Flitterwig Read online

  Ella took the spectacles off for a moment. They were beginning to pinch her nose and felt tight around the back of her ears. The pixie disappeared! She blinked. Gone! Just like that! The room dimmed and the lovely smells vanished. The empty silence of loneliness, a feeling she was so used to, felt deafening now. An anxious wheeze caught in her throat.

  Taking a quick puff on her asthma inhaler, she slipped the spectacles back on. She had to hold them to her face so they wouldn’t fall off, because Dixon was attached to them. He was swinging about like a flag at the top of a flagpole, his hat tinkling, making her cross-eyed.

  ‘Careful there, Ella,’ he yelled. ‘These are magic spectacles – magicmagicmagicmagicallymagic.’

  Ella caught the pixie in her hand and held him up in front of her face. He rested his arms on the fist she had made around his body.

  ‘Are you real?’ she asked, annoyed with herself now for letting this nonsense go on so long. She squeezed him a bit.

  He felt real.

  ‘The spectacles are the windows to the Magical Kingdom of Magus,’ Dixon said, ignoring her question. ‘Although in time you’ll be able to see us Magicals without them,’ he added, wrinkling up his forehead. ‘It just takes a bit of practice. The specs make it easier, of course, but you’ve already got the magic in you, poo, who, moo.’

  Ella shook her head really hard this time, the way she would if she had water stuck in her ear after swimming. And then, out of nowhere, there was a sound:

  It gave Ella such a fright that she dropped the pixie on the bed.

  There it was again.

  Hovering in the air was a teeny-weeny silver alarm clock, no bigger than a thumbnail. It had arms, and wings! It thrust itself into a nosedive, heading straight for Dixon, and wrapped its hands around his throat. Ringing its bell over and over, it pounded the poor pixie’s head against the quilt cover.

  ‘Okayokayokayokayokayokayokayokay!’ the pixie yelled.

  went the alarm clock as it bounced Dixon about with increasing urgency.

  ‘Okay!’ Dixon yelled again. Reaching out with some difficulty, he twiddled his ear. The alarm clock disappeared.

  ‘That was my internal alarm reminding me we don’t have much time, Ella,’ he said, looking around him and nodding, eyes wide. ‘Yes, yes. It’s quite right. We really must get going. Rhymes with rowing. Yes, yes.’

  chapter 3

  bubblegum & bad guys

  ‘What do you mean you can’t remember, you drivelling, snivelling fool?’ said the Grand Elven Duke of Magus, the authority in his voice belying the delicate lines of his slight, regal frame. He was standing in the moonlit shadows of a barn on Snoppit Farm in Dorset, glaring at a Troggle in the reflection of a mirror held before him.

  Silver-winged and silken-haired, wearing a black velvet suit and a richly embroidered overcoat tailored to allow his wings to lie free, the Duke was the most powerful Magical ever, other than the Queen herself. His Protector, Ragwald, a nervous, round-eyed goblin with snow-white hair and significant ears, was sitting at a respectful distance next to a plush bag. The Duke turned to him and rolled his eyes to signal his despair at the Troggle’s stupidity.

  ‘It was the simplest of tasks, you confounded nincompoop!’ the Duke said, turning back to the Troggle in the mirror. The Troggle shuffled uneasily, for there was still a lump of bubblegum stuck to the sole of his boot. ‘All I requested was that you set eyes on the pixie and report back to me.’ He beckoned Ragwald over.

  Reading his master’s mind, Ragwald jumped up at once on his sturdy legs and approached the mirror, his thick shock of hair flopping this way and that. ‘All four of you are to stay on watch until morning,’ he instructed the Troggle. ‘All of you together. Not one at a time.’

  The Troggle bowed low and faded from view.

  The Duke moved across the dusty floor to the plush bag Ragwald had been guarding, and tapped his foot impatiently. Ragwald hurried over to open it for him.

  A staggering incandescence shone from the bag. The sparkle of the Five Sacred Dewdrops filled the dark barn, bold and fresh as summer rain.

  The Duke smiled a smile of deep satisfaction. ‘Power is mine!’ he declared, looking up at the rafters and spreading his wings. This was history in the making. Never before had the Sacred Dewdrops, the very essence of Magic, been removed from the Magical Kingdom of Magus. These perfect objects held within them more power than the most powerful machines on Earth would ever do. And the Duke had succeeded in luring them to Earth, to help him achieve his mission to overthrow the Queen and take over the Magical Kingdom himself.

