Battlesaurus Read Free Page B

his own room, the microsaurus underfoot. His mother is sitting on his bed, unmoving and unspeaking, but he can sense her anger from the rigid way she holds her head. Then he sees the open door to his closet.
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    Willem’s mother is a French-speaking Walloon, from Wallonia in the Southern Netherlands. His father was from Flanders, to the north. He was a magician, a conjurer of some reputation, who performed in the royal courts of Europe and was a favorite of Napol é on Bonaparte, the French emperor. But during one engagement at the Tuileries Palace in Paris, he did something to incur the emperor’s displeasure. What it was, Willem does not know. It was never discussed. But such was the nature of the emperor that his displeasure quickly turned to wrath and Willem’s father fled Paris. His disappearance from the palace and escape to Wallonia was perhaps his greatest conjuring trick of all.
    It is said that Napol é on smashed crystal goblets and hurled crockery through palace windows when he heard of the magician’s flight.
    The family was forced into hiding. Willem’s mother was the daughter of a baker and that had lent them their disguise. His father shaved off his beard, grew his hair in the Walloon style, and under his wife’s tutelage the Great Geerts became Monsieur Verheyen, the baker.
    The costumes and equipment and other magic trickery were sealed into chests and never spoken of, lest someone in the village should discover the true identity of the simple baker and his well-spoken but humble wife.
    For a Flemish family, hiding in Wallonia was a masterpiece of misdirection. For years the emperor’s men scoured Flanders, never suspecting that their quarry was hiding in French-speaking Wallonia, almost within sight of the French border.
    The choice of village was clever for other reasons too. It lay on the edge of the Sonian Forest, and on the other side of the forest was the city of Brussels. Should they ever be discovered, they could steal away through the trees of the forest and lose themselves again in the bustling streets of the city.
    It was a brilliant deception from a master magician.
    For six years they lived peacefully in the village, hoping that the time would come when the shadow of the emperor no longer hovered over them.
    And that day drew closer. Slowly Napol é on’s empire crumbled. Then came his final defeat and exile to the island of Elba.
    But Willem’s father did not live to see that. Not even a master magician was a match for the dangerous beasts that roamed the Sonian Forest. At the funeral, his coffin had to be weighted with river stones. Willem was told there was barely enough left of the body to fill a hatbox.
    Although hidden from the world, his father’s chests were a constant source of mystery and wonderment to young Willem.
    Many times he sat and stared at them, his mind hardly daring to imagine what magic and treasures lay inside. After the death of his father, he opened them often, dressing himself in cloaks that were far too large for him, wondering at the secrets of the hats and the pouches. Then he found the letter. It had fallen down inside one of the chests and only a corner of the paper protruded from behind a sack of potions. Perhaps it had originally been placed on top.
    To my son.
    It was a letter written in case the father was no longer around when the boy was grown to a man.
    The letter outlined the boy’s inheritance. The magic contained in the boxes. Willem read it with breathless excitement. It was many pages long and detailed the ways of the magician: the Glorpy, the French Drop, and even the Guillotine. It explained the powders and the potions, how to use them, how to make them. And the secrets of the grand illusions.
    Willem kept the letter from his mother. She would not approve. But in quiet times, when she was out, or asleep, he taught himself the secrets of the chests. He learned the ways of the