The Evil Wizard Smallbone

by Delia Sherman

  The sausages and beans curdled in Nick’s stomach. “Apprentice? I don’t want a job. I mean, I’ll work to pay off dinner and all, but I need to go home soon as the snow stops. My uncle — I mean, my father — is — will be worried.”

  Smallbone gave a low, dry, evil-sounding chuckle. “You ain’t going nowhere. From the look of you, I doubt this uncle of yours — I mean father — cares whether you live or die. If he even exists. You’re a waif and a stray, my Foxkin. You knocked on the door and you asked for shelter. Well, you got it. And now Evil Wizard Books has got you.”

  He rose to his feet, and the dogs jumped up like they’d been stung and ran into the front room, their tails tucked between their legs. The cats hissed and streaked after them. The old man lifted his arms, and his round glasses shone like silver coins and his white hair and bony fingers crackled with energy.

  “I am the Evil Wizard Smallbone.” His voice swelled and clanged like iron bells. “I know spells of binding and release, transformation and stasis, finding and losing. I learned them by experiment and example and luck. But most of all, I learned them from books. And you’ll never learn a single thing I don’t choose to teach you, because you can’t read!”

  Nick stared, openmouthed. The evil wizard lowered his arms and straightened his hat. “Well,” he said mildly, “now we’re all clear where we stand, you can take a bath.”

  “What?”

  Smallbone’s beard bobbed impatiently. “How old are you, boy?”

  Nick was too disoriented to lie. “Twelve.”

  “Plenty old enough to know what a bath is. You’re rank, Foxkin. In plain English, you stink. And you look like you been drug through a knothole backwards. Bathroom’s through that door over there. Don’t spare the soap.”

  Something was tickling Nick’s nose. He groaned and buried his face in his pillow. He knew he was dreaming because it smelled of lavender instead of motor oil.

  The tickling moved to his ear, along with the sound of breathing and something wet and . . .

  “Yow!” Nick rolled out of bed with a bone-shaking thump, whacking his elbow so hard he saw stars.

  Since his mattress at Uncle Gabe’s was on the floor, he knew he must be somewhere else. Which meant he’d succeeded in running away from Beaton. And now he was — oh, yes — in a big house in the middle of nowhere owned by a crazy old dude who claimed to be an evil wizard.

  Nick sat up, rubbing his elbow. The room was just exactly the kind of bedroom his mom would have loved, from its blue-checked curtains to the desk by the window to the painted wooden bed, where a small orange cat was peering at him out of the folds of a bright quilt. It mewed, jumped down, and butted against his leg. Nick scratched its ears and tried to remember what had happened last night.

  He remembered taking a bath in a bathtub perched up on lion’s paws, hot enough to soak the last of the cold right out of him. The towels were warm, too, and the long flannel shirt Smallbone gave him to sleep in. Nick thought it looked uncomfortably like a nightgown, but it was either that or the filthy clothes he’d come in. He didn’t like sleeping in his clothes, but sometimes he had to — when the heat was off at Uncle Gabe’s, for instance. Times were tough, Uncle Gabe said. Oil was expensive. And a man couldn’t live without cable and beer.

  Did Smallbone have cable? Nick wondered. Did Smallbone even have a TV? It didn’t seem likely.

  After the bath, the old man had picked up a lantern that smelled strongly of kerosene and seemed to create more shadows than it chased away. He led Nick through the gloomy front room and up a steep stair to an even gloomier hall where rows of brass doorknobs glowed in the flickering light. Smallbone turned one of them and pushed open a door onto absolute blackness.

  “Here you are,” he said. “Sweet dreams.” And he’d taken the lantern back downstairs, leaving Nick to find his way to bed in the dark.

  Now it was morning, and the room filled with mouthwatering smells of frying bacon and coffee. The orange cat mewed and trotted out the door. Nick’s stomach rumbled hopefully. There was a chair by the bed with a pile of clothes folded across the cane seat. Nick got up and shook out, in turn, a set of embarrassing long underwear with a drop seat, a plaid shirt, a pair of bib overalls, and lumpy knitted socks. A quick, desperate search in a chest of drawers turned up a pair of corduroy knickers, a tiny frilled shirt, two pairs of linen sheets, and another nightshirt. Nick put on the clothes from the chair and went in search of breakfast.

