by P. D. Kalnay
He casually leaned forward, and grasped the handle with one hand, picking the sword up out of the case with no apparent effort. Slowly, he swung it out beside him and held it at arm’s length, rock-steady, extended toward the sitting room’s doorway. Then he put it back.
“Even in the Seventh World, where magic is weakest, the enchantments remain strong,” he said. “Try picking it up.”
I took my turn at the end of the coffee table as Ivy had done and braced myself. The handle was rough and cool to the touch, feeling similar to bone or plastic in my hands. The sword wasn’t weightless, but it was far lighter than a steel sword would’ve been. Slowly, I swung the blade up in front of my face before returning it to the coffee table. I accidentally broke Gran’s table setting it down. The two far legs snapped like matchsticks, and the case started to slide. Mr. Ryan snatched the sword from me with one hand, steadying the case with the other.
“I’m sorry Gran,” I said, as I inspected the ruin of her antique coffee table.
She shrugged and took a sip of her tea.
“You may build me a replacement this winter,” she said. Then she turned to Mr. Ryan, “Satisfied?”
He nodded.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The sword is very, very heavy,” Mr. Ryan said. “Even if you don’t sense its mass, it’s real, and so is the resulting momentum when it’s moved. There can be no question that you were once Marielain.”
A thought occurred to me then.
“What about the silver dragon lady from last summer? She was swinging the sword around.”
“She’s incredibly strong,” Mr. Ryan said, “and so able to use the sword, but it felt as heavy for her as it did for Ivy. Travelling to this world diminished her, but Sirean is still a dragon.”
Chapter 22 – Blood of the World Tree
Mr. Ryan and I didn’t have a practice that morning. I spent it with Ivy, and we both made a point of not speaking about anything of consequence. The weather was still nice. We sat quietly together on the old wooden swing on Gran’s back patio. She did sit pressed up next to me and didn’t let go of my hand. When Mr. Ryan called us in for lunch, it felt as if the morning had flown by. Gran had Ms. Mopat make an unusually fancy lunch. I noted it was filled with many of Ivy’s favourites. After an awkwardly silent beginning, I asked the question that had been on my mind for a while.
“Why do we have to send her back?”
“What was that, Jack?” Gran set her fork beside her plate, and I got all of her attention.
“I asked why we have to send Ivy back. Why should Ivy, or I, go along with any of this?”
“Jack–” was all Ivy got out before my grandmother cut her off.
“We will send her back today because I agreed to do so,” she said. “Promises are serious commitments in every world, but more so in the First World. I’ve lived a very long time without breaking my word. Today will not be that day.”
She picked up her fork. My grandmother had spoken. That wasn’t good enough for me anymore.
“I didn’t agree,” I said. A new thought occurred to me. “We can just leave.”
“Won’t work,” Mr. Ryan said.
“Why not?”
“I doubt they were careless enough to let Ivy come here without conditions,” he said.
“What kind of conditions?”
It was my grandmother who answered.
“If Ivy travels more than ten miles from the portal, she will die. If Ivy strays from the grounds and the wards for more than a day, she will die. If Ivy is an hour late in returning, she will die.” Gran gave me a stern look. “Ivy has been allowed to come here as a courtesy to me. When I moved to this world, I lost the… social status that I once enjoyed. The most I could do now is block the portal in the basement. Two others exist, and eventually retribution would come. None of that would prevent Ivy’s certain demise.”
“Don’t worry,” Ivy said. She smiled at me across the table, one hand resting on the necklace. “I’ll have your words to keep me company until I return. I’ll be fine.”
That didn’t make me feel any better. If anything, I was angrier.
“Swear to me,” I said to Gran. “Swear to me, that there is nothing you can do for her.”
I don’t know where I found the nerve, but my grandmother didn’t look angry when she answered.
“I swear to you Jakalain, I have done all that was in my power to help both of you.”
Damn it. I believed her. Defeated, I finished my lunch in silence.
