A Boy Without Magic

by Guy Antibes

  “Like what old men and women use to read?” Sam said.

  Harrison smiled. “And young men who can’t see if a person is dressed or not? I’ll find out where the glass craftsman is and see if he can put the same coating on a pair of spectacles. Don’t tell others about this. Few people in Oak Basin know you can’t see pollen. Let’s keep it that way.”

  Sam took a few deep breaths to calm down. “You said the coating was gold?”

  “Gold appears to be your friend, Sam.”

  “I’ll say. This may change my life.”

  Harrison sighed. “How?”

  “I can see pollen, that’s how,” Sam said.

  “Can you manipulate it?”

  Sam frowned. “No…I see what you mean. I guess I got a bit excited.”

  “And you should be. It will literally change your outlook on life,” Harrison said. “Hopefully, gold-coated spectacles can facilitate.”

  “At least I can act more normally,” Sam said.

  “You can. Let’s eat first, and then we will take a stroll through the evening part of the market and find some treats.”

  ~

  Harrison worked in the morning, leaving Sam to care for Emmy, who hadn’t returned to normal.

  “Make sure you refill Emmy’s water bowl,” Harrison said. “I found out where the glass crafter’s shop is located.”

  Sam did as Harrison suggested and walked back to the same area where Hiron Smith worked metal.

  They didn’t quite go as far as the smithy before Harrison led Sam down an alleyway to a court lined with a few open-air shops. Sam could tell why they were open air. The smells were potent, but he could feel a breeze take some of the odors away towards the wall that encircled the village.

  “The glassmaker?” Harrison asked a woman making pots underneath a slate roof. A line of odd-shaped ovens emitted smells of their own behind her.

  “Over there,” she said, pointing to the door of the only enclosed building in the court.

  Sam walked in first. “Hello?” he called.

  A tall, burly, bearded man walked out. He looked more like his father than a glassmaker, but Sam didn’t know how glass was made. He hadn’t expected such a large person.

  “Can I help you?” the man said, wiping his hands with something pollen-made that Sam couldn’t see.

  “Did you make the window panes for The Golden Goddess?”

  The man nodded. “I did. The owner paid me extra, so I wouldn’t duplicate the look in Oak Basin.”

  “I’m not looking for a window. This boy has a disability.”

  The glassmaker eyed Sam. “Looks fit enough to me,” he said with a smile that could have easily been a smirk.

  “He can’t see pollen. The boy was struck by lightning when a toddler. We had dinner last night at The Golden Goddess, and when he looked through your windows, he could see pollen veils. We wondered if you could fashion spectacles for him with plain glass using the same coating.”

  “I don’t have the molds for spectacle lenses, but if it’s plain glass, I can fashion something.” He looked at Sam. “You’ll need frames, but I suppose they can’t be pollen frames, since if you set them down in the wrong place, you wouldn’t be able to find them, right? I could put those together in a quarter hour.”

  “If you paint the frames, I’ll be okay,” Sam said. “I can’t see pollen made with colors, but I can see paint and dirt well enough.”

  “Wait a moment.” The man went back into his shop for a bit and returned with a foot-square piece of glass. “This was a rejected from the restaurant. Can you see pollen?”

  Sam looked through the glass and spotted a pollen rag wadded up on a counter that he hadn’t seen before. “I can.”

  “Buy me dinner tonight at the Golden Goddess, and I’ll make you three sets with painted pollen frames.”

  Sam’s face fell. “We already have a dinner engagement.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  Harrison nodded. “We will be available tomorrow night. What time do you close up?”

  “Seven after noon will work. I’ll see you then. The name is Link Cackle. I come from a long line of chicken farmers, and you won’t see me ordering any at the Golden Goddess.”

  “I am Sam Smith, and this is Harrison Dimple. He is a visiting healer.”

  The glassmaker shook their hands. “Glad to meet you both.”

