The Snarled Circle Chronicles

18. Ludwig and the Flying Chair

Ludwig hatches a plan to get Gilbert out of the tower and into some fun.

It was late afternoon one summer's day, and deep within the patch of enchanted forest up on the western promontory of the Rhein, a boy called Ludwig was struggling to detach a door from his family bathhouse.

It was the back door — an old, rotted, lichen-licked board of wooden planks nailed together and jammed into place by a rusted hinge. Fringes of moss crept out of the cracks between the planks, and a few mushrooms grew in layered scales along the bottom. Ludwig yanked it back, then grunted when the momentum tossed him back into dew-moistened earth. He brushed himself off and tried again. The rusted hinge was so close to breaking! He could hear it creak a little more each time he put his weight into pulling on the door.

Wiping muddy hands off on his trousers, he slipped his fingers into the hole where a knob used to be and pulled back until his shoulders popped. The door swung out until it was parallel with his body, and he wiggled a bit, enjoying the fun of weightlessness.

The scents of all the mysterious soaps and potions wafted out into the humid heat. Ludwig's fairy-wizard of a brother had mixed up plenty of magical solutions to make bathtime fun. Cherry-scented rainbow bubbles that softened the skin. A shampoo of sparkling apple blossom that left hair shiny for days. And of course, the pumpkin gel that "eased the old joints." Ludwig wasn't allowed to use the gel, but sometimes he sneaked some to rub on his hands because it smelled so delicious.

A creak-crick-crack filled the air, and Ludwig shrieked when the door he was hanging from burst from its hinges and slammed hard on the ground next to where he fell. Dust and dirt flew everywhere. Strings of moss and cobwebs floated down from their disturbed corners to tarry on the earth. The spiders scuttled away, harrumphing.

With a grand smile, Ludwig hauled himself up again. He seized the door by its top edge and put all his strength into dragging it back toward the leaning stone tower of home. The cumbersome thing skidded over gravel and lagged on the grass. The seat of Ludwig's trousers was completely stained from all the falls on his rump he had suffered. But still, he continued, tromping under the sagging sky in the heat of a molten sun. Blond bangs were all plastered to his forehead by the time he reached the front step, and only then did he drop the door and scamper on inside.

Now, Ludwig was a modest child, a mature child, and he was not one to shout. So when his brother was nowhere to be found on the first floor, he earnestly tromped up the spiral staircase to the second, and then to the third. The third floor was Ludwig's room, and there he found his big brother Gilbert attaching a pair of newly-sewn emerald curtains to the rod above the western window.

"Are you done playing outside?" Gilbert asked as he turned. His ears, long and knifelike, were already furiously burnt for the summer, and when they twitched, his eyes crinkled in a wince.

"Em, would you play with me for a while?"

"Out there all day, and you want to play more? How do you not exhaust yourself? If we had more money, I'd pay for you to have two breakfasts."

They never had much money, for Gilbert was a changeling who was loathe to disguise his ugly features, and he rarely put himself in the service of humans for any bearable amount of time. It was on day-old bread and stolen bacon and homegrown potatoes that they lived, and because it was all Ludwig had ever known, being raised by the cheap changeling, he was happy with it.

"Did you weed the garden and cut asparagus like I asked?"

"Yup," Ludwig replied, playing with his hands. "I also organized your books downstairs and swept out the bathhouse."

"You didn't eat anything in the bathhouse, did you? Not everything in there is edible. The last thing we need is you drinking more potions and growing extra appendages."

"It was one time!"

Gilbert glared with eyes the color of human blood, and Ludwig hung his head.

"No, I didn't eat or drink anything. All I did was sweep and dust, then I spent the rest of the day playing. I think I saw a pixie! It was really small, and it had wings, and it was glowing!"

"Nonsense, Luddy. We live too far north to see pixies. It was probably a bonflier. There's a hatch going on."

"Well… I saw a troll."

"Wormlocks can eat my ears if you saw a troll in this forest."

