Contest Winners: Everybody
The island was very small, very beautiful, and very quiet.
It was beautiful because of the staggering expanse of cloudless blue sky that stood over it like the cover on a gargantuan pie-plate, and because of the sunshine that sparkled on the still, turquoise-blue waters of the lagoon separating its shore from the coral reef that surrounded it, and because of its broad smooth beach of sparkling pewter-colored sand, and because of the almost painfully bright green of the grass that waved around the middle part of the island between stands of graceful palms and thickets of colorful fragrant flowers.
It was quiet because nobody lived there. No human foot had ever disturbed its soft sandy soil. No human hand had ever plucked its sweet succulent fruit. No human nose had ever sneezed upon its highly pollinated flowers. No human eye had ever watered with agony after the previously mentioned foot was stung by the spines of its venomous burrowing crustaceans. No human ear had ever heard the squawk of its cheerfully colored (but not very talkative) local species of parrot, nor the buzz of its viciously biting swarms of insects, nor the croaking battle-cry of the indigenous iguana relative whose vermin-infested bite guaranteed a slow, hideous death to anyone whose foot disturbed the island's soft sandy soil, or whose hand pl-... You get the picture.
It was small because... Well, it had always been small. But these days the island was even smaller than it ought to have been, at least if one counted as part of the island the smaller teardrop-shaped hump of sand connected to the main part of it by a slender shoal that was only above water at low tide. For the past little while--long enough for the iguanas to forget, but little enough for the parrots to remember--this stretch of land had been under water. Under water in a most unusual way. A way that threatened the parrots with extinction, because they could not resist their old insect-hunting grounds, even though visiting them meant diving horizontally through a vertical surface of water behind which swam the first sharks in the south seas to have developed a taste for parrot.
Today the parrots, iguanas, and stinging crustaceans of the littler-than-ever island were nonplussed by the arrival of three creatures the likes of which they had never seen. The trio arrived with a pop like a cork exiting a champagne bottle. One was a tall, broad-shouldered wizard whose flowing dark robes brushed the sand, and the hood of whose cloak overshadowed his face. The second was a pale, shapely witch who wore her pointed hat and broomstick-trimmed robes with an indescribable blend of demure domesticity and lively flamboyance, as though she wanted to make up for not being visible for a rather long time. The third was a seven-foot-tall, scruffy dump of a djinn who, although he was already weaving on his feet, risked leaning backward to finish the dregs of an enormous bottle of wine. With a loud hic the djinn sat down hard, crushing an iguana that had been sneaking up in the hope of biting him.
"What the devil is this?" the hooded wizard demanded, gesturing toward the wall of water that surrounded the smaller portion of the island.
"It'th an ishfthsmush," said the djinn, patting his pockets in search of another bottle. "An ithsthmuth. Itshthsmus. Isthmuff. Just a mo, I've got it: iffsmus."
"Not this," the wizard bellowed, kicking at the narrow shoal of damp sand that, at that moment, just cleared the surface of the lagoon. He gesticulated hugely toward the water wall: "This!"
"Dunno," said the djinn, squinting blearily at a paper umbrella he had discovered about his person. "Pimple on face of t'ocean? I say, yer couldn't poss'bly fetch a feller drop ter drink, could yer?"
The wizard turned toward the djinn, but was forced to retreat backwards by a long, rich belch whose odor providentially killed a swarm of bloodthirsty insects that had gathered around the three.
"Awk," the witch gagged, gathering several folds of her robes in front of her face.
"Parrot, I should think," said the djinn, though his pointing arm was just a bit too slow to follow the flight path of a gaily colored bird that, a moment later, perished in the jaws of a shark that jumped the isthmus and returned to the lagoon, all without leaving the water.
The wizard dipped his fingers in the sideways lagoon, pulled them out, and gave a low whistle. "Must be some kind of water-weave charm," he mused aloud.
"Powered by a waterspout spell," the witch added.
"Oi!" the djinn shouted. "Dyin' o' thirst, here!"
The wizard sighed, flicked his wand toward the top of a nearby palm, and caught a coconut as it sailed down into his hands. Then he drew a long, silver knife; hesitated, with a shake of his head perceptible in spite of the hood; and drove it through the shell of the coconut with an ease that made the djinn's eyes go wide. Another wave of the wand and the smell of piña colada brought moisture back to the djinn's dry mouth. Sober as he suddenly was, the djinn's hand shook slightly as he accepted the fruit from the wizard's hand. The umbrella went in, and for a while the only sound that came from behind it was a slow, steady slurp.
"That's him sorted," the witch said, the Romanian lilt in her voice contrasting with her British turn of phrase. She held out her right hand palm-up, balanced her wand on it, and chanted: "Annulus invenio." The wand began to spin like the needle of a compass, only it didn't stop until the witch muttered, "Finite."
"It has to be through here," the wizard said, gesturing with his head toward the wall of water. "I would hate to waste a wish on a broom only to find out that it forms a dome over the entire peninsula."
The djinn snickered behind its paper umbrella.
"What?" the wizard demanded. "What's funny?"
"You said penim- ...er. Penum... Pessinoola..." Slurp. "Wicked 'ot, it is. Wot wuz I sayin'?"
"Your drink is evaporating," the witch warned, and that silenced the djinn for another while.
"Bubble-head might get us through," the wizard mumbled, thinking aloud again. "That's if we can move fast enough to get to the other side before the sharks get us. And I can't tell how thick this water-weave is..."
"This would be a great place to bring the kids," the witch said, gazing in the opposite direction to where a lithe, beautiful skink lay sunning itself on the silvery beach. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than a huge pair of jaws rose up from beneath the sand and closed around the unsuspecting reptile. "Maybe when they're a bit bigger, though," she added, shaken.
"An animagus transformation would help about now," the wizard said, continuing his previous train of thought and oblivious to what the witch was saying. "Only it would have to be to some type of aquatic creature. But those spells take ages to learn. And the sharks could still be a problem."
"Maybe a divination spell can get through their defenses," the witch speculated, squatting down before a tiny, reflective puddle of water. As she held the tip of her wand above the surface, a long black tongue darted out of the water, wrapped itself around the wand, and pulled hard. The witch barely managed to hold on as she engaged the creature in the pool in a fierce tug-of-war. Meanwhile, she couldn't spare the effort of calling for help, so the wizard had no idea this was happening. The djinn watched from under his paper umbrella, but did nothing to cheer her on except to continue slurping on his piña colada.
"Maybe a freezing hex?" the wizard thought aloud. "In this climate, it might not last long enough to kill anything, but it might give us time to break through to the other side... Only, it could be a meter thick. How would we get through it then?"
The witch finally wrestled her wand free of the grip of the submerged creature's prehensile tongue. She sat back on the sand, panting, until something stung her hand and she leapt up with a cry.
"Be quiet, will you?" the wizard snapped without looking over. He had begun to pace up and down before the wall of water. "One of us is trying to think here."
The witchground her teeth in frustration, cradling her stung hand as it swelled and turned red.
"Give us a butcher's," the djinn said, considerately setting his coconut aside and offering the witch a helpful hand.
Dubiously, the witch let the djinn check out her wounds.
"Hmm," he said, after holding the swollen limb close to his bleary eyes, sniffing the wound, and giving the swelling a gentle squeeze. "Ah," he said knowledgeably. "Nuffink a wee wish wouldn't sort" was his diagnosis.
The witch yanked her hand away from the djinn's inebriated caress. "I can wait for it to mend on its own," she sniffed.
"Meanwhile," the djinn said, shaking his empty coconut sadly, "P'raps yer'd make me five or six more o' these while yer 'ave time. Would hate ter get thirsty watchin' yer writhe in t'agathas... er, agronomies... angernees..."
"Don't you wish you had this fellow's way with words?" the witch called to the wizard behind her.
"Yes, dear," the wizard said absentmindedly.
Suddenly there was another "pop" as of a champagne cork going. The djinn hiccoughed and fell backward onto the sand, groaning, "Coo, but me 'ead 'urts!"
At the same moment, the wizard exclaimed: "I think I've got it, now!"
The witch, meanwhile, had realized her mistake and tried to stop her partner before he did something they would all regret. "Spanky! Wait!"
Spanky did not hear her. Flourishing his wand, he was already halfway through an elaborate incantation that began with Congelato! and was supposed to end with Reducto! As a result of the djinn's magic, it came out otherwise than as planned. He said "Congelato," all right; and a shield of frozen water spread before him from a center point directly opposite the tip of his wand. But instead of "Reducto," he said "Radix toe!" Then he stared dumbly at the ice shield before him, which was not blasted open by his second spell as expected. Instead, it continued spreading, though more slowly every moment; then stopped and began shrinking again, until all the ice was gone and the water-weave was back to normal.
When he tried to turn around to appeal to Ilona for help, he found himself stuck fast. Looking down, Spanky discovered a long tap-root growing out of his big toe. It had ripped a hole in his right boot and was busily burrowing into the sand when Spanky caught it. In wrestling it free of the sand, he fell over backward and had a good roll in the sand before he caught the waving root under control and, finally, singed it off with a silent blast of flame from his wand.
"Bovver," he said as he rose to his feet, examining his wand with concern. "Wot could've gorn wrong? Oi! Why am I talkin' like..."
Spanky finally paused and looked at the witch, who had stopped trying to get his attention and now seemed to wish she could become invisible.
"Ilona, luv," he said, grimacing at the words he heard coming out of his mouth, "what've yer done?"
"Actually, you did it," Ilona replied evasively.
"Did wot, luv?"
"Wished to talk like the djinn does."
"Did I?" Spanky looked severely dubious.
"A technicality," said the djinn, lifting one hand, index finger raised, from his otherwise supine repose.
"He tricked me," Ilona added.
"You tricked him," the djinn countered.
Ilona rolled her eyes and said, rather to Spanky than to the djinn, "Give him another drink and we can wish it all right back."
Spanky covered his face with both hands.
"She knows 'ow yer feel, mate," said the djinn.
"I wish," said Spanky.
"Aargh!" yowled the djinn, simultaneous to the popping of an invisible champagne cork. The magical creature clutched his head with one hand and his belly with another. "The mornin' after is comin' early, an' no mistake..."
"Oh, Ilona," the wizard groaned.
She turned away from him, her lips white. "Yer meant ter do that," she accused, wincing at the sound of her own voice.
"Get the poor sick child a hair o' the dog," the djinn begged. "I can 'ardly stand it."
Spanky produced three more coconuts, swiftly and efficiently cutting them open for the djinn's convenience.
"There's the problem," he said informatively, as he cleaned his silver knife. "Djinn need lurbi-... loobi... lurbrication ter work proper. Lee."
"Lee who?" Ilona said, rubbing her forehead.
"Proper-like," Spanky corrected himself. Sort of. "Look, there's a way ter get through this weave fing. We just 'ave to say the spell careful-like."
The djinn scowled. "Do I soun' like that fer real?"
"Shut yer gob," the witch-wizard couple said in unison.
"Let's try putting shark ter sleep," Ilona suggested.
"Good idea," said Spanky. They approached the water wall together.
While Ilona pointed her wand at the wall, Spanky stuck his arm into it and splashed it around. The shark jumped at him so quickly that he almost didn't have time to pull his arm back. Luckily, Ilona hit it with what was meant to be a Morpheus spell. Somehow it came out "Morphequus." Instead of falling asleep, the shark turned into a horse and leaped, neighing, out of the water weave.
As the sound of galloping hooves receded into the stand of palm trees, Ilona hung her head in humiliation. The djinn, however, laughed so hard that piña colada came out of his nose.
"This makes the aeons spent squeezed int' a dusty bottle worthwhile," he chortled as he wiped the moisture off his face. Then, after licking his fingers, he returned to his drinking.
"We'd best do this fast," said Ilona, observing that the once-towering djinn would now stand shorter than herself. "If 'e keeps drinkin' at this rate, we won' be able ter find him ter wish our way home."
After several more attempts to put the waiting sharks to sleep had the same effect, the island was home to a large herd of wild horses, all noisily whinnying, cropping the tropical grass, and running along the shore while the sun baked the seawater out of their coats. At last, using his arm as bait, Spanky was unable to attract any more predators. So, bracing themselves with a long look into each other's loving eyes, the witch and wizard held their breath and dove through the vertical lagoon.
A moment later they found themselves standing, drenched, on a flat, teardrop-shaped island under a dome of clear water, lit by the sun beyond. Amid the rippling, dancing patterns of light and shadow, they spotted a long, low, barn-like building, half-buried in a dune at the far end of the island.
"It must be here," breathed Ilona.
Spanky seemed preoccupied. His eyes closed, his nostrils flared...
"What is it?"
"Don't you smell them?"
"I smell something," Ilona whispered. "I thought it might be from having the sea all around us."
"No," he said.
If either of them noticed that they had their own accents back, neither remarked on it. Ilona strained her senses toward the building at the far end of the peninsula.
"Listen," said Spanky in a voice so low that Ilona more felt than heard it. "Listen. You must hear them."
For a moment he did not seem to hear her. Then, just as she separated a sound in the background from the muffled hum of the surf--just as she realized that it reminded her of the growling of a wild beast--a lonely voice, almost human, raised itself in a blood-chilling howl. Then another. Then several others... All of them coming from that slow, sand-swept shack.
The howling of wolves. No... The howling of werewolves.
"What is that djinn playing at?" Ilona trembled.
"Wishes are dangerous things," Spanky replied, unsheathing his dagger for the third time that day.
"Put that up," said a voice to their left. Ilona jumped. Spanky whirled, but not before two spells hit him, one blasting his knife out of his hand, the other taking his wand.
"Expelliarmus!" Ilona hissed, disarming the smaller of the two cloaked figures that had crept up on them from behind the dunes.
The larger of the two, however, took her wand. Doing the math, Spanky and Ilona held up their empty hands.
The wizard Ilona had disarmed picked up the weapons that had been dropped. The one who had overcome them wriggled the tip of his wand in Spanky's direction. "Where's the other barrel?"
The double-barreled wizard gently pulled out his second wand, grimacing in chagrin, and handed it over to his captor.
"Very good. Now I know the both of you, and you probably know me..." Harvey put back his hood.
"Did you like my wall? Family specialty, one of the premium items in our catalogue. No? Well, here you are. I regret that I can't say, 'Welcome to my home from home,' but you didn't choose the best time to pay a call."
To punctuate this remark, the werewolves in the barn--the not-very-distant-at-all barn--renewed their chorus of mournful howling.
"A full moon is going to be rising soon," said Harvey. "Your arrival at this of all times--most particularly, the scent of your blood--could have a most interesting effect on our breeding and training programme."
"Ours?" Spanky asked. "Yours and who else's?"
"Surely you recognize the man who took your knife," said Harvey, gesturing toward his smaller, hooded partner. "Why, he's the man who gave it you."
Another hood fell back, and so sharp was Spanky's shock that as he sucked air through his teeth, it made a whistling sound.
"Zophar," Ilona croaked. "Zophar Good!"
"Alive and well," said the twisted little man; and he gave a slight bow.
"How are you alive?" Spanky asked, his voice thick with emotion. Then, with sudden anger, he demanded: "What would possess you to breed an army of werewolves?"
"The usual motives," said Zophar Goode. "Money, revenge, and..."
"Shush!" said Harvey, but a moment later the need to conceal his last secret was moot. A loud, rubbery snap echoed deafeningly within the water-weave dome. As the echoes died, all eyes looked up at the top of the nearby dune, behind which someone had begun to play a recorder. A furry hump emerged above the top of the dune, followed by the rest of a harnessed yak. Leading it were two servants, while a third played the recorder and, walking beside the animal with her hand on its snout, a witch with a sort of motor-veil wrapped around the brim of her hat came into view. She raised a hand to wave at the party on the beach, releasing the end of the veil so that the wind caught it and let it trail behind her like a flag.
"Yoo-hoo!" cried Madam Solfeggia as her party picked its way over the top of the dune. She beamed at everyone as she came closer, most especially Ilona and Spanky.
"If it isn't the very people I was hoping to see before feeding-time," said the wolf-woman as her entourage brought the yak to a halt. "I was starting to worry that my clues were too subtle. But here you are!" Ilona was too nonplussed to resist having her cheeks air-kissed. "Has Harvey been a gracious host and shown you the puppies? They're just wolves at the moment, but wait until dusk and I daresay you'll be impressed! Shall we refresh ourselves?"
Harvey and Zophar Goode exchanged a look of bewilderment that mirrored the way Spanky and Ilona were feeling.
"I think there's been a misunderstanding," said Ilona. "We're not here about the yak killing. We've come to ask Harvey to turn over an heirloom of my family which he has been, er, minding for me..."
"Don't be silly," said Madam Solfeggia, preening her robes while the recorder-player tootled on. "We both know Harvey isn't to be trusted with such an object. There are simply too many of him. No, dear, I've been holding the ring for you. But first, I have a teensy favor to ask of you. I would ordinarily be ashamed of the imposition, but since you can hardly resist my written request, I think the two of you could be of great service to me."
"To do what?" Spanky growled. "To set yourself up as the next dark lord?"
"Oh, no!" Madam Solfeggia laughed musically. She took Ilona's hand and handed it to Harvey, then put her hand on Spanky's elbow. "Nothing remotely like that. I only wish to lift the stigma that my kind must live under." She kept talking as she, Harvey, and the ever-present recorder-player led the Spankisons back over the dune from which she had come, while Zophar Goode and the other two servants led the yak away toward the barn. "The ostracism, the shunning. The persecution, even to the point of hunting and killing. It all has to be stopped. The time has long since come, but now at last the means has come as well."
"And how do you propose to do that?" said Spanky, as a roof of a smaller building--a house, perhaps--came into view behind the next dune but one. "I mean, if it were as simple as writing a letter, sealed with the Ring of Count Matthias, telling everyone who reads the Daily Prophet to accept werewolves as equal members of society..."
