by Simon Cherry
“Yes,” said Hen. “Give me science any day.”
“I shall ignore that foolish remark,” said the Genie. “But only because you rescued me from the well.”
“So this challenge you can’t tell me about,” said Eddy. “Does it just turn up? Do I get any warning?”
“You must present yourself at sunset on the beach at Tidemark Bay,” said the Genie.
“Is that it?” said Eddy. “No hints? No tips?”
“Well, I shouldn’t,” said the Genie. “But as you also rescued me, I will say this. You possess three mighty objects of great power that will assist you. Do you remember what else was in the box when you bought the lamp and the statue?”
“Let me think,” said Eddy. “There was an old toothbrush. That went straight in the bin.”
“You must take it out of the bin as soon as you get home,” said the Genie. “For that is no ordinary toothbrush. It is nothing less than the fabled Wand of Alacazar, a mighty weapon of great power that can smite your enemies with a fiery bolt of lightning.”
“Really?” said Eddy. “Why does it look like a toothbrush?”
“What do you expect it to look like? It was easy in the old days. Everyone carried swords and daggers. You could dress up a magic weapon to look like one of those and no one would notice. But in these modern times you have to disguise them as ordinary everyday things. Like toothbrushes. What else was in the box?”
“A pair of wellington boots.”
“The Boots of Instant Escape. When anyone wearing them is about to be struck a blow, the boots jump away before it can land. Anything more?”
“There was a cook’s apron,” said Eddy. “With roses on it.”
“The ancient Robe of Unseeing,” said the Genie. “The most magical of all the objects, for it renders the wearer invisible. These are three items of great mystery and power. Use them wisely and wield them well.”
“If they are so brilliant,” said Eddy, “what were they doing in a cardboard box at Tidemark Manor?”
“They were given many years ago to the owner of the Manor to hide and keep safe. It is a long and complicated story which there is no time to tell.”
“It all sounds a bit crazy,” said Hen. “But I suppose I should be getting used to that by now.”
“Remember. The beach. At sunset,” said the Genie. “And come alone. And now I will send you all back home.”
“And you must take the camel with you,” said the Emperor.
“That’s very kind,” said Eddy, “but to be honest, I haven’t really got room for a camel.”
“You misunderstand me,” said the Emperor. “What I mean is, you must take the camel, or the deal is off. I’m not having him hanging around here any more, waving his feet about and breaking things. So, off you all go. Goodbye, everybody. And especially you,” he said, taking Mitzee’s hand. “We’ll meet again – in my dreams.”
“Bye, babes,” she said. “That’s sweet.”
“I’ll drop you all on the lawn,” said the Genie. “You would never be able to get the camel down the chimney and out of the secret room.”
“Hang on a minute,” said Six. “I’m not with this lot.”
He was too late. His voice echoed like a trumpet down a drainpipe. The room around them began to look blurred and smeary, as if it was a painting that was having water poured onto it. The smears began to form into new shapes – trees and bushes and grass – and suddenly they were standing just outside the front door of Tidemark Manor.
“I suppose,” said Six, “that this means I’m going to be late home for tea.”
“We had better tell my brother we’re back,” said Hen. “He’ll be wondering where we’ve been all this time.”
They left Claudius munching his way across the front lawn, and went to find Chris P. He was waiting by the fireplace, exactly where they had left him. He sounded confused when they walked through the door.
“How?” he said. “Up the chimney…but not back…other way, then. So…passage just to outside? No secret room?”
“Yes, secret room,” said Hen. “I’m not even going to try to rearrange the rest of what you said into a proper sentence. Where do you think we’ve been for the past two days?”
“Two days?” said Chris P. “Two minutes, more like.”
“But we’ve been away,” said Hen. “For ages.”
“Not from where I’m sitting,” said Chris P. “You’ve hardly been gone long at all.”
“Really,” said Eddy. “Where do you think our friend Six came from then?”
