Contest winner: Dragonic
Runner-up: TWZRD
The rehearsal of the Blastburn Philharmonic was not going well even before the guest conductor called a 30-minute break and stormed offstage, muttering and clutching his head. The musicians dispersed, some to take a nap in the green room, some to have a smoke outside the stage door, a few to throw back a quick drink at the pub around the corner. Two or three viola players (it was never easy to tell for sure) stayed onstage, trying to get their instruments in tune. The stage manager loitered near the snack machine, unable to decide between a vacuum-packed sandwich and a bag of crisps. The horn players played a quick hand of rummy. The backup conductor, whose primary income came from a secondary school teaching job, put his feet up in the sound booth and began correcting a stack of algebra papers.
So no one observed the purple light that flashed from under the door of the guest conductor's dressing room. No one heard the muffled "whuff" sound caused by a stunning spell; nor, if they had, would they have been able to identify it as such. No one even noticed the thud of Bernie Landstein's body collapsing on the floor. Even the fact that the maestro kept the orchestra waiting ten minutes past the end of the break did not raise much concern. The violas were still trying to get tuned. The piccolo player was having a case of hiccoughs. One of the horn players, who had a habit of cheating at cards, was still applying direct pressure to a nosebleed when Landstein reascended the podium.
The musicians' chatter and practice riffs gradually died. This, in itself, would prove to be the first sign that something unusual had happened to their conductor - when the players had leisure to think back on it. Bernie Landstein was usually such a commanding presence. For a few moments, however, he seemed reluctant to assert control of the situation. He seemed, in fact, to fade gradually into visibility - though he had walked quite openly out of the wings.
Just before silence fell, one of the oboists muttered: "My, Bernard, but what a big baton you have!"
"All the better," Landstein purred, "to beat... er, time with."
"Black and blue," a horn player mouthed behind the bell of his horn.
"Let's pick it up," the conductor said, scanning the score with what momentarily looked like a glance of desperation, "at Rehearsal Number 61. A-one, a-two, a-one two three..."
The musicians gamely plunged into an extremely brisk march, which caught them off guard because the passage in question was usually played as a graceful lament.
"Keep it together, trombones," the conductor said, much to the confusion of the clarinettists he was looking at. "Look alive, there, timpani," he added in the direction of the xylophone player. "No, no, no! That's an A-flat!" The cellists looked at each other, wondering what clef the conductor was reading. "All right, stop! Yes, Mister... er..."
"Frogbourne," the concertmaster piped up. "Just a question, sir. Do you want us to hold the crotchet in bar 211 for its full value?"
"Absolutely not," Mr. Landstein exclaimed, looking deeply affronted. "Any other questions?"
Another musician put her hand up and said, "Would you like the bassoons to double the basses in bars 198 to 206?"
"What does the score say, Miss..."
"Boing," said the bassoonist.
The maestro rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Boing? Where does it say Boing?"
"The name is Boing," said Miss Boing. "The score says como sardini, avido, senza ginocchia..."
"And that means...?"
"Er... like sardines, greedily, without knees?"
"Exactly!" the maestro cried triumphantly. "Therefore, the answer to your question is...?"
Miss Boing hung her head. "No, I guess."
"At last, we are communicating. Mr. Cheesedanish?"
"Hasenpfeffer, Herr Direktor."
"Yes, yes, what is it?"
"Your score is on fire, sir."
"Oh, dear! How did that..."
"A spark from your baton, sir..."
"But that's..." Bernie Landstein looked at the stick in his hand and suddenly giggled: a sound no one had ever heard him make before. "Well, how silly of me. Agua."
The baton squirted water at the singed sheet music, dousing the flames with a hiss of steam.
"Whoops-a-daisy," said Mr. Landstein. "I seem to have picked up somebody's joke w-... that is, baton. Carry on, then, from Molto moderato assai ma non troppo, with feeling now!"
The next portion of the rehearsal was, if at all possible, even more chaotic. While Bernie Landstein, eyes closed with rapture, waved his baton in a broad, swinging 6/8 time, the orchestra struggled to reconcile his gesture with a rigorous passage in 2/2. "That's the ticket," he said, oblivious to the fact that one of the bassists - a dumpy, pock-marked creature with curlers in her hair - was struggling to drag her instrument through the middle of the orchestra and colliding with two out of three musicians in her way.
"I say, there, Madrigal dear," Bernie Landstein said, opening his eyes and looking straight at her.
The ugly bassist froze in her tracks. The music, like the baton, went on.
"Your solo isn't until the next movement," said the jovial, dissolute face under its swirl of prematurely gray hair. His eyes, however, locked on hers with a steely force that, for once, reminded the band of the conductor they knew and hated.
"I'm just going to fetch some rosin," the bassist said in a demure yet gravelly voice.
"I'm sure the... er, cello section here would be delighted to lend you some," said the maestro, sweeping his baton in the direction of - rather surprisingly - the cello section. The tip of the baton emitted a puff of smoke, at which the principal cellist faltered.
"What did he call her?" one flautist asked another, audibly, during a rest in their part.
"Madrigal," said the second flautist.
"That's funny," said the oboist, regardless of a solo he was supposed to be playing. "I thought her name was Erwinia Mizenboom."
"She and the maestro must have a special relationship," hissed the harpist, from two rows away.
"Enough chatter," Bernie chided. "Madrigal, love, do resume your seat."
The ugly bassist dithered, looking longingly toward the exit.
"Don't make me point my baton at you," the maestro added meaningfully. Grape pips began to fall out of the wand as he said this, forming a heap around the podium. He didn't bother stopping this unusual manifestation until one of the pips ricocheted over the viola section and struck Miss Boing above the eye. "I beg your pardon," he said in an unapologetic tone. "Keep up, people! Where are the cymbals? I wanted a cymbal crash there!"
"But maestro," someone hissed, "this passage is marked pianissimo!"
"Don't correct me!" Bernie Landstein exploded, his arms waving more furiously than ever.
"It really is him," the concertmaster whispered to his assistant principal. "I was starting to wonder if we had an impostor."
"Terrible! terrible!" the maestro screamed, waving the whole band to a stop. "That's enough existential horror for one day. Come back tomorrow, if you can remember how to play by then!"
"But maestro," the bassoonist bravely urged, "our concert is tonight!"
"Get out of my sight!" Landstein screamed. "You - Madrigal, there - stay put. We shall have a private rehearsal, just the two of us."
The bass player gulped, her eyes darting toward all the exits.
Some time later, the bass player walked very stiffly out the stage door, her hand on the guest conductor's arm. She appeared to be trying to resist his lead, but she could not let go of him. He heaved her toward his car - a black AC Frua with mirror-tinted windows.
"My instrument will never fit," the gravelly voice said in a tone of desperation.
"Nonsense," said the maestro. "It'll go in the boot." He waved his baton at the car, and the rear door popped up. Some cars have glove compartments larger than the Frua's trunk, but with a bit of coaxing from Bernie Landstein's baton (or rather, wand), the huge bass violin sank right into it.
Madrigal began to tremble as Landstein opened the left-hand door and pushed her down into the car. The door snapped shut behind her. He walked round and got in on the right-hand side, put the key in the starter, fastened his safety-belt... and suddenly threw himself face-forward against the steering column. And again. And a third time. Unconscious, Bernie Landstein sagged against the restraining belt.
The arms that had reached out of the sides of the driver's seat relaxed their grip on the conductor. One of them patted the shoulder of the frightened hag in the left-hand seat. The neck-rest turned toward her and smiled. "It's all right now," the car seat said reassuringly. "I've taken custody of Mr. Shore here. Or rather, Mr. Noir. Are you all right?"
Madrigal made a strangled noise.
"The name's Albuquerque," said the driver's seat, offering to shake her hand. "Joe Albuquerque, RMB. You must be Madrigal. I've been tracking this one, but I would be lying if I said I hadn't hoped to talk with you, too. Don't worry -- " He added this, seaing the hag was about to bolt from the car. "I won't stop you if you want to run. It's just that I know somebody who, in my opinion, is overdue for a nightmare. You wouldn't know anyone who could supply one?"
Madrigal left off trying to batter the door open. "Maybe," she admitted.
"Excellent," said Joe Albuquerque, pulling a card out of a pocket in his upholstery. "Here's the name and address. Scream for me if you need any assistance. I'll be within earshot from half midnight until dawn. Can you read that all right?"
"H. H. Harvey, Esquire," the hag read with painstakingly precise diction. "The Drains, Suite Number..."
"Fine, fine," said the seat. "You may go now. Don't forget your instrument."
+++ Double Challenge for TMQ #171 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: What gift from way back in Chapter 141 should Merlin use next? (A) Karl's survival satchel. (B) Another dose of Endora's Liquid Skill. (C) Subito's Turbo Gum. (D) Boccachiusa's Peekaboo Kit.
CONTEST: Propose an entertaining alternate definition of a word or phrase, preferably with a touch of magic in the meaning.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
168. The Revolting Ones
Contest co-winners: Linda Carrig, Joe, and _houdini
Runner-up: greyniffler
Rigel had survived being chased by merhags, wereyaks, and enemies on the rooftops. After running through zigzagging alleys and across several bridges without hearing pursuit behind him, he began to think he could survive anything. Then he saw light ahead - an open square! No one would think of attacking him there...
He put on a surge of speed, in spite of his weariness. The lure of open space called to him. It was almost close enough to touch, if he stretched out his arm...
...and then the ground disappeared beneath his feet.
He landed in a shoulder-roll, his fall cushioned by what seemed to be sacks of dried beans piled in an underground storeroom. Looking up from where he came to rest, he saw the hole he had fallen through as a rectangle of starlight in an otherwise pitch-black sky. Was this some sort of Venetian sewer with the manhole cover left off? It didn't smell like one. In fact, it didn't even smell damp - which, for an underground passage in Venice, could only mean one thing. Magic.
Rigel sat up and tried to look around. No good; there wasn't enough light to see anything. He pulled out his wand and began to say, "Lumos!" But he had scarcely opened his mouth when the wand was wrenched out of his hand.
"I say," he protested to the darkness. "Give it back while I'm asking nicely."
"Why should we give it back?" barked a cold voice from so close to his left ear that Rigel flinched away from it. He collided with a pair of robed legs standing to his right.
"Be still," growled the owner of the legs.
"You'll give it back because it's mine," said Rigel, bracing himself against the sacks of beans.
"Yours?" replied the first voice - which, Rigel soon learned, always seemed to be barking, snarling, or snapping. "By what right?"
"By right of the fact that I spent good money on it," Rigel snapped back. "Give it here."
"Possession," the second speaker observed. His inflections ranged from a growl to a hiss, with hints that at any moment he might begin to roar. "Property. Ownership. We find these concepts to be meaningless."
"Today is the dawn of a new order," Barker added, moving behind Rigel in a manner that made him nervous. "We are shaking off the shackles that muggles have placed on our minds. Wizards will rise, and..."
"...bump their heads against the rafters," Rigel put in, "because they haven't got the sense to raise a wandlight in the darkness."
"All right, comrade," said Growler. "Let's look at you, then. Lumos!"
A wand-tip blazed with light, inches from Rigel's nose. He winced. He could see nothing except dazzling, searing brightness.
"Not bad," growled Growler. "Looks young, rough, rebellious. Ready to fight, ready to die, ready to kill for our cause."
"I disagree," barked Barker. "He looks like the idle rich to me. Too fattened by privilege to care for change, yet ungrateful to his betters -- probably no threat to our cause, but we should kill him just to be on the safe side."
"I know who you lot are," said Rigel. "You're the Black Elbow!"
"See?" huffed Barker. "He can identify us. Kill him now."
Rigel grinned. "This is the greatest moment of my life!"
The lighted wand shook in his face for an uncertain moment. Its holder seemed nonplussed by Rigel's reaction to his death sentence.
"The greatest moment?" Growler rumbled. "Which it is the latest moment. Don't make this any harder that it needs to be!"
"But, I mean, this is so amazing!" Rigel beamed with ecstatic fervor. "I've been searching for you blokes since I was knee-high to a garden gnome. I want to join your - er..."
"Revolting organization?" suggested Growler.
Rigel almost laughed with joy. "Exactly! And I can be of service in so many ways. I have connections. Rich wizards. Dark wizards. Undead wizards. Witches whose words can reach millions. Dark creatures who could wreak terror..."
"Stop a minute," Barker said harshly. He must have pulled down Growler's wand arm, for as the light moved away from Rigel's face, he could see more of their forms - especially the black ribbons tied around their wand arns, just above the elbow. Their faces were indistinct, but Rigel had an impression of sharp angles and beady eyes. Barker resumed: "This might be interesting... if you can be trusted, that is."
"Maybe we should bring him before Madam Defaaaargh," Growler rasped.
"Who? That witch who is always doing needlepoint? I don't see what she can do. By now she could have finished a sampler the size of Siena, but she never seems to get past the second row of stitches..."
"No, you fool! That's Signora Imbroglio, the club-footed contessa. I'm talking about the Madam Defaaaargh, the lady who does... you know, things... with knitting needles..."
"Ah! Yes! She will know how to poke the truth out of this one!"
"But surely," said Rigel, with an openness to his face that would have astonished anyone who knew him, "you yourselves can think of a way to test my sincerity! Would any fat, privileged, rich wizard know the names of the months on the calendar that all people will observe when the revolution succeeds?"
"Er," said Growler, who wasn't sure he knew the names of the months himself.
"Go on," Barker belled.
"Bezoar," began Rigel, quivering with enthusiasm as he rattled off the list, "Boomslang, Snargaluff, Juxtipiary, Gigantril, Cornicus, Satyricus, Phoenicus, Grifonis, Centauris, Chalcember, Argentober, and Chrysember. That's all thirteen, right?"
"That's right," said Barker.
"Hang on," said Growler. "Wasn't there something in there about a Dandelion?"
"No," said Barker and Rigel in unison.
"I'm sure there was."
"I'm sure there wasn't," Barker insisted.
"But surely you remember Wizard Fianchetto's speech about the glorious Fifth of Dandelionuary?"
"Surely you remember that Wizard Fianchetto was turned into a toad for crimes against the revolution," Barker returned.
"A miscarriage of justice!" Growler wheezed. "And even if it were not so, how would that change the calendar of the wizard revolution?"
"It didn't," said Barker. "Wizard Fianchetto's memory has been condemned. He never existed. His speech was never delivered. There is no such month as Dandelionuary. Do you dare contradict me?"
"I dare it!" said Growler.
"See?" Rigel whispered at Barker. "He's the impostor! He's the enemy of our revolution!"
"I'm beginning to see that," Barker confessed.
"Nonsense!" Growler retorted in a voice that Rigel felt through the sack of beans beneath him. "I was among the first to wear the sign of the Black Elbow. I forget nothing, least of all our first ideals! Down with transfiguration, charms, astronomy, and all those bourgeois forms of magic! Children in wizarding schools should be taught practical skills instead, such as how to turn a bowl of thistles and acorns into a five course meal for a family of six, how to fix scrapes and cuts, how to knit a warm winter shawl out of navel lint and eyebrow trimmings..."
"Banned heresies!" shouted Barker, drawing his wand. "Renounce them, or I'll turn you into a toad here and now!"
Growler trembled. "Renounce them?"
"Aye! And beg for reeducation by the Party Obliviators!"
"Shall I forget, then, the teachings of Madam Adriana degli Melanzani? Shall I forget the great goal of our revolt against the Statute of Secrecy - which is to bring the benefits of magic to bear on the needs of all mankind?"
"Aye, and a thousand times aye!" Barker thrust his wand into Growler's face. "Purge that cursed name from your memory! And spare no more pity for the muggles. Wizards are made to rule them. And we of the Black Elbow are made to rule all wizards!"
"That's going too far," Rigel whispered to Growler. "Don't you think so?"
"I ought to turn you into a toad," Growler growled at Barker.
"Try it," Barker barked at Growler. "You'll be lucky if I don't turn you into a caterpillar first."
"You would, you disgusting power-monger," Growler hissed.
"And I'd step on you too," Barker added.
"Do him before he does you," Rigel murmured to Growler.
"What's that you're saying?" Barker demanded.
Rigel leaned toward him and whispered, "I'm doing all I can to hold him back. If I were you, I would move quickly at the first sign..."
Growler shook his wand hand threateningly at Barker. "I've half a mind..."
"Oh, no you don't!" Barker howled, flourishing his wand. "Mangi zanzare!"
As he began this spell, however, Growler pointed his wand and blurted: "Coltivi verruche!"
Rigel caught his lit wand as it dropped out of Growler's fingers. Then he drew his feet up onto the sacks of beans, avoiding the angry hopping and ribbiting on the floor below. "Idealists," he muttered, shaking his head. "They're so easy..."
He looked at the rectangle of starlight above him. "Now," he asked himself aloud, "how do I get back up there?"
"Tsk," said a voice behind him.
Rigel threw himself down and rolled to the side. He came up with his wand pointed directly at...
...the most beautiful witch he had ever seen.
"An opportunity to explore a place like this only comes once in a lifetime," said this vision of perfection. Surrounded by furs and silks, cascading tresses and tasseled cushions, she reclined on a hovering carpet at eye level, just within the glow of his wand-tip. Everything about her seemed to laugh at everything about him - his predicament, his mischievous dealings with Barker and Growler, the expression on his face.
"Who are you?" Rigel breathed.
"When you can asnwer that question yourself," said the lady, "I will speak to you again. For now, why don't you see what lies beyond the door to your left?"
"I have to help my friends," Rigel said, though he glanced in that direction, unable to restrain his curiosity.
When the witch said nothing in reply, he turned toward her again -- but she was gone.
Rigel's heart sank. "Thanks a lot," he muttered. "You could have given me a lift out of here on that carpet of yours."
His reproach fell on no ears whatsoever. Grumbling to himself, he stepped gingerly over the two squabbling amphibians on the flagged floor of what seemed to be a storeroom, sidled through a narrow gap between two shelves full of tins and glass jars, and approached the door. Closer-to, in the light of his wand, he saw that it bore a sign: NO AUTHORIZED PERSONS BEYOND THIS POINT. TRESPASSERS WELCOME!
"Looks like I have no choice anyway," said Rigel. At his touch the door swung open, and he walked through. Before he could turn back, it closed itself.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #170 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Which type of gatekeeper should Merlin and Miss Pucey meet in their next adventure? A) A pair of talking paintings, of which one can only tell the truth and the other only lie. B) An animated suit of armor that attacks anyone who approaches on foot (as opposed to walking on their hands, etc.). C) A statue that tells riddles. D) A mirror that shows your worst fear. E) Write-in candidate ______________.
CONTEST: Come up with the name for the witch Rigel encountered in this chapter.
Runner-up: greyniffler
Rigel had survived being chased by merhags, wereyaks, and enemies on the rooftops. After running through zigzagging alleys and across several bridges without hearing pursuit behind him, he began to think he could survive anything. Then he saw light ahead - an open square! No one would think of attacking him there...
He put on a surge of speed, in spite of his weariness. The lure of open space called to him. It was almost close enough to touch, if he stretched out his arm...
...and then the ground disappeared beneath his feet.
He landed in a shoulder-roll, his fall cushioned by what seemed to be sacks of dried beans piled in an underground storeroom. Looking up from where he came to rest, he saw the hole he had fallen through as a rectangle of starlight in an otherwise pitch-black sky. Was this some sort of Venetian sewer with the manhole cover left off? It didn't smell like one. In fact, it didn't even smell damp - which, for an underground passage in Venice, could only mean one thing. Magic.
Rigel sat up and tried to look around. No good; there wasn't enough light to see anything. He pulled out his wand and began to say, "Lumos!" But he had scarcely opened his mouth when the wand was wrenched out of his hand.
"I say," he protested to the darkness. "Give it back while I'm asking nicely."
"Why should we give it back?" barked a cold voice from so close to his left ear that Rigel flinched away from it. He collided with a pair of robed legs standing to his right.
"Be still," growled the owner of the legs.
"You'll give it back because it's mine," said Rigel, bracing himself against the sacks of beans.
"Yours?" replied the first voice - which, Rigel soon learned, always seemed to be barking, snarling, or snapping. "By what right?"
"By right of the fact that I spent good money on it," Rigel snapped back. "Give it here."
"Possession," the second speaker observed. His inflections ranged from a growl to a hiss, with hints that at any moment he might begin to roar. "Property. Ownership. We find these concepts to be meaningless."
"Today is the dawn of a new order," Barker added, moving behind Rigel in a manner that made him nervous. "We are shaking off the shackles that muggles have placed on our minds. Wizards will rise, and..."
"...bump their heads against the rafters," Rigel put in, "because they haven't got the sense to raise a wandlight in the darkness."
"All right, comrade," said Growler. "Let's look at you, then. Lumos!"
A wand-tip blazed with light, inches from Rigel's nose. He winced. He could see nothing except dazzling, searing brightness.
