The Night of Wishes Read online

  Tyrannia flashed her gold teeth once again. “How sweet of you to be so worried about me, Bubby. But what you’re saying is wrong. The cat and the raven are supposed to be there! In fact, I insist on their being witnesses. That’s the best part of the whole thing.”

  The sorcerer drew nearer. “How do you mean?”

  “We’re not talking about just any magic potion here,” explained the witch. “The Satanarchaeolidealcohellish Notion Potion boasts one ideal feature. It grants the opposite of everything you wish. You wish good health and you get a plague; you mention prosperity for all and actually cause misery; you say peace and the result is war. Now do you understand what a sweet little number this is, Bubby?”

  Tyrannia chortled with pleasure and continued: “You know how much I love charity events. They are my great passion. Well, today I shall throw quite a party—no, wait, what am I saying?—a charity orgy!”

  Preposteror’s eyes began to sparkle behind the thick lenses of his glasses.

  “Great radiating strontium!” he shouted. “And we’ll even have the spies as witnesses that we only did our best—nothing but good deeds for this poor, suffering world!”

  “This,” cried Tyrannia, “will be a New Year’s party the likes of which I’ve dreamed of since I first learned my money conjuror’s one-times-one!”

  And her nephew interjected in a bawling bass, “The world will remember this night for centuries to come—the night of the Great Catastrophe!”

  “And no one will know where all the evil came from!” she screeched.

  “Not a soul,” he howled, “because you and I will be standing there as innocent as two little lambs, Tye!”

  They fell into each other’s arms and hopped about. The entire array of crucibles and test tubes in the room began playing a shrill, dissonant Waltz Macabre; the furniture kicked up its legs, the green flames in the fireplace flickered rhythmically, and even the stuffed shark on the wall snapped in time with its impressive teeth.

  “Hey, catso,” whispered Jacob, “I think I’m gonna be sick. My head feels so funny.”

  “Me too,” Mauricio whispered back. “It’s that music. We singers have very sensitive ears, you know.”

  “Maybe cats do,” replied Jacob, “but no kind of music fazes the likes of us.”

  “Perhaps it’s also due to the tranquillizers,” said the little cat.

  “Maybe in your case, but not in mine,” murmured the raven. “Are you really sure that you understood what was written on the barrel?”

  “Why?” asked Mauricio fearfully.

  “Maybe this stuff we’re squatting in is poisonous.”

  “What!? You think we’re already contaminated?”

  Horror-stricken, the little cat attempted to jump out of the barrel straightaway. Jacob held him back.

  “Stop! Not yet! We’ve got to wait till those two are gone, or else all is lost.”

  “What if they don’t go away?”

  “Then this will come to no good end,” the raven croaked glumly.

  “Forgive me!” breathed the little cat remorsefully.

  “What is there to forgive?”

  “I can’t really read at all.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Jacob croaked, “Oh, if only I had stayed back in the nest with Tamara.”

  “Is that yet another one?” asked Mauricio.

  But Jacob did not reply.

  The sorcerer and the witch had sunk down onto their chairs and were trying to catch their breath. Every now and then a wicked giggle escaped their lips. Preposteror wiped clean the fogged-over lenses of his glasses with the sleeve of his dressing gown; Tyrannia dabbed away the sweat from her upper lip daintily with a lace handkerchief, so as not to smudge her makeup.

  “Oh, by the way, Bubby,” she said casually, “you keep talking about ‘we’ and ‘us.’ Just so that we understand one another: I may need your half of the scroll and your expert advice, but you’re getting more than well paid for services rendered, right? Naturally, I’ll be the one doing the drinking and wishing. You’re not in on that.”

  “Wrong, Auntie,” replied Preposteror. “You’d only end up going on an alcohellish bender, and possibly getting sick. After all, you’re no spring chicken anymore. Better leave that part of it to me. You can always tell me what I should wish for you. I’ll only play along under that condition.”

  Tyrannia hit the roof. “I can’t believe my ears!” she bellowed. “You swore by Pluto’s Deep Dark Treasury that you’d sell me your half.”

