The Evil Wizard Smallbone (31 page)

Everyone leaned forward eagerly.

A smell rose from the chest — bitter and wild, like a salt marsh at high tide. Lily brushed aside a tangle of dry seaweed and lifted out a seal skin, dappled silver and black.

“Golly,” said Hell Cat reverently.

“Are they all there?” Miss Rachel asked.

Lily laid the pelt on the old librarian’s lap. “We’ll count them together, Miss Rachel. But they seem all right. In fact, they’re wonderful.”

Dinah hunkered down by the open chest, breathing in the sea smell and looking at the pelts Smallbone had taken from her ancestors, but not quite daring to touch them. They were beautiful and magical, but they were dangerous, too. If she put one on and went out to sea, would she have to be a seal forever? Would she forget about Smallbone Cove, her mother, the library, everything she loved? Would she forget she wanted to go to college or be a scientist?

Hell Cat had no such qualms. She picked up a skin and rubbed her face over it. “Oh, it’s
soft
!” She looked at Smallbone. “Can I try it on?”

“No!” Smallbone and Dinah shouted in unison. Smallbone’s cheeks bunched. “You want to tell her why not?”

Dinah shot him a nervous look. “I can’t — I mean, I don’t know how magic works. Except it’s only logical that putting on a skin that isn’t yours is not right. It leads to bad things like, well, like Fidelou and the Howling Coyotes.”

“Oh, pooh,” Hell Cat said. “I ain’t like them loser bikers. I’m just curious, is all.”

“You might recall,” Smallbone said mildly, “what curiosity does to cats. And we got business to do. Lily, you got them papers?”

Lily got up. “It’s in the library computer. Dinah, will you print it out for me?”

Everybody watched, mesmerized, as Dinah called up the file and sent it to the printer. As the printer was thinking things over, Miss Rachel said, in a making-conversation tone, “Anybody heard anything from Fidelou town?”

“It’s still there, far as I know,” Smallbone said. “Though there ain’t much left of it.”

Lily frowned. “Now I’ll worry every time I hear a motorcycle.”

“Don’t,” Smallbone said. “I promised to protect Smallbone Cove from all evil and I done that.” As he spoke, a hot metallic tang tinged the air. “If a single coyote tries to pass the Sentries, on two legs or four, the Wall will bar his way, the Stream will rise to drown him, the Wind will blow him into the middle of the next county, and the Lantern will set such a fire under his skin that he’ll be sorry he was born.”

He stopped and coughed. “Well,” he said in a more ordinary tone, “if that paper’s ready, Dinah, let’s see what else I promised.”

The new contract between Zachariah Smallbone and the residents of the town of Smallbone Cove was a long document. It had clauses and subclauses and what Dinah’s dad, who had helped to draw it up, called contingencies and Hell Cat called boring parts. What it all boiled down to was that, for the first time since Smallbone had dragged their ancestors out of the sea and given them human form, speech, and the ability to think, the inhabitants of Smallbone Cove could come and go as they wished. The Sentries that kept were-coyotes, stray evil wizards, shoplifters, guns, and drunk drivers out of Smallbone Cove no longer kept the townsfolk in. Dinah could study at the University of Maine or Caltech, if she wanted to. Lily could go to trade shows in Augusta or even Boston. Fishermen who were tired of the Reach could fish off of Portland or even Cape Cod, if they wanted.

The seals of Smallbone Cove were free.

“Town Meeting’ll be different,” Dinah said.

Smallbone sighed. “A lot of things’ll be different. But that’s for another day. Let’s get this jeezly thing signed so I can have my breakfast.”

Lily and Miss Rachel signed, then the old wizard took the library ballpoint and wrote
Zachariah Smallbone
on the proper line with a flourish. Dinah signed as a witness for the next generation. Smallbone turned down an invitation to join Lily and Dinah for breakfast at Eb’s, a cup of tea, and Mutt’s offer of a ride home in Lily’s car, and left the library.

Nobody, not even the most sunburned of the tourists, said hello as he walked down Commercial Street. He was the Evil Wizard Smallbone, and you never knew when he might do something to prove it.

He marched down the woodland path, whistling under his breath. When he reached the pond, he took off his top hat, banged it shut against his leg, and stuffed it into a pocket. He scratched his head energetically, unbuttoned his coat, and walked on, the skirts of his coat brushing the ferns and moss and small white trilliums growing along the edge of the path.

When he emerged from the woods, Jeff bounded up to him, his legs muddy and his coat rough with burrs. The black Lab licked his hands and tore off toward the house, ears flapping.

The parking lot was empty. Smallbone ran up the porch steps and entered, flipping the little wooden
CLOSED
sign as he shut the door behind him. Evil Wizard Books looked downright cheerful. The piles of books in the windows and on the tables were decorated with carved wooden figures of animals and fishermen and pirates and mermaids. Evil Wizard T-shirts in assorted sizes were piled on the counter between the old brass cash register and a wire rack of scenic postcards.

In the kitchen, a plump man in an Evil Wizard Books T-shirt was sitting in the rocker, reading a book propped against the furry orange ball that was Tom, asleep on his lap. He had a bald spot and a new and scruffy-looking brown beard. Judging from the state of his clothes, he’d been digging in the garden.

“How’d it go?” the man asked, not looking up from his book. “Anybody get turned into anything untoward?”

Nick slipped off the Smallbone coat and draped it over the back of a kitchen chair. “Nope. It went off real well.” He sniffed the air. “Is that sausages I smell?”

“Ayuh.”

“Any left? I’m hungry enough to eat a boiled owl.”

“Look in the oven.”

Nick had only taken a couple of bites when the shop bell clanged.

Smallbone turned the page. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “You’re the Evil Wizard today.”

This book is based on a short story I wrote for
Troll’s-Eye View
, an anthology of stories told from the point of view of classic fairy-tale villains. I chose to retell “The Wizard Outwitted,” which I read as a child in
Fairy Tales from Many Lands
, edited by H. Herda and published by Franklin Watts in 1956. It’s a Russian fairy tale, and I’ve never seen it collected anywhere else. So I’d like to begin with a big thank-you to H. Herda (whoever they may have been), and to Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling for inspiring me to think of Nick in the first place. And to my BFF Eleanor Hoagland and her husband, Leigh, for lending me their beautiful house on the Reach to write in, thus giving me the setting for Nick’s story.

Once inspired, however, a book needs to be written and rewritten — a process that should not be undertaken without the guidance of good and magical friends. I count myself lucky to have had Iris Wilde, Doselle Young, Karen Meisner, Will Alexander, Terri Windling, Theodora Goss, Kat Howard, Lev Grossman, Edith Hope Bishop, Claire Cooney, Carlos Hernandez, Holly Black, Hillary Homezie, Elizabeth Dulemba, Chip Sullivan, and Ruth Sanderson as readers, advisers, and cheerleaders, with special callouts to Stu Segal and Stan Dulemba, who gave me valuable tips on the care of motorcycles; Kay Crabb, who checked out Nick’s psychology; and the Maine trapper, the pig farmer, and the goat farmer at the Blue Hill Fair who patiently answered my rather strange questions about gray foxes, Maine coyotes, pig games, and how goats behave when upset.

I am also grateful beyond words to Jill Grinberg, who handled the whole mysterious process of submission and negotiation with verve and grace, and to Deb Noyes and Miriam Newman of Candlewick, who gave me and Nick the kind of rigorous and useful editorial attention I’ve always dreamed of.

Most of all, I thank Ellen Kushner for keeping me supplied with industrial-strength chai and support while I took this book apart and put it back together again multiple times, complaining all the while. I owe you one, dear.