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zardoru · 5 years ago

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The Kapok Tree

Part 3, Chapter 2 (cw: othering of indigenous humans)

My trip to the rainforest began immediately after I stepped between the trees and saw the incredible variety in flora and fauna around me; from snakes to monkeys, beautiful flowers and ants carrying leaves three times their size; trees so tall that only a few slivers of light came from the sun. Even then, with all that shadow, it was amazing to think how hot the whole place was!

Of course, I took out that trinket you gave me, Fri. I didn't want to stop to rest so soon; I figured I would find food without trouble. And I did! But that will come later.

I took out the flower and that part with the petals spun around in place; it almost cut its own stem. Of course, I let it go! I thought I had broken it, and I didn't want my precious memento simply to break at the first opportunity.

Anyway, the matter is that the flower fell on the floor standing. Standing! Every other time I held a flower in my mouth it laid on the floor like that, but not this one. I'm sure you did it on purpose, Fri.

The thing is, the flower had stopped moving and it pointed up. Up. Think about it. I thought it was broken because that would mean that there was a dragon flying above me right now and I remembered no dragon besides Ash that can just fly in place like that.

SO! I looked above me just in case, and you know, there she was! An awkward looking dragon stared down at me from above, and, don't you know it, she goes all "Aaaah!" and falls on top of me.

Well, that hurt, but I knew that I had the battle advantage with this poison, and all. Besides, I had my handy tail, which, I don't know if I've told you before, it's unusually flexible. Right? Yeah, I told you. I know you don't believe me because you've not seen me use it, but I'll have you know that it's true.

Anyway! The dragon had hurt itself in the process, right? I mean, the assault couldn't have been on purpose. She would've attacked me earlier. Yeah? So, all I could say was, "HEY! CAN YOU PLEASE GET OFF ME?"

Not exactly gracious, but it did the job.

So the dragon was getting off me faster than you can tell Ash to shut up, and she was all like, "Sorry, sorry, sorry! I wasn't trying to attack you or anything!" That's when my suspicions were confirmed. This dragon was not trying to attack me.

With that out of the way, the obvious next step was asking what their name was, and I didn't really listen properly, but I decided I'd call them Mamba, just because there was this creepy snake that was looking at me and I remember Tuga had walked me across the river to around here, and pointed to that snake and said, "That's a 'something' Mamba."

"A black Mamba, Joy," said Tuga.

Sorry, Tuga! Who's telling the story? So, the thing is, I just went ahead and I said, "Well, hello, Mamba, I'm going to forgive you this time around for falling on top of me and not completely melt your face off," because that's the polite thing to do when you're the better dragon.

Of course, they were complaining, "My name's not Mamba! It's---" I didn't care! You know, Mamba's just a far better name. Right, so I figured it was time for me to leave and recruit some dragons. But you know, That Was A Dragon.

Right. I haven't told you how they looked. So Mamba's this big black plush of a dragon that couldn't hurt anyone, like, completely unlike me, eating scavengers for breakfast. Hey, Tija should've told you how she found me. I took down like, one adult dragon that was trying to kill me for being in their property? I'm not sure. I should ask her, actually. Thing is, I'm a warrior, you snakes.

Anyway, this lady had these beautiful colorful rainbow wings I hadn't seen ANYWHERE ELSE in the WHOLE CONTINENT. I mean I'm a bit ashamed that they faded out once her chameleon scales came in but you know, it served her well; saved our lives quite a few times.

I haven't gotten to that part yet, so let me tell you more about Mamba. We had a bit of a long discussion about wanting to, you know, get the continent dominated and all of that, that we, a band of like, what, one, two, three... Whatever! A few dragons, had completely taken over that settlement near the river?

Mamba was impressed! I told her all about how I was melting down scavengers to the ground with Ash, and it had been so easy with Astra coordinating us all, so---

"Hey," said Fri. "I was the one delivering the messages."

Yeah, sure, you were. Okay Mamba doesn't know about you yet Fri, but that's because I had completely blocked you from my mind at that point. I just didn't want to think like, "Oh no, I made Fri feel miserable." It's just not in my head at that moment, so I just erased you.

