The Wizards of Once Read online

  “This is our only chance to save Squeezjoos’s life,” said Wish. “What if you put him on the stone for just a second or two, to take away the Witchblood Magic, but take him off very quickly again to leave him with enough Magic to fly with?”

  “Might that work?” Xar asked Caliburn.

  “Well, I can’t guarantee it,” said Caliburn. “I’ve never come across Witchblood before.”

  “But we have to be hopeful,” said Wish. “We can’t just let him die. We have to hope that this will work, and we can make something good happen even in this dark place.”

  “Help me,” said Xar to Wish. “I can’t do it on my own.”

  The five sprites and the hairy fairies formed a glowing halo above Xar’s and Wish’s head, alarmed and suspicious, Ariel spitting out words of protection like “CCVRBXTLT” and “DJERKLTITOCOLX,” and the spiky glowing letters quivered with fear and anxiety as they hovered in the air before melting away.

  Xar and Wish took deep breaths, and knelt by the stone, gently holding up Squeezjoos, tipping him so that only the Witch-stain on his chest touched the surface of the rock.

  Xar turned his face away.

  And then…

  Nothing happened.

  The poor little hairy fairy jerked a little, and was still.

  “Do you think it’s too late?” whispered Xar, for Squeezjoos’s light had gone out entirely and for one second he was like a stiff little piece of ivy lying there against the stone.

  And then, just when Xar had thought he had lost him, a very faint twinkling of light flickered from Squeezjoos’s chest and grew brighter… and brighter…

  The green slowly faded from the little sprite’s legs… from his arms… and finally from his chest, so that with a sudden whoosh! he took in air, and his eyes opened, and feebly he beat his wings…

  “He’s alive…” breathed Wish in passionate relief, as Squeezjoos buzzed gently to life.

  “Quick, take him off the stone!” said Xar.

  Wish and Xar peeled Squeezjoos off, gently but firmly, and the little hairy fairy sat in Xar’s palm, blinking, dazed, as if awaking from a coma.

  “He’s alive!” cried Xar, punching the air as the little sprite breathed very, very quietly and whispered, “I’s alive! I’s alive! I’s alive!”

  “He’s ALIVE!” smiled Xar. “Do you think he can still fly?”

  “It’s a little early to tell, Xar,” said Caliburn. “He’s going to need some time to recover.”

  Fairies are not like humans—the wildwoods are so dangerous they would have died out years ago if they did not recover quickly from illness. Bravely, Squeezjoos raised his head, unfurled his shaking wings, and launched himself unsteadily into the air.

  “He can still fly!” cried Xar. “I’VE MADE AMENDS! IT’S ALL GOING TO BE FINE!

  “You see, Caliburn, for all your gloomy, what-is-done-cannot-be-undone stuff, it is just like I said—nothing is impossible! And that was perfect timing! I am SO CLEVER, oh the brilliance of me. It was such a great idea of mine to leave him enough Magic so that he could fly…”

  “Quick, Xar!” said Bodkin. “Put your own hand on the stone now to get rid of the Witch-stain… and then we can leave this horrible place.”

  Xar sighed.

  “Come on, Xar,” urged Caliburn. “You know this is the second part of our mission. And you must have learned something from this night. All of these bad things have happened because you tried to get bad Magic from a Witch…”

  “I know, I know,” said Xar sadly. “But you have no idea how hard it is, growing up in a world of Magic, when you have no Magic of your own.”

  “It is difficult, but you have seen what the Witchblood did to Squeezjoos. That is bad Magic you have in your hand, and bad Magic will go wrong.”

  “Okay, okay,” sighed Xar. “I’ll do it.”

  Miracle of miracles, it seemed that Xar really had learned something over the course of the day.

  Xar knelt down and put his hand with the Witch-stain on it against the stone.

  It was a bizarre feeling, but it didn’t take long.

  There was an electric quivering sensation in his palm, and it stuck to the stone as if magnetically attracted to it. For the next minute, he could feel something being pulled out of him, and then the force went away, and when he lifted his hand off, there was no green stain anymore.

