The Wizard In My Shed Read online

  “Oh my goodness!” the kids screamed in unison.

  “I know. ’Tis wonderful!” cried Merdyn.

  But the children weren’t ecstatic about the abundance of flora and fauna. They were crowded around Shakia’s phone. “We’ve gone viral!” They were looking at a very fuzzy video of the moment the old well had erupted, filmed by someone crouching behind the glass on the upper level of the mall.

  “Now I knoweth why they call them startfoams,” said Merdyn. “A sorcerer has cursed them. As soon as thou looks at them, thou starteth foaming at the mouth!” He was quite pleased with this piece of observational humour.

  The kids ignored him.

  “Now the police are saying the disturbance was caused by a giant sinkhole,” Shakia read.

  “What’s a stinkhole?” said Kris.

  Merdyn’s patience snapped. He had experienced quite enough of this world’s indifference to nature. He would have to adopt a more robust approach to get Rose and her friends’ attention.

  Quickly, he pointed Thundarian at them and chanted, “TRILLIUM PEUMUS LEVITATO-THEM!” which the observant among you will recognise as a variation on the magnificent flying spell from earlier (or slow-flying spell, as it was now known).

  Rose, her brother, Tamsin and Shakia all left the ground at the same time. They started screaming. Tamsin was especially alarmed. She’d assumed the talking guinea pig had been some sort of magic trick, but now she was as weightless as an astronaut in space.

  “Whoa, what the—!” “Hey!” “What are you doing?” “Put me down!” they all cried as Merdyn took great delight in floating them (slowly) across the water until they were above the deepest part of the pool.

  “Please!” Shakia begged as she caught on to what Merdyn was about to do. “You’re going to break our phones!”

  “Yeah, he does that,” said Rose, speaking from experience.

  “I’m still in my clothes, dude!” cried Tamsin.

  “I’ve got Crème de la Bear in my hair, bruv!” shrieked Kris.

  But this just made it all the more fun for the pesky warlock. “What was that?” he said cheekily. “I can’t hear thee …”

  “I don’t know what’s going on out there,” came a squeaky voice from Rose’s bag, “but it doesn’t sound good.”

  “Merdyn, no!” Rose shouted. “I’ve got Bub—”

  But it was too late. With a flourish of Merdyn’s staff to end the spell, all four of them fell – SPLOOSH! – into the cold blue water: clothes, phones, hair fudge, guinea pig and all. As they wailed and scrambled to get out, Rose holding her backpack over her head and the others trying in vain to save their precious phones, Merdyn laughed to himself.

  And he went back to foraging on the forest floor. The children eventually emerged from the water and Rose pulled a saturated and very angry Bubbles out of her bag, putting him on a rock to dry. She was really beginning to understand why Merdyn had been cast out of his world now. She would gladly have sent him into the Rivers of Time herself at that moment, singing spell or no singing spell. But as they all stood on the bank now, dripping wet, their phones and rodents soaked to their circuits, something extraordinary happened.

  It started when Rose looked at Tamsin and saw her hair all out of place, and Tamsin looked at Rose and saw that she, too, looked like a drowned ginger rat. And the pair of them started to giggle.

  Then Rose, realising she couldn’t get any wetter, decided she was going back in the water.PLOP!Tamsin shrugged, and jumped back in too. Shakia was next. And if she was going in, so was Kris. The four of them then splashed and larked and played like they hadn’t a care in the world.

  While Rose and her (sort of) friends were cavorting in the water, Merdyn stocked up his supplies for his battle with Jerabo the next day. He needed to get hold of Jerabo’s spellbook if he was going to get home. It was the only way he knew to access the Rivers of Time. Jerabo wouldn’t just hand it over however, so Merdyn collected ingredients for a special spell of his own: a disenchantment potion. This was a liquid which, once drunk, would render a W-blood powerless for ever. One drop, and nabbing the spellbook from Jerabo would be as easy as taking eggs from a bird’s nest. (This was seen as OK in the Dark Ages, but now frowned upon. Do not try this at home!)

  Merdyn then collected wood and set it ablaze with a fire spell. WHOOSH CRACKLE. Rose was

  the first to climb out of the pool and huddle by the fire to dry off. Tamsin followed.