Six gave Chris P a little wave.
“Or the camel on the lawn out there,” said Hen, pointing through the window.
“Or these fab clothes, Babes?” said Mitzee, twirling in her new outfit.
“When you say really,” said Chris P, “you mean really really?”
“Really really.” Eddy nodded.
“Well you might have told me,” Chris P said, “so I could come with you.”
“There wasn’t a chance,” said Hen. “We crawled down to the bottom of the bed in the secret room, and then we just fell into this foreign country. There was no way to come back to tell you anything.”
“Bottom of the bed,” said Chris P. “Right. I’m going to take a look.”
“It’s not the best time,” said Eddy, “we’ve got loads of…”
“So you can do it, but not me?” Chris P interrupted. “I’m not having that. Hen, give me your torch so I can see where I’m going. And you two –” he gestured to Eddy and Six – “can give me a leg-up.”
Eddy watched Chris P’s feet disappear into the passage above the fireplace. A few seconds later they heard the squeal of the hinges on the trapdoor that opened into the secret room.
There was a brief silence. And then a loud BUMP as Chris P tumbled out of the bottom of the bed and landed head first on the floor.
“Ow!” he shouted. “I suppose you think that’s funny, do you? Well, I knew it was a joke straight away – I only went along with it to show how stupid you all are!”
“I wonder why it didn’t work for him?” said Hen.
“Maybe it only works when the Genie wants it to,” said Eddy. “Anyway, I can’t think about that now, I need to go to get ready for the challenge.”
“I want to come with you,” said Hen.
“I’d like that. But the Genie said I had to go alone,” said Eddy. “Besides, you had better look after Six. He’ll need somewhere to sleep. And Claudius. Don’t let him near any stray castanets.”
“Good luck,” said Hen.
“I’ll see you afterwards,” said Eddy. “Tell you what happened.”
If I can, he thought. Because if the challenge – whatever it turns out to be – goes wrong, I might not see you ever again.
Eddy opened the doors of the wardrobe in his bedroom. He stuck his head in, close to the vase that was sheltering Wizard Witterwort.
“I’m doing my best to get your body back,” he said. “If everything goes well, it should happen quite soon. And if it doesn’t happen quite soon, that probably means things haven’t gone well.”
He fished the Wand of Alacazar out of his wastepaper basket, brushed some fluff from its bristles, and stuck it into his backpack. Then he pulled the Boots of Instant Escape and the Robe of Unseeing out of their cardboard box, and packed them as well.
He glanced up at the statue of the Genie on his bookshelf. It cast a long shadow across the wall. The sun was already low in the sky. Nearly time to go.
He looked in on his mother in the front room – or at least, on the young woman who was going to grow up to be his mother. Just thinking about that felt too weird. She was still asleep – getting young must be just as tiring as getting old. Probably best that way, he thought. At least she couldn’t be confused or upset by what was happening if she wasn’t awake.
Then he changed the channel on the TV.
“There you are, Dad,” he said to the sofa. “There’s some football on. A
nd here’s a snack for you.” He stuffed a couple more digestive biscuits down the back of the cushions. “Hope it’s a good match.”
Then he quietly closed the front door behind him, and headed down to the beach to meet whatever was coming for him.
Weird things were still happening in Tidemark Bay.
As he walked down towards the harbour, Eddy passed a house where a spaniel was playing the piano, and singing in a beautiful clear voice.
In the next street was a cottage that was made entirely out of sweets. Three small children were bouncing round the front room, licking at the walls, while their mother sat in a corner quietly sobbing.
Down near the sea, all the lamp posts were wearing party hats. And there was a cheesy smell in the air. The ice cream in the harbour had started to melt, and the milk in it was going off.
