Doctor Sandstorm: Chapter 2: Welcome to Transylvania

The second chapter of my first novella Doctor Sandstorm. This was written in September 2012, and explains a little bit about the book. It's more about description than action. Don't worry, the novel I'm writing now is a million times better. This is positively RUBBISH stuff compared to Resurrection of the Golden Era.

“Well, the Conversion Chamber won't clean itself,” decided Doctor Sandstorm, making herself busy by stooping down to collect bits of the mountains of debris that had gathered, and putting them into a brown sack she had produced from nowhere, seemingly.

“That's what this place is called by the way. The Conversion Chamber. It's because this is where the Wraiths – those creatures you saw – take victims to be turned into new Wraiths. It's only normally with animals, so I'm really surprised they've taken you. And yes, you are underground. Transylvania, in fact. I promise you, it is beautiful. I was just popping by, checking how things were, nice break from Lysander Castle, too dark in there by half, but I picked up enormous energy readings coming from here, and I thought 'well, it's pretty bad sometimes in there, but this isn't normal' so I hotfooted it over here. Damsel in distress, woo hoo! Who could resist? And the Wraiths must be getting more clever if they're onto people now. But maybe that shows that they're weak. If they're using humans, they need stronger Wraiths than normal, so they're either weakening in power or dwindling in numbers”.

“Sorry, did you say 'welcome to Transylvania'?” spluttered Clara. She couldn't believe what was happening. She had been snatched against her will and drugged, and had waken up on an operating table and then a magic woman had broken down the door and sucked two doctors into a walking stick. She thought she would pass out, she had a pounding migraine, and she was tired beyond belief. She desperately wanted to wake up from this terrible nightmare, but somehow she knew it was reality.

“Is that the bit you choose to focus on? Not the impressive Wraith ritual? Yes, we're in Transylvania, but it's not all vampires and Dracula and neck-biting and bloodsucking. If it's that that you want, you need to go to the North of Scotland. There's a few vampire clans over there. They spread downwards a little, Edinburgh's quite notoriously got two rival vampire clans, but that's not what we're talking about”.

“There are vampires in Scotland? I go on holiday to Scotland!”

“Anyway...” continued Doctor Sandstorm, annoyed at the interruption. “Transylvania is a peaceful area of Romania, with some beautiful architecture, I can tell you. Nice... lovely... castles and things. I expect the Wraiths drugged you and you woke up here”.

“I was in New York!”

“Then they're more advanced than I thought. Hmm... no worries anyway. They're pretty stupid anyway. No brain. They rely on thoughts from their controllers”.

“They're robots?”

“Not really”.

“Do they work on their own?”

“No. I'm not advising you should call people stupid, unless they really are, especially at your age. How old are you, nine?” she asked.

“You're three years out,” she said.

“Six?” asked Doctor Sandstorm, looking Clara up and down.

“Er... twelve, thank you very much. And if they don't work on their own, who do they work for?”

“Ah. We don't talk about her”.

“Who?”

“Lady Darkness”.

“I thought you said we don't talk about her! You mentioned her! And who's 'we'?”

“Anyway, Lady Darkness is extremely powerful, unbelievably powerful, creating chaos and anarchy just because that's what she likes to do, and with a horrible taste in pink feathered cloaks. Scheming and manipulative, she possesses many powerful qualities perfect for starting wars, which she is very good at. The Wraiths are her servants”.

“What did you do to the creatures... Wraiths, whatever?”

“The little shabam with the blue light and the cane... I was wondering when you'd ask about that. Thought I'd add a little pizazz into my entrance. That word can mean two different things depending on how you say it, can't it? 'Entrance' as in, when you enter, or 'entrance' as in, put in a trance, mystify. I learned that at the BASIL in my first class of Hypnotics. Anyway, that thing with the Wraiths... well, that was magic”.

“Magic?” spluttered Clara again, disbelieving. This joke had gone too far. Yet again, she had to hold herself back. She could kind of sense that it wasn't a joke.

“Of course. It's an old thing, magic, dangerous and not to be messed with. Unless of course, you're me. The magical supervisor is a nice doddery old guy named Aldred Lysander, and he's the one who controls the flow of magic in and out of countries and who uses magic, when and where”.

“You mean there's magic that's existed for ages, and nobody's found out about it? How's it been kept a secret?”

“Well, people have found out, over the centuries since Saxon King Offa discovered magic. Journalists, looking for a story of the century, but they went to sleep that night after typing up their article, and woke up upside down, suspended by the ankles from their chandeliers with their computer files deleted”.

“Okay...”

“That's just one example, by the way. We can do loads better than that. The chandeliers and computers scenario is created by two simple spells. The first a word meaning 'to suspend', the second a word meaning 'to wipe'”.

