Castle Hangnail

by Ursula Vernon

  “I hear he’s got an eye on your place too,” Jane added. “When the old Sorceress went to the home, he got the notion you’d be selling it.”

  “No!” said Molly, shocked. “Nobody’s selling Castle Hangnail!”

  Majordomo said nothing. If the Board of Magic had to decommission Castle Hangnail, they’d put it up for sale, and Freddy Wisteria would be waiting. He’d put three hundred houses on it, and the village would change all out of recognition.

  “That’s what’s going to happen, isn’t it?” asked Molly as they left the post office. “If we can’t fix things. If I can’t do the Tasks.”

  Majordomo nodded. “Six weeks from now,” he said. “Maybe two months, because it takes a little while to send out the druids. But not longer.”

  “We’ll fix it,” she said fiercely. “We have to.”

  The old servant glanced down at her and smiled, almost involuntarily. He knew that it was probably hopeless, and yet, the new Master loved Castle Hangnail. And that was a start, however small.

  Chapter 17

  Two days later, Majordomo went back to town to check the mail. He usually waited a few days, but he had sent the letter to the Board of Magic off over a week ago, and he was desperate to get the reply. Even just an acknowledgment that Castle Hangnail had a Witch and was now no longer slated to be decommissioned would be something. That way, when the boiler issue came to light, they’d be the castle with the Wicked Witch who was filing an extension and not the abandoned castle without a Master and he could stall the paperwork for weeks if he had to.

  There was no letter. There was, however, plenty of junk mail, a flyer for a rummage sale, and a cheerful postcard of people water-skiing, with WISH YOU WERE HERE!! printed across it.

  The second exclamation point disturbed him. Majordomo did not believe in squandering punctuation. He flipped the card over.

  It was addressed to Molly Utterback, care of Camp Hangnail.

  At that point, he should have stopped reading. He meant to stop reading. He really did.

  But the writing on the postcard was a large, clear print, like a schoolteacher’s, and the word camp leaped out at him from it, and as he started to turn it back over, he saw the last line. He couldn’t help but see it.

  And then Majordomo did a terrible thing.

  He read a letter that wasn’t addressed to him.

  It was a betrayal of common decency, and furthermore, it was a betrayal of a minion’s loyalty to his Master. He knew that even as he was doing it.

  As he read, his free hand clenched into a fist, and the flyer for the rummage sale crunched as it was smashed into a ball.

  “Something wrong?” asked Postmistress Jane. “Bad news?”

  “No,” said Majordomo. “No. Nothing.” He crammed the postcard under the other junk mail. “Thank you.”

  He did not stop at the café. He did not stop at the mercantile. He walked home, up the long road to the castle, while the words on the postcard ran through his mind.

  Dear Molly,

  Hope you’re having a good time at summer camp! We’ve gone to Lake Whattamatta for two weeks, although we’ll probably be back by the time you get this. We went swimming and your dad went water-skiing. Sarah picked out this postcard. We miss you, and can’t wait for you to come home.

  Love,

  Mom & Dad & Sarah

  It was as if every cheerful letter was a weasel and it was chewing on his brain. (Majordomo was, in fact, one of the few creatures on earth who had had a weasel chew on his brain and lived to tell the tale, but that had been back in the old days, and Ungo had bought a new lock for the ferret cage the next day.)

  Molly’s parents thought she was at summer camp.

  Her parents were expecting her to come home again.

  He’d mailed a letter to the Board saying that they had a new Master, and the new Master, it turned out, was a twelve-year-old girl who was the next best thing to a runaway and was expected to leave at the end of the summer.

  A twelve-year-old girl who had been lying to him this whole time.

  He’d thought—just a few days ago, walking up this very same road with her—he’d thought there was a chance. He’d seen somebody who loved Castle Hangnail and thought that maybe here was a Master, however young, who could help him save the castle from destruction. Majordomo had stalled the Board of Magic for years, but with a Master to help him, maybe they could have saved the castle once and for all.

  He’d almost started to believe. That was the worst part of all.

  At first, he was angry. Being angry got him past Miss Handlebram’s house, with a face that wilted several roses as he passed.

  But then, as he looked up the road to Castle Hangnail, with its crumbling tower and tottering turrets, he thought, She lied to all the others too.

  What was he going to tell the other minions? What was he going to tell Lord Edward, who had sworn fealty to Molly? What was he going to tell Pins, who had labored so lovingly over a proper outfit for a Wicked Witch?

  What was he going to tell Cook?

  His heart sank.

  They were going to be devastated.

  He trudged up the road to Castle Hangnail, moving like an ant under the unforgiving sun.

  Chapter 18

  Molly was in the library, looking for a spell.

  The Little Gray Book was no use. She’d gone cover to cover, trying to find a spell that would turn something into gold, and all she could find was a spell that would turn real gold into fool’s gold, which was no good to anybody.

  The other spellbooks were just as opaque and complicated as they had been a week ago. As far as she could tell, nobody else had been able to turn things into gold either. One of the books had a recipe, but you had to start with diamonds and live lobsters, and the scrawled notes underneath said it didn’t work and just made the lobsters very uncomfortable.

