Wizard at Work (2 page)

"Shhh!" The wizard brushed his hand in front of his face to keep the frenzied bird at a safe distance.

It swooped at his head, pulling up only at the last moment with an angry screech. Then it
climbed back into the air for another pass. And then another. And another.

People watched: The wicked queen and her daughter, passersby on the street, merchants at their outdoor stands—all stopped what they were doing to stare. A street juggler, distracted, dropped one of his clubs, then tucked them all under his red-and-green satin sleeve, unwilling to compete for the attention of the rapidly growing crowd.

"Stop it!" the wizard hissed at the crow.

He rounded his shoulders and slouched down into the saddle to make himself less conspicuous, but that only made the children in the crowd point and squeal, "Look at the hunchback and his trained bird!"

The wizard put his heels to the horse's sides, but the temperamental animal whipped around and nipped at him. Moving his leg farther back, out of range of the horse's big teeth, didn't help, for the horse kept after him, circling like a dog chasing its tail—or like the crow, still repeatedly
diving at him. Finally he lifted both legs up and crossed them on top of the saddle.

The crowd clapped in polite appreciation.

The wizard pulled off his hat and swung at the crow, using the hat as a net. He almost fell off the horse. Not until his fourth try did he catch the crow. He quickly moved his hand to close off the top of the hat.

The crowd cheered. He heard someone thank the queen for sending such fine entertainment on a market-day afternoon.

Holding the violently shaking hat away from him and ignoring the outraged squawking that came from it, the wizard did his best to smile calmly and sweetly, and he bowed to the appreciative audience. He sneaked a glance at the queen. She had her eyes narrowed to thin slits and had her eyebrows lowered ominously. Under his breath, the wizard whispered, "Move, you stupid horse."

By now he had gathered a loyal following of children, a regular parade. They tracked after him
as he rode away from the castle. "Mister!" they kept insisting. "Hey, mister! What are you going to do with the bird next, mister?"

But finally, almost a mile beyond the last cottage of the town, his silence and the lack of further tricks from bird or horse got to them, and one by one the children fell away.

When the last child was out of sight, the wizard took hold of the tip of his hat and shook. The crow gave an angry squawk and shot off in the direction of the castle.

The wizard hurriedly said the spell that transformed himself into a bird.

Farmer Seymour's horse must have felt the tingle in the air that accompanies magic, for it whinnied and got that wild-eyed look it always did whenever it was seriously considering biting him. But by then the wizard was flying away toward the castle.

If I'm lucky,
he thought,
the horse will run home before I get back.

The wizard could keep a different shape for only a short while, but much sooner than that
his shoulders began to ache from all the flapping. The crow he followed seemed to sense his distress and cruelly circled the castle twice before selecting a high tower window to fly into. With his last strength, the wizard landed on the windowsill, then transformed back into his own self so quickly that he almost fell backward off the sill.

Someone in the room screamed.

The wizard clutched the window frame and half jumped, half fell into the room.

It was a bedroom, a lady's bedroom; and although the time must have been about two o'clock in the afternoon, the young lady in question was in her bed. She clutched the sheets tight up around her neck, looking ready to scream again.

"Please don't do that," the wizard begged, clapping his hands over his ears. She was a very big lady—and she had an equally big voice.

To the wizard's surprise, the lady calmed down immediately. He could see her mouth move, but to form words, not to shriek.

"Beg your pardon?" he asked, slowly uncovering his ears.

She had raised the sheet up to hide the bottommost of her several chins. "I said, 'You're the wizard, aren't you?'" She didn't wait for his answer, but held the sheet up with one hand to block her face, and with her other hand pulled off her nightcap and fluffed her dark hair. She grabbed a mirror from the nightstand, and—still under cover of the sheet—started primping.

"Please don't bother," the wizard murmured. "I'm just passing through."

As if he hadn't spoken, she explained, "I didn't realize you'd be here so fast or I'd have made some arrangements."

"You see," the wizard continued as if
she
hadn't spoken, "I was following this crow. And it flew in here—you must have noticed it?" He spotted the vile creature, sitting on one of her bedposts, glowering. "And I didn't realize this was someone's room, and I'm terribly sorry, so I'll just be leaving now."

