This was originally a submission to an anthology put together by Kevin J. Anderson’s publishing students, with the prompt to write a story about cats or any other magical companion. I decided to choose the “other” category. While this story did not end up getting included in the anthology, I did quite enjoy writing it, so I thought I’d share it here. I hope you enjoy this bit of whimsy!
The wizard felt a tug on his line. Heart beating a little faster, he pulled on the rod. It tugged back. The wizard spun the crank, making the line cut through the clouds that billowed gently against the edge of the rocky little airborne island.
He looked like every master of the arcane arts ought to: long white beard, a monk’s robe and obligatory arcane amulet around his neck, and eyes that bore wisdom and curiosity in equal amounts. He even had an appropriately wizardly name: Lloyd James Alexander III, though everyone just called him Jim.
But unlike most wizards, who are quite fond of tall pointed hats with magical stars embroidered on them, Jim currently had a little purple octopus clinging to his bald head. The little creature’s eight arms swayed slightly around his ears like a tentacled alien wig.
As Jim cranked the fishing line in, he saw a nimbus whale flick its tail over the waves of clouds and sent a puff of birds skittering into the sunset-streaked sky. One by one, they dove into the orange waves, then rose again, beaks filled with bugs.
The wizard caught the hook. Empty. He sighed.
“Looks like beans for dinner again.”
The little octopus chirped, then stabbed one tentacle at the horizon. A dark thundercloud was crawling across the ocean of clouds, churning them up like a great machine tilling the earth.
“Mhmm. I know. I thought we might be able to catch something before it got here. Guess not. No suppliers will be getting through that storm for a few days, either.” He stood and propped his fishing rod over his shoulder. A cool breeze ruffled his cloak as they walked away from the island’s edge.
“I still have some of those crickets you love so much. I could put them in the soup.”
The little octopus turned a putrid shade of green and made a sound like a fart. The wizard chuckled.
“Or not.”
At the center of the island in the sky rose a strange collection of towers. They weren’t attached to a castle or a monastery; after all, when all of the inhabitants of a floating island are wizards, all you really need are wizard towers. Instead, they jutted out of the rock like a stand of pale stone trees. As was appropriate, each wizard had his own tower.
When they entered the courtyard among the looming towers, a gaggle of wizards wearing the correct wizard headgear pointed at Jim and his octopus and laughed.
“Jim, when are you going to get rid of that ridiculous octopus and get a real familiar?”
“I catch ten of those things in my nets every day. Always have to toss them back.”
“Why? They taste alright.”
The little octopus stiffened into a purple brick on the wizard’s head.
Jim waved a dismissive hand at the other wizards. “He may be common, but he’s a better companion than any other creature I’ve met. Including you lot.”
The vice-like tentacled grip on his scalp eased a little.
A tall wizard with a pinched nose and a long face arched an eyebrow. “We’re wizards, Jim. Our companions should be just as magical as us. Not like…that thing.”
The others nodded. “It’s disgraceful,” a round wizard in a shimmery purple robe said. “You should at least have something from another world. I can help you get the portal open if you’re having trouble. At your age–it’s understandable, I mean.”
Jim smiled at the rotund purple wizard. “Did you ever find out what happened to your stolen potion?”
The purple wizard blushed. “No.”
“What potion is this?” asked the long-faced wizard.
“An experimental potion I’ve been working on. It lets a person take on the appearance of another for a short time.”
The third wizard, who looked like he might crumble to dust at any moment, said, “Are you planning on becoming a thief?”
Jim winked at the purple wizard. “More likely he’s looking for a way to get into Esmerelda’s tower without anyone noticing.”
There was a moment of silence as their rheumy eyes all drifted over to a lovely ivy-covered tower set a little apart from the rest. A pretty wreath of cypress sprigs hung on the door.
The long-faced wizard coughed. “I’m sure there are plenty of other uses for such a potion.”
They all murmured their half-hearted agreements.
Just then, a skinny young wizard with his robes hanging off his gangly frame dashed up to Jim.
“Sorry to bother you, sir. There’s a man in the forest who fell off his dragon and broke his leg. He needs immediate medical attention.”
“A supplier?”
“I didn’t see any saddlebags, but they might have fallen off.”
Jim’s shoulders slumped, but he shook off his disappointment. He was the best healer they had and a man needed his help whether he was carrying fresh food or not. “Right. Take me to him.”
