‘THATS BOOKS GOT POWER!’ she suddenly roared. ‘ITS GOT RESPECTIN’ AN’ MAKIN PEOPLE ALL FRIGHTSEY AN POLITE AN NOT LARDY DAH AND LOOKIN DOWN ON YOUS, JUST BECAUSE YOUS A BIT STUPID!’ She paused and looked like she was making a visible effort to calm down. ‘Well, nows the time to see...’
Plog saw what he thought was his chance and stepped forward. ‘There, there, my dearest, don’t be angry on your birthday, I’ll get you a big cake - bigger than this one and a fur coat with...’
‘GET AWAY... DON’T TOUCH ME!’ Plog jumped back as if he had been electrocuted by the path. Gertrude Plog took a deep breath. She turned to Sept and began to smile until the smile became a grin. An evil grin that spread across her whole face like an alligator. ‘Magic ’elpe’d us once afore... made us strong not all nice... not all weaksies.’ She winked at Plog then turned back to Sept. ‘You probablys heard the spell went wrong, I say it went right... we gets want we wants now... so yous and that pet of yours is going show me those frightsie spells and no-ones going to laugh at uses evir again.’
‘No,’ was all Sept said in reply. ‘You’re on your own, now.’ The Hand was right all along, he should have left months ago. Why didn’t he?
‘She can’t read,’ whispered Plog, looking pathetic, ‘...we can’t read. We tried it once before with the Book and got it wrong.’
‘Oooh, but youz can!’ Gertrude may have looked potty, but her hearing was still spot on. ‘Smarty aleccy boy, he can read, oh yes! You show me. You telliz me and I saysiz it!’
Sept turned to Gertrude. He thought of all the years of sleeping in a cold damp bedroom, he thought about only getting leftover potato peelings to eat, being shouted at and getting laughed at. ‘No,’ he repeated. Sept had had enough of this.
‘WHHHAAAAATTT!?’
‘I said I’m not doing it. It’s not your book, it’s not even mine and we should go.’ There was a loud creak as the house shook, as if in agreement. Gertrude just stared at Sept. He’d never said no to her before like that. He wouldn’t dare... but he was now.
‘Uh, oh,’ said Plog, sounding a bit muffled, from behind a door.
Sept took a deep breath. ‘Anyway, what makes you think some spell is going to solve all your problems?’
At that Gertrude’s face changed. It went from mad to spiteful and mad. ‘Oooh, thinks youz soo clevir, thinks I’m soo stoopid, thinks I don’t notice things, can’t read, horribliness, fat...’ Sept felt a chill chase up his spine as he followed his mother’s narrowed gaze.
Gertrude had spied the casket with the Hand inside. It was still open.
‘Gotcha!’ she cried triumphantly, grabbing the wriggling Hand in her own pudgy paws as It struggled weakly to get free.
‘Leave It alone!’ Sept called out. But she just kept grinning.
‘Or what? Spose I slices It with this?’ Gertrude picked up a shard of broken glass by the front door and held it against one of the wriggling Hand’s slender fingers. Then she opened her mouth filled with gaps and brown teeth. ‘What you gonna do about that boysie, if I bites off one of Its wriggly fingies?’
Sept felt his vision tunnel and his head went sort of buzzy. He couldn’t fight her. Not his mum. Not if she was like this. His shoulders slumped.
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘I’ll help. Just put the Hand down.’
A book-with-no-name, for folk from Nowhere. It kind of made sense, when you thought about it. As ever, Gertrude had kept the Book close to her during the party and now she pulled it from an inner pocket in her huge, ridiculous birthday frock. The pages were as black and scary as before and Sept felt a shudder of fear alongside a jolt of magic as she handed it over to him.
Sept flicked through the pages as the Hand climbed weakly onto his shoulder... but... they were blank! There was no writing. Had this all been some horrible joke? he thought.
‘Hurry up, there must be something in this booksie!’ Gertrude gave him a sharp nudge in the ribs.
Sept was going as fast as he could, the flames were billowing everywhere and the heat was getting worse by the second.
