Floods 3 (8 page)

‘Excellent,' said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘A child will slow them down. We'll rest here for the night and set off at dawn. We will have them in chains before lunchtime.'

Once out of the mountains, the refugees made better progress. Using ancient Buddhist Mountain Running And Leaping Skills which Vessel had learnt at his mother's knee,
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they managed to cover huge distances in mere minutes so that by late afternoon they were having tea and cakes in Shangri-La, and by evening they had reached the Chinese border. Of course, once they crossed into China, the mystical running and leaping skills
stopped working and they were forced to travel on foot. Nevertheless, they reached the Great Wall of China Inn and Noodle Takeaway Number Seventy-Three by nightfall, just in time for a delicious meal before the kitchen closed.

Their pursuers had to make do with bicycles and a faulty broomstick that kept flying backwards. This meant that when they finally reached the Inn, it was after midnight and they were forced to eat what they could scavenge out of the dustbins.

‘The Princess has been chewing this,' said Stain, sticking a chicken bone up his nose and inhaling deeply.

‘So what's the plan?' said Cliché. ‘Grab her and kill the rest of them?'

‘It's not that simple,' said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘They have very strong magic. We need to catch them off-guard.'

‘They're asleep,' said Ooze. ‘How much more off-guard can they get?'

‘We're not all asleep,' said a gloomy voice from the shadows.

‘Some vatch up on you from below outside in,' said another voice from the roof.

‘It's just the stupid donkey and the servant's crazy bird,' whispered Stain.

‘Stupid, maybe,' said George, ‘but with hearing sharper than a pin and kung-fu hooves.'

The four spies agreed to wait for an unguarded moment when they would be able to strike.

Parsnip flew through his master's bedroom window and tapped him on the head.

‘Four pies, master, flee now must go do,' he said.

Vessel woke everyone. The four spies were busy poking around the dustbins for food, so the refugees slipped quietly out of the front door and off into the night.

The refugees had many, many miles to travel to reach Shanghai and find a boat, but they were in
no hurry and agreed with Vessel when he said that travelling slowly would be exactly the opposite of what the King's spies would expect. So they took detours to beautiful villages and walked along country roads past gentle streams.

Time passed and everyone except Valla got five months older. Little Valla got five years older. He even went to some of the village schools, where he learnt Chinese calligraphy and how to make delicate porcelain bowls.

‘Because,' he explained, ‘you never know when things like that might come in handy. And besides, fresh blood looks so appetising in a fragile white bowl.'

They had to leave most of the villages in rather a hurry when Valla kept drinking blood out of the local chickens and his fellow students' necks, but each time the Queen would wave her wand and do the forget-we-were-ever-here spell, so no one came after them.

The spies did not overtake them, as Vessel had predicted, but followed at a discreet distance,
staying just one village behind them. There were many occasions when the Hearse Whisperer was sure they could have overpowered the refugees and kidnapped Mordonna, but her three pathetic companions were such dreadful cowards they always found excuses why it wasn't the right time. Even the Hearse Whisperer felt uneasy about a confrontation. She knew she could overpower Vessel, Nerlin and Mordonna on her own, but Queen Scratchrot was another story. They had crossed swords in the past and the Queen had usually come out on top. Also, only an idiot would be in a hurry to get back to Transylvania Waters and its awful king, and the Hearse Whisperer was not an idiot.

So, she waited.

At last the runaways reached the outskirts of Shanghai. One look at the group would tell anyone that they had as much chance of blending in as a glass of water in an oil slick, except that the Queen and her party were more like the oil slick in a sea of clean water.

‘I think we should split up and meet at the
harbour in two hours,' said Vessel. ‘That way we might not stand out so much.'

‘I'm not splitting up,' said George. ‘All my insides will fall out.'

‘Actually, good and faithful friend …' the Queen began.

‘Uh oh, bad stuff,' said George. ‘Whenever you talk like that, it's always followed by something I don't like.'

‘This time you will like it,' said the Queen, ‘because you are going to get a huge reward.'

‘Oh yes?'

‘Absolutely,' the Queen explained. ‘Which would you rather do: get on a very small boat and set off into a wild and stormy sea where you are guaranteed to be horribly seasick every ten minutes, or spend the rest of your life in this lovely field we are now standing in?'

‘Boat,' said George.

‘No you wouldn't,' said the Queen. ‘Look at all this lovely grass.'

‘Don't like Chinese grass,' said George.

‘Yes you do,' said the Queen. ‘You're just being silly. Here we are offering you a life of leisure and luxury as a reward for all the hard work you have done for us, and all you can do is complain. You are a very ungrateful animal. I've half a mind to turn you into a boiled egg.'

‘Go on then,' said George.

