Knock Three Times

by Cressida Cowell

  The wolves and the snowcats put their heads over the side of the boat, wind waggling their ears, as they looked back at the beach. They could still see the shoes.

  The shoes were waiting.

  They would wait forever if they had to.

  And little did they know it, but there were eyes OTHER than the eyes of will-o’-the-wisps watching them leave the Beach of Shoes…

  The eyes of WITCHES.

  Witches were crouching like great dark spiders in the reed beds, muttering to each other, “Sehs gnimoc… sehs gnimoc…” which means, “She’s coming… she’s coming…”

  But oddly, they did not yet attack. They were waiting too.

  What were they waiting for?

  Crusher swam through the quiet black water, so far out that they could no longer see the shore and the beach with the waiting shoes behind them, and then Wish began to feel not-so-brave.

  As they drew closer to the island of the Nuckalavee, the shadowy outline coming nearer and nearer, bottles began to appear in the ocean—at first only a few passing the log boat every now and then, but then there were more of them, and more and more and more.

  Xar leaned over the side of the log boat and picked one out of the water. It was a perfectly ordinary bottle with a blank piece of paper in it, and a bit of hair, and a fingernail, and some other things he couldn’t quite identify.

  “Why are all these bottles here?” asked Wish.

  “They’re curse bottles,” said Xar, putting the bottle back in the water. “Somebody on that island must be putting them in the water and pushing them out to sea. Whoever it is really doesn’t like someone else, but I don’t know who. Normally you write the name of the person you are cursing on that piece of paper, but there’s nothing written on the paper.”

  Wish shivered. There were so many bottles bobbing past in the sea around them. That was an awful lot of cursing, and she didn’t really want to meet whoever was behind it.

  Mists suddenly descended out of nowhere, great choking sea mists, treacherous, shifting, there one minute gone the next, sometimes so thick that they could barely see the comforting head of Crusher swimming out in front of them.

  But they knew they were still going the right way, for they were following the bottles.

  Ariel tasted the mist. “This fog is not natural—it is Magic, summoned by the Droods,” whispered Ariel, his eyes gleaming red for danger in the swirling, confusing fog all around them. “The Droods are concealing something.”

  The mists cleared and there it was, finally, close-up.

  The Isle of the Nuckalavee.

  “Oh my goodnesssss!” squeaked Bumbleboozle, turning multiple somersaults in panic. “It’s not an island. It’s a MONSTER! Look at how big its JAWS are… Pleassse let’s go back…”

  But Wish screwed up her eyes and flicked up her eyepatch a smidgeon because her Magic eye was good at seeing through magic-made mist.

  “That isn’t a mouth,” she said at last. “It’s a CAVE…”

  A dark island, shrouded in fog, with a gigantic dark sea cave like the open mouth of a monster.

  17. In the Sea Cave of the Nuckalavee

  The sea and the bobbing bottles went right inside the cave, but it was very dark in there and they did not dare take the log boat in, in case the cave narrowed farther down and the boat got stuck. They wanted to get off the Isle of the Nuckalavee as quickly as they could once they’d completed their quest.

  If they completed their quest, that is.

  So Crusher the giant dragged the boat up the beach and left it there, beside forty or fifty other log boats hauled up high above the sands. A bit like the shoes, these boats were a melancholy presence, because whoever had crossed the sea in them had made a one-way trip and never returned.

  They made themselves slo-o-o-o-owly enter the sea cave, trying to ignore every nerve in their bodies screaming “DON’T GO IN! DON’T GO IN!,” not to mention Bumbleboozle buzzing around in such a state of anxiety that she had blown up like a pufferfish.

  Poor little Squeezjoos had not left Xar’s pocket since they had traveled farther and farther away from Perdita’s healing influence. He was trembling and going rigid again, the Witchblood poison affecting him as it had done once before. Now he put one green eye to a hole in Xar’s pocket and peered out fearfully.

