The Evil Wizard Smallbone (15 page)

After a moment, Nick retrieved the book and smoothed its pages with trembling hands. None of them were torn, and the cover was only a little scratched. But inside it was still blank.

Nick climbed back into the hayloft, slid the offended book into the straw, and brushed Groucho’s coat until he’d calmed himself down. The way he was feeling, the last thing he needed was to run into Smallbone. He’d be eating flies — or worse, scuttling around the kitchen floor with Hell Cat after him — in no time flat, with no way of coming back to himself again until Smallbone decided he was tired of doing his own cooking.

Or maybe Smallbone wouldn’t turn him back at all.

The next day, he fished
101 Steps
out of the straw, just to check.

Nick studied the completed Step 75. It didn’t say a thing to him, but at least he’d done it.

I
n Maine, February is the longest month of the year despite having the fewest days. For Jerry, this February was longer than most. It wasn’t just the pretty much nonstop snow and wind that kept him stuck in a two-room house without a TV or even a radio to distract him. It was being stuck in that two-room house with his dad. Gabe had a way of making Jerry feel crowded and lonely at the same time that made him want to howl. The only thing that kept him from going crazy with boredom was the hope of earning his pelt in the spring. In the meantime, he didn’t have much to do but play solitaire and hope the beer held out until the next delivery.

He was shoveling a path out to the gas pumps to check if they were frozen one afternoon when a coyote appeared at the edge of the woods and turned into a girl wearing a buff-and-gray pelt with the head over her head like a mask. She pushed it back until the muzzle pointed at the sky as if it were howling. “Hey, Jer!” she said. “The Boss wants to see your dad. Better go get him fast. The Boss don’t like waiting.”

A special invitation from the Boss to the town mechanic turned out to include a snow-free path from the garage to the castle just wide enough to walk on. Still, by the time they got there, Jerry was freezing and wet, and his dad was red nosed and sullen. It didn’t help that about the only thing they could see by the flickering torchlight in the Great Hall was the misty breath of the human Howling Coyotes, bunched together on the red carpet. A group of actual coyotes, with fur, sat and lay around the throne, where the Boss lounged comfortably on his white wolf pelt, his feet propped on the footstool, with Hiram and Audrey stationed behind him, scowling importantly.

Except for an occasional whine or sniff, the hall was completely still.

“I have summoned you,” Fidelou said, “to witness my triumph. Smallbone’s Sentries droop and wither like trees in a year of drought. When they fail — and they must fail — Smallbone Cove will be ours. It is only a question of a little push in the right place, at the right time, by the right hands. Those hands cannot be mine.”

The Howling Coyotes shifted uncomfortably.

“I am a loup-garou,” Fidelou went on. “I am magic, me, to the marrow of my bones. As long as there remains a spark of power in any of the Sentries, I may not pass. Yet many of you have crossed the Stone Bridge across the Stream and taken meat from under Smallbone’s very nose. It follows then that human hands may complete the destruction my wolf magic has begun.”

He grinned — an unsettling and inhuman grin. “Let those who have not yet earned their pelts come forth. Rejoice, pups! Your time has come!”

He hadn’t even finished before Jerry was elbowing his way forward, grinning as ferociously as he knew how. This was his chance to prove that he was good coyote material, to earn his pelt and join the pack for real. His father might think he was a pain in the neck and a waste of space, but Fidelou needed him.

Night falls early in February. It had been dark for hours when the aspiring pack members hit the road to Smallbone Cove. Because of the hard winter and the slim pickings, there were only two: Jerry and a big guy with a bad attitude named Pete. Jerry didn’t want to count his dad.

The light of a full moon filtered through the clouds, turning the sky a milky gray that matched the pelt of the great white wolf loping easily beside the road. Jerry rode on his old Yamaha, following the taillights of Pete’s Harley, with his dad’s pickup behind him. A light snowfall glittered in his headlights and stung his cheeks. For the moment, he was perfectly happy.

Fidelou led them to a field east of Smallbone Cove, where Gabe pulled a heavy duffel full of tools from the back of the pickup. It held, among other things, a big camping lantern that lit the way through the trees to what looked like a perfectly ordinary stone wall, covered with patches of lichen and moss and almost low enough to step over.

“Don’t look like magic to me,” said Pete.

Gabe snorted. “Really? Then how do you explain how come it ain’t covered with snow?”

It was true. Not only was the Wall clear of snow, but so was the ground for a couple of feet in front of it. Jerry watched as big fluffy flakes fell through the camping lantern’s beam and ran down the gleaming rocks to the soggy mess of leaves at the foot. He shivered, and not from the cold.

