Goodly and Grave in a Bad Case of Kidnap

by Justine Windsor

  Bathsheba’s muscles bunched and rippled beneath her shiny black fur as she moved into a crouch, ready to leap once more. Her roar echoed around the frozen wasteland.

  The hoarse voice shouted out again. “Yeah, girl, let’s get ’em!” And suddenly Lucy realised who the owner of the mysterious voice was. The voice that she had once thought belonged to a thuggish henchman actually belonged to someone – or something – else altogether. Hunkered down on Bathsheba’s back, one and a half ears flattened, orange eye flashing, was Smell.

  The two felines flashed past Lucy in a blur of fur and teeth before smashing into Amethyst, who staggered and fell backwards into the snow. With barely a pause, they then sprang at Havoc, who still had Bertie in a headlock. But Bertie twisted free a second before the animals crashed into the magician. Like Amethyst, Havoc stumbled from the force of being hit by a large, wild and angry panther. But he somehow managed to stay upright, although his tricorn hat fell off.

  Nevermore tried to flap to safety, but Bathsheba snatched the raven in her jaws. Holding her by one wing, she swung her round several times before suddenly letting her go. Nevermore barrelled through the air, hit a snowdrift at speed and vanished beneath it.

  “Lucy! Get yourself and the others through the opening! We’ll ’old off this lot till Grave gets ’ere!” yelled Smell as he launched himself from Bathsheba’s back. He landed on Havoc’s head, crouching there like a bizarre black furry replacement for the hat lying in the snow. The Smell version of a hat enjoyed the added advantage of four sets of claws, which were dug firmly into Havoc’s head.

  “Aggh!” Havoc yelled, sinking to his knees.

  Meanwhile, Bathsheba was keeping herself occupied with Amethyst, pinning her down, snarling and dripping drool into her face. Amethyst wriggled and squirmed.

  Lucy rushed over to Violet and helped her to her feet. One of the little girl’s skis had fallen off. Lucy quickly took the other one off too and then her own. Skis would make it hard to climb through the hole.

  “Violet, listen. You have to go through that opening,” Lucy said urgently.

  “But I’m scared. What’s on the other side?”

  “Somewhere safe, I promise. You know you can trust me, don’t you?”

  Violet nodded and allowed Lucy to help her through the hole and into the Room of Curiosities.

  “Bertie, come on!” Lucy yelled, snatching up the Wish Book.

  But Bertie was standing with his back to the opening, staring at Amethyst fighting with Bathsheba, who was at her most fearsome.

  “It’s going to kill her!” He turned to Lucy. Tears were streaming down his face.

  “Who cares?” Lucy yelled. “Remember what she did to Kathleen, Bertie. What she would have done to Violet and me. And what she’s done to you. She stole you from your father and kept you prisoner all this time! She doesn’t deserve you caring about her!”

  “I can’t let it kill her!” Bertie said, and ran to where the others were fighting. And to Lucy’s utter despair, he threw himself on top of Bathsheba and began trying to pull her off Amethyst.

  By now, Nevermore had dug herself out of the snowdrift. She flew lopsidedly towards Smell. She grabbed his tail in her beak, and yanked at it. Smell yowled and released his grip on Havoc, who swiped the cat off his head and into the snow. Havoc straightened up and staggered towards Lucy. She clutched the Wish Book tighter to her chest.

  “I won’t let you have it!” she yelled.

  Havoc didn’t reply. Instead, he ripped open the bag of bottles that Lucy had left lying on the ground, grabbed one of the bottles, yanked the stopper out and poured the contents straight down his throat before dropping the empty bottle. He stared at Lucy and laughed. Then he closed his eyes and threw his hands in the air. Magic crackled at the end of his fingertips.

  Several very bad things happened all at once.

  The hole Lucy had opened made a sucking noise and vanished.

  An invisible force seemed to drag Bathsheba away from Amethyst, tumbling Bertie off the panther. Then Bathsheba whipped through the air and thumped down beside Smell, who seemed unable to move. At the same time, Lucy was propelled through the snow, landing face down at Havoc’s boots. He bent over and pulled the Wish Book from her grasp.