"Well that's nice," said Fri.

I said Sorry!

So, Mamba said, "Well I'll stick around with you and see what you can do then!" I mean, don't quote me on that, I think it was something more among the lines of, "Oh I need to see that," or whatever. She started following me around until we found a weird white line drawn in the dirt? It wasn't natural, is what I'm saying. Mamba stopped me and told me, "You better be cautious, you!" or something like that, and I of course asked why.

"Well," they were saying, "There's humans there that can take down a dragon with a single blowdart," she said.

At that point I didn't know what a blowdart was, but I figured it was a very massive weapon like those Tija always warns us about. I thought if I didn't get close, I was going to be okay, you know?

So, I shook it off and told Mamba to stop worrying so much. But no, she insisted, "No, you must listen to me!" She was very dramatic, you know. I was completely ready to listen to her and be cautious, but I apparently wasn't being careful enough for them.

Okay I did underestimate them a bit, because there was this human at the top of the tree that Mamba pointed me to, and it was sneaky sneaky hiding at the top of the trees. At that point I figured I might trust my new friend, since they seem to know better about what was happening in the rainforest.

I was a bit oblivious! So I asked them, "So where do you sleep?" And their answer was ridiculous! It was like, "I sleep on top of the trees." Fri, I remember the last time I slept on top of a tree and it was terrible.

"I can't really stay on the top of a tree for any longer than an hour," said Fri.

I know, right? Mamba insisted it was no big deal once you got used to it and that these huge trees had branches that were actually really comfortable. I asked them if they really meant it, and Mamba just gave me this incredibly annoying snicker and said, "Well, newcomer, let me show you." Argh. Complete showoff.

So, we walked in the rainforest for a bit, at Mamba's suggestion because she said that she's seen dragons literally rain from the sky because they were dumb enough to fly above human territories. I asked her what they do with them and she told me I didn't want to know. So, I shrugged, and followed her to this stupid big tree. She said it was a Caboc? Catoc? Katok. Oh, Kapok. So, this tree was supernaturally tall, and it had these big branches that a dragon could comfortably sit in.

Okay, that's how Mamba described it, but did I mention it was tall? I think I did. When I thought tall I thought, "Oh, maybe it's a few dragons in size." I was wrong. Only the trunk was big enough to house all of us if you were to make a hole in it, but of course that's a bad idea; the tree would fall over and nobody would want to deal with that huge a tree falling on their heads.

The thing is, we had to fly to climb this thing. We circled around the tree in this spiral motion for a surprising amount of time. Those branches seemed far closer at a distance. You know, I figured Mamba was doing this a few times a day, so I asked her, "Hey, do you do this trip many times a day?"

I'm not saying Mamba was being mean, but she laughed at my face like, "Why are you asking that?" Well, I explained that I thought that it would be tiring, but she just replied to me with, "You're making a bigger deal of this than it really is."

I thought, Whaaaat? How can they just do this trip that often? It was far above what our little cave in the mountain was, Tuga. How did we fail to see this? I still can't get over it, it was huge.

We reached the top of the tree, obviously, I wasn't about to quit just because of a tougher than usual flight to an uncomfortable height. The thing was, Mamba had friends waiting for her on the branches and they were sleeping way too comfortably. I mean, uncomfortably comfortable for me. Imagine being up this mythically tall tree and you see someone like you just letting their limbs hang to the sides of the branch with their bellies completely laying on the wood. Imagine you have like, a twitch during the night and just like that, you're now about to fall to your death because you lost balance.

I thought they were extremely brave or extremely, extremely dumb.

You'd think I'd notice that Mamba had been carrying all this fruit with them, right? Wrong. There it was, Mamba just laid it on a small nest they'd made. Like birds? Can you imagine that? Dragon birds.

Speaking of, there was this weird bird with a rainbow-colored beak that was twice the size of its body, and it was there, perched on a tree like everything is fine in the world.

