Ten Apprentices

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  And I loved my magic.

  “Do you have scissors?” he asked.

  I’d left my nice hair cutting scissors in my apron back at the salon. But I had a fold-up pair in my purse. I took that everywhere with me.

  “Yes,” I said. I got them out.

  “I knew there was something about you,” he said. “You didn’t cut hair because you love cutting hair.”

  “No,” I said. It seemed our conversation had been reduced to this. Statements of things both of us knew already. Monosyllabic answers.

  I didn’t want things to end this way.

  But they were going to end now, regardless of what I did.

  “What happens, afterwards?” Kris asked.

  “After I cut the hair?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hold it and say the words.”

  “Magic words?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then the hair turns into strength. And I take it for myself. Or I give it to her.”

  There was a long pause. “The person who took her hair—”

  “It had to be someone like me,” I said. “Who gets magic from hair.”

  “Someone who doesn’t work in a salon like you do. Where they get hair all the time.”

  “Probably,” I said. I didn’t know.

  “Will she tell me who it is, after?”

  “She might,” I said.

  “Do it, then,” he said. “For Lou.”

  The fold-up scissors were lousy for this kind of job. It took a long time to finish cutting. In the end, I didn’t get it all, but he looked awful. He’d have to go to a salon to get it shaved the rest of the way.

  Not my salon, though.

  “I want to watch it,” he said, when I was finished. He looked at me now.

  I held his hair in my hands.

  It was just as beautiful as it had been before. It felt like power. Heavy. Smooth. Thick.

  I said the words.

  “There really are magic words,” he whispered.

  I ignored him.

  The hair disappeared in my hands.

  “God,” he said.

  Then he waited.

  And I waited.

  To see if I would do it. Give up what he had given me.

  It took a lot of effort. It felt like I was walking through sand. But I reached for his sister. I gave her most of it. Not all.

  He took hold of my hand when I pulled back. “More,” he said.

  I gave her more and pulled back again.

  Her hair was almost to her chin by then.

  “More,” he said again, and held my hand tight.

  I had already given her all that was his. But I gave some of my own.

  Her hair was down to her collarbones. Her eyes were open. She was awake again. Alive.

  He tightened his hold on my hand. It hurt. “More,” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  And I gave more.

  “Kris,” she said.

  He let go of me and looked at her.

  “Kris, you won’t believe what happened.”

  “Trust me,” he said in a low, grim voice. “I will.”

  “My hair,” she said. “It’s back. But that’s impossible.” She chewed at her lower lip. “It couldn’t have been a dream.”

  “It wasn’t a dream. Tell me who,” he said.

  I moved to the door.

  I was cold and wished I’d brought a coat. But that was what always happened when the magic was gone.

  THE TASTE OF STORY

  It’s not in the words of the story. It’s in the taste of the air after one has been told. The heaviness, the loss of the end of a good tale, the laughter and tears shared. Who knows why? It’s there and I’ve learned to be a good storyteller to steal what comes after.

  Maybe you think I might as well be one of those pickpockets who wait til the mark’s distracted and then reach in. Well, what wrong with that, I say. If they don’t even know what they’re missing, what’s wrong with that?

  Who did I learn it from?

  There was an old man who came to our village each month, to tell stories. He always told new ones, no matter how much the little children begged him to tell the same ones as before. And there was a look in his eyes that made me watch him. He was intent, not on the words, but on the reactions of those who listened. He looked like a cat who was sniffing at a bit of meat, trying to decide if it was good enough to eat.

  Then afterwards, he left in a hurry, with his back turned to us.

  I could feel the change in the room, the irritability in the air, the way that parents snapped at children and told them they should have been in bed, lovers who had kissed and sat cuddling before the story, moved away and would not meet each other’s eyes.

  I knew that he had taken something, but I did not know what it was. I sometimes thought he was a thief in truth, and looked to see if there were coins missing, or if anyone checked their purses to see if they had been cut. But I saw nothing, and there were no accusations, even in the morning.

  It was when I was twelve that I realized what it was he was taking.

  And I tried to take it, as well.

  I waited until the climax of the story, when breaths were held and lips clamped down upon. I did not know how to do it, so it was a crude wrestling match. I pulled it to me, and he pulled back.

  He won.

  I felt my ears sting and I groaned.

  A few stared at me, but most did not notice.

  It was his story. He was in charge. He knew just the right moment when to stop talking, to let the ending hang in the air, untold. And to steal then, before there was closure.

  I learned from him, but I learned more from myself, and from doing it wrong.

  No storyteller takes an apprentice.

  We are too greedy, you see.

  When the storyteller realized that I was a threat to him, he came back sooner than before, and made sure that he had control over the magic in the air tightly, so that I had no chance to take from him. I had to make my own opportunities if I wished to try things out. With little girls my own age, or at home with my family. It seemed wrong to take from those who knew me and loved me best, but I could not stop myself from doing it.

  I did discover why he did not tell the same stories again.

