Chapter 2. The Wizard’s House
The children looked up and saw a large brown dog bounding towards them. As they backed away, Mark put out a trembling hand and quavered,
‘Nice doggie, go home boy.’
The dog stopped and gave a snort.
‘Nice doggie?’ the dog repeated it as if it couldn’t believe its ears. ‘Nice doggie!’
‘It talks,’ exclaimed Paul in amazement.
‘Of course he does.’ The same thundering voice echoed around their ears as a little man suddenly appeared beside the dog. ‘His name is Caleb.’
The children stared at him. Even though the man was not much bigger than Paul was, he seemed very old. His face was wrinkled and brown and his hair was silver. He was dressed in strange flowing clothes, decorated in stars and moons. But what the children noticed above all were his ears. They were very large and pointed and every time the man spoke they wriggled.
‘Please get off my flowers,’ he continued more kindly. ‘I have hardly any left as it is.’
Sharon promptly stepped onto the grass beside the garden, followed more slowly by the boys. Paul looked doubtfully at the dog, which was sitting silently staring at them. The dog raised one front paw as Paul approached it and Paul solemnly shook it.
‘Won’t you come and see my house?’ asked the little man, and pointed to a cottage half hidden by trees in the garden behind them.
‘I am Aylwin the wizard,’ explained the little man, as he led the way into his cottage.
‘A wicked wizard?’ asked Paul hopefully.
‘Oh dear, no,’ replied Aylwin. ‘As a matter of fact I have nearly retired.’
The children were disappointed to hear this for they were hoping to see some displays of magic. They cheered up once they were inside the cottage as they could see that this was no ordinary house. The entrance hall stretched out in front of them with a series of doors leading to mysterious rooms. A winding staircase soared above them and they could hear the sound of a distant flute playing a haunting melody.
‘We will go by chair,’ announced Aylwin, leading the children into a room filled with chairs of all shapes and sizes and colours. Aylwin gave a satisfied sigh and sat on an ornate golden chair with carved feet resembling lion’s paws.
‘Forward,’ he commanded, as the feet stepped out and the chair began to move majestically forward.
Sharon gasped as a pretty pink brocade chair minced across the floor towards her and in a soft lisping voice invited her to sit down. She tentatively sat down on the padded seat, and the chair proceeded to carry her along in a series of stiff jerking steps. Mark chose a wooden upright chair, and found that by winding his feet around the rungs he could ride it like a bucking rodeo horse. Paul collapsed with a giggle into a squashy purple chair that squeaked and bounced along behind the others. Caleb smiled tolerantly and padded beside them.
It seemed as if everything in the wizard’s house was alive. The children watched doors open and beckon them through with gnarled hands as they passed through a series of connecting rooms, each holding strange and magical objects. Staircases rippled like rivers and carried them up and down, while odd shaped windows set at irregular intervals showed a different scene to each person who looked through. Paul had a great surprise when he looked out a round brass window to find he was staring into an underwater world. He saw shipwrecks lying on a rocky seabed, with brightly coloured fish swimming past his astonished eyes.
‘Look, a mermaid,’ he cried excitedly, but with a bump the chair carried him on to follow the others.
Mark was amazed at the size of the house.
‘This has to be a magic place,’ he thought to himself. ‘From the outside it looked like a tiny cottage but inside it’s so huge.’
‘Oh, we’re in the clouds,’ Sharon exclaimed in delight as the staircase gave an unexpected wriggle and carried them high up in the air.
‘They can’t be real clouds,’ said Mark feeling one with a cautious hand as he galloped past. ‘Real clouds would be wet and cold, these are soft and fluffy. Ahh!’ He ended on a scream as his chair bucked him off onto a small fluffy cloud. Paul and Sharon laughed as they too were deposited on the clouds that billowed around them and drifted gently higher and higher. The children soon found that by patting the clouds, they could make them change direction. Paul managed to make his go round and round in circles but soon wished he hadn’t as it made him feel rather ill.
‘This is better than the merry-go-round,’ he called joyfully. Mark and Sharon gave a guilty start. They had forgotten the fairground completely.
Aylwin sailed on in his chair with the clouds behind him. He led the way into a large room and slowly the clouds sank lower and lower to tumble the children onto cushions at a large table. Aylwin took his place at the head of the table, still calmly seated in the golden chair.
‘Oh, it’s empty,’ cried Paul in disappointment.
With a twinkle in his eye, Aylwin clapped his hands twice and the table was covered in a feast of monumental size. There were cakes and cookies, jams and jellies, patties and pastries and delectable edibles of every conceivable colour, size and shape. By the time a goodly proportion of this food had disappeared into the children they felt they had known Aylwin all their lives.
‘Now we have to get down to business,’ announced Aylwin briskly. ‘I have been very worried lately. Let me explain why. This is the land of Amaranthi,’ he continued, ‘and usually it is a beautiful place. Lately, however, something has come to pass which has brought great sorrow. Look.’
He pointed and suddenly they were all sitting round a small table in the wizard’s garden. The children looked where he was pointing, and saw that beyond the garden everything was bare and bleak. The sun was shining on the garden but it did not shine where there were no flowers. It looked cold and unfriendly and Sharon shivered.
‘That was always full of flowers,’ continued Aylwin sadly, ‘but something has made them wither away. Soon the only flowers left will be those in my garden.’
‘How awful,’ said Sharon sympathetically.
‘Yes,’ agreed Mark. Privately he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. What did a few flowers here or there matter.
Aylwin went on. ‘These flowers are really happy dreams,’ he said. ‘When they grow I pick them and send them to people in other worlds so they will have sweet dreams and wake up feeling happy and refreshed. Try to imagine what your world would be like if there was no laughter or singing, and everyone went about weeping.’
‘Why are your flowers still alive?’ asked Mark.
‘I use magic to keep them alive,’ Aylwin answered.
‘Then why don’t you use magic to keep all the flowers alive? That way everyone could have happy dreams.’
A sad expression settled on Aylwin's wrinkled face. ‘I told you I was nearly retired. I only have a few of my magic powers left now. I have enough to protect only a small circle of flowers and if I leave that circle, all the flowers here would die too. Then there would be no happy dreams left at all.’
Sharon looked around. Now that he had pointed it put she could see that there was only a small circle of sunlight and flowers.
‘It’s like a circle of summer in the middle of winter,’ she thought.
Paul had become bored by this time and was busy tickling Caleb’s whiskers. This annoyed Caleb, as whiskers are very sensitive things, but he was a polite dog and decided to ignore it. Paul suddenly looked up as he heard Aylwin say,
‘Now this is what you are going to do.’