Crick snatched the machine from Trixie, almost breaking the leather strap as he did so. He slipped it onto his own wrist and pulled it tight.
‘You can’t leave me stranded here,’ Trixie protested. ‘This isn’t my time.’
‘I am sure the CPA will find you eventually,’ Crick said, turning on the holographic display and admiring Beatrix’s handiwork. ‘This is excellent craftsmanship. I will enjoy using it a great deal.’
‘You can’t,’ Trixie implored.
‘Of course I can,’ Crick said. ‘I already have.’
‘Let him take it,’ I said. ‘It’s not worth it.’
‘We can’t trust him with a time machine. Who knows what he has planned, what damage he could do,’ said Trixie.
There was nothing we could do. Sure, there were two of us and only one of him. But he was an adult armed with a futuristic death ray. We would need some incredible misdirection if we wanted to get it away from him.
And that’s when it hit me.
‘I say we do nothing,’ I said loudly. ‘I’m very good at doing nothing.’
Trixie opened her mouth to say something but didn’t. Crick looked at me suspiciously.
‘In fact, I don’t think I’ll become a magician at all. I think I might become a librarian like my mum. I’ll spend all day reading books and telling kids to be quiet.’
My stomach started to move. I hoped this worked. I didn’t want to be spaghetti.
‘Or maybe I could become a geologist like my dad. Look at rocks and investigate volcanoes erupting. That sounds like fun.’
Stubbins Crick laughed nervously. ‘But you wouldn’t. If you quit you’ll be spaghettified. You have a destiny, my boy; the universe demands it of you. You can’t simply give up.’
‘Can’t give up?’ I interrupted, getting to my feet. ‘Do you know how many hobbies I have given up on? I have started and dropped out of every sport you can imagine. Basketball, softball, cricket, even squash. I have a trumpet, a ukulele and a drum kit gathering dust in my bedroom cupboard. I have never stuck with a single New Year’s resolution, never managed to keep a diary for more than a few weeks.’
The hairs were standing up on the back of my neck. Behind me, I could hear the metal bed rattling as it shifted and moved under the gravitational fluctuations. As long as I kept imagining quitting, of just giving up, the fluctuations would continue.
‘Nick . . .’ Trixie said carefully. ‘What are you doing?’
I looked down at my feet. My laces were undone and slithering through the air like a couple of snakes being charmed. The more I convinced myself I wouldn’t do what was expected of me, the shakier the timeline became, and the more unstable gravity became.
‘If there is ONE thing I am good it,’ I shouted, ‘it’s quitting!’
Stubbins Crick’s face turned white as he lifted up into the air. He let go of the butter warmer death ray and it floated in mid-air, spinning slowly in front of his face.
I felt my feet lifting off the ground too, and soon I was weightless.
The rules of reality no longer applied. Trixie was floating next to me, a determined look on her face.
Being weightless isn’t like swimming in a pool. It’s more like that feeling you get at the very top of a roller-coaster or when you’re jumping really high on a trampoline, just as you start to fall back down. When you’re swimming in water, you can feel the liquid around you and, when you move your hands and feet, you can push yourself around. When you’re weightless, you need to push off something if you want to move.
‘NOW!’ I shouted, and pushed myself away from the wall with my feet. Trixie followed my lead and we both flew towards Crick, our arms outstretched. Trixie aimed at his feet, sending him spinning backwards through the air. His hands flew up and he swung at me wildly. I grabbed his arm to stop him from hitting me. He kicked out his legs and Trixie went flying across the room, smacking into the brick wall. She looked winded.
Crick reached out and grabbed my shirt, trying to push me away. I grabbed his arm with my other hand and we floated there, eye to eye. I tried not to blink, tried to stop the fear from passing down into my shaking hands. I could do this.
Crick bared his teeth at me like a wolf and shoved me as hard as he could across the room. I spun through the air and hit the wall hard. Everything went blurry in front of me as the room stretched out in every direction.
I wasn’t sure if I was winded like Trixie or if I was about to be spaghettified, but I knew I couldn’t take the chance.
‘Fine,’ I shouted. ‘You win.’
As I spoke, gravity returned and the three of us came crashing to the ground. The butter warmer crashed down as well, smashing into hundreds of pieces. Trixie and I landed on the single bed. I bounced off and hit the floor, where I lay in a crumpled mess. Crick, on the other hand, landed on his feet, which was pretty impressive considering he’d been spinning through the air a few seconds earlier.
‘That was a very immature display,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘But I am glad you returned to a compos mentis state.’
He pulled up his sleeve to switch on the time machine. But his wrist was bare. Someone had stolen the time machine right off his wrist. Someone who thought they’d never be able to steal a watch. Crick looked at Trixie and me, his eyes wide with a look of total and utter surprise that any magician would kill for.
I held up the time machine, now safely on my wrist.
Trixie reached over and flicked it on.
The holographic display filled the room. Crick stepped forward as Trixie jabbed at the big green button. She grabbed my shoulder.
‘Tada!’ I said.
