The Wizard of Rondo

by Emily Rodda

  ‘That was just his little joke,’ Cluck put in hastily as Bertha looked shocked. ‘Wizard Bing always joked when he was happy, and he was very happy that morning. He looked splendid, too! He was wearing his best robe, and his tall hat, and he was carrying a fine new wand striped in four different colours.’

  ‘Ha!’ Conker hissed, digging Leo sharply in the ribs.

  ‘ “Things are looking up!” he said,’ sighed Broody.’ “What a lucky old wizard I am.” It’s so ironic, when you think about it, given what happened that very night.’

  ‘Yes,’ Chickadee clucked tearfully. ‘“An excellent breakfast,” he said, “a splendid flock of hens, a fine apprentice, the invention of a lifetime – who could ask for anything more?”’

  ‘Then he felt in Moult’s nest, under her feathers!’ squawked Teeny, in a high state of excitement. ‘He said, “Aha, what’s this?” And he pulled out – a golden egg!’

  ‘We all saw it,’ Egbert said, fixing Conker with a steely eye. ‘There was no trickery involved. The egg Moult was sitting on was pure gold.’

  Moult gave a strangled cry and tried to bury her face in the dust.

  ‘It’s so unfair,’ Chickadee whispered piercingly to Broody. ‘Moult, of all hens!’

  ‘Personally, I’m grateful it wasn’t me,’ Broody answered darkly. ‘I wouldn’t like it on my conscience.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ Moult cried piteously. ‘It just – happened.’

  ‘You’ve made your nest and now you have to sit on it, Moult,’ snapped Cluck. ‘You were happy enough on Flyday morning.’

  ‘Gobbling up Wizard Bing’s praise like hot mash,’ Chickadee sneered. ‘Fluffing yourself up at Egbert’s compliments. Clucking and cackling away like a –’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Egbert moved to stand protectively over the cowering Moult. He glared around till all the other hens fell silent, then turned to face the quest team.

  ‘You now perhaps understand why I wished to speak to you in private,’ he said severely. ‘This is a delicate matter. It arouses high emotion in the flock.’

  ‘And for very good reason!’ snapped Cluck. ‘That golden egg was the cause of all our trouble or I’ll be fried!’

  ‘It was a disaster,’ agreed Chickadee, with a malicious sidelong glance at Moult. ‘How any hen could have been proud of laying it, I do not know.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have been proud!’ cried Teeny, hopping feverishly up and down on the spot. ‘Oh, my beak, I would have been so ashamed that I’d have – I’d have drowned myself in the pond. Or let myself be knitted up by the click-clacks.’

  ‘That cursed egg was the downfall of the House of Bing,’ droned Broody. ‘The day it was laid was a day of doom.’

  ‘That was Flyday, right?’ Scramble asked anxiously.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of them,’ Mimi said to poor Moult, who was crouching in Egbert’s shadow, the picture of misery. ‘They’re just jealous.’

  ‘Jealous?’ squawked Chickadee. ‘What an idea! As if any of us could be jealous of Moult!’

  ‘I think I might be jealous,’ said Scramble doubtfully. ‘Just a bit,’ she added quickly as Cluck, Broody and Teeny glared at her.

  ‘Cut the cackle, will you?’ snapped Conker. ‘We’re wasting precious time here!’

  ‘What did Wizard Bing do with the golden egg after that?’ Leo asked hurriedly, before another argument could break out.

  ‘He put it in the basket with the rest,’ said Egbert stiffly.

  ‘He put it right on the top,’ Cluck added. ‘Which was not a very wise thing to do, I must say, because it looked very heavy and could have cracked the other eggs. I mentioned this to Wizard Bing, but he said it didn’t matter if every other egg in the basket was smashed to smithereens as long as the golden egg was safe. I’m sure that was just his little joke too.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure,’ drawled Freda, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Wizard Bing then swore us to secrecy and left us to take the basket back to the house,’ said Egbert, ignoring her. ‘We never saw him, or the golden egg, again.’

  ‘We didn’t find a golden egg in the house,’ Bertha said, glancing at Mimi significantly.

  Conker narrowed his eyes. ‘Who else knew about this golden egg business?’ he demanded. ‘Could anyone in town have found out about it?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Cluck said. ‘Wizard Bing told us it was to be kept absolutely secret.’ She frowned at Scramble.

