‘Oh n— OH!’ breathed Oswin, peeking out from the bag at the noise, turning from pumpkin orange to a bright lime green in relief, though his ears were still faintly orange. ‘Oh! Yeh did it!’
Willow opened her eyes, then blinked in bewilderment as she saw that the witch and the bed that had been pinning her … had disappeared.
‘Come on, let’s SKEDADDLE!’ suggested Oswin.
The tower, however, did not want to let them go. Not without a fight. It sent a bedpan and a chair flying at her and Oswin, who turned a violent shade of orange in his outrage.
‘Aaargggggh!’ Willow screeched as the iron poker leapt from the floor and hurtled towards her, pricking her in her side. ‘Ouch. Stop it! Stop this right now!’ The poker slowed down, but continued to poke her wherever it could find a gap. She batted it away with her arm, earning herself countless scratches in the process, as it kept prodding her into giving the tower back its witch. Only … she couldn’t. She wasn’t sure how.
Oswin wasn’t having the best time either. He was fighting off several rolled-up copies of the Middling Times, which were repeatedly smacking him over the head. His ears were starting to smoke in a rather worrisome way, which usually meant he was on the verge of blowing up. ‘Oi,’ he said as one of them thwacked him on his ear. ‘Stop that!’
Thwack. ‘A curse upon yeh!’ Thwack.
‘A curse!’ he growled Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Finally, Willow screamed, ‘Ouch! Eugh. Stop. Just STOP! Enough of this, Tower. Or I will make you disappear too!’
The rolled-up newspapers above Oswin’s head seemed to sag. One of them smacked him rather feebly on the forehead one last time, and he hissed a low warning, his flame-orange fur standing on end. The poker, meanwhile, paused before Willow’s feet, the top bent towards her in a hangdog sort of way.
‘Um, thank you,’ said Willow, rubbing her arm, which was starting to sting from all the scratches. ‘Now I suggest you open the door and let us out.’
The door remained stubbornly shut. It juddered on its hinges somewhat reproachfully.
She narrowed her eyes, crossed her arms and, summoning her fiercest voice, declared, ‘If you do not OPEN this door right NOW, I will NOT release your witch.’
There was a long pause, while Willow tapped her foot impatiently, and then, with the faintest of clicks and a slow, reluctant creaking sound rather like a sigh, the door opened.
‘Good,’ said Willow, hiding her relief that it had worked. She helped Holloway climb through the wall, breaking some more of the plaster with a chair leg so that he could get his shoulders and torso through. Once he was clear, she grabbed Oswin by his long tail and shoved him back inside the green hairy carpetbag, to his outrage.
‘Wot choo go an’ grabs me by the tail like that for!’ he harrumphed. ‘Wot wiff being thwacked on me ’ead and monster-’andled like that, there’s jes no respect, me being the last kobold an’ all!’
She ignored this, and together she and Holloway dashed out of the room and down the stairs before the tower could change its mind – or the witch popped back from wherever Willow had sent her. Whichever came first.
As soon as they were outside, the thirteen-foot tower door slammed itself shut with a loud BANG, and then bolted itself for good measure. Perhaps it was hoping that she wouldn’t change her mind and come back either. Then it sort of bent a little, like it was looking down at her rather expectantly, and Willow realised with dread that it was waiting for something … something she couldn’t exactly deliver. The windows looked on reproachfully.
Willow bit her lip. It was a bit odd that the witch hadn’t actually reappeared yet. When she’d made her family vanish, they’d returned in mere minutes. It had been triple that amount of time already. She blinked as she realised something. The truth was she didn’t really want to find the witch – not just yet. And, now she thought about it, when her family had come back, they’d reappeared in the house rather than next to her, like missing things usually did. Could that have been because she’d needed to keep them at a distance in order to escape? She didn’t know if her wishes had anything to do with the way this misfiring magic worked or not.
‘Um,’ she hedged, clearing her throat slightly, ‘it might take some time, I’m not sure …’ She thought of her coat and nightdress, which had taken a couple of days to reappear. ‘I’ll find her somehow, erm, as soon as I figure out how to actually do that.’
The iron bar that ran along the middle of the door seemed to fold itself together, like someone crossing their arms. Then the door-knocker shaped like a witch’s hat turned itself into a mouth and stuck its tongue out at her.
Willow blinked. ‘Rude! It’s not like you treated me any better, locking me up like that … and anyway I didn’t mean to make her disappear. I was provoked, and—’ Then, catching sight of Holloway’s raised eyebrows and Oswin’s wide eye peeping out of the carpetbag, she blushed. She realised that she was trying to justify herself to a building. Shaking her head at herself, she said, ‘Come on, let’s just get out of here.’ And they set out towards the Howling Woods, towards freedom, at long last.
It was only later that Willow realised with a heavy heart that she’d left behind her broom, Whisper. But it was too late to go back, and besides she was sure that there was no way the tower would give it back if she didn’t give it its witch in return.
7
The Sudsfarer
They walked for close to an hour.
‘If we go this way, it’ll take us to a small tributary of the Knotweed River, where I keep me boat,’ said Holloway.
Willow swallowed. If what Pimpernell said was true, and the witch really did seem to know everything – like Willow’s ability, and the fact she had a kobold in her bag – then Moreg was gone, which meant that Willow was going to have to find Nolin Sometimes some other way. It couldn’t be helped. She figured the best place to start looking was where he’d been taken. Perhaps there was some clue left behind. She might even be able to find a plant that could help fix her magic. Now that she thought of it, if any garden could hold a cure, surely it would be his?
‘I need to get to Wisperia,’ Willow said.
The old wizard’s eye fairly popped out of his skull as he twisted to look at her. ‘Lass, ya don’t want to go there, trust me!’
‘I have to, Holloway. My friend needs me – he’s in danger …’ She swallowed. She hadn’t had that many friends before, and after losing Granny – Willow felt her stomach clench at the thought of her, but tried to push the feeling away – she couldn’t, wouldn’t risk losing anyone else. ‘He’s counting on me.’
It meant a lot to her, more than she could say.
The wizard’s eye shone in the morning light, and he nodded. ‘I can take ya up the Knotweed, towards the Cloud Mountains.’
‘Thank you,’ said Willow.
‘No problem. It’s the least I can do as payment for breaking me out. But, if ya come back with leaves for fingers, don’t say I didn’t warn ya.’