Phyllis Wong and the Waking of the Wizard

by Geoffrey McSkimming

  ‘And he’s been up to no good,’ said Barry Inglis in a low, disgusted voice. ‘No good at all . . .’

  Time to move

  ‘What sort of no good?’ asked Phyllis, her skin getting a creeping feeling.

  ‘He’s been attacking people,’ Barry answered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve got footage of him in at least twenty different places. He’s been pushing people off subway platforms, or onto busy roads into the traffic while they’ve been waiting to cross the street. In a department store uptown he shoved a woman down the stairs. She tumbled down three flights. There’ve been some nasty injuries.’

  Phyllis listened, anger rising inside her.

  ‘He always manages to get away in the ensuing confusion,’ Barry went on. ‘People rush to the aid of the victims, and Sturdy’s gone. Now I can see how. Now that we know he’s a Transiter, why, all he has to do is rush to the nearest flight of stairs where there’s a . . . what do you call them, Miss Wong?’

  ‘A TimePocket.’

  ‘A TimePocket, yes, and then he makes a clean getaway. That explains something, at least.’

  A light came on in Phyllis’s brain. ‘And that’s why he bought those photos! He’s trying to buy up all the photos of himself so that the police won’t recognise him on the off-chance they see one of the old photos. That’s got to be why.’

  ‘What you say could very well be the reason,’ Barry muttered.

  ‘It has to be,’ said Phyllis. ‘But why’s he doing all this?’

  Barry stared out the window. ‘We’ve no idea. But he’s been at it for months now.’

  ‘Does he know the people he’s attacking?’

  ‘We don’t think so. The attacks seem to be random. All sorts of people have been hurt: old people, young people, people from all parts of the city. None of the victims we’ve interviewed have ever got a look at him—he often strikes from behind, while the victims are busy talking on their phones or texting or what have you.’

  ‘He moves quietly,’ Phyllis said. ‘Really quietly. Great-grandfather told me so, and when we were at Stonehenge just the other century, even Daisy didn’t know he was there.’

  ‘And she can detect a mouse-hair from the other side of the street,’ Barry said. He turned to Phyllis. ‘All these random attacks may mean that Sturdy could be seriously disturbed. He has to be apprehended, as quickly as possible.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll go and see my colleagues with this photo, and we’ll get it out there pronto. Obviously I can’t tell them everything about Sturdy—I’d be hauled off to the clinic if I said too much—but at least we have a little more to pinpoint him. Would you like me to make you a copy of this?’ he asked, almost as an afterthought.

  ‘Yes please.’ She watched as Barry made a quick scan of the photo on his scanner and then printed off the copy on some glossy paper.

  ‘Here,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’ She popped it into her journal and put it into her bag. ‘Is there anything more I can do?’

  He thought for a bit, and ran his hand through his hair. ‘Yes. There is something you can do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get out of town for a while.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Miss Wong, now I know that Sturdy’s the man who’s been attacking all these strangers, and knowing that he’s after you, because of your connection with your great-grandfather, I really think it best if you could lay as low as possible until we get this villain. I mean it; this man’s not pussyfooting around out there. He means business. Is it possible that you could . . . take a little trip somewhere?’ He gave her a wink—a worried sort of wink, but a wink nonetheless.

  ‘You mean, a little Transiting?’ she asked.

  Barry nodded. ‘If you’re in a completely different location to where Sturdy is, well . . .’

  An idea rushed into her mind. It was time to start the search with which W.W. had entrusted her. ‘I know the very place,’ she said, giving her inscrutable smile.

  ‘Good. And Miss Wong? I think it’d be good if you were not alone. As you said, Sturdy’s very quiet. It’d be wise if you had company during your Transiting.’

  Phyllis shook her head. ‘You know I can’t take anyone who doesn’t know about the Pockets,’ she protested. ‘There’s no way I could take someone from the Force with me, unless you came along. You’re the only one who’s in on it all—apart from Clem, obviously . . .’

  Downstairs, Clement was in a dark fury. Phyllis could almost see a thundercloud above his head. ‘What’s up?’ she asked.

