The next week was spent catching up with the laundry, sleeping a lot and generally doing nothing before it was time for school to start again. Everyone was so busy that no one actually noticed Aubergine Wealth was not around. Even though he had been born there, he didn’t live in Transylvania Waters so no one realised he hadn’t gone home. He had a house in Switzerland that no one was ever invited to visit and that was where he always spent the holidays. Though he didn’t like to think he so much ‘spent’ the holidays as ‘saved’ the holidays.
His house was halfway up a mountain overlooking Geneva, and in particular overlooking the six Swiss banks where he had large amounts of his money hidden.
Other places he had his money hidden included:
• In three hundred cardboard boxes under his bed.
• In an enormous sock inside a plastic bag under a rock on Inaccessible Island, guarded by a flock of really bad-tempered Rockhopper Penguins who spent all day hopping on and off the rock and spitting at anyone who ever went near it – which no one did, so wasting all their spit made them even more bad-tempered.
• Inside a big tin embedded in a massive block of concrete in the heart of the radioactive Chernobyl nuclear power station.
• In a wallet that was so big it took ten men to lift it, except there was no way Aubergine Wealth was going to tell one other person, never mind ten, that he had a huge wallet of cash, so it was slowly sinking into the lawn behind his house, which was as far as he had managed to drag it.
• Stuck over every single square metre of every wall in his house, then painted over with pretty flowers to disguise it as wallpaper.
• Lots of other places.
• Lots more other places.43
When Aubergine Wealth regained consciousness, the Summer School was deserted apart from a large number of sad, lost, lonely puppies who were licking his face very enthusiastically because they were not lost or lonely any more.
There was also another person there, and this person had pulled Aubergine’s fingers out of his ears and was sewing them back onto his hands.
The pain was excruciating.
‘I expect you are in excruciating pain,’ said the lady. ‘Don’t worry, I can fix that.’
She hit him on the head with a heavy saucepan and instantly all the pain went away, due to a sudden outbreak of unconsciousness.
When Aubergine came round, he was lying on a large couch with his head in the lady’s lap. She had finished sewing his fingers back on and was bathing his face and hands with a soft warm cloth to remove all the remaining dried blood and puppy drool.
‘Tell me, you poor man,’ she said. ‘Who chopped your fingers off?’
‘Well, it’s a long story,’ Aubergine began.
‘I’m in no hurry,’ said the lady, stroking his head. ‘By the way, I am Chrysanthemum Gofaintly and this is the Manhattan Home For Sad, Lost, Lonely Puppies. The puppies and I are wondering who you are and what you are doing here.’
Aubergine Wealth sat up and looked around. Every last speck of evidence that Quicklime College had ever been there had vanished, even down to the teethmarks Satanella had left in the doorframe and the unmentionable stains on the wallpaper.
‘Actually, it’s a very long story,’ he said. ‘And I think you probably wouldn’t believe any of it anyway.’
‘Sweetheart,’ said Chrysanthemum, ‘my name is Chrysanthemum. My parents were two wild hippies in California in the nineteen-sixties. I live with two-hundred-and-whatever puppies. I’ll believe anything.’
‘Do you believe in wizards?’
‘Well, of course I do,’ said Chrysanthemum. ‘Half the people in the commune I grew up in were witches and wizards.’
‘No, no. I don’t mean long-haired hippies who took strange potions and thought having a bath was a capitalist plot,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘I mean real wizards who can do magic.’
‘Hey, baby, everything was magic in the sixties.’
‘I mean real magic, like this,’ said Aubergine.
He looked around the room and focused on an old armchair covered in sleeping puppies. As he concentrated the chair lifted itself up in the air and floated slowly towards them.
‘Oh, that sort of magic,’ said Chrysanthemum and fainted.
When she woke up she was lying on her back on the sofa with her head in Aubergine Wealth’s lap. The armchair with the sleeping puppies was still floating around the room in lazy circles and now Chrysanthemum and Aubergine’s sofa began to float after it.
‘Wow,’ said Chrysanthemum.
It is an unwritten law that wizards tell humans as little as possible about their world. Very few humans know there is such a country as Transylvania Waters and even fewer know about Quicklime College. For most humans the world of witches and wizards is like it is in story books, all made up and rather silly. True wizards are only too happy to keep it that way. It makes life a lot less complicated.
Since Nerlin had become King of Transylvania Waters and human tourists had begun visiting, things hadn’t really changed that much. None of the visitors realised the entire population were wizards. They just thought they were a bit strange, which is what everyone thinks about anyone who comes from a different country to them.
He wasn’t sure why, but Aubergine felt completely overwhelmed with a great need to tell Chrysanthemum Gofaintly everything.
