JIMMY WONDERSPOON

Chapter 1

Sam Gorey knew that she had an odd family, because other people said so.  She lived with her mother Elena in a little house by the sea, and her uncle, Jimmy Wonderspoon, who most people thought was even stranger than Elena, lived around the corner.  Her father, David Gorey, had disappeared two years before.

It wasn’t that unusual not to have a Dad, but it was unusual to have a father who had literally vanished in a puff of blue smoke at the supermarket while he was buying toothpaste, in full view of shoppers.  It had caused a panic, and one old lady had gone off in a dead faint and was revived by a helpful check out lady, who threw a bottle of mineral water over her (she opened it first). 

It had caused a lot of fuss at the time.  Media types with notebooks and video cameras had swarmed in front of the front gate of No. 5 Cheshire Crescent, wanting to make documentaries about a bona fide paranormal event and film the grieving mother and child.  There were rumours about Russian drug gangs and CIA experiments.  Strange people sent them long letters reporting they had spotted David Gorey in a UFO, hanging out with Elvis Presley. 

Poor Elena, Sam’s mother, also had to deal with the police, who were frankly baffled and decided in the end that all the shoppers had suffered a collective hallucination.  “A most unusual phenomenon, Mrs Gorey,” said Senior Detective McAlister. Hallucination or not, it was a fact that Sam’s Dad had vanished without trace and hadn’t been seen since.  He was listed as a Missing Person.  But the people who missed him were Sam and Elena.

Sam had been eight years old.  She hadn’t asked questions at the time, because her mother had to answer so many questions from so many different people that she was constantly exhausted.  Time passed, and somehow it was too painful to ask Elena questions, and then more time passed, and she just got used to missing her father, and their life settled into a kind of normality.

It was hard not to wonder where her father had gone, and why, and whether he was ever coming back. 
And now, it seemed, there was news about him.

It all began one fine autumn day, not long after Sam's tenth birthday.  She and Uncle Jimmy had driven out of town to a motorcycle swapmeet in the hills. 

Uncle Jimmy was the sort of man who always made people mad, but next to her mother, he was Sam’s favourite person in the world.  He was very tall and very skinny, with scruffy red hair, bright blue eyes and a beautiful smile.  Somehow he always looked as if he had got dressed out of a rubbish bin, even when he tried to look smart, which was not very often.  For instance, he always had odd socks on, and he always wore a bowler hat which was so old and battered you could barely tell its original colour (dark velvety blue).

Jimmy was her mother’s brother, but before her Dad had disappeared, he had also been her father’s best friend.  Before Sam was born, Jimmy and her mother and father had had all sorts of funny adventures, which her mother sometimes told to Sam as bedtime stories.  He lived in a tiny weatherboard house just up the road.  The Council regularly threatened to demolish it, because it leaned at a dangerous angle and was full of holes.  Sam thought the house was very pretty, because in the garden it had a jacaranda tree which every summer was covered with bright purple blossom, and what the verandah lacked in paint it made up for with an ancient wisteria which wound all around the roof, dropping mauve petals everywhere in the spring, and a rambling rose which grew up the walls and had big, softly perfumed flowers so dark red they looked black.

But there were other reasons that Sam loved Jimmy.  For one thing, he could do amazing magic tricks.  Not the kind of soppy magic tricks where someone hides an object in their sleeves, but wonderful magic:  rabbits and lizards which appeared out of nowhere and then grew wings and flew up and away through the ceiling, and paper scarves which turned into butterflies and then fell over Sam’s face in a shower of multicoloured sparkles.  Most of the time, because she loved him so much, Sam couldn’t understand how it was that he annoyed people.  But it was a fact that he did: and as she grew older, Sam began to understand why.

Anyway, on this sunny autumn day a week after Sam’s birthday, they had climbed into Jimmy’s dull green beaten-up station wagon, pushing aside the bits of lawn mower and electric drills and musical instruments and bird cages which littered the tattered seats, and had driven all the way up to the hills outside the city.  There were long trestle tables covered with bits of engine and headlights and tyres and wheels and exhaust pipes, and on the grass between the barbecues and picnic tables were rows and rows of beautiful motorbikes, gleaming red or black or creamy Harleys, and even some antique bikes with sidecars. 

