Phyllis Wong and the Waking of the Wizard

by Geoffrey McSkimming

  Phyllis shook her head. ‘Too dark. Don’t shine the light onto the water, though. It reflects back too much.’

  ‘Okay.’ He turned off the flashlight and waited.

  Last time, before the water had drained away to nothing, bubbles had popped up from underneath the surface. Phyllis concentrated hard, willing the bubbles to return.

  ‘Baaa-aaa-aaaa,’ bleated a sheep, somewhere on the hills. Clement jumped.

  Seconds passed, slow, long seconds, stretching like rubber bands that seemed to be pulled out forever. But no bubbles came.

  Phyllis squinted into the water. It was too murky, and the surface was too glassy when the moon shone on it, to see anything down there. She tried to detect the outline of stairs, but all she could see was blackness.

  ‘Anything? Clement asked softly.

  She shook her head.

  Phyllis urged the water: Bring up the bubbles. Bring them up, and then drain away. Show us the stairs to over seven hundred years ago. Bring forth the watery Pocket . . .

  The water lay there, still and unrippled.

  Phyllis tried a different tack. She concentrated like she did when she looked for a TimePocket, emptying her mind of everything—every thought and feeling, every memory and snatch of music and glimmer of colour. She mustered up her most intense focus and tried to send a message through the ages, through all of the Time that lay all around her like a slumbering giant . . .

  Myrddin, let me come to you. Let us find you. I can help you. I can give you back your Jasper . . .

  She sent this message urgently, over and over, strongly, like arrows being fired into the air. She felt herself tingling as she sent out the message; she had never tingled like this before.

  And then there was a small pop.

  ‘Phyll! Look!’

  There, on the water’s surface, tiny ripples were spreading.

  Daisy cocked her head, watching the water.

  Phyllis waited, still tingling, barely breathing. Then, smoothly and silently, another bubble rose up from beneath the murkiness. With another tiny pop it broke the surface and rippled away.

  Phyllis’s heart began beating fast. You heard me, she thought. You hear me.

  More bubbles came, each of them bigger than the last. Each popped on the surface, growing louder and louder as the bubbles came quicker and quicker.

  As before, it was like a cauldron boiling.

  ‘ARF! ARF! ARF! ARF! ARF! ARF! ARF!’ barked Daisy excitedly.

  ‘We’d better move back,’ Phyllis said. ‘If this is like last time . . .’

  She dragged Daisy a few steps back, and Clement stepped away, just as all the water drained speedily down into the depths of Calanais, with a loud squelch and echoing gurgle.

  High above, the moon glided out from behind a cloud-ribbon. The lichen on the stones glowed luminously. Down below, glistening green in the pale moonshine, was the stairway.

  For a moment, neither Phyllis nor Clement spoke. Daisy whimpered quietly.

  Then Clement said, ‘He’s waiting for us, do you think?’

  Phyllis gave him her inscrutable smile. ‘Ready?’ she asked.

  He twirled the ends of his moustache and poked his glasses up. ‘Most certainly.’

  She peered down the stairs. It didn’t take much, this time. Straightaway she saw the faint, shimmering, misty purple lights bordering the Pocket.

  ‘C’mon,’ Phyllis said. She scooped up Daisy, popped her into the shoulder bag and, with Clem right behind her, descended the stairs.

  The envelopation was swift: once again, they were pulled in suddenly, as though they had been grabbed by invisible hands and yanked forward. Once again, they were floating, and the wind was strong and warm. Once again, the Transit only lasted for the merest of seconds.

  The high-pitched humming filled Phyllis’s ears and in the next instant she felt firmness beneath her feet. She’d shut her eyes when the wind had picked up, and now she opened them and saw daylight—bright sunshine on the newer-looking stones.

  There were the tall wooden platforms Myrddin had built around the stones, and his thatch-roofed, mud-walled house with its ripply-glass windows.

  Standing by the main door of the abode was the wizard himself, holding a tall staff crowned by a large, chunky crystal. Corvus the rook perched on his shoulder.

  Myrddin swept the folds of his cloak back. ‘I knew you would return,’ he said. ‘I knew you would find me again.’

  Drawing him back

  ‘Please,’ said Myrddin. ‘This way.’

