by Obert Skye
“It’s just down this road,” Rin said, sliding through a two-foot opening on the side of the gate.
“This doesn’t seem very welcoming,” Clark chirped.
“No one uses this road?” Ozzy asked.
“Only me.”
The three of them hiked up the road, and as they did, the asphalt became more cracked and the weeds taller.
“You don’t ever drive on this?”
“No, I usually park by the gate. I find the walk helps me think. Did you know that the word picnic is French in origin?”
“I didn’t,” Ozzy admitted. “That’s what you think about?”
“That and where I might have put the key to the gate lock,” Rin said. “I like picnics. Think of the freedom. You can sit down and eat anywhere. Besides, most restaurants are getting a little out of hand.”
“Do you feel that way because you were kicked out of that one in New York?” Clark asked.
“That hostess had it out for me,” Rin insisted. “Putting me at a table near the bathroom. Wizards, as you know, have a keen sense of smell.”
Ozzy took a second to sniff the air.
“Smells like trees and dirt.”
“A much better smell than that table I was placed at. Any rational person would want to put a wizard in the center of the restaurant, to class the place up. And then they gave me attitude when I asked the waiter to wrap up the food someone else hadn’t finished.”
“That’s true,” Clark said. “I think they were mostly bothered because you took those leftovers and tried to slip them into the pocket of the people who had left them.”
“No room for neighborly these days.”
“You should talk,” Ozzy said, glancing around at the isolated forest. “You have no neighbors. This place is almost as remote as the Cloaked House.”
“I don’t like people prying.”
Up ahead, arching across the road, was a large rusted sign with painted letters on it. The letters were faded but readable.
WetLand
“What’s that for?” Ozzy asked. “Are these wetlands?”
“I didn’t put it there,” Rin answered. “I sort of won this whole place in a bet.”
“Sort of?” Clark asked.
“Well, I bet a friend named Woody that he wouldn’t live past forty. When he died at age thirty-nine, he left this all to me.”
“That’s pretty generous,” Ozzy said.
“He owed me. I did some magic work for him. You know, cured a few ailments.”
“But he died,” Ozzy said.
“Some cures are fickle,” the wizard said. “I once helped a man regrow all his hair so he could impress his wife. But . . .” Rin didn’t finish his sentence.
“But what?” Ozzy asked.
“Well, his wife wasn’t able to see the new hair. She lacked the gift of second sight.”
“Do I have second sight?” Ozzy asked.
“No, you’re up to at least eighth sight.”
“His wife left him?”
Rin nodded. “It turned out okay, though. He got this place in the divorce.”
“Wait, the hairless man was Woody?”
“Yes, this place was a dream he and his wife had,” Rin explained. “But after the divorce Woody got it all. It used to be a small amusement park. Well . . . it never was, but it used to be a place that was going to be a small amusement park. Now it’s just my home.”
They walked under the rusted arch and across a torn-up parking lot. On the far side of the parking lot there was a long wooden fence with a steel gate that said, ‘Welcome to WetLand.’ Crossing the parking lot, Rin stopped to push open the right half of the gate. It squealed loudly into the wet air.
“That’s terrible,” Clark howled. “Reminds me of a hinge I once knew.”
Once they were all inside the gate, Rin took a moment to stop and motion with the staff.
“This is WetLand Amusement Park.”
The wet part was fairly accurate—the ground was squishy from recent rain. And the land part was also accurate, since it was land. Even the amusement part was accurate, because Ozzy and Clark were somewhat amused. But the park part seemed to be stretching it. WetLand was an overgrown and long-forgotten mess. There was an old carousel with a crumbled top and a few small buildings with faded signs. One building said: “Sweet Treats.” One said: “Squirt Gun Range.” And one just said, “Ho s o Wa rs.”
“I think that was House of Waters,” Rin explained. “It was some sort of maze.”
Past the buildings there was a small rusted roller coaster, most of its track barely standing up, its main loop leaning to the side at an uncomfortable angle.
“That was the Rain Coaster,” Rin said as they walked. “It never worked. Woody wasn’t an engineer.”
“But he liked water?” Ozzy said. “WetLand, House of Waters, Rain Coaster?”
“Who knows?” Rin said happily. “You can’t judge a person by one amusement park.”
Near the Rain Coaster was a small outdoor amphitheater filled with weeds and decay with a large field in front of it.
“He was going to build a field for a game he invented called Kick-Run,” Rin told them. “It was a lot like soccer, but the goals moved around.”
Ozzy was listening to Rin talk, but his mind was preoccupied with what was at the other side of the empty Kick-Run field.
Ozzy squinted to get a better look.
Sitting there like a complicated dream was a large three-story Victorian house, with a gigantic round tower on its east corner that shot ten feet above the third floor. The tower was topped with what looked like a blue shingled wizard’s hat. The entire structure was covered with intricate carvings around the windows and the slanted roofs and eaves. A wide front veranda was accessed by a set of grand wooden stairs. The stunning structure was painted a faded green with weak yellow accents. It was worn and in need of care, but it was a sight to behold, standing like a castle surrounded by tall trees and endless rolling landscape.
