by Lari Don
“Here’s the girl with even more power than your mother! Who dares take her on?”
“I dare,” croaked Corbie, tears running down his cheeks as he stepped forward.
But he was the only one. The rest of the crows were flying out of the throne room, swooping into the corridor, knocking each other out of the air in their haste to get away from Molly.
When Corbie saw his army retreating, he shifted to crow-form and flapped unevenly after them.
The room fell silent.
Innes let go of Molly and ran to Atacama. He skidded on the stone floor and stumbled to a stop beside the motionless sphinx.
Molly looked round at Beth, who was staring at the empty throne. Then at Theo, who was lying flat on the floor, but gasping and therefore breathing. So she ran to Atacama too.
When she got there, Atacama’s eyes were open. Innes was saying, “But what happened to you?”
“She threw knives at him,” said Molly. “Five knives, five wounds.”
“Five claws,” said Atacama quietly.
“Let me see,” said Innes.
“No!” Atacama sat up carefully, twisted his spine and neck, and looked at his side. Then he licked each wound once. “The scratches aren’t too deep.”
“We should clean them,” said Innes. “We should get treatment for them.” He put his hand on Atacama’s back.
The sphinx hissed. Innes pulled his hand away.
“Don’t touch me! Cats heal themselves. If anyone,” he glared at Innes, “if anyone suggests taking me to a vet, I’ll bite their hand off.”
Molly said, “I want to check on Theo, if you’re alright here?”
Atacama nodded and licked his wounds again.
Molly ran over to Theo. Beth was already there, crouched down beside him, her heavy black boots splintering the glass diamonds.
Theo was conscious too, coughing and rubbing his throat.
“Are you ok?” asked Molly.
“I will be, once I catch my breath.” His voice was hoarse. “Thanks to you for destroying that rope.”
“And thanks to Innes for destroying the rainbow-maker,” said Molly. “Nan would have been even scarier with that in her hands.”
Innes joined them. “You weren’t very clear though, were you? You just dropped it under my hooves. I wasn’t sure if crushing it was the right thing to do.”
“It was perfect,” said Beth. “You always know what the right thing is. Sometimes you even do it.” She smiled at him. “Did you enjoy your curse-caster feast?”
“Not really. It won’t be hard to persuade the guests to leave, once I show them what they’ve been eating.”
Atacama walked over, slowly.
“So how exactly did you defeat Nan?” asked Innes. “Is that throne a powerful weapon?”
“No,” said Theo. “She was cursed to stand beside the throne forever. And that ‘forever’ was giving her a very frustrating immortality.”
Atacama added, “When she sat on the throne, the curse contradicted itself and she lost her ‘forever’.”
Beth said, “I heard her whisper something when she sat down. Did you hear it too, Molly?”
Molly nodded.
“I think she was grateful to you.”
Molly sighed. “Did I kill her? Was that what happened? I didn’t mean to. I was just trying to save Beth.”
“But you shifted into a hare to do it,” said Beth. “You have to stop shapeshifting.”
“Don’t nag her,” said Innes. “She saved your life.”
“She saved the balance of the helix too,” said Theo.
“We’re not finished yet,” said Atacama. “We need to free the curse-casters.”
“And we need to find someone to look after the baby,” said Beth.
They looked at the Promise Keeper, lying quietly on the golden cushion, gazing at the ceiling.
“Where are her mum and dad?” asked Beth.
“She doesn’t have parents,” said Theo. “Like you were born from a tree, she was born from the earth. She needs a guardian, though ideally not another power-crazed ancient warrior. Who can care for her?” He looked round them all.
Innes laughed. “Don’t look at me. I don’t do babies.”
Atacama said, “I only do kittens, and even then, just the fun tail-chasing bits, not litter-tray training.”
“I’m better with buds and leaves,” said Beth.
Molly said, “Theo, you know lots about the Keeper’s Hall and you want to find out more. Why don’t you stay here, while the baby grows up?”
“No, I’m too powerful.”
Innes snorted. “Show off.”
