Outside, I threw away the broken umbrella, rinsed the dirty gumboots, cleared the vines from the windows, and washed all the glass.
Inside, I mopped the floors and stood on chairs to polish the light fittings.
On my last day, I tipped out the bin of macaroni. This was very wasteful of me, but I was so tired of macaroni and cheese. Aunt Carrie must surely feel the same, I thought. Maybe that was why she only ate a spoonful each night?
I went to the local grocery store that day, and bought as many colourful foods as I could find: tomatoes, carrots, red and green capsicums. I filled up Aunt Carrie’s pantry with fruits and vegetables, jars of bright herbs and spices, vinaigrettes, a carton of eggs, a side of ham, and a loaf of fresh bread. I also bought an entire cheesecake from the diner and placed this on the countertop. (I took it out of its box and put it on a cake plate, as if I’d made it myself.)
Next, I picked bunches of wildflowers, and placed these in vases all around the cottage. The wildflowers were tricky to find, since most of the fields were dusty and dry, but the vases had been in one of the boxes.
At 5.25 pm, I chose a record, placed it on the gramophone, and set it playing.
I looked around the cottage. Perfect.
Almost.
I slid the curtains from every curtain rod, folded them and put them in a cupboard.
Now everything was perfect.
I could hear footsteps on the path outside.
Wait! One more thing.
I tipped the couch upside down.
The door opened.
Aunt Carrie ducked her head, as she always did, when she saw how bright her cottage was. She turned to the nearest window, reaching out her hand.
There was no curtain.
She frowned and moved to the next window along, reaching again.
She stepped to the third, arm outstretched.
Gosh, I thought. When’s she going to figure it out?
At last, her hands dropped. She patted her sides, puzzled. Then she glanced back at me.
‘Bronte,’ she said. ‘I can’t seem to find the curtains. Let me just sit down and think what could have—’ She started. ‘The couch,’ she murmured. ‘It’s …’
‘Upside down,’ I prompted. She blinked at me.
She looked at the windows. At the couch. Her eyes swivelled to the dining chairs.
Quickly, I hurried over and tipped them all over.
She stared. Her face trembled.
Oh dear, I thought. I’ve broken her.
And then she erupted into laughter. It was alarming at first, like the roar of a volcano, but then she was slapping her thighs, hooting and shrieking. It was a very comprehensive laugh, high, low, sideways, musical, and everything in between.
It was also the kind of laugh that catches you, so I was laughing too. We laughed madly for a long time, and Aunt Carrie began dancing her laughter all around the cottage, pointing at things, opening drawers and cupboard doors—‘It’s clean!’—‘the boxes are gone!’—‘the floor is clean!’—‘there are flowers everywhere!’
Oh, well, I thought. I’m glad you find it funny, but it was actually quite a bit of work.
But Aunt Carrie was still spinning—‘Look at all this food!’ she cackled from the open pantry door. ‘Oh, where’s the macaroni?’
‘Threw it away.’
A scream of laughter.
‘And the board game? Did you throw that away too?’
‘It’s under the wood box.’
I thought she’d suffocate herself on that guffaw.
‘Oh, the couch!’ she exclaimed on another gust of laughter as she spiralled giddily through the living room.
She was burbling in her bedroom now, shrieking about the dresses in the cupboard, and then she was back in the living room, wiping her nose and eyes.
Eventually she quietened, giggling now and then until even the hiccups faded.
The gramophone played quietly. Aunt Carrie looked across at it in surprise and I thought she might be about to laugh again, but her eyes returned to me.
‘Oh, Bronte,’ she murmured. ‘Look what you’ve been doing. And I never even noticed.’
Then she burst into tears.
We had a colourful dinner that night. Aunt Carrie spent it laughing and crying and praising my hard work. She blew her nose a lot, and she still ate very little, but at least she was there. You couldn’t really miss her.
After we’d eaten some cheesecake and shared the final Ricochet orange, I took out my parents’ gift. Aunt Carrie was chortling again as she opened it—‘You turned the couch upside down!’—then the gift rolled out along the tabletop, and she stopped.
It was a jar of nutmeg.
