Magic Ink

by Steve Cole

  “Capital, old boy!” Posho hurried to stand close beside me. “Oink! But don’t zap me with your incredible, real-life superhero powers!”

  We looked at each other and then we started to giggle and snort with gleeful laughter.

  “Now, we’d better not waste time or any more magic.” Posho cleared his throat. “Are you ready for me to recite the Spell of Time Transportation?”

  “Ready and steady,” I said. “Go.”

  Posho read the rhyme aloud in his most dramatic ‘Power Pig’ voice:

  Heroes mighty, disappear

  Take our butts away from here!

  O’er the seas of time we’ll sail

  To set the Big Man free –

  All Hail!

  And then fireworks began to bang and crack inside me. The world around – the garden, Granddad’s house, the shed, the sky – all began to dissolve. Me and Posho were slipping away. Centuries began to blow and bluster around us, harder, faster, colder, freezing me through my suit. . .

  Then suddenly the journey was over. Like stepping off an invisible escalator, Posho – sorry, Power Pig— and me stumbled forward into a white, wet, misty world. I dropped the bin bags with a rustling clatter and a brimstone stink caught hard in my nostrils.

  “Is this the right place?” My voice sounded small and had no echo. “The right time?”

  “It’s er. . . a little hard to tell, old bean.” Posho pulled up his leotard and peered through the curling mist. “Any sign of a great dragon with fiery breath and poisonous claws?”

  I stepped forward, fear hardening in my chest now while wet pebbles crunched mushily under foot. Cliffs loomed up through the smog like an avenue of chalk skyscrapers, creating a kind of natural arena.

  Arena? As in fighting? Fighting to the death against. . .

  A shrieking roar, high and hate-filled, slammed through our bones. I dropped the utility bin bags. The terrifying howl seemed to swallow the air around us. And I realised the mist was not mist at all.

  It was smoke.

  Smoke that was breezing from the horrific, hanging-open jaws of a gigantic reptilian beast. A craggy, coal-black behemoth, its scaly skin like shining rock hacked from the heat-mines of hell.

  “Ah,” said Posho quietly. “That must be the great dragon.”

  Doesn’t look so great to me, I wanted to wisecrack, superhero-style; but I couldn’t mumble the slightest reply, as the dragon’s lava-red eyes opened like bullet-wounds, and its black teeth bared in a welcoming grin.

  Welcoming us to our deaths. . .

  TIME’S A-DRAGGIN’

  The dragon’s shadow swamped me like a suffocating blanket.

  Unless you’ve ever stared up at a giant dragon rising to its full and awful height, extending its rock-sharp poisonous claws towards you as its jaws hiss and steam with a growing, glowing fireball that you just know will be spat your way at any second, you might find it hard to appreciate just how mega-ultra-super-scared I was at that exact moment – even in superhero-form. Especially since I was also aware that I was a good (or rather, very, very bad) one-thousand-five-hundred years away from everything and everyone I knew and loved and my only friend and ally was a prank-playing cartoon pig currently wearing my sister’s leotard, my mum’s tights, an unidentified pair of pants and a beanie hat.

  Luckily, it was this very pig who saved my bacon by reminding me we had actually prepared for this encounter.

  “Utility bin bag three, old bean!” yelled Posho, his trotters a blur as he sprinted through the smelly fog to where I’d dropped the PVC bundles. “Coming your way!”

  He threw the bag towards me – but it fell hopelessly short.

  Luckily for me.

  I scrambled over to try and catch the bin liner. And moments later I felt a blistering heat on my back, as crimson flames engulfed the very spot where I’d been standing. Yes, Stupendous Man very nearly had the shortest career of any superhero in the world.

  As it is, I didn’t die. I just fell to my knocking knees and pulled out the contents of the black sack. . .

  A netted bag of lemons.

  The perfect anti-dragon defence – when you’re Stupendous Man.

  With another blast of stinking, smoking air, the dragon reared up and raised one huge, rocky paw to splat me. But I wasn’t having it. I jumped clear, the mighty muscles in my legs heaving me high into the air so that I landed on a ledge some way up the nearest cliff face.

  Below me, with a jolt, I saw three blackened silhouettes had been burnt into the chalky rock. One bulky and big, one scrawny and one way too small.

