Eddy Stone and the Mean Genie's Curse Page 10

  And then he had a thought. Something that might just work. Something that the guards would never suspect was an escape plan.

  The trouble was, it would take two wishes. And he only had one. The only way it was going to work was if he could get Hen to understand what he was trying to do, so that she would use her wish in the right way.

  But how? He couldn’t just whisper in her ear. The guards would instantly know that something was going on. He would have to give her a clue. A hidden clue that she would understand but that would mean nothing to the guards.

  He turned the problem over in his brain. He poked it, and prodded it and walked round it to have a look at it from the other side.

  After half an hour, when he decided he had done all the thinking that he could, and that this was the best idea he was going to get, he said, “I’ve got a last wish.”

  “You took your time,” said the first guard. “Go on.”

  “Somewhere near the entrance to the castle, there’s a girl with a camel.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said the guard. “You want to say goodbye to her? That’s sweet.”

  “No,” said Eddy. “I want to say goodbye to the camel.”

  “Really?” said Six. “That’s the thing you want most?”

  “Definitely,” said Eddy.

  “If it means that much to you I suppose we can try to find your camel,” said the first guard.

  “Bit odd, though,” said the second guard.

  “You understand why, don’t you, Hen?” said Eddy. “I mean, he led us a bit of a dance at first, but we just clicked and had a really smashing trip.”

  He said it as clearly as he dared, and hoped that she really did understand.

  Hen said nothing.

  Come on, thought Eddy. Please.

  He felt like he waited for ages. But…

  “I’ve got a wish, too,” said Hen. “I’d like to play the castanets one last time.”

  Yes, thought Eddy. Well done, Hen.

  “Castanets?” said the first guard.

  “My passion,” said Hen. “I live to clack.”

  “There must be a pair in the room where the castle band keep their instruments,” said the first guard. “So, last wishes. One camel. Some castanets. Weird.”

  “Yeah,” said the second guard. “Kids these days, eh? I’ll go and see what I can find. You wait here and watch them.”

  Claudius ducked his head as the guard led him through the doorway and into the room where Eddy, Hen and Six were being kept prisoner.

  “Hello, old fellow,” said Eddy, hugging his neck. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “Are you feeling quite well?” said Claudius.

  “He talks!” said the second guard. “That’s cute.”

  But they didn’t think he was cute for long.

  Hen took the castanets from the first guard, and gave them a gentle CLICK.

  Claudius’s ears twitched.

  Eddy quietly pulled Six into the far corner of the room.

  Hen gave a louder CLACK.

  The camel’s front legs trembled.

  She began to tap out a regular rhythm – three long clacks and two short – CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLICK-CLICK

  A tremor ran through Claudius’s body. His head shook. His neck rippled. His back wiggled and his bottom waggled.

  “What’s going on?” said the first guard.

  Too late.

  The beat was in control.

  CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLICK-CLICK

  Claudius kicked out with a back leg.

  One front foot shot out sideways.

  He started twisting and turning, clattering across the floor, feet flailing in all directions.

  CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLICK-CLICK

  And suddenly there was an awful lot of camel and not very much room in the room.

  “Duck!” shouted Eddy, diving out of the way.

  “Hey!” shouted the first guard.

  “Stop that!” shouted the second guard.

  They tried to grab Claudius’s harness and hold him still.

  Big mistake.

  CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLICK-CLICK

  A flying camel foot caught the first guard on the chin, knocking him out cold.

  A swinging camel bottom walloped the second guard into the wall, and he slid, unconscious, to the floor.

  Hen stopped playing. Claudius came to a rest. He looked at the two flattened guards.

  “Oh, dear,” he said. “I hope they aren’t damaged. One simply cannot resist that sound. Terribly sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” said Eddy. “You just saved our lives. Now let’s get out of here.”

  A crescent moon shone in through the castle windows, giving enough light to see their way. They hurried down a long black passageway.

  “We need to get our bearings,” said Eddy. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the plan of the castle that the Emperor had given him. “The trouble is, these black corridors all look the same. We need something that stands out.”

  They turned the corner. And skidded to a halt.

  In a room straight ahead of them stood a huge black statue of the Duke. The sculptor had captured him kicking an unfortunate servant up the backside. “I wonder if that’s on the plan,” said Eddy.

  It was.

  “So now we know we’re here.” Eddy pointed to the plan. “And the big room with the old well is marked over here.” He pointed again. “It shouldn’t take us long to get there.”

  “What do we do if we bump into any guards?” asked Six.

  “Remember the Chief Guard said that they always catch people by the fig tree, and don’t even bother posting men round the rest of the palace,” said Eddy. “So with any luck we won’t have a problem.”

  They found the old well. And, as Eddy suspected, they did it without being spotted.

  But now they did have a problem.

  Hen pulled back the grate and shone her torch down into the well. They could just see a faint glitter of water.

  “There’s no way anyone can clamber down there,” Eddy said. “The walls are far too smooth. I was hoping there would be a bucket on a rope lying around that I could be lowered down on. But there’s nothing – I suppose it’s the old well and they don’t use it any more. I don’t know how we are going to reach that tin. Six, you’re the proper thief. What do you think?”

