((Previously…))

http://absitomen.com/index.php?topic=6952.msg51184#msg51184

After casting a few ineffectual hexes, Aleron realized he was just getting in the way. This was best left to the people who knew what they were doing. Besides…the Blue Tornado was getting away. And…since he was the one who’d called it up…it was his job to pacify the whirl-wind, and turn it into a nice, well- mannered little breeze.

What was I thinking? he asked himself as he ran after it. A fine time to test a theory…

The mad dervish-wind was having a grand old time. First it plowed into a witch balancing a large basket of loaves on her head. The wind blew her off her feet, bread went flying in all directions, and the basket went rolling down the street, back towards the werewolf fracas.

“I’m sorry, Meine Frau!” yelled Aleron, tipping his hat as he ran by.

“That was your wind?” she spluttered, getting up and straightening her corset. “That’s a whole day of baking , dumped in the street!”

“I’ll pay you for it!” he exclaimed.

“A likely story!” she snorted.

“Please, Madame! There’s no time for dickering right now! I must catch up with that wind!”

By then the whirlwind was roaring through a newsstand, scattering issues of the Daily Prophet and Witch’s Weekly up and down the street. It didn’t stop long enough for Aleron to explain, but since the old woman was running after him…and for a large old lady she was pretty fast…it didn’t take long for the owners of the newsstand to figure things out…and then they were running after him, too.

“Follow that whirlwind!”

Just as Aleron was thinking things couldn’t possibly get any worse, he quickly learned the folly of ever thinking that.  Veering sharply off- course, the whirlwind turned toward a second-hand bookstore Aleron had long been intending to visit, but somehow never found the time.

“Oh please no!” he lamented, sprinting faster than ever.

It was no use. Growling and rumbling like the Tasmanian Devil of Muggle cartoons, the whirlwind spun up the steps, flung wide the door, and headed right for the paperback section.

Which immediately exploded in a blizzard of loose, flying pages…

Leda had absolutely no clue whatsoever what transpired outside the Magpie's Friday.  Nothing new: Leda had little clue of the goings-on in the real world, or in the world outside her establishment, unless it was written in concrete and everlasting ink.  Print never lied...

She'd only just finished the transformation from book store to lending institution not a week before, though she'd been open for nearly a month now.  She finished stamping the library card of a new patron, happily bagged her lent books for her and wished her a happy day... when the borrower opened the door and a dust-devil took her place at the counter.  Then leapt up onto the rows of study tables.  Then tore through the paperbacks...

"Oh, no!  Not the romance section!" Leda lamented, wringing her hands.  It wasn't that she was particularly fond of romances (though she secretly was).  But it was the newest edition to the library, extended from just a few romantic comedies (like a Midsummer Night's Dream and Othello) and it seemed to be popular with the local witches...

She pulled her wand from behind her ear, preparing to deal with the whirlwind first, then attempt to clean up and repair the rent books... only to discover that she'd drawn her pencil instead, which was really a poor substitute for a wand, since its core was graphite rather than something more useful, like unicorn hair.  She held it up as if she expected it to turn into her wand, shook it twice, then muttered, "Where did I put it?"

The wand, of course, was still safely tucked behind her opposite ear.

The whirlwind had begun on her collection of medieval "physicking" books-- the ones with the graphic etchings that always made her shudder.  How much better it was, to let magic do the healing...

Aleron chased frantically after the dust-devil, cringing as it leapt up onto the rows of study tables and spun through the paperbacks. This day was going to cost him a whole month’s salary…

"Oh, no!  Not the romance section!"

Aleron glanced around the place, thinking there could be far worse losses to the world than I was Genghis Khan’s Love Slave. Of course he would never admit that during a rainy week on the Amazon, he had been…forced to read that steamy opus himself.

He was just wondering why the proprietor was aiming a pencil at the whirlwind when she looked around, puzzled.

"Where did I put it?"

Ah,  thought Aleron. The wand. 

“Mmm,” he said aloud, hating to call attention to himself just now, especially to a lady with a wand.  “Behind your other ear?” He hoped she wouldn’t use it to hex him, once she found out he was the one who’d summoned the wind.

He saw that the magical tornado was now going after a collection of what looked like very old books…and that indeed it seemed to be picking up steam. He raised his own wand, advancing on the whirlwind. But he felt uncertain whether he should interfere. On the one hand, it didn’t seem right to just stand there while the lady’s business was trashed. On the other…he had encountered some pretty nasty things in old books…especially from the medieval era. Could that be what had drawn the demon-banishing wind to this location? 

