Castle Hangnail

by Ursula Vernon

“They must, mustn’t they?” said Serenissima. “Witch Economics and . . . oh, Toadology or some such. She’s bound to know all sorts of spells.”

  “I suppose.” Majordomo rubbed his finger over the wood-grain of the table.

  There was a long silence.

  “Will the Board of Magic think it’s enough?” asked Pins finally.

  Majordomo hunched his shoulders up even higher than usual. “They will if she completes the Tasks.” He stared down at the table. “They gave us an extension again. When I said that there was a new Master coming.”

  “They said this was the last extension, though,” said Pins. The Board of Magic, it should be said, is not like a government that rules over magic. Magic is ungovernable. There’s no king or queen, no president or prime minister.

  But the various people who use magic had found, over the years, that it’s useful to have an organization that takes care of practical matters, like making sure fairy roads are kept up and standing stones don’t get overgrown with ivy and that somebody’s pet octopus doesn’t have an accident in the laboratory and grow eighty feet tall and start devouring tour buses.

  This is the Board of Magic.

  One of the things that the Board of Magic does is oversee old magical castles. If they have a proper Master, everything’s fine. But if their Master isn’t up to the Board’s standards . . . well, then the problems arise. Magic is a lot like water, and if there isn’t a fit Master in charge, it’ll puddle up everywhere, the basement will flood, and weird things will start laying eggs in it.

  Castle Hangnail had filed eleven extensions so far, and the Board was running out of patience. If they didn’t get a Master soon, the castle would be decommissioned.

  Which meant “de-magicked and sold.”

  Which meant all of the minions would be out of work and out of their home. Some of the younger ones—Pins, maybe, or Serenissima—might be able to find new jobs, but it would be hard for Majordomo to find another castle. And even if he did, he probably wouldn’t be in charge of it.

  It was one thing to take orders from the Master. It was quite another to take orders from a butler or a housekeeper. He shuddered at the thought.

  “The Board will accept her,” said Majordomo. “I don’t have to write down how old she is, or that she’s fresh out of school. They’ll just see ‘Wicked Witch’ and sign off on it, once she’s completed the Tasks.”

  “Unless they send someone out to have a look,” said Serenissima.

  Majordomo shuddered again.

  “Board or no Board, she’ll have to do something to earn money,” said Pins. “Cook’s been selling eggs to Miss Handlebram, and Angus is doing odd jobs at the farm over the hill, but you can’t keep the whole castle up on egg money.”

  “We do all right,” said Serenissima. “Every woman in the village brings you her silk and velvet to wash. They won’t go anywhere else.”

  Burlap can’t blush, but Pins dropped a stitch on his scarf. “It’s nothing,” he mumbled.

  “We do all right,” Majordomo echoed. Then he sighed. “We do all right for a half-dozen people in a castle without a Master. But what if she’s wanting to throw masked balls or have a chariot pulled by cockatrices or some such?”

  All three of them stared at the table.

  Masters were prone to extravagance, and the castle was supposed to provide it. But there just wasn’t very much money in Castle Hangnail. They didn’t have a cellar full of gold or a gallery full of paintings by great artists.

  Between all the minions, they made enough to pay everybody a small wage and buy soap and sugar and tea and anything they couldn’t make themselves. But a masked ball would stretch them very thin, and they certainly could not have afforded even a very small cockatrice.

  “Ungo the Mad could turn lead into gold,” said Pins. “That was useful.”

  “I don’t think Wicked Witches can do that,” said Serenissima. “The old Sorceress used to zap bandits and take their money, though.”

  “Not as many bandits as there used to be,” said Pins. “She was zapping bank robbers toward the end, and look where that got her.”

  All three shuddered. Their most recent Master, the old Sorceress, had been very old and a bit senile toward the end, and had zapped an innocent television repairman. The authorities had to get involved. She was reportedly in a home now and thought she was a rosebush, which was better for her but had left the minions in a pickle.

