Wizards (11 page)

"Meep, meep" [I like doing it]

"Sounds like a good answer to me, Jake. The trouble is that Jake doesn't understand people, does he Retnor?"

"Meep," my dragon agreed.

"Fine, then let’s get on with it."

"Haven't you brought any luggage?"

"Got my duffle bag."

"That thing would barely hold enough underwear for a whole week," Jenny protested, not without a degree of truth.

"I'll go commando, girl."

Jenny made an attempt to thump me, but I was ready for her and backed away. I felt quite pleased, score one for me. It didn't happen very often these days.

We mounted Fluffy's back in the same way we had done when we went to visit his parents. Then we discovered there was no way we could carry the suitcases with us.

"Just a sec." I got back off Fluffy, grabbed the suitcases and my duffle bag and hopped. A couple of seconds later I reappeared in front of them.

"I've dropped them off at the Palace," I explained.

"Couldn't you just grab hold of Retnor and me and hop?"

"Esmeralda wants us to make a big entrance into Salice."

It was only as Fluffy dove out of the cave entrance and glided down the cliff face that I thought to ask myself what would happen to us when Fluffy glimmed to avoid being seen. Glimming makes a dragon both invisible and insubstantial and we might have fallen straight through him for all I knew. Fortunately, we didn't, and his glim field stretched to cover the three of us.

When Fluffy gained some altitude, I hopped us to Salice, or rather to the road to Salice when I first visited this world. Fluffy meeped in alarm as we reappeared only a few feet above the ground. He flapped his wings in an effort to get us higher into the air, even though he uses magic to fly and the wings are merely for show. I suppose instincts drive us all, even when the need has long gone.

"This country is beautiful," Jenny said.

This was the first time I had seen Salice from the air and I agreed with Jenny. It looked a little like Austria, rolling grassland and tall hills with snow-capped mountains in the distance. It was much warmer than Wales. Esmeralda said it was spring here and the air confirmed it, everything was growing and you could smell heady scents all around you. The fields were full of yellow and blue flowers, though we were too high to identify what they were. Looking down at them made me feel happy inside.

The city state of Salice was easy to spot from the air. A long winding river moved slowly between the hills, snaking into and out of Salice on its journey to a faraway sea. Fluffy banked steeply and took us towards the city in a series of long fluid curves. He stopped glimming when we arrived, and he was obviously enjoying being visible.

We dropped lower and lower as the city got closer. In the end we glided over the rooftops, Fluffy's shadow flitting over the roofs in the bright warm sunshine.

"Over there, that's the Palace gate," I said.

"Meep." [Never] Only Fluffy could meep sarcastically.

He landed magnificently, which was amazing given his usual clumsiness. As soon as he touched the ground, he reared high on his hind legs and spread his wings impressively, looking every inch a legendary dragon.

Unfortunately, his rearing meant Jenny and I slid off his back into an untidy heap on the cobblestones. As I sat behind Jenny, this resulted in crushing me between the stones and my girlfriend.

"Meep." [Sorry]

The Palace guards were expecting us, but they still stepped back in alarm when Fluffy landed. By the time I got up, helped Jenny to her feet and pushed past my preening dragon, Princess Esmeralda had appeared at the gates.

"Welcome, Wizard Morrissey, Maiden Jenny and your dragon…"

"Retnor," Jenny interjected swiftly.

"Dragon Retnor. So much more appropriate a name than 'Fluffy' might I say."

"That's just one of the things Jake isn't very good at."

Fine. The trick to teach Jenny the language had worked and the first thing she uses it for is to gang up on me with Esmeralda.

"The people of Salice have much more reason to know that than you," Esmeralda said sweetly as she smiled at Jenny.

"He told me you were fat and ugly."

"Hold it!" I broke in. "Shouldn't we get off the streets and into the palace before you girls start swapping notes on how awful I am?"

"But Jake, Jenny is only going to be here for a week. We have so little time."

"Meep, meep, meep!"

"That's it!" I told all three of them angrily and hopped to our room in the palace. When even your dragon turns on you, you know it is time to hop out. I paced that room for over two hours before Jenny finally walked in through the door.

"Stand straight and stop slouching!" ordered the Royal Tailor, Grimaldi. I'd not worked out yet whether it was his first or last name as it was the only way people addressed him. Perhaps it was both, though Grimaldi Grimaldi seemed a bit like overkill to me.

I tried to straighten up and was stabbed by a couple of the pins he'd stuck in the trousers I was currently modeling. The pins jabbed into a particularly sensitive part of my body and I yelped.

"This would not be such a rush if you had arrived a little earlier. The Spring Ball is tonight and the Princess insists you should be presentable to royalty." Grimaldi loosened a couple of the pins and made some chalk marks on the black shiny cloth. "I believe we are both aware how impossible that is."

Grimaldi was a short man with a U of black curly hair ringing his brightly polished bald head that looked a bit like a lucky horseshoe throw. He had that strange way of moving some short people have. Stiffly from the hips, as though his legs were made of wood. Despite the fact he started insulting me from the moment we first met, I have to admit I liked him.

"Take the trousers off and I will do some sewing," he commanded. I started to obey and he cursed at me saying I was dislodging his pins. He came up to me and ripped my half-finished trousers to my feet, then held them open while I stepped delicately out. "Go away. Look out of the window or your looking at me will slow me down."

Having worked out my place in our relationship I did as I was told and stared out of the window, looking down on the palace courtyard.

The courtyard looked like an abbey cloister. There was a big square of immaculately tended lawn surrounded by covered walkways. Ivy grew around the carved stone pillars that held up the walkway roof. Between the pillars were carvings, usually of naked girls who somehow preserved their modesty by strategic hand positioning or through holding snakes and suchlike.

