“I had no idea they were like that in Aberdeen,” said Rose’s mum.
Rose just smiled awkwardly.
No one wanted to kick the storytelling off, but in the end Suzy agreed, on the basis the sooner they started, the sooner they’d be done and could go to bed. And the story she told was about Rose’s dad.
It had been a long time since Rose had heard her mum talk about her dad, as she found it all too difficult. But now Suzy started to smile as she told a tale from the time they were dating. Apparently, one night they had been driving home down a country lane when they hit a rabbit. Rose’s dad had felt so bad that he put the poor rabbit’s body in the boot of the car to take home and give it a proper burial. But when they got back to the house, her dad opened the boot and BOOSH! The rabbit leaped out.
“It jumped right up in his face and kicked him hard with its back foot!” Suzy laughed. “Your dad had a black eye for a week.”
Rose had never heard this story before and she liked it. Most of all because it showed her that her dad had loved animals just as much as she did.
When Rose headed to bed, she told Bubbles all about their unusual evening.
“Sounds good. Nice to get an invite,” said Bubbles sulkily, twitching his nose.
Rose felt bad. She hadn’t thought to invite Bubbles. “Why don’t you come to school with me tomorrow instead?” she suggested.
“That sounds boring. Poo.”
“Yes, but after school we’re going to the Oldwell Shopping Centre!”
“Even more boring. Double poo.”
“Yes, but while we’re there Merdyn’s going to get his magic staff from the well so he can do battle with Jerabo the Great on Saturday, give me my singing spell and go home!”
“Now it’s getting interesting,” Bubbles conceded. “Count me in.”
And that night,
no one wept (makes a change!).
The family Falvey
were well slept.
Notes
1 Someone who outstays their welcome by keeping the fire burning needlessly at the end of the night.
2 An opportunist. Someone who smells a feast from miles away and arrives uninvited·
3 Show-off. Ah, you remembered this one from last time, did you? All right, don’t get big-headed, you hufty tufty!
The next day Rose gave Merdyn strict instructions to meet her at THE CHURCH, not THE SCHOOL. Then she put Bubbles in her backpack with some hay and food pellets. She had attached the pinecone to his collar so that he could speak whenever he wanted. It was too big to hang underneath the collar, so Rose tied it on top and it stuck up like a Mohican or a Cherokee headdress. Bubbles thought a guinea pig in a pinecone headdress looked ridiculous.
“That’s the price you pay for being able to talk, I’m afraid,” Rose told Bubbles with a shrug as they walked to school together. “Speaking of which, don’t talk to anyone. The world isn’t ready for a chatting guinea pig. Besides, we can’t share Merdyn’s secret yet. I don’t want him giving away my singing spell to anyone else.”
“I don’t get it,” Bubbles groaned, squeezing another poo from his bottom. “First you want me to talk. Then you don’t. Then you do, then you don’t. I’m getting mixed messages here, Rose.”
“Be quiet!” Rose hissed. “And stop pooing in my bag!”
As luck would have it, the CATs were passing just at that moment. And it looked to them like Rose was talking to herself. Or to her school bag. Rose wasn’t sure which was worse.
“Weirdo,” sneered Tamsin.
By the end of the day, Bubbles had done approximately thirty-seven poos and ten wees in her bag. Rose vowed she would NEVER bring him to school again.
After school, the meeting with Merdyn didn’t quite go to plan either (of course). Granted he hadn’t turned up at school, which was an improvement on yesterday, but he was an hour late. Apparently, it was because it was cloudy and he couldn’t see the sun properly to tell the time. Rose pointed out this proved maybe not EVERYTHING was better in the Dark Ages.
Once inside the shopping centre, they took up a position behind the Donuts-R-Us stand and observed the ornamental garden beyond. Merdyn recognised the place at once. This was where he’d arrived through the Rivers of Time two days earlier. And sure enough, there was the old well, exactly as it had been fifteen hundred years ago – barring a few missing stones and all the plastic flowers. It was only thirty feet from where he had found himself. He could have got Thundarian from the well there and then, had it not been for the guards.
