“Even dolls hate dolls,” said Clyde. “I would rather be a little boy like you.”
“Really?” said Billy. He hugged Clyde and pulled his string again.
“Not really,” said Clyde. “You’re a sissy. Would you like to meet the Wizard?”
“I already did,” said Billy. “And I am not a sissy.”
“How many little sissies get to meet the Wizard?” asked Clyde.
BILLY threw Clyde into the garbage and went to the garage to find the Wizard.
He opened Today’s Wizard, and there he was in his pointy hat.
“Where’s Clyde?” asked the Wizard.
“He called me a sissy,” said Billy. He turned the page.
“That Clyde,” said the Wizard. “I told you not to pull his string.”
“I had no one else to play with,” said Billy. He looked around the garage. It was dark and scary. “Can I take you outside?” he asked.
“No way,” said the Wizard. “I’m in hiding.”
“Why is the Devil after you?” he asked.
“Why do you think?” asked the Wizard.
Billy turned the page. “I give up,” he said.
“He wants to steal my hat,” said the Wizard. “So he can rule the world.”
Billy thought about that. “What does he look like?” he asked. He turned the page.
“He looks ugly and evil,” said the Wizard. “Now put me back in the pile. Here comes your mother.”
“What are you doing in there?” asked Billy’s mother.
“Nothing,” said Billy
“Put your dolls away and come to supper.”
“GET a load of this,” said Billy’s father. He was reading the paper. “Wizard Goes Into Hiding.”
“He’s hiding from the Devil,” Billy said.
“He’s apparently not the Wizard of Everything anyway,” said Billy’s father. “So what’s the big deal?”
“He’s the Wizard of Everything Else,” said Billy.
“What do you know about it?” said Billy’s mother. “Eat your turkey.” They had turkey every night.
BILLY woke up in the middle of the night. Clyde was standing on his chest.
Billy was afraid. “I’m sorry I threw you in the garbage,” he said.
“Pull my string,” said Clyde.
Billy pulled his string.
“I’m sorry I called you a sissy,” said Clyde. “Now hurry. Come with me! It’s an emergency.”
“What’s the problem?” Billy asked. He pulled Clyde’s string.
“The Devil is in the garage, looking for the Wizard. It’s an emergency!”
IT was midnight. Billy’s parents were asleep.
Billy sneaked out the side door, into the garage.
The Devil was sitting on the floor, going through the magazines. He looked ugly and evil. He had a snout like a dog. He wasn’t wearing any pants.
“What are you doing here?” asked Billy. Even though he knew.
“Don’t bother me, kid,” said the Devil. “Go play with your dolls.”
“The Wizard’s not here,” said Billy.
“You’re a liar,” said the Devil. “I like that. Now go back to bed and leave me alone. I have work to do.”
He started going through the magazines again.
“This is my garage,” said Billy.
“It is not,” said the Devil. “It’s your father’s. And you’re a sissy.”
“I am not,” said Billy. “If I had a gun, I would shoot you.”
“Be my guest,” said the Devil. Then he said something in Latin, and a magic gun appeared in Billy’s hand. It was silver. Billy pointed it at the Devil and pulled the trigger but it just went click.
“Guess I forgot to load it,” said the Devil. He grinned. “It takes magic bullets. And look what I found.”
He held up a magazine. It was Today’s Wizard. “Thanks for the tip, Clyde,” he said.
Billy was shocked. “You told on him!” he said. He pulled Clyde’s string.
“I’m sorry!” said Clyde. “Pull my string again. But only halfway out this time.”
“Don’t do it!” said the Devil. But Billy did.
“Si vis pacem para bellum,” said Clyde. “Bibere venenum in auro.”
The Devil stood up, looking scared. And no wonder: three gold bullets had appeared in Billy’s gun.
“I was just about to leave,” said the Devil. He held the magazine over his face and tried to hide.
But it did him no good. Billy shot him three times: once in the snout and twice in the heart.
The Devil disappeared. So did the magic gun. Only the magazine was left. Billy picked it up.
