‘Yoohoo!’ said a troll by a red stone counter in the middle of the room. He looked exactly the same as Dimm the shopkeeper.
‘Is that . . .’ began Cora, wondering if Dimm had magicked his way down the stairs faster than they had walked.
‘This is Dimm’s brother, Dunn,’ said Ogg.
Dunn the troll waved to them.
They waved back before following Ogg down another set of stone steps in the floor. Like the ones before, the stairs descended down into another amberlit space. And again, Cora, Tick and Tock found themselves in a room that matched the previous two. Cora wondered how far down the shop went.
‘Yoohoo!’ said a troll from behind a red counter in the middle of the room.
And how many brothers Dimm the shopkeeper actually had.
‘Is this him?’ asked Tock.
‘No, this is Dimm and Dunn’s brother, Dinn.’
The troll waved to them.
They waved back and followed Ogg down another set of stone stairs in the floor. The steps led to another room that was exactly the same as the first three rooms.
‘Is this him?’ asked Tick.
‘No, this is Dimm, Dunn and Dinn’s sister, Donn,’ Ogg said.
Cora, Tick and Tock paused.
‘Yoohoo!’ said Donn the shopkeeper. She waved at them from another red stone counter.
They waved back and followed Ogg down the next set of stone stairs. When they reached the bottom, Cora was relieved to find that the room they entered didn’t match all the others. There were no vases, or tables, or a floating chisel tap-tapping away at a stone chair. Instead, the room was covered in . . . rocks. Baskets full of them sat on the floor. Some rocks weren’t in baskets at all, and sat haphazardly in lumpy piles. Cora saw a few of the rocks glinted and sparkled different colours. In the corner of the room, a large metal furnace sat open and inside it was a roaring blue fire. It sent a wave of heat towards them, so hot, Cora had to look away.
Standing behind yet another red counter was a troll who looked exactly like the other troll shopkeepers, except that he wore a soot-stained apron, and a small glass monocle sat over one of his eyes. He glanced up at them from a messy stack of papers. ‘Oggmund!’ he said.
‘Dann,’ said Ogg. ‘The best stonemaker in all of Troll Town.’
‘I’m the only stonemaker in all of Troll Town,’ said Dann with a low chuckle. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you were on your adventure?’
‘I was,’ said Ogg. ‘But there is someone I want you to meet.’
‘I’ve met fairies before, Ogg,’ said Dann, eyeing Tick and Tock.
‘Not like us, you haven’t,’ said Tock.
Cora had to agree.
Then Dann looked over at Cora, his eyes shifting from her hair, to her missing eye and then down to her hands.
‘Ogg,’ said Dann warningly. He shook his head.
‘Dann, please,’ said Ogg.
‘We don’t have much time,’ said Tock. ‘The council . . .’
‘The council?’ Dann questioned.
‘They may or may not be looking for us,’ said Tick.
‘You must have upset them terribly,’ said Dann with a chuckle.
‘We might have borrowed something,’ said Tock.
Magic. And it was more stolen than borrowed, Cora thought. She wished she could give all of the magic she had absorbed back. If only she knew how.
‘Dann,’ said Ogg, ‘I promised we could help. She is different.’
The troll peered at Cora. She shifted her feet under his scrutinising gaze.
‘I’ve never really liked the council,’ said Dann. And then he stopped and looked around the room, as if he were waiting for something to happen, a consequence for uttering the words. And when nothing did, he relaxed. ‘How old are you?’ he asked, looking at her through his monocle.
‘Eleven,’ said Cora.
‘Eleven years old, one eye, wanted by the council and on the verge of becoming a Havoc,’ said Dann. ‘That is different.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
Dann lifted one of his hands and a stone chair slid across the floor from behind the red counter. It swivelled and turned, scraping against the stone floor until it came to a stop behind Cora.
‘Please, sit,’ the troll said.
Cora sat down in the chair. It was cold to the touch and not very comfortable.
‘How long since the symptoms began?’ Dann asked.
‘Uh, I’m not sure,’ said Cora. She thought back to Jade City, when Archibald Drake melted her bracelet. ‘A few days?’
