Floods 12 Read online

  ‘Because we do not want any bits of the Hearse Whisperer or her son backfiring up here,’ Winchflat explained.

  Winchflat explained that when he set off the remote-control device, it would explode the nitro-glycerine, killing Geoffrey-Geoffrey and the Hearse Whisperer and blasting their atoms out of the drain and into the icy cold Atlantic Ocean. The trouble was that the tracking device inside Geoffrey-Geoffrey was only accurate to within a hundred metres, so it showed that he was somewhere near Rockall. It did not show that he and his mother were jammed in the drain outlet on the island.

  Everyone had a cup of tea and a biscuit while the quick-set concrete set as quickly as it could.

  ‘OK, said Winchflat, checking his watch, ‘who would like the honour of pressing the button?’

  ‘I think it should be your father,’ said Mordonna, ‘considering what he’s been through.’

  There was a VERY, VERY loud

  BANG

  … which was heard all around the world.

  The bang was followed by an almost invisible very, very thin layer of dust, which Winchflat’s Micro Dust Analyser analysed as:

  Ex-King Quatorze – 5%

  Countess Slab – 13%

  The Hearse Whisperer – 3%

  Geoffrey-Geoffrey – 3%

  Seagulls (various types) – 0.001%

  Seaweed – 0.02%

  The sea – 17.5%

  Rockall – 58%

  ‘What about the 0.479%?’ said Betty. ‘What is that?’

  ‘Probably bacon dust,’ said Winchflat. ‘The atmosphere’s full of it.’

  So, not only had the Hearse Whisperer and Geoffrey-Geoffrey been totally and forever obliterated, but so had Ex-King Quatorze, Countess Slab, several assorted seagulls and winkles57 and the remote island of Rockall.

  ‘A win–win situation all round, really,’ said Mordonna.

  Everyone agreed, apart from three gannets who had been out sea-fishing and were wondering where on earth their home had gone.

  ‘Probably something to do with global warming,’ they said.

  So finally the scene was set for everyone to live happily ever after.

  Betty and Prince Bert mooned around holding hands and looking soppy, while in Castle Twilight’s main courtyard the Floods and the Creaks – who had come over from Shangrila Lakes to celebrate the reuniting of the two families after years and years of not speaking to each other over some silly argument no one could remember, which had involved a one-legged parrot, three oranges and a cartridge in a pear tree – had a party.

  Betty was not the only one of Mordonna and Nerlin’s children to fall in love that day. By an amazing coincidence, the Creaks’ youngest child, Tristram Jolyon De-Vere Creak – the Creaks couldn’t help themselves, they had a terrible weakness for silly posh names58 – had been born on Tristan da Cunha in exactly the same hut as Satanella. And as luck would have it, the midwife had used the very same faulty wand that Satanella’s grandmother, Queen Scratchrot, had used. Also, coming from a generation that had been brought up to never waste food, the midwife had used a very old prawn that had been lying under the chair.

  So it was that Tristram Jolyon De-Vere Creak ended up like Satanella, that is to say, a small dog. Where Satanella had black, wiry fur, Tristram Jolyon De-Vere Creak had golden, silky fur. It was love at first sniff, and as Queen Scratchrot, who had been dug up for the party, said – destiny.

  ‘All that remains now,’ said Nerlin, as he and Mordonna sat atop Castle Twilight’s tallest tower, sipping their warm blood slurpies and watching the moonlight grovel miserably across Lake Tarnish, ‘is to sort out who is going to be the next ruler of this wonderful land.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Mordonna, ‘that is another story.’

  So, do you think

  there might be

  a FLOODS app

  coming sometime

  around Easter?

  I know I do.

  Probably time to start saving or pestering for an iPad.*

  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 printing, 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. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  The Floods 12: Bewitched

  Published by Random House Australia 2013

  Copyright © Colin Thompson 2013

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  A Random House Australia book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW, 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at

  www.randomhouse.com.au/offices

  First published by Random House Australia in 2013

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Author: Thompson, Colin, (Colin Edward)

  Title: Bewitched [electronic resource] / Colin Thompson

  ISBN: 978 1 74275 531 1 (ebook)

  Series: Thompson, Colin (Colin Edward). Floods; 12

  Target Audience: For primary school age

  Subjects: Witches – Juvenile fiction

  Wizards – Juvenile fiction

  Old age – Juvenile fiction

  Design, illustrations and typesetting by Colin Thompson

  Additional typesetting by Anna Warren, Warren Ventures Pty Ltd

  This work is fictitious. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental and if you complain about it, you will end up with an invisible friend who pretends to be your friend, but actually gives you bad dreams, bed-wetting and scabby pimples.

