Aster Wood and the Wizard King (Book 5) by J. B. Cantwell

Author:J. B. Cantwell [Cantwell, J. B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-06-06T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Kiron loved oak. Once, I had traveled for an entire day to collect a bushel of oak nuts for him, only to have him choose just a single one to use in a potion he was brewing.

As I laid Cait on the ground, I opened the top of her blankets. She was still out cold, but her breathing was already starting to steady with the warmth of this place. The sun overhead indicated it was around noon, whatever that meant here. I was starting to get used to not keeping track of time in the usual way that I might on Earth or Aeso. It could be that on this planet the sun was always high overhead.

I looked up to find Kiron leaping away from the group toward the tree as if he were greeting a old friend he hadn’t seen in a ages.

“Should we gather?” Finian asked, surveying the landscape. Several promising looking trees were nearby, and I wondered what sorts of fruits they might hold.

“No,” I answered. “Go after Kiron. Ask him what else he needs for his brew. Find those things first. We’ll worry about food later.”

Cait stirred slightly, but as the sun warmed her, her shivering seemed to ease a little.

In what seemed like no time at all, they were all back, their arms full of a variety of fruits and barks and nuts. Kiron cleared a space on the ground and lit a fire in a pile of grass with his disk. In a flash, his tiny pot hovered above it, and he began throwing pieces into it.

While he worked, he murmured the whole time. He seemed oddly connected to the process, and his voice would go up and down along with the movements of his hands over the pot. We didn’t dare disturb him. I had never seen him brewing a potion like this before. Once, I had seen him finish a brew that had rendered a traveling pack invisible, the same one I now carried, in fact. But I had only seen him finish it at the very end, and I never knew what it was about the mixture that had rendered it magical. Now, watching him create the potion, I at least got a sense of what was happening. The intonation of his voice, the movements of his hands; everything he did seemed to have an effect on the spell, the contents of the pot bubbling and frothing with each move he made.

At last Kiron sat back and laid out every oak nut he had found beneath the single tree, inspecting each one carefully, searching for dents, holes, anything that might have damaged them. Finally, he settled on a single nut, smaller than the rest, but perfectly formed. When he plunked it into the pot, the mixture sizzled.

He sat back, wiping sweat from his forehead.

“That’s it?” I asked. “Is it ready?”

“No,” he said. “Now we wait.”

“How long?” Father asked. His eyes were not on Kiron, but on Cait.

“A few hours,” he said.

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