The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,94
awarded me by the Ugglian Academy in Grailsund. I graduated with five necromantic stars. Do you know what that means?’
‘No,’ Echo said.
‘It means I’m a qualified Uggly with five necromantic stars, that’s what! I wrote my doctoral thesis on the capillary system of the Witch’s Hat Toadstool. I studied prophosophy for thirty-four terms - that’s prophetic philosophy, a subject only Ugglies can study. Only one Uggly in a hundred is awarded five necromantic stars. My mentor was the legendary Kora Kronch. That’s what it means.’
Breathing hard, Izanuela pointed to a gold cup on a shelf. ‘You see that cup? That’s the Green Thumb of Watervale, the most highly prized award in the field of floristic botany. Guess who was nominated for it three times and awarded it once! I’ll give you a clue: the person who’s standing in front of you, bears my name and is the only Uggly left in Malaisea.’
Izanuela had delivered this harangue with her head held high, squinting like mad and waggling her ears excitedly. She still seemed proud of having pulled the wool over Echo’s eyes, but that was fine with him. Better a well-qualified Uggly than the worst one in Zamonia.
‘Is there anything else I should know?’ he asked. ‘Now that we’re partners, I mean?’
She looked down at him with a smile.
‘I really must congratulate you, my young friend,’ she said in a condescending tone, ‘on your good manners. There’s one question you must be itching to ask me.’
‘What’s that?’ said Echo.
‘Well, how the staircase works. But you don’t dare, eh?’
‘It would certainly interest me to know,’ Echo admitted.
‘Then look around you. Which is the biggest plant down here?’
Echo looked around the cavern.
‘That big blue cactus over there,’ he said. ‘That’s the biggest.’
‘Wrong.’
‘But there isn’t anything bigger.’
‘You aren’t using your eyes properly. Where do you think all these roots in the ground and the ceiling come from?’
‘A tree of some kind, I suppose.’
‘Well? Have you seen any trees in Uggly Lane?’
Echo thought hard. No, there were no trees at all in Uggly Lane.
‘The nearest trees are in the municipal park,’ Izanuela said with a laugh. ‘That’s half a mile away. No trees have roots that long.’
‘You mean …’ Echo looked up at the ceiling.
‘Exactly,’ said Izanuela. ‘This house is the biggest plant here. All the houses in Uggly Lane are plants and they’re alive. Very much alive.’
Picking up a flowerpot, she brought it down hard on the fat black root writhing around her feet. The bark split open in several places and some big, melancholy eyes came to light beneath it.
‘An Ugglian oak,’ she said. ‘One of the oldest plants in Zamonia. Only the Ugglies know of its existence. Which makes you an Uggly too, in a manner of speaking. Can you keep a secret?’
‘Of course,’ Echo said hurriedly.
‘Good. You wouldn’t like to hear what would happen if you blabbed.’
Izanuela subjected him to a long, piercing stare and he felt genuinely scared of her for the first time. Her eyes were incandescent with the millennial power of Ugglyism. He grew terribly cold, as if a giant shadow had engulfed him, and for one brief moment he thought he heard the weird music that had assailed his ears the first time he set eyes on her house. Her gaze was like an unspoken threat, a curse. He shivered.
Then the light in her eyes went out.
‘These trees existed many thousands of years before Malaisea was founded,’ she continued, squinting good-naturedly now. ‘Only the Ugglies realised that they were habitable, and they were also the only living creatures the trees would accept as tenants. The Ugglian oaks came to look more and more like houses as the centuries went by, until no one would have guessed they were really plants. The town of Malaisea grew up around the Ugglies’ colony, but they kept the secret to themselves and passed it on from generation to generation.’
The eyes in the roots slowly closed as if the tree were going to sleep.
‘Living inside living plants isn’t a bed of roses, believe you me. They have their idiosyncrasies, their moods, their quirks, their habits. You have to be able to put up with them or you’d go mad. Things are in a constant state of flux. Walls become displaced, windows close up, roots suddenly appear where there weren’t any before - you trip over them and fall flat on your face. This tree also hums to itself at night, that’s why I wear earplugs.’