Read Online The Wicked Wand by Steve Shilstone - Free Book Online Page B

vow,” I interrupted. “Continue. Golden Glue ... Shoe.”
    â€œI obey commands. Ye be the Harick,” said the wand while performing another of its tilting bows. “No mischief now. The Golden Shoe. There came a time one day when I twitched on my own. Oh, that were glory! I felt it. Practice and practice, I mastered rolling, lifting, floating, but bolt magic yet eluded me. In its place I mastered batting the Golden Shoe off its sill and picking it up and putting it back. It were a part of my mischievous plan. I kept my new skills hidden from the witch and vowed to wait for her next forgetful day, the day when, shoeless, she would pick me up. Then, bolt power activated by her touch, I would change her into a patch of tar! Ha! Then I would scoop up the Golden Shoe and carry it out to the nearest deepest lake and drop it in. I would be free to fly anywhere with my mastered magic and hide away for whatever time it took to capture unaided bolt power and create all manner of mischief, more than just tar, that I could think of.”
    The wand, unable for the moment to remain a subdued story-telling wand, lifted and twirled madly around us before settling again on the folds of my blackest purple cloak.
    â€œI apologize, Harick,” said the wand, “but that be a memory what makes me hop.”
    â€œWell, did you glue it ... do it?” I asked.
    â€œNearly everything of it. So nearly,” sighed the wand, “but not. The troll. The meddlesome troll.”
    â€œWhat about the bowl ... troll?” I urged. The wand had fallen silent. It needed to be prodded.
    â€œIf not for the meddlesome troll,” said the wand in a dreamy wooden musing manner.

Chapter Twenty-Five
    THE MEDDLESOME TROLL
    â€œTell us!” shouted Kar and I in chorus. We exchanged looks and shrugs.
    â€œMeddlesome. I should have waited for him to go visit his friend across the river,” mused the wand, picking up the thread of its story. “I should have, but I didn’t. I were too fizzed and surprised when at last one day the witch, who had been sitting and staring into her crystal ball for a tedious boring span of seemingly frozen time, jumped up waving her arms and shouting, ‘Praw Fuh Sigh!’ She accidentally kicked me. I rattled off the wall. She bent down and picked me up. The Golden Shoe were still on the sill! Freedom! Mischief! I threw the bolt of magic I had dreamed of throwing, the one I had been saving for this very time. I fell clatter to the floor. Why? Patch of tar! The witch were a patch of tar! My mischief! My own! I wriggled around her and were about to lift and float when the cottage door flew open and there were the monstrous troll. ‘What Praw Fuh Sigh?’ he roared. ‘Babba Ja? Babba?’ He stared at the patch of tar, a look of horror on his face. True, his face were ever and always a look of horror, but this time it were real and felt. ‘Wand?’ He looked at me. I moved not a quiver. Another mistake. He sat down and combed his claws wildly through the hair on the top of his fearsome head. ‘What to do? What to do? What to do?’ he repeated and repeated as he combed and combed. Ye plainly see the unhappiness I had caused? I myself could not see it then. I rejoiced in my mischief. But now, oh now, I see how wrong it were. How young I were, and foolish. A lackwit. Thoughtless. Mischief. I hereby apologize for all of the mischief I ever bolted. So wrong. It were so wrong to ...”
    â€œWrong! It was long ... wrong. Yoss! Past is last ... past. Continue. What happened ... happened ... happened ...,” I said.
    â€œNext!” punctuated Kar.
    â€œThe meddlesome troll got a meddlesome idea,” hummed the wand in its wooden way. “He rumbled, ‘Waterwizard.’ I heard him. He rumbled, ‘I’ll fetch a waterwizard.’ Then in the next instant he was up and loping off through the clearing to disappear into the trees. Too