Wizard of Washington Square

by Jane Yolen

  “But, officer,” David began. “It really is my dog, and—”

  “I’ll take him home, sir. And thanks for letting us go,” said Leilah, pulling David toward the subway.

  The policeman watched until they started down the subway stairs then went to his call box and complained that nothing interesting ever happened on his beat.

  As they went down the stairs David said, “You’re a traitor, Leilah. Why didn’t you back me up? You know it’s true.”

  “Of course it’s true,” said Leilah. “But you’ll never convince an adult of it. Especially a policeman. They have no imagination, adults. They don’t believe in magic. The only thing left to do is go back to the Wizard and see if he can help.”

  “Oh, great,” said David. “Some help he’s been so far. If it hadn’t been for his help in the first place, we wouldn’t need his help in the second place.”

  “Well, smarty, any other ideas?” asked Leilah.

  “None,” said David glumly, reaching into his pocket for his lunch dollar to pay the subway fare. “Hey, it’s gone!”

  “What’s gone?” asked Leilah.

  “My dollar. I must have given it to old Pickleface with the other money. We’ll have to go back and get it, otherwise how can I get into the subway?”

  “Well, we can’t go back, because we’ll be arrested by the policeman,” said Leilah sensibly. “We’ll just have to walk.”

  “Walk?” said David. “How far is it?”

  “Well, since we’re on Fifty-ninth Street and Lexington Avenue, it’s fifty-nine blocks and two avenues.”

  “That’ll take hours,” said David.

  “Let’s see…if twenty blocks make a mile, that’s about three miles,” said Leilah. “If we could walk a mile in twenty minutes, twenty blocks in twenty minutes…we’d have to walk a block a minute. And if the lights are with us and not too many people slow us down, we could be back at the Square in about an hour.”

  They started off at a brisk pace, walking a block a minute by David’s watch. They had to pause at several red lights, losing five minutes in all and causing David to shift from one leg to another and snap his fingers nervously each time they waited. But in less than an hour, because Leilah had forgotten that Washington Square is on Sixth Street and not on First Street at all, and because in the end they decided to run one block and walk the next, the Arch loomed ahead of them.

  “We’re here!” shouted David, who was beginning to limp because the heel of his sock had slipped down into his shoe and had rubbed a blister. He began to run toward the Arch, favoring the one foot.

  Leilah started to run with him, but stopped abruptly and shouted, “David—look!”

  David stopped and followed her finger. There, under the Arch, was the Wizard. His pointed cap was quivering. And he was shaking hands with a tall, skinny man with a waxed moustache.

  “It’s old Pickleface Pickwell,” said David. “What’s he doing here? And why is he shaking hands with our Wizard?”

  As they watched, Pickwell got into a large truck that was standing by. It said Pickwell Pick-up on the side. Then he drove off. The Wizard, his hands clasped behind him and his head down, walked back into the Arch.

  “They must have been in cahoots all along,” said David. “Why, I bet that old Wizard goes around turning dogs and cats (and maybe even people) into statues and then Pickwell sells them as ‘priceless possessions.’”

  “David, what a gruesome thing to say,” Leilah protested. But her protest sounded faint, even in her own ears.

  David went on. “Think of all the animals and people that are missing every year. I bet they are all on display in someone’s living room.”

  Leilah looked thoughtful. “I had an Uncle William John who went out for groceries one day and never returned. We suspected he ran off to Tahiti.”

  “Your Uncle William John is probably standing marble-fied in some rich person’s garden, snowed on in winter, rained on in spring, leafed on in the fall, and carrying a summer bird’s nest in his hair.”

  “Poor Uncle Billy Jack,” said Leilah sadly. Then she giggled. “And he never could stand birds, either.”

  “It’s not funny,” said David. But they both started giggling uncontrollably at the thought of Leilah’s Uncle William John with robins nesting in his Italian marble hair.

  “But if it’s true,” said Leilah suddenly, “then the Wizard is a menace. Maybe we ought to call the police.”

