“It’s all the fairytales, OK?” Jones said, waving a laconic hand. “They’re all true. They all really happened. Every single—”
She was interrupted by the roar of an engine, followed by the screech of brakes.
A midnight-blue SMOG van had hurtled into the Septagon and stopped right outside the pavement café. A moment later, the van doors were thrown open.
“SMOG patrol!” gasped Frankie. “We’re doomed!”
11
Frankie grabbed both girls by the elbow and yanked them down the nearest side street.
Roxy almost lost her footing. “What are you—”
“Oh, do hush, dearie!” Frankie was pressed against the wall of one of the houses that lined Seven Point Three Street, sweating beneath his face powder. “We mustn’t be seen!”
“That’s one massive SMOG patrol. And they’re heavily armed, too!” Jones peeked back round the corner, ignoring Frankie’s squeak. “Those IPLs are pretty awesome. D’you know, I think they’re actually carrying two each?”
“What do you think they’re doing?” Roxy asked nervously. “Is this anything to do with that prison breakout?”
“Of course!” Frankie was white-faced beneath his make-up and looked as if he might happily double over and vomit on the cobblestones. “I’ll bet it’s a random licence check! That’s the only reason the SMOGs ever come to Sector Seven. They must have ordered one because of the breakout!”
“Licence check?” echoed Roxy. “What does that mean?”
“All BOBIs have to have a licence if they want to stay in Illustria,” muttered Jones, who was still watching the Septagon. “MOOOOOH gives them out, right, Frankie? And you have to have it renewed every five years? Oh, wow, here come even more of them!” she added as a second vehicle came roaring into the Septagon. This time, Roxy could see, it was a midnight-blue car: an extremely sleek and shiny one. A uniformed driver got out of the front and opened the back door for the passenger.
The person who climbed out was a small woman with grey hair and glasses, dressed in grey trousers and a grey parka. She wore a pleasant smile, and carried a rolled-up black umbrella.
“It’s Mrs Smith,” croaked Frankie.
Mrs Smith. Roxy’s ears pricked up at the name. Minister Splendid had mentioned her. This was the person Gretel had said did not exist.
Frankie was now backing away down Seven Point Three Street. His eyes were fixed on Mrs Smith, out in the Septagon. “D’you know, dear hearts, I don’t think I’ll be able to take you to meet Diadora after all.”
“Hey! You said you’d help us!” Jones pointed an accusing finger. “What’s going on? I mean, OK, I’ll admit, SMOGs are a bit intimidating, but why all the panic about this Mrs Smith person? Who even is she?”
“No panic, dearie, no panic!” said Frankie with a slightly strained laugh. “I’m perfectly, perfectly at ease around Mrs Smith! Or, as we all used to know her in the olden days, Wincey the Wisteria Fairy.”
“Don’t tell me. Another one of Sleeping Beauty’s lucky fairy godmothers?”
“Yes, dear. And now she works for Minister Splendid. She’s his deputy, actually.” Frankie took a deep breath. “And the thing is … if it is a random licence-check … well, I’m not one hundred per cent certain, but my own licence may be … ah … just a teensy-weensy bit out of date.”
“How out of date?” Roxy asked.
“Erm … well, gosh, now, let me see… It’s been, ooooh, a good twenty years since the Great Clean-Up … so that would make my licence … ummm … well, OK, I may not ever have actually got one.”
He mumbled this last part so quietly that Roxy wasn’t sure they’d heard him right.
“You never got one?” demanded Jones.
“Not as such, dearie,” Frankie mumbled, “no.”
Both girls stared at him.
“Look, getting a licence can be hard!” said Frankie plaintively. “MOOOOOH has files, and video footage, and they interrogate you for two or three days straight. And, well, I may have occasionally hung out with the wrong sort of people in my much younger days. No bad-magic elements – never! – but a few of what you might call naughty-magic elements. I was a … a rather wild young fairy, I’m ashamed to say.”
“That’s why you don’t live here in Sector Seven, isn’t it?” demanded Jones. “Because MOOOOOH keep more of an eye on people who live here—”
“If we get caught while we’re with you,” Roxy interrupted as an image of Gretel’s shocked – no, devastated – face popped into her mind, “and you’re unlicensed, will that get us into even bigger trouble?”
