Wizard for Hire

by Obert Skye

  “The most despicable thing has happened,” Mia continued. “If this is found under suspicious circumstances, contact Charles Plankdorf immediately. He will . . .”

  The tape was silent again.

  “He will what?” Clark asked.

  Ozzy fast forwarded through the rest of side B to see if there was an answer. When he reached the end, it clicked to a stop.

  “He will what?” Clark asked again.

  “I have no idea,” Ozzy answered.

  Both the bird and the boy looked at Rin. Sigi did the same.

  “I’m stumped too,” the wizard said.

  “Don’t you have a crystal ball or a puddle you can look into for answers?” Ozzy asked.

  Sigi looked bothered by what Ozzy was asking.

  “Be careful,” Rin said. “She’s my daughter, but she doesn’t have much belief in my abilities.”

  “Actually,” Sigi insisted, “I’ve just lived with my mother for too long and she has no belief.”

  “Well,” Ozzy said. “I hired a wizard—I would love to see you pull out your wand or gaze into a crystal ball.”

  “Does that seem fair to the rest of mankind? How can a person cheating life ever bring balance to the universe?”

  “So, no crystal ball?” Ozzy said sadly.

  “No. I had one, but it cracked when I accidentally took it bowling.”

  “Really?”

  “I thought it would improve my score.”

  “Never mind that,” Clark chirped. “Who’s Charles Plankdorf?”

  “I’m not sure,” Ozzy answered. “But didn’t Timsby say that my half-uncle could have been named Charles?”

  “I don’t know. I was in the car charging my batteries when that happened.”

  “Not you, Clark.”

  “I think you’re right,” Rin said. “Charles or Jonathan.”

  “Since we don’t have a crystal ball, we need a computer to search the name.”

  “We could go to the public library,” Rin suggested. “No . . . that could be trouble, what with all the late fees I have. Wait,” Rin said, sounding suddenly serious. “I sense something.”

  He closed his eyes and began to mumble.

  “Yes, I do feel something. The veil between Quarfelt and reality must be really thin here. We’re all connected and there are those in Quarfelt who wish to help us.”

  “Really?” Clark said excitedly.

  “Close your eyes!” Rin commanded.

  Ozzy, Clark, and Sigi obeyed.

  “There’s no need for vision now, we must hear the answer. Charles Plankdorf, Charles Plankdorf, Charles Plankdorf.”

  Rin repeated the name a few more times and then began to hum. Clark, because he was a mechanical bird with a warped sense of ethics, opened his eyes to peek.

  “Hey, what’s that?”

  Ozzy and Sigi opened their eyes and saw Rin holding a smartphone and typing the name Charles Plankdorf into a search engine.

  “You have a phone?” Ozzy accused him.

  “Of course,” Rin replied, acting as if it was undignified for anyone to ask him that sort of thing. “What do you think you called me on, a troll verbalizing device?”

  “That’s cheating, Dad.”

  “No it’s not, because the internet is the humans’ closest form of magic. And I am currently using the internet to locate one Charles Plankdorf.”

  “But it’s not real magic,” Clark argued.

  “Forget about that—did you find him?” Ozzy asked, more interested in finding Charles than talking about the phone.

  “It doesn’t seem to be a popular surname. In fact, there’s only a single reference and there’s not much on him.” Rin held his phone closer to his face and began to read from it. “Charles Plankdorf appears to be a businessman who works for a company called Harken Corporation. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico . . . interesting. He’s alive and grew up in New York . . . more interesting.”

  “You think he’s the Charles my mother was talking about?”

  “I suppose it could be. It says he’s forty-eight years old.”

  “That age would fit with what Timsby said.”

  “There’s not much on him, but there is a name and business phone number. And from the few pictures posted online, he appears to be wealthy. Look at his house.”

  The picture on the phone was of a man and a dog sitting on the hood of an expensive-looking car that was parked outside of an expensive-looking house. The home was beautiful, the car luxurious, and the dog handsome, but it was Charles Plankdorf’s face that Ozzy found most interesting.

  “He looks like my dad.”

  “He does?” Rin asked. “Actually, I think I can see a resemblance to you.”

  “That has to be him,” Ozzy said. “So what do we do now?”

  “How about we make a call?” Rin suggested.

  He swiped the screen on his phone and pressed the number listed for Harken Corporation.

  He looked excitedly at Ozzy and then at his daughter and finally at Clark.

  “It’s ringing.”

  Clark looked unimpressed.

  The phone continued to ring. The small crowd of three people and a mechanical fowl waited impatiently to hear who would pick up. But no human answered, and after ten rings it went to voicemail, where a generic woman’s voice told Rin to leave a message.

  “Yes,” Rin said into the phone, “there are many things in this world that fight for one’s attention—let only the honest win.”

  Rin hung up.

  “That’s your message?” Ozzy asked.

  “I’m trying to get people to really take a look outside of themselves.”

  “I think it means ‘message’ like who you are and how they can call you back.”

  “Really? Maybe that’s why no one ever returns my calls.”

  Rin’s phone made a chiming noise that startled him.

  “Oh, I have a text from Patti.”

