Continuing the tale of Thredwyl the Kupie…you can read it from the beginning on Wattpad.
What Thredwyl needed was a spell to make things small, to wit, the Mothers Manual. And where might that be found? In Grandma Eanch’s Spell Book. Despite it was a mighty dense Spell Book he would not be discouraged but would turn the pages and check each entry.
He found a transportation spell that would take him to some place other. That could be useful. He unwrapped his neckcloth and used it to mark the page and continued with his search. Twenty pages, fifty pages, one hundred pages. Maybe there was no spell to shrink a thing down. What there was – and he yelped as he realised – was a need of more haste, for someone now was climbing the stairs to the attic.
There was nothing else for it, he had to improvise. He would stand on the Manual while using the transportation spell and hope – hope – that the spell transported the Manual along with him.
He grinned at his own devious cleverness, to have marked the page.
The tump-tump-tump of ascending feet grew louder. Speed was of the essence, no time for a practice run. But by the cringe and what the heck, what could go wrong with a simple spell? And then to collect his winnings. A bag full of diamonds – a small bag to be sure but better diamonds than a date with a Nixie.
Never had Thredwyl stepped back from a dare and only one dare had claimed something from him. Alas, that something still marred him, though only seen upon close inspection.
Now, Thredwyl told himself, and climbed upon the Manual.
He drew in a breath, enough to swell his chest and took a moment to steadify.
Then, three times round on the ball of his foot (his right) the left foot striking hard at the Manual’s thick leather cover on each revolution, while chanting the spell (no mean feat of coordination). I bid you take me to [some other place]. Thredwyl didn’t understand that last, why it was written in red and enclosed in square parenthesis. But it was part of the spell, so he said it anyway. In his head, he pictured Gruff’s Cavern, where his cousins were waiting.
The attic swung round him. Hey, the spell was working!
Faster and faster, it unsettled his balance, skidded his feet, slipped him down on his rump in a whump. He sought something stable, anything to hold to. But all there was was…was where had it gone, the Manual was no longer beneath his feet. Instead, he found a crevice, a crack in the floor, and tried to dig his fingers in there. Alas, only his nails would fit.
He winced as the attic spun to a blur. Lips sealed not to regorge his breakfast which, by centrifugal force, had climbed that alley from belly to gullet, fingertips fiercely hurting as the spin sought to tear out his nails.
By the cringe, what have I done now? Done and dead I’ll be before this spell stops.
With a spine-crunching jar the spell and the spinning stopped.
“Lo!” he shouted out to his cousins.
But there were no cousins. Around him all was shadowy gloom.
Where were they? Nix, wrong question. Where was he? Not in Gruff’s Cavern along with his cousins, hands out and awaiting that bag of diamonds. He groaned. All that pain, and the dizzies, and where had the spell deposited him?
He sat himself up. He stood. He dusted himself down. And noticed a bare murmur of light coming up from below. He was still in Grandma Eanch’s attic! The spell had dumped him down where he’d begun.
“First things first. Let there be light!” That was his talent. Yet all around remained in shadowed gloom.
“Hah-rumff, now that’s not happened before.” Had he lost his magic in the whirling? “And for this I have bleeding sore fingers.” He brought them closer to inspect them. Those fingers would be tender for a good count to come.
Then, beyond their tender tips… “What! But the attic has grown.”
It had grown mighty large. He would say vast, though he’d seen vast, and this didn’t quite measure up. The walls that really were part of the ceiling now rose up to a towering height, though before the spell they’d been just above his head. And that tight crack that had bitten his nails? It now was a goodly sized trench.
What the…?
Thredwyl wasn’t a numpty. Along with his staggering bravery – more an inability to say no to a challenge – was his innate ‘gift’ of reasoning it out. It wasn’t the attic had instigated, spun, stamped and said the spell; it was him. Therefore, it was upon him, not the attic, that the spell had worked. Therefore, it wasn’t the attic grown all gigantic. It was him that had shrunk so small.
