The Mage and the Magpie

by Austin J. Bailey

  “That’s the gist of it,” Archibald agreed. “It is far more complex than that, however. The mages don’t rule over the elements, strictly speaking.”

  “They control them,” Hugo insisted. “I’ve seen Animus control the wind.”

  “The wind obeys him, but he does not control it. It obeys him, honors him because the life energy of the wind flows through his soul. Whatever energy the wind requires to govern itself, it takes from the soul of Animus: his spirit and his body.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Archibald raised an eyebrow “I asked him once.”

  “Why are you telling it to me?”

  Archibald gave him a small smile. It was good that the boy appreciated what was being shared.

  “Because someday you will be the king.”

  Hugo was quiet and Archibald wondered if, for the first time, he might be appreciating the weight of that responsibility.

  After a while Hugo cleared his throat. “Archibald, I guess you know that I’ve studied the mages a bit on my own…”

  Archibald raised an eyebrow, and Hugo hurried on. His father wouldn’t approve of him delving deeper into the restricted subject, but then, his father wasn’t around. “Anyway, in my reading I found something that doesn’t make sense. Out of the mages we just listed, I’ve only really heard about three of them: Animus, Cassis, and Belterras. There is a lot written about them too,” he said. “I’ve met Animus and Belterras, but I don’t know anything about the other three. They are in the poem, but you don’t ever hear anything about them. Why is that?”

  Archibald nodded appreciatively. “You have stumbled upon a very serious question, Hugo, and one not easily answered.”

  Hugo twisted to get a better look at Archibald. He didn’t want to miss a single word.

  “Many years ago,” Archibald began, “three of the mages went missing‌—‌Chantra, Unda, and Lignumis. One day they were there, the next they were gone.”

  “Gone?” Hugo prompted.

  Archibald nodded. “Without warning. At first there was a bit of a panic.”

  “Like when my father found out about Animus disappearing?”

  “Yes. But soon it faded away. There were no big problems; the sea seemed to behave, more or less. The trees went on producing fruit, and fires did not rage out of control as we first feared. It seemed that the mages, wherever they were, were still in control of things. Though if I’m being honest, I am no longer so sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Archibald squirmed a little. “There are differences, I think, in the way the world works now. Every year there are less fish to be caught. While trees continue to produce fruit, seeds rarely produce new trees. The forests have been diminishing since the day Lignumis disappeared. Your father thinks that something serious has happened to them, and I agree.”

  “Can’t we just ask Animus? The poem says that he’s the king of the mages. Maybe he would know.”

  Archibald shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that. He is not really a king of any sort. I suppose that, in some ways, the poem is just a poem. By ‘king’ I guess that it is referring to the fact that he is the oldest of the mages. In reality, the mages are all equal to one another in power, even though you could argue that some of them have more important powers than others.

  “What about the Magemother?” Hugo asked. “Wouldn’t she know where the lost mages are?”

  Archibald shook his head. “She always maintained that they were safe, though whether she actually knew where they were is hard to say. She would not speak much on the subject.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Hugo was trying to piece together everything that he had heard. It felt wonderful to talk about the mages out in the open. If he had known that Archibald knew so much on the subject he might have tried before, even if his father wouldn’t have liked it.

  “You know,” Archibald said, breaking the silence, “that is still only six mages.”

  “What? But that’s the whole thing,” Hugo said, reviewing the poem in his head to make sure. “It ends with Animus, the oldest.”

  “What about Lux?” Archibald asked.

  Hugo’s face went blank. “He’s not in the poem,” he said, looking suddenly confused. “Why didn’t I ever notice that? Why isn’t he in the poem, Archibald?”

  “He is. He’s in the next stanza.”

  “There’s more?” The lines on Hugo’s forehead drew together. “I don’t remember it.”

  “Because you were never taught it,” Archibald said simply. “There is power in it, and secrets. It isn’t taught, and it isn’t even printed in the copies of the Magemother’s book.”

  “But you’re going to teach it to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because I’m going to be a king?”

  “Yes. And because you want to understand magic. Those who seek understanding find it, though not always in the places they expect.”

  Hugo waited patiently and quietly, which was the most powerful thing that he probably could have done, since it was the most difficult.

  Archibald looked around the little clearing of trees before he began, as if checking to see that they were alone. Eventually he began, his friendly voice bending into a thin and tired sound under the weight of the words:

  “After every mortal thing

  Rule the elements of being:

  Space and time and wrong and right;

  Lux Tennebris‌—‌day and night.”

  The moment he finished, the light from the fire changed, lifted free of the churning flames, and left them burning in the dark. The light spun together and expanded, and Lux stepped out of it into the night, his luminous body lighting them more sharply than the fire had done. Hugo started at the sight of him. It wasn’t just the suddenness of his appearance, it was his actual appearance. This was not the mage that had lived under the same roof with him his whole life. This was not the sunny-faced counselor to the king. This was a twisting shadow‌—‌a sickle-faced man of light and dark. He had one blue eye like the North Star and one filled with emptiness. His mouth, half smile, half sneer, barked into the night.

  “Who said my name?”