  Seconds later, four sets of iron bars shot upwards out of the ground. The bars formed a cage round the two animals. Bathsheba roared with rage and leaped at the trap, gnawing ferociously on the metal bars. When she realised she couldn’t bite her way through, Bathsheba began scrabbling at the snow around the bottom of the cage. But it was no good. The ground beneath the fluffy layer of snow was so solidly frozen that digging was impossible.

  “It works! It really works!” Havoc yelled, sweeping his arm through the air.

  “Excellent work, Havoc,” said Amethyst. Her face was very white, and livid red scratches covered her arms. Her fur cloak hung in tatters, shredded by Bathsheba’s claws. But her eyes still glittered dangerously.

  “What are you going to do to Lucy, Mother? You won’t hurt her, will you?” Bertie asked.

  “Bertie, my love, she’s not worth your concern,” Amethyst said, putting her arm round his shoulders. “I made a mistake. This girl is not what she seems. I thought she was a poor vulnerable child whom Grave wanted to exploit. But no. She’s working for him. It was all a ruse to find where I was hiding. To get to the children I was sheltering. You saw how she gave poor dear Violet to him without a second thought. She gave him Kathleen too.”

  “No, Bertie! She’s lying! Remember what I told you about Kathleen? About your parents. Your real parents!” Lucy yelled. “And the bottles! How can you believe her now?”

  Bertie turned to Lucy, his face twisted in disgust. “I thought you were my friend. But everything you’ve told me is a lie. You’re a filthy double-crosser. I don’t care what happens to you now.” With that, he picked up his ski poles and headed for the Tower.

  “This is the end for you, Lucy,” Amethyst said. She grabbed Lucy’s arm and began dragging her back towards the Tower as well. Havoc followed, lugging the Wish Book and the bag of bottles.

  “The end, the end, the end,” cawed Nevermore as she swooped erratically over their heads.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  SLAMMING THE DOOR

  Lucy wriggled, trying hopelessly to loosen the ropes that bound her forearms to the arms of the dungeon chair.

  “So we’re doing it now?” Havoc said.

  “Yes. Now,” Amethyst replied. She bent over and pulled the ropes tighter, so that they bit into Lucy’s flesh.

  “And then what?”

  “What we always planned. Attack Grave and MAAM. Capture them. Take their powers for our own.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “We use a similar technique to the tears. I have it all worked out. And then I can do what I want with no interference.”

  “We, surely?”

  “Yes, Havoc, we, of course. We can cast the magic we want. No one will be able to stop us. We’ll show Grave and the rest of MAAM exactly what we’re capable of!” Amethyst was ranting now and sounded completely unhinged.

  Havoc looked slightly taken aback by Amethyst’s wild demeanour. “Shouldn’t we wait until we have more bottles before we attack?”

  “This girl will give us what we need, all by herself. And I don’t want to wait. Grave will find us sooner or later and try to attack. We need to strike first. And there’s my boy. I have to protect him.”

  Lucy finally found her voice and shouted, “He’s not your boy! He’s Lord Grave’s son!”

  Amethyst slapped her stingingly hard across the face. “He’s mine, mine, mine. Havoc, stop standing there looking gormless. I need a bottle. Go and fetch one from my study.”

  As Havoc and Nevermore left the dungeon, despair flooded Lucy. Amethyst was right. This was the end. She was going to be made to cry herself to death. Smell and Bathsheba were going to die of cold in the cage Havoc had conjured up. Bertie and Lord Grave would never be
reunited. Amethyst would drink enough tears to be able to regain her powers and take down Lord Grave and the rest of MAAM. And who knew what she would do after that?

  And Lucy was to blame for it all.

  “Oh, Mum, oh, Dad” she cried aloud. She was never going to see them again, or her pet cat Phoebe, or her bedroom at Leafy Ridge.

  “Oh, Mum, oh, Dad” Amethyst mimicked. “Why are you pining over your pathetic parents?”

  “They’re not pathetic!”

  Amethyst shook her head, as though she was feeling really sorry for Lucy. “Poor deluded child,” she said in a more kindly voice. She stared at Lucy, her eyes beginning to glow in the same fiery way they had the night Lucy stole the playing card. Lucy’s head began to buzz and ache. Strange thoughts crept and crawled into her brain.