Chrysanthemum was a sweet, floaty hippy who thought everything in the world could be put right with a nice vase of flowers and some homeopathic ylang-ylang drops. Aubergine Wealth was a hard-nosed, soulless businessman who thought everything in the world could be put right by everyone giving him all their money.
Well, my world would be put right, he thought. Who cares about anyone else’s?
Yet he felt deeply attracted to Chrysanthemum. Sure, she was the only person who had ever sewn his fingers back on, but there was more to it than that. Whatever it was didn’t fit in with anything he had learned up until that point. It had nothing to do with spreadsheets and calculators or the rise and fall of the value of gold, so he was confused. For the first time in his life the faintest hint of the tiniest possibility that there might be more to life than money crept into the edge of his brain.
Don’t be ridiculous, his brain said, but his heart said, Hey, man, think about it.
Chrysanthemum Gofaintly also felt deeply attracted to Aubergine. Sure, he was the first man she had ever sewn bits of his body back onto and he was the first man she had ever felt sweet thoughts for who didn’t need a haircut and a wash, but there was more to it than that.
He had a strange hypnotic smell and she sensed that beneath his apparently soulless exterior there was the heart of a true romantic. She could see the two of them growing broccoli and radishes together in a little cottage by a beautiful lake while a large number of once sad, lost and lonely puppies scampered playfully in the soft grass biting the heads off tiny lizards. That last bit confused her a little, but she let it pass and concentrated on the organic vegetables.
So Aubergine Wealth sat the lovely Chrysanthemum Gofaintly on his knee and told her everything. He told her not just about teaching at Quicklime College and the Summer School, but everything right back to his earliest memory, which was selling his Lego for eighty-five per cent profit to another child at pre-school. He told her that by recycling his disposable nappies and selling his baby teeth on eBay he had become a millionaire at the age of five and that by the time he was ten he had been a billionaire.
Chrysanthemum Gofaintly was enchanted. Did she think to herself, here was a man who she could save from the mercenary grip of capitalism and lead down the path of inner peace, yoga and Buddhist contentment into a world of the simple country life and living happily ever after? Did she see her future making this lost, wealth-obsessed man realise his full potential in a higher level of meditation, cuddly puppies and organic vegies?
No, she didn’t.
She suddenly realised that she had needs too. Big, unfulfilled needs she had kept locked away in her heart for years.
Stuff the broccoli and radishes, she thought. Stuff the poor defenceless animals. SHOW ME THE MONEY!
And then she realised what the strange, hypnotic smell was. It was a heady, delirious smell that made a vase of roses smell like nothing more than a bunch of flowers. It was the scent of money, rolls of hundred-dollar notes bursting from Aubergine’s every pocket. To the child of penniless hippies all this was a whole new world. The most money Chrysanthemum had ever had in her hands in one go was twelve dollars and she had thought the fact she could buy three chickpea burgers and a litre of wheatgrass all at once had been pretty cool.
Now as Aubergine rose to his feet, he just leaked money everywhere. Notes fluttered around like very big butterflies, only much more beautiful. Chrysanthemum picked them out of the air and buried her face in them. She breathed in the scent of wealth, closed her eyes and sighed as a gentle smile of paradise spread across her face.
Stuff meditation. Stuff Zen Buddhism, she thought. This is pure nirvana.
And you are the most perfect woman in the world, thought Aubergine, who knew the look of money-worship when he saw it.
‘All those years I wasted,’ said Chrysanthemum. ‘All that floaty hippy rubbish, living on tofu and tinkly bells and dopey chanting. When all the time paradise was right here.’
Aubergine thought he had died and gone to heaven. All those years he had spent collecting more and more wealth without stopping for a second to ask himself why. Now he knew. Now he had someone to lavish all his incredibly massive amounts of money on.
‘I don’t suppose,’ he said nervously. ‘I don’t suppose you would consider marrying me, would you?’
‘I would,’ said Chrysanthemum. ‘Have you got all the paperwork?’
‘Yes, the pre-nuptial agreements and contracts.’
‘Do we need all that?’ said Aubergine.
‘I just assumed . . .’ Chrysanthemum began. ‘Do you think Romeo and Juliet had paperwork?’
‘Well, no, but then look what happened to them,’ said Chrysanthemum.
‘No, what I meant was it doesn’t seem very romantic.’
Chrysanthemum knew that Aubergine Wealth loved her more than she could have ever imagined. For someone so staggeringly wealthy to marry someone with no contracts to protect them, they would have to be really, really in love, or stupid, and Chrysanthemum knew that Aubergine was definitely not stupid.
‘Wow,’ she whispered.
‘Of course, there could be a few problems,’ said Aubergine Wealth.
‘Well, of course there could. It’s only to be expected,’ said Chrysanthemum. ‘Two people who have been single for years, suddenly being married. It’s going to take a bit of getting used to for both of us.’