  I tired of the taste of those emotions. It was like eating the same food for each meal of the day. Even starving with hard work, I could not bring myself to eat enough of it. And it was so easy to twist an ending here, change a name there, or make a woman false who had been true.

  I changed small things at first, and then big things. A battle lost that was won. A magic sword found that was destroyed. The great wizard who had died, rose from the grave despite the prophecy. And the ring turned to dust on the hand of the hero, when he proved the black depth of his heart.

  My mother wanted me to keep my mouth shut.

  “A man does not want to marry a girl with a mind of her own. He wants a girl who agrees with him, who nods her head and says, ‘yes,’ and gives him babies,” she said. When my father was out of the room.

  When he was in the room, she did mostly as she said a woman should.

  Though sometimes she made faces at him, when his face was turned.

  I did not want the life she had.

  I wanted my own life. My own power.

  But I could not stay where I was.

  The storyteller had his own place here. He was old, but not old enough for me to fight him and win. I was impatient. I did not want to wait until I was an old woman to feed as he did.

  So I would have to go elsewhere.

  I packed up a few things. A blanket, a change of clothes, and some food. I did not feel hungry after I took magic, but I had stumbled out once into the snow, and would have to find a village to take magic from soon.

  It had to be a very small village, one the old man had decided it was not worth his while. And it would have to be far away, not on his cir
cuit.

  I missed my mother terribly the first night.

  I slept in a hollowed out tree, under the stars. It was cold, but I had my blanket. I sang myself to sleep, but it was a waste of energy. I could not give magic to myself.

  The next night, it was colder still. It was not close to winter, but it was one of those spells that came and went at the end of summer.

  On the third day, I saw a farmhouse ahead.

  I would have been content to tell my stories to the cows in the field, if I had to. There was magic to be taken from them, as well, if you stroked ears and under chins. They did not care much for the meaning of the words, only the sounds. And the magic itself tasted strange, like the flavor of rat meat. With a bitter undertaste, and it seemed wrong in some way.

  But I could live on it.

  I had not thought I would come to the end of my stomach so quickly.

  But then I saw the farmhouse clear, and knew the old man had not been here. That was in the air, too. A freshness and abundance that came from stories that had not been taken from the air, but lingered.

  I hallooed at the door, as was the custom in the country. The storyteller never did this. He always knocked, and waited patiently to be answered, like a noble—or the king himself. And there was bowing and scraping as he was ushered in.

  A boy of ten opened the door. He looked at me with suspicious green eyes. “Who’re you?” he asked.

  “Zara,” I said.

  He looked back behind the door and listened to a voice there, older than his. Then he turned back to me to relay the same words. “Whaddaya want?”

  I held up my hands. “Just a room for the night, and some food, if you have some to spare.”

  “Why should we?” he asked, this time without prompting.

  I held out one of the three coins I had saved for this journey. The smallest one, all of copper.

  But his eyes went round over it nonetheless, and he pulled the door wide, his hand outstretched.

  The woman behind him snatched it out of his hands and put it into her mouth to bite it. She took it back out and nodded. “We don’ have much,” she said. “But ye can have what we’ve got.”

  I nodded. “That’s good enough.”

  “Ye can sleep by the fire. We’ve no blankets to spare. And you’ll have to stoke it yerself.” She had put the coin into her pocket by now, and had no intention of getting it back out if I decided she was not offering me a bargain and went on to the next house. Not that I knew there was one, anywhere nears.

  “That’ll be fine,” I said. I listened carefully to the sound of her accent. She was not from here, and her son spoke as she did. I could use their voices in my own stories, make them sound more authentic, more exotic. Or more humorous, if I put it to that effect.

  But what story should I tell them? What would get me the most from their desperation? It would have to be a long tale, one with many twists and turns. They would not be impressed with trials unless far beyond their own.

  The storyteller no doubt could have done this with ease.

  It hurt my brain to think of it, however.

  “I’ll bring out the soup in a bit,” said the mother. She ducked away from me and I saw her limp then. She dragged her foot across the floor, and pulled the boy with her. She cuffed him when he poked his head back towards me.

  “Manners,” she said.

  It made me smile, but only once she was gone. That she would care about her son showing manners, in such conditions as these. Who was she, truly? And why was she here, like this?

  Where were the servants that should have been drawn to a prosperous farmhouse? Where was her husband—the boy’s father? Where was her mother, who as tradition had it in our world, went with her eldest daughter on her marriage, to make her household easy and secure with her knowledge?

  I sat by the fire.

  There was no chair to be had, nor even a crude stool.

  It looked to me like the wood in the grate might be remnants of furniture, but if so, it was not worth much. It had been rotted through, and I could see the rust on the nail beds.

  I clutched my arms around my knees and thought of my favorite stories.

  The girl who discovers that she is of noble blood. Or the boy who learns he is a bastard prince.

  Would either play here?

  What of the great war? The storyteller used variations on that time and again. Brother against brother, father against son.

