Hardly had this happened when the King felt a shadow cross the moon. He looked up in fearful apprehension, and saw her – her broomstick renewed, the cat in its place, and the witch, quite unhurt – diving straight at them!
“She’s seen the moon on the water!” burbled Gollop wetly. “Quick! Hold onto my nose and jump into the pool under my chin!”
They grabbed the big stony nose and jumped, and were knee-deep in Cijam water by the time she swooshed down and landed on the river bank, so fast that the handle of her broom dug a long runnel in the grass.
The King didn’t know what to expect, other than the worst. The pool was only a few yards wide. The witch, even without magic, could have reached out her skinny arms and grabbed them both. But she didn’t.
Keeping well back from the edge of the pool, she went into contortions. She hurled herself about, she jumped, she twirled, she flung her twisted green-nailed fingers at them in furious gestures. She shouted and screamed, uttering spells in every magic language. The King had never seen anyone so angry – not even himself in a rage! She was beside herself. But it didn’t do her any good at all.
The King, who had been wincing and ducking every time he thought a spell was heading his way, noticed that the mumbo was standing beside him perfectly calmly.
“Why can’t she do anything to us?” the King muttered in the mumbo’s ear.
“Oh, it’s the water of course,” said the mumbo. “Witches can’t bear water at all.”
“Ah!” breathed the King. “That’s what I remember reading!”
“There was no water in that tea you drank, it was all pure spelling-fluid. She hasn’t a drop of water in her body, it’s all horrible smelly green gunge. And now look at her, going mad because she can’t send spells across even a few inches of it!”
“That’s because this water’s special,” burbled Gollop. “It’s her enemy. That’s why she stole my flandy-bakes, and why she keeps blocking my throat … You’re safe as long as you stand there.”
“But how long can we stand here? I’m getting so cold!” said Midas.
“Cold, are you!” shrieked Wuzzleflump. “That’s nothing to what you’ll be when I get my hands on you! I’ll shut you up in blocks of ice! I’ll hang you upside-down in snowdrifts, for ever, do you hear me? How dare you defy me? How dare you make a fool of me? I haven’t crashed my broomstick since I was a novice!”
The mumbo sniggered rudely. “Bet that was a good few years ago!”
“As for you,” she said with bitter fury, “You, that I nurtured from the moment you hatched, that I treated as my own, that I lavished good food on—”
“Good food! That’s a laugh!” sneered the Mumbo. “Your leftovers, more like – thanks for nothing, Wuzzy!” And he tried to splash her. She leapt back.
“You disloyal, deceitful little – human!” she screamed. (Midas understood this was a term of abuse, like a person calling someone a beast.) “You will regret this treachery! I will disdragon you! I will clip your wings! I will draw your teeth one by one as they emerge so you will never taste man’s flesh! And you will never breathe fire, for I shall put it out for ever! I will see you grovel at my feet for the dregs of my pot, you wretched little ingrate, I will make you my helpless slave!”
As she uttered these terrible threats, she was moving closer and closer, her body twisting and writhing, her snaggle-teeth bared, her green eyes fastened hypnotically on the mumbo. Midas saw to his horror that the mumbo’s paws were growing slack, loosing their hold on the rocky nose. Her threats were frightening him without magic until he lost his will.
“Mumbo! Don’t listen!” the King cried.
But the mumbo was slipping, slipping – another moment, and the tumbling water would sweep him down to his doom!
The King once again forgot his curse. Just as the mumbo was about to be carried over the edge, Midas’s hand shot out and grasped the mumbo’s paw.
Chapter Nine
“Gone For Ever!”
They stared at each other as the witch raved on, and the water rushed past, tugging at their legs.
“You saved me!” said the mumbo.
“I touched you,” said the King. “And you’re still you.”
“Of course,” rumbled Gollop. “Your hands got wet where the water first comes out of my mouth. The spell is broken. Your curse is removed.”