“When my hair grows and I can store power again, I’ll be back to full strength. If I stayed here, I’d probably unbalance the helix again.”
Molly sighed. “I’m back at school soon, so I can’t babysit either. But we can’t leave her here on her own.” She walked over, picked the baby up and gave her a cuddle. “Once we’ve got everyone out of the Hall, we’ll find a safer childminder.”
They left the throne room, Molly carrying the baby. She was heavier and harder than Molly had expected, more like a porcelain doll than a cuddly toy. But she wriggled happily in Molly’s arms.
Innes marched out of the nearest archway, into the courtyard.
The mermaid cooed, “Ooh, my charming water-horse, do feed me more olives…”
“They weren’t olives.” He raised his voice, “Nothing on these tables is what it seems.”
Everyone in the courtyard turned to look at him.
“You haven’t been eating olives or grapes or sushi or chocolate. You haven’t been eating your favourite things. This is enchanted food, designed to keep you quiet and passive. And the curse-hatched didn’t bother to enchant expensive food for you. This is what you’ve been eating.”
Innes yanked the white tablecloth off the nearest table.
He wasn’t attempting a magic trick. He didn’t leave all the crockery sitting neatly on the table. Bowls, plates and glasses crashed to the floor and their contents spilled out. As Innes walked round the courtyard, dragging more tablecloths off, the food transformed into:
slugs
gravel
twigs
spiders
mud
brussel sprouts
Innes called out, “You weren’t invited here as a reward, or for your safety. You were brought here to increase the crows’ strength by being too dozy to lift your curses. You’ve been prisoners, fed on rubbish. Now it’s time to go home.”
Most of the guests were yawning and looking around in surprise. Some were spitting out food.
The mermaid said, “What horrid crows. What nasty food. I want to go back to my seabed now. Who will carry me?”
“How can we get them out?” said Beth. “We don’t know where the door will appear next.”
Atacama pointed at the other side of the courtyard. “Is that it?”
Molly looked at the newly appeared door. “The carvings and pillars fit on that wall, like a jigsaw piece in the right place. But will it stay there long enough for us to get everyone out?”
Theo nodded. “That must be the door’s original place. Nan’s magic kept it moving, to deny the guests a way out. But now she’s d—” he glanced at Molly. “Now she’s gone, the door has settled back into its proper place.”
Innes yelled, “Right everyone. Up and out. Back to real food and your own lives!”
Most of the guests stood up and stretched.
Beth strode across the courtyard and flung the door open. Molly followed and stood beside the doorway, with the Promise Keeper in her arms. The baby made bubbly noises and waved as the guests left.
The giant ducked under the lintel with the mermaid in his arms.
“Careful!” she screeched. “Don’t drop me!”
Beth said to each guest as they left, “If you’re grateful to us for releasing you, please lift the curse you cast.”
The boy with the deer’s legs nodded. “I
will lift my curse. It was cast in a moment of anger and I’ve regretted it ever since.”
But several other guests shrugged or scowled as they left.
The last guest to leave was Mr Crottel, with two yawning dogs at his heels. Beth moved to stand in his way, joined suddenly by Theo, Innes and Atacama. Molly stepped back, embarrassed to see them all confront her curse-caster for her.
Beth said, “We’ve released you from this prison. In return, you must release our friend Molly Drummond from her curse.”
Mr Crottel picked his teeth with his long yellow pinkie nail. “I liked it here. My dogs were happy, I was happy. The food tasted fine. I owe you resentment, not gratitude, for forcing me out of a free feast I was enjoying. And I won’t lift her curse. She deserved it. I won’t lift it and you can’t make me. Let me past.”
No one moved.
“What about the changes to my curse?” asked Molly. “How did that happen?”
Mr Crottel grinned. “The crows wanted revenge on someone for Corbie’s clipped wing, and you were the only one still cursed. They promised me an endless feast, if I’d adjust your curse to make it more… inconvenient. So in this Hall filled with curse-casters, I found enough dark magical energy to adjust the rules and make it harder for you to shift back.”
