Geri Novél: Girl Mystic, chapter five

A children's story

Chapter Five

The Hybrid New Wand

It was decided (by Geri) to assemble the hybrid new wand in the privacy of Box’s bedroom, where there was a workbench and tools at the ready. Geri might have been worried that Box’s parents might see what they were up to, had it not been for all the locks and bolts he had installed on the door. With the locks and bolts thus in place, Mr and Mrs Privet would not be seeing anything.

“What can they be doing up there?” said Mrs Privet, one evening, when the two cousins were upstairs, secreted within the confines of the small bedroom.

“Didn’t you tell me they were making a radio?” said Mr Privet as he turned over the page of his newspaper.
“Yes, I did…”

“I see the wholesale price of fruit and vegetables is going up again,” Mr Privet mumbled, without giving the children, and what they might or might not be getting up to, a second thought.

Mrs Privet said nothing, but she listened intently, worried for the safety of her only son.

“Holly, did you hear me? I said the price of fruit and vegetables is going up again!”

“That’s nice, dear,” she replied. “I am so happy to hear that…”

Mr Privet turned another page of his newspaper, where he saw an article about owls dive-bombing some children in the local park. “What on earth will be happening next?” he growled. “The world has gone barking mad.”

Over the following week, Geri and Box spent every waking minute in the confines of his small bedroom; Box at his workbench creating, crafting the new hybrid wand that his cousin so desperately wanted, and Geri in charge of the existing one, helping him to understand and to meld the two seemingly incompatible standards.

It was a long process, transferring her wand’s powers into the new electro magical creation, but Box persisted nevertheless, and when he was in the final stages, with sparks, smoke and all sorts of magical phenomena going on, something quite unexpected happened. Geri’s wand, instead of shrinking away into nothingness, as Box had planned, stopped short from doing this. When it was about the size of a matchstick, it stopped shrinking and stubbornly remained at that size no matter how hard they tried to finish the process. In the end they had to accept that although the process had been a success, the last vestiges of power in her old wand remained stubbornly there – within it, the matchstick wand.

With the new electro magical wand all but complete, the two cousins emerged from the bedroom tired and weary, yet happy they had achieved their objective.

“The only thing that we have left to do is to test it,” Geri whispered as they made their way down the stairs.

“Can we do it now?” Box asked, impatient to see if his efforts had been successful.

“No, we’ll do it later, when no one is here,” Geri whispered as she opened the kitchen door.

“It’s good to see both of you out of that stuffy old room,” said Mrs Privet when the two cousins entered the kitchen. “How’s the radio coming on?”

“The radio?” said Box.

“The radio is all finished,” said Geri, digging her forgetful cousin in the ribs. Box’s eyes watered.

“Any lemonade?” Geri asked, casually opening the fridge door as she spoke.

After giving each of them a glass of lemonade, Mrs Privet said, “Now go inside to the dining room, dinner’s just about ready. Then calling her husband, she said, “Laurel, dear, Geri and Box have finished their radio…”

“About time too,” he replied. “They could have made a bomb for all the time they’ve spent up there.”

Hearing her husband making his way upstairs, Mrs Privet said, “Dinner is almost ready.”

“I’m just going for a piddle, be down in a jiff,” he replied.

Mr Privet did go for a piddle, but he omitted to say that he was also going to see if he could take a peep at the new fangled radio…

“There you are,” said Mrs Privet, placing two huge plates on the table in front of the children. “Shepherd’s Pie, your favourite, Box.”

Her son wasted no time in tucking into his favourite meal; he was absolutely famished after a week of such intense work, having missed so many meals.

Prodding her meal dismissively with her fork, Geri’s eyes looked upwards; she was worried.

“Don’t you like it, Geri?” Mrs Privet asked her politely.

This time it was Box who nudged Geri in the ribs.

“Pardon, what did you say?”

“I said don’t you like your dinner?”

“It was lovely,” Geri replied. “I enjoyed every bit of it,” she said, holding the now empty plate for the woman’s inspection.

Mrs Privet’s jaw dropped. “How did you do that?” she asked in astonishment.

“Come on,” Geri whispered to Box, “let’s get upstairs, I think we left the door unlocked…

“Can’t I finish my dinner first?”

“You have,” she said as she pushed back her chair and got up.

“But I haven’t,” Box protested, “In fact I’ve hardly begun…”

“Look at you plate, dummy.”

Staring down at his plate, Box was shocked to see that it too was as clean as a whistle. “But I didn’t eat it,” he moaned, “and I’m still starving.”

“Have you forgotten about your father?” Geri hissed, annoyed that Muddles can waste so much timing on thinking about food.

Meanwhile, on the landing, Mr Privet, Laurel, having spotted the door to his son’s bedroom having been left slightly ajar, was creeping surreptitiously towards it.

Standing outside, he peeped through the crack in the door, trying to get a glimpse of the mysterious radio that had taken so long to assemble. He looked but he saw no sign of it, no sign of it at all. Pushing the door slowly inwards he tried to get a better look. Creaking, the door opened revealing his son’s workbench – and the new fangled wand sitting so innocently atop it.

