The Young Sorceress

by Wesley Allison

  “Thank goodness you’ve come in,” said Mr. Parnorsham. “I need a break.”

  “Can I buy you a Billingbow’s, Mr. P?”

  Mr. Parnorsham thought for a moment, and then said, “I think you can.”

  He pulled two bottles from where they were cooling and set them on the counter. He handed Senta a straw. Then he popped the cork from his own bottle and tipped it back, pouring the cool soda water down his throat.

  “You must be making money hand over fist,” said the girl. “The lizzies sure love your store.”

  “It has been very profitable, I won’t lie. Honestly though, I think I’m getting too old for this. And to tell the truth, Mrs. Parnorsham is feeling lonely at home by herself. I think a year or two more and I’ll have to retire.”

  “What would we do without a Pfennig Store?”

  “Oh, I’m sure someone will open up another establishment. I’m surprised they haven’t already. For that matter, I might sell the business or pass it on to someone. Mrs. P and I were never blessed with children, but I have quite an abundance of nephews back in Brechalon.

  “It won’t be the same without you, Mr. P.”

  “That is very kind of you to say,” said the man.

  Just then the bell over the door rang. A lizzie walked in leading three human children. Senta sipped her Billingbow’s and watched as the group made its way to the toy counter.

  “Tsaua Cissy!” called Mr. P. Then to Senta, he added, “the governor’s lizzie.”

  “Yes, I recognize her.”

  In the relatively quiet store, the children grew louder and louder until they were almost shouting at each other. The lizzie hissed, quieting them. Senta strolled over to where they stood by the toy counter.

  “Can I be of assistance?” she asked in the lizzie tongue.

  “It is nothing for you to worry about, Drache Girl.” The words “Drache Girl” were in Brech, but he rest was in “spit-n-gag.” “The children can’t decide which toy they want.”

  “Hello kids,” said Senta, in Brech.

  “Hello Senta,” said Iolana Staff and Augie Dechantagne at almost the same time.

  “Where’s your dragon?” asked little Terra Dechantagne.

  “He’s sleeping, but I’ll tell him you asked after him. So you can’t decide which toy to get?”

  “I want another soldier,” said Terra, in her hoarse little voice, “but Mommy says I have to be a princess.”

  “You should get a soldier. Then you can be a queen and order him around. Queens are better than princesses any day.”

  “She’s getting her soldier mixed in with my regiment,” said Augie.

  “Yes, I can see how that would be a problem,” said Senta. She turned to the oldest of the three. “And what is your problem?”

  “I don’t think we should get a toy every time we come to the Pfennig Store. We have so many toys already that we can’t play with them all. There are little children in Enclep that can’t afford a single toy to play with.”

  “I don’t suppose your mother knows you’re a socialist?”

  “See?” said the lizzie. “Just kids.”

  “Mr. Parnorsham,” called Senta, back toward the counter. “Can you get me a tin of those butter biscuits and perhaps put a bow on it? I have a sick friend.”

  * * * * *

  The pirates had been on the island for three days, and Baxter had carefully watched them from afar. In the storybooks he had read as a child, pirates stopped on islands to bury treasure, but that didn’t seem to be the case here. Maybe it never was in real life. There were twenty-one individuals from the ship who came ashore. There might have been others who never made landfall. There was no way for the Brech officer to know.

  The second day it had become clear why they were here. Three of the men from the ship seemed to be on the outs with the others. At first Baxter thought that they might be prisoners taken from another ship, but from their dress and behavior, at last he came to believe that they were simply party members who were not getting on with their cut-throat companions. The bulk of the pirates shoved the unarmed men out onto the beach and began brandishing their weapons at them. One stood his ground and was quickly stabbed through the chest. The remaining two went running off into the jungle. The pirates gave them a five-minute head start, and then set off after them.

  The naval officer watched from a distance, the best he could. He had moved Odval and most of his possessions to the northern end of the island and he hoped that if they found his little tree house and cooking area they would take it for something that had been there for a long time. Fortunately, they didn’t seem like they would find it. The fleeing pirates ran toward the south and those in pursuit naturally followed.