  Loved the book?

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  AUSTRALIAN READERS:

  randomhouse.com.au/kids

  NEW ZEALAND READERS:

  randomhouse.co.nz/kids

  * * *

  * Which is actually a more accurate description of a straitjacket.

  * You know who you are.

  1 Which is like a mouse, but rhymes with castle better.

  2 Actually, Nerlin had had an imaginary friend when he had been about five. He was called Slime Boy and he lived in the ooze that ran down the walls of the drain where the young Nerlin had lived with his downtrodden parents, but Slime Boy had been a false friend and had run away to join the circus. At least that’s what Nerlin’s mother had told him.

  3 Incredibly, there is actually a planet called Janet, which we will visit sometime in the future, in another time, another place, another galaxy and another series of books. REMEMBER – you heard it here first.

  4 Dr A’tan was actually Transylvania Waters’s ONLY psychiatrist, though, of course, there were also the famous Transylvania Waters Crones, who were usually three times more gaga than any of their patients but were experts in the Olde Ways, with herbs and earth and slimy stuff. Pretty much every village in Transylvania Waters had a crone who they went to if they were ill. See the back of this book for a small selection of their treatments.

  5 Nerlin had been unusually Doolally that day and had become convinced that dark forces were trying to steal all the daisies in Transylvania Waters. Naturally, he thought his nose was the perfect place to hide them.

  6 Transylvania Waters’s earth is not like the earth in other places. It is actually alive and has a rather wicked sense of humour, which I am not allowed to tell you about.

  7 Friar’s Balsam is a fragrant resin that comes from the sunny meadows of Sumatra and also comes in a small brown
bottle. When I was a little boy and had a stuffed-up cold, my mother would put a few drops in a bowl of hot water and I would inhale it. It was supposed to clear my head. I can’t remember if it did, but it smelled nice, just like a sunny meadow in Sumatra.

  8 This had nearly put Betty off invisible friends for life because, as everyone knows, currants, raisins and sultanas are gross and disgusting and are like slimy rabbit’s poo.

  9 See The Floods 8: Better Homes and Gardens.

  10 Yes, yes, including the donkeys.

  11 See the back of the book for an incomplete list of Castle Twilight Chefs.

  12 See footnote 10.

  13 Which is like the French Foreign Legion, except that it’s not French, is only open to invisible donkeys and doesn’t actually exist except as a lie that Tubby-Tubby had told Blossom to hide the embarrassing fact that she was going to take part in Australia’s Got Talent.

  14 Whoever he was.

  15 And Dreary was a very small town.

  16 Mordonna had decided that everyone in the travelling party had to take turns riding side by side with Nerlin.

  17 Or was it? Ooeerrr!

  18 See the back of the book for some information about these useless reference books.

  19 They were NOT Transylvania Waters donkeys but a really cheap herd of Belgian donkeys, and you could actually get one free if you bought the encyclopaedias. Luckily, very few of these were sold and the salesmen, their encyclopaedias and their donkeys were hounded out of the country by a pack of Wilfhounds, which sound like wolfhounds but are actually snappy little terriers all called Wilf.

  20 See The Floods 11: Disasterchef.

  21 Readers of earlier Floods books will already know this, as it was the very reason the Floods had chosen to live in Acacia Avenue – which, by the way, had been a totally acacia-free street – to try to keep the agents of Mordonna’s father, the evil King Quatorze, away. See every Floods book ever written and any others not yet written or published.

  22 Which, as everyone knows, is one of the three most perfect smells in the world. The second greatest smell is bacon and the third is more bacon. And, as I sit here writing this, I am beginning to drool and want bacon, and, hey, it’s nearly lunch time!

  23 Apart from King Nerlin and Queen Mordonna, who were each given a handmaiden’s sleeve to use.

  24 There really is a type of cheese called gorgonzola. It isn’t actually made with gorgons but it does smell that way. As I was writing this book, I thought I should do some research. So I ate a large piece of this cheese at bedtime, and I did have a similar dream where my tongue had a map of a tongue that belonged to someone else on it and all my toes turned inside out.

  25 See The Floods 8: Better Homes and Gardens.

  26 There were always thirteen Old Crones. If one of them died, then another was found. By the way, Old Crones die in a very unique way. They shrivel up like an old leaf, getting smaller and smaller. Then they are laid out on the Shrinking Stone while the remaining twelve Old Crones summon the Winds of Time to take the shrivelled-up body high into the upper atmosphere, where it is carried round the planet in jet streams that go faster and faster until the body is flung out into space always at exactly the same speed and angle so that eventually it comes to land on a planet far, far away, where it is reincarnated as an immortal newsagent, forever wondering if this is all there is.

