The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,10
you can over-season anything.’
‘I see.’ Echo nodded. ‘Does it only work with salmon?’
‘Oh no, all kinds of fish, all kinds of animals. Chickens, rabbits, wild boar - anything edible. It even works with plant life. I could turn you into a mushroom if I wanted.’
‘I’m impressed,’ said Echo. ‘You promised a great deal, but this surpasses all my expectations.’
‘You’ve seen nothing yet.’ Ghoolion made a dismissive gesture. ‘This was just a modest prelude. Just a starter - one of many.’
He cleared away the bowl, which the little Crat had licked clean, and replaced it with another. It was empty. Echo couldn’t understand why an empty bowl should give off such an irresistible aroma.
‘Invisible caviar,’ Ghoolion explained, ‘from the Cloak-of-Invisibility Sturgeon, the rarest and most expensive source of caviar in the world. Try catching an invisible fish with your bare hands, the only method permitted by the Zamonian Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. I managed to obtain only one tiny egg, and even then I had to make use of my most disreputable contacts in the Florinthian underworld. There’s blood adhering to it.’
Echo shrank away from the bowl.
‘No, not to the egg itself,’ said Ghoolion. ‘I’m speaking metaphorically. This egg was really destined for the Zaan of Florinth. I was informed that Florinthian glass daggers were wielded and several assistant chefs had to be drowned in soup before the Zaan’s head chef could be prevailed on to defraud his lord and master of the egg. He bamboozled him by serving him an ordinary sturgeon’s egg with his eyes blindfolded, claiming that it enhanced the flavour. The Zaan of Florinth has been susceptible to such tricks ever since the ceiling of his throne-room fell on his head.’
Echo’s curiosity revived at this account of the caviar’s adventurous provenance. He explored the bowl with his tongue, searching for the invisible egg. All at once, his palate was rocked by a minor gustatory explosion. A frisson of pleasure ran down his spine.
‘Mm,’ he said. ‘So that’s what invisible caviar tastes like. Heavenly!’
‘Now look at your tongue,’ said Ghoolion, holding out a silver spoon for him to see himself in it. Echo leant forwards, smiled at his distorted reflection in the convex metal, opened his mouth - and recoiled in horror. His tongue had vanished.
‘No, you haven’t lost it.’ Ghoolion smirked. ‘It’s temporarily invisible, that’s all. It’ll reappear as soon as the taste of the caviar has faded.’
Echo stared at the spoon open-mouthed, frozen with fear. What if Ghoolion were wrong? It was as unthinkable for a Crat to live without a tongue as without a tail. But, sure enough, the more the taste faded the more clearly he could see his tongue once more. He breathed a sigh of relief.
‘True aesthetic pleasure should sometimes be accompanied by a touch of nervous titillation,’ said Ghoolion, who was already preparing some new concoction in a cast-iron frying pan. ‘Bee-bread wouldn’t be worth eating but for the risk of biting on a Demonic Bee that hadn’t had its sting removed, nor would a steamed Porcufish if one didn’t have to take care not to puncture oneself on its lethally poisonous quills. Are you feeling relieved at having your tongue back? That, too, is an aesthetic pleasure beyond price.’
He put a plate in front of Echo.
‘Don’t worry, your hair won’t fall out and you won’t grow horns either. This is fried Sewer Dragon’s knilch.’
Echo eyed the next course mistrustfully. ‘What’s a Sewer Dragon, if you wouldn’t mind telling me? And what is its knilch?’
‘A Sewer Dragon is a creature that lives exclusively in sewers. As for its diet and physical appearance, I’d sooner not go into them at dinner time. Because of its unusual habitat, the Sewer Dragon has developed an organ that digests like a stomach, detoxifies like a liver and filters like a kidney: the knilch. What is more, it actually thinks with its knilch as well! The knilch is a superorgan unique in the annals of Zamonian biology. Fresh Sewer Dragon’s knilch is such a delicacy, head chefs fight duels over it with filleting knives.’
Echo emitted an involuntary belch, feeling faintly nauseous. He tried to imagine a Sewer Dragon but thought better of it when his inner eye pictured a creature with matted fur and several fleshy pink probosces.
‘Why are things that naturally arouse disgust considered by gourmets to be supreme delicacies?’ Ghoolion asked. ‘Live oysters? The diseased livers of force-fed geese? The brains of baby calves? The aborted offspring of the Cloak-of-Invisibility Sturgeon? Sewer Dragon’s