Marcia came in, and behind her Septimus could see a slight murkiness in the air as the Shadow followed her into the potion room. Marcia bent down and looked more closely at Septimus's thumb, almost enveloping him in her purple cloak as she did so. Marcia was a tall woman with long, dark, curly hair and the intense green eyes that always came to Magykal people, once they were exposed to Magyk. Septimus had the same green eyes too, although before he had met Marcia Overstrand they had been a dull gray. Like all ExtraOrdinary Wizards who had lived in the Wizard Tower before her, Marcia wore the lapis and gold Akhu Amulet around her neck, a deep purple silk tunic fastened with the ExtraOrdinary gold and platinum belt and a Magykal purple cloak. She also had on a pair of purple python shoes, carefully chosen that morning from a rack of about a hundred other almost identical purple python shoes that she had taken to stockpiling since her return to the Wizard Tower. Septimus wore, as usual, his only pair of brown leather boots. Septimus liked his boots,and although Marcia often offered to get some new ones made for him in a nice emerald python skin to match his green Apprentice robes, he always refused. Marcia just couldn't understand it.
"That's a spider bite," said Marcia, grabbing hold of his thumb.
"Ouch!" Septimus yelled.
"I don't like the look of that at all," Marcia muttered.
Neither did Septimus. His thumb was now dark purple. His fingers looked like five sausages stuck on a football, and he could feel sharp pains shooting up his arm toward his heart. Septimus swayed slightly.
"Sit down, sit down," said Marcia urgently, throwing some papers off a small chair and guiding Septimus down onto it. Quickly she took a small vial out of the Medicine Chest. It had the words SPIDER VENOM scrawled on it and contained a murky green liquid. Marcia took out a long, thin glass dropper from the scary-looking medical instruments that were lined up in the lid of the chest like bizarre cutlery in a picnic basket. Then she sucked up the green venom into the dropper, being extremely careful not to get any in her mouth.
Septimus pulled his thumb out of Marcia's grasp. "That's poison!" he protested.
"There's a Darkenesse in that bite," said Marcia, putting her thumb on top of the venom-filled dropper and carefully holding it away from her cloak, "and the Spider Balm is making it worse. Sometimes you have to fight like with like. Venom with venom. Trust me."
Septimus did trust Marcia; in fact he trusted her more than anyone else. So he gave her back his thumb and closed his eyes while Marcia dropped Spider Venom onto the bite and muttered what sounded to Septimus like an Anti-Hex Incantation. As Marcia did so the shooting pains up his arm died away, his light-headedness left him and he began to think that maybe his thumb would not explode after all.
Calmly, Marcia replaced everything back in the Medicine Chest, and then she turned and considered her Apprentice. Not surprisingly, he looked pale. But she had, thought Marcia, been working him too hard. He could do with a day out in the summer sunshine. And, more to the point, she didn't want his mother, Sarah Heap, coming around again either.
Marcia had still not forgotten the visit Sarah had made not long after Septimus had become her Apprentice. One Sunday morning Marcia had answered a loud banging on the door, only to find Sarah Heap on the other side, accompanied by an audience of Wizards from the floor below, who had all come up to see what the noise wasfor no one ever dared bang on the ExtraOrdinary Wizard's door like that.
To the amazement of the assembled audience, Sarah had then proceeded to tell Marcia off.
"My Septimus and I were apart for the first ten years of his life," Sarah had said heatedly, "and, Madam Marcia, I do not intend to spend the next ten years seeing as little of him as I did for the first ten. So I will thank you to let the boy come home for his father's birthday today."
Much to Marcia's annoyance, this had been greeted with a small round of applause from the assembled Wizards. Both Marcia and Septimus had been amazed at Sarah's speech. Marcia was amazed because no one ever spoke to her like that. No one. And Septimus was amazed because he didn't realize that that was what mothers did, although he rather liked it.