  ‘Well, obviously someone knew,’ Bertha exclaimed. ‘Obviously, the golden egg was the motive for the crime! It must have been! Golden eggs are quite valuable, I imagine.’

  ‘Not as valuable as a hen who can lay them,’ Leo said slowly.

  Everyone looked at Moult again. She bowed her head.

  ‘And that,’ Egbert announced heavily, ‘is the yolk of the matter, I fear. A hen who can lay golden eggs is not only supremely valuable, but a great oddity – a very great oddity indeed.’ He sighed deeply. Then he raised his eyes meaningfully to the sky.

  His skin prickling, Leo turned to look with everyone else at the glimmering towers of the cloud palace.

  ‘I knew it,’ muttered Freda. ‘I knew that thing was going to get back into the picture somehow.’

  And, weirdly, the sound of shrill voices chanting the Strix skipping rhyme floated to their ears on the breeze like a chilling refrain.

  ‘Oh, they’ve started again!’ Bertha gasped. ‘How could they?’

  ‘Mush for brains,’ Freda said. She spoke with casual disdain, but the feathers on the back of her neck were standing up like spines.

  ‘Egbert,’ Conker snapped, ‘are you saying that you think Wizard Bing has been – collected? That’s your theory?’

  ‘It is,’ Egbert said, very gravely. ‘And not only mine. We all believe it.’

  ‘The Ancient One answered the call of the golden egg,’ droned Broody, her eyes rolling alarmingly. ‘The Ancient One took Wizard Bing for its Collection. Brave Simon tried to prevent it, and was … changed.’

  Teeny nodded tensely. ‘The Ancient One can transform people – and chickens – into anything it wants, just by pointing its bony old finger,’ she said. ‘My grandmother told me.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Egbert, as everyone shivered. ‘And that is the only logical explanation for recent events.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Leo, fighting down a sick feeling in his stomach and trying to close his ears to the continued chanting from the Snug. ‘It doesn’t make any sense at all. The cloud palace didn’t arrive in Hobnob till the day after Wizard Bing disappeared.’

  ‘That was Saladday,’ said Scramble, nodding eagerly. ‘The day after Flyday, which is Teeny’s hatching-day, was Saladday, which is Broody’s hatching-day. And today … is Sunday, and we don’t have any hatching-day parties on Sunday. I remember that perfectly!’ She looked around as if expecting congratulation, but only Egbert paid any attention to her, and he just said ‘Very good, my dear’ in an absent-minded way.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what day it was,’ Bertha interrupted in a high voice. ‘The Str – the Ancient One – couldn’t be responsible for Wizard Bing’s disappearance anyway. The cloud palace isn’t here on the island. It’s over by the Snug. And the Ancient One can’t snatch victims from a distance – everyone knows that. If it doesn’t land on them directly, it has to lure them into its palace, just like the Blue Queen does.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Conker said bracingly, as the hens gasped and shuddered at the mention of the queen, who seemed to frighten them even more than the Strix. ‘There are rules for baddies as well as for us, you know.’

  ‘Very handy, that,’ Freda commented.

  ‘What you have not considered,’ Egbert said gravely, ‘is that unlike Her Extreme Wickedness, the Ancient One can come and go at will. Its palace can appear in an instant and disappear just as quickly. Or so it is said.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Broody crooned. ‘Who can say what occurred in the depths of that Flyday night, when the Fl
ock of Bing was sleeping and the lights of the town were dim? Who was there to see a cloud come down over the island, shrouding it in mystery?’

  ‘Oh, my beak!’ wheezed Teeny. She started to pant, and had just begun to fluff out her feathers when she caught Mimi’s eye, gulped, and fell silent.

  ‘You think the cloud palace settled over the island on Friday – Flyday – night, Egbert?’ Leo asked uneasily.

  Egbert bowed his head. ‘We do,’ he said.

  ‘Then why didn’t it just go back up into the sky where it came from?’ demanded Bertha a little hysterically. ‘Why did it come back on Saladday and settle in Tiger’s Glen?’

  ‘Because,’ Egbert said heavily, ‘as every chicken knows, the cloud palace cannot land in the same place twice. And when it had regained the sky once more after taking Wizard Bing, the Ancient One discovered it had made an error. Wizard Bing was not the item it wanted for its Collection. The item it wanted was – Moult.’

  Chapter

  27

  Crash Landing

  Moult trembled, opening and closing her beak as if she wanted to speak but couldn’t find the words.

