Читать книгу The Familiars: Animal Wizardry - Adam Epstein - Страница 12

Tiny kitten paws hovered above the grass. It felt as if he was flying… or was he being carried? The sound of a river current came nearer. Then his own face was staring back at him in the water. He was much younger, though, and the tip of his ear was still there. A nest of twigs was floating by. And then he was falling, falling…

Aldwyn awoke from his slumber with a start. He had had this dream before; it visited him on nights of deep, uninterrupted sleep, but its meaning remained a mystery. As he opened his eyes, he had no idea where he was at first. He expected to be surrounded by rooftop shingles and cooing pigeons, but instead found himself on a twisted-root floor in front of a still-crackling fire. Confusion soon gave way to memories of the previous day and its haunting conclusion down by the runlet. There was something foreboding and sinister about the mass of spying eyeballs that made him think he should tell the others about it. But once again, Aldwyn chose to keep the unsettling encounter to himself. He stretched luxuriously and then got up and walked outside, where he was surprised to find the sun hanging high in the sky. When was the last time he had slept this late?

Aldwyn saw that Marianne, Dalton and Jack were already outside the cottage, each holding big, thick volumes of parchment bound by twine in front of them. Kalstaff was waiting for them by a row of tree stumps in the glen, standing in front of a tablet of slate. Aldwyn noticed that it was covered with all kinds of intricate symbols and letters written in chalk. The students sat down in this strange outdoor classroom and Kalstaff began the morning lesson, tapping the glass ball at the tip of his rod against the board three times. A second later, the chalk symbols began to rearrange themselves into an orderly figure of eight.

Aldwyn walked over to Gilbert and Skylar, who waited eagerly nearby to see what assistance the wizards would need during today’s tutorial.

“Look at what the cat dragged in,” said Skylar, rather stiffly. “That was a joke,” she added, seeing Aldwyn’s straight-faced reaction. “You know, because you’re a cat and you were late.”

“She doesn’t understand humour,” said Gilbert. “See, what she should have said is, ‘Talk about a cat nap!’”

Aldwyn let out a laugh. “Now that’s funny.”

Skylar looked at them, confused. “I don’t get it. What’s the difference?”

Without answering her question, Gilbert nudged a giant oak leaf towards Aldwyn, who looked down to see a few crumbs of cheese on it.

“I saved you some breakfast,” said Gilbert. “But then, umm, I got hungry and ate most of it.”

“Why didn’t anyone wake me?” asked Aldwyn.

“Kalstaff believes that the natural sleep cycle should remain undisturbed, that we learn more with our eyes closed than we do with them open,” replied Skylar. “Of course, if that were true, Gilbert would be a genius.”

“Thank you,” said Gilbert cheerfully.

Aldwyn considered telling him it wasn’t a compliment, but decided to keep his mouth shut.

Over by the tree stumps, Kalstaff began throwing sprinkles of crushed nightshade into the air.

“Look, Kalstaff is preparing to conjure a fire spirit,” whispered Skylar. “We should gather some juniper berries and sage leaves. They’ll need them to cast the spell.”

With a flap of her wings, Skylar soared off towards the woods. Aldwyn noticed she had a tiny satchel slung across her back.

By the time Aldwyn and Gilbert reached the boundary where the glen met the woods, Skylar was already filling her satchel with ripe, purple berries. Gilbert started plucking sage leaves. Aldwyn pretended to be busy giving his fur another once-over.

“Aldwyn, since it’s your first day, I’ll leave the basics to you, something even an untrained familiar should be able to handle,” said Skylar. “See if you can gather some Juniperus phoenicea. I’ve got the oxycedrus covered. Kalstaff says a good blend of varietals creates a more potent invocation.”

Aldwyn stared at her like she was speaking a different language. He wouldn’t know a juniper berry if it smacked him right on the nose, let alone be able to identify a Juniperus phoenicea.

