Syren (9 page)

The jinnee could hardly believe his luck (it had decided to be a him—with a name like Jim Knee, what else could it be?). He had gone from the very brink of being forced back into his bottle to total—or almost total—freedom in one minute flat. As long as he steered clear of the old witch who had Awakened him for the next year and a day he would be fine, and he certainly had no intention of going anywhere near the pestilential marshes where he had been Awakened, no intention at all.

The jinnee looked at Merrin lying facedown on the floor, drumming his feet and wailing. He shook his head in
bemusement. Even though in the dim, distant past he had been one himself, humans were a weird bunch—there was no denying it. With an overwhelming desire to smell some fresh air at long last, the jinnee rushed out of the secret chamber, causing a great draft of air to slam the door with a bang.

Inside the secret chamber Merrin’s tantrum abruptly ceased—just as it always did as soon as the nurse slammed the closet door on him. In the sudden silence, with his ears still ringing, Merrin slowly got up and tried to open the panel. It did not move.

An hour later Merrin was slumped on his cushions, hoarse from yelling, and Sarah Heap was sitting in the Palace kitchen talking to the cook.

“I’m hearing things behind the wainscoting,” she said. “It’s those poor little princesses Jenna told me about. Poor little trapped ghosties. It’s so sad.”

The cook was matter-of-fact. “Don’t you go worrying about it, Mistress Heap,” she said. “You hear all kinds of things in the Palace. Terrible things ’as ’appened here over the years. You just got to put it out of your mind. It’ll soon go away, you’ll see.”

Sarah Heap tried, but the yelling continued all that evening. Even Silas heard it. They both went to bed with cotton stuffed in their ears.

Merrin did not go to bed at all.

F
rom the shadows of a
dank and smelly street, Wolf Boy saw Septimus and Spit Fyre rise above the rooftops and fly off into the sun. He Watched until they were no more than a small black speck in the sky, or possibly just a piece of soot on the end of his eyelash—it was hard to tell. And then he set off, following the last of Aunt Zelda’s maps.

Like Septimus, Wolf Boy felt elated by a new sense of freedom mixed with responsibility. He was on his own but
not alone, for he knew that Aunt Zelda was thinking about him and that the job he had to do was important to her—very important. He did not know why; he was just happy to be trusted to do it.

Wolf Boy had spent years living in the Forest and was unused to seeing so many people at once. But as he made his way toward the Harbor and Dock Pie Shop—which he had been looking forward to for days—he felt excited by the streets and the strange mixture of people walking past him. It was, he thought, much like the Forest, only with houses instead of trees and people instead of Forest creatures—although he thought that the Port people were much weirder than any Forest creatures. As the lanky boy with the straggly dreadlocks, grubby brown tunic and loping wolflike gait wound his way along the cobblestone streets that snaked between the dilapidated warehouses, he drew no attention from the mongrel inhabitants and visitors to the Port. And that was the way that Wolf Boy liked it.

Aunt Zelda’s map was good. Soon he emerged from a narrow cut between two warehouses into the breezy sunlight of the old fishing harbor. Before him, bobbing in the choppy water, was a motley collection of boats tended by fishermen
and sailors. Some were being unloaded onto waiting carts and others were being made ready for venturing out into the wide blue expanse of sea that filled the horizon. Wolf Boy shivered and pulled his brown woolen cloak around himself. Give him the Marsh or the Forest any day, he thought; the vast emptiness of the sea scared him.

Wolf Boy breathed in deeply. He liked the faint salty tang of the air, but even better he liked the mouthwatering aroma of hot pies that told him he had come to the right place. His stomach gave a loud gurgle and he headed for the Harbor and Dock Pie Shop.

The pie shop was quiet. It was just before the lunchtime rush, and a plump young woman behind the counter was busying herself getting another batch of pies out of the oven. Wolf Boy stood in front of the biggest variety of pies that he had ever seen in his life, trying to decide what to buy. He wanted to try them all. Unlike Septimus, Wolf Boy had not taken to Aunt Zelda’s distinctive style of cooking and immediately decided against any pie with cabbage in it—which only cut out three. Finally he bought five different pies.

As he turned to go, the door to the shop burst open and a young, fair-haired man strode in. The young woman behind
the counter glanced up and Wolf Boy saw an anxious look cross her face. “Simon,” she said, “any luck?”

“Nope,” the young man replied.

Wolf Boy froze. He recognized that voice. From underneath his dreadlocks he stole a look at the new arrival. Surely it wasn’t…it couldn’t be. But yes, there was a scar across the young man’s right eye exactly where the stone from his catapult had caught him. It must be him. It was—it was Simon Heap.

