Contest winners: Dragonic and Linda Carrig
Joe Albuquerque showed his key to the goblin in charge. The goblin looked up the number of the key in a huge ledger. "This vault is retained by a Bette Noir," the goblin sneered. "Would that be you?"
"Albuquerque's the name," said Joe. "I inherited the vault and its contents from Ms. Noir."
"Making a withdrawal, are you?" the goblin pried, glaring at Joe suspiciously. "Only, you made a deposit yesterday."
"My mother-in-law was visiting," Joe said smoothly. "Never goes anywhere without that niffler of hers. We simply wanted to put a few things out of the niffler's reach until she had gone, which she has." He smiled blandly, which irritated the goblin even more.
"Sprocketlip will escort you," the goblin in charge replied, muttering something foul under his breath.
"Thank you," said Joe, as a goblin with astonishingly large ears stepped forward and beckoned to him with a brusque gesture.
Sprocketlip did not make much conversation until they reached Vault 1036, where he squealed: "Key!" Joe handed it over. Using the key together with a number of secret gestures known only to goblins, the creature released the locks and booby traps on the door. It slid open with a soft grinding noise.
Joe walked into the vault, nonchalantly ignoring racks of furs and shelves laden with rare artifacts. He went directly to a large sack of treasure in the corner, hefted it, shoved it into a pocket in his cloak (where, of course, it made no bulge whatsoever), and walked out of the vault.
As they rode their ore cart back up toward the bank lobby, Joe cried: "Wait! We have to go back!"
The goblin's ears curled at this news, but it said nothing. At the next turning the goblin steered the cart around on a track leading back down toward the lower vaults. The next word it shrieked was, predictably, "Key!" - though Joe had already taken the precaution of handing it to him.
Joe winced, walked back into the vault, and pulled a sack of treasure out of his coat. "My wife would have fed me my liver," he said cheerfully as he exchanged it for an identical sack of treasure. "She's been telling me all week how she wanted to switch to her grandmother's silver service. I ought to be able to take a hint by now."
The goblin made no audible response. Perhaps it didn't speak English.
This time their trip back to ground level was uneventful, and Joe walked out of the bank. He stopped for a pint at The Leaky Cauldron, then disapparated.
Spanky started when Joe appeared in his study. "How did it go?" he asked, recognizing his visitor with relief, and going back to the report he was writing.
"Everything went smoothly," said Joe. His voice broke a bit at the end of his phrase. "Excuse me," he added. "Frog in my throat."
"I quite understand," said Spanky, unlocking the large, lower drawer of his desk. Joe pulled the treasure sack out of his cloak and dropped it into the drawer, which Spanky locked again.
Joe gagged, made some horrible retching noises, and finally pulled a small frog out of his mouth. "That's better," he added, only now in the voice of Spanky's wife Ilona. He set the frog in an aquarium furnished with grass, pebbles, and a bowl of water, then began peeling his face off.
The fake hair and skin that had made Ilona look like Joe Albuquerque (wouldn't you like to know!) rolled up quickly into a small bundle, which Ilona handed to Spanky. "I think I'm getting used to this," she said, as her husband helped her out of a wizard's robes and into attire more becoming a witch - which look exactly the same to untrained eyes. "If Joe doesn't watch his back, I may come after his job."
"I hope he and Sadie will be all right," Spanky said as he stuffed Ilona's disguise into a cupboard. "I have a feeling they're about to meet some dangerous characters."
"We will hear from them if anything bad happens," Ilona said firmly. "Don't worry."
"Was anything out of order in the vault?"
"It was hard to tell," said Ilona, taking the pins out of her hair. "I couldn't be sure, from Joe's description. But the goblin-in-charge was suspicious. Evidently someone besides Joe was there yesterday with a deposit."
"Well, then," said Spanky, "we must be on the right trail. Whoever stole that ring from your uncle must be connected with Bette Noir after all."
At that moment, Joe and Sadie were receiving their own confirmation of this as Sadie pursued the thin young wizard through the treasure sack which opened directly into a false-bottomed chest in the house on chicken feet.
Sadie swore a not-very-ladylike oath and ran after the retreating house as the rain began to fall. She might not have caught up to it if a stone fence hadn't appeared in its path. As the feet turned under the house and prepared to run in a new direction, Sadie caught up and burst through what seemed to be a side door. She found herself at the intersection of two corridors; and when the door slammed behind her she turned and saw, instead of a door, another wing of the house lined with mysterious, closed doors.
Voices and footsteps approached. Sadie plunged through the first unlocked door she came to and pushed the door shut as quietly as possible. She listened, eyes shut, as the voices and footsteps approached, past, and faded away. On opening her eyes again, she saw one of the eeriest rooms she had ever been in.
It took Sadie some moments to learn the size and shape of the room. It was an oval-shaped space, about the size of the public room at the Hog's Head, eerily lit by dim oil lamps set in recesses on the wall. This glow was repeated in dozens of gilt-framed mirrors that lined the walls. Spaced throughout the room were about twenty life-size figures carved out of pieces of wood - smooth, featureless figures standing in a variety of poses. Each was dressed in costly finery, with circlets on their heads, necks adorned with ropes of pearls and jeweled chains, bracelets and rings on their hands...
Sadie gasped when she realized that the ring she was looking for might be in this very room. Before taking a step away from the door, however, she took a good look at everything around her. Knowing the security spells and magical traps used by other wizards of means, Sadie was reluctant to move a single toe until she knew what was safe and what wasn't. She had gotten to be quite good at this. For instance, any of these dummies might be jinxed to poke her in the eye, or snatch the wand out of her fingers. Sadie carefully pocketed her wand. Or perhaps that rug - the one in front of the one nearly naked dummy - might have a spell on it. She guessed that, if she stepped on it, she would instantly find herself trapped in a rolled-up carpet.
Keeping as much distance as possible between herself and the dummies, Sadie tiptoed across the room to the naked dummy. On the first finger of its upraised hand it wore a heavy, silver signet ring. Taking care to walk clear of the carpet, she circled behind the dummy and stretched her hand over its shoulder, reaching for the hand with the ring. At the last moment, she put her foot on a tile that looked like any other...and felt a sudden tug. "Oh, no."
When the portkey spit her out, Sadie expected to land heavily on the ground. Instead, she felt herself jammed into a space so small and confined that she had to curl herself up to the limit of her considerable limberness. Every part of her ached. She had her fast reflexes to thank for not being instantly crushed to death. With a groan, she twisted around and put her hand out, feeling for an opening...
...and gave a stifled scream as another hand grabbed hers and tugged. She fought to pull her hand free, but she had no where to flee to. Soon she gave in to her helpless position and allowed herself to be pulled free of what turned out to be a trunk with a false bottom, and into the Gringotts vault she had left minutes earlier.
Joe Albuquerque - the real one, as evidenced by his disguise as a major in the Swiss Guards - helped Sadie to her feet.
"Are you all right?" he cried.
"Give me a moment," she said, and began checking herself for injuries. "You've changed," she observed.
"I got nervous," Joe said apologetically.
"Well, I hope you brought a lot of disguises," said Sadie, "because I have news that will turn your hair white. First, I've seen the ring, and I almost got it back."
"Well done!" Joe cheered.
"But," Sadie added, "I don't know how I'm going to find it again, especially with His or Her Horridness alive, well, and at large in there." She pointed toward the collapsed treasure sack Joe had helped her out of.
Joe's jaw dropped. "You don't mean..."
"I do," said Sadie. "I would rather not go back there, but in a minute or two, I will. But you know, I would feel a lot better if I had your whistle with me."
Joe opened his mouth to argue, stopped, closed his eyes, and shook his head. Then, reaching under the collar of his Swiss Guards uniform, he pulled out a slender chain made of individually carved slivers of dragon bone. Threaded on the chain was a small whistle carved out of a small, highly polished fang.
"I guess you'll need this more than I," he said gallantly as he handed it over.
"Thanks," said Sadie, putting the chain around her own neck. "While you're waiting for me, look around this place. Maybe you'll find something just as useful for yourself." Then she took two deep breaths, like a diver, and swarmed back into the empty sack.
Joe Albuquerque sighed as her feet disappeared. "I need to raise my fees," he muttered.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! First, go to the forums, or send Robbie feedback. Then, in 250 words or less, answer 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 is the scariest curse in the Harry Potter books?
CONTEST: Rumor has it that a potions expert can "bottle fame, brew glory, stopper death," etc. Describe something that would be really unusual to find in liquid form.
[Originally posted 7/4/08]
Showing posts with label Gringotts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gringotts. Show all posts
Saturday, December 27, 2008
137. Death by Aromatherapy
Contest winner: greyniffler
Joe Albuquerque had walked around the hogshead barrel in the late Bette Noir's vault for the 100th time, occasionally pausing to knock on it or to try some other means of guessing what it contained (short of opening it), when something started to happen in the very corner where he had been hiding when the barrel was delivered.
Sadie stepped away from the pile of enormous money bags and joined Joe on the far side of the barrel. Together they watched from behind a rack full of fur coats as the jumping-juniper barrel rocked itself back and forth. Nearby, a sack writhed and shuddered as if someone was trapped inside it. Sadie chewed the end of her veil. Joe watched with his fists clenched. A few minutes earlier, he had been disguised as a money bag only a few feet from the one that was now coming to life. Now his attention was focused on who might be coming out of it, focused to razor keenness by the hope and dread of seeing a woman he had loved and lost many years ago.
So when an entirely unknown person came out of the bag, he almost cried out with relief. Or, perhaps, disappointment.
The unknown person was preceded by a fountain of galleons, shooting out of a burst seam below the neck of the sack. This was followed by a hand, which tugged on the outside of the sack to make the rip wider; then an arm, and another; then the head and shoulders of an extremely thin young man; and finally the rest of him, flowing out of the coin-clogged sack in one rapid movement. This, Joe was certain, was no one he had ever met . . . yet there was something familiar about him. Joe watched silently, meaning to learn as much as he could about this newcomer before revealing himself.
Meanwhile, Sadie had recognized the signet ring on the young man's finger. She nudged Joe and pointed it out.
Oblivious to their presence, the young man chanted some very precise shrinking charms, reducing the size of the great wriggling barrel until it would fit in the palm of his hand. He pocketed this. Then he prised the lid off a crate and pulled out a glass votive holder. This was evidently not what he needed. The youth put the votive back and opened another crate. This one was full of squat, beeswax candles. With a grin of success, he sealed the crate and shrank it until it would fit in his other pocket. Then he went back to the split money bag and burrowed into it. A moment later his kicking legs disappeared into the pile of coins still remaining in the sack, and the sound of rattling galleons ceased.
"Who was that?" Sadie blurted before the last echo had died. "And where did he go with - er - whatever it is?"
"Only one way to find out," said Joe, pushing the rack of furs aside. He began digging in the sack of galleons, and quickly struck upon a wooden surface. Clearing the coins away, he found that, on the inside, the sack was only one end of a canvas lining of a chest or strongbox of some kind. The lid on top was unadorned wood. Even with all the contents scraped out on the floor of the vault, the chest was too narrow to accommodate someone of Joe's size. He pulled his head out of the split sack and looked at Sadie. "You might be scrawny enough," he remarked.
"Thank you very much," she snapped. She stretched and flexed, throwing her bosom out as if to prove that she had one.
"Well, maybe if we wrap a tight bandage around your chest," Joe conceded.
Sadie seemed mollified. "That's all right," she said. "I can get through some tight spaces. Let me see what you have there."
Before Joe could stop her or discuss their plan of attack, Sadie swarmed into the sack headfirst and was gone, slamming the lid of the chest behind her.
Swearing, Joe pushed the lid up and tried to see out of the top of the strongbox. "Sadie," he hissed. "What are you doing?"
When he received no answer, Joe sat back on his heels and waited. After a while he grew bored, so he opened the crate of votive holders the young stranger had rejected. These were narrow glass cylinders, open at one end, and decorated with a painting of some medieval saint cradling a wounded bird in his hands. Beneath the picture, a short rhyme was picked out in curly, thread-like letters:
What Sadie found when she emerged from the narrow strongbox was a lady's bedchamber in a very fine, old house. There was no mistaking it, even with dustcovers over everything and the windows veiled by smothering curtains. The draped shapes included a four-poster bed, a chair beside a workbasket, a wardrobe, a dressing table (on which the strongbox was situated), a cold, dark fireplace, and a washstand. The dust covers were a good idea; they were heavily soiled with dust, as was the floor, except where the young man's feet had come and gone.
Sadie carefully stepped in the youth's footprints and followed them across the dusty floor. Slowly, mindful of even the tiniest creak, Sadie pulled the door open and peeked out into the room beyond. Again, smothered windows and dustcovers over all: a lady's sitting-room. Beyond that was a deserted hallway, from which dim light and the sound of voices filtered as if from some distance. She crept along the hallway, looking into the rooms she passed. In some, the curtains were pulled aside, revealing an improbable variety of vistas. From a child's day-nursery she saw a winter landscape with snow on the ground and trees glittering with icicles. From a small library, the windows gave a view of a gravel driveway, green lawns, towering hedges, and an iron gate. The music room (where a piano and violin seemed to have been abandoned by their players only a moment ago) commanded a view of a khaki-colored waste dotted with cactus, agave, and sagebrush. But the view that made the breath catch in her chest was in the dining room.
It wasn't so much the vast window overlooking the Thames at night, with the lights of the city in the distance; nor was it the painting on the other side, the painting of a Dark Lord of recent (but not blessed) memory; nor the vase of shriveled, putrid-smelling flowers under it. What made Sadie draw back around the corner was the vast figure wedged into a massive chair at the head of the dining room table, surrounded by a crowd of platters and tureens from which it ceaselessly ate while the skinny youth from the vault stood by his elbow, speaking.
"...exactly as planned," the young man was saying just now. "I will begin infusing the napple cordial into the candles tomorrow. Then, with..."
"Today," belched the monstrous figure at the head of the table.
"All right," said the youth, scarcely looking put out. "Today. Then, with the St. Mungo commemorative votives stuffed with suicider-scented candles, we can proceed to the next stage. The healers will find the missing crate of votives, conveniently but plausibly misplaced in their regular candle-supply closet. The fundraiser will proceed as planned. Every do-gooder wizard this side of the Channel will buy one to support the hospital's expansion project. Next thing they know, St. Mungo's will be flooded with unexplained comas. That's when you will - er..."
"You'll see," gobbled the thing beside him with a wicked gleam in its little eyes. It continued feeding while the young man fidgeted nervously.
"Surely, Uncle," the lad cried out at last. "That is to say, Auntie - or whatever - surely the plan has ripened to the point where I'll need to know what comes next."
A huge, meaty paw slapped the young man, knocking him headlong into a heap of discarded crockery. "Be still," the paw's owner warned, his wobbling face turning puce with anger. "When Uncle or Auntie is ready to reveal that he or she still lives," it continued, in defiance of its ordinarily ravenous appetite, "the world will know soon enough what we want. Until then, give us a reason to doubt your loyalty, and you will become" - the speech broke off in favor of a long, rich belch - "an item on the menu."
As soon as Uncle or Auntie Leslie had resumed stuffing, the skinny youth picked himself up and limped out of the room, passing within inches of the stuffed panda whose shadow concealed Sadie. She gripped the bear's fur, eyes wide as saucers, trying to make sense of all that she had just seen and heard. After several minutes of uninterrupted gross noises coming from the adjacent room, Sadie plucked up her courage and slipped back down the hallway, in search of the lady's bedchamber from which she had somehow entered the stronghold of a dark wizard whose death had been reported long ago.
Five minutes later, Sadie knew she was lost. She recognized none of the rooms she looked into, and now some of the doors were locked. Backtracking didn't help; when she went back to a door she was sure had been, moments earlier, a dairy stocked with rounds of cheese and brimming butter molds, it had become a breadroom thick with the smell of cooling loaves. As she wandered, discouraged, through increasingly unfamiliar corridors, Sadie's ears picked up to the sound of approaching footsteps. She threw herself through a door...
...stumbled, in near-darkness, down half a dozen brick steps...
...and only realized she was outdoors when a flash of lightning brightened the sky. Sadie turned around, quickly reestablishing her bearings, but it was too late. The door she had come out of was on the retreating side of a rough-hewn, wooden shack. A shack that was running away from her at surprising speed, running on ten thousand chicken feet.
Sadie said something not very dainty and began to race after it.
+++ Double Challenge for #139 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! First, go to the forums, or send Robbie feedback. Then, in 250 words or less, answer 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: How did Joe and Sadie get into Vault 1036 at Gringotts? (See chapters 135 and 136 for more background.) A: The goblins let them in because they had a warrant from the RMB. B: Joe had a key because Bette Noir gave it to him. C: They hid inside a deposit bag. D: I dunno, some type of magical means of entry. (Suggestions are welcome.)
CONTEST: Describe a clever, magical security measure that could trip up even an experienced burglar like Sadie.
[Originally posted 5/25/08]
Joe Albuquerque had walked around the hogshead barrel in the late Bette Noir's vault for the 100th time, occasionally pausing to knock on it or to try some other means of guessing what it contained (short of opening it), when something started to happen in the very corner where he had been hiding when the barrel was delivered.
Sadie stepped away from the pile of enormous money bags and joined Joe on the far side of the barrel. Together they watched from behind a rack full of fur coats as the jumping-juniper barrel rocked itself back and forth. Nearby, a sack writhed and shuddered as if someone was trapped inside it. Sadie chewed the end of her veil. Joe watched with his fists clenched. A few minutes earlier, he had been disguised as a money bag only a few feet from the one that was now coming to life. Now his attention was focused on who might be coming out of it, focused to razor keenness by the hope and dread of seeing a woman he had loved and lost many years ago.
So when an entirely unknown person came out of the bag, he almost cried out with relief. Or, perhaps, disappointment.
The unknown person was preceded by a fountain of galleons, shooting out of a burst seam below the neck of the sack. This was followed by a hand, which tugged on the outside of the sack to make the rip wider; then an arm, and another; then the head and shoulders of an extremely thin young man; and finally the rest of him, flowing out of the coin-clogged sack in one rapid movement. This, Joe was certain, was no one he had ever met . . . yet there was something familiar about him. Joe watched silently, meaning to learn as much as he could about this newcomer before revealing himself.
