by Toby Forward
“So late. Stupid,” she whispered. “You’ve already let him slip away.”
Sitting back down at the desk, she began to write her reply.
Frastfil was in the middle of a question
when Smedge burst into flames and fell over.
“You lost him?” said Frastfil. “Oh dear. Do you think—”
What Frastfil would do stayed a mystery to Smedge. The boy was on fire. Flames flowed over him. His hair was a fiery torch, his finger ends, candles. He rolled over and over in his frenzy to put the flames out. Nothing made any difference. He blazed like a beacon. Frastfil screamed for help, the swift onslaught of fire taking him by surprise and driving all thoughts of magic from his mind.
Smedge shouted a dousing spell. The flames hesitated, shrank back, then flared up, more powerful than ever. The words jerked Frastfil into action. He dragged a curtain from the window, wrapped it around Smedge, and shouted a spell of his own to stop the flames.
Duddle’s face appeared in the doorway.
“What’s—” he started to say, then, seeing the flames, pulled back.
“Come and help!” shouted Frastfil.
Duddle sidled in, keeping close to the wall, his hand against his face to shield it from the fire.
Smedge shrieked in pain. Then, as though it had never been, the fire disappeared. He hugged his arms to himself, rocking back and forth, moaning.
Frastfil knelt beside him. The boy was completely unhurt. No burning of the skin. His hair was as neat and tidy as ever, his clothes unscorched. The room, too, was unmarked by the fire. Not even a smell of smoke.
The Professor helped Smedge up from the carpet, moved him to an armchair.
“Does it hurt?”
He shook his head.
“Not now. Not anymore.”
His hand was clenched into a fist. He opened it. He was clutching a fat white moth. The moth fluttered its wings, stopped, then unfolded into a note.
I know you’ve lost him already. Find him. Follow him. Or it will be worse next time.
“What’s this about?” asked Frastfil.
The wolves fell silent.
The swell of a soft song stood alone in the small room. December searched Sam’s face for a response. The rain had eased. The heavy drops from the roof splattered in slow procession.
Sam’s lips straightened. The curve of his mouth tensed. He grimaced.
December’s song faltered. A solitary wolf yapped. She began again, stronger, singing of a dragon’s flight. She stroked Sam’s forehead. Some warmth there, perhaps?
She lifted a potion to his lips. He made no response. Dipping her fingers in the cup, she put them to his lips, parting them gently. A few drops made their way into his mouth.
A wolf bumped against the door, nosing the wood. Claws scratched.
December rubbed Sam’s hands between her own. He returned a feeble grip. She dabbed more moisture through his lips. A third time, his tongue reached out for it and she lifted the cup again. He swallowed a little, turned his head, and the potion ran down his cheek. He coughed, gasped, then lay still.
“No!” said December. “No. Don’t go now!”
Her face was white. Her lips were pale as parchment. Her whole body shook. She tried to sing again, but had no voice for it. The notes would not hold true.
The wolves all set up a terrible howling. A heavy body hurled itself against the door, shaking it.
“Stay with me, Sam,” she whispered. “Stay here.”
Sam’s breathing had stopped. His fingers were cold now, his lips blue.
December took the cup and filled her mouth with the potion. Leaning her face over Sam’s, she parted his lips and sprayed it between them, into his mouth from her own. She shook him. He gulped. For a moment he stayed without motion, then coughed, gasped, and panted deep breaths in and out.
December staggered back, sat in front of the empty grate, and watched.
The ghost of the flames
still burned in Smedge’s body. The pain had gone, but the memory remained. He walked the corridors of the College when everyone else was in bed. Almost everyone. He paced up and down, his shoes light on the polished wood, the smooth stone; Tamrin watched him. She had lived for years like a wild animal in the long passages of the gray building. She needed no magic to conceal her, no spells to hide her. She knew every dark corner, every long curtain, every obscure niche. And she was quiet. Mice did not hear her pass.