Looking around, to make sure the coast was clear, that no one was watching him, Mr Privet crept surreptitiously into his son’s inner sanction, the room that he had promised never to enter on his own. A floorboard creaked. He stopped, frozen to the spot. No one had heard it; no one was coming after him, and he continued further into the room wondering where the radio could be.

Seeing nothing of any more interest than a peculiar steel rod on the workbench – the new electro magical wand, Mr Privet picked it up and began waving it. “Hmm,” he whispered, “this doesn’t look like a radio.” Then studying it closer, he spotted some buttons at its base. “Now what are these?” he said, “Might be on/off switches, I suppose, and radios do come in all sorts of shapes and sizes nowadays.” He pressed the first button. There was a slight click, but nothing seemed to happen.

Waving it again, Mr Privet said, “I wish I could understand what’s been going on around here.” And he did. He suddenly understood everything that his son and Geri had been up to in that room. He laughed, Mr Privet laughed thinking that his mind was playing tricks on him, that his imagination was running into overdrive, and he said, “Hold it together, Laurel, or they’ll be carting you off to the loony bin, and sharpo.”

Waving the rod again, this time like a conductor’s baton, Mr Privet imagined he was conducting an orchestra. Then he heard music playing. Surprised, he stopped waving it. The music also stopped. Looking carefully at the rod, he thought that perhaps it really was a radio, that it had simply taken a while for it to warm up, and now that it had it was beginning to play music on the station it was tuned into.

He pressed a second button. It clicked, but unlike the first this button produced a result, a very unfortunate result indeed. Flames, huge searing flames shot out from the wand, scorching a large area of wallpaper in front of him.

“No, no!” Mr Privet gasped in fright, directing the wand away from the burning wallpaper, to his son’s wardrobe. The flames began attacking it in earnest. “No, no!” he shouted again.

Hearing the commotion upstairs, Geri and Box ran out from the kitchen, scorched down the hallway and leapt up the stairs two steps at a time. Arriving on the landing they found the door of Box’s bedroom now fully open, with huge flames shooting out through it.

Smiling with satisfaction, Geri said, “Well, at least we know that it works!”

“What about my room?” Box hollered, unable to see in, for all the flames and billowing smoke coming out.

On reaching the landing, Mrs Privet began crying out loudly, “Laurel, what have you done? Laurel, can you hear me? Laurel, where are you?”

Geri knew that something had to be done – and it had to be done fast. But stunned by the Muddlesome meddling of her uncle, she hesitated, unable to decide on what.

Box, however, had no such qualms and he sprang into action like he had been dealing with such things all of his life. Shouting in through the doorway, to his father, he said, “Point it out through the window!”

“What?” his father yelled in back at him. “What did you say?”

“I said point it out through the window! Aim the flames out of it!”

“But the window’s shut!”

“Don’t worry about that – JUST DO IT!” he ordered.

Following his son’s instructions, Mr Privet pointed the wand at the window, even though it was closed tight. And no sooner had he done this, did the huge flames shoot their way through the glass, shattering it onto a million red-hot pieces that rained onto the ground below.

With the charred doorway now free of flames, Box, followed closely by Geri, entered the room. His father was still holding the wand; pointing the huge flames that showed no signs of abating, out through the window.

“Help, help,” he shouted, “This radio has gone berserk, all that I wanted to do was change the station.”

“Hang on a minute, Geri will stop it,” Box shouted. Then turning to her, he said, “It’s up to you now, cousin. This is your department.”

“It seems a waste,” she replied dryly, “stopping such a fine flame.”

“GERI!”

“Oh, all right,” she said. Then after uttering a few words that Box failed to hear let alone understand, the flames died away.

Mr Privet, his face, hands and clothes all sooty black, carefully placed the ‘radio’ onto the workbench, close to where a small fire was still burning. Wetting two of his fingers, he extinguished the flames with them, and muttered, “You know, I only wanted to change the station – that was all, just the rotten station...”

Outside on the landing, his wife cried out, “Laurel! Are you all right?”

“Holly, where are you?” he asked, in a muddle.

When his wife entered the room, and saw the utter devastation within it, she burst out crying.

“It’s all right, Holly,” said her husband. “It’s not that bad. I just put it on the wrong station, that’s all… It was just a silly mistake…”

Mr Privet mumbling incoherently and his wife crying inconsolably left the smouldering room, on their way to their own bedroom, where they closed the door behind them, trying to forget all they had just witnessed.

“Phew, that was close,” said Geri, with a wink.

“Close?” Box yelled. “We could have all been burned to a crisp!”

“Might have, but didn’t,” she replied, hurt that her cousin’s faith in her abilities was so lacking.

With the help of her newly tested wand, Geri soon had the room back to its former condition, down to the very last detail including a cobweb hanging from a corner of the ceiling.

Nothing more was said about this unfortunate incident, Mr and Mrs Privet preferring to believe that it had all been some sort of a bad dream, for how could it be anything other than that, when there wasn’t the slightest sign of fire or damage to be seen anywhere?

Chapter Six

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© Gerrard T Wilson 2008