Jody Richards and The Secret Potion (15 page)

“You told a lie,” chastised Jody. “You may not remember, but you also promised father you would never lie.”

“I didn’t lie,” James grinned. “I just called out the word ‘heads’ – I never actually claimed the coin landed on the ‘heads’ side. Like Milo said, it’s not lying, it’s simply misleading someone who deserved to be misled.”

“But how do we get out of this cage?” asked Bunter. “We have only 24 hours to do so otherwise we’ll be killed by poisonous snakes. And if we do get out the dogs will attack us.”

“Someone is bound to come across us eventually,” the Bag Man consoled him. “Then they can go for help.”

Unfortunately, nobody came near the clearing in the forest and, as the sky began to darken, the five prisoners prepared to spend the night sitting in the cramped cage, with seven dogs barking and yelping madly only a matter of inches away.

Bodger, prowling around the cage menacingly in his black boots, was particularly fierce. He twice tried to thrust his head through the bars of the cage in vain attempts to attack the girl who had been responsible for goading Augustine The Awful into transforming him from a goblin into a dog.

A scared Jody moved away quickly. “Bodger is determined to get me,” she said.

“Don’t worry, he can’t reach you in here,” the Bag Man comforted her.

“I’m hungry,” said Bunter.

“We’re all hungry,” Nick-Knack chided him.

“Well, I can do something about that,” the Bag Man replied. He clicked his fingers and on the floor of the cage at their feet appeared the biggest spread of food and drink imaginable.

But this made the dogs bark even louder. “I suppose I had better magic up some food for you, too,” the Bag Man told the dogs. He clicked his fingers once more and some meat appeared.

As the Bag Man was about to throw it out of the cage to the dogs, Jody stopped him. “Please put some more sleeping potions on it,” she urged.

“I forgot about that,” the Bag Man admitted. He went through his carrier bags and eventually found a tube that he squirted on the meat as the dogs yelped impatiently. The boys helped him hurl the meat through the bars of the cage. The animals immediately devoured it, which caused them to fall asleep soon after they had finished eating.

But the dog in the boots had ignored the doctored meat. Instead, he continued to prowl around, his brown eyes blazing with fury, as he looked for a way to get into the cage.

“Bodger might have been silly enough to take the sleeping potion the first time, but he’s not going to fall for the same trick twice,” said Jody as the angry dog bared his teeth and growled threateningly at her.

Bunter had already crammed a large portion of chicken pie into his mouth, but Nick-Knack and James stopped eating their smaller portions of food to question the Bag Man.

“If you can perform magic then why didn’t you stop that nasty wizard putting us in this cage?” asked Nick-Knack.

“And more important, why don’t you get us out of the cage now?” pressed James between mouthfuls of turkey.

“I once fell foul of Augustine The Awful and he took away most of my magic powers,” explained the Bag Man ruefully. “I can only perform basic magic now such as producing food and drink and making it rain. Those are just elementary spells.”

“Can you make it rain anywhere?” Jody asked.

“Yes, I suppose so,” the Bag Man acknowledged. “Once I played a joke on Wiffle by causing it to rain on his head while everywhere else around him was dry. He was very angry at first, but we are good friends so he soon forgave me. We have often laughed about it since.”

“Well, why don’t you make it rain on Wiffle again? If the water only fell on him then he would no doubt realise that it was you doing it.”

“What would be the point?” asked Nick-Knack, who was not the brightest of boys. “He would only think it was another of the Bag Man’s jokes.”

“Milo – not The Bag Man,” Milo corrected him.

“Maybe Nick-Knack is right,” sighed Jody. “But it might occur to Wiffle that Milo was trying to get a message to him and needed his help. After all, it was Wiffle who told me where I could find Milo – and Wiffle was worried I might land in trouble. Surely, it’s worth a try.”

Bunter also had reservations. “But even if Wiffle thought it was Milo and that it was a cry for help, he wouldn’t know where we are, would he?” Bunter pointed out.

