Frogspell

by C. J. Busby

  Contents

  Title Page

  An Accidental Spell

  A Vital Ingredient

  Dragon to the Rescue

  Hogsbottom’s Secret

  Encounter with a Wizard

  Schemes and Enchantments

  Kidnapped!

  A Knockout Punch

  The Gagging Spell

  A True Knight

  The Spell-Making Competition

  A Winning Spell

  Copyright

  An Accidental Spell

  The day that Max accidentally discovered the frogspell started like any ordinary day in Castle Perilous. He and his sister, Olivia, were having breakfast late, as usual. Olivia had been trying to teach her pet dragon, Adolphus, a new trick, and Max had been making plans for his new spell. He was still studying his spell book at the dining table while absent-mindedly chewing a sausage, and Olivia was happily enjoying her second bowl of porridge.

  Suddenly their mum, Lady Griselda Pendragon, burst into the dining hall, in a hurry as usual, and tripped over Adolphus.

  “Aaarrrghhh!! Drat that dragon! Max! I need my broomstick! Have you been using it again? You know what Dad said last time.”

  Max looked up from his breakfast. He couldn’t actually remember what Dad had said last time, but he could make a pretty good guess. Sir Bertram Pendragon was a gruff, burly knight with a large moustache and a deep voice. He liked nothing better than a good flagon of ale and a trusty enemy to whack with his big sword, and he wasn’t fond of wizardry. He considered it cheating. He tolerated Lady Griselda’s witchiness and allowed Max to learn a few spells and potions, but he did not at all approve of letting Max ride a broomstick. It was too girly.

  Max sighed. His father had probably threatened to make him sleep in the pigsty if he were ever caught on it again.

  “Max!” said his mother again, loudly. “Did you leave it somewhere?”

  Max considered. He’d certainly used the broomstick recently, because he remembered pushing Olivia into the moat with it when they were pretending to be Sir Gawaine and the Black Knight of Doom.

  He glanced over at his sister. She was wearing a long green dress and looking demure, but it was misleading. She spent most of her time wrestling with the squires or mucking about in the stables. It was a miracle he’d actually managed to push her in the moat – usually it was the other way round. Max was slight for his eleven years, with light brown hair that fell untidily around his freckled face. And he was not particularly well coordinated, so he usually missed any target he was trying to hit.

  Suddenly he remembered where the broomstick was. He’d taken it to fly up to the top of the Bell Tower to rescue Adolphus, who had somehow got himself stuck after chasing the castle cat up there. Then Adolphus had been too scared to sit on the back of the broom so he’d had to carry him all the way back down the winding staircase.

  “I think you’ll find the broom is at the top of the Bell Tower, Mum,” said Max, returning to his toast. “I saw Olivia take it up there when she was playing with her dolls.”

  Olivia looked up from her porridge and opened her mouth to protest that this was absolutely not true – she didn’t even possess a doll – and Max was a slimeball But Mum had gone and all that was left in the kitchen was a trail of green smoke.

  “You are a big fat liar, Max,” said Olivia, flicking a spoonful of porridge at him. He ducked, and kicked her hard under the table.

  “Oww! I’ll get you for that!”

  “Just try,” said Max, getting off his chair and heading for the door. “But it’ll have to be later, because I’m busy this morning. Leave me alone or I’ll turn your face purple with my new spell.” And with that he headed off to the Spell Room, to practise it.

  The Spell Room was in the cellar of the castle, down a steep stone stairway with cobwebs swinging gently from the ceiling. Max loved it down there. It was where he got to experiment with cooking up his own spells and potions, and generally where he escaped to avoid sword practice with his father. Last week Sir Bertram had accidentally whacked off a squire’s fingers while demonstrating a particularly tricky manoeuvre, and although Lady Griselda had managed to magic the fingers back on, Max didn’t fancy being the next victim. He had a better plan.

