Wishing for Trouble (3 page)

‘Cool,' Emmy said, swishing her pearl-embroidered, blue damask skirts about.

‘Emmy!' Nick cried. ‘You're wasting wishes!'

‘It's not wasting wishes to get a dress like this,' Emmy said. She took a few dancing steps and then stopped, wincing. ‘Ow! The shoes pinch like anything.' She lifted up the skirt and looked down at her feet, which were squeezed into high-heeled blue shoes with extremely long, pointed toes. ‘I wish I had my own shoes back again,' she said.

Immediately, the pointy shoes disappeared and were replaced with a pair of pink sparkly thongs. Emmy laughed, bit her lip, and said, ‘Ooops! Sorry!'

‘Emmy, give me the ring,' Nick said furiously.

‘It's not your turn,' Emmy said. ‘Don't worry, I'll wish for something useful next time.'

She realised that the people on the stage were standing and pointing, with various expressions of horror and fury.

‘She's wearing my dress!' the little countess screeched. ‘How dare she!'

‘This bodes naught but ill!' the man in black snivelled.

‘We're doomed!' the woman in the horned hat sobbed. ‘This is some foul conjuration from the pit of hell!'

‘My lord priest, I beg of you, rid us of these devils,' the knight shouted.

‘They must burn!' the priest screamed, holding up the cross that hung about his neck. ‘It is the only cure for witchcraft.'

Emmy said crossly, ‘I wish you'd stop calling us witches and devils. Can't you see we're just children?'

At once everyone in the room stopped screaming and leant forward, staring intently at the five cousins.

‘Stop being such fools!' the countess said. ‘Obviously they're not witches and devils. Have you no eyes in your heads to see they are merely children?'

Emmy said to Nick, in a low voice, ‘See, that was a good wish!'

Nick made a face at her, then said to the knight, ‘Really, we don't mean any harm. We don't know what we're doing here. It just sort of happened.'

‘We've got this ring,' Ben said, lifting Emmy's hand to show everyone the red ring with the lion carved upon it. ‘We think it's some kind of wishing ring. It brought us here, and every time we wish for anything, no matter how stupid, it happens.'

‘That's my ring!' the countess shouted. ‘Give it back to me now!'

‘It's not your ring, it's Timmy's ring,' Emmy answered at once. She looked down at the ring, which was beginning to burn her, and shook her hand to cool it.

‘That is the seal ring of the Lyonessa family,' the countess said imperiously. ‘I have heard many tales of it. See! Does it not have my family shield upon it?' She waved one hand at the banner that hung behind her, which showed a red lion rearing up on its hind paws. ‘Legend has it that the ring was blessed by a fairy, but until now I thought that was just a story, like the one that it was stolen by a dragon many years ago.'

Ben and Tim glanced at each other, and grinned, remembering their friend the dragon.

‘It is my ring, and I want it back. Now!' the countess demanded.

Swiftly, Emmy slid the burning ring off her finger and gave it to Nick. ‘Sorry,' she said. ‘Nick's got it now. He can't take it off until he's had his three wishes.'

‘Which I won't be wasting on coats of armour, or silly dresses,' Nick said loftily.

The countess scowled. ‘Guards! Arrest them! Get me my wishing ring, and throw them in the dungeon!'

Guards began racing towards them, shouting at the tops of their voices.

Nick took a deep breath. ‘Freeze!' he shouted.

The guards rushed upon them, waving their swords and pikes and maces.

‘Urn, I mean, I wish you would all freeze!'

At once, every single person in the room – apart from the five children and Jessie – were encased in a shining sheath of ice. Through the ice, their boggling eyes and screaming mouths could still be seen.

‘Do you reckon it'll hurt them, being frozen solid?' Ben said. ‘Maybe you should have wished they would all just stop shouting at us.'

‘And listen?' Tim suggested.

‘And be nice,' Emmy said.

Nick was rather taken aback that his wish had been fulfilled quite so literally. ‘Um, OK,' he said. ‘I wish that … everyone would stop being frozen, and not be cold, or get frostbite or anything, but all be still and quiet and listen to us …'

‘And be nice,' Emmy said.

‘… and be nice to us,' Nick finished.

The five children watched with some trepidation as the ice melted away, and the crowd of people in the room stood quietly, listening.

‘Maybe the ring did belong to your family a long time ago,' Ben said to the countess, ‘but finders keepers. It's our ring now, and we need it to get home again.'

‘Indeed, of course, you are absolutely right,' the countess said. ‘You must forgive me. It is just that I was hoping the wishing ring could help us. I could wish for a rain of boiling oil to descend from the sky upon our enemies, or for those cursed traitors to all get the plague and drop dead on the field, or …'

‘I guess this is the countess being nice,' Ben murmured to Emmy.

‘Or for boils to appear on all their bottoms …'

Tim and Lach giggled, and the countess shot them a furious glance. There was a huge bang, and the whole castle shook. Everyone screamed and shrank together.

‘Sorry to interrupt,' Ben said politely, ‘but I guess you couldn't tell us what's going on out there?'

‘We are under siege,' the countess said, her voice trembling. ‘The villain leading the assault is my neighbour Lord Dastardly, who thinks that because I am just a girl, and an orphan, he can claim my land and my castle as his own. He has had us besieged for months!'

‘There, there, little cabbage,' the woman in the horned hat said. ‘Do not weep. What's the use? We're all doomed. There's no hope. We may as well surrender, as I've been saying from the first.'

The countess scowled. ‘Yes, there's hope,' she said crossly, ‘for hasn't the wishing ring of Lyonessa returned just in our hour of need? We'll be able to strike down all our enemies with sweating sickness and boils and lice and the pox …'

Tim and Lach giggled.

Emmy felt very sorry for the countess, and for all the people in the castle, who were looking sick and thin and frightened. ‘Couldn't we use just one of the wishes to help the countess?' she said. ‘We've got heaps left.'

‘We could wish the bad guys were all back at their own castle,' Ben suggested.

‘That would be no use,' the countess said. ‘Lord Dastardly would just come straight back and besiege us again. He's wanted Castle Lyonessa for years. No, the only hope is for them all to drop dead.' She saw their faces, and added, ‘Or for us to capture them all, and then send a message to my uncle, who would lock Lord Dastardly up in prison and make sure he never attacked us again.'

The five cousins looked at each other and shrugged. ‘I guess we could do that,' Nick said. ‘What we need to do is sit down and work out a plan.'

‘Except I'm starving,' Ben said, rubbing his stomach. ‘I can't think when I'm so hungry.'

‘I wish we'd come here after dinner, not before,' Emmy said.

‘I wouldn't mind my sausage sambo now,' Lach said sadly.

The countess bit her lip. ‘I think we may have some rat stew left…'

‘Urgh,' Ben said. ‘Gross!'

‘I wish we had some ham and pineapple pizza,' Nick said longingly, and then, as a big round sizzling pizza suddenly appeared on the table before him, smelling absolutely delicious, he hastily added, ‘for everyone!'