Forest Mage

I suddenly decided it was time to leave.

The guide seemed to have calmed his customers on the way down. As I followed the path back through the ancient city, I saw that the teacher and her charges had dispersed throughout the ruins. The easel woman was hard at work again. One of the women with a sketchbook was drawing the other as she sat picturesquely beside a tumbled wall. I passed them all, enduring their glances as I did so. Something nagged at me, some task had been left undone, but I recognized that concern as belonging to my other self. Nevare only wanted to be away from that place.

As I drew near to the base of the Spindle and the shabby little shack there, I saw the guide again. He leaned in the shade against the wall of his pathetic house and watched me come. I could see him trying to decide if he would say anything to me or would let me pass unchallenged. His furtive glances told me that he both despised and feared me as a madman.

I heard voices. As I passed the edge of the bowl in which the Spindle rested or spun, I glanced over the rim. The boys were there. This time, his two companions gripped his legs while Jard lay, belly down, in the slanting cup of the bowl. His knife was busy again. Large letters proclaimed that Jard had been there. Ret’s name was in the process of being added. All three were so intent that they didn’t see me staring at them. I looked at the guide and our eyes met across the distance. His face paled with fear. I smiled.

‘If my illustrious ancestors had carved this, I’d protect it from young vandals,’ I advised the half-breed sarcastically.

He narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to respond. But before he could, one of the boys holding Jard’s legs yelped, ‘It’s that crazy fat man! Get out of there, Jard!’ At the same moment, he helpfully let go of Jard’s leg as he sprang away and fled, intent on saving himself from my supposed insanity. Jard, supported now only by Breg’s grip on his other leg, gave a wild yell as he suddenly slid deeper into the bowl. He flailed his arms wildly, seeking a grip on the smooth surface and finding nothing. Breg, surprised by Ret’s desertion, was himself tugged to his knees at the edge of the bowl. ‘I can’t hold him!’ he wailed. I heard a tearing sound and saw the fabric of Jard’s trousers starting to give way.

In two steps, I reached the rim of the Spindle’s bowl. I flung myself to my knees and reached to grab Jard by the knees. He screamed and kicked at me, evidently thinking I intended to tear him from Breg’s grip and let him plunge headfirst into the Spindle’s well. I didn’t. I hauled him back to the lip of the bowl. He jabbed his knife at me, still struggling against his rescue. My blood seethed with anger at his insolence. I seized his wrist and slammed it flat against the stone of the bowl. His knife flew free. An instant later, I had dragged him back over the edge and to safety. I released him and tried to stand up. Magic was singing triumphantly through my blood. Something was happening, something vast and not of my volition, but of my doing all the same. The forest mage within me laughed wildly, victoriously, and then slid back into the leafy shadows of my subconscious. I could not discern what his victory was, and then I did.

Even as the other tourists were running towards me, and Jard fled sobbing to his teacher, I watched his knife sliding down the bowl towards the unseen depths at the centre. As the bowl became steeper, the knife slid faster across the polished stone. When it entered the darkness of the centre, I felt my heart stand still.

The half-breed had seized my hand and was pumping it while stuttering out his thanks and apologizing for misjudging me. The fool. I heard Ret shouting to the rapidly gathering tourists that, ‘No, it’s all right, he didn’t try to hurt Jard, he saved him! Jard nearly fell head first into that hole. The man pulled him out.’ Jard was sobbing like a small boy as he clung to his teacher. I alone seemed to hear the terrible grinding noise at the edge of the worlds. The blade of the knife had wedged beneath the Spindle’s tip. I knew that tip existed, deep inside the well the magic had drilled for all those years. The vast momentum of magic met the iron knife and wedged against it. The Spindle ground to a halt. I felt the moving magic foul and tangle, thwarted by a small iron blade. I sank down and pressed my brow to the edge of the stone bowl. It was like the death of the windwizard all over again, but this time I could not claim innocence for myself. What had I done? What had the forest magic done through me?

‘Best leave him alone!’ I heard the guide say. ‘I think the man just wants to be left alone.’

