The Mage and the Magpie
Page 3
She would wake early in the morning, when most people were still dreaming, and walk across the river bridge to watch the bullfrogs stretching their long legs. She taught them some gymnastics every morning. A cartwheel and a back hand spring, a somersault and a heel stretch. Her imaginary bullfrogs followed, flipped, and bowed and were so appreciative that she didn’t mind that the “real” bullfrogs just sat there, burping at her with bored looks on their faces. After the bullfrogs, she would walk into town and look in all the shop windows before anybody got there; she liked seeing things when they were empty and quiet. It was easier to stay invisible that way. She wasn’t truly invisible—not yet—but she might as well have been for the way she disappeared every day from the sight of normal people.
On this particular morning she woke especially early to the smell of a freshly watered world. She had left her window open the previous night to listen to the rain as it pitter pattered down from the clouds. There was no way she would be able to fall back asleep. All she could think about was the sound of the bell. Saturday was still three days away. Her father had worked a double shift yesterday, so she knew he would be sleeping in. She was supposed to do chores today. She was supposed to weed the garden and clean the bathroom, but she could do that later. Her father didn’t mind when she did her chores, as long as they got done. That was one of the greatest things about him. He trusted her. She got up, threw her hair in a bun, stuck a couple of her favorite drawing pencils in it, and left for Morley.
Morley was an old abandoned mining town on the side of the mountain. Over the years it had become one of her favorite places to draw. Today would be unlike any other trip to Morley. She would sketch the sun rising against the face of the broken church, and the birds, and the empty mine shafts, but this time she wasn’t going just to draw. This time she was looking for answers.
It was a long walk to Morley. Usually she didn’t mind, but today she wanted to get there as quickly as she could. Briefly, she entertained the idea of taking one of the four-wheelers. It would be faster, but it would be loud. She imagined rocketing through the streets, waking the neighbors, and cutting the journey down to fifteen minutes. She wrinkled her nose at the idea. She would walk. It was better to stay invisible, but she would have to walk fast if she was going to make it by sunrise.
She always liked walking the old trail to Morley; in certain places it was the very same Santa Fe Trail that the old pioneers came west on. Stories and pictures of their lives flew through her imagination as she glided along the trail, the cool morning wind invigorating her
When she arrived an hour later, the sun was on the verge of rising. She grinned. Apart from the question of the bell, Morley held a special meaning for her, and it was always exciting to visit—especially early in the morning (ghost towns are always best in the strangeness of the early morning hours). She wasn’t afraid. She had grown up around the town and was used to its strange emptiness. The emptiness was actually one of her favorite things about it. It wasn’t that she didn’t like other people; she liked them well enough. But she was different from them somehow. She felt different. Not because she had an imagination so wild that she often got lost in it (though she did). And not because of her shyness, which was so severe that she sometimes wished people really couldn’t see her. Those weren’t the main reasons anyway. Brinley felt different because of Morley. She was different because she didn’t have a mother.
Almost all children have a mother at some point, she knew. Her cousin Veronica said that she didn’t have a mother, but she really did. Veronica’s mother had split up with her dad and now she hardly ever saw her. Her friend Marshal had a mother who died giving birth to him. So in a way, he didn’t have a mother either, but at least he used to, and he had a picture or two of her, and he knew that his mother had once known him. Brinley didn’t have those things. Her father had found her right on the steps of Morley Church. She supposed her mother must have left her there, a baby in a basket, for her father to find. But how could any mother do such a thing? She didn’t understand.
“I will have to be your father and your mother,” her dad would say on the days when he could tell that she was sad. She knew he meant well, but it didn’t always help. She knew it was silly, hated herself for it sometimes, but no matter how she tried, she didn’t feel normal. When she was younger, whenever she got tired of feeling that way, she would pretend to be invisible and wander off to be alone. She surprised herself with how happy she could be, how content she could make herself, away from the world and invisible, and the habit stuck.
Her father didn’t approve. “When you do a thing for too long you become it,” he would say, but Brinley was not quite thirteen—far too young for anything like that to happen.
Brinley walked to the foot of the church and peered carefully up into the ramshackle bell tower.
It was empty.
She stared at it a while, wondering what that meant. Maybe there had never been a bell. Maybe the people who built it had never got around to putting one in. Then again, the place had been abandoned for so long…was it possible that there could have been a bell here years ago when her father had found her? She looked around the church, thinking that it may have just fallen out and rolled away, but there was nothing.
Eventually, she gave up the search and decided to draw. The sun had crested the trees now, and that magical hour of morning light had begun. Few people knew about that secret, she thought. Painters, and photographers, and movie makers, perhaps. They were the only people who seemed to know how the morning light made everything look different, special, alive. Walking past the church to sit on the shoulder of a fallen pine tree, her imagination started to run wild. She would let it loose like this sometimes; it was a relief, like dropping something heavy that you have been carrying for too long. She gazed around and saw the friendly ghosts of days long gone. Of all her secret places, Morley was her favorite; it was easy to imagine things in a place like this.
