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.
Showing posts with label Bette Noir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bette Noir. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Saturday, December 27, 2008
136. Fistley Confunded
Contest winner: Dragonic
Titus Fistley lay giggling on the floor of his cubicle, surrounded by laughodil bushes. As his mirth subsided, he lifted a leaf on a nearby plant and read aloud from its underside: "Question: How many Dark Lords does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: Three - one to try and do it with his best curse, and be stopped by an infant; one to try and do it by possessing a willing minion, and be stopped by an adolescent; and a third to take matters into his own hands and screw in the lightbulb . . . which then falls out and steals his wand! Ah, ha ha ha ha ha!" Tears ran down his face.
By this time of night, faces had stopped appearing in the doorway, looking in on his breathless laughter with a mixture of concern and revulsion. The wall torches had dimmed, and the hovering light-bulb plants had drifted off to some shady corner to rest. There was barely enough light left for him to read by. So when an owl flew into the cubicle and perched on the corner of his desk, Fistley did not see it. And since, at that moment, he was laughing at a series of uproarious knock-knock jokes about the Hogwarts Houses, he did not hear its wings flapping either. So he was quite startled - in truth, he screamed a bit - when the bird pecked his elbow.
Fistley took the letter proffered by the owl and squinted at the elaborate wafer seal on it. It seemed a pity to break it, but as he was too tired to charm it off, Fistley bit through it and spat out the wax over his shoulder. The moment he opened the letter, however, his moist, puffy eyes went blank. He read aloud his instructions from Lee Shore, esq., in a voice as glazed as his eyes. Then, after murmuring "We hear and obey," he chewed up the letter and swallowed it.
He moved like a sleepwalker through the vast labyrinth of the Abraculture Office, gliding effortlessly around obstructions while staring straight ahead. The olives on a seeing-eye olive tree turned to follow him as he passed. An elephant ear plant (which remembered every word ever spoken to it) perked up at the sound of his footsteps. Orchids sniffed at the hem of his robe, and some Mexican jumping beans went very still as he passed the bush on which they lived. Triffids, Devil's Snare, and Malagasy man-eating trees jerked against the stakes that held them firmly in their soil. Cattails hissed, dogwood blossoms whimpered, and a horse-chestnut tree whinnied softly.
Titus Fistley floated deeper and deeper into the maze of planters, terraria, digging tools, and sacks of fertilizer until he came to a region of barrels, hogsheads, butts, and firkins, stacked in long shelves. These contained spirits and extract distilled from the myriad herbs and fruits catalogued by the office. Here casks of cow-parsley cordial ruminated contentedly; essence of milkweed curdled as it aged; jars of buttercup ghee glowed with purity; a barrel of mead, inadvertently left open, provided the ministry's bee population (which worked to keep the plants pollinated) with an opportunity for a loud, drunken party; and in one grossly ill-judged experiment, a cask of guevara - a blend of Cuban rum and guava brandy - bubbled quietly, fermenting rebellion.
Still deeper Fistley drifted, his feet barely touching the ground. He passed, without hesitation, through the illusion of a solid, stone wall that had been charmed to feel solid to all visitors but those with a high security rating. With a single touch, he opened the door of a vault that was only supposed to admit people of Deputy Minister rank or higher. He passed numerous top-secret liquors, and vials containing the last residue of priceless and irreplaceable potions, heading directly for a dank and gloomy stairway - which he began to descend, unconcerned by the fact that it was booby-trapped to drop anyone without a special warrant from the Queen directly into a deep, dark dungeon. He flicked aside spectral signs (modeled after will-o-the-wisps) that warned about the approaching danger of hazardous substances.
In some corner of his mind he knew what was down here. Here were acids that could eat through any substance known to man; since only a substance unknown to man could hold them, it was imperative that no one ever visit them and find out what it was. There were sneezing powders that could make a man's head explode; lotions that could make a woman so repulsive that the sight of her was fatal; a salve that, if poured into one's eyes, would result in maddening visions; a flatulence cure that had been recalled after turning several users into human weather balloons; and a vaccine against deception, which had the side effect of destroying a person's imagination. There was even a balm for unhappiness there, but no one remembered what disastrous results it caused; it had always been considered too horrible to discuss. But at the very back of the cellar were a number of bricked-in vaults. The next-to-last one - beside a vault filled with clumsy masonry and decorated with the graffito "Fortunato wuz heer" - was guarded by a last will-o-the-wisp warning sign: "DANGER: NAPPLE CIDER - HIGHLY TOXIC."
Fistley touched the brick wall with one finger, and it collapsed in a pile of dust around his feet. Within the vault was a stack of firkins - 70 imperial gallons, each - covered in a coating of dust. He coughed slightly, and for a moment almost emerged from his trance, if the brief look of confusion in his eyes could be taken so far. But his eyes glazed over again, and he pointed an ink-stained finger at the nearest barrel. It lifted itself off its shelf and levitated out of the vault, following its mesmerized master up out of the cellar and back through all the stacks and storehouses of the Abraculture office.
All was still and dim when he arrived in the hooper's shop. The jumping juniper cask was easy to discover by the way it incessantly rolled from side to side. Fistley gave a flick of his wrist, and the bung flew out of the napple cider barrel. A funnel levitated over the hole in the waiting juniper cask, which trembled but otherwise held still while it was being filled. The latter was only a hogshead, somewhat over fifty gallons' capacity; so not all of the contents of the firkin went into it. When the hogshead was full, Fistley stoppered it, and vanished the firkin with its remaining contents.
The jumping juniper barrel was soon rocking back and forth on the bed of a levitating, zero-wheeled cart, which he effortlessly towed to an enormous, freight-sized fireplace. A fistful of Floo Powder ignited green flames in the hearth, and Fistley guided the cart and the hogshead into them . . . and then out of a similar fireplace in a cavern bustling with heavily laden goblins.
"State your business, please," growled a particularly hideous specimen with a squashed nose.
"Take this to Vault 1036," Fistley said blankly.
"Very well," said the goblin, after consulting a clipboard. "Have a pleasant day. Now shove off."
As soon as Fistley had shoved off (taking the cart with him), the squashed-nose goblin screeched at a goblin with cauliflower ears. Cauliflower Ears rolled the hogshead barrel to a nearby rail platform and, with the help of two other goblins and an enormous prybar, managed to wedge it into a large ore cart. The three goblins - Cauliflower Ears, Wrong-Way Elbows, and Braided Eyebrows - steered the cart to Vault 1036, where they deposited the barrel.
As soon as the vault door slammed, a sack of money in the corner lifted, then fell aside, proving not to be a sack at all, but an artfully designed wizard's robe. A wizard stood up in it, looking so like Thierry Henry that it could have been no one but Joe Albuquerque. From the shadow behind him emerged a stiff and groaning Sadie, still in her veil and black leotard.
"There's the delivery we expected," Joe said grimly, pacing around the enormous barrel, which even now was rocking from side to side, stirring its contents.
"I wonder what's in it," Sadie yawned.
"Whatever it is," said Joe, "she won't be long in coming to get it. Then, perhaps, I will believe" - his voice faltered - "believe Bette Noir is alive."
Sadie touched Joe's arm gently. "You never expected that you would see her again," she whispered.
Joe's face, or rather Thierry's, darkened. "Neither," he murmured, "does she."
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE +++
Help decide the shape of The Magic Quill's plot line! All you have to do is visit the forum and leave a brief comment with your answers to this week's survey and challenge. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: From page 2 of the record-shattering discussion on TMQ #133, which of the following idea(s) would you like to see in Chapter 138? (Please, vote for only 2 or 3 ideas at most!).
[Originally posted 5/4/08]
Titus Fistley lay giggling on the floor of his cubicle, surrounded by laughodil bushes. As his mirth subsided, he lifted a leaf on a nearby plant and read aloud from its underside: "Question: How many Dark Lords does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: Three - one to try and do it with his best curse, and be stopped by an infant; one to try and do it by possessing a willing minion, and be stopped by an adolescent; and a third to take matters into his own hands and screw in the lightbulb . . . which then falls out and steals his wand! Ah, ha ha ha ha ha!" Tears ran down his face.
By this time of night, faces had stopped appearing in the doorway, looking in on his breathless laughter with a mixture of concern and revulsion. The wall torches had dimmed, and the hovering light-bulb plants had drifted off to some shady corner to rest. There was barely enough light left for him to read by. So when an owl flew into the cubicle and perched on the corner of his desk, Fistley did not see it. And since, at that moment, he was laughing at a series of uproarious knock-knock jokes about the Hogwarts Houses, he did not hear its wings flapping either. So he was quite startled - in truth, he screamed a bit - when the bird pecked his elbow.
Fistley took the letter proffered by the owl and squinted at the elaborate wafer seal on it. It seemed a pity to break it, but as he was too tired to charm it off, Fistley bit through it and spat out the wax over his shoulder. The moment he opened the letter, however, his moist, puffy eyes went blank. He read aloud his instructions from Lee Shore, esq., in a voice as glazed as his eyes. Then, after murmuring "We hear and obey," he chewed up the letter and swallowed it.
He moved like a sleepwalker through the vast labyrinth of the Abraculture Office, gliding effortlessly around obstructions while staring straight ahead. The olives on a seeing-eye olive tree turned to follow him as he passed. An elephant ear plant (which remembered every word ever spoken to it) perked up at the sound of his footsteps. Orchids sniffed at the hem of his robe, and some Mexican jumping beans went very still as he passed the bush on which they lived. Triffids, Devil's Snare, and Malagasy man-eating trees jerked against the stakes that held them firmly in their soil. Cattails hissed, dogwood blossoms whimpered, and a horse-chestnut tree whinnied softly.
Titus Fistley floated deeper and deeper into the maze of planters, terraria, digging tools, and sacks of fertilizer until he came to a region of barrels, hogsheads, butts, and firkins, stacked in long shelves. These contained spirits and extract distilled from the myriad herbs and fruits catalogued by the office. Here casks of cow-parsley cordial ruminated contentedly; essence of milkweed curdled as it aged; jars of buttercup ghee glowed with purity; a barrel of mead, inadvertently left open, provided the ministry's bee population (which worked to keep the plants pollinated) with an opportunity for a loud, drunken party; and in one grossly ill-judged experiment, a cask of guevara - a blend of Cuban rum and guava brandy - bubbled quietly, fermenting rebellion.
Still deeper Fistley drifted, his feet barely touching the ground. He passed, without hesitation, through the illusion of a solid, stone wall that had been charmed to feel solid to all visitors but those with a high security rating. With a single touch, he opened the door of a vault that was only supposed to admit people of Deputy Minister rank or higher. He passed numerous top-secret liquors, and vials containing the last residue of priceless and irreplaceable potions, heading directly for a dank and gloomy stairway - which he began to descend, unconcerned by the fact that it was booby-trapped to drop anyone without a special warrant from the Queen directly into a deep, dark dungeon. He flicked aside spectral signs (modeled after will-o-the-wisps) that warned about the approaching danger of hazardous substances.
In some corner of his mind he knew what was down here. Here were acids that could eat through any substance known to man; since only a substance unknown to man could hold them, it was imperative that no one ever visit them and find out what it was. There were sneezing powders that could make a man's head explode; lotions that could make a woman so repulsive that the sight of her was fatal; a salve that, if poured into one's eyes, would result in maddening visions; a flatulence cure that had been recalled after turning several users into human weather balloons; and a vaccine against deception, which had the side effect of destroying a person's imagination. There was even a balm for unhappiness there, but no one remembered what disastrous results it caused; it had always been considered too horrible to discuss. But at the very back of the cellar were a number of bricked-in vaults. The next-to-last one - beside a vault filled with clumsy masonry and decorated with the graffito "Fortunato wuz heer" - was guarded by a last will-o-the-wisp warning sign: "DANGER: NAPPLE CIDER - HIGHLY TOXIC."
Fistley touched the brick wall with one finger, and it collapsed in a pile of dust around his feet. Within the vault was a stack of firkins - 70 imperial gallons, each - covered in a coating of dust. He coughed slightly, and for a moment almost emerged from his trance, if the brief look of confusion in his eyes could be taken so far. But his eyes glazed over again, and he pointed an ink-stained finger at the nearest barrel. It lifted itself off its shelf and levitated out of the vault, following its mesmerized master up out of the cellar and back through all the stacks and storehouses of the Abraculture office.
All was still and dim when he arrived in the hooper's shop. The jumping juniper cask was easy to discover by the way it incessantly rolled from side to side. Fistley gave a flick of his wrist, and the bung flew out of the napple cider barrel. A funnel levitated over the hole in the waiting juniper cask, which trembled but otherwise held still while it was being filled. The latter was only a hogshead, somewhat over fifty gallons' capacity; so not all of the contents of the firkin went into it. When the hogshead was full, Fistley stoppered it, and vanished the firkin with its remaining contents.
The jumping juniper barrel was soon rocking back and forth on the bed of a levitating, zero-wheeled cart, which he effortlessly towed to an enormous, freight-sized fireplace. A fistful of Floo Powder ignited green flames in the hearth, and Fistley guided the cart and the hogshead into them . . . and then out of a similar fireplace in a cavern bustling with heavily laden goblins.
"State your business, please," growled a particularly hideous specimen with a squashed nose.
"Take this to Vault 1036," Fistley said blankly.
"Very well," said the goblin, after consulting a clipboard. "Have a pleasant day. Now shove off."
As soon as Fistley had shoved off (taking the cart with him), the squashed-nose goblin screeched at a goblin with cauliflower ears. Cauliflower Ears rolled the hogshead barrel to a nearby rail platform and, with the help of two other goblins and an enormous prybar, managed to wedge it into a large ore cart. The three goblins - Cauliflower Ears, Wrong-Way Elbows, and Braided Eyebrows - steered the cart to Vault 1036, where they deposited the barrel.
As soon as the vault door slammed, a sack of money in the corner lifted, then fell aside, proving not to be a sack at all, but an artfully designed wizard's robe. A wizard stood up in it, looking so like Thierry Henry that it could have been no one but Joe Albuquerque. From the shadow behind him emerged a stiff and groaning Sadie, still in her veil and black leotard.
"There's the delivery we expected," Joe said grimly, pacing around the enormous barrel, which even now was rocking from side to side, stirring its contents.
"I wonder what's in it," Sadie yawned.
"Whatever it is," said Joe, "she won't be long in coming to get it. Then, perhaps, I will believe" - his voice faltered - "believe Bette Noir is alive."
Sadie touched Joe's arm gently. "You never expected that you would see her again," she whispered.
Joe's face, or rather Thierry's, darkened. "Neither," he murmured, "does she."
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE +++
Help decide the shape of The Magic Quill's plot line! All you have to do is visit the forum and leave a brief comment with your answers to this week's survey and challenge. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: From page 2 of the record-shattering discussion on TMQ #133, which of the following idea(s) would you like to see in Chapter 138? (Please, vote for only 2 or 3 ideas at most!).
- A: Harvey meets Yevrah, his evil double from a backwards, bizarro-universe.
