The Alchemaster's Apprentice (13 page)
Read The Alchemaster's Apprentice Online
Authors: Walter Moers
What particularly fascinated Ghoolion about Echo was his almost preternatural agility. He half believed that the Crat could walk along a razor’s edge without cutting himself, or cross a rain cloud without falling through it, or nimbly traverse a deep puddle without wetting his paws, or step on a red-hot stove without burning himself. The laws of gravity seemed of only limited application to Echo. A dog that tried to scale a roof was the epitome of a venture doomed to fail. If Echo wanted to do this, he glided up the drainpipe as effortlessly as if he had suckers on his paws. If a Crat fell off a roof it landed unscathed on all fours. If a dog did so, it was dead.
Echo exerted a soothing effect on Ghoolion, if only because of his silent, unobtrusive presence and the tranquil atmosphere it generated. With his inward and outward equilibrium, his flowing, well-gauged movements, his insatiable appetite for sleep and his instinctive aversion to hectic activity, he was the personification of poise and calm. Ghoolion particularly admired the way he prepared to go to sleep. He didn’t just lie down, he performed a balletic tribute to Morpheus. When the time came, the little Crat betook himself to his basket with the leisurely tread of a lion making for a waterhole. Then he climbed in and marked time with his forepaws to tamp the cushion down, purring and turning majestically on the spot as he did so. Next, yawning unashamedly, he stretched, first his forelegs and then his whole body, which positively melted into the cushion in a single, fluid, seductively lethargic movement. Last of all, he curled his tail round him in a semicircle, licked his paws with care and gave another yawn. His little head subsided, his eyes narrowed to slits, then closed, and Ghoolion could tell from the regular rise and fall of his furry flanks that Echo had safely arrived in every feline’s paradise, the land of dreams.
The Alchemaster hardly slept at all. The most he did was sit down on a chair and lapse into an hour’s restless slumber, haunted by excruciating nightmares in which blazing Ugglies pursued him along endless passages or an octopus digested him alive. Then he would get to his feet again and resume his restless, obsessive activities.
Ghoolion’s only companions in recent times had been the Leathermice, but he now realised how much of their behaviour had rubbed off on him. He lived more by night than by day, was extremely nervous and fluttery, had hypersensitive hearing and started at the smallest sound. He wrapped himself in his cloak like the vampire bats in their wings and, like them, was forever retreating into the shadows.
‘If I’m not very careful,’ thought Ghoolion, ‘I’ll soon be hanging from a rafter upside down, squeaking. Echo is so relaxed. I really should try to emulate him.’
Yes, he was starting to develop a respect for Echo. It had been a good idea to choose a Crat for his culminating experiment. Crat fat might contain the missing bonding agent that would weld all other substances together. But Ghoolion derived particular pleasure from the way in which Echo was being trained and used despite his natural indolence and independence - and all without his realising it. That was cruelty to animals of the highest order.
The Sheet
A
fter only a few days at the castle, Echo had acquired two friends: an eccentric bird and a Cooked Ghost. Beggars couldn’t be choosers in Ghoolion’s ancient pile, so you had to take what you could get in the way of company. But even a Crat subscribed to the principle that friendship entails obligations, so he felt bound to cultivate those acquaintances, however peculiar.
fter only a few days at the castle, Echo had acquired two friends: an eccentric bird and a Cooked Ghost. Beggars couldn’t be choosers in Ghoolion’s ancient pile, so you had to take what you could get in the way of company. But even a Crat subscribed to the principle that friendship entails obligations, so he felt bound to cultivate those acquaintances, however peculiar.
The Cooked Ghost disappeared for days after Ghoolion had shooed it away, but it must have remained on the premises because it suddenly turned up again. Its manner at first was timid and hesitant, but as time went by it became increasingly confident - if a ghost could be described as such. It seemed to enjoy being near Echo, who gave a terrible start whenever the shimmering thing came sailing through a solid stone wall or bobbed up through the flagstones like a figure in a puppet theatre. In time, however, he got used to it. It never came too close but floated at a respectful distance behind him when he sauntered along the passages. If he halted, the ghost would also stop short and hover there, patiently and unobtrusively, until he walked on. That was all there was to their relationship - silent proximity - and Echo sometimes wondered what the ghost got out of it.
