The moaning, which had been coming from high above the wizard's head, paused...
...then resumed, slightly softer, as though the ghost had turned its back on the wizard, as though it was heading back through the door.
Of course it's leaving, the wizard thought. It was looking for Snell.
"Wait!" the wizard called.
The moaning stopped entirely, but the dripping water did not.
"I'm here to help you," the wizard said. Help get rid of you was what he meant, but the way to get rid of a ghost is to settle whatever is bothering it.
Judging by the dripping water, the unseen creature, whatever it was, remained where it was.
"Can you speak?" the wizard asked.
The moaning resumed.
The wizard, realizing the moaning was the creature's speech, cast a spell so that he could understand the speech of animals. "There. Now can you tell me who you are?"
"I am Guardian," the deep but quiet voice said. "It is my duty to protect this den."
"Den?" the wizard echoed. Had the castle been built on top of a dragon's lair? But usually dragons preferred caves in high places. And the castle was not new enough to have recently disturbed a dragon's nest.
The ghostly voice repeated, "This den. And all those of your kind who dwell within."
It meant the castle. It was calling the castle the closest word it had to "home" or "dwelling."
The moat monster, the wizard realized. It hadn't killed anyone—it was the one who had died. Everyone had been trying to think of people who had died. And all the while this poor dead thing was unable to stop its attempts to continue the task that had been set for it.
The wizard said, "It is good that you take your duty so seriously, but now it is time for you to rest."
"I cannot," the ghost of the moat monster said.
"Did another wizard bespell you?"
The moat monster said, "There were words spoken in silver light, with the scent of jasmine and the feel of sun-warmed pebbles—the way you spoke just now to allow yourself to understand my speech. Those words said I was to be Guardian, and I was to protect this den and all who dwell within for the rest of my natural life."
The wizard hadn't been aware that magic words had scent or texture. "Well," he said, "it is difficult to be the bearer of bad news, but I have to tell you..." He sighed, never before having had to tell anyone, You died.
But he didn't have to say it now, either. Apparently the creature already knew it was dead. "'My natural life,'" it repeated. "My kind normally lives through a thousand revolutions of this earth around the sun: time of rain and new growth, time of heat, time of leaves turning bright colors, and time of snow. But I lived only a hundred cycles."
That was the trouble with spells: Sometimes they just went on and on.
The wizard said, "Others' spells can be very tricky to overcome, but I can try to unravel the spell that ties you here."
Silence.
Not that the wizard was used to thunderous applause at his proclamations, but he had expected the moat monster to say something. Had it left the room after all? Half suspecting there would be no answer to this, either, the wizard asked, "Don't you want to move on to the next stage of being?"
The moat monster's voice came soft as a sigh, but still from the same spot. It said, "A hundred cycles out of a thousand is not very long at all."
"I realize that," the wizard said. Then he thought to ask, "What did you die of?"
"Bad meat," the monster said.
The wizard decided it might be rude to mention that this was a risk taken by those who ate their meat raw. But then he remembered how the servants had insisted the monster was a gentle creature, and he realized the monster had said "meat," not "fish," and he thought to wonder where a moat-bound, gentle-natured monster would get its meat. He asked, "Bad as in spoiled?"
"Bad as in poisoned." The monster sighed. "I didn't eat it, of course. My nose and my eyes could tell there was something wrong. But the poison spread from the pieces of meat into the water itself. I avoided the tainted area, but then more pieces were thrown in, here and there, all about the water that surrounds the den, and the fish either swam away or sickened and died. I am not permitted to swim away."
"Duke Snell," the wizard surmised. "He wanted to set up the gates in the water so that he could charge tolls and make money to buy himself fine things and make himself impressive in the eyes of others." For a moment he thought he was explaining things to the monster, but then, looking about the room with all its broken things, he realized the monster knew.
"I cannot give you back the life that was taken from you," the wizard said, "but I can make Duke Snell pay for it."
"How?" the monster said.
"Wait and see," the wizard said, for he knew that the monster would not be pleased with his solution.
The next morning, as soon as Duke Snell returned, the wizard told him to order all the inhabitants—servants and hangers-on alike—to leave the castle.
"Why?" Snell demanded.
"I'm going to rid the castle of its ghost," the wizard explained.
"I thought you were supposed to do that last night," Snell complained.
The wizard forced a pleasant smile. "Ghosts are more powerful in the dark. Daytime is the proper time for dispersing them."
Snell sighed. "Well, it will take most of the day to get all my possessions out of the castle."
"Oh, your things can stay," the wizard said. "People can't. I don't want to get too technical here, but organic life-forms might tend to ... soak up some of the residual"—the wizard was having to think quickly—"ahm ... residue from the magic. But possessions—perfectly safe."
Snell asked skeptically, "Are you sure?"
"Didn't you pay me that great big salary because I'm the expert?"
Snell looked as though he was trying to work out whether he had paid too much or whether the wizard was being sarcastic, but he gave the order. The wizard directed everyone to wait on the far bank of the river, across from the island on which the castle stood.
