Echo waited for her at the top of the first flight.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘You’ve not only taken a step, you’ve climbed a whole flight of steps. How’s the acrophobia? On the scale, I mean?’
‘Ooof!’ she went. Sweat was streaming down her face. ‘Well … Eight, maybe?’
‘We must hurry,’ he said. ‘Time’s running out.’
They climbed the next flight of steps. Izanuela grunted, groaned and cursed him terribly, but she persevered.
‘And now?’ Echo asked after three more flights.
‘Seven,’ she replied. ‘No, six.’
Izanuela’s cloak billowed out in a sudden gust of wind, but she doggedly went on climbing. ‘You’ve no need to be scared of Ghoolion,’ she said. ‘When this is over I’ll wring your neck with my own hands.’
‘Only one more flight and you’ll be able to see the Cratmint,’ Echo said coaxingly. ‘What’s the score?’
‘Five, I’d say. Or even four.’
‘You see? Your fear is subsiding.’
Izanuela reached the top step and stared at Echo in astonishment. ‘How did you do it? Is it a trick you’ve learnt from Ghoolion?’
‘No, just a little applied Cratology. Or Echoism, if you prefer.’
‘Now you’re poking fun at me. Stop it, or I’ll -’
‘There it is!’ Echo broke in. ‘The Cratmint!’
The plant was still in full bloom. In the moonlight its stems looked white as milk and the flowers silver. Nocturnal insects were buzzing round it, attracted by its powerful scent.
Izanuela sighed. ‘It’s superb!’
‘Is it big enough for your love potion?’ Echo asked.
‘The Cratmint won’t be an ingredient of the potion. It doesn’t work like that. I shall distil my perfume from it.’
‘Your perfume?’
‘The erotic spell depends on two factors. The drink itself will merely cause Ghoolion to fall in love. In that state he could fall in love with anything or anyone: with me, with you, even with a tree. Only the perfume I distil from the Cratmint will point him in the right direction. If I drench myself in it, he’ll fall head over heels in love with me.’
Echo nodded. ‘I see. Then let’s dig it up.’
They went over to the plant. Izanuela produced a trowel from her robe and proceeded to dig.
‘I’m quite carried away,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It smells divine. It’s the loveliest scent I’ve ever smelt.’
Echo grinned. ‘It’s the same with me. I love that fragrance.’
‘Look at all the insects,’ she said. ‘They’re absolutely besotted with the plant.’
It was true, the beetles and moths whirring around the Cratmint were displaying almost lovesick behaviour. They kept diving into the flower cups and bathing in the pollen.
‘Your fear of heights,’ Echo remembered to ask, ‘what’s the score?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Izanuela said absently. ‘No idea. One or two, maybe.’
She dug up the plant with surgical precision. ‘One can’t afford to damage the smallest root hair,’ she pontificated. ‘Flowers feel no pain, but they feel something else. There isn’t a word for it in our language, which shows you how ignorant of plants we are. You can hurt them in many different ways.’ Having finally detached the clump of Cratmint from the surrounding soil, she held it up in the moonlight.
‘I love this plant - I could sniff it for ever. It’s wonderful.’
‘We must go now,’ Echo said. ‘How’s the acrophobia?’
‘Acrophobia?’ Izanuela retorted. ‘What’s acrophobia? I feel like dancing in the moonlight with this plant. I’d like to marry it!’
She clasped the Cratmint to her bosom and drew its scent deep into her lungs. ‘Aah!’ she cried. ‘Come, dance with me!’ Rising on her toes like a ballerina, she tittuped off the steps and on to the sloping tiles. Echo was seized with panic.
‘Come on now!’ he hissed. Izanuela was utterly enraptured. There would be a nasty accident if he didn’t take her home. ‘Get back on the steps!’ he said sharply. ‘Move!’
‘Acrophobia?’ she cried exuberantly. ‘Acrophilia, you mean! I’m fearless. I’m like a feather in the wind. I’m lighter than air!’
She leapt boldly over several tiles. When she landed on them with her full weight, they disintegrated like stale piecrust. Her left leg went through and sank in up to her crotch.
