Contest winner: Rehannah
Runner-up: TWZRD
The light at the tips of their wands revealed a grim sight to Merlin and Miss Pucey. Ahead of them, a flagstoned passage receded into darkness. Along each side ran an endless series of heavy doors with barred windows in them at eye level. When they looked through the windows, they saw heaps of bones, some more or less held together by remnants of sinew and tattered clothes. The bones of humans mingled with those of the rats who had starved with them - or, at least, shortly after them.
Miss Pucey shuddered. Merlin growled at the back of his throat, sounding fiercer than he felt.
The dungeon continued straight ahead, damp and cold and still and heavy with despair and death. It seemed they had been walking through it for hours, yet the cell doors marched onward in unbroken formation. Now and again Merlin checked to see if a cell had been occupied, and each time he came away from the window with the same bitter growl.
Then, for the first time since passing the Joke Knocker, they saw something different. It appeared so suddenly, in fact, that the duo only noticed it when Merlin tripped over it. They stopped to look around, Miss Pucey hiking her skirts up over her ankles.
"It's a shoe," said Merlin, pointing his wandlight at it.
"A shoe in remarkably good condition, compared to what's left of the inmates' footwear," said Miss Pucey, measuring it roughly against her own shoe. "Men's size ten, give or take."
Merlin didn't say it aloud, but the thought came to him unbidden: "That's my size." But it wasn't his shoe. His shoes weren't in top condition like this one. They had, for example, gotten soaked in the waters of the Venetian lagoon and dried out in the dank air of the merhags' larder. He could do with a new pair, and this one looked pretty good.
"How did it get here?" he wondered aloud. "There was nothing ahead of us. We would have seen it. And then I just tripped over it."
Miss Pucey sucked her breath through clenched teeth when Merlin picked up the shoe. He turned it over in his hand, suffering no ill effects. It didn't seem to be poisoned or cursed. Not yet, at least.
"I wouldn't wear that if I were you," said Miss Pucey. "Haven't you heard what happens to witches or wizards who put on shoes when they don't know where they came from? You could end up dancing yourself to death."
"I'm not putting it on, am I?" Merlin stuffed the shoe into a pocket in his robes. "We might need it to get out of here."
After following the dungeon walk another length of a football field, the pair found another shoe, the mate of the first. Merlin pocketed it as well. Shortly after that a sturdy, sensible calfskin shoe, seemingly tailored to Miss Pucey's right foot, appeared. Then another for the left.
"This is starting to feel ominous," Miss Pucey noted as Merlin pocketed the second woman's shoe. "I mean, what comes next? Kid gloves? Stockings with garters?"
What came next was a commotion in the darkness ahead. Merlin rummaged in his satchel and brought out the portable wall Harvey had given him. He tugged a cord at one end of it, and in moments it grew to fill the passage ahead of them. From their side of it, it looked like a layer of thin gauze stretched over a rickety frame. Through it they could see the length of corridor ahead of them, still lit by their wandlights, but Merlin knew that from the other side it would appear to be a section of dungeon wall advancing down the corridor.
"It's funny," whispered Miss Pucey, as they began walking toward the noise ahead, "but I don't feel very well-protected."
Merlin silenced her with the look on his face.
As they approached one of the cells, seemingly identical to all the others, they heard whispering voices from within. Someone seemed to be saying: "What's that light?" Another: "They're coming." Other words and voices were stifled by a general shushing sound.
Peering through the portable wall, Merlin saw the inside of the cell by wandlight. No one seemed to be there except the last occupant of the cell, now no more than a pile of desiccated bones. "Hello?" Merlin called gently. Other than a feeling of frozen fear and waiting, no one seemed to be home.
Merlin looked more closely at the bones on the dungeon floor. There seemed to be more than bones there. A tattered piece of cloth or skin lay spread on the floor with several items arranged on it. Tools. Merlin peered harder, wishing he had a free hand to scratch his head. Then it came to him. The spade-like lasts arranged according to size; the pointy awls, sharp leather-cutting tools, heavy needles, fine instruments for pinching and gripping and hammering... These were the tools of a cobbler. But what could a cobbler have done to provoke the wrath of one of the counts of Bestemmia?
Merlin jumped at a loud noise farther along the corridor. Something had landed against the flagstones with a metallic clang.
"Oh, this place!" Miss Pucey moaned, her hands fluttering about her.
"This way," said Merlin, pushing the inflatable wall ahead of them.
"Are you sure?" she murmured.
"There's no other way out but forward," he said.
"Are you sure?" she repeated.
He rolled his eyes. "Aren't you curious about what's going on here?"
"Curiosity killed the cat," said Miss Pucey. "You wouldn't have a cat in that bag of yours? You know, to scout ahead?"
"Sorry," Merlin grinned, "we'll just have to risk it."
They risked it, and soon enough they found out what had made the clanging noise. It was a horseshoe.
Miss Pucey darted a look behind them, holding her wand above her head.
"What?" cried Merlin.
She sighed. "Nothing. I just had to check to see whether a horse was following us. Or maybe a thestral. Could you see a thestral if one was there?"
"There's no thestral behind us," Merlin said confidently. "Whoever has been dropping footwear ahead of us has apparently noticed that we've run out of feet."
Another clang up ahead made both of them jump again.
"Maybe there will be horses to go with these shoes," Miss Pucey suggested, "when we get to wherever this corridor leads."
They collected a total of eight horseshoes before the corridor led anywhere but past more dungeon cells full of grisly remains. Once more they followed a sound of whispering to a cell door where, as soon as Merlin looked through the window, the whispering stopped. This time the victim's corpse was surrounded by other tools - anvil, forge, hammers, tongs - suggesting that a farrier had met a fate similar to that of the cobbler.
"This Maledicto person," Miss Pucey said, pronouncing the name as if it brought the taste of bile to her lips, "seems to have it in for honest tradesmen."
"I think," said Merlin, "he's just greedy. He wants the best of everything, and then he destroys the artist who made it so that no one else can enjoy the same quality. Or perhaps he kills them so that he needn't pay for their services."
"How very like a spoilt child," Miss Pucey sneered. "People ought to have their children brought up better."
Torn between making a pointed observation on how she had phrased her last assertion and asking how much credit she took for the way Rigel had turned out, Merlin bit his tongue.
They continued forward for only another quarter-mile or so. Then, quite suddenly, the dungeon ended. The flagstoned floor plunged into space as a deep chasm opened before them, so deep that their wandlight could not reach bottom. The opposite side was only a stone's throw away. Directly across from them stood another heavy wooden door. There was just enough flagstoned floor before the door for one or two people to stand upon, and a thick metal rod jutted out of the stone wall beside the door, angled upwards.
Merlin groaned. There seemed to be no way across this canyon. There was no path around the edge. There was no bridge over it. It was too far to jump. "All right," he said. "Let me try something."
Miss Pucey stood back a few paces while Merlin attempted to levitate the portable wall across the gap. As it hovered in midair about halfway across, an updraft caught it and smashed it against the vaulted stone ceiling. The wall crumpled and disintegrated before their eyes, raining fragments into the dark depths.
"This isn't good," Merlin noted.
"Look!" Miss Pucey gasped and pointed.
Merlin squinted in the direction she was pointing, but ultimately had to ask: "Look at what?"
"There's a kind of path running straight up the face of the cliff!"
It was true. Similar to the flagstoned floor they stood on, a smooth path ascended the opposite side of the ravine, as if designed for a human fly to walk upon. Looking over the edge before him, Merlin confirmed that a length of even flagstones descended the near side as well, terminating well above the edge of their circle of light.
Miss Pucey spoke through her fingers, which she had pressed to her lips as if to hold her excitement within: "Do you suppose the shoes we found will allow us to walk down the wall and up again?"
"Maybe," said Merlin. "The trouble is, we can only find out by trying. And if they don't work that way, we won't get a chance to try a different theory."
"All right," she suggested in a sensible tone, "how about that lever over there? Perhaps if we pull it down, the path will rise up off the sides of the cliff and form a bridge."
"That's also possible," Merlin admitted. "But how can we pull the lever from over here?"
Something went clang directly behind them. In their surprise, they nearly jumped off the cliff. When Merlin looked down, he spotted a ninth horseshoe lying on the stone floor just behind his heel. He also caught a glimpse of something moving close to the wall, but when he looked in that direction, nothing was there.
"I've seen some weird things," said Miss Pucey. "I mean, my young man is Life Commissioner of the League of Head Quidditch, Ghost Rugby Union, and Spectral Sports. I've been formally introduced to everything that goes bump in the night. But this is starting to give me the creeps."
"I fully understand," said Merlin. But he looked awfully calm about it.
"Do you?" said Miss Pucey. "I've had the screaming heebie-jeebies over for ice cream. I coached the winning team in a djinn sand volleyball tournament. I've played pachesi against three 15th-century Persian moguls on a board the size of Leicester Square, with the ghosts of sixteen fat eunuchs acting as gamepieces. I once spent an entire cruise on the Flying Dutchman listening to Marie Antoinette giving beauty tips to Lucrezia Borgia. I can deal with that. But right now, right here, I am this close to having a full-on panic attack. Can you understand that?"
Merlin shook his head. "I meant, I understand what's going on now. You remember that poor cobbler? And the farrier too?"
"Of course I remember them! I'll remember them until the day I die, which won't be long now unless we get across this hole in the ground..."
"Can you think of something cobblers and farriers always have around them?"
Miss Pucey shook her head. "Tools? But we saw their tools..."
"No," said Merlin. "Not tools. Creatures."
The lightbulb went on in Miss Pucey's face. "Ah! Not..."
"Yes," said Merlin. "Brownies. They've spent who knows how long preparing the best possible shoes, using whatever materials were on hand, just for us."
"And horseshoes," Miss Pucey pointed out, looking around but still seeing no horses nearby.
"And horse-..." Merlin's eyes went blank. He turned around and looked at the lever on the far wall of the chasm. "Oh," he added. "I see it now. We're to play horseshoes..."
The first two horseshoes missed the far wall entirely, falling silent into the void below. The third horseshoe struck sparks from the stone above and to the right of the lever. It wasn't until the sixth throw that Merlin made a ringer. The shoe hung its weight on the uptilted lever, but nothing changed.
He threw the seventh horseshoe. By now his aim was spot-on. By the eighth throw, he had three horseshoes hanging on the lever. Only one remained in his hand.
"Make this one count," he told himself.
Miss Pucey covered her face with both hands.
Merlin's heart almost stopped when the shoe struck the wall above the lever. But then, miraculously, it dropped straight down onto the lever. Before clattering off into nothingness, the last iron shoe lent its weight to the three that already hung there, and suddenly the lever tilted downward. All the shoes rattled off and sailed into the darkness. But already something was happening, and it evidently couldn't be stopped by anything as mundane as three horseshoes falling off an iron rod.
The lengths of path running down both sides of the chasm rose up and joined in the middle, forming a narrow bridge. Quickly, Merlin and Miss Pucey crossed it in single file, he reaching back to hold her hand. The bridge stayed where it was behind them while they stood considering the door on the opposite side.
"Locked," Merlin observed.
"Shall we knock?" Miss Pucey suggested.
"No," said Merlin, thinking back to the Joke Knocker with an inward shiver. "I have a better idea...."
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #159 +++
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. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Whatever happened to Minimilian? (A) Madrigal the hag caught and ate him. (B) He escaped and reformed his ways. (C) He escaped and began planning his revenge against Spanky and Ilona. (D) He was rescued by another villain, who means to use him for his/her own evil plan.
CONTEST: Write a magical parody of the lyrics of a popular song. One stanza and a chorus will do.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
156. In for a Sickle...
Contest winner: Linda Carrig
Runner-up: Dragonic
A canal in Venice. A moonlit night. The sound of a guitar playing behind some open window. A dog pauses while chasing a rat across a bridge, looks down and sees a head emerging from the water, then resumes pursuit.
Wisely, Rigel doesn't dismiss the Bubble-Head charm until he is well on dry land. He heaves himself wearily up a short flight of stone steps and collapses on the stone quay. Looking down, he sees a clutch of hideous women looking up at him from just below the water's surface. They favor him with rude gestures; he returns the favor. They linger, as if hoping he will come back down into the water, until he catches his breath enough to walk away.
Rigel's legs feel like pieces of cooked spaghetti as he trudges, dripping, through a narrow alley. He looks around carefully, trying to get his bearings and hoping he can get to his hotel without having to cross water. He absent-mindedly rubs the stoneskin ring that hangs around his neck on a leather thong. He owes his survival to its protection from the merhags' piercing fangs. On the other hand, the ring hasn't prevented the merhags from developing a taste for his skin. He shudders to remember the feeling of his arms, chest, and back being licked by dozens of slimy, black tongues.
A strange sound rouses him from his reverie. He peers ahead through the gloom. The sound comes again: a deep snuffling noise, like a very large creature stifling a sneeze. It seems to come from an angle in the passage ahead. The moonlight isn't much help in this narrow alley. Rigel edges forward cautiously, preparing to flee back to the canal. Then his breath catches in his throat as a dark shape moves out into the alley ahead. A huge, dark shape. How, he wonders, could he not have noticed that smell?
As he thinks this thought, Rigel turns on his heel... and stops. Another figure is coming up behind him. A human figure. "Go back," Rigel hisses in a stage-whisper. He says it again in Italian, but the figure keeps walking toward him at the same pace. He glances over his shoulder. The great beast behind him is just standing there, filling the alley. He looks ahead again, just in time to see the shadowy man transform into another hulking animal shape. Another hulking, stinky, menacing, animal shape.
"Cripes," Rigel squeaks. But the wonderful thing about Rigel is that he never freezes under pressure. Even while all this is happening - from the moment he has spotted the first wereyak, in fact - his fingers have been picking at the stitches tacking a slender strip of silk piping to the seams of his damp trousers.
