Caliburn had begged him not to involve Wish in all this trouble, but Xar had said he would just sneak in and take back the Spelling Book without her realizing. Everything had initially gone to plan. He had gotten through the Wall by the simple trick of approaching the gate wearing Queen Sychorax’s hooded cloak, which he had stolen from her six months ago. Queen Sychorax made a habit of wearing these spectacular cloaks that didn’t show her face, so she could come and go through her own Wall without people recognizing her. Xar passed through the gate unchallenged by the sentries, the sprites hidden underneath the folds of fabric.
It took a while for them to find Wish, creeping through the corridors of the fort, using invisibility spells and lurking in quiet corners.
When Wish and Bodkin had run out of the schoolroom, they had been followed by an invisible Xar and his sprites. Xar had tripped Wish up at the bottom of the stairs, so that the Once-sprite and Squeezjoos could search her pockets for the Spelling Book, but once they were in the courtyard, all the surrounding iron had turned them both visible, and by the time Wish had reached the Royal Stage it didn’t seem a very good moment for the sprites to escape.
Tiffinstorm and Hinkypunk were all for leaving Wish to fend for herself when the Witchsmeller accused her of being a Witch.
But Xar was determined to stick to his resolution to be good. He couldn’t abandon Wish… particularly when it was his sprites in her pockets that had gotten her into trouble.
So he made his invisible charge at the Witchsmeller… only to be tackled around the legs by Bodkin the bodyguard, who mistook Xar’s drawn sword for the talon of a Witch.
But this was all news to Wish, who hadn’t realized any of this was going on.
Saving me? Sabotaged his mission? What IS Xar talking about?
Blink! Blink! Blink! Blink! Blink! Blink! Out of nowhere, six sprites came blinking into visibility, and then—Blink! Blink! Blink!—three smaller lights of the hairy fairies.
Wish had been missing these sprites so badly, and at any other time she’d have been thrilled to see them, but right now…
“I have to say, I don’t want to be unwelcoming, but this is a really, really bad moment for you to drop by,” said Wish.
This was the understatement of the Iron Age.
The effect of a Wizard boy, a talking raven, six sprites, and three hairy fairies rapidly appearing in an iron Warrior fort full of blood-crazy Magic-hunters who have already been whipped into a Witch-finding frenzy by a barking mad Witchsmeller is a rather similar one to that of a large plump juicy chicken with ten dear little yellow fluffy baby chicks suddenly appearing in the middle of a pack of ravenous wolves who’ve had a bit of a lean streak lately.
“A WIZARD and its WITCH COMPANIONS!” shrieked the Witchsmeller.
(He really couldn’t ever have seen a real Witch if he thought a Witch looked like Squeezjoos, but the other Magic-hunters weren’t in a mood to be picky about their species identification so they all joined in joyfully.)
“GET THEM!” they cried.
Now, this was a crisis.
Queen Sychorax’s Warriors might rush to stop the Magic-hunters from seizing their unsatisfactory little princess, but they weren’t going to do the same for Xar. Indeed they might even join in. After meeting him six months ago, Xar wasn’t exactly top of Queen Sychorax’s Midwinter’s End Eve present list.
Yes, it was most definitely a crisis.
But Wish, though she didn’t look much like her mother, did in fact have a few things in common with Queen Sychorax.
She was rather good in a crisis. Cool. Collected. Tricky, if by tricky you mean clever.
In that split second when it became apparent that Xar might be killed if she didn’t come up with a pretty nifty solution right now, Wish reviewed her options.
She was a bit hampered by the fact that no one had taught her how to use her Magic properly, so these choices were a little limited.
She could take her eyepatch off entirely.
That would make the castle fall down, which would create a diversion, but would also be dangerous and a little messy.
She could use the Spelling Book to do a spell of invisibility or transformation.
But Bodkin had the Spelling Book, and it would take way too much time for him to retrieve it, carefully hidden as it was beneath many layers of body armor.
Or… she could cast a spell that she had seen someone do before, so she could copy it.
Wish thought back to six months ago, when Tiffinstorm had cast the spell that made Xar’s bedroom door shrug out of its frame like an old man shrugging out of his jacket, and turned it into a flying door so that they could escape from Wizard fort.
