Nettle Blackthorn and the Three Wicked Sisters (18 page)

An almighty
thump exploded from the cottage. The very roof of Blackthorn
Cottage had been suddenly forced upward, jolted from the rafters in
a horrendous heave.

A frightened
yell came from the upper floor. “HELP!”

“
Bram!” cried Fred.

Both Fred and
Nettle shared a look of alarm before bolting toward the cottage’s
back door.

Nettle was
first to reach Bram’s bedroom. She flung the door wide open and
found herself facing a gigantic creature engulfing the room. What
remained of Bram’s cot was smashed into kindling underneath the
beast’s chunky feet. Its four large toes had black nails that had
gouged holes into the floorboards while its shoulders and head were
hunched under the ceiling. The floorboards and ceiling groaned
beneath the excessive pressure.

Nettle stood rooted to the spot, stunned. Her mouth gaped
wide and her tongue lolled.
What… is… that…?

The creature’s grey rough skin looked akin to granite. Its
rotund torso looked like the Michelin Man carved out of rock,
except the head of the creature seemed gnomish, with a wide mouth
and flaring nostrils. The creature was from the tales she used to
read at bedtime, imaginary, fictitious, fantastical. It was
incomprehensible to be faced with such a being. A real, live,
breathing…
what could it be?

“
Ogre?” she named it, her voice barely a whisper.

“
Ogre..?” her voice rising sharply, but still
flabbergasted.

Her hand
involuntarily rose to point at the creature and she screeched,
“OGRE!!”

The creature
swivelled its fat head Nettle’s way and glared at her with pitch
black eyes. Enraged, it roared and its hot putrid breath washed
over her and she choked, coughing and spluttering at its
foulness.

A small voice
cried out from somewhere behind the creature. “Nettle!”

“Bram!” Nettled called out. A grin already spreading across
her face with the relief of hearing her brother.
He’s alive!
“Are you
OK?!”

“
Yeah, I’m OK!”

“What’s an ogre doing in our house?!” She shook her head in
disbelief.
I
can’t believe I actually asked that, aloud.

The beast bellowed, spittle flying from its fat lips. Some
of landed on Nettle’s shoulder. She shrieked in disgust and fright.
“It’s like
ectoplasm…
Get it off,
get it off
!” she wailed trying to wipe the thick mucus gunk from her
jacket.

“Stop
calling it that,” implored Bram. “You’re making it
angry!”

“
What?!” called Nettle confused. “An ogre?!”

The creature
howled, shaking its body from side to side, trying to reach for
her. The floorboards immediately below gave way suddenly and two
boards snapped in half beneath the creature’s weight.

Fred arrived huffing and puffing, and slammed into Nettle.
She suddenly found herself pressed into the flesh of the thing. It
felt cool and soft, a cross between the sensation of a fluffed
pillow and a children’s party balloon and smelt of stale sweat.
“
Ewww…
gross
,” she whimpered and pushed herself off the
creature.

“
That’s no ogre,” corrected Fred, “It’s a
spriggan.”

The ogre, or
spriggan, Nettle supposed - bewildered her father even had a name
for the thing - glowered fiercely at her father. Its mouth yawned
open, revealing a row of short blunt teeth, and the creature
inhaled a gigantic breath. Its body inflated even further with the
mouthful of air and the ceiling cracked under the pressure of its
massive head pressing against it.

“
Spriggan,” hissed Fred, shaking his head. “Typical.” He
called out loudly, “Bram, where are you?!”

“Over
here, by the window,” replied Bram, a quiver in his voice. “I can’t
get out!”

“Don’t
panic,” reassured their father. “Everything’s going to be,
OK!”

“
Hurry Dad! I’m scared.”

The spriggan opened its mouth to swallow another gulp of
air. Fred sprung at it. Nettle gawked at her father as he nimbly
ascended the creature’s shoulder. She blinked rapidly, mistrusting
her sight.
How on earth did he just do that?
She watched aghast as he pressed both
hands against the beast’s mouth, preventing it from inhaling
further. The spriggan roared a muffled protest behind Fred’s grip.
It ferociously shook its head, determined to free itself. Fred
punched it in the face.

