The Wizard In My Shed Read online

  “Wait!” cried Rose’s mum suddenly. Now Merdyn was out of the car, she could see his face properly for the first time, and she was staring … Rose thought she looked pale and confused, as though she’d seen a ghost. “I’m sorry but … I think I know this man!” Mum said now, much to the surprise of everyone. Especially Rose. “Those cheeks. That nose. Rose, I think it’s … your father …” She trailed off, almost overwhelmed with emotion.

  Rose was totally baffled. She knew her mum hadn’t been herself these last few years, but she’d never actually forgotten her husband was dead before. “Mum,” she said. “Are you OK?”

  “It is, it’s your father …’s brother!” Suzy gasped. “It’s Uncle Martin! Rose, don’t you recognise him?”

  Rose had hazy memories of Uncle Martin. She knew he was her dad’s brother and that he became a racing driver. She’d heard her mum on the phone to Auntie Eileen, her dad’s sister, whispering about ‘problems’ he was having one time. But he certainly was not a warlock slash wizard who could (maybe) make animals talk.

  Rose quickly surmised, however, that this “Uncle Martin” mix-up was a perfect cover story for Merdyn to stay at the house. Certainly long enough for him to potentially create a spell to make her the best singer in the world anyway …

  “Ah yes, of course!” she said now, in her best acting voice. “That’s where I knew him from. It’s Uncle Martin!”

  “Why did you say he was a wizard?” asked her mum, quite understandably in the circumstances, don’t you agree?

  “Sorry, I er … thought that’s what he said,” said Rose. “I must have misheard him.”

  Merdyn hadn’t yet recovered enough of his wits to cotton on to Rose’s plan. “I am a warlock!” he insisted now. “I am NOT Un-cle Mart-in! I am Merdyn the Wild, the finest warlock who ever liveth! Destroyer of enemies. All those who knoweth me er … something something.” He petered out, still too traumatised to finish his usual intro.

  “I’m confused,” said Sergeant Murray. “You say he’s Uncle Martin, he says he’s a blimmin’ warlock. What’s going on?”

  “I can explain,” Suzy whispered, lowering her voice so that “Martin” couldn’t hear. “A few years ago, he had a bad car crash. In a race. He was in a coma for a while. Never been the same since. I didn’t realise it was so bad. You’ll have to let him go. I need to phone his sister Eileen, she’ll know what to do with him.”

  “All right then,” said Sergeant Murray, much to Rose’s relief. “I’m releasing him into your charge.”

  Up to this point, Dion had been kneeling by his crashed car, gently weeping and stroking its bashed bumper. “Hold on,” he said now, as Sergeant Murray took the handcuffs OFF Merdyn’s wrists. “Are you telling me you’re NOT arresting this man?”

  “I don’t get involved in family matters pertaining to comas and the like, sir,” said the sergeant. “Leads to nothing but headaches and paperwork, not necessarily in that order. This will have to be settled internally.”

  “But – what about my car?”

  “You’ve got insurance, haven’t you? Use it,” said Sergeant Murray. He turned to Merdyn and tapped his nose. “Suffice to say, I’ve got my eye on you, mate.”

  “Come on inside, Martin. This way …” said Rose’s mum gently, walking ahead to the house and beckoning Merdyn to follow.

  “Yes, come on, Uncle Martin,” said Rose.

  “Child, thou knoweth I am not Martin!”

  “SHHH!” Rose hissed. “You want to stay with us? You’re Martin. OK?”

  Merdyn shrugged. He couldn’t claim to understand every word these strange people said, but he guessed “prison” meant the same as it ever did. Sticking with Rose and her deranged mother seemed like his best hope of getting home – for now.

  Ten minutes later, they were all eating fish and chips in the kitchen. It turned out that Merdyn the Wild really loved fish and chips. Rose watched him eat with a mixture of wonder and disgust. He had no regard for whether bits of food went into his mouth or on to the floor. He just grabbed handfuls of fried potato, batter and cod, flung them in the general direction of his face and hoped for the best.

  When Suzy finally got off the phone, she was also a little taken aback by the mess Merdyn had made. “Someone’s hungry,” she said with a wink to Rose. “He’s a messy pup. Your father was the same.”