  So this was what had become of them – War Commander, Harvest Boy and Lantern Girl – Merlin’s Rescue Mission version one, the poor things, fallen at the first hurdle. Dead and burnt down to their shadows.

  As I turned back to the dragon, my fingers curled into fists. No way was Stupendous Man about to go the same way.

  I squeezed the lemons tight. In my stories, Stupendous Man could absorb the properties of anything he touched – and, sure enough, I felt the sharp tang of the fruit entering the fingers of my left hand. Moments later, a blast of pure citric acid burst from my right palm – and it was the very best feeling in the world. Every time I’d drawn Stupendous Man in the act of absorption, I’d always wondered how it would actually work to have that power, and now I knew.

  It was an absolute rush.

  “Top hole, old boy!” Posho yelled, cowering among the bin bags, “but don’t forget to aim it at the dragon!”

  The dark, jagged monster, its skin aglow like hot coals under bellows, was reaching out to carve me from the cliff face. I sent the supernatural spray of essential lemon-ness right up into the creature’s face, stinging its sizzling eyes, drenching its deadly maw. It recoiled, steam blasting from its body with a noise like hissing boa constrictors, shaking and shuddering.

  “Keep it up!” Posho urged me.

  But then something like a huge dark girder accelerated out of the smoke towards me – the tail of the dragon. I hurled myself aside as the snaking weapon pulverised the cliff face, spraying it as I went somersaulting through the air in a hail of boulders. But as I fell, I lost hold of the lemons.

  Posho squealed and buried himself for cover as debris fell in a hard rain all about, and I landed on my back in the middle of the bin bags. There was foul-smelling smoke everywhere, I couldn’t see where the dragon had gone, nor what state he was in, and without the lemons. . .

  “Here!” Posho emerged from the rustling refuse sacks with more lemons. “Spare fruit from utility bin bag four. Oink! I packed some in case of accidents.”

  “Brilliant,” I cried, beaming as I took hold of the yellow fruits in one hand and tried projecting in the other.

  But this time nothing happened. It seemed that Stupendous Man’s powers had dried up. I grunted, gritting my teeth, straining to let the lemons’ life-energies flow from my fingers. . .

  “I say, are you all right, old chap?” Posho looked concerned. “Do you need the lavatory?”

  “Yes,” I gasped, “but that’s not really relevant right now.”

  It was no good. The lemons were no longer juicing. Merlin’s powers, already weakened as we knew, could do no more.

  The one-hour-only rule seemed to have gone to pot. How much longer would any of my powers remain?

  Then a colossal dragging of flesh against stone close by signalled the return of the dragon. I glimpsed large, yellowing jaws thrusting down at me. A pool of drool splashed down beside me. . .

  And at the smell, my mouth watered hard and I almost laughed out loud in relief.

  The dragon’s spit smelled like lemon juice! His whole head had taken on the texture and shape of squeezed lemons – even his teeth had turned into rind. He gnashed them uselessly together as he raised one paw, its poisonous razor-claws now a mess of pith and fruit flesh.

  I jumped to my heroic feet. “You know what I do with lemons, dragon? I put them in a FRUIT PUNCH!”

  And then I
clobbered that big, spongy yellow head with a double-fisted KA-POW! The blow stung my knuckles, but the effect on the dragon was more dramatic – the great, yellow head jerked aside on the end of its knobbly-bobbly neck in an enormous swing that yanked the bulk of its body skidding across the ground, until. . .

  Head made contact with cliff face and – Never has a sound effect seemed so sweet. The dragon’s eyes closed and with a sour roar that sounded more like an iguana gargling with lemon quarters, it went down – and stayed down.

  “Wow,” I breathed, shaking my aching fists. “I did it! Power Pig, did you see?”

  “I saw it, old boy. Wondrous work!” The refined voice came not from the bin bags, but from the misty stretch ahead of me; I could hear him running about. “Though I hope you didn’t hit the dragon too hard. We need him alive and angry if the rest of the plan’s going to work.”

  “I don’t know my own strength,” I admitted, getting up. “And I don’t know how much longer I’ll have it, either.” As I spoke, I remembered Merlin’s words on the old parchment:

  I was already well aware that Viviane knew about me. Was she down below even now, carrying out her evil promise?