"I would already have done it?" Madam Solfeggia agreed. "But surely you see that it can't be that simple. I mean to say, what would happen after I returned the Ring to you? You would have it in your power to reverse everything I had accomplished. No, our solution must be more permanent. I only took the ring because I needed you, the two most trusted agents in the Rogue Magic Bureau."
Their musically-enhanced walk came to an end below the front porch of a modestly-proportioned but strongly-built house. "Do have a seat," Madam Solfeggia said, gesturing toward a row of driftwood chairs on the porch. "Dinty will be here presently with refreshments."
"I won't make myself comfortable," said Spanky, pulling his arm out of the wolf-lady's grip, "until you tell me how you mean to use me."
"Use you?" The lady's eyes softened. "I should think you would assist me willingly. Surely you can sense the injustice of the way my people are treated!"
"I simply can't see what all this"--Spanky gestured toward the barn, now hidden behind a dune, but easy enough to locate by the renewed howling that must have been triggered by the yak's arrival--"what all this is going to accomplish, in terms of gaining the sympathy of the wizarding world."
"The answer is simple, Mr. Spankison: We propose to have more people bitten. Many, many more."
"Merlin's beard," Spanky gasped. Ilona squeezed his hand, looking sick.
Madam Solfeggia, meanwhile, kept talking, gazing out upon the beach below and the base of the water-weave dome that enclosed it, oblivious to their horror. "Soon nearly every magical family will understand the trial that all too few of us now bear. People hate what they fear, and they fear what they do not understand. So doesn't it stand to reason that if they come to understand--really understand..."
+++ A NOTE FROM ROBBIE +++
Thanks for your patience, as this chapter took a record 3 months to pull together. My prognostication, back in September, that it was going to come out in record time, goes to show that I probably have Trelawney blood! I am fairly confident that the time-management crisis that curtailed my creative writing for a few months is now behind me (more or less), so I hope you can expect a few more Quills in 2011!
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #179 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Which Magic Quill hero holds the ultimate key to putting the pieces of Harvey back together? A) Spanky with his djinn. B) Joe Albuquerque with his hag. C) Sadie with her waveform collapser. D) Endora with the potion described below. E) Your write-in candidate--the more radical the suggestion, the better!
CONTEST: Our Endora hasn't had much to do for a while. What exciting potion has she been working on? Feel free not only to name the potion, but to describe how it's made, what it's supposed to do, and what happens if it isn't made quite right. The winning entry will be the most entertaining idea.
Showing posts with label Spanky. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spanky. Show all posts
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Saturday, May 22, 2010
173. Dance of the Fauns
Contest winner: kaleidoscopicepic
The arrival of a tall stranger wrapped in a cloak, his face hidden in the shadow of a hood, had the usual result on the patrons of Talia's inn. Most days, the arrival of any stranger at all was enough to stop conversation.
Talia's inn shared a lonely intersection of two forest roads with three other businesses: an apothecary who moonlighted as a no-questions-asked surgeon for magical beasts, a wandwright who doubled as a trader in charmed amulets and talismans against the dark, and a toothless old biddy who performed divination, midwifery, and all the duties expected of the village curmudgeon. No one had any business in these woods except the wizarding clans who lived there and, now and then, the type of visitor best left alone. And though such visitors were rare, the nature of the village meant they were always looking for something rare and powerful.
Long experience had taught Talia's patrons to assume, when they saw a hooded and cloaked stranger, that he was someone not to be crossed, someone not to be trusted, someone up to no good.
"Looking for something special?" Talia asked the stranger when he approached the bar. In her usual way, she looked him over while appearing to slump lazily against the dresser behind the bar, her eyelashes drooping sleepily. She wore a spotless linen towel draped over her left wrist, an impossibly clean apron tied around her plump waist, and a bonnet to hold her ample hair out of the ale. Nevertheless, a keen eye could not have missed the wand tucked up her sleeve, nor the hand that was casually ready to draw it.
The stranger saw all this in an instant, but he understood nothing Talia had said. She asked him another question, equally unintelligible. This was not his language. He said the only thing he knew would be understood here: "Spiro."
Talia stiffened. She sniffed. The voice was very foreign, very deep and dangerous. From the sound of it she gathered a sense of the size and strength of the figure only vaguely revealed by the stranger's cloak. Keeping her hooded eyes fixed on her visitor, Talia poured two glasses of twelve-star Metaxa, drained one in a single draught, and upended the empty glass on the clean countertop. A golden stain began to spread across the wood. The stranger threw back his drink and upended it as well. They looked at each other, he from beneath his hood, she from behind her eyelashes, with nothing to say.
After a minute of this silent, mutual study, a third character joined their tableau. He was a middle-aged wizard with a short, dry, wiry build, dressed for the forest in a short, supple jacket, sturdy boots, snug trousers, and a waistcoat with numerous pockets. Apart from his loose white shirt, open at the neck, the wizard's clothes all seemed to be woven from homespun wool and dyed in shades of brown. Most important for identification purposes was the letter clutched in his hand, a letter sealed with the crest of Count Matthias.
"Spiro, I presume," growled the huge, hooded stranger.
Spiro slapped the letter down on the bar and moved the upended Metaxa glasses onto it.
"What you ask I will do," said Spiro, and even a foreigner could hear him silently adding, "although it is madness."
"Neither of us has a choice," said the hooded stranger. "But I believe we are equal to the dangers of this forest at night." Somehow a knife found itself in the stranger's hands -- a very long, very cruel-looking silver blade, almost a dagger in fact. To Spiro's credit, his hand did not shake as he took a glass offered by Talia and raised it to his lips. When it was empty, he upended it on the counter as well.
The stranger tapped the three glasses with the tip of his knife. Coins materialized in them. Without another word, he turned and walked out of the inn, followed by his wiry new guide.
During the next several hours, the two wizards spoke aloud less than a dozen times. They moved through the forest with a silent, mutual understanding. The terrain was uneven, often sloping steeply and veined with tree roots, and until the moon rose above the treetops they had only a faint gleam of wandlight to guide their steps.
They were near their destination - perhaps half a mile - when Spiro stopped short and put his arm out to halt his companion. Not far ahead, and slightly downhill from where they stood, lay a round clearing whose grasses gleamed like silver in the light of the full moon.
The stranger observed that Spiro was scarcely breathing. He stared at the clearing ahead in rapt stillness, waiting... but for what?
A moment later, the answer became clear. Suddenly, strange figures began to march into the clearing, forming lines. At first they looked like children - boys wearing waistcoats that seemed to be woven out of bark, girls draped in little more than moss-covered vines. There was something especially strange about their legs, clad in furry trousers and moving in a manner that, for some reason the stranger could not put his finger on, struck him as unnatural. And something about the headware worn by the boys tugged at the back of his mind. Then the knut dropped.
"Satyrs?" he breathed into Spiro's ear.
"You see human feet?" Spiro whispered back, his words understood more by the shape of his mouth than by any sound the stranger could hear.
He looked again. No, there were hooves at the ends of the children's furry legs.
"Fauns," Spiro mouthed, then repeated it to make sure he was understood.
The stranger wanted to ask more questions, but there was no time. Something was about to begin. The childlike fauns, male and female, stood in a mixed formation that now tightly filled the clearing -- except for a small space in the very center. Into this space stepped three fauns, two male and one female. One of the males struck a chord on a sort of lyre strung on an enormous, curling horn. The other male began to play a sprightly tune on a bone flute - a tune that struck the stranger as absurdly familiar. And finally, the female began shaking and tapping a tambourine and singing at the same time. As the song began, so did the dance.
Under other circumstances, the stranger would have been breathless with awe to witness the midnight dance of the fauns, in this ancient forest, on the night of a full moon... But instead, he had to stuff half of his hand into his mouth to stifle his laughter.
The fauns were doing the hokey-pokey.
There was no mistaking the dance moves, nor the meaning of the instructions sung by the faun girl with the tambourine. Even with the folk-inflections of the flute skirling around the main melody, the stranger could not fail to recognize it. And with all the seriousness of a magical race celebrating its most mystical rite, the other young fauns danced the hokey-pokey for all they were worth. They put their right hoof in, they took their right hoof out, they shook it all about...
Suddenly, the stranger's urge to laugh aloud merged into a powerful feeling of joy that wiped out all consciousness.
After what seemed like only a few minutes but, by the angle of the moon, must have been several hours, the stranger realized that the dance was over, the fauns had left, and he and Spiro had remained where they were, gazing into the clearing with wonder.
"Wow," said the stranger, pulling back his hood and looking up into the sky, where the disc of the moon had already begun to dip into the treetops again, and where the stars twinkled as though enjoying a hokey-pokey dance of their own. "To think," said Spanky Spankison, his face filled with happiness and moonlight, "to think that that's what it's all about..."
"We must not cross this clearing," said Spiro, his voice trembling slightly.
"No," said Spanky.
Together, they skirted the clearing - though it meant wading across a frigid stream too wide to leap across, making a detour around a dense thicket, and climbing the cliffs on both sides of a massive rock. Finally, they came to the ravine Spanky sought. At the far end of the ravine, in a cave behind a waterfall, something huge and strong and dangerous was reputed to live, something with a loud voice that could be heard roaring and howling on many a moonlit night, a giant being with a vast hunger and even greater thirst. Local legends disagreed whether it was a giant, a troll, or an ogre that dwelt in the cave. The one point on which the locals agreed was that the dweller in the cave behind the waterfall must be avoided at any cost.
Tonight, something moved in the cave behind the waterfall. It moaned. It sobbed. It screamed a hideous scream that made the flesh on Spiro's back creep and crawl.
"I go no further," said Spiro.
"Merlin's beard," Spanky gasped, recognizing something in the sound coming out of the waterfall cave.
"You did not hire me to make the introductions," Spiro said defensively. "Only to show you where to find the ogre. You need not seem so surprised. I do not resist what your letter told me to do."
"No, no," said Spanky. "Listen! The creature is singing!"
Spiro gave him a queer look, and began backing away into the trees.
"I know this song," Spanky explained, grinning at his guide. He began lightly singing along with the tuneless caterwauling of the cave giant: "Ché se non galleggiava per me quest'epa tronfia, certo affogavo. Brutta morte. L'acqua mi gonfia...."
"I do not know this song," said Spiro, though he was intrigued enough to cease backpedaling.
"Your howling troll behind the waterfall?" Spanky gestured toward the source of the horrible noise. "He knows Italian opera! He sings it badly, to be sure... but if that's a savage monster, I'm the Man in the Moon."
"Oh, him," sniffed Spiro with a dismissive wave. "I know him well. Visits Talia's tavern once a month. But this one...! Savage brute or no, he is a dangerous customer. The floor of his ravine is littered with bones. Mauled goats and deer are often found in the country around here. People, entire families have disappeared, their farms vanished without a trace. And many barrels of mead, firewhisky, and Metaxa bound for Talia's have been snatched in these woods. Sometimes the splintered staves are found near this place..."
"Our operatic friend likes his drink, does he?" Spanky grinned even wider, and twirled his silver blade. "Let's go back to Talia's, then. We'll come back tomorrow night a cask or two."
"I will have no part in this craziness," Spiro protested. "I have fulfilled my duty."
Spanky turned toward Spiro with an anguished look on his face. He seemed to beg forgiveness with his eyes even while his mouth formed the words: "Have you?"
Something inside Spiro told him he could not refuse to join yet another night of secrecy and danger. This Englishman with his sealed letter was perhaps even more dangerous than the creature in that cave.
"No," Spiro admitted in a strangled voice. "I appear to be bound to help you."
"Good," said Spanky, the ruthlessness in his voice belied by the sorrow in his eyes. "Let's get some rest. Our next night's work will be much longer than this."
Spiro shuddered as they turned away from the ogre's cave.
"If it makes you feel better," said Spanky, pulling up his hood, "the creature in the cave is neither a giant nor a troll nor an ogre."
Spiro chewed on this as they climbed over the rock, skirted the thicket, and waded the stream. As they paused for breath near the fauns' clearing, he finally asked: "What is the beast, then?"
"Not a beast, so much," Spanky replied cryptically. "It knows opera, after all. Shakespeare, even! And once it's had a drink or two, it won't seem very threatening...."
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #175 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Which are you most interested in finding out? (A) What costume Joe Albuquerque wears next. (B) Which of the contents of his Survival Satchell Merlin uses next. (C) What happens when Sadie lobs the Waveform Collapser at Harvey. (D) What Allie O'Modo, Chat Noir, or Minimilian gets up to (take your pick).
CONTEST: Briefly describe a discrepancy, or possible mistake, in the Harry Potter books and a possible solution to this problem.
The arrival of a tall stranger wrapped in a cloak, his face hidden in the shadow of a hood, had the usual result on the patrons of Talia's inn. Most days, the arrival of any stranger at all was enough to stop conversation.
Talia's inn shared a lonely intersection of two forest roads with three other businesses: an apothecary who moonlighted as a no-questions-asked surgeon for magical beasts, a wandwright who doubled as a trader in charmed amulets and talismans against the dark, and a toothless old biddy who performed divination, midwifery, and all the duties expected of the village curmudgeon. No one had any business in these woods except the wizarding clans who lived there and, now and then, the type of visitor best left alone. And though such visitors were rare, the nature of the village meant they were always looking for something rare and powerful.
Long experience had taught Talia's patrons to assume, when they saw a hooded and cloaked stranger, that he was someone not to be crossed, someone not to be trusted, someone up to no good.
"Looking for something special?" Talia asked the stranger when he approached the bar. In her usual way, she looked him over while appearing to slump lazily against the dresser behind the bar, her eyelashes drooping sleepily. She wore a spotless linen towel draped over her left wrist, an impossibly clean apron tied around her plump waist, and a bonnet to hold her ample hair out of the ale. Nevertheless, a keen eye could not have missed the wand tucked up her sleeve, nor the hand that was casually ready to draw it.
The stranger saw all this in an instant, but he understood nothing Talia had said. She asked him another question, equally unintelligible. This was not his language. He said the only thing he knew would be understood here: "Spiro."
Talia stiffened. She sniffed. The voice was very foreign, very deep and dangerous. From the sound of it she gathered a sense of the size and strength of the figure only vaguely revealed by the stranger's cloak. Keeping her hooded eyes fixed on her visitor, Talia poured two glasses of twelve-star Metaxa, drained one in a single draught, and upended the empty glass on the clean countertop. A golden stain began to spread across the wood. The stranger threw back his drink and upended it as well. They looked at each other, he from beneath his hood, she from behind her eyelashes, with nothing to say.
After a minute of this silent, mutual study, a third character joined their tableau. He was a middle-aged wizard with a short, dry, wiry build, dressed for the forest in a short, supple jacket, sturdy boots, snug trousers, and a waistcoat with numerous pockets. Apart from his loose white shirt, open at the neck, the wizard's clothes all seemed to be woven from homespun wool and dyed in shades of brown. Most important for identification purposes was the letter clutched in his hand, a letter sealed with the crest of Count Matthias.
"Spiro, I presume," growled the huge, hooded stranger.
Spiro slapped the letter down on the bar and moved the upended Metaxa glasses onto it.
"What you ask I will do," said Spiro, and even a foreigner could hear him silently adding, "although it is madness."
"Neither of us has a choice," said the hooded stranger. "But I believe we are equal to the dangers of this forest at night." Somehow a knife found itself in the stranger's hands -- a very long, very cruel-looking silver blade, almost a dagger in fact. To Spiro's credit, his hand did not shake as he took a glass offered by Talia and raised it to his lips. When it was empty, he upended it on the counter as well.
The stranger tapped the three glasses with the tip of his knife. Coins materialized in them. Without another word, he turned and walked out of the inn, followed by his wiry new guide.
During the next several hours, the two wizards spoke aloud less than a dozen times. They moved through the forest with a silent, mutual understanding. The terrain was uneven, often sloping steeply and veined with tree roots, and until the moon rose above the treetops they had only a faint gleam of wandlight to guide their steps.
They were near their destination - perhaps half a mile - when Spiro stopped short and put his arm out to halt his companion. Not far ahead, and slightly downhill from where they stood, lay a round clearing whose grasses gleamed like silver in the light of the full moon.
The stranger observed that Spiro was scarcely breathing. He stared at the clearing ahead in rapt stillness, waiting... but for what?
A moment later, the answer became clear. Suddenly, strange figures began to march into the clearing, forming lines. At first they looked like children - boys wearing waistcoats that seemed to be woven out of bark, girls draped in little more than moss-covered vines. There was something especially strange about their legs, clad in furry trousers and moving in a manner that, for some reason the stranger could not put his finger on, struck him as unnatural. And something about the headware worn by the boys tugged at the back of his mind. Then the knut dropped.
"Satyrs?" he breathed into Spiro's ear.
"You see human feet?" Spiro whispered back, his words understood more by the shape of his mouth than by any sound the stranger could hear.
He looked again. No, there were hooves at the ends of the children's furry legs.
"Fauns," Spiro mouthed, then repeated it to make sure he was understood.
The stranger wanted to ask more questions, but there was no time. Something was about to begin. The childlike fauns, male and female, stood in a mixed formation that now tightly filled the clearing -- except for a small space in the very center. Into this space stepped three fauns, two male and one female. One of the males struck a chord on a sort of lyre strung on an enormous, curling horn. The other male began to play a sprightly tune on a bone flute - a tune that struck the stranger as absurdly familiar. And finally, the female began shaking and tapping a tambourine and singing at the same time. As the song began, so did the dance.
Under other circumstances, the stranger would have been breathless with awe to witness the midnight dance of the fauns, in this ancient forest, on the night of a full moon... But instead, he had to stuff half of his hand into his mouth to stifle his laughter.
The fauns were doing the hokey-pokey.
There was no mistaking the dance moves, nor the meaning of the instructions sung by the faun girl with the tambourine. Even with the folk-inflections of the flute skirling around the main melody, the stranger could not fail to recognize it. And with all the seriousness of a magical race celebrating its most mystical rite, the other young fauns danced the hokey-pokey for all they were worth. They put their right hoof in, they took their right hoof out, they shook it all about...
