The Evil Wizard Smallbone (26 page)

Nick set his teeth. He wasn’t useless and he wasn’t helpless and he wasn’t going to let a clueless old bully use him as bait. Uncle Gabe might be big and mean as a snake, but he didn’t know magic.

Nick did.

The truck climbed a long hill and the trees thinned. At the crest of the hill, the road ran through a blueberry barren. Low bushes and gray boulders tumbled down the hillside like a thick, lumpy carpet to a stand of pines. Beyond it, the Reach shifted and sparkled under the bright spring sun.

Nick scanned the roadside for something he could use to stop the truck. A tree branch across the road would do it, but he’d never called wood before. The water was too far away. There were plenty of rocks, however. This was Maine; there were always plenty of rocks.

Nick closed his eyes and thought of stone. He liked stone. He’d been one, after all. You could make a knife out of stone, if you chipped it right. He’d cut his foot once, walking barefoot in a field just like the one they were driving through now. When he concentrated, he could sense them, slices of quartz, clusters of feldspar, shards of granite sharp enough to slice through the pickup’s balding tires. He called and felt them answer, drawn by his magic like iron filings to a magnet rolling out over the road in an avalanche.

The truck bounced and rocked over the tumbling stones, then there was a loud rubber
POP
as a tire blew. Uncle Gabe clung to the wheel, cursing all the devils out of hell as he tried to keep the pickup on the road. With a crunch and a tooth-jarring lurch, the pickup came to rest with its rear wheels off the ground and its front wheels in a ditch.

Nick had wedged himself under the dashboard as soon as they’d started to skid and pretended to be knocked out. He didn’t move when Uncle Gabe kicked the door open, got out, still cursing, and crunched around to the front to check out the damage.

It was now or never.

Nick knew that to turn himself into an animal, he had to have perfect Will and Concentration. Oh, and he had to be Confident, too.

He certainly had the Will. He’d find the Concentration. As for Confidence, there was only one way to find out.

The world turned inside out and around.

When it stopped, he was hit by a stench of stale beer, old cigarettes, and garbage festering behind the seats, overlaid with a sharp, peppery, sour stink that had to have been Uncle Gabe. He sneezed and shook himself.

The world was strangely colored — all blues and greens and shades of gray — and painfully bright and sharp. His nose was telling him more things than his brain could take in. He wasn’t sure he knew how to run with four feet.

Uncle Gabe shouted hoarsely, and instinct took over. Nick leaped out the open door and fled the asphalt stink of the road. The rocks didn’t offer much cover, and the low, thick bushes dragged at his fur. What he wanted was trees to hide in and rotten logs to hide under.

A sharp crack sounded behind him. Something zipped past and slammed into a nearby boulder, knocking off a shower of stone chips. Nick dodged behind the rock and burrowed into a thicket, where he lay among the twigs, panting.

His fox-self told him to try for the trees, but his boy-self knew he couldn’t outrun a bullet. And Uncle Gabe was getting closer, his big boots shaking the ground, his sour, beery, furious stink floating on the air. Nick heard a loud, concentrated buzzing. Wiggling forward, he saw a handful of yellowjackets hovering like tiny helicopters around a hole at the base of the rock.

Uncle Gabe hated yellowjackets.

Nick’s jaw dropped in a foxy grin. He crawled out of the thicket, gathered himself, and leaped up onto the rock, to find himself a stone’s throw from Uncle Gabe.

Nick put back his ears and hissed. Uncle Gabe grinned, reversed his rifle, and raised it like a club. Nick wheeled and jumped behind the boulder, landing bare inches from the entrance to the yellowjackets’ nest. He kicked some dirt into the hole, then dove into the bushes.

Behind him, the yellowjackets boiled up out of their nest in a swarm, looking for something to sting.

What they found was Uncle Gabe. He stomped and yelled and swung his rifle at the swarm like a baseball bat, but that just riled them up. He dropped the rifle and lit out downhill with the yellowjackets after him in a furious, buzzing cloud.

Nick crawled out of the bush, sniffed at the rifle, lifted his leg, and peed on the trigger. With any luck, the yellowjackets would sting Uncle Gabe until he swelled up like a balloon. In any case, he wasn’t likely to come back. In the meantime, Nick’s nose told him there was another fox nearby.

