Curse of the Dream Witch (13 page)

Olivia was in her parents’ bedroom, as conjured by the Dream Witch. She’d seen her spell-father propped up in his bed and hugged him close. He’d tapped his blessing on her cheek with his left thumb, then she’d gone with her spell-mother into the adjacent bathing room to soak away the grime of dreamland.

Her nose filled with a wondrous blend of aromas. Her mother’s large porcelain tub, with its golden feet and faucets, had been filled with a bubble bath infused with orange blossoms and rose petals. Essential oils of jasmine, juniper, and eucalyptus hung in silver pans over lavender-scented candles.

The spell-queen sat on a stool at the head of the tub, combing Olivia’s newly-washed hair with a brush dipped in freshly squeezed lemons.

‘Your bedroom doesn’t look like I remember it at all,’ Olivia said.

‘Doesn’t it?’ her spell-mother said. ‘I suppose that’s not surprising. You were locked up in your turret for so many years, you missed out on all the changes. I hope they don’t disappoint you.’

‘Oh, not at all,’ Olivia reassured her. ‘It’s good to be home.’ She looked down at the pysanka, dangling from the chain around her neck. It seemed to glow in an unfamiliar way.

The spell-queen eyed the talisman. ‘I’ll know you’re truly well, my love, when you get rid of that thing.’

‘Why? It’s beautiful.’

The spell-queen shook her head. ‘It’s nasty. Such bad memories.’

Olivia frowned. ‘All the same, I’m so used to having it near me, I’d feel odd if it were gone.’

‘You mustn’t be afraid of change,’ the spell-queen soothed.

‘I’m not, it’s just – this was my christening gift from Ephemia. It wouldn’t feel right to part with it.’

‘But—’

Before her mother could say another word, Olivia decided to change the subject. ‘How long have I been soaking? I feel like a prune.’

She rose from the tub and let her mother wrap her in a thick towel warmed over a bed of smouldering pine needles. Then she stepped behind the changing screen where ladies-in-waiting began to dress her in fresh petticoats and a sunny yellow gown with a cream bodice, pearl buttons, and lace trim.

‘Ephemia was a good and faithful servant,’ the spell-queen called over the screen. ‘The pysanka was a token of her love, and I’m pleased you’re loyal to her memory. But do you think she’d want you tethered to your past?’

‘I can’t hear you,’ Olivia lied. ‘Wait till I come out.’

‘Surely Ephemia would want you to have a future as fresh as tomorrow,’ the spell-queen continued a little more loudly. ‘Come, let’s get your father’s advice.’

Olivia was cross that her mother kept pestering her. Still, she didn’t want to be cranky – not on her second day home, and when her mother meant so well. ‘Fine. As soon as I’m dressed.’

‘But you
are
dressed,’ the spell-queen said.

Olivia blinked. It was true: She
was
dressed.
How did that happen so quickly?
she wondered.
And when did I slip into these beaded shoes?

Olivia looked up in confusion. To her further surprise, the ladies-in-waiting were gone and she was sitting between her mother and father on her parents’ bed. The shock made her woozy.

‘I’m not well,’ she gasped. ‘Time is playing the strangest tricks on me.’

The spell-queen eased her down onto the pillow. ‘Rest. A little sleep will do you good.’

Olivia pressed her father’s hand against her cheek and drifted off. She dreamed she was in the witch’s world, lying on a rock bed between two demon serpents made of hair and fingernails stuck together with bits of blood and skin.

Now, do it now
, one said.

The other removed its hand from beneath her cheek and began to remove the pysanka hanging from her neck.

Olivia woke with a start. She found herself staring into her father’s eyes. There was something strange in the blacks of his pupils: little shavings swimming in their gaze.

‘Father?’ She clutched for her pysanka and felt his hand around it. ‘What are you doing?’

‘N-nothing,’ her spell-father stammered.

Olivia filled with terror. ‘You’re talking. You’re moving. You’re not my father! You’re—’

‘Give us the pysanka!’ her spell-mother shrieked. ‘Give it now or we’ll rip out your throat.’ Her hair shot out in all directions. Her teeth turned to fangs.