Anyway, Mamba went ahead and woke both of her friends up. They were these weird... colors that were like, imagine that if you looked at them from a certain angle, they changed colors? They were dark, but if you looked at them from a certain point they were a bit blue, or a bit purple or something like that. It was very pretty! I was somewhat jealous, and I didn't notice that I was turning from my usual shade to like, green.

At that point Mamba gasped at me and said, "Perching sloths! You can change colors like that?"

I wasn't sure if I was going to explain that Fri enchanted me? I figured we would go along with the plan and depend on the flower, so I explained carefully, "Yes, this magic flower did it," and she... She just squawked and almost fell off her branch cackling! I mean, I guess she didn't believe me? Well, I insisted, "Look! Just stay near this flower, it's going to do the magic thing and," well, the flower interrupted me, sort of.

You see the flower pointed at her two friends by spinning around because I had left it on the nest. Mamba saw that and was staring at it, because, I quote, "How can a flower do that!?"

I explained myself again and said the flower was magical, at that point they were like, "Okay but how can I receive the enchantment, then?"

She was jealous, too, I thought. But yeah, I remember that part of the enchantment was that the flower would act as fast as they could be convinced that they could change, or whatever. So, I figured I'd tell them, "Um, well, convince yourself that the flower can do it, I think." I figured she might not believe me this time either, so I added, "That's what I did!"

Of course, as you know, that's not what I did at all.

Mamba pressed the tip of her claws against her head and was making a silly face and repeating a mantra. "I believe, I believe, I believe," she said, unconvinced.

Well, I know my magic now, and that wasn't going to work. I wasn't sure then, so I just said, "Nah! You have to sound convinced, not just act like it."

She hemmed at me and went serene, closing her eyes wide and sitting there, completely still. I wish I could hear her internal monologue because at that point it was like all of her scales had become wet? Or something like that? Like, picture someone's scales dissolving from black to indigo. It's really something special.

Mamba at that point opened her eyes and looked at herself and almost ignored the fact that it was changing colors again to violet. It was a surprise! How'd someone just change their minds like that so quickly? But I wasn't about to let her feel like a freak, so I changed my color to match hers.

"Look! We're both violet!" I said.

She was changing her surprise at her own colors into some expression I couldn't decipher at all, but she was turning yellow. Mamba then told me, "Wow! Hey, what did you say your name was?"

Who even brings someone to their home and then asks their name? Well I told her; I was Joy. She looked at her own wings and noticed her rainbow-colored membrane was gone. It was a bit of a bummer, but it's like her body had absorbed the rainbow in her wings. I think I don't feel that bad about it.

She looked a bit disappointed nonetheless, but you could see her making the tradeoffs in her head. I explained to her, "Hey, at least you got this poison thing I have as well."

So Mamba touched her own face and noticed the two little fangs at the front, and freaked out a bit. "What happened to me?"

I explained how it works, and how it could very much melt organic things.

Okay so, I think I've made some poor choices at this point, but I wanted to demonstrate how it worked, right? I mean, it made sense. So I told her to look and that I'd show her how it works, and I went to the base of the branch and let some of the poison eat at the base of it.

Mamba obviously saw through my bad idea; the poison acid death spit was eating through the wood and Mamba just screamed, "No! Don't do that!"

That's what she would have said if she had actually finished her sentence, she actually just said, "No! Do---AAAAAH!"

We both were falling, and there a huge freaking tree branch underneath us and there were leaves falling and a few angry birds pecking at us. Ah! We all make mistakes sometimes!

We're dragons though, so we both opened our wings and climbed right back up. We perched on another, smaller branch a bit above that one, and Mamba gave me this strong look while she turned red first at her head, then her entire body. "Our food was in that branch!" She scolded me hard. I don't want to tell you the details, let's say she's got a viper's mouth, unlike me. So that's why I called her Mamba. Absolutely. Great foresight on my part.

At that point we had to do something about the food, of course, and Mamba insisted that I was going to have to help. I said I don't have the time, I had dragons to recruit. She then said, "If you can't help me get food, how are you expecting to keep any dragons loyal to you?"