A moment later, he appeared on the boulder. His fur was a rusty red and his paws and muzzle were soft black. He twitched his black-rimmed ears. Nick ran over and touched his muzzle with his nose.

It was Smallbone.

“If you concentrate,” the fox said, “you’ll find you don’t need a human throat to talk like a human. It ain’t nature, but it is magic.”

Nick concentrated. “It’s a trap,” he said. “Fidelou sent Uncle Gabe to get me so you’ll leave Smallbone Cove.”

The red fox sat and swept his tail around his front paws. “That ain’t exactly the surprise of the year, Foxkin.”

“Aren’t you worried?”

“My story is what it is,” Smallbone said, “and it’s moving on to the climactic scene. You, on the other hand, got choices. You’ve passed all the tests, young Foxkin, outwitted the evil wizard, and slain the ogre — or at least made him mighty sick. You belong to yourself now, fair and square. You can go out into the world and seek your fortune, like them other young fellers who escape evil wizards. But,” he went on stiffly, “I’d take it kindly if you stayed with me. Only if you want to, though.”

“I want to,” Nick said.

“Then we better head on home,” Smallbone said. “No need to make this any easier for Fidelou than we have to.”

A little while later, they were trotting through the woods, heading north. Smallbone was moving fast, stopping from time to time to sniff for the next tree he’d peed on to mark the way home, and talking about foxes.

“Gray foxes,” he said, “ain’t like red foxes. Red foxes get the publicity, but you can do things we can’t. Climb trees, for instance.” He stopped, nose lifted. “Dang. Coyotes.”

Nick smelled them, too — rank, meaty, rotten, wrong. His lips drew back and he chattered angrily.

“Whole pack of ’em,” Smallbone said. “The old wolf, too. Dang.”

Now was the time, Nick thought, for the old man to turn into something big and dangerous, something that could fight coyotes. But Smallbone just pricked his ears and dove into the undergrowth.

The coyote stink was getting stronger. Instinct sent Nick skinning up the nearest tree, his paws turning in to pull him up the trunk. Once safely out of reach, he balanced on a sturdy branch and looked around. Through the trees, he saw a bush-tailed red fox perched on a giant boulder. His ears were glued against his skull, his teeth were bared, and he was surrounded by coyotes.

Nick danced on his branch with frustration. Why didn’t Smallbone blast the coyotes with a spell? He was the Evil Wizard Smallbone, for Pete’s sake. Why didn’t he turn into a dragon and eat them?

A huge wolf appeared, glimmering unnaturally white against the dark pines. As Nick watched, whimpering, the air crackled, and there stood the Evil Wizard Fidelou, shaking back his long black hair and howling with laughter.

If the coyotes smelled wrong, Fidelou smelled worse. He smelled like rotten eggs and raw sewage and dead rats in a muddy basement and spoiled milk. He smelled of pure evil. Nick crouched down on his branch and stayed very still. A land wind tossed the pine and ruffled his fur, blowing Fidelou’s scent into his nose and his own scent out to sea.

Fidelou kicked the coyotes aside like so many puppies, grabbed the snarling Smallbone by the scruff of his neck, and held him high.

“Well, if it is not my old friend Smallbrain!” The harsh voice crept along Nick’s bones like a chill wind. “How I have longed to meet you again! But you grow cautious: you keep to your den. So I find your weakness, eh? Your new apprentice, the apple of your eye. I remove him, and voilà! You follow, like a dog after her pup. Where is he, then, this precious apprentice of yours? Not here? Perhaps your rescue has failed, and he waits in my dungeon for you to join him. Perhaps I will kill him, eh? Or perhaps I will give him a pelt, make him my own obedient little dog, and teach him to hunt seals.”

Smallbone, who had been hanging limply in Fidelou’s grasp, snapped.

The wolf wizard tightened his grip. “You have no honor, you. I bring you a formal challenge, and you sulk, you hide, you decline to answer. By the Rules of Story, I have the right to fight you here and now, but I will not. Fidelou is honorable, even to a mortal hedge wizard. Before we duel, you will eat, drink, rest. And then it will be my great pleasure to kill you.”

