The Evil Wizard Smallbone Page 8

  Of course, her father had been trying to eat him at the time. But still.

  By the time Nick finished the story, he’d recovered from his post-rock daze enough to wonder what the bookstore was trying to tell him. “The Wizard Outwitted” was a dumb story. Why did the boy trust his father to save him after the old man had traded him for a sack of coins? Why didn’t the wizard know his daughter was sabotaging him? And where had he been keeping all those old apprentices?

  True, the boy’s situation and Nick’s were similar, but Nick didn’t have a father — not one he’d ever heard about, anyway — and though he wanted to get away, he certainly didn’t want Uncle Gabe coming for him. Finally, there were no suspicious flocks of pigeons or herds of horses or even piles of stones lying around that could be Smallbone’s former apprentices.

  It just didn’t add up.

  As Nick closed Fairy Tales from Many Lands, he noticed that the front cover was thicker than the back. He poked it, and it gave a little. There was something hidden inside it.

  He tore back the endpaper, uncovering a crackly yellow packet. When he touched it, his fingers tingled. He pulled back his hand, then took out the packet and unfolded it. It was a chart of some kind, crossed and recrossed with fine lines and curves drawn with brown ink. There were numbers, too, some written on the lines and some between them. It was clearly magic and important enough to hide. But what did it mean?

  The grandfather clock on the stairs chimed the half hour, impatiently, as though it had done it before. Nick jumped up and ran down to start lunch.

  The chart filled Nick’s head as he chopped cold corned beef and onions and peeled potatoes for hash. It was obvious that he was meant to have it. Maybe what the bookshop was trying to tell him, he thought as he put the potatoes on to boil, was that he was the hero of this story. Maybe E-Z Spelz was teaching him how to outwit Smallbone and rescue himself. Maybe tests were part of being a hero. Maybe the chart was the thing he needed to learn that would set him free.

  In any case, it fascinated him. He wanted — no, he needed — to know what it meant.

  That night, he stashed the chart in his bureau, under his shirts. And he cast Bow-Wowzer Meowzer on the drawer, just to make sure.

  Next morning, Nick bounced out of bed feeling ready to take on the world. He could protect himself and milk a goat, he could draw a perfect pentagram and light a candle, and under his clean shirts he had a cool secret chart he just knew would be his ticket out of Evil Wizard Books, once he learned how to use it.

  He couldn’t wait to get started.

  At breakfast, Smallbone said, “You’re looking mighty chipper.”

  Nick swallowed a mouthful of egg. “Must be left over from the rock spell,” he said blandly. “It’s mighty restful, being a rock.”

  “I didn’t do it to give you a rest. I did it to calm you down. You’ll be taking the evening chores from now on and keeping the wood box filled. I got important work in hand.” Smallbone cleaned out his pipe and put it on the mantel. “There’s a chicken in the deep freeze. You remember what I told you about roast chicken?”

  Nick didn’t, but he could look it up in The Joy of Cooking. “Yep.”

  Smallbone gave him a narrow look, whistled for the dogs, and left.

  As soon as he was gone, Nick had E-Z Spelz out of his pocket.

  The next week passed in a blur of chores and magic.

  E-Z Spelz was silent on the subject of charts with numbers, but it did start teaching him more actual spells. Some were more E-Z than others. Levitation gave him a lot of trouble, and he didn’t seem to have the knack of conjuring visions at all. But the spells having to do with water or fire or wind or stone came natural as breathing. He made little whirlpools in the animals’ water troughs and chased Hell Cat off the kitchen table with magically aimed water squirts. He learned a spell for finding lost objects and another for lifting and moving little ones, which must have been what Smallbone had used to retrieve Ollie’s jingle ball. Nick tried to use it to gather eggs. It sent the chickens into cackling hysterics, but it worked — maybe a little too well. Eggs, new and not so new, zoomed at him from the hayloft, the rafters, behind the mangers — all the hidey-holes discovered by generations of wily hens. He ducked, but they smashed into him anyway. When it was all over, he was covered with egg slime and smelled like a sulfur pit. He managed to wash off most of the stink before Smallbone came down for breakfast and covered up the rest by burning the bacon on purpose.

