A Spell in the Country

by Heide Goody

  “I was, but the power keeps going off in my hut, so I gave up.” Kay held out the bag. “Want a sweet?”

  Dee took one and put it in her bag for later. “That’ll be Norma’s welder: making the power go off.”

  “Did you see Caroline?” said Kay. “Shazam gave her green hair. And horns. And a tail.”

  “A tail?”

  “I hit her with the green hair spell and she did nothing about it,” said Shazam. “So, I went to town with every other spell I knew.”

  “She did nothing to defend herself?” said Dee. “That doesn’t sound like Caroline.”

  “What doesn’t sound like Caroline?” asked Caroline, strolling up. She was notably tailless and lacking both green hair and horns.

  Shazam sat up quickly, causing Mr Beetlebane to complain loudly and cling onto her skirts with his claws. “Removing the spells after I cast them is cheating, isn’t it?” she said.

  “I’ve not removed any spells, Cobwebs” said Caroline, serenely. “But if you mean the hair, horns and tail I think you’ll find that Jenny is currently tending to a bewildered handyman who happens to be sporting all three.”

  Shazam frowned.

  “A body swap?” said Dee.

  “A swapping of outward forms, yes,” said Caroline.

  “Well, I’ll be buggered,” said Shazam.

  “Sadly, I’m no longer equipped to help you with that particular request,” said Caroline cheerfully. “But I do have a favour to ask of you and Dee.”

  “Happy to help,” said Dee.

  “I’d like to borrow your car.”

  Dee’s boundless generosity faltered a moment. “Mustapha?”

  “Your car’s called Mustapha?”

  “Lots of cars have names,” said Dee defensively.

  “Yes, although lots of cars are not called Mustapha. Could I borrow – it – him – it?”

  Dee believed in loving people and animals, not things, but Mustapha had been her first car, her only car, and his little quirks and habits – which the garage insisted on calling “widespread and dangerous faults” – only made him seem like a living being. But Caroline had asked and Dee believed in nothing but generosity. “You will be careful with him?”

  “I’ll bring it back with a full tank of petrol and won’t drive it any higher than seventy.”

  “Seventy?”

  “Sixty.”

  “And how can I help?” asked Shazam.

  “You’re coming with me,” said Caroline. “I’m going to meet Doug Bowman.”

  Kay shuddered.

  “We all want to get to the bottom of this,” said Caroline. “I’m meeting him in Birmingham. He doesn’t know I know you, kiddo. And he’s never seen Shazam before.”

  “Ooh,” said Shazam. “Is this a covert op?”

  “Well as much as it can be when your clothes are covered in cat shaped sequins.”

  Dee fished around in her bag and passed her keys over. Caroline inspected the key fob. “Who’s Terry the Boss-Eyed Tortoise?”

  “He’s the mascot of the Shelter for Unloved Animals.”

  “Do Ugly Animals Need Love Too?”

  “They certainly do, poppet.”

  “Not just a decent beauty regime?”

  Caroline tossed the keys in the air, caught them again and headed off up to the annexe and car park. “Not a jot above seventy,” she promised.

  “Sixty,” Dee called at her receding back.

  Shazam made to follow; Dee put a hand on her arm. “Three things. Could you make sure Caroline brings that car back in one piece.”

  “Of course, Dee.”

  “And herself.”

  “Of course.”

  “And…” Dee sang a snippet of A Whole New World, gave a little hand-jive and smiled. “Gotcha.”

  Shazam smiled at her. “I’m wearing my protective anti-magic vest from One Stop Sorcery. You can’t harm me with your sleps.”

  “Sleps?” said Dee.

  “Your kigam sleps.” Shazam attempted to glare at her own mouth. “Oh, that’s just annoying. They assured me it would work. I’ve a good mind to write them a strongly worded rettel and demand a dnufer.”

  “And you’d be right to do so,” said Dee. “Enjoy Birmingham, poppet.”

