Off to Be the Wizard Read online

  “So, you wanted us to know that you’re a wizard. We know. What now?”

  “I was thinking that if I demonstrate my powers, you might give me food, and a place to sleep for the night.”

  “Hmmmm,” The barman stroked his stubbly chin with his left (and only) hand as he rose and walked to Martin. “Interesting offer you make, young master wizard. I’d think if I were a powerful wizard, I’d offer to not demonstrate my powers if I was given what I want, if you see what I mean.”

  “I’m not trying to threaten anyone!” Martin said.

  “And you haven’t! You’ve just barged in and asked for free room and board without doing us the courtesy of threatening us with your magic.”

  “I’m sorry,” Martin sputtered.

  “As well you should be. You don’t just prance into an inn and demand free food and a bed simply because of who you are. It’s not done! Look at Gert.” The bartender turned to the back of room. “Gert, come ‘ere.”

  A woman at the back of the room took a long time getting up from her seat. She rose at normal speed, but there was so much of her that it still took a long time. Once she was up, she walked quickly to where Martin and the innkeeper stood. Again, she moved at normal speed, but her stride was so long it only took a few steps. Gert smiled benevolently and put a hand on Martin’s shoulder. The sheer weight of it made Martin squirm. She was all muscle – her fingers were stronger than most men’s arms. Martin looked up into her mammoth eyes. They looked sad. The look in her eyes said that she would not enjoy hurting Martin, and she would not enjoy it soon.

  “Are you looking at Gert?” the innkeeper asked.

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “Good. It might not surprise you to learn that some people used to call her Big Gert. People stopped eventually though. As they say, ‘Res ipsa loquitur.’ Latin, that is. Means ‘The thing speaks for itself.’ By the way, people also used to call Gert the thing. Anyway, Gert eats and drinks for free here at The Rotted Stump.”

  The innkeeper explained, “One day, Gert comes in here and announces, much like you did, that she wants food and a bed. And like you, Gert has powers. Far less mysterious powers than you claim, but powers nonetheless. Where Gert’s approach differed from yours is that she just went ahead and demonstrated her power. She demonstrated her power on that table.” The innkeeper pointed at a heavy oak table that had been broken in half, then crudely braced and nailed back together. “Then she threatens to continue demonstrating until I give her what she wants. It’s in my interest to keep Gert happy by feeding her. It’s in Gert’s interest to keep me happy by not causing me trouble, and not letting anyone else cause me trouble. Do you mean to cause trouble, young wizard?”

  “No,” Martin said, still looking up at the face of Gert, “I won’t cause trouble. But I can show you something you’ve never seen, something that will amaze. That’s gotta be worth dinner and a bed.”

  The innkeeper smiled. “If you can show me something that will persuade me to give you free food and a bed that isn’t you smashing an oak table with one blow, I will indeed be amazed.”

  The customers were laughing openly now. Gert went back to her seat. The innkeeper stood aside. Everyone was watching Martin to see what he’d do next.

  “Good people!” Martin declared, surreptitiously reaching his left hand into his pocket. “Customers of The Rotted Stump, Mark this moment well, for one day you will gather your grandchildren ‘round and tell them of the day the great wizard Martin the Magnificent showed you … cloth you can see through!”

  He produced the evidence bag from his pocket with a flourish, holding it above his head with both hands. All laughter stopped. The customers slowly approached Martin and the plastic bag. They had never seen anything like it. He lowered it so they could get a good look.

  “I’ll hand it to you, lad,” the innkeeper said, examining the plastic as Martin held it tight. “That is something.”

  An old man poked at the bag with the end of his pipe, watching it deform under pressure. “Will it hold off water?

  “Yes,” Martin said. “It lets light through, but it keeps water out!”

  The innkeeper gave Martin a searching look. “Can you make more?”

  “Yes!” Martin said. “I can!”

  “I’ll tell you what. If you’ll make more of this, say a few square yards, you’ll have a place to sleep tonight.”