  “’Tis goodly bellytimber, this!” Merdyn replied, smattering the table with chips and scraps as he spoke. “Thou must think me a terrible raggabrash1. But I have not eaten in a long time.” (Literally centuries, if you think about it.) “And these fish and ships are a delight.”

  The warlock stuffed the last of the battered fish into his mouth. By now his robes looked like the floor of a fish and chip festival after everybody had gone home.

  “Erm, perhaps you’d like to clean yourself up?” offered Rose’s mum. “The bathroom is at the top of the stairs.”

  “Aye. Thank ye,” said Merdyn, and shuffled off.

  As soon as he’d gone, Suzy turned to Rose. “I couldn’t get hold of Auntie Eileen. I’ve tried every number I know. I left a message with two of the cousins, hopefully someone will tell her …”

  “So Merd—” Rose remembered the ruse just in time. “I mean, Uncle Martin can stay with us in the meantime?” she asked, hopefully.

  “He’ll have to,” said her mum, much to Rose’s relief. “He’s worse than I thought he’d be. Why does he talk so weird? I can’t understand half of what he’s saying. And what’s he on about Purgatory and wizards for? He’s stark raving mad!”

  Upstairs, Merdyn had found the bathroom. Or at least he thought he had. There was a bath-shaped object there for sure, but no water pump. He tried to lever the taps. Then he hit them with his fists, pulled them, pressed them. Nothing. (Remember, he’s from 511 AD. Screw taps wouldn’t be invented for another twelve hundred years.) He grabbed a shower head and tried that too. Again, nothing.

  “Aha!” he exclaimed finally. For in the corner of the bathroom he’d spotted a little bowl with a small pool of water in it. Now, we would recognise this object as a toilet, but in Merdyn’s time, toilet activities were done outside in a hole in the ground. It would be unthinkable to do your number ones and twos in your own home. So, to Merdyn, this little bowl of water looked like just the sort of place you could easily wash your hands and face – and perhaps slake your thirst too, with a nice cool drink.

  At this exact moment, Kris returned from his shift at Top Boy in the shopping centre.

  “I’m back!” he shouted as he came through the front door. “Dion’s car’s wrapped around a tree outside, FYI. He’s out there weeping like a baby. What’s the story there then?”

  He received no reply, as Rose and her mum were still deep in conversation in the kitchen. So he headed upstairs to his room.

  He skipped up the short flight of stairs as usual. But as he passed the bathroom, he heard a strange sound. He leaned his ear against the door. Someone … a man … was humming to himself in there.

  A man? “That’s odd,” he thought. There hadn’t been another man around since Dad died.

  Finding the door ajar, Kris felt within his rights to push it a little. It swung open. So did Kris’s mouth. For there, before his very eyes, was a scruffy, bearded pirate with dirty clothes, kneeling down and splashing his face and hair with water from the toilet bowl. And not only that, but the man was cupping the water in his hands and drinking it, too!

  Now, do not be alarmed. The thought of washing our precious faces in the toilet obviously appals us, but hygiene in the Dark Ages was so terrible that this may well have been the cleanest water Merdyn had ever tasted.

  However, let’s leave Kris and our toilet-drinking warlock for a moment. Rose is still downstairs, and you’re probably wondering what she’s up to.

  In the kitchen, mother and daughter were in the midst of a heated debate about where Uncle Martin/Merdyn would sleep.

  “I think the shed will be OK,” Rose was insisting. S
he wanted to keep the wizard/warlock close, but not TOO close.

  “The SHED? You can’t make a former world rally champion sleep in a SHED!” her mum was insisting in return.

  “But he wants to go in the shed!”

  “He doesn’t know what he wants. He’s not in his right mind!”

  As they argued, they barely noticed Kris enter the room. The colour had completely drained from his pretty face.

  “You all right, sweetheart?” asked Suzy, when she finally noticed him.

  “Erm … yeah. I think so,” said Kris. “Just wondering why there’s a tramp in the bathroom, drinking from the toilet bowl?”

  No sooner had he said this than Merdyn entered the kitchen, looking very refreshed.

  “Say what thou liketh about Purgatory, the water is as fresh as the morning dew!” he said cheerfully.

  “Kris, this is Uncle Martin,” explained Mum. “He’s visiting from Scotland, he’ll be staying with us for a while.”