  The smoke was clearing, and now I could see a pool of blackness in the ground before me, its sinister perimeter surrounded by stone flagstones marked with strange symbols.

  “Oi, Posho,” I hissed. “I think I’ve found the dragon’s pit.”

  “Oh?” Posho came racing over, out of breath. “Ah. That would be the hellish pit full of demonic skeleton warriors, hmm? Excellent. Well done.”

  “Shh!” I whispered. “I can hear something rattling around down there.”

  Posho swallowed hard. “Oink! Probably those skeletons’ kneecaps knocking now they know we’re coming, eh?”

  “Yeah. Right. Very likely.”

  “Well, I’ll just go and fetch the next lot of utility sacks.” With a cheery wave, Posho plunged off into the mist again.

  “Good idea,” I called. “With my absorbing powers gone, we need to get on with Plan C and just hope we—”

  I never got to finish my sentence – a bloodcurdling noise like deranged, jubilant laughter rose from the ground ahead. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up on end.

  Harsh, ragged whispers came scraping out from the pit, followed by horrible laughter: “Free. . . we are free again. . . free to kill. . . To slice and dice the souls of our prey. . . To sport their fine flesh upon our warrior bones till it rots around us. . .”

  “P-P-P-Power Pig?” I stammered. “Can. . . can you hear those voices. . .?”

  “Certainly can, old boy.” Posho rejoined me, dragging a clutch of bin bags behind him. “Oink! I think those devils are trying to scare us.”

  I sighed. “If they try any harder I might wet myself.”

  “Don’t worry! I’ve got these. . .” Posho emptied three large red-and-yellow water-squirting rifles from a bin liner. “Fully charged. And there are spares in these other bags. . .”

  “Well, that’s great.” I shook my head. “Hordes of living skeletons with swords climbing up to get us, but not to worry – we’ve brought along a stack of water pistols!”

  At last I saw them – grasping, bony fingers clawing at the top of the pit. The skeleton warriors began to emerge.

  How had I ever convinced myself that risking my life like this was the right thing to do?

  As dark sockets in ivory skulls peeped over the edge of the pit, and as bony jaws gibbered and snapped, I wished I could run away. . . like Granddad had, all those years ago.

  “Stupendous Man!” Posho turned to me as if he could feel me wobbling, his eyes wide and bright through his beanie hat. “It’s all right. We can do this – belief, remember? That’s what we need. Belief. . . and a whole load of dirty tricks!”

  With every last scrap of courage, I forced a smile. “I hope clean tricks will work too. . .”

  I tensed myself as the horrific skeletons came climbing out of their foul hidey-hole; five of them. . . eight. . . ten. . . They swayed about on the flagstones as if acclimatising to their new environment, still giggling, still hissing.

  “OK,” I said in a wavery voice. “That looks like all of them. Fire on my command. . .”

  Slowly, the bony barbarians reached inside their ribcages to draw their swords from the scabbards stuck to their spines. Then, as if moved in unison by some invisible puppeteer, ten ivory arms raised their weapons high above the grinning skulls. . .

  “All right, Power Pig!” I shouted.

  “Now!”

  DANCES WITH SKELETONS

  SQUELCH! SQUALCH! SQUILCH! Posho and I squeezed and pumped our plastic weapons, sending clear, gloopy liquid sloshing out at speed, dousing the skeletons and the flagstones they stood on from head to toe. SPLURT! SPLUSH! Viviane’s warriors glared at us with those ghastly, sightless eyes, swords clamped tight in their ivory fingerbones. . .

  PLL-SQUERCH! FRRRP-SPLIDDLE! After only a dozen blasts, the shooters were exhausted. The skeletons straightened up, looked at each other. . . then they threw back their skulls and laughed like bony drains.

  Posho and I stooped to grab the next of our guns, and started firing again. But the skeletons had had enough. As one, they rushed towards us—

  And tripped over, sprawling onto the flagstones, one after another!

  Suddenly, I saw a silver string tied between two large rocks either side of the pit, and I turned to Posho. “You rigged one of your tripwires! That’s what you were doing while I KO’ed the dragon!”

  “What can I say?” Posho beamed. “I got the most dreadful urge to play a prank – I told you, it’s in my nature!”

