by Jeff Wheeler
“I’m Dwyn,” she said, more loudly than she’d intended. “Grandda, this is—”
“Where is that book?” he said, cutting her off. He glanced at her with a sudden look of angry realization. “I know what must’ve happened to it—it’s those goblin neighbors of mine. They took it when they broke in here!”
Dwyn clenched her teeth and her fists. Of all the times for him to start in on that again . . . “No, they didn’t, Grandda. It’s just deeper in one of these rooms somewhere.”
“Well, I can’t believe this,” her grandfather said, moving to the window that faced southeast over the rest of Cardiff, overlooking the cottage and their neighbor’s house beyond it. “It’s bad enough they’ve been taking my tools and ingredients, but I’m not going to stand by while they steal my books.”
“The Jameses aren’t stealing your books, Grandda!” Dwyn said, stalking over to stand beside him at the window. “They’re good people, and far nicer to you than you deserve, the way you talk about them. Besides, the tower is warded—there’s no way they could get in here without me knowing about it!”
“Well . . . you don’t know goblins like I do,” her grandfather replied, cupping his hands to peer out the window, as though he were going to catch someone in the act of sneaking through his garden. “They’re tricky. I guess I’ll have to go over there and get the book back—I just hope they’ll give it up if I threaten to call the police.”
Dwyn clenched her fists again. “No, that’s a great idea,” she said. “Let’s call the police.”
“What?” Her grandfather seemed taken aback.
“Let’s call the police, Grandda,” she repeated with all the insincere sweetness she could muster. “If they’ve stolen from you, then they should be arrested. We’ll just call the police, and tell them the neighbors somehow broke into the warded tower of a high wizard and stole his spellbooks.”
Her grandfather frowned. “Well, I don’t want to get them thrown in jail. I just want my spellbook back.”
“No, Grandda. If you’re so sure that this is what happened, then we need to call the police.”
Her grandfather looked back out the window and then hunched his shoulders. “Goblins would probably just trick the police, anyway,” he muttered, turning back to the room. He shuffled to his bed and began digging through a pile of old clothing there. “I guess I’ll just have to do it from memory, since someone doesn’t want me to get my spellbook. You try to be good and decent in this world, but look what it gets you . . .”
Dwyn just managed to refrain from punching a stack of newspapers into the air. Instead, she closed her eyes and took a slow breath, carefully unclenching her fists and forcing the muscles to relax.
“Grandda, please listen to me,” she said, opening her eyes. “You’re not up to sneaking through a war zone anymore. You’re not up to creating a peace ward again—you just aren’t. It will kill you.”
“Well, I have to try,” her grandfather replied, frowning at her. “Even if I might die. The world is depending on it.”
“Grandda . . .” Dwyn sighed and rubbed her face. “You can’t do it.”
“Oh, just stop it, Dwyn. You’re as bad as your mother, always thinking about your own wants before the needs of others.”
Dwyn froze, staring at her grandfather. “What did you say?”
“You just don’t want me to leave.” Her grandfather tugged a natty old robe free from the pile and held it up to the light. “Your mother was always doing that, after the Great War, stopping me from going out to help people like I used to. All she cared about was what she wanted.”
“You think my mother was selfish?” Dwyn said. “You? You think that your daughter, who spent years looking after your needs and putting up with everything . . . you think she was selfish?”
“Oh, don’t go acting like Mair was some sort of saint,” her grandfather said. “She made me take care of the tower all by myself, even when I was sick, and I had to do most of the chores around the cottage too. Why, she once—”
“You can’t perform a peace ward, Grandda!” Dwyn snapped. She was shaking.
Her grandfather rolled his eyes. “I already told you, I—”
“I’m not saying that you shouldn’t, I’m saying that you can’t!” Dwyn shouted over him. “You’re not the lord wizard anymore—you are incapable! You can’t tell when your wards have decayed; you can’t even tell a weed from starleaf anymore!”
