The Wicked Wand (9 page)

PATCH OF TAR

What happened? The wand turned me into a patch of tar. Did I know so such? I did not. I existed as an empty mind suspended in inky silence. Everything all that happened while I was tar I learned later from Kar. When you are an empty mind suspended in inky silence, time has no meaning. There's no ago and no to be. There's only an empty now, a silent black empty now.

Though I was unaware of it, I was a puddle of tar on the floor of the edible cottage. My crystal ball glowed yellow danger, clearly so such a warning to be aware of the wand's mischievous tricks. Too late to help me. Though I was unaware of it, the wand, after turning me to tar, apparently somehow stole from my tarry puddle self the simple gold ring which was one of the three that I wore on my right thumb. Why that ring? Why not another? The mischievous wand had through some hidden means acquired knowledge of the various powers possessed by my rings. The simple gold ring boasted travel-over-water power! The wand knew! The wand took it! Though I was unaware of it, the wand abandoned me and fled toward Skrabble.

Meanwhile, though I was unaware of it, Kar raced over the Blue Hills on her way to the oasis. She did not return to Fan Wa's Island to participate as Queen Jebb in a Pie Rumpus. No. There had never been a so such Pie Rumpus. Instead, she searched for the waterwizard, Briny Brook. How fine it is that Kar truly doubted the wand's so such very insistence that all of its mischief had drained away. I was a puffed up lackwit. Kar was a most perceptive jrabe jroon. My friend jrabe jroon from ever! My Kar.

Though I was unaware of it, she zoomed straight to the blue dunes and discovered the oasis. She shifted to her jrabe form Rakara and hovered upside down above the pool, sensing for the waterwizard's presence. Sharply she felt it and summoned him up with a chant. He appeared, rising to break the pond's surface.

Though I was unaware of it, he said, “Who summons me? A jrabe? What jrabe be ye?”

“I be Rakara and others, a shifter of shapes so said,” replied Kar. “The new Harick has collected the wand. I fear its mischief. She has no Golden Shoe.”

“What say ye? Shoeless, she has freed the wand? The new Harick? Be she foolish?” grumbled Briny Brook.

“No!” protested Kar. “She be trusting! The wand promised her its mischief was gone. She trusts! I don't!”

“Ye be sensible then, Rakara, the jrabe. Wait a ripple. I'll fetch my pouchbag. Then ye must lead me to her,” said Briny Brook.

Though I was unaware of it, Kar, as Rakara, and Briny Brook were soon on their way to Danken Wood. They crossed the Greenwilla River and traversed the Charborr Forest and traveled nearly halfway across the Woods Beyond the Wood before the sun began to sink and they were abruptly turned away from their chosen course. What turned ‘em? Booming noises and explosions of color erupting far off to the south in the skies above Skrabble. Evidence. Evidence that the wand, free and untouched, had developed complete control of its bolt magic. Such it had cleverly left out of its tale told to Kar and me on the rocky island.

Though I was unaware of it, Briny Brook sent Kar on ahead to the cottage while he took off in pursuit of what he surmised was the wand. He recognized wand-like mischief when he saw it. Kar agreed to obey him and hurried to the cottage. I don't know why she scraped me from the floor and deposited me in the cauldron. Though I was unaware of it, she shifted to bendo dreen Karro of Thorns and said, “Don't worry, Bek. I found Briny Brook. He's out there capturing the wand. He'll be here soon to unspell you.”

THE WAND CAPTURED

Though Kar, pacing the floor, and I, pooled in the cauldron, were unaware of it, Briny Brook engaged in wily wizard pursuit of the wand. The details I write now were learned later from the waterwizard himself.

Firstly thus, Briny Brook dusted his beard for double speed and raced for the night sky above Skrabble, filled as it was with exploding orbs sprinkling colored glitter to fall like snow. Over barren slabs, hills of scarp, and thrusts of craggy cliffs he went. His ice blue gaze scanned without success ink black shadows in rocky chasms. He settled down onto a great boulder and quickly opened his pouchbag. He snatched the bottle he needed and pulled its stopper. He tilted the bottle above his head and allowed two glow blue drops to fall from it, one into each ice blue eye. He blinked the drops home, and his eyes blazed beams to light up the landscape. He swept ‘em across the face of a cliff and spied the wand spinning madly in the mouth of a cave, a cave Briny Brook knew very well. It was the entrance to the cavern of the skrabblers. When the beams of his eyes hit the wand, it flipped away out of view, retreating into the cavern. Briny Brook sensed mischief, and flung up his hands just in time to deflect it. The invisible tar spell was turned aside. It crashed on a scarp hill and hissed away in mist.

