Great Harvest 2022: Maja's Magical Apprentice

‘Somehow, when Decima told me we’d be helping the Chief Sorcerer with her brew, I pictured it a lot more magical and a lot less… cooking show.’

“Duly noted. Pass me the paprika, please.”

Prendergast picked up the shaker of ‘paprika’ (her word for processed phoenix dander) with his wing claws and held it up. Maja swept past him, shook a few sprinkles into her mixing bowl, and immediately pushed it at Ghost.

“Clockwise with a– wooden!-- spoon, three minutes. Where is that Rhett? I need those blue pumpkins yesterday.”

By the piles of chopped vegetables and dirty mixing bowls lying around, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were making a great big stew and not… whatever it was the Chief Sorcerer had planned. Smelled heavenly, though, he’d give her that.

“It’s great that we’re finally giving back to the city this year,” Angelica said. The Great Harvest wasn’t technically a festival, but Maja was happy to have the aedile’s help. “We’ve had enough stress to last a lifetime.”

“Oh, absolutely. I just wish they’d told me about this days ago, instead of hours. F.V., I need these onions diced smaller.”

Decima threw up her hands, sending her chopping knife sailing away. “My parents run the Scarlet Destrier. I think I’d know what ‘diced’ looks like.”

“Whatever the word is, get them smaller than that.”

“Onion powder, coming right up.”

Prendergast sidled over to Ghost, who was maneuvering the wooden spoon in his jaws. To fit it inside the cauldron, he’d tilted his head almost completely sideways. He looked like he was doing the world’s strangest neck workout.

‘So. Does Maja always get like this around the holidays?’

‘I am under an NDA, and not at liberty to speak on the situation.’

‘They have those for stryx?’

“Quit hounding my Ghostie.” Maja’s voice said behind him, swiftly followed by a slap on the wing with a solid stone pestle. “I have a job for you, Prends. Rhett’s running late. Rhett never runs late. Go see what’s holding up my pumpk– ah, the Royal Herald.”

‘Ma’am, yes ma’am.’

It’d get him away from the hurry-scurry, at least.

*

A full year after Senka’s rampage, the City of Sol was starting to bounce back. The big hole in the wall had been completely patched up, with real stone this time. Most of the buildings had hung wisplights in the windows again, and the piazza statues had fresh coats of garish bright paint. Most of the 16 main Viae were bustling with citizens and carts returning home for the evening, but Via Portus, the Herald’s last known location, was silent. Prendergast had a bad feeling about this…

His claws clicked against the stone tiles, and every step echoed off the walls all around him. Like most of Oneiros, it was a maze of warehouses, built to service the ships that came to dock at the busiest harbour on the continent. Swarms of workers trod this road day and night, but right now, it was completely deserted.

‘Hello?’ Prendergast said. In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have opened with a line straight out of a horror novel. A single shriek answered him, but as it echoed off the walls, it sounded like an entire chorus calling out in unison.

He instinctively ducked down, putting him in just the right line of sight to see a figure in regal red robes crouching in the shadows a few feet away.

‘Rhett? What are you–’

The Royal Herald raised a finger to their lips. With their other hand, they pointed up. Prendergast looked, and saw a pair of beady red eyes staring down at him.

‘C’mon. It’s just the one–’

The eyes blinked, and then a second pair opened next to it, then another on its left, and another on its left, and then–

‘Alright, point taken.’

The casua sprinted for cover seconds before he felt the rush of wind and the prick of claws against his neck. The creature let out its ululating shriek, and its cry was taken up by the entire swarm perched on the warehouse roofs. The evening sky seemed to burst into a storm of wings and snapping beaks. Prendergast threw himself under the hanging roof of a warehouse, just in time. He heard a whoosh and a thunk against the canopy, before he saw its shadow wheel away and shrink into the sky.

Rhett was curled up into the narrow alleyway between two warehouses, cradling Maja’s blue pumpkins like their life depended on it. Knowing Maja, it probably did. “Oh, thank Day. F.V.’s bird, right? I was coming up the docks with the Chief Sorcerer’s pumpkins when these… bandits ambushed me! I’ve been pinned down for hours now. So hungry…”

‘Where’s Pester? Couldn’t he fight them off?’

“I sent him to scout ahead for just this exact scenario, but he never returned! Oh, he could be hurt, or being held hostage, or–”

‘Okay. Alright. Climb on. We’ll make a run for it.’

“But the pumpkins–”

‘In the saddlebag.’

“Right, yes… lovely saddle you have, R&G’s custom-made, right? Oh, there’s some stuff in here already.”

‘Toss ‘em. Decima will understand.’

Rhett flung a mussy pile of fabric onto the street and stuffed the pumpkins in. Then they climbed into the saddle, fumbling a little with the high horn.

