Author: Cressida Cowell
Category: Humorous
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It was somehow typical that it would be Xar who found one.
“How could Xar have killed this Witch?” asked the Enchanter with a sort of reluctant admiration. “Witches are virtually impossible to kill…”
“Well,” admitted Looter slowly, “he did cheat in that Spelling Competition by bringing in this whopping great big iron sword thing-y that he said he had stolen from the Warriors…”
“Was it a sword of power?” gasped the Enchanter.
“It looked pretty ancient,” said Looter. “And I think he did mention something about it being a Witch-killing sword… but you know what Xar’s like: He lies his head off all the time.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about that?” raged the Enchanter, turning on Looter, as the lightning of his fury crackled around the devastation of Xar’s room.
So now, a little over twenty-four hours later, the Enchanter was pacing, up, down, up, down, hoping against all hope that Xar might yet be found.
Looter was not particularly enjoying how distressed everybody seemed to be at the loss of Xar. Even Ranter was sighing and saying things like: “He was a good boy, really… lively, of course, mischievous… but he meant well…”
“This is all Xar’s fault,” said Looter sulkily. “He brought the Witch here. It serves him right.”
But the Enchanter was blaming himself.
What did the boy say to me, just before I banished him to his room? thought Encanzo.
“YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT ME! ALL YOU WANT IS A SON WHO IS MAGIC!!”
Encanzo wanted to be able to tell his son that was not true.
But it was too late.
His son was not there.
Encanzo had been up all night, in the form of a peregrine falcon, and had flown low over the treetops, mile after weary mile, searching for his son. But Xar was an expert at covering his tracks, so even the bright red eyes of the falcon, peering deep down into the leafy blackness, could spot no sign of the boy, however hard they looked.
Encanzo had consulted his star maps so scorchingly long that his eye beams burned holes in them, but Xar was hidden in a fort of iron, so peer how the Enchanter might, there was no sign of the boy there either.
It was as if he had vanished off the face of the earth.
And then the Enchanter began to think the unthinkable.
Nobody knew much about Witches.
What if, just before it died, the Witch had dispatched the boy and made Xar’s corpse disappear, in some manner unknown to Encanzo?
The Enchanter had sent Xar to his room to teach him a lesson.
But as so often seems to happen, the lesson being taught was to the Enchanter himself.
I WISH I had not shouted at the boy! I WISH I had listened to him, not threatened to expel him! I WISH he may not have died without knowing that I love him! thought Encanzo the Great Enchanter.
But even a very Great Enchanter cannot turn back time.
There was a shout at the doorway.
The pacing Enchanter turned eagerly.
It was him! It was Xar!
There he was, climbing off Nighteye, his snowcat, looking a little guilty, a little unsure of his reception, but still as cheeky and irrepressible and full of himself as ever.
Maybe even more so.
All-powerful Enchanters are, at heart, still parents like the rest of us.
Encanzo the Great Enchanter ran to his son on trembling legs, and with pathetic eagerness and relief, he scooped Xar up into his arms.
“XAR! YOU’RE ALIVE! AND YOU’VE COME HOME!” cried Encanzo the Great Enchanter.
“I have,” said Xar, grinning with surprise from ear to ear, for he had been expecting expulsion at the worst and at the best a few awkward questions, which was what normally happened when he made it back from an adventure. “Er… sorry about the dead Witch, Father… and my room… and I’ve lost my Spelling Book again… but look!”
Xar beckoned to the giants, the Wizards, the dwarves, and sprites who he had rescued from Sychorax’s dungeons to come forward.
The crowd gathered in Wizard camp gasped as they recognized family members, friends, and colleagues who they thought they would never see again.
They rushed to embrace their lost relatives with cries of joy.
“I wanted to make amends,” said Xar proudly. “I tried to take Magic from a Witch, and I stole a sword that brought the Witch to us, so I returned the sword to Sychorax’s dungeons, and while I was there, I realized she was keeping our people prisoners, so I rescued them.”
Well, for astonishingly mad but brave acts like that one, they would all be prepared to forgive Xar even if he had led TROOPS of Witches into the camp. (As long as he killed them all, of course.)
Encanzo was very rarely pleased with his son.
But here was his son doing something right for a change!
The most important “right thing” of all being:
He had returned home ALIVE.
For the first time, Encanzo the King Enchanter shook his son by the hand as if he were an equal.
Xar thought he had never been so happy in his life.
To see his father looking at him, Xar, with such pride, such love, such admiration.
To see everyone else in the camp cheering and applauding him.
The Enchanter turned to the crowd.
“Perhaps there needs to be room in the Wizard world for those who have no Magic!” cried the Enchanter. “For look! These brave Wizards, giants, and sprites are returning to us with their Magic removed. We need to find a place for these people, do we not, in our society?”
And the crowd cried back, “We do, we do!”
“I would like to propose three cheers for my son Xar!” said the Enchanter. “Who braved the terrors of Sychorax’s dungeons to bring these old friends back to us, at great danger to himself and his sprites and animals.”
