Clearheart Read online

  The Duke tapped on the top of the Waters in his wooden bowl. Saul appeared there at once.

  ‘The Clearheart is too resistant to me, I can’t take her,’ the Duke said furiously. ‘She seems to have some sort of inbuilt defence against me, or my evil intent. Or something of that sort. We will have to take your approach.’ The Duke scowled like a spoilt child who hasn’t got his way.

  ‘I have it covered,’ said Saul gruffly. He was not at all surprised at this turn of events. The Duke had failed before when he had tried to overwhelm Ella through Possessification of another. (Possessification of the Clearheart herself was out of the question. The idea was ludicrous. The child’s heart, her intentions, were far too pure for the possibility to even be entertained.)

  ‘How are you going with the procurement of arms and weapons?’ the Duke asked.

  ‘It is slow,’ said Saul. ‘We have some supplies, but negotiations are not going as quickly as I had hoped. We will need the Clearheart anyway, to fulfil our plan. So until we have her, there is time. Be patient.’ The Duke growled and stamped his foot. He drew his face close to Saul’s in the Waters.

  ‘I must be patient? I must be patient!’ he yelled, splintering the reflection in the Waters with his words. ‘I have waited hundreds of years for this moment. I have all the patience in the world!’

  Saul held his tongue. The Elf Duke was the Elf Duke, after all. The most powerful Magical being of all, save his wife, the Elf Queen. It would not do to anger him.

  ‘Just bring me the Clearheart,’ said the Duke, turning his back on Saul and reaching out his hand to Ragwald for a goblet of Antidote to clear the pollution that still coursed through his veins from his short spell in Gloria’s body in England.

  It was a risky ploy, granted. So much could go wrong. He was confident, however, that Saul’s predictions were probably correct. He would use Ella’s Clearhearted qualities—love and goodness and care and foolish traits like that—to lure her into his trap.

  And this time he would not fail.

  In the Duke’s former kingdom of Magus, four white elves departed from the diminutive halls of the Magusian Palace. They had been granted an audience with an aide of Mr Elton Wrinkles, the Queen’s Goblin Protector, as Wrinkles was sick with the flu. The magnificent citadel, home to the Queen and, formerly, the Duke, soared up above them, its turrets and spires wrought of an unimaginable water—a water that bonded like molten diamond melded with mercury, both liquid and solid at once.

  It sat upon a hill of such brilliant green that it veritably sparkled. The blue of the sky and the green of the pastures reflected off the walls of the citadel, casting sprays of shining natural colour through the crisp, clean air. Beyond the hill, the kingdom spread out, a patchwork of tiny crystal homes surrounded by nature. Not a road, not a telegraph pole, not a bulging, burping factory in sight.

  More white elves were to be sent to Hedgeberry, to keep watch over the Clearheart. The incident in the loggia, which they had recounted to Wrinkles’ aide, was something of note, the aide had told them, but hardly a matter for panic. What a pity that the aide never remembered to pass the information on.

  ‘Something’s up with you and I’m going to find out what it is,’ Gloria hissed at Ella, who found herself, most unfortunately, sitting next to her nemesis in Transmogrification. Ella chose to ignore the girl. There was nothing about her today that made Ella feel threatened. Best to say nothing, her instincts told her.

  Dixon’s instincts were clearly not so well primed. She felt him struggling to get out of her pocket. Avoiding eye contact with Gloria, Ella moved discreetly to the back of the class in order to settle the pixie. She asked Humphrey if he would be so good as to swap places with her today. Humphrey harrumphed, but found Ella’s request to be so sweetly asked, he felt compelled to say yes. There was just something about the girl.

  Ella tucked her hand into her pocket and pulled Dixon out.

  ‘I’m going to get that girl and put a pixie spell on her so she can never rhyme anything ever again!’ Dixon yelled, standing on her lap, hands on hips, his face crumpled up in such a tight grimace that he was pretty much all eyes. ‘Spell. Spell. Rhymes with bell. Tell. Smell!’

