The Evil Wizard Smallbone (27 page)

His words were met by silence. No rustles. No book soaring or fluttering or floating out of the shadowy aisles. His heart began to pound.

“Is this one of your stupid tests? Because I don’t have time for that. Fidelou’s dead set on a wizards’ duel, and I don’t know if Smallbone will win!”

There was an uncomfortable pause, and then a book fluttered down the stairs and landed neatly in Nick’s hands. It was
E-Z Spelz for Little Wizardz
. It wasn’t a joke — as far as Nick could tell, the bookshop didn’t make jokes, although sometimes the books did. And
E-Z Spelz
had always been his friend. He opened it and read.

It was coming up on noon when Nick went to rescue the Evil Wizard Smallbone. He had Smallbone’s pipe in one pocket, a map of Maine in the other, and a basket on his arm containing a very indignant Tom. He closed the door behind him, whistled to Jeff, and headed toward the path to Smallbone Cove. He did not lock up.

It was a beautiful day. The weather had softened, and the path through the woods was almost dry. Leaf buds were swelling on the trees, and pink and white flowers were blooming among their roots. The air was alive with the faint, high creaking of peepers and the shrill voices of birds arguing over nesting spots. Nick unbuttoned his jacket and walked faster. He’d drop by the Mercantile, leave Tom and Jeff with Lily and tell her what was up, then walk to Fidelou town.

What he really needed was a car, but he didn’t think Lily would lend him hers. Maybe he could thumb a ride.

Smallbone Cove was quiet. The fishing boats were still out on the Reach, the kids were in school, and Nick didn’t care where the rest of the Covers were. They couldn’t help him anyway.

The Mercantile’s window was boarded over, and the sign said
CLOSED
. Nick opened the door and went in.

Four pairs of startled eyes — two blue, two dark — turned to him from different parts of the store. They belonged to Ollie, Hell Cat, Mutt, and Dinah, who were putting the Mercantile back in order after the Howling Coyotes’ last visit.

“Hi, Foxkin,” Dinah said.

Nick had no time to waste on manners. “I got to go somewhere,” he said, “and I don’t want to leave Tom and Jeff at the house in case I don’t come back right away. Will you take care of them?”

Dinah looked alarmed. “I don’t know if Mom —”

“C’mon, Dinah. She could handle a coyote, she can handle a couple of pets. Or maybe you can get one of the farmers to take them.” He thrust the basket containing Tom into her arms. “Where is she?”

Dinah clutched the mewing basket. “Town Meeting. She’ll be a while.”

“Why do you need somebody to look after them, anyway?” Mutt broke in. “Where’s Smallbone?”

“Gone,” Nick said flatly. “Fidelou got him. They’re going to fight a wizards’ duel, and I have to try and stop it.” He felt better saying it, even if it didn’t make any difference. “I was going to tell Lily, but you can do that.”

“Wizards’ duel?” Ollie asked uncertainly.

Nick jittered impatiently. “It’s like a giant game of rock, paper, scissors, only the wizards turn themselves into dragons and winds and try to kill each other.”

“What happens if Smallbone loses?” Dinah wanted to know.

“Smallbone won’t lose,” Hell Cat said. “His speciality is turning people into things. What’re you worried about?”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Nick said. “Fidelou’s not human. He’s really old and really powerful and really horrible. As bad as you think Smallbone is, Fidelou’s a thousand times worse. He stinks. And if he kills Smallbone, you’re next.”

He looked around the circle of frightened faces. He saw excitement, fear, and suspicion. “You’ll tell your mom, right?” he asked Dinah. “ ’Cause I gotta go.”

Mutt had been down on the floor, wrestling with Jeff, but when Nick started for the door, he stood up. “Hold on. I’m coming, too.”

Nothing else would have stopped Nick, but that did. “What?”

“You heard me. I’m not mad at Smallbone anymore. You’re right. He’s different from who he was. He even smells different.” His thin upper lip lifted slightly. “Besides, I hate coyotes.”

Ollie cleared his throat. “I’ll come, too, if you think there’s anything I can do.”

It was a brave offer. Nick considered it. “I don’t know. Can you drive?”

“Do you have a cart and a horse?” Ollie asked.

