Wheedle couldn’t get the Kavanaghs out by himself. He needed help. A lot of help. He left Sam’s family with promises to return and the cavern far behind him.
He sniffed his way along the exit tunnel in the direction of home, picking up the scent of the escaped rabbit as he went. The bunny had got itself turned around a few times. Its smell came from everywhere as it headed all over the place. Wheedle might have missed it, if the rabbit hadn’t been so tired and intent on digging a burrow for a kip.
He was impressed the bunny had managed to get this far.
Wheedle snuck closer. The half-asleep creature made an occasional scrape at the ground, its fluffy rump sticking out, its ears deep inside the burrow, which meant even a half-tonne gargoyle could sneak up on it.
‘Gotcha!’ Wheedle said as he grabbed the animal. He almost lost hold as the terrified creature twisted and turned in his hoofs, but eventually Wheedle got a steady grip. ‘Don’t worry, little one, you’re not my idea of a snack.’ It was so light and small, the gargoyle wondered why the ogres had any interest in it at all. Perhaps just for the chase. It would explain why they gave up.
Wheedle reached to his full height and looked at the bars. The rabbit wiggled against his chest, hissing and squealing. If the gargoyle had been made of anything but stone, the fierce little creature would have scratched him to shreds, but Wheedle waited until the rabbit gave up, panting and puffing, and settled.
Wheedle carried it with him to the drain opening and lifted it to the outside world. It went rigid as it passed through the bars. As small as its head was, it couldn’t go through the gap without monster magic to help it. It calmed as it saw morning light, and Wheedle placed it gently on the pavement outside. As soon as the gargoyle let it go, it raced to the nearest shrubbery, the hum of its bewildered heart quicker than its feet.
‘No, that’s fine, you’re welcome,’ Wheedle called after it. ‘Don’t mention it. My pleasure.’
He pulled himself out, the rest of the bars fading through him like mist.
The day was overcast, an early winter grey, and he stared up and down the street before tiptoeing back to the Kavanagh house.
He heard the sound of flapping wings and Daniel landed.
‘The house is all but empty,’ the angel said.
‘Down in The Hole. Maggie’s got ’em. We’ve gotta get ’em out. Where’s Sam? If he’s still out on the sea, he needs …’
But the angel was gone.
‘Well, that’s helpful,’ Wheedle muttered.
He had no time to think about it, because a taxi pulled up.
He froze, pretending he was a doorstop. Sam jumped out and, as soon as the car door closed, the taxi squealed off.
Wheedle raced to the kerb and snuffled at Sam’s face.
Bladder came sprinting up the empty streets towards them both and Wheedle rubbed noses with the stone lion too.
‘You’re both back,’ Wheedle said. ‘Oh my goodness, do I have a lot to tell you.’
‘Not as much as we have to tell you,’ Bladder replied.
Sam walked up to the door and turned the knob. It was locked. He patted his pockets, then groaned. ‘I didn’t take keys.’
The door swung open. Spigot stood in the entrance with Beatrice under one wing and Nugget hanging off his neck. ‘Squark!’ he said.
Nugget hung from the eagle’s neck and lobbed herself on to Wheedle’s back, and little Beatrice held up a chubby fist to Sam.
‘Tham, Tham!’
‘Hello, baby.’ Sam took her from Spigot and the eagle flopped on the floor.
‘I know exactly how you feel,’ Wheedle said.
Sam peered around, listening to the quiet in the rest of the house.
‘They’re gone,’ he said.
‘That’s what I needed to tell you,’ Wheedle replied.
‘Well, it sounds like we’ve all had an adventure,’ Bladder said. ‘I wondered why Chicken Breath flew off so quickly. He’s always going off and abandoning Sam.’ Bladder nudged Wheedle. ‘I said, “He’s always going off and abandoning Sam.”’
Wheedle didn’t reply. He just stared at Nugget. Bladder understood. She looked worn, like an age-old gargoyle left out for centuries to weather storms and battles. She didn’t look like a gargoyle who was only a few months old.
Bladder sighed. ‘It’s getting worse, isn’t it?’