Ludwig wrinkled his nose. Before him stood a creature with a great, beaky nose and teeth like needles and a body so bony the skin was like a canvas stretched over a wooden frame. And he didn't believe there were trolls in this forest. What a vain people, the fae!

"Maybe it was some kind of hobgoblin."

"Most likely," said Gilbert as he finished with the curtains. "There. Your room has some color now. Not just gray stone. I can use the fabric scraps to start a new quilt for you, too.

"Can you make me my own wizard robe?"

"You're not old enough to be a wizard," Gilbert tutted. "If I can't trust you not to drink potions, I can't trust you with a wand."

"But I'm growing! I'll get my magic powers soon, right? Then I can be a wizard like you! So I should have my own robe."

Gilbert's ears drooped, and he hid an awful wince from the boy, for Ludwig didn't know that humans were without magic from birth.

"Well, I don't have any wool to line a wizard robe with. You'd be a very cold wizard."

"It's not cold outside. Come on, I need you to help me with something. Please?"

Gilbert fussed with the curtains for a little while more before following Ludwig down the spiral staircase and out to the front step. There the changeling gasped when he saw the door all rotting and idle before him.

"Where did you get that!?"

"From the bathhouse," Ludwig squeaked. "It was going to fall off, anyway. It's the back door. I can build a new one. Hans in town can show me."

Gilbert was not angry. Instead, he knelt next to the door and twitched his great ears in a curious fashion. Then he took his claw of a thumbnail and scraped a bit of wet bark off the fibrous surface of the door.

Just beneath was a mass of tannish worms, all tangled together and squirming over and under one another like a slimy, pulsing knot of flesh. They were fat as fingers and ranging from as short as a pinky to as long as a garter snake.

"Wormlocks!" Gilbert screeched. "Lud, you said this is from the bathhouse!?"

"Yeah. I took it from the back."

Gilbert finally noticed just how filthy Ludwig was from rolling around in the mud. He bolted around the tower and back toward the bathhouse, and when he arrived, Ludwig heard an enormous cry that sent small whirlwinds into motion around the trees. The boy darted back to the scene of the cry, and there he found his brother absolutely heartbroken.

"Woah," Ludwig said. "Those weren't all there earlier."

Slithering and squelching out of every little crack and cranny were more wormlocks. They ate away at surfaces with invisible mouths and wriggled right through wood, stone, and glass as easily as a finger through a stick of butter. Gilbert took a twig and entered the bathhouse cautiously, but he squealed and ran back out when he saw the tub itself was a wiggly nightmare of worm soup.

"Euh, so gross," Gilbert whined. "Wormlocks feed on rot and dirt. Careful! Don't let them touch you! They'll eat right through your muddy flesh!"

Ludwig squealed and swatted away three wormlocks that had wriggled up his arm. "What do we do!? They're eating the whole bathhouse!"

"Go grab the bottled geysers. All of them."

"But those are—"

He was cut off by Gilbert's scream. The changeling charged into the worm-eaten shed and burst out the other side with his precious globe of pumpkin gel.

Ludwig bolted back toward the tower. He found what he needed on the potion shelves next to the sitting area — a rack of flasks each filled with a churning body of water that made it hot to the touch. He strained his skinny arms lifting the rack and set off trundling back out toward Gilbert and his pumpkin spice insanity. By the time he reached the scene of upset again, five whole bottles of bubble bath had been rescued.

"I have the geysers!"

"Good!"

Gilbert seized two of them from the rack, then gnawed off the corks with his teeth and let two steaming white jets of water burst forth from the bottlenecks. His frail body was forced backwards, and he screamed when he landed on his bony bottom. But his aim was true, and the miniature geysers squirted right into the squirming mass of wormlocks steadily chewing through the floor.

Ludwig grabbed another bottle. It burned his hands, but he worked to bite off the cork in the same fashion and yelped when a spray of steam got him right in the face. The bottle exploded in his hands, soaking both him and Gilbert with the boiling contents. The rest of it spilled into the bathhouse, where the wormlocks were either boiled away or forced out into the forest again.