And I mean, I think she got me on that one, because I wasn't sure what to answer, at all. I figured either Fri, or Tuga or maybe Astra. Three moons, even Tija could've found a good answer to that! But sadly, I figured I had to do it on my own.

Besides, Astra had told me that I would become a leader on my time here and I have no idea what it entailed but being able to help everyone get food is probably up there. That's what Tija does, right?

"It's not really just about the food," said Tuga.

I told you, I learnt my lesson, but I hadn't at the time.

I asked her, "What's the plan?"

She huffed, looked down the tree, and pointed to some trees far away. "We must bring any and all of the fruits and berries we can get."

That wasn't a surprise at all, and I wondered why I even asked. What surprised me was that there were no cows or the like involved in their diet. So I asked her that, how come they didn't eat meat?

Mamba explained to me that, besides being more plentiful and delicious and not having to kill and get game, she figured hunting would also leave less to other dragons.

So that was weird.

We flied off while there was still light and found ourselves over the trees. Mostly. There were a few that were tall enough that we legitimately had to dodge around. Mamba was a mélange of colors by this point, and I was checking if I still had the flower with me, which I did, so lucky me.

"Losing the flower by that point would be less than ideal," said Fri.

I know, Fri. I would've had to travel to wherever you were, but I'd have to ask Astra, but she would've been impossible to contact; it would've been a mess and a huge waste of time.

On my way to wherever Mamba said we were going, I managed to get a glimpse of what the human settlement looked like, and it was fascinating! They were like, wooden, concentric buildings that had a bunch of small dots running all around them; smoke rose like they dominated fire, and there were a few other things that caught my attention, but I'll tell you about that later. Trust me, it's going to get complicated.

So once we landed and begun to pick up a few bananas, a few mangoes, and on our way around a few grey, furry things that perched upside down on the branches with dark spots around their eyes looked at us funny. Apparently they're called sloths, and they're not named after Ash, so that's great.

"Why Ash?" asked Mud. "Ash doesn't look like a slacker."

I had to take a jab at someone and Ash is an easy target, okay?

"I'm going to tell her once you're here," said Tuga, chuckling.

Okay, okay, do whatever you want. Ash is going to get angry but won't do a thing at all.

"Your joke was lazy," said Fri, raising a claw to point out she was pausing to deliver the blow, "Just like Ash."

Pffft. Where'd that joke come from?

Okay, regardless, I was merrily picking up a fig with my mouth, when Mamba yelled "Watch out!" and she pushed me over the branch I was siting on and we both fell to the floor. Saying my back hurt would be an understatement no matter how you put it.

So that back pain set me in place for a moment when Mamba, still on top of me, yelled, "It's the humans! They saw us, RUN!" and we both scrambled to get on our feet and get off as soon as we could.

We dropped the fruit, because like, there's no point to it if we get caught, which is a real shame because I had a fantastic eye for figs.

I hadn't mentioned that I still had no idea why Mamba was so keen on not getting detected, so I asked, "Hey, why don't we fly and go through the sky?"

She told me, "We're even easier targets on the sky, with no cover!"

It wouldn't be long before I knew what she was talking about, but couldn't we just camouflage? So that's what I did. I kind of made a mistake of not telling Mamba.

When she turned back to see if I was still following her, but she was looking around frantically, seeing where in the moons I was. "I'm here!" I yelled at her, thinking she'd just follow my voice.

"Where? Where are you?" she yelled back. At that point she yelped and dropped to the floor with a look of, "Oh no, oh no, oh no," on her face. Right after, she just... fell asleep like when you had enchanted me, Fri.

"So, they were able to enchant dragons?" asked Fri.

Not really, no. It was the blowdarts, but I'm getting there.

So, there I was, camouflaged, and completely still to not ruffle any of the bushes around me, when two humans walked right next to me. And a few dropped from the treetops, and some more surrounded Mamba.

Ah, I knew that was going to be trouble.

