Magicalamity (17 page)

“No.” Lorna was frowning. “I don’t hold with gambling. And don’t you dare start playing that stupid game before Tom’s safely out of the room!”

She made the cocoa in a huffy way, while the other godmothers set up their game of cards—didn’t the old bags ever sleep? Tom wondered. Iris shuffled cards as Dahlia set out bowls of chips and nuts.

Lorna, helped by Tom and Pindar, dragged an old dusty camp bed from the cupboard under the stairs. The three of them managed to heft it up to Clarence’s old bedroom, and once Lorna had put on sheets and blankets, it looked really comfortable.

“Sleep well, you two,” Lorna said. “I’m not one for making fancy speeches—but you were both brilliant today. Good night!”

Climbing into bed felt wonderful. Tom waited for the wave of sleep to crash over him. He was glad to be back in the safety of Mustard Manor, with Hector guarding the scrapyard outside. He was on the point of falling asleep, when …

“ARRRGH!” A tremendous scream rang out downstairs.

Tom sat bolt upright in bed, his heart thudding. “What was that?”

Pindar sleepily raised himself on one elbow. “It’s the electric poker. You see, if you don’t want to bet money, you can agree to be electrocuted if you lose.”

“But—but—doesn’t it kill them?”

“They’re a lot tougher than mortals.”

“ARRRGH!” Another terrible scream rang out downstairs.

“That’s Iris—she’s either losing, or she’s very mean.”

They both chuckled over this, and Tom immediately started dreaming.

It was a warm afternoon in summer, and he was standing beside a shallow pond, gazing at a man in a horse-drawn cart, and a pretty cottage surrounded by trees. His mother sat in a wicker chair with a cup of tea. She wore a flowered dress and looked very happy.

“Hi, Mum.” In the dream, they were not at all surprised to see each other.

“Hello, Tom. If you see your dad, tell him I’ve moved, but he’s not to worry—I’m safe and sound in one of my table mats.”

“OK,” said Tom. He didn’t ask her what she meant, and just fell deeper into a dreamless sleep.

E
arly the next morning Lorna went out to the supermarket. By the time Tom and Pindar came downstairs, there was a big mortal fried breakfast of eggs and bacon sizzling in the kitchen. For a second Tom thought there was a stranger at the table, but it was Milly, wearing one of Lorna’s blue jumpsuits. It looked a bit odd because she was still wearing all her jewelry, but it was a relief not to have to walk around her huge white dress.

When they had all (even Lorna and Milly) finished eating, Iris cleared herself a space on the table among all the dirty plates and took her little notebook out of her handbag. “Right, Milly. Let’s have another crack at your memory.”

“Oh dear, it’s no use. All I can remember is arriving at the ball, taking off all my clothes and putting on my jewels.” Milly patted her crown. “The very jewels I’m wearing now—aren’t they splendid?”

“Paste,” said Dahlia.

“What?”

“They’re false, darling.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! These are the finest jewels in the Realm!”

Taking a jeweler’s eyeglass out of her pocket, Iris snatched one of Milly’s wrists and looked closely at her bracelet. “She’s right—these are fakes.”

“FAKES?”

Tom thought Milly seemed more shocked by this than by anything else. “Perhaps one of the Adorers nicked the real ones?” he suggested.

“My Adorers would never do such a thing!” Milly snapped.

“It was probably my father,” said Pindar. “He made my mother sell her moon-diamonds,” said Pindar.

“But … But why would Tiberius do that? He’s rich!”

“Not anymore. The Realm’s falling apart.” He looked round at them all. “Didn’t any of you wonder why none of the police managed to kill us? Half their lightning bolts are blanks. They have to rent their own guns and take turns with the helmets.”

“You’d better prepare yourself for a shock, Milly old
girl,” said Lorna. “These days the Realm is blooming chaos!” She picked up her pile of mail from the previous day and began shuffling through the envelopes and catalogs. “Hello—what’s this?”

She held up a brown padded envelope with something hard and heavy inside it. “I wasn’t expecting any parcels!”

“Achoo!” sneezed Pindar.

“Careful!” Iris pulled out her lightning-gun. “If Pindar sneezed, that means it’s magic.”

Tom edged round the corner of the table, bracing himself for an explosion.

Lorna opened the padded envelope with trembling hands and took out a small, stumpy black bottle. “OW!” She dropped it on the floor. “It’s burning hot!”

The cork popped out of the bottle and the kitchen filled with purple smoke. A moment later the smoke had pulled itself into the outline of a short, fat man in a turban.

“Abdul!” cried Lorna. “Good grief—what happened to you?”