  Occasionally she’d pull out the letter from the Board of Magic. It was probably her imagination that the black underline under “Secure and defend the castle” was spreading.

  She was sitting in a chair, trying to puzzle out the crabbed handwriting of A Witche’s Grimoire of Practicale Magicke (written in an era when E’s were plentiful) when the door opened and Majordomo came in.

  At first, she didn’t look up. Reading books in the library was perfectly acceptable now. If he asked, she’d tell him the truth—that she was looking for a way to turn things to gold.

  He set a small silver tray down on the end table beside her and said, in a chilly voice, “Your mail, madam.”

  “Mail?” said Molly.

  She leaned over and picked up the postcard. It took her only a moment to read it, but she stayed, staring blankly at it, for several seconds.

  Then she raised her eyes, very slowly, to Majordomo.

  She knew at once.

  “You read it,” she said. It was not a question.

  “Yes,” said Majordomo.

  “You shouldn’t have read my mail.”

  “No.”

  “But you did.”

  “Yes.”

  People talk about tension so thick that you can cut it with a knife. You couldn’t have cut this with a knife. A knife would have bounced off. You’d need a sledgehammer for tension like this.

  Molly tried. She made a choking sound that was meant to be a laugh and said, “Postcards. I never thought of postcards. Ha.”

  “When did you plan on telling us that your parents expected you back?” Majordomo asked. His voice was very calm and very even.

  “I thought I’d find a spell to change their minds,” said Molly in a small voice. “I’ve got weeks and weeks to look for it. I’ve been looking . . .”

  She trailed off. From the way that Majordomo’s eyes had gone wide, she realized that she’d managed to shock him.

  “You can’
t change people’s minds with magic,” said Majordomo. “For an hour or two, maybe, you can muddle them—but to actually make them think something else? You have to break their minds open, turn them into thralls . . .” He trailed off, horrified.

  Making someone a thrall is well past Wicked. It’s deepest, darkest Evil. An Evil Sorceress who thought nothing of freezing someone in ice for a thousand years might balk at turning them into a thrall.

  “Didn’t they teach you that in Witch school?” asked Majordomo.

  Molly gave him a small, guilty glance and looked away.

  He collapsed into one of the reading chairs and put a hand over his eyes.

  “You didn’t go to Witch school,” he said.

  “I wanted to!” She leaned forward. “My mom wouldn’t let me! There’s not that many Witch schools left, and they’re mostly expensive or far away, and she didn’t think it was nice. But I tried!”

  “So you lied about it.”

  “I thought you’d like me better,” she said uncomfortably. “It’s not like I’m not really a Witch! You’ve seen me cast spells! Ask Angus about the donkey! It’s just . . . I’m self-taught, is all. And I learned a lot from Eu—from a friend of mine. I’m really a Witch!”

  “Yes,” said Majordomo wearily. “I suppose you’re really a Witch. There’s still that.”

  He got up. He looked older and more tired than Molly had ever seen him look.

  “Are you going to tell everybody?” she asked.

  He shook his head slowly. “Why? What does it matter now? We can’t fix the plumbing. The Task will fail, you’ll have to leave, and the Board will have us decommissioned. Whether or not you went to Witch school . . . when or why you’re going to leave . . . it just doesn’t matter.”

  He went out, shutting the library door behind him. Molly waited until the door was closed and promptly burst into tears.

  Chapter 19

  Molly cried hard and ugly, the way people do when the world is utterly broken and can’t be fixed. Her nose was red and runny and her face was blotchy and scrunched up and her eyes ached and still she cried.

  Bugbane hunched up against her neck and extended one wing over her shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m still your friend. Even if you have to go somewhere, I’ll come with you.”

  This only made Molly cry harder.

  She’d let everybody down.

  She’d ruined everything.

  The only thing that could make it worse would be if he found out I’m not really Eudaimonia.

  She knew she had to stop crying. Someone might come into the library and find her, or hear her, and then they’d ask what was wrong and she’d have to tell them, or Majordomo might tell everybody and then they’d all hate her.

  It wasn’t easy. She bit down on her knuckle to slow the sobs.

  She thought, Eudaimonia wouldn’t be crying.

  Yeah, but Eudaimonia wouldn’t have screwed everything up in the first place.

  Molly took a deep, shuddering breath.

  Eudaimonia would have swept in and probably kicked Majordomo aside as she did, and he would have loved it because that’s how he expected a Master to behave. And no one would have questioned, because Eudaimonia was tall and pale and had exciting cheekbones and was an Evil Sorceress to her fingertips.

  And the servants would have loved her and hated her in equal measures for it. Pretty much the way that Molly did.

  If she could see the mess I’ve made . . . she’d say, “But it was so simple, Molly dear! Can’t you even get that right?”

  And then she’d laugh.

  The memory put steel in Molly’s spine. She straightened up and took another breath and refused to let it catch in a sob.

  Eudaimonia—the real Eudaimonia, the one Molly had known in her hometown—had been perfect and Wicked and seventeen years old. She’d had almost a dozen invitations to come and be an Evil Sorceress.