- B: Yldemhs (Bizarro-Shmedly) visits our universe.
- C: Gratefruits are used to counteract napple toxin. (Note: Someone please remind me what previous chapter they were in!).
- D: Rashrooms (mushrooms that make you feel reckless).
- E: Beet-ems (vegetables that beat anyone who trys to eat/touch them).
- F: Leekys (Leeks that give the eater an irresitable urge to go to The Leaky Cauldron).
- G: Feral Root/Kennel Root (Fenel roots that make the eater wild).
- H: Slow-Dates (Dates that when consumed, make everything seem slower).
- I: We meet the original Merlin as a child, only beginning his long career of living backward through time.
J: Shout-kraut (a screaming cabbage). - K: Wrestle Sprouts / Rassle Sprouts (help me with this one).
- L: Self-pitting olives.
- M: Self-spitting (self-seeding) watermelons.
- N: Collared greens (veggies that help you arrest someone).
- O: Plants growing out of control due to an out-of-control acceleration spell.
[Originally posted 5/4/08]
Friday, December 19, 2008
18. The Double-Barreled Wizard, Part 5
Concepts contributed by: Jessica Parker, Aidan Raelyn, Jamie Peters, Armand, "Angelbot" & Leanne
Spanky found Sadie at dusk, standing in the street outside the Hog’s Head, ringing a handbell loudly and already wearing her broom-veil. Enough of the veil was pushed aside by the pipe clenched in Sadie’s teeth that Spanky could glimpse the forest of pale stubble on the witch’s chin. Between every series of four or five rings, Sadie bellowed in a hoarse, coarse voice: “Oy! Walk up and give your life-saving donation to the ETHF, wot is workin’ to put an end to starvin’ witches and wizards in the Fird World!” Beside her a cauldron was set up on a tripod. It was already half-full of knuts and sickles, and even the occasional galleon.
Spanky sidled over and bunged a knut into the cauldron. “I’ve never heard of this ETHF,” he remarked. Though his face was hidden by the hood of his cloak, one gathered from the sound of his voice that he was smirking. “What do the letters stand for?”
Out of the side of her mouth Sadie muttered, “Exterminate the Hungry Foundation. Run by the Eighth Earl of Fishtoft, a former Death Eater wot reformed and travels the world looking for good deeds to do.”
“Exterminate the Hungry?” Spanky scritched in the cauldron until he had got his knut back. “That’s not on, mate. I mean, mam. Not exactly what I would call a good deed.”
“Well, for a reformed Death Eater, it’s a start,” growled Sadie. “Besides, seein’ as what they’re doin’ ain’t strictly good work, skimmin’ the donations ain’t strictly stealin, is it? Oy! You there, with the hairy mole! Give us some chink for the ETHF! I guarantee you that not one knut of your donation will be used for any purpose besides feedin’ the hungry!” She added in an aside to Spanky, “Or at least, givin’ drink to the thirsty. You seen Harve yet?”
“Hard to tell,” said Spanky, “as I don’t really know what he looks like. Shall we go back to his parlor and wait for him? It must be nearly time.”
Sadie managed to dump the contents of the cauldron into her voluminous pockets, then vanished the cauldron, tripod, and bell with a wave of her wand. Taking Spanky’s arm with a hard, hairy hand, she allowed him to escort her through the noise and bustle of the Hog’s Head public room, where a fire-breathing cockfight was taking place on the same shielded stage where Nasal Drip had been playing the week before. Once past the beaded curtain at the top of the room, Sadie let go of Spanky’s arm and cleared her throat loudly. “I can manage from here,” she muttered in an unnaturally deep voice.
“As you wish,” said Spanky, who felt oddly like clearing his own throat.
When they reached the parlor where they had exchanged so many stories the previous week, they found two goblets of firewhisky already hovering in midair, being tipped down the throats of invisible drinkers.
“Back to the old invisibility cloaks, I see,” Sadie observed with disdain as she squeezed alongside the table.
“They’re much cooler than those heavy old cloaks,” said the voice of a wizard who liked to be called Merlin.
“The color goes better with my eyes,” the witch Endora remarked at the same time.
“No sign of Harve, then?” Sadie asked. She snapped her fingers and two more drinks appeared. She nodded toward Spanky, who sat down before one of the drinks with a whispered, “Cheers.”
At that moment, flames burst out of the air above the center of the table. Endora started, splashing firewhisky everywhere. She hastily mopped it up with a scouring charm before it could burn holes in the table. Meanwhile, Spanky had caught the roll of parchment that fell out of the flames, before they sizzled out with a puff of sulfurous smoke.
“Whew,” said Sadie, waving the smoke away. “Almost enough to put me off my drink! What a ‘orrible, smelly, hinconsiderate thing to do!” At once she began preparations to light her pipe.
“Well, mates,” said Spanky, spreading the parchment on the table, “I suppose this means Harvey won’t be making his business proposal tonight. Listen: ‘Esteemed colleagues...’”
“Esmoked would be more accurate,” Merlin coughed.
“Do you want to hear this or not?” Spanky made as if to roll up the parchment again.
“Oh yes, do go on,” said Merlin hastily.
Spanky slowly unrolled the parchment, training the opening of his dark hood directly on Merlin’s end of the table. Then he lowered his head and continued to read. “’Esteemed colleagues, please forgive my absence this evening. My reasons for being unable to keep our appointment are so complicated that I haven’t time to relate them here. Suffice it to say that it involves a spill over a waterfall, a crystal cave, and a hag who wears a mail vest studded with men’s teeth. I need hardly express to you how inconvient all this is for a man in my position. I fully expect to make my escape within a day or two; but if I’m not with you by this time next week, please have my subscription to The Goblin canceled. Meanwhile, talk amongst yourselves. Yours in fellowship, H.’”
“That’s all right,” said Merlin, smacking his lips after a long draught of firewhisky. “Old Harve’s gotten himself out of worse, he has. Anyway, I’ve been dyin’ to hear what happened next.” When Spanky showed no sign of understanding, Merlin added, “You know, with you and Joe Albuquerque.”
“Oh, that,” said Spanky. He sighed loudly, drained his goblet, then refilled it with his wand.
“All right. After the Bette Noir affair, Joe and I went our separate ways for a while. I went back to England, took a leave of absence from the RMB, and went into training. I’m sure you all know of the international magical games that are held every five years. That year was to be the 2000th Owlympiad, and it was to be held right here in Hogsmeade during the summer holidays. A lot of the events took place down the road at Hogwarts. You must remember it: the whole country was aflutter over hosting the Owlympics; England had high hopes for many of its teams. My friend, the one whose name came up on the Gryffindor tapestry, was expected to do wonders on the Quidditch team. My school mate, Otis, had gone in for Quodpot. I knew people who were competing in nearly every event: from the Defense Against the Dark Arts Decathlon to Levitation Weightlifting, from the Wand Throw to Transfiguring Objects in Flight. But I was training for the most anticipated event of all, save Quidditch. Guess which.”
“Er,” said Endora.
Sadie jabbed her elbow at the empty air from which Endora’s voice came. “Dueling, you nit,” she said over Endora’s grunt of pain.
“Right-o. I was also looking forward to meeting Ilona, who was training for the Romanian Magymnastics team. I had seen some of her moves during the time we both worked out of the Bucharest Mission. You take a witch or wizard in top physical and magical form, and it’s amazing what they can do. Ilona held a national record for riding a bucking pommel-horse. Her uneven-brooms routine was so daring that I once passed out while watching it. Well, nearly. And her quintuple-backflip-with-a-twist dismount from the levitating-stepping-stones has gone into the repertory as “the Ilonera.” But when she wrote to me about an old school mate of mine who had joined the Romanian Dueling squad--one who was eager to meet with me again--I was perplexed and concerned. I asked her what old mate she meant. Her return owl said his name was Sid Shmedly.”
“He never!” Endora gasped.
“Oh, yes, he did,” Spanky said grimly. “It seems the entire Romanian Dueling team had come down with a mysterious case of dragon pox, and their ministry’s Department of Magical Games and Sports was so desperate to compete in the event that they advertised for expatriates to fill up the team. And by some amazing coincidence, Sid Shmedly’s family owned vast estates along the Prut River, almost directly opposite the castle where I had been stationed on Worm Patrol. Shmedly and a couple of his school cronies happened to have been staying in a lodge on those estates for just long enough to meet the Romanian Ministry’s residency requirements. They passed all the usual blood tests--polyjuice potion, strengthening solution, rapidity rub, supercharge salve, and so forth--and they were all clean. Their wands were weighed and approved. And in trial duels against the national team’s trainers, Shmedly and his cronies--let’s call them Lobster and Quadrille--had proved themselves formidable duelers indeed. It was almost as if they had been training to be on the Romanian team all along.
“You can imagine how this news thrilled and unnerved me. Though I could end up facing the most talented duelers from around the world, the idea of facing my old school nemesis made me determined to work my very hardest. There was even a rumor that Shmedly had perfected a new kind of curse that would be difficult to block, and the Owlympic Commission had approved of its use. It had something to do with lightning shooting out of a wand and even the thought of it made my hair stand on end. I had to be fast, and I had to be strong. I practiced dueling with just my left wand, then with just my right. I labored tirelessly, wearing out the other members of my team--their names were Crinkle and Ruff--in my fierce determination to be ready for Sid Shmedly. I believed that if I was ready for him, I would be ready for anyone.
“The Owlympics finally opened on a blazing summer day. I’m told the opening ceremonies, held out on the grounds at Hogwarts, were spectacular. I’m also told that several of the matches were very exciting, and that records were set and rivalries settled in many events. But I missed it all, because I couldn’t bring myself to stop preparing for what I knew was coming. With Dueling teams from a hundred and twelve countries in a double-elimination tournament, statistical chances were good that I would never face Shmedly in these Owlympics. But in my heart, I was sure it would happen...”
[Originally posted 9/3/04]
Spanky found Sadie at dusk, standing in the street outside the Hog’s Head, ringing a handbell loudly and already wearing her broom-veil. Enough of the veil was pushed aside by the pipe clenched in Sadie’s teeth that Spanky could glimpse the forest of pale stubble on the witch’s chin. Between every series of four or five rings, Sadie bellowed in a hoarse, coarse voice: “Oy! Walk up and give your life-saving donation to the ETHF, wot is workin’ to put an end to starvin’ witches and wizards in the Fird World!” Beside her a cauldron was set up on a tripod. It was already half-full of knuts and sickles, and even the occasional galleon.
Spanky sidled over and bunged a knut into the cauldron. “I’ve never heard of this ETHF,” he remarked. Though his face was hidden by the hood of his cloak, one gathered from the sound of his voice that he was smirking. “What do the letters stand for?”
Out of the side of her mouth Sadie muttered, “Exterminate the Hungry Foundation. Run by the Eighth Earl of Fishtoft, a former Death Eater wot reformed and travels the world looking for good deeds to do.”
“Exterminate the Hungry?” Spanky scritched in the cauldron until he had got his knut back. “That’s not on, mate. I mean, mam. Not exactly what I would call a good deed.”
“Well, for a reformed Death Eater, it’s a start,” growled Sadie. “Besides, seein’ as what they’re doin’ ain’t strictly good work, skimmin’ the donations ain’t strictly stealin, is it? Oy! You there, with the hairy mole! Give us some chink for the ETHF! I guarantee you that not one knut of your donation will be used for any purpose besides feedin’ the hungry!” She added in an aside to Spanky, “Or at least, givin’ drink to the thirsty. You seen Harve yet?”
“Hard to tell,” said Spanky, “as I don’t really know what he looks like. Shall we go back to his parlor and wait for him? It must be nearly time.”
Sadie managed to dump the contents of the cauldron into her voluminous pockets, then vanished the cauldron, tripod, and bell with a wave of her wand. Taking Spanky’s arm with a hard, hairy hand, she allowed him to escort her through the noise and bustle of the Hog’s Head public room, where a fire-breathing cockfight was taking place on the same shielded stage where Nasal Drip had been playing the week before. Once past the beaded curtain at the top of the room, Sadie let go of Spanky’s arm and cleared her throat loudly. “I can manage from here,” she muttered in an unnaturally deep voice.
“As you wish,” said Spanky, who felt oddly like clearing his own throat.
When they reached the parlor where they had exchanged so many stories the previous week, they found two goblets of firewhisky already hovering in midair, being tipped down the throats of invisible drinkers.
“Back to the old invisibility cloaks, I see,” Sadie observed with disdain as she squeezed alongside the table.
“They’re much cooler than those heavy old cloaks,” said the voice of a wizard who liked to be called Merlin.
“The color goes better with my eyes,” the witch Endora remarked at the same time.
“No sign of Harve, then?” Sadie asked. She snapped her fingers and two more drinks appeared. She nodded toward Spanky, who sat down before one of the drinks with a whispered, “Cheers.”
At that moment, flames burst out of the air above the center of the table. Endora started, splashing firewhisky everywhere. She hastily mopped it up with a scouring charm before it could burn holes in the table. Meanwhile, Spanky had caught the roll of parchment that fell out of the flames, before they sizzled out with a puff of sulfurous smoke.
“Whew,” said Sadie, waving the smoke away. “Almost enough to put me off my drink! What a ‘orrible, smelly, hinconsiderate thing to do!” At once she began preparations to light her pipe.
“Well, mates,” said Spanky, spreading the parchment on the table, “I suppose this means Harvey won’t be making his business proposal tonight. Listen: ‘Esteemed colleagues...’”
“Esmoked would be more accurate,” Merlin coughed.
“Do you want to hear this or not?” Spanky made as if to roll up the parchment again.
“Oh yes, do go on,” said Merlin hastily.
Spanky slowly unrolled the parchment, training the opening of his dark hood directly on Merlin’s end of the table. Then he lowered his head and continued to read. “’Esteemed colleagues, please forgive my absence this evening. My reasons for being unable to keep our appointment are so complicated that I haven’t time to relate them here. Suffice it to say that it involves a spill over a waterfall, a crystal cave, and a hag who wears a mail vest studded with men’s teeth. I need hardly express to you how inconvient all this is for a man in my position. I fully expect to make my escape within a day or two; but if I’m not with you by this time next week, please have my subscription to The Goblin canceled. Meanwhile, talk amongst yourselves. Yours in fellowship, H.’”
“That’s all right,” said Merlin, smacking his lips after a long draught of firewhisky. “Old Harve’s gotten himself out of worse, he has. Anyway, I’ve been dyin’ to hear what happened next.” When Spanky showed no sign of understanding, Merlin added, “You know, with you and Joe Albuquerque.”
“Oh, that,” said Spanky. He sighed loudly, drained his goblet, then refilled it with his wand.
