The Last Task

by Maeve Friel

  “Does he live around here, this Mr Pengelly?” asked Jessica, wiping her face.

  The giant jabbed an arm at the ground. “Do they teach you witches nothing at school these days? Why, the caverns down there are riddled with gnomes, hammering and banging night and day.”

  “Oh,” said Jessica and hurriedly climbed aboard her broomstick.

  “Hey!” shouted the giant as Jessica took off. “Before you go, could you help me find my seven league boots? They must’ve sunk into the bog while I’ve been rotating.”

  “No!” said Jessica, very sharply. “I must fly!”

  She shot off to rejoin Miss Strega and Felicity who were waiting for her on the summit.

  They set up camp as soon as the giant set off down the mountain. The earth quaked with every thudding step he took. Jessica kept watch to make sure he didn’t come back while Miss Strega prepared the cauldron of muncheon, their midnight snack.

  The marvellous thing about witch’s muncheon is that it tastes of whatever you like, so out of the same pot Jessica was having pizza Hawaii, while Miss Strega was looking forward to crab cakes with a sweet chilli sauce.

  “Great spelling, poppet,” said Miss Strega, when Jessica explained what had happened with Don Gigantesco. “You must write that one down for future reference, in case you are ever hijacked by a windmill-cum-giant again. Now do tell me, how is your quest coming along?”

  Jessica picked a bit of pineapple off her pizza and put it in her pocket for Berkeley. “Well,” she said, “the giant was a horrible bad-mannered brute and he didn’t know a thing about Dame Walpurga’s shoes – but he did say that there is a gnome called Pengelly in a cavern underneath this mountain so I think that must be ‘the answer that lies beneath his hands’. Now I must find the entrance to the cavern and interview Pengelly.”

  “Very wise,” Miss Strega began. “I think that …”

  But before she had time to tell Jessica what she was thinking, an ominous rumbling started up somewhere deep beneath them. Wispy funnels of steam began to seep through the grass. The muncheon cauldron swayed wildly, tumbled off its stand and disappeared down a crack that had suddenly appeared in the ground.

  “Mmeoowww!” yowled Felicity.

  “Moonrays and Marrowbones!” shouted Miss Strega.

  “Hu-eeeeet!” shrilled Berkeley.

  “All aboard,” yelled Jessica, springing to her feet and reaching for her broomstick.

  “Crikey! Help!”

  With an ear-splitting wrench, the ground beneath her feet splintered and split open and Jessica went tumbling into the gaping hole.

  Chapter Five

  When Jessica came to, she found herself lying on her back, staring up at a patch of sky and the hole she had fallen through.

  She was in a cave dimly-lit by the light of the half-moon. Rocks like immense organ pipes hung down from the roof, gleaming gold where the moonlight struck them. An entire garden of solid stony trees, flowers and giant mushrooms grew out of the floor. There was a musical plip-plop of dripping water.

  From way back in the dark tunnel came the sound of scraping.

  Rats? Jessica wondered. She shivered and got shakily to her feet. She picked up her broomstick and looked around. Miss Strega and Felicity were nowhere to be seen, but Berkeley was sitting on the ground looking a bit dazed. She fluttered over and sat on Jessica’s shoulder.

  They began to pick their way around the rocks, stumbling on the uneven ground, feeling the walls, looking for a way out, but the further Jessica moved from the circle of moonlight, the harder it was to see where she was going.

  “Miss Strega?” she called into the darkness, but no answer came.

  “What I need is a torch,” she thought. And no sooner had she said it than she remembered that she did have a torch – the magic Lantern Fish pin that her Charm teacher, Pelagia, had given her. As soon as she popped it on the end of her wand, it glowed so brightly it lit up the whole cave. Holding the wand out in front of her, she was able to stoop beneath the rocks without banging her head and skirt around the stone pillars that looked like bearded wizards.

  As she walked deeper into the cave, she found the steps of a staircase cut into the rocks. A large notice was nailed to the wall:

  The sound of scraping grew louder and closer. The air grew hotter. Clouds of steam billowed up the stairs.

  “Brilliant!” said a gruff voice. “That’s all I need. The giant must be on the blink again. And that means Muggins here will have to go up and reset him.”

