Floods 11 Page 2

  ‘My mother will leave really early in the morning,’ she told Ffiona, ‘when she thinks everyone else will still be asleep.’

  ‘Well, they will be, won’t they?’ said Ffiona.

  ‘No. We won’t,’ said Betty. ‘Because we’re leaving tonight so we can get there before my mum. Come and see what I’ve made.’

  She led Ffiona down to the castle kitchens and unlocked the door into her private kitchen. This took quite a while because Betty had set up a really complicated security system that even her brother Winchflat couldn’t get past.

  ‘Look,’ she said when they finally got inside.

  ‘Whoaa ooerr wassat?’ Ffiona spluttered.

  ‘It’s you and me,’ Betty explained. ‘Before my mum goes to bed tonight, she’ll check up to see that we’re both fast asleep in our beds, so I’ve made a life-size you and me out of pastry to put in our beds.’

  ‘Your hair looks a bit odd,’ said Ffiona.

  ‘It’s spaghetti,’ said Betty. ‘It’s the best I could do at such short notice, and it’s probably better if you don’t ask what yours is made of.’

  ‘They smell nice,’ said Ffiona.

  ‘That’s probably the crunchy earwigs I put in,’ said Betty. ‘I mean, you can’t just make plain old boring pastry, can you?’

  Ffiona agreed.

  ‘So I added some earwigs for crunch and powdered socks for flavour.’

  ‘Excellent choices,’ said Ffiona.

  Betty had not studied how to be this deceitful and cunning. To learn such advanced skills would take years and years of study and Betty hadn’t been alive that many years. No, she had been born with these talents and, as everyone knows, they certainly didn’t come from her father’s side of the family. After all, crafty people do not end up living in the drains of a city they once ruled.

  No, Betty had inherited her streetwise cunning from her mother, so it’s no surprise that Mordonna suspected her daughter might try something.

  I reckon they’ll slip away tonight and try to get to the cookery witches before I do, she thought.

  Spaghetti hair, she said to herself when she peeped into Betty’s room at midnight. Who does she think she’s fooling?

  Nice sculptures, she added, breaking off an ear. Bit too much sock, though.

  Mordonna had, of course, been prepared for such subterfuge and had to admit to herself that she would have been a bit disappointed if Betty hadn’t tried something.

  ‘They won’t get far,’ she said as she settled down for a few hours’ sleep, planning to set off at sunrise.

  ‘Something tells me,’ said Betty as she and Ffiona rode through the darkness on George, son of George, son of George, the latest in a long line of donkeys called George who were descended from the original George whose full name had been George-The-Donkey-Formerly-Known-As-Prince-Kevin-Of-Assisi and who had been the legendary miserable donkey that the Queen Mother had ridden when she had fled Transylvania Waters with Nerlin and Mordonna all those years ago. Over the generations the Georges had shortened their names until the latest George, being the son of George son of George, was simply known as 3G.7

  ‘Something tells me,’ Betty repeated, because it was quite a long time since she had said it the first time. ‘That was all too easy.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Ffiona, who believed almost everything she read, saw or heard.

  ‘I mean, we just went down to the stables, saddled up 3G and rode away without seeing a single soul,’ Betty explained. ‘It was all too easy.’

  ‘I’m sure it was just good luck.’

  ‘There is no such thing as good luck,’ said Betty. ‘I reckon my mother suspects something and has taken steps.’

  ‘Talking of taking steps,’ said 3G, who, like all his ancestors, could speak, ‘my feet are sore. When are we going to have a rest?’

  ‘Oh come on, donkey,’ said Betty. ‘We’ve hardly gone any distance.’

  ‘Well, I’m not used to it,’ said 3G. ‘This road is really hard and I need a rest.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Betty. ‘We’ll be walking on grass soon.’

  ‘Really?’ said 3G. ‘What sort of grass?’

  ‘Lovely soft grass.’

  ‘Is it green?’

  ‘Oh yes, a wonderful shade of green.’

  ‘Is it succulent?’

  ‘It is so succulent, you will think you have died and gone to donkey heaven,’ said Betty.

  ‘Wow,’ said 3G and Ffiona.