  It was not surprising that they needed COURAGE to go into that cave. For there were extraordinary rock formations that looked uncannily like TEETH and gave the impression that you might indeed be entering the mouth of a monster, as Bumbleboozle had suggested. And this cave contained some of the Droods’ greatest secrets, so all around them in the cavern’s hush there came a wicked whisper of “Beware…” that sent the hairs at the back of everyone’s necks quivering electrically upward, along with strange scuttling noises that might have been the pattering feet of rats or mice, or were they just the fearful scurry of Wish’s frantically beating heart?

  “Beware… Beware… Beware…” sang the unknown voices, and they could be ghosts or they might be will-o’-the-wisps that were appearing out of nowhere, laughing and cackling, and then adding more eerily, “Come here only if you dare…” as they dived and swooped and vanished back into the darkness, leaving haunting echo whispers of “Beware…” in sound and in sprite-writing fading into the dark air in front of them. And then they heard louder scraping noises, this time made by larger and more malevolent creatures with paws that had talons.

  “I bet those are nixes,” said Caliburn, shivering. “I HATE nixes… horrible animals. Everyone, watch out, for they’ll strangle you if they catch you.”

  “Isss ssppooky down here,” whispered poor little Squeezjoos from Xar’s pocket. “I’sss really don’t like it… can’t we go home to Pook’s Hill? Pleeeeeasssee??”

  But Squeezjoos’s plight only reminded everyone of the urgency of their quest.

  “We have to go on,” said Wish. “We must find Bodkin and get the scales of the Nuckalavee so we can make that spell as quickly as possible.”

  Now this was where Xar was extremely helpful as a companion. When things were really dangerous, Xar’s eyes would light up, and he would stick out his chest and whistle, out of tune, as if he didn’t care about any of it. “Bit damp and smelly in here,” sniffed Xar, and even if he was more scared than he looked, his cheerful defiance was useful in fooling them all that this was a lot less dangerous than it seemed.

  So on, on, they went. Sometimes the cave narrowed and the beach disappeared entirely, and Crusher had to carry them across the water to the next bit of shore. Xar had explored many a sea cave in his short life, but this was the largest he had ever seen, and it was a long time before they reached what surely must have been the heart of the island, where the cave opened up to reveal a great underwater lake.

  All around was darkness and a smell of secrets that made them all shiver with the coldness of it, the air so chokingly foul it was hard to breathe. The sprites lit up as high and bright as they could so that they could see, and the weird green light of little cave slugs gave off a gentle, queasy glow.

  On the edge of the lake was a great heaped-up mound of treasure in the form of magical objects the Droods deemed too powerful to be in the world. Harps that played themselves, arrows made of moon, hats with wings and seven-league boots and talking heads and speaking stones and singing swords, all bewitched items of such threatening strength that the air around the heap of treasure gave off a sickly, shimmering stench of muffled, ghastly power.

  The sprites hissed like hornets.

  “That treasure is cursed,” hissed Ariel uneasily. “Lettsss go back…”

  In front of them, the lake was smooth and serene as a sheet of black glass.

  And deathly still, sitting upright in the lake like rows and rows of soldiers, were thousands and thousands and thousands of bottles.

  “Uh-oh,” gulped Caliburn. “I think we may have found what we are looking for…”

  They certainly had.

  For high u
p on a ledge on those very cavern walls, Bodkin was lying, having cried himself to sleep. He was beyond hope, poor Bodkin. He knew he was going to die here in the darkness.

  A little higher up still perched Nighteye the snowcat, clinging to the walls, her head drooping, poor cat, for she too was in despair.

  But now Nighteye lifted her head eagerly, her whiskers twitched, she swiveled her black-tipped ears. She let out a happy, yowly meow of excitement as she caught the sound of approaching sprites and humans and a giant that she recognized.

  “Don’t worry, Nighteye, we’ll be fine,” lied Bodkin, waking and trying to give the snowcat the reassurance that he did not believe himself, and he closed his weary eyes again.

  And then Bodkin heard the voices of Wish and Xar.

  For a second he thought he was hallucinating, for he hadn’t eaten anything for a while now, and all he had had to drink was the drops of water that he could lick from the cavern walls.

  He lifted up his poor exhausted head…

  And to his total delight, there they were!

  Wonderful Wish, her hair all a mess with electric anxiety, and staunch, proud Xar, bold as ever, whistling to pretend he wasn’t scared as he looked around at the terrifying cavern.