Still ignoring the wizard's words, the lady
went on, "I was thinking something along the order of a room divider or a screen for the first meeting, until I could explain."

"You see, I'm on an important mission..."

"But I suppose this will have to do, if you'll just give me another moment..."

"I have to rescue a princess—"

She emerged from under the sheet, smiling triumphantly and wearing a crown. "There."

"Princess Rosalie," he finished.

"Yes," she said, and gave a regal bow of the head.

The wizard, with his hand on the door, froze. He looked at the lady, who was almost as round as a ball, then he looked at the door, then at the lady again. He cleared his throat. "Princess Rosalie?" he repeated in a very small voice.

Her patience with him finally cracked. "If it's a shock to you, think how I feel," she snapped.

"I beg your pardon?"

"The
spell,
Wizard, my ugly stepsister's magic spell."

"Ah!"

Princess Rosalie picked up her mirror again. "Is it really that bad?" She glanced at her reflection, then wiped a tear from her eye.

"No," the wizard hurried to say. "No, really." She was huge, but her face was actually quite lovely. Somehow, he didn't think she'd appreciate his saying so.

Princess Rosalie reached around the brass headboard and banged the edge of her mirror against the wall. "Bernard!" she called. Then, to the wizard, "If you think I'm bad, wait until you see Prince Bernard."

Before he could think what answer he could possibly give to
that,
the wizard heard a scratching sound at the door.

"If you don't mind?" The princess motioned toward the door.

Slowly, warily, the wizard opened it, and a large Saint Bernard bounded in, knocking him down.

"Prince Bernard—Wizard," the princess said by way of introduction. "Wizard—Prince Bernard."

"Friendly fellow, at least," the wizard managed to say, as the dog sat on his chest and licked his face.

Princess Rosalie started to wail. Loudly.

As though to comfort her, Prince Bernard went over and began to lick her hand, but she snatched it away. "Look at him! And he drools. And he has fleas."

Unperturbed, the dog-prince sat down, his tail thumping against the floor.

"I see your problem." The wizard got back to his feet. "You say your stepsister did this?"

"Yes." Princess Rosalie pouted. "And now she and that hateful boyfriend of hers plot with my stepmother to keep me a prisoner here."

He was about to say that countering the magic of someone who did not want his or her magic countered was just about the hardest kind of spell—but that he would do his best—when he heard voices approaching.

Princess Rosalie heard them, too. She gasped, "They're coming! Quick, hide!"

The wizard glanced about the room hurriedly,
though Prince Bernard remained calm, scratching behind an ear.

"Hurry!" the princess cried.

The wizard pulled open the door of a large armoire, but it was so jammed with dresses, shoes, and plumed hats that there was no room for him or the dog.

"Oh, for goodness' sake!" Princess Rosalie threw back the covers and made to jump out of the bed. Instead, she floated—very slowly—to the ceiling. The wizard felt his jaw drop. The princess kicked the wall in frustration and went gracefully sailing in the opposite direction.

Prince Bernard raised his head and began to howl.

"What are you doing?" the wizard asked.

"It's more of that miserable spell!" Princess Rosalie cried. "My stepsister said, 'Let my sister become big and fat and swell up like a hot-air balloon'—that's exactly what she said. And now look at me."

The door flung open and the wicked-looking queen strode in, followed by her shifty-eyed
daughter. "Rosalie, we heard you sere—" The queen's eyes narrowed at the wizard, and her thin lips pursed, and for a moment he was afraid that—should she know magic, as her elder daughter evidently did—she would put a spell on him before he had a chance to react. But then her attention snapped back to her stepdaughter, who had just bumped into the dresser and knocked off all the combs and perfumes. "Rosalie! Get down from there at once before you hurt yourself."

With all the dignity she could muster, the floating princess said, "Would
some
body please?..."

The wizard took hold of her by the ankle and pulled her back down.

"Thank you." Princess Rosalie sat on the edge of the bed and daintily rearranged her dressing gown to make sure her knees were covered, but she held on to her ruffled pillow for ballast.

