Phyllis Wong and the Return of the Conjuror

by Geoffrey McSkimming

  Phyllis looked at him.

  He gave her a wink. ‘Oh, you might be surprised who Transits, my dear. All sorts of people. I’m sure you’re bound to come across some surprises . . . but now, let’s find out about this.’ He held the scarab between his thumb and first finger and passed his other hand across it. When he took his hand away, the scarab had disappeared.

  Phyllis giggled. She raised an eyebrow. ‘Right or left?’ she asked.

  ‘Try your left,’ replied Wallace Wong.

  Phyllis felt behind her left ear. Sure enough, there was the scarab. She took it and gave it back to him. ‘You’re the only magician who’s ever been known to disappear something and make it reappear behind someone’s ear without you having to take it from them,’ she said. ‘How?’

  ‘How is not now,’ Wallace said, his green eyes gleaming secretively. ‘I shall reveal this to you, all in the goodness of the Time to come. But for now, I need to find a newspaper. Come, my dear girl.’

  He started down the steps, two at a time, and Phyllis followed close behind. As they jostled past other people on the lower steps, Phyllis asked, ‘What do you need a newspaper for?’

  ‘To find out what Time we have arrived at.’

  They came to the base of the staircase and squeezed into the alleyway ahead, past all sorts of people: vendors carrying trays of sweets, with heavy samovars full of hot tea hanging from their shoulders; men and women laden with carpets and boxes and all sorts of paraphernalia as they hurried to get to their stalls and shops; and tourists, dressed in all types of clothing from all parts of the world. Phyllis observed that many of the tourists were dressed in Western-style clothes and seemed well attired, in fashions that suggested a Time from not so long ago.

  ‘Ah!’ exclaimed Wallace, stopping, and putting his hand out to stop Phyllis also. ‘Over there. See, those men having coffee and eating dates at that little café? The fat man wearing the red fez has a paper.’ He turned to Phyllis. ‘My dear, pop over there and try to see what the date is on the front page.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘And try to be inconspicuous. Do not draw any attention to yourself if you can at all help it.’

  ‘Okeydokey. I’ll be back in a flash.’

  She darted through the crowds, zigzagging in and out and being careful not to bump into anyone. She neared the man with the newspaper. He was sitting on a wooden chair while his friends were having a loud discussion in Arabic.

  Unfortunately, because he was reading the inside of the paper, he had the front page lowered, so Phyllis couldn’t get a good glimpse of the paper’s banner.

  She thought quickly. She approached his chair and then, when she was right in front of him, she knelt and pretended to tie up her shoelace, all the while looking up through her fringe.

  After a few seconds she came bounding back to her great-grandfather. ‘May 20th, 1927,’ she said excitedly.

  ‘Nineteen twenty-seven,’ Wallace repeated. His greenness throbbed and his mouth curled disdainfully. ‘Far from ancient! The scoundrel!’ He held the scarab between his fingers, and stared daggers at it. ‘He told me this was from the Time of the pharaohs! He assured me it was thousands of years old. He charged me a hundred pounds for it—a lot of money back then—here today—Phyllis. We have returned to the Time it was made—1927! Oh, wait till I get my hands on him! Come!’ And off he hurried, up a side alley, the tails of his coat flying out behind him.

  ‘But how do you know where to find this guy?’ She ran to keep up with him.

  ‘Well, Time is on our side here. You see, the vendors at the Khan el-Khalili tend to pass their sites down from generation to generation. It is a time-honoured tradition to be a seller at the most important markets in Cairo—indeed in all of Egypt and all of Africa. A stall at the Khan el-Khalili nearly always stays in the same family for hundreds of years. And it nearly always remains in the same location inside the bazaar.’

  Phyllis side-stepped a puddle of some revolting-smelling purplish-brown liquid and tried to stay alongside Wallace as he darted into a smaller passageway. Her shoes smacked loudly against the cobblestones.

  ‘And,’ he added, his voice rising, ‘fortunately for me, I have a very good memory for locations. Now, this way!’

  She was starting to feel the heat now, as she hurried along—a dry heat which hit against her face and arms, but didn’t cling to her or make her feel awash with perspiration. She realised that they had come out from the undercover, vaulted, arched section of the bazaar and were now in an outside space.

