The Royal Family by Colin Thompson

Author:Colin Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2014-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

‘Hello,’ she said, shaking off the last bits of rag.

As the figure straightened up, the two girls could see someone that looked remarkably like Betty’s father, Nerlin.

‘Dad? What on earth’s happened to you?’ Betty cried.

‘Nothing,’ said Gertrude. ‘And I am not your father. In fact, I haven’t seen him for years.’

She explained that she was not some really ancient distant relative of the Floods – as the cats and others had thought – but something much closer. She was Betty’s aunt, Nerlin’s twin sister. All the rags and smells had merely been a disguise.

‘When your mother fell into the drain all those years ago and landed on your father, the rest of us hid in the deepest drains, as far away from your mother’s father as possible,’ Gertrude explained. ‘He was livid with rage and spent months dropping bombs and deadly gas cylinders into our tunnels. A lot of us didn’t survive.

‘And then, a few years later,’ she continued, ‘when you all came back and reclaimed the throne, most of us were overjoyed and left the drains for the world above. There were only two of us who thought it might be a trap and refused to leave.’

‘Two?’ said Betty.

‘Yes. Me and Mad Boggit,’ said Gertrude. ‘As far as I know, she’s still down there. She found a doorway in one of the deepest tunnels and went through it and down some stairs into total darkness. I dared not follow her and she never came back, so we have no way of knowing if she is dead or alive, or both, or something else completely. I used to hear strange wailing noises that sounded like they came from a whale, but they stopped a few years ago.’

‘So what made you finally leave the drains?’ said Betty.

She wanted to say ‘auntie’, but was too shy. Betty had never said it before and it seemed like a nice thing to do. And if Gertrude could read Betty’s mind – which she could – she would tell her that it would be quite nice to be called auntie.

‘My spies told me there was no longer any danger. The damp was also beginning to seep into my bones,’ Gertrude explained. ‘It took a long time to re-adjust here. The last time I came up, the light was so bright it blinded me, but I gradually got used to it and now I’m up here for good.’

‘Does my mother know about you?’ Betty asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Gertrude. ‘That depends on whether your father ever told her.’

‘Neither of them has ever mentioned you,’ said Betty.

And this was true. Mordonna didn’t even know that Gertrude existed due to it being a Deep Dark Secret, which meant that Nerlin had NEVER told her.56

As mentioned before, kings and queens in the world of wizards are not the same in the world of humans. Witches and wizards are much fairer. It is always the oldest child who becomes the next ruler, and whether they are a witch or a wizard makes no difference at all.

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