Forest of Wonders

  Raffa gasped. It hadn’t occurred to him that someone might try to steal the bat! He cast a worried look at its box, then sat up straighter as his concern turned into resolve. No one was going to take the bat from him. He would do everything in his power to protect the little creature.

  Mohan returned the poker to its holder. The family discussion was over for the time being. “We can begin to work with the vine,” he said, “as soon as you finish mucking the vegetable beds.”

  That was all Raffa needed to hear. He spent the whole day in the garden, mucking with all his might.

  Garith did not come by; Raffa suspected it was because his cousin and uncle were preparing for the move to Gilden. Busy as he was caring for the bat, Raffa hadn’t thought of a way to convince his father to change his mind about living at the Commons. He wondered if Garith had come up with an idea.

  Later that evening, the bat awoke in a frenzy of hunger. Raffa was overjoyed: Hunger meant that the bat was healing. But the good news meant a great deal of work. He could hardly believe the amount such a small creature could eat.

  He spent a full hour running back and forth from yard to house, catching insects and feeding them to the bat. When at last the little creature stopped opening its mouth the instant after swallowing, he plopped down on his pallet, exhausted.

  “Whew,” he said.

  “Whew?” the bat said, and blinked a few times.

  Raffa peered closely at the little bat’s face. Its eyes were a smoky gray color, with a striking tinge of purple. All this time, he had thought that the bat’s eyes were black; it was strange that he hadn’t noticed before.

  He wasn’t sure how to talk to a bat. Not like a baby—this bat was fully grown, and he knew that bats could live several decades. The bat might well be older than he was.

  He decided to try an experiment. Glancing around the room, he said the first three words that popped into his head. “Lantern, pallet, table.”

  Silence.

  “Rucksack, bench, blanket.”

  More silence.

  “Bucket, jug, water.”

  “Water?” the bat chirped. “Thirsty. Need water.”

  Raffa got up to fetch a reed and gave the bat a drink, thinking all the while. The bat had ignored every word except for water. Maybe that meant he could speak words for the things that bats knew, which would make complete sense. Why would a bat need to know what a bucket was?

  “Name,” Raffa said hesitantly. “Do you have a name?”

  Silence again, but the bat was watching him intently. So he pointed to himself. “Raffa,” he said. “My name is Raffa.”

  “Raffa,” the bat said.

  “Good!” Raffa was delighted. “If you need me, call out ‘Raffa’ and I’ll come, okay?”

  “Good! Raffa good!”

  Raffa laughed, although he still wasn’t sure how well the bat had understood him. “Well, at least now I’ve got a name for you,” he said. “I’m going to call you Echo.”

  That first evening of Echo’s recovery, Raffa learned that he had guessed correctly: The bat’s vocabulary revolved for the most part around bat things. Raffa was delighted by the vast number of insects Echo could name. Gnat, moth, fluttereen, skimmer, wasp, pollenux, hornet, midge, starfly—there didn’t seem to be a single flying insect Echo didn’t know.

  But Echo did not always speak when spoken to. Was it because the ability was so new and strange? Or was it his character? Grogginess especially seemed to affect him. On first waking, he made only bat sounds. Maybe it was the equivalent of Salima’s incoherent grumbles in the morning before she’d had her first cup of tea.

  Raffa fashioned a perch from a twig fastened to a leather thong, cut from the rope that had been his tunic. Once Echo was well enough to leave the box, he planned to wear him like a necklace. It was the best way he could think of to keep Echo safe.

  He could hardly wait to introduce Echo to Garith. In his mind he tried out various scenarios. Should he go for the most dramatic effect? Or would it be better if he acted casually? In any case, he’d have to make sure he was in just the right position to see Garith’s face when Echo spoke!

  But the next day, when Garith and Ansel arrived in the afternoon, Echo was asleep. Mindful of what had happened when Mohan first met the bat, Raffa was not going to risk the chance that a groggy Echo would refuse to speak in front of Garith. It would make him look—and feel—like a complete fool.

