A Hidden Magic (5 page)

Lesson Two was bothersome to the young sorcerer: "If the answer isn't in you, it isn't."

"Well," Norman reasoned, "if it's in
you,
then it can't very well be in
me
"

That sounded distressingly like he was still trying to get out of helping her, so Jennifer quickly asked, "Are you going to tell me about Malveenya?"

"I've never actually met her, but from what I hear she's extremely powerful and has a temper that would make that mirror of hers seem gentle as a month-old bunny."

"Oh," the girl said.

"I gather she likes to use pain and fear on helpless creatures—not necessarily to get her own way, but just because she likes to."

Jennifer gulped and decided she didn't really want to know any more about Malveenya. "Is there anything we can do about Alexander?" she asked instead.

"Okay," Norman considered. "Malveenya has several places around the forest. Apparently she was away from the cottage and the
mirror was simply acting on its own to defend itself. If you had left it alone, it wouldn't have bothered you."

Jennifer gave him an apologetic half-smile.

"The fact that the mirror was acting on its own, without Malveenya's power, means that maybe the spell is weak enough to be countered."

Jennifer jumped up from her chair. "You can break the spell?"

Norman stood up also and immediately added an extra foot to his height. "Not with the information you gave me, and not if Malveenya's gotten in on the act."

He replaced the geranium on the stool and started pacing about the room as Jennifer sank back down with a little "Oh." She watched his hair turn to auburn and a bushy mustache appear, and she asked, "Why do you keep doing that?"

Norman stopped pacing. "What?" he asked.

"You keep changing."

"Ahm, no, actually I don't. Appearances
are deceiving. Things are not necessarily what they seem."

While Jennifer tried to figure out what that had to do with anything, Norman suddenly took on the form of a large eagle furiously flapping his wings. "I can change my appearance, but not my reality," he said, his voice the same as always. "I may look like an eagle, but I can't fly. I could make you think I look like a gazelle"—he demonstrated—"but that doesn't mean I can run any faster than I could it
1
looked like a fish." He showed her this, too, then returned to his form as a skinny red-haired youth.

"And I could stay looking like a fish all day, since I wouldn't need to be in the water, whereas if I stuck my head in the well long enough, I'd drown whether that head seemed to belong to a speckled trout or to a hippopotamus."

"I get the point," Jennifer said quickly, before he took it upon himself to show her what he'd look like as a hippopotamus.

Norman held out his hand to show her the large ring he was wearing. The edges showed gold, but mostly it was a wide band of dark blue with glittering little stars.

"This is how I do it. The sorcerer who used to live here gave me this magic ring before he retired. He probably could have helped you a lot better. I'm very young for a sorcerer, and I don't have much experience. This ring's the only magic I have, and I certainly don't see how it can possibly help us against Malveenya."

"Us?" Jennifer said hopefully.

Norman usually wore a very serious expression that often bordered on looking downright sad, but now he gave her a smile. "Us," he assured her.

J
ENNIFER WAS SITTING
on a wide, flat-topped rock, watching the patterns caused by the current as the water met and flowed around her feet dangling in the stream.

Norman was lying on the ground several yards away from the cave entrance, nose-to-nose with a curious rabbit.

An old shoe came flying out of the cave. It didn't land anywhere near them but it startled the rabbit, who first crouched close to the
ground and then stood on its back legs, sniffing the air and quivering its ears. In another second it disappeared into the tall grass.

"I said. Nobody's home!'" the Old Witch's creaky voice screamed at them. "Now scram!"

"Just a few minutes of your time," Norman called without turning to face the cave. They had been going through this for some time now, and the shoe was only one of several furious, if somewhat inaccurately aimed, missiles scattered on the grass in front of the witch's home.

"Go away, you young hoodlums!"

Norman sighed. "Please. We only want to talk."

"I have nothing to say to you."

"A simple business transaction."

"Drop dead."

"I'm sure we can work something out."

There was no further sound from the cave, and Jennifer concentrated her attention on a smooth pebble that she examined with her toe.

According to Norman, the Old Witch owned something that might be able to help them: a jinni in a bottle.

"Oh!" Jennifer had cried eagerly upon hearing this, for she had great faith in the value of magic. "Do you think she'll let us use it?"

"Not likely," Norman had answered. "You know how ornery she can be. And don't get too excited, a jinni is good for only one wish. But it's worth a try."

So far, though, their try wasn't going very well. Neither Norman nor Jennifer wanted to force their way in, and the Old Witch refused to come out. She would stand well inside, yelling at them and throwing whatever she thought might inflict bodily harm.

Happily, though, the intervals between these episodes were rapidly shortening as curiosity wore her down. ("Just the way you wore me down," Norman noted, but Jennifer decided against responding to that.)

"You're juvenile delinquents!" the Old Witch called.

"No, we're not," Norman answered. "We just want to talk to you."

"About what?"

That took both young people by surprise.

"No, stay back," she warned from the doorway as they jumped to their feet and started toward the cave. "We can talk from here. What do you want?"

"Your jinni in the bottle," Norman started, but she cut him off with a sharp laugh.

"Ha, do you hear that? It's our magic bottle they want. Well, they aren't going to get it, are they? No, I didn't think so. Good-bye, and good riddance."

"No, wait. I'm not just asking for a handout. I thought we could talk about a trade."

The Old Witch took one step out of the doorway. A breeze lifted her wispy gray hair as she narrowed her yellow eyes at them. But she also made a motion with her head, telling him to go on.

"I thought maybe I could give you something for the bottle."

"Sounds good," the witch said. "I'll take your magic ring."

"Are you out of your mind?" Norman cried.