Dad
punched the spriggan in the face?! In the face!
Nettle’s mouth
gaped.
Who
on earth is he?
Gone was the amiable bookish father she’d known all her
life, replaced by…
What? Who?
I don’t even know who he is...

Fred yelled
out to Nettle, “Go get that horse shoe!”

Nettle was
frozen to the spot in a stupor. She couldn’t quite understand what
she was seeing.

“
Nettle!” bellowed her father. His voice ripped through her
dazed state. “Go get that horse-shoe!”

Nettle
panicked, “What horse-shoe?” All she could see was the spriggan and
its undulating folds of flesh. Its size was of such mammoth
proportions, she could barely make out its limbs from its torso. It
was like her father was grappling with a gigantic pillow.

“It’s on the wall, where the cot is –
was
,” he corrected.
“Quickly!”

Nettle
edged around the creature as it fought her father. The spriggan was
trying to grab hold of her father, but the beast’s arms were too
fat and its movements too slow. She didn’t know how much longer he
was going to be able to keep the spriggan at bay. One more mouthful
of air, and she was certain it would either smash through the
ceiling or the floor would give way beneath them.

“
Hurry,” Fred urged.

Right where her father said it would be, an old iron horse
shoe hung on the wall where the cot once stood. Nettle gratefully
ripped the horse shoe from the wall. She stretched
out an arm, trying
to reach her father. “Dad!”

Fred loosened
his grip on the creature to reach for the horse-shoe. The spriggan
wrestled its mouth free.

“
Dad! Watch out!” Nettle shrieked.

The spriggan
drew in an enormous mouthful of air, filling its cheeks to capacity
and swallowed it down in a massive gulp. Nettle was instantly
squished against the bedroom’s hard wall as the creature’s rubbery
flesh expanded, the skin stretching thinly like a party balloon.
The hand holding the horseshoe was pinned awkwardly above her head.
She felt a crushing pain as her ribs begin to compress. “Dad!” she
yowled.

Fred
gave the spriggan a good slap in the face. “Nettle, you have to
press the horse shoe against its body!”

“
I can’t!” she gasped. She couldn’t move. She was stuck. It
was getting hard to breath. Panic began to overwhelm
her.

Fred let
go of the creature’s mouth and punched it in the face. His fist
smashed a couple of its teeth. It roared, expelling air and
deflated slightly. Black blood spurted from its mouth as it spat
out three rotten teeth.

The pressure
against Nettle eased only a little, but it was enough for her to
wriggle her arm free. She pressed the horse shoe against the
spriggan’s rotund stomach.

As soon as the
iron pressed into the creature’s skin it scorched a half-moon
imprint. The air churned with blackened smoke of smouldering flesh,
stinging Nettle’s nostrils. The spriggan howled in agony, releasing
another mouthful of air and it shrank further in size.

Nettle pushed
the horse-shoe, again and again, burning flesh and extracting
screams of torment. The screeching noise made her skin crawl.

As the
spriggan deflated, it grew more agile, its movements swifter. It
lunged for Nettle. Nettle yelped and flung herself backward. She
stumbled over something and fell, just as the creatures arms swung
above, narrowly missing her.

Fred’s
olive eyes darkened. “Don’t you dare!” He battered the spriggan’s
head, startling it. The beast turned its attention back on him like
he wanted. It went berserk, throwing itself against the wall,
desperate to crush Fred. Fred hung on tightly and kept slapping the
creature across the face, rocking its head from side to side to
keep the attention on him and not his daughter.

The spriggan hurtled itself against the wall and caught
Fred across the back.
“Ooof…”
Fred groaned, paling, and almost lost his
grip.

Nettle
screamed.