He came again to the window. Looked through the small panes between the lead lines. He pressed his hands against the glass. The stars looked back.
He said nothing. But Tamrin, who was skilled at watching people, saw the resolution made in the way he altered his posture. Something in him was decided.
She followed him down the stairs, through the wide door, into the night air of the quadrangle.
He kept to the colonnaded sides, not crossing the grass in the open, hugging the shadows. Tamrin was his shadow, though there was no light.
Smelling pipe smoke, she dropped back, just in time. Smedge had walked past a roffle, sitting in a niche in the cloister wall. Tamrin nearly walked past him, too, revealing herself as a spy.
“Young sir,” said the roffle. “A cold night for a walk.”
Smedge arranged a smile on his face.
“Megatorine, isn’t it?”
“The very same.”
The roffle pulled on his pipe and the tobacco glowed.
“Wasn’t it you who brought that new boy here?” Smedge asked.
“Mister Cartouche? It was. Why? Has he made a cake with frogs?”
“No.”
“No. Then has he sent the cooks to the seaside for the day and cooked up a pot of porridge?”
“Why would he do that?”
“He’s a boy, that one is.”
“Well he hasn’t done either of those things.”
“No, he hasn’t. And shall I tell you why?”
Smedge was impatient to get away, but he waited.
“Why?”
“Because he’s run away, that’s why.”
Tamrin hated this roffle. Smedge seemed to show a strange interest.
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“My brother told me.”
Smedge leaned against the wall and watched the roffle do those things that people do with pipes—fiddle with the stem, examine the tobacco, puff two or three times sharply, then draw in slowly. Megatorine was in no hurry to add anything, so Smedge did.
“I’ve been worried about him,” said the boy.
“Oh, yes.”
Tamrin screwed up her eyes in hatred.
“He seemed to need some help, and we would have given it to him.”
“Yes,” said the roffle. “Help and a thick ear. That’s what all boys need. Still, he’s gone now.”
“I thought,” said Smedge, as though it was just a casual thing, “that I ought to go and find him. See if I can help him. Bring him back here, if he’d like that.”
“There’ll be no need for that,” said the roffle.
Tamrin knew Smedge’s moods, and she could see that it was taking him all his patience not to cast a painful spell on the roffle. And there was something about Megatorine’s attitude that told her he knew that as well, and he didn’t care. He seemed to be teasing the boy.
“No need?” asked Smedge.
“No help. You can’t help a cat with a bottle of stones, can you? Or you can’t help cow with a bag full of burst balloons.”
Tamrin had never heard a roffle speak before, and she was puzzled at first; then she realized it was Megatorine’s way of frustrating Smedge, to get him to speak more directly.
“He’s not a cat or a cow,” said the boy.
“No,” said the roffle. And then he produced a bit of news, with smile and flourish, like a conjurer finding a coin behind your ear. “No, he’s not anything. He’s dead.”
The air was soft. The water in the fountain in the center of the quadrangl
e twitched and tumbled with the noise of a stream over pebbles. Tamrin blinked. She saw Smedge control the smile that had threatened to move his lips. She saw the roffle’s keen eyes examine the boy.
“That’s terrible,” said Smedge. He kept the excitement from his voice by speaking slowly and in a low tone. “How did it happen?”
“Do you mean am I sure?”
Smedge nodded.
“My brother was there. He saw the other roffles carry him away on the mine trusses. He heard them say it. He saw the boy, cold, dead.”
“Why?”
The roffle tapped his pipe against the wall, pushed his stubby fingers into the bowl, put it into his mouth without trying to light it.
“He was starved to death, almost, then he did a Finishing for a miner.”
“He can’t do that. Not a Finishing.”
“He did.”
Tamrin pressed her cheek against the stone, felt it grow wet, closed her eyes.
Megatorine continued, “Finished himself at the same time. Just what you’d expect.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Smedge.
