Floods 9 (15 page)

‘I was kind of hoping we could live in a little cottage by a stream in the country with a lovely old half-timbered barn full of safes where we could keep all our money,' said Chrysanthemum.

‘And we will, my darling, but right now we need a safe haven where we can rest and plan our future,' said Aubergine.

So they got themselves some new disguises and joined a coach party of jolly Belgian tourists on holiday from the famous cabbage-pickling factories of Bruges. Two days later they arrived at the coach park by the entrance of the tunnel into Transylvania Waters. The tunnel had been deliberately made too narrow to allow anything larger than a mediumsized car to go down it, but as luck would have it, there was a huge fleet of Valla's Executive Taxi Cabs waiting to take the tourists through the tunnel into paradise and on to their hotel.

⁶¹
Which for Winchflat means just a tiny little bit annoyed.

⁶²
Except for Satanella, who spent a lot of time in front of mirrors looking under her nose. Being a dog she had a highly sensitive sense of smell, and being hairy she got a lot of her dinner stuck round her mouth, so under her own nose was a very interesting and exciting place.

When the taxis arrived at the hotel, Aubergine and Chrysanthemum slipped quietly away into the woods behind the building. Aubergine Wealth knew the forests of Transylvania Waters like the back of his hand. In fact, he actually had a map of them tattooed on the back of his hand. Whenever he grew homesick as he had travelled the world, all he had to do was look at his hands and he felt happy again.
⁶³
The Wealths were an old Transylvanian family who could trace their ancestors to the very first settlers who had set up the country. They were one of the original Ten Families who had created the enchanted country to escape the Knights Intolerant, who had organised a world-wide persecution of witches and wizards in the very-long-time-ago century.

As a boy, Aubergine had scoured the forests with a metal detector searching for lost money. He knew every twist and turn, every cave and secret place there was to know, and he also knew a shortcut to Castle Twilight.

Up in his laboratory, Winchflat was going crazy. According to his sensors, Aubergine Wealth was in four places at the same time.

‘And only one of them can be the right one,' he
complained, twiddling all the knobs on the console.

‘Or none of them,' Betty suggested.

‘I'd guess that Betty's right,' said Ffiona. ‘I'd guess that Mr Wealth and his wife discovered your tracking device and somehow made three copies of it and then put them, plus the original one, into four other life forms while they got clean away with all their money.'

‘Girls, please,' said Winchflat. ‘Might I suggest you go and play with your Barbie dolls and leave all the technical stuff to people who are experts.'

‘Oh yes,' said Betty. ‘So where are they, clever-clogs?'

‘They're in Kazakhstan heading towards Uzbekistan,' said Winchflat.

‘And this one?' said Betty, pointing at one of the screens. ‘They are crashing round in a small pet shop eating mice.'

‘And this one?' said Festival. ‘They seem to have photocopied themselves and are both lying in ditches sleeping off hangovers.'

‘Maybe they haven't photocopied themselves,'
Betty laughed. ‘Maybe they're still drunk and are seeing double.'

Winchflat went bright red. Not only was he angry that his machine seemed to be broken, but he had to admit to himself – but not her – that Ffiona's suggestion sounded like the most likely explanation, which meant that he didn't have the faintest idea where Aubergine and his wife might be.

Oh God,
he thought very quietly.
They could be anywhere.

Which of course they were.

And the anywhere was much nearer than he would have ever thought.

‘I think we must assume that they have outwitted you, darling,' said Mordonna.

‘But . . .' Winchflat began.

It was the first time in his life that one of his inventions hadn't worked perfectly. Either they had outsmarted his tracking equipment or the equipment itself had broken down. Both options were unthinkable. Winchflat felt a great wave of depression sweep over him. His wife, Maldegard, put her arm round his shoulder, but there was no consoling him.

‘I am not programmed to fail,' he said.

‘None of us are perfect, darling,' said Maldegard.

