Lily and the Prisoner of Magic by Webb Holly

Author:Webb, Holly [Webb, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781408316429
Publisher: Hachette Children's Books
Published: 2012-10-03T22:00:00+00:00

‘There! She’s gone off to the promenade deck.’ Lily craned her neck around the corner of the passage.

‘We’ll follow her then,’ Georgie said, her voice rather small. ‘Ugh. Did you have to make this hat so big, Lily? It looks like I’ve got a cake on my head.’

They had decided earlier on that morning that Georgie had better be glamoured as well, just in case Mama spotted her. She was now several years older, and dressed in the height of fashion – Lily had copied the outfit from a colour plate in the Ladies’ Monthly Museum, which someone had left lying around in one of the saloons.

‘It isn’t as big as the one in the picture!’ Lily protested. ‘I thought you’d probably fall over if I made it that huge. And it doesn’t really look like a cake. More like a meringue.’ She giggled.

‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about,’ Henrietta muttered. ‘We need to go now, Lily. The sooner I’m out of this unnatural shape, the better.’ She fluttered and shuddered, shaking out the green feathers irritably.

‘If anyone comes, then I’ve the perfect excuse for being in her stateroom,’ Lily said, for at least the sixth time. ‘Everyone on board knows about that awful parrot. I’ll just say that I found it flying about in one of the parlours, and brought it back.’ She grinned at Henrietta. ‘But you’ll need to squawk, you know. It’s always making the most unholy noise.’

Henrietta snarled, which was a rather strange sound, coming from a parrot. Lily was surprised she could still do it, actually, with a beak, but then she supposed the beak was only imaginary. The glamours she made weren’t even as much as skin deep, since she’d never been taught the proper way to do them. If anyone stroked Henrietta, they would probably still feel fur. But then no one would be stupid enough to stroke Mrs Archibald’s parrot, which was known to be vicious as well as noisy. And even if Henrietta’s glamour was only thin, Lily was still very proud of it. She had glamoured herself and Georgie before, into old ladies, to disguise themselves in London, but she had never tried to glamour another creature. The spell had taken a while, and Henrietta had been forced to sit motionless and watch herself growing feathers. She was still in the worst of tempers.

‘We’ll see you soon,’ Georgie told her. ‘Be careful. And quick! Just a few minutes, remember? We don’t know how long she’ll be up on deck.’

Lily nodded, and watched them hurry away down the corridor.

‘Why did your mother have to make her new spell-creature a parrot?’ Henrietta growled. ‘I hope you’re not expecting me to fly, Lily. I’ve still got paws under all this, you know. It won’t work.’

‘Just flap a bit,’ Lily told her consolingly. ‘If anyone comes you could try fluttering around. There isn’t a lot of space for proper flying in these passageways anyway.’

‘A wolfhound. Would it really have made much difference?’ Henrietta spat, making a series of ungainly hops to jump onto Lily’s outstretched arm.

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