Castles, Dragons & Wizards
The day Myrddin lost his whiz
Myrddin propelled through a side entry into the kitchen. The heavy wooden door slammed behind him, startling his wife, Morgana.
“Oh, good grief, dear,” she chastised, throwing her arms into the air. “Now look what you’ve made me do! My amphibians are airborne!”
Several large, vocal green frogs fell haphazardly into Morgana’s thick black curls.
“Yech,” she complained. “Pull them off me immediately, Myrddin!”
“I can’t!” declared the wizard dejectedly. “I’ve lost my whiz.”
“What on earth are you going on about!” screeched his wife. “If you don’t know a spell, use your hands! Sometimes, I swear you should have been named “Moron, the Wizard!”
Myrddin reached out and plucked three fat frogs from Morgana’s hair and placed them carefully into an earthen bowl standing on the countertop.
The wizard shook his head sadly. A flow of long silver hair swayed gently around his lined and bearded face; his deeply saddened eyes settled on his beloved Morgana.
“Can you spare me a moment, dear? I have an emergency, and it might be best if I show you.”
Morgana sighed, wiped her hands on her pretty black apron, and followed her husband into the castle garden.
“What is it, now?” asked the ever-suffering enchantress.
Looking to the edge of the flower bed, she scowled at a huge, motionless lump that was Druvdea, the dragon.
The enormous scaly beast was lying with his long chin resting on Morgana’s prized petunias. “Oh, dear! I see why you are concerned, my love. Shoo, shoo, shoo, Druvdea! You are squashing my lovely little petunia patch!”
Myrddin shook his head again — how many times did he have to explain that dragons can’t be shooed like dogs or swatted like annoying insects?
“Leave him be, precious,” pleaded Myrddin. “He is very depressed.”
The dragon opened heavy-lidded, soulful eyes, then closed them wearily with a soft sigh.
“Please!” pleaded the wizard. “Forget about Druvdea. I have lost my whiz, and I am dreadfully worried.”
The tone of her husband’s voice made Morgana bite her tongue, halting a flow of caustic words. “What?” she whispered, an edge of concern creeping through.
“MY WHIZ! It is gone!” Myrddin hysterically ran long, gnarly fingers through his hair.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” complained Morgana as she retrieved Myrddin’s wand from the garden table. “You merely misplaced it.”
“NO! NO! NO! You are not listening to me!” The wizard raised his wand high in the air and muttered some magic words, instructing the Powers of Mystic to dress his wife as if for an enchanted ball.
Instead of the usual glorious purple haze and static bolts of magical lightning, Morgana heard a soft “poof,” which left a tiny, dismal cloud floating above her head.
Horrified, she glanced down to see she was standing naked in the yard!
“Arggh,” she squealed, hands flying ineffectively to cover wrinkly, undressed lady bits. “Myrddin, DO SOMETHING!”
Myrddin’s hands fell uselessly to his sides, his head slumped sadly to his chest.
Morgana’s piercing banshee screams slowly kindled the interest of Druvdea, who languidly raised his eyes, then shut them immediately. The saggy-bagginess of an ancient enchantress was more than the dragon could handle in his depressed state. With a desperate whimper, he slumped even more heavily into the petunias.
Sometime later, Morgana returned, fully dressed, to the garden and found her husband sitting at the table with his head in his hands, a picture of disconsolation.
Druvdea, the mighty dragon, Protector of the Curious Woods, was exactly where he had been all morning, lying in a sad heap, flattening flowers.
“Don’t worry about your whiz, dear,” Morgana placated kindly. “I think you have the wizard flu. Doctor Googoggle on the WizNet said the virus can mess with spells and stuff up magic in uncanny ways.”
She encouraged her husband to leave the garden and guided him to his bed.
“Pop yourself under the covers, and I will bring you some healing frog-glob bisque. We will banish the virus in a tick.”
Back in her cobblestoned kitchen, Morgana worriedly set about making her famous virus-banishing broth. She tried singing to lighten her mood as she prepared the basis of the glob soup; equal parts lavender water and frog snot.
Unfortunately for Morgana, all her powers seemed unable to produce even one frog sneeze. Disheartened, she threatened to boil the creatures in the cauldron whereupon the frogs went ‘poof’ and disappeared.
It seemed to Morgana that the frogs had more magical oomph than she now possessed.
Realising she would need hot water for whatever would be on the menu, Morgana attempted to light a big black, cast-iron cauldron that occupied pride of place on the cobbled floor.
“Bubble, Bubble, I’m having trouble; Light my fire, and boil the blinkin’ water.”