  For as big as the man was, Sam was happy to find he was amiable. What he had thought might be a smirk was just the man’s good nature coming through.

  When they left the glassmaker, Sam wanted to dance along the alley that led to the crafter’s court. To think he would solve part of his problem, as Harrison was right to point out.

  “I’ll pay for dinner tomorrow,” Sam said.

  Harrison chuckled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  ~

  Emmy perked up when they returned to their room. Sam gave her three sausages that he had bought at the market before they headed to the inn. All in all, the visit was turning out very well, despite the thieving couple’s abuse of Emmy.

  “Should we take her to Hiron’s house?”

  “Not if they have a new baby,” Harrison said.

  “Then I’ll take her out tomorrow when I’m doing some snooping.”

  “It will do her good. I have a full day tomorrow, anyway.”

  Sam led Emmy out of their room and through the back door to the stable to check on their wagon and the horses. Everything seemed to be in order, but he spotted the drug dealer hanging around the stable, waiting again. He fetched Harrison who followed Sam to the wagon.

  “He’s still there,” Sam said.

  “I can see that. Can you recognize the drug dealer if you see him again?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Then you watch him, and I’ll saunter over to the village council building and wait for him to show up after he makes his delivery. Don’t try anything. You don’t even have your wand to defend yourself,” Harrison said.

  Emmy sat watching Sam rummage around in their wagon. He inspected the contents a few times. Most of what sat in the back was herbs in loose pollen bags that Harrison had made to enhance drying. He was doing some more rearranging when a woman stepped into the stableyard to confer with the drug seller. Sam kept his head down as he observed the exchange. The seller watched the woman leave and then left the stableyard in the same direction as he had before, towards the council building.

  Emmy smiled. She looked happy and recovered from her poisoning, so they strolled through the remnants of the market. A few sellers had kept their stalls open, but now it looked like even they were beginning to knock their stalls down. Sam noticed Harrison strolling through the activity, walking towards him.

  “Emmy is easier to spot than you are,” Harrison said.

  “Our drug dealer is a clerk dealing with property recording. He doesn’t seem to be particularly well-liked. At least I have a name for Chief Constable Bentwick. When we get back from dinner tonight, we will compose the report together, since you have seen two exchanges.”

  “A woman this time,” Sam said.

  Sam procured a few more scraps from the kitchen. Now that the merchants were leaving, the scraps from the last few days were even cheaper. With Emmy taken care of, Harrison and Sam strolled through the streets on a pleasant evening. The weather was warm, but not hot, and people seemed at ease.

  Harrison had been to the Smith house before.

  “Hiron moved here because his wife’s father lives in Oak Basin. The father is an ex-miner. There are lots of them in the mountain villages as you have already discovered.”

  They reached the blacksmith’s house in the new part of the village. Harrison knocked on the door. Sam had to stifle a comment when he recognized the woman at the door as the person who had purchased drugs that afternoon. He wanted to tell Harrison, but he fidgeted as they walked into the house.

  “A little colic,” Harrison said, sniffing a sourish smell in the air.


  “We plan on eating outside in the back since it’s such a nice evening,” Hiron said. “This is my wife, Pensie.”

  “We’ve met once before,” Harrison said. “Two years ago at the smithy. You probably don’t remember me.”

  “You do look familiar,” Pensie said with a beaming smile.

  For a woman on drugs, Hiron’s wife looked very pert and happy.

  “I think I might have seen you in town this afternoon,” Sam said. He mentioned the name of their inn.

  “I did pass the market square today,” she said, blushing. “You have a good memory, young man.” Her smile was a little more forced.

  Harrison gave Sam an inscrutable look but chuckled. “Sam has many hidden talents. He continues to surprise me.”

  “Dinner is about done,” Pensie said. “I’m putting our baby to bed if you’d like to see him first.”

  Harrison and Sam followed her to a small dining room where the baby sat up in a metal crib. “Hiron has missed his calling. He could make a lot of money making decorative baby furniture,” Harrison said.

