Corona gasped out loud and turned back to Cressida. It all started to lock into place; why the Shadow Assemblage were so desperate to get the Book of Fire back, why there was only ever one person at a time (usually, anyway) who could read ancient Elvish and translate the book. This was worse than even Bullavent had imagined.
“The spell in the book!” Corona/Joe cried. “I know why they want the book so badly! Oh, this is horrible!”
Chapter 24 – Joe Is Confused
Corona tried to keep her cool as the Shadow Assemblage’s diabolical plan revealed itself inside her head. Was it even possible?
Corona/Joe screamed out, “They want to resurrect Frostma the Ice Serpent!”
Cressida hesitated. She had been about to give Joe a well-intentioned shove onto the book to save his life. His sudden revelation was confusing her. How would he suddenly know what the Shadow Assemblage’s true plans were?
“What do you mean?” she wondered.
“Bullavent just wanted me to make sure the book was safe in the forest, away from the hands of humans,” Corona/Joe babbled, careful to avoid the book. “I was supposed to wait until you’d got rid of the protection spell and steal the book but now…there’s no hope I can get it back to him!”
Cressida was seriously confused. Had Joe banged his head during the earthquake or something? He was talking gibberish. The sooner she got him out of the house and into the river the better. She grabbed the book and advanced on him.
“This is for your own good,” said Cressida. “You’ve hurt your head in the earthquake. You need to go to a hospital.”
“You humans are so stupid!” Corona/Joe roared.
“Humans?”
Cressida started to become suspicious, and walked closer to her best friend and looked him in the eyes. It was while she was doing that that she saw something twitch in his hair. She yelled in horror and she knew immediately what was going on.
“Get out of my friend’s head this instant!” Cressida screamed.
“You can’t let the Shadow Assemblage have the book!” Corona/Joe cried. “Whatever happens, no matter who dies, you can’t let them have the book!”
“I don’t really have much of a choice sitting up here, do I?” said Cressida. Angrily she smacked Joe across the face with the back of her hand and, snapping her hand out, managed to grab hold of the irie nestled in his hair.
“If you don’t come out now I will pull you out so hard you will suffer permanent injuries,” Cressida warned. “I swear I’ll do it!”
“Joe will suffer permanent injuries if you do that too,” Corona/Joe pointed out.
“Maybe, but you might die.”
Corona/Joe sighed and decided she might as well do as she was told. She carefully extricated herself from Joe’s mind, felt him scream at her mentally, and she fluttered away to land on the couch. Joe collapsed to the floor, holding his head in pain, screaming over and over again, “Take me back!”
Cressida put a hand on his shoulder and he pushed her away.
“I liked it there!” he shouted. “I want to go back!”
A distraught, confused Cressida turned to Corona, who said, “His mind was forced to retreat into a dreamland of his own making when I took over. He was with his parents.”
“No wonder he’s upset about leaving them,” said Cressida. She knelt down on the floor and took Joe’s hands in her own. He struggled violently, trying to push her away, but she wouldn’t let him. She said, “You’re back in the real world now. I need you. We’re all in great danger. I can’t do it without you.”
Joe was crying. “We were going on a picnic. I made a lemon meringue. It was going to be the best day out we had in ages.”
The house rumbled again. Corona screamed and fell back behind a cushion on the couch.
“Joe, please,” Cressida begged. “Snap out of it.”
“We were in the car on the way to the park. We played eye-spy. I spotted a willo-the-wisp and I won. We’d never seen one before. It tagged along behind our car and pulled faces at me.”
Another rumble. Cressida fell onto Joe, her elbow making a dent in his face. He pushed her off him and stood up, looking around himself in a daze. He felt like he’d been asleep for days and the whole world had passed him by. He felt like he’d missed something very important.
“What have I missed?” he inquired.
“The Shadow Assemblage has lifted my house up into the clouds and you were possessed by an irie,” Cressida explained. “The rest will have to wait. I think the next act of their plan is about to unfold.”
“Next plan?” Joe exclaimed.
The screws on the door hinge were slowly beginning to turn. As each one popped onto the floor the door finally became free and it, as well as the screws, was sucked out into the sky. Cressida saw other things spinning and twisting around outside that made her feel ill; bricks and roof tiles and even a whole windowpane. They were from her house.
“Joe, touch the book and get out of here!” she ordered him.
Joe looked around at the shuddering walls and said, “How are you going to get out? I’m not leaving you here!”
“We’re already had this conversation with my mom,” said Cressida.
“Your mom was right!” said Joe.
There was a loud boom upstairs, similar to the earthquake but ten times as loud. Cressida ran to the window and craned her neck upwards to see her bedroom being torn from the house like a hunk of bread. Her bed and vanity mirror and all her clothes were being tossed around like they were leaves in a storm, and the My Baby Unicorn collection she had hidden in the back of her wardrobe were now able to gallop through the sky, free once again.
“My bedroom…”
She pulled her head back in and turned to Joe, to find him watching the carpet as it began to pull free from the tacks that were holding it down. The Shadow Assemblage were literally tearing the house apart!
