Magicalia

1

Until a monster swallowed her PE uniform, Bitsy’s evening had been going to plan.
She’d finished all her homework, tidied her room, and defeated her best friend, Kosh, at Mario Kart. Twice. After dinner, the two of them had blown up an inflatable mattress so he could stay over this weekend while his parents were away and join Bitsy and her dad on a holiday to Paris on Monday. There was only one thing left to do before they could call it a night.
“Recording in three, two . . .” Bitsy tapped a button on her laptop, adjusted her headphones, and leaned closer to the wireless microphone on her desk. “Hello and welcome to Poddingham, the local news podcast for Oddingham village. It’s Friday the twenty-ninth of March. I’m your host, Bitsy Wilder, and this week I’m joined by our sports correspondent—”
“Koshan Ranasinghe!” Kosh declared his Sri Lankan surname like a football commentator announcing a goal. Sitting beside her, he had a tatty Oddingham FC beanie pulled over his floppy black hair and was wearing his usual slouchy T-shirt-and-tracksuit-bottoms combo. “Some of you might also know me as the boy who delivers your newspapers and accidentally rides a bike through your flower beds. Shout-out to Mrs. Harris on Bridge Lane for always being so chill about it!”
Bitsy covered the microphone with the sleeve of her cardigan. “Mrs. Harris is not chill about it, by the way. I saw her yelling at your mum yesterday.”
“You did?” Kosh paused. “Maybe edit that bit out.”
Shaking her frizzy blond curls, Bitsy plowed on. “Coming up, Kosh has the lowdown on last night’s football match between Oddingham and Bletchy Town. First, though, the headlines.” She flipped open her trusty reporter’s notebook and tried to ignore a heavy feeling of disappointment as she read, “Tarmac Trouble: Residents concerned as potholes worsen on Church Street. Wood You Believe It? Sighting of rare woodpecker thrills local bird-watchers. And Gotta Ketchup-All: Oddingham gardener grows tomato shaped like Pikachu.”
“‘Gotta ketchup-all’?” Kosh laughed. “That’s got to be one of your best puns yet.”
Bitsy gave him a weak smile. As much as she enjoyed devising witty headlines, she wished there was more interesting news in Oddingham. She’d never understood why her dad had relocated from London to such a boring village in the middle of nowhere, but if she was ever going to become a professional journalist, she had to start by reporting the experiences of the community she lived in. Even if that meant talking about look-alike vegetables.
She gazed at the bulletin board above her desk, cluttered with newspaper clippings of the articles her mum had written. Matilda Wilder had passed away in a car accident when Bitsy was five, but Bitsy’s dad, Eric, talked about her all the time—how she’d been an investigative reporter for the BBC and had adventured around the globe, sniffing out important stories that exposed corruption and fought injustice. Matilda had recorded her investigations in reporter’s notebooks, too. Bitsy was determined to follow in her footsteps.
Glancing back at her notebook, Bitsy was about to begin her report on potholes when a rumbling boom reverberated around the house.
“What was that?” Kosh asked. “It sounded like thunder . . . but inside the house.”
Bitsy slid off her headphones. She could hear voices talking downstairs—her dad and someone Bitsy couldn’t place. Something about her dad’s tone made Bitsy’s heart race.
Stuffing her notebook into her jeans pocket, she rushed to open her bedroom door. A strange shadow was climbing the stairs. It looked like the outline of a large animal with long whiskers and a bulbous head. “Dad?” she called uncertainly. He had a goofy sense of humor; perhaps he was playing a practical joke. “Dad, are you—?”
But her question wedged in her throat as a hamster the size of a bathtub heaved itself to the top of the stairs, wheezing heavily. Amethyst-purple fur covered the beast’s entire body, except for a bald patch above its nose, where a jagged black rhinoceros horn protruded. The beast’s violet eyes glittered as it spotted the wicker laundry basket on Bitsy’s landing. It scurried forward, snared the basket in its claws, opened its mouth—revealing four overgrown incisors—and tossed the contents, PE uniform and all, to the back of its throat.
“What in the world is that?” Kosh gasped, jumping out of his chair.
Bitsy stumbled back. For a split second, she thought she might be hallucinating—after all, a purple hamstoceros couldn’t possibly be real—but that didn’t explain how Kosh could see the monster, too. “I don’t know!” she spluttered, diving behind her bedroom door. “Hide!”
Kosh dashed across the floor and flattened himself against the wall beside Bitsy. “Do you think it’s friendly? What if it wants to eat us?!”