Then all sound halted around me. Like the harsh kiss of a sandstorm the harnessed magic of the plainsmen suddenly burst free and scattered. For a blink of my lifetime, I swear the world went black and still. Raw power abraded my senses and engulfed me. I struggled to stand, to lift my arms to defend myself from it.

When time started up again, I seemed once more to have fallen behind the rest of the world. The guide had rounded up his tourists and was herding them back towards their wagon. Several of them glanced back at me and shook their heads, speaking quickly to one another. The knife-boy was already sitting on a wagon seat. Ret said something to Breg and they both hooted with laughter. Jard’s brush with death was already a joking matter for them. They had no idea of what had just happened.

The flash of anger I felt subsided before I even felt its heat. Surely the sun had moved in the sky? I gave my head a small shake and let my clenched fists fall to my sides. My arms ached. My nails had left deep red indentations in my palms. I had no idea how long I had stood there. I did know what my Speck self had done. The Dancing Spindle no longer danced. The magic of the plainspeople was broken. I found Sirlofty. It was all I could do to clamber onto his back. I held to the horn of the saddle as I kicked him into a lope and fled that place. The driver of the wagon shouted at me angrily as I passed his team on the steep trail. I paid him no mind.

By the time I reached the road again, I had almost recovered. The farther I went from the Spindle, the clearer my head became. The forest mage inside me ceased his chortling and grew still.

Evening fell, and I pushed Sirlofty on, journeying through the dusk to make up the time wasted in my foolish detour. I wished I’d never left the road. I tried to stuff what I’d discovered back into the darkness, but it rode with me now. I shifted in my saddle and felt it slip under me. Gently I reined Sirlofty in; I dismounted as if I were as fragile as an eggshell. With a feeling of ineffable sadness, I tightened the cinch on my saddle.

It was the first time in my life that I’d ever had to do that.

Night was deep by the time I reached the town. I found an inn that would admit me. Before I fell asleep, as had become my habit, I wrote carefully of the day’s events. Then I scowled at the words. Did I really want these wild thoughts in the first volume of my soldier-son journal? Only the teaching that it was my duty to record what I observed each day comforted me.

In the days that followed, I did not again diverge from my father’s itinerary for me. I fixed my mind on my carefully planned life, on my brother’s wedding, my reunion with Carsina, my education at the Academy, my service and my eventual marriage. My father had mapped out my future as precisely as he had mapped out my journey home. I had no time for illusions, no time to question where my reality ended and someone else’s began. I refused to think about the magic of the Plains and a ‘keep fast’ charm that no longer seemed to work. Everyone knew that the magic of the plains folk was fading. There was no reason to blame myself for its demise. With the destruction of the Spindle, that other self in me seemed to subside. I dared to hope that it was the last I would sense of him. I practised believing that until I was able to think and live as if I were certain it was so.

Although the Midlands are often referred to as flat, they rise and fall with subtle grace. Thus it was that the trees and walls of my father’s home were concealed from me until I rode up a slight rise in a bend of the road and suddenly perceived my home. My father’s manor was set on a gentle rise overlooking the road. I gazed up at it and thought that it looked smaller and more rustic than when I had last seen it. Now that I knew what the estates and manors of the west looked like, I could see that my father’s house was a pale imitation of their grandeur. I could also see how clearly our home was modelled upon my uncle’s house. They had made improvements since I’d left for the Academy. River gravel had been hauled up to surface the drive, and young oak trees, each little more than a shovel-handle high, now edged it. Some day they would be tall and grand, and this would be a fine carriageway to our home. But for now, they looked spindly and forlorn, exposed to prairie dust and wind. Each had a damp circle of soil around its base. I wondered how many years they’d have to be watered daily before their roots reached deep enough to sustain them. This copying of our ancestral home suddenly seemed both sentimental and a bit silly to me.

But nonetheless, it was home. I’d arrived. For an instant, I had the foolish thought that I could pass it by and keep travelling east, on and on, all the way to the mountains. I imagined tall trees and inviting shade and birds calling in the shadowy thickets. Then Sirlofty took it on himself to turn from the main road and break into a canter. We were home! We woke dust all up the long driveway from the King’s Road to my father’s front door. There I pulled him in with a flourish, as our family’s dogs swirled around us in a barking, wagging pack and one of the stablehands came out to see what had roused them. I didn’t know the man, and so I was not offended when he asked, ‘Are you lost, sir?’

