Chapter Text
“SEPTIMUS! WHERE ARE MY BOOTS?” yelled Marcia.
Septimus blushed. “They’re… I put them… You know how Spit Fyre was more interested in the food than lighting the ovens for the Grate Magykal Bakyng Showe?”
“Yes ...?” said Marcia, not sure if she would regret letting Spit Fyre help out with the showe.
Septimus continued, “I thought I could train him.”
“That’s a good idea, Septimus. But what does that have to do with my boots?”
“You know, when you train an animal, you have to give it some kind of reward. And I remembered when Spit Fyre ate my boots, so - “
“YOU FED SPIT FYRE MY BOOTS?” screamed Marcia, and some birds flew away from a tree outside the Wizard Tower.
“And instead of the boots, you have a well-trained dragon. He’s such a good boy.”
“If he was a good boy,” said Marcia, “you wouldn’t need to train him in the first place!”
“Think of it this way, we’ll earn enough money from the Grate Magykal Bakyng Showe that you can buy new boots!”
Marcia walked away, face-palming. Now Septimus could keep training Spit Fyre to light the ovens without hearing Marcia complain. The Grate Magykal Bakyng Showe was a game show in which bakers have to bake a different kind of pastry every week. At the end of every episode, one baker is eliminated. This caused some controversy at first, because viewers were afraid that the contestant who went home might become an ingredient in the next week’s show. In the last round of every episode, the bakers havce to combine Magyk with cooking and practice the impressive art of Bakyng. Septimus would be one of the Bakyrs, as well as O. Beetle Beetle, Simon, Sally Mullin, Foxy, Jenna, and the buffoon who only Septimus and Jenna knew was really the hunter. The final episode of the show would be Septimus’s ExtraOrdinary Wizard ceremony. If he made it to the finals, he would make a big boot for Spit Fyre. Marcia was sad about not being ExtraOrdinary Wizard for much longer, but she liked Septimus and she knew he would be a good leader even if he wasn’t a perfectinist like her.
Septimus walked out of the Wizard Tower and into the garden where Spit Fyre stayed. It was a hot, sunny day, so Spit Fyre flopped in a nice patch of sunlight. Septimus scratched under Spit Fyre’s chin. “You’re such a nice dragon, I’m going to have a surprise for you when I become ExtraOrdinary Wizard,” Septimus promised.
Chickens? Thought Spit Fyre. That would be a good surprise. Or a big pumpkin. As soon as I got to eat one they moved them out of my garden. I wonder why they did that. Then Spit Fyre felt so pleasant in his nice sunspot that he stopped thinking about food and fell asleep.
Septimus walked away absent-mindedly and almost bumped into Jenna, who was pushing a wheelbarrow full of tires. “I have an important job to do, according to Ignatius the One-and-a-Half-Armed,” she panted.
“WHO??” shouted Septimus, and not because of the strange nickname. “You mean that pirate who Marcia told me about? All he wants to do is find this Jem and he’ll do anything to get it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was asking 14-year-olds to do his real work for him so he could go out and look for it.”
“What do you mean, ‘real work’? Like, a day job, and being a pirate is just his hobby?”
“No, but he hasn’t been a very successful pirate, since he only looks for that one Jem and nothing else. So he found a job as a banker.”
“They let a pirate be a banker?” Jenna exclaimed.
“That’s what Marcia thought too, but Beetle says he’s pretty honest. I think if he stole the money, he’d be afraid that when he was in jail, someone would find the jem first.”
“Right,” said Jenna, and she headed down the path with the wheelbarrow. Septimus followed her. They finally stopped at an even larger wheelbarrow without wheels. It was just a barrow. “I’m supposed to put the tires from this wheelbarrow onto the big one,” she explained. “Then I have to wheel more tires in that wheelbarrow to another wheelbarrow, and then - “
“Hold on! You’re the princess! You should be making Ignatius do the work instead of the other way around!”
Jenna sighed. “He said he’d let me on his ship if I helped him with the wheelbarrow thing, because with a hook hand, he can’t exactly use a wheelbarrow.”
Septimus still thought there was something wrong with that reasoning. “He’s just lazy, and, like I said, you’re a princess, so you can make him take you with him if you’re that curious.”
“He’s a pirate, though, so I wanted to stay on his good side.”
Septimus face-palmed and walked away. Ignatius the One-and-a-Half-Armed stepped into view. “Just what I was waiting for. Now, who wants to play a game of ring toss with me?” he asked what appeared to be an empty boat yard. Suddenly, a few more pirates and residents of the port came out of hiding. None of them wanted Septimus to know what they were doing, in case he told Marcia, who would have a cow if she knew what they were about to do. Basically, ring toss with Ignatius worked like normal ring toss, except that the tires were the rings and they were supposed to toss them onto his fake half arm. This made the game a lot harder because if the hook popped a tire, the player who threw the tire was out. This was the main reason Marcia would have a cow, because they were wasting the ExtraOrdinary Wizarddom’s rubber. But the players knew that this would be their last game, because after that they had to put the tires on a wheelbarrow and have larger tires in their place. Eventually, they would just have a lot of barrows and popped tires, and they would be ready to put the largest tires of all on the boat. What they didn’t know was that Jenna had been collecting the popped tires and using them to train Spit Fyre, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time and rubber.
When Spit Fyre earned his tires later that night, he thought, “Why does she always give me the ones that taste like pirate hooks?” And, when Jenna wasn’t looking, he face palmed.