  “We’ve always managed before,” said Majordomo firmly. “We’ll manage this time. I’ll just explain that we haven’t had a Master in a while and things have been a bit . . . tight. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

  “The old Sorceress wouldn’t have understood,” Serenissima said finally.

  “She’d have you encased in ice just for suggesting that she limit herself to one cockatrice for evenings and weekends,” said Pins. “Some Masters like to be extravagant. And nobody’ll bring the washing up if they’re afraid they’ll be turned into silverfish.”

  Unspoken between them was the knowledge that if Molly did not understand, if things went badly, they might find themselves in deep trouble. And if that happened, there were worse things than angry Sorceresses. If Molly left or wasn’t found to be a fit Master, the Board would take steps.

  None of those steps would be good for Castle Hangnail.

  “We’ll manage,” said Majordomo, with confidence he didn’t feel. “We don’t have any other choice.”

  Chapter 5

  Molly took the news that there would be no masked balls quite well.

  Rather too well, so far as Majordomo was concerned.

  “Oh?” she said vaguely. “That’s a shame. Were you planning on having one?”

  “Well, no,” said Majordomo. “But if you wanted one, you understand. Or a chariot pulled by cockatrices.”

  “Are they good at pulling chariots?” asked Molly. She applied herself to one of Cook’s pastries. A pile of crumbs was building up around her plate.

  “They’re terrible at it,” said Majordomo. “They have to wear smoked-glass goggles so they don’t turn people to stone.”

  “Is not liking pulling,” said Cook, sliding a poached egg onto Molly’s plate. “Is half chicken, half snake. Chicken half is not liking pulling.”

  “Then it doesn’t seem very nice to make them pull a chariot,” said Molly. “This is a great egg.”

  Cook grunted. “Is from my chickens. Chickens is not pulling, but is laying.”

  “Can I see them?”

  “Yes. After is eating.”

  Molly accepted this. Majordomo drank his tea and felt grave misgivings. The Master shouldn’t be pleased with poached eggs and the prospect of meeting chickens. The Master should be storming around the battlements, defying the gods, screaming dark curses, raining lightning down on the village.

  (Not anyone specific in the village, of course. He quite liked Miss Handlebram, who cared about her flowers the way some people care about their grandchildren. And it would be very awkward if lightning were to strike the mercantile, which was the only place in the village to buy tea.)

  It was a matter of survival—minions serve Wicked Masters. Good Masters don’t have minions, they have companions, and that was a totally different union with different rules. Majordomo did not think he could become a companion at his time of life. He’d been born a minion, raised a minion, had died a minion several times, and then been brought back to life with lightning rods, still a minion.

  Molly hadn’t cursed anyone or Brooded Darkly or vowed to violate the laws of god and man or anything.

  Serenissima said that she’d gone into Molly’s room to tidy up and found the bed already made.

  “Are you sure you’re a Wicked Witch?” he asked.

  Molly rolled her eyes and said, “Fine.” She took a deep breath . . .

  . . . an
d held it . . .

  It only took a few seconds. She went a little blurry around the edges, and then Majordomo could see the chair through Molly’s body. A few heartbeats later, she had vanished completely.

  The chair pushed back, apparently by itself. The cream cheese pastry on Majordomo’s plate floated upward, around the table, and settled onto Molly’s plate.

  Majordomo was impressed despite himself. Invisibility was impressive magic.

  Molly let out her breath in a whoosh and was instantly visible again. “Phew. I can hold my breath for almost a minute, but I start to get light-headed.” She took a bite of the pastry. Around the cream cheese she added, “I didn’t used to be able to make my clothes invisible too. That was awkward.”

  “That was my pastry,” said Majordomo.

  She swallowed and grinned at him. “That’s how you know I’m a Wicked Witch.”

  Pastry-theft was not on the same level as lightning, but it would have to do for now. “When you’re quite done,” said Majordomo, “I’ll give you a tour of the castle. You can meet the others who are here to serve you. Then it’s time to talk about the Tasks.”