  Most of the pirates were Enclepians, like Odval, with brown skin and straight black hair. A couple were clearly Sumirian, though he couldn’t tell if they were Brechs, Misannans, or Freedonians. All were dressed in a mixture of clothing types, no doubt representing stolen attire as well as the remnants of their own clothing. There wasn’t really any difference between those being chased and those who were doing the chasing. One of the latter, a particularly large, ugly fellow with a shaved head and tattooed face wore the remains of what could only have been a woman’s day dress.

  Late in the evening of the third day, Baxter returned to his makeshift camp on the little meadow. He had left the pirates that morning, just after they had caught and tortured to death one of the two remaining runners.

  “Que font-ils?” asked Odval, moving up beside him as he watched the interlopers from between the trees.

  “I wish I knew what as going on,” he said. “If I only knew what those men were accused of doing. I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  “Je ne comprends pas.”

  “Right.”

  They climbed into the little shelter that they had made the day before by piling palm branches up around a bush. Though quite a distance from where the pirates had landed, Baxter didn’t want to chance a fire. When the sun rose, he woke to find the woman watching him.

  “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” she repeated slowly. She smiled, and then asked, “Peux-je voir votre main?”

  “I have no idea what that means,” he replied.

  She reached out and took his hand, unfolded it, and spread out his palm. Her slim brown fingers glided over the lines. She pointed to one.

  “Ceci est votre ligne de vie.”

  “Ligne de vie? This is my life line? You’re a palmist?”

  “C'est long, n'est-ce pas?”

  “Long? If you say so. That may go to prove that the art of reading palms is so much bunk. It’s not likely I’ll have a long life here.”

  She simply smiled at him and continued.

  “Ceci est votre ligne d'amour.”

  “Ligne d’amour. Love line. That’s easy enough. Are you in there then? L’est vous?”

  “No.” She smiled sadly. “Je peux vous dire quelque chose d'elle.”

  “I don’t know what you said.”

  “Vous la rencontrerez dans votre ville de maison, dans un café.”

  “All I got from that was ‘café’.”

  When they climbed out of their shelter, they were both surprised to find a large red welt on the woman’s leg. Baxter examined it to see if it was a bit or sting or some kind of rash. She hadn’t made any sound during the night to indicate a wound, and even now she didn’t seem to find it painful. There were no fang marks, either large or small, that would indicate a serpent or a spider. Odval had no difficulty walking, so they set about finding their daily meal.

  By noontime, they had found enough fruit to make a fairly substantial meal. After they ate, Baxter examined his companion’s leg and the rash didn’t seem any worse, though it wasn’t any better either.

  At the northern edge of the little meadow was an embankment of large volcanic rocks, and seeping from between two of these large rocks was a trickle of water. It wasn’t enough to form into a strea
m. It wasn’t even enough to make a pool, but Baxter had earlier placed a hollowed out coconut to catch the runoff and had returned several times during each day to find it filled about an hour later.

  That night, Baxter insisted on constructing an entirely new shelter. He hacked the twigs from some fallen branches, and then using a coil of rope, fastened them together and suspended them as a sleeping platform several feet off the ground. It swayed like a hammock and it took several tries before man and woman were able to situate themselves in it, but it held them both. He didn’t want to risk another incidence of whatever had bitten or stung his companion. He didn’t know if the cause of the injury might be animal, vegetable, or mineral, he decided he wouldn’t take a chance.

  They stayed at their northern camp for five days. During that time, Baxter expanded their sleeping area by constructing a rain shade of large leaves above them and an enclosed fire pit near them on the ground. The gigantic birds that they had encountered on their earlier visit returned and they killed and butchered one, but the next day, the flock had again wandered back into the jungle.

  When on the fifth day, Baxter decided that it was time to go see if the pirates had gone, he spent a great deal of time gathering provisions for his female companion. Once he thought that enough food had been gathered to last her three days, he spent one last night with her and first thing in the morning, started south.

