by Em Lynas
“FAILURE TO CHOOSE HAS RESULTED IN – NO CHOICE.”
The flagstones tip again. Oh dungpats! This place is ANNOYING! The centre rises. We slide. Jess holds on to me. I hold on to Shalini but Shalini has one leg on our triangle and one on the next one and she loses her balance and I can’t hold her and we all fall and she tumbles towards the blue door as we tumble towards the yellow one.
“No!” I shout. “Not the singing! Anything but the singing!”
Shalini shouts, “Twink! Just screeeeeeeech—”
We are tipped in and the horribly screechy sound she’s making is cut off as both doors slam and we are trapped in the singing room and she is trapped in the blue room and we are NOT TOGETHER!
“Shalini!” I shout, as if she will hear me. “What do we sing?”
There is no answer. Shalini is all alone facing whatever must be faced BY HERSELF! I turn around. This room is totally empty apart from me and Jess. No spiders, no scarabites, no vernicious veraptors. Yet. The granite walls, floor and ceiling are cracked, like a frozen puddle that’s been stamped on.
“ATTENTION, WITCHES. YOUR VOICE IS THE KEY TO DEFEATING THIS ROOM.”
I am experiencing severe annoyance. It’s no wonder Greats-Grandma Ursula fell out with Greats-Grandma Marietta. It’s no wonder she banished her from the school. She must have turned into a nightmare witch. Evil witch. Demon witch.
We wait for doom to strike. The room continues to be empty. I have a feeling of anticipation as we stand with our backs to the door. This is not a feeling of joyful anticipation. It is a feeling of dreadful anticipation. Which is bigger than scared and slightly less than terrified.
“What’s it waiting for?” says Jess. She’s scanning the room with her witchwood spoon in her hand. I think she’s acting calm. Or maybe she is calm.
“I don’t know but I don’t like it,” I whisper back. The whole room creaks and the cracks widen. “I think something’s behind the walls. Trying to push its way through.”
“I’m guessing that would be the Qwibbling Quitch,” says Jess.
“If your witch skill is your voice,
Then enter here, make your choice.
Find a song, a note, or pitch.
To defeat the Qwibbling Quitch.”
“Or what?” I say. “What happens in this room if we fail?”
“Death,” says Jess but she’s grinning. Why is she grinning?
We both jump at a crack from the corner on the left and a lump of granite falls to the floor with a thump and a little cloud of dust. I say my least favourite words.
“Uh-oh.”
Summary:
I can stop anticipating something dreadful happening because something is ac-chew-ally happening and the chances of it being dreadful are HIGH.
There’s a tiny green shoot growing from the crack in the corner.
“Uh-oh,” I say again. There’s another thump as another lump of granite falls to the floor and another shoot appears. The shoots grow thicker. More push their way through. The cracks widen. Granite falls. I would step back if I could but, as previously mentioned, our backs are against the door. Which is not a good place to be because the walls on each side are cracking and crumbling and green tendrils are snaking sideways towards us! We jump away. Into the room. We are surrounded.
The plant is growing like ivy, spreading out, weaving into a tangle. The shoots turn into stems. The stems grow leaves and flower buds. It’s like a time-lapse film on a nature programme, from seed to sunflower in sixty seconds. Only this plant is no sunflower. The leaves are like nettle leaves, green and spiky around the edges. The flowers are like little silver stars twinkling in a dark-green sky.
“They’re so pretty,” says Jess.
“And probably deadly,” I say. I remember how lumpy Dominique’s hand was and how she was scratching. “We need to control it while it’s still small. Before it attacks. We have to sing.”
We have to sing is obviously a daft thing to say as Jess and I both have the sort of voice that annoys and irritates the plants in the garden, unlike Shalini who has the sort of voice that can calm even the biggest and fiercest vernicious veraptor.
“But what?” I say. “If it likes lullabies we’re doomed.”
Jess seems remarkably calm. Why is Jess remarkably calm?
“So,” she says slowly, like this – soooooo. “Would Ms Lobelia class this situation as an emergency? A life and death situation? A no-other-choice scenario?”
Now I know why she’s grinning! “Yes!” I say. I grin too. “She most definitely would!”
