Phyllis Wong and the Waking of the Wizard

by Geoffrey McSkimming

  Aurora boom-de-ay!

  ‘You . . . you made the Auroras?’ Phyllis asked Myrddin.

  ‘I did.’ To Sturdy he said solemnly, ‘There is great power in the shifting lights of the Auroras, Sturdy. Even more power than in the Pockets I created for Transiting.’

  Sturdy was trembling with impatient fury. ‘Do you think I do not know that? Why else did you think I beckoned you here? Only you can harness the Auroras—I cannot even touch them. Only you can unleash their power. Bring the Aurora Borealis from the north and the Aurora Australis from the south! Bring them to collide and spread across the globe. Only their combined energies can bring down the satellites of the Mantle!’

  Clement’s head was reeling. ‘Oh, man, all those electrical charges . . .’

  ‘Show the world that a thing such as the Mantle is doomed, Myrddin. When they see that the Mantle’s power is no match for what they call the power of Nature—your power—they will never attempt to reconstruct it! Bring forth the Great Whimpering,’ commanded Sturdy, ‘and then you shall have your Jasper.’

  ‘But if you destroy all of it,’ Phyllis pleaded, ‘you’ll destroy the lives of millions. You’ll ruin generations to come!’

  Sturdy thundered, ‘What do I care for the dwindle-isation of the human essence? It has always been foretold—even by you, Myrddin—that the Great Whimpering would destroy the lives of many. I am here to propel the Whimpering into the Nowness of things! I am the catalyst!’

  The mighty wizard was torn: he desperately wanted his Jasper—and what lay within—back, but he couldn’t be a part of the utter destruction of humanity. The wizard had always had a soft spot for the ways of the world, and humankind.

  Sturdy still had his foot on the bag before him. ‘Well, Myrddin? Bring forth the Auroras, or I destroy him.’ He pressed his foot down harder. ‘And don’t even think of casting a spell on me; I have created a field of immunity around myself, to protect me from the likes of you!’

  ‘Then so be it,’ pronounced Myrddin.

  ‘No!’ gasped Phyllis. ‘Please don’t!’ Daisy scrambled about in the bag, sensing Phyllis’s alarm.

  ‘But first,’ Myrddin said, ‘you must make a compromise. If I am to be a part of your wicked catastrophe, if I am to bring forth the Great Whimpering, you must give me my Jasper now.’

  Sturdy considered this. ‘When I see the Auroras forming above us, you shall have him,’ he spat.

  ‘Very well,’ Myrddin said, sadly. He looked at Phyllis, his eyes gloomy and old, and his face changed momentarily, distorting in that strange way it did, before returning to the Myrddin she knew.

  Then, with a great exhalation of breath, the mighty wizard Myrddin Ambrosius cast his arms wide, his green robe billowing about as an icy breeze whisked all around him.

  ‘Congrego, tumultum, Auroraswirlos, coniunctum!’ he murmured. He added some other words after these, but they were chanted in such a low, deep tone that neither Phyllis nor Sturdy could hear them clearly.

  Seconds passed. Alexander Sturdy looked up at the satellite and the sky around it. Phyllis looked up too, as did Barry and Clement. The other plain-clothes officers remained motionless, staring blankly straight ahead, unseeing and uncomprehending from their icy, Time-locked cages at the edges of the field.

  The cold breeze grew stronger. The satellite above was being buffeted back and forth. In the next second, the dark sky blazed with brightness: great swirls of iridescent lights, bright, glowing, green, yellow, red, orange and purple highways of illumination. The heavens were a kaleidoscope of luminosity.

  The Auroras hung there silently. On one side of the Mantle satellite, the lights from the Aurora Borealis shone; on the other side, the lights from the Aurora Australis glowed. Here and there, brilliant bolts of lightning speared out from the shifting colours.

  Phyllis’s breath was taken away by the beauty of it all, and also by the dread of what was to come.

  ‘And there’s the wonder of the thing!’ Barry Inglis whispered.

  Clement gasped. He was so amazed he didn’t even think to get out his phone to take a picture of it.

  ‘Now,’ Myrddin addressed Sturdy, ‘your part of the bargain. You see the Auroras. Before I make them collide, before I unleash the dreadful energy, you give me my Jasper.’

