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The
Sorcerer and his Apprentice
Written
by: Jason Petz
1/2/01
Inside his castle, deep within the scary woods,
the wizard was practicing his magic, by creating
the most beautiful things! With every wave
of his aging hands, beautiful butterflies and
fairies would dance and sing.
In
the next room, the wizard’s young apprentice
was busy carrying buckets of water to fill the
well. Back and forth, the apprentice
carried the buckets full of water from the stone
fountain, and dumping them into the old wooden
well.
Magic
made the wizard tired. Creating the
fairies and butterflies was tiring, so the wizard
took off his magical hat and left the dark room
to sleep for a while. The tricky little
apprentice, whose name was Vincent, peaked
around the stone wall and noticed the wizard was
gone. So Vincent quietly made his way into
the room and sat upon the wizard’s
chair. Noticing the sparkling blue hat,
the apprentice deviously took it from the
Hickory table and plopped it upon his light brown
hair. Vincent looked around the stone room
and noticed a broom in the corner. He
picked up the book "Wizardry for
Dummies," off the table and flipped through
a few pages. With his nose buried in the
old book, he spotted an incantation. He
waved his hands vigorously at the broom and he
chanted: "Ooga kabooga, awaken thy broom, I
summon you to fill the well, alakazoom!"
Poof,
the broom stood up on it’s rough bristles and
grew two strong arms. The broom’s
bristles split down the middle and it started to
walk toward the big stone fountain. It picked up two buckets off of the stone
floor, dipped the two buckets deep into
the fountain, and then walked to the well and
emptied them. Back and forth, bucket by
bucket, the broom filled the well.
Vincent
became tired and fell asleep in the wizards’
chair. While he was asleep he dreamed he
was a very powerful wizard. After sleeping
for a while, he awoke with a start, and found
that he was sleeping in a pool of water.
Not knowing what was happening, Vincent sat up
in his drenched red cape and looked
around. The room was flooded.
Vincent was floating in the big chair that he
fell asleep in. The broom was still dumping
water into the now overflowing well.
Vincent clumsily reached for the handbook. He
flipped a few pages and found the incantation
for reversing the spell he put upon the broom.
He
recited the incantation on the page.
"Whazz-a-ma-tazz, let thy spell be
broken!" He quickly looked at the broom;
back and forth, back and forth, the broom didn’t
stop. Much to Vincent’s disappointment it
continued to dump water into the overflowing
well. Vincent looked around the big stone
room. He quickly thought about what he
should do to stop the broom. He looked in
the corner of the room and saw a hatchet leaning
against the tall stone wall. He swam over
to it and gripped it tightly in his small
hands. He cautiously swam over to the
broom and sliced it into many pieces.
Vincent
let go of the hatchet, huffing and puffing from
his strenuous act. To his dismay, he looked
up and saw more brooms starting to form out of
each little splinter that the hatchet had sliced
out of the broom. His face grew grim, for
he did not know how to stop the thousands of
brooms. Vincent knew he was in trouble,
and he tried to think of a way to fix his bad
deeds.
Vincent
heard a noise and he quickly swam over to the
wooden door that led out of the room and into
the sleeping chambers. He put his ear to
it and at first couldn’t hear anything.
He waited about thirty seconds; then he was sure
he could hear a faint sound. It got louder and
louder. It started to sound like
footsteps. Vincent bolted away from the
door, and swam over to the stairs at the other
side of the room and waited. Suddenly the
door flew open violently and the blue cape and
wise old face of the wizard appeared from behind
the open door. The wizard put his hands
together and pulled them apart quickly and all
of the water that had flooded the room
vanished. He looked around the room, waved
his hands, and all of the many brooms pulled
together and made one broom, which fell to the
stone floor.
The wizard’s gaze
shifted to Vincent. Vincent took off the
blue magical hat, looked at the ground and
slowly walked toward the wizard. He held
out the hat and the wizard snatched it from
him. Vincent could tell that the wizard
was upset with him. The wizard slowly
lifted his arm and pointed toward the door, the
door that led to the exit on the castle.
Sheepishly Vincent looked up at the wizard, and
the wizard nodded his head. Vincent turned
around and slowly walked toward the door.
He didn’t look back. |
©Jason Petz