  Molly was not seventeen and not perfect, but she was the one at Castle Hangnail, so she was the one who was going to have to muddle through.

  “There’s got to be a way through this,” she muttered, standing up. “There’s got to be a way to keep the Board of Magic away. I don’t care how cold it gets in winter or how far I have to walk to flush the toilet, and I won’t let anybody make me leave!”

  Bugbane clutched at her hair. Molly swiped at her face with the back of her hand and turned up the collar of her jacket.

  She wanted to go outside. If she was out in the air, maybe things would be different.

  She went through the castle without saying anything. No one stopped her.

  At another time, the garden might have been a comfort. Molly trailed her fingers over the mint and the sage as she passed, so that she walked in clouds of sweetness and spice. But the thought that she might have to leave the garden—just when they’d gotten the weeds out and the stinking horehound was happy and it looked like the manticore artichokes were going to flower this year—made her want to cry again.

  Molly went out through the garden gate, into the pasture where Dragon the donkey was grazing. (They had named him Dragon, because there was really no other choice.)

  She picked a spot largely free of donkey droppings and sat down. Bugbane stretched his wings and took a few cautious turns over the flowers, snapping at passing flies.

  Molly flopped over on her back and stared up at the castle.

  Clouds drifted by. The main tower rose like a tree above her. One of the ravens had found a bit of shiny ribbon and was showing it off. A bit of rock fell off the side of one of the turrets and thumped down into the grass. The shallow moat glittered in the sun, casting wet shadows on the squat little detached tower.

  She loved it.

  She loved the towers and the sense of elegant decay, the not-very-bright ravens, the grassy hills that tried so hard to be a blasted heath but were really just grass, spangled with clover blossoms and dandelions.

  “I won’t leave you,” she told it fiercely. “If they try to make me go home, I’ll run back to you. If the Board of Magic tries to decommission you, I’ll tie myself to the front door and make them go through me!”

  The ground trembled.

  For a split second, Molly thought that the castle had heard her, and was responding—or that the Board of Magic had heard her, and a druid in rubber gloves and a breathing mask was going to erupt from the ground under her feet!

  Then her more practical side exerted itself and she thought that they were having a very minor earthquake.

  Then the ground trembled again and a little bit of earth heaved itself up onto the grass, and a long pink nose poked out of the ground.

  It was a mole.

  Molly rolled on her side to look at it better and the mole dove back underground, startled. The disturbed dirt lay in ruffles around the entrance to the hole.

  Molly sighed. She hadn’t meant to startle it. She knew people didn’t like moles because they dug tunnels in the lawn, but she’d always thought the tunnels were more interesting than the lawn anyway. Lawns were boring.

  The mole had left in such a hurry that there was a tiny tuft of velvety fur left on the edge of the tunnel. She picked it up between her fingers.

  And then she had an idea.

  Treasures are a thing of earth, the Eldest had said. And: Ask someone else.

  By now Molly knew the talking to animals spell backward and forward. There were dock leaves growing wild in the grass already. She had the ingredients together in no time at all.

  “Avack! Auilriuan! Arwiggle!”

  She leaned over, put her mouth close to the hole, and said, “Oh please, mole, please come back and talk to me.”

  She waited.

  The mole must not have gone very far down the hole, but he emerged very slowly, nose twitching. “Eh? This isn’t a trick, is it? Eh?”

/>   “No trick,” said Molly. “I’m Molly. I’m the Wicked Witch.”

  “Witch, eh?” said the mole. “Got it. Explains why you talk Mole.” He ran a heavy clawed foot over his snout. “Whatcha want?”

  “While you’re down there, in the dirt,” said Molly, “have you ever seen any treasure?”

  “Treasure . . .” said the mole slowly. “Eh? Worms. Rocks. Lotta rocks.”

  Molly sat back, disappointed.

  Well, what did you expect him to say? “Oh, yes, we’re sitting on a giant trove of gold and jewels and small unmarked bills”?

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry to have bothered you then.”

  “No bother,” said the mole. “Always time for a Witch, eh?”

  He dove back into the earth.

  She put her chin on her hand and her elbow on her knee and stared at the castle.

  “Maybe we can have a bake sale,” she said out loud, without much enthusiasm. Whenever her school wanted to raise money, it seemed like they always had bake sales. Cook could probably whip something up . . .

  Bugbane danced over the flowers. Butterflies veered out of the way, wondering why a bat was chasing them in daylight.

  She’d have to take him home if she failed to save the castle. It would be hard to explain, though. Usually if you saw a bat wandering around in daylight, it was sick. Her mom was going to have a lot to say, and the word rabies would come up at least three times.

  And Sarah . . . Molly didn’t even want to think about it. Bugbane was very handsome for a bat, with his squished-up face and his wrinkled nose and his big ears . . . and Sarah was going to scream until she lost her voice when she saw him.

  Molly wiggled her toes inside her boots. That might not be all bad . . . No, if Sarah lost her voice, she would just write notes demanding that the bat be removed from the bedroom.