The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,65
the shadowy streets he needed a special sense to find his way: down here he had to see with his ears! Utterly confident of his faculties, he shut his eyes. No longer was he a Crat that had temporarily turned into a Leathermouse - no, he was all Leathermouse. A dauntless vampire, a drinker of blood and demon of the night who could only dimly remember having once been a Crat. Brain, hearing, inner eye, wings, sense of balance - all these were functioning in perfect harmony, unimpeded by any hint of doubt or fear.
He uttered four or five staccato squeaks. They would have been inaudible to most ears, but their manifold echoes lit up the whole of Apothecary Avenue, bathing it in a magical glow before his inner eye. He could see its full extent: roadway, kerbstones, pavements, buildings, windows, doors, roofs, extinguished street lights, pharmacists’ hoardings - everything, and all in a luminous, monochrome blue.
Echo … How well his name suited him now - better than ever before, in fact! What he couldn’t see was what lay behind the windows of the pharmacies and other shops, because he perceived only the surfaces that reflected the sounds he emitted. The windowpanes appeared to him as luminous expanses resembling rectangular pools of calm blue water. There were people walking along the pavements, though not many at this hour. Echo spotted two nightwatchmen, a handful of ailing citizens on their way to late-night pharmacies and some workers returning home from the bandage-weaving factory, several of whom carried lanterns. It filled him with surreptitious glee to think that he could see them without being seen. He could have pounced on them and bitten them in the neck right away - it would have been too late by the time they heard the rustle of his wings - but for the moment he decided to savour the mere idea.
Right now he preferred to remain airborne, nothing more. Along Apothecary Avenue he flew, then veered off down a side street. A manoeuvre he might have found dangerous as a Crat walking on all fours was now just a question of a few leisurely wingbeats. He missed a beat with his right wing, flapped his left wing a trifle harder and went swerving round the corner like a wagon on invisible rails.
Dogs! There was a whole pack of them down there. Five big, ferocious wild dogs with grimy fur and scarred muzzles, they were clearly in search of some smaller and weaker animal to hunt down and tear to pieces.
‘Dogs!’ thought Echo. ‘And I’m not afraid of them in the least. If I were a Crat I’d be done for. I’d never make it down that street in one piece.’
Almost without thinking, he stopped flapping his wings, spread them out sideways and used them as air brakes. Then he went spiralling down towards the dogs.
‘It might be fun to rough them up a bit,’ he thought. He even recognised two of the tykes. On one occasion in the past they would have harried him to death if he hadn’t managed to escape on to a roof.
Echo shot between the dogs like a whiplash. He didn’t do anything to them - didn’t even touch them, just snarled ferociously and flapped his wings - but that was quite enough to send them bounding in all directions, barking wildly. He soared into the air to inspect the result.
The panic-stricken animals had scattered across the full width of the street. They ran around aimlessly for while, then clustered together again.
‘What the devil was that?’ yapped one of them.
‘A confounded Leathermouse,’ yapped another. ‘It came out of nowhere!’
‘Damn the things! They transmit dangerous diseases. My brother was bitten by one and he’s never been the same since.’
Echo retracted his wings and went into a dive. Just above the animals he spread them again, which not only slowed his descent abruptly but made a sharp crack. The pack of dogs scattered once more, howling. He pursued one of them. It was one of the pair that had chased him that time, a big, muscular beast with a mouthful of huge teeth. ‘Incredible,’ thought Echo, ‘it’s scared of a mouse!’ He found it so easy to keep up with the dog, it seemed to be running in slow motion. He flew close to its ear and hissed: ‘I’m right behind you!’
The dog uttered a terrified yelp and bounded on even faster. It snapped at him over its shoulder, but so slowly, by