‘Umm, yes.’
‘Well, maybe we should make him into a visible friend so I could meet him,’ said Gruinard.
Nerlin was horrified. There were so many things to consider. Supposing Geoffrey-Geoffrey was really ugly? If he was short and spotty and fat and looked Belgian, would Nerlin still be able to have him as a special friend? And, of course, if he said that out loud, then it would make Nerlin look really shallow. On the other hand, supposing he was really, really handsome? Could Nerlin handle that?
I mean, supposing my beloved Mordonna saw him and fell in love with him? Nerlin thought. What would happen then?
‘I suppose you’re wondering how you would feel if Geoffrey-Geoffrey turns out to be really, really ugly?’ said Gruinard. ‘Or really, really handsome?’
Nerlin shook his head, but his bright-red blushing gave him away.
And of course there was also the nagging thought in the back of his brain: What if Geoffrey-Geoffrey isn’t actually real, but just a figment of my imagination?
‘Though I suspect your biggest fear is finding out that Geoffrey-Geoffrey doesn’t really exist and is just part of your imagination,’ Gruinard continued. ‘If that were the case, it would probably mean you are in a Doolally-overload situation.’
Nerlin looked really embarrassed and scared.
‘It’s all right,’ said Gruinard. ‘You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have those worries.’
‘But I’m not human,’ said Nerlin. ‘I’m a wizard.’
‘Oh yes, of course you are,’ said Gruinard. ‘Still.’
‘What?’ said Nerlin.
‘Maybe we should just let Geoffrey-Geoffrey stay invisible for now.’
‘Yes,’ said Nerlin, feeling very relieved.
‘In that case, I think the next thing must be the Fruit-Pulp Immersion,’ said Gruinard.
She reached up and pulled a calendar down from a shelf and studied it with increasing excitement.
‘This is amazing,’ she said. ‘Tonight is just about the most perfect time in the past one hundred and fifty-three years for a true Fruit-Pulp Immersion. And after tonight it will be at least another three hundred years before such an auspicious night comes again.’
‘Wow, that’s brilliant,’ said Nerlin. ‘Why?’
‘Well, tonight is Midsummer’s Night,’ Gruinard explained. ‘Today we have an equinox, a solstice, a full moon and buckets and buckets of very ripe fruit. If I were to consult the Fruit-Pulp Oracle – and I’ll send her an email right now – I imagine she would be overwhelmed by the incredible coincidensity of it all.’
‘Um, what exactly is a Fruit-Pulp Immersion?’ said Nerlin.
‘Well, it’s just amazing,’ Gruinard explained. ‘Oh look, the Fruit-Pulp Oracle has replied: “Wow, Gruny, I’m overwhelmed by the incredible coincidensity. I will see you at midnight at the Fruit-Pulp Pool”. Right, we’ve got a lot to do.’
She rang a bell and a young girl appeared.
‘I want you to collect the others and fill the Fruit-Pulp Pool to the very brim with the finest fruit pulp you can get. Spare no expense, for tonight’s ceremony will go down in history as the greatest Fruit-Pulp Immersion in the entire history of Fruit-Pulp Immersions. Also, I need you to send word down to Quenelle and the other Old Crones and tell them all – and I mean every one of them – to be here at eleven-thirty. They must each have a bath, even if it has been less than a year since their last, and they are to wear their finest sacks, for tonight they too may bathe in the greatest Fruit-Pulp Immersion the world has ever seen. And be sure to tell them to bring a towel.’
‘And shall we sieve the fruit pulp through the enchanted cobweb, mistress?’ said the girl.
‘Absolutely not,’ said Gruinard. ‘Tonight the Fruit-Pulp Immersion will be the full bio-dynamic recipe – natural as nature intended, pips and all.’
Now, Nerlin had always been a fairly down-to-earth sort of person, or as down-to-earth as a wizard can be. So the idea of jumping into a pond of fruit salad seemed a little bit weird and hippy-like.35 Would he have to take all his clothes off in front of everyone, or were there special Fruit-Pulp Immersion swimmers that you could wear? And were you supposed to drink some of the pulp after everyone had been swimming in it with their dirty feet and pimples and hair? Did you have to put your head right under? And if you did, what would happen if you got raspberries stuck up your nose? It all seemed a bit dangerous and ridiculous.
