Floods 12

by Colin Thompson

  ‘That’s right,’ said Anorexya. ‘No, we will stay right away from there and go to the far end of the world, to the land of my ancestors in Patagonia. We will go high up into the mountains to Shangrila Lakes, and there we will eat enchanted cakes and buns and drink fizzy pop, not the ordinary kind, but magical fizzy pop that flows like nectar from the Fountain of Eternal Youth.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Nerlin. ‘Nerlin loves fizzy pop.’

  ‘Yes, I know you do,’ Anorexya said to herself. ‘I’ve done the research.’

  Then she said out loud, ‘And it will be strawberry-flavoured fizzy pop. Your favourite.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nerlin. ‘And Nerlin likes eternal youth too.’

  ‘Well, who doesn’t?’ said Anorexya, and she clicked her fingers – the finger clicking was just for effect because at the same time she pressed a red button on a remote control – and a hot-air balloon floated from within the clouds to stop right in front of Nerlin, hovering a couple of metres above the grass.

  A skinny little man with very bad skin and a runny nose appeared from inside the basket. He threw a rope ladder over the side and climbed down.

  ‘Step aboard, Your Majesty,’ he said, bowing low so his nose dripped all over his feet.

  ‘Yes,’ Anorexya murmured. ‘Climb aboard, my beloved, and we shall whisk you away to eternal happiness.’

  The balloon rose up into the sky just as Quenelle came out of her cave to tell Nerlin that tea was ready. Of course by then he wasn’t there, but something made her look up just in time to see the last little bit of the balloon’s mooring rope vanish into the clouds.

  ‘Anorexya, Dispepsya,’ she called out. ‘Come quick. Someone has kidnapped the King!’

  ‘Where? Who? What?’ called Dispepsya, running out of her cave, almost dropping the cup in her hands. ‘Oops, I’ve spilt my tea.’

  Up in the cloud, Anorexya heard Quenelle shouting and laughed.

  Under the cloud, Quenelle heard Anorexya laughing and realised what had happened. Anorexya had always had a twinkle in her eye whenever Nerlin had been around. She had always run back into her cave and changed into her best rags and sprinkled herself with enchanted ditch water and become all giggly.47

  All the other Old Crones knew that Anorexya had a crush on Nerlin, but none of them had ever expected she would do anything about it apart from a lot of blushing and carving his name on her shins with her machete.

  Anorexya’s laughter grew fainter and fainter as the balloon rose higher and higher, clearing the clouds as it floated towards Patagonia. Then it was gone, taking Nerlin and his kidnappers with it.

  ‘Thank goodness I came out in time,’ said Quenelle. ‘Another minute and the rope would have vanished and we would have had no idea what’d happened.’

  ‘Except Anorexya would have vanished too,’ said Dispepsya.

  ‘Yes, but she oft en goes off into the forest to eat millipedes, and sometimes we don’t see her for weeks,’ said one of the other crones.

  ‘Right,’ said Quenelle. ‘Fetch my mobile. I’ll ring Castle Twilight and tell them what’s happened. The sooner we go after them the better.’

  ‘Where’s your mobile?’ said Dispepsya.

  ‘On the shelf, above the number six cauldron,’ said Quenelle. ‘We all keep our mobiles there.’

  ‘I know,’ said Dispepsya, ‘but they aren’t there.’

  ‘What, none of them?’

  ‘No.’

  A quick search of high, followed by a long search of low, followed by another more careful search of high and low revealed nothing. Every single one of the Old Crones’ mobiles had vanished.

  Anorexya had planned the kidnap very efficiently. There was a single landline phone down to Dreary and she had cut that too, in dozens of places. And finally, she had pulled all the feathers out of the wings of Fluffy Sainte-Marie the carrier pigeon.

  The only way to get news to Mordonna and the others was for someone to go down the footpath.

  ‘What about the broomsticks?’ someone suggested. ‘One of us could fly down on one of them.’

  ‘Except we got rid of them all when we got the vacuum cleaners,’ said Quenelle.

  ‘I could fly down on one of them,’ said Slandarella, who was not actually an Old Crone, but the lumpy older sister of one of them who they had employed out of charity. Slandarella made the tea, did the washing up and made sure everyone had enough boils and scabs.

