This would be a good time for us to talk about some things that happened long before that sunny day when Rae and Vanny (and I) met Mr. Quackers for the first time. The story of how Mr Quackers came to be in a small swimming pool in a small garden in a small town in Hungary is a long and complicated one, but I will do my best to tell it.

(When I say ‘long and complicated’, I really mean it. This story comes in four parts and is almost four thousand words long (3,975 words, to be exact). You shouldn’t try to read it all in one go unless you have a bit of time on your hands!)

Mr. Quackers and the Magic Gems

Part One - Four More Witches

I know that you’ve already heard about the Sand Witch and her three sisters, the Sea Witch, the Witch of the Air, and the Snow Witch. Back when I told you about them (and about how witches always come in groups of four sisters), you might have wondered if there were other sister-groups of witches in the world. How smart of you to wonder that! There are!

Today’s story involves a different sister-group of witches known as the Gem Witches. They were called that because they possessed four of the most powerful magic gems in the world. No one knows where they got the gems, but it is known that they did not make them themselves. Most people believe that they found them hidden with an ancient treasure long ago and figured out how to use them. (Maybe that’s when they chose names matching the gems that they had found.)

All of this happened hundreds of years ago, and witches don’t like people knowing much about their pasts, so if you want to know more you’ll have to ask them directly—if you dare.

No one knows what the original names of these witches were, and no one knows which sister was the oldest, second-oldest, third-oldest, and youngest, but after they found the gems, their names became:

• The Blue Witch
• The Red Witch
• The Dark Witch, and
• The White Witch

Each of these four witch-sisters kept her powerful magic gem around her neck like a pendant on a necklace—but the gems didn’t need necklaces to hold them in place. To wear one, you simply placed it wherever you wanted it to be on your body, and it would stay there.

While wearing one of these gems, you had whatever power the gem had, and no one could take the gem from you unless you took it off and gave it to them yourself.

The powers of the gems (as far as we know) were:

• Blue Gem: Cold / Freezing
• Red Gem: Heat / Fire
• Dark Gem: Unknown
• White Gem: Combined powers of all colored gems, including several not mentioned in this story

Obviously, the white gem was the most powerful gem of all, because it contained the power of all the other gems combined in one gem. You might think that the White Witch was the oldest and most powerful of the four in this sister-group, but that’s not the case. The White Witch was the youngest of the four. How she ended up with the most powerful gem is unknown.

Now that you know a little bit about these witches, I can tell you the second part of this story…

Part Two - A Daring Theft

Everything in this part of the story happened so long ago that no one remembers much about what really happened. Since most of the people in this story are witches, that makes everything even more secretive and confusing. I’ll do the best I can to tell the story based on what little information is known.

The Sand Witch was a bit of a pirate in her younger days. (Did I mention that she was able to move around freely when she was younger?) She was not the kind of pirate who sails the Seven Seas in a pirate ship stealing treasure from other ships. (She did not like being around water, you might remember.) She was as clever and as dangerous as any seafaring pirate, but she mainly stole things from other witches. Especially magical things.

Before she was even one hundred years old, she had stolen:

• a magic bowl that could churn up storms (and other things) to cause incredible damage,
• a magic teapot that could make any kind of tea you asked for in about ten seconds, even if you didn’t have any water or tea with you (not a very exciting magic item, but definitely a very useful one),
• a magic dog that could sniff out anything you asked for, whoosh around the world in about ten seconds, find it, and bring it to you about ten seconds after that (although she managed to lose the dog some years later and had never been able to find it again),
• a magic thimble that could hold any amount of liquid in it, and
• quite a few other things that I can’t describe because I’m not sure exactly what they were or what they did.

By the time she was in her two hundreds she was the best and cleverest witch-thief in the world. She believed that she could steal anything from anyone—witch, pirate, or human—and never get caught.

She was so sure of herself that she decided to steal the greatest magic item known to witches everywhere: the White Gem.

It was an impossible goal, of course. The White Gem could never be removed from the White Witch unless she took it off and gave it away herself, which would never happen. Not to mention that her three sisters would stop you from stealing it by freezing you, burning you up, or doing to you whatever the Dark Gem could do.

The Sand Witch believed that she was smarter than all of the Gem Witches, though, so she tried it.