  Jessica tiptoed further down the steps.

  At the bottom, there was a short round bearded manikin leaning on a spade in front of a conveyor belt heaped with piles of glittering rocks. He was wiping the sweat from his neck and face with a large spotted handkerchief.

  “Bother and double bother!” he grumbled.

  Jessica coughed. “Mr Pengelly?”

  The gnome, startled, wheeled around. He held up his spade to shade his eyes from the luminous glow of the Lantern Fish.

  “Turn off that light!” he snarled. “I can’t be doing with bright lights in my cavern. Don’t you know I’m a gnome! Where did you come from anyway?”

  “I fell though the roof,” said Jessica, shielding the Lantern Fish with one hand. “There was a sort of earthquake and …”

  “Earthquake, my foot! My bellows exploded, more like. And now the conveyor belt’s conked out. Kaput. Broken. I daresay that good-for-nothing giant is slacking off. He’s supposed to keep this machinery moving.”

  “If you mean Don Gigantesco,” Jessica interrupted, “well, he’s gone. I made up a spell and …”

  “… and let him go?” Pengelly screamed. “You young witches, you come in here, spelling mad, freeing my giants, making my mountain blow up, bringing in lights!”

  Jessica wriggled her nose. “I’m just trying to find a missing pair of shoes.”

  Pengelly looked shifty. He squinted at her and blew his nose vigorously with his spotted handkerchief.

  “Shoes?” he asked, nervously scraping the dirt off one of his steel-capped boots with the heel of the other one. “What sort of shoes?”

  “A pair of historic witch’s shoes. They’ve been stolen.”

  “You won’t find any witch’s shoes down here. Now scram. Hop it.” He plunged his spade deep into the lumps of gold and began shovelling them up on to the conveyor belt.

  “If you could just think,” Jessica pleaded. “You may have information that you don’t think is very important but it could be vital.”

  Pengelly kept on shovelling.

  Jessica sighed.

  All this trouble for a pair of old shoes, she thought. Here I am in a leaky cave; I’ve been flung around like a yo-yo until I was sick, I’ve fallen through a hole, I’ve probably broken something, I haven’t had any muncheon and Miss Strega has disappeared. I might just get on my broomstick and fly home.

  Berkeley, perched on her shoulder, gave her cheek an encouraging pat with a feathery wing.

  Jessica tried again.

  “A very famous Oracle thinks that you can solve this mystery.”

  “I told you I know nothing about any Dame’s shoes. Now clear off.”

  “Ha-ha!” Jessica said, shining the Lantern Fish on Pengelly’s face. “I didn’t say anything about a Dame.”

  “You didn’t?”

  Pengelly shuffled backwards out of the light.

  Jessica followed him.

  “Tell me what you know!” she demanded, sounding much braver than she felt.

  “Why should I? What’s in it for me?” demanded Pengelly, belligerently.

  Jessica waved the Lantern Fish in his face. “I could turn you into a bat or a slow worm. I’m good at transforming, I am, with or without a wand.”

  “Oh for crying out loud!” the gnome shrieked. “I’ll tell you everything; just turn off that light.”

  Chapter Six

  “You’d better come this way.”

  Pengelly, grumbling, led Jessica
down the stone staircase. He let her keep the Lantern Fish pin on as long as she just shone it on her feet to see where she was going. Water dripped down the walls and plip-plopped on to the steps.

  “We don’t go out much, us gnomes,” he told her. “I don’t like daylight, and moonlight is not much better. I like being underground, doing my work, mining gold like my dad and his dad before that. But Mugwump—” Pengelly stopped suddenly and jabbed his index finger at the side of his head, “Mugwump is different. She likes to go Up There. She’s not a garden gnome, don’t get me wrong, she’s not that bad. But she keeps old stuff …” He lowered his voice. “She has a hoard.”

  “A hoard?” Jessica repeated, excited. “And you think she has Dame Walpurga’s shoes?”

  Pengelly snorted. “I’m only saying …” He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, “… that I found this on the floor a week ago.”

  Jessica shone the light of the Lantern Fish torch on it and read:

  The Dress Shoes worn by Dame Walpurga of the Blessed Warts at the Signing of the Treaty to End the Broomstick Battles.

