Floods 6 (12 page)

It was Parsnip.

‘Big panic doing,' he croaked and fainted.

Mordonna picked up the unconscious bird and tucked him inside her cloak. Soon the warmth of the witch's body revived him and after a snack of dead mackerel he was back to being as normal as a Transylvanian Crow ever is.

‘Flee doing now,' he said. ‘Acacia Avenue charcoal being.'

‘What?'

‘Fire, Worse Hisperer playing with matches done. Boom, boom. All gone.'

‘All gone?' said Mordonna.

‘Huge deep hole, big flame. Snip-Snip even lost dead pigeon dinner,' said Parsnip.

‘What about
our
house?' said Ffiona, who had come rushing in to see what the crashing sound was.

‘Think all right, just thirteen and eleven gone. Snip-Snip not see nineteen in big smoke.'

‘Are we in danger?' said Mrs Hulbert when Mordonna explained to her what had happened.

Since she had had her beauty treatment that
morning, Mrs Hulbert had been floating around the hotel feeling very, very relaxed. In fact she had spent the past few hours on Planet Relaxed, which meant she had been completely unaware of the storm raging outside. She had been lying on her bed drinking champagne and eating chocolates while hippy music floated through her head. She had been idly wondering if she should become a hippy too, and spend the rest of her life in a field full of pretty flowers. The news that large parts of Acacia Avenue, possibly including her own home, had been destroyed, was taking a while to sink in. Mrs Hulbert had more important things to think about, like how soft her skin was and exactly what type of flowers she should grow in her hippy field. It wasn't until baby Claude realised something strange was going on and bit her on the ankle that she came abruptly back to reality, where all the fields were full of potatoes, without a single flower in sight, not even dandelions.

‘Are we in danger?' she repeated.

‘You've got nothing to worry about,' said
Mordonna. ‘The Hearse Whisperer isn't after you. She won't know you have anything to do with us. So if you leave the minibus here and hire a little car just big enough for the four of you and go home, you should be fine. She won't know we've been on holiday. She probably thinks we've just gone shopping.'

‘What about my poor Igorina?' said Winchflat.

‘Oh yes, I'd forgotten about her, sweetheart,' said Mordonna. ‘Correct me if I'm wrong, but you did manufacture her out of readily available parts, didn't you?'

‘Well, yes,' said Winchflat. ‘But she was a living, breathing creature with a soul.'

‘Actually, sweetheart, she was a zombie and, as you know, the only soles zombies have are on the bottom of their feet.'

‘But, but … we were engaged,' Winchflat said.

‘Really?'

‘Well, not exactly. I hadn't got round to asking
her, but I'm sure she would have said yes, once I had taught her to speak properly.'

‘Never mind, darling,' said Mordonna trying to hide her relief that her son's hideous creation was not going to become her daughter-in-law. ‘Parsnip, do you know what happened to my faithful pet vulture, Leach?'

‘Him toast become,' said Parsnip. ‘Burnt to a crips.'

‘A crisp?'

‘Yes,' said Parsnip. ‘Vulture flavoured crips, him delicious, yum, yum, thank you, better than salt-n-vinegar, better than igorinaflavour.'

‘You ate them?' said Mordonna.

‘Waste not want not,' said Parsnip. ‘Long flying here needed something for journey.'

‘Fair enough.'

Winchflat went and sat by the window. Along the beach a team of scientists were still poking and prodding at the turrets of the girls' sandcastle with a whole barrage of high-tech equipment.

Winchflat concentrated hard. The ground
around the sandcastle began to shake. The scientists dropped their equipment and ran. As they did so the entire castle rose slowly into the air. When it was a hundred metres above the beach, there was a blinding flash and fourteen thousand very dead slimy jellyfish came raining down on everyone.

‘I thought that would make me feel better,' said Winchflat, ‘but it didn't.'