  Initially, Jenny had been uncertain what to do with a befuddled man in a woman’s body. Even when Caroline had cancelled her glamour and given George his body back, he was still in possession of lurid hair, curly horns and a prehensile tail; and profound confusion regarding his own sexual anatomy. The answer eventually came in the sleeping potion Caroline had put in the wine. Jenny steered him to the teaching hut, plonked him in the centre of the protective chalk circle she’d drawn, plied him with enchanted booze and left him there to sleep it off; secure in the knowledge he would be safe from other spells.

  She sat by and watched over him. By early afternoon she thought she could see signs of the spells wearing off: a lightening of the hair colour, a shortening of the tail.

  “An’ when are you gunna ride ’im like a locomotive?” asked Jizzimus.

  “He’s unconscious.”

  “All aboard the overnight sleeper train! Callin’ at Moist Valley, G-Spot an’ Climax Central!”

  “You’re disgusting. A: I’m not going to rape a sleeping man and, B: he isn’t… Well, if he’s asleep, he’s hardly going to be, you know, standing to attention.”

  “We would like to inform our passengers that today we will be runnin’ a reduced service.”

  “Knock it off, Jizz.”

  “Customers will ’ave to use our manual relief replacement service due to prudes on the line.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Yes?” said Jenny, too loudly.

  “Only me,” called Kay. She pushed inside. “Sorry, Jenny, I thought you were talking to someone.” She looked at the sleeping transformed gardener. “I’m not interrupting something am I?” she asked with a crooked smile.

  “Definitely not,” said Jenny.

  “Too bloody true,” sulked Jizzimus. “Doesn’t want to eat children. Doesn’t want to ’ump sleepin’ dudes.”

  “That weird hippy wizard has turned up and is helping Norma with her latest project. I thought you ought to come down.”

  “Do they need help?”

  “Not really,” said Kay, rustling around in her bag of sweets. “Thought you just might want to watch and laugh.”

  Jenny shut the teaching hut door behind them. They went down to Norma’s hut, where an ice-cream van was parked on the lawn.

  “Ladies, thank you for coming,” boomed Norma. “I want you to be the first to admire my newest invention. Step inside!”

  Jenny followed Kay inside. Dee and Zoffner the Astute were already there. The air held a thick tang of acrid smoke. Zoffner was fiddling with the industrial contraption on the table, in such a way as not to draw Norma’s attention. The contraption was formed of solid metal straps which criss-crossed each other to create a distorted balloon shape. It looked like a perverse art project fusing a hanging basket with an iron maiden. Dee glanced at Jenny and gave a small shrug, indicating she didn’t know what it was either.

  “Nice handiwork, Norma,” Dee said. “Where did you learn to weld?”

  “One can learn a great many useful skills in prison,” said Norma. She caught their expressions. “I know Effie told you all. It is important, as always, to use one’s time productively, and I did just that.”

  “Great work, Norma,” added Jenny. “What is it?”

  “It’s a psychic resonance defuser,” said Zoffner.

  “It’s no such thing,” said Norma. “This is a prototype Faraday cage corset.”

  “That’s what I said, foxy lady.”

  “And what is that, exactly?” asked Jenny.

  Norma sighed as if they were exceptionally slow pupils. “You’re familiar with the usual concept of a Faraday cage, yes?”

  Jenny, Dee and Kay shook their heads in unison.

 
“It is a metal enclosure used to protect whatever is inside, whether it is delicate electrical equipment, or in this case, me, from an electromagnetic discharge.”

  “An electromagnetic discharge,” said Jenny.

  “Yes, like lightning,” said Norma.

  “Or magic,” said Zoffner.

  “Such as any puny incantations my, ahem, colleagues might try to cast on me.”

  “Would it protect against witchfire?” asked Dee.

  “Witchfire?” said Zoffner, with a broad, disbelieving smile.

  “I should think so,” said Norma primly. “Although I wouldn’t want to put it to the test just yet. You will notice there are hooks here, and here, that will fasten to my usual undergarments. I’m at the stage of development where I need to do a fitting. I require two volunteers to lift it into place for me. No, Mr Zoffner, you can keep your hands to yourself. Dee, Jenny – help me.”

  Time slowed for Jenny. She was being asked to handle a large piece of ironwork. Norma might as well have asked her to juggle balls of acid. She tried delaying tactics.

  “The gaps are quite big, Norma. Won’t the magic be able to get through?”

