Jenna couldn't sleep. Not because of the icy chill of the cell air, or because of the hard little bed, the thin scratchy blanket or because her clothes felt cold and damp. She could not sleep because of the thought of the skull staring empty-eyed at her door. Whenever she closed her eyes an image of the grinning white skull drifted by and woke her with a start.
Jenna gave up trying to sleep. She wrapped herself in Lucy's cloak, her mind racing as she went over the events of the day. Until she had seen the skull, Jenna had found it hard to believe that Simon meant her any harm. In her mind he was still her eldest brother, the reliable one who always helped her out when she was in trouble and showed her how to do her homework. But that was before Simon had picked up the skull, cradled it in his arms and told her how he had rescued DomDaniel's skeleton from the Marram Marshes on the night of the Apprentice Supper and that he was now DomDaniel's Apprentice. "How about that, little Miss Princess? And unlike his last useless Apprentice, I am carrying out his every wish to the letter. And his very particular wish was to have the Castle free of any interfering royalty, such as yourself. He considers the power of the Queen an intolerable imposition on any ExtraOrdinary Wizard. As do I. So, if we want some proper Magyk back in the Castlenot just Marcia's dinky little spellsthen someone has to go." Simon had looked at her with a horrible coldness in his eyes, which stayed with her still.
Jenna sat on the edge of the bed, thinking. She wondered why Simon hadn't already got rid of her. He could have easily pushed her off the ravine into the river or just left her out for the Land Wurms. But Jenna already knew the answer. Whatever Simon might have said, he had still wanted to show off to his little sister. But he had done that now, and tomorrow it would be a different story. Maybe tomorrow he would leave her out for the Land Wurmsor the Magogs.
Jenna shivered. She heard a low noise drifting through the wall and her heart leaped into her mouth. It was a strange, regular,snorting noise, and she knew what it wasit was the skull. The noise got louder and louder; Jenna pressed her hands over her ears to blot out the awful sound, and then suddenly she realized what it really was: Simon was snoring. Which meant that Simon was asleep and she was awake. She could try and escapeshe must try and escape.
Jenna tried the iron door. It was bolted but there was a small gap between the door and the wall, and Jenna wondered if she could push something through the gap and somehow undo the bolts. She looked around the cell but Simon had not been so considerate as to leave her a hacksaw. Jenna put her hands in her pockets, wondering if she had anything on her that could help. Septimus would have the very thing, she thought. He always carried his Young Army knife, which had about a hundred and one different uses, mostly involving horses' hooves. She missed him.
The thought of Septimus made Jenna remember the chocolate Charm he had given her that morning. Where had she put it? There it was, damp and sticky, stuck at the bottom of her tunic pocket. She pulled out the Charm, held it in her palm and squinted at the inscription:Take me, shake me,and I will make thee:Quetzalcoatl's Tchocolatl.
Well, she thought, it was worth a try.
Jenna tried to remember what Septimus had said when he had told her how to use the Charm. She cupped both of her hands together and shook the Charm up and down as hard as she could to Activate it. As she did so, she whispered the words written in the small brown square and concentrated all her thoughts on what she wanted. Sure enough, the Charm began to work. It grew warm and smooth in her cupped hands, as though it were a real piece of chocolate. Then, just as Septimus had said it would, it began to buzz like a small fly trapped in her grasp. Jenna waited until the Charm was almost too hot to hold, and then quickly placed it on the object she wanted to turn into chocolatethe door of the cell.
Jenna did not really believe that Septimus's Charm could turn a thick iron door into chocolate. But, as she pushed the Charm against the door, to her amazement she felt the hard pitted metal change into a smooth surface that was cool, rather than icy cold, to the touch. Something else had changed too. Jenna sniffed the airthe cell was filled with the faint smell of cocoa.
Hesitantly, Jenna took the Charm off the cell door. The Charm was cool now; she slipped it back into her pocket and gazed at the door. At first Jenna thought it seemed much the same as it had before, except now, as she looked more closely, she could see that the rusty hinges and even the flap over the keyhole were beautifully molded in chocolate. Never in her life had Jenna seen so much chocolate and, unfortunately, never had she felt less like eating it.
Jenna soon discovered that a massive slab of three-inch-thick chocolate, chilled hard on a cold night, is not easy to shift. She pushed as hard as she could against it but the slab stayed as firm as if it were still iron. She decided to start scraping some shavings off the door to make it thinner, but it was hard work and she thought it would take all night.
Jenna sat down disconsolately on the edge of the bed and ate some of the shavingsit was extremely good chocolate, even better than the Choc Chunks from the sweetshop at the end of Wizard Waywhile she wondered what to do. After a few minutes the chocolate began to help her think more clearly, and Jenna realized that she needed to find something sharp to help cut a hole in the door. Simon had made sure that there was nothing sharp in the cell, but, as Jenna hunted around, she soon discovered that even Simon did not think of everything. He had forgotten about the bedsprings.
Jenna threw the thin mattress off the bed and quickly unwound one of the looser bedsprings until she held a sharp, pointed piece of metal in her hand. Then she set to work, scraping away a hole in the door big enough to squeeze through, while, to her relief, Simon's snores carried on reverberating through the walls.
An hour later, Jenna's bedspring had cut a large rectangle at the bottom of the door. All she had to do was give it a push and hope that it did not fall over with too loud a thud. Carefully, Jenna pushed against one edge of the rectangle and to her delight, it moved easily. Very quietly, Jenna laid the thick slab of chocolate on the floor, and, in case she got hungry later, she broke off the keyhole cover and stuffed it into her pocket. Then she squeezed through the opening, stood up and wiped her chocolaty palms on her tunic.
Simon was still snoring loudly; the snores echoed around the circular chamber and were strangely comforting, for at least they were human. Jenna tiptoed past the huge white dish of the Camera Obscura, glancing down for a last look at the strangely compelling scene outside, and noticed that Simon had left the Enlarging Glass lying on the dish. Jenna picked up the Glass and stuffed it into her tunic pocket. Now Simon would not find it so easy to see where she had gone.