  Xar could not help sighing as he looked at it. For a moment he had been special, even if it was special in the wrong way. Now he was just ordinary plain old Xar again, way too old for his Magic not to have come in.

  Caliburn landed on his shoulder and said sympathetically, “You did the right thing, Xar. I’m proud of you. That was the wise, grown-up thing to do. I know it is difficult, but you have to wait patiently for your own Magic to come in, and not just leap in and try to fix things immediately.”

  “Yes, I know, but it’s so hard to do that. At least Squeezjoos is cured,” he said, to cheer himself up.

  “I IS!” whispered Squeezjoos, peering sleepily over the edge of Xar’s pocket. “But why is we still all here in thisssss creepy dungeon?”

  “Good point,” said Xar. “Let’s get out of here!”

  Wish was kneeling right beside the stone, in Xar’s way, and trying not to panic.

  “Wish? I said come on!”

  Wish did not answer him immediately. She swallowed.

  “I can’t get my hands off the stone.”

  18. Oh Dear… The Story Turns in an Unexpected Direction

  There was a nasty silence.

  “What do you mean, you can’t get your hands off the stone?” said Xar.

  “I mean they’re stuck… my hands are stuck to the stone…”

  “How is that possible???!” exclaimed Bodkin in horror.

  What had happened was this.

  Wish had been kneeling down, helping Xar hold Squeezjoos against the stone. And as she got to her feet, she stumbled clumsily, as she often did. She put both hands out, with flat palms, against the stone to steady herself.

  And she could not get them off again.

  Puzzled, she tried to pull away, but the harder she pulled, the more stuck they were.

  Now she was kneeling down once more, both hands on the stone, her forehead pressed against the cold gray surface. Her hands were stuck to the stone like glue. She tried to move her little finger, but it would not budge. A not-unpleasant, warm feeling was in her hands now, and she was beginning to feel a little sick. She was getting the oddest sensation—it was as if some compelling force from within the stone was dragging her inside out, emptying her like it was draining a bottle of wine.

  “What’s happening?” demanded Bodkin. “Why can’t she get her hands off the stone? Has something gone wrong? What does this mean?”

  “This is strange… ever so strange…” said Caliburn, extremely puzzled.

  Xar and Bodkin tried to help Wish pull her hands away, but they were stuck fast.

  All that pulling and scraping at Wish’s fingers did was make her fingers bleed, and she cried out for them to stop. The sprites could not use spelling, of course, in Sychorax’s iron dungeons. So they just buzzed around, wailing, “You have to lissten to the sstoriesss… Listen to the fairy talessss… Don’t touch the sssstone…”

  Which wasn’t very helpful, frankly, since Wish already HAD touched the stone, so it was rather late to warn her not to.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear… What’s going on?” wondered Bodkin uneasily. “There’s something weird happening, I know there is… I wish we’d never come here. Are you all right, Wish? It’s not painful, is it?”

  “No,” said Wish, “it’s not painful. I feel a bit sick, but it doesn’t hurt.”

  Wish was feeling nauseated, and confused, and scared.

  It was very claustrophobic to be stuck in a horrible cavern in a dungeon a hundred yards underground, with your hands stuck to an enormous gray stone. Wish’s imagination started playing tricks on her.

  What i
f she was stuck there forever? This was the problem with Magic objects, and why you had to be very careful about touching them. You never quite knew what the rules were.

  What if that was the moral of the fairy tales, that if you put your hands on the stone and you were the wrong kind of person, like a Warrior rather than a Magic person, you could never get them off again?

  Seven minutes passed.

  Eight minutes passed.

  “What is happening?” Wish kept repeating.

  “Nine minutes… ten minutes… What is going on?” said Caliburn, very bewildered.

  It was so hot in the room that sweat was rolling down Xar’s face in great wet tears and his shirt was soaking wet.

  Stranger still, the heat seemed to be affecting the Enchanted Spoon. He drooped on the princess’s shoulder, trying to comfort her, but almost bent double, poor spoon, as if, in sympathy with her predicament—the life was being sucked out of him as well.