  The story of magic discovered in a stone on the path to the well. A fairy pleased and eager to give a reward.

  No. They would not believe in magic here, not of that kind. Dark magic, perhaps, but it would frighten them, and I did not want to take fear in on my first time. I needed something easier to go down, to keep it firmly down.

  I had paid them a coin, I told myself. It was fair that I get more in return than sleeping by the fire and a bit of food. And they had nothing else to give.

  What did they care if I took a little of their thoughts, their hopes, their desires? They did not have anything else, so they must have those in plenty.

  The fire was not as warm as it might have been. I reached to put on another piece of wood, but the door opened.

  “Stop it!” called the woman’s harsh tones.

  I let go of the wood.

  “Can ye not see we’ve none to spare?”

  “It will be cold tonight,” I commented.

  She shrugged and handed me a bowl of soup. The bowl itself was chipped porcelain that had likely never been good. Shoddy workmanship, and worse painting. The soup itself was thin with bits of what looked like no more than weeds swimming in it.

  “Herb soup,” she said, hands on hips as if to challenge me to say it was anything else.

  I lifted the bowl to my lips, for she had brought me no spoon.

  In fact, it tasted better than I expected. It tasted delicious. “Mmmm,” I said.

  “Ye like it?” the woman asked.

  She was starved of compliments. It told me something about her, but not enough. What did she need? More food, obviously. More fuel.

  But those were physical needs, and stories were made to touch other needs. The heart, and the soul.

  “You cook better than my mother, and she worked for an inn before she married my father,” I said. It was an utter fabrication, the beginnings of a story that might or might not have an ending here tonight.

  But the woman did not seem interested in my mother. “I only do what I can,” she said, and slipped back out.

  The boy came in, as soon as she had gone.

  He stared at me, and then at my mouth. And at the bowl.

  I had the sick feeling that I had eaten his supper.

  But the woman had said they had enough to share. After I had shown her a coin.

  How often had this boy gone without food, for promise of something better on the morrow?

  “Ye gonna lick it clean?” he asked, after glancing back towards the kitchen to make sure his mother did not hear him. He spoke softly, with a hint of a kitten’s purr.

  I handed him the bowl and in a moment, it was clean. There was not a bit of the soup on his face. He had some skill at this.

  He handed the bowl back to me. So his mother would not know.

  But now I wondered—was she his mother? I had taken them as a pair to begin with, for they both had hair dark with dirt. But her features were coarser than his. His eyes were bright with intelligence, and though he spoke as she did, there was a lilt to it.

  “Can I put my back to your’n?” he asked, slowly scooting his body towards the fire. When it lit his face, he looked older than he had seemed at first.

  “If you like,” I said.

  But the woman came in and scolded him for it. She yanked him away from me, and said I was the guest and he was to give me the fire.

  “Can I tell you a story?” I asked then, as she and the boy stood back halfway between the fire and the kitchen door. I spoke to the fire rather than directly to them, a
s if I were speaking to a stray dog, trying to get him to take a scrap from my hand. Holding it out without looking him in the eye or challenging his place.

  “What kind of story?” asked the boy.

  “Manners,” the woman said.

  The boy made a sound of pain, but I did not know if she struck him or twisted his ear.

  “A story of true love,” I said, my mouth dry.

  The woman gave a hoot. It was not an encouraging sound.

  “Or a story of honor defended, whichever you choose,” I added quickly.

  “Honor defended, then,” said the boy.

  “Stories,” said the woman derisively. “As if they’ve ever made a difference to the world.”

  I was stung, but I tried not to show it. How would you like it if you were told that boots were of no importance, that no king had ever had need of an apothecary, that a woman needed a physician rather than a midwife?

  I began the story by setting the mood. I told of the weather, the portents, the prophecies.

  The boy snored.

  “Good night to ye, then,” said the woman. “I’ve need of my sleep, and without talk, if ye don’ mind.”

  “Wait. Let me tell more. I’ll go on to the battle. He will like the battle scene, will he not?” I made a slashing motion with my hand, as if there were a sword in it, and then made the sound of steel on steel, and then of a death cry.

  A loud one.

  The boy stirred, snorted, and sat up.

  “But it was not finished,” I said. “For he was only the Duke’s man, and not the one who had dishonored his beloved with his own hands.”

  “Dishonored?” said the boy, eyes bright.

  I flushed.

  “None of that talk. We’re good folks here, and proper,” said the woman. Though it was an odd sort of proper.

  “Dishonored by insults,” I amended. This storytelling was more difficult than I had thought, when I had practiced it in my own bedchambers. When an audience was listening, the story changed in ways you could not anticipate in advance. I had thought the storyteller had his stories all set in advance. Did his change as much as mine had? Or did he have ways of pulling his listeners back on track?

  “Eh, go on then,” said the woman.

  I licked my lips and tasted the air in the room. It was faint yet. Only two of them, and the boy had just woken from sleep. A dreamless sleep, apparently, or there would have been more flavor in it.