“So ye would turn me into tar, would ye?” growled Briny Brook.

He took from his pouchbag a small gray pebble, the plainest of his pouchbag possessions. How homely it seems, sitting as it does among the bright colors of his bottles and amulets. Kar and I saw it. He held it in his hand as he told to us this tale. Homely it is, and yet, with the proper chant it makes a most magnificent magnet of magic. He told us he popped it into his mouth and held it under his tongue. He sped to the opening at the base of the cliff. In he went, and the cavern opened before him.

“Oh, what have ye done, foolish wand?” he gasped.

Such and so often in that cavern he had visited the great mounds of animated rocks, the skrabblers. They gathered there daily for discussion after spending the nights studying stars. The cavern should have been bathed in the golden glow of Sharumin, Coil of Gold, the legendary underground golden river which passes beneath the mountains of Skrabble. There was no golden glow.

“I be glad that it be night and that the skrabblers be not here to see this,” muttered Briny Brook.

What was it that Briny Brook did not want the skrabblers to see? Sharumin, Coil of Gold, a glorious part of many a Gwer drollek story, had been spelled by the wand to a river of tar, a flow of sludge. What was it that Briny Brook was able to do about so such a major mischief? He took the gray pebble from under his tongue and held it high between the thumb and the forefinger of his right hand.

“LOCK!” he shouted.

What happened then? Many things. One, the bright magic beams of his eyes were instantly doused. Two, Sharumin, Coil of Gold, danced free and ran clear, sparkling gold again. Three, the wand clattered to the apron of rock from where it had been hiding, hovering in a fissure in the far cavern wall.

“There ye be, mischievous wand,” said Briny Brook. “What? Ye say nothing? The jrabe jroon told me that ye fairly couldn't shut off the flow when ye spilled your lies on Vault Island. Well, I can say to ye that there be nothing for ye to say. Even if there were something to say, ye could not say it. Feeling glacier bound, be ye? Trapped? Well, I'll tell ye why. This little gray pebble here has pulled from ye your magic. Mine, too. True. A most powerful talisman. Yet I have legs to walk to ye and hands to pick ye up. No magic required. And yes, see here? I have retrieved the Golden Shoe!”

With the wand secure in his left hand, Briny Brook poked his right foot out from under his robe. The Golden Shoe glinted in the glow of the river.

“And, oh yes, to be sure, as long as I hold this little gray pebble, I retain the sea storm power of a single magic word. What word? UNLOCK!”

The wand quivered, its bolt magic surging and dancing within it, elusive, controlled by the Golden Shoe on Briny Brook's foot. The waterwizard floated smiling out of the cave, the restored beams of his ice blue eyes lighting the night. He headed north for the Danken Wood.

BRINY BROOK INSTRUCTS ME

The wand whined wooden pleas of protest all the way to the edible cottage. Such and so occurred according to Briny Brook. Kar added she had heard the last and grumpiest of the protests when the waterwizard triumphantly entered the cottage. As for me, I heard nothing, suspended as I was in inky silence. The journey back from the so said inky silence was for me a strangeness of fuddlement beyond imagining. First, voices called from beyond the edges of distance. Echo tunes blurbed, unrecognizable, pushing through sticky black thickness. A formlessness of droning sound gathered around, behind, over, under. Was I me?

“Bek ... Golden Shoe ... wand ... waterwizard ... Bek, Bek, Bek!”

I blinked my eyes and sat up. I still felt gummy and so such sticky around the edges. I stared at my lavender hands. Harick. I was Harick.

“This be yours, I believe.”

I blinked my eyes, and the waterwizard swam into focus. White robe sprinkled with black moons and stars, cool ice blue eyes, fiery orange skin, long red flow of beard, I knew him at once. He held out to me the simple gold band. I flicked my eyes to my thumb where the ring should have been resting snugly secure above the simple silver and the simple lattice gold and silver weave rings. My mind yet blank, I watched while Briny Brook placed the ring in its proper place on the tip of my thumb.