  Preposteror rubbed his hands together. “Really? I don’t seem to remember any such thing.”

  “For Devil’s sake, Bubby,” she gasped, “you’re not going to break your solemn oath, are you?”

  “I didn’t swear anything,” he answered with a grin. “You must be hearing things.”

  “Whatever has become of our good old family spirit,” she exclaimed, covering her face with her ring-laden hands, “if even an unsuspecting old aunt can’t trust her favorite nephew anymore!”

  “Come, come, Tye,” Preposteror said. “Are you starting up with that hogwash again?”

  They traded hostile looks for a while.

  “If we keep this up,” the witch pronounced finally, “we’ll still be sitting here next year.”

  She cast another glance at the clock, and it was clear that she was having a lot of trouble keeping a grip on herself. Her hanging cheeks trembled and her several double chins quivered.

  Preposteror secretly relished the situation—although he didn’t feel much better himself. He had been dependent on the money witch for so many long years—and she had let him know it—that it was now an outright pleasure to really let her have it.

  He would gladly have stretched out the game a little longer, yet he himself had but a few short hours till midnight.

  “The New Year will be here soon,” he murmured absentmindedly.

  “You said it,” Tyrannia burst out, “and do you know what happens then, you fool? The Notion Potion loses its reversing power at the first stroke of the New Year’s bells!”

  “You’re exaggerating as usual, Tye,” Preposteror ventured, slightly disconcerted. “I can’t stand the New Year’s bells either, because they always give me heartburn, but you’re not trying to tell me that the ring of a bell can take away the entire infernal magic power of so awesome a potion.”

  “Not the magic power,” she snorted, “the reversing power—and that is much worse! Then the lie becomes truth, do you understand?! Then everything you wished for is taken literally.”

  “Wait a minute,” said the sorcerer, confused, “what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That means that we absolutely have to have finished brewing up the potion before midnight, and as long before midnight as possible. I have to have drunk every drop and made every wish before the first stroke of the New Year sounds. If so much as the tiniest bit remains, everything will go wrong! Imagine what will happen then: all my seemingly good wishes, including the ones I made at the start, would no longer be turned around but would literally come true.”

  “How horrible!” groaned Preposteror. “How revolting! How atrocious! How ghastly!”

  “You see!” confirmed his aunt. “But if we hurry, we can expect the best.”

  “The best?” Preposteror’s face twitched in confusion. “What do you mean by the best?”

  “Naturally I mean the worst,” she said, placating him. “The best for us, but in reality the worst. The worst we could possibly wish for.”

  “How wonderful!” Preposteror cried. “How fabulous! How marvelous! How splendiferous!”

  “You said it, my boy,” Tyrannia replied, giving him an encouraging slap on the knee. “So get on the ball, will you!”

  When she saw that her nephew was still staring at her hesitatingly, she once again pulled more rolls of bank notes out of her pocketbook-safe and piled them up in front of him. “Perhaps that’ll get the wheels turning again in that head of yours. Here you
are, twenty thousand—fifty—eighty—one hundred thousand! But that is absolutely my final offer. Now go and bring me your half of the scroll! Quick! Run! Or else I might change my mind.”

  Yet Preposteror did not budge.

  He had absolutely no idea whether his aunt would refrain from carrying out her threat, or whether he was risking everything with this final bluff, but he had to take the chance.

  With a stony face he said, “Keep your money, Auntie Tye. It doesn’t interest me.”

  Now the witch flipped her lid. Gasping with exertion, she threw roll after roll of bank notes at him and screamed madly, “There, there, and there . . . What else should I offer you? How much more do you want, you hyena? A million? Three? Five? Ten? . . .”

  She dipped both hands into the mountain of bills and threw it in the air like a madwoman, so that bills fluttered down all over the laboratory.

  At last she collapsed onto her chair in exhaustion and panted, “Whatever is the matter with you, Beelzebubby? You used to be so greedy and corruptible and generally such a nice, obedient boy. Whatever changed you so?”

