The Adventures of King Midas (Red Storybook)

by Lynne Reid Banks

  “Can’t stand her!”

  “Why?”

  “She is so mean, you can’t imagine. Would you believe that after stealing Gollop’s flandy-bake tree, that he used to let me help myself from – it grew right next to him in case his throat ever got blocked up – saying she wanted it to feed me, she won’t even give me one fruit off it? She makes me eat the most disgusting messes she cooks up in that cauldron of hers, right on top of all kinds of spelling potions, yucky isn’t the word! I swallowed half a rat yesterday … Ugh! I was as sick as a parrot.”

  “But you said when you’ve got your proper teeth you’ll be eating people,” said the King. “You can’t be exactly a vegetarian.”

  There was another pause, and then the mumbo muttered, “Well, let’s just say I’m told I’m meant to eat people when I’m bigger. I can’t actually imagine myself doing it, if you want the truth. All I really like is flandy-bakes, especially toasted. I wish I had one now!”

  The King said, “Well, look over there, there’s a whole tree laden with them.”

  “Where?!” cried the mumbo eagerly.

  “Over there somewhere, I saw it before I drank that so-called tea.”

  “Oh,” said the mumbo, lapsing into gloom. “That one. That’s the one I’ve been talking about. She pulled it out of its pot by the roots before she went off, and took it with her, so I couldn’t nick any. I tell you, she’s the meannest cruellest starvingest –”

  “You know, those aren’t all real words,” mentioned Midas. “If you wanted to know some real long words, I could teach you some.”

  “Like stackalite and gullabubble?”

  “Er – yes.”

  “But it’s no use. I can’t learn anything while I’m so hungry.”

  “Why don’t you just run away?” asked the King.

  “Nowhere else to go,” explained the mumbo sadly. “She stole me from my mother as soon as I was hatched. If I went out into the world, people would chase me and kill me. I’ve got no one to look after me.”

  There was a long, painful silence. Midas had no idea whether mumbos could cry, but this one sounded as if he felt quite bad enough to, if he could. He felt another rash impulse coming on that he couldn’t resist.

  “Listen, Mumbo,” said the King. “If you’ll help me get out of this place, and to get unmagicked, you can come and live with me at my palace, and no one shall hurt you. I promise.”

  The moment the words were out of his mouth, the King regretted them. He’d never even seen this creature, and the notion he had had of him as a huge black balloon-monster with a terrifying face was still with him. But it was too late now. His word, as they say, had gone from him.

  “No one keeps promises,” mumbled the mumbo.

  “I do,” said the King. “All the best kings do.”

  “Are you a real king?”

  “Yes. And I’ve given you my word. Now, what about some help?”

  “All right,” said the mumbo. “It couldn’t be worse than living with her. What do you want first?”

  “I can’t seem to move out of this chair,” said the King.

  “You’re being gubblullable again.”

  “Gullible,” corrected the King. “What do you mean?”

  “You can get up when you want to. All those little horrors on the chair just have you tricked into thinking you can’t.”

  The King again tried to get up.

  “You can’t move! You can’t MOVE!” shrieked the villainous little voices frantically.

  “Of course he can,” said the mumbo. “Shut your ugly faces, you little beasts, or I’ll throw you in the fire, chair and all!”

  The voices gave hissing cries of protest and then died away into silence. The King stood up easily.

  “Could we have some more light?” asked the King, who could hardly wait to see what he had invited into his home.

  “There’s some stuff Wuzzy throws onto the fire to make it burn brightly,” said the mumbo. The King could hear him fumbling among the jars and bottles on the mantlepiece.

  “Let’s try this.”

  There was a sudden burst of white flame that made the cave as bright as day.

  The King gave a gasp of astonishment. “It can’t be!” he thought. But it was. Right there in front of his eyes.

  The mumbo looked rather like a large green kangaroo, only with hands and feet like a squirrel’s and a spiked tail. A fat stomach, a soft dappled green skin with scales on the back, small leathery wings …

  “You – you’re a dragon!” he exclaimed, aghast.

