The Wizard In My Shed Page 2

  None of this was helped by the fact Rose was without her much-needed glasses. She’d decided that they didn’t go with her outfit: a skin-tight leopard-skin onesie like one she’d seen Beyoncé wearing in a YouTube video. In hindsight, this was a bad decision, as now she couldn’t see a darn thing. She dashed around the stage, glimpsing nothing but a blur of faces and the occasional blinding light. By now, the crowd were giggling loudly.

  It wasn’t a good start.

  By the time Rose finally found her light, she was breathing heavily. She still felt positive, however, of giving a fantastic rendition of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love”.

  Rose had inherited her dad’s endless positivity. He had always told her that as long as you tried your best, it was impossible to fail. She had practised for this moment in front of a mirror every night for three weeks. If what her dad said was true, which it usually was, this was bound to go well.

  The music started.

  “O-oh O-oh O O O O wah

  O-oh-O-oh -oh -oh -oh -oh!”

  From the moment she began to sing, Rose felt something was wrong. When she sang at home it was within the muffled confines of her bedroom, her only audience her yellow guinea pig, Bubbles. After merely an hour of rehearsing, her older brother Kris had insisted she closed the door and wore headphones so he didn’t have to listen to the song over and over again and go crazy himself. Now, onstage, singing out loud for the first time, she felt strangely exposed, like one of those dreams where you end up at school with no clothes on.

  “Oh yeah you got me so crazy in love, yes I’m crazy in love! O-oh o-oh etc.”

  Rose started her dance moves. She figured that if her singing voice didn’t wow the crowd, she could always rely on her superb dancing.

  In her room she had quickly realised that she couldn’t dance like Beyoncé. Who could? Therefore, Rose had invented her own routine. Her signature move, the one she was most proud of, was ‘the high kick’. It was as it sounds: a super-high kick that almost went higher than her block of frizzy red hair that sat atop her head in bunches.

  She let loose some high kicks now, followed by some ‘spins’. Rose was proud of these too. They were really just an extension of the high kick. When the elevated leg came down, she would swing it across and behind her standing leg, using the centrifugal force to send her upper body into a spin.

  Getting into the spin was easy. Getting out was always problematic, however, even in her bedroom. And as Rose now couldn’t see very well, she kept finding herself exiting the spins facing the BACK of the stage, then having to track down the audience again in time for the next bit.

  It gives me no pleasure to tell you, reader, that eventually, the combination of out-of-tune singing, manic high kicking and wonky spins took their toll on the audience. Soon, loud gales of laughter began to spread through the auditorium. “HEE HEE! HA HA, HA HA HA HA HAAAAA!” When the song finally ended, even the three judges (three fully grown adult teachers, mind!) couldn’t keep straight faces.

  “If that had been a comedy act, you’d have got top marks, Rose,” said Mr Culkin (head judge and maths teacher) eventually. The other judges were too busy laughing even to speak.

  Rose made her way from the stage and into the schoolyard, feeling completely embarrassed. You could have fried an egg on her cheeks, they were so hot and red. She tried to pull herself together. What did Mr Culkin know about music anyway? He thought Stormzy was a type of weather front. She’d endured embarrassment before. She would get through this blip.

  The last thing she needed to see, however, were the CATs walking towards her.

  Catrina, Andrea and Tamsin were three of the most odious twelve-year-olds you’d ever wish to meet. They were collectively known as the CATs, because of their names and because they had claws. Nasty ones. Metaphorically speaking, anyway. And now they had made their way out of the auditorium specifically to get those claws into poor Rose.

  “Hey, frizzpot,” said Catrina, who wore too much make-up. “Nice moves!” She then did her own little high kick by way of parody. Rose couldn’t help noticing that it wasn’t even knee height, never mind hair height.

  “Your audition from hell just went viral,” Tamsin sneered. Tamsin had brains, but didn’t like to use them.

  She shoved her brand new smartphone in Rose’s face and pressed ‘play’ on a video.

  Rose saw the grainy footage of herself high kicking and singing in a voice which seemed even worse than she remembered. The video had been liked over seven hundred times already.