  Merdyn held out his hand to be shaken. Kris just stared at it.

  “I’m not touching that, bruv,” he said.

  “Kris, don’t be rude!” Rose snapped.

  “No offence, mate,” said Kris. “It’s just not that normal to wash in the toilet.”

  “What is ‘toilet’?” asked Merdyn.

  “You know,” answered Kris, squirming with embarrassment. “Where we do our … you know …”

  “A privy?” Merdyn bellowed in horror. “Who in the name of Vanheldon has a privy IN THEIR HOUSE?”

  “Mate, what world are you living in?” said Kris. “This is the twenty-first century, not the Dark Ages. Now where are my fish and chips? You’d better have got the low-fat ones, sis.”

  But Merdyn’s eyes had widened. A firework had just gone off in his brain. “What sayeth thou, fellow?”

  “I said, you’d better have got the low-fat ones because I’m on diet, see, and …”

  “No, before then!”

  Kris rolled his eyes. “I said it’s not the Dark Ages, it’s the twenty-first century, and guess what? We have toilets in our houses now.”

  Merdyn’s darting, panicking eyes landed upon a calendar pinned to the wall. He slowly approached it, his heart pounding. Because, of course, up to this point the great warlock had presumed he was in Purgatory. That’s what he’d been sentenced to, so that’s where he was. He could handle Purgatory. If worst came to worst, he would be there for seven years; fewer if he found an escape route, or if Evanhart persuaded the King to grant him clemency. And then he’d return home. But now he stared at the calendar in disbelief.

  There it was. In black and white.

  He wasn’t in Dark Ages Purgatory any more. He was fifteen hundred years in the FUTURE, and everyone he had ever known would be dead. Evanhart included.

  “How …? Why …? I shouldn’t be here,” he said softly to himself.

  Something about the way he said this struck Rose’s heart like an arrow. Merdyn’s usually booming voice was suddenly fragile, and moistness gathered in the corners of his large blue eyes.

  Suzy picked up on this too. “Don’t you worry, Uncle Martin. We’ll look after you ’til Eileen comes,” she said, trying to comfort him.

  Merdyn wasn’t listening. His sadness was turning to anger. He flung open the back door and stomped into the garden. Then he looked up to the heavens, searching for something.

  There they were.

  The same stars.

  The same moon.

  He had probably stood in this very spot nearly fifteen hundred years ago. The expression on his face turned from despair into a scowl as he realised this was the work of one man. The man who had been jealous of him since their School of Alchemy days. And now, finally, he had beaten him. Merdyn was trapped out of time – probably for ever.

  “A pox upon thee, Jeremiah Jerabo! Thou crooked nose knave2, thou fusty-lugged bespawler3, thou wax-nosed hufty tufty4!” Then Merdyn stretched his arms out wide and howled at the heavens like a wolf, “CURSE THEE, JEREMIAH JERABO!!!”

  And the stars themselves

  shook like jelly

  when Merdyn the Wild

  yelled with such welly!

  Notes

  1 Very messy person. Next time you encounter someone who is disorganised and horrifically grubby, try calling them a raggabrash and see what happens. They’ll probably be very confused, unless they’ve read this book, in which case they have good taste and you can cut them some slack.

  2/3/4 Low class, mouldy, slobbering, fickle show-off! Safe to say, Merdyn didn’t like Jerabo much.

  Rose was putting Bubbles to bed in her room. She had the smallest room in the house, but she didn’t mind. It was cosy. Posters of her favourite singers adorned the walls. Beyoncé of course. Amy Winehouse. Florence and the Machine. Even her mum, in a poster from when Suzy was in The Mondays. She was stunning and wild, all blonde hair, lipstick and tons of attitude. Any other free space was taken up with pictures of animals: dogs, cats, hamsters, horses and, of course, guinea pigs.

  Rose carefully measured out Bubbles’s vitamin C powder, a bowl full of pellets and some hay to chew on. She looked at the enchanted pinecone next to his cage. Had she imagined Bubbles’s voice? What happened in the wood already felt like a dream. And what about the singing spell? Was Merdyn even really a wizard, or a warlock, or whatever he said he was? And why had he been in such a terrible mood since the calendar incident?