  Luckily, one of the donkeys had been left behind for Nerlin when Mordonna and everyone else had gone back to Dreary, so it was agreed that Dispepsya would ride it to the castle and get help.

  Meanwhile, the hot-air balloon rose up through the clouds until Nerlin and Anorexya were drifting far above them. The pilot turned off the seatbelt sign and pulled on the ropes until their course was set for Patagonia.

  Anorexya fed Nerlin fizzy pop, enchanted cakes and buns with added sleeping pills and soon the King was drifting, not just through the stratosphere, but through a vast library of dreams that Anorexya had manufactured. Many of the happiest memories of his life that involved times spent with Mordonna were replaced with fake memories of days spent with Anorexya.

  They drift ed south-west across France, over Spain and out to sea, and when they were hundreds of miles away from land, Anorexya threw the Old Crones’ mobiles over the side. Amazingly, their fall towards the sea was interrupted by a lone pelican, who swallowed one of the phones.

  Nerlin slept like a baby. Not one of those babies that wet the bed and have nightmares, but the ones that sleep all through the night without a peep and don’t actually exist.

  The balloon reached South America and sailed south-west towards Patagonia.

  Anorexya couldn’t believe she had got away with it. Everything had gone perfectly and it wasn’t as if she’d spent years planning everything. In fact, she’d only had the few days since Nerlin and everyone had come up to the caves.

  Of course, it wouldn’t take long for the Old Crones to realise that she had disappeared at the same time as Nerlin, but it would take ages for them to work out where they had gone. Anorexya was pretty sure that no one knew she came from Shangrila Lakes. After all, hardly anyone even knew the place existed.

  Once there, she would get Nerlin’s marriage to Mordonna declared illegal and she would become Mrs Flood. And after she disposed of her father, the King of Shangrila Lakes, and her brother, Prince Bert, who was the heir to the throne, she and Nerlin would become the King and Queen of Shangrila Lakes.

  ‘And we will live happily ever after,’ she said to herself, ‘especially after he gets cosmetic surgery.’

  Except everything had not gone completely perfectly. There had been the little bit of rope hanging out of the cloud.

  If Quenelle had come out her cave two minutes later, or if she had come at the right time but not looked up, then Anorexya would have got clean away.

  Although the rope didn’t tell Quenelle where they had gone, it did tell her that Nerlin had been taken away by balloon and Anorexya’s laughter coming down through the clouds had told her who had taken him. Quenelle racked her brains to try to work out where they would be heading. There were several possibilities:48

  Tristan da Cunha – This was top of the list. Even with the fastest magic available, it would take days to get there, but its remoteness made it a perfect hiding place. On the other hand, Quenelle thought, its remoteness makes it hard to escape from.

  Belgium – This was the most unlikely place and therefore one of the most likely. Anorexya was the sort of person who could easily take Nerlin there, just for the hell of it. On the other hand, Quenelle thought, its unlikeliness makes it quite likely. Or not.

  Transylvania Waters – This was also very unlikely, while being the perfect place, so therefore likely. There were hundreds of caves hidden up in the mountains, even little secret valleys perfect for concealing a kidnapped king. But then what would Anorexya do? Quenelle thought. She would hardly be satisfied keeping Nerlin hidden away. She would
want the world to know he was hers.

  It was all very difficult. The world was a huge place and there were just so many possibilities. By the time she had finished writing them down, Quenelle had a list of over fifty.

  And none of them was Shangrila Lakes.

  Dispepsya stood at the top of the narrow slippery path that led down to the valley. Crème-de-Menthe, the donkey who was going to carry her, was in a bad mood and not just the standard bad mood that most donkeys are in, but a special bad mood that only a really stuck-up, snobby donkey could get into.

  ‘Are you King Nerlin?’ Crème-de-Menthe said. ‘The noble ruler of our magnificent country? Of course you’re not. You’re just a lumpy, ugly Old Crone and not even the top Old Crone. Was I brought up here to carry you down to Dreary? Of course I wasn’t. I mean, if someone had said to me, “Excuse me, oh wonderful donkey, would you please drag yourself up a slippery rocky path to some godforsaken cave and fetch a smelly old woman back here?” what do you think I would have said?’