"Yes," the wicked queen said, turning back to the wizard, "thank you, kind sir." She squinted at him again. "Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

"Oh," said Princess Rosalie, "no. I don't think so. This wizard just dropped by to offer to help find Prince Bernard. Didn't you, Wizard?"

The wizard looked at the ugly stepsister, who was scratching the head of the Saint Bernard—which did, as Princess Rosalie had mentioned earlier, show a tendency to drool. He looked at the wicked stepmother, who was still peering at him through narrowed eyes. It suddenly occurred to him that she was nearsighted, and that she squinted to see better. "I think," he said, "I think I need a hint before I can guess what's going on here. Are you two keeping Princess Rosalie a prisoner?"

"Poor Rosalie is the victim of a magical spell," the stepsister explained, and despite her ugly, mean-looking face, her voice was sad and full of concern.

"Not yours?"

The stepsister was too surprised to answer. Her mouth opened and closed twice, before she finally shook her head.

"Hers," the queen said. And pointed to Princess Rosalie herself.

"I think I'm getting a headache," the huge princess said. "Maybe you'd all better leave now."

"What have you been telling this man?" the queen asked, though not unkindly.

Princess Rosalie squirmed.

"You see," the stepsister said, "Francis—he's the Master Craftsman of the Wood-Carvers Guild—Francis has been sort of courting me, and he gave us this nice fat goose for dinner last week."

The wizard didn't see what that had to do with anything, but he gave her the benefit of the doubt and nodded for her to go on.

"He had gotten it from this little old lady who lives in a cottage near the town wall, and she's always claimed to be a witch, but we never took that seriously—she's always been a bit odd, but so are a lot of other people—but, anyway, she gave him the goose in payment for a chair he had made for her, and he brought it here—the goose,
not the chair—and we had it for dinner, because even though she said it was a magic goose, she says lots of things, but then after dinner we found the wishbone, and Rosalie and I decided to make a wish, so I took one end, and she took the other, and we both pulled—"

"Yes," the wizard urged, his patience beginning to wear. "And?"

"—and, it broke right down the center, so I thought that meant we'd each get our wish, but Rosalie said it meant neither of us would, and when we asked the little old lady, she said, 'That means you each get the other's wish.'"

"Ah! Switched wishes." He turned to Princess Rosalie. "Is this true?"

Again the princess squirmed, but he wouldn't stop looking at her. "Well...," she said. And still he stared. "More or less." And
still
he stared. "Yes!" she shouted.

Let my sister become big and fat and swell up like a hot-air balloon.
Rosalie had claimed that this was what her stepsister had said. It must have been what she herself had wished. She must have
added,
And let her boyfriend turn into a dog, too.
But for the moment the wizard was more curious about something else. He turned to the stepsister. "What did you wish for?"

She looked embarrassed, but explained, "Well, you see, even though Rosalie has always been very beautiful, and talented, and popular, she was sad, and she was always saying she wished for this, or she wished for that, so even though we don't get along all that well, I felt sorry for her, so I wished she'd have health and love and happiness, which I figured are the most important things in the world, and because the wish by its very nature has to be secret, and because I didn't know what she was wishing for—"

"And did you get the benefit of that wish yourself?" the wizard interrupted.

She blushed, right up to her beady little eyes. "Well, Francis—he's the Master Craftsman of the Wood-Carvers Guild—"

"Yes?"

"—Francis is leading the search party that's looking for Prince Bernard—Prince Bernard is
Rosalie's betrothed, but he disappeared all of a sudden last week just at the same time all this trouble started—and we asked the little old lady who claims to be a witch, and she says she doesn't know anything about it and can't
do
anything about it, and Francis is looking all over to find him because we're so afraid he's been hurt or lost, but I'm sure they'll find him and he'll be all right, and then after they get back, Francis has asked that he and I get married, which I'd been hoping he'd ask for a long time, and I said yes."

This was quite a mouthful, even for her, and she finally had to stop to take a breath. The wizard looked at the Saint Bernard, which was scratching itself again. Princess Rosalie made a strangled whimpering sound, and the wizard took pity on her. "Well, because it's just a wishbone spell, it'll be easy enough for me to break."