Josh and the Magic Vial

by Craig Spence

  The wretched creature could not withstand anything beautiful — anything truly beautiful, that he could not sully with his callous, filthy hands. Josh pitied him. He tried not to. He wanted to feel compassion instead. But Blackstone and his son Andrew were beyond the reach of compassion. They were too miserable, too pathetic. The best Josh could do was keep his pity from degenerating into contempt.

  “Open yourself to it,” he advised Blackstone and Andrew. “It’s as warming as sunlight, as welcome as a breeze.”

  “Bah! It grates on the air. Is this what you bring to Desolation Isle? Turn it off! Turn it off!”

  Josh laughed.

  “What’s so funny!” Blackstone demanded..

  “I can’t switch if off,” Josh answered. “It’s not ofmy making.”

  “Whose is it then?”

  Josh listened intently. He couldn’t pick individual voices out of the chorus, but he sensed his mother in the strains, his father, Millie and Ian. Puddifant and Charlie Underwood were there too — and all the spirits that had escaped Syde.

  “It’s my friends,” Josh answered at last. “They are calling to me.”

  Blackstone cackled, his emaciated frame shuddering and wheezing with the effort.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “The notion that an imp like you thinks he might make it off Desolation Isle. Nobody has ever escaped this place; nobody ever will — least of all someone Vortigen hates as much as you.”

  Josh let these gloomy words pass through him. He heard them, understood them, but did not allow them to stick to his soul.

  Sensing this, Blackstone scowled. “Ah! You’re the fine one, aren’t you. Turns up his nose at a kingdom, now expects to simply float away. We shall see.”

  A scrabble in the rocks behind them interrupted their discussion. Josh had been aware of a presence there, but had ignored it. Now he turned toward the source of the sound as a lanky figure crept out from behind the rocks.

  “Quiggle!”

  “Well, hello Your Fallen Highness!” the valet cried in feigned astonishment. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “There’s no surprise at all in my being here, but how on earth did you end up on Desolation Isle.”

  “Well, His most Eminent Eminence has often threatened to send me off on a holiday here, and now I guess he’s done it.”

  “What for?”

  “Consorting with the enemy, I suppose.”

  “But why didn’t you leave with the others. Why didn’t you wish for your freedom along with the rebels instead of letting yourself be hurled into this abominable place?”

  Quiggle scratched his head and frowned as if he had trouble figuring that out for himself. “It’s a funny thing, loyalty, sir,” he said after a while. “I’ve always hated the things Vortigen does, and I know you think he’s evil through and through, but . . . well . . . everyone needs a friend, I guess, and I was his.”

  “You are a remarkable man, Quigs,” Josh shook his head, chuckling.

  “Aye,” Blackstone cut in. “Too remarkable for my liking!”

  He stepped toward Quiggle, his hands balled into fists. Andrew laughed like a hyena, happy to see someone else on the receiving end of his father’s vicious temper.

  “NO!” Josh shouted, his word echoing like a clap of thunder up a narrow valley, hurling Blackstone backward, clear off the shelf onto the rocks below.

  The warlock lay stunned beside the cauldron of bubbling lava. Andrew gave Josh one startled glance, then fled scrambling over the jagged landscape like a beetle hearing footsteps on the garden path.

  “Listen!” Josh commanded.

  “I hear it, sir,” Quiggle said. “It’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. Magic, really. As if the very atmosphere had a voice.”

  “We can follow that sound out of here, Quiggle. It’s calling us.”

  “It’s calling you,” the valet said glumly. “I don’t think it’s meant for the likes of me.”

  Josh laughed. “Don’t be a fool,” he said. “Here, take my hand and sit beside me.”

  Quiggle folded his lanky legs beneath him, settling on the ground the way a heron might settle on its nest. Josh couldn’t help smiling at this. Quiggle was such a gentle, wonderful spirit.

  “I won’t leave without you.” he promised.

  “But what if they won’t take me sir?”

  “Then we will keep each other company here. It’s hard to be a good man all alone, but a good man with a good companion, why that makes all the difference.”

  Nothing he had ever experienced pleased Josh more than the look of courage and gratitude Quiggle bestowed on him then. “It’s why I’m here,” he thought. “That single glance is my whole reason for being.”

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Listen to the music, Quiggle. That’s all you have to do.”

  They closed their eyes and listened. Without the distraction of Blackstone, the chorus grew suddenly loud and triumphant. It shook the air around them, overwhelming their senses.

  “Oh my!” Quiggle gasped.

  Suddenly, the jubilation had a direction. It surrounded them still, but there was a direction in the music which Josh and Quiggle turned their thoughts to. And as they faced it, it took hold, becoming louder and exultant. The vision that had been Desolation Isle began to quiver and quake. Rocks toppled off of rocks and cracks appeared in the hard surface of illusion, then the island folded in on itself, collapsing into a dark void.

  They found themselves in what appeared to be outer space. Absolute blackness.

