‘Oh,’ said the toad, ‘that’s sad. Is it for the old crone who keeps scraping it off my back?’
‘Exactly,’ said Echo. ‘You know her, then?’
‘I most certainly do. She always squirts some stuff up my nose before she scrapes it off. It makes me go all dizzy and my head swims for days afterwards. There’s absolutely no need for her to do that - I’d gladly give her the stuff of my own free will. I’m only too delighted when someone scrapes some off from time to time. It itches, that’s why, but I can’t tell
her
that because I can’t talk to her the way I can to you.’
‘I could drop her a hint,’ Echo said.
‘Would you?’
‘Of course. So you wouldn’t mind if I took a little of your moss?’
‘No, no,’ said the toad, ‘help yourself.’
‘You mean I can jump down on to your back?’
‘Well,
I
can’t scrape it off for you - I can’t reach the stuff myself.’ The toad looked over its shoulder and raised its short front legs with a tormented croak.
Echo debated with himself. The toad was big and ugly, but did that mean it was dangerous? It certainly didn’t make a devious impression. On the other hand, if you spotted a trap it ceased to be one. He grunted irresolutely.
‘What’s the matter?’ the toad demanded. ‘Changed your mind?’
What had he got to lose? He was under sentence of death in any case. His only means of extricating himself from his predicament was growing on the back of this warty monster. He leapt boldly into the grave.
‘Ah!’ the toad said blissfully. ‘That feels good. Would you mind marking time on the back of my neck for a while? I think I’m suffering from muscle cramp.’
The old creature smelt truly frightful at close range. Echo had landed plumb on its back between some huge warts and a clump of Toadmoss. He would have preferred to get the business over in double-quick time, but he didn’t want to seem discourteous, so he complied with the toad’s request.
‘Ah!’ it said again. ‘You’ve no idea how good that feels. What’s your name, by the way?’
‘Echo. And yours?’
‘Just Toad. I’m the only toad left in this forest, so any more names would be superfluous.’
‘I see,’ said Echo.
He stopped marking time.
‘I’d like to scrape off some of your moss now,’ he said, ‘if it’s all right with you.’
‘Of course,’ said the toad. ‘I’m wasting your precious time. Help yourself.’
Echo drew a deep breath and took a big bite of Toadmoss. He wrenched it off with his teeth, gagging despite himself. It tasted even more revolting than Izanuela’s tongue.
‘There,’ said the toad, ‘now you know what Toadmoss tastes like. Shall I tell you what
I’d
like to know?’
‘Mm?’ Echo said with his mouth full.
‘I’d like to know what a Crat tastes like.’
The toad opened its slimy jaws as wide as they would go and put out an enormous tongue at least three times the length of its body. Reaching back over its shoulder, the tongue wrapped itself round Echo and popped him into the creature’s gaping mouth, which promptly closed again - all within the bat of an eyelid.
Just as he had been when falling from the castle roof, Echo was far too astonished to feel scared. ‘Ghoolion’s going to be mighty disappointed,’ was the only thought that occurred to him.
But the toad didn’t swallow him.
It opened its mouth and extended its tongue, Echo and all. Having deposited him on the edge of the grave, the creature retracted it again.
‘You taste of absolutely nothing,’ it observed in a reproachful voice.
‘The Leathermice said that too,’ Echo thought dazedly. He was covered in toad slobber from head to foot, but he still had the Toadmoss in his mouth.
‘So I haven’t been missing anything,’ said the toad. ‘I apologise, my friend. Don’t take it personally, it was only an experiment.’
Echo retreated a few steps for safety’s sake.
‘Best of luck with that moss!’ he heard the toad call. ‘And look in on me again some time. I could use a massage like that occasionally. It would be nice to see you again.’
Echo turned and made his way out of the forest as fast as his paws would carry him.
Alchemy and Ugglimy
‘Now the Alchemist’s away
I’m at liberty to play,
and shall now, for good or ill,
bend his spirits to my will.