“Xar! Xar! Xar!” cheered the Wizards.
“Why is Xar SO ANNOYING?” raged Looter, clenching his fist.
“My son has returned to me, and he returns a better person. Xar has learned a lesson,” smiled the Enchanter, “that it is far, far wiser to wait for your Magic to come in, than to try to obtain it from a dark source…”
He turned to his son.
“And Xar has taught ME a lesson too. It is far, far better to have a son who has no Magic than to have no son at all…
“Welcome home, Xar.”
The Enchanter hugged his son.
And then the Enchanter turned once more to the cheering crowd.
“So I declare this a day of thanks and celebrations… Let’s see, what shall we call it?” said the Enchanter, and, if he hadn’t been such a very Great Enchanter, that might have been a twinkle in the grim gray of his eye. “We shall call it… the CELEBRATION OF XAR NOT COMING INTO HIS MAGIC! Let the festivities begin!”
Now, Wizards never need much excuse to have a party.
The hall went mad, with fiddles magically playing themselves, the zigzagging glow of sprites zooming everywhere, and Wizards and snowcats and giants and dwarves and animals of all shapes and sizes dancing and singing and howling to the dark winter sky.
“Are we free now, Master?” Ariel asked, flying up to the Enchanter, wanting to get him while he was in a rare good mood. “Don’t forget that you promissssed us, Caliburn and me… our freedom when the boy grows up and no longer needs us… We are spirits too brave for a boy like Xar…”
“I haven’t forgotten,” snapped the Enchanter, his benevolence disappearing, “but let’s face it, Xar will need you for a little while longer. I will not release you and Caliburn until the boy grows up into a wise and thoughtful adult.”
“That may never happen,” said the raven.
“In which case you will never be free,” said the Enchanter grimly. “And by the way—Caliburn?”
“Er… yes, Enchanter?” said Caliburn, starting guiltily.
“At some point I will want a full report of exactly what went on over the last twenty-f
our hours. Now is the time for celebration, but later you must tell me the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Caliburn.”
And off the Enchanter swept, with a rather unnerving thunderclap sweep of his cloak, to join in the merrymaking.
“I’d rather you didn’t tell him the WHOLE truth.” Xar grinned.
“Ye-e-e-es,” said Caliburn. “I think I might leave out the bit about the sword being iron and Magic mixed together. And the sprite being poisoned. And the Witch-Inside-The-Stone. And Wish being the girl of destiny—in fact, now that I come to think of it, there’s not a great deal of the story I can tell, is there?”
“Definitely don’t tell him THIS, then,” said Xar, a mischievous glint in his eye as he opened up his hand.
There, right in the center of the palm, was the very faint pale green mark of a washed-out Witch-stain.
Caliburn gave a squawk of absolute horror. “The Witch-stain! What happened? I thought you’d gotten rid of it!”
“So did I,” grinned Xar, closing his fist around it again. “But I must have come off the stone too quickly. And you know the best thing about it?”
Now Xar could not repress his excitement. “I think it’s beginning to work!”
“But… but… but… Xar!” gabbled poor Caliburn. “It’s bad Magic! From a dark source! We’ve just GONE through all this and I thought you’d learned your lesson and returned a better person, just like your father said! What has the whole moral of this entire adventure all been about?”
But Xar had already hurried off, worried he was going to miss some of the Xar-Not-Coming-Into-His-Magic-Celebrations.
The sprites joined enthusiastically into the festivities and were zooming around, getting into their usual mischief, such as:
Tiffinstorm had a wonderful time aiming spells at people’s food, so that when they picked it up, it was something yummy like a nice slice of apple pie, but by the time it reached their mouths, it had turned into something disgusting, like a giant slug.
Squeezjoos set off a stink spell (though typically he got it wrong, and instead of smelling of bad eggs, it smelled rather deliciously of lemons).
And Xar showed off to all the prettiest girls, without a care in the world…
Meanwhile, poor old Caliburn was sitting on a tree branch, worrying and trying to comfort himself.
“Maybe because the Kingwitch is dead,” the bird said to himself, “the Witches will go back to sleep again. Maybe even if they wake again in our lifetime, they will not find the girl, because she will not be so silly as to venture out of the iron fort again, because maybe she is one of those rare humans who learn from their mistakes.
“Maybe.”
Then, as is the way of worriers, having made himself feel better about one worry, he immediately started to worry about something else.
“Xar wished for Magic, and he got it, and it is bad Magic indeed… and if his father ever finds out about it, then Xar will be in bigger trouble than ever…” worried Caliburn.
“And although they are happy with him NOW, it will not take them long to remember his past disobediences: give a weredog a bad name, and all that…”
The old raven cocked his head to the other side, as if to consider the alternatives.
“But then maybe Xar will learn to control that Magic of his before his father finds out. There is good in Xar, and this adventure has brought that out too. The good in Xar will control the bad in the blood…
“Maybe…
“Maybe.”