It had a bullet hole all the way through it. “Oh no,” said Billy. He opened it with trembling hands.
The Wizard’s pointy hat had a hole in it, but the Wizard was okay.
“Good going, Billy,” he said. “You’re no sissy. But how did the Devil find me?”
Billy told him and turned the page.
“That Clyde,” the Wizard said. “He can’t keep his big mouth shut. Pull his string and let’s see what he has to say for himself.”
Billy pulled Clyde’s string.
“I’m sorry,” said Clyde. “The Devil said he would make me a Devil too. Anything is better than being a doll. Almost.”
“We all make mistakes,” said the Wizard. “So I forgive you. Besides, you saved the day.”
“It’s true,” said Billy. “Maybe the Wizard will make you into a little boy, as a reward.”
“Thanks anyway,” said Clyde. “I’d rather be a doll.”
Billy thought about that.
“Suit yourself,” said the Wizard. “I’m out of here.”
“What about your hat?” Billy asked the Wizard. “It has a hole in it.”
“I have an extra,” said the Wizard. He was starting to fade away. “And now I don’t have to hide anymore.”
Billy turned the page. The pointy hat was still there, and so was the hole, but the Wizard was gone.
“WHAT’S that infernal racket?” said Billy’s father. He was standing in the door. “Give me that magazine and go back to bed.”
“Yes, sir,” said Billy. He handed his father the magazine.
“Today’s Wizard,” said Billy’s father. He threw it onto the pile. “Pointy hats and dolls! You are such a sissy. Go back to bed and take your doll with you.”
“Yes, sir,” said Billy. He pulled Clyde’s string as he went into the house.
“You’re the big sissy,” said Clyde.
“What did you say?” asked Billy’s father.
“Nothing,” said Billy. “It wasn’t me.”
The Magikkers
TERRY DOWLING
If you had the power to perform one—and only one—act of magic, what would it be? Pick carefully, now…
One of the best-known and most celebrated Australian writers in any genre, winner of eleven Ditmar Awards and three Aurealis Awards, Terry Dowling (www.terrydowling.com) made his first sale in 1982, and has since made an international reputation for himself as a writer of science fiction, dark fantasy, and horror. Primarily a short-story writer, he is the author of the linked collections Rynosseros, Blue Tyson, Twilight Beach, Worm-wood, An Intimate Knowledge of the Night, and Blackwater Days, as well as Antique Futures: The Best of Terry Dowling, The Man Who Lost Red, and Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear. He has written three computer adventures: Mysterious Journey: Schizm, Mysterious Journey II: Chameleon, and Sentinel: Descendants in Time, and as editor has produced The Essential Ellison, Mortal Fire: Best Australian SF (with Van Ikin), and The Jack Vance Treasury (with Jonathan Strahan), Born in Sydney, he lives in Hunters Hill, New South Wales, Australia.
TWICE upon a time there was someone named Samuel Raven Pardieu. The first to bear the name was a nineteenth-century blacksmith who tried his hand as a toother during the Napoleonic War. In the morning following the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, while collecting teeth from the newly killed to sell to dentists
in the big cities, he was spotted by an English patrol and shot as a looter.
The second Samuel Raven Pardieu was that man’s great-to-the-fifth-grandson, and on the morning of 24 May 2006, this second Sam, two weeks past his fourteenth birthday, one full month after enrolling in the special classes at Dessida, was sitting in his favourite spot in all of the sprawling Dessida estate when Bettina Anders found him.
“I knew you’d be here,” Bettina said in that special know-it-all tone she had. “Haven’t forgotten what today is?”
“Of course not,” Sam said, as if he could, as if he needed to be reminded. Key Interview Day. His first one-on-one interview with Lucius Prandt, one of the world’s greatest magicians.
The real surprise was that Bettina was bothering to talk to him at all. In his four weeks at Dessida, in both the ordinary curriculum classes and the special Magikker classes they shared day after day, she hadn’t spoken more than a few dozen words to him. Now here she was, this stand-offish fourteen-year-old, the one the other eighteen students, Sam included, called the Princess behind her back, pretending to be friendly. Pretending. It couldn’t be genuine.
