Wizard's Guide to Wellington Read online

  Coombe House & Phantom Feather Press 2014

  First published 2012

  Copyright © A.J. Ponder

  http://wizardsguide.wordpress.com/

  http://phantomfeatherpress.wordpress.com

  Cover art © 2012 Richard Ponder

  ISBN paperback 9780473220303

  ISBN mobi 978-0-9941155-4-6

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons dead or living is coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  CONTENTS

  The Book

  Here be Danger

  Missing Persons

  Truth, Lies and the Landlady

  The Death of a Legend

  Bad Men

  Crazy

  Caught at the AMO

  Leap of Faith

  Magic Quake

  The Witch

  Hide and Seek

  Teetering on Disaster

  Drowning – that’s nothing

  Kidnapped

  The Terror and the Taniwha

  Gone

  Paperwork

  The Coterie

  The GORMLESS

  Behind Bars

  Going Home

  The Frying Pan

  The Fire

  Hot Coals and Traitors

  Embers

  THE BOOK

  Alec peered down the walkway outside the airport bookshop. He wondered if his father would arrive the way he often did, sneaking right up to him and complaining with mock-seriousness, “Alec, you jumped. You should have been looking harder.”

  Today Alec stared so hard his eyes watered and a small patch of midnight blue inched across the grey carpet.

  Strange.

  He shook his head and tried not to listen his annoying little sister, Miss Whine-And-Get-My-Own-Way Molly as she emerged from the airport bookshop. “But Mummy, I want it – and look, it’s got fairies, and Mummy, pleeeease...”

  “The traffic’s not that bad,” Mum said ignoring Molly and checking her cell phone for perhaps the hundredth time. “I can’t believe your father isn’t here yet. He promised to finish work early so we could all meet this mysterious cousin Perrin when he arrives.” She looked up at the arrivals screen and sighed. “And now Perrin’s flight’s running half an hour late.”

  “Just great,” Alec said. He’d wanted to spend time with his dad at his dad’s place. Alone. With no little sisters and definitely no cousins. But when he’d complained all he’d got was a firm, “You’ve never met any of my side of the family and it’s about time you did. Believe me, you’ll be surprised.”

  Molly squealed and pointed past the cafes and the glass wall, to a landing aircraft. “Is that Perrin’s plane now?” she demanded, almost stepping on a flash of midnight blue against the dull grey carpet.

  Hadn’t he seen that before – creeping slowly towards him?

  No. Of course he hadn’t, it was just a book. On its cover a glint of setting sun flashed over a midnight blue Wellington harbour. Nobody else seemed to notice anything strange as they walked around or skipped over the book as if by accident.

  Curious, Alec picked it up – the thick yellowed pages crinkling noisily under his fingertips smelt of sand and sulphur and the sea. Definitely not an ebook. Not even holographic. And yet on the cover sunset tinted clouds caught on the fancy gold lettering – Ye Goode Olde Wizarde’s Guide to Wellingtowne – and skidded away. A sinister shape slid through increasingly inky water. Blue-grey, it might have been a whale, but it looked more like some kind of dragon.

  Alec shivered.

  “Something the matter?” his mother asked.

  “Er, nothing,” he said looking up. “I just found this old book.”

  “Huh? What book?”

  Alec waved it at her. “You think it might belong to someone?”

  “Don’t be silly, Alec. Come on, Molly! There you are,” she said picking her way around café tables to the window.

  Molly pulled her nose away from the windowpane and pointed past the runway to where a windsurfer was speeding across Lyall Bay. “Mummy, can I go sailing too?” she asked. “I want a rainbow sail just like that one.”

  “Or we could get hot chocolate?” Mum said.

  Molly rushed over. “Mummy, I want cake. Pleeeease. And marshmallows...”

  Alec took a step and froze. A gruff, but not unpleasant voice was talking. “Welcome to Wellingtowne, the greatest little capital in the world.”

  He looked about. It couldn’t be coming from the book. Could it?