The odd, dark-skinned humans had some colorful painting marks like our (well, mine and Mamba's) scales, and had fang and tooth necklaces hanging and a harsh look to them that made them seem far more competent than the ones on the den. They were carrying these huge sticks with which they tied Mamba and took her in the direction of the concentric circles I talked to you about earlier.

As I told you, there had been something that caught my attention.

For some reason, they had cages. You know? Big strong and roughened cages where they kept animals. So clearly, they were intelligent enough to construct structures and hunt and even outsmart a dragon.

"Oh, Joy, I wish I had been there to see that for myself," said Tuga.

It's okay, it's all still there. You're going to see it once we go there together and invade them.

So the worst part of it all was that Mamba still seemed half-awake after all, and her scales were turning white, and she began to look sickly. Her eyes twitched as she barely held her head enough to not have horrible neck strain, but also not convince the others that she wasn't knocked out. Well, the humans might have thought that was as far as a neck would go, but I wasn't fooled. These necks go all the way.

Just in case my noises could give me away, I stepped back and took some distance, and became one with my surroundings.

Some of the humans were making a few noises and examining Mamba. She was just being dragged across the ground picking up all of the dirt while the humans seemed to be making an overwhelming effort to tow her. They were grunting something that I could obviously not understand, but they were doing things like grabbing Mamba's tail or opening her maw and now I can sort of understand why Mamba insisted so much that she didn't want to get caught.

One of them took one of their tools and skinned Mamba's scales near the tail. It was horrifying. You could see some of the... you know, I don't want to describe it. That said I put myself entirely in Mamba's place and decided I did not want to her to go through whatever they had planned for her.

She twitched in pain, obviously, but if she did any more than that she would've been found out, and they'd probably put more of whatever concoction they'd hit her with. With how pained she already looked, I don't think she would've had it better with more.

"Savages," said Fri.

"They do what the must to survive," said Tuga. "Don't be so harsh."

I disagree with both of you. They are utterly terrifying, and smart, and I don't want to face them alone at all. But, at that point, I knew I didn't have much time because I bet the humans think they didn't have much time to keep a creature five times their height to stay calm for whatever they thought their usual concoction would have it asleep.

"Can you repeat that?" asked Fri.

No.

Anyway, I figured, I'd pull a Tija.

I'm not sure if I was feeling guilty or not but leaving a dragon to die after just making Fri feel like butt was one of the worst of things I could have done to myself at that point.

And so, I charged on, all by myself, to try to do something about this.

"Wow! So you're Mamba's hero, right?" said Mud.

Not Mamba's, not really. She was able to get herself out of it, since we had the same you know, flesh-dissolving power?

"So your bravery was pointless?" asked Fri.

Not quite! Remember the cages?

When I arrived to rescue Mamba in that weird human settlement, it was packed. There were so many humans that the likelihood of bumping into one while invisible was far, far too high. So, I climbed the buildings.

While the buildings weren't exactly made to be climbed by a dragon, they were supportive enough to carry me. I jumped from building to building, camouflaged obviously, keeping an eye of where they were taking Mamba.

Anyway, there were the cages, and of course there were a few more dragons more than just Mamba and me. They didn't seem to be doing too great. They had these loooong sad faces and seemed badly hurt.

I would've wanted to know why they were keeping caged dragons near the center of their settlement, but it's not like I could strike a friendly conversation with the humans right there and then. Even then, Mamba was put in a cage with some of the others.

The thing is that they looked awfully sick.

But you know, I think many of us is far better than a few of us, right? The cages were hilarious, too. They were at best a very strong, very thick wood. None of us would've just... tackled it right? That'd been ineffective. And there must've been a reason why they didn't just break free by burning the cage to the ground.

I would guess that escaping like that would've meant a quick recapture if they can just take dragons out of the air, though. Clearly, I needed a different approach.

"So, you melted your---"

I melted my way in.

I dropped from the buildings, and they creaked, so that caught a few eyeballs of attention. The cages were against some of the buildings but still had a gap large enough for me to get behind, and clearly no humans were interested in walking on that side of the cages.

