The Sword in the Grotto (3 page)

M
y Plan went right out of my head when we got back to the mushroom farm.

As we reached the gate, we heard someone shouting, and it wasn't Barry. Then we saw Barry being pushed out of the mushroom shed by a tall, thin man with a ponytail and a very loud voice—Morris FitzMaurice, who runs the mushroom farm, or Old Morris, as Uncle Drac calls him.

“Look here,” Old Morris was yelling, “I'm usin' nice clean chemicals now, delivered in nice clean sacks at a decent time of day. You can tell that creepy Drac bloke once and for all that I don't want no more of his disgustin' bat stuff. Got that?”

“But—” Barry tried to get a word in, but the ponytail man still had a lot more to say.

“I dunno what he thinks he's doin'—comin' 'round with them sacks in the middle of the night, wakin' us all up, tellin' me how to manage my mushrooms and takin'
no
notice when I tell him I don't want no more of this stuff. Well, I'm tellin'
you
I've had enough of it. Got that?”

“Er, yes,” said Barry, “I think I have.”

“Good,” snapped the ponytail man. “An' you can take them smelly sacks back with you
an' all.” With that, he stomped back inside the mushroom shed and slammed the door.

Barry began dragging the sacks back to the van. He looked very annoyed.

On the way home, I sat in the front of the van as I
totally
refused to go back with all those sacks. It was not a fun journey. One of Barry's frogs was missing, and Big Bat suddenly looked a lot fatter.

“I'm sure I had five frogs this morning,” said Barry.

“Yes, Dad, you did.” Wanda glared at me like it was
my
fault. All the way home, Big Bat swung from the rearview mirror, and every time Barry looked in the mirror, Big Bat glared at
him
. Just like Uncle Drac does.

“What is Drac going to say?” muttered Barry as he swerved around a corner and Big
Bat hit his head on the windshield.

“Quite a lot, I expect,” I said.

“He'll blame me,” said Barry.

“Yes, he will,” I agreed.

“He'll say it was all my fault because I didn't deliver it last night.”

“Yes,” I said, “he will.”

Barry didn't say anything for the rest of the ride.

 

When we got home, Barry parked the van at the front of the house so that Uncle Drac wouldn't hear it. I unhooked Big Bat from the mirror. I was looking forward to giving him to Uncle Drac. But I wasn't looking forward to Uncle Drac finding out what Old Morris had said.

“Are you going to tell Uncle Drac what
happened?” I asked Barry, who had his head stuck under the seat. He was looking for his frog.

Barry mumbled something.

“You'll have to tell him sometime, Dad,” said Wanda.

Barry came up for air. “Later,” he said. “I'll tell him later, when he feels better.”

“You mean when
you
feel better,” Wanda said.

Barry sighed. He took off his hat and clicked his fingers. All the frogs that had not been eaten by Big Bat jumped on top of his head. Then Barry put his hat back on and went to get the sacks out of the van.

I crept up to the broom closet door and opened it just a little bit. Then I threw Big Bat in. Bats don't mind being thrown. They just fly wherever they want to go, which is exactly what Big Bat did. He flew into the corner
where Sir Horace was hiding and settled on the top of an old coat.

“Big Bat—oh,
Big Bat
!” gasped Uncle Drac. He sounded really happy. I peered around the door, and Uncle Drac spotted me.

“Minty.” He smiled. “I
knew
you'd find Big Bat. Where was he?”

“In a sack—I mean, in a safe place, Uncle Drac. He was fine. Really fine.” Uncle Drac
looked so pleased that I did not want to spoil things by mentioning the mushroom farm. So I didn't. But the trouble was, Uncle Drac mentioned it.

“Did Barry take the bat poo to the mushroom farm?” Uncle Drac picked up his weird green knitting.

“Yes, he did, Uncle Drac. That's a very nice scarf you're knitting.”

“Oh, do you really think so, Minty? And Barry made sure he gave the bat poo
personally
to Old Morris, did he?”

“Oh, yes, he certainly saw him personally, Uncle Drac. No doubt about that. Your scarf is quite long now, isn't it?”

“Yes, I'll need some more yarn soon. Did Old Morris mind about the bat poo being late, Minty?”

“I'll go and find you some more yarn, Uncle Drac. Back in a minute.”

Phew.
I got out of the broom closet fast and bumped straight into Wanda.

“Have you told him?” she whispered.

“No. Barry can tell him. Anyway, we've got things to do. I've got a Plan—remember?”

Wanda did not look as impressed as she should have.

“What
kind
of Plan?” she asked suspiciously.

S
tring is very important when you are going to explore a secret passage. The trouble was, I couldn't find any. I had everything else ready from my Secret Passage Kit—my big flashlight, cheese and onion chips, and a can of Coke—but the string was gone. I figured Aunt Tabby had taken it.

Wanda kept asking me irritating questions about my Plan, but I said there was no point
telling her anything, as it wasn't going to happen unless we found some string—and lots of it. So Wanda went to find some, and I sat on the attic stairs and thought through my Plan.

It was a really brilliant Plan, but then my Plans always are. We were going to go and get the sword in the grotto and give it to Sir Horace for his birthday. And how were we going to do that? Yes—you've guessed it. We would get to the grotto through the smugglers' secret passage. How about that for a great idea?

