Clearheart Page 8

  Ms Wheelbarrow dismissed Gloria as soon as was polite, a worrisome concern rising within her. She Personified her teacup and sent it to go and find Humphrey Scrumphries and young Toby Wetlands at once. But could she get a word from Humphrey? No she couldn’t. The boy seemed to be utterly confused by every question she asked him. And as for Toby Wetlands, he had been knocked out on the cricket grounds at ten o’clock this morning. By Samantha Wallow, apparently. She’d hit him over the head by accident with her cricket bat and then smacked herself in the head as it rebounded off him, knocking herself out in the process. If it had been anyone other than Samantha Wallow, possibly the most clumsy Flitterwig Hedgeberry had ever had (although her Spritely Physician skills were exemplary), Wheelbarrow might have been surprised. But it was Samantha and Wheelbarrow was worried, so she wasn’t.

  Teatime came and went. Feeling sick to her stomach, Ms Wheelbarrow settled herself on the brown corduroy couch in her study (this was far too serious a call to be made from a desk) and pulled the telephone towards her.

  First she dialled the Snoppits. She feared their reaction less than the Montgomerys’, though she dreaded telling them the news no less at all. They said they would make their way to the school immediately. Dialling Mrs Montgomery, Ella’s grandmother, next, the poor headmistress felt a lurch in her heart. She knew that Mrs Montgomery had been reluctant to allow Ella to attend Hedgeberry in the first place. Now it seemed her fears were justified. The phone rang only twice before Mrs Montgomery picked it up.

  Her reaction was just as Ms Wheelbarrow had expected. Hanging up from the distraught woman, Wheelbarrow immediately tiptapped the Waters and contacted Samuel Happenstance at the Flitterwig Rooniun and then, instinctively, Manna Mallalooka Chetwode, Ella’s maternal grandmother, a former student at Hedgeberry herself.

  ‘You do know who Ella is, don’t you?’ said Manna at once.

  ‘I do,’ answered Ms Wheelbarrow.

  ‘I have renounced magic, and I am not much in favour with Ella’s other grandparents, so I shall stay away. But please, keep me informed,’ said Manna. ‘You should tiptap Elton Wrinkles in Magus at once,’ she added urgently.

  But Ms Wheelbarrow did not try to tiptap Elton Wrinkles. As headmistress of Hedgeberry, she had had many students go missing over the years. Teaching children the art of Flitterwiggery, after all, did lead to a few rather out-of-the-ordinary adventures. While the parents must be notified—and, in Ella’s case, so must Samuel—she was reluctant to call on any Magical so soon after the lifting of the Ban, for fear that she would be bothering them needlessly at a very important juncture in Magical and Flitterwig relations.

  Humphrey let himself into the school sanatorium, fully Bongled. Both Samantha and Toby sat patiently on a couple of beanbags, fully recovered from their bashings, for Matron was a most capable Sprite Flitterwig and had cured them both. But they were required to wait for several hours to ensure that there were no secondary effects.

  ‘Psst,’ said Humphrey in Samantha’s ear. Samantha almost jumped out of her skin. ‘It’s just me, Humph,’ he hissed, causing both Samantha and Toby to look about them as if there might be a ghost in the room. ‘I’m Bongled, you idiot,’ Humphrey whispered more quietly in Samantha’s ear, pinning her to her beanbag to keep her still.

  ‘Oh,’ said Samantha. She smiled at Toby Wetlands as if saying ‘Oh’ to herself was the most natural thing in the world. He turned his back and tried to ignore her. He’d had quite a bad enough day as it was. ‘Um, sorry, by the way, again, for knocking you out,’ said Samantha, seeing a sparkling spell chart drifting to the ground in front of her, and plucking it out of the air.

  ‘We need to Bamboozle him,’ Humphrey whispered. ‘So he can’t remember what happened with Ella and Charlie this morning.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Samantha, understanding.

  ‘Could you stop saying that?’ said Toby, wishing he’d never got up this morning. Standing behind him, Samantha spun the spell for Bamboozlement, while Humphrey tried to pour the potion he had pinched from the chemistry lab down poor old Toby’s throat as the boy struggled and called for help. He was being attacked by nothing! They hoped the spell would work. The Flitterwig’s mouth began to fill with foam, his eyes opened and he started to gurgle. Matron walked into the room. Samantha sat back down on her beanbag at once.

