The Starflash Opal
By Linda Talbot
Illustrations by Linda Talbot
Copyright Linda Talbot 2013
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List of Ilustrations
Waldo the Warlock
The Peacock
The Witch
The Two-Tailed Cat
Author's Note and Contact
THE STARFLASH OPAL
The golden rushes with hairy tousled heads, stir in the Underearth wind. They whisper inaudibly as Zophenas the Enchantress approaches from the Miasmic Sea. She grumbles, tossing her pale hair shot with pallid water reflections and flashes her strange green eyes in anger.
“Look, she’s trapped!” exclaim the rushes still in a whisper for fear of being spellbound.
Zophenas has heard there are three possible ways to rise from the Underearth:
1. To find the soul of Waldo the warlock who wants to die but cannot without the soul he has hidden but cannot remember where.
2. To secure the magic ointment made by a witch which enables her to fly, or
3. To capture a woman who has turned into a two-tailed cat.
She cannot imagine how the first and the last will help her rise from the rushes and the foul Miasmic Sea. Would the warlock levitate her in gratitude? Would she ride to Earth on the back of the two-tailed cat? The witch’s ointment seems the most likely means of escape.
To find out she will have to try all three. But how? She needs someone to carry out these tasks, the first in her name, for which Waldo should be grateful and the other two would entail the objects being brought to her.
Who could carry out the tasks? Someone small, lithe, able to get in and out of tight corners, to melt into mooonshine and run on the rain. Children.
Zophenas raises her piercing green eyes and gazes intently above, towards the Earth overrun with foolish people - and innocent children waiting to be harnessed by magic powers. Their parents would only scoff at warlocks, witches and two-tailed cats.
She sees children swarming through streets and growing fat slumped in front of televisions. She assesses dozens in a single glance. None is suitable. Some are like sheep, others worse than wild animals and there are those too lazy to even play games on the computer.
Then, set apart from the cities in a tangled field, she sees a small grey stone house with a warm glow in the windows and smoke curling as in the past, from a chimney. Her green eyes pass through the yellow front door to a room with two deep armchairs in which a man and woman sit reading and a large oak table where a boy has a book of mathematics spread before him and a girl is making a ceramic pot with a wavy handle and curving spout.
“Here are two sensible children with enough intelligence to carry out my tasks!” thinks Zophenas. The rushes murmur in approval.
The Enchantress musters her magic. She glides across the mist white ground to the edge of the sullen Miasmic Sea. She bends like a reed in the wind, until her arms begin to grow and sprout fingers like spiders that deftly wander on the water. It changes from a seething black mass to a mixture of lilac and green, sending silver sparks up and through Zophenas. She quivers, drawing them in, her green eyes glowing deeper until they seem to fill half her face. At last she lets out a deep breath and, for some moments, stands motionless.
Then she whirls round three times, her long arms still raised and as they shrink to their normal length, she floats back across the misty ground, through the whispering rushes. She halts, bows her head and utters a long incantation drawn from years of bewitchment. Raising her head and focusing her green eyes on the distant Earth, she says more loudly, “Come to me children. Now!”
Gemma and Swot feel an impact at the oak table. The book of mathematics slides onto the floor. The pot cracks apart.
“Oh my! What was that? An earthquake?” shrieks the mother as her book tumbles onto the carpet.
“Not in Gloucestershire!” says the father, whose book has also dropped onto the floor.
“Where are the children?” cries the mother.
Two overturned chairs lie by the table. The children have gone.
“Hello. Welcome to the Underearth!” Zophenas greets the astonished children, who land lightly, then begin to sink into the misty ground. Zophenas steadies their wet feet and they gaze about them in bewilderment.
“Where’s our house?” asks Swot.
“Where’s mum and dad?” demands Gemma.
“Safe and sound,” says Zophenas, “I am Zophenas. Now, what are you called?”
“Gemma!” says Gemma.
“Swot!” says Swot.
“That’s a strange name,” says Zophenas to Swot, “What does it mean?”
“It means I am very interested in learning things, especially mathematics. Now did you know that if you divide the number of stars in the milky way by 5,000......”
“Stop! Very impressive, I’m sure, but I have work for you two and I want you to listen carefully. If you complete my three tasks I will give you a Starflash Opal - and that’s better than anything in your Milky Way, Swot - because it will grant you six wishes, so long as they are not foolish like so many granted in the past.”
The children stare at her disbelievingly.
“First...” says Zophenas, “I want you to go to Waldo the old warlock who lives in the back end of a rock full of spiders in the Fusty Fields of Nowhere. He is so old and absent-minded, he has forgotten where he put his soul for safe keeping. He is now ready to die because his spells are getting feeble, but he cannot until he finds his soul and replaces it in his body. That, of course, will survive after death.”
“Spiders?” says Gemma, thinking of the cave, “I’m frightened of spiders.”
“They won’t hurt you. They just hang there getting dusty,” Zophenas assures her.
“If Waldo doesn’t know where his soul is, how are we to find it?” asks Swot sensibly.
“You must suggest likely hiding places, in case they include some he hasn’t thought of,” says Zophenas.
The children look at her doubtfully. Then they think of the Starflash Opal and the six wishes. “All right, we’ll go!” says Swot.
Zophenas takes them to the door and points across the misty ground.
“Waldo’s cave is over there,” she says, pointing a long finger northwards. “Start out now before nightfall. You can’t miss the hollow rock; it’s jagged and black with shiny silver stones that you will see in the moonlight even if you arrive after dark.”
Swot and Gemma set off, their feet gliding without sinking now on the misty ground. Strange shapes loom from the vapour; neither trees nor rocks but the writhing forms of some madman’s imagination. They weave before, round and behind the children, teasing and deceiving them, until the children grow dizzy and decide to ignore them.
They peer into the gloom ahead. It heaps and hovers until, sure enough, a great black rock shot with silver stones rears before them as though placed there that second by a giant hand.
Swot and Gemma halt and gaze fearfully at the winking rock. “Come on, think of the Starflash Opal!” urges Swot, overcoming his apprehension.
Gemma hesitates, then follows him to the entrance. It yawns like a hungry mouth leading to a black stomach, filled she knows with spiders - and the ancient warlock. They tiptoe inside, holding their breath for fear of being heard, but Swot steps on a loose stone that rattles in the dark. They pause. No shiny stones light their way now, but the cave seems to draw deep, damp breaths.
&n
bsp; Carefully, they walk on. Gemma is listening for spiders, although they probably do not make a sound. Suddenly, a strange voice that seems feeble from lack of use, echoes in the dark.
“Who’s there?”
“Swot and Gemma. We’ve been sent by Zophenas to help you find your soul.”
Waldo the Warlock
Back to the Start!
“Come closer. Let me have a look at you!” says the voice.
They step nearer. Gemma suddenly gives a piercing cry. She has walked into the white webs of the spiders, strung like thin string from one wall of the rock to the other.
“Don’t be afraid of the spiders. They won’t hurt you!” the voice soothes.
Gemma claws at the black spiders crawling over her. As though they understand, they scuttle away into the dark.
Suddenly a shaft of moonlight falls through a chink in the cave. So now it is night. The light falls on Waldo, the ancient warlock who sits with his long black hair and beard flowing onto a dingy garment covered in red triangles.
Gemma cries out again. Twined around his bony knees and rising now to look at them is a green and black serpent; Waldo’s “familiar”. A witch will probably have a black cat. Waldo has his serpent to keep him company and run errands. But even he has been unable to find the warlock’s soul.
“Now I wonder why Zophenas is helping me find my soul,”