Septimus Heap, Book One_ Magyk - Angie Sage [88]
He put down his book and tiptoed over to the potion cupboard door. It was strangely silent considering it contained Aunt Zelda in close proximity to hundreds of little clinky bottles. Boy 412 knocked hesitantly on the door. There was no reply. He listened again. Silence. Boy 412 knew he should really just go back to his book but somehow Thaumaturgy and Sortilage: Why Bother? was not as interesting as what Aunt Zelda was up to. So Boy 412 pushed open the door and peered in.
The potion cupboard was empty.
For a moment, Boy 412 was half afraid that it was a joke and Aunt Zelda was going to jump out at him, but he soon realized that she was definitely not there. And then he saw why. The trapdoor was open, and the musty damp smell of the tunnel that Boy 412 remembered so well drifted up to him. Boy 412 hovered at the door, uncertain of what to do. It crossed his mind that Aunt Zelda might have fallen through the trapdoor by mistake and needed help, but he realized that if she had fallen, she would have got wedged halfway, as Aunt Zelda looked a good deal wider than the trapdoor did.
As he was wondering how Aunt Zelda had managed to squeeze herself through the trapdoor, Boy 412 saw the dim yellow glow of a lantern shining up through the open space in the floor. Soon he heard the heavy tread of Aunt Zelda’s sensible boots on the sandy floor of the tunnel and her laborious breathing as she struggled up the steep incline toward the wooden ladder. As Aunt Zelda started to heave herself up the ladder, Boy 412 silently closed the cupboard door and scuttled back to his seat by the fire.
It was quite a few minutes later when an out-of-breath Aunt Zelda poked her head out of the potion cupboard a little suspiciously and saw Boy 412 reading Thaumaturgy and Sortilage: Why Bother? with avid interest.
Before Aunt Zelda had time to disappear back into the cupboard, the front door burst open. Nicko appeared with Jenna closely following. They threw down their skates and held up what looked like a dead rat.
“Look what we found,” said Jenna.
Boy 412 pulled a face. He didn’t like rats. He’d had to live with too many of them to enjoy their company.
“Leave it outside,” said Aunt Zelda. “It’s bad luck to bring a dead thing across the threshold unless you’re going to eat it. And I don’t fancy eating that.”
“It’s not dead, Aunt Zelda,” said Jenna. “Look.” She held out the brown streak of fur for Aunt Zelda to inspect. Aunt Zelda poked at it warily.
“We found it outside that old shack,” said Jenna. “You know the one, not far from the Port at the end of the marsh. There’s a man there who lives with a donkey. And a lot of dead rats in cages. We looked through the window—it was horrible. And then he woke up and saw us, so me and Nicko went to run off and we saw this rat. I think he’d just escaped. So I picked him up and put him in my jacket and we ran for it. Well, skated for it. And the old man came out and yelled at us for taking his rat. But he couldn’t catch us, could he, Nicko?”
“No,” said Nicko, a man of few words.
“Anyway, I think it’s the Message Rat with a message from Dad,” said Jenna.
“Never,” said Aunt Zelda. “That Message Rat was fat.”
The rat in Jenna’s hands let out a weak squeak of protest.
“And this one,” said Aunt Zelda, poking the rat in the ribs, “is as thin as a rake. Well, I suppose you had better bring it in, whatever kind of rat it may be.”
And that is how Stanley finally reached his destination, nearly six weeks after he had been sent out from the Rat Office. Like all good Message Rats he had lived up to the Rat Office slogan: Nothing stops a Message Rat.
But Stanley was not strong enough to deliver his message. He lay feebly on a cushion in front of the fire