Before Frankie could answer, a booming voice came from the Septagon.
“SECTOR SEVEN INHABITANTS.” The voice belonged to the SMOG captain, who was holding a megaphone. “PAY ATTENTION. THERE HAS BEEN A SECURITY BREACH.”
“They are here because of the breakout!” hissed Frankie. “I should have known it was a bad day to come! Oh, Frankie, you silly, silly fairy!”
“WE ARE ABOUT TO CONDUCT A RANDOM SEARCH OF THE AREA,” came the SMOG captain’s voice again. “PLEASE PRESENT YOUR LICENCE AND IDENTIFICATION PAPERS WHEN ASKED TO DO SO.”
“We have to get out of Sector Seven,” gurgled Frankie. “Now.”
“DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LEAVE SECTOR SEVEN,” boomed the voice. “ALL EXITS ARE SEALED.”
“What are we going to do?” Roxy’s heart was thudding. Out in the Septagon, she could see that Mrs Smith, with the same pleasant smile on her face, was taking the megaphone from the captain.
“This is Mrs Smith speaking,” she said, her voice crisp and clear. “I would like to assure my fellow BOBIs that there is no reason to be alarmed. The usual procedures will be followed. Law-abiding folk need have no fear.”
“Which would be reassuring,” hissed Jones, “if we were actually with a law-abiding BOBI.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, child, just let me think a minute!” said Frankie. “We’re on Seven Point Three Street, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“Then we can make it to my friend Skinny’s instead! It’s much closer, and we’ll be safe there. Come on, dearies!” Frankie set off at a rather bouncy, arm-flapping trot. The street continued to wind away from the Septagon, narrowing as it went, and they’d been jogging steadily for several minutes when Frankie began to slow down. “Number Seven-Eight-Four… Number Seven-Eight-Six… We’re here!”
They’d stopped outside a grimy shop window. A sign above said: BOGIE WONDERLAND.
“Frankie,” began Jones, “why have you brought us to a shop that sells bogeys?”
“It’s supposed to say Boogie,” Frankie sighed. “As in, dancing to good music. Not as in, the contents of your nostrils. I have told him about his appalling spelling. Numerous times.” He pushed open the front door.
The shop inside was piled, from floor to ceiling, with something that Roxy instantly recognized: old vinyl records, the kind people used to play music on creaky old record players, in the days before instant digital downloads.
It was, at a swift glance, almost as impressive a collection as the one belonging to her brother.
“Oh, wow,” Roxy breathed, forgetting to NOT act like a total music geek. She stepped forward, reading aloud from some of the covers she could see in the nearest pile. “Patagonia Dreaming by Electric Funk Suitcase… Hell on Four Wheels by Zadie Starburst… This is incredible!”
“Excuse me,” interrupted a voice from behind the pile of records. “That’s my beard you’re trampling on.”
Roxy glanced down to see that she was definitely standing on something.
It was, indeed, a beard. It was a very, very long beard. It was wispy, and faintly gingery, and it belonged to the very, very short man who now appeared from behind the stack of records.
12
The bearded man was wearing baggy cargo shorts, and sunglasses, and a crumpled T-shirt with the words SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT printed on it. He was holding a plank of wood and, alarmingly, a large ha
mmer. He was not smiling.
“I’m s-sorry,” Roxy stammered. “I didn’t see you there … or your beard.”
“Skinny, dear,” said Frankie, stepping towards him. “It’s me.”
“Frankie?” The little man dropped the plank of wood. “What the blooming heck’s happened to you?”
“Oh, just a bad makeover spell, dearie. Now, look, there’s a random licence-check going on out there…”
“And you never got round to actually applying for your licence, so you want to hide out here.” Skinny, behind his sunglasses, was still not smiling. He didn’t seem the sort of person to take kindly to unexpected visitors (and it was not merely the hammer that was giving this impression). “I’m honoured.”
“Now, don’t be grumpy, Skinny. I was actually bringing my friends to meet you, too!” Frankie was quite clearly making this up on the spot. “They have a few questions about witches, as it happens, and I suspect you’re just the chap to help them out.”