Chapter 25 – Splash Landing
I won’t let them tear apart my house, Cressida thought. I love this house! I’ve grown up in this house!
A tack that had previously been hammered into the carpet to keep it fixed onto the floor skimmed past Cressida’s face like shrapnel, spinning outside to join the rest of her house. Joe was on the floor, trying to hold the carpet down, hoping that he could at least delay what was happening, but the carpet wanted to be free, so it was lifting him up with it.
“I can’t hold on!” Joe cried.
Corona the irie was still hiding in the couch cushions. She’d never been more terrified in her entire life. She suddenly wished she had never volunteered for this suicidal mission in the first place. Then a sudden realization dawned on her.
“Why am I hiding?” she said. “I can fly!”
Corona laughed and flew up out of the couch. Some magical pull grabbed her; she screamed as she was yanked out of the house with enough force to knock her unconscious. Cressida watched as tiny irie body, looking as if it were dead, vanished from sight amid all the other debris of her house floating out there.
“The book,” Cressida mumbled. She’d forgotten all about the book! She turned around to see it sliding across the floor towards the open front door. She ran and jumped, hoping to land on it, but it flew out into the sky and crashed into a block of wall she assumed must be from her bedroom.
“NO!” she screamed.
She couldn’t lose the book, not after everything they’d been through.
There was an explosion of plaster, bricks and wallpaper outside as two walls collided. Cressida covered her eyes. Amid the dust, she couldn’t see what had happened to the book. Had it finally been destroyed by the black magic used to lift the house up here? Wasn’t that a good thing?
“Cressida, look at this,” said Joe.
She turned, the house creaking and cracking around her, to find the Book of Fire back on the coffee table.
“Good book!” she said.
Joe, still trying to keep the carpet down, was tossed into the air. He
landed on the sofa as the carpet continued to try and rip itself up.
Ginger felt the cold water of the river hit her. She began to swallow water as she was still in the middle of shouting “no” to Cressida when she’d arrived here. Kicking her legs, swimming to the surface, she spat out the water and began coughing. How could Cressida do that? She was going to die up there!
“Let me help you up,” said Bram. A hand reached out, which she grabbed, and she was pulled out of the water. She shook her head, looking around her, to see Snaps the cat, now resembling a giant wet fur ball, sitting by the bank. Martin was shaking his wet fur vigorously and Emily was nowhere to be seen.
“Emily?” she called, and found the girl. She was lying unconscious on the grass by the river. Ginger went up to her and checked her breathing; she was still alive. But why was she out cold like this? She saw the blood congealing at the side of the girl’s head and realized what was wrong; she must have hit her head on a rock or something when plunging into the river. After all, it wasn’t that deep.
“I got her out before she drowned,” said Bram. “She should be fine, though I think we should get her to a hospital. I would’ve performed a healing spell but, as you know, our magic seems to be going wonky.”
“What about Cressida?” said Ginger. “How is she going to get down?”
“Joe is still up there too,” said Bram.
The two of them looked up, the bottom of the house seemingly about the size of a suitcase to them all the way down here. Ginger knew her daughter was resourceful and clever, but this was an impossible situation. There was no way out of it. Then something occurred to her; the person performing this spell must be close. All she had to do was find them and make them bring the house down.
She walked forward, seeing something, some figure in the garden. When she got up to it she realized it was a statue made of marble; a statue that looked remarkably like agent Seth. She looked at it closely and realized it was Seth. Somebody had turned him into a statue; someone extremely powerful.
A glittering on the grass caught her eye. She bent over to inspect it to find a small glowing crystal. A glowing crystal that could be used for various things, but which in this case was obviously being used to steal the magical energies of the people in the house. That explained why, whenever they had tried to use magic, it had either failed or sputtered out really quickly. If I destroy this then maybe Cressida can levitate herself down, she thought. This could be my daughter’s only chance to get out of this alive.
Ginger brought her foot down to crush the crystal but something hard hit her shoulder. She looked around to find the man she’d seen snooping around the garden the other day charging at her. Preparing a spell, Ginger only realized too late her magic was depleted when the man, Abe, fired his most infamous of spells. Ginger tried to duck but the spell connected with her face, and within the tenth of a second she turned to marble.
Abe regarded the old man and the wolf by the side of the river. They were watching him nervously, like mice hiding out from a larger predator. They were no threat. He didn’t know how they’d got here from up in the house but he knew Cressida wasn’t with them. His senses told him she was still up there.
“Time for stage two,” he whispered.
Chapter 27 – Stage Two
Stage two was currently in the middle of its destructive path. The top floor of the house, along with a thousand roof tiles, a chimney stack and a weather vane shaped like a duck, was swirling around an air current like ingredients beings stirred into a bowl. Some of the second floor had gone too, first Cressida’s bedroom, now the other occupied bedrooms. Ginger’s collection of evening dresses from all over the civilized world were now dancing about the sky, torn and dirty, and her four-poster bed with red silk drapes was in pieces.