  “Not really,” the blacksmith said from the doorway. “Only I can move the darn thing.”

  Sam played with the baby for a few moments. He looked well-fed and happy. He was sure the woman had bought the drugs, but there were no signs of drug use in the house. Sam set aside his doubts and followed the two men outside to a wooden table with decorative iron legs and wrought-iron chairs.

  “We like it out here,” Hiron said, pointing out the greenery in their garden. Flowers bloomed, and Sam thought it was very pleasant. “Pensie’s father used to visit us and putter around, but he’s been under the weather, lately.”

  Now Sam knew who Pensie bought the drugs for. That meant if the same concoction that took the life of the miner in Horner’s Rest would result in the death of Hiron’s father-in-law.

  “I need a little help,” Pensie said from the door.

  Hiron grinned. “I also need to pour some ale.” He followed his wife into the house.

  Harrison looked grim. “She was the woman?”

  Sam nodded. “There aren’t any drugs here. I am sure she got them for her father.”

  Harrison’s expression didn’t change. “If so, I need to see the man.”

  Sam jumped up and went inside. “Can I help?” he said.

  “Sure!” Pensie said. She gave him an armload of plates and flatware that Hiron must have made.

  Soon they sat in the evening dusk eating in Hiron’s garden. Sam let the conversation between the two friends flow around him. Pensie leaned against her husband, following along and asking questions to see if she knew some of the people they talked about. She actually did, growing up with her mother in Baskin.

  The conversation flagged a bit, so Hiron jumped up and returned with Sam’s knife and wand in a pollen sack. Sam was used to seeing things that seemed to float in the air.

  “First the wand,” the blacksmith said. “I had to make a clay mold. Pollen won’t work, for obvious reasons, and then I recast the gold to make the point more of a point. Unscrew the tip.”

  Sam took the point that looked more like a multi-sided arrowhead and unscrewed it. “That is much easier.”

  “Gold is soft enough that it will grab the threads, so you have to be careful not to tighten it too much.”

  “I understand,” Sam said, as he screwed the tip on and off. He looked in his pouch and found one fewer tip. “You used one to make these bigger?”

  “And stronger. A round tip isn’t as strong as one with defined edges.”

  “I’ll be able to see if they are worn down easier, too.”

  Hiron grinned. “Smart lad. It looked like there were five tips made of about a golden lion and a half. Now they are roughly equivalent to two lions. I weighed them, should you run into hard times and need to use one for money.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  The blacksmith handed Sam’s knife to Harrison. The blade was polished to a bright finish, but the healer looked at the metal knob at the hilt. He turned to the side and played with the blade in much the same way he had when Sam first showed it to Harrison.

  “Much better. Sam doesn’t appreciate the change now, but he will when he learns to use this properly.”

  “Training him to be a soldier?”

  Harrison shook his head. “No. Not having magic puts him at a disadvantage in the field. Pollen has too many good uses for a soldier. He might find another line of work that requires him to know his way around weapons.”

  “A brigand? That would seem counterproductive, Dimple.”

  “No. We will see. He has taken well enough to the sword for a fourteen-year-old. It’s a start. This will help him. I’ll teach him how to keep it sharp.”

  “You do know how to do that, ‘healer.’ I still know my old trade well enough, and I’m sure you do, too.”

  “Well enough,” Harrison said, smiling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ~

  “C OME WITH ME TO PENSIE’S FATHER’S COTTAGE. It is outside the village,” Harrison said right after breakfast in the common room. “You can bring Emmy.”

  “I had to get the location from Hiron,” Harrison said, once they began their walk through the town. “He said Pensie is sensitive about her father’s illness.”

  “I suppose she would be if she’s buying him the ingredients to that potion.”

  They continued up the slope on the other side from the new part of the village and found two rows of ten miner’s cottages facing a rock-lined stream that flowed through the middle of the road. Small stone bridges forded the tiny waterway between the two rows. The structures looked like they had been there for a long time.

