It was meant to be a Unicorn.
Unfortunately, it just looked like a badly painted donkey with an ice cream cone stuck to its head. When the fountain started to make rude noises, it became nervous and was now braying its head off.
Some of the guests did say hello to Sept but most ignored him, too. He didn’t mind. None of them seemed particularly nice anyway - they all walked about with their noses in the air and talked like they weren’t allowed to move their lips.
‘Ghastly,’ he heard one man mutter to his wife.
‘Quite,’ she replied. ‘Is this meant to be some kind of a joke, surely no-one has taste this bad?’ Then she saw the marshmallow sofa. ‘Archibald, we’re leaving.’
‘Already? I wanted at least to have a glass of something.’
‘This instant.’
And it got worse - in the guests’ eyes at least - who were now all openly laughing or staring in amazement (the wrong sort). In the Plogs’ eyes, all this was the very height of refinement - just what they had always dreamed of. If they wanted an avenue of mechanical singing rose buds, one that led up to a large lawn and a solid gold throne upon which Gertrude Plog sat to greet everyone, then why not? Didn’t everybody dream of the same thing - if they could afford it?
Later, after champagne milkshakes, they sat down to dinner.
The dining table was made of deep pink crystal and supported at its four corners by pink satin ropes, studded with rubies, that hung from the roof. Instead of sitting at the end of the table, Gertrude had insisted that the stonemasons cut a large round hole in the middle of the priceless table where she could sit on a swivel chair. That way, she could talk to whomsoever she liked and all guests would be able to get the benefit of her amazing wit and surprising opinions as she spun clockwise and counter-clockwise.
Unfortunately, she was too nervous to talk to anyone. She had already seen the looks on most of the guests’ faces and she heard the sniggers. There was no sign of Plog and the boy didn’t seem to be able to get the donkey to shut up.
The starter didn’t do anything to improve Gertrude’s mood.
‘Oi!’ she shouted at one point to one of the Visigoths who were acting as butlers, ‘vaht are you do’in youz dumskull, serve me vurst, not those lot!’ Gertrude had decided on a foreign accent that day, to make her seem more interesting and exotic.
‘Where did you say you were from,’ asked an elderly Duchess who was sitting at the end of the table, trying to avoid her tomato ketchup soup sprinkled with hundreds and thousands.
‘Er, ahem...,’ Gertrude looked panicky. Suddenly she couldn’t remember a single country name. ‘Er, Frermany.’
‘Grance,’ said Plog at exactly the same time. He had finally got out from under all those coats.
The elderly Duchess pushed her plate away with an ill-disguised look of contempt. ‘Well, is it France or is it Germany? Surely you must know?’
‘Oooh, er.’ Gertrude had gone bright red to match the soup... this wasn’t going to plan at all. She swivelled back and forth in her chair. Each face she saw was waiting for an answer, people she didn’t know... strangers, ‘neither, it’s between the two...’ She’d even forgotten how her fake accent went. ‘We’ve got a great big castle don’t yew know!’
A real General, sitting opposite her, spluttered. Lucky for Gertrude he’d already finished his soup, otherwise she would have been splattered by the splutter. Lucky for him he’d completely lost his sense of smell and taste when a cannonball hit him on the helmet, which meant he could pretty much eat anything, even the Plogs’ starter. ‘How can you be between two countries, it’s impossible! Unless you’re at sea... I should know, I’ve conquered most of em at one time or another... queer bunch this,’ he added to nobody in particular.
‘Oooh, look, the main course!’ said Sept brightly. He never thought he’d think this after everything, but he actually felt sorry for his parents. ‘...and doesn’t it look...,’ but he petered out. There really was no way to describe the main course unless you wanted to use words like shocking, surprising, alarming or very upsetting.
To be fair, even Plog thought that Live Octopus Stew was a bad idea. Quite where Gertrude had got the idea from was anyone’s guess at the time - but later she explained that she’d heard somewhere that all the best restaurants served their fish live.
