When the water had ebbed from the landing stage, Marcia and the crew climbed out of the Dragon Boat and made their way up to the cottage, which was suspiciously quiet and the front door was slightly open. With a sense of foreboding, they peered inside.
Brownies.
Everywhere. The door to the Disenchanted cat tunnel was open and the place was crawling with Brownies. Up the walls, over the floor, stuck on the ceiling, packed tight into the potion cupboard, munching, chewing, tearing, pooing as they went through the cottage like a storm of locusts. At the sight of the humans, ten thousand Brownies started up their high-pitched squeals.
Aunt Zelda was out of the kitchen in a flash.
“What?” she gasped, trying to take it all in but seeing only an unusually disheveled Marcia standing in the middle of a heaving sea of Brownies. Why, thought Aunt Zelda, does Marcia always have to make things so difficult? Why on earth had she brought a load of Brownies back with her?
“Blasted Brownies!” bellowed Aunt Zelda, waving her arms about in an ineffectual way. “Out, out, get out!”
“Allow me, Zelda,” Marcia shouted. “I’ll do a quick Remove for you.”
“No!” yelled Aunt Zelda. “I must do this myself, otherwise they will lose respect for me.”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call this respect,” muttered Marcia, lifting her ruined shoes out of the sticky slime and inspecting the soles. She definitely had a hole in them somewhere. She could feel the slime seeping in between her toes.
Suddenly the shrieking stopped, and thousands of little red eyes all stared in terror at the thing a Brownie feared the most. A Boggart.
The Boggart.
With his fur clean and brushed, looking thin and small with the white sash of his bandage still tied around his middle, there was not quite as much Boggart as there had been. But he still had Boggart Breath. And, breathing Boggart Breath as he went, he waded through the Brownies, feeling his strength returning.
The Brownies saw him coming, and desperate to escape, they stupidly piled themselves up in the farthest corner away from the Boggart, higher and higher until every Quake Ooze Brownie but one, a young one out for the first time, was on the teetering pile in the far corner by the desk. Suddenly the young Brownie shot out from underneath the hearth rug. Its anxious red eyes shone from its pointy face and its bony fingers and toes clattered on the stone floor as, watched by everyone, it scuttled down the length of the room to join the pile. It threw itself onto the slimy heap and joined the throng of little red eyes staring at the Boggart.
“Dunno why they don’t just leave. Blasted Brownies,” said the Boggart. “Still, there’s bin a terrible storm. Don’t suppose they wanter go out of a nice warm cottage. You seen that big ship out there stuck on the marshes sinkin’ down into the mud? They’re lucky all them Brownies is in ’ere an’ not out there, busy draggin’ ’em down inter the Ooze.”
Everyone exchanged glances.
“Yes, aren’t they just?” said Aunt Zelda who knew exactly which ship the Boggart was talking about, having been too engrossed watching everything from the kitchen window with the Boggart to have noticed the invasion of the Brownies.
“Yeah. Well, I’ll be off now,” said the Boggart. “Can’t stand bein’ so clean anymore. Just want ter find a nice bit a mud.”
“Well, there’s no shortage of that outside, Boggart,” said Aunt Zelda.
“Yeah,” said the Boggart. “Er, just wanter say thank you, Zelda, fer…well, fer lookin’ after me, like. Ta. Them Brownies’ll leave when I’ve gone. If you get any more trouble, just yell.”
The Boggart waddled out of the door to spend a few happy hours choosing a patch of mud to spend the rest of the night in. He was spoiled for choice.
As soon as he left, the Brownies became restless, their little red eyes exchanging glances and looking at the open door. When they were quite sure that the Boggart was really gone, a cacophony of excited shrieks started up and the pile suddenly collapsed in a spray of brown goo. Free of Boggart Breath at last, the Brownie pack headed for the door. It rushed down the island, streamed over the Mott bridge and headed out across the Marram Marshes. Straight for the stranded Vengeance.