  He led them across the grass and through the low doorway of his house. Everything inside appeared unchanged since the last time they’d been here.

  Phyllis blinked at the dimness. Even though it was bright outside, not much sunlight was coming through the small windows.

  ‘Let me light a glim or two,’ said Myrddin. His voice sounded heavy, tired.

  He leant his staff against the wall and took out his twig-wand from his cloak. In quick succession he pointed the wand at four lamps set into the earthen walls. Instantly, the lamps glowed with a soft, but surprisingly strong, light.

  Phyllis was aware of Daisy scrabbling about in her bag. She took Daisy out and placed her gently on the floor, and Daisy stayed by Phyllis’s feet, looking up curiously at Myrddin.

  ‘Please, have a seat if it is your preference,’ Myrddin offered.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Clement, dumping his backpack and sitting on one of the wooden chairs. His voice, just like it had been when they had come before, was muffled, as though he were speaking from somewhere several rooms away.

  Corvus flew across the room and landed on a shelf set high into a wall, above one of the windows. From there he watched, unblinking.

  Phyllis didn’t know how to begin, so she started in the way she would have started if she’d dropped by unannounced on anyone she knew: ‘I hope you don’t mind us arriving out of the blue like this . . .’

  ‘You in the blue,’ said Myrddin. ‘Now what can you do?’

  ‘You knew we were coming?’ Phyllis asked.

  ‘Oh yes. I heard you. I heard your voice, Phyllis Wong.’

  ‘Just then? When we were by the pool, all that Time ahead?’

  ‘Just then.’ Myrddin took off his cloak and, with a twist of his twig-wand, sent it floating across the room, where it hooked itself on a deer’s antlers affixed to the wall by the door.

  Phyllis smiled.

  ‘You do not know this,’ Myrddin said, lowering himself into the other chair and stretching his long, stockinged legs out in front of him, ‘but you are the only one.’

  ‘The only one?’ she repeated.

  ‘You are the only one—the only one who uses my . . . what did you call them . . . TimePockets . . . who has been able to communicate with me. I have never heard the voice of any other, until you.’

  ‘Wow!’ exclaimed Clement. ‘See, Phyll, I knew you were special!’

  Phyllis blushed and quickly went on: ‘Mr Myrddin, we’ve come here because we need you. And we can help return something to you. I know how desperately you want him back—I heard you when you were Perkus, the night he was stolen from you.’

  ‘Jasper,’ whispered Myrddin.

  ‘Jasper,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘Alexander Sturdy,’ growled Myrddin.

  ‘Crorark,’ croaked Corvus.

  Myrddin swished his wand at the document-strewn table. The smell of half-dead daisy petals filled the room, and a single sheet of paper—more modern-looking than the parchments and scrolls—rose into the air and travelled across the room. Phyllis reached out and plucked it from the ether.

  She felt a chill as she read its message, written heavily in red pencil:

  to wreak Great Whimpering

  obliterate Mantle

  come to my Time! come for

  your magic, Myrddin!

  It was the original message, the same one she’d taken a rubbing of in Sturdy’s dressing room.

  ‘He left that for me�
��for Hercule Perkus—in my dressing room the night he stole Jasper. The night he stole much of my very essence . . .’

  Over the next few seconds his face changed; the length of it and the breadth of it, and even the shape of his nose and cheekbones, all distorted into strange, different contours. Once again, his new visage reminded Phyllis of someone she’d seen, but again, she couldn’t quite work out whom.

  It was as if the wizard were starting to crumple before her very eyes.

  Then his face shifted differently, and he looked once more like the former Myrddin.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Clement, frowning.

  ‘What, Clem?’ Phyllis asked, still looking at Myrddin.

  ‘What I don’t get,’ Clement said to Myrddin, ‘is why you just didn’t go and find Sturdy and take Jasper back yourself? With all your powers, why couldn’t you—?’

  ‘Ah!’ Myrrdin silenced him with a sweep of his hand. ‘Do you think I would not have done such a thing, if it were at all possible? Master Whiskers, I tried to find him. Believe me, I tried, many times. But I could never trace even so much as a hair from Sturdy’s vile head. I am certain that he has used some sort of his warlockry to hide himself . . . he has put a shield or something around himself, so that I am not able to trace him, in any Time or place.’

