Moonshine

by Susan Dexter

  “Well, it was more fish than I’d managed to fetch for him.” Tristan scowled glumly at the pot. Scorched oatmeal was stubborn. Next time the cottage walls needed patching, he’d know just what to use. “I liked it. I can never catch a trout. Not even with a silver hook. But Blais still says I have to take you back to Dunehollow. He reminded me just before he left. You were sitting right there. You must have heard him.”

  As if you could make me stay there. Thomas batted the stone again, then captured the pebble. He held it to his mouth as if to bite it.

  “I can’t let you stay here,” Tristan said. “As soon as I’ve cleaned this—” the last of the oatmeal finally gave up the fight. The copper pot shone pink. “And swept out the hearth, we’d better go.” He wiped the pot dry and picked up the twig broom.

  Why do wizards fuss with brooms and dish-rags? What good’s magic? Thomas hooked the tips of his claws into the broom. He tussled with it until Tristan pulled it out of his reach.

  “Blais doesn’t need magic for housekeeping. He has me. That’s what apprentices are for. And I don’t use magic to sweep the floor because—” Tristan fell silent, not sure how much the cat understood. Had Thomas seen the clothes-drying fiasco? And would he assume the affliction applied to other chores?

  I could, though, Tristan thought stubbornly. He chewed at his bottom lip. Do thus, and so. And then so again. He could remove every last trace of ash from the hearth in the space of two breaths. Much faster than scraping ashes and cinders into a pile, scooping the pile into the scuttle, and lugging the heavy scuttle all the way to the midden. Ashes scattered out on every wisp of breeze, and he always had to sweep the floor again after.

  Blais had used a spell the week past, removing a rotten egg from a pancake batter. He’d even made the stink of the bad egg vanish from the air. Tristan examined the spell in his memory. It was important for wizards to observe and remember what they saw. Yes, that. And the fingerplay just so, to dismiss the unwanted object. He did know the spell. Every word, every gesture. He understood its principles. He could use it.

  Tristan put the broom down. He set the scuttle aside. Squaring his shoulders, he faced the hearth. Thomas pricked his ears with interest.

  Tristan raised his right hand. He held it up with the first finger pointed, while he made gathering gestures with his left hand. His lips twisted around insistent words. Ashes clumped obediently. Tristan lowered his right hand, aiming his forefinger at the hearth. Instead of a word, a puff of plain air left his lips.

  Whoooosh! The ashes started up the chimney, vanishing even as they rose. Tristan’s ears popped. He blinked.

  Thomas crouched by his feet. The cat’s fur stood on end. His eyes squinched nearly shut. Well, welllll, the cat purred, obviously impressed.

  * * * *

  “I don’t why Blais didn’t want me to tend to the cabbage moths,” Tristan grumbled as they neared the outskirts of Dunehollow-by-the-Sea. “All I’d need to do is call up some dragonflies and get them to notice the moths. They’d do the rest. It’s hardly even a spell.”

  Thomas, draped over his left shoulder like a coat, boxed Tristan lightly on the ear. You’re as witless obedient as a dog, the cat hissed. You’re wasting your time hauling me back here. I won’t stay. I intend to see the world and find my fortune. Not to mention my destiny.

  “Just don’t start off by following me home again,” Tristan advised him. “If he wants to, bad eggs aren’t the only things Blais can make disappear.”

  Thomas purred very loudly, his whole body vibrating against Tristan’s shoulder and neck. He won’t hurt me. And he won’t order me to go—or to come when he calls.

  “Well, fine for you! But I’m Blais’ apprentice, and I have to do what Blais says!” He stopped suddenly, attention caught. “What’s that?”

  Tristan had no intention of going anywhere near the harbor, so he’d turned into the first alley he came to. The narrow passage linked a few back gardens with one of the lesser streets. The shouts and shriekings suddenly filling the air would have suited the butcher’s slaughtering pen, only Tristan knew Rho’s master kept shop at the far end of the village. And the shrieks were human words, not swine squeals.

  “Help! Murder!”

  “Fire! Ho! Fetch water!”

