Magic Ink

by Steve Cole

  “But if you can travel into the future,” I broke in quietly, “can’t you see what happens and avoid it?”

  “Sadly not,” said Merlin. “That is impossible because of—”

  “Nectarines,” said Mum, striding off. “Come on. Stop talking to yourself!”

  I looked across at the magician on his seat of cereal. “Maybe we should talk some other time?” I hissed. “How can I even understand you, anyway? Your comics were in Latin.”

  Merlin tutted. “I’m a wizard, lad! I have sent this astral projection of myself across fifteen centuries to track you down, haven’t I? I mastered your modern language long ago so I could enjoy the marvellous comics made by the likes of Stan Lee and Roy Thomas and Jack Kirby and Garry Penders. . .”

  “My granddad!” I whispered in a daze.

  “Really?” Merlin’s eyes lit up. “Is he around here? Can I get his autograph?”

  “Um, no – he passed away a couple of months ago.”

  The big man groaned – and then, so did Mum. “Stew, come ON!” She looked like she might go fairly nuclear sometime soon.

  “Er. . . sorry.” I said it to her, but meant it for Merlin.

  However, it seemed the ghostly mage wasn’t about to be put off. With a swirl of mist, he reappeared beside the nectarines. How did he find them so fast, and tell them apart from the peaches? Clearly, he really WAS magic!

  I smiled politely. “You, er, were telling me why it’s impossible for you to learn your destiny. . .”

  “I tried to peek once,” Merlin confessed. “It was no good. The view is clouded with dark spells that can only have been cast by some fearsome future foe. That is how I know there is a struggle ahead. Now, my lad—”

  “Tights!” Mum cried suddenly, placing a punnet of nectarines into the trolley. “I almost forgot, I have to buy some more tights, all mine have gone missing. Wait for me by the pasta, Stew, while I nip and get them. Oh, I’ve just got too much to cope with. . .”

  As she walked away, Merlin vanished once more – only to reappear in the trolley’s toddler seat!

  “What is this pasta of which your matriarch speaks?” the great wizard enquired.

  “Uh, just food. From Italy.” I gingerly returned to pushing the trolley, trying not to let the wizard’s ghostly feet brush through my legs. “You know, this is totally weird!”

  “In truth, I too am perturbed.” Merlin looked all around. “You mean to say, this place is a store for foods harvested from around the world? You must surely have your own Harvest Boy in this time, to gather so many.”

  “Harvest Boy as in your, uh, ‘superhero’, you mean?” I felt kind of awkward. “Er, no. Superheroes aren’t real.”

  “Mine were,” Merlin said calmly, fixing me with his gaze. “In my own time, heroes of greatness were sorely needed. So, inspired by the comics of this time, I started Magic, Inc. - my own comics company. I created my own characters and brought them to magical life. . .”

  “Like Posho,” I breathed, as we turned into the pasta aisle.

  “Posh what? No! Don’t tell me.” Merlin suddenly yelled, “La-la-la-la!” and covered his ears. I couldn’t believe the crowds around me were deaf to it all; as deaf as Merlin, it seemed. “Can’t hear a thing when I do this,” the magician went on cheerily. “La-la-la-la! I do it when Arthur’s making speeches sometimes – he hates it, ha ha! Perhaps I should’ve been a singer. . .”

  “Merlin,” I whispered, as he finally removed his fingers from his ears. “Back-tracking a bit, do you mean that Lantern Girl and Sonny Siege and War Commander really were alive?”

  “Alive and fit for fighting and wrong-righting. My comics were not fiction as are your modern comics, but a true chronicle of my heroes’ brave and bold actions all over Arthur’s kingdom.” The wizard’s face darkened. “Arthur’s kingdom, yes – he never let me forget it! That strutting peacock couldn’t handle the competition my characters gave him! Arthur wanted to be the only hero in the land. . . so he demanded I stop conjuring superheroes and stop making comics.”

  I brought the trolley to a rest beside the spaghetti. “That’s. . . that’s tough.”

  The wizard’s eyes seemed wet with tears. “Arthur made me close down Magic, Inc. and return to my proper wizardly duties as his guide and mentor. I had to give up on my comics empire, just because he said so. . . oh, and because there were no such things as printing presses or paper. . . And because the population couldn’t read. Lame excuses!”

