Castle Hangnail

by Ursula Vernon

  “Is belonging to Molly,” rumbled Cook. “Molly is being Master here.”

  Eudaimonia raised one eyebrow. One corner of her mouth—on the same side as the eyebrow—went up in a crooked little smile.

  Molly knew that look. If they had been back home, sitting in Eudaimonia’s bedroom, Molly would have apologized immediately for whatever she’d done wrong—or right—and if it wasn’t her fault, she would have agreed immediately that whoever Eudaimonia was mad at was completely in the wrong, totally, and she hoped they fell down the stairs and got splinters in their knees.

  But we’re not back home. And this is my castle, not hers!

  “And where do you suggest I go?” asked Eudaimonia coldly. “There are no other castles going begging at the moment.”

  “Well,” said Majordomo, clearing his throat. “That’s very unfortunate, of course, but I’m sure there will be plenty of other invitations as other castles—or crags, or fortresses, or whatever you like—come open. Most Masters choose to retire in spring, when the new crop of magical folk are getting out of school, but there are always occasional vacancies. Meanwhile, however unorthodox the method, the Tasks have been performed and Castle Hangnail is taken.”

  He stood up as straight as he could when he said it, and Molly felt proud and frightened all at once.

  “So it is,” purred Eudaimonia. “So it is . . . and yet, I don’t feel like waiting for someone to die or retire to the seaside.” She tilted her chin toward Molly. “Do you know what happens, dear Molly, when a Sorceress wants another Sorceress’s castle?”

  Molly shot Majordomo a quick, worried look. He shook his head.

  “They fight,” said Eudaimonia. “And the more powerful of the two takes the castle for herself.”

  Molly had to lick her lips twice before she could speak. “I’m . . . I’m not a Sorceress.”

  “No,” said Eudaimonia. “That should make it easier, don’t you think?”

  And she grinned a grin like a starving wolf and snapped her fingers. “Gordon! Andrew! Attend me!”

  Gordon stumbled down the stairs. He was bleary eyed and looked as if he’d been sleeping in his clothes. “Sorry, Mistress. Can’t wake Andy up. He’s out cold.”

  “Hmm. Nicely done, dear Molly. Perhaps this will be more entertaining than I thought.”

  Molly braced herself—and Eudaimonia turned away. “Tomorrow at noon,” she said. “Tonight I require my beauty sleep—and it wouldn’t do you any harm either, dear.”

  She swept out of the Great Hall, toward the front door. Pins ducked hurriedly aside. Majordomo and Cook and Molly followed, crowding into the doorway—was she leaving? Would it really be that simple?

  No.

  She halted on the stone steps before the door, facing the moat with its single stubby tower. She pointed her wand, and spoke a single guttural word.

  The moat rippled, then heaved itself upward. Frost formed on a causeway of sparkling ice, stretching to the door of the tower.

  Eudaimonia turned back to the little knot of minions in the doorway. “Until tomorrow,” she said.

  And then her hand darted out like a striking snake and she snatched Pins up by the back of the neck. The doll squeaked as her nails dug into the burlap.

  “No!” said Molly.

  “Pins!” said Majordomo.

  Eudaimonia strode across the causeway. Gordon blocked the others from following, backing across himself.

  “Give him back!” yelled Molly, hating how feeble her voice sounded—how thin and how useless and how young.

  Eudaimonia laughed.

  The edge of the causeway began to melt. Gordon waited until the gap was too large for any of the minions to jump, then hurried after his Mistress.

  The tower door slammed. The causeway lost its shape and slumped into the moat. Small icebergs bobbed in the murky water.

  Eudaimonia was beyond their reach, and she had taken Pins with her.

  Chapter 43

  I don’t understand,” said Molly miserably as Majordomo pulled the door shut. “Why did she want Pins?”

  The old minion shook his head. “She was interested in him earlier. Wanted him to make her a wardrobe.”

  Molly sighed. She could believe it. Eudaimonia never could stand for anyone to be better dressed than she was. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. We just have to get him back—and I’m not waiting until tomorrow! She could do horrible things to him!”