  “Of course,” said the mumbo. “I’m a mumbo. That’s what you call a baby dragon, like a kitten is a baby cat and a puppy is a baby dog. Fancy you with all your long words, not knowing a thing like that!”

  “But dragons are – well, to say the least, very rare, if not completely extinct!” (“Ex-TINK-t! Ex-TINK-t!” echoed the mumbo gleefully.) “Of course I’ve heard the rumours that there are a few surviving in the mountains, but I’ve certainly never heard of anyone seeing one!”

  “If anyone did see one, what do you think would happen?”

  “Ah. You mean – hunters, zoologists, sight-seers, all that?”

  “My mother didn’t have time to teach me anything, but never mind EX-tinks, I have my INstinks, and they tell me to keep well out of sight. That’s why I’ve stuck it here with Wuzzleflump all my life. Are you sure I’ll be safe in your palace?”

  “I shall see to it that you are. IF we can escape. But before we do, there’s something very important I have to know. How did the witch take the golden spell off you?”

  “It must have been something she mixed up specially. Let’s look in the cauldron. She’s revoltingly untidy, she never cleans it out till she needs it for something else, not always then.”

  They looked inside the blackened pot. There was a strange purple mixture bubbling in the bottom.

  “That’s it!” said the Mumbo. “She must have sprinkled me with it. I wiped some off my ears when I woke up.”

  “Let’s take it! I’ll need every drop!” cried the King, the hope now blazing in his heart. This was it! This was what he needed to bring all the things he’d touched back to life – to save Delia! He felt inclined to forgive the witch everything, just for her carelessness in leaving these dregs behind!

  The mumbo found an empty bottle and carefully ladled into it all that was left of the precious purple liquid. Just as he put the top on, he let out a bellow.

  “Ouch, it’s hot!”

  And he flung it from him.

  The King didn’t have time to think. His right hand snapped out and caught the bottle as it flew through the air.

  It didn’t burn him, of course, because hot bottle and hot life-saving fluid turned, as one, into gold.

  “You great gubblabooby!” yelled the Mumbo jumping up and down, entirely forgetting whose fault it was.

  They peered into the cauldron, and on all sides of the ladle, but both were quite magically spotless.

  “This can’t be happening!” cried the King despairingly. “I can’t bear it!”

  “What does that mean?” asked the mumbo interestedly. “If it’s not happening, what is happening, and if you can’t bear it, what will you do instead?”

  That brought the King to his senses. After all, there was no real alternative to bearing it.

  “All right, I’ll bear it. But we must think.”

  They both thought hard. Suddenly the King said, “Your ears! You said it was all over your ears!”

  “Yes! But I wiped it off.”

  “Then it’s on your paws!”

  The mumbo stretched out his squirrel-like paws. Both were stained purple!

  “Touch the bottle! Rub it, rub the stuff onto it!” cried the King.

  The Mumbo took the golden bottle in his paws and rubbed it hard.

  Nothing.

  “It’s dried!”

  “Lick it! Lick the stain!”

  “Must I? Yuck …”

&
nbsp; But the mumbo did lick both his paws with a long forked tongue, and then rubbed again. It worked! Not perfectly, but enough so that the bottle became a bottle and the purple liquid around the outside was restored. In the middle of the bottle was still a great lump of unrestored gold; but as the mumbo shook the bottle and the purple liquid circulated, the gold slowly dissolved.

  “Oh, thank heaven!” cried the King. “Quick! Slip it in my pocket – no, the back one, where I’m not so likely to touch it by mistake!”

  The mumbo, squeaking with excitement, did as he was told.

  “Now, quickly, we must go, before she comes back!”

  “I know a secret back way out – this way—”

  The King hurried towards the mumbo, who was standing in a nook by the fireplace. Suddenly he put his foot on something like a round stone, turned his ankle, and fell. The flagstone under his hand turned to gold; but the King hardly noticed. The Mumbo had swooped upon the thing he’d trodden on and was dancing with delight.

  “It’s a FLANDY-BAKE!-Oh, and look, look! There’s another! She must have dropped them when she pulled up the tree!”