  “It’s no use, Tye,” he said. “Either you give me your half of the scroll—or else you finally admit why you’re so desperate to have mine.”

  “Who? Me?” she asked weakly, in a last attempt at playing dumb. “Why? What should it matter to me? It’s only for a simple New Year’s Eve joke.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t think it’s funny,” said Preposteror coldly. “Our senses of humor are too different, dearest Auntie. I guess we had better forget all this nonsense. Let’s just drop it! Perhaps you’d like a nice cup of hemlock tea?”

  Yet, instead of gratefully accepting this polite offer, Tyrannia went into a temper tantrum. She turned quince-yellow beneath her piglet-colored makeup, let loose an inarticulate cry reminiscent of a whistling buoy, jumped up, and stamped her feet like an irate child.

  Now, we know that such outbursts have completely different results with witches and sorcerers than with irate children. The floor ripped open with a crackle of thunder, flames and smoke pouring forth from the rent along with the head of a giant, glowing-red camel perched on a snake-like neck, which opened its mouth and bleated at the Shadow Sorcery Minister with ear-splitting intensity.

  Yet the latter did not seem in the least impressed.

  “I beg of you, Auntie,” he said wearily, “you’re only ruining my floorboards—and my eardrums.”

  Tyrannia made a sign for the camel to disappear, the floor closed up again without leaving a trace, and now the witch flabbergasted the sorcerer after all with something unexpected.

  She wept.

  That is, she pretended to, for witches cannot shed real tears, of course. Still, she sucked in her face like a dried-up lemon, dabbed her eyes with her lace handkerchief, and whined, “Oh, Bubby, you naughty, naughty boy! Why must you always upset me so? You know how temperamental I am.”

  Preposteror looked at her with loathing. “Embarrassing” was all he said. “Really most embarrassing.”

  She tried out a few more halfhearted sobs, but then she stopped the show and declared in a defeated voice. “All right; if I tell you, you’ll have me in your clutches one hundred percent—and naturally, I know you, you’ll exploit that shamelessly. But what the hell, I’m lost either way. Today I was visited by a hellish official, one Maledictus Maggot, dispatched by my benefactor, Infernal Secretary of the Treasury Mammon. He told me that I would be personally foreclosed upon tonight at the turn of the New Year. And that is all your fault, Beelzebub Preposteror! As your employer I am in the sourest of pickles now. Just because you were way behind with your work, I got into arrears with my business and couldn’t wreak as much havoc as stated in my contract. And now the Deepest Circles down there are on my back. They’re holding me responsible! That’s what I get for financing my lazy, incompetent nephew out of devotion to the family! If you had just a speck of a guilty conscience in you, you would give me your half of the formula on the spot so that I could drink the Notion Potion. It’s my last resort. Or else, may you be cursed with the most evil curse of all: the Curse of the Rich Relations!”

  Preposteror had unfolded his entire spindly length into a standing position. During Tyrannia’s speech the tip of his nose had gradually taken on a greenish tinge.

  “Desist!” he cried, and held up his hand. “Desist before you do something you might regret! If what you have said is true, then we have no other choice but to join forces. We’re in each other’s clutches now, dear Auntie. That hellish bailiff visited me as well and I am also to be foreclosed upon at midnight, unless I make good on my contract. We’re sitting in the same boat, my dearest, and we can either rescue ourselves or go down together.”

  Tyrannia had stood up as well while he was speaking. She looked at her nephew and held out her arms. “Bubby,” she stammered, “I could kiss you!”

  “Later, later,” Preposteror said evasively. “We’ve got more urgent business at hand. The two of us shall begin preparing this legendary Satanarchaeolidealcohellish Notion Potion without any further ado; then the two of us shall drink it, taking turns, one glass for you, one glass for me; and all the while the two of us shall make our wishes, first me, then you, then me again—”

  “No,” his aunt interrupted, “first me, then you.”

  “We can draw straws,” he suggested.

  “Fine with me,” she said.