  “Well, cloth is pretty resistant to ice, so I don’t think she could do him any real harm . . .”

  “Yes, but is he resistant to a pair of scissors?”

  Majordomo went a bit gray. That was the problem with being around Sorceresses and Witches—you got in the habit of thinking of magic first and foremost and forgot that somebody could do all sorts of nasty things to you with ordinary objects lying around the house.

  The fog had mostly cleared from the Great Hall. Cook went up and knocked on Edward’s armor. “Is being all right?”

  “Gaaaaah!” said Edward, in a surprisingly feminine voice, and then the helmet flipped up and revealed the brown face of Miss Handlebram.

  “Is that awful girl gone? I can’t hear anything in here—it’s like wearing metal earmuffs!”

  “Miss Handlebram! You’re okay!” Molly flung herself at the suit of armor and hugged it fiercely.

  “Oh, yes. Sir Edward here very kindly . . . err . . . disguised me . . .”

  “Mmmm-ffmmghff!” said Edward.

  “And now I should like to get out, please.”

  “Mmmff!”

  It took less time to get Miss Handlebram out than you might think. Armor is very unwieldy, but magic armor will help you get in and out, so in a very little time they had freed Miss Handlebram and she stood, panting and slightly damp, on the floor of the Great Hall.

  “Forgive me, Sir Edward,” she said, “it was very gallant of you, just—err—stuffy.”

  “Honored to be of service, madam,” said Edward, readjusting his helmet. “No offense taken. I always thought armor was hot and stuffy when I was inside it. It’s different when you are the armor, if you understand.”

  Miss Handlebram did not remember anything of being frozen, and was quite perturbed to learn that she had been encased in ice for several days. “My cats!”

  “Serenissima fed them,” Molly assured her.

  Serenissima peered out of the kitchen and curtsied. She had had to run from the Great Hall when the water turned to fog. To a steam spirit, it felt as if Molly’s spell were tugging at her, trying to unmake her into fog as well. It had been a very unpleasant sensation.

  They gathered in the kitchen. Cook put the kettle on and began vengefully baking scones.

  Angus appeared, to tell them that the donkey was safely away at Berkeley’s farm. “And he’s given me a spare set of keys so that if we need a dragon for anything, I can go and fetch him.”

  Majordomo vanished for a few minutes. When he returned, he was cradling the goldfish bowl between his hands.

  Molly inhaled sharply. Did the goldfish know that Pins was missing?

  “It’s all right,” said the goldfish. “He already told me.” She pushed up the sleeves of her tiny sweater. “So this is our council of war?”

  Council of war sounded awfully grand for seven people and a goldfish gathered around a kitchen table, but—

  “Yes,” said Sir Edward. “When Lord Sevenshanks took the Tower of Otters from his ancient foe, he started with four men and a bushel basket of laundry. We already have more men and more arms than he did.” He banged the point of his sword on the floor.

  “May we see the Tasks?” asked Majordomo.

  Molly pulled it out.

  All the Tasks had been crossed out.

  “But—” Molly blinked.

  Majordomo, though, was nodding. “You’ve throw
n her out. She left. The tower is not, technically speaking, attached to the castle, and however . . . confused . . . the paperwork has gotten, the Board has acknowledged you as the ruler of the castle.”

  “But that’s wonderful!” said Serenissima. “That means—”

  Majordomo tapped the Tasks.

  A note had appeared at the bottom, in elegant, flowing script.

  Due to multiple irregularities, the Board has determined that a representative will be sent to investigate the situation in person.

  “What will they do?” whispered Serenissima.

  Majordomo shook his head. “Maybe nothing. Maybe they’ll decide Molly’s too young. Maybe they’re just coming because I filled out the paperwork wrong. But if Eudaimonia’s not gone by then . . .” He spread his hands. “They may decide the Tasks weren’t properly finished. They may even decide that the castle belongs to her by right.”

