Floods 6 (5 page)

Winchflat took a tiny Transylvania Waters flag out of his pocket and stuck it in the roof of the tallest tower.

‘There we are,' he said. ‘Finished.'

He clicked his fingers and it stopped raining.
He clicked them again and the black clouds formed a long line and went off to rain on Belgium, which was a shame because stage two of that year's Tour de France cycling race was going through there that very day.

At five o'clock the judges walked along the beach looking at each of the thirty-two sandcastles. Thirty-one of them got equal second prize, which was a bucket and spade and a DVD called
How to Build Sandcastles
. Betty and Ffiona's castle won, in a judges' decision that was almost unanimous except that one judge had a son who had built one of the other castles, so he wouldn't vote for Betty
and Ffiona's castle even though it was clearly the best.
³¹

The first prize was a family ticket to the local theatre to see the current seaside holiday show.

‘Brilliant,' said Betty and Ffiona, neither of whom had been to the theatre before.

‘Brilliant,' said Mordonna, Nerlin and everyone else when they showed them the ticket. No
one else in the family, apart from Queen Scratchrot, had ever been to the theatre either.

‘I went to the theatre lots of times when I was young,' said the Queen.

‘Really, I didn't know that,' said Mordonna.

‘It was before you were born,' said the Queen. ‘In fact, it was where I met your father.'

‘What did you go to see, Granny?' said Merlinmary.

‘Oh, I didn't go to see anything,' said the Queen. ‘I was on the stage. I was one of the actors in a group of travelling players called the Mysterious Monarchs. All the actors were princes and princesses and we performed wonderful magical plays and exotic variety shows.'

‘Wow, Granny, who would have thought?' said Betty.

‘Well, not me,' said Mordonna. ‘Why haven't you ever told us about it before?'

‘Well, it all came to a rather tragic end,' said the Queen, ‘and I'd rather not talk about it.'

‘Oh go on,' said everyone, ‘please.'

‘No, it's too upsetting,' said the Queen.

‘We'll polish your bones with linseed oil,' said Winchflat.

‘And beeswax,' said Betty.

‘With live bees?' said the Queen.

‘Yes.'

‘Oh, all right then,' said the Queen, arranging her loose bones as tidily as she could before pulling the zip in the top of the backpack tight around her neck.

She suspected that she might get quite emotional when she told them all her story and she wanted to make sure it was only her emotions that got carried away and not her ribs or any of those little tiny bones that are always so hard to find again.

‘What none of you know,' she began, ‘is that my husband, the mean, horrible, fat King Quatorze, was not my first true love. No, my first love,' and here she blushed as only a skeleton with virtually no skin left on it can blush, ‘was the dashingly handsome, incredibly rich, but not very intelligent Prince Wynegum of Patagonia.'

‘Patagonia? That's where we go to school, Granny,' said Merlinmary. ‘I never knew there was a Patagonian royal family.'

‘Prince Wynegum was the last,' said the Queen sadly. ‘We were to be married and carry on the royal line so that Patagonia could once more claim its place as a leading world power.'

‘So what happened?' said Mordonna.

‘We were touring small country towns in Belgium,' the Queen continued. ‘I said no, let's go to Wales or Tasmania, but I was overruled. I could sense impending doom. Have I ever told you that I have an unerring ability to sense impending doom?'

‘Yes,' said everyone, beginning to sense impending boredom.

‘Well, we were performing in the little town of Silly
³²
on a cold December night. My beloved was about to do his high-wire act, where he walked blindfolded above the stage reciting Shakespeare's
The Tempest
and juggling seven pork pies and a Jell-O model of the Eiffel Tower, before leaping into a bowl of custard balanced on a small boy's head. This was nothing unusual. He had performed this act dozens of times, on several occasions with his trousers on fire, and even once with seven live chickens down his trousers – not at the same time his trousers were on fire, of course – but this night was different,' said the Queen.

She fell silent and for a few minutes no one said anything.

‘Go on, Granny,' said Betty.

‘Well, on this particular night there was a terrible storm in Silly. The thunder and lightning were so loud you could hardly hear yourself speak, even on stage. Prince Wynegum, being right up near the roof on his high wire, could hear nothing but the hail crashing on the roof. But, being a true professional, he didn't let that stop him. He began his walk and was halfway across when the biggest thunderclap ever recorded in the whole of Europe exploded above his head. The roof split open and a
massive bolt of lightning crashed through, looking for some metal. It found some – my beloved's crown. He lit up like a firework, and the audience, thinking it was part of the act, cheered their heads off as my darling flew up into the air and came down headfirst into the bowl of custard, cooked to a crisp. As the storm died down, the theatre was filled with the smell of burnt custard and roast prince. I have never been able to eat either since.'

‘Oh my goodness,' said Mordonna.

‘What happened to the boy who had the bowl of custard on his head?' said Morbid.

‘We never saw him again,' said the Queen. ‘Though there are stories that his ghost appears in the Silly theatre every time there is a thunder storm.'

‘Does my father know this story?' Mordonna asked.

‘Of course not, darling,' said the Queen. ‘He is so stupid and so vain, he thinks it was his charm that won me over.'

‘You're kidding,' said Mordonna.

Winchflat couldn't quite understand why, considering his grandmother was a powerful witch, she hadn't just cast a spell to make the King nicer.

