by Temre Beltz
Wasn’t that what fairy godmothers were all about?
Four
A Snake Named Delilah
Deep down in the heart of the Swinging Swamp, Oliver Dash awoke to the sound of voices, and his heart immediately began to pound. Oliver always made it a point to rise long before any of the other students in the dormitory stirred awake. Oliver faced enough ridicule during the waking hours, and he’d learned the hard way that sound sleeping left him far too vulnerable.
Oliver cautiously blinked one eye open. Save for the three youngest, who were still sound asleep—one of whom was small enough to require the use of a crib—most of the other boys were gathered around seven-year-old Theodore’s bed. And there, in Theodore’s hands, was a hat.
Oliver bolted upright. His chest tightened.
His gaze swept toward the window that—despite the putrid swamp air—was always left open to allow for a hat’s mysterious delivery. And last night it had happened again. A new hat had arrived. But, as always, it had swept right past Oliver and on to someone else.
Oliver was only three days closer to Headmaster Razzle’s deadline, but it felt like a terrible blow. A small part of him had hoped that, in the face of such dire need, his hat would take pity on him, make up for all those miserable years of waiting, and hurry up already! Alas, things never seemed to go Oliver’s way.
Theodore bounced up and down, tossing his hat into the air and loosely catching it on the tip of his thumb. Oliver’s fingers strained at his sides, and all he could think was: What if he drops it? But it wasn’t Oliver’s hat to care for.
“Tell us again how you found it,” a five-year-old boy, Herbert, said, touching a hand to his bare head as if his own magician’s hat might pop out of thin air at any moment.
“I crushed it. I was sleeping real good, rolled over onto my stomach, and then—splat! There it was,” Theodore said with a grin.
The rest of the boys erupted into laughter, while Oliver tried not to gasp at the thought of a squished hat.
One of the older boys, Frederick, who remained lounging on his own bed, called out lazily, “You better believe we’ll never hear the end of this from Von Hollow. After choosing you as his assistant for last night’s showcase, he’ll take full credit for sure.”
Despite Frederick’s casual tone, the name Von Hollow rippled throughout the room. Master Von Hollow was the Swinging Swamp’s nastiest magician. His main source of income was the acceptance of bribes, and he loved nothing more than a “good deal.” He was ruthless, cunning, and unquestionably skilled. And while most magicians sent objects they disappeared jetting willy-nilly around the space-magic continuum, Master Von Hollow was the one and only magician who could make something disappear and guarantee its destination.
Theodore stopped bouncing. In typical magician fashion, he adamantly refused to give a single bit of credit to anyone other than himself. “No way! My hat must have already been on its way before the showcase. Just watch this!” he cried.
He brought his small fingers to the brim of his hat. Though Frederick and a few of the older boys snickered, everyone else grew quiet, watching and waiting. Oliver leaned as far forward as he dared, eager to see what Theodore could do, wondering what he might do if the hat had been his, but the miniature mushroom that popped into view was rather disappointing.
Frederick howled with laughter. Theodore glared angrily at him. “At least I conjured an illusion on my first try,” he protested.
Of the three powers that a magician’s hat bestowed—personal travel by vanishing, making objects disappear, and illusions—illusions were the magicians’ favorite. Despite the fact that the objects the magicians conjured were precisely as their name implied, i.e., completely fake, illusions were the one trick that garnered a moderate amount of fear and respect from the citizens of Wanderly. Ironically, this fear was borne of the same habit most magicians found so annoying about their hats: the sudden, startling reappearance of other magicians’ disappeared objects—you didn’t forget about that pink baby octopus, did you? Of course, the magicians didn’t actually create those objects from nothing, but they weren’t about to set the record straight and instead played up the misconception to its absolute fullest.
If you asked Oliver, fake or not, it was still entirely unsettling to turn the corner at Razzle’s School for Meddlesome Boys, never knowing whether you might happen upon an illusion of a snarling tiger, a three-headed monster, or an army of spiders.
