The Sword in the Grotto (2 page)

T
he next morning Aunt Tabby yelled up to our Saturday bedroom, “Uncle Drac's back from the hospital. Two broken legs, nothing to worry about.”

I jumped out of bed and looked through the small trapdoor. Aunt Tabby was standing at the bottom of the rope ladder in the corridor below.

“Two broken legs?” I said. “But that's awful, Aunt Tabby.”

“Better than having three, dear,” she said briskly. “Drac's resting in the broom closet. I want both of you to be very quiet this morning and leave him in peace.”

Wanda sat up in bed with her hair sticking up like it always does. “Why is he in the broom closet?” she asked. “Shouldn't he be in bed?”

“Uncle Drac doesn't have a bed, silly,” I told her. “He sleeps in his sleeping bag in the bat turret.”

“Why?” asked Wanda, rubbing her eyes.

“I don't know. Because he likes being with his bats, I suppose. Come on, let's go and see him.”

“But Aunt Tabby said—”

“Duh,” I told her. “You don't want to take any notice of what Aunt Tabby says. Come on, Wanda. Get up.” And I pulled her duvet off.

The broom closet is downstairs by the back door. Barry's frogs were waiting for him outside, and we could hear Barry's voice coming from the closet. He was arguing with Uncle Drac.

“I don't know why you're making such a fuss, Drac,” he was saying grumpily. “I told you, I'm going in a minute.”

“You promised me you'd deliver it last night,” Uncle Drac complained.

“No I didn't,” said Barry. “I promised I'd deliver it. I didn't say I'd take the wretched stuff there at midnight. That's ridiculous, Drac.”

“It is
not
ridiculous,” Uncle Drac growled. “I always deliver it at night. I've been doing it for years. That's when Old Morris expects it, and that's when the mushrooms like it.”

“How can you possibly know what mushrooms like?” Barry asked.

“I understand mushrooms,” said Uncle Drac. “Me and mushrooms have a lot in common. We both like dark and peace and quiet. Now go away, close the door, and leave me alone.”

Barry stomped out of the broom closet and nearly trod on one of his frogs. “I wouldn't go in there,” he said to us. “He's in a really bad mood. Would anyone like to take a trip to the mushroom farm? I could use some help.” He scooped up his frogs and put them in his pocket.

“I'll come, Dad,” said Wanda, and she ran off without even bothering to see how Uncle Drac was.

I pushed open the door to the broom closet and peered in. It was really dark and gloomy in there. Aunt Tabby had put a blanket over the tiny window to keep the light out, as Uncle Drac doesn't like daylight very much. I slipped into the closet and closed the door behind me. All I could see were Uncle Drac's two white plaster casts propped up on a footstool, but Uncle Drac, who can
see really well in the dark said, “Hello, Minty. You can put the light on if you like. I may as well get on with my knitting.”

“
Knitting
, Uncle Drac?” I was a bit shocked. I didn't know Uncle Drac liked knitting.

“Knitting stops people from moaning—according to Tabby,” Uncle Drac said gloomily. He waved a pair of knitting needles and a ball of green yarn at me. “I'd watch it if I were you, Minty. One moan, and she'll have you knitting a scarf too.”

I looked at the green muddle of wool on Uncle Drac's knitting needles. “Is that a
scarf
, Uncle Drac?” I asked.

“Of course it's a scarf. Can't you tell?” And then he said, “Minty, would you do me a favor?”

“Of course, Uncle Drac.”

“Would you go into the bat turret and see if Big Bat is…squashed?”

“Squashed, Uncle Drac?”

“Er, yes. I fell on him last night. And I couldn't see him anywhere when Tabby and Barry got me out.”

“Well then, I expect he
is
pretty squashed,” I said. “Squished, even. You are quite heavy, Uncle Drac. And
really
heavy compared to a bat.”

Uncle Drac groaned.

“Are your legs hurting?” I asked him.

“Big Bat, Minty, Big Bat. Go and find him, will you?”

I didn't reply right away, as I had just seen something rather interesting. A pair of pointy metal feet were sticking out from underneath
a pile of coats—I had found out where Sir Horace was hiding! I decided not to say anything to Sir Horace, as I didn't want him to disappear again. I figured if he thought that no one knew where he was, he would stay put.