Tamrin’s eyes flicked open. She wanted to hurt him. A lot. She wanted to slam him against the wall and make his head reel.
“So you won’t need to be leaving the College tonight, after all,” said the roffle.
“Ah, no. Well, perhaps. I may just go out anyway.”
“Do you want to find a fly with a paper tail, then?”
“No.”
“Or is there a heap of ribbons with a badger’s baby underneath that you need to stroke?”
Smedge moved away from Megatorine.
“I think I’d like to be by myself,” he said. “Such sad news.”
Tamrin watched him slip unobserved through the gate. She saw the roffle hitch his barrel-shaped bag onto his back and slip after him.
Stepping out of the shadows and into the quadrangle, she lifted her eyes up and interrogated the stars. She asked them for an answer, and they replied, clearly. Usually they gave an answer which was not an answer, a riddle more than a reply. This time Tamrin read them like a name on a book. Look inside yourself, they said.
The wolf nosed the door open. Its gray head wet from the rain, its eyes bright against the dark. It swerved inside, half-crouched, ready to spring.
December moved to put herself between the wolf and Sam. Her quick movement alerted the wolf and it snarled, baring its teeth at her. She waited for the others to appear.
“Get out!” she shouted. “Go on. Out.”
The wolf lifted its legs carefully, like a dancer, and advanced. December searched for something, a knife, a heavy candlestick, a doorstop, anything to use as a weapon.
“Flaxfield.”
Sam’s voice was growing fainter. The recovery that December had given so much to achieve was pouring away, like the rain running from the eaves. His life was emptying.
The wolf turned its head from December and moved with deadly grace toward the boy.
December tried to stand up and grab the wolf. She had seen men carried up from the pit, broken and dead. She had seen what a dead miner looked like who had been five days underground, trapped by a fall and drowned in water that sprang up from a released spring, bloated and wrecked. She had once seen what was left of a woman who had been attacked by wolves on her way home in the dark. She knew what teeth could do to flesh.
The wolf leaped up and knocked her to one side. It bounded onto the bed and crouched over Sam, lowering its mouth over his face. It lifted its head, turned, and grinned at her. Its long tongue licked and lolled. Then it lifted its head and howled.
December was hurt. Her leg twisted beneath her. She couldn’t stand.
The wolf turned again to Sam, opened its jaws wide, showing long, yellow teeth, and closed its mouth around Sam’s face.
“No. Don’t,” December moaned. “Leave him.”
She covered her face with her hands, feeling the scars and ridges. She raised her head again to see what insult the wolf had visited upon Sam.
It was licking his face, snorting, nose to nose, growling low.
December sat back, winced as she straightened her leg, smiled, looking at the tapestry.
The wolf lay down beside Sam, licking still, pressing its body close to his.
Sam’s left hand moved to find the wolf’s back. He stroked the fur. His breathing grew more steady. He had stopped calling out. Smoke trailed from his nostrils as his breath returned.
The wolf stared at December. She was uncomfortable, in new pain, but no longer afraid.
Ash smiled
and picked at her cheek with a broken fingernail until the skin broke and she bled.
“We lost the boy,” she said.
Bakkmann cowered away from her. The smiles were always the worst thing.
Ash crouched over the stone floor, glistening with the smear of her fresh blood. The candlelight caught the moisture and made a picture.
A young man. An old woman under a gray sky. The man was leaving.
“Listen,” Ash breathed.
Bakkmann crept toward her.
“I can feel that there’s something,” said Caleb. “When I’m not thinking about anything, or when I’m half-asleep, it’s as though there’s another person there with me, watching me. Do you understand?”
“That’s me,” Ash hissed. “It’s me he can feel.”
“What sort of person is it?” asked Flaxfold.
“It’s not exactly a person,” said Caleb. “Sometimes it’s more like an animal, watching me, sniffing me. Then, other times, I almost hear its voice, talking to me.”
“Come to me, Caleb,” Ash hissed. “Come on, boy.”