“Well . . .” her grandfather looked startled and confused. Dwyn should have cared; but she didn’t.
“And this!” She stalked over to where his battered, cracked cauldron still lay on the workbench and dipped her finger into the remains of the potion he’d botched that morning—which he still hadn’t cleaned up—holding it up for him to see. “What color is clearthought potion supposed to be, Grandda?”
Her grandfather stared at the brownish goop on her finger, his eyes unfocused and distant and his brow furrowed.
“It’s supposed to be light blue!” she said, waving her finger. “This looks like you were trying to make a shapechange potion and failed completely! And you think you can create a peace ward again? From memory?”
Her grandfather hunched his shoulders and stuck his chin out stubbornly. “Well, that may be what you think, but—”
“What I think?” Dwyn shrieked. The room was growing blurry—there were tears in her eyes, she realized. The piles of junk were leaning in on her, and it was difficult to breathe. “Grandda, you blew up your tower today! I have to switch out all of the potions and spells you make for people with ones I’ve made, because the ones you make might kill them! You eat rotten food, you can’t hear anymore, and you make up stories about the neighbors stealing from you . . . do you want to know what really happened to all of your missing things?”
Her grandfather simply stared at her.
“It’s all buried somewhere in a senile old man’s . . . useless . . . trash!” she screamed. She grabbed the table near the window and heaved, toppling it on its side. Dust-covered newspapers flopped across the floor, filling the narrow pathway from the worktable to the bed. Other odds and ends clattered into the wall and against her feet—glass marbles, forgotten cups and plates, a stack of old plaques and commendations, and a brown, decayed potted plant that had been covered up and forgotten.
Dwyn stared down at the mess. She put her hands over her mouth in horror, sobbing. After a moment, she forced herself to look up at her grandfather.
She caught a glimpse of painful, terrifying awareness on his face, and her breath stopped. His eyes were wet, just on the verge of spilling tears. Then his chin jutted out again and his eyes hardened. He turned away.
Dwyn ran from the tower, slipping and stumbling over newspapers and books.
* * *
She hid in her room. She didn’t even make it onto the bed, instead ending up curled in a ball on the floor, crying. At one point, she heard her grandfather come into the cottage. He went to his room, and then his footsteps moved to the back of the house, to her workroom. Probably stealing supplies that he thought he needed. She didn’t care. She just pushed herself into the corner and covered her face with her arms.
By the time the sun began to rise, she was cried out. Her body was sore, her head was pounding, and her face was plastered with crusty snot and the salt of dried tears. But she was finally calm enough to know what she had to do.
Her grandfather was going to try to create a peace ward; she clearly couldn’t talk him out of it. But if he botched a spell of that magnitude, who knew what it would do. It wouldn’t just put him in danger—the effects could cover all of Europe, perhaps more. She would have to warn the king, to let him know that her grandfather wasn’t as capable as he’d once been. Maybe . . . maybe the king would keep it from getting around.
Dwyn stood, stiff and aching, and began to pack a small bag with a change of clothing and her toiletries. She would try to send a telegram to the king from the Cardiff station, of course; but sh
e doubted that he would be taking messages from young dropout wizards at such a time of crisis, no matter who her grandfather had once been. She would have to go to London.
And then what? She paused her packing, thinking. Would her grandfather even want her around after she’d gone to the king? He had ignored her for days and even weeks over minor disagreements—it wasn’t hard to believe that he wouldn’t ever forgive her for ruining his reputation with the king.
Maybe Mrs. Reilly had been right—maybe she needed to find an elderly home for her grandfather. She certainly wouldn’t mind having time for her studies; there was even the chance that she’d be able to get back into the academy, if she reapplied soon enough.
She sighed and shook her head, resuming her packing. Even after their argument, her stomach knotted up at the thought of sending her grandfather away, of taking away the last vestiges of his pride. But then, if he remained angry with her, it might be best for both of them.