  The mumbo turned, clutching in each front paw a large, striped lump. He was grinning and panting like a dog. Then he opened his mouth and was just going to pop one of the lumps in when the King cried: “Stop!”

  “Why?”

  “Listen! This purple stuff won’t take the spell off my hands! Only Old Gollop can do that, and to do it he needs at least one of those flandy-bake things. You must save one for him – otherwise, even if I take you home with me, I’ll never be able to touch you, and I shall probably soon starve to death.”

  “I’m starving to death now!” said the mumbo, opening his mouth very wide again.

  “Oh, don’t, pray don’t!” cried the King.

  “You only need one for Gollop, so why can’t I eat the other one?”

  “If we had one, we could plant it, and grow a tree from it in my greenhouse. Otherwise I really don’t know what I’m going to feed you on.”

  The mumbo lowered his paw. “And what am I going to eat till it grows?” he asked. “Lumpy porridge thickened with dead rats, I suppose, like I get here.”

  “Put them into my side pockets,” said the King. Huffing rebelliously through his large nostrils, the mumbo obeyed.

  Just at that moment there was a loud too-whoo from the snow-white owl, which made the King shiver.

  “Quick! That means she’s coming!” whispered the mumbo. “Out the back way!”

  He pressed a knob on the rock, and a section of it opened out silently, revealing a secret passage. They were just going to dive into it, when from the carved chair came the hiss of the evil little creatures: “She’ll get you! She’ll get you!”

  “They’ll tell and she’ll be after us in two seconds!” said the mumbo in a frightened whisper.

  “Not if I know it!” said the King, and, running back, he touched the chair.

  “She won’t be able to change it back till she’s mixed up another brew!” he said as they closed the secret door behind them and hurried along the passage.

  Chapter Eight

  Flight By Moonlight

  The King stumbled after the mumbo for a long way through the pitch-dark, winding tunnel.

  “Ouch!” he exclaimed, banging his nose on a stalactite. “I wish you’d remember I can’t see in the dark!”

  “Oh! Sorry. Is this better?”

  The mumbo appeared in the darkness, by some light of his own. He glowed a faint green, growing brighter towards his chest, which glowed red.

  “You’re luminous!” exclaimed the King admiringly. “How do you do that?” (They were both talking in whispers.)

  “I can only just do it,” he whispered back, “now I’m bigger and the fire in my lungs is starting to form. Soon I’ll be able to breathe flames!”

  He huffed and puffed a bit, making noises like a bellows, and the red glow in his chest got brighter, but all he could manage was a few puffs of smoke. “Then I’ll be able to toast my own flandy-bakes!” he added proudly. “Come on then, don’t hang about!”

  They could both go faster after that, and soon they smelt clean, fresh air. There was no daylight, though, and the King realised he had slept until the middle of the night.

  “Sh! Don’t make a sound!” muttered the mumbo as they emerged cautiously from the back entrance to the cave. “She might be anywhere!”

  “Can she make herself invisible?”

  “She can if she likes, but she probably won’t bother. She’ll just be flying overhead, looking for us.”

  “Lucky it’s night!”

  “We could do without the moon, though.”

  There was a nearly-full moon hanging in the night sky. Midas hadn’t noticed it at first because they were in a forest.

  “She can’t see us through these trees, can she?”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it. She’s full of tricks. Look out! – There she is!”

  The King looked up. Silhouetted for a moment against the moon he saw a horrid sight: the witch, sailing through the sky on her broomstick, with Ackerbackus riding on the twigs behind her. The mumbo and the King crouched in the deep shadow of a large tree and watched her swooping down again and again over the forest canopy.

  “Turn off your luminosity!” hissed the King suddenly.

  “Oh, what a lovely word! Loo-min – Oh!” Realising, he faded his glow, and not a moment too soon.

  Down out of the sky right above them Wuzzle-flump’s broomstick swooped. As it flattened out just above the tree-tops, so close they could hear the whistle of the wind in the twigs, her cracked voice screeched:

  “We’ll find ‘em, Ackerbackus! We’ll find ‘em if it takes us all night long! And when we do, we’ll turn ‘em into we-e-e-eazles!”

