Floods 8 (8 page)

‘Well, actually, you could say that humans also have one legpit.'

‘I think we would all prefer not to say that.'

Several other cockroaches, who had arrived while this conversation had been going on, all nodded. It was agreed that every single cockroach
in Transylvania Waters hated the King right down to their six legpits.

‘If only we could let him know somehow,' said the first cockroach. ‘I can't bear to think of all that hatred going to waste.'

Outside the Castle, Winchflat reported the King's comment and the cockroaches' conversation to the Queen and Auntie Mould. Then he pressed a button on his Even-Hear-A-Pin-Drop-Machine and put a thought inside the King's head.

‘Everyone hates me,' the King whimpered. ‘Even the cockroaches.'

‘Wow!' said all the cockroaches. ‘Telepathy!'

‘Wonderful,' said Auntie Mould after Winchflat told them the King's response. ‘We'll let him stew for a few more days then move on to Part Two of the Grand Plan.'

‘Exactly,' agreed Queen Scratchrot. ‘Good idea. By the way, just remind me again, Part Two, exactly what's involved?'

‘Umm, well, I, err, thought, umm, you'd organised that.'

‘No, we agreed Part Two was your domain.'

‘There isn't a Part Two, is there?' said Mordonna.

‘Not exactly.'

‘Or a Part One?'

‘Well, umm…'

‘There isn't actually a Grand Plan, is there?'

‘Not as such, no,' said the Queen.

‘OK,' said Mordonna, taking charge. ‘Get me a pen and some paper. We'll make a Grand Plan now.'

It turned out that there was only one part to the Grand Plan and it was: Get Rid Of The King And His Gross New Wife.

‘I assume,' said Mordonna to Betty, ‘that you can reverse the spell you put on the Countess?'

‘Reverse?'

‘Yes, so we can get her out of the doorway.'

‘Not exactly,' said Betty.

‘Meaning?'

‘Meaning that I haven't actually thought about it,' said Betty.

‘Well, maybe you could start thinking about it now, young lady. Spells have consequences, you know.'

‘OK.'

Betty did some thinking, then a bit more thinking, and then said, ‘OK, I've finished thinking.'

‘And?'

‘No, I haven't the faintest idea how to reverse it,' Betty explained. ‘It all happened so quickly that I can't remember what I did to trap her in the first place. I can remember clicking my fingers and there was a sort of flash of light, but after that my mind's a blank.'

‘Oh.'

Queen Scratchrot and Auntie Mould thought that was hilarious and came up with all sorts of silly suggestions of what could be done to get the Countess free. Their favourite was cutting her up with a chainsaw and, just for a laugh, putting the bits back together back to front so her bottom ended up just below her face.

‘Or we could set her on fire,' said Queen Scratchrot. ‘I bet all that fat would burn really well.'

‘Stop it, stop it,' Auntie Mould cried. ‘If I laugh any more I'll wet myself. Oops.'

The obvious solution – apart from the really, really obvious solution of getting Nerlin or Mordonna to do some magic, which no one had thought of – was to remove the entire wall with the Countess stuck in the doorway, and this what they decided to do. And because she was weighed down with fifty tons of stone there would be the added bonus of the Countess not being able to move fast enough, or at all even, to chase and hurt anyone.

‘And if she does fall on anyone,' said the Queen, ‘it'll just feel the same whether she's stuck in a huge lump of rock or not.'

‘Stop it, stop it,' Auntie Mould cried, tears of laughter pouring down her face. ‘Oops.'

First they had to catch the King – but that would be easy. Every single day of his life at two o'clock in the afternoon he went to the toilet whether he needed to or not. That was not why he went. He went to read his secret magazines that he kept hidden under a loose floorboard. These were not rude magazines, but every single edition of
What Cardigan
magazine, which he had secretly
smuggled in from outside, because King Quatorze was a cardigan addict, so much so that sometimes he wore three at once, though he always kept them hidden beneath his royal regalia. Even the teddy bear he took to bed each night had a little wardrobe of cardigans.

So the next day, as the King sat on the lavatory enjoying the August 1967 edition of
What Cardigan
with its exciting feature on Famous Belgian Cardigans of History, Queen Scratchrot performed the legendary Flying Toilet Spell. Not just the toilet but the entire room rose silently into the air and headed west over Europe and out towards the Atlantic Ocean.

