Arthur had thought of snatching the Key as he handed over the turkey, but he couldn’t bring himself to get close enough. Lady Wednesday’s hunger was really frightening and it took all Arthur’s courage just to stay and listen to her — from a distance.
‘As I was saying . . . this good . . . started getting hungry but held it in check for a couple of thousand years without too much trouble . . . sauce for this duck, ah . . . ate a huge amount but didn’t matter . . . then I realised wasn’t just my appetite getting out of hand . . . cucumber sandwiches excellent, only four dozen, pity . . . the Border Sea was spreading without my direction . . . extending into the Secondary Realms, which was bad enough, but also into Nothing . . .’
She paused to eat a huge, towering jelly-cake, shoving handfuls of it into her maw in quick time. Then, between mouthfuls of bread torn from a loaf the size of Arthur himself, she continued.
‘I could stop the Sea spreading when I noticed it, using the Key . . . ugh, fish, you can have that . . . but I didn’t like what was going on. Eventually I concluded that the problem went back to our actions with the Will. So I decided —’ She stopped suddenly and flung herself on a platter of small chocolate desserts, smearing chocolate all over her pasty face. Then, through bubbles of chocolate, she continued what she was saying.
‘I decided that I would free Part Three of the Will and relinquish the Key. That I was not equipped to deal with whatever was wrong with the Border Sea and with myself.’
Wednesday stopped eating for a few seconds. Her face screwed up with a look of pain.
‘Unfortunately I also decided to share my plan first with my friend, the so-called Superior Saturday, who I thought might do the same. Two of us would have a better chance against the others. Or so I thought.’
She took a deep breath and staggered down the table to a barbecue plate that was sizzling away without any visible source of heat. It was crowded with thick, succulent sausages, which Drowned Wednesday picked up by the half dozen and crammed into a mouth that Arthur noticed was already bigger and wider than it had been moments before. Drowned Wednesday herself had also grown a foot or two in every direction while she was speaking.
‘Saturday betrayed me! The other Trustees, save that somnolent fool Monday, called me to a meeting. I was ambushed, five Keys against my one. They stripped me of my power and I was cast down into the Border Sea, my shape lost, my appetite unsuppressed!’
She punctuated her last remark by eating an entire watermelon, rind and all, washing it down with a huge flagon of ale that spilled down her front.
‘Ahh! Since then, I have not been fully able to wield the Key. All the power I have is directed at growing no larger, else I eat up everything in the Border Sea and beyond!’
‘What about the Will?’ asked Arthur. ‘Why didn’t you just release it like you were going to?’
‘Stolen!’ roared Wednesday as she slavered over a side of suckling pig. ‘They reached into my mind and stole out the secret of its location, then Saturday or one of the others sent that pirate Feverfew to take it. But you will get it back, Lord Arthur! You will get the Will, and I shall give you the Key, and all will yet be well. Oh, how I long not to . . . eat! Eat! Eat!’
She threw herself on the table, sliding along with her mouth gaping open like some sort of awful giant vacuum cleaner, scooping up food, plates and all. As she ate her way along the table, her torso grew larger and larger, and her arms and legs shrank back into her body.
‘Where did Feverfew take the Will?’ Arthur shouted. He started to back even farther away from the feeding frenzy, darting glances at Dawn, who did not look at all ready to fly away.
‘Aaaarrch homp homp ugh,’ Wednesday gurgled and spat, bits of mangled silver falling from her jaws. ‘Don’t know! The pirates have a secret harbour. I know it is in my very own Border Sea, I feel it in my gut! But I cannot find it. You must! Now run! Run!’
She focused on the last few yards of piled-high food on the table and swallowed the lot down in one sweep of her now enormous mouth. Then she turned towards Arthur and slid onto the deck, a huge blubbery cylinder that was not yet whale but no longer human, her now vestigial arms and legs writhing and her vast mouth chomping, the ridges of bone that had once been teeth making a hideous clattering sound.
Arthur wasn’t on the deck anymore. He was halfway up the main mast, almost jumping from ratline to ratline. He climbed so quickly that he made it to the cross-trees and was working himself onto the small platform there when Dawn caught up with him and plucked him away and into the air.
Below them, Wednesday continued to grow and grow, threshing and rolling in her hunger, biting at the timbers of the ship until her own rapidly increasing weight broke the vessel’s back and sent it to the bottom.