And we were off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Facing the music
Trixie and I appeared behind the jumping castle on the oval. The noise of the time machine was drowned out by the sound of the fan and the big generator that kept the jumping castle inflated. It was the third time I’d travelled through time and I was starting to get used to it. I hadn’t even thrown up. Although it looked like we’d only travelled a few minutes into the future.
‘Harry the magician is about to start,’ Trixie said. ‘You should get a move on.’
I smiled and let out a sigh of relief.
‘We’re definitely safe?’ I said.
‘We’re safe,’ she assured me. ‘Crick is stuck in the sick bay. He can’t get us now.’
The words had barely left her mouth when I felt a hand slam down on my shoulder. I froze and glanced at Trixie. She had a hand on her shoulder too. We both spun around to face two serious figures looming over us. A tall, thin man with a tiny narrow moustache took his hand from my shoulder. Standing next to him was an equally thin but much shorter woman, her hair tied back in a tight bun. Both were dressed in matching black shoes, pants and turtleneck sweaters.
They reached into their pockets. I stepped back, ready to make a run for it, but before I had a chance, they each pulled out a wallet and flicked it open. Inside were badges made of some kind of glass that glowed bright green. Engraved in the glass was an image of a clock, its numbers running backwards around the face, and three little letters: CPA.
Chronological Protection Agency.
The time police. The people who hunted down time travellers and brought them to justice. And they’d just caught Trixie and me red-handed.
The man with the thin moustache cleared his throat and spoke.
‘Do you have any idea how much trouble you have caused?’
‘A lot of trouble,’ the woman with the tight bun answered before we could. ‘That’s how much.’
‘Do you know the punishment for interfering with an ongoing CPA investigation?’ Thin Moustache added.
Again, Tight Bun answered before we had a chance to. ‘Severe. The punishment is severe.’
Thin Moustache went
on. ‘You almost caused a singularity. Do you know what a singularity is?’
Tight Bun opened her mouth to answer the question but this time Trixie got in first.
‘Yes, we know what a singularity is!’ Trixie barked. ‘And if you’d done your job properly we wouldn’t have had to risk our lives. Beatrix told you Stubbins Crick was still alive and you didn’t listen to her.’
‘Well,’ Thin Moustache said carefully. ‘She is helping us with our enquiries now.’
‘Helping us with our enquiries’ did not sound good at all. I hoped she wasn’t in trouble.
‘And what about Mr E?’ I said.
The pair looked confused. Thin Moustache’s mouth wiggled testily, making his moustache look like a caterpillar crawling across his upper lip.
‘He means Crick,’ Trixie explained. ‘He calls himself Mr E in this time.’
‘Ah yes, Dr Stubbins Crick,’ Tight Bun said. ‘We have agents fetching him as we speak.’ She turned to Trixie. ‘We need to get you home. Say goodbye to your . . . friend.’
‘And what happens to me now?’ I said.
‘Now?’ Thin Moustache said, confused at the question. ‘You are already in the correct time. You get back to your life and forget you ever saw any of this. You know, everything could have backfired very severely if we hadn’t intervened. You’re lucky the gravitational fluctuations from your little stunt in the sick bay caught our attention. Otherwise we wouldn’t have found you in time.’
‘You didn’t find us in time,’ Trixie exclaimed. The two time cops gave each other an embarrassed look. ‘We did everything ourselves.’
‘Okay, how about this,’ Thin Moustache said, looking at his watch. It was smaller and slicker than the chunky device Beatrix and Trixie had been using. ‘You can deliver him to this magic show he is supposed to attend. Once you’ve made sure he does what he is supposed to do, you go straight home. Okay?’
‘He needs to get his life back on track,’ Tight Bun agreed. ‘We can’t have any more of these changes.’
That was it? It was all over? A few minutes ago I’d been going head to head with a time-travelling megalomaniac from the future. Now I was expected to just go back to how everything had been in the past?
‘Well?’ Thin Moustache said. ‘What are you waiting for?’
Before either of us could respond, Tight Bun answered.
‘The show must go on.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The show goes on
The school hall was packed with students and parents and teachers. The back of the room was filled with fold-out chairs for the adults while the little kids sat on mats in front of the stage. The curtains were closed but I could hear the sound of the magician and his assistant bickering behind it. Mrs Dorbel stood beside the stage, glaring at any child who looked like they were having the tiniest bit of fun. Gary waved from the other side of the hall and pointed at two seats next to him. We sat down.
‘Trixie, isn’t it?’ Gary said. ‘From France?’
‘Oui,’ Trixie said. ‘Quelle journée!’
Gary looked confused but before he could speak, music began blaring from the stage. The orange curtains slowly opened while Mrs Dorbel dimmed the lights from her position in the wings. Smoke billowed out onto the front row, making the little kids cough and splutter. The magician and his assistant stepped onto the stage and spread out their arms as the music swelled.
My eyes fell on all the props behind them. I recognised most of them from the Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic. There was a Mirror Box, a Temple Screen, a set of Multiplying Bottles and even a Dove Pan. Everything looked so familiar after all my practice.
The magician took his top hat from his head and held it up. He leaned forward and spoke into the microphone.
‘Ladies and gentle—BURP!’