No sooner had Merdyn thought these thoughts than the guards themselves – named Jim and Alan, if you recall – marched into view. They were stalking the perimeter of the ornamental garden like a couple of panthers, eager not to get caught out again.
“We have a problem,” said Merdyn to Rose. “Those two guards. When I did landeth here the other day, well, I may have attacked them a shrew.”
“What?”
“In self-defence, I might add! I was confused. I did not know I had landed in the future,” said Merdyn, his tone turning melancholy. “This was once a beautiful forest full of great pines and oaks, the most magnificent herbs and plant life. Now look at it. A gaudy monstrosity! ’Tis enough to make a person weep. Anyway, as soon as they clappeth eyes on me, they will try to retain me again, I have no doubt.”
Rose racked her brains for a solution. Her eyes, quite by chance, rested on the Top Boy shop where Kris worked. He should be on his shift right now, she remembered. Then another genius idea grew in her cranium, and she dragged Merdyn into the men’s fashion store.
Kris was leaning against a cash register, flirting with his co-worker Shakia. Kris had fancied Shakia for ages. She had curly Afro hair and a nose ring, which was absolutely the very height of cool in Kris’s mind.
Suddenly Kris saw Rose and Merdyn coming across the shop floor towards him. The shock caused his elbow to slip off the cash register, sending his body crashing to the ground like a character in a cartoon.
“You all right?” asked Shakia, picking him up off the floor.
Kris tried to style it out. “I dropped a fifty pence, I was looking for it, that’s all. I’ll just go see to these customers.” And with that he hurriedly made his way over to his sister.
Rose saw Kris coming and waved enthusiastically.
“Don’t wave at me!” her brother snapped. “What are you doing here? I thought we had a deal. No meetings in public spaces.”
“Kris, shut up. We need your help!”
Her brother looked around anxiously. Shakia was staring at him, her face a portrait of curiosity. Kris smiled in return, then spun back to his sister.
“Certainly, madam!” he said loudly, with a false grin in Rose’s direction. “The changing rooms are this way, if you’d like to follow me?”
He ushered Merdyn and Rose across the shop floor and into a cubicle.
“What do you want?” he hissed now. “I could get fired for having him in here. This is a FASHION store, for FASHIONABLE men! Uncle Martin drinks from toilets and he stinks. No offence, Uncle Martin.”
“None taken,” replied Merdyn. And he meant it too. A powerful aroma was seen as a good thing in the Dark Ages.
Rose grabbed her brother by the shoulders and looked into his eyes. He was her big brother, and it was time to be honest with him. Surely he would come through for her in her hour of greatest need.
“Kris, listen to me very carefully,” she said. “This man is not Uncle Martin. He is actually a wizard—”
“Warlock!” shouted Merdyn for the twentieth time since arriving.
“Warlock, sorry, from the sixth century. He needs a disguise so he can get his magic wand—”
“Staff,” Merdyn interjected again, wearily.
“Staff, sorry. But will you stop interrupting please?” said Rose.
“Get it right, then!” the warlock snapped back.
Kris’s head bobbed back and forth between the bickering pair like he was watching a dem
ented tennis match.
“He needs to get his staff from the old well,” Rose went on, trying again. “So he can go back in time. But we need to get past the security guards first. With a disguise. Provided by you.”
“These guards and I have history,” Merdyn said, with a grimace.
“You’re both insane,” said Kris, calmly. “Please leave the shop, thank you.” And he swished open the curtain of the changing room to let them out.
Rose’s shoulders slumped. “Come on, Merdyn,” she said with a sigh. “Let’s try something else.”
Merdyn didn’t move. Instead, he fixed Kris with a knowing gaze and said, “What if I could make her fall in love with thee?”
“What? Who?” Kris spluttered, his face turning a deep shade of pink.
“Why, the object of thy affections,” said Merdyn, and gestured towards the girl at the cash register.
NOW Kris was interested. He ushered Rose and Merdyn back into the dressing room and shut the curtain once more. “How?” he said, quickly.
“Why, a love potion of course. ‘Tis a simple recipe. Thou will find the ingredients in any forest or wood – if there are any left in this godforsaken place.”
