by B. T. Narro
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I’d gotten to know the neighboring boys in the four years I’d spent in Cessri, but only Eizle was nice to me. I was eight years old, stick-thin and with bright blond hair that has since dulled. I wasn’t skilled at wrestling or banter. I found no enjoyment in being cruel to others. I knew nothing about girls. In those boys’ eyes, I was no man.
Eizle excelled in every instance I failed. He was thin but wiry, a natural wrestler. He could talk his way out of any situation and even bring out a belly laugh from the boy inciting him to do something stupid, one of my least favorite ways our “friends” liked to pass time.
It wasn’t long before Eizle and I were spending more time with each other and less with the other boys. The only drawback was I had to endure his older brother by nine years. I kept expecting Swenn to change. Eizle’s whole family was kindhearted, humorous, thoughtful, but Swenn was just vile…constantly, and when he wasn’t, he was deceitful. This I knew now but not as much at the time.
For years, Eizle and I played by the river a mile east of town. Sometimes my mother would come to watch over us. Other times it would be one of Eizle’s family members. I liked it best when his sister was the one looking after us. She was Swenn’s twin, but she couldn’t have been more different. She was kind, letting us get away with far more than either of our parents would. I still could recall how she liked to wet her hair and sit in the sun as it glistened.
When none of them were free to take us, Eizle’s mother would make Swenn go. He would mutter curses, get rough with us—even holding my head underwater once. The cruel young man seemed inhumanly strong against us. It didn’t help that when Eizle and I were seven, Swenn was sixteen, my age now. I couldn’t imagine brutalizing a seven-year-old boy like he had.
He tricked us once into standing beneath a hornets’ nest and closing our eyes, claiming we’d get a surprise. Then he picked up a rock and threw it, hitting the nest hard enough for it to fall just beside us. When Eizle’s mother saw the stings, Swenn told her Eizle had thrown the rock. We knew not to tell the truth, otherwise hornet stings would be the least of our troubles.
By the time we were eight years old, my last year in Cessri, Eizle and I had earned the trust of our parents to play by the river without supervision. And what immediately followed, I did not tell Aunt Nann, because this was when Eizle and I both learned about pyforial energy.
We’d heard there were mages who could move things with an illegal energy. Being young boys, we naturally wanted to try it. We found small rocks by the river, threw them in the air, and attempted to use our minds to catch them. I could say now that it was utterly hopeless, but at the time we thought we actually were moving them with py. When they flipped awkwardly, when they seemed to stay in the air longer than they should, when they hit something hard and bounced back up, it wasn’t just our imagination. It was our will.
Everything changed when Swenn found out what we thought we could do. He went with us to the river to watch us use the illegal energy, only to laugh and tease us when he didn’t see the same minor movements we did.
“I knew you idiots couldn’t be pyforial mages,” he taunted.
“Let’s see you grab a stone, then.” Eizle handed him a pebble.
“I wouldn’t, fool. It’s illegal.”
“Because you can’t.”
“If that’s what you think, fine. I won’t tell you how to do it.” Swenn turned, starting back toward the city.
“Wait,” I said. “You can really use pyforial energy?”
“Why should I tell you when you’ll just report me?”
“I won’t!” I looked at Eizle. “We won’t, right?”
“We won’t. We promise,” Eizle agreed.
Swenn shook his head. “I’m not going to do it in front of you, but I will tell you how to do it if you pay me.” Swenn was obsessed with money, always finding ways to squeeze it out of people, even children. “The information is valuable. I’m going to need a ruff for it.”
“Then you’ll tell us how to be pyforial mages?”
“Only if you can keep it secret. Even Mother can’t know.”
I looked at Eizle. I could see in his eyes that he didn’t want to get involved with his brother. I didn’t either, but this was manipulating pyforial energy!
“Who else could help us learn it when just teaching it is illegal?” I argued.
Eizle frowned. “Fine.” He turned to Swenn. “We’ll each give you five pits when we get back home.”