  The skeletons were trying to get back up – but they couldn’t. They were too busy slipping and sliding in the gloop we’d used to douse their bones and the ground around them. It was bubbling to a lather now, coating their limbs. They were struggling even to hold their swords.

  “I guess you’ve not come across this stuff before, living in the sixth century,” I told the skeletons with a grim smile. “It’s just liquid soap and bubble mixture, all mixed up together with a little water.” I splattered the skeletons with more of the bubbly slop, and Posho did the same. They writhed helplessly, wailing in a monstrous babble (or bubble) of cries and groans.

  “Phew!” Posho wiped piggy sweat from his brow and straightened his tights. “Time to put Plan J into action?”

  I flexed my legs, which still seemed pretty muscled. “OK,” I agreed. “Plan J – for JUMP!”

  So saying, I leaped twenty metres into the air and landed – K-KRAASH! – red-grippy-boots-first in the middle of the skeleton pile, grinding ivory hard against soapy flagstones. Again and again I jumped on our foes, careful not to slip, dodging the clumsy swipes of swords and the clutching quiver of fingerbones. And each time I landed I made the impact count. Rib cages snapped, vertebrae crumbled, limbs dislocated.

  “Dear, dear,” said Posho, wrinkling his snout. “I don’t really want to watch this. Oink! I’ll fetch the next lot of bin bags, shall I?”

  “OK,” I panted. The skeletons snarled and hissed as I went on jumping up and down, trampling and stamping on their grisly remains, driving out whatever freaky force had animated them.

  Finally, the warriors lay broken and scattered in the soapy stew, like the table-leavings of some brutal yet hygiene-obsessed ogre.

  With relief I jumped clear – but to my horror, as I did so, Stupendous Man’s super-strength seemed to flee my knees. I’d been aiming for the non-slippery ground on the far side of the pit, but my leap was too puny. Instead I found myself scrabbling desperately for the jagged edge of the hideous hell-hole. . .

  WHUMP!

  I just caught hold of the flagstoned precipice, all but my fingertips dangling down inside the pit. It was dark and dank, stinking and nightmarish, with no bottom in sight.

  “Whoa!” I gasped. “So much for my stupendous leg power.” I began to pull myself up. “Luckily my arms are still. . . oh, NO!
”

  My biceps and triceps were deflating like old balloons. I didn’t have enough upper body strength to lift myself back up.

  “Posho – Power Pig – quick!” I yelled. “I’m going to fall! My super powers have gone!”

  Weirdly, with that realisation, it wasn’t only the thought of falling down into a dark supernatural pit that terrified me. My other horrible thought was: if my stupendousness had suddenly leaked away. . . what did that mean for Merlin? “Power Pig!” I shouted again, still clinging on helplessly to the side of the pit. “Posho, please? Where are you?”

  “Hang in there, old chap!” Posho came scampering over with another few bin bags. “I’m coming! Oink! I’ll pull you out! I’ll—WHOOPS!”

  I watched, horror-struck, as Posho skidded in the soapy gloop around the mouth of the pit and went bum-over-trotters into freefall. The bin bags slipped from his grip. . .

  Then he dropped like a stone. He only just managed to grab on to my long underwear, snuffling and clinging on for his life. I was glad my pants were on the outside of my costume, or I might have been showing everything by now.

  “Oink!” He called up. “Sorry, old bean! Bit of a cliffhanger moment, what?”

  “I can hardly hold my own weight,” I gasped. “With yours too. . .”

  No, I told myself, don’t give up! You can do this.

  Believe! Believe!

  I closed my eyes. . . gritted my teeth. . .

  But it was no good. My fingers were numb. My arms were full of pins and needles.

  With a shout of despair, I finally lost my grip. Next second I was plummeting with Posho into the deathly blackness of the pit. . .

  DID IT EVER HURTY!

  How far can you fall in a second? I didn’t know then and I still don’t, but I can tell you it feels like you’ll never stop.

  I remembered my very favourite Spidey tale (as told in Amazing Spider-Man #121-122 from 1973) in which the Green Goblin knocked Spider-Man’s girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, from the top of a New York bridge. Spidey tried to save her but he was too late – the force of the fall had already killed her.