The Real Boy

by Anne Ursu

  “I’m not going to disappoint him,” Oscar said. He repeated himself once more, in case the words themselves had any power. “I’m not.”

  Oscar and Crow were out in the forest before the shop opened the next morning. Maybe, he thought, if the customers from the last two days didn’t lay eyes on him, they would forget he’d ever been there, and never say a thing to Caleb about his odd little hand.

  And then maybe Caleb would go on thinking Oscar could do this. For at least a little while longer.

  Oscar pushed the thoughts away. He was in the forest now; everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. As Oscar concentrated on the list of plants Caleb had asked him to gather, the map of the forest spread out in his head, and the locations of Caleb’s plants lay themselves on top of the map like pins. Oscar would be in the forest for hours.

  “We’ll get the honey mushrooms first,” he told Crow.

  It wasn’t the natural place to begin, but that grove of little red mushrooms grew underneath the biggest wizard tree in the forest. If you looked at the map of the trees in your head, you would see this one right in the middle of the Barrow. Most of the wizard trees had towering trunks that stood majestically straight, as high as the eye could see, but this one split off a few yards up into six thick branches that spread out from the tree like petals on a flower. If Oscar had been a little taller and a lot braver, he could have climbed up the tree and sat in the cradle the branches made, right in the heart of the forest.

  Instead, he picked the mushrooms at its feet.

  With the canopy of low, thick branches just above, you felt perfectly protected around this tree, like you could live underneath these outstretched arms and nothing could ever harm you. Oscar collected mushrooms, and everything buzzing and agitating inside him eased.

  He worked though the morning, making his way around the forest, gathering berries and leaves and bark, trying to hold everything that had happened in the last two days in his mind at once. Crow kept him company until the baneberry bushes, where she darted off chasing her lunch.

  She always had plenty to choose from. In addition to the ravens and owls and buzzards who lived in the trees, the forest was home to red-eyed white mice and red-tailed black rats and spiders the size of a man’s fist that looked like miniature fanged octopuses. Wolf had gotten bitten by one once and then poured an entire packet of capsaicin down his throat. Afterward, his face turned red and his eyes popped and he sweat for three days straight.

  Wolf. Oscar grimaced.

  As if summoned, the Wolf in his head spoke up. I died out here, he said. Shouldn’t you be scared?

  “You were reckless,” Oscar muttered, shifting. He rubbed his chest. The Barrow was his home, he had trees watching over him—why would he be scared out here?

  It’s not your home, Orphan.

  Biting his lip, Oscar looked around the green world. No. He was not from here. Not like everyone else. Oscar had grown up across the river in the Children’s Home. Eastern Aletheia had no magic, no forest—just farmland and the Eastern Villages and the sea all around.

  Maybe, he thought, that was why he could not understand anyone here. Maybe people in the Eastern Villages were just different. Oscar didn’t remember—it was five years ago, and it was all so fuzzy. His life before coming to Caleb was just shadows of moments and a burning, grinding sensation that seized him whenever he thought of it.

  There had been a day, once, when Caleb came across the river to the Home to pick his hand. Maybe all the young boys and girls had lined up. Maybe he asked them questions. Maybe he gave them herbs to grind. Maybe he could just tell who would be able to look at plants and know how to listen to them, who would be able to carry long lists of plants in his head. He was Caleb, after all. He would know who would be useful to him.

  And on that day or one soon after, Caleb must have taken Oscar across Eastern Aletheia. Across the river. Across the plaguelands—the dead swath of land that surrounded the Barrow, where the plague had taken every last thing that grew or thrived, had killed the land so badly that now even magic could not survive crossing it.

  But all Oscar could remember of that day was the sight of the front of the Home growing smaller and smaller and then disappearing. You’d think one would remember the rest, it seemed odd not to remember. Maybe all that really mattered of the Home was the leaving of it.

  Wolf: You don’t even know where you came from.