  In under a week, the Annual Festival of Magic would take place at Castle Camelot, and Max was determined to have perfected a really spectacular bit of magic for the Novices’ Spell-Making Competition. Apart from the prize money of twenty gold coins, winning this might finally prove to Dad that Max was a natural wizard who should forget about knight school and concentrate on spells. So far, Sir Bertram had resisted all Max’s pleas, insisting that he just needed to try harder and he’d make a very decent knight. But Max didn’t like horses at all, and the last time he had tried to skewer the practice dummy with a lance he had almost skewered Sir Bertram instead, who was standing twenty yards away.

  In general, Max was a lot better at spells than he was at horse riding or swordplay. But the annual Novices’ Competition had not been a lucky one for him so far, mainly due to Adrian Hogsbottom, Max’s worst enemy. He couldn’t remember when Snotty Hogsbottom had first proved himself to be the kingdom’s slimiest toadwart, but it was a long time since either of them had had a civil word for the other. The year before last, Snotty had caused the stage to burst into flames just as Max’s carefully controlled firework spell was coming to a triumphant conclusion. Max had been blamed, and Snotty had won. And Max’s freckled face turned pink just thinking about last year’s competition. He’d tried to magic a bucket to carry water from the castle well but it had simply turned itself upside down and crash-landed on the examiner’s head. Snotty had won again. This year he really had to get it right.

  As Max dabbled and mixed and consulted his spell books, a voice floated down the stairwell.

  “Max! I’m off to cook up a spell at Castle Pendennis – Lady Alys wants a beauty potion for the ball tonight Dad’s at the Round Table meeting but Mrs Mudfoot will keep an eye on you.”

  “Yeah, okay,” called back Max, concentrating as he added a scattering of silver dragonfly wings to the cauldron and watched blue steam rise up to the ceiling. Mrs Mudfoot was the castle cook. She had twenty chins and twice as many hairy warts, and was always looking for an excuse to put Max in one of her cooking pots and make him into a tasty stew. He made a mental note to keep well out of her way.

  “Be good – look after Olivia! And don’t cause any trouble!”

  “Yes, yes, fine!” called Max impatiently, waiting for the right moment to add the slivers of river’s root.

  As Mum left, he turned back to the mixture in the cauldron, which was starting to smell like dirty feet. Perfect! As he added the slivers one by one, he didn’t notice Olivia creeping down the stone stairs to lurk in the darkest corner of the cellar.

  When the last sliver of river’s root had been added, the mixture turned purple and started to smell like buttery crumpets.

  “Yes!” Max punched the air, then looked at the spell book again. “Now it’s just the snails’ toenails.” He looked round the room for the jar and spotted a shadow in the corner by the shelves. It looked suspiciously like Olivia. Max moved a bit closer. It was Olivia.

  “Olivia! What are you doing here?! I told you to leave me alone this morning! You’re asking to be spelled!”

  “Yeah, right,” said Olivia, unimpressed. “Like last time, when you tried to make my nose grow onger and all that happened was I sneezed twice. Big scare, Max.”

  Max narrowed his eyes. “For your information, Snotface, I didn’t try to make your nose grow longer, I just said I was going to, so you’d go away. But this time I really will turn you purple if you don’t leave me in peace.”

  “Well, I don’t think that would be a very
good idea seeing as Mum said you had to look after me. And besides, I thought you said something about needing snails’ toenails to finish the spell?” Olivia held up a dark-blue glass jar that she’d been concealing behind her dress and looked smug.

  “Olivia! Give me that!” said Max crossly. Honestly! Olivia was such a pest! All he wanted was a little peace and quiet to finally get this spell right for the competition. It wasn’t much to ask, surely?

  Olivia considered this, looking at the jar in her hands.

  “I’ll give it to you, Max, if you promise to come and show me that disarming manoeuvre Dad taught you yesterday,” she said.

  Max groaned. Sword practice with Olivia was always a painful affair. If he wasn’t skewering his own foot, she was doing it for him. Neither of them was very good – Olivia because she wasn’t actually allowed to use a sword at all, Max because he was just naturally talentless. But Olivia insisted on getting all the practice she could and she was getting relentlessly better.

  “Okay,” he sighed. “Now hand over the jar, quick.”

  He strode across the room to get the jar of snails’ toenails. But as he reached out for it, Olivia spotted his pet rat, Ferocious, poking his head out from the top of Max’s tunic.

