by Heide Goody
Gavin and Myra gaped in shock.
“Natalie?”
Natalie stood firm and held the open jar before her.
“Libertatibus perierat et ignaro in ampulla ad imperium,” she intoned.
Carabosse was now clearly visible to Natalie. She had become the focal point of the room. Everything else faded away.
“Libertatibus perierat et ignaro in ampulla ad imperium.”
Carabosse should have been quaking in fear at that point, her plan about to come unravelled and her form to be imprisoned in the jar once more but, instead, there was a playful and knowing smile on the fairy’s lips. She raised a hand towards Natalie. Two bluebirds came from nowhere and swooped down at her face. Natalie ducked, curling her body protectively around the jar and her arm around her face.
Ella snatched Myra’s bouquet and swatted at the birds with it, catching one with a satisfying backhand that send it thudding into the marquee wall.
“Is that really Natalie?” said Gavin, bewildered.
“Out the way, lass,” instructed Rose.
She had the gun unwrapped and was taking aim at Carabosse.
“Mad old lady!” screeched Petunia.
“Let me take care of her boss!” yelled Psycho, and he wriggled out of the registrar’s suit and jumped down.
“You! You haven’t finished the ceremony!” yelled Myra.
The blast of the shotgun rang out throughout the tent, sending people into a panic, spilling chairs and expensive decorations everywhere. Carabosse crumpled up like a badly folded deckchair.
“Is that you, Natalie?” said Gavin.
Myra, who was a woman with some fixed priorities, windmilled her arms in frustration. “Would everyone stop trying to ruin my wedding! I know Ella’s put you up to this... whatever this is.”
Ella was watching Carabosse. The fairy godmother was still standing and now, slowly but surely, she was straightening, frowning down at the hole in the front of her dress. She swivelled to reveal that there was also a hole in the back of her dress, but her body was whole in between.
“Oh Rose,” she said, with her head cocked coyly to one side. “Violence is unbecoming, don’t you think?”
Psycho leapt at the shotgun in Rose’s hand, dragging the barrel down. Rose’s second shot blasted a minor crater in the ground. Ella swatted at the bluebird that was trying to peck Natalie’s face. Myra was screeching at anyone she thought might be listening, including the now headless registrar. Psycho wrestled with Rose for control of the shotgun.
“You right horrible bugger,” cried Rose.
“Bastard ungrateful child,” Psycho retorted.
“Been on my case for donkey’s and I’m sick to death of the ruddy sight of thee!”
The wolf bounded forward and bared his fangs.
Psycho gave a look of pure terror.
“Eat her! Eat her!” he yelped.
The big bad wolf opened his jaws wide and, with a chomp and gulp and a cry of “Not again!” Psycho was swallowed whole.
With a lucky swipe, Ella snatched the bluebird out of the air.
“How about second helpings?” she called to the wolf.
The wolf turned, Ella hurled the bundle of blue feathers and it was gone.
“Hmmm. Not all bad are you, Zeke?” Rose said.
“Not all,” he said.
“The jar!” yelled Ella.
Natalie picked herself up and then held out an empty hand.
“I had it…”
Carabosse chuckled lightly. The jar was in her hand.
“We’ll have no more of this nonsense Natalie. You’re not part of this story, my dear.”
“I do think that is Natalie, you know,” said Gavin.
“Shut up,” said Myra.
“It’s time for Ella to have her happy ending,” said Carabosse and dashed the jar against one of the marquee support poles. It came apart in a million snowflake fragments.
“Now, we need to get things back on track,” said Carabosse.
“That’s right,” said Myra firmly, who clearly had no idea what was going on but was dead set on what she wanted.
“Disco, dear chap,” said the fairy. “It’s time for some music.”
Ella put her fingers in her ears, suspecting what was coming next. She tried to signal to others that they should do the same, but it wasn’t the easiest of messages to get across in the circumstances.
The sound system burst into life with a hypnotic thumping that made Roy break apart from the bridal party and raise his hands ecstatically, as his body swayed to the rhythm. Disco capered to his side and they led the dance. Those around them swiftly moved from mild embarrassment through fascination into a compulsion to join in. Even those guests who had been fleeing for the exit now found themselves bopping and gyrating to the beat.
