Floods 8 (3 page)

‘Door Fairies?' said several people at once.

‘Yes, look, there's a notice on the wall.'

There was. It said:

‘There's no such thing as Door Fairies,' said Mordonna.

‘Of course there is,' said Auntie Mould. ‘It's written on the sign.'

‘And you believe everything you read?'

‘Umm, probably,' said Auntie Mould. ‘Though to tell you the truth, that sign is the only thing I have ever read in my whole life. When I was girl, living in the Castle, we had servants to do all our reading.'

‘So how did you learn to read then?' said Betty.

‘I didn't. I mean, I can't.'

‘So how do you know what the sign says?'

‘I played this,' said the old lady, pulling out an ancient clockwork record player with a very dusty old record on it. ‘Mind you, it took me three years
to work out how to use it, because when I was a girl living in the Castle –'

‘Yes, we know,' said Mordonna. ‘You had servants to wind it up for you.'

‘Wind it up? You can wind it up?'

‘Of course. How else do you play the record?'

‘Well, I was much younger and fitter then and I just ran round and round the machine very fast pulling the needle round the record,' said Auntie Mould.

‘And the record told you what the notice on the wall said?'

‘Eventually.'

‘Eventually?'

‘Yes, I kept falling asleep from all the running and then I couldn't remember what the record was saying,' said Auntie Mould. ‘I thought about writing the words down, but of course I can't write because when I was a girl living in the Castle –'

‘YOU HAD SERVANTS TO DO THE WRITING FOR YOU,' everyone shouted.

‘How did you know that?' said the old lady.

‘Just a hunch,' said the Queen.

‘I noticed that, dear,' Auntie Mould said. ‘If you straightened your back no one would notice it.'

‘Well, never mind all that, Auntie,' said the Queen. ‘I can tell you for absolutely sure, there is no such thing as Door Fairies.'

‘So you say,' said Auntie Mould.

‘Have you ever seen one?'

‘No, but then I've never seen the Going Out Door or the Coming In Door,' said the old lady. ‘I deliberately didn't go looking for them in case the fairies were there.'

This went on for another thirty-three minutes until Auntie Mould said that she would go out of the Coming In Door as long as the Queen went first and then came back to prove the Door Fairies hadn't got her and then went out again and came back again several more times just to make sure. This took another thirty-three minutes, until the whole family, except Auntie Mould, had climbed
up and down the ladder to the roof five times. By then it was dark and Auntie Mould said that no matter how safe it was, there was no way she was climbing up in the dark in case the Darkness Fairies got her.

So they all had some more bacon sandwiches and spent the night in the van.
⁸

The next morning, they blindfolded Auntie Mould and tied her up. Then they gave her five sleeping pills and six pieces of very burnt bacon, which they told her were angels' scabs, and finally she was ready to go up the ladder to the roof.

‘Someone stole the ceiling,' was the first thing she said when Winchflat's Wake-Up Pills had taken effect.

‘It's the sky, Auntie,' said Betty.

‘Well, I don't like it. It wasn't there when I was a girl,' said Auntie Mould.

‘It's always been there,' said the Queen.

‘I've never seen it before.'

‘Don't tell me,' said the Queen. ‘When you wanted to look up you had servants to do it for you.'

‘Well, of course we did,' said Auntie Mould. ‘We didn't want to end up with wrinkles in our necks from all that stretching. I had a special Looking Up Maid and a Looking Down Maid. Doesn't everyone?'

When Mordonna tried to explain that things weren't like that any more, the mad old lady couldn't believe it.

‘But you'd keep stepping in puddles,' she said. ‘No, what I mean is that nowadays everyone does their own looking up and down,' said Mordonna.

‘Oh, don't be silly, dear,' said Auntie Mould. ‘What would all those little peasants do all day if they didn't have important jobs like looking up and down. You'll be telling me there are no more Looking Round Corners Maids next.'

‘There aren't.'

‘Well, I suppose when we take over the castle again we can put all that right and I can always get my Checking The Back Of My Neck Maid to do all the other looking for me.'

‘Auntie?' said Betty. ‘What did you actually look at for yourself?'