  ‘And if that’s what he did,’ said Phyllis, ‘he could take that shield away when he chooses to . . . when the Time’s right for him to meet you . . .’

  ‘It is entirely possible,’ nodded Myrddin.

  ‘I think that Time has come,’ Phyllis rejoined.

  ‘Maybe it has come for a while now,’ said Myrddin. ‘To tell you the truth, Phyllis Wong, I gave up my search for my Jasper. I gave up some Time ago.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I grew . . . tired . . . I grew sad and . . . exhausted, with all the searching I had been doing. I . . . lost my hope. I am only human, after all.’ He gave a small scowl. ‘Well, part human, at least. And, like many humans, when something dear and important is taken from them, they sometimes lose the will . . .’

  He trailed off, frowning at the floor.

  Phyllis looked at Clement, and he at Phyllis. Daisy made a small, marble-gargling sound at the back of her throat.

  Myrddin said, very quietly, ‘How do you imagine you would feel, Phyllis Wong, if you lost your Daisy?’

  Phyllis felt suddenly heavy. This was a sadness she didn’t want to contemplate, ever.

  ‘Is that why you’ve holed yourself up here, away from the world and everything?’ asked Clement. ‘Because you’re so sad?’

  Myrddin sighed. ‘I suppose, yes, Master Whiskers. When I lost what was inside Jasper, what was so dear to me, I felt like I had no further desire to move amongst humankind.’

  What was inside Jasper. The words lit up inside Phyllis. What had she glimpsed, in the back of the dummy, that night when she had seen him in the dressing room? What was it?

  ‘I wish I had never taken my little companion with me!’ Myrddin said wearily.

  ‘But now, maybe the Time has come to get him back,’ Phyllis told him. ‘Now has to be the Time. If you get him back, we’ve also got the chance to save the Mantle!’

  ‘Mantle?’ Myrddin gave her a quizzical glance. ‘Is this the Mantle written about on that paper?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Elucidate this to me,’ Myrddin requested.

  Phyllis told him all about the Mantle, and how powerful it would be and how it would be unveiled in a matter of days. Myrddin had no idea about any of this, so ensconced had he been in this Time at Calanais.

  ‘This Mantle does indeed sound amazing,’ the wizard murmured. ‘A type of magic of the modern Time . . .’

  ‘It could be marvellous,’ said Phyllis. ‘It’ll revolutionise the world! Everyone, all around the globe, will be able to use it. But if Sturdy destroys it, he’ll not only destroy all the networks around the world, but also people’s lives. You see, great Myrddin, many people depend so much on technology in the Time where we’re from.’

  ‘Almost as much as oxygen,’ added Clement.

  Myrddin fixed his eyes on Phyllis. ‘Read out Sturdy’s words again,’ he requested.

  Phyllis did so.

  When the wizard spoke next, his voice was grave. ‘The Great Whimpering. I foresaw this, long ago even by this Time. I told Arthur about it. But never did I imagine what exactly it would be. Sturdy wants me to come and bring on the Whimpering. He wants me to destroy the knowledges from above, to obliterate the Mantle and ruin everything, the progress, the lives, the minds . . . he wants to destroy humanity, to cast it back into a darkened, unenlightened Time . . .’

  ‘We think he’s using Jasper as the bait to get you back,’ said Phyllis. ‘I’m guessing he’ll agree to give you Jasper if you do his bidding.’

  The wizard’s eyes flashed with lightning bolts of fury. ‘No one holds Myrddin to ransom!’ he bellowed, his weariness seeming to fall away from him as if it were another cloak he had shrugged to the floor. ‘This vile miscreant makes my blood boil! He shall not have what is mine! He shall not have his way!’

  ‘Please come with us,’ Phyllis implored him. ‘Please try to stop this!’

  Myrddin rose to his feet, saying nothing. He flicked his twig-wand in the direction of his cloak, and the garment flew across the room to him, settling upon his shoulders.

  ‘Crorark,’ Corvus croaked. The rook soared over and perched on his shoulder. Myrddin swept his staff silently through the air, into his hand.

  Then he said in a deep, commanding voice, ‘Come.’