Olivia screamed.

‘Not so fast, demon!’ Milo cried. He shot out of the chimney beyond the bed, Ephemia on his shoulder.

‘It takes more than jasmine and lemon to mask the scent of Hell!’ Ephemia cried.

The spell creatures turned from Olivia. The skin fell from their forms. Their limbs disappeared into trunks of swelling sinew. They reared up from the ground like mighty snakes and undulated across the ceiling.

Milo pressed his back against the broad stone front of the fireplace. He tossed a coal scuttle on his head for a helmet and grabbed a poker and coal shovel from the hearth.

The snakes dropped on Milo, one after the other. He pierced one with the poker and bashed the other with the shovel. Instantly, they fell apart. The outer bits turned to dust, while the insides shattered into strands of hair and slivers of nail.

‘Run!’ Milo yelled.

Olivia didn’t need to be told twice.

The pair ran into the corridor after Ephemia.

‘To the left,’ the good mouse cried.

Milo and Olivia turned left and ran past suits of armour. As they passed each suit it sprang to life and gave chase. Soon they were fleeing an army of ghostly warriors.

‘Have a ride,’ Milo hollered as they reached the main staircase. He leapt on the marble banister and slid down in a flash.

‘Here goes nothing!’ Olivia gulped, speeding after him.

The suits of armour weren’t so nimble. The first few fell off the rail and crashed below. The others tried the stairs. They tripped and tumbled, clattering down in a twisted ball of chainmail and steel. They lurched to untangle themselves, clunking and clanking in pointless frenzy.

Meanwhile, Olivia and Milo raced through the palace gates with Ephemia. The dream castle disappeared in smoke, the gardens withered, and the friends found themselves running over rock. They were back in the witch’s underworld, in a cavern as large as nightmare.

The rock floor sheered off in front of them, falling into a bottomless pit. They turned to run back, but the rock behind them had disappeared. They were on a ledge. It began to break into columns. Lava bubbled beneath. Sulphurous clouds billowed up from the cracks.

As the columns crumbled, Milo pointed across the chasm. ‘Over there,’ he hollered above the roar. ‘It’s the entrance to the witch’s lair. It’s where she flew me.’

‘But how are we to reach it?’ Olivia hollered back.

‘We’ll fly!’ Ephemia cried. She opened her throat and roared to her woodland cousins roosting in the cavernous heights.

A great wind blew down from above. Olivia and Milo looked up to see thousands of bats swarming towards them. A second cry from Ephemia and the winged rodents swooped into rows of a hundred, fifty abreast, five deep.

‘They look like flying carpets,’ Olivia marvelled.

‘Hop aboard,’ Ephemia said. ‘Lie flat to spread your weight.’

Milo let himself fall forward. He rolled over thousands of furry backs.

Olivia fell, too, Ephemia clinging to her ear. She missed her mark and plummeted towards the molten lava. Her carpet of bats dived after. They spread their wings and whooshed beneath her. Some rubbed their heads on Olivia’s chin in welcome. Then her carpet flew up to join Milo’s. They headed towards the witch’s lair.

‘Wait for me!’ called a voice from the mists.

‘Leo?’

‘I followed you. Spare me,’ he wailed.

Olivia and Milo gritted their teeth.

‘There’s things you do because you have to,’ Ephemia said.

‘I know, I know,’ Olivia replied. She said a prayer, as the flying rodents circled back to rescue the puling brat. The bats at the edges of each formation peeled away to form a third flying carpet.

‘I’m so grateful,’ Leo wept, once safely aboard.

‘See that you stay that way,’ Ephemia sniffed. ‘These bats can fly upside down.’

There was no more time to talk. They’d crossed the gulf and entered the Dream Witch’s lair. 

The bats flew down a pitch-black corridor. They veered left and right, soared high and low.

Olivia and Milo kept their eyes closed. It was far more comforting to pretend the passage was well lit, than to witness a flight into nothingness.

Ephemia felt Olivia's tension. ‘Never fear,' she encouraged, ‘our friends see in the dark; the night is their home.'

