for quite some time. With a little shrug, he turned away, and was poking around in a bureau drawer when a voice snapped at him:
'Do you think the roof will fall in on us today? Did the frost hurt your stinkweed?'
That was the magic mirror, a competent, but somewhat sarcastic mirror in a heavy gilt frame When the magician was not trying to get something out of it, it was given to tuneless humming and crabby remarks.
'I don't know what you're talking about,' growled Prospero as he hunted for his toothbrush.
'You know very well what I mean' said the mirror in an unpleasant tone. 'What's all this staring at the ceiling and thinking? Have you discovered a cure for mangy eyebrows?'
'I may discover a cure for talkative pieces of plate glass,' said the wizard, grinding his teeth.
'Boorish threats,' said the mirror. 'By the way, if you step over here now, you can view Aurungabad, as seen from the ruins of the palace of Aurungzebe.'
'How nice,' muttered Prospero, and he disappeared into the bathroom with a balding toothbrush clenched in his fist.
A little later, as Prospero was soaking in a large porcelain tub with eagle-claw legs, the mirror began to sing:
Most of the time, the mirror's singing voice might have been compared with that of a tubercular reed organ; but, when it hit high notes, Prospero thought of children with long nails scraping on blackboards. So, it was not surprising that the wizard soon emerged from the bathroom, wet and dripping and wrapped in a yellow-damask towel that looked like a Byzantine cope.
'All right,' he said quietly. 'Let's see what we can see.'
The wizard peered deep into the fathomless depths of the murky mirror, and when the swirling mists cleared, he found himself watching a 1943 game between the Chicago Cubs and the New York Giants. The Cubs were behind 16-00 in the eighth inning.
Prospero stood silently watching for a few seconds. Then, with an evil grin, he produced from behind his back a large cake of soap. 'Now watch it, whiskers,' said the mirror, alarmed. 'Don't you dare...Ak Hoog! Glph...Hphfmnphpph!'
Prospero scribbled wildly on the mirror with the cake of soap, signed his name with a flourish, and went downstairs, chuckling.
But, not even his victory over the cranky mirror could help Prospero to shake off the uncertain fear that hung in the still, heavy air of that August day. Something was coming, and he would have given his hat to know what it was. In the meantime, he fribbled away the day with mindless tasks like cleaning the ash pit of the fireplace and raising the ghosts of flowers. From a square bottle marked 'Essential Salts,' Prospero poured a few green crystals into a white ceramic dish; when he had mumbled some words over the bowl, a pink and green cloud began to ascend from the shimmering translucent pebbles. Before long, a definite shape appeared.
'Carnations,' said the wizard disgustedly. 'Phooey.'
He fanned at the uninteresting specter until it blew out the window in a long sickly streamer of colored smoke. Then, with a distracted air, he walked to a carved lectern that held a large, unlabeled folio volume. It was a thick, dog-eared brown leather cover and its blue-ruled book in a cracked brown leather cover and its blue-ruled pages were filled with the wizards florid script; on some pages were pentacles, pentagrams, and doodles, these latter being usually pictures of bearded patriarchs, pharaohs, and King Louis XI of France, who, as far as Prospero was concerned, looked like Cyrano de Bergerac with a lumpy Roman nose.
On some pages were spells set to music: the curious words, split up into syllables, wandered through bars of badly drawn square notes. He selected one of these incantations and began to chant in a loud, wailing voice. All the clocks in the house suddenly went off at once, though it was only three-twenty; the copper pots hanging in the kitchen clanged and whanged against each other,– and a couple of the wizards books fell off their shelves with a clump. But, nothing else happened. Prospero slammed the magic book shut and slumped into an overstuffed chair. He fumbled in his smoking stand for his pipe and tobacco.
'I learned that spell fifty years ago,' he mumbled as he lit his pipe. 'And, I still don't know what it's for.'