‘Never mind, darling,' said Mordonna. ‘Why don't you think of poor Igorina as a kind of prototype and when we get settled again you can build a new and much better one.'

‘Yeah, one without the pooey smell,' said Morbid.

‘Yes,' said Betty, ‘one where none of the bits keep falling off.'

‘I suppose so,' said Winchflat, ‘but you know, no one's ever quite the same as your first love.'

‘Actually, I don't, darling,' said Mordonna. ‘Your father was my first love, but he is also my last love.'

‘Aww,' said Betty.

‘Yeughh,' said Merlinmary. ‘Sloppy, sloppy.'

‘But what are you all going to do?' said Mrs Hulbert.

‘We will have to go far, far away,' said Mordonna.

‘But, but…' Mrs Hulbert began, her bottom lip quivering and tears coming into her eyes. ‘You're my best friend, Mordonna. Does this mean I'll never see you again?'

‘Of course not,' Mordonna lied. ‘Once we get somewhere safe, we'll let you know and you can come and visit us.'

She knew that this would be impossible. The Hearse Whisperer was not stupid. She would probably suspect that the Floods would have made friends in the neighbourhood. So she would be watching everyone in the street. She would hide microscopic tracking devices under the skin behind the left knee of every man, woman and child in Acacia Avenue while they were asleep. She would even tag the dogs and cats. She would know where every single one of them was all the time. Mordonna
knew that no matter how safe and secure their eventual hiding place would be, they would never be able to see the Hulberts again.

Betty knew this too and wrapped Ffiona up in her arms and hugged her tight until Ffiona realised it as well. The two of them went to Ffiona's room and, while she packed her bag, Betty tried to reassure her.

‘Look, we're witches and wizards,' she said. ‘We are the cleverest people in the world, and there are nine of us – nine-and-a-half if you count Granny – and there is only one Hearse Whisperer. I know she's evil and cunning, but we caught her once before, so I'm sure we can do it again. And then you can come and see us, or we could even come back and build a new house in Acacia Avenue.'

‘OK,' said Ffiona, unconvinced.

All she could see was that without Betty to look after her at school, there was a strong possibility that having her head flushed down the toilet might start all over again. She'd be able to pretend that Betty was just on an extended holiday and coming back any minute, but eventually the bullies would work it out and her life would become sheer misery.

‘And don't worry about the school bullies,' said Betty. ‘I'll get Mum to cast an invincible protection spell over you so that if anyone comes within a metre of you planning to do something horrible, they will have instant toothache and terrible diarrhoea.'

Ffiona looked up hopefully at Betty.

‘So if the bullies start taunting you from across the street, all you have to do is the exact opposite of what they expect you to do,' Betty added.

‘How do you mean?'

‘Well, they'll be expecting you to run away, won't they?'

‘I suppose so,' said Ffiona.

‘But what you do is run straight at them and, as soon as you get to within one metre of them, bam – screaming headache and runny bottom. Them, that is, not you,' said Betty. ‘And if a teacher or anyone else is being mean to you, you can do it to them too.'

The two girls returned to the living room, where the Hulberts were waiting with their luggage. Betty turned to Satanella. ‘One other thing,' she said. ‘I think that Ruby and Rosie should go with the Hulberts. We might be running away a fair bit and hiding and moving around a lot and … well, Claude adores them. But Satanella, they're your friends so you should decide.'

‘I adore them too,' said Satanella, ‘but I agree, they'll be safer and happier with the Hulberts.' She ran off to say goodbye to her friends.

‘But I will see you again, won't I?' said Ffiona.

‘I promise you that one day we will see each other again,' said Betty. ‘And a witch's promise is the most powerful promise you can get.'

There isn't one. I mean, the story isn't over yet.

The Floods haven't even had their blood-red slurpies like they did at the end of the first five Floods books. But since they don't have a verandah to sit and drink them on any more, we'd better let them drive off into the sunset, until they find a new home in the next book.
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