Scatterbungle Read online

  Scatterbungle

  another flitterwig tale

  by Edrei Cullen

  illustrated by Gregory Rogers

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  chapter 1: dormitories & dreams

  chapter 2: predicaments & pepper

  chapter 3: carnivals & cluelessness

  chapter 4: misfits & memories

  chapter 5: empathy & eggshells

  chapter 6: power stations & prophecies

  chapter 7: guilt & grudges

  chapter 8: diving & discoveries

  chapter 9: shadows & shivers

  chapter 10: shell-shock & shambles

  chapter 11: antidotes & animosity

  chapter 12: mix-ups & mayhem

  chapter 13: letters & legacies

  chapter 14: scents & shrinkification

  chapter 15: repetitions & revelations

  chapter 16: disappointments & determination

  chapter 17: letters & longing

  chapter 18: extremes & extrapolations

  chapter 19: roots & realisations

  chapter 20: freezification & fright

  chapter 21: visible & visionary

  chapter 22: firs & fires

  chapter 23: blame & backbone

  chapter 24: invaders & inevitability

  chapter 25: destruction & divisions

  chapter 26: toes & tumbles

  chapter 27: nemesis & nets

  chapter 28: possessification & pomposity

  chapter 29: carpets & cacophony

  chapter 30: helicopters & humanity

  chapter 31: miracles & mothers

  chapter 32: tricks & tomorrows

  Copyright

  For Mary-Jan E.C.

  chapter 1

  dormitories & dreams

  Ella sat up with a start, catapulting the snoring pixie tucked under her chin across the bed. Her shoulders tingled and her hair flared in the dark, its honey colours shining strangely in the light of the moon. She grabbed the tips of her terribly pointy ears. They were burning up!

  ‘Gracious, blimey!’ yelled the pixie, as he landed upside down on the mattress, his striped stockings kicking up in the air. He slapped a tiny green hand across his mouth, suddenly mindful of all the other sleeping bodies in the quiet dormitory. Even though he was only the size of a pepper pot, he had a big voice!

  Ella’s wings began to strain against her shoulderblades. ‘Shhhhh Dixon,’ she urged the pixie, as she tried to catch her breath. Air was coming in short, sharp bursts that hurt her lungs. When it came to pollution in the air, being a Flitterwig—a human being with Magical blood—had its challenges.

  Dixon glared at Ella so hard she could see the whites of his eyes bulging in the moonlight. He pointed wildly at the other hand, clasped over his mouth, to show he was trying EXTREMELY hard to shhhhhh! And then he realised that his best friend was struggling to breathe!

  In a flip, jump and a twinkle, he was up and across the bed. He hauled Ella’s asthma inhaler from the bedside table and balanced it on his head, squishing his pointy cap flat.

  Ella grabbed it and took a grateful puff.

  ‘Were you having another wobbling, bobbling, troubling dream, gleam?’ the pixie babbled, much louder than he wanted to, which forced him to smack himself over the mouth again.

  Ella simply nodded but her emerald eyes flitted about the room with such uncertainty that Dixon could do nothing but let out a sympathetic whimper.

  ‘Shh,’ Ella whispered again, gently. She scooped Dixon into her hand, covered his weensy mouth—indeed, practically his whole face—with her finger, and padded out to the hall.

  Finding the landing, with its royal-blue rug and grand mirror—the size of a whole wall—perfectly intact, calmed Ella. A gentle lamplight cast warm tones up the majestic staircase, and the carved oak of its elegant banister was as firm and reassuring as always. Ella shook her head to dispel the images of her bad dream. Only moments ago she’d seen this very landing burnt to a cinder. She’d seen the mirror ahead smashed and blackened. She’d seen the banister scorched and broken. In fact, Ella had seen her whole school completely ravaged by fire. The only thing she’d seen left standing was a menacing Giant wearing a kilt and a scar across his right eye. In Ella’s dream the Giant jangled a bunch of old keys in his enormous hands as he laughed at the destruction of her beloved Hedgeberry.

  But right now, everything was in order. Ella looked at herself in the mirror and patted down her billowing hair. She rolled her eyes at her dishevelled reflection and tiptoed back to bed. Gosh, she was silly.

