CHAPTER 11
SPELLBOUND
Mort was sitting at his desk, leaning forward and meticulously painting a little figurine. Around his work space there were a few containers of different colored paints and a larger container with a few paintbrushes standing in it. When he heard a knock outside, he rubbed the excess golden paint off the brush, placed it with the others and, with a big smile on his face, jumped up to answer the door.
Just as expected, he found his new favorite visitor standing outside.
"Hi, Seven!"
"Hello, Mort." – His eyes lit up with joy when she bent down and embraced him.
However, his smile died instantly when he took a closer look at her; he realized that something was wrong, terribly wrong. The side of her face was swollen, her left eye almost swollen shut. A cut above it oozed blood; it ran into her eye, then over her cheek, and down to her neck.
"Dear Frank, what happened to you?! You look horrible! How did you get those bruises?" Mort took her by the paw and led her to the bed, and then he washed her face and treated the cut above her eye. All the while she didn't speak, only stared straight ahead without expression. – "How did you get that?" he asked again, whispering, "It's sore!"
Seven didn't answer. Her head drooped. Mort reached out and leaned forward, tentatively skimming the grip marks on her neck. She winced. "Did you fall?"
"No, I didn't." Her face contorted, and she began to cry.
Mort scurried into the kitchen, took ice cubes out of the new fridge he'd gotten from Timo lately, and wrapped them in a small leaf before he took them to his guest.
"Here, hold this ice on," he told her, and she put it on her bruises. Sitting down to face her again, he insisted urgently, "Tell me what happened! Did you have a fight with someone?"
The young witch didn't answer, but she stopped crying and just stared at the floor, her breathing heavy and labored. Her tousled fur obscured part of her face.
"Alright, who was it?"– She neither moved nor spoke. Raising his voice, Mort pressed her, "Seven, who the hell was it?!"
Her slim brows came together, and a dark scowl clouded over her features. "Clemson."
Mort blinked his eyes in astonishment, having expected any answer but that one.
"Ha! I knew they were wrong!" he exclaimed then, "Maurice and the others say that Clemson is your ally, that you're working for him and help him do evil things to the people on this island. But how could you be working for him if he does something like that to you!"
She sighed deeply. "In fact it's true. We are allied indeed, and he punished me because I failed to do what he asked me to."
Now Mort was even more confused. He stared up at her, his hazel eyes wide and sad.
"But... why?! Why are you helping someone like him? He's evil!"
She nodded, her eyes staring ahead sadly. "Well, to me he didn't seem all that evil at first… at least no more than the other lemurs on this island." She shrugged slightly. "He even helped me, you know. He freed me… I've been banned from this world a long time ago, and by allying with me, he helped me return. I'm just returning the favor, you know, because I am truly grateful that he did this – or should I have been locked in this cold black castle for all eternity?!"
Mort was quiet for a moment as he considered what she'd said.
"And in return you're ready to do such cruel things for him as you did to the lemurs and all the other animals living here?" he asked tentatively.
Seven chewed on her bottom lip and then shrugged again. "I don't care about them. Not one damn bit!" Her eyes flashed. – "How in witch school they used to scoff at me and mock me! They were always jealous of me, always, because I was so much better than them. Every single day they waited for me to finally fail for the first time. And when I did, when I messed up that spell and turned into a ghost, they had their fun of course... but now it's my turn! How they hated and humiliated me – and thanks to Clemson now I've finally got the chance to turn that hate back on them tenfold! Hahahahihihaha!"
Mort clutched his tail and hid behind it; the witch's creepy cackling scared him a bit. When Seven noticed this she stopped immediately and for a moment looked at him as if after this confession she doubted that he'd continue being her friend any longer. So he quickly hopped up on the bed beside her and took her paw in his.
"I sure know what you mean," he said truthfully, "It sucks being the village weirdo all the time... Believe me; I know it from my own experience."
Her eyes widened. "What – you, too?"
He nodded slowly, gravely. "No matter what it is, or who - it seems like I'm always in the way, you know," he murmured, "When I'm out there with the others, I'm always the one who's pushed around, bullied around, ordered around wherever I go. Just because I'm not like the other lemurs... Sometimes I'm really so sick of it! When I come to a place they never say 'look, it's Mort, the one who loves to paint, who laughs a lot and bakes yummy mango pies'. They say 'look, it's Mort, the one who takes baths in his toe nail collection, who talks to himself when he thinks no one listens and can't even memorize the names of the colors he paints with'. I tried to invite some of them to tea parties and make friends with them, but no one ever came… Before I met you I've never even had a single real guest, you know."