With the bag over her shoulder, she left the cottage and began following the gravel path to the road. When she reached the gate, she glanced up at her grandfather’s tower. The faint glow of his lamp still shone in the windows, only slightly washed out by the gray dawn.
Dwyn hesitated. If she did it, she wouldn’t be able to take it back. For several minutes, she stood there on the path debating. She didn’t want to face him again right then, but . . . maybe he would listen to reason. Maybe. At the very least, she felt like her mother would have tried again. Finally, she sighed and walked to the tower.
She climbed the stairs slowly and then paused in the doorway at the top. The table was still overturned, and the newspapers and other junk still cluttered the narrow pathway. But she was surprised to see that a new path had been cleared through the center of the room to the far wall.
The path led to a bookcase that she hadn’t even known was there. Her grandfather sat beside it in a sturdy old rocking chair—her grandmother’s, some distant part of Dwyn remembered. There was a pile of books beside the chair, and her grandfather held one open in his lap.
Hesitantly, Dwyn stepped forward to see what was in the book. She’d thought that maybe, somehow, he’d managed to find the spellbook that contained the peace ward. Instead, she was surprised to see that it was a dusty old photo album.
“You look so much like your mother, Dwyn,” her grandfather said. He rested his hand on one of the photographs. It was of her parents at their wedding. “Did your parents ever tell you the story of how they met?”
Dwyn looked down at her grandfather, but his head was lowered over the book and she couldn’t see his face. “Um . . . Dad was one of your students, wasn’t he?” she asked. “He met Mum when you had her help you carry some equipment to the classroom?”
“I made her help me so that she would meet him,” her grandfather said. She thought she could hear a faint smile in his voice. “He was one of my best students, so promising, but he was determined to remain a bachelor forever. I knew he’d change his mind when he met your mother.”
“I hadn’t heard that part.”
“I never told them about it.”
Dwyn smiled slightly. It wasn’t often her grandfather was so lucid anymore; she’d forgotten how pleasant talking to him could be. It was a much better reaction than she’d expected.
Her grandfather turned a few pages; Dwyn noticed that he’d already had the spot marked with one finger.
“Do you remember this?” he asked.
She peered at the picture he was indicating—her, as a baby, sitting in her grandfather’s lap and gnawing on a wooden charm.
“No,” she admitted.
“That was an old flavor charm, for improving food and the like. Your mother let you play with it after it stopped working.”
Dwyn squinted at the photo. “Wait, I do remember that. I carried that old thing around for years, didn’t I? I still had it when I started primary school.”
“Yes, you did.”
“What ever happened to it?”
“One day, after you’d left for school, your mother found it hanging in the kitchen. You’d repaired it and put it there yourself.”
Dwyn blinked. “Really? I don’t remember that. How old was I?”
“Six.” Her grandfather chuckled softly, shaking his head. “Your mother thought I had done it, at first. Then she thought I’d been teaching you behind her back, even though you were too young. But no . . . you had been sneaking peeks at our spellbooks, and had figured out on your own what the flavor charm was supposed to look like and what it did. So you fixed it and hung it up in the kitchen.”
He lifted his left hand, and she saw that he was holding the flavor charm itself.
“You still have it?” she asked.
He snorted. “Of course I do. It didn’t work for too long, but for a child your age to manage that, without any instruction . . . we were so proud. Even your mother wanted to keep it, for the memory. We weren’t surprised at how well you did when you went to the academy—you already knew most of the curriculum, by that point.”
Dwyn blushed. “It’s in our blood, I guess.”
Her grandfather nodded. He looked up at her, and she was surprised at how . . . present his eyes were. She’d never realized just how distant his gaze tended to be lately. There was water in his eyes and faint tear tracks on his cheeks.
“Yes, that’s the point I’m trying to make,” he said. “The magic is in our family’s blood. It’s strong. You’re strong, Dwyn.” He set the charm on the photo album and then reached down beside the rocking chair, lifting a thick, leather-bound book from the floor. “You’re probably the strongest wizard alive these days.”
