The Night of Wishes Page 7

  “You said it,” agreed Jacob. “That’s why I’m still alive. Come on, give me a hand!”

  They were just about to grab the scroll when, suddenly, the snake of parchment uncoiled of its own accord and raised its front end high, like a giant cobra swaying to a flute player.

  The two heroes’ hearts sank immediately into their talons—or rather, paws. They clung together and looked up at the swaying tip of the scroll, which seemed to be staring down at them menacingly.

  “Do you think it bites?” Mauricio whispered quakingly.

  “How do I know,” said Jacob, his beak clattering lightly.

  And before they knew what was happening, the scroll had wrapped itself around them with a lightning movement, again and again, until it looked like a parcel with a cat’s and a raven’s head sticking out at the top. The two of them could not move a muscle and could hardly breathe. The scroll wound tighter and tighter.

  They fought with all their fading strength, but the parchment could not be torn.

  “Gasp! Puff! Ugh!” was all they could manage to utter.

  At which point Preposteror’s hoarse bass resounded.

  “Unruly spook,

  By your master’s ring,

  Unwrap your cocoon

  From those nosy things!”

  At that very moment the snake scroll came tumbling down, twitched once or twice, and then lay motionless—nothing more than a long, bescrawled strip of parchment.

  “Most humble thanks, Your High and Mightiness,” panted Jacob. “That was close!”

  Mauricio couldn’t speak at all, first because every bone in his body ached, and second because the cat had got his tongue—for it was Preposteror of all people who had saved their lives; Preposteror, whom he had actually meant to punish with deepest disdain. Mauricio’s intellect was no match for such complications.

  Now Tyrannia Vampirella appeared behind the sorcerer.

  “Holy profit!” she cried. “You poor little things, you didn’t hurt yourselves, did you?” She stroked the raven’s head.

  The sorcerer stroked Mauricio and said in a benevolent voice, “Now listen, this is not a toy store! You should know better, Mauricio di Mauro. You must never touch anything without my express permission. It’s much too dangerous. All manner of things could happen to you, and that would make your dear Maestro very, very sad.”

  “Blablabla . . .” the raven croaked almost inaudibly to himself.

  The sorcerer and the witch exchanged a quick glance, and then she asked, “Jacoboo, my dear raven, what are you doing here, anyway?”

  “If you please, madam,” said Jacob innocently, “I just came to announce your visit.”

  “Really? I can’t seem to remember having ordered you to do so, my little pigeon.”

  “I came on my own, because I thought you just wanted to spare me, because you were worried about the filthy weather and my rawmatism, but I was just dying to do you a favor.”

  “Well, that’s very sweet of you, Jacoboo. But from now on, you had better ask first.”

  “Did I do the wrong thing again?” asked the raven shamefacedly. “Oh, I’m such a sad sack of feathers.”

  “Say,” said the sorcerer, turning to the cat, “where have you two been hiding, you little rascals?”

  Mauricio was about to reply, but the raven butted in hastily. “That disgusting bird-eater tried to drag me into his chamber, Your High and Mightiness, but I got away and zipped down into the cellar, but he caught me anyway and locked me up in a stinking old crate, and I complained for hours, because that’s no good manners and that’s not no way to treat a guest, and then he unlocked the crate and said I should keep my beak shut or else he would roast me in the oven like a turkey, and so I gave him one on the noggin and then we engaged in fisticuffs, and before you know it, we were back here, don’t ask me how, and during the scuffle that stupid paper snake wrapped itself around us, and then you came, lucky for us. But I really must say this cat belongs in a cage, that’s where he belongs, because he’s a surefire public danger and a bloodthirsty beast!”

  Mauricio had been listening to the raven’s outburst in wide-eyed wonder. He had tried to interrupt a few times but, as luck would have it, without success. Now Preposteror addressed him laughingly: “Well done, my brave little knight! But from now on, you two have to get along. Do you both promise?”

  “Well, pluck my feathers!” croaked Jacob, turning his back on Mauricio. “How can I get along with someone who calls me a turkey? First he has to take that back!”

  “But—” Mauricio protested, before the witch interrupted him.

  “No buts!” she piped in a sickeningly sweetish voice. “Be nice to each other, you little scoundrels! You see, my wonderful nephew and I have thought up something extra-special for you. And if you are nice and friendly and get along well, you may join in our New Year’s Eve celebration. It should be a lot of fun, don’t you think, Bubby?”

  “You can say that again,” Preposteror said with a crooked grin. “You’re really in for something. If you’re good.”

  “It rubs my feathers the wrong way,” rasped Jacob, “but if there’s no other way, we’ll make a truce. Baron, what do you say?”

  He nudged Mauricio with his wing, and the latter nodded a little foolishly.

  In the meantime, the witch had rolled up the snake scroll. Now the sorcerer produced a similar-looking scroll from within the wide sleeve of his dressing gown.

  “First of all, Tye,” he explained, “we have to put to the test whether the two halves in fact originally belonged together. You know the spell and what you have to do?”

  “All clear,” she said.

