Aurelius and I (29 page)

“Okay, okay, you’ve sold me...I presume this one won’t take an age to come into effect.”

“Why don’t you see for yourself?” I said, before hurling the acorn at the table top with all the strength I could muster.

There followed a highly satisfying explosion, similar in power to the one Daisy had created earlier on. A small area of the table briefly ignited but quickly burned out in wealth of thick smoke. When this cleared a significant scorch-marked had replaced the scorn’s presence on the table. This time Mr Romarticus was suitably impressed;

“Wahey! That was amazing. Do it again, do it again!” he cried like an excited child at his first magic show.

“We shouldn’t waste them,” I said, unsure as to whether Ophelia had the potions left to allow the trick to be repeated. “There are only two others remaining after all and we need to leave you something to experiment on.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he grumbled reluctantly before fixing his eyes greedily upon the one remaining item; the plastic cowboy. “What’s so special about him then?”

“What’s so special about him?” I repeated, playing for time as I looked desperately down at Ophelia for an answer, but no answer was forthcoming. The little princess simply shrugged her shoulders at me before turning her empty bag upside down and shaking it as if to demonstrate just how much trouble we were in. In doing so she spilled across the table, three fairy-sized books, a tiny globe and what appeared to be a penny-farthing style bicycle which used those actual coins for wheels. Although magnificent in their own right, none of these things seemed as though they would be of any use in helping to make a cheap plastic cowboy into a fair trade for a live fairy.

“It might be easier to ask what’s not special about him. I mean, just look at him. Sculpted from the highest quality plastic, before being hand-painted in a one off, original design by an up and coming young artist” (I neglected to mention that this artist was in fact me), “why this is a one of a kind, a once in a lifetime opportunity to procure an important piece of modern art before it inevitably skyrockets in value with time.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” replied the old man, sounding less than convinced, “I am not in the business of collecting art, but magic, and although even an untrained eye like my own is able to appreciate the creative integrity of the piece, and the ingenious juxtaposition between the new east and the old west that it represents, I fail to see what value it has to me in terms of advancing my search into the realm of magic.”

“You’re right of course, and might I say what a wonderful eye for art you have, sir,” I said, trying to soften his stance whilst holding no clue as to what anything he had just said actually meant. “But this is not just a piece of art, just like the other items you have seen, it too is enchanted.”

“What does it do then?”

“What does it do?” I repeated, asking myself the same question. This was not going well. The acorn and the sweets had gone badly enough, and now I didn’t even have the use of the princess’s little bag of wonders to help me. I was on my own. And so, under the pressure of the eyes of the greedy smurf-man boring into me from across the table, I just panicked;

“I’ll tell you what it does, it talks, that’s what!”

“Show me,” came the all too obvious yet tremendously unwelcome reply.

“Okay, Mr Cowboy, I command you to speak.”

There followed a tremendously awkward silence during which I actually found myself willing the inanimate piece of plastic before me to mysteriously come to life and confirm its enchanted status without the quite considerable help of one of Ophelia’s spells.

This is crazy
I thought to myself
what am I even expecting to happen? It’s just a useless toy I got from a Christmas cracker.

I looked up to discover Mr Romarticus staring at me in a manner that suggested he was thinking along similar lines. I didn’t know what to do. I found myself trying to work out whether I should try to swap the remaining useless acorns for one of Ophelia’s parents, or fall back on the enchanting, hair-curling ability of my left over sandwich crusts.

And then a miracle happened.

“Now listen up, Bucko, if you wanna doubt maw existence, you gonna have me and maw six-shooters to deal with.”

The words, spoken in full western twang, nearly gave me a heart attack from the shock of their arrival. The cowboy had spoken! But how? It just didn’t make any sense. I looked to Ophelia for an answer but she appeared to be just as bewildered as I was on the matter.

“I do beg your pardon, sir. But I’m afraid one does grow to be cynical in these times. Tell me, how is it that you can speak without moving your mouth?”

“Why, bah magic of course. I didn’t never used to be like this, but then a powerful wizard put a spell on me an’ gave me as a present to his son.”

“And how is it that you came to be in the possession of this young man?”

“Well y’all know how it is, it’s easy to forget about something that fits inside your pocket, no matter how special that something might be.”

And at that moment I realised the secret behind the cowboy’s sudden verbal animation. And it was neither my desperate hopes, nor Ophelia’s magic that had caused it, but something altogether more scientifically explainable – the ventriloquist skills of an ingenious Daylet.

“Well,” I said, interrupting the conversation before old blue face had a chance to work out what I really had, “I think you’ve seen enough in the way of a demonstration, do you want to make a trade or not?”

“Hmmm, I might be interested yes, but first, a closer look at those acorns if I may,” he said, reaching quickly across the table at them.

“I don’t think so,” I replied snatching them away. Unfortunately, I did this a little too quickly and was forced to watch in horror as one went spinning across the table, over the edge and onto the wooden floor below.

It was one of those moments that seems to move in slow motion, where you are able to see in precise detail everything that is happening while simultaneously being filled with a clarity as to what terrible repercussions the events you are witnessing are liable to have. Unfortunately, it is at these moments that one finds themselves paralysed and powerless to do anything to change the path of the events they can so clearly see coming. That was the case that day, as the acorn crashed to the ground before my eyes, failing to explode on impact just as I had known it would.

“What is this trickery?” the old man cried from a face that would no doubt have turned red with anger were it not for the earlier candy-based mishap.