  Smallbone didn’t notice. Smallbone was spending every waking hour in his tower workshop, appearing only for meals, looking more than ever like a badly made scarecrow and smelling odd. Sometimes it was paint and sawdust. Sometimes it was the hot metal and ozone that was the smell of magic.

  After a few days, the chickens got used to the egg-gathering spell. It was funny to see them bobbing in the air like feathery balloons, peering underneath themselves and saying werk. Nick started using the same spell to clean the kitchen when Smallbone was out of the way. He lit the lamps with magic, too. It came so naturally that he slipped once and did it when Smallbone was in the room, but the old man was patting Mutt and didn’t notice.

  When he realized what he’d done, though, Nick went cold. If he didn’t want to get turned into a slug and salted, he was going to have to be more careful.

  A few days later, Smallbone left Evil Wizard Books after lunch, saying he’d be back for supper. When suppertime came and went, Nick, who’d made spaghetti, found himself watching out the window for the gleam of lamplight on a curling wave of snow.

  It was almost nine when Smallbone finally showed up, looking fierce and carrying a dinged-up old lantern in his hand. He eyed the set table, the simmering pot of sauce, and the spaghetti draining in the sink. “Heat up them noodles and I’ll be down directly. Better make a fresh pot of coffee, too. It’s some nippy out.”

  He disappeared with the dogs, who’d spent the evening whining and pacing by the door, bouncing joyfully around him.

  Nick set a kettle on the stove and fumed. He was just a convenience, like the stove and the hot water and the laundry that did itself. He couldn’t go anywhere: he couldn’t do anything. And the only person he had to talk to was an evil wizard.

  It was almost enough to make him wish he hadn’t run away from Beaton. But then he wouldn’t have the bookstore or the animals. And he would have Uncle Gabe.

  Still, he was getting sick of being stuck in one place all the time.

  Next morning, Smallbone came down carrying a large leather satchel.

  Nick looked up from the slightly lumpy pancakes he had sizzling on the griddle. “What’s that?”

  “Something I should have done a long time ago,” Smallbone said unhelpfully. “Hurry up with them flapjacks, Foxkin. We’re going into town again.”

  This time, they walked, with Nick carrying the satchel over his shoulder. It was heavy.

  Beyond the woodshed, a clear if somewhat icy path led eastward through the woods. Under the trees it was very quiet, except for the occasional whoosh and thud of wet snow sliding off a branch. A load landed on Nick’s head, soaking his blue watch cap and sending icy trickles down the collar of his jacket.

  Smallbone, of course, was untouched.

  The path came out at a small pond, iced over and snow covered, plunged back into the trees, crossed a bridge over a frozen creek, and fed onto the main street of Smallbone Cove. Some kids heading for the hill behind the church with sleds stared as Smallbone and Nick stalked by behind a wave of snow.

  When they reached the Mercantile, Smallbone banged on the door, right under the CLOSED sign.

  A window went up on the second floor. “Go away,” a male voice shouted.

  Smallbone banged some more.

  Zery’s head appeared at the window. “It’s Sunday morn — Oh. It’s you.”

  Smallbone stepped back and glared upward. “Tell Lily the Evil Wizard Smallbone wants to talk to her.”

  Zery disappeared and the window slamme
d shut. Nick peered through the shop window and saw Lily hurrying out of the back with her shirt buttoned cockeyed, a this-better-be-good look on her face. Behind her were Zery and a girl about Nick’s age. Nick looked away quickly. Girls made him nervous.

  Lily opened the door. “ ’Morning, Mr. Smallbone. What can I do for you?”

  Smallbone met her glare with glittering intensity. “Town Meeting. Now.”

  “Town Meeting’s not until June,” Lily said.

  “I’m calling a special one,” Smallbone said. “Get hopping.”

  Lily sighed. “You heard the evil wizard, Zery. You and Dinah start knocking on doors. I’ll take the car and hit the farms.”

  “Dinah can stay here,” Smallbone said. “I got some questions for her.”

  Dinah’s mother looked unhappy.

