Pure Dead Magic (8 page)

Intrigued by the two-ring binder, Pandora found it to be full of page upon page of her mother’s handwriting. Hmm, thought Pandora, this looks promising.… She meditatively ate the remainder of the chicken sandwich, reading by the dim light from the open doorway, and after a couple of pages, found what she was looking for. It read:

Downstairs, the front door opened and Pandora heard her mother’s voice calling the pets to order. A honk and a splash from the moat signified Tock’s bedtime and the sound of footsteps and rattling chains meant that Signora Strega-Borgia was leading Sab, Ffup, and Knot back to the dungeon. That gave Pandora about two minutes to leave the bedroom exactly as she had found it.

Stuffing everything back into the briefcase, she carefully removed three relevant pages of spells from the two-ring
binder, wedged them under her pajama top, and replaced the binder in the briefcase. She had just enough time to press the latch closed, buckle the straps, and hurl the briefcase back on the bed before she heard her mother sneezing her way back up from the dungeon.

Pandora slipped away along the corridor and up one flight of steps to her own bedroom. Judging by the lack of light from under Titus’s door, he had fallen asleep, happy in the knowledge that his sister was one day closer to her swim with Tock. “Just you wait, Titus,” she muttered, pulling the quilt over her head and turning on her flashlight. “First I’ll get to grips with these wands, and then … you’re toast.” She removed the sheets of spells from under her pajama top and began to commit them to memory.

The Schloss slept, the heavy air full of dreams, the gentle lapping of waves on the shore forming a tidal rhythm to doze by. Deep in her polar night, Strega-Nonna dreamt of igloos and ice. Her freezer bed hummed and clicked, powered by a thin cable that snaked between the sleeper and the wall socket. The cable trailed across several yards of floor, dipping for half its length into a yellow puddle. This puddle consisted of fluids that had oozed out from Pandora’s neglected pile of fish sticks, profiteroles, and ice cream. At first it was a rather nasty combination of fish drip, chocolate and cream leak, and banana, mint-chocolate-chip, and strawberry ooze. That had been fourteen hours ago.

In the gentle warmth of the cellar, the puddle now could be safely described as a biological hazard. Bacteria formed, grew, reached adulthood, had babies, and became grandparents. Teeming millions fed on the puddle, came back for second
helpings, belched microscopically, and, due to the richness of the feast, passed large quantities of noxious gases. The puddle bubbled and heaved like a small swamp. The puddle stank. To Multitudina, who had missed bacon rind breakfast, the puddle was the nearest thing to heaven that she’d ever smelled.

Oh YES, she thought, running at it at full tilt. Oh YES, oh YES, she continued, rolling up her top lip to expose her long yellow teeth. Mmmhmmm, sweet fishy rancidness, mmhmm, sour cheesy putrefaction, mmHMMM, taste that decay, mmHmMM? Rubbery chewiness? … BANG! Uh-oh … FLASSSSH.

Those fireworks were quite unnecessary, thought Multitudina, rubbing her burnt nose and assessing herself for whisker loss. Good food doesn’t need that kind of embellishment. Squeaking with outrage, she bolted out of the cellar and scuttled upstairs to her refuge under Titus’s bed.

The freezer, in the silent way of such things, began to adapt to life as a large box. The thaw had begun.

Magic for Beginners

M
orning dawned, wet and gray at StregaSchloss. Rain pitted the surface of the moat like a bad case of acne, and Tock sulked under a water lily thicket. Puddles formed, gutters ran, and windows misted up inside. The dungeons tended to seep and drip in bad weather, and out of pity, Mrs. McLachlan had allowed Sab, Ffup, and Knot into the kitchen to dry off. By the range, Marie Bain was stirring a pot of volcanic porridge, her yellow feet incongruously clad in fluffy pink slippers adorned with little bunnies. Mouth pursed and eyes grimly slitted, she was trying to ignore Knot, who gazed fixedly at the cook’s feet and hoped against hope that she was wearing his breakfast.

Titus sat opposite the beasts, sneezing occasionally and steadily working his way through the healthy part of breakfast in the hope of reaching the unhealthy part before his jaws collapsed from exhaustion.

“More muesli, dear?”

“Nnnng,” he replied, chewing heroically.

When Mrs. McLachlan turned her back on him to assess the status of her baking raspberry muffins, Titus slid his muesli bowl over to Ffup.

The dragon glared at him. “Forget it, pal,” he hissed, pushing it back to Titus with a disdainful talon. “After last night’s offering, I’m
never
going to eat your leftovers again.”

Titus raised a hopeful eyebrow at Sab. The griffin’s eyeballs immediately turned to stone. Titus sighed. Knot was oblivious to everything but Marie Bain’s feet, encased as they were in such delicious pink fluffiness.… With another deep sigh, Titus began his fortieth spoonful of muesli.

Upstairs, Pandora was examining the plunder from her mother’s briefcase.

