The Wizards of Once Read online

  The giant Crusher leaned down and gently picked up the sleeping pony in one giant hand. He smoothed the pony’s mane with one giant finger, like a human might pet a mouse, before very gently putting the pony in one of his pockets, and ve-ery slowly lumbering after Bodkin and Wish and the snowcats.

  “Don’t worry!” shouted Wish across to Bodkin as Nighteye caught up with Forestheart. “It’s going to be fine!”

  “Don’t worry?” said Bodkin sarcastically. “It’s going to be fine? So far tonight we have: broken out of Warrior fort without permission… taken an Enchanted Spoon as a pet… stolen your mother’s extremely precious and, as it turns out, exceptionally dangerous sword… let that same sword fall into Wizard hands, thus putting into peril the entire War Against the Magic… and NOW we are traveling into the heart of enemy territory on the back of a whole load of banned animals, having been kidnapped by a lunatic Wizard boy, who may or may not be about to turn into a werewolf…

  “Why would I worry?”

  Bodkin’s stomach gave a loud rumble.

  “AND we’ve missed supper. Deerburgers. My favorite.”

  Squeezjoos zipped ahead like a little streak of white lightning, screeching, “I’s the lookout! I’s the lookout! AAAAAAGHHHH! There’s a jagular! There’s a jagular!…Ohhhh… No, sorrys, my mistake, is a tree trunk. SORRYS, everybody…”

  Silence fell as they followed Xar farther and farther into the dark wilderness of the wildwoods, deeper and deeper into the unknown, where strange eyes seemed to glare from behind trees and terrifying shrieks of the nighttime screamed all around them, that could be jaguars or could be werewolves or could be worse than all of these…

  Luckily, Bodkin did not see two things that happened after they left the clearing, or he would have been even more worried than he was already.

  Firstly, the giant Crusher was captured by Sychorax’s iron Warriors.

  Wish had been right to be concerned about him. Giants are deep thinkers, but unfortunately the fact that they operate in a slower time zone puts them at a severe disadvantage when faced with much smaller enemies. Crusher just about had time to think: “W-H-A-T O-N E-A-R-T-H I-S G-O-O-I-N-G—” before the Warriors on their plunging horses exploded into the clearing and wound iron chains around and around his legs. The Warriors warned him that if he made a sound they would kill the pony, so the giant was silent as he was dragged away toward iron Warrior fort, making the treetops sway as he stumbled and blundered after the angry antlike Warriors. (What were they so CROSS about? Giants didn’t understand crossness; it seemed like such an obvious waste of time.)

  And then there was silence. But the air in the clearing seemed to chill a few degrees colder than it had been before, and the snow moved and swelled, like a white sea turning stormy. Was it that something was descending into the clearing? Had something been watching? Could it be that something was looking for the Enchanted Sword?

  Ah yes, that would have made Bodkin worry.

  But if that something was a Witch, however unlikely that may seem, Bodkin was going to need very advanced bodyguard skills indeed…

  Witches’ feet make no footprint.

  Witches’ bodies make no shadows.

  But they make the trees, the land, the moss

  a little colder as they pass.

  We’re not there, that’s just air, that glimpse of wing you saw right there

  That dying cow, that wasn’t us, so don’t you cuss, and don’t you dare

  Cross-the-sprites-and-curse-their-spite-and-make-your-hand-a-stony-fist

  You can’t punch us, we don’t exist, we’re only mist,

  And that was just the wind that hissed.

  We don’t care, and we weren’t there, and for a dare, we would never snap that chair

  And-leave-it-looking-like-it-was-perfectly-all-right-and-wait-for-someone-big-and-fat-and-old-to-put-their-lardy-fat-behind-on-it-and-SMOOSH-BANG-HA-HA-HA!-SMASH!!!!!-the-entire-thing-shatters-into-tiny-smithereens-and-then-they-land-upon-the-stony-floor-and-break-their-jaw-and-fuss-and-roar-and-cry-until-they-cry-no-more…

  And that was not the eerie sound of fairy laughter when they cried. And if they said it was, they lied.