“I can't believe this is happening”.

“Magic's not all just about blasting evil creatures away and boring stuff like that. Some of it's quite interesting and dare I say it, though I probably shouldn't, fun. Name?”

“Uh... Clara Green”

“Clara Green, do you fancy something to drink?”

And with that Doctor Sandstorm clicked her fingers, and two cups of steaming hot chocolate appeared in front of her, hanging in the air motionlessly.

“Go on, take one. It's nice,” she offered. Clara realised that she was still on the operating table, got up sheepishly, turned to her black jacket in the corner, put it on, rolled up the sleeves, and walked over to Doctor Sandstorm warily. She took the hot chocolate and drank it. The mug had a picture of a sheep on it.

“Mmm... that's nice,” she said as she slurped. And it was. Creamy, tasty, warm and fiery in Clara's throat, giving her some much-needed warmth.

“Marshmallows, cream, steaming hot, my treat. But drinks go perfectly with food, naturally...” she clicked her fingers and there appeared in the air, a tray of assorted biscuits. Doctor Sandstorm, whose hands, Clara noticed, were white-gloved, reached out and picked two custard creams delicately from the tray. Clara herself decided on a chocolate bourbon. After some time spent drinking and eating, including a half-minute trying to extract the biscuit from the hot chocolate after it fell in, Clara decided to speak up for herself.

“Doctor Sandstorm – that's a weird name. Doctor what Sandstorm?”

“Excuse me!” she responded in mock anger. “Have you ever asked a teacher what their first name was?”

“Um... yeah”.

“Good. I hoped I wasn't the only one. But if I told you my first name, we'd get too personal. And I can't allow that to happen. I need to drop you off back where you belong as soon as possible, after my friend's run a medical inspection on you, just a check-up”.

“And I just pretend that nothing's happened?”

“Exactly. Back to your boring, normal life. Forget about this. But first, a brief history of magic. To satisfy you. The magic I just did there, with the hot chocolate and lovely biscuits, was Conjury. Simple enough once you get the hang of it, but tricky to master at first. There's many other types of magic. Potion Brewing's easy enough with guidance, Numeric Arithmancy is predicting the future using numbers, which in turn is a category of Divination or Seeing, the art of seeing the future and more importantly, reading it and interpreting it. Can be useless and a load of codswallop, but can be incredibly important. Hypnotics is a bit of a fuzzy one, deviously hard, and so's Alchemy, but alchemists have a shady reputation round here. Time Control is the control of time, obviously. There's loads of other categories of magic, including some dangerous ones – Necromancy, or Evocation, the study of death and resurrecting dead spirits. Two good ones are Arcane Magic, which is primitive yet effective, and Demonology, the study of demons. Handy to learn so you can get inside their head and think as they think. But to do that you have other branches of magic. To get inside their head – literally – you need to use some simple Shrinking Charms, and to think as they think you need to use practice, Mind Reading and Mind Resistance. For all the dangerous magical disciplines, there's some nice fun ones to balance it out – Animal Charming, Healing Magic, Elemental Control. There are hexes and jinxes and curses and incantations and spells, but you won't be able to do any of that”.

“Why not?”

“Partly because I'm dropping you off back where you belong and leaving you there, but partly because magic is generally born into people. You can't suddenly become a magician, or go to sleep one night and wake up in the morning with magical powers, no no NO no. Magicians are born with magic. It flows inside their veins. It's in their very DNA, their existence”.

“You sound very confident. Knowledgeable. Clever”.

“Well, I've had a very, very long time to learn about magic. Ages and ages and ages. Years and years. Decades, even.”.

“You don't look that old! How old are you – thirty?”

Doctor Sandstorm pointed her finger up to the ceiling. “You flatter me, but higher”.

“Thirty-five?”

“204,” she replied calmly.

“Very funny”.

“No, seriously. I was born in 1808. Magicians have an ability sometimes to change their form, or even lock their physical appearance into the appearance they had when they were younger. If you don't want to look like an old geezer, you can simply lock your appearance one day and stay looking like that for the rest of your life. It's dangerous, but practical. I locked my appearance when I was thirty-three. Locking isn't just a part of streetdance”.

“Wow. Magic exists,” said Clara out loud.

“Thinking aloud, Clara?” asked Doctor Sandstorm. “Bad idea. All sorts of evil can get inside your head. It's a practice called Mintealectura, which is the Romanian for 'Mind Reading'. Most magical spells are in the Romanian language, and Romania is the base for all magic, really. Aldred Lysander lives in this country, as do most of the powerful warlocks, witches and sorcerers.

“Of course, for every spell there is a counter-spell. Resistance to mintealectura is known as rezistentminte, or 'Resistant Mind”.