A line formed, with Disco and Roy at the front, performing a wide-legged conga, pounding invisible drums as they went. They snaked around the room, gathering followers. Myra’s solid mask of annoyance dropped from her face and she joined the dancing, dragging Gavin along behind her. Lily and Petunia squealed with delight and tottered out of time on their high heels.
Carabosse beamed with pleasure at the daughter, mother and grandmother who were the only ones unaffected by the spell.
“You can’t fight a happy ending, girls,” she said.
Chapter Sixteen
“Everyone will soon be in my control,” said Carabosse, “and there will be no more interruptions.”
A rapid burst of explosive gunfire by the marquee entrance argued otherwise. Disco faltered in his conga and the line behind him fell apart, wedding guests staring at each other and straightening their clothes in embarrassment.
Ella turned and was stunned to see Mr Dainty. He stood tall and carried the enormous and ancient Gatling-style gun from his private weapons collection. He wore bandoliers across his shoulders loaded with spare ammunition and added further to his action hero image with a rakishly angled beret and a cigar. He looked very pleased with himself indeed.
His black-clad henchmen — Cheeky, Hook, Eyepatch, Scarhead, the lot — flanked him, toting weaponry of their own.
“Ella!” cried Mr Dainty. “I order you not to marry this man. He is a feeble specimen and you will see that I am surely the better choice. Come to me now and I will make you mine.”
“You tried to shoot me!” shouted Ella.
“What can I say? I’m a passionate man!”
“This will not do!” shouted Carabosse. “You had your chance and you blew it! Dwarfs!”
Passive Aggressive and Inappropriate wriggled free from the registrar’s suit while OCD, Shitfaced and Windy dropped from the ceiling using leafy vines as ropes. Their weapons were limited to boots and offensive smells, but they launched into an attack on Mr Dainty and his sidekicks nonetheless. The henchmen replied with small arms fire and chaos erupted once more.
“Kill the groom!” Dainty shouted.
Scarhead knelt down and opened fire on the conga line with a submachinegun.
Ella threw herself at her pretend-fiancé and bore him to the ground, a task made slightly trickier by his persistent desire to dance.
Despite the unfolding bedlam, Disco was still making a concerted effort to continue his dance of bewitchment. He exaggerated the dance, throwing shapes that nobody could miss. The music was still playing on the loudspeakers, and a few of the guests fell back in line behind him. Lily and Petunia giggled together and started their own routine. Ella had seen it many times. They practised it in the garden centre when it was quiet, but it never seemed to get any better.
“And a one, two, three, four. Step, two, three, four!” yelled Lily. It looked as if the two of them were playing an invisible game of Twister in a wind tunnel. Ella had often wondered how they avoided brutalising each other with their flailing, but as an interesting side effect, the lack of rhythm (or perhaps it was the disagreeable spectacle) seemed to break Disco’s spell. Several of the happy Conga dancers stopp
ed to stare at the two girls and whispered to each other, trying to work out what had happened.
“FEEL THE RHYTHM WITH ME!” bellowed Disco, who jumped onto the table alongside the wedding cake. He used his hands as a conductor might, bending the crowd to his will. Dainty’s henchmen plus many of the wedding guests turned towards him and their expressions all changed to hollow-eyed euphoria as they linked arms to strut in time with Disco’s instructions.
“Got to dance,” mumbled Roy, underneath Ella.
“Stay down,” she told him, and he seemed content to wriggle dazedly on the floor to the faltering beat.
“And a one, two, three, four. Step, two, three, four!” Lily and Petunia were concentrating hard, but still moved as if they were falling off roller skates in slow motion. Once again, their alternative and discordant beat cut straight across the steady hypnotic trance woven by Disco.
Ella saw Hook and Eyepatch, who had been mesmerised by Disco, shake themselves, look at their weapons, and remember who they were. There was a great deal of noise and shouting but the Euro-villains, who seemed to favour shooting in the air and shouting to actually harming anyone, were happy enough to cause panic and uproar.
