The Dead World of Lanthorne Ghules
Page 19
“A good thing the back door was open,” said Trunke.
“You should have seen the speed with which it flew out the door. Gone in a flash, like a…”
“Like a missile,” said Edwin. He didn’t want a spell that turned him or Mandoline into missiles.
“We need to sit round a table,” said Trunke. “Come into the kitchen.”
More backwards and forwards, thought Edwin. This had better be the last time.
He picked up Mandoline’s basket, and he and Lanthorne followed Nanna Bowle and Trunke out of the room.
Both boys were taken aback by the odd smell when they entered the kitchen. It was metallic, with a hint of strawberries.
So that’s the smell of magic, Edwin thought. He wondered whether he would ever come across it again.
Nanna Bowle drew the curtains and made them sit in particular places at the table, which she had already prepared. Edwin had to sit facing the window, because he wanted to move into a world of greater light, and Trunke was made to sit opposite him with his back to the window, because he was the most rooted in his own world. Mandoline’s basket was on the floor a few feet from Edwin, near enough for him to take hold of it if he needed to, and far enough away so that nobody tripped over it.
“Lanthorne and I are halfway houses,” Nanna Bowle said. “Free spirits, or whatever else you want to call us, so we sit at the sides.”
She pointed to four small dishes she had placed on the table. “We have something to stand for each of the elements. That’s earth. Trunke took it from the garden. Water from the tap, and the candle represents fire. All we need is air. Trunke, dear, could you put a coal from the fire in that empty dish? The smoke will do for air.”
As Nanna Bowle was pointing across the table and giving her commentary, Edwin’s chest began to rise and fall very quickly. Nanna Bowle took no notice, but Lanthorne was alarmed. Try as he might, Edwin couldn’t banish the picture of the snarghe spinning round in the air like a catherine wheel, a catherine wheel that turned into a rocket. The giggles burst out of him as if they had a life of their own. He had only laughed like this once before, when he broke his arm and the doctor was about to set it. All through the stabs of pain and the tears, he had shrieked with hysterical laughter, and then he’d passed out in a dead faint.
“I know how you feel,” said Nanna Bowle. “Magic used to get me like that, only with me it was uncontrollable hiccups. Now we need something from each of our worlds. A piece of bread from our world will do the trick nicely. Trunke, could you oblige, please? Everybody here uses bread to mop up their gravy, don’t they?”
Edwin wondered what exactly she meant by “gravy”. Certainly not the hot, recently cooked kind.
“We also need something from your Shiner world, Edwin. I don’t expect you’d let me put your sister on the table?”
Edwin definitely wouldn’t let her do that. He was only asking for a door to be opened for a moment. There was no way he was going to run the risk of Mandoline going up in flames or disappearing or taking off. He intercepted an unhappy look from Lanthorne, who was obviously thinking that he might have to forfeit the penknife or the lighter. Edwin gave a little shake of his head.
“I haven’t got anything of my own in my pockets,” he said. “But I do have a watch, a horlogge. Trunke’s been keeping it safe for me.” He looked hard at Trunke, who gave the most convincing I don’t know what you can possibly be talking about look Edwin had ever seen.
“Come along, Trunkie,” said Nanna Bowle. “You can have your horlogge back in a few minutes. Unless we all explode.”
Trunke reluctantly took the watch off his wrist and laid it on the table, about six inches away from himself.
“I’d move it a bit further away, just to be on the safe side,” his grandmother told him.
Mandoline lay quietly in her basket all this time. Edwin nodded to himself and bent down and lifted her up. He wrapped the blankets tightly round her, making sure that the squeaky mouse was inside. Then he sat back down in his place, with Mandoline cradled on his lap. If anything good or bad happened, it would be better if it happened to them both and at the same time.
Nanna Bowle now began to work her spell. Her voice changed. It became deeper and echoey, and Edwin couldn’t catch her exact words. They might not even have been in English.
Each wave of Nanna Bowle’s hands and each intoned sentence changed the atmosphere in the kitchen a little more. The temperature dropped, and the light from the candle and the thread of smoke from the coal dish began to waver. Edwin could hear Lanthorne’s teeth chattering. Something strange was definitely going on.
He held Mandoline more tightly against him, making her fidget because the new position was uncomfortable. Please let a door burst open and bright light pour through it, he wished. If that happened, he would be on his feet in an instant. He pushed his chair away from the table and raised himself six inches from the seat. No Olympic athlete could ever have started a race as fast as Edwin was determined to move towards the door when it opened.