  Norma rolled her eyes. “Magic doesn’t have a size, Miss Knott. The apparatus disperses all approaching magic at a fundamental level.”

  “Diffuses its psychic resonance you mean?” suggested Zoffner. “I do believe we sell anti-magic vests at our shop. They’re much lighter and flattering to the female form.”

  “They don’t work,” said Dee. “Trust me.”

  “’Ere, boss!” said Jizzimus as he peered down at Norma’s contraption from a roof beam. “That thing’s made out of iron! You can’t touch that, you’ll get all blistered an’ ’orrible. Want me to bite them all until they run away?”

  Jenny gave a tiny shake of her head. “Kay, would you mind helping Dee with the corset?” she said.

  “Frightened of a bit of heavy lifting?” said the teenager.

  “I’ve just pulled my wrist. Hurt it somehow.”

  “Let me take a look,” said Dee. “How did you do that?”

  “Well,” said Kay, “I did just find Jenny in the classroom with a man who was lying there with—”

  “Enough chit-chat—!” Jenny interrupted. “Come on. Give Dee a hand.”

  With a squeak of wheels and a clonk of the suspension, Caroline swung the car into the park entrance opposite the Edgbaston cricket ground and, moments later, a parking space that a family-filled people carrier might or might not have been edging towards.

  She flung off her seatbelt. “Ten to three. Time to spare.”

  Shazam still gripped the glove box, her knuckles white. Mr Beetlebane was wrapped around her neck like a terrified furry choker.

  “You’re a bit of a nervous passenger, eh, Cobwebs?” said Caroline.

  “So tsaf,” whispered Shazam. “So very, very tsaf.”

  “I know we’re going a teeny bit faster than Dee wanted—”

  “Teeny tib?” Shazam consciously disengaged her fingers from the dashboard. “She said don’t go over sixty, not drive so fast you go back in emit.”

  “Emit?”

  “I mean emit. Emit! Oh, blast this esruc!”

  “Pfff. Dee will never know, long as the engine doesn’t blow.” Several warning lights lit up on the dashboard and steam curled around the edges of the bonnet. “We’ll do this thing and give this baby some time to cool down. Now, you remember the plan.”

  Shazam nodded. “The nalp is that you talk to him and get him to tell you about this elpeep trafficking operation. For some reason, you’re doing this by a pond in a krap.”

  “And your role?”

  “To hang around as backup, keeping a low profile.”

  “Might be best if you wait behind in the car for a moment, and follow us afterwards.” Caroline passed her the keys.

  Caroline got out. The River Rea separated park from car park. There were two bridges across it: one leading directly into the Midland Arts Centre building, and further on a humpbacked bridge which led into Cannon Hill Park proper. Caroline crossed the humpbacked bridge and walked round towards the larger of the two ponds.

  There were dozens of geese and ducks on the pond, a stand renting out pedalos at the near side, a large playground off to the right, and no sign of Doug Bowman. The ‘scene of the crime’: the biggest bust of hers and Bowman’s careers. Unfortunately, the crime was theirs and they were the targets of the bust. They were foolish enough – arrogant enough – to not think that the man they were selling police forensic files to might be a wired-up police informant. They had sat on that bench just there, put the papers in his hand and blabbed their stupid hearts out.

  “I always remind myself,” said Doug Bowman, appearing behind her, “if those papers hadn’t got lost, and the recordings hadn’t got scrambled up, as if by magic, then you and I would be, this moment, in little six by eight cells.”

  “Instead of enjoying the life of bent ex-coppers,” she smiled.

  “Free agents,” he said.

  “Oh, that makes it sound so much better.”

  “It’s great, Caz, just the thing for someone like me. Someone like you too.”

  “Like me?”

  “We’re mavericks, you and me,” said Bowman. “We can’t be doing with the nine to five. We’ve got the flair to hold our own in a world where the stakes are much higher. We’d have been pirates in the old days, I reckon.”

  “Which is all very well, until we get caught.” She gave him a meaningful glance. “And we did, didn’t we?”

  He laughed and nodded towards the boating lake. “Come on, let’s go and play pirates. We need to have a chat, so we might as well, eh?”

