THOTH & MORVEREN
Someone knocked insistently at the door again. Thoth covered his ears with his hands and planted his face into the pages of the open book on his desk.
“Go. Away!” He shouted. There was a pause, and then the knocking started again – this time accompanied by the sound of muffled giggling.
Thoth groaned into his book. This had been going on for three days. Three days. After Tsi had outed him as the son of Aura, he’d run straight up to his lab, slammed the door, and stayed there. Fortunately, it locked from the inside. The streams of people had been endless – some knocked, some shouted through the door or from outside when the window was open, others actually tried to force the door or pick the lock. After that happened the first time, Thoth had emptied his bookcase, dragged it in front of the door, and filled it up again with the heaviest tomes he could find. On the first night he’d tried to sneak out, but had almost tripped over a boy of about twelve who was camping outside his door. Thoth recognised him as one of the kids who usually followed Tristan around with doe-eyes. He, Thoth, had hastily retreated back inside his sanctuary.
It was insane. Nobody treated Mallos’ descendants like this, or Poppy. Then again, Mallos had a lot of descendants, and lots of people were intimidated by Poppy’s magic… assuming ‘intimidating’ was the correct word for ‘didn’t want to be turned into a pink elephant’.
Even when you factored in the fact that Aura was the most famous and widely worshipped of all the originals in Shaman and on Earth, and the scarcity of her offspring, it was still nuts. Everyone in the castle knew Thoth. Half of the people banging on his door were the very people who had been picking on him for years, and the other half had chosen to ignore him his whole life. They all knew he was an unathletic, unpopular, bookish science nerd with more animals than people for friends – what were they expecting? That he’d magically turned into Hercules the minute his heritage had been announced?
Three days. The lab had a toilet, but no food. Thoth waited until darkness had fallen out of the window before he started to remove the books from the bookshelf as quietly as possible, freezing every time he heard a knock or voices outside. By the time he’d removed all the books, shifted the shelf and waited for the last noises in the corridor to die away, it was gone half ten. Just to be sure, he waited another hour before cautiously turning the key and peeking out into the corridor, which was – miraculously – clear.
Most people should have retired to their bedchambers by now. Thoth stuck to the servants’ walkways just in case, ducking and speeding up whenever he passed one. The servants were too professional to stop and badger him, but they did stare as he passed – as though they’d never seen him before. It took about ten minutes to negotiate the winding corridors down to the kitchen, which had long since been cleaned and packed up.
Relieved to have made it without incident, Thoth dropped his guard and made for the larder.
|
|
