‘That’s Oswin. He’s a kobold,’ said Willow, pointing to the hairy green bag behind her.
‘A kobold!’ he gasped, his sea-green eye brightening. ‘Well now, ya don’t see that every day.’ There was silence and Holloway admitted, ‘Not that I can see him now, as he seems to be in a bag, but ya know what I mean.’
There was a low mumble from Oswin about ‘peoples forgetting that not seeing kobolds is the whole points of being the monster from under the bed’ – or monster in the bag as he was more recently known – and then something about cumberworlds.
Willow shrugged at Holloway’s confused look. She was too distracted by the thought of getting out to explain.
She got up and tried the door.
Holloway sighed. ‘I’ve wrecked two chairs and a table trying to break open my door, but nothing works. I think they’ve been charmed shut. And unfortunately—’
‘You can’t undo a charm from the inside,’ said Willow, sitting down in despair. She’d learnt that the hard way too.
‘Yup.’
She took the StoryPass out of her pocket and wasn’t surprised to see that the needle was currently pointing to ‘One Might Have Suspected as Such’.
‘Well, that’s just perfect,’ she sighed.
Still, that didn’t stop Willow trying to break out. By the end of her first day, she’d used the poker to try prising open the lock on the door and had broken the chair against it too. She’d even attempted scaling the walls of the tower – several times – but to no avail.
‘Like I said,’ continued Holloway, as if no time had passed, when she collapsed in a heap with her head in her hands, ‘she’s taken every precaution necessary so we can’t get out. See, there’s four levels to this tower. This is the last, for the highly dangerous and incurable. Each level goes in ascending order. First is yer everyday sort of maladies, like spell-rash or love-potion recovery. Second is stubborn curses. Third is environmental—’
‘Environmental? That doesn’t sound so bad,’ said Willow.
‘Pfft,’ scoffed the wizard. ‘That’s one of the worst! Ya know – those poor souls who spent too much time in the forest of Wisperia, where magic went to hide after the Long War? They come back with leaves for fingers, stalks for eyes, or worse …’
Willow felt her heart thud. Did they also come back with their magic turned inside out?
‘Then again,’ Holloway continued in a dark whisper, not noticing her distress, ‘they’re not half as bad as the ones who wandered through the Mists of Mitlaire. They haven’t really come back, have they? Just their bodies.’
Willow shuddered. She’d heard the stories, of course, about the poor souls who were lost to the Mists, the ghostly veil between worlds where time seemed to stand still. Families who were never able to find their loved ones again. It was said that beyond the Mists was the Lake of the Undead, which flowed into the shadowy realm of lost souls, Netherfell.
It was the stuff of nightmares.
Willow cleared her throat nervously, and tried to push the thought out of her brain. ‘How come you’re in here, Holloway, and, erm, in the most dangerous section?’ she asked, darting a wary glance at Oswin, whose green head had peeked out of the bag. He made a motion with his paw for her to get away from the wall, fast, which she managed to ignore. Just.
‘I was trawling for fleurie-coral with me boat when I had a run-in with a sea serpent, and I lost me leg, again.’
Willow blinked. ‘Did you say you lost your leg, um … again?’
‘Yeah, well, me wooden leg – was a good one too. Fitted perfectly, not like this blasted one, which pinches something terrible. Lost me real leg years ago when the Great Melee Sea froze and I got exposed to the bitter cold. Life of a sailor,’ he said with a woeful shrug. ‘But this latest escapade was far worse, as not only did I lose me good wooden leg, I developed this weird thing where everything I touched turned to copper.’
‘Copper?’
‘Yeh. I know, right? Gold would have been worth the fight. Anyway, I came here when I heard about Pimpernell. Heard that she might be able to help put things right, and, for a while, that seemed true. She found these dragon-scale gloves that helped – stopped me changing things – which was great. It got me thinking that maybe I didn’t actually need a cure for me new ability – I could make use of it. Trade with it, that sort of thing. So I told her thanks and said I wanted to be on me way. But she got sticky about it. Told me that she couldn’t let me leave if I was going to be a danger to others. I told her that with the gloves I wouldn’t be harming anyone … Well, she didn’t see it that way. She got suspicious, thought I was up to no good. Like maybe I would use me new ability against people. There was a confrontation, and she tried to get the gloves back from me so that I would stay. I resisted, of course – but she got them off. I tried not to touch anything, but, I mean, that’s hard, ya know? I stumbled into a few beds, which turned everything – the sheets, the floor and even her foot – to copper.’
Willow gasped. So that was what had happened to the witch’s foot!
Holloway sighed. ‘She used a potion throw on me – ya know the kind ya don’t even need to drink for them to take effect? Something for sleep, I think, as I passed out. Next thing I knew I woke up here.’ He gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘She’d put the gloves back on me, but she took her foot as proof that I was a danger and needed to be kept here for me own good. She told me that it was for the best while she works on that cure … which I’m beginning to think might never happen. It’s been about a year now.’
Willow gasped. A year? Here? ‘I’m so sorry, Holloway! It was an accident. She must know that – you never meant to do it and, if you’ve got the gloves, then surely you aren’t dangerous? Can’t you explain that to her?’
‘Yeh … well, I tried, didn’t I? She didn’t see it that way. She didn’t trust me any more. And, I suppose, because I’d tried to get the gloves back and flee, perhaps she had reason not to,’ he said in a hollow voice.
‘Still, that didn’t give her the right to keep you here,’ said Willow.
He nodded. ‘The trouble is this whole tower has been charmed to do her bidding, so it’s impossible to go against her and –’ he sighed, sounding hopeless – ‘truth be told, I do feel a bit like I deserve it. I feel really bad about her foot.’
There was a heavy silence after this. Willow could only imagine. ‘But it wasn’t really your fault,’ she said again.
Perhaps Holloway had needed to hear that because after a while there was a sniffing sound, and he mumbled, ‘Thanks.’ Then he cleared his throat. ‘Maybe you’ll have better luck – she’s true to her word, even if she’s a bit extreme. If she thinks you’re no longer dangerous, she will let you go.’
Willow shared a fearful look with Oswin. If the witch had locked up the wizard for a year for turning things to copper, how long would she be stuck here for making things disappear? And, while she was imprisoned here, what was happening to poor Sometimes? They were wasting time! He’d trusted Willow to rescue him, and who knew what danger he was in? Moreg’s dark words, when she’d told her why so few forgotten tellers were around, floated into Willow’s mind. ‘Most don’t live to tell their tales …’