Frogspell

An Accidental Spell

The day that Max accidentally discovered the frogspell started like any ordinary day in Castle Perilous. He and his sister, Olivia, were having breakfast late, as usual. Olivia had been trying to teach her pet dragon, Adolphus, a new trick, and Max had been making plans for his new spell. He was still studying his spell book at the dining table while absent-mindedly chewing
a sausage, and Olivia was happily enjoying her second bowl of porridge.

Suddenly their mum, Lady Griselda Pendragon, burst into the dining hall, in a hurry as usual, and tripped over Adolphus.

“Aaarrrghhh!! Drat that dragon! Max! I need my broomstick! Have you been using it again? You know what Dad said last time.”

Max looked up from his breakfast. He couldn’t actually remember what Dad had said last time, but he could make a pretty good guess. Sir Bertram Pendragon was a gruff, burly knight with a large moustache and a deep voice. He liked nothing better than a good flagon of ale and a trusty enemy to whack with his big sword, and he wasn’t fond of wizardry. He considered it cheating. He tolerated Lady Griselda’s witchiness and allowed Max to learn a few spells and potions, but he did not at all approve of letting Max ride a broomstick. It was too girly.

Max sighed. His father had probably threatened to make him sleep in the pigsty if he were
ever caught on it again.

“Max!” said his mother again, loudly. “Did you leave it somewhere?”

Max considered. He’d certainly used the broomstick recently, because he remembered pushing Olivia into the moat with it when they were pretending to be Sir Gawaine and the Black Knight of Doom.

He glanced over at his sister. She was wearing a long green dress and looking demure, but it was misleading. She spent most of her time wrestling with the squires or mucking about in the stables. It was a miracle he’d actually managed to push her in the moat – usually it was the other way round. Max was slight for his eleven years, with light brown hair that fell untidily around his freckled face. And he was not particularly well coordinated, so he usually missed any target he was trying to hit.

Suddenly he remembered where the broomstick was. He’d taken it to fly up to the top of the Bell Tower to rescue Adolphus, who had somehow got himself stuck after chasing the castle cat up there.
Then Adolphus had been too scared to sit on the back of the broom so he’d had to carry him all the way back down the winding staircase.

“I think you’ll find the broom is at the top of the Bell Tower, Mum,” said Max, returning to his toast. “I saw Olivia take it up there when she was playing with her dolls.”

Olivia looked up from her porridge and opened her mouth to protest that this was absolutely not true – she didn’t even possess a doll – and Max was a slimeball But Mum had gone and all that was left in the kitchen was a trail of green smoke.

“You are a big fat liar, Max,” said Olivia, flicking a spoonful of porridge at him. He ducked, and kicked her hard under the table.

“Oww! I’ll get you for that!”

“Just try,” said Max, getting off his chair and heading for the door. “But it’ll have to be later, because I’m busy this morning. Leave me alone or I’ll turn your face purple with my new spell.” And with that he headed off to the Spell Room,
to practise it.

The Spell Room was in the cellar of the castle, down a steep stone stairway with cobwebs swinging gently from the ceiling. Max loved it down there. It was where he got to experiment with cooking up his own spells and potions, and generally where he escaped to avoid sword practice with his father. Last week Sir Bertram had accidentally whacked off a squire’s fingers while demonstrating a particularly tricky manoeuvre, and although Lady Griselda had managed to magic the fingers back on, Max didn’t fancy being the next victim. He had a better plan.

In under a week, the Annual Festival of Magic would take place at Castle Camelot, and Max was determined to have perfected a really spectacular bit of magic for the Novices’ Spell-Making Competition. Apart from the prize money of twenty gold coins, winning this might finally prove to Dad that Max was a natural wizard who should forget about knight school and concentrate on spells. So far, Sir Bertram had resisted all Max’s pleas, insisting that he just
needed to try harder and he’d make a very decent knight. But Max didn’t like horses at all, and the last time he had tried to skewer the practice dummy with a lance he had almost skewered Sir Bertram instead, who was standing twenty yards away.

