The magician's lecture 5/7

The horse with his double load, trotted along the path towards the giant's castle. As he approached Tornak's cave Tasmin popped her head out to see who was coming by.

"Hello Sir George, hello Jennifer Jane would you like to pop in for a snack and a chat?"

Jennifer Jane explained that they were on an urgent errand to speak to Fundin. Tasmin waved a wing and watched them ride up the path towards the castle.

"Still can't get used to chatting with dragons instead of killing them," said George, "although I must admit she's quite pleasant when you get to know her. How she ever took up with Tornak is beyond me and then she goes on to become mother to that nice young Cyril."

They continued their discussion as they approached the castle drawbridge. George banged loudly on the small door used by the human visitors.

"Go away, we're closed! Oh it's you," said the giant looking down at Jennifer Jane, "have you come to mend my enlarging box?" he asked hopefully.

She explained that there was a possibility that something could be done with Fundin's help.

"Right, in you come then. You can tie your horse up to that chair leg," he said to George. Then he went over to the trapdoor that the dwarf used and stamped twice on the stone. After a moment the slab lifted a little and Fundin peered out through the gap. He made sure that there were no other visitors before he came out. He was wearing his boiler suit and had very oily hands.

"Hello young lady," said Fundin "and Sir," he added, "judging by the looks on your faces you've got a problem. Well you couldn't have come to a better person," he said modestly, "problems solved while you wait."

"I'm afraid this is really serious," said Jennifer Jane, "a Magician has made a mistake with a spell and nothing magic will work any more."

"True," said the giant who'd been listening, "that's why my enlarging box has stopped working."

"Come downstairs into my design office," said Fundin, rather more seriously than before.

"I'll stay up here and have a look round the castle if you don't mind," said George, "I'm afraid ideas aren't my strong point."

"You may as well have a free look," the giant told George, "one more normal sized food item won't help much and if that young apprentice and Fundin come up with a solution it'll be worth it."

The slab closed with a bang behind Fundin and Jennifer Jane, as they went down into the dwarfish workshops underneath the castle. He lead her along a corridor and eventually turned into a side room, 'a bit like the spell rooms at the Witches' Home', she thought.

There was another dwarf working at one of two drawing boards in the room. Some large tables with drawings spread out on them, a plan file with four drawers in it and several chairs completed the furniture. Fundin pulled up a chair for her and they sat down together at one of the tables. He didn't say anything for several minutes. Jennifer Jane looked round at the other dwarf but he put his finger to his lips and shook his head.

"I don't know a lot about magic," said Fundin at last, "I'm an engineer and craftsman but it seems to me that if you can reverse the spell everything should come right again."

"But that's the whole point, no one can use a spell," said Jennifer Jane, "no magic will work."

"I was just going to make that very observation," said Fundin, looking her straight in the eye rather crossly, "somehow we have to go back in time, or to a place where magic will still work."

Jennifer Jane held her hand up excitedly, Fundin made her feel rather as if she was back at school and somehow it seemed the right thing to do. "Please, I think I know how to make time go backwards."

Fundin looked at her in amazement. "You'll be the first person to do so, if you really can," he exclaimed.

"Well the second actually," said Jennifer Jane modestly, "some time ago I got lost in a third world and one of the people trying to help me was a scientist. He used a gadget with a lot of mirrors driven by an engine to make time go backwards. It started to work but broke before he could complete the experiment. I think he said it was based on a stroboscopic principle."

Fundin asked a lot of questions about the machinery and the circumstances where the experiment had taken place.

"We knew it was nearly working when we saw people riding towards us on bikes. Bill must have just got back to the time when the door was open and we were beginning to see through. Then the machine broke and shortly after that Abigail opened the door by magic and came through with the bicycles."

Fundin looked across at his companion. "Sounds like a fairly typical sloppy human experiment," he said, "the large mirrors he used would have created an excessive load simply by their radial moment of windage. The whole thing wasn't contained enough, so the effect was being dissipated over a far wider area than necessary. Not a bad basic idea though."

"So what we want are narrow steel mirrors, with shafts running along their longest axes to reduce windage. Then we'll need a housing large enough for a wizard to get inside to work some magic and a generator with a large capacity to drive a high speed gearbox."

The second dwarf had been sketching his ideas as he spoke and he passed the paper to Fundin.

Jennifer Jane got up and looked over Fundin's shoulder as he studied the design. "It looks very similar in overall size," she said "but you've got lots of long thin mirrors instead of two or three short wide ones."

"That's the whole point," replied Fundin, "this one should work properly if the principle is sound and your friend seems to have proved that it is."

The second dwarf took back the design and pinned a large clean sheet of paper onto his drawing board. "Two days for the drawings," he said, "then another two for the assembly if you can get the mirrors and generator organised. Say a week at the most for a trial run."

Jennifer Jane went back upstairs to the castle and waited for Sir George to finish his tour. As they rode back towards the Witches' Home she was feeling a lot more cheerful. 'I wonder how the failure of all the magic in the world is affecting everybody else,' she thought to herself.