“All right. After the Bette Noir affair, Joe and I went our separate ways for a while. I went back to England, took a leave of absence from the RMB, and went into training. I’m sure you all know of the international magical games that are held every five years. That year was to be the 2000th Owlympiad, and it was to be held right here in Hogsmeade during the summer holidays. A lot of the events took place down the road at Hogwarts. You must remember it: the whole country was aflutter over hosting the Owlympics; England had high hopes for many of its teams. My friend, the one whose name came up on the Gryffindor tapestry, was expected to do wonders on the Quidditch team. My school mate, Otis, had gone in for Quodpot. I knew people who were competing in nearly every event: from the Defense Against the Dark Arts Decathlon to Levitation Weightlifting, from the Wand Throw to Transfiguring Objects in Flight. But I was training for the most anticipated event of all, save Quidditch. Guess which.”
“Er,” said Endora.
Sadie jabbed her elbow at the empty air from which Endora’s voice came. “Dueling, you nit,” she said over Endora’s grunt of pain.
“Right-o. I was also looking forward to meeting Ilona, who was training for the Romanian Magymnastics team. I had seen some of her moves during the time we both worked out of the Bucharest Mission. You take a witch or wizard in top physical and magical form, and it’s amazing what they can do. Ilona held a national record for riding a bucking pommel-horse. Her uneven-brooms routine was so daring that I once passed out while watching it. Well, nearly. And her quintuple-backflip-with-a-twist dismount from the levitating-stepping-stones has gone into the repertory as “the Ilonera.” But when she wrote to me about an old school mate of mine who had joined the Romanian Dueling squad--one who was eager to meet with me again--I was perplexed and concerned. I asked her what old mate she meant. Her return owl said his name was Sid Shmedly.”
“He never!” Endora gasped.
“Oh, yes, he did,” Spanky said grimly. “It seems the entire Romanian Dueling team had come down with a mysterious case of dragon pox, and their ministry’s Department of Magical Games and Sports was so desperate to compete in the event that they advertised for expatriates to fill up the team. And by some amazing coincidence, Sid Shmedly’s family owned vast estates along the Prut River, almost directly opposite the castle where I had been stationed on Worm Patrol. Shmedly and a couple of his school cronies happened to have been staying in a lodge on those estates for just long enough to meet the Romanian Ministry’s residency requirements. They passed all the usual blood tests--polyjuice potion, strengthening solution, rapidity rub, supercharge salve, and so forth--and they were all clean. Their wands were weighed and approved. And in trial duels against the national team’s trainers, Shmedly and his cronies--let’s call them Lobster and Quadrille--had proved themselves formidable duelers indeed. It was almost as if they had been training to be on the Romanian team all along.
“You can imagine how this news thrilled and unnerved me. Though I could end up facing the most talented duelers from around the world, the idea of facing my old school nemesis made me determined to work my very hardest. There was even a rumor that Shmedly had perfected a new kind of curse that would be difficult to block, and the Owlympic Commission had approved of its use. It had something to do with lightning shooting out of a wand and even the thought of it made my hair stand on end. I had to be fast, and I had to be strong. I practiced dueling with just my left wand, then with just my right. I labored tirelessly, wearing out the other members of my team--their names were Crinkle and Ruff--in my fierce determination to be ready for Sid Shmedly. I believed that if I was ready for him, I would be ready for anyone.
“The Owlympics finally opened on a blazing summer day. I’m told the opening ceremonies, held out on the grounds at Hogwarts, were spectacular. I’m also told that several of the matches were very exciting, and that records were set and rivalries settled in many events. But I missed it all, because I couldn’t bring myself to stop preparing for what I knew was coming. With Dueling teams from a hundred and twelve countries in a double-elimination tournament, statistical chances were good that I would never face Shmedly in these Owlympics. But in my heart, I was sure it would happen...”
[Originally posted 9/3/04]
17. The Bette Noir Affair, Part 5
Concepts contributed by: "Misheal"
“As Joe Albuquerque’s killing curse echoed down the corridor,” Spanky continued as his audience hung on every word, “something large and heavy crashed to the floor behind us. Ms. Noir and I spun around. It must have been almost on top of us when Joe stopped it. It was an acromantula, big enough to eat me for dinner and Ms. Noir for dessert. It’s amazing that we didn’t hear it sneaking up behind us. Now it was twitching its last, its hairy legs splayed beneath its enormous body.
“'That was close,' said Ms. Noir, as Joe ripped off his Nigel makeup and tossed it on the dead spider. 'Thank you for saving us, but the mystery deepens. If you’ve been here to protect us all this time, then who is really trying to frame me for stealing the Gryffindor Sword? I’m sure whoever it is let that thing into the house. They’re obviously trying to kill me!'
“'I daresay it’s Mr. Spankison they’re after,' said Joe. 'Because he should have figured out by now who the real culprit is. I figured it out just ten minutes ago, as I was thinking over a comment Spanky made when I met him at the airport.'
“'Me? I?' I stammered. 'You think I know who done it?'
“'What was the first thing you said to yourself when you got off your plane?' Joe asked, tossing his white-haired wig aside and accepting a brandy from the real Nigel, who had arrived along with four house-elves and a wheelbarrow to remove the giant dead spider from the corridor.
“I racked my brains. Then I said, ‘I suppose it was something like, “Gee, it’s awfully cold here. I would never have expected southern Cal-...”’
“'No, no, I mean what you said to yourself out loud,’ said Joe.
“'Er...’ I gave it some more thought. Then it came to me. ‘Oh, yeah. I said, “Confound that Iovanescu for telling me to dress...for warm...weather...”’ My voice trailed off. The knut, as they say, had just dropped. ‘Merlin’s beard!’ I gasped. ‘How could I have missed it? He told me to dress for warm weather before I went to the Blokebury Office! I hadn’t done my unpronounceable potion, or discovered the bit of fuzz from the hotel towel, or any of that. How would he have known that I was going to California unless...”’
“'Unless Iovanescu was the one who stole the sword and planted the evidence in the first place,’ Joe exclaimed, shooting sparks out of his wand in an excess of emotion. ‘But why would he want to cause trouble for Ms. Noir?’
“We both looked at her. She shrugged, looking blank. Then it came to me. ‘It isn’t her,’ I said, staring at an icon from a Russian cathedral that had been torn down by the Soviets. ‘It’s us. We made him look like a fool. Remember that Penguarts case? You called him something like an inkwell-swilling, quill-pushing, useless git of a desk jockey...’
“'I think I used stronger language than that, to his face,’ Joe admitted ruefully.
“'And I suppose he never expected a rookie like me to blow the whole case wide open like that. Maybe he was in with the Penguarts coven all along; maybe he wants to discredit us; and maybe he wants the sword to make another stab at gaining power for the dark forces...’
“'And maybe,’ said a thickly accented voice behind us, ‘He wants to leave with a certain iron gauntlet.’ We all turned to look at the speaker. It wasn’t Nigel. It was one of the house-elves, a fat little fellow. Only it wasn’t a house-elf at all. It undid a couple of zippers, cast aside its tea-towel, and unfolded into my Romanian station commander, Iovanescu. He must have been hobbling around on his knees for hours, disguised as that house-elf! ‘And you thought Joe was a master spy,’ Iovanescu sneered at me. ‘And you,’ he said to Joe, leveling his wand at my friend’s face, ‘you thought I didn’t have what it takes to make it in the field. And you, madam,’ he concluded, turning toward Ms. Noir, ‘thought there had to be a motive for picking on you. And you’re right.’
“'But I’ve never seen you in my life,’ Ms. Noir said, looking shocked. The other house-elves unzipped and unfolded into two witches and a wizard, also brandishing wands at us and the unfortunate Nigel.
“'Oh, it’s not personal. That’s why it was so perfect. You were too busy guessing which man you had done wrong and who was trying to even up the score, that you didn’t bother looking at any other theory. I just needed someone to lead me to you and that lovely gauntlet of yours. My master will find it ever so helpful to his plans. A new world order is arising, my friends. Too bad you won’t be around to see it. Now get downstairs, all four of you. I believe you have a silicon steel vault that seats four.’
“At this dreadful pronouncement, poor Nigel clutched his chest and went down. As Ms. Noir and I hurriedly crouched down to help him, the old man winked and slipped my right wand out of his sleeve.
“'Leave the old fool,’ barked Iovanescu.
“The old fool gestured with his head for Ms. Noir and me to duck. Then he tossed a handful of dungbombs at Iovanescu. He was totally splattered, and the stench made his accomplices stagger. In that moment of disorientation, we regained the upper hand. Joe, Ms. Noir, and Nigel had a wand each. I had two. That gave us a five-to-four advantage, and we began using it immediately.
“It was all over in about thirty seconds, during which more things happened than I have time to tell. Sadly, some priceless works of art were scorched, drenched with ink, or turned into confetti. Part of the floor became thin ice with a freezing pond under it (which disposed of one of Iovanescu’s accomplices). The dead spider down the corridor surrendered a jet of sticky web material which bound up the other two accomplices. It was Iovanescu who managed to fire a killing curse at Joe before I hit him with a giant wad of sticky chewing gum from my right wand and covered him with toilet paper from the left. Then I turned to see what had become of Joe.
“Miraculously, he was alive, but Ms. Noir was down, struggling for breath, clutching the lapels of Joe’s Nigel-suit. Joe was sobbing. ‘Why did you do it?’ he asked her. Apparently she had thrown herself in the way of Iovanescu’s killing curse.
“Her last words were, ‘Because I love you more than my own life.’ Then, either because a killing curse is too much even for a woman who has taken a draught of immortality, or because she had finally found true love and it freed her from the curse of being immortal, she gave up the ghost. The labored breathing slowed, seemed to stop; she took another couple of breaths, then no more. The cynical look faded from her face, leaving her as beautiful and peaceful-looking as an angel in that altarpiece she had rescued. Joe hugged her to himself, and Nigel clutched at her feet, and they both wept. I must say, even I got a little misty.
“And that is the tale of the Bette Noir Affair,” Spanky concluded sadly.
Sadie, Endora, and Harvey sighed.
The wizard who called himself Merlin, however, rapped on the table indignantly. “You call that an ending?” he demanded. “What happened to Iovanescu? Did he get punished? Did he get the Dementor’s Kiss? And what about all those art works? Did Joe get over his loss?”
Spanky shrugged. “Those American wizards take a different approach to magical crime. They wiped Iovanescu’s memory and put him to work shoveling dragon dung at the Magicland Theme Park outside Bakersfield. It’s a terrific place, by the way. The Muggles who go there think everything is atrociamoronic. I mean, animatrocious. Well, anyway, they think the beasts are just lifelike machines. All the ticket-takers, mechanics, and cleaners are convicted criminals. I think it’s an idea that our country should try.”
“I don’t know,” shivered Sadie. “I find Dementors to be highly deterrent.”
“I don’t know about highly,” Merlin chuckled.
Spanky went on as if they hadn’t said anything. “When Joe and I went back to the mansion a few days later with a team of art authenticators, we found nothing on the site but a stretch of redwood forest. The mansion, the grounds, everything was gone. As if it had never been there.” He sighed.
“And what about Joe?” Merlin pressed. “Did you see any more of him?”
“That,” said Harvey firmly, “is a tale for another night.”
“Isn’t that my line?” Spanky asked.
“It’s getting late. Or rather, early,” said Harvey, conjuring a mantel clock out of nowhere. The minute-hand pointed between the ten and eleven, and the hour-hand stood away from it in a straight line. “Sleep it off, all of you. If you come to this parlor a week from now, I may have a proposition for all four of you. If you don’t see me--who knows what may come up in a week’s time--then by all means, continue with your fascinating stories. And now, farewell!”
With a twitch of his bandanna-covered nose, Harvey vanished.
Endora yawned and said, “Well, I suppose he’s correct.” She made sure every last drop was drained from her goblet and then disappeared with a pop.
Sadie pounded her pipe on the end of the table, cleared her throat thunderously, and said, “All right, then,” and disapparated.
Merlin put his hand on Spanky’s shoulder, and squeezed. “Well, mate, good night,” he said, and he was gone.
Spanky stayed where he was, staring out from under his deep hood. Then he sighed, stuck his wand into his empty goblet, shot a fountain of firewhisky into it, and raised it to his lips. After a long drink and an even longer pause to work the sparks out of his nostrils, he sighed again and muttered, “Poor old Joe.”
[Originally posted 8/26/04]
“As Joe Albuquerque’s killing curse echoed down the corridor,” Spanky continued as his audience hung on every word, “something large and heavy crashed to the floor behind us. Ms. Noir and I spun around. It must have been almost on top of us when Joe stopped it. It was an acromantula, big enough to eat me for dinner and Ms. Noir for dessert. It’s amazing that we didn’t hear it sneaking up behind us. Now it was twitching its last, its hairy legs splayed beneath its enormous body.
“'That was close,' said Ms. Noir, as Joe ripped off his Nigel makeup and tossed it on the dead spider. 'Thank you for saving us, but the mystery deepens. If you’ve been here to protect us all this time, then who is really trying to frame me for stealing the Gryffindor Sword? I’m sure whoever it is let that thing into the house. They’re obviously trying to kill me!'
“'I daresay it’s Mr. Spankison they’re after,' said Joe. 'Because he should have figured out by now who the real culprit is. I figured it out just ten minutes ago, as I was thinking over a comment Spanky made when I met him at the airport.'
“'Me? I?' I stammered. 'You think I know who done it?'
“'What was the first thing you said to yourself when you got off your plane?' Joe asked, tossing his white-haired wig aside and accepting a brandy from the real Nigel, who had arrived along with four house-elves and a wheelbarrow to remove the giant dead spider from the corridor.
“I racked my brains. Then I said, ‘I suppose it was something like, “Gee, it’s awfully cold here. I would never have expected southern Cal-...”’
“'No, no, I mean what you said to yourself out loud,’ said Joe.
“'Er...’ I gave it some more thought. Then it came to me. ‘Oh, yeah. I said, “Confound that Iovanescu for telling me to dress...for warm...weather...”’ My voice trailed off. The knut, as they say, had just dropped. ‘Merlin’s beard!’ I gasped. ‘How could I have missed it? He told me to dress for warm weather before I went to the Blokebury Office! I hadn’t done my unpronounceable potion, or discovered the bit of fuzz from the hotel towel, or any of that. How would he have known that I was going to California unless...”’
“'Unless Iovanescu was the one who stole the sword and planted the evidence in the first place,’ Joe exclaimed, shooting sparks out of his wand in an excess of emotion. ‘But why would he want to cause trouble for Ms. Noir?’
“We both looked at her. She shrugged, looking blank. Then it came to me. ‘It isn’t her,’ I said, staring at an icon from a Russian cathedral that had been torn down by the Soviets. ‘It’s us. We made him look like a fool. Remember that Penguarts case? You called him something like an inkwell-swilling, quill-pushing, useless git of a desk jockey...’
“'I think I used stronger language than that, to his face,’ Joe admitted ruefully.
“'And I suppose he never expected a rookie like me to blow the whole case wide open like that. Maybe he was in with the Penguarts coven all along; maybe he wants to discredit us; and maybe he wants the sword to make another stab at gaining power for the dark forces...’