And everywhere were big, long haired, bearded men.  They all wore black wraparound sunglasses and black leather jackets studded with silver, with pictures on the back of skulls with ribbons threaded through, or red faced demons, or green twining serpents.  They stood bargaining earnestly over the tables, or sat in the sun studying each other’s bikes, or they picnicked on big blankets with their families and friends, their long denim legs stuck out in front of them, holding frothing glasses of beer.  Children ran around everywhere, playing and shouting. 

Sam held Jimmy’s hand very hard: she hadn’t seen bikies much before, and she felt a little frightened.  Certainly Jimmy, who was thinner and taller than most of the bikies, stuck out.  He was wearing an ancient purple jacket which had once had velveteen collars, but which were now shabby and worn smooth with age, and old moss green trousers which somehow made his long legs seem even longer.  And his hair was sticking out even more than usual from under his bowler hat.   But Sam felt safe with Jimmy; he looked down and smiled at her, and she instantly felt everything was all right.

And for quite a while, everything was.  Jimmy seemed to know a few of the bikies, and chatted with them knowledgeably about motorbikes and the weather and other grown up things, while Sam looked about her at the carnival, digging her toes into the ground.  One bikie, a man called Mocka with a big long ponytail of grey hair and an even bigger beard, gave Sam a ride on the back of his bike, roaring off up the road as she clung to his back, pink with excitement.  She and Jimmy had lemonade and chips at one of the stalls, and watched a stilt walker in a silver suit, who bent right down until his sharp face was close to Sam’s, and tickled her chin. 

They walked around until Sam was tired, and then Jimmy said, “OK, business time,” and led her to a long table covered with tiny, round, shiny objects.  They looked like batteries, small and silver like the ones you put inside watches. 
Behind the table, surprisingly seated in a big floral armchair, sat the biggest man Sam had ever seen: he was even taller than Jimmy, and much wider.  Like all the other bikies he wore a black leather jacket, but instead of sunglasses he wore an eye patch.  His hair was very black and he had thick eyebrows that met in the middle, and instead of a long bushy beard he sported a handlebar moustache.  Sam didn’t like the look of him.

“But you don’t use these in motorbikes,” said Sam, as Jimmy frowned and leant over the table.

“Shhhhh.  Of course not,” said Jimmy.  “But this is the only place I know where you can get them.  I need a special one.”

“What for?” asked Sam, but Jimmy had put on his vague look, and Sam knew she wouldn’t get an answer.

Jimmy picked up a battery and inspected it minutely, holding it with the tips of his long bony fingers, and the huge man grunted and walked up to him.

“What you looking for?” he asked.  Jimmy looked up.

“Afternoon, Mr Bikko,” he said politely.  The fat man started and looked at him more sharply.  “I’m looking for a ventricle accelerator,” Jimmy went on.  “But I need a good one.  How much is this one?”

“Five thousand four hundred and sixty dollars,” said the fat man.

Sam gasped.  That was such a lot of money, and Jimmy never seemed to have any, apart from an endless supply of loose change.  She looked at him anxiously, but he appeared completely unperturbed and turned the battery over and over, apparently in deep contemplation. 

“But you don’t have enough...” Sam began to whisper, but Jimmy put his finger against his mouth.

“I have plenty,” said Jimmy.  “Watch me.”

He put the battery down very carefully, drew two white gloves out of his pocket, and stretching out his fingers, carefully drew them onto his hands.  Then he took a little jeweller’s eyeglass out of another pocket, polished it fastidiously and screwed it into his eye.  Mr Bikko watched him with increasing suspicion.  Finally Uncle Jimmy picked up the battery again with the very tips of his gloved fingers, and this time subjected it to a silent scrutiny which lasted almost five minutes (Sam checked on her watch).  The fat man seemed almost hypnotised by the performance.

“These are as good as you can get,” Mr Bikko said at last.  “Not to press a point, they’re also the only ones you can get.”

But Jimmy said,  “Look, it’s got a spot on the wooffergig.”  He pointed delicately and Mr Bikko leant over, squinting.
“It has not,” he said.