‘Look, any donkey would give his right hoof to be sold to this wonderful Chinese gentleman,' said Vessel. ‘Lovely fresh ditch water, all the grass you can eat and all you have to do is carry a few really tiny bags of ultra-lightweight coal out of his
lovely clean mine eighty-seven times a day.'

‘Can't I be a boiled egg instead?' said George.

‘No,' said the Queen.

She stared deep into the donkey's eyes and said, ‘Now look, everyone knows that donkeys are the worst sailors in the world. You would be so seasick it would fill up the boat and sink it.'

‘Who told you that?' said George.

‘It's a well-known fact,' said Mordonna. ‘Everyone knows that.'

‘I don't,' said George.

‘Listen, donkey, if being seasick was in the Olympic Games all the medals would be won by donkeys.'

‘But, I err, umm …' George began, but he was now so confused that the thought of coal mining was beginning to look quite appealing.

‘And this lovely man is going to pay us three whole fen
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for the honour of allowing you to carry his extra special bio-organic low-fat coal.'

‘Three fen? Is that a lot of money?' said George. ‘After all, I've given you the best years of my life.'

Trouble is, you gave me the worst ones too,
thought the Queen.

‘Well, of course it is. You are probably the most valuable donkey in the whole world,' she said.

Before he could say another word and before the Queen could start feeling guilty, Vessel took the miner's three tiny coins and handed him George's halter. After man and donkey had disappeared into the coal mine, Nerlin said, ‘Is that enough to buy a boat?'

‘Not so much a boat as a very small nail to start building a boat with,' said Vessel. ‘We'd need fifty billion fen to buy a whole boat. That is, if we were going to buy one.'

‘So, we're not going by boat?'

‘Oh yes, we are,' said Vessel, ‘but we're not so much going to buy a boat as borrow one.'

Although the Queen had a big bag of gold and Mordonna had all her pockets stuffed with precious stones, and witches and wizards can always
get money by magic, Vessel only had the three fen he'd been given for George, and his male pride wouldn't let him ask the Queen or her daughter to help. Besides, as far as he was concerned they weren't going to keep the boat. They only needed it for a little while, so he didn't see why he should have to pay for it.

‘You mean steal one?' said Nerlin.

‘I think “steal” is such a nasty word, don't you?'

‘Actually, I quite like it,' said Nerlin. ‘Don't forget I grew up in the drains. We had to steal everything just to survive.'

‘Ah, how true,' said Vessel, remembering his own childhood.

‘Well, we'll just say we're borrowing the boat,' said the Queen. ‘When we've finished with it, the owners can come and get it back.'

‘Of course,' Vessel added, ‘the three idiot spies hiding in the tree above our heads will probably “borrow” a boat too.'

Cliché, Stain and Ooze all began doing bird
impersonations to try and throw the fugitives off the scent.

‘Oh, listen,' said Vessel. ‘There are three pigeons up in that tree. Can't remember the last time I had pigeon pie. Where's my gun?'

Cliché, Stain and Ooze fell out of the tree and landed at Nerlin's feet. Pretending to be Belgian
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tourists, they began babbling incoherently and bowing and backing away in the direction of the coal mine, which they fell down. They landed on George, who most definitely did not like it and told them so in several languages, including Belgian.

The Hearse Whisperer kept very still up in the branches. She really was disguised as a pigeon, and had no intention of becoming a pie.

‘Oops,' said the Queen, watching George's kung-fu hooves connecting with the three spies' bottoms. ‘Time to go, I think.'

Nerlin and Mordonna with baby Valla went one way. The Queen and Vessel went another and Parsnip flew overhead, keeping a lookout for the spies. They blended in like barbed wire at a jellyfish party, but because they looked so weird, no one dared bother them, though several people did invite Parsnip to join them in a sweet and sour crow and noodle dinner.

The three spies didn't manage to escape from the mine until they had each carried seven bags of coal to the surface at the suggestion of the miner, who had a large stick and an angry donkey. The Hearse Whisperer had followed Vessel and the Queen down to the harbour and sat watching them from a tall chimney. She knew the Queen would sense her presence if she got too near so she kept a safe distance.

‘Right,' said Vessel when he and the Queen reached the wharf, ‘we need to find a boat, something big enough to survive the open sea.'

‘None of these is much good,' said the Queen. ‘They're a load of junk.'

‘Very funny,' said Vessel. ‘But that one at the end of the harbour looks promising. The one with the French flag.'

‘How will we get everyone else off the ship?' said Nerlin, who had just reached them with Mordonna.

‘No problem,' said the Queen. ‘We are wizards, after all.'

She took a small wand from her sleeve and waved it at herself. There was a flash and the Queen turned into a twenty-three-year-old French cafe dancer with long black hair, bright red lips and a dress with a long split in the side. She walked up the gangplank of the French boat and whistled loudly.