The Boggart
The slimy brown hand fumbled along the side of the canoe, making its way toward Jenna. Then it grabbed hold of her paddle. Jenna wrested the paddle away and was about to hit the slimy brown thing with it - hard - when a voice said, "Oi. No need fer that."
A seallike creature covered in slippery brown fur pulled itself up so that its head was just out of the water. Two bright black-button eyes stared at Jenna, who had her paddle still poised in midair. "Wish you'd put that down. Could hurt someone. So where you bin, then?" the creature asked grumpily in a deep, gurgling voice with a broad marshland drawl. "I bin waitin' for hours. Freezin' in here. How'dj'ou like it? Stuck in a ditch. Just waitin' "
All Jenna could manage in reply was a small squeak; her voice seemed to have stopped working.
"What is it, Jen?" asked Nicko, who was sitting behind Boy 412, just to make sure he didn't do anything stupid, and couldn't see the creature.
"Th - this..." Jenna pointed at the creature, who looked offended.
"What you mean this?" he asked. "You mean me? You mean Boggart?"
"Boggart? No. I didn't say that," muttered Jenna.
"Well I did. Boggart. That's me. I'm Boggart. Boggart, the Boggart. Good name, innit?"
"Lovely," said Jenna politely.
"What's going on?" asked Silas, catching up with them. "Stoppit, Maxie. Stoppit I say!"
Maxie had caught sight of the Boggart and was barking frantically. The Boggart took one look at Maxie and disappeared back under the water. Since the notorious Boggart Hunts many years ago in which Maxie's ancestors had taken part so effectively, the Marram Marsh Boggart had become a rare creature. With a long memory. The Boggart reappeared at a safe distance. "You're not bringin' that?" he said, looking balefully at Maxie. "She didunt say nothin' 'bout one a them."
"Do I hear a Boggart?" asked Silas.
"Yeah," said the Boggart.
"Zelda's Boggart?"
"Yeah," said the Boggart.
"Has she sent you to find us?"
"Yeah," said the Boggart.
"Good," said Silas, very relieved. "We'll follow you, then."
"Yeah," said the Boggart, and he swam off along Deppen Ditch and took the next turning but one.
The next turning but one was much narrower than the Deppen Ditch and wound its snakelike way deep into the moonlit, snow-covered marshes. The snow fell steadily and all was quiet and still, apart from the gurgles and splashes of the Boggart as he swam in front of the canoes, every now and then sticking his head out of the dark water and calling out, "You followin'?"
"I don't know what else he thinks we can do," Jenna said to Nicko as they paddled the canoe along the increasingly narrow ditch. "It's not as if there's anywhere else to go."
But the Boggart took his duties seriously and kept going with the same question until they reached a small marsh pool with several overgrown channels leading off it. "Best wait for the others," said the Boggart. "Don't want 'em gettin' lost."
Jenna glanced back to see where Marcia and Silas had got to. They were far behind now, as Silas was the only one paddling. Marcia had given up and had both hands clamped firmly to the top of her head. Behind her the long and pointy snout of an Abyssinian wolfhound loftily surveyed the scene before him and let drop the occasional long strand of glistening dribble. Straight onto Marcia's head.
As Silas propelled the canoe into the pool and wearily laid his paddle down, Marcia declared, "I am not sitting in front of that animal one moment longer. There's dog dribble all over my hair. It's disgusting. I'm getting out. I'd rather walk."
"You don't wanter be doin' that, Yer Majesty," came the Boggart's voice from out of the water beside Marcia. He gazed up at Marcia, his bright black eyes blinking through his brown fur, amazed by her ExtraOrdinary Wizard belt that glinted in the moonlight. Although he was a creature of the marsh mud, the Boggart loved bright and shiny things. And he had never seen such a bright and shiny thing as Marcia's gold and platinum belt.
"You don't wanter be walkin' round 'ere, Yer Majesty," the Boggart told her respectfully. "You'll start followin' the Marshfire, and it'll lead you into the Quake Ooze before you know it. There's many as has followed the Marshfire and there's none as has returned."
A rumbling growl was coming from deep down in Maxie's throat. The fur on the back of his neck stood up, and suddenly, obeying an old and compelling wolfhound instinct, Maxie leaped into the water after the Boggart.
"Maxie! Maxie! Oh, you stupid dog," yelled Silas.
The water in the pool was freezing. Maxie yelped and frantically dog-paddled back to Silas's and Marcia's canoe.
Marcia shoved him away. "That dog is not getting back in here," she announced.
"Marcia, he'll freeze," protested Silas.
"I don t care."
"Here, Maxie. C'mon boy," said Nicko. He grabbed Maxie's neckerchief and, with Jenna's help, hauled the dog into their canoe. The canoe tipped dangerously, but Boy 412, who had no desire to end up in the water like Maxie, steadied it by grabbing hold of a tree root.
Maxie stood shivering for a moment, then he did what any wet dog has to do: he shook himself. "Maxie!" gasped Nicko and Jenna.
Boy 412 said nothing. He didn't like dogs at all. The only dogs he had ever known were the vicious Custodian Guard Dogs, and although he could see that Maxie looked nothing like them, he still expected him to bite at any moment. And so when Maxie settled down, laid his head on Boy 412's lap and went to sleep, it was just another very bad moment in Boy 412's worst day ever. But Maxie was happy. Boy 412's sheepskin jacket was warm and comfortable, and the wolfhound spent the rest of the journey dreaming that he was back at home curled up in front of the fire with all the other Heaps.
But the Boggart had gone.
"Boggart? Where are you, Mr. Boggart?" Jenna called out politely.
There was no reply. Just the deep silence that comes to the marshes when a blanket of snow covers the bogs and quags, silences their gurgles and gloops and sends all the slimy creatures back into the stillness of the mud.
"Now we've lost that nice Boggart because of your stupid animal," Marcia told Silas crossly. "I don't know why you had to bring him."
Silas sighed. Sharing a canoe with Marcia Overstrand was not something he had ever imagined he would have to do. But if he had, in a mad moment, ever imagined it, this was exactly how it would have been.
Silas scanned the horizon in the hope that he might be able to see Keeper's Cottage, where Aunt Zelda lived. The cottage stood on DraggenIsland, one of the many islands in the marsh, which became true islands only when the marsh-land flooded. But all Silas could see was white flatness stretching out before him in all directions. To make matters worse, he could see the marsh mist beginning to rise up and drift across the water, and he knew that if the mist came in they would never see Keeper's Cottage, however close they might be to it.