Avondale

by Toby Neighbors

  The rest of the day progressed more easily, and they had just finished the heavy framing as the sun began to set. The Inn was on the edge of town, just down the hard-packed street from a stable where several of the more wealthy citizens kept horses. Zollin’s home, the house his father had built for his mother, was just outside of town. Quinn was giving Mansel instructions for the morning as Zollin started for home. He usually had a fire going by the time his father arrived. Quinn was on the town Council and habitually stopped at several houses at the end of the day to visit with friends and people who wanted to talk. Zollin made his way up the small hill that their house was built on and looked at the wood pile. It was getting low and his father would want him to cut more soon. He gathered enough for a cooking fire and headed inside.

  The house had a low ceiling and was hot inside. There were big windows that were shuttered with thick pine wood planks set on leather hinges. Zollin pushed them open to let the rapidly cooling evening air in. The fireplace was getting thick with ash and Zollin knew his father would want him to clean that too. He hated the little chores his father gave him, even though he knew they were necessary. He felt resentment rising up in his chest like a river overflowing its banks during flood season.

  Blast the stupid ash, he thought vehemently to himself. And suddenly, the ash burst into flame. The heat and light rose up so quickly before him that Zollin fell back onto the sturdy wooden table his father had built in the middle of the small kitchen. The flames flashed and crackled and then just as suddenly as they had appeared, they winked out.

  Zollin looked at the fireplace, but it was too dark to see anything, especially after his eyes had been dazzled by the light of the fire. He lit a candle and looked into the hearth. It was empty, and not even a trace of ash remained. Zollin was so surprised by what had happened that he took no notice of his heart racing and the stifling sense of fatigue that settled in on him like a heavy quilt around his shoulders.

  How did I do that? he thought to himself. There was no doubt that he had caused the flames to burn up the ash, just as he had somehow summoned the nail bag to rise up off the spike. He decided to try an experiment. He placed the candle on the counter and then placed an apple beside it. He reached his hand out toward the apple but nothing happened. He concentrated, visualizing the apple moving into his hand. Suddenly there was a rush of something hot inside his body like wind on a summer day, and the apple leapt into his hand. This time he felt the sag of spent energy, felt the heaviness of his arms and the rapid beating of his heart. He was suddenly very thirsty and sat on a stool to eat the apple. It was cool and sweet and he sucked the juice from the meat as he chomped into the fruit.

  After a few minutes he began to feel better. He made supper and wondered if he should risk telling his father. Quinn was a good man. He was kind and a very hard worker. Zollin had never seen his father shirk a task, and he had scolded his son for such behavior often. Still, Zollin didn’t feel that this was something his father would approve of. He decided to keep his newfound ability a secret.

  Chapter 2

  The construction of the new Inn kept Quinn and his apprentices busy all week, and it wasn’t until week's end that Zollin really had a chance to be alone. He slipped off into the woods to a place with a large, mossy boulder where he had often played as a child and began to experiment. All week in the back of his mind he had wondered more about the fireplace and the ash that caught fire. Moving things was very helpful, but if he could conjure fire, could he conjure other things?

  It was early summer and the ground was clear of leaves, but there were plenty of dry twigs, and after arranging them for a small fire, Zollin pictured the twigs ablaze in his mind. Nothing happened, and he focused harder. “Blast the twigs!” he said out loud, mimicking what he had said about the ash. The twigs flew apart, burning so brightly and hot that they were consumed before they touched the ground where they crumbled into cinders. Zollin watched in surprise and sudden fatigue as the little bits of glowing red ash slowly faded.

  After a bit of rest, he gathered another pile of dry wood together. He focused his mind on a small tongue of flame and thin wisp of smoke rising from the pile. “Burn!” he ordered the wood and saw a yellow flame spring to life. The dry wood and straw caught immediately and smoke began to rise. After a moment, the small pile of wood was a brightly glowing fire. Zollin smiled and sat back. He was tired, but the small controlled fire was not nearly as exhausting as blasting the wood apart. He had packed fruit, dried meat and bread into his satchel, enough for several meals. He had felt better after eating that first night, and so he took some of the bread and tore a piece off and stuffed it into his mouth. The bread was dry and soon he was thirsty. He stood and walked down toward a stream that ran through the woods nearby. The water was clear and cold. He cupped his hands together, scooped up some water and then slurped the cool, refreshing liquid. Then a thought occurred to him and he pictured a small wooden cup in his hand and said, “Cup!”

  Nothing happened. He tried several more times in different ways, and although he could not conjure a cup from thin air, he could feel a swirl of heat inside his chest as he tried. After a while he decided to move objects again, and spent the rest of the afternoon making leaves dance in the air before him. He could not sustain the magic long, only for a few minutes at a time before exhaustion overcame him. It reminded him of hammering. At first driving iron into wood with a hammer seemed like fun, but soon the swinging of the heavy tool and the jarring impact over and over became exhausting.

  Over the next several weeks, he was able to move small objects and control fire proficiently. He practiced as often as he could get alone, and although he was still skinny and not as strong as Mansel, he felt the magic growing within him. Each day the small tricks he performed took less and less toll on him physically.