“Sure thing,” he said without missing a beat. One thing being an alley cat had taught him was to never admit weakness. “I’ll go get the focaccia.”

“Phoenicea.”

“Right.”

Aldwyn scampered up a neighbouring tree and walked across one of its low-lying branches. He reached out a paw and swiped a few tart yellow berries from the twig. Within the blink of an eye, a grey cloud formed overhead and a small thunderclap could be heard. Skylar and Gilbert both looked over to Aldwyn.

“Why are you picking storm berries?” asked Skylar. Aldwyn thought there was a note of frustration in her voice.

Before he could answer, a shower of rain poured down on the three of them. It only lasted for a few seconds, but it was enough to soak them from head to toe.

“Don’t worry about it—I made the same mistake when I first got here,” said Gilbert. “I almost got struck by lightning.”

Skylar shook the drops of water from her feathers and flew over to a small tree. She began pulling off a slightly darker hued berry with her beak.

“I suppose if you want something done correctly, you have to do it yourself,” Skylar said under her breath, but making sure the others could hear. “Elementary education for familiars just isn’t what it used to be.”

Aldwyn made his way back down to the ground, his damp fur already giving off the musky odour of week-old dish rags. It was evident that he was lacking even the basic knowledge needed to fit in here, but luckily he wasn’t expected to know everything about this world… yet. Of course, if he made too many mistakes, he’d be exposed as the magicless, talentless, utterly ordinary cat that he was, and his comfortable new life would be over before it had even begun.

The sky was still a deep purple as dusk slowly turned to night, and the bald wizard ladled second helpings of a homemade stew into Jack and Marianne’s wooden bowls. Kalstaff called it dining under the stars. It was a fancy way of saying what Aldwyn did every night back in Bridgetower: eating outdoors.

Aldwyn warmed himself by the fire as he lapped up chunks of fish and potato from a dish of his own. Skylar sat perched on Dalton’s forearm, pecking at a pile of nuts and grubs in the palm of his hand. Gilbert was shovelling a bowlful of swamp flies into his mouth. Every so often, he let out a loud belch, barely stopping to take a breath before continuing.

Aldwyn’s belly was getting full, but he had worked up quite an appetite during his first official day as a familiar. After accidentally causing the rainstorm while gathering the conjuring ingredients, he had spent the rest of the morning assisting—well, watching—Skylar and Gilbert catch the slither of bookworms that had crept into the spell library. Skylar, close to a nervous breakdown, recounted how the last time the parasitic worms had invaded the book-filled study, they had eaten straight through The Collected Works of Parnabus McCallister’s Divining Spells, all twelve volumes. But she snapped out of it in time to start pecking at the bookworms, while Gilbert lit some warding candles, which gave off plumes of smoke forcing their retreat.

The afternoon had been filled with wizarding chores as well: cauldron cleaning, wand polishing and dusting the hourglasses. They spent some time collecting mud lizards for regeneration potions—potions that Aldwyn was told would allow a missing arm or finger to grow back within minutes. It turned out Aldwyn had a particular knack for chasing these dirt-dwelling creatures made of living mud. He’d become quite comfortable digging through muck while living briefly in the sewers beneath Bridgetower, until the notorious crocodile infestation two years ago had made it too dangerous. He even got a compliment from Skylar for nabbing three mud lizards at once.

Before the sun had set, Aldwyn watched the young wizards-in-training create water fairies out of thin air and cast a spell that allowed a barren everwillow tree to grow back its leaves. And right before dinner, Gilbert said this hadn’t even been a busy day.

Aldwyn licked his bowl clean as embers popped and crackled right over his head. Dalton added some more kindling to the fire.

“The evening breeze is strong for early autumn,” he said. “If the strange weather occurrences of late keep up, my father’s barley crop will be a small one again. And I imagine Marianne and Jack’s uncle will fare no better.”