  The hall was long and shadowy. When Nick turned toward where he thought the stairs were, he saw a kid glaring at him suspiciously.

  Nick scowled and swaggered. The kid did the same.

  Oh.

  Nick laughed. It was the patched overalls and faded flannel shirt, that’s all, making him look like a hick from Hicksville on the planet Hickooine. Before he left, he’d have to get his own clothes back. He was leaving, no doubt about that. But not until he’d rested a couple of days, found out where the nearest town was, made some plans. It wasn’t like the old man had done anything particularly threatening, after all — just waved his arms around and talked like a nut job. If things got weird, Nick could always run away. He was good at running away.

  He clattered down the steps to the front room. He’d been too sleepy to notice much the night before, but now he saw that it was filled with tall, dark shelves stuffed solid with books. It was also dim and chilly and stank of mold. The back of his neck prickled, like somebody was watching him, wary and a little hostile. The dogs, maybe. Or the spiders that had spun all those webs. He passed through as quickly as possible, following the smell of bacon.

  The kitchen was bright and warm. Smallbone was busy at the stove, his black hat tipped crazily to one side. “Breakfast’s ready,” he said. “Eggs are cooked solid and the bacon’s burnt, but that’s all you deserve, sleeping half the day.”

  Nick slid into a chair, and Smallbone slapped a plate of bacon and eggs, sunny side up and perfect, onto the red-checked tablecloth. The black cat jumped up and sniffed delicately at the bacon. Nick flapped his hand at it. “Scat!”

  Unfazed, the cat sat down beside the plate, cocked its hind leg, and got down to some serious grooming. Nick gave it a shove. It hissed like a boiling kettle and leaped from the table to a narrow shelf over the stove, where it crouched between a salt box and a pottery jar and glared out resentfully.

  “You want to watch out for Hell Cat,” Smallbone remarked. “She bites.”

  “So do I,” said Nick, and dug into his eggs. The dogs from last night stationed themselves on each side of his chair, and the little orange cat jumped into his lap and patted his hand with a soft paw. Nick broke off a bit of bacon.

  The old man settled himself in the rocking chair and got out his pipe. “Tom can always tell an easy mark,” he said.

  Nick gave Tom the bacon anyway. He crunched it neatly, then jumped down and sauntered off. The dogs yawned and kept on hoping.

  Having filled his pipe and lit it, Smallbone fixed Nick with his glittering spectacles. “I suppose you ain’t a farm boy, Foxkin?”

  Nick swallowed his egg. “Nope.”

  Smallbone said, “It ain’t rocket science. You’ll feed and water the livestock, spread fresh bedding and suchlike. Collect eggs. Milk the goats.”

  Nick’s fork paused halfway to his mouth. “Milk the goats?”

  “You’ll pick it up.” The old man sounded horribly cheerful. “It’s easy as splitting wood, once you know the trick. You do know how to split wood, don’t you?”

  Nick shook his head. There might not have been much heat in Uncle Gabe’s house, but what there was came from an oil furnace. “If you’re an evil wizard, how come you don’t just do it all by magic?”

  Smallbone grinned, displaying a dentist’s nightmare of crooked yellow teeth. “Because that’s what an apprentice is for.”

  This conversation was going nowhere good. “I said I’d do one job, to pay you back,” Nick said. “But then I got to move on.”

  �
��One job.” Smallbone’s dark eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “I see. Well, you can clean the shop, then. But wash the dishes first. I hate a dirty kitchen.” He emptied his pipe into the fire, wrapped a muddy-gray scarf around his neck, and went outside.

  The shop. That must be the book-filled front room. He remembered the card Smallbone had shown him. Evil Wizard Books, huh? Stink City Books would be a better name. Muttering, Nick left the dishes on the floor for the animals to lick and went to look for a vacuum cleaner. He wasn’t particularly surprised when he didn’t find one. There was, however, an ancient straw broom and a tin bucket in the mudroom, and a basket of clean rags under the sink. Nick stuffed his pocket with rags, filled the bucket, and carried it and the broom into the shop. He might not be able to keep out of trouble, but he could clean, no problem. His mom had worked for a cleaning company and used to take Nick on jobs when he wasn’t in school. He’d grown up helping her sprinkle water on floors to keep the dust down and polish windows with vinegar and newspaper. He even knew how to wind up cobwebs on a broom handle like dirty cotton candy.