  “Max! You’re not allowed to have Ferocious down here! Mum told you!” she said accusingly. “He’s disgusting anyway, he’s probably got fleas…”

  Ferocious, offended, jumped out at Olivia, who fended him off with one hand but missed, and whacked Max instead. Max overbalanced and, throwing out his arms as he fell, swept a tall green jar off the nearby shelf. There was an awful crash, as the jar shattered, and little bouncy balls of bat’s-squeak-breath flew across the room.

  Max, sprawled on the floor, watched in horror as three blue balls bounced right into the cauldron and sank into the purple liquid. There was a moment’s pause, and then

  BANG!

  The contents of the cauldron exploded and dollops of sticky, blue gunk flew around the cellar. One landed on Max, one landed on Olivia and one landed on Ferocious. They barely had time to blink when the room went all shivery and strange and seemed to grow rather larger.

  Olivia was now a purple frog with red spots. Ferocious was a red frog with purple spots. And Max was an extremely angry-looking orange frog with bright blue spots.

  A Vital Ingredient

  There was a shocked silence as the frogs stared at each other.

  “Well that was quite spectacular, wasn’t it?” said Ferocious grumpily. “You two never stop arguing! No wonder things go wrong. And now here I am, horrid and small and slimy – and worst of all – with no tail!”

  “Ferocious – you can talk!” spluttered Max.

  “Of course I can talk!” said Ferocious with scorn. “I always could. It’s just you couldn’t understand me before, because you’re not a rat. And nor am I, any more, thanks to you,” he added, stretching out one webbed foot and looking at it gloomily.

  “Well,” said Olivia, recovering rapidly from the shock of being small, fat and purple. “You seem to have actually done a spell, Max. Blow me down with a puff of bat’s-squeak-breath. Now what are you going to do?”

  Max put his head on one side and considered.

  “Well personally, I think you look much better as a frog, Olivia, so I’m not sure I’ll be doing anything. And besides, it’s your fault the wrong stuff got in the spell, so maybe it’s you that should be doing something.”

  Olivia narrowed her eyes and was about to give Max a piece of her mind, when a small fly buzzed past. In a blink, her tongue whipped out and pulled the fly in and her mouth shut on it like a trap. She chewed thoughtfully.

  “Wow, I can’t believe you just did that!” said Max, awed.

  “Mmm,” Olivia licked her lips. “Neither can I. But it was delicious. Like a flying strawberry ice cream.”

  Max looked round to see if he could spot another. Once you started to look, with super-enhanced, fly-spotting frog-vision, you could see they were everywhere. Soon Max and Olivia were snapping up flies like experts and discussing whether they tasted more of strawberry ice cream or blueberry crumble.

  “Erhem! When you two have quite finished” said Ferocious after a few minutes. “Maybe we could get back to the issue of HOW WE GET CHANGED BACK! I don’t want to spend the rest of my life as a frog. I liked being a rat.”

  Max regretfully let a particularly juicy-looking fly escape and turned to Ferocious.

  “I don’t know. I suppose I could look in my spell book – but as far as I know, no one has ever found a spell to turn people into frogs before, so there’s not likely to be a spell to turn them back.”

  “I thought people got turned into frogs all the time?” said Olivia, surprised.

  “No, that’s just in fairy stories,” said Max scornfully.

  “Oh, great,” said Ferocious. “I’m a frog, and it’s not even a spell anyone knows anything about because it’s never been done before. Great.”

  But Max was not listening. He was standing completely still, running over what he’d just said in his head. No one’s ever found a spell to turn people into frogs before. No one’s ever…

  “That’s it!” he spluttered.

  “A reversal spell?” said Olivia hopefully.

  “No, idiot! I’ve invented a new spell! No one’s ever done it before! I’m going to win the Novices’ Spell-Making Competition! I’m going to beat Snotty Hogsbottom!! And Dad will have to let me train to be a wizard and stop all this stupid knight nonsense! I’m made! I’ll be famous!”

  “Except no one will know it’s you who’s won and you won’t be allowed to enter anyway, because in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re now a frog,” Ferocious pointed out.