On the other hand, the sensible bit of his brain told himself, it probably isn’t a real Fruit-Pulp Immersion. It’s more likely to be a sort of symbolic thing where you just stick your finger in a jar of strawberry jam.
And we’ve all done that, haven’t we?
Nerlin certainly had, though he preferred a pot of honey.
But no, it wasn’t going to be a jam jar. The sound of singing approached and, looking out of the window, Nerlin saw fifteen trainee witches carrying huge buckets of squashed fruit along the path and up into the trees beyond the Impossible Waterfall.
Two minutes later, fifteen trainee wizards went by, also carrying buckets of mushy fruit, and two minutes after that, another fifteen witches, and so it went on until sunset.
‘Tell me something,’ Nerlin asked, trying to get Fruit-Pulp Immersion thoughts out of his head, ‘why is it called the Impossible Waterfall?’
‘I’ll show you,’ said Gruinard. ‘Follow me.’
They left the cottage and walked up to where the waterfall came crashing down into the stream. The water was clearer than glass and shinier than the shiniest glass that ever came out of a dishwasher. It was only a narrow strip of water, no more than a metre wide, but it fell from a fantastic height.
Looking up, Nerlin could see it falling out of a layer of Masking Clouds.
‘Yes, it’s beautiful,’ he said, ‘but why is it called impossible?’
Gruinard raised her arms in the air and concentrated. Slowly, the clouds parted to reveal the source of the waterfall.
There wasn’t one.
‘See?’ she said.
‘I can’t see anything,’ said Nerlin.
‘Exactly.’
‘But …’
There was nothing there. The waterfall just appeared out of thin air and fell down into the stream.
Gruinard lowered her arms and the Masking Clouds slid back into place.
‘That’s impossible,’ said Nerlin.
‘Exactly,’ said Gruinard.
The waterfall, although impossible, was beautiful in its simplicity. Gruinard said it had been there for as long as anyone could remember and it was the reason she had built her house where it was. The water itself, she said, was the one true fountain of youth, though you had to be very careful where you drank it from.
‘If you take a glass from the stream after it has passed my garden gate, it actually makes you get older,’ she explained, ‘and the further downstream you go, the quicker you age. To get the maximum effect you must hold the glass in the flow of water as it comes down from the sky.’
‘Wow,’ said Nerlin. ‘Think I could do with a glass of that.’
‘You will tomorrow, after tonight’s Fruit-Pulp Immersion,’ said Gruinard. ‘There are some people who believe that if you went up the waterfall to where the water appears and drank some of that, you would actually get younger and younger until you were a child again.’
At eleven o’clock, the Old Crones arrived and everyone walked up the path behind the waterfall. They climbed a short flight of stone steps and there, set in a tiny flat lawn of brilliant grass, was the Fruit-Pulp Pool. It was so close to the back of the waterfall that a fine mist of spray filled the air.
The moon was full, just edging towards the highest point in the sky. The Old Crones, bathed in its eerie blue light, held out their hands, let the mist settle on their faces and slowly massaged the water into their skin. The effects were instant and amazing. The Old Crones became the Young Crones as their wrinkles disappeared.
‘Why have you never come
up here before?’ asked Nerlin, who could feel the lines on his own face smoothing over as the mist condensed on his skin. He wondered if he could take a couple of bottles back for Mordonna, but he suspected, correctly, that the magic would not work once the water left the valley.
‘It is forbidden,’ said Quenelle. ‘The entrance to this valley closes over and only opens at Gruinard’s command.’
‘And why is she not young and beautiful?’ Nerlin whispered to Quenelle.
‘The waterfall creates magic, not miracles,’ Quenelle replied. ‘She is over seven hundred years old. So, really, she’s pretty good for her age.’
As midnight approached, Gruinard came up the path and stood in front of everyone.
‘Right, everybody,’ she said. ‘Clothes off and into the Fruit-Pulp Immersion.’
‘What?’ said Nerlin, fearing the worst.
‘I said, clothes off …’
‘I heard what you said,’ said Nerlin, ‘but it’s embarrassing. I mean, I’m the only man here.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Quenelle, throwing her sackcloth onto the pile with everyone else’s. ‘Just keep your eyes shut.’
‘But everyone will see my body,’ Nerlin protested.
‘Yes, but if you shut your eyes, you won’t be able to see them looking at you,’ Quenelle explained.
