#2-A Loss and A Pack of Seven
The sun was setting when O Wan Ho finally got up with a huge stretch and a big yawn.
“I think I overslept,” he said and looked for the children. Seeing Mani he said, “why didn’t you wake me up? And what’s all this?” pointing to the gold pile of gold that Mani was trying desperately to hide.
Mani thought that if he just sat on the gold, the magician would not see it. He was sitting cross-legged and curiously his knees were much higher than his feet.
But O Wan Ho’s eyes saw everything and them some more. Mani realised he had been found out and the reaction was very different from what he had imagined.
“I got this gold. It’s all mine you can’t take it,” Mani had spent the last few hours muttering the spell the tinker man had given him and had tucked it all below his knees hoping to impress O Wan Ho as soon as he got up.
“Your gold? That’s fool’s gold young man hahaha,” laughed O Wan Ho. “Someone has fooled you. It will all turn to dust when the moon touches the highest point in the sky.”
Mani’s face fell, “Oh no, I’ve been cheated. You can catch the thief, that old tinkerman will not know what’s coming for him when you attack him with your spells.”
“No, not for your silliness would I use my spells. Magic is not a game. And it’s about time you learnt that, I just hope you didn’t give anything valuable in exchange.”
The minute O Wan Ho said those words, Mani remembered Vani and her ring. He had given her ring to the old tinkerman and then had become so engrossed in creating money from the spell that he had forgotten all about her. Where was Vani?
O Wan Ho asked Mani the same question and grew very serious when he heard Mani’s story, “Your mother was quite wise in her youth and that’s why I gave her the spells but I think she’s lost her head after you and doesn’t know the difference between night and day. that cannot be helped now. Now you have to make good of all that you spoiled, this is your only chance.”
Walking around the place where Vani had sat, O Wan Ho pulled out a blade of grass, “Take it and follow this blade of grass it will take you to the tinker. Once you find him, you go begging him for your sisters life. He will not give it that easily and you will have to prove your worth to him. Be straight now, don’t lie or cheat. That’s the only way, you can break his spell.”
Mani was too scared to argue with O Wan Ho and cursing the tinker man he took hold of the blade of grass. In the blink of an eye, he reached a beautiful garden in a fragrant valley full of flowers.
There was a comfortable-looking cottage with flowers twined around its windows. “That must be that greedy, vile tinkerman’s house. I will go in and save Vani there,” he thought but instead of knocking on the door, Mani hid behind the shrubbery. “I need to figure this out first,” he thought as he peered through the leaves.
The house looked silent and safe. He couldn’t see Vani nor could he hear the tinkerman. “Maybe they are sleeping,” he thought to himself and felt his own eyes sag. It had been a long day and unlike Vani and O Wan Ho he had not slept.
Suddenly he felt himself being pulled back, trussed in a sack and thrown on the saddle of a horse. It was the most horrible experience as he was pushed and jolted and then after a few minutes that felt like an eternity, Mani was thrown off the horse.
“Ow ow,” he cried, “What did I do? Why are you hurting me so?”
“Quiet,” came a gravelly grave voice, “master will see you soon.” This command was followed by a kick so vicious that Mani decided crying silently was a better option.
Soon, the sack was removed. Opening his eyes and cursing the day he set out to become a magician Mani opened his eyes to a horrific sight.
He was surrounded by six murderous-looking robbers and their chief was the cruellest man he had ever seen. With bloodshot eyes, and an angry face he growled, “Who are you? Why were you spying on that old robber?
Hearing the chief refer to the tinkerman as a robber gave Mani some heart, and he told him his whole sorry tale starting with how many problems he faced as compared to Vani who had had everything so easy to the way the old tinkerman had tricked him.
When he heard that the tinkerman had tricked Mani, the chief of the robbers also became quite eloquent and started telling him his story.
“All 7 of us used to work in the City of Aqra. It’s a big city and we had small jobs which we rightly hated. I mean I worked for a rich merchant who gave me a piddly salary and never complimented my efforts, Jabal there,” he pointed to his burly commander who had trussed Mani into the sack with one hand, “was a banker of so low a grade that he wasn’t even allowed to ask for a raise for the next 10 years.”
Mani tried hard to imagine the gruesome-looking commander as a lowly banker and even the chief looked too grand and horrible to ever be trusted with a piddly salary.
“We didn’t look like this then,” growled the chief correctly guessing Mani’s questions. “That old man promised that his spell would make everyone look up to us and give us more money. That’s how he turned us into these horrible-looking goons with thunderous voices and muscles that can pick up anything but all we want to do is to go home and even get back our piddly salaried jobs- this is so horrible.”
The chief started crying big oily tears and his sobs sounded like a dreadful case of whooping cough. “Oh hear us now, our voices have changed to growls. Our girlfriends have thrown us out, my mother also runs away whenever she sees me coming from far. We have no one and no one wants us.”
Hearing their chief cry, the other goons also started crying, “We want what was before! take all this back…someone make that old man take it all away.” They cried and big, floppy tears rolled down their bristly beards.
For the second time in the day, Mani felt happy and had to stop himself from laughing aloud at the funny goons. Now that he knew they were also fooled by the tinkerman he felt better about himself, at least he could say that he was younger, what excuse did they have?
Feeling quite superior Mani told them, “don’t worry I have a plan given to me by the great O Wan Ho himself.”
Sidelight
Thank you for checking this story…
It’s an odd story and grew out of a simple thought- to find an outlet for these odd stories that get stuck in my head at odd hours- like just before I wake up or as soon as I step out of the bath.
I write serious business non-fiction for my work but these stories still manage to creep into my head proving to me that I have a twin in another tine-space dimension who might be an artist waking up to ideas about companies going bankrupt or setting up some new quality-based process to reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction.
While writing these stories I have discovered a curious fact:
The more I face my fears and insignificant attempts the better I become.
This is something I’ve learnt often while writing…the simple act of giving thoughts a shape and form brings out extreme fears but if faced with determination that fear can turn into inspiration. For me this is transmutation that alchemists dreamt about- it’s the way I turn lead into gold…