  ‘I’m feeling so much better now, Matron,’ she said. ‘Can I go?’ Noticing that Toby seemed to be having some sort of secondary reaction to his concussion, perhaps even a fit, Matron released Samantha from the sanatorium with barely a thought.

  ‘We need to find Gloria,’ said Humphrey, more animated than Samantha had seen him in years, as he reappeared in the corridor. ‘She was watching me when I came out of Wheelbarrow’s office’, he said. ‘She knows something about Ella’s disappearance, and we’re going to find out what.’

  The Montgomerys and the Snoppits were at the school within the hour. Ella’s father had been informed, but anything to do with Ella brought up too many painful memories of the deaths of his wife and sons in that dastardly accident years ago. So, as usual, he stayed well away and buried his head in the sand.

  Samantha and Humphrey, meanwhile, had found Gloria out in the red poppy gardens, where Ella liked to go to practise her skateboarding. Gloria was shaking her finger angrily at nothing in particular. Humphrey, with some difficulty, Bongled them both again. He was feeling quite exhausted with all the magic he’d been spinning. He hoped to Magic he would not end up with a suspension for breaking the school rules so many times in one day. They approached Gloria. She really was talking to nothing. About Ella! Demanding thin air tell her where the Elven Flitterwig had gone.

  If Samantha and Humphrey could have, they would have looked at one another and burst out laughing, but they couldn’t, because they couldn’t see each other. Which was probably a good thing or they would have been discovered for sure.

  A dozen white elves ran around and around in circles over by the stream, not far away from the wildflower gardens. They had been on their way to find a Mirror of Foreverness through which to pass back into Magus and inform Mr Wrinkles of Ella’s disappearance. But somewhere on the way they had been offered a glass of water by a goblin with rotten fingers, and they hadn’t been able to resist. They were losing their sense of perspective more and more with every day they spent on Earth. The poor wee fellows were now mildly Trogglified. Fairly drunk on sugar planted in their drinking water by Saul, they were, and dancing about in circles seemed to be their only care.

  The Duke stood staring into the Waters in his hideaway. The ceilings of his new abode rose in spiked majesty above him. He clapped his clawed hands together as he watched the collection of concerned individuals gathered in the headmistress’s office at Hedgeberry. As he had suspected, no-one had contacted the Magicals. Ha! Humans were so arrogant. So foolish. So proud.

  He had not been able to locate Ella in the Waters as yet, but she was certainly missing. And that was what he had wanted all along. The child had surely gone in search of the pixie. The Duke turned and watched with glee as Ragwald struggled to tie the stupid little mite up and lower him into his prison. He had to give it to the pixie, he was a feisty little blighter. Tiptapping his finger upon the Waters on another dais, the Duke waited until Saul appeared.

  ‘I would like to extend an invitation to our new allies to visit me here,’ he said to the hairy Flitterwig. ‘I think it is time to bond.’

  chapter 13

  anxiety & anoraks

  Don Posiblemente felt a sting of anxiety as he and Carmen ushered Ella and Charlie out of his drawing room to find some heavy-duty clothing. He intended to enchant the clothes, to ensure that they were prepared for all climates. For who knew where they might be off to in the next few days. He had also given the children a Candlefloss each, to keep their temperatures stable. For where he was sending them they would need serious cooling. He tucked a pair of sunglasses into Ella’s pocket and cast a spell over Charlie’s lenses to make the
m change according to the light. He handed Charlie a bag holding a large red glass bottle, full of some sort of liquid. For Thomas, he explained. Sap. Brewed by Don Posiblemente himself. It would help the Giant stay awake for a while.

  Yet the good philosopher still felt somewhat uncertain. To be secretive was very much in character for him, for he lived a solitary life studying the Flitterwig Files, protecting them from the hands of those who would abuse the secrets they held. The idea of sending two young Flitterwigs into the unknown, however, rested uneasily on his conscience. But he believed the second part of the Prophecy was unfolding, and to let anyone stand in its way—as they surely would were they to discover that he had sent the Clearheart directly to find the Lord of Gommoronahl—would be to stand in the way of protecting the future of Earth itself. Surely there were moments when dissemblance was in order for a greater cause? He would tell the powers that be soon. Of course he would. He simply wanted to give the Prophecy a chance by giving the children a head start.