  ‘Man, this is ridiculous!’ He shoved his webPad towards her. ‘I haven’t been able to get on the internet since you went upstairs! I can’t hook up to any games anywhere! The same thing happened the other day, in the middle of a game. Argh!’

  The constable behind the desk heard him. ‘We can’t get any access either,’ she said, looking up from her computer screen. ‘Seems like there’s something happening with the net all over the place.’

  ‘Well, at least it’s not just me,’ Clement grumbled.

  ‘Never mind,’ Phyllis said to him. ‘C’mon, I’ve got something better than the internet for you.’

  He shoved his webPad into his backpack and hurried to follow her out the front door. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Someplace magical,’ she replied.

  ‘Where?’ he asked, almost falling down the steps after her.

  ‘Clem, I’m going to take you somewhere.’

  ‘You mean we’re going to Tra—’

  ‘Shhh!’ She stopped walking for a moment and gave him a don’t you dare say it stare.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘But are we?’

  ‘You want to?’

  ‘Well no, actually I’d rather go home and rehearse my xylophone solo of Flight of the Bumblebee for the next three days.’

  Phyllis started walking again. ‘Don’t be sarky, Clement. You’re sounding like Leizel Cunbrus.’

  ‘Ugh. Now that is a puke-making thought. Of course I wanna come. I’ve been hanging out to go again!’

  She smiled as they came to the corner. While they waited to cross the street, she scanned the area in all directions, on the lookout for the tall, wide-shouldered man she needed to avoid. Clement saw her looking around and he, too, peered up and down and across the street.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ he asked.

  The lights changed and Phyllis started crossing. ‘Never mind; everything’s fine. Listen, there’s a lot you need to know. I want you to help me try to find something. Or rather, someone.’

  As they hurried along, Phyllis filled Clement in on the story of Wallace Wong and his search for Myrddin. (She kept all the information about Alexander Sturdy out of it, so that she didn’t overload him with too much.)

  Clement listened intently. He had already encountered Phyllis’s great-grandfather a few now-months ago, so there were no surprises about her hanging out with him. What he was surprised about was the mention of Myrddin.

  ‘Myrddin?’ He repeated the name. ‘Hey, I’ve heard of him. From one of my games I used to play when I was a kid. Dragons of Doomvillea. Yeah, he was a wizard who controlled the dragons.’

  ‘Myrddin is one of the old names for Merlin,’ Phyllis told him.

  ‘Merlin?’ He stopped walking and looked really confused.

  ‘Yep.’ Phyllis kept walking. ‘C’mon.’

  ‘The wizard Merlin?’

  ‘The same.’

  He hurried on. ‘But . . . wasn’t Merlin just a story? Like King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table? And Camelot and all that stuff?’

  ‘He was more than a story,’ said Phyllis, turning the corner into her street. ‘W.W. has been looking for him for Times and Times and Times.’

  ‘I get it. Wallace wants to meet up with him because he’s a magician, right?’

  ‘He wants to find him because he was the greatest magician. Clem, W.W. wants to fin
d Myrddin because Myrddin was the man who invented the TimePockets and the whole realm of Transiting!’

  ‘Oh, man!’ exclaimed Clement, his insides feeling as if a firecracker had just been let off there. ‘Let’s go searching!’

  Daisy was yappingly pleased to see Phyllis and Clement when they came into Phyllis’s apartment. Mrs Zepple had gone out shopping, and the little terrier had been waiting patiently for Phyllis to come back. She leapt up into Phyllis’s arms, giving her a warm, tickly snouting under the chin.

  ‘And I’m glad to see you too,’ Phyllis laughed.

  ‘Hey, Deebs!’ Clement tickled Daisy behind her folded-down ear. She gave his hand a lick and then she wriggled to be put on the floor.

  Phyllis obliged, before hurrying off towards her room. ‘I’m just going to get a different coat,’ she called to Clement over her shoulder. ‘And one for Daisy. In case we arrive in the cold.’

  ‘Arrive where?’ he called.

  She didn’t answer. Clement stood in the foyer of the penthouse apartment and waited, looking at some of the large framed posters of Wallace Wong performing his famous illusions: removing a woman’s head and replacing it as she floated above the stage; producing three elephants from a box that looked no bigger than a suitcase; and, in another poster, playing cards with a dandy-looking devil.

