CHAPTER TEN - An Unexpected Choice
“Mr. Drywater,” said Mr. Marlin with what looked like pain in his eyes, “your unexpected eavesdropping has created a rather awkward situation for us. I had hoped this moment wouldn’t come quite this soon. I don’t think you’re ready.”
“You beast!!” yelled Poindexter in a strangled voice. He dove through the air toward Mr. Marlin—and then was frozen solid. But what was even more shocking was who froze him there. It wasn't Mr. Marlin or Skinpeeler. It was Mr. Hornsby! He carelessly twirled the wand that had magically appeared in his hand, then gazed at me with a smug look on his face while I stared back at him with massive bug eyes.
“Thank you for coming to me with your little problem,” said Mr. Hornsby. His whole face looked different, and he was sneering. “I was waiting to hear back on which of you two it would be—and here you both came charging in to me! Your timing was perfect.”
“Now, see here, Hornsby,” said Mr. Marlin, stepping forward. “I still believe that Mr. Drywater is not ready. If you give him the potion now, it could have the most devastating result!”
Give ME the potion? What on earth was he talking about?
Mr. Hornsby gazed at Mr. Marlin, a look of amusement on his face. Without taking his eyes off Mr. Marlin, he said suddenly, “What’s your opinion, Skinpeeler—my junior wizard!”
Mr. Marlin’s face went white in sudden realization. “YOU!” he cried at Hornsby. He stared back and forth between Skinpeeler and Hornsby. “You’re his boss wizard! You!”
Hornsby laughed. “Of course. Who did expect? Gandolf?”
Skinpeeler laughed, a nasty, brutish sort of laugh that made my skin crawl. “Drywater’s ready, all right,” he said in a slithering voice that made me want to throw up. “More than ready.”
Mr. Hornsby paced slowly across the room. “No,” he said unexpectedly, turning on Skinpeeler. “I’m not entirely convinced that he is ready. You see, I have to take careful consideration of the advice of my other junior wizard—who happens to be Mr. Marlin!”
Now it was Skinpeeler’s turn to be shocked. “YOU!” he cried, as if he were an echo of Mr. Marlin of a minute before. “You’re HIS boss wizard, too?”
“Indeed,” said Hornsby with a snide smile. “Unknown to either of you, the wizard counsel decided the best way to keep an eye on you two would be to have just one boss in charge, rather than two. So they arranged for me to be boss wizard for both of you. It’s been a little tricky in hiding it from the two of you, but very handy to keep an eye on you both.”
“Sir,” came a sudden, unexpected raspy voice from somewhere in the room. To my shock, I realized it was coming from Poindexter, who was still hanging frozen in the air. “This is getting kind of uncomfortable. Can I get down now?”
“Certainly,” said Horsnby. With a wave of his wand, Poindexter dropped to the floor. Slowly he got up, anger written all over his face. He came over and sat next to me.
But even though he couldn’t attack them with his fists, Poindexter still had his mouth. And as I had learned only too well over the years, he knew how to use it.
“You liar!” he said in a terse voice to Mr. Marlin. “You cheat! You’re a fraud! You were tricking us all along!”
Mr. Marlin’s eyes looked pained, and he didn’t respond. But Skinpeeler did. “That’s right, little boy,” he croaked in his slimy voice. “He told you part of the truth, but not all of it. You see, he was correct that our potion had a missing ingredient that we badly needed. He just failed to say that the missing ingredient was one of you!”
Poindexter was almost never at a loss for words. But he was now. What Skinpeeler had said caught him completely off guard. Me too.
“Yep,” said Mr. Hornsby casually, almost as if he were bored with the conversation. “The potion is no good to us if we drink it, even though I know Mr. Marlin told you otherwise. It doesn't do a wizard any good. Rather, we needed to find a human with a certain gift for magic to drink the potion. Not that the human would actually have real magical powers themselves, mind you. Rather, they would have the ability to make use of the magic that was given to them from one of us. If such a human drinks the potion, he or she becomes a powerful weapon for us to use.”
