The Familiars: Animal Wizardry. Adam Epstein

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      Entering the living room, he spotted a window that had been left ajar and quickly made his way towards it, passing the hammocks strung up in front of the fireplace. The room was much darker now, since the lightning bugs had gone to sleep in their hive. Hopping up onto a large oak table, Aldwyn paused to look at a framed painting of what appeared to be Kalstaff in his younger years, accompanied by another man wearing a robe just like Kalstaff’s and a beautiful, imperial-looking woman in a long white dress. He recognised her as a younger Queen Loranella—there was a statue of her in front of Bridgetower’s courthouse that Aldwyn used to sleep beneath on hot summer afternoons. Each of them was joined by what had to be their familiars: Kalstaff’s bloodhound, the wizard’s turtle and the queen’s grey rabbit. Aldwyn continued along the table, past an enchanted quill that was busily copying Kalstaff’s lesson plans for the next day, before bounding out of the window.

      He immediately looked for the fastest route to the roof and spotted an orange tree whose branches brushed up against the tiles atop the cottage. As Aldwyn walked swiftly across the yard, he noticed that one of the spell library’s windows was open. He didn’t think much of it until he saw Skylar exit with a small leather-bound book tucked under her wing. He ducked out of sight as Skylar pushed the window shut with her beak before flapping off into the woods. Aldwyn found her actions curious and decided to follow her.

      He stepped quietly through the dense underbrush on the edge of the woods until he arrived at a clearing. Fallen leaves of orange and green carpeted the ground, and at the centre, Skylar was perched upon a tree stump, the borrowed—or was it stolen?—book open before her. Aldwyn hid in the darkness, peering through a narrow gap between two massive oaks. Skylar flipped the pages of the book with her wing, looking purposefully for a passage of interest. Then she seemed to have found it. Aldwyn watched with growing curiosity as she plucked the carcass of a large beetle from her shoulder satchel and placed it beside her on the stump. Her eyes sped across the page of the book and then her clawed foot dived back into the satchel, removing a clawful of silver powder. She sprinkled some onto the beetle’s carcass and read aloud from the tome.

      “Mortis animatum!”

      Aldwyn felt a chill tickle his ear, almost as if the air was whispering to him. Then, on the tree stump, the beetle’s legs began to twitch. Aldwyn was quite certain the beetle had been dead just moments ago, so how could it be moving now? Skylar looked like she expected something more to happen. When it didn’t, she buried her beak back into the spell book, and as she read, a gust of wind blew some of the leaves up off the ground, exposing what lay beneath them: a scattering of elk bones, left behind by forest-dwelling wolves. The same breeze sent the excess powder from the stump sprinkling down onto the gnawed skeletal remains. Skylar, still searching the text, failed to notice the bones of the great elk starting to reassemble themselves behind her. Aldwyn watched aghast and fascinated as the jigsaw puzzle of hooves and antlers pieced itself together, one cracked bone at a time. What kind of dark magic is Skylar dabbling in? Finally, she looked up, just in time to see the skeletal elk reborn. She seemed terrified and at the same time thrilled by what she had accidentally brought to life. Then the creature charged. Skylar instantly took to the air, as the reborn elk galloped blindly forwards. It was only then that Aldwyn realised that the creature was heading straight towards him. He braced himself as the skeleton collided with the trunk of the tree behind which he was hiding. When it hit, its bones shattered; rib cage, vertebrae and antlers split apart once more, dropping back down to the ground in a lifeless heap. Skylar, rather unbothered by it all, returned to the book and her beetle, but Aldwyn had no intention of sticking around to see what spell she would cast next. He high-tailed it out of there before he was spotted, thankful to still have his limbs intact.

      Aldwyn ran for the cottage without looking СКАЧАТЬ