CHAPTER TWELVE: A NOSE FULL OF WORMS

Griselda is up against real magic, but she's no novice herself....

The ragged and somewhat fusty-smelling Griselda gazed at the gnome-like Professor and his suddenly bright eyes as they seemed to want to pierce her brain with an invisible shaft of power. She shuddered, and then decided to gird her loins, whatever that might mean. She wasn't quite sure, but she did think that something ought to be girded. Things had gone on for long enough without the merest suggestion of the girding of loins or anything like them.

“The Pope?” she asked. “Why in the name of goodness would you want to be the Pope? I mean, all those robes and things, the gobbledegook, the nonsense, the long history of duping millions, the pervy priests with their pervy ways...?”

He snorted back at her in the way that an elderly farmer might snort at a pig that was starting to show signs of intelligence beyond its station in the order of things. He clearly wasn't accustomed to his grand schemes being challenged by little old ladies with warts, and it discomforted him.

“What do you know about things?” he asked. “I mean, an old hag like you with a hooked beak like an old sparrow? How can you be expected to understand the more powerful things that move the ordinary folks of this little planet as if they were pawns in a chess game? And anyway, I might really fancy a few pervy priests around me! What's wrong with fellows like that, I'd like to know! There's more to Heaven and Hell than are dreamed of in your philosophy Hora... I mean old woman!”

“I know what I see,” breathed Griselda, suddenly very quiet, “and I've been around long enough to put two and two together and invariably come up with four... It's what old people do and it makes them damned infuriating to the young! Ask my niece if you don't believe me! I make her mad enough, and she's me!”

He sneered at her and tapped the side of his stubby nose with an aquiline finger. “Then if you're so good at the addition of small numbers you'll know that the richest organisation on Earth is the Catholic Church, the Church of Rome, even though for centuries its been in the hands of a long line of amateurs who like to wear posh robes and ponce about?” he growled, and warming to the lesson he continued: “But a long time ago the leaders of that church realised that if everyone on Earth, and by everyone I mean the teeming millions, gave a penny each to them then they'd all become very rich indeed and would be able to drink out of silver goblets and eat their toad in the hole off golden diamond-encrusted plates. Quite a scheme, eh? Especially if you realise for most of that time there wasn't much besides silver and gold to spend their fortune on, so they just ended up amassing more and more and more of the stuff until they've got whole treasuries overflowing with riches beyond your feeble understanding.

“They could even afford the best prostitutes that Europe had to offer, and some of them made full use of the noblest whorehouses ever seen! And the things they liked to do would make your ancient eyes water if I were to tell you! Yet despite all that spending, still the cash accumulated. Still the coffers grew fuller! That's what I'm after, Griselda Entwhistle: the dosh �" and that's what makes you my enemy because you just might stand in my way to riches beyond compare, and fame and glory and everything money can buy. And that's why I'm going to stop you, you interfering old cow, before you get a foot on the ladder of power yourself!”

“Rubbish!” sneered Griselda. “Utter rubbish! Money and riches never made anyone happy! Ask Thomas the Greek if you don't know that one! He'll tell you: he'll put you straight on that one!”

The little man frowned. “And who might Thomas the Greek be?” he asked.

“He keeps an Inn,” murmured Griselda, “but that doesn't matter. On Friday nights when Tom Coppley's spewing his guts all over the tap-room floor there never was a happier creature on God's Earth than Thomas the Greek with his eyes fair bulging every time he opens that till of his and puts the money in! But then, he does water the beer down and he doesn't pay taxes on water!”

“I'd have thought that made my point for me,” murmured the Professor. “The money makes him happy. Touché!

“Ah, but he wouldn't be happy if he wasn't skint for most of the week,” Griselda told him. “Old Thomas is a wastrel. He spends what little money he gets like it was water! He even puts pound after pound into his own fruit machine, and he knows that's rigged because he organised the rigging himself! Which is the main reason why he gets so eye-bulgingly happy every Friday night when Tom Coppley starts vomiting every which-where because it means he's sold a whole lot of weak beer at premium prices and the bar till's heaving under the weight of all that money! But if he had that wealth all the time he'd be as miserable as sin because Friday nights would lose all their significance for him, and all their charm.”

“Bah! A till full of money, you say? That's peanuts to what I'll have when I'm the Pope! I'll have untold millions! It'll be like winning the lottery every week! But that won't happen if someone gets in the way, someone decrepit, someone old as the hills, someone with weeping spots on her face, and a hairy chin!”

“They're only little wisps!”

“A hairy chin, I said. And everything in my book of magic spells tells me that if anyone on the planet is going to upset my plans then that someone is you, so I'd better do something about you! Be warned, old hag! I use proper magic, and I'm going to use some right now!”

There's possibly no more ridiculous sight on this humble planet than what looks like a geriatric dwarf holding a forked twig in the air as if it was some kind of wizard's wand, and waving it about like a loony. But Professor Stroggleoff started doing just that whilst at the same time closing his eyes and murmuring a little indecipherable chant in a low and mysterious voice and dancing, first on one foot and then on the other

So this is what real magic looks like, thought Griselda. I prefer my kind, but it doesn't seem to work while this dwarf is around. But I'd better try it anyway if I'm going to get out of what looks more and more like a fix. Now what did he say? That any magic would have to come from inside myself rather than that daft old devil?

The Professor took no notice of her (largely because his eyes were closed and he was entering into what looked more like a trance than anything else.) and she breathed as quietly and under her breath as she could “The devil get rid of this revolting little squirt so that I can get a bit of peace in my bed.”

The room did seem to lighten a bit and the shadows that had filled the corners did appear to start going away, but that was all, and Griselda had certainly made no mention whatsoever of the light in the room. But nothing else happened and Professor Stroggleoff still stood where he'd been standing since entering the room, rocking gently backwards and forwards and muttering indecipherably into his beard with his piggy eyes shut.

“I'm on my own, then,” whispered Griselda to herself as worms started crawling out of the Professor's nose and wriggling towards the floor.”This is what my horny friend must have meant when he said I'd need him to defend me against the worms. Well, we'll see. I reckon that one Griselda Entwhistle on her own is equal to at least a dozen dwarfs with a bad case of worms!”

Then she closed her own eyes (a dangerous thing to do when you're in the presence of deep and dark magic, but she felt that she had no choice) and held both hands high in the air.

“Turn me back into my niece!” she commanded of nothing and everything. She felt a bit silly, but knew deep down in her corsets that it was the right thing to do. “Make me young and fair of skin and short of skirt again, and don't let this fool stop you!”

She knew, from the way she felt, that it was a powerful command. She could feel tingling sensations ripping along half-forgotten pathways in her old brain, as if synapses that had long been unused were at last being called into action, with work to do. When she squinted through half-closed eyes she saw that the light got brighter even though night was falling. It was a spooky feeling, but one she rather liked, because, she knew with a wonderful certainty, it was the real feeling of proper magic. She knew, for the first time in her life, that she had power within her, maybe power as mighty as the powers she had gleaned from her erstwhile devilish accomplice.

And she felt her skin puckering up, her heart beating like a youngsters, her thighs becoming firm and her breasts almost bursting out of an undersized bra.

And when she opened her eyes it was to see the old Professor staring at her in horror with a dozen or so worms half in and half out of his nose and turning, it seemed, to stone as they clung there.