“Oh, thank you! Thank you!” cried the King ecstatically. He actually kissed Old Gollop’s nose, and then heaved the mumbo back from the brink and hugged him, nearly causing them both to be swept away. The witch was so astounded by these goings-on that she stopped in the midst of her rantings.
“What are you so happy about?” she snarled. “Oh! I know! You’ve lost the golden touch! Well, don’t rejoice too soon – I can soon put that back. Nandan isn’t the only one who knows that trick! Not by a tall hat, he isn’t!”
“You’ve got to get at us first!” taunted the mumbo.
“No,” thought Midas. “We have got to get at her.”
Shivering from the cold, he crouched down, allowing the magic waters to pour all over him from his head downwards till he was completely soaked. Then he straightened up and, disguising his quaking terror, waded boldly out of the pool on the witch’s side and faced her.
She couldn’t believe her eyes as she saw him coming. As he put his foot on the bank, streaming with Cijam water, she moved uncontrollably backward, away from him, her hands warding him off.
“You dare – you dare –!” she spluttered. But there was fear in her face.
“Get out of the pool on the other side, mumbo,” ordered the King without looking round. He heard the mumbo splashing behind him. Then, keeping his eyes fixed on the witch’s glowing green ones, he counted three, nerved himself with a deep breath, and seized her.
The King felt her bony shoulders shrink from his grip, then go squashy, then seem to dissolve away so that his fists clenched on emptiness. She snatched herself from his grasp. The King gasped. There were holes in her shoulders where his hands had been.
She backed away, her face savage with rage and dread. The King advanced, she backed faster, until – suddenly a yowl filled the night.
She had trodden on Ackerbackus!
The black cat, every hair on end, burst from under her feet and clawed the backs of her legs, sending her stumbling forward right into the King’s wet arms.
The King wasted no time. In a second she would have melted free of him again. Holding the detestable bundle of rags and wickedness, he spun round to face the river, and, while she was still off balance, hurled her into it.
The shriek she uttered as she hit the water was so piercing it echoed to the farthest corners of the kingdom, making people miles away start from their sleep.
By some last exertion of power, she bounced off the surface and shot straight into the air, and the King thought his plan had failed. But for Wuzzleflump it was too late. The water had touched her.
As her flying figure reached its peak, it changed. The rags she wore, and her pointed hat, made a ragged star-shape spread against the moon, blotting it out for a moment. There was a sudden deadness in the air, like an explosion in reverse, a complete absence of sound. And then a tatty bundle of black rags and an old dented hat fluttered into the pool, turned slowly once, and were washed over the rim.
Gone.
“She is no more!” shouted the mumbo from the other side. “She should have known better! Oh King, you’re so brave, you’re so clever! Give me some good, long words to tell you how brave and clever you are or I shall burst!”
“Extremelyfortunate,” said the King. “Providentiallylucky.”
“Yum, yum, lovely!” slurped the mumbo. “Only I know I shall forget them in a minute! You’re the extremelyfortunatest and providentiallyluckiest king in the world!”
“Where’s that cat?” asked Midas, who was still feeling very shaky and completely unbrave and unclever. “Acky-backy or whatever your name is, come out!”
A
pathetic, straggly little form crawled out from under a rock, crept along the ground and rubbed itself humbly against Midas’s wet trouser-leg. When it didn’t blow up or melt away, Midas realised at once that it wasn’t very wicked and had no magic powers of its own. He bent down to stroke it. It felt pitifully thin.
“I don’t think she fed this one much either,” Midas said. “You were a great help, you know, Acky-backy. I think you’d better come home with us. Heavens! How good it is to stroke a cat’s soft fur and have it stay that way!”
Then he and the mumbo turned to thank Old Gollop. There just didn’t seem to be any words that would do the job adequately.
The mumbo turned to the King.
“Would I be a little bit strexstremilynorfanate, too, if I said, let’s give him the other flandy-bake? I don’t mind – much – eating porridge for the rest of my life, now you’re all right again.”