“Well, word has spread that Queen Loranella is ill,” said Kalstaff. “Which would explain why her weather-binding spells have been unable to hold back the hail and mountain winds. And why there have been reports of gundabeasts breaking through her majesty’s enchanted fences and roaming Vastia.”

Marianne glanced up from her stew.

“I thought I saw something creeping outside our bedroom window last night,” she said with a devilish grin.

“Stop teasing,” said Jack, clearly alarmed.

“And it looked hungry.”

“Now, now, Marianne,” said Kalstaff. The old wizard waited until her giggling subsided, before continuing. “Border monsters like the gundabeasts are very serious business. The longer the queen is in a weakened state, the greater these threats to Vastia will become.”

“But you could defeat them, couldn’t you, Kalstaff,” said Jack, more as a statement of fact than a question.

“Nothing to be concerned about, Jack,” said Kalstaff. “Not yet at least.”

Aldwyn had never realised how important the queen’s magic was in keeping Vastia safe.

“May we be excused?” asked Dalton. “I have some component charts to memorise before bed.”

“Not just yet,” said Kalstaff, as he turned to his youngest pupil. “First, it is time for Jack’s Familiar Rite.”

Jack jumped up excitedly, hurrying over to Aldwyn. He picked him up and brought him before Kalstaff, who was seated on a mossy rock.

“Sit him beside you and take his paw in your hand,” instructed Kalstaff.

Jack sat cross-legged on the ground, scooping up Aldwyn’s furry paw in his palm. There it was again: the warm, comforting sensation of belonging. It was the very same thing Aldwyn had felt in the familiar store when Jack first tickled his chin. Kalstaff began to draw circles in the air with his rod. Aldwyn glanced over to Gilbert, utterly confused by what was happening.

“Uh, what’s going on?” asked Aldwyn.

“Shhh,” whispered Skylar. “You’ll disturb Kalstaff’s incantation.”

Kalstaff continued with the ritual, throwing a spray of copper dust into the fire, turning the flames green.

“Vocarum animale,” intoned Kalstaff. “Assendix scientento felininum!”

In a flash, the fire jumped into the sky and then just as quickly got sucked back into the logs, disappearing as if it had never been there in the first place. Jack and Aldwyn looked around, waiting for more to happen.

“That’s it?” asked Jack.

“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” asked Aldwyn.

Jack’s head shot round to Aldwyn.

“What did you just say?”

“I said will somebody please—hang on, are you talking to me?” answered Aldwyn.

“Holy dragon eggs!” exclaimed Jack. “I can understand you. Say something else.”

“Um, OK: I… like… fish!”

“Wow! It worked. Now I suppose you can tell me your name.”

“I’m Aldwyn.”

“Nice to meet you, Aldwyn. I’m Jack,” he said, before turning to the others. “His name is Aldwyn! He just told me.”

“That is amazing,” teased Marianne. “What else did he confide in you? That he likes chasing balls of wool?”

“You forget how excited you were when Gilbert first spoke to you,” Kalstaff admonished her. “You nearly fainted.”

“It’s true,” recalled Dalton. “Kalstaff had to carry you over to the runlet and splash water on your face.”

Marianne blushed, and Jack let out a laugh.

“Pretty cool, huh?” said Gilbert to Aldwyn. “Kalstaff waves his wand a couple of times and next thing you know, your loyal gains the ability to understand what you’re saying.”

“It’s a lingual divination spell,” explained Skylar. “It only works between you and your loyal. It allows human spellcasters like Dalton or Jack or Marianne to commune with their familiars, even though they can’t speak animal tongue the way elder wizards, like Kalstaff, are able to.”

“I understand it’s some of Ebekenezer’s best work,” said Aldwyn, taking the small titbit of knowledge he had overheard in the familiar store and claiming it as his own.

Skylar nearly sprained her neck, so severe was her double take.

“Horteus Ebekenezer,” clarified Aldwyn, “The great forest communer.”

“I didn’t realise your studies were so advanced,” said Skylar.

