Magicalamity (5 page)

This made Tom smile. “I certainly have.”

“Let’s go to bed. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow.”

“OK.” Tom had another moment of longing for his bedroom at home, but it was quite cool to be sleeping in Clarence Mustard’s mysterious room. He was incredibly tired, and glad that Lorna would be in the same house, with her fierce, fairy-spotting Rottweiler prowling around outside.

“Good night, Tom. Sleep well.”

“Thanks,” Tom said. He added, “I mean, thanks for everything—for coming to help me.”

He could see that Lorna was pleased. “I’m rather a pathetic specimen of a fairy godmother, but I’ll brush up on my magic, and then you wait and see what we can do.”

W
hen Tom came downstairs the next morning he found Lorna at the kitchen table, bent over a tattered old book. She looked up. “Hi, Tom. Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, thanks.” He had slept extremely well, and had a lovely dream about his mother being on a wonderful holiday at some kind of tropical health spa. It was only a dream, but he had woken up feeling far less worried about her. He wasn’t quite so concerned about his dad, who at least had some magic to fight back with. “What’re you doing?”

Lorna groaned softly. “This is my old magic textbook from school. I’ve been up since dawn, trying to get these
spells back into my head—I don’t remember it being as hard as this! We need to be able to move around quickly and secretly, and the only way to do that is to fly.”

“When do I start?” Tom was dying to see if he could fly.

“Hold your horses—you can’t start until I’ve remembered enough to be able to teach you.” Lorna sighed heavily and got up to pour the last dribble of coffee from the dented pot on the stove. “I can’t believe I’ve forgotten the spell! When I lived in the Realm I flew every day, without even thinking about it—I even played flying basketball at school. But those blooming words won’t stay in my brain.”

“I could start by learning the words,” Tom offered.

“Good luck to you! I’ll make some more coffee and a bit of toast.”

Tom sat down at the table and pulled the old schoolbook towards him. The page was creased and covered with scribbles (“Maud Lightfoot is a COW!!!!”), and he had to strain to make out the long list of spell-words underneath.
Ziff, zaff, zoff—zipp, zapp, zopp—flish and wish
—and so on, for four more lines. It sounded babyish and silly, but Tom believed in magic now and had no doubt that it would work. He read the words over and over to himself, trying to memorize the actions, while Lorna made the toast and coffee.

“I’m glad to see you’re not afraid of hard work,” she
said approvingly. “We might as well get your wings on now, to see if they fit.”

“I have wings?” Tom had assumed he would be sharing Lorna’s.

“You can use Uncle Clarence’s old ones.”

“Great—where are they?”

“In your bedroom, of course.”

“Oh, you mean the bat’s wings above the fireplace!” Those huge leather bat’s wings were not the costume wings Tom thought he was getting. They were amazingly cool genuine wings, and if Tom had enough magic, he would be flying with them. He raced back upstairs.

Uncle Clarence’s old wings looked a lot more impressive than Lorna’s. Tom stood in front of the fireplace staring at them. Fully spread out, they had a wingspan of at least three meters. He climbed up on a chair to take them off the wall. Cautiously, he touched the leather. It was as soft and pliable as velvet, and so light that the wings were fastened to the wall with only four small nails. He picked them out one by one and climbed down very carefully with the wings in his arms.

There were stiff rods inside the leather, like bones. One long strut caught against the back of the chair and Tom’s heart jumped into his mouth. He waited for the sickening snap, but it was bendy and surprisingly strong.

These wings did not have a waistcoat part like
Lorna’s. Instead there were leather straps, and the belt part had a holster for a gun. There were also leather handles stitched inside the wings, where Tom assumed you were supposed to put your fingers when flying. Tom secretly hoped that he would be allowed to carry a real gun. In this strange new world, anything seemed possible.

Wings
.

The straps were adjustable, but when Tom buckled them on they were a perfect fit. He ran back to the kitchen with the soft leather billowing and swishing behind them.

Lorna inspected him gravely. “Excellent. You’re begining to look like a fairy.”

“Thanks.”

“But it takes time, so don’t expect to be looping the loop right away. We’ll be doing well if we get you off the ground.”

She had let out the waistcoat part of her wings so that it fitted her stout figure more comfortably. Once they were both winged, they went outside to practice on the weedy patch of concrete in front of the disguised Mustard Manor. Lorna brought out one of the kitchen chairs for her first jump and Tom’s spirits soared. It was a warm, sunny morning, and even the heaps of old engines and twisted fenders looked cheerful.