  27 THONGS as in Australian shoe – not tiny British knickers.

  28 See The Floods 6: The Great Outdoors.

  29 As seen in the famous movie Seven Rashers of Separation.

  30 Don’t feel sorry for him. He’s a nasty piece of work who wants to destroy the Floods.

  31 Which is like Google Maps PLUS it cures bad breath.

  32 Unlike the Transylvania Waters GPS, which stands for Global Pigeon Scout. See The Floods 10: Lost.

  33 See The Floods 8: Better Homes and Gardens.

  34 See the back of the book for examples. Though do remember you will need to obtain a special licence if you actually want to sing any of them yourself.

  35 Many years ago in the 1960s, I lived in a beautiful village in Deiá, Mallorca, where one of the world’s most famous poets, Robert Graves, lived. Robert kept getting letters from strange hippy groups in California after one of his books became a sort of hippy bible. One letter invited Robert to come to a commune on Midsummer’s Night so that he could join a Fruit-Pulp Immersion.

  36 Look it up on Google, and despite what you might think the female version is NOT a homauntulus. Actually, I have decided that it is.

  37 Oh, come on! Surely you didn’t think the amazing wonderful effect of the Impossible Waterfall would last forever? You’ll be eating Royal Jelly and drinking Immortalitea next. By the way, have you ever noticed how all the people selling things that make you live forever always look quite old, unhealthy and tatty?

  38 They are not alone. It has been estimated that there are over seventeen thousand toes, fingers, ears and noses frozen into the arctic tundra of outer Mongolia. There are other lost bits of bodies out there too, but we won’t go there.

  39 Nice by Ukranian standards of the day: his own made-to-measure cardboard boots, a red rubber ball with almost no teeth marks and a toy pistol carved out of a mammoth’s shinbone.

  40 In case you haven’t seen The Amazing Illustrated Floodsopedia, the money in Transylvania Waters is Scents and Dolors.

  41 Actually, pretty unlikely because since Nerlin became King, the drains of his childhood have become a top tourist attraction with more than fourteen visitors a year.

  42 PLEASE NOTE: The 17 on this line does NOT refer to a footnote – it is a mathematical number meaning 3000 to the power of seventeen.

  43 See Floods 8: Better Homes & Gardens to find out why Rockall is important and how the Hearse Whisperer had ended up frozen.

  44 The Countess’s stick deserves a mention here. Rockall is, as its name suggests, all rock. There are no trees, no grass, no anything. Except rock. The only green things are bits of seaweed the ocean has vomited up onto the rock and the colour of Ex-King Quatorze’s skin most of the time. Other things get thrown up on Rockall every now and then, and Countess Slab’s stick was one of them.

  45 Though not necessarily in that order.

  46 Which is like a Disenchantment Spell, only the complete opposite.

  47 An ancient, wrinkly Old Crone being giggly sounds a bit like a chainsaw with a lot of teeth missing trying to cut its way through a bucket of rusty nails.

  48 There were over fifteen million possibilities, but Quenelle refused to let herself think that.

  49 Considering Shangrila Lakes was called Shangrila Lakes, it was a bit strange that it actually only had the one lake. There were lots of streams and a few puddles, but no more lakes or even ponds. But Shangrila Lakes’ one lake was very, very lovely and seriously enchanted.

  50 Calling Nerlin the world’s top wizard does not in any way mean that he was the world’s best wizard. As we have seen in earlier Floods books, he was actually pretty useless at magic, but he was the King of Transylvania Waters and that made him Top Wizard.

  51 Dispepsya and the castle guard slept for about four hours. When they finally woke up, they got to their feet, both blushing profusely, fell deeply in love with each other, got married, had fourteen children and lived happily ever after in a rather nice hovel, where they spent the rest of their lives carving rude sculptures out of turnips, which they sold to tourists at vastly inflated prices. There is even talk of an exhibition at a top New York gallery.

  52 Which is an iPhone for wizards.

  53 Well, it was designed to maim a little bit, but only in a very sticky and embarrassing way.

  54 See The Amazing Illustrated Floodsopedia.

  55 See The Amazing Illustrated Floodsopedia.

  56 When I was a boy, my stepfather used to boil up things called senna pods, drink the disgusting liquid and then spend many happy hours on the lavatory doing various things, which included very complicated crossword pu
zzles.

  57 Stop sniggering, they are a type of shellfish.

  58 Prince Bert’s full name was Prince Bertram Circumstance Augmentation.