’ she said.

  ‘But she will kill you before you even get close to her,’ said Nerlin. ‘Or do something far worse if she feels like it.’

  ‘You mean worse than being killed?’ said Mordonna. ‘What on earth could be worse than that?’

  Nerlin thought for a bit. He made a few suggestions that Mordonna dismissed until he said: ‘She could make you really ugly with warts, droopy bits and missing teeth, and she could make your eyes dull and beige-coloured, and then she could make you live for a very, very long time.’

  ‘She couldn’t do that,’ Mordonna said, though there were doubts in her mind.

  ‘She could and probably would,’ said Nerlin. ‘One of the extra abilities the holder of the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers has, is knowing someone’s deepest fears and using that against them.’

  ‘I still think you should try to see your sister,’ said Mordonna.

  ‘Yes, but there will be no making-her-dead attempts, or thoughts like that,’ Nerlin replied.

  ‘OK, if you say so.’

  Of course, Nerlin had known his wife long enough to be able to tell in an instant when she was lying. This was one of those instances.

  Oh well, he said to himself. If she does try anything and Gertrude turns her into a really ugly old crone, at least I’ll have the satisfaction of saying, ‘I told you so’.

  I can’t believe I just thought that, he added.

  On Nerlin’s face was a little smile, which he hid from his wife by coughing and putting his hand over his mouth.

  ‘Your mother tells me that you have met my dear sister,’ Nerlin said to Betty upon his return at Castle Twilight, after his partly relaxing, partly weird and partly freaky weekend at the cottage.

  ‘Yes, Daddy, she’s lovely,’ Betty replied.

  Father and daughter were sitting alone in one of the tower rooms, looking out the window. The last beams of the afternoon sun glowed like fire over the roofs of the town, and in the distance the golden light swayed across the water of Lake Tarnish. The sun eventually slipped down behind the mountains at the far end of Transylvania Waters and the air began to grow cold. As if controlled by the setting sun, which of course, being in a land of magic, it was, the wood waiting in the fireplace came alight in the room and began to warm the evening air.

  ‘I would love to see Gertrude again,’ said Nerlin, which, in some ways, was true. She was his sister, after all, and it had been such a long time and so much had happened since the siblings had last been together.

  ‘There were times,’ Nerlin continued, ‘when I wondered if she was even still alive.’

  Nerlin sounded as if he really wanted nothing more than to be reunited with his long-lost sister and Betty appeared to believe him one hundred percent.77

  ‘I’m sure we can arrange something,’ said Betty, with the sweet, innocent facial expression she was so good at.

  The sweet, innocent act totally took Nerlin in. It always had, despite Mordonna telling him over and over again that it was all just put on. But Nerlin was one of those people who always saw the very best in people, even when it wasn’t there.78 He could never accept that his youngest child could even think of doing anything devious, never mind actually doing it. If someone fell over on a banana skin that Betty had deliberately dropped in front of them, Nerlin would say how sad it was for poor Betty that the banana had slipped out of her dainty little hands just at that moment. It drove Mordonna mad, but nothing she said could ever change her husband’s mind.

  Betty had known this her entire life and had used it many times in all sorts of little ways to get things from her father and to wind up her mother.

  ‘I’ll get in touch with Auntie Gertrude tomorrow and see what we can sort out,’ said Betty.

  ‘Maybe I could come with you?’

  ‘No, I think it would be better if I saw her alone first,’ Betty replied.

  ‘I wonder if she got married,’ Nerlin mused. ‘Maybe she’s got children. You could have cousins.’

  And if Gertrude does have children and ends up claiming the throne, it will be her children who will continue to rule our wonderful kingdom, Nerlin thought.

  Betty knew that Gertrude had never been married or had any children, but she said nothing. She thought that there was no point making things any easier for her parents, for the moment.

  This was enough to put Mordonna’s original thought of murdering Gertrude into the bit of his head that was used for storing ideas that might actually be used. Unlike his wife and most of his children, this was not a very big part of his brain and because it had been so long since Nerlin had used it, there were cobwebs inside.

  So now he felt guilty, really guilty for allowing this thought in. If Gertrude wanted to take over the throne, who was he to stand in her way? Mordonna’s husband, that’s who he was. He could hear her voice echoing round and round his brain and saying:

  Kill her, kill her, kill her.

  Nerlin was getting more and more stressed and c
onfused. He wanted to pour his heart out to Betty, but the thought of what Mordonna would do to him if he did stopped him from telling his daughter.

  It was a long, lonely night. Nerlin couldn’t sleep, so he went down to the kitchen for a mug of hot Silo,79 but that didn’t work and he was still awake. Bacstairs followed him round and round until Nerlin handed him three mugs of cold Silo, which, as a dutiful servant, he drank himself, only to fall fast asleep in the dog’s basket on top of the dog, who had always adored Bacstairs and was happier than he had ever been in his whole life, even happier than the time his greatest enemy, Grummo the kitchen cat,80 had fallen into the toaster and got all his fur burnt off down one side.81

  Nerlin returned to bed, and as the sun came up he finally fell asleep and missed breakfast. As he snored away, Betty went out into the forest to see Gertrude.

  Of course, Gertrude already knew everything that was going on. When you have the Ultimate Super-Wizard powers, you have spies absolutely everywhere, even inside your enemies’ heads. You have the normal spies, like magpies and cockroaches, but you also have invisible spies that you just imagine. All you have to do is think of where you would like to be spying and an invisible fly on the wall appears or, rather, doesn’t appear. None of the normal spy-detectors can pick them up and neither can any of the abnormal ones. So Gertrude had heard every word that had passed between Mordonna and Nerlin up at the cottage and all the stuff between Nerlin and Betty back at Castle Twilight. She had also read the secret thoughts inside everyone’s heads.

  ‘So, what would you like to do?’ Gertrude asked Betty. ‘And I must say, I’m quite enjoying this.’

  ‘I knew you would,’ Betty replied, grinning.

  ‘Yes, I thought winding your mother up and making your poor parents think I wanted the throne seemed a bit childish at first – and I apologise for that, my dear,’ said Gertrude. ‘It’s just that stuck down in the drains I never had time for a childhood. I just went straight from being a toddler to being old. I missed out on all the stuff in between, and it’s only now I realise that’s actually the best bit.’