Flyte

by Angie Sage

Chapter 46 What Happened Before

  Billy Pot

  Billy Pot once had a pet shop that specialized in reptiles. Billy loved lizards and snakes, and he specialized in breeding purple pythons. The biggest python that Billy Pot had ever bred lived in the backyard of Terry Tarsal's shoe shop. Terry, who did not like snakes, very reluctantly used their sloughed skin for Marcia's pointy snakeskin shoes.

  When the Supreme Custodian bought a colony of snapping turtles from Billy and then ordered him to move to the Palace to look after them, Billy did not dare refuse. Billy's niece, Sandra, took over the pet shop and to Billy's great disapproval started selling fancy hamsters and fluffy rabbits. Sandra's new line in cuddly animals proved very popular, and she soon offered to buy the pet shop from Billy.

  With the money Sandra had given him for the pet shop, Billy set up the lizard lodges down by the river, built the Contraption and embarked on his never-ending quest for the perfect lawn. When the Heaps moved into the Palace with Jenna, Silas asked Billy to stay on and help them get rid of the snapping turtles. Billy agreed, but the job proved impossible and he gave up after he nearly lost a finger to a particularly aggressive turtle.

  Una Brakket

  Una Brakket was housekeeper at the Young Army Barracks when Septimus was a toddler. Una did not like boys, even subdued and scared Young Army boys; she soon got a transfer and became housekeeper to the Hunter and his Pack. Una admired the Hunter very much indeed, although it is doubtful whether the Hunter even noticed her. He once asked her where his socks were, and Una went around in a daydream for days afterward. After that she took to hiding the Hunter's socks so that he might ask her again, but he never did.

  When the Supreme Custodian fled and Jenna came back to live in the Palace as Princess, Una took advantage of Marcia and Alther's Second-Chance Scheme. She applied for a job as Palace housekeeper, which she did not get as Sarah Heap thought she was scary. The Scheme eventually referred her to Professor Weasal Van Klampff, who only took her on because he was too frightened to refuse.

  However, Una's sympathies still lay with DomDaniel, and she joined the Restoration Unit, a secret network of people who wished to see him return. They met every Saturday night under the pretense of country dancing classes. It was through them that Una was put in touch with Simon Heap.

  Professor Weasal Van Klampff

  Weasal Van Klampff came from a long line of Professors. Many hundreds of years ago, Professor Doris Van Klampff had worked out a secret and very complicated formula for getting rid of Hauntings. This included Shadows, such as Marcia's, and Spectres like the one that had Waited for Alther when he was Apprentice to DomDaniel. Although the Van Klampffs had great mathematical ability, they tended to be rather gullible and extremely forgetful; Weasal was no exception.

  After Weasal's father, Otto, blew himself upalong with the original Van Klampff Laboratorywhile mixing some volatile Amalgam, Weasal decided to give up experimenting and live a quiet life beside the Moat. On moving into his house on Snake Slipway, he was dismayed to find an ancient laboratory tucked away at the end of a warren of tunnels. Weasal spent many years trying to ignore the laboratory, but in the end the temptation was too great, and he decided to carry on his father's work. He perfected Otto's Amalgam so that it acted as a highly efficient screen for Darke energy, thus unwittingly providing an ideal hiding place for DomDaniel's bones. Weasal Van Klampff was a trusting man and had no idea that Una Brakket belonged to the Restoration Unit.

  Beetle

  Beetle was an only child. He grew up in The Ramblingshis parents had two large rooms on the floor immediately below the Heap family. One of Beetle's earliest memories was his mother banging on the ceiling with a broom handle, yelling, "For heaven's sake be quiet!" His parents refused to let Beetle have anything to do with the Heaps, which only made them more attractive, and he soon struck up a friendship with Jo-Jo Heap, who was the same age.

  At the age of eleven, Beetle passed the highly competitive entrance test to the Manuscriptorium, much to his mother's delight. He started as General Dogsbody, and after the Inspection Clerk fell off the sled and broke his ankle, Beetle was trusted enough to take over the weekly inspections of the Ice Tunnels.

  Beetle liked Septimus a lot; he reminded him of Jo-Jo, but he also shared Beetle's interest in Magyk and his liking for weird fizzy drinks. Beetle shared Septimus's dislike of Darke Magyk for, as he once said to Septimus over a mug of FizzFroot, "All that Darke stuff is depressing. When that awful old bloke came back to the Wizard Tower my hamster died, my mum got a huge boil on the end of her nose and the cat ran away. All because Darke stuff stuck to me at work, and then I brought it home. Horrible. "

  Septimus liked Beetle a lot too. He trusted him completely.

