Fireborn

by Toby Forward

  The man laughed again.

  “You shouldn’t tease him, Spendrill,” said Flaxfield.

  “Sorry, lad,” he apologized. “Do you know where these hands come from?”

  Cabbage shook his head, suddenly uneasy.

  “I killed a giant and hacked them off, and I slid my own hands inside them and they grew into them till they belonged.”

  Cabbage looked at Flaxfield for confirmation of this story. Flaxfield studied a notice pinned to a board.

  “And do you know why I did that?” asked the man.

  “No.”

  “Guess.”

  “Because you wanted big hands?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  Spendrill put his hands over his face and Cabbage saw that he could wrap them all the way round his head so that nothing could be seen at all but hands.

  “Guess again.”

  “I can’t.”

  Spendrill opened his hands in a swift gesture and grinned out at him.

  “Because I could,” he shouted.

  This was clearly the funniest thing Spendrill had ever heard because Cabbage thought that if a person could laugh himself to death that person was Spendrill.

  “Very good,” said Flaxfield. “Come on, Cabbage, we’ve got work to do.”

  Spendrill made a point of waving them goodbye. Cabbage shuddered at the sight of the huge hands and tried not to think about how they had been hacked from the dead wrists of a giant.

  “Who is he?” he whispered.

  “I can hear you,” Spendrill shouted. Cabbage turned to look. Spendrill had his hands cupped behind his ears.

  “I’m the porter,” he shouted. “See you later.”

  Cabbage didn’t say another word until they had crossed the courtyard, walked under the echoing arcade and passed into the building and up the wide stairs. He was glad when the silence folded itself round him again.

  At the top of the stairs they followed a corridor, then another, and another. It was as though Canterstock was inside the college as well as outside. The corridors seemed as numerous as the streets and sometimes as wide. Some of the corridors had doors leading off, with small windows in them. Cabbage stopped and looked through into classrooms.

  “What are lessons with teachers like?” he asked.

  “What do they look like?”

  Cabbage checked the next window. The pupils were about his own age. They sat at desks in rows and faced a blackboard. Some were writing, others reading, a couple were in conversation with the teacher who moved on after a couple of moments and leaned over another and pointed at his exercise book.

  “It looks good,” said Cabbage. “Quiet.”

  “Good, then,” said Flaxfield. “Now, shall we go straight to the library, or ought we to go and say hello to the principal first?”

  “You’d better say hello first,” a voice called out, “or she’ll want to know why you didn’t.”

  Flaxfield raised a hand in greeting. “And there’d better be a good reason?” he asked.

  “Exactly. Hello, Flaxfield. You’ve not been here for a long time. Hello, Cabbage. How do you like our college?”

  Cabbage swung round and glared at Flaxfield.

  “You planned it,” he said. “You planned all this to get me here and leave me.”

  Flaxfield spoke quietly, “I told you,” he said. “There was no such plan.”

  Cabbage pointed at the woman who had spoken to them.

  “Then how does she,” he jabbed his finger at her, “know my name.”

  Cabbage had not often seen Flaxfield angry. He had never seen him as angry as he was now. The wizard said, “I apologize for my apprentice, Melwood. It’s my fault. I should have taught him better than this.”

  The woman smiled and touched Flaxfield’s arm.

  “All apprentices should be a little bit cheeky,” she said. “Otherwise they’d be wizards already.”

  She moved her hand to Cabbage’s arm.

  “You’re welcome here, Cabbage,” she said. “And please don’t think that there are any secret plans about you. I certainly don’t know of any.”

  Cabbage was embarrassed at his outburst in front of this stranger. Her voice seemed to belong in the college. It was the same colour as the stone, and it had the same quiet strength, the same solidity.

  “How did you know my name?” he asked, keeping his voice polite this time.

  The woman drew close to him. When she spoke he caught the scent of almonds, or sweet herbs.