A few more mishaps, and the clean hot water liberated the bathhouse. In the end, it was a rather pointless endeavor. The place had no roof now, and the beams holding up the walls were chewed through so drastically, they resembled soggy lumps of cheese. The rug was full of holes, and the cabinets were leaking various magical liquids that sparked and exploded when they mixed.

Shaking, sopping hands wrapped around Gilbert's bony chest, and he took in the sight of a child so fraught with emotion, he couldn't tell whether Ludwig was frightened or excited about the whole thing. The changeling heaved a great sigh.

"Get me one of those chewy tablets for broken bones."

After Gilbert's bottom was put back in order, and the burns all healed with Gilbert's special formula, they took the pain of trundling down the cliffside to bathe in the river. There, a host of wormlocks splorted and squelched freely in the muck. All fluffed and dry as they could be, the boy and his fairy trundled up the cliffside again and were soon seated at dinner, where a disgruntled Gilbert mowed down potatoes like the most famished of dark creatures.

"I'm sorry," Ludwig whimpered.

Gilbert just shook his head and grinned like he'd been given a gift. Red eyes were sparkling.

"It's not your fault. I'm the one who said wormlocks could eat my ears. That must have given them permission to burrow up here and eat the bathhouse. Oh, that place was falling apart, anyway. We can use the old wood to build a farm shed and a chicken coop, just like Adela was suggesting. And then we can build a new bathhouse! Why, it will take us all summer! A wonderful project for the two of us."

Ludwig groaned. "I don't want to build a new bathhouse. I want to do wizard stuff."

"It is wizard stuff! Don't you want your own familiar? It could be a chicken! Lud, we need a good protein source. All this bacon and beef just sits in my gut and makes me nauseated. With chickens, you get eggs and cute fluffy wings to pet!"

Ludwig seemed to melt at this statement. He slouched in his chair and quietly munched his potato. "I wanted to make the door into a flying sled."

"Hm?"

"A flying sled. I was going to ask if you could make the birds carry me around on the door. You could lead them in your eagle form."

"In my eagle form, eh?" Gilbert narrowed his eyes. "And what kind of dangerous scheme is this?"

"You never want to do anything fun. All you do is sit in the tower sewing curtains. I used to help you get ready for cursing raids, but ever since your mackerel dreams, you don't let yourself leave the tower. Can't we have magical adventures anymore?"

"Why, I... " Gilbert was stumped by this proposition. "I really haven't gotten out lately. I've been too stressed to go out, so I busy myself with things at home. I suppose you're right, my pancake-ears."

"Teach me about magical things! Like the wormlocks! And the bonfliers! We could find more of them! Please? Flying sled!"

"If you want to make a flying sled, we're not using that old worm-eaten door. What about a flying… chair? You could strap yourself in with some twine and belts."

"That works! Yeah!"

Gilbert's ears folded down in annoyance, but the boy was completely serious. It was a confusing thing, sometimes. Changelings grew up much too quickly. By Ludwig's age, Gilbert was a mature adult with a slew of burdens weighing on his mind. He was a changeling in a world that saw changelings as monsters, and he'd nearly been executed for it. That was a hard, hard thing to swallow.

It was a world full of darkness and light, spinning and churning like a knot of poison in the blood, spiting the man who ever saw insanity as unnatural. But Ludwig, dear Ludwig, knew nothing of insanity at all. He denounced the world's insanity as effortlessly as a swallow taking wing. Ludwig was keeper of the virtuous apathy — the power to remain calm in a storm, swaying in neither direction, but pushing dearly on his way. He did not care to see Gilbert as a monster. He did not care to spite his own kind for thinking so. He did not care to think about the matter entirely. All he wanted on a typical summer afternoon was a flying chair.

It was… inspiring to Gilbert. His whole life, he had known nothing but sides taken and sides excluded. Ludwig did not brood indoors. He did not keep himself away from his stressors. The boy had no stressors to speak of. No mackerel on his tongue. No iron in his heart. Any meaner spirit would seek to crush one so seemingly vain and optimistic. Of course he would feel nothing. Of course he would be fiendishly happy in a time of trial, wanting a flying chair when his kind were ruthlessly stolen day by day, when he himself had been stolen.