The little mouse lemur looked over to the King Julien dummy and the plush bunny in the corner, and suddenly an overwhelming wave of sadness overcame him, a feeling of isolation and loneliness that was rooted so deep within him that no nursery rhyme could ever make it fade away. He had to swallow a couple of times before he went on, "Even King Julien despises me... I try my best to show him how much I care, but he never even seems to notice. Like when I traveled half around the globe to bring him the good book that has all the answers... but he wouldn't think for a second about thanking me, you know. Instead he just stomped on me. But I don't mind of course because I love him very much, so I usually pretend I don't care… but deep down it does hurt sometimes, you know, it really does."
Rocking back and forth, he swallowed the grief gathering in his throat. "It's always been like that, you know. I've kind of gotten used to it over the years. Half the time I don't fight it and just go along with it, so I don't get so stressed out. But I'm telling you I'm really grateful for any real friend I can find... like you, Seven."
He smiled up at the witch, deep gratitude shining in his eyes.
Seven looked at him as if she couldn't believe it. "But why?! How could they ever reject someone as cute as you! You, you haven't done a thing to anyone, not a thing! – And they're calling me cruel; look how cold their hearts are! You deserve to be showered with love, to be embraced and cared for." She lifted the little mouse lemur and settled him in her lap. Mort snuggled happily against her chest fur.
"And so do you." He wrapped his bushy tail around her waist and intertwined it with hers – a gesture of mutual affection, a sign that the two of them enjoyed each other's company. "I don't care if everyone out there hates you and thinks you're nothing but a cruel, cold-hearted witch… I don't care about what you've done to them. It means the world to me that you're here with me now; that's the only thing I care about!" He reached out and engulfed her in a warm hug, which she seemed only too happy to return. She didn't shed tears, but she looked very lonely sitting there, her paws clasped tightly together in her lap.
"Thank you, Mort. You know, you really are my only true friend… I wish I could just stay with you and forget about all the rest. I want to paint some more with you and have a slumber party, like we did after we painted your home tree."
"Oh yes, that was so much fun!" Mort jumped up with joy, clapping his paws excitedly, all sadness forgotten now. "Let's do that again – let's eat sweets on the bed, mix coconut milk and mango juice, and play until we get sleepy!"
"But I can't stay with you. I have to return to Clemson and serve him."
He pouted. "But why?! He doesn't deserve being your ally! Now that he's brought you back, can't you just ditch him? – He'd sure deserve it after what he's done to you!"
"Even if I wanted, I couldn't do that," she sighed, "We were allied by a ritual... Our pact can't be broken – unless he dies or I lose my magical powers."
"Lose your powers?"
"Yes. That would be the only way to free myself from his influence. I'd have to give up being a witch and sacrifice my own powers with one last spell." She clenched her paws into fists. "But I would never do that. Never. Being a witch means everything to me, everything! I'd rather throw every single animal on this island into Larry's volcano with my own paws before I'd give up my magic!"
"Oh, I see."
"– And then I really don't know what's wrong with Clemson! I don't know why he's never satisfied with my services... I just made him the king of Madagascar, like he said it was his dream! Yet he must have more. Always more!" she insisted, struggling for control, but she failed, and angry words gushed out of the deep well of her disappointments before she could stop them. – "Tonight he'll have me attack Madagascar again, and he won't leave me alone with that until I finally get him what he wants. And then I'll have to perform a really mighty spell for him, and I'm not even sure I can do it... I've already tried it once before and it didn't work. Instead it ended up robbing me of my body and turning me into a ghost... So I'd rather not try it out again, you know. But I have to, if he asks for it!"
Mort shook his head fiercely. "No, you don't! You don't have to do anything for him! Why don't you just turn that evil lemur into a toad and squash him?!"
"I can't. Our pact also includes that I have power over any animal but him... that's how he could do this to me, you know." – Her fingers brushed over her bruised cheek and the strangulation marks on her neck, and she bit her lower lip. – "I'm so mad at myself for letting this happen... What a stupid choice I made to offer him my powers! If I had known in advance what a selfish, erratic, and unpredictable maniac he is, I would've never agreed to that alliance!"
"What a stupid situation… I'm so sorry I can't help you!" Mort said ruefully, "But look, I bet that pact doesn't include that you always have to be with him, does it? So just stay away from him for as long as possible, okay? I don't want him to hurt you anymore – so even if you have to serve him, you've got to give him as little chance to do that as you can!"