“Perhaps Sam went to the mines,” said Flaxfold. “You might find him there.”
“That’s the last place he’ll be.”
Flaxfold nodded.
“Good-bye, then,” said Caleb.
“No need to be the best,” said Flaxfold. “Just do the best.”
Caleb walked off.
Flaxfold went back into the house and to Flaxfield’s study. She watched him through the window till the two roads diverged in a yellow wood and he dissolved into the undergrowth.
Ash moved to the window, to watch for his coming.
Pages from an apprentice’s notebook
MEGATOLLY’S QUESTION
PART 1. ARE THE LEAVES THE TREE?
There are many ways to answer this part of the Question.
a) The leaves are not the tree, they are part of the tree.
SO, ARE THEY AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THE TREE?
b) Yes, it would not be an oak unless it had oak leaves.
SO, DOES IT STOP BEING AN OAK IN THE WINTER
WHEN THERE ARE NO LEAVES?
c) No. It is still an oak.
SO, THE OAK DOES NOT NEED LEAVES TO BE A TREE?
THEY ARE NOT ESSENTIAL.
b) Yes, it would not be an oak if it did not have leaves.
SO, THE LEAVES ARE THE TREE?
Here the clever person will say that the oak is all of the parts of the tree, the trunk, the branches, the twigs, the bark, the leaves, the acorns, all at once.
And here the very clever person will say that they do not need to be there all at once, as long as some of them are there.
WHICH ONES?
Clever people sometimes get a headache at this point. Less clever people go away and try to climb an oak tree or to get inside a hollow one, or to look for roffle holes.
Megatolly’s Question also asks about each part of the tree.
WHICH PART OF THE OAK IS THE TRUE, ESSENTIAL PART?
THE TRUNK?
But a trunk alone is not an oak.
Trunk and branches are an oak. But there has to be the possibility of leaves, the possibility of acorns.
Megatolly added a second Question to his first, great Question.
HOW OLD IS AN OAK?
a) An oak is as old as its trunk.
WHAT ABOUT ITS BRANCHES?
b) There are new branches and old branches.
ARE THEY ALL PART OF THE THING CALLED OAK?
c) Yes.
SO A BRANCH THAT IS A HUNDRED YEARS OLD IS A TRUE PART OF A SEVEN-HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD OAK?
d) Yes.
SO, IT IS, IN SOME WAY, SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS OLD?
e) Yes.
AND A HUNDRED YEARS OLD?
f) Yes.
BOTH AT THE SAME TIME?
g) Yes.
AND A WEEK-OLD LEAF ON THE SAME HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD BRANCH ON A SEVEN-HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD OAK IS A TRUE PART OF A SEVEN-HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD OAK?
By now, the clever person will have stopped trying to answer and will just listen.
A week-old leaf, a day-old leaf, is a full part of a seven-hundred-year-old tree. It is, in some ways, one day old and seven hundred years old. It knows all that the tree knows. It is the tree. Without the tree it will die. Without new leaves the tree will die. They are not different things. They are the same thing. Old is new. New is old. Leaf and acorn, branch and twig, trunk and bark. And we have not even begun to think about the roots yet—they are all the tree, all oak.
That’s how it is with dragons. And boys.
The night is never as quiet
as you think it is going to be. Alone on the turret, Tamrin could hear the sounds of darkness. Only the stars were silent.
Tamrin sat, eyes closed, legs straight on the cold stone, arms by her sides, face upturned to the cool night air.
So, when Vengeabil finally appeared in the small doorway, it was after a symphony of approaching sound. Feet on the steps, coat brushing against the wall of the narrow spiral, breathing getting deeper, mumbles of complaint, a tapping of wood.
He sat opposite her and waited.
“He said that Sam’s dead,” she said.
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Not much is said in the College that I don’t hear.”
Tamrin opened her eyes and saw him, sitting propped against a staff. She closed them again.