“I thought so,” she says. She is now calm and confident. She aims her witchwood spoon at the biggest tangle. “Then this challenge will be easy-peasy. I shall defeat the Quibbling Quitch with the Weedkiller Note Of Death.”
She takes a deep breath, breathing in until I think her lungs must be about to burst. She releases the deep vibrations of the weedkiller note.
“Eeeooooooowwwwwaaaaaaahhhhhh.”
The plant shudders. It backs away. I think it’s working. The starry flowers jingle against each other as if they’re little bells made of real silver. It’s a cross sound. An angry sound. A sound of fury. Maybe it isn’t working.
“Eeeeeooooooowwwwwaaaaaahhhhhh.”
“I think you’re annoying it,” I say.
“No, I’m definitely killing it,” she says. “Watch.” She sucks in another enormous breath and aims the note at the tangle growing towards her feet.
“Eeeeeoooooooooowwwwwaaaaaaaahhhh.”
The plant squirms and quivers and shudders as if someone’s thrown icy water over it. Suddenly, sharp pointy stings spring from the edges of the leaves, like cats’ claws. Ready to scratch.
Oh dungpats. The stings are qwibbling with crossness!
“Jess! I think you’ve just nettled it! I rename this plant The Stinger! Ms Lobelia’s weedkiller note obviously doesn’t work on Marietta’s plants.” The silver jingling from the flowers is tingling my eardrums. The plant doubles in size.
Jess stops singing and her calm confidence is replaced by PANIC. “But that means we’re DOOMED!” she says. “We can’t possibly sing properly. That will annoy it even more.”
Shoots are growing. Buds are budding. Flowers are blooming and filling the room with jangling jingles.
“Maybe it likes a particular type of song, like Vernon liked his lullabies,” I say. “Or…” I have an idea and it might be an idea of genius, maybe not. “It might like old songs. Songs that Marietta would have liked.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” says Jess. “I shall just consult my journal of medieval melodies. Which I do not own!”
“We can make one up,” I say. I launch into song and aim my spoon. “With a hey nonny nonny and a fiddle dee dee, I shall sing a song and thee’ll obey me. Relent and yield to my tuneful tune … as my words doth cut and my voice doth prune. With a hey nonny noo and a prancing dance, we will win the trial and escape … perchance.” I leap about in a silly dance to emphasise the words.
The plant stops shuddering and I think I’m on a winner.
Jess joins in with the singing and the dancing. “Methinks, nonny, nonny, this plant doth be a fool, nonny, wonny, bonny, zonny, dee dah … drool.”
Growing has ceased. I feel hopeful so I continue.
“Thou wilt wither and fade away, Jess and Twinkle will be happy and gay.”
“Nonny, nonny,” adds Jess. “Uh-oh.”
The uh-oh of doom is not part of the song.
“Twink,” she says. “The Stinger’s growing things.”
It is. The Stinger is growing nippers, like crabs’ nippers.
“Oh dungpats!” I rename it. “It’s a Stingernipper. Jess, look out! Ouch!” It’s crept up behind us and stung my leg. An itchy lump immediately swells up under my tights. It’s as big as a grape.
“I don’t think it does like the Shakespeare song,” she says, dodging a nipper. “I think it was fooling us.” She twizzles her spoon. “Witchwood, witch
wood, do the deed. Change to be what I now need.” Her spoon turns into a wide rake and she pushes the plant back against the walls. The jingling turns angry and clusters of dark-red buds double in size wherever she pushes.
“I don’t like the look of that,” I shout.
The plant is filling the room. It’s growing over our heads! It’s tangling together like the tangle of plants in the Garden of Doom.
Jess knocks the stingernipper down with her rake. It reacts badly. The buds burst open all around us revealing sticky black berries. They’re the size of pearls but they’re inflating like balloons. The black berry skin stretches and stretches and stretches. Bigger than a grapefruit. Bigger than a melon. Bigger than a pumpkin!
I grab Jess. “I think they’re going to pop!” I push my spoon into the air and cry, “By the power of the witchwood, by the power of the spoon. I create a bubble with the writing of this rune!” I scribble the stickman rune in the air.
