Dragonborn

by Toby Forward

  “Sam has no magic,” she said.

  “Nothing?” Axestone spoke quickly.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’ve watched him. I’ve seen him try. There is nothing inside him to work magic anymore. Even his notebook is empty.”

  “Then we’re lost,” he said.

  “Empty can be filled,” said Flaxfold. “Broken can be mended.”

  “Can it?” asked Eloise.

  “Sometimes,” said Flaxfold. “How?”

  December paused.

  “Well,” she said. “We know that he’s being hunted. That hurt him. The College was bad for him, and that has hurt him, too. The journey itself was difficult, and an ordinary person would have died. Then, he used up everything that was left inside him to perform a Finishing.”

  Flaxfold put her hand on December’s arm.

  “If it were not for you, he would have been dead long ago.”

  “And you,” said December to Axestone. “And the wolf.”

  He nodded.

  “Go on,” he said. “How can we mend him?”

  “He dreams,” she said. “And he calls ‘Flaxfield’ all the time.”

  “He never really knew anyone else,” said Flaxfold. “People came to the door, but they never stayed. He went with Flaxfield to Finishings, but never really met people there, never talked to them. Flaxfield was all he knew.”

  “After you left,” said Eloise.

  “Yes.”

  Eloise continued. “I went to fairs with Flaxfield, and to markets. We traveled all over, staying for weeks at a time sometimes. I played with street traders’ children, learned how to fight and how to make up. And he had visitors, often. We were never lonely.”

  “I was never lonely,” said Sam, “but I was alone a lot.”

  They had not heard him come in.

  “How long have you been there?” asked Axestone.

  Sam hobbled in. Looked around.

  “We’ll go to the parlor,” said Flaxfold. “It’s more comfortable.”

  The day was drawing to a close. The sun low, the air cool and fresh. The spring evening gave a strange clarity to everything, a more vivid color, a deeper, cleaner atmosphere.

  The fire in the parlor had smoldered to gray ash. The low sun caught the copper pans and blue-and-white plates, painting them with an intense glow.

  “Tell me more about the markets and fairs,” said Flaxfold, when they were settled.

  “Tell me about the wolf,” said Sam.

  The creature moved across, sat with his head on Sam’s lap.

  “What do you want to know?” asked Axestone.

  “Is he yours?”

  “No. He belongs to himself.”

  “That’s not a straight answer,” said Sam.

  Flaxfold smiled and folded her hands on her lap.

  “There’s a connection,” said Axestone. “Sometimes. With a lot of effort. I can see what he sees, hear what he hears.”

  “How?”

  “Scratch your head,” said Axestone.

  “Don’t make me look a fool,” said Sam.

  “I don’t know another way to explain.”

  Sam scratched his head.

  “How did you do that?” asked Axestone.

  Sam shrugged.

  “Close your eyes. What do you see?”

  “Trees,” said Sam. “Above my head. And moss. And a fox. Earwigs and beetles.”

  He opened his eyes and saw the others were looking at him intently.

  “Was it a memory?” asked Eloise.

  “What else?” said Sam.

  “How did you do it?” asked Axestone. “Scratch your head, see pictures with your eyes closed?”

  “It just happens,” said Sam.

  “Like breathing. Or swallowing,” said the man.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s how it is with the wolf.”

  “All the time?” said Sam.

  “No, not all the time. Only when I make it so. It costs a lot.”

  “Did you send him to look for me?”

  “We did it together,” said Axestone.

  Sam stroked the wolf.

  “Thank you.”

  There was a long silence.

  “The fairs,” said Flaxfold.

  Eloise smiled.

  “It seems so long ago,” she said. “Flaxfield had work to do there. Not that it seemed like work. He walked about among the stall-holders, talking to them, buying what he needed, string, shoes, selling a few things that he took with him.”

  “I never understood the things he bought,” said Axestone.

  “Or what he sold,” said Eloise. “Little parcels that he had made himself. Bottles of tincture. Sometimes just a piece of paper with writing in a strange language.”

