by neetha Napew
“Whoooooo the hell are youuuu? And what doooo youuuu want here?”
“Uh, I need to talk to Clothahump.” Duncan tried to see past the hovering owl. He could hear the wailing specter somewhere in the back.
“The Master is busy right now. Come back another tune.” The owl made as if to shut the door.
“Just a minute. Who’re you?”
“Mulwit, his famulus.”
Not for the first time it struck Buncan that Clothahump went through famuli the way an echidna went through termites. Using his bulk, he forced his way past the owl.
“This’ll just take a minute. My dad’s his partner.”
“Youuu’re Jon-Tom’s nestling?” Mulwit looked around uneasily. “It doesn’t matter. Youuu have to get out of here. If the Master catches me talking instead of working, it’ll go hard on me. But I shouldn’t let youuu in. Not now. Not in the middle.”
“Middle of what?” Buncan asked.
“Middle of everything. Go away.” With that Mulwit flew off up a side passage, his great wings scraping the walls with each powerful downbeat.
Left alone, Buncan thoughtfully closed the door behind him before starting up the narrow hallway that led into the depths of the interdimensionally expanded tree. Light globes illuminated the way.
Peering into a study filled with scrolls and books, he found it deserted and moved on.
“Clothahump? Master Clotnahump?” He came to the workshop and halted.
Suddenly it was right there.
Snarling and thundering, the funnel-shaped storm confronted him. Sticks and chunks of gravel spun wildly within the spiral structure. Instinctively he started to retreat, reaching for his sword.
It was at home, with his dress clothes. Weapons weren’t allowed in school.
The stout storm slid behind him and shoved him forward, into the room. He could feel the intensity of the collared winds, the power within. It could as easily have wrenched his head off his shoulders.
At which point Clothahump appeared, peering curiously over his glasses.
“What have we here? Buncan Meriweather, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Sir.” Buncan turned to stare at the storm, watching in awe as it scooted across the floor, over benches, tiptoeing daintily among delicate equipment. “I was worried about you, sir. I thought maybe this was some theurgic weapon called up by an enemy of yours. I see now that you control it. What hapless unfortunate is to be visited by this irresistible horror?”
“No one. I’m in the midst of my spring cleaning.”
Buncan pointed uncertainly at the coiled riot of a storm. “That has to do with spring cleaning?”
“Yes. It’s a tornado, albeit a small one. That’s your father’s name for it. Mine’s much longer, and I prefer his. They’re very useful meteorologic phenomenons . . . if you can keep them under control. Otherwise they make a total hash of everything.” Turning, he uttered a string of phrases which meant nothing to Buncan.
Compliant, the tornado took one last passing swipe at Buncan as it whizzed around the room, sucking the dust from window shelves, poking under carpets, scouring behind furniture, and generally going about the tasks Clothahump had assigned it earlier.
“Quite efficient, actually.” Ignoring the tornado, the wizard put a thick-fingered hand on Buncan’s back and eased him out of the workshop, leading him back toward the front study. “Have to renew the spell periodically, though, or it gets irritable. What brings you to the tree, lad?”
Buncan was glancing back over his shoulder. “I think it wanted to eat me.”
“Instinct. Don’t blame it for that. It’s a very effective, not to mention ecologically sound, method of cleaning, especially for those hard-to-reach spots.”
“What’s ‘ecologically’?”
“A term I acquired from your father. Something that sorcery needs to be more concerned with, I’m afraid. Have to stop dumping toxic waste in the third cosmic interstice, things like that. Bright fellow, your father, if a bit impulsive. Of course, he’s a human. Shouldn’t you be in school?”
Somehow it seemed counterproductive to try to hide anything from the greatest wizard in the world. “I know. I’ve got problems.”
In tine study, Clothahump directed his visitor to the couch beneath the wide picture window while taking the stiff-backed chair directly across. “You’re eighteen. Of course you’ve got problems. All the troubles of the world have fallen exclusively on your shoulders, and you haven’t the vaguest notion how to cope with them.” The wizard glanced to his right. “Mulwit!”