  This was a good thing, because Evil Wizard Books was well supplied with cobwebs. They drooped from the corners and hung in heavy swags between the rows of tall bookcases. They veiled the big bay window behind the shop counter like ragged curtains and completely covered a mysterious box-like shape that Nick thought might be an old-fashioned cash register. Besides the cobwebs, there was plenty of grime — on the windows, mostly, but also on the floor, which looked like it hadn’t been swept or scrubbed in maybe a hundred years. Nick saw tracks in the dust where Smallbone and the dogs had walked to the door and back, and the smears of his own wet boots.

  The air smelled sour and musty.

  If it hadn’t been for the snow and the wind and the cold and the memory of wolves howling, Nick might have stolen a heavier jacket and some food and taken his chances in the woods. But Smallbone’s sausages had been delicious, also his eggs, and it was nice to feel, if not exactly safe, at least warm. Besides, Nick might be a liar, but his mom had always said it was important to keep promises.

  Reversing the broom, he took a swipe at the nearest web. It danced away like a curtain in a light breeze. He swiped at it a couple more times with the same result, almost as though it knew he was trying to get rid of it.

  Nick pulled a rag from his pocket, wrung it out in the bucket like his mom used to do, and swiped it over the grimy counter.

  The dirt didn’t even smear.

  He rubbed harder. Tom jumped up by his elbow, curled himself next to the shrouded cash register, and watched through slitted eyes. The rag turned black, but the counter stayed as grimy as ever. It felt like trying to blow out one of those trick birthday candles. It wasn’t magic, of course. Magic — except for the card trick, nothing-up-my-sleeve kind — didn’t exist. Nick was very clear on that. Still, there was obviously something going on.

  Nick threw the rag on the floor and swore. Tom jumped down off the counter and padded away.

  A voice behind him made a tsk, tsk noise, and Nick spun around.

  Smallbone was standing on the stairs with his coat fluttering like something out of a late-night horror movie. “Best watch your tongue, Foxkin,” he said. “The books in this shop don’t take to bad language.”

  Nick swore again, using one of Uncle Gabe’s best swears, then said, “You want this stupid shop cleaned, do it yourself. I’m out of here.”

  “You ain’t going nowhere,” said Smallbone.

  Nick had heard that before, from Uncle Gabe. “How you going to stop me, old man?”

  “I’ll turn you into a spider.”

  Smallbone’s voice was perfectly calm and matter-of-fact. He obviously believed he could turn Nick into a spider, and for a second, looking up into the flat silver of his little round glasses, Nick half believed it, too. Then Smallbone worked his jaw in a munching way, and Nick remembered he was just a crazy old dude who thought he was a wizard.

  He laughed.

  Smallbone’s beard bunched up threateningly. “You think you’re clever, don’t you, Foxkin, can see right through the old crackpot like he’s a jeezly clean window?”

  Nick shrugged. “You said it — I didn’t.”

  Smallbone raised his bony fist high. “Just remember, you brought this on yourself.” He began to speak words in no language Nick had ever heard before, his voice clanging and swelling. Nick wanted to run, but he couldn’t move. All he could do was watch Smallbone swelling up and up like a giant balloon as the bookshop faded into a shadowy mist.

  Smallbone Cove was one of the prettiest towns on the Maine coast. It was tucked at the end of a deep, rocky inlet with a view down the Reach of little forested islands and distant blue hills. The weather was always practically perfect. In summer, it rained often enough to keep the small farmers happy and no more, and a brisk offshore breeze cleared the fog before anybody was ready to go to the beach. Its shore was free from blackflies, and its woods were free from mosquitoes. The winters were mild (for Maine), with a minimum of nor’easters and a maximum of days above zero. Violets and white trilliums bloomed early in Smallbone Cove, and the bright leaves of fall lingered late.