  David shook his head. “Leilah, you said yourself that no adults would believe us. We’ll have to do it ourselves. We’ll have to face him in his warren.” He stood up as tall as he could. “We owe D. Dog that much.”

  “But I don’t want to end up a statue too,” wailed Leilah.

  David didn’t either. But once he had made up his mind, he rarely changed it. And so he said, more bravely than he really felt, “Nothing will happen. We’ll tell him we’ve sent letters home to our parents to be opened in case we disappear. And they will know who is to blame and go directly to the police if anything happens to us.”

  “But that’s not true. No one will know anything if we disappear,” said Leilah.

  “You know that and I know that,” said David. “But the Wizard doesn’t.”

  It seemed like a good plan on first thought. So without waiting to give it a second thought, David and Leilah opened the door to the Arch and went down the twisting tunnel toward the Wizard’s warren. They were really frightened, though neither would admit it. But when they reached the door to the warren, Leilah’s hands were shaking uncontrollably and David’s teeth were chattering a complicated rhythm. However, drawing in deep breaths at the same time, they pulled the door open and bravely walked in.

  The Table’s Part

  THE WIZARD WAS SEATED in the chair that controlled the tapestry. He was concentrating on a scene. By the time they got to the tapestry, David and Leilah could see the picture clearly. It was Mr. Pickwell and he was arranging the statue of D. Dog on a new table.

  “But that table—it…it’s…” began David.

  The Wizard sighed. “It’s my table, all right. And I hope it’s in a good mood. If it does anything foolish, we’re all sunk.” And he took his pointed hat off and ran his fingers through his long white hair.

  “But why does Old Pickleface have your table?” asked David.

  The Wizard looked pleased. “I was hoping you’d ask that,” he said. “It’s part of my plan.”

  “What plan?” asked David and Leilah fearfully.

  “Why, my plan to rescue the statue, bring it here, and try to turn it back into a real live dog again.”

  “You mean,” said David, smiling, “that you aren’t in cahoots with Pickwell? That you don’t turn animals into statues for a living and then sell them to rich people to keep in their gardens?”

  “My dear child, whatever are you talking about?” asked the Wizard. He looked so genuinely puzzled that David and Leilah realized how foolish their thoughts had been.

  “Never mind,” said Leilah. “Just tell us your plan.”

  “Well,” the Wizard began, running his fingers through his beard and freeing a butterfly that had become entangled there, “I saw what happened to you through the tapestry. And when I realized how long it would take you to walk home, I knew I had to do what I could on my own. But I also knew that I didn’t dare trust the magic. So I telephoned Mr. Pickwell from the pay phone in the park and said I was interested in selling my table to him if he was still interested in buying it. He harrumphed a bit, but when I said cheap he agreed to my one stipulation. That was that he himself come down immediately and pick it up. That way, you see, I knew he would be out of his store and so could not sell the statue before my plan went into action. The only difficult thing was to persuade the table to go along with the whole scheme. But I managed to get its ball away from it, and so it was forced to agree. Of course, it kicked me once during the scramble.” The Wizard paused to lift his robe up until his knee was showing. He had an en
ormous black-and-blue-and-green-and-yellow mark on his shin. “But if my plan works, it was worth it.”

  “What is your plan?” asked David.

  At that moment, Leilah, who had been watching the tapestry out of the corner of her eye, cried, “Look!”

  David and Leilah moved closer to the tapestry. They saw Pickwell talking to a customer in his store, his back to the table. The table was calmly scratching its drawer handle with a front leg.

  “Oh, you promised…” said the Wizard.

  David and Leilah and the Wizard looked away, counted to sixty, then looked back again at the new picture framed by the floral border. All in all, they watched almost an hour until the drama was played out.

  Pickwell was haggling with a customer on the price of one of his “priceless possessions”—an unbreakable lamp base made from the tusks of a rogue elephant. Indian, of course. They settled at last upon $72.97, when a rattling made them turn around. The table had shifted its weight to a back leg, and the statue of D. Dog had slipped a little to the right.

