Maddy West and the Tongue Taker

by Brian Falkner

  The witch smiled. “My name is rather long and rather old, so I don’t use it very often. My friends call me the Chocolate Witch.”

  Maddy said nothing.

  “I hope you’ll be my friend, Maddy,” the witch said. “I know it will take some time before you trust me, but I’m sure that we’ll eventually be friends.”

  Maddy wasn’t so sure about that, or whether she had been rescued or in fact kidnapped. But it seemed best to be polite — for now at least.

  “Why the Chocolate Witch?” Maddy asked.

  “Because I’m such a sweetie.” The witch laughed.

  The girls both smiled and nodded.

  The witch winked at Maddy and added, “And I do love to eat chocolate.”

  “Me too,” Maddy said, still unsure. The witch seemed nice enough. “Are you honestly a witch?”

  “Of course she’s a witch,” Anka said, as if it was a stupid question.

  The witch stood and stepped away from the table. She clapped her hands together three times, and on the third time, when she opened them, her fingertips began to glitter. A stream of butterflies poured out of the gap between her palms. Colorful, brilliant butterflies, all different shapes and sizes. They circled around the room, brightening it, and making a dizzying kaleidoscope of colors and patterns.

  “Wow!” said Maddy.

  The witch clapped her hands twice more, and the butterflies all turned into white doves, twisting and turning over each other, jostling for space as they flocked around the inside of the room.

  Maddy watched, awestruck. She squealed and ducked her head as one of the doves flew right at her. It didn’t touch her but just passed through her as if it was made of air. Another clap and the doves disappeared.

  “That really was magic!” Maddy said.

  “That was nothing. Just a little bit of conjuring.” The witch smiled.

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” Maddy said, warming to the rather odd woman. “But why do you live in this funny old house? And . . .” She hesitated. “What happened to your hair?”

  “This is my family home,” the witch said. “Although, sadly it is falling into disrepair. The cost of maintaining a house like this is enormous, and to be honest, we are not rich. As for my hair, it is the unfortunate result of a simple spell gone wrong. I was trying to get rid of a few pesky gray hairs. I’m afraid I got rid of a few too many.”

  “I think it’s quite distinctive,” said Anka.

  “Yes, it suits you,” Pavla said, which earned her a sharp glance from her mother.

  “What about Professor Coateloch? Is she a witch too?” Maddy asked.

  “No, Maddy,” the witch said. “But I think she wants to be one. I think that’s why she wanted you to translate The Paths of Ancient Magic.”

  “But you said she was evil. So she wouldn’t be a good witch, would she?”

  “I’m afraid not, Maddy,” the witch said. “She’s not even really a professor, you know.”

  “She’s not?”

  The witch shook her head. “No, she —”

  She was interrupted by the arrival of a scrawny black cat that had slunk into the kitchen behind them. It jumped up onto the table in front of the witch and regarded Maddy for a moment. Its fur was patchy and matted. Like the witch, it had mismatched eyes — one black and one a vivid green. That was a strange coincidence. The cat sniffed in Maddy’s direction, and then curled up on the witch’s lap. The witch stroked it gently, and the cat began to purr, but the sound was not like that of other cats. This purr sounded like fingernails scraping over a cheese grater.

  “How do you know all this about the professor?” Maddy asked.

  “It doesn’t matter how I know,” the witch said. “What matters is that you are safe now.”

  But was she safe? Maddy wasn’t sure what — or who — to believe. She looked at the witch’s daughters who both smiled at her.

  “I want to go home now,” Maddy said.

  “Of course,” the witch said. “You can leave anytime you want, but whatever happens, you cannot let the professor find you. I have a friend in the police force who can take you safely back to Sofia. She will be here soon. But you must not show your face to anyone else. There has not been a tongue talker in the world for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, and there are others, not just the professor, who would use your talents for evil.”

  “A tongue talker?” Maddy asked.

  “That is what you are,” the witch said. “A talker of tongues. A person who can speak or read any language.” The witch stopped talking and regarded Maddy carefully. “It is true, isn’t it, Maddy? You are a tongue talker, aren’t you?”

  “I think so,” Maddy said.

  “Then it is a rare talent you have,” the witch said.

  “Thank you,” Maddy said.

  “Tell her about the old papers,” Anka said.

  “Yeah, tell her about the old papers,” Pavla said.

  The witch shook her head.

  “What old papers?” Maddy asked.

  “Just some old junk we found in the attic,” the witch said. “Some very old papers that used to belong to my mother and, I think, her mother before that. In fact, we’re not sure how old they are.”

  “Old papers?” Maddy said, fascinated.

  “They are written in an ancient language that we can’t understand,” the witch said. “I was just going to throw them out.”

  “I’ll go get them,” Anka said.

  “No, no, I don’t want to bother Maddy with this,” the witch said.

  “Oh please, Mother,” Pavla said, and there was something a little odd about the way she said it, but Maddy couldn’t put her finger on why.

  “My police officer friend will be here any minute,” the witch said. “I don’t think we have time.”

  “That’s okay,” Maddy said. “I’ll have a quick look at them before she arrives.”