  Whatever the weather was like in the rest of Maine, in Smallbone Cove, the Fourth of July was always clear and sunny.

  In summer, tourists flocked to Smallbone Cove like bears to honey. They loved it because it was quaint and relaxing, a little slice of the good old days, when life was slower and less complicated. Kids jumped rope in the parking lot to rhymes about building walls and blowing winds, and the only snacks available were all homemade.

  There were no computers in Smallbone Cove and no electronics. At Smallbone Cove Mercantile, Lily and Zery Smallbone rang up homemade jams and sunscreen on a big brass cash register like the ones in every other shop in town. Telephones had cords and dials and lots of static on the line. There was no Smallbone Cove police force because there was no crime, not even any sketchy-looking characters hanging around at night. Of course, you had to go to Blue Hill if you wanted to eat anything but seafood and veggies. There was no cell-phone reception and forget about wi-fi, but most people thought it was kind of nice to be away from the Internet — for a few days, anyway.

  In winter, when the tourists were gone, the adult Smallbone Covers fished, raised animals, and made things to sell in summer. Their kids went to the smallest school in Maine. It was too small to exist, really — its twenty-five students should have ridden the bus to Blue Hill. But somehow they didn’t — just like the library didn’t have wi-fi like every other library in Maine and the citizens didn’t pay any state or local taxes. It was as if the State of Maine didn’t know that Smallbone Cove existed.

  The other thing the Covers didn’t do was leave Smallbone Cove. They didn’t go on vacations; they didn’t go away to college; they didn’t even go shopping in Blue Hill. The adults didn’t seem to mind, and if they did, they didn’t complain. They ordered their souvenir T-shirts and groceries and professional supplies over the phone or even by mail. They understood that staying inside the Town Limits was part of the price they paid for living in a practically perfect place.

  The other part was looking after Zachariah Smallbone, the proprietor of Evil Wizard Books.

  Nobody talked about him much, but everybody knew that he was the founder of Smallbone Cove, that he was over three hundred years old, and that he was the reason that Smallbone Cove was the way it was.

  When Dinah Smallbone was five, she’d asked her mother if Smallbone was really an evil wizard like in the fairy tales.

  Lily had given her one of those looks mothers give kids when they ask an awkward question. Dinah, who was all about asking awkward questions, saw it often.

  “I’ve never seen him do magic — not anything I’d call magic, anyway,” Lily said carefully. “And he’s never done anything I’d call evil, unless you count tearing strips off anybody who talks to him when he’s not in the mood for talking. But my grammy used to tell stories t
hat’d curl your hair, about him turning folks into frogs and calling up demons and hurricanes and such.”

  Dinah thought about this. “Maybe your grammy was making them up.”

  “No,” said her mom, “she couldn’t. Grammy couldn’t make up a story to save her life. If she said Smallbone turned folks into frogs, then that’s what he did.”

  “Is that why he doesn’t have to pay for anything, even the special orders?”

  “Well, he keeps Smallbone Cove safe, too.” Lily took Dinah’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “Listen, honey. You know I told you how people aren’t comfortable talking about certain things? Smallbone’s one of those things. I’m glad we had this talk, but you better not try and have it with anybody else.”

  Dinah nodded. She didn’t really understand why certain subjects made adults uncomfortable, but she did understand that nobody would discuss them with her. It was a disappointment that Smallbone fell into that category. She was curious about how anybody could live three hundred years and not just wither up and blow away.

  Dinah was curious about many things. When she was six, she’d decided she was going to be a scientist and learn how and why things worked. By seven, she’d discovered that books will tell you things that adults will not, and she started to spend all her spare time in the library. When she was eleven, the Smallbone Cove librarian gave her an after-school job as her assistant.

  The librarian’s name was Miss Rachel Smallbone, and in Dinah’s opinion, she was the most interesting person in Smallbone Cove. She wore thick glasses that magnified her eyes into huge pools of darkness. Her lips were thin, her nose small and flat, and she wore her mottled gray-and-white hair tucked into a bun at the nape of her neck. She spent her days by the library’s front window in a wheeled chair with a desk fastened across the arms, writing a book on the history of Smallbone Cove and keeping an eye on things.