  Chickadee tossed back her comb. ‘So it’s all Moult’s fault,’ she said, with a resentful, sidelong look at Mimi. ‘If she hadn’t laid that golden egg –’

  ‘It wasn’t Moult’s fault!’ Mimi retorted hotly. ‘She didn’t mean –’

  ‘Oh, don’t defend me!’ Moult cried, breaking her silence at last. ‘I know I’m to blame! The Ancient One came for me. Wizard Bing nobly sacrificed himself in my place. And Simon – dear Simon who was always so good to me – tried to defend us both and … oh!’ She burst into a storm of heartbroken tears.

  Egbert cleared his throat loudly. ‘So now you have all the facts,’ he said to Conker. ‘How long do you think it will be before you bring Wizard Bing and Simon home?’

  ‘Oh,’ Conker said. ‘Well …’ He tugged his beard.

  ‘Perhaps you cannot give an estimate,’ Egbert said. ‘I know little of the hero business. Let me just say that the sooner we are back to normal here the better. As you can see.’ His razor-sharp beak gleaming unpleasantly, he nodded meaningfully at the weeping Moult.

  ‘We’ll bear that in mind,’ Freda said briskly. ‘Cheerio, then.’ She turned and made for the yard gate.

  ‘Right,’ said Conker. ‘Ah … right!’ He hurried after Freda, urgently beckoning to the rest of the team.

  Murmuring awkward goodbyes, Leo, Mimi and Bertha began to follow. They had almost reached the gate when Moult shot from Egbert’s side and ran awkwardly after them, her shabby feathers awry, her tattered comb flopping. ‘Take me with you!’ she cried, collapsing at Mimi’s feet. ‘I want to help. I have to help!’

  Mimi hesitated.

  ‘No, Mimi,’ Leo muttered. ‘You know we’re not really going to –’

  ‘Now, now, Moult,’ Egbert called benignly. ‘Enough of this foolishness! You’re embarrassing yourself, my dear.’

  ‘Please!’ Moult wailed, looking up at Mimi, her reddened eyes beseeching. ‘I would have gone by myself long ago if I’d been able to, but I couldn’t get off the island. I can’t fly over the pond – I’m not a Flyday’s chick like Teeny. And I’m too short to walk across like Wizard Bing and Simon do. Oh, give me a chance to redeem myself, I beg you!’

  ‘Moult, don’t be absurd!’ squawked Cluck.

  ‘Just ignore her,’ Broody muttered. ‘She’s only trying to draw attention to herself – as usual.’

  ‘Imagine Moult going on a quest!’ giggled Teeny.

  ‘As if she could do anything except get in the way!’ Chickadee sneered.

  Mimi pressed her lips together. She gave the flock a single scathing look. Then she bent, picked up Moult, put her in the egg basket and stalked out of the yard without looking back.

  ‘Oh, lawks-a-daisy!’ Bertha nodded in a sketchy way to Egbert, who was staring after Mimi with his beak open, and hurried out of the gate.

  ‘Sorry,’ Leo said, backing out of the gate himself. ‘Sorry. We’ll – um – see you later.’ He turned and bolted after Bertha.

  Conker was far from pleased when he saw the new member of the quest team. Freda was, if possible, even more unwelcoming.

  Leo understood how they felt. Hunched in the egg basket, clearly exhausted by the emotional stress of her outburst in the yard, Moult was not an impressive sight. He was sorry for her, and furious with Mimi. When Moult found out that the quest team had no intention of trying to save Wizard Bing from the cloud palace, whatever they’d let Egbert believe, she’d be devastated. Leo felt hot at the thought of it.

  Away from the shelter of the chicken yard, the skipping girls’ chanting seemed louder. Leo could almost hear the thudding of the rope. He imagined the twins and the small girl called Skip running in to jump, one by one, egging each other on, daring Woodley to stop them.

  Carrying the basket, Mimi picked her way towards the flying rug. It was still floating by the sandwich tree, its fringe curled up to avoid the knitting needles, which were clicking around it avidly.

  ‘There’s no room for extra passengers,’ Freda snapped, standing in front of the rug with her wings outspread in an attempt to bar Mimi’s way.

  ‘Of course there is,’ Mimi retorted, dodging her, crawling onto the rug and putting the basket down in its centre. ‘There are still only six of us. There’s plenty of room for Moult now we don’t have the cooking pot any more.’