  ‘Ah-ha!’ announced Wallace Wong, stopping at the end of the passageway. He put his hand out and Phyllis also stopped.

  Ahead was a small courtyard, in the centre of which was a circular fountain. Wallace extended his arm and pointed to a small, darkened opening in the wall at the rear of the courtyard, behind the fountain. In front of this opening was a trestle table, upon which resided several dusty glass-and-mahogany display cabinets and a tall pile of old-looking, weathered sheets of papyrus and parchment. ‘There it is,’ he said quietly, his teeth flashing in the sunlight. ‘That’s where the rotter resides!’

  He grabbed Phyllis’s hand and marched across the courtyard, around the fountain and to the darkened opening with the table out the front. Phyllis half-hopped and half-ran to stay next to him.

  ‘Hello? Iwy em hotep?’ called Wallace, loudly. ‘That’s hello in the old Egyptian,’ he said as an aside to Phyllis.

  ‘Ah-ha,’ she said, still holding his hand.

  They waited for a few moments. Here in the open-air courtyard, it was quieter than elsewhere in the Khan el-Khalili. Phyllis and her youthful great-grandfather were the only people in this quarter.

  There was no response from the darkened place in the wall. A small, warm breeze blew a scrap of paper across the courtyard, and the paper ticker-ticker-tickered across the cobblestones.

  ‘Iwy em hotep?’ Wallace called again. He let go of Phyllis’s hand and with his knuckles he rapped loudly on the tabletop. ‘Is anybody there?’

  Phyllis saw something in the darkness. A small movement. A deep brown curtain was pulled lazily aside, and out from behind the curtain, emerging from the gloom in the wall, came a large, bristly man wearing a long, striped galabiyya and a squat mulberry-coloured fez with a black tassel. Phyllis detected the strong smell of aniseed coming off the man’s clothing.

  ‘Iwy em hotep,’ said the man, in a gravelly voice. He looked carefully at Wallace, up and down at his immaculate silk suit, and then he addressed him in English: ‘Welcome in Egypt. How can I be of assistance to you, my friend?’

  Wallace held out his hand, the scarab resting on his opened palm. ‘I bought this from you for a hundred pounds,’ he said in a steady, courteous tone. ‘You told me that it was ancient. But it is not. It is new. It was made, quite possibly, only yesterday.’

  The man raised his heavy, coarse, black eyebrows and inspected the scarab in Wallace’s hand. He shook his head. ‘No, my friend, you are mistaken. That is ancient. It is from the time of the pharaohs. It is thousands of years old.’

  ‘No, my friend,’ retorted Wallace. ‘It is not. It is a modern copy. A fake. You have hoodwinked me, by Houdini! And I desire to have my money back.’

  The man lowered the black hairy rooftop of his brows, and a scowl began to creep across his fat lips (Phyllis thought they resembled a pair of cuddling, bloated tadpoles). ‘Why,’ he asked, ‘should I give you money? Why? I have never laid my eyes upon you before in my lifetime!’

  Wallace gazed at him steadily and thought. Then he said, as another aside to Phyllis, ‘He may be a scoundrel, but at this moment he speaks the truth. I bought the scarab from him in 1930, nearly three years after we are meeting today. And that was the first time I ever encountered him.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Wallace added, ‘the truth becomes as wibbly-wobbly as the jellied eel on the escalators of disparity.’

  She raised her eyebrow
s and looked at him.

  ‘Oh, I know what—’

  The bristly man stepped around the table, moving closer to Wallace and Phyllis. ‘I have never seen you before, yet you come here seeking money from me? You dare to demand that I give you money?’

  ‘Well,’ said Wallace, stepping back and taking Phyllis’s hand again, keeping her well away from the bristly man and his aniseed odour, ‘I do, erm, yes, I did, but things may not be as simple as they appear. Perhaps I should just—’

  ‘Perhaps you should just meet my brothers,’ said the man, his voice becoming more gravelly and deeper.

  ‘No, no,’ Wallace protested, retreating with Phyllis. ‘I don’t think they’d want to meet us. I think we’ll just make ourselves—’

  ‘Oh, yes, they will want to meet you. Husain!’ called the man. ‘Hosni! Hafiz! Hakim! Keith!’