“I think I’ve got it now.” Lorna climbed onto the chair. “You can have a try in a minute. Watch me carefully.”

“OK, I’m watching.”

“You simply say the words, snap your fingers twice—first left, then right—”

“No,” Tom said, “it’s right first.”

“Is it?” She wobbled uncertainly on her chair. “We’d better check in the book.”

“I don’t need to,” Tom said patiently. “I’ve learned it by heart. I’ll talk you through it.” He concentrated as hard as he could on the spell. “OK
—ziff, zaff, zoff—zipp, zapp, zopp
—right finger-snap, left finger-snap—” They both snapped their fingers.
“Flish and wish—”
The words seemed to roll off his tongue, line after line, with surprising ease. “
Flash and dash
—oh!”

Something—a muscle he never knew he had—rippled across his shoulders, making his skin tingle. His giant bat’s wings suddenly fanned out majestically around him, making an amazing spooky, spiky shadow on the concrete.

“Good grief!” Lorna was pale with astonishment. “I don’t believe it!”

Tom couldn’t work out why she was so thunderstruck—until he noticed that he was gazing down at her, and his sneakers were floating in midair.

He was flying.

He took a deep breath and slotted his fingers into the leather hand-straps. His wings gently stirred the warm air like giant oars. He thought of going higher, and immediately shot ten meters into the air.

“STOP!” shrieked Lorna.

It was the most brilliant thing that had ever happened to him. He found that if he thought of a direction, he flew that way, as light and free as a leaf on a breeze. When he snapped his fingers—left, right—he halted and hovered. And if he paddled with his feet and made swimming movements with his arms, he flew faster.

“Lorna, look at me—I can fly!”

“Tom, come down! It’s not safe! You don’t know anything about wind currents!”

He swooped gracefully over the top of the crane. “I’m flying!”

A gust of wind, strong and firm as a giant’s arm, suddenly hurled him across the scrapyard. Lorna bellowed, but once the shock had worn off, Tom managed to slip out of the current and put himself back on course with a perfect loop-the-loop.

“It’s as good as being a bird!” He landed neatly in front of Lorna. “Sort of like being on a trampoline with a mind of its own—could my dad fly? How could he stand to give it up?”

His fairy godmother plumped down on the chair, wiping her brow with the sleeve of her jumpsuit. “I thought
you’d been blown away to kingdom come! I’ve never seen anything like it! You’re a natural.”

“Now that I can fly,” Tom said, “what do we do next? Can we go and search for my dad?”

“We don’t go anywhere until I can fly too—for pity’s sake, boy, give me a few tips!”

Tom spent the rest of the morning helping his fairy godmother to relearn her flying skills. After about half an hour she got herself a few meters off the ground. By lunchtime she was doing wobbly circuits, with a rope tied round her waist and Tom pulling her along like an enormous balloon. Finally she managed to fly to the top of the crane with Tom holding her hand. The huge scrapyard was spread beneath them, metal gleaming in the sun. In the distance Tom could see the beginning of a motorway.

“Magnificent!” sighed Lorna. “I’d forgotten how good the world looks from this angle! You can let go of my hand now.”

Tom released her hand and she immediately shot up into the air and performed a flashy triple somersault.

“She flies through the air with the greatest of ease!” sang Lorna. “That daring old fairy on the flying trapeze!” She swooped almost to the ground and suddenly shot up again. “I’m really in the swing now! Let’s see if I can still make a dainty landing.”

She grabbed Tom’s hand and the two of them made a perfect landing outside the hut.

“Blimey, Tom!” Lorna said breathlessly. “It’s a good thing you learn so fast. Let’s stop for now and have something to eat. And then—”

Across the yard, Hector barked sharply.

Lorna’s hot red face turned pale. She grabbed Tom’s wrist—so hard that it hurt—and dragged him back into the house.

“Hey—what’s going on?”

Slamming the door behind them, she bolted it top and bottom and made a quick sign with her fingers. “Someone at the gate—Hector doesn’t like the look of him.”

Tom was startled to see his tough godmother so agitated. On the hall table there was a kind of round shape covered with black velvet. Lorna whipped the cloth off impatiently, and Tom saw a single headlamp from a very large truck.

