Modern Magick

The Striding Spire: 5

But I was distracted — twice.

I was halfway up the main stairs when I heard Miranda's voice calling me. I turned back. She had just come through the great doors leading into the east wing and was hastening towards me, her blonde hair half out of its ponytail as usual and a besmeared white coat over her jumper and jeans. A little dog trotted at her heels, and in spite of everything it still took me a moment to recognise my pup.

'What do you think?' said Mir, a bit breathlessly, as she came up to me.

I gazed at the pup. Instead of gold, her fur was now chocolate brown dappled liberally with purple, and there was no trace of the little horn that had adorned her forehead. She now had two horns instead, slightly thicker ones, nestled behind each of her pointed ears. Her nose had shrunk, and turned to an unobtrusive black colour.

In other words, she was a gorhound.

'Wow,' I said intelligently. 'That's amazing.'

Miranda nodded. 'They're good, aren't they?' she said, presumably referring to whichever of our illusionists had worked on the pup.

'Amazing,' I said again. So amazing, in fact, that for a brief, wild moment I wondered whether some switcheroo hadn't been performed, and the tiny Goldnose wasn't now languishing in some hidden nook in the east wing while I was fobbed off with a different creature altogether.

I squashed those ideas very quickly. What reason did I have to distrust Mir? None whatsoever. The illusionists really were that good, that was all.

When the gorhound puppy trotted up to me and rubbed herself all over my leg, my doubts vanished altogether. 'Hi, pup,' I said, and bent to pat her.

'Pup?' said Miranda. 'Doesn't she have a name?'

I know I have been referring to her as my pup for a while now, but I knew full well that she was no such thing. She was under my care for a little while, that was all, and if she had taken an obvious shine to me, well — what did that matter? No one was going to leave so rare, so valuable and so, er, illegal a beast with me for very long.

So I had not had the presumption to name her. It seemed wiser, somehow. If I did not name her, maybe I could refrain from getting too attached to her.

Hah.

'Pup works just fine,' I said, declining to explain all of this to Miranda.

I think she understood anyway, though, for she gave me a smile of unexpected sympathy and said, 'Perhaps it does, at that.'

It occurred to me that Miranda had probably been in the same situation over and over again. How many beasts had she bred and raised herself, or rescued and tenderly restored to health, only to have to relinquish them into someone else's possession? Or back into the wild? She would grow used to it, I supposed — to a degree. Her attachment to animals of all kinds was legendary at Home, after all.

Miranda gave me a salute and dashed off again, leaving the pup trailing around at my heels. We barely managed to climb four stairs between us that time before I heard the double doors of the front hall swing ponderously open, admitting a blaze of sunshine from outside. I say heard because they open with a groaning noise indicative of rusted hinges. They don't have rusted hinges, of course; the House is far too well-maintained to permit of that. But no amount of persuasion, oil-based or otherwise, can convince the doors to stop announcing each new visitor with some unpromising noise or another. I've long since concluded that House does it on purpose. If any building could be supposed to have a sense of humour, it would be ours.

Anyway, when the doors groan like that — or squeal, or cackle, choke — it means someone of note has arrived, so I stopped and went back down the stairs yet again.