Beyond the harbour there was a small park. A long strip of grass, dotted with flower beds, looked down on a stretch of shingle beach. Eddy plonked his backpack on a park bench and unzipped it. He tugged off his trainers and stuck his feet into the Boots of Instant Escape. They were several sizes too big, and came up almost to his knees. His feet flapped about in them when he tried to walk. Next he found the Robe of Unseeing and slipped it on over his clothes. Finally, he picked up the Wand of Alacazar and held it out in front of him.
I wonder if this just knows when to shoot lightning bolts? he thought. Or do I need to press something to make it work?
He turned it over in his hand and examined it. There were no switches or buttons. Its toothbrush disguise was perfect. He would just have to trust it to do what it was supposed to. But he could at least hold it like the mighty weapon it was. He practised his pose – one foot forward, arm out, brandishing it defiantly. That felt right.
And maybe he should say something. Something to scare whoever or whatever was coming for him.
“By the power of the fabled Wand of Alacazar…” he began. He felt a bit foolish. And sounded a bit wet. He needed to practise. He took a deep breath and started again, in the deepest, boomiest voice he could manage, “By the power of the Wand of Alacazar, I command you to begone – or feel its wrath!”
Wrath. He liked that word. It sounded good. Like something out of a superhero comic.
“Here, mate!”
“Mate!”
He looked round. A group of rabbits were sitting watching him, while nibbling at the flowers in the park.
“What you got there then, mate?”
“The Wand of Alacazar. It’s very powerful.”
“Expecting someone, are you, mate?”
“Or something,” said Eddy. “I don’t really know.”
“Right. Here, mate, got any carrots?”
“No, I – hang on.” A sudden thought struck Eddy. “You can see me?”
“Yeah. It’s these eye things we’ve got stuck in our heads, mate.”
“But I’m wearing the Robe of Unseeing. It’s supposed to make me invisible.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he’s supposed to be invisible.”
“Does he look invisible?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen an invisible before.”
“Sorry, mate, if we’d known you was invisible, we wouldn’t have stared at you, would we, lads?”
Maybe I haven’t put the robe on right, thought Eddy. Or did the Genie say it made you invisible to enemies – so maybe rabbits don’t count? He was thinking about this when one of the rabbits spoke again.
“Flip! What’s going on over there?”
Eddy turned back towards the beach.
He had never seen a sky like the sky he could see now. It was covered with purple clouds that seethed and bubbled like a vast cauldron of angry porridge. And beneath it, something was coming out of the sea. It looked at first like the top half of a huge rusty iron ball, but as it rose from the water a face appeared, and then a neck and shoulders, and still it kept growing taller and getting nearer. Steam billowed from its ears, and its joints creaked and clanged as it took great strides forward. And now the metal giant stood on the stony shore, looming over Eddy, as tall as a church steeple.
Eddy looked up.
And up.
And then up some more.
He held the Wand of Alacazar out in front of him, his arm trembling, and began to speak the words that he had been practising.
“By the power of the Wand….”
At least, he tried to. But his voice stuck nervously in his throat, so it came out in a weedy warble, “Budda…pudda…wunna…”
And then his voice gave up completely, as the giant began to bend forward, lowering its head until it was just above him. With a whir of gears and a scrape of metal, its jaws opened wide, showing two sharp-toothed edges like giant saw blades. There was a hiss of air and then it spoke a single word.
Eddy’s hand was trembling and damp with sweat. The Wand of Alacazar slipped from his grip and clattered to the ground. He scrabbled on the shingle to grab it again.
And then Eddy heard a high-pitched giggle. And a familiar voice.
“Oh, we so, so got you!”
A ladder slid down from the metal giant’s open jaws, and the Emperor clambered onto the beach. The Genie of the Baked Bean Tin floated gently down behind him.
“Admit it,” said the Emperor, “you were completely fooled, weren’t you?”
Eddy admitted nothing. He just stood with his mouth hanging open, unable to find a single word.
“Loved the sky, by the way.” The Emperor turned to the Genie.
“Thank you, master,” said the Genie. “It’s a little special effect I’ve been working on for a while.”