  Axestone laughed.

  “Now we buy and sell the same things ourselves,” he said.

  “What are they?” asked Sam.

  “Not apprentice things,” said Axestone, not unkindly.

  “Anyway,” said Eloise, “all I wanted to do was buy some sweets and maybe a scarf, and look at the entertainers.”

  “Jugglers,” said Axestone.

  “Fire eaters,” she said. “Tumblers and puppet shows.”

  Sam wished Flaxfield had taken him to the fairs.

  “One day,” said Eloise, “there was a juggler, and I loved watching him. He juggled balls at first, then knives, then burning torches. I watched the whole show. When it was over, he came around the crowd with a hat, for money. I didn’t have any and said I was sorry, but thank you for a lovely show. He started to shout at me, and I didn’t know what to do. He said I was robbing him by sitting at the front and then not paying. I was so embarrassed that I put my hand in my pocket, took out a toffee, and put it in his hat. It was all I had. Then he was really angry, and started to call me names. He made fun of my clothes, which were old fashioned and not very colorful. You remember what Flaxfield was like.”

  “I always left you nice clothes,” said Flaxfold.

  “Yes, but after you left, we didn’t look after them very well,” said Eloise. “I was a bit of a scarecrow. Anyway, people were laughing at me, and he was enjoying hurting me, making me feel silly. That was when Flaxfield arrived.

  “He asked the man to apologize to me. The man laughed at him and started to make fun of him as well. The whole crowd was having fun. He was a clever man, good with words and quick on his feet, as you’d expect a juggler to be.

  “Flaxfield let him have his say. Then he told the juggler that I was only there to teach him how to juggle properly. The man laughed; then, when Flaxfield told him what a poor juggler he was and that he needed lessons, he got angry. The crowd was laughing at him now. Flaxfield had begun to turn them around. Flaxfield pulled me to the front of the crowd, threw the juggling balls at me, and told me to juggle.”

  Eloise looked at them, her eyes bright with the memory. Sam was holding his breath. Even the wolf was attentive.

  “I was thirteen,” she said. “Do you know how awful it is for a thirteen-year-old girl to stand in front of a crowd? And to be asked to juggle? I wanted to fall through the ground and go live with the roffles. They started to jeer at me. ‘Juggle,’ said Flaxfield. So I did. I was wonderful. It felt wonderful. The jeers turned to cheers. The juggler was furious. He picked up his knives and started to juggle them. But he dropped one and it clanged on the cobbles; he stumbled and another one came down the wrong way. He grabbed it by the blade instead of the handle and it cut deep into his hand. This made him so angry that he threw it at me. I caught it, added it to my act, and juggled it up with the balls. He threw another, and another. I caught them all.”

  Sam screwed up his shoulders with pleasure.

  “In the end,” said Eloise, “the juggler was covered in blood from his hand. The crowd jeered at him. I was applauded and congratulated, and the crowd made him give me the money in his hat because I was a better juggler than he was. I gave him the toffee, though.”

  Flaxfold nodded
. “Flaxfield didn’t like his apprentices to be made to feel small,” she said.

  “He bought me a set of juggling balls,” said Eloise. “That night, when we got home, I tried to show him how good I was. I dropped them all.”

  “Why?” asked Sam.

  “He said if I wanted to be a juggler the only honest way was to practice.”

  Sam remembered the day he had used magic to get the trout.

  “What about you?” asked Flaxfold, looking at Axestone. “Have you got a Flaxfield story?”

  Axestone looked through the window. The light caught his eyes and made them seem like polished stones.

  “Not as much fun as that one,” he said. “I made a kite.” He stroked his cheek and paused, remembering. “Such a kite. I’ve never made a better one. Well, perhaps. But never one I loved so much. It was shaped like a tortoise, and its head went in and out of its shell as the wind took it. I flew it all afternoon, and I was getting tired, so I lost control of it and it got stuck high in an old elm. I was tired and hungry, but I wasn’t going to lose that kite. By the time I had climbed the tree I was covered in scratches, sweating like a roffle’s dog, and so thirsty I could have drunk the water from a stagnant pond. Well, you can guess what I did. I freed the kite, took hold of it, and let it glide down to the ground, carrying me with it.”