‘What? No, that’s not right! Everyone else should keep their eyes shut, not me,’ said Nerlin.
‘But then you’d be able to see all of our bodies,’ said one of the Young Crones. ‘And we are all young and lovely now.’
‘I can see you all now,’ said Nerlin, who was the only one left with clothes on.
So the Young Crones all slipped discreetly into the fruit pulp and immersed themselves up to their necks.
‘Is that better?’ said Quenelle.
‘Yes, but you can still see me,’ said Nerlin.
‘Well, we’ll look up at the moon and hum a little song,’ said Gruinard.
So Nerlin stripped off and lowered himself into the Fruit-Pulp Immersion. And apart from one Young Crone who just couldn’t help herself, no one saw Nerlin being nude. The one who did giggled, and thought, Ooer, I don’t know what he’s wearing, but it needs ironing, and wished she had been looking at the moon too.
Far, far away, deep down in the valley, the solstice bell in the tower of Castle Twilight, which only rang twice a year, chimed midnight. As its echo died, the Old Crones began chanting and formed a ring around Nerlin.
One by one they tapped him on the head until the last one, Quenelle, left her hand there and suddenly, with no warning, pushed Nerlin Flood, the King of Transylvania Waters, under the surface of the Fruit-Pulp Pool, holding him there while he spluttered and struggled. Just as Nerlin thought he was going to drown, she took her hand away and he came up and took a huge breath of air.
‘Ahh, oooh, ooooooooooooooh, errr,’ he cried, wiping the fruit from his eyes.
‘You might have warned me you were going to do that …’
There was no one there.
Except there was, and Nerlin could feel it wriggling around in the bottom of the Fruit-Pulp Pool. It slid over his feet and tried to bite him.
Forgetting he was naked, Nerlin leapt out of the pool. The fruit pulp covered him from head to toe like a thick skin. It stuck to him like a suit of clothes.
‘How are you feeling?’ Gruinard asked, coming back up the path.
‘There’s something swimming around in the bottom of the pool,’ Nerlin said.
‘No there isn’t.’
‘There is,’ Nerlin insisted. ‘It wriggled across my feet.’
‘Well, it isn’t one of the crones,’ said Gruinard. ‘They’re all back at my house now, getting showered and dressed.’
‘No, it was much smaller than a person.’
‘Maybe a rat fell in the pool.’
‘No, it was bigger than a rat.’
And as they watched, the level of the Fruit-Pulp Pool began to drop. It got lower and lower, until a writhing creature the size of a dog appeared. It was very fat and was drinking the fruit pulp, a feat that seemed impossible, seeing as the pulp volume was a thousand times bigger than the creature’s size.
Gruinard threw a bucket of water over the creature. And it was then that they could see that it was nothing at all like a dog.
It was a short, hideous homunculus.36 Above a minute, hairless body with skinny arms and legs and enormous hands and feet was the ugliest head Gruinard and Nerlin had ever seen.
‘Toiletbrain!’ it cursed. ‘Toe-cheese-pigface!’
‘Oh my God!’ cried Nerlin, and fainted.
The voice was a voice he had heard inside his head many, many times.
It was Geoffrey-Geoffrey.
Gruinard may have been very old, but her brain was faster than the speed of light. In a split second she slid shut the steel grating for when the Fruit-Pulp Pool wasn’t being used so that Geoffrey-Geoffrey was imprisoned there. There were seventeen bolts around the rim of the pool and Gruinard ran around frantically, slamming each one shut.
Then she threw several buckets of water from the Impossible Waterfall over Nerlin, dried him off and got him back into his clothes.
‘I just had a terrible nightmare,’ he said when he came around. ‘There was this gross creature in the pool, like an evil little homunculus, and it had killed Geoffrey-Geoffrey and stolen his voice.’
‘It wasn’t a nightmare,’ said Gruinard as she and the Young Crones, who were now the Middle-Aged Crones37 as the waterfall spell wore off, pushed a lot of big heavy rocks onto the steel grating, just to make sure Geoffrey-Geoffrey stayed put.
‘Lemmeout, lemmeout, lemmeout!’ he screamed.
Nerlin peered over the edge of the pit at the creature, who was now bright red with anger.
‘What have you done with Geoffrey-Geoffrey?’ Nerlin shouted.
