When a car did actually reach Transylvania Waters, they had to go through Immigration. If anyone coming in to the country had a moustache they had to pay a 25-splatzis Moustache Tax. As there was nowhere outside Transylvania Waters where you could change your money into splatzis no one could pay the tax, so the only option was to forfeit their moustache. Removal of the moustache was a free service provided by the Transylvania Waters Bureau Of Good Taste, though if you wanted it removed painlessly it cost 15 splatzis. The Cardigan Tax meant that cardigans were taxed at double the rate of moustaches. Every cloud has a silver lining, though, because cardigans make first-class compost, which meant all the gardens around the Immigration Office grew wonderful vegetables.
When a car left Transylvania Waters through the eastern mountains tunnel, it passed, quite unawares, through a magic gate that filled every visitor’s brain with happy memories. It even filled the memory cards in their cameras with happy memories. This, of course, meant that more and more people wanted to visit Transylvania Waters, even more than Belgium.
As the Floods settled down into their new lives in Transylvania Waters the outside world seemed further and further away. They may have opened the country to visitors, but as far as the Floods were concerned, none of them ever wanted to go outside again. The younger children, of course, were still at school, but because it was a school for witches and wizards and hidden away in a remote Patagonian valley, Quicklime College was more like an extension of Transylvania Waters than a part of the outside world.
Castle Twilight was so big that all the Floods didn’t just have a bedroom of their own, they each had a tower full of rooms. Of course, having seen the creepy, damp gloom the attics had to offer, Valla and Mildred un-bricked the old doorway up from the main Castle and moved up there. The rooms of peeling wallpaper and mildew-covered bones everywhere would be the perfect place to bring up their new baby.
‘Just think of all the wonderful things he will absorb crawling through that,’ said Valla.
‘Oh yes, and all the centuries of history and germs he’ll be able to lick from the walls,’ said Mildred.
Winchflat decided to move down to the cellars. There were so many of them they could have swallowed the whole of Acacia Avenue fifteen times.
‘With all this,’ he said to Maldegard, ‘we won’t need any rooms upstairs with all their distracting daylight and sunshine.’
Maldegard agreed and, between them, they began to create the greatest network of experimental laboratories that had ever existed.
Naturally, Merlinmary chose to move into the tallest tower in the whole Castle.
‘It means,’ she explained, ‘that I will be nearer to the sky and all that wonderful lightning.’
Transylvania Waters has more thunderstorms than anywhere else on earth. They happen almost every day and are so popular that TWTV began a Fantastic Storms series for people to watch when there wasn’t a real storm going on. Lightning was to Merlinmary what chocolate is to humans, and to get as much of it as she could, she always slept with the window open and a giant lighting conductor in her mouth.60
Nerlin and Mordonna slept in the main tower at the front of the Castle. It meant they could sit up in bed and look out over the entire town and out across the fields to Lake Tarnish in the distance. It also meant that anyone in the town could climb onto their roof with a pair of binoculars and see the King and Queen sitting up in bed and wave at them.
Morbid and Silent had two identical towers at opposite ends of the Castle. Most of the time they shared the same tower, one week in Morbid’s and one week in Silent’s, but from time to time they had arguments and then each one stayed in their own tower. Sometimes they wouldn’t see each other for over a week – not because they were still arguing, but because they couldn’t find each other again and kept forgetting who was who. This was especially a problem around full moon when Morbid became Silent and Silent became Morbid.
Betty painted the rooms in her tower pink and filled them up with lots of Hello Witchy dolls – which are like Hello Kitty only much, much better. But there was one thing that she missed and that was her human friend, Ffiona. After the Hearse Whisperer had destroyed the Floods’ home, Ffiona and the rest of the Hulbert family had gone back to Acacia Avenue while the Floods had fled disguised as hippies. Since that day, they had never seen or heard from each other.
Betty went to see her father for advice.
‘Father,’ she said. ‘You remember the Hulberts?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said King Nerlin. ‘They were our best human friends. Well, to be honest, they were our only human friends.’
