‘No need to lie, then,’ remarked Perkins grumpily, nursing his eye, which was already beginning to go purple.
‘Better get going,’ I said, glancing at the clock and then giving him my warmest hug. I even kissed him on the cheek as an apology for the punch. Tiger offered to hug and kiss him too, but Perkins said ‘no thanks’ and went off to make the phone call. It was three minutes to midnight, and Perkins was gone by five past. Gone too with midnight was Kazam’s chance to cut a deal with Blix. The die was cast. The contest would go ahead.
And as likely as not, we’d lose.
Before the contest
I lay in bed staring at the water-stained ceiling of my room on the second floor of Zambini Towers, a room I had chosen for the fact that it faced east, and the sun woke me every morning. The sun didn’t wake me this morning as I had yet to get to sleep. Magic contests rarely ended happily, and through the years had resulted in recrimination and despair, bruised egos and lifelong feuds. There were always winners and losers, but this was the first time in wizidrical contest history that the defending team were unable to field a single sorcerer of any sort.
I had tried to fool myself that Zambini’s ‘trust in providence’ approach was actually sensible and worthwhile, but could not. We were, without a shadow of a doubt, stuffed.
‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Tiger, who occasionally slept on my floor as he was not yet used to sleeping on his own, and missed the cosy dormitory companionship of eighty other foundlings, all coughing, grunting and crying.
‘I was thinking about how everything would be fine.’
‘Me too.’
‘Actually I wasn’t.’
‘No,’ said Tiger, ‘neither was I.’
I went downstairs after my bath and wandered into the office. I made myself a cup of tea and sat down, deep in thought.
‘You seem sad,’ came a low voice with a sing-song Scandinavian lilt to it, ‘is everything okay?’
I turned to find the Transient Moose staring at me.
‘You can talk?’
‘Three languages,’ replied the Moose, ‘Swedish, English and a smattering of Persian.’
‘Why haven’t you spoken before?’
The Moose gave a toss of its antlers that I took to be a moosian shrug.
‘No one here really shares any of my interests, so there’s not much to say.’
‘What are your interests?’
‘Snow . . . female moose . . . grazing . . . getting enough sodium and potassium in my diet . . . snow . . . avoiding being run over . . . snow . . . female moose . . . snow.’
‘You’re not likely to be run over in here,’ I said, ‘or find snow or a female moose – and you don’t need sodium, since you’re a spell.’
‘As I said,’ said the Moose, ‘not much to talk about. Did you like my thinness enchantment?’
‘That was you?’ I asked, with some surprise.
‘I didn’t like the way they kept on taking the sorcerers away,’ he said simply, ‘so I used that thing that didn’t want to be found to increase my power.’
He nodded towards where the terracotta pot and ring were located in my desk, and I took them out and stared at them. It still didn’t make any sense.
‘How is this working?’
‘I have no idea,’ replied the Moose. ‘It’s suffused with emotional power. Loss, hatred, betrayal – you name it. I can almost hear the screams.’
‘Negative emotional energy? A curse?’
The Moose gave another toss of its antlers.
‘Sort of. But good or bad, I can tap into it and draw as much power as I want. It’s like having a sorcerer, sitting right there in that pot.’
I had an idea. It was a long shot, admittedly.
‘What are you like at building bridges?’
‘Well,’ said the Moose after some reflection, ‘we weren’t talking to the Siberian elk for a while after the whole cash-for-wolves scandal, and I was instrumental in bringing them to the negotiating table. I was alive then, of course, and real.’
‘I didn’t mean building bridges as in “making people talk to one another”, I meant building bridges as in “actually building bridges”.’
‘Ah,’ said the Moose, ‘you meant literally, rather than metaphorically.’
I nodded, and the Moose gave out a short whinnying noise.
‘What a suggestion,’ it said. ‘A moose, building a bridge?’
It paused for a moment, then asked why I wanted it to build a bridge, so I told it all about the contest and it said that it thought something odd was going on, but wasn’t sure, and I said that it could be sure that something was, and asked it if it thought it might be able to help.
‘There’s a lot of power coming out of that terracotta pot,’ said the Moose thoughtfully, ‘probably enough to build a bridge.’
I stood up. Perhaps all was not lost.
‘You need to come and see the remains of the bridge. The contest starts in half an hour.’
‘Leave the building?’ said the Moose in a horrified tone. ‘Out of the question. I haven’t been outside since it first opened as the Majestic Hotel in 1815.’
‘Have you tried?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘No. And that’s not the point,’ said the Moose in the manner of a moose that had realised it was very much the point. ‘I’m not leaving the hotel and that’s final.’
‘Agoraphobic?’[36]
‘No thanks, I’ve already eaten.’
‘I heard,’ I began slowly, ‘that there is some snow outside – and a female moose. Not to mention some sodium. And most of the town centre is pedestrianised so you won’t have to worry about being run over by a car.’
‘I’m only a spell,’ said the Moose wistfully, ‘I only think those things are important. It’s the Mandrake Sentience Protocols. I know I’m not real, but I think I am. In any event, I’m not going outside.’
‘Final?’
‘Final.’
And it vanished.
I sighed. It was worth a try, but we were back to square one again. No sorcerers to do the contest. Not one.
‘So let’s talk about something else,’ continued the Moose, reappearing as suddenly as it had left. ‘Are you going to go out on a date with the young wizard with the tufty hair?’
‘How do you know about me and Perkins?’
‘It’s all they talk about,’ he said, looking upwards, presumably at the retired ex-sorcerers in the building. This was news to me, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be the subject of bored sorcerer tittle-tattle.
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Love always is,’ said the Moose, sighing forlornly. ‘I’m only a vague facsimile of a moose once living, but I share some of his emotions. Ach, how I miss Liesl and the calves.’
‘Who are you talking to?’ asked Tiger, who had just appeared at the door.
‘The Moose.’
I pointed at the Moose, who simply stared at me, then at Tiger.
‘You were saying . . .?’ I said to the Moose, but it just looked at me blankly, and then slowly faded from view.
‘Are you okay?’ Tiger asked.
‘I’ve been better. Come on, let’s go and show some dignity before we get trashed. How do I look?’
I had put on my best dress for the event, and Tiger was wearing a tie and had combed his hair. We would at least make an appearance at the start for good form’s sake.
We stepped out of the building after making quite sure that Margaret ‘The Fib’ O’Leary was looking after the front door to enable us to get back in. Margaret was one of our ‘hardly mad at all’ sorcerers, and also one of the least powerful – she could tell the most whopping great lies and, by skilled distortion of facts and appearances, make you believe them wholeheartedly. As a party trick she would convince guests that down was in fact up, then laugh as everyone started fretting that they might fall on to the ceiling.
36
It’s the fear of open spaces. Jennifer never did find out what the Moose thought she meant.