The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,51
look like?’ the Tuwituwu demanded, shaking the soot from his wings. ‘I naved your seck, my young friend. Leripous adventures with happy endings may be pytical of Zamonian light fiction, but who wants everything to nulmicate in a tacastrophe?’
Escape
Echo slunk back to his basket and lay awake brooding half the night. Why had Ghoolion placed him in such a dire predicament for a mere trifle? Sheer spite? Calculation? Plain insanity? There were really only two plausible possibilities. One was that the shadows could never have harmed him because they were merely projections of his own fears. Alchemistic hocus-pocus, as innocuous as a Cooked Ghost. Hallucinations generated by fumes given off by the black paste Ghoolion had rubbed into his hands. The other possibility: the Alchemaster was simply off his rocker and even more unpredictable than he’d feared.
He didn’t fall asleep until dawn. When he awoke a few hours later, his mind was made up: he would try to escape that very day.
Echo stole up to the roof to fill his belly with one last drink from the pool of milk. A drink so big that it would be several days before he had to wonder where his next meal was coming from. Then he made his ponderous way downstairs through the Leathermousoleum and laboratory. He was relieved not to bump into Ghoolion. He neither detected the Alchemaster’s scent nor heard his clattering footsteps.
Having reached the castle gate, he paused to analyse his feelings. Was he scared? Scared of freedom? Scared of his own temerity? Of course he was. He would be leaving Malaisea, his home town, and going out into the wide world for the first time in his existence. He was an urban creature. Until now he had spent his entire life in Malaisea without ever questioning that fact. He was used to paved streets and footpaths, sheltering walls and roofs, stoves and warm milk, street lights and crowds of people. Leaving the town was like throwing himself into a raging torrent without being able to swim. A cosseted, domesticated Crat completely dependent on himself, he proposed to exchange civilisation for the unpredictable wilds of Zamonia. A wilderness teeming with dangers of the most diverse kinds, with vicious life forms and animals, poisonous plants and malignant natural phenomena. All those hazards were reputed to lie in wait outside - he had only to venture beyond the town walls to come face to face with them. The wild dogs that prowled the fields were far more brutal and dangerous than the dogs of the town - he had often heard them howling. Snakes, scorpions, rabid foxes, Woodwolves, Lunawraiths - these were no mythical beasts but real-life denizens of the Zamonian outback.
He would first have to traverse the municipal rubbish dumps, which were probably alive with rats. Then would come grain fields patrolled by Corn Demons, which stuffed all the living creatures they caught into black sacks and drowned them in ponds. Next he would have to wade through the Strangleroot-infested mangrove swamps and make his way across the Murderous Marsh, in which a Golden Goblin was said to lurk. Only then would he come to the mountains, with their vultures and predators, ravines and crevasses, Mistwitches and Gulch Ghouls.
And after that, the unknown. Echo hadn’t even the faintest idea what awaited him beyond the mountains - if he ever got that far. A waterless desert, perhaps, or a boundless sea, or a bottomless abyss.
Was he scared?
Of course he was.
Did that deter him?
No. All at once, in obedience to a sudden, reckless impulse, he darted out of the castle gate, down the winding lane and into the heart of the town.
Malaisea … How long was it since he’d been there? He hadn’t missed them overmuch, the town’s unwholesome atmosphere and chronically diseased inhabitants, the germ-laden air, the incessant hawking and spitting, the bloodstained handkerchiefs and pus-sodden wads of cotton wool in the gutters.
Ah, Apothecary Avenue, the town’s main shopping street! In this throbbing thoroughfare could be found all that the typical inhabitant of Malaisea could desire: one pharmacy after another, window after window filled with bottles of cough syrup and cold cures, vitamin tablets and throat pastilles, thermometers and catheters, eardrops and laxatives, poultices and ointments for treating Leathermouse bites. The townsfolk pressed their noses to the windows or emerged carrying baskets laden with medicines, showed each other their latest abscesses or surgical scars, and discussed new remedies between coughs and sneezes. Pedlars dispensed hot lemonade or camomile tea, Druidwarfs sold