He pulled the thorny black rose from his lapel. “But the adjustments won’t hold, now the dark-magic users have dispersed.” The black rose was wilting in his fingers. “What a shame.”
Molly thought of all the dangers her friends had faced to give her this one chance to confront her curse-caster. And she stepped out in front of Mr Crottel.
“Lift the whole curse,” she demanded. “This wasn’t a party, it was a prison. It wasn’t a feast, it was mud and spiders. We’ve freed you, so you have to free me.”
“No, I don’t have to do anything. It’s a perfectly good curse. The adjustments were fun while they lasted…” he watched black petals drift to the ground, “…but the basic curse is yours for ever! It’s not wise for a dark-magic user to lift a curse, it makes us look weak. If your friends don’t let me past, or if you keep nagging me to lift the curse, I will search for enough power to make your curse worse again, now I’ve been shown how. So, out of my way!”
He barged between Theo and Innes, and led his dogs down the mosaic corridor.
Molly sighed. “He’s not grateful. So I’ll be cursed forever.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Molly watched Mr Crottel slouch along the corridor and heard him snap at the mosaic men to move out of his way.
She looked down at the withered black petals. “Does that mean my curse is back to normal and I’ll become a girl again when I cross ordinary boundaries as well as magical ones?”
“You can’t check here,” said Theo. “There are no human boundaries in the Hall. We can experiment when we get out.”
“We’re not going to experiment on Molly!” said Beth.
“Not yet, anyway,” said Innes. “We have to find the keys to free Mrs Sharpe. Let’s search the rooms.”
They split up: Beth and Atacama going through one archway; Molly, Innes and Theo taking another.
“Anyone else want to carry the baby?” asked Molly. “She’s a bit heavy.”
Theo and Innes acted like they hadn’t heard, and the baby smiled up at her. So she snuggled the baby more comfortably in her arms, and followed them into the first room.
It was a kitchen, filled with piles of rotting muddy food. They looked along the shelves and checked the drawers, but they didn’t find any keys.
Further along the corridor, they checked a cupboard full of tablecloths, a smelly toilet with lots of different-sized cubicles, and the Chamber of Promises. Then they opened the playroom door.
As Innes and Theo started looking through the toys, Molly put the baby in her cot and searched drawers of towels and blankets, many of them embroidered with stars and the name Estelle.
Then she realised Theo was standing still, staring at something.
“Have you found them?”
“What?”
“Have you found the keys?”
Theo shook his head. He was staring at the shelf of dolls.
“Keep searching,” said Innes. “Or can’t toads keep up with horses and hares?”
Theo didn’t answer.
Molly walked over to him. “What is it?”
“She kept it. The old fool kept it. I could have reclaimed it the first time we were here!”
“What did she keep?”
Theo reached up to the most beautiful doll on the shelf. A dark-skinned black-eyed many-armed doll in a bright red sari, with a thick black plait hanging over her shoulder.
He tugged the plait and it fell into his hand. It wasn’t part of the doll; it had just been wrapped round the toy’s neck.
“This is my plait. She didn’t burn it. She didn’t destroy all the power I’d gathered and stored!” He grinned at Molly. “I wish I’d had this when we met the grey men and the nuckelavee, and when we confronted Nan in the throne room.”
Innes said, “You managed fine with the grey men and the nuckelavee. And Molly dealt with Nan in the throne room.”
Theo let the plait hang down from his hand. It almost reached the floor.
“Didn’t you ever cut your hair?” asked Molly.
He shook his head. “This is a dozen years’ worth of power. I won’t let it go again.” He coiled it up and put it in his pocket.
“I don’t think the keys are in here,” said Innes, looking round the cluttered room. “We can search more thoroughly later, if we don’t find them anywhere else.”
Molly picked up the baby and they tried the next room. It looked like a staffroom for the curse-hatched guards, with tables, chairs, wooden perches, a few black feathers and a bunch of rusty keys hanging from a nail.