‘No, I’m Nevare Burvelle, a son of the house, just returned from the Cavalla Academy. Please take Sirlofty for me and see that he is well treated. We’ve come a long way, he and I.’

The man gaped at me, but I ignored that and handed him my reins. ‘Oh, and send the contents of his panniers up to my room, if you would,’ I added, as I climbed the front steps. I let myself in, calling out, ‘Mother! Father! It’s Nevare, I’m home. Rosse, Elisi, Yaril? Is anyone home?’

My mother was the first to come out of her sewing room. She stared at me, her eyes growing round and then, embroidery in hand, she hurried down the hall. She embraced me, saying, ‘Oh, Nevare, it’s so good to see you. But the dust on you! I’ll have a bath drawn for you immediately. Oh, son, I’m so glad you are home and safe again!’

‘And I am glad beyond words to be here again, Mother!’

The others had arrived by then. Father and Rosse looked startled, even when I turned and strode towards them, smiling. Rosse shook my hand but my father held back from me, demanding, ‘What have you done to yourself? You look like a wandering peddler! Why aren’t you wearing your uniform?’

‘It needs a bit of mending, I’m afraid. I hope Mother can have it ready in time for Rosse’s wedding. Elisi, Yaril? Am I a stranger now? Aren’t you going to say hello even?’

‘Hello, Nevare. Welcome home.’ Elisi spoke stiffly, and looked aside from me as if I’d done something rude and she wasn’t sure how to deal with it.

‘You’re so fat!’ Yaril exclaimed, tactless as she had ever been. ‘What have you been eating at that place? Your face is round as the full moon! And you’re so dirty! I thought you’d ride up, all glorious in your uniform. I didn’t even recognize you at first.’

I chuckled weakly, and waited for my father to rebuke her. Instead, he muttered, ‘Out of the mouths of babes.’ Then, speaking more strongly, he said, ‘I’m sure you’ve had a long trip, Nevare. You’re a few hours earlier than I expected you, but I think you’ll find your room is waiting, with wash water. After you’ve cleaned yourself and changed, please come and see me in my study.’

I made a final effort. ‘I’m so glad to see you, Father. It’s good to be home.’

‘I’m sure it is, Nevare. Well. I’ll see you again in a few minutes.’ There was restraint in his voice, and the edge of command. Plainly he wished me to obey him immediately. And I did. The habit of not questioning his authority and commands was still strong in me, but as I washed the dust from my face and hands, I experienced something I hadn’t felt before about my father. Resentment. It wasn’t just for the way he ordered me about, but for his obvious displeasure with me. I had only just arrived home. Could not he have suppressed whatever it was that annoyed him long enough to shake my hand and welcome me back? Must I immediately fall completely under his domination again? I thought of his rigid itinerary for my journey home, and suddenly saw it not as a helpful aid, but as oppression. Did he or did he not trust me to make my own way in the world?

My anger gave way to a greater frustration as I tried to find some clothing that would still fit me. When I had left for the Academy, I had emptied my room. My mother, ever thoughtful of such things, had hung two of Rosse’s old shirts and a pair of his trousers in my closet, for my use until my travelling clothes could be washed and pressed. When I put them on, I looked ridiculous. The trousers were too short on me as well as far too tight. I had to let my stomach bulge out over the top of them. Both shirts strained on me. I took them off and vindictively threw them on the floor before putting my travel-stained clothes back on. But a glance in my mirror showed me that they were ill-fitting and dirty to boot. The seams in the seat of the trousers looked ready to part. The shirt was already slightly torn at both shoulders, and barely met over my middle.

Well, I decided, if I must look silly, I would at least be clean. I retrieved Rosse’s clothes, put them on, wiped the worst of the dust off my boots and descended the stairs. The house was silent. My mother and sisters seemed to have vanished completely. I did not even hear their voices in a different room. I tapped at the closed door to my father’s study and then walked in. My father was standing with his back to the room, staring out the window. My brother Rosse was there also. He glanced at me and then away, plainly uncomfortable. My father held his silence.