Nice words. But with the air whistling in her ears and her hair flying out behind her, Olivia was far from reassured. Her only comfort was that Leo was throwing up
behind
them; if he'd been in the lead . . .

‘Ah, the antechamber to the witch's quarters,' Ephemia announced.

Olivia opened her eyes. She wished she hadn't. The chamber was carved from the rock in the shape of a mouth. Its walls were lit by flaming skull-pots set into alcoves that glistened like oozing flesh. At the end of the chamber was an iron door crusted with rust and lichens. The latch was shaped like a devil's head with an open jaw.

‘Can that really be the entrance?' Milo asked.

‘Yes,' Ephemia said, as the bats spiralled to the ground.

‘Strange. From the other side it looked enormous.'

‘It wasn't; you were small. The Dream Witch shrunk you to fit into her spice grinder.'

The bats deposited their riders and flew to the top of the antechamber, where they hung by their feet from gnarly outcrops of rock. Leo held back as the friends approached the door.

‘How do we get in?' Olivia asked.

‘Try the latch,' Ephemia replied.

‘It's as easy as that?'

‘The Dream Witch doesn't get visitors. Why would she keep it locked?'

Olivia reached for the devil's-head latch, taking care to keep her fingers underneath its chin. The moment she squeezed, the jaw snapped shut, the latch opened, and the iron door swung wide on its rusty hinges. Olivia heard the sound of bottles rattling on the wooden shelves within.

‘It's all right,' Milo called out to the children. ‘It's me, the boy the Dream Witch sent to the castle. I've come with friends to set you free. And not just any friends: the Princess Olivia, her court mentor, and a Pretonian prince.'

‘This is a trick,' said a little voice.

‘And a mean one,' said another. ‘Princess Olivia is the reason we're here. She doesn't care about us.'

‘I care a great deal,' Olivia said, feeling her way through the dim light. ‘It's wrong that you've suffered for my safety. That's why I'm here – to make things right.'

The bottles stopped rattling as the children pressed their faces against their jars to get a better look.

‘Is it her?' one whispered.

‘Can't tell,' another whispered back. ‘I've only seen her once, up in that turret behind the bars.'

‘Have a closer look,' Olivia said. She took the child's spice grinder off the shelf and held it to her face. Inside, she saw a terrified boy in rags. ‘Don't be afraid. I make you all a promise. In no time, my friends and I will have you home again, safe in your parents' arms.'

‘The Dream Witch will kill you first,' the boy said. ‘She wants your heart.'

‘She can want it all she likes,' Olivia replied, with far more confidence than she felt. ‘But it's mine, I'm keeping it, and that's that.'

Foul gusts of wind blew in from the antechamber.

‘It's her,' Ephemia said. ‘She's coming back. Hide.'

‘Where?' Olivia panicked.

‘Here!' Milo pointed to the coal staircase leading down to the witch's spell chamber. Leo bolted down the steps.

Olivia returned the spice grinder to its shelf. ‘We mustn't raise her suspicions. Everything must look the way it was,' she whispered. ‘But we'll be back to get you out as soon as we can.' She and Milo disappeared down the stairs, Ephemia scampering at their heels.

No sooner were they out of sight than the Dream Witch flew in on her cleaver, the great owl on her shoulder. She hopped off at the grinder shelves. ‘What's going on? Who opened the door?'

The jars rattled. ‘It wasn't us.'

‘Then who was it?' the Dream Witch demanded.

The cleaver reared up, as if to slice a row of the bottles from their shelves. The children shrieked.

‘No wait. Don't tell me.' The Dream Witch unwrapped her trunk from around her waist and sniffed the air. ‘Jasmine, and lemon, with a hint of mole pantry.' She followed her nose to the top of the stairs. ‘Aren't we the brave souls?'

The sorceress spun to the outer entrance of her lair. ‘
Finitum transitorum nexit
!' She snapped her bony fingers: the iron door clanged shut. Its edges turned molten red and melded with the rock.

‘A perfect seal,' the Dream Witch cackled. She turned to the coal stairs leading down to her study. ‘They'll never escape me now.'