  Sturdy scowled. ‘I am a man of my word, whether it’s spoken or thrown. It’s about Time we found out what’s inside the ugly little dummy! But first—’

  He quickly lashed out and kicked the crocodile-skin bag across the grass to Myrddin. At the same time he lunged at Phyllis, grabbed her, and held her tightly in front of him with her arms pinioned behind her back.

  Phyllis winced at the sudden pain.

  ‘Sturdy!’ Barry Inglis bellowed. ‘Let her go!’

  ‘Oh,’ shouted Sturdy, ‘no, no, no! I have unfinished business with this one! Or should I say, with her great-grandfather! No, I do not forget. I do not forget what he and Maracas Estevan did to me, the humiliation, how they treated me! I shall use this young Wong to entice the older Wong to find me, just as I used Jasper to bring the wizard to me. Then I shall destroy the Conjuror of Wonder!’

  ‘No,’ gasped Phyllis. ‘Please—’

  ‘Shut up, you little dummy!’ Sturdy hissed in her ear.

  Myrddin gave Phyllis a look—a look which seemed to say wait.

  Then, swiftly, the wizard crouched down and unlocked the crocodile-skin bag. He flung it open and stepped back.

  The great lights above glowed and shifted like rivers. From inside the bag a pair of tiny hands emerged. They gripped the top of the bag, and then there came a small head. Jaunty Jasper stood, looked around and saw Myrddin.

  The wizard’s eyes brimmed. He gestured for the dummy to step out of the bag.

  Jasper climbed up over the sides of the bag and stood on the grass. He looked exactly the same as when Phyllis had seen him on stage at the Froux-Froux Levité. Slowly he walked, of his own accord, towards Myrddin.

  ‘My dear, sweet friend,’ Myrddin greeted him, ‘my companion, it is Time to shed your going-out clothes. Come and be who you truly are!’

  With a wave of his hands, Myrddin released a zip-like fastener—a fastener that only he could ever find—at the back of the dummy. It was this fastener that had come loose in their early Transit and had created a gap in Jasper’s back, through which Phyllis and Sturdy had spied what lay inside.

  The zip-like fastener opened from Jasper’s shoulders all the way down to the bottom of his coat. Jasper wriggled, and his clothing and his limbs and his wooden, smiling head fell away.

  Everyone, including Sturdy, gasped at what stood before them.

  The small creature blinked, stretching its legs and arms. It still resembled Jaunty Jasper, but now, as everyone stared, it began morphing into a different shape; it became purple and glistening and scaly, and slowly, a long, thick tail unfurled from behind it.

  ‘A . . . a dragon?’ Phyllis stammered, still in Sturdy’s tight grip.

  The small dragon looked at Myrddin. Then, with a tiny yelp-squeak, it rushed to him and jumped up into his arms, licking his face with a pointy puce-coloured tongue.

  ‘My wyvern,’ Myrddin said, his face full of affection. ‘Hello again, Gordon Farclas,’ he welcomed the tiny lizardacious creature.

  ‘Man!’ gasped Clement, and Barry Inglis stared, incredulous.

  Then, quick as a sparkle, Myrddin deposited his wyvern on the ground, whispering some words into its ear. The wyvern turned and rushed headlong at Alexander Sturdy and, as it did, it began to grow.

  Larger and larger it swelled, its scales gleaming with a glow of powerful ancientness, its eyes wide, flashing angrily at Sturdy from its countless years of confinement.

  Sturdy’s face went white. For a moment he was thrown off-guard as the dragon loomed huger and huger as it hurtled at him. He loosened his grip on Phyllis and she jumped aside.

  ‘Go, Phyll!’ shouted Clement.

  The dragon Gordon Farclas stopped before th
e ventriloquist, baring its long, sharp fangs. A burst of fire shot from its gaping nostrils, singeing Sturdy’s overcoat.

  ‘Stay away,’ Sturdy warned. ‘Stay away!’

  ‘Oh, he will stay away from you,’ growled Myrddin, ‘but I shall not!’

  Suddenly the wizard was grappling with Sturdy. ‘You are a threat to the hope of the world!’ he cried. ‘And I will obliterate the threat!’

  Sturdy got his hands around Myrddin’s throat. ‘Obliterate yourself!’ he thundered.

