Phyllis Wong and the Return of the Conjuror

by Geoffrey McSkimming

  Not being able to be with her magic was the most hurtful part of the whole thing.

  The first week of her suspension/grounding/ forbiddance seemed to last a year. If it weren’t for the company of Daisy, Phyllis felt she would have gone crazy. They would set out straight after breakfast for their morning walk, sometimes going to City Park (where there were the best smells for the small dog—Phyllis often thought that if smells were a rainbow, then the odours were always the brightest and most colourful and glowing for Daisy here in the park).

  Other mornings they might walk along the streets, down towards the Tennis Centre and over to the river before heading on back to the Wallace Wong Building. Or they might wander along the ritzy avenues, early, before most of the commuters arrived for work. Here they would amble by what Phyllis’s friend Minette Bulbolos (a professional belly dancer who lived in an apartment on the second floor of the Wallace Wong Building) called the ‘zhooshy establishments’: pricey jewellery stores like Duckworth’s and Tiffany’s; clothing outlets that always stocked the latest fashions from Paris and Milan and Port Moresby; trendy shops full of the latest must-have crazes like sheepskin boots and electric toothbrushes encrusted with emeralds, and sunglasses that were so expensive that you almost had to sell your grandmother to be able to afford them.

  But wherever Phyllis and Daisy walked, Phyllis felt like part of her had been left back at the apartment. She stared vacantly at the shop windows, and watched quietly as Daisy snouted around in the park.

  She felt strangely incomplete.

  She did her homework. She found it every afternoon in the foyer mailbox after Clement had dropped it off. Clement always included a note with it, telling her the latest news and gossip—things like the fact that Dr Bermschstäter was going to fill Phyllis’s spot in the concert by performing his recitation of ‘’Twas the Night before Christmas’ (Clement had drawn a picture next to this of a boy looking like he was being strangled, with his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth and his eyes bulging); or that Clement had just got a new game that hadn’t been released yet called Zombies of Stratosphere 7 Grand Perm Auto! (he had drawn a zombie next to this with a very weird-looking hairdo and five stars beside it); or that he had made a cat run away when the cat had seen him in his latest disguise (there was a drawing of a boy with a pair of bats’ ears and a long, pointy chin, and a cat with its fur all zithery); or that Leizel Cunbrus was telling everyone that she was going to Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France, for a skiing vacation as soon as school broke up (next to this fact he had drawn a boy being very sick into a bucket).

  Clement had always been good at drawing and Phyllis looked forward to his daily updates in a groaning sort of way.

  One of the good things about living in the Wallace Wong Building was that it had the ground-floor shops: The Délicieux Café and Lowerblast’s Antiques & Collectables Emporium. Although her father had forbidden her from leaving the building (apart from when she was walking Daisy), Phyllis felt that it would be okay for her to visit these places in the afternoons before he got home from his office. She wasn’t really leaving the building (even though, strictly speaking, to go into the café and the antiques shop she had to go out the front doors and then into the shops from the street). But she reasoned that it’d be all right.

  Late one afternoon towards the end of the first week of her grounding, she and Daisy were sitting in The Délicieux Café, Phyllis with her homework spread out on her usual table by the window and Daisy with her paws spread out on her usual patch of the floor at Phyllis’s feet.

  ‘I ’ope you do nert spoil yer appetite fer yer dinner tonight, Phyllees.’ Pascaline Ravissant, one of the café’s owners, placed a chocolate milkshake and a slice of Reine de Saba, a chocolate almond cake that Phyllis especially liked, on the table next to her homework.

  Daisy got up and placed her front paws on Phyllis’s knee and tried to get her snout as close to the table—and the chocolate cake—as she could.

  ‘I’ll have room,’ Phyllis said. She gave Pascaline a half-smile, and Daisy a half-push back down to the floor. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘De rien, my treasure.’ Pascaline reached across and gently pushed a lock of Phyllis’s long dark hair back over Phyllis’s ear. ‘So,’ she said, ‘you are coping all right wiz zis explosion frerm yer school, oui?’

  Phyllis had a forkful of the cake halfway to her mouth. ‘What explosion?’ she asked.

  ‘Why, you erf curse. You ’ave been exploded frerm school, ’ave you nert?’

