Forest Mage

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 headfirst 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 world. 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 wind wizard 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 again to have fallen behind the rest of the world. The guide had rounded up his tourists and was herding them back toward 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 onto 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 Plainsfolk 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 practiced 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 gentle 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 modeled 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. Someday 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.