Suddenly, the stranger's urge to laugh aloud merged into a powerful feeling of joy that wiped out all consciousness.
After what seemed like only a few minutes but, by the angle of the moon, must have been several hours, the stranger realized that the dance was over, the fauns had left, and he and Spiro had remained where they were, gazing into the clearing with wonder.
"Wow," said the stranger, pulling back his hood and looking up into the sky, where the disc of the moon had already begun to dip into the treetops again, and where the stars twinkled as though enjoying a hokey-pokey dance of their own. "To think," said Spanky Spankison, his face filled with happiness and moonlight, "to think that that's what it's all about..."
"We must not cross this clearing," said Spiro, his voice trembling slightly.
"No," said Spanky.
Together, they skirted the clearing - though it meant wading across a frigid stream too wide to leap across, making a detour around a dense thicket, and climbing the cliffs on both sides of a massive rock. Finally, they came to the ravine Spanky sought. At the far end of the ravine, in a cave behind a waterfall, something huge and strong and dangerous was reputed to live, something with a loud voice that could be heard roaring and howling on many a moonlit night, a giant being with a vast hunger and even greater thirst. Local legends disagreed whether it was a giant, a troll, or an ogre that dwelt in the cave. The one point on which the locals agreed was that the dweller in the cave behind the waterfall must be avoided at any cost.
Tonight, something moved in the cave behind the waterfall. It moaned. It sobbed. It screamed a hideous scream that made the flesh on Spiro's back creep and crawl.
"I go no further," said Spiro.
"Merlin's beard," Spanky gasped, recognizing something in the sound coming out of the waterfall cave.
"You did not hire me to make the introductions," Spiro said defensively. "Only to show you where to find the ogre. You need not seem so surprised. I do not resist what your letter told me to do."
"No, no," said Spanky. "Listen! The creature is singing!"
Spiro gave him a queer look, and began backing away into the trees.
"I know this song," Spanky explained, grinning at his guide. He began lightly singing along with the tuneless caterwauling of the cave giant: "Ché se non galleggiava per me quest'epa tronfia, certo affogavo. Brutta morte. L'acqua mi gonfia...."
"I do not know this song," said Spiro, though he was intrigued enough to cease backpedaling.
"Your howling troll behind the waterfall?" Spanky gestured toward the source of the horrible noise. "He knows Italian opera! He sings it badly, to be sure... but if that's a savage monster, I'm the Man in the Moon."
"Oh, him," sniffed Spiro with a dismissive wave. "I know him well. Visits Talia's tavern once a month. But this one...! Savage brute or no, he is a dangerous customer. The floor of his ravine is littered with bones. Mauled goats and deer are often found in the country around here. People, entire families have disappeared, their farms vanished without a trace. And many barrels of mead, firewhisky, and Metaxa bound for Talia's have been snatched in these woods. Sometimes the splintered staves are found near this place..."
"Our operatic friend likes his drink, does he?" Spanky grinned even wider, and twirled his silver blade. "Let's go back to Talia's, then. We'll come back tomorrow night a cask or two."
"I will have no part in this craziness," Spiro protested. "I have fulfilled my duty."
Spanky turned toward Spiro with an anguished look on his face. He seemed to beg forgiveness with his eyes even while his mouth formed the words: "Have you?"
Something inside Spiro told him he could not refuse to join yet another night of secrecy and danger. This Englishman with his sealed letter was perhaps even more dangerous than the creature in that cave.
"No," Spiro admitted in a strangled voice. "I appear to be bound to help you."
"Good," said Spanky, the ruthlessness in his voice belied by the sorrow in his eyes. "Let's get some rest. Our next night's work will be much longer than this."
Spiro shuddered as they turned away from the ogre's cave.
"If it makes you feel better," said Spanky, pulling up his hood, "the creature in the cave is neither a giant nor a troll nor an ogre."
Spiro chewed on this as they climbed over the rock, skirted the thicket, and waded the stream. As they paused for breath near the fauns' clearing, he finally asked: "What is the beast, then?"
"Not a beast, so much," Spanky replied cryptically. "It knows opera, after all. Shakespeare, even! And once it's had a drink or two, it won't seem very threatening...."
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #175 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Which are you most interested in finding out? (A) What costume Joe Albuquerque wears next. (B) Which of the contents of his Survival Satchell Merlin uses next. (C) What happens when Sadie lobs the Waveform Collapser at Harvey. (D) What Allie O'Modo, Chat Noir, or Minimilian gets up to (take your pick).
CONTEST: Briefly describe a discrepancy, or possible mistake, in the Harry Potter books and a possible solution to this problem.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
166. The Cart-o-Matic
Contest winner: greyniffler
Runners-up: Joe & TWZRD
Inside one of the crude huts in the island compound was a large, comfortably decorated room. It had wainscoted walls, a flagstoned hearth, and windows filled with diamond-shaped panes that seemed to admit more light than the conditions warranted. Still more light was provided by flames in hurricane lamps mounted on the walls, lamps that gave off a warm glow even though their crystal oil reservoirs were empty. Bookcases, chairs, a rolltop desk, and a teatable were all cluttered with rolls of parchment and dirty cups.
Harvey sighed when he saw it. He shook his three heads, and one of them said: "This place needs a house-elf's touch."
A noise like a pistol-shot rang off the walls and windows. Several of Harvey's prisoners flinched. But it was, after all, only Dinty the house-elf, appearing with a blue-and-white striped handkerchief tied somewhat in the manner of a sumo wrestler's mawashi. He made three bows, one to each of his master.
"What's this you're wearing?" Harvey 2 demanded. "You're not thrashing that elf from flat 3-E again?"
"Only keeping in condition, sir," piped the elf. "Shall I tidy up, sir?"
"Yes, please, Dinty." Harvey strolled to three of the windows and looked out of them pensively. All three of him raised the same eyebrow in an identical manner. "Interesting," he said in unison. Then he looked around at each other and asked, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
"Hippogriff foals frolicking in the grassy downs," Harvey 1 volunteered.
"A family of faeries checking out a nest box in the woods," said Harvey 3.
"This window overlooks a scrubby rock in the middle of the sea," Harvey 2 contended.
"Scenery spells," said Harvey 1 and 3.
"No doubt," agreed Harvey 2.
During this exchange, Dinty had turned into a veritable whirlwind of grabbing hands, wiping rags, and swishing feather-dusters. Minimilian winced at the sound of breaking crockery. By the time Harvey agreed among himself that the window spells were well done, all that remained of the room's clutter was a sudden, blazing fire on the hearth.
"I say," Minimilian complained. "Those papers were extremely..."
"Yes, yes," said Harvey 3. "I'm sure they were. But look! Chairs for everybody! Do have a seat, won't you? Dinty will have tea up in a jiffy."
Meanwhile, Harvey 2 spread a piece of parchment over the desk, weighting its corners with an inkwell, the iron head of a golf club, a a dragon's fang, and a bottle clearly labeled "Preparation W," the sight of which made Minimilian turn red and look as though he wanted to sink into the ground. Then Harvey 1 reached under his cloak and pulled out a small contraption, somewhat like a saucepan on wheels, covered with a glass lid. As Harvey's guests, or prisoners, settled in chairs around the desk, he placed it on the parchment. They all leaned toward it, gazing through the transparent top at the brass frame, silvery cogs and wheels, and delicate springs and coils that worked inside it. At the center was an egg-shaped, crystal reservoir full of liquid that changed constantly from one bright color to another.
"Coo," said Sadie. "I had one of those when I was a chicken."
"You?" Harvey 3 asked, distracted from his purpose for the first moment so far.
"You know," Sadie insisted. "A cub? A pup? A kid?"
Harvey 3 shook his head. "I mean, I find it hard to believe you..."
"Well, it didn't work," said Sadie. "Not like the advertising jingle. Mum had to take it back to the toy shop."
All three of Harvey stared at her. "Toy shop?" Breathed Harvey 2, gobsmacked.
"Well, you see," said Sadie, like one talking to an idiot, "it was supposed to zip when it moved, pop when it stopped, and whirr when it was standing still. But our one popped when it moved, whirred when it stopped, and zipped when it stood still. So the ditty was complete b-"
"Look here," said Harvey 1. "This isn't a toy. There have been no commercial ditties about it. While it should be celebrated in song and legend..."
"It has been," Harvey 2 argued.
"No," said Harvey 3, "but it will be."
"Don't let's start this again," cried Harvey 1, waving both hands above his head. "The important thing is..."
"It's a Cart-o-Matic," said Sir Lionel Niblet.
Harvey 1 glared at Sir Lionel in irritation. "That's hardly the way one should talk about a device some say was invented by Prester John, others by Daedalus himself..."
"It was patented in 1936," Sir Lionel went on ruthlessly, "by a wizard named Mark Grey from Piscataway, New Jersey..."
"You'll find," said Harvey 2, "that Grey only registered the self-refilling ink reservoir..."
"...based on an earlier device invented by Alvin Snook-Peebles of Drizzling Duffham, Beds, for creating engravings for the wizarding press."
All three of Harvey looked beaten, deflated. "Have it your way, then," said Harvey 3. "But it most certanly does not pop when it stops."
"What does it do?" Ilona asked, directing her question at the room in general.
All six of Harvey's eyes rested coldly on Sir Lionel, so he answered: "It draws very beautiful and detailed maps, with copperplate writing, decorative borders, and watercolor shading. The longer you let it run, the finer the detail - though it tends to overlook things that it considers insignificant, such as expressways and rail depots, and embellishes the landscape with such features as 'Here there be Crumple-Horned Snorkacks' and 'Wreck of the Pirate Ship Irving.'"
"Does it really?" Sadie said eagerly. "Could you get it to draw that one?"
"I didn't bring this device for your amusement," Harvey 1 said sourly. "I am only showing it to you so that you understand why I need the ring of Count Matthias. I think it may solve a little problem. You see, there are some places that cannot be plotted on a map. Even such a magical device as the Cart-o-Matic cannot break through their enchantment. But if one were to instruct the Cart-o-Matic, under the seal of Count Matthias..."
"I see," said Spanky. "There's some place you want to find, someone or something whose location is only known to a few..."
"Or perhaps no one," Sir Lionel offered. "No one still living, that is."
"Like a secret protected by a Fidelius Charm," Endora added.
"Something you want to steal," Sadie suggested.
"Someone you want to kill," said Allie O'Modo.
"Perhaps it is a lost art or buried knowledge that he seeks," said Sir Lionel, always willing to see people in a better light than most.
"A magical object," suggested Minimilian.
"A weapon," Spanky speculated.
"A document of some kind," said Sir Lionel.
"This had better not be about some bric-a-brac to decorate your flat," Ilona muttered.
Harvey waited for the chatter to stop, all three of him looking down at his hands folded in his lap. Into the pause that followed Ilona's remark, Dinty squeaked, "Tea!"
No one objected to taking refreshments, even under such strained circumstances. The fact that even such savage enemies could share a quiet fellowship over the munching of cakes and the sipping of tea, lent a reassuring sense of civilization and civility. Spanky felt himself beginning to relax - which, owing to the habits of a lifetime, immediately put him on edge.
"Well, you have the ring," he said, setting his cup down. "What do you want with us, then?"
"I need eyes," said Harvey 1.
"Ears," said Harvey 2.
"Hands and feet," said Harvey 3.
"In plain language," Harvey 1 said, "I need someone to follow where this map will lead."
"Someone who isn't - how shall I put this? - enmeshed in a temporal paradox," Harvey 3 added.
"Mmm," said Harvey 2. "Enmeshed. I like it."
"I would have said embarrassed," said Harvey 1.
"That would have been good too," said Harvey 2.
"Balked," suggested Harvey 3.
"Constrained," Harvey 1 countered.
"Encumbered," said Harvey 3.
"Hampered," said Harvey 1.
"Crippled?" Harvey 2 tried.
Harveys 1 and 3 gave Harvey 2 a pitying look.
"I applaud your wide-ranging vocabulary," Minimilian said testily, "but could you please come to the point?"
"If I go where I'm hoping this map will lead us," said Harvey 1, "there is no telling what might happen. I might cause the (cough) prize to move backward in time..."
"...and so become the cause of its being lost, rather than being found," Harvey 3 clarified.
"Or I might uncreate it," said Harvey 1.
"Or cause it to multiply," suggested Sir Lionel. "Which, for all we know, could be as great a disaster..."
He fell silent as he noticed the blank look the Harveys were giving him.
"You know," said Sir Lionel, grinning. "Like yourselves."
Harvey 1, 2, and 3, each shook his head, perplexed.
"You're getting nowhere with that one," Endora told Sir Lionel out of the corner of her mouth.
Harvey put down his teacups in perfect, threefold synchronicity, stretched his arms, clapped his hands, rubbed them together, and said (in Harvey 3's voice), "Now then, let's give this a try. Quill and ink, Dinty. Dear Mr. Cart-o-Matic... Or should that be Monsieur?"
"Why not Madam?" Endora suggested pugnaciously.
"How about To whom it may concern?" Allie O'Modo said over a stifled yawn.
"Never mind," said Harvey 3, crossing out the Mr. "Dear Cart-o-Matic. Feel free to disregard any and all magical barriers in drawing a map showing the location and route to the..."
Whatever he said next was drowned out by a deafening stroke of thunder. The entire hut shook with it, and a sudden heavy fall of rain roared upon the corrugated steel roof.
"Dash it all," Harvey 1 swore. "This is going to be harder than I thought."
Endora perked up. "That's just like what happened when..."
Ilona elbowed Endora hard in the ribs.
"...wh-when it wouldn't stop raining in the great hall at Hogwarts," Endora covered feebly.
"It's not necessary to dissemble," said Harvey 2. "I was there when Spanky told that story, wasn't I? When that djinn arranged for him, and only him, to know where Ilona was, and every time he mentioned her, there was a deafening noise."
"And look," said Harvey 1. "The ink blotted all over the paragraph."
"Even if we use a roundabout way of describing the prize," said Harvey 2, "the map will most likely come out blotted just as badly as that letter."
"It's no use," Harvey 3 said, throwing down his quill. "We're going to have to find a djinn before we can do anything else."
"We nothing," said Allie O'Modo. "If you have no further use for us, at this time, may we please have our wands back? We were just about to slaughter each other, and I would like to get on with it."
"That's not quite true," Endora said hotly. "You'd already been knocked into a cocked hat. We were just about to..."
"The point," Allie interrupted, "is that he can't keep us all locked up until he finds a djinn to lift the taboo on whatever he is trying to find."
"He doesn't have to," said Ilona, talking through clenched jaws. "With that ring, he holds the free will of every one of us in his hand. He can bring us back here, or whever he wants us to go, simply by dashing off a note and sending it under seal."
"I reckon I'll be moving houses, then," retorted Allie O'Modo. "And leaving no forwarding address."
"Oh, no," said Harvey 1, suddenly brightening. "You'll be fetching me a djinn. And with my little friend here" - he patted the Cart-o-Matic - "we will soon have some ideas of where to start looking."
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #168 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: What area of magic do you think was most neglected in Harry Potter's education?
CONTEST: If there was ever a wizard's revolution, and the months of the year were renamed along magical lines, what would they be called?
Runners-up: Joe & TWZRD
Inside one of the crude huts in the island compound was a large, comfortably decorated room. It had wainscoted walls, a flagstoned hearth, and windows filled with diamond-shaped panes that seemed to admit more light than the conditions warranted. Still more light was provided by flames in hurricane lamps mounted on the walls, lamps that gave off a warm glow even though their crystal oil reservoirs were empty. Bookcases, chairs, a rolltop desk, and a teatable were all cluttered with rolls of parchment and dirty cups.
Harvey sighed when he saw it. He shook his three heads, and one of them said: "This place needs a house-elf's touch."
A noise like a pistol-shot rang off the walls and windows. Several of Harvey's prisoners flinched. But it was, after all, only Dinty the house-elf, appearing with a blue-and-white striped handkerchief tied somewhat in the manner of a sumo wrestler's mawashi. He made three bows, one to each of his master.
"What's this you're wearing?" Harvey 2 demanded. "You're not thrashing that elf from flat 3-E again?"
"Only keeping in condition, sir," piped the elf. "Shall I tidy up, sir?"
"Yes, please, Dinty." Harvey strolled to three of the windows and looked out of them pensively. All three of him raised the same eyebrow in an identical manner. "Interesting," he said in unison. Then he looked around at each other and asked, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
"Hippogriff foals frolicking in the grassy downs," Harvey 1 volunteered.
"A family of faeries checking out a nest box in the woods," said Harvey 3.
"This window overlooks a scrubby rock in the middle of the sea," Harvey 2 contended.
"Scenery spells," said Harvey 1 and 3.
"No doubt," agreed Harvey 2.
During this exchange, Dinty had turned into a veritable whirlwind of grabbing hands, wiping rags, and swishing feather-dusters. Minimilian winced at the sound of breaking crockery. By the time Harvey agreed among himself that the window spells were well done, all that remained of the room's clutter was a sudden, blazing fire on the hearth.
"I say," Minimilian complained. "Those papers were extremely..."
"Yes, yes," said Harvey 3. "I'm sure they were. But look! Chairs for everybody! Do have a seat, won't you? Dinty will have tea up in a jiffy."
Meanwhile, Harvey 2 spread a piece of parchment over the desk, weighting its corners with an inkwell, the iron head of a golf club, a a dragon's fang, and a bottle clearly labeled "Preparation W," the sight of which made Minimilian turn red and look as though he wanted to sink into the ground. Then Harvey 1 reached under his cloak and pulled out a small contraption, somewhat like a saucepan on wheels, covered with a glass lid. As Harvey's guests, or prisoners, settled in chairs around the desk, he placed it on the parchment. They all leaned toward it, gazing through the transparent top at the brass frame, silvery cogs and wheels, and delicate springs and coils that worked inside it. At the center was an egg-shaped, crystal reservoir full of liquid that changed constantly from one bright color to another.
