Apprentice Read Online Free Page B

the wizard’s body, and the wolf that came out of the wizard similarly also became much larger as it shed its human prison. It looked at Benen, standing over him. He felt silly with his little branch held before him menacingly.
    The wolf did not attack him though; the next thing Benen saw it do was something he’d never imagined a wolf could do: it laughed at him. It was half-way between whining and spastic barking, but Benen was sure it was laughter. He did not understand what was going on.
    The wolf continued laughing for a few more seconds, then used one of its paws to write characters on the ground. They were human characters!
    Unfortunately Benen didn’t know how to read. He’d seen writing and recognized this as exactly that, but he didn’t know what the wolf was writing. When he looked at the writing uncomprehendingly, the wolf rolled its eyes. Just like his master had. The body language was the same.
    “Master?” Benen asked uncertainly.
    The wolf nodded.
    Benen stared at the wolf who was his master. His jaw dropped.
    I might be a wizard like him someday. This could be me, he thought. Then he shuddered as he thought of the transformation he had just seen.
    The wolf tossed its head toward Benen’s abandoned firewood pile and growled impatiently at him. Benen hurried to gather the pieces of wood and run back to the meadow they had chosen as their camp site. The wolf hounded his steps, discouraging him from any dallying.
    When Benen reached the campsite, he was surprised by the presence of a small wooden cottage, complete with thatched roof, filling the meadow. It had glass in its windows — more than many of the poor back in Oster’s Gift could say — and a front door painted bright red. He stopped dead and dropped the wood when he saw it, causing the wolf behind him to bowl him over. When Benen got back up, the wizard was standing near him, the wolf gone once more.
    “Damn you, Boy,” the wizard said. “Can’t you be amazed and continue doing things at the same time? Useless!” The wizard walked away from Benen without waiting for a response and entered the cottage. Benen followed a minute later, firewood in hand.
    The inside of the cottage contained a small wood stove — doing double duty as heating and cooking stove — a bed, a chest, and a desk. The floor was wooden planks, largely covered with a rug made from the pelt of some sort of giant white bear, or so Benen assumed. At a motion from the wizard, Benen put the firewood beside the stove and began to build a fire. He was rather inept at this and the wizard lost patience with him quickly.
    “Step aside, Boy,” he commanded. The wizard piled some wood into the stove willy-nilly, then muttered a very short incantation, punctuating it with a flick of his index finger toward the stove. The wood burst into flames instantly. “There,” he said with satisfaction. Noticing that Benen was still disturbed by his nakedness, the wizard went to the chest and retrieved his clothing. He also brought out some jerky and a jar of water. “Make a soup of this, will you?” he said to the boy as he handed the items to him. He handed Benen a pot and kettle next, “boil some of the water for my tea too.”
    Benen was dying to ask the wizard where the cottage had come from. How could magic create all this from nothing? He was beginning to think it might not be so bad to be an apprentice to someone so powerful, but stopped when he realized that he would never be able to understand all this, he was too simple.
    The wizard should have gone looking for his apprentice in a city, he thought. City folk go to school and know how to read. This will all be wasted on me.
    At length, Benen managed to prepare the food and tea as best he could and they sat on the bed to eat, each at his own end of the bed, facing the other. After having had a few swallows of his tea, the wizard’s mood changed, becoming more mellow than Benen had yet seen.
    “This tea is the first thing