  (“Oh, no!” David and Leilah said together. The Wizard just gasped.)

  Mr. Pickwell came over to investigate, decided it was mice, and made a notation on his cuff to call the exterminator in the morning. Then he stepped into the back of his shop to wrap the unbreakable Indian elephant-tusk lamp base. Meanwhile the customer went down into the basement to look at Pickwell’s Pick-overs (Nothing higher than fifty dollars), the VIP bargains. The minute Pickwell left the room, the table stepped gingerly out of the window, balancing carefully so that the statue of D. Dog did not slip off. Then, with a quick two-step, the table walked past some large Victorian chairs and a grape-pattern stuffed sofa, patted a dainty schoolmarm desk on the drawer with one leg, and headed for the door. The table pushed the door open and sidled out silently just as Mr. Pickwell emerged from the back with a large brown paper package tied with a bright red string. The door slammed shut and Pickwell, thinking it was a customer leaving, ran over to the door. He leaned out and saw the table calmly walking down the street.

  (“Run!” shouted David at this point. To the table, of course, not to Pickwell. But of course the table could not hear him.)

  Pickwell was so surprised that he dropped the lamp, which broke into several large pieces. Stepping over the pieces, Pickwell started shouting, “Stop, table, stop, thief. Someone stop that table.”

  Several people turned to look at him, but since everyone knew that tables couldn’t really walk, they chuckled and guessed it was just an advertising stunt and did not try to help.

  The policeman, the same one who had stopped David and Leilah before, heard the shouts and came running. When he finally understood that Pickwell wanted him to chase and arrest a runaway table, he threatened to take him in for disturbing the peace and possible drunk-and-disorderly. He knew as well as anyone that tables can’t walk.

  And through all this fuss, the Wizard’s table calmly walked to the IRT, took a token from its center drawer, and went over the turnstile carefully so as not to break the statue.

  The subways going downtown were not crowded and no one was pushed by the table. Consequently, no one noticed it either. As soon as the subway reached Cooper Square, the table got off and went through the door into the tunnel. The children and the Wizard came out to the fork in the tunnel to greet it. David grabbed the statue of D. Dog and hugged it tightly.

  Leilah took one of the table’s legs in her hand and shook it enthusiastically.

  And the Wizard was so pleased with himself, he did a little dance all the way back through the twisting tunnel to the warren.

  Once in his room, the Wizard brought out a golden flask. “This calls for a celebration,” he said. He poured a little of the liquid into goblets for David and Leilah and himself. And he even poured a little on the table top. David and Leilah watched as the liquid was absorbed. It was an amber-colored drink, yet it also reflected the light in rainbow colors, and beautiful shadows seemed to suggest themselves in the goblets.

  “It’s delicious,” said Leilah at her first sip. “What is it?”

  “Nectar,” said the Wizard. “The drink of the old gods.”

  They finished their nectar in silence, each thinking godlike thoughts.

  Finally David said, “Now all we have to do is turn the statue back into a real live dog and—” he was stroking the statue as he spoke and he suddenly stopped. “It’s chipped! The statue is chipped. Here, look. On the back leg. There’s a piece missing.”

  “Oh my,” said the Wizard. “So there is.” He shook his fist at the table. “See what you did. You weren’t careful enough. Making eyes at that schoolmarm desk instead of tending to your own business. I ought to turn you into firewood!”

  “It’s just a little chip,” soothed Leilah. “Will it make a difference?”

  “I don’t know,” said the Wizard. “I don’t know. It might spoil the spell. It’s been known to happen. Pieces of things getting stuck in the works and all that. All we can do is go ahead and hope.”

  “Okay,” said David. “What do we do?”

  “First, I think we should all go out where it all began. With the swinging statues, I mean. I’m sure if anything is going to happen, it will happen there.”

  Leilah collected the goblets and put them gently in the large wooden wine vat the Wizard seemed to use as a sink. The Wizard put the golden nectar bottle back on the shelf amid dozens of other colorful bottles. Then David, with the statue in his hands, led the way up the twisting tunnel.