‘What?!’ Plog said when she explained. ‘You choose your fish when it’s alive in those posh places, then they take it back in the kitchen and the chef or someone knocks it on the ’ed with a rolling pin. Everyone knows that!’
Now, the one person who thought it was a worse idea than Plog was the octopus itself. Four of the Visigoths carried it in on a huge silver platter covered with an enormous silver dome. From under this lid came banging and dull thumping noises as the octopus waved its arms about angrily in a dark confined space, all on a bed of chopped carrots and white wine sauce.
The moment the lid came off, it launched itself into the air and latched eight strong tentacles around Plog’s pudgy face.
‘Geddit moff!’
‘What?’ said the elderly General who was suddenly beginning to enjoy himself. ‘Can’t hear you man, speak up!’
‘Baaargggh, I sned, geddit moff... geddit moff my bace!’
‘E-N-U-N-C-I-A-T-E,’ someone else said. ‘That’s the whole problem with the lower classes and foreigners. No elocution.’
Everyone nodded.
Gertrude looked around. Not one of them was helping her husband and she was trapped in the middle of the table. She caught sight of herself in one of the wall high mirrors that ran up and down the length of the dining hall. And Gertrude Plog finally saw herself as others did. In her pink dress, she looked like a great big pudding wedged in the middle of a ridiculous table.
Everyone was laughing. Someone threw a bread roll and guffawed, a great braying noise that sounded just like the donkey outside.
Strangers, she thought again. And they had ruined her birthday and her dream of this house and all the money and being able to have everything.
Something in Gertrude snapped.
She reached over and pulled the flaying Octopus off Plog’s face with one hand. In a single movement, she hurled it at the General who stopped laughing at once and fell off his chair with muffled cries of indignant alarm. Next she turned to the lady who’d laughed loudest, taking a handful of her hair and dunking her head in the soggy mess of soup several times.
Then she stood up.
At the force of her standing, the table snapped clean in two. Guests fell off their chairs and into the Visigoths who were carrying food and drink, which tipped in turn onto expensive evening gowns, suits and massive hairdos.
Some people ran for cover, as Mistress Plog started throwing all the food she could lay her hands on at the various guests. ‘Youz thinks you can laugh at me do yer? Thinks you’reses somfink special, all ladidah and staring down your great big long noses at Plog an’ me whats invited you to our sumpty mansion with lovely food and you don’t have to pay a fing and you fink you can says what you like.’ She got hold of the soup tureen with both hands and hurled it at a group of guests who were immediately drenched in the cold remains of the red ketchup soup. ‘Think you look oity toity now? I mebee just some stupid fat lady to yous but I knows what polite n’ nice iz and you ain’t politey or even a bit nice. GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!’
Unfortunately with her last scream, she threw her arms wide and knocked over a candle, which caught the tablecloth.
Within seconds the whole dining hall was ablaze. The remaining guests ran out of the large doors at the end of the hall, into the gardens and down the drive, not even waiting for the carriages to pick them up. The elephants stampeded across the perfectly manicured lawns, squashing Codeye and Herringmouth flat on their way, then punched two very large, elephant-shaped holes in
the wall and hid in the woods.
Poor old Ruddgruel had the worse time of all. As all the guests pushed past, he fell backwards onto an ornamental cactus by a window. Jumping up, he stubbed his toe on the statue of Gertrude made of ice, which made him hop around on one leg howling, until he put his other in a large pot of soup Carpsniffer had dropped when he ran for safety. The pot got stuck on his foot and so he fell over into the fire, which set his hair alight. Hopping from one foot to the other, with thorns still sticking out of his bottom, and his hair on fire, he ran around in circles until Sept threw a bucket of water over him. Unfortunately, Sept had no idea that Ruddgruel was terrified of water, so although his hair was no longer on fire, this seemed to make things worse. Ruddgruel screamed like a girl and ran into the curtains. Knocking himself out on the doorframe, he fell over, and the curtains fell on top of him. Ruddgruel then came to almost immediately, jumped to his hobnailed feet and, forgetting that he had just run into a large pink curtains, panicked. ‘I’ve gone blind!’ he wailed and he ran off into the night, still with them on his head.