  One hand steadying Thomas, Tristan hurried onward. He reached a larger street and turned along it in the direction of the Guildhall. That was an easy landmark—no other structure in Dunehollow boasted a full three storeys. The shouts were much louder. People rushed toward the hall from all directions. From streets and shops they came, out of houses and up from the harbor.

  “Help! The Mayor! The Mayor’s murdered!”

  “Thought ‘twas a fire!” shouted a man with a pail.

  Instinct halted Tristan where he was. Instead of running straight out into the square, he ducked into another narrow street. He ran down an alley, dodged a jumble of lobster traps, and finally stretched to peer over a wobbly fence.

  He saw a score of folk milling in front of the Guildhall’s shallow steps. More people joined them with buckets in hand. They jostled one another and called questions. At the foot of the stair stood a man. The crowd had left a little space around him, so Tristan could see him clearly.

  The Mayor’s girth was impressive. The man could afford to eat well. His shape was exactly like the wine barrels which supplied his living at the tavern he owned. Newly come from conducting official business in the hall, the Mayor was dressed in his best. He wore fine britches and polished shoes, a pale starched shirt and what must have been a fine waistcoat.

  Very little of his grand costume was actually visible. From head to toe, the Mayor of Dunehollow was coated with fine gray ash. Cinders were heaped about his feet.

  “Come out of the air, it did!” a woman cried. “The sky clear as could be, not so much as a gull flying over. And then all this—”

  The Mayor coughed. The Mayor sneezed. The Mayor’s eyes, when he opened them, were red as blood and full of fury. His Honor tried to issue an order to his bailiffs, but another fit of coughing afflicted him. Clouds of ash puffed off of him with his every movement.

  “Oh, no!” Tristan moaned, behind the fence. He had that horrible emptiness in the pit of his stomach again. He recognized those ashes. He could smell, very clearly, the apple-wood scent of the cottage’s hearth-fire. “Oh, noooo!”

  A Dark Moon

  Light a candle, Thomas suggested. The cat flicked his tail impatiently.

  Tristan shook his head. “I don’t think so!” Suppose someone saw that light? It would draw them straight to the cottage. Blais’ home sat at the end of an obvious path, beside the orchard’s carefully-tended trees. There was nothing to hide the place. Not even—yet—darkness. Though the cottage was dim inside, the sky was still light.

  Tristan had shoved the heavy work table against the cottage door, in too much haste to bother with the incantation that would have compelled the table to walk over on its own legs. A thick oak plank further barred the door. Tristan had added a lock-ward for good measure. Now he sat under the table, his back pressed against the door. His eyes were shut tight. He held his breath much of the time.

  Thomas finished sharpening his claws upon the windowsill and jumped to the floor. He marched over to Tristan and peered up at him. He sniffed. No one followed us. I told you that.

  “They didn’t have to follow us,” Tristan whispered, opening his eyes. He gave the window a wary glance, but from where he sat, he couldn’t see it—the table blocked his view. “Everyone in Dunehollow knows where the wizard lives…”

  So? Thomas’ eyes shone, giving back the light that found its way past the closed shutters. You think they suspect you?

  “How could they not?” Tristan asked indignantly, forgetting to whisper. “Ashes out of thin air—”

  “You’ve done it before, then?” Thomas cocked his head, as if impressed by the notion.

  “No!”

  Thomas sat, wrapping his tail neatly about his
paws. Ashes are just ashes, you know, he said conversationally.

  Tristan stared at the cat. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  You weren’t there when it happened. Thomas’ eyes were unblinking. So far as they know. No one saw us in the village.

  “You think they didn’t know a rain of ashes was magic?” Tristan asked scornfully.

  Thomas gave one paw a delicate lick. Fools, they surely are. Didn’t they think the mayor was murdered, even when he was standing there alive, in plain sight? I didn’t hear any mention of magic. He cocked his head again. Did you?

  Tristan leaned his head back against the door. He wondered if he’d be able to feel approaching footsteps. Hoofbeats, certainly. The earth conducted those well. Only no one in the village had a horse. Just a couple of shaggy donkeys and a pony, used to drag the fish carts around. The villagers would walk. The question was, would they keep silent? Or would they come shouting and grumbling and threatening? Would he have any sort of warning at all?