From my position, I could see the main entrance to the courtyard and a total of three of the sides, the forth being beneath me. Courtiers, and what I assumed must be the guests, promenaded down the walkways in gaily colored clothes. For a Welsh lad from the valleys it all looked suspiciously like a gay pride meeting. Not that I am prejudiced against gays, but it can go hard for you on the estates if the local thugs get that kind of idea about you, and the view unsettled me.

There was a certain fly in the ointment for those who wished to show off themselves and their fancy clothes. The fly in question had a thirty foot wingspan not to mention a wide grin on his face. Fluffy was holding court in the center of that immaculate lawn, which was already beginning to show signs of having encountered clawed feet too often.

Fluffy had his wings spread wide and was doing the same rearing act he first used at the gates. Every so often, he blew a large smoke ring into the air and then shot a little burst of fire through it as though it was a target. He was certainly feeling full of himself this morning.

I knew that grin of Fluffy's very well. Despite being the size of a light aircraft, Fluffy is pretty harmless, but he does have an outrageous and often wicked sense of humor. This was the first time he'd been in a position to get to know any humans except for me and Jenny and he was revelling in the attention.

As people entered the courtyard from the palace Fluffy slinked over to them like the snake he sometimes resembles before rearing and holding out a scaly claw for them to shake. Some of the guests responded politely and shook hands without hesitation. Others shook his hands with a grimace and obvious trepidation, but I watched one couple run for their lives.

This was a portly man in his forties and his fastidiously groomed wife. They backed against the wall as if Fluffy was a dangerous wild animal before finally sliding past him. They walked away and down the walkway, a walking speed that increased significantly when Fluffy puffed out a small ball of fire aimed at their backsides. I should have disapproved, but what I wanted to do was applaud as the discourteous couple took to beating at their scorched backsides as they ran.

I turned back towards Grimaldi to see how he was getting on. His two young female assistants were using primitive sewing machines to finish off my frilly pink silk shirt and even frillier and glossier black jacket. It looked to me as if I was going to an Elton John party and I would not have been the slightest bit surprised to find him playing the piano when I finally got there. I'm usually reluctant to go to anything that requires me to wear something other than jeans. I might be persuaded to wear cords if I wanted to impress them with my sophistication.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky I hadn't actually turned up going 'commando'. It was so easy to return to my home and pick up clean underwear that I never bothered to pack. My duffle bag held only my toothbrush, toothpaste and pajamas.

I only packed the pajamas as a courtesy to Jenny as she didn't like me wandering around in the nude. I've not enquired why, deciding it was simpler to travel with pajamas and avoid the issue.

"Come," Grimaldi said, gesturing to me to come over, "we will try what I have sewn for fit."

As I walked over, one of his two pretty assistants, the blonde one, approached him and handed him something. As she turned away, I noticed she was trying hard not to giggle.

"Remove those strange undergarments and put these on," Grimaldi demanded waving what looked like a pair of women's black silk knickers in my direction.

"No way."

I backed away from him as though he was holding a poisonous snake.

"Those things you wear are too bulky, the lines will show through the trousers and it will look like you have a nappy in there. This will look much better. Come on young man, I do not have the time to waste."

I took them reluctantly from his hands.

"Change now. We have no time."

I turned to look for somewhere to go while I changed. I couldn't help noticing as Grimaldi’s assistants moved in closer to get a better look.

"Now! Now! Get on with it. Helda and Bletty have seen it all before."

Well, they are professional tailors, I thought and turned away from them, bent over and quickly dropped my jockeys.

"Where is the royal barber when you have need of him?" Esmeralda asked, causing me to stumble as I struggled to get the tiny black silk briefs on and up.

"More like the royal lawn mower if you ask me," Jenny chimed in. How had these two managed to time their visit so perfectly? It wasn't so much a talent with Esmeralda, it was looking more and more like witchcraft.

I managed to pull the damned briefs up into place with my face as red as beetroot. I'm surprised the women didn't have to put up their hands to shield them from the heat I was generating.

Jenny put one hand to her mouth and pointed towards my groin with the other. Esmeralda managed to avoid laughing, though I could see the corners of her mouth stretching and twitching. I looked down to see what all the fuss was about but all I could see was a large black bulge.

"Just like two potatoes trying to escape a rubber balloon," Jenny giggled. "Jake, please wait while I switch on my mobile, I have to get a picture of this."

"Ladies," Grimaldi said loudly in a voice that brooked no argument. "You have asked me to do a job that’s impossible and now you are delaying me. Shoo, go, before I give up and go home."

"Thank you," I said fervently to Grimaldi as Jenny and Esmeralda headed out of the door trying to suppress their laughter and failing rather badly.

"Helda, find Wizard Morrissey an appropriately sized pair of underpants at once," Grimaldi said grimly. "And then you will report to my office with the large hairbrush tonight when we finish here. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior."

Helda, who it turned out was the blonde assistant, curtseyed deeply to Grimaldi with a look of horror on her face and then rushed off to the large bags of clothes they had brought with them. Her face was looking every bit as red as mine was earlier.

The new pair of underpants she brought me fitted perfectly and actually felt quite good, even though they certainly weren't my style.

Grimaldi and his girls finally finished with me and I stood before them in razor sharp creased black shiny trousers with a similarly colored jacket, pink frilly shirt and a bright red silk scarf thing round my neck. The royal cobbler delivered a pair of black shoes so shiny I was scared to go out in the sun with them for fear of blinding someone. I felt like a complete clown as I looked at myself in the full length mirror, though I must admit that I did look like an immaculately-clad clown.