“With this kind of spell, I could shrink you as small as a bug,” muttered Pandora, conducting an imaginary conversation with her absent brother. “And squash you so
flat
that your insides would come out with a splat.…”

One and three-quarter Disposawands later, Pandora was getting the hang of magic. At first light, she’d crept out of bed, re-read the relevant instructions in the papers from the ring binder, and selected her first victim. Dangling from its hanger, adorned with layers of frills, lace, and petticoats, was her most hated dress. Cause of many wardrobe wars, the dress had perversely survived each and every one of Pandora’s attempts to destroy it. “But
this
time …,” she gloated, circling it with one of her purloined wands, “
this
time …”

The lace on the collar lifted and stirred in the breeze caused
by Pandora’s passes with the wand. With a tiny metal clatter, it fell, complete with tiny metal hanger, onto the floor at her feet. Diminishing afterimages faded in its wake—identical dresses for eight-, seven-, six-, five-, four-, three-, two-, Damp-year-olds, babies, and newborns, each one smaller than the next, each one fading slowly away until, with a gasp, Pandora picked up the smallest version from the floor. “When I find Multitudina’s babies, this will be just
perfect
for one of them,” she said, holding the tiny thing in the palm of her hand.

Several hours later, Pandora’s room had undergone a radical transformation. From the curtain poles hung two pocket-handkerchief-sized curtains. A miniature library of books the size of postage stamps huddled forlornly at the end of a large bookcase, lost in the vast space that now surrounded them. Pandora’s wardrobe had become her new jewelry box and the bedroom floor was dotted with thumbnail-sized teddies and dolls. There had been a few casualties along the way—where she was going to sleep might present a problem since her bed was now the size of a matchbox, and CDs the size of pinheads were frankly useless, but Pandora was feeling triumphant.

“Easy peasy, lemon squeezy,” she said. “Now for something trickier.” She flung herself onto her bed, forgetting that it had been an early casualty of the learning process. There was a tiny crunch from beneath her leg. “First thing I’ll try is matchsticks into mattresses,” she muttered, picking out the splinters.

A Little Family History

L
uciano Strega-Borgia breakfasted alone. He sat flanked by coffeepots, little dishes of apricot jam, platters of prosciutto, and enough croissants to feed a small army. However, the fact remained that his left ankle was chained to the table, and next to his plate was a document requiring his signature. Gazing out at the cypresses mirrored in the lake, he wondered if he’d ever see his wife and family again. His appetite deserted him as he remembered the morning he’d stormed out of StregaSchloss, all those weeks ago.…

It had started with bickering at breakfast.

He’d come downstairs to the kitchen where his family was eating breakfast. The table was already awash with milk. Damp was grizzling and Titus and Pandora were looking particularly glum. At the head of the table, his wife of many years, the beautiful Signora Strega-Borgia, sat with her head buried in the local paper. At the range, wearing a particularly black scowl, Marie Bain stood murdering a panful of scrambled eggs.

On seeing her father, Damp threw her hands in the air, sending her cereal bowl skidding off the table and across the floor. She bounced up and down in her clip-on baby seat, causing everything on the table to bounce up and down in tandem. Coffee and orange juice slopped out of cups and glasses. Cereal boxes toppled over and spilled their contents.

Serenely unaware of the squalor surrounding her, Signora Strega-Borgia stirred her coffee with the end of a pencil, licked it dry, and circled something in the paper.

Signor Strega-Borgia sat down at the breakfast table. Damp hurled her cup at him by way of welcome. Marie Bain placed a plate of blackened eggs in front of him.

“Dad, I’ve got a bit of a problem,” said Titus.

“That’s a major understatement,” said Pandora, scattering sugar over her cereal, the surrounding tablecloth and, ultimately, the floor.

“Dad,” said Titus, ignoring his sister, “you know you let me load
Death & Destruction II
onto your computer?”

“Titus, you are terminally boring, d’you know that?” interrupted Pandora. “All you ever do is talk about computers from the moment you open your eyes in the morning until—”

“Shut up, Pan,” said Titus. “It’s rude to interrupt.”

“It’s even ruder to bore the pants off everyone,” mumbled Pandora, through a mouthful of Ricey Krispettes. Several Ricey Krispettes were launched floorward with each word.

Damp, her baby barometer sensing an impending storm, began to wail.

“Well, the problem is … Dad? Dad? Are you listening?”

“AAAARGH!” yelled Signor Strega-Borgia.

“Something wrong, darling?” said Signora Strega-Borgia, dropping her paper in the communal milk pool.

“TOO RIGHT, SOMETHING’S WRONG!” yelled Signor Strega-Borgia illogically.

Damp began to cry in earnest.

“Dad, look, I’m
really
sorry I crashed your computer, but it wasn’t my fault,” blurted Titus.

Signor Strega-Borgia leapt to his feet, causing his chair to crash backward onto the floor. “I’ve
had
it!” he shouted at his family. “I’m sick of living in a pigsty!” He waved at the table. “I’m sick of eating pig swill!” He hurled his plate at the wall. “And above all, I’m fed up to the back teeth with the lot of you!”

His family looked at him in dismay. In the background, Marie Bain curled up on the floor with the broken crockery and tried to make herself invisible. Above her head, scrambled eggs tracked slowly down the wall.

“Well …,” said Signora Strega-Borgia icily, “you know what you can do about
that,
don’t you?”