Have Wroom Will Travel

by Jim Conder

  She pushed him a away and wiped her mouth. Her heart pounded in her chest and her breathing was ragged.

  “Tonight at midnight, Mr. Taft,” She said grabbing her broom and flying off.

  “I’ll be looking forward to it,”

  Brooms have a mind of their own, and sometimes a witch gets one with a bit too much spirit. Some of the most powerful witches in the world had needed to tame a wild broom. Even Susan had glared her own broom into submission, and Widowmaker had gone unridden for almost six generations before Damien Taft. Considered to be a rite of passage, there are many opinions on the best way to tame a broom, but none of them worked for Maggie Lyn.

  For two weeks now Maggie had spent every spare minute working on the broom problem. So far her hard work and diligence had resulted in a black eye, sprained ankle, several scratches, swallowing a bug, and a the loss of a toenail when she’d dropped a heavy tome entitled Howe to ride Broome on her foot. All of this on top of trying to keep up with the mounds of potion and spellcasting homework that Mistress Crone kept pouring on her. Now with one day left, Maggie knew she had to work fast. She mounted the broom, drew a deep breath, pushed off and…

  … fell forward, hitting her nose on the handle as she hit the ground.

  This humiliation would have been enough, but her broom felt nasty that day. Without warning it took off, not upward merely foreward along the gound. Maggie instinctively tightened her grip and the broom dragged her along the ground, thrice around the cottage, before it finally whipping her off . She skidded across the ground and hit the side of the woodshed, lying there for a moment and groaning.

  All Maggie wanted to do was travel. Since moving from for her birth village of Lyn, which hadn’t really been a village at all just Maggie’s rather large family, Maggie had only been outside of Ghast once, that fateful trip where she’d met Mistrss Crone and Mr. Taft. She’d heard Mr. Taft’s tales of foriegn places and she wanted to go, but this stupid broom, this stupid broom, this stupid broom. She looked at it.

  It was laughing at her.

  Technically it had neither mouth nor lungs, nor did it make a sound. It didn’t move, but all the same it laughed at her. Maggie kmew just by looking at it that the stupid piece of wood and twig that it just radiated an aura of laughter. The broom was laughing at her.

  There was the slightest of sounds, a single almost inaudible snap, as Maggie’s overworked, overstressed, and generally battered mind decided that sanity needed a good rest. she slowly rose to her feet as the broom watched. It stopped laughing, somethig wasn’t right here.

  “Well,” Maggie said, cheerfully, “guess I’ll never be able to ride you. nope,nope, nope not gonna be able to do that., No m’am”

  She looked at the broom with an unbalanced grin and a gleam in her eyes that did not belong in a thirteen year old girl. It belonged in the eyes of the sort of person who wears a hockey mask and hangs out at campgounds killing oversexed teenagers. She grabbed the axe from the wood pile.

  “Guess I’ll just have to find someother use for you then,” she said raising the axe above her haead.

  “LIKE FIREWOOD!”

  Shortly thereafter Maggie found herself riding the broom calmly above the tree tops.

  She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there, the last thing she could remember had been hitting the woodshed. She didn’t remember chasing the broom around while swinging the axe and singing:

  Maggie Lyn took an axe,

  Gave her broom stick forty whacks

  Maggie knew she had to be sure

  So then she gave it forty more

  She didn’t remember giving a mad cackle, the sort most witches trained their whole lives to achieve. Even Susan couldn’t cackle like that. Maggie didn’t remember cornering the broom in the outhouse and advancing on it slowly.

  She couldn’t remember any of this.

  But the broom could, and it knew the time had come to be a a lot more cooperative.

  The rain had stopped at nightfall. Susan landed her broom at the Stone circle. she could feel wet blades of grass poking through her sandals as she walked across to the large stone altar ( actually it had been a juice bar) in the center of the circle, where Damien stood shuffling a a deck of cards. He looked up and smiled as she approached. Torches had been lit on either side of the altar to provide illumination.

