Wizard of Jatte by Rowan Erlking (ereader ebook .TXT) 📖

saying?”

Tilting his head, Theissen gave it some thought and then headed towards the door. “Most of the time they are saying, ‘let’s dance.’”

And he walked back upstairs. He did not see their bemused expressions, but he certainly could feel them, journeying the rest of the way with dismay. Despite everything, it was true. No one would understand him. It was the same old fear as always. Just different locations.

Chapter Eighteen: What a Curious Morsel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Theissen insisted that he be given a loaded pack before he left town. He also insisted that he not take the carriage north no matter how much they pressed him. Frankly annoyed by their urgent and nervous state, the carpenter’s son told them flat out that the point of being a journeyman was for him to go on foot from village to village until he found a home. Riding fast on carriages defeated that purpose. However he did leave before noon, carrying a full bag and whistling as he continued towards the next place on route. Liptan Town would probably take him a month to reach since it was about as far from Brakirs Town as Lumen Village was from Pepersin Town, not counting the bend in the highway around the forest edge to get there.

Walking along the highway, he went with a glad march that he was out again, listening to the peaceful harmony of the trees and the simple end of summer wind. The leaves were starting to turn, but they were not yet at the stage of full-blown autumn color. It was nice to look up and see the yellow tinge on the ever-lightening green leaves. He smiled at it, wondering if the trees near his cousin’s place were starting to change at all.

For a moment he thought of Milrina, but it was not a pining feeling, reinforcing the suspicions he had had about his true feelings of the match. He just didn’t think of her in the way he ought for marriage. In a way it made him feel guilty for not fulfilling his mother’s wishes. Still, it was hard to imagine holding his childhood friend like he would a woman. To kiss her made his insides squirm. She was such a pretty girl. Why was it that he just could not bring himself to play those emotional and physical games? Holding her hand was like leading a friend along, not like affectionate love. What was wrong with him?

Theissen pounded his forehead half-heartedly, shaking his head then looking back to the trees. So far, the only thing he missed about having Milrina around was that she was the only one outside his immediate family that had not looked at him with fearful eyes. Even under those regal façades, the village elders had hidden fears inside. He had seen them ease when he departed from the village despite their verbal wishes for him to stay. The whole thing was disheartening. It was also annoying.

He marched along the road thinking about this when he caught whiff of a familiar disturbing smell. The odor of hate was unmistakable. Theissen turned to look at what was behind him, but he had moved too late. Hate was always difficult to smell before it was too late.

Crashing face first into the ground, Theissen was unable to make out half the epithets the thief was shouting at him as the other ripped aside Theissen’s cloak and stabbed his knife into the base of the pack.

“…die! I don’t care how you did it!” The man shoved Theissen’s jaw into the earth. The man’s hand wrapped Theissen’s hair in his fingers with a tightening grip.

“I am so sick of this.” Theissen tried to shove the man off with his own strength first, but it really was to no avail. So, reaching inside the ground below him, Theissen let himself and all his belongings sink down. Then the earth he was in shoved him forward though the road. He came up again for air, five feet away, dusting himself off as he crawled out. He turned and extended his hand to the thief. “I’ll have that back.”

His teacup was gone again.

Both thieves stared at him. One dropped the cup. The ground popped up under it and flung it straight to Theissen. He caught it as he exhaled with a glare. Touching his own pack, Theissen sealed up the hole, tucked in the teacup, then turned and continued on his way.

“You can’t do that,” one muttered.

“Yes, I can,” Theissen said, casting back a glare. He was about to continue on, but as he headed up the road, four other men stepped from the bushes that grew at the sides. All looked as ruthless and unkempt as the other two thieves. They would smash his brains out into a jelly and take everything if they could. Flooded with sheer panic, Theissen darted straight towards the trees at his right wondering how in the world his brothers got as far as they did without any magic to help them out.

Scrambling into the brush, Theissen plowed straight into the forest with abandon. Forget the road. Forget everything. He was just a lanky kid, easy to smash into bits. Their heels tromped after him, their curses echoing through the trees like calls of crows. It seemed that way at least until he had plowed so far ahead that all he heard were the caws of crows and other forest birds. By this time he had found a rough path, one recently torn as if plowed by an enormous rolling thing. Sticks, trees, brambles, all bent and bruised by whatever it was, it made a faster road to escape. Theissen looked back only once. But that once was enough. They were no longer behind him, and he could no longer detect their hateful smell.