  They actually sounded quite good excuses to me.

  “In any case. . .” The wizard cleared his throat noisily. “My mission here today is to reveal this to you: that, if you succeed in whatever great service you have sworn to perform for me, I will reward you handsomely. . .”

  I gulped again. “Handsomely?”

  “Extremely handsomely. . .” Merlin raised an eyebrow and smiled. “I shall revive my magical comics company in this century. I shall put you in direct control of Magic, Inc.!”

  FROM THE SUPERMARKET TO. . . SOMEWHERE ELSE

  (Possibly back home. Ok, yes, straight home. Well, what did you expect? It was raining!)

  You can picture me, can’t you, at that moment in the supermarket, as Merlin dropped his bombshell beside the pasta sauces. “Magic, Inc.,” I breathed, every sense in shock, every moment stretching into infinity as the words sunk in.

  I must have stayed like that for maybe half a second. Then I frowned.

  “But. . . I’m still at school,” I whispered, ignoring the look an old lady was giving me as she reached for a jar of Bolognese sauce. “I can’t control a business. What kind of a reward is that?”

  “Magic, Inc. will give you great advantage in the world of comics. Especially once you have this.” Merlin pulled a slim, neat, beautifully made paintbrush from inside his sleeve. And unlike the rest of Merlin, it was solid and real. He pressed the brush into my hand, and little prickles of power sparked through my fingers.

  I can help your talents grow, he’d told me yesterday.

  “When dipped in the magic ink that you already possess, and when in close proximity to the drawing board of a master comic-book artist like your grandfather, this charmed instrument will allow you to draw as well as the finest comics artist you can imagine. Your work will be admired and desired by many companies. You will become famous and wealthy – that shall be your reward! And once you are full-grown you will be able to start your own comics empire. A mighty empire that, in honour of old Merlin and his lofty ambitions, you shall name—”

  “Frozen pizzas,” Mum announced, making me jump half a mile.

  Merlin glared at her. “That is a rubbish name, Madam!”

  She couldn’t hear him, of course. “We need to get pizza for dinner tonight, Stew.” I hid the brush behind my back and stuffed it down the back of my trousers as she chucked a packet of tights into the trolley and bustled away. “Come on, get wheeling.”

  Merlin tutted as I pushed the trolley after Mum.

  “I’m sorry about her,” I said. “I’m sure if she could see you she wouldn’t keep interrupting. She’d just faint or something.” Thing was, I felt close to fainting myself. My brain was ablaze with the fabulous futures that suddenly seemed possible. “My own comics empire. . . My ‘Magic, Inc.’. . .” My cheeks ached with the size of the grin on my face. “Thank you, great wizard. Thank you so much.”

  “Thank you, for whatever it is you will do for me.” Merlin looked troubled. “I fear that for me to grant you such a prize as this, the needs of my future self must be mighty indeed.”

  “You sure you don’t want me to tell you about the—?”

  “La-la-la-la!” Merlin shook his head so hard that his pointy hat nearly flew off and stabbed an old lady in the eye. “Now, my spirit’s time in your strange world is coming to an end. I must return to my waiting body in my own time of 500 AD.” He gave me a cheerless smile. “Farewell, lad. May we both be equal to the challenges ahead. . .”

  “Thank you, sir.”
I stared, transfixed, as the wizard’s apparition dissolved into scentless smoke. “I’ll try my best, I’ll—”

  “OWW!” Mum rubbed her behind and grimaced. “You banged the trolley into my bottom, Stew! You’re away with the fairies today – honestly, I wish I’d left you at home!”

  “Sorry, Mum. Perhaps you could take me back right now, and finish the shopping on your own later?” I suggested.

  The look she gave me suggested ‘perhaps not’. Still, it had been worth a try. Merlin’s mysterious brush was burning a hole in the back of my pants. Not literally – that wouldn’t be cool. It would be hot. What I mean is, I couldn’t wait to get using it.

  I’m going to be rich! I thought, staring fervently at Merlin’s gift every chance I could. Perhaps it was a good thing that all my friends were fifty miles away or I might’ve blabbed to one of them, giving away my new secret identity as Merlin’s Rescuer-to-be.

  I was dying to sneak up to the attic and try out my brand new brush at Granddad’s drawing board, as Merlin had directed. But I didn’t want to be disturbed, so I forced myself to wait for the perfect opportunity. . .