The creatures have begun to close in, but slowly - cautiously. Rigel curses himself silently for leaving his wand tied to his arm by a shoelace. He must choose between escaping and defending himself; and since his first instinct was to pick his silken ladder free, escape is now his only option. If only he could use his wand for defense, he might be able to buy himself a bit more time to escape. As it is, the only spell he can count on (with his wand where it is) is Lumos.
He tries it. Light flares out of the tip of his wand, showing him every humped, shaggy, slobbery detail of the figure in front of him. The creature stops moving forward, wincing into the brightness. But the snuffling, shuffling noises from behind continue to draw nearer.
I don't know who these people are, Rigel tells himself, or why they all turn into yaks, but I have a feeling I should avoid them like Dragonpox...
"Nox," he says, putting out the wandlight. Then he throws the silken ladder upward with an expert snap of the arm. A moment later, a long thread hangs above his head, reaching vertically into the pale darkness above the cobbled alley. Rigel jumps for the end of the thread and shins up it. When he reaches the top, hanging in space, he looks down and sees two yaks directly below him, looking up.
A moment later, two dark human shapes have taken their place, one of them crouching to spring toward the bottom of the silken ladder. Quickly, Rigel swings the lower end of the thread around so that it hangs above him, and continues his climb. The next time he looks down, the alley is deserted.
When he finally reaches the roof of one of the nearby buildings, Rigel collapses against the stone tiles with a grunt of exhaustion. Bracing his legs against a lead gutter, he spools up the silken ladder and stuffs it into a trouser pocket. Then he rubs his cramped hands, wriggling for a more comfortable position as the roof tiles seem determined to dig into the sore muscles of his shoulders.
A passing breeze makes him shiver. Or maybe it wasn't the breeze. Rigel wrenches his neck painfully, looking around to see who or what might be on the roof with him. No one is there. He sighs, flops on his back, and almost chokes when a hand reaches up from the alley and grips the edge of the gutter, just between his feet.
This time Rigel has nowhere to escape to. His only choice is to fight. Clawing at the waterlogged shoelace tying his wand to his forearm, he racks his brains for a spell he can use in this situation. The first thing that comes to him is the disillusionment charm, which he casts on himself with a soundless movement of the lips, as soon as his wand comes free. He does it just in time, too. The owner of the hands pulls himself over the gutter a second later, seeing nothing but a loose shoelace dangling over the gutter.
Rigel balances dangerously on the gutter itself, scarcely out of the reach of the man's arms. He owes his silent tread to his shoes having been left behind in the merhag larder.
The other man picks up the shoelace, sniffs it, then raises his nose to the moonlit sky and sniffs again. He turns his head slowly, eyes closed, then stops and opens them. He is looking directly at Rigel.
Rigel looks down at himself: still disillusioned! Can he see me? he wonders. Who are these people?
The wereyak's intent gaze is suddenly distracted by a clatter of stone on stone. His head whips around to look at a small avalanche of pepples on the adjacent rooftop. It appears that someone invisible is attempting to run away in that direction. Glancing back in Rigel's direction with a snort of disappointment, the man follows in a stooped scramble, keeping his hands close to the sloping stone tiles beneath him.
Rigel waits until his pursuer is out of sight before padding as quietly as possible in the opposite direction. He clambers over the peak of one roof and up the slope of another, easily hurdling a narrow alley, little caring that he has lost his way in one of the world's most confusing cities. After covering some distance without seeing any sign of pursuit, he climbs down a drainpipe and staggers wearily toward the nearest canal.
He spots a vaparetto tied to a stanchion and instantly, though with a twinge of remorse, decides to steal it. It takes but one flick of the wand to part the rope securing it to the pavement, and a brief twirl to get the propeller turning without the noise, smell, and bother of starting the engine. Within moments, he has rounded a point and found his bearings in a familiar canal.
By now dawn is not far away, its light already paling the eastern horizon. Rigel has never wanted anything as badly as the hot bath and soft robes that would await him at the Gritti Palace... but he does not steer in that direction. Biting his lip, he sets a course for the island of Il Comte di Bestemmia. He can think of no one else with the motives or resources to send two wereyaks after him. Il Comte must know he is working with Merlin to despoil him -- or, at least, to expose his treachery. And if Il Comte knows that much, he will know where Rigel lodges. His hotel will not be safe. Nowhere in this city will be safe, indeed, until they bring Il Comte down.
Although Rigel hasn't intended to get involved, he sighs and mutters to himself: "In for a sickle, in for a galleon..."
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #158 +++
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. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Whose storyline will be featured in Chapter 158? (A) Spanky. (B) Sadie. (C) Sir Lionel Niblet. (D) Harvey. (E) Endora.
CONTEST: Invent a whimsical name for a witch or wizard of historical importance. Also briefly describe what he/she did to become famous.
Runner-up: Dragonic
A canal in Venice. A moonlit night. The sound of a guitar playing behind some open window. A dog pauses while chasing a rat across a bridge, looks down and sees a head emerging from the water, then resumes pursuit.
Wisely, Rigel doesn't dismiss the Bubble-Head charm until he is well on dry land. He heaves himself wearily up a short flight of stone steps and collapses on the stone quay. Looking down, he sees a clutch of hideous women looking up at him from just below the water's surface. They favor him with rude gestures; he returns the favor. They linger, as if hoping he will come back down into the water, until he catches his breath enough to walk away.
Rigel's legs feel like pieces of cooked spaghetti as he trudges, dripping, through a narrow alley. He looks around carefully, trying to get his bearings and hoping he can get to his hotel without having to cross water. He absent-mindedly rubs the stoneskin ring that hangs around his neck on a leather thong. He owes his survival to its protection from the merhags' piercing fangs. On the other hand, the ring hasn't prevented the merhags from developing a taste for his skin. He shudders to remember the feeling of his arms, chest, and back being licked by dozens of slimy, black tongues.
A strange sound rouses him from his reverie. He peers ahead through the gloom. The sound comes again: a deep snuffling noise, like a very large creature stifling a sneeze. It seems to come from an angle in the passage ahead. The moonlight isn't much help in this narrow alley. Rigel edges forward cautiously, preparing to flee back to the canal. Then his breath catches in his throat as a dark shape moves out into the alley ahead. A huge, dark shape. How, he wonders, could he not have noticed that smell?
As he thinks this thought, Rigel turns on his heel... and stops. Another figure is coming up behind him. A human figure. "Go back," Rigel hisses in a stage-whisper. He says it again in Italian, but the figure keeps walking toward him at the same pace. He glances over his shoulder. The great beast behind him is just standing there, filling the alley. He looks ahead again, just in time to see the shadowy man transform into another hulking animal shape. Another hulking, stinky, menacing, animal shape.
"Cripes," Rigel squeaks. But the wonderful thing about Rigel is that he never freezes under pressure. Even while all this is happening - from the moment he has spotted the first wereyak, in fact - his fingers have been picking at the stitches tacking a slender strip of silk piping to the seams of his damp trousers.
The creatures have begun to close in, but slowly - cautiously. Rigel curses himself silently for leaving his wand tied to his arm by a shoelace. He must choose between escaping and defending himself; and since his first instinct was to pick his silken ladder free, escape is now his only option. If only he could use his wand for defense, he might be able to buy himself a bit more time to escape. As it is, the only spell he can count on (with his wand where it is) is Lumos.
He tries it. Light flares out of the tip of his wand, showing him every humped, shaggy, slobbery detail of the figure in front of him. The creature stops moving forward, wincing into the brightness. But the snuffling, shuffling noises from behind continue to draw nearer.
I don't know who these people are, Rigel tells himself, or why they all turn into yaks, but I have a feeling I should avoid them like Dragonpox...
"Nox," he says, putting out the wandlight. Then he throws the silken ladder upward with an expert snap of the arm. A moment later, a long thread hangs above his head, reaching vertically into the pale darkness above the cobbled alley. Rigel jumps for the end of the thread and shins up it. When he reaches the top, hanging in space, he looks down and sees two yaks directly below him, looking up.
A moment later, two dark human shapes have taken their place, one of them crouching to spring toward the bottom of the silken ladder. Quickly, Rigel swings the lower end of the thread around so that it hangs above him, and continues his climb. The next time he looks down, the alley is deserted.
When he finally reaches the roof of one of the nearby buildings, Rigel collapses against the stone tiles with a grunt of exhaustion. Bracing his legs against a lead gutter, he spools up the silken ladder and stuffs it into a trouser pocket. Then he rubs his cramped hands, wriggling for a more comfortable position as the roof tiles seem determined to dig into the sore muscles of his shoulders.
A passing breeze makes him shiver. Or maybe it wasn't the breeze. Rigel wrenches his neck painfully, looking around to see who or what might be on the roof with him. No one is there. He sighs, flops on his back, and almost chokes when a hand reaches up from the alley and grips the edge of the gutter, just between his feet.
This time Rigel has nowhere to escape to. His only choice is to fight. Clawing at the waterlogged shoelace tying his wand to his forearm, he racks his brains for a spell he can use in this situation. The first thing that comes to him is the disillusionment charm, which he casts on himself with a soundless movement of the lips, as soon as his wand comes free. He does it just in time, too. The owner of the hands pulls himself over the gutter a second later, seeing nothing but a loose shoelace dangling over the gutter.
Rigel balances dangerously on the gutter itself, scarcely out of the reach of the man's arms. He owes his silent tread to his shoes having been left behind in the merhag larder.
The other man picks up the shoelace, sniffs it, then raises his nose to the moonlit sky and sniffs again. He turns his head slowly, eyes closed, then stops and opens them. He is looking directly at Rigel.
Rigel looks down at himself: still disillusioned! Can he see me? he wonders. Who are these people?
The wereyak's intent gaze is suddenly distracted by a clatter of stone on stone. His head whips around to look at a small avalanche of pepples on the adjacent rooftop. It appears that someone invisible is attempting to run away in that direction. Glancing back in Rigel's direction with a snort of disappointment, the man follows in a stooped scramble, keeping his hands close to the sloping stone tiles beneath him.
Rigel waits until his pursuer is out of sight before padding as quietly as possible in the opposite direction. He clambers over the peak of one roof and up the slope of another, easily hurdling a narrow alley, little caring that he has lost his way in one of the world's most confusing cities. After covering some distance without seeing any sign of pursuit, he climbs down a drainpipe and staggers wearily toward the nearest canal.
He spots a vaparetto tied to a stanchion and instantly, though with a twinge of remorse, decides to steal it. It takes but one flick of the wand to part the rope securing it to the pavement, and a brief twirl to get the propeller turning without the noise, smell, and bother of starting the engine. Within moments, he has rounded a point and found his bearings in a familiar canal.
By now dawn is not far away, its light already paling the eastern horizon. Rigel has never wanted anything as badly as the hot bath and soft robes that would await him at the Gritti Palace... but he does not steer in that direction. Biting his lip, he sets a course for the island of Il Comte di Bestemmia. He can think of no one else with the motives or resources to send two wereyaks after him. Il Comte must know he is working with Merlin to despoil him -- or, at least, to expose his treachery. And if Il Comte knows that much, he will know where Rigel lodges. His hotel will not be safe. Nowhere in this city will be safe, indeed, until they bring Il Comte down.
Although Rigel hasn't intended to get involved, he sighs and mutters to himself: "In for a sickle, in for a galleon..."
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #158 +++
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. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Whose storyline will be featured in Chapter 158? (A) Spanky. (B) Sadie. (C) Sir Lionel Niblet. (D) Harvey. (E) Endora.
CONTEST: Invent a whimsical name for a witch or wizard of historical importance. Also briefly describe what he/she did to become famous.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
155. The Hystereo Effect
Joint contest winners: Rehannah & TZWRD
The whistle didn't sound as Sadie expected. When Mr. Graves, or rather Joe Albuquerque, put it to his lips and blew, she had braced herself for a shrill blast. Instead, it gave a loud "Baaa!"
Duckham fell forward out of his chair. He had been resting his forearms on the table, until it vanished. Suddenly the Ministry inquisitor sprawled face-down on the floor. As he pushed himself up onto hands and knees, he heard another "Baaa!" behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he had only enough time to see a furry blur charging toward him, head down. He rolled out of the way. The charging goat narrowly missed, its hooves clattering and sliding on the floor tiles, the smell of its fur filling the interrogation room.
Weedom screamed when the table turned into the goat. He tried to get to the door, but the goat charged that next - with splintery results. The door stood up to two more blows from the goat's bony head before it gave way, landing on a surprised Millbray who had come running to see what was the matter. The three men picked themselves up, panting, cursing, whimpering, and checking each other for serious injuries, as the sound of the goat's scampering hooves faded around a distant bend in the corridor. It was only when Duckham realized that he had lost the suspect's wand that they noticed the suspect had gone as well.
Sadie started laughing the moment they apparated outside the Hog's Head pub. She kept laughing, supporting herself on Joe's arm, all the way to the shabby back parlor that had been held in readiness for them. On the way there, Joe paused to hand the whistle over to the proprietor, along with a fair tip and a word of thanks.
"That was the least thing I would have expectorated," Sadie gasped as she regained control of herself. She used the hem of her veil to wipe her eyes. "Leaf it to old what's-his-neume..."
"Yes," Joe agreed, while rummaging through a bulging carpetbag for his next disguise. "He can be a clever fellow, when goats are involved. Do you know, that whistle is made out of a goat's ankle bone? Instead of a pea inside, it's got a tiny bezoar..."
"Spanking of cleverness," said Sadie, "that Graves disgust worked awfully whelk, considering how fiddle time you had to perspire it."
"Oh! well," Joe admitted, bashfully, "it wasn't really that hard. Graves and I have crossed paths before. It's easy to pick up details about people who really annoy you."
Sadie's eyes widened. "I my have pricked up a derail about him myself."
Joe looked up at her from a selection of monogrammed jumpsuits - he had been trying to decide whether to become a pool cleaner or an exterminator - and by his look he managed to say, "Yes?"