The
spriggan shook itself violently like a dog after a swim. Fred’s
glasses slipped from his face, hanging off of one ear, but he
didn’t let go of the spriggan. “Horse-shoe!” he yelled and Nettle
tossed it to him, her father only just managing to catch
it.

She
frantically looked about for her brother. “Bram?!”

“
Over here!” Bram was cowering in the far corner of the
room.

Nettle dodged
past the whirling spriggan and Bram flung himself into her arms.
She hugged him tightly, “Are you OK?”

She felt him
nod and gave him a comforting squeeze. His muffled voice warbled,
“I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I let it out of the cage and it
just went mad.”

“
It’s OK.” Nettle soothed, “Dad’s got it under
control.”

She watched
her father in wonderment.

The
spriggan had diminished to the size of a tall human. Fred clung to
its back as it whirled about the room, shrieking and struggling to
strike him. He held on tight, pressing the iron against the
creature’s flesh. It screeched and squealed in frustration as it
quickly deflated, dwindling to the height of a stocky teenager. The
spriggan staggered beneath her father’s weight and fell to its
knees. Fred stepped off the creature and loomed over it as it
rapidly shrunk to the height of a young child, swiftly shrinking
back to its natural size.

Fred snatched
the spriggan and held it tightly about the waist. The little
creature was only a foot tall but still fought fiercely to free
itself. Finally after a long spell, it gave up and went limp. Out
of breath, it kept a leery eye on Fred.

Fred blew out
a deep breath, exhaustion made his limbs instantly heavy but he
dared not relax until he had the spriggan locked away. He turned to
his children, grinning with relief and a certain amount of
satisfaction.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Wart-Face and Rat-Droppings

Nettle stared in disbelief at the strange little man
trapped in her father’s hands. She clutched Bram’s arm so tightly,
he squirmed
.
“Ouch, you’re hurting me.”

She started,
and relaxed her grip. “Sorry.”

Bram rubbed
his arm, and gave her a small smile.

The creature gave her a churlish sneer. He had a squat face
with beady black eyes and no neck. After a long moment Nettle was
finally able to ask, “
What
is that?”

Her father
gave her a level stare. “This, is a spriggan.”

The shriek
that followed was not from either of his children. It came from
Jazz. She stood in the doorway, a trembling finger pointed at the
spriggan. “It’s not a RAT!”

The creature
pah’d
and spat a gob of spit on the floor. He fixed Jazz
with a baleful glare.

“Ew
,” Nettle grimaced. “So very, very gross.”

The spriggan
said nothing further, but he didn’t take his eyes from Jazz
either.

“
No, not a rat.” Fred said very slowly and calmly, hoping to
reassure them all. “It’s a type of faerie.”

Jazz and Nettle exchanged a perplexed glance. Nettle turned
back to her father with an
are-you-for-real
stare. “What exactly do you
mean?”

“Well,” Fred drawled, looking from Nettle to Bram to
Jazz.
How to
explain this?
“I guess, the best way to describe a spriggan, is, if you
think along the lines of brownies and imps and goblins and
pixies-”

Nettle burst into laughter. “Really, Dad? Come on.”
Maybe he’s just one
of those really little little-people
,
she thought, trying to be rational.
Except, a moment
ago, it was this massive creature that engulfed the whole room… so
that wouldn’t explain it either.
Her gaze started getting a far-away
quality. “A faerie…” she echoed.

Bram
interrupted, grasping the concept far quicker than the two girls.
“Like the bedtime stories you used to read?”

Nettle shook
her bewildered head, her charcoal lashes blinking rapidly, and
repeated again, “Faerie?”

Fred nodded,
briskly moving on. “Now, a spriggan,” he began, holding the little
creature aloft. It gave the children a sullen pout. “Can’t help
himself. They’re thieves and bandits, simply annoying at best. But
they have been known to steal babies. And their only real form of
protection is blowing themselves up to the size you saw, just
now.”

Nettle still
needed clarification. She raised a finger. “You mean that’s a
faerie, a real faerie?”

“
Yes.”

“
So all those stories… are real?”