The Evil Wizard Smallbone (12 page)

“Well,” Smallbone said, “no use in beating a dead horse. What a jeezly mess.” He glanced at the clock over the counter. “I think I got time for a Moxie. Bring one for Foxkin, too.”

With the expression of someone who is hoping she’s doing the right thing, Dinah took two brown glass bottles out of the cooler and brought them to Smallbone. He opened them and handed one to Nick. “Drink up.”

Nick took a cautious sip. An intensely bitter wash reminiscent of tar and pine needles flooded his mouth and nose. His tongue felt like it had been scoured with Brillo.

Smallbone laughed like water going down a drain. “If you could just see your face!”

“The bitter taste comes from gentian root,” Dinah chimed in helpfully. “It’s supposed to be good for the digestion, but it hasn’t been scientifically proved.”

Smallbone took a long swallow and smacked his lips. “
Children
don’t like it. I guess that tells us where you stand, eh, Foxkin?”

Nick wiped his face on his sleeve, put the bottle to his lips, and chugged. The bubbles went up his nose and the bitterness caught at his throat, but he persisted. When the bottle was empty, he burped loudly. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess we do.”

Dinah giggled. Nick shot her a glare in case she was laughing at him. She wasn’t; she was smiling. His ears grew hot.

“I see folks heading for the church,” Smallbone said. “Foxkin, if you’re done showing off, it’s time to go.”

When Nick was little, his mother used to take him with her every Sunday to St. Mary Magdalene. The last time he’d gone was more than three years ago, for the funeral, but he remembered shadowy aisles and high-backed pews, an altar with a gold cross, windows like kaleidoscopes, and the nose-tingling perfume of incense and hot candle wax.

The Smallbone Cove church was not like that. It was a big open box. The walls were painted the cloudy green of sea glass, and the windows were made up of dozens of small panes, also faintly green, with a rippled texture that gave a wavy undersea look to the sunlight pouring through them. A dozen rows of backless benches faced a wooden stage that was set up with a piano, a beat-up lectern, and two chairs. There were no crosses anywhere, even on the steeple.

Smallbone stalked to the stage, climbed the steps, and lowered himself into the bigger chair. It was dark and heavy, with carving on the arms and back, like the rector’s chair at St. Mary’s. Only the arms of the rector’s chair didn’t look like reclining seals, and the legs and back weren’t held up by carved seals balanced on their back flippers.

“Pass me that satchel, Foxkin,” Smallbone snapped. “And see if you can manage to sit still.”

The second chair was free of seals but very hard. Nick fidgeted uncomfortably as the townsfolk trickled in: Eb and the staff of the Klam Shak in stained aprons, fishermen in worn foul-weather gear, shopkeepers and farmers in oilskins and parkas. There were old folks with canes, babies in arms, toddlers in strollers, and kids of assorted ages. By the time Lily herded the last of the latecomers onto the benches, Nick had counted maybe three hundred Smallbones, all staring at the evil wizard and his apprentice.

What chiefly struck Nick, looking at them all together like that, was how alike they were. There was something about the shape of their faces, the size of their noses, and those wide-spaced, ink-black eyes. Except for a few of the teenagers who’d dyed theirs blue and pink, everybody’s hair was brown or white or gray, blotched or streaked with black. They didn’t look quite human, and Nick found himself wondering if Smallbone had called up a town of fairies to serve him, or even demons.

Lily walked to the front. “That’s all of them,” she told Smallbone.

“You’d best get started, then.”

Lily faced the townsfolk. “I call this Town Meeting to order.” Her voice was deep and resonant, a good voice for addressing a roomful of people. “All rise.”

Benches creaked as they got to their feet.

“Smallbones, are you all assembled?”

“We are,” answered the townsfolk in slightly creepy unison.

Smallbone stood, his old black coat flowing around him like a movie wizard’s robes. “Who are you?” He used the voice he used to turn boys into rocks. The little hairs rose at the back of Nick’s neck.

“We are swimmers and fishers,” came the answer. “We are beasts and men.”

“Where do you come from?”

“We come from the north, from the wide beaches and the raging waves of the sea that shows no mercy.”

“What are your rights?”

