Castle Hangnail

by Ursula Vernon

  And all the bats had flown away.

  Molly had almost—almost—exhaled.

  Then she turned around—and saw, instead of her shadow, moonlight on the ground.

  I’m invisible. I’m holding my breath and I must have just faded out when the bats flew away—

  Her boots would have clattered on most paths, but the herb garden was overgrown with mints and mosses. She hurried out of the center of the garden, snuck around the edge of the courtyard, and squeezed past Edward. She was just starting to feel light-headed from holding her breath when Majordomo spoke and she saw her opening.

  We did it. The Eldest put on an amazing show, and I helped out at the end.

  She snuggled down under the covers. Bugbane made tiny squeaking noises on the bedpost.

  If the ancient bat wanted Molly to take care of Bugbane—a bat who preferred daylight! How silly and wonderful!—then it was certainly the least Molly could do. She made a note to ask Cook to save some caterpillars for him, if there were any in the garden.

  A bat flitted by her window, but no one was awake to see it.

  Chapter 10

  Today,” Molly announced at breakfast, “we really must see about some Smiting and Blighting.” She put both hands flat on the table. “Does anybody know anyone who needs to be Smited?” (She wanted to put off the Blighting as long as possible. It’s mostly good for killing vegetation, and Molly never felt quite right about Blighting an innocent wheat field or patch of daisies.)

  “Smited?” asked Majordomo.

  “Smitten?”

  “I thought it was Smote,” said Angus. His voice was so deep, it sounded like a church organ.

  “Someone who deserves Smiting,” said Molly firmly. “Whatever the past tense of that may be.”

  The kitchen fell silent. Cook flipped a pancake onto a plate and slid it toward Majordomo.

  All of them stared at the table. Pins played with one of the needles on his head. Bugbane chewed on a caterpillar that Angus had located in the garden.

  The problem was that, while they all approved of Smiting & Blighting in the abstract, when it came down to Smiting real people in the village . . . well, that was another matter. They were neighbors. Nobody wanted to see Miss Handlebram Smited or Smitten or Smote, and she would have been terribly upset to find her geraniums Blighted. And certainly it would be a bad idea to Smite the mercantile . . . or any of the ladies who brought Pins their washing . . . or the post office . . .

  “Nobody?” asked Molly.

  “What sort of person?” Majordomo asked.

  “Somebody bad,” said Molly. “Rude or mean or unkind to animals. I don’t want to Smite someone who doesn’t really deserve it.”

  Angus tapped a finger on the table. “There’s Old Man Harrow. He beats his donkey.”

  “That’s terrible!” said Molly. “That poor donkey!”

  The Minotaur nodded. “Aye. I would stop him, but . . .” He spread his hands.

  Molly looked blank.

  “Is being monsters,” said Cook, dropping a second plate of pancakes in the middle of the table. “Is always being very careful, if monsters. Is being good neighbors, very quiet, not making trouble. Otherwise is being blamed always, all things.”

  Molly froze with a pancake suspended on her fork. “But you won’t get blamed, will you? If I Smite someone?”

  “It’s different for the Master of the castle,” said Majordomo. “People expect it. They might not want it to happen to them, but they like knowing there’s a Master in the castle, in case something needs Smiting. Makes them feel good knowing the old traditions are being kept up.”

  “It’s safer for monsters to be minions,” Angus added. “Then everyone says ‘That Wicked Witch, somebody should stop her!’ instead of putting monster-hunting parties together.”

  “That doesn’t seem very fair,” said Molly in a small voice.

  Cook shrugged. “Is not being fair,” she said. She dropped another pancake on Molly’s plate. “But is way things are being. Not like old days.” She grinned sourly. “Not being like days of mazes and swords! But monsters is adapting.”

  “Well,” said Molly after a minute, “it sounds like Old Man Harrow needs Smiting. I’ll teach him not to beat a poor defenseless donkey! Angus, can you take me there after lunch?”