  Don Posiblemente met Ella and Charlie at the base of his staircase. They both looked up into the watery sky, wrapped up in stripy anoraks and wellington boots. They looked comical, Ella with her dishevelled hair and Charlie with his white hair sticking up above his startled, freckled face like a baby porcupine’s prickles.

  ‘Magic’s speed be with you,’ he said, his delivery sure and steady. ‘Remember, Nature is your greatest ally. Trust yourselves and all will be well. And the clothes you wear, they may feel silly, but they will protect you, I assure you. DO NOT TAKE THEM OFF. If the Prophecy unfolds as it should, the Lord of Gommoronahl will provide you with all you need.’

  With that, he pushed the children up the staircase, towards the rippling liquid sky above them. ‘Don’t forget to think of me, Ella, if you need me at any moment. I will be watching for you.’

  Charlie instinctively took Ella’s hand in his and marched up ahead. The moment his head touched the sky they were pulled up into its mysterious watery midst and then vanished.

  Don Posiblemente shut the staircase behind them. ‘Do not let me sleep, woman, whatever you do,’ he said to Carmen. ‘I will be waiting by my Waterway constantly and will make contact with Samuel the moment I sense true danger.’

  For the second time that day, Ella found herself travelling at a speed that made her cheeks wobble and her mouth pull back in an exaggerated smile that would scare the ghouliest of ghouls. Only this time when she stopped twirling through water she didn’t land at the top of a staircase in a warm house in Spain.

  No. This time, she and Charlie found themselves bursting headfirst out of a huge dewdrop on the leaf of a tree. Though only Ella knew that was what they had sprung out of, for Charlie couldn’t see anything at all. They landed smack wallop onto hard ground in the middle of a plain, goodness only knows where, with the sun beating upon them like a million desperate hands on a pair of bongos. A vast wilderness speckled with spinifex bushes spread out before them.

  The first thing Ella had to do was get all these clothes off! She began to unzip the red and white striped anorak Don Posiblemente had lent her. Charlie yelled at her to stop.

  ‘We can’t take the clothes off, remember? Don Posiblemente told us we mustn’t.’

  As he said this, both anoraks blew up as though their puffy bits had been filled with cool air. Charlie pulled the hood of his blue and white striped anorak over his head and immediately felt as if he had stepped into a cool room. He pulled the hood of Ella’s anorak over her head too, grateful now to Don Posiblemente for doing whatever he had done to his glasses to combat the glare of an unforgiving sun, for they turned darker at once. It was hot as all jiggery-pokery out here. He pulled Ella’s sunglasses out of the pocket of her anorak and handed them to her. He popped a Candlefloss into Ella’s mouth and another in his own. The Candleflosses became cool at once, regulating the children’s temperatures so that they were chilled from the inside against the overwhelming heat.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Ella, grateful to have a shield for her eyes from the glare of the sun.

  Charlie felt about for Harold, who he found in one of the big pockets of his anorak. Pulling the frog up in front of his face, he appealed to the amphibian to make some sense of his situation.

  ‘Have I done the right thing agreeing to let Ella come here, Harry?’ he whispered to the frog as Ella looked up dreamily at nothing, her mouth agog. ‘I know I’m her Protector and everything, but it’s one thing trying to do my best to protect her from Gloria at school. Now we’ve been flung out the end of a staircase into the middle of a plain, dressed up in two bouffy anoraks like a couple of striped Michelin men, who knows what I’m meant to do.’

  Harold hopped out of Charlie’s hand and up into his hood so he was resting in the cool next to his ear. ‘It is clearly all part of your destiny, young man,’ he said philosophically. ‘Just listen to your heart the way Ella does and you will be fine. Where are we, I wonder?’ he added, surveying the vast expanse of wilderness that reached out in every direction from where he was perched. ‘I have to say this is a lot more interesting than living in a pond,’ he said with an adventuresome rrrribbit. Charlie paused to think for a moment. It was true. Being stuck on a plain, wearing a stripy soft fridge on his back, was certainly a lot more fun than detention or algebra. He looked over at Ella, who was sniffing for all she was worth.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked. ‘Weirdo,’ he added, for no good reason at all. For if she was a weirdo, he was surely one too.