At the same time, Auntie Mould performed the Flying Wall Spell and the kitchen wall containing Countess Slab rose up through the ceiling, out over the town, across Lake Tarnish, up over the mountain tops and followed the King out into the Atlantic. They flew unseen over Scotland, past the islands of the Hebrides and even past the remoteness of St Kilda.

And then they began to descend towards a tiny desolate rock sticking out of the angry sea.

 

Rockall.
³⁹

All the while the terrified Countess had been screaming at the top of her voice, but the King was so deeply immersed in the beauty of an antique eighteenth-century cardigan from Bruges that he hadn't even noticed he'd been moving. He lifted the secret floorboard, put the magazine back in its right place and opened the lavatory door.

Then he realised something had happened. Where there should have been a dark castle corridor there was now a bit of sharp rock, lots of rain, angry waves and an even angrier huge screaming Countess stuck in a bit of wall.

The screaming seemed like a good idea, so he joined in. Their combined screaming not only shattered all the limpet shells clinging to the rock below them, but it made the Countess's bit of wall shatter too, proving that every cloud has a silver lining. It also proved that every silver lining has a cloud as the frantic wind blew a lot of shattered wall dust into Quatorze and the Countess's eyes.

‘That all went well,' said the Queen as they watched everything on their RockallCam.

‘Apart from the poor sheep,' said Auntie Mould.

The plan had included sending a very old smelly sheep to Rockall with the King and the Countess, but Rockall was so small the sheep had fallen off. Incredibly, it had actually survived due to all the grease in its wool keeping it afloat and the wind blowing in just the right direction to carry it back to Scotland, where it entered and won the Eurovision Song Contest.

We shall return to Ex-King Quatorze and the Countess Slab later…

As the genie had predicted, George the Donkey was a babe magnet. As he walked through the town towards Castle Twilight, the seven girl donkeys he passed swooned and went knock-kneed. Four of them had riders who fell off as the donkeys staggered around with stars in their eyes and the other three shed the loads of cabbages they had been carrying in convoy up to the castle kitchens. This caused a serious cabbage jam in the narrow alley they'd been walking down.

‘I saw him first,' said all seven of the girl donkeys and a fight broke out.

‘Ladies, ladies, chill out,' said George. ‘There's enough George for everyone.'

This demonstrated that a miserable complaining donkey is probably preferable to one who thinks he is Mr Wonderful.

You know,
George thought to himself as he remembered it had actually been Queen Scratchrot who had sold him to the coal miner all those years before,
I don't need the Queen. I am Mister Cool. If the Queen wants to see me, she can come looking.

‘Come on, ladies, we're outta here.'

And he walked back up the path through the forest to the heartbreakingly beautiful valley in the Himalayas followed by seven adoring girlfriends.

‘OK, ladies,' said George when they got there, ‘we are all now going to live happily ever after. We will eat the perfect grass and drink the perfect water and I shall be known as George The Perfect and I name this valley Georgeland.'

‘Oh, George, you are so wise and so cool and so wonderful,' said his seven not very bright girlfriends.

They talked about setting up a sanctuary for unwanted humans, but the water in the stream was so cool and refreshing and the grass was so delicate and delicious and the cave where they slept at night was so cosy and warm that they agreed they'd talk about it tomorrow. The next day they decided that maybe they'd discuss it next week after they'd all had a good rest and some more perfect grass, and a week later agreed that looking after neglected humans was just too much trouble and they simply couldn't be bothered.

‘Yeah, ladies,' George said, summing up everyone's feelings, ‘I think we just need some George-The-Great time.'

They didn't take a vote because donkeys can't count, so they decided simply living happily ever after would do.

Because hey (and hay), donkeys are like that.

Within five minutes of the news of Transylvania Waters' liberation spreading across the town, the ordinary people went from street to street ripping up all the drain covers and freeing the Dirt People, who had spent so long trapped beneath them. Hundreds of children had been born in the drains and had known no other world. Now they staggered around in the bright gloom rubbing their eyes in disbelief. So it was true, all those stories their parents had told them about ‘above' had not been made up after all.