‘My reflection, of course,' said the old lady, ‘but not until my Still Gorgeous Maid had checked that I was still gorgeous.'

‘Right. Now we'll just leave the servant problems until later,' said Mordonna. ‘We've got things to do.'

It was decided that Betty would go down into the castle first. She would go into the kitchens, pretend she was a kitchen maid and see how everyone felt about the King and his dreadful new wife, Countess Slab. At the same time Satanella and Brastof would go down into the town pretending to be normal dogs, and sound out things there.

‘Can we sniff lampposts?' said Satanella.

‘You can indeed, my darling,' said Mordonna.
‘And trees too. After all, they are like doggy newspapers.'

‘What about me?' Merlinmary asked. ‘I want to go.'

‘I'll tell you what,' said Winchflat. ‘Take this walkie-talkie and go down to the power station and if there's a problem I'll call you and you can make all the lights go out.'

‘Nice idea,' said the Queen. ‘Just one flaw.'

‘What?'

‘The only place in the whole of Transylvania Waters with electricity is the castle and then only in the King's bedroom because he is afraid of the dark and is terrified a puff of wind might blow out the candles. Fifteen kidnapped Belgian geography teachers are imprisoned in one of the deepest cellars where they pedal fifteen bicycles night and day to generate the electricity to power the castle's three pathetic light bulbs. For everyone else it's candles and oil lamps,' the Queen explained. ‘And you don't want to know where the wax comes from or what they boil to get the oil.'

‘Yuk,' said Betty.

‘Everything has its upside,' said the Queen. ‘No one ever has blocked-up ears.'

‘And the oil?'

‘Don't let your cat outside after dark.'

‘Cool,' said Satanella. ‘Cat Oil Lamps. I like that idea.'

‘Well, Cat Oil does burn really brightly, but the smell takes some getting used to,' said the Queen.

While the family had been in the attic with Auntie Mould, Parsnip the crow had been flying around the town looking for his old friends and relations, and old they were. The few who hadn't died were now very, very old and infirm. Parsnip had been kept fit and healthy by Mordonna casting Keep Fit And Healthy spells over him and Winchflat had plugged him into his Old Bird Rejuvenator at least once a year. The result was that the old bird who should have been a crumbling wreck by now was almost as young as the day he had fled with his master, Vessel, and the Queen all those years ago.

‘All family has crumbly to bits,' he said when he got back. ‘Favourite girlfriend not so favourite actually, all bald and very old fish smell.'

‘What about the people?' said Mordonna.

‘How are they?'

‘All bald and very old fish smell too,' said Parsnip.

‘Everyone?'

‘Snipsnip not actually look at everyone.'

‘Well, go and have another look,' said Mordonna.

Winchflat gave the bird a tiny two-way radio. ‘You can report back with this,' he said.

‘Snipsnip do wreckonay, umm reconum, i-spy-ey thing,' said the old bird and flew off.

Meanwhile, Betty slid down a drainpipe, crept past the dustbins and down into the castle kitchens. The reek of boiled cabbage was so strong it turned the air green. Huge saucepans bubbled on the ranges and every single one appeared to be full of cabbages and nothing else – all except the last one, which was full of brussels sprouts.

‘Aren't they sweet?' said a small boy about Betty's age.

The boy was the lowest member of the
kitchen staff. He was so low that he wasn't even allowed to have a name and was simply referred to as ‘Oi you'. His job was to scan every cabbage for caterpillars and then eat them. Birds eat caterpillars and thrive on them because they are full of protein. Transylvania Waters caterpillars are not full of protein. They are full of runny stuff that tastes like very old cabbage.

‘Aren't what sweet?' said Betty.

‘The little baby cabbages.'

‘Where are all the other vegetables and the meat?' said Betty. ‘Are they in a different kitchen?'

‘What's meat?'

‘Well, umm … oh, I get it, the King's a vegetarian,' said Betty.

‘What's a vegetarian?' said the boy.

When Betty explained, he was even more confused. It seemed that the King was not a vegetarian and it seemed that the range of vegetables and fruit on offer was cabbages and other cabbages and more cabbages.

‘And the baby cabbages,' said the boy.