With a sad, slightly pained smile, he handed her the book. It was the spellbook that held the peace ward.
“You can perform it,” he whispered. He leaned back in his chair, visibly exhausted. “I looked at the wards you have on the tower—they’re excellent. A peace ward will be difficult, even agonizing . . . but you can manage it.”
Dwyn stared at her grandfather. She looked at the book, then back at her grandfather, and frowned. Something was wrong.
“Grandda, what’s going on?”
Her grandfather had begun to doze. He started and looked up at her, his eyes half closed. “You were right,” he said, his voice slightly slurred. “I can’t . . . can’t manage it. S’why you have to go . . .” He began to nod off again.
“Grandda?” Dwyn stepped around the rocking chair to look him in the face, and her foot bumped something on the floor. She looked down—it was an almost-empty glass flask. One of her flasks from her workshop, not one of the old, stained bottles her grandfather used. And it held a few spoonfuls of pale blue liquid.
Dwyn went cold. “Clearthought?” she asked. “You . . . you drank the whole flask?”
“Was too much,” her grandfather slurred.
“Grandda!” she shouted, jolting him awake for a moment. She grabbed his head and turned him to face her. “You can’t . . . you have to stay awake! I’m going to get you some monkshroom, but you have to stay awake!”
“No,” he replied, his voice faint. “Rubellum and some fae dust—should counteract the effect.” He blinked, his eyes becoming alert for a moment. “I think. Double . . . double-check in that book there.” He pointed weakly at the bookcase.
Dwyn scrambled for the book and tore through the pages, finally finding a list of overdose countermeasures scribbled in her grandfather’s shaky handwriting. She squinted, trying to decipher the words. He’d been right—rubellum and fae dust, boiled in moonwater.
“Grandda, stay awake!” she shouted, shaking him. “Tell me more stories!”
“I was the lord wizard, once,” he murmured, his head lolling back against the chair’s headrest. “Did you know that?”
“Tell me all about it!” She stumbled across the room to his workbench and dug through his cupboards until she found the ingredients. When she hurried back to her grandfather, his eyes were closed again. “Grandd
a!” She forced some of the rubellum into his mouth, the yellow chunks crumbling across his lips. “Just a little rubellum should keep you alert without being poisonous, right? Right? Just chew that while I brew the rest!”
For a moment, he didn’t move. Then, just when she was about to burst from holding her breath, he began to chew and swallow. It wouldn’t be enough. Dwyn looked around for something that could buy her time. After a moment, she remembered her suspension powder. She pulled the bag from her waist and dumped some of the powder on her grandfather, whispering the words to freeze him in time. It would buy him twenty to thirty extra minutes.
The next half hour was a haze of lantern light and dust. She dug madly through the room until she found the cauldrons she’d given him for his birthday, still in the gift box. While the potion boiled, she lifted her frozen grandfather—he was frighteningly light—and moved him to his bed, clearing enough space with kicks and plentiful curses. He coughed as she set him down; the suspension was wearing off.
When the potion was ready, she spoon-fed it to him with his head in her lap. He had trouble swallowing, occasionally coughing it back up. She mopped his face with shaking hands and kept feeding him. He had to pull through—he was all she had.
When the potion was gone, she sat and held him, waiting for his eyes to open.
* * *
Her grandfather finally awoke around ten o’clock, when the sun through the window reached his face. Dwyn had moved to a chair beside the bed, and she sat forward and squeezed his hand.
“Grandda? Can you hear me?”
“Dwyn?” He turned his head, and his eyes slowly focused on her. “You need to go,” he coughed. “I’ll . . . I’ll be fine with a little more rest.”
“I know,” she replied. She held his spellbook in her lap and had been studying the peace ward. As he’d said, it was enormously difficult, but . . . she did think she could do it. “Grandda . . . they’re going to ask why you sent me to do it instead of coming yourself.”
