by Toby Forward
The tugging had stopped. Sam wasn’t being dragged into the Finished World, he was helping one out of it.
No one should ever come from the Finished World. No one ever tried. No one ever could. This woman was crossing that barrier. And Sam recognized her. The cord round his neck tightened and hurt. The metal weight grew hot, burning his throat.
He tried to free his arm. The harder he pulled the more she emerged through the door. She was stuck, struggling. The Finished World didn’t want to let her go.
Sam tugged to free himself. She pulled back. Each time she came a little further out, freed herself a little more. Sam knew he couldn’t let her. Couldn’t allow her to come through. If she did, he would have brought a plague into the world, a bringer of death.
“You’ll stay there,” he said. “I’ll come to you.”
He stopped struggling and relaxed. The Finished World breathed in and the woman was sucked back, Sam drawn in with her. His head approached the door. He gave up the fight.
“No you don’t.”
Flaxfold’s voice pierced his submission. His arm froze and the woman released it with a shriek of pain. Flaxfold seized his other hand and jerked him to her. The door slammed, with the woman still the other side. Sam gasped. He looked at Flaxfold. By a trick of the light she was taller, no longer stout but upright and angry. No, not angry. Prepared for any fight. Fierce. His arm was dead with cold.
She stepped between him and the shocked assembly.
The room was level now, restored. The faces of the family were clothed with anger and disappointment.
Flaxfold, small and stout again, smiled at them.
“You’re very lucky,” she said.
The girl’s father began to protest and complain that the Finishing had been badly done, spoiled. Sam flexed his fingers to bring life and warmth back to them.
“Hush,” said Flaxfold, taking the father’s arm and sitting him down. “Hush. It’s all right. It’s good. Sometimes, with a young one, with a special child, the Finished World is as glad to receive her as we are sad to lose her. The depth of your sorrow is balanced by the surplus of their joy. When that happens…” She shrugged. “Well, you saw how it was.”
Sam knew they had seen nothing, of course. People never did. Just shadows and flashes.
Flaxfold stayed longer than she would have done, creating confidence, rebuilding the family for each other. She heard their memories, encouraged plans, shared their food and helped them to be ready for the next day, and the next.
Sam was impatient to leave, to talk, to explain and to ask questions. He had to wait. He ate a little and went outdoors and looked up at Starback, circling the sky. The dragon had been unsettled by the event. Sam closed his eyes and circled with him, looking down at the house until Flaxfold waved goodbye.
Rejoining her he waited until they were on the road.
“I thought it was Tamrin,” he said. “Dead, I mean.”
“Yes. I saw that. You were upset.”
“And then the woman. What happened?”
“Something,” said Flaxfold, “that changes everything. There’s dangerous work ahead. Now. For all of us. But mostly for you.”
“Tell me,” said Sam.
“It’s like this,” she began. “Your old master, Flaxfield, died because he was wounded. Long ago. His magic was tested and torn.”
Sam trudged along next to her. The day was closing and they still had a long way to go.
“A weak, greedy wizard tried to steal magic from a young girl, his apprentice,” she said. “It went wrong and magic was distorted, infected. The wizard changed, grew younger and stronger, and new magic ripped through into the world. Flaxfield was the only one who could tame it.”
She looked at the darkening sky. Starback flew overhead, leading the way, effortlessly riding the air. Sam waited for her to continue. He knew stories took their own time. They’re not dogs to call to heel.
Flaxfold’s face was sad. She was living the events again in her mind.
“It damaged him very much,” she said. “It never showed. He had many apprentices afterwards, and only one of them knew what he had endured. But it changed him. And, in the end, weakened him to his early death last year. He wasn’t supposed to die. He was supposed to stay until your apprenticeship was complete.”
“I still don’t know why he had to die,” Sam complained.
Twilight contracted the world. Trees were closer, the road more narrow. The moon rode low in the sky.
“Tell me about the woman,” said Flaxfold. “The one who tried to come from the Finished World.”
“You haven’t finished your story yet,” said Sam. “Let’s hear the end of that first.”
“It’s the same story,” said Flaxfold. “Tell me about her.”
Sam had known this all along. He had known without knowing that these two tales would cross.
“Last year,” he said, “at a different Finishing, in the mines, she was the one who appeared then, and tried to pull me into the Finished World.”
