Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” said Caliburn.
As Xar spoke the name, the Nuckalavee sighed, a sigh of satisfaction.
Blink! Blink! Blink!
With a flash of Magic, every single curse bottle bobbing in the lake lit up with light. And in every single curse bottle there blazed the word Encanzo! with a bright, vengeful orange light.
“You’re right!” whispered the Nuckalavee, eyes agleam with hatred of the boy called Tor. “I feel it in my heart that you are RIGHT. The treasure-hunting, staff-stealing burglar of a boy WAS called Tor… and he used MY treasures, MY staff, MY cup, MY scales, MY adderstone, MY treasures to become the greatest Wizard in the wildwoods. So the boy called Tor has become the noble Encanzo, the great Encanzo, the oh-so-clever Encanzo… I’ve heard that name, even down here in my dark and terrible dungeon, and I should have guessed it was him.”
The Nuckalavee spat out every “Encanzo” with as much disgust as if the word had been made out of burned and bitter mustardseed mixed with the pus-like ooze of putrid-green-bad-eggs.
“I’ve been cursing him ever since,” spat the Nuckalavee. “Every night I get the nixes to build a little bonfire down here in my dungeon and scramble the wrong way around it, wishing ill on the boy who stole my treasures and all his descendants.”
“Oh dear…” said Caliburn. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…”
It was clearly going to be quite important for the Nuckalavee NEVER to find out that one of Encanzo’s descendants was standing right in front of him.
Unless he already knew…
“I thought that you might know the answer,” said the Nuckalavee, all thirteen yellow eyes now burning orange in fury, “because in another extraordinary coincidence, YOU, boy, are carrying the very staff that Encanzo was carrying when he tricked me twenty years ago. Where did you get that staff, boy?”
“I stole it,” said Xar, looking the Nuckalavee straight in all his eyes, one by one. “We have answered your question correctly. Now give us those scales!”
“Oh, I’ve been tricked before, so I don’t make the same mistake twice,” said the Nuckalavee. “You will climb into my throat and remove the stone that is lodged there. Bring the stone out of my throat, where it has been burning, itching, torturing me—take it out of here and up to me and THEN I’ll give you four of my scales. And then you and your companions can leave this cavern with your hearts intact, and with your bodyguard and your selves free and alive.”
Suddenly the second part of the bargain they had made with the Nuckalavee seemed very, very foolish indeed.
“But you might close your mouth and swallow us,” said Wish, in a very small voice indeed.
“I’ve already promised not to,” said the Nuckalavee. “By Magic and mistletoe, and giving my life as forfeit. Complete the bargain and remove the stone, on your honor.”
The monster put his head down, and they saw him clearly for the first time.
Ah, it was a scary one, that Nuckalavee, now that they saw him right up close.
Great dark tentacles swung from his ancient, barnacled chin, and these tentacles were slimy with secrets, besmeared with curses, encrusted with hates and petty spites and mean little thoughts, and every kind of thing you might want to dispose of, and they were clinging like glue to the hairs on those tentacles.
The monster rested his chin on the ground before them and opened his great mouth like a gigantic cavern.
There was a smell in that mouth of disappointed hopes, and deep despair, and power bad and power strong, secrets that the Droods wanted to get rid of, magical objects too wild for the hearts of men, lies so bitter they would turn your lips green to speak them. There right in front of them were the giant daggers of his great green teeth, and even more spookily and horribly, down right at the bottom of his throat, you could see another mouth, farther down, another set of jaws, closed tight shut, so that nothing that went down there would ever get out.
“We do have to keep our promise,” said Wish, shivering, trying to concentrate, even though the stink of the monster’s breath was confusing her as she peered inside the great grim depths. “Just as the Nuckalavee must keep his. We said that this was a test of our courage, didn’t we?”
They had said that, but they hadn’t quite realized exactly how courageous they were going to have to be.
The sprites and Caliburn offered to fly in first and see where the stone was lodged. Which was brave of them, not only for the obvious reasons, but because sprites have a very strong sense of smell, and so for them this stink was even worse than it was for the humans. They buzzed into the mouth of the great beast, wands drawn, prickling with anxiety and quivering with revulsion, and they were gone for so long that Wish and Xar began to get nervous.
When they eventually emerged, they all looked green with nausea, and Bumbleboozle actually threw up. “Isss YUCKY in there,” said Bumbleboozle.
“But we found the ssstone,” said Ariel. “A small gray stone, stuck tight as anything. We couldn’t budge it…”
“It looksss very ssssorre in there, very sore,” said Bumbleboozle.
There was no point in trying to transform into birds or fish or anything Perdita had been teaching them at school, because when they got down there, they wouldn’t have hands to remove the stone with.
“Didn’t I TELL you that education wasn’t important?” fumed Xar. “Perdita said we were learning all that stuff for a reason, that we might need it in the fight against the Nuckalavee.”
They did a quick mental review of the things they had learned at Pook’s Hill over the last three months:
Transformation, telepathy, speaking to animals, illusions, wort-cunning, starcraft, leechdom.
And it did seem that none of these skills would come in handy right now.
“But that doesn’t mean they’re useless on EVERY occasion, Xar,” said Wish. “There are some quests where speaking to animals might be terribly important.”
“Well, not right now it isn’t,” grumbled Xar.
Sometimes there are problems that even Magic can’t help you with. You have to do it the good old-fashioned way.
“You’re going to have to let me down on a rope, and I’ll try and dislodge it,” said Xar. “I should have spent the last three months practicing my ropework—that would have been a lot more helpful.”
Crusher had a long rope twisted around his waist and he tied one end around a stalactite, and the other end around Xar. The giant braced himself against one of the Nuckalavee’s gigantic green teeth. And then slowly, slowly he let Xar down the throat of the Nuckalavee, the sprites buzzing in with him, to give out some light from their glowing bodies and offer helpful advice.
“Stop!” yelled Xar, when he spotted the stone, halfway down the creature’s gullet. It was much smaller than Xar expected, so Encanzo must have shrunk down his broken heart to fit into the confines of the pebble. Crusher held the rope steady, and with a shiver of revulsion, Xar reached out to try and work the stone free.
You, dear reader, I hope will never have been in the position of being lowered down the throat of a Nuckalavee, trying to remove a stone that has been stuck in it for twenty years, while being dripped on by the disgusting goo that is sludging down the sides of the monster’s throat walls.
However, it is likely that you have been in the situation of trying to do something tricky, like take the top off a bottle or mend something that is stuck or turn a handle that WILL NOT BUDGE, so you will probably sympathize with Xar, who was trying to do something rather like this under very trying, frightening (and disgusting) circumstances, while being given useful suggestions by the sprites, such as:
“What happensss if you wigglesss it the other way?”
“Try pulling it…”
“Try squiggling it…”
“Have you tried wiggling it?”
But absolutely nothing worked.