‘No, my beloved, that wasn’t what I meant,’ said Aubergine. ‘I meant that Quicklime College will probably be looking for me. I have seventeen billion dollars or so that they want me to give back to the people I acquired it from.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Chrysanthemum Gofaintly. ‘Did you break the law to get any of it?’
‘Not quite.’
‘Well then, it’s yours to keep and I’m sure any court in the land would support you.’
‘But Quicklime College includes a lot of the most powerful witches and wizards on Earth,’ said Aubergine. ‘They are more powerful than any court and as far as they are concerned, their rules and laws are above any human laws.’
‘Mmm, I see. Well, we’ll have to work out a plan,’ said Chrysanthemum, ‘a plan that does not include giving-it-back options. That is not going to happen.’
Aubergine Wealth knew he had found Miss Right, Ms Right, Mrs Right and Miss Totally Perfect. There had been a nagging thought in the back of his brain that if all else failed, he could always save himself by doing as he had been ordered. It had made him feel better knowing that he had a potential solution if he really needed it, but the thought of losing it all had also given him an upset stomach and a bad headache.
Now his thoughts were all over the place.44 He knew what the Floods were capable of. He had heard of their kinder punishments, such as turning children into refrigerators or feeding them to the partly – but not completely – dead Queen Mother. He had also heard rumours of the punishments no one was supposed to know about, such as turning people into Belgian history teachers and, if that worked, turning them inside-out too. There was even the legendary punishment where they had turned a very evil slum-landlord into a frog in the kitchen of a French restaurant – not just any frog, but one with ninety big, fat, succulent legs. The list of extremely creative punishments the Floods were rumoured to have meted out to bad people was endless and grew even longer than endless every day. He knew that all the really bad ones were only rumours, but imagination is a powerful weapon, especially when you are the potential victim.
On the other hand, he was now suddenly and totally in love so deeply that he thought he might be possibly, perhaps, maybe prepared to give every last cent of his fortune away if he had to. Giving back the rewards he had earned from the Summer School would be small change compared to the rewards of winning Chrysanthemum’s heart.
Well, maybe not all of it, but so much that he would be left with no more than ten or twenty – well, say thirty billion dollars, he thought.
I can’t believe I have these thoughts inside my head, he added, and that I’m even considering them as possibilities.
But he needn’t have worried. As these new thoughts shocked his brain, Chrysanthemum’s brain had also changed dramatically. Step aside, Miss Nice Girl, feeding sardines to little old ladies and helping kittens across the road – Ms Super-Computer-I-Love-Money-Oh-How-I-Love-Money is here. If the little old ladies want sardines, fine, but each one will cost ten dollars, and the kittens will never see the other side of the road. They will see the big fat steamrollers turning them into lovely designer mats to sell in the most exclusive over-priced boutiques. Mmm, that gives me an idea, she thought, looking around the room at all the lovely, happy, cuddly puppies.
Thankfully, there was still enough of the old hippy Chrysanthemum left to scratch the kitty carpets and puppy pillows idea.
Phew, she thought. Money does strange things to a person. A bit like seven very strong espressos, only stronger.
‘So the first thing we must do is find somewhere safe to hide out while we work out the best way to handle all this,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘That is the second thing. The first thing we must do is get married.’
‘And we need to do something with all these puppies,’ said Chrysanthemum. ‘I think travelling with a hundred and twenty-three very excited incontinent baby dogs might draw a bit of attention to us. Could you do a spell and turn them into skylarks? We could just open the window then and they could all fly away to Central Park. Can wizards do that sort of thing?’
‘There are different levels of magic,’ said Aubergine. ‘To change something that’s alive into another life form you need to have the top level – Very Advanced Magic. Unfortunately I’ve only got Middle Level Magic. I can only do magic on inanimate objects and stuff like that.’
‘How do you get Very Advanced Magic? Can you buy it?’
‘No. It’s mainly hereditary. If your parents had it, then you have it when you’re born. The Floods are all like that,’ said Aubergine.45 ‘The only other way is for a Grand Master Wizard to give you an upgrade and, as far as I know, there is only one Grand Master Wizard and no one actually knows where he lives. In fact, most people think he’s simply a myth.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes, but I also think he’s real, a kind of living myth,’ said Aubergine.46
‘If we could find him,’ said Chrysanthemum, ‘could you bribe him or something like that?’
‘The puppies would probably have died of old age before we discovered his secret home and I think anyone who tried to bribe him would end up turned into a small omelette. No, we have to think of something else.’
