While he energetically scraped the sole of his shoe against the curb he turned his eyes in the direction of the Ill-Watching. To his surprise his eyes were drawn to the Palace. Puzzled, Septimus stopped scraping. He must be wrong.
There was no one in the Palace who would do that. He was getting jumpy. What he needed was half an hour of Beetle’s company and a mug of FizzFroot.
Septimus pushed open the door to the Manuscriptorium. Ping. Jillie Djinn’s counter clicked over to number seven.
“Wotcha, Sep,” said Beetle, jumping up from his chair.
“Wotcha, Beetle,” Septimus replied.
“That was quick. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”
“I didn’t know you were expecting me at all,” said Septimus, puzzled. He took the piece of paper from his pocket. It was covered with his very best capital letters carefully drawn in various colors. “I need a space in your window.”
Beetle looked at the Manuscriptorium front window—what he could see of it, at least, which amounted to no more than a few square inches. The rest was piled high with stacks of books, pamphlets, papers, manuscripts, parchments, bills, receipts and remedies that were randomly—and rather stickily—interspersed with old pies, socks, poems, peashooters, marshmallows (Beetle was a great fan of marshmallows), umbrellas and sausage sandwiches from the meat pie cart, most of which had been put down by absentminded scribes only to be instantly lost in the muddle and never seen again—although they were sometimes smelled.
“Can’t I get you something else a bit easier, Sep?” asked Beetle. “Like an All My Dreams Come True Spell or something?”
Septimus looked at the piece of paper. “It’s not very big,” he said. “Couldn’t you fit it in somewhere? It’s really important. Marcia’s threatening to send Spit Fyre away because she says I’m spending too much time looking after him and I’m not getting any work done. So I thought if I did this…”
Septimus handed the paper to Beetle. “‘Dragon-sitter wanted,’” Beetle read out. “‘Irregular hours but interesting work.
Sense of humor an advantage. Apply to Septimus Heap, Wizard Tower.’” Beetle snorted with laughter. “They’ll need a bit more than a sense of humor, won’t they, Sep? How about cast-iron feet, no sense of smell and being able to run a hundred yards in two seconds flat—and that’s just for starters.”
Septimus looked downcast. “I know,” he said, “but I didn’t want to put people off. I’ve had people interested but as soon as I show them how to clean out the Dragon Kennel something weird happens. They suddenly remember that, oops, they completely forgot that they had agreed to look after their great-aunt or, oh bother, it escaped their mind that they had to take a long sea voyage the very next day. Then they look all embarrassed and say how really upset they are as they would have loved to have taken the job. I believed the first two but after that it got a bit predictable. Oh, go on, Beetle, please put my notice up. You get all sorts of unusual people looking in here; one of them might do the job.”
“You’re right, we get all sorts of unusual people in here,” grumbled Beetle. “Too unusual for my liking. Tell you what, Sep. Since it’s you, I’ll make a space on the door. This advertisement for a new scribe can go. It’s attracting the wrong kind of people, just like I told Miss Djinn it would. I’ll stick yours there instead.”
“Oh, thanks, Beetle.”
With some enthusiasm, Beetle ripped down Jillie Djinn’s notice, crumpled it into a little ball and hurled it into the wastepaper bin. Then he got a pot of glue, slathered it all over Septimus’s paper, and stuck it on the grubby window.
Septimus tried not to notice that the colored letters had run.
“I’m due a break now,” said Beetle, licking the glue off his fingers. “Like some FizzFroot?”
“You bet,” said Septimus. He followed Beetle out through the Manuscriptorium and into Beetle’s den in the backyard.
Beetle set out two mugs, dropped a Fizz Bom cube into each one and lit a small burner. As the kettle began to boil, it let out the loud squeal that—ever since Beetle had once let it boil dry—it always made when the water got too hot for it.
Beetle took the kettle off the burner and poured the water into the mugs, which immediately frothed up and began to overflow with chilled pink foam. He handed one to Septimus.
“Oof, that’s a good one!” Septimus spluttered as the FizzFroot went straight up his nose.
“Funny thing happened this morning,” said Beetle after a few restorative gulps of FizzFroot. “Someone said they were you.”
