Floods 7 (8 page)

‘Hello, there. Great snow, isn't it?' said a penguin.

The Hearse Whisperer had been watching the penguin for three days. That was how long it had taken the poor bird to jump out of the sea, scramble over the rocks, waddle across the famous Tristan da Cunha Potato Patches and clamber up the slippery rocks to the top of the volcano. It had fallen down seventy-three times, but because it only had room inside its head for one thought at a time, and that thought was,
I am going up the mountain,
it kept trying over and over again until it finally made it.

‘Don't be stupid,' said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘Snow is disgusting stuff – all that pure cold whiteness.'

‘But it's a great view, isn't it?' said the horribly cheerful little bird, whose head was now full of the thought that said,
Great view, isn't it?

‘It's rubbish,' said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘Some rocks, a bit of grass and lots of sea. What's so great about that?'

‘Well, why are you here then?' said the penguin.

‘I'm waiting for someone.'

‘Buried up to your neck in snow on the top of a volcano in the most remote place on earth and you're waiting for someone?' said the penguin. ‘Do you not think that maybe – and this is just an idea – do you not think that this is probably the very last place you would ever meet them?'

The Hearse Whisperer turned to face the penguin and was just about to fry the poor innocent bird when a really, really large penny dropped. She could feel the veins inside her head begin to throb,
and when they did that she got really, really angry, as anything alive within a fairly large radius would discover very suddenly when the Hearse Whisperer converted them into a small pile of charcoal dust.

‘Penguin,' she said between gritted teeth, ‘I am deeply indebted to you so I have to tell you that you must leave here very, very quickly.'

‘No probs,' said the penguin. ‘I only came up here so I could slide all the way down the ice on my tummy and shoot off the cliff into the sea.'

‘What?'

‘Oh yes,' said the penguin. ‘It's an old family tradition. All us Tristan da Cunha penguins do it.'

‘Well, do it now and do it very quickly,' said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘Here, I'll help you.'

She kicked the little penguin and it slid down the ice faster than a sliding penguin.

‘Thank y o o o o o o u u u u …' it shouted as it shot off the cliff top, across over the grass and rocks, past a small fishing boat, right over the heads of seven very impressed seals, and landed in the sea over eighty metres from the shore. Even the
Hearse Whisperer had to admit, though only to herself, that the penguin's slide had looked pretty impressive.

The tiny bird ploughed through the waves, disappeared into the surf and bobbed up waving its little wings at all the other penguins, who gave it a high-five and cheered as only small penguins bobbing about in frantic surf can.

The Hearse Whisperer's veins were at bursting point. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have let those vile Floods trick her again? She stared down into the volcano and concentrated. The bottom of the crater was shaped like a heart, which made her even more angry.
²⁴
A tiny crack appeared in the ice. The volcano's last eruption had been in 1961. That had only been a baby, even though it had meant everyone had had to leave the island for a couple of years.

‘This one will wipe the island off the face of the earth,' she sneered. ‘Unless. Hold on …'

Maybe the Floods had been double bluffing. Maybe they had suspected she would think that Tristan da Cunha was a false trail. So maybe they really were on their way there after all, thinking that she would think they weren't and be a long way away.

Fuzzy black spots appeared in front of her eyes. Her veins stopped getting ready to burst and
started throbbing. Just how many she knew, they knew she knew, she knew they knew she knews could there be?

‘Why does life have to be so complicated?' she cried.

‘Because if it wasn't, you would be out of work,' she answered herself. ‘And life would be boring.'

‘Right now,' she continued, ‘I wouldn't mind a bit of boring.'

She was now seriously depressed because she knew that having conversations with yourself was only one short step away from sitting in a chair smelling of wee and having conversations with the wall like her old grandmother used to do. Depressed was the normal mood for the Hearse Whisperer. She felt happy and safe that way, but this was way below that kind of depression. And there wasn't even a wall to hit her head against.

Let's face it
, she thought,
I have become an emo
.

And it was all the Floods' fault.

The cold was getting to her. She began to fantasise about leaving planet Earth, about transporting herself up to the international space station and then blasting the whole of planet Earth into oblivion. That would finish the Floods off wherever they were hiding.

Trouble is
, she thought,
it would finish off all my friends and family too
.

She thought for a bit longer, then concluded,
But I haven't got any friends and I hate my family, so maybe it's worth looking into
.

‘I'm getting too old for this job,' she said out loud and then set about destroying every single living thing – fourteen slugs, eighty-three ants and a lost snail – that might have heard her say it.

The door had slowly creaked open a crack, but the Floods still couldn't see who was inside.

‘Go away,' said a voice.

‘We were wondering if you could put us up for the night,' said Mordonna.

