Magicalamity (11 page)

Things that appear hugely important in dreams often seem very silly when you’re properly awake. Tom shook the whole thing out of his head and sat up in bed.

Pindar came out of the bathroom rubbing his head with a towel. “Morning, Tom—d’you think there’s any breakfast? You won’t believe it, but I’m starving again.”

Tom decided not to tell him about the dream. From everything he’d heard about Pindar’s mother, it didn’t sound likely that she loved him so much. And his cousin had reminded him that he was also very hungry. “Me too—it must be something about staying up late. Let’s go downstairs and see if there’s any food.”

They found the fairy godmothers in the drawing room—or what had been the drawing room and now looked like a futuristic beauty clinic. The three fairies lay on couches, wearing nothing but white towels, while three of Dahlia’s enslaved husbands rubbed cream into their faces.

“Look, here are the boys,” Lorna said through her cream. “Can we stop now?”

“No,” Dahlia said firmly. “Your skin’s in a shocking state.”

“It’s not right, that’s all—this man used to own an airline! He shouldn’t be giving beauty treatments to old fairies!”

“Nonsense, he loves it—don’t you, Mr. Bates?”

“Yes, madam,” the husband droned.

Dahlia raised her head. “Go across the hall into the dining room, you two, and have something to eat. I’m giving Iris and Lorna a makeover.”

The two boys went across the hall to a comfortable, red-painted dining room, where a long, polished table
was crowded with a feast of bacon, eggs, sausages, fried onions, toast, muffins, jam and croissants.

“Cool!” said Pindar, sitting down and loading his plate with sausages. “Ms. Pease-Blossom’s really good at food.”

“Dahlia’s good at everything,” Tom said. “Lorna can’t do magic food, but she’s a lot nicer than my other two godmothers. She doesn’t enslave mortals, for a start. Fairies don’t think much of mortals, do they?”

“Well—no, to be honest.” Pindar reached out for a muffin. “We make a lot of jokes about how thick mortals are, and all the silly stuff they believe in. Like gravity.”

“Gravity! Of course we believe in gravity!”

“It’s only half the story,” Pindar said. “What mortals know as gravity is actually caused by the existence of the Realm. It wraps the whole earth like a big invisible duvet. Without us, you’d all float away into space.”

“But—but—the atmosphere … Oh, never mind.” Tom decided to forget about this as quickly as possible. If he ever managed to get to his middle school in the mortal world, he didn’t fancy telling his science teacher that gravity was caused by fairies.

“Isaac Newton was a demisprite,” Pindar said. “My tutor told me about him—in secret, because we’re not meant to know about them. You’re the first demisprite I’ve ever met. What’s your special thing?”

“My—what?”

“You demisprites usually have something you’re very good at. You know—like Mozart with his music, Shakespeare with his writing—Stalin with his murdering.”

“Oh. I’m good at math, I suppose.”

Pindar dolloped strawberry jam on his muffin. “I wish I could find something I was really good at.”

“You must be good at something,” Tom said. “My mum says everyone in the world has a talent for something—even if it’s only burping the alphabet, like my friend Charlie.”

“The whole alphabet? That’s pretty good for a mortal.”

“Tom—” Lorna put her head round the door. Her face, still slathered with cream, was deadly serious. “You’d better take a look at the fairy news. You’ll need to brace yourself. It’s not good.”

Tom felt sick. “Is it Dad? Have they—have they killed him?”

“No, he’s alive and well, but they’ve caught him—there was a massive raid on Hopping Hill last night. Come and read it for yourself.”

Dad wasn’t dead. Tom took a deep breath and felt less horrible. He wasn’t dead, that was the main thing. In the drawing room Iris and Dahlia (still in their towels and face cream) bent anxiously over the jeweled laptop. MILLY’S KILLER CAUGHT! screamed the headline.

Half the screen was taken up with a photograph of a bat, its claws bound together with a pair of tiny handcuffs.

“He doesn’t look well,” Iris said, shaking her head.

“Don’t frighten the boy,” said Lorna. “Nobody looks their best when they’re disguised as a bat.”

It was incredibly strange that this handcuffed bat was Dad. “What’ll they do to him? Where have they taken him?”

“They’ll take him to the Falconer Fortress,” Pindar said. “It’s the highest-security prison in the Realm.”

“They won’t torture him, will they?”