Oliver wasn’t thinking about spiders in this moment, however. Oliver was thinking about something Frederick had said. Something he’d never once considered. Had Master Von Hollow really had something to do with the arrival of Theodore’s hat? Master Von Hollow was an exceptionally fearsome magician; was it possible that a bit of his prowess had managed to somehow rub off on Theodore during the showcase? Certainly a magician’s skills weren’t transferrable during the ordinary course of a day, but maybe there was something special about what happened onstage—maybe there was something special about the connection between a magician and his assistant.
Oliver looked slowly around the room. Beginning at age six, every student became eligible to participate in a showcase as a magician’s assistant. Not surprisingly, every student over the age of six had done exactly that. Everyone, that is, except Oliver.
Alas, we have come to another one of those moments in the story where the circumstances are almost too cruel to mention. I said from the beginning, however, that I traveled here for the sole purpose of telling the whole truth, and so here it is. Do come a bit closer, though, as we needn’t shout it from the rooftops.
Oliver—who had spent a lifetime trying to find his place among a group of applause-seeking showmen—suffered from a severe case of stage fright.
Indeed, it was so bad that when Oliver last auditioned to be a magician’s assistant three years ago, his nervous clumsiness had led to the magician in question spraining his ankle, tearing a hole in his hat, and plunging headfirst into the moat surrounding Razzle’s School for Meddlesome Boys.14 After that, Headmaster Razzle decreed that, for the safety and preservation of all, Oliver should never be allowed to set foot onstage again; a decision that even Oliver had agreed with.
But what if that decision had been the start of all his problems? What if the one thing standing between Oliver and proving he belonged here was . . . the stage? Would he really do anything it took to avoid getting kicked out of the Swinging Swamp?
Yes.
Oliver’s pulse began to race; his palms began to sweat. If Oliver remembered correctly, Master Von Hollow was the magician scheduled for one more showcase before Oliver’s deadline. Oliver would have much preferred to work with, well, any other magician besides Master Von Hollow, but perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps Master Von Hollow had more skill to spare than anybody. It certainly had seemed to be enough for Theodore, who, despite Frederick’s pestering, was now surrounded by an entire collection of tiny mushrooms. Of course, all of that was assuming Master Von Hollow would actually choose Oliver as his assistant, but Oliver had an idea about that too.
Oliver slid down the sandy hill that Razzle’s School for Meddlesome Boys was built on, sprinted past the snoring gang of ancient crocodiles, and ducked into the creaky boathouse where the school’s pack of rowboats swayed eagerly back and forth.
The names of the rowboats—Jack, Sue, Rocky, Pearl, Syd, and Cecelia—were painted on the sides in bright, bold letters, not as a matter of sentimentality but as a matter of necessity. The rowboats weren’t ordinary rowboats but enchanted rowboats obtained from the magicians’ next-door neighbors in the Dead Tree Forest, i.e., the witches. Each rowboat had a wildly divergent personality and strong opinions to boot. This did not bode well for an eleven-year-old boy with a ridiculously short cape and no hat, but so far the rowboat known as Syd didn’t seem to mind much, and maybe even not at all. Fortunately for Oliver, he saw no sign of Rocky, the rowboat that had the greatest disdain for him and tended to spray him with swamp go
o at every opportunity.
Oliver drew near to Syd and swung his legs inside. “Hello there,” Oliver said. He delivered three short pats to Syd’s hull, and Syd pulled obediently away from the dock. Syd plowed through the murky green water and past the clusters of catfish that turned their whiskered faces up at Oliver and mewed pitifully.
Once Oliver and Syd made their way out of the deepest, darkest parts of the moat, they eased onto the flats, where a network of shallow channels—some no more than six inches deep—branched off in a dozen different directions. In the center of it all was a crude, mud-splattered wooden sign that read in drippy red paint: “The Carousel.” And, just in case that wasn’t creepy enough, the sign also had a rudimentary picture of a skull drawn on it.
