Free Wizards by John Booth Page A

planet because I was scared I'd fall off the next time. I walked down the path trying to find somewhere wide enough to draw a hopscotch court, and that was when I met this wise-man.
    He spoke English though he spoke with a strange accent, a bit like Polish, now I come to think of it."
    "There were very few Poles in Wales when you were eleven," Jenny pointed out. "You can't move for them now."
    "He watched me draw the court and told me it was an invention of the Druids. According to him, all the important Druids left our world when the Romans invaded Britain and it was clear they were going to win."
    "The Druids left Earth using hopscotch courts and the Roman commanders tried to get their troops to follow after them by hopping and skipping on the same courts. They never did manage to follow the Druids, but the hopscotch court became a training exercise for Roman soldiers in Britain and they took the practice all over Europe with them."
    "He said that a full wizard like me didn't need one. It just helped my mind prepare for a special kind of step…, hop, skip and teleport. He told me I was using the court as a crutch."
    "He sounds very wise," Jenny threw in, "What else did he say?"
    My face turned red with embarrassment as I remembered the rest of the conversation.
    "Well?" Jenny asked when I remained silent.
    "I was eleven and he used the word crutch," I explained. Jenny raised her eyebrows and continued to stare at me.
    "Crutch, crotch," I muttered in a whisper. "I started laughing because a grown-up had used a naughty word. He got annoyed when I wouldn't stop laughing, and he left."
    "God, you are sad," Jenny said in total disbelief.
    "I was an eleven years old. I'm not very bright, I'm afraid."
    "Don't ever say that," Jenny said angrily and punched me on the shoulder. "Now if you said uneducated, I'd have to agree with that."
    "Okay," I responded, but Jenny was no longer looking at me. She was looking in horror at something behind me.
    I turned around and spotted what had upset Jenny. A man was reading a newspaper and held it so we could read the headlines.
    He was holding the most popular tabloid in England and Wales and it had a picture of Fluffy in full flight on the front page.
    'GOT THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST?' the headline read.
    "Shit," was the best response I could think of.
     
    "What have you got to say about this?" I shouted angrily at Fluffy, waving the newspaper in my dragon's face.
    Fluffy raised his front legs off the ground taking up an almost human pose as he took the paper out of my hands. Fluffy's front legs are very like arms and his clawed feet are capable of delicate actions just like human hands. He lifted the paper into a reading position and looked at his picture.
    "Meep, meep, meep," he replied and Jenny giggled.
    "I don't care if it is a good picture of you," I said angrily. "You were supposed to be hiding in the cave."
    "Meep, meep."
    "He has a point," Jenny agreed irritatingly. "You can't expect him to stay cooped up in here forever, just on the off chance someone might snap a picture of him."
    "It's been two weeks!" I shouted at Jenny. "Two weeks since Williams took photographs of the two of you. Is two weeks too long a time to expect Fluffy to lay low?"
    "Meep," Fluffy replied simply, the plainest 'yes' I've ever heard him utter.
    I sat down and put my head in my hands. In the quiet of the cave, I could hear the sound of microlights combing the valley beyond. At the very least, I could do something to protect the cave entrance from discovery.
    I walked to the hole in the cliff face and extended the spell covering it. From now on, it would be invisible from outside. The side of the cliff would look whole and unblemished no matter what angle it was observed from.
    "Bolting the stable door?" Jenny asked.
    "Closing it off to outsiders. I don't want anybody interrupting us while we try and figure this out."
    "Meep, meep, meep," Fluffy suggested as he finished reading the article. I taught him to read