Magic Ink

by Steve Cole

  Bumped straight into Posho, back again – his top hat askew and looking very pleased with himself. “Not a bad distraction, eh, old bean?”

  “That was amazing,” I told him. “You were, like, an action hero pig just then.”

  “A hero, you say?” Posho looked super-delighted, and grabbed me in a big, bristly hug. “Thank you! Oink! Thank you, dear boy, from the hearty bottom of my bottom-most heart!”

  “No worries,” I muttered awkwardly. “What did you actually do, anyway?” I ran to the window overlooking the front of the house at the far end of the landing.

  And gasped.

  There, below, were Mum, Dad and Lib, staring at a jagged explosion of broken glass that stretched right across the street. Some of our neighbours had come out to see, and everyone was taking it in turns to shrug, stare down at the road and then up again at the evening sky, over and over again. It looked a bit like a particularly rubbish dance routine.

  “The bottles, they. . . they must’ve fallen from a plane or something,” I heard Dad say.

  “Or from the roof, of course!” Posho chuckled. “I’ve been collecting bottles left out for recycling over the last ten-or-so years and storing them in several crates tied up together on the roof. Oink! Heaved them all overboard to draw everyone’s attention to the front of the house! I was planning to drop them beside the postman one day. It’s a shame I shan’t get to see the look on his face, but at least all that effort wasn’t in vain!”

  I looked at him. “Did you check there was no one down below? You might’ve killed them!”

  “Of course I checked!” Posho blustered, fiddling with his moustache. “In any case – Oink! – may I remind you that we are engaged in a matter of life and death, old boy?”

  I nodded slowly. I was still ecstatic about my amazing drawing upstairs – the first of thousands, it seemed, that would make me rich and famous and a comic book legend. . .

  But at what price?

  I was starting to realise that this magic stuff wasn’t just fun and games. It could be dangerous.

  As I’d find out later, it could be deadly dangerous.

  “Now, go to your family before you are missed,” Posho urged me. “And join me again in the attic later tonight. Oink! Toodle-pip!”

  As Posho scampered back up to the attic, I staggered downstairs. My family was still huddled together outside the front door.

  “This mess’ll need clearing up before someone hurts themselves.” Dad sounded shell-shocked. “Should we call the council? Or the police?”

  “Or the army,” said Lib (dumbly, as per usual).

  “Or an ambulance,” Mum cried, “to take me to hospital when my nerves give up completely!”

  And for once, I didn’t roll my eyes and grumble. Because, for once, standing there forgotten in the hall, I kind of knew how Mum felt.

  (Hang on, have I actually spelled both those wurds korectly?)

  POSHO FALLS FROM GRACE

  ( AND A WINDOW)

  As it turns out – and luckily for my guilt levels – Posho’s crazy stunt actually did a lot more good than harm for my family. Yeah, sure, it meant a load of grown-ups had to go out with gloves and brooms and dustpans and stuff to clear up the glass before little kids like Lib could go out and fall on it, but it turned out to be a really good way for Mum and Dad to meet the neighbours. I reckon grown-ups secretly like it when stuff goes wrong; they can have a good moan about it together and, like, bond over it. Weirdos.

  The bad news was, while Mum and Dad cleared away the remains of the pig’s prank, I had to babysit Lib while she babysat for her dolls. And all I could think of, all that mattered to me just then, was getting back upstairs to the attic. I was dying to know what Merlin thought of my artwork. I wanted to start helping him so I could get on with the rest of my now-surely-guaranteed-to-be-fantastic life.

  After the big clear-up, Mum and Dad invited some of the neighbours round for tea or something. They were soon all loud voices and hearty laughter, so I guessed there was less tea and more something else quenching their thirst. Mum came up looking flushed and with a red nose, but she wasn’t complaining for once; she just wanted me and Lib in bed ASAP so she could get back to the party. Which suited me! As soon as the coast was clear, I snuck up to that magical moonlit room at the top of the house and carefully pushed open the door before I entered. No practical jokes this time. Posho was standing by the drawing board, looking grave.