Sam was sitting in his special spot, of course. There were twelve stone plinths flanking the old ornamental approach to the front steps of the main house at Dessida, twelve marble pedestals hopelessly overgrown with thorn-bushes and bracken except for this one, the one Sam had cleared himself and now occupied. The large house stood on its rise behind them, overlooking the grounds of the sprawling country estate.
Bettina didn’t leave. That was another marvel. She simply stood there, dark-haired and, yes, princess pretty if you thought about it at all, and just seemed to be watching the day.
“Well, I hope it goes well,” she said, and astonished him even more.
Sam couldn’t fathom it. Bettina Anders saying such a thing. And with it came another thought: what does she know about my Key Interview that I don’t? What happens at a Key Interview with Lucius? Should I ask her?
Sam played it safe and said nothing. Why ask only to have her snub him again? He’d been gazing at what lay concealed in the thorn-bushes between the plinths when she’d arrived. Now he looked out over the estate as well, the spacious grounds set amid these rolling green hills under a brilliant autumn sky. He was determined not to let Bettina Anders know what he’d really been looking at. That was his secret, his one special thing at Dessida.
But she lingered. Against all reason, all sense, Bettina stayed.
“So, do you have your question ready,” she said.
“My what?”
“Key Interview Day is also First Question Day, if no-one’s told you. Lucius will probably ask you to ask one. He usually does.”
Sam couldn’t help himself. “A question? What question?”
“Ahhh,” Bettina said, which translated as: So, you didn’t know! “Just what I said. He’ll ask if you have a question. Do you?”
“One question. I’ve got lots of questions. Like when do the real magic classes start. Not just these mind exercises we keep doing all the time.”
“You need to be patient,” Bettina said, and looked anything but that herself. “It’s worth it.”
It struck Sam right then that she’d been told to come and find him, to say all this. With two months’ more experience at Dessida, she was probably following someone’s instructions, a script of some kind. Maybe Lucius had sent her himself. It was certainly possible.
“Where would you rather be right now, Bettina?” he said, and could see he had surprised her.
“What?”
“This is my spot. I love sitting here, just watching the grounds and the house. But you don’t want to be here now. Where would you rather be?”
The old Bettina defiance was back in a flash. She couldn’t help herself. “You’re so smart and stand-offish. You tell me!”
Stand-offish! That threw Sam. That couldn’t be right. He wasn’t the stand-offish one!
“Well, I haven’t known you long, but it has to be the top of that tower,” Sam said, and pointed back up the hill to Dessida’s huge front doors at the end of the overgrown approach promenade. Above that big doorway rose a modest central tower, three storeys tall, with a big bronze bell on an ornate stand at the top and a flag flying on a flag-pole. “Or beside the lake, down behind the trees there. Somewhere away and safe.”
Bettina stared at him, not because he was necessarily right in naming either place—how could he possibly know?—but probably because of that final sentence and final word.
The look between them might have been special except that Bettina was guarding, was more protective about some things than even Sam was. His last comment had probably been too close to the mark. She had to say something to deal with the vulnerability it brought with it.
“As if I’d tell you,” she said, like “Princess” Bettina on any other day. “And don’t think I don’t know why you like sitting here. I can see your silly statue down in there.” She gestured at the thicket beyond the plinth where Sam sat, then stalked off towards the house.
Sam could have hated her right then, watching her go, but knew that such an emotion was to cover something else, just like Bettina’s own sudden outburst. She was guarding, protecting herself. Sam was doing the same.
“It’s the only one left!” he might have called after her as she disappeared through the double doorway. But he didn’t. He looked instead at the toppled form hidden in the thorn thicket, a figure of dirty white stone, the same old marble as the plinths, toppled and abandoned long ago.
Whatever statuary had adorned the other plinths was long gone. The house itself was maintained well enough, but the grounds of the Dessida estate had definitely seen better days.
Let her tell the other students about the statue. Let her tell their three teachers or the other staff, Lucius himself for all he cared.
