The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,105
‘A peaceful sight, actually,’ Echo thought to himself. Why were people so scared of skeletons? Nothing could do one less harm than a skeleton and in this particular case, dead was really better than alive.
He walked on, keeping his eyes peeled so as not to be startled by another dead Incurable. Wisely so, because it wasn’t long before the next one came into view. Like a knight on a medieval tomb, he was lying on a huge boulder with his eye sockets directed at the canopy of foliage overhead and his skeletal arms folded on his chest. Whether or not he hadn’t liked the thought of flowers growing through him, he couldn’t defy the moss, which had spread from the boulder to his bones.
Moss … Of course, thought Echo, that’s why he was here, not to view the Incurables’ mortal remains. He sniffed the air once more. Yes, the smell of Toadmoss was growing steadily stronger.
Again he heard that low, throaty sound issuing from the depths of the forest. No doubt about it: Toadmoss and the author of the sound shared the same location. He walked on along the path, undistracted by the skeletons lying or sitting here and there. One Incurable was staring down at him from his perch in the fork of a large tree; another, who had presumably wanted to cut his sufferings short, was hanging by his neck from a branch.
One part of the forest consisted almost entirely of willow trees whose foliage, which resembled strands of pale-green hair, hung down to the ground. The smell of Toadmoss was now so intense that Echo caught it every time he drew breath. Mingled with it were other smells - unpleasant ones! - that prompted him to slacken his pace. Was that a clearing up ahead?
Although the sun had already set, the sky was still faintly tinged by its afterglow. The moon was three-quarters full. Echo came to a halt. Yes, it was a clearing. More than that, however, it was one of Nature’s marvels.
Jutting from the ground was a forest of tall slabs of stone. What kind of wood was it in which rocks grew instead of trees? It seemed unwise to approach them, but the smell of Toadmoss was coming from their direction. Having come this far, Echo wasn’t about to return without achieving anything.
He ventured a little nearer the slabs, which looked old and weather-worn. Many of them overgrown with creeper, they differed in shape and colour. Some were bigger, some smaller, some paler, some darker, some jet-black, others streaked with red and white veins. One slab was thick and composed of dark-brown porous stone, another was thin, with a white, mirror-smooth surface. Echo now saw that some of the slabs bore inscriptions. No, not just some, many - possibly all of them! This was becoming more and more mysterious. What was written on them?
He took a close look at one of the monoliths. Black marble. An engraved name. A date. Another date. The next bore another name, another date. He began to doubt that the rocks had grown here naturally. They had been embedded in the ground, but by whom? And when? Were they a work of art? A monument? An artefact from another age? He felt ashamed of his naivety in mistaking them for plants.
He read some more inscriptions. They always comprised names and dates. Some of the surnames were familiar to him from Malaisea. Many were emblazoned on the fascia boards of pharmacies and bakeries, opticians’ and butchers’ shops. And then he read one that affected him so deeply that he couldn’t suppress a sob:
FLORIA OF INGOTVILLE
It was the name of his former mistress.
Echo grasped the truth at last: this was a graveyard! He hadn’t recognised it at once because he’d never been to one before, only heard tell of such sinister places. The townsfolk of Malaisea had consigned their burial place to the depths of the forest because they couldn’t endure the sight of it. They were too preoccupied with their ailments to tolerate a perpetual reminder of death, so they came here to bury their nearest and dearest, not to mourn them.
This was the kingdom of death. His late mistress’s mouldering corpse was down below, together with countless others. He now knew where the unpleasant smells were coming from: the ground itself.
He found it only too easy to imagine the dead breaking through the surface, as they had in Ghoolion’s story of the accursed vineyard, and grabbing him with a