  She tucked herself under her duvet while Dixon sang a soothing old pixie lullaby in her ear.

  ‘It’s okay, Dixon,’ she said softly, as much to reassure herself as to reassure the pixie. ‘It was only a dream.’

  But the bad dreams were coming more frequently these days, and always, overwhelmingly, they would end with the awful, horrible, terrible revisiting of the day when Ella was three years old and her mother’s car crashed through a stone bridge and plunged into a valley… Ella lost her mother and two brothers that day. The only passengers to survive the accident were Ella and her Grandmother Manna.

  Ella concentrated on breathing evenly and picturing the sparkling fields of her school grounds, awash with colour from the flowers that grew in wild abandon. She pictured the bold trees that surrounded them, guarding the secrets inside; the rickety outhouses where she took her lessons, full of startling, thrilling, magical secrets; and the spiralling, elegant turrets of the great main building itself, with its twinkling windows and steep, shingle roof.

  The comforting thought of Hedgeberry as it was today helped her ears to cool and her hair to settle. But even as she lay wide-eyed in the dark, watching the shadowy body of her friend Samantha in the next bed, letting out lovely puttering noises from her mouth as she slept, Ella couldn’t help but feel uneasy in her heart.

  Ella sat up with a start.

  Again.

  But this time she was smiling. The morning sun was streaming through the windows and Dixon was clinging to the top of her ear, one leg resting on her shoulder, the other swinging free.

  ‘Wakey, wakey! Rhymes with shaaaaaaaaakeeeeeeey!’ he sang as quietly as he could in her ear (for it wouldn’t do for him to be heard by anyone other than Ella and her dearest friends). Ella squeezed her eyes shut against his over-excited timbre.

  ‘You’ll make her deaf one day if you keep doing that every morning, Dixon,’ said Samantha, Ella’s Flitterwig friend (who was allowed to know about the pixie). Sam hopped off the bed next to them with a flourish, then landed awkwardly on a slipper, slid across the floor and tumbled onto Ella.

  Samantha was a Sprite Flitterwig—a healer who could make a bruise disappear in moments, just by laying her hands upon it. But, like most Sprite Flitterwigs, unless she was focused on the act of healing she was really rather clumsy! She looked up at Ella apologetically. Her delicate features, perfect skin and slightly slanting turquoise eyes, were framed in a halo of blonde curls. She looked more like an exotic bird than a clumsy clot as she hopped back into her bed and stretched her arms up to welcome the day.

  Every morning in the dormitory it was the same. Dixon tried to keep himself hidden, while Samantha stumbled, tripped and made a lot of noise, before the bluebells had even rung to let everyone else know it was time to get up.

  And, like every other morning, when the bluebells did ring, everyone else in the dormitory would stir from their sleep. Ella tucked Dixon, and all but her nose and eyes, under her duvet and watched the room, sleepily, from her bed.

  One of the Goblin Flitterwigs was up in an instant, opening the windows and beckoning in the birds on the sill.
She chattered away to them as they flew inside and settled on her head and her arms. Ella couldn’t understand a word of their birdy language. She was hopeless at Animumble.

  One of the Sylphs—Flitterwigs of the Air—rose from her bed like an angelic ghost. As she stretched her arms, the air around her seemed to move and meld into her body, as if she was a part of it. She let out a long sigh and Ella marvelled at the current her breath created.

  Ella peered over to where Gloria Ulnus slept. Gloria, who hated Ella more than anyone in the world… Gloria who would never forgive Ella for getting her father—Frederick Ulnus—arrested… Gloria who used to be the best skateboarder at Hedgeberry… until Ella came along. There she was, as uptight as ever, ratty nose poised over a tightly puckered mouth, brown eyes half closed in an intense frown, tending to the bonsai tree on her bedside table.

  Gloria was a Dryad Flitterwig. Her kind had a deep affinity with everything woody and plant-like. They could understand the whispers of the trees and transform parts of their bodies into branches and twine. Ella couldn’t help noticing how gently Gloria’s olive brown hands moved as she watered the tiny tree and dabbed at its leaves. The bonsai was equally tender in return.

