The boys must have sprinkled something into them.”

The monitor doesn’t know, he hasn’t seen anything. There was ink. No one touched the inkwells. How could he not have noticed?

The teacher licks his finger to taste the water once, twice, then spits it out and shrugs his shoulders. He’s pretending to understand what’s going on.

“Just wait. I’m going to tell the headmaster. The whole class will answer for this. Enough of this hooliganism. You won’t get away with it. You can write with pencils.”

But they don’t have any pencils. So there was no test.

Kaytek’s ninth spell caused even greater confusion.

They were having a handicraft lesson.

In fact, handicraft can be fun if the teacher makes an effort and the boys do what he says. But if not, handicraft is even more tedious than a regular lesson.

Kaytek sees there’s a long time to go till the end of the lesson.

For a week now every single spell has worked. So he thinks: I’ll give it a try.

I want. I command. Make the bell go now.

And it does. But it’s different from usual. The sound seems to come from above, as if the bell were flying through the air and ringing.

The boys pile out of the classroom wondering why the lesson’s over so soon, and feeling thrilled by the surprise.

The headmaster comes out of his office in a fury.

“What’s going on here? Why? Who?”

“I didn’t ring it,” says the janitor.

“So who did?”

“I don’t know.”

The old man stands there with tears in his eyes.

“Headmaster, either believe me, or don’t. I am not drunk. It’s not the first year I’ve been working at this school. I know what kind of tricks the boys get up to. And I tell you: there are ghosts or something in charge at this school.”

“All right, all right. Ghosts! Please come to my office. Boys, back to your classrooms!”

Kaytek stretched and yawned, feeling discouraged.

It was never going to be possible to do something really interesting. It always seemed to end a bit stupidly somehow.

So he was a wizard – and what of it?

He felt sorry for the janitor. What had the old fellow done wrong? And the headmaster had taken him into his office and was probably telling him off.

Kaytek really didn’t want to upset anyone.

Then two serious spells worked for Kaytek – one straight after the other.

One of his classmates is a rich boy.

He brings various goodies for breakfast. He’s greedy and sly – he never offers any of it to anyone else. He brings in cream cakes, then licks the paper with his great big tongue.

First thing in the morning Kaytek sees the glutton getting out his package. Kaytek stares hard, takes a deep breath of air, and thinks: Make him have a frog instead of breakfast.

At once there’s a scream.

“Frogs in the classroom!”

The greedy boy is goggle-eyed, frozen to the spot as if paralyzed. The frog hops off, and the rest of the boys are laughing.

“Look at that! He’s brought a frog for his breakfast.”

“It’s sure to be a foreign one!”

“With cream on top!”

“If he brought it, let him eat it.”

Just then the teacher comes into the classroom.

She makes a long speech.

“That’s not a clever joke. But what’s worse is that someone has stolen two ham rolls, a cake, and an orange.”

Kaytek can see he has upset the teacher, so he wants to console her.

Make a rose appear on the table in front of the teacher.

Then he’s sorry he said that, because something stabs at his heart and something yanks painfully inside him – it’s like an electric shock, or like a tooth being pulled, as if that rose has been torn from his chest.

And there it is, lying on the table.

That other time the teacher asked: “Who took my pen? It was here a moment ago.”

This time the lady teacher asks: “Who put this rose here? I don’t want it.