Nick shook his head. Ollie looked relieved.

Dinah bounced impatiently. “We’ve got a car. And I know how to drive it, too.”

Everyone’s attention shifted to her. There was a thoughtful silence.

“But you can’t leave Smallbone Cove,” Mutt pointed out.

“We don’t
know
that, not for sure. Nobody’s tried, not in living memory. Besides, the Weathervane and the Stream are still weak, right?” Nick nodded. “Then it’s worth a try.” She turned faintly pink. “I’m a scientist. I experiment. And I’ve always wanted to see outside Smallbone Cove.”

Nick wanted to tell her no, but he didn’t. It was her decision, not his. The fact that he’d feel better if she came was beside the point. “That’s it, then,” he said. “Mutt, Dinah, and me will go to Fidelou.”

Hell Cat looked affronted. “I’m coming, too.”

Everybody stared at her. Mutt snorted. “That’s a hoot and a holler. What about ‘Smallbone’s evil and I hate his guts forever’?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Hell Cat said loftily. “You need somebody with brains along on this picnic.”

D
inah stole her mother’s car.

“She’d only say no if I asked,” she said. “Besides, if we rescue Smallbone, he’ll square it with her, and if we don’t, I’d rather she killed me than be a coyote.”

Mutt and Hell Cat got in the backseat, Mutt looking like he’d rather be in Smallbone’s kitchen, Hell Cat bouncing with excitement. Nick got in the front seat next to Dinah, and they drove off toward the Stone Bridge. Nobody talked about what might happen to Dinah when they crossed it, but Nick, at least, could think of nothing else. He was pretty sure what happened to Covers who ventured outside the Town Limits, and he thought Dinah knew, too.

Dinah slowed down as the car approached the Stone Bridge, then gave it the gun. The car lunged over the Stream, then stopped with a lurch, its front wheels resting on the county road.

Nick looked at Dinah. She was staring at her arms in horror as they sprouted a coat of thick, glossy fur — silver gray with black spots like her hair. Her fingers spread into flippers, her head lengthened into a snout, and then Nick was sitting next to a harbor seal wedged between the seat and the steering wheel, groaning.

There was a shocked pause, then Hell Cat said, “Golly. Who’s going to drive now?”

Nick reminded himself he couldn’t hit a girl. “Shut up, Hell Cat. Mutt, help me get Dinah out of the car.”

It wasn’t easy. Dinah flapped her flippers when they tried to move her and threatened them with a mouthful of small sharp teeth. In the end, she fell out of the car on her own and galumphed awkwardly across the bridge. On the far side, she collapsed against a tree.

She was still a seal.

“What’ll we do now?” Mutt asked.

What Nick wanted to do was jump in the car and see how fast he could drive to Fidelou. But he couldn’t stand seeing Dinah so sad and helpless when he knew she was so brave. She’d stolen the car for him, after all, and done her best to get him where he needed to be.

“We take her back,” he said.

Hell Cat’s eyes went wide. “All the way to town?”

“There was a sign for the Smallbone Cove Goat and Dairy Farm back down the road. We’ll take her there. I’ll get the car, and you bring her some water from the Stream. It can’t hurt her, and it might help.”

Like Jerry, Nick had learned to drive on Uncle Gabe’s pickup. Lily’s old Ford was a lot easier. Nick turned it around and pulled up near the tree where Mutt was trickling water into Dinah’s mouth from his hands. The three of them shoved her into the backseat and drove back the way they had come.

Whether it was the water or being on the right side of the Stream, Dinah was definitely regaining her natural shape. She still looked like nothing you’d want to find on your front porch on a bright April morning, but she’d lost her muzzle and her whiskers and reabsorbed some of the fur. Mutt and Nick helped her to the porch, rang the bell, and ran for the car, getting in just as a woman in a red shirt opened the door and saw Dinah slumped on her porch swing.

Nick stamped on the accelerator and laid rubber out of there.

When they got to the Stone Bridge, Nick took a piece of string and Smallbone’s pipe out of his pocket and hung it on the rearview mirror.

“What’s that for?” Hell Cat asked.