“It has indeed,” Jimmy said.  “If you had the faintest idea what you were selling, you would see at once.  I can’t offer you a penny over twenty dollars for such a substandard piece of equipment.”

The stall owner seemed to swell with indignation.  Sam watched with interest: she had never seen a face get that red that quickly.

“No, really,” said Uncle Jimmy.  “See for yourself.”  He took a huge magnifying glass out of yet another pocket, and held it up in the stall owner’s face, so that suddenly one huge eye loomed frighteningly at Sam.  Mr Bikko growled, and glared at Jimmy.

“I only sell the best,” he said.  He took the magnifying glass in his massive hands, took the battery from Jimmy with a surprising delicacy, and submitted it to his own inspection.  Sam was watching him closely, and she saw his face fall, although he instantly concealed it.

“See?” said Jimmy.

Mr Bikko growled again.  He still seemed very cross.

“Twenty dollars is fair,” Jimmy said quickly.  He waved a note in front of the man’s nose and to Sam it suddenly seemed as if the stall owner had fallen into a trance.  “Here.  A fair deal.  You won’t be able to sell it otherwise, you see,” Jimmy continued.  “Because I will spread the word.  Jimmy Wonderspoon’s the name.  I think you will find that even the slightest adverse word from me could be fatal to the prospects of your business.”

Still with the dazed look, Mr Bikko took the money, and carefully put the battery in a little plastic bag like the ones they use for coins in the bank.  Jimmy pocketed it quickly.

“Thankyou,” he said.  “A pleasure doing business with you.”  He suddenly seemed to be in a huge hurry.  “Come Samantha, we have an urgent appointment. We must attend at once.” 

He took Sam’s hand and pulled her away almost at a gallop.  Sam looked back, and through the crowd saw Mr Bikko’s face.  He seemed to have woken up, and his face was even redder than before.  He was shouting and waving his arms.  He looked rather frightening, and what was worse, other men almost as big as he was were running up to the stall.  She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it didn’t sound very complimentary to Uncle Jimmy.

Now Jimmy was frankly running, dragging Sam behind him.  They skidded into the carpark and he threw open the doors (he never locked them, figuring correctly that no one in their right mind would want to steal his car, or anything in it) and threw Sam into the passenger seat.  Sam was panting so hard she could hardly talk, but she still managed to gasp out: “What are you doing?”

Jimmy was revving up his V8 engine, but he looked sideways at her and spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
“We’re makin’ our getaway, pardner,” he said.  “Hold onto your hat.”

“Did you steal that battery from that man?”

“It was a fair deal,” said Jimmy.  But he had his vague look again.

He reversed wildly, spinning up gravel from his wheels, and screamed out of the carpark with his tyres smoking.  They drove down the little curly roads which led to the swapmeet at an unfeasibly fast pace, and Sam shut her eyes.  She never liked going fast in cars, especially when it involved skidding around corners.  At last they reached a wide road with lots of other traffic, and Jimmy slowed down.  He breathed out, relaxing his arms on the steering wheel, and winked at her.

“We made it, pardner,” he said.  “What a ride.”

By now, for the first time in her life, Sam was feeling angry with her uncle.

“I didn’t like that,” she said, her lips pursed up tight and her eyebrows looking like thunder.  “I didn’t like that at all.  I think you were horrible.”  Then she said: “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Aww, don’t be a spoilsport, Sam,” whined Jimmy.  And then he said: “Oh, hell.”

Sam, unable to hold it in, was vomiting everywhere. 



It took some time to find a service station with a washroom, and to get Sam and the car cleaned up.  They drove off in complete silence, with the windows wide open, because even though it was cleaned up, the car still stank.  They were coming up her street when Jimmy cleared his throat.

“Sam,” he said.

Sam wasn’t speaking to Uncle Jimmy, so she gave him her snake look.  He cleared his throat again.

“Sam, I don’t believe it’s entirely necessary to tell your mother about this afternoon’s little, um, adventure,” he said.

Sam, who was usually intensely loyal to Jimmy, instantly resolved to tell her at once.

“It’s just,” said Jimmy, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, “It’s just that I don’t think she’d be interested.  And she might, well, she might feel a bit worried.”

