“And who are you?”
“I’m the Evil Wizard.” Mr. Smallbone spoke quietly, but his words echoed through the uncle’s brain like a thunder-clap.
“You’re a weird old geezer, is what you are,” said the uncle. “I oughta turn you in to the county authorities for kidnapping. But I’ll be a sport.” He squatted down by the puppies and started to rough-house with them. The puppies nipped at his hands, wagging their tails and barking — all except one, which cringed away from him, whining. Nick’s uncle grabbed the puppy by the scruff of the neck and it turned into a wild-looking boy with black hair and angry black eyes.
“You always was a little coward,” his uncle said. But he said it to thin air, because Nick had disappeared.
“Once,” Mr. Smallbone said.
Next he took Nick’s uncle to a storeroom full of boxes, where four identical fat spiders sat in the centers of spun four identical fine, large webs.
“One of these spiders is your nephew.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Nick’s uncle. “Shut up and let me concentrate.” He studied each spider and each web carefully, once and then a second time, sticking his nose right up to the webs for a better look and muttering angrily under his breath. Two of the spiders curled their legs into knots. The third ignored him.
Nick’s uncle laughed nastily. “This one.”
Nick appeared, crouched beneath the web, looking grim. His uncle made a grab for him, but he was gone.
“Twice,” Mr. Smallbone said.
“What’s next?” demanded Nick’s uncle. “I ain’t got all night.”
Mr. Smallbone lit an oil lamp and led him outside. It was cold and dark, now, and the wind smelled of snow. In a pine tree near the woodpile was a nest of four fine young ravens, just fledged and ready to fly. The big man looked them over. Nick’s uncle tried to bring his face up close, but the young ravens cawed raucously and pecked at him with their strong, yellow beaks. He jerked back, cursing, and pulled his hunting knife out of his pocket.
Three of the ravens kept cawing and pecking; the fourth hopped onto the edge of the nest and spread its wings. Nick’s uncle grabbed it before it could take off.
“This one,” he said.
Nick struggled to shake off his uncle’s embrace. But when Mr. Smallbone gave a tiny sigh and said, “Thrice. He is yours,” he stopped struggling and stood quietly, his face a mask of fury.
Nick’s uncle insisted on leaving right away, refusing to stay for the baked beans. He dragged him out to his battered pick-up, threw him inside, and drove away.
The first town they came to, there was a red light. They stopped and Nick made a break for it. His uncle jerked him back inside, slammed the door, whipped out a length of rope, and tied Nick’s hands and feet. They drove on, and suddenly it began to snow.
It wasn’t an ordinary snowstorm — more like someone had dumped a bucket of snow onto the road in front of them, all at once. The truck swerved, skidded, and stopped with a crunch of metal. Cursing blue murder, Nick’s uncle got out of the cab and went around front to see what the damage was.
Quick as thinking, Nick turned himself into a fox. A fox’s paws being smaller than a boy’s hands and feet, he slipped free of the rope without trouble. He leaned on the door handle with all his weight, but the handle wouldn’t budge. Before he could think what to do next, his uncle opened the door. Nick nipped out under his arm and made off into the woods.
When Nick’s uncle saw a young fox running away from him into the trees, he didn’t waste any time wondering whether that fox was his nephew. He just grabbed his shotgun and took off after him.
It was a hectic chase through the woods in the dark and snow. If Nick had been used to being a fox, he’d have lost his uncle in no time flat. But he wasn’t really comfortable running on four legs and he wasn’t woodwise. He was just a twelve-year-old boy in a fox’s shape, scared out of his mind and running for his life.
The world looked odd from down so low and his nose told him things he didn’t understand. A real fox would have known he was running towards water. A real fox would have known the water was frozen hard enough to take his weight, but not the weight of the tall, heavy man crashing through the undergrowth behind him. A real fox would have led the man onto the pond on purpose.
Nick did it by accident.
He ran across the middle of the pond, where the ice was thin. Hearing the ice break, he skidded to a stop and turned to see his uncle disappear with a splash and a shout of fury. The big man surfaced and scrabbled at the ice, gasping and waving his shotgun. He looked mad enough to chew up steel and spit out nails.
Nick turned tail and ran. He ran until his pads were sore and bruised and he ached all over. When he slowed down, he noticed that another fox was running beside him — an older fox, a fox that smelled oddly familiar.
Nick flopped down on the ground, panting.
“Well, that was exciting,” the fox that was Mr. Smallbone said dryly.
“He was going to shoot me,” Nick said.
“Probably. That man hasn’t got the brain of a minnow, tearing off into the dark like that. Deserves whatever happened to him, if you ask me.”
Nick felt a most un-foxlike pinch of horror. “Did I kill him?”
“I doubt it,” Mr. Smallbone said. “Duck pond’s not more than a few feet deep. He might catch his death of cold, though.”
Nick felt relief, then a new terror. “Then he’ll come after me again!”
Mr. Smallbone’s foxy grin was sharp. “Nope.”
After a little pause, Nick decided not to ask Mr. Smallbone if he was sure about that. Mr. Smallbone was an Evil Wizard, after all, and Evil Wizards don’t like it if their apprentices ask too many questions.
Mr. Smallbone stood up and shook himself. “If we want to be back by sunrise, we’d best be going. That is, if you want to come back.”
Nick gave him a puzzled look.
“You won your freedom,” Mr. Smallbone said. “You might want to use it to live with somebody ordinary, learning an ordinary trade.”
Nick stood up and stretched his sore legs. “Nope,” he said. “Can we have oatmeal and maple syrup for breakfast?”
“If you cook it,” said Mr. Smallbone.
There’s an Evil Wizard living in Dahoe, Maine. It says so on the sign hanging outside his shop. Sometimes tourists stop by, looking for a book on the occult or a cheap thrill.
In the kitchen, two men bend over a table strewn with books, bunches of twigs and bowls of powder. The younger one has tangled black hair and bright black eyes. He is tall and very skinny, like he’s had a recent growth-spurt. The older man is old enough to be his father, but not his grandfather. He is clean-shaven and his head is bald.
The doorbell clangs. The younger man glances at the older.
“Don’t look at me,” says the older man. “I was the Evil Wizard last time. And my rheumatism is bothering me. You go.”
“What you mean,” says Nick, “is that you’re half-way through a new spell and don’t want to be interrupted.”
“If you won’t respect my authority, apprentice, I’m going to have to turn you into a cockroach.”
The bell clangs again. Mr. Smallbone the older bends over his book, his hand already reaching for a pile of black dust. Nick grabs a top hat with a white wig attached to it and crams it over his black curls. He hooks a bushy beard over his ears and perches a pair of steel-rimmed glasses on his nose. Throwing on a rusty black coat, he rushes to the front room, where he hunches his shoulders and begins to shuffle. By the time he reaches the door, he looks about a hundred years old.
The door flies open with the creak of unoiled hinges.
“What do you want?” the Evil Wizard Smallbone snaps.
Jeffrey Ford is the author of several novels, including The Physiognomy, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, and The Shadow Year. He is a prolific author of short fiction, whose work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, SCI FICTION, and in numerous anthologies, including my own The Living Dead. Three collections of his short work have been published: The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories, The Empire of Ice Cream, and The Drowned Life. He is a six-time winner of the World Fantasy Award, and has also won the Nebula and Edgar awards.