His private name for it was ‘the Sheet’, which shows how little it now unnerved him. He had almost completely lost his original fear of it, having grasped that the ghost was no more dangerous than a curtain stirring in the breeze. There were times, however, when the sight of it did still make his blood run cold. This happened whenever he seemed to glimpse a kind of face in the floating ectoplasm. The phenomenon, which never lasted for more than a few seconds, looked as if a scary mask with a gaping mouth and no eyes were pressing against it from behind. Echo would have liked to talk the Sheet out of this undesirable habit, but alas, Cooked Ghost was not among the languages in his repertoire.
The Sheet even followed Echo up to the roof, where it would suddenly seep through the tiles and pursue him up and down the stairways for hours on end. At night it often hovered beside his basket until he went to sleep and sometimes it would still be there when he awoke in the morning.
But the Sheet was no less scared of the Alchemaster than anyone else in Malaisea. As soon as Echo heard his clattering, iron-shod footsteps, the ghost would instantly disappear through some wall or painting or the floor and refrain from showing itself again for a long time thereafter. Thus, Ghoolion was unaware of its continued presence in the castle. For some reason he himself could not have defined, Echo had refrained from telling the Alchemaster about his relations with the Sheet and Theodore T. Theodore.
One warm summer night his nocturnal perambulations brought him to the big room filled with dust-sheeted furniture. He was once more accompanied by the ghost, which had turned up at some stage and was floating doggedly after him. When they entered the room, however, it came to an abrupt halt, fluttered to and fro like a terrified bird, and fled back in the direction they had come from.
Echo walked on into the room. He had stopped trying to fathom his new friend’s motives. For reasons that remained a mystery, the Sheet kept on turning up, manifested itself at the most diverse times of day and vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. It couldn’t have fled at Ghoolion’s approach on this occasion, or Echo would have heard his unmistakable footsteps long ago.
He found this room one of the creepiest in the entire castle. Even though it contained nothing genuinely frightening, his imagination was so stimulated at night by the enshrouded pieces of furniture that he could readily picture some dangerous creature lurking beneath each dust sheet, ready to burst forth and pounce on him. There! Hadn’t that fold of cloth stirred? Wasn’t it bulging as if something were breathing beneath it? Or was the material merely billowing in the wind? Whatever the truth, Echo wanted to cross the room as quickly as possible. He scampered nimbly between the wardrobes and chests of drawers, wing chairs and sofas, which looked to him like snow-bound giants. What kinds of decay did they harbour? What was in those wardrobes and chests of drawers? He could imagine pullulating maggots and woodworms, but also drawers full of desiccated eyes and mummified hands, shelves laden with skulls and chests filled with grinning teeth. He kept casting nervous sidelong glances at the white mountains of cloth, prepared at any moment for a sheet to be rent asunder and a skeleton to emerge with glowing embers in its eye sockets and fangs smeared with blood. He had almost reached the door. Only one last cloth-swathed colossus barred his path. Perhaps the dust sheet concealed a big oak cupboard, perhaps a guillotine and its headless victim. He had just slalomed round the bulky piece of furniture with the exit already in sight when he heard a strange sound.
He came to a halt.
And listened.
There was someone else in the room.
The fur on the back of his neck stood on end. It wasn’t a loud, frightening or menacing sound, but subdued and exceedingly mournful.
Someone was sobbing.
And Echo knew who it was, because at that moment he caught a whiff of something familiar and not particularly pleasant - something to which he had become accustomed: Ghoolion’s alchemical body odour.
He stole back into the room. All his fear had gone. Now he was motivated by curiosity alone. He paused behind a wing chair, then crawled beneath it and peered cautiously from his hiding place.