“Well, that’s the crappiest spell ever,” she thought disgustedly. “It doesn’t even rhyme!”
And the fire didn’t light.
“Druvdea! Druvdea!” Morgana called urgently from the kitchen door. “Come immediately. I need you to light the cauldron!”
Druvdea, understanding there was urgency, lumbered painfully to the castle door. He raised his head as high as he could muster, drew the deepest of breaths, and expelled the most dreadful pall of swirling black smoke. The pollutant filled the kitchen, insidiously penetrating the adjacent rooms and covering everything in thick soot.
Morgana spent several moments running in hysterical circles, concerned with her inability to clean the castle now that her enchantress powers had deserted her. She glared at Druvdea but softened when she noted the dragon lying listlessly, completely blocking the kitchen door. Hot black tears ran from his brown eyes, tracking across his scaly green snout. A miserable soft cough sent tiny fireballs flying from his mouth and nostrils, singeing the soft furnishings in nearby rooms.
The kindly enchantress raced to the medicine cabinet, fully cognizant that she now had both an ailing wizard and a sick dragon to attend to. As for her own predicament, that would have to wait.
In her absence, Druvdea continued to cough mini meteors, filling the air with objects that resembled oversized fireflies.
Running back into the room, Morgana commanded Druvdea to “open wide,” whereupon she emptied a full bottle of black cat fur ball medicine down his throat, reasoning it had fixed Sooty, her black feline, so perhaps …
For the next twenty-four hours, the once proud dragon groaned and strained as he pooped out hundreds of Siamese kittens. Finally, he lay exhausted in a pile of squirming felines that filled the castle kitchen and spilled out into the yard.
Miffed, Sooty appeared on the scene and began rehoming the kittens to the Curious Woods via Scruff of the Neck Transport, potentially causing an ecological disaster never experienced in the local area; a serious threat to the bird and small rodent population.
Druvdea, exhausted from his bum-birthing process, sunk even further into depression as an ailing Morgana bravely attempted to clean house and tend to Myrddin.
In a moment of weakness, she sank onto the bed next to her wizard and confessed she had first noticed problems when she found herself naked in the garden and could not conjure up an outfit.
Myrddin reached out to weakly pat her hand and promised that all would be well in the end.
His watery platitude had the bizarre effect of raising Morgana’s spirits, and with renewed vigour, she swiped through the black soot resident on every surface in the castle and helped Sooty by piling mewling kittens into a big basket.
Against Myrddin’s advice, she carried them into the Curious Woods after dark.
“Be mindful of the ecology,” the wizard had warned, but Morgana was only mindful of the potential domestic disaster; rancid kitten pee and stinking feline feces messing up her cobblestone floors.
In time, as often happens, the virus ran its course, and the household began to return to normal.
The upside was that the trio’s abilities to whiz, enchant, and conflagrate began to recover — Myrddin was able to wave his magic wand, magically, Morgana was able to enchant Druvdea’s sooty mess into cleanliness, and Druvdea was able to revisit his favourite haunt, the Forbidden Desert of the Troll kingdom. Following his first visit to the area several centuries earlier, he had razed every living thing and structure above ground; he was obsessed with keeping it that way.
His new bout of pillaging created further problems because the King of Trolls, Nobliknuggles, sought revenge and cast a spell over….oh, hang on, that’s another story.
On the downside, unbeknown to the magical trio, all their failed spells had been building up residual energy for days, which suddenly resulted in a catastrophic and blinding explosion within the castle walls.
Morgana had to enchant the castle clean again, from top to toe — but there was not a spell available that could remove an abundance of dried, sticky frog snot from every flat surface and weird, runny, green stuff that dribbled down the castle’s stone walls.
Myrddin generously assisted his wife by concocting a canny spell to automate a scrubbing brush, and motorize a pail of water, that followed her from room to room.
Sooty was horrified to see all the kittens running from the forest back toward the castle in a long, mewling stream of skittering fur but was somewhat appeased when he saw the Siamese “snake” disappearing right back into its source — Druvdea’s bum! Druvdea was not, however, quite so amused, but his belching fires did get an extra boost once the return of his progeny was complete.
And so, life at the castle returned to normal, and they all lived happily ever after.
Well, there was the issue of the hemorrhoid balm Morgana conjured up for Druvdea’s pulsating backside, but that, too, is another story.
For the littlies under seven years:
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Check out John’s take on fairytale telling:
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Mark Suroviec, M.Ed., called for team members to play Fantasy Football (and I damaged my brain trying to keep up).
Shirley Laffa mispronounces stuff — do you?
