by Debi Gliori
“NO!” she howls. “Get away. Get away from me—NOOO. AUGHHHHH. HELP!”
“Child. Would you calm down?” Strega-Nonna’s icy hand is on hers, her face peering intently into her own. Behind her, Pandora can see Titus sitting ashen-faced in the boat’s prow, and now the hooded thing is hauling Damp out of the water.
“But it’s dead. And sorry, Nonna, but I was so sure you were de—de—”
“Quite,” Strega-Nonna mutters. “He is, and I am too. Dead. Tact was never your strong suit, child.”
Pandora tries to drag her gaze away from the fatal black mark in the middle of Strega-Nonna’s throat.
“But the demon, Nonna. Where is—?”
“He’ll be along presently,” Strega-Nonna sighs. “I’m afraid we won’t get rid of him that easily. However, thanks to your little sister, he can’t touch us.”
“Damp?” Pandora frowns. “What did she do?”
Strega-Nonna smiles. “So many questions. Always such an inquisitive child. Why don’t you ask her? Maybe she’ll teach you. But you’ll have to wait. There isn’t time now. We’re here.”
And the boat bumped ashore, back on the island once again.
Waiting for them by the fire was a thin man dressed in an impeccably tailored gray suit. He nodded to them in greeting, watching while they made their way toward him. As she approached, Pandora felt her blood turn to ice. It was as if she’d always known that one day, no matter what she did, she would come to stand in front of this person, bleating her excuses, avoiding his eyes, and utterly desperate to postpone the inevitable conclusion—
“My poor Pandora, you look like a rabbit caught in the headlights, and you, Titus, dear boy, calm yourself. Your presences here are accidental. Or should I say ‘incidental’? In time, you will return to your lives, and with time, you will forget that you were ever my guests.” The man bowed, his gray eyes heavy with foreknowledge, his expression full of compassion. Then he pulled himself up to his full height and turned to Strega-Nonna, but now his face was wreathed in smiles.
“My dearest lady,” he said, his voice like liquid velvet, “I am delighted to welcome you into my realm at last.”
Strega-Nonna hung her head in embarrassment, aware of how strenuously she’d sought to avoid this moment; how, in fact, she’d spent centuries evading this man, finding evermore-elaborate ways to ensure she didn’t end up as his guest.
“Now, now,” he chided. “Don’t be bashful. I know you’ve been avoiding me, and I’ve tried my hardest not to take it personally, but, Amelia, truly the only person you’ve been avoiding is yourself.”
Strega-Nonna’s shoulders began to shake as the man continued, his voice softer now, almost aching with sympathy. “All those hundreds of lonely years, Amelia. All those nights alone, dreaming of those you loved…and lost.”
Strega-Nonna wept openly, and neither the presence of the baby boy in her arms nor that of Titus, Pandora, and Damp hugging her tight appeared to give her comfort.
“But you are out of your own time, Amelia. You have been lost in time for so long now, you cannot remember what it is not to be homesick. I can bring you release. I alone can bring you home. Come, my dear, lay down your burden, take my hand, and let me lead you home.”
“STOP RIGHT THERE.” A ghastly voice bellied out of the darkness, a voice that set Titus’s teeth on edge and advanced the dial on his internal terror meter several notches into the red. “GIVE ME MY STONE,” it continued, assaulting their eardrums, the words distorted by the raw power behind their projection.
“Quickly”—the man in the suit spread his hands wide—“the sooner you come to me and pass over that pesky stone for safekeeping, the sooner we can dispatch that demon back to where he belongs.”
“Ba-bye,” Damp whispered, her face upturned to Strega-Nonna as if trying to imprint the old lady’s face forever in her memory.
“YOU STUPID OLD WITCH,” the voice roared. “YOU THINK YOU CAN DEFY ME?”
“Nonna”—Pandora realized she was crying—“I love you. We all love you, we always will, but…you must go. Now.”
“YES,” the voice mocked. “YOU GO, AND I’LL EAT THE KIDS. SO GET A MOVE ON. STIR YOUR STUMPS, BECAUSE I’M GETTING A TAD PECKISH HERE. FEE, FI, FO, FUM…”
“Don’t be silly.” Damp heaved a sigh, mortally affronted at this misusage of one of her favorite fairy tales. “We’re not playing ‘Jackan Binstork.’ We’re doing Maffew, Mark, Lucan, John.”