“And this time,” said Flaxfold, “she tried to use you to get out. That’s bad.”
“Who is she?” asked Sam.
Flaxfold stopped and looked at him.
“She’s the wizard that Flaxfield fought and defeated,” she said. “He put her in prison. He had her sealed tight, together with her assistant. And now she’s found you, and she thinks she can break out through the Finished World.”
“That’s impossible,” said Sam. The thought of travelling through that place filled him with panic. “You can’t move through the Finished World.”
“That’s what we’ve always thought,” said Flaxfold. “Enough. It’s dark now. We need daylight to talk of these things. We’ll be later home than I thought.”
She touched the burned skin on his throat. He winced at the initial pain, then her fingers took the heat away and soothed it.
“I’ll give you a salve for that when we get home,” she said.
They walked in silence, the folded night around them, until the house was in sight.
“What happened to the girl?” asked Sam. “The one he stole the magic from?” ||
The next morning Sam found a roffle
at the breakfast table, waiting to be fed.
“How did you get in?” he asked.
“How does a snail sing a sausage?” asked the roffle.
Sam sighed. He found the roffles’ way of talking very irritating. You never got a straight answer to anything.
“You’re Megatorine,” he said. “Right?”
“Does a cat know its own bread knife?” said the roffle. “Clever boy. You remember me?”
“I remember you cheated me last year,” said Sam. “You lied to me. You led me to the college and left me there.”
Flaxfold bustled in and put a frying pan on the range.
“You two have met before,” she said. “You’ll want bacon, I suppose? And eggs?”
“A few sausages would be nice as well, missus,” said the roffle. “And some fried bread.”
Sam made a private note that a roffle could speak straight enough when he was hungry. Sam had grown since last year and was now taller than the roffle, who was the usual height for someone from the Deep World. He noticed that the roffle sat at the table on the upturned, small, hard-leather pack they all carried, shaped like a squashed barrel. He waited for his food with his knife and fork in his hands, ready to fall on it as soon as it was placed in front of him.
This roffle had betrayed Sam, led him into danger, watched him as he nearly died, and he did nothing to help him. And somehow Sam still found it hard to dislike him. There was something about roffles.
“What have you come for?” he asked. “What do you want?”
Flaxfold gave him a friendly clip round the ear, so light he scarcely felt it.
“How long since you started being my apprentice?” she asked.
“Nearly a year,” said Sam.
“Oh,” said the roffle, “that’s the wa
y of it, is it? He’s your boy?”
“As if you didn’t know,” said Flaxfold. She pointed her fork at Sam before turning the bacon in the pan. “Nearly a year. And you’ve met him before, besides, and you still think you can ask a roffle a direct question and get a direct answer. I’m ashamed of you.” She laughed.
They got no more from the roffle for the rest of the meal. He ate his breakfast as though he’d been starved for a month, interrupting his work only to ask if there would be toast and marmalade next, and to wonder if there was a sausage left in the pan. Sam couldn’t help smiling.
When he was sure that no more food would be coming he sat back, undid the bottom two buttons of his waistcoat and folded his arms.
“Don’t settle yourself,” said Flaxfold. “You can either wash up or wait outside while Sam does. Do you want to wash up?”
“Does a fiddle need a fox when it can have a sideboard?” said the roffle, and he hoisted his barrel on to his back and left.
“Hey,” Sam called. “Don’t go. I want to talk.”
He started to follow him.
“Leave him alone,” said Flaxfold, “and get these plates washed. He’s not going anywhere.”
“What?”
“He’s come here to talk to you. And he won’t go until he has.”
“How do you know that?”
Flaxfold raised her eyebrows.
“Because he’s a roffle,” she said.
Sam poured water from a bucket into the basin and added boiling water from the kettle. He washed the mugs first, then the greasy plates and left the pan for later. The bacon fat was tasty and he wouldn’t waste it.
“That girl,” he said.
Flaxfold carried on tidying up.
“The dead one. The one who looked like Tamrin,” he continued.
“Yes?”
“It started me thinking.”
Flaxfold looked through the window. The roffle was halfway down the small decline that led from the house to the river. He couldn’t hear them.
“What about it?”
“You remember when I met Tamrin last year at the college? Well, she seemed to know me. She knew I was going to be there. She even knew my name.”