  ‘Can you smell that magical cinnamon and rain smell mixed with the eucalyptus coming from that massive gum tree?’ she asked, somehow not as perplexed by the oddity of their situation as she should be. For at least now she was on her way to finding Dixon, and that seemed to overrule all strangeness right now.

  ‘What massive gum tree?’ said Charlie, rubbing his forehead.

  ‘This one,’ she said matter-of-factly, pointing at the enormous tree beside them. ‘The one whose dewdrop we just popped out of.’ She pointed up at a dewdrop the size of a football that Charlie couldn’t see either. The breeze passing through its leaves made the same noise as the oak at school.

  ‘Asquemi, asquemi,’ it whispered. Its silver-white trunk rose up out of the sandy plains like the prehistoric digit of a giant ape. Branches sprouted from its girth, ancient and gnarled. The stunted branches bore the odd leaf here and there, each the size of a single-bed sheet, of such brilliant green that they shone like emeralds against the skin of a pale, aged queen. Not that Charlie or the frog could see it, of course. The fact that Ella could was, in itself, extraordinary. But Ella was extraordinary, after all.

  ‘What one?’ said Charlie. ‘There isn’t anything there.’ Ella cast him a look that suggested she thought he was being a bit dense and continued to admire the ancient growth.

  ‘She is rather wonderful, don’t you think?’ Harold whispered in Charlie’s ear, staring at Ella with undisguised admiration. Charlie just shook his head in disbelief. What chance did they have of finding Dixon if Ella was having hallucinations already?

  Imagine the sight of two children, eleven years old, both standing in stripy anoraks on the Nullarbor Plain, a plain as huge and unending as an ocean, under the unforgiving Australian sun.

  As she inspected the tree more closely, Ella noticed that each leaf (and there were no more than ten of them) sparkled with the sheen of a single dewdrop. Each dewdrop sat alone, shimmering and alive against the dry heat beating mercilessly from an arid sky. Each leaf was perfectly still, despite the wind that whistled up through its branches from nowhere at all.

  There was nothing Ella could do but stare. Which is exactly what she did.

  Slowly, Ella edged closer to the mammoth gum. She would have touched its grand, prehistoric sides, had they not seemed to shimmer with energy like antique silver. Instead, she just looked up and up and marvelled at the pure fecundity of its few massive leaves, heaving in wetness, hanging down towards her. It occurred to her then that she couldn’t for
the life of her remember the rhyme Don Posiblemente had told her to recite to rouse the Giant who slept beneath it.

  chapter 14

  giants & gum trees

  ‘What are you doing, Ella?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Looking at the Spirit Tree Don Posiblemente told us is the Great Gum of Gommoronahl,’ said Ella softly.

  ‘You what?’ said Charlie. ‘But I can’t see a tree.’

  ‘Well it’s there,’ said Ella. ‘Trust me. And it keeps whispering to me.’

  Charlie looked at Ella and scrunched up his forehead. ‘Huh?’

  ‘It sounds like it’s saying asquemi, asquemi, or something like that,’ said Ella. ‘Just like the oak tree at school.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Charlie, scratching his head.

  ‘Have you forgotten, children,’ hissed Harold in a half-whisper and half-yell, ‘that you only have ten minutes from reaching the tree to summon the Giant before Don Posiblemente will consider us being here a wasted mission and come to take us back?’

  As if pulled from a dream by Harold’s croak, Ella shook herself from her awestruck surveillance of the tree and looked at Charlie uncomprehendingly. Charlie translated.

  It was true! She only had ten minutes from the moment she reached the tree to rouse the Giant. And they must have wasted seven just standing around and staring at it. But how was she going to tell her companions that the rhyme Don Posiblemente had made her commit to memory had escaped her completely? Ella looked back at Charlie and hunched up her shoulders inanely.

  ‘You can’t remember the rhyme, can you?’ he said.

  ‘Nope,’ said Ella.

  Harold covered his eyes with his webbed feet in an act of froggy horror. Charlie wished to Magic and goodness and Earth and all that he could wish to that he had been paying more attention when Don Posiblemente had told Ella what the rhyme was.