"Not bad," growled Growler. "Looks young, rough, rebellious. Ready to fight, ready to die, ready to kill for our cause."
"I disagree," barked Barker. "He looks like the idle rich to me. Too fattened by privilege to care for change, yet ungrateful to his betters -- probably no threat to our cause, but we should kill him just to be on the safe side."
"I know who you lot are," said Rigel. "You're the Black Elbow!"
"See?" huffed Barker. "He can identify us. Kill him now."
Rigel grinned. "This is the greatest moment of my life!"
The lighted wand shook in his face for an uncertain moment. Its holder seemed nonplussed by Rigel's reaction to his death sentence.
"The greatest moment?" Growler rumbled. "Which it is the latest moment. Don't make this any harder that it needs to be!"
"But, I mean, this is so amazing!" Rigel beamed with ecstatic fervor. "I've been searching for you blokes since I was knee-high to a garden gnome. I want to join your - er..."
"Revolting organization?" suggested Growler.
Rigel almost laughed with joy. "Exactly! And I can be of service in so many ways. I have connections. Rich wizards. Dark wizards. Undead wizards. Witches whose words can reach millions. Dark creatures who could wreak terror..."
"Stop a minute," Barker said harshly. He must have pulled down Growler's wand arm, for as the light moved away from Rigel's face, he could see more of their forms - especially the black ribbons tied around their wand arns, just above the elbow. Their faces were indistinct, but Rigel had an impression of sharp angles and beady eyes. Barker resumed: "This might be interesting... if you can be trusted, that is."
"Maybe we should bring him before Madam Defaaaargh," Growler rasped.
"Who? That witch who is always doing needlepoint? I don't see what she can do. By now she could have finished a sampler the size of Siena, but she never seems to get past the second row of stitches..."
"No, you fool! That's Signora Imbroglio, the club-footed contessa. I'm talking about the Madam Defaaaargh, the lady who does... you know, things... with knitting needles..."
"Ah! Yes! She will know how to poke the truth out of this one!"
"But surely," said Rigel, with an openness to his face that would have astonished anyone who knew him, "you yourselves can think of a way to test my sincerity! Would any fat, privileged, rich wizard know the names of the months on the calendar that all people will observe when the revolution succeeds?"
"Er," said Growler, who wasn't sure he knew the names of the months himself.
"Go on," Barker belled.
"Bezoar," began Rigel, quivering with enthusiasm as he rattled off the list, "Boomslang, Snargaluff, Juxtipiary, Gigantril, Cornicus, Satyricus, Phoenicus, Grifonis, Centauris, Chalcember, Argentober, and Chrysember. That's all thirteen, right?"
"That's right," said Barker.
"Hang on," said Growler. "Wasn't there something in there about a Dandelion?"
"No," said Barker and Rigel in unison.
"I'm sure there was."
"I'm sure there wasn't," Barker insisted.
"But surely you remember Wizard Fianchetto's speech about the glorious Fifth of Dandelionuary?"
"Surely you remember that Wizard Fianchetto was turned into a toad for crimes against the revolution," Barker returned.
"A miscarriage of justice!" Growler wheezed. "And even if it were not so, how would that change the calendar of the wizard revolution?"
"It didn't," said Barker. "Wizard Fianchetto's memory has been condemned. He never existed. His speech was never delivered. There is no such month as Dandelionuary. Do you dare contradict me?"
"I dare it!" said Growler.
"See?" Rigel whispered at Barker. "He's the impostor! He's the enemy of our revolution!"
"I'm beginning to see that," Barker confessed.
"Nonsense!" Growler retorted in a voice that Rigel felt through the sack of beans beneath him. "I was among the first to wear the sign of the Black Elbow. I forget nothing, least of all our first ideals! Down with transfiguration, charms, astronomy, and all those bourgeois forms of magic! Children in wizarding schools should be taught practical skills instead, such as how to turn a bowl of thistles and acorns into a five course meal for a family of six, how to fix scrapes and cuts, how to knit a warm winter shawl out of navel lint and eyebrow trimmings..."
"Banned heresies!" shouted Barker, drawing his wand. "Renounce them, or I'll turn you into a toad here and now!"
Growler trembled. "Renounce them?"
"Aye! And beg for reeducation by the Party Obliviators!"
"Shall I forget, then, the teachings of Madam Adriana degli Melanzani? Shall I forget the great goal of our revolt against the Statute of Secrecy - which is to bring the benefits of magic to bear on the needs of all mankind?"
"Aye, and a thousand times aye!" Barker thrust his wand into Growler's face. "Purge that cursed name from your memory! And spare no more pity for the muggles. Wizards are made to rule them. And we of the Black Elbow are made to rule all wizards!"
"That's going too far," Rigel whispered to Growler. "Don't you think so?"
"I ought to turn you into a toad," Growler growled at Barker.
"Try it," Barker barked at Growler. "You'll be lucky if I don't turn you into a caterpillar first."
"You would, you disgusting power-monger," Growler hissed.
"And I'd step on you too," Barker added.
"Do him before he does you," Rigel murmured to Growler.
"What's that you're saying?" Barker demanded.
Rigel leaned toward him and whispered, "I'm doing all I can to hold him back. If I were you, I would move quickly at the first sign..."
Growler shook his wand hand threateningly at Barker. "I've half a mind..."
"Oh, no you don't!" Barker howled, flourishing his wand. "Mangi zanzare!"
As he began this spell, however, Growler pointed his wand and blurted: "Coltivi verruche!"
Rigel caught his lit wand as it dropped out of Growler's fingers. Then he drew his feet up onto the sacks of beans, avoiding the angry hopping and ribbiting on the floor below. "Idealists," he muttered, shaking his head. "They're so easy..."
He looked at the rectangle of starlight above him. "Now," he asked himself aloud, "how do I get back up there?"
"Tsk," said a voice behind him.
Rigel threw himself down and rolled to the side. He came up with his wand pointed directly at...
...the most beautiful witch he had ever seen.
"An opportunity to explore a place like this only comes once in a lifetime," said this vision of perfection. Surrounded by furs and silks, cascading tresses and tasseled cushions, she reclined on a hovering carpet at eye level, just within the glow of his wand-tip. Everything about her seemed to laugh at everything about him - his predicament, his mischievous dealings with Barker and Growler, the expression on his face.
"Who are you?" Rigel breathed.
"When you can asnwer that question yourself," said the lady, "I will speak to you again. For now, why don't you see what lies beyond the door to your left?"
"I have to help my friends," Rigel said, though he glanced in that direction, unable to restrain his curiosity.
When the witch said nothing in reply, he turned toward her again -- but she was gone.
Rigel's heart sank. "Thanks a lot," he muttered. "You could have given me a lift out of here on that carpet of yours."
His reproach fell on no ears whatsoever. Grumbling to himself, he stepped gingerly over the two squabbling amphibians on the flagged floor of what seemed to be a storeroom, sidled through a narrow gap between two shelves full of tins and glass jars, and approached the door. Closer-to, in the light of his wand, he saw that it bore a sign: NO AUTHORIZED PERSONS BEYOND THIS POINT. TRESPASSERS WELCOME!
"Looks like I have no choice anyway," said Rigel. At his touch the door swung open, and he walked through. Before he could turn back, it closed itself.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #170 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Which type of gatekeeper should Merlin and Miss Pucey meet in their next adventure? A) A pair of talking paintings, of which one can only tell the truth and the other only lie. B) An animated suit of armor that attacks anyone who approaches on foot (as opposed to walking on their hands, etc.). C) A statue that tells riddles. D) A mirror that shows your worst fear. E) Write-in candidate ______________.
CONTEST: Come up with the name for the witch Rigel encountered in this chapter.
Monday, November 9, 2009
167. Muggle Magic
Contest winner: Rehannah
Runners-up: Dragonic and TWZRD
ABINGDON WIZARD UNLOCKS SECRET POWERS OF MUGGLES!
Bo Dwyer reports for Fascinating Fizzog!--the journal for enquiring mages, holding the Mirror of Pissog up to the magical world since 1777...
While the Unspeakables in the Department of Mysteries grapple with the first principles of what makes Muggle gadgetry work, one wizard, toiling in a damp, draughty clocktower in the ancient Thames town of Abingdon, claims to have cracked the case.
"It's a simple matter, really," says G. Fiddlewood Snordahl, of No. 8, Old Abbey Close, Abingdon, Berks. "One simply has to study a few thousand of the Muggles' arcane texts, discreetly observe their behavior eleven hours a day for 30 years or so, and devote every other waking moment to tinkering with their expired gadgets until it all comes together."
Snordahl, the son of Europe's leading bearded operatic soprano, the late Lynnie Jend of l'Opera du Freak fame, and her mentalist husband, Professor Hypnocrates Snordahl, was left a lame orphan on the doorstep of the Sisters of Intermittent Hostility at the age of six. He is still haunted by the memory of his parents' death, buried in an avalanche triggered by Madam Jend's high F in the aria O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn--a tragically pure note that also rang the death-knell of the Finsteraarhorn Outdoor Music Festival.
Traumatized by the act of singing, young Fiddlewood hid himself in the noisy clocktower whenever the Sisters began to chant their devotions. He became increasingly reclusive, developing his mesmeric powers (inherited from his father) to charm mice, pigeons, and cats into bringing him stolen bits of food and small objects left lying about the neighborhood. By the time his Hogwarts letter came, young Fiddlewood had begun his lifelong study of Muggle gewgaws.
"How did you get along at Hogwarts?" I asked him, as he showed me around his workshop one cold November day.
"Ack!" Snordahl croaked, stuffing his thumbs into his ears. "Ask it again, but with less singsong in your voice."
"How-did-you-do-at-Hogwarts?" I asked, all on one tone.
"Aargh!" Snordahl pulled his hair. "That's what they sound like when they're chanting Evensong!"
Finding this hard to believe, I nevertheless repeated my question in a harsh rasp that, after I continued using it for the rest of our interview, left me with a sore throat for a week.
"Ah, better!" Snordahl hissed. "Don't you remember me, then? We were in the same year."
"Really?" I grated. "It's been a long time, though. I reckon you can't remember everyone--"
"We were in the same house," Snordahl insisted gutturally.
"And so were plenty of other--"
"We slept in the same dormitory," added Snordahl. "There were only six of us. Don't you remember?"
Abashed, I began to make some noncomittal noises about how one loses touch with one's old--
"You don't remember when old Gungy turned all the furniture on his side of the room into sculpted butter, and we had to sleep two to a bed for the rest of the term? I was your bunkmate."
"Well, I'm quite sure that never--"
"To be sure, I mostly slept under the bed."
The penny dropped. "Oi!" I crowed. "That was you!"
"Easy with the tonality," Snordahl winced.
This is the part of the essay where I tell you what Snordahl was wearing. However, I seem to have burned that part of my notes by accident. Mentally as well as physically. Visit him sometime, and you will most likely do the same.
Meanwhile, the floodgates of memory had opened. How could I forget little Woody Snordahl? Well, to be honest, forgetting him was easy. I don't recall hearing him say five words in all the years we studied together. He always seemed to be comfortably, gratefully outside my angle of view. I find, on exploring the matter further, that he spent several weeks living in a closet on the Third Floor, eating scraps left for him by the house-elves and tinkering with broken things the creatures hoarded, things the teachers and students had thrown away.
"The elves are very literal-minded," Snordahl revealed over a tea of sandwiches that savored of wet cardboard and biscuits that felt, in the mouth, like baked socks. "If you didn't tell them, directly and firmly, to get rid of something, they kept it in any of hundreds of secret stashes all over the castle. Most of it was never good for anything again, but the elves stripped off anything they could use and saved the rest forever. If you knew where they got the cloth bags for boiling suet pudding, you would never eat another Christmas dinner."
"What did you live on, then?" I asked, desperate to change the subject before he went into more detail.
"Sweets, mostly," said Snordahl. "The house-elves were mad keen on sweet wrappers, but--many people are surprised by this--they didn't care for the sweets themselves. Especially around Hogsmeade weekends, when students often left sweets lying openly around their beds, the housekeeping elves often came away with loads of shiny, colorful wrappers. They let me eat the sweets. Chocolate frogs and fizzing whizzbees especially. Those tended to upset a house-elf's stomach. Ever seen an elf yack?"
"Elf yak, you say?" I replied evasively. "I've heard of dwarf oxen, bred by the goblins to--"
At this point in our interview, the tower struck the hour--according to my magic quill--of four o'clock. In my memory, however, it seemed like at least eight, perhaps twelve. The next thing I clearly heard Snordahl say was, "Why don't you get up off the floor? It's filthy down there." It was, too.
"Why don't you show me your lovely experiments," I said, "and quickly, so I can leave you in peace before the next time the clock chimes?"
"That's the best question you've asked so far," growled Snordahl.
The first contraption he showed me looked like a cross between a walking stick and a set of bagpipes. It wheeled around on a heavy base, trailing a long thin tail with a metal fork at the end.
"Is this some type of medieval weapon?" I guessed. "Or perhaps a musical instrument? And who is this Hoover it belongs to?"
"It does stir up a right racket," Snordahl agreed, shivering. "I've observed through my telescope. I don't know yet why they do it, but Muggles like to run them up and down their floors. As far as I can tell, all they do is spread dirt around the room. But after many years of patient study, I have come to understand exactly how it works."
"Do tell."
"Muggles have many, many devices with the same type of forked tail. My researches have convinced me that these tails are a diabolical device for summoning, and harnessing, the power of lightning. This power, in turn, is used to summon and trap and tiny whirlwind."
Snordahl brightened at my gasp of shock. "Yes, old son, it's quite true. Those Muggles aren't as innocent as we thought. It started with an American fellow named, er, Benjamin Francis. Went out in a storm and invoked the powers of the air. Somehow he confined some of them in a talisman, like a brass key, and the Muggles have built every one of their inventions since then on the same dark magic!"
I asked if I could see proof of this, but Snordahl claimed that the machine would not work in the presence of wizardry. So, dear reader, you will have to make up your own mind!
"What is this?" I asked, as Snordahl led me to a boxy device that had several leathery tails curling out of it.
"Would you believe me," Snordahl purred mysteriously, "if I told you this little box holds an entire printing press inside?"
"No," I said without hesitation.
"One day soon," said Snordahl, with a twitch of irritation, "one day soon I will be ready to prove it to you. For now, all I can suggest is that you use my telescope to spy on that window across the square. The people over there use one just like it, every day. Somehow they feed their thoughts into it--"
"Like into a Pensieve?"
"Exactly! The energy goes through one of these tubes and into this necromancer's box, which instantly - and I mean instantly! - spits out sheets of paper that would have taken the Daily Prophet's typesetting spells at least five minutes to set up. Of course, the pictures don't move..."
We share a shudder at this latest example of the proverbial Muggle weirdness.
"Soon," Snordahl claimed, with an air of grandiosity, "soon I will have perfected a device enabling me to connect a wand to one of these tubes. Then I will be able to transfer my thoughts into the, as it were, printer's devil. You'll see."
I smiled indulgently and assured him that I would, indeed, see.
"But if you want to see ironclad proof that the Muggles are performing evil magic to conceal the source of their powers"--Snordahl handed me his telescope. "Go to that window. She's always in the square at about this time. Look for the woman facing north--the other north--and fiddling with a makeup mirror. See her?"
I saw her.
"Now push in on the mirror..."
I almost dropped the telescope out the window.
"Easy, there..."
"Where are those letters and words coming from?"
"Some of them, she puts there by the mystical movements of her fingers," Snordahl explained knowingly. "Some of them just appear by themselves...as if someone, or something, is answering her..."
"Oh, protect us!" I moaned.
"She isn't the only adept at such arts. I have seen dozens of people, in this square alone, dabbling in the smae powers."
"What are they playing at?" I squeak. "I mean, surely, Muggles don't have enough experience to control such... such..."
"But wait," said Snordahl. "You haven't heard the worst. Do you know what they call the little messages that come to them on their magic mirrors?"
I trembled, waiting for Snordahl to tell me. And when he did, I kept trembling.
"Tweets," he said, cruelly relishing my horror.
"Oh, no!"
"Oh, yes!" Snordahl pointed accusingly at the pleasantly-dressed, nice-seeming young woman in the square below. "Can you imagine what they must have done to the poor owls?"
While it wouldn't be responsible to speculate on that question, there is little else we can do. Nothing else that happened in our interview could be worth reporting after this, this utterly astounding discovery. We must await confirmation, or (one hopes) clarification, from the Ministry of Magic. Until then, this is Bo Dwyer urging every witch and wizard in Britain to be on alert against the rising threat of Muggles dabbling in dark powers. Owl your district RMB supervisor, your local member of the Wizengamot, or any aurors you may know, and urge them to look into this promptly!
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #169 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Which long-lost character would be most fun to bring back? (A) Madrigal, the finishing-school hag. (B) Madam Solfeggia, the lady who uses music to hold back her werewolf transformation. (C) Otis, Spanky's old school chum. (D) The "illustrated wizard" with all the moving tattoos. (E) ____ (write-in candidate).
CONTEST: Propose a feat of sheer magic for a master of disguise like Joe Albuquerque.
Runners-up: Dragonic and TWZRD
ABINGDON WIZARD UNLOCKS SECRET POWERS OF MUGGLES!
Bo Dwyer reports for Fascinating Fizzog!--the journal for enquiring mages, holding the Mirror of Pissog up to the magical world since 1777...
While the Unspeakables in the Department of Mysteries grapple with the first principles of what makes Muggle gadgetry work, one wizard, toiling in a damp, draughty clocktower in the ancient Thames town of Abingdon, claims to have cracked the case.
"It's a simple matter, really," says G. Fiddlewood Snordahl, of No. 8, Old Abbey Close, Abingdon, Berks. "One simply has to study a few thousand of the Muggles' arcane texts, discreetly observe their behavior eleven hours a day for 30 years or so, and devote every other waking moment to tinkering with their expired gadgets until it all comes together."
Snordahl, the son of Europe's leading bearded operatic soprano, the late Lynnie Jend of l'Opera du Freak fame, and her mentalist husband, Professor Hypnocrates Snordahl, was left a lame orphan on the doorstep of the Sisters of Intermittent Hostility at the age of six. He is still haunted by the memory of his parents' death, buried in an avalanche triggered by Madam Jend's high F in the aria O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn--a tragically pure note that also rang the death-knell of the Finsteraarhorn Outdoor Music Festival.
Traumatized by the act of singing, young Fiddlewood hid himself in the noisy clocktower whenever the Sisters began to chant their devotions. He became increasingly reclusive, developing his mesmeric powers (inherited from his father) to charm mice, pigeons, and cats into bringing him stolen bits of food and small objects left lying about the neighborhood. By the time his Hogwarts letter came, young Fiddlewood had begun his lifelong study of Muggle gewgaws.
"How did you get along at Hogwarts?" I asked him, as he showed me around his workshop one cold November day.
"Ack!" Snordahl croaked, stuffing his thumbs into his ears. "Ask it again, but with less singsong in your voice."
"How-did-you-do-at-Hogwarts?" I asked, all on one tone.
"Aargh!" Snordahl pulled his hair. "That's what they sound like when they're chanting Evensong!"
Finding this hard to believe, I nevertheless repeated my question in a harsh rasp that, after I continued using it for the rest of our interview, left me with a sore throat for a week.
"Ah, better!" Snordahl hissed. "Don't you remember me, then? We were in the same year."
"Really?" I grated. "It's been a long time, though. I reckon you can't remember everyone--"
"We were in the same house," Snordahl insisted gutturally.
"And so were plenty of other--"
"We slept in the same dormitory," added Snordahl. "There were only six of us. Don't you remember?"
Abashed, I began to make some noncomittal noises about how one loses touch with one's old--
"You don't remember when old Gungy turned all the furniture on his side of the room into sculpted butter, and we had to sleep two to a bed for the rest of the term? I was your bunkmate."
"Well, I'm quite sure that never--"
"To be sure, I mostly slept under the bed."
The penny dropped. "Oi!" I crowed. "That was you!"
"Easy with the tonality," Snordahl winced.
This is the part of the essay where I tell you what Snordahl was wearing. However, I seem to have burned that part of my notes by accident. Mentally as well as physically. Visit him sometime, and you will most likely do the same.
Meanwhile, the floodgates of memory had opened. How could I forget little Woody Snordahl? Well, to be honest, forgetting him was easy. I don't recall hearing him say five words in all the years we studied together. He always seemed to be comfortably, gratefully outside my angle of view. I find, on exploring the matter further, that he spent several weeks living in a closet on the Third Floor, eating scraps left for him by the house-elves and tinkering with broken things the creatures hoarded, things the teachers and students had thrown away.
"The elves are very literal-minded," Snordahl revealed over a tea of sandwiches that savored of wet cardboard and biscuits that felt, in the mouth, like baked socks. "If you didn't tell them, directly and firmly, to get rid of something, they kept it in any of hundreds of secret stashes all over the castle. Most of it was never good for anything again, but the elves stripped off anything they could use and saved the rest forever. If you knew where they got the cloth bags for boiling suet pudding, you would never eat another Christmas dinner."
