136. The Iberian School of Magic

Alpin was right about Don Alonso and Mr. Panza. When we invited them to join us in our quest for the pencil, Don Alonso said he would never allow us to visit the devil unescorted. And Mr. Panza would not allow Don Alonso to go unescorted either. So we were four. And then Michael made an unwilling fifth.

                                      

It was time again for another of Michael’s birthdays and he had ordered a huge Scrumptious Cake from The Sweet Dreamer, a bakery famous for its sweets and most especially for this type of cake, made with seven kinds of chocolate, black and red cherry sauces and meringue.He was coming up a lane on the way home with the cake when he was accosted by Mrs. Dullahan. It took her a while to persuade him, but with her wailing and screaming and pretending to faint, Miss Aislene made him promise to chaperone us. She gave us a letter of recommendation written in her own hand. It was soaked in her entrancing night-blooming jasmine perfume. She said the devil didn’t think as much of her as he had  before she had married Mr. Dullahan, but maybe, for old time’s sake, he might receive us.

Number six was our Roman ghost Nauta, who told us the cave we meant to visit had once belonged to the Greek hero Hercules. He had no idea how it had fallen into the hands of other proprietors, but thought this had probably happened in the Middle Ages.  

                                                

                                                     

And number seven were the leafy Vincentius and my cat Gatocatcha. Vinny was sitting on my three-footed cat’s head, almost lost in his hair, hoping that between them they would pass for someone bigger and make an acceptable seventh member of the party. Gatocatcha said what counted in Heaven and Hell was the size of one’s soul, and Vinny’s was large. He feared that if we were disqualified, it would be for being eight.

“I can’t believe this,” said Michael as we stood before the cave of St. Cyprian’s church. “I’m going to celebrate my birthday in Hell. This is worse than any other year. And the sort of thing that only happens to me.”

“Drama queen!” mocked Alpin. “All those that live in Hell celebrate their birthdays there.You’re not special.”

“Where do you have the letter of reference your mother wrote to the Devil?” Michael asked Alpin, but it was I who answered his question.

“I kept it in my knapsack,” I said, producing the letter. “It fell out of Alpin’s so I thought it might be safer in mine. It has some ketchup stains on it and it smells like food from a burger Alpin carried with him, but there are still traces of Miss Aislene’s jasmine perfume on it.”

Michael rolled his eyes and waved his hands so I would keep it again.

                                  

“He might like it better smelling strange,” said Sancho Panza. “I was taught that devils always give off bad smells, like farts.”

                                     

“Sulphur,” said Don Quijote. “The Devil is preceded by the smell of sulphur. Other lesser devils are said to smell like rotten eggs. Sanctity, instead, smells like roses.”

I anticipated trouble at the doorway, where when we were all huddled together on the doorstep of the Devil’s school, Moll Avery appeared at the spyhole.

                                                               

“Hmmm,” she said. “I can see you are seven. But the door won’t open because it’s not September Eve. However, if you have a credit card, you and any hood can open it from the outside.”

She waved a credit card before our noses and then kept it again in her apron pocket.

“Why didn’t you say that before?” hollered Alpin.

Moll made a grimace that was, I think, supposed to be a pert smile and got away from the door, to avoid being run over should we be able to enter and stampede into the cave.

“Come back!” hollered Alpin. “Lend us your credit card so we can enter. Or is it to suggest a bribe you waved it at us?”

I had a card, and that’s what I did, use it to open the door.

“Keep that immediately if you don’t want it stolen from you,” whispered Michael before we entered.

I didn’t say it was my library card I had used. I was afraid we might get kicked out for using that.

Within the cave, seven students were giving their reports on the results of their end of the year projects a finishing touch.

They were working  at a very large rectangular table set among thin white columns that  held up a ceiling full of  arches and vaults with constellations painted on them in silver and gold.

Also on the walls and even on the ceiling was a lot of very simple looking graffiti. Very rudimentary, but undeniably graffiti. I felt we might be in the right place.

The students looked up from their work and stared at us with surprise.

“Hello,” I said, remembering that it is the person who enters who must speak first.

                                       

“What is the meaning of this?” growled a huge, bearlike fellow, who wore red from his feet to his pointed cap as well as a perpetual frown.   His name, we later learned,  was Corrupius Surly and he was nicknamed Touchy. “New students mustn’t show up till September Eve. We’re being cheated of our time!”

              

Cupid Bonnetbee, known as Q, was more receptive. He emerged from the shadowier part of the table saying, “I can’t see well from here. Is there anyone hot among the new ones?” There was something about him that made one draw back. But the strangest thing was that his wizard’s cap was shaped like a beehive with little cloth bees swarming around it.  

                                                      

“They are a motley crew if there ever was one,” said a fellow with a jutting chin and an upturned nose, who was all dressed in purple. “How did these people get accepted? This class lacks class.”

                                        
                         

“We’re not next year’s students,” I said. “We’re a commitee in search of a pencil we’ve been told can be found here.”

Tarquin M.C.de la C.C., the thirteenth, curled a lip in disgust and looked away.

But a fellow in worn yellow clothes crept up and rubbed his chin with fingers that seemed to have difficulty unclenching as he studied me. He was Prosperous Pincher, called Penny by his mates.

                                       

“You’ve barged into Hell because you wish to retrieve a pencil? Well, I must say that’s cheap of you! I find that admirable. Well done!”

                                             

Next to address us was Abundant Cestodes. He was known as Bunny, not because he looked like a rabbit but because of his voracious hunger and enormous capacity to ingest anything, most especially buns.

“There are no pencils here. We write with feather quills soaked in blood, sweat and tears. What have you got there in that box, little green bearded boy?”

Michael clutched his birthday cake box, but said nothing. It was not necessary.

                        

“Stop Bunny before we go without!” screeched Ophidian Evergreen, a student with a body like that of a lizard. He was the most envious of those present.

Michael had no choice but to surrender his cake for we were immediately surrounded by the students, all determined that Bunny should not eat up by himself whatever was in the box.

And there we were, celebrating Michael’s birthday in Hell without a lit candle or a sad song, among a group of strangers who scowled at us and each other as they chomped on Scrumptious Cake as if it were their duty to destroy it.