  “I’m glad you’re here, old boy,” Posho said. “The Big Man has made his feelings clear.”

  I joined him and found that Merlin had filled a couple of panels already with his long-distance blend of words and pictures:

  So. Not a single comment on Stupendous Man. “You were right, Posho,” I muttered. “It’s superheroes he’s after, just as you said.”

  “This team-up wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.” Posho glanced forlornly at his favourite floorboard again. “Oink! Still, if the Big Man favours a super-group of his own heroes, well – he knows best.”

  “Does he?” I wondered, thinking back to early issues of The Avengers comic – and the movie version too. “When you stick a load of superheroes together, they always fight. And anyway, Merlin doesn’t know what Stupendous Man can do,” I argued. “So. . . I’ll show him.” I picked up the brush and set to work at once. The sound of merry adults laughing rose from that whole other world downstairs.

  The world I was starting to leave behind.

  I drew a stonkingly stupendous Stupendous Man, pictured in action against those terrible guardian monsters. My brushstrokes in the magic ink captured each figure deftly and surely; all I had to do was picture the image in my head and the brush would help me to draw it with absolute confidence.

  With the picture drawn, I started lettering, trying to sell Merlin on the concept.

  I waited eagerly. But as the next panel began to appear, I didn’t like it much.

  Ouch. I felt like a schoolboy who’d picked a fight with the Head Teacher. If Merlin wanted his own heroes, I’d just have to draw them as best I could.

  “How’s Merlin going to get these characters back to him through time, anyway?” I muttered.

  Posho forced a smile. “The Big Man supplied me – er, your grandfather – with a Spell of Time Transportation. Oink! It will allow those freshly-drawn heroes to traverse the centuries to the glorious battle that awaits them.”

  I nodded, still feeling kind of disappointed. And the sixth and seventh panels inked themselves into existence.

  “But. . . I can’t!” I spluttered.

  “I can help, old chap!” said Posho eagerly. “Oink! I can devise strategies. . . Train them in a couple of piggy-commando moves. . .”

  He started to pace up and down. While he wasn’t looking, I filled panel eight with words.

  At once, the final panel on the page began to fill with scratchy linework. The picture was not very pleasant – particularly if you were a pig.

  “Oh. ‘Accursed’? Oink-oink! Oh, Merlin!” Beside me, Posho was staring at the parchment, tears welling in his wide and disbelieving eyes. “I’d hoped that after so long. . .”

  And then he started to cry. Noisily. Very noisily.

  “Posho, don’t! Please!” The sight of him so upset was upsetting me. What was worse, because Posho had started life as a cartoon character, he wept like one too – you know, water squirting from his eyes like there were hosepipes hidden inside them. His spurting tears hit me in the face – and splashed all over the drawing board too. The magic ink began to run. “Posho, you’re getting the parchment wet!” I spluttered. “I don’t know what this is all about, but you need to keep it down! If my mum and dad hear and catch us up here. . .”

  But Posho was inconsolable. He tried to jump out through the skylight again, but his aim was off and it didn’t open – he just cracked the pane, his tears like a sprinkler system splashing everything in sight. In desperation I bundled Posho towards the other window and tried to open it so he coul
d cry into the garden instead. The pig was hysterical now, shaking and shuddering and whimpering so hard I could barely hold onto him. He smashed into the window; the catch broke away from the splintering frame and the window opened. . .

  “Watch out!” I cried, as the hysterical pig began to tumble backwards over the windowsill. “Don’t—”

  Too late. Trotters waggling, Posho vanished from sight and went plummeting three storeys down to the ground below.

  That stopped the pig crying.

  The laughter from downstairs now sounded horridly out of place. “Posho!” I hissed anxiously, peering down into the dark space below. Where was the moonlight? Dark clouds in the sky had soaked it up like sponges. I willed my eyes to adapt to the night. “Posho, are you there? Are you all right?”