‘Except the Grand Master Wizard,' said Betty.
⁶⁴

Meanwhile, Aubergine and Chrysanthemum were strolling peacefully through the forest towards the castle. Exquisite Scarlet Vampire Butterflies
⁶⁵
fluttered around them and the air was filled with the delicate scent of deadly nightshade, which is always in full flower in Transylvania Waters. They each invited a butterfly to bite them and then drifted along singing old hippy songs.

Aubergine made an unusual hippy. His love for the finer things in life – money, more money and lots of money – was too deeply embedded in his soul
for a mere butterfly bite to override. Every fibre of his being was devoted to wealth, more wealth and lots of wealth. His blood was gold-coloured and his sweat smelled of crisp new banknotes, the smell that had first captured Chrysanthemum's heart.

They came to the end of the footpath through the forest and there was a tall stone wall. They were at the back of Castle Twilight – not just the back, but the unfashionable part of it, where the whole place was shrouded in permanent semi-darkness cast by the huge towers at the back of the castle. Aubergine took Chrysanthemum's hand and led her along the wall until they came to a small door that was hidden behind a curtain of poison ivy.

‘My great-grandmother planted that,' said Aubergine, ‘to hide the only entrance into the castle grounds apart from the main gate. I think one of my cousins still comes here to feed it and make sure it is still covering the door.'

‘Doesn't it give you a terrible rash if you touch it?' Chrysanthemum asked.

‘Yes,' said Aubergine and, reaching into his
pocket, he pulled out a silver spray bottle. ‘Unless you cover yourself with my great-grandmother's special spray.'

They covered themselves. Aubergine unlocked the door and they crept into the gardens that surrounded the castle.

‘Follow me,' said Aubergine, ‘and whatever you do, don't eat anything. Those beautiful flowers over there may look like chocolate. They may smell like chocolate and they may appear to be waving their petals at you inviting you to eat them, but one tiny nibble and you will turn instantly into a Belgian accountant with a really bad limp and an enormous purple and yellow boil throbbing on your neck. Within an hour the boil will have grown seven times bigger than your head and then it will burst and you will be drowned in a flood of your own pus.'

Chrysanthemum looked as if she was going to throw up.
⁶⁶

‘Though of course,' Aubergine continued, ‘if
you were a Belgian accountant with a really bad limp you'd probably be quite relieved to be drowned.'

There were other equally terrible plants. There was the Ferocious Weaving Grass, which could grab you by the ankle and weave you into a basket full of very old herrings, and there was the Very Naughty Prickle Bush, which does such unmentionable things to its victims that they are unmentionable.

By picking their way carefully through the garden they finally reached the back wall of the castle itself. The wall towered above them, vanishing in places into the thick white clouds. The whole place had a really sad, depressing atmosphere about it, as if time itself had given up here and moved on to somewhere else.

‘Can we get out of here?' said Chrysanthemum. ‘I feel myself becoming really sad and depressed.'

‘Don't worry, my darling,' said Aubergine. ‘It's just a spell my wonderful great-grandmother put here to keep people away. Once we go inside the castle the spell will lift. You might still be really sad and depressed, but it will be a different really sad and
depressed and it will be for quite different reasons.'

Aubergine walked along the huge wall for a few moments, pausing now and then to slip his finger into a gap between the stones. Finally he stopped, pushed his whole hand into a gap and pushed. A large stone slid aside, revealing a small stone staircase.

They were inside Castle Twilight, right under the noses of the Floods themselves. Of all the places in the world they could have run to, this was the closest they could have been to their pursuers.

Almost.

‘Come on,' said Aubergine, taking Chrysanthemum's hand and leading her through the darkness up the narrow stairs.

The stairs went round and round up in a spiral until they could go no higher. There was a heavy wooden door in front of them with a tiny beam of light shining into the darkness through a keyhole.

‘Here we are,' Aubergine said as he pushed the door open. ‘Perfect safety.'

But instead of the room Aubergine was expecting – the old, dark, deserted room with its
treasure chests and simple oak furniture lit only by a single narrow slit in the masonry of the far wall – they found themselves in a bright white space bathed in sunlight.