  Anka disappeared and returned a moment later with an old leather-bound case that she laid carefully on the table in front of the witch. The witch picked up the cat and put it on the floor. It glared at Maddy, as if somehow it was her fault that it had lost its position on the witch’s lap. It slunk off into a corner and began cleaning itself.

  The witch pulled the case closer, unlocked it, then reached inside and pulled out a rolled up piece of paper. It did look extremely old and not like any paper that Maddy had ever seen before.

  The witch unrolled it and placed it on the table, weighing down the corners with small black stones that she produced from a pocket in her dress.

  “Come and sit here,” the witch said, and Maddy moved to sit beside her.

  “This is one of the papers,” the witch said. “It could be anything. It might be a prayer sheet, or a recipe, or even a letter.”

  It was old, Maddy saw. Much older than the witch had indicated. Maybe much older than the witch knew.

  The letters were similar to the strange squiggles that the professor had shown her. Glagolitic she had called the alphabet.

  “It’s none of those things,” Maddy said, twisting and turning her head to bring the letters into focus.

  “Well, what is it?” the witch asked.

  “It’s a magic spell,” Maddy said.

  For some reason, the witch and her daughters didn’t seem surprised.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE SPELLS

  IT WAS A SPELL, but it was also some kind of recipe, Maddy realized as she read the words on the crumbly paper.

  “It’s a recipe for a thunderstorm,” Maddy said. “A spell to conjure up a storm.”

  “I wondered if they were spells,” the witch said. “My mother was also a witch, and her mother before her. The ‘Recipe for a Thunderstorm’ is a simple child’s spell that all witches learn when they are young.”

  “Really
,” Maddy said.

  “I’d love to hear some of it,” said the witch. “To see if it is the same as the one I was taught.”

  “I’m not sure I should,” Maddy said.

  “Just a little bit,” the witch said. “I can even tell you how it starts. ‘With a pail of ice and a pitcher of warm water . . .’ Am I right?”

  Maddy read the first few lines. She nodded.

  The witch was smiling at her pleasantly, but Anka was glaring at her. Pavla was looking at the floor, the ceiling — anywhere but at Maddy.

  “Just a few words,” the witch said. “The police will be here soon.”

  Maddy read the next few lines out loud.

  “It’s wonderful to hear those old words,” the witch said. “It is the same spell we know today, but somehow the wording seems a little more . . . quaint.” She handed Maddy another roll of paper. “What about this one?”

  “The calling of the animals,” Maddy read aloud without thinking about what she was doing. “If you call a wild animal by its true name, it will come to your bidding. These are the true names of the animals.” She read out a few of them and then stopped. “I’m not really sure I should be doing this.”

  “And this one,” the witch asked, handing her another scroll.

  “I’m sorry,” Maddy said, “but I don’t think I should translate any more spells for you. I hardly know you.”

  “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” the witch said.

  “Absurd,” Anka said.

  “The taking of tongues,” Maddy said eventually, then stopped. The other spells had sounded interesting and not too dangerous. But this did not sound nice. Far from it. “What does it mean, the taking of tongues?”

  “That’s a very long story,” the witch said.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to translate any more spells for you until you tell me,” said Maddy, pushing herself back from the table.

  The witch’s eyes flashed fire, but she took a deep breath and shut them. When she opened them again, they were calm. It reminded Maddy of someone, but she couldn’t think whom.

  “That is not your concern,” the witch said. “I can assure you it is nothing bad.”

  She was lying. Maddy didn’t know how she knew it, but she did. There was a restless excitement in the way the witch was looking at Maddy, then down at the paper, then back to Maddy.

  Anka, too, had drawn closer, captivated somehow by the pieces of paper that lay in front of her. Pavla hovered near the door.

  “I’m sorry,” Maddy said. “But I won’t do any more. I want to talk to my parents and the police first. Then I can come back here another day, if you like, and —”

  “Of course, of course,” the witch said. She was practically salivating, staring at the scrolls. “As soon as we can. But first read me this spell.”

  She was no longer asking, Maddy noted. She was demanding. That made Maddy’s temper start to rise.

  “No, I won’t,” Maddy said. “I didn’t ask to come here, and I want to go home. I’ll take the scrolls with me if you want and —” Her mouth dropped open, suddenly horrified.

  “Just read the first line,” the witch said.

  “These are parchment scrolls! They aren’t yours at all, are they?” Maddy shouted. “You didn’t find them in your attic — they are the scrolls from the monastery! You stole them, and you kidnapped me to translate them for you.”

  The witch said nothing. Neither did her daughters.

  “I won’t,” Maddy said. She stamped her foot on the floor. “I won’t do it. You have to let me go now. I won’t translate any more spells for you.”

  “I think you will,” the witch said, her voice a foreboding, low rasp, not at all like the voice she had been using up until now. Her one green eye seemed to glow, and her long fingernails seemed to stretch out into claws, although that was probably just Maddy’s imagination.

  “I won’t — not even if you turn me into a toad,” Maddy said, wondering why the witch was so desperate to translate the scrolls. What did they contain?

  “A toad?” Anka said. “A toad? I think that is a very good idea, don’t you, Mother?”