  Mind, I’m not saying it wouldn’t be wise to lie low, just for a bit. Thomas carefully inspected the claws of his left front paw. Discretion always has value.

  “I’m never going back to Dunehollow again!” Tristan burst out. He meant every word of his vow. The notion that no one in the village would think him capable of even such a wretched piece of spellcraft burned like seawater on scraped skin. He should have been relieved to escape the disaster. Instead, Tristan felt so ashamed that just breathing hurt.

  He scrambled to his feet. Thomas was right. No one was coming after him. He wasn’t worth the bother—

  Misjudging the table’s edge, Tristan slammed his left shoulder hard into it. The table barely moved. Tristan sat down again, without intending to. He bit back rash words. A curse spoken now might just stick! Blais wouldn’t want his table charred to a crisp.

  Humans don’t see well in the dark, Thomas observed in mock surprise.

  Tristan got to his feet more carefully. He pickled up a candle from the tabletop. The collision had jarred it from its candlestick and cracked it right across. It leaned tipsily in Tristan’s hand, held together by its wick.

  Normally he’d light a candle from the cookfire. Nothing to it. However, the hearth was cold and painfully clean. Wincing, Tristan turned away. He felt across the mantel. Blais always left his firestone there, handy.

  Of course Blais had taken his firestone. The walk to Master Sedwick’s was longish, and Blais would pause along the way. The wizard would rest, eat a bite of food, brew himself a cup of peppermint tea. Blais could not have expected that Tristan would thoughtlessly put out the cottage fire the moment he and his firestone were gone.

  Tristan sighed. He could grope about in the dark and eat a cold supper. A raw supper. Or he could beg a coal from the nearest neighbor, the best part of a league away. He should have had another choice. Fire-lighting was the very first spell Blais had taught him. In some ways, its magic was the basis of all the rest. To control fire, to create it, was a vital skill.

  But without a firestone’s aid, Tristan was helpless to summon the magic. His spell wouldn’t go awry. It simply wouldn’t go anywhere.

  Thomas washed himself in earnest. The cat licked his paws one by one. He cleaned between each toe. He licked his back. He scrubbed behind his ears with a damp paw. He finished with his tail, combing and fluffing the hair. Finally he seemed satisfied. I expect you’re too upset to eat? he asked brightly.

  “I’m not hungry.” Tristan decided not to mention the lack of fire. “The cow’s got to be milked, though.” He picked up the wooden pail.

  Thomas licked his lips and headed for the door, his tail raised high as if he flew an invisible banner from it.

  The sky was still bright enough to let Tristan see what he was doing. He gave the cow her evening measure of grain and settled down to milk her while she was busy with eating it. “Sit over there,” he directed Thomas, pointing to a nearby spot.

  After that, most of the milk was for the pail, but Tristan sent every fourth or fifth squirt Thomas’ way. He was rather good at milking. Spellcraft made his fingers nimble. His touch was gentle. The cow liked that and was cooperative. The cow liked him.

  Thomas swallowed and licked white pearls of milk from his whiskers. He looked more pleased by the moment. Tristan rested his head against the cow’s warm flank. She smelled of hay. He could feel, faintly, the grinding of her teeth as she ate her grain. How much better it must be to be a cow and not an apprentice wizard.

  By the time Tristan was done milking, the sky was a deep violet. A fat moon was rising behind the orchard. He need not, Tristan thought, bother about a candle after all. He opened the window shutters and left the door standing wide. The evening air was mild. The silver moonlight was easily bright enough to read by. Encouraged, he turned toward Blais’ books.

  They faced him from all directions. There were books absolutely everywhere. Blais bought books, traded for books, borrowed books, wrote and bound many volumes himself.

  Books leaned against one another all the way across the mantelpiece. They sat amid the potted herbs on the sills of the windows. Stacks of the seldom-read held up a board which bore a bound collection of Blais’ daily weather observations. Two fat books made the candlestick considerably taller. A slim book kept Blais’ favorite chair sitting steady.