Gilbert knew that feeling — the feeling that he was judged unfairly for his feelings. The feeling that he really was a monster because at one time, he didn't feel like one. Because he couldn't feel what he did wrong. Because he felt the wrong things at the wrong times, and he felt for all the wrong reasons. Because he felt strongly against those who felt strongly against him, and then curled up into himself and felt that perhaps they were right.

Feeling wasn't everything. Feeling was abstract, and a feeling in the head was not like a feeling in the earth — truer than clouded ambition and animate spite.

Hatred was rare, Fritz had said. Cruel apathy was manifest. Hurting changelings without a care for their feelings. And virtuous apathy, not caring either way, made Gilbert want to cry out of joy.

It was possible… It was acceptable… to want a flying chair.

"What are you thinking about?" Ludwig asked.

"Ach, just that I wish you would stay small and cute forever," Gilbert replied. "Are we making this flying machine, or what?"

Blue eyes that once seemed shallow were now as deep as the river and bright as the stars.

It was the sturdiest chair in Piyo Tower — the one from behind Gilbert's desk on the second floor. They took it outside and removed the all slippery varnish with sandpaper. Then Gilbert cut up an old pair of leather shoes and sewed a few straps around the top bar and arms for mighty talons and human hands to grip. Ludwig helped lift the chair so it could be enchanta-glued onto a stiff square board from the wood pile. Long ropes were attached to this as extra holds for the wings. A log was glued just under the chair as a footrest, and a lap bar was made out of a pair of rolling pins.

"This is a ridiculous idea. Are you sure this is safe?"

"I don't know. You're the grown-up here," Ludwig replied.

"Well, we won't fly over the river. How about that. Okay, strap in."

Ludwig bounced up and down in his seat as Gilbert belted up his chest and legs. He made sure the boy wouldn't wiggle around in flight, and tested the chair's sturdiness with a few gusts of wind whipped up by yelling. Then, still with a suspicious frown, he waved his arms skyward and called out for birds.

"I need your help, friends! Eagle-owls—"

"Not owls, Gilbert!"

"Owls can see in the dark, Lud. Eagle-owls, strongest birds of the night! Come serve your master!"

Gilbert was blessed with power over birds, and a host of owls came silently whiffling out of the trees, circling and hooting above Gilbert's outstretched hands before landing in a circle where he pointed. Their huge, unblinking eyes and fluid movements unnerved little Lud, and he shrank into his seat. Gilbert directed the biggest of them to perch on the back frame of the chair. It gripped its talons around the leather strap, and fluffing itself, swiveled its head down to smile at its passenger. Ludwig reached out a cautious hand and pet the feathers, which were puffy as pillows and soft as sand.

Each owl was given a place to grip, whether a leather patch on the chair itself or a place on the ropes tied onto the baseboard. Gilbert directed each one to the perfect spot, and the more he spoke to them, the more their hooting, hissing wildness nulled down and dissipated. By his strange changeling magic, they transformed from feral raptors into feathery gentlemen, who smiled and bowed at Ludwig like coachmen.

"All right. That should be enough eagle-owls. Now, what kind of brother would I be if I weren't watching you? Might as well have wings myself!"

Ludwig looked on, nervous, but fascinated. Gilbert's nose was already stretching into a silver hook, and inky feathers were sprouting in patches all over his pale skin. He pulled off his shirt just in time before his arms strained and crackled as they stretched. The flesh of his hands crawled up over the fingers, fusing them together with tiny cricks, and the thumbs bent backwards into vestigial nubs.

"What does it feel like to transform?"

"It's like when you feel your stomach churning, only everything is churning and shifting around under your skin. It all gets tingly and warm and itchy, but it feels really good," Gilbert squeaked out. His voice went from a rasp to a shriek, and as the feathers crawled up his face, his nose deformed even further, pulling his skull out in an oblong fashion and fully forming the wicked silver-gold beak.