“Sit and stay quiet, and remember that I’ll break your arm if you ever talk to anyone about this.” He glared at us, causing my heart to pound against my chest. He wasn’t one to make threats without following through.
“Which arm?” I asked stupidly.
“Your right. Understand?”
I nodded.
“First you idiots need to know that you can’t move the rocks with your mind. No one can do that, so don’t waste your time trying. A pyforial mage grabs the object with pyforial energy and then moves the energy, not the object itself. If I wanted to lift a pebble from the ground, I would wrap py energy around it tightly enough to hold it.” He lifted his arm, pointing his fingers at a stone between us. “Then I would lift the energy, and it would lift the pebble.”
Eizle and I gawked at the stone, waiting for it to rise.
“Do it,” Eizle said after nothing happened.
Swenn punched him in the shoulder. Eizle stumbled back a step, grabbing his shoulder and grunting. Swenn looked as if he was going to hit him again.
“I told you…”
I thought of a question to distract Swenn. “Why is it illegal?”
“What?” Now he looked as if he wanted to hit me.
I took a step back. “Why is using pyforial energy illegal?”
“Are you too dumb to see that it’s dangerous?” He had a wry smile like he always did when he belittled me. “If I can squeeze the energy around a rock tight enough to keep it floating, then I can squeeze the energy around your neck.” His tone made it sound like it was something he craved. “It’s a weapon. It’s the weapon. Nothing is stronger than a pyforial mage.”
“But other mages can cast fire,” Eizle argued, still holding his shoulder.
“Not in secret. Those mages need wands. Their spells cause bright flashes. But if I choked someone with py energy, no one would know it was me. It’s the same reason poison is illegal but bows and swords are not. Being able to hide this deadly force is what’s most powerful about it.”
“I don’t want to choke anyone,” Eizle pointed out. “I just want to lift things.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“Teach us.”
“I said I’d tell you what you need to know so you could learn it. I didn’t say I’d teach you. Two hells, I doubt I even could teach you idiots.”
At that point, I just wanted to see a spell in action. “If you’re really a pyforial mage, you’ll show us you can at least lift a pebble.”
Swenn bent and picked up not a pebble, but a rock. He placed it in his palm and stared at it. I waited with excitement to see it rise into the air.
With a quick jerk, Swenn threw the rock at me. It hit me in the stomach hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs. I fell, gasping and crying while he laughed.
Eizle crouched beside me. “Are you all right?”
When my breath came back and my tears stopped, I nodded.
“Want to see me lift another rock?” Swenn taunted.
“No,” Eizle answered for me.
After Swenn’s explanation, I realized I’d never been close to actually lifting a pebble. I felt no connection to this invisible energy. Thinking back, if I’d never heard of pyforial energy until the present day, I would’ve assumed it was a myth. But I never thought that way when I was young. Little boys want to believe in magic so desperately that not even their parents can convince them otherwise. If asked, a boy might tell you he knows magic isn’t real, but deep down he never sto
ps believing in the chance that everyone’s wrong. Sometimes I missed this feeling, that the myths of this world were mine to explore.
I couldn’t remember the last time I was as determined as Eizle and I were to lift a pebble, even after our uninspiring conversation with Swenn. For days, Eizle and I still threw pebbles in the air, trying to catch them with no success. Eventually, I came to the idea that catching a pebble with py energy was too difficult for us. We needed to start with something easier.
I sat and tried to use this energy I knew nothing about to move the dirt. I could do so with my breath, so I knew I didn’t need much force. Eizle sat beside me.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I swayed my hand over the dirt, trying to tell the energy to move it. “I can’t feel the energy. Can you?”
“I think I can.”
We sat there for maybe an hour swaying our hands back and forth.
“I did it!” Eizle shouted, jumping to his feet. “I did it! Did you see?”
“I didn’t.” I was mad with jealousy. “Let me see you do it again.”
He sat and focused. He moved his right hand over the ground. Nothing happened.