Within thirty-five minutes of the news of
Transylvania Waters' liberation spreading across the town, twenty-seven people were being treated for broken legs from falling down open manholes.

Within one day of the news of Transylvania Waters' liberation spreading across the town, all the drain covers were put back, but with nice easy-open handles and no padlocks.

Within two days of the news of Transylvania Waters' liberation spreading across the entire country, seventeen people were being treated for broken ankles from tripping over the easy-open handles on the drains.

As readers of all the seven earlier Floods books will have realised, Nerlin was never a wizard of any real talent. He was kind-hearted, well intentioned and a caring, loving husband and father for sure, but not a genius. With the banishment of the usurper King Quatorze, and the throne being returned to the rightful king of Transylvania Waters – Nerlin, descendant of Merlin – all that changed.

Now that Quatorze was gone and the Dirt People who had been imprisoned down in the
drains were free again and back above ground, all the spells King Quatorze's evil witches had cast over them vanished. Not only had the King made the Dirt People forget their glorious past and how they were the rightful rulers of the land, he had also spread Hatred Spells on all those above ground to make them despise Merlin and his followers.

Everyone above ground now felt so guilty at how they had treated the Dirt People that they showered them with gifts of hand-woven calico underpants and envelopes of pressed flowers, the second and third most prized gifts in the whole of Transylvania Waters.
⁴⁰

When Nerlin was a very young child his father, Merlin the 84th, had cast a Not-Very-Bright Spell over him for his own protection.
⁴¹
If he hadn't done this, Nerlin would probably have become a rebel and tried to reclaim the throne that should have been his family's, and as King Quatorze had
surrounded himself with dozens of evil cronies and spies, Nerlin would undoubtedly have been captured, tortured and turned into a sticky residue at the bottom of Lake Tarnish, like many of the King's other enemies.

‘Besides,' Merlin the 84th had said, ‘Nerlin is far too young to be clever. It would only get him into trouble even if he didn't try to overthrow the King.'

So the spell was cast. Nerlin immediately forgot his nine times table and how to tie his shoelaces. His mother realised her precious son had suddenly changed from a bright spark to a weak, but pretty, candle and put it down to the overwhelmingly depressing atmosphere of living in the drains, or something he had eaten. Merlin hadn't told his wife what he had done, just in case she blurted it out by mistake at a coffee morning.
⁴²

Nerlin grew up as happy as any other young person living in the dismal gloom of a slime-coated drain – which is to say, Nerlin grew up in a trance with a little voice in the back of his head that kept telling him life should be better than this. But everyone else was in the same boat,
⁴³
so they all
accepted it, especially the children, who had never known anything else.

But now, with King Quatorze banished to Rockall and the passing of time having made Nerlin a lot older, Merlin decided it was time for his son to become clever again.

Of course, Merlin should have taken over as King, but he was a wise man and realised that he was too old to lead the country.
⁴⁴
Besides, all the years of being trapped in the drains had taught him to love slime and damp slippery places and while the whole of Transylvania Waters was generally very damp and slippery, above ground just didn't have that extra something that the drains had – sewage.

So Merlin removed the spell from his son and suddenly huge waves of wisdom, cleverness and the ability to change tap washers in seventeen different languages washed back into Nerlin's brain. Lights that had been switched off years before suddenly shone with an amazing brilliance as Nerlin not only
remembered all of his nine times table, but finally stopped tripping over his untied shoelaces because he was now wise enough to wear shoes that didn't have laces. As the spell faded away, tiny clouds puffed out of his ears until the inside of his head was as clear as a bright sunny day. Now he could even programme the TV remote – or rather, he would have been able to if there had been television in Transylvania Waters, but that is another story.

No one, from Mordonna to Nerlin himself, suspected that he had been under a spell for most of his life. His wife and children had just assumed that he was a bit average and had loved him exactly as he was. He was a good father and husband, always happy to go along with everyone else's suggestions and plans. Now that he was not only clever, but also seriously wise, it took some getting used to. Mordonna was not the sort of person who like playing second fiddle, though the majestic way Nerlin carried himself was rather thrilling. Betty had always thought her father was a hero so she felt exactly the same towards him. Winchflat was
excited at the prospect of discussing complicated scientific projects with his father and Satanella was excited at the prospect of her dad probably being able to throw a red rubber ball further than he could before. Even Morbid and Silent were excited. They didn't know why, but if everyone else was, they weren't going to miss out.