***
Ivy was scheduled to go right after lunch. We followed Gran and Mr. Ryan down the basement stairs. When they turned the corner at the bottom, I pulled Ivy close and kissed her goodbye. It was a more substantial kiss than any of the others had been, but like the first, it tasted of tears. Then we walked hand in hand to the tree-carved door. Gran and Mr. Ryan were already inside. The kiss must have lasted longer than I’d realised, because Gran looked annoyed, and Mr. Ryan looked as though he thought it was funny. Ivy let go of my hand and moved to the middle of the circle. This was the first time I’d get to see it from the outside. Gran raised her hands and said something I couldn’t quite make out; Ivy began to fade in bright golden light. Then, she was gone. Her pink butterfly hair clips fell to the floor where her feet had been. I bent to retrieve them.
“How come the necklace went with her and the clips didn’t?” I asked.
“Those are made from material from this world,” Gran said. “The necklace was not.”
“How did Jack get precious metals and stones from the First World?” Mr. Ryan asked.
“He used the leftover materials belonging to a woman who sought refuge here. She refused to explain how she’d managed to bring so much with her up the Tree. She was a powerful enchantress and a renowned smith in her day; and she never explained why, but she insisted on spending her last days here.”
“Jack obviously added a little extra to the mix,” Mr. Ryan said. “Was I the only one who noted something strange about the necklace at the end there?”
He wasn’t. I could have sworn I saw one bee on Ivy’s necklace flap its wings.
“If you mean the bees coming to life,” Gran said dryly, “then no. How did you enchant the necklace, Jack?”
I shrugged, not having a clue.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You sure about that?” Mr. Ryan asked.
“Well, I guess it could have been the red metal,” I said. I was pretty sure that’s what had done it.
“What red metal?” Mr. Ryan sounded genuinely curious.
“There was weird, dull, reddish metal in with the other stuff. I used some of that to make the necklace.”
“Could you show us?”
“Yeah, it’s next door in the workshop.” I led them down the hall and into the boiler room/workshop. I’d tucked the case with the precious materials under one of the benches. I opened the various drawers to show Mr. Ryan the metals and gems.
“That’s a great deal to travel up the Tree with,” he said before I’d even got them all open.
“As I told you,” Gran said. “A substantial amount. Particularly, given the raw form and lack of enchantments.”
The last little drawer held the reddish metal. I pulled it back to show them.
“Here, this is the stuff.”
“I don’t recognise that,” Gran said. She leaned in for a closer look. When her hand reached out to pick up a piece, Mr. Ryan caught her by the wrist.
“I do,” he said. “I wouldn’t touch it if I were you.”
Gran pulled her hand back. “Why not?”
“Have you read The Book of Cautionary Tales?” Mr. Ryan asked.
“A long time ago, when I was a girl. Every student of enchantment reads that early on. Or should.”
“Then you likely remember the last five stories.”
Gran looked at Mr. Ryan, and slowly her mouth fell open. That was the first time I’d ever seen my grandmother flu
stered.
“You can’t mean…”
Mr. Ryan nodded.
“But this looks nothing like the Blood. I saw a vile of it up close once. As big as your thumb, if you can believe it.”
“I can believe it,” he said. “I have a sword that was quenched in the stuff.”
“What are you two talking about?” I asked. They seemed to have forgotten I was there.
“The Blood of the World Tree,” Mr. Ryan said. “Sometimes called the Sap of the World Tree, but it’s the same thing. It’s a liquid that the very essence of creation is distilled into by the most powerful enchanters of the First World. Not many can manage it.”
“One in a generation, if that,” Gran added.
“That,” Mr. Ryan pointed at the reddish chunks, “is a refined or distilled form of the Blood. Only one person I know of ever made any, and not in such a quantity. To say it’s dangerous is like saying fire is hot.”
“So this is like maple sugar candy,” I said. “Someone took a bunch of the tree sap and boiled it down to this?”
