Lemon followed Hogarth down the hall and to the levitation platform. It was stationed in the center of the building, and included some advanced talisman controls to move it from floor to floor. After manipulating the magic to bring it down to ground level, they hopped on board and it rose up to the fourth floor.
“Here’s our room, four-twelve,” he said, opening the door to reveal a room that was much bigger than it could possibly be based on how close the neighboring doors were. The interior was lavishly furnished with a bed containing a plump mattress and four extra-thick fluffy pillows. A counter ran along one wall with a crystal bowl in the center and a water-generating rune scribed into its surface. The window had a reading nook built in, which Midnight was laying on and sunning herself.
“Back already?” she asked. “I thought the lecture on advanced telemetry was supposed to be three ho- WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!”
“Hi Midnight!” Lemon barked.
Midnight shot her an absolutely venomous look, which Lemon completely ignored as she padded into the room. “This is really nice,” she said, looking around. “Almost nicer than back home.”
“Hogarth, why? It’s my vacation. Just, why do you do this to me?”
“Well, it seems that Lemon misunderstood what was happening and thought that I needed the test potion I left back home. She walked all this way to bring it to me.”
Midnight’s tail lashed back and forth in agitation. “Of course she did. Wait, how did she get here so quickly? There’s no way.”
“Oh, that’s easy. I walked really far. Look, I’ll show you.” Lemon pulled the map out of her bag and held it up. She pointed towards the Harpy Woods with her snout. “I cut through here, see? And there were a bunch of bird ladies, those are called harpies. Anyway, they were doing this ritual when I found them, but it smelled like Bad Magic, so I-”
“Is that the map from my sitting room?” Hogarth interrupted.
“No, this is the one from your bedroom.”
“Arrggh,” Midnight said, her head snapping over to look at the map. “I got that as a gift. It’s a collector’s item! There’s a reason it was behind glass. Do you know how expensive that was?”
“No?” Lemon was confused. There was a map in the sitting room, but it wasn’t as pretty as the one from the bedroom. It was also smaller and harder to read because the letters were written so fancy that they didn’t look normal anymore.
“Hogarth! Do something!”
He peered at the map and said, “Well, it doesn’t look damaged. I’m sure we can clean it back up.”
“There’s dried dog snot all over one side!” Midnight screeched.
“I had to sneeze once while I was looking at it,” Lemon told her. “Anyway! So I stopped the harpies from summoning a demon, but then there was a swamp hag they were working with I had to beat too. She was really mean and had even more Bad Magic than the harpies did. Oh, and then I got to Tamble’s Crossing and-”
“That says Bramble’s Crossing. Or at least it did before you sneezed all over it.”
“-there was a vampire there who abducted a human puppy right in front of me! And me and her dad teamed up and took that vampire down to get her back. I had to use all my glow power to make it happen, and then-”
“I can’t believe you just took it. I saved for like four months for that.”
“-when I got to the city I met another human, but this one could do magic too. He showed it to me, but it was only two spells. He was trying to help me get up to the conference, but the light wouldn’t let me up and there was this old guy who smelled like he had been rolling around in the dirt-”
“How did you even get all the creases in it? The bag magically preserves it.”
Hogarth watched, a rather bemused expression on his face, as Lemon excitedly recounted her adventures and Midnight bemoaned the condition of her precious map. Finally, she snatched the map from Lemon and stored it away in her own bag. “Thank you, Lemon, for that riveting story. But I’m sure you want to explore and see what’s on display at the conference this year, not sit around a boring old room.”
“Oh yeah! I do want to do that. But we need to go get Bon first, right Hogarth? I promised him.”
“Oh, uh, yes. About that. I forgot that I’m scheduled to give a lecture on how to properly mix Hestionic reagents with Alkoranine to avoid creating a Nomuric Reaction in an hour. I have to go set up for that and I don’t really have time right now. You’ll have to go back and get your friend yourself.”
“But what if I can’t get back up?” Lemon asked. “The light didn’t work when I tried it.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“Well, you have your pass now, so it’ll work fine,” Hogarth told her.
“What if it doesn’t? And I have to levitate all the way up here again, and the wards shoot fire at me again?”
“It’ll be fine, Lemon. The obstacle course wards aren’t even turned on right now.”
“But they might be by the time I get back!”
“Lemon, I really just don’t have the time right now. I’m sorry. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow if you don’t want to go get him by yourself.”
“But I promised!” Lemon said. “Midnight, help!”
The cat narrowed her eyes to slits and said, “I wouldn’t help you right now even if you fell into the bathtub. I hope you get sprayed by a skunk.”
“That reminds me! I saw a skunk near the old bridge back home. But I ran away before it could get me”
“Small mercy,” Hogarth muttered. “Midnight, would you please escort Lemon to pick up her friend?”
“What? Hogarth, no. No. Absolutely not. No way.”
“Midnight.”
“Noooooo. Not doing it.”
“Remind me, who is the familiar in this relationship again?”
“Come on! It’s my vacation too!”
Hogarth gave Lemon’s head a pat and said, “Why don’t you go wait for her by the elevator? I promise she’ll be out soon.”