"Coo," said Sadie. "I had one of those when I was a chicken."
"You?" Harvey 3 asked, distracted from his purpose for the first moment so far.
"You know," Sadie insisted. "A cub? A pup? A kid?"
Harvey 3 shook his head. "I mean, I find it hard to believe you..."
"Well, it didn't work," said Sadie. "Not like the advertising jingle. Mum had to take it back to the toy shop."
All three of Harvey stared at her. "Toy shop?" Breathed Harvey 2, gobsmacked.
"Well, you see," said Sadie, like one talking to an idiot, "it was supposed to zip when it moved, pop when it stopped, and whirr when it was standing still. But our one popped when it moved, whirred when it stopped, and zipped when it stood still. So the ditty was complete b-"
"Look here," said Harvey 1. "This isn't a toy. There have been no commercial ditties about it. While it should be celebrated in song and legend..."
"It has been," Harvey 2 argued.
"No," said Harvey 3, "but it will be."
"Don't let's start this again," cried Harvey 1, waving both hands above his head. "The important thing is..."
"It's a Cart-o-Matic," said Sir Lionel Niblet.
Harvey 1 glared at Sir Lionel in irritation. "That's hardly the way one should talk about a device some say was invented by Prester John, others by Daedalus himself..."
"It was patented in 1936," Sir Lionel went on ruthlessly, "by a wizard named Mark Grey from Piscataway, New Jersey..."
"You'll find," said Harvey 2, "that Grey only registered the self-refilling ink reservoir..."
"...based on an earlier device invented by Alvin Snook-Peebles of Drizzling Duffham, Beds, for creating engravings for the wizarding press."
All three of Harvey looked beaten, deflated. "Have it your way, then," said Harvey 3. "But it most certanly does not pop when it stops."
"What does it do?" Ilona asked, directing her question at the room in general.
All six of Harvey's eyes rested coldly on Sir Lionel, so he answered: "It draws very beautiful and detailed maps, with copperplate writing, decorative borders, and watercolor shading. The longer you let it run, the finer the detail - though it tends to overlook things that it considers insignificant, such as expressways and rail depots, and embellishes the landscape with such features as 'Here there be Crumple-Horned Snorkacks' and 'Wreck of the Pirate Ship Irving.'"
"Does it really?" Sadie said eagerly. "Could you get it to draw that one?"
"I didn't bring this device for your amusement," Harvey 1 said sourly. "I am only showing it to you so that you understand why I need the ring of Count Matthias. I think it may solve a little problem. You see, there are some places that cannot be plotted on a map. Even such a magical device as the Cart-o-Matic cannot break through their enchantment. But if one were to instruct the Cart-o-Matic, under the seal of Count Matthias..."
"I see," said Spanky. "There's some place you want to find, someone or something whose location is only known to a few..."
"Or perhaps no one," Sir Lionel offered. "No one still living, that is."
"Like a secret protected by a Fidelius Charm," Endora added.
"Something you want to steal," Sadie suggested.
"Someone you want to kill," said Allie O'Modo.
"Perhaps it is a lost art or buried knowledge that he seeks," said Sir Lionel, always willing to see people in a better light than most.
"A magical object," suggested Minimilian.
"A weapon," Spanky speculated.
"A document of some kind," said Sir Lionel.
"This had better not be about some bric-a-brac to decorate your flat," Ilona muttered.
Harvey waited for the chatter to stop, all three of him looking down at his hands folded in his lap. Into the pause that followed Ilona's remark, Dinty squeaked, "Tea!"
No one objected to taking refreshments, even under such strained circumstances. The fact that even such savage enemies could share a quiet fellowship over the munching of cakes and the sipping of tea, lent a reassuring sense of civilization and civility. Spanky felt himself beginning to relax - which, owing to the habits of a lifetime, immediately put him on edge.
"Well, you have the ring," he said, setting his cup down. "What do you want with us, then?"
"I need eyes," said Harvey 1.
"Ears," said Harvey 2.
"Hands and feet," said Harvey 3.
"In plain language," Harvey 1 said, "I need someone to follow where this map will lead."
"Someone who isn't - how shall I put this? - enmeshed in a temporal paradox," Harvey 3 added.
"Mmm," said Harvey 2. "Enmeshed. I like it."
"I would have said embarrassed," said Harvey 1.
"That would have been good too," said Harvey 2.
"Balked," suggested Harvey 3.
"Constrained," Harvey 1 countered.
"Encumbered," said Harvey 3.
"Hampered," said Harvey 1.
"Crippled?" Harvey 2 tried.
Harveys 1 and 3 gave Harvey 2 a pitying look.
"I applaud your wide-ranging vocabulary," Minimilian said testily, "but could you please come to the point?"
"If I go where I'm hoping this map will lead us," said Harvey 1, "there is no telling what might happen. I might cause the (cough) prize to move backward in time..."
"...and so become the cause of its being lost, rather than being found," Harvey 3 clarified.
"Or I might uncreate it," said Harvey 1.
"Or cause it to multiply," suggested Sir Lionel. "Which, for all we know, could be as great a disaster..."
He fell silent as he noticed the blank look the Harveys were giving him.
"You know," said Sir Lionel, grinning. "Like yourselves."
Harvey 1, 2, and 3, each shook his head, perplexed.
"You're getting nowhere with that one," Endora told Sir Lionel out of the corner of her mouth.
Harvey put down his teacups in perfect, threefold synchronicity, stretched his arms, clapped his hands, rubbed them together, and said (in Harvey 3's voice), "Now then, let's give this a try. Quill and ink, Dinty. Dear Mr. Cart-o-Matic... Or should that be Monsieur?"
"Why not Madam?" Endora suggested pugnaciously.
"How about To whom it may concern?" Allie O'Modo said over a stifled yawn.
"Never mind," said Harvey 3, crossing out the Mr. "Dear Cart-o-Matic. Feel free to disregard any and all magical barriers in drawing a map showing the location and route to the..."
Whatever he said next was drowned out by a deafening stroke of thunder. The entire hut shook with it, and a sudden heavy fall of rain roared upon the corrugated steel roof.
"Dash it all," Harvey 1 swore. "This is going to be harder than I thought."
Endora perked up. "That's just like what happened when..."
Ilona elbowed Endora hard in the ribs.
"...wh-when it wouldn't stop raining in the great hall at Hogwarts," Endora covered feebly.
"It's not necessary to dissemble," said Harvey 2. "I was there when Spanky told that story, wasn't I? When that djinn arranged for him, and only him, to know where Ilona was, and every time he mentioned her, there was a deafening noise."
"And look," said Harvey 1. "The ink blotted all over the paragraph."
"Even if we use a roundabout way of describing the prize," said Harvey 2, "the map will most likely come out blotted just as badly as that letter."
"It's no use," Harvey 3 said, throwing down his quill. "We're going to have to find a djinn before we can do anything else."
"We nothing," said Allie O'Modo. "If you have no further use for us, at this time, may we please have our wands back? We were just about to slaughter each other, and I would like to get on with it."
"That's not quite true," Endora said hotly. "You'd already been knocked into a cocked hat. We were just about to..."
"The point," Allie interrupted, "is that he can't keep us all locked up until he finds a djinn to lift the taboo on whatever he is trying to find."
"He doesn't have to," said Ilona, talking through clenched jaws. "With that ring, he holds the free will of every one of us in his hand. He can bring us back here, or whever he wants us to go, simply by dashing off a note and sending it under seal."
"I reckon I'll be moving houses, then," retorted Allie O'Modo. "And leaving no forwarding address."
"Oh, no," said Harvey 1, suddenly brightening. "You'll be fetching me a djinn. And with my little friend here" - he patted the Cart-o-Matic - "we will soon have some ideas of where to start looking."
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #168 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: What area of magic do you think was most neglected in Harry Potter's education?
CONTEST: If there was ever a wizard's revolution, and the months of the year were renamed along magical lines, what would they be called?
Thursday, September 17, 2009
164. The Pocket Elephant
Contest winner: cv675
Spanky's jaw dropped. Beside him, Ilona stiffened. Behind them, Endora gasped. Sadie growled. Sir Lionel said, "Er."
Harvey faced them from the end of a blind alley in the fast-growing yew maze Sadie had planted (seeds courtesy of her friend Miles O'Roughage). Not just one Harvey, nor even both of him. Three Harveys confronted them. But that wasn't what made Spanky gape. It was partly the menacing way each Harvey's wand was pointed at them. And, partly, it was the third Harvey's outstretched hand.
"Give me the ring," he said coolly.
"Was this your racket all along?" Spanky asked.
"Don't let's have a fuss," said Harvey 1. "It's only a wee bauble. You'll come to no harm."
"What do you want with it?" Ilona demanded.
"How will I use it, you mean?" said Harvey 2. "Would you believe me if I said that I would never use it?"
"Indeed," added Harvey 3, "that I would make sure nobody ever used it again?"
Ilona looked at Spanky. Spanky turned toward Harvey again and said, "No."
"He," Sadie shouted, then corrected herself: "They must be working with Il Comte and Lee Shore. How else..."
"...would I be here when you were expecting them?" Harvey 3 shrugged. "I'm afraid I can't answer all your burning questions."
"At least," added Harvey 2, "not at present. Please to hand over the ring."
"You've really gone through time's mangle, haven't you?" Sir Lionel's voice carried an undertone of laughter. "You've messed things up properly. I wonder what you think absolute power over other people can do to sort out your, er..."
"Problem?" said Harvey 1. "I see no problem. I've seen the end of the world. I've seen its beginning. If older and wiser heads had been in charge..."
"...and, well," said Harvey 2 with an immodest air of modesty, "I'm as old and wise as they come..."
"...a lot of things might have turned out differently." Harvey 3 nodded. "Better."
"You're mad," Endora said shakily. "You can't go about history changing things. You of all people would know, if you hand't changed yourself..."
"Don't be ridiculous," scoffed Harvey 2. "I'm the same as ever."
"Haven't you noticed," Sadie said venomously, "you ought to be saying 'we,' not 'I'?"
Harvey looked at each other, then back at the prisoners who had been his friends. "I'm sorry?" Harvey 1 said. "Am I missing something?"
"Only that there are three of you," Sadie yelled.
Harvey looked around themself again. For a moment, he seemed bewildered. At that moment, Spanky struck.
"Petrificus totalis," he muttered with a flick of his right wand. "Incarcerous," he added quickly, waving his left wand. Ilona's voice cut across his, hissing: "Expelliarmus!"
None of these spells had any effect. Harvey looked back at them with a mildly surprised expression on his three faces. Surprised and hurt.
"I say," he said.
The five wizards at bay immediately began pelting him with jinxes. None of them found their target. Sizzling jets of light zoomed toward Harvey's chests, then dissipated as if nothing was there. They didn't seem to be hitting a shield.
"Come, Rumbo," said Harvey 2, tugging on a leash that snaked around his legs.
An elephant walked into view from behind Harvey 2's legs, where it seemed to have been hiding. It was about the size of a well-fed beagle, and it had a wand gripped in its curling trunk.
"Meet my friend Rumbo," said Harvey 1. "Once, when I had a lot of time on my hands - say, eighty years or so - I trained him to remember jinxes and their counterspells."
Harvey 3 added, "He's very good to have with one when one is surrounded by hair-trigger witches and wizards."
"Only look how he's shrunk," said Harvey 2 sadly. "Unfortunate side effect, it always happens. He was the size of a standard schnauzer a few minutes ago."
"Eventually the poor chap will grow so small, I won't be able to care for him," said Harvey 1.
"Alas," said Harvey 3, "it's the price we have to pay..."
"We?" Sadie challenged.
Harvey 3 blinked at her. "Yes, of course," he said. "Rumbo and I."
Sadie stared back. "You've lost your marbles, mate."
Harvey 2 and 3 simply smiled. Harvey 1 cheerfully said, "Right. Now, the ring. Unless any of you is harboring a pocket elephant, I would urge you to give it up promptly."
Spanky opened his mouth to ask a question, but Harvey 2 answered it first: "I've still got a few spells Rumbo hasn't seen."
When no one moved for a long beat, Harvey 3 anxiously added: "They'll hurt. A lot."
Sadie shook with fury as she stepped forward, clutching the ring in her fist.
"That's better," said Harvey 3.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #166 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Harvey is working (A) on his own. (B) for Bobs the Reality Wizard. (C) for il Comte. (D) for Uncle or Aunt Leslie. (E) for ______ (write-in candidate).
CONTEST: Describe a magical machine and what it does. The more whimsical, the better!
Spanky's jaw dropped. Beside him, Ilona stiffened. Behind them, Endora gasped. Sadie growled. Sir Lionel said, "Er."
Harvey faced them from the end of a blind alley in the fast-growing yew maze Sadie had planted (seeds courtesy of her friend Miles O'Roughage). Not just one Harvey, nor even both of him. Three Harveys confronted them. But that wasn't what made Spanky gape. It was partly the menacing way each Harvey's wand was pointed at them. And, partly, it was the third Harvey's outstretched hand.
"Give me the ring," he said coolly.
"Was this your racket all along?" Spanky asked.
"Don't let's have a fuss," said Harvey 1. "It's only a wee bauble. You'll come to no harm."
"What do you want with it?" Ilona demanded.
"How will I use it, you mean?" said Harvey 2. "Would you believe me if I said that I would never use it?"
"Indeed," added Harvey 3, "that I would make sure nobody ever used it again?"
Ilona looked at Spanky. Spanky turned toward Harvey again and said, "No."
"He," Sadie shouted, then corrected herself: "They must be working with Il Comte and Lee Shore. How else..."
"...would I be here when you were expecting them?" Harvey 3 shrugged. "I'm afraid I can't answer all your burning questions."
"At least," added Harvey 2, "not at present. Please to hand over the ring."
"You've really gone through time's mangle, haven't you?" Sir Lionel's voice carried an undertone of laughter. "You've messed things up properly. I wonder what you think absolute power over other people can do to sort out your, er..."
"Problem?" said Harvey 1. "I see no problem. I've seen the end of the world. I've seen its beginning. If older and wiser heads had been in charge..."
"...and, well," said Harvey 2 with an immodest air of modesty, "I'm as old and wise as they come..."
"...a lot of things might have turned out differently." Harvey 3 nodded. "Better."
"You're mad," Endora said shakily. "You can't go about history changing things. You of all people would know, if you hand't changed yourself..."
"Don't be ridiculous," scoffed Harvey 2. "I'm the same as ever."
"Haven't you noticed," Sadie said venomously, "you ought to be saying 'we,' not 'I'?"
Harvey looked at each other, then back at the prisoners who had been his friends. "I'm sorry?" Harvey 1 said. "Am I missing something?"
"Only that there are three of you," Sadie yelled.
Harvey looked around themself again. For a moment, he seemed bewildered. At that moment, Spanky struck.
"Petrificus totalis," he muttered with a flick of his right wand. "Incarcerous," he added quickly, waving his left wand. Ilona's voice cut across his, hissing: "Expelliarmus!"
None of these spells had any effect. Harvey looked back at them with a mildly surprised expression on his three faces. Surprised and hurt.
"I say," he said.
The five wizards at bay immediately began pelting him with jinxes. None of them found their target. Sizzling jets of light zoomed toward Harvey's chests, then dissipated as if nothing was there. They didn't seem to be hitting a shield.
"Come, Rumbo," said Harvey 2, tugging on a leash that snaked around his legs.
An elephant walked into view from behind Harvey 2's legs, where it seemed to have been hiding. It was about the size of a well-fed beagle, and it had a wand gripped in its curling trunk.
"Meet my friend Rumbo," said Harvey 1. "Once, when I had a lot of time on my hands - say, eighty years or so - I trained him to remember jinxes and their counterspells."
Harvey 3 added, "He's very good to have with one when one is surrounded by hair-trigger witches and wizards."
"Only look how he's shrunk," said Harvey 2 sadly. "Unfortunate side effect, it always happens. He was the size of a standard schnauzer a few minutes ago."
"Eventually the poor chap will grow so small, I won't be able to care for him," said Harvey 1.
"Alas," said Harvey 3, "it's the price we have to pay..."
"We?" Sadie challenged.
Harvey 3 blinked at her. "Yes, of course," he said. "Rumbo and I."
Sadie stared back. "You've lost your marbles, mate."
Harvey 2 and 3 simply smiled. Harvey 1 cheerfully said, "Right. Now, the ring. Unless any of you is harboring a pocket elephant, I would urge you to give it up promptly."
Spanky opened his mouth to ask a question, but Harvey 2 answered it first: "I've still got a few spells Rumbo hasn't seen."
When no one moved for a long beat, Harvey 3 anxiously added: "They'll hurt. A lot."
Sadie shook with fury as she stepped forward, clutching the ring in her fist.
"That's better," said Harvey 3.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #166 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Harvey is working (A) on his own. (B) for Bobs the Reality Wizard. (C) for il Comte. (D) for Uncle or Aunt Leslie. (E) for ______ (write-in candidate).
CONTEST: Describe a magical machine and what it does. The more whimsical, the better!
Friday, August 14, 2009
162. Mirror Seeds
Contest co-winners: Dragonic and greyniffler
Spanky, Ilona, and Lionel Niblet marched in single file with their hands tied behind their backs. Behind them walked Minimilian, Hugo, Allie O'Modo, and a considerable following of henchwitches and -wizards, all abristle with wands and under orders to curse the prisoners at the first sign of resistance. Behind and below them lay the wooded valley with the mercenary camp and its outlying magical orchards. Above and ahead, the trees thinned toward a bare ridge that hid the gnome proving ground on its far side.
"It was very clever of you," pontificated Allie O'Modo, "to turn the tables on us so. Too bad for you, we turned them back . And when you turned the tables on us a second time, we turned them back again. It only shows that the side with the better preparedness has a right..."