  ‘Shhhh,’ said Ella, looking up to make sure Professor Patchouli hadn’t heard him. She stifled a chuckle, pretty certain that Gloria Ulnus couldn’t care less whether she could rhyme words or not. Luckily, the rotund and ruddy-cheeked teacher was busy helping Charlie refill his glass of water, which had spilled all over his desk. ‘Just settle down, Dixon,’ said Ella. ‘You don’t want us to get in trouble, do you?’

  The pixie’s face uncrumpled at once and his watery eyes opened wide with horror. ‘I do not! You are quite right,’ he said, smacking a hand across his mouth and pulling at the bell on the end of his cap so that his legs snapped straight to attention. ‘Am going to be so good. Knew I would. Always should. Won’t say a peep. Rhymes with sheep.’

  Ella tried not to giggle. She looked at the glass of water on her desk and took a deep breath. ‘Let’s get this right today then, shall we?’ she said to the pixie.

  ‘Absamoloutely,’ said Dixon, very seriously. His face took on a look of extreme concentration, which made him go completely cross-eyed.

  Ella hadn’t quite managed to Transmogrify anything yet (without the use of her tears, that is) in class. First, she had to be able to make the glass move across the table without spilling any water. Basic Transmogrification. Once she managed that, she would be allowed to enchant the object into growing wings and arms and legs, and one day even a face and a personality. Personification. But not until she had harnessed her concentration enough to make the glass move so surely that nothing spilled out. She looked over at Samantha, whose glass was hovering delicately if facelessly in the air, its wings flapping gently. She scrunched up her nose and tried not to feel inadequate.

  Dixon peered up over the desk from his place on her lap, his tiny hands clasping the edge, and looked the glass square on. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Tight, might, light,’ he added, flipping backwards and scurrying up her dungarees so that he could balance near her ear in the shadows of her hair. ‘So first, my dear Ella,’ he whispered in her ear, ‘say the spell.’ Ella did as she was told, reading the words off the board. ‘Now you have to tweak your ear like so,’ the pixie said, grabbing the tip of Ella’s ear and giving it a firm yank. The glass flipped wildly to the left, water splashing everywhere. ‘Ah, maybe not so hard! Yard,’ said the pixie, reaching to tweak her ear again. Ella grabbed the pixie’s hand before he could touch it.

  ‘Maybe I should try by myself,’ Ella whispered out of the side of her mouth.

  ‘But I want to help!’ said Dixon, raising his voice. Ella found the pixie’s face and stuck her finger in his mouth to keep him quiet. The pixie bit it!

  ‘OUCH!’ Ella cried. Professor Patchouli looked up from the front of class. Charlie swivelled round on his chair in time to see Ella swing the pixie out of the confines of her hair, his teeth firmly embedded in her finger. Charlie zipped across the room before Professor Patchouli could stand up on her swollen feet. He was going to be there to protect Ella today. Yes he was.

  Before Ella could get her bearings, Charlie was pulling her hair violently, to draw attention to himself and away from the pixie.

  ‘OUCH!’ she yelled again, and then ‘OUCH’ once more, as Charlie tore the pixie off her finger, making her eyes water.

  ‘Detention, Snoppit!’ roared Professor Patchouli, pointing at Charlie and sending him from the room. Charlie squashed the deranged pixie into the pocket of his jeans and did as he was bid. Ella looked on, not sure whether to feel grateful or irritated.

  She had no choice but to rub her finger and the part of her neck that stung where Charlie had pulled her hair, and do nothing. She wiped her eyes. A perfect, round tear, the size of a pea and sparkling as a diamond, fell gently into her lap.

  ‘Back to work, Ella,’ said Professor Patchouli sternly.

  Ella returned to h
er task. Quietly. Carefully. With no distractions. She would ask Samantha to heal the tiny bite on her finger later. Although there was really no point. It was more of a dent. Whispering the spell on the board and tweaking her ear slowly, she stared at the glass. Nothing. She stared harder, drawing on the magic within her.

