Through groggy slits that exposed luminous orange eyes that hadn’t seen daylight for several weeks Oswin was glaring at her now. His lime-green fur was turning a ripe pumpkin colour in his outrage and his bright green-and-white striped tail electrified with indignation.
‘Wot choo go and do that for? Grabbing peoples by the tail? Is that any way to treat a body? No respect … and me being the last kobold and all!’ he muttered darkly. Then he scratched a shaggy ear with a long, slightly rusty claw and grumbled, ‘I ’ave ’alf a mind to leave … Specially after I got you them awfully resistible feet thingamababies, which you never even fanked me for,’ he pointed out with a deep hard-done-by sniff.
Oswin was always a bit cross, so Willow ignored this.
The ‘thingamababies’ that he referred to were her next-door neighbour Mrs Crone-Barrow’s ancient, rather dead-looking bunny slippers. Willow had made the mistake of muttering one night that her toes were cold, so Oswin had gone next door and prised the prehistoric slippers from the old woman’s sticky, corn-crusted feet with a butter knife. Willow had woken up to the feeling of something warm, wet and icky attached to her feet, followed very closely by the sound of her own screaming when she realised what it was. She still shuddered at the memory.
Despite this, there was the faint, very faint, chance Oswin might come in handy on an adventure thought Willow. He was really good at spotting magical ability, as well as detecting lies, and his thick kobold blood allowed him to resist most forms of magic. He was also her only friend, and who would remember to feed him when she was gone?
Oswin, despite his threat, had made no attempt to leave and was now taking care of some morning monster ablutions: checking his fur for any stray bugs and polishing his teeth with a corner of Willow’s bedcover. In fact, Oswin had been threatening to leave the relative comfort beneath Willow’s bed ever since Willow first caught him three years ago. ‘Caught’ being the operative word, like an infection.
Willow had been called to the Jensens’ farmhouse to deal with a case of a missing monster, wondering on the way over why the Jensens would want to find a monster … She decided not to think about it too much because, as her father always said, spurgles don’t grow without fertiliser. But when she arrived and Mrs Jensen pointed to the stove, squealing, ‘It’s in there …!’ Willow had been a little confused.
‘What’s in there?’
‘The monster, of course.’
Willow had frowned. ‘But, Mrs Jensen,’ she’d replied, ‘I can’t deal with monsters!’
‘You have to – you’re a witch and … he’s lost … Isn’t that what you do, find things?’
‘But … how can he be lost if he’s right there?’
It turned out that the Jensens knew he was a lost monster because Oswin had told them so shortly before he took up refuge in the stove. He refused to come out or to tell them where he was from for that matter. Later Willow would find out that this was a sore point, as he and his fellow kobolds had been banished from their home and scattered throughout Starfell due to a bit of thievery on the part of his aunt Osbertrude.
But Willow hadn’t known any of that when she’d taken him from the Jensens’ stove. She’d figured that if he really was ‘lost’, it couldn’t hurt to try ‘finding’ him with her magic, using these precise words:
‘I Summon the lost monster currently residing in the Jensens’ stove in Grinfog, the kingdom of Shelagh, Starfell.’
It didn’t hurt to be precise about such things just in case there were any other Jensens in any other parts of the world who also had lost monsters to contend with.
And Oswin had arrived into her outstretched arms with an orange plop. He was the size of a large and fluffy tabby cat, but one who glowered at her with cat-like fury. In fact, if you didn’t know better, and you were really quite stupid, you might mistake Oswin for a cat. To be sure, there were the pointed ears, the fluffy fur and the very stripy tail. He even (to his shame) had white paws, which made him look very tabby-like indeed. All cat-tastic really, except that he was green (when he wasn’t cross, which was seldom), with very sharp monstery claws, the rather persistent smell of boiled cabbage, the stealing, the ease with which kobolds got offended, and the unfortunate truth that occasionally, when they were offended enough, they exploded. Which isn’t great when they live under your bed. Oh, and the fact that he could talk – you don’t get many tabby cats that can chat.
And once Oswin was ‘found’ he was determined to stay that way … choosing to stay with Willow from then on and showing his appreciation for his new home under Willow’s bed by bringing her ‘presents’ from the neighbours. Which wasn’t good for business. Especially if your clients found out that the person who found their lost things also seemed to be the one who took them in the first place.
Willow cleared her throat. ‘Listen, Oswin, apparently Tuesday has gone missing … and we are going to help Moreg Vaine to find it.’ Then, because she felt that perhaps it was the right thing to do, she added, ‘Er … you may want to pack a bag.’
Oswin turned tangerine; his eyes bulged to the size of tennis balls. ‘Wot? We?’ His catty lips silently mouthed the words ‘Moreg Vaine’ and his fur-covered body turned from carroty orange to a rather ill-looking shade of green like pea soup. ‘Wot choo go and sign us up for a rumble with a madwoman for? Vicious witch, she eats peoples! She pickles children in ginger! Makes candles with yer earwax! And she blew up me cousin Osloss when he found ’imself in ’er pantry! Don’t even think about it! I aren’t going, nohow, no way! Staying right here … I’s got me a duty to stay as the last kobold anyhow,’ he said, glowering at Willow, his claws digging into the bedcover in stubborn revolt.
Willow sighed, then snatched him by the tail once more, and shoved him into the hairy carpetbag. ‘Never mind all that,’ she said dismissively, ignoring his hissing and muttering. She knew that kobolds blew up regularly, with or without a witch’s help, and usually survived relatively unscathed. ‘You’re coming; now stop your grumbling.’
It was a little worrying, though, that rumours of Moreg Vaine even terrified the monster population.
Oswin sat in the bag with a huff, muttering darkly while Willow turned to the task at hand. The blue horseshoe scarf.
Would she need it? Was it necessary? Or was that really beside the point?
It was pretty, expensive and didn’t actually belong to her. It belonged to her middle sister, Camille, who had received it from one of her many admirers. Knowing that Camille would be furious when she saw the scarf gone gave Willow a grim satisfaction that only those with older siblings understood. So she packed it in the bag along with everything else, closed her bedroom door and set the hairy bag down on top of the kitchen table with a thud (to Oswin’s outrage). She decided at the last minute to add a half loaf of bread and her mug.
Then, fighting mounting panic, she scribbled her father a note:
Dear Dad,
Tuesday has gone missing
The witch Moreg has asked for my help
The witch Moreg has need of my skill – yes, really
She scribbled over her first attempt and discarded it in the wastebasket when she remembered that honesty wasn’t what they were going for. Not that he would believe her anyway … Then she tried again.
Dear Dad,
I’ve gone