by E. G. Foley
“You can think of another reason, my lady?” Henry asked.
“Revenge,” she answered. “Lord and Lady Griffon were loved by most of Magic-kind. They helped countless magical beings, some of whom can be quite vengeful, like the water nymphs, for example. It was thought perhaps some witch or wizard friend of the couple took matters into their own hands and punished the servants in this manner for not going to their aid that day. The servants cowered inside the house—and so, inside the house they must remain.”
“A curse,” Henry murmured.
She nodded. “I’ve tried to break it and turn them back.” The grand old lady-witch faltered, to Jake’s surprise. She shook her head, lowering her eyes. “But all my efforts could not restore those poor souls to their proper form. They’ve been like that for eleven years!”
Archie harrumphed. “You magical types are a menace.”
“There must be something we can do to help them,” Derek said in concern.
“I have tried every transformation spell I could find in our libraries. Nothing’s worked. Some very powerful ingredient has been used on those poor people. There’s no telling what it might be.”
“Maybe Jake should try,” Archie suggested. “The frogs are tied to the castle, and he’s its rightful master, not Uncle Waldrick. They served his family, so maybe one of those spells would work for him, even if they failed for you, Aunt Ramona.” The boy-genius bit off the end of a carrot. “Seems logical to me.”
“I’m happy to try,” Jake said, “but I’ve never done a magical spell in my life.” While his great-great aunt considered it, his thoughts churned.
If the frogs could be turned back into people, they might be able to provide a few clues about what they had seen that day.
Even though the courts considered the murders of the last Lord and Lady Griffon an open-and-shut case, as Derek had said, he still couldn’t bring himself to believe that Sir George Hobbes was the only one to blame.
Uncle Waldrick had to be involved somehow, he knew it.
Her Ladyship was studying him intently. “If you are willing, Jacob, I suppose there is no harm in letting you try.”
He pushed his chair back from the table and stood. “Then let’s have at it.”
They all hurried down to Griffon Castle, where Isabelle used her particular gifts to summon all the frogs together into the great hall.
Soon the vast space resounded with the throaty chorus of their croaking.
Meanwhile, Dani took Jake aside. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she whispered.
“No harm in trying.”
“You don’t know that, actually,” she retorted.
“Aunt Ramona said so.”
“What if she’s wrong? You don’t know what you’re doing! What if it only works halfway and they end up—you know, half-frog, half-human? Wouldn’t that be worse—?”
Jake stared at her, the blood draining from his face. “Hadn’t thought of that.”
She gave him an I-told-you-so look.
Jake suddenly felt queasy about the task he had agreed to. Good grief, what if he ended up turning these people into half-frog monsters?
Even being a frog—a whole one—had to be better than that. His palms began to sweat.
“Jacob, are you ready to begin?” Aunt Ramona called.
He looked at Dani, his heart pounding, but he couldn’t back out now.
She frowned. “Good luck.”
He nodded to her, dry-mouthed. Then he took a deep breath and went to hear his aunt’s instructions. This was the most responsibility he had ever undertaken.
It was a dreadful feeling. His stomach churned. He listened to every word the old woman said about how to hold the wand, how to clear his mind and concentrate, and how to enunciate each strange phrase of the hand-written spell in her thick, mysterious book.
When she had filled his ears with her advice, she stepped back to let him try his best. The moment was at hand. Jake cast Derek a rather desperate glance. The Guardian nodded back at him in reassurance.
Isabelle laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “You can do it, Jacob. They want you to at least try to help them. That’s why they’ve been coming around you. They know who you are by your smell. They trust you. I could understand that much from them just now.”
“Right.” He swallowed hard.
“Stand back, children,” Miss Helena ordered, pulling the other three back. Isabelle and Dani clung to each other with Teddy between them, while Archie held his notepad, waiting to scribble down his observations.
“Just read it as it’s written,” Aunt Ramona instructed. “Repeat the words as many times as needed for the change to be complete.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded and raised the wand in his right hand, while holding the book of spells in his left.
Then he began, slowly and carefully:
“No more in mud to hop and crawl,
Misdeeds removed, forgiven all.
No more the form of frogs to ape,
Return each one to his true shape!
SANETIS!”
A wind ruffled his hair, gusted through the great hall, though none of the windows were open.
“Keep going, Jacob! It’s working!” his great-great aunt exclaimed.
Jake spoke the rhyme again, flicking the wand with the final word of the spell, as she had showed him.
The wind blew harder, increasing in strength each time he said the words; it rippled through the ragged white pennant of his ancestors’ ancient battle flag hanging high in the room, a red gryphon on a field of white.
Jake repeated the spell as a distant echo of a horrid screeching filled the room. The sound was all too familiar, though it was quieter than he had heard it before.
It was the same, nails-on-blackboard shrieking that he had heard that night in Newgate when the adults, the dead and the living alike, had gone into a trance.
“Cover your ears!” Derek yelled to the others over the noise. They did, except for Teddy, who began barking madly.
Jake yelled the words of the spell louder, again, to be heard over the angry noise.
“…SANETIS!” This time when he flicked the wand, a bolt of bluish-white lightning burst out of the tip and went crackling into the room, zapping the nearest group of frogs. Jake gasped.