  Ragwald held his breath and bowed his head, partly out of respect for the Light of the Sacred Dewdrops, but more out of an instinctive concern for his master’s safety, the uncertainty of which was giving him hiccups. This was a dangerous mission undertaken by a troublesome master, and Ragwald was not at all sure how he could protect the Duke effectively now they were on Earth, exiled from the clean, simple serenity of Magus.

  Two Troggles hiding behind a haystack shared similar concerns.

  ‘It is one thing,’ one Troggle was saying to the other under his breath, oblivious to the sparkle of the Dewdrops as he chomped greedily on a toffee, ‘to visit Earth and do one’s job and then go home to Magus. I was just a simple grass imp before I got Trogglified, by the way. Cleaning grass was all I had to do.’ The Troggle sighed, thinking back. It had been pretty boring cleaning grass all day. ‘It is quite another thing, however, to actually have to stay here on Earth indefinitely. I mean, I was bored with my job, I’ll admit that, and that’s why I went to the Duke’s “Get Out of a Rut” seminars. But really, I wasn’t bored enough to join a blinking army! It was his promise of unlimited sugar that clinched it for me and made me desert Magus. And I have to say it was very exciting to find a huge pile of sweeties waiting for us when we stepped through that Mirror of Foreverness.’

  The other Troggle, who was chewing on a toffee himself and drooling syrup down his chin, nodded vehemently. ‘Well, I was a petal imp myself, which, let me tell you, isn’t much more interesting than grass impery. My friends warned me. “Don’t do it,” they said. “Don’t join the Duke’s army just for sweeties. You know sugar will Trogglify you,” they said. “The addiction will draw you away from the green loveliness of Magus, and turn you dark and ugly and stupid. It will rot your body and pickle your memory. Eventually, it will make you brutal and angry.” But how could I resist? Just taste one of these’ – the Troggle pushed the bag of toffees on the floor over to his companion – ‘and tell me, how could anyone resist?’

  ‘I know,’ whispered the first Troggle, diving into the bag, ‘although I’m feeling a bit misled right now. The Duke did promise us the Antidote to reverse the effects of Trogglitis as soon as we got here, and it hasn’t turned up yet. We’ve been here two days now. At least, I think it’s been two days, but my memory is getting a bit fuzzy.’

  The other Troggle nodded sympathetically, and then, talking with his mouth full, said in hushed tones, ‘I think he’s waiting for a Mr Saul Something-or-other to bring it.’ He looked about to make absolutely sure no one else was listening, and a bit of Trogglified skin fell off his arm. ‘Apparently, he’s a…’ The other Troggle had to crouch down as if avoiding a low-flying aeroplane, in order to hear his companion. ‘He’s apparently a, a…’ the Troggle gulped down his toffee, ‘a Flitterwig,’ he barely uttered. ‘Don’t say that word,’ the first Troggle hissed, looking panicky and almost choking on his confection.

  The Duke’s rich voice echoed through the barn and rolled over the Troggles in their uniform of black cloak and hobnailed boots, sending them running, scared, deeper into the shadows, dragging the half-empty bag of toffees behind them.

  ‘I must assume that the pixie has indeed reached the girl and that the Prophecy of the Clearheart in the Magusian Tomes is officially in motion,’ the Duke said to Ragwald, wiping a speck of dirt from a stone on the floor and settling himself elegantly upon it. He peered with
interest at the grime everywhere. ‘Unfortunately for my wife, the Queen, I intend to foil the Prophecy.’

  The Duke remembered the day when his wife had become the ultimate Ruler of Magus. He had never expected Magic to choose her over him, just because he had a penchant for progress, a vision for the future. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, enjoying every particle of the coarse, gravelly bite of Earth’s polluted air, so much more exciting than the thin, over-oxygenated freshness of Magus. It meant that there were machines here, puffing their luxurious emissions into the atmosphere, proving their power over Nature and cleanliness and monotonous sameness.

