Miss Brown’s expression softened, and her pursed lips rearranged themselves into a spindly grin.
‘Wait for it …’ Odge whispered again.
‘Well, it seems you’re the only Gribble in history to be any good,’ Miss Brown said with a laugh, clawing nearer.
‘WAIT FOR IT …’
Lina leaned forward, ready to pounce.
Miss Brown inched closer and closer.
‘Hang on,’ the harpy said, spotting Lina by the suitcases. ‘Is that—’
Aunt Maureen lunged forward before she could finish. An almighty cracking sound whipped around the station, causing all the humans to look up. But it hadn’t come from above; it had come from the bald harpy rolling around on platform thirteen.
‘I’M BALD!’ Miss Brown screeched, stating the obvious.
Lina and Odge charged forward. The harpy tried to leap into the air, but she barely got an inch off the ground before landing back down with a squish.
Odge worked fast, tying the harpy’s talons together with her bootlaces. They stood back and inspected their catch.
‘YOU WON’T GET AWAY WITH THIS!’ Miss Brown cried.
Lina pulled Ray out of her backpack to make room, and they stuffed Miss Brown inside. It was a fairly large backpack, and luckily harpies are surprisingly bendy.
‘WHAT’S GOING ON OUT THERE?’ came a cry, and through the gump shot Miss Witherspoon. She flew straight for Aunt Maureen, landing with a thud as soon as she got within touching distance.
‘I’M BALD!’ she screamed.
‘Tie her up,’ Odge said, nodding at Lina’s trainers.
She dutifully unthreaded them, her hands shaking as she sat on Miss Witherspoon to prevent her from scuttling away.
Soon, the pair of harpies were tied up inside the backpack. Lina spotted some chocolate éclairs lined up neatly behind Ernie Hobbs. She decided it would be nice to pop a couple in the backpack. The harpies might be hungry.
Ernie hovered over them defensively. ‘I’m waiting for them to go off so I can eat them,’ he said, reluctantly letting Lina take a few.
‘Ernie Hobbs,’ Mrs Partridge said sternly, ‘I think we both know that is not how I taught you to tidy up. You can’t stash food and wait for it to go off.’
‘But the chocolate éclairs never go off,’ he moaned.
‘Thank you for helping us,’ Lina said with a sad smile, knowing she may never see the ghosts again.
‘You make sure you get back home safely,’ Mrs Partridge said, before turning her attention to Odge. ‘And, Odge, you may have defeated two harpies, but don’t get cocky – remember what Mrs Smith is capable of. She will not go as easily as those two.’
Odge nodded. ‘Spread the word to all magical creatures who were evicted from Mist that they can return,’ she said grandly. ‘There will be no harpies at the gump. They must travel home before the gump closes tonight.’
‘But the harpies,’ Mrs Partridge said. ‘We can’t send the magical creatures back to Mist – it would be deadly.’
Odge stood tall. ‘Tonight, the harpies will be gone.’
‘But … it’s not possible,’ Mrs Partridge said.
Odge flashed Lina a smile. ‘Everything’s possible, Mrs Partridge. You’ve just been dead so long that you’ve forgotten.’
Odge picked up the mistmaker backpack, heavy with the weight of the harpies, and slung it over her shoulder. Lina lifted Ray and wrapped him round her neck.
‘We match!’ Odge laughed, turning so they were standing side by side, one with a bulging mistmaker backpack on her back, the other with a real one.
Odge whistled for the King and Queen, who came running, leaving a crowd of confused humans in their wake, and together – two hags, three humans, a mistmaker and two tied-up harpies – they made their way back to Mist for the final showdown.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE MOUNTAINS
The Island was relatively small, but the mountain was not. It towered tall over the land cloaked in dark clouds.
At the base of the mountain grew fields of technicolour flowers. It had once been the home of the flower fairies and the occasional wizard, but now it lay empty, the wind combing through it as if searching for the magical creatures now scattered beyond the gumps.
It hadn’t taken Lina, Odge, Aunt Maureen and the rescued King and Queen too long to get there – the tunnel from platform thirteen to the shore was relatively short, and the mutant mermaids had swum them safely across the bay – but Lina noted every precious second that passed.
