340. Breaking Spells

 340.  Breaking Spells

Azuline did no more than speak and Uncle Gentlerain said, “We’re out of here!”

And he moved us all back to Uncle Richearth’s plantation.

“The cocoon spell is a lure out spell. It can be broken just like any other lure out spell. In this case, the luring  is done just like when someone is in a coma. You have to talk to them to draw them out of it,” said Little Azuline. “You talk and talk and play music and say things that will draw them out of wherever their spirit is. In the case we have here, out of the cocoon.”

“We are going to have to spend hours talking to Umbrian?” asked Brightfire, not looking too happy about this.

“Not you. Someone who really wants him out of the coma. That is, out of the cocoon.”

“Good,” said Brightfire.

“I want my friend out of the cocoon,” said Richearth, “but the idea of carrying him everywhere where I have to be, every minute, while doing my business, and talking and talking at him at the same time… is rather stressful, the idea is. Just the idea is stressful. I’m stressed already. So imagine actually doing this. A self-moving stretcher? To place the cocoon there?  With wheels and wings? Following one every place one goes? Should I be ordering one? Yes, because if I carry the cocoon in my pocket and it suddenly grows to the size of Umbrian, we will both fall to the floor and someone is bound to get hurt.”

“Maybe Fancy Feverfew will do this,” said Neferclari. “She might still love Umbrian and want to recover him. Why can’t she just wake him with a kiss?”

“We’ll study it, dear,” said Gentie and he turned to Azuline and asked, “Where did you learn this about drawing people out of cocoons, love?”

“I have this book about breaking spells that my cousin Arley gave me for my name day party.”

“Hmm. I’ll be wanting a copy of that myself,” said Gentie.

“I can make you one.”

“Would you, Azuline? What do you want in exchange for it?”

“Just to see you happy with it.”

“Oh, I will be. But I think you can do a little better. We’ll see. In the meantime, I think Neferclari’s idea about Fancy Feverfew may be a good one.”

“Sure,” said Esmeraldo. “All Fancy does is sit in that dolmen and sulk. We can stick the cocoon in there and she can talk and talk to it until it unravels or whatever it has to do. What else has Fancy got to do in there? Maybe she can even kiss it, like Neferclari said.” 

So, the three kids, our three uncles, the two imps Shiver and Quiver and I, Heather, who am telling this tale, went to Fancy’s dolmen.

“Oh,” she said, when we explained the case to her. “Oh, my. I’m not sure I want to speak to Umbrian ever again.”

“Forget about her kissing the cocoon,” said Neferclari. “This isn’t true love we have here.” And she shook her little head so vehemently that she embarassed Fancy. For when Fancy Feverfew heard this comment, she felt ashamed of herself and said, “I’ll try talking to him while he is in there, even if I will refuse to once he is out.”

And the poor lady did try. But…

“Umbrian, sweetie, I am Fancy, please come out of that cocoon.  **** you, Umbrian! What are you doing inside a ****cocoon? Hiding from me, you  stupid ****? Oh! Oh, my! Why did I say that? I didn’t want to. Honestly, I never meant to say something as mean as that! How could it have come out of my mouth?”

“We understand you are **** angry,” said Brightfire. “You have a right to be.”

“But I’m not. Not as angry as to say such things.”

“Try again,” said Richie.

Fancy took a deep breath and then yelled, “Umbrian, you stinking **** of a hollow man, get the hell out of that cocoon and get me out of here too, you ******* idiot! Oh, by Og! No! No! That’s not what I wanted to say! Really, I never say things like that.”

“Maybe it’s the curse you yourself are under,” guessed Neferclari. “You said you stopped being a do-gooder fairy because you couldn’t do anyone any good anymore. You are trying to do Umbrian good, but you can’t.”

“That makes sense, doesn’t it?” asked Gentlerain.

“Oh, my! Oh! I can’t do even Umbrian good!” sobbed Fancy, breaking into tears. “But it shouldn’t surprise me. I wasn’t able to even clean my gran’s kitchen. That’s how I began to notice I had become useless.”

“I think we will first have to break whatever spell you yourself are under, Fancy. Crack whatever is keeping you from doing good,” said Gentie.

“But I have no idea what is. Throw me up! Throw me up for once and all, you stupid *****!”

