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Raspberry chuckled and winked merrily at her. "Not all the company one has in normal society is so enchanting."
"Still," Colin argued, "I should think it would be boring out here in these woods all by yourself all the time with nothing to do but draw pictures and dress in funny costumes."
"If I remember correctly," the wizard said, "they do much the same thing at court, except they don't draw pictures. Besides, that's not all I do; I have my little projects as well, you know, and my garden. And people do seek me out now and then to ask for a spot of magic. What they pay helps provide me with what I can't make for myself, which isn't much. Usually I charge some commodity that will help with my projects, though that depends on the client."
"What projects, master wizard?" Maggie asked. She hadn't thought about a fee, though she should have. Even among friendly magicians who extended a certain amount of professional courtesy to each other, some fee had to be charged in order for the magic to be worth anything. Granny Brown had told her that often enough. But Maggie realized Raspberry was too polite to bring the subject up directly, so she asked, "Do you mean you practice learning extra skills your magic doesn't aid you with? Like my Granny does healing and ale brewing, which have nothing to do with transforming, and like Aunt Sybil practices metalsmithing to relax her from gazing into the present?"
"Yes," the wizard nodded, "Precisely like that. And like you go on quests to provide diversion from hearthcrafting."
"It's not really like that," she protested.
"And like Colin here performs real heroics to give himself a break from simply singing about them," the wizard finished.
Colin looked up, startled and pleased. He'd never thought of it that way before but now that the wise and mighty wizard mentioned it, he supposed one could look at the quests he'd undertaken in that light.
"I don't do anything so practical myself," Raspberry confessed. "Mostly I just tinker with trying to make the things I draw work. Like balloons, for instance."
"Balloons?" Maggie asked. "That's a funny word. What does it mean?"
"Nothing-yet," the wizard answered. "Though it's supposed to be a sort of flying ball that keeps floating through the air after you've let go of it. I drew the first one before I left court many years ago. Even built my house here with towers so I'd have a good place to launch the things from, once I got them invented." He shook his head sadly. "So far, I haven't been able to make the idea work."
"I'd have to see a flying ball to believe one," Maggie said, settling back in her chair with her arms crossed under her blanket and a skeptical expression on her face. "Unless it's magic, of course, I can't imagine such a thing working."
"You're right, I'm afraid. Mostly it doesn't," the wizard admitted, rising and combing through the upended boxes which served him as cabinets until he extracted a triumphant fist full of small tan objects. These he rolled onto the table in front of Maggie. "So far, fish bladders work best. You can blow them up and sail them. They'll go as far as the edge of the moat with a good headwind."
He sounded so discouraged, Maggie tried to appear interested as she watched him puff one of the bladders to twice its normal size. It hung on the air for a moment, then dropped sputtering to the floor.
"They'd be wonderful toys," Colin said helpfully. "Children would love them at fairs and festivals."
But Raspberry shook his head. "They're too heavy, you see. That's the problem. I'm sure one could get them to fly properly, if only one had enough air. And then too, what if they did catch on with children? What would happen to all the fish then? I hate making a toy out of part of a living thing."
Maggie picked one up. "I don't think you need to worry. They aren't very pretty or colorful. I doubt children would take to them anyway."
"But you want them to really FLY?" Colin asked. He was becoming intrigued with the idea. "Like dragons?"
"That was the idea. I'd hoped eventually to think of some-tiling one could do with them that would make them rather larger. I'd even thought, you know, that perhaps I might find a way to blow one up large enough to carry a man."
Maggie was still handling the bladder. "Colored silks would be prettier than this," she said critically. "Lighter, too."
"But one couldn't just knot a handkerchief, don't you see?" Raspberry protested. "All the air would get out."
"One could, however, sew it in the proper shape," Maggie said gently. It was clear from the ragged condition of his gown and the roughness of its embroidery that Wizard Raspberry knew very little about tailoring, however much he might know about the other aspects of disguise. "Then you could seal it, if it was to stay up a long time, by waterproofing it the way we do the seams of our snowboots." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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