  Amethyst’s right.

  My parents are pathetic.

  They would have left me to starve rather than stop gambling.

  And they were cruel. I remember that Christmas when I was little. I wanted a wooden train and they somehow managed to get me one. Mum saved up for it. But I didn’t even have it for a whole day. They used it as a gambling stake when they ran out of money.

  “No! That never happened!” Lucy yelled. “I know what you’re trying to do! It won’t work with me!”

  But more images swirled around in Lucy’s mind.

  Her parents eating a delicious chicken pie and giving her only the scorched pastry to eat. Laughing at her.

  “Not true, not true,” Lucy moaned. But the images kept coming and grew worse, as though she was having a waking nightmare.

  A nightmare.

  She’d learned how to end nightmares, hadn’t she?

  Lucy summoned up all the mental strength she had left. She imagined a door. A door like the one at Grave Hall. Immensely strong with a gleaming lion’s-head knocker. She put the door between herself and the terrible false memories flooding her brain. Then imagined slamming it with all her might, slamming it hard and forever shut.

  Amethyst flinched, as though she’d heard the slam.

  The dreadful pictures in Lucy’s mind vanished.

  “How did you do that?” Amethyst said, the fire in her eyes dwindling to sparks.

  Lucy said nothing, but concentrated on keeping the door in her mind tightly closed. Little prickles pressed against it like thorns as Amethyst attempted once more to force false thoughts on her. The door shook and the lion’s-head knocker rattled. But Lucy’s concentration never wavered.

  The door held firm.

  Amethyst was panting now, as though she’d been running, and the fire in her eyes had completely died. “You can’t keep me out forever. I’ll make you see the truth about your parents. Why do you children always love them so much? Why do you all cry out for them? Mummy, Daddy, Mummy, Daddy. Makes me sick. But at least it gives me the best, most powerful tears.”

  Lucy wriggled furiously in her seat, trying to work herself free. “We love our parents because they love us! They try to do their best for us, even when they get it wrong. Not like you! You’re a terrible parent!”

  Amethyst’s eyes began to glow. “How dare you!”

  “It’s true. You’re the worst parent I’ve ever met!”

  “Well, I never dragged my Bertie in and out of stinking gambling dens!” Amethyst’s nasty smile made her beautiful face ugly.

  “My parents made mistakes, but they were still good to me. My dad used to sing me nonsense rhymes to cheer me up when I was ill. He’d scorch me my favourite pie. And my mum would save pennies every week to buy me a birthday present she couldn’t really afford. Remind me again, what did you ever do for Bertie?”

  Amethyst’s smile faded.

  “Let’s see. You stole him from his father. Lied to him. Kept him cooped up in this tower in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and no one to be friends with. Then when he did find some friends in the children you kidnapped, they soon vanished from his life again. That’s a terrible thing to do! And Bertie will find out the truth sooner or later. Then he’ll hate you forever!”

  Amethyst’s face twisted with rage, even as tears sprang from her eyes. She turned and began banging her fists against the walls. Lucy felt the ground shudder.

  Amethyst spun back to face Lucy. “I’ll make you suffer. You’ll be begging to be bottled by the end. Where is that useless lump of a man? Why hasn’t he brought the bottle?” Amethyst stalked out of the dungeon, shrieking Havoc’s name.

  The tower shook harder.

  Lucy desperately tried to pull her arms free from their bindings. Amethyst would be back any moment with a bottle and Lucy had no intention of crying all her love, energy and curiosity into it in order to make Amethyst more powerful. She twisted her wrists this way and that. The rough ropes scraped and burned her skin, but didn’t loosen.

  “I can’t do it!” she half-sobbed in frustration.

  “You need to relax, if you can. It’ll help. There’s an art to untying knots, you know, I read a book on it once,” a voice replied.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  A HOLE LOT OF TROUBLE

  And with that, Bertie was there, working at the ropes, freeing Lucy in seconds.

  She leaped out of the chair and then snatched up her fur cloak and the Wish Book from the dungeon floor while Bertie grabbed the bag of bottles. Together they raced out of the dungeon and up the stairs.