Jody looked to James for support and he nodded his agreement. “Like Jody says, it is worth trying,” he insisted.

“Milo could use the rain in three short bursts so that it comes down on Wiffle and stops and then comes down twice more – it would be like an SOS signal.”

“Well, all right. I’ll give it a try,” the Bag Man conceded. “But I don’t think Wiffle will be too pleased if I make it rain on his head, particularly if he’s sitting on his expensive furniture. Besides I don’t know whereabouts he is in the house.

“I’ll just cause it to rain very hard immediately outside his front door and against his windows. If he doesn’t see it he is bound to hear it.”

“You should repeat the three bursts several times just to make absolutely sure,” urged Bunter, gulping down another pie.

The Bag Man nodded and said “OK, let’s go for it.” He then muttered a few strange words, clicked his thumbs against his fingers quickly and repeated the action four times. “Now all we can do is wait and hope.”

But six hours passed very slowly and there was no sign of Wiffle.

They were consumed with a feeling of despair as they sat down and tried to get through the night huddled together tightly in the middle of the small cage.

Chapter Twenty-Five

WHEN the sun began to gain strength the next morning they were all exhausted, having been unable to get much sleep in their confined space.

Jody rubbed her legs where cramp was starting to set into her calf muscles. She noticed that James was also massaging his legs, while Bunter was hopping around in discomfort, obviously needing to go to the toilet after drinking and eating far too much the previous day.

“Good morning,” the Bag Man greeted her.

“Good morning, Milo,” she replied continuing to try to massage the cramp away. She put one hand on the cage bars as she rubbed with the other hand.

“Look out,” shouted the Bag Man.

The warning came too late. Although Jody hastily withdrew her hand she was not quite quick enough. The dog in the black boots made a wild lunge towards her hand and managed to bite one of her fingers before his teeth grated against the metal bars of the cage. It caused Bodger to chip one of his teeth and he howled out in pain.

His cry was partly drowned by that of Jody, who fell to the floor, writhing in agony. “He got me that time,” she sobbed, holding her injured finger, which was bleeding profusely.

“Let me see,” said James, loosening her grip so that he could take a look at the bleeding finger. “That’s a very nasty bite – it’s so deep it might have gone down to the bone.”

The Bag Man went across to one of his carrier bags and pulled out a white shirt, from which he tore off a sleeve and started to bind up her finger.

Jody cried out as he pressed the wound together. Although the Bag Man tried to dress her cut gently, she felt as if someone was touching her finger with a hot poker, and a wave of nausea swept over her. Finally the Bag Man had finished and the girl sighed with relief.

She managed to mutter bravely through her sobs: “I just hope it’s not infected. But I suppose that’s the least of our worries.”

“Our attempt at trying to send an SOS signal to Wiffle obviously hasn’t worked,” reflected Bunter, moving from one foot to the other.

“No. I suppose it was a silly idea,” admitted Jody. “It seems we are sunk. There are only a few hours left before this cage is full of poisonous snakes.”

“It was worth trying,” James comforted her. “Has anyone got any other ideas?” Nobody had.

“In that case I suggest we try the rain trick one more time,” James said to Milo. “Perhaps Wiffle didn’t even notice the bursts of rain you sent outside his front door.”

“They would have made quite a noise,” the Bag Man told him.

“But if it was raining already or if Wiffle was listening to music or watching television then he would not have heard the bursts of rain. So let’s try it again now.

“You could make it rain just INSIDE Wiffle’s front door in the hall as well as OUTSIDE so that he’s sure to see it or hear it.”

“All right,” said the Bag Man. “I’ll repeat three more bursts of rain outside his front door and three bursts INSIDE.” He muttered a spell and clicked his thumbs against his fingers twice, then did it twice more.

