Drowned Wednesday(24)

‘What are you doing?’ Arthur asked suspiciously. He sat up and glared at Scamandros. The doctor looked quite different, though it took Arthur a second to work out why. His animated tattoos were gone, and he was wearing a woolly cap with a long tassel that hung down next to his neck.

‘Your leg has been recently broken,’ said Doctor Scamandros. ‘And set.’

‘I know,’ Arthur replied. His leg was hurting again. He wondered if Scamandros had been prodding it. ‘That’s why it’s in a cast. Or was . . .’

He added the last bit because the ultra-high-tech cast had almost completely fallen apart. There were only thin strips of it remaining, and Arthur could see his pale and puffy skin in the gaps between.

‘Usually, I could fix that leg for you,’ said Doctor Scamandros. ‘But my examination reveals a very high and unusual level of magical contamination that would resist any direct action to repair the bone. I could, however, equip you with a better brace and exert some small magic that would lessen the pain.’

‘That would be good,’ said Arthur hesitantly. ‘But what do you want in return?’

‘Merely your goodwill,’ said Scamandros with a halfhearted chuckle. He tapped the bellows at his side and added, ‘Though I understand from Ichabod that you might have a cold? If so, I should like to harvest any sneeze, nose-tickle, or phlegmatic effusion that you feel coming on.’

Arthur wrinkled his nose experimentally.

‘No, I haven’t got a cold. I just thought I might.’

Scamandros was looking through his short telescope again, this time at Arthur’s chest.

‘There is also a disturbance in the interior arrangement of your lungs,’ he said. ‘Most interesting. Again, there is magical contamination of a high order, but I think I could probably lessen the underlying condition. Would you like me to proceed?’

‘Uh, I’m not sure,’ said Arthur. He took a breath. He couldn’t completely fill his lungs, but it wasn’t too bad. ‘I think I’ll wait. It’ll be all right when I get back in the House.’

‘Just the leg brace, then,’ said Doctor Scamandros. ‘And amelioration of the pain.’

He slid his stubby telescope into one pocket of his greatcoat and, reaching inside, took out a flat tin labelled with the picture of a bright red crab. It had a key stuck to it, which Scamandros now broke off, connected to a tab, and used to wind back the metal lid. There was a whole small crab inside, but the Denizen only broke off one of its legs. He put the leg on the sand and passed his open palm across the tin, which disappeared.

Arthur watched with both curiosity and anxiety as Scamandros picked up the tiny crab leg and held it high in his left hand. A thick carpenter’s pencil appeared in his right hand, and he used this to lightly sketch several lines and asterisks on Arthur’s leg. Then he clapped his hands, still holding both pencil and crab leg.

The two objects disappeared and at the same time, the remnants of Arthur’s modern cast were instantly replaced by an armoured section of red-and-white-speckled crab exoskeleton, jointed at the knee and ankle.

‘As for the pain,’ Scamandros said, scribbling on a piece of paper with a pen that trailed glowing crimson ink, ‘take this prescription.’

Arthur took the page of heavy, deckle-edged paper. It was very hard to read, but he made it out eventually:

Apply pain-lessening paper to painful area once

Dr. J. R. L. Scamandros, D.H.S.

(Upper House, Failed)

‘What does D.H.S. stand for? And . . . excuse me . . . why do you put ‘failed’ on it?’ Arthur asked as he touched the paper to his leg, directly above the break, where it hurt most. The paper crumbled as he spoke, paper-dust forming a miniature tornado that appeared to go straight through his new cast and into his leg. A moment later, the dull pain there started to ebb.

‘It stands for Doctor of House Sorcery,’ said Scamandros. ‘A very high degree, which I so very nearly possess. Honesty necessitates me to reveal my failure, but it was only in my final year. Seven hundred and ninety-eight years of successful examinations, only to fall at the end. Politics, you understand! But I do not wish to speak of that.

‘Let us talk of you instead, Arth. You hold a magical book of great potency in your pocket, too potent for me to even touch without your leave. Your very flesh and bones reek of past magics. You are found on a buoy of the infamous pirate Feverfew, in the Border Sea of the House. Yet you are a mortal, or mostly so. Tell me, on what world in the Secondary Realms do you make your home?’

Arthur almost answered ‘Earth,’ but restrained himself just in time. Scamandros had certainly helped him, but there was something about the look in his piercing brown eyes that made Arthur think the fewer secrets he knew the better.