Floods 9 Read online

  Thankfully, there was still enough of the old hippy Chrysanthemum left to scratch the kitty carpets and puppy pillows idea.

  Phew, she thought. Money does strange things to a person. A bit like seven very strong espressos, only stronger.

  ‘So the first thing we must do is find somewhere safe to hide out while we work out the best way to handle all this,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘That is the second thing. The first thing we must do is get married.’

  ‘And we need to do something with all these puppies,’ said Chrysanthemum. ‘I think travelling with a hundred and twenty-three very excited incontinent baby dogs might draw a bit of attention to us. Could you do a spell and turn them into skylarks? We could just open the window then and they could all fly away to Central Park. Can wizards do that sort of thing?’

  ‘There are different levels of magic,’ said Aubergine. ‘To change something that’s alive into another life form you need to have the top level – Very Advanced Magic. Unfortunately I’ve only got Middle Level Magic. I can only do magic on inanimate objects and stuff like that.’

  ‘How do you get Very Advanced Magic? Can you buy it?’

  ‘No. It’s mainly hereditary. If your parents had it, then you have it when you’re born. The Floods are all like that,’ said Aubergine.45 ‘The only other way is for a Grand Master Wizard to give you an upgrade and, as far as I know, there is only one Grand Master Wizard and no one actually knows where he lives. In fact, most people think he’s simply a myth.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes, but I also think he’s real, a kind of living myth,’ said Aubergine.46

  ‘If we could find him,’ said Chrysanthemum, ‘could you bribe him or something like that?’

  ‘The puppies would probably have died of old age before we discovered his secret home and I think anyone who tried to bribe him would end up turned into a small omelette. No, we have to think of something else.’

  ‘OK. Here’s my suggestion,’ said Chrysanthemum. ‘Everyone loves puppies, but not everyone is prepared to give one a home. However, everyone also loves money and everyone loves chocolate. So if we get big bars of chocolate, wrap them in dollar bills and give them away to anyone who is prepared to take a puppy at the same time, we shouldn’t have any problem re-homing them.’

  Although the thought of giving anything away went against everything Aubergine Wealth believed in, he knew that sometimes you actually had to make small investments to get a bigger return. One hundred and twenty-three bars of chocolate he could produce. His magic was powerful enough for that. Then he scooped up one hundred and twenty-three ten-dollar bills and they wrapped each bar of chocolate in one.

  They stood outside the building with a big sign that said:

  When humans see the word ‘free’ the small sensible bit of their brain switches off. In less than fifteen minutes Aubergine and Chrysanthemum were completely puppy-free. They collected up the rest of the money that had been floating round the room and went down to City Hall to get a marriage licence.

  ‘You have to wait for at least twenty-four hours before you can get hitched,’ said the clerk. ‘Unless there are special circumstances – then we could marry you straight away. Are there any special circumstances?’

  Aubergine leant over, whispered in the clerk’s ear and handed him an envelope.

  ‘I now pronounce you man and wife,’ said the clerk with a big smile. ‘You may now kiss the bribe . . . oops, sorry. You may now kiss the bride.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Chrysanthemum Wealth said as they took a taxi to the airport.

  ‘I asked him if a huge bribe qualified as special circumstances. He said probably. So I gave him the title deeds to the old Summer School puppy shelter apartment block in Manhattan,’ said Aubergine.

  VIt wasn’t until they reached the airport that they realised they hadn’t the faintest idea where they were going. They had been so busy with getting married, it had entirely slipped their minds. They sat down in the cafe and wrote out a list in three columns. The first column was places the school would look first, the second column was places the school would look last and the third column was all the other places the school would look. The third column only had one word in it, but it was the biggest problem.

  The word was:

  Everywhere.

  ‘So what you’re saying is, there’s not much point in writing anything in the other two columns, because wherever we go, they will come looking,’ said Chrysanthemum.

  ‘Pretty well,’ said Aubergine. ‘Though I suppose if we could work out the last place they’d look and go there, there’s a remote chance they might get bored and stop looking before they get there.’