He looked closer at the books, recognizing some of the titles. Great, he thought. Medieval physicking. In other words, torture…

Well…if  there was something wicked hiding under one of those leather bindings…it ought to be jumping out right about now…

"Ah yes, thank-you."  Leda flashed the wizard who breezed in on the whirlwind's tail a quick smile, slipped her wand from behind her ear, checked that it was indeed a wand and not another pencil before inscribing an intricate flick of the tip and murmuring, "Aeolus Abatum.'  She shared a congratulatory smirk with the newcomer, then turned to survey her handiwork...

Only to discover that the whirlwind had now turned into a solid wall of books, towering and swirling over them.  "Taste my wrath foolish mortals!" it said in one of those voices that can only be produced by Muggle special effects in horror flicks... or the taint of cursed books.

"Fiddlesticks," Leda said as her wand wavered.  "I knew I should have cleared out that section.  Ah, well..."  Of course, she couldn't have imagined that something would feed from the tomes.  After all, the books only described curses, they weren't actually cursed themselves...

Were they?

The "whirlwind" was now the height of the Magpie's Friday-- that is, at least two stories tall-- and growing.  "Ideas?" Leda said, trying to avoid sounding snappish as her bust of Aristotle joined the mess.  Then she took a good look at the wizard.  She'd seen him somewhere before...

"Taste my wrath foolish mortals!"

"Fiddlesticks…I knew I should have cleared out that section.  Ah, well..." 

“Ach mein Futhark,” muttered Aleron, looking up and up and up at the wall of books that  loomed menacingly overhead. If it wanted, it could smash them flat as Stanley, by sheer weight alone…

"Ideas?"

Aleron thought for a moment, which was hard to do since now the book-monster was throwing tomes at them too.

Ducking as  a half-ton volume of Maleficus Malefactorum, or the Witch's Curse flew past, he said, “Can I  borrow your pencil?”

Anyone else might have asked, 'What for?'  Leda only said, "I'd like it back," and handed it over.  In fact, it was automatic, as it was for any librarian or teacher you've ever met in your life and asked for a pencil-- it was nothing personal.

She ducked a playbook: Malecrit's Hélas, Je me suis Transfiguré mes Pieds.  She got off lucky, since the previous one had gone directly for the wizard's head-- a half-ton volume of Maleficus Malefactorum.  "Naughty-naughty, you old blowhard!"  She had to shout to be heard, and of course the thing got angry and whistled out it... ears?  opening its papyrus maw and burping out a Monster Book of Monsters at her which bit her on the nose.  "Ow."  She rubbed her nose as the book fell to the floor and she stomped it closed.  "Eby ideeya where it came fum?" she asked her partner in crime.

Taking the pencil, Aleron grabbed the first paper he could lay hands on...a yellowing page from The Pleasuring of a Pirate...and began to magically erase all the English letters, replacing them with the runes for a binding spell. He hoped by writing, rather than by merely transfiguring the letters as he'd done with the clay tablet...that he would achieve the desired result. Theoretically...since this time there was demonstratively a demon present...a demon-binding spell should work. Of course as he'd already seen that day...theory wasn't necessarily the same as practice. But it was all he could think of.

He ducked as a volume of Avicenna whooshed past his head. He wasn't so lucky with Maimonides; it glanced off his left shoulder, leaving that whole arm numb. Fortunately he was right handed, so he just kept writing.

Lockhart's book on the Wagga Wagga Werewolf went howling past, and Aleron growled absently at it. He thought he heard it  whimpering, Ki, yi-yi-yi! but that may have been his imagination.

He finished writing the last rune...Ys, or Ice...just as the companion volume of Maleficus Malefactorum... Malleus Maledictorum, or the Hammer of Curses...snuck up on him from behind and knocked him cold.

Leda sat on the silly wizard and patted him gently on the face.  "Oh, piffle.  He's fainted, Ari," she told her whirling bust of Aristotle.  The rune failed, you see, due to an overlooked period on the printed page which marred it so minutely that even a magnifying glass might have missed it.  Instead, the demon wind burst into maniacal laughter.

"Oh dear," Leda said, hoisting his arm over her neck and heaving him into a sitting position.  "You seem to have tickled his funny bone.  Upsidaisy, then.  Let's see if we can't clip his toenails.  Have you a match?"  Burning books went against Leda's grain but so did defacing a classic.  If they didn't do something, the vandal would ruin the library before it was barely open.  Desperate times and desperate measures.  "Where did the vagabond come from, anyway?" she asked curiously as she began building a pyre from Leaves of Grass and her Percy Bysse Shelley's collection.