"You said trade. Didn't he say trade? That's the only thing you have that I'm interested in."

"I had in mind something more like my services," the sorcerer explained, hastily regaining his composure. "Like mowing your lawn or painting your cave or something."

"We like our lawn the way it is, don't we, Magic Pool? And the cave doesn't need painting. I'll take your ring."

"Look, let's be reasonable. You've already made your own wish. The bottle isn't any good to you anymore."

The witch shook her head. "But we've grown very fond of it as a decorative piece. It fits in perfectly with the living room's motif."

"What?" Norman said.

"You heard. That's our final offer."

Norman glanced at Jennifer, who hadn't said a word but wore an expression that said all her hopes in the world were being destroyed. "Wait," he called, to keep the Old Witch from leaving as he frantically tried to think of something.

She saw the dejected look on Jennifer's face and said coolly, "Isn't it worth your magic ring to help out this young lady?"

"Don't do it," Jennifer whispered. "We'll find some other way."

Norman continued speaking to the old woman, trying to keep his voice even. "Look, the ring isn't all that great. All it can do is change your appearance. Wouldn't it be better to have me around to chop wood for you on cold winter days, or to build a well so you wouldn't have to come down the hill to the stream, or—?"

"No."

"Pick anything else. You can have all my books."

"I don't like books."

"I'll share all the incantations I know and I'll show you all my secret formulas."

The Old Witch looked bored. "I've got enough of my own."

"I'll give you my whole house."

"Would you get off my back? I already told you there's nothing wrong with the cave. Now face up to it—I want your ring or it's no deal."

Norman motioned to her to wait and pulled Jennifer aside. "What do you think?" he asked. "She sounds pretty definite about the ring."

Jennifer nodded. "If that's all she'll settle for, then we'll have to do without the jinni."

"I'm afraid it's not going to be that easy. Getting the jinni to help us isn't our best plan; it's our
only
plan."

"But the ring is your base of power—"

The sorcerer scratched his red hair. "It may be a base of power, but it's a very narrow base.
I haven't gotten much use out of it. And I know she can't do any harm with it."

"Norman!" Jennifer said.

He patted her hand. "If the jinni is powerful enough, maybe he can help us in more ways than one."

"But you said we'll only get one wish."

"Right. But the trick is to make that one wish count for a lot."

"It doesn't look like that jinni helped the Old Witch very much," Jennifer said, glancing at the cave.

"Hey, we heard that!" the Old Witch hollered. "You just mind your own business, missy."

"I wonder what she wished for," Jennifer whispered, as she and the sorcerer approached the cave again.

"Well, from what I've heard, the jinni had a very thick accent," Norman said, imitating the way a Middle Eastern jinni might speak. "And while he was explaining the rules, the Old Witch stamped her foot and said"—and here he mimicked her creaky voice—" 'I wish you'd stop talking with that stupid accent,' and that, as they say, was that." He gave a wide grin and the Old Witch spat on the ground.

"Nobody likes a smart-mouth kid," she said.

Norman instantly put on his old face with the long white beard and gave a low bow. "Anything that'll make you happy."

The Old Witch scratched herself noisily, then spat again. "Yeah, well, let's see this tricky ring of yours before we make any final decisions."

The sorcerer pulled the ring off and handed it to her. She immediately slipped it onto her finger and went through a dizzying series of changes so quickly that Jennifer couldn't tell what she saw, but she was pretty sure that at one point the witch was an Egyptian pharaoh and at another a rather pudgy duckling.

"Not bad," the witch said, resuming her former face. "Wait here for a second."

Norman gave Jennifer a tight smile and tugged on his beard.

The Old Witch came out almost immediately and tossed a plain brown bottle toward them. Norman coughed at the dust that flew as he grabbed it.

"There you go," she said, turning back to her cave. "Thanks a lot."

"Wait a minute," Jennifer said, a sudden awful feeling in her throat.

Norman was a bit slower to catch on because he was examining the old bottle and hadn't seen her movement. "Does this mean it's a deal?"

"Now you've got it, sweetie," the witch answered.

"I thought we could talk to the jinni first to see if he's what we need."

"Nope."

Norman knit his bushy white eyebrows in annoyance but accepted this. "All right, then. Just give me back my ring so I can turn myself back to normal, and then it's all yours."

"Nope."

He took a step forward, trying to reason with her. "Look, you can trust me. Here, you can hold the bottle while I've got the ring."

The witch wouldn't touch the bottle. "A deal's a deal."

Jennifer saw the sorcerer's face grow pale. "Now, wait a minute. You said you just wanted to see the ring."

"Did I?" the old woman said sweetly. "You must have misunderstood me."

"Old Witch, I've been acting in good faith! This isn't fair!"

She examined the edge of her torn sleeve that had been dragged through chicken stew last week and which she hadn't gotten around to cleaning yet. "Since when has life been fair?" she hooted. "Now get away from our cave."

Norman was furious. "You can't do this!"

Suddenly he was confronting a gigantic purple dragon who blew a flame seven feet long. He took an instinctive step backward before remembering it was only an illusion.

"Wrong, sorcerer," the dragon said, her yellow eyes smoldering. "I can do whatever I want." She executed a graceful turn and disappeared into the cave. Her voice carried out to them as she called, "Defensive wall."

Neither Jennifer nor Norman saw or heard anything happen, but when they tried to follow her into the cave, they found they couldn't. There was some sort of unseen barrier through which they were unable to pass. It reached from the ground to as high as their fingers could stretch and fit into every jagged nook of the entryway. As clear as the air around them, as hard as the rock of the cave—there was no getting around it and no getting through it.