A cloud of smoke exploded where the frogs had sat.
He looked at Aunt Ramona in a panic, afraid he had just incinerated them.
“Keep going!” she shouted. “That’s supposed to happen! Probably,” she added with a faint look of worry.
“Probably?” he yelled back over the gale.
“You can’t quit now!” she cried, the wind making a mess of her neat gray bun. “Believe me,” she warned.
Remembering Dani’s warning of horrible half-frog, half-human results, he saw he had no choice but to forge on. He would not turn them into grotesque monsters. He kept on saying the words, and slender lines of lightning kept flying out of the wand, finding each poor frog in the room.
Poof!
Poof! Another one. Poof!
Each frog in turn was obscured inside a thick cloud of yellowish smoke, until the whole hall was filled with fog.
Jake could not see his hand in front of his face.
Suddenly, the wind and shrieking stopped cold.
In the silence, he didn’t hear anymore croaking.
Oh, no, he thought, his heart pounding, his whole body shaking. I’ve killed them.
Derek felt his way along the wall until he found the door. He flung it open and the smoke began to clear. The others slowly uncovered their ears. Dani calmed Teddy down.
Derek strode toward him through the thick fog. “Are you all right, Jake?”
“I think so. Did it work?”
They all stared toward the dissipating smoke.
As the drifting clouds parted, human shapes became visible.
All of a sudden, Archie’s burst of laughter filled the great hall.
“Good hea
vens!” Her Ladyship uttered. “Children, cover your eyes!”
Derek automatically raised both hands to cover the boys’ eyes. For the servants were indeed whole people again, scattered around on the floor where they had been sitting around moments ago as frogs. They looked groggy and confused. And they were all stark naked.
“Henry, Helena, quickly!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Jake laughed heartily, letting go of his tension after that ordeal, while the adults rushed into motion, trying to cover up all the ex-frog people with the dust-cloths on the furniture.
“Run and play, children!” Aunt Ramona ordered anxiously. “Off you go! We’ll take it from here! Out, out! Well done, Jacob. Run along, now!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A Visit to Gryphondale
“Ew, gross! Naked people!”
All too happy to escape, the four children ran outside laughing their heads off—except for Isabelle, who was too much of a lady to poke fun at somebody else’s misfortune.
“That man had hair all over his back. Disgusting!”
“Then why were you looking at it?” Jake cried, still laughing as he flung himself down onto the soft grass.
“I couldn’t help it. He was right there. Blech!” Dani gagged.
Fortunately, they regained their composure at last after that disturbing image. With all four reclining on the grass in the shade of the old trees, they wondered how best to spend such a beautiful spring day.
“I know! Let’s go down to the village and visit the candy store!” Archie suggested.
“Candy?” Jake sat up straight at that word.
Archie pulled some coins out of his pocket. “My treat!”
“Well, I do deserve a reward after those heroics, if I dare say so myself,” Jake declared.
“Come on!” Archie jumped to his feet. “The Confectioner’s Emporium is the best candy shop in the whole county. I’ve tried them all—”
“Wait, you two!” Isabelle spoke up.
They turned to her in question.
“Aunt Ramona said we’re not supposed to go outside the bounds of where the water nymphs are on patrol.”
“Aw, come on!”
“She’s right, Jake,” Dani agreed. “We can’t leave their protection, not when there are people out there trying to kill you—”
“Pshaw, worry-wart! That was back in London! They don’t even know where I am. Besides, I’m tired of all the rules! You don’t know the half of what I’ve been through these past few days, while you and Teddy were having your holiday. I need a break!”
“It’s too dangerous!”
“Then don’t come if you’re a scaredy-cat. Let’s go, Arch. We’ll keep all the candy for ourselves!”
As the boys marched off down the drive, the girls exchanged a worried but irritated frown.
“I’m sorry, Isabelle. I have to go after Jake,” Dani said. “Somebody’s got to keep him out of trouble.”
Isabelle gazed thoughtfully at her. “You’re awfully brave, Dani.”
“I also like candy,” she admitted with a grin.
“Well, I’m not going to be the only one left behind.”
The girls hurried after the boys, catching up to them at the edge of the footbridge over the stream. Jake was scanning the water to make sure none of the water nymphs were close by. “Keep your dog quiet.”
Dani picked up Teddy so he would not bark and alert Lydia’s warrior maidens that they were sneaking off.
Then all four children crept across the bridge together, holding onto each other nervously as they tiptoed over its gentle arch. Jake led the way at the front; as the eldest, Isabelle brought up the rear.
“Hurry!” Dani whispered as a ripple in the water warned of a water nymph approaching.
The green-haired beauty suddenly broke above the surface with an angry splash. “Where are you children going?” she demanded, her trident in her hand.
They screamed and ran.
Pounding off the other end of the bridge, they raced a good distance down the country road until they all were winded and had to stop for air.
Jake, of course, started laughing the second they were out of danger. First he bent to catch his breath; then he straightened up, throwing up his hands. “Free!”
“We showed her!” Archie cried, red-faced with running and with the rare taste of rebellion.