She wriggled up her eyepatch, just a tiny, tiny smidgeon and looked up toward the Tower of Education. She imagined the door of the Punishment Cupboard (she knew that door well) gently shrugging out of its door frame in the same way as Xar’s bedroom door had done. She spelled out the word that Tiffinstorm had said as she cast the spell: M-O-U-V-E…
Luckily, Magic did not seem to care about the exact positioning of the letters. Indeed, it seemed to positively LIKE creativity in the spelling department. It invigorated the Magic, like adding oxygen in some kind of chemical experiment.
As the Magic-hunters thundered toward them, swords drawn, shouting, “KILL THE WITCHES—”
BOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Above their heads, the broken door of the Punishment Cupboard EXPLODED out of the top window of the Tower of Education and rocketed at breathtaking speed, neck-height across the courtyard. Everybody had to stop charging toward Xar and the sprites-misidentified-as-Witches and throw themselves on the ground for fear of being decapitated.
The Witchsmeller rubbed his eyes and stared upward at the door sailing up into the air and turning back around again for another dive.
“What’s that?” whispered the Witchsmeller in a hollow voice of disbelief.
“It seems to be a door, sir,” said his sergeant smartly.
“I know it’s a door, idiot!” spat the Witchsmeller. “But what is it doing flying through the air like a bird?”
The door came to a screeching, manic, hovering halt in front of Xar and Wish.
“The Wizard boy’s kidnapping me!” shouted Wish, grabbing Xar by the arm and dragging him onto the door. The sprites, already finding it difficult to fly because of all the iron around, threw themselves down on the door beside them.
Xar grinned. “Quick thinking, Princess.”
Neither he nor the sprites could make this door fly themselves, because the door had iron hinges and an iron lock.
“How do I make it work?” panicked Wish. She’d never driven a flying door before.
“Use the key!” advised Caliburn.
Without thinking, Wish put her hand on the key, and then moved her arm back sharply, as if she had been stung, as the head of the key moved like a mouth, asking: “Where would you like to go?” in its cozy, creaky, upbeat little voice.
“Up…” said Wish. “We want to go UP!”
She put her hand on the key again a little more cautiously this time and moved it gently upward, and the door went shrieking up into the air so wildly that all of them nearly fell off.
“We have to go back for Bodkin!” yelled Wish. “We can’t leave him there—my mother is hopping mad, and she’ll say it’s all his fault for not looking after me!”
“HA!” said Xar. “Do we have to? He does kind of get in the way. If it wasn’t for Bodkin interfering, I’d have SMOOSHED that horrible guy with the sniffing nose…”
“Er… I’s thinks that Bodkin might have the Spelling Book, Boss,” wheezed Squeezjoos. “It wasn’t in Wisssh’s pockets…”
“We go back for Bodkin!” said Xar, punching the air.
Wish slammed the Enchanted Key to the right and the door of the Punishment Cupboard veered violently around in a circle and made a great swooping dive back down again, sending everyone who was beginning to get up BACK onto their stomachs
for the second time.
Xar and Wish both had to lean over and drag Bodkin onto the door, such was the heaviness of his armor.
“Nobody shoot, or the princess will die!” shouted Wish over the side of the door as it sailed up into the air, a little shakily because of Bodkin’s weight, and swooped backward and forward over the crowd.
The only person still standing on the Royal Stage was Queen Sychorax. She would have DIED rather than throw herself on her stomach.
Nonetheless, she was rattled, really rattled.
The situation had gotten thoroughly out of hand.
She waved her sword up at the door shouting, not with her usual cool, for Queen Sychorax had lost her temper, “COME DOWN IMMEDIATELY, WISH! A Warrior princess does not fly about on the back of doors! A Warrior princess does not allow herself to get kidnapped!”
“Oh dear, she really is angry,” said Wish, peering over the edge of the door. “I’m so glad we didn’t leave you down there with her, Bodkin…
“You’re right, you don’t ALLOW yourself to be kidnapped, Mother!” Wish shouted back down. “A kidnapping just happens…”
But Queen Sychorax was not fooled. She knew perfectly well who was kidnapping whom.