"What did you live on, then?" I asked, desperate to change the subject before he went into more detail.
"Sweets, mostly," said Snordahl. "The house-elves were mad keen on sweet wrappers, but--many people are surprised by this--they didn't care for the sweets themselves. Especially around Hogsmeade weekends, when students often left sweets lying openly around their beds, the housekeeping elves often came away with loads of shiny, colorful wrappers. They let me eat the sweets. Chocolate frogs and fizzing whizzbees especially. Those tended to upset a house-elf's stomach. Ever seen an elf yack?"
"Elf yak, you say?" I replied evasively. "I've heard of dwarf oxen, bred by the goblins to--"
At this point in our interview, the tower struck the hour--according to my magic quill--of four o'clock. In my memory, however, it seemed like at least eight, perhaps twelve. The next thing I clearly heard Snordahl say was, "Why don't you get up off the floor? It's filthy down there." It was, too.
"Why don't you show me your lovely experiments," I said, "and quickly, so I can leave you in peace before the next time the clock chimes?"
"That's the best question you've asked so far," growled Snordahl.
The first contraption he showed me looked like a cross between a walking stick and a set of bagpipes. It wheeled around on a heavy base, trailing a long thin tail with a metal fork at the end.
"Is this some type of medieval weapon?" I guessed. "Or perhaps a musical instrument? And who is this Hoover it belongs to?"
"It does stir up a right racket," Snordahl agreed, shivering. "I've observed through my telescope. I don't know yet why they do it, but Muggles like to run them up and down their floors. As far as I can tell, all they do is spread dirt around the room. But after many years of patient study, I have come to understand exactly how it works."
"Do tell."
"Muggles have many, many devices with the same type of forked tail. My researches have convinced me that these tails are a diabolical device for summoning, and harnessing, the power of lightning. This power, in turn, is used to summon and trap and tiny whirlwind."
Snordahl brightened at my gasp of shock. "Yes, old son, it's quite true. Those Muggles aren't as innocent as we thought. It started with an American fellow named, er, Benjamin Francis. Went out in a storm and invoked the powers of the air. Somehow he confined some of them in a talisman, like a brass key, and the Muggles have built every one of their inventions since then on the same dark magic!"
I asked if I could see proof of this, but Snordahl claimed that the machine would not work in the presence of wizardry. So, dear reader, you will have to make up your own mind!
"What is this?" I asked, as Snordahl led me to a boxy device that had several leathery tails curling out of it.
"Would you believe me," Snordahl purred mysteriously, "if I told you this little box holds an entire printing press inside?"
"No," I said without hesitation.
"One day soon," said Snordahl, with a twitch of irritation, "one day soon I will be ready to prove it to you. For now, all I can suggest is that you use my telescope to spy on that window across the square. The people over there use one just like it, every day. Somehow they feed their thoughts into it--"
"Like into a Pensieve?"
"Exactly! The energy goes through one of these tubes and into this necromancer's box, which instantly - and I mean instantly! - spits out sheets of paper that would have taken the Daily Prophet's typesetting spells at least five minutes to set up. Of course, the pictures don't move..."
We share a shudder at this latest example of the proverbial Muggle weirdness.
"Soon," Snordahl claimed, with an air of grandiosity, "soon I will have perfected a device enabling me to connect a wand to one of these tubes. Then I will be able to transfer my thoughts into the, as it were, printer's devil. You'll see."
I smiled indulgently and assured him that I would, indeed, see.
"But if you want to see ironclad proof that the Muggles are performing evil magic to conceal the source of their powers"--Snordahl handed me his telescope. "Go to that window. She's always in the square at about this time. Look for the woman facing north--the other north--and fiddling with a makeup mirror. See her?"
I saw her.
"Now push in on the mirror..."
I almost dropped the telescope out the window.
"Easy, there..."
"Where are those letters and words coming from?"
"Some of them, she puts there by the mystical movements of her fingers," Snordahl explained knowingly. "Some of them just appear by themselves...as if someone, or something, is answering her..."
"Oh, protect us!" I moaned.
"She isn't the only adept at such arts. I have seen dozens of people, in this square alone, dabbling in the smae powers."
"What are they playing at?" I squeak. "I mean, surely, Muggles don't have enough experience to control such... such..."
"But wait," said Snordahl. "You haven't heard the worst. Do you know what they call the little messages that come to them on their magic mirrors?"
I trembled, waiting for Snordahl to tell me. And when he did, I kept trembling.
"Tweets," he said, cruelly relishing my horror.
"Oh, no!"
"Oh, yes!" Snordahl pointed accusingly at the pleasantly-dressed, nice-seeming young woman in the square below. "Can you imagine what they must have done to the poor owls?"
While it wouldn't be responsible to speculate on that question, there is little else we can do. Nothing else that happened in our interview could be worth reporting after this, this utterly astounding discovery. We must await confirmation, or (one hopes) clarification, from the Ministry of Magic. Until then, this is Bo Dwyer urging every witch and wizard in Britain to be on alert against the rising threat of Muggles dabbling in dark powers. Owl your district RMB supervisor, your local member of the Wizengamot, or any aurors you may know, and urge them to look into this promptly!
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #169 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Which long-lost character would be most fun to bring back? (A) Madrigal, the finishing-school hag. (B) Madam Solfeggia, the lady who uses music to hold back her werewolf transformation. (C) Otis, Spanky's old school chum. (D) The "illustrated wizard" with all the moving tattoos. (E) ____ (write-in candidate).
CONTEST: Propose a feat of sheer magic for a master of disguise like Joe Albuquerque.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
166. The Cart-o-Matic
Contest winner: greyniffler
Runners-up: Joe & TWZRD
Inside one of the crude huts in the island compound was a large, comfortably decorated room. It had wainscoted walls, a flagstoned hearth, and windows filled with diamond-shaped panes that seemed to admit more light than the conditions warranted. Still more light was provided by flames in hurricane lamps mounted on the walls, lamps that gave off a warm glow even though their crystal oil reservoirs were empty. Bookcases, chairs, a rolltop desk, and a teatable were all cluttered with rolls of parchment and dirty cups.
Harvey sighed when he saw it. He shook his three heads, and one of them said: "This place needs a house-elf's touch."
A noise like a pistol-shot rang off the walls and windows. Several of Harvey's prisoners flinched. But it was, after all, only Dinty the house-elf, appearing with a blue-and-white striped handkerchief tied somewhat in the manner of a sumo wrestler's mawashi. He made three bows, one to each of his master.
"What's this you're wearing?" Harvey 2 demanded. "You're not thrashing that elf from flat 3-E again?"
"Only keeping in condition, sir," piped the elf. "Shall I tidy up, sir?"
"Yes, please, Dinty." Harvey strolled to three of the windows and looked out of them pensively. All three of him raised the same eyebrow in an identical manner. "Interesting," he said in unison. Then he looked around at each other and asked, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
"Hippogriff foals frolicking in the grassy downs," Harvey 1 volunteered.
"A family of faeries checking out a nest box in the woods," said Harvey 3.
"This window overlooks a scrubby rock in the middle of the sea," Harvey 2 contended.
"Scenery spells," said Harvey 1 and 3.
"No doubt," agreed Harvey 2.
During this exchange, Dinty had turned into a veritable whirlwind of grabbing hands, wiping rags, and swishing feather-dusters. Minimilian winced at the sound of breaking crockery. By the time Harvey agreed among himself that the window spells were well done, all that remained of the room's clutter was a sudden, blazing fire on the hearth.
"I say," Minimilian complained. "Those papers were extremely..."
"Yes, yes," said Harvey 3. "I'm sure they were. But look! Chairs for everybody! Do have a seat, won't you? Dinty will have tea up in a jiffy."
Meanwhile, Harvey 2 spread a piece of parchment over the desk, weighting its corners with an inkwell, the iron head of a golf club, a a dragon's fang, and a bottle clearly labeled "Preparation W," the sight of which made Minimilian turn red and look as though he wanted to sink into the ground. Then Harvey 1 reached under his cloak and pulled out a small contraption, somewhat like a saucepan on wheels, covered with a glass lid. As Harvey's guests, or prisoners, settled in chairs around the desk, he placed it on the parchment. They all leaned toward it, gazing through the transparent top at the brass frame, silvery cogs and wheels, and delicate springs and coils that worked inside it. At the center was an egg-shaped, crystal reservoir full of liquid that changed constantly from one bright color to another.
"Coo," said Sadie. "I had one of those when I was a chicken."
"You?" Harvey 3 asked, distracted from his purpose for the first moment so far.
"You know," Sadie insisted. "A cub? A pup? A kid?"
Harvey 3 shook his head. "I mean, I find it hard to believe you..."
"Well, it didn't work," said Sadie. "Not like the advertising jingle. Mum had to take it back to the toy shop."
All three of Harvey stared at her. "Toy shop?" Breathed Harvey 2, gobsmacked.
"Well, you see," said Sadie, like one talking to an idiot, "it was supposed to zip when it moved, pop when it stopped, and whirr when it was standing still. But our one popped when it moved, whirred when it stopped, and zipped when it stood still. So the ditty was complete b-"
"Look here," said Harvey 1. "This isn't a toy. There have been no commercial ditties about it. While it should be celebrated in song and legend..."
"It has been," Harvey 2 argued.
"No," said Harvey 3, "but it will be."
"Don't let's start this again," cried Harvey 1, waving both hands above his head. "The important thing is..."
"It's a Cart-o-Matic," said Sir Lionel Niblet.
Harvey 1 glared at Sir Lionel in irritation. "That's hardly the way one should talk about a device some say was invented by Prester John, others by Daedalus himself..."
"It was patented in 1936," Sir Lionel went on ruthlessly, "by a wizard named Mark Grey from Piscataway, New Jersey..."
"You'll find," said Harvey 2, "that Grey only registered the self-refilling ink reservoir..."
"...based on an earlier device invented by Alvin Snook-Peebles of Drizzling Duffham, Beds, for creating engravings for the wizarding press."
All three of Harvey looked beaten, deflated. "Have it your way, then," said Harvey 3. "But it most certanly does not pop when it stops."
"What does it do?" Ilona asked, directing her question at the room in general.
All six of Harvey's eyes rested coldly on Sir Lionel, so he answered: "It draws very beautiful and detailed maps, with copperplate writing, decorative borders, and watercolor shading. The longer you let it run, the finer the detail - though it tends to overlook things that it considers insignificant, such as expressways and rail depots, and embellishes the landscape with such features as 'Here there be Crumple-Horned Snorkacks' and 'Wreck of the Pirate Ship Irving.'"
"Does it really?" Sadie said eagerly. "Could you get it to draw that one?"
"I didn't bring this device for your amusement," Harvey 1 said sourly. "I am only showing it to you so that you understand why I need the ring of Count Matthias. I think it may solve a little problem. You see, there are some places that cannot be plotted on a map. Even such a magical device as the Cart-o-Matic cannot break through their enchantment. But if one were to instruct the Cart-o-Matic, under the seal of Count Matthias..."
"I see," said Spanky. "There's some place you want to find, someone or something whose location is only known to a few..."
"Or perhaps no one," Sir Lionel offered. "No one still living, that is."
"Like a secret protected by a Fidelius Charm," Endora added.
"Something you want to steal," Sadie suggested.
"Someone you want to kill," said Allie O'Modo.
"Perhaps it is a lost art or buried knowledge that he seeks," said Sir Lionel, always willing to see people in a better light than most.
"A magical object," suggested Minimilian.
"A weapon," Spanky speculated.
"A document of some kind," said Sir Lionel.
"This had better not be about some bric-a-brac to decorate your flat," Ilona muttered.
Harvey waited for the chatter to stop, all three of him looking down at his hands folded in his lap. Into the pause that followed Ilona's remark, Dinty squeaked, "Tea!"
No one objected to taking refreshments, even under such strained circumstances. The fact that even such savage enemies could share a quiet fellowship over the munching of cakes and the sipping of tea, lent a reassuring sense of civilization and civility. Spanky felt himself beginning to relax - which, owing to the habits of a lifetime, immediately put him on edge.
"Well, you have the ring," he said, setting his cup down. "What do you want with us, then?"
"I need eyes," said Harvey 1.
"Ears," said Harvey 2.
"Hands and feet," said Harvey 3.
"In plain language," Harvey 1 said, "I need someone to follow where this map will lead."
"Someone who isn't - how shall I put this? - enmeshed in a temporal paradox," Harvey 3 added.
"Mmm," said Harvey 2. "Enmeshed. I like it."
"I would have said embarrassed," said Harvey 1.
"That would have been good too," said Harvey 2.
"Balked," suggested Harvey 3.
"Constrained," Harvey 1 countered.
"Encumbered," said Harvey 3.
"Hampered," said Harvey 1.
"Crippled?" Harvey 2 tried.
Harveys 1 and 3 gave Harvey 2 a pitying look.
"I applaud your wide-ranging vocabulary," Minimilian said testily, "but could you please come to the point?"
"If I go where I'm hoping this map will lead us," said Harvey 1, "there is no telling what might happen. I might cause the (cough) prize to move backward in time..."
"...and so become the cause of its being lost, rather than being found," Harvey 3 clarified.
"Or I might uncreate it," said Harvey 1.
"Or cause it to multiply," suggested Sir Lionel. "Which, for all we know, could be as great a disaster..."
He fell silent as he noticed the blank look the Harveys were giving him.
"You know," said Sir Lionel, grinning. "Like yourselves."
Harvey 1, 2, and 3, each shook his head, perplexed.
"You're getting nowhere with that one," Endora told Sir Lionel out of the corner of her mouth.
Harvey put down his teacups in perfect, threefold synchronicity, stretched his arms, clapped his hands, rubbed them together, and said (in Harvey 3's voice), "Now then, let's give this a try. Quill and ink, Dinty. Dear Mr. Cart-o-Matic... Or should that be Monsieur?"
"Why not Madam?" Endora suggested pugnaciously.
"How about To whom it may concern?" Allie O'Modo said over a stifled yawn.
"Never mind," said Harvey 3, crossing out the Mr. "Dear Cart-o-Matic. Feel free to disregard any and all magical barriers in drawing a map showing the location and route to the..."
Whatever he said next was drowned out by a deafening stroke of thunder. The entire hut shook with it, and a sudden heavy fall of rain roared upon the corrugated steel roof.
"Dash it all," Harvey 1 swore. "This is going to be harder than I thought."
Endora perked up. "That's just like what happened when..."
Ilona elbowed Endora hard in the ribs.
"...wh-when it wouldn't stop raining in the great hall at Hogwarts," Endora covered feebly.
"It's not necessary to dissemble," said Harvey 2. "I was there when Spanky told that story, wasn't I? When that djinn arranged for him, and only him, to know where Ilona was, and every time he mentioned her, there was a deafening noise."
"And look," said Harvey 1. "The ink blotted all over the paragraph."
"Even if we use a roundabout way of describing the prize," said Harvey 2, "the map will most likely come out blotted just as badly as that letter."
"It's no use," Harvey 3 said, throwing down his quill. "We're going to have to find a djinn before we can do anything else."
"We nothing," said Allie O'Modo. "If you have no further use for us, at this time, may we please have our wands back? We were just about to slaughter each other, and I would like to get on with it."
"That's not quite true," Endora said hotly. "You'd already been knocked into a cocked hat. We were just about to..."
"The point," Allie interrupted, "is that he can't keep us all locked up until he finds a djinn to lift the taboo on whatever he is trying to find."
"He doesn't have to," said Ilona, talking through clenched jaws. "With that ring, he holds the free will of every one of us in his hand. He can bring us back here, or whever he wants us to go, simply by dashing off a note and sending it under seal."
"I reckon I'll be moving houses, then," retorted Allie O'Modo. "And leaving no forwarding address."
"Oh, no," said Harvey 1, suddenly brightening. "You'll be fetching me a djinn. And with my little friend here" - he patted the Cart-o-Matic - "we will soon have some ideas of where to start looking."
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #168 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: What area of magic do you think was most neglected in Harry Potter's education?
CONTEST: If there was ever a wizard's revolution, and the months of the year were renamed along magical lines, what would they be called?
Runners-up: Joe & TWZRD
Inside one of the crude huts in the island compound was a large, comfortably decorated room. It had wainscoted walls, a flagstoned hearth, and windows filled with diamond-shaped panes that seemed to admit more light than the conditions warranted. Still more light was provided by flames in hurricane lamps mounted on the walls, lamps that gave off a warm glow even though their crystal oil reservoirs were empty. Bookcases, chairs, a rolltop desk, and a teatable were all cluttered with rolls of parchment and dirty cups.
Harvey sighed when he saw it. He shook his three heads, and one of them said: "This place needs a house-elf's touch."
A noise like a pistol-shot rang off the walls and windows. Several of Harvey's prisoners flinched. But it was, after all, only Dinty the house-elf, appearing with a blue-and-white striped handkerchief tied somewhat in the manner of a sumo wrestler's mawashi. He made three bows, one to each of his master.
"What's this you're wearing?" Harvey 2 demanded. "You're not thrashing that elf from flat 3-E again?"
"Only keeping in condition, sir," piped the elf. "Shall I tidy up, sir?"
"Yes, please, Dinty." Harvey strolled to three of the windows and looked out of them pensively. All three of him raised the same eyebrow in an identical manner. "Interesting," he said in unison. Then he looked around at each other and asked, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
"Hippogriff foals frolicking in the grassy downs," Harvey 1 volunteered.
"A family of faeries checking out a nest box in the woods," said Harvey 3.
"This window overlooks a scrubby rock in the middle of the sea," Harvey 2 contended.
"Scenery spells," said Harvey 1 and 3.
"No doubt," agreed Harvey 2.
During this exchange, Dinty had turned into a veritable whirlwind of grabbing hands, wiping rags, and swishing feather-dusters. Minimilian winced at the sound of breaking crockery. By the time Harvey agreed among himself that the window spells were well done, all that remained of the room's clutter was a sudden, blazing fire on the hearth.
"I say," Minimilian complained. "Those papers were extremely..."
"Yes, yes," said Harvey 3. "I'm sure they were. But look! Chairs for everybody! Do have a seat, won't you? Dinty will have tea up in a jiffy."
Meanwhile, Harvey 2 spread a piece of parchment over the desk, weighting its corners with an inkwell, the iron head of a golf club, a a dragon's fang, and a bottle clearly labeled "Preparation W," the sight of which made Minimilian turn red and look as though he wanted to sink into the ground. Then Harvey 1 reached under his cloak and pulled out a small contraption, somewhat like a saucepan on wheels, covered with a glass lid. As Harvey's guests, or prisoners, settled in chairs around the desk, he placed it on the parchment. They all leaned toward it, gazing through the transparent top at the brass frame, silvery cogs and wheels, and delicate springs and coils that worked inside it. At the center was an egg-shaped, crystal reservoir full of liquid that changed constantly from one bright color to another.
"Coo," said Sadie. "I had one of those when I was a chicken."
"You?" Harvey 3 asked, distracted from his purpose for the first moment so far.
"You know," Sadie insisted. "A cub? A pup? A kid?"
Harvey 3 shook his head. "I mean, I find it hard to believe you..."
"Well, it didn't work," said Sadie. "Not like the advertising jingle. Mum had to take it back to the toy shop."
All three of Harvey stared at her. "Toy shop?" Breathed Harvey 2, gobsmacked.
"Well, you see," said Sadie, like one talking to an idiot, "it was supposed to zip when it moved, pop when it stopped, and whirr when it was standing still. But our one popped when it moved, whirred when it stopped, and zipped when it stood still. So the ditty was complete b-"
"Look here," said Harvey 1. "This isn't a toy. There have been no commercial ditties about it. While it should be celebrated in song and legend..."
"It has been," Harvey 2 argued.
"No," said Harvey 3, "but it will be."
"Don't let's start this again," cried Harvey 1, waving both hands above his head. "The important thing is..."
"It's a Cart-o-Matic," said Sir Lionel Niblet.
Harvey 1 glared at Sir Lionel in irritation. "That's hardly the way one should talk about a device some say was invented by Prester John, others by Daedalus himself..."
"It was patented in 1936," Sir Lionel went on ruthlessly, "by a wizard named Mark Grey from Piscataway, New Jersey..."
"You'll find," said Harvey 2, "that Grey only registered the self-refilling ink reservoir..."
"...based on an earlier device invented by Alvin Snook-Peebles of Drizzling Duffham, Beds, for creating engravings for the wizarding press."
All three of Harvey looked beaten, deflated. "Have it your way, then," said Harvey 3. "But it most certanly does not pop when it stops."
"What does it do?" Ilona asked, directing her question at the room in general.
All six of Harvey's eyes rested coldly on Sir Lionel, so he answered: "It draws very beautiful and detailed maps, with copperplate writing, decorative borders, and watercolor shading. The longer you let it run, the finer the detail - though it tends to overlook things that it considers insignificant, such as expressways and rail depots, and embellishes the landscape with such features as 'Here there be Crumple-Horned Snorkacks' and 'Wreck of the Pirate Ship Irving.'"
