The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,100
fear, just bewilderment.
A moment later they were suddenly surrounded by darting shafts of black lightning - by hideous, wrinkled faces and bared teeth: Leathermice, hundreds of them! They sank their teeth in Echo’s tail, buried their claws in his fur and gripped him by the neck.
Then he noticed that his rate of descent was slowing. The same thing was happening to Izanuela, he could see this through a flurry of black bodies. The vampires had fastened their teeth and claws on her in many places and were bearing her slowly downwards, vigorously flapping their membranous wings.
Echo was gently deposited on the path that led up to the castle. Izanuela landed just beside him, the Cratmint still in her trembling hand. The creatures of the night were fluttering overhead.
Echo looked up at them. ‘Why did you do that?’ he called. ‘You’re under contract to Ghoolion. I don’t understand.’
‘Nobody understands the Leathermice!’ came the reply, doubtless from an individual whose first name was Vlad. ‘Not even the Leathermice!’ Then the vampires, in close formation, went soaring into the sky and darkened the moon.
Echo felt himself all over. He had escaped without a single scratch.
‘Please excuse me,’ he said to Izanuela. ‘Ghoolion is bound to be waiting dinner for me.’
The Cheese Museum
When Echo paid a visit to Izanuela’s house the next day, the door opened even before he set foot on the veranda steps. It was as if the house had seen him in the distance and invited him in. He was flattered by this mark of esteem on the part of a centuries-old plant and tried to tread with special care once he was inside the house. Izanuela wasn’t in the kitchen, but the stairway to the subterranean garden was open.
‘Hello!’ he called. ‘Iza? Anyone at home?’
‘I’m down here!’ she called back. ‘Come and join me!’
He found her at her distillery, which was surrounded by unfamiliar plants in clay pots. Translucent coloured liquids were bubbling away, and the air was filled with many new smells.
‘Some job you’ve landed me with!’ she groaned. ‘Thanks a lot. Have you any idea what a business it is, extracting the chlorophyll from a Dragonthistle? I have to ugglimise almost every plant I need. That’s a particularly economical way of isolating its active substances, but you’ve no idea how much work it entails. And my suffragator has just broken down. Now I’ll have to suffragate everything by hand.’
‘Well, how’s it going?’ Echo asked diffidently.
The Uggly put her hands on her hips and squinted at him.
‘Is that the only reason why you’ve come, to hassle me? What comes next, the “I’ve-got-so-little-time-left” act? The “poor-little-Crat-in-distress” spiel? You can save yourself the trouble, my friend! I’ve been slaving away - didn’t sleep a wink all night. My heart has been beating like a tomtom ever since we fell off that roof - it just won’t stop. I feel as if I’d drunk fifty cups of coffee and I never touch the stuff.’
‘I was only asking,’ said Echo.
‘Thanks for the enquiry, then. Yes, I’m making progress. I’ve been distilling the Cratmint oil for twelve hours. It’s a remarkably productive plant. The perfume will be very strong.’
The Cratmint, Echo saw, was immersed in a big glass balloon filled with some kind of clear, pale-green liquid. It had lost none of its beauty.
‘The Gingerbread Japonica has already been etherised,’ Izanuela said with a sigh, ‘and I immersed the Toadmoss in a marinade of Crocodiddle’s tears overnight. It should soon be chattified.’
‘Chattified?’ said Echo.
‘Yes, chattified, the opposite of unchattified. You’re surely not suggesting we lace our love potion with uchattified Toadmoss?’
‘No,’ Echo said uncertainly, ‘of course not.’
She grinned at him.
‘You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you? That’s because I’m a qualified Uggly and you aren’t. It doesn’t matter how much you know about alchemy; Ugglimy is a science in its own right. Ghoolion may cook ghosts or transform sugar into salt or heaven knows what, but he can’t concoct a decent love potion - not him! And I’ll tell you why: because alchemy doesn’t give a fig for the emotions, that’s why! Because he’s too busy trying to construct perpetual-motion machines or looking for the Philosopher’s Stone to trouble his head about anything as stupid as love. But the thing that makes the world go round isn’t in here.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘It’s in here!’ She thumped her chest twice with her fist.
Echo didn’t reply, but he wasn’t displeased by Izanuela’s vehemence. It showed how motivated she was.