  “Those of us who know about magic always know the name of Flaxfield’s apprentice. Didn’t you know that?”

  Cabbage shook his head.

  “Are you teasing me?” he asked.

  “Why would I do that? Did you think you lived secretly, obscure, unknown?”

  He hesitated.

  “Yes.”

  She smiled.

  “It will be a strange day when no one knows who Flaxfield’s apprentice is. Now, please come and have a drink with me before you go to the library. I think that there must be things I ought to know about.”

  She linked her arm in Cabbage’s and led them away. Cabbage still had no idea who she was until she put her hand to the handle of the door with the sign PRINCIPAL on it and led them in.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” she said, indicating chairs. She sat behind her desk and rang a small bell.

  “What do you like to drink?” she asked Cabbage. |

  Perry had never been Up Top

  on his own before. He missed Cabbage. He looked back at the roffle hole. He remembered the floury woman and the smell of cooking. Although he liked the air Up Top it wasn’t his air.

  “I’ll go back, he said. “Every second day, I’ll go back, just for a short time and make sure I don’t forget what it’s like. Megawhim’s story had frightened him a little. He didn’t want to be trapped away from the Deep World. He didn’t want to be exiled Up Top.

  He shook himself and started down the hill. That was where Cabbage had gone. That was where Perry would start looking. Less than halfway down he stopped. A black line snaked across the ground. It started at Slowin’s Yard and continued up the road. And it moved. From side to side a little. It rippled like a caterpillar. It was sleek and shiny. For a moment Perry thought it might be a giant snake. He looked more closely. It had no end in the distance. As far as he could see along the road the black line carried on.

  He sat down and watched it, trying to work it out. A line of silk would shine like that, move in that sinuous way. A rivulet of oil would ripple like that. A snake would not bulge and contract at the edges like this. He couldn’t decide anything about it except for one thing. It frightened him. He couldn’t get to the yard without crossing the line and he was not going to go anywhere near to it.

  Perry had just about decided to give up the plan of going to the yard and to head instead back to the village and see if Cabbage had turned up there, when a rabbit lollopped out from the edge of the field and, pausing, twitched its ears before trying to cross the road.

  The black line broke near to the rabbit. It swarmed over it, engulfing it. The rabbit struggled briefly and was gone, torn apart and consumed within seconds.

  Beetles.

  Now that he knew what it was made up of Perry could see it clearly. The whole line, miles of it, was an army of beetles, on the march. And determined. Not ambling aimlessly. They were a disciplined body.

  Perry realized that the wild magic was no longer swirling all around him. In a strange insight he recognized it in the beetles. The magic had clenched, like a fist and had inhabited the beetles. It had found a way to concentrate its power.

  Where the wild magic was, Perry expected to find Cabbage.

  He sought high ground and kept to it. The beetles seemed not to want to deflect from their target. They ignored anything that stood away, off. He moved faster than the army, overtaking all the time yet never finding the vanguard.

  It was clear almost from the
beginning where they were going.

  The Palace of Boolat.

  If the space where a person works reflects the sort of person they are, then Melwood was the sort of person he wanted to know, reflected Cabbage.

  The drinks had arrived, milk for Cabbage, something different for the others. Cabbage wasn’t that interested in what they had.

  “Would you like some biscuits with that?” she asked.

  “No, thank you,” said Flaxfield. “We’ve just eaten.”

  Melwood looked at Cabbage.

  “I think your apprentice might manage one,” she suggested.

  Flaxfield grunted.

  While the two of them talked and Flaxfield explained what had happened Cabbage kept quiet and munched the very good biscuits. He was wondering if they should have eaten here after all if the food was this good. And he was looking around at the study.

  I’ll have a room like this one day, he decided. The light swam in through one of the high, broad windows, not a slit. The walls were painted a delicate pink. He thought he might have a different colour. Pink was a bit, well, for a girl. It was a good pink, though, with a blush of rose and he decided that pink would be fine. He liked pink. He wouldn’t change the bookcases either. They went all the way up to the ceiling and there was a little wooden ladder to climb to get to the high ones. He thought about climbing it while they talked, just to see what it was like. He knew what Flaxfield would say if he tried so he didn’t bother.

