Floods 10 (17 page)

‘Two hundred and seven,' said another one of Fiscal's heads.

‘Two hundred and seven what?' said Winchflat.

‘You've got two hundred and seven hairs in your eyebrows,' said head number two.

As they went down the one hundred and fifty-six stone stairs to the foot of the tower, the four heads counted the stones in the wall.

Meanwhile Maldegard, Edna and Spudly had stopped for the night. They had reached a small village that actually had an inn – one of only five in the whole of Transylvania Waters – and had taken a room.

As they sat eating dinner in the downstairs bar, they wrote up a few more names in their ledgers.

‘I think we should call this village
,' said Edna.

‘Can you take my photo?' asked Spudly as he ate his way through a second bowl of salsify. ‘No one will believe I have actually eaten salsify.'

‘Why not?' said Maldegard.

‘Well, I always thinked that salsify was a madeup, magic food like cherries and marzipan. That they was all too delicious to be real,' said Spudly.

‘Cherries and marzipan aren't made up,' said Maldegard.

‘But … No! Wow!' said Spudly. ‘Are you sure? You're not doing that teasing thing again, are you? You are, aren't you!'

‘No, we promise you they are both real,' said Edna. ‘And we'll do our best to find both of them before we get home again.'

Spudly had never felt happier. He fell asleep and had his most exciting dream ever. He was riding a golden marzipan through a field of tall salsify trees while a flock of cherries sang lovely songs in their branches.

Now and then, if you're lucky, life comes up with wonderful coincidences. So it was the next day. After a wonderful breakfast – Spudly had three salsify smoothies – the three map-makers continued their journey and incredibly the next village they came to was the actual place where
the legendary Transylvania Waters Marzipan was made. This incredible marzipan was the Rolls Royce of marzipans. No, it was the Bugatti Veyron of marzipans, pure perfection in every mouthful. It was the one thing that had made Transylvania Waters famous with marzipan connoisseurs around the world.

This was a double-edged sword. On one hand, Transylvania Waters wanted to keep itself to itself, to remain a remote place that most people hadn't heard of. On the other, the marzipan was just too irresistible and addictive to stop producing it. Making it very, very expensive to export helped keep it a secret, but there were always marzipan addicts who would pay any price for its delights.

The stairs from Winchflat's Number Six Laboratory led down to the Perfect Courtyard. As soon as Winchflat opened the door and Fiscal saw That Tiny Building In The Middle Of The Perfect Courtyard, he ran forward and fell to his knees at the Mysterious Door.

‘Can it be?' all four of his heads said.

‘Be what?' said Winchflat.

‘The Ark of the Incontinent,' said Fiscal Head One.

‘Don't you mean the Ark of the Covenant?'

‘No, no. The Ark of the Covenant came much later and was just one of the satellites,' said Fiscal Head
Two. ‘The Ark of the Incontinent spread everywhere and all the other satellites came from there, not just the Covenant one, but the Ark of the Incompetent and the little known Ark of the Flatulent.'

‘Indeed,' said Fiscal Head Three. ‘The Ark of the Incontinent is the mothership. The Ark of all Arks. The Ark of the Incontinent is what brought me and your ancestors to this world.'

Winchflat's mouth fell open. His brain wanted to say ‘OMG!!!' and ‘WHAT???', and a hundred other amazed, gob-smacked, overwhelmed words, but his mouth just hung open in disbelieving belief as Fiscal Matters explained everything.

The Ark of the Incontinent had come from a galaxy far, far away. Its mission had been to boldly seek out planets that could sustain life and send word home so more ships could come with settlers who could boldly inhabit them. Fiscal Matters's race were the Masters Of All Of The Universes and wizards and witches had been their servants.

‘The trouble was,' Fiscal explained, ‘that this planet was already populated with great huge vicious
dinosaurs that wiped out my companions and me before we could get a message home. Now your species has completed the circle and re-created me from my fossilised remains.'

It took Winchflat about zero-point-two of second to realise what this meant. If Fiscal Matters could get into the Ark, he could send a message home and more four-headed creatures would come and take over the world.