  “What else can you do?” Tamsin asked Merdyn as she took off her hoodie and spread it out beside her to dry faster. “Can you make fireballs and stuff?”

  “And can you make lightning come from your fingers, like in Star Wars?” wondered Kris, joining them with Shakia.

  Merdyn hadn’t a clue what Kris was talking about. “Come see me practise for my battle in the morning!” he said. “I’ll show you fireballs and lightning, the likes of which the world has never seen!”

  “Will you teach ME how to do fireballs?” asked Kris in excitement.

  “Only W-bloods can do real magic,” said Rose, rolling her eyes. “Isn’t that right, Merdyn?”

  “That’s right,” he agreed. “Are your father or mother a warlock, wizard or witch?”

  “Well, Rose can be a bit witchy sometimes,” said Kris. Rose elbowed him in the ribs for his cheek.

  “OW!”

  “Maybe we should show them something eh, Rose?” Merdyn put out a hand. “Give me Bubbles.”

  Rose passed a dry but still cross Bubbles over.

  “I’ll bet everyone a bag of hay this won’t end well,” said Bubbles. “Ooh. It’s poo time. Yep. Here it comes. Oh, hang on. Not a poo. A wee. False alarm.”

  Tamsin and Rose clapped their hands over their mouths to hide their giggles as Bubbles did a wee in Merdyn’s lap.

  “Bah! Thou filthy animal,” cried Merdyn. “Thou did asketh for it!” He banged his staff on the ground and threw crushed nettle leaves into the air around the guinea pig. “ANIMA FOXILOXI,” he intoned. And with that, Bubbles turned into a fox. POP!

  The laughter halted as everyone gasped in delight.

  “Oh crikey!” said Bubbles the Fox. “What’s going on here? That’s not my nose. Hang on …” Bubbles looked at his fluffy red tail. “That’s not my tail! Have I been eaten by a fox?”

  Rose couldn’t help it. Despite Bubbles’s alarm, another snort of laughter escaped from her nose. Tamsin and her sister were clutching on to each other, tears of glee rolling down their cheeks. Even Kris had given into a cool smirk. “ANIMA BUFFONEM TOADAMODE!” Merdyn banged his staff on the ground again. POP! This time Bubbles turned into a TOAD.

  “Ooooooh, now what?” croaked Bubbles the Toad. “What’s wrong with my voice? I feel cold. So cold. Why are you all looking at me?” He instinctively flicked out his tongue and caught a fly on it, before whipping it back into his mouth and gulping hard. “Bleugh! I feel sick. Why did I just do that? I don’t eat flies. That was disgusting.”

  “Stop!” cried Tamsin, laughing so much she was hardly able to breathe. “Please stop!”

  Merdyn turned Bubbles back into himself. Rose, her brother, Tamsin and Shakia were ALL rolling around in fits of giggles by now.

  “That’s better,” said Bubbles, relieved. “I didn’t feel myself then for a minute. You know when you don’t feel yourself? I didn’t feel myself then.” He saw everyone thumping the ground with their fists, they were laughing so hard. “Shut up. All of you.” Which only made them laugh even more. Even Merdyn joined in, chuckling with mirth as the sun went down. “TEE HEE, TEE HEE, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA …”

  “Why does everyone laugh at me?” said Bubbles to himself. “I am literally the least funny person I know.”

  Who’d have thought it?

  Bubbles the guinea pig!

  Some would pay to watch

  his comedy gig!

  As it was on the way, Shakia dropped Tamsin off at their house before driving the others home. Rose waved goodbye, but Tamsin walked
through her front door without waving back.

  “Maybe she’s just tired,” Rose whispered to Bubbles. Bubbles gave her a cynical look – no mean feat for a guinea pig.

  It was nearly 10.30 p.m. by the time Shakia pulled into Daffodil Close. She had driven as slowly as she possibly could so that Merdyn didn’t feel sick. To pass the time the warlock was trying to teach them the ‘rap’ (sixth-century folk song) which he’d delivered with such success in the shopping centre.

  “And the gumtree hush will get thy

  bush in a mush,

  The white willow lark will

  have thee up with a bark–”

  “Nay nay nay!” complained Merdyn. “’Tis ‘The gumtree bush will get thy mush in a hush’, and there’s no such thing as a willow lark! It doesn’t make sense your way!”

