The Familiars: Animal Wizardry - Adam Epstein

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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 back and leaped up the orange tree he had spotted earlier, effortlessly climbing up the bark and across the branch to the safety of the rooftop. Heart still beating, he sat himself down next to the weather vane, took a deep breath and peered out over the Aridifian Plains. Far, far away in the distance, he thought he could make out the light at the top of Bridgetower’s spired watchtower. As he stared, Aldwyn thought of what this night would have been like back home: sleeping with one eye open, his paw clutching the scraps of food he had scrounged that day, guarding against other alley strays who would attack him for even the smallest morsel of fish. It had been the only life he’d ever known, orphaned as a kitten, with no memories of his mother or father or what kind of alley cats they must have been. But here in Stone Runlet he would walk a very different path, one that was dangerous and unpredictable, but also filled with a sense of purpose, of something larger than himself.

      Aldwyn’s eyes began to close. Both of them. So here he would stay. He would learn to be Jack’s familiar, magic skills or no magic skills. Familiar. How strange that word sounded in his head, when in fact there was nothing familiar about this world to him at all.

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       FIVE

       Walkabout

      “Aldwyn!” cried Jack. “Aldwyn, where are you?”

      Aldwyn stretched his legs as far as he could, still half asleep on the rooftop of the cottage.

      “Aldwyn!” called Jack again, his voice growing more concerned.

      Aldwyn’s eyes opened wide and he quickly got his bearings. Giant puffy clouds were racing across the sky, swallowing up the sun for a moment, but burning off just as quickly as they had come. The autumn scent of falling leaves floated in the air, an unaccustomed smell to a cat who had spent his life in the city. He peered over the shingles and saw Jack searching the yard frantically, barefoot and still dressed in his cotton nightshirt.

      “I’m up here,” said Aldwyn.

      When Jack saw his familiar, his face flooded with relief.

      “What are you doing up there?” he asked. “I thought you’d run away.”

      “Sorry. I’m just used to sleeping under the stars.”

      “Well, come on. We have to get ready for our walkabout.”

      Aldwyn scurried across the tree branch and back down to the ground, walking up alongside Jack and rubbing his fur against the boy’s legs.

      “I better get changed,” said Jack, bending down to scratch Aldwyn’s ear. The alley cat’s tail curled happily. “You should head over to the runlet and drink some water. It’s going to be a long day.”

      “I’m not that thirsty,” replied Aldwyn, wanting to avoid another run-in with the swimming eyeballs.

      Jack ran back into the cottage and almost collided with Dalton and Skylar as they were stepping out into the sunshine.

      “Be sure to check your boots before you put them on,” Dalton warned Jack. “I saw your sister carrying a handful of marsh berries.”

      “Hey, why do you have to ruin all my fun?” Marianne asked Dalton as she and Gilbert came outside right behind him. She gave Dalton a playful push, the kind fourteen-year-old girls give fourteen-year-old boys they like.

      It wasn’t long before Kalstaff emerged from the cottage dressed in his wilderness cloak with his rod floating by his side. Jack followed behind, now wearing a tunic with leather laces up the front.

      “Today we shall walk to the edge of the borderland,” announced Kalstaff. “Remember to bring your botanical field guides and a quill. You will be taking notes.” Jack sighed at this, disappointed.

      “Oh, and I almost forgot,” continued the elder wizard. “Have any of you seen Wyvern and Skull’s Tome of the Occult? It seems to have gone missing from the spell library last night.” Aldwyn immediately knew the culprit and stole a glance at Skylar. She nervously shifted from one foot to the other, but nobody else seemed to notice. “I don’t want to discourage private study, of course,” said Kalstaff, “but let me warn you: this is a very dangerous book about necromancy, one whose spells of the dead can be corrupting in inexperienced hands.”

      A tense silence followed. Despite Skylar’s earlier skittishness, she remained stone-faced, and Aldwyn was in no position to out her. With none of his pupils coming forward, Kalstaff let the issue go unresolved for now

      “Very well then. Let us be off.” Kalstaff waved his hand over his rod and it immediately transformed into a large walking stick. Aldwyn watched as the old wizard headed for the trees, which seemed to open a path for him.

      Even on the sunniest of days, glorious days like this one, the Forest Under the Trees was cloaked in emerald shade. No ray of light could penetrate the 200-foot high canopy of green that protected the woodland floor below.

      As they were heading deep into the shadowy forest, Kalstaff began a long-winded lecture on the vegetative rarities unique to this isolated region, from lavender fungus to dew algae. Aldwyn could barely keep his eyes open as Kalstaff’s lesson turned to such snooze-worthy topics as “proper ivy handling techniques” and “the advantages of chopped versus diced pine needles”. He was more interested in looking up at the day bats that were flying in circles overheard.

      Gilbert, who was lagging behind, stopped mid-hop as he passed a puddle of morning dew that had collected in an over-sized fern leaf.

      “Whoa, I think I’m seeing something,” said Gilbert to the two other familiars. “A vision. It looks like some kind of wyrm dragon.”

      Sklyar peered over his shoulder, then said in her usual exasperated tone, “You mean the reflection of that caterpillar up in the tree?”

      Gilbert looked up to spy a black, prickly caterpillar that was clinging to a twig. “Huh. Well, puddle viewing isn’t an exact science.”

      “Puddle viewing?” asked Aldwyn curiously.

      “Gilbert comes from the Daku Swamp Forest,” explained Skylar, “where all the tree frogs are born with the power of divination, able to see visions of past, present and future in pools of water.”

      “Clever,”

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