‘Hang both legs down on the left, shift your back so the centre of gravity– yeah, perfect. Now hold on!’

“Hold onto wha–AAA!”

Prendergast waited for a lull in the action before breaking into a sprint. He’d hoped to make a stealthy run for it, but Rhett’s yelling dashed all hope of that. Pointed wings pummeled and sharp beaks rained pecks as he burst onto Via Quarto, with Rhett still hollering and white-knuckling the horn like their life depended on it. With how the flying fiends were tugging at their robe and hair, it probably did.

A few straggling merchants screamed and scattered as the pair thundered down the boulevard, a swarm of screaming white banshees flapping in their wake. Prendergast visualised his route in his head: straight down Quarto onto Via Tredicesimo, through the Inner Ring Road, and back into the no-fly zone. Then Langley and his hawk stryx could wrangle to their hearts’ content. It was all they ever talked about in the break room, after all.

Buildings and trees whirred by in a speedy blur, then a flash of white glided in on his blind spot. Prendergast lowered his head and shoved left as hard as he could; he felt casque impact keel and felt a twinge of satisfaction as the beast spun and crashed onto the road, cawing weakly for his companions to avenge him.

The quick blur of a road sign told him they were now on Tredicesimo. Rhett had finally stopped screaming too, which was nice. Now they were helpfully swatting at any attackers who got too close above them. The squawking horde hadn’t slowed, though, and Prendergast narrowed his eyes against the onslaught of wings beating him over the head. So close, just a few dozen more paces…

Rhett shrieked, and Prendergast felt their weight begin to lift out of the saddle, but then a burst of light flashed above his head, and he felt them slam back down as their attackers scattered to the sky.

He chanced a quick look upwards, and realised that they were still a few feet away from the inner city limits. Maja had stormed out to meet them, raising a wooden staff high into the air. She crushed a handful of ‘paprika’ in her other hand, and the staff tip lit up with another globe of blazing orange light. She slammed the staff onto the ground, and the light arced upwards and into the gulls, exploding with a deep boom that shook the ground and sent them all careening away.

“That’s right, take a flight, you freeloaders!” Maja shouted, as the gull stryx panicked and fled. The last of them screamed a parting insult at her before wheeling away, straight into Langley’s tossed lasso.

Prendergast flopped down to the ground, panting loudly as Langley and Rydge wrangled their gull in the sky above. He felt a hand pat his sweat-drenched neck. “Thank you,” Rhett whispered in his ear, and for a moment all the fire burning in his muscles seemed to extinguish.

“Well, it’s about time,” Maja said, tossing the staff back to Ghost. On closer inspection, Prendergast realised that it was actually a massive wooden spoon, fit to stir the gigantic black cauldron now standing in the middle of the piazza. “And the pumpkins?”

“Right here, ma’am,” Rhett said, patting the saddlebags. Maja shoved past them and flipped the flap up, grabbed the cargo, and tossed them straight into the cauldron, so effortlessly that one might forget they weighed ten pounds each, minimum.

Immediately the concoction began to bubble, changing from ooze green to a marginally-more-appetising brown. Ghost dropped the spoon in and stirred clockwise, and the brew slowly deepened to a rich, stew-like red.

“Stew’s on!” Maja declared, and a cheer went up from the crowd of helpers and citizens alike. “Drink as much as you like, citizens and peregrini. The cauldron's enchanted with a bottomless conjuration. And the ingredients only cost the city fifty thousand baubles!”

The crowd began to organise themselves into an orderly queue, bowls and crusty bread heels ready in hand. Maja beckoned Rhett and Prendergast forward.

“It’s only fitting that my bold couriers get to have the first taste. Take as much as you like! Every time you scoop some out, it’ll fill itself back up with vegetable stew. The wonders of modern magical cooking, and all that.”

‘Why not just… cook a normal pot of stew?’

“Why not cook a what-now? Whatever. Give me your bowl.”

Meanwhile, Decima was digging around inside Prendergast’s saddlebags, muttering to herself while pulling out piles of lint.

“Prends, where is my project?”

‘Your what?’

“My sweater I was knitting. It was right here. Where you put the pumpk– oh. Oh, you overgrown chicken–”

‘Wait, you knit?’

“A woman can have hobbies, can't she? Like throttling you, right here and now.”

Langley and Rydge had just about got their quarry under control, and they swooped down for a landing, parading the tangled gull stryx in front of them like a prize fish. But wait, there was something familiar about this stryx's beady yellow eyes and long, pointed wings.

"Pester?" Rhett said, tossing their unfinished stew into Ghost's waiting jaws. "Is that you? What were you doing with that horrible mob?"

Pester snapped his beak at Langley, who spluttered apologies and scrambled to free him. ‘Who do you think gave them the tip? A snitch's got to get a cut, doesn't he?'

"Oh, Pest..."