“Well,” replied Aldwyn. “I may not know so much about juniper berries, but I do know my communers.”

Kalstaff got up from the lichen-covered rock he was sitting on.

“Jack, this is the beginning of a long journey that you and Aldwyn will be taking together,” he said. “No wizard can accomplish true greatness without a devoted familiar at their side. I know I couldn’t have if it hadn’t been for Zabulon, may the Gods rest his spirit.”

Jack nodded, then looked at his new feline companion. Aldwyn glanced back up, saw the pride in the young boy’s eyes and, to his surprise, felt a little proud himself.

“All right, time for bed,” said Kalstaff to his three apprentices. “We leave for our walkabout at sunrise.”

Everyone helped rinse the pots and pans and douse the firepit. Jack, the last to finish his chores, scooped up Aldwyn and headed for the cottage. They went straight to Jack’s bedroom, which the boy shared with his sister and Gilbert. After a quick survey, Aldwyn decided the room was a bit confined for his taste. There were two straw cots placed side by side, while a small trunk rested against the wall, stuffed with all of Jack and Marianne’s clothes. On a nearby table, a pear-shaped globe was slowly spinning on a needle, showing the lands of Vastia and beyond.

Gilbert fell asleep on a pillow at the foot of Marianne’s bed and within two minutes was snoring loud enough to wake a hibernating cave troll. Jack folded up a blanket on the floor for Aldwyn to sleep on, then, after saying good night, got into bed himself.

Hardly a moment had passed before Jack whispered in the dark, “Aldwyn, are you awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask you something? Do you ever get seasick?”

“You mean like on a boat?”

“A boat, or a sailing skiff, or on the back of a travelling whale.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been on any of those things. Why?”

“I was just thinking, after my wizard training is complete, we’ll be going on a lot of adventures together. And I’d hate for you to get all green in the face every time we take to the water.”

“Shhhhhh!” said Marianne from her neighbouring cot.

“Sorry,” replied Jack before continuing in a whisper. “My mum and dad were Beyonders, you know. When I was a baby, they were sent on a secret mission to retrieve stolen treasure taken by the queen’s jewel-keeper and his wife, who had raided the Palace Vault that they’d sworn to protect. My parents were lost at sea, but I’m going to find them one day.”

“You never knew them?” asked Aldwyn.

“No. Marianne did. Just a little, though.”

“I didn’t know my parents, either. At least you have your sister. I never had any family.”

“Well, you do now,” said Jack.

Jack’s hand reached down and stroked Aldwyn’s back. Aldwyn immediately cosied up to his touch. He never would have expected to feel such a strong kinship with a boy who’d been a total stranger a mere two sunrises ago.

“Good night, Aldwyn.”

“Night, Jack.”

Moments later, Jack’s breathing became heavy. The boy had fallen into a peaceful slumber.

Aldwyn tried to get comfortable, but unlike the first night, when he’d been too exhausted to care where he slept, tonight he simply couldn’t fall asleep with a roof over his head. He decided he needed a breath of fresh air and crept to the hallway. As he passed Dalton’s neighbouring room, he could see through the crack in the door that the boy was still awake, studying a scroll by candlelight.

Entering the living room, he spotted a window that had been left ajar and quickly made his way towards it, passing the hammocks strung up in front of the fireplace. The room was much darker now, since the lightning bugs had gone to sleep in their hive. Hopping up onto a large oak table, Aldwyn paused to look at a framed painting of what appeared to be Kalstaff in his younger years, accompanied by another man wearing a robe just like Kalstaff’s and a beautiful, imperial-looking woman in a long white dress. He recognised her as a younger Queen Loranella—there was a statue of her in front of Bridgetower’s courthouse that Aldwyn used to sleep beneath on hot summer afternoons. Each of them was joined by what had to be their familiars: Kalstaff’s bloodhound, the wizard’s turtle and the queen’s grey rabbit. Aldwyn continued along the table, past an enchanted quill that was busily copying Kalstaff’s lesson plans for the next day, before bounding out of the window.