‘Um, I can’t... I can’t see anything...’ What would she do, if he couldn’t find what they were looking for? It didn’t exactly help that he wasn’t sure what Gertrude thought she wanted or needed. Sept was bright enough to know that magic wouldn’t solve every problem, especially when it came to Gertrude Plog. ‘There’s nothing here...’.
‘NAAAAGGGHHHH! YOUS STOOPIT AFTER ALL... TOO GOODS... ONLY BAD MAGICS GOOD TO ME!’ The Hand, back on Sept’s shoulder, cowered in fear and now Sept began to panic seriously. If she got any angrier, he had no idea what she was capable of doing - not just to the Hand, but to all of them.
In desperation, Sept turned to the last page and, at first, there was nothing there either.
Then Sept felt burning in his fingers - very different from the pleasant tingle of magic - this was a roaring, like a stadium of angry voices. He began to get very afraid now as writing seeped through the pages. The letters were dark red, like blood. ‘What’s that one all about, thens?’ The jet black cover seemed to be warm and pulsating, like the skin of an animal, just waking.
‘I, er I don’t think it’s one for us,’ he said instinctively. Right at that very moment, every nerve in his body was telling him that this book was the most dangerous thing he had ever held. Sept just wanted to get as far away from it as possible. At his shoulder, the Hand trembled like a frightened mouse.
‘That’s it!’ cried Gertrude leaning in closer, ‘that’s it, I knows it is. The powerfullest spellsie was hiding in the book, I knews it all those years along.’
‘I... I’m not sure we should be using this... it... looks... dangerous.’
Even Plog looked seriously scared. ‘The boy might be right, my dragonfly,’ he said.
‘Just read it!’ barked Gertrude in a voice like sheets of corrugated iron being crumpled.
This is a really, really bad idea, thought Sept. He ran his finger over the top of the page. ‘Spell of Terrible Power,’ he read out loud.
‘Go on.’ Gertrude’s leered and came closer still.
‘By these words, this spell will serve
To give the life that you deserve.
You’ll require a looking glass
Say these words and this will pass
... GATHRESTE GAN GARTUAN FESTER KILLE’
‘You’ll need a mirror,’ Sept translated.
But he needn’t have bothered.
‘GATHRESTE GAN GARTUAN FESTER KILLE, GATHRESTE GAN GARTUAN FESTER KILLE, GATHRESTE GAN GARTUAN FESTER KILLE,’ Gertrude was in the hall amongst the flames, racing around half-repeating the words, searching for a mirror. Finding none, she ran out of the room. The house was so covered in flames now, Sept wondered if she would return. Part of him almost hoped she wouldn’t.
Guests had now slunk back to watch the house in its dying moments, most of them stood on the front lawn. To be fair to Gertrude, Sept saw that some of them were laughing, as if this was Bonfire Night and the Plogs’ dream house burning to the ground was the main attraction. The guests were stupid and a bit cruel, thought Sept, but they don’t deserve what Gertrude has in mind for them.
Plog and Sept heard her barging through the burning rooms, as the house began to groan as if in pain. And Sept remembered - the oval mirror that hung in the reception room!
‘GATHRESTE GAN GARTUAN FESTER KILLE!!!!!’
She had found it.
As she said the words, the roof of the burning mansion tore off.
The next few moments were a blur. As the Hand ran for the safety of Sept’s pocket, Plog and he ducked and tried to find cover under a large marble table that stood by the open door in the hallway. All the time more bits of the house flew off, spiralling upwards in a huge wind that had just sprung out of nowhere.
Sept turne
d to look up at the sky through the window - it was boiling with black clouds that swirled at the centre, like a forming hurricane, spiralling right over the house.
‘Wot’s ’appening?’ shouted Plog over the noise.
‘The spell,’ Sept yelled back, ‘... it must be working... those words she just said, this must be causing the hurricane!’
Plog looked deep into Sept’s eyes, as the front of the house collapsed. ‘She’s finally gawn mad,’ he said half to himself. ‘I tried to stop it over the years, but I knew it was goin’ to ’appen sooner or later.’
Sept looked up. There was something funny about the storm. The clouds seemed to be taking shape into something horribly familiar. Deep within the swirling depth of the storm a voice boomed out.