A bubble of safety forms around us just as the berries burst. SPLAT! The bubble is splattered by sticky, steaming, hissing blackberry juice. Not the tasty blackberry juice that Granny Wart makes. Not the sort of sticky blackberry juice you might find in a pie. This is like blackberry juice with added gloop. Blackberry juice from The Dimension of Disgusting.
“Good timing,” says Jess. We hold on to each other so we don’t break the bubble spell. She turns her rake back into a spoon and points it towards a stingernipper leaf trying to push its nippers through the magical shield. “Now what?”
I have no idea! We are completely trapped inside the bubble of safety with no way out and no plan for escape and bonding with Ms Thorn is now an IMPOSSIBILITY!
A huge shudder passes through the stingernipper, shaking the leaves and flowers.
“What was that?” says Jess.
The stingernipper is shaking. As if something is pushing though the tangle of plant that it is now tangling in on itself and filling every inch of untangled space in the room until there is no more space to fill!
The bubble squeaks under the pressure. Stingers scratch across the surface like extra-pointy fingernails specially sharpened to create extra annoyance. The air feels heavy, as if it’s being squashed, like being deep under the sea with the weight of the water pressing down. Not that I have been deep under the sea with the weight of the water pressing down but I imagine it and I don’t like it.
A pointy sting stabs right through the bubble and I screech a high-pitched, terror-filled screechy sound because I do not want to be stung to death.
“Eeeeeek!”
The sting turns to dust, leaving a tiny hole. The dust falls on Jess’s nose. She wipes it off and inspects her fingers.
“What’s this?” she says.
“A possible solution!” I say. Another stinger pokes through. I screech again but this time I screech higher. I screech like Shalini screeched as she slid through the blue door.
“Screeeeeeeech!”
The stinger turns to dust and I laugh with relief. “We just have to screeeeeeeeech like Shalini screeeeched!” I screech again as two more stingers poke their stings through. They turn to powder. The bubble is cloudy with dust.
“Then let’s do it,” says Jess. She lets go of my arm, breaking the bubble, and we are in the middle of the furious stingernipper and I “Screeeeeeeech!” because I am TERRIFIED!
Jess joins in.
“Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech!”
The stingernippers retreat. We stand back to back and aim the screech. The stings disintegrate and the plant shrivels. The flowers shatter like crystal and the leaves curl in on themselves.
“It’s wooor-kiiiiiiing,” sings Jess, as if she’s in an opera. “The leaves are shriiiiiiii-vel-iiiing.”
I answer her, “This makes me haaaa-pppeeeeeeee because we are wiiiiin-iiiiiiiiiiiiing!” The Stingernipper doesn’t like the high iiiiii notes. So I sing more. My throat feels tight. My neck is stretched. My mouth is open wide, like the time I went to the doctors with a sore throat and I had to say ah for far too long.
The plant on my side is retreating, back through the cracks. I stop screeching. It keeps retreating. We’ve won!
Jess screeches another “iiiiii”. It’s an impressive screech but really it’s more like a scream.
She does it again, followed by, “TWINK, LOOK!”
I turn around. She’s doing a look from The Big Book of UH-OHS!
Summary:
The look from The Big Book of UH-OHS! is not my favourite look and, as previously mentioned, the word LOOK is not my favourite word because in the current tragedy that is my life the word LOOK is never followed by … at your new cute puppy … at your giant sticky cherry pie … at your BAFTA and your OSCAR.
I look. There are eight enormous spider legs wriggling from a crack in the ceiling. They are as long as Ms Thorn’s legs! A hairy body is attempting to squeeze through after them. It’s squishing. And squashing. And squirming. It suddenly drops down in front of us then bounces back up, like a bungee-jumping scary spider, which is exactly what it is! It bounces back down and we are face to face. Although its face is upside down and mine is not.
“Twink!” says Jess. “It’s SCARY!”
“I know!”
This is not a description. Well, ac-chew-ally it is a description but it’s a name too. It’s the name of the Toadspit Terror that almost ATE ME as I tried to escape my destiny! And now it’s going to DO IT AGAIN! Things are much, much worse than they were a moment ago. MUCH WORSE.