“Does it come in any other colours?”
“There’s this,” said the Genie. He waved his hand and the boiling purple sky changed to a sickly yellow. “But I prefer the purple.”
“Me, too,” said the Emperor. “Anyway, put it away for now. And get rid of this rusty hulk. We’re done with both of them.”
The Genie clapped his hands. The sky cleared, and the giant metal figure vanished.
“This is just an ordinary old toothbrush, isn’t it?” Eddy found his voice. “You’ve got me standing here wearing an ordinary old apron and ordinary old wellingtons and feeling like a total idiot.”
“How you feel is your own business,” said the Emperor. “But you are right about the rest. Getting you to think all this old rubbish was magic and dress up in it must be one of the best jokes we’ve played in ages.”
“Well if this whole challenge thing is a joke,” said Eddy, “would you mind just telling the Genie to give the Wizard his body back and get on with putting things back to normal round here?”
“No need to sound cross,” said the Emperor. “And the challenge isn’t a joke. No, to lift the curse and all that, you really do have to get through a challenge. You’ve got to beat the Genie.”
“That’s what it says in the Ancient Book of Magic,” said the Genie.
“Beat the Genie?” said Eddy. “At what?”
Does it matter what? he thought. How can you beat a Genie at anything?
“Whatever I decide,” said the Emperor. “Now, let me think.”
“I hope he doesn’t ask us to build him a palace,” the Genie whispered to Eddy. “He’s always asking for another palace. It gets so difficult to come up with new ideas. I’ve done palaces of marble. Palaces of glass. One made entirely out of clouds – that was rather good. And one made out of cheese – that wasn’t.”
“I want you,” said the Emperor, “to build me a palace.”
“Splendid idea, master,” said the Genie.
“A palace of fun,” the Emperor continued. “A palace of entertainment. A palace to amuse me. We need somewhere for you to build. What if we just knock down this little town and start from there.”
“But people live here,” said Eddy. “And we want to put the town right, not make it worse. How about up at the Manor? There’s loads of space in the garden.”
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“The Manor it is then,” said the Emperor. “You’ve got twenty-four hours.”
“What?” said Eddy. “We’ll never do it in that time.”
“It’s always twenty-four hours,” said the Emperor. “That’s the tradition. I’m sure a bright lad like you will manage something.”
“You’ve got magic on your side,” Eddy said quietly to the Genie. “And I know how brilliant you are at that. We’ve got nothing to match it. But we did rescue you when you were stolen. So what I’m thinking is, maybe, could you do us a favour in return and let us win? Just so we can get the town back to normal? Please?”
“Let you win?” The Genie suddenly looked stern. “The Genie Code requires every genie to always serve his master to the best of his abilities. No matter what he commands or why. I’m insulted that you even thought of asking me the question. So, no, I can’t let you win. I shall be using all my magic powers.”
“Then we’ve got no chance,” said Eddy.
“No,” said the Genie. “I don’t suppose you have.”
“The only way we could build a whole palace in a day is by magic,” said Eddy. He was sitting at home on his bed, talking to Wizard Witterwort’s flimsy shape. “Is there anything you can do?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Wizard Witterwort. “I told you. All I can do is answer wishes. One each for everyone in Tidemark Bay.”
“And I suppose they have all used them,” said Eddy.
“Actually, there is one left,” said the Wizard. “But I don’t know who it belongs to. I’ll only know when I hear it.”
“Maybe we could find out,” said Eddy. “We could get them to wish for a palace…”
“It would probably come out wrong. My magic usually does.”
“It would still be a start,” said Eddy. “Something to work with.”
The doorbell rang. Eddy went downstairs to answer it. He had phoned Hen and asked her to bring everyone from the Manor to see if they could come up with a plan.
Chris P pushed in past the others.
“I love little places like this,” he said. “Just like proper houses – only smaller. Are we in here, then?” He strode through the door into the living room.
