Maddy West and the Tongue Taker

by Brian Falkner

  Straight ahead, Maddy could see another panel. On this side was a handle. She turned it cautiously and stayed very still for a moment, watching for any movement, listening for any sound. There was nothing. She edged out through the doorway. Kazuki followed, and the door clicked shut behind them.

  They had emerged under another set of stairs. Another cellar, but this was nothing like the last. The room was huge. It stretched out in front of them, a cavern under the earth. The only light came from a high, narrow window at the far end, letting in thin strips of daylight and air but not enough to remove the musty smell of the room.

  Along all the walls were shelves full of bottles and glass flasks with cork stoppers in them.

  In the center of the room, a pattern of stones on the old stone floor made a strange triangular design. In the middle was a metal cauldron about the size of a large cooking pot.

  They were in the witch’s lair.

  One thing looked out of place, though — a small dressing table with a mirror. On it were little pots and tubes of makeup, a hairbrush, and a long black wig on a stand.

  They walked out from under the stairs, and Maddy looked up at a large, heavy door, crisscrossed with metal bands.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”

  She began to climb up toward the door, hoping that it wouldn’t be locked.

  Halfway up the stairs, she stopped. Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door. Kazuki’s fingertips dug deeply into her arm.

  Then came the rattle of a key in the lock.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE LAIR

  SILENTLY, MADDY, KAZUKI and Mr. Chester hurried back down the staircase and ran underneath it. There was nowhere else to hide and no time to open the door to the tunnel. They crouched in the darkest corner of the space under the stairs and waited.

  They heard the big door open, and then shoes sounded on the steps above them. Dust trickled down, tiny dots of gold in the light from the high window. A pair of heavy brown shoes appeared in the gaps between the boards. Then the long brown dress. The smell of bitter chocolate wafted past. The witch walked to the center of the room. She was carrying a dark brown bag, which she placed on the floor by the cauldron. She looked around, then right at the stairs. Maddy shrank back as far as she could, and the witch’s eyes moved on without seeing them.

  The witch waved her hands in the air, and her fingertips sparkled. The sparkles seemed to reflect off the ceiling, but then Maddy realized that the ceiling was full of candles. There were hundreds of them hanging from huge chandeliers. As they watched, the sparks from the witch’s fingertips flew into the air, lighting the candles. Slowly, the room filled with a pale yellow glow.

  The witch twirled her ponytail around into a bun, and secured it with a long hairpin. She scratched absent-mindedly at the bald top of her head. She seemed to be waiting for something.

  After a moment, there were running footsteps at the top of the stairs. “They’re gone!” It was Anka’s voice.

  “Gone?”

  “The cellar is empty!” Pavla said.

  “Pavla didn’t lock the door properly,” Anka said.

  “Me? It was you who shut the door.”

  “It was you, you idiot.”

  “Stupid toad of a girl,” the witch said. “Go and look for them. Search everywhere.”

  The sisters disappeared, and the witch was quiet, thinking. She took some papers from the brown bag and consulted them. Maddy didn’t have to see them to know what they were. It was the translations. The spells!

  The witch began to mutter again, more low, dark sounds, and then sparks flew from her fingertips, brighter than before. A few moments later, there was a scraping sound from the high window, and a huge black crow was perched on the windowsill. It was joined by another, then another. The witch murmured some words to the crows, and they flew off together.

  Maddy watched, horrified. Now the witch was casting another spell, and a strange rustling, scratching noise sounded above them. It got louder and louder until it was right overhead. Then a shadow blotted out the light.

  Maddy and Kazuki held each other as a dark shape flowed down the stairs in front of them. Maddy’s mind could not comprehend the black, shapeless mass that slithered above. What vile creature could this be? What evil had the witch summoned from the depths of the underworld?

  The scratching, scrabbling noise was much louder now, and as Maddy watched, a cockroach dropped between the gap in the stair treads onto the box in front of her. Then another. Now hundreds of them were dropping down and running toward the center of the floor.