Aunt Carrie sat back. She rested her elbows on the table. She studied the jar. I waited patiently. Now she was going to tell me a story about my parents. Maybe my father had made an excellent pumpkin pie for her once, and added a sprinkle of nutmeg? Maybe my mother advised nutmeg as a cure for the common cold?
But Aunt Carrie’s silence spilled out across the table. It spilled across the cottage floor and seemed to hit the gramophone—it was only that the record happened to finish at that moment, but that’s how it seemed.
At last, she spoke.
‘He was so big,’ she said.
‘He was?’ I hadn’t heard anybody call my father ‘big’ before. He looked like he was a fairly standard size in the wedding photograph.
‘And his hair, it stuck out—here, and here, and here!’ Her hands shot out from her own head, and I thought: Oh, this is not my father. This is the man she lost, the one who broke her heart. ‘He was so big that I used to call him Bear.’
She stopped speaking then.
I decided it was time to be stern. ‘Well, Aunt Carrie,’ I said. ‘I’m sure there are plenty of other big men around. Some might even have messy hair. Go find one and call him Bear.’
Aunt Carrie’s gaze drifted around the room.
‘Not in here,’ I said firmly. ‘Out there. In the world.’ I pointed to the window.
But Aunt Carrie’s eyes were on the upturned couch. Oh, here we go, I thought. She’s realising she could turn it right-way up again, and she’s going to lie down.
‘Anyway,’ I added, to distract her. ‘Perhaps this Bear of yours should have combed his hair.’
She laughed softly. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I loved it like that. I loved everything about him, Bronte, every detail. And he loved me. What are the chances? we used to say. What are the chances of us finding each other?! Then we’d throw our arms around each other.’
‘Hm,’ I said. I wondered if I should remind her that I was ten years old.
‘I used to travel all over the Kingdoms and Empires for my work,’ she continued.
‘As a filing clerk?’
‘I was a different sort of filing clerk then,’ she said, reaching for the jar of nutmeg. ‘I filed big things. Dangerous things. It made me dangerous, and one day I decided that it wasn’t safe for Bear. This was not long after I had tea with you in Gainsleigh, Bronte. From there, I went to do a huge job—a huge filing job. And I came home shattered and very dark. The darkness was under my fingernails, on my lips, in my hair. As big as Bear was, he wasn’t safe with me. I told him it was over. I told him he must marry somebody else.’
‘Well, I hope he took no notice,’ I said, stern again.
Aunt Carrie shrugged. ‘I insisted. I gave him no choice. He left. And so I lost him. And then …’ Her voice dwindled. ‘And then I realised my mistake. I tried to work at home, but my tears made the ink run on my papers. I looked for Bear and learned he’d married somebody else, just as I’d told him to, so I sold the house, packed up and moved here to Stantonville, to hide.’
She rolled the jar of nutmeg back and forth. ‘And now,’ she whispered, ‘we’ve lost Patrick and Lida, too. Oh, I’m tired. Shall we go to sleep, Bronte?’
She was gone again. I knew it at once.
In bed that night, I thought about
the different ways there are of being sad. Just as there are different ways of laughing. All my aunts were sad because their brother and his wife had died. But this meant that Aunt Sue couldn’t concentrate, Aunt Emma sobbed, Aunt Claire worked extra hard, Aunt Sophy hugged baby dragons, Aunt Nancy was cross. The Whispering King had been furious with grief when his wife died, I had read in Uncle Nigel’s history book. Aunts Maya and Lisbeth told stories, Aunt Alys was quiet, and Aunt Carrie—
Well, Aunt Carrie disappeared when she was sad.
However, the next morning she made a special effort to be there. I could see it in the way she looked directly at me when I came out of my bedroom. She was frying eggs in the kitchen, and she had brushed her hair.
‘I’m taking the morning off work,’ she told me, ‘so I can see you off.’ She was eating something as she spoke, and now took another bite. There was a shower of crumbs. ‘Where’d you get the bread? It makes perfect toast.’
‘Will you get into trouble?’ I asked. ‘For taking the morning off?’