Kris still looked sceptical. They were losing him again. Then Rose had an idea.
“He really can do magic. I’ll show you,” she said.
She got Bubbles out of her backpack and held him up. Bubbles twitched his nose as if to say, I am not a performing monkey. But he didn’t actually say it, because he was REALLY ANNOYING.
“Bubbles? What is wrong with you?” Rose screamed, exasperated. “All right. Kris, you’ll just have to trust me. Will you help us?” She fixed him with a pleading look, as only an annoying little sister can. “Pleeeeeeeease? For once just trust me on this! Pleeeeeee—”
“All right!” said Kris finally. “She’d better fall DEEP in love with me. Like you hear about in songs and stuff.”
“Oh, she will,” replied Merdyn, with great confidence.
Kris smiled. “Then it’s time … for a makeover.”
“What’s a makeover?” Bubbles whispered to Rose after Kris had left to get some clothes.
“Shut up. I’m not talking to you,” Rose huffed at her furry friend. But really, she was too excited to be annoyed. After all, what does a warlock look like after a makeover?
Ten minutes later Rose found out. Merdyn was transformed. Kris had gone for a ‘street’ look for the sixth-century sorcerer. Gone were his flowing robes and pointy hat – replaced by skinny jeans, big trainers and a blue bomber jacket. On his head he wore a garish orange trucker’s cap and huge wrap-around sunglasses. Now Kris gathered Merdyn’s matted hair in a bunch at the back of his head and tidied up his beard with a hair bobble, which made him look like he had a ponytail on his chin.
“What do you think?” asked Kris, turning the warlock to face the mirror.
“I don’t know,” said Merdyn. “I cannot see a wretched thing in these absurd eyeglasses.”
“Well those guards won’t recognise you,” said Rose. “And that’s the main thing.”
Rose gathered Merdyn’s old garments into a bag as she was sure he couldn’t stay in those jeans for long. They looked VERY tight.
Kris, however, was pretty pleased with Merdyn’s look. “I think this will catch on,” he said, proudly.
Suddenly the curtain of the dressing room flung open – SWISH – and there stood … Shakia.
“What are you up to, Kris?” she said, in a firm voice. “We’re not supposed to let homeless guys in here. And who’s this?” Shakia gestured toward Rose.
“That’s my, er … that’s my sister,” said Kris, reluctantly. “And this … this is …” Kris didn’t know what to say about Merdyn. He felt he couldn’t say ‘Uncle Martin’ any more. “He’s a … friend of my sister?”
“He needs our assistance,” Rose said, helping her brother out. “He just wants to get something that belongs to him that someone threw down the old well a long time ago.” It was the best she could do without using the words ‘wizard’, ‘warlock’, ‘wand’ or ‘staff’.
Shakia eyed them suspiciously. “OK,” she said after a pause, much to everyone’s surprise. “But who’s paying for these threads?”
Kris hadn’t actually thought about who would pay for Merdyn’s clothes. And he wasn’t usually the fastest thinker in the world, but on this occasion, he managed to come up with something pretty quick.
“Me,” he said, with a nod. “Out of my work allowance. We all get an allowance, right? To spend on clothes. Well, I can pay for these clothes out of mine.”
Shakia looked at him in astonishment. So did Rose.
“You’d blow your entire allowance to help a friend of your sister?” she asked.
Kris nodded. Strictly speaking, it was to get Shakia to fall in love with him, but yes, he’d blow his entire allowance to help a friend of his sister (to help him).
Then something amazing happened. Shakia HUGGED Kris. Actually HUGGED him. Not in his dreams, but in real life.
Dear reader, this was a momentous moment in Kris’s short, anxious life. He had never felt so ecstatic. His heart was pounding so hard he thought there was a mixed martial-arts fight going on in his ribcage. He was sure Shakia would notice, but she didn’t. Instead she stopped hugging him, looked into his eyes and said softly, “Sorry, Kris.”
“That’s OK,” Kris said automatically, before adding, “What for?”