The owl appeared in seconds, a heavily patterned headband restraining the feathers above its eyes. The broom and dustpan were gone, having been replaced by a rag and a bottle of amber liquid.
“Purebark tea for my visitor and me,” the wizard commanded. “Cold or hot?” he inquired of Buncan.
Why is it, he wondered, that whenever I want to talk about my troubles everyone keeps offering me tea? “Uh, hot, I suppose.”
“Be off!” Clothahump ordered.
The owl shot Buncan an impressively venomous look but soared away to comply. He returned in short order.
“Now then, lad.” The wizard adopted a benign tone as he poured himself a cup of the pungent liquid and stirred in a teaspoon of Noworry honey. “Tell me your problem.”
“Well, for one thing, the other kids know that my old man’s a spellsinger and they’re always teasing me about it It’s been that way ever since I started school. I’m sick of academics anyway.”
“Your father has mentioned the situation. He seems to believe you might be better off apprenticed to some worthy craftsperson. Or, if you choose to pursue your music, as a member of some larger group. These seem to me worthwhile goals for someone of your age to consider.”
“But I want to be a full-fledged spellsinger like Jon-Tom.”
“Yes, well,” the wizard demurred. He sipped at his tea as he crossed his short, thick-skinned legs. “Not just anyone can be a spellsinger, you know. It’s rather more difficult than, say, greengrocering. Your father is an exception. There has to be innate talent present, a special spark.”
Buncan tapped the duar strapped to his back. “I’ve inherited his ability. I know I have!”
“I don’t know that such ability is inheritable.”
“I can make magic already. I just can’t, well, make to do exactly what I want it to every time.”
“According to your father, you can’t make it do what yoa want it to any of the time.”
“Dad had similar troubles when he was starting out.”
“It wasn’t as extreme as it seems to be in your case. His voice was merely bad, and he utilized already composed lyrics from his own world. Not liking his music much, you improvise, and from everything I hear it would appear that while your playing may possibly be his equal, your singing is truly excruciating.”
Buncan winced. That criticism was becoming a part of him. An unpleasant part. “I’ll get better.”
“Perhaps. If you don’t kill somebody in the meantime.”
“So I mussed up the kitchen a little. So what?”
“From what I was told, your would-be spellsinging put your mother at some physical risk.”
“My mother, at physical risk?” Buncan tried not to laugh. “My mother could disembowel any three of the best swordsmen in Polastrindu before they could land a blade on her. With her balancing arm fastened behind her back.”
Clothahump wagged a stubby finger at his visitor. “The fact remains that you are dabbling in harmonic forces you imperfectly comprehend and cannot control.”
Buncan slumped back in the overpadded couch. “Why does that sound like a cliché to me?”
“Clichés are merely truths repeated to the point of boredom, lad.”
“Then why don’t you teach me? Help me to learn?” Clothahump sighed. “Some things cannot be taught. Nor can I cast a spell to improve your voice. At best you might become an accompanist to your father. His fingers are
not as fast as they once were.”
“Thanks for your help.” Barely containing his sarcasm, Buncan rose and headed for the doorway. It was terribly impolite: He should have waited to be dismissed. Clothahump could have restrained him easily with a few choice words. Instead, the wizard simply watched the youth depart, peering down over his beak through his thick glasses.
“You must make your own decisions, lad. You’re nearly old enough to do that.”
Buncan whirled. “What do you mean ‘nearly’? I’m going to be a spellsinger and do great deeds. Whether you approve or not, or whether my father approves or not! Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .” He shoved the sputtering, flapping owl out of his way.
“Let him go, Mulwit,” said Clothahump tiredly. “After the first hundred years he’ll begin to understand. If he lives that long.”
“What was that all about, Master?” The owl began to gather up the tea service. Clothahump raised a hand.
“Leave it. This spring cleaning exhausts me. As does the impatience of youth.”
“The huuuman vexed youuu, Master?” Mulwit could not conceal his pleasure.
“We disagreed on the path he has chosen. As do his parents. That’s normal, of course. But in the lad’s case it could prove truly dangerous.”
