The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter (15 page)

“Cut out the itch?  Certainly not!  Was it the Enchanter who put that foolish idea into Tinkerfingers’s head?”

Stephen rolled his eyes.  “What do you want me to do?”

“I have creams to relieve itches,” said Medic, “but they have no effect on Tinkerfingers.  If the Enchanter were to increase their efficacy—or make Tinkerfingers believe he had—it would be helpful.”

“I doubt it.  If the creams have no effect, doubling the effect isn’t going to do any good.  And like I said, I don’t do healing magic.”

“The Enchanter enjoys complaining,” Medic said, “but unless the Enchanter has a better suggestion—”

The Enchanter did not have a better suggestion, and so he reluctantly agreed to help.  “I’m warning you, though,” he said, “I’ve never tried this before.”

“If the Enchanter has finished making excuses—”

“Disclaimers.  And yes, I suppose I have.”

“Good.”  Medic held out a palm-sized jar. 

Stephen unscrewed the top, and dipped a finger in the pale-greenish cream beneath.  “It smells like plants,” he observed.

“The Enchanter means willowherb.”

“I don’t think so.  I’ve never heard of it.  Could you stand back?  It’s hard to concentrate with you breathing down my neck.”

Medic stayed where he was.  Stephen moved instead, going to sit down.

A base of
soothing
would do, with secondary enchantments for
cooling
and
freshness
.  He thought he might be able to manage those, with a variation on the preservation enchantment he used on trophies.  No; that’d kill Tinkerfingers’s skin.  He’d have to make the enchantment adaptable, willing to allow the natural growth and shedding of skin.

Stephen pressed the base enchantment into the cream—and watched it slid right off.

Huh.  All right. 

Stephen pushed his finger back into the cream and channeled the enchantment through it, funneling magic directly into the center of the cream.

The magic bubbled out into the cream, but did not cling to it.  When Stephen drew his finger away, the magic seeped out through the cream and slid to the earth, dissipating.

Stephen said several unmagical words.

“There’s no need for that sort of language!” Medic said, much offended.

“Yes, there is,” Stephen said firmly, and tried again.  This time, he used a base of
numb
, but that slid off almost as quickly as the
soothing
. 
Relax
was just as bad. 
Deaden
was a slight improvement, until Stephen realized what it would probably do to human skin, and hurriedly removed it. 
Desensitize
was equally unwise, and wouldn’t stick anyway. 
Balm
was a flop, as were
cool
,
calm,
and
anti-itch
.  In his desperation, Stephen tried
heal
, which was so vague and unsuited to enchantment that he wasn’t surprised in the least when it failed to materialize.

The cream simply wouldn’t hold an enchantment; it wasn’t sufficiently solid.  Stephen put down the jar of cream and collected up the failed enchantments, which had puddle around him, like colorful shadows—what some people called an aura.  He grounded the excess magic so it couldn’t cling to anything—although the dirt in that area might never be quite the same—and stood.

“The Enchanter is finished?” said Medic, in the tone of one who has been waiting an hour when he expected to wait only minutes.

“Yes,” said Stephen.  “Here, take it.  I’m off to bed.  Good night.”

“The Enchanter does not wish to see the effects of his improved cream?”

“Oh, I know the effect it’ll have.”  None.

“Are you done?” Youngster asked, dragging Tinkerfingers behind him as he approached.  The rest of the company was asleep, but Youngster had volunteered for the first watch—he wasn’t likely to get any rest anyway.

“Have you made the cream acidic?” Tinkerfingers asked.  “It could eat a hole in my shoulder; that’d get rid of the itch.”  He laughed at their horrified expressions.  “What?  It was a joke.”

It hadn’t been a joke.

“It’s not acidic,” said Medic.  “Is it?”

Stephen shook his head.  “No.”  At least, it shouldn’t be.  What was the effect of pushing magic after magic at a cream?  He’d never tried it before.  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

“Pity,” said Tinkerfingers.  “Is that it?”  He plucked the cream out of Medic’s fingers and sniffed it.  “It smells the same.”

“Of willowherb, apparently,” said Stephen.

Tinkerfingers scooped a blob of the cream out with his fingers, stuck his fingers down his collar and rubbed the cream on the area where, presumably, the itch resided.

“Improved?” Medic asked.

“It feels the same as before—only slightly colder, than when it sat near the fire.”

“The Enchanter worked on it for hours.”

“Not hours.”

“What enchantments did he put on it?”

Stephen folded his hands in front of him.  “Oh, all sorts of enchantments, all designed to sooth itches.  Unfortunately, enchantments don’t stick to non-solids.”

“The Enchanter doesn’t mean—”

“He does, I’m afraid.  That cream is no more magical than it was before.  Now, if there’s nothing else you want, it’s my bedtime.”  He turned away from their disappointed faces and went to lie down.

He’d warned them.  Enchanters didn’t heal.  It wasn’t his fault.  What did he know about itches?  Nothing. 

