They would set out again and soon their throats would be dry once more. It was as though the desert was playing with them. Keeping them going just a little bit longer. But the end must come eventually. Sooner or later one of them would fall and would not get up.
And during all this time did they think of their lost companions, of the fiery princess, the brave warrior and the amazing horse? They did not. They thought only of the next step and then the step after it. All that they knew was that they must keep going. They had no idea why.
And then, on the third day, as the sun was at its highest and most unforgiving, Capablanca was walking down a dune when the sand slid away from under him as it had done time and again in the last two days. On the first day Capablanca’s reactions would have allowed him to balance himself. On the second day he would have attempted to balance himself, but would have been too slow and would have fallen. But now he did nothing but fall. Down the dune he rolled, until he landed in a heap at the bottom. A heap that did not move.
Blart saw Capablanca roll past him. He continued to plod down the dune. He passed the heap that was the wizard but he did not stop. The wizard had fallen over many times. Blart had fallen over many times. They got up and carried on. Blart continued to walk. Another dune lay in front of him. He began to climb. The sand slipped away from his feet. He struggled upwards. He was no longer Blart. He was no longer a person. He was simply a thing that moved.
Beneath him the sand gave way. Now his face was pressed into the sand and its gritty particles invaded his mouth. He had fallen over. He should get up. His arms refused to lift him. The sun burnt his eyes but he was too dazed to look away. He stared at it for a while. And then he remembered that he should be doing something. What was it that he should be doing? He wasn’t sure. He should be moving. His body didn’t want to move but his brain kept saying he should. Move, his brain told him. Leave me alone, he said to himself. Move, his brain repeated.
Blart began to crawl. Slowly, ever so slowly, he moved up the dune. He slipped back and then crawled up and then slipped back some more. He was moving so slowly now that it was almost impossible to tell that he was moving at all. The sun, which had been at its highest point when he began, was now dropping into the west, but its harsh unyielding heat remained. Still Blart inched up the dune. He could not stop now because he no longer knew how to. Only death could end his crawling now. But death did not come. The top of the dune came instead. Blart raised his head and saw colours. Colours whose names he could hardly remember. Greens and blues and other ones frazzling his brain with their sudden difference.
And Blart felt angry. Angry at these new colours. Angry that they weren’t sand. Angry that he could not lie down and die, when that was all he wanted to do. Angry that he had been saved.
And the new colours made him think. Made him remember. Capablanca. He looked behind him. There at the bottom of the dune was the wizard, where Blart had passed him an age ago. He had to go and get him. He’d know what to do about all these new colours. Blart began to crawl back down the dune towards the blot in the sand that was Capablanca.
Chapter 28
‘I saved your life,’ said Blart.
‘Shut up,’ replied Capablanca.
‘But you’d be dead if it wasn’t for me,’ pointed out Blart.
‘You’ll be dead in a minute because of me,’ grumbled Capablanca.
‘I came back for you. I could have gone on. But I didn’t.’
‘I know. You’ve told me a million times.’
‘I’m a hero,’ concluded Blart proudly.
Now, this is a difficult thing to judge, as there are no hard and fast rules about how you become a hero. Can you rightly claim to be a hero based on only one courageous action or must there be a number of courageous actions one after the other and an absence of cowardly ones? History has never given us a definite answer to this question. Blart, however, had already promoted himself to heroic status.
‘You’re not a hero,’ said Capablanca, who obviously hadn’t. ‘Now pass me some bread for this is our last meal before we depart.’
They were eating at a table in a deserted two-roomed cottage that sat on the edge of the desert next to a babbling river. Three days previously, Blart had dragged Capablanca to it and knocked on its solid door with all that remained of his strength. There was no answer. Blart had pushed open the door and found a tidy kitchen with an immense jug of water on the table and a fresh loaf of bread by its side. He had drunk greedily, feeling life return to his body as the water rushed through it. Then he had forced some water down the wizard’s throat that made him cough and spit at first but soon brought him back to consciousness. In the other room they had found two freshly made beds and, without a word to one another, had collapsed on to them and slept for many hours.
Quickly, they had recovered. They had eaten and drunk. They had rested. They had caught fish in the river that ran past the cottage and built a fire to cook them. Then they began to wonder whose cottage it was and why they hadn’t returned. They looked out across the fields for a sign of an owner but they saw nobody. In the end they gave up. If somebody appeared then they’d explain what had happened, apologise for eating the person’s bread and sleeping in his bed and hope that he didn’t have a short temper.
But nobody did appear and now the wizard pronounced them ready to leave. Blart had another point of view.
‘I’m still tired,’ he said. ‘I need more time to get better.’
‘We’re going now,’ said Capablanca grimly. ‘The chances of us arriving before Zoltab has been released are getting smaller all the time. We must go now.’
‘Uuugghh,’ said Blart.
But he stood up and headed for the door. The world still had a chance.