"Does it really?" Sadie said eagerly. "Could you get it to draw that one?"
"I didn't bring this device for your amusement," Harvey 1 said sourly. "I am only showing it to you so that you understand why I need the ring of Count Matthias. I think it may solve a little problem. You see, there are some places that cannot be plotted on a map. Even such a magical device as the Cart-o-Matic cannot break through their enchantment. But if one were to instruct the Cart-o-Matic, under the seal of Count Matthias..."
"I see," said Spanky. "There's some place you want to find, someone or something whose location is only known to a few..."
"Or perhaps no one," Sir Lionel offered. "No one still living, that is."
"Like a secret protected by a Fidelius Charm," Endora added.
"Something you want to steal," Sadie suggested.
"Someone you want to kill," said Allie O'Modo.
"Perhaps it is a lost art or buried knowledge that he seeks," said Sir Lionel, always willing to see people in a better light than most.
"A magical object," suggested Minimilian.
"A weapon," Spanky speculated.
"A document of some kind," said Sir Lionel.
"This had better not be about some bric-a-brac to decorate your flat," Ilona muttered.
Harvey waited for the chatter to stop, all three of him looking down at his hands folded in his lap. Into the pause that followed Ilona's remark, Dinty squeaked, "Tea!"
No one objected to taking refreshments, even under such strained circumstances. The fact that even such savage enemies could share a quiet fellowship over the munching of cakes and the sipping of tea, lent a reassuring sense of civilization and civility. Spanky felt himself beginning to relax - which, owing to the habits of a lifetime, immediately put him on edge.
"Well, you have the ring," he said, setting his cup down. "What do you want with us, then?"
"I need eyes," said Harvey 1.
"Ears," said Harvey 2.
"Hands and feet," said Harvey 3.
"In plain language," Harvey 1 said, "I need someone to follow where this map will lead."
"Someone who isn't - how shall I put this? - enmeshed in a temporal paradox," Harvey 3 added.
"Mmm," said Harvey 2. "Enmeshed. I like it."
"I would have said embarrassed," said Harvey 1.
"That would have been good too," said Harvey 2.
"Balked," suggested Harvey 3.
"Constrained," Harvey 1 countered.
"Encumbered," said Harvey 3.
"Hampered," said Harvey 1.
"Crippled?" Harvey 2 tried.
Harveys 1 and 3 gave Harvey 2 a pitying look.
"I applaud your wide-ranging vocabulary," Minimilian said testily, "but could you please come to the point?"
"If I go where I'm hoping this map will lead us," said Harvey 1, "there is no telling what might happen. I might cause the (cough) prize to move backward in time..."
"...and so become the cause of its being lost, rather than being found," Harvey 3 clarified.
"Or I might uncreate it," said Harvey 1.
"Or cause it to multiply," suggested Sir Lionel. "Which, for all we know, could be as great a disaster..."
He fell silent as he noticed the blank look the Harveys were giving him.
"You know," said Sir Lionel, grinning. "Like yourselves."
Harvey 1, 2, and 3, each shook his head, perplexed.
"You're getting nowhere with that one," Endora told Sir Lionel out of the corner of her mouth.
Harvey put down his teacups in perfect, threefold synchronicity, stretched his arms, clapped his hands, rubbed them together, and said (in Harvey 3's voice), "Now then, let's give this a try. Quill and ink, Dinty. Dear Mr. Cart-o-Matic... Or should that be Monsieur?"
"Why not Madam?" Endora suggested pugnaciously.
"How about To whom it may concern?" Allie O'Modo said over a stifled yawn.
"Never mind," said Harvey 3, crossing out the Mr. "Dear Cart-o-Matic. Feel free to disregard any and all magical barriers in drawing a map showing the location and route to the..."
Whatever he said next was drowned out by a deafening stroke of thunder. The entire hut shook with it, and a sudden heavy fall of rain roared upon the corrugated steel roof.
"Dash it all," Harvey 1 swore. "This is going to be harder than I thought."
Endora perked up. "That's just like what happened when..."
Ilona elbowed Endora hard in the ribs.
"...wh-when it wouldn't stop raining in the great hall at Hogwarts," Endora covered feebly.
"It's not necessary to dissemble," said Harvey 2. "I was there when Spanky told that story, wasn't I? When that djinn arranged for him, and only him, to know where Ilona was, and every time he mentioned her, there was a deafening noise."
"And look," said Harvey 1. "The ink blotted all over the paragraph."
"Even if we use a roundabout way of describing the prize," said Harvey 2, "the map will most likely come out blotted just as badly as that letter."
"It's no use," Harvey 3 said, throwing down his quill. "We're going to have to find a djinn before we can do anything else."
"We nothing," said Allie O'Modo. "If you have no further use for us, at this time, may we please have our wands back? We were just about to slaughter each other, and I would like to get on with it."
"That's not quite true," Endora said hotly. "You'd already been knocked into a cocked hat. We were just about to..."
"The point," Allie interrupted, "is that he can't keep us all locked up until he finds a djinn to lift the taboo on whatever he is trying to find."
"He doesn't have to," said Ilona, talking through clenched jaws. "With that ring, he holds the free will of every one of us in his hand. He can bring us back here, or whever he wants us to go, simply by dashing off a note and sending it under seal."
"I reckon I'll be moving houses, then," retorted Allie O'Modo. "And leaving no forwarding address."
"Oh, no," said Harvey 1, suddenly brightening. "You'll be fetching me a djinn. And with my little friend here" - he patted the Cart-o-Matic - "we will soon have some ideas of where to start looking."
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #168 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: What area of magic do you think was most neglected in Harry Potter's education?
CONTEST: If there was ever a wizard's revolution, and the months of the year were renamed along magical lines, what would they be called?
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
165. Verity Pilgrim
Contest winner: Dragonic
When they reached the top of the long, dark, spiral staircase, Merlin and Miss Pucey found themselves in a drab hallway floored in scuffed tile. Flickering jars of fluorescent fireflies hung from the ceiling, casting a sickly light over the framed prints that lined the yellowish walls on either hand. One of the prints was a moving, wizardly copy of Munch's The Scream, complete with a deafening bellow of anguish triggered by their arrival.
A little gray man looked up from behind the counter that barred their way forward. The room beyond the counter was featureless except for a small dumbwaiter, a pneumatic tube, and a pair of doors at the far end. One of the doors appeared solidly built and secured by numerous tough magical locks and bolts. The other looked like a battered screendoor held shut by a dainty hook.
Merlin took in all this in the time it took the little gray man to clear his throat twice and say, in an unsurprisingly reedy voice, "May I help you?"
"Yes," said Merlin. "We're here to break into il Comte's private vault. Is it the door on the left?"
"Hmmm," said the man, pressing a fingertip to his chin. "That would be form N.I.L.P.R.I.M., I believe."
"Your pardon?" said Merlin.
"Notice of Intent to Loot, Pillage, Redistribute, Invade, or Mooch." The little gray man conjured six rolls of parchment out of thin air and laid them, one by one, on the counter. "To be completed by each of you. In triplicate."
Merlin studied Miss Pucey's face for almost a minute, wondering how she controlled the urge to roll her eyes. Strangely, this exercise helped him avoid the same faux pas. Then he said, "May we take these forms with us? I promise to fill them out and post them back to you."
The little gray man appeared to consider this. "Hmmm. Will you be looting or pillaging today?"
"I'm sorry, I don't understand the distinction."
"Then no. You must fill out the forms in my presence."
"Wait, I've got it: pillaging."
"Are you sure?"
Merlin's fingers twitched. He really wanted to wrap them around his wand.
"Sorry," said the little gray man. "If you're not sure, you'll just have to..."
"I'm sure," said Merlin.
"I think not," said the little gray man. "Here are the ink and quills."
"What if I forced my way past you, regardless?"
"Hmmm. I believe that would require form R.A.S.H.B.U.M.P., a Request for Authorization to Subdue, Humiliate, Beat Up, or otherwise Molest my Person. I must warn you, however, that the criteria for approval are very strict, and the review process may take up to 10 business days."
"Who reviews these things?" Merlin asked, barely maintaining his indoor voice.
"I do, actually," said the little gray man, straightening his bow tie modestly. "But I do make an effort to consider every application with all the objectivity..."
"All right!" Merlin snapped. He dragged an inkwell, quill, and roll of parchment toward him. Miss Pucey, looking prim in her tight-lipped silence, began to fill out her forms.
A minute later, the parchment Merlin was writing on exploded. He glared at the little gray man through a coating of soot and the singed remains of his eyebrows.
"Tsk," said the little gray man, pronouncing the word as spelled. Then he handed Merlin a new roll of parchment to replace the one that had self-destructed. "I shouldn't have to warn you that it is useless to write false or misleading information on these forms."
"How can you expect a body to give his correct name and address," Merlin whinged, "when he's about to loot and pillage..."
"I'm sorry to interrupt," said the little gray man, "but my coffee break is coming up in fifteen minutes. If you haven't completed these forms by then, you will have to step outside and start over when I return."
Merlin almost exploded. "I've never heard anything so..."
Miss Pucey nudged him in the ribs. Her elbow was amazingly sharp. Muttering under his breath, Merlin subsided into a frenzy of scratching and scribbling.
"Five minutes," said the little gray man, when Merlin was only about halfway through his paperwork. The latter bit his tongue and scratched harder.
A minute later the little gray man began to review Miss Pucey's completed forms. "Pucey, eh?" He darted an appraising look at her evening dress. "Of the Bedfordshire Puceys, I take it? Such a fine wizarding..."
"Entirely unrelated," Miss Pucey said shortly.
The little gray man's eyebrows climbed toward his scalp. "Really? Most coincidental..."
"My ancestors have been in Suffolk since the Magna Carta," said Miss Pucey. "Muggles as far back as I can trace them. Except for my mother, of course."
The little gray eyebrows dropped. Through narrow, pinched eyes the man behind the counter considered her again, then said: "I wonder which is worse - to suppose that a scion of a great wizardly bloodline would come to this, or..."
"I beg your pardon," Miss Pucey sniffed. Drawing herself up, she assumed a classic pose and began to recite:
"What?" she snapped, noticing him.
"For bearing seven children, your figure has held up quite well."
Now she did roll her eyes. "Your education has been sadly neglected."
"Verity Pilgrim," said the gray little man, daubing sweat off his forehead with a sickly yellow handkerchief. "A most gifted orator, and a tireless advocate for Muggleborn rights." He refrained from adding that he hadn't heard such a blistering recitation since his own and his sisters' years under the forceful hand of their governess. He wondered whether there was a special place where such witches were trained...
Hands shaking, the little gray man vanished a corner of the counter and gestured to Merlin and Miss Pucey to walk through. "I'm afraid your paperwork was lost in a pneumatic mishap," he said. "How inconvenient! Ah, well. It's the screen door there, on the right. Yes, I'm sure. The strong door leads to a pit filled with sharpened erumpent horns, most disagreeable. Good luck now."
As the screen door banged behind them, Merlin realized that he was not as close to the end of the adventure as he had hoped.
He and Miss Pucey now stood at one end of a long glasshouse. At first the hot, moisture-heavy air was hard to breathe. Then, when his nostrils registered the odors of the plants before them, breathing became even harder. Sickeningly sweet perfumes mingled with the scents of rotting carrion. Rank, minerally, muddy tangs mixed with the pong of wet animal fur, unpalatable blends of spices, musty and moldy smells, and a faint whiff of poison.
There were no paths ahead of them. Only beds of flowers in every bright color, every strange shape, every threatening posture of stem and vine. Some of the plants seemed to breathe. Others turned to look at the witch and wizard who had just entered their growing space.
"Earned a N.E.W.T. in herbology, did you?" Merlin asked Miss Pucey.
She shook her head. "I'm allergic to dirt. That's why I became a governess."
Merlin paused to think about this, then gave up. "I got kicked out of herbology in my third year, after I tried to organize a bouncing bulb fight club. Some folks have no sense of humor about that sort of thing."
Judging by her harrumph, Miss Pucey was one of those folks.
"Any road," Merlin went on nervously, "these don't look like the kind of plants we had in the O.W.L. greenhouses. They seem more... advanced. Dangerous, maybe."
As if to underscore his point, one of the flowers ahead of them shot a barrage of razor-sharp seeds at a neighboring plant, whose creeping vines suddenly withdrew their grip from the first plant's roots. The stricken creepers writhed in agony while the leaves on their main stalk opened and closed, as if silently screaming. The ordeal ended when a third plant leaned over, wrapped its huge leaves around the gasping stalk, and snapped it off above the ground with a horrible wrench.
Miss Pucey shuddered. "Not maybe," she said. "Definitely dangerous."
Merlin looked round. Behind them, where the screen door had been, there was now a solid sheet of glass. There was nothing to see on the other side of the glass except brilliant light, diffused across the moisture that coated the inside of the glass. He turned back to view the plant with the prehensile leaves, which were now bashing pieces of its vegetable victim against the ground.
"All right, then. There's nothing for it." He rummaged in his survival satchel, then brought out a small bottle corked with a glass ball. "Second of four doses," he said gravely, imagining his wife's concerned eyes as he regarded her specially-formulated potion.
"What is it?" asked Miss Pucey.
"Liquid Skill," said Merlin. "I reckon I could use one day with a green thumb, like Miles O'Roughage. Otherwise, we won't know where to step, what these plants could do to us."
Miss Pucey nodded, adding: "Or how to get across this hothouse alive and well."
Merlin hesitated before breaking the cap off the bottle. He couldn't help but remember what had happened after the first dose, when he had become an animagus and almost didn't change back into his human form in time. There didn't seem to be any such danger in this situation. But then again, none of the dangers he had faced so far had been expected.
"Here's to herbology," he toasted. Then he drained the vial.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #167 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: What is your favorite variety of Honeydukes sweets?
CONTEST: Describe something you can do with modern (muggle) technology, and how a wizard or witch might interpret it. Remember to make it brief and entertaining.
When they reached the top of the long, dark, spiral staircase, Merlin and Miss Pucey found themselves in a drab hallway floored in scuffed tile. Flickering jars of fluorescent fireflies hung from the ceiling, casting a sickly light over the framed prints that lined the yellowish walls on either hand. One of the prints was a moving, wizardly copy of Munch's The Scream, complete with a deafening bellow of anguish triggered by their arrival.
A little gray man looked up from behind the counter that barred their way forward. The room beyond the counter was featureless except for a small dumbwaiter, a pneumatic tube, and a pair of doors at the far end. One of the doors appeared solidly built and secured by numerous tough magical locks and bolts. The other looked like a battered screendoor held shut by a dainty hook.
Merlin took in all this in the time it took the little gray man to clear his throat twice and say, in an unsurprisingly reedy voice, "May I help you?"
"Yes," said Merlin. "We're here to break into il Comte's private vault. Is it the door on the left?"
"Hmmm," said the man, pressing a fingertip to his chin. "That would be form N.I.L.P.R.I.M., I believe."
"Your pardon?" said Merlin.
"Notice of Intent to Loot, Pillage, Redistribute, Invade, or Mooch." The little gray man conjured six rolls of parchment out of thin air and laid them, one by one, on the counter. "To be completed by each of you. In triplicate."
Merlin studied Miss Pucey's face for almost a minute, wondering how she controlled the urge to roll her eyes. Strangely, this exercise helped him avoid the same faux pas. Then he said, "May we take these forms with us? I promise to fill them out and post them back to you."
The little gray man appeared to consider this. "Hmmm. Will you be looting or pillaging today?"
"I'm sorry, I don't understand the distinction."
"Then no. You must fill out the forms in my presence."
"Wait, I've got it: pillaging."
"Are you sure?"
Merlin's fingers twitched. He really wanted to wrap them around his wand.
"Sorry," said the little gray man. "If you're not sure, you'll just have to..."
"I'm sure," said Merlin.
"I think not," said the little gray man. "Here are the ink and quills."
"What if I forced my way past you, regardless?"
"Hmmm. I believe that would require form R.A.S.H.B.U.M.P., a Request for Authorization to Subdue, Humiliate, Beat Up, or otherwise Molest my Person. I must warn you, however, that the criteria for approval are very strict, and the review process may take up to 10 business days."
"Who reviews these things?" Merlin asked, barely maintaining his indoor voice.
"I do, actually," said the little gray man, straightening his bow tie modestly. "But I do make an effort to consider every application with all the objectivity..."
"All right!" Merlin snapped. He dragged an inkwell, quill, and roll of parchment toward him. Miss Pucey, looking prim in her tight-lipped silence, began to fill out her forms.
A minute later, the parchment Merlin was writing on exploded. He glared at the little gray man through a coating of soot and the singed remains of his eyebrows.
"Tsk," said the little gray man, pronouncing the word as spelled. Then he handed Merlin a new roll of parchment to replace the one that had self-destructed. "I shouldn't have to warn you that it is useless to write false or misleading information on these forms."
"How can you expect a body to give his correct name and address," Merlin whinged, "when he's about to loot and pillage..."
"I'm sorry to interrupt," said the little gray man, "but my coffee break is coming up in fifteen minutes. If you haven't completed these forms by then, you will have to step outside and start over when I return."
Merlin almost exploded. "I've never heard anything so..."
Miss Pucey nudged him in the ribs. Her elbow was amazingly sharp. Muttering under his breath, Merlin subsided into a frenzy of scratching and scribbling.
"Five minutes," said the little gray man, when Merlin was only about halfway through his paperwork. The latter bit his tongue and scratched harder.
A minute later the little gray man began to review Miss Pucey's completed forms. "Pucey, eh?" He darted an appraising look at her evening dress. "Of the Bedfordshire Puceys, I take it? Such a fine wizarding..."
"Entirely unrelated," Miss Pucey said shortly.
The little gray man's eyebrows climbed toward his scalp. "Really? Most coincidental..."
"My ancestors have been in Suffolk since the Magna Carta," said Miss Pucey. "Muggles as far back as I can trace them. Except for my mother, of course."
The little gray eyebrows dropped. Through narrow, pinched eyes the man behind the counter considered her again, then said: "I wonder which is worse - to suppose that a scion of a great wizardly bloodline would come to this, or..."
"I beg your pardon," Miss Pucey sniffed. Drawing herself up, she assumed a classic pose and began to recite:
That wizard over there says that witches need to be helped off of broomsticks, and not apparate alone, and get the best seat in the Knightbus. Nobody ever helps me off broomsticks, when I apparate, or or gives me a good spot anywhere! And ain't I a witch? Look at me! Look at my wand! I have cast spells, and stirred potions, and wizard could head me! And ain't I a witch? I can produce as many charms and enchant as many objects - when I'm given the chance - as any wizard - and endure all your prejudices as well! And ain't I a witch! I have borne sven children, and seen 'em all labelled as second-class for being born to a mudblood, and when I cried out the injustice, not even the Seers heard me! And ain't I a witch!Merlin stared at her.
"What?" she snapped, noticing him.
"For bearing seven children, your figure has held up quite well."
Now she did roll her eyes. "Your education has been sadly neglected."
"Verity Pilgrim," said the gray little man, daubing sweat off his forehead with a sickly yellow handkerchief. "A most gifted orator, and a tireless advocate for Muggleborn rights." He refrained from adding that he hadn't heard such a blistering recitation since his own and his sisters' years under the forceful hand of their governess. He wondered whether there was a special place where such witches were trained...
Hands shaking, the little gray man vanished a corner of the counter and gestured to Merlin and Miss Pucey to walk through. "I'm afraid your paperwork was lost in a pneumatic mishap," he said. "How inconvenient! Ah, well. It's the screen door there, on the right. Yes, I'm sure. The strong door leads to a pit filled with sharpened erumpent horns, most disagreeable. Good luck now."
As the screen door banged behind them, Merlin realized that he was not as close to the end of the adventure as he had hoped.
He and Miss Pucey now stood at one end of a long glasshouse. At first the hot, moisture-heavy air was hard to breathe. Then, when his nostrils registered the odors of the plants before them, breathing became even harder. Sickeningly sweet perfumes mingled with the scents of rotting carrion. Rank, minerally, muddy tangs mixed with the pong of wet animal fur, unpalatable blends of spices, musty and moldy smells, and a faint whiff of poison.
There were no paths ahead of them. Only beds of flowers in every bright color, every strange shape, every threatening posture of stem and vine. Some of the plants seemed to breathe. Others turned to look at the witch and wizard who had just entered their growing space.
"Earned a N.E.W.T. in herbology, did you?" Merlin asked Miss Pucey.
She shook her head. "I'm allergic to dirt. That's why I became a governess."
Merlin paused to think about this, then gave up. "I got kicked out of herbology in my third year, after I tried to organize a bouncing bulb fight club. Some folks have no sense of humor about that sort of thing."
Judging by her harrumph, Miss Pucey was one of those folks.
