The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,25

seen a liquid behave so strangely. The longer he looked at it, the more he thought he glimpsed objects beneath the surface - alarming, shadowy shapes, as if the cauldron were a window into another world. Then the brew rose at several points like a cloth with something moving beneath it. The depths of the cauldron emitted a growl like that of a beast preparing to pounce at any moment. Echo instinctively retreated a few steps, even though he was up on a table and several feet from what was happening.

‘Hearken, ghost, to what I say,

and my potent spell obey!

Quit your home in Death’s domain,

realm of sorrow and of pain,

hasten through the nameless portals

that divide the dead from mortals!’

The brew became transformed into a miniature sea in a violent storm, an expanse of countless tiny waves, all of which were converging on a focal point. There, in defiance of every law of nature, the foam-capped, snow-white liquid rose into the air. Ghoolion threw up his arms again and cried:

‘Spirit, let your froth and spume

semi-human form assume.

But with arms and legs dispense

- they’d be an irrelevance.

Simply let your weird ensemble

washing on a line resemble!’

The foam swirled upwards like a waterspout, fell back again, then resumed its steady ascent. Echo stepped back and tripped over an old book, almost singeing his tail on an Anguish Candle. The waterspout was now an amorphous shape expanding both upwards and outwards. Echo wondered apprehensively how big the ghost would eventually become. Already as tall as the Alchemaster and still growing, it looked like a shred of wind-wafted silk woven from luminous yarn - a ghostly thing that moved in obedience to the natural laws of another world. Only the thinnest of threads still connected it to the cauldron above which it was floating.

‘Now the time has come for you

from the cauldron’s bubbling brew

to emerge and bid farewell

to the regions where you dwell.

Summoned by my mystic powers,

leave your world and enter ours!’

As if actually obeying the Alchemaster’s command, the luminous Something swayed left, then right, then reared upwards. All at once the thread of froth that had connected it to the cauldron snapped, enabling it to drift freely around the laboratory.

Exhausted, Ghoolion lowered his arms. The thunder had dwindled to a distant rumble. As though resentful of its inability to compete with the happenings in Ghoolion’s abode, the storm had moved on and was raging elsewhere.

‘That’s it!’ cried Ghoolion. He sounded relieved. ‘A Cooked Ghost - a trick extremely popular with apprentice alchemists.’

The disembodied spirit was drifting around like a skein of mist - aimlessly, it seemed. Having floated past the bookshelves and over the Ghoolionic Preserver, it made a sudden beeline for Echo.

Terrified, he jumped off the table and darted across the laboratory, but their strange guest remained hard on his heels. He vaulted over benches, dived under tables and between piles of books and chair legs, but he failed to shake off his pursuer. Ghoolion burst out laughing.

At length, completely out of breath, Echo cowered down beneath a chair while the ghost hovered overhead, fluttering like a sheet on a washing line.

‘What do I do now, Master?’ Echo asked plaintively. ‘What does it want?’

‘You’d better just get used to it,’ Ghoolion told him. ‘It’s a ghost, but it’s quite harmless. It can neither see nor hear. However, Cooked Ghosts sometimes develop an affection for persons present when they materialise, so we assume that they have certain feelings.’

‘You mean it likes me?’

‘You could put it that way, although we don’t know whether ghosts “like” anything at all. They themselves are nothing, really. They feel no pain, are devoid of intelligence and have no intentions of any kind, either good or bad. That, at all events, is our present state of alchemistic knowledge. They cannot invade our dimension physically, just as nothing in our dimension can touch a ghost. From now on, this one will drift around our world for ever. It’s bound to frighten a lot of people. Anyone ignorant of alchemy will get a terrible shock when it suddenly floats in through one bedroom wall and sails out through the other. Many people will probably die of shock. Or lose their wits.’ Ghoolion grinned malignly at the thought. ‘Yet it’s as harmless as a fair-weather cloud.’

‘Why doesn’t it simply fly away?’ Echo enquired from his refuge.

‘It seems to feel at home here. For some reason Cooked Ghosts enjoy being in old, ruined buildings. Perhaps they like the sensation of floating through ancient stonework. Hence