The Eye of Zoltar (3 page)

There were about fifty yards between it and us and Perkins and I sat there for a moment, the engine of the Beetle idling. It stared at us blankly for some moments until I realised we were upwind, and it probably wasn’t aware of the liquorice. I slowly backed away, but the Tralfamosaur didn’t follow. Quite against my better judgement I stopped, and then inched slowly forward again. It still didn’t seem that interested.

‘Better show yourself,’ I said to Perkins, ‘and try to look appetising.’

‘Yes,’ he said sarcastically, ‘I’m well known for my pie impersonations.’

Perkins took a deep breath, undid his seat belt, stood up through the sunroof and waved his hands. The effect was instantaneous. The Tralfamosaur gave out a deafening bellow, and charged.

I slammed the car into reverse and swiftly backed away. Luckily there was an open gateway nearby, and I reversed into this, pulled the wheel around, thumped the gear lever into first and drove off with the Tralfamosaur in close pursuit. Part one of the plan was now in operation.

The Tralfamosaur could now smell the liquorice, and it took a wild bite at the car as we accelerated away. We felt the jerk as a single tooth caught in the bodywork, but a moment later the metal split, releasing us. I glanced into the rear-view mirror as we took off back the way we had come, and could see the Tralfamosaur glowing red in the tail-lights as it chased us with a heavy, lumbering gait. Thankfully, a Volkswagen is speedier than a Tralfamosaur, and we maintained a safe distance.

We took a left at Mordford, then a right over the River Wye, where the Tralfamosaur, now quite hungry, stopped to sniff at the ironically named Tasty Drinker Inn. The Tralfamosaur was so distracted by the smell of citizens hiding inside that we had to reverse almost to within reach of it before the creature changed its mind, and, overcome by the sheer succulence of the liquorice, once again moved after us, knocking over two cars in the car park and demolishing both bridge parapets as it lumbered across.

‘Wow,’ said Perkins, watching the spectacle while hanging out of the window, ‘I think I’ve seen everything now.’

‘I sincerely wish that were the case,’ I said, ‘but I doubt it. You’re new to the magic industry. Pretty soon, stuff like this will be
routine
.’

After another ten minutes I took a tight left turn into a field. I had left the gate open ready and hung an oil lamp on the gatepost so I wouldn’t miss it. I had to slow down to take the corner, however, and the Tralfamosaur, seizing the opportunity, closed his teeth around the rear bumper. The back of the car was lifted high in the air, held there, and then with a tearing noise the bumper ripped off. Almost immediately the car fell back on to the grassy slope with a thump and bounced back into the air. The Quarkbeast was catapulted off the rear seat to hit the roof, where he became stuck fast when his scales got embedded in the steel.

Undeterred, I put my foot down and aimed the car towards the second pair of oil lamps, positioned where we had removed a length of fencing between the field and the railway.

‘Stand by for SpellGo one,’ I yelled as we drove up the stone ballast and on to the railway track, the tyres bumping noisily across the sleepers. Perkins’ hand hovered over the first of the two spell activation buttons.

‘
Now!
’ I shouted and Perkins thumped the one marked ‘Bogeys’. There was a bright flash and a buzzing sensation and the Volkswagen’s wheels were transformed into railway bogeys, that is to say, train
wheels
. They immediately slotted on to the rails and the ride smoothed out. We were now, technically at least, a train. I didn’t need to steer so let go of the wheel, pressed on the accelerator and looked out of the window.

The Tralfamosaur was close – and even more angry. It was snapping at us wildly, driven on by the overpowering smell of liquorice.

And that was pretty much when we entered the Kidley Hill railway tunnel. The Tralfamosaur followed us inside and the engine sound and angry bellows bounced off the tunnel sides to create a noise that I would be happy never to hear again.

‘Right,’ I yelled. ‘Timing is everything for this one. I’m on the SpellGo button, you’re on the grenade launcher.’

‘Right-o,’ replied Perkins, and shouldered the weapon as he stood up in the sunroof and faced, not the beast, but the other direction – the far tunnel opening we were fast approaching.

I accelerated to give us some distance between the creature and us, then came to a halt alongside a single green lamp I had left there earlier. I switched off the engine and flashed my headlights. In the distance a light flashed back at us, then stayed on. Perkins took aim at the light with the grenade launcher and flicked off the safety.

