Floods 10 (9 page)

After that they made much better progress and
Maldegard speeded things up even more by saying that as the Official Namer of Places she hereby appointed Spudly a Deputy Namer of Places with the sole right to name all the underground places within a day's walk of Yggdrasil though he wasn't allowed to do so until next week. Spudly wasn't old enough to know exactly how far away next week was, but it kept him happy and silent, except for the first thing every morning when he asked if it was next week yet.

‘Can you hear running water?' said Edna, who couldn't swim.

‘Yes,' said Maldegard.

‘'Tis probably the
said Spudly, pretending they already had a name. ‘They be the farthest point any of us has ever beed to, though I suppose all the goblins who came down here and never came back probably goed further.'

The water noise grew a lot louder. The water wasn't so much running any more as tearing along shouting its head off. The plugg of Transylvanian Firestorm Glow-worms came to a halt in an agitated fluttery muddle as the tunnel filled with heavy mist
thrown up by a solid sheet of water that fell from the tunnel roof and vanished down a narrow slit in the floor. It sealed off the tunnel like a curtain flapping wildly in the wind, and the noise was deafening.

‘I think this is as far as any of my family have come,' Spudly shouted.

‘But look,' Maldegard shouted back. ‘If you keep staring at the water, you can see gaps in it. It's only a few inches thick. If we ran at it I reckon we could just jump through it and come out on the other side.'

‘But what about they terrible Waterfall Pixies?' said Spudly. ‘They'll pull our ears off.'

‘Don't be silly,' said Maldegard. ‘There's no such thing as pixies.'

‘Oh yes?' said Spudly. ‘And I'd bet when you left home you never thought there was no such thing as goblins, did you?'

‘Well, yes, that's true.'

‘There you go.'

‘That doesn't prove anything. Just because you exist, that doesn't mean every other fairy story creature does.'

‘Hey, remember where you are,' said Spudly. ‘This is Transylvania Waters, the land of witches and wizards. Even the grass be magic here. If there are going to be pixies anywhere, this is where they'll be.'

Maldegard started to look a bit uncertain, but not enough to believe in pixies.

‘Goblins, yes – I mean you're just little people, really – but pixies, I don't think so,' she said.

‘What about fairies? Do you believe in them?'

‘Why, are you going to tell me they exist too?'

‘Absolutely,' said Spudly. ‘I might not have actually seen a pixie with my own eyes, but I have seen fairies.'

‘Oh yes,' said Maldegard. ‘And what are they like?'

‘Like goblins,' said Spudly.

‘Well then, they probably were goblins,' said Edna, who was secretly hoping that fairies and pixies were both real.

‘With wings?' said Spudly. ‘Goblins don't have wings.'

‘And you've seen them?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you weren't asleep and hadn't been drinking too much turnip wine?'

‘No,' said Spudly.

He was starting to get cross now. He knew the two women were only humans and not proper witches, but even allowing for that, they seemed very stupid. He was about to go back and leave the two of them to it when Edna, who had had enough of all the talk, took a few steps back, turned round and ran into the waterfall.

For a second it looked as if she had disappeared, but then they could make her out on the other side waving at them.

‘See, I told you so,' said Maldegard.

She grabbed Spudly by the arm, slung him over her shoulder and jumped though the water After Edna. The glow-worms gathered themselves into a tight arrow shape and followed them.

‘I'm wet,' whinged Spudly. ‘I'll shrink.'

‘No, you won't.'

‘I will,' Spudly protested. ‘That's how my people becomed goblins. We used to be giants and every time we gets wet we shrinks and it's hereditary.'
³⁰

‘Don't be ridiculous,' said Maldegard. ‘What about when you have a bath?'

‘What's that then?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘What's a bath?

When Maldegard told him, Spudly went white and stared at her in total disbelief.

‘And the Waterfall Pixies?' said Maldegard. ‘Did you see them?'

‘No, course not, they'm invisible.'

‘Exactly. If something is invisible, that means it doesn't exist.'

‘What, like air and electricity and noises?'
³¹
said Spudly.

‘You know what I mean.'

‘And farts.'

‘Yes, yes, OK.'

And so it went on. The young goblin drove the two women crazy. They asked each other why they had actually brought him with them. It certainly
wasn't to be their guide. Now they had jumped through the waterfall, they had travelled further than he ever had before and the so-called map he had with him turned out to be a lolly wrapper with some silly puzzle on it.

‘We could throw him back,' said Edna.

‘We could, and with a bit of luck the Waterfall Pixies might get him this time,' said Maldegard.

‘Or he might get so wet, he'll shrink away to nothing,' said Edna.

Spudly began to cry.

‘It's all right,' said Maldegard, putting her arm round the young goblin. ‘We were just teasing you.'

‘What's that, then?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘What's teasing?'

‘Well, what it means is mean,' said Spudly when they told him. ‘I'm going to tell my mum.'

‘If you do, I'll put your mum in my handbag,' said Maldegard.

Spudly looked like he was about to cry again, but then he frowned and said, ‘Is that teasing?'

‘It is.'

‘Yes, well, I've half a mind to turn you both into snails,' said the young goblin. ‘We can do that sort of thing, you know.'

‘Really?' said Maldegard.

‘TEASING!' said Spudly. ‘It's fun, isn't it. I can't wait to tell everyone about it when we get back. We can't turn people into snails, only slugs.'

‘Are you teasing again?'

‘No. We really can turn people into slugs.'

All this time they were walking further along the tunnels with the glow-worms lighting their way. There were dozens of smaller tunnels going off from the main one but, as Edna pointed out, if they started looking down them, it could take months to get anywhere.

‘I have made an executive decision,' said Maldegard. ‘See how a lot of the tunnels go downwards?'

‘Yes,' said Edna.

‘Well, they obviously lead down to the other lower-down levels that Nedwin told us about,'
Maldegard continued. ‘If we were to begin even thinking about names for all of that, we would never see our families again. So I have decided that everything below here will be called Downstairs.'

They themselves were actually walking uphill and had been doing so for a couple of hours. Maldegard expected them to come out into daylight at any minute, but they didn't.

‘We must be inside a mountain,' she said.

When you are underground away from daylight, it's very difficult to know what time it is. However, the Transylvania Waters Glow-worms are programmed to fade at sunset. They still glow enough to stop you banging into things and falling over, but they change from bright yellow to a nice pale moonlight blue. As this change took place that day, the three travellers reached a large cavern and for the first time, they saw signs of life

The glow-worms had raced on ahead and flown up to the cavern roof where they now hung like stars. A large group of them had even gathered together like the moon and the whole cave shone
with an enchanted glow. For a moment Maldegard thought they had left the tunnels and were back above ground. Except above ground there weren't stalactites hanging down from the sky, not even in Transylvania Waters.

The two women stood in silence looking at the enchanted cave.

‘I name this place
said Maldegard.

‘Or maybe even,
said Edna.