Scary is making the thrumming sound from the potions room but BIGGER. It’s like this: thruuuummmmmm. It reaches into my heart and makes it wobble. It vibrates along the thread he’s dangling from and through the hole in the ceiling.
He’s watching us with his weird, fractured eyes. We are reflected in bits, like a Picasso painting where all the pieces of the people are there but they’re all in the wrong place.
I wait for the attack. The nip. The bite. The crunch. It doesn’t come.
He’s wiggling his belly, spinning a thread. He catches it with his feet and spins it round and round.
“Uh-oh,” says Jess. “I think he’s about to cocoon us. What shall we do?!”
“I don’t know!” I can’t think through the terror. I am frozen. Not cold. Stuck. I am mesmerised by his spinning. He’s spinning a thing. A solid thing. He’s turning and twirling it, adding more and more silk. Round and round and round it goes.
Jess flicks her spoon and mutters the changing spell. Her spoon changes into a giant fly swatter. She aims it.
“Keep back, Scary,” she says. She swipes the swatter at him. He ignores her.
“Jess.” I pull on her arm before she can swat him again. She brushes me off.
“JESS! NO!”
I grab the swatter out of her hands.
“LOOK,” I say and at last it’s a LOOK that is a GOOD LOOK. “Look at the thing he’s making.”
Scary has stopped spinning. The thing he’s spun is hanging from a silken thread. It’s a white statue. Of me. He lowers it down. I take it.
Jess stops swatting and inspects the statue. The tiny white figure is doing a look from The Book of Uh-oh. I’m not sure this is a good look on me. I prefer a look from The Book of Everything is OK.
“Oh,” says Jess. “OH,” she says again. “But that means…”
“Scary must be my secret admirer.”
“Because…”
“I’m a Toadspit? I own the school? I wear the witchwood charm?”
Scary’s spinning something else. It’s tiny. He takes my wrist. I try not to resist even though the hairs on his legs tickle. He jingles my bracelet. His claws feel spiky but he’s really careful not to scratch as he hooks the tiny shape on, next to the witchwood tree. It’s another charm. A spider charm.
Jess is doing a look from The Book of Amazement. I suspect I am too.
“I do not believe it!” she says. “Twink, you’ve inherited the Toadspit Terrors from your Greats-Grandma Ursula! You’re Queen o
f the Spiders! A SPIDER GODDESS! Just wait until Dominique finds out.” She is laughing hysterically. “She’ll explode with jealousy!”
I’m not sure I want her to know, I think.
Scary is attempting to smile. It’s odd. I smile back. He doesn’t feel Scary any more.
“I think I’ll rename him,” I say. I touch him on the head, like the queen knighting someone for services to the country, only I use my spoon, not a sword. “I name you … Bruce the spider. Protector of the School.”
Bruce nods and suddenly there’s a lot of spider clicking and we look up to see other smaller spiders have crawled through the hole. They click their pincers as if they’re applauding.
“YOU HAVE COMPLETED YOUR SECOND TASK,” dooms Clump.
I look around. All the stingernippers have disappeared. They’re all back behind the cracks.
Bruce thruuuumbs his thread and the spiders swing up to the corner. They disappear through the hole. With one last weird grin at me Bruce follows. It’s a tight squeeze. His legs wiggle through and he’s gone.
I feel sad. We were just beginning to bond. Thinking of the word bond reminds me of Ms Thorn. Surely if I can make Bruce smile I can make her smile. I have hope!
The door swings open and we race out into the choosing room. It slams behind us. We are alone again.
My bracelet jingles. The second question mark charm has turned into a musical note. Jess has one too. I have a charm but I also have questions.
Question one: Where is Shalini and is she alive? (Which is tech-nic-ally two questions.)
Question two: What’s next?
Question three: Do I really want Dominique to know the Toadspit Terrors think I am a goddess?
I only have one answer. “Jess, I don’t want Dominique to know about Bruce. Dominique shall remain ignorant.”
“OK,” says Jess, just as the blue door bangs open.
Shalini backs out. She’s waving her spoon at something in the room. The marks stay in the air as if she was waving a sparkler. Her face is flushed with success. “Take that,” she says, and she sounds like a mega-witch of mega-power. Brave and fearless. The door slams shut.