The Flying Sorcerers

Purple had never seen a cultivation before. He stood and watched as Shoogar offered the seventeen blessings in Quaff borrowed from the Lower Village.

Shoogar was relaxed as I had not seen him relax since his confrontation with Purple. It did him good to get his mind off the complexities and unknowns of a flying spell. A cultivation is mostly a simple rote reciting, so basic and foolproof that even the position of the moons cannot change it.

Purple watched politely while Shoogar chanted in his brightly marked robe and heavy headdress, prayer shawl and beads. When Shoogar sprinkled the quaff at the base of the tree, he muttered something about comparative somethings and fertility rites. Demon words again.

At last we reached my favorite part of the ceremony. All of the women and children shed their clothes and began dancing around the newly sanctified tree, singing, and painting stripes round and round the trunk in bright colored dyes. Purple’s interest immediately perked up. “What spell is this?” he asked.

“What?” I didn’t understand his question.

“What is the purpose of this spell? Perhaps you hope to frighten away the red strangling crabvines, or the termite blight, or —??”

“No, Purple. They’re doing that for fun.”

“For fun!” Purple’s naked face turned pink. He watched a bit longer, then gradually lost interest in the ceremony. It did go on for a very long time. He wandered off morosely.

It was only when Shoogar got to the tree-bleeding that Purple’s attention returned. He was sitting dourly off to one side, lost in thought. Now as Damd the Tree Binder began tapping into the veins of the tree and Shoogar began chanting again, he looked up.

“What are they doing now?”

“Bleeding the tree,” shouted one of the children derisively. What kind of a magician was this, who did not even recognize a simple cultivation ceremony?

We watched patiently as Shoogar blessed the blood of the tree and anointed the tied limbs and roots-to-be. Guided by Damd’s ropes and Shoogar’s chanted instructions, the lowest limbs would become additional sections of trunk. The higher limbs, which had been bent downward and tied together, would grow into a strong circular framework for a nest.

The spell was nearing completion when Purple abruptly stepped into the middle of it. He brushed through the circle of chanting women and ran a finger through the blood of the tree.

The chanting stopped instantly. We stood frozen in shock, wondering why Purple would break a treespell. And Shoogar, furious, reached for a pouch at his waist.

Thoughtfully Purple said, “It may be that we can use this sap.” He turned to Shoogar, his sticky fingers outstretched.

Shoogar was taken aback. He hesitated, he forgot the pouch in his hand, and doubtless he remembered his oath. But his voice was thick with fury as he asked, “Is that why you smashed the delicate web of my magic?”

“Shoogar, you don’t understand.” Purple rubbed the sticky substance between his palms, savoring its feel. “It may be that I can use this substance for the air bags.”

“Housetree blood for a flying machine? Housetree blood?”

“Certainly,” said Purple, “why not?”

The murmur of voices around him should have told Purple why not. It didn’t, of course. I stepped quickly through the crowd, took Purple by the arm and led him out. He stumbled along with me almost in a daze, he was murmuring excitedly in his own tongue.

Behind his back I signaled Shoogar to start the ceremony again. I moved off to one side with Purple and tried to get some sense out of him.

“It’s like natural rubber, Lant. I’ll have to try it, of course, but it may be just what I need to hold the gas in the bags —”

“Forget it, Purple. You can’t use housetree blood. House-trees are sacred.”

“Sacred be damned. I must have an airtight container. Will you stop jumping around like that?”

“Then stop using those horrendous curses!”

“What curses??” He looked puzzled. “Oh, never mind.” He went back to examining the sap on his hands.

“Can’t you use something else besides housetree blood? Infant blood, for instance — I’m sure we could —”

“No! he gasped “No! Definitely not — no human blood — it wouldn’t work anyway.”

“You said that if your cloth was watertight it would be airtight. What about pottery? Could you hold your light gas in large pottery containers?”

“No, no, they’re too heavy — much too heavy — we’ve got to try the housetree blood. It may be the only way. You see, the cloth we’ve got just isn’t good enough — but if they can weave the finer cloth, and if we can soak it in housetree sap and then dry it, perhaps that might work. We’d have to try different arrangements, of course —”

“But — but —” I sputtered. There had to be a way out of this mess. Purple was desperate to fly; but Shoogar and the villagers would never permit housetree sap to be so defiled. A duel was in the offing, unless —

A weird thought occurred to me. I would have dismissed it instantly, even with my layman’s knowledge of magic. But Purple was so oddly unorthodox.

I said, “There is one chance. Now, don’t laugh, Purple, but could you possibly use the sap of a wild housetree in the same spell?”

“Yes, of course. Why not?”

“Huh?” I was incredulous. “You mean you could??”

“Of course.” There was an odd expression on Purple’s face, a delighted expression. “Sap is sap.”

“Uh, it isn’t, you know —” but he wasn’t listening. He was fidgeting impatiently.

“Lant,” he said. “I will need to experiment. I will need a wild housetree and some pots — and some cloth — and — and —”

“See Wilville and Orbur. They will help you get what you need. You do know how to recognize a wild housetree, don’t you?”

“Of course. The roots and branches won’t be bent.” And off he went.

It was the right answer, of course — but I was still surprised. Purple was so unorthodox.