  Mr. Chester was gripping her hair so tightly that he was hurting her. He was terrified, too.

  That’s what the noise was. Cockroaches. A river of them. Thousands of the creatures crawling down the stairs above her head. Maddy hadn’t known there were so many cockroaches in all of existence, let alone all in one place.

  Floating along on the cockroaches was a silent, motionless shape. It was only when it reached the cauldron that she saw what it was.

  Dimitar!

  For a moment, she could see his face, and it was full of fury. He struggled a couple of times against his bonds, but the thick mat of spider webbing held firmly.

  The cockroach army stopped. A wave of black bugs rippled out from underneath Dimitar’s body, and within a few minutes, all of the cockroaches had disappeared into cracks in the walls and the floor. Dimitar lay in the middle of the cold, hard stone floor and glared at the witch with an expression that would have scared his wrestling opponents right out of the ring. But the witch seemed unconcerned.

  “I was going to test one of the spells on the children,” the witch said. “But you’ll do much better.” Dimitar writhed and twisted, his face red as he strained to break the bonds that held him.

  “When I get my hands on you . . .” he muttered.

  The witch just laughed a low-pitched cackle.

  Pavla and Anka returned, shaking their heads.

  “They’re nowhere in the house,” Anka said. “We’ve looked everywhere.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the witch said. “The only place they can run to is the forest, and they won’t get far. I have asked the wild beasts to take care of them.”

  She leafed slowly through the pages of spells, a smirk coming over her face at some of them.

  “Eeeny, meeny, miny, moe,” she said. “Catch a giant by the toe.”

  She selected one of the spells and seemed pleased with her choice.

  “Pavla, find me some bat droppings,” the witch said. “Third shelf on the right.”

  Pavla scanned the glass jars and bottles on the shelf until she found it: a small ceramic urn with a cork stopper. She handed it to the witch, who carefully measured out a small amount and put it in the cauldron.

  “Sulfur,” the witch said, pointing toward one of the shelves.

  Anka went to find it.

  The witch carefully tapped a few grains into the mixture. The smell of rotten eggs began to waft around the room. She added a few more grains, then again, checking the paper like a recipe until she was satisfied with whatever it was she was doing. Then she picked up a small bowl from a shelf on the far side of the room.

  She called the girls over. “Put on your runestones,” the witch said. “I don’t want you two catching this spell.”

  Pavla and Anka each took a small, round, smooth pebble from the bowl. The pebbles seemed to glow softly under the light of the candles, and Maddy could see strange markings on them. The stones were attached to thin loops of thread.

  The witch did not wear one. Maybe she didn’t need to, Maddy thought, as she was the person casting the spell.

  Once the girls had placed the runestones around their necks, the witch used the ladle to take a sample of the mixture and pour it into a glass flask. She swirl
ed it around in the flask, sniffed at it, then held it up and looked at the color. How she could see properly in this dim yellow light, Maddy had no idea.

  The witch opened a large brown bag that had been sitting on the floor by her feet. She took out a thin glass tube with a cork in the end of it. There was something small, black, and rubbery in the bottom of the tube. Setting the tube down on a small stand, she carefully took out the cork.

  A strange sense of darkness invaded the room and, in her mind, although not with her ears, Maddy could hear a distant roaring sound.

  Next the witch took a small wooden stick and dipped it in the flask. It emerged, dripping with the vile-looking liquid. She approached Dimitar and motioned the girls to back away.

  “Your runestones should protect you but just in case, try not to breathe in any of the smoke,” she said.

  She snapped her fingers, and a flame appeared between them, which she used to set fire to the end of the small stick. As soon as it was flaming, she blew it out. A thin wisp of yellow-colored smoke drifted from the end of it.

  She waved the stick under Dimitar’s nose and began to chant ancient words — terrible words. Words that Maddy had translated from the parchment scrolls.