  The goldfish let out a low moan. Lord Edward clutched the Imperial Squid around his neck.

  Molly took a deep breath and looked around the table.

  Her friends. All her friends in the world, except for Pins, who was being held captive by someone who had never really been her friend at all.

  What am I doing? I can’t fight Eudaimonia! She was always better than me—stronger than me—she only let me hang out with her because she liked having someone to boss around—and now she’s got that wand, and how am I supposed to stop her?

  Molly listened to the little voice in her head. She acknowledged that what it was saying was probably the absolute truth.

  And then she shut it up in a high tower inside her heart and threw away the key.

  None of that matters. I have to try.

  Across the table, Majordomo met her eyes. He nodded, very slightly.

  “All right,” said Molly. Her voice surprised her, because it sounded older and like it knew what it was doing. “We’ll deal with the Board when they show up. Castle Hangnail is mine now—even if just for a few days. Our first priority is to get Pins back. Who can tell me about that tower?”

  “The tower wasn’t part of the original castle,” said Majordomo. “The moat used to run around the entire thing. The builder wasn’t good with drains, though, and it all settled around that one tower. A later Master built the causeway, and they’ve been falling down and getting rebuilt ever since.”

  “Between the sludge and the mud, it’s between six and eight feet deep,” said Angus. “Water on top of mud. You can’t wade in it without getting stuck, so just walking across and trying to climb up is right out.”

  “I suppose we could build a raft,” said Miss Handlebram dubiously.

  Molly tapped her fingers on the table. “If the moat is that deep, it must be covering up the bottom floor of the tower . . .”

  Majordomo nodded. “The causeway runs to a second-story window. I think the bottom floor is full of water.”

  Molly turned and looked at the goldfish.

  The goldfish nodded.

  “It’s going to be full of muck,” said Molly. “Probably crawling with germs.”

  “Yes,” said the goldfish. “I know.” She removed her sweater and tore a tiny strip off with her fins. They watched as she tied it around her forehead (or what passes for a forehead on a goldfish) so that the ends trailed behind her. “I’m ready. Let’s go now.”

  “Don’t take any risks,” Molly cautioned as they crept out to the moat. “We need information. It won’t help Pins if you get caught too.”

  “You’re a good Wicked Witch,” said the goldfish. “Moles and bats and plants—yes, those things you’re very good with. But you’re not a fish. Leave water work to me.”

  Molly knelt down by the edge of moat, on the far side of the tower, where there were no windows. She set the goldfish bowl down at the edge of the moat and the fish gave a great leap over the rim and landed in the murky water with a splash.

  She vanished with barely a ripple. Molly and the minions went back inside the castle, while Bugbane clung to the side of the castle and waited for the fish to return.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Majordomo.

  Molly rubbed the back of her neck. “Well . . . if the tower is open underwater, maybe we can drain the moat and just walk out to it.”

  “We’d need to put down boards over the mud,” said Angus dubiously. “A lot of boards . . .”

  “No, we wouldn’t,” said Miss Handlebram. “Molly, you’ve got that one spell, haven’t you? The one that makes plants grow? You used it on my creeping thyme and filled it in so nicely.”

  “Well, yes . . .”

  “So we’ll plant our way to the tower and walk on those instead of the mud.” Miss Handlebram grinned. “Something with a nice deep taproot to stabilize the mud, and then between those—mint, do you think? Or lemon balm?”

  Molly clapped her hands together. “Yes! That’s perfect! Although I hate to let mint run around loose—still, desperate times . . .”

  “Will be making mint jelly,” put in Cook. “Lots and lots of mint jelly.”

  “That’s all well and good,” said Majordomo, “but even assuming we drain the moat, what then? We still have to face Eudaimonia.”

  Molly exhaled. “Yeah.”

  There was a glum silence.

  “I think it’s mostly the wand,” said Molly. “She just . . . just wasn’t that powerful before. I mean, she could do things, but she couldn’t have called up a block of ice and frozen somebody, or made an ice causeway. And she only had the one spellbook.” She twisted her fingers together. “I think she must have gotten a better one. She couldn’t have controlled her mother’s mind when I knew her.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Serenissima.

