The Wizard In My Shed

by Simon Farnaby

  Alan remembered his counselling. Don’t let anyone undermine you. YOU are in charge, Alan, he said to himself. “We’re people you don’t wanna mess with,” he declared out loud.

  Jim took his lead from Alan. No more Mr Nice Guy. “Yeah! Mess with us and we’ll teach you a lesson you’ll never forget,” he added.

  Jerabo proceeded with caution. Who knew how advanced magic had become in the future? How far humans had come in harnessing the awesome power of nature? “Art thou wizards?” he asked the dumbfounded pair. “Warlocks? Speak!”

  “That’s right, mate. We’re wizards,” Alan quipped. “And as soon as we say the magic words ‘You’re under arrest’, you, my friend, will magically go straight to jail!”

  Jim thought that was a brilliant line from Alan. They both gave a self-satisfied chuckle.

  Jerabo couldn’t risk going to jail. It would be terrible for his plans. He decided to call their bluff. “Very well, future wizards,” he said. “Let us have a wizard battle and settle this quickly.”

  “Do w-what?” asked Jim. But the words had hardly left his lips when …

  “ANIMA PORCINEUS-PIGGUS!”

  Jerabo chanted a spell from his book and *SHWONG!** turned Jim into a pig.

  Alan looked in horror at his now porcine friend. He reached for his pepper spray and unclipped his truncheon, both of which he held toward the wizard in a threatening manner.

  “Is that all thou have?” Jerabo scoffed.

  “Erm, yeah,” said Alan. “We’re not allowed guns or even tasers at our level.”

  SHWONG! In a trice, Jerabo turned Alan into a pig too. Both porkers took off down the mall, squealing and weaving in and out of startled shoppers.

  The evil sixth-century wizard stepped out of the ornamental garden and walked through the shopping centre, taking in his new surroundings. There were lots of bright colours. Flashing lights. But where was the nature?

  The people were weak, Jerabo concluded. Enslaved to the small black tablets in their hands. Some had even plugged their ears into them. It was clear they knew no magic, had no nature. This was going to be EASY.

  But Jerabo’s itinerary was thrown into disarray when he saw Merdyn’s face right in front of him. He was only five minutes in this new world and he had already found his foe, here in this brightly coloured market!

  Merdyn seemed to be talking to some painted ladies. They were all sitting, shrunken, in a little box inside one of the market stalls.

  Jerabo decided to vanquish Merdyn on the spot. He pulled his sword from under his cloak and shouted, “Prepare to meet thy death, you cur!”

  Then he ran at full speed towards his foe and … WHUMP! … ran straight into the window of the TV shop.

  What a strange place, thought the evil wizard as a kindly old lady helped him up off the floor. Maybe there was magic here after all.

  “Are you all right, dear?” the elderly lady asked.

  “Yes. Thank you, old hag,” said Jerabo, a little dazed.

  The woman was wondering if he’d really just called her an ‘old hag’ when she was distracted by his face. “Hey, it’s you!” she said. “You’re Jerabo the Great.”

  Jerabo was flattered that his fame had travelled fifteen hundred years into the future. “I am he,” he announced grandly.

  “That Merdyn fellow certainly gave you a good hiding,” the old lady said, puncturing the moment. “You recovered yet?”

  Jerabo thought he must be dreaming. “What meanest thou? Merdyn the Wild, get the better of me? Never.”

  The woman got her phone out to show him otherwise.

  The wizard’s mind was promptly blown. The little theatre inside the tablet was tiny. And there was someone in it who looked exactly like him.

  “What be this depiction?” he enquired frantically. “This be happening now?”

  “This was about a month ago,” said the lady. She frowned. “I heard you took it badly, but this is ridiculous.”

  Realisation dawned on Jerabo. “This is not me,” he said. “Why, it must be my offspring! My progeny! That’s who was leafing through my spellbook! He’s the one who liketh strawberry jam! Tell me, can thou direct me to this youngling’s abode?”