  “Welcome to Wellingtowne,” the voice repeated. Maybe some trickster had put a microphone inside the cover. He opened it. No microphone, just a picture of a green gobliny face staring out.

  The face was moving. “Hello, boy,” it said. I am Ike.”

  “What?” Alec said. “Oh. Um, I’m Alec.”

  A girl giggled and he looked up to see her turn away, her velvet-dark cloak swirling behind her.

  Embarrassed, he slammed the cover shut.

  There was a muffled “ow,” as Alec sped off after his family.

  “Sorry,” he muttered feeling like a fool.

  “Alec Kettleson,” his mother scolded, “what are you doing?”

  “Um,” he said, automatically hiding the book behind his back to keep it well away from Miss-Molly who was prone to want anything that was his. Right now she was too busy shaking her finger at him in mock telling-off mode to notice anything strange.

  Not satisfied with wagging her finger, Molly stuck out her tongue. “And where’s Dad anyway?” she asked. “He was s’posed to be here to meet you, and then me and Mum could-–”

  “Shut up, Molly,” Mum snapped. “Do you want hot chocolate or not?”

  Alec sighed. “I can look after myself until Dad gets here. It’s pointless you waiting too.”

  “Don’t be silly, Alec. What if your dad doesn’t turn up? I can’t get hold of him and I’ve rung ten times – and left half a dozen texts.”

  “But Mum-”

  “No. I need to know you’re safely gone for the holidays.”

  Safely gone so she could spoil Molly, Alec thought, idly tracing the embossed writing on the cover of the book as his mum ordered three hot chocolates and two slices of orange cake.

  He itched to open it again. He wanted to find out more about the voice and the mysterious face but his sister was watching him like a hawk. Besides, whenever he even thought about the book he noticed peculiar people staring at him. A pretty lady with a shawl that looked like butterfly wings, a ragged boy wearing a witch’s hat, and a man dressed in black robes and looking disapprovingly at everyone over his beakish nose.

  The girl in the cloak who had laughed at him earlier caught his eye and gave a half smile as she bustled past. He watched her darting around the cafes and in and out of the shops as if she was looking for someone.

  Alec was so distracted he didn’t notice Perrin’s flight was landing, not until his mum dragged them over to gateway 28. “Now keep your eyes peeled for this cousin, both of you. We don’t want to miss him amongst all these people.”

  Tired passengers filed past, none of them boys travelling alone.

  At last, in desperation Alec’s mother approached a solitary man wheeling his suitcase out of the gangway. “Hhih hhm,” she coughed in the fake throat-clearing noise adults use to gain somebody’s attention.

  The man looked up.

  “Is there anybody left after you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe...”

  He shook his head and hurried away, pulling his suitcase behind him.

  Alec’s mother stood
there for a moment before slumping into a nearby chair and rummaging through her purse.

  “Ahem,” the book coughed, even less convincingly than his mother. “Alec, please remember Wellingtowne is a magically unstable zone, so please be very careful when carrying powerful magical items or casting spells. Disturbances within reality should be kept to a minimum as the force of the Unreal has been known to translate into seismic Events.”

  “Shh,” whispered Alec, fumbling for – and failing to find – an “off” button.

  Molly turned around. She blinked and stared at him, her gaze landing squarely on the book. “Mummy why can Alec have a talking book and I can’t?”

  “What book?” Mum said.

  “That one,” said Molly. “It’s not fair. I want a book too, and I want to go home. And I’m hungry.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Mum pulled a card out from her purse, turning it over slowly as if the other side might have more information. “Maybe I wrote down the wrong flight. I just don’t know. I don’t suppose you’ve seen a boy about your age hanging round...you know, I assumed Perrin was a boy’s name, but I guess it could be for a girl. Your Dad never really said.”

  Alec rolled his eyes. A girl? Surely Dad would have said if Perrin was a girl? Sometimes mothers can be so silly. Imagine taking us all this way, and waiting all this time and getting so terribly confused.

  Then he remembered the strange girl in the black cloak.