  “You’ll trade room and board for the see-through fabric?”

  “No. but I’ll lend you a stick and you can make a tent.”

  A slightly raised voice called out from the door. “Hello, Pete, I’m told I may be of some assistance.”

  All eyes turned to the door. There stood a man of average height and slightly heavy build. He had a neatly trimmed beard, keen eyes, and the bearing of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. He wore a flowing powder-blue robe with flared sleeves, which was by far the cleanest garment in the building. He was wearing a pointed hat that matched the robe perfectly. He held a polished wood staff. At the top of the staff, just above head height, there was a curved bottle full of some thick, red fluid, stopped with a cork. The bottle was lashed to the staff with twine.

  “Aye, Phillip. Thanks for coming,” the innkeeper said, smiling. “I believe an introduction is in order. Lad, Phillip here is a powerful wizard and friend of the house, the house being me. Phillip, this lad claims to be a powerful wizard, and suggests that I should give him dinner and bed.”

  Phillip the wizard bowed. “Always a pleasure to meet another practitioner of the unknowable arts! You have the advantage of me. I am Phillip. What’s your name?”

  Damn right I have the advantage of you, Martin thought. He had this “wizard” figured out. The friendly words, the confident demeanor, the impressive robe, it was all classic con artist stagecraft.

  “Says his name is Martin the Magnificent,” Pete the innkeeper said, before Martin could respond.

  “Ah, very pleased to meet you, Martin.” The wizard bowed again, more deeply. His eyes caught the plastic bag. “Oh, my! What is this?!”

  “He calls it see-through cloth,” Pete said, again cutting Martin off. “Says he made it.”

  “Indeed!” the wizard said, his eyes wide with wonder. “Might I please see it more closely, Martin?”

  Martin didn’t want to hand him the plastic bag. Who knew if he’d give it back? He could always zip back to modern times and get more plastic, but if this Phillip person made off with the bag, he’d have given the charlatan another tool to use in conning these rubes into believing he was a wizard. Martin didn’t want that on his conscience. He held the bag up closer to Phillip, but kept a tight grip.

  Phillip smiled and poked at the plastic with his forefinger a few times. “Impressive! Clearly, you are a wizard of prodigious power, Martin. Tell me, can you make more?”

  “Don’t bother telling him to make himself a tent, ‘cause I already did.” Pete said.

  “I was sure you’d already covered that, Pete. No, I just wanted to see him produce more of this wondrous material. It’s always a pleasure to see another wizard work. Perhaps I might learn something. How about it, Martin? You made this cloth you can see through. Can you make more?”

  “Of course I can make more! Any time I want!” Martin said.

  “Splendid!”

  “But I can’t do it while people are watching.”

  This caused some laughter, but Phillip raised a single hand and silenced it instantly. “Of course I understand. There are things we wizards are required to do that are not for others’ eyes to see. It was unfair of me to ask that he conjure more transparent cloth right here in front of us.”

  Martin exhaled, happy that he had dodged that bullet.

  “We shall have to find him a private place in which to work.”

  Gert threw Martin into
a small room filled with casks and slammed the door behind him. It was dark, humid, and musty. Beyond the door Martin could hear the wizard and the innkeeper, his captors, talking.

  “He’ll have no light in there.”

  “Oh, he shouldn’t need any. They are called the dark arts, after all.”

  “And what if he can’t produce any more of the cloth you can see through?”

  “That would mean he’s a liar. So, naturally, we take all of his belongings, smear him with dung, and chase him out of town.”

  Martin had a vision of himself in filthy, torn clothing, fleeing into the woods while Phillip went through his former belongings and happened across his smartphone. It was an awful thought, but Martin knew it would not come to that. Of course, he could just teleport out of here, but then what? No, he had to demonstrate that he was a wizard and shut up this con man. Once that was done, things would be much easier.

  Martin turned on the smartphone. Its screen lit up the room.

  “I think I see a faint glow under the door!” The innkeeper’s muffled voice exclaimed.