  “Whenever I was trying to steal something that was really hard to get to, I had a solution that always worked,” said Six.

  “Sounds promising,” said Eddy. “What was it?”

  “Give up and pinch something else instead,” said Six.

  “That’s no good this time,” said Eddy. “We could really do with a bit of magic now to get that tin back.”

  “Magic’s okay,” said Hen. “But sometimes what you need is a bit of science.” She reached into her tool bag and pulled out her magnet. “Very useful for picking up stray screws, nuts, bolts – and baked bean tins. I just hope my ball of string is long enough.”

  She tied the magnet securely to the loose end of the string.

  “Let’s fish,” she said, as she began to lower the magnet into the well. Eddy shone the torch down, and they watched the magnet drop and drop until it dipped into the water and disappeared from sight. A few seconds later Hen felt the string go slack.

  “I’ve reached the bottom,” she said. She jiggled the string, dragging the magnet around. “I felt a tug. I think I’ve caught something.”

  Slowly and carefully, she began to haul the string back up.

  “There’s something there,” said Eddy. “But I can’t tell what it is yet. Keep pulling, it’s nearly…oh.”

  The thing came clearly into view. It was a battered trumpet.

  “I wonder what that was doing down there?” she said.

  “Maybe somebody kept playing out of tune,” said Six.

  Eddy pulled the trumpet off the magnet.

  “Let’s try again,” he said.

  They did. Several times. And they
found a soup spoon, the frame of an umbrella, part of a guard’s helmet and most of a roller skate. And then, at last…

  “Bingo!” said Eddy. “One tinned genie. And now we need to move. I want to be a long way from here by the time everyone wakes up.”

  They followed the plan of the castle, and were soon at the front entrance. Mitzee was sitting on the ground just inside the gate.

  “At last,” said Mitzee. “A man took Claudius away and told me to wait here. I thought you were never coming back.”

  “We nearly didn’t,” said Eddy. “What happened to those guards you were talking to?”

  “They all went to bed,” said Mitzee.

  “That should make it easier to get out,” said Eddy.

  Unfortunately, before they went to bed, the guards had done something that was going to make it much harder to get out.

  They had locked the front gate.

  Everyone pushed as hard as they could, but they couldn’t shift it by even a fraction.

  “We’ll never force it,” said Eddy. “We need a key.”

  “Sounds like a job for me,” said Six.

  He slipped through a door next to the gate and into the guard tower. A few moments later, he slipped out again.

  “Told you I’d still got it,” he said.

  The key he was carrying was as long as Eddy’s forearm. Six slid it into the lock and turned. The bolt shot back. It sounded loud enough to wake the whole castle. But nothing stirred as they eased the gate open and slipped outside.

  They closed the gate behind them, and Six locked it shut. Then he swung the key around his head and hurled it away into the night. They heard it clatter on a distant rock.

  “Oops,” said Six. “I seem to have dropped it. How clumsy of me. That should slow them down a bit if they try to come after us.”

  “Let’s go,” said Eddy. “And this time we’re taking the quick road. If the Duke posted lookouts along it, they’ll be watching for people heading to his castle, not away from it. We can be back at the Emperor’s palace before word gets out that we’ve escaped.”

  Eddy was right. They reached the Emperor’s city soon after sunrise. Lots of people were already up – and already grumbling. They had woken to find they faced another day with no fresh food. And no new clothes.

  The men at the palace gate barely looked up as the group passed. They were too busy glumly taking turns to sniff at a small piece of cheese rind between munching mouthfuls of dry crackers.

  Eddy led his party towards the doorway to the palace.

  “I won’t come in,” said Claudius. “The Emperor still hasn’t forgiven me for that time I wrecked his parade.”

  “Do you really think he’s going to recognize you?” said Eddy.

  “Most people can tell us camels apart, you know,” said Claudius.

  “Even so,” said Eddy. “You saved us. That should more than make up for anything that happened in the past. Come on.”

  They found the Emperor in the golden room, chomping his way through a breakfast of sticky cakes.

  “You’re back!” he exclaimed, spraying a fountain of crumbs. “Have you got the Genie?”

  Eddy held out the tin.

  “I knew you could do it,” said the Emperor. He tugged at the chain on his neck for the magic ring pull.

  “You might have told us how difficult it was going to be,” said Eddy. “And dangerous.”

  “I didn’t want to put you off,” said the Emperor. “Anyway, you’re back now and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

  He pressed the ring pull against the baked bean tin.

  “What really matters to me now,” said Eddy, “is finding out from the Genie how we can get Tidemark Bay back to normal.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the Emperor, “all in good time.”

  A puff of blue smoke emerged from the tin. As they watched, it grew into a cloud, which slowly solidified into the Genie.

  “What is your wish, O master?” said the Genie. “And before you think of anything too complicated, can I just let you know that I’m feeling a bit dazed.”