‘We're closed,' said the voice. ‘For renovations.'

‘And we've come for the dog,' said Mildred. ‘My dog.'

‘I said…' the voice began and then stopped.

The door opened wide to reveal a thin, ashen-faced man who bore a strange resemblance to Valla
– which is to say, he bore a strange resemblance to a long-dead corpse.

‘Dog?' said the man.

‘Yes, her dog,' said Mordonna.

‘Oh my Lord,' said the man. ‘You are Mildred Flambard, the last witch to die here under the merciful hands of the Knights Intolerant. How can this be?'

‘As you can see,' said Mildred, ‘I am no longer dead.'

‘I, I, I …' said the man.

‘You, you, you,' said Mildred. ‘You are Standpipe the butler and you took as much delight in my suffering as I shall in yours.'

‘No, please,' said Standpipe. ‘Hear my words, words I dared not speak those many years ago.'

‘Go on.'

‘I do not believe there is such a thing as witches, nor did I then,' said Standpipe. ‘But to have said as much to the Knights Intolerant would have been to sign my own death warrant.'

‘So why were you so cruel?' said Mildred.

‘Erm, no, listen,' Standpipe begged, ‘I am a nice person. I am kind to animals. Have I not kept your dog alive these past two hundred years?'

‘I don't know, have you? We haven't seen him.'

‘Can you not hear him howl?'

‘That could be a recording,' said Winchflat.

‘Recorders weren't invented two hundred years ago,' said Standpipe.

‘Well, maybe the dog died only a few years ago,' said Betty. ‘And happy dogs don't howl. Only sad ones do that.'

‘Or else you invented the very first sound recorder a long time before anyone else,' said Merlinmary.

‘Or you have invented a brilliant time machine sound recorder that can capture noises from times gone by,' said Winchflat.

‘Or the dog is still alive,' Standpipe whimpered.

He seemed to shrink to half his size, a small pathetic creature with a runny nose and mould in
his hair. He moved his head slowly from side to side, staring open-mouthed at the Floods.

‘Oh my Lord,' he cried. ‘I was wrong. There are real witches and wizards and Mildred Flambard was not the last of them and you are all wizards and I –'

‘Yes,' said Mordonna. ‘Now go and fetch the dog before I turn you into a toad.'

‘I can't,' said Standpipe.

‘Why not?'

‘It hates me. Although I have fed and watered it for the past two hundred years, it hates me with all its heart and if I ever go too near, it tries to tear me apart.'

‘All the more reason to send you to fetch it,' said Mildred.

‘I'll fetch it,' said Winchflat.

‘It might be a trap,' said Mordonna.

‘It'll be OK,' said Winchflat. ‘Besides, there's something down there that I need to check on.'

‘What?'

‘You'll see.'

He left the room and went down to the cellars. Almost immediately, the mournful howling stopped and was replaced by happy yelps.

‘He never did that for me,' said Standpipe. ‘Not once in two hundred years.'

‘Well, look at you,' said Mordonna. ‘You're a disgrace to whatever species it is you belong to. Who on earth would be happy to see you?'

‘I expect his mother was,' said Betty, who was the kindest one of the Floods.

‘She wasn't, actually,' said Standpipe. ‘She put me out with the garbage when I was three. I sat by the kerb in the garbage bin for a week because the garbage men refused to take me. When they came back a week later she gave them ten dollars and then they took me.'

‘That's terrible,' said Betty.

‘Did they give her any change?' sniggered Merlinmary.

‘Yes, nine dollars,' said Standpipe. ‘How did you know?'

‘What did they do with you?' said Betty.

‘Two streets away they threw me off the back of the cart into the mud.'

‘But surely you could have just gone back home, couldn't you?' said Betty.

‘Oh yes,' said Standpipe. ‘I did, but in the hour since I had left, my parents had sold the house and moved and refused to tell anyone where they were going.'

‘You poor man,' said Betty. ‘So you never saw your parents again?'

‘Only bits of them,' said Standpipe. ‘When the Knights Intolerant took me in and I told them my sad tale, they tracked my parents down.'

‘So you were reunited after all?' said Betty.

‘Partly,' said Standpipe. ‘The Knights chopped them into little bits. All I saw of my parents were their left ears. They were so good to me, the
Knights Intolerant, they had those ears made into a beautiful purse. Look, I have it here still with the three coppers the knights gave me for my twenty years of loyal service.'

‘Oh, you poor, poor man,' said Betty.

‘No he's not,' said Mildred. ‘He's pure evil. Look.'

She pulled her left sleeve up and burnt into her skin was a scar. It read:

‘Oh,' said Betty. ‘Fair enough. Let's take him down to the cellars and chain him up where your poor dog was.'