  ‘Is that likely?’

  ‘Not really, but it’s the best chance we’ve got,’ said Aubergine.

  ‘Well, the last place I’d look for someone would be right under my nose behind me,’ said Chrysanthemum, ‘or Belgium.’

  ‘I think I’d rather get caught than go to Belgium,’ said Aubergine. ‘Did you know they’ve got a town called Silly?’

  ‘I did, actually,’ said Chrysanthemum. ‘When I was a teenager I spent a summer there working as a nanny to a family of Silly bottle makers. I think I agree with you about going back there.’

  ‘OK, well, that only leaves the option of going right under their noses.’

  ‘What will they do if they catch us?’

  ‘I’m not really sure,’ said Aubergine, ‘but it won’t be nice. You have to remember that the Floods are the most powerful wizards in creation.47 I mean, they don’t just make armchairs of puppies float round the room. They could make the whole apartment block where the room is float around and not just around the street, but off around the moon and back, and when it got back the puppies on the armchair in that room on the fifth floor would have changed into sabre-tooth goldfish that breathe fire and speak Welsh.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes, they’ve done it before – and that was just because someone gave them fifty cents short in their change when they bought a cabbage. We’re running away with billions.’

  ‘So, do you think they’re out looking for you now?’ said Chrysanthemum.

  ‘Probably not,’ said Aubergine. ‘I reckon they won’t realise I’m missing until school starts next week and I’m not there.’

  ‘How about lying?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why not just go back to school as if nothing has happened and if they say anything, just say you gave everything to the lady who took over the Summer School building for the Manhattan Home For Lost & Lonely Puppies?’

  ‘That’s you.’

  ‘Oh yes, so it is,’ said Chrysanthemum with a big grin.

  This was not a cheating grin that meant she was about to rob Aubergine. It was a conspiratorial, naughty grin that meant they were both about to con the Floods, which if it worked would be the first time in history, apart from the time Mordonna’s father, ex-King Quatorze, took over the whole of Transylvania Waters. Compared to that, keeping a few billion dollars didn’t seem so bad.

  * * *

  43 He also kept several gold coins up each nostril and wore origami underpants folded out of a one-million-dollar bank note.

  44 Because they were all inside his head, they were not so much all over the place as racing round, tripping over each other and making him dizzy.

  45 Apart from Betty, who has a strange version of Very Advanced Magic called Unfortunate Magic, where she can theoretically do very advanced magic, but it often comes out wrong.

  46 This was completely accurate.

  47 Apart from the Legendary Grand Master Wizard who is so legendary he may not actually exist, or may just be messing with our minds to make us think that he might not exist when he really does, or doesn’t. Or both.

  ‘The Headmaster tells me that Aubergine Wealth has gone missing,’ said Nerlin at dinner that night. ‘There’s no one at his home in Switzerland, nor h
as he been anywhere near his secret hideaways that we’re not supposed to know about. The Headmaster sent people to check. They say that the Belgian Fish Repair Shop where he has a secret apartment, the Leek Weaving Works in Wales where he has another hidey hole and the Potato Museum on Tristan da Cunha are all deserted. No one has been anywhere near them in months. It would appear that Mr Wealth and the seventeen-billion-plus dollars he made at the Summer School have done a runner.’

  The Floods and the Hulberts were all gathered in the Friday Night Dining Room at Castle Twilight to celebrate the fact that it was Friday night and dinner time.

  ‘I suspect that Mr Wealth thinks we don’t know what he’s done,’ Nerlin continued. ‘He probably thinks he’s safe until school starts next week and we’ll all assume he’s gone on holiday.’

  ‘Maybe he has,’ said Ffiona.

  ‘Mr Wealth does not do holidays,’ said Nerlin. ‘He thinks they are a waste of money.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Mordonna, putting her arm round Winchflat’s shoulders. ‘Once again our resident genius is in control of the situation.’

