The Sword in the Grotto by Angie Sage Page A

months anyway—so I shouted out, “Happy early five-hundredth birthday!” and everyone looked at me like I’d gone crazy.
    â€œWell, it is almost his birthday,” I told them. “And he’s five hundred years old tomorrow. Aren’t you, Sir Horace?”
    â€œYes, unfortunately,” Sir Horace boomed. He didn’t sound very pleased about it. I didn’t know why, because I always love my birthdays.
    â€œFive hundred is very old,” said Wanda, trying to cheer him up. “You must be so excited, Sir Horace.”
    â€œNot really,” he replied gloomily. “Five hundred is indeed very old, Miss Wizzard. It seems so much older than four hundred and ninety-nine.”
    Well, they both sounded pretty old to me, but I didn’t say so. Instead I dragged the sword in and said, “Here’s your present, Sir Horace. I’m sorry we didn’t have time to wrap it up. Happy Birthday!”
    Sir Horace took the sword. He didn’t say anything at all. He just held on to it really tightly.
    â€œDon’t you like it?” Wanda asked, after a few minutes of everyone waiting for Sir Horace to say something.
    â€œI have always liked this sword,” he said in a peculiar voice.
    â€œWhat does he mean—
    â€˜always’?” Wanda whispered to me. “He just got it.”
    Sir Horace made a kind of gulping noise and carried on, “My dear father gave this sword to me on my twenty-firstbirthday. And you have returned it to me on my five-hundredth birthday. Thank you….”

    I was disappointed. It’s not a proper birthday present if you give someone something that already belongs to them.
    But Sir Horace didn’t seem to mind. “This…is the best present I could possibly have,” he said. He sat down on a chair in the corner and carefully propped up the sword beside him. I am sure I heard him sniff, although Wanda says he can’t have, because ghosts don’t cry—but I don’t see how she is such an expert.
    On the way upstairs to our Sunday bedroom, we saw something really odd. A long trail of our green string came out from under the secret passage door and went all the way downstairs and into the broom closet.
    â€œThat’s our string,” yawned Wanda.“I wonder what it’s doing there?”
    But I was too sleepy to answer.
    Â 
    The next morning we followed the string down to the broom closet. We wanted to say a proper happy birthday to Sir Horace.
    â€œGood morning, Sir Horace,” we said. “Many happy returns of the day.”
    Sir Horace sounded puzzled. “But it is you who have had the happy returns,” he said.
    He was still sitting in the corner with the sword propped up beside him, but now there was a big pile of rust by his feet. We hardly recognized the sword from the night before—it was gleaming. The handle was shiny, and the patterns that we had seen under the rust looked beautiful and shone with inlaid gold. There was a huge ruby setinto the top (which Sir Horace called the pommel) and two smaller ones set into the sides. The blade was a bit jagged, though—you could tell that Sir Horace had done a lot of fighting with it—but he had polished it so well that it was now smooth, glittering steel.
    â€œâ€™Morning Minty, Wanda,” said Uncle Drac, yawning. “Sleep well?”
    â€œYes, thank you, Uncle Drac,” we said.
    â€œGood,” said Uncle Drac, “because I didn’t. That ridiculous sword. I told Sir H to go and scrape the rust off somewhere else, but he sat here all night, scrape, scrape, scrape. Set my teeth on edge something rotten.”
    â€œSorry, Uncle Drac,” I said.
    â€œDon’t worry about it, Minty.” Uncle Drac smiled. “It’s worth it just to have you bothhome safe and sound. Pass me my knitting, will you?”
    I gave Uncle Drac his long green scarf. It was just as I had thought. Uncle Drac