Floods 3

by Colin Thompson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  The Floods 3: Home & Away

  ePub ISBN 9781864715712

  Kindle ISBN 9781864717006

  This work is fictitious. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Random House Australia 2006

  Copyright © Colin Thompson 2006

  www.colinthompson.com

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at

  www.randomhouse.com.au/offices

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Thompson, Colin (Colin Edward).

  Home and Away.

  For primary school children.

  ISBN 978 1 74166 032 6.

  ISBN 1 74166 032 7.

  I. Title. (Series: Thompson, Colin (Colin Edward) The Floods; 3).

  A823.3

  Illustrations by Colin Thompson

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Imprint Page

  The Floods’ Family Tree

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1 Transylvania Waters

  2 The Drains

  3 The Dark Forest

  4 Meanwhile…

  5 The Valley of the Sages

  6 It’s a Boy

  7 The Hearse Whisperer

  8 Run For It

  9 China

  10 Sail Away

  11 Stormy Seas

  12 Tristan da Cunha

  13 Far Off Lands

  14 Dry Land

  15 13 Acacia Avenue

  Epilogue

  Footnotes

  The Floods 1 & 2

  The Floods 4: Survivor

  The Floods 5: Prime Suspect

  thefloods.com.au

  How To Live Forever

  who was born on 7 January 2006,

  but is actually 287 years old.

  If you haven’t read the first two Floods books, you probably don’t know that the Floods are a family of witches and wizards who live at numbers 11 and 13 Acacia Avenue – an ordinary street in an ordinary town, just the sort of place you or I might live.1 (The little number you can see at the end of the previous sentence refers to a footnote at the bottom of this page. It does not mean there is something written on your foot.)

  You can read all about Acacia Avenue and how the Floods came to own two houses and get rid of the neighbours from hell in the first Floods book, Neighbours.

  Nerlin and Mordonna Flood have seven children. The eldest, Valla, has left school and is the manager of the local blood bank, a job he got by draining the blood out of the previous manager and all the other applicants who applied to replace him.

  The next five Flood children go to a wonderful school for witches and wizards in Patagonia called Quicklime College. You can read all about this school – which makes Hogwarts look like a really boring TAFE – in the second Floods book, Playschool.

  Betty, the youngest of the Floods, goes to an ordinary school a few streets away, and you’ll be able to read about Sunnyview Primary School and Betty’s nerdy new friend, Ffiona, in the next Floods book, Survivor.

  Nerlin and Mordonna have not always lived in Acacia Avenue. They both come from a land far, far away, a dark secretive country hidden in unmapped mountains and deep gloomy valleys between Transylvania and the endless pine forests of deepest Russia. You won’t find it on a map, because any map-makers who have ventured into this land over the centuries have been turned into garden gnomes. This is not a place anyone ever visits for a holiday. In fact, it is the only country in the world without a tourist board.

  The country where Mordonna and Nerlin were born is called Transylvania Waters. The witches, wizards, gremlins, zombies, corpses and other creatures of the night who live, or half-live, in Transylvania Waters are terrible snobs.2 They are always showing off with things like turbo broomsticks and Versace magic wands covered in black sapphires. They are forever boasting how their skin is the whitest and their baby smells as if it has been dead longer than anyone else’s. Nearly everyone in Transylvania Waters is like this, except the Dirt People.

  Although they are wizards too, the Dirt People spend their entire lives underground, cleaning the lavatories from below and burrowing up into coffins to nibble all the meat off the fresh corpses so their bones are sparkling white. The Dirt People are treated terribly. If an above-ground creature is feeling angry or mean – which they are most of the time, especially when they find their neighbour has skin that is two shades whiter than theirs – they pour boiling blood down the drain just to scald the Dirt People.

  The Dirt People were once the noblest witches and wizards who ever lived. In fact, the most famous wizard of all, Merlin, was himself one of the Dirt People. Exactly how they were reduced to living such terrible, oppressed lives is a long and complicated story involving international intrigue, huge amounts of gold, extremely white skin, badly fitting tights and a beige cockerel called Norman, a story that may well be revealed at a later date.

  Nerlin Flood was one of the Dirt People and a direct descendant of Merlin, but he knew little of his glorious ancestry. Until he was twelve, he never even saw the light of day, unless it was the weak glow reflected down the lavatory bowls above him. There were no teachers or school for the children of the Dirt People, who huddled together in damp tunnels and caves. Their only education was in the art of drain navigation and lavatory cleaning, so that when they began work at the age of twelve and someone shouted, ‘Grease and gristle blockage at 17 Goitre Street!’ they would know where to go and what hat to wear.