Sam stared straight out through the windscreen, her arms folded across her chest.  Jimmy looked at her sadly.

“I’m sorry I scared you.  I didn’t mean to.  I just had to have that ventricle accelerator.  It’s very important.”

Sam deigned to look at him again.  “Why?” she said.

Instead of adopting his vague look, which was his usual way of avoiding tricky questions, Jimmy blushed slightly and squirmed a little in his seat.  There was a short silence.

“I really can’t tell you now,” he said at last.  “But it really is important.”

They pulled up outside Sam’s house, and she got out quickly and ran inside.  She looked back from the front door.  Jimmy was sitting in the front seat without driving off, staring at the steering wheel, and Sam thought with a pang that he looked very sad indeed.

“Good,” said the nasty inside part of her.  She still felt furious with him.  But she also felt a little ache start inside her chest, and she had to stop herself from running back and giving Jimmy a big hug, like she usually did.

 
Chapter 2

Sam and her mother lived in a tiny street in an old weatherboard house almost as small as Uncle Jimmy’s, but much neater.  It was painted yellow and had a red painted front verandah and a little back yard with a bit of lawn like a handkerchief in which stood a lemon tree and a clothes line.  By the back fence was a flowerbed full of herbs and petunias and under the lemon tree was a wire cage with two guineapigs called Yip and Yap.  Sam also had a brown and white dog called Wendy, a friendly and fluffy creature of no particular breed, and an elegant cat called Zorro, who was a glossy midnight black, apart from smart white paws and a white chest.   And finally, there was a greedy goldfish called Mr Shakespeare who lived in Sam’s bedroom.  So you see, quite a lot of people lived at No. 5 Cheshire Crescent. 

After Jimmy dropped Sam off at her house, she shouted hello to her mother, and then shut herself in her bedroom, and lay on her bed with Zorro purring on her tummy.  She wanted to think.  Why was she so upset with Uncle Jimmy?  She hadn’t got cross that time he had mistakenly let a dozen puppies out of their cages in the pet shop and they had chewed all the dried cows’ bones and the pet shop owner had threatened to call the police.  She had just thought it was funny.  It hadn’t bothered her when Jimmy had volunteered for the school excursion to Parliament House, and he had stood up in the public gallery and shouted that the Prime Minister ought to be manacled and whipped for his treatment of the endangered Golden Bellied Podsquawk (that time, the police did take him away, in handcuffs, and her teacher nervously told her the next day that perhaps it was inappropriate for Jimmy to come on school excursions).  Jimmy was always inappropriate and sometimes he was embarrassing.  But the thing was, no matter how outrageous he was, Sam had never seen him do anything dishonest, and he had never done anything which frightened her.  This was the first time.  And it bothered her deeply.

“You’re very quiet, Sam,” said Sam’s mother, Elena, later, as she put out spoons and forks for their dinner (they were having spaghetti bolognaise).

Sam sat at the table, resting her chin in her hands and watching her mother.  She wasn’t like the other mothers at school.  She didn’t wear tracksuits or shorts, but long skirts made of lovely soft material, or sometimes short tight dresses with flowers all over them.  She usually forgot to go to parent’s meetings and school events, although she always turned up for the school concerts.  When she was dressed up with perfume and makeup, Sam thought she looked like a princess. 
Secretly Sam was very proud of her mother, although when she had first started school she had told all her friends that her mum was a witch and got drunk all the time (she didn’t really know what being drunk was, being so little, but it sounded interesting). 

Consequently Elena still got odd looks from some of the other parents, even though the most she drank was an occasional glass of wine.  Elena was quite short, and had medium length red hair, not carrot coloured like Uncle Jimmy’s, but a beautiful shining auburn.  With the hair, as Sam knew, went a shocking temper, which Sam had also inherited, and sometimes they had terrible fights. Elena’s skin was pale, with tiny freckles, just like Sam’s, and she had big brown eyes, which a lot of the time looked very tired, and quite often when she was very tired she forgot to brush her hair and it stuck out almost as much as Uncle Jimmy’s.

Sam’s hair was brown, like her Dad’s.  Tonight for some reason she was really missing her father.  She had got used to missing him - he had been gone for two years now - but sometimes it came back, and the ache in her tummy and her throat returned as if he had just disappeared yesterday.

