The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter

by Natelson, D. J.

  Medic pointed out that they would move more quickly if given time to heal. The Jolly Executioner said the companions were sitting down, weren’t they? That was restful.

  Medic said that riding and resting were two different things. Riding jolted injuries and forced the riders to pay attention. Besides, making camp and hunting for food and caring for horses was hard work.

  The Jolly Executioner told Medic to stop arguing and do something useful for a change.

  Medic certainly had his hands full. Craggy’s concussion was so severe that he could do little more than remain upright, and his horse had to be led—not by Stephen, who was not trusted (and who, besides, knew little of horses)—but by those companions who had escaped the worst of the madness. Feedledum lost his voice entirely after the first day, and didn’t regain it for more than a week. Miss Ironfist’s bruises faded slowly, and she had picked up the habit of running her fingers under her face scarf to feel for scarring. Tinkerfingers had scratched away the skin on his left wrist, and had to keep his arm in a sling.

  “The worst thing about it,” he told Stephen as they rode, “I mean, the really annoying thing is that it still itches. You’d have thought Chubblewooble would’ve cured me of the desire to scratch, but it’s as bad as ever.”

  “It itches because your skin is growing back,” said Medic. “Don’t scratch.”

  “I said I wanted to, not that I was going to. I learned my lesson. But I also think the itch is more than that; the actual itch isn’t bad where I scratched it; it’s moved up near my elbow.”

  “Sensory coping mechanism. Ignore it,” said Medic, and fell back to speak with Warthog, whose nose would never be the same.

  “I told you not to scratch,” Youngster said, urging Craggy’s horse forward. Youngster had no obvious injuries, and he had refused to tell anyone what the madness had done to him. “But did you listen to me? No.”

  “Yes, thank you; I know. Do you have any other brilliance to impart?”

  “How about every word that drops from my lips?”

  “Only if we’re going by vastly different definitions of ‘brilliance.’”

  “I don’t think so. Are you scratching again?”

  “No!”

  Stephen left Noble Steed to her own devices, and drew Deadman’s eyes from his pocket. It was time to make a permanent monster, something that would fulfill the Jolly Executioner’s expectations—something that would remind the Jolly Executioner how dearly he wanted the Enchanter to remain alive.

  “Are those what I think they are?” Tinkerfingers asked, in some disgust. “I thought you didn’t want them.”

  “I didn’t. But since I have them, I’m not going to waste them. These are perfectly good eyes.”

  “Yes, but it’s not exactly respectful, is it? Why don’t you bury them?”

  “Banananose gave me permission. Besides, my dog will need to see, and I’m unlikely to find anything better.”

  “Your dog,” said Youngster. “You’re making a dog?”

  “Not exactly a dog. A monster, really. But I’m going to give it a dog-like consciousness.”

  “I had a dog once. A real dog, with floppy brown ears.”

  “It was supposed to be a hunting dog,” Tinkerfingers said, “but was afraid of practically everything.”

  “I liked her. Her name was Mimi.” He caught Stephen’s eye. “I was about four years old when I got her. I thought Mimi was a wonderful name. Can you make yours look like her? I can give you details.”

  “Better yet,” said Tinkerfingers, “design a powerful dog, huge, a superb fighter, with massive teeth. This dog should be more than a friend; it should be a monster-killer.”

  “I wasn’t going to make it a literal dog,” Stephen protested. “It’s just easier to say ‘dog’ than ‘permanently-enchanted monster.’”

  “But you could make it look like a dog if you wanted, couldn’t you?” Youngster asked easily. “You can make it look like whatever you want. And a dog would be fun. It wouldn’t only have to fight monsters—it could also fetch and hunt with us and protect us and warn us when danger was coming. We could call it Superdog.”

  Stephen got the feeling that Youngster had a rather higher opinion of Stephen’s artistic talents than Stephen deserved. He had never considered making his animals look like real creatures; it was easily to shape them any which way, for function rather than form. Even his snow serpent hadn’t looked particularly reptilian; it had looked like a snake mostly because it hadn’t had any legs.

  On the other hand, there was something appealing about making a dog. “It might not turn out exactly as you’d expect,” Stephen said cautiously. “I’m limited by my materials, and my memories of dogs.” Mostly, he was familiar with the large, vicious kind that the unfriendlier sort of farmer set on passing enchanters.

  Stephen tucked the eyes away. He would have to build the skeletal system first, imbuing every bone, every tendon, with magic. Stephen frequently enchanted weapons and buildings that had been made by someone else, but those enchantments were only skin-deep. All the really powerful enchantments had been poured into swords or rings as they had been forged: magic inside and out, never fading.

  Hopefully.

  The Jolly Executioner was forced to call breaks every few hours for the company to rest. At the first of these, Stephen used his knife to cut a long wedge out of a sturdy-looking tree. He spent the rest of the ride whittling at it, shaping it into the many bones of a dogleg. It wasn’t as difficult as he had expected; he still had a vivid memory of skinning the fairy wolf.

