The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,72

ingestion of Ugglian pharmaceuticals, quality-controlled or not, can damage your health. Do not believe a word an Uggly says, especially when she claims to foretell the future. And, if you have a problem with warts, consult your GP or a pharmacist!

Succubius Ghoolion

Municipal Alchemaster-in-Chief

Yet another notice read:

This Establishment is Subject to

Municipal Ordinance No. 52736 pertaining to Ugglies

Should an offence against one of its provisions

come to your notice, kindly report this at once

to the Municipal Alchemaster-in-Chief.

The offender will be summarily punished

in your presence, if you so desire.

These noticeboards conveyed such a vivid impression of the bleak professional existence led by the Uggly who lived here that Echo suddenly felt profoundly sorry for her. Besides, his craving for some Placebo Wart Ointment had become quite overpowering, so he decided to make his presence known at last. But what was the best way to attract an Uggly’s attention? Should he call? Knock? Scratch at the door? Echo opted for a method he seldom employed: he miaowed as piteously and plaintively as he could. An encounter based on mutual compassion might be the best way of avoiding any unpleasantness.

The door opened almost at once, and more quietly than Echo would have thought possible in the case of so old a building. He had expected to hear rusty hinges squeal in agony, but the door half-opened as quietly as a flower coming into bloom. Nothing happened for a while. Then the silence was broken by a voice that sounded as if its owner had lived for centuries on unwholesome, trance-inducing substances.

‘If you aren’t the Alchemaster, come in.’

Cautiously, Echo squeezed through the crack. The contrast between the cool night air and the steamy atmosphere inside, which smelt of soup and other less familiar aromas, was such that he felt he’d been wrapped in damp cotton wool. The Uggly was standing with her back to him, lit by the dancing flames of a stove. The weird music had ceased.

‘You must be really hungry, Pussycat,’ she said in a deep bass voice, ‘to come begging for food at night in Uggly Lane, of all places. Didn’t anyone tell you it’s haunted by the Decapitated Tomcat?’

‘I’m not hungry,’ said Echo. ‘Nor am I a pussycat.’

The Uggly turned round and Echo had to make a supreme effort to resist the impulse to dash out of the house, hissing and yowling. He had seen some real-live Ugglies in the days when there were still some left in Malaisea, but only at long range, because they exuded a very special scent which a Crat’s sensitive nose found hard to endure. Imagine a damp, hollow tree trunk in which a whole family of polecats has died and decomposed, and you may gain some inkling of an Uggly’s body odour. Hitherto, Echo had only seen the creatures from afar, so his sightings of them had been rendered indistinct by distance, but now he was face to face with a full-grown specimen.

The Uggly’s face was a living affront to all the laws of harmony. Her nose seemed to have grown first to the right, then to the left, then to the right again, and it tapered to a point disfigured by a third nostril. The other two nostrils were so unnaturally flared that you could see up them even if you were taller than the Uggly herself. Thick, greasy tufts of hair sprouted from them like mouldy strands of eelgrass from submarine caves. Her pupils and irises differed in size and colour, her lips were grotesquely thick and painted black, and her ears protruded further than those of a Leathermouse. Her skin was as pitted as the moon’s surface, and standing up here and there were wiry hairs resembling bent rusty nails. The rest of her body was mercifully concealed beneath an ankle-length robe of coarse black linen gathered at the waist by a cord. On her head she wore the skin of an octopus.

‘You can speak?’ she said. ‘Then you aren’t a pussycat at all, you’re a Crat. I didn’t think there were any left in Malaisea.’

Echo started to relax. There was nothing menacing about her hideous looks. The best explanation for an Uggly’s outward appearance might be that it was Zamonian natural history’s attempt to indulge in a touch of black humour.

‘If you aren’t hungry, what brings you here?’

‘To be honest, an irresistible urge to buy a tube of wart ointment. Except that I don’t have any money,’ Echo confessed.

The Uggly’s demeanour underwent an immediate change. She opened her eyes still wider and stared