The Wizard of Rondo

by Emily Rodda

  ‘Lawks-a-daisy, it’s too late to worry about that now!’ Bertha exclaimed, suddenly more confident now that her hat was securely in place. ‘Once folk read today’s Rambler they’ll know there’s a celebrity in town. Anyway, I was obviously recognised last night – you heard all that cheering. Ah, well. That’s the price of fame, I suppose.’

  With the neatly rolled rug floating behind them, they began threading their way through the trees. They kept as far away from the field as they could, but it wasn’t always possible to avoid it completely. The sounds of the skipping game grew louder by the minute, and every now and then they would catch a glimpse of the turning rope between the trees.

  They were almost opposite the game when the chanting grew suddenly louder and more high-pitched. All of them stopped and turned to look.

  The small girl with fiery red hair was jumping the rope. She jumped with a fierce, determined air, her eyes fixed straight ahead, her mouth set in concentration. Her friends chanted excitedly.

  Dare to call the Strix!

  Show the Strix your tricks!

  Seven, eight, lock the gate …

  As the third line began, the red-haired girl spun round in a circle. She almost made it, but not quite. The rope thudded down just before she’d completed her turn and she tripped, falling to the ground with a squeal. The chant broke off in a chorus of groans.

  ‘Out,’ Mimi murmured with relief.

  ‘Still,’ said Bertha, looking worried, ‘that girl got further than anyone else. Next time she tries, she might –’

  ‘What’s “lock the gate” got to do with turning around?’ Leo asked, frowning.

  ‘The spin mimics the turning of a key,’ said Tye unexpectedly. ‘It is an old skipping trick and not too difficult, with experience.’

  She had spoken without thinking. When she became aware that everyone was looking at her in surprise, her face became expressionless. ‘Even I had a childhood, strange as that may seem to you,’ she said coldly. ‘In Old Forest, when I was young, my friends and I played similar rope-jumping games.’

  Friends who are all dead, Leo thought, swallowing the lump that had suddenly risen in his throat. An ancient forest destroyed. A whole tribe – a whole way of life – obliterated by the Blue Queen.

  How would it feel to be the last of your kind?

  Lonely – so lonely …

  Tye’s not alone though, Leo told himself. She’s got Conker and Freda and Bertha. And Hal – especially Hal. Last time we were here Tye said that he was her tribe now.

  But Tye’s past had vanished. Her people were gone forever. When Tye herself died at last, there would be no one to remember what it was to be a Terlamaine.

  Leo looked down at his boots. He didn’t want to meet Tye’s cold, golden gaze. He knew she didn’t want his pity. She’d probably be insulted by it.

  ‘Did you ever play that game, Tye?’ Mimi asked, nodding towards the clearing, where the chant had started again from the beginning.

  ‘We were not so foolish,’ Tye said harshly. ‘We had more sense, and more respect, than to chant the name of the Ancient One in mindless play. These children are soft and protected. They treat danger as a game because they have never known real danger and think they will always be safe. We in Old Forest knew better.’

  Dare to call the Strix!

  Show the Strix your tricks …

  The rolled rug nudged the backs of Leo’s knees impatiently. He was just about to suggest they move on when Woodley came into view, whirring sedately across the clearing. He called out in his squeaky voice, but the girls, intent on their game, didn’t hear him.

  Obviously outraged at being ignored, Woodley picked up speed. ‘Stop it at once – at once, I say!’ he squeaked, buzzing in circles over the heads of the skipping girls like an angry beetle.

  The girls squealed and scattered.

  Three of them, the twins and the small, red-haired girl who had snatched up the abandoned skipping rope, headed straight for the place where the companions were standing.

  ‘Move on!’ Freda said urgently.

  But it was already too late. The girls saw them, skidded to a stop, and stood staring, transfixed, at Tye.

  ‘What are you?’ the red-haired girl asked Tye curiously.

  ‘I am a Terlamaine,’ Tye said, unsmiling. ‘What are you? Other than extremely impolite.’

  The twins each took a step back, but the red-haired girl stood her ground.

  ‘I’m a girl,’ she said. ‘I’m called Skip.’

  ‘You should never tell strangers your name, little girl,’ Conker growled.

  Skip sighed in an exaggerated fashion and rolled her eyes. ‘Skip isn’t my true name,’ she said. ‘It’s only what I’m called.’