  “His is the fourth one on the left.” Harrison walked up to the door and knocked.

  They heard someone clunking on the wooden floor. A sickly-looking man with white hair and a grizzled face stared up at Harrison.

  “Why are you at my door?” the man said with narrowed eyes.

  Harrison’s face brightened up with crinkling eyes and a smile. “I’m a visiting healer, and I decided to visit you and your friends today.”

  “Most of them are dead, and I’ll soon be,” the man said.

  The potion’s effect didn’t make Pensie’s father any less cranky, Sam thought.

  “Do you have family in Oak Basin?”

  “Most of us do, or did,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t you like to be around them for a bit longer?”

  “Of course. Can you help me there?”

  “Let me come in and check you out.”

  The man looked at Harrison suspiciously.

  “If you don’t trust me, I’m a friend of Hiron’s from army days. He made weapons, and I fixed up the injuries his weapons wrought.”

  “Come to think of it, he did mention a healer he was friends with. You can look me over. Leave the dog outside.”

  Sam tied Emmy’s leash to a hitching post outside the cottage.

  “Hiron said you lived your life around Oak Basin and did some mining,” Harrison said as he put his medicinal bag on the man’s table.

  “I used to live in Shovel Vale until the mines began to shut down. Then I moved here.”

  Pensie’s father appeared as far gone as the ex-miner who ran away at Horner’s Rest. Sam looked about the place and spotted a bag that looked similar to the one Pensie exchanged for cash with the village clerk.

  When Harrison had the man cough, Sam snatched a pinch of the herbs inside and put them in his shirt pocket.

  “Have you been taking anything for that cough?”

  “Some herbs that a friend suggested I use.”

  Harrison looked concerned, and Sam didn’t think his friend was play-acting.

  “How long have you been taking them?”

  “A few months,” he said. “They make me feel good and then when I stop them, I don’t.”

  “Do you have any around? I might be able to suggest something that won’t make you co
ugh so much.”

  “I really like the potion though. Do you think it’s doing some harm?”

  “A smell test should do the trick.”

  “No,” the man shook his head. “They aren’t from a healer, and they are hard to get. You can leave well enough alone. How much longer do I have?”

  “If you make a large potion and drink it all, you could die from it, I think,” Harrison said.

  “Then I’ll make sure I take smaller doses. I think that’s it for now. I don’t have a wasting sickness or anything?”

  “No, just a poor reaction from your potion. Your mind might like it, but your body doesn’t. When the feel-good from the potion wears off, you just want to lay around and sleep all day, right?”

  The man nodded.

  “Who is your friend?”

  The old man looked away. “He is a civil servant; that’s all I’ll say.”

  Harrison forced a smile. “Did any of your friends take the same stuff?”

  “Oh, that. We all take it up here.”

  “Does your civil servant friend bring the herbs for the potion up here?”

  Pensie’s father shook his head. “He won’t leave Oak Basin and come to the cottages. I get my daughter to…” He clamped his mouth shut.

  “You aren’t going to tell me any more?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Then there isn’t anything else I can do for you. If you want to see your little grandchild walk and talk, stop taking those herbs.” Harrison said.

  They left the cottage. Harrison and Sam spent the rest of their time knocking on every door. They found another dead body.

  “Time to get the constables involved,” Harrison said.

  The constabulary had an office of three constables and a sergeant. Harrison told them of another death.

  “I expected it,” the sergeant said. “They are all loopy most of the time.”

  “I snatched a sample,” Sam said. He leaned over and produced the pinch that he took.

  Harrison smelled it. “Same thing. Mendica, alms wort, and podica. I don’t think this is a coincidence. We saw the same stuff at Fussel’s Ford. It might have been distributed at Horner’s Rest, as well. The seller is Jaron Allswell. He’s a village clerk. I suggest you get him in jail right now. I’ll fill out the complaint.”