  ‘And then, once we are away from the road, we will have a rest and you can eat all the grass you want and wash it down with enchanted water,’ said Betty.

  ‘How do you know it’s enchanted?’ said 3G.

  ‘All the water in Transylvania Waters is enchanted,’ said Betty.

  ‘Oh yeah, boring,’ said 3G.

  ‘Did you study to be so miserable, or is it a natural talent?’ said Betty.

  ‘It’s genetic,’ said 3G. ‘A psychiatrist told me all donkeys have a huge inferiority complex because we aren’t horses. I can’t see it myself.’

  ‘Yes, great, thanks,’ said Betty, wondering if it might have been a better idea to travel by mountain bike.

  ‘I mean, what’s so great about being a horse?’

  ‘Would you like a list?’ said Betty.

  ‘Donkeys can’t read,’ 3G moaned.

  ‘You have to stop talking now and be very, very quiet,’ said Betty as they turned off the road onto a narrow grass track that led to a dark forest.

  ‘Is this the grass you were talking about?’ said 3G. ‘It’s rubbish. I sleep on better stuff than that.’

  ‘I told you to be quiet,’ said Betty.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you are very, very boring.’

  ‘And making me depressed,’ Ffiona added.

  ‘And there could be spies about,’ said Betty. ‘We need to glide silently through the forest.’

  ‘Donkey’s don’t do gliding,’ said 3G.

  ‘This one had better,’ said Betty. ‘I’ve got a very powerful cattle prod.’

  3G cursed under his breath, but he did shut up and tried to tiptoe, which, of course, is impossible for a donkey.

  There was a flicker of light at the entrance to the forest. Just a brief flash like someone lighting a match. Betty and Ffiona jumped down from 3G’s back and led him off the path into the bushes.

  ‘There’s someone up ahead,’ Betty whispered. ‘We’ll pick our way through the bushes and come up behind them as if we’re coming out of the forest.’

  ‘What about the donkey?’ said Ffiona. ‘There’s no way he can creep silently.’

  ‘I have a plan,’ said Betty.

  She whispered in 3G’s ear, ‘If you do this properly, you will get a feed of the finest grass in the whole of Transylvania Waters and a drink of special enchanted water from the stream at the far end of the forest.’

  He nodded and ambled down the path towards whoever it was who had struck the match.

  ‘And remember – pretend you are an ordinary donkey. You can’t speak and you can’t understand anything humans say to you,’ Betty said, then, turning to Ffiona, added, ‘Come on.’

  The two girls picked their way through the undergrowth until they were right inside the forest. Then they went across to the path and walked back towards the source of the light Betty had seen. There were three soldiers, each of them sitting on a kneeling peasant with their backs to the girls. As they reached the guards, 3G appeared from the other direction.

  ‘Oi, donkey, come here,’ said one of the guards.

  3G stopped walking and stood completely still, staring at the three men.

  ‘It can’t understand you,’ said another guard. ‘It’s a stupid donkey.’

  3G had to bite his tongue to stop himself from saying anything.

  ‘I say, my good man,’ said Betty.

  The guards jumped out of their skins. They tried to leap to their feet, but got all tangled up in the three kneeling peasants
and ended up in a heap on the ground.

  ‘What are you doing with my donkey?’ Betty continued.

  ‘I, er, umm …’ The first guard began, trying to get to his feet.

  ‘You stole it, didn’t you? While my back was turned?’ said Betty and, turning to the second guard, said, ‘You, get to your feet and arrest him and then arrest yourself.’

  ‘I, er, umm,’ said the second guard.

  ‘How dare you er umm at me, you nasty little man,’ Betty shouted. ‘I am a Royal Princess. Get down on your knees.’

  ‘They are down on their knees already,’ said Ffiona.

  ‘Right,’ said Betty, pointing to the three guards and three peasants, ‘take off all your clothes and change places. You three insolent useless guards are now peasants and will go straight back to Dreary and report to the sewerage works as junior lavatory brushes.’

  ‘But, Your Highness, we were only obeying orders,’ snivelled the guards.

  ‘They all say that,’ said Betty. ‘Give me your lantern so we can see our way through the forest.’

