Magicalamity (14 page)

“Well, we’ve done the job,” Lorna said. “Nobody will recognize him now—his own parents wouldn’t know him.” She looked searchingly at Pindar. “Though funnily enough, he looks more like you now, Tom—in fact, he looks just like your father when we were at college. There must be more Harding in him than we thought. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

The three of them hurried back to the front of the shop, and Tom wondered if the new Pindar really looked like him. Obviously he wasn’t as handsome as Pindar, but his cousin did suddenly look like a much younger version of Dad, and he was distracted by another pang of longing for his parents—would he ever see them again?

But there was no time to worry about that now. Dahlia came out of the chemist’s shop carrying three heavy bags. “Where have you BEEN? I had to buy all his wretched special offers!” She glanced sharply at Pindar. “Where’s Pindar? And why is this gorgeous boy trying to spy on us? Buzz off, you attractive rascal!”

“This is Pindar,” Tom said. “It went a bit wrong.”

“Pindar? Good gracious!” Dahlia dropped the shopping bags into a nearby litter bin. “I wouldn’t say it went wrong! Darling, you’re the image of your uncle
Jonas! Well, the Harding side is the good-looking side of your family—your father looks like a duck-billed platypus with ears and a mustache.”

This wasn’t kind, but Pindar snorted with laughter. “He does, actually.” His handsome cheeks reddened. “Er—does this stuff wear off?”

“No, darling, you’d better get used to being a pinup. That Falconer hooter is a thing of the past!” She glanced at her watch. “Oh wonderful—we’re still in good time for the Afternoon Sobbing.”

Tom saw at once that the Chapel of Milly was past its best. It was a small, square building of red brick in the purple shadow of Hopping Hill, set in the middle of a garden—but the buildings all around had been bombed and the garden was full of rubbish. They had traveled to the fringes of the city, through alternating scenes of fairy-tale prettiness and patches of blackened ruins—it had been scary dodging the gunfights and explosions, and Tom’s mouth and nose felt gritty with dust.

“There’s Iris,” Lorna said. “Trust her to be early!”

Iris—thankfully wearing her raincoat—stood in front of the wooden doors of the Chapel. “You’re thirty-two flickers late, and—who on earth is this?” Her thin lips turned white.

“It’s Pindar,” Tom said hastily. “He fell into a vat of handsome-stuff.”

“Good heavens—just for a moment I thought—you look so much like …”

Tom was curious. The first thing all three godmothers had said about the new handsome Pindar was that he looked like Dad. No wonder they’d all had crushes on him.

“Yes, it’s brought out his Harding side,” Dahlia said. “How was the nude ball?”

“Magnificent—you’d never know Tiberius is penniless. Dolores had some fabulous buttock-paintings, and there was quite literally a fountain of Kaulquappe.” Iris had recovered and was frowning at her watch. “The Adorers will be out in just a few moments. We must pretend to be tourists.”

“This doesn’t look like much of a tourist attraction,” said Tom. “It’s a bit of a dump, to be honest. And we’re the only people here.”

“It used to be a lot more exciting,” Pindar said. “A long time ago, when I was little, there were two hundred Adorers—they had a choir, and there were loads of stalls selling food and souvenirs.”

“Yes, and people used to come in flying coach parties to have their picture taken with Milly’s corpse,” Iris said wistfully. “Some of the Adorers used to do juggling acts to entertain the queue. Her memory was properly honored in those days.”

Lorna snorted. “That’s because Tiberius put former
Adorers on the fast track in the civil service—and who bothers with that nowadays? Times have changed, all right. Nowadays none of the bright young people want a career in the Realm.”

A bell started pealing, low and solemn.

“Here they come,” Dahlia said. “Bow your heads, everyone.”

Tom bowed his head but kept watching avidly out of the tops of his eyes. A large, battered house that was half a ruin stood near the Chapel. The door of this house opened and a line of men (he counted twenty) filed out. They wore long black robes and black hoods that hid half their faces. The Adorer at the front of the line was loudly sobbing. He produced an iron key from the depths of his robes and (still sobbing) unlocked the door of the Chapel.

“Well, I never!” whispered Lorna. “Look, girls—it’s poor old Derek Drapton! Now, he really DID adore Milly!”

“She wouldn’t look at him,” sniffed Iris. “The Draptons are a minor family and his legs were too spindly.”

“His legs? Darling, I heard it was because of his tiny—” Dahlia stopped as Derek shuffled past them, sobbing loudly in the depths of his hood.