And stand-offish! How dare she!
Sam looked at his watch: 9:45. Almost time.
Key Interview. Just him and Lucius at last!
But Bettina had no reason to lie. First Question Day. What would he ask? What did one ask the man who was probably the world’s greatest magician, having been hand-picked by him from hundreds, no, literally thousands of other boys and girls across Australia, across the world, if what the Prandt testing officers had said was true? Hand-picked and paid to come to Dessida in the Southern Highlands on a Prandt Scholarship to hone his latent skills, become a magician or magikker, whatever that was. It had never been made clear.
That had to be the question.
What’s the difference between a Magician and a Magikker?
Sam looked at his watch again: 9:50. And that was when Martin Mayhew appeared in Dessida’s big double doorway, happy Martin, always smiling, always happy to be in the world. Tall, blond, and handsome, Nordic-looking and easy in his buff-coloured house fatigues and sandals, greeting every morning with his arms spread wide and his head back, if the stories were true, breathing in the day. Martin was in charge of the household staff, and here he was to make sure that Sam didn’t miss his 10 A.M. meeting.
Martin gave a big sweeping gesture of summons. “It’s time, Sam!”
“Take care, Rufio,” Sam called to the stone figure lying in the thicket, his special name for his secret friend. Then he was up in a flash, off the plinth and up the steps.
“Rufio?” Martin asked as they headed for Lucius Prandt’s large office in the north-western wing.
“My name for him,” Sam said. “He’s the only one left. Do you remember the others?” Sam knew he could ask Martin things like this and be safe about it.
“Sorry, Best Sam. Before my time, I’m afraid. But ask Master Lucius. He’ll know. He’s lived here all his life. You’re allowed to bring up things like that during your interview.”
“Anyone else scheduled today, Martin?” Sam had to ask it.
Martin shook his head. “Not today. Today is your day, Sam. Lucius has been looking forward to it.”
; Then they were at the large oaken door to Lucius Prandt’s private office, and Martin was knocking.
“Good luck, Best Sam,” Martin said, opening the door for him.
And in Sam went.
It was a wonderful room, Sam saw, a true magician’s room, large and high-ceilinged, with bookcases lining most of the wood-panelled walls and fabulous miniature engines of glass and metal working away on a bench top to one side. Against the far wall was a suit of medieval armour with—incredibly!—two heads, two fiercely snouted, visored helmets set side by side on big spiky shoulders. Where could that have come from? Sam wondered. How could it be real? There were maps on the walls between the bookshelves: Mercator projections of land after fabulous land with exotic names like Sabertanis Major and Andastaban Arcanus. Small pins with demon heads fastened maps atop others in some places, there were so many.
Lucius Prandt’s huge desk was set on a raised dais before four tall leadlight windows that opened onto views of the lawns and forests of Dessida, windows that framed glimpses of rolling hills and held great masses of fluffy cumulus in an achingly blue sky.
So many things sat on that wide wonderful desk, but most noticeable were the three planetary globes Sam had learned about in his Introductions to Magic classes. The closest was the Earth as Sam knew it, but joined by seventeen silver threads to the second, which was the Overworld, set with its spelltowers and mage-points. That orb was joined in turn by red wires to the third, which represented the Underworld, all blacks and reds, with threads of hot bright copper picking out the various Sunder Points.
But Lucius Prandt wasn’t at his desk. He sat in one of two big armchairs before a fire-place in which was set not a conventional fire but rather a slowly turning image of a burning city.
“Welcome, Sam,” Lucius said, standing to greet him, shaking his hand warmly. He wore true-wizard black, of course: soft black woollen top, black slacks, black shoes. None of the star-and-moon robes or mysterious pentagram stuff he wore for his concerts and television performances, not today. His dark eyes glittered under silver-grey hair that swept back like a wave. He was in his late fifties, they said, but others had told Sam that a zero should be added to any age you felt tempted to put him at. Lucius Prandt, they said, had been present at the death of the ancient city that burned forever in his fire-place.
Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy Page 36