  This life had turned the Dirt People into a downtrodden, flushed-over race of beings who were too defeated to even feel depressed. They may have once ruled the world and had great magic at their fingertips, but an evil spell had been cast over them to make them forget. Even if it dawned on someone that there could possibly be a better life somewhere else, there was no escape. The manhole covers were bolted down and the outlets barred with heavy steel gratings.

  Sometimes the spirit of Nerlin’s ancestor, the legendary Merlin, spoke to Nerlin while he was asleep, but all Nerlin could hear was a faint crackling whisper and the occasional word like ‘Excalibur’ and ‘Belgium’. It was enough to make him realise there might be something else to life, somewhere else to live – somewhere that didn’t grow mould that tried to eat you, maybe a place where it was bright enough to not keep banging into things.

  ‘Now, now, son,’ said his father. ‘Thoughts like that only lead to unhappiness.’

  ‘I
thought that was where we lived already,’ said Nerlin.

  ‘Just accept life as it is, or you’ll end up like Uncle Knute.’

  No one would ever tell him how Uncle Knute had ended up, but Nerlin imagined it was not very nice as all that remained of his uncle was a pincushion made of his left buttock.

  So the years passed and Nerlin tried to stop thinking. He immersed himself in his work as a lavatory-from-beneath cleaner, which was not pleasant. Sometimes in the evenings he would go and sit by the big grating where all the drains flowed out over the sheer drop into Lake Tarnish. There he could dream to his heart’s content, at least for a few precious minutes, until the toxic chemicals that floated softly in the fumes made large pieces of his skin start falling off. Nerlin would then crawl away to his bed of mouldy paper and dream of what might lie beyond the yellow fumes. He knew so little that all he could imagine was more fumes, maybe in a different colour.

  And then, one wonderful day, when Nerlin was eighteen years old, everything changed. Something unheard-of happened, something so magical that it must have been fate.

  Mordonna was also eighteen, and was ravishingly beautiful. She was the most beautiful girl in the whole of Transylvania Waters, and to make it even more unfair on all the other girls in the country, she was also the heir to the throne, the eldest daughter of King Nombre-Sept-À-Quatorze.3 To make it triply unfair, she was staggeringly intelligent, a brilliant cook and had very, very, very white skin and extremely well-fitting tights.

  But Mordonna was a prisoner of her own wonderfulness, for this poor creature had spent her entire life in the castle. The tall walls that surrounded the castle gardens were a jail that she was never allowed to leave. Since no one would ever be good enough to be allowed to marry Mordonna, the King had all the gates locked except one, and that was guarded by two giant Cyclops, who were in no doubt what would happen to them if they let the princess leave. They would be granted the King’s favourite gift, the gift he liked to give to his enemies. They would go water-skiing on Lake Tarnish.4

  Throughout her childhood, Mordonna had spent many hours crouched at the foot of the castle wall, listening to the world outside. She could hear the hustle and bustle of the town, the talking and shouting and laughing. She could taste the air with its exciting smells as the common people lived their strange and fascinating lives. Even the birds that sometimes flew over the wall seemed brighter and happier than those that lived around the castle. Her heart overflowed with loneliness and misery.

  ‘I wish I could just be an ordinary person like everyone else,’ she would say to any of the servants who would listen.

  ‘Yeah right,’ they would reply, totally not believing a word of it.

  ‘Who does she think she is?’ they would say to each other later. ‘She has everything times ten that anyone could dream of and all she can do is moan about it.’

  Mordonna’s only happiness was her garden, where she grew every poisonous plant known to man, from deadly nightshade to the Destroying Angel mushroom.5 She fed them to her sister, Howler.

  Howler was everything Mordonna was not: stupid, ugly, the proud possessor of a spectacular lump, with three eyes, several green teeth and a map of Belgium tattooed on her left leg. Howler also wore the baggiest tights in the whole of Transylvania Waters, and in the baggiest bit round the ankles she kept her pet leech, Queasymodo, and several families of slugs in case she felt a bit peckish between meals. It was impossible to tell if she was older or younger than Mordonna – especially as she spent most of her life in a cellar full of warty toads where, at least, no one thought she was ugly. In fact, it was hard to imagine the two sisters were even related apart from the beautiful eyelashes they both shared, though Mordonna’s only grew on her eyelids.

  ‘Couldn’t you do some magic and make me beautiful like you?’ Howler begged Mordonna.

  ‘I don’t think there’s a spell that would be powerful enough,’ Mordonna replied.

  She felt sorry for Howler and did try. She experimented on one of the warty toads, but it ended up worse rather than better. The sight of her creation – a 25-kilogram purple warty toad that croaked in Belgian and wore tights that were so baggy it couldn’t hop more that a few centimetres without tangling itself up in a knot – made Mordonna too scared to have another go.