  That dying child, that wasn’t us, so don’t you cuss and don’t you dare

  Cross-the-sprites-and-curse-their-spite-and-make-your-hand-a-stony-fist.

  You can’t punch us,

  We don’t exist,

  We’re only mist,

  And that was just the wind that hissed.

  7. Wizard Encampment

  The animals flitted through the maze of the dark forest for what seemed like hours. Wish, Xar, and Bodkin crossed the frozen river and the broken Ghost Wall that marked the end of Warrior territory and the beginning of the land of the Wizards, and eventually they reached a part of the wood that was so tangled and mangled with briars and fallen trees and vines that it was impossible to carry on.

  The moon came out from the clouds, and Xar got Ariel to point at the barbed mountain of choking vegetation in front of them. In front of Wish’s and Bodkin’s astonished eyes, the brambles and branches slid out and through and over each other as if invisible fingers were unraveling a complicated knot from a fishing line. With a creak like the bending of ancient knees, the trees swayed and bent left and right, and the vegetation flattened so that a clearing lay in front of them.

  The hairs stood up on the back of Wish’s and Bodkin’s necks, as the spines might rise on a thorny hedgehog, when they saw what lay inside the clearing. A truly gigantic circle of ancient trees, most of them giants. Yew, birch, rowan, alder, willow, ash, hawthorn, elder, apple, poplar—every species you could imagine—the most important being the oak, of course. No sign of any human habitation, but a sound of music and a smell of chimney smoke.

  Now that they were so far away from home, and so deep in enemy territory, Wish was beginning to feel very, very frightened. What if Xar held them for ransom? Xar had said he would let them go the next morning, but Xar didn’t seem very trustworthy.

  “Where’s your fort?” asked Wish shakily.

  “Underground,” said Xar.

  Imagine a camp that had been sunk underground. Each one of those gigantic trees was hollow, and drew light down into the rooms hidden underneath. Xar led them to the tree-tower that housed his room, a great ancient yew so wound around on itself that it looked as though in the tree’s youth, a giant had taken it gently by the topmost branches and twisted the trunk around in his hands as if the yew were a piece of clay. They climbed a series of ladders and platforms and in through the window of Xar’s room.

  Wish’s heart sank even further. There was no way out now. They were stuck here, surrounded by enemies. What if Xar told the other Wizards about her? What if there were Wizards worse than Xar who really could Magic you into a slow death?

  She felt a little sick.

  There was no ceiling in Xar’s room, so above them was the night sky and the stars. The floor had such huge cracks in it that you could see right down into the main hall forty feet below. “Don’t worry,” said Caliburn reassuringly to the astonished Bodkin and Wish, watching Xar strolling across a floor that seemed to be made partly of air. “The floor is held together by Magic.”

  Xar opened his rucksack and took out the Spelling Book, to find the spell about turning people into worms. It was right beside the page that told you how to turn people into cats (easy) and cats back into people (trickier).

  First, Xar thought, he would punish Looter by turning him into a worm using the Witch Magic. Then, in a dramatic climax, he would draw the sword and show everyone how he could use Magic-that-works-on-iron. And then, of course, they would all start clapping and cheering him, chanting his name, and his own father would bow down before him, saying: “Xar, I am so sorry I ever doubted you… I always knew you were something special. I know we have had our misunderstandings in the past, but you are the hero we have all been waiting for.”

  It was all going to be SO satisfactory.

>   Xar memorized the spell and slammed the book shut.

  “Come on, sprites!” said Xar briskly. “The Competition is going to start in a couple of minutes and we need to get down there so I can HUMILIATE Looter. Everyone follow me… except you, Forestheart, Nighteye, Kingcat, the bear, and Squeezjoos…”

  “Oh why does I’s have to stay behind?” said Squeezjoos.

  “Well, YOU seemed to like the Warriors so much,” said Xar pointedly, for he had been feeling a little jealous. “So you can stay here and guard them.”

  “Don’t you worry, Boss… I’S’LL protect them…”

  “I didn’t say PROTECT them, Squeezjoos, I said GUARD them; they’re enemy prisoners…”

  “But I DID’s wants to comes with you and sees you turn into a werewolf!” said Squeezjoos, very disappointed.