  “Certainly,” rumbled Angus, and it was agreed.

  • • •

  Molly had a plan. Mostly.

  One of the spells in the Little Gray Book was for turning a cow into a dragon for one minute. It was an oddly specific spell, but it made sense when she thought about it, because a minute is enough time to get the point across (the point being “Look at my dragon!”) without being enough time for the cow-dragon to go stomping across the countryside setting things on fire.

  If she could turn Old Man Harrow’s donkey into a dragon for one minute, that should throw a good scare into him. Then Molly could pretend to be passing by and turn the donkey back, but warn Harrow that it could happen again at any time, unless he treated the donkey better.

  She examined this plan from all angles and could only find one flaw with it—namely that donkeys are not cows and cows are not donkeys. They both have hooves and large ears and live on farms, but there the similarities end.

  “That, however, we can fix,” said Molly, under her breath.

  The invocation in the book required a hair of the cow’s tail, a sprig of moonwort dipped in spring water, and six magic words. The hair would have to be a donkey hair, and she would get that at the farm itself. She had a bunch of moonwort sprigs that she’d brought from home, since moonwort is very common in potions, and Cook would give her some spring water from the kitchen.

  That left only the magic words themselves . . .

  “Accreus Illusus Bovine Accomplicia Margle Fandango,” she read aloud.

  “Eh?” said Bugbane, who was hanging behind her left ear.

  “Magic,” said Molly. “I’m tweaking the spell a little.”

  “Oh.” The bat stretched. “Can I help?”

  “Not with this,” said Molly, pulling a dictionary down from the library shelf, “but I’ll need your help when I actually cast it.”

  She opened the dictionary. The Q section had been carefully cut out with a razor blade. Molly sighed and flipped past it.

  She had always been very good at vocabulary, so she already knew that bovine means “related to cows.” She double-checked, however, because magic is tricky stuff.

  There it was . . . bovine. She ran her finger down the page to a small drawing of a Holstein cow.

  “Of, related to, or affecting cattle,” she read aloud. “Excellent.”

  She flipped through the pages to the E section.

  “Equine,” she read. “Of, related to, or affecting horses or members of the horse family.”

  If she substituted a donkey hair for a cow hair, and then used the word equine instead of bovine . . .

  “It’s bound to work,” said Molly, slamming the dictionary closed, and went to go find some spring water.

  Chapter 11

  The Smiting of Old Man Harrow went well . . . at first.

  Angus led Molly through a low, scruffy wood off to one side of Castle Hangnail. He whistled as he walked and Molly hurried along beside him. The Minotaur took one step for every three of hers. Bugbane flitted overhead, nabbing at startled mosquitoes.

  Molly felt like singing or skipping or laughing out loud. She was on a grand adventure with a bat and Minotaur. And to think only a week ago, she’d been at home, with her twin sister keeping her from Smiting so much as a fly!

  The more sentimental sort of grown-up would have been surprised how little Molly missed her twin. Other than being identical, though, they had very little in common.

  Comes of being the good twin and the Wicked twin, I guess.

&nbs
p; The truth of the matter was that Sarah used to run and tattle whenever Molly did anything even remotely Wicked—even just Blighting the Brussels sprouts in the garden, which, after all, Sarah would have had to eat too. Now, without Sarah around, Molly felt . . . free.

  “Here,” rumbled Angus, turning off the path. He held back the branches so that she could scramble through. “This is the fence around Old Man Harrow’s property.”

  Molly ducked out of the wood and blinked in the sunlight. The wooden fence (and the wood) stood at the bottom of a hillside, although “stood” was probably being overly generous with regards to the fence. Posts leaned at crazy angles and a few of the boards had gone missing completely. It was obvious that Old Man Harrow was not concerned about upkeep.

  There was a dilapidated barn at the top of the hill.

  “Bugbane!” said Molly.

  The bat zipped in and landed on her head. He weighed almost nothing. “Yes, boss?”