Jim strode away from the other wizards. As he did, he noticed that the little octopus was quivering. He glanced up. The little octopus had gone a violent shade of red.
Jim reached up, pried the little creature off his scalp, and looked it in the bulbous eyes. “They’re just a bit stuck in their ways, you know. And besides, their opinions don’t matter. Only mine. And I think you’re wonderful.”
The little octopus’s angry red coloring faded to a soft pink. He nuzzled Jim’s hand. The wizard chuckled and rubbed the cephalopod’s smooth head.
“I can take care of this on my own. You should go enjoy the evening. Try to get their words out of your head.”
The little octopus chittered a bit, then whooshed skyward, filling its gas bladder with air.
He turned and watched the wizard hurry off towards the small forest that covered the east side of the island.
The little octopus stretched out his legs, then flung them back behind himself to make his bulbous body as streamlined as possible, and propelled himself forward with a jet of air from his gas bladder.
He zipped this way and that, twirling through the cool, damp air, sucking in the clean scent of rain, and letting the last rays of sunshine wash away his anger. Jim was right. Those stuffy old windbags didn’t matter.
Steering well clear of the edge of the island, the octopus darted into the clump of gnarled cypress trees that constituted the island’s “forest”. He chirped happily as he zipped through the treetops, startling a band of jays. They screamed at him, but he just turned his skin a stealthy mottled green and scooted through another tree, bowling through a family of ravens. They squawked and pecked at him. He dodged around a snarl of branches to protect his delicate skin.
Then he rammed straight into a cat.
The cat let out an unholy shriek that startled both octopus and cat. The cat blindly leaped up into the air, octopus plastered over its face.
Unfortunately for the little octopus, this cat was a familiar of one of the other wizards and had absorbed enough magical energies to have a few abilities of its own.
Its hiss was drowned out by a loud zap as its fur crackled with blue lightning. The force of the electrical blast peeled the little octopus off of the feline’s face and flung the stunned cephalopod out of the tree.
When his vision returned, the octopus realized he was floating upside down, eight arms akimbo, an uncomfortably short arm’s reach away from a crouching cat waggling its hindquarters.
He zipped out of reach just in the nick of time, narrowly avoiding the feline’s wicked claws. Below him, he heard a frustrated yowl plummeting towards the ground.
He chortled and zoomed back towards the towers feeling much better. He caught sight of Jim, a large burlap sack slung over his shoulders, just before the wizard vanished through the door at the base of his tower.
The little octopus zoomed up the side of Jim’s tower and through the window, then alighted on his perch on the wizard’s desk. It wasn’t the most comfortable perch, being a caiman skull, but it stood next to the wizard’s book stand, which is exactly where the little octopus liked to be during the long hours Jim spent reading.
The octopus wrapped a single tentacle around a frizzy bellpull and yanked. A stream of soft green glowing magic poured out of a large glowing bladder suspended from the ceiling onto his purple skin. He trilled happily, his triumph over the cat drowning out his hurt feelings.
The wizard hadn’t noticed him, though. Jim seemed preoccupied with picking up various odds and ends. The little octopus chirped.
Nothing.
Getting perturbed, the little octopus chirped again, louder.
Jim glanced over, swore, and resumed his task.
The little octopus’s skin went inky black. He drew its arms in close, unsure what this strange behavior meant. Just a short time before, the wizard had been quite at ease. Had something happened in the forest?
After a minute, the little octopus relaxed, reasoning that Jim must simply be a little tired. Perhaps healing the man in the forest had been more taxing than usual.
The octopus’s skin returned to placid purple as he hopped up into the air. Humming quietly to himself, he floated over to the little stove where a hot teapot full of still-warm water sat. It weighed several times the little cephalopod, but he let out a strong jet of air from his gas bladder and managed to carefully lift the pot into the air. He poured the steaming water into a ceramic mug nearby. Then he scooted to the shelf and rifled through the various tins of tea. Beside him in a tall cupboard, he heard a low moan.
The little octopus rolled its eyes. A stray poltergeist, most likely. Why couldn’t the necromancers in the basement keep their fiends under control like everyone else?
He floated to the side and bumped the cupboard door closed. The wizard could handle that in a moment after he’d relaxed a bit. Then the little octopus carried a tin of tea over to the cup and poured what seemed like a decently generous amount of fragrant leaves into the water. The water turned a weird brackish brown color.