  “I’m sssure I can seeee a few more hairs on his armsss already,” hissed Tiffinstorm, eyes bright with malicious pleasure.

  “Oh, shut up, both of you!” snapped Xar. “I’m not going to turn into a werewolf! This is Witchblood and I’m going to use it to perform Magic!”

  “But you don’t know if it will work yet,” Caliburn pointed out. “And shouldn’t you find out what that stain is before you go in front of a whole load of other people and possibly turn into a werewolf in front of their eyes?”

  Xar looked at him as if he were completely crazy.

  “But that would mean WAITING,” Xar replied. “And the Spelling Competition is happening RIGHT NOW. Anyway, even if the Witchblood doesn’t work, I know the sword works.”

  “You’re not allowed to take swords into Spelling Competitions, Xar, let alone IRON ones,” said Caliburn.

  “And it’s our sword!” protested Wish.

  “I wish you’d stop saying that. This a Magic sword,” said Xar. “So it belongs to me, and all your gloomy, what-you-give-to-the-universe-the-universe-will-give-back-to-you stuff, Caliburn, well, all I can say is, by bringing this sword to me, the universe clearly thinks I’m pretty special…”

  “And the universe is RIGHT!” squealed Squeezjoos.

  There was no talking to Xar when he was in this kind of mood.

  “The universe is really tipping it down now,” said Caliburn gloomily as big splatters of rain came down on their shoulders.

  Downstairs in the main hall, the jubilant sound of dancing giants and happy voices could be heard. Upstairs in the little room tangled with jungle vines, swaying in the wind, rocking like a boat on the sea, a heavy drenching rain was now falling in Xar’s room.

  “Why on earth would you design a room with no ceiling?” wondered Bodkin. “It’s not very practical.”

  “Tiffinstorm!” said Xar. “Do us a weather spell before we all drown. And you’ll have to stay here to keep the spell up so the prisoners don’t get wet…”

  Tiffinstorm huffed crossly, “WhyisitalwaysME-whohastodoeverything? I wanted to see the Spelling Competition!” before sulkily looking in her wandbag and getting out a number four. She picked out a spell and batted it up into the air with the wand, and a nice little invisible umbrella of wind sprang out the end of the spell, hovering some three or four feet above them, so that the rain poured over the edges in a waterfall.

  “Oh my goodness,” marveled Wish. “That’s incredible!”

  “Don’t be impressed!” warned Bodkin. “Remember, Magic may look attractive on the outside, but it is danger, it is chaos…”

  “You have to admit, it’s extremely useful if you don’t want to get wet, though,” said Xar.

  “A ceiling works quite well too,” said Bodkin.

  Xar slammed the door and locked it.

  “He’s taken the sword with him,” said Wish, very disappointed. “We’ll just have to wait till he comes back, and then we can steal the sword off him when he’s asleep.”

  “Okay, so say we do successfully manage to steal the sword off Xar,” said Bodkin. “How do we get back to our fort? We can’t WALK back—it’s miles away.”

  “Oh dear, Xar was right. We’re prisoners!” said Wish, peering out the window into the blackness of the night. It was a long way down to the bottom of the tower, and there was absolutely no sign of the giant or the pony. “And I’m worried that poor Crusher might have been captured by my mother’s Warriors…”

  “Poor Crusher? He’s a GIANT, Wish!” said Bodkin, very shocked. “Whose side are you on?”

  With a heavy sigh, Wish turned away from the window and picked up the Spelling Book that Xar had carelessly left on the table.

  “Bodkin, you HAVE to see this book. This is unbelievable!” said Wish, forgetting her fear and her anxiety and nearly dropping the book in her excitement.

  “We really shouldn’t have anything to do with these things, Wish…” said Bodkin uneasily. “They’re Magic… We shouldn’t be looking… We shouldn’t be listening… We shouldn’t be holding them…”

  “But this book says it has six million pages in it!”

  “That’s impossible,” said Bodkin, peering over her shoulder despite himself, for Bodkin loved books and a book with six million pages in it was something he had to see.