In the living room Cressida and Joe were in a panic as they heard the upper floors groaning and screaming. All the furniture around them was rattling, and the carpet was still trying to pull itself up but the furniture, and the two of them, was managing to hold it down. Quite why they figured holding the carpet down would save them all they didn’t know, but it seemed like the thing to do.
“Having second thoughts about touching the book now?” Cressida asked him.
“Not really,” said Joe. “I can’t let you go off having adventures without me.”
A lamp whizzed past Cressida’s head, almost knocking her over in the process. She knew they couldn’t hold on for long. Pretty soon the whole house would be in pieces.
“What does it feel like having magic?” Joe asked.
“It felt pretty good,” Cressida admitted.
Something smashed in the kitchen. It sounded a lot like a giant electrical appliance colliding with a window.
“What was that?” Joe cried.
“The kitchen’s going!” shouted Cressida. The high altitude wind was blowing through the house now, coming in from where the front door used to be and being sucked out through where, presumably, the back door used to be. The entire house was being dismantled around their heads and they couldn’t do a thing about it. Sooner or later they would be plucked out as if by giant omnipotent hands and delivered to their deaths.
“You have to touch the book, Joe,” Cressida told him. They held onto each other as the fireplace began to rattle apart and the wallpaper began to peel itself off the wall. The book was in her hands now.
“How can I leave you here?” said Joe. “I’m not listening to you. I’ve already told you that I’m not leaving you and that’s final.”
“They want me alive so they can kill me later,” said Cressida. The wind was whipping her hair. “That will at least give you and the others time to rescue me.”
Joe paused, torn over what to do. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yes!” she shouted.
He put his hand nearer to the book and hesitated. What if they couldn’t rescue her in time? What if he could never apologize for thinking that she and her mom were stealing his power from him? He’d never be able to live with himself otherwise. He was about to tell her when Cressida tapped his hand with the book. She said sorry and he vanished.
“Sorry, Joe, I couldn’t wait for you to stop dithering,” she said.
When he appeared again, in exactly the same place as before, Cressida had to tap her own head to make sure she wasn’t imagining things. The protection spell hadn’t worked. Whatever it was that was draining their powers must now have started to affect the energy contained in the book as well!
“You should’ve gone earlier you idiot!” Cressida shouted. “Now they’re going to capture you too and they might kill you!”
Down below, standing on the grass amidst his new collection of beautiful marble statues, Abe began the spell to bring the house back down to earth. It felt easy, so easy. Now the Shadow Assemblage would be placated. Grace would be safe. They would be happy. He could finally have a life with no pain.
“Aargh!” he screamed. The wolf was biting his leg. He shook his leg to remove it but it held on firm, grinding his flesh with its sharp teeth. He cried out and didn’t notice, far above, the house slip the confines of his spell and begin to plummet to the ground.
In the house Cressida began to think. Her father was an archaeologist who climbed down into sunken ruins and stuff, so he must have rope. What if he had a spare rope stored somewhere in the house? Yes! He would! Except he kept stuff like that on the third floor, and that was already in pieces, swimming about in the sky.
“This is it,” said Cressida.
“What if…”
Joe was cut off when the house lurched under their feet. They screamed, their bodies pulled up to the ceiling as they fell in free-fall, totally weightless, defying gravity. Cressida could feel the force on her head, her body, and especially her stomach. The furniture was also on the ceiling, the couch narrowly missing squashing them both, and a lampshade smashed, showering them with glass.
They clutched hands as the house continued to fall. So they
were going to die here. Cressida was glad. She wanted to die at home, not in some horrible lair that belonged to the Shadow Assemblage. At least she had her best friend with her.
Chapter 28 – The Decision
Corona awoke when she crashed into the ground. Groggy, she tested her wings and her limbs. Everything was in working order. An irie could survive a lot of physical punishment before becoming seriously injured. A fall from such a height had only given a slight bruise to her head, although it did hurt.
She fluttered over to Emily Swine, landing on her forehead. A powerful enchanter was staring up at the floating house with intense concentration. Grandpa Bram was standing by the wolf, looking at what was going on with a kind of helpless rage. She felt sympathy for them, wanting to help. But what could she do? She had to get back in the forest and warn her father! Her family had to come first.
“Not so fast,” said Emily. Her hand whipped out and grabbed one of her wings. Corona yelled in pain.
“You were faking it?” Corona exclaimed. “Lying little cow!”
“No, you landing on me woke me up,” snapped Emily. She glared hard at the irie, wondering what to do with it. “What are you doing here? Are you in league with that dark enchanter over there?”
“Of course not!” Corona spluttered. “He works for the Shadow Assemblage and they are the one true source of evil in this universe!”
Corona didn’t have time for this. She quickly changed herself into something smaller, a bee, and zipped through the girl’s fingers. A blast of light was thrown at her back but she dodged it and managed to make her way to the forest. She turned back once to see if Emily was following her but she girl stood up, holding her head and cursing. The wolf seemed to be running for the enchanter. Corona laughed and weaved through the trees, going home.
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