  Myrddin grabbed the back of Sturdy’s head, pulling it away. As the two men struggled, the wizard turned and looked at Phyllis. ‘Farewell, Phyllis Wong,’ he gasped. ‘My Time has come. Transit safely . . . you have a special way ahead . . .’

  And, before Phyllis could respond, Myrddin and Sturdy left the ground, tussling and writhing, shooting up like rockets into the swirling lights of the sky.

  The dragon was busying itself, hurrying around the field and snorting gentle but strong blasts of flame at the cages. First it melted the cage of Barry and Clement; then, quickly, it melted the other cages. When all of the officers were free, and before they could realise what had happened—for it took them a few minutes to come out of their stupor—the dragon had spread a pair of beautiful green and lilac wings, and shot off towards the heavens, following Myrddin and Sturdy.

  Phyllis was speechless as she watched it growing darker and darker, until she could see it no more, not even against the shifting lights of the Auroras and the flashing lightning bolts.

  As Barry and Clement ran to her, Phyllis opened her bag and Daisy jumped out. Phyllis patted her and scanned the skies for any sign of the wizard and the ventriloquist. As she watched, the lightning ceased and the swirling lights of the Auroras began to fade, becoming paler and paler as they stretched across the universe, returning to their rightful hemispheres.

  ‘Miss Wong!’ gasped Barry. ‘Are you unharmed?’

  ‘You okay, Phyll?’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m . . . Look!’

  She pointed up, and they all craned their necks. High in the atmosphere, not far from the twinkling satellite, there was a sudden, glaring flash of light, as if a match had been struck against all the darkness.

  And then the light disappeared completely.

  ‘Was that . . . Myrddin?’ Clement asked in a small voice.

  Phyllis couldn’t say anything. She didn’t know. Even if she did know, she would have found it hard to speak. She was overcome with a trembling emotion, and she couldn’t find her voice.

  Pinkie Chatterton, along with the other plainclothes officers, crowded around Barry.

  ‘What happened, Chief?’

  ‘What’s gone down?’

  ‘What time is it? My watch has stopped.’

  ‘So has mine . . .’

  There was a chorus of confusion. Barry led the officers away, trying to come up with suitably evasive answers to their queries.

  Clement asked Phyllis if she was okay again and she nodded, slowly. He sensed that she might need some time to herself, so he scurried off—he wanted to investigate where those cages had sprung from, and whether the dragon had left any claw marks in the grass that he could photograph.

  Then, as Phyllis stood there alone, trying to comprehend what had just happened and how close she had come to such great danger, one of the women hurried up to her.

  ‘Phyllis,’ she beckoned, ‘come this way! Hurry!’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Come, please!’ The woman smiled at her and gestured for her to follow.

  Phyllis went after the woman, who was striding quickly towards Barry and the other officers. All at once, from behind, from the place Phyllis had been standing near the centre of the field, there was an almighty CRASH!

  Phyllis spun around to see an enormous glowing rock embedded deeply in the grass. She shuddered violently. Sturdy’s final threat, she thought, her blood running cold, colder than the chill breeze still blowing. He sent it crashing down from the cosmos. Just for me.

  She turned to follow the woman, but the woman had gone.

  Barry, Clement and the other officers came rushing up to the young conjuror. ‘Miss Wong!’ Barry gasped. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. If it hadn’t been for that officer who told me to come away, I’d be mincemeat.’

  ‘Which officer?’ asked Pinkie Chatterton.

  ‘That one,’ said Phyllis, pointing to one of the women. ‘Oh. No, it wasn’t you.’

  ‘No,’ said the officer. ‘Not me.’

  Phyllis looked at all the officers. ‘Where’d she go?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The woman who brought me away.’

  Barry said to the group, ‘Any of you?’

  They all shook their heads.

  ‘No, Chief,’ said Chatterton. ‘We were all with you, being debriefed.’

  Phyllis clenched her hands. She counted the detectives. ‘Where’s the seventh officer?’ she asked.

  Barry said, ‘No, Miss Wong. There’s no seventh member of the Department present. Apart from myself, there’s only been five other officers here.’

  ‘Huh?’ This was getting screwy.

  ‘There’ve only been six of us here,’ said Barry.