  “You mean where does he live?” the kindly granny said. “I don’t know.”

  “I desperately need to find him!” cried Jerabo. “You see, he is my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandson!”

  The old lady stared at him quizzically. “His real name’s Julian Smith, I know that. You could look him up in the phone book, I suppose.”

  “The foam-book?” Jerabo repeated, in that way that people from the sixth century do. Apparently.

  “Phone book!” she shouted, in case he was a bit deaf. “Should have his address in there, I would have thought!”

  Jerabo’s eyes filled with tears. He was an unsentimental fellow, but even he felt overwhelmed at the thought of meeting his great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandson.

  “Very well. I shall findeth him in this foambook,” he said. “Then my descendant and I will killeth Merdyn together. It can be a family outing!” He had to bite his own fist, such was the emotion coursing through his veins.

  “You’re going to do what?” said the old lady.

  “Many thanks for thy help, old hag.” Jerabo dipped his hand into his purse and threw some dirty stones at her. “Here. For thy time.”

  Realising now that she hadn’t misheard the words ‘old hag’ first time round, the woman began thwacking him repeatedly over the head with her handbag.

  Maybe not all of them are weak,

  Jerabo’s inner voice said . . .

  as the handbag pummelled

  him over the head.

  Lazy Ladies was a TV talkshow where a panel of laid-back women talked to guests about anything and everything, usually touching on something they wished to promote. Merdyn was plugging his huge new shows at Wembley stadium and a new line of “Thundarian” magic staffs (a bargain at £34.99) so Freddie had figured Lazy Ladies was perfect.

  At the same time, Rose was standing backstage in the school assembly hall, getting ready for her performance for the Mountford’s Got Talented People heat. She’d chosen “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera. It was a song she knew inside out and she liked its message of positivity. All she needed was the pipes to sing it – and Merdyn had, finally, provided those. She held the bottle tightly in her hand and unscrewed the lid.

  She was about to take a swig when she saw Tamsin coming towards her.

  “Hey, Rose,” Tamsin said a little nervously. “I just wanted to wish you good luck. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think you need this.”

  Rose was confused. “What do you mean?”

  “I just think you’re so much better than you think you are,” said Tamsin. “Just be you, Rose.”

  Rose glowered. “That’s rich. You can’t even ‘be you’ enough to say hello to me in the halls!”

  “And now,” boomed the tannoy suddenly, “please welcome back … Rose Falvey!”

  Rose pushed past Tamsin into the wings. What did Tamsin know anyway? Winning this competition and becoming a star would solve everything. Her mum would get off the couch. Kris would respect her. She’d finally be the special person her dad always told her she’d be, and she’d finally make him proud. Everything would make sense. She’d tried being herself, just the way she was, and it hadn’t worked. This was the only way!

  Rose took a deep breath, gulped down the foul-tasting singing spell and strode confidently on to the stage.

  Meanwhile, on Lazy Ladies, Merdyn had been asked to show off one of his spells. Merdyn faked surprise, although this had of course been p
lanned all along.

  “All right. Which of thee ladies would liketh to howl like a wolf?” Merdyn asked.

  The women all giggled before one of them, Linda, bravely volunteered.

  “I warneth thou,” said Merdyn. “For nigh on five cock-crows1 thou shall not speaketh a word. The only sound that will leaveth thy mouth will be the howl of a wolf.”

  “Don’t call your husband, then!” said another Lazy Lady, improvising.

  “He probably won’t even notice!” Linda bantered back, and they and the studio audience laughed like hyenas.

  Merdyn opened the little brown bottle and offered it to Linda. Linda took a sip, smiled nervously, then opened her mouth to talk.

  BUT …

  Instead of howling like a wolf, she SANG like an angel. In fact, everything she said came out in beautifully pitched operatic notes.

  “I harrrdly feel any differrrrrrent,” Linda thrust a hand over her mouth, then opened it again and sang, “Wait a minute. I thought I was meant to howl like a wolf. This sounds beautifuuuuul!”