  “See,” the wizard said. “I think we’ll find this Martin is quite resourceful.”

  You don’t know the half of it, Martin thought.

  Walter and Margarita Banks stood, bewildered, in the kitchen of their house in suburban Seattle. Their youngest son Martin had just burst in, hugged them both, and told them, “Just remember, I love you, and it isn’t true.”

  As Martin walked toward his old bedroom Margarita asked, “It’s not true that you love us?”

  Martin stopped. “What? No! I love you. Something else isn’t true.”

  “What it isn’t true?” Walter asked.

  Martin said “You’ll see soon enough. I’ll be in my room,” and retreated to his room, closing the door firmly behind him.

  Margarita and Walter looked at each other, confused. They heard sirens, which were getting louder. Walter slowly started walking toward Martin’s room.

  “Son,” he said, loud enough to be heard through the door. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  He was almost to the door when it burst open. Martin ran out of the door and back to the kitchen. For some reason he was wearing that stupid robe from his Halloween costume when he was in high school.

  Martin ran to the drawer next to the kitchen sink.

  “Martin, what’s going on?” Margarita asked.

  Martin held up a package of cling film. “Do you have any heavy duty? This stuff’s too flimsy.”

  “In the cupboard under the sink. Why are you wearing your Snape costume?” Margarita had to yell, the sirens were very loud now, as if the police cars had parked on the front lawn, which they had.

  Martin muttered, “It’s Malfoy. You always get that wrong,” as he threw open the cupboard, grabbed two boxes of heavy duty cling film, and silently thanked his parents for shopping at a discount warehouse. He then went back to his old room. He shouted, “Thanks, Mom!” and closed his bedroom door just as he heard someone pounding on his parents’ front door.

  Back in the storeroom of The Rotted Stump, Martin caught his breath. He felt a fresh pang of guilt over the stress he was causing his parents. He knew that to them it had been less than a minute since he burst in their front door, but to him it felt like his parents’ home had been under siege by federal agents for several hours. There was nothing he could do about that now, though. He had problems of his own.

  Working by the dim light of his phone’s screen, Martin opened the two boxes of heavy duty cling film. He set the rolls aside while he methodically tore and folded the cardboard boxes so they could be hidden in his pockets. He doubted they’d be of use, and he didn’t think the people of this time would know what to make of them, but it felt foolish to leave any evidence lying around.

  Martin stood up and spread his arms. He was wearing his light jacket under his robe, and when he raised his arms the robe billowed outward from his sides exactly as he’d hoped. He picked up one of the rolls of cling film and pulled about a yard of the film off of the roll. He did not tear the exposed film off. Instead, he scrunched it into a sort of loose rope and fed it through the arm of his robe. He put the roll of film in the left exterior pocket of his jacket where it would be hidden beneath his robe. He held up his left hand. He could see an inch of the cling film extending out of the cuff. With his other hand he tugged it, and with some effort the film fed smoothly off of the roll and out his sleeve. He fed the excess back into his sleeve. Martin giggled fiendishly as he put the second roll in his right jacket pocket and fed the film through his right sleeve.

  Pete, Gert and Philip heard a knock on the storeroom door. Pete released the catch and swung the door open. Martin Banks didn’t say a word. He acted like he didn’t notice they were there. He walked back to the front of the inn’s main room and held his arms aloft, with the backs of his hands facing the assembled audience. All conversation stopped.

  “I, Martin the Magnificent, the most powerful wizard in the … place, have been challenged to prove my prowess by producing more of the cloth you can see through. Before I continue, I ask the one called Phillip, can you produce the see-through cloth?”

  Phillip stood smiling at the side of the room, next to Gert and Pete. “No, Martin, I admit I cannot. I look forward to watching you do so, that I might learn something of your methods. The day we stop learning is the day we stop living.”

  Yeah, you’re about to learn, you fraud, Martin thought.

  “SO BE IT!” Martin bellowed. “I will need two volunteers!”