Meanwhile, Sadie had recognized the signet ring on the young man's finger. She nudged Joe and pointed it out.
Oblivious to their presence, the young man chanted some very precise shrinking charms, reducing the size of the great wriggling barrel until it would fit in the palm of his hand. He pocketed this. Then he prised the lid off a crate and pulled out a glass votive holder. This was evidently not what he needed. The youth put the votive back and opened another crate. This one was full of squat, beeswax candles. With a grin of success, he sealed the crate and shrank it until it would fit in his other pocket. Then he went back to the split money bag and burrowed into it. A moment later his kicking legs disappeared into the pile of coins still remaining in the sack, and the sound of rattling galleons ceased.
"Who was that?" Sadie blurted before the last echo had died. "And where did he go with - er - whatever it is?"
"Only one way to find out," said Joe, pushing the rack of furs aside. He began digging in the sack of galleons, and quickly struck upon a wooden surface. Clearing the coins away, he found that, on the inside, the sack was only one end of a canvas lining of a chest or strongbox of some kind. The lid on top was unadorned wood. Even with all the contents scraped out on the floor of the vault, the chest was too narrow to accommodate someone of Joe's size. He pulled his head out of the split sack and looked at Sadie. "You might be scrawny enough," he remarked.
"Thank you very much," she snapped. She stretched and flexed, throwing her bosom out as if to prove that she had one.
"Well, maybe if we wrap a tight bandage around your chest," Joe conceded.
Sadie seemed mollified. "That's all right," she said. "I can get through some tight spaces. Let me see what you have there."
Before Joe could stop her or discuss their plan of attack, Sadie swarmed into the sack headfirst and was gone, slamming the lid of the chest behind her.
Swearing, Joe pushed the lid up and tried to see out of the top of the strongbox. "Sadie," he hissed. "What are you doing?"
When he received no answer, Joe sat back on his heels and waited. After a while he grew bored, so he opened the crate of votive holders the young stranger had rejected. These were narrow glass cylinders, open at one end, and decorated with a painting of some medieval saint cradling a wounded bird in his hands. Beneath the picture, a short rhyme was picked out in curly, thread-like letters:
Here is the bird that never flew.This meant nothing to Joe. He sighed, went back to the corner behind the fur coats, wrapped one of the coats around him, and took a nap.
Here is the tree that never grew.
Here is the bell that never rang.
Here is the fish that never swam.
What Sadie found when she emerged from the narrow strongbox was a lady's bedchamber in a very fine, old house. There was no mistaking it, even with dustcovers over everything and the windows veiled by smothering curtains. The draped shapes included a four-poster bed, a chair beside a workbasket, a wardrobe, a dressing table (on which the strongbox was situated), a cold, dark fireplace, and a washstand. The dust covers were a good idea; they were heavily soiled with dust, as was the floor, except where the young man's feet had come and gone.
Sadie carefully stepped in the youth's footprints and followed them across the dusty floor. Slowly, mindful of even the tiniest creak, Sadie pulled the door open and peeked out into the room beyond. Again, smothered windows and dustcovers over all: a lady's sitting-room. Beyond that was a deserted hallway, from which dim light and the sound of voices filtered as if from some distance. She crept along the hallway, looking into the rooms she passed. In some, the curtains were pulled aside, revealing an improbable variety of vistas. From a child's day-nursery she saw a winter landscape with snow on the ground and trees glittering with icicles. From a small library, the windows gave a view of a gravel driveway, green lawns, towering hedges, and an iron gate. The music room (where a piano and violin seemed to have been abandoned by their players only a moment ago) commanded a view of a khaki-colored waste dotted with cactus, agave, and sagebrush. But the view that made the breath catch in her chest was in the dining room.
It wasn't so much the vast window overlooking the Thames at night, with the lights of the city in the distance; nor was it the painting on the other side, the painting of a Dark Lord of recent (but not blessed) memory; nor the vase of shriveled, putrid-smelling flowers under it. What made Sadie draw back around the corner was the vast figure wedged into a massive chair at the head of the dining room table, surrounded by a crowd of platters and tureens from which it ceaselessly ate while the skinny youth from the vault stood by his elbow, speaking.
"...exactly as planned," the young man was saying just now. "I will begin infusing the napple cordial into the candles tomorrow. Then, with..."
"Today," belched the monstrous figure at the head of the table.
"All right," said the youth, scarcely looking put out. "Today. Then, with the St. Mungo commemorative votives stuffed with suicider-scented candles, we can proceed to the next stage. The healers will find the missing crate of votives, conveniently but plausibly misplaced in their regular candle-supply closet. The fundraiser will proceed as planned. Every do-gooder wizard this side of the Channel will buy one to support the hospital's expansion project. Next thing they know, St. Mungo's will be flooded with unexplained comas. That's when you will - er..."
"You'll see," gobbled the thing beside him with a wicked gleam in its little eyes. It continued feeding while the young man fidgeted nervously.
"Surely, Uncle," the lad cried out at last. "That is to say, Auntie - or whatever - surely the plan has ripened to the point where I'll need to know what comes next."
A huge, meaty paw slapped the young man, knocking him headlong into a heap of discarded crockery. "Be still," the paw's owner warned, his wobbling face turning puce with anger. "When Uncle or Auntie is ready to reveal that he or she still lives," it continued, in defiance of its ordinarily ravenous appetite, "the world will know soon enough what we want. Until then, give us a reason to doubt your loyalty, and you will become" - the speech broke off in favor of a long, rich belch - "an item on the menu."
As soon as Uncle or Auntie Leslie had resumed stuffing, the skinny youth picked himself up and limped out of the room, passing within inches of the stuffed panda whose shadow concealed Sadie. She gripped the bear's fur, eyes wide as saucers, trying to make sense of all that she had just seen and heard. After several minutes of uninterrupted gross noises coming from the adjacent room, Sadie plucked up her courage and slipped back down the hallway, in search of the lady's bedchamber from which she had somehow entered the stronghold of a dark wizard whose death had been reported long ago.
Five minutes later, Sadie knew she was lost. She recognized none of the rooms she looked into, and now some of the doors were locked. Backtracking didn't help; when she went back to a door she was sure had been, moments earlier, a dairy stocked with rounds of cheese and brimming butter molds, it had become a breadroom thick with the smell of cooling loaves. As she wandered, discouraged, through increasingly unfamiliar corridors, Sadie's ears picked up to the sound of approaching footsteps. She threw herself through a door...
...stumbled, in near-darkness, down half a dozen brick steps...
...and only realized she was outdoors when a flash of lightning brightened the sky. Sadie turned around, quickly reestablishing her bearings, but it was too late. The door she had come out of was on the retreating side of a rough-hewn, wooden shack. A shack that was running away from her at surprising speed, running on ten thousand chicken feet.
Sadie said something not very dainty and began to race after it.
+++ Double Challenge for #139 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! First, go to the forums, or send Robbie feedback. Then, in 250 words or less, answer 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: How did Joe and Sadie get into Vault 1036 at Gringotts? (See chapters 135 and 136 for more background.) A: The goblins let them in because they had a warrant from the RMB. B: Joe had a key because Bette Noir gave it to him. C: They hid inside a deposit bag. D: I dunno, some type of magical means of entry. (Suggestions are welcome.)
CONTEST: Describe a clever, magical security measure that could trip up even an experienced burglar like Sadie.
[Originally posted 5/25/08]
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]
131. Scratching Post
Contest winner: h_morgan
The stone door slid open with hardly a sound. Rigel and his companion stepped out into the starry night, led by the light at the tip of Rigel's wand. As they emerged from the shelter of the cliffside, seven goblin faces turned toward them from around a folding table where they were playing exploding snap, close to the edge of the still, misty lake.
"At last," said the goblin with the longest nose, rising from his seat. Quickly the creatures closed in on the man and boy, surrounding them tightly.
"I don't care what you want!" Rigel yelled. "I'm not going back in there!"
"We already have what we want," said the lead goblin.
Long-fingered hands brushed Rigel's face. Sharp-toothed grins leered at him. Tough little arms held him and the man in an all-but-suffocating embrace. But there was no move toward the entrance to the crystal cave, where all manner of goblin-desired treasures must lie.
"I don't understand," Rigel gasped. "What is this all about? Does this man owe you money?"
"Money!" snarled a particularly ugly goblin. "We would never take money from master!"
As one, the goblins stepped back from the two wizards. Each extended a long, sharp claw and poked it into the top of his own head. The night was filled with the sounds of air hissing out of punctured, inflatable goblin disguises. The goblin bodies collapsed, and out of them came seven beaming house-elves, nearly as ugly but infinitely friendlier.
"Master has returned," said the house-elf with the biggest nose, and he ran to embrace the grown-up wizard's legs.
"There, there," said his master. "It is good to see you too, Dinty. I have missed all of you."
Lifting up his head, Harvey breathed the night air deeply and added, "It is good to see the sky as well."
Rigel clutched his head, bemused. "They were your house-elves all along! I thought they had come from Gringotts to ent-t-tomb me for my sins!"
"Yes, their disguises were rather clever," Harvey said proudly, failing to notice the boy's traumatized stammer. "I expect they've been following Joe Albuquerque since I went away. I shall give each of them a tin star to pin to his pillowcase" - for the house-elves all wore pillowcases with the seams ripped for their heads and arms to poke through - "and free reign to prepare a feast to celebrate my return."
"Master is too good to us," Dinty fawned. Rigel silently agreed.
Harvey rubbed his palms together. "Now, let's go home. Shall we Apparate together? To The Drains, then, on three. One, two, three..."
Rigel, though currently too young for an Apparition license, still knew how since his previous adulthood. Nevertheless, he winced as he felt the constricting, smothering sensation of Apparition. It lasted only a fraction of a second, before an even stranger and more unpleasant sensation took its place. Feeling like a cork shooting out of the neck of a champagne bottle, Rigel fell back onto the lakeshore under the starlight. All around him, bodies popped out of nowhere and slammed into the ground with cries of surprise and dismay.
"That's never happened before," Harvey said, picking himself up. "Someone must have set an anti-Apparition spell around The Drains. I shall have a word with the caretaker as soon as we get home. Meanwhile, there must be a wizard-dwelling within a few miles of here. From there we can use the Floo Network, perhaps."
Man, boy, and house-elves began to march back along the cliffside, retracing the route by which the supposed goblins had carried Rigel the day before. The house-elves whispered among themselves, pointing out signs along the path that no wizard could see, until they came to a cottage in a clearing in a wood.
The ground around the cottage was planted with herbs, turnips, pumpkins, and marrows, guarded by not one scarecrow, but a dozen. The scarecrows were ghastly, huge, animated things with fur and fangs, claws dripping with blood, and slavering mouths from which mangled feathers occasionally dropped: clearly the work of a wizard or witch. Rigel had never seen anything like them. Even the house-elves seemed subdued as they approached the cottage door. The woods around the clearing were strangely silent; perhaps owing to the effectiveness of the scarecrows, not one bird's song could be heard.
Harvey knocked on the front door. Whoever lived there must have sensed their approach, because the door immediately opened. Rigel was astonished as, quite unconcerned, Harvey walked into the dimness beyond the door. Hesitantly, the boy followed - but the house-elves stayed outside in a nervous cluster.
The owner of the house may have been male or female; it was hard to tell. He or she stood tall and bone-thin, wrapped in patched and threadbare robes, with long, dirty, white hair hanging in tangled profusion over his or her face. The strangest aspect of the cottager's appearance was the steel mesh-reinforced birdcage over its head - or perhaps it was the swim goggles it wore over its eyes, overhanging hair and all.
The cottage itself was equally strange. Strange skins dangled from the ceiling, along with nets full of small skulls. The tables, shelves, walls, and mantel were crammed full of unusual items: pixie-sized weapons, fragments of an enormous eggshell, a string full of deadly looking talons, a feathered wing mounted by itself, bird skeletons held together by wire, a large number of pipes and whistles in all sizes, runes written in blood on bamboo blocks strung on leather thongs, and stones with holes through them.
Rigel made up his mind to stay close to the door.
"I'm terribly sorry to intrude," Harvey said, taking in the cottage, its owner, and its bizarre contents as if none of it surprised him. "I've had a minor travel mishap, and I would be very grateful if you could assist me in sending for help. Is your fire hooked up to the Floo Network?"
The cottager pointed to a velvet bag dangling by a string next to the hearth. It was embroidered with the symbol of two crossed wands. Harvey took the bag off its hook, found that it was empty, and put it back.
"Well, you seem to have run out of Floo powder," he said cheerfully. "I will gladly see that you get a supply of it, if I could only borrow your owl."
The silent cottager flinched, and spoke at last in a nasal voice that confirmed, at least to Rigel's ears, that its owner was a woman. "I won't have an owl in this house," she said.
"Then," Harvey went on, not sounding at all discouraged, "is there any way you can help us send a message?"
The crazy old witch pointed to a cupboard door. Hesitantly, Rigel opened it. Then he jumped backward and nearly upset a table full of wooden figurines, as a plump beagle popped out of the cupboard with a gray and white cat on its back.
Immediately the dog began to bark - but not in the pointlessly disruptive way Rigel normally associated with dogs. Within a few woofs, Rigel recognized the tune of a song Celestina Warbeck had sung on the Wizarding Wireless the previous evening. The cat hopped onto the kitchen table and began to dance, its rear legs cleverly matching the steps of its front legs.
Rigel swallowed. "I never..."
"Tie your note to Puss's tail," the witch rasped. "He won't like it, but he'll know what to do."
Harvey pulled a small roll of parchment out of his hat and wrote quickly with a pen the witch proffered him: "To Agent S. Spankison, RMB - I have returned, but suspect that trouble awaits in my flat. Please gather the usual forces and meet me at The Drains at your earliest convenience. Your humble etc., M. Harvey, esq." This he rolled up as tightly as possible and tied firmly to the cat's tale while Rigel held it.
The cat yowled and scratched Rigel up and down both arms, then darted out the door in a furious gray-white streak.
"Thanks for the help," Harvey said smoothly, while Rigel clutched his bleeding arms. "We'll just be off to the train station, then. I will have that Floo powder delivered by...er, courier, I suppose. And if you ever need anything, please contact me." He handed the witch his card.
The witch shook her head. "Never go to London these days," she said. "Have a horror of pigeons. Birds of all kinds, really."
Rigel wondered that birds didn't have a horror of this witch, thinking of the wing trophy, the string of talons, and the horrible scarecrows outside.
"Be that as it may," Harvey shrugged.
"My parents were eaten by a roc," the witch explained. "Saw it happen when I was very young."
"I quite understand," said Harvey, bowing his way backward out the cottage door. "Pay a call by Floo, anytime. Cheers, then."
He waited until he and Rigel were well away from the cottage, following the house-elves and their invisible signs, before giving a low whistle. "I've seen too many witches or wizards end up like that," he said. "Filthy rocs."
+++ QUADRUPLE CHALLENGE! +++
Contact Robbie through the Discussion Forum or by feedback to share your ideas about how the Magic Quill should continue. Survey answers that get the most votes, and contest answers that Robbie chooses, will be in the next two chapters! [EDIT: This discussion is closed.]
Survey for TMQ #132: How can Harvey be in St. Mungo's and with Rigel at the same time? (A) It's just one of those odd things that happens when you mess around with time travel. (B) The one with Rigel is an impostor. (C) The one with Rigel is someone else who has been made to look like Harvey, and who actually thinks he is Harvey. (D) Two words: magical cloning.
Contest for TMQ #132: Describe a potion that a witch or wizard could find habit-forming.
Survey for TMQ #133: Which of Rigel's old Gringotts-escape mates should come back next? (A) Karl, the survival expert. (B) Jaan, the wandsmith. (C) Anatoly, the animated tattoo artist. (D) Slavik, the DADA teacher at Durmstrang. (E) Boccachiusa, the mime wizard. (F) Subito, the vertically challenged clown wizard. (G) Pagliai, the leader of the clown wizards.
Contest for TMQ #133: Describe a magical plant and its properties, including both advantages and disadvantages over a similar, non-magical plant.
[Originally posted 1/20/08]
The stone door slid open with hardly a sound. Rigel and his companion stepped out into the starry night, led by the light at the tip of Rigel's wand. As they emerged from the shelter of the cliffside, seven goblin faces turned toward them from around a folding table where they were playing exploding snap, close to the edge of the still, misty lake.
"At last," said the goblin with the longest nose, rising from his seat. Quickly the creatures closed in on the man and boy, surrounding them tightly.
"I don't care what you want!" Rigel yelled. "I'm not going back in there!"
"We already have what we want," said the lead goblin.
Long-fingered hands brushed Rigel's face. Sharp-toothed grins leered at him. Tough little arms held him and the man in an all-but-suffocating embrace. But there was no move toward the entrance to the crystal cave, where all manner of goblin-desired treasures must lie.
"I don't understand," Rigel gasped. "What is this all about? Does this man owe you money?"
"Money!" snarled a particularly ugly goblin. "We would never take money from master!"
As one, the goblins stepped back from the two wizards. Each extended a long, sharp claw and poked it into the top of his own head. The night was filled with the sounds of air hissing out of punctured, inflatable goblin disguises. The goblin bodies collapsed, and out of them came seven beaming house-elves, nearly as ugly but infinitely friendlier.
"Master has returned," said the house-elf with the biggest nose, and he ran to embrace the grown-up wizard's legs.
"There, there," said his master. "It is good to see you too, Dinty. I have missed all of you."
Lifting up his head, Harvey breathed the night air deeply and added, "It is good to see the sky as well."
Rigel clutched his head, bemused. "They were your house-elves all along! I thought they had come from Gringotts to ent-t-tomb me for my sins!"
"Yes, their disguises were rather clever," Harvey said proudly, failing to notice the boy's traumatized stammer. "I expect they've been following Joe Albuquerque since I went away. I shall give each of them a tin star to pin to his pillowcase" - for the house-elves all wore pillowcases with the seams ripped for their heads and arms to poke through - "and free reign to prepare a feast to celebrate my return."
"Master is too good to us," Dinty fawned. Rigel silently agreed.
Harvey rubbed his palms together. "Now, let's go home. Shall we Apparate together? To The Drains, then, on three. One, two, three..."