  A precarious pile teetered on a footstool. There were books under the bed and surely books in the bed as well, lost in the linens. The table held its own weight again in books and thus had made such an effective barricade for the door.

  Tristan looked about, touching this book, then that one. He had by no means read them all, but he had read many. Finally he found what he sought. He shuffled the stack from the three-legged stool to the floor beneath the table and carried the stool to the doorway. The moonlight poured in, solid as white paint.

  His master hadn’t reminded him to tend to his studies. Blais hadn’t needed to. Tristan enjoyed study. If he’d had only starlight to do it by, he’d have tried his best to read. Sore eyes were not too harsh a price for knowledge. Yet, the silver moonlight was more than a replacement for the candle he could not light.

  The books Tristan had chosen shared a special quality. Their pages could be read only by the moon’s light. Beneath the sun, their leaves were covered with gibberish—Tristan had checked once, not quite sure Blais wasn’t teasing him on the subject.

  Now, the carefully written words made sentences, and sense. Tristan settled contentedly to his studies. He might not be able to work magic with his master’s ease, but he never tired of learning about it. Reading spells and committing theories to memory were better than meat and drink. At least better than pease porridge and water.

  Here, for example. Six different ways of making fog. Who’d have expected half so many? Why did one not suffice? It wasn’t like clearing ashes away.

  Tristan read, but after a few moments his attention drifted. His concentration faltered. The words on the page seemed to lose their meanings. A handful of them dimmed and disappeared altogether. Tristan blinked at the blurry page, rubbed his eyes—then shifted his suspicions to the sky. Clouds often interfered with moonlight reading. Clear night skies were the rule only during the coldest part of the winter—and then he had the distraction of frozen toes and fingers to contend with.

  Tristan scanned the sky. Nary a cloud. The arch of black overhead was thoroughly spattered with stars, all sharply visible. Tristan frowned. The moon looked dull. Her usually silver face was the color of an old copper coin. Did a cloud of dust veil her? Sand, windswept from some far-distant desert, smelling of cinnamon, of costly myrrh?

  All at once, Tristan’s heart began to hammer. His breath came fast, but not quite fast enough. The lower edge of the moon was round no longer. A sliver of it had been pared away, as if some invisible creature gnawed upon the rind of the moon. And Tristan knew what that had to mean.

  An eclipse.

  Not so rare or unsettling as the darkening of the sun,
but uncommon enough. Tristan stood, shedding books and Thomas, who’d crept onto his lap. The cat protested the assault on his comfort. The books merely fluttered their pages as Tristan gathered them up again and dumped them onto the table.

  An eclipse presented opportunities far greater than the chance to read his master’s moonlight books. This was a special night. The moon ruled the sea. She made the tides strong or weak, high or even flooding. Spent waves cast objects up on beaches. Fantastically twisted driftwood and water-smoothed crystals appeared on the shore. Beach-gleanings provided most of the ingredients for the weather spells Blais practiced. On rough coasts, wreckers made good livings collecting what the sea spat up—lumber, wine casks, crates full of lost treasures. On a smaller scale, Tristan and his master got their livings the same way.

  Wreckers greeted storms with glee. Wizards felt the same way about eclipses. Tides governed by a dark moon brought up strange things. Uncommon things. Powerful things. Wonders beyond imagining. Tristan must seek them, gather them. Such opportunities came infrequently. He could not ignore this one. He would not.

  His master had told him to stay home, except for taking the cat back to Dunehollow. But Blais had not expected the eclipse. Predicting eclipses required patient observation for years on end. Records had to be kept. Charts had to be drawn. And after all the preparation, clouds might hide the moon on the critical night. In Calandra, the effort wasn’t worth the chance of reward. Blais always said he preferred to take what came.

  Well, now this eclipse had come. The wizard would not wish his apprentice to ignore it, Tristan told himself. His logic was ironclad. He looked down at Thomas.

  Thomas gave an enquiring mew.

  “Come on,” Tristan told him.

  * * * *

  Readying himself was no bother. Tristan slung his cloak around his shoulders and snatched up a sack to hold whatever objects he might find. His pockets were always full of holes—and who knew what wonderful things he might come across? Perhaps more than even mended pockets could safely hold.