Magicalamity (3 page)

“OK. Well, why can’t you hide me in the same place you hid my mother?”

“Sorry—you’re not human enough for that.”

“Oh.”

Lorna began to unfasten her wings. “There’s nothing else for it, I’m afraid. I’ll just have to swallow my pride and ask Abdul.”

“Who?”

She was stern. “Are we near Kentish Town Road?”

“Pretty near, yes.”

“Good. We’ve got to find a cafe called The Casbah—next door to a twenty-four-hour supermarket and just by the bus stop.”

“I think I know that cafe,” Tom said, surprised. “It always has steamy windows. And it’s always full of little fat brown guys.”

“They’re not little fat brown guys,” Lorna said shortly. “They’re genies. And one of them is my ex-husband.”

“H
e was incredibly handsome,” Lorna said. “With a devilish charm that could sweep a young fairy off her feet.” She had decided to risk a short journey on mortal transport and they were on the bus, surrounded by her plastic bags. She couldn’t stop talking about her ex-husband the genie. Tom hoped he didn’t run into anyone from school. “And he was the first man I’d ever met who had his own flying carpet. I just lost my head. By the time I found out he shared the carpet with his useless brother, it was too late.”

“We get off in a minute. It’s the next stop.” Tom was liking his godmother more and more, but she didn’t seem to be much of a fairy. Her magic was too patchy to
carry them to Abdul’s cafe, and she had forgotten to bring any mortal money with her for bus fares. Luckily Tom often went swimming in Kentish Town, so he had taken charge. He borrowed his mum’s transit card and got Lorna and her bags on the right buses.

“And whenever my mother came to visit he’d turn himself into a puff of smoke and sulk inside a lamp for days. Once I got so mad at him, I threw the lamp in the garbage.” The bus slowed down, and Lorna stood up, grabbing all her bags, including the one with her wings. “Don’t forget your backpack, will you?”

“You don’t have to keep telling me. It’s still on my back.”

“Splendid.”

They got off the bus beside a row of shops. The Casbah, squeezed between a twenty-four-hour supermarket and a dry cleaner’s, was smaller and shabbier than Tom had remembered. On a quiet afternoon in the summer holidays it looked disappointingly unmagical. He couldn’t see how anything here could help him to save his parents.

“Are you sure this is the right cafe? It’s so … well … ordinary.”

“Oh, this is it,” Lorna said grimly. She stepped up to the steamy window. “And there’s Abdul—sexy as ever!”

Tom peered through the dim glass. Inside the cafe,
five short, fat men with pointy black beards sat at rickety plastic tables. “Which one is he?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” groaned Lorna. “The handsome one!”

“Er—sorry, they all look the same amount of handsome to me.”

“He’s behind the counter—the cafe belongs to him. Come on.”

She pushed open the glass door and Tom followed her in. Despite being so worried about Mum and Dad, he was very curious to see real genies, if that was truly what they were. The men in the cafe—all staring at him with big dark eyes—wore normal, everyday clothes and were nothing like the genie from
Aladdin
. When he looked closely at the pictures on the walls, however, he saw that they were all photographs of traditional genies doing genie-ish things in puffs of colored smoke—one of them seemed to be a picture of a whole genie football team posing on a flying carpet.

The genie behind the counter gasped. “Lorna!”

“Hello, Abdul.”

“Lorna! Good grief, it’s been—how long? What on earth are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry to barge in like this,” Lorna said stiffly. “I didn’t know where else to go—this is an emergency.”

The genie sitting nearest to Tom pointed a finger at him. “Demisprite!”

She put her hand on Tom’s shoulder. “This is my godson, Tom Harding.”

“That’s the demisprite the Falconers are looking for,” another genie said. “I heard it on the fairy news.”

The cafe was hot, but Tom suddenly felt cold. This was getting seriously scary. In the other world, where his dad came from, he was being hunted like a criminal.

“Don’t worry.” Lorna gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “You’re among friends here—they’re all exiles, and several are being hunted themselves. Nobody will betray you.”

Abdul came out from behind the counter and shook Tom’s hand. “Tom Harding—Jonas’s boy! Well, well!” He was nothing like the sexy rascal described by Lorna. He looked kind and rather cuddly, and his rosy brown face was as round and smiling as a clock on a nursery wall.

“You know my dad?”

“Oh yes. I haven’t seen him for years, but he was part of the gang in college—those were the days!”