"Seeds away!" cackled a voice from above. Captors and captives alike ducked as a broom rushed close overhead. The flyover was followed by a hailstorm of hard little seeds that instantly took root, even on this rocky slope, and began to shoot up at an eye-boggling rate.
While Allie O'Modo struggled to free her feet from the roots of a rapidly-growing yew seedling, Minimilian frantically searched the skies. "Drubbins! Goonsworth! Stop the prisoners getting away! Everyone else, bring down that broom!"
His instructions were too late to stop their attacker's second, shrieking pass. More seeds rained down, pinching and biting any flesh they encountered before reaching the ground. Minimilian howled with red-faced fury, looking more than ever like a spoiled child.
"Patience, love," Allie murmured after finally wrenching her boot free of the plant's roots. Already their party was surrounded by the walls of a waist-high yew maze. Several of their co-conspirators were getting tangled in the branches as they tried to wade through to their escaping prisoners. "Grimly, go with Drubbins and Goonsworth. Track our guests through the maze. Keep a wall to your right hand at all times. Don't get split up. The rest of you" - her speech was interrupted by another low sweep by their yipping assailant - "keep your eye on that broom!"
This time the overflight was followed by a rain of broken glass. Everyone cowered under their robes to avoid getting a faceful of jagged slivers. By the time they looked up, O'Modo's people had lost visual contact with their broom-mounted attacker.
"I never," Hugo breathed, as he observed what happened to the glass shards that reached the ground. For they, too, had started to spring up like plants, at a speed only magic could induce. The rising stalks were surrounded by a spiral staircase of leaves, thin and delicate to the point of translucency, and variegated like little stained-glass windows. As the stalks grew higher they wove themselves into the mesh of yew branches that, by now, formed a continuous shoulder-high hedge within and around the maze. Tiny buds swelled on the stained-glass vines, burst open, and unfurled shiny flowers whose clear, glassy gloss was backed by a silvery sheen. Mirror blossoms! "I absolutely never," said Hugo.
"You'd better start, then," snapped Allie O'Modo. "Hasn't anyone spotted that broom yet?"
It became harder to track the trajectory of broom flyover as the yew hedge passed the height of their heads; harder still when the next two passes came, in short succession, from quite different directions, suggesting that they had at least two aerial enemies to aim at; hardest of all when each broom sprayed them with a green, glittery gas, leaving them sneezing and waving the fog out of their faces.
"We have to get out of this maze," Minimilian shouted.
"Nonsense," said Allie. "It's cover, isn't it? Out in the open, they could hit us with anything!"
"Out in the open," snarled Minimilian, "we might be able to hit them."
"All right, then," Allie O'Modo relented. "You take Mugwump, Skink, and McCurdle and try to find a way out. The others will stay with me and try to shoot them down from in here. Oh, yes - and I would suggest that you all put on your safety-pins..."
"Right you are," said Hugo, pulling an ugly brooch out of his pocket (decorated with the skull of a small snake) and pinning it to his robes. The other members of Allie's squad did the same. "Now let's see those blighters try to curse us," Hugo added.
They saw the very thing Hugo wished for soon afterward, when Sir Lionel darted out of an unguarded gap in the hedge and aimed a jinx at Allie O'Modo's head. He immediately cried out and dropped his wand, or rather Drubbins's wand (but that's a long story), clutched his arm, and fell back out of range of the answering volley of curses.
"Crumple-horned snorkacks!" Sir Lionel swore, chafing his wand arm. Luckily Ilona, just behind him, had retrieved his wand with a quick summoning spell. "Spanky, old chap, don't jinx them! They've done something to make spells rebound!"
Spanky adjusted his tactics by aiming his spells at one of the mirror blossoms, in which he could see a reflection of one of Allie's henchwizards around the corner. Whatever spell he was firing at the wizard, it missed the first two times. Then he got the refraction angle just right... and the mirror shattered.
"Blimey," said Spanky.
"I think we should fall back," said Lionel.
They were all thinking the same thing. They could do nothing, at present, to resist their enemy's counterattack. Without another word they scrambled through the twisting and turning maze.
Now and then Ilona cut a blaze in the yew hedge, whose growth had stopped at a height of fourteen feet. Most of the time she did this as a reminder of where they had been in the tricky maze. Sometimes, however, she paused a beat longer - gauging the available time by the sounds of pursuit behind them - to create a booby trap. The pursuers, after all, were bound to stay on their trail, for the blazes would help them as well. Ilona smirked when, now and then, a dismayed yell indicated that a henchwizard had run into a snare, a concealed pit, or a barrier of fallen limbs and clutching vines.
Screams came, from time to time, from another direction. Spanky's party headed toward them, wondering whether they were running to rescue or more danger. He would have grinned if he had known that some of the screams resulted from a pot of very aggressive snapdragons, bred by Miles O'Roughage and borrowed for the occasion by his friend Sadie. In another case, the screams came from a witch who had failed to catch an eggshell full of Tickle Tonic thrown at her by Endora as her broom swooped low overhead.
"Their safety-pins must be running low on charge," Spanky speculated as the shouts and cries multiplied from both directions.
"We must be running out of maze," Sir Lionel added.
Instead, as they rounded the next corner, they came to a dead end.
"This can't be right," Ilona whispered.
"Oh, yes," said a tight, stiff-jawed voice behind them.
The three escaped prisoners turned as one and faced Allie O'Modo, who stood in the middle of their only way out of this bottleneck. Her chest heaved. Her face was disfigured, as much by fury as by the whiplash-marks left by one of Ilona's booby traps. She raised her wand.
Spanky's right hand was faster. "Expelliarmus!" he barked. But the spell rebounded in a flash of light, and the wand dropped out of his numb fingers.
"I've got enough safety-pins to block a few more curses," Allie laughed bitterly. Indeed, her robes sparkled with a multitude of tiny green gems, each individually hooked through the wool. She raised her wand again. "It's time for you to say your last words."
"Ow," Spanky said, massaging his elbow.
"It's not much to remember you by," said Allie O'Modo with an insane grin, "but I'll take it."
"Expelliarmus!" Spanky yelled.
Ilona couldn't believe he would try that again. Her head whipped around in time to see that he had aimed the jinx at himself, with his left wand held out at arm's length. The wand shot straight out of his hand and jabbed Allie in the eye.
"Ow!" she screamed - taking Spanky's last words, as promised.
Before she could recover from her stumbling, face-clutching agony, Ilona brought her facedown with her hands hiked up between her shoulderblades.
"Ow, ow, ow," Allie O'Modo insisted feebly.
"I believe you," said Ilona, kneeling on Allie's thighs.
Sir Lionel clapped Spanky on the back and crowed, "Well shot, my lad!" Meanwhile, two brooms darkened the sun for a moment, before their riders dropped into the maze beyond Ilona and her prisoner.
Spanky stared with joy at one witch with a veil covering half of her face, and another wearing a fake nose and glasses (complete with a curly mustache). "I can hardly imagine two faces I would be happier to see," he said.
"Well, you'll be happier to see this," said Endora. She held up her left hand, where the signet ring of Count Matthias shared a finger with her wedding ring.
Ilona gasped. "Where did you...!"
"The bad news," said Sadie, "is that Lee Shore, Il Comte, and Aunt or Uncle Leslie have all put spells on this ring. Endora can't get it off her hand. Since she used the ring to undo what Lee Shore was using it for, they know exactly where she is. I reckon we'll have some company in about..." Sadie checked a pocket watch she had nicked on her way out of the Ministry of Magic. "Right now, actually."
Another flight of brooms threw its shadow over them. Three pairs of feet touched down in the blind alley behind Sir Lionel and Spanky.
They all turned to face the latest arrivals.
"You were half right," said their old friend Harvey.
"It was only the names you got wrong," added Harvey's identical twin.
"I'll have that ring now, if you please," said their third visitor, smiling as Spanky's jaw dropped.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #164 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Who is the third member of Harvey 1 & Harvey 2's party? (A) Harvey 3. (B) Robertus Magnus. (C) The real Sir Lionel Niblet. (D) Joe Albuquerque. (E) Orion Oldmanson. (F) Tip, formerly of Nasal Drip. (G) _____ [write-in candidate].
CONTEST: Chose a kind of animal and describe something silly that it could be trained to do, with the aid of magic.
Spanky, Ilona, and Lionel Niblet marched in single file with their hands tied behind their backs. Behind them walked Minimilian, Hugo, Allie O'Modo, and a considerable following of henchwitches and -wizards, all abristle with wands and under orders to curse the prisoners at the first sign of resistance. Behind and below them lay the wooded valley with the mercenary camp and its outlying magical orchards. Above and ahead, the trees thinned toward a bare ridge that hid the gnome proving ground on its far side.
"It was very clever of you," pontificated Allie O'Modo, "to turn the tables on us so. Too bad for you, we turned them back . And when you turned the tables on us a second time, we turned them back again. It only shows that the side with the better preparedness has a right..."
"Seeds away!" cackled a voice from above. Captors and captives alike ducked as a broom rushed close overhead. The flyover was followed by a hailstorm of hard little seeds that instantly took root, even on this rocky slope, and began to shoot up at an eye-boggling rate.
While Allie O'Modo struggled to free her feet from the roots of a rapidly-growing yew seedling, Minimilian frantically searched the skies. "Drubbins! Goonsworth! Stop the prisoners getting away! Everyone else, bring down that broom!"
His instructions were too late to stop their attacker's second, shrieking pass. More seeds rained down, pinching and biting any flesh they encountered before reaching the ground. Minimilian howled with red-faced fury, looking more than ever like a spoiled child.
"Patience, love," Allie murmured after finally wrenching her boot free of the plant's roots. Already their party was surrounded by the walls of a waist-high yew maze. Several of their co-conspirators were getting tangled in the branches as they tried to wade through to their escaping prisoners. "Grimly, go with Drubbins and Goonsworth. Track our guests through the maze. Keep a wall to your right hand at all times. Don't get split up. The rest of you" - her speech was interrupted by another low sweep by their yipping assailant - "keep your eye on that broom!"
This time the overflight was followed by a rain of broken glass. Everyone cowered under their robes to avoid getting a faceful of jagged slivers. By the time they looked up, O'Modo's people had lost visual contact with their broom-mounted attacker.
"I never," Hugo breathed, as he observed what happened to the glass shards that reached the ground. For they, too, had started to spring up like plants, at a speed only magic could induce. The rising stalks were surrounded by a spiral staircase of leaves, thin and delicate to the point of translucency, and variegated like little stained-glass windows. As the stalks grew higher they wove themselves into the mesh of yew branches that, by now, formed a continuous shoulder-high hedge within and around the maze. Tiny buds swelled on the stained-glass vines, burst open, and unfurled shiny flowers whose clear, glassy gloss was backed by a silvery sheen. Mirror blossoms! "I absolutely never," said Hugo.
"You'd better start, then," snapped Allie O'Modo. "Hasn't anyone spotted that broom yet?"
It became harder to track the trajectory of broom flyover as the yew hedge passed the height of their heads; harder still when the next two passes came, in short succession, from quite different directions, suggesting that they had at least two aerial enemies to aim at; hardest of all when each broom sprayed them with a green, glittery gas, leaving them sneezing and waving the fog out of their faces.
"We have to get out of this maze," Minimilian shouted.
"Nonsense," said Allie. "It's cover, isn't it? Out in the open, they could hit us with anything!"
"Out in the open," snarled Minimilian, "we might be able to hit them."
"All right, then," Allie O'Modo relented. "You take Mugwump, Skink, and McCurdle and try to find a way out. The others will stay with me and try to shoot them down from in here. Oh, yes - and I would suggest that you all put on your safety-pins..."
"Right you are," said Hugo, pulling an ugly brooch out of his pocket (decorated with the skull of a small snake) and pinning it to his robes. The other members of Allie's squad did the same. "Now let's see those blighters try to curse us," Hugo added.
They saw the very thing Hugo wished for soon afterward, when Sir Lionel darted out of an unguarded gap in the hedge and aimed a jinx at Allie O'Modo's head. He immediately cried out and dropped his wand, or rather Drubbins's wand (but that's a long story), clutched his arm, and fell back out of range of the answering volley of curses.
"Crumple-horned snorkacks!" Sir Lionel swore, chafing his wand arm. Luckily Ilona, just behind him, had retrieved his wand with a quick summoning spell. "Spanky, old chap, don't jinx them! They've done something to make spells rebound!"
Spanky adjusted his tactics by aiming his spells at one of the mirror blossoms, in which he could see a reflection of one of Allie's henchwizards around the corner. Whatever spell he was firing at the wizard, it missed the first two times. Then he got the refraction angle just right... and the mirror shattered.
"Blimey," said Spanky.
"I think we should fall back," said Lionel.
They were all thinking the same thing. They could do nothing, at present, to resist their enemy's counterattack. Without another word they scrambled through the twisting and turning maze.
Now and then Ilona cut a blaze in the yew hedge, whose growth had stopped at a height of fourteen feet. Most of the time she did this as a reminder of where they had been in the tricky maze. Sometimes, however, she paused a beat longer - gauging the available time by the sounds of pursuit behind them - to create a booby trap. The pursuers, after all, were bound to stay on their trail, for the blazes would help them as well. Ilona smirked when, now and then, a dismayed yell indicated that a henchwizard had run into a snare, a concealed pit, or a barrier of fallen limbs and clutching vines.
Screams came, from time to time, from another direction. Spanky's party headed toward them, wondering whether they were running to rescue or more danger. He would have grinned if he had known that some of the screams resulted from a pot of very aggressive snapdragons, bred by Miles O'Roughage and borrowed for the occasion by his friend Sadie. In another case, the screams came from a witch who had failed to catch an eggshell full of Tickle Tonic thrown at her by Endora as her broom swooped low overhead.
"Their safety-pins must be running low on charge," Spanky speculated as the shouts and cries multiplied from both directions.
"We must be running out of maze," Sir Lionel added.
Instead, as they rounded the next corner, they came to a dead end.
"This can't be right," Ilona whispered.
"Oh, yes," said a tight, stiff-jawed voice behind them.
The three escaped prisoners turned as one and faced Allie O'Modo, who stood in the middle of their only way out of this bottleneck. Her chest heaved. Her face was disfigured, as much by fury as by the whiplash-marks left by one of Ilona's booby traps. She raised her wand.
Spanky's right hand was faster. "Expelliarmus!" he barked. But the spell rebounded in a flash of light, and the wand dropped out of his numb fingers.
"I've got enough safety-pins to block a few more curses," Allie laughed bitterly. Indeed, her robes sparkled with a multitude of tiny green gems, each individually hooked through the wool. She raised her wand again. "It's time for you to say your last words."
"Ow," Spanky said, massaging his elbow.
"It's not much to remember you by," said Allie O'Modo with an insane grin, "but I'll take it."
"Expelliarmus!" Spanky yelled.
Ilona couldn't believe he would try that again. Her head whipped around in time to see that he had aimed the jinx at himself, with his left wand held out at arm's length. The wand shot straight out of his hand and jabbed Allie in the eye.
"Ow!" she screamed - taking Spanky's last words, as promised.
Before she could recover from her stumbling, face-clutching agony, Ilona brought her facedown with her hands hiked up between her shoulderblades.
"Ow, ow, ow," Allie O'Modo insisted feebly.
"I believe you," said Ilona, kneeling on Allie's thighs.
Sir Lionel clapped Spanky on the back and crowed, "Well shot, my lad!" Meanwhile, two brooms darkened the sun for a moment, before their riders dropped into the maze beyond Ilona and her prisoner.
Spanky stared with joy at one witch with a veil covering half of her face, and another wearing a fake nose and glasses (complete with a curly mustache). "I can hardly imagine two faces I would be happier to see," he said.
"Well, you'll be happier to see this," said Endora. She held up her left hand, where the signet ring of Count Matthias shared a finger with her wedding ring.
Ilona gasped. "Where did you...!"
"The bad news," said Sadie, "is that Lee Shore, Il Comte, and Aunt or Uncle Leslie have all put spells on this ring. Endora can't get it off her hand. Since she used the ring to undo what Lee Shore was using it for, they know exactly where she is. I reckon we'll have some company in about..." Sadie checked a pocket watch she had nicked on her way out of the Ministry of Magic. "Right now, actually."
Another flight of brooms threw its shadow over them. Three pairs of feet touched down in the blind alley behind Sir Lionel and Spanky.
They all turned to face the latest arrivals.
"You were half right," said their old friend Harvey.
"It was only the names you got wrong," added Harvey's identical twin.
"I'll have that ring now, if you please," said their third visitor, smiling as Spanky's jaw dropped.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #164 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next.
SURVEY: Who is the third member of Harvey 1 & Harvey 2's party? (A) Harvey 3. (B) Robertus Magnus. (C) The real Sir Lionel Niblet. (D) Joe Albuquerque. (E) Orion Oldmanson. (F) Tip, formerly of Nasal Drip. (G) _____ [write-in candidate].
CONTEST: Chose a kind of animal and describe something silly that it could be trained to do, with the aid of magic.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
159. Minimilian Returns
Contest winner: Linda Carrig
As Sir Lionel crept through the mysterious compound, he discovered that it was much larger than he had spotted at first. Clearly, the wizards here were caught up in more than one sinister plan.
Beyond the ring of huts he found a grove of walnut trees playing cricket with their own fallen fruit. Getting through it without being hit by a leathery, walnut-cored ball was quite tricky. Then there was the thicket of ash and yew trees that he found practicing archery, using bows and arrows made out of their own branches; Sir Lionel had to be very careful to avoid becoming a target. He edged nervously around a copse of whomping willows that he found sparring with each other, raining splinters and twigs from every collision of their powerful limbs. At the brink of a stream he encountered another variety of willows whose long, supple branches, trailing in the water, snatched up passing fish now and again. He wondered what they were called, and was trying to decide between "reaping rillows" and "wringing whompers" when he felt a wand-tip touch the back of his neck.
"Hands up slowly," said the wizard behind him. Sir Lionel obeyed, feeling the wand snatched out of his right hand as he did so.