“That’s your house?” Ozzy asked in astonishment.
“It’s nothing compared to the one in Quarfelt.”
“At least this one’s real,” Clark whispered into Ozzy’s ear.
They walked across the Kick-Run field and up the stairs. On the veranda, Rin took a key from the trim above the door and unlocked the ornately carved front door. He pushed it open and the hinges screamed, sounding again similar to the one Clark had known.
The inside of the house was surprisingly clean. Ozzy would not have been surprised to find the place filled with old trash bags, stacks of phone books, and an unidentifiable smell. But the interior was interesting and his wizard-in-training nose couldn’t smell anything rotting. The place was filled with antique furniture and dusty paintings. The ceilings were covered in murals of nature scenes and parts of the night sky. Mixed among the antiques and old furniture were some more modern pieces—a long blue leather couch was pushed up against one wall and there was a black-and-white-checkered La-Z-Boy near one of the windows. The flooring in the house was wood, covered with colorful, old expensive-looking rugs, and the walls were mainly wallpapered in a busy pattern or painted a soft yellow.
“This place is unbelievable,” Ozzy said.
“My brother and his wife loved the Victorian style,” Rin said. “It’s a little stuffy for me.”
“Wait,” Ozzy said. “Woody was your brother?”
“Yes, my older brother.” The wizard sounded wounded. “He always had to do everything first. Even die.”
“I’m sorry he passed away,” Ozzy said with sincerity.
“Not as sorry as he was,” Rin said without it.
Clark was still sitting on Ozzy’s shoulder looking around curiously. “Where are the dirt floors?” he asked, sounding disappointed. “And the hammer?”
&n
bsp; “Out in the workshop.”
“I can’t believe how big this house is,” Ozzy said. “And there’s an amusement park out there.”
“It’s more like a bunch of overgrown pieces of metal and wood,” Rin said. “It’s no Harry Potter World.”
“Has Sigi ever been here?” Ozzy asked as he looked around.
“No. Patti’s afraid of tetanus. Now come on.”
Ozzy followed Rin through another room that was bigger than the first and into the kitchen near the back of the house. The large kitchen had an old cast-iron stove, an outdated sink, and a brand-new refrigerator that seemed both out of place and out of time. On the front of the fridge were dozens of colorful magnets. The flooring in the kitchen was linoleum in a colorful red-triangles-and-blue-squares pattern that was also cracking at the edges.
Stepping out of the kitchen, they entered the dining room that housed a table long enough to fit twelve chairs around it. In the corner of the room was an old phonograph with a black vinyl record sitting on it. Clark hopped off Ozzy’s shoulder to go take a closer look at it.
“You should sit down,” Rin suggested.
Ozzy took a seat at the table. It was covered with a lacy tablecloth made from stiff string.
“I have something I need to take care of,” Rin said. “Hold on.”
The wizard left Ozzy and Clark alone.
“I’m really glad you’re back,” Ozzy said to his bird.
“Me too,” Clark said affectionately as he perched atop the needle arm of the phonograph. “This thing is amazing.” He leaned his head down to read the label on the record beneath him. “What are the Spice Girls? Some sort of food experts?”
“Probably,” Ozzy answered. “You can’t tell me anything about Quarfelt?”
“No,” the bird said, still looking at the needle beneath him. “I can only tell you that I don’t think I was there. I don’t want to be that bird, but I’m still not sure Riny’s a wizard. I was built by a scientific thinker and I’m not easily swayed. Whoa, look at that knob.”
Clark hopped off the needle arm and over to the round knob that turned the machine on.
“If you weren’t in Quarfelt, then where do you think you were?”
“Remember when you found me?” Clark asked.
“Of course,” Ozzy said. “You were in that box under the stairs.”
“And when I came to, it felt like I had just been sleeping since the day your father put me in there. That’s how I felt when Rin pulled me out of that toolbox in his shed. I was just tucked away while he did whatever.” Clark hopped back onto the needle arm. “Do you know how many times I’ve begged Mister Wiz to shapeshift into a bird, or a raven, or a bird?”
“Those are all the same thing.”
“Well, he never did.”
“He changed into something in the ocean,” Ozzy explained. “I wish you had been there, but it jumped out of the water and destroyed the Spell Boat.”
“I’d be more impressed if that boat wasn’t such a piece of—”
“My ears are burning,” Rin interrupted as he came back into the dining room.
“Soak them in ice,” Clark suggested.
“It’s an expression,” Rin said. “Like ‘two knees don’t make an elbow.’”
Ozzy stared at the wizard.
Rin sat down on a chair across from the boy and sighed the kind of sigh that wizards sigh when they want others to notice that they’re sighing and hope someone will say something about it.
“Are you okay?” Ozzy asked, falling for Rin’s ploy.
The wizard looked seriously at the boy. He cleared his throat in a way that he alone thought sounded authoritative.
“Seriously,” Ozzy asked again, “are you okay?”
“Of course,” Rin insisted. “Now, you know that I pride myself on always telling people what they need to hear.”
“You’ve told me that a lot of times.”