"Did you ewer get a goad look at the chap who nickled this?" Sadie opened her fist and showed Joe the dull, heavy, silver ring she had taken from Uncle or Aunt Leslie's house. Where it might otherwise have held a jewel setting, the ring flared out into a flat, circular stamp with a raised insignia decorated with a complex design.
After staring at the ring for a moment, Joe finally took notice of Sadie's question. "The skinny youngster?" He shook his head. "Too busy hiding from him in that bank vault. Why?"
"He and your fiend Grades could be relegated to each other," said Sadie.
"You saw a family resemblance, did you?"
She nodded. Joe stroked his chin thoughtfully. When he put his hand down, he was suddenly wearing a Fu Manchu beard. "I guess I'm relieved," he said, rummaging more deeply in his carpetbag. He came up a moment later with a dog catcher's uniform.
"Released?" Sadie repeated, inaccurately. "Whiz?"
"Why?" Joe translated. Sadie nodded.
"Because," he went on, "I was starting to wonder if he was Bette Noir's boy - seeing that he inherited her bank vault and all. And given his apparent age, she would have had him around the time Bette and I were trapped in that Egyptian pyramid."
Sadie's eyes and mouth all said, in unison, "Oh."
"I thought he might have been my son," Joe added, by way of unnecessary explanation. After saying it, he fell silent, the better to concentrate on his new disguise. He also sat a bit lower in his seat. Sadie could not tell whether this showed his relief or his disappointment. She could understand another reason Joe might have been thinking along those lines: their young nemesis shared Joe's gift for disguise.
Sadie had almost put together a little speech of encouragement, which she knew wasn't going to come out right thanks to the lingering effects of the misspell on her, when a hand pulled aside the curtain at the entrance of the parlor and a familiar face looked in.
"Iguana!" Sadie exclaimed, beaming behind her veil.
Joe turned toward the doorway with a delighted grin. "You made good time," he said. But his grin faded when he saw the grim, tired look on Ilona's face.
"You have it?" she said, sitting down heavily across the table from Joe.
Sadie opened her hand again. Ilona snatched the ring out of it and held it close to her eye. She seemed to study it for a very long time, neither moving nor speaking, while Sadie fidgeted and Joe changed his disguise. At one point Ilona looked as if she might smile, but soon afterward a frown creased the center of her brow. Finally, she let the ring drop onto the table with a surprisingly loud thud.
"That's almost the best fake I've ever seen," she said.
Sadie's high spirits plummeted. "I bet your parson?"
Ilona turned her scrutiny toward Sadie, reading her features through the sheer fabric of her veil. Then she shook her head and said, "You've been had. Either Uncle or Aunt Leslie planted that fake, or he never got the real one in the first place..."
"Or I made the swatch," Sadie said, completing the thought for her. Her voice trembled with outrage. "Word you like to church me? Or maybe you shed frisky Joe here..."
"We have to eliminate the possibilities until we are left with the truth," said Ilona, refusing to retreat from Sadie's hurt feelings. "We know this Lee Shore person, whoever he is, took the real ring from my uncle. We know he used it to compel a worker at the Ministry to deposit a barrel of suiCider in Bette Noir's bank vault. We know he works with Uncle or Aunt Leslie, who has plans for the suiCider, and that he has been in contact with Il Comte di Bestemmia. What we don't know is whether Leslie planted the fake ring to fool Il Comte, or whether Lee Shore gave Leslie the fake and kept the real ring. We also don't know what happened between the three of them after you got away. So, really, any of them could have it."
"Il Comet was trying to stale this ring form Leslie," Sadie growled, "unlit I stole it fist."
"He clearly has plans to use the ring to force people to his will," said Ilona. "He was supposed to speak at a political rally in Venice, but he had to call it off. I'm sure if he had the ring, the rally would have gone forward..."
"...and Il Comte would be on his way toward world domination," Joe guessed.
Ilona nodded. "Since he didn't show up to speak, we can probably rule out Il Comte. That means either Uncle or Aunt Leslie fooled him..."
"Food us broth," Sadie muttered.
"...or Lee Shore fooled Leslie."
"In either case," said Joe, "they will start using the ring soon enough. With that vault under constant watch, they won't be able to go forward with Operation Death by Aromatherapy. But if it's true that no one can resist commands sealed with that ring, it won't be long before they move on an even nastier plan."
"The question is," said Ilona, "How will we know what their plan is before it's too late?"
The cheerful fire in the hearth behind Sadie suddenly flared green. With a loud puff of warm air, a roll of parchment sailed out of the fire, over Sadie's head, and onto the table in front of her.
"It's from Harry," said Sadie, untying the ribbon from around the parchment.
"Who?" said Joe, taking the parchment from her. "Oh! It's from Harvey!"
"That's wart I sad," Sadie sighed.
As Joe scanned the letter, his grin faded and his face became blank. With dead, hollow eyes he handed it over to Ilona. The same thing happened to her as she read it in turn.
"Er," said Sadie. "Is ever-think all ripe?"
Joe, meanwhile, had pulled several blank pieces of parchment out of his bag and begun writing at a furious pace. As soon as Ilona handed the letter back to Sadie, she began digging through her handbag for a quill and ink bottle.
Sadie squinted at the letter. Something was not quite right about it. The words swam before her eyes, their spelling changing fluidly. Any word she focused on would be spelled differently the next time she looked at it. She decided it had to do with the misspell. Muttering a dire curse under her breath, she began at the beginning and tried reading it again. The effort was so great that she had to move her lips. Before long she was reading aloud, with great difficulty and many oral spelling mistakes:
"To Wham It May Concert: This is a text of our new regiment. At your eeriest convent, please cupid this better to fire people of your acquittal and sand it to them by the fattest means at your deposition. Remonstrate to tile the better with a robin and steal it with an extract relic of the steal on this better. We recompense the following spill..."
Before Sadie could read further, she was interrupted by the voices of Joe and Ilona. They had finished copying the letter, word for word by memory, and tying them with a ribbon. Now each of them gave five wand flicks and, with each flick, repeated the word Xerosigilus. Wax seals appeared out of nowhere, securing all the ribbons on the letters with an insignia nearly identical to the one on the fake ring Sadie had stolen. The letters shot, one by one, into the fire, disappearing in explosions of green sparks and flame.
"...Xenophilius," continued Sadie, slightly shaken. "Then tun out your pickets and picket-books..."
Joe and Ilona turned out their pockets.
"...and through ever-think but the monkey into the neatest five..."
Except for their coins (which remained heaped on the table), Joe and Ilona threw all their belongings into the fire. This included the contents of Ilona's handbag and the disguises remaining in Joe's carpetbag. They watched the flames with blank expressions.
"...Then stamp by for furrier destructions," Sadie added, reaching the end of the letter. "Your obstinate servant, Lee Snore, esq."
In spite of her growing concern at her friends' behavior, Sadie could not seem to stop reading the letter before this. Now she sat and fidgeted, torn between an overwhelming urge to do as the letter commanded, and a terrifying need to do something about the wrongness unfolding all around her. The former was about to win the point, as her hands crept closer to her own handbag. But then the fire gave off a loud popping noise, and something thumped loudly on the stone floor under the grate. It rolled out into the room, sounding like a large marble. This distraction was enough to give Sadie a moment to think.
The sound of stone rolling across stone came to a halt beneath the table, close to Sadie's end. She looked down. About half a meter from her foot lay the object that had fallen out of the fire. Sadie had never seen anything quite like it...
A crystal finger.
She knelt down beside her chair and placed her hand close to the perfectly shaped, life-sized artifact. It seemed to beckon to her somehow. And it didn't give off any heat, either. Sadie picked it up and found that it felt quite cool in her hand. Then, moved by what impulse she did not know, she stuck it into her right ear...
And the memory of the chain letter, that had lingered in the back of her mind, suddenly fuzzed into a tangle of nonsense. She looked down at the parchment again and realized that she couldn't make out a word. She tried to say, "That's odd," but what came out of her mouth sounded - to her unstoppered left ear - more like, "Znrf'g bvv." She was so shocked that she immediately plucked the finger out of her ear...and the urge to comply with the letter's commands returned.
Finger in: freedom. Finger out: compulsion. Finger in: a total loss of spoken and written language. Finger out: back to the comparatively mild, magically-induced dyslexia that had been troubling her all day. Finger in left ear, for a change: the dyslexia suddenly disappeared. Sadie forgot herself for a while, then happened to look down when something touched her foot. It was that crystal finger again. How did it get down there? She picked it up, considered throwing back into the fire, then shrugged and popped it into her right ear.
Whoa. Sadie looked around the room. Ilona and Joe were both seated, looking blankly across the table at each other, waiting for further instructions. By the heft of her handbag, Sadie had emptied all her portable belongings into the fire. This hinted that she had sent five copies of the chain letter, too. But for this crystal finger in her right ear, she would be in the same zone of blank mental readiness as her two friends.
She snapped her fingers in front of their faces, but they didn't blink. She touched their arms, spoke their names: no response.
Sadie huddled back into her chair and shivered. "I'm on my own," she tried to say, but what she actually said was, "F'w kmubh zprav shlug." She decided not to think her thoughts out loud any more. So, silently, she told herself three things. First: She must never put the finger in her left ear again. Second: She would risk taking it out of her right ear only when she really needed to communicate with someone. Third: It was probably up to her to save the world. So she'd better find out what it needed saving from...
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #157 +++
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. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: 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) Harvey's inflatable wall. (E) Subito's Turbo Gum. (F) Boccachiusa's Peekaboo Kit.
CONTEST: Butcher, baker, candlestick maker, tinker, tailor, cobbler, sailor... choose any "old world" craft or trade, and describe something strange and different that could be made by combining their wares with a bit of magic.
The whistle didn't sound as Sadie expected. When Mr. Graves, or rather Joe Albuquerque, put it to his lips and blew, she had braced herself for a shrill blast. Instead, it gave a loud "Baaa!"
Duckham fell forward out of his chair. He had been resting his forearms on the table, until it vanished. Suddenly the Ministry inquisitor sprawled face-down on the floor. As he pushed himself up onto hands and knees, he heard another "Baaa!" behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he had only enough time to see a furry blur charging toward him, head down. He rolled out of the way. The charging goat narrowly missed, its hooves clattering and sliding on the floor tiles, the smell of its fur filling the interrogation room.
Weedom screamed when the table turned into the goat. He tried to get to the door, but the goat charged that next - with splintery results. The door stood up to two more blows from the goat's bony head before it gave way, landing on a surprised Millbray who had come running to see what was the matter. The three men picked themselves up, panting, cursing, whimpering, and checking each other for serious injuries, as the sound of the goat's scampering hooves faded around a distant bend in the corridor. It was only when Duckham realized that he had lost the suspect's wand that they noticed the suspect had gone as well.
Sadie started laughing the moment they apparated outside the Hog's Head pub. She kept laughing, supporting herself on Joe's arm, all the way to the shabby back parlor that had been held in readiness for them. On the way there, Joe paused to hand the whistle over to the proprietor, along with a fair tip and a word of thanks.
"That was the least thing I would have expectorated," Sadie gasped as she regained control of herself. She used the hem of her veil to wipe her eyes. "Leaf it to old what's-his-neume..."
"Yes," Joe agreed, while rummaging through a bulging carpetbag for his next disguise. "He can be a clever fellow, when goats are involved. Do you know, that whistle is made out of a goat's ankle bone? Instead of a pea inside, it's got a tiny bezoar..."
"Spanking of cleverness," said Sadie, "that Graves disgust worked awfully whelk, considering how fiddle time you had to perspire it."
"Oh! well," Joe admitted, bashfully, "it wasn't really that hard. Graves and I have crossed paths before. It's easy to pick up details about people who really annoy you."
Sadie's eyes widened. "I my have pricked up a derail about him myself."
Joe looked up at her from a selection of monogrammed jumpsuits - he had been trying to decide whether to become a pool cleaner or an exterminator - and by his look he managed to say, "Yes?"
"Did you ewer get a goad look at the chap who nickled this?" Sadie opened her fist and showed Joe the dull, heavy, silver ring she had taken from Uncle or Aunt Leslie's house. Where it might otherwise have held a jewel setting, the ring flared out into a flat, circular stamp with a raised insignia decorated with a complex design.
After staring at the ring for a moment, Joe finally took notice of Sadie's question. "The skinny youngster?" He shook his head. "Too busy hiding from him in that bank vault. Why?"
"He and your fiend Grades could be relegated to each other," said Sadie.
"You saw a family resemblance, did you?"
She nodded. Joe stroked his chin thoughtfully. When he put his hand down, he was suddenly wearing a Fu Manchu beard. "I guess I'm relieved," he said, rummaging more deeply in his carpetbag. He came up a moment later with a dog catcher's uniform.
"Released?" Sadie repeated, inaccurately. "Whiz?"
"Why?" Joe translated. Sadie nodded.
"Because," he went on, "I was starting to wonder if he was Bette Noir's boy - seeing that he inherited her bank vault and all. And given his apparent age, she would have had him around the time Bette and I were trapped in that Egyptian pyramid."
Sadie's eyes and mouth all said, in unison, "Oh."
"I thought he might have been my son," Joe added, by way of unnecessary explanation. After saying it, he fell silent, the better to concentrate on his new disguise. He also sat a bit lower in his seat. Sadie could not tell whether this showed his relief or his disappointment. She could understand another reason Joe might have been thinking along those lines: their young nemesis shared Joe's gift for disguise.
Sadie had almost put together a little speech of encouragement, which she knew wasn't going to come out right thanks to the lingering effects of the misspell on her, when a hand pulled aside the curtain at the entrance of the parlor and a familiar face looked in.
"Iguana!" Sadie exclaimed, beaming behind her veil.
Joe turned toward the doorway with a delighted grin. "You made good time," he said. But his grin faded when he saw the grim, tired look on Ilona's face.
"You have it?" she said, sitting down heavily across the table from Joe.
Sadie opened her hand again. Ilona snatched the ring out of it and held it close to her eye. She seemed to study it for a very long time, neither moving nor speaking, while Sadie fidgeted and Joe changed his disguise. At one point Ilona looked as if she might smile, but soon afterward a frown creased the center of her brow. Finally, she let the ring drop onto the table with a surprisingly loud thud.