  Then they spoke together:

  “By the power of six-and-sixty

  Pentagrams all in a row,

  Prove these parts be part and party

  Of the one and only scroll.

  Formula of deepest night,

  If it’s you, then show your might!

  Join what once was rent asunder,

  To the sound of flames and thunder!

  Ready! Set! Go!”

  The two of them threw their parchment scrolls into the air at the same moment. There was a huge, blinding flash of lightning and the air all around sparkled with thousands of little stars, like a display of fireworks, but this time not a sound could be heard.

  The two halves had shot together and become one, as if under the influence of a colossal magnetic force—and they were as perfectly joined as if they had never been separated, with no sign of a rip.

  A snake scroll of approximately five yards length floated in long, slow waves back and forth beneath the ceiling of the laboratory, sinking bit by bit to the floor.

  The sorcerer and the witch nodded at each other in satisfaction.

  “And now you have to leave us alone for a little while,” said Preposteror, turning to the animals. “We want to prepare our New Year’s Eve party and you’ll just be in the way.”

  Jacob, who still had the secret intention of preventing the timely completion of the Notion Potion, begged and pleaded to be allowed to stay, promising to be very, very quiet. Mauricio joined in.

  “Not a chance, you little rubbernecks,” said Tyrannia. “You would just keep bothering us with your questions—and besides, it is supposed to be a surprise for you.”

  All their coaxing was in vain, and finally, the witch grabbed the raven and the sorcerer the cat. They carried them into Mauricio’s chamber and put them down.

  “Why don’t you two catch a few winks in advance,” said Preposteror, “so you won’t get sleepy later on at the party. Especially you, kitty.”

  “Or you can play woolball to pass the time,” added Tyrannia. “The main thing is to be good and not fight anymore. When we’re done we’ll come and get you.”

  “And just to make sure that you don’t peek and spoil all the fun for us and yourselves,” Preposteror continued, “we’ll lock you in till then.”

  He closed the door and turned th
e key in the lock. Their steps faded away.

  Jacob Scribble fluttered onto the arm of the old plush sofa, several springs of which were protruding out of the cushions where the cat had sharpened his claws once too often.

  “Well,” he rasped bitterly, “now we’re in a fine mess, we two super spies, and a silly mess at that.”

  The first thing Mauricio had done was to run to his luxurious canopy bed, but then, although he felt more tired and sick than ever in his life, he had made the heroic decision not to lie down. The situation was too serious to consider a catnap.

  “What are we going to do now?” he asked perplexedly.

  “What’re we going to do now?” croaked Jacob. “We’re going to be a sorry sight, no more, no less! So much for foiling their plans.

  “I said it first,

  things always keep going

  from worser to worst.

  “And that’s the truth of it, because rhymes don’t lie. This will come to no good end!”

  “Why do you keep saying that?” Mauricio complained.

  “That’s my fillosophy,” explained Jacob. “One must generally expect the worst and then do what one can to prevent it.”

  “And what can we do?” asked Mauricio.

  “Nothin’,” Jacob admitted.

  Mauricio was standing in front of the low coffee table, enticingly decked out with saucers of sweet cream and various tasty tidbits. Although it took enormous self-control, he resisted this temptation as well, since he now knew the disastrous effect this catnip would have on him.

  It was quiet for a while, with only the sound of the blizzard whistling around the house.

  “I’ll tell you something, kitty”—the raven finally broke the silence—“I’m fed up with the secret agent profession. This goes way beyond the call of duty. I’m at the end of my feather. I’ve had it. I’m quitting.”

  “Now of all times?” asked Mauricio. “But you can’t do that!”

  “Oh yes, I can,” said Jacob. “I’m sick of it. I’d like to lead a perfectly normal vagabond life again, like in the olden days. I wish I was in my warm nest with Ramona.”

  Mauricio sat down and looked up at him. “Ramona? Why Ramona all of a sudden?”

  “Because she is farthest away,” said the woebegone Jacob, “and that’s where I’d most like to be now.”

  “You know,” Mauricio said after a short pause, “I would also much rather wander through foreign lands and melt all hearts with my songs. But if those two villains destroy the world tonight with their magic, what kind of life will be left for a minnesinger, if there is any life left at all?”

  “So what?” croaked Jacob angrily. “What can we do about it? We two lousy, pitiful creatures, of all animals? Why doesn’t anyone else bother—up there in heaven, for example? There’s one thing I’d like to know: why do the bad guys in the world always have so much power and the good guys never have anything—except maybe rawmatism? It’s not fair, kitty. No, it’s just not fair! I’m sick of it. I’m going on strike, that’s all there is to it.”

  And with that he stuck his head under his wing so as no longer to see or hear anything.

  This time it was quiet for such a long time that he finally peeked out from under his wing and said, “The least you could do is contradict me.”

  “I must think about what you said before,” said Mauricio. “With me it’s just the other way around. My great-grandmother Mia, who was a very wise old feline, always used to say: If you can get excited about something, then do it—and if you can’t, then go to sleep. I have to be able to get excited, which is why I always try to picture the best of all possibilities and then to do all I can to achieve it. But unfortunately, I haven’t as much experience and common sense as you, or else I would most certainly come up with a way out of this.”

