Free Wizard at Work by Vivian Vande Velde Page B

away.
    "Trust me. All you need to do is generate a little enthusiasm. You don't need to resort to trickery."
    She ran her hand through her hair, trying to force it into some sort of manageability. "All right," she said softly. "I agree. I will marry the man who can pass the test you devise. Now, what shall it be?"
    The wizard was struck by inspiration. "We will ask the suitors to present you with three golden cucumbers from the secret garden of the dwarf Maximilian. That way, if you don't like a particular suitor—if he's too young, or too silly, or too whatever—all you have to do is refuse to accept the cucumbers from him, and the quest isn't considered fulfilled."
    "Cucumbers?" the king said. "
Cucumbers?
Isn't one usually sent in quest of golden
apples?
"
    "Anybody can do apples," the wizard scoffed.
    "Oh, well, thank you very much!" Teddy said. "But I've heard about this dwarf Maximilian. Funeral arrangements to be handled by the family. Calling hours, eight to ten. No flowers, please."
    "Now, see here," the wizard said. "It's hard, but not impossible."
    "'Not impossible,'" Teddy repeated. "Maybe not for a wizard." She started biting one of her fingernails.
    "Really," he assured her. Then, ignoring the little voice inside his head that warned he was about to go too far, he said, "Look. I'll prove it can be done.
I'll
do it."
    "Without magic?" Teddy asked.
    The wizard nodded, but she continued to look worried. It wasn't fair, he thought. After seeing how princesses like Rosalie and Gilbertina could attract royal suitors, the wizard felt it just wasn't fair that a sweet girl like Teddy couldn't, if that was what she wanted. His sense of outrage prompted him to say, "Well, my goodness, if you
don't trust me, if you want to come along to check up on me—"
    "Oh," she said. "What a fine idea! Thank you."
    The king leaped to his feet to shake the wizard's hand.
    "Well, that's settled then." The queen stood up and smiled. "Have a nice trip."
    The wizard took a deep breath and wondered how he got himself into these things. Maybe he could blame this on that witch he'd met in the blacksmith's shop—the one who may or may not have cursed him.
    He was to wonder about that many times in the three days it took to reach the island ruled by the dwarf king Maximilian.
    They had to travel by horse, for Princess Teddy insisted that even the wizard's transporting spell, being magic, was not fair.
    "But there's nothing here," the wizard complained as their horses plodded along the dusty trail, which caused him to alternately cough and sneeze. "There's just plains and meadows and
small towns until we get to Maximilian's lake: no danger, nothing interesting."
    "Still, you never know," Teddy kept saying.
    So they rode, and they camped out, and the wizard volunteered to do all the cooking. Still, the time passed quickly, for Teddy was good company and knew or made up all sorts of exciting stories.
    After three days had passed, quicker than the wizard would have thought possible, they came to the edge of the lake that surrounded the dwarf king's forbidden island.
    Princess Teddy looked from the dwarf king's walled garden, which they could see from the far shore, to the water that separated them from it. "What kind of fish are those?" she asked apprehensively, pointing at the large, dark shapes that watched them from the water.
    The wizard studied them warily. "I don't know, but they certainly have a lot of teeth, don't they?"
    Teddy pulled him back from the edge. "Careful. That one was licking its lips when you leaned over like that."
    The wizard didn't think fish—even hungry fish—licked their lips, but he decided to keep his distance, just in case. He said, "Dwarfs are nothing if not practical. And casting a spell each time they come here from their kingdom beneath the mountain would be an awful waste of magic. So we can assume there's a nonmagical way to cross." He began walking along the edge, peering at the water. The shadowy