The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,104

outsize ants and spiders crawling around on their bark.

It was Echo’s first time in a forest. ‘I suppose I’m the urban type,’ he thought. ‘Forests aren’t my bowl of milk.’ Twigs snapped, leaves rustled. Trees bent over him like hunchbacks, groping for him with their gnarled branches. The agonised cry of some animal rang out in the distance. Something drummed on a hollow tree trunk. Then absolute silence returned. ‘I can’t understand what people see in forests,’ Echo muttered to himself. ‘Personally, I’d sooner have a nice, well-kept municipal park.’

He heard a low, throaty sound, possibly made by a fat frog. It came from the direction in which his nose was taking him.

You’re feeling terminally sick?

Off to the Toadwoods with you, quick!

The Uggly’s words rang in his ears. Did the Incurables really exist, or were they just another old wives’ tale concocted by grown-ups to dissuade their children from wandering off into the woods?

All alone you there will be,

with no one else around to see.

‘Precisely,’ thought Echo. ‘No one wants to be here, least of all yours truly! Where’s that confounded moss?’ He lifted his little nose and sniffed the air. The scent of Toadmoss was growing stronger. For the first time in his life, he cursed his acute sense of smell for leading him ever deeper into this wilderness.

So dig yourself a grave to fit

and then, my friend, lie down in it.

‘Rhyming is one thing,’ Echo reflected, ‘digging your own grave is quite another.’ What a gruesome thought! Who dreamt up these ideas? Poets were strange creatures. That Knulf Krockenkrampf needed his head examined.

The sun was sinking. Just to make matters worse, the forest was now populated by shadowy figures that stole through the trees and waved to him from the topmost branches. ‘No,’ he told himself bravely, ‘the branches are simply stirring in the evening breeze. There aren’t any shadowy figures. Or Incurables.’ All that was incurable was his own lively imagination.

In the distance he heard again the low, throaty sound. The trees thinned and he eventually came to a narrow path, a beaten track leading in the direction from which the scent of Toadmoss was drifting towards him.

‘Ah, civilisation,’ he thought, feeling relieved. Well, only what might be regarded as civilisation in such surroundings: a boggy path dotted with puddles and stumbling blocks in the shape of tree roots and boulders. Still, no more thistles and stinging nettles. A rough aid to direction, at least. Presumably, this was the path Izanuela herself had taken when gathering Toadmoss.

Echo was further reassured by the protracted drum roll of a wood-pecker. ‘There are only harmless little forest creatures here,’ he told himself. ‘Woodpeckers and frogs, beetles and squirrels.’ He rounded a bend in the path half hidden by the massive root of an oak tree. What awaited him beyond it made his heart stand still for a moment. He stood there transfixed. Seated with its back against the oak tree’s blackened trunk was the skeleton of a man. His white bones had been picked clean by ants and were cocooned in spiders’ webs. Wild ivy was growing around his thigh bones and between his ribs. A red forest rose was flowering on his lower jaw, which had dropped open. Echo fluffed out his tail and hissed.

You’re feeling terminally sick?

Off to the Toadwoods with you, quick!

A butterfly landed on the skull and folded its wings. This had been an Incurable, no doubt about it, but he was dead. ‘It isn’t a pleasant sight,’ thought Echo, ‘but it’s less alarming than being ambushed by someone with an incurable disease.’ The poor man hadn’t even had time to dig himself a grave. Echo’s tail resumed its normal appearance.

All alone you there will be,

with no one else around to see.

Echo found it awful to picture the man dying all by himself in the woods. On the other hand, wasn’t it awful to die anywhere? And wasn’t everyone alone when the time came? He shook off the disagreeable thought and walked on along the path. Really nice of Izanuela to send him blithely off into a wood with a skeleton lurking in it!

A skeleton? Echo froze once more. Another one was lying a few paces further on. A miaow of alarm escaped his lips, but he didn’t hiss or fluff out his tail. This man’s remains were lying full length in the grass. Busy bees and bumblebees were droning around a whole garden of weeds and wild flowers that had sprouted from between his bones.