Her ex-husband was blackened and scorched, and his clothes were smoking as if he had just been plucked off a barbecue.

“My cafe!” He was breathless. “My beautiful cafe—they have burned it to the ground!”

Lorna turned so deathly pale that her lips were
gray. “The jar!” She grabbed Abdul’s singed satin tunic. “For pity’s sake—where’s the jar of sun-dried tomatoes?”

Tom couldn’t understand why she was in a state about a stupid jar of tomatoes. “Don’t—he might be hurt! Are you OK, Abdul?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” Abdul caught his breath and took Lorna’s hand. “And the jar is safe, my flower.”

“Where? Where did you put it?”

“Hussein took it. He was arrested—but not before he hid the jar somewhere extremely safe.” Despite the fact that his turban was smoldering, the genie looked dignified. “Those Falconers destroyed my cafe, but they didn’t get what they came for!”

“Blimey, you gave me a nasty turn!” Lorna’s face turned back to its normal color. “Poor old Hussein! I was so wrong about him—he risked his life to save that jar!”

“I wish I knew what’s so special about those tomatoes,” Tom said impatiently. “You’ve been fussing about them since we left the deli!”

“You might as well know the truth,” Iris said briskly. “I suppose Lorna didn’t tell you because she didn’t want to worry you. The fact is one of the tomatoes in that jar is your mother.”

“What? What do you mean?” Tom thought he was used to shocks by now, but this was like a punch in the
stomach. He turned to Lorna, so stunned that he could hardly get the words out. “You turned my mum into a … a sun-dried tomato?”

“I had to think fast,” Lorna said unhappily. “I didn’t want to scare the poor woman, and I knew the Falconers would be after her. So I put her to sleep, shrinking and hiding her in the nearest thing I could find, which was that jar of tomatoes.”

“But—did it hurt her?”

“No!” Lorna put one hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I swear, Tom—please believe me! It’s an old genie trick that Abdul taught me—I had no idea they’d find him and burn down his cafe!”

“So where is she?” It was truly horrible to think of his innocent mortal mother being tortured by Falconers. “You said Hussein hid her?”

“Yes, my brother got wind of the attack a few minutes before it happened. There was just enough time for him to save the jar, put me in a Jiffy bag and mail me here.” Abdul took a few more deep breaths and plumped down on the sofa. “What a day!”

“Hello, Abdul,” said Milly.

Now it was Abdul’s turn to be shocked. “Milly—Milly Falconer? Is this a dream?”

The three godmothers and Milly all began explaining at once, until Tom’s head swam, but somehow they
managed to bring Abdul up to date. Lorna made him a mug of tea (very strong genie tea, with two tea bags and condensed milk), and he told them about the attack on his cafe.

“There I was, just wiping down the counter—and in comes Hussein, shouting about a Falconer raid—oh, we were all in an uproar—genies falling over each other and crashing through windows—Hussein grabbed the jar and told us all to get out—we turned ourselves to smoke and took cover wherever we could—Cassim hid in the tea urn—and then a huge ball of fire came shooting in from the top of a passing 134 bus, and everything was smoke and flames.”

“Didn’t the police notice anything?” Tom asked. “The mortal police, I mean.”

“The mortals thought it was a gas explosion,” Abdul said. “Thanks to Hussein, nobody was hurt.”

“Your brother is a very brave genie,” Milly said. “If he’s single, I might marry him.”

“Hang on,” Lorna said. “Don’t forget poor old Derek Drapton—he’s been your Chief Adorer since the Chapel was built!”

“Oh yes,” Milly said vaguely. “But does he still have those spindly legs?”

“Excuse me—but WHERE did Hussein take my mother?” Tom couldn’t believe they were all chatting
about Milly’s Adorers while his mother’s life was in danger. “And shouldn’t we go and get her? I mean, wouldn’t she be safer with us?”

“Shh!” Lorna was suddenly still. “Listen—that’s Hector!”

Across the yard Hector’s loud bark grew louder, and ended in a kind of roar.

“INTRUDER!” yelled Lorna. “Action stations!” She grabbed the first weapon she could find—a big soup ladle—and ran out of the room like a tornado.

Iris and Dahlia had cooler heads. They quickly armed themselves with their lightning-guns before dashing out of the room after her.

“What’s going on?” cried Milly, wobbling on her white satin heels (which looked odd with her borrowed jumpsuit).

Even in high heels, fairies and genies can run a lot faster than mortals—unnaturally fast, like speeded-up film. Tom had no hope of keeping up. Pindar, Abdul and Milly streaked past him as he sprinted as fast as he could out of Mustard Manor and through the twisted remains of trucks and vans.