  ‘At least you have your freedom,’ she said to Howler. This is because the King, realising Howler’s chances of finding true or even false love were almost nil, did not keep her confined to the castle grounds. In fact, he encouraged her to go out as often as possible in the hope that someone or something would come along and take her off his hands. She usually ended up at the sewerage works, where she felt most at home.

  While he kept Mordonna a prisoner, King Quatorze sent secret agents around the world to find a prince worthy of Mordonna’s hand.

  ‘He must be incredibly handsome, incredibly intelligent and incredibly rich – and of course he has to be a prince,’ said the King. ‘That is all I ask. Go and find me a Prince Charming.’

  His agents searched high and low.

  ‘All right then,’ said the King as he tore up the last of the photos. ‘He must look fairly human, be not too stupid and seriously incredibly rich.’

  The King’s agents had another look.

  ‘Well,’ the King sighed as he tore up the new batch of photos, ‘just find someone staggeringly rich and still breathing and preferably with a chin and ears that don’t move in the wind.’

  Which, of course, ruled England out.

  ‘Daddy,’ said Mordonna, as she tore up the final four photos, ‘I will go water-skiing on Lake Tarnish in a blotting-paper bikini before I will marry any of them.’

  ‘But, my angel,’ pleaded the King, who had spent all the money in Transylvania Waters on cake and garden gnomes of himself, ‘I am only thinking of your happiness.’

  ‘And what makes you think my happiness is linked to your wallet?’ snapped Mordonna.

  ‘I am the King,’ roared the King. ‘That means everyone has do what I tell them, including you.’

  Mordonna went to her mother, Queen Scratchrot, to see if she could call the King off, but all the Queen could say was, ‘I’ve been telling him he’s off for years, dear. But you know what he’s like when he gets a bee in his bonnet.’

  ‘Then I shall have to escape,’ said Mordonna.

  ‘Yes, of course you shall, my dear,’ said her mother, and turned back to her cobweb weaving.

  On the day Mordonna had been born, a large vulture had flown in through the window and sat at the foot of the bed. Many people said that this was a fantastic omen that meant something really significant, but no one was sure what. The King’s personal soothsayer, Bloodlyss, muttered about signs of great portent and future massive importance, but wasn’t prepared to commit herself in case she was wrong. The King made her go water-skiing.

  Mordonna’s first word had not been ‘Mama’ or ‘Papa’ but ‘Leach’, which had become the vulture’s name.6 Leach followed Mordonna everywhere and over the years child and bird developed a strange telepathic relationship that could only exist between a staggeringly beautiful princess and a really ugly bird with a bald neck.

  Now, as Mordonna sat in her special place in the castle garden, hidden from the world under the giant rhubarb leaves, she poured her heart out, telepathically, to the wise old bird. Leach rose into the air and flew away. He criss-crossed every square metre of the palace ground and, as afternoon finally gave way to evening, he returned to his beloved mistress.

  ‘Follow me,’ he telepathed.7

  He led Mordonna to a scrubby patch of ground behind one of the sheds and began to peck at the earth with his beak. He grabbed the few lonely flowers in his claw and ripped them out of the ground.

  ‘Come on,’ he telepathed. ‘Dig.’

  ‘But I’ll get my hands dirty,’ Mordonna telepathed back.

  ‘Do you want to get out of here or not?’

  ‘What? You mean …? Wow,’ Mordonna whispered. She
began to dig too and, as she pulled on a particularly large, revoltingly orange marigold, the ground collapsed beneath her and she fell into a deep dark hole.

  At the bottom of the deep dark hole was a drain that young Nerlin was cleaning, and by an amazing but obviously pre-destined coincidence, Mordonna landed right on top of him.

  ‘What the …?’ Nerlin exclaimed, face-down in the sludge.

  ‘Who the …?’ cried Mordonna, jumping up.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but Nerlin had lifted himself out of the sludge and was wiping his face on his sleeve, and something in the young man’s eyes made her stop. A sparkle there went straight into a soft bit of Mordonna’s brain that, until this very moment, had been fast asleep. She knew she should be screaming because a filthy stinking drain was not a place a princess should be, but the light in Nerlin’s eyes held her entranced.

  She tried to speak, but no words would come out of her mouth, which surprised her because she knew thousands of them.

  ‘Who … err, err?’ she finally managed to say.

  Nerlin was also speechless. There was a sparkle in Mordonna’s eyes, too. She was the most incredibly beautiful creature Nerlin had ever seen, so beautiful that he thought she could not be a real person, but an angel that had fallen from heaven. Which she was, sort of, except angels don’t usually fall on top of you and fill your nose up with slime.

  After what seemed like an hour of staring at each other, they calmed down enough to talk.

  ‘Umm,’ said Nerlin.

  ‘Yes,’ Mordonna added.