  Molly grinned. Boss. She liked that. “I have a very important job for you. I need you to go up and tell me what’s going on in the barn. And I need a spot I can look inside without being seen.”

  Bugbane hummed happily. “Will do!” He launched himself from the top of her head and flittered up the hill.

  A few moments later he flew back. This time he landed on one of Angus’s horns and hung upside down so that he could gesture with his wings. “The donkey’s in the barn. So’s Old Man Harrow, and he looks angry. If you go up to the back wall, there’s a lot of broken boards. I bet you could look right through one.”

  “Thanks, Bugbane!’

  The bat grinned. He had tiny pointed teeth. “Also . . . uh . . . I thought you might want this . . .”

  He stretched out a claw. Wrapped around it was a single coarse black hair.

  “It’s from the donkey’s tail,” he said. “You said you needed one for the spell.”

  “You’re the best,” said Molly. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on his little wrinkled nose. Bugbane blushed and put his wings over his face. (You can tell a bat is blushing when his ears turn pink.)

  “All right,” said Molly. She took the donkey hair and tied three knots in it, then wrapped it around the sprig of moonwort. She had a bottle full of spring water from Cook’s stash and dipped the sprig into that. All that remained were the magic words.

  “I’ll wait here,” said Angus. “I, uh, don’t hide all that well. But if you need me, yell, and I’ll come get you.”

  Molly nodded. “I doubt it’ll be a problem. I can turn invisible, after all.”

  Still, she was glad to know that the muscular Minotaur was waiting for her. Old Man Harrow was a grown-up, after all, and one who beat innocent donkeys, so it was good to have backup.

  She hiked up the hillside. It was a steep slope, and she was glad that she didn’t have to turn invisible, since holding her breath would have been difficult. When she reached the back of the barn, she peered through a crack in the slats.

  The barn was filthy. Nobody had cleaned it for a long, long time. It smelled of old dung and moldy hay.

  There was a wooden cart in the middle of the barn, piled high with firewood. It was stacked halfway to the ceiling.

  An old man with knotted forearms was pulling a donkey toward the cart by the halter.

  He can’t really expect that little donkey to haul all that wood, can he? There’s more wood there than donkey!

  Apparently he did expect it. The donkey, on the other hand, took one look at the cart, set its hooves, and hauled backward.

  This ridiculous tug-of-war continued for nearly a minute—Harrow was a big man, if elderly, and the donkey was very small—then Harrow balled up a fist, yelled something not at all nice—and punched the donkey between the eyes.

  The donkey let out a tragic bray. Harrow lifted his fist again.

  Molly had seen enough. She yanked the Little Gray Book out of her sleeve and read, quickly and clearly:

  “Accreus Illusus Equine Accomplicia Margle Fandango!”

  The sprig of moonwort in her hand leaped up in a tongue of flame and vanished before the heat even touched her skin.

  “Eh?” said Old Man Harrow, turning his head. “Is someone there?”

  He dropped the donkey’s halter and started toward the back of the barn.

  Molly sucked in a breath and prepared to vanish.

  The donkey brayed again. It sounded . . . different.

  Hotter, somehow. Scalier.

  Old Man Harrow froze.

  The next bray wasn’t a bray at all.

  Harrow was one of those people who is born mean and continues to lose ground. He took up farming because people hated him. Animals didn’t like him very much either, but they weren’t capable of telling him to go away. His wife had told him to go away, many years ago, and when he refused, she had gone away instead.

  Harrow had gotten older and meaner and even though he had an adult daughter who kept urging him to move to the city and stay with her (she was as kind as Harrow was mean), he had planned to stay on the farm until he died.

  The noise the donkey was making made him think that perhaps that might not take very long.

  He turned around.

  A dragon filled the space where the donkey had been. It was a small gray dragon with enormous ears, but it was definitely a dragon.

  It shook the remains of the halter off its long reptilian snout and grinned at Old Man Harrow.