  ‘Skip,’ one of the twins whispered, tugging at her arm. ‘Let’s go!’

  ‘Yes,’ Tye said coldly. ‘Go, before your parents come looking for you. And do not use that jumping rhyme again. It is dangerous.’

  The twins giggled behind their hands, but Skip regarded Tye solemnly. ‘I got right up to “Seven, eight, lock the gate”,’ she said.

  ‘I saw you,’ said Tye. ‘You did well. But save your efforts for another game. If you play that one again it may be the last time you ever jump the rope. Tell your friends the same.’

  The twins stopped giggling. Skip bit her lip. All of them looked scared, though Leo suspected that it was not the Strix but Tye herself who frightened them.

  ‘You’re teasing,’ Skip said, rallying a little.

  Tye shook her head. ‘I am not,’ she answered softly. ‘Now, be off with you!’ She hissed and made a sudden shooing movement with the black-gloved hands.

  The three girls turned on their heels and ran, the twins screaming shrilly. Instantly Tye moved on, walking fast.

  ‘They’ll go straight to their parents and tell,’ Mimi warned.

  ‘Of course,’ Tye said. ‘And their parents, who care not at all that they risk summoning the Ancient One, will panic at the thought that they spoke to a Terlamaine.’

  ‘Triple-dyed fools!’ muttered Conker.

  Tye gave a short, bitter laugh and glided on, a shadow slipping through the green shade of the trees.

  By the time they found a clearing large enough for the rug to unroll itself and take off, there was uproar in the Snug. As they sailed over the treetops, the sounds of angry adult voices, excited children’s chatter and the anxious squeaks of Woodley drifted up to them from below.

  ‘Down, if you please,’ Tye said to the rug after only a few moments. The rug hesitated and then, with a petulant tweak of its fringe, began settling to land.

  ‘But we haven’t gone nearly far enough yet,’ Bertha protested, looking over the side. ‘We’re only just out of the Snug, and the Shoe Emporium is right in the middle of town!’

  ‘I do not propose to walk through the streets of Hobnob with you,’ Tye said calmly. ‘Tongues will soon be wagging about my presence at the Snug, and the sight of me will cause aggravation. You will be safer without me, as long as you remain together.’

  ‘Oh!’ mumbled Conker, shifting uneasily as shame and relief warred on his face. ‘Well, as you like, Tye.’

  Tye smiled wryly.

  The rug landed on a narrow road that ran beside the Snug. Trees grew thickly on the other side of the road, but they were very different from the Snug giants. They were slender, with pale trunks and whispering light green leaves. The moss and ferns that covered the ground were puddled with sunlight and striped with flickering shadows. Somewhere not far away there was the glint of water.

  Tye slid lithely from the rug and stepped into the trees. ‘Come to me at sunset, or earlier if you need me,’ she said, and melted away into the shadows.

  Chapter

  19

  Gossip in the Square

  Conker glanced up at the sun and gasped. ‘We’re late,’ he shouted, batting away the cooking pot, which was trying to climb onto his knee. ‘Rug! To the village square! On the double!’
He regretted his order to speed as soon as it was given, but he had no time to take it back. Thrilled, the rug shot up into the air, leaving everyone gasping for breath, and hurtled towards the village centre, its fringe flattened to its sides. The cooking pot rolled and shrieked. No one else could utter a word.

  In what seemed only a few seconds, the rug halted in mid-air and dropped like a stone. Even through the roaring of the wind in his ears, Leo could hear people shrieking below.

  The rug jerked to a stop just as the tips of its dangling fringe touched the cobbles. Its centre bulged violently. Freda flew upwards with a squawk, and Conker, Bertha, Leo, Mimi, the packs and the cooking pot rolled off onto the ground.

  ‘Well, have you ever seen the like?’ a woman’s scandalised voice shrieked. ‘If that’s not dangerous driving, I don’t know what is!’

  ‘Out of the sky like a thunderbolt!’ cried another voice. ‘If we’d been standing underneath it we’d have been squashed flat, Bodelia!’

  Dazed, bruised and blinking, the friends crawled to their feet. Bertha’s hat was hanging below her chin, Conker’s newly washed hair was standing on end, the cooking pot had a small dent in its side, Leo and Mimi were windblown, and everyone was smeared with dust. Even Freda, fluttering to land beside them in a small shower of loose feathers, was in disarray.

