Untitled Starfell #2 (Starfell #2) - Dominique Valente Page 0,11

slightly exasperated.

To the slight relief of her knocking knees, she saw a gnarly finger waving at her from a small hole in the wall opposite. At least it wasn’t a ghost, though the lone finger wasn’t exactly comforting either.

Willow hesitated, then came forward slowly. Kneeling down on the attic floor and putting her hair behind one ear, she peered through the hole. She could just make out a sea-green eye and, when the figure turned, a heavily lined and weathered face framed by long, straggly grey hair. She felt her heart rate return almost to normal. It was just an old man. A wizard, she realised, if he was here.

‘Whatcha in for?’ he said, his blue-green eye wide.

‘Oh. Well, you see, my magic has gone a bit weird—’

The sea-green eye narrowed. ‘How weird?’

‘Um. Very? It’s sort of scrambled, I think. Usually, I find things that are lost, but lately … well, erm, it’s almost as if I’m making them vanish as well.’

The face turned and she saw the wizard head-on. He was even older than she’d first thought, with one eye made of glass, but his expression was curious, and his other eye was clear and full of life. ‘Well, are ya?’

‘Yes. I – I suppose I am,’ said Willow, who, even now, after everything that had happened, was finding it hard to admit that she had been the cause of the missing things. ‘But NOT on purpose.’

‘Ah, that’s the problem, see. If it were on purpose, ya wouldn’t be stuck up here,’ the wizard said with a humourless snort.

Willow couldn’t deny the logic of that. ‘Pimpernell said she’d help …’ This now seemed a bit doubtful. ‘When I met her in the woods, I thought she seemed, well …’

‘Helpful?’ supplied the old wizard with a hollow sort of laugh, as if he knew an unwelcome secret she did not.

‘Yes.’ Willow frowned as she recounted the tale to the wizard. ‘She made it seem like she could help me, but I think she started panicking when I made half of her tower disappear.’

To be fair, Willow thought, panicking did make a bit of sense …

‘The witch means well,’ acknowledged the wizard. ‘The problem is that she can take trying to help to extremes. Especially if she thinks you’re dangerous.’

Willow swallowed. Locking someone up did seem extreme, especially considering the only reason things started to disappear was because Pimpernell kept trying to force Willow to drink that dreadful-smelling tonic.

Suddenly she remembered what Granny Flossy had said, and what her brain had been trying to remember. ‘She’s one of the best healers around, but ’tis hard living on yer own. Especially when you don’ feel accepted by the people around you – a body needs company, and outsiders, to make ’em see wrong from right. It’s not good to only take yer own counsel, and Pimpernell has only been listening to herself fer years …’

Willow stared at the eye in the hole. ‘Do you think she’ll let me out?’

‘Oh. I dunno,’ said the old man, rubbing his chin in thought. ‘Hard to say for sure, but once she’s figured you’re a danger it’ll be hard to persuade her differently.’

‘Oh,’ said Willow, her heart sinking fast.

‘Me name’s Holloway, by the way.’

‘Willow.’

‘Who’s that with ya?’ Holloway asked. ‘Thought I heard someone else.’

‘That’s Oswin. He’s a kobold,’ said Willow, pointing to the hairy green bag behind her.

‘A kobold!’ he gasped, his sea-green eye brightening. ‘Well now, ya don’t see that every day.’ There was silence and Holloway admitted, ‘Not that I can see him now, as he seems to be in a bag, but ya know what I mean.’

There was a low mumble from Oswin about ‘peoples forgetting that not seeing kobolds is the whole points of being the monster from under the bed’ – or monster in the bag as he was more recently known – and then something about cumberworlds.

Willow shrugged at Holloway’s confused look. She was too distracted by the thought of getting out to explain.

She got up and tried the door.

Holloway sighed. ‘I’ve wrecked two chairs and a table trying to break open my door, but nothing works. I think they’ve been charmed shut. And unfortunately—’

‘You can’t undo a charm from the inside,’ said Willow, sitting down in despair. She’d learnt that the hard way too.

‘Yup.’

She took the StoryPass out of her pocket and wasn’t surprised to see that the needle was currently pointing to ‘One Might Have Suspected as Such’.

‘Well, that’s just perfect,’ she sighed.

Still, that didn’t stop Willow trying