“Okay,” Lemon said, tail wagging.
* * *
“Stupid Hogarth. Stupid conference. Stupid Lemon ruining my vacation,” Midnight muttered to herself as they walked down the streets. She lifted her voice and said, “Do you even know where this kid lives?”
“Somewhere by Wall Road,” Lemon said, looking around for a street sign that she could read. Midnight was standing, her two back paws balanced on Lemon’s back and her front paws on Lemon’s head as she rode the dog around town. She’d claimed she didn’t want to get her paws dirty with all the grime and mud on the ground.
It certainly drew a lot of attention, but outside of the guards who’d been surprised to see Lemon again when she appeared inside the pillar of light, nobody had stopped her to ask any questions. Midnight’s paw cuffed her ear and she said, “If it’s by Wall Road, why are you going north instead of west?”
“Oh, right. Which way is west again?”
“I cannot believe you managed to follow a map all the way here,” Midnight said.
“It was really hard! I had to remember which way the sun rises, but then I followed the road the rest of the way.”
Midnight groaned and muttered something that Lemon thought sounded like, “What did I do to deserve this? Was it the mice? It was, wasn’t it?” But she couldn’t be sure, because she got distracted by a guy walking by eating some sort of meat on a wooden skewer. She tried to catch his eye to see if he would share, but he ignored Lemon and just kept walking.
“West,” Midnight demanded. “That way.”
They walked along, or rather Lemon walked and Midnight rode on her back, until they found Wall Road, then they followed it in the direction that Midnight said was south while Lemon sniffed for Bon’s scent. It was easy to notice once she came across it since it had the rare tingle of magic in it. All wizards had that scent, though in Master Hogarth’s case, it was almost overpowered by alchemical smells. Bon’s was very faint, but it was there.
Lemon found the scent and followed it along. “Here’s where those men caught up to us,” she told Midnight when they stopped next to the shattered old crate that used to cover the crawlspace entrance.
“Is your new wizard friend hiding in the dirt under a house? Not very wizard-like behavior, if you ask me.”
“No, he’s not here,” Lemon told Midnight. “Give me a second to figure out which of these scents is the newest.”
“Lemon, isn’t that-”
“One second, this is really tricky.”
“Lemon.”
“One second! Please.”
“Is it the boy standing right there with the bucket waving at you?” Midnight asked.
“Huh?” Lemon looked up, then she gave a little bark of joy and jumped forward, an action which quickly flung Midnight loose and caused her to hiss in displeasure when she landed. “Bon! There you are! Guess what! I got you a pass for the conference. Well, technically my master got it for you, but I’ve got it here in my bag and we can go right now.”
“Hi, Lemon. Um. I don’t think I can go,” Bon said. “I kind of got in trouble about the whole thing with those guys.”
“What kind of trouble?” Midnight asked sharply.
Bon’s mouth formed a little ‘O’ of surprise and he peered down at her. “Wow, you can talk too? I didn’t know there were so many talking animals in the world.”
“There’s about a hundred of them right above your head right now,” Midnight said. “Now what’s this about not being able to go?”
“So, like, if those guys hadn’t caught me stealing back the money they took, it would have been fine, but since they did catch me, and they know who I am, they went back to my parents and demanded all the money back plus extra.”
“Ah, trouble with the local street gangs. A tale as old as civilization itself.”
“Uh, sure. Yeah. Anyway, now I’m kind of in trouble and I have to do chores. I’m getting water from the well right now,” Bon said, holding up the bucket by way of demonstration. “So I guess I don’t have time to go to the wizard show. Plus Mom would probably get mad at me. Well, madder.”
“Okay, I think there’s a simple solution here. We just need to go explain to your parents what kind of opportunity you have here.”
Bon glanced over at Lemon, confusion plain on his face. “What opportunity? I mean, it looks really fun and all, but I’m not dumb enough to try to steal from a bunch of wizards.”
“Lemon said you can do magic,” Midnight said. “Is that not correct?”
“No, I can. But so what?”
“If you can do magic, that means you could become a wizard’s apprentice, and then a wizard yourself. Getting you up to that conference is the first step in finding you a master willing to train you,” Midnight explained.
Halfway through her explanation, Bon’s jaw dropped. “Me? A wizard? I don’t think that’s possible.”
“It is very possible, if you can really do magic.”
“Here, I’ll show you,” Bon said. He cast around for a small rock, picked it up, and then made it disappear from one hand and into the other. Then he stuck his hands onto the side of a nearby house and pulled himself up off the ground. “I’m still working on that one. It’s hard to make my feet stick too.”
“Magical, indeed. Very well, let’s go talk to your parents and get this all sorted out.”
“Yay! Bon’s going to learn to be a wizard,” Lemon said as she pranced around the boy in a circle. He just stood there, stars in his eyes, and gazed up at the floating island.
Eventually, Midnight got sick of the frolicking and got them moving again. It was a slow journey though, with them having to basically drag a dazed Bon through the streets and get directions from him repeatedly. He just kept mumbling to himself about wizards and magic and food the whole way. But eventually, in an act of supreme patience, Midnight did manage to shepherd Lemon and Bon to his front door.