The Eye of Zoltar

We made our way to the town square and noticed that everyone was streaming out of the main gates with whoops of joy and resounding cheers. Hats were being thrown in the air, old women were crying in doorways and a brass band had struck up a triumphant tune. Just beyond the town gates I could see a shiny locomotive, big and bold and hissing with steam, where less than an hour ago there had been only battlefield.

‘Go with Wilson,’ I said to the Princess. ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can. Something’s … not right. Wilson, use force to protect her if necessary.’

‘All other considerations secondary?’

‘Exactly.’

I left them and ran out of the gates to find that ahead of me a mile of shiny new track connected the depots of Trans-Wales Rails and Cambrian Railway. The rails were dead straight, the sleepers perfectly aligned and the ballast looked as though laid carefully by hand. The jubilant townsfolk and equally jubilant and now very wealthy railway troops were dancing in the dust outside the short connecting piece of rail while the railway militia generals were shaking each other’s hands in an annoyed but relieved fashion. The line was to be shared; profits would be equal; and better still, there would be no more senseless loss of life over an insignificant mile of railway line somewhere in the forgotten wilds of the Cambrian Empire.

‘In less than ten minutes!’ said one man, dancing past me.

‘It is a miracle!’ shouted another.

‘It’s nothing of the sort,’ I muttered through gritted teeth, ‘it’s Perkins frittering his life away.’

I looked around, knowing he would still be about. Such a feat would have exhausted him, and he’d need help getting to the North Gate. I eventually found him sitting on a bench a little way away.

‘That was quite something,’ I said, my voice trembling. His face was obscured by his hands, and I dared not see what price his magic had exacted this time around.

‘It was a win-win,’ he said in a tired voice. ‘My timing was good and the Princess lives, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the Llangurig Railway War is over?’

‘It is.’

He looked up at me and smiled. A mile of track in under ten minutes is a fearfully large spell. By my best estimation he was now in his early fifties. His hair was streaked with grey and there were wrinkle lines about his mouth and eyes. A small mole on his cheek was now more prominent, and he was wearing reading glasses.

‘I thought it would only take six years from me,’ he said with a smile, ‘but it took over twenty. But then, I’m not so young as I was.’

‘It’s not funny,’ I said. ‘Here, take my arm.’

I pulled him to his feet and we stumbled back through the main gates and the deserted town. ‘For Sale’ signs had already sprung up, and townsfolk were loading handcarts with their possessions and beginning to move out, the town’s purpose now vanished with the arrival of the railway. We were passing a parade of shops when I stopped outside a second-hand furniture store and stared in the window. I moved closer. This was not what I had expected.

‘Will you look at that,’ said Perkins with a smile as he followed my gaze, ‘he’ll never live this down.’

Sitting in the antique shop’s window and surrounded by several pieces of furniture, a moose’s head and various items of bric-a-brac was a large rubber Dragon, its scales perfect, its mouth open and a large array of black teeth on display in its rubbery mouth.

‘I can turn him back instantly if you want,’ said Perkins. ‘It’ll only take ten years off me.’

‘Absolutely not. Your spelling days are over until we get you back to Kazam. I’ll go and make enquiries while you sit down and rest.’

A bell rang above my head as I opened the door, and a few seconds later a middle-aged woman appeared from the back room. She stared at me over her half-moon glasses, and didn’t look the type to take any nonsense, nor give any.

‘I’m interested in the rubber Dragon,’ I said, touching Colin’s rubber scales with an index finger. In life they would have been hard and unyielding, but here they felt soft and pliable, like a marshmallow. ‘Is it for sale?’

‘Everything’s for sale,’ she said, ‘make me an offer.’

I emptied the contents of my pockets on to the counter. There was a shade over eight hundred plotniks. The woman looked at the money, then chuckled derisively.

‘The rubber scrap value alone is fifteen hundred. Give me two thousand and it’s yours.’

‘I don’t have two thousand,’ I told her. ‘Eight hundred and an IOU for the rest.’

‘I don’t take IOUs.’

‘It’s all I have.’

‘Then you aren’t going to own a rubber Dragon today, and given that Llangurig is being abandoned, he’ll be sold to the recyclers tomorrow, and made into bicycle inner tubes and pencil erasers.’

It wouldn’t be a dignified end for such a magnificent beast, but I had an idea. It wasn’t a good one. In fact, I think it might have been one of my worst, but I needed to buy Rubber Colin before anyone figured out who or what he really was.

‘Then I’ll trade,’ I said. ‘You give me the rubber Dragon, and I’ll give you … me.’