And that was the last they saw of him.
Sept, still holding the donkey, looked on horrified.
A few minutes later the rest of the house caught fire, even the treacle fountain. The guests all looked like they had reacted in time and would get away safely... except...
‘The Hand!’ Sept suddenly shouted to everyone’s apparent bafflement and he turned and ran.
Before the guests started to arrive, he had put the locked casket containing the Hand in a cupboard in his room. He didn’t want to look at it - it just reminded him of what was inside and made him feel angry and guilty at the same time. Guilty because when he’d last opened the box, the Hand seemed genuinely ill and Sept couldn’t escape the feeling that It was telling the truth about the great risk the Hand had taken going against the curse. And about the rest, about him being a great Warlock. He was confused and angry and he didn’t like to think about it.
But now the Hand was in danger and suddenly the only thing that mattered was to save it.
‘Can you help me?’ he asked a couple who were making for the door. The lady in a huge emerald-studded ballgown just shook her head and the man pushed Sept roughly aside. ‘Get out of my way...’
‘But I need...’ he was going to say an adult... but grownups had never been any use to him and no-one stopped to see what the young boy was so upset about... and, more to the point, no-one but Sept was going to help save his only real friend.
As he ran down the long corridor from the dining room into the entrance hall, he was shocked to see fire already running up the huge curtains that flanked the stairs and sparks leaping across the chasm of the stairwell and onto the fluffy pink carpets Gertrude had put everywhere. Its thick acrylic material, just like plastic cotton wool, was the perfect base for fires to spread.
And spread it did, the flames rushing through the great hallway as fast as Sept could sprint.
Sept made the stairs at full speed, gasping for breath, just as several small fires had broken out along the landing where his room was on the top floor (and where the servants’ rooms would normally be in a grand house).
The fumes from the horrible carpet were already starting to choke him, making his lungs heave, and a wave of fire caught the expensive wall, flames whipping at his heels. Sept felt the hair on the back of his head crackle in the heat as he finally got to the door of his bedroom where the Hand was. He burst inside, staring wildly about the room, half expecting it to be full of black smoke and orange flames. Luckily it was OK for the moment. Feeling a huge sense of relief on seeing the window was open and the room was clear of smoke, Sept wasted no time grabbing the casket containing the Hand from the wardrobe and turned towards the door.
He knew something was wrong when he took hold of the brass handle and it was searing hot.
In under thirty seconds, the whole of the pink, fluffy and over-furnished corridor upstairs had been transformed into a tunnel of bellowing fire, like the inside of some huge dragon’s neck. A fish tank, which mercifully Gertrude had not got around to buying fish for, was sending boiling water in frothy cascades onto the floor and it stung Sept’s eyeballs just looking at the scene. Feeling sick with fear and lack of oxygen, he held onto the casket even tighter and jumped back into the room, slamming the door.
Sept now ran to the window and looked out wildly. The last guests were already far off down the huge front lawn, running towards the gates at the end of the drive, so none of the adults noticed the lone figure in one of the upstairs windows, nor cared to look back to see if anyone needed saving. There was no sign of his parents either.
Yet again, Sept was on his own and in great danger.
Sept looked down at the flagstones a hundred feet below. Underneath his window was a metal fence running down the steps to the basement. If he jumped he would surely spike himself on these and die.
Then, the now-familiar whispering started.
No, thought Sept, I don’t have time for this, not now.
Sept hissed the voices.
‘Go away!’ he shouted into the smoky air, ‘you’re not even real.’
SEPT! The voices were more urgent and Sept felt the Hand in Its casket move.
‘Leave me alone!’
OPEN THE DOOR SEPT.
‘No!!’
Trust yourself and everything will be fine.
I’m not listening to the voices, Sept thought. ‘I’m not listening to you!’ he cried. ‘If I do open the door it’s because it’s the only way out!’