“You know,” said Aunt Zelda as she watched the Brownies disappear into the shadows of the marsh, “I almost feel sorry for them.”
“What, the Brownies or the Vengeance?” asked Jenna.
“Both,” said Aunt Zelda.
“Well, I don’t,” said Nicko. “They deserve each other.”
Even so, no one wanted to watch what happened to the Vengeance that night. And no one wanted to talk about it either.
Later, after they had cleared as much brown goo out of the cottage as they could, Aunt Zelda surveyed the damage, determined to look on the bright side.
“It’s really not so bad,” she said. “The books are fine—well, at least they will be when they’ve all dried out and I can redo the potions. Most of them were coming up to their drink-by date anyway. And the really important ones are in the Safe. The Brownies didn’t eat all the chairs like last time, and they didn’t even poo on the table. So, all in all, it could have been worse. Much worse.”
Marcia sat down and took off her wrecked purple python shoes. She put them by the fire to dry while she considered whether to do a Shoe Renew or not. Strictly speaking, Marcia knew she shouldn’t. Magyk was not meant to be used for her own comfort. It was one thing to sort out her cloak, which was part of the tools of her trade, but she could hardly pretend that the pointy pythons were necessary for the performance of Magyk. So they sat steaming by the fire, giving off a faint but disagreeable smell of moldy snake.
“You can have my spare pair of galoshes,” Aunt Zelda offered. “Much more practical for around here.”
“Thank you, Zelda,” said Marcia dismally. She hated galoshes.
“Oh, cheer up, Marcia,” said Aunt Zelda irritatingly. “Worse things happen at sea.”
46
A VISITOR
The next morning all that Jenna could see of the Vengeance was the top of the tallest mast sticking out of the marsh like a lone flagpole, from which fluttered the remnants of the tops’l. The remains of the Vengeance was not something Jenna wanted to look at, but like everyone in the cottage who woke up after her, she had to see with her own eyes what had happened to the Darke ship. Jenna closed the shutter and turned away. There was another boat that she would much rather see.
The Dragon Boat.
Jenna stepped out of the cottage into the early morning spring sunshine. The Dragon Boat lay majestically in the Mott, floating high in the water, her neck stretched out and her golden head held aloft to catch the warmth of the first sunlight to fall upon her for hundreds of years. The shimmer of the green scales on the dragon’s neck and tail and the glint of the gold on her hull made Jenna screw her eyes up against the glare. The dragon had her eyes half closed too. At first Jenna thought the dragon was still asleep, but then she realized that she was also shielding her eyes against the brightness of the light. Ever since Hotep-Ra had left her entombed under the earth, the only light the Dragon Boat had seen had been a dull glow from a lantern.
Jenna walked down the slope to the landing stage. The boat was big, much bigger than she remembered from the night before, and was wedged tightly into the Mott now that the floodwater had left the marshes. Jenna hoped the dragon did not feel trapped. She reached up on tiptoes to put her hand on the dragon’s neck.
Good morning, my lady, the dragon’s voice came to her.
“Good morning, Dragon,” Jenna whispered. “I hope you’re comfortable in the Mott.”
There is water beneath me, and the air smells of salt and sunshine. What more could I wish for? asked the dragon.
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” agreed Jenna. She sat down on the landing stage and watched the curls of the early morning mist disappear in the warmth of the sun. Then she leaned back contentedly against the Dragon Boat and listened to the dabblings and splashings of the various creatures in the Mott. Jenna had become used to all the underwater inhabitants by now. She no longer shuddered at the eels who made their way out along the Mott on their long journey to the Sargasso Sea. She didn’t mind the Water Nixies too much, although she no longer paddled with bare feet in the mud, after one had stuck itself onto her big toe and Aunt Zelda had had to threaten it with the toasting fork to get it to drop off. Jenna even quite liked the Marsh Python, but that was probably because it had not returned since the Big Thaw. She knew the noises and splashes that each creature made, but as she sat in the sun, dreamily listening to the splish of a water rat and the gloop of a mudfish, she heard something she did not recognize.