  Phyllis shut her eyes for a moment. ‘Oh, you mean expulsion.’

  ‘Oui,’ said Pascaline. ‘Zis is what I say, non?’

  ‘I’m okay. It was an accident, what happened.’

  ‘Ah!’ Pascaline smoothed down her apron. ‘I am sure it was. Zey are over-reacting, to explo . . . to expulse you like zis. Zermtimes I wonder zat ze world has becerm far too serious. We live in ze ninny-state, mon amie. Oui, we certainly do.’

  Phyllis smiled and ate her cake.

  ‘Never you mind,’ said Pascaline. ‘Zree weeks? Whert ees zree weeks? Zey will go in a flush!’

  Just then some more customers came into the café. Pascaline winked at Phyllis, excused herself, and went to show them to a table.

  They might go in a flush, all right, Phyllis thought as she slurped the milkshake. But I’ll probably be flushed away with them . . .

  Towards the end of the second week of the suspension/grounding/flushing-away of Phyllis Wong, she felt like she barely existed.

  She missed her friends at school, she missed Clem and their walks and talks on the way home, she missed being able to have her life the way she knew it. Mostly she missed her magic. It hurt her, almost like someone was squeezing her tightly around her ribs, not to be able to rehearse her tricks and try out new magic effects.

  If it hadn’t been for little Daisy and her four-footed company, Phyllis was sure she would have faded away to a tiny ball of nothing.

  The mini foxy sensed the sadness and frustration in her friend. On their walks, Daisy would trot as jauntily as she could to try to make Phyllis feel lighter and happier. And sometimes, when Phyllis saw the tiny terrier prancing along on her dainty paws, it was as though the heaviness on Phyllis’s shoulders was lifted. But only for a few minutes. It always returned when she and Daisy went back to the Wallace Wong Building.

  Then, on the Friday morning of the second week, after her father had left for his office, Phyllis made a decision.

  ‘I have to do this, Daisy,’ she said as she scooped the dog up and carried her towards the elevator.

  Daisy snuggled into her arms—she loved being carried around.

  ‘I know Dad said I couldn’t,’ Phyllis muttered, ‘but if I don’t, I’ll explode.’ She shut the apartment door and pressed the elevator button. ‘And anyway, he doesn’t have to find out, does he?’

  ‘R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r.’ Daisy made her quiet gargling-with-marbles sound.

  They waited while the elevator lurched up from the ground floor. It was an old contraption—as old as the building—and it usually took a long time to get anywhere. Anywhere, that is, except for where Phyllis and Daisy were about to go.

  Finally, after what seemed like months, it juddered to a stop. The beautiful wooden elevator doors, decorated with shooting stars and comets, slid open. Phyllis and Daisy entered the elevator. The doors slid shut again.

  Phyllis hoisted Daisy under one arm. She reached into her pocket and withdrew a long, old, silver key. This she put into the keyhole that was next to the button for the basement. She turned the key once to the right and pressed the button.

  The elevator shuddered with a loud clanging noise. Then it started dropping—fast!

  ‘Keep your seats, please!’ said Phyllis, using a saying from one of her great-grandfather’s old movies. She often said this when the elevator was plunging to the basement.

  Daisy clung on tightly.

  Down they sped, and Phyllis and Daisy watched through the windows in the d
oors. The floor on which Minette Bulbolos and Chief Inspector Barry Inglis had their apartments blurred past. The shiny chromium balustrade of the stairs in the ground floor lobby glinted and then disappeared, sliding up and out of view.

  Then there was a thump, and a huge juddering, and the elevator landed with a groan of metal and wood and aged machinery.

  The doors slid open and, carefully, Phyllis stepped out into the darkness. Daisy wriggled under her arm.

  Phyllis’s hand fumbled across the wall opposite. Her fingers found the light switch and she flicked it down. Instantaneously the cavernous basement was lit up by brilliant golden light shining down from the towering ceiling.

  ‘Home,’ Phyllis whispered to Daisy. ‘Where we belong.’

  She put Daisy down and the little dog ran down the stairs and into the enormous area below.