  The jollity in the car was brought to an abrupt halt, however, for as they approached Rose and Kris’s house they saw not one, but THREE police cars parked outside. Rose’s mum, Sergeant Murray and several officers were waiting, all looking very cross indeed.

  “Uh-oh!” said Rose, although she was also a little pleased to see her mum off the sofa again, even if it was to give them a telling-off.

  “I could blast them with a fireball?” Merdyn offered.

  “NO!” came the collective response.

  “As far as they know, we’ve done nothing wrong really. They can’t possibly believe Merdyn did all that with magic powers,” said Rose.

  “They said on the news it was a stinkhole, right?” Kris agreed.

  Rose and Shakia looked at each other and decided not to correct him.

  “So, we’ve nothing to fear,” said Rose sensibly. “We’d best just face the music.”

  They stepped out of the car to face said music. Or Sergeant Murray’s loudhailer, to be precise.

  “Put the staff DOWN!” Sergeant Murray roared at Merdyn through his loudhailer, which was totally unnecessary as he couldn’t have been more than four metres away. The policeman realised this and put it away.

  “Why didn’t you answer my phone calls and messages?” demanded a furious Suzy. “I missed The Making Of Britain’s Got Talented People, thanks to you! And as for you, Uncle Martin …” She turned on the warlock, who had almost forgotten who he was supposed to be. “I’m VERY disappointed in you! And what on earth are you wearing?” Merdyn was still dressed in his MC Warlock trendy togs.

  “The whole lot of you are under arrest!” announced Sergeant Murray next.

  “What exactly did we do wrong?” asked Rose.

  Sergeant Murray laughed. “What did you do wrong? How about breaking and entering a synthetic horticultural enclosure? Vandalism of an ancient monument? Resisting arrest? Pretending to fly? And the popular hair salon Hell’s Belles has reported half a very expensive tub of hair cream missing. You might know something about that too!” He directed this last remark at Kris. “Officers, arrest these criminals!”

  The officers moved to put handcuffs on the four felons when Merdyn issued a short plea.

  “If I am to spend the night incarcerated,” he said, “may I at least change into my normal attire? These youthful garments do not befit a man of my age.”

  Sergeant Murray looked him up and down. “You’ve got something right at least,” he said. “Go on then. Be quick about it.”

  “And I’ve got Bubbles with me,” said Rose. “You wouldn’t put a guinea pig in prison, would you?”

  Bubbles popped his head out of Rose’s bag. “What are you on about?” he said in his tiny voice. “You keep me in a cage!”

  Rose quickly shushed him.

  “And I need an overnight bag,” Kris said. “I’m on medication!” He meant he wanted to pick up his face cream.

  “Blimey O’Reilly! All right. But hurry up!” bellowed Sergeant Murray, tutting.

  “Why don’t you come inside a minute, Sergeant? I’ll put the kettle on,” offered Mum with a sigh. “It’s been a long night.”

  I think you, dear reader, would probably agree. But there was more drama to come.

  As you may have guessed, Merdyn wanted to do more than just change his clothes. Once he had switched back into his warlock outfit, he beckoned Rose to join him in the garden, where he unveiled his plan.

  “I will take all responsibility for these crimes,” he insisted. “I’ll say I did putteth a spell on you younglings and did forceth thee to help me.”

  “Merdyn, we can’t let you do that!” Rose said, more than a little surprised and touched by this gesture from the usually cranky warlock.

  “All will be fine. Now I have Thundarian, I shall escape from prison without difficulty.”

  “And then what? Spend your life on the run?”

  “I won’t need to,” Merdyn said in a soothing voice. “Tomorrow night I shall defeat Jerabo and go home. But Rose, thou must come with me to the theatre. I must give thee the singing spell before I go.”

  “I’d love to, Merdyn,” said Rose. “But I checked out tickets today. They’re fifty pounds each.”

  “Then thou must buy the whole theatre.” Merdyn dipped into his pouch and threw a handful of dirty stones at Rose. She sighed.

  “How many times? This isn’t money!”

