Free The Alchemaster's Apprentice by Walter Moers

missing.’
    ‘You’d better find yourself a nice dry spot somewhere,’ said Theodore.
    ‘I will. Many thanks for the conversation and the good advice.’
    ‘That wasn’t a conservation, it was a cansporitorial get-together. I didn’t advise you, either, I simply made some stragetic suggestions. From now on we’re a team.’
    ‘A team?’
    ‘An alliance forged by fate. We’re brothers in spirit, camrodes-in-arms. See you again soon.’
    Theodore T. Theodore shut his single eye and disappeared slowly down the chimney.
    Echo turned and scanned the heavens. Big-bellied rain clouds were towering over the Blue Mountains and the moist, warm wind was steadily increasing in strength. He was beginning to feel uneasy out there on the roof; being at the mercy of a thunderstorm really didn’t appeal to him. Theodore’s topsy-turvy utterances had left him bemused. Besides, he was sleepy after gorging himself, so he resolved to go inside and have a little nap to help him digest what he’d heard and eaten. It had been a thoroughly eventful morning.

The Cooked Ghost

    E cho could hardly believe he’d managed to give Ghoolion the slip. Flatly ignoring the terms of their contract, he had sneaked out of the castle, scampered all the way across Malaisea and left the outskirts of the town behind him for the first time in his life. He’d been afraid that the Alchemaster would lay him low with a remote-controlled thunderbolt or turn him to stone, but nothing of the kind occurred. Now he was up in the mountains he’d seen from the roof of Ghoolion’s castle. Walls of blue rock towered on either side of him, far higher than the walls flanking Malaisea’s narrow streets - higher, even, than the Alchemaster’s castle.
    Suddenly he heard a clatter all round him. The rock faces rang with the tramp of marching feet and the rattle of bones. Echo knew at once what was making this din: Ghoolion’s iron-soled boots were beating out their menacing rhythm. The sound was accompanied by an asphyxiating stench of sulphur and phosphorus. Then the whole mountain range grew dark as if a sudden storm had gathered overhead. Echo looked up, fearing the worst, and there, taller even than the very mountains, stood Ghoolion. Dressed all in black, he had grown into a giant a thousand times bigger than before. He bent down and, with a casual backhander, knocked off a mountain peak. It exploded into countless fragments as it fell, and an irresistible avalanche of rock came rumbling down the mountainside in Echo’s direction. He tried to run, but his legs felt so leaden he could hardly detach his paws from the ground. The thunderous avalanche drew nearer and nearer, the first rocks hurtled past him. And then, looking more closely, he saw to his horror that they weren’t rocks at all: they were human heads, each of them adorned with Ghoolion’s face. ‘Irrevocably committed!’ one of them shouted. ‘Indissolubly binding!’ yelled the next. ‘Legally enforceable!’ cried another.
    Echo woke up. He was lying in his basket beside Ghoolion’s stove - lying in a thoroughly unnatural position with the blanket wound as tightly round his legs as ropes around a captive. He must have been wrestling with its imprisoning folds in his sleep. Grunting and groaning, he extricated himself and climbed sleepily, laboriously, out of his basket.
    The thunderstorm was raging immediately above the castle as Echo stole along the passage to Ghoolion’s laboratory. Rain came slanting in through the empty window embrasures, lightning lit up the passage so brightly at times that the little Crat had to shut his eyes. ‘Windowpanes,’ he muttered, ducking his head. ‘Windowpanes would be a good thing right now.’
    Ghoolion had been expecting him. He was taking advantage of the dramatic meteorological conditions to perform a spectacular alchemical experiment for Echo’s benefit. What better place to stage it than his laboratory, with rain-laden storm clouds billowing