  It took only a few moments before Maddy recognized the spell. It was the spell of tongue taking! She was going to steal Dimitar’s tongue. Not his real tongue, Maddy knew, but his language, his words, his ability to talk. She usually didn’t sweat very much, but now she felt a cold sweat break out around the back of her neck and under her arms.

  The smoke wafted toward Dimitar. Although she was quite a long way from the witch, Maddy instinctively covered her nose.

  Dimitar shut his mouth tightly and narrowed his nostrils. He was holding his breath, trying not to breathe in the smoke. But the witch waited, and the smoke continued to drift.

  After a few minutes, Dimitar could hold his breath no longer. His face turned red and his eyes bulged out, until he gulped in a huge breath of air and with it, the smoke from the glowing stick.

  When he breathed out, the smoke came out too, but it had changed. It was no longer a thin, semitransparent wisp of smoke. Now it seemed thick and lumpy, like bad yogurt.

  The smoke swirled toward the small glass tube, settling into a low, dense cloud on the bottom, barely covering the black object. Maddy knew now what that object was: a tiny piece of dragon’s tongue.

  “Did it work?” Anka asked breathlessly.

  “Why don’t you ask him?” the Chocolate Witch said, putting the cork back on the glass tube and swirling the pale smoke around inside it. It rose up inside the tube but quickly settled back down to a low cloud on the bottom.

  “Go on, say something, tough guy,” Anka said, walking up and kicking Dimitar in the leg.

  “Aaarrgha, ooorgha, grumph,” Dimitar said, and his face strained with the effort. He tried again. “Oooorrrgh. Aarrrgh. Draaak.” He tried a few more times to talk, but he no longer seemed to be able to make words.

  The witch said, “You can babble all you like and nobody will understand you. Nor you them!” She clapped her hands together, threw her head back, and cackled.

  “Is it permanent?” Anka asked. She picked up the glass tube and twirled it around, watching the lumpy smoke form into a small whirlpool inside.

  “The tongue will seek out its owner if it escapes from the glass,” the witch said. “As long as it escapes the same day it was taken.”

  “The same day?” Pavla asked.

  “The same day,” the witch said. “A tongue cannot survive long without its owner. Once the clock strikes midnight, it will turn to dust.”

  “Uuuurrrrgha!” Dimitar said.

  “He sounds like a baby.” Anka laughed and circled the horizontal giant. “Just a little bubby boy. How cute.”

  Dimitar looked anything but cute.

  “Now I must go and talk to the police again. If I don’t show up, they will start to get suspicious.”

  Maddy mouthed to Kazuki, “Talk to the police?”

  Why did the witch want to talk to the police? Were they in on it, too?

  “While I am gone, I want you to find those children,” the witch said. “Search everywhere. They can’t have gone far. They may even be hiding somewhere in the house.”

  As she said that, her gaze flitted around the room, passing once again right over the stairs where Maddy and Kazuki crouched in the gloom. The witch’s green eye burned. Maddy felt it cast an evil light right into the depths of the shadows in which they were hiding, but if she saw them, she said and did nothing.

  The two girls disappeared upstairs.

  The witch moved over to the small dressing table and sat down. She picked up a brush, dabbled it in a small pot, and started to apply it to her face.

  Then something extraordinary happened. Her face began to soften, almost as if it was about to melt. Whatever the makeup was, it was no ordinary makeup. Her face became spongy and rubbery, like modeling clay. Her fingers flitted over her face, pulling a little bit this way, pushing a bit that way, reshaping her nose, the curve of her mouth, the set of her eyes. She kept her eyes on the mirror, checking what she was doing.

  She put on a long black wig and brushed it.

  Then some more makeup . . . normal makeup this time. Blush and lipstick.

  The witch stood and walked toward the stairs. Maddy shrank backward.

  The transformation was startling. It was no longer the witch who was walking toward her. It was someone else entirely. Someone whom Maddy knew all too well.