  The snowcats and the sprites sensed danger, and formed a defensive circle around Xar, the sprites holding up their arms, trying, and failing, to spell and curse with such intensity that the air bristled with frustrated Magic.

  Wish was limp now, and frantic with trying not to panic. “I’m not going to be stuck here forever, am I, Caliburn?”

  “No, no,” said Caliburn, trying hard to be reassuring, “no, no, not forever… ‘Forever’ is a long word… I’m sure it’s just a little hiccup… Some small misunderstanding, and any moment now you’ll be able to get your hands off…”

  Wish’s forehead was very near the stone.

  Was it her imagination, or did the rock in front of her seem to be getting lighter? Lighter and lighter, and somehow more transparent, as if the surface of the stone was just a membrane, and she could see right into the stone itself ?

  Oh by mistletoe and oak and all things sweet and poisonous.

  As Wish looked, fascinated, mesmerized, she thought she saw an eye open somewhere in the heart of the stone…

  … and a horrible little creaking voice whispered: “Hellooooo… I’ve been waiting for you…”

  Xar stared openmouthed. “The stone seems to be talking now.”

  “It’s not the stone!” Wish gasped. “There’s something in there…”

  There was a moment of blinding, dazzling color, and as Wish’s eye adjusted…

  She was looking straight into the eye of an enormous Witch, all curled up inside the stone, legs folded up underneath itself like a large dark grasshopper.

  19. Magic Can Never Be Destroyed; It Can Only Be Hidden

  Encanzo the Enchanter had a saying that Sychorax would have done well to remember:

  “Magic can never be destroyed; it can only be hidden.”

  How very true that saying was.

  For this was the secret of the Stone-That-Takes-Away-Magic.

  It was taking away Magic for a reason.

  “What… is… that?” whispered Wish in absolute horror.

  “I,” said the horrible, terrifying, creaking voice, “am the Kingwitch…”

  “Oh eye of newt and toe of beastly frittering frog!” cursed Caliburn in horror. “Destiny has led us up the garden path! It’s the wrong kind of star-cross! It’s the universe in one of its trickiest moods! It’s fate having a VERY BAD DAY INDEED!”

  It was, indeed, the Kingwitch.

  And it looked like fate had been playing a mischievous game with them.

  You see, Wizards used to have a tradition of never writing anything down.

  The problem with that is, when the truth gets passed from mouth to ear over the course of a number of centuries, it can get deformed and fragmented along the way.

  It seemed like the sprites were right to be saying: “DO NOT TOUCH THE STONE.”

  It appeared like the fairy tales might have had a point.

  As Caliburn said, the trouble with stories is: You have to know what they mean.

  For now at last the real secret of the stone was discovered.

  Here was the truth of it.

  Many centuries ago, the Kingwitch had been defeated in the last Witch War and cast inside this stone. For hundreds of years he had been soaking up the Magic from outside, waiting, and waiting.

  Queen Sychorax thought she was bringing the Once-Magic-People to the stone of her own free will. How could she dream that she was responding to the will of the Witch-Inside-The-Stone? That inside the very heart of the iron fort, quiet inside the gray rock, there was another heart, another will, that was pulling, scheming, wishing, and wanting with such dreadful invisible force, like a long-legged spinner in the center of a great gray web?

  “It’sssawitchit’sssawitchit’ssssawitchit’ssssawitch!” shrieked the sprites and the hairy fairies, climbing up the air in their fear, sending out little clouds of black terror-smoke.

  “Give me your Magic…” whispered the Kingwitch. “Give me your Magic… GIVE ME YOUR MAGIC…”

  “There must be some mistake,” pleaded Wish, forcing herself to look at the horror inside the stone. “I’m afraid I don’t have any Magic to give you… I’m not a Wizard… I’m just a very ordinary Warrior princess. Please let me go…”

  “Oh, but you do have Magic,” replied the voice of the Kingwitch. “Trust me, I know Magic when I feel it. And the Magic that you have isn’t ordinary at all. It’s a very special kind of Magic, a Magic that I have been waiting for, for a long, long time.

  “The kind of Magic-that-works-on-iron…”

  Oh.

  My.

  Goodness.