I placed my hand over the SpellGo button marked ‘Float’ and stared out of the broken rear windscreen. I could hear the footfalls of the Tralfamosaur and its panting, but could not see it, and after a few more moments everything went quiet.

‘Now?’ asked Perkins, finger hovering on the trigger.

‘When I say.’

‘How about now?’

‘When I say.’

‘Has it gone?’

‘It’s moved back to stealth mode,’ I whispered. ‘It’s there all right, somewhere in the darkness.’

I peered into the inky blackness but could still see nothing, then had an idea and stamped on the brake pedal. The brake lights popped on, bringing much-needed extra luminance to the brick-lined railway tunnel. It was a good job they did. The creature was less then ten feet from the rear bumper and I could see its small black eyes staring at us hungrily in the warm red glow.

‘
Now
.’

There was an explosive detonation as Perkins pulled the trigger, and the liquorice rocket flew down the railway tunnel, illuminating the tunnel sides as it went. There was a metallic
thang
noise as the rocket hit something. It didn’t explode, of course – the warhead had been replaced with liquorice.

I thumped the SpellGo button marked ‘Float’. There was another buzzing noise and the car lurched upwards. Not to the roof of the tunnel, of course, as that would not have allowed us to escape, but into one of the three ventilation shafts that connected the railway tunnel to the world outside. The shaft was quite large but even so the Volkswagen bumped against the sides as it rose, eventually pitching forward into a nose-down attitude that offered a good view looking straight down. The car’s headlights now illuminated a confused-looking Tralfamosaur below us, standing on the shiny railway lines. It pondered us for a moment, then followed the trail of liquorice scent left by the grenade launcher. As soon as it vanished, we looked at one another and smiled. We were, for the moment at least, safe.

We bumped and scraped up the ventilation shaft to finally emerge into the early morning light. Moobin was waiting for us as planned, and a dozen men deputised from the nearest town placed hooks around the bumpers of the now lighter-than-air Volkswagen. The men heaved on the ropes as the car swung around in the breeze, and after a lot of grunting the floating car was tied to the front of two heavy tractors. I breathed a sigh of relief. It had been an exciting and dangerous night. As we sat there for a moment reflecting upon recent events, the Quarkbeast fell from the roof of the car back on to the rear seat with a thump.

‘Are all our dates going to be like that?’ said Perkins.

‘I hope not,’ I replied with a smile, ‘but it was quite fun, wasn’t it? I mean, it’s not like we were killed or eaten or anything, right?’

‘If your idea of a good date is not being killed and eaten, you’ll never be disappointed.’

And he leaned towards me. I think I may even have leaned towards him, but then a voice rang out from below:

‘Are you coming down from there?’

It was Moobin.

‘Another time,’ I whispered.

A ladder was placed against the car and we climbed down to join Moobin, who congratulated us both before we walked down the hill to the tunnel entrance. A shipping container had been reversed up to the portal, and the Tralfamosaur, urged on by the liquorice grenade fired into the back of its new prison by Perkins, had swiftly been contained. We could hear the sound of contented chewing through the thick steel of the container; we had left several slabs of bacon in there for it, as well as half a bison.

The third part of the plan was soon completed; the floating Beetle had been hauled down the hill and anchored to the shipping container with self-tying string. The Tralfamosaur was now fast asleep and snoring, pretty much worn out after the night’s excitement, something that could be said for most of us.

‘A fine job,’ said Once Magnificent Boo in a rare moment of congratulation, although you wouldn’t know it from looking at her – her mood seemed as dark as normal.

She then climbed the ladder to the Volkswagen, gauged the speed of the wind, slammed the door and ordered the ladder away.

‘Ahoy, Moobin and Lady Mawgon,’ she called out, ‘I need Jenny’s car to be another fifteen tons lighter.’

The two sorcerers complied, and with a straining of wires and creaking from my car, the Volkswagen lifted the container into the air. Within a few seconds the breeze had caught the strange flying machine and it was over the treetops and drifting away in an easterly direction. I joined Moobin and Lady Mawgon, who were also watching my VW rise rapidly into the dawn sky.

‘She’s a bit high for just going to the zoo,’ I said.

Moobin and Lady Mawgon said nothing, and I figured out then what was happening.