  When Aubergine Wealth had passed out behind the curtain back in Manhattan, he thought no one had realised he was there. When he had come to and everyone else had gone back to Transylvania Waters, he was sure that no one had known he hadn’t gone with them. There had been a lot of things going on, what with transferring all the wealth back to its original owners and removing every single trace of the Summer School. So it had been a fair assumption. After all, who would miss one person, especially one person who didn’t actually have any friends to look out for him?48

  But Winchflat had noticed because Winchflat noticed absolutely everything, even the numbers of feathers on the left wing of a sparrow that had been sitting on the windowsill outside the room where they were having their last Summer School meeting.49 He hadn’t been able to count the feathers on the sparrow’s right wing as it was sitting sideways. Although he assumed it was the same, he wasn’t happy with guessing and decided at some point in the future he would have to make a machine to let him see through sparrows so he could count all the feathers with complete accuracy. With such an eye for detail, it would have been surprising if he hadn’t seen Aubergine. He had even noted exactly how much blood the economics teacher had lost as it trickled down the crack in the floorboards.50

  Mmm, clever, he thought when he discovered the anti-spell lead shield buried under Aubergine’s scalp, but it only took a couple of seconds to lift a tiny bit of the lead and slip a bugging device into his brain. If Aubergine discovered it, he would assume that the lead was blocking the device’s signals, which of course it wasn’t. It took more than some heavy metal to outsmart Winchflat.

  ‘So where is he now?’ said Nerlin.

  ‘They are at JFK airport,’ said Winchflat, ‘trying to decide where to fly to.’

  ‘They?’ said Mordonna.

  ‘Yes. Aubergine Wealth appears to have got married.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said the Headmaster. ‘When you say married, you do mean to another living person and not a pocket calculator or a spreadsheet?’

  ‘No, it’s a person,’ said Winchflat. ‘A human being.’

  ‘Not a witch?’

  ‘No, it’s an ordinary human. If it was a witch, my bug would say so.’

  ‘And can your bug tell us what they are saying?’ said Nerlin.

  ‘Only what he is saying, not her,’ said Winchflat. ‘I can usually tailor bugging devices for each situation, but Mr Wealth getting married was not a possibility that I thought was remotely likely.’

  Aubergine and Chrysanthemum decided they would go back to Transylvania Waters, and not some remote part as far away from Castle Twilight as possible, but to a small house built right into the outer wall of the castle itself. They also decided that to avoid detection, they would actually fly to Belgium and then travel the rest of the way by horse and cart. Belgium would be the last place the Floods would expect them to go. They bought their plane tickets and went through security and, of course, as soon as Aubergine stepped into the electronic scanner, the lead shield in his head set off all the alarms.

  ‘Take your shoes off, please, sir,’ said the security officer.

  ‘Take your belt off, please, sir,’ the officer said when that made no difference. ‘Pull your trousers up, please, sir.’

  This went on until Aubergine Wealth was down to his underpants and small children were hiding in tears behind their parents. Actually everyone was hiding behind something because Aubergine Wealth in his undies was a sight that no living creature should be made to look at. Even Chrysanthemum, who adored her new husband, felt herself beginning to go faint. It wasn’t because he was displaying anything rude so much as the strange colour and texture of his skin. It was like pea-soup-coloured corrugated cardboard that had been soaking in water for a very long time.

  But even then Aubergine Wealth set off the security alarm each time so they took him away to a special x-ray room and scanned him. As soon as they did that everyone could see his lead anti-spell head shield and that explained everything. Aubergine had been watching the screen too and that was when he saw Winchflat’s secret tracking device.

  I wondered why I had a bit of a headache when I came to, he thought.

  He was just about to tell Chrysanthemum about the bug when he stopped himself. He guessed that Winchflat – and it had to be him because no one else was clever enough – could hear every word he was saying. He motioned to Chrysanthemum to say nothing and scribbled her a note explaining the situation.

  Brilliant, Chrysanthemum wrote back.If we play this right it could work to our advantage.

  What’s your plan? wrote Aubergine, quite happy for his wife to take charge.

