The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,31

through a series of rooms, along various passages and down the stairs. He didn’t dare stop until he was three floors below in a library filled with ancient books and redolent of the cold ashes in the fireplace. He crept beneath a worm-eaten lectern and listened with a pounding heart to see if Ghoolion had followed him, but all he could hear were the rustling wings of some Leathermice performing their nocturnal aerobatics beneath the library ceiling.

The Smallest Story in Zamonia

The Alchemaster was bent over a table with his eyes glued to a microscope when Echo, yawning and stretching, slunk into the laboratory the next morning. He made no attempt to greet the little Crat but remained engrossed in his observations, which he clearly found fascinating in the extreme.

Echo was feeling irritable and short of sleep. He had lain awake half the night, trying to fathom Ghoolion’s behaviour and apprehensively wondering if the Alchemaster had spotted him. Head down, he ambled over to a bowl filled with sweetened cocoa and proceeded to lap it up.

‘Forgive me,’ Ghoolion said at length, without looking up, ‘I’m just examining a leaf from the Miniforest, and that calls for extreme concentration. It’s so tiny that you can hardly see it, even with a microscope.’

‘The Miniforest?’ Echo asked between two mouthfuls of cocoa. ‘I’ve heard of the Megaforest, but never of the Miniforest.’

Ghoolion adjusted the focus slightly. ‘Only scientists equipped with the strongest spectacles and the most powerful magnifying glasses are aware that the Megaforest lies next to another wooded area known as the Miniforest. It’s the smallest forest in Zamonia. The Miniforest is so tiny that even insects feel cramped there. Its largest trees are so diminutive that the timber from one of them would suffice to make a single toothpick at most. The only creatures that can live in it without suffering from claustrophobia are Rootkins.’

Echo had woken up at last. He licked his whiskers clean, then turned away from the bowl, sauntered over to Ghoolion and lay down at his feet. He was exceedingly glad that no mention had been made of last night’s events.

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘Rootkins must be really tiny.’

At long last, Ghoolion detached his gaze from the microscope and directed it at Echo. He rubbed his eyes.

‘Big and small are relative attributes,’ he said. ‘I must seem pretty big to you, I’m sure, but to a Turniphead I’m a dwarf. To me you look rather small, if you’ll pardon my saying so, but to a mouse you’re a giant.’

He looked around, picked up something lying on the table in front of him and held it under Echo’s nose. It was a slice of stale bread - a form of food typical of the Alchemaster’s own preferred diet.

‘A slice of bread,’ he said. ‘You would regard it as one big slice, wouldn’t you?’

Echo thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said.

Ghoolion clenched his fist and the brittle bread disintegrated.

‘But it’s really a lot of little fragments.’ He opened his fingers, allowing the crumbs to fall on to the table, then picked one up and held it between thumb and forefinger.

‘And this crumb here - you’d describe it as a single crumb, wouldn’t you?’

Echo nodded again, rather more hesitantly this time.

Ghoolion ground the crumb to dust between his fingers.

‘But it, too, consists of many smaller particles. It’s the same with all physical matter. All the things you see here - workbenches, chairs, microscopes, books, glass vessels, the whole laboratory, even you and I - are made up of tiny components held together in a wondrous manner. That’s why we alchemists concentrate our research on the very smallest objects, because we believe that their microcosmic structure contains a latent but immense store of energy.’

‘How can something small contain an immense store of energy?’ Echo demanded. ‘Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?’

The Alchemaster seemed to be debating whether to go back to work or devote himself to the gaps in Echo’s education.

‘Listen,’ he said at length, ‘and I’ll tell you a story. It’s about the Miniforest and it’s also to do with alchemy. Interested?’

Echo nodded.

‘Every budding alchemist has to learn this story by heart. He won’t gain his diploma unless he can recite it perfectly. I can still say it word for word, even today.’

‘It must be an important story, then,’ said Echo.

‘It is. It takes place in the Miniforest, so I hope you won’t expect it to deal with grand emotions or events on an epic scale, let