One by one, the Adorers filed past the boys and the godmothers. Tom’s mouth was dry—how on earth were they going to get away with this? Now that they were at
the point of carrying out Dahlia’s plan, it seemed absolutely crazy. He glanced at Pindar, who was looking more like his old self as Tom got used to the handsomeness. Pindar was as scared as he was, but his face showed a rocklike determination.

Dahlia’s scarlet lips moved and her manicured fingers snapped. The last five Adorers in the line silently fell to the ground. “Right—get their robes.”

This was one of the parts of the plan that had worried Tom. Fairies are a lot stronger than mortals, and Pindar and the godmothers briskly stripped the black robes off the unconscious Adorers, but Tom found it a real struggle—an unconscious person is amazingly heavy, and by the time the others were in their disguises he had only managed to get the man and the robes into a tangle and Pindar and Lorna had to help him. The robe was like a monk’s habit, with a belt made of rope and a deep hood.

They left the stripped Adorers lying on the bald, dirty lawn in their underwear and sandals. Dahlia put a finger to her lips as they entered the Chapel. Tom followed her, then Iris, then Pindar, with Lorna at the back.

Tom made an effort to calm down. It was going like clockwork so far and he was right behind Dahlia—her magic was of a very high quality, even if she did despise mortals and turn them into slaves.

Pindar let out a stifled sneeze and Tom’s heart skipped—but none of the Adorers took any notice.

Though his orders were to keep his head bowed to blend in with the other Adorers, he couldn’t resist looking round. This place gave him the shivers. It was like a church or a museum. There were rows of chairs, and the walls were covered with pictures of Milly Falconer. The biggest one was life-sized and showed a plump young woman with a round, pink face and fat ringlets of brown hair. She was dressed very grandly in a glittering white gown, gauzy white wings that sparkled with jewels and a small jeweled crown.

Derek Drapton broke into louder sobs. The other Adorers began sobbing too.

“Sob!” Iris hissed, behind him. “Boo-hoo!”

Tom let out a couple of feeble sniffles and immediately wanted to laugh, in spite of the danger; the godmothers were so bad at acting grief-stricken. Luckily, apart from Derek Drapton, the genuine Adorers weren’t much better. Tom was amused to see that one of them was listening to an iPod under his hood and another was texting on his phone. For heartbroken lovers, they looked bored.

It was a shock to see Milly Falconer’s dead body. The Adorers had formed a circle around her glass coffin and Tom looked as closely as he dared. He’d never seen a
dead body before, and Milly had been laid out in the same dress, wings and crown she wore in the life-sized portrait. He’d expected her to be pale like a wax figure, yet she looked amazingly alive—pink and peaceful, as if she were asleep.

Derek Drapton dropped to his knees. “Oh, Milly!” he wailed. “You were so beautiful, so graceful—WHY? WHY?”

“Why?” echoed the other Adorers (rather halfheartedly, Tom thought).

“Milly, the world is a parched desert without you! My only beloved! Woman of my dr—” The weeping Drapton froze midsentence with his mouth open.

Dahlia dropped a tiny glass tube into her handbag. “Hurry up, everyone—we’ve got exactly ten minutes before they all wake up and raise the alarm.”

“Achoo!”

“Oh, Pindar—do stop sneezing!”

“Sorry—achoo!”

Tom knew exactly what he had to do; they had practiced this twice before they left Dahlia’s house. He threw off the black robes. His wings were tightly packed into a traveling harness on his back, which he quickly untied. He shook the creases out and took his place at the foot of the coffin.

“I wish I dared to use a bit more magic,” Dahlia said.
“But it’s just too easy to spot, and the police are trained to investigate any sudden surges.” She was rummaging in her handbag, and she suddenly swore. “Drat and double drat! The tube of invisibility has leaked all over the inside of my bag! Now I’ve got a lot of invisible credit cards! Never mind, we’ll just have to hope what’s left is enough.” She scattered the pale green powder around them (sending Pindar into a storm of sneezes). “Now let’s get Milly out—one, two, three, HEAVE!”

With tremendous huffing and groaning, the five of them lifted the glass coffin off its velvet-covered plinth and staggered out of the Chapel into the rubbish-strewn garden.

“Blimey,” gasped Lorna. “She was always going on diets—I wish one of them had WORKED!”