“Caliburn!” yelled Xar from below. “Stop sitting up there being all gloomy and worrying!”
Xar looked around him to check no one was looking.
And then he pointed his hand with the Witch-stain on it up at the tree branch.
Xar must have tried to perform Magic a thousand times before, and it had never worked.
But this time was different.
This time he felt this extraordinary tingling feeling, a kind of pins and needles in his entire right arm. It was as if some weird muscle that he had never felt before was stretching out and unfurling.
And to Xar’s delight he could feel the Magic curving out of his fingertips.
BAM!
It exploded the tree branch that Caliburn was sitting on, and with a disgruntled shriek, the old bird fell out of the sky in a flurry of feathers and flapped protestingly in front of Xar’s grinning face.
“IT WORKED!” cried Xar, looking at his hand in total delight. “EVERYTHING HAS BEEN WORTH IT! I DID GET MAGIC IN THE END AFTER ALL!”
Caliburn sighed a very, very deep sigh.
The moral of the adventure had gone all wrong somehow.
And Xar learning to be good was going to take a little time.
But in the meantime…
“Worry tomorrow, old bird!” Xar smiled. “Tonight we DANCE!”
And the Wizard boy took the raven by the wings, and the old bird forgot to worry and he became like a chick again as Xar whirled him around and around, dancing with him, under the cold of the midnight stars.
Epilogue
So, that was the story of Xar and Wish, and how their stars crossed on a midnight deep, long, long ago in the ancient past.
Before the British Isles knew they were the British Isles yet, and the Magic lived in the dark forests.
And, a little like Caliburn, I am still trying to figure out the moral of it.
You have to listen to the stories, for stories always mean something.
But what worries me is… what exactly DO they mean?
It’s the story of how Xar got himself some Magic, and how Wish found out she was special, and how the Kingwitch escaped from the stone.
So everyone got their wishes, but not quite in the way they expected.
Because—and I think I have mentioned this once or thrice before—you have to be careful what you wish for, guys.
It may come true.
Right at the beginning of this story, I said it was being told by one of the characters.
Did you guess which one?
I could be any of them, couldn’t I?
Xar or Wish or Bodkin the Assistant Bodyguard with the dream of being a hero, Sychorax or Encanzo or one of the sprites or that dusty old bird, Caliburn, the raven-who-has-lived-many-lifetimes.
I could be any of these characters, good or bad or a mixture of both.
I am not going to tell you the answer to who I am yet.
You will have to keep on guessing.
For we have not reached the end of the story, not by a long shot.
The Kingwitch is out of the stone, like a genie out of the bottle.
He will be looking for Wish, for she has the Magic-that-works-on-iron.
And Xar has bad Magic, and we do not yet know how that will turn out.
Under Wish’s pillow, the Spelling Book is sleeping. But it could wake any moment. Let us hope that Caliburn is right, and it will help her fight back against wicked people with strong Magic and evil hearts who might want to get hold of the Magic she possesses…
FOR WHERE THERE IS ONE WITCH, THERE WILL BE OTHERS…
Keep hoping.
Keep guessing.
Keep dreaming…
Signed:
Once there was Magic…
Wandering free
In roads of sky and paths of sea
And in that timeless long-gone hour
Words of nonsense still had power
Doors still flew and birds still talked
Witches grinned and giants walked
We had Magic wands and Magic wings
And we lost our hearts to impossible things
Unbelievable thoughts! Unsensible ends!
For Wizards and Warriors might be friends.
In a world where impossible things are true
I don’t know why we forgot the spell
When we lost the way, how the forest fell.
But now we are old, we can vanish too.
And I see once more the invisible tra
ck
That will lead us home and take us back…
So find your wands and spread your wings
I’ll sing our love of impossible things
And when you take my vanished hand
We’ll both go back to that Magic land
Where we lost our hearts…
Several lifetimes ago…
When we were Wizards
Once.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A whole team of people have helped me write this book.
Thank you to my wonderful editor, Anne McNeil, and my magnificent agent, Caroline Walsh.
A special big thanks to Jennifer Stephenson, Polly Lyall Grant, and Rebecca Logan.
And to everyone else at Hachette Children’s Group, Hilary Murray Hill, Andrew Sharp, Valentina Fazio, Lucy Upton, Louise Grieve, Kelly Llewellyn, Katherine Fox, Alison Padley, Naomi Greenwood, Rebecca Livingstone.
Thanks to all at Little, Brown, Megan Tingley, Jackie Engel, Lisa Yoskowitz, Kristina Pisciotta, Jessica Shoffel.
And most important of all, Maisie, Clemmie, Xanny.
And SIMON for his excellent advice on absolutely everything.
I couldn’t do it without you.
* Sprite word for: fine strands of ice that from on dead wood in freezing conditions.
* Not to be recommended. A sword should always be put safely away in a scabbard, but Xar was not someone who worried much about health and safety.
* Witches speak the same language as we do, but each individual word is back to front. This means “It’s here… it’s here… it’s here…”