  ‘Oh wonderful, wonderful day!’ Samantha sang at the top of her voice. Ella looked over at her friend. The Sprite touched her toes five times in quick succession, each time letting out a swift breath. Ella grinned. She was so happy to have Samantha as a friend. Samantha and Dixon and Charlie and Humphrey were the best friends a Flitterwig, or any sort of human, for that matter, could wish for!

  Dixon was watching Samantha too, from the hidden safety of Ella’s armpit. It was unheard of for a pure Magical to be so close to a Flitterwig, but Ella was an exception—she was the Clearheart. She patted the pixie on his head. Any minute now Samantha would hop out of bed, trip and fall over again—it was a certainty! Dixon burrowed further into Ella’s armpit and chortled, covering his eyes in anticipation.

  Ella loved everything about being at Hedgeberry, School of Flitterwiggery. Until Ella realised she was a Flitterwig—part human, part Magical—she’d thought of herself as just a lonely 100% human kid, with too-long hair, too-pale skin and ridiculously pointy ears! But at Hedgeberry she was normal as normal could be!

  She loved learning how to make the lemongrass soap in the shower flip out of its dish and into her hand, just by tweaking her ear and mumbling a few magic words. She loved the way breakfast would appear in her bowl, as though every ingredient in the kitchen had anticipated her wishes.

  And after nearly two years at Hedgeberry, Ella’s secret was still safe—she was the Clearheart, a powerful Flitterwig descended of Royal Magicals, the rarest of them all. Not only did Ella have tears that could cure a pure Magical from the devastating effects of Earthly pollution, she also had the ultimate power to Shrinkify or Stretchify people and objects. This meant she could reduce herself and others to a size that could infiltrate the Pure Magical Kingdom of Magus, which was a dangerous gift indeed.

  Ella had turned thirteen in the summer, and it had been a while since any of her really special skills had been called into action. The Flitterwig world had not had a hint nor heard the barest whisper from the exiled evil Duke of Magus, now presumed dead. The pure Magicals of Magus and the Giants of Gommoronahl were allies again, and it seemed that Ella had not a greater care in the world beyond working hard at Ecology, enjoying Recycling (her best subject) and discovering the endless mysteries of how it came to be that pixies and elves and goblins and giants really did exist in the world.

  Yes, except for those pesky bad dreams of her school destroyed, and the fact that Gloria Ulnus hated her, life at Hedgeberry was just peachy for Ella Montgomery, Elf Flitterwig in training.

  chapter 2

  predicaments & pepper

  And so at breakfast, it was more than a little disconcerting to see the front cover of The Daily Flitterwig as its misty pages rippled out over the dining hall fountain, like projections in a waterfall. Ella jumped up from the quiet table in the corner she shared with her friends and approached the watery sheets. Flitterwigs normally sat with their own kind, but Ella—an Elf Flitterwig—and her friends—a Goblin, a Moglin and a Sprite, broke the mould daily.

  On the left of the front cover was a floating image of another friend of Ella’s, Thomas Brackenrack, the Giant, Lord of Gommoronahl. He wore his favourite beanie on his boulder of a bald head, and his soft nose was scrunched up above huge squishy lips grinning at the camera, bearing craggy, filthy teeth, the size of paving stones. His arm was around his brother Bolgus’s shoulder. Bolgus stood smiling gormless as ever, his red hair filled with soil, his eyes full of love and admiration for Thomas.

  Ella caught her breath. That was the photo the Flitterwig press photographer had taken on the day the Magicals and the Giants had re-signed their peace treaty after so many years of being enemies. The Elf Queen of the Magicals, Tirabelle Rose the Nineteenth, was meant to be in it with them, but she had politely refused at the last moment. But it wasn’t the image on the left that made her gasp.

  It was the one on the right.

  It showed a Giant wearing a ginormous kilt, looking over his hulking shoulder as he made away from the camera. He had big nests for eyebrows, wild black hair, a nose more knobbled than the top of a muffin… and a deep scar across his right eyebrow.

  He was the Giant from Ella’s dreams!

  Her heart sped up in her chest. She nervously read the floating headline, plunging her hands deep into the pockets of her scruffy dungarees.