"That's almost the best fake I've ever seen," she said.
Sadie's high spirits plummeted. "I bet your parson?"
Ilona turned her scrutiny toward Sadie, reading her features through the sheer fabric of her veil. Then she shook her head and said, "You've been had. Either Uncle or Aunt Leslie planted that fake, or he never got the real one in the first place..."
"Or I made the swatch," Sadie said, completing the thought for her. Her voice trembled with outrage. "Word you like to church me? Or maybe you shed frisky Joe here..."
"We have to eliminate the possibilities until we are left with the truth," said Ilona, refusing to retreat from Sadie's hurt feelings. "We know this Lee Shore person, whoever he is, took the real ring from my uncle. We know he used it to compel a worker at the Ministry to deposit a barrel of suiCider in Bette Noir's bank vault. We know he works with Uncle or Aunt Leslie, who has plans for the suiCider, and that he has been in contact with Il Comte di Bestemmia. What we don't know is whether Leslie planted the fake ring to fool Il Comte, or whether Lee Shore gave Leslie the fake and kept the real ring. We also don't know what happened between the three of them after you got away. So, really, any of them could have it."
"Il Comet was trying to stale this ring form Leslie," Sadie growled, "unlit I stole it fist."
"He clearly has plans to use the ring to force people to his will," said Ilona. "He was supposed to speak at a political rally in Venice, but he had to call it off. I'm sure if he had the ring, the rally would have gone forward..."
"...and Il Comte would be on his way toward world domination," Joe guessed.
Ilona nodded. "Since he didn't show up to speak, we can probably rule out Il Comte. That means either Uncle or Aunt Leslie fooled him..."
"Food us broth," Sadie muttered.
"...or Lee Shore fooled Leslie."
"In either case," said Joe, "they will start using the ring soon enough. With that vault under constant watch, they won't be able to go forward with Operation Death by Aromatherapy. But if it's true that no one can resist commands sealed with that ring, it won't be long before they move on an even nastier plan."
"The question is," said Ilona, "How will we know what their plan is before it's too late?"
The cheerful fire in the hearth behind Sadie suddenly flared green. With a loud puff of warm air, a roll of parchment sailed out of the fire, over Sadie's head, and onto the table in front of her.
"It's from Harry," said Sadie, untying the ribbon from around the parchment.
"Who?" said Joe, taking the parchment from her. "Oh! It's from Harvey!"
"That's wart I sad," Sadie sighed.
As Joe scanned the letter, his grin faded and his face became blank. With dead, hollow eyes he handed it over to Ilona. The same thing happened to her as she read it in turn.
"Er," said Sadie. "Is ever-think all ripe?"
Joe, meanwhile, had pulled several blank pieces of parchment out of his bag and begun writing at a furious pace. As soon as Ilona handed the letter back to Sadie, she began digging through her handbag for a quill and ink bottle.
Sadie squinted at the letter. Something was not quite right about it. The words swam before her eyes, their spelling changing fluidly. Any word she focused on would be spelled differently the next time she looked at it. She decided it had to do with the misspell. Muttering a dire curse under her breath, she began at the beginning and tried reading it again. The effort was so great that she had to move her lips. Before long she was reading aloud, with great difficulty and many oral spelling mistakes:
"To Wham It May Concert: This is a text of our new regiment. At your eeriest convent, please cupid this better to fire people of your acquittal and sand it to them by the fattest means at your deposition. Remonstrate to tile the better with a robin and steal it with an extract relic of the steal on this better. We recompense the following spill..."
Before Sadie could read further, she was interrupted by the voices of Joe and Ilona. They had finished copying the letter, word for word by memory, and tying them with a ribbon. Now each of them gave five wand flicks and, with each flick, repeated the word Xerosigilus. Wax seals appeared out of nowhere, securing all the ribbons on the letters with an insignia nearly identical to the one on the fake ring Sadie had stolen. The letters shot, one by one, into the fire, disappearing in explosions of green sparks and flame.
"...Xenophilius," continued Sadie, slightly shaken. "Then tun out your pickets and picket-books..."
Joe and Ilona turned out their pockets.
"...and through ever-think but the monkey into the neatest five..."
Except for their coins (which remained heaped on the table), Joe and Ilona threw all their belongings into the fire. This included the contents of Ilona's handbag and the disguises remaining in Joe's carpetbag. They watched the flames with blank expressions.
"...Then stamp by for furrier destructions," Sadie added, reaching the end of the letter. "Your obstinate servant, Lee Snore, esq."
In spite of her growing concern at her friends' behavior, Sadie could not seem to stop reading the letter before this. Now she sat and fidgeted, torn between an overwhelming urge to do as the letter commanded, and a terrifying need to do something about the wrongness unfolding all around her. The former was about to win the point, as her hands crept closer to her own handbag. But then the fire gave off a loud popping noise, and something thumped loudly on the stone floor under the grate. It rolled out into the room, sounding like a large marble. This distraction was enough to give Sadie a moment to think.
The sound of stone rolling across stone came to a halt beneath the table, close to Sadie's end. She looked down. About half a meter from her foot lay the object that had fallen out of the fire. Sadie had never seen anything quite like it...
A crystal finger.
She knelt down beside her chair and placed her hand close to the perfectly shaped, life-sized artifact. It seemed to beckon to her somehow. And it didn't give off any heat, either. Sadie picked it up and found that it felt quite cool in her hand. Then, moved by what impulse she did not know, she stuck it into her right ear...
And the memory of the chain letter, that had lingered in the back of her mind, suddenly fuzzed into a tangle of nonsense. She looked down at the parchment again and realized that she couldn't make out a word. She tried to say, "That's odd," but what came out of her mouth sounded - to her unstoppered left ear - more like, "Znrf'g bvv." She was so shocked that she immediately plucked the finger out of her ear...and the urge to comply with the letter's commands returned.
Finger in: freedom. Finger out: compulsion. Finger in: a total loss of spoken and written language. Finger out: back to the comparatively mild, magically-induced dyslexia that had been troubling her all day. Finger in left ear, for a change: the dyslexia suddenly disappeared. Sadie forgot herself for a while, then happened to look down when something touched her foot. It was that crystal finger again. How did it get down there? She picked it up, considered throwing back into the fire, then shrugged and popped it into her right ear.
Whoa. Sadie looked around the room. Ilona and Joe were both seated, looking blankly across the table at each other, waiting for further instructions. By the heft of her handbag, Sadie had emptied all her portable belongings into the fire. This hinted that she had sent five copies of the chain letter, too. But for this crystal finger in her right ear, she would be in the same zone of blank mental readiness as her two friends.
She snapped her fingers in front of their faces, but they didn't blink. She touched their arms, spoke their names: no response.
Sadie huddled back into her chair and shivered. "I'm on my own," she tried to say, but what she actually said was, "F'w kmubh zprav shlug." She decided not to think her thoughts out loud any more. So, silently, she told herself three things. First: She must never put the finger in her left ear again. Second: She would risk taking it out of her right ear only when she really needed to communicate with someone. Third: It was probably up to her to save the world. So she'd better find out what it needed saving from...
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #157 +++
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. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: 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) Harvey's inflatable wall. (E) Subito's Turbo Gum. (F) Boccachiusa's Peekaboo Kit.
CONTEST: Butcher, baker, candlestick maker, tinker, tailor, cobbler, sailor... choose any "old world" craft or trade, and describe something strange and different that could be made by combining their wares with a bit of magic.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
154. Gnome Warfare
Contest winner: Dragonic
Runner-up: Sir Read-a-Lot
Using his wand to join the edges of the monkey skins, Sir Lionel Niblet put the finishing touches on his new all-weather cloak. It was both practical and stylish, with a warm layer of fur facing inward and a suede-like suppleness facing out. He examined it approvingly, then slipped it on. The fit was perfect. He should have been a tailor. "If I ever find my way out of this horrid valley," he thought aloud, "I'll have found my true calling, at least."
Round about his campsite were the trappings of his new life, since his broomstick had rammed into an invisible wall high above the island. The broom, still held together by a few splinters, had barely managed to slow his fall into this long, deep cut between two parallel mountain ridges. It had been a hard landing, but survivable - except his broom was completely shattered now. Without it, he had no way of scaling the sheer sides of the ravine. So he had turned his thoughts toward survival.
Uncounted weeks had passed. The stream that ran along the bottom of the ravine had provided him many suppers of fish, clams, and snails. The small animals that lived among the trees had supplied plentiful meat, pelts, and bones from which he had made fishhooks, needles, knives, and other tools. He hadn't needed weapons really; a well-aimed stunning spell had often served to bring down his prey, at least long enough for him to go to work with a bone knife. Apart from a few wild cats, who left him alone as long as he laid scraps out for them, Sir Lionel was the apex predator of this isolated valley.
When he could spare time from matters of survival, Sir Lionel had thought but briefly on the life he left behind. There was little point in regretting his loss. He hoped his friends would do well without him. He reproached himself for the foolishness of setting out on this flight through unfrequented skies without telling anyone where he was bound. He worried just a bit about the outcome of the business deal that had been at the end of his planned, but uncompleted, journey. How had it gone on without him?
But mostly, he had wondered about that invisible wall in the sky. Who had put it there? The how was obvious: by magic, of course. But the why still eluded him.
After a midday supper of roasted fowl washed down with fermented yam juice, Sir Lionel spent an hour going over his gear. He now had several coiled lengths of braided thong, slippers and gloves made of woven plant fibers, and a dozen magically-sharpened picks fashioned from large animal bones and small rocks. His supply of leaf-wrapped, salted meat and bladders of yam vodka filled a skin bag he had made a week ago. He was ready. He would begin his ascent of the eastern ridge the next morning. Perhaps this time he would make it to the top. Then, at least, he could look at what lay in the next valley, beyond the mysterious barrier that had halted his broom.
The night fell, cold and damp. Sir Lionel was glad of his new cloak. Before the sky grew pale above the eastern ridge, he put on all his gear and began his long hike up the forested foothills. The first stab of daylight found him crawling over a scrubby pile of scree. His camp, invisible amid the trees behind and below him, would have looked tiny from this distance. He rested for a few minutes, then scrambled onward.
The day passed quickly. The sun seemed to plunge suddenly behind the western ridge - though its light did not die so quickly at this height as it seemed to do from the bottom of the valley. Sir Lionel wedged himself into a cleft and settled down for the night, eating and drinking sparingly and with deliberate slowness in spite of his ravenous hunger and thirst. Stiff, painful muscles disturbed his rest throughout the night, and woke him early in the morning. He stretched himself thoroughly before resuming his climb.
The valley now yawned below him, dark and distant and threatening. Sir Lionel tried not to look down when he could help it. When he did catch a glimpse of what lay behind, he sensed that he was covering less distance today than on the day before. The top of the ridge seemed just as unreachably distant as ever. He needed to pause more often, sucking in great breaths that never seemed to satisfy his need for air. With great weariness and a growing sense of failure, he rested for a second night, this time on a wide ledge, and slept deeply for the first time in several days.
He was nearing the end of his supplies, and the end of his third day of climbing, when Sir Lionel suddenly found himself tumbling over the other side of the ridge. He might have fallen to his death if an invisible wall hadn't caught him with a bruising matter-of-factness. He leaned his weight against it, resting full-length against apparent nothingness over the vast, misty canyon before him.
Unlike the valley he had come from, this one appeared to be inhabited. At any rate, several columns of smoke rose from the dark mass of trees below.
After hours of sidling along the unseen barrier, looking for a way through it, Sir Lionel spotted a broad ledge covered in the rubble of a long-past rockslide. Fortunately, two of the larger rocks that leaned together to support much of the pile lay directly beneath the barrier. Throughout the next two days, he dug out pieces of rock. His food and drink nearly exhausted, his gloves and hands similarly shredded, he finally cleared an opening between the two large stones and crawled through it. Now he was inside the magical wall that apparently shielded this valley from the outside.
His descent went more quickly than the ascent. This was partly the result of gravity, partly of the somewhat gentler slope on this side of the ridge, and partly of necessity. Sir Lionel was literally starving, and parched into the bargain, when he reached the first stream. He immediately stripped off his cloak and plunged into the water. He drank deeply, then with some difficulty speared a fish and ate it raw, skin and all. He left only fins and bones behind as he drank again and dug for tubers.
His first night in the new valley was filled with strange and disturbing sounds. Different birds shrieked here. Somewhere not far enough away, a cat roared and a monkey screamed. A huge snake slithered by him in the darkness, ignoring him in its search for smaller prey.
Late morning found him gazing down at a surprising discovery. Below a long, waist-high wall of unmortared stone lay a broad, tree-shaded compound. Its thatched roofs and walls of mud-caulked timber held only a faint air of primitiveness. The place was well-organized, with a large central building surrounded by smaller huts, some of them suspended above the ground on stilts. Smoke rose from chimneys of every building except the ones on stilts. The ground around the huts had been cleared and swept, and an unmistakable cistern stood behind the main building, connected to the nearby river by a silvery pipe and a hand-operated pump.
This was no native village. Based the magical barrier around the valley, as well as the curious sparks that floated out of several of the chimneys, Sir Lionel knew that sorcery was involved.
Seeing no one moving about the compound, Sir Lionel lifted himself over the stone wall and hurried on tiptoe toward the nearest building. He flatted himself against it and edged around the nearest corner, searching for signs of activity.
He almost gasped aloud when he found himself looking through an unglazed window at three men who, fortunately, were not looking in his direction. Seen in profile, they seemed to be intent on something out of Sir Lionel's field of view. He shifted to the other side of the window to get a better look. Now he saw what the three men were watching.