“N-n-no trickery,” I stammered, panicking. “J-just forgot to use the magic word, that’s all.”

“Nonsense! Do you think me a fool, boy? No magic word was needed before and none is needed now! That acorn is about as magical as a jack-in-a-box!”

“B-but you saw the explosion. A-and the talking cowboy, how do you explain that without the involvement of magic?”

“Oh, I never said that there was no magic involved,” he sneered, the anger in his voice being replaced by a sinister undertone that was a great deal more frightening. “I simply implied that the items themselves were not magical, as for you’re accomplice however, I believe that to be an altogether different matter.”

“A-a-accomplice?” I stammered, trying to appear ignorant as opposed to just scared as my eyes darted around the room, searching, without success, for a door or window that had not been locked shut.

“Don’t play dumb with me, young man, I’ve seen you making your little signals to someone – or, more likely, some thing – I mean, did you really think I wouldn’t notice? Did you really think I could be fooled into swapping two live fairies for an old Christmas-cracker novelty and a few acorns? You must think me quite mad. Now who is it you’re working with?”

I sat, mouth-open in stunned silence as I tried to think of a suitable answer to the old man’s question. He was right of course, I did think he was mad - a not unreasonable to make such an assumption of somebody who lived alone in the woods, dressed like an unemployed clown and spent his days stuffing corpses with Styrofoam. But crazy and stupid are not the same thing and in equating the two I had underestimated a serious threat to our mission thereby placing us all in grave danger.

I looked toward Ophelia for any indication as to what I should say, but she merely met my glance with helpless eyes which told me that, perhaps for the first time, her fear was even greater than my own.

Grahndel’s reaction was even less helpful, I looked down into my rucksack to discover him curled up in a ball in its darkest corner, quivering. This time I was on my own, I was in charge, I needed to come up with my own solution. But as I sat there staring into the narrow, evil eyes of the blue-faced taxidermist my mind went blank, my mouth went dry, and I could find within me no answer to his question that would allow all of us (or quite possibly any of us) to walk out of this awful place alive. And then, for the second time in as many minutes, I was rescued from the brink of disaster by the smallest, quietest and yet bravest of my companions;

“He’s working with me,” came the strong, confident voice from inside my shirt pocket.

“Who said that?”

“I did,” Daisy replied, climbing out of my pocket and onto the table. “My name is Daisy, and I am a daylet; a magical species devolved from the fairy family.”

The old man’s eyes lit up with the excitement of a child witnessing his first snow fall. He had finally found what he had been looking for all his life; a living, breathing,
talking,
magical creature with whom he was able to communicate.

“And how am I to know that you truly are magical?” asked the old man, for though he wanted to believe more than anything in the world, he remained, at heart, a scientist.

“Will this suffice as a demonstration?” Daisy asked before promptly using the spectacular bolts of green fire he had previously shown us to incinerate a napkin.

“Impressive,” agreed the old man before falling silent for a moment, his hand cradling his chin as if in ponderance. “Very well,” he said finally, “I am willing to trade, you may take with you one of my prized fairies in exchange for this intriguing little fellow.”

“
No!
” I cried in anguish before I could think, before quickly recovering a little of my composure. “No, I couldn’t do that. No way!”

Anger once again crossed the old man’s violet face and he looked as though he were about to launch into another torrent of abuse before he was interrupted by the tiny daylet.

“If I may be permitted to speak sir, I believe that the point my master is attempting to intimate is that I - being a sophisticated, magic-using, English-speaking creature of the mystical variety - should be considered a far more valuable prize than a mute, half-dead fairy who seems unable even to fly any longer, let alone perform magic.
Twice
as valuable, some might say.”

“Well, I don’t know...”

“And then there is the fact that, while there are two fairies, their health is clearly not what it once was. A great scientist like yourself must have realised that they will not be of this earth much longer. I, on the other hand, am, as you can see, at the peak of physical perfection, and promise to serve you and your quest for knowledge for as long as I live.”

It was when the brave young-yet-old warrior uttered these final words, winking at me as he did so, that I knew that he was right. Ophelia’s parents had the potential for a long and happy life, whereas, no matter what happened, Daisy would be dead by morning. It might not have been what any of us had desired, but it was a situation that required a sacrifice for its resolution, and Daisy’s unusual biological curse made him the obvious solution to the problem. Being the smart, kind, brave warrior that he was, he had realised this long before I would have, and had done all he could to take the decision, and the guilt that accompanied it, from my young shoulders. In doing so he had provided himself with great dignity and his life with great purpose.

Having sacrificed my young friend in order to release the king and queen from their copper prison, I loaded them into my rucksack with the rest of our troop and moved quickly out into the forest, straying away from the path and into the thick undergrowth and frequently changing direction until I was certain that I was not being followed. Only after a good quarter of an hour did I dare to stop, sheltered from on-looking eyes in the dip of a long-dried out stream, in order to use my abilities to heal my two newest passengers.

Whilst I still found it difficult to believe that the fire I felt when using my ability was actually emanating from me, my own incredulity was nothing compared to the reaction of those I was healing, both of whose faces quickly moved from baring distrust to the looks of creatures witnessing divinity. I still couldn’t get used to being looked upon as some sort of hero. It really was quite unsettling.

“Are you the chosen one?” the fairy queen asked me with wide eyes.

“Er, well, I guess...” I hesitated, not wanting to disappoint my new-found fan.

“Yes he is,” insisted Ophelia, demonstrating a great deal more confidence in me than I held myself.

“Then there is still hope,” said the king.