just about to break into song when Ghoolion suddenly said, ‘Well, my blossom, it’s growing late and the journey from Ingotville must have been long and tiring. I shall now show you to your sleeping quarters.’
‘Ingotville?’ thought Echo, but he refrained from saying the word out loud. Izanuela was equally puzzled.
Echo was on his guard. Whenever Ghoolion had conducted him to a remote part of the castle, a nasty surprise had been waiting there. Although the Alchemaster was now under the spell of the love potion, he was still dangerous and unpredictable.
‘I told you that story, my dearest,’ Ghoolion said suddenly, ‘because it bears a certain resemblance to our own.’
‘Really?’ Izanuela looked mystified.
‘Yes, in some respects. Our love, too, began in Ingotville. I also lived there as a young man, then went to another city and became a completely different person. But there the resemblance ends. Our own story has a happy ending.’
The Uggly gave Echo a look of enquiry and shrugged her shoulders. She clearly had no idea what Ghoolion was talking about.
He paused outside a massive door. The frame was of polished steel, the door itself of solid iron. It looked like the entrance to a strongroom. ‘Or a prison,’ thought Echo.
Ghoolion produced a big key from his cloak and unlocked it.
‘Here it is, my blossom,’ he said solemnly. ‘Your bedchamber. I trust you’ll find everything to your satisfaction.’
He pushed the door open and went in. Echo and Izanuela followed.
Echo was flabbergasted. There wasn’t another room like it anywhere in the castle. The walls, floor and ceiling were of rusty iron, the furniture of polished steel trimmed with copper. The chamber was windowless but brightly lit by Anguish Candles. The pictures hanging on the walls in gold and silver frames had probably been painted by Ghoolion himself. They were gloomy views of Ingotville: factory chimneys wreathed in fog, rain beating down on rusty machinery, cogwheels the size of millstones. Even the roses in a vase were made of iron.
‘I want you to feel thoroughly at home,’ Ghoolion said with a smile. ‘Welcome to your new abode, Floria!’
‘FLORIA,’ thought Echo.
FLORIA OF INGOTVILLE …
He had a sudden vision of his late mistress’s grave in the Toadwoods.
‘Floria?’ Izanuela asked in a puzzled tone of voice. Echo gently prodded her foot with a forepaw.
He understood it all now. The love potion’s sweet poison, coupled with the potency of the Cratmint perfume, had deluded Ghoolion into believing that his long-lost love, Echo’s late mistress, had found her way to him at last. Floria of Ingotville … His ideal of feminine beauty, which he’d cherished within him since his youth, had become identified with Izanuela, whom he now regarded as the love of his life.
The Uggly interpreted Echo’s nudge correctly and asked no more questions. ‘This is, er … incredible …’ she said haltingly. Ghoolion smiled.
‘It’s all falling into place now,’ thought Echo. They said love blinded a person, but in this instance it had driven someone mad. Maybe it had all started when he told Ghoolion the story of his mistress’s life, maybe long before that. The Alchemaster had finally flipped. He had told his story in Echo’s words because he believed they were his own. He thought he was face to face with his beloved because he mistook Izanuela for Floria. When he looked in a mirror, perhaps he saw the young man he used to be. Ghoolion’s sick brain had turned time and space, emotion and reason upside down.
‘Up is down and right is wrong,’ thought Echo. Was it the effect of the potion? If so, the potion was probably just the last straw. The Alchemaster had doubtless begun to lose his wits a long time ago.
‘Come now, Echo,’ he said. ‘Floria needs her beauty sleep and we’ve got a big day tomorrow.’
The Last Breakfast
Something was restricting Echo’s breathing when he awoke the next morning. He felt his throat with his forepaws and was horrified to find a chain encircling it. Ghoolion, standing beside his basket, was smiling benevolently down at him.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘Our great day has dawned! The moon is full at last! I hope you’ll understand why I can’t let you roam around at liberty any more, not on such an important occasion. I don’t want to have to go looking for you in the castle’s ventilation system just when I need you most.’
The collar that had been slipped over Echo’s head while he was asleep was composed of links of solid steel, and it was attached