  “I did,” Archibald said, and the twisting specter turned to him. “It’s me, Lux. It’s Archibald. I was just teaching Prince Hugo here the names of the mages.”

  The specter turned his blue eye on Hugo and seemed to relax. The shadow half of him faded; his empty eye filled with blue and the strange expression fell from his face. The light around him flickered and he seemed to shrink as he turned into the kind-faced, frail man that Hugo was used to.

  Lux considered him a moment, then turned to Archibald. “Very well,” he said, and faded back into the night without another word.

  Hugo blinked in the sudden darkness. He heard Archibald scraping about, starting another fire, no doubt.

  “Is he gone?”

  “He’s gone.” Archibald’s face appeared as a match tip burst into life. Hugo moved to help him.

  “What was‌—‌what was‌—‌” Hugo stammered, struggling to make up his mind about which question to ask first.

  “That was Lux Tennebris,” Archibald said quietly.

  “It didn’t look like Lux.”

  “No. That was his true form. He usually hides it.”

  “I can see why,” Hugo said, shivering. “What is he?”

  “A mage‌—‌the seventh mage, as the poem says. But he is different. While the other mages rule over the elements of the world, Lux is connected to that which makes it possible for the world itself to exist.”

  “And what is that?” Hugo asked, trying to think of what made the world possible.

  “Duality.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Duality,” Archibald said patiently. “The law of opposites. Up and down, here and there, good and evil, light and darkness, life and death.”

  Hugo shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

  Archibald smile
d. “It’s simple,” he said. “Just think of time and space. Could you exist‌—‌could this world exist, if there were no such thing as time and space?”

  Hugo thought. “No, I guess not.”

  “Well, to have time, you need a now and a then. A past and a future. To have space you need‌—‌”

  “A here and a there?” Hugo asked.

  “Exactly. That is duality.”

  “And Lux is the mage of duality?” Hugo said, sounding skeptical.

  “Yes, ‘the Mage of Light and Darkness,’”

  “I don’t understand,” Hugo said. “Is he good or bad?”

  Archibald gave him a thoughtful look. “You saw him,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “Well…” Hugo hesitated, remembering Lux’s one dark, empty eye, the way his mouth blended from smile to sneer. “I think…he’s both.”

  Archibald nodded approvingly.

  Hugo shook his head again. It didn’t make any sense. “But Archibald, that’s just messed up‌—‌isn’t it?”

  Archibald laughed. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose it is. But that is the nature of Lux Tennebris. Lux, the light, Tennebris, the dark, the two sides of him working together in balance…” He studied the fire. “Actually,” he said,” I think that is the reason for our trip.”

  “What do you mean?” Hugo asked, sitting up.

  Archibald glanced over his shoulder. “It’s a small thing,” he said. “A conversation I had once, years ago, with the Magemother.”

  “What did she say?” Hugo asked eagerly.

  “She said that Lux was changing.” Archibald’s expression grew dark, his eyes stared curiously into the flames. “She said that something was wrong with him‌—‌wrong about him,” he corrected.

  Hugo shuddered, thinking of what it might mean for there to be something wrong with the person in charge of balancing good and evil.

  “That would be bad,” he said.

  Archibald glanced up from the fire. “Indeed it would,” he agreed. He gave Hugo an appraising look. “I think that this is the very puzzle the Magemother was working to solve when she disappeared.”

  “Really?” Hugo felt suddenly worried. He hadn’t been aware before that they might be in any real danger on the trip. Knowing what the Magemother might have been investigating seemed to cast a shadow over the trip.

  “What does that mean, Archibald? If that’s true, then where should we start looking?”

  “I don’t know,” Archibald said. “But I think we should start at the Magisterium.”

  Hugo felt a flutter of excitement. The Magisterium! The one place he had always wished he could go. Maybe this adventure was going to be all right after all.

  Chapter Seven

  In which there is a team of oxen

  Brinley cracked the oven door and squinted at the blackened chicken as smoke wafted out. Why hadn’t she just set the timer? She opened the door farther and another wave of heat and smoke hit her, making her cough. Quickly, she turned the oven off and opened the kitchen window, hoping that the smoke alarm wouldn’t sound. Then she retrieved a pair of daisy-patterned hot pads and extracted the poor bird. As she set it down on the stove, the smoke alarm went off. Just then, her father opened the door, a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair still dripping from the shower.

  “What is‌—‌oh,” he said, taking in the scene. He opened the front door, and Brinley handed him a cookie sheet, which he used to fan the smoke away from the smoke detector. It stopped a second later.

  “Brinley,” he said, “you shouldn’t have.”

  Brinley bit her lip apprehensively. This was not a new occurrence. She used to burn something at least once a week, which was a lot, given that she only had to cook twice a week. But it had been two months since her last offense.

  “How did you know I love extra crispy?” he finished, producing a smile.

  She laughed. “Just had a hunch.”

  “What were you doing this time?” he asked. “Working in the garden? Playing solitaire?”

  She shook her head, pointing to the table. “Drawing.”

  He crossed to the table and bent over the drawings that she had spread out there.

  “When did you do these?”

  “Uh…recently,” she said carefully.

  “Recently?”

