The Tinker & The Witch by G. J. Daily

Author:G. J. Daily [Daily, G. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Arace nearly as rare as Humans, Andrew had never seen a Scritt before. What little he had heard of them was that they were a highly intuitive race who worshiped writing. If Daphnie was correct, they saw writing in three-dimensional terms, recording body language, movement, mannerism, tone, dialect, inflection, intonation, accent, and so much more in how they annotated their texts. Surely, this Elrift would have some answers.

It took Andrew half a day to find the nearly overgrown stone path Daphnie had told him about that wound up and around a part of the Ridge Back known as Table Mountain.

"Just past the leaning man," she had said, which didn't mean much until he came to an ancient stone statue nearly a hundred feet high of a wise old minotaur leaning out of the cliff face, looking over the valley below. Trumpet vines grew down from his head like long strands of hair. He had a shepherd’s staff in one hand and a sword in the other.

"This must be it," he told Brynlee.

Little yellow warblers with grey wings chirped at him and Brynlee from the long, reaching branches of hornbeams as they made their way up a slender slope of loose slate to a stone door covered in vines. The door was round and painted in the circular script Andrew recognized from Daphnie’s book.

He reached for the door, but before he could touch it, it gently rolled open, and standing in the entrance was an Inkling. The Inkling stood barely half as tall as Andrew with a white beard that came to a point and tufts of white hair sticking out of his double-lobed and pointed ears. His eyes were large, looking up at Andrew through a pair of bi-focal lenses that clung to the end of his button nose, and tufts of blue hair intermixed with bright blue hedgehog-like quills stood up and were tied back through a blue-felt dome of a cap lined with brass buttons. He wore fingerless gloves and brown leather boots with scuffed brass toecaps. His fingertips were stained with yellow and blue ink.

"Yes?" he asked in a high and nasally voice.

“Elrift?”

The Inkling scowled at Andrew. “I am not he. What do you want?”

“I don’t mean to bother you, uh, sir, but is Elrift available? Daphnie sent me," Andrew replied, holding up the flowers Daphnie sent as a gift.

The Inkling narrowed his gaze and sized up Andrew and Andrew's horse. Not appearing to be much of a threat, he stepped aside, indicating that Andrew could enter the long stone hallway behind him.

"You will need these," the Inkling said, holding a pair of darkly tinted goggles up to Andrew and turning a nob to tint his own glasses.

Andrew put the goggles on, which blocked out almost all light once the front door closed.

Then, trying not to trip on any of the stacks of leather and thread binding material lining the hall walls, Andrew followed the clicking sound of the Inkling's metal boots.

They passed several doors covered

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