Ma Pach

“The imposter called himself Odwald Ebonheart,” I said dramatically once we were safely behind the closed doors of Dean Windsworth’s office.

The professors didn’t seem terribly surprised to hear this name.

“One of yours, Glinda?”

“That’s right,” said Professor Glinda Nightseed confidently. “I’ve teach all the Ebonheart family that come through the Avium. And as you know, they all come through the Avium.”

The professors chuckled a bit and nodded to each other.

“Perhaps you could explain?” I asked, not bothering to disguise the irritation in my voice.

“The Ebonhearts are a great family in Alderheart,” said Glinda, not bothering to disguise her amusement either. “Rich and powerful; they send all of their young to the Avium to study necromancy. It’s a mark of status for them. They never do anything with it though. Usually end up as accountants or solicitors or members of the Birdfolk Council.”

The other academics muttered something about “selling out” and chuckled again.

Mordane Swiftgale was going through the stash of torn pages we had given him and making a list of the books to which they belonged. He had enlisted the help of some students and was sending them to fetch the original books for immediate repair and analysis.

Dean Windsworth shut Odwald’s diary and handed it somewhat reluctantly back to me.

“You shouldn’t have scared him off,” the Dean admonished us. “It seems like Odwald made more progress in his research on the Aspect of Fire than you have during this last week.”

“That’s only because he’s been pulling pages out of books!” I said indignantly.

“Nevertheless,” said the Dean, “Odwald has definitively ruled out the option of destroying the Aspect of Fire. It’s a dead end. There’s no way to permanently defeat a pure elemental force like that. But it seems he did find a lead on how to seal it away.” The Dean sighed and paced the room. “And even that is but a glimmer of hope. His calculations suggest you would need a powerful magical artifact like the ice staff Borealis to even have a chance against it.”

“Do you know where we can find this staff?” I asked. Any hope was good hope.

The Dean motioned for me to open Odwald’s diary again. He flicked through to the latest entry which, true to style, Odwald had apparently ripped out before fleeing the Avium.

“I think the only chance you have of finding it is to ask Odwald,” said the Dean. “Professor Revayne, would you be able to assist them?”

Corvax Revayne stood from his comfortable chair and joined them.

“If we have the time, an augury should do the trick,” he said.

Crispin’s eyes lit up with excitement.

“Yours, or mine?” Professor Revayne asked Crispin apprehensively. “I would prefer my own, of course, but—”

“Together!” Crispin announced.

“Indeed,” said Professor Revayne through gritted teeth. “Together.”

---

Corvax Revayne escorted us to the Divination tower and, as begrudgingly agreed, prepared for the augury together with Crispin. This time the Divination professor laid out a pan of sand and placed a spindly metal tripod over it. Meanwhile, Crispin gathered a variety of cobblefright bones, choosing each one with an unknown but rigorous selection criteria.

“And now an item belonging to Odwald,” said Corvax Revayne.

He hung the silver pendant from the tripod and arranged the chain just so. It dangled and swung gently over the center of the pan of sand.

“Ready?” Professor Revayne asked Crispin.

“Yes, I am,” said Crispin confidently. Then, with an overly-familiar wink, he gave Corvax Revayne, Professor of Divination at the Avium, a pet name. “Bone buddy.”

Professor Revayne had a far off look in his eyes.

The ethereal wind rustled into the room so slowly it was hard to pinpoint exactly when it began. But it grew in strength and the candles flickered and flared, and Crispin’s cobblefright bones glowed and shifted and clattered against each other, and the surface of the sand cleared and rippled smooth.

Pictures appeared in the sand, moving pictures as if traced by tiny unseen fingers. We saw farmland, woods, carts pulled by giant beetles, and the silver pendant swung out one side of the tripod, suspended unnaturally pointing in one direction and not swinging back into the center.

“South-east,” said Corvax Revayne, studying the pendant. “That points towards—”

“Brackenmill!” Crispin interrupted, filled with excitement. “Did I mention that I grew up there? Oh, the stories I could tell about home.”

All of a sudden the wind dropped, the candlelight settled, and the sand shapes shifted back into meaningless disarray.

“It also points towards the door,” said Professor Revayne.

---

The Dean was kind enough to go back on his word and allow us one last night at the Avium to rest before the journey ahead of us. He charged us with tracking down Odwald and finding out what he knew about the Borealis.

I slept like an egg after the exertions of the fight. Olive took the top bunk to prevent Crispin from using it again. Apparently Crispin couldn’t get to sleep as quickly as usual and that kept him up the entire night.

After my regularly scheduled morning crowing, we walked the familiar route to the cafeteria to indulge in one last Avium breakfast.

For the first time we saw the librarian sitting with the other professors for breakfast. The real Mordane Swiftgale had a heap of hard-boiled eggs piled up on his plate and he peeled them carefully before wolfing down the tender unprotected centers.