"Any road," Merlin went on nervously, "these don't look like the kind of plants we had in the O.W.L. greenhouses. They seem more... advanced. Dangerous, maybe."
As if to underscore his point, one of the flowers ahead of them shot a barrage of razor-sharp seeds at a neighboring plant, whose creeping vines suddenly withdrew their grip from the first plant's roots. The stricken creepers writhed in agony while the leaves on their main stalk opened and closed, as if silently screaming. The ordeal ended when a third plant leaned over, wrapped its huge leaves around the gasping stalk, and snapped it off above the ground with a horrible wrench.
Miss Pucey shuddered. "Not maybe," she said. "Definitely dangerous."
Merlin looked round. Behind them, where the screen door had been, there was now a solid sheet of glass. There was nothing to see on the other side of the glass except brilliant light, diffused across the moisture that coated the inside of the glass. He turned back to view the plant with the prehensile leaves, which were now bashing pieces of its vegetable victim against the ground.
"All right, then. There's nothing for it." He rummaged in his survival satchel, then brought out a small bottle corked with a glass ball. "Second of four doses," he said gravely, imagining his wife's concerned eyes as he regarded her specially-formulated potion.
"What is it?" asked Miss Pucey.
"Liquid Skill," said Merlin. "I reckon I could use one day with a green thumb, like Miles O'Roughage. Otherwise, we won't know where to step, what these plants could do to us."
Miss Pucey nodded, adding: "Or how to get across this hothouse alive and well."
Merlin hesitated before breaking the cap off the bottle. He couldn't help but remember what had happened after the first dose, when he had become an animagus and almost didn't change back into his human form in time. There didn't seem to be any such danger in this situation. But then again, none of the dangers he had faced so far had been expected.
"Here's to herbology," he toasted. Then he drained the vial.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #167 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: What is your favorite variety of Honeydukes sweets?
CONTEST: Describe something you can do with modern (muggle) technology, and how a wizard or witch might interpret it. Remember to make it brief and entertaining.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
164. The Pocket Elephant
Contest winner: cv675
Spanky's jaw dropped. Beside him, Ilona stiffened. Behind them, Endora gasped. Sadie growled. Sir Lionel said, "Er."
Harvey faced them from the end of a blind alley in the fast-growing yew maze Sadie had planted (seeds courtesy of her friend Miles O'Roughage). Not just one Harvey, nor even both of him. Three Harveys confronted them. But that wasn't what made Spanky gape. It was partly the menacing way each Harvey's wand was pointed at them. And, partly, it was the third Harvey's outstretched hand.
"Give me the ring," he said coolly.
"Was this your racket all along?" Spanky asked.
"Don't let's have a fuss," said Harvey 1. "It's only a wee bauble. You'll come to no harm."
"What do you want with it?" Ilona demanded.
"How will I use it, you mean?" said Harvey 2. "Would you believe me if I said that I would never use it?"
"Indeed," added Harvey 3, "that I would make sure nobody ever used it again?"
Ilona looked at Spanky. Spanky turned toward Harvey again and said, "No."
"He," Sadie shouted, then corrected herself: "They must be working with Il Comte and Lee Shore. How else..."
"...would I be here when you were expecting them?" Harvey 3 shrugged. "I'm afraid I can't answer all your burning questions."
"At least," added Harvey 2, "not at present. Please to hand over the ring."
"You've really gone through time's mangle, haven't you?" Sir Lionel's voice carried an undertone of laughter. "You've messed things up properly. I wonder what you think absolute power over other people can do to sort out your, er..."
"Problem?" said Harvey 1. "I see no problem. I've seen the end of the world. I've seen its beginning. If older and wiser heads had been in charge..."
"...and, well," said Harvey 2 with an immodest air of modesty, "I'm as old and wise as they come..."
"...a lot of things might have turned out differently." Harvey 3 nodded. "Better."
"You're mad," Endora said shakily. "You can't go about history changing things. You of all people would know, if you hand't changed yourself..."
"Don't be ridiculous," scoffed Harvey 2. "I'm the same as ever."
"Haven't you noticed," Sadie said venomously, "you ought to be saying 'we,' not 'I'?"
Harvey looked at each other, then back at the prisoners who had been his friends. "I'm sorry?" Harvey 1 said. "Am I missing something?"
"Only that there are three of you," Sadie yelled.
Harvey looked around themself again. For a moment, he seemed bewildered. At that moment, Spanky struck.
"Petrificus totalis," he muttered with a flick of his right wand. "Incarcerous," he added quickly, waving his left wand. Ilona's voice cut across his, hissing: "Expelliarmus!"
None of these spells had any effect. Harvey looked back at them with a mildly surprised expression on his three faces. Surprised and hurt.
"I say," he said.
The five wizards at bay immediately began pelting him with jinxes. None of them found their target. Sizzling jets of light zoomed toward Harvey's chests, then dissipated as if nothing was there. They didn't seem to be hitting a shield.
"Come, Rumbo," said Harvey 2, tugging on a leash that snaked around his legs.
An elephant walked into view from behind Harvey 2's legs, where it seemed to have been hiding. It was about the size of a well-fed beagle, and it had a wand gripped in its curling trunk.
"Meet my friend Rumbo," said Harvey 1. "Once, when I had a lot of time on my hands - say, eighty years or so - I trained him to remember jinxes and their counterspells."
Harvey 3 added, "He's very good to have with one when one is surrounded by hair-trigger witches and wizards."
"Only look how he's shrunk," said Harvey 2 sadly. "Unfortunate side effect, it always happens. He was the size of a standard schnauzer a few minutes ago."
"Eventually the poor chap will grow so small, I won't be able to care for him," said Harvey 1.
"Alas," said Harvey 3, "it's the price we have to pay..."
"We?" Sadie challenged.
Harvey 3 blinked at her. "Yes, of course," he said. "Rumbo and I."
Sadie stared back. "You've lost your marbles, mate."
Harvey 2 and 3 simply smiled. Harvey 1 cheerfully said, "Right. Now, the ring. Unless any of you is harboring a pocket elephant, I would urge you to give it up promptly."
Spanky opened his mouth to ask a question, but Harvey 2 answered it first: "I've still got a few spells Rumbo hasn't seen."
When no one moved for a long beat, Harvey 3 anxiously added: "They'll hurt. A lot."
Sadie shook with fury as she stepped forward, clutching the ring in her fist.
"That's better," said Harvey 3.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #166 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Harvey is working (A) on his own. (B) for Bobs the Reality Wizard. (C) for il Comte. (D) for Uncle or Aunt Leslie. (E) for ______ (write-in candidate).
CONTEST: Describe a magical machine and what it does. The more whimsical, the better!
Spanky's jaw dropped. Beside him, Ilona stiffened. Behind them, Endora gasped. Sadie growled. Sir Lionel said, "Er."
Harvey faced them from the end of a blind alley in the fast-growing yew maze Sadie had planted (seeds courtesy of her friend Miles O'Roughage). Not just one Harvey, nor even both of him. Three Harveys confronted them. But that wasn't what made Spanky gape. It was partly the menacing way each Harvey's wand was pointed at them. And, partly, it was the third Harvey's outstretched hand.
"Give me the ring," he said coolly.
"Was this your racket all along?" Spanky asked.
"Don't let's have a fuss," said Harvey 1. "It's only a wee bauble. You'll come to no harm."
"What do you want with it?" Ilona demanded.
"How will I use it, you mean?" said Harvey 2. "Would you believe me if I said that I would never use it?"
"Indeed," added Harvey 3, "that I would make sure nobody ever used it again?"
Ilona looked at Spanky. Spanky turned toward Harvey again and said, "No."
"He," Sadie shouted, then corrected herself: "They must be working with Il Comte and Lee Shore. How else..."
"...would I be here when you were expecting them?" Harvey 3 shrugged. "I'm afraid I can't answer all your burning questions."
"At least," added Harvey 2, "not at present. Please to hand over the ring."
"You've really gone through time's mangle, haven't you?" Sir Lionel's voice carried an undertone of laughter. "You've messed things up properly. I wonder what you think absolute power over other people can do to sort out your, er..."
"Problem?" said Harvey 1. "I see no problem. I've seen the end of the world. I've seen its beginning. If older and wiser heads had been in charge..."
"...and, well," said Harvey 2 with an immodest air of modesty, "I'm as old and wise as they come..."
"...a lot of things might have turned out differently." Harvey 3 nodded. "Better."
"You're mad," Endora said shakily. "You can't go about history changing things. You of all people would know, if you hand't changed yourself..."
"Don't be ridiculous," scoffed Harvey 2. "I'm the same as ever."
"Haven't you noticed," Sadie said venomously, "you ought to be saying 'we,' not 'I'?"
Harvey looked at each other, then back at the prisoners who had been his friends. "I'm sorry?" Harvey 1 said. "Am I missing something?"
"Only that there are three of you," Sadie yelled.
Harvey looked around themself again. For a moment, he seemed bewildered. At that moment, Spanky struck.
"Petrificus totalis," he muttered with a flick of his right wand. "Incarcerous," he added quickly, waving his left wand. Ilona's voice cut across his, hissing: "Expelliarmus!"
None of these spells had any effect. Harvey looked back at them with a mildly surprised expression on his three faces. Surprised and hurt.
"I say," he said.
The five wizards at bay immediately began pelting him with jinxes. None of them found their target. Sizzling jets of light zoomed toward Harvey's chests, then dissipated as if nothing was there. They didn't seem to be hitting a shield.
"Come, Rumbo," said Harvey 2, tugging on a leash that snaked around his legs.
An elephant walked into view from behind Harvey 2's legs, where it seemed to have been hiding. It was about the size of a well-fed beagle, and it had a wand gripped in its curling trunk.
"Meet my friend Rumbo," said Harvey 1. "Once, when I had a lot of time on my hands - say, eighty years or so - I trained him to remember jinxes and their counterspells."
Harvey 3 added, "He's very good to have with one when one is surrounded by hair-trigger witches and wizards."
"Only look how he's shrunk," said Harvey 2 sadly. "Unfortunate side effect, it always happens. He was the size of a standard schnauzer a few minutes ago."
"Eventually the poor chap will grow so small, I won't be able to care for him," said Harvey 1.
"Alas," said Harvey 3, "it's the price we have to pay..."
"We?" Sadie challenged.
Harvey 3 blinked at her. "Yes, of course," he said. "Rumbo and I."
Sadie stared back. "You've lost your marbles, mate."
Harvey 2 and 3 simply smiled. Harvey 1 cheerfully said, "Right. Now, the ring. Unless any of you is harboring a pocket elephant, I would urge you to give it up promptly."
Spanky opened his mouth to ask a question, but Harvey 2 answered it first: "I've still got a few spells Rumbo hasn't seen."
When no one moved for a long beat, Harvey 3 anxiously added: "They'll hurt. A lot."
Sadie shook with fury as she stepped forward, clutching the ring in her fist.
"That's better," said Harvey 3.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #166 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Harvey is working (A) on his own. (B) for Bobs the Reality Wizard. (C) for il Comte. (D) for Uncle or Aunt Leslie. (E) for ______ (write-in candidate).
CONTEST: Describe a magical machine and what it does. The more whimsical, the better!
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
163. The Golden Cap
Contest winner: Sir Read-a-Lot
All the ghosts in Venice were rioting. Head Quidditch hooligans, every one of them. Il Comte di Bestemmia winced at the sound of massed wailing, moaning, and rattling of chains. The walls of his compound dripped ectoplasm as ghostly apparitions of severed body parts were hurled at them like pieces of rotting fruit. It was giving him a splitting headache.
"Ombra," the wizard called weakly, shuddering as an army of ghosts marched below his window playing musical saws. "Fetch my manual of exorcism, if you please."
A simpering house-elf ran out of the room. While il Comte waited for his return, something went crash in the garden. He hurried, muttering, to a window on another side of the room. The beastly ghosts were getting into his greenhouse now! Il Comte wrung his hands, thinking about some extremely rare plants that might not recover from the cold, clammy touch of these unquiet spirits. "What is taking that elf so long?" he wondered aloud.
All his attention was focused on the lagoon side of his private island, from which more ghosts were still rising from the sickly fog over the water. So il Comte did not notice a separate disturbance developing on the canal side. In a small square just opposite il Comte's jetty, Rigel was encircled by five burly figures cloaked in heavy furs. He turned round and round in a defensive posture while rummaging in his parallel-universe pocket locker. His assailants seemed content, for the moment, to wait and see what interesting weapon he would come up with.
Rigel's fingers closed around something. He pulled it out with a triumphant "Ha!" The defiant gleam in his eyes changed to dull grimness when he saw what he held. It was a rubber chicken.
Before he could recover from this disappointment, the first of his opponents charged. Rigel flourished the chicken in its face before stepping aside. The wind of the giant's passage caused the young wizard's robes and hair to flutter. A flapping hem of the attacker's fur cloak slapped against Rigel's calf.
For a moment the five cloaked men stamped and pawed. Then the one most directly behind Rigel charged. He felt rather than heard its approach, felt it in the ground vibrating underfoot. He turned and smacked it in the face with the broad side of the chicken. When a third opponent came at him, Rigel stuck out his foot and tripped him. The fellow went stumbling out of the circle.
"It's a lucky thing the bad guys always attack one by one," Rigel mused aloud. Then he added, "Whoops," as four massive figures closed on him at once. He crouched down and rolled through their legs, laughing at the sound of their bodies colliding and the brief bout of shoving and cuffing that followed it.
Now Rigel was outside the circle. He turned to face a line of five gigantic men. No, not men... yaks.
"Yikes," Rigel squeaked. He started backing away, digging once more in his pocket.
The next thing he pulled out was a golden cap. The Golden Cap, rather. Rigel allowed himself a half-second's distraction as he recalled purchasing it at Jude the Insecure's "From Out of This World" outfitter. He racked his brains, trying to remember whether he had used it twice or three times...
The yaks took a step toward him. Rigel was not keen on turning his back on them. Did yaks have an instinct to chase anything that ran from them, he wondered? He walked backwards, faster, risking a glance over his shoulder as he turned the cap round and round in his hands.
"Well, there's nothing for it," he told himself when his back bumped wall. He tugged the cap onto his head. The yaks were a dozen meters away now. Standing on his left foot, Rigel chanted: "Ep-pe, pep-pe, kak-ke!" Seven meters and closing. Shifting to his right foot, he intoned: "Hil-lo, hol-lo, hel-lo!" Three meters! On both feet now, Rigel screamed: "Ziz-zy, zuz-zy, zik!"
The nearest wereyak was so close by now that Rigel could smell its breath. It reeked of rancid butter, fermented tea, damp fur, and a sweet, gassy, grassy scent. Slobber dangled from the creature's lips. Its nose was damp with yak bogies.
"I'm only going to say this once," said Rigel warningly. The wereyaks stopped. Swallowing with an audible gulp, he added: "Surrender now, and it will go easier for you."
The yak in front of him snorted. Foul-smelling snot splattered the front of Rigel's robes.
"All right then," Rigel said in a shaky but grim voice. "Give these dirty beasts a bath, boys!"
The air was suddenly filled with the flapping of wings, screeches and howling laughter. The already shadowy corner of the square darkened even more as the space overhead filled with a squadron of diving, grasping creatures.
Winged monkeys.
The yaks turned and bellowed. Rigel edged toward a nearby alley, barely wide enough for his thin shoulders, and darted away from the ensuing melee.
Moments later, he found himself on the edge of the canal. Il Comte's private jetty stood but a stone's throw away. It might as well have been miles, with the waters in between infested with merpeople who served that cruel master. In the distance, he could see flashes of light as the ghosts, at his instigation, continued their riot. It seemed they were trying to burn down il Comte's gatehouse, using ghostly torches that burned only on their own, insubstantial plane. He sighed and shook his head, then began digging around in his pocket again. There had to be something to get him across the water...
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #165 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Which Hogwarts subject includes a lesson that will soon save the lives of Merlin and Miss Pucey?
CONTEST: Rewrite a portion of a famous speech, from either history or literature, to make it apply to the magical world of Harry Potter. (Examples: Hamlet's soliloquy, Patrick Henry's "liberty or death" speech, the Gettysburg Address, Mary Schmich's "Wear Sunscreen" speech, etc.) Use your imagination! Entries will be judged on the basis of entertainment value.
All the ghosts in Venice were rioting. Head Quidditch hooligans, every one of them. Il Comte di Bestemmia winced at the sound of massed wailing, moaning, and rattling of chains. The walls of his compound dripped ectoplasm as ghostly apparitions of severed body parts were hurled at them like pieces of rotting fruit. It was giving him a splitting headache.
"Ombra," the wizard called weakly, shuddering as an army of ghosts marched below his window playing musical saws. "Fetch my manual of exorcism, if you please."
A simpering house-elf ran out of the room. While il Comte waited for his return, something went crash in the garden. He hurried, muttering, to a window on another side of the room. The beastly ghosts were getting into his greenhouse now! Il Comte wrung his hands, thinking about some extremely rare plants that might not recover from the cold, clammy touch of these unquiet spirits. "What is taking that elf so long?" he wondered aloud.
All his attention was focused on the lagoon side of his private island, from which more ghosts were still rising from the sickly fog over the water. So il Comte did not notice a separate disturbance developing on the canal side. In a small square just opposite il Comte's jetty, Rigel was encircled by five burly figures cloaked in heavy furs. He turned round and round in a defensive posture while rummaging in his parallel-universe pocket locker. His assailants seemed content, for the moment, to wait and see what interesting weapon he would come up with.
Rigel's fingers closed around something. He pulled it out with a triumphant "Ha!" The defiant gleam in his eyes changed to dull grimness when he saw what he held. It was a rubber chicken.
Before he could recover from this disappointment, the first of his opponents charged. Rigel flourished the chicken in its face before stepping aside. The wind of the giant's passage caused the young wizard's robes and hair to flutter. A flapping hem of the attacker's fur cloak slapped against Rigel's calf.
For a moment the five cloaked men stamped and pawed. Then the one most directly behind Rigel charged. He felt rather than heard its approach, felt it in the ground vibrating underfoot. He turned and smacked it in the face with the broad side of the chicken. When a third opponent came at him, Rigel stuck out his foot and tripped him. The fellow went stumbling out of the circle.
"It's a lucky thing the bad guys always attack one by one," Rigel mused aloud. Then he added, "Whoops," as four massive figures closed on him at once. He crouched down and rolled through their legs, laughing at the sound of their bodies colliding and the brief bout of shoving and cuffing that followed it.
Now Rigel was outside the circle. He turned to face a line of five gigantic men. No, not men... yaks.
"Yikes," Rigel squeaked. He started backing away, digging once more in his pocket.
The next thing he pulled out was a golden cap. The Golden Cap, rather. Rigel allowed himself a half-second's distraction as he recalled purchasing it at Jude the Insecure's "From Out of This World" outfitter. He racked his brains, trying to remember whether he had used it twice or three times...
The yaks took a step toward him. Rigel was not keen on turning his back on them. Did yaks have an instinct to chase anything that ran from them, he wondered? He walked backwards, faster, risking a glance over his shoulder as he turned the cap round and round in his hands.
"Well, there's nothing for it," he told himself when his back bumped wall. He tugged the cap onto his head. The yaks were a dozen meters away now. Standing on his left foot, Rigel chanted: "Ep-pe, pep-pe, kak-ke!" Seven meters and closing. Shifting to his right foot, he intoned: "Hil-lo, hol-lo, hel-lo!" Three meters! On both feet now, Rigel screamed: "Ziz-zy, zuz-zy, zik!"
The nearest wereyak was so close by now that Rigel could smell its breath. It reeked of rancid butter, fermented tea, damp fur, and a sweet, gassy, grassy scent. Slobber dangled from the creature's lips. Its nose was damp with yak bogies.
"I'm only going to say this once," said Rigel warningly. The wereyaks stopped. Swallowing with an audible gulp, he added: "Surrender now, and it will go easier for you."
The yak in front of him snorted. Foul-smelling snot splattered the front of Rigel's robes.
"All right then," Rigel said in a shaky but grim voice. "Give these dirty beasts a bath, boys!"
The air was suddenly filled with the flapping of wings, screeches and howling laughter. The already shadowy corner of the square darkened even more as the space overhead filled with a squadron of diving, grasping creatures.
Winged monkeys.
The yaks turned and bellowed. Rigel edged toward a nearby alley, barely wide enough for his thin shoulders, and darted away from the ensuing melee.
Moments later, he found himself on the edge of the canal. Il Comte's private jetty stood but a stone's throw away. It might as well have been miles, with the waters in between infested with merpeople who served that cruel master. In the distance, he could see flashes of light as the ghosts, at his instigation, continued their riot. It seemed they were trying to burn down il Comte's gatehouse, using ghostly torches that burned only on their own, insubstantial plane. He sighed and shook his head, then began digging around in his pocket again. There had to be something to get him across the water...