  The Duke opened his eyes and stared across the barn, seeing a bright new future. ‘It is time,’ he declared, throwing his head back. ‘Time,’ he repeated dramatically, ‘to get mechanical.’ He clicked his fingers and a vial appeared out of nowhere. It held a clear liquid inside it. Opening it carefully, he tweaked his ear before pointing his forefinger into the vial. Immediately elf dust spun out of his finger, and the vial began to bubble dangerously. ‘And what is more, it is time for me to grow, Ragwald, to a size that reveals my potency, to dimensions that demand submission, to a stature those damned Flitterwigs will respect. And then I will bring machines and industry and development to Magus.’

  The vial exploded, and a great white swirl of smoke filled the air, enveloping the Duke completely.

  His diminutive body began to grow.

  It stretched and it stretched and it stretched.

  He roared with pain.

  Ragwald covered his eyes.

  Within minutes the Duke was the height of a human man, his translucent skin drawn so tight that every vein and artery strained through his face in a curdling network of red and blue. His nose pulled and twisted until it disappeared flat against his fine features. His long silky hair wrapped itself around his throat like a crow’s claw. His deep, dark eyes became bloodshot, bulbous, swollen. His hands turned a mottled grey, and oversized nails, like claws, sliced out of the tip of each delicate finger. His wings drooped down his back, bathed in pus that oozed from his shoulders like oil from an engine, and a stench of raw meat filled the barn.

  In a low voice, the Duke began to chant an incantation. A tail pushed its way through the remains of his velvet pantaloons. A long, slimy, reptilian tail. It was an artistic touch he had come up with in the bath one day, so no one could possibly mistake him for a Flitterwig. His torn suit fell from him in tatters.

  A Troggle peered out from behind a haystack and, seeing the naked monstrosity before him, dropped his packet of bubblegum in shock.

  Hardly daring to look, Ragwald approached the Duke, dragging a human-sized purple suit and cloak behind him. He had made them weeks ago, when preparing the Troggles’ uniforms, in anticipation of this moment.

  The Duke took them from him, and had barely managed to pull on his new clothes when the barn door opened and moonlight poured across the floor. He hid behind a barrier of neatly stacked wood, moving painfully in his overextended skin.

  A boy, short for his nine-and-a-half years, sneaked inside and headed over to a trunk in the corner. His face was almost hidden under a pair of oversized glasses resting on a snub nose, and a shock of strawberry blond hair shot out of his head. His skin was completely covered in freckles, right down to his legs with their knobbly knees poking out of his filthy shorts. In one hand he held a small, wriggling hessian sack.

  The boy pulled a food processor out of the trunk and plugged it into a socket in the wall. Crouching down beside it, he opened the sack. A frog’s head popped out and looked about in alarm.

  ‘Look,’ the frog said hurriedly to the boy. ‘I’m sorry. I know you hate it something rotten when I talk to you…’

  The boy put his hands over his ears. ‘La, la, la, la, la,’ he sang manically. ‘Can’t hear you, no I can’t. Frogs don’t talk. There’s no such thing as talking frogs. No, I’m not mad,’ he sang.

  ‘Charlie,’ the frog beseeched him, ‘I know it’s strange. Indeed, I’ve never met a person who understands me, either, but, dear boy, just think what you could do to help us froggies if you would just accept your wonderful gift.’

  But it wasn’t only frogs Charlie could hear. He could hear all animals, all the time. The pig in the piggery had a toothache. The robin who sat on the windowsill outside his classroom had lost her babies. Even the spider in the bathroom at home had a problem with the colour the walls were painted!

  Charlie grabbed the frog out of the bag and dangled it over the food processor. He took a deep breath. ‘I can do it, I can do it, I can do it,’ he repeated to himself, lowering the now hysterical frog into the blender. He slipped the lid on as fast as he could and put his finger on the ‘ON’ switch.

  But it was no good.

  He couldn’t do it.

  He just couldn’t bring himself to get rid of them. Oh, he’d tried. Time and again. Because he hated the talking animals more than anything in the world. If he could just get rid of them, no one would think he was mad anymore. They wouldn’t be able to distract him and confuse him and make him behave like a complete and utter idiot. And then the Fowler boys would stop beating him up and his stutter would go away and he could concentrate on becoming a world-famous runner and everything would be all right.

  Except that Charlie had one big problem he could not overcome, no matter how he tried.

  Charlie couldn’t hurt a fly!

  He put his head in his hands.

  The Duke peered out from his hiding place. He cleared his throat.