“It’s a homemade crystal ball,” she told him. “An object no fairy can do without. Watch the glass.”

The headlamp suddenly glowed with light, so fiercely that Tom had to shut his eyes. The glare died down and he opened them to see a picture in the headlamp—the main gate of the scrapyard with a small hut beside it. A tall, thin postman was knocking at the gate.

“It’s OK,” Tom said. “It’s just the postman.”

“Hector says there’s something weird about him—watch!”

Outside in the yard, the Rottweiler was barking himself into a frenzy. In the headlamp the tall postman sighed crossly and sneezed twice.

And then he changed into someone else. The postman was gone, and there was now a large, untidy teenager with a huge nose and a mess of black hair.

“Hey, that’s the same guy who came to the deli!” Tom cried. “The one who pretended to be Charlie—it’s him!”

“I knew it!” Lorna hissed. “They’re after me! They’ve found out that I’m your godmother and they know I’ve got you!”

In the headlamp, the young man didn’t vanish immediately but stood for a moment, looking vacant and scratching his thick mop of black hair.

“What’s he doing?” wondered Lorna. “Doesn’t this idiot know I have a crystal ball?”

The untidy teenager took something from the pocket of his baggy jacket and began to eat it.

“Well, I’ll be blowed!” Lorna said. “It’s your cousin Pindar!”

“My cousin?” Tom bent towards the headlamp, trying to get a closer look. His cousin was the son of the two wickedest and most powerful Falconers in the Realm, but he had a very funny, friendly-looking face. His nose
was large and turned up at the end like a duck’s beak, and he had very big ears that looked even bigger because they stuck out.

“The Fairy Secret Service must be desperate if they took Pindar,” Lorna said. “He’s always been rather a disappointment to his parents. Your aunt Dolores put him under house arrest once, for being stupid.”

“Oh.” This cousin of his must be very stupid indeed, if his own mother had locked him up for it.

Pindar finished whatever he was eating, wiped his hands down the front of his jacket, sneezed and vanished. Poor exhausted Hector finally stopped barking.

Lorna puffed heavily, as if she had just run a race. She replaced the black velvet cover on her crystal ball and sat down on the bottom stair. “Let’s be calm … let’s be reasonable.” She was muttering almost to herself. “They’re looking for anyone with a connection to Jonas. If I was a chief suspect, they wouldn’t have trusted the job to a twit like Pindar. That means we have a bit of time. But we can’t stay here now.”

Tom didn’t like the idea of leaving Mustard Manor. “Where shall we go?”

“To tell the truth, I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t do this job on my own.” Lorna heaved herself to her feet. “You have two more fairy godmothers—and it’s time those lazy cows started pulling their weight.”

L
orna ran the names of the other two godmothers through her headlamp crystal ball. It didn’t find them, but she wasn’t discouraged. “That only means they’ve left the Realm, like me. We’ll search in the mortal world.”

“If you’ve got a computer,” Tom said, “you could Google them.”

“Yes, I keep a primitive mortal computer,” Lorna said, “to deal with my mortal business—I don’t have a fairy broadband connection here, and a good thing too—it would make us far too easy to trace.” Her computer was in a small and very messy office next to the kitchen, nearly buried under a heap of papers. She swept these
aside, sitting down at the keyboard, and typed “Dahlia Pease-Blossom” into the search engine.

All they got was a list of flower shops and garden centers.

“She’s in hiding.” Lorna said. “Typical Dahlia! I wonder what she’s up to. Never mind, let’s try Iris.” She keyed in “Iris Moth.” “Bingo!”

Tom leaned over her shoulder to look at the screen: “Crackdown Park, Boarding School for Girls Aged 11–18, Headmistress I. C. Moth, MA.”

“That’s her! The ‘C.’ stands for ‘Clutterbuck’—it was her mother’s maiden name.”

“Are you sure it’s the right one?” Tom couldn’t imagine a headmistress who was also a fairy. The headmistress of his old primary school was even less fairylike than Lorna.

“Bet you it is.” Lorna clicked on “Crackdown Park,” and up came the school website, which showed a huge gray house and a photo of a mean-looking thin-lipped woman. “Yes, that’s definitely Iris—I’d know that miserable lizard face anywhere. There was a rumor in college that she had a bit of dinosaur blood. She always did say her family went back a long way.”