Willow frowned. ‘She said it was an accident.’
‘Yes, that’s right, it was an accident. That’s what I tol’ her … She had no right to question me the way she did …’
‘Question you? Why did she question you? Did you have something to do with it?’
‘What did you just say?’ hissed the hag. ‘Are you accusing me o’ something? I don’ appreciate that, not one bit.’
The StoryPass Willow was still holding was suggesting, ‘If I Were You, I’d Run’.
Amora sniffed. ‘I know exactly which grandbaby you are. You is the one that stays home to look after the old croat now that she’s gone banana doolally. The one whose magic is a bit, well, humdrum, ain’t cha? Finding people’s lost bits and bobs – it’s not really impressive now, is it?’
Willow wrenched her arm out of the old woman’s grip, rubbing the skin. ‘Well, that depends,’ she said.
‘On what?’ asked the hag.
‘On what I find,’ said Willow, closing her eyes and raising a hand to the sky. Suddenly there was a flash of light and a dripping-wet fisher’s net, twice as big as Willow, appeared in her outstretched palm.
‘Ha!’ sniggered the hag, slapping a skinny knee. ‘’Tis you! What you gonna do with that, girl?’ she scoffed. ‘Ketch yerself my lost socks? Frighten my nostrils to death?’ She threw back her head and guffawed. She took a potion from out of her robe and uncorked it. The liquid inside began to glow a dark, oozing sort of blood red and her hand snaked forward towards Willow’s mouth. ‘I think maybe I need to teach you a lesson about what happens to little girls who go around accusing people …’
Willow shut her eyes and held the fisher’s net up to the sky, and suddenly a wave of green briny water cascaded from the heavens, and a colossal hairy fish with a set of razor-sharp, needle-like teeth landed with a whoosh into the net and began flopping around wildly, drenching them all.
The hag jumped back, all traces of humour fading fast. A bit of spilled potion hit the ground and began to smoke in a dark red puff.
‘This is the Buzzle Wuzzle,’ said Willow as the thing inside the net thrashed around madly.
‘He’s a lost lake monster and he looks like he might like to teach you a lesson himself!’ she said, flinging him at the hag, who screamed as it flew at her with all its needle-like teeth bared.
Amora fell backwards over the wheelbarrow, fighting off the fish, and in the kerfuffle Willow picked up the carpetbag with Oswin still inside and followed the StoryPass’s advice by making a run for it.
8
The Sometimes House
Willow slowed down only once she was safely away on a long winding road deeper inside the district of Ditchwater.
‘Horrid old crook,’ she said, gasping for air, a hand on her knees. ‘You – know –’ she said, sucking in big draughts of air – ‘Granny used to be the best potion-maker in all of Starfell before that accident …’ She thought it was weird the way that Amora had seemed so cagey about it … Was it possible that she had something to do with it?
‘Was that before her hair turned green?’ asked Oswin from within the bag as Willow carried on, walking past streets that widened into avenues with small front gardens that spread into bigger lawns. This must be the oldest and wealthiest part of the suburb, she realised.
‘I think so,’ said Willow, who stopped to peer at some of the front gardens. Here and there the houses had names and plaques. But she couldn’t see any yellow door and none of the gardens looked unusual, just overgrown and a bit wild really.
Suddenly something bright caught the corner of her eye. She turned and looked, but couldn’t see anything. Then as she began to walk on by she passed a thin, long bridleway wedged between two houses and saw, at the end of it, something bright and yellow in the twilight. It was a door.
She stopped. ‘Do you think this is it?’ she whispered, peering up ahead at the long sweeping path, where very far in the distance she could make out what looked almost like a house.
‘Mebbe,’ said Oswin.
She looked at the StoryPass, which right then didn’t seem to be offering much help, as it was currently suggesting, ‘Cup of Tea?’
They set off up the dark, overgrown path, Willow looking over her shoulder in case anyone was watching. She didn’t want another run-in with Amora Spell, that was for sure. But they saw no one.
As they drew closer it became clear that the house was old and dilapidated. It had chipped blue paint and a yellow front door. The garden was wild and covered in brambles. As she neared she saw dozens of colourful teapots fixed beneath the windows like curious flowerpots, with trailing plants spilling out of them.
‘This must be it,’ she breathed. She tried the door, which was locked, then walked round the back of the house, going past an assortment of old, discarded furniture. It looked like no one had been here for years.
The back door was off its hinges, and after a bit of struggling she managed to wedge it open.
Inside the house smelt of damp and neglect. It was getting dark but she could just make out signs of what had once been a family home – an old mustard-coloured sofa with a broken leg in one corner, which birds had used as a nest. On the walls she saw portraits of little old women and men all with white hair, and a young boy smiling while holding up a plant. She stopped to peer at it closely. Now that is unusual, she thought. The plant had funny blinking eyes. Was this who Moreg was referring to …? She walked down the passage, stepping over discarded bits of crockery and brushing against dusty curtains and disintegrating furniture. Whoever had lived here seemed to have left many years before …
She peered into a bedroom, which looked like it had belonged to the boy’s parents. There was nothing in it besides an old, sagging bed and an empty wardrobe. She left and went through the last door, then stopped. For just a second she thought she had left the house, and walked into a garden. But on closer inspection she realised it was another bedroom, though it was filled with dozens of large pots containing curious plants, which sadly seemed mostly dead now. Their spots and fur had faded, the strange-coloured leaves shrivelled. One of the walls was covered from floor to ceiling in pictures and sketches of even more plants. Wherever she stepped, her foot crunched dried leaves, feathers and flowers, and in the corner, the only nod to it being a bedroom at all really, was a single wooden bed.
She crept closer to the wall covered with pictures. They showed unusual-looking flowers and plants of all colours, shapes and sizes, with messy handwritten notes in the margins. Such as a hairy yellow plant with what looked like bushy eyebrows over odd cat-like eyes. A note next to it read, ‘Likes shade. Feeds on old spiders.’ There were blue and gold ones, which according to the notes sang lullabies that put children to sleep. Others were translucent and looked like they had been dipped in watercolour paint. And on each sketch at the bottom was a note about where the plant was from.
It was a collection, she realised. Whoever drew these was interested in the most extraordinary, perhaps even the most magical plants.
The biggest drawing, however, was in the centre of the wall. It was of an enormous pale blue tree. Each branch had different-coloured blooms.