  Caroline nodded her approval. “I like the sound of this job already. It’s not every day you get to conduct business meetings in a pedalo.”

  Dee and Kay had positioned Norma inside her Faraday cage corset and worked on the various clasps and bolts that secured it in place. Zoffner stood in the doorway, appraising his metal-clad lady with one eyed closed and thumb outstretched, like a fine artist.

  “I think there may be a teensy flaw in your design,” he said.

  “Codswallop, man,” Norma replied.

  “The universe speaks only truths.”

  “All my calculations are correct. You’ve checked them yourself. I’d like to see any spells get through this armour.”

  Dee reflected that not only spells but muggers, molesters, mortar fire and psychotic polar bears would struggle to penetrate this iron bodice. She knew this was a very serious endeavour, and that Norma’s device might well be useful in the fight against evil witches, but nonetheless Dee couldn’t help bursting into fits of giggles. One of the many fundraising events that had been held for the Shelter for Unloved Animals was a Family Fun Sports Day. One of the activities they had arranged was sumo wrestling in foam padded suits. Of course, the main purposes of sumo suits was to hinder the competitors and provide a hilarious spectacle for those watching. The sumo wrestlers would bump into each other, get knocked off their feet and rolled around on the floor, all the while looking like ungainly mushrooms. The more Dee tried not to think of Norma’s metal overcoat in the same way, the more she couldn’t help herself and started laughing again.

  “Are you all right, Dee?” demanded Norma. “You look very red in the face.”

  “It is quite warm in here,” said Jenny, standing well clear of the operation.

  “I think it’s mostly secure now,” said Kay. “Shall we go outside?”

  “Good idea,” said Norma.

  Zoffner and Jenny backed out ahead of her. Norma followed.

  With a jarring clang she discovered, in her surrounding cage, she was too wide to fit through the doorway. “Oh. That is most unfortunate.”

  “The universe speaks only truths,” said Zoffner.

  Caroline and Doug Bowman pedalled across the boating pond in a huge fibre glass swan. Caroline didn’t turn around to see if Shazam was followin
g, but a couple of times she thought she heard the sort of yowling that might be made by a cat who was very unhappy to be surrounded by water.

  “So, we bring them. Ports, airports, whatever suits. And then deliver them to our customer,” said Bowman.

  “One customer?” said Caroline.

  Bowman nodded. “It’s a specialist product.”

  “Who’s the customer?” she asked.

  Bowman just smiled.

  “Drugs?”

  “A mug’s game, and the margins are too small.”

  “But contraband?”

  “If you like,” said Bowman.

  “So, it’s smuggling.”

  “I like to think I offer an end to end logistics solution for customers with very niche requirements.”

  “That’s because you’re full of shit, Doug,” smiled Caroline. “You always could write up a report that made you sound like a shining star. What would my role be, exactly?”

  “I need some more brains around the place, Caz. We got the trucks and the drivers. They all come courtesy of Kev.”

  “Kev?”

  He gave her a look, not suspicious, but the next best thing. “Yeah. Kev. He runs the show. My problem is we’ve had some critical failings, and I can’t cover them all. We had some goods go missing recently.”

  “Oh?”

  “Warehousing and storage is a problem. Our product is … delicate. And volatile. Security and handling need tightening up.”

  Caroline nodded with interest. “So the hours and the pay would be what, exactly?”

  A smile spread across his caveman face. Caroline knew what it meant. They’d had a saying back on the force when it came to paying someone off. “As soon as they ask how much, it’s in the bag. The rest is just negotiation.”

  Jenny had succumbed to Dee’s infectious giggles. Norma, strapped into a metallic hamster ball, had tried to get through the door by tilting and wriggling and only succeeded in getting wedged in the door frame at an angle.

  “I think we can get her loose if you push from the inside and Mr Zoffner tugs from this side,” suggested Jenny.

  “You will do absolutely no tugging,” Norma warned him but the cut-price mystic paid her no heed. He grabbed a pair of struts either side of her body and there was nothing she could do about it. He even stole a quick peck on the cheek while Norma was trying to see what Kay and Dee were up to behind her.