The Witch's Revenge (9 page)

“What do you mean?”

“This,” the bird said triumphantly. He pulled out a big jar of gray dust. A white label proclaimed:
Instant Driver, just add water
. Bertie unscrewed the cap and took a quick sniff inside. He sneezed and emptied the entire contents on the floor. He dipped his wing once again into the bag and pulled out a glass of water. Without pausing for breath, he tipped it over the dust and waited.

Morag held her breath.

“This'll never work,” said the medallion.

“Shhh,” scolded the girl.

They waited. And waited. By now, Shona and Aldiss were standing outside the driver's cab, anxiously watching and willing the magic dust to do something.

“I told you this wouldn't work,” Henry began just as the dust, which was now a soggy pile of mush, started to crackle and pop and then to flash with bright sparks. As they watched, it began to take the shape of a man, gray-skinned and wearing a gray boilersuit and driver's hat. With a series of puffs he inflated to the size of an adult. The crackling and sparking and puffing came to a stop and the conductor snapped into life. He looked at the friends and
smiled. “Afternoon,” he said politely. “Where may I drive you?”

He placed his big gray hands on the controls and gave them a wiggle. The train whinnied with delight.

“Did that train just whinny?” Henry asked.

“I think so …,” replied Morag.

But they didn't dwell on it too long, for they could not take their eyes off the conductor. He had a look in the firebox. It was empty. Before Morag could even say “We need fuel,” coke suddenly appeared and with a flash, caught fire. The tender, where the fuel and water were kept, gurgled as it filled up. Morag knew from science lessons that the water was needed to create the steam that made the train go. The driver fiddled about with the controls, and the train, snorting and snuffling with excitement, chuffed into life. He turned to the friends.

“Tickets, please,” he said.

“Oh. We don't have tickets,” Morag replied.

“Then I can't take you anywhere,” he said.

“But …,” she began. And then she remembered. Morag felt in her pocket and pulled out her little red book. It looked almost black in the dull light. She opened it and fished out the ticket stub her parents had left inside the book. Trying not to think about what she was handing over, she passed it to the conductor.

“Will this do?” she asked.

“ ‘Marnoch Mor Railways,' ” he read with a smile. “Perfect!” He took it from her and stuck it in a slot on the wall. “Where to?” he asked.

“Take us to Oban, and don't spare the horses!” said Bertie.

The conductor saluted, pressed some buttons and with a few puffs, the train began to chug forward.

“Wait for us!” Shona shouted as she and Aldiss tried to clamber on board.

As the locomotive rolled forward, Shona grabbed Aldiss by the tail and tossed him on board. Squealing, the rat sailed through the air and landed with a bump. Shona swung herself on board just as the train plowed into the tunnel.

“Whooo-hooo, this is fun!” squeaked Aldiss as he poked his head over the side, his ears streaming behind him.

“Fun, he says,” spat Henry. “I'm glad someone's enjoying themselves. I wonder if Montgomery is having fun wherever he is. I very much doubt it.”

Morag said nothing, but her stomach churned as she thought of what might have happened to him. She could only hope that now that they were moving they still had time to save him.

On and on the train sped, flying down the long dark tunnels of Marnoch Mor's Secret Underground. Hours passed and soon the friends grew bored. It would not have been so bad had the steam engine been pulling a comfortable carriage. Without one they had to ride in the engine room. It was cold, it was chokingly dirty and it was uncomfortable. Most of all, it seemed as if their journey would never end.

Sick of the smell of coal-smoke, Morag sat sullenly on the cold metal floor, thinking of Montgomery. She was wrapped against the chill in her red duffle coat and had tucked a blanket—courtesy of Bertie's bag—tightly around her legs. Aldiss, always hungry, had ordered a plate of cheese and grapes from the satchel and sat munching them nearby. He offered to share, but Morag waved him away, explaining that she was too worried to eat anything.
The dodo, fascinated by the train, stood at the Instant Driver's side marveling at everything he did.

Up on the bunker, out of view and stretched over a knobbly pile of coal, Shona tried to plan what they would do when they arrived at Oban. They would have to find Kyle the Fisherman again. He was the only friendly human able to take them to Murst. Her stomach lurched when she thought of her homeland. She was the last dragon to be hatched and raised on the DarkIsle and she loved it still, but could not bear thinking of it under the control of the evil forces of Murst Castle. There was another problem: how to get onto the island without being seen. The DarkIsle rose out of the sea on a bed of perilous cliffs, with only one safe bay for boats to dock—and that was overlooked by Murst Castle. The only other way onto the island was to climb the rock face on the western side, something the dragon was not keen on trying.

“That's a bridge we'll have to cross when we get to it,” she said to herself as she shifted to get comfortable.

“Did you say something, lizard?” a little tinny voice asked. It was Henry. He was snuggled up against the cold inside Morag's coat.

“Nothing that would interest you,” Shona replied sniffily.

“You said it,” the medallion retorted.

The dragon was about to say something back, when she was distracted by the train slowing down. It climbed up and out of the tunnel into the fresh open air and slowed to a halt at a familiar station. Morag scrambled to her feet as the arches of McCaig's Tower, a folly on a hill in Oban, came
into view. Unaccustomed to the daylight after hours in the dark, she scrunched up her eyes to see the little building before them. The station sat in the middle of the folly and looked just as it had when she had first seen it less than three months before: a small, redbrick building with decorative wooden struts and a cheerfully smoking chimney pot. It was like seeing an old friend again.