  From the gloom behind the deep brown curtain, five enormous, unshaved men spilled forth. Like their bristly brother, they all wore striped galabiyyas that smelled of aniseed. It looked like a whiskers convention had suddenly appeared.

  The five enormous men gathered around Wallace and Phyllis. ‘This man,’ snarled the bristly one, ‘demands that I give him money, yet he is a stranger to me. I think we should give him something for his’—the bristly man’s eyes shone angrily—‘impertinence!’

  There was the sound of scraping metal, sharp and squealingly high-pitched, as each of the five brothers swiftly withdrew a long silver scimitar from a scabbard he wore on his hip. Each of the brothers pointed his curved, sharp weapon at Wallace and Phyllis.

  ‘W.W.!’ Phyllis gasped, her legs going instantaneously trembly. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘I think,’ Wallace whispered, ‘it’s time for our exit.’ He looked upwards and his green-tinged eyes widened as a look of amazement spread across his face. ‘Heavens above! Is that a roc? Swooping down, returning to the Khan el-Khalili to bring good fortune to those on whose marketplace it descends?’

  All six of the brothers looked at each other, then, remembering the legend that foretold the return of the great bird in the great marketplace, they all looked up, in the direction of Wallace’s amazement.

  ‘Let’s take it on the lam!’ Wallace hissed urgently, grabbing Phyllis’s hand tighter and pulling her away from the mass of sweaty bristliness. They ran as fast as they could, past the fountain and out into a wider part of the open-air bazaar.

  ‘They escape!’ cried the first brother.

  ‘He has tricked us!’ snarled another.

  ‘After them!’ shouted one of the others.

  Wallace and Phyllis pelted through the alleyway ahead and came out into a big sunlit courtyard lined with small stalls. ‘This way!’ Wallace urged, pulling Phyllis across the courtyard.

  The brothers were in close pursuit, their heavy feet echoing through the cobblestoned alleyway as they gained on Phyllis and her great-grandfather.

  ‘See!’ shouted the first brother as the two magicians ran into the centre of the courtyard. ‘There they are! Surround them!’

  The brothers nodded and grunted and, with their scimitars held aloft, they started spreading out, running towards the edges of the courtyard.

  Phyllis could see that they would soon have the area surrounded. ‘What’ll we do?’ she yelled, her mouth dry and her heart bursting against her ribs.

  Wallace slowed his pace as he took in all that was around them. ‘Ah-ha!’ he exclaimed, spying something. ‘Quickly, before they get to the other side of the yard! As long as they can’t see us from the rear, this might just work. A little move I picked up in my picture Neddy and the Nightshirt. Just do as I do, my dear, and stay close!’

  ‘Okay,’ gulped Phyllis.

  The Conjuror of Wonder started running again, holding Phyllis’s hand and pulling her close to him, in the direction of a small, bright yellow truck that had driven in at the eastern edge of the courtyard and which was now travelling straight through the middle. It was moving at a swift speed, bumping and jerking across the uneven stone pavers.

  ‘What?’ yelled Phyllis—Wallace was leading her directly into the truck’s path, towards a crashing head-on collision!

  ‘Quickly!’ he urged.

  The bristly men saw what was happening, and they slowed their paces, wondering what was going on.

  Wallace didn’t slow down, but, rather, he began to run more quickly. Straight towards the oncoming vehicle. Phyllis wanted to stop, to pull up suddenly, but she couldn’t—Wallace’s grip was too strong.

  Then, just in the last moments before he and Phyllis were to be hit by the truck, Wallace pulled his great-granddaughter to the side.

  What happened in the next moment happened so quickly that it seemed truly magical. In the instant that Wallace and Phyllis were hidden from their attackers by the truck, Wallace, with no break in his speed, turned around, turning Phyllis with him, so that they were now facing the same direction in which the truck was heading. Then, hidden by the truck, he and Phyllis ran peltingly fast alongside it as it disappeared into a laneway at the western side of the courtyard.

  His timing was perfect.

  To the angry scimitar-wielding brothers it looked as if Wallace and Phyllis had disappeared without a trace!

  ‘What devilry is this?’ bellowed one of the brothers, his whiskers standing on end with rage.

  ‘They are gone!’ declared another, lowering his scimitar sulkily.

  ‘Arrrr,’ seethed another brother, the one named Keith.