And when Betty looked closer at the other kitchen servants she realised that it wasn't just the air that was green, it was all the people too.

‘So the only thing you ever have to eat is boiled cabbage,' she said.

‘No, of course not,' said the boy. ‘We have baby cabbages too and fried cabbage and pickled cabbage and cabbage coleslaw and … and, umm, err, cabbage stew and at Christmas we have red cabbage and cabbage stalk wine.'

‘And is that what everyone eats, even the King?'

‘Well, yes, of course,' said the boy.

It was obvious that Transylvania Waters had become an even more wretched place to live than it had been when Mordonna and Nerlin had run away. Mordonna had told Betty about the great feasts they used to have in the castle – and not just in the castle, but all over the country. There were quail's eggs, white caviar, mushrooms as wide as tables and twenty-three-layer chocolate cakes with fresh strawberries and cream between every layer.
Queen Scratchrot had talked about the wonderful meals too, and had even brought a few of her old cookery books with her, containing incredible recipes that were more like works of art than cooking instructions. Transylvania Waters may have been a damp, mould-infested country with spies and secret agents at every corner, but the food had always been its saving grace.

Yet now, all there seemed to be to eat was cabbages.

‘It's different on Fridays,' said the boy. ‘We don't eat grown-up or baby cabbages on Fridays.'

‘What do you eat then?'

‘Nothing. Oh no, that's not true. Sometimes we eat our own toenails.'

Something didn't add up. Transylvania Waters was a country full of wizards, so why couldn't they just do some spells to make any sort of food they wanted? Before Betty could ask anyone, there was an almighty crash and the kitchen door flew open so hard that the whole room and everyone inside it shook.

A fat angry woman in a fat angry dress, with fat angry hair and bright red lipstick smudged over her fat angry mouth and down her chin, stormed in.

It was Countess Slab, the King's awful new wife. The only good thing about her was that she was so dreadful, she made the King seem almost, but not quite, but nearly maybe, well, actually not so bad after all.

‘WHERE'S ME LUNCH?' she roared. ‘It's a minute past one. I wants me lunch NOW.'

The cook – and, in fact, everyone else in the kitchen, except Betty – had thrown themselves to the floor when the Countess had come in. The woman plunged her arm into a boiling saucepan, pulled out two whole cabbages and swallowed them.

This woman's days are numbered,
Betty thought to herself. She could tell that the Countess was only in charge because she was louder, larger and nastier than everyone else.

‘Oi yous, little girl thing,' she screamed at Betty, ‘get over 'ere.'

‘“Please come here, Your Highness” is what you are supposed to say,' Betty said. ‘I am a proper princess, not some lardy pants who married a tyrant who shouldn't really be king at all, and therefore I outrank you, fatso, and you will speak to me with respect.'

The Countess froze. It had been many, many years since anyone had answered her back. In her homeland of Bavaria one or two people had tried, but she had simply sat on them and carried on sitting on them until they had got very, very flat and dead. She had even done this to one of her own sisters. After that no one had ever answered her back, not even her parents.

Until now.

Still rooted to the spot, Countess Slab changed from her angry-looking red to a dangerous-looking purple. Because of her shape she looked like a very big aubergine in a dress. Steam began to come out of her nose, and if there had been any matadors in the room they would have all run away. This is what Betty did, pausing only to cast a spell over
the doorway she ran through that made it shrink to about half the width of the Countess. Blind with fury, Countess Slab threw herself at the doorway and stuck halfway through.

‘YOUS EVIL LITTLE WORM!' she screamed at Betty, who had stopped just out of her reach.
⁹

Taking a few steps back, Betty turned and grinned at her.

‘You will now apologise to me, lardy pants, and then you will apologise to the whole world for being so gross and horrible and stupid,' she said.

‘SHAN'T!'

‘In that case you can stay where you are,' said Betty. ‘And don't think you can call a stonemason to come and dig the wall away, because I've done a spell and the whole wall is as hard as a diamond.'

‘Excuse me,' said the cook, after Betty had made a new door in the wall and gone back into the kitchen. ‘Did you say you were a princess?'

‘Umm, err, yes,' said Betty. ‘Probably shouldn't have said that, but you know, I got carried away.'