  ‘Have you got a sweater as well as your coat?’ Phyllis asked, coming back down the hall with Daisy trotting by her heels. Phyllis had put on a long black coat with furry-looking cuffs and collar, and she’d tied her hair back in a ponytail.

  ‘Huh?’ Clement snapped back to the present.

  ‘Do you want to borrow a sweater?’ she asked.

  He adjusted his glasses. ‘No, thanks. I’ve got one somewhere in here.’ He jerked his thumb at his bulging backpack. ‘Unless I’ve left it behind somewhere again.’

  ‘Okay.’ She grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder. ‘Time to go, then. C’mon, Daisy girl.’

  After the usual juddering elevator ride, Phyllis switched on the lights in the basement and led the way down the stairs.

  At the bottom, she turned and looked back up to the top step. Clement stood beside her and looked up as his friend concentrated.

  Phyllis emptied her mind of everything but that which she wanted to see. She thought of nothing but the colour black as she focussed on the top of the stairs.

  Slowly it emerged. The faint green baubles of light, glowing as they twinkled more brightly, defining the large almond shape of dark blurriness.

  The breeze from the Anamygduleon there on the stairs blew steadily down.

  ‘Can you see it?’ Clement asked.

  ‘It’s ready for us,’ Phyllis said. ‘Remember, hold on tight to my coat and don’t let go.’

  ‘Roger.’

  ‘This one’s a bit bumpy, if it’s like the last Transit I did to this place.’

  ‘Where . . . ?’

  She took the Sphere of Greater Temposity from her bag and held it tightly. Pausing only to pat Daisy through the outside of the bag, Phyllis brought the Sphere to her lips and whispered, ‘Ekots enruobretniw, ekots enruobretniw, ekots enruobretniw.’ Then she ran up the stairs, towing Clement straight into the Pocket.

  The magnet of Time

  Alexander Sturdy strode briskly along one of the paths that snaked through City Park.

  There was a chill in the air, growing colder by the hour as a battalion of grey-bottomed clouds rolled in from the west. Sturdy looked up through his bristly brows at the gathering masses. They are bringing snow, to be sure, he thought, glowering.

  He scowled. He did not like snow. He hated the way, whenever there was snow on the horizon or about him, his earlobes always tingled.

  Sturdy strode on, heading for the place where, when he was in the here-and-now, he called home. A large apartment on the outskirts of the city, in an old, tall building where he never saw the other dwellers.

  He clutched the handle of his bag tightly, being careful to avoid jostling the bag as he strode along. Its contents were precious . . . if anything bad were to befall what was in that bag, the summoning might not happen . . .

  As he made his way around one of the park’s duck ponds, his thoughts, like the clouds ahead, began to gather. And, like the clouds, they were heavy.

  Where is he? Sturdy was wondering. Why is he not seeking me out? What more can I do to entice him to come, to come to come to come to find me? Only he can accomplish that which I must set in motion. Why does he not come?

  His dark eyes took on the glinting sheen of black ice. On the path ahead a young woman was strolling towards him. She had her cell phone clamped to her ear and was having a loud, droning conversation.

  The volume of her voice pierced Sturdy’s thoughts. ‘Wretched technology,’ he muttered under his vaporous breath.

  The woman was taking up the entire pathway. She was looking straight ahead as she approached, but she appeared to stare through him. Her eyes were focussed on some point in the distance and her attention was fixed on her loud phone conversation. To Sturdy it was a yackety-yackety-yackety of nothingness: busy, loud nothingness.

  Sturdy moved to the right of the narrow, snaking path and shifted his bag from his left hand into his right, so that it would be as far away from the woman as possible.

  Now they were only ten paces from each other. The woman still didn’t move from the centre of the path. Sturdy sidestepped and then, just when he was alongside her, he moved sharply to the left. His arm connected with her shoulder and he barged her off the path and into the pond.

  There was a loud splash as she stumble-sprawled into the icy water. The pond here was shallow, but her fall disturbed enough water to create a swell that sloshed completely over her.