  Crème-de-Menthe then told anyone who would listen what she would have said and it included fifteen of the most disgusting words ever created.

  ‘I mean,’ Crème-de-Menthe continued, ‘I am not just any donkey, you know. I have twice been voted Miss Beautiful Hooves in the Dreary Annual Show and I was runner-up in Transylvania Waters’s Got Talent for my beautiful performance of Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Thick Toad”. I am someone to be reckoned with, you know.’

  ‘Indeed you are,’ said Quenelle. ‘And that is why you have been personally chosen to carry the messenger down to our glorious Queen Mordonna, to let her know that our magnificent ruler, the Awesome King Nerlin, has been kidnapped.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Crème-de-Menthe. ‘I suppose that’s different, then.’

  ‘It is indeed,’ said Quenelle. ‘Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Queen rewards you in a most magnificent way. You could even get the Golden Carrot Award.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘OK,’ said Crème-de-Menthe. ‘Is there any chance you could hose the Old Crone down before we set off, though? I mean, she does smell dreadful, and if there is one thing us donkeys know a lot about, it’s stinky things.’

  Dispepsya was not about to take a bath.

  ‘After all,’ she protested, ‘I haven’t got to where I am today by washing.’

  ‘That, I think everyone would agree, is obvious,’ said Crème-de-Menthe. ‘Didn’t you have a bath in the Fruit-Pulp Pool?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ said Dispepsya. ‘I’m like a duck. Water rolls off me without having any effect at all. Some people think it’s part of my charm.’

  ‘So even if we did hose you off it wouldn’t make any difference,’ said Crème-de-Menthe. ‘You’d still be a horrible, stinky old woman.’

  ‘Listen, pony,’ Dispepsya snapped, well aware that the greatest insult you can throw at a donkey is to call it a pony, ‘if I were to go out into the middle of the densest forest on earth and get lost, my unique scent would lead my rescuers to me in no time at all.’

  ‘Are you likely to go out into the middle of the densest forest on earth?’ said Crème-de-Menthe.

  ‘Well, no …’ Dispepsya began.

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘OK, you two,’ said Quenelle. ‘Enough with the arguing. Just get down the mountain before our beloved King is taken so far away we will never be able to find him. You should be ashamed of yourselves.’

  She clipped a big clothes peg on the donkey’s nose to keep out the smell, but because Crème-de-Menthe was chewing a huge mouthful of grass and couldn’t breathe through her mouth, she fainted.

  ‘And I could even smell her when I was unconscious,’ said the donkey, when they’d removed the clothes peg and brought her round again.

  In the end Quenelle tied a big bunch of lavender under the donkey’s nose, which hid the Old Crone’s smell a bit as they set off down towards home.

  Their beloved King had been taken as far as he was going.

  The balloon had passed unseen over Quicklime College, traversed the frozen mountains and hills beyond, and come gently down to earth in a field of bright green grass at the edge of Shangrila Lakes’ only lake.49 At the other end of the lake was the country’s only town, but where Anorexya and Nerlin had landed was peaceful, private and quiet. A single enchanted cottage sat in a secret garden of beautiful flowers a mere ten metres from the water’s edge.

  Anorexya had emailed ahead so that when she arrived everything was ready. Nerlin, still sleeping, was carried into the cottage, where he was dressed in beautiful velvet robes. Around his wrists and ankles were shackles of the finest gold, joined together by deceptively strong chains.

  ‘Just in case,’ Anorexya said to her two maid servants.

  No one, apart from her two maid servants and Old Wobbly the gardener, knew that Princess Anorexya had returned to the land of her birth. Everyone knew that she had left many years ago because of some terrible naughtiness that no one would talk about. Since then, most people had forgotten she even existed.

  Anorexya was well aware of this and that was one reason she had kidnapped Nerlin and brought him to Shangrila Lakes. Not only had she come home, but she had brought the world’s top wizard with her,50 and she was going to marry him and they would be the King and Queen of Shangrila Lakes, and all those people who had driven her away with their revolting accusations would be seriously and painfully sorry. The fact that every single one of those accusations was true was completely irrelevant.

