Floods 6 (8 page)

‘Do I really have to?' he'd said, but now he couldn't believe his eyes.

Here in this little sleepy seaside town, where even the fish and chips had cobwebs on them,
³⁸
was the greatest magician he had ever seen in his life, a man whose tricks seemed almost mystical. He would sign him up. He would call him The Man Who Put the Magic in Magician, and they would both become seriously famous and very seriously rich. The Sensational Brenda was probably not as young nor as beautiful as today's television audiences demanded, but the producer had never seen anyone, young, old, plain or gorgeous, who could juggle six eggs, throw them up into the air in a puff of smoke and have them come down as six live chickens. For an encore the Sensational Brenda then juggled six paper bags full of mushrooms that
changed into six pink pigeons that landed on the stage and turned into six cute puppies that could bark all the Beatles songs in perfect harmony.

At the end of the show the audience cheered so loudly that the Great Klunko and the Sensational Brenda had to come back for seven encores and then use some ear drops to stop their ears ringing. They only managed to make everyone go home when they both got inside the cabinet and made themselves disappear. They did not reappear in Silly, but back in their dressing room, where Mordonna was waiting for them.

‘From now on,' she said, ‘all your magic will be as brilliant as it was tonight.'

‘We don't know how to thank you,' said the Great Klunko.

‘Just do lots of brilliant magic for everyone,' said Mordonna.

‘What happened to those three horrible boys?' said the Sensational Brenda.

‘Who cares?' said Mordonna. ‘And if you get any more troublemakers in the audience, just
put them in the cabinet. Nice people will just get transported to the theatre foyer, but troublemakers will end up on the other side of the world.'

As she left, the television producer arrived with a big fat contract and the three of them lived happily ever after in the Lap of Luxury, which is a very expensive seaside village in California with a tall fence all round it.

After almost a week, Betty and Ffiona's sandcastle still stood at the end of the beach as perfect as the day they had built it. The council had erected a fence round it with Keep Out signs, and a team of scientists were poking and prodding at the turrets with a whole barrage of high-tech equipment. Their instruments recorded nothing at all. Even the Sandometer, which should have told them the castle was made of sand, just showed a blank screen.

Most scientists think they are Very Important People with Tunnel Vision, which means that
although they tell everyone they are developing and discovering new and exciting things, they are actually just developing new and exciting names for things that everyone already knows about.
³⁹
The scientists on the beach at Port Folio were exactly like that. It never occurred to them that magic might have something to do with the castle, because scientists don't believe in magic. As far as they were concerned, every single thing in every single place had a proper scientific explanation. If it didn't, then it obviously didn't exist – even if, like the wonderful sandcastle, they could see it with their own eyes.

When their twenty-five different bits of equipment showed them blank screens, they assumed that all twenty-five were faulty.

‘They must have been dropped or got wet on their way here,' said the chief scientist, who then ordered all twenty-five to be replaced.

‘These ones must have been dropped or got
wet too,' he said when the second lot showed blank screens.

Winchflat went along to the sandcastle every day and watched the scientists.

‘Excuse me,' he called over the barrier. ‘I think I can help you.'

‘Move along, sonny,' said one of the Port Folio policemen, who were now on a twenty-four-hour guard around the sandcastle.

‘But I can explain it all,' Winchflat insisted.

‘If you don't go away right now, sonny,' said the second policeman, ‘I'll have to arrest you.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes,' said the third policeman.

‘I don't think that would be a very good idea,' said Winchflat and clicked his fingers.

Immediately all the seagulls on the beach gathered in a huge flock and dive-bombed the three policemen with such accuracy and attention to detail that in less than five minutes every square centimetre of their uniforms had changed from Official Policeman Blue to Unofficial Seagull
Guano White With Black Streaks.

‘See, told you so,' said Winchflat. He clicked his fingers again, which made the seagulls call for reinforcements before they all dive-bombed the four scientists.

‘We're going to the funfair,' said Betty when the family arrived at the sandcastle to check on the scientists' progress. ‘Are you coming, Winchflat?'

‘No thanks,' said Winchflat. ‘I'm having too much fun here.'

‘There's a circus too,' said Satanella. ‘With performing animals.'

‘I might come along later,' said Winchflat as his team of precision seagulls swooped down to give the policemen and scientists another coat.

Witches and wizards shouldn't really be allowed to go to funfairs because they turn them into unfairs. No matter how much the sideshow owners cheat, and they all do, wizards can always win the big prize on the top shelf that no one is ever supposed to get. If the last coconut you need to knock down is glued in to the shy, wizards just unglue it. If the
mechanical arm starts to move towards the five-cent whistle, wizards just concentrate and make it pick up the really good wristwatch. Of course the sideshow owners don't realise this is being done by magic because, like scientists, and most humans, they don't believe there is such a thing as magic.

Betty's favourite thing at funfairs was the big dipper. The bigger and dippier the better, but even the wildest ride in the world could always be made better with a bit of magical help.

‘I think I might be very sick if I went on that,' said Ffiona, looking up at the huge wheel towering almost fifty metres into the sky.

‘No you won't,' said Betty. ‘You'll love it.'

And just to make sure nothing went wrong, she got her mother to do the I-Will-Not-Puke-Ever-At-All-Spell on Ffiona, and the Flying-Through-The-Air-Incredibly-Fast-Is-Brilliant-And-I-Love-It-More-Than-Anything spell too.