‘Yes.’
‘In all the time we lived in Acacia Avenue, they were the only humans who accepted us for what we were and didn’t criticise or complain about us,’ said Nerlin. ‘I wonder how they’re getting on.’
‘I was wondering that too,’ said Betty, ‘and I was wondering if we could invite them to Transylvania Waters.’
‘What, for a holiday?’ said Nerlin.
‘Or maybe even for ever,’ said Betty.
‘Ah, well now,’ said Nerlin, ‘I’m not sure if that would be allowed. They would be the only humans who had ever come to live here.’
Nerlin decided to ask his father for advice.
Since Merlin the 84th and his wife had been liberated from the drains, they had moved to a small idyllic cottage on the shores of Lake Tarnish. All they wanted was a nice peaceful life to see out their last two hundred years or so, a life full of all the things they had been deprived of trapped down in the gloom of the drains. So every morning they sat out in the garden and tried to get sunburnt. With the polluted skies above the country, this was taking a long time. Of course, their skin did turn a rich golden colour, but it wasn’t sunburn. It was rust.
As he sat there, the old wizard performed Cleaning Spells and gradually the yellow clouds turned white. This was not popular with a lot of people who had grown up in the damp yellow gloom and didn’t like the idea of sunshine and happy butterflies and skylarks singing high in the air.
‘Black crows and blood-sucking moths were good enough for our parents,’ they said. ‘And they are good enough for us. Look what sunshine has done to the rest of the world.’
No one complained, however, as Lake Tarnish grew less polluted. Merlin knew where the tap in the museum had come from and once it was put back on the end of the deadly acid pipeline, the lake began to recover.
Betty adored her Grandpa Merlin and visited him almost every day. She would sit spellbound at his feet while he told her stories of the olden days when his great, great grandfather had guided King Arthur in ancient Britain. He was telling her about Camelot when Nerlin arrived.
‘Yes, Betty has already asked me about your human friends,’ said Merlin.
‘And what do you think?’ said Nerlin.
‘Well, friends are one of the greatest thing a person can have,’ said the old wizard, ‘but you have to remember, the reason Transylvania Waters was created in the first place was to escape humans – in particular, the Knights Intolerant, who were determined to destroy us all.’61
‘But the Hulberts aren’t like that,’ said Betty. ‘They were our best friends.’
‘I know,’ said Merlin, ‘but they could have nasty relations who might want to come and visit them and who knows where that could end up.’
‘They don’t have any relations at all,’ said Betty, but she could see her grandfather wasn’t sure.
‘Why don’t you make Mr Hulbert the human ambassador to Transylvania Waters?’ Betty suggested. ‘We could give them a special house, the Human Embassy, and they could live there.’
‘But then you’d have to tell all the humans about it and then they would all know Transylvania Waters is the land of witches and wizards and I’m not sure that would be such a great idea,’ said Merlin. ‘We want life to stay nice and uncomplicated. We’ve already hidden all the valuable minerals and oil and stuff like that just in case one of our tourist
s is a mining expert. If they realised we could do magic, they’d have all sorts of evil people here trying to use us for awful military things. You know how aggressive and greedy humans can be.’
‘True,’ Betty agreed.
But then King Nerlin, who had now become one hundred per cent wise, with every single bit of his brain as clever as a whole drawer full of very sharp knives, came up with a solution.
‘We will adopt the Hulberts,’ he said. ‘We will make them Transylvania Waters citizens. That is, of course, assuming they want to come and live here.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Betty.
Having a father who had become really clever almost overnight took some getting used to, but Betty decided she really liked it. What she and no one else realised was that the Not-Very-Bright Spell that Merlin had cast on Nerlin had actually made all his children not quite as clever as they could be, too. While Nerlin had been reduced to about forty per cent cleverness, his children had been reduced to ninety per cent. So the change wasn’t very noticeable and the children put down their extra sharpness to being in Transylvania Waters.
‘What we’ll do is invite them here for a holiday and then, if they like it, we’ll let them stay,’ said Nerlin.