It was a pen, fenced off by a single strand of wire. This didn't seem like much of a fence at first glance, but Sir Lionel soon noticed a few odd things about it. First, it glowed slightly with a blue radiance that made his head ache. Also, it gave off a curious hum that set his teeth on edge - until he looked away from it, that is. Then he saw, beyond it, group of ugly little gnomes, huddled together and shivering, though they grinned madly all the same. On the opposite side of the ring surrounded by that glowing, humming wire, stood another gnome - a curiously still, composed gnome. It did not seem at all inclined to giggle, dance, or pull faces. It simply studied its kinsmen as if committing their features to memory.
The image chilled Sir Lionel to the bone. This was distinctly un-gnomelike behavior. It stirred a memory in the back of his mind - the memory of a rare disease that sometimes afflicted these magical garden pests: Mad Gnome Disease. A gnome that acted like a sane, balanced person was clearly, dangerously insane. And that insanity could spread instantly from one gnome to another, should the infected gnome bite or scratch the normal one. The results could be a fast-spreading epidemic of intelligent, organized, and ferocious gnomes - gnomes who could easily turn against any wizards and witches who crossed their path, and attack them with deadly savagery.
Sir Lionel's suspicions were confirmed when the mad gnome - that is, the seemingly sane one - launched itself toward the three trembling ones, biting and scratching and yowling. A moment later, all four gnomes stood together, looking up at the three wizards with expressions of calm cunning.
The wizard on the left shivered. "That's all I need to see," he said. "One or two dozen of these blighters ought to be enough to bring the entire Wizengamot to its knees."
"I should think so," agreed the wizard on the right in a thick, middle-European accent. "Let's discuss terms. If you'll come with me, Willibald here will, er, secure the specimens while we talk."
Sir Lionel ducked around the back of the hut just in time. Moments later, two of the wizards came out of the door a few feet beyond the window. He listened to the sound of their retreating footsteps, his mind reeling at the thought of weaponized gnomes. It was the most monstrous trade in living creatures that he had heard of, notwithstanding the unforgettable scandal of Wizard Stafford-Fume and his wands made with a core of living bowtruckles. Suddenly Sir Lionel wished he had his young friend Spanky at his side, armed with two wands and a long habit of dueling practice.
"Aye, old son," Sir Lionel whispered, almost as if in prayer. "Where are you when I need you?"
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #156 +++
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. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Which magical creature will we see next? (A) A wereyak. (B) A merhag. (C) A fruit troll. (D) Other _____ (write-in candidate).
CONTEST: Describe a common cliche, giving it a slight magical twist. Example: "That really takes the pumpkin pasty!" (Instead of: "That really takes the cake!")
Runner-up: Sir Read-a-Lot
Using his wand to join the edges of the monkey skins, Sir Lionel Niblet put the finishing touches on his new all-weather cloak. It was both practical and stylish, with a warm layer of fur facing inward and a suede-like suppleness facing out. He examined it approvingly, then slipped it on. The fit was perfect. He should have been a tailor. "If I ever find my way out of this horrid valley," he thought aloud, "I'll have found my true calling, at least."
Round about his campsite were the trappings of his new life, since his broomstick had rammed into an invisible wall high above the island. The broom, still held together by a few splinters, had barely managed to slow his fall into this long, deep cut between two parallel mountain ridges. It had been a hard landing, but survivable - except his broom was completely shattered now. Without it, he had no way of scaling the sheer sides of the ravine. So he had turned his thoughts toward survival.
Uncounted weeks had passed. The stream that ran along the bottom of the ravine had provided him many suppers of fish, clams, and snails. The small animals that lived among the trees had supplied plentiful meat, pelts, and bones from which he had made fishhooks, needles, knives, and other tools. He hadn't needed weapons really; a well-aimed stunning spell had often served to bring down his prey, at least long enough for him to go to work with a bone knife. Apart from a few wild cats, who left him alone as long as he laid scraps out for them, Sir Lionel was the apex predator of this isolated valley.
When he could spare time from matters of survival, Sir Lionel had thought but briefly on the life he left behind. There was little point in regretting his loss. He hoped his friends would do well without him. He reproached himself for the foolishness of setting out on this flight through unfrequented skies without telling anyone where he was bound. He worried just a bit about the outcome of the business deal that had been at the end of his planned, but uncompleted, journey. How had it gone on without him?
But mostly, he had wondered about that invisible wall in the sky. Who had put it there? The how was obvious: by magic, of course. But the why still eluded him.
After a midday supper of roasted fowl washed down with fermented yam juice, Sir Lionel spent an hour going over his gear. He now had several coiled lengths of braided thong, slippers and gloves made of woven plant fibers, and a dozen magically-sharpened picks fashioned from large animal bones and small rocks. His supply of leaf-wrapped, salted meat and bladders of yam vodka filled a skin bag he had made a week ago. He was ready. He would begin his ascent of the eastern ridge the next morning. Perhaps this time he would make it to the top. Then, at least, he could look at what lay in the next valley, beyond the mysterious barrier that had halted his broom.
The night fell, cold and damp. Sir Lionel was glad of his new cloak. Before the sky grew pale above the eastern ridge, he put on all his gear and began his long hike up the forested foothills. The first stab of daylight found him crawling over a scrubby pile of scree. His camp, invisible amid the trees behind and below him, would have looked tiny from this distance. He rested for a few minutes, then scrambled onward.
The day passed quickly. The sun seemed to plunge suddenly behind the western ridge - though its light did not die so quickly at this height as it seemed to do from the bottom of the valley. Sir Lionel wedged himself into a cleft and settled down for the night, eating and drinking sparingly and with deliberate slowness in spite of his ravenous hunger and thirst. Stiff, painful muscles disturbed his rest throughout the night, and woke him early in the morning. He stretched himself thoroughly before resuming his climb.
The valley now yawned below him, dark and distant and threatening. Sir Lionel tried not to look down when he could help it. When he did catch a glimpse of what lay behind, he sensed that he was covering less distance today than on the day before. The top of the ridge seemed just as unreachably distant as ever. He needed to pause more often, sucking in great breaths that never seemed to satisfy his need for air. With great weariness and a growing sense of failure, he rested for a second night, this time on a wide ledge, and slept deeply for the first time in several days.
He was nearing the end of his supplies, and the end of his third day of climbing, when Sir Lionel suddenly found himself tumbling over the other side of the ridge. He might have fallen to his death if an invisible wall hadn't caught him with a bruising matter-of-factness. He leaned his weight against it, resting full-length against apparent nothingness over the vast, misty canyon before him.
Unlike the valley he had come from, this one appeared to be inhabited. At any rate, several columns of smoke rose from the dark mass of trees below.
After hours of sidling along the unseen barrier, looking for a way through it, Sir Lionel spotted a broad ledge covered in the rubble of a long-past rockslide. Fortunately, two of the larger rocks that leaned together to support much of the pile lay directly beneath the barrier. Throughout the next two days, he dug out pieces of rock. His food and drink nearly exhausted, his gloves and hands similarly shredded, he finally cleared an opening between the two large stones and crawled through it. Now he was inside the magical wall that apparently shielded this valley from the outside.
His descent went more quickly than the ascent. This was partly the result of gravity, partly of the somewhat gentler slope on this side of the ridge, and partly of necessity. Sir Lionel was literally starving, and parched into the bargain, when he reached the first stream. He immediately stripped off his cloak and plunged into the water. He drank deeply, then with some difficulty speared a fish and ate it raw, skin and all. He left only fins and bones behind as he drank again and dug for tubers.
His first night in the new valley was filled with strange and disturbing sounds. Different birds shrieked here. Somewhere not far enough away, a cat roared and a monkey screamed. A huge snake slithered by him in the darkness, ignoring him in its search for smaller prey.
Late morning found him gazing down at a surprising discovery. Below a long, waist-high wall of unmortared stone lay a broad, tree-shaded compound. Its thatched roofs and walls of mud-caulked timber held only a faint air of primitiveness. The place was well-organized, with a large central building surrounded by smaller huts, some of them suspended above the ground on stilts. Smoke rose from chimneys of every building except the ones on stilts. The ground around the huts had been cleared and swept, and an unmistakable cistern stood behind the main building, connected to the nearby river by a silvery pipe and a hand-operated pump.
This was no native village. Based the magical barrier around the valley, as well as the curious sparks that floated out of several of the chimneys, Sir Lionel knew that sorcery was involved.
Seeing no one moving about the compound, Sir Lionel lifted himself over the stone wall and hurried on tiptoe toward the nearest building. He flatted himself against it and edged around the nearest corner, searching for signs of activity.
He almost gasped aloud when he found himself looking through an unglazed window at three men who, fortunately, were not looking in his direction. Seen in profile, they seemed to be intent on something out of Sir Lionel's field of view. He shifted to the other side of the window to get a better look. Now he saw what the three men were watching.
It was a pen, fenced off by a single strand of wire. This didn't seem like much of a fence at first glance, but Sir Lionel soon noticed a few odd things about it. First, it glowed slightly with a blue radiance that made his head ache. Also, it gave off a curious hum that set his teeth on edge - until he looked away from it, that is. Then he saw, beyond it, group of ugly little gnomes, huddled together and shivering, though they grinned madly all the same. On the opposite side of the ring surrounded by that glowing, humming wire, stood another gnome - a curiously still, composed gnome. It did not seem at all inclined to giggle, dance, or pull faces. It simply studied its kinsmen as if committing their features to memory.
The image chilled Sir Lionel to the bone. This was distinctly un-gnomelike behavior. It stirred a memory in the back of his mind - the memory of a rare disease that sometimes afflicted these magical garden pests: Mad Gnome Disease. A gnome that acted like a sane, balanced person was clearly, dangerously insane. And that insanity could spread instantly from one gnome to another, should the infected gnome bite or scratch the normal one. The results could be a fast-spreading epidemic of intelligent, organized, and ferocious gnomes - gnomes who could easily turn against any wizards and witches who crossed their path, and attack them with deadly savagery.
Sir Lionel's suspicions were confirmed when the mad gnome - that is, the seemingly sane one - launched itself toward the three trembling ones, biting and scratching and yowling. A moment later, all four gnomes stood together, looking up at the three wizards with expressions of calm cunning.
The wizard on the left shivered. "That's all I need to see," he said. "One or two dozen of these blighters ought to be enough to bring the entire Wizengamot to its knees."
"I should think so," agreed the wizard on the right in a thick, middle-European accent. "Let's discuss terms. If you'll come with me, Willibald here will, er, secure the specimens while we talk."
Sir Lionel ducked around the back of the hut just in time. Moments later, two of the wizards came out of the door a few feet beyond the window. He listened to the sound of their retreating footsteps, his mind reeling at the thought of weaponized gnomes. It was the most monstrous trade in living creatures that he had heard of, notwithstanding the unforgettable scandal of Wizard Stafford-Fume and his wands made with a core of living bowtruckles. Suddenly Sir Lionel wished he had his young friend Spanky at his side, armed with two wands and a long habit of dueling practice.
"Aye, old son," Sir Lionel whispered, almost as if in prayer. "Where are you when I need you?"
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #156 +++
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. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Which magical creature will we see next? (A) A wereyak. (B) A merhag. (C) A fruit troll. (D) Other _____ (write-in candidate).
CONTEST: Describe a common cliche, giving it a slight magical twist. Example: "That really takes the pumpkin pasty!" (Instead of: "That really takes the cake!")
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
153. Margarine Headache
Contest winner: greyniffler
Runner-up: Benjamin Ng
The hard-faced men in one of the more brutish, back offices of the Ministry of Magic had ways of making people talk. Or, given a suspect like Sadie, who had vast resources of shtumness to draw upon, they had ways of keeping people waiting.
Sadie began to sweat during her sixth hour in a row of holding her fists clenched. The ring of Count Matthias was in one hand. In her other fist was the bone whistle Joe Albuquerque had given her. Nothing could compel her to show either item to her interrogators. But they were equally determined to know what she knew.
She still hadn't had a moment of privacy in which to blow the whistle. She wondered whether she would, anyway. She wasn't exactly sure what would happen if she did.
For the eighteenth time since they rescued her from the footnotes of a self-updating report on the number of breeding pairs of augureys in Hertfordshire, the crack interrogators of the Office of Magical Documentation and Records swapped position - most likely a strategy to wrong-foot her. It hadn't worked six hours ago; far less would it work now that Sadie had gotten to know them so well. This time it was Duckham who walked out of the room, while Millbray stood up to pace and Weedom stepped in and took the seat Millbray had just vacated. If they kept this up, Sadie thought, she might pass out from dizziness.
"Are you ready to make a statement?" Weedom asked with a clipped voice and a tight-lipped, joyless smile. He regarded her with shooting-glass eyes and patted a roll of parchment spread open before her, its corners weighted down and a quill and inkwell standing nearby.
"I would like a drink of waiter," Sadie said quietly.
"I don't take your meaning," said Weedom, with the tiniest hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth.
"My meaning," said Sadie, "is as plan as the noise on your face."
Drat, she thought as she heard herself speak. Will that misspell never wear off?
"Are you feeling quite well?" Weedom asked with a fair semblance of concern.
"No," she said, digging her knuckles into her temples. "I feel a margarine headache coming on."
Weedom coughed, then replied in a strangled voice, "You might feel butter after a full confession." Behind him, Millbray sneezed loudly and retreated from the room. The door did not close quite fast enough to cover his explosive laughter.
"Have you always had this way with words?" Weedom asked sweetly.
"Only sincere I - oh, dart! - only since my little occident in your filling system." Sadie hoped he would conclude that she had fallen afoul of a poorly cast check-spell. She wasn't about to explain that she had been hexed by her pursuers, who seemed to have gotten away. The less these sad little men knew, the better for all concerned.
"And will you, at last, explain what you were doing there?"
"Just having a larch," she said, taking little care to rein in her sarcasm. "Nothing quilt like a stole down memory lance - particle when it belongs to the buoyed politic. We three-silkers are drowned to it like months to a flame."
Weedom held her with a level gaze for some moments, then shook his head. "No," he said. "I don't buy it." The truth is: he didn't understand a word of it.