  They each thought that they would certainly find a way of cheating the other later on. And each of them knew that the other was thinking the same thing. They were, after all, members of the same family.

  “Well then, I’ll go and get my half of the formula,” Preposteror said.

  “And I’ll go along with you, Bubby,” Tyrannia answered. “Trust is one thing, control is another, don’t you agree?”

  Preposteror rushed off and Tyrannia followed after with surprising nimbleness.

  As soon as their steps had faded away, the little cat came tumbling out of the barrel. He felt dizzy and miserable. The raven, who wasn’t feeling any better, fluttered after him.

  “Well,” he croaked, “did you hear everything?”

  “Yes,” said Mauricio.

  “And do you understand what’s happening?”

  “No,” said Mauricio.

  “But I do,” declared the raven, “so who wins the bet?”

  “You do,” said Mauricio.

  “And how about that rusty nail, comrade? Who has to swallow it?”

  “I do,” said Mauricio, adding somewhat theatrically, “So be it! I want to die anyway.”

  “Nonsense!” croaked Jacob. “It was just for fun. Forget it! The main thing is that now you’re convinced I was right.”

  “That’s just why I want to die,” Mauricio said tragically. “No chivalrous minnesinger can bear such shame. It’s nothing you would understand.”

  “Oh, why don’t you just drop your highfalutin airs!” Jacob said angrily. “You can always die later. We’ve got more important things to do now.” And he stalked about the laboratory on his skinny legs.

  “You’re right, I’ll postpone it for a while,” agreed Mauricio, “because first I wish to give that unscrupulous villain, whom I used to call Maestro, a piece of my mind. I shall spit my disdain into his face. I want him to know—”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” said Jacob. “Or do you want to spoil everything all over again?”

  Mauricio’s eyes glowed with fiery determination. “I’m not afraid. I must give vent to my outrage, otherwise I could never look myself in the eye again. I want him to know what Mauricio di Mauro thinks of him . . .”

  “Sure,” said Jacob dryly, “that’s really going to bother him. Now listen to me for once, you heroic tenor! By no means are the two of them to suspect that we know what they’re up to.”

  “Why not?” asked the little cat.

  “Because as long as they don’t know that we know, we might be able to foil their plans. Do you get it?”

>   “Foil them? How?”

  “Well . . . for example . . . oh, how do I know. We have to make sure that they don’t get their magic hooch done on time. We could do something clumsy like knock over the glass with the hooch in it, or . . . Well, we’ll think of something. We just have to be on our talons.”

  “On our what?”

  “Kid, you really don’t understand anything. We have to keep our eyes open, get it? We have to watch every move they make. And that’s why the two of them mustn’t notice that we were eavesdropping. That’s the only advantage we have left, comrade. Is our flight pattern finally clear?”

  He fluttered up onto the table.

  “I see!” said Mauricio. “That means that the future of the world now lies in our paws.”

  “More or less,” said the raven, while stalking among the papers, “although I wouldn’t exactly say paws.”

  Mauricio puffed up his chest and murmured, “Ho, a great deed . . . destiny beckons . . . a noble knight knows no fear . . .”

  He was trying to remember the rest of the famous cat aria when Jacob suddenly croaked, “Hey, get over here!”

  He had discovered Tyrannia’s scroll, which she had left lying on the table, and was peering at it, first with one eye, then with the other.

  The little cat was at his side with one leap.

  “Look, look!” the raven whispered hoarsely. “If we was to throw this thing into the fire, then that would be the end of the magic potion. Your Maestro said himself that the second half alone is useless to him.”

  “I knew it!” cried Mauricio. “I was sure we would have a marvelous idea. Quick, away with it! And when those villains start to look for it, we shall step up to them and say—”

  “ ’Twas the wind,” Jacob interrupted him. “That’s what we’ll say—if we say anything at all. The best thing is, we don’t know anything. Do you think I feel like having my neck wrung by the two of them to wind things up?”

  “You’re just a philistine, after all,” said Mauricio disenchantedly. “You simply have no sense of greatness.”