They would probably wipe out all the humans and the wizards would become servants again.

Obviously this could not be allowed to happen.

‘I don't think the tiny building is your ark,' said Winchflat. ‘I think it's just a bit of a garden shed.'

‘Well, no, of course it's not the Ark,' said Fiscal Matters. ‘The Ark is inside it.'

‘No, there's just an old lawnmower and some rusty shovels and old flowerpots in there.'

‘Open it, then,' said Fiscal Matters.

‘Well, um, no. I'm not allowed to,' said Winchflat. ‘Only the official Head Gardener's allowed to do that. You've no idea how fanatical
gardeners can be about their equipment.'

‘Do we look stupid?' said Fiscal Head One.

‘Open the door immediately,' said Fiscal Head Two.

‘I don't know how to,' said Winchflat. ‘To tell the truth, no one does.'

‘Except me,' said Fiscal Head Three.

‘Wait,' said Winchflat. ‘This is much too important to do without some sort of ceremony. My family should be here and maybe there should be some sort of blessing or something.'

Fortunately for the future of mankind, wizardkind, kittykind, puppykind and every-other-life-on-Earthkind, evolution had bypassed Fiscal Matters. He was a recreation of a creature from a prehistoric age, an age where there had been none of the useful things that modern man loves and takes for granted, such as deceit. He assumed that wizards would be as they had been when he had been alive before. He assumed they would still be docile and slavishly obedient. So it wasn't difficult for Winchflat to fool him.

‘Why don't you wait here while I go and fetch my parents and the court musicians, who will come and wait on you,' he said.

‘You are a good and faithful servant,' said Fiscal Matters.

‘What is the deepest pit of poo you can think of?' Winchflat spluttered breathlessly as he ran into the throne room where Nerlin was building an
enormous LEGO model of Castle Twilight.

‘Well, that's obvious,' said Nerlin. ‘It's the Dariana Trench at Quicklime College, where they hold the high-diving competition on Sports Day.'

‘Well, we are in a deeper pit than that,' said Winchflat and explained the situation.

‘We need to work out our options,' said Mordonna.

This is what they came up with:.

• Creep up behind Fiscal Matters and hit him on all of his heads with something big and heavy.
  
• Creep up behind him and hit him on all of his heads with a stick of celery.
  
• Flood the Perfect Courtyard with water and drown him.
  
• Flood the Perfect Courtyard with vinegar and pickle him.
  
• Flood the Perfect Courtyard with water and some sharks.
  
• Turn Fiscal Matters into a small kitten and then flood the Perfect flood the Perfect Courtyard with water and some sharks.
  
• Turn Fiscal Matters into a small shark and then remove all the water from the Perfect Courtyard.
  
• All of the above with added violence.
  
• All of the above with music.
  
• Run away.
  

‘I like the music one best,' said Mordonna. ‘Because if we play really nice music then we won't feel guilty when we kill him.'

‘We probably shouldn't actually kill him at all,' said Nerlin. ‘Not even a little bit.'

‘But if we don't,' said Winchflat, ‘it could be the end of life as we know it, not just for us wizards, but for all the humans, too, and everyone else.'

‘Exactly,' said Mordonna. ‘We do not want planet Earth taken over by a race of four-headed super-beings.'

‘Yes,' said Nerlin. ‘I know, but it's like that thing where they say – you can have a million dollars, but if you do one innocent stranger will die.'

‘Exactly,' said Mordonna. ‘Take the money.'

‘Well, no. You're supposed to say you wouldn't
take the money,' said Nerlin.

‘But that would be lying,' said Mordonna. ‘Everyone knows that. Everyone says they wouldn't take the money, but that's only because they know it's not real and I'm sure that if it were real everyone would take the money. In fact most people would probably take it if it was only fifty dollars.'

‘Can't we just do some magic on him?' said Nerlin. ‘Turn him into something harmless?'

‘He's probably got some anti-spell protection,' said Mordonna.