Wolf Boy knew that Simon had not recognized him. Indeed, Simon had barely even glanced at him. He was deep in a murmured conversation with the woman. Wolf Boy hesitated. Should he sidle out and risk Simon noticing him or should he stay put and feign a continuing interest in the pies? With the hot pies just begging to be eaten, Wolf Boy favored getting out fast before he was noticed, but something in Simon’s voice—a kind of desperation—stopped him.

“I can’t find her
anywhere
, Maureen. It’s like she’s vanished into thin air,” Simon was saying.

“She can’t have,” was Maureen’s sensible reply.

Simon—who knew more about these things than Maureen realized—was not so sure. “It’s my fault,” he said miserably. “I
should have gone with her to the market.”

Maureen tried to comfort him. “Now, you can’t go blaming yourself, Simon,” she said. “Lucy has a temper on her. We both know that.” She smiled. “She’s probably just gone off in a huff. You’ll see. She did that for a whole week once when she was here.”

Simon was not to be comforted. He shook his head. “But she wasn’t in a temper. She was fine. I have a bad feeling about this, Maureen. Oh, if only I had Sleuth.”

“Had who?—ohmygoodnessthey’reburning!” Maureen rushed off to rescue the next batch of pies.

Simon watched Maureen flap away the smoke with a dishcloth. “I’ll try and Trace her steps once more, Maureen, then that’s it. I’m going to go and get Sleuth.”

“What’s Sleuth, some new detective agency?” Maureen asked, inspecting a blackened sausage-and-tomato pie. “Rather them than me. The last one around here got burned down. Looked even worse than this bunch of pies.”

“No, Sleuth’s my Tracker Ball,” said Simon. “Marcia Overstrand stole it.”

Shocked, Maureen looked up from her pies. “The ExtraOrdinary Wizard
stole
a ball?”

“Well…she didn’t exactly steal it,” said Simon, trying his best to stick to his new resolution to tell the truth at all times. “I suppose she kind of confiscated it, really. But Sleuth’s not just any old ball, Maureen. It’s Magyk. It can locate people. If I can get Marcia to give Sleuth back I could make it find Lucy, I’m sure I could.”

Maureen tipped the entire contents of the tray into the garbage with a regretful sigh.

“Look, Simon, don’t you go worrying too much. Lucy will turn up, I’m sure she will. If I were you, I’d forget any thoughts about all that Magyk stuff and keep looking around here. You know what they say—if you wait on the old quayside long enough, everyone you have ever met will pass by. You could do worse.”

“Yeah…I suppose you’re right,” muttered Simon.

“Of course I am,” said Maureen. “Why don’t you go and do that? Take a pie with you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Wolf Boy watched Simon pick up a bacon-and-egg pie and walk out of the shop. Through the steamed-up window he saw Simon walk slowly along the harbor wall, eating his pie, deep in thought. It was a very different Simon from Wolf Boy’s last encounter. Gone was the hooded,
menacing look in his eyes and the feeling of Darkenesse that had surrounded him. If he hadn’t recognized the voice, thought Wolf Boy, he would not have known him.

Wolf Boy left the pie shop and followed some steps down to the water, which took him safely out of Simon’s way. He sat watching some tiny crabs burrow into the damp sand and, fending off repeated attacks from the notorious Port gulls, he munched his way through a cheese-and-bean pie, a beef-and-onion pie and a particularly delicious vegetable-and-gravy pie. Then he put the other two pies in his backpack and consulted the map. It was time to go and do what he had come for. It was time to call on the Port Witch Coven.

W
olf Boy was not often
nervous, but as he stood on the suspiciously slimy steps of the House of the Port Witch Coven, a flock of butterflies began playing football in his stomach. There was something about the battered old front door with its black peeling paint and Reverse writing scrawled from top to bottom that scared him. He reached deep into his tunic pocket and brought out the note that Aunt Zelda had insisted he not read until
he was standing on the very doorstep of the Coven. Wolf Boy hoped that the sight of Aunt Zelda’s friendly handwriting would make him feel better. However, as he slowly began to read the note, it had quite the opposite effect.

Aunt Zelda had written her note on special paper that she had made from pressed cabbage leaves. She had written very carefully in ink made from crushed beetles mixed with water from the Mott. Aunt Zelda had not used cursive writing, because she knew that Wolf Boy had trouble with letters—he would often complain that they rearranged themselves when he wasn’t looking. There were a lot of letters—it had taken a whole family of beetles to make the ink. The beetles said:

Wolf Boy gulped.
Eat
it? Had he read that right? He looked at the word again. E-A-T. Eat. That’s what it said. Wolf Boy shook his head and continued reading very slowly. He had a bad feeling about what was coming next. The note went on:

At this point Wolf Boy gulped.
Tentacles?
He did not like the sound of that at all. How many tentacles? How big? As the bad feeling in the pit of his stomach grew, he continued reading.