  HERE BE DANGER

  “There’s nothing like travel to broaden your horizons,” Perrin’s father had said, bundling her onto Griffin Airlines and waving goodbye.

  It was a lie. Travel had only shrunk her horizons and depleted willing relatives, until there was nowhere else to go except to an uncle she’d never met before in a backwater place called Nova Zeelandia, Aotearoa or New Zealand, depending on who you were talking to. In the old family atlas the entire country was almost completely obscured by a coffee stain and a nice friendly warning: Here be Dragons.

  Her father had given her Ike, an old wizard’s guide to help. Cantankerous, and very set in his ways, Ike wasn’t exactly the perfect travelling book, or companion. Right now she figured he was either lost or not talking to her. Something she might have celebrated if only her uncle, Mr Kettleson had bothered to turn up at the airport.

  A search of the airport showed up nothing except a scary magician. Black-cowled and beak-nosed, there was something about the way he stared intently at all the travellers that made her teeth stand on edge. She did her best to avoid him, ducking into a shop behind a woman with a clingy girl whining about fairies. Stupid child – didn’t she know fairies were dangerous? Then again, according to all Perrin’s friends, Wellingtowne was even more dangerous. That’s why she needed Ike.

  Unfortunately, he was nowhere to be found.

  Searching her bag, her pockets and the airport floor turned up nothing. Not even a hint of the guide. “Don’t come out then, you cantankerous piece of firewood!”

  The threat didn’t help. As she looked about it struck her how little she knew about her uncle, just that he worked for the AMO and was in some sort of trouble with the rest of the family because of an “unsuitable marriage.” Which could mean he’d married a Water Sprite, or been entangled by a Siren – or any one of a number of disastrous, and even frightening, prospects.

  What if the cowled wizard was her uncle? She spotted him again as he slipped through the crowd, meaning to ask him. But one glance convinced her she’d rather swim home. He seemed to be circling a boy, who looked up – his book leaking baby-magic all over the place. No control, Perrin thought with a scornful laugh, and turned away.

  Not that roaming Wellingtowne AirePorte alone with nothing but a small bundle of gold pieces, her broomstick, and some clothes in a pitifully under-filled bag of holding, was much better.

  ”Zorch it!” Perrin muttered ten minutes later. “One day I’ll make an unsuitable marriage. Then I won’t have to see my family again. Ever.” She searched around and soon found a lift under an old brass plaque so green it looked like it might photosynthesise. Seconds later cow bells chimed, the door slid open and the scary wizard hurried out, his cloak fluttering elegantly behind him.

  She shivered, wondering as a draughty chill enveloped her, if the terrifying campfire stories she’d been told about Wellingtowne were true. “’Course they’re not,” she told herself bravely, but only after the wizard had disappeared around the corner, nose first.

  Several deep breaths later Perrin walked into the lift, and froze. The contraption must be two hundred years old if it was a day. She stared at the hundreds of buttons lining the walls. Surely it couldn’t be as dangerous as it looked? After all, Ike had told her that thousands of people came through Wellingtowne every year. Most of them must have walked out of this lift still breathing.

  She screwed up her face, squinting to read the small, spiky writing and negotiate some pretty terrible spelling – like “shops”. Whoever’d heard of “shops”? The word should have at least another ‘p’ in it, and an ‘e.’ And what was a Te Papa? Still, it wasn’t all bad; in amongst the bright, glossy adverts for hotels and motels was a shabby bit of curled and yellowed parchment advertising a backpacker’s in proper Qweene’s Inglishe.

  On the negative side the Sticke Tracke backpackers looked cheap and nasty, but that was also the positive side – Perrin couldn’t exactly afford to stay anywhere decent.

  “Sticke Tracke,” Perrin told the lift.

  The lift answered with the jangle of more cowbells. “Fifth button, bottom left.”

  “Sticke Tracke,” Perrin repeated firmly.

  “I told you, bottom left.” The lift sighed. “Now, do be quiet, I’m having such a nice conversation with old Charlie Fudgebucket.”

  Perrin carefully examined the bottom tier of buttons, and found the correct one at last, its silvery writing all but worn off. Bravely she pressed it.