  He was willing to wait for exactly the right moment: He and Echo would put on a dazzling display, and Garith would be beyond astonished. Raffa would make sure to arrange things so that Uncle Ansel could be there, too.

  He contented himself with showing Garith how well the bat’s injuries were improving. Without waking Echo, he pointed out the rapidly healing scars on the bat’s back and head. “And his wings are getting better, too,” he said. “If he wakes up later, I can show you.”

  “That’s amazing,” Garith said. “Better than anything we’ve ever used! What were the combinations?”

  Raffa told him, then added, “But you can’t tell anyone else. Da says we need to work more with the vine. Shame upon sorry we have so little of it.”

  Garith went to the window to examine the clippings while Raffa returned the bat’s box to the shelf. He took a few moments to fluff up the bedding, pleased that the bat was sleeping so restfully.

  “Let’s tell my father about this,” Garith said. “I’m sure he’ll want to know.”

  He headed for the door, with Raffa behind him. Then Garith halted abruptly and raised a hand, gesturing for silence.

  The adults were standing in a corner of the yard. Mohan’s voice was raised in anger. “—without even knowing what kind of project it is!”

  “I told you already, I’ll learn more on our arrival,” Ansel responded. “The Chancellor herself wants to meet with me. And with you, too, if only you would change your mind!”

  “But why would they not tell you more? Why all the mystery? I can make no sense of it, Ansel, and it worries me.”

  “Always the worrier! Why can you not see the good of this?” Ansel pounded his fist against something wooden, which made both boys jump.

  There was a moment of heavy silence, and then Mohan sighed. “At least promise me this,” he said. “That you will keep your eyes wide and your mind clear, so you might perceive things that are not what they seem.”

  Ansel mumbled a reply.

  “Please, let’s not argue on the day of your parting,” Salima begged.

  Raffa poked his cousin, and the boys drew back from the doorway.

  “Today?” he said in dismay. “You’re leaving today?”

  “I know, it’s happening awfully fast, isn’t it?” Garith said. “Not today, but tomorrow morning early.”

  Raffa was shocked. He hadn’t thought it would be so soon! How was it possible that Garith would no longer have lessons with him? That if he walked to the Vales’ cabin, as he had countless times over the years, he would find it empty? He might even miss the way Garith always pinched his feet as they slept head to toe whenever they shared a bed.

  “You’ll come see me, won’t you?” Garith said. “Get your parents to bring you for a visit as soon as you can. I won’t know anybody there at first, except for my da, and he doesn’t really count.” He laughed, but without his usual ease, and it surprised Raffa to see him looking anxious.

  For a moment, Raffa felt peeved. He was the one being left behind—why should Garith need comforting? But Mohan’s decision was hardly Garith’s fault.

  “It’s Gilden,” he said, reaching up to rap Garith’s noggin playfully. “Hundreds of people live there, and surely at least one or two of them are either softhearted or dull-witted enough to become friends with you.”

  “Why, thank you, dear cousin,” Garith replied, crossing his eyes.

  Raffa laughed, and Garith joined in.

  “Really, I expect you’ll be so busy at first, you won’t have time to worry about anything,” Raffa said
. His wistfulness returned as he thought of the glasshouse and the laboratory where Garith would be working.

  “You’re probably right,” Garith said. “I mean, of course you’re right—you’re the baby genius!”

  Raffa chased him out the cabin. That was their farewell, for Garith ran from the yard and kept on running. Neither of them said good-bye.

  It was better that way.

  CHAPTER TEN

  RAFFA stared at the list that Mohan had chalked on the worktable’s surface. There were more than three dozen combinations for poultices and two dozen for infusions, all standard preparations.

  “We need a list of the vine’s capabilities,” Mohan said, “but we cannot work with it until the clippings have begun to grow. In the meantime, there is plenty to do. We’ll begin by making fresh batches of these combinations. They’re the ones I want to try first with the vine added. By the time they’ve been completed, the clippings should be ready to use.”