So they set off for home, the three of them.
The King was so relieved to be able to touch things without turning them into gold that he almost danced ahead, doing it just for fun. He was far more happy and excited by what didn’t happen than he had been (except just at first) by what did, when he had used his magic gift.
The mumbo shuffled along behind talking in cat-language to Acky-backy (they had become friends and allies while half-starving together with the witch), and trying not to think about flandy-bakes. It had felt great when he gave up his last flandy-bake to Gollop, and the King had given him a new long word all of his own, saying how totally, wondrously self-sacrificing he was being; but now he was thinking that being that, as well as extremelyfortunate, had its drawbacks.
No flandy-bake to plant, no flandy-bake tree coming along to feed him in his new life … No flandy-bakes, ever again. He didn’t regret what he’d done, but he did wonder if he’d do it again now, if he had the chance over again, the last delicious ripe striped sweet-sour-solid crunchy munchy mouth-melting satisfying flandy-bake here in his paw …
“Mumbo! Look there!”
They were passing the seventh waterfall on their climb down to the valley. The mumbo looked, looked again, goggled – and pounced!
There, lying abandoned beside the seventh waterfall, with its torn-up roots in the air, and many of its fruits scattered on the ground, was – the flandy-bake tree!
“Mine, all mine!” he cried, stuffing two into his mouth at once and sending big stripy flakes flying in all directions. “And here’s the tree, too! She must have just dumped it there! We can take it back and plant it in your garden and not have to wait while a new one grows! Here, you try one!”
He handed a lump the size of a grapefruit to Midas.
Only now, looking at this wonderful object and smelling its mysterious, mouth-watering smell, did the King realise that he hadn’t eaten properly for nearly two days. He held it in both hands and took a huge bite. His teeth sank into it, a large piece filled his mouth and he chewed and chewed …
After a long time, he swallowed it down. A look of bliss was on his face.
“That,” he said, “is the most delicious thing I have ever tasted in my life. It’s got all the good tastes in the world wrapped up in one thing.” He handed the rest of it back. “But that’s all I want. One bite has satisfied me … Amazing!”
“It is amazing,” said the mumbo, stuffing down the King’s flandy-bake. “One never satisfies me! Oh, this is just so … Give me a word, quick!”
“Palatable, delectable, toothsome, luscious—”
“Too short! Not long enough!” he cried, jumping up and down.
“Superscrumptious, how’s that?”
“Perfect! Scrooperumpshus! Love it! You are such a clever King!”
“I’m a silly old dimwit, is what I am,” said Midas ruefully. “What’s that cat doing?”
“Eating the bits.”
“Oh! Do cats like it, too?”
“Everything likes flandy-bakes,” said the mumbo.
“Princesses, too?”
“I don’t know, but I bet. Why, do you know one?”
“You could say so.”
“Is there a story?”
So the King, as they walked along, carrying the tree between them, told the mumbo (who told the cat in translation) the whole story. Acky-backy couldn’t understand a word of it. The mumbo found it rather difficult, as well…
“You mean, you wanted everything to be made of gold? Everything to be the same?” he kept asking incredulously.
“I know now how foolish it was. Nothing in the world suits everybody.”
“Of course not, think how boring!”
“Though some people think everyone should believe the same,” said Midas thoughtfully.
“What I believe is only suitable for mumbos,” said the mumbo firmly.
“What do you believe?”
“That mumbos should have plenty of flandy-bakes to eat and grow up to be dragons and fly and breathe fire and—”
“—Eat people?”
The mumbo didn’t answer at first. “Wouldn’t eat you, anyhow,” he muttered at last.
“What about my little daughter?”
“Depends. If she’s very tasty, I might fancy her. It’s my nature, after all,” he added.
The King said nothing. He was frowning.
It was quite light by this time, and when they came to the field at the foot of the hills, there stood the cow, with the first sunlight shining on her golden horns.