  “Well, okay. I did them today. I know you said you wanted to go together, but I didn’t think you would mind if I took another trip out there on my own first‌—‌and this morning when I woke up it was such a perfect day for walking, so I decided to do my chores later and go to Morley.”

  “Hmm…” he said, still looking over the drawings. “And did you?”

  “What?”

  “Get your chores done.”

  She stopped short. She had been so caught up with the excitement at Morley after she got home that she hadn’t thought about the garden, or the bathroom, until now. At least she had remembered dinner, but now she had messed that up too.

  He snorted at the look on her face. “Relax,” he said. “You know I don’t mind. And I don’t mind that you went to Morley either. You knew I wouldn’t. You can do today’s chores tomorrow, just don’t get too far behind.”

  “I won’t,” she promised.

  “I know,” he said. “I can’t do it all without you, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “We’re a team.”

  “I know.”

  “Like oxen.”

  “What?” she said, perplexed.

  “Oxen. One ox, two oxes,” he said, poking her each time. “Oxen.”

  She snickered at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “You and I, Brinley.” He adopted a tone of mock solemnity that made it very hard to take him seriously. “You and I are like a team of oxen.”

  “Is this another one of Grandpa’s lectures?” she cut in, catching on.

  “Yes,” he said, waving a finger at her. “Don’t interrupt. As I was saying, you and I are like a team of oxen, pulling a cart together. We’re connected at the shoulders by a beam of wood, which in turn is connected to the cart. Do you know what the beam is called?”

  “A yoke?”

  “Yes‌—‌brilliant child‌—‌a yoke! It helps us pull the cart together.”

  “And we’re the oxen?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “A big ox and a little ox.”

  “So you’re saying you’re just a big ox?” she said, trying to keep a straight face.

  He smirked. “I’m saying we have to work together. We have to be evenly yoked. We each have to work as hard as the other. You do your work, and I do mine, and in the end, two oxen are better than one.”

  “But Dad,” Brinley protested. “Technically you can’t have one oxen. It would just be an ox.”

  “Aghh,” he growled. “I give up.”

  They laughed and began to set the table together.

  “Are we still going to eat it?” Brinley asked, eyeing the chicken.

  “Sure,” he said. “There’s bound to be an unburned bit inside there somewhere.”

  “Dad,” she said as she spooned instant mashed potatoes onto her plate, “that was a very good lecture.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “You think so? I didn’t overdo the oxen thing?”

  “A little bit,” she admitted. “But it was still good.”

  “Grandpa was better at explaining it,” he said. He smiled at her and began to dig through the chicken.

  They ate in silence for a while, then Brinley thought of something. “Dad, we’re still going to Morley together, right?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  She nodded, glad that he hadn’t abandoned the idea simply because she had gone without him. She looked at him again. He seemed to be lost in thought.

  “Did it happen again today?” he asked suddenly.

  She nodded. “I heard a really loud bell again,” she said, “when I was right by the church.”

  He nodded, taking another bit
e of chicken.

  “Dad,” she said slowly. “There was no bell there.”

  He nodded again. “There is something strange going on for sure,” he said. “Maybe we can figure it out together.”

  “I might go again tomorrow,” she blurted out.

  He gave her a searching look. “Why not just wait till Saturday when I can go with you?”

  She shrugged, not wanting to explain. The truth was she felt a bit embarrassed about the way she had practically run away from the situation. It seemed real enough at the time, but looking back it was clear to her that she must have simply let her imagination get the best of her. She was going to make herself walk all around the church until she was convinced of how ordinary it was, even if she had to sit there drawing birds and looking at nothing all day long. But she didn’t know how to explain that to her dad without sounding crazy.

  “I just have to,” she said.

  He made a face. “If you say so. But be careful, and don’t spend all day there.”

  “Okay,” she promised. “I won’t.”

  ***

  True to her word, Brinley only spent two or three hours there the following afternoon. She didn’t see or hear a single thing out of the ordinary. Mother Magpie was there again‌—‌that bird she had seen on the day she had heard the voice‌—‌and she drew another picture of her. Then she sat down inside the church and spent an hour doing a full panoramic sketch of the inside, taking care to make it look as ordinary as possible.

  After she had gathered up her things, she took one last look at Morley Church before leaving. She was about to walk away when a thunderous gong shattered her thoughts.

  She could feel the sound reverberating through her whole body. Instinctively, she looked up to the bell tower in the church. It was empty, of course. Wherever the sound was coming from, it wasn’t anywhere she could see. And strangely enough, as far as she could tell, nothing else was aware of the noise. The birds were still singing happily, and a squirrel scampered past her on the forest floor. Somehow, for some reason, just as it had done for her father, the bell rang only for her.

  Chapter Eight

  In which Hugo is bitten by a monster

  Put that down this instant!” Archibald cried. Hugo jumped. He swept the bell behind his back, but it was too late. He had awakened that morning to find Archibald still asleep. He couldn’t help noticing the little silver handle protruding from his teacher’s vest pocket. He told himself he would just take a peek. But, of course, it is very hard to not ring a bell after you have it in your hand. He thought if he did it very quietly, he might be able to return it without ever waking Archibald.