The Familiars: Animal Wizardry. Adam Epstein

      “Phoenicea.”

      “Right.”

      Aldwyn scampered up a neighbouring tree and walked across one of its low-lying branches. He reached out a paw and swiped a few tart yellow berries from the twig. Within the blink of an eye, a grey cloud formed overhead and a small thunderclap could be heard. Skylar and Gilbert both looked over to Aldwyn.

      “Why are you picking storm berries?” asked Skylar. Aldwyn thought there was a note of frustration in her voice.

      Before he could answer, a shower of rain poured down on the three of them. It only lasted for a few seconds, but it was enough to soak them from head to toe.

      “Don’t worry about it—I made the same mistake when I first got here,” said Gilbert. “I almost got struck by lightning.”

      Skylar shook the drops of water from her feathers and flew over to a small tree. She began pulling off a slightly darker hued berry with her beak.

      “I suppose if you want something done correctly, you have to do it yourself,” Skylar said under her breath, but making sure the others could hear. “Elementary education for familiars just isn’t what it used to be.”

      Aldwyn made his way back down to the ground, his damp fur already giving off the musky odour of week-old dish rags. It was evident that he was lacking even the basic knowledge needed to fit in here, but luckily he wasn’t expected to know everything about this world… yet. Of course, if he made too many mistakes, he’d be exposed as the magicless, talentless, utterly ordinary cat that he was, and his comfortable new life would be over before it had even begun.

      The sky was still a deep purple as dusk slowly turned to night, and the bald wizard ladled second helpings of a homemade stew into Jack and Marianne’s wooden bowls. Kalstaff called it dining under the stars. It was a fancy way of saying what Aldwyn did every night back in Bridgetower: eating outdoors.

      Aldwyn warmed himself by the fire as he lapped up chunks of fish and potato from a dish of his own. Skylar sat perched on Dalton’s forearm, pecking at a pile of nuts and grubs in the palm of his hand. Gilbert was shovelling a bowlful of swamp flies into his mouth. Every so often, he let out a loud belch, barely stopping to take a breath before continuing.

      Aldwyn’s belly was getting full, but he had worked up quite an appetite during his first official day as a familiar. After accidentally causing the rainstorm while gathering the conjuring ingredients, he had spent the rest of the morning assisting—well, watching—Skylar and Gilbert catch the slither of bookworms that had crept into the spell library. Skylar, close to a nervous breakdown, recounted how the last time the parasitic worms had invaded the book-filled study, they had eaten straight through The Collected Works of Parnabus McCallister’s Divining Spells, all twelve volumes. But she snapped out of it in time to start pecking at the bookworms, while Gilbert lit some warding candles, which gave off plumes of smoke forcing their retreat.

      The afternoon had been filled with wizarding chores as well: cauldron cleaning, wand polishing and dusting the hourglasses. They spent some time collecting mud lizards for regeneration potions—potions that Aldwyn was told would allow a missing arm or finger to grow back within minutes. It turned out Aldwyn had a particular knack for chasing these dirt-dwelling creatures made of living mud. He’d become quite comfortable digging through muck while living briefly in the sewers beneath Bridgetower, until the notorious crocodile infestation two years ago had made it too dangerous. He even got a compliment from Skylar for nabbing three mud lizards at once.

      Before the sun had set, Aldwyn watched the young wizards-in-training create water fairies out of thin air and cast a spell that allowed a barren everwillow tree to grow back its leaves. And right before dinner, Gilbert said this hadn’t even been a busy day.

      Aldwyn licked his bowl clean as embers popped and crackled right over his head. Dalton added some more kindling to the fire.

      “The evening breeze is strong for early autumn,” he said. “If the strange weather occurrences of late keep up, my father’s barley crop will be a small one again. And I imagine Marianne and Jack’s uncle will fare no better.”

      “Well, word has spread that Queen Loranella is ill,” said Kalstaff. “Which would explain why her weather-binding spells have been unable to hold back the hail and mountain winds. And why there have been reports of gundabeasts breaking through her majesty’s enchanted fences and roaming Vastia.”

      Marianne glanced up from her stew.

      “I thought I saw something creeping outside our bedroom window last night,” she said with a devilish grin.

      “Stop teasing,” said Jack, clearly alarmed.

      “And it looked hungry.”

      “Now, now, Marianne,” said Kalstaff. The old wizard waited until her giggling subsided, before continuing. “Border monsters like the gundabeasts are very serious business. The longer the queen is in a weakened state, the greater these threats to Vastia will become.”

      “But you could defeat them, couldn’t you, Kalstaff,” said Jack, more as a statement of fact than a question.

      “Nothing to be concerned about, Jack,” said Kalstaff. “Not yet at least.”