Phyllis Wong and the Waking of the Wizard

by Geoffrey McSkimming

  It was agony; every step she crossed made her knee throb with a knife-blade sharpness. Somehow she managed to get near the bottom of the stairs, the pain pulsing through her.

  She turned and looked up. And she let out a wail!

  The stage manager was advancing down the steps towards her, his eyes wide and furious, his cigar stub sticking out of his fat-lipped mouth.

  Find it, she told herself. Forget about everything, the pain, that man, everything. Concentrate on—

  She summoned up all her focus, the same intense focus that overtook her when she was practising magic. This time, the edges of the Andruseon appeared not slowly, but swiftly.

  Gathering her strength, ignoring the pain, Phyllis dashed up the stairs, straight towards the Pocket’s dark, swirling, windy opening. The stage manager, rushing down the steps towards her as fierce as a charging bull, stopped dead in his tracks, not four steps above her hurtling figure.

  His cigar stub fell to the stairs when she vanished, wind-blown and silently, right in front of his nose.

  Opening up

  When Phyllis tumbled out of the TimePocket onto her basement stairs, her knee was no longer a mass of stabbing pain. It felt as good as normal.

  She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and rubbed her leg. Seems that an injury is only real at the Time and place it occurred, she thought. Maybe if I went back there, my knee would be killing me again.

  She vowed she’d never return to the Froux-Froux Levité Opera House on the 24th of October, 1931, if she could at all help it.

  Daisy leapt off the sofa and bounced over. Phyllis scooped her up and snuggled the pup into her chest. Daisy gave her a quick snouting under her chin, and then wriggled to be put down on the floor again; it had only been a few minutes in present Time since Phyllis had Transited to Paris, and Daisy didn’t feel the need to give her a longer welcome back.

  Phyllis took off her coat and sat on the sofa. She took out her cell phone and called Clement.

  ‘Clem?’

  ‘Phyll?’ He sounded anxious. ‘You back already?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Can you—?’

  ‘How’d it go? You okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll tell you all about it when we meet. Can you be outside Police Headquarters in twenty minutes?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Good. I’ll take this makeup off and see you then.’ And she rang off.

  She wanted Clement to be with her when she met with the Chief Inspector. Even though Barry Inglis was aware of the world in which she moved, this was going to be a story that might need back-up.

  ‘Myrddin?’ Barry Inglis repeated. He was sitting behind his desk, looking confused.

  ‘Also known as Merlin,’ said Clement, before Phyllis could elucidate any further. It was the first time Clem had been into Barry’s office and he was all goggle-eyed. ‘Hey, you’ve got some view, Baz,’ he said, going over to the windows and looking out over City Park as he stroked his fake ginger goatee.

  ‘Chief Inspector to you, Clement.’

  ‘Sorry, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘I know who Merlin is,’ said Barry. ‘I’ve read the stories and seen the movies. But surely he was just a myth, Miss Wong?’

  ‘No, Chief Inspector. He’s real. He’s the one who created the TimePockets and Transiting.’

  ‘Good lord,’ he uttered.

  Phyllis said, ‘I didn’t tell you this part of the story before—only the stuff about Sturdy and W.W.—because you seemed to have enough on your plate with the Sturdy attacks.’

  ‘Which are still happening, Miss Wong. Another three people pushed in the way of buses and down stairs and into ponds. Every time, we see Sturdy on the CCTV footage. And every time, he gets away.’

  Clement listened intently to all of this . . . he had no idea all this had been going on.

  ‘I think I know what he’s up to,’ said Phyllis.

  Barry gave her his steady detective’s gaze. ‘Enlighten me.’

  Phyllis did. She told him of Wallace Wong’s quest to find the wizard. She told him about her trip to Stonehenge with Daisy and Clem and how they’d found the inscription in the eclipse, and how they’d gone to Calanais and stumbled into Myrddin’s belvedere over seven hundred years ago. She told him of the connection between Myrddin and Perkus and the theft of Jaunty Jasper.

  Then she said, ‘But now it gets really serious. When I first went into Sturdy’s dressing room, before he caught me in there, I saw some books on his dressing table. They were dark books, Chief Inspector. They were of a magic that shouldn’t be; not magic like my stage and parlour magic, but magic that pulls out black things from places that we don’t know about.’