I sneaked around and quickly got to Mamba's side. She was still pale, but a friendly whisper was going to make her twitch.

"Mamba," I said.

She was laying sideways and opened her right eye to see me. "What are you doing here?" she asked, trying to act as she was still asleep by only moving the right side of her mouth.

"I'm here to save you!" I yelled.

Yelling was not a good idea.

A few more human eyeballs looked towards my direction. They were right on the side opposite to mine.

Mamba tried to keep the appearance of being knocked down, but the dragon next to her, some marble-patterned dragon with wings with cuts along their membrane and some funky looking yellow eyes, just went and screamed, "SOMEONE'S COMING TO HELP!"

"Yikes," said Fri.

I can't blame them.

Just about every other dragon began to thrash in their caves trying to break them. Which was pointless on its own but it diverted attention away from us.

I melted away the wood from the right side of the cage and the other two adjacent cages. Mamba and the other dragon immediately ran out of their cage. You know, I think that if the others had decided to help each other we wouldn't have been needed? Ah, that would've made things more difficult for me.

I told Mamba to use that thing I used to burn the branch along with the rest of the cages, became visible and screamed at everyone, "BURN THEM! BURN THEM ALL! COVER FOR EACH OTHER!"

I'm not sure if they listened to me or if my instructions were common sense, but when Mamba and I started telling them to group up the stink of burnt human flesh started to be pretty bad.

I hadn't at all noticed that I was standing atop the buildings, yelling at everyone how they were about to be assaulted from a side, to be careful with a human hiding in a gap between buildings, or how Mamba had jumped on top of the building to swat away one of the humans that had climbed with a pointy stick to stop me.

When we noticed that they were coming from the outer edges back to the inner edges, and noticed that there were no more humans downright in the innermost circle, I told them all, "QUICK! COVER ALL OF THE OPENINGS!" Pointing groups to all the spaces where more humans could've come from.

Since none of them could fly they couldn't surprise us from above, and walls of fire began to form whenever a human dared come close. You should've heard the screams, Fri. They were incredibly loud and obnoxious.

That would give us enough time to figure out a new plan to get out of there together, so we came up with a new plan: We'd put some the firebreathers on top of two other dragons that would carry them away, flying, and we'd make a wall of fire that would burn so hot it'd be a barrier to anything they'd throw at us.

So that's what we did.

When I instructed them to start breaking the defensive line, slowly to not show there was any opportunity to strike while we were distracted, and eventually, we had this weird formation ready to go.

I'm not saying it was an elegant idea, but it was effective enough for us to get away.

"Did that really happen?" asked Tuga.

Do you take me for a liar?

"It seems unlikely that they'd keep their equilibrium just like that," said Tuga.

Well, yeah, they weren't standing on the backs of the other dragons, they were hanging upside-down!

"That seems even more unlikely," said Tuga.

That's just because you had to be there.

#scorching wof fic

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readbookywooks · 8 years ago