  The thin, bony nose was gone, as were the mismatched eyes; they were now an even hazel color. The pale skin was radiant and youthful. Her teeth were perfectly even and white, like the keys of a piano.

  The witch stepped lightly over Maddy’s head.

  “I don’t believe it!” Maddy hissed to Kazuki in the faintest of whispers as soon as the door at the top of the stairs closed. But she did believe it because she had seen it with her own eyes.

  Now she knew why the witch had to talk to the police. She had to keep up appearances. Professor Coateloch would be doing everything she could to help the police with their search.

  But some magic makeup, a long black wig, and a change of clothes, and it wasn’t the witch who had walked up the stairs above their heads. It was Professor Coateloch.

  Professor Coateloch was the witch.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ESCAPE

  WHEN THE WITCH had gone, and with no sounds from the stairs to indicate that she or the two girls were coming back, Maddy and Kazuki ventured out from their hiding place.

  They ran over to Dimitar, who was lying like an Egyptian mummy in swathes of spider webbing. His eyes opened wide at the sight of them and Mr. Chester, who was still perched on Maddy’s shoulder.

  “Urgle, urgle, unk!” he said.

  Mr. Chester jumped up and down and chirped at the giant.

  “Are you okay?” Maddy asked.

  Dimitar just stared at her. He strained against the bindings, but the thick, matted fabric cocooned him tightly, and even his great strength could do nothing.

  “Did the witch steal his tongue?” Kazuki asked, horrified.

  “Not his actual tongue,” Maddy explained. “Tongue means language. She stole his language.”

  Mr. Chester shook his head, as if in disgust.

  “That horrible old witch planned this all along,” said Maddy. “But when my parents asked for me to be sent home, that messed everything up, so she kidnapped me instead and stole the scrolls from the monastery.”

  “What do we do now?” Kazuki asked.

  “Find something sharp and cut these webs off him,” Maddy said. Maddy and Kazuki hunted around the witch’s lair, but they could find nothing sharp enough to cut the spiderwebs.

  “We have to get out of here before she comes back,” Kaz
uki said.

  “Where? We can’t go into the forest,” Maddy said. “The witch has called the wild animals to look for us.”

  Kazuki looked even more terrified than before.

  Mr. Chester began rubbing Maddy’s head.

  “Not now,” she said a little irritably, shaking her head.

  Mr. Chester perched on her shoulder, put both arms around her neck, and touched his lips to her cheek. A little monkey kiss.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Chester,” Maddy said. “I’m just frightened, that’s all.”

  He chirped, as if to say, “That’s okay.”

  “So what do we do?” Kazuki asked again.

  Maddy looked at the thick mat of spiderwebs and didn’t want to touch it, but when she did, to her surprise, it was not sticky at all. She remembered learning at school that spiderwebs are only sticky on one side.

  She pulled at the strands with her bare hands, but the web was too thick and matted.

  “It’s a shame you don’t have a ninja sword,” she said to Kazuki, thinking of the fierce men with long swords in the posters on his bedroom wall.

  She could see him thinking about that, then he turned and walked over to the shelf of jars and pots. He found a jar that was mostly empty and, before Maddy could say or do anything, he dropped it on the floor.

  The crash reverberated around the room, an explosion of sound, and Maddy was sure they must have heard it upstairs. She held her breath, but nobody came to look.

  Kazuki picked up the largest piece of glass, which included the unbroken top of the jar. The bottom was a jagged edge, like a knife.

  “Quickly!” Maddy said.

  Kazuki pressed the broken edge against the webs between Dimitar’s legs and sawed back and forth. A small hole appeared. He pressed the point of the glass down into the hole and sawed some more. It was very hard work. The webs were sticky underneath and clung to the glass.

  After a few minutes, Maddy took over and cut away as best she could, but it was taking too long. With all their hard work, they had only managed to make a cut in the webbing from just below his knees down to his feet.