  Boris Catchpole

  Ever since he could remember, Boris Catchpole had been known by his last name. His mother had tried her best to call him Boris, but by the time he had started toddling she, like everyone else, had given up and reverted to plain Catchpolesomehow Boris seemed just too familiar.

  Catchpole's ambition was to be a Hunter. He had run away from home and joined the Hunting Pack in the Badlands while DomDaniel had been preparing the assassination of the Queen. Catchpole had trained hard with the Pack, but he was not popular. He had given up cleaning his teeth as a boy and had no intention of starting again now that he did not have his mother telling him to. He had a nervous habit of clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth that made people feel snappy, and, to top it all, he was growing fast and was soon too tall to make a good Hunter.

  Catchpole, true to his name, became Deputy Hunter but progressed no farther. After the overthrow of the Supreme Custodian he joined the Second-Chance Scheme and was accepted as a sub-Wizarda new trainee Wizard post for those of more mature years or no Magykal background.

  Catchpole's ambition was now to be a proper Wizard. At the very least he wanted to be an Ordinary Wizard, but he had decided that he would not turn down the job of ExtraOrdinary Wizard if it were offered to him. It never was.

  Jannit Maarten

  If you asked Jannit Maarten to describe herself, she would say, "boat builder. " And that is all she would say. Jannit had little time for politics and even less time for Wizards. Whatever went on in the Castle was of no concern to Jannit, whose whole world consisted of her boatyard just outside the Castle walls. She slept soundly in her hammock at night, rose at dawn and spent all daylight hours happily building, mending, painting and scrapingand all the other hundreds of wonderfully time-consuming fiddly things that boats require.

  Although Nicko found it hard to believe, Jannit had once been a little girl, but she had forgotten all about itpossibly because she had grown up on a small farm in the middle of the Farmlands and had disliked chickens, hated cows and loathed pigs. Her parents never understood why, at fourteen, Jannit had dressed as a boy and run away to sea. At nineteen she returned with a ship of her own and set up the Jannit Maarten Boatyard next to the derelict Castle Customs Quay. Jannit was entirely happy with her life and set foot outside her beloved boatyard with great reluctance.

  Sleuth

  Sleuth had once been a tennis ball. It had spent two years lying in a damp ditch beside the Port Municipal Real Tennis House after someone had hit it out the window in a fit of temper; it had been seriously nibbled by mice and was slowly falling apart, until one day Simon Heap picked it up, put it in his pocket and took it back to the Observatory.

  Over the next few months, Sleuth lay in a Sealed box, which Simon Heap carefully tended. He regularly filled and refilled the box with gases and potions, chanted over it for long hours and encircled it with Reverse Charms. As Sleuth gradually became conscious, it heard incantations muttered over it at midnight and smelled the Darke fumes that Simon wafted through the box. It had lain there, confused but excited, waiting to see what was going to happen.

  Then, one night, at the Dark of the Moon, Sleuth was let out of its box and saw the world
for the first time. It liked what it saw and Simon Heap was equally pleased with his creation. Sleuth glowed brightly and seemed intelligent; it was obedient and quick to learn. Soon it followed its Master everywhere and became Simon Heap's most loyal and faithful servant.

  Nurse Meredith

  Nurse Agnes Meredith, ex-Matron Midwife, ex-baby snatcher, made her way to the Port after being released from the Castle Asylum for Deluded and Distressed Persons. She walked the streets looking for her son, Merrin, but she had no luck. Eventually she ran out of the allowance the Asylum had given her and found a job as a cleaner in a seedy lodging house in the Rope Walk, next to the Port Witch Coven.

  The owner of the lodging house was a Mrs. Florrie Bundy, a large woman of short temper and long memory. Florrie had numerous ongoing feuds with her neighbors, the Port Witches, and it was a heated argument over a used teabagwhich Florrie claimed had been deliberately aimed at her headthat led to her demise. Linda, who one day for want of nothing better to do had indeed thrown a teabag at Florrie's head, eventually got tired of being yelled at and placed a Shrink Spell on Florrie. Over the course of a few weeks the Shrink Spell gradually reduced Florrie to the size of a teabag herself, and one frosty morning she slipped on some ice, fell down the drain outside the backdoor and drowned.