  “I belive that this dual involved precognition,” he said, laying all fifty two cards out face down upon the altar, all side by side. “So we’ll play wizard’s poker.”

  “I’m not familiar the game,” Susan said.

  “It’s simple really.” He explained, “You choose a card then I choose one, and so on till we both have five cards. Then we compare cards, scoring is the same as poker.”

  She nodded, concentrating carefully she choose a card. Then he did. When each of them had five cards they lay them down.

  “Full house beats a, well you really don’t have much of anything there do you?” Damien said. She bounced one of her sandals off his head. He winked, then smiled and shuffled the cards.

  One hour later, Susan felt quite a bit draftier. Modesty and embarrassment dictated that she should make some sort of effort to cover herself, but pride would allow no such thing. so she stood with her hands on her hips, daring him to make a comment.

  “Well Mistress Crone, that would appear to be all,” he said carefully folding her dress and placing it on the back of Widowmaker. “Unless you’d care for one more hand? Win this one and I’ll give back everything, boots included.”

  “And if I lose?”

  He grinned and told her.

  “That’s disgusting!”she said.

  “Well if you’re afraid, ok then,” he said and turned to leave.

  “You’re on! Deal the cards!”Susan said.

  The rain started again. It pelted against the roof of Farmer Jones, a pleasant enough old man, just recovering from being badly concussed by a falling sandal. Perhaps it it had to do with the head injury, but he could have sworn he heard a voice in the air. A woman’s voice, doing quite a bit of swearing, followed by strange noise. He stepped outside into the rain and looked up.

  “Son of a bitch! ptooie !” something wet, but with far more phlegm in it than rain hit Farmer jones in the eye.

  “Son of a bitch, ptooie! Son of a bitch, ptooie! Son of a bitch, ptooie!” Susan cursed and spat as she flew on through the rain. She continued even after she landed at her cottage. she walked in and before even bothering to get dressed, she heated up some water, put some salt and a few herbs in it and gargled for a good half hour. She repeated this twice, then brushed her teeth for a good hour. Then gargled some more.

  “Son of a bitch, ptooie! Son of a bitch, ptooie! Son of a bitch, ptooie!”

  That last bet had been a definite mistake.

  Susan did not approve of this. But once again that damn man-witch had outmanuevered her. She’d known her entire life that anything you needed could be found at home. If you couldn’t find it, you didn’t need it. Foriegn parts were savage places, filled with foriegners, who couldn’t do things properly. Susan had no problems with different customs, as long as they were exactly like hers.

  But Damien had filled Maggie’s head with all sorts of nonsense, and Susan had never dreamed the girl would actually be able to master the broom in so short of a time. The damn thing was the most submissive thing she’d ever seen. Susan didn’t really have to come along, she technically hadn’t even been invited. But the idea of Damien spending time alone with Maggie and filling her head with all sorts of corrupting thoughts, well that was more than Susan could bear to think about.

  On the plus side, He had at least given Susan back her sandals as a good will measure. Maggie had another new dress. Dmaien gave sniff when he got close to Susan.

  “My but you have minty fresh breath.” He said to her. “Smells like you must have brushed you’re teeth all night.”

  “Go to hell, Mr Taft,”

  “Sorry but that’s no
t on the itinerary.” He said.

  “Can we go to Lander?”Maggie asked.

  “Um, well uh,” Damien said,his usual grin dropping momentarily. “Um, you really don’t want to go to Lander, a big dirty place, not very nice at all.”

  “Oh,” said Maggie, clearly dissapointed.

  “Trust me kiddo, you’ll love where we’re headed, it’s a lot better than Lander,”

  So they left, and after about three hours, for the first time in either of their lives, Susan and Maggie found themselves looking at the ocean. It impressed Maggie, But Susan merely looked at primly.

  “Hmmph,”she said,”a respectable body of water would never allow itself to become so big. Overindulgence, really.”

  “Nobody really knows how big it is,” Damien told Maggie, “But some people think there may even more land on the other side.”