  For now, she would lie low while the worldwide panic over Nerlin’s disappearance reached its peak and then began to fade away. This could take a while, but that would not be wasted time. Anorexya knew that the wretched genius Winchflat Flood would probably have implanted everyone in the family with tracking devices in case they did get kidnapped, but he wasn’t the only evil genius in the world.

  She had already made contact with Dr Atrocius Strabismus, the evil twin brother of the famous Professor Nylon Strabismus, and he was on his way from his mountain lair in Austria to scan Nerlin and remove any devices. He would then implant the device in an albatross and send it on its way.

  In the meantime she would keep the king sedated and inactive.

  The great advantage in using Dr Atrocius was that he was also a highly skilled plastic surgeon and would be able to transform Nerlin into anyone Anorexya wanted.

  She had a big collage on her bedroom wall of all the best bits from the world’s best blokes – ancient and modern. Knees from one, blue eyes from another, muscles from the greatest athlete of all time, armpits from a 1930s movie star and so on. Every day she went through countless books and magazines, cutting out bits of pictures and updating and improving the image of her dream man.

  Nerlin would be perfect and he would be all hers.

  After twenty-three long, slow and exhausting hours, Crème-de-Menthe with Dispepsya asleep on her back staggered into Castle Twilight.

  ‘Halt, who goes there?’ said the castle guard.

  ‘It’s me, you idiot,’ said Crème-de-Menthe. ‘You can see who I am, and I’ve got this Old Crone on my back.’

  ‘All I can see,’ said the guard, ‘is a clapped-out old donkey with a bag of rags and bones on its back.’

  ‘Listen, stupid, we have to see the Queen and it’s urgent.’

  ‘Oh yes? They all say that,’ said the guard. ‘You could at least try to be a bit more original.’

  ‘If you don’t let us see the Queen right away,’ said Crème-de-Menthe, ‘you will be seriously sorry and probably spend the rest of your life cleaning the castle lavatories with your tongue.’

  ‘They all say that too,’ the guard replied. ‘Why, if I had a dolor for every time I’ve heard that, I’d be a rich man.’

  Crème-de-Menthe decided to try another approach. She turned around and kicked the guard as hard as she could, which, being a donkey with very powerful back legs, was very hard indeed.

  ‘They all t
ry that too,’ groaned the guard, as he lay on the ground in agony.

  Just as Crème-de-Menthe was about to step over the now unconscious guard, Betty, who had popped out to get a takeaway cafe latte from Scarebutts, the coffee shop opposite the castle gates, came up.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ she said, and Crème-de-Menthe explained.

  ‘You are a great and noble donkey,’ said Betty. ‘I suggest you tip the old bag off your back and I will take you to my mother and you can tell her everything.’

  Crème-de-Menthe shook herself and Dispepsya fell off onto the guard.51

  When Mordonna heard that Nerlin had been kidnapped, she summoned her children and broke the news.

  ‘Your poor father,’ she said. ‘He is such an innocent and trusting soul.’

  ‘And I must tell you, your amazingly wonderful Highness,’ said Crème-de-Menthe, ‘that I think he had been done over with an Enchantment Spell by one of the Old Crones.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, my lady. I was standing behind a camellia bush, having a bit of a browse, when I heard her talking to the King,’ Crème-de-Menthe explained.

  ‘Then a balloon came down and took them away.’

  ‘Right,’ said Mordonna. ‘So first of all we need to find out which Old Crone it was. That might give us a clue to where she’s taken my poor darling.’

  ‘It was Anorexya what done it, Your Highness,’ said Crème-de-Menthe.

  Winchflat was sent to get his Dad-Tracker. But the batteries were flat and no one could find a single replacement anywhere in the entire castle. So they had to wait forty-three minutes until the newsagent on the corner opened, only to find that the store had completely sold out of that particular battery and wasn’t expecting any more stock until Friday and he wasn’t actually sure which Friday.

  So they went for the caves and told Quenelle to come down to the castle as soon as possible and that made the Old Crone faint because she hadn’t been in the valley for over eighty years and was terrified she would get depth-sickness because of the extra oxygen at lower levels. Winchflat then had to make her a vacuum mask to suck the surplus air out of her lungs for her trip to Dreary.