The wobbly pitch of his voice matched the jumpy feeling in Bitsy’s stomach. She peeked through a gap in the door. The hamstoceros was sitting on its hind legs, gobbling the contents of her dad’s bookcase. Its diet seemed to consist of absolutely everything . . . “We need to sneak downstairs and find my dad—he could be in trouble,” she whispered, desperately hoping he was OK. As the hamstoceros tramped into her dad’s bedroom at the other end of the landing, she steadied her nerves and snuck out from behind the door. “Come on, this is our chance.”
They tiptoed toward the stairs. Like most houses in Oddingham, Bitsy’s was old and the floorboards were notoriously creaky. Her knees trembled as she crept forward, trying to remember the quiet parts of the landing. Kosh trod carefully in her footsteps, holding his arms out for balance. At the top of the stairs, Bitsy grabbed the banister and lowered her slippered foot onto the uppermost step . . .
But as she shifted her weight forward, the door to her dad’s bedroom clattered and the hamstoceros waddled out, chewing on one of her dad’s work ties. Its cheeks had swollen to the size of beach balls and were now stuffed with so many oddly shaped lumps, the hamstoceros could barely fit its head through the doorframe.
Bitsy froze as the monster caught sight of them. It hastily slurped down the rest of her dad’s tie and lowered its horn as if it were taking a bow.
Kosh hesitated. “What is—?”
“Yeeee!” With a high-pitched squeal, the hamstoceros charged.
“Not friendly!” Kosh wailed, pushing Bitsy forward. “Go!”
They scrambled down the stairs two at a time as the hamstoceros rammed into the wall behind them. As if struck by an earthquake, the staircase shook in all directions. Plaster crumbled from the ceiling, and a couple of pictures fell off the wall and smashed onto the steps. Coughing dust out of her lungs, Bitsy landed on the ground floor and raced along the hallway. Voices were coming from the living room.
“Give the book to me!” a woman snarled.
“You can’t have it,” Bitsy’s dad said fiercely. “It doesn’t belong to you.”
With a burst of speed, Bitsy bolted through the door ahead of Kosh and skidded to a stop in the middle of the carpet.
A tall raven-haired woman with pale skin was pacing by the TV. Bitsy had never seen her before, but with her shaved undercut, dark eyeliner, combat pants, and heavy biker boots, she cut a striking figure.
“Bitsy!” Eric Wilder blinked at her from behind his steel-framed glasses. There were tea stains on his jumper and an empty mug rolling back and forth by his feet. “I’m, uh, just dealing with a surprise visitor. Take Kosh back upstairs and—”
But before he could finish, the hamstoceros barreled through the door behind them, roaring furiously. Clumps of shredded wallpaper dangled from its horn, and dust caked its whiskers as if it had face-planted in powdered sugar. It surveyed the room and fixed Bitsy and Kosh with a malevolent glare as if to say, Prepare to join your dirty laundry.
Eric stiffened. “On second thought, both of you get behind me. Now!”
Bitsy grabbed Kosh’s arm, and they dropped behind the sofa. “What’s going on, Dad?” she asked breathlessly. “What is that thing?”
“It’s called a magicore,” Eric said, backing steadily away from the hamstoceros. “They’re powerful beasts conjured from emotional energy. That particular species is conjured from greed.”
A beast conjured from greed? The concept pinballed around Bitsy’s head, making her dizzy. “I don’t understand. What’s it doing here? And who’s she?”
The raven-haired woman studied Bitsy with a wry smile. She wore studded leather gloves and a dagger-
shaped bronze earring in one ear. Eric glowered at her, pain flickering across his face like it sometimes did when he spoke about Bitsy’s mum. “I’ll explain later. Just stay down, both of you.”
A cold feeling spread through Bitsy’s chest as if she’d just been stabbed with an icicle. How did her dad know all this? Had he been keeping secrets from her? It didn’t make sense.
The raven-haired woman stomped over to the hamstoceros. “Well?” she asked sharply, surveying the monster’s bloated cheeks. “Did you find the book?”
As if it had understood the woman’s question, the hamstoceros snorted. It wiggled its cheeks as if it were gargling with mouthwash and, with a loud clatter, vomited up an assortment of her dad’s possessions, including two pairs of shoes, a dozen astronomy textbooks, a long black telescope, and a fleecy tartan dressing gown with a hole in the sleeve. Finally, it spewed up a week’s worth of Wilder dirty laundry.
The raven-haired woman scrunched her nose as she kicked through the drool-covered pile. “It’s not here. Keep hunting.”