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #165 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Which Hogwarts subject includes a lesson that will soon save the lives of Merlin and Miss Pucey?
CONTEST: Rewrite a portion of a famous speech, from either history or literature, to make it apply to the magical world of Harry Potter. (Examples: Hamlet's soliloquy, Patrick Henry's "liberty or death" speech, the Gettysburg Address, Mary Schmich's "Wear Sunscreen" speech, etc.) Use your imagination! Entries will be judged on the basis of entertainment value.
Friday, August 14, 2009
162. Mirror Seeds
Contest co-winners: Dragonic and greyniffler
Spanky, Ilona, and Lionel Niblet marched in single file with their hands tied behind their backs. Behind them walked Minimilian, Hugo, Allie O'Modo, and a considerable following of henchwitches and -wizards, all abristle with wands and under orders to curse the prisoners at the first sign of resistance. Behind and below them lay the wooded valley with the mercenary camp and its outlying magical orchards. Above and ahead, the trees thinned toward a bare ridge that hid the gnome proving ground on its far side.
"It was very clever of you," pontificated Allie O'Modo, "to turn the tables on us so. Too bad for you, we turned them back . And when you turned the tables on us a second time, we turned them back again. It only shows that the side with the better preparedness has a right..."
"Seeds away!" cackled a voice from above. Captors and captives alike ducked as a broom rushed close overhead. The flyover was followed by a hailstorm of hard little seeds that instantly took root, even on this rocky slope, and began to shoot up at an eye-boggling rate.
While Allie O'Modo struggled to free her feet from the roots of a rapidly-growing yew seedling, Minimilian frantically searched the skies. "Drubbins! Goonsworth! Stop the prisoners getting away! Everyone else, bring down that broom!"
His instructions were too late to stop their attacker's second, shrieking pass. More seeds rained down, pinching and biting any flesh they encountered before reaching the ground. Minimilian howled with red-faced fury, looking more than ever like a spoiled child.
"Patience, love," Allie murmured after finally wrenching her boot free of the plant's roots. Already their party was surrounded by the walls of a waist-high yew maze. Several of their co-conspirators were getting tangled in the branches as they tried to wade through to their escaping prisoners. "Grimly, go with Drubbins and Goonsworth. Track our guests through the maze. Keep a wall to your right hand at all times. Don't get split up. The rest of you" - her speech was interrupted by another low sweep by their yipping assailant - "keep your eye on that broom!"
This time the overflight was followed by a rain of broken glass. Everyone cowered under their robes to avoid getting a faceful of jagged slivers. By the time they looked up, O'Modo's people had lost visual contact with their broom-mounted attacker.
"I never," Hugo breathed, as he observed what happened to the glass shards that reached the ground. For they, too, had started to spring up like plants, at a speed only magic could induce. The rising stalks were surrounded by a spiral staircase of leaves, thin and delicate to the point of translucency, and variegated like little stained-glass windows. As the stalks grew higher they wove themselves into the mesh of yew branches that, by now, formed a continuous shoulder-high hedge within and around the maze. Tiny buds swelled on the stained-glass vines, burst open, and unfurled shiny flowers whose clear, glassy gloss was backed by a silvery sheen. Mirror blossoms! "I absolutely never," said Hugo.
"You'd better start, then," snapped Allie O'Modo. "Hasn't anyone spotted that broom yet?"
It became harder to track the trajectory of broom flyover as the yew hedge passed the height of their heads; harder still when the next two passes came, in short succession, from quite different directions, suggesting that they had at least two aerial enemies to aim at; hardest of all when each broom sprayed them with a green, glittery gas, leaving them sneezing and waving the fog out of their faces.
"We have to get out of this maze," Minimilian shouted.
"Nonsense," said Allie. "It's cover, isn't it? Out in the open, they could hit us with anything!"
"Out in the open," snarled Minimilian, "we might be able to hit them."
"All right, then," Allie O'Modo relented. "You take Mugwump, Skink, and McCurdle and try to find a way out. The others will stay with me and try to shoot them down from in here. Oh, yes - and I would suggest that you all put on your safety-pins..."
"Right you are," said Hugo, pulling an ugly brooch out of his pocket (decorated with the skull of a small snake) and pinning it to his robes. The other members of Allie's squad did the same. "Now let's see those blighters try to curse us," Hugo added.
They saw the very thing Hugo wished for soon afterward, when Sir Lionel darted out of an unguarded gap in the hedge and aimed a jinx at Allie O'Modo's head. He immediately cried out and dropped his wand, or rather Drubbins's wand (but that's a long story), clutched his arm, and fell back out of range of the answering volley of curses.
"Crumple-horned snorkacks!" Sir Lionel swore, chafing his wand arm. Luckily Ilona, just behind him, had retrieved his wand with a quick summoning spell. "Spanky, old chap, don't jinx them! They've done something to make spells rebound!"
Spanky adjusted his tactics by aiming his spells at one of the mirror blossoms, in which he could see a reflection of one of Allie's henchwizards around the corner. Whatever spell he was firing at the wizard, it missed the first two times. Then he got the refraction angle just right... and the mirror shattered.
"Blimey," said Spanky.
"I think we should fall back," said Lionel.
They were all thinking the same thing. They could do nothing, at present, to resist their enemy's counterattack. Without another word they scrambled through the twisting and turning maze.
Now and then Ilona cut a blaze in the yew hedge, whose growth had stopped at a height of fourteen feet. Most of the time she did this as a reminder of where they had been in the tricky maze. Sometimes, however, she paused a beat longer - gauging the available time by the sounds of pursuit behind them - to create a booby trap. The pursuers, after all, were bound to stay on their trail, for the blazes would help them as well. Ilona smirked when, now and then, a dismayed yell indicated that a henchwizard had run into a snare, a concealed pit, or a barrier of fallen limbs and clutching vines.
Screams came, from time to time, from another direction. Spanky's party headed toward them, wondering whether they were running to rescue or more danger. He would have grinned if he had known that some of the screams resulted from a pot of very aggressive snapdragons, bred by Miles O'Roughage and borrowed for the occasion by his friend Sadie. In another case, the screams came from a witch who had failed to catch an eggshell full of Tickle Tonic thrown at her by Endora as her broom swooped low overhead.
"Their safety-pins must be running low on charge," Spanky speculated as the shouts and cries multiplied from both directions.
"We must be running out of maze," Sir Lionel added.
Instead, as they rounded the next corner, they came to a dead end.
"This can't be right," Ilona whispered.
"Oh, yes," said a tight, stiff-jawed voice behind them.
The three escaped prisoners turned as one and faced Allie O'Modo, who stood in the middle of their only way out of this bottleneck. Her chest heaved. Her face was disfigured, as much by fury as by the whiplash-marks left by one of Ilona's booby traps. She raised her wand.
Spanky's right hand was faster. "Expelliarmus!" he barked. But the spell rebounded in a flash of light, and the wand dropped out of his numb fingers.
"I've got enough safety-pins to block a few more curses," Allie laughed bitterly. Indeed, her robes sparkled with a multitude of tiny green gems, each individually hooked through the wool. She raised her wand again. "It's time for you to say your last words."
"Ow," Spanky said, massaging his elbow.
"It's not much to remember you by," said Allie O'Modo with an insane grin, "but I'll take it."
"Expelliarmus!" Spanky yelled.
Ilona couldn't believe he would try that again. Her head whipped around in time to see that he had aimed the jinx at himself, with his left wand held out at arm's length. The wand shot straight out of his hand and jabbed Allie in the eye.
"Ow!" she screamed - taking Spanky's last words, as promised.
Before she could recover from her stumbling, face-clutching agony, Ilona brought her facedown with her hands hiked up between her shoulderblades.
"Ow, ow, ow," Allie O'Modo insisted feebly.
"I believe you," said Ilona, kneeling on Allie's thighs.
Sir Lionel clapped Spanky on the back and crowed, "Well shot, my lad!" Meanwhile, two brooms darkened the sun for a moment, before their riders dropped into the maze beyond Ilona and her prisoner.
Spanky stared with joy at one witch with a veil covering half of her face, and another wearing a fake nose and glasses (complete with a curly mustache). "I can hardly imagine two faces I would be happier to see," he said.
"Well, you'll be happier to see this," said Endora. She held up her left hand, where the signet ring of Count Matthias shared a finger with her wedding ring.
Ilona gasped. "Where did you...!"
"The bad news," said Sadie, "is that Lee Shore, Il Comte, and Aunt or Uncle Leslie have all put spells on this ring. Endora can't get it off her hand. Since she used the ring to undo what Lee Shore was using it for, they know exactly where she is. I reckon we'll have some company in about..." Sadie checked a pocket watch she had nicked on her way out of the Ministry of Magic. "Right now, actually."
Another flight of brooms threw its shadow over them. Three pairs of feet touched down in the blind alley behind Sir Lionel and Spanky.
They all turned to face the latest arrivals.
"You were half right," said their old friend Harvey.
"It was only the names you got wrong," added Harvey's identical twin.
"I'll have that ring now, if you please," said their third visitor, smiling as Spanky's jaw dropped.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #164 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Who is the third member of Harvey 1 & Harvey 2's party? (A) Harvey 3. (B) Robertus Magnus. (C) The real Sir Lionel Niblet. (D) Joe Albuquerque. (E) Orion Oldmanson. (F) Tip, formerly of Nasal Drip. (G) _____ [write-in candidate].
CONTEST: Chose a kind of animal and describe something silly that it could be trained to do, with the aid of magic.
Spanky, Ilona, and Lionel Niblet marched in single file with their hands tied behind their backs. Behind them walked Minimilian, Hugo, Allie O'Modo, and a considerable following of henchwitches and -wizards, all abristle with wands and under orders to curse the prisoners at the first sign of resistance. Behind and below them lay the wooded valley with the mercenary camp and its outlying magical orchards. Above and ahead, the trees thinned toward a bare ridge that hid the gnome proving ground on its far side.
"It was very clever of you," pontificated Allie O'Modo, "to turn the tables on us so. Too bad for you, we turned them back . And when you turned the tables on us a second time, we turned them back again. It only shows that the side with the better preparedness has a right..."
"Seeds away!" cackled a voice from above. Captors and captives alike ducked as a broom rushed close overhead. The flyover was followed by a hailstorm of hard little seeds that instantly took root, even on this rocky slope, and began to shoot up at an eye-boggling rate.
While Allie O'Modo struggled to free her feet from the roots of a rapidly-growing yew seedling, Minimilian frantically searched the skies. "Drubbins! Goonsworth! Stop the prisoners getting away! Everyone else, bring down that broom!"
His instructions were too late to stop their attacker's second, shrieking pass. More seeds rained down, pinching and biting any flesh they encountered before reaching the ground. Minimilian howled with red-faced fury, looking more than ever like a spoiled child.
"Patience, love," Allie murmured after finally wrenching her boot free of the plant's roots. Already their party was surrounded by the walls of a waist-high yew maze. Several of their co-conspirators were getting tangled in the branches as they tried to wade through to their escaping prisoners. "Grimly, go with Drubbins and Goonsworth. Track our guests through the maze. Keep a wall to your right hand at all times. Don't get split up. The rest of you" - her speech was interrupted by another low sweep by their yipping assailant - "keep your eye on that broom!"
This time the overflight was followed by a rain of broken glass. Everyone cowered under their robes to avoid getting a faceful of jagged slivers. By the time they looked up, O'Modo's people had lost visual contact with their broom-mounted attacker.
"I never," Hugo breathed, as he observed what happened to the glass shards that reached the ground. For they, too, had started to spring up like plants, at a speed only magic could induce. The rising stalks were surrounded by a spiral staircase of leaves, thin and delicate to the point of translucency, and variegated like little stained-glass windows. As the stalks grew higher they wove themselves into the mesh of yew branches that, by now, formed a continuous shoulder-high hedge within and around the maze. Tiny buds swelled on the stained-glass vines, burst open, and unfurled shiny flowers whose clear, glassy gloss was backed by a silvery sheen. Mirror blossoms! "I absolutely never," said Hugo.
"You'd better start, then," snapped Allie O'Modo. "Hasn't anyone spotted that broom yet?"
It became harder to track the trajectory of broom flyover as the yew hedge passed the height of their heads; harder still when the next two passes came, in short succession, from quite different directions, suggesting that they had at least two aerial enemies to aim at; hardest of all when each broom sprayed them with a green, glittery gas, leaving them sneezing and waving the fog out of their faces.
"We have to get out of this maze," Minimilian shouted.
"Nonsense," said Allie. "It's cover, isn't it? Out in the open, they could hit us with anything!"
"Out in the open," snarled Minimilian, "we might be able to hit them."
"All right, then," Allie O'Modo relented. "You take Mugwump, Skink, and McCurdle and try to find a way out. The others will stay with me and try to shoot them down from in here. Oh, yes - and I would suggest that you all put on your safety-pins..."
"Right you are," said Hugo, pulling an ugly brooch out of his pocket (decorated with the skull of a small snake) and pinning it to his robes. The other members of Allie's squad did the same. "Now let's see those blighters try to curse us," Hugo added.
They saw the very thing Hugo wished for soon afterward, when Sir Lionel darted out of an unguarded gap in the hedge and aimed a jinx at Allie O'Modo's head. He immediately cried out and dropped his wand, or rather Drubbins's wand (but that's a long story), clutched his arm, and fell back out of range of the answering volley of curses.
"Crumple-horned snorkacks!" Sir Lionel swore, chafing his wand arm. Luckily Ilona, just behind him, had retrieved his wand with a quick summoning spell. "Spanky, old chap, don't jinx them! They've done something to make spells rebound!"
Spanky adjusted his tactics by aiming his spells at one of the mirror blossoms, in which he could see a reflection of one of Allie's henchwizards around the corner. Whatever spell he was firing at the wizard, it missed the first two times. Then he got the refraction angle just right... and the mirror shattered.
"Blimey," said Spanky.
"I think we should fall back," said Lionel.
They were all thinking the same thing. They could do nothing, at present, to resist their enemy's counterattack. Without another word they scrambled through the twisting and turning maze.
Now and then Ilona cut a blaze in the yew hedge, whose growth had stopped at a height of fourteen feet. Most of the time she did this as a reminder of where they had been in the tricky maze. Sometimes, however, she paused a beat longer - gauging the available time by the sounds of pursuit behind them - to create a booby trap. The pursuers, after all, were bound to stay on their trail, for the blazes would help them as well. Ilona smirked when, now and then, a dismayed yell indicated that a henchwizard had run into a snare, a concealed pit, or a barrier of fallen limbs and clutching vines.
Screams came, from time to time, from another direction. Spanky's party headed toward them, wondering whether they were running to rescue or more danger. He would have grinned if he had known that some of the screams resulted from a pot of very aggressive snapdragons, bred by Miles O'Roughage and borrowed for the occasion by his friend Sadie. In another case, the screams came from a witch who had failed to catch an eggshell full of Tickle Tonic thrown at her by Endora as her broom swooped low overhead.
"Their safety-pins must be running low on charge," Spanky speculated as the shouts and cries multiplied from both directions.
"We must be running out of maze," Sir Lionel added.
Instead, as they rounded the next corner, they came to a dead end.
"This can't be right," Ilona whispered.
"Oh, yes," said a tight, stiff-jawed voice behind them.
The three escaped prisoners turned as one and faced Allie O'Modo, who stood in the middle of their only way out of this bottleneck. Her chest heaved. Her face was disfigured, as much by fury as by the whiplash-marks left by one of Ilona's booby traps. She raised her wand.
Spanky's right hand was faster. "Expelliarmus!" he barked. But the spell rebounded in a flash of light, and the wand dropped out of his numb fingers.
"I've got enough safety-pins to block a few more curses," Allie laughed bitterly. Indeed, her robes sparkled with a multitude of tiny green gems, each individually hooked through the wool. She raised her wand again. "It's time for you to say your last words."
"Ow," Spanky said, massaging his elbow.
"It's not much to remember you by," said Allie O'Modo with an insane grin, "but I'll take it."
"Expelliarmus!" Spanky yelled.
Ilona couldn't believe he would try that again. Her head whipped around in time to see that he had aimed the jinx at himself, with his left wand held out at arm's length. The wand shot straight out of his hand and jabbed Allie in the eye.
"Ow!" she screamed - taking Spanky's last words, as promised.
Before she could recover from her stumbling, face-clutching agony, Ilona brought her facedown with her hands hiked up between her shoulderblades.
"Ow, ow, ow," Allie O'Modo insisted feebly.
"I believe you," said Ilona, kneeling on Allie's thighs.
Sir Lionel clapped Spanky on the back and crowed, "Well shot, my lad!" Meanwhile, two brooms darkened the sun for a moment, before their riders dropped into the maze beyond Ilona and her prisoner.
Spanky stared with joy at one witch with a veil covering half of her face, and another wearing a fake nose and glasses (complete with a curly mustache). "I can hardly imagine two faces I would be happier to see," he said.
"Well, you'll be happier to see this," said Endora. She held up her left hand, where the signet ring of Count Matthias shared a finger with her wedding ring.
Ilona gasped. "Where did you...!"
"The bad news," said Sadie, "is that Lee Shore, Il Comte, and Aunt or Uncle Leslie have all put spells on this ring. Endora can't get it off her hand. Since she used the ring to undo what Lee Shore was using it for, they know exactly where she is. I reckon we'll have some company in about..." Sadie checked a pocket watch she had nicked on her way out of the Ministry of Magic. "Right now, actually."
Another flight of brooms threw its shadow over them. Three pairs of feet touched down in the blind alley behind Sir Lionel and Spanky.
They all turned to face the latest arrivals.
"You were half right," said their old friend Harvey.
"It was only the names you got wrong," added Harvey's identical twin.
"I'll have that ring now, if you please," said their third visitor, smiling as Spanky's jaw dropped.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #164 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Who is the third member of Harvey 1 & Harvey 2's party? (A) Harvey 3. (B) Robertus Magnus. (C) The real Sir Lionel Niblet. (D) Joe Albuquerque. (E) Orion Oldmanson. (F) Tip, formerly of Nasal Drip. (G) _____ [write-in candidate].
CONTEST: Chose a kind of animal and describe something silly that it could be trained to do, with the aid of magic.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
161. Defensive Tattoos
Contest winner: Joe
After successfully picking the locks to seven doors in a row, Merlin felt himself struggling with the eighth and knew that another dose of liquid skill had worn off. He shrugged, looked meaningfully at Miss Pucey, and knocked instead.
The door opened by itself. Cautiously, the wizard and witch squeezed through the narrow gap. Then the door slammed so suddenly that Miss Pucey scarcely had time to jerk the hem of her robes out of the way.
Merlin was surprised to find a working laboratory in this deep dungeon. Retorts bubbled. Cauldrons stirred themselves. Liquids, glowing in the oddest colors, chased each other through coils of glass tubing. Candles smoked and flickered as they drifted through the air.
"They seem to be from home," Miss Pucey sniffed, inspecting her dusty finger after stroking the handle of a blue ceramic teapot. "No one has had tea here for at least a week."
"Maybe they prefer firewhisky," Merlin suggested. He made a sweeping gesture that gathered in all the simmering potions and distilling fumes. "These would have boiled dry by now if - "
His reasoning was interrupted when a disembodied voice shrieked, "Petrificus totalis!"
Merlin turned his head toward the voice. He saw no one in the direction from which the spell came. He flinched as it hit him. Then he completely failed to fall over paralyzed.
"That old gimmick won't work on us," Merlin sneered into the tangle of tubes and beakers from which the curse had emerged. He knew, though his assailant didn't, that his immunity to the body-bind curse owed itself to the one-time-only effect of a defensive tattoo. Since he wasn't naked, he couldn't see how the tattoo had actually leaped off his skin and absorbed the curse before it touched him. But he didn't need to know how it worked. He was just glad that it did. Under his breath he said a word of thanks to his old friend Anatoly.
Two more jets of light leaped at him through gaps in the forest of glassware, pewter and brass. Merlin wondered not what curses were flying at him, but how his enemy had managed to aim them through so many distracting and distorting surfaces. Both curses passed through his robes. Neither quite touched his skin.
"Nor those either," said Merlin, sidling toward the source of the spells. With a glance and a jerk of his head he told Miss Pucey to keep behind him. "You don't know who you're dealing with," he added menacingly.
"You have no call to come here," squeaked a shrill, desperate voice.
"Ah! How can we resist such a warm welcome?" Merlin taunted. "I don't know. Since you're so keen on chasing us off, I have to think you're doing something wrong. And then maybe we do have a call..."
"Imperio," muttered a voice unexpectedly close to Merlin's left shoulder. He instinctively dodged backward, bumping into Miss Pucey and upsetting a mortar full of glittering purple dust.
For a moment, even Merlin was surprised that the curse had no effect on him. Yes, that accounted for another of Anatoly's tattoos. Which ones were left, he wondered anxiously. Meanwhile he turned a thin smile toward his attacker.