  Just after sundown, he had arrived at the ruins by the little lake. The pirates had obviously been here. One of the walls of his kitchen was knocked down and they had damaged the platform that he had put up in the tree. Scattered around the remains of the ancient temple were pieces of old clothing, broken weapons, and assorted trash.

  Baxter bent down to examine a piece of a sword, when something landed on his back, driving him to the ground. He rolled, but the thing had hold of him and didn’t let go. Slamming his head backwards, he made contact, and in a spray of blood, his attacker fell back. Turning, the naval officer found a raggedly dressed man, one hand clutching his bleeding nose and the other whipping out a long, wicked-looking dagger. It was the last of the three men the pirates had been chasing, and from the look on his face, he was a very desperate man.

  * * * * *

  St. Ulixes was a strange city. Seeing it as the ship approached the dock took Wissinger’s breath away. It had been inhabited for thousands of years, but not by humans. The aboriginal inhabitants of Mallontah were reptilians, similar though not identical, so he had heard, to those who lived in Birmisia. They were upright and roughly man-sized, with scaly brownish green skin and a frill on the tops of their heads. The trogs, as the aborigines were called, built round mud brick houses, and these structures stretched out as far as the eye could see. Near the docks, they had been replaced by human buildings, square and neat. Some were constructed of wood or stone, but many used the same mud brick building material that the trogs had been using for centuries. By far the largest edifice was the great Cathedral of St. Ulixes, for which the city had been renamed.

  When the S.S. Waif des Vaterlands pulled into the vast port facility, Wissinger was ready, his single duffle bag already in hand. The ship’s gangplank was connected to a loading structure made of a steel frame with wooden stairs attached. The writer was across and down on solid soil before anyone, save several ship’s officers. Looking back over his shoulders, he watched for Spinne, the Zaeri-catcher, but could see him neither descending from the ship nor waiting along the railing.

  Once on solid soil, it was obvious that even the human portion of St. Ulixes was large, far larger than it had appeared from the ship. It was a maze of winding streets and alleys, lined with brick buildings, with the occasional wooden or stone structure. Two of every three seemed to be pubs or saloons. Wissinger stepped into a nondescript little tavern, which had no identifying sign. The darkened interior was alive with low voices, and the fact that most of them were speaking Brech, filled him with a strange sense of relief.

  “A pint of bitter,” said Wissinger in answer to the expectant face behind the bar.

  He recalled on his last trip to Brechalon trying the pale ale that was so popular there. To his mind, it didn’t hold a candle to the thick, heady beers of the fatherland. But blending in was far more important than personal taste. When he scooped up the clear glass from the counter and put it to his lips though, he was pleasantly surprised.

  He looked around as his eyes adjusted to the darkened interior. The room wasn’t much larger than a typical parlor and half of that was the territory behind the bar. A dozen small tables had been crammed in, each with two chairs, about half of which were now filled. The men were mostly laborers, and they were all men. This didn’t surprise Wissinger. Unlike Freedonia, where women frequented taverns, Brech pubs were the exclusive domain of the male. There were also no aborigines present. The writer didn’t know if this was because the reptilians didn’t drink, or because of prejudice against them by humans, but he guessed it was a combination of the two.

  “Newly arrived?” asked the barkeep, a round-faced fellow with large sideburns and a bushy mustache.

  “Yes,” answered Wissinger. “I’m on my way to Birmisia.”

  “A lot are.” The barkeep nodded affably. “Course, there’s plenty o’ work to be had ‘ere too.”

  Wissinger nodded right back and sipped his drink.

  “Depot’s down ‘at away,” the barkeep continued after a moment. “Got to beard the trogs. They’re a begger lot, so you just ignore ‘em, right?”

  Wissinger nodded again, though he wasn’t sure he followed all of what the man had said. He pulled a one mark note, one of those Zurfina had given him so long ago in the ghetto, and placed it on the bar. He received a handful of odd looking coins in return, which he shoved into a pocket. Then he headed back out the door and walked resolutely in the direction of the train depot.