This "churning" was audible. A series of gurgles and squelches and wet crunches filled the air as Gilbert's frail body puffed up into the muscular build of a raptor. His paper chest swelled in his face before his neck snaked upward. His sunken stomach blew up to merge with his feathered breast. His shoulders bent back and sank into the rounding body, which deflated a bit as Gilbert started to shrink. Feet grew dry and shriveled before breaking out in scales. Toenails sharpened into talons. A pointed tail pushed and stretched the skin of his lower back before it was consumed by a handsome fan of feathers.

Gilbert's grand black wings stretched out at his sides, and when he was finished with all the bubbling strangeness of transformation, he was an eagle with eyes like rubies. Ludwig looked on in awe. Changeling magic at its finest — the power to transform into anything!

The black eagle hopped backwards so he could take the very front rope in his talons. Then he screeched an order, and every pair of wings began to flap. The wind whipped back Ludwig's hair and tugged at his clothes. The eagle-owls strained to lift him up, all hooting and huffing, but their light, hollow-boned bodies were no match for the solid-boned human.

Gilbert grumble-squeaked something from his position at the front, then shrieked one long note that brought a wave of air rushing over the flying machine. Instantly, it lifted off the ground, and the eagle-owls found the motivation they needed to use their full power on keeping it airborne.

Up flew the flying chair above the trees. It spiraled around the stone majesty of Piyo Tower before rising above it entirely and speeding off toward the west. Ludwig gripped the arms and pressed down on the footrest. The tiny scraps of wood below were hardly visible now.

The higher he rose, the more the world started to curve and round out, as if he were floating above an enormous bubble of wood and water. This must be the forest in its completeness! Not individual tree trunks, but shaggy green patches of woodland like hedges of moss upon the earth. To the east, he saw the grand river plodding on toward the north. Back behind him, he saw the mountains of the south far in the distance.

Gilbert swung his head back as if to check on things. Ludwig gave a great smile. It was the most fun he'd had in a long time, much more fun than chasing after trolls Gilbert didn't believe in and preparing for a cursing raid he wouldn't get to tag along for.

"Go higher!" He called over the roar of the wind.

Gilbert pointed his beak to the sky and chirped. The flapping intensified, and the flying chair rocketed upwards, soaring toward the wisps of evening clouds, dyed purple and gold from the light of the setting sun. Up in the sky, the puffy behemoths thinned and broadened into a great field of mist that soaked Lud's clothes with sparkling dew and left him laughing. He sucked on cold fingers while taking in the eerie sight of clouds floating below him. This was like a secret dimension no human eyes had seen before! Sometimes he felt odd about having a fairy for a caretaker, but a magical adventure like this was enough to outweigh any strangeness. Ludwig himself was a part of the strangeness.

"I'm cold now! Go down! Fly over the village!"

Another chirp brought the chair whipping down in a shaky arc. Clearly Gilbert's wind magic and the eagle-owls were ill-suited for one another. A few feathered friends were thrown from their perches and had to strain their wings to catch up to the flying chair. Feathery horns folded down in exasperation.

Ludwig received another splash as he raced through the clouds once more. The sun was nearly set, and stars were peeping out on the deep blue fabric of emerging night. The eagle-owls were more at peace, now. They stretched their wings and glided silently on, following every twitch of Gilbert's tail feathers and listening to his every chirp.

Ludwig spread his arms out and felt cool air rushing over his skin. He closed his eyes and imagined there was no chair beneath him, but only the summer wind. He was a bird himself, swooping down upon the woodland with his wings wide and his talons curled and ready. What magic there was in imagination, and what magic there was in reality!

The flying chair circled the village in the valley nearest Piyo Fortress. Ludwig made out the fountain, now a teeny shimmering ring, and from there he traced stems of streets to find Adela's bakeshop and the house of his good friend Thomas. He waved to the few little floating heads of people he saw before Gilbert twitched his tail and the flying chair veered out of the view.

