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you?’ said Mordonna. ‘Wondering if they are worth the risk of getting dead for?’
    â€˜Umm …’
    â€˜I’ll tell you what,’ said Mordonna. ‘I’ll do some of the other magic I promised you. I will make you a bit taller and cure your baldness and remove all those nasty blackheads from your back. When you bring the cage back here with the bird happy and safe inside, I’ll do the dark and handsome bit and make you seventeen years younger. OK?’
    Without waiting for his answer, Mordonna performed the spells. It was all a charade, really, because she could have simply taken her sunglasses off, stared deep into Barry Trubshaw’s eyes and made him do whatever she wanted without all the stamp and image-changing stuff. But sometimes using magic was more fun and she realised that someone as pathetic as B. Trubshaw did not deserve the unbelievable joy of staring into her eyes.
    â€˜Stand up,’ she commanded.
    Barry Trubshaw stood up and bashed his head on the central beam across the middle of the yurt.
    â€˜See, I told you I’d make you taller,’ said Mordonna. ‘Now I am going to put a map inside your head of where you have to go. I will turn one of your chickens into a horse and one of your pumpkins into a packet of cheese and pickle sandwiches and a bottle of cordial, and you can set out on your quest.’
    Barry Trubshaw rubbed the sore bit on top of his head and found that he was no longer bald. Where he had previously reflected moonlight, he now had a thick head of hair – a thick head of hair matted with blood from where he’d hit himself.

    â€˜Stamps beyond price, taller and hairy,’ said Mordonna. ‘Come on, off you go. And by the way, failure is not an option, as they say in the movies.’
    â€˜What would, er, happen if I failed?’ Barry asked.
    â€˜Stamped on , much, much shorter, every single hair on your body removed with fire and when itdoes grow back it will be bright ginger and you will only be able to speak an obscure language that only three very, very old people on a remote farm in Belgium can understand,’ Mordonna said with a smile. ‘But don’t worry, you’ll be fine. If there is anyone guarding the birdcage, just wait until they are asleep, get the cage and slip away without waking them. Just whisper my name to the old bird and he will understand.’
    Barry Trubshaw climbed onto the horse, then climbed down and back on again so his head was facing the same direction as the horse’s head. Then he got down and went to the toilet three times because the whole thing had made him very nervous, before climbing back up again and setting off along the valley towards the track back to the outside world.
    â€˜And remember,’ Mordonna called after him, ‘I will be watching you every step of the way, so no running home to Mummy and hiding in that secret place you made in the garden shed where you keep those magazines.’

    â€˜You entrusted that self-important fat little bald man with the task of rescuing my beloved Vessel?’ cried the Queen.
    â€˜Yes, Mother, and I have no doubt he will bring him back here without any trouble at all,’ said Mordonna. ‘Barry will merely act as a robot that I can channel my powers through. Besides, the Hearse Whisperer is on her way to Tristan da Cunha and any guards she will have posted to look after Vessel’s cage will be very lowly third-rate idiots who would never suspect a fifth-rate idiot like Barry Trubshaw. They’ll just think he’s some loony hippy roaming round the country on an old horse, which he is.’
    Mordonna was absolutely right. 18 Barry Trubshaw rode through the forest until he cameto the deserted house where the Hearse Whisperer had trapped Vessel in the enchanted cage, and sure enough there were two third-rate idiots sitting outside on the verandah.

    â€˜I am so bored that if summink don’t