  Agnes Meredith had watched Florrie Shrinking with great interest. One day, when she could no longer find the diminutive landlady, Nurse Meredith took over the lodging house as though nothing had happened. She soon made it her ownhanging flock wallpaper, writing whimsical messages to stick on the walls and filling the house with dried flowers and dolls. She enjoyed the company of her dolls, and after a while she stopped looking for Merrin. At least you knew where you were with dolls, she told herself.

  Maureen

  Maureen had run away to the Port with the Chief Potato Peeler after an incident in the Palace kitchens. Maureen and the Chief Potato Peeler, Kevin, were saving up to buy their own cafe. When Kevin was taken on as cook on a large merchant ship on a round-the-world voyage, Maureen took the only job she could find at the time, working in the Doll House. It was not ideal but she managed to save the tips she was given by grateful guests, and at least living in the cupboard under the stairs meant she did not have to pay for lodgings. She longed for the day that Kevin would return and they would find a little place of their own down by the harbor.

  Port Witch Coven: Veronica

  Veronica had been in the Coven for the longest of all the witches, but she did not hold the post of Witch Mother on account of her forgetfulness and tendency to sleepwalk out of the Coven and get lost for days on end. Veronica loved rats, something she had inherited from her father, Jack, who lived out on the reed beds near the Marram Marshes. Like her father, Veronica had a large collection of caged rats in various stages of decay.

  Linda

  Linda was the youngest of the witches and was, as she put it, "up for anything, me. " The other witches enjoyed her company but not her practical jokes. Linda had a fiery temper and a penchant for very nasty spells if anyone crossed her. But after the incident of Dorinda's elephant ears, none of the witches did. Pamela, the Witch Mother, saw that Linda had potential and was secretly grooming her as her successor.

  Daphne

  Daphne was the quiet one of the Coven. She bumbled around amiably and kept to herself, happily nurturing a colony of giant woodworms, which were slowly eating their way through the house. Daphne loved her woodworms and kept most of her conversation for them.

  Pamela

  Pamela was the Witch Mother and the Darke one of the Coven. Of course all the witches thought they were Darke Witches, but Pamela was the real thing. She had spent some years with DomDaniel at the Observatory and had returned with many Darke tales to tell, which had frightened the other Coven members, even though they would rather drink rotten frog juice than admit it. Pamela had her own Locked room, which the other witches kept well away from, and at night, when bloodcurdling shrieks echoed from the room, the rest of the Coven stuffed their fingers in their ears and tried to sleep.

  Dorinda

  Dorinda had not been especially concerned about her appearance until the terrible night of the elephant ears. She knew she was not particularly good-looking, for her nose was slightly crooked after an argument with a fire escape, and she had never liked her hair. But Dorinda gave up any attempt at personal grooming after Linda accused her of eavesdropping on a private conversation with a young Warlock she had brought home. Dorinda had strenuously denied iteven though the whole Coven knew she crept around listening at keyholes. Linda was furious and Bestowed upon Dorinda a pair of elephant ears (African elephant earsthe really big ones), saying that "if she was going to go flapping her ears around the place, she may as well have some decent ears to flap. " Since that night Dorinda had worn a large towel swathed around her head and kept up the pretense to the rest of the Coven that she had just washed her hair, even though they knewand Dorinda knew that they knewthat underneath the huge towel lay a pair of neatly folded African elephant ears. It was a permanent spell, and not even Pamela could get rid of it.

  Hugh Fox, Chief Hermetic Scribe

  Hugh Fox had been a lowly scribe in the Manuscriptorium for twenty-five years when he was Picked to become the Chief Hermetic Scribe.

  When DomDaniel had lured Marcia back from the Marram Marshes, he had snatched the book she had with her, The Undoing of the Darkenesse. The Necromancer had taken the book to Waldo Watkins, who was the Chief Hermetic Scribe, and told him to use the Darke Hermetic Powers that are always available to a Chief Scribe to UnLocke its secrets. Watkins had refused, and that night on his way home Waldo Watkins vanished, never to be seen again.

  DomDaniel insisted on an immediate replacement and the Draw was made. The Draw was a ceremony: each scribe placed his pen into a large ancient enameled Pot. The Pot was taken into the Hermetic Chamber and left overnight. The next morning one pen would always be found lying on the table, while the rest would remain in the Pot. Traditionally the youngest scribe would be sent in to retrieve the chosen pen.

  However, when Hugh Fox was Picked, DomDaniel insisted on going into the Hermetic Chamber himself to get the pen. When he brought out a much-chewed black pen belonging to Hugh Fox, no one could believe it. Not even Hugh Fox. There were rumors about the Pick not being fair, but nothing could be proved.

