Free The Vanishing Sculptor by Donita K. Paul Page B

tumanhofer.
    “Worrywartish, unscientific, unfounded superstitions. Comes from sitting with books too much.”
    “Maybe so, but I’ve never reached my hand into my own hollow and pulled out a full-grown centimonder.”
    Fenworth blustered. “And you are implying—”
    The shorter man seemed to grow a bit as he stood up to his companion. With one eyebrow cocked, he glared at the old wizard.
    “Ah yes,” said Fenworth. “I remember being bitten.”
    The tumanhofer agreed with one emphatic nod.
    Beccaroon ruffled his feathers. “Shall we proceed, gentlemen?”
    Ushering the two visitors farther into the tropical forest to the second and then the third hidden statue proved to be just as strenuous on Beccaroon’s nerves as the first leg of their journey. As they headed back, he took them a shorter route.
    “That’s an odd tree,” said Wizard Fenworth. He moved off the path to examine his find. “Librettowit, take a look at this. We have nothing like it in Amara.”
    His curiosity aroused, Beccaroon doubled back to see what his followers had found. He landed on a branch close to the librarian’s hat.
    “What do you call this tree?” asked Librettowit.
    “I’ve never seen it before, and it’s dying. It looks somewhat like a bittermorn tree, but it is so disfigured and twisted…” Beccaroon leaned over the tumanhofer’s shoulder and nipped a leaf. He spit it out after a second. “Awk! It’s a bittermorn for sure. Tastes awful.”
    Librettowit scowled. “I’m afraid this tree may have dissipated as Verrin Schope does.”
    Fenworth nodded. “And come back together every which way.” He scrunched his brow and looked askance at Beccaroon. “I would assume that this tree, in the normal way of things, is not sapient.”
    “I beg your pardon?” Beccaroon knew the man was touched in the head, but sapient? “Do you mean you have trees in Amara that think, plan, and converse?”
    “We have some that are emotional, but few are thinkers.”
    “As far as I know,” said Beccaroon, “this type of tree has shown no sign of being able to reason.”
    Fenworth nodded as he considered the parrot’s words. “Didn’t have the sense to guide its reassemblage so that it would turn out a tree as it had been before.”
    “This is proof, then?” asked Librettowit.
    “We’ll discuss it with Verrin Schope, but I believe our theory of the effect of the foundation-stone fiasco is correct.”
    “What?” squawked Beccaroon. “What are you talking about?”
    Librettowit cast him an apologetic look as Fenworth returned to the path and started on. “If more things besides your sculptor friend start dissipating and reforming, we may have a landscape covered with these abnormalities.”
    If he had not been looking at evidence of disaster, Beccaroon might have scoffed. Instead, he grew silent and got the two foreigners back to Byrdschopen as quickly as possible.
    By the time they returned to Verrin Schope’s mansion, exasperation quivered at the tip of every feather of the grand parrot’s spectacular plumage. The men had expounded on every possible mishap that could possibly come about as objects passed through the process that ailed their apprentice wizard.
    Tipper rushed onto the back veranda as soon as the men stepped into the fountain garden.
    “Did you find them?” she called.
    “We did,” Beccaroon muttered.
    Fenworth patted the sides of his robe. “Magnificent work. Your father is a genius.”
    Tipper merely nodded. “Do you want to send someone out to fetch them?”
    The old wizard laughed, jarring loose a few leaves clinging to— or were they growing from?—his robes. “We brought them, my dear. Now where is your father?”
    She frowned, looking at the two old men as they climbed the three stairs to the veranda and then at her friend perched on a balustrade. Beccaroon shrugged.
    Tipper glanced over her shoulder to the second-story windows. Her father looked down from her mother’s chamber.
    “He’s