Her heart seemed to lighten a bit, and she let a smile cross her face. "You're right. I won't have my powers back anyway before midnight, so he can't ask anything from me before that. That means we still have the whole day to enjoy ourselves and then have that slumber party in the evening!"
"Yay! Come on, let's go outside then – let's go to the Cove of Wonders and look what we can find there and make as much of the day as we can!" Mort jumped up again and took her by the paw, and she willingly let herself be pulled out into the sunshine.
– "Let's play pirates," the little mouse lemur suggested when they were down in the cove by the seashore, picking up a piece of driftwood to use as a cutlass. "I love to play pirate, you know. I imagine I'm a swashbuckling captain, and I call myself 'Dread Pirate Mort'."
Seven looked a bit surprised at first but then smiled. "Alright. If you're the captain, then I will be the bo'sun, okay?"
"Sure! Let's go conquer the seas together, bo'sun!"
They played for a while, using a sloping rock as their boat; from there they pretended to shoot at merchant vessels and put notes in empty bottles they'd found in the cove and watched how the tide would take them to the beach. In the end Seven had to walk the imaginary plank, but she didn't mind. The salty waves washed away her dark, heavy witch makeup when she jumped into the water, and Mort thought she looked very lovely without it, just like a nice, normal lemur girl.
When they had enough of playing pirates, Mort asked her if she could teach him a little about magic, so she showed him a dance she called the imaginary waltz; she told him it was a dance often used by animals bestowed with the knowledge of magic to communicate with each other. If he sang and danced in a certain way, she said, she would be able to sense that he was trying to contact her – that way, she said, he could always call her if he needed her.
However, she also made him promise not to do this dance when other animals were around. Feeling very honored that she had shared a part of her knowledge of magic with him, Mort practiced the dance with her right away until he knew it perfectly.
Eventually they could hear voices across the cove from other visitors; Seven didn't want them to see her, so they decided to leave and go for a walk on the beach instead.
"Oooh, you have such pretty feet! They're almost as pretty as King Julien's!"
Mort watched with shining eyes when Seven dug her toes into the cool sand. Then he curled his tail around her ankles and brushed his cheeks against her sandy toes and overall made no secret of the fact that this was the greatest pleasure to him.
This made her giggle; she looked a little flustered at first but didn't kick him or push him away. By force of habit Mort withdrew anyway and apologized.
"I'm sorry; I didn't mean to touch your feet if you don't want me to…"
"Why, I don't mind if you do."
"Really?" His eyes lit up with joy. She shrugged, smiling.
"Sure, why not?" She spread her arms suddenly, as if to embrace the whole world. "The scent of the sea, the warm sand underneath my toes, the gentle breeze in my face, you touching my feet… It's all so amazing, so amazing to have a body, to be able to feel again."
As they walked on she also took off her dress of baobab leaves and just left it behind right there, declaring it distinctly uncomfortable for playing in the sand and saying she wanted to feel the warmth of the sunrays on her fur. Now she looked even less like the witch everyone knew, and when they once walked past an older lemur couple, they were both greeted kindly since the two of them didn't recognize Seven. For a moment it was just as if she was part of the pack again and had never been anything or anyone else.
"It's getting a bit cold," she said when in the late afternoon the sun began setting over the tops of the palm trees. Also it wasn't quite as warm anymore as it had been the entire day; during the course of the evening the clouds had begun hanging lower and lower.
Mort nodded. "Oh, yes. Let's go home."
Dusk was turning to dark when they came back to his hut. Mort climbed up the baobab with Seven trailing behind him. The treetop was dark, but he knew his way around. His door was open so he just pranced in; Seven laughed as she watched him do so. He lit a lantern and jumped on his bed. Seven sat down next to him on the mattress, and Mort blushed under his fur when their tails accidentally touched.
"So…" he randomly said.
"So…" Seven chuckled, grinning at him, making his insides turn all warm and fluttery.
And then they started their slumber party with a big pillow fight, rolling around on the bed like they were wrestling. They laughed again until it hurt. The little mouse lemur tumbled backwards on his bed, and Seven fell next to him. Their finishing chuckles moved the bed slightly. Mort rolled on his side to look at her, and she turned to look back. Her messed up black hair dangled into her face, and her lovely yellow eyes stared back into his. She smiled at him. He smiled back and reached over to her and ever so lightly touched her bruised cheek, observing it. Then he put a paw to her neck and twirled long streaks of her fur around his fingers. She shivered and blushed a little, then started twirling his fur with her paw, too, and he laughed. Then they ate buckets of sweets and talked until they fell asleep, with taffy in their fur and eyelashes and pieces of candy on the mattress and floor.