Going off the road was a good and bad idea, Theissen decided, peering left then right as he tried to decipher which way to go. Forests were infamously dangerous places. Though it was clear the stories about witches and wizards were false, it did not ring so with this place. Theissen could feel two kinds of flow here. There was the natural flow of growing things, and then there were pockets of stifled unnaturalness looming over him in the trees. All Theissen saw were birds, but these birds peered down at him like he was their prey. However, they seemed to sense in him what he sensed in them: that they were dangerous adversaries, not wise to be interfered with.

However, with the underlying natural flow pulling, turning and twisting here and there, Theissen eventually was able to determine north, and therefore the direction of Liptan Town. He walked the path for several miles before reaching what looked like a dead end. There at the end of the plowed road was an enormous cow corpse. Half of its body had been eaten; the ribs sticking out and its head clear gone. The horns were stuck into the ground as if someone had just plucked them off and stabbed them there. They curled nearly taller than him.

Thinking it was a good idea to back away and find another path through the forest, Theissen turned to his left, tiptoeing around the corpse. The whole air reeked of demon, foul and rotting. The smell of death and dying was one thing, rotting demon, quite another.

As he turned towards a fallen stump to vomit over, he felt a hand suddenly rest on his shoulder.

“What a curious morsel to wander in at the right time for dessert.” The voice was smooth and entrancing. It would have calmed Theissen right away had he not also heard the shrieking scratch of magic pulling across each word like nails scraping on metal.

The thing held him with a broad grip. It turned him around as if to see his face. What Theissen saw was nothing he had ever witnessed before.

It looked human, but large and ugly. Its mouth spread in a wide teethy grin, tiny beady eyes peering at him expectantly from a leathery face, but looking almost immediately dismayed. Its hands were larger than Theissen’s own head, and its arms were strangely elongated, much like those stories his father told about monkeys brought in from the country of Hann. He would have thought this thing an overlarge monkey only it wore clothes of the strangest leather Theissen had ever seen. The leather was skin colored, laced together with what looked like horsehair, though not as coarse.

“What? You aren’t even afraid of me?” the thing said, peering down at him with a shake.

“Quit that,” Theissen tried to push from its grip with no success. “You’re jarring me.”

The thing shook him more. “Is that all I get from you? Not even a scream?”

Theissen blinked, tilted his head some and said, “Eek. Does that work?”

The demon dropped him. “No. Don’t you know what I am? Don’t you know I eat humans?”

Groaning from another bruise on his back, Theissen tried to sit up. His pack was way too full and his tools had jabbed his side. Theissen got a good look at this thing’s legs. They were profoundly muscular. The demonic knotted curse on them alone showed him that it would be a fast runner. The demon had no fear of losing its lunch, especially if it ran from him on human legs. Running was out of the question.

“I…” Theissen glanced at the dead cow. “…didn’t really think about it. Don’t you want to finish your cow first?”

The thing reached down and lifted Theissen up off the ground with his hand. “Humans taste better. Tender meat.”

Theissen made a face. “You’re disgusting.”

It laughed aloud. “Ah, how funny. Food that talks back. Come on. Give me a scream.”

Getting tired of this, Theissen made a small tired sounding, “Oh, help me.”

“Are you suicidal?” The demon pulled Theissen closer to his face. Its breath stank as bad as his demonic knots did.

“You plan to eat me anyway,” Theissen replied dryly. “And it is obvious that I can’t outrun you. So really, what is the point in screaming? Besides, personally I think you are wasting both your time and mine since I really have no intention of being eaten. So, if you would please put me down, I’ll be on my way.”

It stared, blinking its beady eyes at him. Clearly not believing what it had just heard, the thing stuck one of its fat fingers to an ear as if he could clean it out, and then he made a face knowing he really wasn’t able. He shook Theissen instead, shouting. “I’ll tear you apart!”

“I said put me down!” Theissen barked back.

The thing grabbed a hold of Theissen’s arm, ready to snap it off just like that, but Theissen took hold of one end of the knot inside the demon and pulled it apart. The knot of the invisible flow in the huge demon’s arms untangled like a bit of rope, dropping first. And then everything else dropped. Collapsing back onto the ground with a painful thump, Theissen watched the demon’s arms shrivel into more human-like stumps. With satisfaction, Theissen reached out and did the same to those speedy legs. Both deflated, shrinking into toothpicks that attempted to still hold up that overlarge belly and trap like head. It