There were still no telephones or internet in Transylvania Waters and no one was in any hurry to bring them in. They were sensible enough to realise that the rest of the world didn’t really have anything much to offer that Transylvanians wanted – apart from shoelaces and shiny red saucepans and maybe, though perhaps not, harmonicas. Betty wanted to go back to Acacia Avenue and fetch their friends, but Mordonna said no way because she was much too young to travel by herself. Everyone else was really busy with other stuff so Parsnip was ordered to volunteer for the job.
‘Snipsnip too tired,’ he complained.
‘I’ll make you a knight,’ said Nerlin.
‘Sir Snipsnip … mmm, s’not bad,’ said Parsnip. ‘Wait here.’
He flew out of the window and down to the town, where a group of crows were rummaging through the rubbish bins.
‘Hey girliebirds, King just make me Sir Snipsnip,’ he said. ‘Who want be me girlfriend?’
‘Me,’ said a one-eyed magpie with a bad limp.
Parsnip flew back to the castle.
‘Sir Snipsnip not get the girls,’ he said.
‘How about Lord Parsnip?’ said King Nerlin.
This produced three potential girlfriends and one of them had both eyes working.
‘Still not so great,’ Parsnip reported.
‘OK, OK, Parsnip, Duke of Tarnish,’ said Nerlin. ‘Duke’s as high as I can go, but I’ll throw in a bag of gourmet bird seed every Friday.’
‘Two bags.’
‘OK.’
That got Parsnip over twenty-five girlfriends. He knew in his heart that most of them only wanted him for his bird seed, but he could live with that.
‘Duke Snipsnip have bacon sammich then fly to Acacia Hublets,’ he said.
Ffiona had been miserable since they had said goodbye to the Floods in Port Folio. The Hulberts had driven home to Acacia Avenue in total silence, each of them wondering if they would ever see their best friends again and thinking they probably wouldn’t.
Before they had met the Floods, Ffiona’s family had led very quiet, boring lives – and then everything had changed. Ffiona had stopped being bullied at school. Mr Hulbert had not only stopped being bullied at work but had ended up being in charge of the whole office, and Mrs Hulbert had learned that life could be a lot more exciting if you let your hair down from time to time, especially at weekends.
But now, with the Floods gone, the Hulberts felt they were slowly moving back to Dullsville, until that Saturday morning when there came a tap on Ffiona’s bedroom window.
‘Is that you, Parsnip?’ she said, her heart getting ready to jump for joy, but not actually doing it in case it wasn’t Parsnip, because all crows look very much alike and it might not have been. She opened the window.
‘Hello, Ffonier person, Snipsnip Duke of Tarnish bring big massage from Floods,’ Parsnip said as he hopped into the room.
‘Big, err, massage?’ said Ffiona.
‘Yes, writ on this paper, big massage.’
‘Oh, you mean message,’ said Ffiona.
‘Swot eye sed,’ said Parsnip.
Ffiona took the piece of paper from the old bird and unfolded it:
West Tower, Castle Twilight,
Transylvania Waters
Dear, dear Ffiona,
We all miss you enormously and would love to see you all.
Please, please come and visit us.
My dad is King now so you’ll have a really cool time.
Your very best friend,
Princess Betty
P.S. See you soon!
P.P.S. Make sure to leave out the cardigans when you’re doing your packing.
‘Is that Parsnip?’ said Mrs Hulbert when Ffiona walked into the kitchen with the old bird sitting on her shoulder.
‘Yes, and we’ve been invited to go and visit the Floods and Mr Flood is the King and Betty’s a Princess so can we go?’ said Ffiona.
‘Go where?’ said Mr Hulbert, who had been outside fighting with the lawnmower, which was sulking in the garden shed and refusing to start.
‘I could so do with a holiday,’ he said when Ffiona told him.
‘You speak yes to Duke Snipsnip and I fly back and send car,’ said Parsnip.
‘Well, we need to make arrangements first,’ said Mr Hulbert. ‘We have to stop the milk and the papers and I have to put in for leave from work and then we need to get in touch with Ffiona’s school.’