  Sam held his breath, thinking how Flaxfield would have felt about that.

  “Flaxfield knew, of course,” said Axestone. “He made me climb back up the tree, carrying the kite, and lodge it back in the branches. Then I had to climb down again. He was waiting for me on the ground. We looked up at the kite together. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Supper, or the kite?’”

  “What did you do?” asked Sam.

  “By this time, I was so tired and hungry that I left the kite where it was. I stamped off in a rage. Flaxfield climbed the tree himself. He rescued the kite and climbed back down again, making sure he didn’t tear it. It took him three hours, and it was night by the time he got down. He was cut and bleeding from the branches, tired to death. He was old even then.”

  “That sounds like Flaxfield,” said Eloise.

  “After supper,” said Axestone, “we sat together and worked on the kite. He never said I was lazy or stupid to use the magic like that. He just helped to make it a better kite. He showed me how to put a special magic into kites, one I have always used since.”

  Sam found himself crying. No noise, just slow tears bathing his cheeks.

  “I miss him so much,” he said.

  “We all do,” said Axestone.

  Sam turned to Flaxfold.

  “What do you remember about him?” he asked.

  “Too much to tell here,” she said.

  “I have a memory,” said December.

  Eloise looked surprised.

  “You were never his apprentice,” she said.

  “I met him once. When I was little.”

  “What happened?” asked Sam.

  “I had hurt myself,” she said. “Well, I was hurt anyway. And nothing would take away the pain.”

  Sam looked hard at her, at the too-smooth skin of her face, the no-lips, the patchy hair.

  “How did it happen?”

  “That’s a different story,” she said. “I’ll tell you that another day.”

  “Who was looking after you?” he asked.

  December looked around at the faces in the room. “It’s not that story I’m telling you now. This is a Flaxfield story.”

  “Sorry,” said Sam.

  “I was being looked after. Very well. But I was in pain all the time. I had potions and salves that helped. They made it bearable. Without them I would not look as good as I do.”

  She smiled at them.

  “But there was never a time when I was without the pain at all. I never went to the fairs or markets. I kept away from people as much as I could. It hurt me more to be looked at. Most people just turned their faces away. Some looked frightened. Some laughed. Other children were the worst. So I tried to stay away from everyone.

  “It was evening. Cool, the sun nearly gone. I was sitting on the riverbank, watching the fishermen. They paddled to shore, picked up their little boats, and put them over their heads, walking back home like mushrooms. I was watching them so closely that I didn’t hear Flaxfield approach until it was too late.

  “I didn’t know who he was. He sat down next to me and we watched the boats disappear. I had been crying. The pain was bad that day. He picked up a stone and threw it into the river.

  “‘I can throw further than you,’ he said.

  “I found a good stone, smooth, flat, just the right size for my hand. I skimmed it over the water, watching it bounce far beyond where his had fallen. He took another stone, flicked it, without effort, and it skimmed along over the water, easily outdistancing mine.

  “ ‘See?’ he said.

  “He looked straight at me, into my face. I didn’t know what to think. He didn’t seem uncomfortable like most people. He wasn’t laughing. And, the thing I hated most, he didn’t seem to be sorry for me. I was angry with him for being so much better than I was. I hadn’t had any magic for a long time. Since I got hurt. I was frightened of the magic I had once had, so I left it to die inside me. But I wanted so much to beat him that I roused it. I took another stone. It was heavy, rough, no good at all for skimming. Underneath, the soil clung to it, and where it had been lying tiny creatures scuttled for safety, exposed to the light. I threw it, without really trying, but used magic to keep it above the water. It went far beyond his, splashed clumsily into the river, almost halfway across.

  “ ‘Very good,’ he said.

  “ ‘I win,’ I said.