Olive, happy to have a breakfast buddy who shared her love of eggs, lead us to sit alongside him and Professor Glinda Nightseed.

“Isn’t it strange how we eat the eggs of other birds,” remarked Mordane conversationally as he chipped fragments of shell from another egg. “The birds and the Birdfolk: so much alike and yet…” He popped the egg into his mouth and gulped it down. “Food for thought, isn’t it?”

I could only look on, aghast.

“Why do you think he needed such a big construct?” Crispin asked Glinda.

“Who? What?” Glinda looked bewildered over her bowl of cornflakes.

“Odwald. The cobblefright.” Crispin answered.

“Oh,” Glinda laughed. “I’ve been giving that a bit of thought, actually. My theory is that Odwald was trying to create something that he could use to fight the Aspect of Fire.” She gestured with her spoon, spreading drops of milk over the table. “It would an ideal fighter. Already dead, you see.”

More and more I felt these academics had a rather disturbing worldview.

While Crispin continued to chat, Corvax Revayne sat down beside Glinda and gave curt but polite good morning greetings to us all.

“Any chance we could take Odwald’s pendant with us?” Olive asked him before he had even begun his paltry breakfast, a small herbal tea.

Corvax looked at us skeptically and clutched at his tunic pocket with one hand.

“No,” he said slowly, his eyes lingering on Crispin. “I don’t think that would be wise.”

“Come on, let’s leave these academics to their books,” I said bitterly. “We’ve got a long way to travel and not a lot of time to do it.”

---

It took three days to reach Brackenmill. Three long, increasingly hot days following the dusty road as it ploughed through the forest with barely a twist or turn to add interest to the journey.

But it was Crispin’s incessant gabbling that made the three days feel like seven. It was “when I was a lad…” and “as my Ma used to say…” and “this one time riding the beetles…” and “did I mention this before?” in tedious meandering circles of conversation that always swung back home to the tavern he grew up in and something about his Ma’s cooking.

I had always thought Crispin as something of a chatterbox but this was on another level. As frustrated as I was, however, I smiled. He clearly had the fondest memories of home and try as I might, I could not begrudge him that.

We knew we were nearing town when we found wagons crowding the road, their creaking wheels stirring up the dust into a fine haze around them. The Humblefolk drivers had their caps pulled forward to keep the worst of it out of their eyes. They greeted us with parched voices and nodded us on in the direction of town.

“–fell off the beetle’s back and straight into the duck pond!” concluded Crispin with a flourish. “By Hath I was young then.”

“Of course,” I said, seeing my opportunity to break into the monologue. “Now, we should decide how we’re going to go about this. Should we split up and scour the town? Or maybe begin by asking the locals if they’ve seen anyone matching Odwald’s description?”

“Plume, Plume,” said Crispin with saintlike calm. “You don’t need to worry about any of that. I know exactly where we should start, and if you’ve been paying attention then you will too.”

---

Brackenmill was closer in style to Alderheart than I would have expected. Expert Tenders had guided the growth of the prolific fruit trees into a wide canopy much like Alderheart. There was a more rural feel though as the houses and shops were smaller, leaving more space for fruit in the branches both above and below. The large community of Humblefolk farmers probably explained why so many of the buildings were close to the ground.

Just before we reached the center of the town our attention was caught by a large round tavern that served as the hub of a branch-level crossroads. Farmers, merchants, Perch guard, traders, all scurried past the tavern as they bustled about on their business. It was the perfect lookout spot.

“The Sunny Silkworm,” said Crispin, basking in the view of his childhood home. “Now where’s that pirate hat we stole? I want to surprise Ma.”

We walked in to the busy tavern and found ourselves a table alongside the wall. As we got seated a matronly Mapach passed by us in a blur, carrying bowls of stew to a rowdy group of Jerbeen farm labourers.

“Just a minute, dearies,” she said as she passed by.

“There she goes!” Crispin squeaked with delight. He kept the wide-brimmed hat tipped forward, masking his face. “This is going to be great!”

It took a while before Crispin’s mother made her way back round the tables to us, but eventually she did. She trotted up with a small notepad open and took out a pencil from behind her ear.

“What can I get you then?” she asked, business-like but friendly. She frowned for a moment, then her face broke out into a wide grin. “Nice to see you, Crispin.”

Crispin’s mouth dropped and the hat fell backwards off his head as he straightened up.

“How—?”

“You didn’t think that would fool me, did you?”

“I—”

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”

“Ma, these are my fellow Defenders of Alderheart,” said Crispin, recovering his manners but still looking a little stunned. “Olive and Plume, this is Ma.”

She shook Olive’s paw first and then offered her hand to me. She had a strong and steady grip.

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs…?”

“Pach,” said Crispin’s mother. “But you can just call me Ma. Everyone does.”

“Your full name is Crispin Pach?” I asked Crispin incredulously.

“Johann Crispin Pach,” said Ma conspiratorially. “We always hoped he’d go into music.”