Lenny Lee Fest

This is a short piece of fiction I wrote for one of my favorite blogger friends, Lenny Lee, to spread some of the Lenny Lee Sunshine (Patent Pending). Because he loves animals, and he always makes me smile. Stop by Lenny's blog and leave a hug for him. (Also: follow the #LennyLeeFest hashtag to find other posts for our special guy.)

Bad Timing

In all the times Jacob had visited the sorcerer’s chamber, there had never been a battle raging outside the castle.

Jacob set down the spell book that had brought him to the dimly lit room. The stuffed raven still stared at him in the creepy way it always did, and the shelves of pickled roots and small creatures seemed the same as last time. But today, the sorcerer was nowhere to be seen, and something orange flickered through the dusty windows. Their warped, thick glass always reminded him of the bottoms of coke bottles, but even through the distortion, he could see something was burning in the distance. And he could hear shouts and clanging of metal.

Growing closer.

“Mrrrp?” He jumped at the sound, his heart settling when he saw it was just a mangy cat, front paws perched on the spell book, looking inquisitively at him. When did the sorcerer get a cat? It was solid black, but uneven, like its fur couldn’t decide if it should be short or long. Its yellow eyes stared at him.

He ignored the beast and shuffled to the heavy wooden-plank door. He could hear shouts and footsteps running down the stone corridor outside. His hand shook as he slid the metal latch. It squeaked its protest, and Jacob was afraid that whoever was taking over the castle might have heard. 

And might come investigate.

He hurried back to the desk, lifted the cat carefully off the spell book, and creaked the ancient leather binding as he opened it.

“Where’s the spell?” he muttered. He flipped through the parchment pages, yellowed with age and catching splinters of light from the wax candles that the sorcerer had left burning. A loud thump on the door made him nearly jump out of his skin.

“Open up!” came a gruff voice from the other side of the door.

He flipped faster, but it was as if his hands had gone numb and could barely turn the pages. He couldn’t make sense of the pictures and words scrolled in blue and purple and gold. Whoever was on the other side of the door banged again and again, making the simple slide latch dance with each beat.

There was no time.

He slammed the book shut and opened the lid of a heavy wooden box on the sorcerer’s table. He had shown it to Jacob one visit and explained how it was enchanted. Once locked, it would disappear. A tiny silver key sat, unturned, in the keyhole. Jacob shoved the spell book inside.

Whoever was coming through the door, Jacob knew that he had to keep the spell book secret. Hidden. He’d sworn to it, as part of his apprenticeship. He’d even made a blood oath. Explaining that tiny scar on his thumb had taken some artful lying on his part, but he couldn’t let his mom know where he went on those Saturday mornings he was supposedly playing D&D in his bedroom.

He dropped the lid shut and turned the key. Sure enough, the box disappeared, the silver key hanging in empty space.

The door flew open and the biggest, ugliest guy Jacob had ever seen stumbled through. Jacob turned, keeping his hands behind his back. He fumbled for the silver key, but he couldn’t find it. His fingers grasped nothing but air.

“What be ya doing, knave?” His words rumbled somewhere deep inside his broad chest, covered with straps of leather bindings that held a strange collection of metal armor and fur. It took only three strides of his thick legs to cover the floor of the sorcerer’s den, and then he loomed over Jacob. The stench was almost enough to knock Jacob out, if his knees weren’t knocking enough already.

The barbarian swept him aside like a fly that had buzzed his face, and Jacob cringed on the floor, waiting for him to see the silver key floating in air.

It was gone.

The man stared hard at the desk, as if he might find something if he gave it an evil enough look. The black cat sat calmly returning his stare, tail curled around its feet. Jacob guessed scary barbarians weren’t as disturbing to cats as they were to sorcerer’s apprentices. A shout from the hall grabbed the man’s attention and without a look back, he stomped from the room.

Jacob scrambled around the floor. The key must have fallen out while he was bumbling around for it, but he couldn’t find it anywhere. There were so many pits and cracks in the ancient wooden floor planks, who knew where it had gone. Maybe Jacob had lost it. And without the spell book, he had no way to get home.

Jacob swallowed the hot lump rising in his throat.

He stood and felt for the box. His hands scraped its edges, trimmed in metal and riveted straps. It was still there, just shrouded in some kind of invisibility cloak. Maybe he could smash it, get the spell book out again before the barbarians returned. But the sorcerer would not be happy about him destroying his prized box.

Jacob turned to the cat, who was staring at him again. “Well, what would you do?” he asked the cat sarcastically. The cat yawned like it was bored with his question. Jacob’s mouth fell open. The silver key…it sat on the tongue of the cat!

The cat closed its mouth again, finished with its boredom. “Nice kitty.” Jacob reached slowly toward the cat. “Pretty, pretty kitty.” The cat bumped his outstretched hand with its head and then spit out the key. Jacob just stared, stunned for a moment. It was as if the cat was helping him. The sorcerer’s cat was cooler than it looked.

“Okay then,” he said. “Um, thanks.”

He picked up the key, slightly slimy from cat slobber, and fumbled around to fit it into the keyhole. It took a moment of twisting to finally hit the sweet spot that sprung the box open and turned it visible. Jacob snatched the spell book out and placed it on the table. The cat bumped his arm again, winding its tail around his wrist.

“Okay kitty,” he said. “Nice kitty. But I need to find the spell to get home now.” He nudged the cat aside and quickly thumbed through. Amazingly, the pages fell open to the return spell with no problem.

He placed his hands on the spell and recited the lines, picturing as he always did, his room cluttered with Lego models and twenty sided dice. “Domum me ad locum tenentem cor cara.” Someday he was going to have to look up the words and figure out what they meant. As the sorcerer’s room began to swirl into that time mist that always made him think of fog but felt like anesthesia, the cat placed a paw on the spell page next to him.

“No! Bad kitty!” he said, but it was too late. She was coming with him.

The spell book fell closed. It always took a moment for his head to clear, like the mist had permeated his brain on the trip back. He shook it, braced himself up from the carpet, and looked around for the black cat. Just when he spied it on the far side of his room, it started to change. Stretching and growing impossibly large, it was blowing up like a giant balloon cat. Its tail shrunk and disappeared and its paws lengthened into fingers. It was gross to watch, but he couldn’t look away. By the time the cat stopped changing, the fur had all disappeared and his sister stood in the cat’s place.

She was dressed all in black, the kind of clothes she thought made her look like an artist, but mostly she wore to impress her friends. “Wicked!” she said. “When are we going again?”

He was so busted.