The last thing Marcia wanted was a repeat visit from Sarah. "Off you go then," she said, half expecting Sarah Heap to appear and demand to know why Septimus looked so pale. "It's time you spent a day with your family. And while you're there, you can remind your mother to make sure that Jenna gets off to Zelda's tomorrow for her MidSummer Visit to the Dragon Boat. If I had my way she would have left days ago, but Sarah will insist on leaving everything to the last minute. I'll see you tonight, Septimusmidnight at the latest. And the chocolate Charm is yours, by the way."
"Oh, thanks." Septimus smiled. "But I'm fine now, really. I don't need a day off."
"Yes, you do," Marcia told him. "Go on, off you go."
Despite himself, Septimus smiled. Maybe a day off would not be so bad. He could see Jenna before she went and give her the chocolate Charm.
"All right then," he said. "I'll be back by midnight."
Septimus headed for the heavy purple front door, which recognized Marcia's Apprentice and flung itself open as he approached.
"Hey!" Marcia shouted after him. "You've forgotten the spiders!"
"Bother," muttered Septimus.
Chapter 2 Wizard Way
Septimus stepped onto the silver spiral stairs at the top of the Tower. "Hall, please," he said. As the stairs began to move smoothly down, turning like a giant corkscrew, Septimus held up the spider jar. He squinted at the occupants, which now numbered only five, and wondered if he had seen the hairy spider before. The hairy spider looked back at Septimus with a baleful stare. It had certainly seen him before. Four times to be precise, the spider thought crossly; four times it had been picked up, stuffed into a jar and dumped outside. The boy was lucky it hadn't bitten him before. Still, at least there was some decent food in the jar this time. The two soft young spiders had gone down very nicely,even though it had had to chase them around the jar for a while. The hairy spider settled down and resigned itself to the journey. Again.
The silver spiral stairs turned slowly, and, as they took Septimus and his catch down through the Wizard Tower, he got some cheery waves from the Ordinary Wizards who lived on the floors below and were beginning to go about their business for the day.
There had been much excitement when Septimus had first arrived at the Wizard Tower. Not only was Marcia Overstrand returning in triumph after ridding the Wizard Tower, not to mention the entire Castle, of a Darke Necromancer, but she was also bringing with her an Apprentice. Marcia had spent ten years as ExtraOrdinary Wizard without taking on an Apprentice. After a while some of the Ordinary Wizards had been known to mutter that she was too fussy for her own good. "What did Madam Marcia expect to find, for goodness' sakethe seventh son of a seventh son? Ha!" But that was exactly what Madam Marcia Overstrand had found. She had found Septimus Heap, seventh son of Silas Heap, who was a poor and untalented Ordinary Wizard and himself the seventh son of Benjamin Heap, an equally poor, but considerably more talented, Shape-Shifter.
As the silver spiral stairs slowed to a smooth halt on the ground floor of the Wizard Tower, Septimus jumped off and made his way across the Great Hall, hopping from side to side to try to catch the fleeting colors that played across the soft sandlike floor. The floor had seen him coming and the words GOOD MORNING, APPRENTICE ran across the shifting patterns and flitted in front of him as he made his way over to the massive solid-silver doors that guarded the entrance to the Tower. Septimus murmured the password, and, noiselessly, the doors swung open before him, sending a brilliant shaft of sunlight into the Hall, which drowned out all the Magykal colors.
Septimus stepped out into the warm midsummer morning. Someone was waiting for him.
"Marcia's let you out early today," said Jenna Heap. She was sitting on the lowest of the huge marble steps that led up into the Wizard Tower, carelessly swinging her feet against the warm stone. She wore a simple red tunic edged with gold and tied with a gold sash, and a sturdy pair of sandals on her dusty feet. Her long dark hair was held in place by a slim gold circlet that she wore around her head like a crown. Her dark eyes had a teasing glint in them as she regarded her adoptive brother. He looked as scruffy as usual. His curly straw-colored hair was uncombed, and his green Apprentice robes were covered in dust from the Librarybut on his right index finger, his gold Dragon Ring shone as brightly as ever.
Jenna was pleased to see him.