Mort dreamed about her, warm in her arms.
Just before midnight he woke to the memory of being held by her, but now the side of the bed next to him was empty. A vertical white band of moonlight, deep and inches wide, like a luminous shaft, was streaming into the room where the curtains missed coming together. He thought she'd already left, but then he saw her standing by the door, the faint moonlight etching a silver outline around her silhouette. She opened the door silently, partway, and then slipped out, disappearing from his longing, loving look. From the hallway he could hear her steps, her soft sobbing.
He grabbed his pillow and put it over his head and buried himself into the blanket, his thoughts dark and troubled; the sadness he had felt earlier in the day came back to haunt him all of a sudden, and he felt it even more strongly now.
You'll pay for this, Clemson…!
Back alone inside the cockpit of the Maverick I, Skipper booted the on-board computer and activated the secure channel linking him to the North Wind Headquarters security network.
His team and the North Wind weren't in dispute anymore since they'd agreed on sharing the task of protecting animalhood and come to the conclusion that if they did so, they'd actually be able to provide safety for the animals around the globe much more efficiently than if they kept on rivaling like they had before. So they'd arranged that the penguins would be more active in the USA while the North Wind would be occupied on other continents, since due to their technically advanced equipment travelling was easier for them than it was for the penguins.
The penguin leader's flippers glided over the controls as he sent an alpha-one emergency message via the private frequency Agent Classified had installed for only the North Wind team and the penguin team to share when they had agreed to work together. Skipper still wasn't too fond of all their techno stuff about high speed and wireless networks and digital gadgets and whatnot, but he had to admit that in a situation like this, when they were stuck on an island cut off from the rest of the world, modern technology definitely had its advantages.
"Password," the mechanical voice demanded.
"Osteoporosis." – The connection was frustratingly slow. The grainy transmission flickered and then returned and finally the face of a familiar gray wolf filled the fifteen-inch screen, teal-blue eyes staring back into Skipper's. "Is that you, penguins?"
– Skipper barely heard Classified's voice; there was too much background noise blaring loudly. "Yeah, this is Skipper."
"It's great you're calling! I was about to call you."
"You were?" Skipper blinked his eyes in surprise, peering into the monitor at the flickering picture of the wolf's face streaming into pixels and static. Even through the grainy image he noticed a long cut running down his cheek fur from just beneath his left eye; the harsh electric light of the screen made it look morbidly red, with spots clotted dark already. In the background he could hear shots being fired and animals screaming.
He frowned. "What's going on? Are you guys alright?"
"Well… not really. Can you guys come to Bangladesh? A civil war has broken out here after a pack of Bengal tigers have tried to take over the Dhaka Zoo, and we're right in the middle of it. We could need some helping flippers here." The transmission flickered and stuttered, the slight time delay fragmenting Classified's words and chewing them up into distorted digital noise.
"Actually I was going to ask you for help," Skipper tried to explain, hoping the North Wind leader could hear him, "We're stuck on Madagascar with a lemur kingdom to save and two foes that are hard to beat. We're dealing with a power-mad despot here who is supported by a witch – so the fact that he's provided with magical assistance makes him quite invincible, you know… We've beaten him several times before though, so there must be a way to beat him now!"
"A witch?" Classified asked, looking at him as if he hadn't heard him correctly. Just then Short Fuse's voice cut into the conversation, announcing that they were running out of ammunition. Classified replied by curtly ordering his team to retreat.
"We've got to head back to base and grab fresh equipment," he then told Skipper, "I'll call you right back when we're there." He waved at the screen, and the transmission stopped.
Skipper clicked off the videophone which displayed 'Transmission terminated' and waited, silently hoping that their new friends would be alright.
A little later the videophone beeped again. "Answer," he said.
Corporal's chubby face appeared full screen, and his dark eyes lit up when he recognized Skipper. "Hi there, you cuddly penguin!" He waved his big white paw in front of the screen before he was roughly pushed off camera by his leader. Then Classified was talking to Skipper again; his gray pelt was now brushed and shiny again, blood had stopped dripping from the gash in his cheek, and in his left paw he was holding his obligatory cup of espresso.