  “I’ll be fine,” Dinah said. Her voice was firm, like she didn’t mind being left alone with an evil wizard and his probably evil apprentice.

  “You heard the girl,” Smallbone said. “Now get going.”

  Lily and Zery got, but not before hugging Dinah and telling her they were proud of her — for what, they didn’t say. It made Nick want to roll his eyes, or maybe punch something — he wasn’t sure which.

  The door closed behind them. Dinah wound her hands together. Like most of the other Smallbones Nick had seen, she had strangely colored hair — white, in her case, with black patches that might have been dyed, if a girl who wore fluffy sweaters with cats on them was the type to dye her hair. She was short and solid, and her eyes were Smallbone Cove black. Right now, white was showing all around her irises. Clearly, she wasn’t as calm as she had sounded.

  Smallbone fixed Dinah with his spectacles. “I want to hear how you found that coyote pelt, girl, and you better not leave nothing out.”

  Dinah took a slightly shaky breath and told Smallbone how she’d walked out on the icy Stream and found a coyote pelt that had turned her into a coyote when she put it on.

  Nick listened open-mouthed, glad he wasn’t the only person outside a fairy tale ever to get turned into something he wasn’t.

  “And what did the Stream do?” asked Smallbone when she stopped talking.

  “The Stream? Nothing. It was all ice, like I said.”

  “All the way down?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, I was testing it.”

  “Hmph,” Smallbone said. “And what happened after you got turned?”

  Dinah looked at her feet. “I can’t say.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t say?”

  “I can’t, that’s all. I remember, kind of, but it’s like a dream, all feelings and smells. It’s hard to talk about.” She lifted her dark eyes. “I’m sorry. I wish I could.”

  Nick wished she could, too.

  “Well,” Smallbone said, “no use in beating a dead horse. What a jeezly mess.” He glanced at the clock over the counter. “I think I got time for a Moxie. Bring one for Foxkin, too.”

  With the expression of someone who is hoping she’s doing the right thing, Dinah took two brown glass bottles out of the cooler and brought them to Smallbone. He opened them and handed one to Nick. “Drink up.”

  Nick took a cautious sip. An intensely bitter wash reminiscent of tar and pine needles flooded his mouth and nose. His tongue felt like it had been scoured with Brillo.

  Smallbone laughed like water going down a drain. “If you could just see your face!”

  “The bitter taste comes from gentian root,” Dinah chimed in helpfully. “It’s supposed to be good for the digestion, but it hasn’t been scientifically proved.”

  Smallbone took a long swallow and smacked his lips. “Children don’t like it. I guess that tells us where you stand, eh, Foxkin?”

  Nick wiped his face on his sleeve, put the bottle to his lips, and chugged. The bubbles went up his nose and the bitterness caught at his throat, but he persisted. When the bottle was empty, he burped loudly. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess we do.”

  Dinah giggled. Nick shot her a glare in case she was laughing at him. She wasn’t; she was smiling. His ears grew hot.

  “I see folks heading for the church,” Smallbone said. “Foxkin, if you’re done showing off, it’s time to go.”

  When Nick was little, his mother used to take him with her every Sunday to St. Mary Magdalene. The last time he’d gone was more than three years ago, for the funeral, but he remembered shadowy aisles and high-backed pews, an altar with a gold cross, windows like kaleidoscopes, and the nose-tingling perfume of incense and hot candle wax.

  The Smallbone Cove church was not like that. It was a big open box. The walls were painted the cloudy green of sea glass, and the windows were made up of dozens of small panes, also faintly green, with a rippled texture that gave a wavy undersea look to the sunlight pouring through them. A dozen rows of backless benches faced a wooden stage that was set up with a piano, a beat-up lectern, and two chairs. There were no crosses anywhere, even on the steeple.

  Smallbone stalked to the stage, climbed the steps, and lowered himself into the bigger chair. It was dark and heavy, with carving on the arms and back, like the rector’s chair at St. Mary’s. Only the arms of the rector’s chair didn’t look like reclining seals, and the legs and back weren’t held up by carved seals balanced on their back flippers.

  “Pass me that satchel, Foxkin,” Smallbone snapped. “And see if you can manage to sit still.”