The next few hours seemed an eternity as they stood helplessly in the cage. It was particularly awful for Bunter, who was not completely successful in overcoming his urge to wee, and his trousers became slightly stained.

Jody had problems of her own. Her finger had swollen and the pain increased. Her head ached and she began to break out in a sweat. “I’m feeling rough,” she muttered.

“That bite has made her ill,” said James. “She needs a doctor. It could be poisonous.”

“Soon we’re all going to be poisoned by snake bites,” Nick-Knack reminded them. “I can’t bear to think about having the slimy things near to me.”

At that moment a large cloud of green smoke appeared outside the cell and two fearsome figures suddenly emerged from it – Hugo Toby and his brother Augustine! Even their odour exuded evil.

“Uga Oooo,” cried the Bag` Man in disbelief.

Jody cowered in fear as Augustine’s menacing black eyes sought her out.

“You obviously didn’t expect to see us again,” said Hugo harshly. “They don’t look pleased to see us, do they Augustine?”

“That’s probably the understatement of the year,” sneered his brother, moving towards the cage menacingly.

“But how did you get away from the moat?” stammered Buster. “We thought you had been turned into a frog.”

Hugo smirked. “So he was – and if you had had your way I would have joined him in the moat and lost my memory, too. But fortunately, Augustine had climbed out of the water on to the grassy bank and that’s where I landed.

“I must admit that when I saw a frog next to me my first instinct was to kick it back into the moat, but I realised just in time that as I had wished to be next to Augustine he must be the frog. So I changed him back to his old self and restored his memory. I am indebted to you for sending me to him.”

Augustine The Awful’s stare seemed to go straight through Jody, who was sitting in the cage in a dazed state. “Now it is time to settle some old scores,” he said, his face full of rage. “The girl and the Bag Man are going to pay dearly for turning me into a frog and throwing me out of my own castle.”

“Yes,” said Hugo. “They must all suffer because they tried to destroy both of us.”

The Bag Man moved to the front of the cage and looked deep into Augustine’s eyes. “You can do what you like to me,” he said. “But don’t hurt these poor children. Jody has been bitten by one of the dogs and is becoming delirious – she needs some medicine.”

Augustine stared at the girl, slumped on the floor of the cage. “I’ll give her something to make her forget her pain,” he said. With that he clicked his fingers and in his hand there appeared a bottle containing some dark and murky looking liquid. He chanted some unintelligible words and the bottle suddenly left his hand to land at Jody’s feet.

“What is it?” asked Jody, drowsily, her head throbbing and her vision becoming slightly blurred.

“As I said, it will make you forget your pain,” Augustine replied. “I want you to be fully focused when I punish you for turning me into a frog.”

Jody picked up the bottle and unscrewed the top.

“Don’t drink it,” warned James.

She hesitated, then heeded his advice and put the bottle down.

“As you wish,” Augustine told them. “Enough of this time wasting. The girl and the Bag Man must now suffer for what they did.”

Hugo interceded. “May I suggest, dear brother, that I merely bring forward the spell I cast before I left – to fill their cell full of poisonous snakes?”

Augustine’s face twisted into an evil smile. “That will do nicely for starters,” he said.

Hugo clicked his fingers and suddenly two barrels landed with a tremendous thud on the floor of the cell. They were both full of snakes.

“Oh, no,” cried Nick-Knack. “Don’t let them near me. I hate them.”

“The snakes are already starting to crawl out of the barrels,” shouted Bunter, watching in horror as two large, venomous-looking snakes slithered from the open top of one over-full barrel and down the side of it towards the bottom of the cage.

“What can we do?” James asked the Bag Man.

“Snakes are scared of fire,” Milo responded. “If I can set fire to the rest of that shirt I tore then we can use it to ward them off.”

“But that won’t last long, will it?” Bunter protested.

They all moved as far away from the barrels as they could, with their backs pressed against the opposite side of the cage, while Milo fumbled in his bags to find some matches.