He immediately looked for the fastest route to the roof and spotted an orange tree whose branches brushed up against the tiles atop the cottage. As Aldwyn walked swiftly across the yard, he noticed that one of the spell library’s windows was open. He didn’t think much of it until he saw Skylar exit with a small leather-bound book tucked under her wing. He ducked out of sight as Skylar pushed the window shut with her beak before flapping off into the woods. Aldwyn found her actions curious and decided to follow her.

He stepped quietly through the dense underbrush on the edge of the woods until he arrived at a clearing. Fallen leaves of orange and green carpeted the ground, and at the centre, Skylar was perched upon a tree stump, the borrowed—or was it stolen?—book open before her. Aldwyn hid in the darkness, peering through a narrow gap between two massive oaks. Skylar flipped the pages of the book with her wing, looking purposefully for a passage of interest. Then she seemed to have found it. Aldwyn watched with growing curiosity as she plucked the carcass of a large beetle from her shoulder satchel and placed it beside her on the stump. Her eyes sped across the page of the book and then her clawed foot dived back into the satchel, removing a clawful of silver powder. She sprinkled some onto the beetle’s carcass and read aloud from the tome.

“Mortis animatum!”

Aldwyn felt a chill tickle his ear, almost as if the air was whispering to him. Then, on the tree stump, the beetle’s legs began to twitch. Aldwyn was quite certain the beetle had been dead just moments ago, so how could it be moving now? Skylar looked like she expected something more to happen. When it didn’t, she buried her beak back into the spell book, and as she read, a gust of wind blew some of the leaves up off the ground, exposing what lay beneath them: a scattering of elk bones, left behind by forest-dwelling wolves. The same breeze sent the excess powder from the stump sprinkling down onto the gnawed skeletal remains. Skylar, still searching the text, failed to notice the bones of the great elk starting to reassemble themselves behind her. Aldwyn watched aghast and fascinated as the jigsaw puzzle of hooves and antlers pieced itself together, one cracked bone at a time. What kind of dark magic is Skylar dabbling in? Finally, she looked up, just in time to see the skeletal elk reborn. She seemed terrified and at the same time thrilled by what she had accidentally brought to life. Then the creature charged. Skylar instantly took to the air, as the reborn elk galloped blindly forwards. It was only then that Aldwyn realised that the creature was heading straight towards him. He braced himself as the skeleton collided with the trunk of the tree behind which he was hiding. When it hit, its bones shattered; rib cage, vertebrae and antlers split apart once more, dropping back down to the ground in a lifeless heap. Skylar, rather unbothered by it all, returned to the book and her beetle, but Aldwyn had no intention of sticking around to see what spell she would cast next. He high-tailed it out of there before he was spotted, thankful to still have his limbs intact.

Aldwyn ran for the cottage without looking back and leaped up the orange tree he had spotted earlier, effortlessly climbing up the bark and across the branch to the safety of the rooftop. Heart still beating, he sat himself down next to the weather vane, took a deep breath and peered out over the Aridifian Plains. Far, far away in the distance, he thought he could make out the light at the top of Bridgetower’s spired watchtower. As he stared, Aldwyn thought of what this night would have been like back home: sleeping with one eye open, his paw clutching the scraps of food he had scrounged that day, guarding against other alley strays who would attack him for even the smallest morsel of fish. It had been the only life he’d ever known, orphaned as a kitten, with no memories of his mother or father or what kind of alley cats they must have been. But here in Stone Runlet he would walk a very different path, one that was dangerous and unpredictable, but also filled with a sense of purpose, of something larger than himself.

Aldwyn’s eyes began to close. Both of them. So here he would stay. He would learn to be Jack’s familiar, magic skills or no magic skills. Familiar. How strange that word sounded in his head, when in fact there was nothing familiar about this world to him at all.