Rigel, though currently too young for an Apparition license, still knew how since his previous adulthood. Nevertheless, he winced as he felt the constricting, smothering sensation of Apparition. It lasted only a fraction of a second, before an even stranger and more unpleasant sensation took its place. Feeling like a cork shooting out of the neck of a champagne bottle, Rigel fell back onto the lakeshore under the starlight. All around him, bodies popped out of nowhere and slammed into the ground with cries of surprise and dismay.
"That's never happened before," Harvey said, picking himself up. "Someone must have set an anti-Apparition spell around The Drains. I shall have a word with the caretaker as soon as we get home. Meanwhile, there must be a wizard-dwelling within a few miles of here. From there we can use the Floo Network, perhaps."
Man, boy, and house-elves began to march back along the cliffside, retracing the route by which the supposed goblins had carried Rigel the day before. The house-elves whispered among themselves, pointing out signs along the path that no wizard could see, until they came to a cottage in a clearing in a wood.
The ground around the cottage was planted with herbs, turnips, pumpkins, and marrows, guarded by not one scarecrow, but a dozen. The scarecrows were ghastly, huge, animated things with fur and fangs, claws dripping with blood, and slavering mouths from which mangled feathers occasionally dropped: clearly the work of a wizard or witch. Rigel had never seen anything like them. Even the house-elves seemed subdued as they approached the cottage door. The woods around the clearing were strangely silent; perhaps owing to the effectiveness of the scarecrows, not one bird's song could be heard.
Harvey knocked on the front door. Whoever lived there must have sensed their approach, because the door immediately opened. Rigel was astonished as, quite unconcerned, Harvey walked into the dimness beyond the door. Hesitantly, the boy followed - but the house-elves stayed outside in a nervous cluster.
The owner of the house may have been male or female; it was hard to tell. He or she stood tall and bone-thin, wrapped in patched and threadbare robes, with long, dirty, white hair hanging in tangled profusion over his or her face. The strangest aspect of the cottager's appearance was the steel mesh-reinforced birdcage over its head - or perhaps it was the swim goggles it wore over its eyes, overhanging hair and all.
The cottage itself was equally strange. Strange skins dangled from the ceiling, along with nets full of small skulls. The tables, shelves, walls, and mantel were crammed full of unusual items: pixie-sized weapons, fragments of an enormous eggshell, a string full of deadly looking talons, a feathered wing mounted by itself, bird skeletons held together by wire, a large number of pipes and whistles in all sizes, runes written in blood on bamboo blocks strung on leather thongs, and stones with holes through them.
Rigel made up his mind to stay close to the door.
"I'm terribly sorry to intrude," Harvey said, taking in the cottage, its owner, and its bizarre contents as if none of it surprised him. "I've had a minor travel mishap, and I would be very grateful if you could assist me in sending for help. Is your fire hooked up to the Floo Network?"
The cottager pointed to a velvet bag dangling by a string next to the hearth. It was embroidered with the symbol of two crossed wands. Harvey took the bag off its hook, found that it was empty, and put it back.
"Well, you seem to have run out of Floo powder," he said cheerfully. "I will gladly see that you get a supply of it, if I could only borrow your owl."
The silent cottager flinched, and spoke at last in a nasal voice that confirmed, at least to Rigel's ears, that its owner was a woman. "I won't have an owl in this house," she said.
"Then," Harvey went on, not sounding at all discouraged, "is there any way you can help us send a message?"
The crazy old witch pointed to a cupboard door. Hesitantly, Rigel opened it. Then he jumped backward and nearly upset a table full of wooden figurines, as a plump beagle popped out of the cupboard with a gray and white cat on its back.
Immediately the dog began to bark - but not in the pointlessly disruptive way Rigel normally associated with dogs. Within a few woofs, Rigel recognized the tune of a song Celestina Warbeck had sung on the Wizarding Wireless the previous evening. The cat hopped onto the kitchen table and began to dance, its rear legs cleverly matching the steps of its front legs.
Rigel swallowed. "I never..."
"Tie your note to Puss's tail," the witch rasped. "He won't like it, but he'll know what to do."
Harvey pulled a small roll of parchment out of his hat and wrote quickly with a pen the witch proffered him: "To Agent S. Spankison, RMB - I have returned, but suspect that trouble awaits in my flat. Please gather the usual forces and meet me at The Drains at your earliest convenience. Your humble etc., M. Harvey, esq." This he rolled up as tightly as possible and tied firmly to the cat's tale while Rigel held it.
The cat yowled and scratched Rigel up and down both arms, then darted out the door in a furious gray-white streak.
"Thanks for the help," Harvey said smoothly, while Rigel clutched his bleeding arms. "We'll just be off to the train station, then. I will have that Floo powder delivered by...er, courier, I suppose. And if you ever need anything, please contact me." He handed the witch his card.
The witch shook her head. "Never go to London these days," she said. "Have a horror of pigeons. Birds of all kinds, really."
Rigel wondered that birds didn't have a horror of this witch, thinking of the wing trophy, the string of talons, and the horrible scarecrows outside.
"Be that as it may," Harvey shrugged.
"My parents were eaten by a roc," the witch explained. "Saw it happen when I was very young."
"I quite understand," said Harvey, bowing his way backward out the cottage door. "Pay a call by Floo, anytime. Cheers, then."
He waited until he and Rigel were well away from the cottage, following the house-elves and their invisible signs, before giving a low whistle. "I've seen too many witches or wizards end up like that," he said. "Filthy rocs."
+++ QUADRUPLE CHALLENGE! +++
Contact Robbie through the Discussion Forum or by feedback to share your ideas about how the Magic Quill should continue. Survey answers that get the most votes, and contest answers that Robbie chooses, will be in the next two chapters! [EDIT: This discussion is closed.]
Survey for TMQ #132: How can Harvey be in St. Mungo's and with Rigel at the same time? (A) It's just one of those odd things that happens when you mess around with time travel. (B) The one with Rigel is an impostor. (C) The one with Rigel is someone else who has been made to look like Harvey, and who actually thinks he is Harvey. (D) Two words: magical cloning.
Contest for TMQ #132: Describe a potion that a witch or wizard could find habit-forming.
Survey for TMQ #133: Which of Rigel's old Gringotts-escape mates should come back next? (A) Karl, the survival expert. (B) Jaan, the wandsmith. (C) Anatoly, the animated tattoo artist. (D) Slavik, the DADA teacher at Durmstrang. (E) Boccachiusa, the mime wizard. (F) Subito, the vertically challenged clown wizard. (G) Pagliai, the leader of the clown wizards.
Contest for TMQ #133: Describe a magical plant and its properties, including both advantages and disadvantages over a similar, non-magical plant.
[Originally posted 1/20/08]
129. The Crystal Cave
Contest winner: Dragonic
The goblins bound Rigel hand and foot. Then they bound him knee and elbow for good measure. They gagged him and carried him down the drive, trussed like a fly in a spider's web, wriggling ineffectually on their shoulders. Turning toward town, they walked beneath him in double-file.
Rigel's insides were tied in knots, with fear pulling at one end and fury at the other. He wanted to ask where they were taking him, and was afraid to ask at the same time. He was afraid, rather, that the answer would be Gringotts, the last place in the world he ever wanted to see again.
Muggle cars passed them on the road. No one seemed to notice a band of goblins carrying a tied-up boy in clown makeup. No one noticed, either, as they marched through the town square, or as they waited for a signal to cross the street. No one made a remark as they bought tickets at the train station, climbed aboard the train, and stowed Rigel on an overhead luggage rack, though they had to stand in a goblin pyramid to do so. Rigel watched with growing frustration as the conductor punched their tickets, taking each one from a goblin's long claws and returning it again without seeming to notice anything odd.
They spent hours on the train, pausing at numerous stops while the sun slid down the sky. The goblins whiled the time munching on biscuits, playing cards and laughing at remarks about people Rigel didn't know. Finally, as dusk approached, the goblins packed up their cards and their tea things, pulled Rigel down from overhead, and left the train at the next stop.
By this time, Rigel was in some pain. His arms and legs were beginning to cramp. His stomach roared with hunger. And the goblin's shoulders under his body were hard and pointy, poking him painfully with their every step. Rigel could see little besides what was directly overhead, but it seemed they passed down a long, tree-shaded avenue. They came out at the bottom of a cliff beside a dark, still lake whose cool surface sent up fingers of mist. After marching along this cliff for a while, the goblins stopped where a long rope dangled from a grooved stone some way up the cliffside.
"Up you go," said the goblins. But they did not untie Rigel. Instead, they fastened his bonds to a number of clamps near one end of the rope. They hung a pair of heavy leather wallets around his neck. And pulling at the other end of the rope, they hoisted him up. It was a painful ascent, too. Every time the goblins heaved on the rope, Rigel's body was slammed against the cliff.
Long before he reached the grooved stone at the top of the rope's arc, Rigel came level with a hole that had not been visible from below. He scarcely had time to see it before he fell into it, at the point in his swing where his battered limbs expected to meet hard rock. The goblins lowered him into the hole carefully.
In only a few moments, he descended around a lip of rock that blocked his view of the hole he had come through, cutting off even the faint evening light from above. He was in pitch darkness, utterly blind. Rigel's heart began to race. This was worse than going back to Gringotts. If the goblins meant to punish him for eluding their bank security - twice - they knew what they were about. He began to choke on his gag, wanting to scream - feeling he would burst if he did not scream - but unable to make a sound. His body twitched, trying to kick, to strike out at the walls of the stone chimney that seemed to close in around him. But his legs and arms would not come free of the goblins' bonds.
Suddenly, when Rigel thought he might expire from terror, his feet touched earth. An instant later, he had collapsed headlong on the ground. Alone. Tied up. In the dark.
But he was not alone. Footsteps shuffled toward him. Again Rigel felt his heart in his throat. Without a word, someone put his hand's on Rigel and felt him up and down. Rigel struggled weakly, but he was almost at the end of his strength. The air around him had an awful smell of sweat and human filth, which grew only stronger as the stranger in the darkness leaned toward him, removed the wallet of food and drink from his neck, and began to untie his bonds.
As soon as his hands were free, Rigel struck out at his prisonmate, pushed him away, and yanked the gag off his face. While untying his feet and knees, he demanded - in a voice that sounded far more scared than he would wish - to know who was there and what they wanted with him.
Whoever-it-was answered by pressing a bacon sandwich, wrapped in wax paper, into his hand. A skin of cool, slightly metallic-tasting water followed. With only a little reluctance, Rigel ate and drank. Then he repeated his questions, a bit more calmly.
"Spayed buttercups sued the jaw juice between the moon," replied the other in a whispery-hoarse voice that, nevertheless, sounded vaguely familiar. "Knee-high badger-berry dresses couldn't brisquet the peach out of more hats but how gleefully the charwoman's yak sneezes below a clarinet."
"I'm sorry," Rigel said, taken aback. "I can't understand a word. Do you speak English?"
His neighbor's voice answered sharply: "Just you double-hinge the clockwork cashew, unless my whistle ducks the brain-powder!"
"Huh," said Rigel. "I'm pretty sure that's not English. Perhaps I can teach you." He felt around in the darkness until he found the other man's hand, then placed it against his cheek. "Rigel," he said. "I am Rigel." Then he put the other's hand against his own cheek and asked, "You are...?"
The other prisoner tore his hand free and uttered a string of what sounded like curses, though they also sounded like "Dill weeping nose! Crispy prawn gripper!"
"Well I beg your pardon," said Rigel, making himself as small as possible against the bottom of the wall. "I didn't mean to offend."
He heard his cellmate's loud, heavy breathing grow calm again. In a quiet, as it were contrite voice, the man in the dark said: "Gobble too flick."
"That's quite all right," said Rigel. "I just wish we could understand each other. Then, maybe we could work together to find a way out of here."
He started a bit as the man in the dark clapped his hands. "Ruble sandwich!" the man said triumphantly. Then, in a more solicitous tone, he added: "Piece your nasty chicken through wriggly bruise-the-herring?"
Rigel yawned. "I don't know what that means, but the sound of it makes me hungry." He yawned again, and let his head fall forward onto his crossed arms, just for a moment. A second later he was shaken roughly awake. The man in the dark grabbed Rigel's right hand and forced something into it - a narrow piece of wood - a wand. Holding it in Rigel's fist, he pointed it at himself and said, "Juniper squeal!"
Rigel laughed. "Excuse me?"
The man gave Rigel's arm a shake, jabbed the wand into his own chest, and cried even more urgently: "Nimble dog to tuck our pillows beside fleeting razors!"
"Eurgh," said Rigel. "I don't know what you want, but it doesn't sound good."
The next shake actually hurt Rigel's arm. The man shouted: "Tingle bleed over the hippogriff's fondue!"
"All right!" said Rigel. "You want me to put some sort of spell on you. Maybe one to enable you to speak English? Eh? How did that go...? Anglo Hanase!"
A pellet of light the size of a pea shot out of the wand and flew down the other man's throat. For a fraction of a second Rigel was able to see part of his face...again, it looked familiar...if only he could visualize it without the beard...
But the spell did no good. The man jumped up and down, screaming, "Spiffing dread snorkels branches upon their ravening slot-mincers!"
"You can say that again," sniffed Rigel. "How about this one? It's something my old tutor used to say when he couldn't understand something I said: Μην μιλήστε όπως έναν τέτοιο χοίρο!* There, how about that?"
The man in the dark cuffed Rigel rudely across the top of his head. "The suet snivels under the brass fiddle," he snarled.*
"Oi!" the boy snarled back. "Who put an itching spell on your knickers, anyway?"
Again he heard the sound of a man jumping up and down, grunting urgently.
Rigel's ears perked up. "What, did someone sput a spell on you, then?"
More jumping and moaning.
"But if I don't know what spell it was, I can't very well undo it, can I?"
The man in the dark stumbled forward, felt for Rigel's wand arm, and tapped the wand in his hand meaningfully.
"I see," said Rigel. "It's something to do with this wand, is it? That means you brought this curse on yourself, you daft git."
The other man shook Rigel's wand arm more urgently.
"All right!" Rigel shouted. "I know! I've got it, don't I? With this wand I can reverse the last spell you put on yourself. Boy, when I do, will you have a lot of explaining to do!"
The man stamped his feet impatiently.
"Well, here goes," said Rigel, aiming his wand at the sound of stamping feet. "Finite incantatum!"
"Did that do it?" the other man asked. "By George, it did! My dear boy" - the next bit was muffled, as the man pulled Rigel's head and shoulders into a crushing hug - "I never thought I would be so happy to see you again. Not that I can, actually. See you, that is."
"Get off!" Rigel yelled, pushing the man away. "Who are you, anyway?"
"I've been telling you these last ten minutes," said the voice, a note of irritation creeping into its joy. "When someone hands you a wand in a dark place, what should you do first?"
"Oh," said Rigel, feeling stupid. "That. Lumos."
Though only a faint glow came out of the wand-tip, Rigel and his companion were suddenly surrounded by a brilliant, sparkling glow - the glow of a vast cavern whose walls were studded with bright, reflective crystals. Rigel gasped as he looked around. It took him a moment to realize that he already knew who the other man was.
"It's you!" Rigel gasped. "But . . . "
"No time for that now," said the man. "We've got to find the door before the sun rises, otherwise we'll be spending another whole year down here. I've got the password to open it, only I haven't been able to spit it out since that bloody Babelnarrus curse backfired - long story - this way, hurry!"
Rigel, bewildered, trailed after his most surprising companion, wandlight held high over his head.
*Translation: "Don't talk like such a pig!"
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE +++
To help choose the direction of the next few chapters of The Magic Quill, visit the Discussion Forum, or send Robbie feedback. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest entry (or entries) Robbie likes best, will be featured in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: What do goblins have to do with Rigel's companion's escape from the Crystal Cave? (A) They want to mine precious stones from the walls. (B) There is a buried treasure of some kind in there. (C) The man in the cave owes them money. (D) They are actually the man-in-the-dark's house-elves, disguised inside inflatable goblin dolls.
CONTEST: How might an ordinary pet change as a side-effect of living in a magical home?
[Originally posted 12/30/07]
The goblins bound Rigel hand and foot. Then they bound him knee and elbow for good measure. They gagged him and carried him down the drive, trussed like a fly in a spider's web, wriggling ineffectually on their shoulders. Turning toward town, they walked beneath him in double-file.
Rigel's insides were tied in knots, with fear pulling at one end and fury at the other. He wanted to ask where they were taking him, and was afraid to ask at the same time. He was afraid, rather, that the answer would be Gringotts, the last place in the world he ever wanted to see again.
Muggle cars passed them on the road. No one seemed to notice a band of goblins carrying a tied-up boy in clown makeup. No one noticed, either, as they marched through the town square, or as they waited for a signal to cross the street. No one made a remark as they bought tickets at the train station, climbed aboard the train, and stowed Rigel on an overhead luggage rack, though they had to stand in a goblin pyramid to do so. Rigel watched with growing frustration as the conductor punched their tickets, taking each one from a goblin's long claws and returning it again without seeming to notice anything odd.
They spent hours on the train, pausing at numerous stops while the sun slid down the sky. The goblins whiled the time munching on biscuits, playing cards and laughing at remarks about people Rigel didn't know. Finally, as dusk approached, the goblins packed up their cards and their tea things, pulled Rigel down from overhead, and left the train at the next stop.
By this time, Rigel was in some pain. His arms and legs were beginning to cramp. His stomach roared with hunger. And the goblin's shoulders under his body were hard and pointy, poking him painfully with their every step. Rigel could see little besides what was directly overhead, but it seemed they passed down a long, tree-shaded avenue. They came out at the bottom of a cliff beside a dark, still lake whose cool surface sent up fingers of mist. After marching along this cliff for a while, the goblins stopped where a long rope dangled from a grooved stone some way up the cliffside.
"Up you go," said the goblins. But they did not untie Rigel. Instead, they fastened his bonds to a number of clamps near one end of the rope. They hung a pair of heavy leather wallets around his neck. And pulling at the other end of the rope, they hoisted him up. It was a painful ascent, too. Every time the goblins heaved on the rope, Rigel's body was slammed against the cliff.
Long before he reached the grooved stone at the top of the rope's arc, Rigel came level with a hole that had not been visible from below. He scarcely had time to see it before he fell into it, at the point in his swing where his battered limbs expected to meet hard rock. The goblins lowered him into the hole carefully.