  A voice bellowed after them. “Nooo!” it hollered. It was Vortigen — Vortigen shrieking in rage and pain. But even he could not follow them out of the imploding world he ruled. He was caught up in the gravity of pride and evil, which Josh and Quiggle had shed, and so he was pulled into his own abyss.

  “I will follow you!” he vowed. “I shall release every evil to track you down! I will not rest.”

  Josh thought he heard Blackstone laughing at this, a laugh that would haunt him forever.

  “Where are we sir?” Quiggle wanted to know.

  “Between worlds, my friend. Nowhere and everywhere at the same time.” Josh thought.

  They could move in any direction now, he realized. Infinite and unspeakable possibilities overlapped where they floated. They could choose anything. They had earned that right.

  “The music,” a voice reminded him — Puddifant’s voice, clear and authoritative as ever. “Find it. Come home.”

  Josh hesitated, then agreed. He listened now for any trace of the song that had collapsed the world of Syde. But the icy silence seemed utterly profound - as if you could shout into it and your voice would not disturb it in the least.

  “Can you hear it Quigs?” Josh asked.

  “No, sir,” the Valet said.

  “Relax, then. We must relax and let the music find us.”

  With that, Josh closed his eyes and drifted into a trance. He held tight to Quiggle’s hand, fearful of losing his companion to the chaos that had enveloped them. But aside from that, Josh stilled his thoughts completely and allowed himself to drift in the void.

  How long they were suspended like that, he could not say. But eventually the stillness acquired direction again, and they found themselves drifting like a loosed rowboat on secret currents. Then, way off in the distance, they heard the faintest suggestion of a sound.

  “Relax,” Josh said. “Don’t try to hear it. Let it find you.”

  By imperceptible degrees they turned toward it and floated in that direction. Slowly at first — so slowly that it might have been the illusion of movement, not the reality. But the tendency acquired speed and as they drifted closer, the voices intensified. And as the voices intensified, Josh and Quiggle were pulled more forcefully into their orbit, until the dreamers hurtled like a double comet toward the earth.

  Millie sang like she’d never sung before. Her voice harmonized with the others: Ian, Mr. and Mrs. Dempster, Puddifant — but most of all
with the chorus that swelled outside and carried everything along on its current.

  She wanted to watch Josh, but kept her eyes shut. That was the only way to hold the notes — and she knew, above all else, that she had to hold the notes, and merge her voice with the undulating harmony.

  No words. No words. Just the voices raised and lowered in unison. Inside the music she could hear all sorts of things that had nothing to do with voices. Wind chimes, a horse whinnying, a baby babbling, bells calling the faithful, wind, waves crashing . . . all these things were in the song, but not a single word.

  Then she felt something. A spirit had heard her. Millie had never felt anyone hearing her before, but that’s what happened. And everyone else in the chorus felt it too, and they redoubled their singing.

  Still she did not open her eyes, but clamped them shut even tighter, all her being concentrated on producing the perfect note in harmony with the swelling choir.

  Again. A spirit harkened.

  This time she could not help opening her eyes — just a bit. Josh lay perfectly calm. Had he slipped even deeper into his coma? “My God, no!” she pleaded.

  A nurse opened the door to Josh’s room, investigating the loud singing, which must have contravened at lease a dozen hospital rules. How long would she let this go on? Millie gave her a pleading look, and the nurse let the door shut.

  “Please, Josh. Come now!” Millie urged quietly.

  And at that precise moment, Josh’s eyes flicked open — not with the glazed look of semi-consciousness, but fully open.

  No one else had noticed, because all of them were singing their hearts out with their eyes closed. A look of amazement and surprise lit up Josh’s face as he scanned the gathering. It was a radiant look — a look of utter innocence, which Millie would never, ever forget.

  Mrs. Dempster, sensing something had changed in the atmosphere of the room, opened her eyes too. For a second she stared, not sure she could believe what she saw, then she whooped for joy and wrapped her arms around her son.

  After that a joyful hubbub filled the room, bringing the nurse scurrying back — perhaps thinking the worst. Mr. Dempster was hugging his son, Ian was hugging Millie, Millie was hugging Josh. Through it all, Puddifant was sitting on the window sill with Charlie Underwood and a dizzy-looking Quiggle, beaming like a man who’s just won a million-dollar lottery.

  73

  “You’re back, my boy!” Puddifant said when things had settled down and the two of them were alone for a moment.

  Yes. I’m back for good.”

  “Well done,” the inspector chuckled.

  “I’m changed though, aren’t I?”

  “Yes.” Puddifant agreed.

  “I feel that I’m grown up, but still a kid.”

  “That’s a good feeling Josh,” Puddifant beamed. “Remember it. Remember it always.”

  “I suspect there will always be someone nearby to remind me,” Josh teased, and the two of them laughed at the brand new future they would share.

  CRAIG SPENCE is a communications manager with the Langley, British Columbia, School District. He has been a writer and journalist for more than twenty-five years. In addition to writing fiction for readers of all ages, he conducts story-building workshops with children. Josh & the Magic Vial is his first published book.