The hamstoceros huffed and, with its cheeks now shrunk to the size of watermelons, plodded toward a glass cabinet that stood against one wall. Bitsy tensed. The cabinet contained a collection of her mum’s journalism awards, plus several souvenirs from her mum’s travels.
She sprang to her feet as the hamstoceros smashed through the front of the cabinet, reached inside, and began devouring trinkets. “Dad, do something!”
Eric’s expression tightened. He looked back and forth between Bitsy and the hamstoceros like he was wrestling with a decision. Finally, he pulled a fountain pen from his pants pocket and aimed it threateningly at the raven-haired woman. “You have until the count of three to take your magicore and leave. One . . .”
“What’s he going to do with that?” Kosh whispered as Bitsy crouched back down. “Squirt ink in her face?”
Bitsy shook her head. She’d never seen the fountain pen before.
“Two . . .”
The woman flared her nostrils. “I don’t have time for this. If you won’t give me the book, I’ll have to take the next best thing.” She signaled to the hamstoceros. “Prepare for extraction.”
The hamstoceros’s fur bristled. It promptly abandoned the statuette it had been about to eat and bared its teeth at Eric.
Eric’s fingers tightened around his pen. Bitsy noticed the barrel glowing blue under his touch.
“Three!”
A cloud of twinkling copper particles burst from the pen with a soft crackle. They whirled through the air like a murmuration of starlings and formed a wavy sausage the width of Bitsy’s thigh. The sausage wriggled, and the particles blew away . . . revealing a flying silver caterpillar. Beneath its transparent skin, its body appeared to be made of dense fog that flickered with electrical sparks.
Kosh’s mouth fell open. “Tell me you see . . .”
“I see it,” Bitsy said, squeezing his arm. Her pulse was racing. Had her dad just conjured a—what had he called it?—magicore?
The caterpillar had a round face with a tiny black mouth, neon-blue eyes, and a pair of squidgy antennae. As it whipped through the air, it kept changing direction as if it weren’t sure which way to go.
Bitsy’s dad smiled at the caterpillar like it was an old friend. “Quasar, over here. I need your help.”
The caterpillar zoomed to Eric’s side and nuzzled against his ribs, causing a fine layer of Eric’s sandy-blond hair to stand on end from a static buildup. Was Quasar the magicore’s name? Eric was an astrophysicist and had once told Bitsy that a quasar was a brightly shining nucleus in space . . .
“Protect Bitsy and Kosh at all costs,” Eric told Quasar firmly. He jabbed a finger at the hamstoceros. “And extinguish that magicore!”
On command, Quasar whirled around to face the hamstoceros. It wiggled its bottom and shot toward its opponent like a giant silver bullet. The hamstoceros growled and lowered its horn. Just as it prepared to charge, Quasar hurled a bolt of electricity at its feet.
A loud clap pierced the air, making Bitsy flinch. The hamstoceros squealed and rocketed to the ceiling in a cloud of smoke. Shrieking in outrage, it rushed at Quasar, slashing with its claws. Broken furniture went flying as the two magicores grappled with each other, tearing around the room in a purple-and-silver blur.
In the tussle, the hamstoceros got its foot tangled in the electrical cord of a table lamp. The lamp went flinging through the air and struck Eric hard on the side of the head.
“Dad!” Bitsy cried, jumping up.
“Bitsy . . . ?” he slurred, wobbling forward. “Stay—”
But then his pupils rolled back in his head, and he collapsed onto the floor like a sack of potatoes. Although Bitsy could see his chest moving, the rest of his body was motionless.
“Look out!” Kosh yanked on Bitsy’s leg, and she ducked just in time as a flaming table leg came frisbeeing over their heads and smashed into the wall behind them.
She protected her face with her arms as fiery debris rained over them. “We have to help my dad!”
But her voice was drowned out by another rumble of thunder. Lightning flared across the ceiling. The floor vibrated.
Then all at once, the room fell quiet.
Bitsy listened carefully for sounds of movement, but there was nothing.
“Is it over?” Kosh asked, lifting his head out from under his arms.
Gripping the sofa tightly, Bitsy pulled herself to her feet.
The room looked like a bomb had hit it. Scorch marks peppered the walls, ripped cushions and broken furniture lay strewn across the floor, and sparks jumped from a crack in the TV. A splintered heap of wood rested in the middle of the carpet where a coffee table had once been.
But the damage wasn’t what troubled her. As Bitsy surveyed the room, a bubble of panic rose to the back of her throat.
The raven-haired lady, the hamstoceros, Quasar, and her dad . . .
They had all vanished.