Isagoth froze, his face a picture of horror. There it was again. That awful spell. Deep inside, he knew he wouldn’t be able to survive hearing it a second time. He was already running into the water as Damp reached the third stanza. “AUGHHH. STOP. NO. SHUT THE TROLL UP. Make it STO-OP. My poor ears. Aaaaaughh—” The hateful voice abruptly cut off as Isagoth dived beneath the surface in an attempt to put himself beyond the range of Damp’s unbelievably potent spell.
“Nonna”—Titus’s voice was thick with unshed tears—“give me the baby and go. Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. We’ll never forget you. We love you. Go.”
Strega-Nonna stood, hesitating for one second, drinking in the features of her youngest descendant before passing him over to Titus. He, in turn, removed the Chronostone from his pocket and handed it over to the gray-eyed man.
“Blasted nuisance, this,” the man muttered to himself, tucking it into his pocket and returning his attention to Strega-Nonna. “Come on, then, m’dear. Let’s be having you.”
As if unconsciously following instructions for a rite of passage, Titus solemnly removed the poultry shears from his back pocket and cut the thread of spider silk binding Strega-Nonna to her living kin. From overhead came the lonesome calls of geese flying inland, their flock arranged in a broken circle like a lion’s head.
Strega-Nonna smiled, stepped forward into the elegant embrace of Death…
…and was gone.
The Past Is Another Country
A smell of wet ashes and old bonfires clung to the air as Mrs. McLachlan peered round the door into the wreckage of the Ancestors’ Room. Paintings hung askew, some so blackened by smoke that it was impossible to tell what their subjects had ever been. Wings drooping, Ffup crept through the doorway behind the nanny, visibly aghast at the damage done.
“What a mess,” the dragon breathed, slowly turning full circle, her golden eyes wide. Icy rain blew through huge holes in the masonry where Ffup had smashed through walls and windows in her haste to reach Baci and Ludo. Decaying lily pads from the moat were smeared across the walls after they’d been vacuumed up and hosed back out by the Sleeper in his role as chief firefighter.
Mrs. McLachlan didn’t appear to notice; she picked her way across swampy wet carpets and squeezed past toppled furniture until she reached the fireplace. It was as if a vast bonfire had blazed there, the floorboards burned away entirely to expose the beams beneath, the wooden skeleton of StregaSchloss. The walls to either side of the fireplace were sticky with tar, the silk fleur-de-lis wallpaper burned away to reveal twisted veins of electrical wiring that poked out from the cracked plaster. Flora McLachlan moaned, reaching out to place one hand against the wall for support.
“It’s okay. Don’t panic. I’m rrright here.” Ffup crashed toward the nanny, her paws splashing across the sodden carpets. “Talk about overkill, huh?” she prattled nervously, guiltily aware that she and the Sleeper had caused far more damage by their fire-extinguishing efforts than the actual fire itself. “I’m sure I could dry out some of these wet rugs myself, if that would help…. You know, sort of gently toast them, with both nostrils…” Her voice tailed off as she saw that Mrs. McLachlan’s face was awash with tears. “Awww, no,” she whispered. “Don’t cry. It’ll be all right. We can make it better. Don’t worry. It’s okay.” And running out of words of comfort, the dragon awkwardly folded the weeping nanny into the vast embrace of her wings.
It was this strange tableau that greeted Latch as he came along the corridor toward the Ancestors’ Room. Its door lay o
pen, and he could see Ffup and Flora framed therein, the blackened walls only enhancing the funereal air of deep sadness that hung over StregaSchloss that evening. Latch had just come upstairs after making a pot of tea in the wreckage of the kitchen and taking a tray through to the library, where his employers sat mute and ghostlike, their hands clasped, their eyes rimmed with red. Ludo Grabbit and Miss Araminta had also fallen silent, their tentative words of comfort falling on deaf ears as Signor and Signora Strega-Borgia came to terms with the knowledge that their deepest fears had been realized.