In only a few moments, he descended around a lip of rock that blocked his view of the hole he had come through, cutting off even the faint evening light from above. He was in pitch darkness, utterly blind. Rigel's heart began to race. This was worse than going back to Gringotts. If the goblins meant to punish him for eluding their bank security - twice - they knew what they were about. He began to choke on his gag, wanting to scream - feeling he would burst if he did not scream - but unable to make a sound. His body twitched, trying to kick, to strike out at the walls of the stone chimney that seemed to close in around him. But his legs and arms would not come free of the goblins' bonds.
Suddenly, when Rigel thought he might expire from terror, his feet touched earth. An instant later, he had collapsed headlong on the ground. Alone. Tied up. In the dark.
But he was not alone. Footsteps shuffled toward him. Again Rigel felt his heart in his throat. Without a word, someone put his hand's on Rigel and felt him up and down. Rigel struggled weakly, but he was almost at the end of his strength. The air around him had an awful smell of sweat and human filth, which grew only stronger as the stranger in the darkness leaned toward him, removed the wallet of food and drink from his neck, and began to untie his bonds.
As soon as his hands were free, Rigel struck out at his prisonmate, pushed him away, and yanked the gag off his face. While untying his feet and knees, he demanded - in a voice that sounded far more scared than he would wish - to know who was there and what they wanted with him.
Whoever-it-was answered by pressing a bacon sandwich, wrapped in wax paper, into his hand. A skin of cool, slightly metallic-tasting water followed. With only a little reluctance, Rigel ate and drank. Then he repeated his questions, a bit more calmly.
"Spayed buttercups sued the jaw juice between the moon," replied the other in a whispery-hoarse voice that, nevertheless, sounded vaguely familiar. "Knee-high badger-berry dresses couldn't brisquet the peach out of more hats but how gleefully the charwoman's yak sneezes below a clarinet."
"I'm sorry," Rigel said, taken aback. "I can't understand a word. Do you speak English?"
His neighbor's voice answered sharply: "Just you double-hinge the clockwork cashew, unless my whistle ducks the brain-powder!"
"Huh," said Rigel. "I'm pretty sure that's not English. Perhaps I can teach you." He felt around in the darkness until he found the other man's hand, then placed it against his cheek. "Rigel," he said. "I am Rigel." Then he put the other's hand against his own cheek and asked, "You are...?"
The other prisoner tore his hand free and uttered a string of what sounded like curses, though they also sounded like "Dill weeping nose! Crispy prawn gripper!"
"Well I beg your pardon," said Rigel, making himself as small as possible against the bottom of the wall. "I didn't mean to offend."
He heard his cellmate's loud, heavy breathing grow calm again. In a quiet, as it were contrite voice, the man in the dark said: "Gobble too flick."
"That's quite all right," said Rigel. "I just wish we could understand each other. Then, maybe we could work together to find a way out of here."
He started a bit as the man in the dark clapped his hands. "Ruble sandwich!" the man said triumphantly. Then, in a more solicitous tone, he added: "Piece your nasty chicken through wriggly bruise-the-herring?"
Rigel yawned. "I don't know what that means, but the sound of it makes me hungry." He yawned again, and let his head fall forward onto his crossed arms, just for a moment. A second later he was shaken roughly awake. The man in the dark grabbed Rigel's right hand and forced something into it - a narrow piece of wood - a wand. Holding it in Rigel's fist, he pointed it at himself and said, "Juniper squeal!"
Rigel laughed. "Excuse me?"
The man gave Rigel's arm a shake, jabbed the wand into his own chest, and cried even more urgently: "Nimble dog to tuck our pillows beside fleeting razors!"
"Eurgh," said Rigel. "I don't know what you want, but it doesn't sound good."
The next shake actually hurt Rigel's arm. The man shouted: "Tingle bleed over the hippogriff's fondue!"
"All right!" said Rigel. "You want me to put some sort of spell on you. Maybe one to enable you to speak English? Eh? How did that go...? Anglo Hanase!"
A pellet of light the size of a pea shot out of the wand and flew down the other man's throat. For a fraction of a second Rigel was able to see part of his face...again, it looked familiar...if only he could visualize it without the beard...
But the spell did no good. The man jumped up and down, screaming, "Spiffing dread snorkels branches upon their ravening slot-mincers!"
"You can say that again," sniffed Rigel. "How about this one? It's something my old tutor used to say when he couldn't understand something I said: Μην μιλήστε όπως έναν τέτοιο χοίρο!* There, how about that?"
The man in the dark cuffed Rigel rudely across the top of his head. "The suet snivels under the brass fiddle," he snarled.*
"Oi!" the boy snarled back. "Who put an itching spell on your knickers, anyway?"
Again he heard the sound of a man jumping up and down, grunting urgently.
Rigel's ears perked up. "What, did someone sput a spell on you, then?"
More jumping and moaning.
"But if I don't know what spell it was, I can't very well undo it, can I?"
The man in the dark stumbled forward, felt for Rigel's wand arm, and tapped the wand in his hand meaningfully.
"I see," said Rigel. "It's something to do with this wand, is it? That means you brought this curse on yourself, you daft git."
The other man shook Rigel's wand arm more urgently.
"All right!" Rigel shouted. "I know! I've got it, don't I? With this wand I can reverse the last spell you put on yourself. Boy, when I do, will you have a lot of explaining to do!"
The man stamped his feet impatiently.
"Well, here goes," said Rigel, aiming his wand at the sound of stamping feet. "Finite incantatum!"
"Did that do it?" the other man asked. "By George, it did! My dear boy" - the next bit was muffled, as the man pulled Rigel's head and shoulders into a crushing hug - "I never thought I would be so happy to see you again. Not that I can, actually. See you, that is."
"Get off!" Rigel yelled, pushing the man away. "Who are you, anyway?"
"I've been telling you these last ten minutes," said the voice, a note of irritation creeping into its joy. "When someone hands you a wand in a dark place, what should you do first?"
"Oh," said Rigel, feeling stupid. "That. Lumos."
Though only a faint glow came out of the wand-tip, Rigel and his companion were suddenly surrounded by a brilliant, sparkling glow - the glow of a vast cavern whose walls were studded with bright, reflective crystals. Rigel gasped as he looked around. It took him a moment to realize that he already knew who the other man was.
"It's you!" Rigel gasped. "But . . . "
"No time for that now," said the man. "We've got to find the door before the sun rises, otherwise we'll be spending another whole year down here. I've got the password to open it, only I haven't been able to spit it out since that bloody Babelnarrus curse backfired - long story - this way, hurry!"
Rigel, bewildered, trailed after his most surprising companion, wandlight held high over his head.
*Translation: "Don't talk like such a pig!"
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE +++
To help choose the direction of the next few chapters of The Magic Quill, visit the Discussion Forum, or send Robbie feedback. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest entry (or entries) Robbie likes best, will be featured in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: What do goblins have to do with Rigel's companion's escape from the Crystal Cave? (A) They want to mine precious stones from the walls. (B) There is a buried treasure of some kind in there. (C) The man in the cave owes them money. (D) They are actually the man-in-the-dark's house-elves, disguised inside inflatable goblin dolls.
CONTEST: How might an ordinary pet change as a side-effect of living in a magical home?
[Originally posted 12/30/07]
127. Oldmanson and Son
Contest winner: zanaboo
The old man attracted remarkably few stares as he pedaled his bicycle around three sides of the village green, up the high street and out among the fields at the edge of town. Perhaps the reason for this apparent lack of interest was embarrassment. No one likes to be caught gaping, even at a man who chooses to ride a stationary exercise bike down the street.
Puffing only slightly (since the rear legs of the exercise machine were supported by a levitation spell), the old man turned directly into a seemingly solid hedge...and drove through it as if it wasn't there. On the other side he halted in a cobble-stoned courtyard half-filled with an assortment of hovering brooms, flying carpets, Abraxan horses, and jalopies fitted with holes in the roofs to accommodate pointy hats. The old man rolled his eyes at the sight of the sprawling building ahead. In meter-high letters of Gubraithian fire it heralded itself as VOLDMART. Beneath this, a free-swearing sign painter dangled from a rope that ended in thin air ten feet above his head. He seemed to be trying to replace the slogan "WE SPELL FOR LESLIE" with one that read: "FEWER CURSES. MORE DAMAGE." By the sound of banging paint pots, splattering liquid, and yells of dismay, the old man deduced the original sign was resisting being replaced. He sighed.
Orion Oldmanson found his son Rigel in the pet department, arguing with a hooded, cloaked sales associate who gave off an aggressively rancid odor.
"What is this all about?" he asked wearily as Rigel stamped his foot. The boy whirled to face him, causing his father to wince. His latest phase was one of the most difficult for his father to cope with: his face was painted like that of a clown, one of the Italian clown wizards, in fact. The tall purple wig made it so much worse.
"I'm not clowning around," Rigel said fiercely. "I want a refund for this cauldron scraper. This git sold it to me under false pretenses!"
The boy held up a charcoal-gray rat with oddly stiff-looking fur.
"Ah! The grimp," said the old man. "Surely, if you meant to buy a cauldron scraper, you could..."
"I meant to buy a beast that spits jewels," Rigel raged. "But this swindler got to me before the newest edition of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Look what it says here!"
Rigel pulled a large book out of his pocket locker and shoved it into his father's hands. Then he waved his hand and the book opened to a page with a picture of a rat nearly identical to the one in Rigel's other hand. The text below the picture said:
"I made no guarantees," the saleswizard said with a puff of rotten-smelling air.
Rigel fumed as his father marched him out of the store. "What's the big hurry?" he demanded. "Another minute and I would have had a refund."
"Why would you want to get rid of a cauldron scraper?" said Orion. "Your potions cupboard is a mess. Cauldron gets any filthier and there's no telling what you'll cook up."
"You used to say the same thing whether my cauldron was clean or not," Rigel pouted as he hopped onto the handlebars of his father's non-stationary bicycle. "And you haven't answered my question."
"You ran out this morning without reading the owl post," said the old man. "We're to have a caller in a few minutes. Someone you would hate to miss."
"My Dad, is it?" said Rigel.
Orion didn't dignify that cut with a response. Tight-lipped, breathing loudly through flared nostrils, he pedaled his one-wheeled, one-legged contraption back across the village and down the road toward the manor.
As soon as the front door closed behind them, a squad of goblins armed with barbed clubs surrounded him. They seemed to have been waiting behind every tapestry in the entry hall. Man and boy stood still, hands raised, as long-clawed fingers dug their wands out of their pockets.
"Well done, Mashsqueak!" cried the goblin with the sharpest nose, addressing Orion Oldmanson.
Rigel turned his head slowly to glare at his father. "What did he..."
The words died on his lips when the old man popped like a balloon. Exactly like a balloon, in fact, right down to the tattered pieces of elastic cloth that littered the ground. Rigel staggered backward, gaping.
"That was a close one," said the goblin who emerged from the tatters, pulling thin ribbons off his hands and face. "I thought he had made me on the ride home, when he said I wasn't his Dad. If he had tried to get away then, I wouldn't have been able to catch him without shedding blood." The goblin leered, flexing his fingers with their unusually long claws.
"What was that?" Rigel gasped, nudging one of the shreds of the burst gasbag that had convincingly impersonated his father. "And where do you get things like it?"
"Comes out of shock quickly, that one," remarked the head goblin (or rather the nose one).
"He has profit on the brain," said a squat goblin with the biggest ears Rigel had ever seen. "Clearly the one we're looking for."
Rigel inched toward a concealed door in the nearby, paneled wall. "Why were you looking for me?" he asked innocently.
"To correct a fault in our security arrangements," said the nose goblin. It was the last thing Rigel heard before someone tripped him from behind, pulled a sack over his head, and hit him on the head. The last thing he felt was a twinge of pain as the frightened grimp in his pocket tried to dig its claws into his skin. The last of his senses to let go was smell...the same rotten smell he had recently whiffed off someone's breath...but before he could remember whose, Rigel blacked out.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE +++
To help choose the direction of the next few chapters of The Magic Quill, visit the Discussion Forum, or send Robbie feedback. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest entry (or entries) Robbie likes best, will be featured in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Do the goblins take Rigel back to Gringotts?
CONTEST: Name and describe a spell that can easily backfire on the wizard or witch who casts it.
[Originally posted 12/4/07]
The old man attracted remarkably few stares as he pedaled his bicycle around three sides of the village green, up the high street and out among the fields at the edge of town. Perhaps the reason for this apparent lack of interest was embarrassment. No one likes to be caught gaping, even at a man who chooses to ride a stationary exercise bike down the street.
Puffing only slightly (since the rear legs of the exercise machine were supported by a levitation spell), the old man turned directly into a seemingly solid hedge...and drove through it as if it wasn't there. On the other side he halted in a cobble-stoned courtyard half-filled with an assortment of hovering brooms, flying carpets, Abraxan horses, and jalopies fitted with holes in the roofs to accommodate pointy hats. The old man rolled his eyes at the sight of the sprawling building ahead. In meter-high letters of Gubraithian fire it heralded itself as VOLDMART. Beneath this, a free-swearing sign painter dangled from a rope that ended in thin air ten feet above his head. He seemed to be trying to replace the slogan "WE SPELL FOR LESLIE" with one that read: "FEWER CURSES. MORE DAMAGE." By the sound of banging paint pots, splattering liquid, and yells of dismay, the old man deduced the original sign was resisting being replaced. He sighed.
Orion Oldmanson found his son Rigel in the pet department, arguing with a hooded, cloaked sales associate who gave off an aggressively rancid odor.
"What is this all about?" he asked wearily as Rigel stamped his foot. The boy whirled to face him, causing his father to wince. His latest phase was one of the most difficult for his father to cope with: his face was painted like that of a clown, one of the Italian clown wizards, in fact. The tall purple wig made it so much worse.
"I'm not clowning around," Rigel said fiercely. "I want a refund for this cauldron scraper. This git sold it to me under false pretenses!"
The boy held up a charcoal-gray rat with oddly stiff-looking fur.
"Ah! The grimp," said the old man. "Surely, if you meant to buy a cauldron scraper, you could..."
"I meant to buy a beast that spits jewels," Rigel raged. "But this swindler got to me before the newest edition of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Look what it says here!"
Rigel pulled a large book out of his pocket locker and shoved it into his father's hands. Then he waved his hand and the book opened to a page with a picture of a rat nearly identical to the one in Rigel's other hand. The text below the picture said:
GRIMP"Sounds like an open question to me," said the boy's father. "It might spit jewels, and again it might not."
M.O.M. Classification XX
The Grimp looks remarkably like a common rat, except that instead of having fur, its skin is thickly covered in small, grayish-brown diamond crystals. These crystals form a highly protective shield for frightened grimps, which curl up in a ball like hedgehogs and armadillos when threatened. Although the diamonds that make up their coats are far from gem quality, some wizards keep grimps because they're quite useful as knife sharpeners, sandpaper, scrub brushes, etc.
The only food grimps are known to eat is coal, which they magically transform into their diamond coat. They are found wherever coal deposits naturally occur, and also wherever humans store coal for heat or electricity generation. Since grimps are nocturnal and quite dark in color, Muggles always mistake them either for lumps of coal or for common rats.
Over the past several centuries, a handful of wizards have claimed their pet grimp coughed up a large gem-quality diamond with various magical properties. None of these claims has ever been verified, and, although many have tried, no wizard has ever succeeded in charming a grimp into producing such a gem.
"I made no guarantees," the saleswizard said with a puff of rotten-smelling air.
Rigel fumed as his father marched him out of the store. "What's the big hurry?" he demanded. "Another minute and I would have had a refund."
"Why would you want to get rid of a cauldron scraper?" said Orion. "Your potions cupboard is a mess. Cauldron gets any filthier and there's no telling what you'll cook up."
"You used to say the same thing whether my cauldron was clean or not," Rigel pouted as he hopped onto the handlebars of his father's non-stationary bicycle. "And you haven't answered my question."
"You ran out this morning without reading the owl post," said the old man. "We're to have a caller in a few minutes. Someone you would hate to miss."
"My Dad, is it?" said Rigel.
Orion didn't dignify that cut with a response. Tight-lipped, breathing loudly through flared nostrils, he pedaled his one-wheeled, one-legged contraption back across the village and down the road toward the manor.
As soon as the front door closed behind them, a squad of goblins armed with barbed clubs surrounded him. They seemed to have been waiting behind every tapestry in the entry hall. Man and boy stood still, hands raised, as long-clawed fingers dug their wands out of their pockets.
"Well done, Mashsqueak!" cried the goblin with the sharpest nose, addressing Orion Oldmanson.
Rigel turned his head slowly to glare at his father. "What did he..."
The words died on his lips when the old man popped like a balloon. Exactly like a balloon, in fact, right down to the tattered pieces of elastic cloth that littered the ground. Rigel staggered backward, gaping.
"That was a close one," said the goblin who emerged from the tatters, pulling thin ribbons off his hands and face. "I thought he had made me on the ride home, when he said I wasn't his Dad. If he had tried to get away then, I wouldn't have been able to catch him without shedding blood." The goblin leered, flexing his fingers with their unusually long claws.
"What was that?" Rigel gasped, nudging one of the shreds of the burst gasbag that had convincingly impersonated his father. "And where do you get things like it?"
"Comes out of shock quickly, that one," remarked the head goblin (or rather the nose one).
"He has profit on the brain," said a squat goblin with the biggest ears Rigel had ever seen. "Clearly the one we're looking for."
Rigel inched toward a concealed door in the nearby, paneled wall. "Why were you looking for me?" he asked innocently.
"To correct a fault in our security arrangements," said the nose goblin. It was the last thing Rigel heard before someone tripped him from behind, pulled a sack over his head, and hit him on the head. The last thing he felt was a twinge of pain as the frightened grimp in his pocket tried to dig its claws into his skin. The last of his senses to let go was smell...the same rotten smell he had recently whiffed off someone's breath...but before he could remember whose, Rigel blacked out.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE +++
To help choose the direction of the next few chapters of The Magic Quill, visit the Discussion Forum, or send Robbie feedback. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest entry (or entries) Robbie likes best, will be featured in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Do the goblins take Rigel back to Gringotts?
CONTEST: Name and describe a spell that can easily backfire on the wizard or witch who casts it.
