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  ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ Ella said, surprising herself with her own cheek.

  ‘What did you say?’ Dribbles rumbled, stopping and poking Ella roughly with her walking stick.

  Ella’s ears began to itch. A sensation of heat passed down the back of her neck and into her shoulderblades, and her hair flared slightly. But, remembering it was her fault that Dribbles needed a walking stick in the first place, she willed her body to be calm.

  Luckily, at precisely that moment, the elevator door opened. Ella stepped in after Dribbles. An elderly couple smiled at them both politely and backed into a corner, as far as possible from the pale girl with the wild hair. Embarrassed, Ella tried to pat it down, and concentrated on calming her breathing. She was afraid of herself now, afraid of whatever it was that had just risen up inside her like hot lava, rich and powerful.

  She looked about her for the pixie, but Dixon, it seemed, had disappeared altogether.

  Sitting at a café in the plaza, chewing on toast and butter and wishing she could have some jam, but knowing better than to ask, Ella was more than a little worried about Dixon’s whereabouts. In his absence she felt helpless once more. Schoolchildren were playing near some orange trees, teasing each other and laughing, singing a song in Spanish she couldn’t understand. For the billionth time she wondered what it would be like to have friends, and for the billionth time she wished she could go to school like normal kids did.

  All that day Ella had to face a gruelling onslaught of Spanish lessons from her determined governess. Towards evening Dribbles announced that, under Ella’s father’s instructions, they were to have tapas in the barrio viejo. Ella’s heart lurched, and she allowed herself to hope that, under the circumstances, her dad might change his rule and be there to meet them.

  ‘He has a dinner function at the hotel this evening and wants you out of the way,’ Dribbles explained.

  Ella’s heart dropped.

  ‘And tapas are?’ Dribbles demanded, motioning to the chauffeur waiting at the kerb as she nudged Ella towards it with her walking stick.

  ‘Little plates with tastes of different foods,’ recited Ella robotically, distracted by the fact that Dixon was still missing. Dribbles poked the girl with her stick again, pushing her into the back of the car. ‘And the barrio viejo?’ Dribbles continued, folding herself into the front seat beside the driver.

  ‘The old quarter of the city,’ Ella replied, putting her face up against the window.

  The car smelt of sweat and leather. The streets they drove through were busy with families, all dressed up in what looked like their Sunday best, sitting in outdoor cafés or wandering the pavement together. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, full of life, while Ella sat silently and stared out at them from behind the glass.

  When they reached the barrio viejo and stepped out of the car into a small street of tapas bars, the air had a gentle wraparound feel to it and the smell of jasmine, olives and strong cheese prickled Ella’s powerful olfactory sense. Her tummy rumbled. People sat at tables, clinking glasses and chattering away in Spanish. Ella wished she could ask one of them, any of them, for help in finding Dixon, but she couldn’t, of course. She followed Dribbles into a tapas bar and slumped into her chair, feeling very alone.

  Dribbles ordered some wine, clicked her tongue with annoyance at Ella’s poor posture, and poked her in the arm with her stick. Ella was about to sit up straight when a tingling down her back stopped her from obeying. She sat for a minute, examining the sensation and looking at the big legs of ham hanging from the ceiling in the bar. But even the sight of meat made her feel sick, so she returned her thoughts to the sensation. Her shoulderblades began to ache, and her ears itched much more than they had this morning. Ella rubbed them to soothe their urging and, like a gift, Dixon appeared, or at least most of him did, as Ella wasn’t wearing the spectacles. He was standing right in front of her on the white paper tablecloth.

  He seemed rather dishevelled and had a bump on his head, but he winked at her, and she, delighted and relieved to see him, winked back.

  Dribbles poured herself a glass of wine and poked Ella in the arm again, much harder this time and for no apparent reason.

  Dixon turned and glared at her, snorting like a bull, his eyes fierce and bulging. Ella put her hand out, but before she could do anything to stop him, he had dived head first into Dribbles’ wine glass.

  Red wine splattered everywhere. Dribbles let out a cry of horror.