“Resistant Mint and Minty Lecture? Okay, I won't be thinking aloud any more”.

“Magic can be non-verbal or verbal you know”.

“Stop trying to tempt me!”

“Right then. We need to see my friend Vir, the doctor, and he can apare here. That's the art of Appearing, or Teleportation, a rare gift, but one you can learn, with time. All the magic I've told you about I've learned, as many others have, at the BASIL school”.

“BASIL?”

“The biggest and best school of magic”.

“Named after a herb?”

“It's an acronym, Clara”.

“Of what?”

“Beatrix Arwald School of Intelligent Learning”.

“Sounds like a jumped-up boarding school”.

“Beatrix Arwald, the founder and an incredibly wonderful magician. Born 1592, still alive now, showing her age a bit, she locked at eighty-five. 'Intelligent Learning' – well, we don't want to put the 'Beatrix Arwald School of Magic” for a start, BASM isn't the best acronym, and secondly, we don't want everybody to know about magic. Anyway, we call Vir. Then he'll give you a quick medical check, and we get the next train out of here. We need to get you back home, Clara Green”.

“How do I explain all this to my teachers? My parents? My friends”.

“Leave that to me. I'll perform a little spell on them, make them think nothing's happened and you've been there the whole time”.

“So I just go on like nothing happened, forget about you, those creatures, and everything that happened”.

“I can't allow myself to become friendly with a non-magic person. Shh!” She closed her eyes and bowed her head, deep in concentration. Then, suddenly, from thin air, two men popped into the room.

The first was dressed in long, flowing robes of vermillion red, with small, gold patterns woven into them. The patterns looked like ornate little squiggles, sitting in their individual nests of vermillion red silk. He had an old, kind face and had clearly locked as an OAP, like Beatrix Arwald did. He had a long white beard and matching moustache, with small round blue eyes.

The second man was a little bit taller and looked a tad younger, though still quite old. This man had only a small beard, bigger than a goatee, but nothing fancy. His beard was grey and he had no moustache. He had a clump of white hair on his head, and wore robes of ebony black, which reached down to his toes and draped over his arms. They too were emblazoned with small gold squiggly patterns. This man must have noticed me staring at his robes, as he said

“Yes, I know, they are nice. Ebony black, with gold leaf symbols. From Selecta, of course. But you wouldn't know Selecta, naturally. Wait – hang on! Who the dickens are you?”

“I've just rescued this girl from two Wraiths, Aldred. They've taken her all the way from New York."

“Hmm... shouldn't be a problem”.

“What I thought. Maybe you should talk to Madame Geldhardt about it. Now this girl is called Clara, and Vir, can you run a medical on her before I take her back home?”

“Sure,” agreed the man in red, whose name appeared to be Vir.

“Vir Astym,” he said. “General expert and magical doctor”.

“She shows a lot of enthusiasm,” said Sandstorm to Aldred Lysander.

“Well, maybe enthusiasm is what the magical community needs right now. Warlocks are dying, we need new blood. Doctor Sandstorm, would you come here please”.

Sandstorm spun in full circles over to Aldred childishly.

“And stop being so babyish”. Aldred and Sandstorm had a heated discussion, and eventually Sandstorm nodded her head, mumbling something back to Aldred.

“Clara, me and Doctor Sandstorm have reached a joint decision”

“Though it was mostly him,” said Sandstorm.

“That we shall offer you a place in the magical community. We'll give you a few days to think about it, and we can use our magical skills to cast an enchantment whereby a complete copy of you always appears to be in your house or at school, like normal, with your memory input into the copy to live your life. And you can join us

and become a magician, learn magic. Come to the BASIL school”.

“Doctor Sandstorm said people had to be born with magic,” Clara chirped.

“Indeed, that is normally the case, but in some rare instances when somebody shows real potential or the magical community is at stake, I, the magical supervisor, can give you the powers of a magician. You can have equal magic inside you as me, Vir or Sandstorm, and train to become a magician. What do you say to that?”

“I...I don't know. I mean, I'll have to leave my family behind”.

“You can visit them when you wish”.

“And...oh, I don't know, can I have a think about it?”

 

“We'll take you back home to have a think. We need to cast that spell on your classmates and teachers, remember. Don't want them thinking you wandered off”.

“But I did!”

“Vir, do the medical test. Quick-sharp now. We're off to Transylvania Central Station”.

COMING NEXT ON THE BLOG: Doctor Who-Director of the Monsters-Episode 1 (an original Seventh Doctor and Ace story. It's three parts long but I've only written two parts at the moment, so you might have to wait until I've finished Part 3 before I put Part 1 up. Sorry.)