  Oscar collected his last berries and headed back toward the marketplace. After a time, Crow slipped next to him. That helped. He mapped out the rest of the day—go back, sort his harvest, dry the berries, grate the bark, then work on replenishing the herbs that had been bought out the day before.

  A normal day. Everything in its place.

  Just as Oscar could sense the smells of the marketplace working their way into the wind, his eyes flicked over an Oscar-sized rock. There, in the shadow—a flash of something that didn’t seem to belong.

  “Wait,” he said to Crow.

  Crow let out an impatient trill.

  “I just want to see what it is,” Oscar said, moving over to the rock to investigate. He found a small pile of wood scraps, nothing more—just discarded pieces from someone’s project. Yet the arcs and blocks and triangles and angles and little scraps and bits seemed to call to him. Like if he sat down and concentrated hard enough he could put them all back together again.

  “What do you think this was?” he called to Crow.

  Crow sat on the ground and began licking her paw, as if she couldn’t hear him. Oscar turned back to the pile of wood.

  There was a piece on the side of the pile a little bigger than Oscar’s hand. He picked it up and ran his fingers over the bumpy edges, then opened his satchel and dropped it inside.

  He looked at Crow and shrugged. “Because I feel like it, all right?”

  The cat turned around and began to trot ahead, and Oscar followed suit.

  The noises of the marketplace greeted him—doors opening and closing, people calling out to one another, and someone ranting very loudly about fish heads. Oscar carried the bag to the back of Caleb’s shop. And then he stopped. In the path in front of the shop stood a girl with curtains of dark curly hair, wearing a bright red cloak.

  Callie.

  She had her arms wrapped around her chest and was tapping her boot against the stone. Her eyes lit on the boy standing frozen behind the shop. “Oscar,” she called. “Can you come here?”

  Her hand crumpled up his thoughts and threw them away. All he could do was obey.

  Callie was almost a head taller than Oscar, and he was not entirely sure how to manage. To look up at her would involve craning his head awkwardly. But to look straight ahead would mean he was looking at her neck, and that was probably strange, too. Oscar compromised and looked at her chin.

  “What’s all that?” Callie asked, pointing to Oscar’s bag.

  “Oh,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Well, it’s baneberry, foxglove, willow bark, red clover—”

  Callie coughed.

  “—white pine needles, walnuts, honey mushrooms, dragon’s blood—”

  “That’s good enough,” Callie said.

  “You asked,” Oscar muttered, shifting.

  “So, do you know why the shop is closed?”

  “What?”

  “The shop,” she said, motioning to the front en-trance. “It’s closed today. Well, to us. . . . It’s open for City people.”

  There was a slight force to the way Callie said City, as if she were using the word to elbow someone.

  “That’s . . . weird,” Oscar said.

  Callie tilted her head. “Yes. It is weird. So . . . do you know what’s going on?”

  “No!” If anything had become clear over the last two days it was this: he had no idea what was going on.

  She studied him, her right boot tapping harder. “So, is he going to open up for everyone at some point? Because, you know . . . we might want to buy things.”


  “I—I don’t know.”

  Callie paused then, like he was supposed to say something else now. But she gave no clue as to what.

  “Oscar,” she said finally, “if we need something, how are we supposed to get it?”

  “Oh! Do you . . . need something?” Oscar asked.

  Callie exhaled. “Yes! I—that is, Madame Mariel—well, we have someone who has hives. And so Madame Mariel sent me to find some treatment. For hives. He said he touched some Barrow ivy, and . . .”

  Oscar closed his mouth emphatically. Barrow ivy was unique to the forest and made people magically itchy. He could see the ingredients on his shelves, see them combine: catclaw, licorice, yellow dock. He could make it for her, crumple her problem away. But Callie would never believe it; she was an apprentice, and he was a hand.

  Callie blinked at him. Oscar half smiled, keeping his eyes on her chin. Callie blinked some more.

  “The patient’s waiting. He’s extremely itchy. Do you think Caleb might come out, or . . . ?”