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“Ah, but it wasn't the same river.” “It wasn't?” “No.” Cutangle shrugged. “It looked like the same bloody river.” “No need to take that tone,” said Granny. “I don't see why I should listen to that sort of language from a wizard who can't even answer letters!” Cutangle was silent for a moment, except for the castanet chatter of his teeth. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, I see. They were from you, were they?” “That's right. I signed them on the bottom. It's supposed to be a sort of clue, isn't it?” “All right, all right. I just thought they were a joke, that's all,” said Cutangle sullenly. “A joke?” “We don't get many applications from women. We don't get any.” “I wondered why I didn't get a reply,” said Granny. “I threw them away, if you must know.” “You could at least have - there it is!” “Where? Where? Oh, there.” The fog parted and they now saw it clearly - a fountain of snowflakes, a ornamental pillar of frozen air. And below it.... The staff wasn't locked in ice, but lay peacefully in a seething pool of water. One of the unusual aspects of a magical universe is the existence of opposites. It has already been remarked that darkness isn't the opposite of light, it is simply the absence of light. In the same way absolute zero is merely the absence of heat. If you want to know what real cold is, the cold so intense that water can't even freeze but anti-boils, look no further than this pool. They looked in silence for some seconds, their bickering forgotten. Then Cutangle said slowly: “If you stick your hand in that, your fingers'll snap like carrots.” “Do you think you can lift it out by magic?” said Granny. Cutangle started to pat his pockets and eventually produced his rollup bag. With expert fingers he shredded the remains of a few dogends into a fresh paper and licked it into shape, without taking his eyes off the staff. “No,” he said. “but I'll try anyway.” He looked longingly at the cigarette and then poked it behind his ear. He extended his hands, fingers splayed, and his lips moved soundlessly as he mumbled a few words of power. The staff spun in its pool and then rose gently away from the ice, where it immediately became the centre of a cocoon of frozen air. Cutangle groaned with the effort - direct levitation is the hardest of the practical magics, because of the ever-present danger of the wellknown principles of action and reaction, which means that a wizard attempting to lift a heavy item by mind power alone faces the prospect of ending up with his brains in his boots. “Can you stand it upright?” said Granny. With great delicacy the staff turned slowly in the air until it hung in front of Granny a few inches above the ice. Frost glittered on its carvings, but it seemed to Cutangle - through the red haze of migraine that hovered in front of his eyes - to be watching him. Resentfully. Granny adjusted her hat and straightened up purposefully. “Right,” she said. Cutangle swayed. The tone of voice cut through him like a diamond saw. He could dimly remember being scolded by his mother when he was small; well, this was that voice, only refined and concentrated and edged with little bits of carborundum, a tone of command that would have a corpse standing to attention and could probably have marched it halfway across its cemetery before it remembered it was dead. Granny stood in front of the hovering staff, almost melting its icy covering by the sheer anger in her gaze. “This is your idea of proper behaviour, is it? Lying around on the sea while people die? Oh, very well done!” She stomped around in a semi-circle. To Cutangle's bewilderment, the staff turned to follow her. “So you were thrown away,” snapped Granny. “So what? She's hardly more than a child, and children throw us all away sooner or later. Is this loyal service? Have you no shame, lying around sulking when you could be of some use at last?” She leaned forward, her hooked nose a few inches from the staff. Cutangle was almost certain that the staff tried to lean backwards out of her way. “Shall I tell you what happens to wicked staffs?” she hissed. “If Esk is lost to the world, shall I tell you what I will do to you? You were saved from the fire once, because you could pass on the hurt to her. Next time it won't be the fire.” Her voice sank to a whiplash whisper. “First it'll be the spokeshave. And then the sandpaper, and the auger, and the whittling knife -” “I say, steady on,” said Cutangle, his eyes watering. “- and what's left I'll stake out in the woods for the fungus and the woodlice and the beetles. It could take years.” The carvings writhed. Most of them had moved around the back, out of Granny's gaze. “Now,” she said. “I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to pick you up and we are all going back to the University, aren't we? Otherwise it's blunt saw time.” She rolled up her sleeves and extended a hand. “Wizard,” she said, “I shall want you to release it.” Cutangle nodded miserably. “When I say now, now! Now!” Cutangle opened his eyes again. Granny was standing with her left arm extended full length in front of her, her hand clamped around the staff. The ice was exploding off it, in gouts of steam. “Right,” finished Granny, “and if this happens again I shall be very angry, do I make myself clear?” Cutangle lowered his hands and hurried towards her. “Are you hurt?” She