‘Ow!’ she wailed. ‘Ow, my leg!’
Echo jumped on to the roof and went over to her. ‘I told you to stay on the steps,’ he grumbled. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.’
Izanuela had come down to earth. ‘Ow,’ she wailed, ‘my leg’s stuck.’ Holding the Cratmint in one hand, she tugged at the imprisoning tiles with the other. One of them came away, then another, then a full dozen. The whole roof started to slide. Echo tried to leap to safety, but it was too late. It was like jumping from ice floe to ice floe while plunging down a waterfall.
‘Whoa!’ cried Izanuela. With a sound like thunder, the whole avalanche of tiles cascaded over the edge of the roof with her and Echo on board.
Then they were in free fall. This time, Echo possessed no Leathermouse wings he could have deployed at the last moment. Quickly, far too quickly, Malaisea came rushing up to meet him. It would be all over in a few seconds. Was this his punishment for trying to redirect his destiny: an even swifter death than at Ghoolion’s hands?
He was almost on a level with the Uggly, who was plummeting to earth in a shower of tiles. Her face betrayed no fear, just bewilderment.
A moment later they were suddenly surrounded by darting shafts of black lightning - by hideous, wrinkled faces and bared teeth: Leathermice, hundreds of them! They sank their teeth in Echo’s tail, buried their claws in his fur and gripped him by the neck.
Then he noticed that his rate of descent was slowing. The same thing was happening to Izanuela, he could see this through a flurry of black bodies. The vampires had fastened their teeth and claws on her in many places and were bearing her slowly downwards, vigorously flapping their membranous wings.
Echo was gently deposited on the path that led up to the castle. Izanuela landed just beside him, the Cratmint still in her trembling hand. The creatures of the night were fluttering overhead.
Echo looked up at them. ‘Why did you do that?’ he called. ‘You’re under contract to Ghoolion. I don’t understand.’
‘Nobody understands the Leathermice!’ came the reply, doubtless from an individual whose first name was Vlad. ‘Not even the Leathermice!’ Then the vampires, in close formation, went soaring into the sky and darkened the moon.
Echo felt himself all over. He had escaped without a single scratch.
‘Please excuse me,’ he said to Izanuela. ‘Ghoolion is bound to be waiting dinner for me.’
The Cheese Museum
W
hen Echo paid a visit to Izanuela’s house the next day, the door opened even before he set foot on the veranda steps. It was as if the house had seen him in the distance and invited him in. He was flattered by this mark of esteem on the part of a centuries-old plant and tried to tread with special care once he was inside the house. Izanuela wasn’t in the kitchen, but the stairway to the subterranean garden was open.
‘Hello!’ he called. ‘Iza? Anyone at home?’
‘I’m down here!’ she called back. ‘Come and join me!’
He found her at her distillery, which was surrounded by unfamiliar plants in clay pots. Translucent coloured liquids were bubbling away, and the air was filled with many new smells.
‘Some job you’ve landed me with!’ she groaned. ‘Thanks a lot. Have you any idea what a business it is, extracting the chlorophyll from a Dragonthistle? I have to ugglimise almost every plant I need. That’s a particularly economical way of isolating its active substances, but you’ve no idea how much work it entails. And my suffragator has just broken down. Now I’ll have to suffragate everything by hand.’
‘Well, how’s it going?’ Echo asked diffidently.
The Uggly put her hands on her hips and squinted at him.
‘Is that the only reason why you’ve come, to hassle me? What comes next, the “I’ve-got-so-little-time-left” act? The “poor-little-Crat-in-distress” spiel? You can save yourself the trouble, my friend! I’ve been slaving away - didn’t sleep a wink all night. My heart has been beating like a tomtom ever since we fell off that roof - it just won’t stop. I feel as if I’d drunk fifty cups of coffee and I never touch the stuff.’
‘I was only asking,’ said Echo.
‘Thanks for the enquiry, then. Yes, I’m making progress. I’ve been distilling the Cratmint oil for twelve hours. It’s a remarkably productive plant. The perfume will be very strong.’
