I reached out and took the wand. It came away easily in my hand, and the bark brushed away, leaking me with clean polished wood. I wondered how it was used, but I found that actually it was very straightforward. I held the wand, wished for a stone to rise off the ground, and it did.
Clearly I needed to think about this. Although the wand might give me a way of rescuing Suki, it was far from clear how it might work. I suspected that I could wish for a magic carpet, too, but I didn’t dare do that until I’d worked out some kind of plan. I stashed the wand in my bag along with the remains of my lunch, and set off for home.
Walking back into the village I saw Arabella walking her collie. Arabella and her boyfriend had bought the biggest house in the village, so they were assumed to be very rich. They were also committed environmentalists. We knew this because Arabella called on their neighbours, shortly after they arrived, to ask if anyone minded them putting a solar panel on their roof. None of the single men would have denied Arabella anything, and no one else raised any serious objection, so the solar panel was duly installed.
On impulse I decided to try an experiment with the wand. It wasn’t quite what the woodland spirits had in mind when they gave it to me, but (I told myself) I had to practice using it. ‘Make me irresistibly attractive,’ I thought as determinedly as possible, and touched the wand in my bag.
As I approached, Arabella looked round. ‘Hello,’ she said, as though she had noticed me for the first time.
Apparently the spell had worked, but there was a snag I hadn’t foreseen. I had to think of something clever that I could say to someone I didn’t really know. ‘Hello. I, um, err, like your solar panel,’ I said.
‘Come and see it,’ said Arabella, leading the way. ‘On very sunny days we can even sell the electricity, it generates far more than we need.’ The spell must have been working overtime.
We were already in the village, so it was only a short time before I saw the big house and the solar panel. I then remembered something that had always puzzled me. The solar panel was a muddy brown colour, and that didn’t make sense. ‘Aren’t solar panels usually black? I mean don’t you want them to absorb as much light as possible?’
‘Would you buy muddy brown electricity?’ asked Arabella, looking up at the panel. ‘No, no one will buy electricity that colour, so it’s much better that we just reflect that part of the light.’
It didn’t make much sense, but who was I to complain when I had a magic wand in my bag? That didn’t make sense either.
‘Oh, there’s our picture, you must see that,’ said Arabella pointing through the window. ‘That’s John the Apostle, the last picture Rembrandt ever painted. We love his work; we’ve got lots of prints but we’ve recently bought that original.’
I assumed she was pulling my leg, but I realised that I had an easy way to find out. I touched the wand and thought, ‘Is the picture genuine?’ I immediately sensed that it was. I’m no art expert, but obviously a painting like that must have cost millions. I realised that Arabella and her boyfriend must be richer than anyone had suspected.
Arabella was trying to lead me in the front door, but I was feeling uncomfortable, for all sorts of reasons. I didn’t want to be disloyal to my girlfriend, and I felt responsible for making sure Arabella wasn’t disloyal to her boyfriend; the spell seemed to have had a dramatic effect and I wasn’t sure if she was in control of her actions. I also remembered the woodland spirits saying that I would be tempted to misuse the wand, and here I was, misusing it. Also, what were the ethics of a love spell? Was it just a way of making yourself more attractive, or was it more like drugging someone and then taking advantage of them?
Too many questions. I mumbled an excuse and left, quickly, before I changed my mind.
(PS: although this story is told in the first person, the humans I meet are entirely imaginary.)