“We’re here,” announced Mervin as he reached the end of the corridor.
Hans looked around himself; all of the stone walls surrounding them were bare, except for a solitary flickering candlestick affixed to the wall before them. He began to wonder if the old man was going senile when he reached up and pulled the candlestick down.
The next minute Mervin was gone. The wall had spun around in an instant, leaving him facing an extinguished candlestick now.
Hans grabbed it almost immediately, the pull of inquisitiveness dragging him onwards where common sense would have told him to cry out for help.
The room he emerged into was covered various painting of moose. He gazed past Mervin around the room, seeing that every wall was littered with those images, and they all seemed to watching him, their eyes piercing his flesh.
He turned away from them to look directly at Mervin, as he said “Yeh’ve just entered the Magic Moose Room,” he said in a rather jolly voice, chuckling a little.
“What’s so funny?” asked Hans, missing the joke.
“Yeh know, it sounds like them drugs… oh, never mind,” said Mervin, realizing he’d be there ‘til next Tuesday if he waited for Hans to get the joke, and reached into his jacket instead. “Right in my hand I have a type 57B wand made from unicorn hair, ash and with a frog thigh bone core,” he continued spinning the wand around in his hand as he did. “Now I find thaa this kind of wand helps concentration a lot, that’s what it’s all about really belief, the power of yeh mind.”
“Alright, so why do you say the words if then, you seemed keen to look them up for my wound?” questioned Hans a little more confused than usual.
“Ah, now yeh’ve got there, another concentration aid to make you think about the spell, all yeh do is say something you associate with the spell, an’ then adjusting the volume of your voice and level of concentration determines the power and location of the spell. Anyhoo, we’re just gonna do some concentrating to build up our belief to start with, now grab thaa wand off the side and hold it out whilst yeh concentrate.”
It made sense now why the words Mervin was looking for were contained in a book called Max the Dog’s Big Adventure. He wasn’t sure whether that revelation worried him more now than it did then.
After standing there feeling like a bit of a fool for a few minutes, Hans plucked up the courage to speak, “I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel anything.”
Mervin mused upon this for a second, and then said, “There’s a tin a’
Treacle on the shelf over there, go an’ dip your hand in that.”
Hans did so, but felt even sillier than before. “Erm... all I feel now is this slimy treacle.”
“Well yeh did say you wanted to feel something,” replied Mervin with a light chuckle.
Hans sighed; it was going to be a long day.
