Willow gave him a slightly strained smile. It was too late for that anyway, wasn’t it? She only hoped she wouldn’t make her magic worse by going back.
It was past midday when they reached the edge of the thick forest where a river was bordered by reeds and grass. It smelt of salt and marshland.
As they hacked through the bulrushes, they encountered the thick, cloying knotweed that lent the river its name. It was a creeping plant with rather delicate purple flowers shaped like bells.
‘Whatever ya do, don’t listen to the music,’ said Holloway as a tinkly bell chime began to play from the water. ‘It’ll lure ya under, to the merworld.’
‘Merworld?’ Willow breathed.
‘Yew don’ wanna go there, trust me,’ hissed Oswin, his shaggy head popping out of the bag. ‘Still got the scars.’
Willow blinked, looking at the kobold in surprise.
‘Long story,’ he muttered. ‘Almost found meself married, like I don’ have enough troubles being the last kobold anyhow. They got teef like nails …’ He shuddered.
Willow started to grin, not sure what to make of that, but, when the sound grew louder, she clamped her hands over her ears to block out the knotweed. Shifting the carpetbag to the crook of her arm, she waded deeper into the river until she was standing up to her thighs, her shoes soaked through and her teeth chattering from the cold. Still they kept going, their feet slipping on mud, which left them dirty and tired. At last Holloway led them to something large and bulky that was obscured by a small mountain of foliage, which he started to remove.
‘Me boat,’ he explained, his sea-green eye gleaming. ‘Had to camouflage it, in case someone tried to pinch it.’ He cleared the last of the debris, and Willow blinked in shock. It didn’t look like a boat.
It looked like an ENORMOUS copper bathtub with silver feet. The bridge, though, appeared to be made from several large, round cauldrons held together somehow by magic to form, quite frankly, the weirdest boat Willow had ever clapped eyes on. The copper glinted and gleamed in the sunlight. Jutting skyward was a copper weathervane topped by a large figure of a whale that had turned a blueish green over time. Willow forgot for a moment that she was bone-cold or covered in mud as she gaped at it.
‘It’s not traditional,’ said Holloway, clearing his throat at her silence.
‘It’s brilliant!’ said Willow.
The tops of the old wizard’s cheeks turned rosy with pride. ‘Made it meself,’ he said, beaming.
Holloway offered her a gloved hand so that she could get aboard, using a set of steps that had been buried in the marshland too. Then he untied what looked like a collection of old handkerchiefs knotted together, with a massive blue-green copper kettle attached to it, which had acted as an anchor, and climbed aboard himself.
As soon as he did so, a wind from nowhere began to stir, and a set of similar yet tiny copper kettles threaded above the helm lit up like a string of fairy lights.
Willow looked around in amazement. The bath-boat reminded her a bit of her brief experience in the Ditchwater district in the city of Beady Hill where home-made houseboats had lined the waterways, though she hadn’t seen any quite like this.
‘Welcome aboard the Sudsfarer.’
Faint music began to play from an old harmonica that was sitting on a battered wooden drum. It sounded a little tired as it gave a feeble sort of hoot.
‘Got rusted,’ said Holloway, picking it up sadly. Then, after pulling off one of his gloves, he touched it. It immediately turned to bright, shining copper and began to play in a livelier way that made Willow’s foot tap in response, despite the fact that she was wet and cold.
‘That’ll do,’ he said to the harmonica, and the instrument fell silent with a slight duh-dum for Willow, who grinned widely.
While Willow was still marvelling at this, the wizard laid a hand on the large copper wheel inside the helm and said, ‘Up the Knotweed River, Sudsfarer, all the way to the Cloud Mountains.’ Then he winked, and put his glove back on.
There was a giant lurch and the bath-boat began to scuttle forward like a giant copper hippopotamus as it made its way towards deeper water.
‘Oh NOOOO, oh, me greedy aunt!’ moaned Oswin, a paw covering his eyes as he turned a sickly shade of green like cabbage soup.
Willow gasped. ‘The legs move!’ She stood by the lip of the bath-boat and peered down, watching them in fascination as they trundled in the water, and the bath-boat started to swim against the gentle current the deeper it went. Holloway cast a sail made of several patchwork quilts, which gusted to life, and they began to hurtle up the river at breakneck speed.
Holloway grinned like a proud parent as the wind blew back his straggly hair. ‘Traded Rubix Grimoire for the charm that brought it to life – turning it from a simple bathtub-boat into this. Wasn’t cheap!’ he shouted, pointing at his glass eye.
Willow paled, clutching the side of the bath-boat for safety as it hurtled across the water. She knew Rubix Grimoire – she was her mother’s friend, and the guardian of Willow’s friend Essential Jones. Rubix was a witch who specialised in charms, and took the craft very seriously, even living in a strange star-shaped home. ‘You gave her your EYE?’
From the carpetbag there was a loud gasp.
Holloway shrugged. ‘It wasn’t doing me much good. C’mon,’ he said, motioning for her to follow him, and Willow saw to her surprise a small wooden door leading to a whole area beneath the deck that she hadn’t noticed till then. She turned to follow him, taking a firm hold of the side with one hand and clutching the carpetbag in the other. Oswin was still staring after the wizard from the hole in the bag in horror.
‘That’s jes mad,’ he whispered.
Willow couldn’t help but agree.
She was distracted, though, from the tale of the wizard’s eye as she made her way carefully down a set of copper steps to the cabin area and started to feel rather green. ‘I might be sick,’ she said as the world started to spin.
‘Hagsbreath! Apologies,’ said Holloway, who gave the side of the boat a tap with his fist. ‘Slow it down there, boat, we have guests. Easy does it.’
And the boat obliged, decreasing its speed to a smooth, leisurely pace.
‘Thanks,’ said Willow gratefully, though it took a moment for her stomach to settle. Then she was able to appreciate the downstairs area more.
It was surprisingly spacious. There was a small galley kitchen with gleaming copper pots, pans and kettles. At the back of the kitchen was a window, beneath which was a small wooden table. A little way along the galley was a small sitting area with two armchairs, one blue, one green, with multicoloured patches on the arms. Between these was a small copper card table that was set up with a pack of brightly coloured cards spread across its polished surface, and right at the back of the boat was a separate cabin, with a curtain for a door, behind which was a small bed.
Holloway took a kettle from a rack above an old fat stove and carried on their conversation from above as if no time had passed. ‘It was a clouded eye, the one I gave her. So, to be honest, she did me a favour.’
Willow frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Couldn’t see properly out of it. It turned everything grey and, well, cloudy. Me mood too – like the world became miserable whenever I looked out of it. I used to wear an eyepatch just so that I could see and feel things normally. Luckily, it came out easily – it wasn’t like a regular eye. It just popped right out after a bit of fiddling … Made this squelching sound, though, that was a bit alarming.’