  Andrea (Andie for short) joined in. She was the muscle behind the CATs, looking more like a wrestler than a schoolgirl and towering head and shoulders above even the boys. “You need singing lessons, you frizzy-haired freckle-mouse.”

  “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” reasoned Rose. This was another lesson her dad had taught her. He’d told her to say this to bullies to stop them in their tracks, or at least confuse them long enough to make her escape.

  “Have it your way,” replied Andie, before casually picking up a stick and hurling it at Rose. The stick struck Rose square on the forehead. THUD!

  “OW!” yelped Rose.

  But even in her agony, she had to give Andie some respect. Of all the times she’d used her dad’s ‘sticks and stones’ line, Rose had never once realised she was actually giving her enemies a useful piece of advice.

  Mind you, why am I surprised? she thought, a hot soup of anger and sadness bubbling inside her. Hadn’t her dad also told her that as long as you tried your best, it was impossible to fail? He’d been wrong about that too.

  Suddenly every piece of advice her beloved dad had ever given her seemed to be crumbling into dust beneath her feet.

  And then Rose ran,

  speeding through the gears,

  she fled the cackling CATs

  so they could not see her tears.

  Rose was still running when she passed the Oldwell Shopping Centre.

  Now, if you will permit me, I must just add an aside here. You see, the Oldwell Shopping Centre has a very interesting history relating to our story. Were you to step through its vast electronic sliding doors on to its gleaming marble-effect floor and carry on past the neon signs of Guccio and SportsDirectly, just before Accessorize This, you would find yourself looking at a fake ornamental garden. This fake ornamental garden has fake flowers, plastic trees and synthetic grass. The only thing that’s real about the fake ornamental garden is a very real …OLD WELL.

  And if you are thinking, Aha! I bet it’s the old well from Chapter One, the one that mean old Jeremiah Jerabo threw Merdyn the Wild’s broken staff, Thundarian, down approximately one thousand five hundred years ago, then you’d be . . . WRONG. It was a different old well and—

  I’m JOKING. Of course you’re right. You’re obviously very clever and deserve a gold star or a trophy. It was the exact same well, but now surrounded not by a forest of trees, but by a forest of gleaming shops. The company which had built the sprawling shopping centre several years earlier had only got permission from the council on the condition that they preserved the historic well. And so, they had turned it into a feature.

  Today, like every day, two security guards, Jim and Alan, stood guard over the ornamental garden. In the olden days the well had been used as a wishing well, and people were invited to throw in coins in exchange for their dreams coming true. However, in more recent times, people had realised that you could also take coins out of the well, presumably to make their dreams of having 50p or £1 come true. So the shopping centre management had decided to put a fence around the well and guard it. This is where Jim and Alan came in.

  Guarding the ornamental garden was one of the least demanding jobs in the world, so it was surprising that neither Jim nor Alan noticed when a huge hole opened up in the fake grass behind them and an ethereal green light shot out. A few of the shoppers noticed, but no sooner had the hole opened up than it closed again, so they quickly dismissed
it as a publicity stunt and carried on shopping.

  But as the light disappeared, it left behind it on the fake grass the crumpled figure of … sixth-century warlock Merdyn the Wild.

  Merdyn opened his eyes. His pupils grew huge as they adjusted to the strip lighting and neon signs of the shops. Remember, in the Dark Ages the only light sources were the sun, fire and the odd candle. Now he had flashing lights, mirror balls and all sorts of other luminescence assaulting his peepers.

  “Heaven forfend!” he exclaimed. “Hell is worse than I thought!”

  This statement brought him to the attention of Jim and Alan, who could scarcely believe their eyes when they turned around. Of all the vagabonds and thieves they’d had to turf out of the garden (a whole six in eleven years!), this was the most impudent yet.

  “Oi!” said Jim. “What you doin’ in there?”

  “Trying to fetch yourself some coins from the well, are you?” said Alan, pleased with his powers of deduction.

  “Who do you think you are?” added Jim.