‘OK. Here’s my suggestion,’ said Chrysanthemum. ‘Everyone loves puppies, but not everyone is prepared to give one a home. However, everyone also loves money and everyone loves chocolate. So if we get big bars of chocolate, wrap them in dollar bills and give them away to anyone who is prepared to take a puppy at the same time, we shouldn’t have any problem re-homing them.’
Although the thought of giving anything away went against everything Aubergine Wealth believed in, he knew that sometimes you actually had to make small investments to get a bigger return. One hundred and twenty-three bars of chocolate he could produce. His magic was powerful enough for that. Then he scooped up one hundred and twenty-three ten-dollar bills and they wrapped each bar of chocolate in one.
They stood outside the building with a big sign that said:
When humans see the word ‘free’ the small sensible bit of their brain switches off. In less than fifteen minutes Aubergine and Chrysanthemum were completely puppy-free. They collected up the rest of the money that had been floating round the room and went down to City Hall to get a marriage licence.
‘You have to wait for at least twenty-four hours before you can get hitched,’ said the clerk. ‘Unless there are special circumstances – then we could marry you straight away. Are there any special circumstances?’
Aubergine leant over, whispered in the clerk’s ear and handed him an envelope.
‘I now pronounce you man and wife,’ said the clerk with a big smile. ‘You may now kiss the bribe . . . oops, sorry. You may now kiss the bride.’
‘What did you say?’ Chrysanthemum Wealth said as they took a taxi to the airport.
‘I asked him if a huge bribe qualified as special circumstances. He said probably. So I gave him the title deeds to the old Summer School puppy shelter apartment block in Manhattan,’ said Aubergine.
VIt wasn’t until they reached the airport that they realised they hadn’t the faintest idea where they were going. They had been so busy with getting married, it had entirely slipped their minds. They sat down in the cafe and wrote out a list in three columns. The first column was places the school would look first, the second column was places the school would look last and the third column was all the other places the school would look. The third column only had one word in it, but it was the biggest problem.
The word was:
Everywhere.
‘So what you’re saying is, there’s not much point in writing anything in the other two columns, because wherever we go, they will come looking,’ said Chrysanthemum.
‘Pretty well,’ said Aubergine. ‘Though I suppose if we could work out the last place they’d look and go there, there’s a remote chance they might get bored and stop looking before they get there.’
‘Is that likely?’
‘Not really, but it’s the best chance we’ve got,’ said Aubergine.
‘Well, the last place I’d look for someone would be right under my nose behind me,’ said Chrysanthemum, ‘or Belgium.’
‘I think I’d rather get caught than go to Belgium,’ said Aubergine. ‘Did you know they’ve got a town called Silly?’
‘I did, actually,’ said Chrysanthemum. ‘When I was a teenager I spent a summer there working as a nanny to a family of Silly bottle makers. I think I agree with you about going back there.’
‘OK, well, that only leaves the option of going right under their noses.’
‘What will they do if they catch us?’
‘I’m not really sure,’ said Aubergine, ‘but it won’t be nice. You have to remember that the Floods are the most powerful wizards in creation.47 I mean, they don’t just make armchairs of puppies float round the room. They could make the whole apartment block where the room is float around and not just around the street, but off around the moon and back, and when it got back the puppies on the armchair in that room on the fifth floor would have changed into sabre-tooth goldfish that breathe fire and speak Welsh.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes, they’ve done it before – and that was just because someone gave them fifty cents short in their change when they bought a cabbage. We’re running away with billions.’
‘So, do you think they’re out looking for you now?’ said Chrysanthemum.
‘Probably not,’ said Aubergine. ‘I reckon they won’t realise I’m missing until school starts next week and I’m not there.’
‘How about lying?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why not just go back to school as if nothing has happened and if they say anything, just say you gave everything to the lady who took over the Summer School building for the Manhattan Home For Lost & Lonely Puppies?’
‘That’s you.’
‘Oh yes, so it is,’ said Chrysanthemum with a big grin.
This was not a cheating grin that meant she was about to rob Aubergine. It was a conspiratorial, naughty grin that meant they were both about to con the Floods, which if it worked would be the first time in history, apart from the time Mordonna’s father, ex-King Quatorze, took over the whole of Transylvania Waters. Compared to that, keeping a few billion dollars didn’t seem so bad.
43 He also kept several gold coins up each nostril and wore origami underpants folded out of a one-million-dollar bank note.
44 Because they were all inside his head, they were not so much all over the place as racing round, tripping over each other and making him dizzy.
45 Apart from Betty, who has a strange version of Very Advanced Magic called Unfortunate Magic, where she can theoretically do very advanced magic, but it often comes out wrong.
46 This was completely accurate.
47 Apart from the Legendary Grand Master Wizard who is so legendary he may not actually exist, or may just be messing with our minds to make us think that he might not exist when he really does, or doesn’t. Or both.