“'And maybe,’ said a thickly accented voice behind us, ‘He wants to leave with a certain iron gauntlet.’ We all turned to look at the speaker. It wasn’t Nigel. It was one of the house-elves, a fat little fellow. Only it wasn’t a house-elf at all. It undid a couple of zippers, cast aside its tea-towel, and unfolded into my Romanian station commander, Iovanescu. He must have been hobbling around on his knees for hours, disguised as that house-elf! ‘And you thought Joe was a master spy,’ Iovanescu sneered at me. ‘And you,’ he said to Joe, leveling his wand at my friend’s face, ‘you thought I didn’t have what it takes to make it in the field. And you, madam,’ he concluded, turning toward Ms. Noir, ‘thought there had to be a motive for picking on you. And you’re right.’
“'But I’ve never seen you in my life,’ Ms. Noir said, looking shocked. The other house-elves unzipped and unfolded into two witches and a wizard, also brandishing wands at us and the unfortunate Nigel.
“'Oh, it’s not personal. That’s why it was so perfect. You were too busy guessing which man you had done wrong and who was trying to even up the score, that you didn’t bother looking at any other theory. I just needed someone to lead me to you and that lovely gauntlet of yours. My master will find it ever so helpful to his plans. A new world order is arising, my friends. Too bad you won’t be around to see it. Now get downstairs, all four of you. I believe you have a silicon steel vault that seats four.’
“At this dreadful pronouncement, poor Nigel clutched his chest and went down. As Ms. Noir and I hurriedly crouched down to help him, the old man winked and slipped my right wand out of his sleeve.
“'Leave the old fool,’ barked Iovanescu.
“The old fool gestured with his head for Ms. Noir and me to duck. Then he tossed a handful of dungbombs at Iovanescu. He was totally splattered, and the stench made his accomplices stagger. In that moment of disorientation, we regained the upper hand. Joe, Ms. Noir, and Nigel had a wand each. I had two. That gave us a five-to-four advantage, and we began using it immediately.
“It was all over in about thirty seconds, during which more things happened than I have time to tell. Sadly, some priceless works of art were scorched, drenched with ink, or turned into confetti. Part of the floor became thin ice with a freezing pond under it (which disposed of one of Iovanescu’s accomplices). The dead spider down the corridor surrendered a jet of sticky web material which bound up the other two accomplices. It was Iovanescu who managed to fire a killing curse at Joe before I hit him with a giant wad of sticky chewing gum from my right wand and covered him with toilet paper from the left. Then I turned to see what had become of Joe.
“Miraculously, he was alive, but Ms. Noir was down, struggling for breath, clutching the lapels of Joe’s Nigel-suit. Joe was sobbing. ‘Why did you do it?’ he asked her. Apparently she had thrown herself in the way of Iovanescu’s killing curse.
“Her last words were, ‘Because I love you more than my own life.’ Then, either because a killing curse is too much even for a woman who has taken a draught of immortality, or because she had finally found true love and it freed her from the curse of being immortal, she gave up the ghost. The labored breathing slowed, seemed to stop; she took another couple of breaths, then no more. The cynical look faded from her face, leaving her as beautiful and peaceful-looking as an angel in that altarpiece she had rescued. Joe hugged her to himself, and Nigel clutched at her feet, and they both wept. I must say, even I got a little misty.
“And that is the tale of the Bette Noir Affair,” Spanky concluded sadly.
Sadie, Endora, and Harvey sighed.
The wizard who called himself Merlin, however, rapped on the table indignantly. “You call that an ending?” he demanded. “What happened to Iovanescu? Did he get punished? Did he get the Dementor’s Kiss? And what about all those art works? Did Joe get over his loss?”
Spanky shrugged. “Those American wizards take a different approach to magical crime. They wiped Iovanescu’s memory and put him to work shoveling dragon dung at the Magicland Theme Park outside Bakersfield. It’s a terrific place, by the way. The Muggles who go there think everything is atrociamoronic. I mean, animatrocious. Well, anyway, they think the beasts are just lifelike machines. All the ticket-takers, mechanics, and cleaners are convicted criminals. I think it’s an idea that our country should try.”
“I don’t know,” shivered Sadie. “I find Dementors to be highly deterrent.”
“I don’t know about highly,” Merlin chuckled.
Spanky went on as if they hadn’t said anything. “When Joe and I went back to the mansion a few days later with a team of art authenticators, we found nothing on the site but a stretch of redwood forest. The mansion, the grounds, everything was gone. As if it had never been there.” He sighed.
“And what about Joe?” Merlin pressed. “Did you see any more of him?”
“That,” said Harvey firmly, “is a tale for another night.”
“Isn’t that my line?” Spanky asked.
“It’s getting late. Or rather, early,” said Harvey, conjuring a mantel clock out of nowhere. The minute-hand pointed between the ten and eleven, and the hour-hand stood away from it in a straight line. “Sleep it off, all of you. If you come to this parlor a week from now, I may have a proposition for all four of you. If you don’t see me--who knows what may come up in a week’s time--then by all means, continue with your fascinating stories. And now, farewell!”
With a twitch of his bandanna-covered nose, Harvey vanished.
Endora yawned and said, “Well, I suppose he’s correct.” She made sure every last drop was drained from her goblet and then disappeared with a pop.
Sadie pounded her pipe on the end of the table, cleared her throat thunderously, and said, “All right, then,” and disapparated.
Merlin put his hand on Spanky’s shoulder, and squeezed. “Well, mate, good night,” he said, and he was gone.
Spanky stayed where he was, staring out from under his deep hood. Then he sighed, stuck his wand into his empty goblet, shot a fountain of firewhisky into it, and raised it to his lips. After a long drink and an even longer pause to work the sparks out of his nostrils, he sighed again and muttered, “Poor old Joe.”
[Originally posted 8/26/04]
16. The Bette Noir Affair, Part 4
Concepts contributed by: Nymphadora T., Chris Pachuilo, and Scott Riddle
“'What is your relationship with Joe Albuquerque?’ I asked her. My flesh crawled with dread as I waited for Bette Noir to answer.
“'I met him in Egypt,’ she replied, leading me out of the vault and up a great, curving staircase. ‘He was disguised as a Pakistani carpet trader. I was in the identity of a film actress--I thought you would recognize me, but it must have been before your time--pretending to be visiting a spa for my health. Actually, I was trying to steal a magnificent stele that had been looted from a Pharaoh’s tomb years ago and was in the hands of a private collector. Joe was on the trail of Abdul Aberber Amir, the chieftain of the great...’
“'Flying carpet cartel,’ I finished for her. ‘I remember that. Biggest rug-smuggling ring in recorded history. The bust was all over the Daily Prophet, and the trials didn’t end until I was at Hogwarts. I didn’t know Joe worked on that.’
“'He is a master of undercover work. I’m sure you know that by now. He obtained the trust of one of Abdul’s chief suppliers, a brutal wizard named Furmahl de Hyde, who brought in hundreds of black-market house-elves and forced them to hook an endless succession of rugs. Joe bought tons of carpets from him and sold them all over Cairo to dummy buyers, who were actually RMB agents like him. He was hoping to get introduced to Abdul Aberber Amir himself.'
“By this time, we had passed several landings and entered what must have been the fifth floor of the palace. The broad, high-ceilinged corridor was hung with glittering chandeliers lit with pumpkin-scented candles. It was another art gallery, but this one contained great works thought to have been destroyed in fires, wars, and other catastrophes. Some of them were supposed to have been hoarded away by Grindelwald--when he fell back in ’45 no one expected to find them again. Yet here they were: the altar-piece from a shelled-out church; a manuscript of the completed last movement of the "Unfinished Symphony"; a string of jewels that supposedly went down with the Lusitania; and a whole shelf of first-edition books by Savanarola, Hus, and others that were burnt by the Inquisition. We stopped in front of a darkened alcove, protected by a pane of curse-proof glass that was embedded in the wall.
"‘The prize of my collection,’ she said, and waved her wand. The alcove lit up. 'This,’ she said, indicating the thing behind the glass, ‘is what finally brought Joe and me together. Or rather, it tore us apart. Do you know what it is?’
“It looked like the hand and forearm off a suit of armor. It sparkled brightly. Its workmanship was very fine, and tiny links of chain-mail showed at the joints. It appeared to be lined with leather on the inside. ‘It’s just an old gauntlet,’ I said, bewildered.
“'Just an old gauntlet!’ she cried. ‘This is the gauntlet of Roland de Mudd, a mighty Norman baronet who fought in the crusade with Richard Lion-Heart. Unfortunately for him, he crossed a wizard rather badly. Somewhere in Macedonia, it is said, he burned and looted a hermit’s farm, not realizing that his victim was a warlock whose dying curse touched Roland’s gauntlet. This gauntlet makes its wearer invincible. No one stands a chance against him in mortal combat. However, it also takes control of the wearer’s will, filling him with ambition and greed until he destroys all good feeling toward him, leaving him utterly alone and destitute. Yet by enslaving the will, the gauntlet also ensures that the wearer will not get rid of it and claim his life back. Everyone who has worn it died miserable and friendless...and died wearing this thing.
“'The private collector who had my stele,’ Ms. Noir continued, ‘was a vicious man named Furmahl de Hyde: a man so feared and hated that no one but slaves, suppliers, and dealers had anything to do with him. Joe was posing as his number-one dealer but was really trying to establish a connection between Furmahl and Aberber. One night, when Furmahl was supposed to be test-driving an Aladdin-78 with a prospective buyer, I slipped over the wall into Furmahl’s compound and levitated myself up to the window of his private study. Unfortunately, as I floated through the window, I bumped heads with Joe, who was coming in the window on the opposite side.
“'The resulting crash awoke Furmahl’s blind, tongueless steward, who immediately shot sparks into the sky. Before we could escape, we were surrounded by Furmahl’s burly guards. Moments later, Furmahl apparated, yanked Joe’s fake nose off, and challenged him to a duel. Joe refused. Next, Furmahl made a very inappropriate proposal to me, which I also refused. Infuriated, Furmahl opened a safe in his wall--one of those goblin safes that devour anyone who touches it except the person who owns it--and pulled out a delicately painted ceramic egg. He muttered something over it and tossed it at Joe. By instinct, I grabbed Joe’s arm and tried to stop him, but his instinct to catch the egg prevailed. He caught the egg, which turned out to be a portkey. We were both whisked away and landed in a place of utter darkness. Worse yet, a crunching sound told us that the egg had shattered when we hit the ground.
“'It was not only pitch-dark, but the air smelled dead, as in a place closed up for centuries. We felt our way along a winding passage, eventually realizing we were in an impenetrable maze. From the way parts of it sloped up or down, we deduced that it was inside one of the great pyramids. The worst part was, we couldn’t disapparate! Those Egyptian wizards left no loopholes in their vile curses. Furmahl had imprisoned us in an ancient King’s tomb. Entombed us, rather. It looked like we would never get out.
“'Til now, Joe and I had not even been introduced. In the days that followed, we really got to know each other. I don’t know how he felt about being entombed forever, but it was the ultimate horror for me. At least he would eventually die--sooner rather than later, I realized, because we had no food and only a half-full wineskin that Joe kept as part of his disguise. I refused to drink from it, and he took only sips, but soon it was all gone and he became desperately thirsty. Somehow, for some reason I cannot explain even to myself, I feared losing him more than anything else. Because after that, I knew I would be alone for eternity. I did what I could to make every moment with him mean as much as possible. I’ve never been more open, more attached, more desperately close to a man. But at last, he began to die. He grew weak and delirious.
“'Without even a wand to provide light, I had to find some water for him. I unraveled the hem of my dress and tied the end around his finger, then carefully walked through the maze, making sure to keep just a little tension on the unraveling thread at all times. I felt high and low. Finally, I found something. I tripped over it, rather. It was a skeleton--the skeleton of a man whose head was crushed by a fallen stone. The clothes it wore felt modern, and in one of its pockets was a little metal flask that had some liquid in it. I was willing to risk whatever state that liquid might be in, just to wet Joe’s whistle. As I was pulling the flask out of the skeleton’s pocket, I brushed against something else metallic. I felt it carefully and realized that it was a gauntlet--this gauntlet. I wondered what a man in a modern suit would be doing in an ancient Egyptian pyramid wearing a piece of medieval Norman metalwork...’
“'You could tell it was Norman workmanship in the darkness?’ I asked.
“'Well, anyone could, who had spent as much time visiting, pilfering, and donating to museums as I have. I brought it back to Joe with the flask. He drank it and it revived him a little. Then I let him feel the gauntlet. I should have stopped him from putting it on...’
“'He put it on?’ I gasped. ‘Then...’
“'Yes,’ said Ms. Noir. ‘I have no doubt that this gauntlet is a big part of his motive for using you to frame me. He can never forgive me for taking it from him; but it really was for his own good. After he bashed a way out of the pyramid for us, he fainted dead away. I took him to a sanitarium, where I left him in the hands of the healers. I took this away with me. I spent years studying it, learning of its origin and its dreaded powers. I have always wondered whether I would see Joe again, returning to claim it from me...or, at least, to avenge himself on me for breaking his heart. Oh, thank you, Nigel.’”
“Nigel?” said Sadie, the veiled witch whose pipe was now emitting a dense cloud of bright purple smoke. “I fought you was going by Sylvester somefink. What’s she fankin’ you for, anyway?”
“She wasn’t thanking me,” said Spanky, taking advantage of the interruption to down the rest of his goblet of firewhisky. “She was thanking the little, wizened, stooped butler who had appeared at her elbow with two glasses of brandy on a silver tray. We walked away from him, sipping our brandy, looking at the other works of art as we continued our conversation.
“'So obviously,’ Ms. Noir said, ‘you’re here to do the dirty work, the frame-up. The genius of it is, you don’t even know it. You’re just an honest lad, probably full of the same ideals you had when you went through school, trying to bring justice to a chaotic world. But Joe...well, I fear even the brief time he wore the gauntlet, though he used it to hurt no one and to save lives...’ She sighed. ‘Who knows how fast it can take over a man’s will? Or how strong and lasting its hold may be? I hoped Joe would have gotten over it by now, with the strong character he seemed to have. Obviously, I was wrong. He wants to put me away forever. He wants power. It’s the only... Nigel, what are you doing?’
“We both froze in our tracks. The feeble old butler had come out of a doorway ahead of us--I would never have dreamt that he could be so agile, getting ahead of us through the connecting rooms and all. He was pointing his wand straight at us.
“'Don’t move,’ said the old man. Only it wasn’t the elderly voice of Nigel that we heard. It was the familiar, deep growl of Joe Albuquerque. ‘Not one muscle,’ he added.
“I tried to go for my wand, and she for hers--but we weren’t fast enough. We didn’t even have time to draw before he lifted his wand and screamed, ‘Avada kedavra!’”
Far from the scene in Spanky’s story, a witch named Endora knocked her goblet over with a clunk. Fortunately, it was empty.
“Blimey,” said Endora, picking up the goblet nervously.
The others at the dark little parlor table held their breaths, waiting to hear what happened next.
[Originally posted 8/20/04]
“'What is your relationship with Joe Albuquerque?’ I asked her. My flesh crawled with dread as I waited for Bette Noir to answer.