I broke the silence at last. ‘Father, you wished me to come to your study?’

He did not turn around. He did not immediately reply. When he did speak, he seemed to be addressing the trees outside the window. ‘Your brother’s wedding is scarcely four days away,’ he said heavily. ‘How can you possibly think to undo in four days what sloth and gluttony have accomplished in six months? Did you give a thought to anyone beside yourself when you were allowing your gut to become the size of a washbasin? Do you wish to humiliate your entire family by appearing at a festive occasion in such a state? I am humiliated to think that you have presented yourself thus to the Academy, to my brother, and to everyone who knew your name on your journey home. In the good god’s name, Nevare, whatever were you thinking when you allowed yourself to descend to such a state? I sent you off to the Academy a fit and able young man, physically suited to be an officer and a soldier. And look what comes back to me less than a year later!’

His words rattled against me like flung stones. He gave me no opportunity to reply. When he finally turned to face me, I could see that his quiet stance had been a deception. His face was red and the veins stood out in his temples. I dared a glance at my brother. His face was white and he was very still, like a small animal that hopes not to draw the predator’s attention to himself.

I stood in the focus of my father’s anger with absolutely no idea of how to defend myself. I felt guilty and ashamed of my body, but I honestly could not recall that I had overeaten since I had begun my journey, nor had my pace been what I would call slothful. I spoke the truth. ‘I have no explanation, sir. I don’t know why I’ve gained so much weight.’

The anger in his eyes sharpened. ‘You don’t? Well, perhaps a three-day fast will refresh an elementary truth for you. If you eat too much, you get fat, Nevare. If you lie about like a slug, you get fat. If you don’t overeat and if you exercise your muscles, you remain trim and soldierly.’

He took a breath, obviously to master himself. When he spoke again, his tone was calmer. ‘Nevare, you disappoint me. It is not just that you have let yourself go; worse is that you try to shrug off the responsibility for it. I must remind myself of your youth. Perhaps the fault is mine; perhaps I should have delayed your entry into the Academy until you were more mature, more capable of regulating yourself. Well.’ He sighed, clenched his jaw for a moment and then went on. ‘That cannot be mended now. But the mess you’ve made of yourself is something I can remedy. We cannot undo it in four days, but we can put a dent in it. Look at me, son, when I speak to you.’

I had been avoiding his gaze. Now I brought my eyes back to meet his squarely, trying to mask my anger. If he saw it, he ignored it. ‘It won’t be pleasant, Nevare. Do it willingly, and prove to me that you are still the son I trained and sent off with such high hopes. I ask only two things of you: restrict your food and demand performance from your body.’ He paused and seemed to be weighing his options. Then he nodded to himself. ‘Sergeant Duril has been supervising a crew clearing stones from the land for a new pasture. Go and join them, right now, and I don’t mean to supervise. Start working off that gut. Confine your appetite to water for the rest of this day. Tomorrow, eat as sparingly as you can. We’ll do what we can to trim some of that off you before your brother’s wedding day.’

He turned his attention to my brother. ‘Rosse. Go out to the stables with him, and find him a mule. I won’t have one of the good horses broken down by lugging him over broken terrain. Take him out to the new alfalfa field.’

I spoke up. ‘I think I could find a mule for myself.’

‘Just do what you are told, Nevare. Trust me. I know what is best for you.’ He sighed heavily, and then with the first hint of kindness I heard from him, he said, ‘Put yourself in my hands, son. I know what I’m doing.’

And that was my welcome home.

FOUR

The Fast

Rosse and I rode silently out to the work site. Several times I glanced at my brother, but he was always staring ahead, his face expressionless. I supposed he was as disappointed in me as my father was. We said a perfunctory goodbye, he rode off leading my mule and I joined my work crew. I didn’t recognize any of the four men and we didn’t bother with introductions. I simply joined them at the task.

The future pasture was on a sunny hillside by a creek. Coarse prairie grass and buck-brush grew there now. The ground was littered with stones, some loose on top of the earth and others nudging up out of the soil. The larger ones had to be moved before a team and plough could break the thin sod. I’d watched our men do this sort of work before though I’d never bent my back to it myself. It should have been well within my ability, but Academy life had softened me. My first hour of prising rocks from their beds and lifting them into a wagon first raised and then broke blisters on my hands. The work was both tedious and demanding.