I left Uncle Drac to his knitting and went to find Big Bat. I didn't want to go and find Big Bat, as I am not that keen on squashed bats myself, and Big Bat would be an awful lot of squashed bat. But I knew that, knitting or not, Uncle Drac would keep asking me about it until I did.

 

When I got down to the bat poo hatch, I found four sacks of bat poo leaning up against the wall—Barry and Wanda were busy getting Uncle Drac's delivery ready. Uncle Drac
runs Drac's Bats. He delivers sacks of bat poo fertilizer to farms, but the bat poo business had not being doing too well lately and Uncle Drac only had one customer left, the Morris Mushroom Farm down by the beach.

I took a deep breath and crawled into the bat poo tunnel. When I got to the top, it was hard to see much. There were bats flying around everywhere, and bat poo was falling like rain.

Barry and Wanda were just filling the last sack. Wanda held the sack open with one hand while holding up a big umbrella in her other hand to keep the showers of poo off her.

“Do you want some help?” I asked.

“Oh, thanks a lot,” said Wanda snappily,
“but Dad and I have finished now.”

Barry put the last shovelful of poo into the sack, then he and Wanda dragged it down to join the other four in the corridor. I had a quick look for Big Bat, but I couldn't see a thing. Everything was covered with a new layer of poo, and it had all been trampled by Wanda and Barry. Big Bat, I decided, was probably history. But I didn't
want to go and tell Uncle Drac that. Not yet, anyway.

“Right,” said Barry as I crawled out of the bat poo door, “let's get these sacks into the van.”

Barry had driven Uncle Drac's van around to the back door. Wanda and Barry heaved the sacks in, and I told them where to put them. Then Barry and Wanda got in the van. Wanda slammed the door, and Barry started up the engine.

“Hey, what about me?” I banged on Wanda's window.

Wanda rolled down the window. Barry's stupid frogs were sitting next to her. “There's no room in here,” she said.

“Yes there is. I can sit where the frogs are.”

“No you can't, you'll squash them. You can
go in the back if you want to come,” Wanda answered.

“You must be joking,” I told her.

“Minty, is that you?” I heard Uncle Drac's voice coming from the broom closet. “Minty, have you found Big Bat?
Minty
?”

I opened the back door of the van and jumped in. I soon wished I hadn't. The smell was
disgusting
.

I
t was totally horrible in the back of Uncle Drac's van.

The trouble was, Barry and Wanda had shoveled up the wrong kind of bat poo. Uncle Drac always uses the old dry stuff, but they had put new stuff in the sacks. Which is not nice.

The even worse trouble was that Barry is not a good driver. He doesn't like other cars,
and every time he sees one he slams on the brakes. Or speeds up really fast to get away from it. In about two seconds flat, I felt very sick. I leaned against the yucky, squidgy sacks and groaned—and one of the squidgy sacks poked me in the ribs.

“Ow!” I yelled. I was so surprised that I jumped up and hit my head on the roof.

“Ouch!”

So I sat down fast and landed on the sack, which squeaked loudly. Just then the van went around a corner really fast and all the sacks slid over to the side, taking me with them. The pokey sack tipped over and spilled bat poo out all over the floor. It spilled out something else, too—Big Bat.

Big Bat is like Uncle Drac, which is why they get along so well. He is a grumpy old bat
who does not like being messed up—and seeing as Big Bat had recently been messed up big-time, I left him alone. He shook out his wings and then waddled over to the farthest corner of the van, hunched himself up, and looked mad. I understood how he felt.

I was really glad that I had found Big Bat. Just as I was thinking how pleased Uncle Drac would be, Barry slammed on the brakes
and the van skidded to a halt. Big Bat, me, and all the sacks slid up to the front of the van. We had arrived at the mushroom farm.

Barry opened the doors and I fell out, gasping for fresh air.

“You've made an awful mess in there,” Wanda said disapprovingly as I staggered to a patch of grass and threw myself to the ground.

“Me?” I wheezed. “
I've
made a mess?”

But Wanda, who is
meant
to be my best friend, showed no sympathy for the fact that I was possibly breathing my last breath. She just stomped off and went to help Barry get the sacks out of the van. Then Barry started shoveling all the poo back into the spilled sack—and I remembered Big Bat, who was sulking in the corner of the van.