[Originally posted 12/4/07]
123. The Care and Feeding of MIADs
Contest winner (tie): jatibbal and TWZRD
Honorable mention: ralucacoldea
It was raining in the Great Hall at Hogwarts.
This wasn't the kind of rain that students had often seen there over the thousand-year history of the school. It wasn't simply an illusion of rain, playing across the enchanted ceiling, resembling the weather outside. It was a good, honest, wet rain that drenched the floor cobbles, tables, and draperies, and caused the levitating candles to fizz and smoke. Joe Albuquerque would have suspected a leak, except the ceiling displayed a rare image of a bright, sunny day outside the castle. The effect of this sunlight shining through the rain was dazzling to the eyes.
Joe looked round at the caretaker, the headmistress, and the groundskeeper - he had already forgotten their names; the staff at schools other than his own never really interested him. The sour-looking caretaker fidgeted with his hands, keeping his eyes respectfully downcast. The half-giant groundskeeper stood at attention, which looked ridiculous given his unkempt hair and clothes. The headmistress simply looked impatient and disapproving. Joe sighed. He knew he shouldn't have worn his Prince of Wales disguise, but the only other one not being cleaned was his Pope outfit.
"This is a MIAD," he said finally. "No question."
"If you're telling us this is a Magic-Induced Atmospheric Disturbance," crabbed the headmistress, "we might have guessed that without retaining your services."
"Type 2," Joe added pointedly. The headmistress's jaw snapped shut. Joe continued: "There are three major categories of MIADs. Type 1 is the result of magical emissions mixing with ordinary rain. Everything it falls on develops magical side effects. It happens rarely, but when it does happen, it's a disaster for magical secrecy."
"But it also happens outdoors," the headmistress pointed out.
"Usually," Joe conceded mysteriously. "This, however, is Type 2, magical weather created by the residual ionization from a major magical battle, particularly one fought in an enclosed space."
"You said there were three types," the caretaker grumbled.
Joe shrugged. "Any MIAD that isn't Type 1 or Type 2 is classed as Atypical. For example, a rain of frogs, especially with bechamel sauce, would be an Atypical MIAD. Such things are generally caused by a large-scale magical accident."
"All right, Mr. Albuquerque," said the headmistress coldly. "You've narrowed this indoor rainfall down to a type of magical weather that happens indoors. How this is worth such a high fee remains to appear..."
"If you had listened," Joe said with royal brusqueness, "you would have noted more than the location of the weather. Each type of MIAD has a different cause, and therefore a different cure. The difference between accidental magic, magical pollution, and the fallout of a massive battle is very significant. The only cure for Type 1 and Atypical MIADs is to wait for them to end, then do a thorough cleanup and try to prevent them happening again. Type 2 is different. It can become a chronic problem, breaking out from time to time for centuries after the battle that caused it. It's like a ghost - not of a person, but of an event."
The headmistress looked crestfallen. "Then we shall have to close the school after all..."
"On the contrary," said Joe. "Something must be done to cancel out the residual ionization. There are two things that could work, but it's probably too late for one of them - taking all the wands that were used in the battle and subjecting them to Prior Incantato. This is something like erasing the last spell each combatant cast, and it would break up the energy pattern that holds the MIAD together."
"We'll never get all those wands together, headmistress," said the half-giant.
"No, too many of them were buried with their owners," the headmistress agreed, "or were destroyed when their owners were captured, or..."
Joe broke in with an air of royal prerogative. "I beg your pardon," he said, "but there is another option. I once saw a large, jeweled watch that was said to belong to the previous headmaster here. I noticed that one of the dials on the watch had a duckbilled platypus on it. I did a lot of work in the Southern Hemisphere, earlier in my career, and I happen to know that the platypus can absorb virtually any amount of magic without being effected."
"I think I see where this is going," said the half-giant, who, Joe realized, might be cleverer than he looked. "You mean to sacrifice a platypus to calm this storm, and I won't have it...er, that is to say, I wouldn't have it even if I did know where a platypus could be found..." The groundskeeper ended up nervously shuffling his feet.
Joe stared at him for a moment, then said, "I wasn't going to suggest anything like that. No platypus sacrifices will be necessary. If my guess is correct, we could use the platypus dial on Dumbledore's watch to absorb the residual magic from the Battle of Hogwarts. Headmistress, do you know what became of the watch?"
Now the old lady looked very distressed. "It hasn't been seen since Dumbledore's death," she said.
"Where was it last seen?" said Joe.
"Let's see..." The headmistress wrung her hands. "Dumbledore gave it to his brother...Someone stole it and got away on a thestramule...It was recaptured and returned...but it wasn't in the head's office when I took over, and it was never mentioned in Dumbledore's will. Do you know, the only time I saw that watch outside Dumbledore's office was when we went down to the station to see about that murder on the Hogwarts Express. Dumbledore kept taking it out and fiddling with it. Something about the way he held it made me afraid. But that was years ago..."
Joe's insides jumped, jumped again, and turned somersaults as he heard this speech. It brought back more than one memory...a certain afternoon outside the Bogley Squint Ward at St. Mungo's...the heroics of his friend Merlin, the deft fingers of Sadie, the mysterious behavior of Harvey...and the story of an unidentified corpse that somehow connected Spanky Spankison's hunt for a werewolf with Merlin's escape from Gringotts...Joe gulped as he realized one of his friends might be in possession of a very dangerous magical device.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE +++
To help choose the direction of the next few chapters of The Magic Quill, visit the Discussion Forum, or send Robbie feedback. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest entry (or entries) Robbie likes best, will be featured in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Which of Joe's friends has Dumbledore's watch now? (A) Spanky. (B) Sadie. (C) Merlin. (D) Harvey. (E) None of the above - just surprise us!
CONTEST: Describe Joe Albuquerque's next disguise.
[Originally posted 8/31/07]
Honorable mention: ralucacoldea
It was raining in the Great Hall at Hogwarts.
This wasn't the kind of rain that students had often seen there over the thousand-year history of the school. It wasn't simply an illusion of rain, playing across the enchanted ceiling, resembling the weather outside. It was a good, honest, wet rain that drenched the floor cobbles, tables, and draperies, and caused the levitating candles to fizz and smoke. Joe Albuquerque would have suspected a leak, except the ceiling displayed a rare image of a bright, sunny day outside the castle. The effect of this sunlight shining through the rain was dazzling to the eyes.
Joe looked round at the caretaker, the headmistress, and the groundskeeper - he had already forgotten their names; the staff at schools other than his own never really interested him. The sour-looking caretaker fidgeted with his hands, keeping his eyes respectfully downcast. The half-giant groundskeeper stood at attention, which looked ridiculous given his unkempt hair and clothes. The headmistress simply looked impatient and disapproving. Joe sighed. He knew he shouldn't have worn his Prince of Wales disguise, but the only other one not being cleaned was his Pope outfit.
"This is a MIAD," he said finally. "No question."
"If you're telling us this is a Magic-Induced Atmospheric Disturbance," crabbed the headmistress, "we might have guessed that without retaining your services."
"Type 2," Joe added pointedly. The headmistress's jaw snapped shut. Joe continued: "There are three major categories of MIADs. Type 1 is the result of magical emissions mixing with ordinary rain. Everything it falls on develops magical side effects. It happens rarely, but when it does happen, it's a disaster for magical secrecy."
"But it also happens outdoors," the headmistress pointed out.
"Usually," Joe conceded mysteriously. "This, however, is Type 2, magical weather created by the residual ionization from a major magical battle, particularly one fought in an enclosed space."
"You said there were three types," the caretaker grumbled.
Joe shrugged. "Any MIAD that isn't Type 1 or Type 2 is classed as Atypical. For example, a rain of frogs, especially with bechamel sauce, would be an Atypical MIAD. Such things are generally caused by a large-scale magical accident."
"All right, Mr. Albuquerque," said the headmistress coldly. "You've narrowed this indoor rainfall down to a type of magical weather that happens indoors. How this is worth such a high fee remains to appear..."
"If you had listened," Joe said with royal brusqueness, "you would have noted more than the location of the weather. Each type of MIAD has a different cause, and therefore a different cure. The difference between accidental magic, magical pollution, and the fallout of a massive battle is very significant. The only cure for Type 1 and Atypical MIADs is to wait for them to end, then do a thorough cleanup and try to prevent them happening again. Type 2 is different. It can become a chronic problem, breaking out from time to time for centuries after the battle that caused it. It's like a ghost - not of a person, but of an event."
The headmistress looked crestfallen. "Then we shall have to close the school after all..."
"On the contrary," said Joe. "Something must be done to cancel out the residual ionization. There are two things that could work, but it's probably too late for one of them - taking all the wands that were used in the battle and subjecting them to Prior Incantato. This is something like erasing the last spell each combatant cast, and it would break up the energy pattern that holds the MIAD together."
"We'll never get all those wands together, headmistress," said the half-giant.
"No, too many of them were buried with their owners," the headmistress agreed, "or were destroyed when their owners were captured, or..."
Joe broke in with an air of royal prerogative. "I beg your pardon," he said, "but there is another option. I once saw a large, jeweled watch that was said to belong to the previous headmaster here. I noticed that one of the dials on the watch had a duckbilled platypus on it. I did a lot of work in the Southern Hemisphere, earlier in my career, and I happen to know that the platypus can absorb virtually any amount of magic without being effected."
"I think I see where this is going," said the half-giant, who, Joe realized, might be cleverer than he looked. "You mean to sacrifice a platypus to calm this storm, and I won't have it...er, that is to say, I wouldn't have it even if I did know where a platypus could be found..." The groundskeeper ended up nervously shuffling his feet.
Joe stared at him for a moment, then said, "I wasn't going to suggest anything like that. No platypus sacrifices will be necessary. If my guess is correct, we could use the platypus dial on Dumbledore's watch to absorb the residual magic from the Battle of Hogwarts. Headmistress, do you know what became of the watch?"
Now the old lady looked very distressed. "It hasn't been seen since Dumbledore's death," she said.
"Where was it last seen?" said Joe.
"Let's see..." The headmistress wrung her hands. "Dumbledore gave it to his brother...Someone stole it and got away on a thestramule...It was recaptured and returned...but it wasn't in the head's office when I took over, and it was never mentioned in Dumbledore's will. Do you know, the only time I saw that watch outside Dumbledore's office was when we went down to the station to see about that murder on the Hogwarts Express. Dumbledore kept taking it out and fiddling with it. Something about the way he held it made me afraid. But that was years ago..."
Joe's insides jumped, jumped again, and turned somersaults as he heard this speech. It brought back more than one memory...a certain afternoon outside the Bogley Squint Ward at St. Mungo's...the heroics of his friend Merlin, the deft fingers of Sadie, the mysterious behavior of Harvey...and the story of an unidentified corpse that somehow connected Spanky Spankison's hunt for a werewolf with Merlin's escape from Gringotts...Joe gulped as he realized one of his friends might be in possession of a very dangerous magical device.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE +++
To help choose the direction of the next few chapters of The Magic Quill, visit the Discussion Forum, or send Robbie feedback. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest entry (or entries) Robbie likes best, will be featured in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Which of Joe's friends has Dumbledore's watch now? (A) Spanky. (B) Sadie. (C) Merlin. (D) Harvey. (E) None of the above - just surprise us!
CONTEST: Describe Joe Albuquerque's next disguise.
[Originally posted 8/31/07]
Friday, December 26, 2008
111. An Elopement Postponed
"Grand Prize" contest winners: voldymortus, jatibbal, zanaboo
Honorable mentions: i6uuaq, Norman Greene, pdhorner, swing667, dele, PotterPig, TWZRD, _houdini, charlottexgf, theotherminister, Dragonic, Poet, and rory86
The group of thinly disguised witches and wizards muttered to each other around the dingy parlor table. Once again, their leader was missing.
“I went by The Drains this morning,” said Joe Albuquerque, who was disguised as a Japanese tourist. “The doorman hasn’t seen him since Christmas. I tried to peek through the windows, but they were on screensaver mode.”
“What’s that?” Endora said while digging under her fake nose to scratch her real one.
“Tinted pitch black, covered by an unbreakable charm, and locked by the sort of spell that only a password can open.”
“Curious,” said Merlin, noticing the uneasy look that passed between Endora and Spanky.
“Then it’s a good job I found this note,” Sadie said cheerfully, pulling a thin, tightly rolled strip of paper out from under her veil — Endora shuddered to think where it had been hidden — and unrolling it between her agile hands.
“It says — ahem — ‘Esteemed colleagues, please be patient during my extended absence. I am deeply embarrassed to confess that my erstwhile mishap involving a waterfall, a crystal cave, and a hag wearing a tooth-studded vest has happened again. Though I do not think it will take long to escape, there are other things I must do before I can join you again. Until then, please continue to gather at the usual time and place, and amuse yourselves as you see fit. I hope that I can soon furnish you with a means of following my exploits. Yours in fellowship, H.’”
“Well, that leaves us nothing to do except drink and swap stories,” Joe said wistfully, though perhaps owing to the unfamiliarity of his new disguise, he looked oddly elated by the prospect. “Where were we last time?”
“I had just finished telling mine,” said Merlin. “There’s nothing else to tell about except odd jobs and broomstick races.”
“No, thank you,” Sadie muttered, rolling her eyes.
“I still don’t think we’ve heard all of Spanky’s story,” Endora chirped. “The last bit I can remember had to do with the night Harry Potter was born.”
“Oh, yes!” said Sadie enthusiastically. “That was when you located Ilona. Did you marry her right away?”
“Was it a lovely wedding?” Endora gushed.
“Were there any werewolves on the guest list?” Merlin suggested.
“Give,” said Joe, with an ironic flick of his eyebrow.
“All right!” Spanky cried, gesturing for peace with both hands. Then, after tugging his hood forward, he resumed his long-suspended tale with a sigh.
“After all the commotion with the Death Eaters, and the genie, and Harry’s birth, and so on, we were all questioned by Aurors and checked out by healers, and then there was a bit of cleaning up. By this time I had realized my mistake, in telling the genie that I wished to see Ilona again. No one else could see her; it was as if she existed for me alone. Had I been able to tell anyone that I could see her, they would have thought me mad; but some freak accident thwarted my every attempt to explain that Ilona was right there. A colossal thunderclap would come out of the clear sky, or a rack of pots and pans would come off the kitchen wall, or if I tried to sign it, a gust of wind would blow through the room and put out all the lamps.”
One of the oil lamps on the parlor wall flickered as if in sympathy with Spanky’s tale. He coughed and went on:
“I tried to write to Ilona’s parents about finding her, and wanting to marry her, but every time I got to that point in my letter, either the quill would drop a massive ink blot covering an entire paragraph, or a spark from the fireplace would ignite the page, or a draft would blow it out the window. Once, when I had done everything in my power to prevent these things from happening, I had actually finished the letter and was about to tie it to my owl’s leg when a huge bat flew down from the rafters and snatched it out of my hand.”
“The owl’s leg?” Endora gasped.
“No, the letter,” snapped Merlin, smacking the back of Endora’s head.
“My brother Festus,” said Sadie, “once tried to compete with the Owl Post Service, only using bats instead of owls.” She shook her head grimly.
“What happened?” asked Spanky, momentarily dropping the thread of his story.
“Turns out owls are a bit higher on the food chain,” Sadie said, and left it at that.
Before Spanky could question her further, Joe cut in: “At any rate, you were saying...?”
Spanky shook his head, shrugged, and continued: “It was a problem. We couldn’t get legally married. No one would license us to marry without seeing proof of the bride’s existence. Family, friends, ministers, judges — none of them could see her or hear her. We couldn’t even declare ourselves married, because there was no way to explain Ilona’s condition. The problem wasn’t merely making people believe, but even getting them to understand what was going on.
“Ilona didn’t want to start living together without getting married, but ever since the Owlympics she had been lonelier than a ghost. No one could see her, hear her, or detect her presence in any way; it was a miracle that she survived at all. Now, at least, one person recognized that she was there. It was the only way she could live. So we wrote out our vows on parchment — knowing that if anyone tried to read it, the parchment would probably crumble into pieces — signed and dated it, and sealed it with an ensorcelled wafer, ensuring that it could not be opened until after Ilona was freed from the djinn curse. From that time on, we considered ourselves married, and I was even able to speak of her as my wife, so long as I didn’t try to explain her whereabouts.”
Endora raised her hand tentatively. “So your marriage...”
“Wasn’t a matter of public record until after our Gringotts caper, when the third djinn finally removed the curse,” said Spanky. “That’s when the scroll was unsealed, and the Hogsmeade magistrate officially made our marriage license retroactive to the date we signed the scroll. You can’t imagine how many difficulties this has cleared up...our children’s schools, healers, neighbors...but never mind that now. The Potters had Harry, and Ilona and I had each other, and even though the times were pretty dangerous, we were all very happy.
“My supervisors at the RMB noted the improvement in my behavior, and I was allowed to return to full duty for the first time since the Owlympics. This made our living situation a bit more comfortable. Even better was when Ilona found out that, by leaving anonymous tips, she could continue battling dark magic, and was especially effective in ‘undercover’ situations because nobody could tell that she was there. This didn’t bring in any income, but she did it because she felt it was right. The RMB is only now recognizing how much she has done for them all these years.”
“Wow,” breathed Sadie. “But...er...what does this have to do with...?”
The dark hood turned slowly toward her, and Sadie gulped.
“What I mean is, do go on,” she said in a rush.
“My first RMB assignment following the Godric’s Hollow incident was the one that eventually put me on the trail of a Death Eater who planned to make Harry Potter’s first Christmas his last. I was put in charge of security for the British entrant in that year’s All-Europe Wizarding Garden Contest. The contestants were generally very wealthy, very fussy, very determined to win — and very concerned about their competitors spying on them, stealing their ideas, or sabotaging their gardens.
“That year, the British champion happened to be my old friend, Sir Lionel Niblet. I was already very familiar with his grounds, having played on them and even worked on them during my youth. I knew that half of my job would be easy: I wouldn’t have to work very hard to keep Sir Lionel out of trouble. Most of the RMB agents working the contest spent so much time keeping tabs on their hosts that the gardens mostly had to protect themselves. But Sir Lionel was a fair player, and his gardens had a good deal of protection of their own. So at first, the assignment looked like a pleasant vacation, even a honeymoon.”