“'I met him in Egypt,’ she replied, leading me out of the vault and up a great, curving staircase. ‘He was disguised as a Pakistani carpet trader. I was in the identity of a film actress--I thought you would recognize me, but it must have been before your time--pretending to be visiting a spa for my health. Actually, I was trying to steal a magnificent stele that had been looted from a Pharaoh’s tomb years ago and was in the hands of a private collector. Joe was on the trail of Abdul Aberber Amir, the chieftain of the great...’
“'Flying carpet cartel,’ I finished for her. ‘I remember that. Biggest rug-smuggling ring in recorded history. The bust was all over the Daily Prophet, and the trials didn’t end until I was at Hogwarts. I didn’t know Joe worked on that.’
“'He is a master of undercover work. I’m sure you know that by now. He obtained the trust of one of Abdul’s chief suppliers, a brutal wizard named Furmahl de Hyde, who brought in hundreds of black-market house-elves and forced them to hook an endless succession of rugs. Joe bought tons of carpets from him and sold them all over Cairo to dummy buyers, who were actually RMB agents like him. He was hoping to get introduced to Abdul Aberber Amir himself.'
“By this time, we had passed several landings and entered what must have been the fifth floor of the palace. The broad, high-ceilinged corridor was hung with glittering chandeliers lit with pumpkin-scented candles. It was another art gallery, but this one contained great works thought to have been destroyed in fires, wars, and other catastrophes. Some of them were supposed to have been hoarded away by Grindelwald--when he fell back in ’45 no one expected to find them again. Yet here they were: the altar-piece from a shelled-out church; a manuscript of the completed last movement of the "Unfinished Symphony"; a string of jewels that supposedly went down with the Lusitania; and a whole shelf of first-edition books by Savanarola, Hus, and others that were burnt by the Inquisition. We stopped in front of a darkened alcove, protected by a pane of curse-proof glass that was embedded in the wall.
"‘The prize of my collection,’ she said, and waved her wand. The alcove lit up. 'This,’ she said, indicating the thing behind the glass, ‘is what finally brought Joe and me together. Or rather, it tore us apart. Do you know what it is?’
“It looked like the hand and forearm off a suit of armor. It sparkled brightly. Its workmanship was very fine, and tiny links of chain-mail showed at the joints. It appeared to be lined with leather on the inside. ‘It’s just an old gauntlet,’ I said, bewildered.
“'Just an old gauntlet!’ she cried. ‘This is the gauntlet of Roland de Mudd, a mighty Norman baronet who fought in the crusade with Richard Lion-Heart. Unfortunately for him, he crossed a wizard rather badly. Somewhere in Macedonia, it is said, he burned and looted a hermit’s farm, not realizing that his victim was a warlock whose dying curse touched Roland’s gauntlet. This gauntlet makes its wearer invincible. No one stands a chance against him in mortal combat. However, it also takes control of the wearer’s will, filling him with ambition and greed until he destroys all good feeling toward him, leaving him utterly alone and destitute. Yet by enslaving the will, the gauntlet also ensures that the wearer will not get rid of it and claim his life back. Everyone who has worn it died miserable and friendless...and died wearing this thing.
“'The private collector who had my stele,’ Ms. Noir continued, ‘was a vicious man named Furmahl de Hyde: a man so feared and hated that no one but slaves, suppliers, and dealers had anything to do with him. Joe was posing as his number-one dealer but was really trying to establish a connection between Furmahl and Aberber. One night, when Furmahl was supposed to be test-driving an Aladdin-78 with a prospective buyer, I slipped over the wall into Furmahl’s compound and levitated myself up to the window of his private study. Unfortunately, as I floated through the window, I bumped heads with Joe, who was coming in the window on the opposite side.
“'The resulting crash awoke Furmahl’s blind, tongueless steward, who immediately shot sparks into the sky. Before we could escape, we were surrounded by Furmahl’s burly guards. Moments later, Furmahl apparated, yanked Joe’s fake nose off, and challenged him to a duel. Joe refused. Next, Furmahl made a very inappropriate proposal to me, which I also refused. Infuriated, Furmahl opened a safe in his wall--one of those goblin safes that devour anyone who touches it except the person who owns it--and pulled out a delicately painted ceramic egg. He muttered something over it and tossed it at Joe. By instinct, I grabbed Joe’s arm and tried to stop him, but his instinct to catch the egg prevailed. He caught the egg, which turned out to be a portkey. We were both whisked away and landed in a place of utter darkness. Worse yet, a crunching sound told us that the egg had shattered when we hit the ground.
“'It was not only pitch-dark, but the air smelled dead, as in a place closed up for centuries. We felt our way along a winding passage, eventually realizing we were in an impenetrable maze. From the way parts of it sloped up or down, we deduced that it was inside one of the great pyramids. The worst part was, we couldn’t disapparate! Those Egyptian wizards left no loopholes in their vile curses. Furmahl had imprisoned us in an ancient King’s tomb. Entombed us, rather. It looked like we would never get out.
“'Til now, Joe and I had not even been introduced. In the days that followed, we really got to know each other. I don’t know how he felt about being entombed forever, but it was the ultimate horror for me. At least he would eventually die--sooner rather than later, I realized, because we had no food and only a half-full wineskin that Joe kept as part of his disguise. I refused to drink from it, and he took only sips, but soon it was all gone and he became desperately thirsty. Somehow, for some reason I cannot explain even to myself, I feared losing him more than anything else. Because after that, I knew I would be alone for eternity. I did what I could to make every moment with him mean as much as possible. I’ve never been more open, more attached, more desperately close to a man. But at last, he began to die. He grew weak and delirious.
“'Without even a wand to provide light, I had to find some water for him. I unraveled the hem of my dress and tied the end around his finger, then carefully walked through the maze, making sure to keep just a little tension on the unraveling thread at all times. I felt high and low. Finally, I found something. I tripped over it, rather. It was a skeleton--the skeleton of a man whose head was crushed by a fallen stone. The clothes it wore felt modern, and in one of its pockets was a little metal flask that had some liquid in it. I was willing to risk whatever state that liquid might be in, just to wet Joe’s whistle. As I was pulling the flask out of the skeleton’s pocket, I brushed against something else metallic. I felt it carefully and realized that it was a gauntlet--this gauntlet. I wondered what a man in a modern suit would be doing in an ancient Egyptian pyramid wearing a piece of medieval Norman metalwork...’
“'You could tell it was Norman workmanship in the darkness?’ I asked.
“'Well, anyone could, who had spent as much time visiting, pilfering, and donating to museums as I have. I brought it back to Joe with the flask. He drank it and it revived him a little. Then I let him feel the gauntlet. I should have stopped him from putting it on...’
“'He put it on?’ I gasped. ‘Then...’
“'Yes,’ said Ms. Noir. ‘I have no doubt that this gauntlet is a big part of his motive for using you to frame me. He can never forgive me for taking it from him; but it really was for his own good. After he bashed a way out of the pyramid for us, he fainted dead away. I took him to a sanitarium, where I left him in the hands of the healers. I took this away with me. I spent years studying it, learning of its origin and its dreaded powers. I have always wondered whether I would see Joe again, returning to claim it from me...or, at least, to avenge himself on me for breaking his heart. Oh, thank you, Nigel.’”
“Nigel?” said Sadie, the veiled witch whose pipe was now emitting a dense cloud of bright purple smoke. “I fought you was going by Sylvester somefink. What’s she fankin’ you for, anyway?”
“She wasn’t thanking me,” said Spanky, taking advantage of the interruption to down the rest of his goblet of firewhisky. “She was thanking the little, wizened, stooped butler who had appeared at her elbow with two glasses of brandy on a silver tray. We walked away from him, sipping our brandy, looking at the other works of art as we continued our conversation.
“'So obviously,’ Ms. Noir said, ‘you’re here to do the dirty work, the frame-up. The genius of it is, you don’t even know it. You’re just an honest lad, probably full of the same ideals you had when you went through school, trying to bring justice to a chaotic world. But Joe...well, I fear even the brief time he wore the gauntlet, though he used it to hurt no one and to save lives...’ She sighed. ‘Who knows how fast it can take over a man’s will? Or how strong and lasting its hold may be? I hoped Joe would have gotten over it by now, with the strong character he seemed to have. Obviously, I was wrong. He wants to put me away forever. He wants power. It’s the only... Nigel, what are you doing?’
“We both froze in our tracks. The feeble old butler had come out of a doorway ahead of us--I would never have dreamt that he could be so agile, getting ahead of us through the connecting rooms and all. He was pointing his wand straight at us.
“'Don’t move,’ said the old man. Only it wasn’t the elderly voice of Nigel that we heard. It was the familiar, deep growl of Joe Albuquerque. ‘Not one muscle,’ he added.
“I tried to go for my wand, and she for hers--but we weren’t fast enough. We didn’t even have time to draw before he lifted his wand and screamed, ‘Avada kedavra!’”
Far from the scene in Spanky’s story, a witch named Endora knocked her goblet over with a clunk. Fortunately, it was empty.
“Blimey,” said Endora, picking up the goblet nervously.
The others at the dark little parlor table held their breaths, waiting to hear what happened next.
[Originally posted 8/20/04]
15. The Bette Noir Affair, Part 3
Concepts contributed by: Angelbot, Jessica Parker and Greg
“The path wound up the hill between wide areas of deeply scored earth, shattered trees, and the dark, threatening shapes of the whomping willows. Warily, deprived of a good broom and an even better wand, I walked the middle of the path and wondered what I would find at the end of it.
“I rounded one last bend and gasped. Before me, surrounded by a moat that flowed with bubbling, sizzling acid under a bridge made of solid diamond, was a sprawling and ornate palace. Its grounds had yew trees cut into the shapes of giant animals--only these shrubs moved around and grazed on the lawn. It had a mirror pool surrounded by an unbroken row of beautiful, bell-shaped flowers that actually rang like bells when the wind nuzzled them. It had fawns and satyrs, baby unicorns, and winged swine--which American breeders call 'pigasus'--frolicking in beds of mixed flowers that belonged to all different parts of the year. It had a fat, docile dragon--the kind with the fire glands removed--snoozing on a pile of gold and jewels.
“At the very top of the gardens, set up against a cliff that overlooked a forest spreading as far as eye could reach, was a house on the scale of Windsor Palace, made entirely out of candy and gingerbread. Its foundations were lined with chickens’ feet, but the rest was edible. Biscuit-brick walls cemented together by marshmallow-cream mortar; sugar-glazed windows hung with Fruit Roll-Up curtains; candy-cane doorposts, chocolate-bar door and windowsills, Gummi Worm pediments, and a Chiclet-tiled roof. The doorknobs were butterscotch candies and the bell-pull outside the front door was made of black licorice. There was even a candy-wax fire-bucket next to the doorstep with a sign painted on it, reading: Please Do Not Dash On the Lady of the House. The bucket was full of Grape Fizz.
“Only magic--and lots of it--could have held all this together. As I stepped on the doorstep, which seemed to be made of Chick-O-Sticks cemented together with quick-set cake frosting, the door swung open of its own accord. Within was a hallway floored and paneled with ordinary marble, wood, and plaster, though on a side table there was a bowl full of Atomic Fireballs with a warning label stuck on it: Use Only When Survival of the Species Is at Stake. I crossed the hallway and found myself in a long, sumptuous gallery that must have stretched from one end of the house to the other. Art works from every period were there, from early Egyptian bas-reliefs to Renaissance sculpture, from the great Impressionists to the most abstract modern style. Every one of them was a living, moving, seductively talking portrait of the same woman. With all respect to Ilona Ilonera, the love of my life, the woman in these portraits was the most magnetic, the most sultry, the most maddeningly desirable and yet unattainable creature I have seen in life or art.
“And then she stepped out from behind a giant piece of blown glass that had three arms, eight eyes, half a dozen lips, and yet seemed to be as fascinating a portrait of her as any. The woman herself was tiny--her head only came up to my mid-chest. She had delicate hands, perfect skin, and a light blue dress with bits of silver thread glittering in it. The dress set off her figure magnificently. Framed by shining, waving yards of hair that captured every color from lightest blond to deepest brown, was a proud yet delicate face, refined yet intense, with a long slender nose and wide-set eyes that were the only jewels she needed to wear. The one flaw was her smile, which was sardonic and cruel.
“'Mr. Spankison,’ she said, looking me over as if I was something vaguely ridiculous to her. That brief look made me feel smaller than she was. ‘I see you have a rare appreciation for art. Would you like to see the crème of my collection?’ I nodded, unable to make a sound. So she led me through the gallery, pointing idly at pieces of interest--‘Poor Van Gogh. After he painted this I had to alter his memory. He was never the same. Something about not being satisfied with colors that stayed put on the canvas anymore...Ah! Here’s the Grimaldi, a wizard painter of Venice. He interpreted me as the Mother of God, would you believe that?’ Finally we reached a door made of the only alloy impervious to magic: silicon steel. She dialed a long combination on the rolling lock, then turned the handle and opened the door.
“The vault was quite small. It had a few shelves and drawers, whose contents were swathed in silks; but hanging on the far wall, illuminated by a pair of torches (Gubraithian fire, Ms. Noir explained), was a magnificent tapestry shining with the richest colors. It depicted a fabulously complex family tree. At the very bottom, at the root, were the names of Godric Gryffindor and his good wife. His name was in gold, hers in black. ‘The gold names,’ Ms. Noir explained, ‘are wizards or witches. The black ones are Muggles and Squibs. It’s interesting how evenly they are mixed in this family tapestry. Some that I have seen have only magical names on them. In comparison, the House of Gryffindor is most impure. But look--a new union has just taken place.’ She pointed to an edge of the tapestry, where the name of my friend the bridegroom was connected to that of his Hogwarts sweetheart. ‘I wonder if one of their children will be the One.’
“'The one what?’ I asked stupidly.
“'The One,’ she explained patiently, ‘who answers to the prophecy embroidered around the edges. Oh, don’t bother. It’s very long, it’s in a pidgin of Latin and Middle English, and most of it is redundant. In summary, it says that an heir will come who will purify...no, hold it. That’s the Slytherin tapestry. How silly of me to confuse them. The Gryffindor heir is the one who is supposed to--I say, is that a wand in your pocket?’
“Instantly I whipped out my left wand and pointed it at her.
“'I told you to leave your wand outside the gate,’ Ms. Noir said irritably.
“'I did,’ I replied. ‘You didn’t say to leave both of them.’
“'Oh, we are clever! But since I am between you and the door of this goblin-wrought, silicon-steel vault, perhaps you should explain what you mean by this impertinence before I entomb you forever.’
“'I’m here to give you a chance,’ I said, ‘to clear your name.’
“Her laughter echoed harshly off the walls of the vault. ‘My good name? And which name is that? My dear Mr. Spankison, it will be such a pity to lose you.’
“'Someone has stolen the Sword of Gryffindor,’ I said, ‘and is trying to frame you for it.’
“'And how are you so sure I didn’t steal it?’ she asked, as if offended by the suggestion that she was innocent.