  “You were pretending to believe Amethyst? You didn’t really?” Lucy said breathlessly as they ran.

  “I think I almost did at first. It was easier than believing those terrible things about my … about her. But then I fell asleep. I had another dream about my mother. My real mother. And I knew it all had to be true.”

  As Lucy and Bertie reached the ground floor and headed for the entrance hall, the Tower began creaking and groaning. Candles fell from their holders and guttered out. Chips of ceiling began dropping like stony rain, and snow began to drift down through the holes.

  “What’s happening?” Bertie shouted.

  “I don’t know!”

  They dashed towards the door. They were almost there when the floor began to rumble and shake. The ground beneath their feet split violently apart.

  “We’ll have to go round it!” Bertie shouted above the crash of falling stone and creaking timbers.

  Lucy saw what he meant. There was a narrow ledge of stone left between the walls and the newly formed hole in the floor. The way out lay on the other side. By flattening themselves against the wall and moving on tiptoe, they managed to edge along inch by nerve-wracking inch towards safety, Lucy in front, Bertie behind.

  They were almost at the Tower door, when Lucy’s foot slipped and suddenly her right leg was dangling over the chasm. She began to tip sideways. As she desperately windmilled her arms, trying to keep her balance, the Wish Book fell from her grasp. It tumbled into the depths below, bouncing and clanging against the sides as it went, pages flying from it. Just as Lucy began to fear she was about to follow, Bertie grabbed her and wrenched her out of danger. Then the two of them hurled themselves through the open Tower door and outside. Lucy fell sprawling on to the icy path. As Bertie helped her to her feet, the Tower behind them began to collapse completely, leaning closer and closer to the ground as it shed bigger and bigger chunks of rock.

  “We need to get away from here!” Bertie yelled.

  The two of them began to stagger through the snow, which was knee-deep in places.

  “If only I’d thought to bring the skis!” Bertie said.

  The falling snow was whipping itself into a blizzard now and Lucy could barely make out Bertie’s face, even though he was right beside her. But she could hear the panic in his voice when he yelled: “Wolf!”

  A very large and strangely lumpy animal careered towards them through the whirling snowflakes. Because the deep snow made running out of the question, Lucy was about to brace herself for a terrible fight. But then she realised the animal wasn’t a wolf after all.

  It was
Smell and Bathsheba!

  Bathsheba bounded up and began butting her head gently against Lucy’s stomach. Then she turned her attention to Bertie and began sniffing curiously at him. Bertie took a few steps backwards, his eyes wide with fear.

  “It’s all right. Bathsheba’s on our side.” Lucy risked giving the panther a friendly scratch behind the ears. “So is Smell. I thought they’d both be frozen to death by now!”

  “Me too,” said Smell, who was balanced on Bathsheba’s back.

  Bertie’s expression shifted from alarm to astonishment. Lucy couldn’t blame him. Although she’d got used to the raven and later Nevermore speaking, a talking cat was still something of a shock.

  “Why have you never spoken to me before now?” Lucy asked Smell.

  “Grave’s instructions. Told me to play dumb while keeping my eye on you.”

  “You were spying, weren’t you? I knew it!”

  “Oi,” said Smell. “Not spying. Protecting.”

  But Lucy merely folded her arms across her chest. “Didn’t do a very good job, did you?”

  “Don’t think now’s the time, Lucy,” Smell said hastily.

  “No. I suppose not. How did you get out of the cage?”

  “Dunno. It was there one minute, gone the next.”

  Lucy remembered what Amethyst had said about some bottles of magic being stronger than others. Havoc must have chosen one of the weaker bottles so the magic had run out quickly. At long last, something was going their way.

  “Oh, Smell, the Wish Book’s destroyed! How are we going to get out of here without it? You said before that Lord Grave was on his way?”

  Smell twitched his one and a half ears back and forth to rid them of snow. “Er … that was just to worry them two criminals, Shade and Reek. Truth is, no one actually knows exactly where we are. Grave will know by now that me and Bathy have disappeared – we were guarding the Room of Curiosities while he was in a meeting. I s’pose there’s a chance the magic that book created when you opened the hole might ’ave left a trace. Grave could track that trace to find out where we are. But that sort of caper takes time.”