At first it seemed no one was there. Then he spotted the thick, wiry eyebrows that almost grew together; the round, blue-tinted eyeglasses; the bruised, gnawed fingernails floating in space around a quivering wand; and the scuffed left boot standing by itself where the invisible wizard's foot should be.
Merlin shook his head sadly. "You're not all there, are you?"
"Shut up," said the nearly-invisible stranger. "There must be spells you aren't immune to. With my methods, it won't take me long to find them. So tell me sharpish: Who sent you?"
"I don't have to tell you anything," said Merlin.
"Legilimens!" screamed the voice under the eyebrows.
"Nope," said Merlin.
The eyebrows twitched. "Obliviate!"
"Uh-uh."
"Imperio!"
"Now we're beginning to repeat ourselves," said Merlin, mentally congratulating himself for having correctly guessed which curses he needed defense against.
Fortunately, the fight went out of Doctor Eyebrows right then. The wand lowered. "What are you?" whispered the see-through wizard.
"You're being naughty again, aren't you?" Miss Pucey improvised. She stepped around Merlin, in spite of his attempt to make a stile of his arm, and plucked the wand out from between the hovering fingernails. The latter fidgeted amongst themselves.
"If Robertus Magnus finds out," said the sad, slightly visible wizard, "he'll take all this away. And then I'll have nothing but stone walls to look at, and I'll run mad. Please..."
"You have nothing to fear from us," said Miss Pucey, "as long as..."
"All right!" screamed the one-booted miscreant. "It's a fair cop! Yes, all right, I was working on a way to make it rain up. But only for a good cause, you know? Only to move a bit of rain from a really wet area, to water the desert. I mean, all right, there was an interested party who would have paid me rather well..."
"Aha!" Merlin barked. Eyebrows clinked backwards into a tray of stoppered tubes. "A financial interest! And how do you know your client won't use your upside-down rain as a weapon? Who knows how much damage..."
While Merlin continued his withering tirade, Miss Pucey slipped unnoticed through the racks of beakers, whirring apparatus, and porcelain pots. She gave a low whistle when she found the door at the opposite end of the dungeon.
"...ever again!" Merlin finished, punctuating his words with a well-rehearsed jab that would leave Eyebrows unconscious for a few minutes. Provided, that is, Merlin had correctly guessed what he was aiming at.
He and Miss Pucey closed the door behind them and found themselves at the bottom of a set of worn stone steps. The staircase twisted out of sight, smelling faintly damp and smoky.
"I think this is it," said Merlin, shaking a bit more light out of his wand tip. He turned toward Miss Pucey and waited until she nodded. Then he began to climb.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #163 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: What has Rigel been up to since Chapter 156? (A) Infiltrating Il Comte's compound in disguise. (B) Organizing a ghost riot as a diversion. (C) Battling wereyaks. (D) All of the above.
CONTEST: Suggest a product that Jude the Insecure might sell at his "From Out of This World Outfitters" shop.
After successfully picking the locks to seven doors in a row, Merlin felt himself struggling with the eighth and knew that another dose of liquid skill had worn off. He shrugged, looked meaningfully at Miss Pucey, and knocked instead.
The door opened by itself. Cautiously, the wizard and witch squeezed through the narrow gap. Then the door slammed so suddenly that Miss Pucey scarcely had time to jerk the hem of her robes out of the way.
Merlin was surprised to find a working laboratory in this deep dungeon. Retorts bubbled. Cauldrons stirred themselves. Liquids, glowing in the oddest colors, chased each other through coils of glass tubing. Candles smoked and flickered as they drifted through the air.
"They seem to be from home," Miss Pucey sniffed, inspecting her dusty finger after stroking the handle of a blue ceramic teapot. "No one has had tea here for at least a week."
"Maybe they prefer firewhisky," Merlin suggested. He made a sweeping gesture that gathered in all the simmering potions and distilling fumes. "These would have boiled dry by now if - "
His reasoning was interrupted when a disembodied voice shrieked, "Petrificus totalis!"
Merlin turned his head toward the voice. He saw no one in the direction from which the spell came. He flinched as it hit him. Then he completely failed to fall over paralyzed.
"That old gimmick won't work on us," Merlin sneered into the tangle of tubes and beakers from which the curse had emerged. He knew, though his assailant didn't, that his immunity to the body-bind curse owed itself to the one-time-only effect of a defensive tattoo. Since he wasn't naked, he couldn't see how the tattoo had actually leaped off his skin and absorbed the curse before it touched him. But he didn't need to know how it worked. He was just glad that it did. Under his breath he said a word of thanks to his old friend Anatoly.
Two more jets of light leaped at him through gaps in the forest of glassware, pewter and brass. Merlin wondered not what curses were flying at him, but how his enemy had managed to aim them through so many distracting and distorting surfaces. Both curses passed through his robes. Neither quite touched his skin.
"Nor those either," said Merlin, sidling toward the source of the spells. With a glance and a jerk of his head he told Miss Pucey to keep behind him. "You don't know who you're dealing with," he added menacingly.
"You have no call to come here," squeaked a shrill, desperate voice.
"Ah! How can we resist such a warm welcome?" Merlin taunted. "I don't know. Since you're so keen on chasing us off, I have to think you're doing something wrong. And then maybe we do have a call..."
"Imperio," muttered a voice unexpectedly close to Merlin's left shoulder. He instinctively dodged backward, bumping into Miss Pucey and upsetting a mortar full of glittering purple dust.
For a moment, even Merlin was surprised that the curse had no effect on him. Yes, that accounted for another of Anatoly's tattoos. Which ones were left, he wondered anxiously. Meanwhile he turned a thin smile toward his attacker.
At first it seemed no one was there. Then he spotted the thick, wiry eyebrows that almost grew together; the round, blue-tinted eyeglasses; the bruised, gnawed fingernails floating in space around a quivering wand; and the scuffed left boot standing by itself where the invisible wizard's foot should be.
Merlin shook his head sadly. "You're not all there, are you?"
"Shut up," said the nearly-invisible stranger. "There must be spells you aren't immune to. With my methods, it won't take me long to find them. So tell me sharpish: Who sent you?"
"I don't have to tell you anything," said Merlin.
"Legilimens!" screamed the voice under the eyebrows.
"Nope," said Merlin.
The eyebrows twitched. "Obliviate!"
"Uh-uh."
"Imperio!"
"Now we're beginning to repeat ourselves," said Merlin, mentally congratulating himself for having correctly guessed which curses he needed defense against.
Fortunately, the fight went out of Doctor Eyebrows right then. The wand lowered. "What are you?" whispered the see-through wizard.
"You're being naughty again, aren't you?" Miss Pucey improvised. She stepped around Merlin, in spite of his attempt to make a stile of his arm, and plucked the wand out from between the hovering fingernails. The latter fidgeted amongst themselves.
"If Robertus Magnus finds out," said the sad, slightly visible wizard, "he'll take all this away. And then I'll have nothing but stone walls to look at, and I'll run mad. Please..."
"You have nothing to fear from us," said Miss Pucey, "as long as..."
"All right!" screamed the one-booted miscreant. "It's a fair cop! Yes, all right, I was working on a way to make it rain up. But only for a good cause, you know? Only to move a bit of rain from a really wet area, to water the desert. I mean, all right, there was an interested party who would have paid me rather well..."
"Aha!" Merlin barked. Eyebrows clinked backwards into a tray of stoppered tubes. "A financial interest! And how do you know your client won't use your upside-down rain as a weapon? Who knows how much damage..."
While Merlin continued his withering tirade, Miss Pucey slipped unnoticed through the racks of beakers, whirring apparatus, and porcelain pots. She gave a low whistle when she found the door at the opposite end of the dungeon.
"...ever again!" Merlin finished, punctuating his words with a well-rehearsed jab that would leave Eyebrows unconscious for a few minutes. Provided, that is, Merlin had correctly guessed what he was aiming at.
He and Miss Pucey closed the door behind them and found themselves at the bottom of a set of worn stone steps. The staircase twisted out of sight, smelling faintly damp and smoky.
"I think this is it," said Merlin, shaking a bit more light out of his wand tip. He turned toward Miss Pucey and waited until she nodded. Then he began to climb.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #163 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: What has Rigel been up to since Chapter 156? (A) Infiltrating Il Comte's compound in disguise. (B) Organizing a ghost riot as a diversion. (C) Battling wereyaks. (D) All of the above.
CONTEST: Suggest a product that Jude the Insecure might sell at his "From Out of This World Outfitters" shop.
Friday, July 3, 2009
160. Furrier Destructions
Contest winner: Sir Read-a-Lot
Runner-up: greyniffler
Sadie charged into Endora's laboratory, shouting strings of consonants that sounded indecent without vowels to clothe them. A crystal finger stuck out of her right ear. She didn't seem able to hear or understand the protests of the receptionist, the watchman, and the laboratory assistant who ran in after her.
Endora looked up from the mortar and pestle, with which she was crunching numbers. "What's all this?" she asked, in a tone of voice that Sadie understood to mean, "Calm down!" even before she unplugged her right ear.
"Have you resleeved any massages by Floo?" Sadie demanded, her words still a bit jumbled but at least recognizable.
"Yes, we all have," said Sadie. She gestured toward a sealed roll of parchment on the edge of her workbench. "Been rather busy, though," she added. "Someone spiked a shipment of Chanel No 5 with a magical algorithm that makes it shift through a succession of surreal numbers. There's no telling what effect the scent might have on the general public..."
"Then you haven't bean enclaved to that gist with the ring?" Sadie grinned with relief. "Whatever you dough, doughnut read it. Have everybody bun -- brown -- bird -- ballots! Tell your lost to incinerate their coupés immoderately."
"You heard her," Endora said, nodding toward her three co-workers as she tossed the roll of parchment onto a gas ring and ignited it. "Spread the word."
The guard, secretary, and lab assistant reluctantly left the room. "Now what is this about?" Endora asked, as Sadie threw herself on a stool and slumped across a paper-strewn stretch of bench.
Sadie's reply was muffled by the sleeves of her robes. "Are you sugar you aren't in leek with this Lee Shorts villain?"
"Sure as my nose is two and three-quarters inches long."
Sadie raised her head and squinted appraisingly at Endora's nose. Then she buried her face again. "They've ghost Joe and Ilex, pretty muck everyone in Hawksmeade. The whole whirl will go necks. We've ghost to dough something."
Endora took a moment to translate all this, then nodded and said: "What can I do?"
"Fist, you've goat to blink-fold your-shelf," said Sadie, her grasp of language struggling more and more as she grew more excited. "That wax, Lee Spore can't beguilt you with the rotten word."
Endora nodded dubiously, but kept smiling.
"Thin," Sadie went on, "we nix a couple of booms, and your note -- your snow -- your gnus" -- she gave a little scream of frustration -- "your olfactory ogre will lead us to wherever Lex Horse is hiving, and we'll tack him down toboggan. I mean, together."
Endora kept nodding while she processed this. Then she shook her head. "How am I supposed to track this bloke? I've never seen him. More to the point, I've never sniffed him..."
"Sniffle this," Sadie said, whipping a thick wad of parchment, tied in red tape, out of her robes. "I necked this from the Mastery. It's a repot on some fainter who supposedly brick the Statue of Secrecy. Vee Sore chased me thorough it. That's wen he punched the rung off me..."
Sadie stopped talking. Endora had snatched the report from her. Tearing the ribbon off, she spread it out across her workbench and began sniffing it, from side to side, from top to bottom. She occasionally muttered a few words, which sounded to Sadie like: "Mustard, sausage drippings... tobacco, Ficus Brothers... felt, sweat, fermented Brylcream; somebody needs to have his hat blocked... Oi! I know this nutter, obliviator obviously, complete putz, couldn't charm his way out of a twist of newspaper... Hmm. Bit of oil-based paint, dab of scented lotion, ladies' brand and not very old ladies' either; our Lysippus has been a naughty boy... dust, mildew... Aha! No, wait, that's just you... There it is -- no -- yes..."
Endora looked up, her eyes fixed and shining, her nostrils flaring. For a moment her expression frightened Sadie. Then she grinned, looked Sadie's veil in the eye, and said: "Now I believe I can find him blindfolded."
"Is he fair away?"
"Oh, yes," said Endora, pulling a sleep mask out of her hat (where she kept it, seemingly, to be prepared for an all-nighter in the laboratory). "Why don't you go and nick those brooms for us, eh? I'll close up here, circulate the word about not opening any mail, and..."
Sadie was already gone. Twelve minutes later she appeared again with a broom over each shoulder. "You'll never belie where I founded this Cleanswipe 6," she chirped. "Some burger was swapping the stairs with it!"
"Language," Endora said absently as she pinned a hat with a motor-veil into her hair. With her the veil was not so much for disguise, as to protect her valuable scent organ. "I'm ready to go. In fact, while you were out, I had time to dig something useful out of my research on this algorithm problem."
"Wait's that?" Sadie asked as Endora led her upstairs toward the roof.
"Just an idea Ernest the Inscrutable left in his notes."
"Eh?" Sadie shook her head. "Wasn't he that gizzard who went gogo over the member 42?"
"Oh, no. He proved that 42 has magical properties. Only, he never found out what they were."
"And wasp," Sadie asked as they emerged onto the roof, "are you going to dupe with a broody number?"
"I'm going to use it to tie up Mr. Shore in red tape," said Endora, brandishing the Ministry report. "Only this time, he won't get out. Not once we use his seal -- "
"Impala's seal," Sadie corrected.
"-- Ilona's seal," Endora agreed, "over instructions not to open the report until the 42nd of May."
Sadie winced.
"What?"
"Remind me," she said, "newer to get up your knob. Er, news..."
"Olfactory organ," Endora hinted.
Sadie nodded grimly, but her gesture went unnoticed because Endora had already donned her sleep mask and leapt off the rooftop. Charming her broom to stay close to Endora's, Sadie followed her into the swift, rushing air.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGES FOR TMQ #161 & 162 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment answering the following Surveys and Contests. The survey answers with the most votes, and the contest answers that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the next two chapters!
SURVEY FOR TMQ #161: What gift from way back in Chapter 141 should Merlin use next? (A) Karl's survival satchel. (B) Some of Anatoly's defensive tattoos. (C) Another dose of Endora's Liquid Skill. (D) Subito's Turbo Gum. (E) Boccachiusa's Peekaboo Kit.
CONTEST FOR TMQ #161: Suggest an experiment a wizard might do, toward bending a particular law of nature.
SURVEY FOR TMQ #162: Funny thing about Ilona... In Chapter 155, she was hypnotized by Lee Shore. But then she turns up in Chapter 159, right as rain. How would you explain this? (A) Ilona-155 is an imposter. (B) Ilona-159 is an imposter. (C) The events of Chapter 159 take place some time after Endora & Sadie (presumably) save the world from Lee Shore. (D) Somehow, by magic, Ilona has managed to be in two different places at one time. (E) Other suggestions welcome.
CONTEXT FOR TMQ #162: Describe a special step or move that a well-trained wizard might use in hand-to-hand combat.
Runner-up: greyniffler
Sadie charged into Endora's laboratory, shouting strings of consonants that sounded indecent without vowels to clothe them. A crystal finger stuck out of her right ear. She didn't seem able to hear or understand the protests of the receptionist, the watchman, and the laboratory assistant who ran in after her.
Endora looked up from the mortar and pestle, with which she was crunching numbers. "What's all this?" she asked, in a tone of voice that Sadie understood to mean, "Calm down!" even before she unplugged her right ear.
"Have you resleeved any massages by Floo?" Sadie demanded, her words still a bit jumbled but at least recognizable.
"Yes, we all have," said Sadie. She gestured toward a sealed roll of parchment on the edge of her workbench. "Been rather busy, though," she added. "Someone spiked a shipment of Chanel No 5 with a magical algorithm that makes it shift through a succession of surreal numbers. There's no telling what effect the scent might have on the general public..."
"Then you haven't bean enclaved to that gist with the ring?" Sadie grinned with relief. "Whatever you dough, doughnut read it. Have everybody bun -- brown -- bird -- ballots! Tell your lost to incinerate their coupés immoderately."
"You heard her," Endora said, nodding toward her three co-workers as she tossed the roll of parchment onto a gas ring and ignited it. "Spread the word."
The guard, secretary, and lab assistant reluctantly left the room. "Now what is this about?" Endora asked, as Sadie threw herself on a stool and slumped across a paper-strewn stretch of bench.
Sadie's reply was muffled by the sleeves of her robes. "Are you sugar you aren't in leek with this Lee Shorts villain?"
"Sure as my nose is two and three-quarters inches long."
Sadie raised her head and squinted appraisingly at Endora's nose. Then she buried her face again. "They've ghost Joe and Ilex, pretty muck everyone in Hawksmeade. The whole whirl will go necks. We've ghost to dough something."
Endora took a moment to translate all this, then nodded and said: "What can I do?"
"Fist, you've goat to blink-fold your-shelf," said Sadie, her grasp of language struggling more and more as she grew more excited. "That wax, Lee Spore can't beguilt you with the rotten word."
Endora nodded dubiously, but kept smiling.
"Thin," Sadie went on, "we nix a couple of booms, and your note -- your snow -- your gnus" -- she gave a little scream of frustration -- "your olfactory ogre will lead us to wherever Lex Horse is hiving, and we'll tack him down toboggan. I mean, together."
Endora kept nodding while she processed this. Then she shook her head. "How am I supposed to track this bloke? I've never seen him. More to the point, I've never sniffed him..."
"Sniffle this," Sadie said, whipping a thick wad of parchment, tied in red tape, out of her robes. "I necked this from the Mastery. It's a repot on some fainter who supposedly brick the Statue of Secrecy. Vee Sore chased me thorough it. That's wen he punched the rung off me..."
Sadie stopped talking. Endora had snatched the report from her. Tearing the ribbon off, she spread it out across her workbench and began sniffing it, from side to side, from top to bottom. She occasionally muttered a few words, which sounded to Sadie like: "Mustard, sausage drippings... tobacco, Ficus Brothers... felt, sweat, fermented Brylcream; somebody needs to have his hat blocked... Oi! I know this nutter, obliviator obviously, complete putz, couldn't charm his way out of a twist of newspaper... Hmm. Bit of oil-based paint, dab of scented lotion, ladies' brand and not very old ladies' either; our Lysippus has been a naughty boy... dust, mildew... Aha! No, wait, that's just you... There it is -- no -- yes..."
Endora looked up, her eyes fixed and shining, her nostrils flaring. For a moment her expression frightened Sadie. Then she grinned, looked Sadie's veil in the eye, and said: "Now I believe I can find him blindfolded."
"Is he fair away?"
"Oh, yes," said Endora, pulling a sleep mask out of her hat (where she kept it, seemingly, to be prepared for an all-nighter in the laboratory). "Why don't you go and nick those brooms for us, eh? I'll close up here, circulate the word about not opening any mail, and..."
Sadie was already gone. Twelve minutes later she appeared again with a broom over each shoulder. "You'll never belie where I founded this Cleanswipe 6," she chirped. "Some burger was swapping the stairs with it!"
"Language," Endora said absently as she pinned a hat with a motor-veil into her hair. With her the veil was not so much for disguise, as to protect her valuable scent organ. "I'm ready to go. In fact, while you were out, I had time to dig something useful out of my research on this algorithm problem."
"Wait's that?" Sadie asked as Endora led her upstairs toward the roof.
"Just an idea Ernest the Inscrutable left in his notes."
"Eh?" Sadie shook her head. "Wasn't he that gizzard who went gogo over the member 42?"
"Oh, no. He proved that 42 has magical properties. Only, he never found out what they were."
"And wasp," Sadie asked as they emerged onto the roof, "are you going to dupe with a broody number?"
"I'm going to use it to tie up Mr. Shore in red tape," said Endora, brandishing the Ministry report. "Only this time, he won't get out. Not once we use his seal -- "
"Impala's seal," Sadie corrected.
"-- Ilona's seal," Endora agreed, "over instructions not to open the report until the 42nd of May."
Sadie winced.
"What?"
"Remind me," she said, "newer to get up your knob. Er, news..."
"Olfactory organ," Endora hinted.
Sadie nodded grimly, but her gesture went unnoticed because Endora had already donned her sleep mask and leapt off the rooftop. Charming her broom to stay close to Endora's, Sadie followed her into the swift, rushing air.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGES FOR TMQ #161 & 162 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment answering the following Surveys and Contests. The survey answers with the most votes, and the contest answers that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the next two chapters!
SURVEY FOR TMQ #161: What gift from way back in Chapter 141 should Merlin use next? (A) Karl's survival satchel. (B) Some of Anatoly's defensive tattoos. (C) Another dose of Endora's Liquid Skill. (D) Subito's Turbo Gum. (E) Boccachiusa's Peekaboo Kit.
CONTEST FOR TMQ #161: Suggest an experiment a wizard might do, toward bending a particular law of nature.