He turned back towards the bedroom door, which was now burning through the top panel, searing hot smoke pouring in around the frame. The handle felt quite cool now, almost cold.
He remembered what the Hand had said about King Mithras’ wife who had thrown him on the fire all those generations ago and being immune to fire. Perhaps the power to not be burned had somehow transferred itself to Sept himself?
Only one way to find out. He stepped into the corridor.
The main part of the house was empty. Apparently, they’d all saved their own skins, and not one, not even his parents, had thought about the fair-haired boy with watchful eyes who had been at the stupid party full of stupid grownups.
So, nobody was there to see the small figure, hugging something to his chest, emerge from the firestorm upstairs, touched by the flames but not burned, as he walked calmly down the blazing staircase and into the main hallway. But emerge he did - a few stray glowing embers of ash smouldering on his best jacket, but otherwise quite unharmed and miraculously quite safe.
Ever so carefully, Sept sat on the stone steps away from the house and opened the casket.
If he was shocked when he saw how ill the Hand was, he did his best not to show it, but the Hand noticed anyway. Stop looking so miserable, I’m not dead yet.
I’m sorry, Sept signed back, I’m really, really sorry... I think I know what you did, what you sacrificed... his hands were shaking. The spell was working its revenge and the Hand was dying. It seemed to be slowly mummifying from the inside out. Sept knew that this was all his fault.
This is all your fault, you know, signalled the Hand. Sept’s intake of breath was almost a sob.
What can I do?
You can start by becoming the warlock you are. If that’s not too much to ask.
I’ll try.
Oh, finally.
...but not for me, for you - so I can make you better...
Oh, Septimus, the Hand opened Its palm weakly, Its sign for Sept to hold him, it’s too late for me probably, but not for you.
But I don’t understand, Sept was trying hard to stop the tears. Look, I can try and fix you... you should have seen what I did to save you, walking through all that fire, the feeling - it was amazing...
No!... you can do SO muc
h more... the Hand seemed dangerously agitated for a moment, then it seemed to sigh... No, Sept, sorry, save your magic... you’ll need every ounce of it soon enough. I am dying because everything dies eventually, there is nothing you can do. Anyway, I don’t see it as death: I’m transitioning that’s all. But you need to accept who you are before you turn twelve, that’s all that matters.
I’m going to find a way to save you, just you see, Sept signed, putting on his most serious face.
Oh good grief was all the Hand would say.
Chapter 19
Things get out of hand
‘COMES HERES!’
Sept turned away from the Hand.
Even after the fire, the Wargs, shotguns, sand storms and killer wasps, the person who still scared him most in the whole world was standing behind him on the path. Gertrude Plog. Her dirty blond hair covered in ash, her dress torn and fire-blackened.
She had stayed and so had Plog and now she reached out, grabbed Sept with one meaty arm, and pulled him towards the house, back towards the firestorm. Sept stared at her: she looked completely and utterly stark, staring round the bend. Even Plog was keeping his distance, a nasty bruise over his eye. Despite his fear of this newly terrifying Gertrude, Sept was aware how the house they were approaching creaked and groaned dangerously, like a great beast about to topple
‘I was waiting for you, boy. It’s all been ruined and it’s all your fault... it’s time... time for the most powerfully book and strongiest spell!’ And without asking, Sept knew that she was talking about the Black Book with the bat cover.
‘Mum, even the Hand’s scared of it - it’s dangerous,’ Sept felt a rising panic and it wasn’t just the fact they were standing in a house that was almost completely on fire.
‘Only dangerous for thems that ruins things for lovely Gertrude...’ she screeched, ‘...and they deserves it.’ She pointed a fat, trembling finger at where the guests had all run. ‘They all laughed at me... on my birthday an’ all... in my lovely house whats all ruined.’ She looked like she was about to cry and Sept almost felt sorry for her again. Then her rage seemed to flood back.
The Hairy Hand Page 10