When Alpin heard the pencil the busker had
given my sister was a magic treasure, he immediately wanted it for himself.
I told him he couldn’t have it because Harpagophytum
Small might come back for it and I didn’t want any more problems with
comeuppance fairies.
“If he gave it to her it’s hers,” said Alpin.
“She’s in possession of it, but we don’t know
if he really gave it to her or might want it back now that she’s with us again
and not at the school where he left her. I can’t give you something that isn’t
mine. Or let you take something that is my sister’s. She’s too young to know
what she wants to do with it, so she can’t give something this compromising
away yet.”
However, since the pencil was eternal, I
decided we could try it out. There was a fine wall that encircled the ruins of
Owl Wood Manse, located according to some, just outside the west of Minced
Forest but indisputably within the west of Minced Forest according to others.
And hither we headed.
Alpin didn’t let me use my sister’s pencil. He
kept painting his logo over and over on the wall. Everytime he wrote “More!” he would ask me what I thought of
his last graffito. Was it as good as the others? The fonts and the
colours were different every time, so there was
some difference. Still, it was getting to be boring watching him repeat himself.
“Couldn’t you do something aside from your logo
for a change?”
“No!”
said Alpin. “Everybody has to know my work is my work.”
We had gone to Owl Wood because there is nobody
ever there except owls.There are so many they cover the trees there as
if they were graffiti on them themselves. The manse, hidden behind the wall, we
always thought to be deserted. So we were quite surprised when Minafer Ominous
passed by wearing a Hawaiian shirt and looking younger and thinner that
day.
“Hello, children,” he said. “Brightening up Mr.
Binky’s dull wall, eh? That’s pretty. I hope we can get to keep it.”
“This
wall is Mr. Binky’s? We thought it didn’t belong to anybody,” I said.
“Mr. Binky has expropriated this manse and its
gardens to build his new school here.”
“Has he paid a fortune for this ruin? My nephew
gave him a lot of dough to build the school with. I’d like to know what he’s
doing with it.”
“He hasn’t paid a cent. Since nobody knows who
the owner is, Binky hasn’t had to indemnify anyone.”
“That’s much worse than I thought. He must be
keeping the money for himself if he’s not misspending it. Why don’t you tell us
what we can do to liven up the summer, Minafer? I’m getting bored of what I’m
doing here. ”
“You’ve a magic treasure there, I see,” said
Mr. Ominous. “That’s not just any pencil. It can draw and paint almost anything
you are capable of imagining. There are only five like it in Fairyland. They
say that whoever has all five could cover the whole sky with graffiti in less
than a night. Imagine the effect the next morning.”
“You’re a know-it-all oracle. Where can we find
the other four pencils?”
“Something in the air here tells me you aren’t
too far from one of them. Follow the white brick wall, kids.”
“Your mystifying way of speaking is annoying,
Minafer,” said Alpin. “Change your style.”
“’Bye, Mr. Ominous,” I said, as the medium
walked away laughing. “Thanks for your suggestion.”
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