The Evil Wizard Smallbone by Delia Sherman Page B

peeled potatoes for hash. It was obvious that he was meant to have it. Maybe what the bookshop was trying to tell him, he thought as he put the potatoes on to boil, was that he was the hero of this story. Maybe
E-Z Spelz
was teaching him how to outwit Smallbone and rescue himself. Maybe tests were part of being a hero. Maybe the chart was the thing he needed to learn that would set him free.
    In any case, it fascinated him. He wanted — no, he
needed
— to know what it meant.
    That night, he stashed the chart in his bureau, under his shirts. And he cast Bow-Wowzer Meowzer on the drawer, just to make sure.

N ext morning, Nick bounced out of bed feeling ready to take on the world. He could protect himself and milk a goat, he could draw a perfect pentagram and light a candle, and under his clean shirts he had a cool secret chart he just knew would be his ticket out of Evil Wizard Books, once he learned how to use it.
    He couldn’t wait to get started.
    At breakfast, Smallbone said, “You’re looking mighty chipper.”
    Nick swallowed a mouthful of egg. “Must be left over from the rock spell,” he said blandly. “It’s mighty restful, being a rock.”
    “I didn’t do it to give you a rest. I did it to calm you down. You’ll be taking the evening chores from now on and keeping the wood box filled. I got important work in hand.” Smallbone cleaned out his pipe and put it on the mantel. “There’s a chicken in the deep freeze. You remember what I told you about roast chicken?”
    Nick didn’t, but he could look it up in
The Joy of Cooking
. “Yep.”
    Smallbone gave him a narrow look, whistled for the dogs, and left.
    As soon as he was gone, Nick had
E-Z Spelz
out of his pocket.
    The next week passed in a blur of chores and magic.
    E-Z Spelz
was silent on the subject of charts with numbers, but it did start teaching him more actual spells. Some were more E-Z than others. Levitation gave him a lot of trouble, and he didn’t seem to have the knack of conjuring visions at all. But the spells having to do with water or fire or wind or stone came natural as breathing. He made little whirlpools in the animals’ water troughs and chased Hell Cat off the kitchen table with magically aimed water squirts. He learned a spell for finding lost objects and another for lifting and moving little ones, which must have been what Smallbone had used to retrieve Ollie’s jingle ball. Nick tried to use it to gather eggs. It sent the chickens into cackling hysterics, but it worked — maybe a little too well. Eggs, new and not so new, zoomed at him from the hayloft, the rafters, behind the mangers — all the hidey-holes discovered by generations of wily hens. He ducked, but they smashed into him anyway. When it was all over, he was covered with egg slime and smelled like a sulfur pit. He managed to wash off most of the stink before Smallbone came down for breakfast and covered up the rest by burning the bacon on purpose.
    Smallbone didn’t notice. Smallbone was spending every waking hour in his tower workshop, appearing only for meals, looking more than ever like a badly made scarecrow and smelling odd. Sometimes it was paint and sawdust. Sometimes it was the hot metal and ozone that was the smell of magic.
    After a few days, the chickens got used to the egg-gathering spell. It was funny to see them bobbing in the air like feathery balloons, peering underneath themselves and saying
werk
. Nick started using the same spell to clean the kitchen when Smallbone was out of the way. He lit the lamps with magic, too. It came so naturally that he slipped once and did it when Smallbone was in the room, but the old man was patting Mutt and didn’t notice.
    When he realized what he’d done, though, Nick went cold. If he didn’t want to get turned into a slug and salted, he was going to have to be more careful.
    A few days later, Smallbone left Evil Wizard Books after lunch, saying he’d be back for supper. When suppertime came and went,