They had been walking for a while when they saw a figure coming towards them. Blart, who had by now come to the conclusion, based on his experience during the quest, that it was best to regard any stranger as a potential murderer, was all for hiding behind a bush until the figure had passed, but Capablanca insisted that you couldn’t decide someone was a potential murderer until they did something which gave you evidence of their homicidal intentions. The problem with this theory is, of course, that you may only become aware of their homicidal intentions a moment before you are murdered, which means that the time available to change your behaviour is severely limited. But fortunately for Capablanca, Blart wasn’t really clever enough to understand this and so Capablanca had his way.
As the figure got nearer it became a tall strong farmer. But it was not until he got right up to them that they discovered the surprising thing about him. His nose was a carrot.
‘Look at him – his nose is a carrot,’ said Blart, who, as he had recovered his strength, had also recovered his marvellous ability to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. The man was obviously embarrassed by his nose because his face flushed red.
‘Woe is me,’ he said. ‘I have a carrot for a nose.’
‘How did that happen?’ said Capablanca.
‘I don’t know. But three days ago, I woke up feeling completely normal and was just preparing for a day’s farming when my wife woke and began to scream.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the wizard rather uncomfortably, because he strongly suspected that he knew the cause of the man’s nose becoming a carrot – Blart’s mispronounced spell as he fought to free himself from the serpent’s clutches.
‘What happens when you sneeze?’ asked Blart.
‘Now, now, Blart,’ said Capablanca. ‘The man doesn’t want us prying into his problems. Let’s get going. Good day to you, sir.’
‘I’ve been to the doctor,’ continued the man, who seemed eager to talk of his troubles. ‘I walked for two days to his house. My wife came with me. The doctor said there was nothing he could do. My wife said she couldn’t live with a man with a carrot for a nose, and so she refused to return to our little cottage and has gone back to her parents. I’ve been a good man and yet my life has been ruined
. I will spend the rest of my life living quietly in my cottage hiding my shameful hooter from the eyes of the world. All I have to look forward to is the last loaf of my wife’s bread that is waiting for me on the kitchen table. It is all I have left of her now.’
Capablanca looked at his feet. He could not help the man. The carrot would revert to a nose eventually, for all spells wore off in time, but he did not know how long it would take. Also, he felt that by demonstrating any knowledge of the subject he would be bound to attract unwelcome suspicion. The man might have neighbours and the neighbours might have wood and before you knew it he’d be burning at the stake.
‘We had some nice bread yesterday,’ said Blart, who had no idea that he was responsible for the man’s new appendage and the consequent destruction of his marriage.
‘Not as nice as my wife’s,’ said the man with the carrot for a nose.
‘How do you know?’ argued back Blart. ‘You weren’t there. It was in this –’
‘We must be going,’ said Capablanca quickly.
The wizard’s nervousness aroused the suspicion of the man, and his expression became one of distrust.
‘The one strange thing that the doctor said to me was that it could have been caused by magic. You wouldn’t know anything about magic, would you?’
‘Me?’ Capablanca looked incredulous. ‘Magic? No. I’m just an old man going about my business with my young grandson.’
‘Funny I’ve never seen you in these parts before,’ persisted the man, who was now scrutinising Capablanca’s clothes.
‘Just passing through on our way to market,’ said Capablanca.
‘Which market?’ asked the man.
‘Er … any market. We like markets. All the hustle and bustle. So many spells … er smells.’
‘You look like a wizard.’
‘Do I? Ha Ha.’ Capablanca laughed unconvincingly. ‘You look like a vegetable patch, but it doesn’t mean you are one.’
‘That cloak and your beard … and what’s that in your hand?’ The man indicated Capablanca’s wand, which he had forgotten he was holding.
‘Oh, that,’ said Capablanca, looking at it as though he was seeing it for the first time. ‘That’s my walking stick.’
‘It’s not very long for a walking stick.’ The man looked more and more suspicious.
‘I have a terrible stoop.’
The man paused and looked Capablanca up and down once more. Capablanca tried to look as little like a wizard as possible.
‘Are you sure you’re not a wizard?’ he asked again.
Blart was biding his time and enjoying Capablanca’s discomfort. He decided enough time had been bided.
‘He is a wizard,’ he announced.
‘What?’ said the man with a carrot for a nose.
‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’ laughed Capablanca. ‘The boy will have his jokes.’
‘No,’ persisted Blart. ‘He honestly is a wizard. He put a spell on my legs so I can’t run away from him, and he’s made me travel all over the place and do loads of dangerous things because he says I’ve got to save the world.’
The man stared open-mouthed at Blart and then at Capablanca. And then he burst out laughing.
‘What a tale,’ he roared. ‘There was me thinking you were a wizard until your boy comes out with all that nonsense. Saving the world indeed. Hahahahaha. Spells on legs. Hahahahaha. I didn’t think I’d ever laugh again now that my nose is a carrot, but you’ve proved me wrong, young lad.’
‘But he is a wizard,’ repeated Blart indignantly.
The man slapped his thigh and laughed some more.
‘Now, now, grandson,’ said Capablanca. ‘Don’t overdo it.’