  The audience shrank away from him and tried to avoid eye contact, because that’s what audiences do.

  Martin said, “You! Yes, you. No, not him, you. Come on, I won’t hurt you. Oh, all right then, how about you? No? Come on, I just need two people to help. Okay, you two. Yes, right here in front. Yeah, look at me. Okay, don’t worry, you don’t even have to get up. Look, just stay there. I’ll tell you what to do.”

  With that settled, Martin again raised his arms with the backs of his hands facing the crowd. “If it’s the see-thorough cloth you want, and proof of my power you require, then I present you with both! BEHOLD!” He put his hands together over his head, grabbed the two stubs of film that were poking out of his sleeves and pulled them, spreading his arms. The crowd murmured. He extended his arm to the two volunteers in the front row, offering them the loose ends of film which extended from his hands. “Pull them, my friends. Pull them!”

  The two men pulled on the cling film, handing the excess to the people around them as it emerged from his sleeves. Martin kept up the patter to help sell the illusion. “Yes, pull! Behold! Pull and behold! I produce the see-through fabric as a spider spins silk, only I do so from my hands, not my abdomen!” By the time the rolls ran out, the entire room was draped with wrinkled cling film. The audience was examining the film, tugging it to test its strength and trying to pull it flat to look through it. The crinkling noise was deafening.

  Phillip looked delighted and Martin was confused. Phillip approached Martin, clapping his hands. “Well done! I honestly don’t think it would have ever occurred to me to do that. I really am impressed!” He shook Martin’s hand vigorously. “I see a great future for you here. Look, forget getting dinner and a bed from Pete. You’ll just end up with fleas, and that’s from the dinner.”

  “Hey!” Pete objected.

  “You know it’s true,” Phillip said, still shaking Martin’s hand. “Come stay with me. I’ve got plenty of room and a big pot of stew. I think we have a lot to talk about.”

  Martin wrenched his hand free. “I’m not going anywhere with you! You just want me to tell you how I did it. You think it’s a trick you can use to fool people.”

  The warmth drained from Phillip’s expression. His eyes darted around the room. “Look,” he said quietly, “We both know exa
ctly how you did it, and now I think we should go back to my home and discuss it as two wizards.”

  “Two wizards?” Martin sneered, “There’s only one wizard in this room. One wizard and another guy who’s done a lot of talking.”

  Phillip turned to all the other people in the room. “Look, you’ve all seen me work, will someone please set him straight?” Something fascinating seemed to be happening on the floor, or the ceiling, or out the windows, anyplace but where the wizards were standing. Who knew medieval peasants were so shy, Martin thought.

  “Look, Phillip, if that is your real name, I’ve demonstrated my powers. Let’s see yours.”

  Phillip put an unwelcome hand on Martin’s shoulder. “Look, you made some transparent fabric. It was very nice, but don’t kid yourself. That’s nothing compared to a real wizard’s power.”

  Martin brushed off his hand. “So you say, but I still haven’t seen anything to prove it.”

  “That’s the way you want to do this? Really?” Phillip asked. “Okay, I challenge you to a wizard’s duel. We go outside, you do something to demonstrate your powers, and I warn you, it’ll take more than transparent fabric. Then, if I can beat it, I do. Then if you can beat that, you do, and we keep it up until one of us fails.”

  Moments later, Martin and Phillip were standing in the street with a large crowd lining both sides. It was dark, but not so dark that Martin couldn’t see the look on Phillip’s face, even from thirty feet away. Martin was set to go first, and that was fine with him. He was supposed to start small, but he’d open with levitating. There was no way the fraud could top that. He’d slink away in shame and leave town most likely. Maybe Martin would get his hut. It sounded nice, and some stew would hit the spot.

  He saw Gwen in the crowd. He smiled and nodded to her. She shook her head, walked to Phillip and said something. Martin couldn’t tell what from this distance, but Phillip nodded as he replied. She looked to Martin again, her large brown eyes looking equally tired and disapproving.