She looked for the others. Myra and Gavin were still in the arbour. Myra, it was clear, was not going to budge one inch until someone married her. Dainty was battling with a determined Shitfaced who was fuelling his alcoholic rage with a pilfered bottle of Champagne. The wolf had his jaws firmly clenched around Hook’s one good hand, which was understandably causing the one-armed thug a great deal of alarm.
Something hard slammed into Ella’s temple, momentarily blinding her. She staggered, clutching her head.
“Didn’t see that coming!” crowed Cheeky, gesticulating with the pistols he held.
“Fucking ninja butler!” she swore, looking at her hand to check for blood.
Cheeky had violent purple bruises on both sides of his head from the repeated clonks he’d received before. The two bruises met in the middle over his angrily furrowed brow.
“You have upset my boss. Why do all of his wives choose to upset him?”
Out of nowhere, Rose swung her shotgun like a baseball bat and smacked Cheeky across the back of the head. He grunted in shock and turned, so Granny Rose adjusted her grip and jabbed the wooden gun stock into his face, knocking him down.
“She ain’t his wife yet, lad.” She gave Ella a terse look. “We need to do something afore someone gets hurt.”
“I think that’s already happened,” said Ella.
Rose gave the unconscious Cheeky a dismissive glance. “I meant someone important. Tha needs to get tha boyfriend, tha mother and whoever tha can out of here.”
Rose broke open the shotgun, expertly flipped out the spent cartridges and reloaded.
“And what will you do?” said Ella.
“Plan B,” said Rose. She raised the shotgun to her shoulder and took aim at Carabosse. “Reckon that little missy can carry on having a tantrum if I blow her head off her shoulders?” she asked, letting off a couple of shots.
“You can’t kill her,” said Ella.
“No, but I can buy thee some time. Get to it.”
Natalie, on hands and knees, stared at the shattered remains of the Solomon Jar. It should have worked. It should have worked but they had rushed into this plan without thinking it through. And now they’d lost the jar. Natalie should at least have taken photographs of the jar before they tried to use it, maybe they could have deciphered those faint marks around the rim, maybe they could have fashioned new jars.
Maybe, maybe, maybe…
A series of loud pops overhead marked the demise of the balloon unicorn. Near to, Mr Dainty clubbed the drunken dwarf with the butt of his gun and waved his men forward. They were going for Gavin and Myra.
Natalie yelled a warning across to them but Myra wasn’t listening. Remarkably, she had approached one of Dainty’s henchmen — the one with a metal plate in his head — and was talking to him about his machine gun.
“I tried one of these at the Berlin arms expo,” she was saying, “but the strap really needs to be modified for a comfortable working angle. Can I show you?”
The man released his weapon and handed it to Myra, who promptly whacked him with the stock. He crumpled to the floor. As Natalie made her way over to them, Myra pulled a cable tie from the man’s top pocket and fastened his hands together.
“Idiot.”
Gavin grinned at her. “You’re magnificent, have I ever told you that?”
Natalie squeezed through a pair of hypnotised dancers to finally reach the betrothed fifty-somethings.
“That was very impressive, Myra.”
Myra stared at her with unfettered dismay. “I don’t know who you are.”
“Reminds of that time at primary school when Linda Hepworth wouldn’t give you your Bunty Annual back and you slammed it shut on her nose.”
“But Natalie…” said Myra.
Natalie shrugged and then gave them a cheesy smile. “Surprised?”
“I need a drink,” said Gavin.
“You certainly do not,” said Myra.
“What we need is to get out of here,” said Natalie.
A hand came down on Natalie’s shoulder and nails dug sharply into her flesh.
“You should never have come,” said Carabosse in her ear.
“Let her go!” shouted Rose, approaching with shotgun raised.
“I thought we’d established that violence did nothing,” said the fairy, painfully dragging Natalie round into the line of fire. “No one is going anywhere until our Princess Ella gets her fairy tale wedding.”
