The Wicked Wand by Steve Shilstone Read Free Book Online Page A

bottle to spill a few honey-thick green drops onto the surface of the pool. The drops hissed and swirled, spreading in crawling rivulets, twining and expanding until the pool was no longer crystal blue, but instead crystal green. I shivered in appreciation. A witness to magic for the very first time! Oh, how I wanted to snap off and fall into the newly green pool. Magic were growing in me. I could feel it, but I could not command it. I vowed a thought to study Briny Brook. I wished a thought for a powerful wind storm to snap me free. When would my day arrive?
    â€œFor bar years I observed Briny Brook’s spells and potions and amulets in wondrous performance. A grumpy delight, salty and frowning, that were Briny Brook. He shaped clouds, changed their colors, made the rain stop in mid-fall. He spelled a rope of water up from the pool to reach the sky. He climbed it for exercise. From time to time he floated away and left me alone in the silent oasis. Those were the times when most I wanted to tear myself from the tree. How had I endured the tedious boredom of the empty oasis in the years before Briny Brook appeared? I tried to snap myself from the tree. How I tried! The magic were in me, but it always slipped aside whenever I tried to grasp it. The snaves slithered over the dunes to visit the pool a time or two, commenting without alarm and some amusement at the pool’s new green color, but never by bad fortune did they arrive when Briny Brook was there. Bad fortune for me. I wished to see what would happen when Briny Brook met the snaves. Oh, bad fortune four or five times. Good fortune once! Hear ye well!
    â€œCame a bright morning when Briny Brook were plucking blades of blue grass directly beneath me. He had to duck or I would have knocked off his conical cap. To my joy, over the dunes came a line of yellow snaves slithering and singing bad rhymes. Briny Brook looked up and began to stroke his long red beard with his fiery orange hands. He retreated to his favorite position, hovering seated cross-legged just a scant reach above the pool. He faced the approaching snaves, who slithered to an astonished halt when they saw him. ‘Seed belt striped with fog, and when I say “Seed belt striped with fog”, I mean “Waterwizard?”’, said the snave at the head of the line. (Kar rammed me a strong elbow. I knew. I knew. We had dealt with snave nonsense ourselves. I nodded a nod.) ‘I be Briny Brook. This be my beckoning pond. Who be ye, and why?’ said the waterwizard. ‘We are the snaves of Innek. We climb on toast, by which I mean that we visit the pool to romp. Will you bend the wheels on our ivy?’ Briny Brook ignored the snave nonsense, instead opening his arms and some magical how building a slitherway which led up to the top of a waterslide which in its own very turn emptied into the pool. The snaves wriggled with delight and spent all of the day in slide and splash play while Briny Brook posed, arms folded, leaning on a grob tree trunk, watching with his ice blue eyes. He was directly across the pool from me. And after the snaves had disappeared over the dunes spouting grateful nonsense songs of farewell, Briny Brook remained leaning against the tree. His ice blue eyes stared straight at me. ‘Ye there, though bent in the middle, would make a comely wand, wouldn’t ye?’ he said.

Chapter Nineteen
    HIDING MISCHIEF
    The wand twitched, flipped, stood on end. It wobbled there on a fold of my blackest purple cloak and continued to tell its tale.
    â€œBriny Brook nodded a smiling frown and circled the pool walking, not floating, all the while keeping his ice blue gaze fixed on me. I were filled with a hope of excitement. The magic inside me fizzed and tingled. I could almost grip it! ‘A gift. A likely gift for the witch ye would make. A trade. Better! A trade! Wand for a sweet chunk of cottage. I hear tell it be made of candy and cakes never ending,’ said