The Necromancer’s Nephew by Andrew Hunter

Author:Andrew Hunter [Hunter, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy
Published: 2012-04-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

“Roo-ah deo ree thu… thooloo.”

Lampwicke pressed her tiny hands over her mouth in a vain attempt to stifle her laughter. The giggling fairy rocked back and forth on the little pillow that Garrett had found to serve as her new bed.

Garrett wrinkled his nose and tried again to read aloud from the storybook. “Thru-leah dulu wik wik… foalaa.”

“Fu’La!” Lampwicke shouted, “Fu’la!”

“Fu’La,” Garrett repeated.

She seemed pleased by his pronunciation of the phrase, though he still had no idea what he was saying.

Garrett sighed and turned the book so that the fairy could look at the illustrations through the bars of her cage. Her eyes went wide with pleasure as she pointed at a section of the text and cried, “What what?”

Garrett shifted in his chair. He kept Lampwicke’s cage on the desk now, atop a pile of books so that she could look out the window during the day. He propped the storybook open beside the cage and squinted at the text.

“Raambolu na… Gooloogoo… that can’t be right, can it?” he said.

“Gaologhu,” Lampwicke corrected him.

“Yeah, that.”

A knock sounded at his door. “Garrett?” Uncle’s voice called from the hallway.

“Come in,” Garrett said.

Uncle opened the door and stepped inside. He crossed the floor to stand beside the desk, smiling at Garrett’s attempt to read the storybook to the fairy. He reached over to turn the book’s cover so that he could read the title.

“Songs of the Hidden Grove,” Uncle said.

“You speak fairy?” Garrett asked.

“No, but I do speak a little Fae, which is what scholars call the language of fairies and their kin.”

“I meant that…” Garrett said.

“A gift from Marla?” Uncle asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t have any idea what I’m reading, and I can’t pronounce the words very well,” Garrett said.

“Hmn, let me see.” Uncle picked up the storybook and perused the section that Garrett had been trying to read to Lampwicke. He flipped back a few pages to the start of the story.

Garrett and Lampwicke looked at each other. Her tiny blue eyes blinked and then looked back to Uncle Tinjin.

Tinjin read silently for a few moments, flipping through the book as he did, and a little smile grew at the edge of his mouth. “It is the story of a rather… romantic young satyr and his attempts to woo a unicorn who has attracted his attention.”

“Huh,” Garrett said, “is it funny?”

“I imagine that it would be quite hilarious to hear it read by someone who doesn’t speak your language.”

“Oh,” Garrett said.

“We shall have to remedy that,” Uncle said as he sat the book back on the desk, “Since you have taken it upon yourself to learn a new language, the least I can do is find you a bi-lingual dictionary. I will seek a suitable one at my next opportunity.”

"Thanks," Garrett said, afraid that he had just inadvertently volunteered for an enormous task.

"In any case... what's this?" Uncle said, picking up an object that had been half-buried under a stack of papers on the desk.

"Oh, that's the dragon tooth that Warren gave me for my birthday.

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