Dann glanced at Ogg.
‘This is very advanced for just a few days,’ said Dann. ‘Are you sure?’
Cora nodded.
Dann stepped out from behind the counter. He gazed at her closely through his glass monocle. The small piece of round glass in front of his eye shrunk and grew on his face.
‘Can you please show me your teeth?’ Dann asked.
‘My teeth?’ replied Cora.
The troll nodded.
Hesitantly, Cora opened her mouth wide. She had never shown anyone inside her mouth before. Not since that time Dot took her temperature one winter, years ago.
Cora watched as the troll used a small smooth stick to peek inside. Then Tick’s and Tock’s heads came into view next to him as they looked inside too. Ogg did the same.
‘Ah-ha,’ said Tock, nodding. ‘Just as I suspected. She has teeth.’
‘Are you brushing them twice a day?’ asked Tick.
Dann shook his head at the fairies before stepping away from Cora. She closed her mouth.
‘And where are you cracking?’ asked the troll.
Cora held out her hands. She pulled back her sleeves to show the troll the black cracks that reached from her hands all the way up to her shoulders.
‘Nightmares?’ Dann asked.
Cora nodded.
‘Sleepwalking?’
Cora nodded.
‘And she snores,’ added Tick.
‘And twitches in her sleep,’ said Tock.
Ogg smirked.
Cora glared at the fairies.
‘What?’ Tick asked, holding his hands up innocently.
‘It could be helpful for him to know,’ added Tock with a smile.
‘It’s not,’ said Dann. ‘Magic?’ he asked.
Cora tore her glaring eyes from the fairies. ‘Pardon?’
‘What magic is causing the cracking?’ asked Dann. ‘Are you a witch? An ogre? You’re certainly not hairy enough to be a fairy.’
‘A mage? A necromancer?’ added Ogg.
‘The last creature that came through the shop was a ghoul,’ said Dann. ‘He kept turning invisible. It was very difficult to keep track of where he floated.’
Cora looked at Tick and Tock. Then she glanced at Ogg. Should she tell the trolls that she was a syphon? She paused, unsure. The trolls were helping her. She could trust them, couldn’t she? And then before she knew it, the word tumbled from her mouth. ‘Syphon.’
There was silence. Cora watched Dann’s eyes grow wide as he leant back against the red counter.
Ogg stared at her, his mouth open. Then he scrambled for something inside his coat pocket.
‘Can I . . .’ Ogg began, pulling out his notebook and pen. Cora remembered what he had said in the cave about syphons. He wanted to draw her.
Cora hesitated before nodding.
‘That explains how advanced your symptoms are. How much magic do you have?’ asked Dann.
Cora counted up the different magics she had absorbed since she left Urt. The Jinx. Princess Avette. The warlock. The witch. And the one that she didn’t know. ‘Five,’ she said.
Dann nodded.
‘Can you help her?’ Tick asked.
‘You need ice stone,’ said the troll. ‘True ice stone is very rare. It’s found in the furthest regions, in the deepest caves on the highest mountain peaks. It would take weeks to find enough stones,’ said Dann, shaking his head. Then he looked
at Cora. ‘You do not have weeks.’
Cora swallowed. The words repeated themselves in her mind. You do not have weeks. She thought of Dot and Scratch. And her syphon family.
‘And there are only a few trolls who know how to make ice stone,’ added Dann.
Cora, Tick and Tock waited for Dann to finish. Was he one of them? Ogg had said he was the best stonemaker in Troll Town.
Dann stared back at them. ‘Obviously, I am one of them.’
Cora felt herself sigh in relief.
‘It won’t be as strong,’ said Dann. ‘But it might work.’
Cora nodded. She was happy with might. ‘Thank you,’ she said. Tick and Tock nodded.
Dann walked over to one of the boxes filled with rocks that sat about the room. He held onto one and shuffled through the rocks inside. He peered at some, turning them in his hands, before setting a few aside. Then walking back to the counter, he pulled out a glass case. Opening it, Cora saw brilliant sparkling stones of different shapes and sizes. Dann grabbed a black one, a white one and a red one and placed them into a giant bowl with a collection of other glinting grey rocks.
