Nogdorf placed a few pieces of wood over the embers and instructed Lester to stand on them after he read the speech to him. Lester cleared his throat and said, “Fellow creatures of the forest, this is Lester, your herbal wizard. I have an important announcement. Please listen carefully because this pertains to everyone. There are humans invading our forest and Nogdorf and I have come up with a plan to get rid of them. We ask for everyone’s utmost cooperation. Everyone to the south of the great forest flats needs to pack up their valuables and find another home and move first thing in the morning. A large area will be turned into a great swamp. This will unfortunately be uninhabitable for you, but will not be the kind of land the humans will want to build on.” Lester started hopping from one foot to the other while he spoke. “I must ask you to save your tears from losing your home until after you move.” Lester was hopping faster from one foot to the other and trying to finish up his speech when the wood he was standing on caught fire. “That is all and thank you for your cooperation,” with those closing words, Lester jumped off of the platform.
“Nogdorf, my wooden platform caught fire,” Lester said.
“I see that. It must have gotten pretty hot,” Nogdorf responded with a chuckle. “Have you ever heard of a hotfoot?”
“It’s not funny Nogdorf. I could have gotten burned,” Lester said, indignantly. “What were you thinking?”
“It helped you not to embellish, but to stick to the point,” Nogdorf said.
“Now that that is settled, we must go check on the animals and see that they were listening and took what you said seriously. We also must check the perimeters of the area to prepare for tomorrow morning,” Nogdorf said.
Nogdorf and Lester spent the rest of the day and the night in this difficult endeavor. In fact they worked right through until the sun came up and it was time to do the spell to create the swamp.
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Quite a few animals had gathered to watch the goings on of the morning. Lester had brought something from each area of the property that they would transform. He laid his treasures on the ground.The varied treasures included: a peacock feather, a small bag of bear scat, a raccoon claw, a lucky rabbit’s foot (Lester wasn’t sure whether or not to be offended when he discovered it???), a hummingbird nest and a beautiful piece of quartz. These were not herbs, obviously, but were usable by the herbal wizard for transforming the land.
As soon as he laid down the treasures, Nogdorf asked, “Are you ready to begin?”
Lester took a couple of deep breaths and said, “Minimize, Maximize, marshy, mushy mud, gators and herons, fish and snails, skeeters and leeches, whoosh.” And with that, there was a new, huge swamp just beyond where they were standing. You could hear the creatures take in a deep breath and let it out. Lester’s mouth dropped open and he just stood there, dazed.
Nogdorf told him to go get a nap and meet him at 5:00 in the evening. They were both happy and excited, but exhausted. When they got back together that evening, Nogdorf said, “I want to go to the side of the great swamp where the men will show up. It is important to hear their reactions.” So he transported them both to the town side of the swamp, they found hiding places and waited.
They waited all night, but the time wasn’t wasted. Nogdorf had Lester go over all of the spells he had learned and was happy to see Lester had retained a lot of valuable information. Early the next morning, they heard a car pull up and looked to see a Mercedes convertible with two men in suits.
The car door opened and a man’s voice could be heard, “Well, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. What do you make of this, Tom? A swamp can’t just appear overnight, can it? Did you get our geologists working on it? We need to know if there is a chance it will go away just as quickly as it appeared.”
“I got our man on it this very morning, Steve. I haven’t heard back from him, yet. This is completely unprecedented. There is not only a swamp here, but all of the wildlife and plants that inhabit a swamp are also here. If I didn’t know better, I would say someone had performed black magic. Is that your phone ringing? Maybe it is the geologists with the report.”