  As a result, the day lasted about forever.

  I did your normal, boring kind of stuff – you know, putting away the groceries, grabbing some toast for lunch, accidentally getting Lib in a headlock and throwing her onto the sofa, blah blah blah. To be honest, I wasn’t really that interested in tormenting Lib, but I knew that it was a surefire way of getting sent to my room – and from there, it was a whole lot easier to slip away upstairs to the attic.

  So around late afternoon I ‘accidentally’ stepped on her mermaid picnic, got myself a wail from Lib and a telling-off from Mum, and duly trooped away upstairs – to the top of the house, brand new ancient brush in hand.

  “Posho?” I whispered, slowly opening the door.

  SPLOSH! A carefully placed plastic bucket of water fell onto my head, drenching me in a moment. The oldest practical joke in the book! It was all I could do not to yell out in shock – at which point Mum and Dad would’ve come charging upstairs to sort me out. As it was, I suppose it was lucky my head had caught the bucket before it could thump onto the floor – if you can call that luck.

  “Posho, what are you playing at?!” I hissed.

  “Sorry, old bean!” The upper crust pig peered out apologetically from behind the armchair. “Oink! I simply couldn’t help myself. I’m made this way! Goodness knows, I’ve tried to change. . . I’d love to be better than this, you know.”

  To my surprise, he really did look upset.

  “Look at me,” I muttered. “I’m soaked.”

  “I took a towel from the bathroom so you could dry off. It’s on the stool there.” Posho tutted. “Where have you been, anyway?”

  “I had to go out. And you’ll never guess who I saw.” Despite my soaking, I couldn’t help but grin. “The Big Man! It was kind of a spirit version of Merlin, an earlier him from before he was captured. . .”

  “Pardon? PARDON?” Posho came scampering towards me, his eyes wide and bright, his top hat barely clinging to his ears. “You actually talked with the Big Man IN PERSON?”

  “Yeah!” I shook my head, marvelling. “I mean, I don’t know how Merlin knew to come and see me before Viviane locked him up,” I said. “But it sounds like he can see into the future a little bit, even if he isn’t meant to. He is a wizard, after all.”

  “I do hope so.” Posho clapped his trotters together. “Tell me more, tell me more. . .”

  As I filled in Posho on all that had happened, I couldn’t help but notice his corkscrew tail growing limper, as the crestfallen look returned to his piggy face.

  “If only I’d been there,” he said quietly. “Twenty years I’ve been waiting and wanting to help the Big Man.”

  “You have,” I told him. “I mean, if you hadn’t been here, I’d never have worked out what to do. How the flip did my granddad even know to draw on the magic paper?”

  “Oink! Instructions were left, old fruit – buried in your grandfather’s garden along with the Magic, Inc. comics.” Posho sighed deeply. “After I sprang to life, the old boy tried to burn the lot. I salvaged all I could – he didn’t realise I could get out of the attic. I don’t think he ever truly believed I was real at all.”

  “You did brilliantly,” I said kindly. “Now, could I see all those instructions? Especially any stuff about the prison itself?”

  “Eh? Oh. . . yes. The Big Man told your grandfather all about it when they began their brief acquaintance.” Posho looked shifty. “Oink! I’ll fetch them. But first you must stand in the corner and hide your eyes.”

  I blinked. “Why?”

  “It’s, er, part of the magic,” Posho insisted.

  I did as he said.

  But obviously I peeped a little bit.

  And I saw Posho scurry over to his favourite part of the attic and pull up a floorboard. So that was where he kept Merlin’s stuff! I had to admit, here was a pig who planned for every possibility. He was sneakier than he seemed.

  I couldn’t see exactly what he was up to in the space beneath the floorboard, but soon he was treading it back into place and turning back to me with a roll of parchment.

  “There.” He pressed it into my hand. “This rescue will be quite a challenge, as you can see.”

  And as I opened my eyes, I could see. Boy, could I see.

  I just didn’t really want to.

  There, in scratchy letters – along with a few off-putting illustrations – was the list of defences around the cave. It read:

  DRAWING ON ALL MY RESERVES OF. . . ER DRAWING

  “Wow.” I lowered the parchment with a shaky hand. “Those defences sound pretty hardcore.”