  Rather than guilt, or a fear of reprisal, Ella felt a skip of excitement. Relieved and exhilarated by Dixon’s reappearance, and guided by that wonderful heat welling up from deep inside her, she squeezed her eyes shut and held the tips of her ears as Manna had shown her. She opened her left eye and stared hard. Dribbles’ glass flipped wildly to the left and Dixon fell out of it. Dribbles, terrified, raised her hands protectively to her chest and looked about to see if anyone else had noticed this bizarre, unprompted lurch. Ella shut her left eye and opened her right. The glass tipped clumsily to the right. Dribbles pushed her chair away from the table, its legs straining under the weight of her body.

  Ella was beside herself with excitement. She was making magic happen! A bit haphazardly, but it was working! She was a genius! This was too excellent for words!

  ‘Hey you, let’s go, blow, show!’ Dixon called out to her, spinning in circles to dry off his wine-soaked clothes. Dribbles let out a distressed whimper as she watched wine drops splatter across the table out of nowhere. ‘Quick, slick, tick!’

  They were up and away before Dribbles could find her shattered bearings.

  chapter 16

  classrooms & castanets

  Ella and Dixon pushed their way through the tapas bar. Ella’s whole body was alive with the thrill of having enchanted Dribbles’ wine glass, and to be able to see and hear better without the spectacles added to her sense of pride. Something big was changing inside her, and it felt great.

  ‘Put on the specs, flecks, Tex,’ Dixon yelled in her ear, far too loudly. ‘Quick, flick, pick!’ he cried.

  ‘Ow,’ Ella said. ‘You don’t need to yell!’

  ‘Okay!’ yelled the pixie. ‘But normally you can’t hear me without the specs on!’

  Ella chuckled to herself and did as she was told. The smell of cinnamon, oranges and rain filled her nostrils, drawing her towards a door at the far end of the bar.

  ‘So where were you today?’ Ella asked. ‘I was worried.’

  ‘I was in the revolving door at the hotel,’ Dixon said matter-of-factly, ‘getting trampled and crushed.’

  ‘Whatever for?’ said Ella.

  Dixon began to cry. ‘Must suffer, buffer,’ he wept. ‘I tried to do a spell on Dribbles when that ugly, disgusting, revolting, yucky, mucky, clucky,’ Dixon wrung his hands as if wringing a neck, ‘gross, pukey, smelly, farty woman poked you with her stick. But it didn’t work!’ Dixon flung himself against Ella’s hair. ‘I’m a bad pixie,’ he wailed, inconsolable.

  Ella’s heart went out to him. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘It’s up to me to protect myself now – but I missed you. I just like having you around.’

  ‘Oh good! I’m so glad, mad, fad!’ Dixon whooped. Then he dangled around her neck in a pixie bear hug. ‘Jolly nice to be around you again it is too,’ he said, giggling at his own joke.

  As Ella opened the door and stepped outside, an elf in a long red ruffled dress with white polka dots, her black hair pulled tightly away from her face, flew up in front of her nose.

  ‘I am Maria,’ she said, smiling sweetly and making a beckoning motion with a tiny, elegant finger. She fluttered by Ella’s shoulder and stroked her ear.

  ‘We have been following you all the long day,’ she sang. ‘Seence we find Deexon in the entrance to the hotel, trying for the revolving door to squash heem. We saved heem because we are getting a message from the gnomes of the Royal Court hiding in the Dell in England. The Dewdrops are wanting to send you the next reedle. We must
make the message come very fastly. The Queen, she ask us to be helping you. We too are unable to get back to Magus. All the Mirrors are frozen, as you know. And as you also know, we can only be on Earth for a leetle bit or we will get seeck. We are elf, you see. We have not a lot of time. Queek, over there, behind the purple flowers. Queekly!’

  With Dixon on one shoulder and Maria on the other, Ella felt her way carefully through the thorny branches of a giant bougainvillea growing up the wall at the back of the yard. Within the bougainvillea she found herself in a space large enough for her to sit back on her haunches and not be seen from outside. She wondered how long it would take for Dribbles to come and find her.

  As if reading her mind, Maria whispered in her ear, ‘Ees okay. We have enchanted the fat lady. She weel not bother us for a leetle bit.’