‘HAR HAR HAR! THIS ISSES POWERFULYNESS. YOU ARE SO SMALL AND SILLY, I AM GIANTY AND STRONG!’ Gertrude’s face, immense and yet horribly like her real self now appeared out of the black storm - a gigantic Gertrude Plog-shaped cloud, like a genie released from a lamp.
Sept heard a collective gasp as the former guests looked up at the sky, amusement on their pinched faces turning to fear and alarm.
Before he could do anything to stop It, Sept felt the Hand scrabble off his shoulder. It jumped onto a hall table in front of Sept, turned and pointed right at him, then made the hand signal for Warlock.
You can do this, It added.
What on earth are you talking about? signed Sept, but, even so, he felt a faint burning in his fingers and heard the dry whispering.
‘WHATS HAPPENING?’ Gertrude’s storm face peered out of the clouds. Even as an all-powerful genie-storm, her chin wobbled.
But actually nothing did happen.
Diddly.
Squat.
Sept flexed his fingers, but the tingling had stopped. The Hand signed weakly.
Do it now!
‘I can’t do it,’ shouted Sept above the noise of splintering wood and crashing waves, ‘... it doesn’t work! I’m not a magician, you’re the magic one, I’m nobody at all. My parents were right! I’m just rubbish.’ The Hand seemed to raise Its fingers up in exasperation. It moved forward but then disaster struck: Gertrude gave a great belch, a huge giant-sized burp and the Hand was blown across the hall, towards Plog by the door. Sept looked up, into his father’s eyes and saw what he intended to do. ‘No!’ he shouted again, just as Plog smirked at Sept.
Then he kicked the Hand as hard as he could.
It flew through the air, Sept reaching out to catch it.
But he was not quite tall enough. The Hand’s slender, black fingers brushed his own, like a farewell, as It was blown out into the swirling black clouds that now billowed around the burning house and grounds.
The Hand, his one friend in all the world, was caught in the hurricane Gertrude had called up, and whipped away, high over the house, into the air. It disappeared from sight in seconds.
‘Noooooooo!’ yelled Sept after it.
Now a finger, the size of a walrus poked out of the storm. ‘COME AND JOIN ME, MY ANGEL, MY PLOG...’
The instant giant-Gertrude touched him, Plog turned to cloud too.
‘’NOW WE IS ONE,’ she cried, ‘WE WILL GO AND WE WILL DESTROY. PEOPLE WILL BE FRIGHTSIE AND NEVER LAUGH AGAIN!’
‘Heeeeellllpppppp meeeeeeeeeeee!’ screamed the smaller voice of Plog that was soon lost on the wind as his shape was swallowed up in hers.
‘BUT FIRST WE WILL SQUASHIES THESE NASTY PEOPLE FOR LAUGHES AT US!’
At that precise moment, images started to rush through Sept’s head: of cruel words, getting across the Thorny desert, the desert storm, the box, full of mystery and magic in his uncle’s study all that time ago... something went click.
He saw the view from his recurring dream, of the chanting man with his arms outstretched and the crying. Except this time the cart was clear and so was Gertrude. She was chanting and the people around were crying out for her to stop. He saw the pleasant village he once lived become the sea of mud and misery he was familiar with all his life.
Then, through the howling wind, the crashing house, the splintering wood and glass flying in all directions, through all the mayhem and sadness, the old man from the cave in the desert appeared before Sept. Despite the shrieking wind, his thin beard and long flowing eyebrows remained still. Slowly, he raised a bony finger and pointed it at Sept’s heart. Right at it. Then a second figure appeared, another old man but with more clothes on. Sept remembered the picture on the downstairs table. ‘Uncle Xavier?’ His uncle nodded and then also pointed a powerful finger at Sept. And suddenly the whole room was crowded with the ghosts of warlocks and wizards past; men in tall hats, magicians from the east with coal black eyes, tall wizards with frowning faces, short ones smiling through twinkly eyes. All pointing. At Sept.
Me? Thought Sept. No!
But the spirits still pointed and nodded.
