✨ Wattys 2023 winner ✨ Special award for best storyline ✨
The Moffet family is just like any other family.
They lead a simple, quiet life in a pretty little two-story house on the outskirts of London... That is until they receive, from a strange de...
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"This might be a good place!" exclaimed Griselda, opening the door while the car was still running.
"Close that darned door immediately!" yelled Odilda. "Have you decided to get killed before you can be of any help?" The professor glared through the rearview mirror. She then slowed down her Citroën, coming to a stop at a corner of a small junction near the Tower of London. "Here then, all right!" she exclaimed as she parked in front of a no-parking sign.
"Are you quite sure this is the right place?" asked Peter, seeing it was just a common intersection with a few anonymous stores here and there.
"It's certainly not, but with a little effort we can make it so," Griselda reassured him, amiably ruffling his hair. "Come on, girls! Let's get to work."
After shooing some passerby, the three grandmothers set the rolled-up carpet in the middle of the intersection. Then each of them took place at a different point of the three-way crossroad, their fists full of shimmering powder, and began to chant in a monotonous tone, rocking from one foot to the other while lifting and lowering their arms.
"Bivium-Trivium-Magicalisresnonsolumetnonsemperestsicut nobis videtur. Bivium-Trivium-Fictorium-Fictatae iusta via non semper facile reperitur. Bivium-Trivium-Arcanum et Incantum quaedam ad nullum locum. Bivium-Trivium-Sapientia ad veram scientiam et summam sapientiam non omnes viae ducunt. Bivium-Trivium- Mysterium et Stregalon una est via quae ad Dralonem perducit."
They threw the magic powder onto the carpet and began to rise in the air. Under their feet, the streets began to stretch, shrink, rotate and divide like pieces of a puzzle.
"Look!" exclaimed Peter.
The carpet lifted from the ground and, like the long tongue of a snake, began to move sinuously through the air, stretching out and rolling back first in front of Griselda, then in front of Magda, and then in front of Myrtle, as if struggling to decide where to finally unfold.
The chant grew powerful and relentless while the carpet struggled increasingly.
"Bivium-Trivium-Mysterium et Stregalon una est via quae ad Dralonem perducit!" The three grannies shouted, stopping their dirge abruptly. Their feet, wrapped in amusing footwear, touched the ground. The carpet, finally sure of its landing place, uncoiled slowly, opening between the buildings a fourth road made of small irregular pebbles, some protruding and colorful, some rounded and decorated.