shook her head. “It's like holding a hot icicle,” she said. “Come on, we haven't got time to stand around chatting.” “How are we going to get back?” “Oh, show some backbone, man, for goodness sake. We'll fly,” Granny waved her broomstick. The Archchancellor looked at it doubtfully. “On that?” “Of course. Don't wizards fly on their staffs?” “It's rather undignified.” “If I can put up with that, so can you.” “Yes, but is it safe?” Granny gave him a withering look. “Do you mean in the absolute sense?” she asked. “Or, say, compared with staying behind on a melting ice floe?” “This is the first time I have ever ridden on a broomstick,” said Cutangle. “Really.” “I thought you just had to get on them and they flew,” said the wizard. “I didn't know you had to do all that running up and down and shouting at them.” “It's a knack,” said Granny. “I thought they went faster,” Cutangle continued, “and, to be frank, higher.” “What do you mean, higher?” asked Granny, trying to compensate for the wizard's weight on the pillion as they turned back upriver. Like pillion passengers since the dawn of time, he persisted in leaning the wrong way. “Well, more sort of above the trees,” said Cutangle, ducking as a dripping branch swept his hat away. “There's nothing wrong with this broomstick that you losing a few stone wouldn't cure,” snapped Granny. “Or would you rather get off and walk?” “Apart from the fact that half the time my feet are touching the ground anyway,” said Cutangle. “I wouldn't want to embarrass you. If someone had asked me to list all the perils of flying, you know, it would never have occurred to me to include having one's legs whipped to death by tall bracken.” “Are you smoking?” said Granny, staring grimly ahead. “Something's burning.” “It was just to calm my nerves what with all this headlong plunging through the air, madam.” “Well, put it out this minute. And hold on.” The broomstick lurched upwards and increased its speed to that of a geriatric jogger. “Mr Wizard.” “Hallo?” “When I said hold on -” “Yes?” “I didn't mean there.” There was a pause. “Oh. Yes. I see. I'm terribly sorry.” “That's all right.” “My memory isn't what it was . . . I assure you . . . no offence meant.” “None taken.” They flew in silence for a moment. “Nevertheless,” said Granny thoughtfully, “I think that, on the whole, I would prefer you to move your hands.” Rain gushed across the leads of Unseen University and poured into the gutters where ravens' nests, abandoned since the summer, floated like very badly-built boats. The water gurgled along ancient, crusted pipes. It found its way under tiles and said hallo to the spiders under the eaves. It leapt from gables and formed secret lakes high amongst the spires. Whole ecologies lived in the endless rooftops of the University, which by comparison made Gormenghast look like a toolshed on a railway allotment; birds sang in tiny jungles grown from apple pips and weed seeds, little frogs swam in the upper gutters, and a colony of ants were busily inventing an interesting and complex civilisation. One thing the water couldn't do was gurgle out of the ornamental gargoyles ranged around the roofs. This was because the gargoyles wandered off and sheltered in the attics at the first sign of rain. They held that just because you were ugly it didn't mean you were stupid. It rained streams. It rained rivers. It rained seas. But mainly it rained through the roof of the Great Hall, where the duel between Granny and Cutangle had left a very large hole, and Treatle felt that it was somehow raining on him personally. He stood on a table organising the teams of students who were taking down the paintings and ancient tapestries before they got soaked. It had to be a table, because the floor was already several inches deep in water. Not rainwater, unfortunately. This was water with real personality, the kind of distinctive character water gets after a long journey through silty countryside. It had the thick texture of authentic Ankh water - too stiff to drink, too runny to plough. The river had burst its banks and a million little watercourses were flowing backwards, bursting in through the cellars and playing peekaboo under the flagstones. There was the occasional distant boom as some forgotten magic in a drowned dungeon shorted out and surrendered up its power; Treatle wasn't at all keen on some of the unpleasant bubblings and hissings that were escaping to the surface. He thought again how nice it would be to be the sort of wizard who lived in a little cave somewhere and collected herbs and thought significant thoughts and knew what the owls were saying. But probably the cave would be damp and the herbs would be poisonous and Treatle could never be sure, when all was said and done, exactly what thoughts were really significant. He got down awkwardly and paddled through the dark swirling waters. Well, he had done his best. He'd tried to organise the senior wizards into repairing the roof by magic, but there was a general argument over the spells that could be used and a consensus that this was in any case work for artisans. That's wizards for you, he thought gloomily as he waded between the dripping arches, always probing the infinite but never noticing the definite, especially in the matter of household chores. We never had this trouble before that woman came.

#EqualRites

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