"Turn around." Sir Lionel turned around. He ended up facing the same direction. The other man clicked his tongue with exasperation and said, "This time turn half-way around." This gave them the ability to look at each other. Sir Lionel wasn't much to look at after weeks of survival in the bush. The other man wasn't much prettier. Short, stocky, squash-nosed and lantern-jawed, he had hardly any neck and, by way of compensation, one enormous eyebrow. The eyes beneath it bulged suspiciously. "Keep it shut," he growled. "Wouldn't want to warn whoever is with you."
"No one is..."
"Who sent you?" the ugly wizard barked.
"Sent me?" Sir Lionel was on the point of telling the truth -- that he was there by pure chance, that his broom had elected to crash on the way to somewhere else -- when he realized that he needed a bargaining chip. Someone who would be coming after him if he didn't report. So he used his hesitation to look shifty and inventive when he replied, "No one sent me. My broom just crashed over that ridge..."
"Very likely," sneered the other. "Only question is, are you one of them RMB blokes, or did the competition send you? Eh?"
"I'd rather not say," was all Sir Lionel dared to improvise.
"Oh! It's like that, is it?" The stocky wizard brandished his wand threateningly. "We'll soon have the whole truth out of you, won't we? Now, turn around and march!" A moment later: "Oof! I meant turn half-way around!"
As his captor barked instructions from behind, Sir Lionel began to wonder how he could possibly get out of this tight spot. Then another voice hissed: "Stop! Hands up!"
"I already have my hands up," Sir Lionel sang over his shoulder.
"I meant the other one," the new voice said gruffly. "Now shut it, both of you, and turn slowly to face me..."
Since his former captor was looking the other way, he did not happen to see Sir Lionel's momentary look of joyful recognition. The tall figure holding them both at wand point was cloaked from head to foot, his face in shadow, his physique hidden by the loose fit of his dark cloak. He held two wands in each hand, all of them pointed at the man in the middle. He could be no one, Sir Lionel realized, but Spanky Spankison.
"Just try it," Spanky growled with all the menace of an approaching tempest. The other man left off trying to dig a throwing-knife out of an ankle sheath with his foot. The thick shoulders bunched and writhed. Sir Lionel was privately glad he didn't have to look at those enormous jaws grinding and gnashing.
"How many wands defend this place?" Spanky demanded. "Speak quickly!"
"I've got nothing to say," said the other wizard.
"Don't make me use these," said Spanky, waving the wands in his left hand threateningly.
"If you're RMB," said lantern-jaw, "there are rules. You can't torture me."
"That's a big if," said Spanky. Then he loosed a spell at his prisoner's right foot.
The man howled, more in terror than in pain, then looked down and howled again. "Yow-how-how-how dare you!"
Sir Lionel, who by now had joined Spanky and retrieved his wand, saw that their prisoner was suddenly mincing up and down in open-toed high heels, with painted toenails and all. The effect wasn't very lovely, given the man's hairy legs and the coarseness of his feet.
"Answer my questions," said Spanky, "or you'll be wearing a dress that goes with those shoes."
The prisoner stopped fidgeting and said, with a sudden coolness that chilled Sir Lionel's blood, "All right, ask away."
"Behind us," Spanky hissed out of the side of his mouth.
Sir Lionel wheeled around to look, but not fast enough to stop the disarming spell that blasted the wand out of his grip.
"Er, sorry, old boy," said Sir Lionel, addressing Spanky, though he was facing another short man he had never seen before. This one, however, was as sleek and handsome as their former prisoner was not.
"Give me their wands, Hugo," the genteel captor said in an almost beautiful voice. He shot a saintly smile at Sir Lionel, a smile that seemed to say that everyone was mistaken about who were the bad guys and who the good. "Ah! As I live and breathe, Mr. Spankison! I never dreamed of meeting you again."
"Nor I you," said Spanky, turning himself around. "Still got all your limbs, Minimilian? I was sure that hag would have eaten at least part of you. Well! It's an imperfect world!"
"We're in agreement to that extent," smiled Minimilian.
"What miserable scheme are you nursing now?" Spanky jerked his head toward the compound.
"Just business," said Minimilian, as cheerfully as ever. "Now, gentlemen, about face and march!"
For a few moments, they marched in silence through orchards of dodge-ball apple trees and groves of lemon trees that kept trying to squirt lemon juice at them. The only sound other than the rustle of leaves and the thump of hard apples against tree trunks was Minimilian's whistling. Sir Lionel recognized the tune: "Hex today goodbye, Portkey to tomorrow..."
"Business!" Spanky snorted, interrupting the tune. "Selling weaponized, magical creatures and plants? You must be hoarding the money for some big gesture, some..."
"Surely you don't expect me to confide in you?" Minimilian's laugh was like the jingling of little bells. "You seem to have me confused with an evil genius. You know the type, always explaining their dastardly plans, so that the hero can escape and put a stop to them. I'm not as clever as that. I'm just a reasonably shrewd businessman, and I'll keep my plans to myself, thank you."
"No: thank you," said another unexpected voice from behind Minimilian.
They all stopped marching.
"Hugo," said Minimilian, with a barely detectible edge of irritation in his voice, "I was hoping you might have covered our backs."
"Don't blame Hugo," said the female voice. "He's tied up, stunned, and gagged a couple orchards back."
"Is it finally my pleasure to meet the elusive Ilona Ilonera?" Minimilian turned around slowly, his hands up and disarmed. "Ah! As lovely as I had imagined!"
"I would prefer," said Ilona, aiming her wand steadily at the spot between Minimilian's wide, innocent eyes, "that you would just shut up."
"As you wish," he murmured sweetly.
Spanky rolled his eyes, though under the hood of his cloak they could not be seen. "Shall we tie him up and carry him?"
"I don't know," said Ilona. "I think I saw a colony of red ants on the way here. Perhaps we could just stake him down beside it..."
Hearing this, Minimilian beamed with satisfaction. He seemed to take it as a personal success when his enemies turned as evil as himself.
"...but I reckon we'd better just portkey him to the nearest RMB field-office for booking."
"It's up to you, dear," said Spanky.
Ilona sighed, then with her free hand began to rummage in the pockets of her robes. She finally brought out a greasy bicycle chain, which she placed around Minimilian's neck.
"I say," the little cherub squeaked uncomfortably. "I'll be sending you my cleaning bill."
"Do," said Ilona, with an equally angelic simper. "And now: three... two... "
"Hold that thought," snapped another feminine voice.
Ilona threw down all the wands in her hand with a strangled roar. Spanky and Sir Lionel put their hands up again as half a dozen figures emerged from the shadows of the juggling oaks, which immediately resumed playing a noisy game of hackey-sack with hundreds of acorns. The woman leading this squad of guards approached Minimilian with an air of disgusted authority. Minimilian, looking as innocent as ever, lowered his eyes before her -- not in embarrassment, but in deference.
"You really must stop letting these people get the best of you," the woman said with a voice like the crack of a whip. Her red-black hair swayed down her back in a thick, tight braid. Her dark eyes flashed under upswept brows.
"I led them here, didn't I?" Minimilian shrugged. "I knew you would take control again."
Spanky and Ilona exchanged confused looks. Or rather, Ilona exchanged one with the shadows under Spanky's hood. Sir Lionel, reading her expression, knew they had expected Minimilian to be the man in charge.
The woman tied the three prisoners together and walked around them several times, eyeing them appraisingly. She didn't seem to need a wand, with seven -- make that eight, as Hugo emerged from the trees rubbing his head -- henchmen holding her prisoners at bay. Finally she said, "It's a pity we can't just kill them and throw their bodies to Audrey Four. But you know they'll have filed a mission plan with the RMB. Someone is sure to come looking for them. So what shall we do?"
"Hold them for ransom," suggested Hugo.
"Wipe their memories," suggested Minimilian.
The woman looked disgusted at the first suggestion, intrigued by the second. But she shook her head. "I'm leaning toward killing them anyway," she said. "Only, we can lay a false trail to the crash site in the next valley. Maybe scatter a few gnawed bones, make it look as though they died of crash-related injuries..."
"There will be a letter in the Daily Prophet about this," Sir Lionel blurted. "Take that woman's name, son."
"The name," said the woman, fixing Sir Lionel with a defiant stare, "which won't be any use to you, is O'Modo. Allie O'Modo. Now tell me, how can you write a letter when you're already dead?"
"The question you should ask," said Spanky, "is: How can you kill us so that it doesn't look like foul play?"
"How kind of you to redirect my thinking," said Allie O'Modo. "That's easy enough, though. I've been meaning to turn my pet garden-gnomes out into the next valley... for some exercise..."
Hugo laughed and clapped his hands. "At last," he said. "A live test!"
+++ SURVEY FOR TMQ #161 +++
Participation in The Magic Quill has gone down dramatically in the past several months. What do you think we should do? (A) Keep it going for at least ___ more chapters, and see if more readers contribute to the comments. (B) Tie up as many loose ends as possible within the next 4-5 chapters, and then bring it to an end. (C) Leave the loose ends hanging, and end it now because it's already too far gone.
Leave your response to this survey in the Comments. If you haven't left a comment before, please take the time and effort to do so -- especially if you would like to see TMQ continue. A little encouragement may fuel Robbie's creativity for a long time. And nothing would be more encouraging than knowing that the Magic Quill matters to more than 5 or 6 people!
As Sir Lionel crept through the mysterious compound, he discovered that it was much larger than he had spotted at first. Clearly, the wizards here were caught up in more than one sinister plan.
Beyond the ring of huts he found a grove of walnut trees playing cricket with their own fallen fruit. Getting through it without being hit by a leathery, walnut-cored ball was quite tricky. Then there was the thicket of ash and yew trees that he found practicing archery, using bows and arrows made out of their own branches; Sir Lionel had to be very careful to avoid becoming a target. He edged nervously around a copse of whomping willows that he found sparring with each other, raining splinters and twigs from every collision of their powerful limbs. At the brink of a stream he encountered another variety of willows whose long, supple branches, trailing in the water, snatched up passing fish now and again. He wondered what they were called, and was trying to decide between "reaping rillows" and "wringing whompers" when he felt a wand-tip touch the back of his neck.
"Hands up slowly," said the wizard behind him. Sir Lionel obeyed, feeling the wand snatched out of his right hand as he did so.
"Turn around." Sir Lionel turned around. He ended up facing the same direction. The other man clicked his tongue with exasperation and said, "This time turn half-way around." This gave them the ability to look at each other. Sir Lionel wasn't much to look at after weeks of survival in the bush. The other man wasn't much prettier. Short, stocky, squash-nosed and lantern-jawed, he had hardly any neck and, by way of compensation, one enormous eyebrow. The eyes beneath it bulged suspiciously. "Keep it shut," he growled. "Wouldn't want to warn whoever is with you."
"No one is..."
"Who sent you?" the ugly wizard barked.
"Sent me?" Sir Lionel was on the point of telling the truth -- that he was there by pure chance, that his broom had elected to crash on the way to somewhere else -- when he realized that he needed a bargaining chip. Someone who would be coming after him if he didn't report. So he used his hesitation to look shifty and inventive when he replied, "No one sent me. My broom just crashed over that ridge..."
"Very likely," sneered the other. "Only question is, are you one of them RMB blokes, or did the competition send you? Eh?"
"I'd rather not say," was all Sir Lionel dared to improvise.
"Oh! It's like that, is it?" The stocky wizard brandished his wand threateningly. "We'll soon have the whole truth out of you, won't we? Now, turn around and march!" A moment later: "Oof! I meant turn half-way around!"
As his captor barked instructions from behind, Sir Lionel began to wonder how he could possibly get out of this tight spot. Then another voice hissed: "Stop! Hands up!"
"I already have my hands up," Sir Lionel sang over his shoulder.
"I meant the other one," the new voice said gruffly. "Now shut it, both of you, and turn slowly to face me..."
Since his former captor was looking the other way, he did not happen to see Sir Lionel's momentary look of joyful recognition. The tall figure holding them both at wand point was cloaked from head to foot, his face in shadow, his physique hidden by the loose fit of his dark cloak. He held two wands in each hand, all of them pointed at the man in the middle. He could be no one, Sir Lionel realized, but Spanky Spankison.
"Just try it," Spanky growled with all the menace of an approaching tempest. The other man left off trying to dig a throwing-knife out of an ankle sheath with his foot. The thick shoulders bunched and writhed. Sir Lionel was privately glad he didn't have to look at those enormous jaws grinding and gnashing.
"How many wands defend this place?" Spanky demanded. "Speak quickly!"
"I've got nothing to say," said the other wizard.
"Don't make me use these," said Spanky, waving the wands in his left hand threateningly.
"If you're RMB," said lantern-jaw, "there are rules. You can't torture me."
"That's a big if," said Spanky. Then he loosed a spell at his prisoner's right foot.
The man howled, more in terror than in pain, then looked down and howled again. "Yow-how-how-how dare you!"
Sir Lionel, who by now had joined Spanky and retrieved his wand, saw that their prisoner was suddenly mincing up and down in open-toed high heels, with painted toenails and all. The effect wasn't very lovely, given the man's hairy legs and the coarseness of his feet.
"Answer my questions," said Spanky, "or you'll be wearing a dress that goes with those shoes."
The prisoner stopped fidgeting and said, with a sudden coolness that chilled Sir Lionel's blood, "All right, ask away."
"Behind us," Spanky hissed out of the side of his mouth.
Sir Lionel wheeled around to look, but not fast enough to stop the disarming spell that blasted the wand out of his grip.
"Er, sorry, old boy," said Sir Lionel, addressing Spanky, though he was facing another short man he had never seen before. This one, however, was as sleek and handsome as their former prisoner was not.
"Give me their wands, Hugo," the genteel captor said in an almost beautiful voice. He shot a saintly smile at Sir Lionel, a smile that seemed to say that everyone was mistaken about who were the bad guys and who the good. "Ah! As I live and breathe, Mr. Spankison! I never dreamed of meeting you again."
"Nor I you," said Spanky, turning himself around. "Still got all your limbs, Minimilian? I was sure that hag would have eaten at least part of you. Well! It's an imperfect world!"
"We're in agreement to that extent," smiled Minimilian.
"What miserable scheme are you nursing now?" Spanky jerked his head toward the compound.
"Just business," said Minimilian, as cheerfully as ever. "Now, gentlemen, about face and march!"
For a few moments, they marched in silence through orchards of dodge-ball apple trees and groves of lemon trees that kept trying to squirt lemon juice at them. The only sound other than the rustle of leaves and the thump of hard apples against tree trunks was Minimilian's whistling. Sir Lionel recognized the tune: "Hex today goodbye, Portkey to tomorrow..."
"Business!" Spanky snorted, interrupting the tune. "Selling weaponized, magical creatures and plants? You must be hoarding the money for some big gesture, some..."
"Surely you don't expect me to confide in you?" Minimilian's laugh was like the jingling of little bells. "You seem to have me confused with an evil genius. You know the type, always explaining their dastardly plans, so that the hero can escape and put a stop to them. I'm not as clever as that. I'm just a reasonably shrewd businessman, and I'll keep my plans to myself, thank you."
"No: thank you," said another unexpected voice from behind Minimilian.
They all stopped marching.
"Hugo," said Minimilian, with a barely detectible edge of irritation in his voice, "I was hoping you might have covered our backs."
"Don't blame Hugo," said the female voice. "He's tied up, stunned, and gagged a couple orchards back."
"Is it finally my pleasure to meet the elusive Ilona Ilonera?" Minimilian turned around slowly, his hands up and disarmed. "Ah! As lovely as I had imagined!"
"I would prefer," said Ilona, aiming her wand steadily at the spot between Minimilian's wide, innocent eyes, "that you would just shut up."
"As you wish," he murmured sweetly.
Spanky rolled his eyes, though under the hood of his cloak they could not be seen. "Shall we tie him up and carry him?"
"I don't know," said Ilona. "I think I saw a colony of red ants on the way here. Perhaps we could just stake him down beside it..."
Hearing this, Minimilian beamed with satisfaction. He seemed to take it as a personal success when his enemies turned as evil as himself.
"...but I reckon we'd better just portkey him to the nearest RMB field-office for booking."
"It's up to you, dear," said Spanky.
Ilona sighed, then with her free hand began to rummage in the pockets of her robes. She finally brought out a greasy bicycle chain, which she placed around Minimilian's neck.
"I say," the little cherub squeaked uncomfortably. "I'll be sending you my cleaning bill."
"Do," said Ilona, with an equally angelic simper. "And now: three... two... "
"Hold that thought," snapped another feminine voice.
Ilona threw down all the wands in her hand with a strangled roar. Spanky and Sir Lionel put their hands up again as half a dozen figures emerged from the shadows of the juggling oaks, which immediately resumed playing a noisy game of hackey-sack with hundreds of acorns. The woman leading this squad of guards approached Minimilian with an air of disgusted authority. Minimilian, looking as innocent as ever, lowered his eyes before her -- not in embarrassment, but in deference.
"You really must stop letting these people get the best of you," the woman said with a voice like the crack of a whip. Her red-black hair swayed down her back in a thick, tight braid. Her dark eyes flashed under upswept brows.
"I led them here, didn't I?" Minimilian shrugged. "I knew you would take control again."
Spanky and Ilona exchanged confused looks. Or rather, Ilona exchanged one with the shadows under Spanky's hood. Sir Lionel, reading her expression, knew they had expected Minimilian to be the man in charge.
The woman tied the three prisoners together and walked around them several times, eyeing them appraisingly. She didn't seem to need a wand, with seven -- make that eight, as Hugo emerged from the trees rubbing his head -- henchmen holding her prisoners at bay. Finally she said, "It's a pity we can't just kill them and throw their bodies to Audrey Four. But you know they'll have filed a mission plan with the RMB. Someone is sure to come looking for them. So what shall we do?"
"Hold them for ransom," suggested Hugo.
"Wipe their memories," suggested Minimilian.