  As soon as Wallace and Phyllis were in the laneway, they veered off, up a narrow side passage, and the truck squeezed onwards, clattering and bumping away.

  Wallace slowed down, and Phyllis did likewise. Together, they huffed and puffed and leant against the wall.

  When Phyllis had got her breath back, she said, panting, ‘Th-that was brilliant! You were amazing, W.W.!’

  ‘W.W.,’ repeated Wallace. ‘I like that.’

  Phyllis pulled her hair back, holding it like she was going to tie it in a ponytail. ‘Man, I hope we don’t come across those guys again. They meant business!’

  ‘Yes. Funny business,’ puffed W.W.

  ‘I’ll show YOU funny business!’ came a snarl from the end of the laneway.

  Phyllis and W.W. turned to see one of the brothers blocking the entrance, his scimitar brandished high above his huge head. It was Keith, the meanest-looking of all the brothers in his family!

  ‘Die, dogs of deceit!’ he bellowed, running at Phyllis and W.W. with a murderous expression on his hairy face.

  Wallace grabbed Phyllis and they took off up the laneway. ‘Ahead!’ Wallace urged. ‘Look! Stairs! Phyllis, do you have something from home?’

  ‘Huh?’ she gasped, running hard next to him.

  ‘Something from the basement? Something to hold on to?’

  Keith was gaining on them, his footsteps coming after them like battering rams crashing against a fortress door.

  Phyllis fumbled around in her coat pocket as she kept running. Her fingers brushed across some chocolate wrappers and what felt like a bus ticket and a scrunchy for her hair and some rubber bands and a packet of breath mints and then—a small ball, one of the red, sparkly balls she used when she rehearsed her cups and balls routines.

  ‘Yes!’ she exclaimed.

  They were at the foot of the stairs. Wallace grabbed her and pushed her up. ‘Hold it, hold it now. There is a Pocket here, I see it! Ascend, my great-granddaughter, run quickly up, to the sixteenth step. It begins there. I am right behind—’

  ‘AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!’ Keith’s bellow was so loud, Phyllis thought it was right in her ear. She heard the cold, lightning-like swiiiiiiiiiish of the scimitar blade.

  There was no time to turn and look. Wallace was behind her; she could sense him there.

  The heavy battering-ram footsteps were right behind him, relentlessly rising on the stairway.

  She bounded up the steps, the sweat flying off her brow, running down into her eyes, almos
t blinding her with its saltiness.

  Swiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiish came the blade’s hiss again.

  She heard Wallace make a noise—a harsh noise, a startled noise. Once she had heard Daisy make a noise like that when she had cut the pad of her paw on a piece of broken glass . . .

  ‘Do . . . not . . . stop,’ Wallace urged, his words breathy and strange.

  ‘W.W., are you—?’ she began over her shoulder.

  ‘Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,’ she heard him counting, gasping.

  Phyllis felt his hand on her shoulder.

  She pelted towards the sixteenth step and saw the dimness and the encrustations of brightness bordering the blackness beyond.

  Swiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiish came the blade.

  There was a cry, and a falling sound, and then the soft, high, vibrating hum.

  And the thick, stretching, whizzing blurriness of the Pocket engulfed her.

  PART TWO

  Almost legendary

  Settling the secret

  Phyllis stumbled forward, her hair flying back behind her, her fingers clasped tightly around the red sparkly ball.

  The soft, vibrating humming lowered and grew softer. The wind, which had been whipping all about her and blowing her cheeks out like over-inflated balloons, was subsiding. The darkness was melting away and everything was becoming lighter on the other side of her closed eyelids. The lurching, urgent, precariously rising feeling in her stomach started to disappear, and she became aware of things slowing . . . slowing . . . slowing down.

  She opened her eyes and there were dancing molecules of light all around her. And then she saw Daisy. Her little dog was still fast asleep, next to her top hat on the sofa.

  ‘I’m back,’ Phyllis whispered, her heart beating wildly. She ran down the stairs into the centre of her magic-filled basement. And she stopped.

  W.W.! Where is he? Her pounding heart skipped a beat and she wheeled around, looking back up the stairs for him.

  But the flight of stairs was nothing more than that; the bright ceiling lights were shining down onto the gleaming marble steps and presenting Phyllis with a vision of emptiness.