‘She’s not going back to the zoo, is she?’

‘No,’ said Moobin quietly, ‘she’s carrying the Tralfamosaur across the border to the Cambrian Empire. They have wild Tralfamosaurs there and it can do … whatever it is Tralfamosaurs do.’

‘I’m not sure the King will be pleased,’ said Perkins. ‘The Tralfamosaur was a valuable tourist attraction for the Kingdom and one of his personal favourites, even after the Queen insisted he stopped feeding his enemies to it.’

‘The Queen was very wise to do that,’ Moobin replied, ‘but I don’t believe Once Magnificent Boo gives two buttons for what the King thinks.’

And with the dawn sky lightening, we watched the Volkswagen with the shipping container slung below it drift high into the early morning. Pretty soon it was high enough to catch the sun, and it was suddenly a blaze of orange.

‘I’m going to miss the Volkswagen,’ I said.

‘Don’t be so sentimental,’ said Lady Mawgon, ‘it’s only a car.’

But it wasn’t just a car. It was my
parents
’ car. The one I had been abandoned in. Wizard Moobin turned to Perkins and myself and smiled at us in turn.

‘Good work, you two. Come on: breakfast is on me.’

Prince Nasil was already up when I walked into the converted dining room we used as the ‘nerve centre’ of Kazam. It was here that the the day’s work was arranged, and where all sorcery-related meetings took place. It had been two weeks since the Tralfamosaur escapade, and the company had returned to what we called normality.

‘Hello, Jennifer,’ said Prince Nasil cheerily. ‘Any news of Boo?’

‘Nothing yet,’ I replied, ‘but we know she got there as she released a homing snail once landed, which told us she and the Tralfamosaur were safe in the Cambrian Empire.’

‘If my carpet hadn’t been damaged so much on that trip up to the Troll wall,’ said the Prince wistfully, ‘I might have been able to help.’

He was referring to a recent high-speed flight to Trollvania. The trip had further damaged an already worn-out magic carpet, and the Prince needed it rebuilt if he were to resume any sort of aerial work.

‘Look at that,’ said the Prince, holding up a tatty and threadbare excuse for a rug, ‘already ten thousand hours and two centuries past rebuild.’

‘What can we do?’ I asked.

‘We need more angel’s feathers,’ he announced, in much the same way as you might ask for an oil change on a car.

‘O-kay,’ I replied as angel’s feathers were, by their very definition, somewhat tricky to obtain, ‘and where would we find angels?’

‘Oh, they’re everywhere,’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘keeping an eye on stuff. But they’re fleet of wing and catching them is the devil’s own job. Here.’

He handed me a wire-mesh box that had a hinged flap on a tensioned spring.

‘An angel trap,’ he said without a shred of shame. ‘Baited with marshmallows, it’s possible we might be able to catch one.’

I looked at the trap dubiously as Tiger walked in. The Prince handed him an angel trap too, explained what it was and that the first person to trap an angel won a Mars bar.

‘Should we be trapping angels?’ asked Tiger, who, despite being not that old, knew right from wrong. ‘I mean, is that ethical?’

‘I very much doubt it,’ replied the Prince cheerfully, ‘but it’s a lot better than running intensive angel farms like they used to in the old days – that was the real reason behind the dissolution of the monasteries.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Not many people do.’

‘Where’s the best place to leave an angel trap?’ asked Tiger as soon as the Prince had gone.

‘Angels are everywhere,’ I said, ‘but usually only intervene during times of adversity.’

‘You should have had one of these when you were chased by the Tralfamosaur,’ said Tiger, and I nodded in agreement.

‘Have you seen this?’ asked Wizard Moobin as he walked into the offices holding a newspaper. ‘The unUnited Kingdoms are gearing up for Troll War V. The foundries have been working overtime – the orphan workforce are receiving extra gruel allowances.’

Moobin was referring to the Kingdom’s main source of income, which was manufacturing landships, primarily to fight the Trolls.

‘I can’t think there’s much appetite for another Troll War,’ added Moobin. ‘Most nations in the unUnited Kingdoms are still bankrupt from the last one. The only ones who really benefit are King Snodd and the weapons manufacturers.’

We all fell silent for a moment, contemplating a potential Troll War V. This, I knew with sadness, would produce only three things: profit for the King, more orphans – and Troll War VI.