Turning to Mr. Marlin, he continued. “It was Mr. Marlin here who suggested we come to your school to find such a person. Prior to that, we were going to just go out into cities and neighborhoods to find someone. But he thought if he posed as a teacher he could conduct a few little ‘tests’ and find someone with the gift. That would save us the trouble of having to find a person by random testing—which would naturally result in our having to kill everyone we tested who didn’t have the gift, until we found someone that did!”
My eyes opened even wider, even though it didn’t seem possible that they could. He was talking about killing people as casually as if he were ordering fries at McDonalds!
Mr. Hornsby unexpectedly turned on Skinpeeler. “Of course, Skinpeeler here nearly ruined Marlin’s plan by showing up one day in your class while Marlin was gone to get the potion. He pretended to be a substitute, with the claim that he was looking for Marlin. However, his real purpose was to try to do a little testing of his own. He thought that probing into your mind, Mr. Drywater, would tell him if you had the gift—which was silly, of course. A mind probe can’t tell such things. Naturally I stepped in and stopped him before he could do you any real damage.”
Unexpectedly, Mr. Marlin turned on Hornsby. “Why are you explaining all this to them?” he asked in a tight voice. “They don’t need to know it. The decision is now up to you. You’ve had the advice of your junior wizards as to whether Mr. Drywater is the one, and if he’s ready to drink the potion. You must cast the deciding vote.”
Mr. Hornsby smiled at both of his junior wizards. He walked slowly and deliberately over to me, and looked down into my frightened eyes. I just sat there, helpless. I was beaten, and I knew I was.
Hornsby turned suddenly back to Marlin and Skinpeeler. “Duel it out,” he said casually, as if he didn’t really care. “I’ll take the advice of whoever wins.”
“But, we’re equally matched!” cried Marlin. “No one will win!”
“Want to bet on that?” said Skinpeeler, pointing his wand at Marlin. A bolt of light shot across the room. Quick as lightning, Marlin swung up his own wand. A huge shield appeared out of nowhere, in mid air. It caught the full impact of Skinpeeler’s bolt of light, and shattered into a thousand pieces.
“Nice,” said Skinpeeler, waving his wand. About a hundred knives suddenly appeared out of nowhere and flew toward Marlin. “But not nice enough.”
Marlin waved his wand, and suddenly the knives became flower petals, all of which fluttered in a shower to the floor. “Must you do the typical evil wizard thing, and make snide comments while you throw your spells my way?” said Marlin in an air of exasperation.
“Of course!” cried Skinpeeler, waving his wand. Suddenly the ceiling disappeared, and a whale—I’m not kidding, it was a real live whale—fell toward us at frightening speed. “It’s what they train us to do at the evil wizard academy.”
“They haven’t taught you very well,” said Marlin, waving his wand and changing the whale into a tiny little hummingbird, which flew away and disappeared. “At my school, they taught us to concentrate, not talk!”
“Then why are you talking?” said Skinpeeler, waving his wand. Dozens of blood-sucking leaches suddenly appeared all over Marlin’s face and arms and hands.
“Because it helps me to concentrate!” replied Marlin calmly, as he waved his wand and the leaches suddenly turned into butterflies which flittered silently away.
Hornsby sat behind his desk, laughing his head off. “My goodness, you two are so quaint!” he called out. “I haven’t heard such silly banter since I battled old Socrates, over 3,000 years ago!”
During this whole time, Poindexter and I just sat and stared. I felt as insignificant as a fly on the wall of a kitchen, waiting to get smashed by a f
lyswatter. Poindexter just sat there and fumed.
Suddenly, Skinpeeler pointed his wand directly at me. In horror, I felt myself being lifted into the air. Looking down, I saw a pit of fire where I had been sitting just a minute before. The flames were so hot I was instantly bathed in sweat.
“Look up as well, my boy,” said Skinpeeler, pointing to the air above me. Looking up I was appalled to see a massive set of shark jaws, ready to snap closed on my feeble body.
“Try and get out of that, if you can!” cried Skinpeeler in a snide voice to Marlin. “Take care of the fire, and in the split second that takes you, I flick my wand and the shark’s got him. Take care of the shark, and in that split second, he drops into the fire!” He smiled in sheer, cruel pleasure.