  A huddle of elves, colourful as a party piñata, stood in a circle on the ground, clicking their feet and clapping their hands. Gentlemen elves in bolero hats and black pants with red sashes greeted Ella with low bows. At the centre of the circle was a large castanet in which water rippled back and forth. An elf dressed all in black, with a long moustache, waved up at Ella. ‘Bienvenido,’ he said.

  Dixon looked blankly at the elf from his place on Ella’s shoulder. ‘I wish I spoke Spanish,’ he lamented.

  ‘That ees meaning “welcome”,’ said Maria, from the other shoulder. ‘Thees ees Alfonso.’ Alfonso flew up to Ella’s face and kissed her, first on one cheek, and then, flying elegantly over her nose, on the other. Ella felt a shiver run down her back.

  Alfonso pointed to the castanet in the middle of the circle. Ella peered at it, and then crouched in closer and looked harder.

  ‘Thees ees water enchanted with wanawana weed,’ Maria explained. ‘Eet knows what you want.’

  In the disc of water Ella saw a blurry image of what appeared to be a room full of children. It must be a classroom, for a teacher at the front of the class was writing words on a board, and Ella had read enough about schools to know what that meant. The elves watched her curiously. The closer Ella leaned towards the water, the clearer the picture grew.

  Feeling her face grow hot with embarrassment, Ella fell against the thorns of the bougainvillea. The classroom faded.

  ‘Eet is okay to want theengs, Ella,’ Maria whispered gently in her ear. ‘If you want sometheeng enough, and you believe in yourself, you can make eet happen.’

  ‘Keep wanting what you want, Ella. Do, do,’ Dixon urged her, in her other ear. Ella peered back into the waters. She really did want to go to school like a normal kid. The classroom appeared again.

  Dixon hopped off her shoulder and bounced towards the castanet. ‘Oh looky, looky, Ella,’ he yelled, pointing at the classroom. ‘There’s that boy who lives next door to you! Remember, December? Charlie Snoppit. We saw him the other day when you fell off your skateboard into the pond at the bottom of the garden. When you were embarrassed and went all red like a tomato.’

  Ella glared at Dixon, and her pale face flushed. How dare he talk about her blushing in front of all these strangers!

  Dixon slapped a hand across his face. ‘Dumb, bum, numb pixie,’ he muttered through his fingers. He flung his other hand around his throat and tried to throttle himself.

  Ella stepped back from the circle. For some reason she felt shaken at seeing Charlie Snoppit again, but her want and curiosity were stronger than her fear and embarrassment, so she fixed her gaze on the classroom and held it there.

  The effect was immediate. As though drawn by her determination, a shiver of tiny silver dewdroplets appeared, just like those that had appeared at Manna’s after her dream-filled night. They spun about her head, stroked her cheeks, kissed her face and, forming a perfect shimmering rectangle of glassy water before her eyes, transformed themselves into a shining silver note that fell softly into her hands.

  A flutter of elf wings hummed in her ears as she turned it over and read the words written on it. She was surrounded by elves in ruffled pink dresses with blue spots, elves wearing hoop earrings, elves in tight black pants and bolero hats, elves in white dresses with black spots, red dresses with white spots, green dresses with orange spots. It was hard to concentrate!

  The note read:

  To be the Clearheart

  You must strive

  To know what’s for the best.

  To learn is noble,

  We’re impressed.

  You’ve passed another test.

  Through twists and turns

  ‘Neath smelly turfs,

  Where rusty cans abound,

  With magic force

  You’ll quell your foes,

  And then we can be found.

  ‘Aiiiii!’ the Magicals called out in unison. ‘Maria, que dice, que dice?’ they cried, a chorus of tinkling voices.

  The castanet, left unattended, began to shake. The excited crowd turned towards it. The castanet shuddered; the water rippled and ripped. Sensing danger, Ella tightened her fist around the silver note. She could see the classroom again, but this time the desks were occupied by dark, cloaked creatures with red eyes. A rotten garbage smell overwhelmed the scent of cinnamon in the air. Ella gagged.

  Charlie Snoppit was sitting in the same place, but from inside him a hideous demon began to emerge, stretching his body beyond all recognition.

  The dark creatures were coming out of the water. They were coming for the elves, who shrank from the stench of them.