  ‘But we shall not be able to find our way back to Dreary without it,’ said the ex-guards.

  Betty toyed with the idea of using the Burning Trousers Spell to give the disgraced guards some light, but remembered the only other time she’d tried it she’d burnt down four cottages, a village school and fifteen lovely old trees when all she had been trying to do was light the candles on a birthday cake.

  ‘You peasants are now officially guards and will escort us through the forest,’ Betty said. ‘Serve me well and you will be given a turnip every Friday for the rest of your lives.’

  Naturally, the promise of such great wealth bought instant everlasting loyalty from the three promoted peasants, who couldn’t believe their luck. One of them took a small child out of his pocket and instructed it to run home to their village and spread the good news.

  ‘Wow, this is cool, isn’t it?’ Betty whispered to Ffiona as they climbed back on 3G and followed the three men through the forest. ‘We’ve got our own army.’

  Ffiona was speechless and totally in awe of Betty. Actually she was now totally, totally in double awe of Betty.

  ‘Your mum will freak out when she finds out,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll teach her to mess with me,’ said Betty.

  Then after thinking for a bit she added, ‘She will freak out, but she’ll also be very proud of me. I mean, it’s the sort of thing she would have done when she was my age.’

  ‘I thought her dad kept her imprisoned in Castle Twilight until she fell down a hole and met your dad?’ said Ffiona.

  ‘Well, yes, but it’s the sort of thing she would have wished she’d done.’

  Betty and Ffiona reached the far end of Transylvania Waters a few hours later, and just as the sun was rising and Mordonna was thinking about getting up and setting out, they reached The Devil’s Kitchen and were welcomed with open arms by the three Cookery Witches – Colander, Ladle and Grater.

  ‘Ah, young Betty,’ said Grater. ‘You made good time.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ said Ffiona.

  ‘We have been watching you,’ said Colander.

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘Since the day you were born,’ said Ladle.

  ‘What on earth for?’ said Betty.

  ‘It is our job to protect you,’ said Grater.

  ‘Listen,’ said Betty. ‘That’s brilliant and everything, but my mother is coming here and she is going to try and drag you back to Castle Twilight and lock you up in the dungeons. She thinks you’ve been putting ideas into my head, like dreams full of recipes.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Ladle.

  ‘We are prepared,’ said Colander. ‘Follow me.’

  She led the two girls inside the cave and along a tunnel into the most fantastic kitchen Betty had ever seen.

  There were stoves and ovens and microwaves and cauldrons and spits turning over open fires and steamers and boilers and refrigerators and saucepans of every shape and size, including a massive one with a whole tree in it.

  ‘Sycamore Soup,’ said Grater. ‘Delicious.’

  ‘Now, obviously, it would be impossible to move all this before your mother gets here, so what do you suggest?’ Colander asked.

  ‘Right,’ said Betty. ‘I reckon we’ve got about three to four hours until Mother arrives. So we need to hide all this by making a fake Devil’s Kitchen somewhere else with three fake Cookery Witches and make sure my mum goes there.’

  ‘Well, we do actually have an old Devil’s Kitchen,’ said Grater. ‘We sort of blew it up a few years ago with a particularly energetic Christmas Pudding, so we moved in here and started again.’

  ‘There’s even a load of old cauldrons and rubbish down there too,’ said Ladle.

  ‘Right, two of you go down there and get a few fires and stoves lit so it looks lived in while we hide this place with a giant rockfall,’ Betty instructed.

  ‘But what about us?’ said Colander. ‘I don’t want to be thrown into a dungeon.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Betty, turning to her three guards. ‘Now, boys, how would you like to earn two turnips every Friday AND a bouquet of gristle EVERY SINGLE Christmas?’

  The first guard pulled another small boy out of his pocket and sent him back to his village with the amazingly, staggeringly exciting news.

  ‘And don’t you worry,’ Betty said. ‘If my mother, the Queen, arrests you, when we all get back to the castle, we’ll tell her that you are not really Cookery Witches and she’ll set you free.

  ‘And,’ she added, ‘while you are in the dungeons you’ll get prison food, which is a bowl of gruel with shredded shoelaces and a whole hollowed-out pig’s tongue full of stinging nettles and cockroach legs every day, and cucumber sandwiches on Sundays.’

