Curse of the Dream Witch (9 page)

A nervous rash erupted in Leo’s armpits as he led the cavalry out of the castle. The itch was unbearable. Still, it gave him something to think about besides his terror of meeting the witch.

The company rode through the town and down the hill to the marsh, halting at the place where the runaways’ tracks had been spotted. The first officer lowered his torch, and peered at the footprints.

‘No doubt they thought they were smart to skulk in the ditch,’ he said. ‘But this mud tells a tale the hard road would have kept secret.’

Leo’s Adam’s apple bobbled in his throat. ‘Where to now?’

‘Wherever Your Highness commands.’

Hooray! Then back to the castle
, Leo thought. But that was impossible. His men would laugh at him. His voice jumped an octave: ‘Follow the footprints.’

The cavalry tracked the trail through the countryside. Leo’s rash blossomed. It spread down his sides and into his underpants. He tried to rub his bum against the saddle. The itch got worse.

‘There’s a camp fire in the valley below,’ the first officer said.

They galloped down, but all they found were a man with a wooden foot and a woman huddled by the ashes of a burnt-out homestead. The couple told the soldiers they’d seen no one but a pair of good-hearted children. ‘We gave the poor things food and clothing. Are they in trouble?’

‘If we find them,’ Leo blustered. ‘Where did they go?’

Milo’s father looked at his wife. ‘We don’t know.’

‘If you’re lying, you’ll be missing more than a leg,’ Leo said.

‘Over here,’ a soldier called out. He pointed at fresh boot marks.

The trail led to the cornfield by the witch’s forest. The tickle in Leo’s drawers was unbearable. ‘They seem to have vanished,’ he said hopefully.

‘With respect, Your Highness, I think they went through the corn stalks.’

‘Exactly. We’ve lost them. They could be anywhere in that jungle. If we try to follow them, our torches will burn the field down around us.’

‘You’d let them go?’

‘No, but I, well . . .’

There was a whoosh in the air above them.

‘What was that?’ Leo trembled.

The men looked up. A great owl swooped out of the night.

Leo convulsed in terror. His legs flailed, his arms flapped. The spurs on his feet dug into his horse’s flanks. The reins in his hands slapped its neck. The steed charged forward into the cornfield.

‘Woah!’ Leo cried, bouncing this way and that. But with every bounce he landed a boot with his spurs. The horse galloped faster, out of control.

Leo couldn’t think; couldn’t breathe. There was corn everywhere. Stalks flayed his face. Cobs boxed his ears. Tassels got up his nose.

His horse burst free of the field. And now – oh no – it hurtled into the forest.

‘Stop!’ Leo squealed. But the horse paid no heed. Guided by an invisible host, it dodged trees and leapt over brooks, racing at a mad clip, impossible to follow.

How will my men be able to find me?
Leo panicked.
What will become of me?

He grabbed the reins at the bridle and yanked them back sharply. The horse came to a sudden stop. Leo pitched over its head and landed in a raspberry bush.

‘Where are you, you mangy beast?’ Leo cried. ‘Get me out of here.’

The horse grunted as if to say,
Why should I?

Leo scrambled out of the bush. ‘I’ll have you sent to the glue factory, just see if I don’t. You’ll be boiled, deboned, and tossed to the pigs.’

The horse whinnied:
I don’t think so.
It turned and trotted merrily into the night.

‘Wait. You can’t leave me.’

There was a distant neigh, like a laugh. Then silence.

Leo was consumed by dread:
I’m alone in the Dream Witch’s forest
. He wasn’t sure where to go, but he couldn’t stay where he was. He tried to tiptoe. His armour squeaked. Two more steps and he walked into a tree. He turned to his right and tripped over a log.

This is Olivia’s fault
, Leo wept in fury
. If she hadn’t run away, I’d be safe at the castle. Wait till I get my hands on her. I’ll teach her who’s boss.

He heard a rustling over his head. Something dived at him out of the dark. A rush of feathers. It flew away.

What was it – that owl again? Maybe. But it was something else, too.

He wasn’t alone.

Not ten feet away, he saw two red coals glowing in the dark. Under their glow, he saw a nose like a trunk that disappeared into the pitch black.

‘Can I help you?’ the stranger said.

Leo’s throat went dry as a desert. ‘I’ve l-lost my way. I’d like to get out of these woods.’

‘If you’d asked for a basket of toadstools, I’d have obliged. But to escape these woods? Not tonight, I’m afraid.’ The eyes floated towards him. He saw the witch’s withered frame, her long curled fingernails, and a nose that went on forever. The owl was perched on her right shoulder.

