Delph said, “So if it can’t use the body, what does it do with it?”
Astrea replied calmly, “It eats it of course.”
“O’course,” parroted Delph, his face growing a bit pale.
“The chontoo can fly, as you might note, since it has no legs with which to walk. It can appear in quite a rush and can do so silently. One must be prepared.”
“And what do we do when it does appear?” I asked.
“You must stop it, Vega,” she said emphatically.
“You mean kill it?”
“This particular incantation is effective.” She lifted her wand and then snapped it downward like it was a whip, right at the image of the chontoo. She cried out, “Enamelis fixidus.” A purple light shot out of the wand and collided with the image of the chontoo.
The creature had been baring its fangs. Now its jaws clamped together and its mouth no longer opened.
“What exactly did the spell do?” I asked.
“Cemented its jaws together. And if it can’t eat, it will die.”
I swallowed nervously and looked down. I knew Astrea was staring at me, but I wasn’t prepared to meet her eye. Not yet.
She waved her wand and the chontoo disappeared and another creature took its place on the board. Astrea said, “The manticore.”
I was looking at a thing with the head of a lion, the tail of a serpent and what looked to be a goat in between. The jumble of animals was positively terrifying.
“It is swift of foot, with immense strength, and its flaming breath is unquenchable,” she said.
I glanced at Delph, who was staring at the manticore like it had somehow possessed his soul.
“And how does one defeat it?” I asked.
“Any number of spells I taught you will do nicely. But it’s tricky because a manticore can read minds. So it knows what you are about to do and will take appropriate evasive action.”
“Well,” said Delph. “That’s a bit of a problem.”
“So how do we beat the manticore?” I asked again.
“There are two of you, so Delph will have to distract it. Let it read his mind, Vega, while you perform the appropriate spell to rid yourselves of the thing.”
I looked at Delph once more. I thought he would be shaking his head and looking mortified. But he was nodding and said, “Now, that’s a right good plan.”
“It’s a right bad plan if the manticore ends up killing you before I can take care of it,” I said forcefully. “It’s dangerous, Delph.”
He looked at me like I was a nutter. “Dangerous! We’ve nearly died, what, six times already since we’ve been here? Dangerous? Har!”
Something nudged my hand. I looked down to see Harry Two pushing it with his snout. I thought he just wanted to be petted, but there was a look in my canine’s eyes that spoke something else.
It was as though he was saying, There are three of us, Vega, not just two.
“Moving on,” said Astrea. She waved her wand again and the manticore vanished and was replaced with an even more odious creature, which I had already seen once before.
I thought Astrea shivered just a bit too as she said, “The wendigo.”
Having already seen this spectral creature devour a deer from the safety of Astrea’s Seer-See, I knew that it ate flesh.
Astrea said, “This creature doesn’t simply kill. It can possess you by eating your mind.”
“It eats your mind?” said Delph, looking horrified.
She said, “You saw what it did to that unfortunate deer.”
I nodded, my mind holding the image of a wendigo running away in my body.
Astrea said, “Now, it’s crafty. You must always be on the lookout for the warning signs that a wendigo is nearby.”
I poised my ink stick over my parchment, ready to write down these warning signs. When she said nothing, I looked up. “What are they?” I asked. “These signs?”
“A vague feeling of terror,” she said.
“Well, now, that’s right helpful,” scoffed Delph. “I mean I doubt we’d be feeling that way otherwise, eh?”
She continued, “And a sense that the facts stored in your head are drifting away and being replaced with strange, often horrible memories that are not your own.”
“How can it do that?” I asked.
“You are being imprinted with the residual memories of the prey that the wendigo has killed in the past and which linger in its own mind.”
It all sounded horrible enough. “Then what do we do?” I asked.
“There is one and only one incantation that will defeat the wendigo.” She held her wand in front of her and then made a slashing motion that resembled the letter X. She said in a very firm, very clear voice, “Omniall.”
“What does that do?” I asked.
“It removes the mind utterly and irreversibly.”
“It removes the mind? Then what happens to the wendigo?” I asked.
“It dies of course. That is just how it must be here.”
And I supposed she was exactly right.
Viginti septem: For the Ages
We sat before the blackboard for long periods of time. I also practiced my spells and incantations, and performed reverse curses when Astrea tried to attack me. I could tell that she always held back some. But as the time passed, I could also discern that she didn’t have to hold back quite as much. What I had found, to my pleasant surprise, was that in combat I had certain instincts that served me well. I could adapt after sizing up my opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. I was quick on my feet, both literally and in my mind. I had done the same thing in the Duelum back in Wormwood on my way to becoming champion.
She also made me work through mazes she conjured inside the cottage. I had great difficulty in doing so, and often resorted to the Confuso, recuso spell. But Delph was never at a loss and was able to get us out of every single maze that Astrea created. Yet I wasn’t overly worried. So long as I had the spell, no maze could defeat us.
Over tea in the library, Archie told us that he had once thought of venturing across the Quag.
“Why?” mumbled Delph, his mouth full of biscuit.
“Well, mate,” began Archie, “when you’ve lived in the same cottage with the same person for hundreds of sessions, it gets to you. You want to try something different, don’t you? A breath of fresh air.”
“I’m not sure I’d call the Quag a breath of fresh air,” I said.
“Well, anyway, it didn’t happen.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“My mum found out about my plan and put a stop to it.”
“How? You can do magic too,” said Delph.
Archie’s expression became forlorn. “Yes, but I’m not as good as she is. She’d win every duel, hands down.”
“But she wants to help us get across the Quag,” I noted.
“Bloody ironic, ask me,” said Archie.
After our lessons were finished each light, Delph worked on maps tracing routes and learning everything he possibly could to help us. And I practiced my spells and incantations over and over. At night, Delph and I would study, talking back and forth as we sat in the book-laden library. My notebook was full with what Astrea had taught us, and the margins were heavily cluttered with additional thoughts. I’m sure that Delph’s looked the same. Most nights we fell asleep in our chairs, our parchment upon our chests, and Harry Two snoring on the floor next to us.