"I wand my want back," Sadie blurted, unwittingly saying all the words she meant but not in the right order. "I have a sight to rend one Patronus - "
"Sister," said Weedom, "you won't want to risk casting advanced spells in your condition. The laws you've already violated are nothing compared to Spellman's 67th Essential Inference, and I quote: 'Chaotic cadences conjoined in casting contrapoise crossbinding cataplexes on sequentially staged spells...'"
"To say nothing of Tybalt's Second Law of Transfiguration," said Duckham, sidling into the room. A sound like whimpering laughter came in with him, cut off by the closing of the door. Weedom jumped up and dutifully began to pace while Duckham sat down.
"Wish is?" Sadie prompted.
Duckham raised his eyebrows with the self-righteous hauteur of one who has done his homework, and knows who hasn't. "When attempting to transfigure an object into something else whose name rhymes with the original object, the strength and permanence of the transfiguration are increased sevenfold. Corollary: If a spell goes off because of incorrect rhyme or fumbled delivery, the magical consequences are seven times as serious."
"Ridiculous," said Sadie, surprising herself with her perfect pronunciation. "Magic is beyond languish. (Oh, carp!) How does it master whether the spell rhythms or not?"
"It matters," said Duckham, as smugly as ever, "because the spell-caster thinks it matters. What is significant to the magic user is significant to the result."
"None of this is revenant," said Sadie, "to casting a Pantalones charm."
"No?" said Duckham, raising only one eyebrow this time.
"Try it," Weedom barked, as he turned at the end of the room, "and see if we don't charge you for reckless spell-casting and endangering the" - he coughed - "buoyed politic."
"Change me?" Sadie snorted. "You? Who do you thick you are? This is a burial gown for expired froms and mementos, and you're nothing but grape diggers..."
"Since you bring that up," Duckham cut in, looking at Weedom, who nodded his assent. "There seems to be nothing for it but to turn you over to Mr. Graves."
For some reason, Sadie felt like making a gulping sound. Due to her misspelling problem, she said "Golf!" instead.
Weedom opened the door a crack and said to the wheezy giggling outside, "Send for Mr. Graves." The giggling stopped, this time before the door shut.
"I take it you know of Mr. Graves," said Duckham, who had continued to study Sadie's face throughout this exchange.
"I'm not sugar," said Sadie. "What deportment does he work for?"
Duckham shook his head as if in regret. "It were better to say: What department works for him?"
Already there came a soft knock at the door. Weedom opened it, admitting a man both strange and familiar to Sadie's eyes. Very tall, very thin, a bit gray at the temples, with small, even features and a looseness of gait that suggested very limber joints, he looked - Sadie realized with a stab of panic - like a middle-aged Chat Noir.
"Mr. Douglas Graves at your service," he said, offering his hand toward her.
Mesmerized, Sadie did not think what she was doing until he gave her hand back without the whistle that had been in it.
For a moment, Sadie felt horror and despair. Then the mysterious Mr. Graves winked at her, and she knew him at once to be the man she had last seen only hours ago, disguised as a Swiss Guard. She didn't have time to wonder whether this latest disguise revealed the true face of Joe Albuquerque or merely a man Joe had chosen to impersonate. She had only enough time to realize that whoever owned this face was probably Chat Noir's father, before Joe Albuquerque raised the whistle to his lips and blew.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #155 +++
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. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Who is Chat Noir's biological father? (A) Joe Albuquerque, who under all his disguises looks a lot like Mr. Graves. (B) The real Mr. Graves, who is Joe Albuquerque's secret nemesis. (C) A completely different person, related to Uncle or Aunt Leslie.
CONTEST: What happens when Joe blows the bone whistle?
Runner-up: Benjamin Ng
The hard-faced men in one of the more brutish, back offices of the Ministry of Magic had ways of making people talk. Or, given a suspect like Sadie, who had vast resources of shtumness to draw upon, they had ways of keeping people waiting.
Sadie began to sweat during her sixth hour in a row of holding her fists clenched. The ring of Count Matthias was in one hand. In her other fist was the bone whistle Joe Albuquerque had given her. Nothing could compel her to show either item to her interrogators. But they were equally determined to know what she knew.
She still hadn't had a moment of privacy in which to blow the whistle. She wondered whether she would, anyway. She wasn't exactly sure what would happen if she did.
For the eighteenth time since they rescued her from the footnotes of a self-updating report on the number of breeding pairs of augureys in Hertfordshire, the crack interrogators of the Office of Magical Documentation and Records swapped position - most likely a strategy to wrong-foot her. It hadn't worked six hours ago; far less would it work now that Sadie had gotten to know them so well. This time it was Duckham who walked out of the room, while Millbray stood up to pace and Weedom stepped in and took the seat Millbray had just vacated. If they kept this up, Sadie thought, she might pass out from dizziness.
"Are you ready to make a statement?" Weedom asked with a clipped voice and a tight-lipped, joyless smile. He regarded her with shooting-glass eyes and patted a roll of parchment spread open before her, its corners weighted down and a quill and inkwell standing nearby.
"I would like a drink of waiter," Sadie said quietly.
"I don't take your meaning," said Weedom, with the tiniest hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth.
"My meaning," said Sadie, "is as plan as the noise on your face."
Drat, she thought as she heard herself speak. Will that misspell never wear off?
"Are you feeling quite well?" Weedom asked with a fair semblance of concern.
"No," she said, digging her knuckles into her temples. "I feel a margarine headache coming on."
Weedom coughed, then replied in a strangled voice, "You might feel butter after a full confession." Behind him, Millbray sneezed loudly and retreated from the room. The door did not close quite fast enough to cover his explosive laughter.
"Have you always had this way with words?" Weedom asked sweetly.
"Only sincere I - oh, dart! - only since my little occident in your filling system." Sadie hoped he would conclude that she had fallen afoul of a poorly cast check-spell. She wasn't about to explain that she had been hexed by her pursuers, who seemed to have gotten away. The less these sad little men knew, the better for all concerned.
"And will you, at last, explain what you were doing there?"
"Just having a larch," she said, taking little care to rein in her sarcasm. "Nothing quilt like a stole down memory lance - particle when it belongs to the buoyed politic. We three-silkers are drowned to it like months to a flame."
Weedom held her with a level gaze for some moments, then shook his head. "No," he said. "I don't buy it." The truth is: he didn't understand a word of it.
"I wand my want back," Sadie blurted, unwittingly saying all the words she meant but not in the right order. "I have a sight to rend one Patronus - "
"Sister," said Weedom, "you won't want to risk casting advanced spells in your condition. The laws you've already violated are nothing compared to Spellman's 67th Essential Inference, and I quote: 'Chaotic cadences conjoined in casting contrapoise crossbinding cataplexes on sequentially staged spells...'"
"To say nothing of Tybalt's Second Law of Transfiguration," said Duckham, sidling into the room. A sound like whimpering laughter came in with him, cut off by the closing of the door. Weedom jumped up and dutifully began to pace while Duckham sat down.
"Wish is?" Sadie prompted.
Duckham raised his eyebrows with the self-righteous hauteur of one who has done his homework, and knows who hasn't. "When attempting to transfigure an object into something else whose name rhymes with the original object, the strength and permanence of the transfiguration are increased sevenfold. Corollary: If a spell goes off because of incorrect rhyme or fumbled delivery, the magical consequences are seven times as serious."
"Ridiculous," said Sadie, surprising herself with her perfect pronunciation. "Magic is beyond languish. (Oh, carp!) How does it master whether the spell rhythms or not?"
"It matters," said Duckham, as smugly as ever, "because the spell-caster thinks it matters. What is significant to the magic user is significant to the result."
"None of this is revenant," said Sadie, "to casting a Pantalones charm."
"No?" said Duckham, raising only one eyebrow this time.
"Try it," Weedom barked, as he turned at the end of the room, "and see if we don't charge you for reckless spell-casting and endangering the" - he coughed - "buoyed politic."
"Change me?" Sadie snorted. "You? Who do you thick you are? This is a burial gown for expired froms and mementos, and you're nothing but grape diggers..."
"Since you bring that up," Duckham cut in, looking at Weedom, who nodded his assent. "There seems to be nothing for it but to turn you over to Mr. Graves."
For some reason, Sadie felt like making a gulping sound. Due to her misspelling problem, she said "Golf!" instead.
Weedom opened the door a crack and said to the wheezy giggling outside, "Send for Mr. Graves." The giggling stopped, this time before the door shut.
"I take it you know of Mr. Graves," said Duckham, who had continued to study Sadie's face throughout this exchange.
"I'm not sugar," said Sadie. "What deportment does he work for?"
Duckham shook his head as if in regret. "It were better to say: What department works for him?"
Already there came a soft knock at the door. Weedom opened it, admitting a man both strange and familiar to Sadie's eyes. Very tall, very thin, a bit gray at the temples, with small, even features and a looseness of gait that suggested very limber joints, he looked - Sadie realized with a stab of panic - like a middle-aged Chat Noir.
"Mr. Douglas Graves at your service," he said, offering his hand toward her.
Mesmerized, Sadie did not think what she was doing until he gave her hand back without the whistle that had been in it.
For a moment, Sadie felt horror and despair. Then the mysterious Mr. Graves winked at her, and she knew him at once to be the man she had last seen only hours ago, disguised as a Swiss Guard. She didn't have time to wonder whether this latest disguise revealed the true face of Joe Albuquerque or merely a man Joe had chosen to impersonate. She had only enough time to realize that whoever owned this face was probably Chat Noir's father, before Joe Albuquerque raised the whistle to his lips and blew.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #155 +++
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. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Who is Chat Noir's biological father? (A) Joe Albuquerque, who under all his disguises looks a lot like Mr. Graves. (B) The real Mr. Graves, who is Joe Albuquerque's secret nemesis. (C) A completely different person, related to Uncle or Aunt Leslie.
CONTEST: What happens when Joe blows the bone whistle?
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
152. The Whispering Cloak
Contest winner: greyniffler
Runner-up: Rehannah
"Don't touch it! Everyone, back away carefully..."
In the infirmary at Isola Indietro, a clutch of teachers stopped squabbling and warily widened the gap between their feet and the crushed remnants of the falcon figurine. Two students remained on hospital beds, one of them staring fearfully over the edge of his sick-berth, the other lying still under a sheet. A portly, middle-aged man peeked around the edge of a nearby screen, giving free rein to his Quick Quotes Quill while, behind him, a younger man with a large, smoking camera jostled for a view. Only Ilona remained close to the fragments.
She pointed her wand at a small, gleaming object among the shards of hard-baked clay. As the wand tip lifted, so did the little bright thing, rising up off the floor until it hovered in front of Ilona's face, an arm's reach away.
Into the hush came a quick, stifled gasp. No one looked round to see who had done it. Everyone in the room felt the same way. For hundreds of years, the falcon figurine had been reckoned indestructible. But now it had shattered into hundreds of pieces. Who would have guessed that among them would be something like this?
It was made of smooth, clear crystal. It seemed to glow with a faint, inner light; or perhaps that was the effect of torchlight reflecting off countless tiny, glittering specks suspended within it. If it had any color at all, one might have called it golden; but again, that may have come from the torches. A weight of silence seemed to press down upon all who looked at it. If it was part of a statue, the whole must have been a marvel to behold. Though this small bit, by itself, might have looked ridiculous when made of any other material, no one grinned as the faculty, student, and guests realized what the object was shaped like. In sparkly crystal they beheld a perfectly formed, life-sized, human index finger.
"If that's a piece of a statue," whispered the Tummetot headmaster, "the whole must have been priceless beyond imagination."
"Don't be thick, Sandstad," his opposite number from Iphinassa barked. "We would know if there had ever been such a statue. No, this finger is what it is."
"But what is it?" breathed Isola Indietro's Quidditch instructor.
"It was one of a matched pair," Ilona replied.
"How do you know that?" Professor Sandstad snorted.
"Look there," said Ilona, gesturing with her free hand while holding the levitating finger at wandpoint. The others looked down and spotted tiny, gleaming fragments of crystal among the remains of the stone falcon.
"That could be anything," scoffed the Iphinassa head. "All the king's horses and all the king's men..."
"Bit small for all that, don't you think?" the lurking journalist blurted. Everyone but Ilona jerked around at the sound of his voice. Flushed with embarrassment, Bo Dwyer stepped out of his hiding place with his hands above his head. A moment later he reached back and yanked his photographer into view. "Sorry," he said. "Couldn't help but overhear..." He was careful to position his and his assistant's bodies so that the others did not see his Quick Quotes Quill scribbling on a roll of parchment.
Ilona threw him a tight smile and chirped, "Mr. Dwyer, how kind of you to join us!"
"There's a ring down there," said the less dead of the two students, who had continued to scrutinize the debris on the floor while the others argued. It was impossible to mistake what he said, because of his richly rolling r. Nevertheless, the Tummetot headmaster said, "A what?"
Ilona rolled her eyes, as if to say, Not another ring!
"Well spotted, Aris," said the Iphinassa head as he lunged forward to pick up the ring.
"Don't!" was all Ilona had time to say, but it made no difference. The Greek wizard came up holding the ring between his fingers, showing no signs of harm.
"That," Professor Sandstad said scathingly, "was brilliant even for you, Chiron."
"Thank you. Here's a surprise for you," the Iphinassa head said, squinting at the object in his hand. "The ring seems to be made of some type of hide, folded in on itself..."
"Like parchment?" Bo Dwyer suggested.
The Greek professor nodded. "Exactly." He began delicately prising the layers of parchment apart.
Ilona wanted to cover her eyes, sure that the man in front of her was about to be struck by a curse. Instead, she kept studying the fragments on the floor until she spotted what looked like a sliver of crystal fingernail. This confirmed her guess that there had originally been two fingers inside the figurine.
"Can you read it?" asked the teacher from Isola Indietro.
Chiron squinted at the unrolled slip of parchment, first with one eye, then with the other. Then he shook his head. "It is - how do you say? - all Greek to me."