  The truth of it was that DomDaniel had put back a pen belonging to Jillie Djinn, a talented and well-read scribe, and pulled out Hugh Fox's penbecause he reckoned that Hugh Fox was a pushover.

  And so Hugh Fox was instructed in the Cryptic Codex, handed the Official Seals and duly installed as Chief Hermetic Scribe. To DomDaniel's disgust, Hugh Fox had great trouble UnLocking the secrets of Marcia's book, but he did manage to find the Flyte CharmConcealed in the coverjust as DomDaniel became a bundle of bones in the Marram Marshes. After DomDaniel's demise and Marcia's return to the Wizard Tower with Septimus, the Restoration Unit threatened Hugh Fox with the same fate that had befallen poor old Watkins if he did not give Simon Heap access to the Ice Tunnels. Hugh Fox agreed. And when Simon Heap demanded the Flyte Charm, he handed it over without a murmur. DomDaniel had been rightHugh Fox was, indeed, a pushover.

  Partridge

  Colin Partridge had once been a Custodian Guard. He had been unwillingly recruited from a small village on the edge of the Sheeplands. Partridge was a dreamy child whose days were spent minding his father's sheep. Partridge had lost more sheep than his father cared to think about, and his father despaired of him ever making a good shepherd. So when the Custodian Guard Recruiting Party promised to "make a man of him," Partridge's father had young Colin packed and ready in no time at all, much to the horror of his doting mother.

  Luckily for Partridge, he arrived right at the end of the Supreme Custodian's regime, and within a month of joining, he had signed up for the Second-Chance Scheme and been snapped up by the Manuscriptorium. Partridge had never been happier.
r />   The Ice Tunnel Ghosts

  Eldred and Alfred Stone were brothers. They, like many other stonemasons, had been brought in at the time of the Great Catastrophe underneath the Castle. They had worked long hard hours to try to repair the breach in the tunnels but to no avail. They were among the thirty-nine people who were trapped by the Emergency Freeze and never again saw the light of day. Along with their companions, they continued to walk the tunnels, unaware that many hundreds of years had passed since they were Frozen. Both brothers were convinced that their lives still awaited them, if only someone would tell them the way out.

  Ellis Crackle

  Ellis Crackle had been DomDaniel's Apprentice when the Necromancer was first ExtraOrdinary Wizard at the Castle, many years ago. Ellis was a slow, ungainly young man with little aptitude for Magyk, but DomDaniel did not care. He chose Ellis because he was Betty Crackle's brother. At that time, Betty Crackle was Keeper of the Dragon Boat. She was a disorganized White Witch who meant well, but she always left a trail of trouble behind her, due to her absentmindedness and general untidiness. Aunt Zelda eventually took over from Betty after she wandered off to the Port one winter's night and got caught by the Big Freeze.

  Ellis Crackle was even more forgetful than Betty was, but DomDaniel had guessed that there might be something very important at Keeper's Cottagesomething that stopped him from getting complete control of the Castleand he wanted to find out what it was. Employing Betty Crackle's brother seemed like a good way of worming his way into the secret.

  Unfortunately for DomDaniel, just after Ellis took up his Apprenticeship, Betty and Ellis had a huge row. Ellis boasted once too often about his important new post and Betty, who was very jealous, could stand it no more. She put an Enchantment on Keeper's Cottage to keep Ellis away and never spoke to her brother again. And so it turned out that DomDaniel never discovered the Dragon Boat at Keeper's Cottageor even where the Cottage was.

  When Aunt Zelda took over from Betty Crackle, Ellis was of no further use to DomDaniel. He took on Alther Mella as a new Apprentice and Ellis was Suspendeda long and nasty Darke process of Reducing someone to a Shadow. DomDaniel then Kept the unfortunate Ellis for further use. He came in very handy later, as Marcia's Shadow.

  Hildegarde

  Hildegarde had worked for the Council of the Custodians in the accounts department, which had spent most of its time trying to curb the lavish spending of the Supreme Custodian. It was an impossible task. Later Hildegarde had been transferred to the Sales Force, which forced the sale of all the Palace treasures. Hildegarde grew to love the old pictures and furnishings she had to sell, but she drove a hard bargain and got a good price for them.

  Hildegarde was very pleased when the Second-Chance Scheme helped her get accepted for training as a sub-Wizard. She was a little uneasy at being on door duty at the Palace, and when she looked at the empty places where all the treasures had once stood, her conscience troubled her. She was determined to become an Ordinary Wizard and make any amends possible.

  The End