Syd shivered and attempted to turn around, but Oliver stuck his oar in the mud. He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the comparatively cheery main channels of the swamp and then back to the Carousel. He swiped his arm across his forehead, which was damp with perspiration. Oliver had heard stories of the Carousel. Stories of magicians rowing in and never rowing back out. The Carousel teemed with slithering things, the Carousel was laden with jumbo-size sinkholes, but the Carousel was also renowned for its fine collection of exotic and rare plants. A collection of exotic and rare plants that included the one thing Oliver was certain would cure his stage fright: worm root.
At Razzle’s School for Meddlesome Boys, when the topic of worm root came up (which was almost never) it was met with little more than a series of yawns. Mostly because the effect of a worm root plant, if consumed, was to provide a massive dose of confidence—something most magicians were already overflowing with and not one bit interested in acquiring more of. Oliver, however, could recite even the most obscure of Headmaster Razzle’s lessons in his sleep. He wasn’t in possession of an exceptional memory but was merely a victim of Headmaster Razzle’s burdensome request to take copious notes for everyone else, while they spent the class period toying around with magic.
If this sounds terribly unfair to you, it was. But sometimes even terribly unfair things harbor a bit of good. In this case, the cornucopia of magicianly terms and concepts that constantly bounced around Oliver’s head was the source of his one and only idea for curing his stage fright.
Oliver set his jaw. He gave Syd a reassuring pat. “This shouldn’t take long, Syd. I know exactly what I’m looking for.”
Though Syd let out a weighty sigh, he nevertheless inched forward. But the deeper they went into the Carousel, the darker it got. The trees in the Carousel were curiously large. Their great, big trunks jutted out of the swamp goo with leafy canopies so dense that not even a glimmer of sunlight could eke through. Oliver gulped. If the Carousel was this dark during the day, what would it be like to be here at night? What would—
HISSSSS. An ominous sound slithered near, and Oliver froze.
He sucked up a breath, looking carefully from left to right. But other than the constant gurgle and pop of the water, everything was still.
Oliver wasn’t afraid of any mere snake. At Razzle’s School for Meddlesome Boys, being situated on a sand hill and surrounded by a moat, snakes wriggled down the hallways like common house spiders. Sometimes Oliver even pulled them out from underneath his pillow at night. But those snakes did not hiss loud enough to make the trees shake, and of all the beasts rumored to live within the depths of the Carousel, there was one that was whispered about more than any other: Delilah.
Oliver set his jaw and urged Syd toward the gooey banks of a mudflat. He swung his legs over the edge and planted his feet in a heap of squishy mud. He told himself that Delilah was nothing more than a tall tale and that even a place like the Swinging Swamp couldn’t hide a creature of those staggering proportions. At a rumored forty feet long and six feet around, Delilah would measure bigger even than one of the Carousel’s enormous trees.
HISSSSSSSSSS. The bothersome sound erupted again, much closer and much louder.
Oliver straightened up, wondering if perhaps he and Syd should come back another day, when a giant mud ball whirred through the air and smacked him in the back of the head.
“Ouch!” Oliver cried, but before he could duck, two more oozing mud balls made their mark. One splattered against his cheek, and the other pelted his too-short cape.
The laughter followed. And Oliver’s heart sank when two students from Razzle’s School for Meddlesome Boys leaped out from behind a cluster of trees.
“Gee, I’m sorry, Oliver. Did that mud ball hit you?” Nicholas Snark said with mock sincerity. He strutted in front of the other boy, Duncan, and swirled his calf-length cape through the air with panache. After tipping his hat in Oliver’s direction, he continued, “Without a hat on, you’re almost impossible to see! But I bet you hear that a lot, don’t you?”
“Not really,” Oliver muttered, but he kept his eyes low. Most everyone agreed that Nicholas Snark was the Swinging Swamp’s next Master Von Hollow. His skills at illusion were the best—or worst, depending on your standing with him—and even grown-up magicians loitered on the sandy banks of Razzle’s School for Meddlesome Boys to ask him for some tips from time to time.
“Well, you’re lucky Duncan and I found you. Don’t you know that students aren’t allowed in the Carousel? That it’s dangerous?” Nicholas said.
Oliver crossed his arms against his chest, though it was very hard to look dignified with mud dripping down his cheek. “And you two aren’t students?”