Having marked his words and ways
carefully these many days,
ready to perform am I
miracles of alchemy.’
The old poem by Aleisha Wimpersleak, which Izanuela was now reciting, could not have been more appropriate to the occasion. Echo had returned to the Uggly’s house late that night to assist her in preparing the love potion.
‘Copious streams of sweat shall flow
from my overheated brow,
as I brew the magic broth
that will help me plight my troth,’
‘Ah!’ Izanuela exclaimed. ‘You’re familiar with the Zamonian classics, I see. That was from “Love Soup” by Wamilli Swordthrow, wasn’t it? We’re really getting into the swing of things! There’s nothing more essential to Ugglimical potion-brewing than sympathetic vibrations.’
They were standing beside the distillation plant in the secret underground garden, where Izanuela had installed an apparatus quite the equal of any in Ghoolion’s laboratory. Echo jumped up on to the big table by way of a chair. Translucent coloured liquids - green, yellow, red, orange, blue and violet - were standing or bubbling away in glass balloons. The vessels were linked by thin tubes of copper, silver or glass, and methane-fed flames were burning brightly. Echo was surprised to see a pair of bellows pumping away steadily, apparently under its own power.
‘It contains earthworms in peat,’ Izanuela explained in a low voice. ‘It pays to harness the energy of Mother Earth. By the way, thanks for the Leyden Manikin formula. I’ve already animated one. We’ll be able to test the efficacy of the love potion on it.’
The Leyden Manikin was seated in a big-bellied flask, apathetically dabbling its feet in nutrient fluid. Echo took little notice of the creature, being far too eager to inspect Izanuela’s apparatus. He darted here, there and everywhere, sniffing and marvelling. Violets and rose petals were floating in pale-pink liquid, clumps of eelgrass waving around in alcohol. Some treacly dark-green substance was bubbling over a Bunsen burner. The air was filled with a smell reminiscent of flower gardens in springtime and stormy nights in the jungle, poppies and freshly mown grass, intoxicating orchids and poisonous tropical fungi, roses in full bloom, lemon balm and rosemary, fresh peat and wet straw.
Incandescent red Lava Worms wriggled along a spiral glass tube, heating up a flask in which a solution of chlorophyll was simmering. A column of big, black soldier ants marched across the table, transporting fragments of leaves and roots to a mortar. Stag beetles dragged whole flower heads over to a copper and dropped them in.
‘I see we’ve got plenty of busy little assistants,’ Echo remarked.
‘Oh,’ Izanuela said dismissively, ‘they’re just being neighbourly - paying me back for pinching my sugar and eating my spinach.’
The roots growing out of the floor and walls were unusually animated. The eyes in the knotholes kept opening and shutting as if aware that some crucial event was in the offing. For the first time, Echo took a closer look at the colourful butterflies fluttering through the subterranean vegetation.
‘What are all these butterflies doing down here?’ he asked when one of them settled on his head.
‘Generating atmosphere,’ said Izanuela, tossing a handful of pollen into the air. ‘Can you imagine brewing a love potion without any butterflies around? I can’t.’
‘You’ve really thought of everything,’ Echo said admiringly. ‘When does the balloon go up?’
‘Soon,’ she said. ‘I’ve still got to regulate my hop dispenser.’ She adjusted the control knobs on a big wooden box in which something was rumbling around and banging against the sides. ‘There,’ she exclaimed, clapping her hands. ‘All we need now is some
twitchstik
.’
‘Music?’ Echo translated.
The weird, rhythmical humming he’d heard on his first visit to the Uggly’s house started up again. He now realised that its source was the house itself, the roots and vegetation all around them.
‘The Song of the Ugglian Oaks,’ Izanuela said enthusiastically. ‘There’s nothing better.’ She put a jar on the table. At once, the Twitching Terebinth inside it began to sway ecstatically to and fro in time to the music. The Leyden Manikin also came to life. It stood up and started drumming on the side of its glass container.