She pulled out her sketchbook and started working. The empty door, the steps, a basket. How many times had she drawn this picture? Too many to remember. She never finished it. She never knew how to draw her mother walking away. She tried this time, formed the loose lines of a head and body turning away from the basket. She stopped abruptly, changed it into her father instead, turning toward her. She wondered again about the bell that had brought him to Morley that night. Why had she never thought to ask him about it before?
She shrugged the thought away and looked around. For most people there wouldn’t be much to see, but her father worked for Fish and Wildlife Services, and she had practically grown up in the forest. She found the birds. She came here often enough that she knew where to look. She began sketching, writing their names beside each one: Black Swift, Downy Woodpecker, Hummingbird, Red-Tailed Hawk, Magpie. She squinted up at the magpie. He was a new addition. She looked back down and added a few extra details to her drawing so that she could recognize him in the future—if it was a him. She didn’t know how to tell with magpies.
Eventually she finished with the birds and looked up at the church. Images of what it used to be like flooded her mind, and she drew. Morley had been abandoned for less than seventy years, but by the looks of it, it might have been five hundred. She could see the old miners and their families, and she drew them coming out of the church on a Sunday afternoon. They had built the structure with their own money, and now it was practically the only evidence left that they were ever here.
After three hours her stomach growled and she checked her watch, surprised at how much time had passed already. She held her drawing up to check it against the real Morley Church, squinting at it appraisingly. Something wasn’t quite right about the empty bell tower. She added some shade to the left side, then set it down and rummaged in her bag for a sandwich. She put her back against a tree and ate. Twenty minutes later, she had drifted to sleep in the warmth of the sun.
She woke to the sound of a magpie.
She sat up and put her chin in her hands, looking around again. She had just been dreaming about hiking with her father around Morley. She had asked him who her mother was. What had he said? She couldn’t remember. She must have awakened before he answered. If that magpie had only waited a few more seconds…
She looked around to where the noise had come from and saw the corner of a large nest peeking out over the edge of the bell tower. So it was a mother magpie. She drew her sketchbook out again, added the nest to her drawing of the church, then started on a new page. “Mother Magpie” she wrote at the top of it, then sketched the bird and her hatchling. Even the magpie babies had a mother.
Where was hers?
She began to draw faster, memories flooding into her mind. The first day of school, when Ann had asked what her mom’s name was. Her first sleepover, when Jennie’s mom had made pancakes in the morning, making her wonder how nice it would be to wake up to a mother every day. Her birthday, two years ago, when she had first really asked her father for answers, and he had told her about the basket. Had he told her everything, though? Maybe he was hiding something, thinking the truth would hurt her. Maybe her mother had been an awful person. Or maybe, just maybe, she really didn’t have a mother at all.
All things have a mother.
Brinley jumped at the voice, looking around. She hadn’t heard anyone come up.
“Hello?” she called. She waited, but didn’t hear anything. There was nothing there, just trees and rocks, half of an old empty church, and a magpie. She must have imagined it. Maybe she had drifted into a daydream while drawing. Yes, it would fit right into the last dream she had been having about her father. Maybe that’s what he had —
All things have a mother.
This time she jumped up and wheeled around. It was a woman’s voice. She was sure of it. Where on earth was it coming from? She definitely hadn’t been daydreaming this time.
“Hello?” she called again. Nothing. She had the sense that someone was there, watching. Perhaps in the trees, just out of sight, or hiding around the corner of the church. It was unnerving. She wished more than anything to be invisible. Really invisible this time.
She quietly zipped her notebook into her bag and started off toward the path. She walked on tiptoes, hoping beyond hope that whoever was hiding wouldn’t notice her. This time, the voice came as a whisper in her ear just as she was passing the door to the church.
All things have a mother.
She gave a little yelp. Whoever it was must have been standing right next to her, but nobody was there! Not knowing what else to do, she ran into the church, glancing around quickly. She couldn’t see anyone. Still…somebody was there. She stood stock-still, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. She didn’t know what was going on, all she knew was that she was afraid.
After a few moments, she came to her senses. This was ridiculous! There must have been some funny tomatoes in her sandwich or something. She had been standing there with a dumb look on her face, her arms stretched out, hands poised to make karate chops. It was almost laughable. Almost. The magpie fluttered down to sit atop the broken wall of the church, looking at her curiously.
“Don’t give me that look,” she said. “I know I heard something—” No, she told herself. She had imagined it. She turned her back toward the door and a sound like musical thunder rang out above her head. It was like a giant gong. Louder than any normal bell could be.
She whipped around, staring up at the bell tower. It was just as empty as it had been before. Her heart was beating fast. Stubbornly, she forced herself not to run home. She had to walk, she told herself. This was all in her head. It had to be.