  Its teeth were as long and thick as pencils. They gleamed in the dim light of the barn.

  The former donkey charged.

  Harrow dove behind the cart of firewood. The dragon smacked at the cart with its claws, but it was now too big to squeeze past the cart. It roared in frustration.

  Molly wanted to cheer. The spell had worked better than she’d dared to dream!

  “Go away!” screamed Harrow from behind the cart. “Go away! Bad donkey!”

  The dragon knocked some of the firewood off the top of the cart. Logs flew like matchsticks. It roared triumphantly.

  “Bad donkey!”

  That should be enough, thought Molly. The spell only lasts a minute. It’ll turn back any second and then I’ll go out and tell him that he’s got to be nice to the donkey or it’ll happen again . . .

  The minute certainly seemed to be taking a while.

  More firewood flew. Old Man Harrow dove into one of the empty stalls, which was only empty in the sense that there were no animals in it. (There was a great deal of animal dung, however. Harrow did not keep his barn very clean.) The dragon tore at the stack of firewood with its claws.

  A very long minute indeed.

  More like two minutes.

  Possibly even three minutes.

  Molly had brought a watch just in case, and she pushed her sleeve back to look at it.

  It had been four and a half minutes.

  The dragon knocked the last of the firewood loose, tore the cart in half, and stomped toward the stalls.

  “It’s not supposed to last that long!” said Molly, panicking. “It’s only supposed to be a minute—the spell said it was only supposed to be a minute—”

  “I don’t think it read that bit,” said Bugbane.

  The dragon roared and sent its tail smashing through an old water trough. Mucky water poured across the floor.

  Five minutes.

  Remember when we said that spellbooks are like cookbooks, and individual spells are like recipes?

  Just like with recipes, sometimes you can substitute the ingredients in a spell . . . and sometimes you can’t.

  If you want to use less salt in a recipe, oftentimes you can get away with it—but if you try to substitute sugar instead, your eggs may taste very odd indeed.

  Cows and donkeys are very different animals—as different as sugar and salt. Cows are large, pla
cid, and not very bright.

  Donkeys, on the other hand, are cunning. And very, very stubborn.

  And this one liked being a dragon.

  It took seven minutes and forty-three seconds for the dragon to turn back into a donkey. They were the longest minutes of Old Man Harrow’s life. He cowered behind the dung heap and put his hands over his head.

  At the six-minute mark, the dragon figured out that it could breathe fire. If it hadn’t already knocked over the water trough, the whole barn might have gone up in flames. It settled for scorching the rafters and setting fire to the remains of the donkey cart.

  Molly was torn between running to get Angus—maybe he could tear some of the boards off the back of the barn and they could pull Old Man Harrow out before he got toasted!—and running in to help herself. What if the dragon got there before Angus did? There was no time! She was supposed to Smite, not commit murder!

  She took a deep breath and charged around the side of the barn.

  “Hey!” she yelled. “Hey! Dragon! Over here!”

  The dragon, who was snuffling at the dung heap, turned around.

  It was not a particularly vicious donkey. It had hated the cart and the barn and Old Man Harrow, but Molly had never done anything to it. And she looked a little bit like Harrow’s daughter, who had always been kind.

  It ambled toward Molly, although in its current state, it wasn’t sure if it wanted a lump of sugar or a lump of coal.

  “Uh—good dragon!” said Molly. “Nice dragon. You . . . uh . . . leave that man alone . . .”

  “Growwrrrrhaaaawww?” said the dragon.

  Molly, for lack of anything else to do, reached out and scratched it behind the ears.

  “Growrhhaaaww . . . haaa . . . heeee-haww . . .” said the dragon, and in a very few seconds it was a small donkey again.

  Molly let out a breath that came from the bottom of her very impressive boots.

  “I think it’s safe to come out now,” she called.

  Old Man Harrow popped up from behind the dung heap. “Safe? Is that brute gone? What in the name of tarnation just happened?!”