For the first time, Mr. Marlin looked troubled. Suddenly, he pulled an object from his pocket. In shock I recognized it as my pocket watch! Why did he have it?
He tossed it across to me. “Quick!” he cried. “Open it and drink!”
Hornsby instantly ceased laughing, and roared to his feet. “I thought you said he wasn’t ready for the potion!”
“He’s not ready to die, either!” cried Marlin.
I held the watch in my palm, not knowing what to do. Frankly, I didn’t even understand. If I opened the lid of the watch, what was I supposed to drink? How would anything to drink have gotten into it?
Unless … Sudden realization flooded over me like a wave. Mr. Marlin had told us he had been living in something one of us owned. Something small. Something exactly like my pocket watch! And if he had been living there, naturally he could have kept the potion in there too!
Suddenly, the fire beneath me and shark above me disappeared—and then re-appeared below and above Mr. Marlin!
“Now, you’re in the same trap!” cried Skinpeeler at Marlin. “That’s the main trick they taught us at the academy. When your enemy is an old softy, just create a double trap on someone they want to protect, and then they’ll let their guard down. Then flip the double trap to them, and it’s all over.”
“Well done,” said Hornsby to Skinpeeler in admiration. “There’s no way Marlin can escape. If he tries to save himself from one danger, the other will get him. Very creative of you, Skinpeeler, to flip it over to Marlin like that. It looks like you come off the victor of this little duel.”
“Does he?” said Marlin. They both looked at him in surprise. “It’s true, that if I cure one of these little difficulties, the other will get me. But have you forgotten the watch in Drywater’s hands?”
“What’s that got to do with it?” Skinpeeler demanded.
“It’s simple, really,” said Marlin calmly. “It’s something they taught at my academy. If your enemy flips a double trap on an innocent bystander, divert their attention while preparing another plan. If Drywater drinks the potion now, in the midst of our duel, since I am the one who gave it to him, he will be on my side. That’s the nature of the potion, you know. Whoever gives it to him will be his master, and then their power will exceed that of any wizard—or any legion of wizards—on earth!”
I looked down at the pocket watch in my hands. He had to be kidding! Me?! Powerful! That was ridiculous!
“Marlin does have a point,” said Hornsby with a slow smile. Then he turned to look at me. “What will it be, Mr. Drywater? Will you drink the potion, and save your teacher? If you do, he will be your master. If you don’t Skinpeeler here will kill Marlin and win the duel—and then force you to drink the potion anyway. Then HE will be your master! What do you think?”
I just looked at him like he was crazy. “Don’t do it!” cried Poindexter. “They’re all crazy! Throw it back to one of them!”
Everyone was staring at me, expectantly. What was I to do? Who was I to trust? Was Hornsby telling the truth? Was Marlin? Wasn’t Marlin a fraud? Should I do as Poindexter said?
I felt so tired. I ached to simply get away from all this madness, to flee, to escape! I didn’t want any part of this! Why was I in this fix? Why me!
I opened the lid of the watch, and to my surprise, I saw on the broken side where the watch face was gone and the gears were exposed that a tiny bottle had been tucked inside. It had a single drop of blood red liquid in it. There really was a potion in there! Was it true that if I drank it, I would gain tremendous power? But then I’d be under their control! This was insane!
“Don’t do it!” cried Poindexter again.
“It’s the best choice you can make,” said Mr. Marlin, looking deep into my eyes. “I know you don’t trust me right now, but believe me, it’ll be worse if you don’t drink it!”
“Worse for you, Marlin,” said Skinpeeler with a sneer, “since you’ll die if he doesn’t drink it!”
“Well, what choice will it be, Mr. Drywater?” asked Hornsby curiously. “It truly is your choice. It doesn’t matter much to me.”
“Don’t drink it!” said Skinpeeler. “Do as you friend says—throw it back to one of us. Don’t trust Marlin!”
My head was swimming. What was I to do? Their eyes were all boring into me. I had to do something!
Quick as a wink, I pulled out the tiny bottle and drank the drop—part of it. I then tossed the bottle down to Poindexter. “Drink the rest!” I yelled. Thankfully, he did so without any hesitation.