  Nothing. Harder. Then, magically, the glass moved gently across her desk and settled at the other side. Ella almost whooped out loud with delight. She’d made the glass move! She had. All by herself. Basic Transmogrification finally conquered! She looked about the class. Almost every other student had at least Personified their glasses to some degree. One or two were chatting away with their animated objects, as if Personification was the easiest skill in the world. Olive Pumpernickle, the class brainiac, was even sending her glass across the classroom to run errands for her, not a drip of water spilling. And that was very advanced Transmogrification indeed. Professor Patchouli stood with her hands on her hips, watching her proudly. There were only five minutes of class left and Ella had not managed to Personify a single part of her glass. She didn’t want to be the most useless Flitterwig in class again, however much the teachers told her that it was quite normal that she was behind.

  Looking terribly guilty, Ella made a decision. She just wanted to know, feel, see that she was somewhat capable—which she knew she could be, if not in the same way as everyone else in her year. She scooped the shining tear off her lap. Professor Patchouli had never even mentioned the use of the use of tears in Transmogrification, so Ella really didn’t want to get caught. Samuel had mentioned tears in Essentials of Magic, but only as a very, very rare Magical skill.

  What had been made clear in Transmogrification was that Shrinkification and Stretchification of objects and people was a very restricted power reserved exclusively to pure Royal Magicals (although there had been rare instances where very powerful Flitterwigs had managed to perform Shrinkification). But Ella could do both of these things, she knew, with the help of her tears, really rather easily. So surely she could use her tears for a little simple Personification.

  Ella tipped the tear in her lap onto her finger. She held it out to her glass of water and, taking her left ear between her fingers, stared at the glass intently, muttering the spell on the board under her breath. She was about to tip the tear into her glass when a slight burning up her neck and in her ears made her hesitate. She listened to it at once, of course. It just wasn’t right to cheat. Her shoulders slumped as she let the tear roll off her finger and onto the ground. It lay there, shimmering like a tiny crystal marble on the floor.

  Gloria Ulnus crossed the room to collect her own glass, which had flown, albeit blindly, to the back of the classroom. ‘Useless,’ she hissed in Ella’s ear, smirking at Ella’s inanimate glass as she passed.

  chapter 8

  dryads & duplicity

  ‘I just want to come home, Mother,’ Gloria whined into the Waters in the Watertalky room. Cynthia Ulnus, a dark-haired, angular woman with deep brown eyes, stared up at Gloria through the Waters impatiently.

  ‘I need a decent reason, for Magic’s sake, Gloria,’ she said, looking at the sundial on her wrist. ‘And quickly.’ She tapped her immaculate crimson nails on an antique side-table. ‘I have a D.O.R.C. meeting in ten minutes.’

  ‘Fine, never mind,’ said Gloria, petulantly. Gloria Ulnus’s parents were always too busy with the Dryads for Optimum Rights Committee to have any time for her. Despite their vast wealth, all they seemed to care about was the fact that Dryad Flitterwigs weren’t allowed to sit in the Upper House during Rooniun Sittings.

  ‘Come now, don’t be silly,’ said her mother. ‘I’m listening. Just be quick about it.’

  Gloria huffily began to tell her mother about the strange goings-on of the past few weeks. Of how this girl Ella, who was really mean and nasty, seemed to be doing strange things to her that made her insides hurt. Of how she couldn’t remember anything afterwards and how her feet and hands were left feeling numb. And of how this girl, an Elf Flitterwig, could see the invisible oak tree in the school grounds.

  Mrs Ulnus stopped tapping the side-table, her attention on her daughter absolute now. ‘Is the girl’s surname Montgomery?’ her mother asked.

  ‘How did you know that?’ said Gloria.

  ‘Well. I…’ said Mrs Ulnus, very much distracted.

  Gloria hadn’t noticed that Charlie was in the Watertalky room as she spoke. Charlie had convinced some Gnome Flitterwig geek working overtime in there to have a look in the Waters for Dixon, who Ella couldn’t find! But unless you had an open channel to someone, and the tiptap required, the Waters were never very reliable. Even if you knew where someone was, they had to be pretty close or thinking of you, or the pollution on Earth made the Waters cloud up.

  Gloria didn’t notice Charlie catch his breath as he heard Ella’s name mentioned. He slipped out of the room at once without being noticed.