In general, Max was a lot better at spells than he was at horse riding or swordplay. But the annual Novices’ Competition had not been a lucky one for him so far, mainly due to Adrian Hogsbottom, Max’s worst enemy. He couldn’t remember when Snotty Hogsbottom had first proved himself to be the kingdom’s slimiest toadwart, but it was a long time since either of them had had a civil word for the other. The year before last, Snotty had caused the stage to burst into flames just as Max’s carefully controlled firework spell was coming to a triumphant conclusion. Max had been blamed, and Snotty had won. And Max’s freckled face turned pink just thinking about last year’s competition. He’d tried to magic a bucket to carry water from the castle well but it had simply turned itself upside down and crash-landed on the
examiner’s head. Snotty had won again. This year he really had to get it right.

As Max dabbled and mixed and consulted his spell books, a voice floated down the stairwell.

“Max! I’m off to cook up a spell at Castle Pendennis – Lady Alys wants a beauty potion for the ball tonight Dad’s at the Round Table meeting but Mrs Mudfoot will keep an eye on you.”

“Yeah, okay,” called back Max, concentrating as he added a scattering of silver dragonfly wings to the cauldron and watched blue steam rise up to the ceiling. Mrs Mudfoot was the castle cook. She had twenty chins and twice as many hairy warts, and was always looking for an excuse to put Max in one of her cooking pots and make him into a tasty stew. He made a mental note to keep well out of her way.

“Be good – look after Olivia! And don’t cause any trouble!”

“Yes, yes, fine!” called Max impatiently, waiting for the right moment to add the slivers of river’s root.

As Mum left, he turned back to the mixture in the cauldron, which was starting to smell like dirty feet. Perfect! As he added the slivers one by one, he didn’t notice Olivia creeping down the stone stairs to lurk in the darkest corner of the cellar.

When the last sliver of river’s root had been added, the mixture turned purple and started to smell like buttery crumpets.

“Yes!” Max punched the air, then looked at the spell book again. “Now it’s just the snails’ toenails.” He looked round the room for the jar and spotted a shadow in the corner by the shelves. It looked suspiciously like Olivia. Max moved a bit closer. It was Olivia.

“Olivia! What are you doing here?! I told you to leave me alone this morning! You’re asking to be spelled!”

“Yeah, right,” said Olivia, unimpressed. “Like last time, when you tried to make my nose grow onger and all that happened was I sneezed twice. Big scare, Max.”

Max narrowed his eyes. “For your information, Snotface, I didn’t try to make your nose grow longer, I just said I was going to, so you’d go away. But this time I really will turn you purple if you don’t leave me in peace.”

“Well, I don’t think that would be a very good idea seeing as Mum said you had to look after me. And besides, I thought you said something about needing snails’ toenails to finish the spell?” Olivia held up a dark-blue glass jar that she’d been concealing behind her dress and looked smug.

“Olivia! Give me that!” said Max crossly. Honestly! Olivia was such a pest! All he wanted was a little peace and quiet to finally get this spell right for the competition. It wasn’t much to ask, surely?

Olivia considered this, looking at the jar in her hands.

“I’ll give it to you, Max, if you promise to come and show me that disarming manoeuvre Dad taught you yesterday,” she said.

Max groaned. Sword practice with Olivia was
always a painful affair. If he wasn’t skewering his own foot, she was doing it for him. Neither of them was very good – Olivia because she wasn’t actually allowed to use a sword at all, Max because he was just naturally talentless. But Olivia insisted on getting all the practice she could and she was getting relentlessly better.

“Okay,” he sighed. “Now hand over the jar, quick.”

He strode across the room to get the jar of snails’ toenails. But as he reached out for it, Olivia spotted his pet rat, Ferocious, poking his head out from the top of Max’s tunic.

“Max! You’re not allowed to have Ferocious down here! Mum told you!” she said accusingly. “He’s disgusting anyway, he’s probably got fleas…”

Ferocious, offended, jumped out at Olivia, who fended him off with one hand but missed, and whacked Max instead. Max overbalanced and, throwing out his arms as he fell, swept a tall green jar off the nearby shelf. There was an awful crash, as the jar
shattered, and little bouncy balls of bat’s-
squeak-breath
flew across the room.

Max, sprawled on the floor, watched in horror as three blue balls bounced right into the cauldron and sank into the purple liquid. There was a moment’s pause, and then

BANG!

The contents of the cauldron exploded and dollops of sticky, blue gunk flew around the cellar. One landed on Max, one landed on Olivia and one landed on Ferocious. They barely had time to blink when the room went all shivery and strange and seemed to grow rather larger.

Olivia was now a purple frog with red spots. Ferocious was a red frog with purple spots. And Max was an extremely angry-looking orange frog with bright blue spots.