Floods 7 (12 page)

The Floods drove north-east into the dark bit of Europe, where all the trees are black and people like cuckoo clocks so much they actually buy them. At each border crossing Mordonna clicked her fingers and the officials ushered them through into the next country.

Finally the campervan stopped at the foot of a great mountain range.

‘You know what's on the other side, don't you?' said Winchflat.

‘Really flat stuff with no mountains at all?' said Satanella.

‘More mountains, probably,' said Nerlin. ‘See, you should have let me do the driving.'

‘Transylvania Waters,' said Mordonna. ‘I can feel it calling me.'

‘Oh, is that what it is?' said Nerlin. ‘I thought it was all the wretched beetroot soup we've been eating.'

‘If I remember my geography lessons,' said the Queen, ‘there is no road as such into the country, just donkey tracks.'

‘Mother, it was a very long time ago when you were at school,' said Mordonna. ‘Things have changed.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes, your husband, my father, got rid of all the donkey tracks years ago.'

‘You mean there's proper roads now?'

‘Did I say that?' said Mordonna. ‘No, he just got rid of the donkey tracks.'

‘It's not a problem,' said Winchflat. ‘I told you the campervan could go anywhere and so it can.'

He pressed two buttons and a big red knob
and they slowly lifted into the air. A small dog who was in the middle of lifting his leg on one of the van wheels fainted in surprise. So did the old lady holding the dog's lead.

The van rose silently above the trees and vanished into the clouds that always covered the mountain tops.

The clouds came halfway down the mountain, but only on the outside of Transylvania Waters. It had been like that for as long as anyone could remember. There were people over ninety years old who had never seen the mountain tops.

The clouds had been put there by the first wizards to settle in Transylvania Waters, to keep outsiders from coming into their country. For the clouds were not simple collections of fluffy water vapour like they are everywhere else. These clouds contained sleeping gas so that anyone climbing up into them fell asleep long before they reached the summit. It didn't take long for humans to learn to stay away. Sheep never learned, though, and the misty hillsides are dotted with sleeping sheep, some
of whom have been there for centuries.

‘Wind up all the windows,' said Winchflat as they rose higher towards the mountain tops. ‘I knew those fog lights would come in handy.'

‘Look at all those sheep,' said Satanella to Brastof. ‘I'd love to get out and chase them.'

‘Getting out would not be good,' warned Winchflat. ‘You would fall as fast asleep as they are.'

‘Well, couldn't we open the window a bit and bark at them?' said Satanella.

‘Yeah,' said Brastof. ‘Brilliant. I aren't barfed at a sheep for two hundred years.'

‘Don't you mean barked?' said Betty.

‘That too,' said Brastof.

‘Do not open the window or we will all fall asleep,' said Winchflat.

‘Listen, darling,' said Mordonna to Satanella, ‘when we get settled again, I'll get you a sheep of your own and you can bark at it all day.'

‘Wow,' said Satanella.

‘Can we barf at it too?' said Brastof.

‘If you hose it down afterwards,' said Mordonna.

They came over the last rise and out of the clouds. It wasn't gradual like normal clouds, but a sudden flat wall of fog. For a few seconds the front of the van was out in the cold clear air while the back was still hidden in mist. Then they were completely free and there it lay stretched out before them.

The deep sunless grey valley that was home.

Transylvania Waters.

Mordonna and Nerlin felt their blood surge with joy. Queen Scratchrot, although looking younger, had no blood left, but she felt her empty veins tingle.

Twenty-three years had passed since they had left the land of their birth. And every single day of those twenty-three years, Mordonna had closed her eyes for a few moments and brought back the memories of its wet grey valleys and waterfalls of acid rain.

She could see, far off in the distance, the brown fog of the evening rise out of Lake Tarnish and crawl towards the city, eating into everything as it passed, as it had done since the dawn of time.
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The spires of the castle, green with verdigris, poked through the fog like the legs of a dead spider. It was the most beautiful sight the Floods had ever seen.

Even Mildred Flambard-Flood and the children, who had never seen their parents' homeland, stood in silence as they felt its magic calling out to them, inviting them down into the only true place on Earth where wizards and witches could be completely free.

‘How could we have stayed away so long?' said Nerlin, putting his arm round Mordonna's shoulder.

‘How could we have ever left such a paradise?' she replied, tears filling her eyes as she watched far below the little dots that she knew were the Evening Moths crashing into Lake Tarnish, overcome by its wonderful toxic fumes.

‘Because of your stinky stupid father,' said the Queen.

‘Yes,' said Mordonna. ‘Since he took over, Transylvania Waters has ceased to be paradise.'

‘True, and I blame myself for marrying him and bringing him here,' said the Queen. ‘When my father was King, life was wonderful.'