  It made perfect sense. Raffa wished it didn’t. He could have made most of these combinations in his sleep, but still his father checked on him frequently as he worked. “Take care,” Mohan said. “Mistakes are seldom made with unusual combinations, for they receive our keenest attention. Carelessness with simple preparations is by far the greater danger.”

  The tasks were endless. Raffa fetched and carried. He stripped an infinite number of leaves from their stems and picked off twice that many flower petals. He washed the soil from roots and tubers until the skin on his fingers puckered. He sliced and chopped, peeled and pounded, scraped and grated—his knuckles as well as whatever he was holding.

  Some good came out of all the work: It enabled him to fill his own jars with fresh ingredients. And he was too busy to miss Garith very much. During the long hours of drudgery, he had Echo to keep him company.

  The bat continued to improve. The broken wing bones had knitted cleanly, and it was a happy day when Echo took flight again, a short staggering hop from the box to Raffa’s arm.

  Raffa began rising to start work before daybirth, when Echo was still awake. The bat would flit from shelf to ceiling to table edge, landing upside down or sometimes sidewise. Raffa continued talking through the steps of his work, but now with Echo listening.

  “This is dried yarrow,” Raffa said. “See these flower heads? I have to pick off every one of them, without getting any leaves mixed in. Like this.”

  “Raffa good!” the bat chirped, a phrase he repeated often.

  Toward midmorning, he would alight on the perch necklace and go to sleep for several hours. It comforted Raffa to feel the bat’s warmth on his chest.

  Echo spoke more words every day. One evening, as he returned from devouring dozens of the moths that hovered around the lanterns in the yard, he tried to land on the perch. But with his left wing badly scarred, his flight was erratic: He missed the twig and grabbed the leather thong instead—along with a little of the skin on Raffa’s neck.

  “Ouch!” Raffa said. He unhooked the bat’s claws gently and directed him to the twig.

  “Ouch,” an upside-down Echo said happily. “Ouch!”

  And from then on, Echo called out “Ouch!” whenever he flapped in for a landing.

  When he wasn’t busy preparing combinations, Raffa had another job to do. True to her word, Salima assigned him the making of a new tunic. He had learned to knit when he was younger, producing several wobbly-edged scarves. For the tunic, his mother inspected his work often, and when it did not meet her standards, she made him rip it out and do it again. There were times when Raffa thought the garment would never be completed. It would be a cold winter with no tunic.

  But Salima helped with the trickier parts, and when every last loose end had been securely woven in, Raffa was proud of his work. The wool was soft and thick and tightly knit; it would keep him warm even when wet. Now he had both tunic and rope, although he would never have shared that satisfaction with his mother.

  Mohan had undertaken the care of the clippings. One morning, he called Raffa to the window ledge and handed him one of the jars.

  “It’s not growing,” Mohan said.

  Raffa examined the clipping. It seemed healthy enough, the stem firm, the leaves neither limp nor shriveled. Oddly, though, only a single tiny, wispy rootlet protruded from the end in the water, and there was no new growth at the other end.

  “I cannot explain it,” Mohan said. “I asked your mother yesterday; she could not fathom it, either.”

  Raffa returned the jar to its place on the ledge. He looked at each of the other jars and frowned.

  “Did you do something with one of them?” he asked.

  Mohan returned the frown. “Other than to tend them? No, why?”

  “I took six clippings,” Raffa said. There were only five jars on the sill.

  Garith.

  Raffa knew at once and beyond doubt that it was his cousin who had stolen the clipping. He felt torn between disappointment and irritation. Why hadn’t Garith asked? Perhaps he had felt entitled to one, since he had gone to the Forest with Raffa. But he still should have asked.

  Mohan too appeared to have guessed where the sixth clipping had gone, for he shook his head before speaking. “I know you want to work with the vine,” he said, “so we’ll begin. But we will use only two of the clippings. We must continue to try to grow the other three.”

  Being limited to just two clippings would restrict the number of experiments that could be done. To stretch the amount of vine pulp as far as possible, only small quantities would be used. Mohan decided to begin by testing if the vine could improve the poultice for rashes, among the most common of maladies.