  He led Phyllis, Daisy and Clement out of the house. They followed him up some of the wooden stairs and along one of the high, scaffolded platforms that intertwined through the standing stones. He came to a landing, hemmed in by three stones to the north, south and east. Here there was a stool and a telescope.

  ‘This is the place where I watch the firmaments. Here my strength re-forms, and my hope replenishes. The skies and the galaxies, and all that they contain, and all the mysteries of which not even I am aware, are like a force of life. Sweetness. Renewal. It is a dire twist of the fates that Sturdy wishes to destroy something so powerful that will reside all across our wondrous heavens, is it not?’

  ‘It is,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘I was defeated in spirit, Phyllis Wong. But no longer. I care too much for humanity to let one person—nay, not a person; this warlock is a beast—destroy the achievements of History.’

  Phyllis, with Daisy in her arms, listened to him, her heart beating quickly.

  ‘There is magic, and there is magic, and there is magic.’ Myrddin gazed high into the sky. ‘The magic you do is a magic of wonder, Phyllis. The magic that I have created, I have created so that people such as you may use it to unravel things which need to be unravelled—wrongs and crimes, and mysteries that need solving, and the unforgiving curtain of neglect that hangs over unremembered things. But the third sort of magic—the magic Sturdy is practising—is wrong. It is bad magic, wicked, dastardly, destructive. Sturdy has crossed a line . . . theft is but a butterfly-step on the journey to malevolent magic.’ The lightning danced through the wizard’s eyes again, and his voice rose in a sudden burst of fury: ‘He took my Jasper, but he will never have my SPIRIT!’

  And, waving his staff in a wide arc above his head, the bright sky darkened and a mighty shuddering of the Earth shook the very foundations of Calanais.

  Bubble, bubble . . .

  When Phyllis thought back on it later, she couldn’t remember any stairs or TimePocket. One moment, she, Daisy, Clement and the great wizard were at the stones, some Time in the past; the next moment, like the blink of an owl, they were in her basement.

  ‘Wha—?’ began Clement, looking around, and patting himself to make sure he was all in one piece. ‘How—?’

  ‘There is no Time to be lost,’ Myrddin said, ‘so I used my most powerful route . . . a Pocket I only use when Time is of the essence. It is one I formed that will n
ot be found on any stairways.’ He surveyed the huge space all around. ‘This is your refuge, is it, Phyllis? This is your Calanais?’

  Phyllis smiled and popped Daisy onto the rug. ‘I guess it is.’

  ‘Crorark,’ croaked Corvus, atop Myrddin’s shoulder.

  ‘So, to business. Where do we find the miscreant?’ Myrddin asked. ‘Where does Sturdy skulk?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Phyllis replied. ‘They’ve been searching for him, but they can never find him.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘There’s someone you have to meet,’ said Phyllis. ‘Someone who’s probably the best person to arrange for your path and Sturdy’s to cross.’

  ‘Yeah, Baz,’ said Clement helpfully.

  ‘Baz?’ Myrddin scratched his beard.

  ‘Chief Inspector Barry Inglis from the Police Force,’ Phyllis explained, giving Clement a try to keep this simple look. ‘They’ve been after Sturdy for months now.’

  ‘Ah. Then no Time we waste—let us see him with haste.’

  ‘But there’s something we have to fix first,’ said Phyllis.

  Myrddin arched an inquisitive eyebrow.

  ‘I don’t think it’d be a wise idea if you went out dressed like that,’ she told him. ‘We need to make you less . . . noticeable.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Clement, eyeing him up and down. ‘There aren’t many people walking round the streets with a cloak like that, or with a staff and a big black bird . . . say, Phyll, I could disguise him if you’d like?’

  ‘No, Clem, we don’t need a disguise, just some different clothes.’

  ‘You sure?’ he asked, disappointed. ‘Oh, man, he’d look cool as an old punk rocker—we could get him a leather jacket and I could stick a couple of fake safety pins through his—’

  ‘No, Clem.’ She pointed in the direction of the costume racks in one of the far corners. ‘See if you can find something hanging over there that’s to your liking,’ she told Myrddin. ‘I’ll give the Chief Inspector a call while you’re choosing.’

  ‘Apparel be thy name,’ Myrddin said. ‘There is wisdom in your reckoning, Phyllis. We do not want to draw unnecessary attentions to ourselves until the Time is meant.’