The King took out the witch’s purple antidote, dipped one finger into it, and, holding his breath, smeared it on her forehead.
The magic charm worked instantly. The King thought he had never seen anything so beautiful as the glossy black-and-white patches on her hide, and her gentle brown eyes as she turned to look at him.
“Is this her?” asked the mumbo.
“Pardon?”
“Is this the princess? Because if so, you needn’t worry, I shan’t fancy eating her.”
“This, my dear Mumbo, is A Cow,” explained the King rather testily. “My daughter is not A Cow, she is a beautiful little girl. On two legs. Like me.”
“Oh,” said the mumbo.
They went on their way, the King shaking his head. He was extremely fond of the mumbo by now, after all they’d been through together, but it couldn’t be denied that he was feeling rather worried.
“How – er, how large do you think you might get, when you’re – er – fully grown-up and a dragon?” he asked, trying to sound careless.
“Oh, I shall be absolutely gi-normous,” said the mumbo cheerfully.
“Gi-normous? What kind of word is that?”
“It’s my word, that I made up. It means, very large.”
“So I guessed,” said the King gloomily.
But he couldn’t stay gloomy for long. Soon the palace came in sight and the King, unable to contain himself, began to run.
His heart was beating very hard. Delia was there ahead of him. He felt he was running towards her – her coldness, her miserableness, all the things about being gold that the mumbo had said. He was running swiftly to relieve all that, to bring her back to herself. Oh, when he could gather her in his arms, take her on his knee, tell her all his adventures – tell her he was sorry! Only then would the nightmare really be over!
There were no gardeners in the garden, no cooks in the kitchen, no housemaids in the scullery and no footmen in the long halls. Momentarily puzzled, the King paused, then remembered. Of course! All the servants except the faithful Biffpot had abandoned him.
The King wasted no more time, but panted up the marble stairway as fast as he could. The purple charm still clinging to his fingers turned the banisters back into carved oak, but he didn’t notice. He ran along the passage, with the mumbo and the cat behind him, in through the golden door of his room. There he stopped dead.
The golden pillow was there, and the golden bell, and there stood the golden screen. But there was no sign of Biffpot, and when the King, with foreboding clutching his h
eart, pulled the screen aside – Delia wasn’t there.
The King’s hope had been so high and sure, his happiness so near, that this final blow brought him to his knees. He buried his face in his hands.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?” cried the mumbo, while the cat rubbed its head against Midas’s knee.
The King did not look up. He was sunk to his lowest.
“She’s gone,” he groaned. “The witch must have come for her while I slept. I have lost her. She is gone for ever.”
Chapter Ten
Under the Palace
“I don’t believe this,” said the mumbo. “You can’t give up, not now! Not an astreemlynortunate man like you.”
The King shook his head brokenly, still on his knees on the floor.
“I am not extremely fortunate at all, not in any sense,” he muttered. “I am the most wretched, the most cursed of men! Gone from me, stolen, my dearest treasure on this earth – and the only one who could tell me where she is – is no more!”
He let out a terrible groan of despair.
“Oh, do get up,” said the mumbo impatiently. “I don’t believe Wuzzy had time to get here and do anything to your princess, and if she did, she can’t have taken her far – a great golden statue, on her broomstick, come on!”
The King stopped groaning and raised his head a little.
“But she could have cast a spell on her – or taken the spell off – or killed her – oh no – my darling –” And the poor man broke down again in tears.
The mumbo contemplated him for a moment.
“I don’t think you’re as streemly-whatsit as I thought,” he said disgustedly. “Why don’t you think a little, if you’re so provi-whoosit? Who do you think went with her on her broomstick, who can tell us everything, and that’s right here rubbing all his silly fur off against your big fat head?”
The King slowly reached one of his hands out from under his face, which was practically on the carpet, and felt around with his fingers till he touched something soft, warm and furry. As soon as he did, he jerked upright.
The Adventures of King Midas (Red Storybook) Page 7