Cora recognised two of the stones. The black one was identical to the one that sat in a ring Archibald Drake wore. And the white stone, she had seen in Jade City before they met Artemis.
‘Heart stone,’ said Cora, remembering what the stone was called. She remembered it because the small markings etched on the stone were the same as those etched onto the spellbox she had found in Urt. The one that had contained the Jinx curse.
Dann nodded. ‘And obsidian stone. And fire stone. The three most powerful stones in the kingdom, besides ice stone.’
Dann picked up the bowl and walked over to the furnace. He placed a pair of goggles over his eyes and put the bowl into the fiery chamber. Then he took out a very large, red stone pot. He closed the door and turned back to them. ‘Now, we wait.’ He placed the giant bowl on the counter and Cora could smell what it was immediately. The smell that now filled the room was the same smell that had filled their noses when they had entered Troll Town.
‘Troll stew,’ said Dann proudly. He waved a hand and out flew five stone bowls from behind a pile of rocks.
The stew smelt delicious.
‘And by wait do you mean eat?’ Tick asked, unable to stop himself from peering into the steaming pot.
Dann served a helping of stew to each of them and himself.
Without waiting for it to cool, both of the fairies found themselves a pile of rocks to sit on and began slurping up the hot troll stew.
Then Tock stopped suddenly. ‘Are there toes in this?’ he asked.
‘What?’ replied Dann.
‘Never mind,’ said Tock and continued eating the stew.
Cora watched as Ogg and Dann did the same and soon the room was full of hungry stew slurps. She blew on her hot stew before lifting the bowl to her mouth and tasting it. The brown soup was warm and full to the brim with vegetables. Dot would have approved.
When they had slurped their bowls clean, Tick and Tock lay down on their pile of rocks. And Ogg went back to drawing in his notebook. Every so often he glanced up at her, his brow furrowed in concentration.
‘It was the trolls who helped the syphons, you know,’ said Dann to Cora. ‘In the beginning. For many years, our family mined the stones in these mountains.’
‘Have you ever met a syphon?’ Cora asked, hopeful. She took another gulp of the warm stew as she waited to hear the troll’s answer.
Dann nodded his head slowly.
Cora inched forward in her seat. At last. Someone who could talk to her about syphons. Cora thought of her family. Had they come here? Had they visited Troll Town? Did Dann know them?
‘But that was many years ago,’ said Dann, shaking his head. ‘You’re the first syphon I have met in a long, long time.’
Cora tried not to let it show on her face, but with the troll’s words, the hope she had felt suddenly flew from her like a snowflake in the wind.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Cora tried to shake away what she was feeling but it stuck to her like a sticky plumdrop. ‘Do you know what happened to them?’ she asked.
The troll placed his bowl of troll stew down on the counter. ‘The ice stone protected them from themselves . . . but not from others,’ he said.
Hunted and killed, Cora remembered. She could see sadness flicker in the troll’s eyes as he looked away from his bowl of stew.
‘And then they all just . . .’ the troll stopped. ‘Disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’ echoed Ogg, glancing up from his notebook. ‘Like magic?’
Cora hadn’t thought of that. Is that what had happened to the syphons? They had used magic to escape?
‘Some say they got hold of a strong magic, yes,’ said Dann. ‘One that could hide all of them, an entire community for years and years. Hide them away from anyone. Away from those wanting to find them.’
Deep down, Cora hoped that was the case. Though she wondered how she would ever find her syphon family if it were true. A sadness slunk inside her. And if they hid themselves away . . . why didn’t they take me with them?
‘That kind of magic could only be dark magic,’ said Dann. ‘Dark magic can have . . . repercussions.’
‘Repercussions?’ echoed Cora.
‘Some say the magic they used to hide themselves, also destroyed them,’ said Dann.
‘But — but they wouldn’t have had a choice,’ Cora said. ‘If they were being hunted and killed.’ She thought of Archibald Drake, and the dark magic she took from him. She peered at her cracking hands. Repercussions.