Nanna Bowle clapped her hands and made them all jump. The candle flame went out and the smouldering coal on the plate flew across the room, barely missing Lanthorne’s head. His squeal was drowned out by the sound of every door in the house bursting open and slamming shut as if closed by someone who was very angry.
In the silence that followed, everyone visibly sagged, hardly daring to breathe.
Is that it? Edwin thought. “Is there a door now?” he asked. He wasn’t aware of one.
“Not right away, dear, but I might have set something in motion. Everyone, take a deep breath and put your hands flat on the table to ground yourselves.”
Lanthorne’s hands were shaking so much he couldn’t stop them from slapping the table. Edwin relaxed his hold on Mandoline. So they weren’t going home just yet.
Nanna Bowle stood up and handed Edwin’s watch back to Trunke, who made a great show of refastening it on his wrist, avoiding Edwin’s disappointed gaze. He wouldn’t be giving it up again.
When the doors had slammed, Edwin was sure he’d heard screams mixed in with all the crashing. As Nanna Bowle drew back the curtains, they saw who was responsible for uttering them. Four faces were pressed against the glass, wide-eyed, panicky faces. Two of them were Auntie Necra and Swarme, but the others were strangers.
Edwin clutched Mandoline tightly again.
Nanna Bowle craned her neck to get a better view outside. “The snarghe won’t let them move away,” she said.
“Who are those other mad-looking people?” Edwin asked nervously.
“It’s my mum and dad!” Lanthorne shouted with delight.
He rushed out of the kitchen and ordered the snarghe to release its prisoners. They scrambled into the safety of the kitchen and were disappointed and annoyed when Lanthorne allowed the snarghe to join them. It immediately herded Auntie Necra and Swarme into the furthest corner of the room and squatted in front of them to make sure they didn’t move an inch. Auntie Necra had a normal boot on her left foot, but the boot on her right foot was huge and misshapen. Ends of rag hung over the top of it, and Edwin suspected that her damaged toes were now wrapped in the universe’s grubbiest bandages.
Swarme got as far as saying “Mum…”, but a yelp from each of the snarghe’s heads silenced him at once.
Lanthorne hugged his parents and seemed not to care or not to have heard when Edwin said they were “mad-looking”. Mad-looking they certainly were, their grey, pinched faces rising not quite vertically from the enormous coats they had both put on against the cold. Their hair was the wildest Edwin had yet seen but there was a kindness in their faces which made a change from almost everyone else Edwin had met in this world.
Nobody could be bothered to move out of the crowded kitchen and into the main room, because there was so much to say and so much catching up to do. Edwin felt ignored. Lanthorne’s parents looked at him and Mandoline briefly, because they had never seen Shiners before, but they were really
only interested in their two sons.
It appeared that Jugge had received Edwin’s note sent via the chimney in the inne, and he had passed its contents on to Mr and Mrs Ghules. They had hired a hansomme so they could travel up to Morting to sort out Auntie Necra “not before time”. Jugge had refused to come along with them.
Nanna Bowle set about preparing drinks, while Lanthorne’s parents had their say. Because these were guests from Landarn, she produced cups of lukewarm tea with a suspicious scum on top which suggested it was even more ancient than the days-old brew Edwin had been drinking.
“Lanthorne, you shouldn’t throw stones at your brother’s face,” said Mrs Ghules. “It’ll spoil his looks.”
“But, Mum, he’s been serving up dead people, and eating them himself! They call it ‘Special Menu’.”
“It’s just a phase. He’s growing out of it already.”
“Mum!”
“And call off that thing before it gets nasty.”
Lanthorne motioned for the snarghe to move away from its captives. Reluctantly, it obeyed, but Nanna Bowle rewarded it with two cabbage stalks, one for each head.
Swarme smirked at Lanthorne. He was beginning to think he might come out of this better than he had expected. He touched his face and winced dramatically.
“It really, really hurts,” he said.
What happened next was a surprise to everyone. Mr Ghules put his lips beside Swarme’s left ear and bellowed, “Act your age!” He shouted so loudly that his son rose off the floor.
Mrs Ghules opened her mouth, ready for an outburst, but she was silenced with a look.
“More tea, anyone?” Nanna Bowle asked.
“I’m going next door,” said Trunke.