  They were right in the centre of the square, beside the sick-looking tree that Leo had noticed the night before. Several blue butterflies were dancing around the limp white flowers. On seeing the quest team, two flew quickly away.

  It doesn’t matter, Leo told himself, trying to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach. It doesn’t matter.

  Still, he looked closely at the four chattering people in front of him, and was relieved to see that none of them looked remotely like Spoiler. From their conversation they all seemed to be shopkeepers who had run out to see what the commotion was all about.

  A large, gimlet-eyed woman encased in a beaded purple dress, her steel grey hair so stiffly arranged that it looked as if she was wearing a helmet, was talking to a meek, wispy little woman in a pink-striped apron.

  ‘Scruffy-looking lot, aren’t they, Candy?’ the large woman said, glaring at Conker as he snatched up the cooking pot to stop its wailing. ‘What are they doing with a rug like that? You can see it’s valuable – look at the pattern on it! In my opinion, they’ve stolen it.’

  ‘Ooh! You’re probably right, Bodelia,’ her friend breathed. ‘We should send for Officer Begood.’ Her faded eyes grew a little misty as she said the policeman’s name. She obviously had a soft spot for him.

  Leo brushed his clothes hastily. As he did so, his elbow bumped one of the branches of the little tree and one of the drooping white flowers fell limply onto his boot. He looked down and was startled to see that it wasn’t a flower at all, but a sandwich, soggy with tomato and slightly curled at the edges. He shook it off furtively.

  ‘We are not rug thieves!’ Bertha announced in a high voice. ‘I’ll have you know we are very famous heroes, on a quest to –’ She broke off with a gasp as Conker dug her in the ribs.

  The woman called Bodelia gave a humourless snort of laughter. ‘Heroes!’ she said with the contempt Conker reserved for dots. ‘I might have known! As soon as that cloud palace appeared it was dabs to dibs there’d be heroes here next, trying to get rid of it and make a name for themselves.’

  ‘Madam, we are not –’ Conker began indignantly.

  ‘Barging around the place full of their own importance, expecting three free meals a day and all the ale they can drink,’ Bodelia went on loudly. ‘Keeping us up all night singing songs about how brave they are, then half the time getting mortally wounded and expecting us to clean up the blood.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said a gloomy man in black, looking at Conker, Freda, Bertha, Mimi and Leo in a calculating way, as if he was measuring them up for something.

  ‘Heroes!’ sneered Bodelia. ‘Do you remember that time we had a dragon, Candy? And that hero came to kill it? That knight, or whatever he called himself?’

  ‘Ooh, yes,’ breathed Candy, her eyes becoming misty again. ‘Sir Clankalot. He was so gallant!’

  ‘Gallant my big toe!’ Bodelia said rudely. ‘He ate us out of house and home, used up every tin of metal polish in the town, and in the end he never killed the dragon at all. It just flew away by itself. The cloud palace will do the same, you mark my words. All we have to do is ignore it.’

  ‘Not all heroes are useless, Bodelia,’ said a thin little man with a voice almost as squeaky as Woodley’s. ‘What about those heroes in the paper who defeated the Blue Queen the other night? The ones led by that glamorous wolf-fighting pig in the hat?’

  ‘As if first-grade heroes like that would ever come to Hobnob!’ Bodelia said resentfully. ‘We get the dregs, that’s what we get.’

  Mimi snorted with laughter.

  Bodelia’s nostrils tightened as if she smelled something bad. ‘The dregs,’ she repeated, glaring at Mimi. ‘The scum of Rondo!’

  ‘Steady,’ muttered Freda, as Conker made a strangled sound and the tips of Bertha’s ears went bright pink.

  ‘Larrikins on flying rugs, claiming to be heroes!’ Bodelia grumbled, turning her back on them. ‘Why we should put up with it, I really don’t know.’

  ‘We could send for Officer Begood,’ Candy put in hopefully.

  ‘Begood wouldn’t come back so soon,’ said the man in black. ‘He only left yesterday.’

  ‘With poor Simon Humble,’ added the thin little man.

  Bodelia pursed her lips. ‘I always said that boy would come to no good,’ she announced balefully. ‘I told Mayor Clogg so, to his face. “Your wife’s nephew,” I said, “will come to no good.” And now look at him! A mushroom, and under arrest for murder!’