“Time to get off,” she called to the others as the Flying Horse came to a hissing stop at the platform. As she leapt from the train, a large European Eagle Owl in a dark blue stationmaster's uniform hurried over, blowing a silver whistle. On his lapel was a name badge that said
Mr. Mozart
. He peered at the girl with his huge orange eyes before launching into a torrent of angry words.

“You can't leave that train here,” the owl shrieked. “I'm expecting the three-fifteen at any moment and your vehicle is taking up valuable track space. Move it along now. Shoooo!”

“But we've only just arrived,” protested Morag, taken aback by the owl's bad manners.

“We didn't mean to take up your space,” said Bertie. “We'll move our train right now.”

“See that you dooooo,” snapped the owl before turning round and marching back to his office.

“Well,” said Shona, “
he
needs to learn some manners. Don't worry, Morag, I'll get the driver to move the Horse right now.”

But Morag wasn't listening. A crumpled piece of paper lying on the grass nearby had caught her eye. She knew
what it was even before she scooped it up and unfolded it. Staring back was an old picture of her in her school uniform above the words:

Moira and Jermy were supposed to be Morag's guardians but they had made her cook and clean and shop and wait on them from morning until night every day. If she hadn't come across Bertie and Aldiss, who had taken a wrong turn and ended up in their basement, she would still be trapped with them. She had thought they were gone from her life forever, but now she knew they were still looking for her. That was not good. She felt sick.

“The Instant Driver is backing the train out now,” said Shona. “So there shouldn't be any more problems.… Morag? Are you all right?”

“It's them,” she said, pointing to the poster. “Moira and Jermy. They're still after me. Oh, Shona, what if they're here, watching me right now?”

“Oh, they'll never find you,” the dragon said. “How could they? They don't even know you're here.”

But Morag was not so sure. “
Why
are they still looking for me?” she said. “They didn't have a kind word for me when I lived with them and now they're offering a reward!” She knew they hadn't cared for her, so why were they making such an effort to find her?

Bertie, who had noticed Shona and Morag looking at the poster, tapped Morag on the shoulder and said: “Rest assured, Morag, we rescued you from them before and we're not about to let them steal you back. Now let's be off down to the harbor. We have to find Kyle.”

The climb down from McCaig's Tower wasn't as treacherous as it had been the last time they were here. Then they had been forced to negotiate the steep path in the dark, but now, in the wintery light of late afternoon, it didn't take them long to stumble down the hillside.

Thinking there might be prying eyes around, Morag ran ahead and kept a lookout for other humans. Aldiss, however, with his nose twitching in the cold winter air, sought a different foe. He sniffed and snorted for the telltale stench of Klapp demons: the ugly, hairy, stinking spies of Mephista. With their long arms and legs and strong fingers and toes, Klapp demons got about by clinging to the undersides of cars and other vehicles. They were the something you saw out of the corner of your eye, or the horrible smell that came from nowhere.

“Do you think Kyle will be here?” Morag asked Shona as they reached the bottom of the hill.

“I hope so,” sighed the dragon. “There's no way to reach Murst without him.”

When they reached the road, Morag told Shona and Bertie that they had to part, at least for a short time. “A dragon and a dodo can't walk around a human town,” she explained. “There'd be uproar, and we can't risk you being captured. Aldiss and I will go and find Kyle. You two hide.”

Bertie and Shona agreed to stay in the woods nearby until Morag returned. A couple of months earlier, they were welcomed not far away at Eleanor's Excellent Eatery, where anyone from Marnoch Mor could go without drawing attention to themselves. But Eleanor had sold Morag to slave traders from Murst and tried to kill Shona, Bertie and Aldiss with a potion. The plan had backfired when Shona swatted the potion away with a tray and it bounced back to the witch and killed her instead. There was no way they could return there, so they were forced to hide in the woods.

As Shona hunkered down into a patch of cold ferns with Bertie beside her, Morag scooped Aldiss up, placing him on her shoulder, and waved to her friends. “We'll be back as soon as we can,” she called.

The walk down to the harbor took less than half an hour. It was beginning to get dark, the sky turning gray and menacing, with a dampness in the air that warned of a storm. The streets were deserted as Morag walked toward the sea; only an elderly couple and their little dog braved the cold afternoon for a jaunt down the high street. They seemed not to notice Morag and the rat on her shoulder.
Not that Morag minded; she was relieved no one had stopped her or asked her what they were doing there. The Missing Person poster had jangled her nerves, and she was terrified she would be recognized and returned to the Stokers' dingy guesthouse on Irvine Beach.

At the harbor wall, Morag and Aldiss stopped and scanned along the line of fishing boats bobbing gently in the water.

“I can't see Kyle,” Morag said. “And his boat's not here either. The
Sea Kelpie
's not here.”

“Let's split up and search for him. With your eyes and my nose we're bound to find him,” Aldiss suggested. Morag nodded. The rat scuttled off in one direction while Morag went in the other.

It only took minutes to confirm that the boat was definitely not there.

“What are we going to do now?” Morag cried. “If Kyle's gone there's no way to Murst. And if there's no way to Murst, there's no way to rescue Montgomery.”

Aldiss sat down on the freezing cold flagstones and shook his whiskers. He too was feeling dejected. Neither of them—nor even Henry, who was still tucked inside Morag's coat—noticed a tall, dark man approach.

“And what are
you two
doing here?” said the gruff voice.

“What's it to you?” Aldiss answered rudely.

Morag looked up as the stranger began to laugh. “Kyle!” she cried. “We've been looking everywhere for you. We thought you weren't here.”