Chapter Six
In which Archibald gets Hugo to recite a poem
In the stable of Caraway Castle, Archibald placed the bell back into the pocket of his vest, donned his hat and twirled his cane, catching it with an audible thump in the crook of his arm. It seemed like the thing to do, ringing the bell at the outset of the journey. Once again, he had little hope that anything would happen, so he wasn’t disappointed when it didn’t. He placed one foot in the stirrup and swung himself into his saddle, patting his sturdy pony on the side of the neck.
“Well, Pilfer, old boy, I thought he would come. But it looks like I was wrong.” No sooner had he said it when Hugo, wearing a large pack and a sword at his side, stepped into the stable. He was smartly dressed in a crisp cotton shirt with the symbol of the Paradise kings, an emerald green salamander, emblazoned on the collar. His golden hair fell in short locks above a clean gray traveling cloak. The dull, apathetic boy of an hour before had vanished, replaced by what looked like an agreeable person.
“What is that?” Archibald said sharply, pointing to the sword at Hugo’s side.
“It’s none of your affair,” Hugo said, and turned slightly to guard the sword from view.
Archibald folded his arms. “I see. And what about when your father notices that you have stolen the sword of the kings of Caraway and gone—how did he say it?—gallivanting across the face of the world? He will send the guard to fetch you straight back to the castle.”
Hugo went red in the face, but said nothing.
“Very well, you will pout in your chambers, and I shall have no pupil to vex with lectures on the road.”
Hugo muttered something under his breath.
“I beg your pardon?” Archibald said stiffly.
“Fine,” Hugo said loudly. “You are always right, I suppose.”
Archibald nodded, choosing to ignore the sarcasm. “Tomlin!” he called loudly.
One of the stable boys ran in.
“Tomlin, please take the king’s sword back to the armory and fetch Prince Hugo’s from his chambers.”
Hugo unbelted the sword reluctantly, handing it over to the stable boy.
“Your horse is almost ready, my lord,” the boy said hastily. “They will bring him out to you in a moment.” He took off at a brisk pace, not unaware of the sudden change in the prince’s mood.
“I’ll be waiting outside,” Hugo said sullenly, and turned for the door. He paused and turned back for a moment, looking like a person who is forcing themselves to say something that they don’t feel like saying. He spoke in a mumble so soft that Archibald almost missed it.
“Thanks for taking me.” His face turned a brilliant red, and he turned to leave the stable before Archibald could comment.
Archibald chuckled to himself, thinking it was a good start.
***
That night they made camp on the far bank of Mirror Lake. They could see the castle faintly in the last light of day; it looked small from this distance. Half a day’s ride had taken them around the long shore. Tomorrow they would ride all the way to Ninebridge, then on to the Magisterium in Tarwal, where Archibald hoped they would find some clue to the Magemother’s whereabouts, and hopefully learn something more about what really happened to Animus; with any luck, the mage’s apprentice would still be there.
They gathered loose branches from the underbrush for a fire and spread themselves out beneath the stars, waiting for water to boil.
“I saw Lux today,” Hugo said abruptly, breaking a long silence. Hugo had not said three words to his teacher since Archibald had made him return the sword that morning. Archibald propped himself up on one arm politely.
“Did you?”
“I bumped into him on my way to the—uh—kitchens,” Hugo lied.
“On your way to spy on your father and me,” Archibald corrected.
Hugo was silent.
“And?”
“Well,” Hugo continued slowly, “I mean, I should have bumped into him. I should have run hi
m over really—I was running—but I just sort of…went through him.”
Archibald smiled. “I’m not surprised. Mages are quite powerful, you know. It is not wise to pretend that we understand everything that they can do.”
Hugo mumbled something, poking the fire with a stick.
“But then, you have always wanted to understand them, and their magic,” Archibald said, guessing his thoughts.
Hugo looked up in surprise.
“Fine,” Archibald continued. “That can be our first lesson.” Archibald cleared his throat in a formal way. “Who are the mages of Aberdeen and what do they rule?”
Hugo rolled his eyes. “I suppose you want to hear it like it says in the poem?”
“Yes, I do. Speaking of which, where is the poem found and what is it called?”
Hugo sighed. He had walked right into that one. “The Seven Souls of Nature, from the Book of the Magemother,” he recited.
“And what does it say?”
Hugo shifted, settling into a more comfortable position, and began.
“Chant the names of mages five:
Chantra first, the Mage of Fire
Second, Belterras of earth
Cassis, metal’s mage, is third
Unda is the lord of sea
Lignumis of wood and tree.”
Hugo paused, trying to remember.
Archibald goaded him on. “Didn’t you say it was called the seven souls of nature?”
“Just a second! It’s not like I read it every day.” He cleared his throat and continued,
“Above the stone, above the sea,
Above the fire and the tree,
Above the earth, the wind is free;
Animus, the sixth, is king.”
“There you have it,” Archibald began, but Hugo interrupted him.
“So Chantra rules the fire—her magic governs it, I guess? Belterras is over the earth, Cassis is the Mage of Metal, Unda controls the sea—and Lignumis the forest and wood,” he said in a rush.