Skinny waved the hammer in sudden alarm. “What’s wrong with you, woman? Or boy. Or whatever,” he hissed. “Today, of all days, you stand here in my store and talk about witches?”
“But I’m talking about good witches, dear…”
“It doesn’t matter which witches you’re talking about! If the SMOGs hear talk of any witches, we’ll all be carted off faster than you can say, Guess who’s broken out of the so-called top-security prison for Diabolicals.”
“Oh, my days.” Frankie gazed at him. “Is it as bad as all that?”
“Yep.”
“It’s … her, isn’t it?”
“Yep again.”
Frankie’s eyes widened so far that his pupils were scarcely visible in the surrounding white. “Do you know, dear,” he murmured, “I suddenly feel very much in need of a cup of hot, sweet tea.”
“You know where the kettle is,” Skinny grunted. Then, as Frankie bustled past him towards the back of the store, he turned his attention to the two girls. “So,” he snapped, “are you all right?”
Roxy was just about to stammer that she was very well, thank you, when Jones nudged her sharply in the ribs.
“Yeah,” she said, tilting her chin. “We’re all right.”
This, Roxy realized, must be a way of letting BOBIs know that you knew about them and their magical powers, and that you would keep it all a secret.
“So let me guess which of the seriously scary Marys has broken out,” Jones went on, leaning casually on a pile of records. “The Gingerbread Witch? Baba Yaga? Or— Aaaaaaaaaarghhh!”
The pile of records had toppled to the floor, Jones beneath them.
“Careful!” shrieked Skinny, darting forward. “What’s wrong with you, girl? Those are priceless records you’re vandalizing! There’s a Candypain: The Live Sessions by H-Bomb and the Missiles right there, under your bum! Do you have any idea how rare that disc is?”
Roxy had been about to help Jones up from the dusty floor, but she stopped in surprise. “You like H-Bomb?”
“I don’t like H-Bomb. I love H-Bomb.” Skinny’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Do you?”
“Yes! I’ve got Candypain: The Live Sessions too! I mean, not as an actual record, but it’s on my phone.”
“You’re joking me.” Skinny’s angry, creased little face was unfurling like a flower towards the sun. “I thought girls like you only listened to cheeseballs like Spencer Sick-Bucket, or whatever his name is. How did you get into Candypain: The Live Sessions?”
“It’s a long story. But it’s one of my favourite H-Bomb albums.”
“Mine too! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love their later stuff, but back in those early days…”
“OK, there’s really no time for the music-nerd chitchat.” Jones, pink in the cheeks from embarrassment, was struggling to her feet by herself. “First off, can we please be clear on one thing: you’re Rumpelstiltskin, right?”
Skinny’s face swiftly shut down again. “What? Who? Never heard of him.”
And with that, he began to stomp towards the door at the back of the store.
“Oh, come on! You’re the spitting image.” Jones scurried after him and Roxy reluctantly left the records to follow. After all, if Jones was right, this was a face-to-face encounter with an actual fairytale person! Roxy’s head might be spinning with what she’d only recently learned about fairytales, but meeting Rumpelstiltskin in the flesh was too extraordinary a moment to miss. “The beard,” Jones went on, “the slightly bad mood … and don’t tell me those delicate hands of yours aren’t made for spinning straw into gold!”
This made Skinny spin round, both fists (which were, indeed, Roxy now saw, surprisingly delicate for such a stocky man) raised. “I swear, if anyone mentions straw…”
“OK, calm down. I’m sorry,” said Jones, sounding genuinely contrite in the face of such instant fury. “I won’t say the S-word again.”
“You’d better not.” Stomping even harder now, Skinny led them into the back room, where a badly shaken Frankie was putting four chipped mugs on a fold-out table while a kettle boiled behind him.
It was impossible to work out, Roxy thought, whether this was a stockroom or where Skinny in fact lived. There were more records piled up everywhere but there was also a slouchy leather armchair half-covered with a crocheted blanket, some ropey old striped curtains, an ancient microwave and – visible through another little doorway – a small shower-room with a rickety loo. The back door had been half boarded up: clearly they really had interrupted Skinny right in the middle of doing it.