  This was the sort of question that didn’t require an answer, but Merdyn sought to give him one anyway.

  “I AM MERDYN THE WILD!”

  he boomed.

  “THE GREATEST WARLOCK WHO

  EVER LIVED! DESTROYER

  OF ENEMIES! BOW DOWN

  BEFORE ME, DEMONS,

  OR FEEL MY WRATH!”

  There was a pause as Jim and Alan looked at each other.

  “You what?” said Alan, finally.

  The two guards stepped over the little garden fence and moved menacingly towards the sixth-century warlock.

  Merdyn reached instinctively for Thundarian in order to blow them away with a fireball. But he just ended up grasping at thin air, for of course he was without his loyal staff. He would have to use the herbs around his belt to perform magic. Herb spells were primary-school alchemy compared to more advanced staff spells, and much less spectacular, but he had no choice.

  “Feel my wrath?” said Jim. “You’ll feel my bloomin’ handcuffs in a minute, mate.” With that, he pulled out his handcuffs and went to make a citizen’s arrest on Merdyn, grabbing hold of his wrists.

  “Unhand me, thou fopdoodle1!” Merdyn cursed and, having no time to mix a herb spell, resorted to poking Jim in the eye with his finger, an undignified move for a warlock, but an effective one nonetheless. SQUELCH!

  “Waaahaa! He’s blinded me!” Jim cried.

  Now it was Alan’s turn to try. He got a fist in his ear for his troubles. CRUMP!

  “Ow! He’s broken my earlobe!” Alan wailed as he rolled around on the floor.

  BOOT! Merdyn kicked him hard in the backside.

  “Right! That’s it!” roared Alan. “NOW you’re in trouble!”

  As one, Jim and Alan grabbed Merdyn’s legs and pulled him to the ground.

  The ungainly scuffle in the garden was now gathering the attention of shoppers, who stopped and stared at the strange sight. As the men tumbled around on the fake grass, Jim’s security-guard hat fell off and Alan’s wig was dislodged, revealing his shiny bald head. This just added to the anger they felt towards this intruder, and they tried even harder to cuff him.

  Then, just as it looked as though Jim and Alan were besting him, Merdyn pulled a fake tree out of the ground and expertly cracked Jim’s knees with a branch and knocked Alan out cold with a root. BISH BOSH. The great warlock didn’t like to be reminded of his time as a soldier in the King’s army, but here was an occasion where his training came in useful.

  His antics had by now attracted the attention of a local police officer, Sergeant Murray. Sergeant Murray came from a long line of police officers. He took the job so seriously that he’d grown a moustache, simply so he could look like a stereotypical policeman. When he spotted the strange man in a pointy hat fighting with the shopping centre security guards, Sergeant Murray felt his moustache bristle. It was like a radar for trouble, that moustache, and here was trouble with a capital ‘T’. He immediately called for back-up through his police radio.

  Merdyn heard the crackle of the radio as the sergeant’s back-up answered: “ROGER ROGER. WE’RE ON YOUR TAIL!” But having never heard a police radio before, Merdyn assumed instead that this was the call of the Giant Ravens rumoured to patrol the burning skies of Hell looking for prey. He definitely didn’t want to be giant bird food, so he set off running as fast as he could. Thinking he had spotted an exit, he bolted for it … and ran smack bang into the glass window of Accessorize This.

  DOINK.

  Remember, there wasn’t any clear glass in the Dark Ages either, so to Merdyn, he’d just run into a wall of hard air.

  “What sorcery be this?” he wondered aloud. But he had no time to sit and think. He pulled himself up off the ground, rubbed his sore nose and took up his search for the exit again. This time, he ran straight into a Donuts-R-Us stand. Dozens of sticky circles shot up into the air and scattered across the floor.

  The doughnut-stand worker assumed Merdyn was trying to steal his doughnuts. He picked up a broom and bonked Merdyn on the head with it.

  BONK! BONK!

  “AARGH! What demon art thou?” screamed Merdyn as the blows rained down upon him.