  Barry Inglis frowned, and a small shudder went up his back as he listened carefully to the conjuror’s low, grave tones.

  Clement came back to the desk. He stood beside Phyllis, who was sitting with Daisy in her lap.

  Phyllis continued: ‘One of the books was called Dark Secrets, and the other, Bringing Forth the Whimpering.’

  ‘The Whimpering?’ said Barry. ‘Good lord, what on Earth—?’

  ‘We first came across a mention of the Whimpering—The Great Whimpering,’ said Phyllis, pulling out her Transiting journal and flicking through it, ‘when we discovered the Stonehenge inscription. This is what it said.’ She found where she’d copied the words, and read them aloud:

  ‘ “The Great Whimpering will see the final days of this world. But it will not be here . . . it will not be until after the reigns of many kings beyond your time. No great winds or storms. No mighty destructions. Merely the Great Whimpering, and the collapsing of the knowledges above . . .” ’

  ‘The end of the world!’ Clement added.

  Daisy barked loudly.

  ‘That was written to King Arthur, from Myrddin,’ Phyllis continued.

  ‘Many kings beyond his time,’ said Barry. ‘Now is a very long time after Arthur . . .’

  Phyllis flicked further through her journal. ‘Then, on my last trip, just a few minutes ago, I went back to the theatre in 1931, to the same date as the time before. When I got there Sturdy had already stolen Jaunty Jasper, and his dressing room was empty. But I discovered that he’d written something.’ She found the page where she’d rubbed in the words from the dressing table, and read them aloud:

  ‘ “to wreak Great Whimpering

  obliterate Mantle

  come to my Time! come for your magic, Myrddin!” ’

  ‘The Mantle?’ Barry gasped. ‘He intends to . . . obliterate the Mantle?’

  ‘What’s the Mantle?’ Clement asked.

  ‘Ah,’ said Barry. ‘It’s only just been announced in the last few days. It’s an enormous new superhighway for all cloud-based technology. Internet, data storage, you name it. They say it’ll speed up access to information by up to five hundred per cent or something. And they reckon it’ll be a person-based platform that could even be activated by your own shadow.’

  ‘Wow!’ gasped Clement. ‘Imagine how fast you could battle zombies!’

  ‘They must’ve announced it while we were Transiting,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘And it’s reported that the satellites of the Mantle will be positioned at so many spots above the planet there won’t be anywhere in the world that won’t have access to it. It’s going to be launched in a few days,’ said Barry. His brow creased.

  ‘Hey,’ said Clement, ‘that’s probably why the net’s been going down so often lately. They’re setting up the Mantle, and everything’s shifting around. Maybe?’

  Barry regarded him thoughtfully.

  ‘Or maybe Sturdy’s been meddling,’ said Phyllis.

  Barry looked at her. ‘Go on, Miss Wong.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if he’s into wicked magic, he could’ve found ways to disrupt the web. But maybe his magic isn’t powerful enough to bring down something as colossal as the Mantle. Maybe he knows that, and he knows that he needs a more powerful magician . . .’ Suddenly some of the words from the Stoneh
enge inscription came rushing into her mind. ‘ “The collapsing of the knowledges above,” ’ she gasped. ‘He’s bringing the power here!’

  ‘So, he’s enticing Merlin—’ began Barry.

  ‘Myrddin,’ interjected Clement.

  ‘Myrddin,’ Barry said, giving Clem a there’s no need to split hairs look.

  Phyllis took up the thought: ‘So he’s enticing Myrddin to come here—“come to my Time!”—and do the deed! To destroy the satellites!’ She quickly stood, dropping Daisy to the carpet. ‘He’s holding Myrddin to ransom, with Jaunty Jasper!’

  ‘Ransom?’ said Barry.

  ‘He wants Myrddin to come and do the task for him. To wreak the more powerful magic. Then, and only then, will he give Jasper back to him,’ Phyllis said.

  Barry scratched his head. ‘But a ventriloquist’s dummy?’ he wondered. ‘What’s so valuable about a lump of wood that talks and sings?’