It did not go well.

Perhaps some day I’ll tell you the story of how the Sand Witch planned the ‘perfect robbery’ using her bowl, her teapot, her dog, and her thimble—and how she very nearly got away with it—but today is not the day for that story.

I can tell you that she managed to get all four gems away from the witches, but she was badly, badly injured in the process and ended up losing all four of the gems (and her magic dog).

When the Gem Witches caught up with her and demanded their gems back, the Sand Witch was unable to do that, since she had lost them. This angered the Gem Witches, as you might imagine. They were convinced that she was lying, and hadn’t really lost the gems at all, but had merely hidden them. You might think that in their anger they would use whatever non-gem powers they had to blast the Sand Witch to smithereens.

Witches can’t kill other witches, though, so that was not an option.

They had to punish her, though. They couldn’t use their lost gems to do it, but they could use a powerful curse to bind the Sand Witch to a specific place in the world and keep her trapped there. That would make it impossible for her to search the world for the lost gems, and it would allow the Gem Witches to hunt for them without having to worry about the Sand Witch or any of her tricks. Since the Sand Witch didn’t even have her magic dog anymore (who might have sniffed out the gems and brought them to her in about twenty seconds), they decided that binding her to one spot would be the perfect punishment for her.

They even chose a very interesting place for her to be stuck, near a large number of duck villages. The White Witch had suggested it, saying, “This is the perfect spot! Being stuck in one place forever is bad enough, but can you imagine how much worse it will be for her to always have ducks waddling about and getting into her business? It’ll drive her crazy for centuries!”

So now you know how the Sand Witch became stuck in one spot, and why she grew more and more hateful towards ducks as the years dragged on.

She was always scheming, though, and she never gave up her hope of finding the White Gem. She thought about it day and night. She simply had to possess the most powerful magic item in the world. She was sure that if she could get her hands on it, she’d be able to break the curse and free herself from the land of the ducks.

Part Three - Mr. Quackers Finds a Gem

It might be interesting to pause here for a moment and point out that if what happened next hadn’t happened next, none of the stories before this or after this could have happened. Mr. Quackers would never have been in that small pool in that small garden in that small town in Hungary. He would never have met Rae or Vanny (or me!). He would never have traveled to the US.

But, as you’re about to find out, what happened next did happen next, and it led to all of the stories before this one and after this one, so let’s get to it…

About a hundred years after the Sand Witch had been bound to a bit of land not far from the Duckingtons, a duck named Mr. Quackers made a strange and miraculous discovery.

Mr. Quackers was the smartest duck in all of the Duckingtons (as you already know). He was probably the only duck who was familiar with every inch of every Duckington, as well as every inch of the fields and forests around the Duckingtons for great distances in every direction.

Mr. Quackers was a duck who loved to explore, and all of the places he explored stayed crystal clear in his memory. Perhaps you’ve heard of people who ‘never forget a face’? Well, Mr. Quackers never forgot a place.

It was Mr. Quackers who discovered that a powerful witch was living near the Duckingtons. It was Mr. Quackers who discovered many other dangerous places in the surrounding area and warned the other ducks never to go near them—like the Great Gulch and the Rushing River.

One day in his wanderings, Mr. Quackers stopped for a swim in a small pond in the forest. As he swam around, he did that cute thing that ducks do when they are a little hungry: he dipped his head beneath the water, let his bottom go up into the air, and poked around on the murky floor of the pond, hoping to dredge up some yummy plankton or a few tasty shoots of pond-grass.

He didn’t find much to eat, but he did accidentally dredge up a small, smooth stone. He almost accidentally swallowed it! He spit it out and let it sink back to the bottom of the pond. He moved on to a different part of the pond, but something told him that he should get a closer look at that strange stone. So he went back to where he had found it.

He scooped it up with his beak, took it to the edge of the pond, and dropped it on the grass there.

He saw immediately that it was no ordinary stone. It was some kind of gem. It was smooth and shiny. It was about the size of a grape. At first he thought it might be black, but after looking at it for a while he decided that it was simply dark. It had no color that anyone could name, really. It seemed to drink in whatever light was around it and just…absorb it—the opposite of the way a candle flame pushes light out into a room.