“We have the right of freedom of the sea and the land for us and our heirs. We have the right of protection from any who would harm us or wish us harm. We have the right of long life beyond the use of our kind.”

“What are your duties?”

“To honor and obey our Wizard. To give him the best of our catch and our harvest. To Walk the Bounds of the township at Midsummer and Midwinter, at the Equinox of Spring and the Equinox of Autumn, and to strengthen the Sentries. To come to Town Meeting and answer the Questions.”

Silence fell. Smallbone glared down, beard bristling, wiry hair quivering with energy, spectacles winking like baleful diamonds. The townsfolk shuffled uncomfortably.

“Now we got that out of the way,” Smallbone said in his ordinary voice, “I got some real questions. You might as well sit down.”

This was obviously not part of a usual Town Meeting. The townsfolk resumed their benches, exchanging startled glances.

“Comfy?” Smallbone asked. “Now. When was the last time you clowns walked the Bounds?”

The townsfolk stared at him, then looked away — at their feet, out the wavy glass windows, at the ceiling, anywhere but at Smallbone. Nick knew how they felt. Smallbone’s voice had been full of acid, as if he already knew the answer and was daring them to lie.

A wheelchair detached itself from the end of a row and rolled down the aisle. It was propelled by an elderly woman with a white bun screwed to the back of her head, wearing a puffy down jacket like a giant pink marshmallow and a grim expression.

“Ah, Miss Rachel,” Smallbone said.

Miss Rachel engaged her brakes. Her glasses, Nick noted, were bigger than Smallbone’s and turned her eyes into giant pools of black. “It’s been quite some time since it was done properly. My granddaddy and his friends used to do it — at least that’s what they said they were doing. My grandmother said it was an excuse to drink and bark at the moon four times a year.”

A woman in a plaid barn coat stood up. “I heard the fishermen back then decided there wasn’t any point traipsing around the Town Limits four times a year when the farmers could go out and check the Sentries any time. I do myself, when I think of it.” She sounded defensive.

“And when was the last time you thought of it, Naomi?” Smallbone asked.

The woman called Naomi looked defensive. “I went to Lantern Glade just last year!”

“I see.” Smallbone’s voice was dry. “And was the Lantern burning bright?”

She shrugged. “It was in the middle of the day. Everybody knows you can’t see a flame so good in the daylight.”

Smallbone munched his beard. Naomi sat down.

A man in a sou’wester got up. “Weathervane don’t turn,” he said. “I’m surprised you ain’t noticed it yourself.”

Smallbone munched faster.

There was a commotion in the front row, where the Mercantile Smallbones were sitting. Nick looked down in time to see Dinah jerk her arm out of her father’s grip and rise to her feet, looking mulish.

“The Stream’s frozen,” she said flatly. “It’s not supposed to freeze, ever.”

“The Stream flows free at midwinter,” Smallbone chanted in his wizard voice. “The Lantern burns bright at midday, the Weathervane guides the Wind, and the Stone Wall stands against all harm. And if they don’t,” he added crabbily, “it’s a sorry state of affairs.”

“You mean the sorry state of affairs where we do all the work and give you food and anything else you want and you don’t do nothing for us?” yelled a voice from the back.

Smallbone’s beard bristled. “You listen here, Saul Smallbone. I drew the Town Limits and set the Sentries to guard them. I set the Wind to sweep away any who threatened the peace of Smallbone Cove, the Lantern to burn them, the Stream to rise and drown them, and the Stone Wall to bar their way. Even you must agree all that’s worth a few provisions.”

Saul got to his feet. The woman sitting beside him tugged at his jacket “No, Jezzy, I won’t hush! I don’t care what he did — or says he did — way back in the old days. Them Sentries are there to keep us in and keep us down, and you”— he pointed a stubby finger at Smallbone —“are a lazy old tyrant!”

There was a communal gasp as the townsfolk waited for the evil wizard to blast Saul into the middle of next week. Nick gripped the arms of his chair and held his breath, wondering what the old man would turn Saul into.

But Smallbone just laughed. “Lazy, am I? Well, maybe I’m tired out after all these years keeping you jeezly blubberheads safe from anything might hurt or worry you. You could at least thank me.”

An older man popped to his feet. “You promised to take care of us! It’s in the Contract! No predators, no danger except from the sea. And now there’s bikers and mosquitoes and I don’t know what-all rampaging up and down!”

