A Life Less Ordinary by Christopher Nuttall Page A

magically-produced foods either looked good and tasted funny, or looked awful and tasted good. I hadn’t yet worked out how to balance looks and taste.
    “You might want to read the paper this morning.” Master Revels said, as I munched my way through a piece of toast. He opened a mundane newspaper and read from the top. “Police in Livingstone yesterday evening arrested a paedophile and recovered thirty-six girls from his basement. The girls, who had been kidnapped over a period of weeks, were apparently not molested by their captor, although they were drugged in order to prevent them crying out or trying to escape. It is believed that their captor had links to an international ring of child slavers who would have eventually taken the girls out of the country. Further investigations are on-going, but a police spokesperson said that preliminary examinations of the house confirmed the suspicion that three other children met their dooms within its dark walls.”
    He looked up at me. “I told you that they’d come up with an explanation for it somehow,” he said, with a grin. “An international ring of child slavers. What total nonsense.”
    I shrugged. “You don’t think that people will think that it is possible?”
    “Of course it’s possible ,” Master Revels agreed. “It just happens to be very unlikely.”
    He waved his hand at his mug of tea and it refilled itself at once. “Still, all of the loose ends will be tied up soon enough,” he added. “The wanker, who was certainly guilty of murdering at least three other children, will pay the price for his real and imagined crimes. The girls will go back to their homes, none the worse for their experience...and you and I have the satisfaction of knowing that we did a good job and that we get the credit.”
    “That paper says that the police are getting the credit,” I said, wryly.
    “You know what I mean,” Master Revels added. He stood up, still carrying his cup of tea. “Finish your breakfast and wash up, and then meet me in the study. If you still want explanations, I’ll be happy to give them to you.”
    I ate up as quickly as I could, before starting on the washing up. I had asked him, some weeks ago, why he insisted that I do it when he could use magic to do it, but he’d explained that it helped to teach me discipline and patience. Fiona fluttered overhead, stealing the remains of my bacon and chewing on it while I washed, leaving me to wonder what dragons normally ate in the wild. I remembered the far larger dragon I’d seen at the market and shivered. I had a nasty suspicion that the answer was human beings. I finished drying the last of the plates and headed into the study. Master Revels was sitting in his armchair, reading one of the books we’d recovered from the library.
    “Take a seat,” he said, absently. He peered down at a piece of text with a magnifying glass. “Do you think that this is meant to be a...”
    Fiona cleared her throat. “I think you promised some explanations,” she said, firmly. I blinked in surprise. I had never seen Fiona be so assertive before. “You can try to decipher the book later.”
    Master Revels scowled at her, but nodded, closing the book gently and putting it on the table. I couldn’t help but notice that someone had carefully engraved a devil’s head onto the book’s cover, leaving me wondering if it was a threat or a promise. Some magical books had their own defences, from spells that made it impossible for one to see them to spells that cursed anyone who tried to touch them without taking the proper precautions. Master Revels had trained me to watch for the latter, after telling me a series of horror stories about people who had opened one only to find themselves trapped within a pocket dimension.
    “I suppose I do owe you an explanation or two,” Master Revels conceded. I got the impression that he wasn’t keen to talk about it to anyone, even to me. “Where would you like me to