  ‘All that food for only three of us?’ said one of the guards.

  ‘No, no,’ said Betty. ‘You get that for each of you.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Wow!’

  ‘Incredible!’ said the three guards.

  ‘Just one thing,’ said the cleverest guard. ‘Do you have to tell the Queen we’re not real Cookery Witches?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Betty. ‘Now swap clothes with the real witches and get down to the old cave while Ffiona and I hide this one.’

  And for the first time in her life, Betty managed to remember every word of the Explosion Spell and say them in exactly the right order as the two girls hid safely behind a rock.

  There was a big bang and half the cliff face fell down, covering the front of the real Devil’s Kitchen.

  ‘Who knew cooking could be so exciting?’ said Betty as they went down to the old cave.

  ‘And noisy,’ said Ffiona.

  ‘Yes, hope my mum didn’t hear it,’ said Betty.

  By the time the two girls reached the old cave, the three real Cookery Witches had done their best to teach the three fake Cookery Witches how to impersonate them, and they had done a pretty convincing job because there’s nothing like the thought of such great luxury as a bowl of gruel with shredded shoelaces, a whole hollowed-out pig’s tongue full of stinging nettles and cockroach legs every day, and cucumber sandwiches on Sundays to focus the mind.

  ‘Right,’ said Betty. ‘I think we’re as ready as we’re ever going to be. Now you three go off and hide somewhere until my mother has been and gone, and then we’ll put things back how they were.’

  ‘I think you’re talking to the pretend cooks,’ said Ffiona, which Betty had been, though she had known they were the fakes and just done that to give them more confidence.

  ‘Oh, so I am!’ said Betty. ‘Have you got any more small children in your pockets? Because if you do, give them this bag of my homemade Toothbreak Toffee to take back to your humble village.’

  All this generosity brought tears to the three fake cooks’ eyes, since only a short time ago they had been bottom rests for the three ungrateful palace guards.

&nb
sp; Colander, Ladle and Grater slipped away up the path and across to the next mountain, where they hid up a tree to wait for Betty’s signal. Then Betty and Ffiona went down the path that Mordonna would arrive on and hid behind a bush to wait for her arrival.

  They did not have long to wait.

  As soon as they heard Mordonna’s party coming up the track, Betty and Ffiona began to walk up towards the fake cooks at the fake cave.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said Mordonna as she came up behind the two girls, ‘look who we’ve got here.’

  ‘Oh, er, oh, hello, Mother,’ said Betty. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

  ‘Well, I imagine you do not fancy seeing me here,’ said Mordonna.

  ‘Actually, no, Mother, because Ffiona and I came up here to go birdwatching and we had just potted a pair of Dingly Frycatchers, which as you know are incredibly rare and only found on this one remote hillside, and all the noise you just made has frightened them away.’8

  ‘Ahh, I am sorry to hear that,’ said Mordonna. ‘It’s an incredible coincidence that these birds that are so rare I have never heard of them happen to nest on the same bit of mountain where The Devil’s Kitchen is, isn’t it?’

  ‘The Devil’s Kitchen?’ said Betty. ‘Remind me again?’

  ‘You are a naughty and deceitful little liar, my girl,’ said Mordonna. ‘And …’

  ‘Wait, Mother, shh, keep very still,’ Betty whispered. ‘I think the Frycatchers have just come back. I’m sure I saw a flash of mauve feathers in those bushes over there.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ said Mordonna. ‘There’s no such bird as the Dingly Frycatcher. Just admit it, you came up here to go to The Devil’s Kitchen.’

  Now, this was Betty’s very lucky day.

  First of all she had done the Explosion Spell faultlessly, and she now did the Transformation Spell – subsection 4b: Small Birds – which worked perfectly too. A pair of pigeons that had been sitting quietly in a tree not bothering anybody suddenly found themselves turned into a pair of mauve finches. To say they were endangered was a bit of an understatement. They were the only two Dingly Flycatchers that had ever existed.

  ‘See, Mother, there they are up there,’ said Betty, pointing up to the two confused little birds fluttering around above them.