‘We’d better keep going if we’re going to make it in time,’ Odge said. ‘The sun is setting, and I can almost feel the gumps itching to close.’
‘Lina, I could drop you off at that gump over there,’ Aunt Maureen said. ‘That’ll take you to Tokyo. That’s close to Vienna, isn’t it?’
As they walked, they all repeatedly gave Lina the option to turn back. The King and Queen told Lina the story of when they’d lost Ben for nine whole years in an attempt to convince her to go home, but it was no good. She couldn’t leave without seeing this through … to the very end.
They marched on, through the fields of flowers, but Lina soon found herself at the back – without the laces in her trainers, they kept slipping off.
‘Silly things,’ she said, bending down to pull her left one back on.
‘Speak for yourself,’ came a gruff voice. ‘And get lost – this is our hiding place.’
Underneath a couple of large rocks, leaning together to form an arch, was a clump of flower fairies. Lina leaned down and stuck her face inside. It was rowdy in there – fairies swung each other around, smashing little tables made of bark. In the corner, a group arm-wrestled, shouting very rude words at each other when they lost.
‘Lina!’ Odge called back. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Tell her and die,’ one of the flower fairies warned, brandishing his fists.
‘Flower fairies,’ Lina said, because the last few days had made her scared of barely anyone – especially not tiny, sweet-smelling flower fairies.
It was a mistake. A stream of flower fairies flew fast at Lina’s face, kicking her eyes and nose until she had to throw herself down and bury her head in the grass.
‘That’s quite enough,’ came a voice.
The flower fairies recoiled in horror at the sight of the Queen marching towards them. They were very badly behaved, but not in front of important and influential people. Why do you think flower fairies have such a good reputation?
‘Your Majesty,’ they oozed, bending double, their eyes set sideways so they could glare at Lina while they did so.
‘You’ll come in handy,’ the Queen said. ‘We’re headed up the mountain to save my son. Odge Gribble is going to stop the harpies. Come on.’
‘Anything, Your Majesty,’ they grovelled.
Lina got to her feet and dusted herself off as they flew past her and joined the group. It was a long journey, but as they were about halfway up the mountain’s rockiest side, Lina could make out little lights in the distance.
Thwompburg had never been a popular part of the Island – people tended to settle in the flower fields or by the cove or in the Haglands or at Central Mist where all the action was. Ogres and trolls had built Thwompburg, and so – naturally – everything was oversized.
It had taken hours to reach the town, and Lina’s feet ached. The place had character: chunky shops carved from rock sat on uneven stone streets surrounded by thundering waterfalls and tall pine trees. She climbed up on to a giant stone bench in the town square and watched as Odge ran excitedly towards a building. The hag poked her head in the door before pulling it back out and shouting, ‘Lina! Get over here! I want you to meet my dear friend Gurkie!’
Gurkie was a fey, and an excellent one at that. She and Odge went way back – Lina had heard – all the way back to Odge’s first trip to platform thirteen. Gurkie, it turned out, had been kept on Mist by the harpies because they enjoyed dancing, and Gurkie
was the best dance teacher on the Island. Her school was normally located in Central Mist, in a crumbling little cottage that had vegetables sprouting from the cracks. The harpies had destroyed it and relocated her to the grand old troll hospital because it was closer to their new homes.
Lina jumped down off the giant stone bench and made her way over to where Odge was standing. A sign on the door read:
There were harpy talon marks through the word ALL, and above it was scrawled the word SELECT. They probably didn’t care which vegetables attended, but Lina wondered if they’d even start policing that next.
Inside, a tall and beautiful woman with an elaborate carrot-covered hat stood poised on the very tips of her toes.
‘This is her?’ said the woman gently, dropping down on to her heels and gliding over to Lina. She took both Lina’s hands in hers and kissed her on the cheek. ‘How lovely to meet you – won’t you stay for my class?’
Lina could see six static beetroots lined up like dance students.
‘No time to stop, Gurkie,’ Odge said, giving her a kiss goodbye. ‘We’re about to bald some harpies.’