Elena came and sat at the table with her.  The water was boiling on the stove and the pasta was bubbling up and down, and for the moment there was nothing to do.  “Is something the matter, sweetie pie?”

Elena was the only person in the world who could call Sam pet names and get away with it.

“Mum, what’s a ventricle accelerator?” she asked.

“I’ve got no idea,” said Elena.  “A ventricle accelerator?  Is it something for school?”

“No.  It’s something Uncle Jimmy bought today.  It’s a tiny little silver thing.”

“Oh.”  Elena suddenly looked troubled.  “You should ask Jimmy then.”

“He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Did you and Jimmy have a fight today?”

Sam stuck out her bottom lip.  Despite her resolution to tell Elena what Jimmy had done, she didn’t want her mother to be angry with him.  “Yes,” she answered shortly.

Elena waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t, and then the pinger rang to say the pasta was ready, and she sighed and stood up and poured it into the colander.  A huge cloud of steam floated up to the ceiling.

“Mum,” said Sam. 

“Yes, darling?”

“Do you think Dad will ever come back?”

Sam saw Elena’s back slump a little.  Then she put down the colander on the table, and came back to Sam and hugged her.
“I don’t know, Sammy,” she said.  “I wish he would.  But I don’t know.”

Sam pushed her nose into her mother’s jumper and breathed in her warm smell.  She thought for a second that she might cry, but she didn’t.

“I miss him,” she said.

“Yes.”  Elena was silent for quite a long time.  “So do I.”  They sat for a while not saying anything, and then Elena remembered the pasta, and jumped up.  It wasn’t quite cold, so Elena didn’t heat it up again, but Sam preferred it that way anyway. 

She felt a bit better after that.


They didn’t see Jimmy for a few days, but it wasn’t unusual for .Jimmy to disappear for days on end.  Then he would phone just as usual (he always had to ring from a public phone box, because his phone had been disconnected so often the telephone companies refused to let him have one) to see if any shopping needed doing or if Sam wanted to go for an ice cream on the pier.  If you asked him where he had been, he’d talk about something else.  If you persisted, he just looked vague.  You could never get Jimmy to answer any questions he didn’t want to.

After a week, Elena said: “I wonder how Jimmy is?  We haven’t seen him for a while.”

Sam squirmed guiltily on her chair.  She was sure that Jimmy wasn’t coming around because she had been so angry with him.  Elena gave her a sharp look, but she didn’t say anything more.  One of the things Sam liked about her mother was that she didn’t ask questions when they weren’t wanted.

But that evening Jimmy turned up in their kitchen.  He didn’t even phone first.  He was just there in the dark tapping on the back window, pretending to be a ghoul, and Elena looked up with the ironical smile with which she always greeted him, and let him in.

Sam was so relieved to see him that she turned quite pink.  Jimmy wasn’t in the least embarrassed.

“Avast there, Sam me lad!” he said, kissing her on the cheek.  “How’s my first mate?”

“Good,” said Sam, like she always did.

“I bet if you had been stung on the bottom by a swarm of wasps and your hair had turned green and you’d lost all your pocket money down the drain, you’d still say, ‘good’!” said Uncle Jimmy.

“No, I wouldn’t,” said Sam.

“Yes, you would,” said Jimmy.

So everything was all right then.


As Sam was brushing her teeth, she heard Jimmy and Elena talking in the kitchen.  It sounded as if they were talking very seriously.  Then she heard the word “David”, said by her mother in a raised voice, and her ears pricked up.

David was her father’s name.

She crept to the kitchen door, holding her toothbrush, and tried to listen, but they were talking in low voices again and she couldn’t make out any words.  Then she heard footsteps coming to the door, and she fled down the passage to the bathroom again.

What was going on?  Had Jimmy found out something about her father?  And why were they being all secretive about it?

How typical of grown ups.  Didn’t she have a right to know about her own father?  If anybody did, she did.  She was his only daughter.  And she was ten years old.  She wasn’t a baby any more.  So why were they treating her like one?  The more she thought about it, the crosser she got.

