The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,9
fallen in and are drowning. As for the salmon, they’re reputed to be so happy, you can hear them laughing when the moon is full and they leap up the rapids in a vain attempt to reach it. They feed on nothing but little freshwater crayfish, which are considered a delicacy in themselves - they’re almost worth their weight in gold during the season. They taste fruity, almost sweet, and give off an aroma of apricots.’
Ghoolion smacked his lips and shut his eyes as if savouring the crayfish in retrospect.
‘I mash up the salmon meat,’ he went on, ‘season it with a pinch of salt and some herbs, add some minuscule cubes of candied onion, mould the mixture into a dumpling, and roll it up in a sheet of rice paper no thicker than a puff of breath on a frosty windowpane. Then I suspend the dumpling on a string above a gently simmering saucepanful of delicious Blue Tea. The salmon dumpling dangles in that pale-blue steam for the space of exactly seven thousand heartbeats, then it’s à point. I remove it from the rice paper, submerge it in the essence of tomato and it’s ready! Go on, try it.’
When Echo bit into the fragrant dumpling, something truly astonishing happened: the world around him disappeared. Ghoolion and his laboratory had dissolved - no, not into thin air, into water! Echo could feel it all over his body, see bubbles rising in front of his eyes, glimpse pebbles on the river bed beneath him and big fat salmon swimming along beside him. The water was not only all round him, it was inside him - inside his mouth, his throat. He was actually breathing it. And then, all at once, he knew he was a salmon. The realisation was so vivid and startling, he emitted a miaow of surprise that expelled some bubbles from his mouth and obscured his vision. A moment later, just as suddenly as it had vanished, everything reappeared: the familiar world, the kitchen and the Alchemaster. Echo was so flabbergasted, he shrank away from the soup bowl and tried to shake the water from his fur. Except that there wasn’t any water; he was bone dry.
‘You were a fish for a few moments, am I right?’ Ghoolion didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Not just any old fish, either: you were a salmon! You could feel the water in your non-existent gills, couldn’t you?’
‘Yes indeed,’ said Echo, still bewildered. ‘I was as much of a fish as a fish can be. I was breathing water.’ He tried to extract a drop of water from his right ear with his forepaw, but it was as dry as the rest of him.
‘In that case, I followed the recipe correctly. It was devised by the greatest salmon chef in Muchwater. He refused to cook anything but salmon throughout his career, and this was his favourite recipe. Go on, help yourself!’
Echo hesitated for a moment, then finished off the rest of the dumpling. Instantly, he was back underwater - not the pleasantest place for a Crat to be. This time, however, he knew it was only an illusion, so he even managed to enjoy Ghoolion’s culinary conjuring trick. He shot some rapids, was sucked down into a raging whirlpool of river water and air bubbles, surfaced for long enough to see a sunny blue sky - and found himself back on Ghoolion’s kitchen table once more.
‘That was terrific!’ he exclaimed delightedly, giving himself another shake. ‘To think a dumpling can do all that!’ He proceeded to lap up the delicious tomato consommé straight from the bowl.
‘It’s what is known as a metamorphotic meal,’ Ghoolion explained, ‘an alchemical offshoot of the culinary art. It used to be practised in the dawn of alchemy but is now prohibited by the Zamonian Ministry of Health - I hope you won’t report me to the authorities!’ Ghoolion grinned. ‘The hallucinogenic effect stems partly from a very rare variety of Blue Tea found only on the outskirts of the Demerara Desert, and partly from the herbs in the salmon filling, which only alchemists can grow these days - Sleepwort, Hypnothyme and Phantasage, among others. If I increased the dosage of tea and herbs you could feel like a fish for hours on end.’
‘Really?’
‘No problem, but it would defeat the object of the exercise if you wriggled around on the table for hours, under the impression that you were a fish. The dosage is what matters. After all,