All the children gone, Latch thought. All gone, save for that changeling monstrosity lying in a baby carrier in a corner of the library, its continued presence an affront to the grieving Strega-Borgias. He’d come upstairs to find Flora, to beg her to use whatever magical powers she had to bring the children back. For Latch had been forced to realize that Flora was a witch, and though he wished it were not so, he knew in his secret heart that she would always be one; would always belong to some secret club to which he could never gain entry. In his naiveté, he’d half hoped that by becoming his betrothed, she’d miraculously undergo a complete personality change—like a leopard losing its spots, or a selkie choosing a permanent human form…. But Latch now knew that this would never happen. A part of Flora would always be beyond him, of this he was certain; he’d seen her eyes when she believed herself to be unobserved, fixed upon some distant place to which he, with his brief human life span, would be unable to travel. He’d hoped…
Och, but there was no place for him or his foolish hopes now. Flora was the one person who stood any chance of finding those poor children; not only of finding them, but of returning them to their devastated parents. He called out then, called her name and saw her break free of the dragon’s embrace and turn to face him…. And then his heart clenched with pity, because at that moment he saw in her face no sign of sorcery, occult self-possession, or witchery; saw only a middle-aged woman whose heart appeared to be breaking as she stumbled toward him, blinded by grief and displaying a kind of vulnerability of which he had not expected her to be capable.
Embarrassed beyond words, Ffup turned her back on the couple; then she whistled loudly as she waddled around the room, righting fallen furniture and, somewhat pointlessly, straightening ruined paintings against walls so blackened by fire they were in obvious need of replastering.
“I’m…uh…aiming for a kind of minimalistic, post-modern effect here,” she babbled, filling up the silence with stream-of-consciousness off-the-top-of-her-head nonsense. “You know, I’m actually rather fond of black as a color, really. It’s sort of restful, don’t you think? And I’ve been thinking about the furniture…well…it was wayyy past its sell-by date, wasn’t it? All those antiques. So gloomy. All that heavy brocade—just a dust magnet. I think what this room really needs is a complete makeover. If it was up to me, I’d chuck everything out and start again.” She came to a halt in front of the fireplace and frowned. “I’ve never seen that picture before,” she muttered, peering at the huge canvas hanging over the mantelpiece, “and I know I’d remember seeing it, because it’s all about food….” The dragon leaned forward, her long nose nearly touching the canvas; then she recoiled rapidly, her eyes widening in shock as she reached out a trembling paw to check whether her initial impression had been correct. “Spoookeee…,” she whispered, backing away from the picture and practically falling over Mrs. McLachlan in her haste.
“What’s spooky, dear?”
Ffup peered at Flora and tactfully decided not to mention the fact that the nanny’s eyeballs looked like they’d been marinating in tomato soup. “This painting. It’s…the paint’s still wet, like it’s just been painted…. Look, see for yourself—”
But Flora McLachlan was there already, with Latch right behind her, both of them grabbing whatever came to hand, dragging items of furniture over to the fireplace, piling a chair on top of a desk and a footstool on top of that.
“Bring me back something to eat,” Ffup wailed, realizing that she was about to be left behind, since she was far too big to squeeze through the gilt frame into the painting beyond.
The painting was a classic still life, its centerpiece a deceased fowl laid out on a pewter plate surrounded by fruits and fish and vegetables, everything chosen with an eye to composition rather than flavor. Thus, wild strawberries cozied up to a gaping sea trout, and grapes sat cheek by jowl with red onions. Goblets filled with wine sat untouched, as if the diners, whoever they were, had been called from the table to some other, more urgent appointment, or perhaps to welcome a late-arriving guest.
For, Flora realized, her breath catching in her throat, it was a homecoming feast, and she was certain who the guest of honor would be. Turning back to check that Latch was with her, she saw the butler’s ashen face, betraying his deep unease at passing through a gilt frame into the land of the paranormal. And yet, she marveled, he hadn’t hesitated to come with her, even though he could have had no idea what dangers may have lain ahead. Love had brought him to her side, to this place that existed hundreds of years before he’d been born.