  Chapter 6

  The more Molly saw of Castle Hangnail, the more she loved it.

  She loved the bossy gray chickens in the courtyard and the bat colony in the tower. She loved the rookery and the elderly, good-natured ravens. She loved the dungeons with their appealingly nasty instruments and the windy battlements that looked over the hills and the dim, ratcheting hive of the Clockwork Bees.

  “Invented by Ungo the Mad,” said Majordomo wistfully. They stood together in the dark cellar. The hive was a huge, misshapen thing, wax hardening on three walls of the cellar. “I take the wax off whenever we make candles, but they make more.”

  The Bees themselves were oil-rubbed bronze, as big as Molly’s thumb. They flew in and out of an enormous brass pipe that snaked back and forth across the ceiling.

  “They go into the pipe every night to wind their little keys. It’s all done with steam from the boiler.”

  He sighed. He missed Ungo.

  “It’s marvelous,” said Molly. A Clockwork Bee landed on her wrist, and she lifted it up to eye level. It clicked a tiny bronze antenna at her. “Ungo must have been very talented.”

  “He made me the man I am today,” said Majordomo. “At least my left arm, right hip, both knees, and my left nostril.” He sighed again. “It’s very hard to sew the nostrils. He was a fine hand with a needle. Pins says he couldn’t have done it any better himself.”

  Molly could hear the sadness in his voice and she patted Majordomo on one hunched shoulder. She tried not to think about where his right arm, left hip, and right nostril might have come from. Majordomo was clearly a man of many parts. Some of them looked as if they’d come by way of grave-robbers.

  For all that, it was very sweet the way that he was so obviously proud of the castle. He reminded her a bit of her pet toad from back home, who had been lumpy and grumpy and equally proud of his tiny pond. “I’m sure he’d be very proud of the way you’ve kept up the castle,” she said.

  Majordomo looked gratified and then immediately suspicious. Molly felt like sighing herself. She’d been trying to make him feel better, but she supposed that wasn’t very Wicked of her. She tried to make her voice gruff, which is difficult when you’re twelve and a girl. “Anyway, if Ungo the Mad were around today, I’d lock him in a tower and make him create terrible devices for me.”

  “Quite proper,” said Majordomo, sounding more cheerful. “In fact, there’s a few left over, if you can figure out how to work them. They’re next on the tour . . .”

  “What about the tower? The little short one off in the moat?”

  “Oh,” said Majordomo, without much enthusiasm. “That tower. The old Vampire Lord used to keep prisoners there, and then it got remodeled into an aviary, and then into a guest suite. But the causeway fell in a few years ago, and we haven’t been able to get to it.”

  “That’s a shame,” said Molly, who would have rather liked a tower surrounded by water—even the sloppy greenish water of the moat. It sounded very mythical and romantic.

  Molly met Serenissima, who was very nice, in a soggy kind of way, and Cook’s son, Angus. Angus was broad and cheerful and good-natured and did not have an accent anything like his mother’s.

  She also saw Ungo’s other devices, which were strange and cryptic and had buttons labeled THUNDER AMPLIFIER and STEAM THURIGIBLE and NEVER EVER PUSH THIS BUTTON. (It had clearly been pushed several times and was jammed in the ON position.)

  She met Pins’s goldfish, who was convinced that she had fin rot and ich and shingles.

  “I don’t think fish can get shingles,” said Molly. “I think you have to be a mammal.”

  “I shall be the first,” said the fish. “They shall write articles in veterinary journals about me.” This prospect seemed to cheer her up. “I shall be remembered forever in the annals of medical history.”

  “Don’t mind her,” whispered Majordomo. “Being sick is her hobby. We tried to interest her in collecting stamps, but it’s hard to get them in the bowl.”

  Pins himself said “Stand still!” and walked around Molly in a circle, frowning.

  “Those are good boots,” he said finally. “The rest is not so good, but I will fix it.”