“Good, then you’re up to speed about that. Now, we have some important things to discuss.”
“Like the fire,” Ozzy said.
“It’s been contained,” Rin reported. “It burned down half the garage, but it did not spread to the house.”
“How do you know that?”
Rin shook his head sadly. “I’m a wizard.”
“And according to you, I’m a wizard-in-training,” Ozzy pointed out. “So, why don’t you train me to know things like that?”
“Good idea,” Rin said. “I’ll put that on the agenda for later. But for now, I already know those things, so I’d have to pretend that I didn’t just to teach you how to find them out. And that seems like a waste of our time. Like I said, we have important things to discuss.”
“More important than a fire?”
“Yes,” Rin said happily. “What would you say if I told you I found your parents?”
Clark accidentally scratched the needle across the record. It was a fitting follow-up to the news that had just been delivered.
Ozzy was beside himself. The news Rin had just delivered hit him like a truck filled with cement and possibilities.
“What?” he asked in awe. “You found my parents?”
“No,” Rin said casually. “But I wanted to see what kind of reaction I have to look forward to.”
Clark hopped from the record player to the table. He cocked his head at Ozzy.
“From the looks of it, I’d say his reaction will be bad.”
“Please, I don’t want to do this,” Ozzy said. “I don’t want to even talk about it. I know you’re trying to help, but this isn’t helping.”
“This is what I was hired to do.”
“But you can’t possibly know if they’re alive,” Ozzy said boldly. “You found a note on the back of a picture—that’s it.”
Rin pushed up the right sleeve of his robe. There, written in pen, were the words he had shown Ozzy and Sigi on the Spell Boat.
No matter what you are told, we are not dead.
“Have you not taken a shower in three weeks?” Clark asked, disgusted. “Quarfelt? More like Quarsmelt.”
“I prefer baths,” Rin said defensively. “And I’ve had plenty, but I’ve retraced this on my arm every day so that I don’t forget what my purpose is.”
Ozzy softened at the reminder of Rin’s commitment.
“It’s okay,” Ozzy said. “You found out more about my parents than I thought. Those words on your arm are nice, but there’s no way my mom and dad could have known they would be able to stay alive when they wrote them.”
“That’s true. Only a wizard can see far enough into the future to make promises now.”
“My head hurts,” Ozzy told them.
“It’s an effect of the serum,” Rin said. “We need to find your mother so we can find a solution to your condition.”
“My mother? And my dad?”
Rin sat up straight in his chair. He reached across the table and patted Ozzy’s hand.
“I have found your father,” Rin said seriously. “I’m sorry, Ozzy, but he passed away three years ago.”
Clark looked closely at Ozzy’s expression.
“Right,” Ozzy said. “You’re testing me again.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You’re serious?” Ozzy asked. “He’s dead?”
The wizard nodded solemnly. “I’ve seen his grave.”
Clark patted Ozzy on the arm with a wing.
“I saw his grave too,” the bird tweeted sadly. “He was like a father to both of us.”
“I don’t understand,” Ozzy said. “How did you find out?”
“Magic,” Rin said, sounding like magic was a next-door neighbor that he occasionally shared gossip with. “I’ve been busy these last few weeks.”
“That can’t be true,” Ozzy said. “Maybe yo
u found the wrong grave.”
“Hold on,” Rin insisted. “Don’t drop the truth while reaching for a more convenient explanation.”
Ozzy’s grey eyes shook inside of their sockets.
“My dad’s dead?”
“I’m sorry.”
“My mom’s alive?”
“I’m . . . yes.”
“You paused,” Ozzy said. “You know something else.”
“I know a lot of something elses,” Rin said soothingly. “You need to remember what I told you at the start. Sometimes the answers we so desperately seek come with sorrow that’s heavier than we can imagine.”
“Can you take me to my mom?”
“No.”
“Use your magic,” Ozzy argued. “Or show me how to use mine.”
“It’s not time.”
“I think it is,” the boy said boldly. “Or are you not a wizard?”
Rin appeared momentarily conflicted. He took a second to let the room grow quiet and then spoke. “Magic isn’t a system of random ideas and rules, Ozzy. There’s an order to what it can do. And the limit is not set by the minds of those who doubt—it’s set by those who know no boundaries. Automatic garage doors and insulated thermoses are magical. But they are the kind of magic that hovers close to the ground. The kind of magic I need you to believe in can’t be seen from where you are, because of how high it flies.”
“Like a bird?” Clark asked wistfully.
Ozzy buried his head in his hands. “I don’t know what to believe.”
Rin took out his list and checked something off.
“Believe nothing,” the wizard said, “no matter where you read it, or who has said it, not even if I said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”
Ozzy looked up. He could see that Rin’s focus wasn’t on him. The wizard appeared to be gazing at something just over his shoulder. Turning, Ozzy saw the refrigerator. The very words Rin had just uttered were a quote from the Buddha printed on a magnet.
“Great,” the boy said dejectedly.
“Isn’t it though?” Rin agreed, putting his list back into his pocket. “Now . . .”
Rin’s words were cut short by the sound of metal clicking into place. The dining room had a fourth and unwanted guest.