The more I thought about it, the more sure I was that Aunt Tabby was wrong about smugglers not wanting to come to our house. It was really a great house for smugglers—lots of rooms to hide stuff in, and far enough
away from the sea so that no one would suspect anything. When I had first discovered the secret passage to Sir Horace's room, I had followed it all the way down to behind the boiler room in the basement. Edmund lives in that part of the passage. I hadn't gone any farther, but I could see that it carried on. And where else would it go but to the grotto? It was obvious, really.

Then Wanda turned up with a huge ball of green string. “Mom let me borrow this from her prizewinning string collection,” she said. “She wants it back, though.”

I smiled. Wanda can be quite nice at times.

“
Now
will you tell me your Plan?” she said.

 

Soon we were climbing down the rickety old ladder that leads from Sir Horace's room.
Wanda didn't like it one bit. She was saying stuff like, “But horrible things might be living down there” and “How do you know it leads to the grotto?” which I was answering very patiently, considering that every time she said something the ladder wobbled, and I was holding on to it with only one hand, since I was the one with the flashlight.

But when we were halfway down
the ladder, Wanda suddenly stopped and wailed, “Suppose we get lost and we never find our way out again and we spend the rest of our lives just wandering around in the dark
forever
?” And the ladder shook so much that I practically fell off.

“Oh,
be quiet
, Wanda,” I said.

She didn't say anything else.

Soon we got to the bottom of the ladder, which I was really pleased about, but Wanda still looked miserable.

“Look, Wanda,” I said very patiently. “We tied the end of the green string to the secret door, didn't we?”

Wanda nodded.

“And you've got the string, haven't you?”

Wanda nodded again.

“So all we have to do is unwind your
mom's green string as we go until we get to the grotto. Then we just pick up the sword and follow the string home again. Easy peasy. There's no
way
we can get lost, is there?”

“I suppose not,” said Wanda. And then she thought for a bit. “Unless something
eats
the string.”

“Don't be silly, Wanda.”

“And if something started to eat the string, then the string would lead it straight to us and it would eat us, too!” Wanda wailed.

“Oh,
shut up
, Wanda.”

 

Now the secret passage was more like a regular tunnel. The walls were made of bricks, and the ceiling was tall enough for Wanda and me to stand up easily. It was arched and made of brick, too. The floor was quite hard, like
earth, and was covered with sand. It was pretty warm down there because we were getting close to where the passage runs behind the boiler room. I was looking out for Edmund, but it was Wanda who saw him first.

“Hello, Edmund,” said Wanda. Edmund floated around the corner and came toward us. Unlike Sir Horace, who just looks like an old suit of armor, Edmund looks like a real ghost. He is a boy of about ten, I guess, but he is an almost transparent boy with a greenish glow around him. He has a pudding-bowl haircut, wears a medieval tunic with a long hood, and carries a really neat dagger in his belt.

“Good Day, Wanda. Good Day, Araminta,”
said Edmund in his funny old-fashioned
accent. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, like it always does when Edmund speaks. His voice has a hollow sound to it, and it's hard to tell where it is coming from.

“Hello, Edmund,” said Wanda.

Edmund was floating around in front of us in a rather annoying fashion and was generally getting in the way. I could see what an irritating boy he must have once been.

“Excuse me, Edmund,” I said, “we'd like to get past. Do you mind moving out of the way? We don't want to walk through you.”

“Where are you going?”
asked Edmund.

I was about to tell him it was none of his business, but Wanda piped up and said, “We're going to the smugglers' grotto to get the sword. You can come too if you want, Edmund.”

“No he can't,” I told Wanda. “We're in a hurry, and Edmund only floats very slowly.” Besides that, considering he's a ghost, Edmund is boring and a bit of a goody-goody, but I was too polite to say that.

“You must go back. You may not come any closer,”
said Edmund in his spooky voice.

“Don't be silly,” I told him, and I tried to push him out of the way.

It was
horrible
. My hand went right through him and out the other side. Suddenly I felt frozen. I shivered so hard that my teeth chattered, and when I snatched my arm back all the hairs on it were
covered in ice.

“Arrgh!” I screamed.

“What?” squeaked Wanda, looking scared. “What is it?”

“It's Edmund. He's freezing. It's horrible.
Brrr.
” I shivered again. I just couldn't help it.

When Wanda saw all the icicles on my arm, her eyes opened so wide that I thought they might fall out. Any minute now, I thought, Wanda is going to panic big-time.

But she didn't. She put her hand in her pocket and took something out and then really fast, like a flash of light, she threw a shower of sparkly dust over Edmund.
Whhoooosh.

The dust settled over him like snow. Edmund looked confused for a moment, then he yawned, lay down on the sandy floor, and went to sleep. I was impressed.

“What was
that
?” I asked Wanda.

“Soporific Snow,” she said. “Dad gave me some from his magic bag. Good, isn't it?”

“Good? It's
amazing
. Wow.” Barry is a conjurer, and sometimes he does tricks for us,
but I had never seen one as good as this.

“Come on then,” said Wanda, “we'd better get going.” And she strode off, unwinding the ball of green string as she went.

“Hey, Wanda,” I yelled, “wait for me!”