  As he walked, he carefully looked around to see if he saw a familiar face. He glanced behind him occasionally to see if he was being followed by the Zaeri-catcher, Spinne. He was so focused on the people around him that he didn’t at first notice when the buildings around him had changed. He was no longer in the human part of the city. The rounded huts of the aborigines now surrounded him. They grew closer and closer together and the streets between them, already narrow, became a truly tight squeeze.

  Suddenly, the toothy snout of one of the locals confronted him. It stood directly in his path, its yellow eyes playing over him. It held out its hand and said something that sounded like it had been punched in the stomach.

  “Uungh. Uungh.”

  “Step away fellow,” he said.

  “Uungh. Uungh.”

  The reptilian continued to hold his hand out, but now his other hand began wandering across Wissinger’s clothing. He didn’t know if the beast was trying to locate his valuables or simply make him feel uncomfortable, but he didn’t like it one bit. The creature was dust-covered, with bits of dried mud here and there. He slapped away the clawed appendage. The creature hissed hideously and the frill on top of its head shot up and flushed red. Now Wissinger was surrounded by reptile men.

  “Get back!” he shouted, placing his hands on the shoulders of the creature in front of him and shoving. “Verlassen sie mich allein!”

  Pushing past the beast, he ran down the winding pathway between buildings. Dozens, even hundreds more reptile men watched him. A few followed him, but he dodged away from any that strayed too close. He felt like he had run ten miles and his nerves were quite frayed when he spotted the large wooden building with a steaming train engine next to it.

  There were quite a few trogs around the depot too, begging, carrying loads to and from the train, or just milling around, but Wissinger felt safer with other humans nearby. He squeezed past another pair of begging reptilians and climbed a wide set of wooden steps to the platform. In the platform’s center sat a poorly constructed, wooden railroad office. A gaunt man with a green visor stared out from behind the wrought iron bars covering the ticke
t window.

  “When is the next train to Birmisia?”

  “Six o’clock tonight.” The railroad clerk’s half-closed eyes showed no interest in his customer or the question.

  Wissinger looked up at the cloudy sky.

  “Um, what time is it now?”

  The gaunt clerk pointed over his shoulder at an ornate clock hanging on the wall behind him. It read quarter past four.

  “Excellent. How much is a ticket?”

  “Sixty-five marks for first class; forty-five for second. Third class is ten marks fifty p.”

  “My goodness,” said Wissinger. “That’s quite a price difference. What is the difference between them?”

  “First and second class, you ride in the coach, in a proper seat. There’s a water closet in the back. You can buy food from the trolley. With first, you also get a bunk in the sleeper cab. Other than that, they’re the same. Third class, you ride in either a boxcar or the flatcar, depending on which has room. You’re out in the open with no facilities… just like a trog.”

  “Um, you don’t have to ride with them, do you?”

  The man’s eyes showed the first sign of interest as he slowly smiled.

  “Trogs don’t ride the train. They don’t go to Birmisia no ways. They’re afraid of the lizzies up that way. Big, scary buggers, the lizzies. They come across a trog and they’ll rip him to pieces.”

  Wissinger gulped and then rifled through his money. He had fifty-two Brech marks.

  “I’ll take one second class.”

  Exchanging his money for the ticket and clutching it to his body, the writer stepped around the corner of the building and looked down the tracks. The train was already being moved into position. He didn’t want to leave the station and he had nowhere to go anyway. There were no benches on which to bide his time, so he leaned up against the building and tried to relax. Relaxation though was not to be his. A crowd of people trudged up the wooden stairs toward the ticket window, and among the crowd, Wissinger saw a face that caused his manhood to try and crawl up into his body. It wasn’t Spinne. It was the wizard from Magdafeld—Von Grieg. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, he had on a tweed suit, but the writer still recognized him. Even if he hadn’t, he would have known him for what he was by the fylfot of the Reine Zauberei. Wissinger hurried away from the train depot as fast as he could, and tried to lose himself in the crowd of humans and the reptilians, who no longer seemed so worrisome.