“What kind of protection?” Merlin asked, before Joe could say, “And then what?”
“There were screaming gargoyles at intervals around the perimeter, and fence fungus that grew all over the walls around Sir Lionel’s prize garden.”
“Fence fungus?” asked Endora.
“When crushed, it gives off a gas that puts intruders to sleep,” said Spanky. “Also, they had stone scaregnomes, and flowers that sprayed an anti-pest venom, and medusa nettle hedges— ”
“I’ve seen those,” said Sadie, bitterly. “Stinging, clinging little gits, once they get a hold of you, only the voice of their owner will induce them to let go.”
“Very good deterrent for intruders,” Spanky agreed. “My favorite, though, were the pirate frogs that guarded the freshwater oysters and their transparent pearls. Any would-be pearl thief had only to hear the pirate frogs’ distinctive croak, which sounds closer to ‘Shiver me, shiver me, timbers, timbers’ than ‘Ribbit, ribbit,’ and he would run for dear life.”
“I thought pirate frogs were a garden pest,” Merlin remarked.
“Only if you don’t pay them tribute,” Spanky argued. “Then they plunder and pillage every flowerbed in sight. But throw a few galleons into their pond now and then, and they come over to your side. Good at pest control, too. After the pirate frogs moved in, he never had to spray against coin beetles.”
“What beetles?” Endora demanded, digging in her ear. “I thought you said coin beetles.”
“Beastly insects,” Spanky went on. “They were destroying Sir Lionel’s money tree.”
Sadie coughed up a mouthful of firewhisky.
“This even I’ve never heard of,” she wheezed, an awed gleam in her eye.
“They’re not as good as they sound,” Joe assured her knowledgeably. “All they do is exchange money; they don’t create it.”
“Exactly,” said Spanky. “If you need to change galleons into sickles, or wizard money into Muggle money, all you have to do is fertilize the tree with money, then pick the fruit and open it up and — voila! — the equivalent amount of whatever kind of currency you want is inside. Money trees give a much better exchange rate than goblins, but they’re hard on the soil and they suffer from a lot of pests, such as the spendthrift vine, embezzleworms, and inflationary fungus. They’re also very difficult to graft, so they’re close to extinction.”
“Where does this Niblet character live again?” Sadie asked with studied innocence.
Spanky ignored her. “There were a lot of rare treasures in that garden, a lot of good reasons for all that protection. Sir Lionel had one of the few Dentistrees ever found on British soil. He used to let the village children chew on its leaves, which did more for our dental health than monthly visits to the dentist would have. He had a Valenvine, which every year on the fourteenth of February produced a crop of chocolate-covered cordial cherries. He had a Truffle Bush, distantly related to the Whomping Willow, that was trained to dig up truffles, and a Flowsha Bush whose cuttings mimicked the favorite flower of anyone who looked at them.
“Sir Lionel always said the key to a harmonious and well-tended garden was to have the plants themselves do most of the tending. So he had spent decades cultivating self-fertilizing rosebushes, self-weeding aspidistras, self-trimming grass, and even a rare variety of self-filling fairy-feeder that, unlike the common type, didn’t actually eat the fairies. It was also a terribly comfortable garden to spend time in, with hammock vines around all the trees, providing a comfortable place to stretch out whenever and wherever one wanted to rest. Right next to the oyster pond was another pond full of everlasting ice, where Sir Lionel let the village children skate all through the summer. And the garden paths were shaded by a portable ceiling, which allowed sunlight to come through while keeping rain, acorns, and bird droppings off the path, and off the head of anyone walking the path.”
“It must have been a lovely assignment,” said Endora, dreamily.
“On the contrary,” said Spanky. “On the fourth day after I arrived, weird things started happening and from then on, I never had an hour’s rest. The first casualty was the broom tree...”
“I thought brooms were made, not grown,” said Joe accusingly.
“I’m not talking about the flying kind,” said Spanky. “I’m talking about a flowering shrub, related to gorse. Sir Lionel liked to pickle the flowers and serve them in a salad.
“The fourth morning of my assignment, I was awakened by a sharp tapping on the window above my bed. Ilona and I were sleeping in the summerhouse, which was basically a one-room apartment built over the potting shed. I looked out the window and saw the broom tree standing there, beckoning at me with its branches. It had uprooted itself and walked across the garden to knock on my window.”
“That’s odd,” observed Endora. Then she observed, “Huff!” as Merlin drove his elbow into her ribs.
“Yes, I thought it was odd, too,” said Spanky. “But that was nothing to the oddness I found when I dressed and went outdoors and found the broom sitting in a lawn chair with its roots crossed, holding my Daily Prophet open with its branches and apparently reading it with its bright yellow flowers. I suppose you can guess what I learned from this?”
“That you should never keep a walking shrub waiting,” Joe suggested.
“That the literacy of Daily Prophet readers deserves concerned attention,” Merlin put in.
“That Sir Lionel’s favorite salad is full of eyeballs,” gagged Endora.
“That your security problems were worse than expected,” Sadie added.
Spanky sighed, and said, “Fourth time lucky.”
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE for TMQ Nos. 112 and 113 +++
Contact Robbie through the CoS Discussion Forum, or through the Feedback System, to share your ideas about how the Magic Quill should continue [EDIT: This discussion is now closed]. Survey answers that get the most votes, and contest answers that Robbie chooses, will be in the next two chapters!
SURVEY for Chapter 112: Will the bad guy in Spanky’s story turn out to be his old nemesis Sid Shmedly?
CONTEST for Chapter 112: At the time of Spanky’s story, Ilona is not only invisible but actually undetectable to anyone except Spanky. This doesn’t mean she is completely helpless. What are some things she could do to help Spanky in a fight?
SURVEY for Chapter 113: In Chamber of Secrets, Tom Riddle claimed that Hagrid tried to raise “werewolf pups” under his bed. This raises at least two questions: (A) Was Tom exaggerating, or can werewolves be born by normal reproduction as well as through humans being bitten? (B) And if baby werewolves can be born that way, do they ever turn into people or are they always in their wild, hairy state?
CONTEST for Chapter 113: What do werewolves eat when they can’t have human?
[Originally posted 1/21/07]
Honorable mentions: i6uuaq, Norman Greene, pdhorner, swing667, dele, PotterPig, TWZRD, _houdini, charlottexgf, theotherminister, Dragonic, Poet, and rory86
The group of thinly disguised witches and wizards muttered to each other around the dingy parlor table. Once again, their leader was missing.
“I went by The Drains this morning,” said Joe Albuquerque, who was disguised as a Japanese tourist. “The doorman hasn’t seen him since Christmas. I tried to peek through the windows, but they were on screensaver mode.”
“What’s that?” Endora said while digging under her fake nose to scratch her real one.
“Tinted pitch black, covered by an unbreakable charm, and locked by the sort of spell that only a password can open.”
“Curious,” said Merlin, noticing the uneasy look that passed between Endora and Spanky.
“Then it’s a good job I found this note,” Sadie said cheerfully, pulling a thin, tightly rolled strip of paper out from under her veil — Endora shuddered to think where it had been hidden — and unrolling it between her agile hands.
“It says — ahem — ‘Esteemed colleagues, please be patient during my extended absence. I am deeply embarrassed to confess that my erstwhile mishap involving a waterfall, a crystal cave, and a hag wearing a tooth-studded vest has happened again. Though I do not think it will take long to escape, there are other things I must do before I can join you again. Until then, please continue to gather at the usual time and place, and amuse yourselves as you see fit. I hope that I can soon furnish you with a means of following my exploits. Yours in fellowship, H.’”
“Well, that leaves us nothing to do except drink and swap stories,” Joe said wistfully, though perhaps owing to the unfamiliarity of his new disguise, he looked oddly elated by the prospect. “Where were we last time?”
“I had just finished telling mine,” said Merlin. “There’s nothing else to tell about except odd jobs and broomstick races.”
“No, thank you,” Sadie muttered, rolling her eyes.
“I still don’t think we’ve heard all of Spanky’s story,” Endora chirped. “The last bit I can remember had to do with the night Harry Potter was born.”
“Oh, yes!” said Sadie enthusiastically. “That was when you located Ilona. Did you marry her right away?”
“Was it a lovely wedding?” Endora gushed.
“Were there any werewolves on the guest list?” Merlin suggested.
“Give,” said Joe, with an ironic flick of his eyebrow.
“All right!” Spanky cried, gesturing for peace with both hands. Then, after tugging his hood forward, he resumed his long-suspended tale with a sigh.
“After all the commotion with the Death Eaters, and the genie, and Harry’s birth, and so on, we were all questioned by Aurors and checked out by healers, and then there was a bit of cleaning up. By this time I had realized my mistake, in telling the genie that I wished to see Ilona again. No one else could see her; it was as if she existed for me alone. Had I been able to tell anyone that I could see her, they would have thought me mad; but some freak accident thwarted my every attempt to explain that Ilona was right there. A colossal thunderclap would come out of the clear sky, or a rack of pots and pans would come off the kitchen wall, or if I tried to sign it, a gust of wind would blow through the room and put out all the lamps.”
One of the oil lamps on the parlor wall flickered as if in sympathy with Spanky’s tale. He coughed and went on:
“I tried to write to Ilona’s parents about finding her, and wanting to marry her, but every time I got to that point in my letter, either the quill would drop a massive ink blot covering an entire paragraph, or a spark from the fireplace would ignite the page, or a draft would blow it out the window. Once, when I had done everything in my power to prevent these things from happening, I had actually finished the letter and was about to tie it to my owl’s leg when a huge bat flew down from the rafters and snatched it out of my hand.”
“The owl’s leg?” Endora gasped.
“No, the letter,” snapped Merlin, smacking the back of Endora’s head.
“My brother Festus,” said Sadie, “once tried to compete with the Owl Post Service, only using bats instead of owls.” She shook her head grimly.
“What happened?” asked Spanky, momentarily dropping the thread of his story.
“Turns out owls are a bit higher on the food chain,” Sadie said, and left it at that.
Before Spanky could question her further, Joe cut in: “At any rate, you were saying...?”
Spanky shook his head, shrugged, and continued: “It was a problem. We couldn’t get legally married. No one would license us to marry without seeing proof of the bride’s existence. Family, friends, ministers, judges — none of them could see her or hear her. We couldn’t even declare ourselves married, because there was no way to explain Ilona’s condition. The problem wasn’t merely making people believe, but even getting them to understand what was going on.
“Ilona didn’t want to start living together without getting married, but ever since the Owlympics she had been lonelier than a ghost. No one could see her, hear her, or detect her presence in any way; it was a miracle that she survived at all. Now, at least, one person recognized that she was there. It was the only way she could live. So we wrote out our vows on parchment — knowing that if anyone tried to read it, the parchment would probably crumble into pieces — signed and dated it, and sealed it with an ensorcelled wafer, ensuring that it could not be opened until after Ilona was freed from the djinn curse. From that time on, we considered ourselves married, and I was even able to speak of her as my wife, so long as I didn’t try to explain her whereabouts.”
Endora raised her hand tentatively. “So your marriage...”
“Wasn’t a matter of public record until after our Gringotts caper, when the third djinn finally removed the curse,” said Spanky. “That’s when the scroll was unsealed, and the Hogsmeade magistrate officially made our marriage license retroactive to the date we signed the scroll. You can’t imagine how many difficulties this has cleared up...our children’s schools, healers, neighbors...but never mind that now. The Potters had Harry, and Ilona and I had each other, and even though the times were pretty dangerous, we were all very happy.
“My supervisors at the RMB noted the improvement in my behavior, and I was allowed to return to full duty for the first time since the Owlympics. This made our living situation a bit more comfortable. Even better was when Ilona found out that, by leaving anonymous tips, she could continue battling dark magic, and was especially effective in ‘undercover’ situations because nobody could tell that she was there. This didn’t bring in any income, but she did it because she felt it was right. The RMB is only now recognizing how much she has done for them all these years.”
“Wow,” breathed Sadie. “But...er...what does this have to do with...?”
The dark hood turned slowly toward her, and Sadie gulped.
“What I mean is, do go on,” she said in a rush.
“My first RMB assignment following the Godric’s Hollow incident was the one that eventually put me on the trail of a Death Eater who planned to make Harry Potter’s first Christmas his last. I was put in charge of security for the British entrant in that year’s All-Europe Wizarding Garden Contest. The contestants were generally very wealthy, very fussy, very determined to win — and very concerned about their competitors spying on them, stealing their ideas, or sabotaging their gardens.
“That year, the British champion happened to be my old friend, Sir Lionel Niblet. I was already very familiar with his grounds, having played on them and even worked on them during my youth. I knew that half of my job would be easy: I wouldn’t have to work very hard to keep Sir Lionel out of trouble. Most of the RMB agents working the contest spent so much time keeping tabs on their hosts that the gardens mostly had to protect themselves. But Sir Lionel was a fair player, and his gardens had a good deal of protection of their own. So at first, the assignment looked like a pleasant vacation, even a honeymoon.”
“What kind of protection?” Merlin asked, before Joe could say, “And then what?”
“There were screaming gargoyles at intervals around the perimeter, and fence fungus that grew all over the walls around Sir Lionel’s prize garden.”
“Fence fungus?” asked Endora.
“When crushed, it gives off a gas that puts intruders to sleep,” said Spanky. “Also, they had stone scaregnomes, and flowers that sprayed an anti-pest venom, and medusa nettle hedges— ”
“I’ve seen those,” said Sadie, bitterly. “Stinging, clinging little gits, once they get a hold of you, only the voice of their owner will induce them to let go.”
“Very good deterrent for intruders,” Spanky agreed. “My favorite, though, were the pirate frogs that guarded the freshwater oysters and their transparent pearls. Any would-be pearl thief had only to hear the pirate frogs’ distinctive croak, which sounds closer to ‘Shiver me, shiver me, timbers, timbers’ than ‘Ribbit, ribbit,’ and he would run for dear life.”
“I thought pirate frogs were a garden pest,” Merlin remarked.
“Only if you don’t pay them tribute,” Spanky argued. “Then they plunder and pillage every flowerbed in sight. But throw a few galleons into their pond now and then, and they come over to your side. Good at pest control, too. After the pirate frogs moved in, he never had to spray against coin beetles.”
“What beetles?” Endora demanded, digging in her ear. “I thought you said coin beetles.”
“Beastly insects,” Spanky went on. “They were destroying Sir Lionel’s money tree.”
Sadie coughed up a mouthful of firewhisky.
“This even I’ve never heard of,” she wheezed, an awed gleam in her eye.
“They’re not as good as they sound,” Joe assured her knowledgeably. “All they do is exchange money; they don’t create it.”
“Exactly,” said Spanky. “If you need to change galleons into sickles, or wizard money into Muggle money, all you have to do is fertilize the tree with money, then pick the fruit and open it up and — voila! — the equivalent amount of whatever kind of currency you want is inside. Money trees give a much better exchange rate than goblins, but they’re hard on the soil and they suffer from a lot of pests, such as the spendthrift vine, embezzleworms, and inflationary fungus. They’re also very difficult to graft, so they’re close to extinction.”
“Where does this Niblet character live again?” Sadie asked with studied innocence.
Spanky ignored her. “There were a lot of rare treasures in that garden, a lot of good reasons for all that protection. Sir Lionel had one of the few Dentistrees ever found on British soil. He used to let the village children chew on its leaves, which did more for our dental health than monthly visits to the dentist would have. He had a Valenvine, which every year on the fourteenth of February produced a crop of chocolate-covered cordial cherries. He had a Truffle Bush, distantly related to the Whomping Willow, that was trained to dig up truffles, and a Flowsha Bush whose cuttings mimicked the favorite flower of anyone who looked at them.
“Sir Lionel always said the key to a harmonious and well-tended garden was to have the plants themselves do most of the tending. So he had spent decades cultivating self-fertilizing rosebushes, self-weeding aspidistras, self-trimming grass, and even a rare variety of self-filling fairy-feeder that, unlike the common type, didn’t actually eat the fairies. It was also a terribly comfortable garden to spend time in, with hammock vines around all the trees, providing a comfortable place to stretch out whenever and wherever one wanted to rest. Right next to the oyster pond was another pond full of everlasting ice, where Sir Lionel let the village children skate all through the summer. And the garden paths were shaded by a portable ceiling, which allowed sunlight to come through while keeping rain, acorns, and bird droppings off the path, and off the head of anyone walking the path.”
“It must have been a lovely assignment,” said Endora, dreamily.
“On the contrary,” said Spanky. “On the fourth day after I arrived, weird things started happening and from then on, I never had an hour’s rest. The first casualty was the broom tree...”
“I thought brooms were made, not grown,” said Joe accusingly.
“I’m not talking about the flying kind,” said Spanky. “I’m talking about a flowering shrub, related to gorse. Sir Lionel liked to pickle the flowers and serve them in a salad.
“The fourth morning of my assignment, I was awakened by a sharp tapping on the window above my bed. Ilona and I were sleeping in the summerhouse, which was basically a one-room apartment built over the potting shed. I looked out the window and saw the broom tree standing there, beckoning at me with its branches. It had uprooted itself and walked across the garden to knock on my window.”
“That’s odd,” observed Endora. Then she observed, “Huff!” as Merlin drove his elbow into her ribs.
“Yes, I thought it was odd, too,” said Spanky. “But that was nothing to the oddness I found when I dressed and went outdoors and found the broom sitting in a lawn chair with its roots crossed, holding my Daily Prophet open with its branches and apparently reading it with its bright yellow flowers. I suppose you can guess what I learned from this?”
“That you should never keep a walking shrub waiting,” Joe suggested.
“That the literacy of Daily Prophet readers deserves concerned attention,” Merlin put in.
“That Sir Lionel’s favorite salad is full of eyeballs,” gagged Endora.
“That your security problems were worse than expected,” Sadie added.
Spanky sighed, and said, “Fourth time lucky.”
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE for TMQ Nos. 112 and 113 +++
Contact Robbie through the CoS Discussion Forum, or through the Feedback System, to share your ideas about how the Magic Quill should continue [EDIT: This discussion is now closed]. Survey answers that get the most votes, and contest answers that Robbie chooses, will be in the next two chapters!
SURVEY for Chapter 112: Will the bad guy in Spanky’s story turn out to be his old nemesis Sid Shmedly?