There he was: Ghoolion. The Alchemaster was seated in an armchair nearby, and he was weeping.
Echo had thought at first that he might be giggling softly to himself. It would have been considerably more in character for the old devil to be sitting there in the dark, sniggering at some diabolical scheme he had just concocted. But he was sobbing beyond a doubt. The circumstances were unusual in every other respect as well. For one thing, Echo found it remarkable that the Alchemaster should be sitting down at all. It dawned on him that he usually saw Ghoolion standing up or walking around, seldom seated, far less lying down. There was nothing demonic or authoritarian about him as he sat slumped there, shaking all over. All his strength and kinetic energy seemed to have evaporated; he was just a picture of misery. He sat there as if the air weighed on him like lead. His shoulders sagged, his head was bowed, his whole body was shaking with convulsive sobs.
Echo was not only astonished to see Ghoolion weeping, he was stunned, not least because he’d never believed him capable of such emotion. The sight moved him so profoundly that a tear trickled down his own nose and he emitted a muffled sob - which he promptly regretted. Instantly, Ghoolion sprang to his feet like a jack-in-the-box and froze, a gaunt shadow silhouetted against one of the lofty windows. ‘Who’s there?’ he snarled.
The words positively exploded in Echo’s ears. He darted out of his hiding place and scampered to the door as if someone had set his tail on fire, then sped like a rocket through a series of rooms, along various passages and down the stairs. He didn’t dare stop until he was three floors below in a library filled with ancient books and redolent of the cold ashes in the fireplace. He crept beneath a worm-eaten lectern and listened with a pounding heart to see if Ghoolion had followed him, but all he could hear were the rustling wings of some Leathermice performing their nocturnal aerobatics beneath the library ceiling.
The Smallest Story in Zamonia
T
he Alchemaster was bent over a table with his eyes glued to a microscope when Echo, yawning and stretching, slunk into the laboratory the next morning. He made no attempt to greet the little Crat but remained engrossed in his observations, which he clearly found fascinating in the extreme.
he Alchemaster was bent over a table with his eyes glued to a microscope when Echo, yawning and stretching, slunk into the laboratory the next morning. He made no attempt to greet the little Crat but remained engrossed in his observations, which he clearly found fascinating in the extreme.
Echo was feeling irritable and short of sleep. He had lain awake half the night, trying to fathom Ghoolion’s behaviour and apprehensively wondering if the Alchemaster had spotted him. Head down, he ambled over to a bowl filled with sweetened cocoa and proceeded to lap it up.
‘Forgive me,’ Ghoolion said at length, without looking up, ‘I’m just examining a leaf from the Miniforest, and that calls for extreme concentration. It’s so tiny that you can hardly see it, even with a microscope.’
‘The Miniforest?’ Echo asked between two mouthfuls of cocoa. ‘I’ve heard of the Megaforest, but never of the Miniforest.’
Ghoolion adjusted the focus slightly. ‘Only scientists equipped with the strongest spectacles and the most powerful magnifying glasses are aware that the Megaforest lies next to another wooded area known as the Miniforest. It’s the smallest forest in Zamonia. The Miniforest is so tiny that even insects feel cramped there. Its largest trees are so diminutive that the timber from one of them would suffice to make a single toothpick at most. The only creatures that can live in it without suffering from claustrophobia are Rootkins.’
Echo had woken up at last. He licked his whiskers clean, then turned away from the bowl, sauntered over to Ghoolion and lay down at his feet. He was exceedingly glad that no mention had been made of last night’s events.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘Rootkins must be really tiny.’
At long last, Ghoolion detached his gaze from the microscope and directed it at Echo. He rubbed his eyes.
‘Big and small are relative attributes,’ he said. ‘I must seem pretty big to you, I’m sure, but to a Turniphead I’m a dwarf. To me you look rather small, if you’ll pardon my saying so, but to a mouse you’re a giant.’
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