“Wait,” he said.
He tried again. Nothing happened.
“Wait!”
Again nothing happened.
“I swear I did it!”
“What does the energy feel like?” I asked, part of me thinking his answer would be nothing but a lie.
He didn’t answer, too determined to move the dirt as he swung his hand back and forth. Soon he grunted in annoyance and brushed the dirt with his hand.
“I did it earlier. I saw it move.”
“Without touching it?”
“Yes!” He must’ve realized I didn’t believe him. “I’m going to do it again. Just wait.”
I held out my hand to halt him. Sometimes Eizle needed to stop what he was doing just to hear me. “What does the energy feel like?” I asked again.
He bit his lip as he thought. “Like I’m moving the wind.”
All right, I thought, moving the wind. I can do that. But as I closed my eyes, I realized I had no idea what moving the wind should feel like. I could feel the wind, and I could try to move it. But that would be no different than feeling the ground beneath my feet and trying to move that. Eizle was never quite adept at describing things he was naturally good at. I asked him once to explain how to be a good wrestler, and the first thing he did was throw me to the ground.
Nowadays, I knew what manipulating py felt like, and I could say with confidence that it wasn’t like moving the wind. No one could do that, so how would we know what it felt like? Manipulating pyforial energy was like turning a crank in order to lift something heavy. The less energy we controlled, the more it felt like we were spinning the crank with no resistance. Of course, the opposite was true as well. To lift another person with pyforial energy would feel not much different than doing so with my arms, legs, and back, yet all the strain would be on my mind.
It wasn’t that I’d ever lifted another person with py, but I had lifted slabs of wood heavier than any man. It was exhausting. My breathing became labored, and my heart slammed against my chest. It wasn’t that different from a wrestling match, for pyforial mages wrestled the energy into submission, bending it to their will when it wanted to be free.
The next day, Eizle proved he really could move the dirt with a gust of pyforial energy. He showed me again and again. By the end of the day, he was trying to catch a pebble with no success.
It took me another week, but I finally got the dirt to move. Mixed with utter satisfaction was anger toward Eizle. “It doesn’t feel anything like moving the wind!” I complained.
He shrugged. “Does to me.”
I sat there on the ground and focused on wrapping the py energy around pebbles so I could lift them. But I couldn’t do it. Day after day I sat there, my back aching.
Once Eizle became frustrated trying to catch the pebbles without success, he sat beside me and started trying to lift one. By the end of the day, he’d done it.
“What should I do next?” he asked.
“After I lift a pebble, I was going to start letting it drop and then catching it.”
“Good idea.”
We went on like that for weeks, Eizle always one step ahead of me. The study of the energy consumed us. We went to the river every evening to practice, staying until it was almost too dark to get home safely. So we started bringing a lamp. We promised each other we wouldn’t use the energy except by the river, and we would never tell anyone.
“I think Swenn was lying,” I said. “I doubt he’s a pyforial mage.”
“I doubt so, too.”
“Don’t tell him, though.”
“I won’t.”
If it were anyone else, I would’ve been worried. But Eizle could keep a secret just as well as I could. Months went by, and eventually we could toss pebbles and catch them as we’d dreamed of doing.
One evening, Swenn came with Eizle to the river.
“Why did you bring him?” I complained.
“He made me.”
Swenn folded his arms. “Let’s see you do it.”
“You first,” Eizle countered. “Lift a pebble.”
I wanted to shout at my friend. This could ruin everything. At the same time, I wanted to show Swenn what we could do, just to see the look on his face. Conflicted, I remained silent.
“You’re so stupid,” Swenn said. “Why would I go first when I have nothing to prove? I don’t believe you can do it. Show me.”
Eizle nudged a small rock with his foot, making sure it wasn’t stuck to the dirt. The stone was about the size of his palm. He sucked in a breath, then extended his hand. Eizle may have been better at using the energy than I was, but he had trouble doing so without moving his hands, mimicking the motion he wanted the energy to take. For me, it helped but wasn’t necessary.