  The lift made a nasty whirring, clicking sound. A hand-hold fell from the ceiling. Perrin grabbed onto it as the lift jolted sideways – then plummeted.

  MISSING PERSONS

  “Come on, Alec,” his mother cajoled. “We need to go home.”

  “But I did see a girl. I told you she was wearing a cloak and-”

  “Don’t be silly – I’ve asked everybody, and nobody saw her. You think people wouldn’t notice a girl like that?”

  “But you can’t have asked everybody because I definitely saw her. Besides I-”

  Molly stamped her foot and assembled her about-to-burst-into-tears face. “I don’t want him coming home. You promised special Mummy-and-me time. You promised.”

  “Yes, it’s not fair.” Alec agreed, “Dad should be here. I shouldn’t have to put up with her one more minute.”

  Mum shook her head and pulled her lips so thin they were almost invisible. “Be quiet, both of you! Just stop it. We’re going home. Look, these things happen, you know. They’re almost always misunderstandings.”

  Alec wasn’t so sure. And on top of worrying about his dad he felt a little guilty about the book. He almost rushed back to leave it for the real owner to find, but the bossy voice snapped, “Don’t even think about it, Alec. I’m not property, I’m a Wizard’s Guide.”

  “Too late to worry now,” he thought as they piled into the car and Alec’s mother revved the engine. A figure in a long black cloak rushed out of the airport.

  “Mu-!” he choked – but it wasn’t the girl at all.

  “What now!” she grumped.

  The man turned towards them, nose quivering as if sniffing for something. Alec shivered. “Nothing, Mum. Let’s get out of here.”

  The ride home was uncomfortably silent. More so for Alec because Molly kept on staring at him and frowning.

  Alec stomped in the door. “I’m going to my room.”

  “Alec, don’t sulk.”

  “I’m not sulking.” He ducked past his mother and up the stairs.

  “And don’t be too long. It’ll b
e dinner soon.”

  “Okay,” Alec called, shutting his door and throwing himself onto his bed.

  He tried to be angry, but he was dying to get a proper look at the book without the feeling there were other people breathing down his neck. Besides it made sense his parents would get the day wrong. Maybe the holiday was next week, or tomorrow, or whatever.

  Anxiously he got up, trying to shake the feeling the book was a hoax, that someone was going to burst in and laugh at him. He checked outside his bedroom door. Nothing. Just Mum and Molly talking downstairs. Alone at last, Alec lay out on his bed, took a deep breath and opened the cover.

  He smelt sea again, and grass, and a hint of sulphur as out from under the words “Ye Goode Olde Wizarde’s Guide to Wellingtowne,” peeked the gobliny face from the airport. Only it didn’t seem quite so gobliny now, more like an odd cross between a goblin and an elf, with bulging eyes, pointed ears, a long nose and a winsome smile.

  Alec jumped as the face grew, and kept on growing until it had pushed itself out of the book and peered right at him, its eye magnified to a seemingly impossible size. “I talk only to wizards,” the book-creature said, its voice a mix between concern, amusement, and something Alec couldn’t quite place. “And you are not a wizard, are you?”

  “Um...” Alec replied, trying to give himself time to think of an answer to the question. “Er...I’m going to be living with my father soon. Although I am with my mother at the moment, and she’s not magical at all.”

  “Hmmm,” the face replied. “Are you sure? It’s against the rules for me to speak to ordinary people.”

  “I’m not ordinary,” Alec replied, struggling to think of something about him that was extraordinary. He didn’t want to lie. After all, he hadn’t lied before – not exactly. He’d only implied his father was a wizard instead of a boring old accountant.

  “Hmm.” The creature, or whatever it was, peered at Alec a bit longer. “Well, I guess you can see me so it must be all right. Anyway, young whippersnapper, let me introduce myself. I am Ike, your guide to the best wizarding centre in the world. You do realise Wellingtowne is a bit out of the way and dangerous? Are you sure your father left you here all by yourself? With, you know, only normal people?”