His jaw dropped as he realised he’d used the wrong spell. This was the one he’d been seeking, to shrink the Manual. Yet… where was the Manual? And the spell definitely said I bid you take me to some other place.
“By Grandma’s Grimy Knickers, what do I do now? If Grandma Eanch finds me…”
He’d had a thwack or two off his own grandma – like a tonnage of stones colliding with him – and he didn’t want more. He needed a spell to reverse the shrinkage.
But there he met with another problem. Where was Grandma Eanch’s Spell Book? It ought to be towering way above him.
He cast a look up and around and…and felt additionally queasy.
“Now why have I only just noticed that?” he asked out loud – out loud because that fixed him as a reality, and he’d a desperate need of reality with this otherwise strangeness happening around him. It was the shape of Grandma Eanch’s attic that now disturbed him. Distorted it was, like a giant had grabbed it and pulled it lengthwise and stretched it. It must have happened during the spin. The other notable changes – like something was odd with the floor – he put down to him being small.
How small? Was he now too small to negotiate the stairs? Only, if Grandma Eanch’s Spell Book wasn’t up here, then he’d have to go look for it. And that would require descending at least one flight of near-mountainous steps and maybe more. But he needed that book. Never mind about escaping this place, first he needed a spell to return him to size. Yet he felt sick at the thought of those stairs. Memories whirled in his head, upsetting his belly, and that only now settling after the spell.
“I dare you to climb the Giant’s Knee,” his cousins had said. It was one of their rites, everyone did it. Well, his male-cousins did, the females did swimmery-things in water – and that was dangerous, inviting the Nixies as it did.
He remembered looking up – and up and up – at that rocky knee-shaped prominence. Sheer maybe, yet there were handholds. It shouldn’t be hard to climb. No one yet had died of it. Though true, several had fallen.
Thredwyl had fallen too.
He’d missed a foothold, dangled there by his fingertips, and they suddenly sorer than they were right now. But from that mishap he might have recovered. Except hindsight said he shouldn’t have done it while the water cascaded.
He shrugged off the memory. It wasn’t helping.
He needed that Spell Book. And if the Spell Book wasn’t up here, in Grandma Eanch’s attic, then it would be down there in another of her chambers. There was nothing for it but to scale those stairs – and hope she didn’t see him along the way. At that he almost laughed. He now was so small he could easily hide behind her skirts.
He didn’t get as far as the stairs. Stopped by the ominous tump, tump of someone climbing. He froze as memory hit him. What had happened to whoever had tumped up the stairs before when, in a panic, he’d miscast that spell?
Tump, tump, tump, came the sound of feet ascending.
What if this was Grandma Eanch? She’d hurl mountains at him. He had to hide. But where? He cast around, but the vastness was empty. No, wait. What was that slab-like thing, like a huge cube of rock, against the far wall? Was it the Spell Book?
Tump, tump, tump.
Now in a triple panic, that huge cubic structure would do him fine.
Tump, tump, tump.
But no, he abruptly halted his hurried flight.
Where was the slap and slither of Grandma Eanch’s sloppy slippers as they wrapped around the ascending tumps? All grandmas wore them, not only his own Grandma Nari. But the slap and slither weren’t there. Instead, the tumps were echoey-hard, as of a stone pelting the stair. That wasn’t any grandma. That was someone other.
The tumping stopped. That ‘other’ had arrived at the top of the stairs.
Thredwyl hardly dared look, his back seemingly scratched by a herd of sharp-clawed spiders. More, that someone was filling the doorway, blocking the light from below. Darkness descended.
“Oh shit!” Thredwyl swore.
“Oh, my Go—What the f—?” squealed a female voice. Then as a shout, “Jace. Ja-cee! Is this your doing, this…manikin? Oh fuck, it’s moving. Jace, stop fucking around and switch it off.”
More next Monday
crispina kemp 