Latch looked at her, wondering to himself who she really was; wondering just how many lives she’d lived before she’d arrived on StregaSchloss’s doorstep, slipping into his life as if she’d always been there. He’d never asked, never pried into her past, because he was afraid of what he might find; and she, in turn, had rarely spoken of her previous life; had hoped to leave the past behind when she became nanny to the Strega-Borgia children. It had been the discovery that Damp was a magus that had blown Flora’s cover. To protect the little girl, she’d been forced to act in ways that demonstrated clearly that she was a great deal more than just a children’s nanny: was, in fact, a sorceress in her own right. That much Latch had understood. What he had yet to discover was that Flora McLachlan was cursed with immortality. It was her fate to watch those she loved wither and die, while she was forced to live on and on forever. She was ageless and unchanging, wandering the Earth alone, yet not alone; human, yet lacking the certainty of her own death that is at the core of what it is to be human.
Thus Flora McLachlan, more than anyone, felt the loss of Strega-Nonna, her friend and companion for over six hundred years. Flora instantly recognized the food on the table, the logs burning in the brazier, the distant view of the hills through the arched window: all these were as familiar to her as her own self. She had dined in this room, long, long ago, with a younger Amelia newly delivered of a son, Raphael di Clemente, asleep at her breast, and with Amelia’s young husband, yet to die in battle, his face flushed from the wine they had drunk to toast the safe arrival of their firstborn….
Looking around the deserted room, Flora saw she had no place here now. The ancestors would be bringing Amelia home, all of them turning out to welcome her at last into their company. No, she did not belong here, she realized, looking up at Latch, whose eyes shone for her alone.
“I love you, lassie,” he whispered, the unaccustomed words kindling a fire in the middle of his chest as he continued, “and I’ll always love you, even if this is all we ever have. The short time I’ve known you has been better than the whole of my life was before you came…. I…you…”
She placed a hand over his mouth then, because his words had moved her so much it took all her self-control not to break down and weep like a baby. Later, when the children were safely home, then she could draw comfort from his embrace and, for a while at least, put the aching loneliness of her immortality to one side and become his wife. But for the moment, for now, they had much work to do.
Grimmer Than Grimm
Ffup crept disconsolately downstairs, avoiding the almost palpable atmosphere of grief that hung outside the library. Without words of comfort to offer her master and mistress, the dragon trailed down to the dungeons to find Nestor. She heard the murmur of voices in the dark below, and she smiled to hear the Sleeper reading a bedtime story to his little boy. When Ffup rounded the final corner and came upon
the candlelit huddle curled in the straw, she saw that the Sleeper had adapted the bedtime fable from “Little Red Riding Hood” into something more along the lines of The Company of Wolves. Gone was the endangered child in her red cape, gone too the kindly grandmother and the heroic woodcutter. Ffup held her breath and froze, not wishing to break the spell cast by the Sleeper’s words, a spell that not only held Nestor in thrall but had also cast an enchantment over the many members of the wolf pack sprawling across the little dragon’s nest.
“Little Red Ride in the Hood shrieked tae a stop ootside Granny’s bender and rolled doon her windae. Loud thumpin’ music poured oot, disturbin’ a’ the wee burds an’ deer and aw they forest beasties fir miles aroond.
“‘Haw, Granny,’ the wean yelled. ‘Check this oot. This here’s ma brand-new sawn-aff shotgun wi’ its serial numbers filed aff. Let’s go an’ kill soma they wolves, eh?’”
Ffup winced. What sort of bedtime story was this, pray, for a little tot? Nestor would have nightmares for weeks if it continued. Ffup was unable to forget the time she had read him “Goldenhair and the Three Dragons,” when the poor mite had been unable to be parted from his porridge bowl for months. No, no, no, she decided, enough of this violence. No guns, no dead wolves, no hood, no thumpy music, no…“AOWWWWWW!” she shrieked, bending over double, eyes crossed in agony.
Immediately, the wolves sprang to their feet, hackles up and teeth bared at the unexpected intrusion of this shrieking dragoness. The Sleeper gave a roar of alarm.
“Ehhhh? Och, wumman. Dinnae sneak up on us like that. You nearly made me keech ma breeks.”
