angry with herself, and sorry about the powder, and very confused thinking about Floralinda, easing trousers off those smoking corpses.
“Perhaps you shall be home for Christmas,” Cobweb ventured; which she had never imagined ever coming true.
“I hope so,” said Floralinda sleepily, under a pile of trousers, shirts and a vest; “only I wish I could write ahead and tell nobody to get me gloves; I can’t possibly be my old size in them, so it would be a waste, and I would be obliged to give them away. I think everyone should give me chocolates instead. This year I won’t say, ‘Oh, chocolates, but I shouldn’t’ and only take one; I will say ‘Thank you very much’ and eat them all.”
At this heresy, Cobweb was more discomfited than ever.
Flight Sixteen-Fifteen-Fourteen
The spider venom, which had been losing potency ever since the siren, stopped being much use at all. Floralinda and Cobweb were obliged to keep re-coating the spear mid-battle with the hippogriff, which was a dangerous stunt. The paralytic had kept better than anything else. It made the monsters easier to kill, but meant that Floralinda had to do the nasty job of killing them herself once they were paralyzed. She found that this became a great deal easier after a while. There were places on the body—even bodies so varied as all the creatures in that tower!—more vulnerable than others, and if the creature had a heart or brain, that was a good spot to aim for. She put one of Cobweb’s sharp new knives to good purpose. Happily, it was more often the case that the paralytic made the animal choke on its tongue, and die; this happened with one of the lion’s heads, but did not happen to the other, and Cobweb ended up treating Floralinda’s leg when the lion got it with its claws.
“More ugly than fatal, I think,” said Floralinda that evening, trying to be cheerful, which is difficult when your thigh has claw-marks, and is being washed with hot water while you sit in a blanket and try to bear it. “Cobweb, dear, you are becoming a very good nurse; I do think you’re wasted on the children who don’t know anything, and living in bottoms of gardens.”
Cobweb loved being flattered, but simply remarked gloomily that princesses had constitutions most horses would die for.
“I wish that the chimaera had not been part-lion, part-goat and part-snake,” said Floralinda pensively, “because you can only really eat one of those parts. If it had been part-cow, part-chicken and part-deer, that would have been wonderful. Don’t you think?”
“Sometimes I think you are enjoying this,” said Cobweb.
“Don’t be so horrid,” said Floralinda.
Flight Thirteen-Twelve-Eleven
The Strix was a great silvery owl as big as a man, with a wicked beak and crimson eyes unlike any owl who lives in the forest. It was an ugly, malign brand of that obscure bird, and had sat thinking vicious thoughts for all of late summer and autumn too. When Floralinda came down to flight eleven, it hid in a corner and closed its eyes, and for a moment she thought that the flight was empty.
“Perhaps whatever was in here has gone away,” she said wistfully; “I do wish more of them had done the useful thing and jumped out a window, or eaten themselves.”
“Be careful, and be cautious,” warned Cobweb, without even bothering to correct Floralinda on whether or not something could eat itself. “I don’t halfway like this; something’s in here with us.”
Floralinda held the lamp up higher. The eyes of the Strix flamed open, and she was dazzled by the flame, so for a moment she did not know what she was looking at. Then the Strix exploded out of its corner with a great flap of its grey wings—it extended its wicked talons out before it, striped yellow and black like a wasp—and Floralinda threw herself bodily out of the way. All that running up and down stairs had not been for naught. She rolled over and over on the cold stones of flight eleven, Cobweb rolling with her. Floralinda raised her spear up before her as the Strix swept down on her, trying to keep it at a distance, and the Strix hopped back and forth as Floralinda threatened it with that venomous spear-tip. It could see that the weapon was wet, and it was an intelligent creature, and thought that it was better safe than sorry.
This was Floralinda’s chance to press an attack. She got to her feet with Cobweb