“Anyway, Rumpelstiltskin was just a fairytale!” Skinny seemed unable to let Jones’s comments go. He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “A made-up, totally fictional story. Nonsense for children. Imaginary. Make-believe. A folderol. A—”
“Yeah, look, we know fairytales are actually real,” said Jones. “So that won’t wash with us. And come on, you’re here boarding up your door because some so-called fairytale witch – oh, and I’m guessing it’s Queen Bellissima, by the way – has escaped from prison. That sounds pretty real to me.”
“You know the truth about fairytales?” Skinny looked astonished. “But what … how…? Has the False Memory Enchantment failed, or something?”
“The Enchantment is just fine,” said Frankie. “It’s my fault, I’m afraid, that my goddaughter knows about us. I may have chatted a wee bit too freely to her father when he was a boy.”
“Ooooh, I’ve never heard of the False Memory Enchantment.” Jones was already reaching into her kitbag for her notebook. “What is it?”
“It’s an APPALLING PIECE OF SKULDUGGERY AND DECEIT!” bellowed Skinny, bashing a furious (tiny) fist on the table so hard that the mugs jumped. It was easy to see how they’d become so chipped.
“Skinny, do try to stay calm, dear. We have quite enough to get stressed about already. And I’m painfully aware,” Frankie went on, to Jones, “that you’ll badger me about it until I lose the will to live, so I’ll explain.” He set down the steaming teapot, sat down heavily on the armchair and sighed. “The False Memory Enchantment is the most powerful spell that’s ever existed, and – probably – ever will exist. It keeps everybody in Illustria under the illusion that fairytales are just fiction, rather than actual history.”
“Not only in Illustria!” sputtered Skinny. “The magic used for the Enchantment is channelled through the Witching Stones. That makes it powerful enough to keep it operating over the entire world!”
“Skinny!” Frankie squawked, horrified. “You can’t tell them about the Stones!”
“Why not? Apparently you’ve told them pretty much everything else.”
“But Skinny, the Stones … they’re top secret! Topper than top! They’re … oh, well, it’s too late now, I suppose,” sighed Frankie, starting to pour the tea with an air of resignation. “They may as well know now. If she’s escaped, the entire world as they know it could be over by next week anyway.”
“Really?” Roxy asked, sharply. In truth, she
was a lot more interested in finding out more about this terrifying escaped prisoner than in hearing about these magical stones: surely the escapee was the number-one priority right now. But evidently Jones didn’t feel the same.
“So, this Stone,” she said casually, beginning to scribble in her notebook. “Tell me more.”
“Stones,” said Skinny. “Plural. There are seven of them.”
“Seven?” Jones’s head snapped up. “I thought there was onl…” She stopped abruptly. “How interesting,” she went on, burying her head in her notebook again. “Do carry on.”
Now Roxy was paying attention.
There was something about the oh-so-innocent angle of Jones’s head as she scribbled – not to mention what she’d just blurted out – that had totally, massively, without-a-shadow-of-a-doubt given it away.
These Witching Stones were the thing she was looking for.
Or rather, as Jones had clearly thought there was only one, a Witching Stone.
“They’re rare magical stones that contain so much power themselves, they magnify any spell you perform when in contact with one,” Skinny went on. “So if any old non-BOBI chanted one while holding a Stone, it would make that spell so powerful that they could, I dunno, turn their nasty Great-Uncle Nigel into a Parmesan cheese, or make their least-favourite teacher’s nose turn blue.”
“Oh, really?” said Roxy, looking rather pointedly at Jones. “So they could be used to harm people you’re angry with, for example? Like, family members?” She paused before adding, “Stepmothers?”
Jones was deliberately ignoring the pointed look. In fact, to aid her in ignoring it completely, she picked up Frankie’s lilac fedora from where he’d left it on the table and popped it on her head at an angle that almost completely shielded her eyes. “Interesting stuff,” she said to Skinny, way too casually. “Fascinating piece of brand-new information.”
“And there aren’t seven, actually,” added Frankie. “There are six. They’re the ones that, jointly, channel the False Memory Enchantment. Nobody even knows if the Seventh Witching Stone still exists. It’s almost certain it was found – and then quickly destroyed – during the Great Clean-Up. It was by far the most powerful Stone, you see, and the only one that could channel Dark Magic as well as Decent Magic.”
Roxy & Jones Page 7
