The Magykal Papers (4 page)

POINTS OF INTEREST IN THE
R
AMBLINGS

Bertha’s Banana Bookshop

No. 3 About Turn

Bertha’s shop specializes in books with yellow covers. Recently she has branched out into books with orange covers, but stock of these is still low.

The Gothyk Grotto

13 Little Creep Cut

A long, narrow shop stuffed with all manner of Gothyk delights. Mainly cheap trinkets and jokes, but you can also find good copies of Darke rings and Charms if you are prepared to spend a few hours in semidarkness listening to the shopkeeper—“call me Igor”—play his bizarre version of a Darke noseflute. If you want to blend in, wear black.

The Big Bloomer Flower Shop

3-7 Windy Way

All the best flowers from the rooftop gardens can be found here. Cecil and Siegfried will tell you the history of each flower—in some detail. Be sure to leave enough time for your visit.

S
ARAH AND
S
ILAS
H
EAP

S
ILAS GREW UP IN THE
R
AMBLINGS
. His mother was the once-lovely Jenna Crackle, and his father was a talented Wizard named Benjamin Heap. Benjamin Heap was a shape-shifter—a rare and much respected talent among Wizards.

Silas was a late baby in the family and was born the seventh son, much to everyone’s delight, but when Silas turned eighteen, his father bade his family a sad farewell and went into the Forest. He wanted to take his final shape: a tree. He was loath to leave Silas, who was still young, but Benjamin knew that to become a tree he needed all his strength. He dared not wait any longer. And so he wandered through the Forest until he came to the
Hidden
Ancient Glades and began his slow transformation.

Silas was very upset. At the time, he was Apprentice to the ExtraOrdinary Wizard Alther Mella and struggling with his studies. He felt upset that his father had left without telling him where he was going—even though Silas knew that the Ancient Glades were a well-guarded secret. Not liking to see his Apprentice so distraught, Alther gave Silas a seven-month leave to look for his father. Silas spent six of those months wandering through the Forest, but he never found the way to the Ancient Glades, where Benjamin Heap was slowly taking root. On the last day of his leave Silas returned to the Castle with the young Sarah Willow on his arm. Sarah had been studying Herbs and Healing with Galen, the Forest
Physik
Woman, but when she met Silas she decided she had learned quite enough and it was time to return to the Castle.

Silas and Sarah made their home in a large room in the Ramblings, and Silas went back to his Apprenticeship—but not for long.

As the children began to arrive, Silas found it harder and harder to tear himself away from family life to spend his days among the dry and dusty books in the Wizard Tower. He hated having to leave Sarah to do all the work—even though she never complained—and one day when he came home to discover he had missed both Erik and Edd’s first smiles and Sam’s first steps, Silas asked Alther to release him from his Apprenticeship.

Alther agreed—and not too reluctantly. He liked Silas very much; in fact, that was one of the reasons why he had chosen him to be his Apprentice, but he knew that Silas was struggling with the more advanced
Magyk
and he thought that Silas had made the right decision.

Sarah and Silas had seven sons in all, but—as everyone knows—the youngest, Septimus, was declared dead by the Midwife and carried away. On that same night, Silas found a baby girl in the snow outside the North Gate—and now everyone knows who she is too.

The day of the baby-in-the-snow’s tenth birthday, the lives of the Heap family were changed forever. Sarah’s children were scattered far and wide, and although she was at last reunited with her youngest son, she lost her oldest son to the
Darke
and her next four sons to the Forest.

Sarah and Silas moved into the vast, virtually empty Palace, and not long after that she lost Nicko to his Apprenticeship with Jannit Maarten. Sarah’s newfound Septimus was living at the Wizard Tower under the thumb of Marcia Overstrand, and all that was left to Sarah was her much-loved adopted daughter, Jenna. Sarah felt bereft. At night she would sometimes dream that all her lost sons were with her once more. But in the morning when she awoke to the sound of Silas snoring, Sarah would gaze mournfully up at the dusty old bed canopy and would know that it was all a dream—and a hopeless one at that.

She comforted herself with the thought that at least it could not get worse—until one day it did. Nicko disappeared from the face of the earth.

And what was even worse were the rumors flying around the Castle—that Nicko was lost in Time. It was, thought Sarah, a wicked thing to say to a mother and, obviously, totally impossible. But as the months went by and Nicko did indeed seem to have vanished, Sarah began to wonder. Those were Silas and Sarah’s darkest days.

Things are a little better now, as Sarah has once again seen her second-youngest son, but she still dreams of the day when all her children will be with her at the Palace. Silas tells her not to count her chickens, but Sarah likes her chickens and she counts them every day.

B
ENJAMIN
H
EAP