“I never disagree with youuu, Master.”
“No. You’re as slavishly obsequious a servant as anyone could ask for.”
“Does that mean,” said Mulwit eagerly, “that youuu show me the fourth-level aerial spell which enables one tooo fly without breathing?”
“Not just yet. You have other tasks to master first. Like how to get a sink whiter than white.”
“But, Master, youuur sink is not white.”
“Therein lies the magic. Now behave yourself, or I’ll turn you into a kiwi. How’d you like to spend the rest of your apprenticeship flightless, with a long beak and hairy feathers?”
“No, Master! I meant no disrespect. I’ll hurry back tooo helping the windstorm with the cleaning.” He bounced anxiously off the far wall, like a bug seeking a way through a window.
“See that you do. And keep out of its way while it’s at work. There are enough loose feathers around the house as it is.”
The owl disappeared. Clothahump finished his tea, then rose with the slowness of great age and stared out the window toward the distant woods. There was no sign of young Meriweather. Clothahump hoped he was on his way home, though that was unlikely.
Well, it wasn’t his responsibility. He had other matters to attend to. There were alcoves and storage chambers inside the tree that hadn’t been scoured in a hundred years. That’s what happened when you put off cleaning for a few decades. Jon-Tom and Talea would have to straighten the lad out by themselves.
Checking the drawers set in his plastron, he trundled off in the direction of his workshop. The tornado ought to be about finished there by now. Have to make sure and empty it outside, he reminded himself.
As the wizard suspected, Buncan did not head back toward school or home. Instead he found himself wandering in the direction of the Shortstub, which was itself a tributary of the river Tailaroam, without any particular destination in mind. He was angry at Clothahump both for his summation of Buncan’s prospects and for his honesty. Just as he was angry at his schoolmates, his teachers, his parents, and most of the rest of the world, all of which seemed to him engaged in a vast conspiracy to prevent him from doing what he wanted.
In short, he was feeling quite normal for an active eighteen-year-old male.
“So I’m a little off-key,” he muttered to himself as he walked. “I can still sing. Dad couldn’t sing either when he was first dumped in this world, but he worked on it, and now he manages.” Although, Buncan had to admit, Jon-Tom still didn’t possess the kind of voice that would sell tickets. “I can get better,” he insisted to himself. “I can—”
A sudden sharp sound interrupted his self-pitying reverie and he halted in his tracks, looking around anxiously. The tornado coming after him? Could wind hold a grudge? It was getting late, and it occurred to him that no one knew where he was.
As he gazed nervously into the forest, something hit him from behind and sent him tumbling. He found himself caught up in a flurry of blows and dirt and confusion. But it wasn’t the tornado. It was something far more active and a good deal less stratified.
Rolling free of the turmoil, he stood and tried to brush himself off. “Very funny,” he murmured.
The nearest of his two assailants was holding his sides, laughing in short, barking yips as he rolled back and forth on the ground. “Well, I thought it was pretty funny, mate!”
His sister sat up and regarded her sibling. “Cor, but it weren’t that funny, Squill.”
“Wot? Why, it were downright hysterical, squinch-face!” Before Buncan could venture his own commentary the two had fallen to fighting again, locked in each other’s arms as they tussled in the grass and dirt. Somehow they managed to keep their clothing intact despite the ferocious level of activity.
Having observed this typical otterish sibling behavior innumerable times before, Buncan simply waited patiently. Another minute or so and it would end. Which was precisely what happened. The two adolescent otters separated, stood, and straightened their attire as they joined him on the horizontal tree root where he was sitting.
Both were full-grown, nearly five feet tall on their short hind legs. Squill was imperceptibly heavier than his sister. He wore a pale-green peaked cap decorated with three feathers, each purchased from a different bird. His vest was a darker shade of green and his short pants brown. A shoulder pouch hung off his neck and across his chest. Both he and his sister carried bows and arrow-filled quivers across their backs and short swords at their sides.