He’d warned them.  It wasn’t his fault.

Stephen’s dog was coming along
beautifully.  He was dedicating all his time and energy to it, ignoring the people around him—even Youngster and especially Tinkerfingers and Tinkerfingers’s Itch.

The chunk of pine had produced a satisfactory—if slightly sticky—skull.  It was long, wide-jawed, and, from an aesthetic point of view, ugly.  Not only ugly, but ugly in the sort of way that suggested that skin would not greatly improve it.  The lines were subtly wrong, the proportions, although mostly even, were slightly . . . off.  The eyes were a little too far apart, the jaw a little too square, the line of the brow overly stylized.  The most that could be said for it was that it was ugly in an endearing, not a horrifying, sort of way.

Youngster told Stephen all of this as they rode.  He did not mean any of it cruelly, he assured Stephen; he meant it as an art critic would.

“It’s not supposed to be pretty,” Stephen said, not looking at him.  “It’s supposed to be practical.  You’d be more impressed if you could see all the magic I’ve infused in it.”

“I wasn’t insulting it,” Youngster said.  “It looks a bit like my artwork.  Tinkerfingers was always better at that sort of thing.”

“I still am,” said Tinkerfingers, hand creeping up toward his shoulder.

Youngster slapped him.  “Don’t scratch.”

“I wasn’t.  I was going to prod it.  Prodding helps.”

“No it doesn’t.”

Tinkerfingers shook his head, and wouldn’t say another word on the subject.

Tinkerfingers wasn’t the only one reticent about talking about the Itch.  Over the next few days, it seemed no one was willing to broach the subject—except for Youngster, who mentioned it every chance he got.  But Stephen got the impression that the company was watching Tinkerfingers, waiting, nervous.  Something was happening to Tinkerfingers, something they didn’t understand and couldn’t fight, and they hated it.

Late one evening, Medic took Stephen aside a second time.

“I told you,” Stephen said.  “I don’t do medicine.  Enchantment is the wrong kind of magic for healing.”

“I haven’t said what I want.”

“No, but this is about Tinkerfingers, isn’t it?  About the Itch.  I’ve seen you watching its progress.  You’ve been trying to make up your mind what to do about it, and trying to calm Tinkerfingers’s desire to cut it out.  Have you any idea how immensely distracting it is, trying to fit a spinal column together while the person next to you is fingering his scalpel?”

“If the enchanter had spent as much work on Tinkerfingers’s malady as he had on his dog, all might now be well.”

“I doubt it.  Have you ever seen me enchant something already living?  Ever?  Have you once witnessed me enchanting living flesh?  No!  And you never will, because it’s a stupid idea.  I can’t enchant your creams and I can’t enchant Tinkerfingers.  What else do you want?”

Medic stood and watched him, unmoving.

“What?”

“I had been given to understand,” said Medic, “that Tinkerfingers regarded the Enchanter as a friend.”

“Enchanters don’t have friends.”

“The Enchanter will have noticed,” Medic went on, just as if Stephen hadn’t spoken, “that the Itch has moved continually from Tinkerfingers’s hand toward his heart.”

Stephen had noticed.  The whole company had—except Youngster, who acted as if Tinkerfingers only had to stop scratching, and the problem would go away.

“The movement, and the speed of movement, is indicative of life.”

“If you’re saying you think I enchanted something to attack Tinkerfingers—”

“Did the Enchanter?”

“No!”

“Good.  I did not think so.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“I did not,” said Medic. 

It was true; it had been Stephen who had assumed the accusation.  He was too used to being blamed.  He nodded.

“Enchanter,” Medic said, looking him in the eye and addressing him for the first time, “I brought you here to ask your help.  You have proven yourself adept at enchanting monsters.  If there is something living attacking Tinkerfingers, something living can stop that attack.  I had hoped the Itch was something simple, and so I resisted cutting it out.  But if there were maggots, they would have emerged by now, and they would not be moving as they are.  Now the Itch is nearly to Tinkerfingers’s heart.”

“So cut it out.”

“I can’t—not without the risk of killing him.”

“But if the Itch reaches his heart, you think it’ll kill him anyway.  You should’ve cut it out when he asked.”

“I am trying,” said Medic, “to do something now.  It’s too late to attack the Itch while it was relatively innocuous.  That’s why I want your help.”

“I don’t heal people and I don’t enchant living flesh.  I told you.”

“Then build monsters—that’s what you do best, isn’t it?  Build me monsters, tiny monsters that can crawl under Tinkerfingers’s skin and fight the Itch.”

“That’s not possible.”

“You haven’t tried!”

“How would I?  I can’t build a monster that small—and if I enchanted a speck, it wouldn’t be able to fight.  I don’t know anything about the Itch and I know barely more about medicine.”

“If Tinkerfingers dies—”

“It won’t be my fault; you’re the Medic.  I’m here to enchant things—big things, monster fighters.  You’re here to heal people.  Do your job, healer.”