“DO NOT, ON ANY ACCOUNT, LEAVE THE SAFETY OF THIS FORT!” commanded Queen Sychorax. “DO NOT, ON PAIN OF MY MOST SEVERE DISPLEASURE, GO OVER THAT WALL!”
Take the usual look of disappointment on Queen Sychorax’s face when she looked at her daughter, then times that by about TEN, and you’ll have an idea of what Queen Sychorax looked like as she gazed up at Wish and her disreputable companions lying on their stomachs on the back of the flying door.
“I’m so sorry, Mother!” said Wish guiltily. “Don’t worry! I’ll be right back, I promise I will!”
And then the door of the Punishment Cupboard sailed UP, UP, and away…
Over the battlements…
And on toward Queen Sychorax’s Wall.
Queen Sychorax gave a sigh of fury and resignation. Maddening though her daughter might be, she really did not want her shot down.
She called up to the sentry on the Tower of Education. “Nobody shoot down the door! The princess is going over the Wall!”
And the astonished cry went up from sentry to sentry, and tower to tower, all along the fortifications and the battlements of Queen Sychorax’s Great Wall.
“Orders of the queen! Nobody shoot down the door!”
The Wall of Queen Sychorax was supposed to be impregnable, unclimbable, unbreachable by Witches and everything Magic. The arrow-hands of those sentries were absolutely itching to shoot that door down as it sailed majestically and a little erratically over their heads, particularly when Xar leaned over the side of it and gave them all a cheeky wave.
But they were all far too scared to disobey orders.
Queen Sychorax watched it go. She closed her eyes for a second as the door lurched wildly this way and that, went into nosedives several times, before flying on, on, over the forest.
With her clumsy little daughter in charge, it really was going to be a miracle if they made it for more than five minutes through that forest without crashing.
But among all the anger in Sychorax’s face there was the blink of an emotion much more unusual for her.
Fear.
For she knew now that her daughter was in real and terrible danger.
Tap tap tap… went Queen Sychorax’s furious little foot on the Royal Stage as the Witchsmeller and his Magic-hunters got cautiously to their feet, looking as though they felt a little at a disadvantage, for the queen was the only one who had stayed standing throughout.
Queen Sychorax’s Warriors remained where they were, curled up like hedgehogs, their arms over their heads, for they knew that their queen was about to speak her mind and it was better to lie low until she had.
Queen Sychorax narrowed her eyes.
And then she struck, every single word a snakebite, dripping with poisonous sarcasm and contempt.
“I hold you entirely responsible for this mess, you miserable little pest controller!” flashed Queen Sychorax. “Thanks to your pathetic inability to follow orders and do your job, MY DAUGHTER has left the protection of MY castle and has been carried off into terrible danger! Because OUT THERE, beyond MY Wall, are REAL LIVE Witches, not that you would know one if it bit you on the nose, and those real live Witches are going to be chasing my daughter and trying to kill her! And this is ALL… YOUR… FAULT!”
The Witchsmeller’s mouth opened and shut.
And then he drew himself up and put his finger in the air for full scariness. He trembled with indignation. He had never met a woman so dreadful in all his life. “None of this is my fault. It is you who is in big trouble, Queen Sychorax! You tried to cover up the fact that your daughter is an extremely dangerous ‘FULE’ and is fraternizing with evil Magic elements!”
“She was kidnapped!” said Queen Sychorax. “And there’s no such thing as a ‘FULE,’ you unbalanced ignoramus!”
Shaking with fury, the Witchsmeller whirled around to face his Magic-hunters in a swoop of cloak, the Sprite-heads around his neck rattling against the giants’ toenails.
“AFTER THEM!” yelled the Witchsmeller. “MAGIC-HUNTERS, ONTO YOUR HORSES! FAIRY-CATCHERS, HAVE YOUR NETS READY! GIANT-KILLERS, SHARPEN YOUR AXES! WE WILL HUNT… THEM… DOWN!”
The Witchsmeller vaulted onto the back of his horse, and with terrible cries, the hunt poured out of the castle gates.