  “Look,” Oscar said, feeling suddenly out of breath, “I’ll go in, all right? I’ll ask Master Caleb for whatever you need. And I’ll bring it out for you. How’s that?”

  “Thank you!” Callie said. She stepped back, as if to make room for Oscar to go in the front door. Oscar’s eyes went to the door, imagining the bright shining buzz of City people, with Master Caleb at the center.

  “I’m just going to go around back,” he said.

  He ducked around the shop before she could say anything, and slipped in the back door. In the pantry his hands reached for the right jars automatically. This was Oscar’s lair, after all. A scoop here, another one there, and he was done. And a little extra, too, just in case. He might not know how to talk to Callie, but at least he knew how to help her.

  When Oscar got back, he handed the pouch to Callie, hands shaking just a little. She took it and looked inside.

  “It should help,” Oscar said quickly. “Caleb says.”

  “Thank you, Oscar,” Callie said. “You are very kind.”

  “I am?” He pressed his hand to his chest.

  Just then, the door to Caleb’s shop swung open. Oscar started and stepped back. He had been so nervous to go in he’d forgotten anyone might come out.

  A boy from the City appeared, one not much younger than Oscar. He wore a fitted black velvet coat with a tasseled gold belt wrapped around his waist. A little white collar peeked out from underneath the coat. His black hair lay perfectly flat on his head, and he stood up so straight, like he had been posed, like his whole skeleton was made of different stuff from Oscar’s.

  The boy looked right at Oscar and Callie and then walked uncertainly over to them, as if that were the sort of thing that happened, as if a young City boy always stopped to talk to two Barrow kids on the marketplace street. Oscar’s skin itched. How was it possible for anyone ever to be so clean? He shifted backward, trying his very best to look like he wasn’t there at all.

  “Can you help me?” the boy asked. “Do I know you?” Even for a City child, the boy spoke strangely, as if each word needed to be chewed on a little.

  Oscar could feel Callie’s eyes snap to him and then away. “What do you mean?” she asked. Her voice sounded different, too. Like she’d polished it.

  “Do we know each other?” the boy said. He took another step forward. Oscar glanced at his face. His eyes had something odd behind them, something completely out of place in a City child. Oscar looked away.

  “I don’t think so,” Callie said, giving the boy her full attention. “Have you ever come into the healer’s?”

  “I don’t know. Mum says Master Caleb should help me remember things. But it’s all gone. I don’t remember anything.”

  Oscar watched the boy, trying to make sense of the words on his face It was all so strange—this City boy didn’t remember where he came from, either.

  “That’s terrible,” said Callie.

  “Can you help me?” the boy said, eyes widening. “I need help.”

  Callie had leaned closer to the boy, so her hair fell around the sides of her head as if creating a space just for her and him. “Did Master Caleb help at all?” she asked softly.

  “Who is Master Caleb?”

  The shop door opened again, and a City lady glided out. She had even bigger hair, bigger skirts, shinier jewels than the rest of them.

  “She says she’s my mother,” whispered the boy.

  “You’ve even forgotten we don’t talk to wretches,” muttered the lady, not very softly. “Come on, Ronald.” A sweep of skirts, and then the lady had her hand on the boy’s back and was pushing him ahead, back through the courtyard.

  Oscar gasped. “You’re not a wretch!” he said hurriedly, turning his head slightly toward Callie.

  Callie glanced at him. “Well, thank you,” she replied. “That’s the duchess. I suppose it makes sense that she’s ruder than the rest of them. Though I would have thought . . .” Callie shook her head, and with it shook the end of the sentence away. “Usually when City parents come in to Madame Mariel hysterical about something being wrong with their kids, it’s because an eyelash is out of place or they forgot to use the right fork. But he . . . he seemed like he really didn’t remember, didn’t he?” Her eyebrows knit. “He looked so frightened!”

  “He did?” Oscar asked, before he could help it. His ears went red. “Master Caleb will fix him. I know it.”

  “He didn’t look fixed to me,” Callie muttered. She fingered her apprentice pin and looked away. “I wish I knew how to help him. . . .”