With a flick of his hand, Fidelou produced a sack, stuffed Smallbone into it headfirst, and slung it over his white-cloaked shoulder. Then he gathered up the coyotes with a huntsman’s whistle and strode off among the trees.

Nick intended to follow him; he really did. The thought of Smallbone in the power of that stinky, horrible wolf wizard made him want to yip like a kit. He had to rescue him. If only he could figure out how to climb down the tree. If only he weren’t so hungry. If only he weren’t so very, very sleepy.

The sky was navy blue when Nick stretched, licked his paws, backed down the tree without thinking about it, and sniffed around for something to eat. When he came to his human senses, he was crunching on a bone, and the fur of his muzzle was sticky and matted. Licking it, he tasted fresh blood.

Concentrate. He had to concentrate.

Slowly, he remembered. Fidelou had captured Smallbone — or maybe Smallbone had let himself be captured. Anyway, Fidelou hadn’t killed Smallbone. He wanted to duel him. He was even going to give him time to rest.

There had been a wizards’ duel in “The Wizard Outwitted.” It had been exciting to read about, with lots of shape-shifting into wind and clouds and dragons. Since it was a fairy tale, the good guy had naturally won. Which brought up the question of what would happen when the dueling wizards were both, officially, evil.

Nick’s sensitive ears picked up a tiny rustle under a bush nearby. A mouse, or a shrew. His mouth filled with saliva. Sweet eating on a mouse. No — he shook his head sharply. Smallbone. Smallbone was in danger. He had to rescue him.

Alone?
his boy-self sneered.
When you can’t even keep your mind on him for two seconds? You need to get rid of this fox while you still can and get some help
.

Man, those mice — they were definitely mice — smelled good.

Nick dug out the mice and scarfed them up like extra-crunchy chicken nuggets with fur. After he’d licked his paws clean, he brought his mind back to the problem at hand, which was what?

Oh, yes. Rescuing Smallbone. Which he couldn’t do the way he was now, with his fox senses screaming to him to hide or go home, anywhere but after those coyotes.

Home, he thought. He’d go home. Turn himself back, get the bookshop to help him, make a plan.

Raising his nose, Nick searched the air until he sensed Smallbone’s mark. He trotted off through the undergrowth.

The first mark was on a tree stump, the second beside a rock. The third was a pile of scat, followed by a spruce tree and a cushiony patch of lichen growing on an old stone wall. As Nick clambered over, it was as if he woke up out of a long dream. He knew he was at the western boundary of Smallbone’s territory, and that this Wall was the Sentry that guarded it. Evil Wizard Books was not far now. He sniffed the air.
That way
.

Night fell as Nick trotted briskly past a pond full of fat frogs and through the woods toward the smell of magic. His paws hurt from the long run and he was hungry again, but he was home.

With the last of his strength he changed himself back into a boy and collapsed on the porch of Evil Wizard Books. As the world began to fade, the door opened and a cloud of books flew out around him. Nick closed his eyes and passed out.

N
ick woke up on the bookshop floor with Jeff licking his face. The sky out the window was a pale gray, and the birds were tuning up their morning chorus. He felt gritty and sore and guilty.

“It’s because of me,” Nick told Jeff. “He’d be safe if he hadn’t come after me. I’ve got to go save him.”

Jeff whined hopefully, and Nick realized that none of the animals had eaten since the day before. The goats hadn’t been milked. He himself was so hungry that his stomach hurt. And he needed a plan. He couldn’t go up against Fidelou without a plan.

He’d ask the bookshop to help him — as soon as he’d seen to the animals. Smallbone would skin him if he let the animals go hungry and dry.

Nick pumped water and handed out hay and feed and milked, then turned Groucho and the goats out into the meadow to graze just in case he wasn’t back by nightfall. Then he went to the bookshop.

It was quiet and cool and darker than it should have been, given the sunshine outside. Nick lit the lamp and turned to the shelves. There was no reason to beat around the bush, so he came right to the point. “Fidelou’s got Smallbone,” he announced. “I’m going to rescue him.”