The burp echoed around the room. The kids laughed loudly. The adults did too but more nervously, not sure if this was part of the show.
‘Haaarrry!’ the assistant exclaimed. The magician cleared his throat and went to speak again but couldn’t. He put his hand up to his mouth and let out another burp even louder than the first. He stopped, took a deep breath and stretched his arms one last time.
Then he threw up in his hat.
And he kept on throwing up. The vomit poured from his mouth until his hat was filled to the brim, then began slopping over the edges. And this was a top hat, one of the biggest hats you can get. His assistant took one look at the hatful of sick and burst into tears. She tottered from the stage as fast as she could in her high-heeled shoes while the magician stumbled after her, trying not to spill the spew.
‘I told you not to eat so many hot dogs!’ the assistant wailed, but the magician was already running for the toilet.
The music kept on playing as the stage sat empty. The audience was frozen in stunned silence. The smoke that had spilled out over the edge of the stage was fading away. The show was over before it had even started.
‘What happened?’ I whispered to Trixie.
She smiled.
‘The show isn’t over yet.’
It was pretty clear the magician and his assistant weren’t coming back anytime soon. The audience began murmuring. The teachers were deep in conversation, probably trying to figure out if one of them should say something. Some of the little kids were standing up and looking like they might wander away.
‘There’s no magician,’ I said.
‘Yes, there is,’ Trixie said with a smile. ‘He’s right here.’
She reached into her pocket and pulled out my thumb tip.
‘You dropped this outside the sick bay. You should be more careful with your props.’
She handed the thumb tip to me and gestured towards the empty stage. I looked at the stage and the audience and finally understood why this magic show was so important.
I got up out of my seat, took a deep breath and walked onto the stage.
‘That was EPIC,’ Gary shouted, pushing through the crowd of kids who were surrounding me outside the hall.
The magic show hadn’t really been epic, if I’m honest. But I had survived.
Harry the magician had left a silver bucket behind on his box of props and so I’d started by plucking coins from behind the ears of the little kids in the front row. I tossed them into the bucket one at a time then pulled out the next one. Every time a coin clunked into the bucket the kids would let out a little squeal of delight that made the adults at the back chuckle.
The music that Harry had left playing when he’d bolted from the stage finished by itself and so I did a card trick. I asked Jasmine Leroy in the year below me to pick a card out of the deck and write her name on it. With quivering hands I put the card back in the deck and shuffled the cards.
‘Now take off your shoe,’ I said, my voice shaking with nerves.
‘My what?’
‘Your shoe.’
She slid her shoe off her foot and there, tucked in the toe, we found the four of diamonds, with Jasmine Leroy’s name written across the front. I accidentally dropped my thumb tip as Jasmine was going back to her seat but I don’t think anyone noticed.
Then I read Mrs Dorbel’s mind.
‘I’d like you to think of a city for me,’ I said.
‘Very well,’ she sighed, annoyed at being dragged up on the stage. ‘Paris.’
‘Oh . . . um . . . sorry,’ I stuttered. ‘Don’t tell me, just think of it. It’s not really magic if you . . . you know . . . tell me what you’re thinking of. That’s just listening.’
She blushed as the audience giggled at her mistake. ‘You need to be clearer with your instructions, young man.’
I asked her to write the name of another city plus a colour and an animal on some small slips of paper that she then screwed up and threw into an empty glass. I waved my hands over the glass and revealed th
at she was thinking of London, green, and a tiger. I swear that she almost smiled as she left the stage to loud applause.
Just as I was about to finish, I noticed that the magician had left behind a box that was almost identical to my Appearing Cat Box. I’d made mine out of cardboard and glue. This one was wooden and shiny but the basic idea was the same. The crowd went wild as I pulled out the magician’s real live rabbit from the empty box.
As soon as I stepped off the stage, I knew that I wanted to do it again. I was hooked.
More important than that, I knew that being a magician wasn’t about knowing all the secrets and having all the power. It was about that look on the faces in the audience when they saw something happen that just shouldn’t have been possible. It was about watching their faces and having them really believe in magic, just for a tiny second. It was about telling them a story that couldn’t possibly be true and making them wonder whether maybe, just maybe, it could be.
‘Truly epic,’ Gary said again, shaking his head.
‘Thanks,’ I said, trying to sound humble.
One of the older kids slapped me hard on the back. ‘The look on Mrs Dorbel’s face when you said London. Awesome, man. Awesome.’
‘Oh, cool.’
I could see the magician, his face white, leaning up against a wall muttering about food poisoning and lawsuits while his assistant yelled at Mr Buggit for letting some kid mess with their props. But I didn’t care.
‘Excuse me,’ a woman said, pushing her way past the kids. ‘I don’t suppose you do children’s birthday parties, do you? My youngest absolutely loved your show.’
Gary stepped in front of me. ‘Actually, I’m his agent. I handle all his bookings.’
I looked around for Trixie but she was nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The end of the beginning
That’s almost the end of the story. This one, anyway. I told you at the beginning that it was completely true. I told you it was unbelievable. You might believe it or you might think it’s all a pack of lies. But I was there and I know the truth.
Tricky Nick Page 12