  The desk was good, too. The old wood shone. And the armchairs were very comfortable.

  Best of all was the arrangement of shelves on the other wall, crammed with stuff that Cabbage wanted to pick up and have a closer look at. There was a bottle of something, no, three bottles that looked as though they were full of stones in green water. And a carved frog, darker green, with the vein of the stone looking like the real markings on a frog. And a hat, and a knife and a lot of boxes and a vase with irises in, blue with white throats, and a sunflower head cut out of paper, and jars and a picture of a dragon, a Green and Blue, the best sort. Cabbage tried to work out how hard it would be to climb up the shelves from the bottom left to the top right, and then work his way across the ledge over the pointed window and get back to the ground by climbing down the ladder.

  “Cabbage,” said Melwood in voice that sounded like it was repeating itself.

  “Wake up,” said Flaxfield.

  “I want to check on something. Do you think you could get me that book, please? The blue one with the silver lettering on the spine.”

  She pointed to a shelf high up.

  Cabbage stood up and brushed the biscuit crumbs from his chest. He shifted the ladder and climbed up. The treads creaked under him. The writing on the spine was in a language he didn’t understand and he decided to learn it as soon as he could.

  “That’s the one,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He climbed down and handed it to her. She took it, put it on the desk and ignored it. Cabbage sat down and waited for her to look at it. She didn’t. When Flaxfield turned aside for a moment and looked out of the window Melwood gave Cabbage a wink, patted the book and looked at the ladder. He grinned and looked away.

  “So,” Flaxfield continued, “Cabbage here thinks I’m finished. And I’d like to change his mind about that. And then there’s the problem of what’s happened at Slowin’s Yard. Is the wild magic blown out, like a storm, or has it just found a way to do some real damage? And if it has, what can we do about it?”

  “I don’t really think–” Cabbage started to argue, ashamed that Flaxfield had accused him in front of Melwood. She held up her hand to silence him.

  “Flaxfield has always been a terrible tease,” she said. “You’re still early in your apprenticeship so you haven’t worked out how to deal with it yet. Let me see, Flaxfield. What was it your master called you when you were an apprentice? What was your nickname.”

  “We should get to work,” said Flaxfield.

  “I think it’s coming to me,” said Melwood. Yes, I remember.”

  Flaxfield stood up and swirled round, his cloak catching the mug next to his chair, his foot banging into the step ladder. “The library,” he announced. “Time to get to work.”

  “I’ll walk you there,” said Melwood.

  “No need. I know the way.”

  “Of course you do, but I want to talk to young Cabbage here on the way.”

  “Why don’t you show him round the college,” said Flaxfield. “And I’ll make a start.”

  “Would you like that?” she asked.

  “Yes, I would, please.”

  Flaxfield left the door open behind him and disappeared into the corridor.

  “Where shall we start?” she asked Cabbage.

  He thought about it.

  “Can you take me round everywhere and end up at the library?” he asked.

  “A good plan,” she agreed. “We’ll start with the classrooms and work round through the magic labs.”

  “I know you can speak,” said Flaxfold. “If you want to. You did earlier.”

  She picked up a rag rug from in front of the empty fireplace and took it over to the window.

  “It’s up to you,” she said. “Talk or don’t talk.”

  Sounds of workers relaxing after harvest soared in through the window. Flaxfold leaned out and shook the rug. Golden motes scattered in the evening sun.

  “I don’t know where dust comes from,” she said.

  She sat next to Bee, picked up the seal and cradled it in her hands.

  “I made that soup myself,” she said. “And it’s not soup you can buy downstairs. You know that, don’t you? That’s going to help to make you better.”

