23

The Hand of Darkness

‘A nest of insects!’ bellowed the undertaker, looking down on them menacingly. Behind him they could see a spacious room filled with boxes. It was the storeroom of the toy shop! Nobody would be there at night-time so it would have been easy for him to break in. Noah, scared but unharmed, peeped over the crater’s edge. Gafferty sighed with relief. She could see rat riders were hiding behind the boxes – they could whisk him away if things got bad.

‘So this is where you hide,’ Mr Ribbons was saying. ‘Under the playthings of a children’s shop! I shall make playthings of you all!’

In one hand he gripped the three glass bottles, the trapped ghosts looking on from inside their prisons. The other hand he waved over the cavern and muttered some strange words. More enchanted smoke appeared, this time black serpents and other monsters who swirled around the Smidgenmoot, spreading a deathlike cold and making the Smidgens shiver with terror. Some lost their nerve completely and ran back down the tunnels.

‘We can’t fight this and Trokanis!’ said Abel. ‘We should retreat – and quickly!’

‘Wait!’ said Gafferty.

Mr Ribbons had noticed the Mirror. His beady eyes lit up and his black tongue ran over his sharp teeth hungrily.

‘Stay back!’ shouted Trokanis at the man. ‘Your business with me is complete. You have your bottles back!’

‘Ah, the tiny wizard!’ laughed Mr Ribbons. ‘I should have kept you as a pet. You were not telling me everything about your little bits of glass, were you?’

‘They are not your concern!’

‘All magical glass is my concern, especially if it does what my ghost here informs me it does. I will take it for my collection.’

From inside her bottle Claudia smiled at Gafferty. I hope we’re thinking along the same lines, Gafferty thought. Mr Ribbons dismissed the smoke creatures and reached down into the Smidgenmoot, his fat white fingers stretching out for the Mirror.

‘No!’ Trokanis looked horrified. He saw the result of all his long efforts, his very life being taken away from him. He frantically fired his purple lightning into the man’s hand. Mr Ribbons swiftly withdrew it as if he’d been stung by a wasp.

‘How dare you!’ he roared. ‘How dare you think your puny pixie magic is any kind of match to my necromancy! You shall pay for your impertinence.’

Black smoke belched from his fingertips and poured over the Smidgen, covering him from head to toe. The other Smidgens, watching from nearby, heard a scream from within the seething fog as it twisted around him, more and more, so that he completely disappeared inside a cocoon of darkness.

‘We should do something!’ said Will. ‘Help him!’ Wyn put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and shook his head.

‘You wished to live forever!’ Ribbons cried. ‘Then you shall! You will remain in this rat hole where you belong for all time!’

The cocoon carried Trokanis to the wall of the cave and spread tendrils of smoke over the rock. The wall opened like a cage and Trokanis was dragged inside it. There was one last scream before the stone closed around him, sealing him into the rock for good. As the smoke cleared all trace of Trokanis was gone.

There was no time for the Smidgens to take in what had happened before Mr Ribbons was reaching for the Mirror once more. His fingers stroked its surface, and it released a shower of white sparks as if it were trying to resist his touch. But Mr Ribbons was deadly serious. Nothing was going to stop him now. He plucked the Mirror from the stone arch and drew it up to his face to examine it more closely. His greedy eyes ran over its polished exterior, admiring its smoothness and studying his reflection in the magical glass.

‘Yes,’ said Gafferty to herself. ‘Go on, Mr Ribbons. Look in the Mirror with your horrible dead eyes. Let’s see what happens when it tries to steal life force from someone who doesn’t have any.’

Something was definitely happening. As he gazed at himself, Mr Ribbons seemed to be giving off more of the sinister black smoke, but instead of escaping through his fingers as a spell it was seeping from his skin in wafts. The man watched curiously as the smoke was sucked into the Mirror. It wasn’t his doing; it was the Mirror’s. It was trying to take the life force from him, trying to make him pass through it. It drew more and more of the smoke from him, faster and faster.

Mr Ribbons suddenly began to look worried. He pulled the Mirror away from his face and was about to dash it to the ground. At that moment the ghosts pounced. They flew from their bottles and wrapped themselves around Ribbons’s hand and wrist, even though it brought them close to the Mirror and its fatal energy. Their combined touch froze the man’s hand and fingers so that he was unable to let go of the Mirror, forced to look at it as it pulled the magic out of him.

‘What are you doing?’ he screeched. ‘You are my servants! Unfreeze me or I will make you pay!’ The ghosts said nothing and watched. Noah backed away, keeping his distance.

Mr Ribbons was frightened, something he hadn’t experienced before. He howled as the magic left him, more and more, faster and faster. The Mirror began to glow and tremble in his hand as if it couldn’t stop what was happening, as if the whole terrible process was out of control. Ribbons’s face began to twist as the Mirror tried to draw his huge bulk inside it. The Mirror began to shake violently. Then … it imploded.