The stone rose into the air awkwardly, like one of those giant bugs too large to fly straight. I watched Swenn’s eyes bulge. Sweet satisfaction—that liar!
Eizle let the stone drop and turned to his brother. “Now you.”
For once, it seemed as if Swenn had no retort. He looked at me with his mouth agape. “You can do it, too?”
I looked at the same stone. It jiggled on the ground as I got py energy around it, then it shook as it came off the ground. I couldn’t get it as high as Eizle before it slipped from my grasp and fell, but it was certainly better than Swenn could do—which was nothing.
“Teach me,” he stated calmly.
“I knew you were lying!” I yelled.
He scowled and started toward me. “You’ll teach me or you’ll be thrown in prison for the rest of your life when I tell the guards.”
“You’re the one who taught us.” Eizle had a snide grin. “You’d be put in prison as well.”
“How can I teach you when I don’t know how to do it?” Swenn asked rhetorically, malice thick in his tone. It was the same voice I’d heard many times just before he got violent. I began to worry, all satisfaction gone. “Teach me,” he demanded. “Now.”
I saw Eizle grow nervous, too. This was suddenly serious.
“Swenn,” I said, trying to reason with him. “We learned from what you told us.” Truthfully, I didn’t want him to learn. I’d never seen him do one good thing for anyone without expecting something in return, so what would he use the energy for?
“Damn idiots, give me the rock.”
Eizle put it on the ground by his brother’s feet. “You might want to start with making the dirt move.”
Swenn shoved him. “If you can move the damn rock, then I should be able to easily.”
His face contorted while he stared at it. Swenn reached out, his hand shaking, a high-pitched noise escaping from his throat.
Laughter threatened to come up from my stomach as his face became red. I covered my mouth. Please don’t laugh. Please don’t laugh.
Then
Swenn farted, and I couldn’t contain it after that. Eizle and I burst out laughing at the same time.
Swenn cursed and charged us. He tackled his brother. As they wrestled, Swenn hit him in the stomach. Eizle screamed for him to stop, trying to use his knees to get him off. But Swenn was twice our age and our weight. Even with me helping, I couldn’t get Swenn to stop. He struck Eizle in the face next. Blood smeared across his upper lip. I grabbed the biggest rock I could find nearby and slammed it into Swenn’s back. He yelped, jumped off Eizle, and started toward me.
I turned and ran, but I only made it a few steps before he grabbed my arm. He spun me around and grasped me by the throat. I couldn’t breathe. I was going to die.
“I could kill you both right now!”
Gods, I really was going to die!
Something collided into Swenn from behind so that he fell on top of me. When I heard Eizle shouting, I knew it had to be him.
Gasping for breath, I had trouble doing anything as the brothers rolled around on top of me.
“Leave us alone!” Eizle yelled, a line often said but never effective.
I was still terrified that Swenn actually would kill us. I screamed for help, hoping someone would hear.
“Shut your mouth!” Swenn threw dirt at my face. Some went down my throat, causing me to cough. Everything stopped soon after. Swenn had his hands on Eizle, but just to hold him against the ground.
Eizle wiped blood from his face. “How are we going to explain this to Mother?”
Swenn let out his breath and plopped onto his rear. Eizle sat up, the three of us breathing heavily.
“How in two hells have idiots figured out how to use py energy?” Swenn muttered to himself, clearly not a question he expected us to answer. A surge of anger ran through him as he grunted and grabbed a handful of dirt. He threw it in Eizle’s face as he stood. “Clean up in the river. Mother will never know.” Cursing, he trudged off.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was after this event that Swenn started teasing me about my father. I shared that memory now with Aunt Nann, reminding her of the things the bully used to say. “No wonder you don’t know how to wrestle, because you don’t have a father. You’re going to grow up to be a woman. No girl will want to kiss a woman. You’d better hope your father comes to Cessri soon, or it’ll be too late for you. You’ll never learn how to be a man.”