  ‘What a little liar!’ Charlie thought to himself as he left. ‘How could she make stuff up like that?’ Maybe Ella’s fears about strange goings-on weren’t unfounded.

  Ella had been looking for Dixon everywhere. He had snuggled up to her on her pillow only last night, as he did every night, his tiny feet shuffling about near her shoulder to get comfy, his hands resting lightly on her right ear. But this morning at breakfast he was nowhere to be seen.

  Samantha, who had knocked over Ella’s glass when she sat down, tried to appease her friend. ‘Really, don’t worry,’ she’d said. ‘He probably just got distracted in the bathroom. You know how he loves to take a swim in the sink.’

  Charlie, though he felt a strange palpitation in his chest, tried to make light of it. ‘Pixies are super unreliable, El,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you been paying attention in Mr Happenstance’s class?’

  Humphrey simply shrugged. He was not having a good time. Despite the fact it was nearly the end of term, the days weren’t getting as short as they usually did at this time of year and he was sick to death of so much light. He’d just received a letter from a cousin of his who lived in a cave in India. He wished he could live in a cave.

  Dixon did not appear all day. That night, Ella tucked herself up in bed without him. But she couldn’t sleep. She missed his funny little body near her head, the tickle of his weeny fingers on her cheek. She squeezed her eyes shut until she could see balls through the darkness, tweaked her ear and repeated the incantation they had learnt weeks ago in Mutterings. A golden Ponkalucka bubble popped out of her tear duct.

  ‘Tell Dixon to let me know where he is,’ she whispered. The Ponkalucka popped before her and disappeared. Ella sighed. She knew he definitely wasn’t anywhere nearby if the Ponkalucka hadn’t sped off to do her bidding. But it had been worth a try. Samantha stirred in her bed.

  ‘Stop sighing and go to sleep, Ella,’ she said.

  Ella rolled over and tried her best.

  But the next day there was still no Dixon at breakfast. Even Humphrey was drawn from his dreams of dark cavernous spaces to consider the conspicuous absence of the pixie.

  ‘Perhaps he went to do some pixie cleaning-upping in the Outer Hebrides, got trampled on by a Scotsman and is dead,’ he offered, sombrely. Samantha whacked him on the chest. A little too hard, as it happens, for the poor Moglin Flitterwig fell right off his stool and onto the floor.

  ‘So sorry,’ said Samantha as she helped him up.

  Ella was even paler than usual today. Used to sharing her toast and a tiny bit of honey with Dixon, the memory of the pixie’s excitement when she let him sample a little of the sweet delectability just made her sad. She took herself off to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She tried to cry, hoping her tears might conjure up something, but she couldn’t.

  ‘Oh, where is Dixon?’ she asked her reflection in the mirror, pointlessly. For an instant she thought she saw something in her pupils. She looked again. Nothing. Just bits of black in green circles, staring back at her. Blank as the hole in a doughnut.

  In Aeronortics
that day she was hopeless. At least with Dixon by her side she had been able to climb up out of the cloud and stand upon it, the first step in finding weightlessness, and not care too much how silly she looked. But today she might as well have been stuck in a nest of fairy floss. By the time she clawed her way up onto the cloud’s surface, heaving for breath and grabbing for her inhaler, she was beside herself with an irrational sense of apprehension.

  That afternoon, doing her homework in the great hall, she turned to Charlie, who always sat next to her at homework time, no matter what. ‘It’s not normal, is it, that Dixon hasn’t shown up?’

  Charlie, who had been trying all day not to pick up on Ella’s mood, had to agree. And then he had a brainwave, which shot through him like electricity. It was a little annoying how he was only ever really brilliant when Ella was around.

  ‘Why don’t you try to get in touch with that Goblin Protector of the Queen’s? Mr Wrinkle or whatever his name is. Remember after we’d rescued the Dewdrops?’ Ella did indeed remember, all too well. Only months ago, she had found the Sacred Dewdrops at the bottom of a well in the rubbish tip on the far side of Charlie’s farm. They had filled her with their mercurial magnificence and she had flown to the willow tree in the Dell beyond her farm and saved the whole of the Magical Kingdom of Magus from the Duke and his dastardly plan to bring machinery into Magus.