Thank you for helping me.”

“Ah!” She gives him forty groshys.

“I won’t spend it. I earned it. I’ll keep it as a souvenir.”

And he’s pleased it’s his own money, and he knows what he got it for, and who gave it to him.

He wrote in the journal: R. to my h. T.s.i.d.b.

No one will understand it, even if they read it. Only he knows what it means . . .

Because Kaytek wants to have a hideout. He has to find an isolated place where he can do his spells far away from other people.

He’ll have jars with healing ointment and bottles filled with the elixir of life.

Instead of a skull, for now, he’ll put a bone in there – a horse’s jawbone with white teeth.

He found the bone in the sand by the River Vistula and took it home.

“What do you want those bottles and that bone for?” says Grandma. “You have enough trash already.”

“It’ll come in handy,” says Kaytek grudgingly.

Grown-ups think everything they don’t care about is dumb, and everything you can’t buy or sell is trash.

Two weeks went by. Then Kaytek started to get impatient. Because if we all look forward to a holiday or a birthday, how might a wizard on vacation feel?

What’s more, things had started to go wrong at home and at school.

Until Kaytek got mad – not just with himself and his stupid joke with the tram, but most of all with school. It was like this:

He’s the class monitor. He refuses to let the boys into the classroom. They’re pulling the door handle down, and he’s pushing it up.

A whole gang of them have gathered outside the door.

It’s a metal handle. Who could have seen it coming? But meanwhile – crrrrack! It’s broken.

At once the teacher says to him: “Are you up to your old tricks again? Spoiling and breaking everything? Look – the walls are spattered and the benches are scored. Do you want to study in a pigsty?”

It’s always true that as soon as a hooligan settles down, the moment one single thing goes wrong for him, absolutely everything collapses around him.

So his father will have to pay for the handle, in the third recess he has a fight with another boy, and in class he gets an unfair grade.

On top of everything else, that really riled him up. What has good conduct got to do with his studies? If he knows the lesson, he should get a good grade. A hooligan can be a good student, and a quiet kid can be a lazybones or a dimwit. Why bother to study if they don’t respect you for it?

That day the lady teacher was sick, and the other teacher sent for his father.

His father had his own worries then, because Grandma was sick and he was only working three days a week, so his income was low and they were late paying their bills.

“Just you wait,” thought Kaytek. “The month will soon be over. Just let me get into some magic spells and the whole school will fly off to the cannibals. I’ll change that teacher into a rat and feed him on F grades. I’ll fill his bowl with Fs and he’ll have to eat them – bon appétit!”

He thought his father would be really mad.

But he wasn’t; he hugged Kaytek, kissed him on the head, and just said sadly: “Make an effort, Antek. I know it’s hard for you.”

Straightaway Kaytek wrote in his journal:

My resolutions:

1. No joking. No clowning around.

2. No fighting.

3. No chasing about with the boys.

4. Do my homework.

5. Read a lot.

Kaytek reads. At home there’s trouble. Now Grandma, now Mom are getting weaker by turns.

Until along came the last day of the month.

So unexpectedly.

Tomorrow his power will be back. What should he start with? Apart from the bottles and jars, he hasn’t made any preparations at all.

After five classes he went home. He didn’t eat dinner: there’d be more left for his dad.

So he goes out by the river. He crosses a bridge.

It’s a muggy day.

He’ll go out of the city.

He hangs onto the back of a tram. He goes five stops.