‘I am Geoffrey-Geoffrey, you horrible old man,’ he sneered at him.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Nerlin. ‘Geoffrey-Geoffrey is my friend. He is kind and helpful and wonderful.’
‘You are a very stupid old man,’ Geoffrey-Geoffrey said, and laughed. ‘I was never your friend. I just pretended to be, after what you all did to my mother!’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Nerlin. ‘I’ve never even met your mother.’
‘Your family destroyed her. First, you imprisoned her at the bottom of the sea and then you totally destroyed her. And all she was doing was her job as a good and devoted servant to your wretched wife’s father,’ said Geoffrey-Geoffrey.
‘You mean, your mother was the vile and evil Hearse Whisperer?’ said Gruinard.
‘No, my mother was the kind and lovely Hearse Whisperer,’ Geoffrey-Geoffrey whimpered. ‘A finer mother no boy could ask for.
‘Even if she did desert us all when were little children,’ he added.
‘And turn us into homunculi,’ he continued, ‘and eat our father.
‘And leave us all alone in an orphanage on the edge of Ulan Bator,’ he concluded.
‘If all that’s a description of a kind and lovely mother,’ Gruinard said, ‘what on earth is a bad mother like?’
‘Well, she never made us watch Australia’s Got Talent or eat greasy takeaway burgers,’ said Geoffrey-Geoffrey. ‘Though, come to think of it, neither of them existed when we were babies.’
‘So you have brothers and sisters?’ said Nerlin.
‘I did,’ said Geoffrey-Geoffrey. ‘I had seven sisters, but they came to a sticky end.’
‘So you are all alone in the world?’ said Gruinard.
‘No, I’m all alone in this disgusting sticky pit,’ Geoffrey-Geoffrey sneered. ‘And if you don’t let me out this instant you’ll regret it.’
‘Really?’ said Gruinard. ‘You have wizard powers then?’
‘No.’
‘So how will I, second only in witch power to Mordonna, Queen of Transylvania Waters, regret it?’
Geoffrey-Geoffrey didn’t answer. He s
plashed around knee-deep in the dregs of the Fruit-Pulp Immersion, cursing, swearing and saying every rude word he could think of, as well as some new and promising ones he made up as he went along.
‘I think we will just leave you down there for now,’ said Gruinard, ‘until you calm down a bit. Someone will bring you some food later.’
‘I don’t want your stinking dinner,’ said Geoffrey-Geoffrey. ‘I’ll just eat the rest of this fruit pulp.’
‘Please yourself,’ said Gruinard, and she and Nerlin went back down to the cottage.
When they had had a few hours’ sleep and a very bacony breakfast, the Ageless Crones sat Nerlin down and questioned him.
‘So do you feel any different after the Fruit-Pulp Immersion?’ was the question everyone asked.
‘Dn’t thnk s,’ said Nerlin. ‘Spps m bt clmr.’
‘What?’ said Quenelle, wriggling her fingers in her ears. ‘Can you repeat that? I didn’t quite catch it.’
‘Sd, spps fl bt clmr,’ said Nerlin.
‘I think he’s lost control of his vowels,’ said Gruinard. ‘Repeat after me: a b d c d e f g h i o u.’
‘Wht n rth fr?’
‘Just do it, please,’ Gruinard repeated. ‘A b d c d e f g h i o u.’
‘B d c d f g h,’ said Nerlin.
‘Yes, just as I thought. Our beloved King has lost control of his vowels,’ said Gruinard.
‘What are we going to do?’ said Quenelle. ‘I imagine there’s a cure of some sort?’
‘Yes, there is,’ said Gruinard.
She left the room and came back with a great big baggy pair of underpants, which she handed to Nerlin.
‘You’ll need to wear these, Your Majesty,’ she said. ‘Go into the downstairs bathroom and put them on under your other clothes. Oh, and don’t forget to tuck them into your socks.’
‘Wht r thy?’ said Nerlin.
‘They are Incompetence Pants,’ Gruinard explained. ‘You’ll need to wear them for a few days until your vowels are working properly again. It’s nothing to worry about, it’s just a very rare side-effect of the Fruit-Pulp Immersion and it will eventually wear off.’
It was agreed that Nerlin would stay at Gruinard’s cottage until all was back to normal. No one wanted his family or his subjects to see him talking without his vowels. They would all think he was certainly Doolally.
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