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  The Floods 10: Lost

  ePub ISBN 9781742743127

  Kindle ISBN 9781742743134

  This work is fictitious. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental, though if you pay me $5000 I am prepared to put your name in The Floods 11.

  A Random House book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Random House Australia in 2011

  Copyright © Colin Thompson 2011

  www.colinthompson.com

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Author: Thompson, Colin (Colin Edward)

  Title: Lost / Colin Thompson

  ISBN: 978 1 86471 946 8 (pbk.)

  Series: Thompson, Colin (Colin Edward). Floods; 10

  Target audience: For primary school age

  Subjects: Wizards – Juvenile fiction

  Witches – Juvenile fiction

  Supernatural – Juvenile fiction

  Dewey number: A823.3

  Illustration by Colin Thompson

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Imprint Page

  The Floods Family Tree

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Postscript

  Footnotes

  More from Random House

  Nigel Davenport, thirty-seven and three-quarters, has spent the last fifteen months and four hours deep in Paraguay as a secret agent for the British Government. He suspects that his seemingly devoted whippet, Olympia, may be a secret-secret agent sent by a foreign government to spy on him.

  His suspicions are confirmed when three of his socks go missing.

  Meanwhile, back in Surreyshire-On-Sea, Nigel’s sweet innocent fiancée, Grizelda, has been kidnapped by secret-secret-secret agents from a completely different country and is being held hostage at table fifteen in the tea shop at Harrods, where she is being forced to eat an enormous number of chocolate eclairs.

  The future is looking bleak for Jolyon Whipsnade-Throgmorton, who still has one payment to make on his Vespa and is being blackmailed by his own mother, who knows he was the brains behind the Great Custard Forgery that almost forced Shepton-Hammer and three surrounding villages to their knees. It was only the quick thinking of Bambi ‘The Killer’ Goodboy that saved the day. That, and the fact that everyone was already on their knees.

  Meanwhile the fearless, some say gormless, Nigel is hacking his way through the dense sand of the Paraguayan Outback on his way to the Lost City of the Navigators, where he hopes to discover something, or not.

  WILL Nigel find the secret of life or at least recover his missing socks before they are decoded?

  WILL Grizelda manage to escape the clutches of the cake bandits before she breaks out in terrible spots?

  WILL Jolyon find the £4.79 to save his Vespa?.

  WILL Bambi ever live down such a stupid name?

  No, of course they won’t so you might as well read this instead …

  Just after the Floods had returned to Transylvania Waters, Winchflat had met and married the lovely and only-slightly-decaying Maldegard Ankle at the Being Transylvania Waters Beauty Pageant1 and they were now the proud parents of the wonderful and not-decaying-at-all Princess Transistor.

  Like all baby wizards, the Princess was a precocious child. She could speak as soon as she was born, not just gooey words like ‘mama’ and ‘dada’, but all the words there were in the whole world including ‘gallimaufry’ and ‘taxonomy’.2 At one week old she could do everything a full-grown adult could do except reach the door handle and flush the lavatory, though being a wizard she could make the door open by itself and the toilet flush itself in a colourful and exciting way that included goldfish.

  Maldegard Ankle-Flood was not actually a witch, but Winchflat’s genes were powerful enough to make his children total wizards. Maldegard had imagined she would have several years being a normal human mum, changing nappies, covering her children in sticking plasters and sending them to the naughty corner while developing a deep and lasting bond with them, but because young wizards are so advanced, she didn’t need to do any of this and soon became pretty bored.

  She had been a fortune teller, but now that she was a Royal Princess, she was not allowed to hold mere mortals’ hands and read their palms. She could only tell the fortunes of other princes and princesses, and that was always very simple and quick.

  Their fortunes were always:

  Maldegard was bored.

  So her loving husband, Prince Winchflat, had found her a job. It was a new and exciting job that no one in the whole country had done before. Maldegard Ankle-Flood was employed to make the first ever detailed map of Transylvania Waters. Map-making in normal human countries was generally fairly boring because everything had been made into maps dozens of times before. Sure, there were big mountains, big lakes and exciting caves with stalagmites and stalagrownups, but there were also great big endless flat bits covered in dead grass or sand. But the most exciting thing about human map-making was sharpening your pencils every morning before driving around in a cheap, lifeless car ticking off things on a clipboard. Because all the world, except Transylvania Waters, has been made into maps hundreds and hundreds of times before. This is a typical modern map-maker’s conversation:

  ‘Yes, that tree/fence/mountain/pond is still there.’