“As good as an analogy as any,” Mr. Ryan said. “It’s more complicated and requires a great deal more of the Sap to begin with.”
Gran seemed unable to take her eyes off of the little pile of reddish metal.
“How much?” she whispered. “What’s the ratio?”
“A thousand to one.” Mr. Ryan said.
Gran started to shake then. I thought back to the way that the pool water had originally tasted.
“I guess that’s why it tastes a bit like maple syrup,” I said.
Mr. Ryan gave me a startled look. Luckily for Gran, his reactions are crazy fast. He caught her as she fainted.
***
I got the doors while Mr. Ryan carried Gran up to the sitting room and set her in her chair. Ms. Mopat appeared with a damp tea towel and set it across Gran’s forehead as she began to revive.
“Tea,” Gran said.
Ms. Mopat glided away towards the kitchen.
“That was a shock,” Gran said. “Jack, would you be so good as to explain how you know what the Blood of the World Tree tastes like?”
“I guess,” I said.
I explained how I had discovered the cleaning properties of the reddish metal, and how I’d used it to restore the pool. Gran and Mr. Ryan remained eerily silent as I recounted the events. They stayed silent for a while after I’d finished.
“How much, how much…” Gran wasn’t able to get her entire question out.
“I believe your grandmother is curious as to exactly how much of the distilled Blood you used to clean the pool,” Mr. Ryan said.
I showed them the last digit of my baby finger, and Mr. Ryan laughed uncontrollably.
“How can you laugh?” Gran asked.
“He, he, he used it to clean a swimming pool,” Mr. Ryan spluttered. “A pool!”
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” I said. I really didn’t, there was still three quarters of the original metal left over.
“I can’t explain without throttling the boy,” Gran said as she accepted a tea cup from Ms. Mopat.
“I’ll try,” Mr. Ryan said. “Jack, it takes a thousand times the volume of ordinary Blood to make the red metal, and one drop of that takes a talented enchanter… perhaps a half year of work to produce.”
I could see where he was going with this.
“First, I’ll try this with a dollar figure. That single drop in the First World would be worth, let’s say, a hundred thousand dollars. How much would you say you spent on pool cleaning?”
When he put it that way it didn’t seem as ingenious an idea anymore. By Mr. Ryan’s reckoning, the pool cleanup was in the fifty million dollar range. That couldn’t be right, could it? I did the math again. Crap. My thoughts must have shown on my face.
“In terms of raw power,” Mr. Ryan continued mercilessly, “you cleaned the pool with the magical equivalent of a nuclear bomb.”
“You didn’t explain why you tasted it,” Gran added.
The tea seemed to be having a calming effect.
“I didn’t taste it, taste it,” I said. “I’m not stupid. I just happened to get a bit of pool water in my mouth before the chlorine was delivered. The taste went away after that.”
“He may have absorbed it all by then,” Gran said.
“Possible,” Mr. Ryan said. “Who knows what mixing it with water might do.”
“I suppose we should be grateful he didn’t eat any,” Gran said.
“I haven’t noticed any effect,” I said. “Why were you so upset?”
“You mean, beyond the fifty million dollar pool cleanup?” Mr. Ryan snickered. “Well Jack, the last five stories in the book I mentioned earlier, involve people who let the Blood touch them, or were otherwise careless with it. The least horrific incident resulted in the unlucky fellow exploding. He lived long enough to grow to five times his normal size first.”
“How much did he absorb?”
“A single drop fell on his hand,” Gran said. “How did you use that solidified Blood in the crafting of the necklace?”
I gave them a brief outline of my process for making the necklace and altering the metals with the condensed Blood. Both considered that for a while.
“Who was the one person who knew how to make the distilled Blood?” Gran asked Mr. Ryan.
“Who do you think?” he said looking at me. “Who was this woman who left it behind?”
“Jerilain Starborn Talantial,” Gran said.
“Ah.” Mr. Ryan said.