But Blart was not to be stopped. He had never seen the wizard so worried, and it occurred to him that now was the time to escape. Now, before he had to meet any dwarves or face the wrath of Zoltab. He could go back with the man and live in his cottage. He could make him get some pigs. This was his chance.
‘Look,’ Blart cried. And he proceeded to run away from Capablanca. Before Capablanca had time to react, Blart had run for ten paces and his legs had tripped him up.
‘Did you see?’ shouted Blart from the ground. ‘My legs tripped me up.’
But the man was unable to respond. He was laughing so much that he was gripping Capablanca to stop himself falling over.
‘What are you laughing at?’ yelled Blart. ‘I’m being taken to save the world against my will.’
The man wiped tears from his eyes.
Blart got up and stomped back to the other two.
‘There’s nothing funny about it,’ he said angrily.
‘Oh, there is, my boy,’ said the man with the carrot for a nose. ‘What a fool I’ve been – accosting perfect strangers and accusing them of being wizards. I see now that it’s just a reaction caused by the shock of discovering that my nose has become a carrot. Still, at least I can laugh about it. If you can’t laugh at yourself then who can you laugh at?’
‘But you’re right,’ insisted Blart.
‘Enough joking, grandson,’ said Capablanca sharply. ‘We have delayed this man too long. He needs to get home to his wife’s loaf.’
‘He shouldn’t bother,’ said Blart sulkily.
‘Why?’ asked the man with a carrot for a nose. ‘No, don’t tell me. It’s because you’ve eaten it, isn’t it?’ And a great snort of laughter issued from him which made his carrot wobble up and down precariously.
‘Yes,’ said Blart.
‘You’re too much,’ said the man, laughing once more. ‘I must be going, but I’ll tell you what, old man. Your grandson has a great future as a fool.’
And so saying, the man with a carrot for a nose nodded amiably and walked off in the direction of his cottage. What he said when he got home and found that his wife’s loaf had indeed been eaten we will never know but we can guess that it was probably rude.
Blart and Capablanca set off in the opposite direction, Capablanca almost doubled up in order to use his wand as a walking stick. It was not until the man with the carrot for a nose was out of sight that he could rise to his full height and shout at Blart.
‘Have I taught you nothing on this great quest?’ shouted Capablanca. ‘Don’t you realise that your welfare is less important than that of the whole world? Have you learnt nothing of sacrifice? Would you condemn me to a burning at the stake to preserve your own miserable hide? Have you learnt nothing of sacrifice and loyalty and friendship and honour?’
Blart didn’t say anything. He trudged along with his head bowed down as the wizard abused him. He hadn’t learned anything about sacrifice and loyalty and friendship and honour. What he had learned mainly on this quest was that saving the world wasn’t anything like what it was cracked up to be and that the best thing to do with a quest was not go on it.
Chapter 29
‘I believe that we must begin to look for the dwarves around here,’ Capablanca announced.
Blart immediately began darting nervous glances about him. The quest had taught him that it was safe to assume that every new thing he met along the way might well try to kill him so he had no desire to meet dwarves.
‘You don’t find dwarves out in the open,’ scoffed Capablanca. ‘Dwarves live underground. Don’t you even know that?’
Blart didn’t.
‘First,’ continued Capablanca, ‘you must look for large stones. They must be at least three feet high and at least two feet wide. Like that one.’
The wizard pointed at a big stone that sat in a field next to their rough path. A moment ago Blart would not have said that there was any difference between that rock and any other. However, as soon as Capablanca had picked it out the rock seemed to be different. It was lighter than all the other stones and it didn’t seem to have got where it was naturally. They left the path and approached the rock.
‘Now we push,’ said Capablanca.
‘Couldn’t you magic it away?’ asked Blart.
‘I could not,’
said Capablanca. ‘If you started using magic for everything you’d become casual, your spells would become sloppy and then they’d stop working. So, as we can move this stone with a bit of physical effort, then we should.’
Capablanca put his shoulder to the stone and pushed. Reluctantly, Blart joined him. The stone moved. They pushed harder. The stone resisted and then suddenly gave. It tumbled over and landed in the grass with a muffled crash to reveal some flattened yellow grass.
‘This is always happening,’ said Capablanca in annoyance.
Suddenly the stone didn’t seem to be quite as out of place in the field as Blart had originally thought. In fact, if you looked around you could see a number of other stones which looked quite similar.
‘Oh, well,’ said Capablanca. ‘Let’s carry on.’
Three fields later they saw another stone.
‘That is definitely a dwarf stone,’ observed Capablanca.
Blart looked at it. It did seem to be out of place and standing at an awkward angle, but then the last one had seemed like that too and nothing had been under that one.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Come on.’
‘What are dwarves like?’ asked Blart.
‘They’re short,’ said Capablanca briefly.
I think even I would forgive Blart a scornful glance at the wizard here.
‘But the thing about dwarves,’ continued Capablanca, ‘is that they don’t like people being bigger than them.’
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