“Wow! Who are you speaking to now?” asked Richie.

“Fancy, do you eat peas?” asked Gent.

And before Fancy could answer, she began to tremble and shake as if suffering from electric shocks and even Quiver and Shiver who do a lot of this were stunned. And she didn’t stop until she had thrown up…a cracked pea.

“Get me out of this pea, you ****** fools! What are you waiting for?!” yelled a voice that came from the pea. Upon closer inspection we saw the potent voice came from an impossibly tiny little woman, tiny enough to fit into a pea, struggling to pop out of it. “Can’t you see I’m stuck? I’ve made all the effort I can. It’s your turn to help me, you useless idiots.”

“We’re not sure we ******* want to,” said Brightfire. “Especially if you happen to be mean Malina Badlight. Are you? Don’t bother spitting out barely visible snakes and toads, because the more you do the less we will want to help you.”

“We’ll see what we can do when we can,” said Gent. He made some pincers and a jar appear and very gently picked the pea with the woman in it and placed it in the jar. Then he shut the lid tight and made it and the pincers vanish. “One thing at a time,” he said.

“Now you must try again, Fancy,” said Richie. “You may be yourself again.”

“But what was that?”

Richie explained to the flabbergasted Fancy that Malina had been turned into a pea and that somehow Fancy must have swallowed her.

“I’m thinking back,” said Fancy. “I have a prodigious memory. The last time I did eat peas it was a dish of peas and corn. There was a pea on the kitchen table that I thought had fallen out of the dish, but…there was no sign of a woman in it. I was crying and crying and salting the dish with tears, and I pushed the pea into the dish. I remember I cleaned it a little before I did with a napkin. It looked a little grimy, as if it had been rolling on the floor before getting on the table. But I was so sad I didn’t mind at all what I ate.  I was in Granny Eulalie’s kitchen. That was ages ago. She wasn’t there. But I grabbed a bite to eat. I didn't chew. I just swallowed and swallowed.The pea gave no sign of life. I could barely even swallow, I was gulping and sobbing so, and I may have swallowed it whole.”

“However it got there, you did swallow *******Malina Badlight at some ****point. That fact has been established,” said Brightfire.

“I didn’t do it on purpose! I had no idea!” Fancy cried, and she broke into tears.

“Of course you didn’t, dear,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve been living with that dreadful woman inside you hundreds of  years and she has been blocking your every attempt to do good.”

“Between my lungs! I suspect she was stuck there. I always felt a pain, a bad feeling there. Like something was trying to burst out of me. Gosh, it banged against my chest so. I thought it was a bit of my broken heart.”

“When you feel better, we can try again,” said Brightfire. “To free Umbrian, I mean.”

But she couldn’t.  She couldn’t bring herself to try. Now she was even more upset than she had been. With both Umbrian and Malina. She never wanted to hear of them ever again. And she shook and cried and made everyone very nervous.  So Gentlerain called Henny Parry.

First, Henny was asked to calm her down. He gave her a sedative, and she fell asleep in her own bed there in the dolmen. Then Uncle Gent had the honour of telling  Henny about the cocoon.

“I’ll try,” said Henny. “But he never paid any attention to anything I said to him when he was with us. I don’t think he will listen to me now either.”

While Henny was trying his desperate best to persuade his brother to break out of the cocoon, Ambivolo Parry appeared. He was wondering why Quiver and Shiver hadn’t returned from the errand he had sent them on. And he had located them with his crystal ball.

“Why are you talking by yourself as if you were mad?” Ambivolo asked his son Henny. “Who or what are you talking to?”

And then it was Ambivolo who began to rave like mad, when he heard about the cocoon.

“Umbrian, get out of there! Are you trying to kill me? Do you know how it feels to see a child of yours in a state like this? I can’t take this, I will go into a cocoon myself! Why are you doing this to me?”

And, to everyone’s surprise, the cocoon began to unravel. As the thread unravelled, what it held within began to get larger and larger. And then it was the size of tall Umbrian. And it was Umbrian. Himself. And everyone gasped with relief when he got up and pulled the dish the cocoon had been lying on from under his bottom and said, “I’m not trying to kill anyone! I didn’t do this to myself. At least, I think I didin’t.”