“Sure, we are,” Duncan piped up. “But we’re here on a special assignment. Headmaster Razzle sent us here to practice our illusions. But you wouldn’t know anything about that because—”
“I know, I know. I don’t have a hat,” Oliver finished for him, which certainly took a bit of wind out of Duncan’s bully sails. Oliver went on, “Why can’t you practice your illusions at Razzle’s? Why would the headmaster send you all the way out here?”
“Because Headmaster Razzle wants us to think big,” Nicholas said with a gleam in his eye.
Oliver frowned. Why would anyone need an illusion that big? Did it have anything to do with Headmaster Razzle’s insistence that soon the Chancellor would acknowledge the magicians in a way that he never had before?
HISSSSSSS. The sound was very nearly upon them, this time accompanied by a noisy rustle, as if something was slithering through the grass. Nicholas and Duncan exchanged glances with one another, and a wave of relief washed over Oliver.
Big illusions.
Of course! Nicholas and Duncan were trying to conjure an illusion of Delilah. Oliver couldn’t imagine why Headmaster Razzle would want such a thing, but it took the edge off the shivers rippling up and down Oliver’s spine; at least he would be able to continue his search for worm root without worrying about getting eaten by a real anaconda.
Duncan’s and Nicholas’s eyes suddenly widened. Their faces paled, and they stumbled backward, all while jabbing their fingers in the air at something behind Oliver. But Oliver wasn’t about to give Nicholas and Duncan the satisfaction of being scared. When they went back to Razzle’s and bragged to the other students about their illusion of Delilah, they wouldn’t get to say Oliver had been fooled.
And so, Oliver forced a smile on his face. He turned slowly around and wasn’t one bit surprised to find himself face-to-face with what really was an impressive representation of Delilah. Her eyes were perfectly cold and calculating, her forked tongue flicked in and out of her mouth in an unnerving fashion, and she looked even bigger than six feet around.
Oliver reminded himself that—giant anaconda or not—all magicians’ illusions were powered by fear and could be made to disappear by the touch of an unafraid observer. He just had to get close enough to Delilah, reach out his hand, and then, poof, everything would return to normal: hot, sticky, and muddy as ever, but minus a giant snake.
Oliver marched right up to the giant anaconda. He heard some muffled gasps, the pounding of feet, and then a crash of the underbrush as if Nicholas an
d Duncan had run away. They certainly seemed committed to maintaining the charade—but Oliver was just as committed to turning over a new page. He was a magician, he belonged in the Swinging Swamp, and soon everyone else would see it too.
With all that energy pulsing through Oliver, he felt nearly invincible. Oliver had enough real obstacles in his life. He wasn’t about to let an imaginary one stand in his way. He reached out and laid a firm hand on Delilah.
But Delilah did not disappear.
To the contrary, she wriggled.
Not to mention, her skin was an awful combination of cold, clammy, and scaly. Oliver’s knees began to quiver. He knew illusions were supposed to look real, but he didn’t know they could feel real too.
Reader, I suspect you and I both saw it coming. Even still it is hard to put into words the feeling of dread that arises when one discovers they have just picked a fight with a legendary anaconda. It is somewhere between realizing that one has agreed to walk barefoot over a field of molten lava and that one has agreed to go skydiving and inconveniently forgotten to pack a parachute.
And, as one tends to do in moments of sheer and utter desperation, Oliver let out a loud and panicked cry. He spun madly around searching for something, anything, that might be of help, and his eyes landed on the closest thing he had to a friend in the Swinging Swamp: Syd.
Syd hadn’t left!
Syd was still waiting faithfully, albeit anxiously, at the end of the muddy bank. Though Oliver was fairly certain Delilah knew how to swim, if the school’s enchanted rowboats kept the students safe from the ancient gang of crocodiles, perhaps they might do the same with anacondas? At the very least, Syd was loads faster than Oliver, and if they were lucky, maybe Delilah would get tired of chasing them. The only problem was, Delilah’s hissing was becoming more insistent, and her giant coils stood between Oliver and Syd like an insurmountable mountain.