“Not with so many people watching,” Dahlia said briskly. “This is a high-profile case, darling—the eyes of the fairy world are upon him. Tiberius wouldn’t dare.”

“What about the raid?” asked Pindar. “Did they capture Clarence Mustard, too?”

“Ha! They don’t know he’s still alive!” snapped Iris. “They burned down his HQ, but Clarence and most of his followers escaped into the forest.”

Tom looked at the other photograph on the screen—a
small mug shot of what was either a pink chimp with no fur or a very ugly bald human being. The caption underneath said: “TOM HARDING the demisprite.” “Hey—is that supposed to be me?”

“They try to make all demisprites look like that,” Pindar said. “Really thick and hideous—to put fairies off marrying mortals.”

“What’s their problem with fairies marrying mortals, anyway?” It was insulting to see his name under the face of the bald, pink, blubbery monster.

“Without getting too technical,” Dahlia said, “it makes power leak out of the fairy Realm into the mortal world. And certain Falconers want to keep all the magical power for themselves.”

“So what would happen if lots of fairies had demisprites?” Tom was curious. “Would fairies be less magical?”

“Yes,” said Lorna. “And mortals would be more magical. They’d finally get clever enough to cure all their illnesses and stop global warming. And fairies wouldn’t be able to take advantage of them. The two worlds would eventually mix together. Some of us think that wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

“And some of us would be RUINED!” Dahlia shuddered. “We HAVE to be able to take advantage of the mortals! I’ve never held with such mad ideas. And in any case, all that matters now is Jonas.”

Tom looked hard at the photo of the bat, trying and failing to see a trace of his dad’s face there. “Can’t we—I don’t know—break into the prison and rescue him?”

Iris snorted. “Impossible! It’d be easier to steal Dolores Falconer’s moon-diamonds.”

“She sold them,” said Pindar. “But Ms. Moth’s right, Tom—we can’t break into the Fortress. Honestly, they’d kill us all.”

“We’ll do the one thing they don’t expect,” Dahlia announced. She was suddenly wearing a smart suit and the black gown and stiff wig of a barrister—which looked a bit strange because she had forgotten to remove the face cream. “We’ll PROVE his innocence! We’ll make such a brilliant case that even a crooked Falconer jury has to let Jonas off—or get torn to pieces by an angry mob from Hopping Hill!”

This sounded hopeful, and Tom’s spirits rose a little.

“I’d like to join that angry mob,” Pindar said. “It sounds like a great mob to be in.”

“All well and good, Dahlia,” Iris said huffily. “But just HOW are we going to prove Jonas is innocent?”

“I don’t know—to tell the truth, I thought Jonas would be more of a help, and he hasn’t even sent us a message.” Dahlia put her hand up to her face. “Whoops!” The face cream disappeared, and her lips were suddenly coated with brilliant scarlet lipstick. “He hasn’t even sent a dream! I paid very careful attention to my dreams
last night, and all I got was a silly anxiety dream about wearing clothes at a grand nude ball. Nothing that could’ve come from Jonas.”

“I think I dreamt about trucks,” Lorna said.

“He didn’t send me any dream-messages either,” Iris said. “I just had my normal dreams, which are always about money.”

“Well, there’s a surprise,” Dahlia said sarcastically.

Iris shot her a poisonous glance, and Tom hoped they weren’t going to start arguing again.

“I had a dream,” he said loudly. “It was about my mother.”

“Ha! A mortal?” Iris sneered. “Who cares about some stupid mortal?”

“She’s not stupid!” snapped Tom. “She’s just as clever as you are—even if she can’t do magic!”

Dahlia was alert. “Yes, quite right—shut up, Iris—did your mother say anything?”

“She said to tell Dad it was just like Snow White.”

“And?”

“That’s it.” Tom’s face was hot; it sounded extremely lame when he said it aloud.

There was a long silence.

“Snow White,” said Iris. “Well, that’s a big help—a bit of waffle about one of those silly fairy stories the mortals take so seriously. Personally I blame those Grimm
brothers.” She added, “Demisprites, of course. Troublemakers.”

“Iris Moth,” Dahlia said, “shut that dinosaur trap of yours! You’re an old FOOL—and so am I! We’ve just been utterly shown up by a MORTAL!” She let out a triumphant burst of laughter. “Tom, darling, your mother’s smarter than the lot of us put together!”

Iris was furious. “A fool? What on earth are you talking about?”

“It was staring us in the face, and we missed it!”