Sandstad snatched the parchment from him, gave a disgusted noise, and handed it to the Italian witch, who also shook her head.
Ilona allowed herself a peek at the parchment, and was so surprised to see words written in her native Romanian that she forgot to keep the crystal finger levitating. Typically, Chiron lunged and caught it in time to stop it shattering on the floor.
"One of these days, you're going to regret that habit," Sandstad sneered.
Chiron gaped at him. "What did you say?"
"It wasn't a threat," the Tummetot head replied, exasperated. "I only meant that you shouldn't rush to touch things that may be..."
"I can't hear a word," Chiron interrupted. "Great Hecate! I can't hear my own voice! Help! I've been cursed!" His voice rising to a wail, he let the finger fall out of his hand. This time Ilona caught it with a ready levitation spell.
"Oh, that was close," said Bo Dwyer.
"Say again?" said the Greek wizard, his expression changing.
"You're a right twit, aren't you?" the journalist added.
"I heard that!" said Chiron. "I'm not deaf, you know! Wait... I'm not deaf! Hee hee!"
"Not cursed, then," mused the Italian Quidditch teacher.
"No," said Ilona. "The parchment explains that the fingers are given as ear-stoppers against a time when it becomes perilous to hear the words of men."
"Apparently," Sandstad observed, "One is enough."
"That is odd, though," said Ilona. "The instructions say you need one for each ear. Clearly, you needn't actually stick them in your ears..."
"Oh, but I've been deaf on the left side since I was a boy," Chiron said cheerfully. "Had a bit of an accident with my father's wand when I was too little to have my own."
"I see how well it taught you not to handle things you don't understand," Sandstad muttered.
"Just think," marveled the boy in the hospital bed, "how many centuries the Maltese have revered this stone bird, and all along it was just waiting for the right time to break open..."
"And reveal ear-stopping fingers," said Professor Sandstad, looking disgusted. "What a waste of time!"
Ilona, meanwhile, had plucked the finger out of the air. She looked at the others and said, "I can still hear you, but only out of my right ear."
"Hold it in your wand hand," the Italian witch suggested.
Ilona switched the finger to her right hand and said, "Somebody say something."
"I have a poster of your Magymnastics team in my dormitory," the injured student told her. "Would you sign it for me?"
"Wasn't that a bit before your time?" said Ilona, blushing slightly. "Oh! Now I'm deaf on the right side!"
"You see?" cried Chiron, as if this proved something he had asserted. "With only one finger intact, it is only useful to someone who has been deafened in one ear."
"If you're suggesting that this object rightfully belongs to you," said Professor Sandstad, "then let me remind you that a great deal of study remains..."
"I suppose you think, somehow, that you're best qualified to be the first to study it," Chiron blustered back.
"If by 'best qualified' you mean cleverer than yourself, then yes," Sandstad retorted. "Besides, it was my student who took the falcon, and sacrificed his life for it. Therefore, it comes to Tummetot."
"Are you deaf in one ear?" Chiron challenged.
Sandstad shrugged. "I'll study it while wearing my whispering cloak. Every headmaster at Tummetot has worn it since the 18th century. I use it to remind me of appointments and to give me directions for the shortest route from one classroom to another. Unfortunately it also has a way of criticizing one's spellwork and potion ingredients, which can be very..."
"I have no interest in capes that whisper in people's ears," the Greek wizard spat. "The fact that I own an air-cooled T-shirt does not make me best qualified to judge an ice sculpting contest. Your fashionable wardrobe is not the question. The question is whether this artifact had better be examined by someone who has made a career in wizard archaeology - which is to say, me - or by someone who cannot even find his way around his own school without..."
"The finger is in my custody," Ilona said in a soft but firm tone that instantly quelled the two headmasters' loud argument. They glared at her rebelliously, but said nothing. The RMB had jurisdiction in this incident, after all.
Ilona collected the other fragments in a leather pouch, tucking it into one pocket of her robes and the finger into another. "Other agents will come round to interview all of you in the morning. I'll be flying to Malta tonight. But first, may I have a private room and a few moments with Mr. Dwyer and his associate?"
The journalist looked nonplussed. The headmasters turned away grumbling. The young man in the bed furrowed his brow, wondering if he was going to get that autograph after all. "This way," said the Italian witch, leading Ilona out of the infirmary with Bo Dwyer and his photographer in tow.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #154 +++
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. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: What became of Sir Lionel Niblet? (A) He was kidnapped. (B) He survived a broom crash but was stranded in a remote, hard-to-reach part of the world. (C) He went into hiding. (D) He woke up in a strange place with no memory of who he was.
CONTEST: Describe a villainous way to use a specific magical creature.
Runner-up: Rehannah
"Don't touch it! Everyone, back away carefully..."
In the infirmary at Isola Indietro, a clutch of teachers stopped squabbling and warily widened the gap between their feet and the crushed remnants of the falcon figurine. Two students remained on hospital beds, one of them staring fearfully over the edge of his sick-berth, the other lying still under a sheet. A portly, middle-aged man peeked around the edge of a nearby screen, giving free rein to his Quick Quotes Quill while, behind him, a younger man with a large, smoking camera jostled for a view. Only Ilona remained close to the fragments.
She pointed her wand at a small, gleaming object among the shards of hard-baked clay. As the wand tip lifted, so did the little bright thing, rising up off the floor until it hovered in front of Ilona's face, an arm's reach away.
Into the hush came a quick, stifled gasp. No one looked round to see who had done it. Everyone in the room felt the same way. For hundreds of years, the falcon figurine had been reckoned indestructible. But now it had shattered into hundreds of pieces. Who would have guessed that among them would be something like this?
It was made of smooth, clear crystal. It seemed to glow with a faint, inner light; or perhaps that was the effect of torchlight reflecting off countless tiny, glittering specks suspended within it. If it had any color at all, one might have called it golden; but again, that may have come from the torches. A weight of silence seemed to press down upon all who looked at it. If it was part of a statue, the whole must have been a marvel to behold. Though this small bit, by itself, might have looked ridiculous when made of any other material, no one grinned as the faculty, student, and guests realized what the object was shaped like. In sparkly crystal they beheld a perfectly formed, life-sized, human index finger.
"If that's a piece of a statue," whispered the Tummetot headmaster, "the whole must have been priceless beyond imagination."
"Don't be thick, Sandstad," his opposite number from Iphinassa barked. "We would know if there had ever been such a statue. No, this finger is what it is."
"But what is it?" breathed Isola Indietro's Quidditch instructor.
"It was one of a matched pair," Ilona replied.
"How do you know that?" Professor Sandstad snorted.
"Look there," said Ilona, gesturing with her free hand while holding the levitating finger at wandpoint. The others looked down and spotted tiny, gleaming fragments of crystal among the remains of the stone falcon.
"That could be anything," scoffed the Iphinassa head. "All the king's horses and all the king's men..."
"Bit small for all that, don't you think?" the lurking journalist blurted. Everyone but Ilona jerked around at the sound of his voice. Flushed with embarrassment, Bo Dwyer stepped out of his hiding place with his hands above his head. A moment later he reached back and yanked his photographer into view. "Sorry," he said. "Couldn't help but overhear..." He was careful to position his and his assistant's bodies so that the others did not see his Quick Quotes Quill scribbling on a roll of parchment.
Ilona threw him a tight smile and chirped, "Mr. Dwyer, how kind of you to join us!"
"There's a ring down there," said the less dead of the two students, who had continued to scrutinize the debris on the floor while the others argued. It was impossible to mistake what he said, because of his richly rolling r. Nevertheless, the Tummetot headmaster said, "A what?"
Ilona rolled her eyes, as if to say, Not another ring!
"Well spotted, Aris," said the Iphinassa head as he lunged forward to pick up the ring.
"Don't!" was all Ilona had time to say, but it made no difference. The Greek wizard came up holding the ring between his fingers, showing no signs of harm.
"That," Professor Sandstad said scathingly, "was brilliant even for you, Chiron."
"Thank you. Here's a surprise for you," the Iphinassa head said, squinting at the object in his hand. "The ring seems to be made of some type of hide, folded in on itself..."
"Like parchment?" Bo Dwyer suggested.
The Greek professor nodded. "Exactly." He began delicately prising the layers of parchment apart.
Ilona wanted to cover her eyes, sure that the man in front of her was about to be struck by a curse. Instead, she kept studying the fragments on the floor until she spotted what looked like a sliver of crystal fingernail. This confirmed her guess that there had originally been two fingers inside the figurine.
"Can you read it?" asked the teacher from Isola Indietro.
Chiron squinted at the unrolled slip of parchment, first with one eye, then with the other. Then he shook his head. "It is - how do you say? - all Greek to me."
Sandstad snatched the parchment from him, gave a disgusted noise, and handed it to the Italian witch, who also shook her head.
Ilona allowed herself a peek at the parchment, and was so surprised to see words written in her native Romanian that she forgot to keep the crystal finger levitating. Typically, Chiron lunged and caught it in time to stop it shattering on the floor.
"One of these days, you're going to regret that habit," Sandstad sneered.
Chiron gaped at him. "What did you say?"
"It wasn't a threat," the Tummetot head replied, exasperated. "I only meant that you shouldn't rush to touch things that may be..."
"I can't hear a word," Chiron interrupted. "Great Hecate! I can't hear my own voice! Help! I've been cursed!" His voice rising to a wail, he let the finger fall out of his hand. This time Ilona caught it with a ready levitation spell.
"Oh, that was close," said Bo Dwyer.
"Say again?" said the Greek wizard, his expression changing.
"You're a right twit, aren't you?" the journalist added.
"I heard that!" said Chiron. "I'm not deaf, you know! Wait... I'm not deaf! Hee hee!"
"Not cursed, then," mused the Italian Quidditch teacher.
"No," said Ilona. "The parchment explains that the fingers are given as ear-stoppers against a time when it becomes perilous to hear the words of men."
"Apparently," Sandstad observed, "One is enough."
"That is odd, though," said Ilona. "The instructions say you need one for each ear. Clearly, you needn't actually stick them in your ears..."
"Oh, but I've been deaf on the left side since I was a boy," Chiron said cheerfully. "Had a bit of an accident with my father's wand when I was too little to have my own."
"I see how well it taught you not to handle things you don't understand," Sandstad muttered.
"Just think," marveled the boy in the hospital bed, "how many centuries the Maltese have revered this stone bird, and all along it was just waiting for the right time to break open..."
"And reveal ear-stopping fingers," said Professor Sandstad, looking disgusted. "What a waste of time!"
Ilona, meanwhile, had plucked the finger out of the air. She looked at the others and said, "I can still hear you, but only out of my right ear."
"Hold it in your wand hand," the Italian witch suggested.
Ilona switched the finger to her right hand and said, "Somebody say something."
"I have a poster of your Magymnastics team in my dormitory," the injured student told her. "Would you sign it for me?"
"Wasn't that a bit before your time?" said Ilona, blushing slightly. "Oh! Now I'm deaf on the right side!"
"You see?" cried Chiron, as if this proved something he had asserted. "With only one finger intact, it is only useful to someone who has been deafened in one ear."
"If you're suggesting that this object rightfully belongs to you," said Professor Sandstad, "then let me remind you that a great deal of study remains..."
"I suppose you think, somehow, that you're best qualified to be the first to study it," Chiron blustered back.
"If by 'best qualified' you mean cleverer than yourself, then yes," Sandstad retorted. "Besides, it was my student who took the falcon, and sacrificed his life for it. Therefore, it comes to Tummetot."
"Are you deaf in one ear?" Chiron challenged.
Sandstad shrugged. "I'll study it while wearing my whispering cloak. Every headmaster at Tummetot has worn it since the 18th century. I use it to remind me of appointments and to give me directions for the shortest route from one classroom to another. Unfortunately it also has a way of criticizing one's spellwork and potion ingredients, which can be very..."
"I have no interest in capes that whisper in people's ears," the Greek wizard spat. "The fact that I own an air-cooled T-shirt does not make me best qualified to judge an ice sculpting contest. Your fashionable wardrobe is not the question. The question is whether this artifact had better be examined by someone who has made a career in wizard archaeology - which is to say, me - or by someone who cannot even find his way around his own school without..."
"The finger is in my custody," Ilona said in a soft but firm tone that instantly quelled the two headmasters' loud argument. They glared at her rebelliously, but said nothing. The RMB had jurisdiction in this incident, after all.
Ilona collected the other fragments in a leather pouch, tucking it into one pocket of her robes and the finger into another. "Other agents will come round to interview all of you in the morning. I'll be flying to Malta tonight. But first, may I have a private room and a few moments with Mr. Dwyer and his associate?"
The journalist looked nonplussed. The headmasters turned away grumbling. The young man in the bed furrowed his brow, wondering if he was going to get that autograph after all. "This way," said the Italian witch, leading Ilona out of the infirmary with Bo Dwyer and his photographer in tow.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #154 +++
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. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: What became of Sir Lionel Niblet? (A) He was kidnapped. (B) He survived a broom crash but was stranded in a remote, hard-to-reach part of the world. (C) He went into hiding. (D) He woke up in a strange place with no memory of who he was.
CONTEST: Describe a villainous way to use a specific magical creature.
Monday, February 9, 2009
151. The Knock-Knock Joke of Doom
Contest winner: TWZRD
Runner-up: greyniffler
Merlin and Miss Pucey watched the water on the steps after Rigel swam away. When it had grown quite calm, Merlin smiled thinly and said, "Well, Miss Pucey, we'll want to make the best of our lad's diversion and move on before the merhags come back."
"That sounds very well," said the pretty young witch, "but I don't see a door."
"It will be well concealed," Merlin admitted. He laid his lit wand on the palm of his hand and said, "Point me." The wand spun of its own accord. It came to rest pointing back over Merlin's left shoulder. As he turned to face that direction, the wand continued to point toward the same featureless wall. "I reckon it's this way," he said, trying to sound confident about it.
"North?" said the witch. "What makes you think the door is on the north side of the vault?"