Dann nodded. ‘Dark magic can destroy many things. Even sometimes the magical beings who wield it.’
Cora looked over at Tick and Tock. The fairies stared at her knowingly.
‘Others say,’ continued Dann, ‘that there were simply no syphons left alive. That other magical beings had destroyed every last one of them.’
‘What do you believe?’ Cora asked.
‘Well,’ said Dann, ‘a few hours ago, I believed there were no longer any syphons left.’ Then the troll met her eyes, locking onto them with a firm gaze. ‘And then an eleven-year-old girl with one eye walked through the shop door.’
Tick, Tock, Ogg and Dann stared at Cora. The room fell silent.
‘There were rumours of syphons in the northern towns,’ Cora said, disrupting the heavy silence.
Dann nodded. ‘I heard them. Is that where you are going?’
Cora, Tick and Tock nodded.
‘What if they don’t want to be found?’ asked Dann.
The troll’s words dropped like stones into Cora’s stomach. Cora hadn’t thought of that. What if they didn’t want to be found? What if finding the syphons put them in danger?
Dann held up his hand and a pair of gloves floated over to him. The troll went back to the furnace and pulling on the gloves, he reached inside and took out the bowl of stones and rocks.
Black smoke billowed out from the top of the bowl as he placed it on the counter. Sitting up in her chair, Cora looked inside it. All of the stones had completely melted, creating a shimmering liquid at the bottom of the bowl.
Dann waved his hand over the bowl. The bowl moved, swirling the liquid round and round. Cora watched it change colour from black, to red, to silver, to white. And then the bowl stopped moving, but the liquid didn’t. It turned by itself, spinning and folding into itself inside the bowl.
Then Dann pulled out a bucket of ice. Carefully, he poured the shimmering, thick liquid over the ice in the shape of a circle. It sizzled and white smoke flew up into the air. Then with his gloves still on, Dann waved a hand over the circle. It split apart in three pieces and Cora watched amazed as it wove itself together. The firm liquid braided each of its strands intricately, one on top of the next. Over, under, over, under, until at last it formed a round, white chain. A necklace.
Dann motioned to Cora. ‘Try it on.’
Tick and
Tock fluttered over to the counter and Ogg stopped drawing.
Cora hesitated. Carefully, she reached down into the bucket and touched the newly formed necklace. It was as cold as the ice it sat on. Picking it up, she held it in her hands and looked at it closely. It wasn’t as bright as her ice-stone bracelet, but it was close. It glinted in her hands.
Cora reached up and placed the necklace over her head. She closed her eye and waited. She felt Tick, Tock, Ogg and Dann waiting too. She waited to feel something. For the rumbling of magic inside her to become quiet. For the heaviness she felt to lift. Seconds turned into minutes and then when minutes went by, and nothing happened, Cora opened her eye. She stared down at her cracking hands. They were still the same.
‘Give it time,’ said Dann.
Cora nodded. ‘How can we ever repay you?’ she asked. She thought about what she had. A pair of clothes. A jar of gooseberry honey. Dot’s pocket watch.
Dann looked over at Ogg.
‘Take him with you,’ said Dann.
Ogg’s eyes lit up.
Cora glanced at Tick and Tock. She could tell by the looks on the fairies faces that they weren’t thrilled about the troll joining them.
‘You might need a troll where you’re going,’ said Dann.
‘Half troll,’ Ogg said, but he puffed his chest out all the same. Then he faltered. ‘Mother will never allow it, Uncle Dann.’
‘Trolls need adventure. Real adventure,’ said Dann.
Tick and Tock stroked their chins in thought.
‘Do you have any more of those delicious dew suckles?’ asked Tick.
Ogg nodded.
Tick and Tock smiled happily.
They said their goodbyes to Dann and after climbing up all of the steps through all of the levels of the shop and waving to all of Dann’s siblings, Cora, Tick, Tock and Ogg, stepped outside into the snowy Troll Town street.
Not wanting anyone to see it, Cora tucked the ice-stone necklace beneath her clothes. The sharp chill of the necklace hit Cora’s skin like a splash of water.
Havoc!: The Untold Magic of Cora Bell Page 11