  “And now, you must do what your grandfather chose not to do. Oink! You must draw the superhero who can get past them to get the Big Man out.” Posho glanced at his favourite floorboard in a furtive fashion. “Or superheroes, perhaps. As in, plural. More than one.”

  I shook my head. “Stupendous Man works alone.”

  Posho frowned. “Who-pendous man?”

  “The superhero I’ve invented! I’ve been drawing him, like, for ever!” I gazed down at the magic brush. “He’d be perfect to rescue Merlin.”

  “I see,” said Posho. “Well, tonight, if the night is clear and the moonlight strong – Oink! – Merlin will commune with us again and give his instructions.”

  “I’ll welcome him back with a greeting from Stupendous Man,” I decided, taking up my place at the drawing board – I just had to try out that brush. “If Merlin was right about what this thing can do, I’ll be able to make my characters look like they’ve been drawn by real comic book artists. . . And the Big Man will know straight away that his magic’s worked.”

  Taking a canyon-deep breath, I dipped the point of my brush in the magic ink. My hand grew suddenly warmer, twitching as if there was an itch inside, and the only way to scratch that itch was. . .

  Almost before I knew it, I was drawing – inking Stupendous Man like I was following invisible guides. From this moment, I could forget felt-tips and dump dip pens; each stroke of the brush came out sharp and confident; it seemed I hardly had to move my hand at all. I watched the picture emerge, marvelling, but terrified I might spoil it at any moment, hardly daring even to breathe.

  My excitement built and built until finally, there he was – Stupendous Man as I’d always dreamed of seeing him.

  His expression screamed raw bravery, his every bulging muscle portrayed in perfect detail. There he stood on the parchment – a truly superhuman hero.

  I had left space for a few words in a speech balloon: THE BRUSH WORKS WELL. . . NOW, TO THE RESCUE! The bold letters sped from the tip of the brush. I inked the oval around them and then dropped the brush back in the bottle of magic ink. My hand felt hot and trembling. I stared at it, wonderingly.

  “Good work, old bean,” snuffled Posho. “Not bad at all.” He was staring at the panel I had filled with perhaps a
hint of envy in his eyes. “I’m sure the Big Man will be pleased – that chap looks a match for most types of trouble.”

  “He is,” I agreed. “See, he can draw power from the things around him. If the dragon breathed fire he could absorb it and blast it back, and—”

  “Stew. . . ?” Mum was coming up the stairs! “If you’re ready to say sorry you can come out of your room and join us. . .”

  I froze. Posho looked at me and did a comedy gulp.

  “Disaster!” I hissed. “If she finds me up here, soaking wet, with all this water over the floor, she’ll hit the roof. She’ll never let me in the attic again!”

  “Leave it to me!” hissed Posho.

  Like a porky blur he jumped high into the air, smacking top-hat-first against the skylight – which can’t have been quite on the catch as it swung straight upwards. He scrabbled through, quite impressively for a pig, and the skylight swung shut behind him. I heard his trotters rat-a-tatting over the roof, but it was Mum’s heavy tread as she scaled the stairs that fixed me where I stood. It’s all going to come out, I thought helplessly. The magic ink, the brush, the parchment, Posho, all these secrets—

  I jumped – it sounded like a billion bottles had just fallen from a great height to shatter outside the front door. Mum gasped with surprise, reversed and zoomed right back down the stairs to see what had happened.

  “Nigel, what was that?” she yelled over Libby’s shrieks of alarm.

  Dad was already flinging open the front door. “It sounded like a billion bottles falling from a great height and shattering just outside!”

  See?

  “I can feel one of my heads coming on,” Mum groaned, as she picked up Libby and followed Dad outside.

  Posho must’ve done something to buy me time, I realised. I’d better get spending that time – fast!

  On wobbly legs I sprinted down the stairs to the landing, grabbed a towel from the bathroom, sprinted back up the stairs, mopped up the wet patch on the attic carpet, started to sprint back down the stairs, tripped and fell the last several stairs, banged my head on the landing wall, gasped and clutched my head, muttered rude words under my breath, staggered up, got inside my bedroom, tripped over a box of comics, narrowly avoided falling on a near mint copy of Conan the Barbarian Issue Eight, fell on my face instead, muttered some even ruder words under my breath, quickly changed out of my wet clothes, chucked them under my duvet, scrambled into some dry clothes, ran from my room and. . .