"I don't," said Merlin. "This is a special wand, made by a friend of mine. The troll nose-hair core makes it point the way out of any place underground."
"Hmmm," said Miss Pucey. "I suppose it's as my mother always says."
"What is?"
"You can pick your friends. Your friends can pick trolls' noses. But you may not want to share a basket of popcorn with them."
"Your mother must have prepared you for anything," Merlin murmured as the they approached the bit of wall indicated by the wand. As he moved to and fro along the wall, the wand shifted on his palm. He raised it, lowered it, watched what the wand-tip did, and soon made a "Hmmm" sound of his own.
"Did you think of something your mother said?" Miss Pucey asked demurely.
"No," said Merlin, "but our exit seems to be more of a window than a door." He set his bag down and pressed his free hand against the wall and slid it toward the area indicated by the wand. He almost fell forward when the solid wall gave way to blank space.
"What is it?" Miss Pucey whispered. "A magic wall? An illusion?"
"Something like that," said Merlin. He felt around the edges of the unseen window, then started to climb through.
Miss Pucey gripped his elbow, holding him back. "Are you sure about this?"
"It's that or a long swim through a merhag colony," said Merlin.
She released his elbow. Merlin shoved his bag through the window, then climbed in after it. The wall remained seemingly solid, so that he seemed to be disappearing through solid stone. At last only his wrist and empty hand remained on Miss Pucey's side of the window. It beckoned to her. She gripped it and plunged through the wall head-first.
Merlin pulled her into a narrow chamber and helped her regain her feet. Once again, they seemed to be surrounded by unbroken stone. The wand now pointed toward the far end of the chamber, only a dozen strides away. At the top of a short staircase was a door, only vaguely disguised as a stone wall. It had a definite door shape, and a kind of knocker at Merlin's waist level, but no knob. Clearly it had not been designed by or for humans.
Merlin reached toward the knocker, then hesitated before his fingers touched it. It had the appearance of an ugly face, scowling malevolently at them. The hinged part hung below its nose, curving downward at the ends like a pair of thick, frowning lips.
"Not very welcoming," said Miss Pucey, staring at the knocker over Merlin's shoulder. She pointed her wand under his arm and added, "Fovea Revelio."
Nothing happened.
"Nothing happened," Merlin observed.
"It isn't a trap, then," said Miss Pucey. "Give it a knock."
"I hope you're right," said Merlin. He grasped the scowling face's lips and tried to prise them loose, but they wouldn't budge.
"Bit rusty?" Miss Pucey asked.
"I'd say it's all one piece," said Merlin.
For a moment, Miss Pucey's frown mirrored that on the supposed knocker. Then she pointed her wand again and muttered, "Techna Revelio."
The next moment, the face on the knocker came to life. The lips parted, and in a voice like the shriek of a rusty hinge they said: "Turn a frown upside-down." Then it clammed up.
The wizard looked at the witch. The witch looked at the wizard.
"Maybe it's a doorknob after all," Miss Pucey suggested. "Shall we try turning it?"
Merlin tried turning the knocker with no success. "Any other suggestions?"
"Unless you feel like standing on your head," she said, "I'm out of ideas."
The knocker snorted.
Miss Pucey gave Merlin a wounded look. "This is no time for levity, sir."
"I know," said Merlin, privately wondering how Rigel had managed to turn out the way he had with such a battle-axe dangling over him. "It wasn't me. It was the gargoyle."
For a long while they stood on the steps, quietly considering what to do next. Then Merlin squeezed past Miss Pucey and knelt down to rummage through the satchel he had brought with him. He was sure there must be something in his sack of tricks, something that could get them through this - until a rusty snicker brought him up short.
He shot a glare over his shoulder. The knocker scowled as evilly as ever.
"It has a sense of humor," Miss Pucey observed.
Merlin's rummaging hands became still. "Turn a frown upside down," he mused.
"Eh?"
He marched up to the door again, satchel in one hand and wand in the other. "Knock, knock," he said in a false, singsong voice.
The iron lips parted just enough to retort, "Who's there?"
"Caldron."
"Caldron who?" grated the horrible knocker.
"Caldron this time yesterday," Merlin replied archly, "but you weren't in."
The knocker seemed to contemplate this remark for a split second. Then it stuck its tongue out and made a rude noise.
"It didn't seem to like that one," said Miss Pucey.
Merlin rolled his eyes. He scratched his scalp with the nub of his wand. Then he squared his shoulders and said, once more: "Knock, knock."
The knocker managed to pout even more as it scraped out the words, "Who's there?"
"Yer wand."
"Yer wand who?"
"Yer wand better manners, yer lout."
A corner of the knocker's grotesque lips twitched for half an instant. Then it resumed its studied frown.
"We'll starve to death in here at this rate," Miss Pucey fretted.
Merlin raised his eyebrows at her. "Can you do better?"
"Knock, knock," she said at once, looking him in the eyes.
"Who's there?" snapped the face on the door.
"House-elf."
"House-elf who?"
"House-elfish of you to keep us standing out here all this time!"
The knocker's frown suddenly became a grin. It even gave a raspy chuckle.
"Quickly!" Miss Pucey hissed.
Merlin hooked the bottom of the iron smile with two fingers and pulled. The center of the smile parted from the face. He gave two knocks with it that seemed to be swallowed up by solid stone. It seemed impossible that anyone could have heard it from even a few feet away.
The scowl returned to the knocker's face.
"Now what?" Miss Pucey asked.
"I'm open to suggestions," Merlin replied.
"Do that point-me thing again," Miss Pucey prompted.
Before he could position his wand on the palm of his hand, however, the stone wall at the top of the steps began to slide away from them with a terrible grinding noise that filled their small chamber. They covered their ears and looked at each other with watering eyes. It only lasted for a moment before the movement stopped, and the noise with it.
Merlin looked up. The front wall of the chamber had receded just enough to allow them to sidle around it. There seemed to be open space on both sides of it.
"After you," he said.
Holding their lit wands ahead of them, Miss Pucey ducked to the left of the wall, Merlin to the right. Scarcely had he tugged his satchel out of the way before the wall slammed back into place, leaving the chamber in total darkness.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #153 +++
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. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: After being trapped in Lysippus Bean's departmental memo, Sadie finds herself held at the Ministry of Magic under arrest. What happens next? (A) She withstands interrogation while planning her own escape. (B) Joe Albuquerque swoops in (disguised, of course) and springs her from custody. (C) Chat Noir swoops in (pretending to be Joe) and captures her.
CONTEST: Propose a law or basic principle of magic, complete with a whimsical name, such as Tybalt's Second Law of Transfiguration, or the Principle of the Conservation of Ectoplasm, etc. Briefly explain what it says. Creative nonsense will be accepted!
Runner-up: greyniffler
Merlin and Miss Pucey watched the water on the steps after Rigel swam away. When it had grown quite calm, Merlin smiled thinly and said, "Well, Miss Pucey, we'll want to make the best of our lad's diversion and move on before the merhags come back."
"That sounds very well," said the pretty young witch, "but I don't see a door."
"It will be well concealed," Merlin admitted. He laid his lit wand on the palm of his hand and said, "Point me." The wand spun of its own accord. It came to rest pointing back over Merlin's left shoulder. As he turned to face that direction, the wand continued to point toward the same featureless wall. "I reckon it's this way," he said, trying to sound confident about it.
"North?" said the witch. "What makes you think the door is on the north side of the vault?"
"I don't," said Merlin. "This is a special wand, made by a friend of mine. The troll nose-hair core makes it point the way out of any place underground."
"Hmmm," said Miss Pucey. "I suppose it's as my mother always says."
"What is?"
"You can pick your friends. Your friends can pick trolls' noses. But you may not want to share a basket of popcorn with them."
"Your mother must have prepared you for anything," Merlin murmured as the they approached the bit of wall indicated by the wand. As he moved to and fro along the wall, the wand shifted on his palm. He raised it, lowered it, watched what the wand-tip did, and soon made a "Hmmm" sound of his own.
"Did you think of something your mother said?" Miss Pucey asked demurely.
"No," said Merlin, "but our exit seems to be more of a window than a door." He set his bag down and pressed his free hand against the wall and slid it toward the area indicated by the wand. He almost fell forward when the solid wall gave way to blank space.
"What is it?" Miss Pucey whispered. "A magic wall? An illusion?"
"Something like that," said Merlin. He felt around the edges of the unseen window, then started to climb through.
Miss Pucey gripped his elbow, holding him back. "Are you sure about this?"
"It's that or a long swim through a merhag colony," said Merlin.
She released his elbow. Merlin shoved his bag through the window, then climbed in after it. The wall remained seemingly solid, so that he seemed to be disappearing through solid stone. At last only his wrist and empty hand remained on Miss Pucey's side of the window. It beckoned to her. She gripped it and plunged through the wall head-first.
Merlin pulled her into a narrow chamber and helped her regain her feet. Once again, they seemed to be surrounded by unbroken stone. The wand now pointed toward the far end of the chamber, only a dozen strides away. At the top of a short staircase was a door, only vaguely disguised as a stone wall. It had a definite door shape, and a kind of knocker at Merlin's waist level, but no knob. Clearly it had not been designed by or for humans.
Merlin reached toward the knocker, then hesitated before his fingers touched it. It had the appearance of an ugly face, scowling malevolently at them. The hinged part hung below its nose, curving downward at the ends like a pair of thick, frowning lips.
"Not very welcoming," said Miss Pucey, staring at the knocker over Merlin's shoulder. She pointed her wand under his arm and added, "Fovea Revelio."
Nothing happened.
"Nothing happened," Merlin observed.
"It isn't a trap, then," said Miss Pucey. "Give it a knock."
"I hope you're right," said Merlin. He grasped the scowling face's lips and tried to prise them loose, but they wouldn't budge.
"Bit rusty?" Miss Pucey asked.
"I'd say it's all one piece," said Merlin.
For a moment, Miss Pucey's frown mirrored that on the supposed knocker. Then she pointed her wand again and muttered, "Techna Revelio."
The next moment, the face on the knocker came to life. The lips parted, and in a voice like the shriek of a rusty hinge they said: "Turn a frown upside-down." Then it clammed up.
The wizard looked at the witch. The witch looked at the wizard.
"Maybe it's a doorknob after all," Miss Pucey suggested. "Shall we try turning it?"
Merlin tried turning the knocker with no success. "Any other suggestions?"
"Unless you feel like standing on your head," she said, "I'm out of ideas."
The knocker snorted.
Miss Pucey gave Merlin a wounded look. "This is no time for levity, sir."
"I know," said Merlin, privately wondering how Rigel had managed to turn out the way he had with such a battle-axe dangling over him. "It wasn't me. It was the gargoyle."
For a long while they stood on the steps, quietly considering what to do next. Then Merlin squeezed past Miss Pucey and knelt down to rummage through the satchel he had brought with him. He was sure there must be something in his sack of tricks, something that could get them through this - until a rusty snicker brought him up short.
He shot a glare over his shoulder. The knocker scowled as evilly as ever.
"It has a sense of humor," Miss Pucey observed.
Merlin's rummaging hands became still. "Turn a frown upside down," he mused.
"Eh?"
He marched up to the door again, satchel in one hand and wand in the other. "Knock, knock," he said in a false, singsong voice.
The iron lips parted just enough to retort, "Who's there?"
"Caldron."
"Caldron who?" grated the horrible knocker.
"Caldron this time yesterday," Merlin replied archly, "but you weren't in."
The knocker seemed to contemplate this remark for a split second. Then it stuck its tongue out and made a rude noise.
"It didn't seem to like that one," said Miss Pucey.
Merlin rolled his eyes. He scratched his scalp with the nub of his wand. Then he squared his shoulders and said, once more: "Knock, knock."
The knocker managed to pout even more as it scraped out the words, "Who's there?"
"Yer wand."
"Yer wand who?"
"Yer wand better manners, yer lout."
A corner of the knocker's grotesque lips twitched for half an instant. Then it resumed its studied frown.
"We'll starve to death in here at this rate," Miss Pucey fretted.
Merlin raised his eyebrows at her. "Can you do better?"
"Knock, knock," she said at once, looking him in the eyes.
"Who's there?" snapped the face on the door.
"House-elf."
"House-elf who?"
"House-elfish of you to keep us standing out here all this time!"
The knocker's frown suddenly became a grin. It even gave a raspy chuckle.
"Quickly!" Miss Pucey hissed.
Merlin hooked the bottom of the iron smile with two fingers and pulled. The center of the smile parted from the face. He gave two knocks with it that seemed to be swallowed up by solid stone. It seemed impossible that anyone could have heard it from even a few feet away.
The scowl returned to the knocker's face.
"Now what?" Miss Pucey asked.
"I'm open to suggestions," Merlin replied.
"Do that point-me thing again," Miss Pucey prompted.
Before he could position his wand on the palm of his hand, however, the stone wall at the top of the steps began to slide away from them with a terrible grinding noise that filled their small chamber. They covered their ears and looked at each other with watering eyes. It only lasted for a moment before the movement stopped, and the noise with it.
Merlin looked up. The front wall of the chamber had receded just enough to allow them to sidle around it. There seemed to be open space on both sides of it.
"After you," he said.
Holding their lit wands ahead of them, Miss Pucey ducked to the left of the wall, Merlin to the right. Scarcely had he tugged his satchel out of the way before the wall slammed back into place, leaving the chamber in total darkness.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #153 +++
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. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: After being trapped in Lysippus Bean's departmental memo, Sadie finds herself held at the Ministry of Magic under arrest. What happens next? (A) She withstands interrogation while planning her own escape. (B) Joe Albuquerque swoops in (disguised, of course) and springs her from custody. (C) Chat Noir swoops in (pretending to be Joe) and captures her.
CONTEST: Propose a law or basic principle of magic, complete with a whimsical name, such as Tybalt's Second Law of Transfiguration, or the Principle of the Conservation of Ectoplasm, etc. Briefly explain what it says. Creative nonsense will be accepted!
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