“That will not be happening,” said Mr Dainty, approaching with Ella and Roy at gunpoint, “unless she is wedding me.”
“Ella, I told thee to get away from here,” said Rose.
“Evidently, we failed,” said Ella.
“And that man there owes me a debt,” said Dainty, waggling his enormous weapon at Gavin.
“I think you owe him payment for all that overtime he’s done for you!” retorted Myra.
“He stole from me!”
“I can assure you I didn’t, Mr Dainty, sir,” said Gavin.
“That teapot never showed up!”
“Teapot?” said Carabosse. “What a small and petty man you are.”
Dainty raised his gun threateningly. Carabosse moved Natalie once more as a human shield. Rose took a step forward and aimed. Myra stepped back into a defensive position, attempting to cover both Dainty and fairy with her submachinegun.
“I don’t think this is going to end well,” said Roy.
“Oi Oi!” sang out a loud voice. “Cavalry’s ‘ere!”
Ella looked round to the marquee entrance. Surely there was nobody left to make a dramatic entrance?
“Awright treacle!” shouted the teapot, riding on top of a magnificent sideboard steed.
“Teapot!” shouted Ella.
“My teapot?” said Dainty.
A mass of furniture surged into the marquee in battle formation. Tables, desks, trolleys, chairs, benches, credenzas, ottomans, night stands and stools rode into the melee of cheap Bond villains, embattled dwarfs, bewildered wedding guests (and one wolf). Eyepatch gave a wail of horror as a trestle table slammed down on him. Passive Aggressive leapt to attack a roll-top bureau which simply rolled open to swallow him and then closed again without breaking stride and anyone close enough might have heard a petulant little voice mutter “Typical” as the bureau galloped by.
“This is unacceptable!” yelled Carabosse, a split second before Oscar the nesting table bounded directly into her, directly followed by his ‘parents’ Tony and Persephone.
Mr Dainty had only a second to marvel at this peculiar sight before a giant Welsh dresser trampled him underfoot.
The teapot drew up his steed beside Ella.
“I thought you’d been smashed!” she said, delighted to see him.
“Just my lid, darlin’, although I ‘ad
a proper dunking, right in the briney.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Without a lid, you must be less valuable.”
“Nah,” said the teapot. “I reckon I’m like a curio now. You know, a talkin’ point. So, we made it in the nick of time, eh?”
“You did and you were awesome,” said Ella.
“She’s talking to a teapot,” said Gavin, just in case anyone else had failed to spot this.
“What’s the dealio here?” said the teapot.
“No time for introductions, but basically take down anyone that looks as if…” — Ella counted off on her fingers. — “They work for Mr Dainty. They’re um, a dwarf. Or, they’re an evil, manipulative baggage.”
Ella glanced at Myra.
“What?” snapped Myra.
“Oh right. There’s only the one evil manipulative baggage that you need to worry about,” said Ella. “That one there.” She pointed at Carabosse who was fighting her way to her feet.
“Look sharp, lads!” shouted the teapot and with a spout-waggle waved his vanguard on. Carabosse sneered at the tables as they charged towards her, but they came in sufficient numbers to knock her to the floor.
The wolf vaulted a charging occasional table and landed before Ella, a hook hand dangling from his lower jaw. Ella didn’t want to wonder where the rest of Hook was.
“Is now a good time to get the hell out of Dodge?” asked the wolf.
“A tactical retreat,” agreed Natalie wearily as she massaged her injured shoulder.
Granny Rose led the way, through the wide gap the furniture army had left in the wake of its initial charge.
“Come on Gavin,” commanded Myra.
A hand grabbed Ella’s ankle. She gave a shout of surprise. Mr Dainty pulled himself up from the floor, his clutches working up from her ankle, to her knee and her arm.
“Come now Ella. I have tolerated enough of your foolish resistance.”
“Steady on, mate,” said Roy.
“You let go of my daughter this instant!” said Gavin in the sternest voice he could muster.
“Or what?” said Dainty. “You are a joke my little drunken friend. You are no more capable of resisting me than you are of resisting a glass of wine. Get out of my way.”