Septimus took another gulp of FizzFroot and sneezed. “Atchoo! Me?”
“Yeah. Weird kid. Wanted the scribe job.”
“So what did you say?”
“Well, I told him he wasn’t
you, and he didn’t take it too well. But I had to tell him that he could come back later. Not my job to say who can apply to be a scribe. Hope Miss Djinn can see he’s as nutty as a fruitcake. I shall tell her he knows a few Darke tricks, too.
Don’t want any of that stuff in here.”
“Darke tricks?” asked Septimus.
“Yeah. You know, the flame coming out of the thumb one. Used to be considered highly insulting in the old days. Not nice even now.”
“No. I wonder who he was.”
“Hmm. Well, I’ll let you know if he comes back.”
Septimus and Beetle sat for a while, drinking their FizzFroot, until Beetle remembered that before everything had gone crazy that morning he had been hoping Septimus would drop by. “Hey, Sep,” he said, suddenly jumping to his feet with a smile back on his face, “we can kill two birds with one stone. I’ve got something to show you.”
“What?”
“You won’t know unless you come and look, will you?” Beetle grinned.
11
DRAGON-WATCHER
M r. Pot!” yelled Marcia, striding across the Palace lawns, her quarry in sight. “Mr. Pot!”
Billy Pot did not reply; he was pushing a large wheelbarrow of dragon dung and was not in a good mood. Billy had completely forgotten how pleased he had been when Septimus had allowed him to start collecting Spit Fyre’s dragon dung. But that had been in what Billy now considered to be the Good Old Days, when he had a regular job mowing the Palace lawns with his Contraption. Billy’s Contraption worked on organic principles, which meant that it contained about twenty hungry lawn lizards in a box that Billy wheeled—extremely slowly—across the grass, while the lawn lizards ate the grass—or not.
Billy kept hundreds of lawn lizards in lizard lodges down by the river, and as the lizard population grew he began to have trouble keeping them under control. The dragon dung had worked miracles—at first. Fearing that a monster lizard had moved into their territory, the lawn lizards instantly became manageable. However, after some time passed and the monster lizard had not materialized, the lawn lizards, which were not stupid, realized something was up. And now they were just as uncontrollable as they ever had been and—having seen off a massive rival—they were arrogant too, and had taken to snapping at Billy’s ankles. Billy was done with lawn lizards.
The last straw for Billy had come when, after a long day’s mowing and several changes of lizards, the Contraption—never the same since it had been trampled by Simon Heap’s horse—had finally fallen to pieces. Sarah Heap had seized her chance. Disgusted with the great piles of dragon dung littering the Palace lawns, Sarah had dispatched Silas to the Port with strict instructions to return with a state-of-the-art lawn mower. Silas was unusually efficient and came back on the return Port barge with an impressive machine.
Billy hated it. It had horrible sharp blades instead of lizards and had to be pulled by horse. Billy was a reptile person; he didn’t like horses.
But the dragon dung had kept right on coming.
Sarah Heap, who was finally getting used to telling people what to do, provided Billy with a large field beside the Palace lawns and told him to shift the dragon dung into the field now
and get to planting vegetables. Billy didn’t like that. He didn’t like vegetables, either.
Billy Pot now made a point of not talking to anyone who looked like they might be trouble—and the ExtraOrdinary Wizard yelling at him ticked all Billy’s trouble boxes. But Marcia was not easily put off. She chased after Billy, who saw her coming and did his best to pick up speed, but was not entirely successful, hampered as he was by his heavy wheelbarrow.
“Mr. Pot!” Marcia jumped in front of the barrow, caught the heel of her pointy purple python shoe in an old rabbit hole and promptly fell over. Billy peered over the pile of dragon dung only to find that the ExtraOrdinary Wizard had disappeared, which was all right by him.
It was only when Marcia staggered to her feet, clutching the snapped heel from one of the pythons, hair awry and with an extremely irritable glint in her green eyes, that Billy thought it wise to set the barrow down.
He peered over the top. “What?”
“Mr. Pot…ouch…I have a job for you,” said Marcia.
“Look, Your ExtraOrdinariness, I already collected the last lot and I ain’t got room for no more until the end of the week. Got that?”