The back of that van was the last place I wanted to be, but I got in and rescued Big Bat just as Barry was about to shovel him back into the sack. Then I took Big Bat out and put him somewhere he would be safe—I hung him from the rearview mirror. The frogs did not look pleased.

The mushroom farm was a weird place—it looked like a load of old ruins with a few ramshackle sheds in the middle where the mushrooms lived. There was no one about. It was a bit creepy.

“You're looking very pale, Araminta,” said Barry, who is a thoughtful person, unlike his daughter. “Why don't you and Wanda go and take a run on the beach while I go and find Old Morris.”

The lane from the mushroom farm led to
a low cliff. Wanda and I climbed down some old wooden steps and ran onto the beach. The tide was far out, and there was lots of wet sand to throw at Wanda. She soon got tired of that, though, and went off to look at the caves at the foot of the cliffs.

There is an old story that they are smugglers' caves and that one of them leads to our house. Once I asked Aunt Tabby if that was true, but she just said that you shouldn't believe everything you hear and why would smugglers want to come all the way to
our
house when there are plenty of houses nearer the beach? Why smugglers would want to come to a house with Aunt Tabby in it was more to the point, I thought. They would be just asking for trouble.

Wanda had disappeared into a small cave.
I waited for her to come out, but she didn't. It was boring on the beach on my own, so after a while I went to see what she was doing.

The cave was very narrow and smelled like seaweed. It had a sandy floor and a high, rocky roof. I looked around for Wanda, but she wasn't there. I thought maybe she was hiding and planning to jump out at me, but I couldn't see anywhere to hide.

“Wanda!” I called out. “Hey, Wan-
da
.”

“Wanda Wanda Wanda Wan-
da
,” echoed back at me.

I walked farther into the cave and switched on my flashlight (Uncle Drac gave me a key ring flashlight for my birthday, and I always carry it just in case). I thought maybe Wanda was lurking somewhere in the shad
ows. Wanda does that sometimes because she thinks it's funny—which it is not—so I shone the flashlight everywhere. But there was no sign of Wanda, and soon I had reached the end of the cave. Where was she?

“Boo!” yelled Wanda. She suddenly jumped right out in front of me. “Ha-ha, got you, got you!”

“Don't
do
that,” I told her. “Where
were
you?”

Wanda looked really pleased with herself. “I was up there,” she said, pointing up to the ceiling of the cave.

“Don't be silly, Wanda. How could you get up there?”

“Come on, I'll show you,” she said, switching on
her
flashlight. Wanda is such a copycat sometimes.

I had been so busy expecting Wanda to jump out at me that I had not noticed some narrow steps cut into the wall of the cave. I followed Wanda up to a small ledge at the top. There was just about enough room for us both, but most of it was taken up by a massive pile of rocks that reached right up to the roof of the cave.

Wanda was really excited. “Look what I've found,” she said. She shone her flashlight through a narrow chink in the rocks, and I peered in. At first I couldn't see what Wanda was on about, but then, as she wiggled the flashlight beam around, I could see the light glinting off some metal.

“It's a sword,” said Wanda.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I've been looking at it forever. I'm
sure
it
is. Go on, take another look.”

“Well, how can I when you're stepping on my foot?” I told her. Wanda has surprisingly big feet for such a short person, and she wears big boots, too.

Wanda got off my foot, and I looked again. I didn't want to admit it, but I thought Wanda was right. On the other side of the pile of rocks, I could see a small, round grotto. And in the middle of its sandy floor lay a sword. A really big, serious-looking sword.

“It would make a great five-hundredth birthday present for Sir Horace,” said Wanda.

Well, I had to admit that Wanda was right about that, too.

“It would if we could get hold of it,” I said. “But there is no way we can squeeze through those rocks.”

“No, I suppose not.” Wanda sounded disappointed. “Anyway, we ought to go now; Dad will be wondering where we are.”

I was thinking about the sword and Sir Horace's birthday all the way back to the mushroom farm. And just before we got back to the van, I said to Wanda, “I know how we can get that sword for Sir Horace.”

“
How
?” asked Wanda.

“I'll tell you later,” I said. “I have a Plan.”