  The woman wallowed in the shallows, then struggled to her feet. She was too shocked and chilled to make any sound, apart from gasping loudly as the water gushed from her drenched hair and clothing.

  Sturdy did not slow his pace. He disappeared around the bend, the hem of his overcoat billowing behind him.

  Hip enough

  ‘OOOF-O!’ grunted Clement as he and Phyllis half-tumbled, half-staggered onto the dilapidated stone stairs in the old farmhouse at Winterbourne Stoke.

  Phyllis only just managed to stay on her feet as she lurched to the floor. Clement wasn’t so lucky; his feet tangled and he fell and rolled down the staircase.

  Daisy yapped loudly inside Phyllis’s bag. The conjuror opened the bag and set it on the floor and in a flash, Daisy hopped out. ‘It’s all right, Daisy girl,’ Phyllis reassured her. ‘We’re here now.’

  ‘Yergh,’ groaned Clement, slowly getting to his feet. ‘I feel like my guts have been dancing around without my permission!’

  ‘You okay?’ Phyllis asked.

  He dumped his backpack down and flexed his shoulders. ‘I think so.’ He took off his glasses and inspected them. ‘Yeah, these made it through. I thought that wind in there was gonna blast the lenses clean out of ’em!’

  ‘You’ve lost your scar,’ Phyllis said.

  He patted his cheek, where his fake latex scar had been stuck. ‘Huh. I thought I felt it being ripped off. So much for that spirit gum Miss Hipwinkle told me was the strongest on the market. I’ll give her a piece of my mind when I see her again!’

  ‘No, you won’t, Clem. You can’t tell her how you lost it. You made me the promise you’ll never breathe a word about all of this to anyone.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ He put his glasses back on and rubbed his elbow.

  ‘Anyway,’ Phyllis went on, ‘you don’t really have enough of your mind to spare to give any away.’

  ‘Oh, ha ha, Phyllis Wong. You are too, too droll for your own good sometimes.’

  ‘Yes. It’s my delightful nature.’

  Daisy was busy doing a sniff-patrol of the farmhouse. She trotted nimbly along the floor, her snout close to the walls, her stumpy little tail upright.

  ‘So,’ said Clement, ‘where are we?’

 
; ‘Near a village called Winterbourne Stoke. And your eyes have gone all green.’

  Clement opened his eyes wide. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep. Don’t worry, it won’t last long.’

  An icy gust of wind blew through the glassless window near the doorway. ‘It’s cold,’ said Clement.

  Phyllis pulled her coat collar up around her ears.

  ‘What’s so special about Winterbourne Stoke?’

  ‘Nothing, apart from the fact that this house has the closest staircase to where we’re headed.’

  Clement gave her an and where precisely might that be? look, but Phyllis was rummaging about in her bag.

  ‘Ah, there it is,’ she said, pulling out the Date Determinator.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Clement.

  ‘Something W.W. gave me last time I saw him. It tells you the Time you’ve arrived in.’

  ‘How does it work?’

  Phyllis gave him a quick rundown of what Wallace had told her about the Date Determinator and the Sphere of Greater Temposity.

  When she’d finished, Clement said, ‘Ah.’

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘let’s find out what the Time is, shall we?’

  Clement instinctively went to get his cell phone out of his backpack but then he stopped. ‘Oh, yeah. I see what you mean.’

  He watched Phyllis press the small button at the end of the Date Determinator. The rows of brass numbers started spinning, clicking and clacking. After half a minute, with a sharp CLICK, the numbers came to a halt.

  Phyllis and Clement peered at the rows of digits.

  The top row showed 11.

  The middle row showed 01.

  The third row showed 1965.

  Phyllis said, ‘It’s January the 11th, 1965.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Clement.

  ‘Arf!’ said Daisy.

  Phyllis crouched down and slid the Date Determinator into her bag, next to the Sphere of Greater Temposity. Then she took out Daisy’s coat and beckoned Daisy over. Daisy waited patiently while Phyllis put the small coat on her. She gave Phyllis’s hand a quick lick of thanks when the last strap had been fastened.