  ‘Did you see how he jumped on Begood’s foot?’ the man in black said. ‘And I always thought Simon Humble wouldn’t say boo to a goose. It just goes to show, you never know about people.’

  ‘Let’s run for it,’ Freda muttered out of the side of her beak.

  But Conker shook his head. ‘We could learn something useful here,’ he whispered. ‘They’ll talk more freely among themselves.’

  ‘Well, I must say I’d never have thought that Simon was the murdering sort,’ Candy was saying breathlessly. ‘He never showed me his violent side anyway, though I must say he drove me wild begging for free lollipops whenever he came to town. He never seemed to have any money, poor chap. I told him he should ask Wizard Bing for more pay, but he said he’d be too scared to do that.’

  ‘Every worm can turn,’ Bodelia said darkly.

  ‘If you ask me, Humble did us all a favour,’ the man in black declared, picking a sandwich from the tree and munching it gloomily. ‘Bats Bing was nothing but trouble. Hobnob is well rid of him.’

  ‘Oh, Master Sadd, that’s a terrible thing to say!’ Candy gasped, her eyes sparkling with pleasurable horror.

  ‘It’s true, though,’ the man retorted. ‘And well you know it, Mistress Sweet, after what Bats did to you with that super chewy toffee he invented. How long were your jaws stuck together when you tried it?’

  ‘Three days,’ said Candy Sweet ruefully. ‘I had to eat and drink through a straw. He wouldn’t give back the chocolate I’d traded him for that toffee, either.’

  He’d probably already eaten it,’ said Bodelia. ‘He was a chocolate addict, in my opinion. You should have sued him for everything he had.’

  ‘He didn’t have much,’ Candy murmured. ‘He was very slow in paying his bills.’

  Everyone groaned and nodded.

  ‘You should never have let him have an account, Candy,’ Bodelia said. ‘I’ve told you time and again you should never give credit.’

  ‘But you let Count Éclair take that silver trinket box without paying for it, Bodelia,’ Candy protested feebly.

  ‘Expensive antiques are rather a different matter from bars of chocolate, my dear,’ Bodelia said with a patronising smile. ‘And cust
omers of noble birth are very different from broken-down wizards. Count Éclair’s bill will be settled by messenger in due course – that’s the way the gentry manage such things.’

  ‘Bing owed you money too, didn’t he, Stitch?’ said Master Sadd, turning to the thin little man. ‘He never did pay for that new cloak you made him.’

  ‘No, he did not!’ squeaked Stitch. ‘He’d insisted on best-quality double-sided velvet, too. I had to order it in specially.’

  ‘Bing said that cloak fell to pieces the first time he wore it,’ Bodelia told Candy in a loud whisper. ‘He had to go back to wearing his old cloak – you know how he never went anywhere without his cloak and hat – and he said he had no intention of paying for shoddy workmanship.’

  Stitch glowered at her. ‘There was nothing wrong with that cloak when I delivered it,’ he said. ‘Simon told me that Bing dipped it in a dirt-repellent rinse he’d invented and all the thread dissolved.’

  ‘Well, you won’t get your money now,’ said Master Sadd with a mournful sigh. ‘And neither will Mistress Sweet. Bing’s gone for good. I only wish Humble hadn’t hidden the body so well. I’ve got my living to make, and what’s the use of digging a grave if there’s no one to put in it?’

  ‘I don’t think Bing is dead at all,’ Stitch said stoutly. ‘He was working on some mysterious new invention, you know, just before he disappeared. Simon told me so, the last time I saw him, though he wouldn’t say what the invention was, or what it was supposed to do.’

  ‘Aha!’ hissed Conker, digging Leo painfully in the ribs. ‘An invention! A transforming invention, or I’m a mushroom!’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ snapped Freda.

  ‘Simon wouldn’t tell me what the invention was, either,’ said Candy with a sigh. ‘He just kept dropping hints. He was so excited to have a big secret, poor boy. It made him feel important.’

  ‘Well,’ said the little tailor, ‘we all know how Bing’s inventions always turn out. My theory is that he transformed poor Simon with this new one – by accident, probably – and just panicked and took to his heels.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Bodelia said scornfully. ‘Bing wouldn’t have run away. He’s always thought he had the right to do anything he liked.’