  They pushed open the door to the park and the sunlight blinded them momentarily, so they didn’t see the owner of the voice that shouted, “Stop, thieves. Come back with my table and my statue.”

  But they didn’t need to see to know who it was—Mr. Joseph Pickwell himself, stepping out of a taxi. He had guessed that the table would return to its original owner, and as soon as the policeman had let him go, he grabbed a taxi and hurried downtown once more.

  “What do we do now?” wailed Leilah.

  “I don’t know,” said the Wizard.

  David started to shut the door.

  At that moment Pickwell, umbrella in hand, reached the Arch and pushed open the door.

  “Got you,” he cried as he grabbed for the statue in David’s hand.

  The Chase

  LEILAH SCREAMED. DAVID SLAMMED the door in Pickwell’s face and leaned his back against it. But he was too light to hold the door shut and it began to move open slowly as Pickwell pushed. Leilah and the Wizard rushed to help David.

  “How long can you two keep it shut by yourselves?” asked the Wizard.

  “Not much more than a minute,” said David.

  “Well, give me the statue,” said the Wizard. “I’ll take it back to the warren and see if I can conjure up something. You hold Mr. Pickwell off as long as you can.” He took the statue and scurried away in the darkness as fast as an old mole in its tunnel.

  David and Leilah struggled with the door but it kept inching inward. They could hear Pickwell’s heavy breathing on the other side and an occasional murmur. “Thieves. Ingrates. Beatniks.

  “Tell you what,” David whispered to Leilah. “When I say three, we’ll jump aside. Maybe he’ll be leaning so hard, he’ll fall on his face. At least that’s what always happens in the movies. Then we’ll run ahead and try to trip him up at the fork. Don’t forget the first time we came how we felt off balance in the tunnel. Well, Pickleface will probably feel that way, too.”

  “All right,” Leilah whispered back. “I’m ready when you say so.”

  David took a deep breath. “Here goes,” he said. “One… two… three!”

  They jumped back and started to run. From the noise and grunts and mutters they heard as they raced away, David had guessed right. Pickwell had been pushing so hard that when the door opened suddenly, he had been caught off guard and had fallen through. Trying to break his fall with his umbrella, Pickwell fell on the handle and broke it instead, knocking himself out of br
eath. It was just enough time to give David and Leilah a good head start down the tunnel.

  They arrived quite quickly at the fork and started down the path toward the warren.

  “Wait a minute,” said Leilah. “We’ll lead him right to the statue and the table this way. Let’s switch signs so that he won’t think of going to the warren at all.” And with that, she reached up on tiptoe to try to take the sign down. She was scarcely an inch too short. But she couldn’t reach the sign. Then David tried. But he and Leilah were the same height.

  “I’ll give you a boost up,” said David. “But hurry.”

  He knelt on all fours, and Leilah clambered up on his back. Teetering slightly, she took down the WARREN sign. Then they brought it over to the right-hand branch. David knelt down again and Leilah scrambled up on his back. She exchanged the DRAGONRY sign for the WARREN sign. Then they hurried back to the place where the warren sign used to be and hung the sign DRAGONRY in its place. Just as Leilah was climbing down, they heard Pickwell’s labored breathing coming down the tunnel.

  “There,” Leilah whispered to David with satisfaction, “no one in his right mind would go to a dragonry.”

  “Well, maybe he’s not in his right mind,” said David. “Or maybe he can’t read.”

  “We’ll soon find out,” said Leilah grimly.

  The children drew back into the tunnel that led to the warren and hugged the damp, mossy wall. They were well into the shadows and could not be seen.

  “If worse comes to worst,” David said, “we can still try to trip him.”

  Under the far lantern light they could see Pickwell making his slow way toward them.

  “Shh, don’t make a sound,” said David.

  “I’m too scared to,” Leilah whispered back.

  At last Pickwell came to the fork. He glanced at the signs and dismissed dragonry and irt with quick snorts. He turned down the tunnel marked warren.