  ‘Trogggggglllllles!’ Dixon yelled.

  Heat beat through Ella’s shoulderblades and her ears. She pinched them to relieve the discomfort, but they kept burning, more and more, until the irritation was overwhelming. A disfigured Charlie swelled out of the water, snatching at her hand, snatching at the silver note.

  Ella remembered Wrinkles warning her that the Duke could try to reach her in many different guises. She closed her eyes, and the aroma of the bougainvillea drew her in, calming her. She breathed in the fragile scent of its lemony leaves. Opening her eyes, she stared at the thorny branches, willing them to come to life. Her hair spread out around her like a protective shield. As if guided by Ella herself, the bougainvillea began to twist itself around the Troggles.

  Charlie Snoppit was unrecognisable now. His eyes were black as night, and his nose had flattened to two holes in a scowling, aristocratic face ill-suited to the freckles on his pale skin.

  The black eyes bored into Ella’s eyes. Ella stared back. The heat within her, the discomfort in her ears, directed itself to her eyes, compelling whatever was inside Charlie to go away. Even the Troggles, struggling in the branches of the bougainvillea, were silenced by the power of her stare.

  ‘Get back,’ Ella whispered, and she didn’t recognise her voice as her own. ‘Get back, and get out,’ she hissed to the dark, piercing eyes of the Duke overwhelming the boy. ‘This note is mine.’

  The black eyes burned into her. Her green eyes blazed back, certain and strong, until the black eyes began to turn red and molten around the edges, as if consumed from the outside in. With a scream, the creature incarnate in Charlie Snoppit began to shrink before her. The bougainvillea branches pushed the captive Troggles back into the castanet and released them.

  As the bodies disappeared, Ella’s hair stopped swirling, and she gasped for breath.

  Dixon was on her shoulder in a moment, holding her inhaler. Taking it from him gratefully, she sucked hard. The thorns of the bougainvillea folded back in unison, protecting her from their spikes.

  The spotted elves stared in awe and fear at the girl before them.

  ‘Wooow,’ said Ella. ‘What just happened? What did I do?’ She swallowed hard. ‘What happened?’ she asked again, looking at the frightened elves.

  Maria stood up shakily and flew over to her. She smiled, but this time there was a deep respect in her eyes. ‘Come away from here, Ella,’ she said, parting the bougainvillea branches and beckoning her out. ‘You are the Clearheart. As powerful as they told us you might be.’

&nb
sp; Back in the yard, Ella stood up straight and looked about her. Everything seemed perfectly normal, as if nothing had happened.

  Maria floated before her, speaking hurriedly. ‘We want you must visit a very important gentleman, Don Posiblemente, while you are in Spain. He can help you on your journey.’ Maria flew this way and that in the wake of Ella’s breath.

  A timid elf in a yellow spotted dress flew to Ella’s hand, carrying a small yellow calling card. Ella took it from her.

  Don Filosofico Posiblemente,

  Calle 23,

  Guadalajara Alta, Estepona

  ‘And one more theeng I must tell you now, Ella dear,’ said Maria kindly. ‘There is nothing wrong weeth want to go to school with other childrens. Ees very normal.’

  ‘Ella Montgomery!’

  Ella nearly jumped out of her T-shirt. She tore the specs off her nose and tucked them into the back pocket of her dungarees, spinning to attention.

  Dribbles stood in the door to the yard, bulbous as a blister, her small, suspicious eyes almost lost in the folds of her forehead.

  Ella didn’t waste a minute. She ducked low and slipped under Dribbles’ arm back into the noisy tapas bar. For once she was glad to see her governess, a symbol of normality (whatever that was) in a wild new world of craziness. She was on a mission, a rather scary mission if the last few minutes were anything to go by, to save her grandparents as much as to find the Sacred Dewdrops, and Dribbles’ appearance was a welcome reminder of that fact.

  Dribbles eyed the child fearfully. If she wasn’t paid so terribly well and so attached to the other Montgomerys, she would quit this job in an instant. ‘It’s in the blood, I swear it,’ she muttered, keeping a safe distance from her charge. ‘You are pure insanity. Dangerous. Wrong. Someone should put a stop to you.’

  chapter 17