“'Because I understand you now,’ I said. ‘You collect originals, priceless things. Yes, you rob, steal, and defraud, but not to buy transient things. Everything passes away but you and these treasures that you have seen fit to preserve. Nothing else matters to you because it is all as fleeting as a doxy in springtime that hatches, feeds, breeds, and dies. Or like a puffapod that...’
“'Skip the flowery similes,’ said Ms. Noir. ‘So to steal a valuable thing like the Gryffindor Sword would be beneath me, I take it?’
“'Yes,’ I say, hoping I’m right. ‘Because it’s a fake and you know it. It's only true value is the value of cash. In itself there is nothing about it worth preserving, and except for the prestige and workmanship and the historical value of having the replica in the Gryffindor Museum, it isn’t intrinsically worth so much that it would be worth the trouble of stealing it. Unless you wanted to perform some kind of diabolical fraud--the kind that is done not for money, but for power...’
“'I see your drift,’ said Ms. Noir angrily. ‘You are right. You will only find originals in this collection; but a ransom would be worth a good deal of money--enough, perhaps, to store up more treasures for eternity.’
“'Yes,’ I argue, ‘but the Gryffindor Trust is in the business of preservation, too. You may be a great criminal mind, Ms. Noir, but are you really the type that would interfere with something in that line?’
“'If you already know that I didn’t do it,’ she says, biting off each word fiercely, ‘why did you come here?’
“'Two reasons. First, I wasn’t entirely sure until I saw this place. Second, because you might be able to tell me who would want to frame you for this...and why.’
“'Well, use your inspecting skills, Inspector! Who led you to me?’
“'Well, Joe Albuquerque, but...’
“'Yes, it would be his style, wouldn’t it?’”
The wizard Spankison paused in his narrative to take a long draught of firewhisky.
Another wizard at the table, nicknamed Merlin, shook his hooded head in disbelief. “Not Joe,” he said, rubbing his belly. “Say it ain’t so.”
“My tale is not finished,” said Spanky. “The worst is yet to come.”
The witch Endora rubbed her hands together. “Oh, goody!”
[Originally posted 8/13/04]
“The path wound up the hill between wide areas of deeply scored earth, shattered trees, and the dark, threatening shapes of the whomping willows. Warily, deprived of a good broom and an even better wand, I walked the middle of the path and wondered what I would find at the end of it.
“I rounded one last bend and gasped. Before me, surrounded by a moat that flowed with bubbling, sizzling acid under a bridge made of solid diamond, was a sprawling and ornate palace. Its grounds had yew trees cut into the shapes of giant animals--only these shrubs moved around and grazed on the lawn. It had a mirror pool surrounded by an unbroken row of beautiful, bell-shaped flowers that actually rang like bells when the wind nuzzled them. It had fawns and satyrs, baby unicorns, and winged swine--which American breeders call 'pigasus'--frolicking in beds of mixed flowers that belonged to all different parts of the year. It had a fat, docile dragon--the kind with the fire glands removed--snoozing on a pile of gold and jewels.
“At the very top of the gardens, set up against a cliff that overlooked a forest spreading as far as eye could reach, was a house on the scale of Windsor Palace, made entirely out of candy and gingerbread. Its foundations were lined with chickens’ feet, but the rest was edible. Biscuit-brick walls cemented together by marshmallow-cream mortar; sugar-glazed windows hung with Fruit Roll-Up curtains; candy-cane doorposts, chocolate-bar door and windowsills, Gummi Worm pediments, and a Chiclet-tiled roof. The doorknobs were butterscotch candies and the bell-pull outside the front door was made of black licorice. There was even a candy-wax fire-bucket next to the doorstep with a sign painted on it, reading: Please Do Not Dash On the Lady of the House. The bucket was full of Grape Fizz.
“Only magic--and lots of it--could have held all this together. As I stepped on the doorstep, which seemed to be made of Chick-O-Sticks cemented together with quick-set cake frosting, the door swung open of its own accord. Within was a hallway floored and paneled with ordinary marble, wood, and plaster, though on a side table there was a bowl full of Atomic Fireballs with a warning label stuck on it: Use Only When Survival of the Species Is at Stake. I crossed the hallway and found myself in a long, sumptuous gallery that must have stretched from one end of the house to the other. Art works from every period were there, from early Egyptian bas-reliefs to Renaissance sculpture, from the great Impressionists to the most abstract modern style. Every one of them was a living, moving, seductively talking portrait of the same woman. With all respect to Ilona Ilonera, the love of my life, the woman in these portraits was the most magnetic, the most sultry, the most maddeningly desirable and yet unattainable creature I have seen in life or art.
“And then she stepped out from behind a giant piece of blown glass that had three arms, eight eyes, half a dozen lips, and yet seemed to be as fascinating a portrait of her as any. The woman herself was tiny--her head only came up to my mid-chest. She had delicate hands, perfect skin, and a light blue dress with bits of silver thread glittering in it. The dress set off her figure magnificently. Framed by shining, waving yards of hair that captured every color from lightest blond to deepest brown, was a proud yet delicate face, refined yet intense, with a long slender nose and wide-set eyes that were the only jewels she needed to wear. The one flaw was her smile, which was sardonic and cruel.
“'Mr. Spankison,’ she said, looking me over as if I was something vaguely ridiculous to her. That brief look made me feel smaller than she was. ‘I see you have a rare appreciation for art. Would you like to see the crème of my collection?’ I nodded, unable to make a sound. So she led me through the gallery, pointing idly at pieces of interest--‘Poor Van Gogh. After he painted this I had to alter his memory. He was never the same. Something about not being satisfied with colors that stayed put on the canvas anymore...Ah! Here’s the Grimaldi, a wizard painter of Venice. He interpreted me as the Mother of God, would you believe that?’ Finally we reached a door made of the only alloy impervious to magic: silicon steel. She dialed a long combination on the rolling lock, then turned the handle and opened the door.
“The vault was quite small. It had a few shelves and drawers, whose contents were swathed in silks; but hanging on the far wall, illuminated by a pair of torches (Gubraithian fire, Ms. Noir explained), was a magnificent tapestry shining with the richest colors. It depicted a fabulously complex family tree. At the very bottom, at the root, were the names of Godric Gryffindor and his good wife. His name was in gold, hers in black. ‘The gold names,’ Ms. Noir explained, ‘are wizards or witches. The black ones are Muggles and Squibs. It’s interesting how evenly they are mixed in this family tapestry. Some that I have seen have only magical names on them. In comparison, the House of Gryffindor is most impure. But look--a new union has just taken place.’ She pointed to an edge of the tapestry, where the name of my friend the bridegroom was connected to that of his Hogwarts sweetheart. ‘I wonder if one of their children will be the One.’
“'The one what?’ I asked stupidly.
“'The One,’ she explained patiently, ‘who answers to the prophecy embroidered around the edges. Oh, don’t bother. It’s very long, it’s in a pidgin of Latin and Middle English, and most of it is redundant. In summary, it says that an heir will come who will purify...no, hold it. That’s the Slytherin tapestry. How silly of me to confuse them. The Gryffindor heir is the one who is supposed to--I say, is that a wand in your pocket?’
“Instantly I whipped out my left wand and pointed it at her.
“'I told you to leave your wand outside the gate,’ Ms. Noir said irritably.
“'I did,’ I replied. ‘You didn’t say to leave both of them.’
“'Oh, we are clever! But since I am between you and the door of this goblin-wrought, silicon-steel vault, perhaps you should explain what you mean by this impertinence before I entomb you forever.’
“'I’m here to give you a chance,’ I said, ‘to clear your name.’
“Her laughter echoed harshly off the walls of the vault. ‘My good name? And which name is that? My dear Mr. Spankison, it will be such a pity to lose you.’
“'Someone has stolen the Sword of Gryffindor,’ I said, ‘and is trying to frame you for it.’
“'And how are you so sure I didn’t steal it?’ she asked, as if offended by the suggestion that she was innocent.
“'Because I understand you now,’ I said. ‘You collect originals, priceless things. Yes, you rob, steal, and defraud, but not to buy transient things. Everything passes away but you and these treasures that you have seen fit to preserve. Nothing else matters to you because it is all as fleeting as a doxy in springtime that hatches, feeds, breeds, and dies. Or like a puffapod that...’
“'Skip the flowery similes,’ said Ms. Noir. ‘So to steal a valuable thing like the Gryffindor Sword would be beneath me, I take it?’
“'Yes,’ I say, hoping I’m right. ‘Because it’s a fake and you know it. It's only true value is the value of cash. In itself there is nothing about it worth preserving, and except for the prestige and workmanship and the historical value of having the replica in the Gryffindor Museum, it isn’t intrinsically worth so much that it would be worth the trouble of stealing it. Unless you wanted to perform some kind of diabolical fraud--the kind that is done not for money, but for power...’
“'I see your drift,’ said Ms. Noir angrily. ‘You are right. You will only find originals in this collection; but a ransom would be worth a good deal of money--enough, perhaps, to store up more treasures for eternity.’
“'Yes,’ I argue, ‘but the Gryffindor Trust is in the business of preservation, too. You may be a great criminal mind, Ms. Noir, but are you really the type that would interfere with something in that line?’
“'If you already know that I didn’t do it,’ she says, biting off each word fiercely, ‘why did you come here?’
“'Two reasons. First, I wasn’t entirely sure until I saw this place. Second, because you might be able to tell me who would want to frame you for this...and why.’
“'Well, use your inspecting skills, Inspector! Who led you to me?’
“'Well, Joe Albuquerque, but...’
“'Yes, it would be his style, wouldn’t it?’”
The wizard Spankison paused in his narrative to take a long draught of firewhisky.
Another wizard at the table, nicknamed Merlin, shook his hooded head in disbelief. “Not Joe,” he said, rubbing his belly. “Say it ain’t so.”
“My tale is not finished,” said Spanky. “The worst is yet to come.”
The witch Endora rubbed her hands together. “Oh, goody!”
[Originally posted 8/13/04]
14. The Bette Noir Affair, Part 2
Concepts contributed by: Jessica Parker and Aidan Raelyn
The cowled storyteller leaned back in his seat and began swirling firewhisky around the bottom of his glass, looking for all the world as if his tale was done.
After a long, expectant pause, Endora the cloaked witch exclaimed, “That’s it? That’s the tale of the Bette Noir Affair?”
“Hush, dear,” her companion, Merlin, warned.
“I mean to say,” Endora surged onward, “it weren’t much of an affair, was it? Didn’t nothin’ happen...”
“Let the man rest,” said Harvey, whose face was now concealed by a piece of blue paisley silk. “It’s obvious the tale hasn’t begun yet to be told. He needs to gather his forces.”
“Well, really,” Sadie, the veiled witch, spoke up. “If this Bette Noir was such a devilish character, why haven’t we ’eard of ’er?”
“You have,” said Spanky from beneath his deep hood. His voice rang out so sudden, chilling, and deep that the others flinched.
Endora bravely stammered, “N-no, we haven’t.”
“Yes, you have,” said Spanky.
“No—ouch!”
“Oh my, was that your foot?” Harvey said regretfully. “I thought it was one of the landlord’s little pets. Pets, I say, because I am convinced that he keeps them around deliberately. They make the sight of food that hasn’t been nibbled, gnawed, or otherwise marked so unusual, one is tempted to tip extra for it.”
Merlin stopped a piece of toasted bread-and-cheese on its way under his hood, and slowly lowered it to the table.
Harvey’s eyes brightened, and he said, “I humbly beg your pardon. Do go on, my good man.”
Instead, Spanky took a long, slow drink out of his glass, then breathed smoke out through his nose with a satisfied sigh. “I was just thinking about the time my friend, Otis, and I dressed up in suits of armor and went clanking around the castle in the middle of the night...”
Harvey raised a hand to silence the others as they shifted mutinously in their chairs.
“...We had borrowed a certain map from a friend of ours,” Spanky continued, “a map that allowed us to keep tabs on where old man Pringle was, and we all but hemorrhaged from trying not to laugh as we led him this way and that by the sound of our footsteps. Every time he caught us up, we were holding dead still in a corridor or room full of suits of armor. And we just waited for him to finish fuming and cursing, waited till his tiny figure on the map moved off, then began clanking around again. It was great fun till we got to the kitchens, where we met a squadron of remarkably grouchy house-elves armed with can openers, veal tenderizers and refrigerator magnets. It seemed we had disturbed them during their customary hour of sleep. By the time we got away, bruised and dented, we were only too glad to throw ourselves at the mercy of Apollyon Pringle...”
Another sigh, another puff of smoke.
Sadie began banging her pipe on the end of the table.
“At any rate,” Spanky relented. “I’ll tell you what Joe Albuquerque told me, after we had gone back to his office on Peanut Butter Boulevard. He told me about a woman, a beautiful woman, most likely a granddaughter or great-granddaughter of a Veela. A proud, selfish, hard-hearted woman who was born in the twelfth century, and who is still alive and beautiful today. She glided into men’s lives and out again, seldom staying in one place or in one marriage long enough for her agelessness to be noticed. She changed her name, her accent, her hair and style of dress so that she wouldn’t be recognized as the same person. But of course, some people knew. Some people saw through her disguises, or stumbled upon her secret in some other way. And a few of those people passed on the tale--the tale of a woman who had taken a draught of immortality; or, in some cases, the tale of a woman who had fallen under a curse that she should never die until she found true love. And this was a woman, I daresay, who can never love.
“She has held many brave and brilliant men in the palm of her hand, distracting them with her beauty and maddening them with her contrariness, for she is difficult to please. And she often leaves them broken-hearted. But she always leaves them poorer, weaker, and less popular than they were before they met her. She steals their ideas and their works of art, she sells their secrets to their enemies, and when she disappears many treasures disappear with her. She is hard on husbands and cold toward her children. It is estimated that she has married forty-seven times and had eighty-two children. All her daughters use men the way she used their fathers, and all her sons are used by women in the same way. She has been the mother of three Kings of England, the wife of two U. S. Presidents, the star of numerous films under four different names, and an early transoceanic pilot. She also owns more priceless works of art than the Smithsonian Institution--things the Muggle authorities regard as irretrievably lost.
“I know only a few of the names she has been called. In one incarnation, she was an American heiress who married a Welsh industrialist, so she was known for a while as Lou Ellen Llewellyn. A little afterward, she posed as a French viscountess who captured the heart of a brilliant young historian. Her name then was Mercedes Binns--when she left, the poor fellow lost his interest in everything but history. In the 18th century, she and her private army founded the Zoology Bay colony in the Antipodes, where she used the illusion of a vast desert to disguise the largest and richest forest and game preserve in the world. To this day, rich wizards and witches go there to hunt chimaeras and gryphons. At one point she was even made a saint, in the identity of St. Oleomargaret, who magically--or, as it was thought, miraculously--churned sour mash into butter, ruining all the nearby dairy farmers so she could expand her brewery farm. Some say this was how butterbeer was invented.
