The Familiars (5 page)

Aldwyn awoke from his slumber with a start. He had had this dream before; it visited him on nights of deep, uninterrupted sleep, but its meaning remained a mystery. As he opened his
eyes, he had no idea where he was at first. He expected to be surrounded by rooftop shingles and cooing pigeons, but instead found himself on a twisted-root floor in front of a still-crackling fire. Confusion soon gave way to memories of the previous day and its haunting conclusion down by the runlet. There was something foreboding and sinister about the mass of spying eyeballs that made him think he should tell the others about it. But once again, Aldwyn chose to keep the unsettling encounter to himself. He stretched luxuriously and then walked outside, where he was surprised to find the sun high in the sky. When was the last time he had slept this late?

Aldwyn saw that Marianne, Dalton, and Jack were already outside the cottage, each holding big, thick volumes of parchment bound by twine in front of them. Kalstaff was sitting with them by a row of tree stumps in the meadow, where a tablet of slate was leaning up against a rock. Aldwyn noticed that it was covered with all kinds of intricate symbols and letters written in chalk. The students sat down in this strange outdoor classroom, and Kalstaff began the morning
lesson, tapping the glass ball at the tip of his rod against the board three times. A second later, the chalk symbols began to rearrange themselves into an orderly figure-of-eight.

Aldwyn came up beside Gilbert and Skylar, who waited eagerly nearby to see what assistance the wizards would need during today’s tutorial.

“Look at what the cat dragged in,” said Skylar rather stiffly. “That was a joke,” she added, seeing Aldwyn’s straight-faced reaction. “You know, because you’re a cat and you were late.”

“She doesn’t understand delivery,” said Gilbert. “See, what she should have said is, ‘Talk about a cat nap!’”

Aldwyn let out a laugh. “Now that’s funny.”

Skylar looked at them, confused. “I don’t get it. What’s the difference?”

Without answering her question, Gilbert nudged a giant oak leaf toward Aldwyn, who looked down to see a few crumbs of cheese on it.

“I saved you some breakfast,” said Gilbert. “But then, umm, I got hungry and ate most of it.”

“Why didn’t anyone wake me?” asked Aldwyn.

“Kalstaff believes that the natural sleep cycle
should remain undisturbed, that we learn more with our eyes closed than we do with them open,” replied Skylar. “Of course, if that were true, Gilbert would be a genius.”

“Thank you,” said Gilbert cheerfully.

Aldwyn considered telling him it wasn’t a compliment, but decided to keep his mouth shut.

Over by the tree stumps, Kalstaff began throwing sprinkles of crushed nightshade into the air.

“Look, Kalstaff is preparing to conjure a fire spirit,” whispered Skylar. “We should gather some juniper berries and sage leaves. They’ll need them to cast the spell.”

With a flap of her wings, Skylar soared off toward the woods, a tiny satchel slung across her back.

By the time Aldwyn and Gilbert reached the boundary where the meadow met the woods, Skylar was already filling her satchel with ripe purple berries. Gilbert started plucking sage leaves. Aldwyn pretended to be busy giving his fur another once-over.

“Aldwyn, since it’s your first day, I’ll leave the basics to you, something even an untrained
familiar should be able to handle,” said Skylar. “See if you can gather some
Juniperus phoenicea
. I’ve got the
oxycedrus
covered. Kalstaff says a good blend of varietals creates a more potent invocation.”

Aldwyn stared at her like she was speaking a different language. He wouldn’t know a juniper berry if it smacked him right on the nose, let alone be able to identify a
Juniperus phoenicea
.

“Sure thing,” he said without missing a beat. One thing being an alley cat had taught him was to never admit weakness. “I’ll go get the focaccia.”

“
Phoenicea
.”

“Right.”

Aldwyn scampered up a neighboring tree and walked across one of its low-lying branches. He reached out a paw and swiped a few tart yellow berries from the twig. Within the blink of an eye, a gray cloud formed overhead, and a small thunderclap could be heard. Skylar and Gilbert both looked over to Aldwyn.