‘Oh, that’s a shame. My beetroots aren’t up to scratch this year. No dancing at all from them. I could’ve used some replacement dancers.’
‘Sorry,’ Lina said. ‘If I had been doing anything else, I would’ve cancelled, honestly.’
She stared down at the unmoving beetroots.
‘Do beetroots dance sometimes?’ she whispered to Odge.
‘Never,’ Odge whispered back. ‘Gurkie just believes in giving vegetables the benefit of the doubt.’
Gurkie picked up a stone microphone and said, ‘And now bend the knees!’
She looked hopefully at the beetroots.
‘I thought perhaps they weren’t dancing because they couldn’t hear me, which is why I was using this. But now I realize it’s perhaps that they don’t like the microphone. Yes, that’s probably it. Here, Lina – I give this microphone to you, a little reminder of our first meeting, and a present from Thwompburg.’
Lina thanked her kindly, as she and Odge headed outside. Even though it was really heavy, she did rather like the microphone.
It was a blustery evening, and shop signs creaked in the wind. Odge’s face fell when she saw HANS-OME CHEESES – a chunky shop with a noticeable trail of cheese stench wafting out of the window.
Lina held her nose and followed Odge inside.
The place was trashed, presumably because the harpies had no desire to eat cheese.
‘Ben and I used to come here for snacks,’ Odge said sadly. ‘We’d be here all day just trying to finish them.’
Lina climbed up on to one of the tables and pulled open the curtains at the back of the shop. Perfectly framed by the window were the troll mansions.
‘Is that them?’ Lina asked. ‘That’s where the harpies are now?’
Odge nodded. ‘Biggest houses on the Island. I’ve never been. Thwompburg is the furthest I’ve ever climbed up the mountain. Ben and Netty are up there somewhere. Come on – we’d better get balding if we’re going to get you home in time for bed.’
And so on they walked, out of the nearly deserted Thwompburg and towards the houses. The problem was, having never been there before, Odge had no idea about the drop – a deep and wide crack in the rocks separating the houses from the town. Of course, if you were a troll or an ogre, it was easy to step over, and a harpy could easily fly.
Lina stared down into the darkness. They were so close to the harpies, but they’d never make it across.
‘We can carry you over,’ one of the flower fairies said to the King and Queen. ‘One at a time.’
‘They don’t need to go over,’ Lina said. ‘It’s just Aunt Maureen for the balding, and then me and Odge to tie up Miss Green and Mrs Smith.’
The flower fairy rolled her eyes. ‘Fine. Which one of you wants to go first?’
Lina looked up at the mansions, wondering which one was Mrs Smith’s and where Ben and Netty were being kept.
‘You won’t get away with this!’ came the muffled shouts of Miss Brown from the mistmaker backpack.
‘Aunt Maureen goes first to do the balding,’ Odge said. ‘Then me, then Lina.’
The flower fairies – around a hundred of them in total – began to heave Aunt Maureen into the air. Some grabbed hold of elbows and knees, others went for the ears and the nose, and it wasn’t long before she was raised up high into the air.
Lina watched in amazement, but was distracted by a whimper. She turned to see a little mistmaker hobbling towards her. It had a shorter snout than Ray and was quite a bit smaller. Behind it, two other mistmakers lay curled up and poorly. Lina ran over and stroked them.
‘Do you think if I hadn’t lied about being the mistmaker master the mistmakers would be better by now?’ she asked Odge quietly.
‘Nah,’ Odge said dismissively. ‘I don’t think the mistmaker master was even going to show up, if I’m honest. She was already a minute late, and apparently the mistmaker master is never late.’
‘You were planning to meet the mistmaker master?’ the Queen asked. ‘We met her just yesterday morning. She had a fabulous pigeon-feather hat.’
Odge twirled round. ‘That’s when I was meant to meet the mistmaker master.’
Lina stood up slowly. ‘Pigeon-feather hat?’
‘She came to the school,’ the King said, speaking for the first time because he was a shy man. ‘I knew Ben was worried about what was happening to the mistmakers. I thought if we summoned the mistmaker master, she could find Ben on the Island and help fix the poor creatures.’
