Mr. Mincas and the Missing Words.

Mr. Mincas was a wizard, just not a very good one. He had lost count of the
number of times he wanted to turn someone into a frog only to end up with a rabbit
or the number of times he wanted to disappear in a puff of smoke only to find when
the smoke had cleared that he was still standing in the same spot.

The main reason for his failure as a great wizard was his reading ability. To put it
plainly, he just wasn’t very good at it.

This could prove to be a dangerous thing when you are a wizard. All it took was one
wrong ingredient in a spell and you could end up turning a small boy, or girl for that
matter, into a giant brussels sprout eating bogey monster.

And so he spent a great deal of time thinking of ways to improve his reading, never
hitting on the most obvious solution, which was to practice. But that would mean
work and why would you do more work when you had magic to do it for you.


One day he hatched a cunning plan.

It went like this, he would conjure a special spell, which would take all the words
from all the books and transfer them into his own head. This way he would know all
the words in the world and would never get a spell wrong again. It would also make
him the most powerful wizard in the world.


Now the hero of our story, which by now may be the only story left, which still has
any words in it, is Ben. Now Ben is just an ordinary ten year old. He doesn’t always
like school; he is not keen on vegetables and hates girls.

One thing Ben did like, were books; when the other boys in Ben’s class were out
playing football or cricket, Ben could be found under a tree with his nose stuck in a
book. Some of his classmates took to calling him Bookworm Ben, which most of
the time did not bother him.


It was Friday afternoon and as usual Ben could be found in the school library
reading. He had found a fascinating book about a man with a time machine having
exciting adventures in far away lands.
He was just getting to the climax when suddenly the words started to fade on the
page.

Ben rubbed his eyes, thinking perhaps there was something wrong with them,
maybe he had done too much reading. But when he opened them again the page
was totally blank.

“Huh what’s happened to the words?” Ben asked confused, flicking through the rest
of the book, and finding all the pages blank.

He got up and grabbed another book from the shelf, opened it in the middle and
found that to was full of blank white pages. He checked half a dozen more only to
find them all empty of words.

It was then that Ben saw him, through a gap in the books. A funny looking man,
Mr. Mincas, muttering to himself and in front of him floating in mid air was an
orange glowing ball, about football size.

Ben eased himself around the bookshelf he was hiding behind to get a better look.
He could see all the words freeing themselves from the pages of the books they
had been bound to and then disappearing into the floating light ball.

When the parade of words had ceased, Ben saw Mr. Mincas mutter some more
words creating a puff of smoke. Ben heard some coughing and when the smoke
cleared the man was still standing there. Ben saw the man looked a bit confused,
then he heard him say “Blast” before Mr. Mincas ran for the door. Ben was amazed
at what he had just witnessed, what was this man up to?
Ben decided the only way to find out was to follow the man. When Ben got outside the man was nowhere to be seen.


By the end of the week the word shortage had reached nearly every part of the town.
All of the town’s bookshops and the school libraray were closed

The Mayor was on the news, “It really is a sorry state. Every book in the country is
just full of blank pages. The police are working around the clock trying to locate the
missing words, but have not found any leads”

Ben decided it was time to do something about the crisis. But how to find the
strange man? He decided to take a bike ride and think about how he was going to
locate the word thief. Ben was just cycling through the town centre, when there!
There he was, the word thief, rushing through the shoppers with what looked like a
fishing net.

Ben went in pursuit; he followed Mr. Mincas back through the town centre, passed
the park into a quiet street. Mr. Mincas disappeared into a large rather run down
looking house.
Ben found an open window at the back of the house; it was just big enough for him
to squeeze through.
Inside the house was dark, but not entirely quiet. Ben could make out the sounds
of someone moaning and complaining coming from upstairs.

Ben followed the noise up to the very top of the house and to the attic, Ben opened
the door very slightly and there pacing up and down, scratching his head was the
man from the library, but that wasn’t all there was, for floating in the air above Mr.
Mincas’ head was hundred of words. They buzzed and darted about, trying to avoid
the net that Mr. Mincas had obviously bought especially to catch the escapees.

Ben decided he should confront the man; he didn’t look very dangerous, in fact Mr.
Mincas looked kind of sad and very tired.
Ben opened the door further and entered to attic. “Errrrrr, excuse me” said Ben ducking to avoid a flying word.

Mr. Mincas swung around “How did you get in here and what do you want?”

“I saw you at my school library, I saw the orange ball and the words disappearing
from all the books” Ben said, looking up at the flock of words.

“Oh that! A lot of good that did me, why do my plans never work?”

“What plan?” asked Ben

“My plan to take all the words from the books and transfer to my head, but just look
they have all escaped and I cannot get them back in the ball let alone in my head”

“But why would you want to do that?” asked Ben

“I just wanted to read better, my spells never work and things always go wrong.

Ohhhhhh! I’m a failure, I will never be a great wizard” moaned Mincas

“Why don’t you just put all the words back and I will teach you to read better”
offered Ben.

“That’s just the problem, I can’t put the words back as I can’t read the spell”
groaned Mr. Mincas

“Oh I see, that is a problem. Well maybe I can help with the spell. I am pretty good
at reading, in fact I am top of my class”

“Well lucky you!” said Mr. Mincas rather rudely.

“No need to be like that. If you don’t want my help, I can just go. Maybe I should
call the police” threatened Ben turning for the door.

“No, no wait! I didn’t mean it, Oh please help” pleaded Mr. Mincas

Ben thought about for a while, he did miss reading and this would ensure the books
were filled once again with their words.

“Ok where is this spell?” asked Ben.

So together they worked, Mr. Mincas showing Ben what to read and Ben reading
out the spell. Soon all the words flew out of the open window and back to their
rightful owners. From then on everything returned back to normal.


After that on every Tuesday and Thursday after school, Ben would cycle around to
Mr. Mincas’ house and help him learn to read.
Mr. Mincas soon became a very good reader and even stopped casting spells
which caused trouble.