“Her other aliases have included Hapenelope, a professional widow in the Boer war who married one soldier after another and collected their survivor benefits; Florence Vulture, a Crimean war nurse who picked the pockets of the dying and wounded; Victoria Borgia, the niece of a pope who ran off with the fund to rebuild the Lateran; Ithica de Medici, the wife of an Italian gentleman who drugged him at night and went out to spend his money while he slept; Mary Squeen of Cots, a pretender to the throne of England who got another lady with a similar name into serious trouble; Meretricia Macbeth, who disappeared and left her husband to pay for her crimes; Dyslexia Defarge, a French woman who brought chaos to the French revolution by knitting important, secret messages in a stitch-code that no one could read; Hemlock Golightly, a woman of ill-repute whose popularity made high-society women so envious that dressing like a streetwalker became the height of fashion; Catastrophe Jeanne, a female gunslinger and dueler in the American West who kept a whole town’s eyes riveted on Main Street while her accomplices broke in the back entrance of the bank; Bonnie Barking, who talked her mild-mannered beau into robbing banks for her; and Nausea Comaneci, whose theft of all the gold and silver medals at the 1972 Olympics resulted in cheap brass and pewter ones being handed out instead.
“Joe Albuquerque had known her as Bette Noir, in his younger days. He wouldn’t say much about what happened between them. He only alluded, now and then, to a Corsican statue of a turkey, a hothouse full of snapdragons, a glass hammer, and a dog named Spumoni. Since Joe told me all about her, I have always thought of her as Bette Noir; but I knew that was no more her real name than Lou Ellen Llewellyn or Mercedes Binns. Nevertheless, the name she was operating under when she came into my life was Maleficent Cacklebury. A right appropriate moniker, that.
“On my fourth day in California, I found a small wood-burning stove crackling away at the gate of a high-walled, forested estate somewhere in the Redwood Forest region. I stepped off my rental broom, tossed a fistful of floo powder into the stove, and announced, ‘Mr. Sylvester Stogether to see Ms. Cacklebury’--I was disguising my identity, you know...”
“Yes, we get it,” said the other four figures at the table, in unison.
Spanky nodded. “A very bewitching voice responded out of the flames, resonating in the frame of the little stove. It said, ‘I have been expecting you, Mr. Spankison. Leave your wand and your broomstick in the cupboard next to the gate. And stay on the path until you get over the bridge. My collection of whomping willows is nonpareil.’
“With a lingering creak, the gate swung open upon a deeply shaded lane that curved into the restless trees. I could see nothing else but a thin sliver of sky directly above me, could hear nothing but the crackling of limbs and rustling of leaves and, far away, the faint sound of Latin dance music so inappropriately cheerful that it struck me as eerie. I must have hesitated on my way up the path, because the gate hit me on the bottom as it slammed shut.”
[Originally posted 8/6/04]
The cowled storyteller leaned back in his seat and began swirling firewhisky around the bottom of his glass, looking for all the world as if his tale was done.
After a long, expectant pause, Endora the cloaked witch exclaimed, “That’s it? That’s the tale of the Bette Noir Affair?”
“Hush, dear,” her companion, Merlin, warned.
“I mean to say,” Endora surged onward, “it weren’t much of an affair, was it? Didn’t nothin’ happen...”
“Let the man rest,” said Harvey, whose face was now concealed by a piece of blue paisley silk. “It’s obvious the tale hasn’t begun yet to be told. He needs to gather his forces.”
“Well, really,” Sadie, the veiled witch, spoke up. “If this Bette Noir was such a devilish character, why haven’t we ’eard of ’er?”
“You have,” said Spanky from beneath his deep hood. His voice rang out so sudden, chilling, and deep that the others flinched.
Endora bravely stammered, “N-no, we haven’t.”
“Yes, you have,” said Spanky.
“No—ouch!”
“Oh my, was that your foot?” Harvey said regretfully. “I thought it was one of the landlord’s little pets. Pets, I say, because I am convinced that he keeps them around deliberately. They make the sight of food that hasn’t been nibbled, gnawed, or otherwise marked so unusual, one is tempted to tip extra for it.”
Merlin stopped a piece of toasted bread-and-cheese on its way under his hood, and slowly lowered it to the table.
Harvey’s eyes brightened, and he said, “I humbly beg your pardon. Do go on, my good man.”
Instead, Spanky took a long, slow drink out of his glass, then breathed smoke out through his nose with a satisfied sigh. “I was just thinking about the time my friend, Otis, and I dressed up in suits of armor and went clanking around the castle in the middle of the night...”
Harvey raised a hand to silence the others as they shifted mutinously in their chairs.
“...We had borrowed a certain map from a friend of ours,” Spanky continued, “a map that allowed us to keep tabs on where old man Pringle was, and we all but hemorrhaged from trying not to laugh as we led him this way and that by the sound of our footsteps. Every time he caught us up, we were holding dead still in a corridor or room full of suits of armor. And we just waited for him to finish fuming and cursing, waited till his tiny figure on the map moved off, then began clanking around again. It was great fun till we got to the kitchens, where we met a squadron of remarkably grouchy house-elves armed with can openers, veal tenderizers and refrigerator magnets. It seemed we had disturbed them during their customary hour of sleep. By the time we got away, bruised and dented, we were only too glad to throw ourselves at the mercy of Apollyon Pringle...”
Another sigh, another puff of smoke.
Sadie began banging her pipe on the end of the table.
“At any rate,” Spanky relented. “I’ll tell you what Joe Albuquerque told me, after we had gone back to his office on Peanut Butter Boulevard. He told me about a woman, a beautiful woman, most likely a granddaughter or great-granddaughter of a Veela. A proud, selfish, hard-hearted woman who was born in the twelfth century, and who is still alive and beautiful today. She glided into men’s lives and out again, seldom staying in one place or in one marriage long enough for her agelessness to be noticed. She changed her name, her accent, her hair and style of dress so that she wouldn’t be recognized as the same person. But of course, some people knew. Some people saw through her disguises, or stumbled upon her secret in some other way. And a few of those people passed on the tale--the tale of a woman who had taken a draught of immortality; or, in some cases, the tale of a woman who had fallen under a curse that she should never die until she found true love. And this was a woman, I daresay, who can never love.
“She has held many brave and brilliant men in the palm of her hand, distracting them with her beauty and maddening them with her contrariness, for she is difficult to please. And she often leaves them broken-hearted. But she always leaves them poorer, weaker, and less popular than they were before they met her. She steals their ideas and their works of art, she sells their secrets to their enemies, and when she disappears many treasures disappear with her. She is hard on husbands and cold toward her children. It is estimated that she has married forty-seven times and had eighty-two children. All her daughters use men the way she used their fathers, and all her sons are used by women in the same way. She has been the mother of three Kings of England, the wife of two U. S. Presidents, the star of numerous films under four different names, and an early transoceanic pilot. She also owns more priceless works of art than the Smithsonian Institution--things the Muggle authorities regard as irretrievably lost.
“I know only a few of the names she has been called. In one incarnation, she was an American heiress who married a Welsh industrialist, so she was known for a while as Lou Ellen Llewellyn. A little afterward, she posed as a French viscountess who captured the heart of a brilliant young historian. Her name then was Mercedes Binns--when she left, the poor fellow lost his interest in everything but history. In the 18th century, she and her private army founded the Zoology Bay colony in the Antipodes, where she used the illusion of a vast desert to disguise the largest and richest forest and game preserve in the world. To this day, rich wizards and witches go there to hunt chimaeras and gryphons. At one point she was even made a saint, in the identity of St. Oleomargaret, who magically--or, as it was thought, miraculously--churned sour mash into butter, ruining all the nearby dairy farmers so she could expand her brewery farm. Some say this was how butterbeer was invented.
“Her other aliases have included Hapenelope, a professional widow in the Boer war who married one soldier after another and collected their survivor benefits; Florence Vulture, a Crimean war nurse who picked the pockets of the dying and wounded; Victoria Borgia, the niece of a pope who ran off with the fund to rebuild the Lateran; Ithica de Medici, the wife of an Italian gentleman who drugged him at night and went out to spend his money while he slept; Mary Squeen of Cots, a pretender to the throne of England who got another lady with a similar name into serious trouble; Meretricia Macbeth, who disappeared and left her husband to pay for her crimes; Dyslexia Defarge, a French woman who brought chaos to the French revolution by knitting important, secret messages in a stitch-code that no one could read; Hemlock Golightly, a woman of ill-repute whose popularity made high-society women so envious that dressing like a streetwalker became the height of fashion; Catastrophe Jeanne, a female gunslinger and dueler in the American West who kept a whole town’s eyes riveted on Main Street while her accomplices broke in the back entrance of the bank; Bonnie Barking, who talked her mild-mannered beau into robbing banks for her; and Nausea Comaneci, whose theft of all the gold and silver medals at the 1972 Olympics resulted in cheap brass and pewter ones being handed out instead.
“Joe Albuquerque had known her as Bette Noir, in his younger days. He wouldn’t say much about what happened between them. He only alluded, now and then, to a Corsican statue of a turkey, a hothouse full of snapdragons, a glass hammer, and a dog named Spumoni. Since Joe told me all about her, I have always thought of her as Bette Noir; but I knew that was no more her real name than Lou Ellen Llewellyn or Mercedes Binns. Nevertheless, the name she was operating under when she came into my life was Maleficent Cacklebury. A right appropriate moniker, that.
“On my fourth day in California, I found a small wood-burning stove crackling away at the gate of a high-walled, forested estate somewhere in the Redwood Forest region. I stepped off my rental broom, tossed a fistful of floo powder into the stove, and announced, ‘Mr. Sylvester Stogether to see Ms. Cacklebury’--I was disguising my identity, you know...”
“Yes, we get it,” said the other four figures at the table, in unison.
Spanky nodded. “A very bewitching voice responded out of the flames, resonating in the frame of the little stove. It said, ‘I have been expecting you, Mr. Spankison. Leave your wand and your broomstick in the cupboard next to the gate. And stay on the path until you get over the bridge. My collection of whomping willows is nonpareil.’
“With a lingering creak, the gate swung open upon a deeply shaded lane that curved into the restless trees. I could see nothing else but a thin sliver of sky directly above me, could hear nothing but the crackling of limbs and rustling of leaves and, far away, the faint sound of Latin dance music so inappropriately cheerful that it struck me as eerie. I must have hesitated on my way up the path, because the gate hit me on the bottom as it slammed shut.”
[Originally posted 8/6/04]
13. The Bette Noir Affair
Concepts contributed by: Jessica Parker and Clare
"...I was out with some old schoolfellows, celebrating somebody's last weekend of bachelorhood. After chasing around one noisy, upbeat place after another, we found a certain quiet little pub to be a pleasant change and were catching up."
As Spanky paused for a sip of firewhisky, the veiled witch called Sadie chimed in: "Catching up on what? Drinks?"
"That too, but mainly each other. Some of us had gone quite separate ways, and of course I was a couple years younger than most of them, so I was really out of touch. The groom-to-be was doing very well but that was no surprise. He was one of the most powerful wizards of my generation and a fine scholar in his day. His best man came from old money and was always mentioned in the Hogsmeade society pages. Both of them had high-paying jobs that kept them in the headlines. The groom was marrying his Hogwarts sweetheart, on whom we had all had a crush at one point or another, and some of us still did. So we had a lot of toasting to do, and a great deal of roasting, and a bit of inebriated prognostication-for those of us who could still remember any of our Divination course work. A late night was already turning toward early morning when the gents came round to asking what had become of me.
"I replied that my career was progressing slowly but surely. But the interest that was riveted on me, as I described my work, surprised me. Their reactions were so out of proportion, I wondered if I was saying something wrong. For instance, one of my friends was an out-at-the-elbows sort who was scraping just enough to live on, working as a human test subject for animal tranquilizers. The worst part was that he could only work one day a month--for safety reasons, he said. Well, when I said that I had gone into the Bureau expecting an exciting career destroying vampires and werewolves, only to find myself spending a lot of time chasing down petty dragon smugglers, this fellow slammed his drink down on the table and stood up. At once the groom and the best man pulled him aside and they talked among themselves for a while before coming back to the table. I tried to dismiss a worry that my old friend was smuggling dragons and kept talking as naturally as I could.
"By then I was finishing my tale about Penguarts and suiCider and was saying something like, 'But it's not always that exciting. Most weeks I don't do anything more dangerous than serve a citation on, say, an unregistered animagus. Small-time stuff.' At that another of my old friends, a chubby little guy with beady eyes, started choking on his ale and it was the best man who surged to his feet, only he just went off by himself for a while, until the groom got anxious and went to fetch him.
"At that point, conversation had moved on to the good old days at Hogwarts, and all the people and traditions there that we used to find silly and annoying. My mate Otis was just finishing a long rant about how stupid it was that we had to bring our owls up on the school train when they could have flown back and forth perfectly well, when the best man and the groom came back to the table. When Otis paused for breath, I cut in and said I thought the stupidest thing at Hogwarts was the whomping willow and whoever had it planted there was without a doubt a complete and utter wanker.
"God help me, I don't know what I had said wrong, but at these words the bridegroom-to-be lunged across the table and tried to get his hands around my throat. Ale splashed, glass crashed, tables and chairs went flying, and before the tapster hit us all with body-bind spells we were all rolling on the floor, punching anyone we could reach. The party broke up after that, and a lot of those guys wouldn't speak to me for a while."
As Spanky paused for another drink, Harvey's eyes smiled at the others, and he tapped the side of his handkerchief-covered nose.
"So I went home to sleep it off and instead spent half the morning lying awake, trying to work out where I had gone wrong. And that was when I got paged."
"Paged?" Endora asked, perplexed. "What's that?"
"It's a little way the RMB have of keeping in touch with their agents. Out of thin air there's a burst of purple flame and a rolled up bit of onionskin paper appears. This one flamed up right above my head, and the scroll hit my chest before I could flinch. I unrolled the page and read in the spiky handwriting of my superintendent-you remember Iovanescu?-that my leave was canceled, as I was urgently required by the local office. I was given coordinates to apparate and instructions to dress for warm weather.
"I changed my robes and popped in to the local office, which wasn't really so much a Mission as a public liaison office. They handled complaints, stored old records, and handled security arrangements for the Gryffindor Trust. But there wasn't anyone on staff who had actually had the business end of a wand brandished at him. They had never had a crime that couldn't be solved by going to the local jail, bailing out the most hungover wizard, and telling him they would drop all charges if he would put all the statue's body parts back where they belonged. One time a wizard had turned the standing stones near Salisbury into a set of draughts and hundreds of tourists had needed memory charms after that. But nothing really dangerous had ever happened around Blokebury-on-Rye, nothing really valuable had been stolen. Until now.
"The superintendent at Blokebury is a skinny chap who looks like a skeleton with skin stretched over it. Everyone calls him Hungry. He must be my father's age, but from the moment I walked into that office, I felt that he was in awe of me. It was a strange feeling, but it started to make up for the lousy night I'd had.