  As he read the screen, his eyebrows knitted deeper and deeper.

  “What is it?” Ozzy asked.

  “I guess Sheriff Wills just paid her a visit. He asked her a bunch of questions about me and you and she told them we were just there. Perhaps we should go in and explain things to them,” Rin said. “You won’t be in trouble and I can think of some spell to get me out of it.”

  “No,” Ozzy said. “I tried talking to them once and it didn’t end well. I have to at least make an attempt to find this Charles guy. After all, my mom just told me to.”

  “That’s true,” Clark agreed. “How far away is he?”

  “Three states down and one over.”

  “Could I fly there in a few hours?”

  “No,” Rin said. “But we could drive there in about twenty hours.”

  Rin’s phone beeped again and he read the new text.

  “Patti said the sheriff wants me to come down to the station.”

  “Go,” Ozzy said. “Tell them it’s my fault. Tell them everything, but I’m going to New Mexico. Can you drop me off at the bus station before you go to the police?”

  Rin looked up at the stars in silence. He blinked a few times and then closed his eyes while keeping his head tilted back. He twisted on the picnic bench and turned to look directly at Ozzy.

  “You’re not going to the bus station. We’ve done nothing wrong and we’re only attempting to right an injustice that was done to you. I’ll take you there. To the car!”

  They picked up the stereo and the food they still hadn’t eaten.

  “Sigi, I’ll need to drop you off at the end of the street,” her father said. “You’ll have to walk a little bit, but I can’t take you all the way home.”

  “Good, because I’m coming with you.”

  “I don’t think so. Your mother will have m
y hide.”

  “Listen, Dad. I’m going. You’re supposed to have me on the weekends. This is your chance to make up for all the times you weren’t there. Show me that you really are what you say you are. You have to let me go.”

  “What do you think, Ozzy?”

  “She was the only person who was nice to me at school.”

  “She also smells better than both of you,” Clark said. “At least I’m guessing she does.”

  “What about the sheriff?” Ozzy asked. “We’ll have to drive through town to get out of town.”

  “Hopefully he’s doing something that isn’t on our route.” The wizard adjusted his pointy felt hat. “Let’s hope he’s preoccupied somewhere else.”

  “If we’re hoping,” Ozzy said. “Let’s hope my parents just come back and straighten things out.”

  They got into the car and buckled up.

  Rin drove away from the beach with Ozzy in the passenger seat and Sigi in the back. It was dark and there were no other cars around. They approached the road leading to Patti’s and Sigi’s house.

  “You sure you don’t want me to drop you off?”

  “Positive,” Sigi said.

  “Well, you’re going to need to call your mother at some point and tell her where you are. And I’m not making that call.”

  Clark turned on the car’s dome light and sat on a headrest under it to soak up light.

  “Oh, yeah, that feels nice.”

  “You might want to turn that off,” Sigi suggested. “It’ll give away who’s in the car.”

  “I might want to not turn it off,” Clark replied. “But I will.”

  The bird switched off the dome light and hopped up into Ozzy’s lap where he could use the light from Rin’s phone.

  “Hold on,” Ozzy said. “I’m looking something up. According to this, Albuquerque, New Mexico, is nineteen hours and thirty-eight minutes away”

  “That sounds about right,” Rin said. “I’ve spent time there before.”

  “We’ll have to stop somewhere for you to sleep.”

  “Oh, wizards don’t need sleep in the way that humans do, but still . . . it might be prudent to pull over and catch a couple of naps along the way.”

  “This whole thing is a long shot,” Ozzy said more to himself than anyone else.

  “All rewarding things are.”

  “I’m sorry about my dad,” Sigi said kindly. “He’s always saying things like that.”

  “I don’t mind it at all,” Ozzy admitted.

  “Well, then, you’re different than any of my friends.”

  The route they needed to take out of town went directly down Main Street and up past the school. From there they could take a short road that hooked up to the Mule Pole Highway. The highway would then take them past the train tracks, past Bell’s Ferry, and almost all the way out of Oregon. And then there were freeways that would get them the rest of the way.

  “If we just get to the highway we should be okay,” Rin said. “I can’t imagine Sheriff Wills caring enough to chase us farther than that.”

  “I hope he doesn’t chase us at all.”

  Rin drove through a neighborhood to avoid Main Street. Eventually, however, he had no option but to use it.

  He turned out on to Main Street just past Volts. All four passengers began searching for any sign of police cars.

  “This is nerve-wracking,” Clark said, standing on the top of the dashboard. “Wait, is that a police car?” Clark pointed to a brown UPS truck parked behind a building.

  “No.”

  “Well, then, I’m no help.”

  Clark hopped off the dashboard and back into Ozzy’s lap so that he could shine the phone on himself again.

  Otter Rock’s Main Street was busy. The streetlights were on and cars were making their way to restaurants and movies while tourists were milling around on the sidewalks.

  “Just act cool,” Rin instructed.

  “I have no idea how to do that.”

  “What I mean is just don’t draw attention to our car.” Rin was using his hands for emphasis and as he talked he accidentally honked the horn. “Whoops.”

