The Ghastly Exchange – Episode 14
With my heart thundering like a steam hammer, I pushed myself up on all fours and almost fainted at the spear of agony which erupting from my throbbing ankle.
The pain faded and I looked around for my crutch, but couldn’t see it. It must have fallen into the long grass at the roadside.
“Grimmon!” I shouted, my head spinning. “Find my stick! Help me stand up! We don’t have much time!”
He didn’t answer. I looked behind me.
The road was empty. There was no sign of the goblin.
“Grimmon?” I said, looking around. “Where the–”
I broke off when a movement on the viaduct caught my eye. Grimmon, running hell for leather, was nearly all the way across it. In seconds he would be at the castle’s gate.
My blood boiled. “Traitor!” I howled. “You can’t leave me like this!”
He gave no sign he’d heard me, and as the aura of magic surrounding the castle expanded a little and grew more intense, he reached the gate and vanished inside.
Seething with outrage, I shuffled on hands and knees as fast as I could along the road after him.
The hard-packed dirt was like sandpaper scraping at my skin. I tried to ignore the stabs of pain exploding from my sprained ankle with each lurch of my hips, and kept my gaze fixed on the castle – my home! – on the far side of the moat.
I panted with effort, pushing myself forward with every ounce of strength I could muster.
Luminous clouds of red, blue, and green streamed out of the castle’s aura, swooping and billowing around the ancient walls as the great world-hopping spell built towards a crescendo.
My guts clenched. At the pace I was going, there was no way I would make it to the castle before the spell completed. Even so, desperation; panic; fear – call it what you will – spurred me on. Gasping and whimpering, I scrambled onward.
The dirt of the road under my hands gave way to the stone of the viaduct and my heart leapt. All I needed to do was scurry across it and I’d be home.
But, at that moment, the clouds of magic shot outwards, expanding in swirls of translucent colours that swept over the moat.
I was too late. The spell was a heartbeat from completion and I was still outside the castle.
Wailing like a lost soul, I flopped to the ground, my head on the viaduct and my body on the road.
Red and blue cloud flowed over the viaduct and covered my head. A deafening roar shook my bones. My brain jiggled about in my skull like a die in a cup.
I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears with my hands.
It didn’t help. I couldn’t shut out the roaring. Worse, I knew I was lying on hard ground – I could feel it pressing into my cheek, my chest, and my knees – but what my inner eye saw was terrifyingly different: I was falling through a seething shroud of green fog.
With a bang like a slamming door, the noise shut off and the fog vanished. I could feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing.
I was a bodiless speck floating in a cold, black void.
A distant spark appeared in the emptiness. Like a mote of dust in a gale, helpless to stop myself or change direction, I accelerated towards it.
It grew larger and larger as I sped closer, taking on colour and form until it resolved into a whirlpool of dark green vaporous strands.
Powerless to do anything but watch in horror, I plunged into the hole in its centre like mouse dropping down a dragon’s gaping maw.
I slowed and came to a halt. The spinning green mass around me faded to black.
Feeling returned.
My body tingled with pins and needles. Breath shuddered into my lungs. Blood stirred sluggishly in my veins.
I was lying on my back on a soft surface. My hands clutched at something warm laid over me.
I sat up.
I was sitting on a bed, the pale half-light of predawn seeping in through a window in the wall opposite me.
Was I dreaming? I pinched myself and yelped at the pain. I wasn’t asleep and my eyes weren’t fooling me… The bed was mine. The hands clasping the blankets were mine, not Igor’s.
Could it be true? Was I really back in my home? Really back in my own body?
Trembling with excitement, I got out of bed and went to the mirror next to my wardrobe. Even in the dim light it was plain that every inch of the virile, manly figure – wearing tasteful burgundy pyjamas – reflected in the mirror was me.
The light grew brighter. I rushed to the window and gasped with joy as I looked out. The rooftops and battlements of Castle Silverhill gleamed in the rays of the rising sun.
My mouth dropped open. How was all this possible?
The mind-swap device was a world away, sitting on a table in Virrellenta’s house…
Could the castle’s powerful world-hopping spell have undone the ghastly effects of the device? It must have… What other explanation was there?
Inside the castle’s walls, most of us were so accustomed to the mild sensations caused by the spell we were barely aware of them.
But this time I had been at the spell’s outer edge, at the far end of the viaduct…
When the castle had been in the process of moving to the next world, I’d been shaken, deafened and blinded by an awful turbulence. Was that what had torn my mind from Igor’s body and returned it to its rightful home? And, I imagined, returned Igor’s mind to his body at the same time?
I didn’t know. But, at that moment, the how wasn’t important.
What did matter, though, was that I was back and had to get rid of a vampire. But first I needed to find out what had happened since said vampire and Igor had arrived at the castle.
Igor, pretending to be me, would have vouched for Virrellenta, and I had no doubt she would have charmed any doubters into accepting her. Of course, she would have omitted to tell them who she really was.
I sat on the end of my bed and thought furiously.
My stomach rumbled and I bounced to my feet.
Deciding what to do could wait until after breakfast.
Humming a cheery tune, I changed into my morning attire and headed for the kitchen.
*** Continued in episode 15 ***
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