  “ ‘Ah, no,’ he said. ‘I win. I challenged you to a throwing match. I won that.’

  “I didn’t know what to say. I had hidden the magic, a little. But he knew I had used it. He picked up a stone and flicked it casually. It hovered, then flew over the water gracefully, dipping and soaring. When it reached the point where my last stone had fallen in, it turned into a swallow, bright in the late sun. It flew high, then dipped again and brushed the water’s surface before swooping up and disappearing.

  “ ‘And now I win the magic contest,’ he said.

  “I knew I had done wrong, so my pain came back all the stronger, fed by the shame.

  “ ‘Do you want to do tricks?’ he asked me.

  “I didn’t understand, so I said nothing.

  “ ‘You’re making your magic starve inside you. It will never quite die, but it will be thin and weak, useless except for tricks. You can do tricks if you like,’ he said. ‘But if you want to do real magic, you must be an apprentice. You must learn properly. Which do you want?’

  I told him I had been an apprentice once before, and it had gone wrong.

  “ ‘I know,’ he said.

  “ ‘Being an apprentice made me look like this,’ I told him. ‘Being an apprentice made me hurt all the time.’

  “ ‘I know that, too,’ he said.

  “ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be an apprentice. Not unless it can make me better. Can it?’

  “ ‘Will it make you look different? Will it take away the pain?’ he asked. ‘No. Can it make you different?’ He took another stone. A smooth, gray stone, slender stripes of deeper gray running through it, not quite oval, but almost. ‘How badly does it hurt now?’ he asked.

  “ ‘Very much.’

  “He gave me the stone. ‘Show me,’ he said, ‘if you can just do tricks, or if you can be a wizard.’

  “I didn’t understand.

  “ ‘Hold it. Stop thinking about anything. Just let the stone be itself.’

  “I thought he was mad, but he was interesting. So I did it. I looked down into the stone. I stopped thinking about myself, the way I looked, the pain, the terrible things that had made me like this. And as I held the stone, it seemed to melt into my hands, and my hands seemed to melt into the stone. Then, I stopped being myself at al
l and I was the stone.”

  December looked down at her hands, remembering that evening.

  “What happened?” asked Sam. “Did the pain go away?”

  “The pain never goes away,” she said. “But I learned that it didn’t matter. That the way I looked didn’t matter. So I said yes, I wanted to be an apprentice again. I wanted to be his apprentice.”

  “But you said you weren’t,” said Sam.

  “He wouldn’t accept me,” she said. “Someone else was ready. So I went to them instead.”

  The wolf stood up, turned around, licked Sam’s hand, and sat down again.

  “Flaxfield was good to me,” she said.

  Sam’s eyes filled with tears again. He blew his nose and smoke billowed out of the sides of the handkerchief.

  “Tell us about Flaxfield, Sam,” said Eloise.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just say anything.”

  “I remember one day,” he said. “In his study.”

  Axestone couldn’t stop himself from interrupting.

  “You were in his study?”

  “Yes.”

  “How often?”

  “All the time,” said Sam. “Why?”

  “I have never been in there,” he said.

  “Nor I,” said Eloise.

  They looked at each other and then at Sam.

  “Are you sure?” said Axestone.

  “Yes.”

  “Go on, Sam,” said Flaxfold.

  “I was in his study,” said Sam, “and he let me take a book from the shelves.”

  He told the story of the strange language and his own anger at feeling cheated.

  “He said, ‘Trust what you have chosen. There is a reason. Sometimes it has chosen you,’ ” said Sam.

  “That’s Flaxfield,” said Axestone.

  Sam remembered the old wizard’s face over the book, the bright eyes, the lips that smiled more than they rested, the quick hands. More than anything he remembered Flaxfield’s voice, always helping him, making him feel good about himself. He remembered the way they started to work and then turned it into a game. The way the wizard’s mind darted about like a dragonfly, bright and beautiful.

  “How did you make the dragon?” asked Flaxfold.

  Sam took a plate from the mantelpiece. He dipped his finger into the soot in the fireplace.