“Bildad is right,” said a woman. “And what about that coyote we saw last month, trotting down Commercial Street in the middle of the day!”

“Be fair, Zilpah,” said Miss Rachel. “The coyote didn’t actually hurt anybody.”

Smallbone’s beard bunched, and Nick thought he could hear his teeth grinding. “That wasn’t no coyote. That was Lily’s Dinah in a coyote suit she found by the Stream. Which”— his voice got louder —“wouldn’t have happened if you numb-brained, no-good blubber-heads had kept up your end of the bargain the way you was supposed to!”

Nick looked at Dinah. Her head was bowed and her hands were clenched in her lap. Her father patted them gently.

Smallbone surveyed the crowd of round, anxious faces. “It goes against the grain, putting myself out for a pack of gormy cusses like yourselves. I’ve a mind to hole up in Evil Wizard Books and let Fidelou’s pack do their worst.”

“Fidelou?” Saul was still on his feet. “Fidelou ain’t nothing but a boogeyman you made up to give you an excuse to keep us penned up here. Everybody knows there ain’t no such thing as werewolves.”

To Nick’s astonishment, Smallbone seemed to find this funny. “I’ll be hornswoggled if that ain’t the most boneheaded thing I’ve heard in three hundred years! You got your own personal evil wizard and you don’t believe in werewolves?”

“Wolves are wolves,” Saul said. “People are people. You can’t switch from one to the other like changing clothes. The world don’t work that way.”

Smallbone picked up the leather satchel. His spectacles glittered. “It don’t? Well, I guess you Smallbones need some reminding about where you come from. Lily, come here.”

Lily climbed up onto the stage, her lips thinned into a determined line.

Smallbone opened the satchel, pulled out a hairy bundle, and put it in her hands. The bundle unfolded like a furry flower into a sleek mass of pale gray spotted with brown that glistened in the underwater light as Lily shook it out.

It was a sealskin, with the head, tail, and flippers still attached.

Smallbone’s voice was like a whip. “Put it on.”

Lily tossed the skin around her shoulders. The head settled over her hair like a hood. For a breath, she was a woman draped in fur, so close that Nick could see her frightened eyes gleaming behind the dead, whiskered mask. And then she was a sleek harbor seal.

The Smallbones gave a collective gasp. Somebody screamed, and the babies started crying. Dinah was on her feet, her mouth ajar. Her father shouted, “Lily!”

The seal shuffled backward, barking unhappily.

“Shut up!” Smallbone roared in a voice that startled even the babies into silence. “That’s what you are,” he shouted. “Every last one of you. I pulled your ancestors out of the sea and gave ’em hands and feet and speech and thought so they could work for me. In return, I promised to keep ’em safe from anything that wanted to hurt them, wolves and coyotes included. That’s what them Sentries’re for. It’s on account of your neglect that they ain’t what they should be. So I better hear a little less about how I ain’t holding up my end and a little more about how you aim to hold up yours, unless you want to find out just how evil an evil wizard can be.”

The silence that followed this speech was thick enough to cut with a saw. Nick wasn’t surprised that Miss Rachel was the one who broke it.

“Fair enough,” she said. “What do we do?”

“Stay away from the Town Limits,” Smallbone said. “Do the Rituals. Even you clowns couldn’t have clean forgotten them. The Equinox is next month. Oh, and give them bikers a wide berth. They’re mean sons of guns.”

Zery got up. “We’ll do it — we promise. Now can you bring Lily back?”

Smallbone rose, marched over to the seal that was Lily, and laid his hand on her head, then stepped back as the sleek dappled body shuddered, flowed up to stand on two feet, and became Lily with a glossy sealskin draped around her shoulders.

Smallbone twitched it off and thrust it back into the satchel.

She tottered to Smallbone’s chair and sat down heavily. “Well, that was a trip and a half,” she said.

“Blubberheads,” Smallbone muttered. “Nothing but blubberheads. Come on, Foxkin. We got work to do.”

They strode past the rows of Smallbones, sitting stunned and silent on their benches. As Nick left the church, he heard a baby cry, and then a great swell of sound as the Smallbones of Smallbone Cove got over their shock and started to react.