‘And I have to tell the bowls club I won’t be playing for a couple of weeks,’ Mrs Hulbert added, ‘and cancel my Pilates and my yoga and my embroidery and tell the clinic that baby Claude won’t be going to play group and prune the roses and wash the car, and … and…’
Back in Transylvania Waters Winchflat had been watching all this on a minute webcam he’d hidden in Parsnip’s feathers. He transmitted a message to the old bird.
‘Flinchwat say he dun magic, fixed all that stuff up,’ said Parsnip.
There was the sound of doors and drawers opening upstairs and things bumping about.
‘What’s that?’ said Mr Hulbert in a panic. ‘Phone the police, we’ve got burglars!’
‘Not burglings,’ said Parsnip. ‘Magic. Clothes packing into cases. All ready go holidays. Bye bye house.’
As he said it, four suitcases with everything the family needed bumped downstairs and stood in a tidy line by the front door.
‘Changing Charlie Hublet nappy do please,’ said Parsnip. ‘Stuff inside too powerful for magic and car be here soon.’
Mr and Mrs Hulbert were about to protest when they realised that the sort of people they had been before the Floods had come into their lives would have protested and that since their friends had gone they had been slowly slipping back into that old, lifeless life.
‘Err, OK everyone, let’s go outside and wait for the car,’ said Mr Hulbert, feeling that little streak of rebellion that Nerlin had given him begin to wake up again.
Ruby and Rosie, the two little dogs that Mordonna had rescued when they had been on holiday in Port Folio, but had to leave with the Hulberts when they had been forced to flee, ran round and round chasing their tails in excitement. Then they tried to chase Parsnip’s tail, which sent him squawking up into a tree.
‘Snipsnip go get spell, turn yapdogs into sausage,’ he called down.
Ffiona tied Ruby and Rosie to the suitcases to keep them quiet.
‘I better check the back door’s locked and I’ve turned off the gas,’ was what Mrs Hulbert nearly said, but she just slammed the door behind her and followed the family down the garden path, feeling 3.2 kilos lighter than she had when she’d got up that morning.
Two minutes later an old hippy minibus pulled up outside.
‘Excuse me,’ said Mr Hulbert, ‘could you park a b
it further down the road? Only we’re expecting a car.’
‘No,’ said Winchflat, taking off his chauffeur’s hat and grinning, which made all the birds fly away, ‘you’re expecting us!’
Betty jumped out of the van and threw her arms round Ffiona.
‘See, I told you we’d see each other again,’ she said.
‘I know,’ said Ffiona through her happy tears, ‘but I wasn’t sure.’
‘Hey, I’m a witch.’ Betty laughed. ‘It was bound to happen.’
They packed the cases into the van, and all climbed in.
‘Just a minute,’ said Mrs Hulbert.
She walked across the road. Ultra-boring trendy greenies had just moved in and were driving everyone crazy about recycling every last thing, including the little bits of sleep in the corners of your eyes, which apparently made excellent stuffing for pincushions to send to refugees who had lost their own pincushions in terrible disasters. She dumped Claude’s dirty nappy on the bonnet of their eco-electric car.
‘Recycle that, hippies,’ she said and they all drove off.
‘Seatbelts on, everyone,’ said Winchflat. ‘I’ve made a few adjustments.’
The old van didn’t so much lift into the air, soar over the town, cross several countries, climb over the mountain tops and come to rest in front of Castle Twilight, as de-materialise and re-materialise in front of Castle Twilight three-tenths of a second later, just as Mr Hulbert was about to say that he couldn’t find the end of his seatbelt.
The whole Flood family was lined up to greet them.
‘Have you had breakfast?’ said Mordonna as she walked into the Castle with her arm round Mrs Hulbert’s shoulder.
‘Nice house,’ said Ffiona as she followed Betty over the drawbridge into the castle courtyard.
‘Bit better than thirteen Acacia Avenue, isn’t it?’ Betty agreed.
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