The octopus paled a little at the unsightly brew, but shrugged it off. That was the way Jim liked it. He dropped a tough biscuit into the muck, then picked up the cup and floated over to the wizard.
Jim’s face contorted in disgust. “What in the blazes is that?”
The octopus trilled, skin darkening with his uncertainty.
Jim pulled the cup out of the octopus’s tentacles and chucked it into the wall with a crash and jangle of broken crockery.
The octopus cringed and went inky black. Shaking a little, tentacles twisting together, he hovered just over the wizard’s shoulder, watching the wizard shove things aside.
Then the little octopus had an idea. His skin returned to its normal purple (though maybe a little darker than usual), and started zipping around, tidying the wizard’s study. He pushed a book back into place, brushed a pile of crumbs into the trash, and picked up the various papers to set them in a neat little pile. After all, it was easier to find what one needed in a clean space.
As he tidied, a book whizzed by the octopus. Startled, he chirped angrily at the wizard. Another book whizzed by. The octopus caught the next book and stared at it. Why was Jim throwing books at him?
He shook himself a little. There had to be a reasonable explanation for Jim’s behavior. The wizard wouldn’t throw a book at him for no reason. Did Jim want to help the little octopus clean?
The little octopus caught another book and whistled his thanks.
Jim gave him an odd look, then turned away. No more books came hurdling the octopus’s way.
“Can’t have a normal familiar like a cat or a bird like everyone else,” Jim muttered. “Had to have a hot-air balloon instead. What an idiot.”
The little octopus froze. That didn’t sound like Jim at all.
“Confound it! Where is it?”
The little octopus drifted up on top of the cabinet and settled there to watch his long-time friend through suspicious eyes. After all, the fat purple wizard had lost a shapeshifting potion, hadn’t he?
Jim looked the same. He had the same long trailing white beard, the beady black eyes that had seen hundreds of years of chaos and plenty, and he even had the scar across the back of his hand where he’d been bitten by a tempest shark that had tried to make a meal out of the octopus a few months ago.
But Jim wasn’t wearing his amulet. That was odd. Had the wizard been wearing it earlier? Maybe he’d taken it off before going fishing?
That didn’t make sense. Jim didn’t even take the amulet off when he slept. He’d mentioned once that the fate of the universe or something depended on him wearing it. Was that what Jim had lost?
The little octopus chirped a question.
Jim glanced up but didn’t answer.
So the little octopus chirped again, this time a bit more sternly. After all, he couldn’t help Jim find whatever it was he’d lost if he didn’t tell the little octopus. The wizard couldn’t understand the little octopus exactly, but they still seemed to understand each other somehow. Body language and familiarity, Jim had called it.
The wizard turned his back on the octopus.
Skin slowly taking on a red tinge, the little octopus drifted down onto the new gem they had found together last month in the bowels of an ancient ruin on another of the floating islands. He had to brush a few papers away with his tentacles, but once that was done, the blood-red stone really was a superb perch. It was more round than the caiman skull, and pleasantly warm to the touch.
He turned his attention to Jim and began berating the man in a series of chirps, whistles, and angry blurbs. As he did so, his skin flushed scarlet.
The wizard’s eyes grew wide when he saw what the little octopus was sitting upon. He swore and swiped at the octopus.
“Get out of the way!”
The man’s hand swept the little octopus off the gem and flung him out the window. He went careening down into the forest below with a scream, shock and horror making him forget how to fly.
Just before he hit a tree, he sucked in a bladderful of air and slowed his fall. Instead of a crash, he bumped gently into a branch.
The little octopus slumped down among the prickly leaves, more injured by Jim’s harsh words. He wrapped his tentacles around themselves in a violet heap and sobbed.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, a crumpled, tangled little mess of rubber. Night had settled upon the island. He could hear the rush of the wind rustling the trees and the barking songs of the whales amid the rumbling thunder. A few drops of rain hit his skin.
He heard a noise below him. Wiping his eyes, he peered over the edge of the branch.
He couldn’t see anything below, but he could hear something…munching.
The octopus turned his skin a pebbly brown and crept down the tree trunk, then floated to another tree. The sound was coming from the other side of a large bush.
Shaking a little but letting his curiosity take over, the little octopus puffed himself upwards a little and floated over the bush.