  Though there were moments of excitement:

  ‘Hello, that tree has fallen over and flattened that fence and that pond is now a carpark full of cars made of steel from that mountain they chopped down.’

  Luckily, map-makers usually work alone, so there isn’t anyone to drive mad with these endless, endless dreary conversations. 3

  Transylvania Waters map-making was nothing like this. Every day was a new and exciting journey of discovery.

  ‘Have you got any old maps I could work from?’ said Maldegard.

  ‘We have indeed,’ said Nerlin, who was the King now and owned all that sort of stuff. ‘Here it is.’

  He handed his daughter-in-law a sm
all sheet of crumpled paper. On it was a single wobbly circle. Inside the circle it said ‘Transylvania Waters’ and outside the circle it said ‘Everywhere Else’. There was a smaller shape in the middle of the paper that had been filled in with blue crayon and was labelled ‘Wet Bit’.

  ‘That’s the beautiful Lake Tarnish,’ said Nerlin proudly.

  There was also a red .

  ‘And that is here, the beautiful Castle Twilight,’ Nerlin explained.

  Maldegard Ankle-Flood realised she would be pretty busy for quite a long time.

  ‘You can also have the honour of naming all the different villages and hills and rivers and stuff like that,’ said Nerlin. ‘In fact, you will be Transylvania Waters’s Official Namer of Things.’

  ‘But don’t all these things have names already?’

  ‘One or two do, like the beautiful Lake Tarnish and the beautiful Castle Twilight,’ said Nerlin, ‘but places aren’t as important to wizards as they are to humans. Basically, we only need two place names, “here” and “over there”.’

  ‘But now we are opening Transylvania Waters to the world, and our population is growing as more and more wizards hear we have deposed my horrible father and come back here to live,’ Mordonna explained. ‘We need to give all these places names, otherwise no one will know where on earth they are.’

  ‘Of course, most of us will still use “here” and “over there”,’ said Nerlin.

  ‘So I can use whatever names I want?’ said Maldegard.

  ‘Yes, apart from Belgium, of course,’ said Nerlin, ‘or any of those strange Welsh names without vowels that sound like someone clearing their throat.’

  ‘Well, obviously,’ said Maldegard.

  ‘And while you’re out visiting all these wonderful places,’ said Mordonna, ‘you can carry out a census.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought she could lift one,’ said Nerlin.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, they’re pretty heavy, and I wouldn’t think they’d want to be carried anywhere,’ Nerlin explained.

  Then Mordonna explained what a census was.

  ‘Oh,’ said Nerlin. ‘So it isn’t a great big heavy horse with the top half of a man?’

  ‘No, that’s a centaur.’

  ‘Or what?’

  Mordonna had a cup of the special tea that calmed her down and stopped her wanting to hit her husband over the head with a big roll of census forms. She seldom went anywhere without a flask of her calming tea just in case her husband tried to think about the meaning of life and ended up driving everyone scatty.

  ‘How many census forms are there exactly in that roll?’ Nerlin asked.

  ‘About a hundred, why?’

  ‘So is that what you call a censuspede?’ Nerlin, who knew exactly what a census was, grinned.

  It was agreed that Maldegard would need an assistant to help her in her work, someone who could write and knew how to sharpen pencils. Ffiona Hulbert was very keen to be that assistant, but she was still at school. Her mother, Edna, who had been teaching Pilates since the family had come to live in Transylvania Waters, was only too happy to give it up and work with Maldegard. Witches and wizards are far too intelligent to waste their time exercising, especially as they perform a quick spell that allows them to get fit and toned in their sleep. The few people who had gone to Edna’s classes had only gone to meet the novelty human who had come to live amongst them. And of course, both Maldegard and Edna were outsiders from the world of humans. Everyone agreed that because they had both grown up with maps they would be well equipped to put Transylvania Waters on paper.

  ‘I mean, even this town which is the capital of the whole country hasn’t got a name,’ said Maldegard.

  ‘Probably the first thing we should do,’ Edna suggested, ‘is write down all the places that have got names.’

  It didn’t take long and it was written on a very small piece of paper.

  ‘Also,’ said Maldegard, ‘we need to get King Nerlin and everyone else to agree that, whatever names we choose, they won’t talk about them and discuss them and change them and then present them to everyone in a referendum. Otherwise, we’ll be lucky to give a name to a side street before Christmas.’

  ‘We could ask everyone to send in any names they’d like us to use, though,’ said Edna.

  ‘Good idea, especially if we don’t let anyone see the list or bother to read it ourselves,’ said Maldegard. ‘But if anyone complains about a name, we can say it was on the official list.’

  ‘Supposing they want to see the list?’