  Molly chewed on her lower lip. It sounded awful to say this about her friend (But she’s not my friend anymore! She never really was!), but—“Yeah. If she could have done that, she would have. She was always yelling that her mother wouldn’t let her do stuff. Um . . .” She poked at the table. “We didn’t do serious magic. Just, you know, little stuff. Changing the color of our hair, or getting the tangles out. Turning leaves into teacups. Starting a fire with your thumbnail. Shadows. You know.”

  “If it was a shadow that scared Freddy Wisteria,” rumbled Angus, “it seemed like pretty big stuff to me.”

  Molly smiled faintly. “He wasn’t magicky, though. Although Eudaimonia was surprised when I could summon one up, so maybe . . .” Cook slid a scone in front of her, and she stared down at it without seeing it.

  She seemed scared, almost, but—no, surely nobody who knows magic would be scared of my shadow. For all I know, she can do the spell herself now.

  “We have to assume, therefore, that she’s found a better spellbook and is drawing on the wand,” said Majordomo. “We can’t do much about spells she already knows, but if we can find a way to get the wand away from her, that would help. Breaking it would be even better. A broken wand will recoil on its owner, and there’s no telling what it might do.”

  It was Serenissima who said, rather sadly, “But how are we going to do that?”

  Chapter 44

  Now we must go back for a moment to our friend the goldfish, who was swimming through the dark water of the moat.

  Goldfish are not brave creatures by nature. They aren’t much of anything by nature. They are remarkably sturdy fish, capable of surviving dirty water, terrible food, and wretched conditions, and that’s about all that you can say about them.

  Pins’s goldfish was, despite her fears, as sturdy as any of her kind. She felt the grimy water slide past her gills and muttered “Ewwww . . .” but that was all. An angelfish would have fallen over dead in the first five minutes, poisoned by the rancid liquid, but the goldfish didn’t even cough.

  Her big fear was turtles. There weren’t any fish in the moat, but it was the sort of place that would attra
ct turtles, and a turtle would love to make a snack of a goldfish.

  “I must be quick,” she told herself. “I must be brave. There may be turtles, but there is definitely a Sorceress, and she has Pins!”

  For the goldfish loved Pins as dearly as he loved her, and the two of them had been friends for a very long time, since he had carried her across a great desert in a plastic bag and had fought Djinn and Ifrits and Ghouls for her. She would have gone anywhere with him, but since he had chosen to settle at Castle Hangnail, she had been more than happy to swim in her bowl and look out over the countryside from the window.

  (Which only goes to show that even minions have their own stories that may be long and heroic and have no bearing on the story at hand.)

  The goldfish swam down, down, into the depths of the moat, where the light was brown and gritty and full of tiny wiggling things. A human would have found them disgusting, but the goldfish knew that they were mosquito larvae and good to eat if you’re a goldfish.

  When she reached the stones of the tower, she swam in a long circle around the outer edge. There was a barred window—easy enough for a fish to slip through, but much too small for a regular-sized person. She kept swimming.

  The water was as dark as coffee and she veered away from black shapes in the mud. Probably they were rocks—probably—but what if they were turtles?

  She came at last to a doorway and let out a tiny fishy cheer.

  For the doorway was almost clear. The door had rotted away until it was only a few scraps of wood clinging to rusted hinges. Eudaimonia might be able to block the doorway with magic, but she could not block it with wood or iron.

  The goldfish swam inside. The interior of the tower was very dark, lit only by pale squares at the door and window . . . and by an arched opening near the roof.

  “It’s the old staircase,” said the goldfish to herself. “The humans must have needed a way up.”

  The archway gleamed. A shadow moved across it, as if someone were pacing back and forth in front of the light. Cool water pulsed across the goldfish’s fins, spreading in tendrils from the archway. Whatever was up there, the air was very cold.