“Ah, what?” I asked. “What are you two talking about?”
“She was a very young woman when I knew her,” Mr. Ryan said. “She was also Marielain’s apprentice. The first one he’d ever taken. She must have spent most of the last fifteen hundred years collecting and distilling the Blood.”
“For what?” Gran asked.
Mr. Ryan looked at me for a moment before answering.
“It can’t be a coincidence it ended up here, waiting to be picked up by one with the talents to make use of it. How much went into Ivy’s necklace, Jack?”
I did a few rough calculations in my head.
“Around a hundred and fifty million. Why did the bees start moving when she was in the circle?”
“Did Ivangelain explain how the portals work?” Gran asked.
“Yeah, they peel away more magic the higher up the Tree you go, right?”
“Close enough. This is true for enchanted items as well. That the Blood didn’t make you…”
“Explode,” I supplied.
“Explode,” Gran agreed, “may be a function of the reduced magic in this world. That so much of it simply bent to your will, and cleaned a pool, is a strong argument for its diminished power here. When the power and enchantments travelled back down the World Tree, the effect of the Blood would have been multiplied as the magic regathered inside of it. The amount you put in the necklace is unfathomable. I can’t imagine what might happen.”
“Do you think Ivy will be OK?” I was suddenly terrified I’d given her a deadly gift.
“I expect she’ll be fine,” Mr. Ryan said. “You made it for her and poured a good deal of your love for her into it apparently. I doubt the necklace will harm her directly. The real question is… what else did you put in it?”
I didn’t have a clue.
“What about harming her indirectly?” I asked.
“Others will notice such a talisman,” Mr. Ryan said.
“Indeed.” Gran sipped her tea calmly.
“What can we do?” I asked. Surely Mr. Ryan or my grandmother must have an idea.
“Wait,” Gran said.
It was crushing to see Mr. Ryan nod his head in agreement.
***
Ivy had only been gone for a few hours, but it felt longer. At dinner, Mr. Ryan said the best medicine for moping was exercise, and he expected my full attention for our evening practice. He was leaving the following afternoon himself, and my second year o
f high school started the next day. With everything that was going on, and given my likely future, it was hard to care about school. Nothing I learned there would be useful now. Mr. Ryan had said he’d be back to check on my training a few times over the winter, so I had that to look forward to. At the end of one of our katas, I asked a question that had occurred to me a few days back.
“Mr. Ryan?”
“What is it, Jack?”
“You know how to fight with a hammer too, right?”
“I know how to fight with every weapon. Considering making a switch from the sword?”
“Yeah, would you mind teaching me?” I asked. With his imminent departure, there’d be little time for extensive instruction.
“I’ll show you the basics tomorrow. First, I’ll tell you something about my friend Marielain that few people knew.”
“What’s that?” I didn’t think of Marielain Blackhammer as myself, but I couldn’t help being curious.
“Marielain was fine warrior, and never lost an important fight I know of, but it wasn’t because of his skill with sword or hammer. He did his real fighting ahead of time at his forge and in his workshop. The showy battle afterwards was always just his way of letting an opponent know they’d lost. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
I nodded, because I did. I’d been contemplating what things I might make over the winter. It was like Mr. Ryan had given me the go-ahead.
***
The following day Mr. Ryan showed me the differences between fighting with a sword and a hammer. He set me a couple of simple katas to start with, and I used a light sledge hammer from the workshop as a temporary practice weapon. Late that afternoon, Mr. Ryan left Gran’s. We didn’t speak of it, but I was certain he spent his winters trying to find a way home. It was just Gran and I for dinner that night.
“Gran?”
“What is it, Jack?”
“I’m going to need the smithy this winter,” I said.
The workshop wouldn’t be enough for me anymore.
“I thought you might.”
She pulled the smithy key, on its tiny horseshoe keychain, from her pocket and dropped it into my hand.
“Jack.”
“Yes?”
“Do try to be careful.”