When he finally reached the end of the letter, Wolf Boy’s hands were shaking. He knew that Aunt Zelda had something special she wanted him to do, but he’d had no idea it was anything like
this
. Attracting curious glances from passersby and an offer of advice—“you don’t wanna be standin’ there, boy. I’d go an’ stand anywhere but
there
if I was you”—Wolf Boy read Aunt Zelda’s note again and again and again until he knew every word. Then he screwed it up into a ball and warily put it into his mouth. It stuck to the roof of his mouth and tasted disgusting. Very slowly, Wolf Boy began to chew.

Five minutes later he had managed to swallow the last pieces of the note. Then he took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts. As he did, a subtle change came over him. Two girls walking past, who had been looking at Wolf Boy and giggling, fell quiet as the dreadlocked boy on the step suddenly looked less boylike and more…wolflike. They hurried on, clutching each other’s arms, and later told their friends they had seen a real live warlock outside the Coven.

Wolf Boy had retreated into his twilight world of wolverine ways—as he always did when he felt in danger—and with a heightened awareness of everything around him, Wolf Boy studied the door of the House of the Port Witch Coven. There
were three doorknockers positioned one above the other. The bottom one was a miniature iron cauldron, the middle one was a curled silver rat’s tail and the top one was a fat, warty toad. It looked very realistic.

Wolf Boy reached up to the toad doorknocker and the toad
moved
. Wolf Boy pulled his hand back as if he had been bitten. The toad was real. It was squatting on the doorknocker, its dark little amphibian eyes staring at him. Wolf Boy loathed slimy things—which was probably the reason he did not like much of Aunt Zelda’s cooking—but he knew he would have to touch the toad doorknocker, and that that would probably not be the worst thing he would have to touch. Gritting his teeth, he reached for the toad once more. The toad puffed itself up to twice its size so that it looked like a small, toad-shaped balloon. It began to hiss, but this time Wolf Boy did not draw back. As his hand began to close over the toad, the creature stopped hissing and shrank back to its normal size—there was something Darke about the grubby hand, scarred from the Tracker Ball, that the toad recognized.

Taking Wolf Boy by surprise, the toad slipped from under his hand and hopped off the doorknocker. It lifted it up and let it fall with a resounding
bang
. Then the toad resumed its place
on the knocker and closed its eyes.

Wolf Boy was prepared to wait, but he did not have to wait long. Soon he heard the sound of heavy footsteps on bare boards coming toward him, and a moment later the door was wrenched open. A young woman dressed in raggedy, stained black Coven robes peered out. She had a huge pink towel wrapped around her head and big, staring blue eyes. She very nearly snapped, “Yeah?” as usual, but then she remembered that it was the Darke Toad that had knocked. Taking care to keep her towel balanced, she stood up straight and said in her formal witch voice—which was bizarrely squeaky and shot up at the end of the sentence—“What be your business?”

Wolf Boy’s mind went blank. The taste of dried cabbage leaves and crushed beetle filled his mouth once more. What was it he had to say?
He couldn’t remember
. He stared at the young woman. She didn’t look too scary; she had big blue eyes and a squashy-looking nose. In fact, she almost seemed nice—though there was something peculiar about her, something that he couldn’t quite figure out. Oh! There was a weird, bristly gray flap thingy escaping from underneath the towel—what was
that
?

The young witch, whose name was Dorinda, began to close the door.

At last Wolf Boy remembered what he had to say. “I have come to feed the Grim,” he said.

“What?” said Dorinda. “You’re kidding me, aren’t you?” And then she remembered what she was supposed to say. She readjusted her towel once more and resumed her squeaky voice. “So be it,” she said. “Enter, GrimFeeder.”

Unfortunately he was not kidding, thought Wolf Boy, as he stepped into the House of the Port Witch Coven and the door began to close behind him. He wished he were. There was nothing he would like better right then than to step back into the sunny street and run all the way home to the marshes, where he belonged. The thought of the marshes made Wolf Boy remember that being in this ghastly place actually had something very important to do with the marshes and all the things he loved there. And so, as he followed Dorinda down the dark passageway, deep into the House of the Port Witch Coven, he kept that in mind. He was determined to do what he had come to do—tentacles and all.