  She picked up the pinecone and pressed it against Bubbles’s fuzzy head.

  “Bubbles?” she said softly. “You still there?”

  There was a long pause as Bubbles continued chewing. Rose was about to turn away in disappointment, when he suddenly stopped munching, stared into the middle distance, then looked up at Rose, his nostrils flared.

  “Did you say something?” he squeaked. “I couldn’t hear, I was chewing on this stuff.”

  Rose let out a HUGE sigh of relief. She hadn’t imagined the whole thing! “Why didn’t you say something before?” she asked, irritated suddenly.

  “When?” asked Bubbles. He started chomping loudly on his hay again.

  “When I was trying to prove to Mum that Merdyn could—” MUNCH MUNCH

  “What?” interrupted Bubbles. “I can’t hear you.”

  “I said, I really could have done with your help earlier when I was talking to Mum.”

  “When were you talking to a nun?”

  “What?”

  “You said you were talking to a nun?” Bubbles said, nibbling again.

  “My MUM. Stop chewing your hay!” complained Rose, barely comprehending that she was losing patience with her own talking pet guinea pig. If all guinea pigs are as annoying as this, it’s probably best they don’t talk, thought Rose. She forced herself to return to a calm voice. “When I was talking with Mum. Why didn’t you speak?”

  Bubbles shrugged. “Dunno. Couldn’t think of anything to say.” Then he paused, twitched his nose, and added, “Can I go back to eating my dinner now?”

  Rose nodded, put the pinecone on the windowsill and looked out of the window. She saw Merdyn sitting alone in the middle of the garden. Her mum had tried to persuade him to sleep in the house, but he was having none of it. He said he couldn’t bear to sleep under the same roof as a privy. So Suzy had eventually given up and made him a bed in the shed with a little lamp next to it.

  It was strange how happy her mum seemed since Merdyn had arrived. Usually Suzy sat on the couch as if nailed to it, even resenting having to get up to go to the toilet. But now she was plumping Merdyn’s pillow and fetching him glasses of water and bedtime snacks as if she were the most accommodating person in the world. Rose had missed this side of her mum. Suzy had even offered Merdyn a pair of Rose’s dad’s old pyjamas, but he said they weren’t woolly or scratchy enough for him, and that wearing them would be like wearing nothing at all.

  Rose thought Merdyn looked so sad, sitting there all alone in the moonlight. Rose certainly knew how it felt to be alone. S
he put on her dressing gown over her pyjamas and went downstairs.

  Opening the back door, she felt the cold air around her ankles as she approached the cross-legged warlock. She sat down on the damp grass next to him.

  “Are you OK?” she asked.

  “No, I am not okaay,” he grumped. “And your promise to help me go home just becameth a sight harder.”

  Rose frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Because I AM home, child. I am from this very place. Fifteen hundred years ago. Last time I did looketh, it was the year 511.”

  Rose’s mind started exploding. Surely that was impossible. But it DID explain a lot. The incident with the phone. The car. The annoying thees and thous. “But then … how did you get here?” she asked, after a long pause.

  “There was a trial. I was sentenced to the Rivers of Purgatory. But my arch-enemy, Jeremiah Jerabo, sent me to the Rivers of Time instead!”

  “A trial? What did you do?” Rose enquired nervously, thinking how cross her mum would be when she realised she’d invited a criminal to live in their shed.

  “Oh worry not, child. ’Twas nothing.” Merdyn waved his hand disparagingly. “Just treason, arson, witchcraft, sorcery, petty theft, grand theft. Mere trifles.”

  Rose’s eyes widened. It didn’t sound like trifles. It sounded like a whole pudding tray, followed by rhubarb crumble and custard. And this was the man she’d entrusted to make her dreams come true?

  Just then, Rose noticed that Merdyn was holding something in his hand. It was a strangely perfect oblong stone, about the size of a large matchbox, with the face of a beautiful woman etched into one side.

  “Who’s that? Your wife?” she asked.

  The warlock smiled fondly. “A wife? Nay. Warlocks have no time for wives. Thou can’t handcuff the wind.”

  This struck Rose as a rather sexist opinion, but he was literally from the Dark Ages, so she let the comment slide. Instead, she raised her eyebrow inquisitively.