‘Yes!’ She set plates down on the table. ‘My boss is a dragon! Not a real one, Bronte, that’s just an expression. I’ll probably get fired.’ But she seemed very cheerful. ‘If not,’ she added. ‘I’ll quit. My job bores me stupid, but I never have the energy to quit. Being sad makes you so tired.’ She yawned. ‘See that? I’m already tired again. I’ll have to quit fast, before I fall asleep.’
I opened the drawer where I’d put away stationery. ‘Write to your boss now,’ I suggested.
So Aunt Carrie scribbled:
Aunt Carrie said that other people would probably use more sentences to say the same thing, but that she believed in getting to the point.
‘Will you go back to your old job now?’ I asked, as I ate my eggs. ‘Did you like that one?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I loved it. But I won’t be strong enough to do that work again for a while. Eat up now, you can’t miss the coach.’
I finished breakfast and went to pack my suitcase. I wondered why Aunt Carrie needed to be strong to do filing. I filed different things, she had told me. Big things. Dangerous things.
It was very mysterious.
‘What exactly did you file?’ I called from my room.
There was no reply.
I carried my suitcase out into the living room. Aunt Carrie was waiting by the open front door. Big things, I thought again. Dangerous things.
‘You’re a Spellbinder!’ I cried.
Aunt Carrie flinched and looked behind her. I remembered that Spellbinding was meant to be a secret.
‘Are you a Spellbinder?’ I asked, this time whispering. ‘My father was a Spellbinder—Esther told me. So it’s in the family! You could be one, too! And you have velvet capes with hoods!’
Aunt Carrie smiled sadly. ‘Used to be,’ she admitted. ‘I was quite a good one.’ She studied my face then beckoned me over to her.
‘Take off your shoes,’ she said.
I was too surprised to argue. I pulled them off.
‘And your socks?’
I did as she asked.
Aunt Carrie leaned over and studied my bare feet. I studied them with her. They seemed like perfectly ordinary feet.
And then my toenails turned blue.
Every single one.
‘There,’ said Aunt Carrie. ‘You’re a Spellbinder, too.’
I was still staring, open-mouthed at my toes. The nails had now switched back to their regular colour, and stayed that way.
‘How strange,’ I breathed, ‘for that to happen right at that moment!’
Aunt Carrie shook her head. ‘Not strange. It’s because I was looking. My Spellbinding is very strong, you see, and yours responded. Congratulations, Bronte. Put your shoes back on now. We’d best get going.’
She pushed the door wide and beckoned me outside. ‘Don’t try to do any Spellbinding,’ she warned me. ‘You’re much too young. If you want to work as a Spellbinder one day, training starts when you turn twenty-one. It’s dangerous, as I mentioned, and you must never feel obliged. Plenty of time to consider.’
We walked along, side by side, past the trees and through the gate. There was a strange, zingy feeling in my heart. I was a Spellbinder! Of course I would work as one! I would conquer Dark Mages one day!
I knew the darkness would be scary. Aunt Carrie had said it got under her fingernails and into her hair after her last job. I wouldn’t like that. But I could just wash my nails and hair.
A huge filing job, Aunt Carrie had done—now I knew she meant a huge Spellbinding, of course—and she’d come home shattered and told Bear to leave. I wondered what the huge job might have been.
We had reached the top of the hill. The sign for Ricochet oranges was lying on the grass now. I gave it a friendly kick as I passed.
‘I went to a Spellbinding Convention when I stayed with Aunt Claire,’ I told Aunt Carrie, as we crossed the fields. ‘The teachers talked about how Spellbinding wears you out. They said that doing the Majestic Spellbinding on the Whispering Kingdom must have practically destroyed Carabella-the-Great.’
Aunt Carrie gave a half shrug. She was walking a little more quickly now, and I had to hurry to keep up with her.
‘The teacher also said that Carabella-the-Great discovered a secret ingredient she used in potions,’ I added. ‘Only I can’t remember what it was. Did you use that ingredient, Aunt Carrie?’
Aunt Carrie was even further ahead. I could see the back of her head, the silver clip in her hair.
And then I stopped. It was as if somebody had tugged down on a blind and it had sprung straight up and let in light.