The woman looked disgusted at the first suggestion, intrigued by the second. But she shook her head. "I'm leaning toward killing them anyway," she said. "Only, we can lay a false trail to the crash site in the next valley. Maybe scatter a few gnawed bones, make it look as though they died of crash-related injuries..."
"There will be a letter in the Daily Prophet about this," Sir Lionel blurted. "Take that woman's name, son."
"The name," said the woman, fixing Sir Lionel with a defiant stare, "which won't be any use to you, is O'Modo. Allie O'Modo. Now tell me, how can you write a letter when you're already dead?"
"The question you should ask," said Spanky, "is: How can you kill us so that it doesn't look like foul play?"
"How kind of you to redirect my thinking," said Allie O'Modo. "That's easy enough, though. I've been meaning to turn my pet garden-gnomes out into the next valley... for some exercise..."
Hugo laughed and clapped his hands. "At last," he said. "A live test!"
+++ SURVEY FOR TMQ #161 +++
Participation in The Magic Quill has gone down dramatically in the past several months. What do you think we should do? (A) Keep it going for at least ___ more chapters, and see if more readers contribute to the comments. (B) Tie up as many loose ends as possible within the next 4-5 chapters, and then bring it to an end. (C) Leave the loose ends hanging, and end it now because it's already too far gone.
Leave your response to this survey in the Comments. If you haven't left a comment before, please take the time and effort to do so -- especially if you would like to see TMQ continue. A little encouragement may fuel Robbie's creativity for a long time. And nothing would be more encouraging than knowing that the Magic Quill matters to more than 5 or 6 people!
Thursday, June 4, 2009
158. History of Magic
Contest winner: Dragonic
Runners-up: greyniffler, Linda, Rehannah, TWZRD, & Evensong
with apologies to Pamela Dean and Roald Dahl
In a hut of mud-caulked timber, in a compound full of similar huts, in a remote valley, a door opened and closed as if by itself. As a school lesson was going on in that hut, the teacher halted her lecture on magical inventions to look round at the door, but she saw nothing to explain the event. She looked narrowly at the children before her, studying them for signs that one of them was playing a joke with, say, a wand under the desk. Seven young faces looked up at her, as surprised and alarmed as she was.
"Never mind," she shrugged. She resumed pacing up and down in front of her students. "Let's check what you've learned now. Patrick, who do you think was the greatest wizard inventor?"
The youngest of the three boys flashed a crooked smile and said, "I'm after sayin' it were Bertrand the Bibulous."
The teacher composed her face to a long-suffering expression and asked, "And how did Wizard Bertrand make our world better?"
"Why, by inventing the cure for hangover, sure."
The other children fell over each other laughing. Patrick gazed steadily into the teacher's face with a look of absolute sincerity, while the latter turned her eyes toward heaven. For a few moments, no one was looking at the teacher's desk. And so no one saw a bruised, dirty hand reach up from behind the desk and pinch the shiny apple that stood there.
"I wonder if that invention really made the world a better place," the teacher said primly, as soon as the room was quiet enough.
"It does for me da," Patrick blurted, to the great delight of his friends.
"And how brave of Bertrand, to keep experimenting on himself until he hit upon the right spell," added one of the older boys. "He must have endured a lot of rough mornings..."
The children's roar of laughter just covered the muffled munching sounds behind the teacher's desk.
"Since Edward is so eager to give us his thoughts," the teacher trilled, as the class came to order again, "the next question will go to him. Who invented Floo Powder, and how was it originally used?"
Edward stammered for a few moments. Casting around for anything to say, he caught the eye of a girl on the other side of the room, who made an odd gesture with one finger pointing upward behind her head. His eyes brightened. Before the teacher could look round to see who was helping him, Edward recited: "A Lakota medicine wizard named Red Smoke is said to have compounded the first recipe for Floo Powder. Originally it was meant to make smoke signals secure from enemy spies. You would throw the powder into the flames and say someone's name. Then, until the spell ended, your smoke signals would appear in that person's fire. The idea of sending anything but smoke didn't come until the Lakota shared their secrets with a white wizard called Gorse."
"Excellent work, Edward," said the teacher, who had been too engrossed in the young man's performance to notice the soft thump her coffee mug made when the strange hand returned it, empty, to the top of her desk. "Now, Ruth, perhaps you can tell me who wrote the first witches' cookbook, and how useful it is."
The tallest girl, who happened to have signaled to Edward before, gave a pained smile. "The witch was known as Cauldron Kate, and the trouble with her book is that she doesn't quite separate the magical potions from the spells to cook food. Many of her recipes have magical side effects, like when her cabbage rolls make you grow asses' ears."
The children tittered. Ruth looked embarrassed. She seemed to resent being asked questions about domestic arts, when she cared rather more about Red Smoke and his type of wizards. The teacher took no more notice of this than of the quill and inkwell disappearing off her desk.
"Ellen," the teacher said, starling a much younger girl out of a daydream, "tell us about the witch or wizard who invented Veritaserum."
"Her name was Samirah al Haqq," said Ellen, stifling a yawn. "She was the first female Court Wizard, or rather Court Witch, of the Sultan of, er..."
"The correct pronunciation is Ur," the teacher hinted.
"Exactly," Ellen said cheerfully. "She was also the court historian, treasurer, and royal torturer. The Sultan of Ur was a bit of a cheapskate, so he liked to combine different jobs like that."
"Ellen," the teacher growled warningly as the other children giggled. The mysterious hand behind the desk took advantage of this disturbance to nick a roll of parchment.
The girl rolled her eyes. "No one would talk to her because she was a woman," she added. "It didn't look like she was going to last long in her job as royal historian, so she messed around with potion ingredients until she came up with Veritaserum, and that saved her. It also..."
"That's fine," said the teacher. "Let's move on. Laura - "
A girl about Ellen's age started nervously, knocking her inkwell off her desk. The teacher, used to this sort of thing, saved it from smashing on the floor with a levitation spell and charmed it back onto the desk. Suppressing a sigh, she continued: "Laura, what became of Gertrude the Grotesque?"
In an almost inaudible voice, Laura reported that Gertrude had invented a variety of potions and glamors to keep herself looking young and beautiful long past the usual best-by date; but that, in a moment of rare clumsiness, she had accidentally turned herself so ugly that anyone who saw her went mad. The Wizengamot had sent three blind wizards who used their exceptional senses of smell, hearing, and irony to discover Gertrude's hiding place. Once captured, she was imprisoned in a hall of mirrors, where her screams, or the screams of her ghost, could be heard from that day to this.
Laura shivered at the end of this tale. For a moment, the whole school room was so still that the stranger's hand froze in place above a pot of Floo Powder on the teacher's desk. Then a weak, nervous laugh spread through the room like ripples in a puddle, and with a quick dusty snatch the hand disappeared again.
"Matilda," the teacher barked at a small girl who was concentrating on levitating a newt out of its aquarium, using neither a wand nor a spoken spell. The girl sat up straighter and gave the teacher a look of perfect innocence. "Tell us," said the teacher, "how the modern wand was invented."
"Wizards had always used forked sticks, greenwood rods, unicorn tailhairs, and so on," said Matilda. "By themselves, they didn't really do much. The first real wand, with a dragon-heartstring core, was made by Po the Polisher, a wizard in the army of the first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang. His wand made him so deadly in battle that all the other army wizards soon wanted them. Po ended up making wands full-time, and his experiments led him to discover nine of the eleven fundamental charms of wandmaking."
"Excellent as usual, Matilda. And that leaves..." The teacher squinted up and down the row of children facing her, then snapped her fingers and said: "George!"
A boy with a dirty nose and stained fingers said, "What?" without looking up from the picture he was drawing on a loose piece of parchment.
Failing to stifle her sigh this time, the teacher gave up on getting George's undivided attention and simply said, "Tell us about an inventor, will you?"
"Tylenenkhamen," said George, without looking up.
"What about him?"
"Invented wizard medicine," George grunted. Meanwhile, he continued to scribble.
"And?"
"And his potion to cure headaches wasn't used for four thousand years because it was mixed up with a recipe for embalming fluid," the boy added. "Preserving the dead was a much bigger business in ancient Egypt than curing headaches. Healing magic had to be re-invented several times before it caught on, thanks to Healer Koscrates of Hippo. But my Great-Uncle Ambrosiaster, who was a curse-breaker for Gringotts, found Tylenenkhamen's recipe and tried it."
"How did it work?" said Edward.
"He died," shrugged George. "But you can't expect success on the first go, can you? His ancient Egyptian was lousy anyway. Recipe probably would have worked if he'd read it right..."
By this point the class had erupted in its loudest disturbance yet, groans of disgust mingling with screams of laughter. The teacher banged a petrified egg on her desk in a vain attempt to call them back to order. In all this commotion, no one noticed the door opening again and a crouched figure darting out into the compound.
Sir Lionel Niblet kept his head down and scurried from hut to hut, pausing only to make sure the coast was clear before crossing each open space. He finally reached what appeared to be a barrel of burning garbage. Opening a door set in the side of the barrel, he tossed in a handful of Floo Powder, whispering "Spanky Spankison," and thrust a tight roll of parchment after it. The letter vanished in a burst of green flames. Now, Sir Lionel thought as he ducked and weaved toward the treeline, he would just have to wait...
His progress was abruptly halted by an unexpected obstacle. He had run directly into the legs of a tall, heavy-shouldered wizard whose robes had, at first glance, blended into the foliage on the edge of the clearing.
"Here's a juicy surprise," said the man, grabbing Sir Lionel's throat in a steely grip.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #160 +++
Are you still there after Robbie inexplicably took a month off from writing "The Magic Quill"? If so, let him know & send him a word of encouragement. Robbie has been working a lot on "The Book Trolley" lately. You may see the results soon if you keep watching MuggleNet for updates. But "The Magic Quill" has a lot of life left in it, too. So, don't just lurk and read! You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. Also, introduce a friend to "The Magic Quill," and get him or her to drop a comment too! [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: How many inches long is Endora's nose?
CONTEST: Describe a number (real or imaginary) that has magical significance.
Runners-up: greyniffler, Linda, Rehannah, TWZRD, & Evensong
with apologies to Pamela Dean and Roald Dahl
In a hut of mud-caulked timber, in a compound full of similar huts, in a remote valley, a door opened and closed as if by itself. As a school lesson was going on in that hut, the teacher halted her lecture on magical inventions to look round at the door, but she saw nothing to explain the event. She looked narrowly at the children before her, studying them for signs that one of them was playing a joke with, say, a wand under the desk. Seven young faces looked up at her, as surprised and alarmed as she was.
"Never mind," she shrugged. She resumed pacing up and down in front of her students. "Let's check what you've learned now. Patrick, who do you think was the greatest wizard inventor?"
The youngest of the three boys flashed a crooked smile and said, "I'm after sayin' it were Bertrand the Bibulous."
The teacher composed her face to a long-suffering expression and asked, "And how did Wizard Bertrand make our world better?"
"Why, by inventing the cure for hangover, sure."
The other children fell over each other laughing. Patrick gazed steadily into the teacher's face with a look of absolute sincerity, while the latter turned her eyes toward heaven. For a few moments, no one was looking at the teacher's desk. And so no one saw a bruised, dirty hand reach up from behind the desk and pinch the shiny apple that stood there.
"I wonder if that invention really made the world a better place," the teacher said primly, as soon as the room was quiet enough.
"It does for me da," Patrick blurted, to the great delight of his friends.
"And how brave of Bertrand, to keep experimenting on himself until he hit upon the right spell," added one of the older boys. "He must have endured a lot of rough mornings..."
The children's roar of laughter just covered the muffled munching sounds behind the teacher's desk.
"Since Edward is so eager to give us his thoughts," the teacher trilled, as the class came to order again, "the next question will go to him. Who invented Floo Powder, and how was it originally used?"
Edward stammered for a few moments. Casting around for anything to say, he caught the eye of a girl on the other side of the room, who made an odd gesture with one finger pointing upward behind her head. His eyes brightened. Before the teacher could look round to see who was helping him, Edward recited: "A Lakota medicine wizard named Red Smoke is said to have compounded the first recipe for Floo Powder. Originally it was meant to make smoke signals secure from enemy spies. You would throw the powder into the flames and say someone's name. Then, until the spell ended, your smoke signals would appear in that person's fire. The idea of sending anything but smoke didn't come until the Lakota shared their secrets with a white wizard called Gorse."
"Excellent work, Edward," said the teacher, who had been too engrossed in the young man's performance to notice the soft thump her coffee mug made when the strange hand returned it, empty, to the top of her desk. "Now, Ruth, perhaps you can tell me who wrote the first witches' cookbook, and how useful it is."
The tallest girl, who happened to have signaled to Edward before, gave a pained smile. "The witch was known as Cauldron Kate, and the trouble with her book is that she doesn't quite separate the magical potions from the spells to cook food. Many of her recipes have magical side effects, like when her cabbage rolls make you grow asses' ears."
The children tittered. Ruth looked embarrassed. She seemed to resent being asked questions about domestic arts, when she cared rather more about Red Smoke and his type of wizards. The teacher took no more notice of this than of the quill and inkwell disappearing off her desk.
"Ellen," the teacher said, starling a much younger girl out of a daydream, "tell us about the witch or wizard who invented Veritaserum."
"Her name was Samirah al Haqq," said Ellen, stifling a yawn. "She was the first female Court Wizard, or rather Court Witch, of the Sultan of, er..."
"The correct pronunciation is Ur," the teacher hinted.
"Exactly," Ellen said cheerfully. "She was also the court historian, treasurer, and royal torturer. The Sultan of Ur was a bit of a cheapskate, so he liked to combine different jobs like that."
"Ellen," the teacher growled warningly as the other children giggled. The mysterious hand behind the desk took advantage of this disturbance to nick a roll of parchment.
The girl rolled her eyes. "No one would talk to her because she was a woman," she added. "It didn't look like she was going to last long in her job as royal historian, so she messed around with potion ingredients until she came up with Veritaserum, and that saved her. It also..."
"That's fine," said the teacher. "Let's move on. Laura - "
A girl about Ellen's age started nervously, knocking her inkwell off her desk. The teacher, used to this sort of thing, saved it from smashing on the floor with a levitation spell and charmed it back onto the desk. Suppressing a sigh, she continued: "Laura, what became of Gertrude the Grotesque?"
In an almost inaudible voice, Laura reported that Gertrude had invented a variety of potions and glamors to keep herself looking young and beautiful long past the usual best-by date; but that, in a moment of rare clumsiness, she had accidentally turned herself so ugly that anyone who saw her went mad. The Wizengamot had sent three blind wizards who used their exceptional senses of smell, hearing, and irony to discover Gertrude's hiding place. Once captured, she was imprisoned in a hall of mirrors, where her screams, or the screams of her ghost, could be heard from that day to this.
Laura shivered at the end of this tale. For a moment, the whole school room was so still that the stranger's hand froze in place above a pot of Floo Powder on the teacher's desk. Then a weak, nervous laugh spread through the room like ripples in a puddle, and with a quick dusty snatch the hand disappeared again.
"Matilda," the teacher barked at a small girl who was concentrating on levitating a newt out of its aquarium, using neither a wand nor a spoken spell. The girl sat up straighter and gave the teacher a look of perfect innocence. "Tell us," said the teacher, "how the modern wand was invented."
"Wizards had always used forked sticks, greenwood rods, unicorn tailhairs, and so on," said Matilda. "By themselves, they didn't really do much. The first real wand, with a dragon-heartstring core, was made by Po the Polisher, a wizard in the army of the first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang. His wand made him so deadly in battle that all the other army wizards soon wanted them. Po ended up making wands full-time, and his experiments led him to discover nine of the eleven fundamental charms of wandmaking."
"Excellent as usual, Matilda. And that leaves..." The teacher squinted up and down the row of children facing her, then snapped her fingers and said: "George!"
A boy with a dirty nose and stained fingers said, "What?" without looking up from the picture he was drawing on a loose piece of parchment.
Failing to stifle her sigh this time, the teacher gave up on getting George's undivided attention and simply said, "Tell us about an inventor, will you?"
"Tylenenkhamen," said George, without looking up.
"What about him?"
"Invented wizard medicine," George grunted. Meanwhile, he continued to scribble.
"And?"
"And his potion to cure headaches wasn't used for four thousand years because it was mixed up with a recipe for embalming fluid," the boy added. "Preserving the dead was a much bigger business in ancient Egypt than curing headaches. Healing magic had to be re-invented several times before it caught on, thanks to Healer Koscrates of Hippo. But my Great-Uncle Ambrosiaster, who was a curse-breaker for Gringotts, found Tylenenkhamen's recipe and tried it."
"How did it work?" said Edward.
"He died," shrugged George. "But you can't expect success on the first go, can you? His ancient Egyptian was lousy anyway. Recipe probably would have worked if he'd read it right..."
By this point the class had erupted in its loudest disturbance yet, groans of disgust mingling with screams of laughter. The teacher banged a petrified egg on her desk in a vain attempt to call them back to order. In all this commotion, no one noticed the door opening again and a crouched figure darting out into the compound.
Sir Lionel Niblet kept his head down and scurried from hut to hut, pausing only to make sure the coast was clear before crossing each open space. He finally reached what appeared to be a barrel of burning garbage. Opening a door set in the side of the barrel, he tossed in a handful of Floo Powder, whispering "Spanky Spankison," and thrust a tight roll of parchment after it. The letter vanished in a burst of green flames. Now, Sir Lionel thought as he ducked and weaved toward the treeline, he would just have to wait...
His progress was abruptly halted by an unexpected obstacle. He had run directly into the legs of a tall, heavy-shouldered wizard whose robes had, at first glance, blended into the foliage on the edge of the clearing.
"Here's a juicy surprise," said the man, grabbing Sir Lionel's throat in a steely grip.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #160 +++
Are you still there after Robbie inexplicably took a month off from writing "The Magic Quill"? If so, let him know & send him a word of encouragement. Robbie has been working a lot on "The Book Trolley" lately. You may see the results soon if you keep watching MuggleNet for updates. But "The Magic Quill" has a lot of life left in it, too. So, don't just lurk and read! You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. Also, introduce a friend to "The Magic Quill," and get him or her to drop a comment too! [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: How many inches long is Endora's nose?
CONTEST: Describe a number (real or imaginary) that has magical significance.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
154. Gnome Warfare
Contest winner: Dragonic
Runner-up: Sir Read-a-Lot
Using his wand to join the edges of the monkey skins, Sir Lionel Niblet put the finishing touches on his new all-weather cloak. It was both practical and stylish, with a warm layer of fur facing inward and a suede-like suppleness facing out. He examined it approvingly, then slipped it on. The fit was perfect. He should have been a tailor. "If I ever find my way out of this horrid valley," he thought aloud, "I'll have found my true calling, at least."
Round about his campsite were the trappings of his new life, since his broomstick had rammed into an invisible wall high above the island. The broom, still held together by a few splinters, had barely managed to slow his fall into this long, deep cut between two parallel mountain ridges. It had been a hard landing, but survivable - except his broom was completely shattered now. Without it, he had no way of scaling the sheer sides of the ravine. So he had turned his thoughts toward survival.
Uncounted weeks had passed. The stream that ran along the bottom of the ravine had provided him many suppers of fish, clams, and snails. The small animals that lived among the trees had supplied plentiful meat, pelts, and bones from which he had made fishhooks, needles, knives, and other tools. He hadn't needed weapons really; a well-aimed stunning spell had often served to bring down his prey, at least long enough for him to go to work with a bone knife. Apart from a few wild cats, who left him alone as long as he laid scraps out for them, Sir Lionel was the apex predator of this isolated valley.
When he could spare time from matters of survival, Sir Lionel had thought but briefly on the life he left behind. There was little point in regretting his loss. He hoped his friends would do well without him. He reproached himself for the foolishness of setting out on this flight through unfrequented skies without telling anyone where he was bound. He worried just a bit about the outcome of the business deal that had been at the end of his planned, but uncompleted, journey. How had it gone on without him?
But mostly, he had wondered about that invisible wall in the sky. Who had put it there? The how was obvious: by magic, of course. But the why still eluded him.
After a midday supper of roasted fowl washed down with fermented yam juice, Sir Lionel spent an hour going over his gear. He now had several coiled lengths of braided thong, slippers and gloves made of woven plant fibers, and a dozen magically-sharpened picks fashioned from large animal bones and small rocks. His supply of leaf-wrapped, salted meat and bladders of yam vodka filled a skin bag he had made a week ago. He was ready. He would begin his ascent of the eastern ridge the next morning. Perhaps this time he would make it to the top. Then, at least, he could look at what lay in the next valley, beyond the mysterious barrier that had halted his broom.
The night fell, cold and damp. Sir Lionel was glad of his new cloak. Before the sky grew pale above the eastern ridge, he put on all his gear and began his long hike up the forested foothills. The first stab of daylight found him crawling over a scrubby pile of scree. His camp, invisible amid the trees behind and below him, would have looked tiny from this distance. He rested for a few minutes, then scrambled onward.
The day passed quickly. The sun seemed to plunge suddenly behind the western ridge - though its light did not die so quickly at this height as it seemed to do from the bottom of the valley. Sir Lionel wedged himself into a cleft and settled down for the night, eating and drinking sparingly and with deliberate slowness in spite of his ravenous hunger and thirst. Stiff, painful muscles disturbed his rest throughout the night, and woke him early in the morning. He stretched himself thoroughly before resuming his climb.
The valley now yawned below him, dark and distant and threatening. Sir Lionel tried not to look down when he could help it. When he did catch a glimpse of what lay behind, he sensed that he was covering less distance today than on the day before. The top of the ridge seemed just as unreachably distant as ever. He needed to pause more often, sucking in great breaths that never seemed to satisfy his need for air. With great weariness and a growing sense of failure, he rested for a second night, this time on a wide ledge, and slept deeply for the first time in several days.
He was nearing the end of his supplies, and the end of his third day of climbing, when Sir Lionel suddenly found himself tumbling over the other side of the ridge. He might have fallen to his death if an invisible wall hadn't caught him with a bruising matter-of-factness. He leaned his weight against it, resting full-length against apparent nothingness over the vast, misty canyon before him.
Unlike the valley he had come from, this one appeared to be inhabited. At any rate, several columns of smoke rose from the dark mass of trees below.
After hours of sidling along the unseen barrier, looking for a way through it, Sir Lionel spotted a broad ledge covered in the rubble of a long-past rockslide. Fortunately, two of the larger rocks that leaned together to support much of the pile lay directly beneath the barrier. Throughout the next two days, he dug out pieces of rock. His food and drink nearly exhausted, his gloves and hands similarly shredded, he finally cleared an opening between the two large stones and crawled through it. Now he was inside the magical wall that apparently shielded this valley from the outside.
His descent went more quickly than the ascent. This was partly the result of gravity, partly of the somewhat gentler slope on this side of the ridge, and partly of necessity. Sir Lionel was literally starving, and parched into the bargain, when he reached the first stream. He immediately stripped off his cloak and plunged into the water. He drank deeply, then with some difficulty speared a fish and ate it raw, skin and all. He left only fins and bones behind as he drank again and dug for tubers.
His first night in the new valley was filled with strange and disturbing sounds. Different birds shrieked here. Somewhere not far enough away, a cat roared and a monkey screamed. A huge snake slithered by him in the darkness, ignoring him in its search for smaller prey.
Late morning found him gazing down at a surprising discovery. Below a long, waist-high wall of unmortared stone lay a broad, tree-shaded compound. Its thatched roofs and walls of mud-caulked timber held only a faint air of primitiveness. The place was well-organized, with a large central building surrounded by smaller huts, some of them suspended above the ground on stilts. Smoke rose from chimneys of every building except the ones on stilts. The ground around the huts had been cleared and swept, and an unmistakable cistern stood behind the main building, connected to the nearby river by a silvery pipe and a hand-operated pump.
This was no native village. Based the magical barrier around the valley, as well as the curious sparks that floated out of several of the chimneys, Sir Lionel knew that sorcery was involved.
Seeing no one moving about the compound, Sir Lionel lifted himself over the stone wall and hurried on tiptoe toward the nearest building. He flatted himself against it and edged around the nearest corner, searching for signs of activity.
He almost gasped aloud when he found himself looking through an unglazed window at three men who, fortunately, were not looking in his direction. Seen in profile, they seemed to be intent on something out of Sir Lionel's field of view. He shifted to the other side of the window to get a better look. Now he saw what the three men were watching.
It was a pen, fenced off by a single strand of wire. This didn't seem like much of a fence at first glance, but Sir Lionel soon noticed a few odd things about it. First, it glowed slightly with a blue radiance that made his head ache. Also, it gave off a curious hum that set his teeth on edge - until he looked away from it, that is. Then he saw, beyond it, group of ugly little gnomes, huddled together and shivering, though they grinned madly all the same. On the opposite side of the ring surrounded by that glowing, humming wire, stood another gnome - a curiously still, composed gnome. It did not seem at all inclined to giggle, dance, or pull faces. It simply studied its kinsmen as if committing their features to memory.
The image chilled Sir Lionel to the bone. This was distinctly un-gnomelike behavior. It stirred a memory in the back of his mind - the memory of a rare disease that sometimes afflicted these magical garden pests: Mad Gnome Disease. A gnome that acted like a sane, balanced person was clearly, dangerously insane. And that insanity could spread instantly from one gnome to another, should the infected gnome bite or scratch the normal one. The results could be a fast-spreading epidemic of intelligent, organized, and ferocious gnomes - gnomes who could easily turn against any wizards and witches who crossed their path, and attack them with deadly savagery.
Sir Lionel's suspicions were confirmed when the mad gnome - that is, the seemingly sane one - launched itself toward the three trembling ones, biting and scratching and yowling. A moment later, all four gnomes stood together, looking up at the three wizards with expressions of calm cunning.
The wizard on the left shivered. "That's all I need to see," he said. "One or two dozen of these blighters ought to be enough to bring the entire Wizengamot to its knees."
"I should think so," agreed the wizard on the right in a thick, middle-European accent. "Let's discuss terms. If you'll come with me, Willibald here will, er, secure the specimens while we talk."
Sir Lionel ducked around the back of the hut just in time. Moments later, two of the wizards came out of the door a few feet beyond the window. He listened to the sound of their retreating footsteps, his mind reeling at the thought of weaponized gnomes. It was the most monstrous trade in living creatures that he had heard of, notwithstanding the unforgettable scandal of Wizard Stafford-Fume and his wands made with a core of living bowtruckles. Suddenly Sir Lionel wished he had his young friend Spanky at his side, armed with two wands and a long habit of dueling practice.
"Aye, old son," Sir Lionel whispered, almost as if in prayer. "Where are you when I need you?"
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #156 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Which magical creature will we see next? (A) A wereyak. (B) A merhag. (C) A fruit troll. (D) Other _____ (write-in candidate).
CONTEST: Describe a common cliche, giving it a slight magical twist. Example: "That really takes the pumpkin pasty!" (Instead of: "That really takes the cake!")
Runner-up: Sir Read-a-Lot
Using his wand to join the edges of the monkey skins, Sir Lionel Niblet put the finishing touches on his new all-weather cloak. It was both practical and stylish, with a warm layer of fur facing inward and a suede-like suppleness facing out. He examined it approvingly, then slipped it on. The fit was perfect. He should have been a tailor. "If I ever find my way out of this horrid valley," he thought aloud, "I'll have found my true calling, at least."
Round about his campsite were the trappings of his new life, since his broomstick had rammed into an invisible wall high above the island. The broom, still held together by a few splinters, had barely managed to slow his fall into this long, deep cut between two parallel mountain ridges. It had been a hard landing, but survivable - except his broom was completely shattered now. Without it, he had no way of scaling the sheer sides of the ravine. So he had turned his thoughts toward survival.
Uncounted weeks had passed. The stream that ran along the bottom of the ravine had provided him many suppers of fish, clams, and snails. The small animals that lived among the trees had supplied plentiful meat, pelts, and bones from which he had made fishhooks, needles, knives, and other tools. He hadn't needed weapons really; a well-aimed stunning spell had often served to bring down his prey, at least long enough for him to go to work with a bone knife. Apart from a few wild cats, who left him alone as long as he laid scraps out for them, Sir Lionel was the apex predator of this isolated valley.
When he could spare time from matters of survival, Sir Lionel had thought but briefly on the life he left behind. There was little point in regretting his loss. He hoped his friends would do well without him. He reproached himself for the foolishness of setting out on this flight through unfrequented skies without telling anyone where he was bound. He worried just a bit about the outcome of the business deal that had been at the end of his planned, but uncompleted, journey. How had it gone on without him?
But mostly, he had wondered about that invisible wall in the sky. Who had put it there? The how was obvious: by magic, of course. But the why still eluded him.
After a midday supper of roasted fowl washed down with fermented yam juice, Sir Lionel spent an hour going over his gear. He now had several coiled lengths of braided thong, slippers and gloves made of woven plant fibers, and a dozen magically-sharpened picks fashioned from large animal bones and small rocks. His supply of leaf-wrapped, salted meat and bladders of yam vodka filled a skin bag he had made a week ago. He was ready. He would begin his ascent of the eastern ridge the next morning. Perhaps this time he would make it to the top. Then, at least, he could look at what lay in the next valley, beyond the mysterious barrier that had halted his broom.
The night fell, cold and damp. Sir Lionel was glad of his new cloak. Before the sky grew pale above the eastern ridge, he put on all his gear and began his long hike up the forested foothills. The first stab of daylight found him crawling over a scrubby pile of scree. His camp, invisible amid the trees behind and below him, would have looked tiny from this distance. He rested for a few minutes, then scrambled onward.
The day passed quickly. The sun seemed to plunge suddenly behind the western ridge - though its light did not die so quickly at this height as it seemed to do from the bottom of the valley. Sir Lionel wedged himself into a cleft and settled down for the night, eating and drinking sparingly and with deliberate slowness in spite of his ravenous hunger and thirst. Stiff, painful muscles disturbed his rest throughout the night, and woke him early in the morning. He stretched himself thoroughly before resuming his climb.
The valley now yawned below him, dark and distant and threatening. Sir Lionel tried not to look down when he could help it. When he did catch a glimpse of what lay behind, he sensed that he was covering less distance today than on the day before. The top of the ridge seemed just as unreachably distant as ever. He needed to pause more often, sucking in great breaths that never seemed to satisfy his need for air. With great weariness and a growing sense of failure, he rested for a second night, this time on a wide ledge, and slept deeply for the first time in several days.
He was nearing the end of his supplies, and the end of his third day of climbing, when Sir Lionel suddenly found himself tumbling over the other side of the ridge. He might have fallen to his death if an invisible wall hadn't caught him with a bruising matter-of-factness. He leaned his weight against it, resting full-length against apparent nothingness over the vast, misty canyon before him.
Unlike the valley he had come from, this one appeared to be inhabited. At any rate, several columns of smoke rose from the dark mass of trees below.
After hours of sidling along the unseen barrier, looking for a way through it, Sir Lionel spotted a broad ledge covered in the rubble of a long-past rockslide. Fortunately, two of the larger rocks that leaned together to support much of the pile lay directly beneath the barrier. Throughout the next two days, he dug out pieces of rock. His food and drink nearly exhausted, his gloves and hands similarly shredded, he finally cleared an opening between the two large stones and crawled through it. Now he was inside the magical wall that apparently shielded this valley from the outside.
His descent went more quickly than the ascent. This was partly the result of gravity, partly of the somewhat gentler slope on this side of the ridge, and partly of necessity. Sir Lionel was literally starving, and parched into the bargain, when he reached the first stream. He immediately stripped off his cloak and plunged into the water. He drank deeply, then with some difficulty speared a fish and ate it raw, skin and all. He left only fins and bones behind as he drank again and dug for tubers.
His first night in the new valley was filled with strange and disturbing sounds. Different birds shrieked here. Somewhere not far enough away, a cat roared and a monkey screamed. A huge snake slithered by him in the darkness, ignoring him in its search for smaller prey.
Late morning found him gazing down at a surprising discovery. Below a long, waist-high wall of unmortared stone lay a broad, tree-shaded compound. Its thatched roofs and walls of mud-caulked timber held only a faint air of primitiveness. The place was well-organized, with a large central building surrounded by smaller huts, some of them suspended above the ground on stilts. Smoke rose from chimneys of every building except the ones on stilts. The ground around the huts had been cleared and swept, and an unmistakable cistern stood behind the main building, connected to the nearby river by a silvery pipe and a hand-operated pump.
This was no native village. Based the magical barrier around the valley, as well as the curious sparks that floated out of several of the chimneys, Sir Lionel knew that sorcery was involved.
Seeing no one moving about the compound, Sir Lionel lifted himself over the stone wall and hurried on tiptoe toward the nearest building. He flatted himself against it and edged around the nearest corner, searching for signs of activity.
He almost gasped aloud when he found himself looking through an unglazed window at three men who, fortunately, were not looking in his direction. Seen in profile, they seemed to be intent on something out of Sir Lionel's field of view. He shifted to the other side of the window to get a better look. Now he saw what the three men were watching.
It was a pen, fenced off by a single strand of wire. This didn't seem like much of a fence at first glance, but Sir Lionel soon noticed a few odd things about it. First, it glowed slightly with a blue radiance that made his head ache. Also, it gave off a curious hum that set his teeth on edge - until he looked away from it, that is. Then he saw, beyond it, group of ugly little gnomes, huddled together and shivering, though they grinned madly all the same. On the opposite side of the ring surrounded by that glowing, humming wire, stood another gnome - a curiously still, composed gnome. It did not seem at all inclined to giggle, dance, or pull faces. It simply studied its kinsmen as if committing their features to memory.
The image chilled Sir Lionel to the bone. This was distinctly un-gnomelike behavior. It stirred a memory in the back of his mind - the memory of a rare disease that sometimes afflicted these magical garden pests: Mad Gnome Disease. A gnome that acted like a sane, balanced person was clearly, dangerously insane. And that insanity could spread instantly from one gnome to another, should the infected gnome bite or scratch the normal one. The results could be a fast-spreading epidemic of intelligent, organized, and ferocious gnomes - gnomes who could easily turn against any wizards and witches who crossed their path, and attack them with deadly savagery.
Sir Lionel's suspicions were confirmed when the mad gnome - that is, the seemingly sane one - launched itself toward the three trembling ones, biting and scratching and yowling. A moment later, all four gnomes stood together, looking up at the three wizards with expressions of calm cunning.
The wizard on the left shivered. "That's all I need to see," he said. "One or two dozen of these blighters ought to be enough to bring the entire Wizengamot to its knees."
"I should think so," agreed the wizard on the right in a thick, middle-European accent. "Let's discuss terms. If you'll come with me, Willibald here will, er, secure the specimens while we talk."
Sir Lionel ducked around the back of the hut just in time. Moments later, two of the wizards came out of the door a few feet beyond the window. He listened to the sound of their retreating footsteps, his mind reeling at the thought of weaponized gnomes. It was the most monstrous trade in living creatures that he had heard of, notwithstanding the unforgettable scandal of Wizard Stafford-Fume and his wands made with a core of living bowtruckles. Suddenly Sir Lionel wished he had his young friend Spanky at his side, armed with two wands and a long habit of dueling practice.
"Aye, old son," Sir Lionel whispered, almost as if in prayer. "Where are you when I need you?"
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #156 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Which magical creature will we see next? (A) A wereyak. (B) A merhag. (C) A fruit troll. (D) Other _____ (write-in candidate).
CONTEST: Describe a common cliche, giving it a slight magical twist. Example: "That really takes the pumpkin pasty!" (Instead of: "That really takes the cake!")
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