We used iron bars to prise the larger stones from the hard earth. Then each had to be lifted, sometimes by two men, and loaded onto a buckboard wagon. When the wagon was full we followed it as the team hauled the stone to the edge of the field. There we unloaded it in a neat line of rock. It became a rough stone wall to mark the edge of the sown pasture. The other men talked and laughed among themselves. They were not rude; they just ignored me. Doubtless they had decided I wouldn’t last long and that there was little point in getting to know me.

Sergeant Duril was supervising the work. The first time he rode by to check on our crew, I don’t think he recognized me. I was glad to escape his notice. The second time he rode up to ask how many wagon loads of stone we’d hauled since he last spoke to us, he stared at me and then visibly startled.

‘You. Come here,’ he commanded me roughly. He didn’t dismount, but rode his horse a short distance while I walked beside him. When we were out of earshot of the work crew, he pulled in and looked down at me. ‘Nevare?’ he asked, as if he could not believe his eyes.

‘Yes. It’s me.’ My voice came out flat and defensive.

‘What in the good god’s name have you done to yourself?’

‘I’ve got fat,’ I said bluntly. I was already tired of explaining it. Or rather, I was tired of not being able to explain it. No one seemed able to believe that it had simply happened and that I had not brought it on myself by sloth and greed. I was beginning to wonder about that myself. How had this befallen me?

‘So I see. But not in a way I’ve ever seen a lad put on weight! A little gut from too much beer, that I’ve seen on many a trooper. But you’re fat all over! Your face, your arms, even the calves of your legs!’

I hadn’t stopped to consider that. I wanted to look down at my body, to see if it was truly so, but suddenly felt too ashamed. I looked away from him, across the flat plain that soon would be a pasture. I tried to think of something to say but the only words that came were, ‘My father has sent me out here to work. He says hard work and short rations will trim me down before Rosse’s wedding.’

His silence seemed long. Then he said, ‘Well, a man can only do so much in a few days, but the intention is what matters. You’re stubborn, Nevare. I would never have imagined that you’d let yourself go like this, but I know that if you’re determined to get back to what you were, you’ll do it.’

I couldn’t think of any response to that, and after a short time, he said, ‘Well, I have to finish my round of the crews. Your da says that a year from now, this will all be alfalfa and clover. We’ll see.’

Then he tapped his horse and rode off. I walked back to the work crew. They had been loitering, watching us talk. I went back to levering up stones and loading them on the wagon. They didn’t ask any questions and I didn’t volunteer anything.

We worked the rest of the day, until Duril rode past again and gave the sign for quitting time. We still had to unload the rock we had on the wagon at the fence line. Then we all rode on the wagon back to my father’s manor house. The other men went off to the help’s quarters. I entered the back door of the house and went up to my room.

I blessed my mother when I arrived there. She had left out wash water and towels, and some of my old clothes, along with an old pair of plains sandals. I could see that she had hastily let out the seams of the trousers and shirt as far as they could go. I washed. When I dressed, I found that my old clothes were still snug on me, but they were bearable and far more presentable than Rosse’s cast-offs had been.

I had come in late and the rest of the family was already at dinner. I was in no hurry to join them. Instead, I crept into my sister Yaril’s room.

My father had always said that vanity was too costly a vice for any soldier to afford. In my own room, I had a mirror large enough for shaving, and that was all. My sisters, on the other hand, were expected to be continually aware of their appearances. They had full-length mirrors in each of their bedrooms. When I stood in front of Yaril’s, I had a shock.

Duril was right. The weight I had put on was distributed all over me, like thick frosting on a cake. No wonder others had been reacting to me so strangely. No part of me had escaped. As I stared at my face, I was certain that instead of losing weight on my journey home, I’d added to it. This was not the face I’d seen in my shaving mirror at the Academy. My cheeks were round and jowly and my chin was padded. My eyes looked smaller, as if they were set closer together. My neck looked shorter.