  Phyllis’s dark eyes narrowed. ‘Jasper’s no ordinary dummy. No. There’s something different about it. Something I saw in the back of it. Perhaps Sturdy saw it, too. Perhaps that’s how he figured that Jasper belongs to Myrddin, and that Hercule S. Perkus was really the wizard.’

  ‘What is it?’ Barry asked. ‘What did you see?’

  Phyllis bit her lip and pictured the scene again in her mind’s eye. ‘I’m not sure,’ she answered after a few moments. ‘I saw it in the opening of Jasper’s back, where Perkus would’ve put his hand to work the dummy. I don’t know what it was, but it was weird . . .’

  ‘Weird?’ The Chief Inspector waited for more, as did Clement, but all they got was a look of perplexity on Phyllis’s face.

  Barry stood and went to the window. ‘Well,’ he reflected, ‘weird is certainly the word for everything that’s going on. But in my acquaintance with you, Miss Wong, the whole notion of weird loses much of its meaning. You move in enlightened circles.’

  ‘So,’ Phyllis said, ‘do you think I’m right?’

  He turned and addressed her. ‘If anyone’s right about anything when it comes to all this, your thinking is probably closer to the mark than anyone else’s.’

  ‘So what should we do?’

  ‘Yeah, Baz—er, Chief, what do we do?’

  ‘First things first,’ said Barry. ‘The most important thing is we have to get Myrddin here, into our Time. If he doesn’t come, that deranged Alexander Sturdy will continue wreaking havoc, hurting people, and worse . . . but at least if you, Miss Wong, can bring Myrddin, there’s a chance—and we don’t know how strong a chance, but a chance is better than a poke in the eye—that we can flush Sturdy out and apprehend him. We can lock him up, away from any stairs, so he can’t Transit away again . . . It’s a gamble, I admit, if Sturdy gets the upper hand on Myrddin. But it’s a gamble we have to take. These attacks have to be stopped!’

  ‘We’ll go back to Calanais,’ said Phyllis, ‘and see if we can find Myrddin again.’

  ‘You must find him,’ Barry insisted. ‘People’s lives are at stake, not to mention the entire fabric of humankind’s knowledge and freedom. If Sturdy gets his way, if he does bring down the Mantle, then life as we know it will be plunged back into times long past. And people will suffer.’

  ‘What if Myrddin doesn’t want to come here?’ asked Clement.

  ‘You’ll have to persuade him,’ Barry said to Phyllis.

  Phyllis nodded. Then her face clouded. All at once she felt like she had the full weight of the world pressing down upon her shoulders.

  Re-awakening

  As they walked back to the Wallace Wong Building, Phyllis and Clement were lost in thought. Daisy, trotting along on her leash, was lost in the smells in the gutter.

  After a few blocks Phyllis said, ‘Y’know, if Sturdy did bring down the Mantle, it’d be really catastrophic.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Clem. ‘It’d be the end of the gaming world. I’d never be able to hook up with anyone online. Mum’d love that . . . there’d be more time for xylophone practice. Yergh.’

  ‘It’d be a disaster. Not just for games. Imagine how much information’s stored all over the world, electronically. There’d be government files and military secrets and spy networks . . . they’d all go down. And the hospitals—oh, Clem, all the medical technology to help sick people would be dashed, even lost. People will die!’

  ‘Planes will fall out of the skies, Phyll, if they lose their navigation instruments.’ Clement started feeling sick in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘And what about all the social networks? Gee, you know those kids at school who think their lives will end if they can’t get onto Facebook or Twitter? What’ll they do?’

  Clement frowned. ‘Mum told me she read there’re people who never talk to other people—face to face, I mean—but only have contact through the net. They’d feel like their world had been destroyed.’

  A big sadness swept over Phyllis. ‘It’d be the lonely ones who’d really feel it. If that’s all they’ve got, and it gets taken . . .’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Clement. ‘And the zombie fighters . . .’

  They turned the corner into Phyllis’s street. As they approached the front stairs of the Wallace Wong Building, Phyllis said, ‘I hope we can get Myrddin to come.’

  ‘I hope we can find him again,’ said Clement.

  They went up the stairs and into the building.

  From across the street, the woman watching made an entry in her notebook. Then she pulled up the collar of her coat and remained there, blending into the chilly, darkening, strangely quiet evening.