  The crowd went wild. They stood up and applauded, thinking it was part of the act. Merdyn laughed along. But this wasn’t the plan at all. What had happened?

  Then he remembered how much of a rush he’d been in, leaving the penthouse earlier. How he’d given Kris a singing spell to pass to Rose and put the howling spell in his pocket. A terrible thought was released into the neural pathways of Merdyn’s brain.

  But if THIS was the singing spell, then … Then what did Rose have?

  The audience at Mountford’s Got Talented People fell silent. Tamsin took her seat next to Catrina and Andie.

  “Where’ve you been?” hissed Andie.

  “You better not have been talking to Rose,” Catrina whispered. “I’ve told you, it’s either her or us.”

  “Relax. I just went to the loo,” lied Tamsin.

  Rose made her way out to the centre of the stage and the music began. This is it, she thought. This was the moment her life came into focus. The great mystery of what her dad thought she’d be great at would finally be solved. It wasn’t even a question of practice. It was going to be magic! Get a load of this voice, world!

  Rose opened her mouth and …

  “Howooooowoowooowooowooowl!” came the sound, like something out of a horror film. The audience’s mouths fell open. Rose wondered if she’d heard her own voice wrongly. That didn’t sound like good singing. It sounded like … a howling wolf.

  She tried again.

  “You’re beautifuooooooowoowooowooooooowl!”

  Nope. It was no mistake. She sounded like a wolf all right. Worse than a wolf, if anything. More like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  “Hooooowwoooooooooooooowl!”

  There it was again.

  There was a moment’s pause. Then the WHOLE SCHOOL burst out laughing.

  “HA HA HA HA HA!”

  Catrina and Andie were laughing loudest of all. “HA HA HA HA HAHAAAAA!” But Tamsin wasn’t.

  “It’s funny, Tam! Laugh!” Catrina demanded, laughing so hard her lipstick smudged into her cheeks.

  “Yeah, get with the programme!” Andie demanded in her deep, strong voice.

  Tamsin forced a snort.

  Rose saw everyone laughing at her, now including Tamsin. If this had been the animal impression Olympics, Rose would have won a gold medal. But it wasn’t. Instead, it was the worst moment of her life. In fact, of all the many worst moments in her life, this one felt like the worst worst of them all. Humiliated again. In front of the whole school.

  Rose burst out crying and ran from the stage as fast as her legs could carry her.

  “Well, that was a howling success!” Rose heard one of the judges say through a microphone as she sprinted out of the theatre, out of the school and through the school gates. How could Merdyn do this to her? Had he done it on purpose? She’d once said that she thought Merdyn was good at heart. But now, as she pounded the pavement, crying all the way home, she wondered how black the devious warlock’s heart could get.

  “I hate you, Merdyn!” she screamed.

  “I wish we’d never MET!”

  Note

  1 Nearly five minutes – remember this, it’s important to the story, any moment now...

  Julian Smith (formerly Jerabo the Great) sat down every day and night by the fire and read out spells from the black and gold book he’d found in the attic on the night of his humiliation at the hands of Merdyn the Wild. But alas he couldn’t conjure up a single bit of real magic. To add insult to injury, he’d had to watch Merdyn become a global superstar while his own star waned terribly.

  He was about to give up when he received a visit from his great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather.

  The real Jeremiah Jerabo had found Julian’s house that afternoon and had been watching him from outside the window for some time.

  “My progeny!” he whispered proudly as Julian got angrier and angrier with each failed spell. “How he looketh like me! How handsome he is. Such fine hair!”

  But now, the time had come to meet. Jerabo performed a dematerialisation spell and passed through the window so that he was in the same room as Julian at last.

  “Hello, grandson!” he announced.

  Julian leaped off the sofa, grabbed a poker from the fireplace and shook it at the hooded intruder. “Who the heck are you? What do you want? I don’t have any money! Who are you?”

  “My child,” said Jerabo softly. “My offspring. ’Tis I.”