Over hill, over dale, went the human boy and his host of feathered friends. Ludwig sat like a prince as he zoomed over the treetops. Gilbert brought him all the way to the city of Fulchen before swinging around and soaring back along the river Rhein. Ludwig saw the Wormlock Tower, where the wicked prince was chewed through by the magic grubs; and he saw the statue of the woman holding up her lantern, looking for the Toadmuffins of the valley; and he even made out the crumbling castle said to be the home of a dark wizard from long ago, who was really not a wizard at all, but a plowboy who had gained success through luck alone.

Ludwig grew sleepy as the darkness crept on. The eagle-owls hooted to tell Gilbert of this, and he gave a raptor's tender smile back at the boy, who rested his head on one shoulder and lazily eyed the world rushing below him as if enchanted by a dream.

Then came the lights.

All along the river bank, thousands of muddy spheres exploded, and from each rose a tiny and delicate being — beetle-like, but with a stout black body and a tail like a shining bulb of gas. Some blinked blue, others purple, and still others green and red and yellow and dearest pink. Millions of the creatures burst from the muck and floated weightlessly up into the night. Their wings set off sparks as they flew.

A glimmer caught Ludwig's sleepy eyes, and he gasped at the rainbow of tiny starlike beings zipping and zooming all around through the air above him. He reached his hand out, and three of them lit on his hand, blinking orange and purple and blue. They did not bite him, but only tickled his skin before soaring off on sparking wings.

The flying chair returned to earth with a jolt. The footrest busted off, and the ropes were chafed to mere strings. Ludwig thanked the eagle-owls for their help, and Gilbert's screech told them where they could find a great feast of rats deep in the woods to the south. They lifted their wings and rose, relieved, with only their own bodies to carry.

Ludwig unbuckled himself and jumped out of the chair. He squeezed the black eagle around the middle and cuddled him to his chest, burying his nose in the warm, glossy feathers.

"You're the best brother ever."

The eagle's weight increased, and Ludwig was surprised to feel him growing and swelling in his arms. He set him down so he could fully reshape into a changeling. Gilbert stretched pale arms to the sky and yawned before retrieving his trousers.

"Did you like that, kid?"

Ludwig tackled him with a hug from behind. "Can we do it again tomorrow night?"

"We won't be doing that again until we have a chicken coop and I'm eating eggs morning, noon, and night. You may be having fun, but flapping my wings and bending the wind around us is no light workout!" Gilbert professed. He put a hand on his stomach and grimaced when it gurgled. "But hey, creative idea, my chirpy chick. You could make a fine wizard someday."

Ludwig just giggled and scampered on toward the tower. But he stopped when he saw the glittering rainbow swirling and swarming the bathhouse. He cupped his hands, and a few tiny creatures floated down to kiss his skin.

"Look, Gilbert! This is what I saw earlier!"

"Yep, those are bonfliers. Heh. Wormlocks must be their larvae! A boring, pesky worm into a rainbow beetle."

"They're so pretty! Look at all of them!"

Gilbert looked, and his fangs poked past his lips in a warm smile. He ran his spindly fingers through Ludwig's hair and gave him a few nice pats.

"I suppose they're safe enough now. You can stay up to watch them, but not too late."

"Watch them with me!"

"I need to eat something. How about I brew us up some chocolate elixirs?"

"Perfect!"

And so Ludwig dragged the door back to the bathhouse, Gilbert took a seat in the flying chair, and until the morning, neither cared much about the massive pain of renovation that was to come.

~N~

I STRONGLY recommend reading my old story "Midsummer Moon Brew" as a direct follow-up to this one! More cuteness there!

Lol, Gilbert is basically an airbender who screams to use his power. And more dream creatures. The bonfliers I just made up, but wormlocks have appeared many times in my dreams. They feed on rot and dirt, but they're attracted to magic, so you'll often find them in abandoned homes of wizards.

Next episode: A house too big, a bed too hard, a tutor too harsh, and a meal too bland. What's a musical little fairy to do?

Published by Syntax-N on Fanfiction . Net June 7th, 2020. Reposters get the toilet ghost.