  “Can you?” asked Molly hopefully. “I’ve never really looked all that—Witchy. Not like I wanted to. My mom always complained that I looked like I was going to a funeral, and she kept buying me pink shirts with rhinestones, even when I told her I wanted black lace.”

  Majordomo put his hand over his eyes in despair.

  “No pink,” said Pins firmly. “Pink has its place, but this is not it. I shall outfit you like a queen of the night!”

  He surveyed Molly’s small, hopeful face, and the regrettable frizz of her hair. “Well . . . a princess of the night anyway.”

  He took another step back. “A princess of moderately late in the afternoon, at any rate.”

  The doll picked up a measuring tape and went for her ankles.

  It took twenty minutes. Molly giggled a few times when he poked a ticklish spot, then sobered up.

  “Well?” she asked worriedly, when Pins had written her measurements down on a pad.

  “I shall think on it,” said Pins. “We will see what can be done.”

  Molly sighed. She had been hoping for something more enthusiastic. “Why yes, my lady, we can make you look like a terribly Wicked and also quite pretty Witch who is also interestingly pale and has fabulous hair!”

  Well, it would have been nice.

  • • •

  The last stop on the tour was the library.

  The library of Castle Hangnail was not famed throughout the world. It was actually rather small as old Gothic libraries go, no bigger than Molly’s bedroom in the castle, and the book-lined shelves only went up for about twenty feet.

  “It’s not much,” said Majordomo sadly. There are castle libraries that go up three and four stories, with spiral staircases and magical spirits bound to the card catalog. He had always secretly wanted one of those. “Ungo kept a great many volumes in his library, but when that exploded—well. I salvaged what I could.”

  Serenissima didn’t clean in here, as steam is not healthy for books. Majordomo did the best he could with a dustpan, but what with one thing and another . . .

  Well, at least there were cobwebs on the higher volumes. You couldn’t argue with good cobwebs.

  “It’s wonderful,” said Molly.

  The library at her school was much smaller. It had low shelves that you could see over, and the books were all carefully spaced out, as if the teachers were afraid to let them get too close to each other.

  Here the books were all crammed together in a leatherbound jumble. There were fat, dumpy volumes with titles
like An Investigation into the Reality of Were-Squid and tall, thin volumes called With Sword and Banjo Across the Great Desert and Fairy Gardens of the Northeast. There were personal diaries and spellbooks with scorched bindings and a nearly complete set of the Encyclopedia Thaumaturgica. (Molly noted that volume Q was missing. Apparently Cook had gotten here already.)

  There was an overstuffed armchair in one corner, lit by three candles. The candles were half melted to the top of a grinning skull. Generally Molly wouldn’t have tried to read by candlelight, but these candles had two wicks each and were thicker around than Molly’s thigh. The skull itself came up to the arm of the chair and had teeth the size of shovel blades.

  “Hill giant,” said Majordomo. “Tried to eat the hill out from under us. The Master—Vampire Lord Voltan—tried to get him to go away, but once they get fixated on a hill . . . well. It gives a lovely light, though.”

  Molly ran her fingertips over the Encyclopedia Thaumaturgica, pausing briefly at the missing Q.

  “And now that you’ve seen the castle,” said Majordomo heavily, “there is the matter of the Tasks.”

  Molly attempted to look as if she knew what he was talking about. “Of course. The Tasks.”

  The old minion reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an official-looking sheet of parchment. It bore an elaborate wax seal that read BOARD OF MAGIC in looping letters.

  He handed it to Molly.

  She unfolded the page. At the top it said “Form 11ZQ-A (Wicked Witch Version.)” The rest read rather like a business letter.

  From the Board of Magic, to the new Master of Castle Hangnail,

  Welcome.

  In order to be fully invested as the owner of your new castle, the Board requires that you perform the following Tasks within the next six weeks.

  1) Take possession of the castle and surrounding grounds.

  2) Secure and defend the castle.

  3) Commit at least one (1) act of smiting and three (3) acts of blighting.