The exams are ooovver! *bounces about randomly* Yayities. For all the insane exams-are-over-and-we're-partying dudes, this chapter's for you! *Grin*
~*~
An agonizing half hour later after unlocking what seemed like a thousand doors, they were sure that they would never want to see another key again. The ring of jingling metal objects was placed on a random bedside table, and it took all the willpower the girls had not to send it flying over to the far end of Salamandastron. After all, as Diana had so pointedly reasoned, they would still need it.
Then Owl raised the question that had been on their minds. "Erm, guys? You do realize that we'll probably be here for quite a while considering the fact that… Well, the ghost was the one who got us here, and he doesn't seem inclined to get us back?"
"We kind of noticed a while ago," Diana replied curtly, the previous incident with the keys still rankling upon her nerves.
Uncomfortable silence that followed was punctuated with Kylie's optimistic tone. "Well, if we're discovered gone, they'll send people to look for us? And I'm sure one of them would touch the visualizer and they would find us? Right?"
"You know, if I can send you here, I can stop others from coming here as well." Martin floated in to join the party, his snide remark raising a considerable amount of panic from the others. "And besides, what makes you think we would want more humans over here? You are, I believe, enough to serve our purpose."
"Go away, Martin."
"Oh, that's tough luck. Make me." The ghost replied, an aggravating smirk on his pale translucent face.
And with that the ghost of a mouse floated away.
The more sardonic people rolled their eyes at the utter irony.
"You know," Sam Wong piped up in the silence that followed, "if we are going to be stuck here for quite a while, wouldn't we have much less time to study for the *PSLE? I mean, if we ever get back to school – which I hope we would, in time for the exams – we'll be missing out on a lot of revision."
Suddenly the entire class looked very alarmed, even more than they had been when they had first realized that they were in Mossflower. The teachers too, looked distinctively troubled.
"And we have the other classes to teach too," Mrs. Tong said.
"Oh, the school will get relief teachers, I'm sure," Mei Keen said briskly, too preoccupied with her own prospect of missing the biggest exam in all of her six years of primary school.
"We could get our bags here, though. I'm sure we have our notes and stuff in them, and we do have the teachers for convenient reference." Po Linn said, and quickly shrank back from the glares of her teachers, they being rather unhappy at the prospect at being called "convenient reference".
"How?"
"Martin has his ways," Sara said, catching on with a grin.
"We'll just have to persuade him to help us." Shu finished, sounding more confident about the idea than she really was.
The others nodded slowly. Exams were important, and the Primary School Leaving Examination was even more so.
~*~
"Martin?"
"What do you want?" The ghost did not turn from his current task of rigging up a makeshift pulley.
"Can you help us?"
There was no reply, and the ghost merely continued to fix wires onto the attic walls, looping rope here, tying another knot there.
Curious, the six diplomats sent to negotiate with the mouse leaned forward to see what the precocious creature was up to.
Owl gasped when she realized what was going on. "Martin, why are you fixing a pulley into that mouse's room?"
Martin gave a hiss in annoyance and alarm as her voice resounded throughout the musty attic, bouncing off the walls loudly. "Keep quiet! I'm not supposed to be up here, they'll hear me! What do you want, go away." He waved them off with a pale paw, the other latched tightly on the length of rope.
"But why are you fixing a pulley into that mouse's room?" Sara repeated Owl's question even louder, grinning as the ghost fixed her with a jaundiced look.
"He's not 'that mouse', for one, he's Matthias. And it's not of your business what I am doing now. Go away." Martin growled.
"But we need your help, you imbecile of a dead mouse," Diana shot back as quickly as the sentence came, pleased to note that the dead warrior of Redwall actually looked alarmed at the insult.
Sighing, Martin waved a paw. "Shoot."
"We need our school bags, and our files, and all other educational material currently in our classroom, which I am sure is in a derelict state by now," Diana said testily.
"Throw in all the *non-educational* stuff as well, will you?" Shu added, grinning very meaningfully.
Martin merely smiled indulgently. "What makes you think I'll help you?"
"We know, for one, that Mordalfus has put a certain limit on the places you can float to, with the help of the mother badgers and Ambrose Spike to reinforce that. And we do know," Sara continued triumphantly, smirking as the ghost took on a look of one mortally insulted, "that those are the places that you would like to set up traps in, such as the Abbot's room, which was where the frog from the Abbey Pond had so conveniently found its way into the Abbot's bed."
Martin actually looked pleased at the mention of his latest prank, but he quickly resumed his taciturn demeanour. "So?"
The grin never left Sara's face as she continued, "we could always help you, you know. It's not like we have never played pranks before."
The others sniggered at her last line, which made a lot of sense to them. Martin looked rather pleased by the suggestion, and he finally nodded, his ghostly head bobbing up and down.
"All right then."
An alliance had been formed between ghost and humans.
Poor Mordalfus.