The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,108

beside the distillation plant in the secret underground garden, where Izanuela had installed an apparatus quite the equal of any in Ghoolion’s laboratory. Echo jumped up on to the big table by way of a chair. Translucent coloured liquids - green, yellow, red, orange, blue and violet - were standing or bubbling away in glass balloons. The vessels were linked by thin tubes of copper, silver or glass, and methane-fed flames were burning brightly. Echo was surprised to see a pair of bellows pumping away steadily, apparently under its own power.

‘It contains earthworms in peat,’ Izanuela explained in a low voice. ‘It pays to harness the energy of Mother Earth. By the way, thanks for the Leyden Manikin formula. I’ve already animated one. We’ll be able to test the efficacy of the love potion on it.’

The Leyden Manikin was seated in a big-bellied flask, apathetically dabbling its feet in nutrient fluid. Echo took little notice of the creature, being far too eager to inspect Izanuela’s apparatus. He darted here, there and everywhere, sniffing and marvelling. Violets and rose petals were floating in pale-pink liquid, clumps of eelgrass waving around in alcohol. Some treacly dark-green substance was bubbling over a Bunsen burner. The air was filled with a smell reminiscent of flower gardens in springtime and stormy nights in the jungle, poppies and freshly mown grass, intoxicating orchids and poisonous tropical fungi, roses in full bloom, lemon balm and rosemary, fresh peat and wet straw.

Incandescent red Lava Worms wriggled along a spiral glass tube, heating up a flask in which a solution of chlorophyll was simmering. A column of big, black soldier ants marched across the table, transporting fragments of leaves and roots to a mortar. Stag beetles dragged whole flower heads over to a copper and dropped them in.

‘I see we’ve got plenty of busy little assistants,’ Echo remarked.

‘Oh,’ Izanuela said dismissively, ‘they’re just being neighbourly - paying me back for pinching my sugar and eating my spinach.’

The roots growing out of the floor and walls were unusually animated. The eyes in the knotholes kept opening and shutting as if aware that some crucial event was in the offing. For the first time, Echo took a closer look at the colourful butterflies fluttering through the subterranean vegetation.

‘What are all these butterflies doing down here?’ he asked when one of them settled on his head.

‘Generating atmosphere,’ said Izanuela, tossing a handful of pollen into the air. ‘Can you imagine brewing a love potion without any butterflies around? I can’t.’

‘You’ve really thought of everything,’ Echo said admiringly. ‘When does the balloon go up?’

‘Soon,’ she said. ‘I’ve still got to regulate my hop dispenser.’ She adjusted the control knobs on a big wooden box in which something was rumbling around and banging against the sides. ‘There,’ she exclaimed, clapping her hands. ‘All we need now is some twitchstik.’

‘Music?’ Echo translated.

The weird, rhythmical humming he’d heard on his first visit to the Uggly’s house started up again. He now realised that its source was the house itself, the roots and vegetation all around them.

‘The Song of the Ugglian Oaks,’ Izanuela said enthusiastically. ‘There’s nothing better.’ She put a jar on the table. At once, the Twitching Terebinth inside it began to sway ecstatically to and fro in time to the music. The Leyden Manikin also came to life. It stood up and started drumming on the side of its glass container.

‘Atmosphere is all!’ cried Izanuela. ‘Now let’s get down to work.’

She took various flasks filled with liquid from beneath the table and put them down beside a small cast-iron saucepan.

‘First we must dispense the vegetable essences in the correct quantities,’ she said.

‘Have they been chattified?’ Echo asked sternly.

‘With a vengeance,’ Izanuela replied with a grin. ‘More chattified than them you can’t get.’

She added minute amounts of the essences to the saucepan, consulting her Ugglimical Cookbook as she did so.

‘One ugg of Gristlethorn … two uggs of Treacletuft … five uggs of Clubfoot Toadstool … twenty-four uggs of Twelve-Leafed Clover … Yes, we can use some good luck …’

‘Why so little?’ Echo put in. ‘Why not tip the lot in? The more the merrier, no?’

‘Keep out of this!’ Izanuela hissed. ‘It’s over your head. Everything depends on the correct dosage. One ugg too many or too few and it’s completely ruined, so don’t distract me!’

Echo bit his tongue.

‘Eighteen uggs of Arctic Woodbine … two uggs of Old Man’s Scurf … four-and-a-half uggs of Pond Scum … one ugg of Sparrowspit … two uggs of Funnelhorn