At least Nugget was asleep. Bladder wondered if it was because she was falling apart. The Kavanaghs slept more when they ‘came down with something’. Beatrice watched the baby gargoyle on the makeshift bed in the middle of the kitchen floor, but Spigot was doing a wonderful job of distracting her with biscuits and occupying himself at the same time. The pair left a pile of crumbs on the tiles.
Bladder remembered the little siren. Its sweet face. It was small too, like it needed to grow. He wondered if it too would start falling apart.
Sam had been watching Nugget as well. His face creased and twisted in a very human way. ‘I’m so sorry, Wheedle,’ the boy said.
Bladder put a paw on the boy’s knee. ‘It’s not your fault, Sam. You didn’t mean to hatch her and you couldn’t have known that …’
‘… she would fall apart,’ Wheedle finished. He shook his head. ‘No, you couldn’t, Sam. You can’t blame yourself for any of this.’
Sam’s face didn’t change expression. Bladder felt for him. Sam had enough on his plate without feeling guilty about Nugget.
‘Maybe if I had some fairy dust I could do something for Nugget.’
‘Well, we need to get the Kavanaghs back. If we achieve that,’ Bladder said, ‘then getting some fairy dust should be simple.’ He tried to sound sprightly, but he knew he looked as wretched as the rest of them; even Spigot, who had a beak full of biscuits. Bladder didn’t feel like biscuits himself.
‘I don’t understand,’ Sam said. ‘Maggie promised she’d leave me alone, she said …’
‘She said she had nothing to do with the sea calling to the children, but she was behind it all the time,’ Bladder finished. ‘It was a distraction, to pull you away from the house so that she could kidnap the Kavanaghs – or something worse. It was a way to get you to go back to her. First, she tried sugar, now she’s trying spice. We should have realised.’
‘Sam,’ Wheedle said. ‘She organised to have thousands of kids drowned, just to get at you. If Amphitrite hadn’t stepped in, who knows what would have happened. I suspect Maggie meant for you to have no one else at all. Just her.’
Tears wove a path down Sam’s face. ‘If I hadn’t sneezed, she wouldn’t have any reason to do this.’
‘We have Nugget,’ Wheedle said. ‘You hadn’t sneezed, we wouldn’t have Nugget.’
‘We won’t even have Nugget anyway.’
Bladder rubbed Sam’s back with a gentle paw. ‘It’s not your fault, Sam. Not a bit of it. An’ look at you. You should be proud of yourself. You saved every single one of those kids. Every. Single. One. If you can do that, you can save your family. What’s three more, hey? I won’t have any of this blub-blubbing.’
‘But I don’t know how we’re going to get them back,’ Sam said. He put his head in his hands. Beatrice sat at Spigot’s feet and threw sparkles across the room at Sam. He didn’t hit any of them back.
Bladder desperately tried to find something cheerful to say.
‘It’ll have to be sneaky,’ Wheedle said. ‘A night raid.’
‘A night raid? In the Great Cavern? Where it’s always dark?’ Sam asked. ‘You need to join a spy agency, you do.’
Bladder winced. It wasn’t like Sam to make barbed remarks. That was Bladder’s job, but he didn’t feel like having a go at Wheedle.
The stone bull put his snout between his hoofs.
‘I’m so sorry, Wheedle, that was a mean thing to say,’ Sam said.
‘No, you’re right. It is a stupid idea. We gotta think better. She’s failed at drowning the kids, so she’ll be desperate. She’s got the Kavanaghs to get you down there. She’ll be expecting you, an’ there’re thousands of monsters working with her. You go to The Hole, you need to go ready to battle. An’ there’s only four of us.’
‘Maybe we can get them to come up here?’ Sam said. ‘Trick Maggie into bringing them back? I could …’
‘What? Agree to parley with her?’ Bladder asked. ‘She’s a liar and a trickster. She’ll say whatever you want to hear, but we know exactly what she wants. She wants you to hatch all those beans, and you know how many there are. Millions. She’ll be picky too, piling up all the ogre beads and leaving the rest.’
‘But …’ Sam started, and looked at Nugget.
Bladder understood. He remembered the little siren and said, ‘I’ve told you before, the first hatches of any ogre king have been off in some way. I remember the story of Thunderguts. It took him months before he could hatch even one. Your hatches will probably end up being stronger than his.’