"'What's the problem?' I asked him. 'Haven't they told you?' he asked back. Why, the sword had been stolen from the Gryffindor Museum at Godric's Hollow. Not the sword, you know, not the one that belonged to the great man himself, but the perfect replica that was forged in the 18th century when the Trust bought the land back from a hop farmer named Snipewell. No one knew where the real sword was, but the Trust worried that the fake would be misrepresented as the real thing, used in some horrid fraud, or perhaps melted down and sold for scrap. Fake though it was, it was worth more galleons than any of us, saving your honor, has ever clapped eyes on."
Harvey nodded at the compliment and snapped his fingers to conjure another round of firewhisky.
"The honor of the RMB was at stake," Spanky went on. "No one knew better than Hungry, who had personally designed the web of enchantments that was supposed to make the sword impossible to steal. Whoever had done it must have been a dark witch or wizard of nearly unheard-of mastery. The one thing that soothed Hungry's anger was the fact that our culprit, amazing as he or she was, had not avoided leaving a trail. A tiny speck of fuzz had stuck to the felt pillow on which the sword had lain.
"I pulled a cauldron and portable fire out of my handy, four-dimensional pocketbook and began whipping up a potion. It was one that had already served me well on several occasions. I can't tell you what it's called, because I learned it in Moldova where they haven't discovered vowels yet; but the active ingredient is powdered pickled starfish. Put a bit of anything in it and it grows back the parts it has lost. Of course what you get can be no larger than your cauldron, so if you put in an elephant's toenail you'll end up with a cauldron-sized elephant with a really bad case of ingrown toenails. So don't think of making this stuff at home, it can lead to big problems.
"After the solution cooled, I dropped in the bit of fuzz, stirred it around for a while, and went out for a pint with Hungry. By the time we came back, the bit of fuzz had grown into a towel embroidered with the words Bilge Vista Hotel-Santa Perdita, California.
"'Very impressive,' said Hungry. 'And useful, perhaps.'
"'Thanks,' I said.
"Hungry beamed at me, holding the towel as though he wanted to rub himself with it. He said, 'This looks like the break we've been looking for. When can you leave?'
"'Leave?' I squeaked. 'Me?'
"'Who else?' Hungry said. He wiggled his wand over his desktop and an airplane ticket appeared there. 'Too far to go by floo or apparition,' he explained, as if answering my unspoken arguments, 'and you never want to assign a Portkey to a place you've never seen. As for flying on a broom, by the time you got there, the trail might be cold. Don't worry, this is an Air Merlin flight. Pumpkin juice cocktails, hinkypunk paté, acceleration-free, normal-air-pressure, levitation-powered flight. The flight attendants are all at least one-quarter Veela. And you can spend your frequent-flier miles at Quality Quidditch Supply.'
"'That's not what I'm concerned about,' I said.
"'What's the matter then?' asked Hungry.
"'I know someone in Santa Perdita,' I said. 'Someone who might be able to help in this.'
"'Excellent. Because your flight leaves in forty-two seconds, so you'd better go right now.'
"I went. I apparated on the plane, business class, with two seconds to spare. The flight to California seemed endless; it must have taken at least forty-five minutes. I don't know how Muggles put up with it, especially without the bigger-on-the-inside flight cabin. I arrived in California sweaty from a tennis match I played against one of the flight attendants, and discovered that I was underdressed after all. Santa Perdita is a small city on the coast of Southern California, and against all expectations, it was cold there. At least ten degrees cooler than in Blokebury. It was a sunny, breezy day in September and I was shivering in shorts and a polo shirt. My first thought was to curse Iovanescu for telling me to dress for warm weather. And then who should I find waiting for me at the gate but Joe Albuquerque, disguised as a flight attendant!
"'You're kinda cute,' I kidded him. 'That half-veela look really works for you.'
"'Well, it's a pain in the knickers, so hurry up,' Joe growled. 'Come on, I've got a portkey to the motel, but we can't use it in front of all these people. Do you see anything that looks like a broom cupboard?'
"I hurried after him as he walked away without giving me more than a glance. 'How did you...' I stammered. 'I mean, when did...or rather, where are we...?'
"'No time to explain,' Joe grunted. 'If the person behind this is who I think it is, your window of opportunity is closing fast.'
"'Who do you think it is?' I panted. 'What window? Why is it closing?'
"Joe snorted with exasperation. 'Will you shut up with the questions? Ah! Good! A janitor's closet. Watch your step, that mop is wet. Okay, touch this. Three, two, one...'
"While my head was still spinning from the whirl of wind and changing colors, Joe hopped over a low stone wall and approached the front doors of a sprawling, badly painted building whose garish neon sign proclaimed Bilge Vista Hotel-Vacancy. I shook the dizziness off and hopped after Joe. By the time I reached the reception desk he was already paging through the guest sign-in book.
"'There she is,' Joe said, jabbing at a page with his thumb. 'Maleficent Cacklebury, stayed two nights, September 4th and 5th. Room 226. It's a fake name of course, but it's like her. Just like her, in fact.'
"'Just like who?' I said impatiently.
"Joe batted his fake Veela-eyelashes at me, as if he pitied me for what I was about to learn. He almost seemed to be apologizing for the trouble that was going to happen, before it happened. And when he said, 'Her real name-or at least the name I first knew her by-is Bette Noir,' I new it was a name that would trouble my sleep for many nights to come..."
[Originally posted 7/30/04]
"...I was out with some old schoolfellows, celebrating somebody's last weekend of bachelorhood. After chasing around one noisy, upbeat place after another, we found a certain quiet little pub to be a pleasant change and were catching up."
As Spanky paused for a sip of firewhisky, the veiled witch called Sadie chimed in: "Catching up on what? Drinks?"
"That too, but mainly each other. Some of us had gone quite separate ways, and of course I was a couple years younger than most of them, so I was really out of touch. The groom-to-be was doing very well but that was no surprise. He was one of the most powerful wizards of my generation and a fine scholar in his day. His best man came from old money and was always mentioned in the Hogsmeade society pages. Both of them had high-paying jobs that kept them in the headlines. The groom was marrying his Hogwarts sweetheart, on whom we had all had a crush at one point or another, and some of us still did. So we had a lot of toasting to do, and a great deal of roasting, and a bit of inebriated prognostication-for those of us who could still remember any of our Divination course work. A late night was already turning toward early morning when the gents came round to asking what had become of me.
"I replied that my career was progressing slowly but surely. But the interest that was riveted on me, as I described my work, surprised me. Their reactions were so out of proportion, I wondered if I was saying something wrong. For instance, one of my friends was an out-at-the-elbows sort who was scraping just enough to live on, working as a human test subject for animal tranquilizers. The worst part was that he could only work one day a month--for safety reasons, he said. Well, when I said that I had gone into the Bureau expecting an exciting career destroying vampires and werewolves, only to find myself spending a lot of time chasing down petty dragon smugglers, this fellow slammed his drink down on the table and stood up. At once the groom and the best man pulled him aside and they talked among themselves for a while before coming back to the table. I tried to dismiss a worry that my old friend was smuggling dragons and kept talking as naturally as I could.
"By then I was finishing my tale about Penguarts and suiCider and was saying something like, 'But it's not always that exciting. Most weeks I don't do anything more dangerous than serve a citation on, say, an unregistered animagus. Small-time stuff.' At that another of my old friends, a chubby little guy with beady eyes, started choking on his ale and it was the best man who surged to his feet, only he just went off by himself for a while, until the groom got anxious and went to fetch him.
"At that point, conversation had moved on to the good old days at Hogwarts, and all the people and traditions there that we used to find silly and annoying. My mate Otis was just finishing a long rant about how stupid it was that we had to bring our owls up on the school train when they could have flown back and forth perfectly well, when the best man and the groom came back to the table. When Otis paused for breath, I cut in and said I thought the stupidest thing at Hogwarts was the whomping willow and whoever had it planted there was without a doubt a complete and utter wanker.
"God help me, I don't know what I had said wrong, but at these words the bridegroom-to-be lunged across the table and tried to get his hands around my throat. Ale splashed, glass crashed, tables and chairs went flying, and before the tapster hit us all with body-bind spells we were all rolling on the floor, punching anyone we could reach. The party broke up after that, and a lot of those guys wouldn't speak to me for a while."
As Spanky paused for another drink, Harvey's eyes smiled at the others, and he tapped the side of his handkerchief-covered nose.
"So I went home to sleep it off and instead spent half the morning lying awake, trying to work out where I had gone wrong. And that was when I got paged."
"Paged?" Endora asked, perplexed. "What's that?"
"It's a little way the RMB have of keeping in touch with their agents. Out of thin air there's a burst of purple flame and a rolled up bit of onionskin paper appears. This one flamed up right above my head, and the scroll hit my chest before I could flinch. I unrolled the page and read in the spiky handwriting of my superintendent-you remember Iovanescu?-that my leave was canceled, as I was urgently required by the local office. I was given coordinates to apparate and instructions to dress for warm weather.
"I changed my robes and popped in to the local office, which wasn't really so much a Mission as a public liaison office. They handled complaints, stored old records, and handled security arrangements for the Gryffindor Trust. But there wasn't anyone on staff who had actually had the business end of a wand brandished at him. They had never had a crime that couldn't be solved by going to the local jail, bailing out the most hungover wizard, and telling him they would drop all charges if he would put all the statue's body parts back where they belonged. One time a wizard had turned the standing stones near Salisbury into a set of draughts and hundreds of tourists had needed memory charms after that. But nothing really dangerous had ever happened around Blokebury-on-Rye, nothing really valuable had been stolen. Until now.
"The superintendent at Blokebury is a skinny chap who looks like a skeleton with skin stretched over it. Everyone calls him Hungry. He must be my father's age, but from the moment I walked into that office, I felt that he was in awe of me. It was a strange feeling, but it started to make up for the lousy night I'd had.
"'What's the problem?' I asked him. 'Haven't they told you?' he asked back. Why, the sword had been stolen from the Gryffindor Museum at Godric's Hollow. Not the sword, you know, not the one that belonged to the great man himself, but the perfect replica that was forged in the 18th century when the Trust bought the land back from a hop farmer named Snipewell. No one knew where the real sword was, but the Trust worried that the fake would be misrepresented as the real thing, used in some horrid fraud, or perhaps melted down and sold for scrap. Fake though it was, it was worth more galleons than any of us, saving your honor, has ever clapped eyes on."
Harvey nodded at the compliment and snapped his fingers to conjure another round of firewhisky.
"The honor of the RMB was at stake," Spanky went on. "No one knew better than Hungry, who had personally designed the web of enchantments that was supposed to make the sword impossible to steal. Whoever had done it must have been a dark witch or wizard of nearly unheard-of mastery. The one thing that soothed Hungry's anger was the fact that our culprit, amazing as he or she was, had not avoided leaving a trail. A tiny speck of fuzz had stuck to the felt pillow on which the sword had lain.
"I pulled a cauldron and portable fire out of my handy, four-dimensional pocketbook and began whipping up a potion. It was one that had already served me well on several occasions. I can't tell you what it's called, because I learned it in Moldova where they haven't discovered vowels yet; but the active ingredient is powdered pickled starfish. Put a bit of anything in it and it grows back the parts it has lost. Of course what you get can be no larger than your cauldron, so if you put in an elephant's toenail you'll end up with a cauldron-sized elephant with a really bad case of ingrown toenails. So don't think of making this stuff at home, it can lead to big problems.
"After the solution cooled, I dropped in the bit of fuzz, stirred it around for a while, and went out for a pint with Hungry. By the time we came back, the bit of fuzz had grown into a towel embroidered with the words Bilge Vista Hotel-Santa Perdita, California.
"'Very impressive,' said Hungry. 'And useful, perhaps.'
"'Thanks,' I said.
"Hungry beamed at me, holding the towel as though he wanted to rub himself with it. He said, 'This looks like the break we've been looking for. When can you leave?'
"'Leave?' I squeaked. 'Me?'
"'Who else?' Hungry said. He wiggled his wand over his desktop and an airplane ticket appeared there. 'Too far to go by floo or apparition,' he explained, as if answering my unspoken arguments, 'and you never want to assign a Portkey to a place you've never seen. As for flying on a broom, by the time you got there, the trail might be cold. Don't worry, this is an Air Merlin flight. Pumpkin juice cocktails, hinkypunk paté, acceleration-free, normal-air-pressure, levitation-powered flight. The flight attendants are all at least one-quarter Veela. And you can spend your frequent-flier miles at Quality Quidditch Supply.'
"'That's not what I'm concerned about,' I said.
"'What's the matter then?' asked Hungry.
"'I know someone in Santa Perdita,' I said. 'Someone who might be able to help in this.'
"'Excellent. Because your flight leaves in forty-two seconds, so you'd better go right now.'
"I went. I apparated on the plane, business class, with two seconds to spare. The flight to California seemed endless; it must have taken at least forty-five minutes. I don't know how Muggles put up with it, especially without the bigger-on-the-inside flight cabin. I arrived in California sweaty from a tennis match I played against one of the flight attendants, and discovered that I was underdressed after all. Santa Perdita is a small city on the coast of Southern California, and against all expectations, it was cold there. At least ten degrees cooler than in Blokebury. It was a sunny, breezy day in September and I was shivering in shorts and a polo shirt. My first thought was to curse Iovanescu for telling me to dress for warm weather. And then who should I find waiting for me at the gate but Joe Albuquerque, disguised as a flight attendant!
"'You're kinda cute,' I kidded him. 'That half-veela look really works for you.'
"'Well, it's a pain in the knickers, so hurry up,' Joe growled. 'Come on, I've got a portkey to the motel, but we can't use it in front of all these people. Do you see anything that looks like a broom cupboard?'
"I hurried after him as he walked away without giving me more than a glance. 'How did you...' I stammered. 'I mean, when did...or rather, where are we...?'
"'No time to explain,' Joe grunted. 'If the person behind this is who I think it is, your window of opportunity is closing fast.'
"'Who do you think it is?' I panted. 'What window? Why is it closing?'
"Joe snorted with exasperation. 'Will you shut up with the questions? Ah! Good! A janitor's closet. Watch your step, that mop is wet. Okay, touch this. Three, two, one...'
"While my head was still spinning from the whirl of wind and changing colors, Joe hopped over a low stone wall and approached the front doors of a sprawling, badly painted building whose garish neon sign proclaimed Bilge Vista Hotel-Vacancy. I shook the dizziness off and hopped after Joe. By the time I reached the reception desk he was already paging through the guest sign-in book.
"'There she is,' Joe said, jabbing at a page with his thumb. 'Maleficent Cacklebury, stayed two nights, September 4th and 5th. Room 226. It's a fake name of course, but it's like her. Just like her, in fact.'
"'Just like who?' I said impatiently.
"Joe batted his fake Veela-eyelashes at me, as if he pitied me for what I was about to learn. He almost seemed to be apologizing for the trouble that was going to happen, before it happened. And when he said, 'Her real name-or at least the name I first knew her by-is Bette Noir,' I new it was a name that would trouble my sleep for many nights to come..."
[Originally posted 7/30/04]
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