The gatehouse was a small wooden building, not much more than a hut, beside the big metal gate of the scrapyard. White light flashed inside it, as if someone had filled it with fireworks. Tom heard shots and
screams—Lorna’s voice yelling, “Bog off out of my scrapyard, whoever you are!”

A tall figure dressed in a fairy police uniform ran out of the gatehouse, leaping into the air. Lorna was right behind it, and gave its leg a whack with her ladle. Dahlia fired a bolt of lightning, but the intruder whizzed off into the gray summer sky and was swallowed by a cloud.

There was an eerie silence while they all recovered from the shock.

Tom looked inside the gatehouse. Everything was scorched and smoldering, and there was a huge hole burnt in the front of Pindar’s T-shirt.

“Pindar, are you OK?”

“It’s only my shirt.”

“Help me up!” Milly lay on her back on the floor, with her white satin shoes sticking in the air, as the two boys ran over to help her up.

“Hector! Where are you? Hector!” Lorna looked around frantically. “What has that fiend done to my dog?”

Tom heard a scraping, scuffling sound near his feet. Down on the floor a scrap of paper moved, and a small mouse hopped onto his sneaker. But it wasn’t a mouse—when Tom picked up the little creature, he saw that it was Lorna’s Rottweiler, shrunk so small that his barks were squeaks.

“Oh, you poor thing, I’ll put you right at once.” Lorna
took him outside in the palm of her hand, set him carefully down on the concrete and mumbled a spell. Hector instantly grew to the size of a cart horse.

“Allow me,” said Dahlia, turning the startled dog back to his proper size.

“Thanks,” Lorna said. “If he stayed that big, I could never afford to feed him. Where’s Iris?”

Tom glanced round, seeing for the first time that Iris wasn’t with them.

“My shoes are killing me,” Milly said. “I must sit down.” She started to sit down on the only chair.

“NO!” Pindar yelled suddenly, pulling the chair away from under her.

“OW!” Milly’s bottom landed heavily on the floor. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Sorry, Auntie Milly—but look!”

On the seat of the chair lay a little doll—no, it was Iris, shrunk to the size of a little doll and lying very still. Milly had nearly sat on her.

“Good thing you saw her, darling,” Dahlia said, giving Pindar a smile that made him turn red. “Poor old Iris—she’d have been as flat as a pancake!”

“Is she OK?” asked Tom.

“Just stunned.” Dahlia snapped her fingers and there was a flash of intense blue light.

The normal-sized Iris stood up, briskly wiping dust off her skirt. “Thank you. Was anyone killed?”

“I think we’re all OK,” Tom said. “Oh—I don’t see Abdul.”

“He’s probably hiding somewhere,” said Lorna. “You can come out now!”

Purple smoke seeped out of one of the drawers in the desk, and the rather sheepish genie appeared—he really was a bit of a wimp. “I thought we were all going to die! How did they find us?”

“I can’t imagine,” Dahlia said. “But we’re not safe here.”

They all trooped back to Mustard Manor. The godmothers were very serious and quiet, and Tom was afraid. If they weren’t safe here, where could they go?

“I think we all need another cup of tea,” Milly said. “I’ll make it.” She bustled about in Lorna’s kitchen, making tea and putting Jaffa Cakes on a plate. Tom had thought this semiroyal fairy was a bit spoiled, but she suddenly seemed nice. She patted Lorna kindly on the shoulder. “Chin up, old thing! It’s not so bad!”

“Yes, it is.” Lorna was very gloomy. “If Tiberius gets Tom or his mother, our case will be ruined.”

“If only you could remember what happened, Milly!” Iris said. “You must’ve seen who poisoned you!”

“Sorry, it’s only coming back in little bits. I was at the ball … I danced with Derek … he asked me to marry him again—that’s it.”

“We must go back to Hopping Hill,” said Dahlia. “The
Falconers know we’re here now. It’s only a matter of time before they send someone even more dangerous. Iris, can you get a message to Clarence?”

Tom had the cold feeling he got when he didn’t know if Dahlia was basically a good fairy or a bad one. “What about my mum? We can’t go without her! We can’t just leave her alone in the mortal world!”

Dahlia’s chilly eyes swiveled towards him. “Drat, I suppose not—my case will certainly be a lot stronger if we have her AND you.”

“But I’m afraid it’s quite impossible,” Iris said (as usual sounding rather pleased, Tom thought). “The three of us are marked fairies now. If we try to rescue her, they’ll just follow us.”