  A little while ago, Phyllis’s father had given her the key to this place—a place that contained what he told her was her legacy.* The entire basement was filled with all of the magical props and illusions, all of the costumes and backdrops, all of the countless, beautiful tricks and books and secrets of conjuring that had once belonged to her great-grandfather, Wallace Wong, Conjuror of Wonder!

  Phyllis followed Daisy down the stairs and made her way to the area in the centre of the basement that she’d set up as her rehearsal space. Here, amid all the sawing-in-half cabinets and zig-zag boxes and gimmicked tables and sword baskets and guillotines and the shelves overflowing with silk handkerchiefs, oversized playing cards, magic wands, feather flower bouquets, artificial skulls and automated red imps and green goblins and other strange and sparkling amazements, there were a few old sofas and armchairs, and a big clear space where she could practise in front of some mirrors.

  She went to one of the many tables and found her hat. It was her favourite top hat, and she always put it on whenever she retreated to her basement. It was a beautiful black silk hat, very old, that sprang from being pancake-flat to more than ten inches tall when she slapped the brim firmly against her opened hand.

  She had found the top hat amongst the huge array of tricks and props and costumes. It wasn’t the only top hat down here—she must have discovered more than a dozen when her father had given her the basement, and sometimes she’d find a few more tucked away in some dark corner of the place—but there was something special about this one. Something that made it feel different from all the others. What that something was, Phyllis didn’t exactly know. It just felt right when she put it on.

  Now she ran her sleeve over the opened hat and looked at it as though it were an old friend she hadn’t seen in years. She smiled and plonked the hat on her head, pulling her fringe down over her forehead as she always did whenever she put the hat on. She never wore the hat when she performed magic for other people; only when she was here, alone with Daisy in the magic basement. Only Daisy had ever seen her wearing it.

  Phyllis stood with her back straight and took a deep breath, letting the sweet smell of the dust and the talcum-like fragrance of all the old, wonderful things down here waft into her nostrils. Then she rubbed her hands together and said, ‘Let’s have some fun, Daisy!’

  ‘Rerf!’ said Daisy. She jumped up onto one of the sofas, turned around three times, settled down like a miniature Egyptian sphinx and started to lick her front paws.

  Phyllis went to one of her magic tables at the edge of the cleared space. On this table, just as she had left it all the last time she’d been down here, were two long, silver metal tubes with gold-edged ends. Next to them were draped six beautiful silk handkerchiefs, three of them bright red and three of them bright yellow. And beside these was Volume I of Grice’s Encyclopedia of Silk Magic, one of the many rare and original magic books that Phyllis had discovered in this enormous cache of conjuring.

  ‘Now,’ she said quietly to herself, ‘let’s see if we can master this Haunted Chimneys effect. Smoothness is of the essence, just like it says in the—’

  ‘RERF RERF RERF RERF RERF RERF RERF RERF RERF!’ Suddenly, like a bomb exploding on the sofa behind her, Daisy erupted in a barrage of barking.

  The noise ricocheted around the magic basement, pinging loudly off the walls. Phyllis put her hands over her ears. ‘Daisy, what’s up?’ she shouted above the barking.

  The little dog continued yapping at the top of her lungs. She was on her paws now, and as Phyllis started towards her, she leapt off the sofa and ran straight between Phyllis’s legs and off to a far corner of the basement near the old furnace, where some heavy, dusty, crimson-coloured velvet drapes hung across the brick wall.

  Here Daisy stopped abruptly. She kept barking and yapping and now, as she lowered her front legs and put her snout closer to the floor, she began making another sound in between all the barking: a high-pitched whining, almost as if she were crying.

  Phyllis followed her. ‘What is it, girl?’ she asked, but Daisy didn’t look at her—she kept on barking and whining at the gloom in the corner.

  ‘What’s up, Daisy? What’s there? Have you found a mouse again? Come on, don’t worry. It won’t hurt you.’

  ‘RERF ARF ARF ARF RERF RERF RERF ARF ARF ARF RERF RERF RERF RERF RERF ARF ARF ARF!’ Daisy was barking and whining even louder now, and she was also snarling at the velvet drapes.