  “That’s amazing! I’ve seen this before. It’s the sign from the Feet First Fund museum. Tell me at once where to find this Mugwump.”

  “This is as far as I go,” declared Pengelly, stopping at the foot of the staircase. “You’re on your own from here on.”

  He hoiked across a dingy ragged curtain. “Behold Mugwump’s lair.”

  And with that, he turned on his feet and scuttled back towards his mine, sniggering unpleasantly.

  Jessica moved her torch from left to right and right to left and up and down.

  If this was a hoard, it was a far cry from what she had been expecting. Where were the gold goblets? The silver swords? The chests of antique coins?

  Ahead of her, for as far as she could see, there were towering heaps of black plastic bin liners jumbled up with stacks of newspapers, broken bicycles, tangles of headphones, balding cuddly toys and pyramids of old clothes. There were crates of empty bottles, a mound of out-of-date computers, a baby grand piano without a lid, several sofas spilling yellow foam and a baby’s buggy with a twisted wheel. She turned back to give Pengelly a piece of her mind for wasting her time when she heard the heavy tramp tramp of a pair of hob-nailed boots approaching and the sound of a female voice singing.

  “I’m a second-hand gnome in my secondhand home …”

  The music stopped. Jessica heard a loud sniff.

  “I do believe I smell a visitor.”

  Jessica moved swiftly behind the dingy old curtain as Mugwump trundled into view. She was like Pengelly, short and round with a pointy head and a pair of thick glass-bottomed spectacles, except that she didn’t have a beard and instead of scowling like Pengelly, she looked radiant. She beamed. She leapt up onto a pile of plastic bin bags and hopped over them like a mountain goat.

  “Come on,” she said cheerfully, “I know you’re here somewhere. Stop messing about! You can’t fool Auntie Mugwump!”

  Jessica peered around the curtain.

  Mugwump looked as harmless as she sounded but, after the night she had had, Jessica wasn’t taking any chances. She stayed behind the curtain and called out.

  “Madam – I mean Auntie – Mugwump. Excuse me for intruding on your lair but my name is Jessica and I am on a very important quest on behalf of Witches World Wide. My bird, Berkeley, is going to fly over to you with a photograph of a pair of shoes. Please look at it carefully and tell me if you have them.”

  She put the photograph in Berkeley’s beak and sent her off. “My, oh my,” said Mugwump. “What an unexpected pleasure! A witch and her mascot! If I’d known you were coming, I would’ve baked a cake.”

  She graciously accepted the photo from Berkeley’s outstretched beak. “Oh yes, I have these. And what a lovely pair of shoes they are. Just look at the quality of that tassel. I think you’ll find that is pure Italian silk. And those pearl buttons. I’d bet my bottom dollar that they are real oyster pearls.”

  Jessica was so annoyed that she flew out from behind the curtain and landed a bit lopsidedly on the junk heap beside Mugwump.

  “But they don’t belong to you. They are historic! They are a relic! They’re no good to anyone but the Feet First Fund.”

  Mugwump looked crestfallen. “But I found them.”

  “You stole them!” Jessica corrected her.

  Now Mugwump looked indignant. “That is a monstrous lie! I found them in a wheelie bin round the back of Coven Garden. Wait!”

  She bent down and began to rummage among her plastic bags. “Here they are! I will not have my good name smeared. You can have them!”

  And she thrust the bag with the shoes into Jessica’s hands.

  Jessica looked at the bag.

  Was that it? Was her quest over, just like that? And what was all that about a wheelie bin?

  “I don’t understand how or why you got these, Madam – I mean Auntie – Mugwump, but thank you for giving them back,” Jessica said. “Witches World Wide will be over the moon. Berkeley and I will return the shoes to Coven Garden right away.”

  “Not so fast, young lady!” came a voice from the shadows. “I’ll have those!”

  Chapter Seven

  Jessica and Mugwump nearly jumped out of their shoes with fright.

  “Who’s that?” they shouted.

  “Just put the shoes on the ground and move back behind the curtain and no one will get hurt,” said the voice.

  Mugwump and Jessica froze.