The coffin was incredibly heavy, and Tom felt as if his arms were being pulled out of their sockets with the weight. This—and Pindar’s sneezing—made it hard to remember the flying spell. Slowly, painfully, they got off the ground with their load. As soon as Tom was properly airborne it felt much lighter. He was able to breathe properly, and to gaze around him at the aerial view of the Realm—spread out beneath them like a beautiful quilt dotted with blackened holes.

“We were just in time,” Iris said. “Look down there!”

Far below them, there was movement around the
Chapel. The Adorers had woken up and discovered that Milly had gone, and there was the distant sound of an alarm bell.

“Make for the border,” Dahlia said. “Fast as the wind—hold tight, Tom!”

He gripped the coffin as tightly as he could, until his fingers hurt, and a good thing too—this was speed as he had never known it. The ground below was a blur and his ears were almost blown off his head. Holding on took so much concentration that he didn’t have time to be frightened.

“Police sirens!” Lorna shrieked over the rushing of the wind. “They’re chasing us!”

Tom heard the sirens—distantly at first, and then they were surrounded by flying police with stiff wings of blue leather, helmets with lights on and enormous guns. He felt sick.

“HALT!” a deafening voice roared through a loudspeaker. “YOU HAVE BEEN PICKED UP ON THE INVISIBILITY SENSOR—HALT OR WE’LL SHOOT!”

“Keep going!” Lorna yelled desperately. “We can still outrun them—OW!” A bolt of lightning flashed past her shoulder. “They’re firing at us!”

A storm of lightning bolts rained around them—Tom felt the heat of one just missing his leg. The coffin jolted and juddered. Iris managed to grab her lightning-pistol with one hand, sending out a volley of shots—Tom saw
a police fairy hurtle to the ground with one wing a cloud of glowing ashes.

“GIVE UP THE DEMISPRITE!”

It was Tom they were after. He was about to fall into the hands of the Falconers.

Suddenly something dark came between Tom and the sun. He saw a man with a black mask over his face shooting down the police one by one, as if he were playing a computer game. It was a nightmarish sight—fairies exploding into ash in midair, sometimes right on top of him.

And then came a tremendous WHACK, which swept Tom off the coffin and sent him plunging towards the ground—with his wings in a tangle and no time to say the spell. His head filled with fog, and he was just aware of Pindar swooping down and grabbing his wrist—before he dropped into deep, silent darkness.

O
ut of the darkness came Lorna’s voice. “I’ll never forgive myself! How can I face Jonas now? He trusted me to take care of his son—and I nearly got him killed!”

Tom tried to tell her he was OK, but he couldn’t move. He was trapped in something warm and thick, like a fly in molasses.

“Oh, do stop fussing,” said Iris’s voice. “He wasn’t killed—thanks to Pindar.”

“Yes, well done, darling,” Dahlia’s voice chimed in. “That was a splendid rescue.”

It was all coming back to Tom. The last thing he remembered was Pindar’s hand grabbing his wrist. He
saved my life, he thought; Mum and Dad will have to let him live with us now.

“Where is everybody, anyway?” Lorna asked. “They haven’t even offered us a cup of tea!”

Tom made an effort to open his heavy eyelids, and saw dancing flames. He was lying on a smooth carpet of grass, beside the massive trunk of a tree. The godmothers and Pindar were sitting around a crackling campfire.

“He’s waking up,” said Iris.

“Tom!” Lorna loomed over him. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Drink some of this,” she said, holding a metal cup to his lips.

Tom took a sip of something hot and fierce that spread a feeling of liquid light through his whole body. The fog in his brain cleared and he sat up.

“It’s just a drop of Kaulquappe.” Lorna drank the rest of it. “Blimey, what a hoo-ha!”

“What happened? Where are we? Pindar—thanks for saving me,” said Tom.

His cousin grinned. “That’s OK.”

“A bolt of lightning knocked you off the coffin and stunned you,” Dahlia said.

“Who were the guys in black masks?”

“We were rescued by Clarence Mustard’s outlaws,” Iris told him proudly. “They’ve brought us to Hopping Hill.”

“This is Hopping Hill?” Tom gazed round curiously. So this was the wild, beautiful fairy mountain owned by his dad. Now that his eyes had got used to the shadows, he saw that they were in a clearing in the middle of dense forest. A short way off, two masked men with machine guns stood on guard. “Where’s the coffin? I didn’t break it when I fell off, did I?”

“No, it’s safe and sound over there.” Lorna pointed to a black shape behind the guards. “The chief outlaw covered it with his cloak—he said it was depressing.” (Tom knew what he meant; he was glad he didn’t have to look at that plump pink corpse.)