  It was midsummer when he discovered the willow tree in a clearing near the little stream where he had rested that first day. He had been walking through the woods and decided to follow the stream in hopes of finding a fish to see if he could lift it from the water. But as he grew closer to the tree, he felt a sense of something, the way a large bonfire will glow into the night sky to be seen from far away. Zollin moved forward, curious as to what could make him feel this way. It wasn’t a bad feeling; in fact he was drawn to whatever it was, the same way a person’s eyes are drawn to light in a dark room. Zollin moved into the clearing and saw the tree but assumed the feeling was still further ahead. The tree was on the opposite side of the stream from him and he walked past it, but as he did, he felt the sense lessening. He turned back and crossed the stream. The sense grew as he approached the tree and he started to look into the woods beyond but realized that the feeling was coming from the tree.

  The willow was large, its branches full of leaves were hanging down, concealing the trunk of the tree. Zollin realized that anything could be hiding under the hanging limbs. Still, he didn’t feel a sense of dread or reservation, so he reached out to pull back the slender boughs. As soon as his hand touched the first leaf he felt a thrill. He jerked his hand back surprised, but realized the feeling that had shot through his arm had connected with the swirling sense of magic – at least Zollin considered the feeling inside him to be magic. He touched the leaf again and felt the tingle as the magic once again connected. This tree, Zollin thought, like himself, was full of magic. He pulled the tree limbs to one side and went under the canopy toward the trunk of the tree. He placed his hands on the tree and felt a hum of power that made him giddy. There were rocks on the bare ground inside the canopy of the willow tree. Zollin had never been able to lift rocks very well – the heavier the object, the less he could move it. At first he hadn’t been able to lift rocks at all. Then, as his power grew, he could move them slightly. He had continued to practice lifting them and could now lift a rock the size of his fist and move the stone with some speed, but not for long and the effort exhausted him quickly.

  He looked at one of the stones that lay at
his feet now. It was the size of a small melon. He projected a mental image of the stone rising into the air and said, “Rise!” The stone shot up, as did several others, some even half buried, broke free from the soil and jumped into the air. Zollin was amazed and laughed with delight. Soon he had the stones dancing and swirling around him. He could feel the power in his chest swirling too, and he wasn’t tired. The magic flowed into him from the tree, giving him strength. He moved the stones for a long time and finally arranged them neatly on the ground in a ring around the trunk of the willow. He sat down on one of the stones to eat but found he wasn’t really tired or hungry.

  For the next several weeks, he visited the willow often. His power grew steadily and he even discovered that after a storm had shaken several limbs from the tree, magic still resonated in the slender boughs. He stripped the limbs of leaves and twigs and wove them into a belt which he wrapped around his waist under his shirt. He reveled in the power that the limbs imbued in him. He could now sense traces of magic in all kinds of things. In plants there was often magic that felt strong but small at the same time. It was different than the raw power he felt within himself – it was concentrated and not as broad. There was power in certain minerals and stones. And there was magic even in people, although most had none, and the ones that Zollin noticed were so faint that they seemed like echoes. Zollin was so fascinated that he had completely forgotten about the Harvest Festival that was fast approaching. His best friend Todrek reminded him one afternoon as he complained that Zollin never spent time in town anymore.

  “Are you becoming a hermit out in the woods all the time?” his friend teased.

  Zollin took the ribbing with good humor, but he also felt the resentment in his friend's words. They had been friends a long time even though Todrek was three years older than Zollin.. They had been in essentials school together where they learned to read and write. Neither was athletic like most of the other boys who spent their free time wrestling and competing in mock battles. Todrek was almost the opposite of Zollin. He was short and thick with muscle and fat that blended together. His father was a butcher and his family never went without meat. Todrek was strong too – he spent most of his time pulling the thick hides from the animals they butchered and moving the heavy carcasses for his father, whose back was bad. His hands, too, were strong and his forearms powerful, but he carried his strength lightly, and having killed more docile animals than he cared to remember, he had no desire to play at war.

  And so Zollin, thin as a whip, and Todrek, thick as a boar, were close friends. They often spent their free time debating the qualities of food or games, although most recently their talk had seemed to center around girls. Todrek was beginning to catch the eye of several young ladies. His size was impressive as was the quality of life a village butcher could provide. Zollin, on the other hand, was almost invisible, not only to the young ladies of Tranaugh Shire, but to the adults as well. His father was well known and liked, so Zollin was known simply as Quinn’s son. If he carried no message from his father, he was ignored.

  “I’ve got something to show you,” Zollin told his friend. “Can you get away for a while?”

  “Get away where, out into the lonely woods?” Todrek asked. “Why can’t you just show me whatever it is here?”

  “I just can’t, okay?”

  “It’s really hot,” Todrek complained. “Do we have to go far?”

  “No, now come on.”

  Zollin dragged his friend into the forest and when he was confident that they were far enough away from town, he stopped.

  “What is it?” Todrek asked. “Have you met a forest Imp who’s beguiled you and wants to make you into a tree?”