  She dipped the spoon in the soup, dragged the bowl of the spoon across the lip of the bowl, to prevent spilling, and held it to Bee’s lips.

  “But only if you eat it,” she said. “The best soup in the world won’t make you better if you just leave it to go cold at the side of the bed.

  Bee stared up at the ceiling. Flaxfold put the spoon back into the bowl.

  “I want to take a look at you. Is that all right?”

  Bee ignored her.

  “I know you can hear me, and I know you can speak, so if you don’t say I can’t I’m going to look at you.”

  When she lifted the sheet Flaxfold bit her lip.

  “There’s nothing to you,” she said. “Nothing at all. I’ve never seen a girl so thin.”

  She let the sheet fall softly back.

  The moss and herbs and potions had done all the work they could. Bee’s skin had healed up, as much as it was going to. There was hardly a part of her body that had not been touched by the fire. Some was like smooth leather, some like wood with deep grain, some wrinkled and puckered, some deep red and some cold white.

  Flaxfold was glad that the final appearance of the girl’s face had still been partly obscured by the healing cover when her parents had said goodbye. Now that it was free of the preparation Flaxfold had applied her face was a child’s painting, without definition or detail. Lips, nose and eyelids were crude attempts at features. And the skin was a landscape after a cruel war.

  Whatever Bee had looked like before the wild magic had destroyed her, whether she had been pretty or plain, now she was a new thing.

  “Apart from anything else,” Flaxfold said to her, in a businesslike way, “we all have work to do.”

  In the days since Bee had first responded, the day that the green thing had left her, Flaxfold had sat and told the silent girl everything that had happened. Everything they knew. She told her story from the time she had been a tiny girl at home. She told her how her parents had missed her when she went to Slowin’s. She told her about the coming of the wild magic. She told her how the boy called Cabbage had found her and brought her here.

  “And now he’s gone off to find his friend and to see what damage the wild magic has done, and to see if there’s anything left of Slowin,” said Flaxfold.

  She
moved her chair to one side. The sun was low now and the light was falling directly onto her face.

  “We need help,” she said.

  She took Bee’s hand.

  “We need your help,” she continued. “You know things that no one else knows.”

  Something banged against the window. Small and not loud. Flaxfold ignored it. Evening in the country brings out many small noises.

  “You can even stop them getting into danger,” she said. “You can tell us so many things we need to know.”

  Something whirred behind her. She looked. A black beetle had flown against the glass, dropped onto the sill and was opening its wing case and testing the gauze wings. Harvest activity disturbs many small creatures, and evening is their time.

  Flaxfold stroked Bee’s hand.

  “And you need to get better anyway,” she said. “Even if there’s nothing you know, nothing you can tell us, we want to get to know you. You’re safe here now. This is a good place for you. Please, why won’t you share it with us?”

  The beetle buzzed its wings, took off, flew unsteadily for a moment then fell onto the sheet, just below Bee’s chin.

  Bee screamed. Flaxfold jumped back, knocking her chair over. Bee sat bolt upright in the bed, screaming and screaming. |

  Mattie searched out and found

  an empty bedroom. He chose one quite high up, because the best rooms were near to the great hall. It had been so easy to get in without being seen. He even had a look into the kitchens and watched his old master and the cooks and servants running around and shouting. Kitchens are very noisy, angry places.

  It was enough. It helped. Back to Bee. Back to that yard. Never going to run around and be shouted at here again. It felt a good decision.

  Easy enough as well to get into the larder and take enough food for a feast in his room. Mattie’s tastes were easily satisfied. He’d eaten more fine food than most poor boys. Dishes that took hours, days sometimes to prepare were often sent back half-eaten. Mattie had enjoyed roast swan stuffed with linnet’s tongues, wild boar marinated in ginger and cardamom, peaches poached in malmsey and cinnamon, dishes that called on the fleets of the world to ferry the ingredients. Tonight he was satisfied with bread and cheese, ham, apples and some fresh milk.