Instead of a hat his sister Neena sported a multihued headband with a thin cabachon of maroon jasper set in the center of her forehead. Bright blue and yellow streaks flowed in waves from the corners of her eyes, running toward the back of her head and up toward her ears. The body paint had been applied with skill and diligence, fur being harder to make up than bare skin. Gold glitter glistened within the paint. Similar designs decorated her short, protruding tail. Her shorts were cut to a more feminine pattern man were her brother’s, and were pale yellow to match her fuller vest. As for the wrestling match, it might as well never have happened.
Her tail twitched as she eyed her tall human friend. “Wot are you doin’ out ‘ere all by your lonesome, Buns?”
“Being angry.”
“Oi, we can see that in yer face, mate.” With his short, clipped claws Squill dug idly at the root’s exposed bark.
How can they see anything in my face? “You can’t see anything, fish-breath.”
Neena let out an appreciative hysterical bark which resulted in her brother jumping her immediately. Buncan sighed as he watched them brawl, not really interested. A moment later it was all over and they rejoined him as though nothing had happened. Which to their way of thinking was exactly the case. One simply had to tolerate such goings-on when one was in the company of otters. Especially adolescent otters. They had more energy than a shrew on uppers.
For their part, they had to slow down not only their movements but their speech when they chose to share the company of anything as plodding as a human.
Squill carefully straightened the feathers in his cap while his sister adjusted her headband.
“I never see you two in school,” Buncan commented. “How do you ever expect to learn anything?”
“Wot,” said Squill, “you mean like ‘ow to wander about in the woods spittin’ into the breeze, like you were doin’ just now? Cor, I think I can manage that without stayin’ up nights porin’ over some manual.”
Neena sidled closer to him. “Wot ‘appened, Bunky?”
He shrugged. “Got into it with Fasvunk again. Had to take another lecture from Master Washwurn.”
She wrinkled her black nose, whiskers arcing. “Sucks, that does.”
&n
bsp; “It was brief enough. Then I went to see Clothahump.”
“No shit?” Squill perked up. “By yourself? That’s somethin’. You pick up any spells?”
Buncan shook his head. “Nothing. Just advice. Most of which I didn’t want to hear.” He aimed a kick at a shelf fungus, knocking the punky growth free of the root.
“Don’t surprise me, mate. Me, I don’t need advice.” Sharp teeth flashed. “I already know everythin’.”
His sister made a face. “You don’t know anythin’, bro’. In fact, I’d opine that you know less than nothin’.”
“Yeah? ‘Ow about me knowledge o’ physics an’ engineerin’? Like ‘ow I can fit your square ‘ead into a round snake ‘ole?” He moved toward her.
Buncan held out his hands between them. “Give it a rest, can’t you? I’m in agony and all you can do is goof around.”
Squill frowned at his friend. “ ‘Ere now, you’re really down, ain’t you?” He put a short arm around as much of the human’s back as he could manage, careful not to disturb the duar.
“It’s just that I’m so bored there,” Buncan explained. “I want to do great things, to challenge the primary forces of existence. I want to spellsing.”
“Uh-oh,” muttered Neena, “that again.”
“Nothin’ personal, mate,” said Squill, “but you can’t sing well enough to inveigle a deaf dugong, much less a primary force.”
“Yeah, well, you can’t play a single-stringed bow,” Buncan shot back.
Squill raised both paws. “Hey, I know that, mate.”
Buncan gazed morosely at the ground. “I keep fooling myself, telling myself I can get better. But deep down I know I’ll never be able to sing well enough to make magic.”
“At least you can play an instrument,” said Neena. “I wish I could play anythin’.”
“Same ‘ere,” her brother confessed.
Buncan slid off the root and turned to face them. “How can I execute spellsongs if I can’t sing? How can I save the world and rescue fair maidens if I can’t work proper gramarye?”
“Ah!” barked Neena. “Now the truth comes out, it does. You’re just like any other male.”
He glared at her. “Why do you always have to bring everything down to such a base and common level, Neena?” She batted her eyes at him enticingly. “Because I’m a base and common sort of lass, Buns.”