“Why are you picking storm berries?” asked Skylar. Aldwyn thought there was a note of
frustration in her voice.

Before he could answer, a shower of rain poured down on the three of them. It only lasted for a few seconds, but it was enough to soak them from head to toe.

“Don’t worry about it—I made the same mistake when I first got here,” said Gilbert. “I almost got struck by lightning.”

Skylar shook the drops of water from her feathers and flew over to a small tree. She began pulling off a slightly darker-hued berry with her beak.

“I suppose if you want something done correctly, you have to do it yourself,” Skylar said under her breath but making sure the others could hear. “Elementary education for familiars just isn’t what it used to be.”

Aldwyn made his way back down to the ground, his damp fur already giving off the musky odor of week-old dish rags. It was evident that he was lacking even the basic knowledge needed to fit in here, but luckily he wasn’t expected to know everything about this world…yet. Of course, if he made too many mistakes, he’d be exposed as the magicless, talentless, utterly ordinary cat that he was, and his comfortable new life would be over before it had even begun.

The sky was still a deep purple as dusk slowly turned to night, and the bald wizard was ladling second helpings of a homemade stew into Jack and Marianne’s wooden bowls. Kalstaff called it dining under the stars. It was a fancy way of saying what Aldwyn did every night back in Bridgetower: eat outdoors.

Aldwyn warmed himself by the fire as he
lapped up chunks of fish and potato from a dish of his own. Skylar sat perched on Dalton’s forearm, pecking at a pile of nuts and grubs in the palm of his hand. Gilbert was shoveling a bowlful of swamp flies into his mouth. Every so often, he let out a loud belch, barely stopping to take a breath before continuing.

Aldwyn’s belly was getting full, but he had worked up quite an appetite during his first official day as a familiar. After accidentally causing the rainstorm while gathering the conjuring ingredients, he had spent the rest of the morning assisting—well,
watching
—Skylar and Gilbert catch the slither of bookworms that had crept into the spell library. Skylar, nearly frantic, recounted how the last time the parasitic worms had invaded the book-filled study, they had eaten straight through
The Collected Divining Spells of Parnabus McCallister
, all twelve volumes. But she snapped out of it in time to start pecking at the bookworms, while Gilbert lit some warding candles that gave off plumes of smoke, forcing the worms’ retreat.

The afternoon had been filled with wizarding
chores as well: cauldron cleaning, wand polishing, and dusting the hourglasses. They spent some time collecting mud lizards for regeneration potions—potions that Aldwyn was told would cause a missing arm or finger to grow back within minutes. It turned out Aldwyn had a particular knack for catching these creatures made of living mud. He’d become quite comfortable digging through muck while living briefly in the sewers beneath Bridgetower, until the notorious crocodile infestation two years ago had made it too dangerous. He even got a compliment from Skylar for nabbing three mud lizards at once.

Before the sun had set, Aldwyn watched the young wizards in training create water fairies out of thin air and cast a spell that allowed a bare everwillow tree to grow back its leaves. And right before dinner, Gilbert said this hadn’t even been a busy day.

Aldwyn licked his bowl clean as embers popped and crackled right over his head. Dalton added some more kindling to the fire.

“The evening breeze is strong for early fall,” he said. “If the strange weather occurrences of late
keep up, my father’s barley crop will be a small one again next season. And I imagine Marianne and Jack’s uncle will fare no better.”

“Well, word has spread that Queen Loranella is ill,” said Kalstaff. “Which would explain why her weather-binding spells have been unable to hold back the hail and mountain winds. And why there have been reports of gundabeasts breaking through her majesty’s enchanted fences and roaming Vastia.”

Marianne glanced up from her stew.

“I thought I saw something creeping outside our bedroom window last night,” she said with a devilish grin.

“Stop teasing,” said Jack, clearly alarmed.

“And it looked hungry.”

“Now, now, Marianne,” said Kalstaff. The old wizard waited until her giggling subsided before continuing. “Border monsters like the gundabeasts are very serious business. The longer the queen is in a weakened state, the greater these threats to Vastia will become.”