‘There is another secret spell I must change too,' said Merlin when he had explained what he had done to his son and why.

‘It's the Cabbage Curse, isn't it?' said Nerlin, using some of his new cleverness.

‘How did you guess?' said Merlin. ‘Oh yes, I forgot, you're incredibly clever now.'

He said this with an air of regret because while Nerlin had been under the spell, Merlin himself had been the cleverest person in the world. Now with Nerlin restored and having a much younger brain than the old wizard, Merlin was only the second-cleverest. This was difficult for him to come to terms with, but he consoled himself with the fact that the person who was the wisest and cleverest was
his own son. He also had the sneaking suspicion that Nerlin's brain, which was already completely brilliant, was draining some of the cleverness out of his own.

‘Yes, it is the Cabbage Curse,' the old man continued. ‘I used the last of my Super-Spells to create it. It was the only thing I could do to get at Quatorze.'

‘So now you can reverse it,' said Nerlin.

‘No, my son, I do not have enough power left in me,' said Merlin. ‘It is up to you.'

So Nerlin, in his first great act as King of Transylvania Waters, reversed the Cabbage Curse
and instantly every cabbage in Transylvania Waters changed back into whatever it had been before. This was mostly wonderful, though there were complaints from some people who said the spell hadn't worked. It had, but when you turn a cabbage back into what it was before and what it was before was a cabbage, then you get a cabbage. Some of the things that were turned back had actually been alive before, so there were a few surprised people who had been standing at their stoves cooking cabbage only to see a chicken fly out of the saucepan and run out of the house. Because Nerlin was a wise and omnipotent King, his Cabbage Reversing Spell also included a very powerful dose of painkiller so chickens and lobsters and the like who had been in pans of boiling water as cabbages were completely unharmed.

And all around the country, where people had thrown away old cabbage leaves, there were thousands and thousands of fifty-dollar notes. There were trees with birds' nests made of them. They were the nests of the strange Cabbage Leaf
Bird, which always builds its nest out of and only eats – wait for it – cabbage leaves. A lot of eggs and baby birds went crashing to the ground, but that was OK because ever since the Curse had been cast the number of Cabbage Leaf Birds had grown to plague proportions.

The next two days were declared a national holiday to give everyone enough time to stuff themselves full of cockroach risotto and rat cake and all the other wonderful things they had been missing for so many years.

‘This is such a great idea,' said King Nerlin, ‘that from now on, the first Friday in every month will be called Sugar Day and be a public holiday. On that day anyone found eating cabbage will have to wear a really bad cardigan with leather elbow patches and lumpy pockets for the rest of the month.'

This, of course, only made Nerlin more popular than ever, except with the Cabbage Leaf Birds, who found it very hard to fly with a big lumpy cardigan on.

Like all new kings and queens, Nerlin and Mordonna had to have a coronation. Not surprisingly, the banished ex-King had long since disposed of the crown jewels. He'd dug all the precious stones out with his penknife, melted down all the gold and then sold everything. He'd even melted the penknife down and sold that too.

‘Couldn't I just use my black pointy wizard hat?' said Nerlin. ‘It's my favourite one anyway.'

‘There's no doubt that you do look seriously attractive wearing it,' said Mordonna. ‘But a coronation is supposed to be symbolic. I mean, how do you think the people will feel if you turn up in your ordinary hat?'

‘They will think I am a modest sort of person who doesn't waste money on silly expensive dressing up,' said Nerlin.

‘But all Kings waste money on silly dressing
up,' said Betty, who had been looking forward to wearing a lot of bling herself. ‘It goes with the job.'

‘No, your father's right,' said Mordonna. ‘The people will love him even more.'

‘But, but…' Betty protested.

She had spent ages making a bright pink Fairy Princess dress with tons of sequins and sparkly bits.

‘That's OK, darling,' said Mordonna. ‘You can still wear your special dress. Everyone will know it wasn't expensive.'

Betty said nothing. She just clicked her fingers and a sticker appeared on her mum's back that said: