The Evil Wizard Smallbone Page 15

  He found himself missing Tom. No, not Tom, but the little orange cat who had slept on his pillow every night.

  Apparently, Tom missed him, too, because it wasn’t long before Nick heard insistent mewing outside the door. Nick put the pillow over his head and told himself Tom would go away if he just ignored him. Eventually, the mewing stopped, but Nick didn’t fall asleep for a long time.

  As the Spring Equinox approached, the seal folk of Smallbone Cove became exercised over the question of Walking the Bounds. Opinions varied wildly. On one side, there were those who agreed with Miss Lily and Miss Rachel that the Bounds should be Walked. On the other were those, like Saul and his friends, who were willing to see the Sentries come down if it meant they could fish farther out or even leave Smallbone Cove completely. Between them were the farmers and merchants who couldn’t see the point of tromping fifteen or so miles through the mud and rain to perform a ritual nobody remembered for Sentries that weren’t even working.

  Miss Rachel didn’t have any patience with this kind of thinking. “It doesn’t matter if we remember or not. We promised we’d do it, and we will. As for the ritual, perhaps the magic will take the intention for the deed. It’s worth a try.”

  At dawn on the morning of the Equinox, all the Smallbones Lily and Miss Rachel could persuade or bully gathered in front of the white clapboard church. There weren’t many — a few farmers, like Ruth and Naomi from the Smallbone Cove Goat and Dairy Farm; shopkeepers like Bildad and Zilpah Smallbone, who ran Three Bags Full Knitting; Joshua from Kites ’N Chimes; and Zery. Also Mr. Micah, who taught grades four through seven at the Smallbone Cove School, and Eb. Ruth and Naomi had brought their daughter Sarah, who was in kindergarten. And Dinah, of course. Nothing on earth would have kept Dinah away.

  Miss Rachel was waiting for them in front of the church. To her sorrow, she wouldn’t be coming with them, her chair not having been built for cross-country wheeling. There had been a path once, all the way around the borders, but most of it was as neglected as the ritual.

  “Well,” said Lily as they all stood looking up at the steeple, where the Weathervane pointed immovably east. “Here we are.”

  “What do we do now?” Ruth asked.

  Everybody turned to Miss Rachel.

  “We sing,” she said. “There was always singing, I remember.”

  “What kind of singing?” Mr. Micah asked.

  Miss Rachel sighed. “I don’t know. I’ve thought and thought, and I’ve looked in every book I can think of, and I simply can’t remember. I was only a little child when Mam stopped going.”

  There was an awkward pause. “Anybody know any songs about the wind?” Lily asked.

  They tried “Oh, the Wind and the Rain”— or at least the two verses of it everybody knew — and “Blow the Man Down,” because Zery said it sounded aggressive, and they wanted the wind to blow Fidelou down, didn’t they?

  The Weathervane didn’t budge, even though there was a stiff wind blowing due north.

  “It’s completely broke,” Eb pointed out. “The old man never said we could fix ’em. He said we could make ’em stronger.”

  Which was true enough, but still, their total lack of success was discouraging.

  They left Miss Rachel and headed west on the paved road that looped through Smallbone Cove, past Evil Wizard Books, looming tall and dark behind its empty parking lot, and followed a muddy, rutted path to the mouth of the Stream.

  The ice had finally broken up, and the Stream was flowing again, though not with any real energy. The place where the fresh water flowed into the Reach was clogged with wood and clumps of leaves from upstream. Zery, Naomi, and Ruth waded in with their high waterproof boots to clean the debris away.

  As they moved out into the current, Dinah watched with a mixture of dread and fascination. Her nerves were screaming, Danger! Pain! Terror! But her scientist’s mind was watching to see what would happen as they got closer to the middle of the Stream. She was relieved, of course, when the bottom got too deep for wading well before the danger point. But she was still curious.

  “I suppose we should sing a song here, too?” Bildad asked when the trio was back on shore.

  They tried “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and Mr. Micah recited a Robert Louis Stevenson poem that began “Smooth it glides upon its travel, / Here a wimple, there a gleam.” Dinah thought the poem was very pretty but not remotely something that would make water want to rise up and swamp attacking enemies.

  This wasn’t going to work.

  It was clear that everybody else in the little group was feeling the same way. Some of the farmers drifted back toward town, along with Joshua and most of the shopkeepers. Those who were left plodded along the path with their heads down, not talking.

  It started to rain.

  After a long, muddy walk, they reached the county road and turned east, still following the Stream. At the Stone Bridge, Bildad and Zilpah peeled off to rest and get dry at Zilpah’s cousin’s house. Ruth was carrying Sarah, and Dinah knew they’d lose her and Naomi, too, as soon as the procession got near their farm. She wondered if everybody else would go with them.

  The Wall began where the Stream dove down under the county road and ran in a shallow curve all the way down to the shore, where it disappeared into the waters of the Reach. There was no obvious place to stop and sing. They stood by the road and argued for a bit, then decided they’d walk to the end of the Wall and sing there, stopping by the Lantern on the way.

  As they squelched along the muddy path, Lily fell back by Dinah. “Your dad and I were thinking we could have some hot chocolate at Ruth and Naomi’s before we finish the circuit. It’s a long walk and everybody’s cold and —”

  “We can’t do that,” Dinah burst out. “If you’re going to conduct an experiment, you have to complete it. It’s bad enough we don’t know what songs to sing. We can’t stop and come back when we feel like it.”

  Lily sighed. “I hear what you’re saying, sweetie, but we might have to. My feet hurt. And Sarah’s too young to be out in the cold so long.”

  They were nearly to the turnoff to the goat farm when Mr. Micah, who was walking in front with Eb, gave a yell.

  There was a gap in the Wall.

  Dinah’s stomach fell into her boots. The Wall was down! It was inconceivable — like the library burning or the Weathervane falling off the church steeple. Mr. Micah was wringing his hands, Sarah was crying, and Joshua and Zery and Naomi were trying to fill the gap with the stones tumbled below the breach. But the stones slipped from their hands or rolled out of place.

  “It’s no use,” Lily said. “We need the song. Do you think if one of us ran to Evil Wizard Books and begged, Smallbone would tell us what it is?”

  Mr. Micah, looking desperate, said he could try, but Eb’s opinion was that it would be a waste of time.

  Mr. Micah looked relieved.

  “Maybe,” Dinah said, “it doesn’t matter what we sing. Maybe we just have to really mean it.”

  Lily looked around at the group. “Anybody know a song about rocks?”

  There was a long silence broken only by the sound of rain plopping into mud, and then Sarah started to sing. She couldn’t carry a tune and she was singing more to herself than anyone else, as little kids do, but Dinah recognized the song. She’d sung it herself, playing with the other kids in the schoolyard when she was small.

  “Build the stones, build the stones,

  High, high, high.

  Pile them and stack them

  Up to the sky.”

  There was a game that went with it, involving making piles of rocks and kicking them over. One team was the wolves and one was the builders, and it all involved a lot of squealing and rolling around on the ground and getting your clothes dirty.

  “Pack them with earth

  And wedge them with moss.

  Kick the wolf in the ribs

  And show him who’s boss.”

  The little girl sang the song through once a
nd started again. Dinah joined her at “High, high, high.”

  At “Pile them and stack them,” the stones began to move, slowly and awkwardly because stones in a good stone wall aren’t really shaped for rolling. Dinah could see them trying to pile and stack themselves, but something was preventing them. She moved closer. Something dark and curved and tapered — a feather, lying on the bare earth where the Wall should be.

  By now, the adults had seen it, too. Dinah could hear them behind her, arguing about what to do, all but Mr. Micah, who was singing along.

  The thought of stepping in among all those grinding, creeping stones was terrifying. But the thought of coyotes taking over Smallbone Cove was more terrifying still. Dinah squared her shoulders and, singing, danced as close as she could, leaned over, and blew the feather into the woods. Then somebody grabbed her by the waist and lifted her out of the way as the stones rushed in to fill the gap with a thundering crash.

  “And show him who’s boss!” Sarah shrilled, and it was done.

  There was a certain amount of crying and scolding and hugging as the adults reacted to what had just happened, and then they all headed off toward the Lantern.

  “But it’s all so silly,” Ruth said. “Can you imagine the Evil Wizard Smallbone expecting grown men and women to dance around singing nursery rhymes four times a year? I can’t.”

  Dinah had been thinking about this. “But they weren’t grown men and women,” she said. “They were seals, or at least they had been not too long ago. I don’t know how turning animals into people works, but I bet there was a learning curve.”

  “Besides,” Mr. Micah said, “can you think of a better way to make sure everybody knows the words to something, whether they know how to read or not?”

  “Fine,” said Lily. “Sarah, do you know a song about fire?”

  Sarah buried her face in her mother’s shoulder.

  “Sarah,” Dinah said, “can you play Roaring Fire with me?”

  The little girl nodded.

  When they got to the Lantern Oak, the adults made a circle around the two girls, who sat cross-legged on the very rock where Nick had stood to light the Lantern a week earlier. Properly speaking, Roaring Fire was a jump-rope rhyme, but there was a clapping game that went with it, too.

  “Roaring fire, pretty light,

  How many wolves have you burnt tonight?

  One, two, three, four . . .”

  The first time, they only got to six before Sarah messed up, but by the third time, twenty wolves got incinerated, or at least singed. The flame in the Lantern leaped and flared before settling down to its usual steady glow.

  Zery cheered and hugged Lily. Eb hugged Mr. Micah.

  By the time the little procession got back to the center of town, everybody was wet and muddy and almost too tired to put one foot in front of the other. They’d had plenty of time, however, to figure out the songs for the Wind and the Stream.

  Adults and children stood in a group in front of the church, looked up at the Weathervane, and sang:

  “The wind blows south and north;

  It blows both west and east.

  Come, wind, and keep harm far from us,

  Safe from man and beast.”

  Saul, who was hanging out on the wharf, nearly bust something laughing at them.

  The Weathervane didn’t move. Sarah burst into tears again.

  “We should take her home,” Ruth said over her daughter’s head.

  “You go,” Naomi said. “I’m going back to the Stream.”

  Everybody groaned. “We were already there!” Zery exclaimed. “We cleared out all those leaves! We even sang to it!”

  Lily sighed. “We didn’t sing the right song. Micah, you game?”

  Mr. Micah nodded.

  “I’m coming, too,” Dinah announced, and then Sarah said she wanted to go with Dinah, and of course Ruth had to carry her, and Zery wasn’t about to be the only one to flake out. So they all traipsed out to the Stream, moving a lot more slowly than they had earlier, lined up along the banks, and sang:

  “The Stream runs free

  Down to the sea

  And runs out into the bay.

  It rises up high,

  It ripples down low,

  And it sweeps the pirates away.”

  The Stream gave no indication that it had heard, but Dinah didn’t care. It was the Spring Equinox, and for the first time in years, Smallbone Covers had walked the Bounds, just as they were supposed to do. The Stream ran clear, the Lantern burned steady, and — most important of all — the Wall ran from the road to the sea without a gap. And the Smallbone Covers had mended it all by themselves.

  As far as Dinah was concerned, the experiment had been a success.

  The sun was up when Nick woke. He was tired and weighed down with the feeling of vague dread he used to get on exam days. For a moment he didn’t know why, and then he remembered the apprentices and groaned.

  It didn’t improve his mood when he opened his door and found Tom curled up on the threshold, fast asleep. When he stepped over him, the little boy woke, stretched, yawned lavishly, and meowed.

  Two more days, Nick thought. I wish I was dead.

  Downstairs, the sink was full of dirty dishes. A note lay on the kitchen table, held down with a wooden spoon. Nick unfolded it and read:

  Nick got the bacon and was beating up a bowl of eggs when Hell Cat trotted in, looking perfectly at home in a pair of overalls and a shirt she’d found somewhere. Her dark hair was tied back with a red bandanna. No longing for the good old days of kitty-hood for Hell Cat, no siree.

  Leaving her to oversee breakfast, Nick put on his sou’wester and squelched out to the barn to see if he could lure Ollie into the house.

  The usual early-morning chorus of bleats and brays was replaced by munching and the occasional contented cluck. Judging by the rustling and the gentle rain of high-quality straw from above, Ollie was taking care of the chores.

  “Breakfast’s ready,” Nick called out. “Better go get some before the others scoff it all.”

  Ollie’s head peered down from the loft. “So they’re okay? Smallbone didn’t turn ’em into mice or anything?”

  “They’re fine. Hell Cat’s making bacon.” Ollie frowned, and Nick felt a pang of guilt. “Sorry, Ollie.”

  The former pig clambered down the ladder. “You bet you are! Cats can’t cook. She’ll burn it or forget to pour the grease off, sure as apples.” And he thundered out of the barn.

  Nick milked the goats, cleaned the pens, and cast the egg-gathering spell. When he got back to the kitchen, Ollie was kneeling by the fire, toasting bread on a long fork with Mutt, Tom, and Jeff gathered around him, watching eagerly. Hell Cat sat at the table, eating bacon with her bare ankles primly crossed.

  Ollie pulled the toast off the fork, pushing Jeff’s muzzle out of the way. “Eggs!” he exclaimed when he saw Nick’s basket. “Toss ’em here and I’ll scramble ’em up. Mutt and Jeff ate the old ones. They was tough anyways.”

  All his life, Nick had considered any eggs that weren’t rotten or burned good eggs. Ollie’s scrambled eggs were more than not burned. They were tender and buttery, like fluffy yellow clouds. He took another helping and wondered why Smallbone had turned anybody who could cook like that into a pig.

  While he was eating, Mutt, who had consented to sit at the table, yelped suddenly.

  Nick stared at him. He’d gone as pale as a fish’s belly and was gazing at the kitchen calendar as if he’d seen a ghost. “What?” Nick said. “It’s the first day of spring.”

  “The year,” Mutt quavered. “Is that the right year?”

  Ollie was staring, too, his mouth opening and shutting noiselessly, his wooden spoon dripping egg on the floor.

  “Golly,” said Hell Cat. “It’s the twenty-first century!”

  Nick looked from one strained face to the next. “What do you mean, it’s the twenty-first century? When else should it be?”

  There was an uncomfortab
le silence, and then Mutt said, “I ain’t got much schooling, but my ma learned me how to cipher. If that there calendar is right, I reckon it’s about two hundred and forty years since the old man turned me into a dog.”

  Nick stared at him. He looked scared but not crazy. “You don’t look it.”

  Sensing that something was wrong, Jeff came and put his chin on his former packmate’s leg. “I still feel like I’m fourteen,” Mutt said, rubbing Jeff’s ears. “But what if them two hundred and forty years creep up and jump on me all at once? Dogs don’t think about things like that.”

  Nick didn’t want to think about it, either. “You’ll get used to it,” he said uncomfortably.

  “Not sure I want to.” Mutt sighed heavily. “I wish you hadn’t turned me back.”

  “I don’t,” Hell Cat announced.

  “I don’t, either,” Ollie said. “Being a pig isn’t all that interesting. Slop is slop.”

  “Meow,” Tom said, and tried to jump up into Nick’s lap. He bumped his head on the chair. As he started to wail, Nick knew what he had to do. He didn’t know how. But if he could pull it off, it would solve half his apprentice problem. All it would take was lots of Will and Confidence. Plus the right book.

  He stood. “You guys clean up. I got something I need to do.”

  “What’s that?” Hell Cat asked suspiciously.

  “You’ll find out,” Nick said, and left.

  The bookshop looked bleak and gloomy. Nick took up his favorite position and folded his arms. “I did what you wanted,” he said. “Okay, I wanted to do it, too, and I admit I didn’t think it all the way through. Now they’re in the way and everything’s kind of a mess. Smallbone needs me to get rid of them, and Mutt wants to be a dog again, and Tom doesn’t even know he’s not a cat. So maybe you could help me turn them back?”

  There was a long silence. Nick folded his arms tighter and bit his lip. If the books were testing his patience, he’d be patient. If they were testing his Control, he’d be controlled. If they were testing his persistence, then he’d go back in the shelves and examine every title until he found what he needed. He was a wizard, and that, apparently, was what wizards did.