  ‘Well, we’ll just add the name we’ve chosen and swear blind it was there all the time.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Edna Hulbert, who was basically a very honest person but saw how a bit of creative lying could make life a lot easier for everyone.

  Their discussion was completely unnecessary. Notices were posted everywhere inviting the public to suggest names for the roads, rivers, towns, villages, tall places, deep places and so on.

  This was the final list:

  4 5

  No one was very interested. They had managed without any names until then and couldn’t see much point in changing.

  ‘After all,’ said an old witch from, umm, from where she lived, ‘I know where I am.’

  ‘But supposing you go somewhere you haven’t been before and you get lost?’ said Maldegard. ‘How would you get home again?’

  ‘I’d use my GPS,’ said the old witch. ‘I may be old and bent and live on a diet of potato peeling and slugs, but I does have a GPS on my broomstick and a cup-holder. This is the twenty-first century, you know.’

  ‘You’ve got GPS?’ said Edna. ‘That’s amazing.’

  ‘No ’tisn’t,’ said the old witch. ‘Everyone’s got them. Mine’s called Byron.’

  She went to the window and whistled. A pigeon flew down from the roof and landed on her arm.

  ‘See,’ said the witch. ‘This is Byron, my Global Pigeon Scout. Don’t humans have homing pigeons?’

  ‘Umm, yes, they do,’ said Edna. ‘Well, some people do.’

  ‘So no matter where I go,’ said the old witch, ‘as long as I take Byron with me, I can always find my way home. I just has to follow him.’

  ‘But …’ Maldegard began, but she knew there was nothing she could say to make the old woman change her mind.

  ‘I think we take it as read that the two of us have a totally free hand with the names,’ said Edna. ‘Obviously you get first pick, because you’re in charge.’

  ‘Well, you can choose too,’ said Maldegard. ‘So, as I was saying, I think we should come up with a name for here. I mean, it’s the only big town in the whole country. It’s home to one of the few things that has got a name, Castle Twilight. It’s the place where the King lives, where the Parliament’s going to be if they ever decide they really want one, and it’s the only place with normal flushing lavatories as you and I know them.’6

  ‘How about a name that honours King Nerlin?’ Edna Hulbert suggested. ‘Like Nerlintown or Nerlinsville?’

  ‘I like your thinking,’ said Maldegard. ‘It would certainly put us in the King’s favour, but I think we need something grander.’

  ‘Merlintown?’

  ‘No – something that says, this is the place where the greatest wizards ever live.’

  ‘Floodstown?’

  ‘No. We need something more exciting.’

  They spent the rest of the day coming up with name After name and couldn’t find one that they even half-liked, never mind loved. They tried sticking their fingers in a book and choosing the first word they touched, but still they got nowhere.7

  ‘I know what we could do,’ said Edna. ‘I’ll phone a friend.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When we lived in Acacia Avenue, I had a friend who was really good at thinking up names for things – I bet she’d come up with a really good name.’

  ‘OK,’ said Maldegard, ‘but you mustn’t tell her what the name is for. I thin
k it would be rather embarrassing if it got out the capital of Transylvania Waters doesn’t have a name and we can’t think of one.’

  ‘But she might think it’s for a puppy or some new soap powder.’

  ‘Well, we’ll wait and see what she comes up with.’

  Edna’s friend suggested Digestive because she got it into her head that the name was for a biscuit.

  ‘If we can’t even name the capital city, this could take the rest of our lives,’ said Maldegard.

  ‘Yes,’ Edna agreed. ‘I thought it was all going to be quite an adventure, but so far it’s been really dreary.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, it’s really dreary,’ said Edna.

  ‘That’s it!’ Maldegard exclaimed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The name. The capital city of Transylvania Waters will be called Dreary.’8

  ‘Brilliant!’ said Edna.

  ‘Brilliant!’ said Mordonna and Nerlin.

  ‘Brilliant!’ said everyone else.

  So that was it. The capital of Transylvania Waters was named Dreary because it was the perfect name. This was not a bad thing because dreary means dull and damp and the city was both of those things and so much more.

  Naming the bits of Dreary was a lot easier. After all, none of them were as important as the city itself. The two women set off with their sharp pencils and clipboards and walked round town, giving all the streets, road, lanes and alleyways names. There were no avenues to name because Transylvania Waters was not that sort of place.

  They reached the highest point of the town and stood looking out over the dull grey mould-covered roofs. The whole place had a warm, comfortable smell like fresh compost. As the two women stood there, thinking how their lives had changed so much recently, a small wet dog came along and threw up on Maldegard’s foot.