Floods 7 by Colin Thompson Page A

Waters, it wouldn’t be an entirely wasted journey.
    Except she thought that she was probably, almost, nearly up to using up her last transformation.
    â€˜But when the wretched Floods do come back to Transylvania Waters, I will be waiting,’ she laughed, ‘and I will teach them a lesson they will never forget. I will teach them flower arranging.’
    â€˜No, no, what?’ she said. ‘It’s supposed to be painful and make them dead, those were my orders.’
    But the spirits that Dr Reversion had implanted had taken control and as much as she tried, the Hearse Whisperer could not get flower arranging out of her mind.
    â€˜There will be gladioli and tulips, and … no, no, no,’ she cried. ‘I need pain and suffering, not floral decorations. I need help. I need to go to …um. I need to go to, er, Flowers ‘R’ Us?’
    She screamed and banged her head against the side of the volcano and realised that somehow, somewhere, she had forgotten everything she had ever been taught about potty training and her undieswere full of very, very cold wet yellow patches that were turning to ice.
    â€˜Right,’ she snapped as she changed into an eagle. ‘I am going to Transylvania Waters and I am going to make the Floods arrange flowers until their fingers bleed and there will be poisonous flowers and flowers with sharp thorns. Well, I say poisonous and sharp thorns, but of course the two will have to complement each other so I might have to choose between poisonous or prickly, but there will definitely be one of them. And I’m going to change my undies.’
    She threw herself off the edge of the volcano. ‘And ferns!’ she shouted. ‘And mushrooms!’
    But as she hadn’t actually finished changing into an eagle, she landed on her head on a pointy rock. 31 This was because when a witch gets to thelast couple of transformations, they can take quite a long time to happen. This time there was a period of at least ten minutes when the Hearse Whisperer had her real body from the knees upwards and an eagle’s feet from her knees down.
    While she recovered, she pondered the idea of using mushrooms in flower arranging. It appealed to her. It could possibly be a world first. There were some very pretty toadstools and some of them were wonderfully poisonous.
    It took the Hearse Whisperer a long time to get back to Transylvania Waters. Not just because she was old and tired, but every time she flew over land, she was distracted by flowers. No matter how high she flew she could see them, because she was an eagle and they have eyesight like, well, eagles. And of course, seeing flowers wasn’t enough. She had to fly down and smell them, which meant she got a lot of stones thrown at her because humans do not feel comfortable about gigantic eagles landing in their gardens and trying to talk to them about their roses.
    When she reached Transylvania Waters, she soared high above its ring of dangerous clouds, 32 took a deep breath and drifted down into the city. She landed on the lead roof of one of Castle Twilight’s taller, more deserted towers and fell fast asleep.

The Floods drove north-east into the dark bit of Europe, where all the trees are black and people like cuckoo clocks so much they actually buy them. At each border crossing Mordonna clicked her fingers and the officials ushered them through into the next country.
    Finally the campervan stopped at the foot of a great mountain range.
    â€˜You know what’s on the other side, don’t you?’ said Winchflat.
    â€˜Really flat stuff with no mountains at all?’ said Satanella.
    â€˜More mountains, probably,’ said Nerlin. ‘See, you should have let me do the driving.’
    â€˜Transylvania Waters,’ said Mordonna. ‘I can feel it calling me.’
    â€˜Oh, is that what it is?’ said Nerlin. ‘I thought it was all the wretched beetroot soup we’ve been