‘Winchflat's taking his time,' said Mordonna, ‘and it's gone very quiet.'

She went over to Standpipe and, clicking her fingers, made him rise up into the air. There was a large iron chandelier hanging from the ceiling and Standpipe floated over to it. The chandelier had once held fifty-one candles, one for each of the
Knights Intolerant. Standpipe reached out and grabbed it, clambering up into the middle of the ornate steelwork. Mordonna clicked her fingers again and fifty-one large yellow candles filled the chandelier, fifty-one candles with big yellow flames that imprisoned Standpipe in a circle of fire.

‘Tell me,' Mordonna said. ‘The Knights Intolerant, are any of them still alive?'

‘They are, all fifty-one of them, but they are old and toothless and all near extinction,' Standpipe cried. ‘They all lie in their beds in the Great Dormitory awaiting death.'

‘Really. And their weapons?'

‘They lie rusted away in the Great Sword Room.'

‘So they are powerless?'

‘Yes,' said Standpipe. ‘They are like me, old and feeble, living out our last days on nettle soup and weevil biscuits.'

‘But in their time they killed many, many witches and wizards,' said Queen Scratchrot. ‘They
almost drove our race to extinction, and being old and feeble is no release from being guilty.'

‘I, I, I …' Standpipe whispered. ‘I cannot disagree.'

The heat from the fifty-one candles was ferocious, as had been the wrath of the fifty-one Knights Intolerant. Standpipe poured with sweat as he clung to the chain. Mordonna handed him a steel rod with a little cup on the end.

‘Take this,' she said, ‘and snuff out the candles. As each one dies so will each one of the evil Knights Intolerant.'

‘I cannot,' whimpered Standpipe.

‘Of course you can,' said Mordonna. ‘Don't be such a baby. It's your one chance to redeem yourself and possibly save your own neck.'

‘Oh, all right,' said Standpipe and began snuffing out the candles.

As each candle died and Standpipe moved the steel cup on to the next one, the dead candle sprang back to life.

‘Betty, stop doing that,' said Mordonna.

‘Sorry, Mum, I couldn't resist,' said Betty.

‘I know, sweetheart, but this is a seriously gothic moment of great symbolism. So stop it,' said Mordonna. ‘When all of the candles are gone, witches and wizards around the world will be free.'

‘We're free already,' said Valla. ‘I mean, most of us hadn't even heard of these crazy knights.'

‘I know, darling,' Mordonna replied. ‘It's symbolic more than real, though I'm sure that hidden deep inside the soul of every wizard is an ancient memory of persecution by the knights, a memory that we are about to finish off forever.'

‘OK,' said Betty. ‘Sorry, Mum.'

One by one Standpipe put out the candles until there was only one left.

‘This is a truly great moment,' said Queen Scratchrot, peering out from her backpack with her one good eye.

But the last candle wouldn't die.

‘Betty!'

‘It's not me, Mum. I'm not doing anything.'

Mildred Flambard-Flood fell to her knees and
wept. She buried her head in her hands and shed floods of tears onto the ancient flagstones.

‘It is me,' she cried. ‘That last candle is my father.'

‘Your own father was one of the Knights Intolerant?' said Mordonna.

‘Yes.'

‘And you cannot bear to see him die?'

‘You must be joking,' said Mildred. ‘After what he did to mother and I? No, these are tears of relief and joy. I feel as if I have been holding my breath these past two hundred years. Actually, I was holding my breath until my precious Valla rescued me. So let me be the one to kill the flame.'

So she sat on Valla's shoulders, who stood on Nerlin's shoulders, and she grabbed the steel cup from Standpipe and slammed it down on the last candle.

‘And as for you,' she said, turning to Standpipe, ‘did you really think snuffing out a few candles would make up for all the terrible things you did to me and my mother and countless other witches?'

‘But …' Standpipe began, turning to Mordonna. ‘You promised.'

‘No, she said “possibly save your life”, not definitely,' said Mildred. ‘Do we look like Love and Peace Greenie Buddhists? Do we look like hippies? Don't answer that bit.'

She clicked her fingers and Standpipe vanished in a pile of dust.

‘Wow,' she said. ‘I haven't done magic for two hundred years. I'd forgotten just how good it feels.'

She clicked her fingers and three cockroaches that had been sitting on the chandelier next to Standpipe turned into a box of paperclips, a bowl of muesli and a copy of the first ever
Batman
comic.

At the same moment, Winchflat and Brastof came up from the cellar. The dog raced over to Mildred and leapt up into her arms, licking her face and madly wagging his tail – which, considering Mildred was still sitting on Valla's shoulders, who was still standing on Nerlin's shoulders, shows not only how much Brastof had missed her, but also how incredibly high he could jump.