  The people around them looked in their direction.

  “I didn’t know cars could honk like that,” Clark said. “No wonder people like them so much. Reminds me of a goose I tried talking to once.”

  The traffic light ahead turned red and Rin had to stop. As they sat waiting for the light to switch to green, a police car drove through the intersection. As it crossed in front of them, the officer in the car looked at Rin and Ozzy.

  “Shlip,” Rin said, using Quarfelt slang. “I think he saw us.”

  The cop moved through the intersection and switched on his patrol lights.

  “He’s turning around,” Sigi said.

  Rin pressed on the gas and drove thought the light well before it had decided to go green. He turned onto Peach Street and instructed the car to go faster.

  Clark jumped over Sigi to the back window.

  “I don’t see anyone following us,” the bird hollered.

  “They will be,” Rin yelled back.

  On cue, a set of bright flashing lights appeared behind them in the distance.

  “Go faster!” Ozzy said.

  Rin turned onto Mule Pole Highway without slowing down. The strong turn caused the small white car to lift up on one side. It came back down heavily on all of its wheels as Rin zipped around a truck that had the nerve to be traveling too slow.

  “Everyone okay?” Rin yelled.

  “I’m fine,” Clark said.

  “Don’t tell your mom!”

  “I won’t,” Sigi promised.

  Rin pressed on the gas and flew down the highway. Behind them Clark could see the police car coming out around the truck. There was now a second one in tow.

  “Two cop cars!” Clark reported.

  “What do we do?” Ozzy asked. “We can’t outrun the cops!”

  Looking back though the windshield and the dark of night Ozzy could see that a third police car had joined the chase.

  “Are they going to ram us off the road?” Ozzy asked nervously.

  “No!” Rin yelled. “They don’t just ram people.”

  “So, what do we do, drive until we run out of gas?”

  “Use a spell,” Clark squawked. “Use a spell!”

  “Do you have actual spells?” Sigi asked.

  Rin didn’t reply—he kept his focus on the road in front of him. The traffic on the highway was as thin as usual, but Rin had to pass a couple of cars on the edge of town before the road opened up and there was no one in front of them any longer.

  They sped down the highway without any impediments.

  They were taking the same route Ozzy’s school bus took on the way home, only much, much faster. Ozzy wished desperately that there were no cops behind them. He wanted Rin to just drop him off at the tracks so he could go home and sleep in his room. But there were cops behind them—and they were closing in.

  “Can’t you go faster?” Clark asked.

  “It’s a car, not a rocket,” Ozzy answered for Rin. He had no desire for Rin to speed up any more than he already was. The small car felt like it was going to rip apart from the strain of moving so quickly.

  “Maybe we should just stop near the train tracks and make a run to the cloaked house,” Ozzy suggested.

  “There’s no way we’d make it,” Rin replied. “And if we did—what then?”

  The little white car flew down the highway, the cops patiently keeping their distance but maintaining the chase.

  “When are they going to start shooting?” Clark asked.

  “They won’t shoot. But they’ll notify the cops in Bell’s Ferry. And they’ll set up a roadblock to stop us.”

  “So we’re
doomed?” Sigi said.

  “Not by a long shot.”

  “Are you nuts?” the bird warbled. “I need to make sure Ozzy stays safe, because if he’s locked up in jail or gets into an accident I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  The cops were all running their lights and keeping back a good distance so as to not make the situation worse. They were aware that eventually the small car would have to stop.

  Rin, Sigi, Ozzy, and Clark kept quiet as each tried to think of a solution. But with every mile they drove, the situation felt more and more hopeless. It wasn’t long before they were nearing the train tracks.

  “The tracks are just around that corner.” Ozzy pointed up the road. “I think making a run for the cloaked house is our best chance of getting away. We can hide in the woods until they give up.”

  “That’s not an answer—that’s a new problem.”

  “At least he’s trying to come up with a solution!” Clark was freaking out. “Do you know what cops do to birds? Seriously, do you? I can’t get caught—I have a record. They’ll punish me for breaking those lights at Bites.”

  Clark started flying around the inside of the car frantically.

  “Knock it off!” Ozzy yelled as Sigi waved Clark away.

  The bird bounced off of the windshield and hit Rin’s hat.

  “Careful, Clark!”

  The road curved and they flew around the corner towards the tracks.

  “Great mounds of magic!” Rin screamed.

  Just up ahead, the railroad crossing lights were flashing, and for the first time that Ozzy had witnessed, there was a train on the tracks. The locomotive was flying across the highway just yards in front of them. Clark screamed and bounced back and forth against the windows.

  “Ahhhhh!”

  He smacked up against Rin, who was already more nervous than a wizard should be. The car swerved and Rin lost control. His foot missed the brake and the car jetted into the mounded shoulder on the side of the road. It hit the mound like a ramp and flew into the air, spinning upside down. The vehicle rolled all the way over in the air as it shot towards the train and landed, wheels down, on the back of an empty—and moving—flatbed train car.

  Unaware of the fact that it had a new addition to its load, the speeding train sped on, continuing its uninterrupted course across Oregon toward California.