“I’m ashamed of too many members of this family, you in particular, Necra,” said Mr Ghules. “I’m ashamed of myself for not sorting you out earlier. All that ordering us about in our own home. As for the guests you have staying with you. Thank goodness that horrible man with the bad leg has cleared off home! It ought to be slaps all round. Except for our Lanthorne. He’s the only one who’s kept the family name out of the drain.”
“My Swarme’s not—”
Another fierce look from her husband cut off the end of Mrs Ghules’s sentence.
“Our son started to go off course as soon as he joined that clubbe for youthe,” said Mr Ghules, warming to his subject. “I could see the warning signs, but I wasn’t paying proper attention. All those questions he used to ask about the olden days and what they ate, and him and his friends daring each other to dig holes in the graveyard.”
“All young people do that,” interrupted his wife, who was determined to find something to say in support of her elder son. “Where else would they go to have fun?”
“And wanting his food riper than ripe,” said Mr Ghules, without paying her any attention.
“You should blame Necra for leading him astray,” said Mrs Ghules defensively.
“I most certainly do. She won’t be welcome in our house ever again.”
“I quite like unripe food, don’t I, Edwin?” said Lanthorne, who was enjoying Swarme’s comeuppance.
Edwin couldn’t help thinking that it would be a while before Swarme felt in the mood to hum again.
The family turned in on itself like a doubles match in tennis, Mr Ghules and Lanthorne taking on Mrs Ghules and Swarme. Lanthorne enjoyed playing sharp little shots, incriminating comments meant to get Swarme into as much trouble as possible. His hero-worship of his brother was definitely a thing of the past. Auntie Necra shrank further into the corner from which she hadn’t strayed since entering the kitchen. She looked like someone who knew she would have to watch her step in future.
Nanna Bowle caught Edwin’s eye and pointed towards a very ordinary-looking cupboard door.
“That’s the one,” she mouthed.
Edwin showed that he understood.
He carefully skirted the quarrelling Ghules family and took a farewell look at his friend.
Lanthorne was glowing with pleasure at being with his family again; it was an extremely grey glow. Edwin felt in his pocket for the purse of coins he had planned to return to Jugge when they were back in Landarn looking for a door. He slipped it into Lanthorne’s hand and nodded. Lanthorne nodded back and added a little poke to Edwin’s arm. It was all over in a few seconds, and then Edwin was standing by the cupboard door to which Nanna Bowle had pointed.
With a final glance at Lanthorne, and making sure Mandoline was secure in the crook of his left arm, he took hold of the door knob.
Nanna Bowle had followed him. As soon as Edwin opened the cupboard door, she pushed him out of her world and back into his own. One moment he was in a kitchen, with its lingering smell of magic and the noise of a family in uproar, and then suddenly he wasn’t.
As he was passing between the two worlds, Edwin felt something brush against his leg—a bucket or mop head—but he didn’t look down. He was too happy gazing out into a bright December late afternoon.
It seemed an age since he’d last seen such real colours—an intense orange streaking the blue, with a hint of the first star. He breathed in the welcome vegetable smell of the allotment. So he had come through the shed door again, which meant he wasn’t far from home. It was sometime near Christmas and appropriate for him to be standing with a baby in his arms. He shook Mandoline and she squawked. She was all right.
Some distance away, a couple of the frosted brussels sprouts plants began to shake violently. Foxes, Edwin thought. It was good to be able to work out what was going on. In Lanthorne’s world it had been one hideous surprise after another.
As he threaded his way between the sections of the allotment, Edwin chattered to his sister.
“Just a short walk and then you’ll be snug in your own little cot again,” he said. “I expect you love that idea as much as I do, Mandy. You don’t mind if I call you Mandy? You see, as I’ve saved you from a fate worse than anything you could imagine, I think we need to get on a different footing. Friends, not you getting me into trouble all the time. Okay?”
Mandoline winked up at him, or perhaps it was just her eye twitching as the first flake of snow settled on it. Edwin took it as a yes.
Something nuzzled his leg. Something nuzzled both legs, in fact. Looking down, he met the adoring gaze of two sets of crossed eyes. The bizarre heads which contained them were decorated with the remains of the recently savaged brussels sprouts.
When Edwin walked through his front door with the best Christmas present his parents would ever receive, they would be too overjoyed to bother him with questions at first. But sooner or later he was going to have to say, “Mum, Dad, I’ve got something to tell you. We were followed home by a snarghe.”
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