  His friends.

  He thought he’d never see them again.

  “I’m up here, Wish and Xar!” he whispered in a shaky voice from way, way up in the heights of the cavern. They looked up.

  “Bodkin!” cried Xar.

  “You’re alive!” shouted Wish, waving madly back.

  But the moment of delight passed in an instant, as Bodkin remembered why they were all there. They mustn’t risk their lives to save him; he wasn’t worth it.

  “You shouldn’t have come!” cried Bodkin in a terrified whisper. “Go back! Leave me here! I betrayed you to Queen Sychorax…” said Bodkin.

  “We forgive you, Bodkin. You thought it was for the best and you made a mistake,” said Wish. “We all make mistakes. We all need second chances.”

  “And I’m useless…” said Bodkin.

  “You’re not useless. Xar should never have said that!” Wish shouted. “Should you, Xar?”

  “No, no, I shouldn’t!” Xar cried. “You’re not useless! Why are you up there?”

  “I kept my shoes on,” said Bodkin.

  There was a silence.

  “Well you have to admit, that is a BIT useless,” muttered Xar.

  “Shut up, Xar,” hissed Wish,

  “Oh!” Xar hurriedly remembered that he was supposed to be being tactful and boosting Bodkin’s confidence. “I’m sure you had a very good reason, Bodkin, but why did you keep your shoes on? There were all those signs up and everything…”

  “I fainted on the beach… and then when I came to, I forgot to take my shoes off… The only thing I’m supposed to be good at is following rules and I can’t even do that!” said Bodkin. “Go away! I’m not worth it!”

  “You ARE worth it, Bodkin!” Xar shouted up in response to agonized tugs on his jacket, reminders from Wish that he was supposed to be Being Nice. Xar tried to think of something nice to say. “You’ve got a… you’ve got a… you’ve got a… very nice smile!”

  Oh for mistletoe’s sake, thought Xar to himself. Can’t I think of anything better than that?

  But there was a short silence from above.

  Bodkin appeared to quite like that.

  “Have I?” said Bodkin in a quavery, quite-pleased voice.

  A glimmer of light was returning to Bodkin’s dark world. Whatever happened next, at least they both forgave him.

  “Don’t worry, Bodkin,” said Wish. “We’re going to save you. Come down from there!”

  “You don’t understand,” said Bodkin. “I kept my shoes on, and I was so scared that I didn’t even realize until I was standing right in front of that ruddy great THING… It gave me the shock of my life I can tell you… and that THING really didn’t like it… It was going to kill me, if I hadn’t climbed up here… It didn’t even let me get to the bit where you bargain with it, but I suggest you don’t even try that. I really don’t think that THING is going to be reasoned with. Go back to Perdita! There has to be a better way than this—OH!”

  Bodkin broke off, and pointed down toward the lake.

  “IT’S COMING BACK! RUN AWAY, GUYS, RUN AWAY!!!”

  What was that, surfacing in the distant waters of the lake, like the back of a humpback whale, sending the curse bottles dancing and bobbing in the water?

  It was not a whale.

  It was an eyelid that slowly opened to reveal a gigantic yellow eye. And then slowly two, three, four, five… countless more giant eyes opened in the lake. And the dripping head of the most enormous monster they had ever seen rose slowly, slowly out of the lake, like the rearing of a mountain, and fixed them with its many yellow eyes.

  “I don’t seem to be able to draw the Enchanted Sword. It’s stuck in the scabbard, and the scabbard is stuck in my belt!” cried Bodkin.

  “Don’t worry, Bodkin! We have our staffs, and I brought your own staff too!” yelled Xar, throwing Bodkin the do-it-yourself Magic staff. Bodkin caught it in one shaking hand.

  “GET READY TO DEFEND US, SPRITES!” cried Xar as Wish and he pointed their own shaking staffs at the emerging monster.

  “How?????” squeaked Bumbleboozle, looking up as the creature coming out of the water revealed itself to be larger and larger and larger.

  The monster opened its mouth and its breath was cold as corpses.

  “WHO,” said the monster, “are you?”