The Cratmint, Echo saw, was immersed in a big glass balloon filled with some kind of clear, pale-green liquid. It had lost none of its beauty.
‘The Gingerbread Japonica has already been etherised,’ Izanuela said with a sigh, ‘and I immersed the Toadmoss in a marinade of Crocodiddle’s tears overnight. It should soon be chattified.’
‘Chattified?’ said Echo.
‘Yes, chattified, the opposite of unchattified. You’re surely not suggesting we lace our love potion with
u
chattified Toadmoss?’
‘No,’ Echo said uncertainly, ‘of course not.’
She grinned at him.
‘You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you? That’s because I’m a qualified Uggly and you aren’t. It doesn’t matter how much you know about alchemy; Ugglimy is a science in its own right. Ghoolion may cook ghosts or transform sugar into salt or heaven knows what, but he can’t concoct a decent love potion - not him! And I’ll tell you why: because alchemy doesn’t give a fig for the emotions, that’s why! Because he’s too busy trying to construct perpetual-motion machines or looking for the Philosopher’s Stone to trouble his head about anything as stupid as love. But the thing that makes the world go round isn’t in here.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘It’s in here!’ She thumped her chest twice with her fist.
Echo didn’t reply, but he wasn’t displeased by Izanuela’s vehemence. It showed how motivated she was.
‘My colleague, Sister Crapanthia Urgel, is sending me some Goat’s Gristle and Old Man’s Scurf from Florinth,’ she said. ‘The Treacletuft and the Toadpipe I’m getting direct from the Impic Alps. The Devil’s Clover is coming from Grailsund.’
‘Are you really planning to get them from so far away?’ Echo was shocked. ‘It’ll take weeks. I don’t -’
‘- have that much time left!’ Izanuela broke in, casting her eyes up to heaven. ‘I know, I know. They’re coming by airmail.’
‘Airmail?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s one of the advantages of being on good terms with Zamonia’s flora and fauna. We Ugglies have an efficient airmail service at our disposal. Pigeons and seagulls mainly, but also eagles, vultures and swallows. Sparrows for short-haul flights, condors for freight.’
Echo looked surprised. ‘You’ve got trained birds?’
‘Our birds aren’t trained,’ she said indignantly. ‘They work for us on a voluntary basis.’
‘You don’t say!’
‘Yes, a long-standing relationship of mutual trust with the natural world can sometimes pay off,’ said Izanuela. ‘We refrain from polluting the birds’ air space with sulphurous fumes from alchemical furnaces, provide them with medical treatment free of charge and hang up bird feeders in the woods in winter. In return, they deliver an occasional express letter or parcel. I’m expecting those consignments as early as tomorrow morning.’
Echo looked relieved. ‘Oh, that’s all right, then.’
‘Meantime, you can make yourself useful. I need your help.’
‘Of course, that’s why I’m here. What shall I do? Do you need some alchemistic advice?’
‘Not yet. I haven’t got enough chattified Toadmoss, but I don’t have time to roam around in the Toadwoods. You could do that for me.’
‘You want me to fetch some moss from the Toadwoods?’
‘Not just any old moss,
Toad
moss. As much as you can carry in your mouth.’
Echo swallowed hard. ‘I’ve never been that far from town.’
‘The Toadwoods are still inside the city limits,’ Izanuela said. ‘They’re quite civilised, really. People only avoid them because the Incurables live there.’
The Incurables … Echo felt uneasy. You didn’t venture into the Toadwoods unless you had some fell disease: you went there to die.
‘“Y
ou’re feeling terminally sick? Off to the Toadwoods with you, quick!
”’ Izanuela recited. ‘You know the poem by Knulf Krockenkrampf?’ She gave a hoarse laugh. ‘I told you this wouldn’t be a stroll in the park, my friend, but we need that Toadmoss badly.’
‘All right,’ said Echo, ‘I’ll go. How do I recognise it?’
‘By its smell: it smells of toad.’ Izanuela removed the lid from a clay pot and held it under Echo’s nose. The Toadmoss floating in the Crocodiddle’s tears stank appallingly.
‘Got it,’ he said with a shudder. ‘I’ll find some.’