They ran outside and Innes yelled, “We’ve got the keys!”
Beth and Atacama emerged from an archway. As they all headed towards the tallest tower, Molly shifted the baby from one arm to the other. “She’s getting heavier…”
They entered the room with the round cages.
Mrs Sharpe peered through the bars. “Young sphinx, you’re injured.”
“Just scratches,” he said. “And it was worth it to drive the crows out of the Hall.”
A golden lizard in a nearby cage snapped, “Are you going to let us out?”
Innes unlocked the round cages. Most of the prisoners – two-legged, four-legged, six-legged and eight-legged – rushed out, then grew or shrank or changed shape or flicked fire from their fingers.
Mrs Sharpe simply stretched. “It’s nice to be out of that circle. It was cramping my style.”
She walked over to Molly. “Have you been left holding the baby?”
Molly looked down. The Promise Keeper was asleep in her arms. “She’s quite sweet really. Nan was keeping her artificially young, burning her back to a newborn every night.”
“Poor wee thing.” Mrs Sharpe took the baby from Molly and stroked her white cheek.
“She has no one to look after her now,” said Molly. “Would you stay and take care of her, Mrs Sharpe?”
“Me? I have crops to plant! I can’t stay at the Keeper’s Hall for years while this one grows up.”
Theo said, “Her natural growth has been held back for centuries, so she’ll probably grow to adulthood in a few months. She just needs someone with wisdom and kindness to guide her while she learns her role and while the helix regains its balance.”
Mrs Sharpe laid her hand on the baby’s bouncy gold curls. She smiled. “I suppose her naptime would give me peace and quiet to try a few new knitting patterns. And she looks like a lovely little girl. I’ll stay for a while, but not past springtime.”
Theo said, “Thank you. Now, we must shut the crowgate, so the Keeper can’t be influenced by the curse-hatched crows again while she’s still so young.”
Innes and Beth were showing the final prisoners out of the arched door
, Beth making her usual request that they lift the curses they’d cast. Theo and Atacama strolled over to join them.
Molly said, “Mrs Sharpe, can I ask you a quick question about my curse?”
“Of course, my dear.”
“It’s convenient sometimes, changing into a hare. But Beth thinks the dark magic is rotting my inner core. So, am I damaging myself or making myself a bad person, by choosing to shift and even enjoying it?”
Mrs Sharpe looked up from the sleeping baby. “Dryads are suspicious of any magic that isn’t nature magic. They call almost everything else dark magic. But whether magic is good or bad isn’t about where the magic comes from, it’s about what you do with it. If you can find joy in a curse or, even better, use the curse to help people, then you’re turning dark magic to light. That’s not harming you. Becoming a hare unexpectedly isn’t safe if you meet a fox or a hound or a hunter with a gun. But the shift itself isn’t doing you any damage at all.”
Molly grinned. Then she wondered whether Mrs Sharpe could explain the bright light she’d seen in her left hand, in the throne room. “What would it mean if a revealing spell—?”
But she heard her friends walking back across the courtyard. Theo was saying, “If Molly saw them fly into this tower earlier, the crowgate’s inner door must be at the top.”
So she just smiled at Mrs Sharpe and said, “Never mind. Thanks!” and ran to join her teammates.
They climbed the winding stairs to a round dusty room at top of the tower.
The empty room had just one window: a huge horizontal slit, like a letterbox, curving around the wall of the tower. There were massive metal shutters open at either side of the window, with complex hinges holding them to the wall, and heavy latches and chains to secure them.
Beth said, “It’s wide enough to let a dozen birds in at once.”
“It’s the same shape as the crowgate back in Speyside,” said Theo. “So let’s close it.”
“Wait,” said Atacama. “They haven’t all left.” The sphinx was staring at the rafters of the tower’s pointed roof.
A black shape plummeted towards him, aiming for his eyes.
Atacama slashed out with his claws and the crow swerved away. It perched above the window on a wide ledge, which was white with crusty bird droppings on top of smooth marble.