  Only silence answered me. It seemed to last for ever.

  . . . But in fact it only went on for a page and a half.

  Then it was followed by a loud sniff and a watery voice: “Oink! Dash it. I landed on my top hat – it’s ruined!”

  I let out a huge sigh of relief. “Posho! Never mind the hat, are you OK?”

  He sounded wretched. “I suppose I’m as OK as a presumptuous pig who’s been spurned by his master, fallen three floors from an attic window and landed on his head can expect to be. O! Cruel fate. . . what a wretched pig am I. . .”

  “I’m glad you’re not a terminally squished one.” I glared at the paper on the drawing board, which drifted between light and shadow under the cracked skylight, as clouds flitted past the moon.

  “Posho never asked to be drawn into existence, Merlin,” I muttered. “And as for him messing up your best chance for escape – what am I, then?”

  But as the moonlight lingered for a few moments and I saw the desk clearly, I had my answer: You’re his last hope, Stew. You’re all the Big Man’s got.

  Where Posho’s tears had struck the parchment, Merlin’s magic ink had run in washy black dribbles. And the dribbles had formed spidery capital letters. And the letters spelled out these words:

  WHAT A SURPRISE, THINGS GET COMPLICATED

  The night clouds mugged the moon, nicking its light all together before bursting into a downpour of rain, and no moonlight meant no heroes springing to life. So I really couldn’t act on Merlin’s plea for speed. In any case, poor old Posho was a wreck after the Big Man’s outburst, and I was a wreck after Posho’s burst-out of the window.

  The sorry-looking pig hauled himself back up the ivy and into the attic.

  “Uh, Posho,” I began quietly, “what did Merlin mean, you’ve drained his—”

  “Oink! I’d sooner not discuss it right now, old chap.” Posho had a big lump on his head, one of those comedy bumps that sticks right up in the air. It made me wonder – could he really hurt himself, or was he as indestructible as most other cartoon characters, like Tom and Jerry or SpongeBob?

  Merlin, for all his magic, obviously was NOT indestructible. He really was in trouble in that prison of his; I decided that in the circumstances he could be excused a few harsh words.

  Of course, if the weather forecast turned properly cloudy for the next few nights, there would be nothing any of us could do to help him. Soon after Posho’s dive, the last of the laughing neighbours (a super-jolly couple who made wine from gooseberries called Clarence and Martha – I mean, the neighbours were called Clarence and Martha, not the gooseberries) finally left the house and splashed back next door. And that meant that Mum and Dad might come back upstairs at any moment.

  Posho peeled the wet ‘talking’ parchment from the drawing table. “I’ll take care of this,” he said dismally. “Pip, pip, old chap. See you tomorrow.”

  And as the pig returned to his favourite floorboard, I crept back to my room.

  Moments later, Mum and Dad came thumping up the stairs, giggling and shushing each other. The secret they were trying to keep: they were a bit tipsy. As for the secrets I was trying to keep. . . where to start?

  I felt uneasy. Not in control. I mean, besides all the crazy magic stuff (which, weirdly, I was getting used to) someone’s life was at stake. And my whole future might be at stake too.

  I wasn’t surprised when the thunder chose that moment to rumble, like a warning of trouble ahead. And suddenly, I realised that the eerie ink stain had vanished from my finger and thumb. I wondered if it had maybe sunk in through my skin and worked its way up to my brain.

  Because the brush and the ink upstairs were all I could think of, the whole night long.

  Early the next morning, I was woken by the sound of banging nearby. The rain was still beating on my window, but this sounded more like a hammer. PAM-PAM-PAMM!

  Hope that’s not Dad hitting Posho, I thought in a half-asleep daze. After more efforts at slumber, I gave up and sat in bed with my sketchpad, copying Merlin’s medieval heroes with a felt-tipped pen; good practice, but the pics were like little kids’ stuff compared to the pictures I’d drawn in the attic.