  They’d flown to a small town called Lyrtle, which seemed to consist entirely of hotels, restaurants, on every other corner either a store called Sparrows, or a store called Beaks. There were multple locations for both stores, and neither store had anything to do with birds but instead sold small decorations made out of shells, long flat boards with fins, and cotten doublets withthing printed on them like “life’s abeach, and then you die.” or “I got crabs at Lyrtle Beach.”. They also sold bathing costumes, which Damien purchased for Susan and Maggie.

  “Where did you get gold?” Susan asked suspiciously. Witches generally worked in a barter economy, far more practical to Susan’s way of thinking. Money wasn’t anything, just the promise of something, Susan never understood why anyone would value gold over iron, which could at least be used for something besides trinkets and baubles.

  “I did some emergency medical work for some pirates once,” Damien said. “Pirates don’t exactly have much to offer in the way of goods or services, so I settled for a chest of gold and a bottle of rum. Sometimes money can be convenient.”

  Susan searched for a long time before she found a decent bathing costume, one with dignity that a respectable woman could wear. Black and the sort that contained so much material that it instanly became waterlogged and drowned anyone foolish enough to wear it into the water. This didn’t present a problem because Susan had never set foot in a natural body of water in her entire life and had no intention of starting now. Besides which, witches are naturally boyant.

  Maggie, on the other hand had chosen a red striped thing that seemed to be popular among the girls of Lyrtle. Disgraceful, thought Susan. You could see almost all of the girls arms, and everything below the shin.

  “Ok let’s hit the beach,” Damien said coming up behind her.

  “YOU WOULDN”T DARE!” Said Susan, spinning around to face him with her fists raised.

  “Beach, I said BEACH,”Damnien said pointing outside. The beach turned out to be a long stretch of ocean front sand, covered with more people than even Maggie had relatives. Apparently, Susan would later reflect, sand in your clothes, sunburn, and chafing from the saltwater, were very popular activities.

  There were some small builidings where they changed into the bathing costumes. Susan and Maggie stepped out and looked at the crowd. Umbrella, blankets, and lowslung chairs covered the beach like a pox. Most women wore bathing costumes like hers or Maggie’s. The men wore what looked like a pair of sleeveless long underwear that had been washed in the wrong temperature.

  “Y’know,” said Maggie thoughtfully looked at the crowd, “When you take away their clothes, most people are pretty ugly.”

  “Everybody ready?” said Damien, joining them. Susan turned, looked at him and screamed.

  “Mr.Taft! Will you put something on!” Damien wore a pair of black trunks that came down to just above his knees, a red shirt, unbuttoned, with multi-colored occult symbols and hibiscus flowers on it, sandals and nothing else. His lack of modesty shocked Susan, while a treacherous voice in the back of her head thought, wow, look at that chest, and damn he has good legs, just the right amount of hair to look masculine, but not enough to look like a monkey. She shook her head to clear it.

  “Disgraceful,” she said.

  All three of them wore their hats, because after all they were still witches.

  They moved ot on the beach where Damien spread a blanket, and set up an umbrella. some other people had started to set up next to them, but Susan had looked at them and they suddenly felt a pressing need to go elsewhere. Damien took Maggie down to the water, while Susan settled in to read.

  “I’m not going in there,”She said “No telling what’s in it and you know they don’t get out to use the bathroom

  “Is it really him?” said Glod

  “Got to be, spitting image of his father,” said Grog. Though both men didn’t really look alike, they were clearly cut from the same cloth. Muscular, yet fat, with greasy black hair on their heads and backs, dirty beards, and despite the heat, black leather. Glod wore a helmet with horns on the side and carried an emormous axe. Grog wore an iron helmet with a piece that came down to cover his nose, and carried a sword as big as a large dwarf.

  Big as mountains, dumber than rocks, both men practically had “Henchman” written all over them, though if they’d done the writing themselves it probably would have been spelld “Henshmin”, and some of the letters would have been backwards.