  ‘Okay,’ said Phyllis, settling Daisy into her bag. ‘You ready, Clemeleon Dude?’

  ‘Just a sec.’ Clement was crouched on the floor with his back to her, his backpack in front of him. She smelt spirit gum. ‘There,’ Clement said. He packed his makeup box into the backpack, stood and hoisted the pack over his shoulders.

  Phyllis looked at him with his huge handlebar moustache—he’d removed his ginger goatee. She’d given up asking questions about his get-ups.

  ‘It’s the same one I wore when we went there last time. Just so he’ll recognise me.’

  Phyllis sighed. ‘Time to go.’

  ‘Ready when you are.’

  Daisy scrabbled about in the bag as Phyllis took out her Sphere of Greater Temposity. Phyllis patted Daisy back into comfort, then closed the top of the bag. She directed her gaze to the upper reaches of the stairs and concentrated on one thing and one thing alone.

  This time the Pocket almost popped into view. Phyllis blinked—she’d never seen a TimePocket manifest so quickly. Just as it had done when she, Clem and Daisy had gone to Calanais the first time, the edges of the Pocket glinted with a pulsating pattern of yellow sparkles, and its centre appeared dark and velvety.

  ‘Looks like an Anvugheon,’ Phyllis said, realising that different sorts of Pockets emerged at different times on her basement stairs. ‘Which means we won’t be going too far back in Time.’

  ‘And for that I’m grateful,’ Clement said. ‘Let’s just get there and get out, and bring Mr Myrddin back.’

  ‘Into position,’ Phyllis told him.

  He went behind her and grabbed hold of the edge of her black coat. ‘Positioned,’ he confirmed.

  She put the Sphere to her mouth. Softly she whispered, ‘Sianalac, sianalac, sianalac.’ And, like a rocket, she rushed with Clement up the stairs into the faint but steady breeze.

  ‘Did you bring a flashlight?’ asked Clem.

  ‘Yep, just a moment.’ Phyllis fumbled about in the darkness. She felt Daisy inside her bag, licking her hand. ‘Here.’ Phyllis handed Clement the flashlight, and took Daisy out, depositing her on the grass. Then she got out her Date Determinator.

  ‘I wonder what time it is,’ muttered Clement, turning the light on and casting the beam across the glistening Standing Stones of Calanais. Daisy was already off on a sniff-patrol through the long grass.

  Phyllis turned on the Date Determinator and waited while the
numbers spun round, whizzing and clicking. When they stopped, and the yellow and emerald lights glowed, she said, ‘It’s only two days ago.’

  ‘I meant what time of night,’ said Clement.

  She looked at her watch and shook her head. ‘Stopped,’ she told him. ‘But I’d say it’s late.’

  ‘Ah well.’ He jiggled his backpack across his shoulders and pointed the flashlight towards the standing stones. ‘C’mon, we’ve got some stairs to find.’ With a determined stride, he set off through the revolving iron gate into the grounds of Calanais, heading to the well.

  Phyllis followed, being careful not to stumble in the dark. A pale moon peeked around a moving bank of clouds, and every now and then the countryside grew a little brighter—as if a dull lamp had been cast across it—before retreating once more into the thick darkness.

  As she came to the centre of the stones, and as she remembered the stairs that had emerged in the pool, she thought how this was the only time that she’d been able to see a Pocket from the top. Every other time she’d Transited, she’d approached the Pocket from below. Maybe it’s Myrddin’s doing. Or maybe it’s because of the water that it’s possible to go down into the Pocket . . .

  Daisy, still sniffing with her snout to the ground, was close at Phyllis’s heels.

  Clement stood by the small pool’s edge, near the tallest monolith. Whenever the moon slid out from behind the clouds, the towering stones cast faint shadows across the dark, almost black, water.

  Phyllis sidled up next to him. ‘Hey, look, Clem. See some of the lichen on the stones? It’s glowing.’

  Clement saw where Phyllis was running her hand across the soft, springy lichen. ‘Cool,’ he said, lighting up the lichen, then taking the flashlight away again and observing the way it became luminous. ‘It must be from the moon.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Phyllis turned her attention to the dark pool.

  ‘Can you see anything?’ Clement asked after a few minutes.

  Daisy sat patiently at the water’s edge.