CONTEST for Chapter 112: At the time of Spanky’s story, Ilona is not only invisible but actually undetectable to anyone except Spanky. This doesn’t mean she is completely helpless. What are some things she could do to help Spanky in a fight?
SURVEY for Chapter 113: In Chamber of Secrets, Tom Riddle claimed that Hagrid tried to raise “werewolf pups” under his bed. This raises at least two questions: (A) Was Tom exaggerating, or can werewolves be born by normal reproduction as well as through humans being bitten? (B) And if baby werewolves can be born that way, do they ever turn into people or are they always in their wild, hairy state?
CONTEST for Chapter 113: What do werewolves eat when they can’t have human?
[Originally posted 1/21/07]
109. Murder on the Hogwarts Express
Concept contributed by Dragonic
Contest winners: _houdini and pdhorner
The silence that awaited the end of Merlin’s story was so complete, it hardly seemed that anyone could be breathing. It didn’t last long. After squeezing Endora’s hand and taking a sip of firewhisky, Merlin carried on:
“As we dashed across the ground-level chambers and offices at Gringotts, naked except for Anatoly’s animated skin camoflage, the next few moments are blurred together in my memory. I remember feelings of confusion, panic, embarrassment, and above all such desperation that I might have killed any goblin who tried to stand in my way. Whatever happened, whether it took thirty seconds or thirty minutes, my next clear memory is of running down Diagon Alley on a bitterly cold January morning. Somehow I had got Rigel riding me pig-a-back. Signor Subito was doing the same on Signor Boccachiusa’s back. Another thing that mildly surprised me was that we had all stuck together.
“It was too cold to stay out in that weather, even for long enough to make the hike up to the Leaky Cauldron. So I yelled, ‘This way!’ and crashed through the front door of Madam Malkin’s robe shop, only a few doors down from the bank. It didn’t take Madam Malkin or her assistant, Miss Nickleby, long to understand our distress. We were herded into a back room with a cozy fire and a lot of warm blankets. New robes and cloaks were purchased for all, on Orion Oldmanson’s account. We had several visitors over the next few hours, including Mr. Olivander, who set us up with replacement wands. Someone else furnished us with bowls of hot soup and tankards of butterbeer. I missed a lot of what went on, since the combination of exhaustion and the lovely feeling of something in my stomach sent me right into a deep sleep.
“In my moments of consciousness I picked up an idea that Madam Malkin was hooked into some kind of underground railroad...er, figuratively speaking. We had seen enough of the literal kind. The next day some trolls carried us all in a closed litter to the back door of the Leaky Cauldron, where we stayed for about a week. No one took our pictures or asked us for our story. No Ministry agents interrogated us. Even when we sat in the saloon at mealtimes, no one bothered us or even seemed to look at us.
“Then one day, a car came for us. It was one of those little German cars with room in the backseat for all nine of us, plus Don Pagliai’s hair, which almost counted as a tenth passenger. The driver wore the hood of his cloak up so we never saw his face. He drove us to King’s Cross and put us on the Hogwarts Express. The train would have had two or three other passengers that day, but the bloke in the hood talked the other lot into postponing their trip to Hogsmeade, so we had the whole train to ourselves, except for the cloak bloke.
“We all woke up when the train whistle blew, coming into Hogsmeade station. I heard the Durmstrang lads open their door, just down the train from the compartment Rigel and I were sharing. Someone yelled out. I sprang out of my seat and into the corridor, where all the clowns and Durmstrang lads were already standing over a dead body.”
Joe Albuquerque choked on a mouthful of Butterbeer and coughed, “Whose dead body?”
“A pale, blond, blue-eyed man with a ferocious expression frozen on his features. A huge, silver-bladed dagger stuck out of his chest. The oddest thing was that he was naked, his skin looking waxy in the moonlight that came through the carriage windows. And the man in the hooded cloak had gone.”
“Maybe the naked fellow WAS the hooded cloak bloke,” Sadie suggested, her words slightly garbled by the pipe stem held between her teeth.
Spanky sighed impatiently, but said nothing.
“But where did the cloak go?” asked Merlin. “We searched up and down the train. The only other people on board were the driver and the beverage cart lady, whom we found sleeping with earplugs in and a mask over her eyes. By this time we had stopped in Hogsmeade, and the local law wizards were interrogating everybody. Apparently they were satisfied that none of us had done the murder, but they didn’t like the vagueness of the rest of our story — who we were, where we had come from, what we were planning to do in Hogsmeade, and so forth. Luckily, before they could pry the whole story out of us, Orion Oldmanson showed up and whisked us all off. We never found out who the dead blonde fellow was, or what he was doing on the train naked with a knife sticking out of him. And of course, we had no idea how the cloak bloke was connected. What’s more, we never read a word about the murder, or heard about it from anyone. It was as if it never happened.”
“So it really had nothing to do with your escape from Gringotts,” growled Spanky, unexpectedly.
Merlin flinched a bit, then said, “No, I suppose not. It just seemed interesting, that’s all.”
“Then stick to your story,” Spanky advised, a bit less testily.
“All-all right,” Merlin stammered. “Well, Old Man Oldmanson took us round to his house and nursed us all back to health. We were shockingly malnourished, you know, and our nerves were completely shot. The quiet country life was just the therapy we needed. After a little while of having nothing to do but play croquet with a set of Quidditch balls, we couldn’t wait to get back to a life of sheer terror.
“Orion gave the clowns and the Durmstrang lads some traveling money — and I rather think, more than just traveling money — and they all left to begin their new lives. I stayed on a bit longer, helping Orion make a few arrangements for raising Rigel all over again. I engaged a private tutor named Professor Biddle, who sent his head to the Floo in Rigel’s day-nursery promptly at 9 a.m. every day, not to teach him a lot of stuff he had already learned during his first childhood, but all the things he had missed: manners, ethics, philosophy, stories of heroic halfbloods and Muggleborns to counteract all the Dark stuff his mother had drilled into him. I also stocked up on a new line of parental discipline aids from the Purple Papoose.”
Spanky had pulled out a quill and parchment and was adding a third line under the name “Biddle” when he asked, “What kinds of aids?”
Merlin scratched his head, not having expected his audience’s interest to lean this way. “Er. Let me see. There was the Nag, sort of a disembodied voice that follows the brat around, lecturing him about proper behavior. Saves you a lot of breath, does the Nag. Then there was the MagiBANd, a sort of charm bracelet that squelches a child’s magical powers until Mum or Dad says the magic word that takes it off. Force the kid to live like a Muggle for a while, and he won’t forget the lesson.
“My favorite, of course, was the self-spanking paddle, which could be programmed to swat a little bum whenever it did anything on a customized list of crimes. While those things lasted, Rigel had a bit of discipline, without Old Man Orion having to run himself to death chasing the child. Actually, though, I bought these things on my own initiative. I don’t think Orion would have thought of disciplining Rigel the second time around, any more than he had done the first time.
“The old man wanted me to settle down on his estate, help him raise the lad, but I was dying to get back to London and catch up on all the people and jobs I had lost track of. Did a lot of cross-country broomstick racing, cockatrice hunting, Hippogriff handling, anything I could do out of doors. And that was what I was doing when Harvey...er, where did Harvey go?”
Everyone glanced around and shrugged. Sadie suggested the loo.
“Hmm,” Merlin said.
“Hmm, indeed,” said Spanky, exchanging a worried glance with Endora.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE for TMQ 111! +++
Next time, The Magic Quill will share some of the responses readers sent to the latest challenge, as to whether TMQ should continue. The week after that — at the risk of giving away the results of the previous challenge - theMagic Quill will feature the winning entries to the Survey and Contest below. Robbie picks the Contest entry he likes best; the Survey answer that gets the most votes wins.
SURVEY: Now that Merlin’s tale is complete, what should be the next “top priority” tale from the back parlor of the Hog’s Head? (A) How the murder on the Hogwarts Express is connected with Spanky’s unfinished tale about a werewolf. (B) How Sadie made and lost each of her successive fortunes. (C) What happens to Harvey after he takes a drink of his Live-Backward-In-Time potion? (D) Other: _____ (write in your own idea, or vote for someone else’s write-in idea).
CONTEST: What unusual things might you find in a well-to-do witch or wizard’s garden?
Please, don’t wait for inspiration to strike: come as you are to the TMQ discussion forum, and add your “off the cuff” Survey & Contest answers to help Robbie (and the Quill) come up with ideas for the chapter after next! [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
[Originally posted 12/28/06]
Contest winners: _houdini and pdhorner
The silence that awaited the end of Merlin’s story was so complete, it hardly seemed that anyone could be breathing. It didn’t last long. After squeezing Endora’s hand and taking a sip of firewhisky, Merlin carried on:
“As we dashed across the ground-level chambers and offices at Gringotts, naked except for Anatoly’s animated skin camoflage, the next few moments are blurred together in my memory. I remember feelings of confusion, panic, embarrassment, and above all such desperation that I might have killed any goblin who tried to stand in my way. Whatever happened, whether it took thirty seconds or thirty minutes, my next clear memory is of running down Diagon Alley on a bitterly cold January morning. Somehow I had got Rigel riding me pig-a-back. Signor Subito was doing the same on Signor Boccachiusa’s back. Another thing that mildly surprised me was that we had all stuck together.
“It was too cold to stay out in that weather, even for long enough to make the hike up to the Leaky Cauldron. So I yelled, ‘This way!’ and crashed through the front door of Madam Malkin’s robe shop, only a few doors down from the bank. It didn’t take Madam Malkin or her assistant, Miss Nickleby, long to understand our distress. We were herded into a back room with a cozy fire and a lot of warm blankets. New robes and cloaks were purchased for all, on Orion Oldmanson’s account. We had several visitors over the next few hours, including Mr. Olivander, who set us up with replacement wands. Someone else furnished us with bowls of hot soup and tankards of butterbeer. I missed a lot of what went on, since the combination of exhaustion and the lovely feeling of something in my stomach sent me right into a deep sleep.
“In my moments of consciousness I picked up an idea that Madam Malkin was hooked into some kind of underground railroad...er, figuratively speaking. We had seen enough of the literal kind. The next day some trolls carried us all in a closed litter to the back door of the Leaky Cauldron, where we stayed for about a week. No one took our pictures or asked us for our story. No Ministry agents interrogated us. Even when we sat in the saloon at mealtimes, no one bothered us or even seemed to look at us.
“Then one day, a car came for us. It was one of those little German cars with room in the backseat for all nine of us, plus Don Pagliai’s hair, which almost counted as a tenth passenger. The driver wore the hood of his cloak up so we never saw his face. He drove us to King’s Cross and put us on the Hogwarts Express. The train would have had two or three other passengers that day, but the bloke in the hood talked the other lot into postponing their trip to Hogsmeade, so we had the whole train to ourselves, except for the cloak bloke.
“We all woke up when the train whistle blew, coming into Hogsmeade station. I heard the Durmstrang lads open their door, just down the train from the compartment Rigel and I were sharing. Someone yelled out. I sprang out of my seat and into the corridor, where all the clowns and Durmstrang lads were already standing over a dead body.”
Joe Albuquerque choked on a mouthful of Butterbeer and coughed, “Whose dead body?”
“A pale, blond, blue-eyed man with a ferocious expression frozen on his features. A huge, silver-bladed dagger stuck out of his chest. The oddest thing was that he was naked, his skin looking waxy in the moonlight that came through the carriage windows. And the man in the hooded cloak had gone.”
“Maybe the naked fellow WAS the hooded cloak bloke,” Sadie suggested, her words slightly garbled by the pipe stem held between her teeth.
Spanky sighed impatiently, but said nothing.
“But where did the cloak go?” asked Merlin. “We searched up and down the train. The only other people on board were the driver and the beverage cart lady, whom we found sleeping with earplugs in and a mask over her eyes. By this time we had stopped in Hogsmeade, and the local law wizards were interrogating everybody. Apparently they were satisfied that none of us had done the murder, but they didn’t like the vagueness of the rest of our story — who we were, where we had come from, what we were planning to do in Hogsmeade, and so forth. Luckily, before they could pry the whole story out of us, Orion Oldmanson showed up and whisked us all off. We never found out who the dead blonde fellow was, or what he was doing on the train naked with a knife sticking out of him. And of course, we had no idea how the cloak bloke was connected. What’s more, we never read a word about the murder, or heard about it from anyone. It was as if it never happened.”
“So it really had nothing to do with your escape from Gringotts,” growled Spanky, unexpectedly.
Merlin flinched a bit, then said, “No, I suppose not. It just seemed interesting, that’s all.”
“Then stick to your story,” Spanky advised, a bit less testily.
“All-all right,” Merlin stammered. “Well, Old Man Oldmanson took us round to his house and nursed us all back to health. We were shockingly malnourished, you know, and our nerves were completely shot. The quiet country life was just the therapy we needed. After a little while of having nothing to do but play croquet with a set of Quidditch balls, we couldn’t wait to get back to a life of sheer terror.
“Orion gave the clowns and the Durmstrang lads some traveling money — and I rather think, more than just traveling money — and they all left to begin their new lives. I stayed on a bit longer, helping Orion make a few arrangements for raising Rigel all over again. I engaged a private tutor named Professor Biddle, who sent his head to the Floo in Rigel’s day-nursery promptly at 9 a.m. every day, not to teach him a lot of stuff he had already learned during his first childhood, but all the things he had missed: manners, ethics, philosophy, stories of heroic halfbloods and Muggleborns to counteract all the Dark stuff his mother had drilled into him. I also stocked up on a new line of parental discipline aids from the Purple Papoose.”
Spanky had pulled out a quill and parchment and was adding a third line under the name “Biddle” when he asked, “What kinds of aids?”
Merlin scratched his head, not having expected his audience’s interest to lean this way. “Er. Let me see. There was the Nag, sort of a disembodied voice that follows the brat around, lecturing him about proper behavior. Saves you a lot of breath, does the Nag. Then there was the MagiBANd, a sort of charm bracelet that squelches a child’s magical powers until Mum or Dad says the magic word that takes it off. Force the kid to live like a Muggle for a while, and he won’t forget the lesson.
“My favorite, of course, was the self-spanking paddle, which could be programmed to swat a little bum whenever it did anything on a customized list of crimes. While those things lasted, Rigel had a bit of discipline, without Old Man Orion having to run himself to death chasing the child. Actually, though, I bought these things on my own initiative. I don’t think Orion would have thought of disciplining Rigel the second time around, any more than he had done the first time.
“The old man wanted me to settle down on his estate, help him raise the lad, but I was dying to get back to London and catch up on all the people and jobs I had lost track of. Did a lot of cross-country broomstick racing, cockatrice hunting, Hippogriff handling, anything I could do out of doors. And that was what I was doing when Harvey...er, where did Harvey go?”
Everyone glanced around and shrugged. Sadie suggested the loo.
“Hmm,” Merlin said.
“Hmm, indeed,” said Spanky, exchanging a worried glance with Endora.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE for TMQ 111! +++
Next time, The Magic Quill will share some of the responses readers sent to the latest challenge, as to whether TMQ should continue. The week after that — at the risk of giving away the results of the previous challenge - theMagic Quill will feature the winning entries to the Survey and Contest below. Robbie picks the Contest entry he likes best; the Survey answer that gets the most votes wins.
SURVEY: Now that Merlin’s tale is complete, what should be the next “top priority” tale from the back parlor of the Hog’s Head? (A) How the murder on the Hogwarts Express is connected with Spanky’s unfinished tale about a werewolf. (B) How Sadie made and lost each of her successive fortunes. (C) What happens to Harvey after he takes a drink of his Live-Backward-In-Time potion? (D) Other: _____ (write in your own idea, or vote for someone else’s write-in idea).
CONTEST: What unusual things might you find in a well-to-do witch or wizard’s garden?
Please, don’t wait for inspiration to strike: come as you are to the TMQ discussion forum, and add your “off the cuff” Survey & Contest answers to help Robbie (and the Quill) come up with ideas for the chapter after next! [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
[Originally posted 12/28/06]
108. The Final Causeway
Contest winner: TWZRD
Merlin paused to drain a smoking goblet before continuing with his tale. The others in the small parlor waited restlessly: one wearing a veil, one a fake mustache and glasses, another’s face concealed by the hood of his cloak, still another’s by a handkerchief, and the last disguised as a shapely young woman, though a shadow of a beard was starting to show on his face. At last, Merlin resumed speaking...
“Naturally, we all followed Rigel down the stairs that were revealed under the tomb of the goblin twins. By the light from the cloak of visibility, which it was Signor Boccachiusa’s turn to wear, we saw that the stairs descended onto a wide, smooth, stone causeway. The walls curved over our heads, no more than six feet up from the floor, so we had to stay near the center of the causeway – and some of us had to stoop a bit.
“The causeway curved to the right, quite sharply at first, but less so as we moved along. Young Karl observed that we were moving along a spiral, and on a gradual upward slope. There wasn’t much else to be observed – no doors, no steps, no features on the walls. Not much, that is, for the first few miles. Then Don Pagliai pointed out something shiny on the edge of the causeway ahead of us. As Signor Subito hopped forward to fetch it, Slavik screamed at him to stop. It was Rigel who saved him, by tackling the little clown before he could reach the pile of coins that appeared to have been left carelessly on the ground.
“’Explain why you have done this,’ snarled Don Pagliai, as he inspected his friend’s scraped elbows and torn trousers.
“’I just saved Subito’s life,’ Rigel snarled right back, and he marched off into the darkness – not far, by the sound of his dragging feet, but far enough to be able to pout in privacy. Even having once been a grown-up didn’t change the fact that he was a small child, after all.
“’He’s right,’ said Slavik, as Subito filled his lungs for what looked like another tremendous display of swearing. The small clown bit his tongue while Slavik explained. ‘Rigel must have realized at the same time I did – and it just shows that it pays to listen in magical history class – what this place is, and knowing that, we also know that you must never touch anything in here that looks like treasure.
“’This,’ Slavik continued, ‘is almost certainly the Final Causeway.’
“He beamed round at the rest of us, no doubt expecting loud exclamations of wonder and incredulity. When he saw nothing but blank faces, he rolled his eyes at us and said, ‘Have none of you heard of the Four Causeways?’ None of us had. ‘Everyone knows there are Four Causeways at Gringotts — four pathways that run directly from the surface level to the deepest heart of the bank. No one but goblins are ever meant to see them and live. Each one is connected with a certain, secret goblin ritual.