Tom exchanged bewildered looks with Lorna and Pindar, both obviously as confused as he was. “What does Snow White have to do with my dad?”

“More than you think,” Dahlia said. Her face was alight with excitement. “Mr. Bates, bring up the case of lightning-guns. We’re going on a mission.”

“Where to? Can I come?” Tom caught her excitement, longing to do something instead of just waiting and hiding. “What’s a lightning-gun? Can I have one?”

“Steady on,” Lorna said. “I’m not sure your parents would want you to mess about with this gun. Dahlia, stop cackling and tell us what this is about.”

Dahlia took off her barrister’s wig. “We’re off to fetch the one piece of evidence that will save Jonas.”

“She’s been at the fairy gin again.” Iris was still cross about being called a fool. “There’s no such thing.”

Dahlia turned back to Mr. Bates. “Fetch my Chanel wings and the matching handbag.”

“Yes, madam.”

“Blimey,” Lorna said, vigorously rubbing the cream off her face with a towel, “Chanel makes wings?”

“Yes—Coco Chanel was a demisprite, and she did some classic designs for fairies.” Dahlia looked at Lorna and sighed. “I wish you’d let me put those auburn streaks in your hair! Trust me, darling—you’d be an absolute genie magnet!”

Iris hissed, “What is this evidence? And what’s it supposed to do for Jonas?”

“We have to go into the Realm,” Dahlia said, “and kidnap the dead body of Milly Falconer.”

A
few minutes later the last lump of plaster fell from the ceiling, and Tom and Pindar dared to come out from behind the sofa. The echoes of Iris’s terrible scream slowly died away. She had unleashed a scream so loud that it had broken the windows and cracked the plaster—the room looked like a battle zone.

Dahlia brushed lumps of plaster off her shoulders. “Next time you disagree with me, Iris, could you make it quieter?” She muttered a long spell to herself, weaving her hands about. The room was restored to tidiness, and Pindar burst into a fit of sneezing.

After about twenty sneezes, he flopped down on the
sofa. “Sorry,” he said foggily. “That’s one of the spells that brings on my allergy.”

“This is an OUTRAGE! This is MADNESS! It’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard!” spat Iris.

“It certainly does sound loopy,” Lorna said. She was back in her jumpsuit now, and there must have been something magical in the face cream, because she definitely looked a little less craggy. “How do you suggest we kidnap a dead body?”

Now that his ears had stopped ringing from the noise of Iris’s scream, Tom could think properly about Dahlia’s amazing suggestion. “It’ll be tough if she’s buried a long way down—it would take a lot of digging.”

The three fairies looked at one another.

“Of course, this demisprite boy doesn’t know,” said Iris.

Tom didn’t like the way Iris always looked pleased when he didn’t know something. “So tell me!”

“Milly’s body isn’t buried,” Lorna said. “Her brother was so grief-stricken when she died that he had her sealed up in a glass coffin.”

“Oh—like Snow White! That’s what Mum meant!” Tom remembered the end of the Disney film.

“Tiberius built a special chapel for the coffin,” Lorna went on, “and all the sorrowful young men who wanted to marry Milly formed themselves into a group called the Adorers.”

“A bit like an order of monks in your mortal world,” Dahlia said. “The Adorers spend all their time weeping over Milly and guarding her body. At one time the Chapel of Milly was quite a tourist attraction in the Realm. People used to queue up to have their picture taken next to the corpse.”

“A lot of the Adorers got bored after a few years and went off to marry other people,” Lorna said thoughtfully, “so the coffin won’t be as well guarded as it used to be—though I’m blowed if I know why you want it.”

“Don’t you see?” Tom cried out impatiently. “They thought Snow White was dead, but she had a bit of poisoned apple stuck in her throat! The Prince dislodged it when he kissed her!” When he was little Mum had always cried at the bit when the dwarfs gathered round Snow White’s glass coffin. And he had always been surprised—didn’t she remember the happy ending? But Mum said she couldn’t help crying, because the dwarfs were so sad.

Suddenly he missed her a lot. Dad sometimes laughed at Mum for being softhearted. Tom didn’t think these fairies (except maybe Lorna) knew much about soft hearts.

“Exactly!” Dahlia clapped her hands. “What an intelligent boy you are, Tom—and I’m beginning to think you might owe some of it to your mortal side.”

Lorna was thunderstruck. “But Milly died! There wasn’t any poisoned apple!”