  The raven pulled his head from under his wing, opening his beak and closing it again. This unexpected compliment coming from a famous artist of ancient, noble lineage left him speechless. No such thing had ever happened to him in his entire, shady raven’s life.

  He cleared his throat. “Hm, well,” he croaked, “one thing’s for sure, nothing is going to happen as long as we’re sitting in here. We’ve got to get out. The question is how. The door is locked. Any ideas?”

  “Maybe I can open the window,” Mauricio suggested eagerly.

  “Try it!”

  “What for?”

  “We’ve got a journey ahead of us—quite a long journey, probably.”

  “Where to?”

  “To get help.”

  “Help? You mean the High Council?”

  “No, it’s already too late for that. By the time we got there and they could do anything, midnight would have come and gone. There’s no point to any of that anymore.”

  “Who else can possibly help us?”

  Jacob scratched his head pensively with his claw. “I don’t know. A miracle is probably the only thing that can help us now. Maybe fate will have a heart—although experience tells me we shouldn’t really rely on it. But we can give it a try.”

  “That’s not much,” said Mauricio meekly. “I can’t really get excited about that.”

  Jacob nodded gloomily. “You’re right. After all, it’s warmer in here. But as long as we sit around, we don’t even have the chintz of a chance.”

  Mauricio reflected for a moment; then he pulled himself together, leaped onto the sill, and, with some effort, opened the window.

  Snow swirled into the room.

  “Let’s go!” croaked the raven, and fluttered out. He was immediately caught up by a gust of wind and disappeared somewhere in the darkness.

  The fat little cat gathered all his courage and leaped in pursuit. He fell a long ways and plopped into a snow-bank, which closed in over him. Only with great effort could he scramble free.

  “Jacob Scribble, where are you?” he meowed fearfully.

  “Here!” he heard the raven’s voice nearby.

  It is essential to all forms of magic not only that you know the right formulas, have the right paraphernalia at your disposal, and carry out the right action at the right time, but also that you be in the right frame of mind. Your mood must correspond to the task you have set yourself. This, by the way, is just as true of evil magic as it is of the good variety (which certainly exists as well, even if it is probably rarer nowadays). To do good magic, you have to put yourself in a loving, harmonious mood, and to do evil magic, in a wild and hateful one. Each case requires a certain amount of preparation.

  And that is exactly what the sorcerer and the witch were preoccupied with.

  The laboratory shone in the cool glow of countless electric spotlights and lamps, both large and small, which quivered, flickered, and flashed from all corners.

  The room was couched in swaths of fog, for thick, multicolored clouds billowed out of several incense basins, creeping along the floor and up the walls and assuming all manner of faces and grimaces, large and small, which instantly dissolved, only to reappear at once in another form.

  Preposteror sat at his organ, hitting the keys with grandiose gestures. The pipes of the instrument consisted of the bones of animals which had been tortured to death; the smallest were little chicken legs, the larger ones from seals, dogs, and apes, and the largest from elephants and whales.

  Aunt Tyrannia stood beside him and turned the pages of his score. It sounded pretty grim when they began singing the Chorale No. CO2 from Satan’s Hymnbook:

  Cursed be you, sense and reason,

  Evil is the light of day.

  Free the soul from your foul treason.

  Truth and wisdom, go away!

  May my words ring true with lies,

  Raining down from test-tube skies.

  False is what the world shall be,

  And reality shall flee.

  Order shall not find our favor,

  Of nature, nor of intellect.

  Chaos is the favorite flavor

  On a menu of disrespect.
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  Since our conscience bogs us down,

  Our powers lift us off the ground.

  If all barriers fall away,

  While the sun shines, we’ll make hay.

  An oath we swear of deadly

  Destruction from the very start.

  Nonsensical insanity

  Is our science, is our art!

  And after every strophe there followed the refrain:

  Evil potion do we mix.

  Blackest magic, do your tricks!

  This was all done to get into the proper mood. No wonder they did not want the animals to witness it. In any case, the sorcerer and the witch were now in the right frame of mind for their creation.

  “First of all,” explained Preposteror, “we must make the proper container for the Satanarchaeolidealcohellish Notion Potion.”

  “Make it?” asked Tyrannia. “Don’t you even have a potion tureen in this bachelor pad of yours?”

  “Dearest Auntie,” said Preposteror condescendingly, “you really don’t have the foggiest notion about alcohellish drinks. No potion tureen in the world—even if it had been cut from a single diamond—could withstand the procedure necessary for producing this potion. It would burst or melt or simply evaporate.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  The sorcerer smiled patronizingly. “Ever heard of Cold Fire?”

  Tyrannia shook her head.

  “Well, pay attention,” said Preposteror. “You might learn something, Tye.”

  He went over to a shelf and took out a kind of oversized spray can, then moved to the fireplace, in which the fire blazed up at that very moment. While spraying something invisible into the flames, he spoke the following words:

  “Imagery of flickering flame,

  Of fire that spits and smokes,

  Your feverish dance is but a game

  And time reveals the hoax.

  Salamander coat of luster,