  “Why not use real bones?” Youngster asked. “I’m sure we could find you a deer or wolf or something. You don’t have to make your own. You could find a dead dog—the next town might have one, recently buried—and bring it back to life.”

  “No,” said Stephen.

  “Why not? You use body parts from other creatures—isn’t that why you took those trophies?”

  “That’s recycling,” said Stephen; “what you’re suggesting is necromancy.”

  “But you could do it, couldn’t you?”

  “I can’t enchant living flesh.”

  “But if it were already dead.”

  “Then I wouldn’t want to. I’m not sure I could. But if I did manage it—then the creature wouldn’t be mine; it’d be itself. You bring a wolf back, and it has a wolf brain, and is only tenuously controlled by magic, and—and it would be a recipe for disaster.”

  And there’s something wrong about doing that, Stephen wanted to say, but wasn’t sure how. What would be wrong about it? Why? Would it work?

  “Anyway,” he finished, “I’m not going to try. So don’t ask.”

  Every evening, when the company had set up camp, Medic made his rounds. The company’s burns, cuts, and bruises mended steadily under his care and—no matter how displeased he was with the Jolly Executioner—Medic had to admit that the company was doing well.

  Most of the company.

  “How is your arm today?” Medic asked Tinkerfingers, tapping the sling. “You haven’t been scratching, have you?”

  “No,” Tinkerfingers said, guiltily snatching his fingers away.

  “It won’t heal if you keep scratching.”

  “I wasn’t—not the raw bit, anyway. And that is healing. I was scratching my shoulder. My arm doesn’t hurt or itch at all anymore—I can hardly feel it. The itch has migrated up my shoulder, and I have to scratch it, or it’ll drive me mad.” Tinkerfingers had jumped up and strode around as he spoke, violently poking the air.

  “The itch has migrated,” Medic said, coolly ignoring Tinkerfingers’s uncharacteristic show of temper. “Really.”

  “Yes!”

  “It’s true,” Youngster volunteered. “He’s been scratch-chasing it since before Chubblewooble—since the Beast of Quag.”

  Medic remained dubious.

  “It’s true. Tell him, Enchanter. You were there.”

  Stephen had been wondering if he would get dragged
into this. He nodded cautiously.

  “And neither you nor the Enchanter thought to tell me of this injury?”

  “We thought it was just a rash,” said Youngster. “There weren’t any bites or punctures or anything like that. It still might be a rash. Or a weird reaction.”

  “Maybe,” said Medic. “I wish someone had told me before. I had been working on the assumption that the events on Chubblewooble had caused this—and now I’m told they merely exacerbated a pre-existing condition . . . one I might have been able to treat if only someone had told me. No wonder it’s spreading.”

  “It isn’t spreading,” said Tinkerfingers, annoyed. “It’s moving. It’s the same size as it always was—and it isn’t getting worse, either; it itches exactly the same amount . . . which was plenty bad to start with, believe you me. I can hardly think of anything but how much I want the itching to stop.”

  Medic was baffled. He reexamined Tinkerfingers’s arm and chest, poked the itching spot—which was an irritated red from Tinkerfingers’s scratching, but was otherwise unmarked—shook his head, muttered to himself, and came to no conclusions whatsoever. “Is it possible that you’re imagining—”

  “No! And if you can’t be helpful, why don’t you—” he checked himself. “I’m sorry. It’s this itch. Can you do anything for it? This itch is driving me crazy.”

  “-er,” Youngster corrected halfheartedly.

  “Maybe a cream?” Medic suggested.

  “I was hoping for something more along the lines of cutting it out. You could use a clean knife and—”

  “That’s a little extreme.”

  “It itches. Listen, it’d be easy. I could do it myself, if you have a knife I could use—mine’s not really the right shape.”

  Stephen had heard enough. If Tinkerfingers really was going to cut out a chunk of flesh, he had no desire to witness it. He stood and walked away from the campsite, examining trees. He wanted the perfect wood for his dog’s skull.

  The last two skulls Stephen had attempted to carve had gone wrong from the start, and Stephen suspected the wood was at fault—surely, it could not be his own skill. He needed a younger tree, one vividly alive despite in the depths of January. He needed a tree with good wood at least a foot in diameter, preferably pine . . . more because he liked the smell of pine than that he thought it particularly easy to work with.

  When Stephen finally returned more than an hour later, proudly lugging a twelve-inch cube of pine, he was immediately accosted by Medic. “The Enchanter wandered off.”

  “That is true,” Stephen agreed. “He did. Look what he found.” He held up the wood proudly—but not for long; his arms were weak from fatigue.

  “The Enchanter must have known his services would be required.”

  Stephen’s mind immediately went to Tinkerfingers’s notion of cutting out the itch. Surely they wouldn’t have waited for him. Surely.