  The boy looked up, and his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. A stretched horror stood before him. Shocked and speechless, he made the face of a child who has had to swallow a brew of dirty four-week-old boiled socks.

  The Duke touched the tip of his ear and pointed at the lid of the food processor. White dust shot from his forefinger, and the lid flew off. He pointed again and struck the frog inside with another white shoot of elf dust. The frog peered over the side of the blender and hoisted himself out. He opened his mouth, but not a sound came out.

  ‘Oh my g-g-g-goodness, did you… did you… did you just shut him up?’ Charlie stuttered, incredulous.

  The Duke closed his eyes affirmatively, veins throbbing red and wiry through the stretched skin of his face.

  ‘Oh thank you,’ said Charlie. He sighed a deep, deep sigh of relief. ‘Thanks so much. That f-f-f-frog’s been driving me p-p-p-potty.’

  The boy took a good look at the creature that had just given him his first moment of peace in years. He’d never seen anything so revolting in his life. What on Earth was he? Not a human being, that was for sure. He had a tail! For an instant Charlie wasn’t sure what was worse – a talking frog, or something unrecognisable as anything at all that could shut frogs up.

  It seemed an appropriate moment for the Duke to introduce himself, and he was about to do just that when out of nowhere a gargantuan cracking sound shot through the barn, followed by a blinding light so intense that it sent the Duke and the boy running for cover. There was a fizz and a snap and a whoosh, and an intense smell of cinnamon and rain filled the barn.

  Across the room exploded the most spectacular, the most brilliant, the most oh-my-goodness-we’re-all-going-to-die lightning bolt, sharp as a shard of glass, majestic as an iceberg, carrying within its blinding radiance the Five Sacred Dewdrops.

  The boy was thrown to the floor in the wake of the lightning’s trajectory. The Duke raised a clawed hand to his stretched face to tweak his ear, but it was too late. The lightning bolt shot out the door. The Duke followed it, his tail a slithering shadow, his body stiff from Stretchification. The boy got up and chased the Duke.

  But by the time they reached the open door of the barn and looked into the dark night, all they could see was a shooting star piercing its way into the inky sky.

  The Sacred Dewdrops were gone.

  The Duke could hardly breathe. He’d just stolen the Dewdrops, the most powerful treasure of Magus, fro
m the Treasury of his own palace. Using Magic knows how many spells and how much elf dust, he had transported this treasure through a Mirror of Foreverness, endangering every Magical in Magus, and now, now the Magicforsaken miseries had taken off before he’d had a chance to convince them his motives were worthy!

  Which they weren’t, of course.

  The Duke looked at the boy.

  The boy stared back.

  The Duke’s mind worked fast. Why had the Dewdrops made their escape? They would be frightened in the human world, of course, but he had assured them that he had brought them here to Willow Farm to await the Clearheart’s return from London so that she could protect them during their stay on Earth. He had studied the Magusian Tomes (he was one of the few who had), for Magic’s sake. He knew that only the Clearheart could wield power over the Dewdrops in the human world. He knew that as long as one Royal stayed in Magus, the Dewdrops would trust the other Royal on Earth if the Clearheart was with them as a Protector. He had even forged a letter from his wife, the Queen, giving them express permission to accompany him. The reason he had given was that the Earth’s ice-caps were melting at a rate too fast for humans to control, and the Dewdrops were required to do some intense environmental reversal work.

  So why would they have deserted him? Unless…

  No.

  She couldn’t have.

  Unless the Queen had left Magus and come through a Mirror of Foreverness too.

  But then… what would that mean? If the Dewdrops and both the Royals had departed Magus, the Mirrors would have frozen within a day. Nobody could get into or out of Magus until the Dewdrops, in the company of at least one Royal, returned.

  What folly! He hadn’t thought his wife had it in her! Such recklessness left the very existence of Magus in jeopardy. It was one thing for him to leave in search of his dreams, but for both Royals to abandon the Kingdom was perilous in the extreme. Now it would be a race to the bitter end, and not only against one another, but against time itself. For, without the Antidote – a Flitterwig invention – Earth’s smoggy atmosphere was lethal to a Royal Magical. The Queen must have known that the Dewdrops would sense danger the moment she too departed Magus. The absence of the two most powerful Magical presences in Magus would have resulted in so great an imbalance that they would have sensed it right away.