‘Atmosphere is all!’ cried Izanuela. ‘Now let’s get down to work.’
She took various flasks filled with liquid from beneath the table and put them down beside a small cast-iron saucepan.
‘First we must dispense the vegetable essences in the correct quantities,’ she said.
‘Have they been chattified?’ Echo asked sternly.
‘With a vengeance,’ Izanuela replied with a grin. ‘More chattified than them you can’t get.’
She added minute amounts of the essences to the saucepan, consulting her Ugglimical Cookbook as she did so.
‘One ugg of Gristlethorn … two uggs of Treacletuft … five uggs of Clubfoot Toadstool … twenty-four uggs of Twelve-Leafed Clover … Yes, we can use some good luck …’
‘Why so little?’ Echo put in. ‘Why not tip the lot in? The more the merrier, no?’
‘Keep out of this!’ Izanuela hissed. ‘It’s over your head. Everything depends on the correct dosage. One ugg too many or too few and it’s completely ruined, so don’t distract me!’
Echo bit his tongue.
‘Eighteen uggs of Arctic Woodbine … two uggs of Old Man’s Scurf … four-and-a-half uggs of Pond Scum … one ugg of Sparrowspit … two uggs of Funnelhorn … one hundred and seventy-one uggs of Tuberous Stinkwort …’
And so it went on until all the essences had been added in the quantities prescribed. Izanuela placed the saucepan over a low flame and suspended a thermometer from the rim. ‘Now we heat it to exactly seventy-seven uggs,’ she said. ‘It mustn’t boil under any circumstances!’
‘What
is
an ugg?’ Echo asked.
‘An ugg can equate to a gramme or a degree - sometimes to a millimetre. It all depends,’ said Izanuela. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Echo. Having already gained the impression that Ugglimy wasn’t a particularly exact science, he was now, for the first time, struck by the disturbing thought that Izanuela might merely be blinding him with science.
‘Seventy-seven uggs on the button,’ she muttered after a glance at the thermometer. She consulted the cookbook again. ‘Now for the infusion of Witch’s Purslane.’ She produced a big, rusty syringe from a cupboard and went over to a glass container. Once there, she froze. The syringe hit the ground with a clatter.
‘By all the … Oh, no!’ she exclaimed.
Echo hurried over to her. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked anxiously.
‘The Witch’s Purslane essence,’ she groaned, ‘it’s gone off. How could
that
have happened?’
The liquid in the glass container looked brackish and slimy. Fat bubbles of gas were rising to the surface, on which limp, greenish-brown leaves floated like victims of drowning. The rhythmical music ceased.
‘Oh dear,’ Izanuela wailed, ‘I turned off the filter by mistake and left it overnight. The essence has become polluted.’
‘So?’ said Echo. ‘It’s only a salad vegetable. I’m sure you can get some more.’
‘That’s just it. This was a very rare variety from a farm on Paw Island. Have you any idea how far away that is? It would take a week to get hold of another batch and by then the other essences would have lost their potency. Don’t you understand? This is the moment to brew the potion. Here, today, tonight! It’s now or never! Damnation!’ She thumped the glass container.
Echo feverishly searched his knowledge of alchemy for a solution. ‘What is in the plant?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘nothing special, really. Iron, zinc, alkaloids - the stuff plants usually contain. But this was
Witch’s
Purslane and it contained an exceptionally effective kind of mucilago. That’s a gum designed to bind the ingredients of our potion tightly together. It’s like a soufflé, my young friend. Unless you follow the recipe exactly …’ Izanuela subsided weakly on to a chair.
Gastropoda
, Echo heard the Alchemaster saying.
Fossaria modicella. Radix auriculata. Stagnicola caperata. Aplexa elongata. Physella vigata. Gyraulus deflectus. Planorbula trivolvis. Planorbula armigera …
‘Planorbula armigera!’ he exclaimed.
‘What?’