The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,141

enough to have played such a rotten trick.

Something was scratching the metal side of the alchemical furnace. The twiglike fingers of the Hazelwitch? The Woodwolf’s claws? There, something was tugging at his chain! They had discovered him!

Echo braced all four paws against the unknown force that was dragging him towards the door of the furnace by the chain round his neck, but it was no use, he kept sliding further forward. The grille was opened, candlelight flooded in, and he found himself looking into the Corn Demon’s empty cowl: a gaping black hole. The creature breathed on him and the putrid but icy gust of air almost robbed him of his senses.

‘It’s all over,’ he thought.

The Corn Demon exhaled a second time, enveloping him in a smell of ether as cold as the grave. Echo’s legs buckled.

He felt not only dizzy but as weary as he had after his wild fandango and drinking bout with Ghoolion.

‘I want to go to sleep,’ he thought. ‘Just to go to sleep at last.’

The Corn Demon drew a deep breath and prepared to expel its third, and final, death-dealing blast of air.

Suddenly, pandemonium broke out. High-pitched screams in the passage outside mingled with growls and snarls from the creatures in the laboratory itself. The Corn Demon turned away, restoring Echo’s view of the room. Hazelwitch, Woodwolf, Grim Reaper and Golden Gondrag - all were staring in the direction of the door.

More despairing cries rang out. Cries of mortal agony? If so, whose? Who was dying, who was doing the killing? Echo ventured to poke his head out of the furnace. The demons had lost interest in him in any case.

Their attention was no longer focused on him or the absent Ghoolion, but on the being that had suddenly, as if by magic, come drifting across the threshold. It was the Snow-White Widow.

The Dance of Death

Echo flattened himself on the floor of the furnace. Ghoolion had unleashed the Snow-White Widow and she was now, at his behest, hunting the demons down. Having slaughtered one after another, she had come here to complete her work. But where was the Alchemaster?

Eager to see what would happen, Echo plucked up the courage to peer cautiously through the bars. Had as many dangerous creatures ever been assembled in one room before? He doubted it. It must be a record and he was in their midst!

The Snow-White Widow seemed to be enjoying the attention she was attracting. She performed a coquettish pirouette that sent her white hair flying. She danced up and down in the doorway, first to the left, then to the right, then back again. Pulsating like a jellyfish, she rose into the air and drifted, light as a cloud of vapour, to the middle of the laboratory.

‘How sure of herself she must be, to venture into the midst of these demons,’ Echo thought. What had Ghoolion said of her?

‘If she stings you, you’re done for. There’s no antidote to her venom because she changes it daily. As for its effects on your body, they’re unique in the annals of toxicology. Death at the hands of the Snow-White Widow is the loveliest and most terrible, most pleasurable and painful death of all. She’s the Queen of Fear.’

The Queen of Fear … Even the demons seemed to sense her majestic self-assurance, because they preserved a respectful distance from her. Like Echo, they were mesmerised by the sinister beauty of her dancing - by the motions of a unique creature that appeared to be exempt from the laws of nature. It was as if the laboratory were filled with some invisible fluid in which she floated up and down. Her white tresses bunched together or dispersed, formed a dense curtain or separated into thousands of individual strands that rippled in all directions.

It was the Woodwolf that broke the spell. Wanting to know what a Snow-White Widow tasted like, the savage but stupid beast leapt at her. Its progress through the air was abruptly halted. The Snow-White Widow got to the Woodwolf before the Woodwolf could get to her. Before it knew what was happening, she had encircled its throat and jaws with her hair and perforated its body with hundreds of stings. That done, she floated majestically back to the middle of the room. The whole thing had taken only a heartbeat or two.

The Woodwolf rose on its hind legs as if to prove that it was master of the situation, apparently believing that it had withstood the attack. But