  “I won’t be able to translate any spells for you if I am a toad, will I?” Maddy said.

  “Oh, it won’t be you we will turn into a toad,” Anka said. She nodded at Pavla, and they both disappeared into the room next door.

  “I hoped we might be able to do this the nice way,” the witch said, “but you are leaving me with little choice.”

  The girls returned with another person, writhing and struggling in their hands, his mouth covered by a coarse cloth gag.

  “Kazuki!” Maddy cried. “What? How?”

  “Now read that spell or the next time you see your little Japanese friend, it will be on a lily pad, catching flies with his tongue,” Anka snarled.

  Kazuki’s eyes stared out from above the rough material. He looked terrified even though he had no idea what the girl was saying.

  “I’ll count to three,” the witch said.

  Maddy stared at Kazuki in shock. All the anger fizzled out of her. She couldn’t let any harm come to him. Slowly, sadly, Maddy’s eyes dropped toward the dusty old scroll weighed down at the four corners by the witch’s black stones.

  For the first time in her life, the ability to speak another language felt like a burden on her shoulders — a curse instead of a blessing.

  “You’re going to go to jail for this,” Maddy said.

  “Just translate the spell,” Anka hissed.

  “As soon as I get out of here, I’m going to the police, and they’re going to lock you up for a really long time,” Maddy said.

  The witch stabbed a bony finger at the scroll in front of her. “Now,” she said.

  Maddy paused, and then she began unwillingly, “You need a morsel of dragon’s tongue . . .”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  KAZUKI

  THE DOOR TO THE CELLAR shut above them with a thud. The single hanging light bulb shuddered and dim shadows danced across the stone walls.

  For over an hour the witch had forced Maddy to read the spells aloud while she and her daughters copied down the incantations and ingredients. Some were odd recipes, like the recipes for thunderstorms and quicksand. Others were to control plants, or the stars, or the tides. Some made no sense to Maddy at all, but all of them, she was now convinced, were evil. This was the black magic she had been warned about.

  Maddy helped Kazuki pull off his gag, then she wrapped her arms around him and gave him a huge hug. He hugged her back tightly.

  He started to say something, but Maddy pressed her finger to her lips to stop him, waiting until she heard the footsteps at the top of the stairs recede.

  “What are you doing here?” Maddy asked. She wasn’t sure if she should be angry with him, surprised, or relieved that he was okay. “Why did you sneak away from the police at the airport?”

  “I promised you I wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to you,” Kazuki said. “How could I keep that promise if I had gone back to England?”

  Maddy had been going to say something else but stopped. There was a word, she thought, to describe what Kazuki had done, but even with all the languages she could speak, she couldn’t find the right one. The closest she could come up with was “noble.”

  “But how did you get here?” she asked.

  “We had to wait at the airport for a lady from the Japanese Embassy to arrive,” Kazuki said. “And when she came, they were all busy trying to sort out the flights or something, and while they were doing that, I went invisible and just snuck away.”

  Maddy knew that Kazuki didn’t really go invisible, he was just good at not being seen, but she didn’t say anything.

  “I knew you were going to Burgas,” Kazuki continued, “so I found a train that was going there and got on it
while they were all still looking for me.”

  “But you didn’t have a train ticket.”

  Kazuki shook his head. “Nobody asked me for one. But when I got to Burgas I didn’t know what to do next. I couldn’t find out how to get to Sozopol, and I didn’t want to go back to Sofia, so I stayed at the train station. I slept on the floor in a quiet corner where nobody could see me.”

  “That doesn’t sound very comfortable,” Maddy said.

  “It wasn’t,” Kazuki agreed. “It was cold and hard, and I was hungry and thirsty. I knew they must be looking for me. The next morning I saw a police officer, and I was about to go and tell him who I was when I saw that you and the professor were with him. Then I saw those two nasty girls kidnap you.”

  “You saw that?” Maddy said. “Why didn’t you do anything?”

  “I did!” Kazuki said. “I tripped up the big girl just as she got to the car.”

  “That was you?” said Maddy.

  “Yes, but then they caught you again, and I didn’t know what else to do, so I hid in the car.”

  “You were in the car with us?” Maddy was more and more astounded by Kazuki’s talent for not being seen.

  “Yes. While they were chasing you, I climbed into the car and hid under the backseat,” Kazuki said.

  “But I was on the floor, too,” she said.

  Kazuki smiled. “If you had turned around, you would have seen me,” he said. “I was right behind you.”

  “So what happened next?” Maddy asked.

  “I waited in the car until I thought it was quiet outside. But when I opened the door, the spotty-faced girl was right there. I think she got just as big of a scare as I did when the door opened. But she yelled out for the other girl, and they grabbed me. They tied me up and gagged me and locked me in a back bedroom.”

  “They thought they’d use you to get me to do what they wanted,” Maddy said, shaking her head. “And it worked.”

  “I’m sorry, Maddy.” Kazuki looked like he was going to cry.

  Maddy had to take a deep breath so that she didn’t cry too. “You shouldn’t be sorry,” Maddy said. “You are a hero. A real ninja hero.”