  18. Dead Boys Can’t Make Bargains

  The Nuckalavee was in darkness so they could not really see him properly. But whatever he was, he was BIG. He loomed over them like a great gloomy precipice, only his thirteen yellow eyes visible, staring down at them. His voice bellowed and echoed most eerily around that cavern. Every now and then he gulped, as if there was something stuck in his throat and it was bothering him. It was most disconcerting.

  “WHOOOOOO ARE YOUOUUUUUUUU?” repeated the Nuckalavee. Gulp.

  Both Wish and Xar knew better than to answer that question correctly. You start telling your real name to a beast that ghastly in a cave that eerie, and you’re deader than doornails before you’ve even started.

  They tried to keep their Magic staffs steady, pointing them straight at the gigantic horror in front of them, but my goodness, even the staff in Xar’s hand was slipping and sliding in his panicky sweating palm.

  “We are humans,” said Wish.

  “Very, very powerful humans,” said Xar, hoping to impress the mammoth opponent in front of him. “We may look unimpressive, but we have Magic swords and Magic eyes, and the girl here has more than one life and everything… and we’re here on a very important shadow quest.”

  “Your Magic will not work in here,” said the Nuckalavee.

  Oh dear.

  Xar tried to cast a spell with his staff, and sure enough, nothing happened.

  Wish put her eyepatch up a smidgeon, and her Magic wasn’t working either.

  Oh dear, oh dear, oh DEAR. This already wasn’t going well.

  “Why were you talking to the dead Wizard?” said the Nuckalavee.

  “Dead Wizard? What dead Wizard?” said Xar.

  All thirteen of the Nuckalavee’s eyes turned toward Bodkin, crouched, shaking, on his ledge.

  “That dead Wizard,” said the Nuckalavee. “The boy-who-didn’t-take-his-shoes-off.”

  “He’s not a dead Wizard. He’s a Warrior and he’s alive,” said Wish.

  Unbeknownst to Wish and Xar, this was good news for the Nuckalavee. The Nuckalavee had an aura about him that dampened and digested the Magic of Wizards, but it worked better when they had their shoes off. The Nuckalavee’s Magic-quenching properties traveled up through their bare feet and smothered the Magic inside them most effectively.

  When they kept their shoes on, the Nuckalavee had to fight them before he killed them, which took a lot of energy. Even
though Wizard Magic didn’t work well against him, Wizards were very clever and tricksy at using magical objects.

  However if the boy-who-didn’t-take-his-shoes-off wasn’t a Wizard after all, he wasn’t going to be a problem.

  The Nuckalavee relaxed.

  “He won’t be alive for long,” said the Nuckalavee. “He can’t stay up there forever. He will starve and if he comes down, I will kill him. Normally I offer visitors to my island the chance to make a bargain with me. But they have to take their shoes off before they come here. This boy was dead the moment he stepped on my island… in shoes,” said the Nuckalavee. “Dead boys can’t make bargains.”

  It wasn’t a great start to a conversation, on the whole.

  “You, however, are both shoeless,” said the Nuckalavee. “And therefore you are welcome to try to make a bargain with me… if you wish. What are you bringing me?” asked the Nuckalavee.

  “We’re not bringing you anything,” said Xar. “We didn’t know we were supposed to bring you something.”

  “Don’t you know the rules of this particular shadow quest?” asked the Nuckalavee.

  The eyes, from their various different perches on the Nuckalavee’s great barnacled head, swiveled in to look down. Six of them looked at Xar. And seven of them at Wish.

  The eyes were old, and it was very difficult to see their expression.

  “Foolish,” said the Nuckalavee, “to come on a quest without knowing the rules yet.”

  “But the rules are a secret!” Wish pointed out. “Apart from the bit about taking off your shoes!”

  “Taking off your shoes is polite,” said the Nuckalavee, “and shows me that you can follow the rules.

  “Now let me tell you the rules of this particular shadow quest,” continued the Nuckalavee. “You don’t have to accept the bargain I offer, because at least you have taken your shoes off. You can walk away from this cavern free and alive. But if you take the bargain, then you must keep to the rules and pay the price I ask. Is that understood?”