The passageway was pitch-black and treacherous. Wolf Boy followed the rustling sound of Dorinda’s robes as they swept along the rough floor. Just in time he sidestepped a gaping hole from which a foul smell rose, only to be assailed by a sudden
onslaught of Bothers—one of them very prickly. Frantically Wolf Boy batted the Bothers away, to the accompaniment of Dorinda’s giggles. But he was not Bothered again as word of the touch of the Darke Toad quickly spread through the Bother community, and Wolf Boy was left at a respectful distance.

Wolf Boy followed Dorinda deeper into the house. At last they came to a tattered black curtain hanging in front of a door. As Dorinda drew back the curtain, clouds of dust made Wolf Boy cough. The dust tasted foul, of things long dead. Dorinda pushed open the door, which someone had taken a huge chunk out of with an ax, and he followed her into the kitchen.

It was just as weird as the time he had escaped the Coven with Septimus, Jenna and Nicko, hands burning from the touch of Sleuth, the Tracker Ball. The windows were covered in shreds of black cloth and a thick coat of grease, which kept the light out. The filthy room was illuminated only by a dull reddish glow, which came from an old stove. Reflected in the glow were dozens of pairs of glittering cats’ eyes ranged like malicious fairy lights around the kitchen, all staring at Wolf Boy.

The contents of the kitchen seemed to consist of shapeless piles of rotting garbage and broken chairs. The main feature was in the middle of the room, where a ladder led up to a
large ragged hole in the ceiling. The place smelled horrible—of stale cooking fat, cat poo and what Wolf Boy recognized with a pang as rotting wolverine flesh. Wolf Boy knew he was being Watched—and not only by the cats. His keen eyes scanned the kitchen until he saw, lurking by the cellar door, two more witches staring at him.

Dorinda was gazing at Wolf Boy with some interest—she liked the way his narrowed brown eyes were surveying the room. She smiled a lopsided, toothy smile. “You must excuse me,” she simpered, readjusting her towel. “I’ve just washed my hair.”

The two witches in the shadows cackled unpleasantly. Dorinda ignored them. “Are you
sure
you want to feed the Grim?” she whispered to Wolf Boy.

“Yes,” said Wolf Boy.

Dorinda regarded Wolf Boy with lingering look. “Shame,” she said. “You look cute. All right then, here goes.” Dorinda took a deep breath and shrieked, “
GrimFeeder!
The GrimFeeder has come!”

The thudding sound of feet running along the bare boards of the floor above echoed into the kitchen, and the next moment the ladder was bouncing under the not inconsiderable weight
of the last two members of the Coven—Pamela, the Witch Mother herself, and Linda, her protégée. Like two huge crows, Pamela and Linda descended laboriously into the kitchen, their black silk robes fluttering and rustling. Wolf Boy took a step back and trod on Dorinda’s toe. Dorinda yelped and poked Wolf Boy in the back with a bony finger. The two witches in the shadows—Veronica and Daphne—sidled over to the foot of the ladder and helped the Witch Mother down as she clumped onto the floor with some difficulty.

The Witch Mother was
big
—or she appeared to be. Her circumference was what the Witch Mother called “generous” and her stiff layers of black silk robes added yet more width, but she was actually not much taller than Wolf Boy. A good foot of her height was due to the very high platform shoes she wore. These shoes were made to the Witch Mother’s own design and they looked deadly. Coming out of the soles was a forest of long metal spikes, which she used to spear the giant woodworms that infested the House of the Port Witch Coven. Her shoes were extremely successful, as the number of speared giant woodworms languishing on the spikes showed, and the Witch Mother spent many happy hours tramping up and down the passageways searching for her next woodworm
victim. But it was not just the shoes that made the Witch Mother look weird—so weird that Wolf Boy could not help but stare.

The Witch Mother did not realize it, but she was allergic to giant woodworms, and she covered her face in thick white makeup to hide the red blotches. The bumpy makeup had cavernous cracks along the frown lines and around the corners of her mouth, and from deep within the whiteness of the makeup her tiny ice-blue eyes stared at Wolf Boy.

“What is
this
?” she asked scathingly, as though she had found some cat poo impaled on one of her shoe spikes.

“He came in by the Darke Toad, Witch Mother, and he’s come to—” began Dorinda excitedly.

“He?”
interrupted the Witch Mother, who in the gloom had taken Wolf Boy’s dreadlocks to be the long hair of a girl. “A
boy
? Don’t be ridiculous, Dorinda.”

Dorinda sounded flustered. “He
is
a boy, Witch Mother.” She turned to Wolf Boy. “You
are
, aren’t you?”