Jody Richards and The Secret Potion (10 page)

The Bag Man shrugged. “We can’t do anything at the moment. We’ll just have to wait.”

The wait proved to be a very long one as several hours passed without a sound, apart from the two large rats scurrying across the stone floor and water dripping from a leak in one corner of the ceiling, which housed a family of cockroaches. Jody, overcome by morbid fascination, watched them moving from one crevice to another.

It was getting dark in the small, smelly cell because even a full moon could not throw much light through the narrow slit of a window.

Finally, they heard a noise of approaching footsteps and the cell door was unlocked by two pixies, dressed in dark blue uniforms and pointed hats. They were the direct opposites of each other. One was large and the other comparatively small.

The large pixie had rugged features, with a scar running down his otherwise unmarked face. The small pixie was spotty, with a bent nose and a squint. He seemed to have something in his mouth that caused him to chew and squint alternatively. In fact, the chewing and squinting were just nervous habits.

“I am a very naughty girl who cannot be trusted,” Jody told them. The pixies looked at each other and then at Jody as if she was deranged. But they quickly pushed the heavy wooden cell door wide open to allow some light to flood into the gap – and Augustine The Awful to enter. He brought with him an aura of evil just like his brother Hugo, and the very sight of him made Jody’s flesh crawl.

“WELL,” bellowed Augustine The Awful menacingly, through his rubbery lips as he strutted into the cell in his usual arrogant manner. “Are you now prepared to tell me the true purpose of your visit to the woods?”

“We’ve done nothing wrong,” cried Jody, jumping off the bed on which she and the Bag Man had been sitting.

“You’ve told me lies for a start,” Augustine The Awful roared back at her, huffing and puffing, which caused his chest to rise and fall sharply with each intake of breath.

“What lies?” the Bag Man inquired, getting off the edge of the bed and rising to his feet.

Augustine The Awful looked at him with scorn. “You told me you just happened to be walking in the woods. So it may interest you to know that when my brother Hugo Toby telephoned to arrange to visit me tomorrow he informed me that a girl with long brownish hair, just like this one, visited his house looking for her brother James. Do you still claim you just happened to come across the boy by accident?”

“All right, I was looking for him,” Jody admitted, defiantly. “And he is my brother. I’ve come to take him home.”

“Have you now?” Augustine The Awful mocked, a vile smile spreading across his shallow cheeks and swollen lips.

“Presumably you are unaware your father has seen for himself that your brother is being well treated here?”

“That’s not true,” shouted Jody.

“Enough!” ordered Augustine The Awful, holding up his hand. “I think the time has come to put an end to your rudeness by silencing you for good.” He rolled up his sleeves menacingly.

“Leave her alone!” challenged the Bag Man, moving towards his old foe.

“Is this you being assertive again?” taunted the evil wizard.

“Yes, it is,” snapped Milo. “And I can be threatening, too.” He clenched his fists and raised them.

The two pixies stepped forward to protect their master, though the smaller of the two, still chewing and squinting, was content to let his colleague take the initiative. But Augustine The Awful was in command of the situation. “It’s all right, Olaf,” he told the larger pixie. “Seeing you and little Grog inflict some pain on Milo would give me great pleasure, but I think he needs to be taught a more subtle lesson.”

The Bag Man swung a blow at his old foe, who ducked to avoid it. With that Augustine The Awful clicked his fingers and uttered a curse. There was a puff of smoke and the Bag Man vanished.

A croaking sound was coming from where he had been standing, and Jody looked down in horror to see that in the Bag Man’s place was a very mournful-looking frog.

“That’s better,” said Augustine The Awful, sneering. “Now I have changed you into a frog you look much less assertive, though I must say more appealing.”

He turned to Jody. “As for you, a night in this cell with a frog will teach you a lesson. Then I’ll decide what to do with you. You look quite a strong girl, are you any good at chopping trees and swimming?”

But Jody wasn’t listening to him. She shrieked: “Look what you’ve done to the Bag Man. You horrid, horrid wizard. Change him back immediately.”

The frog croaked in agreement.

“Don’t you dare tell me what to do,” bellowed Augustine The Awful, enraged at the girl’s insolent remarks. “I’ll never change him back – he will be a frog until the day he dies – or in his case until he croaks for the last time.” He laughed at his own cruel joke.

“Why are you doing this to us and why have you got my brother working for you?” questioned Jody, her blue eyes flashing angrily at him.

“I needed your brother and those other two boys to climb those giant trees for me and collect the golden berries from them because, apart from Olaf here, none of the other pixies or goblins are any good at climbing. They kept falling off the trees long before they got to the top. After all, those Golden Berry trees are the tallest in the world.

“Boys love climbing trees so it was no problem for them. The fact that your brother and the other two are good swimmers has proved helpful as well because I also need plant life from the river-bed.

“That has left Olaf and Grog free to attend to other important tasks. Isn’t that right, Grog?” He turned to the smaller pixie who nodded his head, too scared to open his mouth in case the wrong words came out. Grog actually stopped chewing but carried on squinting.

“So I recruited boys young enough to do as they were told, but old enough and big enough to work hard.”

“But why do you want the boys to climb trees for golden berries?”

“I suppose there’s no harm in telling you,” the wizard mused. “The juice from the berries is one of the main ingredients those two treacherous goblins wanted to steal from me. By getting Olaf and Grog to extract the juice and mix it with a secret compound from the river-bed as well as my own special potion I have produced the powerful formula that will stop me from ageing.

“I had to try out hundreds of different compounds before I finally hit upon the right formula for ever- lasting life. I have tested it on a guinea pig, which has not aged at all.

