You boys take too many liberties.”

Then the boys ask her: “Please smell the rose, miss. Please take it. We’ll pay for his breakfast.”

Some of them are asking for real, others are just clowning. Because they’re pleased when something like this happens.

After the lesson they took up a collection.

“Put a penny in the cap for the hungry glutton.”

They bought twelve rolls, a dozen – a whole bagful.

“There you are. Eat these as a snack, after your frog.”

Kaytek has grown proud, stand-offish and impatient.

Whatever happens, at once he says: “Do you want a smack in the face? You dope! Just look at him: the jackass is playing the wise guy.”

No one likes him anymore because he keeps asking for trouble. Now he’s even started provoking the older boys.

One day he has a quarrel with a boy in the sixth grade. He’s really getting into hot water.

They’ve surrounded him in a circle. They’re all staring, expecting to see a fight.

“Are you going to call me a jackass too?” says the older boy.

“Sure I will. And I’ll give you ears like a jackass as well.”

Kaytek has a small mirror in his pocket, which he uses to reflect sunbeams on the wall, even in class during lessons.

He hands the boy the mirror and says: “You’ve got them. Take a look.”

He focuses his mind, bending his wizard’s will like a bow. He demands and he commands.

The boy looks in the mirror: his ears have grown longer and sprung upward. And then they’re gone.

What the heck? Was that real or was it just an illusion?

“Where did you get this mirror? Sell it to me. Teach me how that’s done.”

They’ve forgotten about the quarrel. They think it’s some kind of trick.

“Give it back,” says Kaytek, with an effort.

Now the other boys are scared. They can see he’s gone pale, and his lips have turned blue. He’s leaning against a wall.

They run off, and Kaytek is left alone.

“The spell for changing people into animals must be really tough if just the ears have worn me out so badly.”

He feels weak and lonely.

He imagined it all quite differently in the days when he so badly longed to be a wizard

Until he did his thirteenth spell, the last one in a month: the flies.

The teacher is explaining something. Kaytek isn’t listening. He’s thinking about this and that. He doesn’t even know where he is and what’s happening around him.

“Did the rose I gave the lady teacher disappear at once too? Maybe quite the opposite – maybe it won’t ever wilt or dry up, because it’s magical, it’s enchanted.”

He gazes at the stove, at the ceiling, at the walls.

He notices a fly on the stove.

The fly is moving upward, quickly, as if it’s in a hurry and is worried about being late. Then it stops, as if it has just remembered something, and goes back down again. And so on, three times over: up and down, up and down the stove. Then it flies away and disappears.

What was it looking for on the stove, and what made it take off like that?

Kaytek looks around, and sees a fly sitting on the wall. And the same thing happens: it goes up three times, then down three times. Maybe it’s the same one?

And then he sees four flies on the ceiling: two big ones and two little ones. They’re marching funnily in pairs. Then a fifth one flies up.

The teacher has turned around and is staring at the class.

“Did you understand that?”

Then Kaytek gets a fright because the teacher tells him to repeat what he’s just said.

At once Kaytek thinks: Make a fly sit on the teacher’s nose.

And the fly is there, waiting for further orders.

Make it three flies . . . he thinks. Make it five!

All five flies come and sit on the teacher’s nose.

The teacher waves his hands about, but the flies keep coming back, because flies are persistent.

That should have been the end of it, but as if someone else were giving the orders for him, involuntarily Kaytek thinks: Make it a thousand flies. Ten thousand – on his nose.

At once, a huge swarm of flies comes crashing through the open window, a whole pack of them.

Kaytek hides under the bench, pretending he’s dropped his pen and is busy picking it up.

The teacher says something or shouts. There’s no sound, just bzzzzz – buzzing.

Then the teacher rushes out and slams the door.

There’s laughter.