“Come on, you lot!” Jake ordered.
“To the candy store!” Archie hollered in agreement.
Whooping like wild savages, the boys tore off down the road. They were like a pair of fireworks someone had just set off, shooting about all over the place, swinging from trees, walking on top of fence-rails, throwing rocks into the sky for no particular reason.
Secretly, Dani wanted to join them, but even more than that, she wanted with all her heart to be ever so nice and respectable like Isabelle. So she held herself back in the same way she kept Teddy on his leash, strolling by the older girl at a more civilized pace.
By the time they reached the quiet country village ahead, she was wondering if being a demure lady like Isabelle was really for her, after all. She longed to explore the village, but Isabelle seemed determined to stick to the single task they had come for and get back to Bradford Park before her aunt grew angry.
Dani supposed she did not want to see Lady Bradford angry, ever. She put the baroness out of her mind, enjoying her surroundings.
Gryphondale was the picture of a quaint English village, its shops facing the cobbled lane with a row of bow windows. Its white church steeple gleamed against the blue sky, and its little train depot sat under a fine clock tower. The boys slowed their pace because Archie had to say hello to everyone, as if he were the mayor.
His friendly greetings to all the villagers allowed the girls to catch up.
“Halloo, Mr. Magnus!” he called when they passed the blacksmith’s forge.
“Why, hello there, Master Archie!” The brawny blacksmith in his leather apron came out to greet them, his metal tongs in one hand, hammer in the other.
“Mr. Magnus, this is my cousin, Jake! Magnus helps me weld some of my larger designs,” Archie explained.
Jake tried out one of his new bows as he greeted the smiling giant. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”
“Likewise, young master.”
Just then, they all caught a whiff of the sweet smells blowing down the country lane; their eyes lit up.
“Cheerio, Magnus! We’re off to the candy shop!” Archie exclaimed.
Magnus grinned under his mustache. “Now, don’t you children go and get yourselves a bellyache!”
But they barely heard, already dashing off around the corner, following their noses.
Fionnula heard the ruckus of noisy brats in the street. She looked out the window of the inn and saw the four children.
“Waldrick!”
A moment later, she and her cohort were both rushing to the blacksmith’s forge, for as it happened, the sea-witch had decided to make a practice batch of the Oboedire potion last night, using the village blacksmith as a test subject. After all, if the potion was strong enough to work on a big, brawny man like Magnus, it would surely be strong enough to control one vexing magical boy.
Having chosen Magnus for her experiment, Fionnula had snatched one of his hairs while flirting with him in the village pub. Now it was time to put her experiment to the test. “Hurry, Waldrick! There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” she hissed, pressing the earl behind her as she peered around the corner from the blacksmith’s forge.
Fortunately, the four little dreadfuls had gone stampeding off to the candy store.
She handed Waldrick the Oboedire potion she had made the night before. Then they hurried on.
Just outside the blacksmith’s forge, Fionnula pulled Waldrick aside. “Remember, eye contact is best when you speak the chant, but at the very least, you have to be looking at him when you drink it. Here’s the incantation. I wrote it down in case you forge
t.” She handed him a small slip of paper.
“Forget? Do you think I’m stupid?”
She just looked at him. “What command will you give him?” she whispered.
Waldrick smiled coldly. “Do you really need to ask?”
She cackled, sounding very witchy in spite of her disguise as a beauty, thanks to her continued use of the magical red feathers.
Then they walked into the blacksmith’s shop to carry out their experiment.
Fionnula batted her lashes as she called to him. “Oh, Mr. Magnus!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sweet Goes Sour
The Confectioner’s Emporium was a wonder to behold.
The irresistible sweet smells of chocolate, vanilla, roasting nuts, and sugar being transformed into a hundred different treats enveloped them as they approached the shop’s double doors with frosted glass and shiny brass handles. When they pulled the doors open and stepped inside, Jake thought he must have died and gone to heaven. It was the loveliest place in the world.
Under the shop’s fancy glass cupola, frothy wrought-iron shelves were painted pale turquoise. The walls were pastel pink, blue, green, and yellow, allowing the brighter rainbow hues of the candy to dazzle their eyes.
Jake and Dani stood enraptured, staring all around them with their mouths hanging open.
Rows upon rows of candy of every variety surrounded them, displayed with gorgeous toys also for sale.
Beautiful toy hot-air balloons hung from the ceiling, with dolls and toy animals looking out of them. A carousel was turning right in the middle of the shop to the music of a steam-whistle calliope.
A toy steam-train ran on a track that encircled the whole store, taking its passengers on a tour of a candy world. The candy was displayed on shelves and tables, round racks and giant jars. Clumps of colorful spun sugar, airy and light. An army of sparkling gumdrops like soldiers standing in formation. Striped candy sticks of every combination of flavors, Turkish taffy, and countless varieties of drops. Chocolate drops, butterscotch drops, licorice drops, and sugared almonds. Caramel apples sprinkled with crunchy nuts. There was peanut brittle, candied popcorn balls on sticks tied up with ribbons, chocolate caramels, caramel chocolates, sugarplums, pink peppermint pigs and marshmallow hedgehogs.