‘That doesn’t help Nugget,’ Sam muttered.
‘The point is, you will get better at it. It’s what Maggie’ll believe, and when you do, if you start hatching them for her, it won’t just be the death of humanity, it’ll be the end of gargoyles. And pixies, and sprites. All the little ones. She don’t need us. Even Thunderguts was better than her. He was king of the ogres, but he breathed on anything. He woke all the monsters.’
‘What’s that noise?’ Wheedle asked.
It sounded like a crowd coming up from Brighton. The hum was a long way off, but maybe that’s what it was.
‘Probably all them parents bringing their kids home,’ Bladder said out loud.
Sam heard steps and a clipping come up the Kavanagh steps and someone knocked. From the next garden Hoy Poy barked, and a dog in the distance replied.
Sam ran to open the front door. ‘Great-Aunt Colleen! Uncle Paddy!’ He hugged the old lady and the not-so-old man.
Great-Aunt Colleen hobbled in, leaning on her walking stick, and headed towards the kitchen. Uncle Paddy came in behind her, carrying two small cases. Sam padded along behind them.
‘I’ll just pop these here then, shall I?’ Uncle Paddy said. ‘Where’s your ma? You’ll be putting on the kettle, won’t … ?’
The old lady did not even blink when she saw the gargoyles, but Uncle Paddy stood in the doorway with his mouth so far open Bladder considered throwing peanuts into it.
‘Well, it must be a bit of a to-do if you’re willing to be seen up and laughin’,’ Great-Aunt Colleen said to Bladder.
‘You’re tellin’ me,’ he replied.
‘Sam, make your uncle a coffee. Make it extra strong. I think he’s just lost his marbles.’ Great-Aunt Colleen sat at the kitchen table. ‘So, you have a story or two to tell, I’m guessing.’
Wheedle sat and listened as Sam and Bladder related their adventures at sea. Their story didn’t take as long the second time. They only needed to give the old lady the highlights. But Sam wanted him to go into detail about what had happened to the Kavanaghs. It was what they had to deal with next. Bladder, Sam and the old lady nodded at the right bits and asked him questions to make him go over certain parts, sometimes making him draw things.
While they talked, Wheedle couldn’t stop glancing at the man Sam had called Uncle Paddy. Paddy stared blankly at Nugget sleeping on Sam’s lap. It gave Wheedle the creeps.
‘Well,’ Great-Aunt Colleen said once they’d finished up, ‘you have two plans then. Either raid the Great Cavern and get caught in the process or offer to parley. You know what she’ll want you to do to get your family back, so that seems an awful option too, but it might be your only choice.’
Wheedle worked hard to follow the conversation. He could hear a parade. It sounded like a parade, anyway. A great lot of people marching. He pinched himself to pay attention.
‘… and increase her army,’ Sam was saying. ‘She has a huge army.’
‘An’ you don’t.’ Great-Aunt Colleen sipped her tea. ‘Looks to me, we have to come up with a plan that doesn’t involve you needing an army too.’
‘Gargoyles,’ said Uncle Paddy, and drooled in his coffee.
Wheedle whispered to Bladder, ‘I think we’ve broken him. We better send him home. If he can’t handle gargoyles, he’s gonna be completely useless for what comes next.’
Bladder grinned. ‘Actually, I’m enjoying the effect myself. It’s been ages since a human’s looked at me like that.’ He glanced at the window again. ‘That crowd sounds close.’
For the second time in an hour someone knocked on the front door.
Great-Aunt Colleen stared at the dribbling man. ‘Paddy, go and see who it is now.’
Uncle Paddy staggered up the stairs, taking a good look at the group in the kitchen as he left. ‘Ahh,’ was all he said.
Great-Aunt Colleen studied the sad faces around her. ‘It seems we need to be putting our heads together and coming up with a better idea, right?’
Another knock, and Wheedle heard creaking hinges.
‘Paddy, who is it?’ Great-Aunt Colleen asked.
They heard a thump; the sound of a body hitting the floor.
‘What is wrong with that boy?’ The old lady sighed.