Floods 10 (18 page)

Meanwhile again, Maldegard, Edna and Spudly were stuck in
, as they had named the marzipan village.

As it has already been said, people didn't travel a lot in Transylvania Waters, so strangers arriving anywhere were always made very welcome and given a great feast. In
this consisted of marzipan. There were marzipan sandwiches made of marzipan bread filled with marzipan jam. There were marzipan buns, cakes and muffins washed down with marzipan cordial and marzipan tea. Finally there was a big bowl of lovely fresh fruit, apples, oranges, pears and bananas, all made out of marzipan.

There was, in fact, a small lane in the village where every house was a fake fruit factory where old ladies spent all day shaping and colouring, each house specialising in a different fruit. Maldegard named it
.

‘Next year,' said the mayor, ‘we are expanding into meat. Our research tells us that people are simply crying out for marzipan pork chops and marzipan chicken burgers.'

Maldegard and Edna were not too taken with the idea, but Spudly thought it was brilliant.

There were several reasons why they were stuck in the village. The main one was that the two women felt very sick.

‘Well, I must admit,' said the Mayor, ‘that the marzipan diet does take a bit of adjusting to.'

‘But give it time and you'll be eating marzipan for breakfast, lunch and dinner with no tummy upset at all,' said the Mayor's daughter, who was the current ‘Miss Marzipan' and was covered in a magnificent collection of marzipan-coloured pimples, zits and boils.

Spudly was not feeling at all sick. It appeared that goblins had a genetic predisposition for huge amounts of sugar.
⁷³

‘Pity young Spudly didn't come with us,' said Edna when they reached the next village which they called
after the incredible cherries that grew there and the ferry that went back and forth across Lake Tarnish.

After they had spent too long in
and much, much too long in
, Maldegard and Edna decided it was time to go home.

‘It seems as if every place we come to has more and more fantastic food,' said Maldegard. ‘I am getting to the stage where none of my clothes will fit me.'

‘That's the least of our problems,' said Edna, running off to the bathroom for the fifth time that morning.

The two donkeys were complaining about carrying the extra weight and refused to go on.

The women were left with two options:

• Walk back to Dreary – a good plan which would definitely burn off a lot of the weight they had put on.
  
• Ride home slowly on the complaining donkeys with only five meat pies and two marzipan fishes a day to keep up their strength.
  

They chose the sensible option – number two.

One week later the Floods and the Hulberts sat on the highest rooftop of Castle Twilight watching the sunset.

Mr Hulbert couldn't keep his eyes off his beloved Edna. She had gone off map-making as a trim woman mostly made of straight lines and had come back very curvy and cuddly. He would make
sure there was always a nice big bowl of marzipan fruit in every room, not to mention a regular supply of meat pies.

Winchflat couldn't keep his eyes off his beloved Maldegard. She had gone off map-making an elegant thin woman mostly made of straight lines and had come back very curvy and cuddly, but it was nothing a Skinny Spell and a diet of brussels sprouts couldn't fix.

The two families looked out over the rooft ops as the town settled down for the night. The silence was only broken by the strangled sound of nightingales being torn apart by the vicious Nighthawks and a remote drone coming from the middle of the castle as Fiscal Matters counted the stones for the fifty-third time that week.

The sun vanished over the mountain tops and as the beautiful ice-cold moon took its place, Castle Twilight's Cocktail Waiter served the traditional warm blood slurpies. Charlie Hulbert had taken to blood slurpies like a crocodile to water. His parents and Ffiona made do with Blackcurrant Juice even
though Mordonna told them how bad it was for them and would rot their teeth.

The last of the nightingales that had been stupid enough to venture out that night was finally chewed to bits. The light had faded in the Perfect Courtyard so Fiscal Matters had given up for the night.

‘Listen to that,' said Mordonna.

‘What? I can't hear anything,' said Nerlin.

‘Exactly.'

Life, at last, was perfect.

Of course, if you're a wizard life is pretty well always perfect.