SURVEY FOR TMQ #162: Funny thing about Ilona... In Chapter 155, she was hypnotized by Lee Shore. But then she turns up in Chapter 159, right as rain. How would you explain this? (A) Ilona-155 is an imposter. (B) Ilona-159 is an imposter. (C) The events of Chapter 159 take place some time after Endora & Sadie (presumably) save the world from Lee Shore. (D) Somehow, by magic, Ilona has managed to be in two different places at one time. (E) Other suggestions welcome.
CONTEXT FOR TMQ #162: Describe a special step or move that a well-trained wizard might use in hand-to-hand combat.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
159. Minimilian Returns
Contest winner: Linda Carrig
As Sir Lionel crept through the mysterious compound, he discovered that it was much larger than he had spotted at first. Clearly, the wizards here were caught up in more than one sinister plan.
Beyond the ring of huts he found a grove of walnut trees playing cricket with their own fallen fruit. Getting through it without being hit by a leathery, walnut-cored ball was quite tricky. Then there was the thicket of ash and yew trees that he found practicing archery, using bows and arrows made out of their own branches; Sir Lionel had to be very careful to avoid becoming a target. He edged nervously around a copse of whomping willows that he found sparring with each other, raining splinters and twigs from every collision of their powerful limbs. At the brink of a stream he encountered another variety of willows whose long, supple branches, trailing in the water, snatched up passing fish now and again. He wondered what they were called, and was trying to decide between "reaping rillows" and "wringing whompers" when he felt a wand-tip touch the back of his neck.
"Hands up slowly," said the wizard behind him. Sir Lionel obeyed, feeling the wand snatched out of his right hand as he did so.
"Turn around." Sir Lionel turned around. He ended up facing the same direction. The other man clicked his tongue with exasperation and said, "This time turn half-way around." This gave them the ability to look at each other. Sir Lionel wasn't much to look at after weeks of survival in the bush. The other man wasn't much prettier. Short, stocky, squash-nosed and lantern-jawed, he had hardly any neck and, by way of compensation, one enormous eyebrow. The eyes beneath it bulged suspiciously. "Keep it shut," he growled. "Wouldn't want to warn whoever is with you."
"No one is..."
"Who sent you?" the ugly wizard barked.
"Sent me?" Sir Lionel was on the point of telling the truth -- that he was there by pure chance, that his broom had elected to crash on the way to somewhere else -- when he realized that he needed a bargaining chip. Someone who would be coming after him if he didn't report. So he used his hesitation to look shifty and inventive when he replied, "No one sent me. My broom just crashed over that ridge..."
"Very likely," sneered the other. "Only question is, are you one of them RMB blokes, or did the competition send you? Eh?"
"I'd rather not say," was all Sir Lionel dared to improvise.
"Oh! It's like that, is it?" The stocky wizard brandished his wand threateningly. "We'll soon have the whole truth out of you, won't we? Now, turn around and march!" A moment later: "Oof! I meant turn half-way around!"
As his captor barked instructions from behind, Sir Lionel began to wonder how he could possibly get out of this tight spot. Then another voice hissed: "Stop! Hands up!"
"I already have my hands up," Sir Lionel sang over his shoulder.
"I meant the other one," the new voice said gruffly. "Now shut it, both of you, and turn slowly to face me..."
Since his former captor was looking the other way, he did not happen to see Sir Lionel's momentary look of joyful recognition. The tall figure holding them both at wand point was cloaked from head to foot, his face in shadow, his physique hidden by the loose fit of his dark cloak. He held two wands in each hand, all of them pointed at the man in the middle. He could be no one, Sir Lionel realized, but Spanky Spankison.
"Just try it," Spanky growled with all the menace of an approaching tempest. The other man left off trying to dig a throwing-knife out of an ankle sheath with his foot. The thick shoulders bunched and writhed. Sir Lionel was privately glad he didn't have to look at those enormous jaws grinding and gnashing.
"How many wands defend this place?" Spanky demanded. "Speak quickly!"
"I've got nothing to say," said the other wizard.
"Don't make me use these," said Spanky, waving the wands in his left hand threateningly.
"If you're RMB," said lantern-jaw, "there are rules. You can't torture me."
"That's a big if," said Spanky. Then he loosed a spell at his prisoner's right foot.
The man howled, more in terror than in pain, then looked down and howled again. "Yow-how-how-how dare you!"
Sir Lionel, who by now had joined Spanky and retrieved his wand, saw that their prisoner was suddenly mincing up and down in open-toed high heels, with painted toenails and all. The effect wasn't very lovely, given the man's hairy legs and the coarseness of his feet.
"Answer my questions," said Spanky, "or you'll be wearing a dress that goes with those shoes."
The prisoner stopped fidgeting and said, with a sudden coolness that chilled Sir Lionel's blood, "All right, ask away."
"Behind us," Spanky hissed out of the side of his mouth.
Sir Lionel wheeled around to look, but not fast enough to stop the disarming spell that blasted the wand out of his grip.
"Er, sorry, old boy," said Sir Lionel, addressing Spanky, though he was facing another short man he had never seen before. This one, however, was as sleek and handsome as their former prisoner was not.
"Give me their wands, Hugo," the genteel captor said in an almost beautiful voice. He shot a saintly smile at Sir Lionel, a smile that seemed to say that everyone was mistaken about who were the bad guys and who the good. "Ah! As I live and breathe, Mr. Spankison! I never dreamed of meeting you again."
"Nor I you," said Spanky, turning himself around. "Still got all your limbs, Minimilian? I was sure that hag would have eaten at least part of you. Well! It's an imperfect world!"
"We're in agreement to that extent," smiled Minimilian.
"What miserable scheme are you nursing now?" Spanky jerked his head toward the compound.
"Just business," said Minimilian, as cheerfully as ever. "Now, gentlemen, about face and march!"
For a few moments, they marched in silence through orchards of dodge-ball apple trees and groves of lemon trees that kept trying to squirt lemon juice at them. The only sound other than the rustle of leaves and the thump of hard apples against tree trunks was Minimilian's whistling. Sir Lionel recognized the tune: "Hex today goodbye, Portkey to tomorrow..."
"Business!" Spanky snorted, interrupting the tune. "Selling weaponized, magical creatures and plants? You must be hoarding the money for some big gesture, some..."
"Surely you don't expect me to confide in you?" Minimilian's laugh was like the jingling of little bells. "You seem to have me confused with an evil genius. You know the type, always explaining their dastardly plans, so that the hero can escape and put a stop to them. I'm not as clever as that. I'm just a reasonably shrewd businessman, and I'll keep my plans to myself, thank you."
"No: thank you," said another unexpected voice from behind Minimilian.
They all stopped marching.
"Hugo," said Minimilian, with a barely detectible edge of irritation in his voice, "I was hoping you might have covered our backs."
"Don't blame Hugo," said the female voice. "He's tied up, stunned, and gagged a couple orchards back."
"Is it finally my pleasure to meet the elusive Ilona Ilonera?" Minimilian turned around slowly, his hands up and disarmed. "Ah! As lovely as I had imagined!"
"I would prefer," said Ilona, aiming her wand steadily at the spot between Minimilian's wide, innocent eyes, "that you would just shut up."
"As you wish," he murmured sweetly.
Spanky rolled his eyes, though under the hood of his cloak they could not be seen. "Shall we tie him up and carry him?"
"I don't know," said Ilona. "I think I saw a colony of red ants on the way here. Perhaps we could just stake him down beside it..."
Hearing this, Minimilian beamed with satisfaction. He seemed to take it as a personal success when his enemies turned as evil as himself.
"...but I reckon we'd better just portkey him to the nearest RMB field-office for booking."
"It's up to you, dear," said Spanky.
Ilona sighed, then with her free hand began to rummage in the pockets of her robes. She finally brought out a greasy bicycle chain, which she placed around Minimilian's neck.
"I say," the little cherub squeaked uncomfortably. "I'll be sending you my cleaning bill."
"Do," said Ilona, with an equally angelic simper. "And now: three... two... "
"Hold that thought," snapped another feminine voice.
Ilona threw down all the wands in her hand with a strangled roar. Spanky and Sir Lionel put their hands up again as half a dozen figures emerged from the shadows of the juggling oaks, which immediately resumed playing a noisy game of hackey-sack with hundreds of acorns. The woman leading this squad of guards approached Minimilian with an air of disgusted authority. Minimilian, looking as innocent as ever, lowered his eyes before her -- not in embarrassment, but in deference.
"You really must stop letting these people get the best of you," the woman said with a voice like the crack of a whip. Her red-black hair swayed down her back in a thick, tight braid. Her dark eyes flashed under upswept brows.
"I led them here, didn't I?" Minimilian shrugged. "I knew you would take control again."
Spanky and Ilona exchanged confused looks. Or rather, Ilona exchanged one with the shadows under Spanky's hood. Sir Lionel, reading her expression, knew they had expected Minimilian to be the man in charge.
The woman tied the three prisoners together and walked around them several times, eyeing them appraisingly. She didn't seem to need a wand, with seven -- make that eight, as Hugo emerged from the trees rubbing his head -- henchmen holding her prisoners at bay. Finally she said, "It's a pity we can't just kill them and throw their bodies to Audrey Four. But you know they'll have filed a mission plan with the RMB. Someone is sure to come looking for them. So what shall we do?"
"Hold them for ransom," suggested Hugo.
"Wipe their memories," suggested Minimilian.
The woman looked disgusted at the first suggestion, intrigued by the second. But she shook her head. "I'm leaning toward killing them anyway," she said. "Only, we can lay a false trail to the crash site in the next valley. Maybe scatter a few gnawed bones, make it look as though they died of crash-related injuries..."
"There will be a letter in the Daily Prophet about this," Sir Lionel blurted. "Take that woman's name, son."
"The name," said the woman, fixing Sir Lionel with a defiant stare, "which won't be any use to you, is O'Modo. Allie O'Modo. Now tell me, how can you write a letter when you're already dead?"
"The question you should ask," said Spanky, "is: How can you kill us so that it doesn't look like foul play?"
"How kind of you to redirect my thinking," said Allie O'Modo. "That's easy enough, though. I've been meaning to turn my pet garden-gnomes out into the next valley... for some exercise..."
Hugo laughed and clapped his hands. "At last," he said. "A live test!"
+++ SURVEY FOR TMQ #161 +++
Participation in The Magic Quill has gone down dramatically in the past several months. What do you think we should do? (A) Keep it going for at least ___ more chapters, and see if more readers contribute to the comments. (B) Tie up as many loose ends as possible within the next 4-5 chapters, and then bring it to an end. (C) Leave the loose ends hanging, and end it now because it's already too far gone.
Leave your response to this survey in the Comments. If you haven't left a comment before, please take the time and effort to do so -- especially if you would like to see TMQ continue. A little encouragement may fuel Robbie's creativity for a long time. And nothing would be more encouraging than knowing that the Magic Quill matters to more than 5 or 6 people!
As Sir Lionel crept through the mysterious compound, he discovered that it was much larger than he had spotted at first. Clearly, the wizards here were caught up in more than one sinister plan.
Beyond the ring of huts he found a grove of walnut trees playing cricket with their own fallen fruit. Getting through it without being hit by a leathery, walnut-cored ball was quite tricky. Then there was the thicket of ash and yew trees that he found practicing archery, using bows and arrows made out of their own branches; Sir Lionel had to be very careful to avoid becoming a target. He edged nervously around a copse of whomping willows that he found sparring with each other, raining splinters and twigs from every collision of their powerful limbs. At the brink of a stream he encountered another variety of willows whose long, supple branches, trailing in the water, snatched up passing fish now and again. He wondered what they were called, and was trying to decide between "reaping rillows" and "wringing whompers" when he felt a wand-tip touch the back of his neck.
"Hands up slowly," said the wizard behind him. Sir Lionel obeyed, feeling the wand snatched out of his right hand as he did so.
"Turn around." Sir Lionel turned around. He ended up facing the same direction. The other man clicked his tongue with exasperation and said, "This time turn half-way around." This gave them the ability to look at each other. Sir Lionel wasn't much to look at after weeks of survival in the bush. The other man wasn't much prettier. Short, stocky, squash-nosed and lantern-jawed, he had hardly any neck and, by way of compensation, one enormous eyebrow. The eyes beneath it bulged suspiciously. "Keep it shut," he growled. "Wouldn't want to warn whoever is with you."
"No one is..."
"Who sent you?" the ugly wizard barked.
"Sent me?" Sir Lionel was on the point of telling the truth -- that he was there by pure chance, that his broom had elected to crash on the way to somewhere else -- when he realized that he needed a bargaining chip. Someone who would be coming after him if he didn't report. So he used his hesitation to look shifty and inventive when he replied, "No one sent me. My broom just crashed over that ridge..."
"Very likely," sneered the other. "Only question is, are you one of them RMB blokes, or did the competition send you? Eh?"
"I'd rather not say," was all Sir Lionel dared to improvise.
"Oh! It's like that, is it?" The stocky wizard brandished his wand threateningly. "We'll soon have the whole truth out of you, won't we? Now, turn around and march!" A moment later: "Oof! I meant turn half-way around!"
As his captor barked instructions from behind, Sir Lionel began to wonder how he could possibly get out of this tight spot. Then another voice hissed: "Stop! Hands up!"
"I already have my hands up," Sir Lionel sang over his shoulder.
"I meant the other one," the new voice said gruffly. "Now shut it, both of you, and turn slowly to face me..."
Since his former captor was looking the other way, he did not happen to see Sir Lionel's momentary look of joyful recognition. The tall figure holding them both at wand point was cloaked from head to foot, his face in shadow, his physique hidden by the loose fit of his dark cloak. He held two wands in each hand, all of them pointed at the man in the middle. He could be no one, Sir Lionel realized, but Spanky Spankison.
"Just try it," Spanky growled with all the menace of an approaching tempest. The other man left off trying to dig a throwing-knife out of an ankle sheath with his foot. The thick shoulders bunched and writhed. Sir Lionel was privately glad he didn't have to look at those enormous jaws grinding and gnashing.
"How many wands defend this place?" Spanky demanded. "Speak quickly!"
"I've got nothing to say," said the other wizard.
"Don't make me use these," said Spanky, waving the wands in his left hand threateningly.
"If you're RMB," said lantern-jaw, "there are rules. You can't torture me."
"That's a big if," said Spanky. Then he loosed a spell at his prisoner's right foot.
The man howled, more in terror than in pain, then looked down and howled again. "Yow-how-how-how dare you!"
Sir Lionel, who by now had joined Spanky and retrieved his wand, saw that their prisoner was suddenly mincing up and down in open-toed high heels, with painted toenails and all. The effect wasn't very lovely, given the man's hairy legs and the coarseness of his feet.
"Answer my questions," said Spanky, "or you'll be wearing a dress that goes with those shoes."
The prisoner stopped fidgeting and said, with a sudden coolness that chilled Sir Lionel's blood, "All right, ask away."
"Behind us," Spanky hissed out of the side of his mouth.
Sir Lionel wheeled around to look, but not fast enough to stop the disarming spell that blasted the wand out of his grip.
"Er, sorry, old boy," said Sir Lionel, addressing Spanky, though he was facing another short man he had never seen before. This one, however, was as sleek and handsome as their former prisoner was not.
"Give me their wands, Hugo," the genteel captor said in an almost beautiful voice. He shot a saintly smile at Sir Lionel, a smile that seemed to say that everyone was mistaken about who were the bad guys and who the good. "Ah! As I live and breathe, Mr. Spankison! I never dreamed of meeting you again."
"Nor I you," said Spanky, turning himself around. "Still got all your limbs, Minimilian? I was sure that hag would have eaten at least part of you. Well! It's an imperfect world!"
"We're in agreement to that extent," smiled Minimilian.
"What miserable scheme are you nursing now?" Spanky jerked his head toward the compound.
"Just business," said Minimilian, as cheerfully as ever. "Now, gentlemen, about face and march!"
For a few moments, they marched in silence through orchards of dodge-ball apple trees and groves of lemon trees that kept trying to squirt lemon juice at them. The only sound other than the rustle of leaves and the thump of hard apples against tree trunks was Minimilian's whistling. Sir Lionel recognized the tune: "Hex today goodbye, Portkey to tomorrow..."
"Business!" Spanky snorted, interrupting the tune. "Selling weaponized, magical creatures and plants? You must be hoarding the money for some big gesture, some..."
"Surely you don't expect me to confide in you?" Minimilian's laugh was like the jingling of little bells. "You seem to have me confused with an evil genius. You know the type, always explaining their dastardly plans, so that the hero can escape and put a stop to them. I'm not as clever as that. I'm just a reasonably shrewd businessman, and I'll keep my plans to myself, thank you."
"No: thank you," said another unexpected voice from behind Minimilian.
They all stopped marching.
"Hugo," said Minimilian, with a barely detectible edge of irritation in his voice, "I was hoping you might have covered our backs."
"Don't blame Hugo," said the female voice. "He's tied up, stunned, and gagged a couple orchards back."
"Is it finally my pleasure to meet the elusive Ilona Ilonera?" Minimilian turned around slowly, his hands up and disarmed. "Ah! As lovely as I had imagined!"
"I would prefer," said Ilona, aiming her wand steadily at the spot between Minimilian's wide, innocent eyes, "that you would just shut up."
"As you wish," he murmured sweetly.
Spanky rolled his eyes, though under the hood of his cloak they could not be seen. "Shall we tie him up and carry him?"
"I don't know," said Ilona. "I think I saw a colony of red ants on the way here. Perhaps we could just stake him down beside it..."
Hearing this, Minimilian beamed with satisfaction. He seemed to take it as a personal success when his enemies turned as evil as himself.
"...but I reckon we'd better just portkey him to the nearest RMB field-office for booking."
"It's up to you, dear," said Spanky.
Ilona sighed, then with her free hand began to rummage in the pockets of her robes. She finally brought out a greasy bicycle chain, which she placed around Minimilian's neck.
"I say," the little cherub squeaked uncomfortably. "I'll be sending you my cleaning bill."
"Do," said Ilona, with an equally angelic simper. "And now: three... two... "
"Hold that thought," snapped another feminine voice.
Ilona threw down all the wands in her hand with a strangled roar. Spanky and Sir Lionel put their hands up again as half a dozen figures emerged from the shadows of the juggling oaks, which immediately resumed playing a noisy game of hackey-sack with hundreds of acorns. The woman leading this squad of guards approached Minimilian with an air of disgusted authority. Minimilian, looking as innocent as ever, lowered his eyes before her -- not in embarrassment, but in deference.
"You really must stop letting these people get the best of you," the woman said with a voice like the crack of a whip. Her red-black hair swayed down her back in a thick, tight braid. Her dark eyes flashed under upswept brows.
"I led them here, didn't I?" Minimilian shrugged. "I knew you would take control again."
Spanky and Ilona exchanged confused looks. Or rather, Ilona exchanged one with the shadows under Spanky's hood. Sir Lionel, reading her expression, knew they had expected Minimilian to be the man in charge.
The woman tied the three prisoners together and walked around them several times, eyeing them appraisingly. She didn't seem to need a wand, with seven -- make that eight, as Hugo emerged from the trees rubbing his head -- henchmen holding her prisoners at bay. Finally she said, "It's a pity we can't just kill them and throw their bodies to Audrey Four. But you know they'll have filed a mission plan with the RMB. Someone is sure to come looking for them. So what shall we do?"
"Hold them for ransom," suggested Hugo.
"Wipe their memories," suggested Minimilian.
The woman looked disgusted at the first suggestion, intrigued by the second. But she shook her head. "I'm leaning toward killing them anyway," she said. "Only, we can lay a false trail to the crash site in the next valley. Maybe scatter a few gnawed bones, make it look as though they died of crash-related injuries..."
"There will be a letter in the Daily Prophet about this," Sir Lionel blurted. "Take that woman's name, son."
"The name," said the woman, fixing Sir Lionel with a defiant stare, "which won't be any use to you, is O'Modo. Allie O'Modo. Now tell me, how can you write a letter when you're already dead?"
"The question you should ask," said Spanky, "is: How can you kill us so that it doesn't look like foul play?"
"How kind of you to redirect my thinking," said Allie O'Modo. "That's easy enough, though. I've been meaning to turn my pet garden-gnomes out into the next valley... for some exercise..."
Hugo laughed and clapped his hands. "At last," he said. "A live test!"
+++ SURVEY FOR TMQ #161 +++
Participation in The Magic Quill has gone down dramatically in the past several months. What do you think we should do? (A) Keep it going for at least ___ more chapters, and see if more readers contribute to the comments. (B) Tie up as many loose ends as possible within the next 4-5 chapters, and then bring it to an end. (C) Leave the loose ends hanging, and end it now because it's already too far gone.
Leave your response to this survey in the Comments. If you haven't left a comment before, please take the time and effort to do so -- especially if you would like to see TMQ continue. A little encouragement may fuel Robbie's creativity for a long time. And nothing would be more encouraging than knowing that the Magic Quill matters to more than 5 or 6 people!
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