Odge threw her head back and laughed. ‘And of course the mistmaker master would go and meet you, because you’re the royals. That’s why she didn’t meet me. Hah!’
‘Did Ben not read the P.S. in our letter?’ the Queen asked. ‘I told Miriam Hughes-Hughes to deliver it.’
‘We got the letter,’ Lina said, ‘but it was too deep-fat fried to read the P.S. We didn’t know there was one!’
‘I knew I should’ve used a lower setting,’ the Queen groaned.
‘So this means you know who the mistmaker master is,’ Odge said excitedly. ‘Who is it?’
‘Um, hag and human!’ the flower fairies called over their shoulders. ‘We have a PROBLEM.’
Flying fast towards them from the tallest troll house came Mrs Smith in a vicious fury. When she saw them, she opened her mouth wide and let out the most horrifying scream Lina had ever heard. It echoed around them until they all had to drop to their knees, clutching their ears.
There was a buzz, followed by a familiar smell, and before Lina knew what was happening she was completely surrounded by swamp fairies. They tore around her, attacking at will. Lina shielded her eyes as the nasty little things bit at her face and landed on her head. She rolled about on the ground, losing hold of Ray.
‘Odge!’ she cried, desperately trying to see where her hag friend was.
‘Over here!’ Odge cried, batting away swamp fairies with a rock.
Lina looked up just in time to see the flower fairies lose their grip on Aunt Maureen. She slipped out of the jacket and let out a squeal. All Lina could do was watch as she disappeared into the deep, dark drop below.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE HAIR ROLLERS
It was the scratching noise that woke Ben.
He’d fallen asleep on Netty’s shoulder, and she was afraid to move. Instead, she’d sat sweating, smiling at the sound of his amateur snores.
‘Did you hear that?’ he said.
‘Barely,’ Netty replied. ‘You really need to practise. Snoring is an art.’
‘Not the snoring, Netty – the scratching. See … there it is again!’
They both crawled slowly to the window and ducked under it.
‘It sounds like something’s climbing the wall. Something sharp,’ Ben said, his eyes wide.
Being a hag, Netty didn’t spend a lot of her time being afraid of little scra
tching noises, so she leaped up and reached a fist out of the barred window. To her surprise, her fingers touched something feathery.
She turned to Ben, a look of fear in her eyes. ‘I think I just grabbed Mrs Smith.’
‘I’m not Mrs Smith,’ came an insulted whisper. ‘Pull me up.’
Netty did as she was told and pulled the thing through the barred window, squishing her slightly to get her through. The creature unravelled her limbs on the floor and stood up, revealing her identity. Ben gasped.
There, right in front of them, stood the horrible and hideous harpy Miss Jones.
‘I thought … The other harpies said y-you went missing when the gump opened,’ Ben stammered, now afraid. He recognized her gaunt face from the photos of official royal events. She was the one who always floated behind his mother. Why was she here? She was as terrible as the others.
She held a thin finger to her wrinkled lips. ‘Your parents sent me a letter, asking me to come.’
‘No they didn’t,’ Ben protested, believing it to be a trick. ‘They would never write to a horrible harpy.’
‘Bit rude,’ Miss Jones muttered, clearly not particularly bothered by the comment.
Netty stepped between them. ‘If you’ve come to kill Ben, then you’ll have me to deal with first.’
‘Kill me?’ Ben cried.
Miss Jones waved her arms frantically in the air. ‘No one here wants to kill anyone!’ she shrieked.
‘I do,’ Netty sneered, hunching over the harpy, trying to be as intimidating as possible. It didn’t work, because one of the boils popped on her face and dribbled on to the floor. She stood back up, annoyed with herself.
‘If you have quite finished,’ Miss Jones said, pushing her way past the hag and hobbling towards Ben. ‘I have come with news of the mistmakers.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Ben whispered.
‘Your parents wrote to me telling me about how worried you are about the mistmakers. They asked me to help.’
‘But you’re a harpy. I told them I needed the mistmaker master.’
Miss Jones bowed. ‘At your service.’
‘You?’ Ben spluttered. ‘You’re the mysterious, marvellous mistmaker master?’
Beyond Platform 13 Page 11