  THOMAS BRACKENRACK, LORD OF THE GIANTS OF GOMMORONAHL, AND HIS BROTHER BOLGUS GO MISSING. GIANT ARCH-NEMESIS ARNOLD MCDUFF BELIEVED TO BE BEHIND THE ABDUCTION.

  From his seat at the breakfast table Charlie Snoppit, Ella’s Goblin Flitterwig Protector (all Royal Elves have one, pure Magical or part-human Flitterwig) and first-ever friend, spotted his Protectee’s flaring hair.

  ‘Oh, Magic,’ he sputtered, his cornflakes and milk flying out of his mouth. Ella’s flaring hair was a sure sign of trouble! Charlie scrambled up from the table, feet zooming beneath him, to join her by the newsfountain.

  ‘You know those dreams I’ve been having?’ Ella whispered to him, pointing up to the rippling news image of the hulking, scarred figure. ‘That’s the Giant I’ve been seeing.’

  Charlie peered at the image of the Giant in the kilt and then looked furtively around the dining hall.

  ‘Have you been having bad dreams about Giants?’ asked Samantha, who had promptly followed Charlie from the breakfast table when she’d noticed his alarm.

  ‘Only every blinking night!’ Charlie hissed, his freckles glowing and his short, white spiky hair standing up on end even more than usual. Charlie looked at Samantha, dumbfounded. Hadn’t they been talking about Ella’s bad dreams for weeks? Charlie, Samantha and Humphrey were the only Flitterwigs at Hedgeberry who knew about Ella’s past and the fact that she was the Clearheart. Apart from a few of the most senior adult Flitterwigs, of course. Others had their suspicions about her, like Gloria, but no-one else knew for sure.

  Charlie’s feet jittered on the spot. Ella might have felt relaxed about being the Clearheart, but Charlie was constantly alert for any danger that might befall her. He couldn’t help it! Like it or not, being her Goblin Protector was his destiny. It was a cause of permanent anxiety, and a reality that rather got in the way of mastering his own magic.

  But Ella was far from relaxed. She was full of concern for Thomas and Bolgus’s wellbeing. What had happened to them? Was the Giant from her dreams involved in their disappearance? Her long eyelashes blinked up and down as she tried to absorb the odd connection. She looked up at the watery paper again and noticed a small caption floating in the bottom left-hand side of the front page.

  Ex co-chairman of the Rooniun Saul Bottomly and rogue Dryad Frederick Ulnus still at large.

  Ella banished this fact to the back of her mind, shuffling awkwardly in her converse trainers. She had been partly responsible
for their arrests, so her tummy had been churning since their recent escape from the Goobloobin Flitterwig Gaol in Cornwall.

  ‘I really think you need to talk to someone about your bad dreams then, Ella,’ Samantha whispered, walking her friend back towards the breakfast table. As Samantha sat down, her hand slipped for no good reason at all and her chin hit the table. Humphrey snatched his glass of milk out of the way just in time. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence?’ Samantha continued, barely noticing Humphrey’s dexterity, ‘that you’ve been having bad dreams about a Giant in a kilt and now there’s one on the front page of the newspaper?’

  ‘Um, derrrr,’ said Charlie, shaking his head. Ella dropped her elbows on the table and her head to her hands to help her think.

  ‘Exqueeze me!’ said Dixon, flipping out of the front pocket of Ella’s dungarees, peeking left and right to make sure no-one at any other table was looking his way. He tugged at her right elbow. ‘Not very good manners, spanners,’ he said, tut-tutting to himself as he pushed her elbows off the table.

  Terribly strong, Dixon was! His lime-coloured face turned a deeper shade of green with indignation and his long cap tipped over his weensy nose.

  Charlie picked him up by the back of his knickerbockers with two fingers. ‘Dixon, you need to be more discreet,’ he said crossly. The pixie was usually gone all day doing his usual magical environmental work. Charlie understood that he was taking a few days off because he wasn’t getting much sleep at night since Ella had started having her bad dreams, but still.

  Dixon moaned. He knew he had to be careful of being spotted at school. Charlie plopped the tiny fellow into the pocket of his shorts before he could start a struggle.

  Charlie heard his pet frog, Harold, grumble as Dixon landed next to him. Charlie held his hand firmly over the opening and scrunched it closed, then refocused his attention on his friends.