“Oh, hah, I see a strange eddy. I see the problem,” said Briny Brook.

He dropped my right hand and grasped my left, lifting it up to study it closer. I was limp, without resistance. My mind had not yet gathered more than a few shavings of wit.

“What problem?” asked Kar, stepping nearer.

“The old Harick, the Babba Ja, was famously forgetful. That be why the wand so often was free to work its mischief,” said Briny Brook. “She forgot to wear the Golden Shoe. She forgot to turn the control ring under. She ...”

“Control ring? What control ring?” interrupted Kar.

I retrieved enough sense to be grateful to Kar for asking the questions my fuddled self couldn't. I looked at my lavender left hand held in Briny Brook's fiery orange right hand. He tapped with his thumb the ring at the base of my little finger. It was the tiny black pearl on a band of overlapping Dragon scales, gold-leafed with veins. It was the lone ring of my twenty-two whose powers were almost unknown to me.

“This one. The black pearl. Did the old Harick not tell ye to wear it with the pearl turned under?” Briny Brook asked me.

Mutely, I shook my head no.

“Forgetful. I myself whispered it to her when I brought her the Golden Shoe. Black pearl under, the wand be powerless to move or make magic on its own. Wear this ring always with the pearl turned under. Turn it up only when ye wear the Golden Shoe and desire to use the bolt magic. Be that not the clearest simplicity? Why the old Harick could not remember be shrouded in mist to me. Ye be new and young. Can ye remember?” grumbled Briny Brook, turning the ring on my little finger until the black pearl was under.

“Yoss,” I said.

He stood the wand in the corner near the cauldron. It leaned there motionless, silent. It hadn't made a wiggle or a hum since I'd blinked back from tar. Kar and I both watched it warily. The waterwizard stepped out of the Golden Shoe and nudged it from under his robe toward me.

“Golden Shoe!” Kar and I gasped in unison.

“So it be. I found it in the Greenwilla bar years ago and kept it safe from Babba Ja Harick. Too much temptation.

Now ye have it as ye should. The black pearl be turned as it should. Complete control of the wand, in or out of your grasp, be yours. It will not speak unless ye wear the Golden Shoe and turn the pearl up. It will not move unless ye wear the Golden Shoe and turn the pearl up. It will not spell unless ye wear the Golden Shoe and so command, pearl turned up. I do believe that ye will remember now that ye have suffered a dousing of the wand's mischief,” said Briny Brook. He turned and addressed the wand, “If not, there always be a fine Vault Island waiting for a companion.”

Happy content, we all shared windowsill brittle and cookie shingle snacks while we traded our tales until dawn. From time to time, I glanced at the motionless wand. My powers were complete.

TIME TO REST

“Well, Bek, there he goes. Now we've met Briny Brook.”

“Yoss, and we ... we have the ... the lost ... story of the Folding Glue! No ... Golden Shoe! Yoss! That's it!”

“More than that. You have the Shoe. Are you going to keep it there next to the crystal ball?”

“Yoss. I ... bike ... trike ... like! ... to cook at it ... look at it. Kar, are you as fired ... tired as I am?”

“How tired are you?”

“Creaky tired.”

“Me, too. How long have we been awake?”

“Too wrong ... long. I'll conjure us cushions to weep on ... sleep on.”

“Not for me. I'll coil myself as beddysnake under the table. I'll be the first anything ever to do so such. Show me the black pearl ring again. Good. Leave it that way forever. I still don't trust the wand.”

“No need to bust ... trust it. I cow ... vow not to bruise ... lose ... command. I won't forget as did ... as did the ... the ...”

“Babba Ja Harick. I know. I see. Nice cushion. Go ahead. Curl down. You can barely keep your eyes open, Bek. Ahh ... And the crysssstal ball ...”

“It ... snows ... glows ... safely ... safely blue.”

“Ssssafely ... And the wand ...”

“Bare ... there ... in the corner ... where it ... it will ... rest ... until ...”

“You sssstand firm in command, sssshoe and pearl, and venture to casssst a sssspell.”

“Yoss. I ... am ... the ... Harick ...”

“Your ... powers ... are ... complete. Resssst ... Ahh ... resssst.”

“............”

“.............”

THE END

 

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