The strange, dark gem made Mr. Quackers feel a little uneasy. He realized that it must be a magic gem. Most ducks avoid magic things, but Mr. Quackers was an explorer. He was far more curious about the world than other ducks. On the one wing, he felt like he wanted nothing to do with the strange gem, but on the other wing, he wanted to learn as much about it as he could. He wished he could figure out where it had come from.

Just as he thought that, the dark gem pulsed a few times and images started to appear in Mr. Quackers mind. He saw four witches wearing four gems. One of the gems was very dark. He saw the four witches being tricked by another witch who looked…very familiar, but younger than the Sand Witch who lived near the Duckingtons. He saw a great witch battle. He saw the four Gem Witches (now without their gems) cursing the Sand Witch to be forever stuck to a bit of land near the Duckingtons.

It was kind of like you or me watching a movie about all those things, but this ‘movie’ flowed into Mr. Quackers head in about three seconds. He had wished to know more about the Dark Gem, and the gem had granted his wish.

The last few scenes were the ones that really got Mr. Quackers thinking, though. In those, he saw where the other three gems had ended up!

Mr. Quackers realized that he was the only one in the world who knew where the four magic gems were. The Dark Gem was on the grass in front of him, and the other three gems were hidden together beneath a small garden in a small town in a country that humans called ‘Hungary’.

He decided that he had to go there and find the gems! With them, he was sure that he could protect all of the ducks of the Duckingtons no matter who or what tried to harm them—even if it was the Sand Witch herself.

Part Four - Mr. Quackers Makes New Friends

When Mr. Quackers met Rae and Vanny that sunny day in that small swimming pool in that small yard in that small town in Hungary, he was very close to accomplishing his mission of finding the other three gems.

He had used the Dark Gem to lead him to the place where the other three gems were hidden. He knew that they were in a secret chamber (or a tiny cave, if you‘d prefer think of it that way) far underground, directly below that swimming pool.

Mr. Quackers had floated around in that pool for several days, acting like an ordinary pool floaty while he looked for clues about how to get into the secret chamber beneath the pool.

(You might be thinking, ‘Why didn’t he just wish for the Dark Gem to bring the other gems to the surface?’. He tried that, and it didn’t work. You must remember that the White Gem is the most powerful Gem of all, and no other gem has any power over it. You can’t freeze the White Gem with the Blue Gem, or heat it up with the Red Gem—and you can’t just wish it to be in a different place using the Dark Gem.)

The kids who lived there were more than a little crazy when they played in their pool, so there were quite a few days when Mr. Quackers’ mission had to be put on hold for long stretches of time while the three boys jumped on him, tossed him around the pool, and so on.

Mr. Q was overjoyed when some new people showed up at the pool one day. They were from a faraway land called Oosah (or something like that). They played more gently in the pool, and sometimes they kept the boys occupied with games and snacks. That gave Mr. Quackers the time he needed to figure out what to do next.

The man who owned the house and pool had invented an interesting way to keep his pool warm. Instead of adding cold hose-water to the pool when it needed a refill, the man had run a dark, black, plastic pipe up and over the roof of his shed (or garage, or whatever it was). The hot summer sun shone on the black pipe all day, every day, heating up the water inside it. Once in a while, the man would run water through the pipe to fill up his pool. That would send the hot water into the pool and refill the pipe with cool water to be baked by the sun.

Mr. Q realized that he could redirect that pipe through the pool’s filter pump and force hot water into the ground behind one of the pool walls. The water would push down through the dry ground, hopefully opening up a channel that would fill the hidden chamber with water. Then, if he increased the water pressure enough, the gems might come whooshing up out of the chamber and plop right into the pool.

There were only two problems with his plan:

1. The pool started to get busier than ever now that his new friends were in it along with the boys (and their dad) who lived there, and
2. Mr. Q had become very fond of Rae and Vanny (and the guy who was probably their uncle or something). He couldn’t bear the thought of rushing back to South Duckington with the gems and never seeing them again.

He solved the first problem by trying his water-pump idea in the middle of the night. It worked! A little mud got pumped into the pool, but along with the mud and a lot of water, the three gems plopped into the pool. Mr. Quackers collected the Blue Gem, the Red Gem, and the White Gem and tucked them under his feathers (where he had been hiding the Dark Gem).