Me! Thought Sept, again. Why not? For the first time in his life - unfortunately just as it was about to end - he felt a stirring of real hope and a real sense of belonging. Was it that simple? One thing suddenly made sense - he was part of the village, but part of how it was before. If he was a warlock, his name made sense. Septimus - seven, the most magical number he had once read. Finally, Septimus felt something immense and powerful start up from the tips of his toes, and spread like warm fire through his body. Something that had always been there but had been deeply buried by his fear and unhappiness.
He listened and the whispering came back.
And finally he could hear what the voices were saying
‘Call the sand, call the sand, call the sand...’
A storm cloud fist belonging to Gertrude, slammed into the house and the floor gave away, sending Sept crashing through the floorboards to the cellar below.
‘HA!’ It went up again like a hammer and Sept, finding himself in the remains of the servants’ kitchen, dived for cover. He braced himself to feel Gertrude’s huge hand squash him to smithereens... then he suddenly thought: no.
No. No. NO!
He wasn’t going to put up with this from the Plogs anymore. He could feel years of pent up anger rising in him, burning through his veins and pounding in his head...
Not this time. He was fed up with being made to feel small and stupid and being bullied; he was... Sept raised his hands...
‘COME!’ he commanded.
Sept felt pure power rushing from the ground through his feet and body, all concentrated on his hands, which were belting out magic, like magnetic waves. His flexed his fingers and they shot out white hot pulses of light and Sept laughed at how good it suddenly felt; 11 years and 364 days of misery and uncertainty had just burned away. This was who he was, this was what he was meant to be. Sept felt another power, the power of being sure about something. He laughed. He had finally found his place in the world. He knew what he had to do...
...Sept concentrated and the storm seemed to change course. COME! he spoke the words of command again. Two hundred miles away from the Thorny Desert, a great wall of sand rose up, at least a mile high, far larger even than the storm he had taken refuge from in the cave. Even Gertrude’s huge shape seemed small by comparison and Sept noticed that she seemed to be looking fuzzy at the edges.
‘WHAT’S THIS?’ she screamed, ‘WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME? I FEEL FUNNY, NOT POWERFULLY!’
‘Oops,’ came Plog’s voice.
The wall of sand Sept had called up covered the distance in seconds and hit the Plogs, swallowing them up like a giant wave breaking over a swimmer.
‘I CAAAAAANNNTTTTT SSTTOOOOOOOP!’ she cried
At that moment Sept knew he could destroy his parents. All the pain and sorrow they had caused him... but something made him pause...
It didn’t feel right, this was not what his magic was for: smashing things up,
making people do what you want and hurting them if they didn’t: that would make him just like all the others. At that moment he could have commanded the sand blast them to smithereens, he’d never have to see them again, never be shouted at, made to feel stupid, like he had no place. But he wouldn’t be that type of warlock
They’d done a stupid thing all those years ago - stealing the Black Book and using it and everybody had paid for it in Nowhere. But they weren’t really evil.
Through the swirling sands, Sept saw himself as a very young boy jumping in puddles and he had looked up at his mother in the house. For once, he could see her face clearly. She wasn’t waving back, because she was crying. He felt her regret, before the curse she unleashed by mistake had taken hold, she had known the terrible thing she had done. She loved him.
If he destroyed his parents he’d be missing the point. Where had the wickedness come from?
THE BOOK!
Sept flexed his mind and saw the Black Book clearly through the storm cloud, swirling; its pages fluttering like a many-winged bat.
Slowly, with a great effort, he turned the sand from the Plogs to pound the Book. The magic in the pages was strong and very old and it fought back, hurling black clouds of counter spells as the sandstorm did its best to break through. Sept concentrated all the harder and felt more power than he could have possibly imagined build up and unleash itself with new fury at the Book’s black pages.
In his mind’s eye he saw the binding beginning to tear from the spine as it started to shred. The wicked illusion of selfishness and misery woven around the village, and the people in it, unravelled like a funeral shroud being picked apart, one black thread at a time. Until nothing of the Book or its malicious magic existed.
He’d done it! Sept staggered away just as the last of the sandstorm hit him and he passed out.
Chapter 20
The real Plogs. The curse is lifted. Sept finds home
The Hairy Hand Page 11