  ‘No,’ Phyllis remonstrated. There were . . . are . . . were . . . seven of you. Four men, including you, and three women. Where’s the other lady?’

  ‘Phyll!’ Clement said. ‘There’re only six. See? Count ’em. Six! You don’t have to be Einstein to work that out!’

  Einstein! Phyllis looked at Clement as though she had never seen him before. ‘Clem, you’re brilliant!’ she beamed.

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s my nature . . . huh?’

  Phyllis had realised who Myrddin had reminded her of, whenever his face had distorted and changed. He had come to look—momentarily—like the great scientist Albert Einstein!

  The young prestidigitator laughed.

  ‘Miss Wong?’ Barry looked concerned. ‘I think we should get you home. Time for resting, and your father will have my guts for garters if you stay out much longer.’ He took off his coat and put it around her shoulders. ‘Come on,’ he said gently.

  ‘Just give me a few minutes, Chief Inspector? I want to let Daisy have a sniff and whatever else she needs to do.’

  ‘Okay,’ he agreed cautiously. ‘I’ll just be with the other five of my officers, near the gates. Don’t be long.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll be there too, Phyll. Don’t be long. I’m busting for a—’

  ‘I’ll be quick,’ she said, as Clem and the officers moved off.

  Daisy trotted a little way off to have a widdle.

  As Phyllis was waiting, she heard a small plop on the grass behind her. She jumped and her heart skipped a beat—was Sturdy sending down another threat?

  She spun around. There was no new rock. She said, ‘Phew,’ and was about to fetch Daisy when she saw what had made the sound.

  Lying on the grass was a stick. A long, slender, slightly gnarled stick. More like a twig, really.

  Slowly, Phyllis Wong smiled. She picked it up and held it delicately, almost tenderly. Thank you, Myrddin Ambrosius, she thought, a huge surge of wonder filling her.

  A voice seeped into her ears from somewhere not in this dimension: Safeguard it, Phyllis Wong. It may be required some Time in the future. Or the past. And remember: we all need mysteries . . .

  The voice disappeared as gently as it had come. Phyllis slid the twig-wand into her bag. Then, as Daisy came bounding up to her, she picked up her little four-pawed friend and together they went off after Clement, Barry and the others.

  Afterwards

  Phyllis still had questions. Where had the great wizard gone to? What had his final words—those disembodied, flowing words that filled her ears—really meant? And who was that woman who had saved her life?

  It was good not to know all the answers, Phyllis thought. As Myrddin had said, we all need mysteries. He was right. If there were no mysteries, then
people like herself and the Chief Inspector wouldn’t have much of a reason to be here, would they?

  She let the mysteries stay with her, as she put the twig from the heavens into the special cupboard where she kept her keepsakes and souvenirs from her Transitings. Mysteries would be solved if they were meant to be. If not, she knew that they’d be around to keep her on her toes . . .

  A week later, Phyllis and her dad were in the magic basement. Phyllis was sorting through some cupboards, and Harvey Wong, having just returned from his business trip to Hong Kong and having missed his daughter very much, thought it would be fun to spend time down there with her while she pottered about.

  As he lounged back on one of the sofas, with Daisy draped across his legs, he watched Phyllis pulling boxes and tubes and coils of silk streamers out of the shelves.

  ‘More treasures, my girl?’

  ‘More stuff,’ said Phyllis, grinning.

  ‘So much, isn’t there?’

  ‘You can say that again. I reckon even if I lived to be a hundred and twenty, I’d never know exactly how many tricks and props are down here.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Harvey. ‘Mysteries abound.’

  ‘They sure do.’

  Phyllis found something underneath a pile of old magic magazines. ‘What’s this?’ she muttered, pulling out a parcel.

  ‘What’s what?’

  She brought the parcel over and knelt on the rug. The parcel was heavy and flat, almost as long as Phyllis’s arm from her wrist to her shoulder, and about as wide as half the length of her arm. It was wrapped in layers of dusty, yellowed tissue paper, tied with old brown string.

  Daisy got to her paws and, perched on Harvey’s knees, sniffed in the direction of the wrapped-up thing.

  ‘Open it,’ Harvey said.

  Phyllis didn’t need to be told twice. She undid the knots and slipped the string over the ends of the package. Then she quickly tore off the tissue paper.