  With Merdyn and Rose arguing outside, let us concentrate for a moment on Kris. Merdyn had snuck him the promised love potion in the car on the way home and, with his mum making tea in the kitchen, this was Kris’s chance to use it.

  Suzy now handed cups of tea to the supporting police officers and nodded to Kris to pour out the rest. “Those two are for Sergeant Murray and your friend, Shakia,” she said, pointing at two red mugs near the kettle.

  “Four and a half sugars for me,” Sergeant Murray said.

  Kris put four and a half sugars in the sergeant’s tea, and half a sugar in Shakia’s. He knew that she took half a sugar from the countless cups of tea he’d made for her at work. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the little bottle that Merdyn had given him, trying to remember the warlock’s strict instructions. Just one drop, Merdyn had said. And be careful that you are the first person she sees after she drinks it.

  Shakia was busy drying her phone on a radiator on the other side of the kitchen. This was his chance! Kris opened the potion bottle and tipped it towards the mug. But instead of just one drop, the entire bottle emptied into the mug in one go.

  “Oh sugar!” Kris said.

  As bad luck would have it, Sergeant Murray swept in behind him at that precise moment and snatched up one of the mugs. “Yes, four and a half. This mine?” he said.

  Kris looked at the red mug still sitting on the side. Now in a total panic, he couldn’t remember which one had four and a half sugars in, and which one contained a full bottle of love potion.

  “This must be mine then,” said Shakia, and she picked up the remaining mug and sipped from it. Kris made sure he stood right in front of her as she did so, just in case.

  “Wow,” she said, making a face. “How many sugars are in here?”

  Kris started to sweat. Had he given her the wrong mug? Because in that case …

  Sergeant Murray took a long slurp of his tea. “Oh dear,” he said. “I need more sugar in my …”

  His sentence trailed off. For at that moment, his eyes had fallen upon …

  Rose and Kris’s mum.

  Now, I don’t know whether you have ever had the fortune – or misfortune, some would say – to fall in love. But as soon as Sergeant Murray looked at Suzy, everything went into slow motion. (Or it seemed that way anyway!) Soft rock played in his head as she handed the tea out to the other officers. If you’d looked into his eyes at that moment, you would have seen a firework display in the shape of pink love-hearts going off in each iris. Up until this point in his life, Sergeant Murray had been married to the police force. Now, for the first time ever, he was completely in love with another human being.

  “Is there a problem with the tea, Sergeant Murray?” Mum asked, noticing the change in his fa
ce. “You look a little sick.” Which of course he was.LOVE SICK.

  “Not at all, Mrs Falvey,” Sergeant Murray replied woozily.

  “Please, call me Suzy.”

  “Suuu-zeee?” He savoured each syllable of her wonderful name. “Did I mention how utterly beautiful you look tonight?”

  Suzy blushed. “I’m not beautiful,” she said. “Well, a long time ago, maybe.”

  The other officers were chatting about football or some such, so it was only Kris that noticed this abrupt change in Sergeant Murray. He gulped.

  “Hey!” said Shakia, snapping her fingers in front of Kris’s eyes. “When this is over, do you wanna … go to the cinema or something?”

  Now Kris was confused. Wait, he thought, did she take the mug with the potion after all? Or – and this was his preferred option – did she like him without any hocus pocus?

  To make matters more confusing, Merdyn and Rose now spilled through the back door.

  “I should be arrested!” Rose shouted. “No one else!”

  “Set Rose free and arrest ME!” Merdyn insisted.

  Such was the hullabaloo that Sergeant Murray employed his loudhailer once again.

  “QUIEEET! No one here is getting arrested!” he said, much to everyone’s amazement. “Except maybe this lady,” he added, smiling coyly at Mum. “For making a criminally good cup of tea. Three cheers for our host, team!”

  The supporting police officers obediently got to their feet and cheered.

  “We’ll get out of your hair now, Suzy,” Sergeant Murray said mistily. “Sorry to have troubled you. And you, Uncle Martin. And, of course, your wonderful children.”

  Rose looked at Kris. What happened here? said her eyes.

  Kris held his hands up innocently. No idea! Though he had a fair clue, as did Merdyn, who’d spotted the empty love potion bottle on the side. But neither of them felt the need to say anything, especially as the mishap had literally just got them out of jail.