Floods 10 (15 page)

Fifteen minutes later, as Nerlin was telling her how the children of Miasto-Kukurudza used to germinate the corn in their ears, Ethel vanished below the feathers. This meant she was surrounded
by sticky bleeding dead chickens, but she decided that was preferable to listening to Nerlin going on and on and on.

‘Wizards one, chickens zero, I think,' said Nerlin.

‘Brilliant,' said Mordonna. ‘Chicken burger, anyone?'

Meanwhile, Maldegard and Edna, completely unaware of talking chickens or Belgian towns with Polish names, were now many miles away from Dreary.

This time they were travelling on two Royal Donkeys, descendants of the legendary George-The-Donkey-Formerly-Known-As-Prince-Kevin-Of-Assisi, simply known as George, who had been the extremely bad-tempered, smelly, moth-eaten, uncomfortable old donkey that Queen Scratchrot had ridden when she had fled Transylvania Waters with Mordonna and Nerlin
⁵³
what seemed like a what seemed like a
lifetime ago.
⁵⁴
George had had the sort of personality that made everyone want to be in a George-free environment as soon as possible.

The two donkeys Maldegard and Edna were riding were not like that. Blossom and Bubbles were happy donkeys and between them they knew seventeen funny jokes, none of which were rude, not even the one with the knicker elastic in it. Over the generations the bad-temperedness had been bred out of them by a combination of magic, lovely fresh grass and treacle toffees.

Spudly was riding in a small saddlebag fixed to Blossom's saddle. The steady rhythm of the donkey strolling along made him very sleepy and the young goblin soon forgot all about being homesick. He imagined he was in the middle of a hundred-acre field of salsify, which was amazing considering he
hadn't the faintest idea was salsify was. He knew his sister was named after it, but all that meant was that it was probably short and fat and covered in spots. He had never tried to eat his sister so he didn't know what salsify actually tasted like, though according to all the goblins who had eaten it, it was the best taste in the world.
⁵⁵
Yet there it was, inside his head, although the image was slightly wrong. Salsify is a root vegetable that looks a bit like a carrot, but in Spudly's dream it was a very big tree with thousands of mauve parrots nesting in it. Either way, it was delicious to eat.
⁵⁶

Turning right out of Dreary could not have been more different from turning left if it had been in the opposite direction. Here the sun was shining without a cloud in the sky. The people were shining too, without a cloud in their heads, and welcomed the two map-makers with open arms.

‘We be so happy you've come here,' they said. ‘We have been sore miserable these past lots of centuries not having names for everywhere.'

‘Forsooth, 'tis true,' they said. ‘We have never been able to go anywhere in case we couldn't find our way back again and we couldn't ask where our village was because it didn't have no name.'

‘Except Our Village,' said another, ‘and everyone's village was called that.'

‘Indeed, it causes all sorts of chaos,' said one old man. ‘Why, I lived in a completely different Our Village for fifteen years with a total stranger and we had four children, seven chickens and a three-legged dog. I sort of felt something warn't right, but the lady didn't say nothin' and the children kept calling me Daddy.'

‘It wasn't a different village, you old fool,' said the old man's wife. ‘It was our village and the total stranger was me, your wife.'

‘No, that can't be right,' said the old man. ‘I went out to buy a turnip and must have wandered into another village by mistake, probably hypnotised by the beauty of the turnip. I know it wasn't the right place because
my real
dog had four legs.'

‘You silly old fool,' said his wife. ‘While you was out one of the dog's legs just fell off.'

‘Are you sure?' said the old man.

‘Yes,' said his wife, hitting him over the head with a dried dog's leg.

This sort of thing went on all the time and had done for hundreds of years. There was almost no
trade between the towns and villages and no one ever met anyone new, just in case everything got muddled up.

There were so many places to name that Maldegard and Edna decided they would use a dictionary and a pin.

‘We'll shut our eyes, open the dictionary and stick a pin in and that's the name we'll use,' said Maldegard. ‘Otherwise it'll take years to get right round the country and back home again.'

‘Supposing we get a rude word?' said Edna.

‘Well, we'll have a best-of-three rule,' said Maldegard.

The first village was called

‘That be lovely,' said the Ropeyans.

The second village was called

‘That be heart-breakingly beautiful,' said the Endurians.

And so it went on. They discovered that about eight out of ten places got a good name on the first pin prick. There were a few that needed a second go and some that even needed three. There were also
places that Maldegard and Edna thought weren't very suitable, but which the locals totally loved, like
and
As they were already the name of strange British towns they were allowed to use them.

Edna's favourite
⁵⁷
was
. Maldegard's was
, which is also a real place, as are
and
.
⁵⁸

‘We do loves living in Goosey,' said the Gooseyans. ‘Pity we aren't got no gooses.'

‘We got ducks,' said someone. ‘Maybe we should call our village Ducky.'

‘No, you can't,' said Maldegard, checking her list. ‘We've already used that name. Though you could call it Lower Ducky or Little Ducky.'