A strange dragon wearing a harness and saddle was snacking on a bony lump of dripping meat. Every time its jaws closed, the bones snapped like the rumbling thunder overhead. Blood sprayed out in every direction. The reptile hummed a little as it munched.
The dragon shifted aside a little. Beside the dragon on a rock lay a set of coarse trousers, a plain linen shirt, and a pair of threadbare boots.
No one at the tower wore such simple peasant clothes, even the servants, the little octopus thought. Perhaps they belonged to the man Jim had met out here.
The dragon swallowed the last of the meat, licked its talons clean of its juices, then trundled off into the undergrowth.
The little octopus zipped down to the clothes and began poking at them.
He didn’t recognize the style at all. Whoever these belonged to, they weren’t from any of the floating island archipelago. Maybe they were from the world below the clouds. He turned a suspicious shade of blue. Suppliers came from the other islands, not below.
Just then, the dragon reappeared. It stared at the cephalopod, tilting its head a little to the side. It shoved its great snout right up against the little octopus, snorting great gusts of air in and out and nearly inhaling the little octopus.
The octopus jumped up so that he was floating at the beast’s eye level. He turned red and chittered angrily at it.
The dragon reared and fell back on its tail, then scrambled in the rocky dirt. Finally righting itself, it bolted into the clouds, oblivious to the forks of lightning slicing across the sky.
Definitely not from around here, the little octopus mused.
He picked up the shirt and wormed his way inside, looking for clues. Then he pulled all of the trouser pockets inside out.
A heavy metal clang startled him as something gold plopped out alongside a folded piece of parchment.
He hooked one tentacle under the metal item and lifted it up. It glinted in the fading light of the evening sun. It was a long gold chain holding a pendant in the shape of two winged women embracing a blood-red gem at its heart. In its depths pulsed an angry black amorphous creature, writhing. His eyes grew wide.
Jim’s amulet.
Why was it here, in a pile of clothes? The little octopus’s eyes drifted upward to the flickering light of a candle in the tower’s window.
He picked up the parchment and peeled it open.
On it was a rough sketch of both the amulet and the gemstone the little octopus had just seen up in the tower. Under it was scrawled: Five hundred gold. Double for both gems.
The little octopus thought back to the strange moan he’d heard from the cupboard that he’d dismissed as a stray poltergeist.
He groaned as understanding crashed down on him.
As the rain began to pelt down in earnest, the little octopus bundled up the amulet and the parchment into the shirt, gathering it up into a makeshift sling, and rose into the air with a wobble. He needed to get this back to Jim and stop the thief before it was too late.
It was slow going with such a load, though. The rain pushed him closer and closer to the ground and wind buffeted him from side to side. But the little octopus pushed on, the thought of an intruder impersonating his master turning his skin red with anger.
Somewhere above in the roiling clouds, he heard a howl that sent a shiver through each of his tentacles. He clutched the cloth-wrapped amulet closer to his bulbous body and pushed on.
He finally made it back up to the tower’s narrow window. This time, though, he pressed his body to the slick west stones of the tower and peered in.
Jim–or whoever he was–was sitting at Jim’s heavy oaken desk, rolling the gemstone from one hand to the other. On the desk in front of him stood Jim’s crystal ball. The surface swirled with pearly blue smoke. At its center was a woman’s face that the octopus didn’t recognize.
“I took the amulet off him when I knocked him out,” the intruder was saying. “It’s stashed away somewhere safe.”
The woman chewed her lip. “Hurry. We need to complete the ritual by the full moon.”
“I’m not going anywhere in this storm. I’ll leave when I can.”
The octopus turned his skin a mottled brown and white to blend in with the mess of books coating the wizard’s study. He then slipped in while the intruder finished his conversation with the woman in the crystal ball.
The little octopus floated behind a stack of books, then dashed under the table and scooted along as quickly and quietly as he could to the cupboard.
A sharp pop next to him nearly made him drop the amulet. Out of thin air stepped the magical cat from earlier that evening. The octopus had to stifle a yelp. The cat looked up at the floating cephalopod and meowed, stretched, and sauntered off as though time was an unfortunate thing that happened to other people.
The little octopus rolled his eyes, then continued on his way. As he floated under Jim’s desk, the intruder shifted his feet, boots narrowly missing the little octopus. The octopus scooted backward and hit the stone wall with a soft clank.
He froze.