  “Who?” said Julian.

  “Why, thy great great great great great great great great great great great great great (seriously? Every time?) great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather.”

  Jerabo stepped into the light and pulled his hood down. Julian could scarcely believe his eyes. “Wow!” he said. “You look just like me. So handsome. Such fine hair!”

  “Of course I looketh like thee!” enthused Jerabo. “Or should I say thou looketh like me. I am thy ancestor from long ago, travelled forward in time to visit thee. Thou art my progeny!”

  “OK. So … nice to meet you, great great great great blah blah grandfather,” said Julian slowly, unsure how to take the news. He remembered something. “How long are you going to stay actually? Because I’ll have to ask my wife, Carol. And we’re decorating the spare room so you’ll have to sleep on the couch.”

  “Young Jerabo!” Jeremiah boomed, slightly angrily.

  “Actually, my name’s Julian,” Julian corrected him.

  “Ju-LION!” boomed Jerabo less slightly and more actually angrily. “I’m not sure thou art completely grasping the enormity of what has happened here. Sit down.”

  Jerabo then explained the situation to his (great times thirty-six) grandson as speedily as he could. He told him how he had travelled through the Rivers of Time to destroy Merdyn. Then how he was going to go back to the Dark Ages and claim the throne for the family name. He decided not to tell Julian about killing the King and imprisoning his wife, just in case he wasn’t into that sort of thing.

  When Jerabo had finished, Julian paced up and down in front of the fire pinching the bridge of his nose. “OK,” he said. “I’m into this plan. Really into it. Finish Merdyn, blah blah blah. I mean I hate him. But after it’s done, you go back, become King or whatever, while muggins here is still left with no career and no money. What I’m saying, is … what’s in it for me, Great Etcetera Grandad?”

  Jerabo looked at Julian with tears in his eyes. “Ah Ju-lion!” he said proudly. “Thou art truly a Jerabo. Don’t thou understandeth? If I becometh King in the past, then THOU shall likely becometh King in the future. Now.”

  “Hm, yeah,” said Julian. “But being King isn’t what it used to be. The prime
minister runs the country now.”

  Jerabo rolled his eyes. Wow, his progeny was annoying. “I shall teach thou how to use thy spellbook, how about that? Then thou can rule over this prime minister too. And anyone else thou wanteth to. THOU shall be King of this pathetic world without magic. THOU, my child.”

  “Now we’re talking. That WOULD be cool.” Julian was excited. To become a magician so powerful that he ruled not just the country but the world? Wouldn’t that be something! Wouldn’t that teach those fools at the Royal Shakespeare Company a thing or two? He could take over the whole blooming theatre and play all the parts himself!

  “But first,” said Jerabo, getting down to business. “We must deal with Merdyn the Wild. He is the only one who can stop us. But it won’t be easy. He will not just rolleth over and giveth in to us. We need to be cunning. Trappeth him somehow … Merdyn playeth the heart of stone, but really he is a sentimental fool. Tell me, has he struck up any kinships while here? Who does he care for? If we can get to them, we can make Merdyn do whatever we desireth.”

  A smile started to play across Julian’s thin lips. “There is someone he cares for actually. She was there that night at the theatre. A little girl with fuzzy hair and glasses.”

  “A little girl with fizzy hair and gasses?” repeated Jerabo, mishearing but still liking the sound of this.

  Julian nodded. “A little, pointless sort of girl. And her name was …” He scratched his head and pulled his nose.

  “I seem to remember

  her name was . . . Rose.”

  In the helicopter after his Lazy Ladies triumph, Merdyn asked the time.

  “Three-thirty, mate,” said Freddie.

  “So schools are still open or …?”

  “Schools are out by three-thirty. Why?”

  “Nothing,” said Merdyn, and he looked back out of the window. Since realising his potion mix-up, he’d had a strange feeling in his stomach that he couldn’t fathom. “Methinks I might take the night off, Freddie,” he said now. “I’m feeling a little unwell.”