  And she whooshed up towards the moon again.

  As soon as she’d gone – for the moment – the mumbo urged the King onward. Following him from shadow to shadow, from tree to tree, Midas felt they were getting near the edge of the wood and the beginning of the rocks where Old Gollop lived. “We’re going to make it!” he thought. “We’re going to –”

  But abruptly, without warning, a faint meow from above froze them into stillness.

  She wasn’t directly above their heads, but some distance away, her broomstick hovering like a kestrel. Yet her voice, now a sing-song whine, seemed to sound right in their ears:

  “King’s right hand that belongs to me,

  Reach out now and touch a tree!”

  It happened before the King could even think of stopping it. His right hand shot out without his bidding, and laid itself upon the trunk of the nearest tree.

  It was a tall pine. Instantly it became a golden beacon, an arrow, shining in the moon-light, pointing directly to the spot where they stood!

  The witch put her broomstick into a steep dive.

  The King, despite his panic, knew he must act quickly. Running out from under the golden pine, he touched another tree, and another, in a widening circle around the tree he had touched first. There was an island of golden trees in the midst of the forest.

  All he had meant to do was confuse the witch as to which tree they were sheltering under. But his quick thinking did better than that.

  In mid-air the witch tried to alter course, pointing the broom-handle first this way, then that, as tree after tree flashed golden in the moonlight. Suddenly she lost control and crash-dived straight onto a vast golden beech-tree.

  It was a hard landing! It made a terrific noise, compounded of the loud rattle of golden leaves, the clash of branches, the snapping of the broomstick, the yowl of the cat and the shrieks and curses of the witch.

  “Great stuff! Maybe you’ve killed her! Let’s get out of here!”

  They rushed pell-mell out of the forest and began scrambling up among the rocks by the dried river bed. Once, they turned and looked back. The golden “umbrella” of trees showed up clearly among the other dark treetops. There was a bro
ken area where the witch had crashed, but they couldn’t see any sign of her.

  “I didn’t think you could kill a witch,” panted the King, who was making heavy weather of the climb. “Not just like that, anyhow.”

  “You could be right,” said the mumbo. “She’s always boasting that she’ll live for ever. But another witch she knew died once, or ‘was no more’ as she called it. She was furious about it, kept saying she should have known better. So there’s got to be a way.”

  The King was dredging his mind for every bit of folklore he’d ever heard about witches.

  “I read once …” he began.

  “Save your breath, King, and climb!” the mumbo interrupted. “We’re nearly there!”

  “Can’t you fly? You’ve got wings!” asked the King as he struggled upward in the mumbo’s wake.

  “They’re still too small to lift me! But just wait till I’m a bit older, I’ll be able to fly as well as any stupid old broomstick!”

  It wasn’t much longer before they came out into Old Gollop’s clearing, and there he was, fast asleep, with not a trickle of water coming out of his mouth.

  “Wake up, Mr Gollop, sir!” said the mumbo, throwing his weight against the side of the rock. “We’ve brought you a flandy-bake to clear your throat.”

  “Hm? Hah? Grrrump?” wheezed Old Gollop.

  “He can’t talk at all,” said the King. “Take one out of my pocket and put it in his mouth! We’ve got to get the river flowing again!”

  The Mumbo obeyed.

  “Grrrunfff … gluggle … d’licious …” mumbled the old boulder.

  What happened next was like an old mill-wheel starting, slowly, to turn as the water strikes its paddles, the cogs squeak into action and the axles begin to turn the millstones. There was a faint splashing, some knocking sounds, some deep rumblings, and then a steady grinding while the watery sounds grew louder.

  All at once the rocky mouth twisted into something like a smile, and at the same moment, with a rushing and a bubbling, water gushed out, fresh and clean and cold. It filled the rock basin under Old Gollop’s chin, overflowed down the first waterfall, and went pouring and chattering over the rocks below and down the hillside.