“Now I simply need to get some more plant life from the bottom of the river and keep mixing it with the berry juice and my own special potion. Once it is refined I can drink it regularly and will be able to live for ever, building up my riches and increasing my power until I rule the whole world.”

“Does that mean you will let James go?”

“No it doesn’t,” snapped the wizard. “The formula has to be taken every week so there will be a lot more trees for your brother and the other boys to climb. And when they are not climbing for the berries they will be plucking more plant life from the river-bed.”

“But James can’t stay here. He has to go back to school and lead his own life,” Jody insisted. “He should never have come here at all.”

It seemed Augustine The Awful was going to ignore the girl’s impertinence, but he couldn’t resist telling her how clever he was to lure James to his castle.

In making the effort to honour her with an answer, as if even speaking was too much trouble for him, Augustine The Awful slowly parted his puffy lips so narrowly that his voice sounded even more sinister than usual.

He hissed: “As I told your father, James came here of his own accord. I sent out an advertisement from my computer website, inviting boys to come to the Castle of Dreams for a free holiday – and climb as many trees as they liked. Lots of boys answered by filling in my questionnaire. I chose James and the other two boys because they best met my requirements so I transported them here.

“James wanted to return home to tell his parents about the adventure holiday I was offering him, but I persuaded him that it was first necessary for him to sign a short work placement agreement to pay his way.”

“How short?” Jody demanded to know.

“I believe the figure 25 was mentioned,” Augustine The Awful recalled.

“Months?” Jody queried.

“Years”, he sniggered. “The small print on the back of the consent form also said that if the boys don’t stick to the agreement there is a penalty clause under which I can turn them into goblins.”

“You wicked, wicked man,” Jody screamed. “You tricked James and then you wiped out his memory, didn’t you?”

“I thought that would be for the best,” Augustine The Awful confided. “I’m sure your father would rather not have any memory of his brief encounter with me – after all, it gave him the biggest nightmare of his life.”

“What do you mean?” Jody demanded.

Augustine mocked her with a shame-face expression as he revealed: “Your father looked on James’ computer disc and found that he had replied to my website. So I thought I had better bring your dad here to straighten things out. I taught him a lesson with the help of my friends Trevor, Roxanne, Michael, Hector and Ralph.”

“Who are they?” she asked.

“They are my collection of spiders and scorpions. They loved your father so much some of them crawled all over him.”

“You loathsome man,” Jody shouted, revolted.

“Such anger,” Augustine taunted. “I think it would be best if I wiped out your memory as well as that of your brother’s and father’s. But I’ll sleep on it and decide what to do with you tomorrow. I must go now – I hope you and the frog have sweet dreams.”

With that he marched out of the cell door, which the two pixies slammed shut behind him and bolted from the outside.

Jody looked across at the frog, who was sitting silently on the stone floor. “Oh, you poor Bag Man – I mean Milo,” she said.

“I’m so sorry you’ve been turned into a frog – it’s all my fault for getting you into this.” Milo croaked in reply to show he understood.

She suddenly noticed for the first time that the pixies had left some food and water to one side of the large oak door. She shared it with the frog who then made himself as comfortable as he could in a corner of the cell.

Jody climbed on to the bed and pulled the sheet over her, causing two of the carrier bags to fall on the floor. But the sheet hardly helped to keep out the bitter wind blowing from the window slit in the wall, and a torn, coarse mattress, which had lost much of its stuffing, offered no warmth, either.

The only comfort for the frightened girl as darkness filled the primitive cell was that the rats and insects had slunk away, presumably to go to sleep.

Eventually Jody shut her eyes in an attempt to get some sleep herself. She was too cold and too scared to do so, however. Instead, she opened her eyes again and stared into the darkness, longing to be in the warm arms of her mother.

Faces came floating into her mind – her mother’s, smiling lovingly; her father’s, looking strained and bothered; Hugo Toby’s mean piercing eyes staring down his long nose; Wiffle’s broad grin through his flowing white beard; Augustine The Awful’s evil scowl and rubbery lips; and finally Milo’s startled expression before being turned into a frog.

The images disturbed her so much she lay awake for hours, her sobs only interrupted by her teeth chattering in the dark, damp atmosphere. Finally, her head fell back on to the single, grubby pillow and she drifted into a disturbed but welcome sleep.

Chapter Sixteen

JODY awoke with a start the next morning in the half-light, drowsily thinking she was at home and wondering why her mother had not called her to get ready for school.

She peered into the gloom of the cell to get her bearings and looked down from her bed to see what appeared to be a rat scurrying across the stone floor. Then the cold realisation hit her that she was locked up in Augustine The Awful’s castle. To make matters worse her nose was half an inch longer and the unfortunate Bag Man was now a frog!

The distressed girl saw the frog was no longer sitting in the corner, but had hopped across the stone floor to the end of her bed where two of the carrier bags had fallen. His head was inside one of the bags and he seemed to be looking at a book.

“What is it?” asked Jody. “Is that something important?”

The frog turned to face her and screeched: “Redit, redit.”

“I know you’ve read it,” she said, smiling. “But is it something I should know about?”

The frog croaked in agreement.

So Jody jumped out of bed, walked over to the carrier bag and took out the book. It had a battered cardboard cover, the corners of which were bent, and was entitled ‘Spells And How To Use Them’. She looked at the page the frog had open and began to read it.

At first she could not comprehend what the frog was referring to. Then her eyes fell on a passage that said: ‘If a wizard grants you a wish you can use it for anything that is positive. You cannot normally harm anyone with the wish. But should someone cast an evil spell you can use the wish to reverse the spell and turn it against the person who cast it.’