  “Look!” said Wish. “It says it’s a complete guide to absolutely everything you need to know about your Magic world. Maps, recipes, Magic species, Wizards, Witches, dwarves, goblins, lynxes, sprites… and then there’s a breakdown of all the different types… and then there’s a section on lost words… That sounds interesting… Languages: Dwarvish, Elvish, Giantish, Doorish—what’s Doorish? I didn’t know doors spoke…”

  The book was very confusing to read because lots of the pages were falling out, and when they floated back in again they were in a different order, and whoever had written it was very disorganized and kept going off on tangents that might lead somewhere or might be dead ends.

  “And some of the spelling in this book is nearly as bad as mine!” said Wish triumphantly.

  “That’s not a good thing, Wish,” Bodkin said. “You know your mother would say there’s only ONE way to spell things, and that is the RIGHT way. Anything else is chaos… disorder… anarchy…”

  But Wish wasn’t listening.

  “Oh my goodness! Look! I’M in this book!” said Wish in astonishment, turning to a picture in the giants section. “AND Crusher! How is that possible?”

  Bodkin squinted over her shoulder. “Well, that’s just a picture of a girl, isn’t it? It doesn’t have to be you…”

  “The girl has a spoon on her head!” Wish pointed out.

  “So she does…” Bodkin sighed. “I suppose it could be you because this book is Magic…” Bodkin shivered because it was really quite an eerie thought that a book could be Magic enough to write you into it without you knowing. “Which is why we REALLY, REALLY should not be reading it…”

  “I’m only looking at it to see if it can help us escape.”

  Squeezjoos and Tiffinstorm and the snowcats were not doing a very good job of guarding Xar’s prisoners. It had been a long, tiring day, and they had all fallen asleep, so maybe they COULD escape, thought Bodkin, his heart lifting.

  Wish frowned. “Now, how did Xar make it work? He tapped on each letter on the contents page, and the pages magically turned to the right place… Bother, my spelling isn’t that good. Bodkin, could you help?”

  Bodkin leaned over Wish’s shoulder and tapped “How do you escape from a Magic tree in a Wizard’s fort and make your way through the Badwoods when you have no transport, no map, and no means of knowing where you are?” into the Spelling Book.

  However, all the answers seemed to involve some sort of specialist equipment, like flying carpets or shoes with wings, and a lot of them pointed out all the dangers of the Badwoods in horribly realistic and ghoulish detail, such as giant cats and werewolves and mushrooms with teeth, and Bodkin didn’t particularly want to be reminded of these.

  The two of them jumped nervously at an unbelievably loud noise coming from below Xar’s locked room—a noise like about twenty thunderclaps
going off at the same time, which was the sound of some of the Wizards in the main hall fighting one another.

  “Good gracious, what was that?” exclaimed Bodkin.

  Wish peered between the cracks in Xar’s walls, and she could see right down into the main hall.

  The Spelling Competition was beginning.

  8. The Spelling Competition

  This was a feast of FIRE, so bonfires leaped high in all corners of the main hall and a great leaping circle of fire marked out the spelling ring, right in the buzzing center of the rowdy banquet.

  The hall was jam-packed with Wizards of all ages and sizes; happy, sleepy giants dancing or snoozing ponderously on the edges of the room; and howling wolves, lumbering bears, and snowcats watching carefully in the shadows from the branches above, their tails swinging. Fiddles and horns danced through the air playing themselves quite independently, with no visible musician in sight.

  In one corner of the room, Encanzo the Enchanter was deep in political conversation with the other adult Wizards. Swivelli, a Wizard from a rival tribe, was arguing that the Wizards needed to fight back against the Warriors just as their ancestors had in the past. “The time has come for BATTLE,” said Swivelli, “and for a new leader—ME—to be king, rather than you, Encanzo…”

  The Young Wizards’ Spelling Competition was taking place in another corner, and Looter had been beating everybody until Xar swaggered in, followed by the bear and the wolves and the sprites zooming overhead, stealing hats and pinching noses, and generally showing off. And within two seconds:

  Ariel had zoomed underneath all the banqueting tables, tying people’s shoelaces together so that when they stood up and tried to move away, they fell face-first onto the table, hopefully into something squishy and messy like STEW.

  Timeloss turned patches of the floor into ice.