  Oscar studied her face. It had shifted; this was a different Callie now. He had nothing to say to make it better, he was made up entirely of a complete lack of words. Of course: he was useless to her up here.

  But the cellar was tugging at him. Maybe down there, underground in the shadows, he could help.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Magic and the Mind

  The rest of Oscar’s day went just as he’d mapped out—sort out the harvest, dry the berries, grate the bark, work on replenishing the herbs. But after leaving Callie he’d added another step: go to the library. Day turned to night, Crow turned to Bear, and Oscar could hear the sounds of Caleb closing up the shop above. Soon, Caleb was passing the pantry on the way to his workroom. His voice wandered back toward Oscar—probably murmuring something to Cat, who patrolled the hallways in the evenings.

  Bear picked herself up with a yawn and slowly stretched out her long white back. Time to stop working. After meticulously putting the pantry to bed for the night, Oscar went to his room to wait.

  One hour. Two. Three. He sat on his bed, one hand on Pebble, and watched the hand of the clock on his wall creep forward, one half breath at a time.

  Four. Oscar picked himself off the bed, grabbed his satchel, and headed for the library.

  He’d spent so much time in there, but still it contained whole universes of books he’d never visited. There were ladders that went all the way to the top of the shelves, but Oscar had never been able to climb up more than two rungs—no matter how tempting the undiscovered country of books above seemed. The shelves were so very much taller than he could even dream of being, and Oscar firmly believed people shouldn’t go any higher than they already were.

  The shelves were organized by subject, and Oscar had spent much of his time in one corner reading about botany, herbs, and plant magic. These hours in the library were stolen things, and he had to be as careful as a thief about how he chose to spend them.

  But tonight he wandered around the library, while the cats dozed on the chairs, to see what else it had to offer. Next to the plant books there was an enormous history section. Oscar looked up as far as he could. On the high shelves were histories of the broader world, the one beyond the sea, so far out of Oscar’s imagining: The Mad Kings of the Meridies and The Cold Collective: The Formation of the Northern Alliance and The Really Not That Great Schism. And there, just above his eye level, an entire section
on Aletheian history: The Peculiar Isle: Discovery and Early Settlements and A Natural History of Magic and Ode to an Aletheian Duke and The City on the Hill: A Disquisition. There was a small green book with no title, and Oscar started to reach for it when his hand touched a thickly bound volume—The Chronicle of the Plague in Aletheia.

  Oscar did not know that much about the plague, except that it had come from the continent and swept across the island. Though the toll was great, Aletheia had not been ravaged like the continent, where it had killed more than half the population. It was the magic that saved Aletheia from that fate; it kept the island, protected its people, while the rest of the world was destroyed. Everyone knew that much.

  What still lingered were the plaguelands. Oscar’s nightmares told stories of that place, of sickly ravenous ghosts and skeletons bursting through the ground at night, of an eternal wasteland empty of everything but death.

  History held no answers for him. Oscar glanced over the shelves and kept wandering around the room, traveling through the library’s well-ordered countries of knowledge, shooting glances at the ladder occasionally as if it might be following him. The history shelves stretched on and on, the books as big as the world itself. Then, astronomy—books of matters even bigger than that.

  There were sections on mathematics and metaphysics, natural and supernatural philosophy, anatomy and bestiaries, and theories of practically everything. There was horticulture and agriculture and climate studies and exotic zoology. The bottom few rows of Caleb’s shelves contained everything you could want to know of this world, of the things you could touch, of everything sensible and effable.

  But these world-bound things were not what Oscar was looking for. He needed things beyond sense. He would have to climb up.

  So he approached the big wooden ladder. It was so very tall, really surprisingly tall. Ladders were not inherently dangerous, he told himself, people climbed them every day, and most of them lived. And the really high parts of this one were attached to the wall by a sliding mechanism to keep the ladder from falling backward and crushing anyone who happened to be on it at the time, and that was probably pretty secure—though Oscar had no idea when the last time was that anyone had checked.