  “GET ME OFF THIS STONE!” yelled Wish at the top of her voice.

  Pandemonium in the chamber of Magic-removal.

  Bodkin and Xar hauled at Wish’s fingers, but her hands would not budge.

  “It can’t be true, can it?” wept Wish. “I’m a Warrior! Warriors can’t be Magic! It’s impossible!”

  But there’s no such thing as impossible. Only improbable.

  And the moment that the Kingwitch had said those words, every single person in the room knew it must be true.

  It explained everything.

  It explained why Wish had been feeling a little different and peculiar lately. For the last couple of months, plenty of odd things had been happening to her. Needles wriggling to life in her hands, rugs inexplicably moving beneath her feet or curling up at the edges when she stepped on them.

  Objects she touched, slipping through her hands like water or tingling with electricity when she put her fingers on them… things that she thought she had put in one place, turning up unexpectedly in another… her hair lifting up when she met particular people or entered certain rooms, and softly wriggling itself into a bird’s nest of tangles… clothes ripping… shoes coming loose… keys going missing…

  She’d thought it was just her being forgetful, and clumsy, and absentminded, even more useless than she generally was. But…

  Wish was thirteen years old, and that was the time when a person’s Magic first came in.

  “The spoon…” whispered Bodkin to himself.

  A Warrior who was Magic!

  Inconceivable.

  But could it possibly be that the iron spoon had come alive because Wish’s weird Magic-that-works-on-iron was enchanting it?

  The character of the spoon, drooping on Wish’s shoulder—now Bodkin came to think of it—was very Wish-like.

  Kind and loyal.

  A little reckless.

  A little odd.

  How could Wish enchant something without even knowing that she was doing it?

  Because Magic is hard to control, particularly when you’re not even aware you have it.

  And that was typical too. Of course, if Wish was going to be Magic, it would be very Wish-like of her to have a Magic that was so different from other people’s.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…” flapped Caliburn. “I knew we weren’t asking the right questions! The questions we should have been asking are: Why are the Witches waking NOW? Why here? Why us? And
the answer is, they are waking because Wish’s Magic has just come in…”

  Caliburn was right. There are no coincidences… For centuries those Witches had lain asleep. But they had indeed chosen this particular moment to wake from hibernation because they sensed that Wish had come into her Magic and it was something that they needed.

  “Give me the Magic…” chanted the Kingwitch inside the stone in that same dreadful creaking, croaking voice. “Give me the Magic-that-works-on-iron…”

  “Why does he WANT it?” wept Wish, already knowing it was a question to which she didn’t want to hear the answer.

  Caliburn had worked out why.

  “He’s trying to get enough Magic to break out of the stone!!!!” screamed Caliburn. “We HAVE to get her off it!”

  “GET ME OFF THIS STONE RIGHT NOW!!!!” yelled Wish again.

  “Tiffinstorm, try to spell her off the stone!” ordered Xar. “I’ll have a go at pulling her again.”

  Tiffinstorm hissed furiously, spitting with anger and irritation. “SSSSSSSsssss!!!! Great galumphings, smelly human girl!! You’s gone mad, Master! What we need to do NOW is get out of here!!!!! Things are about to get nasty…”

  “Obey me,” said Xar sternly.

  The sprites desperately riffled through their spell bags. Invisibility, love potions, cursing spells, flying—all small-time Magic, useful for things in everyday life, but not for facing a great dark evil like a Witch. They tried every wand in their quivers, the drivers, the number fours, the number fives… but of course their Magic could not work anyway in a prison full of iron.

  The Kingwitch’s horrible creaking voice got louder and louder, filling the room with horror.

  “GIVE ME YOUR MAGIC GIVE ME YOUR MAGIC GIVE ME YOUR MAGIC…” chanted the Witch, and the louder he chanted, the more panicky Wish became.

  “How do I use this Magic to get away?” shouted Wish.

  “GIVE ME YOUR MAGIC GIVE ME YOUR MAGIC GIVE ME YOUR MAGIC…”

  “You have to WANT something really, really bad… WISH for it! SPELL IT!…” Xar replied. “And then POINT it out with your hands!”