They were just starting their picnic lunch when the wizard began to weave his spell. It was a variation of his transportation spell, and he worked carefully, a little bit at a time, affecting the back of the castle, where the people couldn't see.
It was, in fact, the moat monster who first realized what he was doing. Bound by spells to protect the castle, the ghost creature rose out of the moat with an angry roar and an explosion of water, so fast that the water clung to its sides, giving shape to its insubstantial form: a huge, rounded body with a long neck, and wide-open jaws that dripped what might have been saliva, or moat water.
People pointed and screamed, and the wizard took the opportunity to transport a whole section from the lower back part of the castle away from there and into his own yard. Eventually, he could use the stones to build a garden wall that those unruly rabbits would need wings to get over, but that wasn't his chief goal. His purpose was to weaken the castle's structure, and that's exactly what happened. A huge crack appeared on the front face of the castle as the entire building began to tip backward over the missing section.
"Wizard!" Snell screamed across the water at him. "Look what's happening!"
The water had run off the moat monster so that it was once more invisible. But something knocked the wizard off his feet, which he figured must be the moat monster butting him with its head. Still, however intent the ghost was on protecting the castle, it was not substantial enough—especially in the daylight—to cause the wizard harm.
There was a resounding crack! as the castle, unable to support its own weight, split apart. Stones hurtled outward, which was the real reason the wizard hadn't wanted anyone else standing on the front lawn. And then, in a cloud of dust that started at the ground and built upward, the castle tumbled to the ground.
"You incompetent ninny!" Snell screamed. "My castle! My beautiful castle! Duke Lawrence will never give me another one! Cordelia will never stay
married to me if she has to live in a woodcutter's cottage!"
"Sorry," the wizard said. If Snell had been close enough to hear, he might have assumed the wizard was apologizing for not being able to save the castle from the ghost; he was never likely to guess that the wizard was, in fact, apologizing to the ghost.
The wizard picked himself up off the grass and walked to the edge of the island. "Did you see that creature come up out of the water?" he called over to the people on the other side. He knew they had—they'd been screaming. "Who would have thought it could knock the castle down like that? I never heard of anything like that ever happening before. So, under the circumstances, Duke Snell, I'm not going to charge you the second half of my fee."
The wizard didn't wait for Snell's sputtering to form itself into words. "Good-bye, then," he said cheerily, and faced the other way, to speak to the moat monster. "Sorry," the wizard said to it again. "That seemed the best way to free you of your duty to protect the castle, and at the same time to punish Duke Snell."
Of course, he couldn't see if the creature was actually there, and for a few long moments he wondered whether the destruction of the castle had dispersed its spirit, for there was no answer. Then Guardian's quiet voice said, "If I had known what you intended, I would have tried to stop you."
"Which is why I didn't discuss my plan with you," the wizard explained. "The castle is gone; those who lived there must now go elsewhere. The spell that held you as Guardian has no more power over you."
"Still..." The monster sighed. "It would have been nice to stay in this world for at least a few more of the thousand cycles I should have had."
"Stay, then," the wizard said, "for as long as you want to." He glanced over his shoulder and saw that two of the castle guards were rowing a boat toward the island shore. Snell was also in the boat, shaking his fist at him.
The moat monster said, "But there are too many bad memories here. If I knew of another river, or a lake ... But it is difficult for my kind to travel over land..."
The wizard had glimpsed its huge body and small legs. He offered, "I could take you to a place I know of: A nice, deep, secluded lake, with clean water, but peat beneath. That way, if people did come, you could roll yourself in the peat and let people glimpse you—the way the people here glimpsed you before the water ran down off your sides—and they would be frightened away."
"You can get me there with the silver words that smell of jasmine and feel like sun-warmed pebbles?" When the wizard nodded, the moat monster said, "Then I would like that."
With the sound of Snell's rowboat scraping its bottom in the shallows behind him, the wizard did a double transporting spell to the lake he'd described.
"It's a lovely place to spend a few more cycles before I'm ready to move on," the moat monster said, splashing its head into the water then out again quickly, so that the wizard could momentarily glimpse its smallish head atop its long neck. "And I will remember how to make my body visible if I want to play tricks, once in a while, on those of your kind who may come here. Thank you, Wizard."
"You're welcome, Guardian," the wizard said. He interrupted the spell to transport himself back home only long enough to say, "Enjoy the lake. By the way, it's called Ness."
The Princess and the Quest for the Golden Cucumbers
When the king and queen of his own land invited the wizard for tea at their castle, he knew he should probably make some sort of excuse. "School will be starting next week," he could say. "So much to do," he could say. After all, he knew they had a daughter and he'd had more than enough problems with princesses this summer.
Still, it wouldn't do to get them angry. So he packed a huge box of broccoli to give the queen as a hostess present and showed up exactly on time.
The princess was late.
Waiting for her, the wizard made the teapot rise up from the table and float to a position directly above the king's cup.