I put down my suitcase.
‘Aunt Carrie?’
She turned.
‘My parents’ gift to you was nutmeg.’
She nodded.
‘Carabella-the-Great’s secret ingredient was nutmeg.’
Aunt Carrie looked at me steadily.
‘Did you do the Majestic Spellbinding? Was that the huge filing job? Are you Carabella-the-Great?’
For a long moment, Aunt Carrie studied me. Then she winked.
We stopped in at the post office so that Aunt Carrie could send her ‘I quit!’ letter. The man behind the desk said, ‘Carrie Mettlestone! I thought you must be dead!’
‘No,’ said Aunt Carrie, and tapped her own head. ‘Alive.’
‘I’ve got a stack of mail waiting for you here!’
He handed it over and Aunt Carrie sifted through while we waited. There was the invitation to Aunt Franny’s party. ‘Will you come?’ I asked, and she said she would try, but might not be strong enough for visiting yet.
There were two letters for me in her stack: one from Aunt Isabelle and one from the Butler. Both just chatted about the weather and games of charades.
‘Nothing else for me?’ I asked.
‘Were you expecting something?’
I shrugged. ‘Not really.’
The artist had probably thought I was crazy, and thrown my postcard away. Most likely, I would never know who told the children to pretend to be a painting, or why.
‘Heading home, Bronte?’ said the post-office man, leaning out the door.
‘First seeing my Aunt Franny at Nina Bay,’ I said. ‘And then home.’
‘Nina Bay,’ the post-office man said. ‘About a day’s ride. Got your horse?’
At that moment, the coach approached, clattering down the highway.
‘Oh,’ said the post-office man. ‘The coach, is it?’ He turned back to his shop, disgruntled.
‘I’ve had a lovely stay,’ I said to Aunt Carrie.
‘No, you haven’t,’ she replied. ‘You’ve had a terrible stay. But you’ve woken me up, Bronte. You’ve saved me.’
Just like the children in the storybooks! I thought. And I had woken Carabella-the-Great, much better than any regular cranky person!
But then sadness misted over Aunt Carrie’s eyes, and I panicked. I hadn’t saved her at all. She would return home and fall
asleep on the couch.
The coach pulled up.
‘Remember when you visited me in Gainsleigh, Aunt Carrie?’ I asked urgently. ‘And we went out for tea and cakes? The waiter couldn’t open the window, so you opened it for him?’
‘Vaguely,’ Aunt Carrie frowned.
‘You did,’ I told her. ‘And the waiter said: You’re strong! And what did you reply?’
‘What?’
‘You said: I am strong!’
Aunt Carrie gazed at me. Her eyes crinkled.
‘Coming or staying?’ called the coach driver.
I picked up my suitcase.
Aunt Carrie kissed my head. ‘Good bye, Bronte’ she said. ‘I will definitely see you at Franny’s party.’
And I got onto the coach.
I have no idea what the scenery was like in the early part of that coach trip. Probably just fields. But I stared through the window without seeing anything, my heart pattering like happy rain.
I was a Spellbinder! Just like my father!
It was a magical secret, like a gift just for me.
Also, Aunt Carrie was Carabella-the-Great! A mighty Spellbinder! Maybe I would take after her one day and be mighty too? She had made the Majestic Spellbinding that had finally, completely bound the Whispering Kingdom. Because of my Aunt Carrie, children were safe from escaping Whisperers.
I was very proud—of myself (in an embarrassed sort of way) and of my aunt.
Now I smiled as I thought through all my aunts and their strange talents and daft ways. Even Aunt Nancy made me smile, although only for a second—then I frowned.
The coach pulled over at an inn, and two women climbed aboard. They settled themselves down the back.
Aunt Franny was the final aunt. I had met her a few times in Gainsleigh: she’s one of the older aunts, and she’s always either smoking a pipe or gnawing on a carrot. Her voice is rough and her arms are muscled. I used to find her a bit scary when I was small, but now that I’d travelled across Kingdoms and Empires, ridden on a dragon and been chased by pirates, I didn’t think I’d be so frightened.
The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone Page 24