‘Some things are just too damaged for magic to fix,' said Queen Scratchrot, reading her grandson's mind. ‘Believe me, I tried, but the best I could do was remove the ugly boils from his neck – and even that didn't work properly. They didn't so much go away as move down to his bottom. Still, it meant
I didn't have to look at them any more, because I can honestly say in all my years of marriage to the King, I never once saw his bottom.'

‘Yeugh, Granny,' said Betty.

‘Too much information,' said Mordonna with a shudder.

‘So how did you actually meet him?' asked Winchflat.

‘He was standing outside the stage door of the theatre one night asking every single person who came out if they would marry him. His parents had kicked him out of Transylvania Waters and told him he couldn't go back until he was married,' the Queen explained. ‘Everyone else said no, of course, but when he asked me, I was so depressed over losing my sweetheart that I said, “Yeah, whatever,” and before I knew it I was being whisked away in a coach and we were married before we reached the border.'

‘How awful,' said Mordonna, who had married Nerlin for love and his incredible good looks.

Everyone felt rather depressed after the
Queen's sad story, but fortunately by then it was time to go back to the hotel for dinner.

It wasn't until they were all sitting down in the dining room that they realised one of the children was missing.

Satanella.

‘Well, where is she?' said Mordonna when Betty said she couldn't find her. ‘She was on the beach with us, wasn't she?'

‘I don't know where she is,' said Betty when she came down from checking their rooms. ‘I've looked everywhere.'

‘She's probably playing with the baby Hulbert.'

‘Claude,' said Betty.

‘Yes, that one,' said Mordonna. ‘You know how they adore each other.'

‘No, she's not, that was the first place I checked. Claude's having his bath. He managed to get an incredible amount of sand in all his chubby creases, not to mention quite a lot of seaweed up his nose.'

‘OK, so let's try to remember the last time we saw her,' said the Queen.

‘It was on the beach,' said the twins. ‘We were throwing sticks in the sea for her.'

‘She didn't get washed away by that angry water, did she?' said Nerlin, looking quite alarmed.

‘Or eaten by a shark?' said Merlinmary, imagining her sister all chewed up in little bits.

‘There was a shark, but Satanella chased it and it swam off terrified,' said Morbid.

‘Wait a minute,' said Valla. ‘I saw her going off along the beach and that was after the stick throwing.'

They worked out that early that afternoon had been the last time any of them had seen Satanella.

‘I bet she was going off after a scent trail,' said Betty. ‘Satanella can't resist a good smell.'

The family agreed that Betty could be right. Like all dogs, Satanella was prone to picking up those scents that can hypnotise dogs so much that, no matter what else is going on around them, they are in a little world all of their own. You could
drop a bomb, make it rain lamb chops and throw a million red rubber balls, but nothing would be able to pull them away from the irresistible scent trail. The trail could go underground, up a tree, across a river, under a warthog's armpit and even into the finest Belgian sausage factory, but the dog would follow it to the ends of the earth.

‘I hope she hasn't gone to the ends of the earth,' said the Queen. ‘Little dogs do that, you know.'

‘Well, we'd better go after her,' said Mordonna. ‘Winchflat, I don't suppose you brought your Electronic-Hypnotic-Psychotic-Antibiotic-Smell-Tracker from home, did you?'

‘Of course I did, Mother,' said Winchflat. ‘I never go anywhere without it.'

‘How can you be sure that it was a hypnotic, psychotic, antibiotic smell that Satanella was following?' said Betty. ‘It might have just been a dead lobster.'

‘I've thought of that,' said Winchflat. ‘It has a Dead-Lobster-Antenna as well.'

‘Should we take a collar and lead in case Satanella doesn't want to come back?' said Ffiona, who sometimes forgot that Satanella was Betty's sister and not just the family pet.

‘A collar and lead?' said Morbid. ‘You must be joking. The last person who tried to put a collar on our big sister is in traction and still undergoing finger transplants.'

‘We could take Claude,' said Ffiona. ‘If Satanella saw him, she'd come back straight away.'

‘Darling,' said Mrs Hulbert, ‘it's half-past Claude's bedtime and pitch black out there, and I've only just managed to get the last bit of seaweed out of his nose. You are not taking your baby brother back to the beach.'

‘Don't worry,' said Winchflat, switching on his thermonuclear three-hundred-and-ninety-seven-LED torch. ‘Betty and I will go and find her.'

Betty's hunch was right. Even without the help of Winchflat's Smell-Tracker, because they were wizards Betty and Winchflat were immediately able to detect that there was a powerful scent trail
running along the beach and off into the darkness. Because they weren't dogs like their sister, the scent did not entrance or hypnotise them.

‘My equipment has analysed the smell as a very old baby's nappy wrapped around an even older crab's stomach,' said Winchflat. ‘Pretty well irresistible to a dog, especially one with a nose as sensitive as Satanella's. Come on, we'll follow it.'

‘How do you know she went that way?' said Betty. ‘The trail goes in both directions.'

‘My Electronic-Hypnotic-Psychotic-Antibiotic-Smell-Tracker can tell that it came from that way and goes in that direction,' said Winchflat, pointing west. ‘And I think Satanella would be much more likely to follow whatever is leaving the trail than to go back and see where it came from. I mean, she'd want to catch whatever it is that's making the smell, wouldn't she?'