  I must’ve drifted off back to sleep again because the next thing I knew, Lib’s voice was warbling from downstairs.

  “Stew! Breakfast!”

  “On my way!”

  Despite the grey rainy day, I felt excited. I was itching to get drawing with the super-brush and ink, to take those first steps to rescuing the Big Man. . .

  My good mood lasted all of 65 seconds.

  Dad was half dressed, wearing a shirt and his pyjama bottoms. His hair was messed up and he looked pretty rough as he scraped butter across our toast. Mum sat on a stool, spooning down cereal and staring into space.

  Something felt odd. This wasn’t Normalsville; not anymore.

  “Hi,” I said. “Wasn’t expecting you up so early after your late night. What was that banging I heard?”

  Dad grunted. “I’ve boarded up the windows in the attic.”

  “WHAT?” The word leaped out of my mouth at ear-exploding volume. Dad dropped his next piece of toast and Lib leaped so high she almost smashed her head through the ceiling.

  Mum turned to stare at me. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Why did you board them all up?” I demanded.

  “The skylight had a crack in it,” said Dad. “The frames on the other windows were rotten. One of the catches had broken clean off. Safest to board them up till we get them replaced, stop all this rain getting in.”

  My heart sank faster than the Titanic with a hundred tap-dancing diplodocuses on board. Dad’s handiwork would mean no moonlight could get into the attic – and how would Posho get in and out of the attic unseen?

  “You didn’t have to board them up,” I argued. “Bit of an over-reaction, isn’t it?”

  Dad smiled. “I don’t think so. It’s a good chance to do DIY. I love DIY. Don’t I, Bryony?”

  “Yes, Nigel,” said Mum calmly, still staring into space. “You love DIY.”

  “Er. . . are you two OK?” I asked.

  “We’ll sort out nice new windows while we’re doing up the place,” Dad went on, ignoring me. “Your mum and I are going to start clearing out the attic today.”

  HUH?

  The words did not compute. “You’re. . . smearing out the Arctic?”

  Dad spoke slowly: “We’re clearing out the attic.”

  “You’re keeping out a hat-trick?”

  “Clearing out the attic,” Mum intoned.

  “Cleaning up the cat sick?”

  “Stew,” Lib butted in crossly, “they’re going to start clearing out the smelly old attic.”

  “Wha. . .aaa. . .a. . .?” You can probably imagine the expression on my face. “The attic doesn’t need clearing out,” I cried. “What about Granddad’s stuff?”

  “Making a clean start is the healthiest thing to do,” said Mum.

  Not for Merlin and Posho it isn’t, I thought. The attic was our base of operations. I couldn’t create four medieval superheroes in my bedroom; there wasn’t room and it was way too close to Mum and Dad and Lib. And where would Posho go while the decorating got
done? I couldn’t be expected to share a room with a pig, even a cartoon one. It would be hopeless.

  “Martha and Clarence were telling us last night how they’ve turned their attic into a very nice guest bedroom,” Mum said suddenly. “So we’re going to do the same with ours.”

  “Starting today,” Dad announced.

  “Today?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Why the rush?”

  Dad and Mum both looked at me sharply.

  “Why do you care, Stew?” Mum said. “It’s not like you ever go in the attic. . . is it?”

  I swallowed like there was a lump in my throat. “Er. . . no. But what about Granddad’s pictures on the wall?”

  “I suppose you can have those,” said Mum.

  “Can you start decorating straight away?” Lib was almost drooling with enthusiasm. “I could help pick colours.”

  “Already picked, little darling.” Dad smiled. “I got a cheap job lot of ‘Fairy Blush’ emulsion when we did your room at the old house. We’ve still got three-and-a-half tins left.”

  I shook my head in absolute disgust. This was a disaster. A total disaster. Not only was the Magic, Inc. hideout going to be turned into a spare bedroom, it was going to be PINK!