“I wonder why he’s never mentioned you. We live quite near here, and we must’ve passed this place a hundred times.”

“He couldn’t risk any magical contact,” Abdul said. “He was in hiding. So are we—nearly all of us are being hunted.”

“By the Falconers?”

“Yes—mostly because we managed to annoy their house genie, Ali Kazoum.”

(All the genies in the cafe muttered angrily, and one spat on the floor.)

“Oh.” Tom was fascinated. His father came from an extraordinary world, where characters in fairy tales were real and dangerous—and it was partly his world too.

“Jonas didn’t tell Tom about his true background,” Lorna said, “which is very awkward, because it means we have to rely on my magic—and I’ve forgotten how to fly. So we’re hoping we can bum a ride to my place near Glasgow.” She frowned. “I hate asking, but as I said, it’s an emergency.”

“I’m delighted you asked me,” Abdul declared. “All that is mine is yours, my flower! Wait a little while, and Hussein will be back with the carpet. You remember my brother, Hussein?”

“I certainly do.” Lorna’s frown deepened. “Still taking the carpet for joyrides, is he?”

Abdul’s sweet, fat face was dignified. “Actually, these days we use it to run a magical minicab service—but of course we won’t charge you. It’s a pleasure to help Jonas’s son. Let’s go into the back room, where we can talk.” He took off his apron and handed it to the nearest genie. “Cassim, you take over—look out for Falconer agents, and bring us a couple of kebabs.”

“OK,” Cassim said cheerfully.

Abdul led them through a door behind the counter to a small, hot back room with no window. There was a tall rack of glass bottles of all shapes and sizes, a fridge-freezer, a table and some chairs. Abdul took three cans of fizzy water from the fridge, and they all sat down. Lorna immediately launched into the whole story of the summons, the problem of rescuing Jonas and her rusty magic powers.

Cassim came in with a big tray of kebabs. It had been hours since the eggs and bacon, and Tom and Lorna pounced on them hungrily. Tom was glad to see that Lorna had stopped frowning at Abdul. She was relaxed and smiling, and he thought she was glad to see him again.

“This is very decent of you, Abdul,” she said through a mouthful of shredded lettuce. “Tom will be safe at the scrapyard, and I’ll do my best to teach him a bit of magic—but I’m blowed if I know what to do for poor old Jonas.”

Tom’s heart sank. “There must be some way to save him!”

“Of course we can save him.” Abdul patted his arm kindly. “Jonas was always terrific at magic. And even before the business with Milly Falconer, he was smart enough to make friends with a few animals—always a good idea if you suddenly need to drop out of sight. I bet that’s where he’s hiding.”

“You’re quite right,” Lorna said. “He’s probably with some bats.”

Tom had a moment of unreality. This time yesterday he’d been watching television in the kitchen at home, listening to Mum and Dad chatting and laughing downstairs while they closed up the deli. Now his mother had vanished and his father was living undercover as a bat. The world had turned inside out.

“Of course—there was that bat he shared a flat with in college,” Abdul said. “He used to bring him to the pub.”

“I remember!” Lorna exclaimed. “What a bore he was—always droning on about animal rights—but I’m glad I was nice to him. They’ll never find Jonas among a colony of bats.”

Suddenly there was a flash of white light, and one of the bottles on the top shelf of the rack poured out a fountain of thick purple smoke.

Tom jumped out of his chair—was this a bomb? Some kind of purple fire?

“Don’t worry,” Abdul said comfortably, “it’s only Hussein.”

This had to be one of the weirdest sights Tom had seen all day. The purple smoke formed itself into a shape and became the silhouette of a man. Twenty seconds later, the smoke had gone and another exiled genie stood in the small room. He was short and round, like Abdul,
dressed in an ordinary shirt and trousers—and a pair of huge sparkling earrings.

“Lorna Mustard!” He was shocked. “Blimey, Abdul—what’s your ex-wife doing here?”

“Hello, Hussein,” Lorna said. “Relax—for once I’m not here to call you a good-for-nothing. I came to get a lift on the carpet. To make a long story short, this demisprite boy is Jonas Harding’s son, Tom, and I’m his godmother.”

Hussein did not know Tom’s dad, but he was also (once he had recovered from the shock of seeing Lorna) very welcoming. He shook Tom’s hand and gave him a Mars Bar ice cream from the freezer. “Any friend of Abdul’s is a friend of mine—especially if he’s an enemy of the Falconers.”