  Somewhere, a whistle blew. Merdyn looked up to see a whole gang of black-and-white Giant Raven-people (or police!) headed his way. He picked up the closest weapon to him, a doughnut, and pelted it. POOF! The doughnut hit Sergeant Murray straight in the moustache, stopping him in his tracks and allowing Merdyn to escape once more, shocked shoppers scattering as he ran.

  Finally, the befuddled warlock found the vast electric sliding doors of the exit, but to him, they were like the giant snapping jaws of a dragon. Bravely, Merdyn ran at the crunching mouth. But each time he misjudged his charge, so that he smacked into the doors –WHACK! CRUNCH! CRACK! On his final attempt, he nearly made it, only to be caught in the jaws of the door like a sausage in a pair of pincers. Eventually he managed to throw himself clear, and finally he was OUTSIDE.

  But his horrors weren’t ending there. They were just beginning.

  For he had run straight into a busy main road.

  Imagine seeing a car, bus or lorry for the first time EVER. Imagine the fastest, loudest transport you’d ever experienced up to that moment was a horse. Then imagine a wall of vehicles coming towards you, screeching their brakes and beeping their horns all at once.

  Merdyn stood, frozen in fear. Then he heard an ear-piercing noise from the sky.

  He looked up. His eyes could not believe what they were seeing.

  “Gadsbudlikins2! ‘Tis a metal eagle!”

  It was, of course, an aeroplane. But Merdyn had seen nothing flying through the air but birds and butterflies his whole life. And now a Boeing 747 was shrieking past like a giant silver bird.

  At this moment, Sergeant Murray popped out of the shopping-centre doors like a champagne cork, a spray of officers behind him. Merdyn looked desperately around and spotted a wood in the distance. Real trees! Something he recognised! He hitched up his cloak and ran straight for them, before diving into the undergrowth and disappearing from sight.

  To all he passed,

  I must confess,

  he was just a bloke

  in fancy dress.

  Notes

  1 Meaning a limp dawdler. Not the most devastating insult but a great word in my opinion. As a further note of interest, there are many people who think that fopdoodle slowly morphed over time into the Americanism dude, meaning an extremely carefree person.

  2 Gadsbudlikins literally means God’s little body. The closest translation for today would be oh my god or, if you really must, OMG. But isn’t Gadsbudlikins so much better?

  Rose trudged glumly past the little red-brick houses on her street, Daffodil Close. The audition was a new low, even for her.

  She’d thought she couldn’t get any lower. Four years earlier, she’d been part of a happy family with a happy school life. But then her dad had died suddenly. Her mum became pe
rmanently sad and they ran out of money. They’d moved to a smaller house, and Rose had had to move to a different school where she didn’t know a single soul. Everything had changed for the worse.

  Starting her new school had also coincided with Rose needing glasses, her red hair turning frizzy and her freckles breaking out like a meteor shower all over her cheeks. The only thing that kept Rose going was her father’s belief that one day she was destined for greatness. He’d always told her she was going to find something she loved and be the BEST at it. He wasn’t sure what that something was, but he’d had complete and utter faith that she would find it.

  I’m just glad he wasn’t there today, Rose thought. He would have been so ashamed.

  Finally, she got to her house. Dion, her next-door neighbour, was in his driveway polishing his special Pontiac Firebird car.

  Dion was a postman, but his real love was the movies. He finished work at 8.30 a.m. and spent most of the rest of his day watching films. His car was his pride and joy because it was THE ACTUAL CAR used in his favourite EVER movie, Smokey and the Bandit. The car had come up for sale ten years earlier, and Dion had paid $23,000 for it (plus shipping). It was now worth nearly $100,000, as it was considered a piece of classic movie memorabilia. Dion hoped that if he looked after it well enough, it might be worth a million dollars by the time he retired from the post office. Then he’d sell it and spend the rest of his life watching movies in his own private cinema.

  Now, Dion was not a man of many words. He preferred the company of movie characters to real human beings. But on this occasion, as he saw Rose marching towards him like some traumatised soldier at the end of a war film, he was compelled to speak.