The two girls waited until they could get the front seat in the first car. Normally the roller-coaster went round the track once, which took about five
and a half minutes. With a snap of the fingers from Betty, this time it went round a lot quicker. Instead of slowing down as it reached the end, it kept speeding up until it was going so fast it kept leaving the track. By the time it came round for the third time it was travelling at over two hundred kilometres an hour and still accelerating. Apart from Betty and Ffiona, all the passengers were screaming at the tops of their voices. By the time it went round for the fifth lap all the people on the ground below were screaming too and running for the exits.

In one last brilliant circuit it left the track completely and soared up into the sky. It looped the loop over seven clouds, stood on its end, waited a second and then came screaming back towards the fairground so fast that it broke the sound barrier.

It shot round the track once more and then came to a nice slow stop at the finishing line.

Mordonna hadn't thought to do the I-Will-Not-Puke-Ever-At-All-Spell on Mrs Hulbert, which was a pity, because when she had seen her
daughter vanishing into the clouds as the roller-coaster went higher and higher, she went extremely white and threw up into her handbag.

‘Wow, that was totally brilliant,' said Ffiona as she and Betty staggered around trying to get their balance back.

‘Yeah,' said Betty. ‘Now let's go and trash some boys on the dodgems before the circus starts.'

Even Ffiona could have trashed the boys, because when boys get into small cars they usually become very stupid.
⁴⁰
So it wasn't really necessary for Betty to make massively thick sticky cobwebs full of horrible, biting, but not fatal, spiders fall down on each dodgem car until all seventeen cars with spotty young macho idiot boys driving them were completely jammed together like fish in a net.

‘Have you ever set fire to a cobweb?' said Betty as she pulled up alongside the tangled mess.

‘No,' said Ffiona. ‘What happens?'

‘This,' said Betty and struck a match.

Of course she didn't really set the cobwebs on fire. She just held the flame close enough to make every single boy wet himself.

‘Come on,' she said to Ffiona, ‘the circus is about to start.'

The circus was one of those old-fashioned ones where wild animals are forced to do demeaning tricks, such as opening their mouths while their trainers put their heads in them or walking around on their hind legs dressed in human clothes.

Naturally, wizard circuses do not do this sort of thing. Wizard circuses have wizards doing incredible things, which the audience can do because they are all wizards too, but which everyone still enjoys seeing. Wizard clowns don't have red noses, big shoes and funny clothes. They all dress up like bank managers and lend each other money or else stick each other into filing cabinets. Wizard circuses do have some performing animals, but they fall into one of two categories. The first category is sheep and chickens, who are too stupid to realise they are being exploited, but are clever enough to realise that performing in a circus is probably better than getting roasted in an oven and covered in gravy. The other category is performing humans, who are also too stupid to realise they are being exploited, which is
why TV shows like
Big Brother
and
Idol
are so successful.
⁴¹

The circus at the Port Folio funfair was not a wizard circus. It was the worst sort, full of depressed animals, and the Floods decided they would have to do something about it.

‘Are you going to get the lion to close its mouth when the trainer puts his head inside it?' said Ffiona, when Betty told her their plans.

‘No, tempting as it is, biting human heads off would probably be going a bit too far. Yes, it would be very entertaining with all that blood and guts, but the audience are mostly human and humans are a bit squeamish. I don't think they'd enjoy it very much,' said Betty. ‘What usually happens in this sort of situation is that Mum casts a few spells to reverse everyone's roles.'

First of all some clowns came on and drove
round the circus ring in their silly car with wheels that fell off. Then they threw water at each other and tripped over each other's great big clown shoes, usually landing face-down in custard pies. No animals were hurt or insulted during this bit.

But then the ringmaster stood in the centre of the ring and cracked a big whip as six beautiful white horses ran round and round, each one with a small poodle on its back.

Now, as anyone who owns a labrador knows, some animals actually like doing stupid things to make their humans happy. So before she did any circus magic, Mordonna looked inside each performing animal's head to see if they were happy or sad. Then she made her adjustments.

‘They all hate the whip,' Mordonna whispered, ‘and the ringmaster's wife doesn't give them enough to eat. Those poodles are quite a bit more intelligent than she is, too.'

So as the ringmaster flicked his whip back for another big crack, the three-metre braided leather thong wrapped itself round his body and
slapped him across the face. At the same time the six poodles stood on their hind legs and clapped with their front paws.

What happened next:

The horses raced out of the ring, galloped across the paddock, through the gate and away into the vast forest behind the town, where they still live to this day, eating soft green grass and leaves, drinking crystal clear water from mountain streams, raising a new generation of beautiful wild foals and generally thinking to themselves,
Life does not get any better than this.

As the horses had run away through the town, the poodles had leapt off their backs and all six of them had ended up living with a little old lady who fed them lightly poached chicken and cuddled them in a big soft armchair in front of a big log fire.

Like the horses, the poodles and the little old lady all thought,
Life does not get any better than this.

And of course they were right.

The ringmaster had a nasty red weal across his face from his whip that never quite faded. Circus ringmasters are quite often incredibly vain and pompous people who even go to bed in their top hats. This one was like that and, after Mordonna had given him exactly what he deserved for cracking a big whip at defenceless animals for twenty-seven years, he left the circus and moved away as far as he could from everyone to a remote run-down property where he spent the rest of his life growing rhubarb that was so sour no amount of sugar could improve it. His wife, who was just as vain, decided she could not love a man with a red scar on his face because it would clash with her new lipstick, so she ran away with the rhubarb inspector from a large supermarket chain and lived miserably ever after.