Mauz
| Species | Olphin toad |
|---|---|
| Home | Tide Tale Alley Books, Ovallia |
| Companions | Barnaby Britto |
| Status | Alive |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Mauz is the fairy-winged toad bonded to Barnaby Britto, and the one Olphin toad in the novels still bonded to an Olphin.[1][2] He came into Barnaby's life at Tide Tale Alley Books and has ridden on his head ever since, which matters more than it looks: a toad bonds with one Olphin, one time, and every other bond in the world was broken when Obellius Kalaar raided Treenode.[1][2]
Appearance
Mauz is a plump, round, warted toad with green skin, tiny hands and a lumpy head, held up by a pair of fairy wings far too small for the body beneath them.[1][3][2] Bea first saw him as a winged toad floating around a boy's head, and thought Barnaby had taken more of his features from the toad than from anything human.[4] Barnaby calls him a "cross-eyed, fairy-winged amphibian".[1]
His eyes cross. Woken from a nap in an abandoned house, he yawned with his "eyes swiveling twice before settling in their crossed positions".[5] His tongue is long and sticky and falls out of his mouth of its own accord, so that Barnaby is forever pinching it between his fingers and posting it back in.[1][6][2]
In cold weather his green turns slightly blue tinted. Halfway up Alakyer in a blizzard his tongue froze and he would not open his mouth at all.[6] Vendalis knitted the party's gear that night and made a small scarf and hat sized for him, which Barnaby fitted around and on top of his toad.[7]
Personality
Mauz croaks in answer when he is spoken to, and Barnaby treats the croak as conversation: agreement, warning, approval of his hair before a door is knocked on.[1][8][6] He greets people by licking them, and licked Bea's forehead in goodbye when the party broke up in the meadow outside Zybersia. His wings twitch when he is nervous.[4][9]
He is a poor hunter and does not seem to mind. A fly once flew straight past his open mouth while his tongue lay on top of Barnaby's head, and Barnaby has told him he will never catch anything "with your tongue hanging from your mouth like a dead worm".[1][4]
He is also braver than his shape suggests. In the core of Alakyer he took his cue from Piercio, joined Alpin Loomin against a Nelazgian rabbit and dropped his slimy body flat onto the creature's face to blind it while the gopher charged.[10]
Background
The toad "found his way into Barnaby's life as if by magic" at Tide Tale Alley Books, the Ovallian bookshop where Barnaby was raised under a contract that he never leave it. Barnaby, who had almost nothing else, would do just about anything for him.[1] How long the two have been together is not recorded, only that Barnaby could not remember the last time they had been apart.[2]
Story
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Mauz set the series in motion. A letter blew off Pemadee's desk and the toad hovered over it, lowered himself onto it and prodded the paper with his tongue until Barnaby read it, against the rule of the house.[1] Barnaby told him to stay behind when he left the shop, and missed him before he had reached the beach; Pemadee found the boy in an alley with Mauz sitting in his lap, tongue hanging on his chest as he had always been told not to do.[1][11][3]
He crossed the bridge at Bellbour's Strait pressed against Barnaby's cheek, and travelled with him through Haberpaw to Treenode.[3][8] He rode out most of the journey on Barnaby's head or shoulder. When Alpin Loomin knocked Barnaby unconscious in an abandoned house, Mauz slopped his tongue over the boy's face trying to wake him, and Bea scooped the confused toad onto her shoulder.[4] At the gully post at Haberpaw a gully named Nepsa hissed at him with its back spines raised, and Mauz blinked, either unbothered or oblivious.[5] He was swatted out of the air when the reactor stone put Barnaby under Seely's control at Treenode, crash-landed on Bea's foot, and was picked up again with his eyes still spinning.[8]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Mauz went up Alakyer with Barnaby, Alpin and Piercio. He tucked himself into Barnaby's shirt when the wind picked up, was carried into Vendalis's house half frozen, and was introduced to the troll on the palm of Barnaby's hand, where he croaked and let his tongue loll out. Vendalis patted him on the head and called him "A great companion he is", and "A sticky one, too".[6] Under the shared blanket that night Alpin kept himself "one Mauz length apart" from Piercio.[6] In the morning he had a knitted scarf and hat of his own, and Barnaby told him he was ready to take on "just about any storm now".[7]
He rode the dragon egg to the core of the mountain, sitting on its shell and drooping his tongue onto it in an ineffective attempt to help.[7] He fought in the core, flew down off the cliff on Egras's back, and kept himself in the air through her bad landing on the beach at Morgaedion rather than be thrown into the ground, having wings of his own.[10][12]
Inside the prison he licked Barnaby's face after the eye in the wall startled him, and croaked agreement to being nice to whoever was behind it.[12] The eye belonged to Mavis, who shook one of his tiny hands when they were introduced and said she missed her own toad.[2] Barnaby left Mauz in Mavis's care before going after Relagatra, the first time he could remember the two of them being apart, and cried over it; Mauz planted a wet lick on Mavis's cheek.[2] She handed him back cross-eyed when Barnaby returned, and reported that "This little guy was interesting company", pointing out the tongue.[13] He was on Barnaby's head when the survivors followed him down the ladder out of Morgaedion.[13]
Relationships
Barnaby Britto is Mauz's bonded Olphin and the thing he is never far from. Barnaby has said he would do just about anything for him, and panicked in the wreckage of a dragon landing when he patted his head and felt only hair.[1][12]
Mavis told Barnaby that "Toads can only bond with one Olphin one time", that every Olphin once had a toad, and that all of them left when Obellius put the Olphins under his control and their toads no longer recognised them. She reads Mauz's staying as proof of an unusually strong connection, and looked after him herself while Barnaby was gone.[2]
Egras clings to Barnaby's back the way Mauz sticks to his head. When the toad took to perching on the dragon's head instead, Barnaby felt a twinge of jealousy and swallowed it.[12]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels gives the name as Mouse.[14][15]
The bestiary appendix in both novels heads the species entry FLYING TOADS and annotates the illustration "blep!".[16]
M.C. Beeler's author biography at the back of both novels and of A Sacred Tale Collection says she spends her evenings spinning tales with talking animals and flying fairy-winged toads.[14]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 Book 1, Ch. 3.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Book 2, Ch. 21.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Book 1, Ch. 11.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Book 1, Ch. 13.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Book 1, Ch. 15.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Book 2, Ch. 6.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Book 2, Ch. 11.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Book 1, Ch. 17.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 4.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Book 2, Ch. 14.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 9.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Book 2, Ch. 18.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Book 2, Ch. 27.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Book 1.
- ↑ Book 2.
- ↑ Book 1, "The Many Creatures of Eslura".