The Boss, on two legs now, pointed a long finger at the Wall. “Destroy it!”

There was a pause, and then Pete hefted a sledgehammer, stepped forward, and slammed it down with all his weight behind it. The sledgehammer hit the rocks with a resounding
CLANG!
Pete dropped the hammer, thrust his hands into his armpits, and swore. The Stone Wall was undisturbed. The sledgehammer, on the other hand, was cracked right up the middle of its iron head.

Gabe laughed. “I told you that wouldn’t work. Step aside, boy, and let the old guy show you how it’s done.” He thrust the lantern into Jerry’s hand and took a screwdriver out of the duffel. Then he knelt by the Wall and swore. “Can’t see,” he complained. “Bring that dang light closer.”

If the Boss hadn’t been there, Jerry might have told his dad what he could do with the lantern. But he wanted that pelt and he knew he wouldn’t get it by acting out. He held the cone of light steady as Gabe scratched at the packed dirt and moss and rotten leaves that had built up between the top stones.

“This,” he said as he worked, “is a dry stone wall. There’s nothing holding it together but gravity and habit and some old moss.” He gave one last dig and stood up. “That oughta do it. Pete, you want to give me a hand?”

It was obvious from the look on Pete’s face that he didn’t want to do anything but run home. The Boss growled. Pete got a crowbar and inserted the end under a capstone. Gabe positioned his own crowbar.

“On the count of three,” he said. “Give it all you got.”

Pete nodded. Jeff clutched the lantern.

“One. Two. Three.”

The two big men leaned into their crowbars, straining. By rights, that stone should have popped off the wall like a rotten tooth. But all it did was shift and slide back a bit.

Cursing, Gabe put his hand on it and pushed.

With a wrenching grind, the rock slid toward him.

Pete jumped back. Gabe dragged in a hissing breath, then screamed once, hoarsely.

The flashlight beam wavered as Jerry leaned over his father’s hand. The stone was back where it started, with Gabe’s little finger caught in what had been a gap and wasn’t anymore. It didn’t look good. There was a lot of blood, and his father was bug-eyed and whimpering.

The Boss shoved Jerry aside, his black hair electric with fury.
“Imbecile!”
he snarled, and seizing Gabe’s arm, murmured furiously under his breath. Gabe’s arm grew long and thin and oddly jointed, then started sprouting black feathers.

The Boss gripped the wing by what looked like the elbow and pulled. Gabe screamed again and cradled the wing across his chest. The Wall was unchanged, except for a long black feather caught in a seam between two stones.

“The Wall holds,” the Boss growled. He sounded more disgusted than angry. “Yet,” he said, brightening, “it is weakened, I think. The feather may weaken it further. We will try again another night.”

N
ick spent the next week doggedly working his way through
101 Steps to the Animal You
. He discovered that, along with being stubborn and quick-tempered, he was passionate, bold, and active; that he was a good liar because he was smart; that he had an attitude because he hated being told what to do; that he liked animals better than people; that he liked spicy, salty flavors better than sweet, milky ones; that his favorite colors were red and dark brown. None of the steps seemed to have anything to do with magic. He stuck with it, though, until finally, finally, he turned the page and read:

The spell was short, but oddly slippery. It took a whole day of practice before
101 Steps
was satisfied that he knew it. Step 99 took even longer, mostly because Nick really needed to be sure that he had it down cold.

Now he was sitting on a hay bale and leaning against Groucho’s pen, listening to the wind chase the snow around the corners of the barn and the goats chewing their cud.
Animal You
was open to Step 100.

It was very short:

“No,” Nick said.

Text appeared under the spell, bolded and underlined.
Animal You
was annoyed.

“I’m not scared,” Nick said. “I just don’t want to. I wanted to learn how to turn myself back if Smallbone transformed me again, and I did. I’m good.”

“Because I have Confidence,” Nick said, and put the book back under the straw.

That night, he pulled the mysterious chart out from under his shirts and studied it. He still couldn’t make sense of it, but there was something about it — the way it made his fingers tingle, the way the numbers almost spoke to him — that made his brain itch to understand it. He was sure it was elemental magic.

He was an elemental wizard.
101 Steps
had said so.

The next day, when Smallbone was safely shut in his tower, Nick went to the bookshop.

“I’ve finished the book you gave me,” he said. “It was really useful, but I’m not really a shape-shifter. I want to learn to read that chart you gave me. I want a book on Elemental Magic. Please,” he added, because he was learning that it never hurt to be polite to magical things.

He got his reward when a volume bound in red flapped heavily out of the darkness and landed next to the wooden duck on the table. Stamped in black on the cover were the words
The Elements of Elemental Magic
.