“’First, there’s the Material Causeway, whose location is most coveted by would-be thieves. It is said to lead to a huge vault containing the richest treasures the goblins possess. Guarding it, and even visiting it, are very special privileges even for goblins. Next is the Formal Causeway, leading to the Chamber of Avarice where the goblins’ governing board meets. Disputes are settled there, sentences passed, treaties ratified. Then there is the Efficient Causeway, which connects the bank to a sort of goblin Hogwarts – a place where young goblins learn whatever the old goblins want them to know. Business practices, maybe. Or the arts of war, maybe.’
“’Don’t bother telling us where the Final Causeway leads,’ I said. ‘We’ve just come from there. So this is the path they use for their funeral processions, right?’
“’Right,’ said Slavik. ‘The goblins are very clever. They have to be, in order to loot ancient tombs and temples without having their pointy ears blasted off by the security curses. And being clever, the goblins have picked up a lot of ideas from the places they plundered. Ideas they then applied to their own security. So unless Rigel and I are both quite mistaken...’
“’The booty in the goblin place of the dead will be protected by some serious curses,’ I guessed.
“Subito shuddered as we walked past another glimmering pile of jewels and gold. Then he squeaked as we approached a pile of bones — human bones — mixed with a few other things like a knife and a silver ring.
“’That narrows down the type of curse we’re faced with,’ Slavik said. ‘I believe that all this treasure is protected by the Somnium Cogo curse. Pick up one coin, and you’ll fall into an everlasting sleep. Or at least, the sleep will last until you starve to death. The bones we see there — and look! There is another pile of bones — mean that occasionally, a foolish burglar is allowed to find his way in here.’
“’Allowed?’ Don Pagliai asked, looking nauseous.
“’Why not?’ said Slavik. ‘They never get away with anything, do they? In fact, by leaving behind whatever they brought with them, they rather increase the amount of treasure collected here.’
“By now, we were far past being shocked by any horrid thing the goblins might do. Nevertheless, looking round at the other Durmstrang lads, I saw faces white with anxiety.
“Rigel rejoined the circle of light around Signor Boccachiusa, though he hadn’t quite finished with pouting. Karl persuaded Rigel to dig into his pocket-universe storage unit, where he found a basket of fresh fruit and some hard-boiled eggs. We stopped to rest and eat, then continued walking up the gentle slope, round the gently spiraling curve of the goblins’ Final Causeway.
“After several more rest stops of increasing length, including a bit of sleep, Karl spoke up again. ‘I belieff ve are getting close to the surface. Ve need to plan vhat to do vhen ve get to the end of this Causevay. Once ve are out in the open, ve von’t have much time to escape from the bank.’
“’They will catch us again,’ Don Pagliai wailed. ‘I can’t stand it!’
“’Ve need a diversion,’ Karl declared.
“’What good is diversion unless we know layout of place where we come out?’ Anatoly countered.
“’They are too many for us,’ said Don Pagliai. ‘We are big, slow, and weak.’
“’We can take them by surprise,’ said Slavik.
“I said, ’Haven’t you learned by now that there is no way to surprise the goblins?’
“’Where does that leave us?’ said Slavik. ‘We have to escape. We have to at least try.’
“’They vill try to stop us,’ said Karl. ‘And they are qvite good at it.’
“’Let them try,’ Rigel said, determination ringing in his high childish voice. ‘Nothing is going to stop me now.’
“A second later, Rigel was stopped in mid-stride with a sudden smacking sound. He fell flat on his back, yelling, with a nick on his chin, a bruise on his forehead, and a bite-mark on his tongue.
“’Well, that’s that,’ Don Pagliai said bitterly as his hands felt around in what looked like empty air. ‘It’s as solid as stone. In fact, I would swear it was stone. Must be another of those invisible walls.’
“Karl came forward and made his own survey of the blockage ahead of us. ‘No, feel here,’ he said. ‘Here is a door. The knob turns...’
“A sliver of light flooded into the tunnel. Jaan threw himself against the concealed door and pressed it shut, hurling curses at Karl that I couldn’t pronounce if I tried.
“’Don’t be a fool,’ Slavik translated. ‘If you open that door, goblins might notice us before we have a chance to do anything. They could attack while our eyes are adjusting to the light.’
“’I have idea,’ said Anatoly, who by now was taking his turn at caressing the disguised wall. ‘This is ordinary wall, painted to look like corridor goes on. But is not ordinary paint. See — perspective holds even up close, from every angle. Is magical paint, camouflage.’
“’That really helpth a lot,’ Rigel sneered. He was understandably in a bad mood; his tongue was swollen where he had bitten it.
“’What if we disguised ourselves same way?’ Anatoly said, ignoring Rigel’s remark. He looked more eager each minute. ‘I used to draw and paint well. With wand, perhaps I can copy type of coloring spell used on this wall.’
“’That would be a good idea,’ said Slavik, ‘if only we had a wand.’”
“Jaan smacked himself on the forehead, then tried a few halting sentences in English, before giving up and pouring out a stream of rapid words in a language he shared with the others. By now I could actually understand about a tenth of what he said at his usual speed, but this time he was talking so fast that I couldn’t make out a word.
“’Of course!’ Slavik cried. ‘Rigel has the last wand in his pocket locker! It’s been there since he was — er...’
“’Reborn,’ Don Pagliai suggested.
“Rigel turned red and fumed, but his tongue was too swollen to say anything we could understand. All the same, he dug out the wand Jaan had made ages ago, and which had never been used before Rigel’s little mistake with the Yesterday Pills. The next part was a bit ticklish and embarrassing. Each of us took his robes off, one after another, so Anatoly could cover every inch of our bodies with a camouflage spell. It didn’t help that, after tinting Rigel and the clowns, the wand started shooting ice pellets at three-second intervals.
“’One more thing that comes of using an Augurey feather as a wand core,’ Jaan said ruefully, with Slavik translating.
“’At last we were all covered with animated tattoos that made us blend in with the walls and floor. The effect was less than invisibility but more than Disillusionment. If you looked directly at one of us, you could see his general shape because of the way his movements distorted the image on his skin. Our eyes, the insides of our mouths, and our hair were still visible. In addition, the Durmstrang lads and I were covered in welts from the ice pellets, and shivering from the cold as well. It felt insane; we were about to walk out into some unknown part of Gringotts, completely naked, and all we could discuss was whether or not to use the wand one more time to make our hair go away.
“Stay close to the walls until you see a door that leads outside,’ Karl instructed us. ‘Then run like your life depends on it.’
“’It does,’ said Don Pagliai.
“We were leaving everything behind now. Rigel’s robes with the pocket locker and all the handy things in it. The cloak of visibility. The silken ladder. The portable hole...all of it would be left behind in the Final Causeway, to tempt future treasure hunters to their doom. We all knew that if we were caught again, we would not survive long without these things. No one had to say anything about it as we looked at each other’s eyes, strangely floating along with disembodied heads of hair and an occasional glimpse of teeth and tongue.
“’Night of the flying hairpieces,’ Rigel joked. Some of us laughed nervously.
“Then Karl gave us a count of three, and threw open the concealed door...”
+++ A MESSAGE FROM ROBBIE +++
In the last few months, demands on my time have increased, while response from readers has dropped off. So the “Challenge” for this time is: Go to the Feedback Form and tell me if you think it is worth our while (yours AND mine) to continue “The Magic Quill.” Frankly, when I only hear from a handful of readers on a regular basis, I wonder whether anyone would notice if TMQ quietly went away. So, if you want this column to continue, please shoot me some feedback on it! [EDIT: Needless to say, these instructions are ancient history.]
Whatever happens, I plan to continue writing reviews for “The Book Trolley.” I don’t plan to end my involvement with MuggleNet. Plus, after nearly 110 chapters, I think everyone who has been involved in writing this column has plenty to be proud of. But the time I spend on “The Magic Quill” comes at a higher cost these days, so I would like to know if it’s still worth it. I hope to hear from you!
[Originally posted 12/17/06]
Merlin paused to drain a smoking goblet before continuing with his tale. The others in the small parlor waited restlessly: one wearing a veil, one a fake mustache and glasses, another’s face concealed by the hood of his cloak, still another’s by a handkerchief, and the last disguised as a shapely young woman, though a shadow of a beard was starting to show on his face. At last, Merlin resumed speaking...
“Naturally, we all followed Rigel down the stairs that were revealed under the tomb of the goblin twins. By the light from the cloak of visibility, which it was Signor Boccachiusa’s turn to wear, we saw that the stairs descended onto a wide, smooth, stone causeway. The walls curved over our heads, no more than six feet up from the floor, so we had to stay near the center of the causeway – and some of us had to stoop a bit.
“The causeway curved to the right, quite sharply at first, but less so as we moved along. Young Karl observed that we were moving along a spiral, and on a gradual upward slope. There wasn’t much else to be observed – no doors, no steps, no features on the walls. Not much, that is, for the first few miles. Then Don Pagliai pointed out something shiny on the edge of the causeway ahead of us. As Signor Subito hopped forward to fetch it, Slavik screamed at him to stop. It was Rigel who saved him, by tackling the little clown before he could reach the pile of coins that appeared to have been left carelessly on the ground.
“’Explain why you have done this,’ snarled Don Pagliai, as he inspected his friend’s scraped elbows and torn trousers.
“’I just saved Subito’s life,’ Rigel snarled right back, and he marched off into the darkness – not far, by the sound of his dragging feet, but far enough to be able to pout in privacy. Even having once been a grown-up didn’t change the fact that he was a small child, after all.
“’He’s right,’ said Slavik, as Subito filled his lungs for what looked like another tremendous display of swearing. The small clown bit his tongue while Slavik explained. ‘Rigel must have realized at the same time I did – and it just shows that it pays to listen in magical history class – what this place is, and knowing that, we also know that you must never touch anything in here that looks like treasure.
“’This,’ Slavik continued, ‘is almost certainly the Final Causeway.’
“He beamed round at the rest of us, no doubt expecting loud exclamations of wonder and incredulity. When he saw nothing but blank faces, he rolled his eyes at us and said, ‘Have none of you heard of the Four Causeways?’ None of us had. ‘Everyone knows there are Four Causeways at Gringotts — four pathways that run directly from the surface level to the deepest heart of the bank. No one but goblins are ever meant to see them and live. Each one is connected with a certain, secret goblin ritual.
“’First, there’s the Material Causeway, whose location is most coveted by would-be thieves. It is said to lead to a huge vault containing the richest treasures the goblins possess. Guarding it, and even visiting it, are very special privileges even for goblins. Next is the Formal Causeway, leading to the Chamber of Avarice where the goblins’ governing board meets. Disputes are settled there, sentences passed, treaties ratified. Then there is the Efficient Causeway, which connects the bank to a sort of goblin Hogwarts – a place where young goblins learn whatever the old goblins want them to know. Business practices, maybe. Or the arts of war, maybe.’
“’Don’t bother telling us where the Final Causeway leads,’ I said. ‘We’ve just come from there. So this is the path they use for their funeral processions, right?’
“’Right,’ said Slavik. ‘The goblins are very clever. They have to be, in order to loot ancient tombs and temples without having their pointy ears blasted off by the security curses. And being clever, the goblins have picked up a lot of ideas from the places they plundered. Ideas they then applied to their own security. So unless Rigel and I are both quite mistaken...’
“’The booty in the goblin place of the dead will be protected by some serious curses,’ I guessed.
“Subito shuddered as we walked past another glimmering pile of jewels and gold. Then he squeaked as we approached a pile of bones — human bones — mixed with a few other things like a knife and a silver ring.
“’That narrows down the type of curse we’re faced with,’ Slavik said. ‘I believe that all this treasure is protected by the Somnium Cogo curse. Pick up one coin, and you’ll fall into an everlasting sleep. Or at least, the sleep will last until you starve to death. The bones we see there — and look! There is another pile of bones — mean that occasionally, a foolish burglar is allowed to find his way in here.’
“’Allowed?’ Don Pagliai asked, looking nauseous.
“’Why not?’ said Slavik. ‘They never get away with anything, do they? In fact, by leaving behind whatever they brought with them, they rather increase the amount of treasure collected here.’
“By now, we were far past being shocked by any horrid thing the goblins might do. Nevertheless, looking round at the other Durmstrang lads, I saw faces white with anxiety.
“Rigel rejoined the circle of light around Signor Boccachiusa, though he hadn’t quite finished with pouting. Karl persuaded Rigel to dig into his pocket-universe storage unit, where he found a basket of fresh fruit and some hard-boiled eggs. We stopped to rest and eat, then continued walking up the gentle slope, round the gently spiraling curve of the goblins’ Final Causeway.
“After several more rest stops of increasing length, including a bit of sleep, Karl spoke up again. ‘I belieff ve are getting close to the surface. Ve need to plan vhat to do vhen ve get to the end of this Causevay. Once ve are out in the open, ve von’t have much time to escape from the bank.’
“’They will catch us again,’ Don Pagliai wailed. ‘I can’t stand it!’
“’Ve need a diversion,’ Karl declared.
“’What good is diversion unless we know layout of place where we come out?’ Anatoly countered.
“’They are too many for us,’ said Don Pagliai. ‘We are big, slow, and weak.’
“’We can take them by surprise,’ said Slavik.
“I said, ’Haven’t you learned by now that there is no way to surprise the goblins?’
“’Where does that leave us?’ said Slavik. ‘We have to escape. We have to at least try.’
“’They vill try to stop us,’ said Karl. ‘And they are qvite good at it.’
“’Let them try,’ Rigel said, determination ringing in his high childish voice. ‘Nothing is going to stop me now.’
“A second later, Rigel was stopped in mid-stride with a sudden smacking sound. He fell flat on his back, yelling, with a nick on his chin, a bruise on his forehead, and a bite-mark on his tongue.
“’Well, that’s that,’ Don Pagliai said bitterly as his hands felt around in what looked like empty air. ‘It’s as solid as stone. In fact, I would swear it was stone. Must be another of those invisible walls.’
“Karl came forward and made his own survey of the blockage ahead of us. ‘No, feel here,’ he said. ‘Here is a door. The knob turns...’
“A sliver of light flooded into the tunnel. Jaan threw himself against the concealed door and pressed it shut, hurling curses at Karl that I couldn’t pronounce if I tried.
“’Don’t be a fool,’ Slavik translated. ‘If you open that door, goblins might notice us before we have a chance to do anything. They could attack while our eyes are adjusting to the light.’
“’I have idea,’ said Anatoly, who by now was taking his turn at caressing the disguised wall. ‘This is ordinary wall, painted to look like corridor goes on. But is not ordinary paint. See — perspective holds even up close, from every angle. Is magical paint, camouflage.’
“’That really helpth a lot,’ Rigel sneered. He was understandably in a bad mood; his tongue was swollen where he had bitten it.
“’What if we disguised ourselves same way?’ Anatoly said, ignoring Rigel’s remark. He looked more eager each minute. ‘I used to draw and paint well. With wand, perhaps I can copy type of coloring spell used on this wall.’
“’That would be a good idea,’ said Slavik, ‘if only we had a wand.’”
“Jaan smacked himself on the forehead, then tried a few halting sentences in English, before giving up and pouring out a stream of rapid words in a language he shared with the others. By now I could actually understand about a tenth of what he said at his usual speed, but this time he was talking so fast that I couldn’t make out a word.
“’Of course!’ Slavik cried. ‘Rigel has the last wand in his pocket locker! It’s been there since he was — er...’
“’Reborn,’ Don Pagliai suggested.
“Rigel turned red and fumed, but his tongue was too swollen to say anything we could understand. All the same, he dug out the wand Jaan had made ages ago, and which had never been used before Rigel’s little mistake with the Yesterday Pills. The next part was a bit ticklish and embarrassing. Each of us took his robes off, one after another, so Anatoly could cover every inch of our bodies with a camouflage spell. It didn’t help that, after tinting Rigel and the clowns, the wand started shooting ice pellets at three-second intervals.
“’One more thing that comes of using an Augurey feather as a wand core,’ Jaan said ruefully, with Slavik translating.
“’At last we were all covered with animated tattoos that made us blend in with the walls and floor. The effect was less than invisibility but more than Disillusionment. If you looked directly at one of us, you could see his general shape because of the way his movements distorted the image on his skin. Our eyes, the insides of our mouths, and our hair were still visible. In addition, the Durmstrang lads and I were covered in welts from the ice pellets, and shivering from the cold as well. It felt insane; we were about to walk out into some unknown part of Gringotts, completely naked, and all we could discuss was whether or not to use the wand one more time to make our hair go away.
“Stay close to the walls until you see a door that leads outside,’ Karl instructed us. ‘Then run like your life depends on it.’
“’It does,’ said Don Pagliai.
“We were leaving everything behind now. Rigel’s robes with the pocket locker and all the handy things in it. The cloak of visibility. The silken ladder. The portable hole...all of it would be left behind in the Final Causeway, to tempt future treasure hunters to their doom. We all knew that if we were caught again, we would not survive long without these things. No one had to say anything about it as we looked at each other’s eyes, strangely floating along with disembodied heads of hair and an occasional glimpse of teeth and tongue.
“’Night of the flying hairpieces,’ Rigel joked. Some of us laughed nervously.
“Then Karl gave us a count of three, and threw open the concealed door...”
+++ A MESSAGE FROM ROBBIE +++
In the last few months, demands on my time have increased, while response from readers has dropped off. So the “Challenge” for this time is: Go to the Feedback Form and tell me if you think it is worth our while (yours AND mine) to continue “The Magic Quill.” Frankly, when I only hear from a handful of readers on a regular basis, I wonder whether anyone would notice if TMQ quietly went away. So, if you want this column to continue, please shoot me some feedback on it! [EDIT: Needless to say, these instructions are ancient history.]
Whatever happens, I plan to continue writing reviews for “The Book Trolley.” I don’t plan to end my involvement with MuggleNet. Plus, after nearly 110 chapters, I think everyone who has been involved in writing this column has plenty to be proud of. But the time I spend on “The Magic Quill” comes at a higher cost these days, so I would like to know if it’s still worth it. I hope to hear from you!
[Originally posted 12/17/06]
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