  Phyllis shook her head, trying to stop her ears ringing from all the noise. ‘Stop it, Miss Daisy,’ she said loudly. She frowned; Daisy didn’t usually go on like this if she came across a mouse or a rat. She usually barked in a more threatening way if a rodent was anywhere about. She didn’t sound threatening now. She sounded scared.

  The small dog’s fear took hold of Phyllis. She felt a chill run down her spine. Something was wrong. She felt her heart begin to pound.

  ‘Daisy, come away from there,’ she said, surprised that her voice was shaky.

  Daisy lowered herself even more so that her pink belly was flat against the floor and her front paws were splayed out, extended towards the drapes.

  ‘Daisy, come here!’

  Daisy ignored the command. It was unlike her to do so. Instead, she stopped her barking and yapping, and the white and brown hairs along her spine hackled. She snarled, low and rumblingly, at the crimson drapes.

  ‘Grrrrrrrr-Rrrrrrrrrrr-Grrrrrrrrrr-Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . .’

  ‘Come on,’ Phyllis said, her heart beating even faster. ‘I think it’s time we were going.’ She went to pick Daisy up.

  ‘RERF ARF ARF ARF RERF RERF RERF ARF ARF ARF RERF RERF RERF RERF RERF ARF ARF ARF!’ Daisy erupted again, and Phyllis jumped back. She saw how distorted Daisy’s eyes were, the same way they became distorted whenever there was a thunderstorm about. Daisy always looked disfigured with terror at those times, and this was the look she had now.

  Only now, there wasn’t any thunder. The old crimson drapes billowed, and Phyllis’s insides felt like they had been yanked away from her.

  ‘Daisy! It’s time to go!’

  ‘The time to go has arrived,’ came a voice from the other side of the drapes.

  They were flung aside with a heavy whooooosh!

  ‘RERF ARF ARF ARF RERF RERF RERF ARF ARF ARF RERF RERF RERF RERF RERF ARF ARF ARF!’

  ‘The time is here,’ said the man standing before them, his eyes throbbing with a bright green glow. ‘The time is here and I have come!’

  * Find out more in Phyllis Wong and the Forgotten Secrets of Mr Okyto.

  Whirl of wonder

  Phyllis Wong froze.

  Daisy’s snarling grew louder, and deeper, and her eyes looked not like the eyes of a dog, but those of a wolf, wild and fiery and ready to strike!

  Phyllis felt her heart pounding, and her mouth was suddenly dry. She couldn’t move as she stared at the man standing against the wall. She knew he shouldn’t be here—no one but she and her father and Daisy should ever come down here.

  Then, as she stared, and as her terror immobilised her, freezing her to the spot, making her dizzy with dread, a strange thing happened. The air aro
und her became filled with tiny molecules of light, minuscule balls of brightness that danced and swirled and twirled between her and the man.

  It was as if time had almost stopped in those moments.

  It was as if those moments were meant to linger longer than any moments should, so that Phyllis could see the man properly.

  He did not move. He looked at her, and his eyes glowed brightly, green and garish—not just his irises, but the whites of his eyes also. Phyllis had seen these kinds of eyes before, and her skin was all at once flooded with goosebumps.

  The man was tall and slender and not very old. His dark, glossy-black hair was slicked back and short. He had a long, fine nose, a thin, neat moustache and high, angular cheekbones. His ears were small and (Phyllis blinked as she looked at them) almost pointed on the tops.

  He was dressed immaculately, in a midnight-blue silk tail coat with the tails extending down to behind his knees, a white low-cut waistcoat, a white wing-collared shirt and a white silk bow tie. His crisp trousers were of the same midnight-blue silk as his tail coat, and he wore pointed black shoes which had been polished to a brilliant shine.

  The man had a calm, quizzical expression as he studied Phyllis. He seemed to be trying to focus in on her, for the greenness in his eyes brightened and then faded, and brightened and faded again, and again and again.

  As Phyllis watched his eyes brighten and fade, she noticed something else about his face—something beyond his features: she saw, really saw, his expression. His face was not angry or harsh or, she thought, likely to turn quickly from one emotion to another. She sensed that he was not likely to flare up in any sort of uncontrollable rage or rampage. There was a calmness here. He had a gentle face, the face of someone who knew delight and excitement, and who relished these things.