“I misjudged you. I thought you were just another bloke obsessed with his hair and clothes and shallow stuff like that,” said Shakia. “But I was wrong.”
Rose raised an eyebrow. No, she wasn’t, that was exactly what Kris was really like. But she wasn’t going to bring that up at his moment of accidental triumph.
“Hey, that’s OK, we’re cool,” Kris said, trying to hide his happiness.
“All right then,” said Shakia, turning to Merdyn. “Can I help too?”
’Tis not a dream,
it would seem
Rose now has
a fledgling team…
Merdyn, Rose, Shakia and Kris walked briskly through the mall towards the ornamental garden. Rose had to guide Merdyn by the arm because he kept bumping into things. He’d never worn sunglasses before, and his tight jeans were cutting off the circulation to his feet.
Bubbles was watching Merdyn through a hole in Rose’s backpack.
“What’s wrong with him?” he said, only loud enough for Rose to hear. “He looks like he’s trying to crack a nut between his butt cheeks.”
Rose had to admit that Merdyn was an odd sight. However, his pony-tailed beard combined with his colourful skater clobber and cool shades were quickly gaining more positive attention from the fashion-conscious young men they passed. Rose could have sworn that by the time they reached the ornamental garden, she’d already seen two teenagers dressed exactly the same as the warlock-cum-dude. Kris had been trying to become a fashion icon for years; Merdyn had managed it in a matter of minutes.
“Hoooold up, there!” said Alan, as Merdyn, Rose, Shakia and Kris finally reached the ornamental garden. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Yeah! Where do you think you’re going?” repeated Jim, unnecessarily.
“We just wanted to have a little look at the old well,” said Rose, as innocently as she could.
Alan and Jim laughed heartily.
“We’d all like to have a little look at the old well … er … little girl!” said Jim, losing confidence halfway through the sentence because he remembered that this wasn’t actually true. Most shoppers couldn’t give two monkeys about it. “But we can’t!” he continued, regardless. “So clear off!”
Alan, meanwhile, had noticed something familiar about the oddly dressed gentleman in front of him. He peered a little closer.
“Do I know you, sir?” he asked.
Merdyn stared back. “Er … okaay!” he said, thinking of the only modern word he could remember.
Rose was
panicking. It hadn’t occurred to her that they needed a plan BEYOND disguising Merdyn. They didn’t let any old person get near the Well, not since the Great Wishing Well Coin Thefts of 2011. You’d need to be a visiting royal or some other famous person to get past security.
Hang on. That was it! Rose had a plan. Another one.
“You should recognise him!” she announced. “This is MC Wizard – I mean, Warlock. He’s a famous rap artist.”
“MC Warlock?” said a baffled Alan.
Merdyn glared at Rose from beneath his glasses. Now what was she talking about? Shakia was thinking the same thing. She leaned into Kris’s ear. “What’s going on?”
Kris decided to come clean. “She thinks this guy is some sort of wizard and he’s lost his magic wand down the well,” he whispered. “I know. It’s embarrassing.”
He shook his head. This could be the end of his and Shakia’s minutes-old relationship. But Shakia just laughed. This was exactly the sort of madness she loved. She turned to the security guards.
“Yes! This is MC Warlock. He’s promoting his new album Well… Good Tunes?, and to promote it, we’re taking photos of him next to various famous wells. Get it? I’m the photographer.” Shakia held up her smartphone and engaged the camera as proof, then winked at Rose. Rose could have hugged her. “And this is his stylist,” Shakia added, pointing to Kris.
“All right,” said Alan, suspiciously. “You can go through.” But before the gang could move, he added, “On ONE CONDITION. We’d like to hear a little song.”
Jim got what Alan was doing immediately. “Yes! If this is this MC Warlock, the FAMOUS rapper, let’s hear one of his songs, shall we?”
And with that, Jim and Alan both folded their arms, ready to listen.
Merdyn leaned towards Rose’s ear. “What is happening?” he asked.
“They want to hear a rap,” she hissed back, in a blind panic.
“What be a rap?”
“It’s a sort of spoken song that rhymes. It has a lot of attitude and, well, you could never—”
The Wizard In My Shed Page 8