‘Then we must make it wonderful again,' said
Nerlin, so moved by seeing his homeland that he forgot all about sulking.

Transylvania Waters is surrounded on every side by tall mountains.
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The slopes below the clouds on the outside, facing away from the country, are soft and green with grass and bushes and pretty birds sipping nectar from exquisite wild flowers and all that sort of fairy story rubbish, but those that face inwards are bare and rough and devoid of all life apart from the Night Vultures, a unique species that not only eat dead things, but will actually dig them up to do so.
³⁵

There is one other type of creature living on the Transylvania Waters side of the mountains. There is one on each mountain and they live in
caves just below the summit. They are the Crones, old ladies with no living relatives who shun society and live their remaining years in deep meditation and complete isolation.
³⁶

When a Crone knows she is about to die, she lights a fire and down in the valley fights break out
among the crowd of old ladies waiting to take the dead crone's place. The winner is then given a pair of warm socks, a sealed box containing a small bonfire and a box of matches to signal when she is dying, and sent off up the mountain. Quite often, because of their arthritis and the steep, rough terrain, they don't make it as far as the cave. After the Night Vultures have tidied them away, there is another old lady fight to choose her replacement. This can take weeks. In 1937 it took fifteen fights before an old lady actually made it up to the empty cave.

Winchflat brought the campervan down in front of one of the Crone Caves. By a wonderful coincidence, the sort of coincidence you usually only get in books, the Crone living there had once worked for Queen Scratchrot.

‘I smell the Queen,' she said.

‘Is that you, Quenelle,' said the Queen from the back of the van, ‘my faithful old Armpit Cleaner?'

‘It is, your majesty,' said the old lady, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Oh, how I missed you when you
left. The King took a new wife and she was so cruel to all your faithful servants.'

‘A new wife?' said the Queen. ‘Who?'

‘She was not from our country,' said Quenelle. ‘She was from Bavaria.'

‘Not the Countess Slab,' said the Queen, rattling with laughter. ‘Don't say it was her.'

‘Yes, your majesty,' said the old lady, ‘and a bigger, wobblier, crueller, horribler, smellier person I never did meet.'

‘But seriously rich, though,' said the Queen.

‘Indeed, my lady.'

‘I have heard, though, that she sings like a bird,' said the Queen. ‘Is that true?'

‘Oh yes, your majesty. She sings like a bird and does so from dawn till sunset,' said Quenelle. ‘But the bird is a chicken.'

‘I am sorry you and my other servants suffered so, but to be honest the two of them deserve each other.'

‘Indeed, your majesty. They have made each other's lives complete misery,' said Quenelle. ‘And
may I say, your majesty, you are looking younger than ever.'

Then Quenelle asked politely and the rest of the family turned away while the Queen lifted her arms and once again her old servant licked her armpits clean, as she had first done when Queen Scratchrot had been a baby.

‘As sweet as ever,' said Quenelle, which made everyone else feel like throwing up.
³⁷

Crones live on a diet of snow and gruel, so Mordonna closed her eyes and did the Dinner Spell Number 437 – the banquet special. Over dinner they discussed their next moves.

‘There are many who will welcome you back with open arms,' said Quenelle. ‘I would imagine that, after years with Countess Slab, even the King would be happy to see you again. And if you think about it, there's probably only one person who won't be overjoyed to see you and that's the Countess herself.'

‘Happy?' said the Queen. ‘I'll teach him happy. If it wasn't for him we would never have had to leave all those years ago. Oh no, I want double, triple, quadruple revenge with extreme pain and humiliation. I want to see him tied naked to a cow with stinging nettles taped to his naughty bits and paraded through the streets of the town with barbed
wire wrapped all round his bottom. I want him locked in the Transylvania Waters Big Brother House for six months with seventeen brain-dead teenagers who talk about nothing but the fluff in their tummy buttons. I want him covered in Vegemite and locked in a cage with fifty hungry poodles. I want so many horrible and nasty things done to him that I could write a big book about it.'
³⁸

‘But don't they say “to err is human, to forgive divine”?' said Nerlin.

‘First of all, I am not human. I am a witch,' said the Queen. ‘And second, whoever said that was a complete idiot. They also, and this is probably a completely different “they”, say “revenge is sweet”.'

‘But, but, what about “forgive thine enemies” and all that,' said Nerlin, who was quite a gentle soul underneath his gentle exterior.

‘Well, “revenge is a dish best served cold”, as
they
say, and he's going to be very cold when I'm finished with him,' said the Queen. ‘I was going to say the King won't know what hit him, but where's the fun in that? The King will most definitely know what hit him. ME!'

‘Wow, Granny,' said Morbid. ‘You are so cool.'

‘Yes, I am, aren't I,' said the Queen. ‘And if you are good, I'll let all you kids help me.'