She finished brushing her teeth, straightened her dressing gown and marched down the passageway again.  She pushed open the door so hard it bounced off the wall and almost hit her in the face. Elena and Jimmy were leaning over the table, facing each other, and they turned to look at her in surprise.

“What’s the matter, darling?” asked Elena.

Sam was wearing her most mulish expression.  Her eyebrows were pushed down so far over her face that they met in the middle.  She felt as if she must look really scary, but Uncle Jimmy seemed as if he was trying not to laugh.  This made her feel even crosser.

“I’m not one year old!” she yelled.

Elena looked astonished, and Jimmy did start to laugh.

“No, you’re not,” Elena started to say, but Sam kept on shouting.

“Why are you treating me like a baby?  I know you’re talking about Dad.  I know you are.  It’s not fair!”

There was a short silence, which felt like a very long one.  Jimmy wasn’t laughing any more, and her mother was looking down at the table, biting her lip.  Then she looked up.

“You’re quite right, sweetheart.  You have every right to know about Dad.”

Jimmy looked as if he was about to protest, but Elena waved her hand at him.

“We’ll have to tell her, James.  We had to one day.  It’s just, my darling,” and Elena took Sam’s hand, “It’s just that it’s a little difficult to explain.”

“If he’s dead,” said Sam, “you should have told me a long time ago.”  Suddenly she felt tears prickling the back of her eyes.
“No, he’s not dead.”  Her mother sighed.  “Why don’t you sit down?”

Sam pulled up a chair, and waited.

“He’s not dead,” her mother repeated.  “He’s in prison.”

Sam looked thoughtfully at her hands.

“If he was in prison,” she said slowly, “we could have visited him.”

“If it was a normal prison, yes,” said Elena.  “But it’s not a normal prison.  It’s a bit difficult to get to, for a start.”  At this, Jimmy nodded vigorously.  “At first we didn’t know where it was.  But Jimmy has finally found out.”

She paused, as if she was wondering what to say next.

“Why?  Did he do something really bad?” Sam asked in a whisper.  A little tear squeezed out of the corner of her eye.  She didn’t want to think of her father as a criminal.

“No!”  Jimmy spoke sharply.  “It’s not like that at all.  He’s been kept prisoner by the Ingkor of Wat because he spoke up for the rats.  It’s a long story.”  He turned to Elena. “I think you’d better put on the cocoa,” he said.

 
Chapter 3

Elena made three hot cups of cocoa, and they all sat around the kitchen table.  Sam looked expectantly at Uncle Jimmy.  He cleared his throat nervously.

“I don’t really know where to begin,” he said. 

“At the beginning,” said Sam, logically.

“I’ll start,” said Elena.  “I’ve always thought it odd you didn’t ask what your father did, Sam.”

“He was a cockatoo salesman,” said Sam.

“Yes,” said Elena.  “But that was only his cover.  He was a kind of spy.”

Sam leaned forward, her eyebrows raised.  This was beginning to sound exciting.

“Who for?” she asked.

“Well, he wasn’t a normal kind of spy,” said Elena.  “He was a spy for the Immensely Important League of Wizards, and he spied on the Wicked Coven of Warlocks.”

“You mean he’s a wizard?” said Sam, her mouth open.

“Yes,” her mother said, looking at her a little strangely.  “Didn’t you guess?”

You might think it odd that Sam hadn’t guessed, or even wondered, whether her family was a bit magic, especially given the manner of her father’s disappearance.  But to Sam, who had grown up with ordinary magic like Uncle Jimmy’s tricks happening all around her, it had never seemed very strange.  It was just how her family was.

“Are you a wizard too?” she asked Uncle Jimmy.

“Not a very good one,” said Jimmy sadly.  “Your Mum’s much better than me.  But she just wants to write poetry.”

“Well, that’s a kind of magic,” said Elena shortly.  “Anyway, because he was a spy, Dad had to live in several parallel worlds at once, and travel through time, and so forth.  So it was a bit complicated sometimes being married to him.”

Sam thought back to when she was little.  There had been a few puzzling incidents, like when she was sure she had seen him hanging clothes on the line and shaving at the same time.  And once she had thought she had seen him walk through a wall, just as if it was made of smoke.  But she had thought later that she must have imagined it.