  Raffa pounded the scarlet vine eagerly. He took a small spoonful of a standard combination for rashes and added an even smaller amount of the pulp. As his hand stirred, his mind waited.

  A tiny pinch, so quick he wasn’t sure it had happened at all. Not comfortable, but not exactly painful, either—like a flick or a nudge . . .

  He stood very still for a moment longer. Nothing more. He’d probably imagined it, and decided to move on. He couldn’t wait to find out what would happen.

  “Da, can I test it myself?”

  No answer, so Raffa rushed into the silence. “On the back of my hand.” He’d skip the blue-veined cheeks today, please upon thank you.

  Mohan nodded. Raffa rubbed in a dab of poultice no larger than a kernel of wheat. The skin there immediately began to tingle and redden.

  After a moment, the back of his hand started to itch. Raffa frowned and raised his hand off the tabletop to examine it more closely.

  Now his hand was feeling warm . . . and warmer still. He sucked in his breath between his teeth. Mohan heard him and stepped around the table to take a look.

  They watched in alarm as the skin on Raffa’s hand began to crack in several places. Layer after layer, the cracks were working their way down, the edges curling a little to reveal the tender pink flesh underneath.

  “Wash it off—quickly,” Mohan said.

  Raffa ran to the bucket by the hearth and plunged his hand into it. Under the water, he rubbed at the cracks in mild panic.

  “Ow—YOW!”

  As his father rushed to his side, Raffa yanked his hand from the bucket. He cried out in horror. Instead of washing away the poultice, the water had spread its effects: Cracks were now splitting the entire back of his hand!

  His skin felt like it was on fire. “Da—YOW, it hurts, it hurts!” He shook his hand hard, as if trying to fling away the pain. Instead, his action fanned the flames.

  “Don’t touch anything!” Mohan strode across the room and flung open the trapdoor to the cellar. He descended and was back moments later. Urgently but with precision, he quickened the combination for pernicious reactions and applied it to Raffa’s hand.

  Raffa could hardly wait for the combination of brightweed and ragged-jack to begin working. He knew what it would feel like, cool and soft and soothing. . . . He gritted his teeth and began cou
nting, trying to take his mind off the pain.

  “One, two, three—”

  By the time he reached ten, involuntary tears of pain were rolling down his cheeks.

  “It’s not working,” Mohan said grimly.

  “Da,” Raffa gasped. It was hard to speak; he had to force out the words between bursts of what felt like flames on his hand. “The vine. Add it.”

  Mohan raised his eyebrows, but he moved at once to put a spoonful of the vine pulp into the brightweed combination. With his good hand, Raffa took up the pestle and began to turn.

  “Again,” Raffa panted. Mohan dropped more pulp into the mortar. Raffa turned the pestle again, and the paste glittered crazily in red.

  Raffa dropped the pestle as the pain nearly overcame him. Mohan grabbed the mortar, took a hurried swipe of the paste, and smeared it on the back of Raffa’s hand.

  The result was as dramatic as a flood in a fireplace. Raffa let out a yowl crossed with a sigh, so great was his relief. He rubbed in more of the soothing poultice. Together he and Mohan saw the cracks begin to subside. After a third application, they vanished. A reddish cast to Raffa’s skin was all that remained.

  His legs weak and wobbly, he collapsed onto the bench. Mohan, too, settled himself heavily. Both were breathing hard.

  “Powerful,” Mohan rasped. “Even more than I had remembered.”

  If the cracks had gone any deeper, they might have begun bleeding badly. Raffa knew then how lucky he had been with the poultice and infusion for Echo. No, lucky wasn’t the right word. He had heard the cowbell-like sound for the poultice, and sensed the silent hum of serenity for the infusion. That tiny pinch he’d felt moments ago—he shouldn’t have ignored it, no matter how Da felt about intuitions.

  He could not make the same mistake again; if he did, the consequences might be far more serious.

  Mohan picked up the mortar—rather gingerly, Raffa thought—and carefully scraped its contents into the fire. “We’ll work no more with the vine today,” he said. “And from now on, I will do all the testing.”