‘Dream Witch.’

‘Clever boy.’

‘What do you want?’ Leo panicked. ‘My heart?’

The Dream Witch chuckled. ‘Do you have one? Ah, but of course you do. It’s beating so fast I’m surprised it doesn’t pop out of your mouth and run away.’

‘P-please. L-let me go. My father, the King of Pretonia, will pay a ransom.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ Leo gulped. ‘I think so.’

‘You
think
so, but you’re not
sure
, are you? I wouldn’t be either. Why pay gold to rescue a coward who shames his name, when a son who died on a noble quest would make the family proud?’

Leo shuddered. ‘So what are you going to do? Grind me up and eat me?’

The witch’s nose inhaled his terror. ‘What a splendid idea.’

Leo threw up  in his helmet.

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, there’s no need to be disgusting,’ the witch chided. ‘Can’t I have a little fun?’ She paused. ‘The Princess Olivia and her friend have breeched my underworld. They dare to threaten my power. My spirits will destroy them, but nothing must be left to chance.’ She smiled. ‘I’d like to offer you a proposition.’

‘Anything, Dream Witch.’

‘As long as the princess has her pysanka, I can’t come near her or her party. Smash the talisman for me and I’ll give you more riches than in all your father’s treasuries. So much gold he won’t care about the missing girl. He’ll be proud of you, boy. Yes, and love you, too.’

Leo couldn’t believe his good fortune. ‘Thank you, Dream Witch. Thank you. I’ll shatter the talisman, and get you the princess and her friend.’ He kissed her yellow fingernails. ‘Take me to them.’

‘Your wish is my command,’ the witch winked.

Leo blinked. When he opened his eyes, he was standing outside the Cottage of Dreams. 

Olivia, Milo and Ephemia spilled out of the earthen gullet into the Dream Witch’s underworld.

Olivia had imagined she’d find a series of vast caverns with rot dripping from rock walls and roots growing down from above. Yet the witch’s lair was something else again – a vast grey emptiness without end or beginning. Even the grey under their feet seemed to disappear into space. Olivia wondered if she was floating, but a tap of her foot found her standing on some kind of invisible floor.

‘So this is the witch’s dream world,’ she marvelled.

‘Yes,’ Milo nodded. ‘It starts in nothingness.’

‘Which way should we go?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ephemia said. ‘Nowhere is everywhere: Everywhere is nowhere. The dream will lead you.’

Olivia took a step. The greyness under her feet was slick. She grabbed onto Milo for support. The two of them skidded forward and wobbled to a stop.

‘It’s slippery as ice,’ she gasped.

‘Cold as ice, too,’ Milo said.

‘Of course!’ Olivia exclaimed. ‘We’re standing on ice. Ice as grey as the marsh when it freezes in winter.’

A chill swept around them. Their toes went numb. Their breaths misted. With each breath the mist spread in waves, filling the dream-marsh with an icy fog.

Ephemia snuggled at Olivia’s neck. ‘Move or you’ll freeze to death.’

Olivia remembered watching from her turret as villagers glided across the frozen marsh on wooden skates. How she’d wished to be with them, making pirouettes and figures of eight. She tried to mimic what she’d seen, but when she pushed forward, her feet slipped out from under her.

Milo reached down and gave her a hand. Olivia tried to pull herself up but toppled him over instead.

‘Sorry.’

‘Not to worry,’ Milo said. ‘Roll onto your knees, plant a foot, then push up with your hands.’

He tried to show her how – he’d done it a million times – but
this
time, he couldn’t find his balance. He tumbled back down. He tried again. And again and again. Olivia too. No use. Each time, they ended up smack on their backs.

Olivia’s teeth chattered. ‘What do we do?’

‘Crawl,’ Ephemia ordered.

They inched forward on hands and knees: their fingers white with cold; their nails blue. A wind whipped up against them. Pellets of icy mist stung their cheeks. They slid backwards.

Through the gusts, Olivia heard the voice of a little girl:
Help me
.

‘I hear a child,’ Olivia hollered over the wind.

‘You’re imagining things,’ Milo hollered back. ‘The children are in the witch’s lair.’

‘No. There’s one nearby. Maybe she escaped.’

Help me. Help me.

The voice was coming from below. Olivia looked down. The ice was covered with sleet. She rubbed it clear.

Through wisps of fog, a little girl’s face stared up at her from under the frozen sheet; her head was in a pocket of air where the ice was thin. The child was near death, her skin a bluish-grey, her long hair spread out in the frigid water. She scratched at the surface from below:
Help me.

‘She’s here, under the ice,’ Olivia shouted. ‘We have to break it. We have to save her.’