“Are you a spy as well?” she asked.

“No,” said Elena.  “I wouldn’t be very good at it, anyway.  And there were things he did I didn’t agree with, and I didn’t like that he had to be away so often.  So one day, when you were about six, he agreed to stop being a spy, and just live at home with us, and he took up a job as an agitator with Wizards for Imbalanced Worlds (WIW), a small environmental organisation.  But the problem was that when he had been a spy he had exposed a few very nasty warlocks, and they wanted revenge.  When he resigned from the Immensely Important League of Wizards, he didn’t have their protection any more.  And the more work he did for WIW, the angrier he got about the way the greedy warlocks were making life miserable for lots of people in lots of different worlds.”

“It all got very complicated,” interrupted Uncle Jimmy.  “That’s why it’s taken so long to find out where he is.  There were so many people out to get him.”

“Jimmy’s been looking for him since he disappeared,” said Elena, smiling fondly at her brother.  “It’s been very hard, because almost no one would help us.”

“But you went to the police,” said Sam. 

Jimmy made a face.

“The police are worse than useless,” he said.  “Do you think they’d get a manhunt going for a wizard who was imprisoned in another world?  And how would they cope with the extradition treaties, anyway?  We had to go to the police, or rather, the police came to us, because he disappeared in this world.  But they couldn’t help us in finding him.”

Sam’s head was really beginning to spin.  It was too much to take in: her father was not only a wizard, but a spy wizard, and her mother and uncle were wizards as well, and now it seemed that her father had been captured by a warlock...

“Hang on,” she said.  She looked sternly around the table.  “You’re not having me on, are you?  Big joke.  Ha ha.”  She was suddenly sure that they were just telling stories, and in a minute both of them would burst out laughing. The truth was, the alternative was too frightening.  She hoped it was a joke.  But deep inside her, she knew that neither Elena nor Uncle Jimmy would ever joke about her father.

“No, my darling,” said Elena, very seriously.  Sam looked into her mother’s dark brown eyes, and her stomach tightened.  Her mother was telling her the truth.  “It’s all true.  I know it’s a bit mixed up, but it’s not a lie.”

“Oh.”  Sam looked into her cocoa mug.  Her cocoa had gone cold.  She didn’t know what she felt.

“Anyway,” said Uncle Jimmy.  “We found him.  He’s in the dungeons of the Ingkor of Wat.  You see, Sammy,” and he looked at Sam pleadingly, “that was why I had to have the ventricle accelerator.  The only way I could get to Wat quickly enough was in the Wave Particle Engine, and it was the only part I didn’t have.  The ventricle accelerator is on the list of Banned Parts under the Wizard’s Convention, which is why I had to get one from Sly Bikko.”

Sam’s head was beginning to spin again, and Elena was looking alarmed.

“Sly Bikko?” her mother said sharply.  “You didn’t tell me you were dealing with him.”

Jimmy threw her a guilty glance.  “He’s the only one who deals in illegal spares, Ellie,” he said.

“But he’s dangerous,” said Elena.

“I know,” said Jimmy.

Sam thought of the big fat bikie with the handlebar moustache.  She had no trouble believing that he was dangerous.

“But anyway,” Jimmy continued hurriedly, “I got the part.  And now the Wave Particle Engine is working fine, and I can get to Wat.  And I know where’s David’s being kept prisoner.  So all we have to do is get him out.”

Elena laughed humourlessly.  “Is that all?” she said, and sighed.  She had that sad expression again and her forehead was all crinkled.  Somehow you got the impression that, much as she loved her brother, she wished he was more organised and, well, realistic.  They all sat in silence for a while, thinking different things.

“What do the rats have to do with it?” asked Sam suddenly.

“The rats?” said Jimmy. 

“The rats that Dad spoke up for.  Why he’s in prison.”

“Oh, the rats of Wat.  Well, the rats of Wat have been having a hard time the past few years, because the Ingkor of Wat imposed a new tax on burrows.  He’s very greedy, you see, and if they didn’t pay, they just got thrown out and their burrows filled in, and the Ingkor used the land to build new theme parks (he loves theme parks).  So now there are thousands and thousands of rat families with nowhere to live and nothing to eat, and the past few winters have been very cruel, and many of them have died.  And if anyone protests, they just get thrown in prison.”