The Enchanted Door was so small in the distance now that it was beginning to disappear into that great dark greenness. After it raced the Magic-hunt, raving Dogwolves barking, as mad and out of control as if they had seen a fox, and the insane scream of the Witchsmeller at the front, his cloak flying behind him as they charged after the door and into the forest.
I don’t know if you have ever seen a hunt in full cry, but it is a truly terrifying sight.
“That hunt is going to tear Wish to pieces when it catches up with her,” said Drama with satisfaction.
“It most certainly will not,” said Queen Sychorax grimly. “For I will reach the Witchsmeller first. Warriors!” She stamped on the Royal Stage, once, twice. “Up and on your feet! Saddle up my hunting horse! There’s no time to lose! We have a princess to catch!”
7. On the Other Side of the Wall
As they approached Queen Sychorax’s unbreachable, impregnable, invincible Wall, Xar let out a long crow of triumph.
“I did it!” cried Xar, punching the air.
“You mean, we did it!” Wish corrected him.
“Which way now?” asked the Enchanted Key chattily.
“I’ve never seen an enchanted object that talked before,” said Xar.
“I don’t know what I’m doing!” replied Wish, slightly hysterically. “I don’t mean to bring things to life at all!”
Wish was struggling to keep control of the flying door. It had looked so easy when Xar did it six months ago. But somehow the door, when she was enchanting it, seemed to be going way too fast, and zigzagging out of control all over the place…
A bit like Wish’s emotions.
Wish knew she should be feeling horrified, and anxious. She knew that Warrior princesses really shouldn’t fly on the back of doors in the company of Wizards. She had tried so hard to be a Warrior princess, to concentrate on all the maths-work, and the sword-work, and the letter-work.
But the truth was, in her heart of hearts, she was absolutely fed up to the back teeth with trying to work out whether “i” went before “e” or what happened when you took “x” from “y,” and whether she should be getting Madam Dreadlock’s homework to the schoolroom or the stables because it was every second Thursday.
Of course she was scared and sad that her mother was going to be so disappointed, and so angry.
But part of her was just absolutely thrilled to be back in the adventure of it, soaring high, high, over the battlements… high, higher still to get over Queen Sychorax’s Wall, the wind
blowing her hair back. Oh my goodness, they were really going to get over it! Peering over the edge of the door, she could see the little figures of the Warrior sentries, shouting but not shooting up at them, way, way down below…
Her heart beat fast… They were over the Wall! The great forest stretched out for miles and miles like an enormous green carpet in every direction, full of excitement and possibilities of danger.
The peril was instant, for the out-of-control door was sinking fast, and Bodkin pointed to the tiny distant figures of the Magic-hunters, pouring out of the gates of the fort. They had to get as far away as possible if they were not going to be caught very quickly.
“Bodkin!” ordered Wish. “Take off your armor! It’s weighing us down!”
And as Bodkin threw away breastplate after breastplate, spears, swords, leg-protectors, arm-protectors, and they fell down into the forest below, the nose of the door lifted, and though it became no slower—in fact it even sped up—it became easier to control. Wish’s heart lifted too.
The Enchanted Door shot over the forest canopy as fast as a speeding arrow, and Wish thought joyfully, They’ll never catch us now! Or… not tonight, at least…
They zoomed over the Ragged River, and on, on and beyond, out of Queen Sychorax’s territory, out of the boringness of real life and Punishment Cupboards and horrible stepsisters, and into the drama and excitement of the Wizard wildwoods.
However, once they were away from Queen Sychorax’s territory and flying above the forest, Wish’s elation died. For there was something odd about the land she was looking down on, something different from the last time she had flown over it. Normally there was the friendly smoke of wandering giants moving slowly across the countryside, or the bonfires from the Wizard camps, or great swarms of chattering sprites migrating south, or north, depending on the season. Now there was not a breath of smoke, not a sound.
The forest was weirdly quiet, and worst of all were the sinister blackened circles cut into the woods, like a child had torn into them with a wicked pair of scissors.
“Oh my goodness…” whispered Wish. “This has all been done by…”
Twice Magic Page 6