The king and queen had invited him here to ask a favor, he was sure of it, and no doubt the smart thing to do was to downplay his magical abilities, but it was hard to resist the temptation to show off, especially since his wise old wizard disguise wouldn't work with them—they knew his true age. In any case, they were looking beyond him, out the big French windows that opened onto the flower garden. He had barely glimpsed the young woman riding the large horse when the king tapped him on the knee.
"A lovely girl, the princess," the king said. "Lovely, in her own way. But not quite what one could call ... ahm, exactly, er..."
"Marriageable," the queen suggested.
The king winced. "Marriageable," he agreed. "The thing is, she has no suitors. That is, none that we've found suitable, that was ... ahm, as it were, ah..."
"Willing to ask for her hand," the queen finished.
The king shrugged apologetically. "We're hoping you can do something about it," he said in a hurried whisper as the princess slid off the horse and jumped over a low hedge to enter by the window. She was tall, that was the wizard's first impression, and had long frizzy hair of a rather mousy brown. "Hello," she said before the wizard could notice much else about her. "Sorry I'm late, but Farmer Seymour's cart was stuck—"
"Yes, yes, my dear." The queen looked disapprovingly at her daughter's pants and brushed at her dusty sleeve. "You should have let Farmer Seymour get his cart out from wherever it was stuck by himself. Say hello to the wizard."
The wizard, who was not short, stood up and found himself at eye level with the princess's chin.
"Pleased to meet you," the princess said, and shook his hand before he could kiss hers. "Kind of young for a wizard, aren't you?"
The queen made a tut sound. "Theodora, don't be rude." She turned back to the wizard. "I know that Theodora—"
"Teddy," the princess interrupted.
"Theodora," the queen continued, "has prepared some sort of special treat for us. Perhaps you'd like to get it, my dear, before we start?"
The wizard watched Princess Teddy leave the room with the slightly bowlegged walk of someone who'd spent the day in the saddle.
The king shook his head and looked out the window.
"We've tried. Heaven knows, we've tried," the queen said. "But she does not look like a princess, she does not act like a princess..."
"Well...," said the wizard only to fill the silence, but he found himself the object of two expectant stares. He cleared his throat and tapped his fingers on his knees. He looked out the window. "It's not that she's unattractive—"
"Princesses are supposed to be exquisite," the king said. "They're supposed to have unsurpassed beauty—beauty to leave young men breathless with admiration. They are not supposed to have freckles, and they are not supposed to bite their fingernails, and they are definitely not supposed to loom over prospective suitors like a ... a..."
"Like an older sister," the queen said, "who's better at riding, and archery, and tracking in the woods..." She was counting these things off on her fingers.
"And who won't give in during an argument—"
"And doesn't have time to learn how to do ladylike things such as embroidery and cooking—"
"Here we go!" Teddy burst into the room, using her foot both to push open the door and to shut it behind her. She placed the dish she was carrying on the short table before them. "Baking is not my strong point," she explained to the wizard, "but Mother insisted that I whip up something special because you were coming."
The wizard stared at the red-white-and-green mound of crumbs on the platter before him. The thought that came to his mind was Pastry Attacked by Demented Baker.
"I had a little bit of trouble getting it out of the pan," she explained when the three of them didn't move and only sat there staring. Finally, she explained, "It's peppermint cake, with pistachio icing."
The queen pulled a lacy handkerchief from her sleeve and leaned back on the sofa, covering her mouth.
The king gulped down the last of his cold tea and looked away.
The princess slid a
piece of the cake onto a silver plate and handed it to the wizard. "I suppose they've told you they're having no luck in marrying me off."
"Really, my dear," the queen said from behind her handkerchief.
"No, it's quite all right. I understand. Princes come to visit, but we never hit it off well. I always think they're young and silly, and they always suddenly remember urgent business elsewhere. Mother and Father are frantic. Here I am, their only child, the heir apparent to one of the nicest realms in the area, and I haven't had a single offer. My friends are all married already. The younger sisters of my friends are all married already. I've become an embarrassment." Teddy sat on the floor, cross-legged, and leaned her elbows on the coffee table, her chin on her hands. "So. What's the plan?"
The wizard avoided her steady gaze. He concentrated, instead, on his cake. He tried to hide the fact that his fork was unable to put a dent in it. "Well...," he said.
"Can you work some sort of spell to improve my looks? To make me less..." She gestured helplessly, "...less like me and more like what a princess should be?"
The wizard bore down on his fork, and a piece of cake broke away and skittered off the plate, hitting his teacup with a loud ping!
Princess Teddy stared at the cup. "Know any nearsighted princes," she asked softly, "who are on diets?"
"Now look here." The wizard put his fork down emphatically. He looked from princess, to king, to queen, back to princess. "You are a perfectly fine princess as you are." He held up a finger so no one would interrupt. "All we need here is just a little something extra. A sense of mystery! Adventure! Quest! A prize hard-won!"
"I beg your pardon?" the queen asked.
"A test?" Teddy said. "Are you talking about some sort of test?"
"Exactly." The wizard stood up and began to pace the room. "We'll announce that only the man who can pass the test will be worthy of the princess's hand. Once we whip up their competitive spirit—"