“But that’s not fair!”

“You bet it’s not fair,” said Jimmy. 

“And Dad protested?”

“Yes, your Dad was one of the leading protesters for the rats.  The Ingkor of Wat couldn’t get him at first, because he was protected by the IILW, and the Immensely Important League of Wizards would have taken away all the Ingkor’s magic breaks.  The problem is the Grand Chancellor of Wat, a warlock called Snorty Binge, who is very powerful indeed.  He hates David, because years ago David put an end to his Whitespell scam and broke up the Bunkum Gangsters.  Binge didn’t go to jail, because he was so rich he got really good lawyers who got him off on a technicality, but he lost a lot of his fortune and was publicly disgraced.  And he was the one who kidnapped David, and then the Ingkor threw him in the dungeons.  And there he still is.”

“But why couldn’t the WIW protest, now you know where he is?” asked Sam indignantly.  She hated the idea of her father being kept captive in a dungeon.  It sounded even worse than prison.

“That’s a very good question, Sam,” said Jimmy, leaning back in his chair and putting his long fingers together so they made a steeple.  “You see, after they kidnapped your father, the WIW was taken over by some people who said that protesting for the rats was not on.  I think they are really associates of Snorty Binge.  If we told them, they would simply have us kidnapped as well.  So it’s better that it be kept secret, for the meantime.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Elena. 

“I think it is,” Jimmy repeated.

“I think you’re being silly,” she said.  “If we went to the Immensely Important League of Wizards, they could help us, I’m certain.  David had some good friends there.”

“You can’t be sure,” said Jimmy.  “I think it’s dumb to take the risk.”

Sam saw they were about to get cross with each other, so she headed them off.  Jimmy and Elena, redheads both, didn’t fight that often, but when they did it kept the entire neighbourhood entertained.  Even if it didn’t want to be. 

“Can the rats help?” she said.  (Even as she said it, Sam felt a sense of unreality - was she really asking seriously if a bunch of rats could help her father?)

“They’ve already helped a great deal,” said Jimmy.  “Rats are very good at getting information.  They really adore your father, and they really hate the Ingkor of Wat.”

“So what’s the plan?” asked Sam, feeling very grown up.

“Go in and get your father out,” said Jimmy.  “Then we’ll go to the Immensely Important League of Wizards.  But not before.  It’s too risky.”

“Why?”

“Because they might just decide to kill him,” said Jimmy bluntly.  “And then it would be too late.”

A windy feeling suddenly rose in Sam’s tummy, as if she had eaten too much, or was going to be sick.  Even though she had often wondered if her father was dead, and had sometimes decided he was, the thought of him being killed was too horrible to contemplate.  Especially when she finally knew where he was, sort of.

“They’re serious people,” said Jimmy.  “You don’t mess with them.  I don’t think we take any risks at all.  There’s too much at stake.”

There was a long silence.

“It’s almost half past ten,” said Elena suddenly.  “And you’ve got school tomorrow.  Bed time.”

“But Mum...” began Sam.

“No, really, Sam.”  Her mother stood up, with her mouth pressed firmly, and Sam knew there was no point in arguing.  “We’ll talk some more tomorrow.”

Reluctantly, Sam kissed Jimmy and let her mother lead her down the hallway to her bedroom and tuck her into bed.

“Are you all right, bunny?” said Elena softly, as she kissed her good night.  “It’s a bit of shock, isn’t it?”

“I think it’s exciting,” said Sam, snuggling under her bedclothes.  “Don’t you, Mum?  Wouldn’t it be great to see Dad again?”

“Oh, yes,” said Elena, and she almost smiled.  “It would be everything I’ve ever wanted.  But you know, we mustn’t hope too much.  There are so many things that could go wrong.”  For a few seconds, Sam understood how worried her mother was, and how much she missed David.  She gave Elena a much bigger cuddle than usual.

When Elena left the bedroom, Sam thought she would stay awake for ages, she had so much to think about.  But she didn’t: her eyelids drooped as soon as the light was out and she went to sleep almost straight away.

 
Copyright Alison Croggon 2011

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