  The second chair was free of seals but very hard. Nick fidgeted uncomfortably as the townsfolk trickled in: Eb and the staff of the Klam Shak in stained aprons, fishermen in worn foul-weather gear, shopkeepers and farmers in oilskins and parkas. There were old folks with canes, babies in arms, toddlers in strollers, and kids of assorted ages. By the time Lily herded the last of the latecomers onto the benches, Nick had counted maybe three hundred Smallbones, all staring at the evil wizard and his apprentice.

  What chiefly struck Nick, looking at them all together like that, was how alike they were. There was something about the shape of their faces, the size of their noses, and those wide-spaced, ink-black eyes. Except for a few of the teenagers who’d dyed theirs blue and pink, everybody’s hair was brown or white or gray, blotched or streaked with black. They didn’t look quite human, and Nick found himself wondering if Smallbone had called up a town of fairies to serve him, or even demons.

  Lily walked to the front. “That’s all of them,” she told Smallbone.

  “You’d best get started, then.”

  Lily faced the townsfolk. “I call this Town Meeting to order.” Her voice was deep and resonant, a good voice for addressing a roomful of people. “All rise.”

  Benches creaked as they got to their feet.

  “Smallbones, are you all assembled?”

  “We are,” answered the townsfolk in slightly creepy unison.

  Smallbone stood, his old black coat flowing around him like a movie wizard’s robes. “Who are you?” He used the voice he used to turn boys into rocks. The little hairs rose at the back of Nick’s neck.

  “We are swimmers and fishers,” came the answer. “We are beasts and men.”

  “Where do you come from?”

  “We come from the north, from the wide beaches and the raging waves of the sea that shows no mercy.”

  “What are your rights?”

  “We have the right of freedom of the sea and the land for us and our heirs. We have the right of protection from any who would harm us or wish us harm. We have the right of long life beyond the use of our kind.”

  “What are your duties?”

  “To honor and obey our Wizard. To give him the best of our catch and our harvest. To Walk the Bounds of the township at Midsummer and Midwinter, at the Equinox of Spring and the Equinox of Autumn, and to strengthen the Sentries. To come to Town Meeting and answer the Questions.”

  Silence fell. Smallbone glared down, beard bristling, wiry hair quivering with energy, spectacles winking like baleful diamonds. The townsfolk shuffled uncomfortably.<
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  “Now we got that out of the way,” Smallbone said in his ordinary voice, “I got some real questions. You might as well sit down.”

  This was obviously not part of a usual Town Meeting. The townsfolk resumed their benches, exchanging startled glances.

  “Comfy?” Smallbone asked. “Now. When was the last time you clowns walked the Bounds?”

  The townsfolk stared at him, then looked away — at their feet, out the wavy glass windows, at the ceiling, anywhere but at Smallbone. Nick knew how they felt. Smallbone’s voice had been full of acid, as if he already knew the answer and was daring them to lie.

  A wheelchair detached itself from the end of a row and rolled down the aisle. It was propelled by an elderly woman with a white bun screwed to the back of her head, wearing a puffy down jacket like a giant pink marshmallow and a grim expression.

  “Ah, Miss Rachel,” Smallbone said.

  Miss Rachel engaged her brakes. Her glasses, Nick noted, were bigger than Smallbone’s and turned her eyes into giant pools of black. “It’s been quite some time since it was done properly. My granddaddy and his friends used to do it — at least that’s what they said they were doing. My grandmother said it was an excuse to drink and bark at the moon four times a year.”

  A woman in a plaid barn coat stood up. “I heard the fishermen back then decided there wasn’t any point traipsing around the Town Limits four times a year when the farmers could go out and check the Sentries any time. I do myself, when I think of it.” She sounded defensive.

  “And when was the last time you thought of it, Naomi?” Smallbone asked.

  The woman called Naomi looked defensive. “I went to Lantern Glade just last year!”

  “I see.” Smallbone’s voice was dry. “And was the Lantern burning bright?”

  She shrugged. “It was in the middle of the day. Everybody knows you can’t see a flame so good in the daylight.”