They appeared to be in a quiet place; the transmission was crystal clear now – Skipper could hear the familiar British accent lighten Classified's every word when the gray wolf asked him, "So what's the situation?"
And Skipper told him what was going on in Madagascar.
Eva, who was taking down in shorthand everything he reported, was so surprised she stopped and lifted her wings from the keyboard for a while when he started telling them about Seven. When he had finished, she and Classified exchanged a gaze before the North Wind leader looked back at the screen, the slightest smirk playing around his whiskers.
"Ghost lemurs and witchcraft? Excuse me, but that sounds all rather… I don't know…" He cleared his throat. "The point is, magic isn't quite our specialty. How exactly do you want us to help you?"
Skipper raised his eyebrows. "Well, I was hoping to hear that from you. – Basically I need any information I can get on that witch, so I know how to deal with an enemy like that. Look, didn't you tell me once that you guys are keeping a register containing information about every living animal on this planet? If that witch was part of this lemur pack once, then maybe you've collected some useful things about her, too."
Classified nodded. "Just a second; I'll check." – For a moment the camera moved, shaking hard, and there was a clattering sound when he set the laptop aside to put up another one next to it on the desk in front of him. "So what intel do you have on that… person?"
"They call her by the name of Seven… 'Seven the Golden Lemur'," Skipper remembered.
"Sorry, but there's no citizen of Madagascar registered with that name."
"Huh. Oh, you know what, 'Seven' is probably not her real name… she might've been registered under a different name."
"Possibly. Do you know that name?" – Skipper shook his head. – "That's too bad. We don't have any nicknames or codenames stored in the database. With the information you've given me 'Seven' could be any female lemur on that island, according to the search engine."
Skipper watched as Eva flew over and landed on Classified's shoulder, craning her neck to whisper something into his ear. He nodded thoughtfully. "Yes… let's do it like this."
– He tapped his keyboard again while he explained to Skipper, "I may not be able to run a specific search for a lemur called 'Seven', but what I can do is show you a statistical table of all the animals who studied magic in Madagascar in the past ten years. If the one you're looking for calls herself a 'witch', then she was very likely among those animals. It seems that there aren't too many of them, so you may be able to identify her." A moment later the videophone beeped and an envelope symbol appeared in the top right corner of the display.
Skipper opened the file; it contained a virtual list giving data on every student of magic in Madagascar indexed over the past decade and their respective degrees. The names were arranged alphabetically and each name had a photo of the according animal next to it.
Skipper frowned when he noticed that there was a Karl the Fanaloka listed as well, intended degree: witch doctor. Studies not completed. He made a mental note to keep that in mind.
He skimmed further down the list, noticing an entry almost near the bottom.
"That's her." The image of the young black lemur girl with lilac blooms tucked behind her ear struck him immediately when he came to it. "A lemur girl by the name of Yasu. I can't be hundred per cent sure of course; it was dark in that canyon, and I saw her on my targeting screen only, but the resemblance is uncanny. Could you fax me a copy of that picture?"
"Sure." A little later the fax machine on the other end of the console chirped; slowly, steadily, the machine spat out a gray-scale copy of the wanted image.
Skipper tore the paper out and scrutinized it.
"Let's see…" Classified ran the specific search in the person index again, tagged with the term 'Yasu'. "Successful graduation at lemur school, then enlisted as a student of healing magic at Madagascar's only magic school," he read out loud to Skipper, "Straight-A student all through magic school, never quite popular though, although Yasu was involved in various extracurricular activities on campus, such as music, dance, and the local chess club. Disappeared under mysterious circumstances a couple of years ago and has been listed as 'missing' since then."
"Yes, that fits! Julien said she disappeared and was brought back by Clemson…"
"Rumors have it that her former teacher from magic school has something to do with her disappearance, but there's no confirmation yet on that point."
"Her teacher?" His chin resting in his flipper, Skipper pensively gazed out the cockpit window. "And who's that?"
"Give me a minute." Classified ran a new search for information about Madagascar's magic school. Skipper looked away from the screen in deep thought for a moment, processing what he'd heard from Julien and the others earlier, recalling their words that were still on his mind, but they hadn't said anything about that.
"Any results?"
"Yes. It says here that Madagascar's magic school has only one teacher, so it's got to be this animal. It's not a lemur, though…" Classified turned away from the other screen and looked back at Skipper. "…It's a chameleon lady. Her name is Masikura."