  “Just do it!” snarled the voice. “And don’t even think about drawing your wand!”

  Jessica and Mugwump backed away.

  As soon as they were behind the curtain, Jessica put a finger to her lips to warn Mugwump not to say a word.

  Then she switched on her super-duper de-luxe invisibility-when-you-need-it cape and glided silently forward on her broomstick to see who would come out from the shadows.

  For a couple of minutes, nothing stirred. Then there was a movement from behind one of the stone pillars and out scuttled a caped figure who moved swiftly towards the bag containing Dame Walpurga’s shoes. Jessica flew silently over her head as she bent down to pick it up.

  “Gotcha!” Jessica pounced and grabbed the back of the mysterious figure’s cape.

  “You fool! You can’t stop me,” the witch shouted. Even though she couldn’t see Jessica, she managed to seize her ear and pull on it very hard.

  “Ouch!” shouted Jessica, jabbing her with an elbow.

  The two of them fell back, grunting. They rolled over and over Mugwump’s stacks of newspapers, upsetting bottles, plinkity-plonking over the keys of the grand piano and collapsing on to a broken sofa as both struggled to hold on to the shoes.

  White smoke began to pour from the witch’s nostrils and her features began to dissolve.

  “Ah-ha!” Jessica muttered, “You won’t catch me out with the old witch-switch trick.”

  So when the witch turned into a pillar of smoke, which made Jessica want to sneeze, she clung on to her end of the bag.

  When the witch changed into a stream of fast-flowing water, which froze Jessica’s fingers to the bone, she didn’t unclench her fists.

  When the witch became a fluttery bird, which flickered its wings and tickled Jessica’s chin, she never let go.

  Behind them Mugwump oohed and aahed and leapt around, rescuing falling stacks of papers and tripping over trailing computer wires.

  “By the raucous squawking of the peacock,” shouted the mystery witch, returning to her everyday shape. “Enough of this! Let’s see who you are.”

  Jessica undid the invisibility clasp of her cape with one hand but still held firmly onto the stumpy heels of Dame Walpurga’s shoes with the other. She stared indignantly at the other witch. “I’m Jessica, witch-in-training. Who are you?” she demanded.

  “I am Professor Cobbleroni, the Head Finder and Seeker …”

  Jessica gasped. “… of the Fancy Fo
otwear Foundation … Heckitty Darling’s rival!”

  “Yes, and I stake our claim to these shoes. I knew they were in Walpurga’s well, whatever Heckitty Weckitty says. I had just gone to get a fishing line and when I came back, she had fished them out herself.”

  Oh my, thought Jessica. Could that be true? “But you stole them back!” she said. “I just took them for safekeeping,” Professor Cobbleroni said with a careless wave of her hand, which gave Jessica the chance to take the bag with the shoes.

  “I hid them in the wheelie bin and went off to tell President Shar Pintake my side of the story, but before I had a chance, someone had raised the alarm and got up a witch hunt. Then when I went back to the bin, the shoes were … gone!” Professor Cobbleroni’s voice trembled just as Heckitty Darling’s had.

  Jessica passed her a handkerchief and while Professor Cobbleroni dabbed her nose, enquired, “So tell me, what does the Fancy Footwear Foundation have in its collection?”

  Professor Cobbleroni cheered up. “Oh lots! We have the Sleeping Beauty’s wedding shoes and one of Cinderella’s glass slippers. We have a pair of charred bootees that belonged to the witch who made the Gingerbread House. She was one of the last old-fashioned witches, you know, the kind with iron teeth who liked to eat children for breakfast. And, as luck would have it, after I heard about your quest and decided to follow you, I found a fabulous pair of giant’s seven league boots lying out there on the mountainside.”

  Jessica tapped the side of her nose. “They belong to Don Gigantesco actually and he’ll probably come after them – he’s not the kind of giant who gives presents to witches. But seriously, Professor, I have an idea that could make everybody happy.”

  Chapter Eight

  Two columns of witches in their best capes, hats, stripy stockings and shiny footwear stretched all the way along Coven Garden Avenue when Jessica and Miss Strega flew there the very next evening. President Shar Pintake, in her ceremonial jade and purple sash, was standing at the great arched door beneath a huge banner.