  First we will buy two airplane tickets for Mongolia, she explained.When we get there, we will remove the bug from your head and implant it into a yak. The Flood boy will track the yak through the wilds of Mongolia while we travel on the Trans-Siberian railway back to eastern Europe where we will slip into Transylvania Waters disguised as tourists.

  Brilliant, Aubergine scribbled, falling in love with Chrysanthemum all over again – which was a bit confusing because he hadn’t fallen out of love with her since the first time.

  ‘I think we should go to Mongolia,’ Aubergine said in a loud clear voice. ‘No one will ever look for us there.’

  ‘They’ve just bought two tickets for Mongolia,’ said Winchflat.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Mordonna. ‘It seems a bit of an obvious place to go.’

  ‘That is true,’ said Winchflat, ‘but I think that’s why they’re going there. They’ll think it’s so obvious that we won’t expect them to go there.’

  ‘It’s all beyond me,’ said Nerlin, but then there were a lot of things that were beyond him. He may have been Top Wizard by the fact of being King of Transylvania Waters, but wizards are like humans in that respect. Hardly anyone is king of anywhere because they are intelligent or resourceful. They usually get the job because their dad had it and he got it from his dad and so on back in history until the first ancestor became king by killing everyone else who wanted the job. The fact that they are not best friends with thinking is probably quite a good thing. Otherwise they would just sit there feeling really guilty at having all that privilege without having earned any of it.51

  Unlike other royal families, the Floods did NOT wear dead animals on their hats and necks.

  Nerlin is seen here wearing Andrew and Christine – the two Royal Ermine, who are very much alive.

  ‘Mmm, the old double-bluff trick,’ said the Headmaster. ‘It’s that sort of devious thinking that has made Aubergine Wealth so incredibly rich.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mordonna. ‘Well, I have cousins in Mongolia: Surge and Alexeye. We can send word for them to watch the airport for when they arrive.’

  Once they realise we are going to Mongolia, Chrysanthemum wrote, I expect they will have spies waiting at the airport.

 
; Of course they will, Aubergine wrote back. Probably Surge and Alexeye. They are Mordonna’s cousins. They run a yak kebab shop and are incredibly stupid.

  Because he firmly believed in the famous statement Knowledge is Power – to which he added the footnote And Power is Money – Aubergine Wealth always made sure he knew as much about everyone as he possibly could. The details that he knew about every single one of the students and teaching staff at Quicklime College and all of the Floods and a million other people were staggering.52

  He not only knew that Mordonna had two distant cousins in Mongolia and that they owned The Jolly Gulag Yak Kebab Shoppe, but he also knew how many pairs of socks each of them owned and what colour they were. He knew that Surge was allergic to thistles and had an inside leg measurement of eighty-seven centimetres on his left leg, but only eighty-five centimetres on his right leg, which meant that when he got drunk on Old Kremlin Ale, he always walked round in circles until he tripped over himself.

  He knew that Alexeye was married to the All Mongolian Heavyweight Wrestling Champion, Tattyana Khan, who was a direct descendent of Ghengis Khan and owned two-and-a-half pairs of socks, all a dark shade of grey. Most of the information Aubergine had stored in his head and on three massive computers was completely useless, but you never knew when some little detail might make all the difference between ending up with fifteen cents or fifteen million dollars.

  So as the plane lumbered towards Ulan Bator, which his computers told him was home to thirty-eight per cent of the Mongolian population, twenty per cent of whom lived on less than $1.25 per day, Aubergine sifted through Surge and Alexeye’s details to see if there was anything that might be to his advantage.

  There was.

  It turned out the two brothers had their very own illegal yak farm right up in the far north of the country. It was hidden deep in thick pine forest in the second largest land-locked country in the world.53 Because the two brothers were wizards, albeit not great wizards like their Floods cousins, they were powerful enough to create illegal six-legged yaks. As everyone knows, the leg is the tastiest bit of the yak and absolutely the best part for making yak kebabs.