Around six o'clock, a dark greenish storm-twilight descended, though the sun was not due to set for two hours. Prospero got up and walked out the back door into this unnatural dusk,– in the yard behind the house, no birds could be seen or heard,– the leaves of the trees hung like carved ornaments,-and even the splashing of the fountain was strangely muted. The slates of the roof were a flat gray, and the thick-piled clouds seemed to press down on the turreted house. Prospero went back inside and decided to prepare dinner for himself. He pottered about in the kitchen in an attempt at a cheerful manner, whistling bits of tunes like 'Lilliburlero' and The Piper of Dundee.' But, his whistling died away as he suddenly thought, with inexplicable dread, that he would have to go down into the cellar for a pitcher of ale. Now, a grown man-especially one who is a wizard-is not supposed to be afraid of going to the cellar at night. But, though he loved the strong brown ale that aged in oozing vats in his dark cool basement, Prospero would (this time) have just as soon done without.
'This is silly.' he said to himself. 'You are a coward and a lumphead.' He lit a tall, twisty beeswax candle and grabbed a fat pewter pitcher from the nail where it hung.
The cellar way was dark and musty-smelling, and a damp breeze blew from a window that must have been left open. Prospero, moving along cautiously in the wavering yellow light, passed shelves of cobwebbed jelly jars and dusty overturned steins with inscriptions in strange blue letters. Overhead were the floor beams of the house, split logs with the furrowed black bark still on them. When he reached the great rounded shapes of the beer kegs, Prospero stuck the candle into a wooden wall socket and turned toward a heavy brassbound tan labeled 'XXX Strong Ale.' Setting the pitcher on a shelf just under the blocky wooden spigot, he turned the handle, and the ale gushed into the container with a tinny rising sound.
He looked absently around the cellar as he waited for the pitcher to fill, and suddenly, his eye was caught by the fluttering of an old cloak hanging on a wooden peg. And, in that instant, Prospero got the odd notion that the cloak was not his, and might not be a cloak at all. He stared intently at it as the fluttering of the garment became more agitated. And then, it turned to meet him. With empty flapping arms, it floated across the cellar floor, swaying in a sickening nightmare rhythm. Prospero clenched his fist and felt his pulse beating in his palms; he fought the rising fear as the cloak flapped nearer, for with all his heart, he did not want it close to him. As it closed the gap between them, all the spells against apparitions ran through his mind, but he had the queasy feeling that none of them would work. The thing was about six feet from him, its cold musty-cellar breath faintly brushing his face, when it simply stopped. The flapping arm dropped, and the gray cloak, or whatever it was, slumped into a ragged heap on the stone floor. Prospero stepped back nervously and stiffened as he felt a cold sensation. But, when he looked down, he laughed abruptly, since he had stepped into the spreading brown pool of ale that was now sloshing and frothing over the sides of the pitcher. He shut off the spigot and leaned, trembling, against the barrel, his forehead pressing the fragrant wet wood. When he looked again at the place on the floor where the cloak had fallen, he was not surprised to see that there was nothing lying on the rough candle lit stone. The peg where the cloak had first hung was not there either.
As soon as he felt able to walk, Prospero grabbed up the brimming pitcher, snatched the candle from its sconce, and dashed up the creaking wooden stairs. When he got back to the kitchen, he felt better, and, since ghostly cloaks should be common experience for a sorcerer, he felt a little ashamed. But, when he closed his eyes, the scene in the cellar came back with all its inexplicable terror.
'Well,' said Prospero to himself, 'the thing to do is to keep my eyes open and eat my dinner.'
Which he did, though he had hardly gotten halfway through his meal of cold roast beef, ale, and Cheshire cheese when the heavy hanging storm broke over the house with a long, splitting, plate-rattling crash. The thunder did not frighten Prospero half so much as his reaction to it, which was to shove his chair back and look quickly over his shoulder. For the next hour, he was plagued by the strong, palpable feeling that someone was behind him. Even in his study, where he had pushed his big wing chair up against the paneled wall, he found that he could not read-the shadows that leaned out over the high-sided chair seemed more than shadows. He got up and