  Currently both were sitting at an outdoor table of a beachfront bar drinking. Glod had a strawberry daquiri, Grog a pina colada. “What’s he doin here?” asked Glod,”an who’s them wimmin with’im.?”

  “They look like witches t’me,”Grog replied.

  “Naah witches are more curvey, like Circe, only curves there is that big honker on the older one.” Glod said. “Circe is an enchantress, they’re different.,” said Grog, the marginally smarter one.

  “Well I still wonder what they’re doin here,”

  “I can tell you onething,”Grog said, “He damn sure ain’t here on vacation”

  Chapter 5

  Attack of the Mermen

  Beneath the sea something lurked. Beneath the sea some things lurked. vaguely man-shaped, their green gills flapped in the water. In their webbed, clawed hands they carried weapons, some tridents carved of bone, some the sword of sailors and pirates who made that one last fatal sea voyage.

  They were the mermen, fierce undersea warriors who hated all land dwellers.Thier leader , looked over them as they readied themselves for battle. The time had almost come.

  “You look swell,” Said Eh-thel leader of the mermen, bubbles trailing form his mouth, “You look great.”

  They’d soon have the whole world on a plate.

  The pleasures of having seawater crash down on you and chafe your skin, wears thin quickly, so Damien had taken Maggie into town to look around. A long wooden boardwalk lined with eateries seperated the town from the beach. They were not, Maggie noticed like the tavern back home, they weren’t really even separate bulidings, but rather one long building divided up, with arge windows facing the boardwalk.

  At each window you could get the local cuisine, the people of Lyrtle felt that nothing went better with blazingly hot days than deep fried food. Damien bought Maggie a sausage on a stick, dipped in corn batter and deep fried. She’d also had potatoes cut up and deep fried, and for dessert there had been batter poured through a funnel into the grease, deep fried and sprinkled with powdered sugar.

  At a break in the building there sat a large boat, inside Maggie could hear sounds and see flashing lights.

  ““Ahh the Ark-ade,” Damien said. Inside Maggie saw people playing games. With each game you could win tickets, depending on how many points you scored. These tickets could be taken to a booth in the center and traded for stuffed animals and other small toys, all valued at less than considerably had been spent playing the games.

  Maggie tried her luck at whack-a-gnome, a game where some small gnomes scurried around under a board with some holes cut in it. Every now and then they would pop up through a diffrent hole, and the object of the game
was to use a padded stick to hit as many of them on the head as you could, within a certain period of time.

  Maggie did miserably. The gnomes even took to sticking out there tongues and making rude noises. Damien laid his hand on her shoulder.

  “Maggie you’re a witch,”he said.”Didn’t Mistress Crone teach you about precognition?”

  “Seeing into the future? Yeah but I’m not to good at it yet”

  “How far have you tried to look?”

  “Um, about ten years, “ she said reddening, “I wanted to see if i’d get…”

  “What?”

  “Y’know…”:She said, using her hands to make two roundish shapes in the air in front of her chest.

  ““Cantaloupes? Crenshaw melons?” He asked. Maggie gave him a glare that Susan would have been proud of. He grinned back at her.

  “I wouldn’t worry to much about those. I understand they’re more trouble than they are worth.”

  “Boys like’em.”

  “Boys are stupid, trust me I used to be one.” he said.”But ten years is to far, a lot can change in ten years. the future is always in motion, at best you get it right maybe eighty percent of the time.”

  For a moment he seemed to drift, then snapped back and said to her,

  “The closer into the future you look the more accurate you’ll be. I never do more than five minutes myself.”

  “Why?”

  “If you spend to much time looking to far ahead, you lose track of the imediate future. Ask Susan about wizard poker sometime.” he thought about this a moment, “But wait until you are older.”

  He looked at the game.

  “Right now I think you should practice at seeing about a half second into the future.”

  Twenty minutes later Maggie had amassed a stack of tickets taller than herself. She traded them in and received a small stuffed bunny. The gnomes had to be sent home for the day due to complaints of headaches and mild concussion.