“Thanks,” Tom said. He was starting to feel more hopeful. These people could do amazing things, and he didn’t even know what powers he had himself. They were bound to find a way to help his parents.

“The carpet’s warm, and I vacuumed it this morning,” Hussein said. “Good luck!”

“Ahem!” Abdul said, pointing to a notice on the back of the door:
STOP! HAVE YOU REMOVED ALL YOUR JEWELS?

“What? Oh—silly me.” Hussein took off his earrings. “Nice to meet you, Tom. And … er … Lorna—nice to … er—Bye!” He scuttled out of the room.

Abdul said, “He really has changed, you know.”

“Hmm,” said Lorna. “I’ll believe it when I see it. Are we ready to go?”

Tom’s spirits lifted. He was about to ride on a flying carpet. Who did that? If he hadn’t been so worried about his parents, he would have been incredibly excited.

The other genies smiled at him kindly as he went back into the cafe to use the toilet. When he returned to the room behind the counter he found Lorna rummaging in his backpack.

“I’m just giving the jar of tomatoes to Abdul,” she told him. “You always liked sun-dried tomatoes, didn’t you?”

“Oh—yes—” Abdul carefully took the jar. “Rest assured, I will guard them with my life.”

“You won’t let your useless brother get hold of them?”

“I swear.” Abdul was very serious. “Nothing and nobody shall take this jar of tomatoes from me.”

“Well, that’s a weight off my mind!”

“I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal about a jar of tomatoes,” Tom said impatiently. “They’re very easy to get. Where do we go now? Is the carpet here?”

“Yes, we keep it in the yard.” Abdul held up the jar of tomatoes with one hand and snapped his fingers, dissolving the jar into a cloud of pink smoke. “I’ll just get changed.”

He snapped his fingers again, and there was another puff of smoke—blue this time.

When it cleared Tom cried, “Hey, Abdul—you look fantastic!”

For the first time, Abdul looked like a real genie from the
Arabian Nights
. He was magnificent in a purple turban with a huge jewel pinned to the front. On his feet were gold slippers that curled up at the toes. His round stomach strained against a tunic and trousers of orange satin. He smiled shyly. “You are very kind.”

Lorna stared at him in silence. After a few moments, she said, “You’ve still got it, Abdul.”

His round cheeks turned pink. “You too, Lorna.”

(They seemed very fond of each other for people who were divorced; Tom made a mental note to ask Lorna what had happened.)

Abdul opened a door beside the rack of bottles and led Tom and Lorna out into a small, sooty backyard, with a child’s sandpit in the middle of the flagstones. Tom watched Abdul take a roll of carpet from a small wooden shed. The back of it was like the underside of any old carpet. When he unrolled it over the sandpit, however, Tom caught his breath—the colors were amazing, like a beautiful stained-glass window with the sun behind it. The magic carpet hovered in midair for a few seconds and then sank slowly onto the sand.

“Shoes off, please,” Abdul said. “Lorna, you sit in the back with the bags. We’ll let Tom enjoy the view from the front.”

Tom took off his sneakers, put them in his backpack and (feeling silly, because he couldn’t imagine this working) sat cross-legged on the carpet. Abdul put on a pair of pink gloves and sat down next to Tom.

The exiled genie folded his arms and muttered something under his breath. It took Tom a couple of minutes to realize they were rising slowly off the ground. The carpet rose as far as the top of the garden wall. Tom clung to the edge, terrified of falling off—how was he meant to fly to Glasgow on this thing?

“Please relax—imagine you are on the rug beside the fire at home,” Abdul said. “You won’t fall.”

In the warm, still summer afternoon, the carpet soared away above the houses and shops. Tom dared to glance down at Kentish Town Road, far below. The tiny cars and people fell away behind them, and they were shooting across the city like an arrow.

At first it was very scary. Tom clenched his fists and screwed up his eyes, expecting to be blown off the carpet at any moment. But the air was soft and fresh on his face, and Abdul was humming a tune beside him. Tom slowly opened his eyes, bracing himself for the shock.

The view was wonderful. The country was spread out at his feet—swaths of green, glittering stretches of
water, buildings like Lego models. The sun was setting, and the carpet sped through banks of pink cloud. This was better than the best carnival ride in the world.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” said Abdul. “Such a nice, quiet little country when you see it from up here!”

“It’s amazing! But why haven’t we been stopped? Don’t the army try to shoot you down?”