But he hadn't, though of course the Floods didn't know that, because when he had been originally alive, in an-extremely-long-time-ago BC, wizards were just ordinary servants with no magical superpowers at all.

‘Well, let's just go to the Perfect Courtyard and play it by ear,' said Nerlin.

‘Yes,' Mordonna agreed, ‘but to be on the safe side we'll each take a sharp knife, a gun, some poison and a brick.'

When they got back to the courtyard, Fiscal
Matters was standing with his back to the tiny building, staring at the wall and muttering to himself.

‘Hello,' said Nerlin. ‘I am Nerlin, the King of Transylvania Waters and …'

Fiscal Matters blinked and stuttered and said an ancient, long-forgotten rude word.

‘What's the matter?' said Mordonna.

‘I've lost my place,' said Fiscal Matters. ‘I'll have to start again. One, two, three …'

Mordonna waited until the creature had got to two hundred and seventy and then tapped him on the shoulder. Fiscal Matters cursed again.

‘What are you doing?'

‘I'm counting the stones in the wall,' said Fiscal. ‘One, two, three, four …'

Mordonna waited until he reached four hundred and something and then asked him why he was counting them. Fiscal Matters cursed again. Twice.

‘Because,' he said, gritting his teeth, ‘because the numbers of stones in each wall are the key that opens The Mysterious Door. One and two and three and four and …'

The thing was that since Fiscal Matters had arrived on Earth and built the four walls to hide and protect the little room that contained his spaceship – The Ark of the Incontinent – the walls had been added to and mucked about with. The first castle builders had built one more storey and made the Perfect Courtyard the centre of the original Castle Twilight, and then over the centuries, people had added more storeys, knocked holes in the walls to make doorways, added windows, take out windows and later bricked up three of the four doorways until there was no way anyone could tell which bits were original and which bits weren't.

Fiscal Matters didn't know this, but Mordonna, to whom carbon dating things was second nature, soon worked it out.

‘We need to find out how he uses the numbers to open the door,' Mordonna whispered to Winchflat.

‘Yes, and then I can use one of my time machines to go back to when the walls were first built and scan them,' said Winchflat.

‘Excuse me,' said Mordonna, taking off her sunglasses and staring into the eyes on at least two of Fiscal Matters's four heads, ‘How do the numbers open the door?'

Fiscal Matters who, like every other living creature, was hypnotised by the immense irresistible beauty of Mordonna's eyes, explained.
⁷⁰

‘We'll come back later,' said Mordonna, putting her dark glasses back on.

‘I said, we'll come back later,' she repeated, pushing Fiscal Matters in the back so he lost count again.

He cursed quite a lot of times and snarled, ‘I may not be here when you get back.'

‘Oh, I think you will,' Mordonna muttered as they left, making sure to lock the one remaining door behind them.

She organised someone to drop some food down to Fiscal Matters once a day and then to make sure he would stay in the courtyard, she did the Bricking-Up-All-The-Windows-Except-A-Really-Tiny-One-Right-Up-In-The-Attic spell.

The one remaining window was so tiny it wasn't so much a window as a little gap where the cement had fallen out. It was however, just big enough to push a little pipe through that was just big enough to push a baked bean along. A trainee assistant baked bean operative was sent up to the attic to push one hundred baked beans down to Fiscal Matters three times a day. Once a week an assistant tube cleaning operative stuck a wet brush down the tube to clean it out.

To show they were nice kind considerate wizards, Winchflat did the Here's-A-Nice-New-Lavatory spell which installed a brand new toilet in the corner of the Perfect Courtyard.

Fiscal Matters was so relieved to see everyone leave that he didn't notice any of this.

And then, gradually, over the next few years,
Fiscal Matters slowly went mad.
⁷¹

He finished counting the stones many, many times, but because they didn't give him the codes to open the door, he kept assuming he'd made a mistake and counted them all over again. Just to make sure he didn't get the same number each time, Mordonna had cast a Muddle-Up spell on one of the walls so the stones kept changing size, shape and quantity.
⁷²