Beauty and the Magician (Tales of the Red Witch Book 1)

Chapter 10 - Finding a prince takes work and stuff

In another part of Main Street, a small nondescript wooden door marked with a small sloppily painted wooden sign and tucked in between Franz's baked goods and Han's sausages and butcher shop opened up spitting out a tall man with unruly black hair. He looked both ways and slapped his grey felt top hat on his head swinging his long black coat as he turned to leave. He straightened his green waist coat and then reached into his pocket for a bejeweled gold cufflink that he had thought he stowed there. A quick perusal of all his pockets and even the inside of his top hat told him the cufflink wasn't anywhere on his person. He frowned and turned to go back in the door when the door opened again on its own.

"Forgot somthin'?" a mop of reddish brown hair and wide brown eyes looked up and up at the Magician from the crack in the doorway.

His dirty freckled hand came up and pinched between his fingers was the cufflink. He smiled smugly, the freckles on his left cheek obscured by another dirt smudge. At least he hoped it was a dirt smudge. Master Magician Ebenebius swiped the cufflink out of the hand with a scowl and a grumble.

"Didn't I give you some potions to mix up?"

"Don't you got a lost prince to find?" The boy said crossing his arms, the wide sleeves of the ridiculous purple cloak he was wearing obscuring the lower half of his body. Eben scowled at the maddening boy. The promise he had made to Hendrik was at the forefront of his mind ever since he made it yesterday. It was unlikely that finding Andri would take more than a day to do, but it was best to get it out of the way as soon as possible so he could return to his peace at Other.

"That is precisely why I'm here." He said looking around as if the street on which he stood was a strange and foreign planet. The people on the street were beginning to stare at the exchange as they gave it a wide birth.

Everybody in town walked by the little shop door but few had ever really considered it and no one had ever seen it open. And they had certainly never seen a man emerge from it. Country bumpkins.you'd think they had never seen such a thing as a man walking out a door before.

"Where exactly is here anyway?" Toby poked his head out a little further looking around the cobble stoned street with some curiosity. Undoubtedly, he was sizing it up as a possible location for mischief making.

"This happens to be the village of Wohnort, and you are unfamiliar with it because no one ever knocks on that door." Eben pulled his coat around him against the brisk morning.

"Then why have it?"

Eben rolled his eyes in frustration. "Because how could someone knock on a door that doesn't exist? Now go back inside and finish your work." Toby screwed up his face pondering Eben's circular argument. He shook his head to clear the thought.

"I want to come help find the Prince." Toby's voice turned demanding as he ignored Eben's request to return to the shop. Such a maddening insubordinate apprentice, he really should just go fly him to an island somewhere and leave him.

"How can you help me find a lost prince if you can't even produce a decent locator charm?" Eben reached out and put his hand on the top of Toby's head giving him a gentle push back into the shop.

"Maybe I could if you'd teach me!" Toby yelled as he fell back.

"Maybe I'd teach you if you'd finish your work!" Eben shouted back. "And clean up in there while you're at it, the place is a pig sty!" They were really truly being stared at now by the people walking on the street. Toby slammed the door in Master Eben's face. Eben frowned and grumbled.

He had never wanted or expected to have an apprentice. Usually they were assigned by the Magician's Council, the seven magicians that governed all magicians, and he had fully intended to ignore the council for the rest of his life. But he couldn't ignore the boy who had somehow managed to break through all of his magical locks and protections only to eat all his food and fall asleep by his fireplace one night. He had obviously been born with a powerful bit of magic. It was a story that was familiar to him.