  “No,” Zollin said with a smile, and then he took a leaf from the forest floor and held it in his palm. Todrek was just about to complain again when the leaf rose from his friend’s hand.

  “Blast,” Zollin said softly, and the leaf burned away in a flash. The ash fell back into Zollin’s hand and blew away on the breeze.

  “How… I mean… what did you just do?” Todrek stammered.

  “Magic,” Zollin said. He was amused by his friend who still looked bewildered.

  “You mean like a trick,” Todrek said. He looked relieved as if he had just realized that Zollin was playing a game or showing him an illusion.

  “No, I mean like real magic. I can feel it, inside me, in those plants,” he said, pointing at some small weeds growing near the roots of a tree. “I’ve been learning to use it all summer. I even found a willow tree that’s full of magical power. I’ve got some of the branches and they increase my abilities.”

  “Increase your abilities?” Todrek asked incredulously. “What are you saying, that you’re some kind of Sorcerer or something?”

  “No, of course not,” Zollin said, aghast.

  “Are you crazy?” Todrek’s voice was rising, his eyes wide in his round face. “Zollin, Sorcerers are evil. You really want to be some crazy old man in a tower casting spells and summoning demons?”

  “Of course not,” Zollin said, a little shocked by his friend’s reaction.

  “Well, that’s where you’re headed.”

  “It is not.”

  “That power that you’re talking about, it’s going to twist you into someone I don’t know, someone I don’t want to know. Perhaps it already has.”

  “Don’t be crazy,” Zollin pleaded. He was shocked by his friend’s reaction, and while he didn’t mind being alone, he had thought that of all the people who would understand, Todrek would.

  “I’m not being crazy, you are. You’re spending all your time out here by yourself experimenting with who knows what. How many rabbits and birds have you sacrificed to your demi-god for more power?”

  “Todrek, you know me better than that. I’m not sacrificing animals.”

  “Then where did this power come from?” Todrek challenged.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, it just sort of happened. You’ve just sort of learned to make things levitate and burn up on command?”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. See I was helping my dad –”

  Todrek cut him off.

  “Does Quinn know about this too?”

  “No,” Zollin said, raising his voice for the first time.

  “Why not, don’t you want your daddy to be proud of you?”

  Zollin wanted to double over. Todrek’s words had been like a punch in his stomach. His big friend had been the only person Zollin had ever confided in. He had told the Butcher’s son how he hated carpentry and how much he feared his father’s rejection. He had even cried once, shortly after Quinn had taken on Mansel as an apprentice. Zollin had felt betrayed, replaced, especially when he saw the camaraderie that his father had with his new student.

  “I thought you were my friend,” Zollin said.

  “Yeah, well, I thought you were a person, not a freak. I’ve got a life now, Zollin. Dad’s giving me more responsibility in the shop. We’ve even talked about negotiating for Brianna’s hand in marriage. If this is who you are, I can’t be your friend.”

  Zollin was so shocked by all the revelations he had just heard that he stood mute and watched Todrek walk away. Part of him wanted to lift his friend into the air and spin him around or shake some sense into him. He felt the magic surging within him, and there was no question that he could do it, but it felt wrong somehow. He didn’t want to be the kind of person who used his power to hurt others.

  It was also hard to believe that his friend had really considered marriage to Brianna. She was by far the most beautiful girl in the village, but she knew it and Zollin couldn’t imagine that she would make a good wife. He had never known his mother, and his father had lost all interest in women after she died giving birth to Zollin. He couldn’t really imagine having a girl in the house with them and had only really been interested in girls for the last year or so. Still, his best friend, his only friend really, was walking away and it felt to Zollin like the world w
as coming to an end.

  He went home after that. He took off his willow belt and tried to push out all of the magic that swirled within him. He couldn’t, of course, but it felt good to try. He would have given it all up at that moment if could have. All the wonder and excitement was gone, replaced by a nagging feeling that Todrek was right. Was the magic changing him? Would he end up an evil, twisted, shell of a man, always grasping for more and more power? He had never considered that possibility before. In fact, he had never given magic much thought. His father was not a speculative man, not about philosophy or religion, and certainly not about such mysterious topics as magic. He fixed his mind on the solid things he could touch or build with, and there was never room in his mind for anything that wasn't rational. And yet Zollin knew magic, not much about it, but he had experienced it, channeled it, used it even to help him with the more practical things his father had him doing. He hadn’t used flint and steel to start a fire in over a month. He could conjure a flame by merely thinking about it with the willow belt on. And it had seemed like he was finally coming to know himself. Going to school and making friends with the other kids from the village and even apprenticing with his father felt somehow like he was imitating life. Magic was who he was, not something he did. And, he thought to himself, if I am good, then the magic in me must be good. But still, he didn’t want to leave the village, and if other people felt the way Todrek did about magic, if they jumped to the conclusion that all magic was evil, he would have to be careful. An icy chill of fear ran up his spine then as he wondered if his friend would tell people what he had seen. What if Todrek turned the town against him?

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  Table of Contents

  Books By Toby Neighbors

  Dedication