  Max came back to earth with a squelch. Ferocious was right. He couldn’t enter the Novices’ Competition as a frog. And he could only imagine what Mum and Dad would say if they returned to find their children gone without a trace and three multicoloured frogs in their place. How could he change them back? He needed a plan.

  “I suppose we could look in the spell book,” he said at last. “There might be some kind of general reversal spell.”

  The three frogs hopped across the flagstones to where the spell book lay open on the floor. Turning the stiff, yellowed pages with webbed feet was not the easiest task. Reading the words was even more difficult. Frog-vision might be fabulous for picking out flies in a dark cellar, but words just looked like blurry squiggles.

  “I think this one says something about a reversal spell,” said Olivia, sticking her tongue out in concentration.

  “Don’t ask me,” said Ferocious. “I couldn’t read as a rat and definitely can’t as a frog. It’s down to you two.”

  Max pored over the spell. Olivia was right, there was something there.

  “A General Reversal Spell for Most Charms and Hexes,” he read slowly. “That might do it! What are the ingredients?”

  “Cobweb fronds, rose-tinted sunset powder, ground hedgehog spines and – er – black peppercorns,” said Olivia, squinting.

  “Black peppercorns?!” said Max in horror. “But they’re kept in the kitchen!”

  Olivia’s round frog’s eyes looked at him sympathetically.

  “Oh dear, Max. In the kitchen. But seeing as you’re the one that got us into this mess, I guess that means…

  “Nooooo!” howled Max. “I can’t! I’ll have to get past Mrs Mudfoot, and she’s bound to put me in a stew or squish me into frog jam or worse”

  “Tough,” said Ferocious decisively. “You need to be a boy, I want to be a rat, and fetching as your sister looks in purple with red spots, your parents won’t be best pleased if she stays that way. Face it, Max, it’s for the greater good.”

  ***

  Max crept along the corridor leading to the kitchen, staying as close as he could to the damp grey stone walls and hoping the shadows made his bright orange colouring a little less noticeable. The heavy oak door to the kitchen was half open and behind it he coul
d hear Mrs Mudfoot muttering to herself.

  “Namby pamby vegetable soup, huh Need some nice cows’ brains in there, give it a bit of flavour…”

  Max poked his head round the door. He could see a large bottom poking up in the air as the cook bent over to pick up bunches of muddy carrots from the basket at her feet. Her long grey skirts hung in grimy folds and he could see her meaty hands grabbing two bunches from the pile. He really didn’t want to get anywhere near those hands…

  “Wash ’em, she says, when the mud’s the only bit with any taste. Fussy beggars, bit of mud never hurt anyone…”

  She turned to the sink and dipped the carrots in some water for the blink of an eye, then dumped them on the long wooden table and began to chop them with a huge meat cleaver. Chop! Chop! Chop!

  With each chop, Max flinched. He crept round the door and tiptoed (as much as he could with webbed feet) into the shadow of the big spice cupboard. This was where the pepper would be. Nearly there now. All well so far.

  He swallowed. Who was he kidding? The most difficult part was still to come.

  Checking that Mrs Mudfoot was still occupied with the carrots, Max glanced up at the spice cupboard. Which drawer would have peppercorns? He hopped closer and looked at the label on the nearest drawer. ‘Mustard Seed’ it said, in neat black writing. It was at the bottom of the cupboard, near the floor. Just above was ‘Saffron’, and across from that was ‘Frog’s Legs’. Max shuddered. And then he spotted it. The pepper drawer Right at the top of the cupboard, in full sight of Mrs Mudfoot’s gleaming black eyes…

  Max nearly gave up there and then. He really couldn’t see any way he was going to get to that drawer, let alone get it open, get the peppercorns out and escape from the kitchen without being squished into a frog pancake or put in the soup to give it some flavour. He sighed. Maybe he would be better off just heading for the castle pond and making friends with the other frogs. He could spend the rest of his life happily jumping from lily pad to lily pad and eating apple-crumble-flavoured insects. But the thought of Snotty Hogsbottom winning the Spell-Making trophy for the third year running was too much to bear. Max had to get those peppercorns.