The intruder shifted again, pushing his chair back with a scrape of wood on stone. The little octopus held its breath, waiting for the wizard’s white beard to appear under the desk.
But instead, the intruder stood and walked over to the window.
“Now cats I can handle. Unobtrusive. Maybe get into a little mischief now and then, but nothing too crazy.”
The octopus realized the intruder was speaking to the cat and breathed again.
With a shudder, the octopus darted to the cupboard door. It was ajar door again. He glanced down. A scrap of thick black cloth stuck out, preventing the door from closing properly. Hearts racing, he cracked the door open a little farther and squeezed inside.
Jim’s white beard and beady eyes met him in the gloom. The octopus wanted to squeal with delight, but he settled for wrapping himself around the wizard’s bald head.
But the wizard didn’t move.
With a sinking feeling of dread, the little octopus crept down Jim’s head and looked the old man in the eye. He pressed a tentacle to the wizard’s nose.
Air passed over the delicate appendage. Relief flooded through the little octopus. But then he realized that Jim must be paralyzed somehow. Without Jim, there wasn’t much he could do to stop the intruder.
He twisted his tentacles together, not knowing what to do. If only he had just a tiny bit of magic!
Just then, the door of the cupboard swung open. With a tiny squeak, the octopus wrapped itself around Jim’s head again.
The intruder’s face went crimson. “You little scum–”
Black with terror, the little octopus did the only thing he could think of. He lifted up the amulet and placed the gold chain over his master’s neck.
Jim’s stiff posture relaxed. He looked around, only to come face to face with himself. His jaw dropped.
“Wha–who–”
The intruder thrust his hands around Jim’s neck.
With a squawk, the little octopus flung itself at the intruder’s face, smothering the man.
Jim recovered from his surprise and kicked the intruder in the gut, sending the man stumbling backward.
Jaw set and eyes blazing, Jim slammed the cupboard door open and rolled out with a grunt, springing to his feet like a man a fraction of his age.
The intruder managed to pry the little octopus off his face, but the octopus wrapped his tentacles around the intruder’s wrist. The man cursed as he tried unsuccessfully to shake the cephalopod off.
Jim wasted no time. White-hot fire crackled in his palms. He threw a fireball just to the side of the intruder’s head, making the stranger’s white hairs sizzle. The intruder ducked and yelled incoherently.
“Give me the gemstone,” Jim said.
The false wizard froze, eyes on the fire blossoming in the real wizard’s hands. Thunder boomed outside, accompanied by a mournful, hungry howl.
A smile crept over the intruder’s stolen face. He strode over to the window and held the little octopus out the window.
“Let me go or I’ll feed your little friend here to the sharks.”
The little octopus untangled his tentacles and tried to fly off, but the intruder had a firm grip on two of his arms. Outside in the storm, lightning lit up a dozen dark torpedo shapes as they slipped through the storm. The little octopus moaned.
It was Jim’s turn to stand frozen, his eyes fixed on his tentacled familiar. He lowered his hands. The blazing fire disappeared.
As the intruder began to pick his way across the book-strewn study, holding the little octopus between him and Jim like a shield, the little octopus looked down and saw something that made his bulbous eyes light up with glee. He tugged the intruder’s hand back and forth, then used the momentum to fling himself into the man’s chest and throw him off-balance. The intruder stumbled backward, letting go of the little octopus and dropping the gemstone.
He tripped over something soft and angry.
The zap that the magical cat delivered to the intruder lit up the study with blinding light and ripped through the air with a teeth-shattering crack.
The little octopus trumpeted as he shoved the stunned intruder through the open window and slammed the shutters closed with relish.
Jim held out his arm to the little octopus, who gratefully wrapped his tentacles around the man’s arm and squeezed. The wizard closed his eyes and rested his forehead against that of the little octopus.
Then the little octopus flew up and landed on the wizard’s head. He could feel Jim’s face crinkle into a million wrinkles as he chuckled.
“Who says Octopus volanti can’t make good familiars?”
Jim scooped up the gemstone. They watched the offended cat scurry out of the room, tail held high and proud.
“I suppose some cats aren’t too bad after all.”
The little octopus gave him a noncommittal mumble.
Jim wandered over to his desk.
“I suppose I’ll have to clean up the mess out there once the storm passes…”
Far below, they heard the unearthly howls of the tempest sharks among the thunder.
“Or…perhaps not.”