  “Dazed?” said the Emperor. “You’re a genie. It’s not in your job description to be dazed.”

  “An elephant sat on me,” said the Genie. “And they fired me out of a cannon. That really shook me up.”

  “It hasn’t exactly been fun here either,” said the Emperor. “I’m down to my last four days’ supply of honey cakes. I was so worried about what I would eat if I ran out, I’ve almost wasted away.” He stuffed another cake into his mouth.

  If anything, Eddy thought, he was even rounder than the last time they had seen him.

  “But I’ll keep it simple,” said the Emperor. “Just for you. And just for now. We must feed all the people in the city. Doughnuts. Everyone likes doughnuts. I want piles of them on every corner of every street. And the people will need something to drink. Orange juice. Let it rain orange juice.”

  “Really, master?” said the Genie. “That will make everyone very sticky.”

  “Then they will need new clothes, won’t they? See to it.”

  “Yes, master.”

  “And the same for everyone in here,” he turned to Eddy and friends. “You must be hungry.” He noticed the state they were in and turned back to the Genie. “And you look like you need hot baths as well.”

  “And we need to know how to lift the curse on Tidemark Bay,” said Eddy.

  “Yes, yes,” said the Emperor. “But baths first. There’s rather a whiff of camel about you all and – ah, no wonder. Come out from behind that pillar.”

  Claudius stepped forward from his hiding place.

  “Oh,” said the Emperor. “It’s you.”

  “You see,” said Claudius. “I said he would recognize me.”

  “You are banned,” said the Emperor. “I told you never to set your big clumsy feet inside this palace again.”

  “If it wasn’t for him,” said Eddy, “none of us would be here now. And you wouldn’t have your genie back.”

  “Hmm,” said the Emperor. “Then I suppose I’ll have to let him off. But I really can’t be doing with that pong. Genie – give him a bath, too. And send him back smelling of something more fragrant. Now off you all go to get washed and changed. I need to have a quiet word with my genie.”

  The quiet word that the Emperor wanted was about what should be done to punish the Duke of Grimglower. And they came up with an idea.

  Back at his castle, the Duke had awoken that morning from a delightful dream about stealing sweets from small children. It had put him in the nearest thing to a good mood that he had felt for many months.

  And then the day went downhill. First he learned his prisoners had not been executed. And that a thorough search had been conducted in the palace and they were nowhere to be found. And that no search at all had been conducted outside the palace, because no one could open the front gate.

  Now the Duke was in his worst mood for many months. Which was saying something.

  He ordered the palace guards to line up in the main courtyard. He would find out who was responsible for these unacceptable events, and for making such a mess of his day. He stood in front of them, ready to let rip.

  “This is a disgrace,” he yelled.

  And at that very same moment, the Genie put the Emperor’s punishment into action.

  “Who is responsible,” the Duke bellowed, “for these unacceptable underpants?!”

  The guards shuffled uncomfortably, looking puzzled.

  “I’ll ask you again,” said the Duke, “who made such a mess of my underpants?!”

  There were a few stifled giggles in the crowd.

  “I don’t mean underpants,” said the Duke. “I mean underpants.”

  The giggles became louder.

  “What’s happening?” the Duke said. “Every time I try to say anything, it comes out as underpants.”

  A few minutes later, after he had ordered a hunt for the missing underpants, demanded an
inquiry into how his underpants had escaped, and told the crowd that if they didn’t stop laughing they would all spend a day with no underpants to eat, he realized that no one was paying any attention to him. They were all too busy rolling around on the floor helpless with laughter.

  The Duke announced that he was tired, and had been working too hard recently, and was going for a lie-down in his underpants.

  Which didn’t help.

  “To raise the curse on Wizard Witterwort,” said the Genie of the Baked Bean Tin, “the person who released him must make the Wizard’s own wish come true.”

  “You mean me,” said Eddy. “But you put the curse on him in the first place. Can’t you just cast a spell, and sort it all out?”

  Eddy, Hen, Mitzee, Six and Claudius had cleaned themselves up and gathered in the presence of the Emperor.

  “There are ways in which these things must be done,” the Genie told them. “Rules. Conditions. For so it is written in the Ancient Book of Magic. I can show you if you like.” He pulled a massive leather-bound volume out of thin air.

  “Blimey,” said Six. “That was impressive.”

  “Let me see,” said the Genie, thumbing through the pages. “Curses come between the chapter of spells to turn people into animals, and the one on getting difficult stains out of delicate fabrics.”

  “It’s okay,” said Eddy. “I believe you. Just tell me what happens next.”

  “First you must find out what the Wizard’s wish is,” said the Genie.

  “I don’t need to find out,” said Eddy. “He’s already told me. He wants his body back. Have you got a spell for that?”

  “Of course,” said the Genie. “But before I may cast it, the Ancient Book says that you must face a challenge.”

  “What sort of challenge?” said Eddy.

  “I cannot say,” said the Genie. “That is also one of…”

  “…the conditions,” said Eddy.

  “Precisely.”

  “It’s complicated stuff this magic, isn’t it?” said Mitzee.