‘No,’ Ephemia shrieked.

‘What do you mean, no?’ Olivia whirled her head to Milo. ‘Milo, help me!’

But Milo’s eyes were wide with terror. He pointed towards the child. Olivia looked back and saw what her friends saw: The little girl’s fingers weren’t fingers. They were claws. Claws attached to tentacles with suckers the size of plates.

Olivia screamed.

The beast threw off its disguise. Its little-girl mouth stretched wide, as it rolled its lips over its forehead and down past its shoulders, revealing a brain sack with a single bulbous eye and a fierce beak. The tentacles swirled in the gelid water as the creature beat and clawed at the underside of the ice.

The surface cracked.

‘Ephemia, save us!’ Olivia cried. ‘Cast a spell!’

‘I’ll only make things worse.’

‘They
can’t
get worse!’

True,
Ephemia thought. For the first time since Olivia’s birth, she rummaged her memory for a spell: ‘
Amnibitor Imnabatar Praxit
!’

And things got worse. The brain sack ballooned. The tentacles swelled. A rubbery limb broke through and shot high in the air. It slapped down by Olivia’s head, splitting the surface of the ice.

Ephemia tried to fix things. ‘
Omnobiter Nimtarbiter Traxip
!’

And worse. The creature multiplied into three beasts, each larger than the first. Their tentacles smashed the ice field into chunks. Olivia and Milo found themselves on a slab that bobbed in the swells as the creatures thrashed below. All around, massive cubes of ice upended. Wedges splintered and cast adrift.

The largest creature wrapped a tentacle around a corner of their slab, and pulled down with its suckers. The ice-raft tilted. Milo and Olivia grabbed the upper edge. The monster raised its head. Olivia lost her grip. She slid towards its open beak.

‘
Nimnobiter Traxibiter Bixit
!’ Ephemia squealed.

A giant umbrella, twenty-feet long, shot down through the fog. Its shaft speared the creature’s eye. With a howl, the beast ripped out the missile, flung it across the pitching slab, and plunged back into the marsh.

‘A parasol? Really?’ Olivia demanded.

‘With my luck it could have been a feather. Be happy you’re alive.’

‘But not for long,’ Milo exclaimed.

On either side, the remaining beasts emerged from the mists. Their tentacles swept the ice in search of their prey.

‘I’ve got it! The parasol!’ Olivia shouted. ‘Ephemia, you’re a genius after all.’

Quickly, she and Milo cupped themselves inside the giant handle and undid the mighty clasp.

A snippet of wind caught the inside of the umbrella. The fabric ballooned open; its broad canopy was like a giant sail. It propelled them across the marsh. Holding on for dear life, Olivia and Milo’s heels skimmed over the water, skipping from one ice chunk to the next.

The creatures gave chase, their tentacles flying through the air.

Dead ahead, a barge of ice bobbed up from below.

‘We’re going to crash!’ Olivia cried, as rubbery limbs slapped at their heels.

‘No we’re not,’ Milo exclaimed, ‘Jump!’

They leapt together, bouncing onto the wedge. In a blink, they skied up and over the top. For a moment, they swayed, suspended in the air, the umbrella a giant parachute.

Slimy suckers flew through the fog around them. The end of a tentacle whipped around Olivia’s left boot. The creature tightened its grip. The umbrella careened in the wind.

‘It’s got me,’ Olivia said. ‘Ephemia, Milo, save yourselves. I’m letting go.’

‘No, don’t give up,’ Milo shouted. ‘That’s what the Dream Witch wants you to do.’ He shinnied up the handle. ‘Grab my leg.’

Olivia clutched Milo’s knee. He shimmied higher, pulling her with him. The creature’s grip held tight to the leather boot. But Olivia’s foot slipped up the inside. She kicked it free.

Released from the creature’s pull, the umbrella shot high in the air current. Soon the friends were sailing far above the fog. By the time it cleared, they were ages from the marsh.

The wind calmed to a gentle breeze. The umbrella floated down. Stretching to the horizon, Olivia, Milo and Ephemia saw gardens lusher than any courtyard with flowers high as houses.

‘It looks like heaven,’ Olivia marvelled.

‘A heaven made in hell,’ Ephemia murmured darkly.

The umbrella landed on top of a peony bush the size of an oak tree. Olivia and Milo climbed down its mighty branches.

‘So there you are!’ came a voice from a patch of bluebells. Olivia whirled around. A sword scythed through the thicket of stems. A young man stepped forward. ‘I’ve come to save you.’

Oh no
, Olivia thought.

It was Leo.