  “The Enchanter will be pleased to increase the efficacy of a medicinal cream.”

  “This isn’t about cutting out the itch, then?” Stephen asked hopefully. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to help with that; enchantment isn’t really made for medicine.”

  “Cut out the itch? Certainly not! Was it the Enchanter who put that foolish idea into Tinkerfingers’s head?”

  Stephen rolled his eyes. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I have creams to relieve itches,” said Medic, “but they have no effect on Tinkerfingers. If the Enchanter were to increase their efficacy—or make Tinkerfingers believe he had—it would be helpful.”

  “I doubt it. If the creams have no effect, doubling the effect isn’t going to do any good. And like I said, I don’t do healing magic.”

  “The Enchanter enjoys complaining,” Medic said, “but unless the Enchanter has a better suggestion—”

  The Enchanter did not have a better suggestion, and so he reluctantly agreed to help. “I’m warning you, though,” he said, “I’ve never tried this before.”

  “If the Enchanter has finished making excuses—”

  “Disclaimers. And yes, I suppose I have.”

  “Good.” Medic held out a palm-sized jar.

  Stephen unscrewed the top, and dipped a finger in the pale-greenish cream beneath. “It smells like plants,” he observed.

  “The Enchanter means willowherb.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of it. Could you stand back? It’s hard to concentrate with you breathing down my neck.”

  Medic stayed where he was. Stephen moved instead, going to sit down.

  A base of soothing would do, with secondary enchantments for cooling and freshness. He thought he might be able to manage those, with a variation on the preservation enchantment he used on trophies. No; that’d kill Tinkerfingers’s skin. He’d have to make the enchantment adaptable, willing to allow the natural growth and shedding of skin.

  Stephen pressed the base enchantment into the cream—and watched it slid right off.

  Huh. All right.

  Stephen pushed his finger back into the cream and channeled the enchantment through it, funneling magic directly into the center of the cream.

  The magic bubbled out into the cream, but did not cling to it. When Stephen drew his finger away, the magic seeped out through the cream and slid to the earth, dissipating.

  Stephen said several unmagical words.

  “There’s no need for that sort of language!” Medic said, much offended.

  “Yes, there is,” Stephen said firmly, and tried again. This time, he used a base of numb, but that slid off almost as quickly as the soothing. Relax was just as bad. Deaden was a slight improvement, until Stephen realized what it would probably do to human skin, and hurriedly removed it. Desensitize was equally unwise, and wouldn’t stick anyway. Balm was a flop, as were cool, calm, and anti-itch. In his desperation, Stephen tried heal, which was so vague and unsuited to enchantment that he wasn’t surprised in the least when it failed to materialize.

  The cream simply wouldn’t hold an enchantment; it wasn’t sufficiently solid. Stephen put down the jar of cream and collected up the failed enchantments, which had puddle around him, like colorful shadows—what some people called an aura. He grounded the excess magic so it couldn’t cling to anything—although the dirt in that area might never be quite the same—and stood.

  “The Enchanter is finished?” said Medic, in the tone of one who has been waiting an hour when he expected to wait only minutes.

  “Yes,” said Stephen. “Here, take it. I’m off to bed. Good night.”

  “The Enchanter does not wish to see the effects of his improved cream?”

  “Oh, I know the effect it’ll have.” None.

  “Are you done?” Youngster asked, dragging Tinkerfingers behind him as he approached. The rest of the company was asleep, but Youngster had volunteered for the first watch—he wasn’t likely to get any rest anyway.

  “Have you made the cream acidic?” Tinkerfingers asked. “It could eat a hole in my shoulder; that’d get rid of the itch.” He laughed at their horrified expressions. “What? It was a joke.”

  It hadn’t been a joke.

  “It’s not acidic,” said Medic. “Is it?”

  Stephen shook his head. “No.” At least, it shouldn’t be. What was the effect of pushing magic after magic at a cream? He’d never tried it before. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  “Pity,” said Tinkerfingers. “Is that it?” He plucked the cream out of Medic’s fingers and sniffed it. “It smells the same.”

  “Of willowherb, apparently,” said Stephen.

  Tinkerfingers scooped a blob of the cream out with his fingers, stuck his fingers down his collar and rubbed the cream on the area where, presumably, the itch resided.

  “Improved?” Medic asked.

  “It feels the same as before—only slightly colder, than when it sat near the fire.”

  “The Enchanter worked on it for hours.”

  “Not hours.”

&nbs
p; “What enchantments did he put on it?”

  Stephen folded his hands in front of him. “Oh, all sorts of enchantments, all designed to sooth itches. Unfortunately, enchantments don’t stick to non-solids.”

  “The Enchanter doesn’t mean—”

  “He does, I’m afraid. That cream is no more magical than it was before. Now, if there’s nothing else you want, it’s my bedtime.” He turned away from their disappointed faces and went to lie down.