“Finding spell,” Nick said shortly. The stem swung left and right, then stopped, quivering. “Inland,” Nick said. He took out the map and handed it to Mutt. “Here. You navigate. We got us a wizard to rescue.”

It was a horrible drive. No state trooper alive was going to believe that Nick was old enough for a license, so they kept to the back roads, some of them dirt, none of them straight, all of them treacherous with potholes and frost heaves. Nick was ready to jump out of his skin.

Suddenly, the pipe stem swiveled to the right. Nick spun the wheel and screeched to a halt.

“Why are we stopping?” Hell Cat asked.

Nick rolled down the window. The rotten stench of Fidelou’s magic hung in the air like smoke. He unhooked the pipe from the rearview mirror and spun it gently. The stem whipped around once, then pointed straight at what looked like an impenetrable tangle of bushes and briars. Nick unfocused his eyes.

The road to Fidelou was a track barely wider than the car, unpaved and rutted, with branches dangling low enough to brush the top of a coyote-biker’s unhelmeted head. “There it is,” he said.

“I don’t see nothing,” Hell Cat complained.

“Good thing you’re not driving, then.”

Nick rehung the pipe on the rearview mirror and, keeping an eye on the stem, drove forward. They crawled along, the axles complaining as they bumped over the deep ruts.
If Fidelou didn’t kill them
, Nick thought,
Lily would
.

“So, Foxkin,” Mutt said, “what’s the plan?”

Nick hadn’t made one. But he wasn’t going to tell Mutt that. “We check out the lay of the land.”

Hell Cat made a rude noise. “By driving up to Fidelou’s lair in Lily’s old Ford?”

Nick kept his eyes on the pipe. “You didn’t have to come, Hell Cat.”

“I suppose you got a better idea?” Mutt asked her nastily.

Hell Cat grinned. “Glad you asked. First off, we ditch the car before we get to town.”

“That makes sense,” Mutt admitted.

“Thank you,” Hell Cat said. “Second, we split up. Puppy-boy here and I sneak in one way and Foxkin sneaks in another.”

“That’s it?” Mutt barked. “That’s your plan? Those are
coyotes
, Hell Cat. They have noses. They’ll smell us before we even get close.”

“Not if we find some really smelly mud and roll in it,” Hell Cat said. “Besides, Dinah said coyotes mostly sleep during the day. Also wolves. So there.”

After some discussion, Nick pulled the Ford into a gap in the trees and cast a glamour to disguise it as a lichen-covered boulder. Hell Cat saw through it right away, but Mutt didn’t, even when Nick explained the trick. Hell Cat said it was because cats were naturally more magic than dogs, and Mutt said if Hell Cat was so magic, she could go rescue Smallbone by herself. They were still arguing as they went off down the road.

Spring had not yet come to Fidelou’s woods. The trees were silent, dark, and barren, the undergrowth dry and dead. The only sound Nick heard as he walked was his own feet crunching through last year’s dried leaves. Nick pulled out Smallbone’s pipe and let it swing. The stem wavered, then quivered to a standstill, pointing straight ahead. He moved on until finally he reached a tumbledown shack with dirty yellow paint flaking off its warped clapboards like sunburned skin. Behind it, two motorcycles were parked under a spidery drying rack hung with coyote pelts, their empty heads dangling between their empty paws. Beyond it, he saw another drying rack in another muddy yard, and on down a row of racks and pelts and garbage-studded mud.

The smell of the pelts made his eyes sting.

Keeping to the edge of the woods, Nick crept along behind the shacks until he came to a gray-shingled general store, where he stopped and got out the pipe. This time, the stem pointed toward the store. Nick scuttled across the muddy clearing and squatted behind a friendly barrel, then peered around the corner and saw Fidelou’s castle.

It looked just like the sort of place an ancient French wolf wizard who liked motorcycles would live. Nobody was around except a burly Howling Coyote standing guard by the door.

Nick drew back behind the barrel and considered his options. If that was where Smallbone was, then he had to get in, hopefully without getting caught. Castles in movies always had side doors. Maybe this one did, too.

A hand grabbed his wrist and twisted his arm up between his shoulder blades. A wiry arm clamped around his throat, and an unpleasantly familiar voice said, “Where’s Dad at?”