Mr. Quackers finally had all four gems! Now he just needed a solution for the second problem. He couldn’t just whoosh back to South Duckington and not see his human friends anymore.

He came up with a wonderful idea: After he made sure all the ducks in the Duckingtons were safe, Mr. Q would use the gems to travel to Oosah, where his new friends lived! He would get a chance to see the oceans, lakes, and rivers of a whole new country, and he’d get to visit ‘Tekszasz’, which sounded like a very big and interesting place (they called it a ‘state’) full of strange plants and animals and dry weather and lots of sunshine.

Mr. Quackers spent several more days playing with Rae, Vanny, and Mr. G before they went back to Oosah. Before they left he promised that he’d meet up with them at their house, probably in just a few weeks.

Unfortunately, Mr. Quackers' plans did not go smoothly. He did return to South Duckington to check on all the ducks there and plan his travels to Oosah, but while he was there, the Sand Witch sensed that the gems had been found. Somehow she had been able to feel that they were nearby. (Mr. Quackers realized that it probably hadn’t been a good idea to bring the gems anywhere near a witch, but by the time he realized this it was too late.)

Mr. Quackers received the following note at his house in South Duckington the morning after he arrived:

Duck,

You have annoyed me again, this time by stealing my property! The gems you have are MINE; I stole them fair and square, years before you were even hatched. By giving them back to me, you will be returning them to their rightful owner.

Bring them to me, TODAY, and I will let you live. We’ll be ‘even’ and I won’t come after you or your friends ever again.

But if you keep my gems…

Well…you don’t even want to know what I’ll do. (It won’t just be grilling. I can come up with things MUCH worse than grilling.)

SW

This note would have scared most people, but Mr. Q just laughed when he read it! Confined to her house and land, as she was, he was pretty sure that there was no way for the Sand Witch to take the gems from him. She wouldn’t dare send a sandstorm after him, since he could just use the gems to stop it. She couldn’t use any of her tricks to take the gems from him, because he was much too smart to fall for anything like that. He also knew that the only way someone could get the gems away from him was if he gave them away himself, and he would certainly never give them to her.

He decided that the best way to handle the situation was to ignore her and continue with his plans.

The Sand Witch did not like being ignored, of course. She decided to do everything in her power to stop Mr. Quackers from using the gems to get to some other part of the world where she might never find him.

After trying seven different recipes with her magic bowl and six other magic things with other mysterious objects in her house that I’m afraid to even tell you about, she found that she could not work any kind of magic to bring the gems to her, or to make them powerless. The gems were simply too strong for her.

What she could do, though, was to create a weak magical interference that would confuse the gems just a bit. Mr. Quackers had no idea that she had done this, of course.

When he tried using the gems to help him travel to Oosah, nothing went exactly as he expected. He wished for the White Gem to take him to Oosah, and found himself in India. Then he wished to go back to South Duckington to start over, and he found himself in France. He went to all kinds of places that were not Oosah at all, and weren’t even on the way to Oosah.

He ended up spending a lot of time in New Zealand, where he reworked his entire travel plan. Then he started out on a much slower journey to Oosah—without using the gems for help along the way.

This made his travels more treacherous, of course, and he ended up falling into the clutches of the terrible pig villain, Pork the Porky, who held him captive for some time. Luckily for Mr. Q, a pickle superhero friend of his named Pickle Peterson sensed that he was in danger and came to the rescue, freeing Mr. Q from Pork the Porky’s secret headquarters.

(You may not know this about pickles, but they have a natural ability to sense when their friends are in danger and to know exactly where they are. This makes pickles very good friends to have—and if you know a pickle who is also a superhero, that’s even better!)

Once he was free from Pork the Porky, Mr. Quackers realized that he was in Tekszasz! He was not far from his friends at all! Pork the Porky had done him a favor by taking him to his secret headquarters!

His friends Rae and Vanny were so happy to see him when he finally arrived at their house, and he was double-glad to see them. He spent the better part of a year with them, hanging out at their house, visiting Mr. G’s house, and he even got to spend some time at their church.

It was quite a year, and all of the friends enjoyed it very much!