“But you could defeat them, couldn’t you, Kalstaff,” said Jack, more as a statement of
fact than a question.

“Nothing to be concerned about, Jack,” said Kalstaff. “Not yet at least.”

Aldwyn had never realized how important the queen’s magic was for keeping Vastia safe.

“May we be excused?” asked Dalton. “I have some component charts to memorize before bed.”

“Not just yet,” said Kalstaff, as he turned to his youngest pupil. “First, it is time for Jack’s Familiar Rite.”

Jack jumped up excitedly, hurrying over to Aldwyn. He picked him up and brought him before Kalstaff, who was seated on a mossy rock.

“Set him beside you and take his paw in your hand,” instructed Kalstaff.

Jack sat cross-legged on the ground, scooping up Aldwyn’s furry paw in his palm. There it was again: the warm, comforting sensation of belonging. It was the very same thing Aldwyn had felt in the familiar store when Jack first tickled his chin. Kalstaff began to draw circles in the air with his rod. Aldwyn glanced over at Gilbert, confused by what was happening.

“Uh, what’s going on?” asked Aldwyn.

“Shhh,” whispered Skylar. “You’ll disturb Kalstaff’s incantation.”

Kalstaff continued with the ritual, throwing a spray of copper dust into the fire, turning the flames green.

“
Vocarum animale
,” intoned Kalstaff. “
Assendix scientento felininum
!”

In a flash, the fire jumped into the sky and then just as quickly got sucked back into the logs, disappearing as if it had never been there in the first place. Jack and Aldwyn looked around, waiting for more to happen.

“That’s it?” asked Jack.

“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” asked Aldwyn.

Jack’s head shot over to Aldwyn.

“What did you just say?”

“I said will somebody please—Hang on, are you talking to me?” answered Aldwyn.

“Holy dragon eggs!” exclaimed Jack. “I can understand you. Say something else.”

“Um, okay: I…like…fish!”

“Wow! It worked. Now I suppose you can tell me your name.”

“I’m Aldwyn.”

“Nice to meet you, Aldwyn. I’m Jack,” he said before turning to the others. “His name is Aldwyn! He just
told
me.”

“That is amazing,” teased Marianne. “What else did he confide in you? That he likes chasing balls of yarn?”

“You forget how excited you were when Gilbert first spoke to you,” Kalstaff admonished her. “You nearly fainted.”

“It’s true,” recalled Dalton. “Kalstaff had to carry you over to the runlet and splash water on your face.”

Marianne blushed, and Jack let out a laugh.

“Pretty cool, huh?” said Gilbert to Aldwyn. “Kalstaff waves his wand a couple of times, and next thing you know, your loyal gains the ability to understand what you’re saying.”

“It’s a lingual divination spell,” explained Skylar. “It only works between you and your loyal. It allows human spellcasters like Dalton or Jack or Marianne to commune with their familiars, even though they can’t speak animal tongue the way elder wizards like Kalstaff are able to.”

“I understand it’s some of Ebekenezer’s best work,” said Aldwyn, taking the small tidbit of knowledge he had overheard in the familiar store and claiming it as his own.

Skylar nearly sprained her neck, so severe was her double take.

“Horteus Ebekenezer,” clarified Aldwyn, “the great forest communer.”

“I didn’t realize your studies were so advanced,” said Skylar.

“Well,” replied Aldwyn, “I may not know so much about juniper berries, but I do know my communers.”

Kalstaff got up from the lichen-covered rock he was sitting on.

“Jack, this is the beginning of a long journey that you and Aldwyn will be taking together,” he said. “No wizard can accomplish true greatness without a devoted familiar at his or her side. I know I couldn’t have if it hadn’t been for Zabulon, may the gods rest his spirit.”

Jack nodded, then looked at his new feline companion. Aldwyn glanced back up, saw the pride in the young boy’s eyes, and, to his surprise,
felt a little proud himself.

“All right, time for bed,” said Kalstaff to his three apprentices. “We leave for our walkabout at sunrise.”