  ‘I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be sorry you ditched that thing,’ Freda said to Conker.

  Mimi murmured something soothing to Moult and crawled off the rug again. She faced Conker, Freda, Bertha and Leo with her hands on her hips.

  ‘I had to bring her!’ she whispered furiously. ‘The other hens would have made her life a misery if I hadn’t. I’ll look after her. You won’t have to do a thing. You don’t even have to talk to her!’

  ‘I’ll thank you not to take that tone with me, Mimi Langlander!’ Bertha exclaimed. ‘If Moult comes with us, naturally I’ll talk to her. I am exceptionally kind-hearted, as anyone will tell you, and I have perfect manners.’

  She tossed a drooping poppy out of her eye. ‘Which is more than I can say for some people,’ she added, ‘who put their hands on their hips and hiss at good friends who have feelings just like they do, and are only saying what they think!’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ growled Conker.

  Mimi’s eyes flickered. Her mouth drooped a little at the corners.

  ‘We’re all sorry for Moult, Mimi,’ Bertha went on, shooting a warning glance at Freda. ‘But –’

  ‘It’s not just that I feel sorry for her,’ Mimi burst out. ‘It’s just … I couldn’t stand the way the others were treating her. It made me so angry I felt … sick. I had to help her – I had to! Oh, I don’t know!’ She pressed her hands together in frustration. ‘I can’t explain it.’

  But Leo thought he could. As Mimi stood there alone, her thin shoulders hunched defensively in the old way he remembered from so many Langlander family gatherings, he suddenly understood what was happening. Mimi mightn’t realise it, but Moult reminded her of herself.

  Spending time with Mimi Langlander is like doing a degree in psychology, he thought ruefully, trying vainly to hold on to his anger. Then, remembering what Mimi had said in the past about his need for approval and his dislike of rule-breaking, he wondered uneasily if she felt the same about him.

  Agitated clucking was coming from the chicken yard.

  ‘They’ll be storming down here any minute,’ Freda warned.

  ‘Quite apart from everything else,’ Conker said to Mimi seriously, ‘you do realise, I suppose, that you’re planning to steal a hen that lays golden eggs? We’ll have Begood after us next.’

  ‘It’s not stealing,’ Mimi protested. ‘Moult wants to come with us. She wants to help save Wizard Bing.’

  ‘But we’re not going to save him, are we?’ Leo argued, lowering his voice to be sure that Moult wouldn’t
hear. ‘If he’s been collected –’

  ‘Then he can stay collected, as far as I’m concerned,’ said Freda.

  ‘We were going to invade the cloud palace at one stage,’ Bertha said doubtfully.

  ‘That was before,’ said Freda. ‘Tye’s put me right off the idea.’

  ‘Me too,’ Conker said gloomily. ‘Dying a hero is one thing. Floating around in a cloud forever with only a monster and a bunch of dreams for company is something else again.’

  ‘I don’t think Wizard Bing has been collected at all,’ Mimi said. ‘There’s no proof that the cloud palace ever landed on this island. That was just an idea of Egbert’s.’

  With a small jolt, Leo realised that she was right. He felt very irritated – with himself and, perversely, with Mimi. He was supposed to be the logical one – the one who weighed up the evidence and stopped Mimi from getting carried away by crazy theories. How had their roles become reversed?

  ‘That’s right,’ he said, digging in his pocket for the list he’d found in the house. ‘It’s just as likely – in fact, it’s even more likely – that one of the people on this list is responsible for everything that’s happened.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t Violet Orpington-Dunk,’ Bertha said at once. ‘Violet would never do anything dishonest.’

  ‘It was Spoiler,’ said Mimi. ‘I’m certain of it.’

  ‘You can’t be certain of it, Mimi!’ snapped Leo. ‘You –’ He broke off as the squawks from the chicken yard suddenly doubled in volume and the gate squeaked ominously.

  ‘Here’s trouble,’ muttered Freda.

  ‘Oh, quickly, quickly!’ cried Moult from her basket.

  ‘Moult!’ screeched Egbert from the top of the path. ‘Return to the yard at once! Quest team, stay where you are! I order you, as Guardian of the Flock of Bing!’

  ‘Oh, my guts and garters!’ Conker growled furiously.

  ‘Mimi –’

  He jumped, his eyes bulging. The skipping rhyme had suddenly broken off and shrill screams, like the wild calls of birds, had taken its place.