“Perhaps someone told her you were on the way? Perhaps that roffle did?”
Sam shook his head.
“It was more than that. And I’ve thought about her a lot since. I dream about her sometimes.”
Flaxfold kept one eye on the roffle. He was nearer the river now.
“And when I saw the girl, dead, and thought it was Tamrin, I was frightened. Really frightened.”
“What do you want to do about it?” she asked.
“I want to see her again. I don’t know why. I want to talk to her. Ask her what she knew about me. How she seemed to know me.”
He finished drying the plate and his hands, folded the towel and hung it on the rail of the range to dry.
“You’d better have a word with the roffle, then,” said Flaxfold. “That’s why he’s here.”
The roffle sat on his barrel-pack by the side of the river. He had a rod and line and was casting in.
“Caught anything?” asked Sam.
“I think so,” said Megatorine.
Sam couldn’t see any fish on the grass.
“Where are they?”
The roffle pulled the hook from the water, flicked the rod and sent it back with a small splash. It landed near the opposite bank, under an overhanging tree, the water freckled with light and shade.
“Where does a bumblebee go for the best shoes?”
“Can we talk properly, please?” said Sam. “I know you can.”
Megatorine winked.
“Can a memmont paint a parsnip?”
“What have you come here for?” asked Sam.
“That was a good breakfast. A roffle would go a long way to eat like that.”
It wasn’t an answer, but at least it wasn’t a riddle. Sam was making progress.
“Catch me a trout, wizard,” said the roffle.
“No. That’s not what magic’s for.”
He sighed, reeled in his line, wrapped it around the rod and hopped on to the grass. He opened the pack and dropped the fishing gear in, so swiftly that even though Sam tried to look he didn’t see what else was in there.
“Ha!” said the roffle. “Caught you. Wouldn’t you like to see? I want a trout.”
He hopped back on and sat with his legs swinging.
Sam raised his head and looked up to the sky, morning-pale with slow clouds. He waited. Without warning, a shape crashed through the trees, sending leaves and twigs spinning. It plunged into the water, through and out in a shower of shining drops. It rose, swung round and dived again, coming to rest on the bank in front of them. Sam grinned.
Starback held a fish tenderly in his jaws. It flapped and twisted.
Megatorine jumped off the barrel and clapped his hands. Starback laid the fish at his feet. The roffle lifted it up, hands clutching at the wriggling, slippery trout. He tossed it back into the river and watched it speed away.
“That wasn’t magic,” said Sam. “It’s what dragons do.”
The roffle hoisted his barrel on to his back and walked alongside the riverbank.
“You’ve come to tell me about Tamrin,” said Sam.
“Have I?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, I have, then.”
He kicked at reeds, scattering their feathery tops into the breeze.
“What are you going to tell me?”
Sam gritted his teeth as he asked the question. Roffles were so difficult. They were so used to hiding information about the Deep World that they found it hard to tell you anything.
“She’s left the college.”
“Where’s she gone?”
“Couple of days ago.”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, you know roffles. We pop up here and there. We notice things. We see what’s happening.”
“Why did she leave?”
They reached a stile. Megatorine leaned on it and rested his pack on the crossbar.
“She met someone,” he said. “With a cart.”
“A cart? What do you mean, a cart? Where’s she gone?”
Megatorine clambered over the stile, dropped down on the other side and disappeared. Sam hurried after him. There was nowhere for the roffle to hide. The plaited hedgerow ran in both directions. He climbed back, looked over his shoulder and the roffle was leaning on the stile.
“How do you do that?” asked Sam.
“Come back over.”
Sam climbed up and when he was over, the roffle had gone again.
“Where are you?” shouted Sam.
Megatorine appeared. He took Sam’s hand and led him to the side of the stile and vanished. Sam could just make out a slit of darkness. He reached his hand into it, but Megatorine pushed him back and appeared again. It was a roffle hole, a doorway to the Deep World.
“We come and go,” said the roffle. “We see a lot that people don’t think we see. Tamrin’s gone to find the tailor who left her at the college. But she’s been detained.”
“I want to see her,” said Sam.
“I know you do.”
“Where is she? Can you take me to her?”
“Find the tailor and you’ll find Tamrin,” he said.
He stepped backwards and vanished into the roffle hole, down, back to the Deep World.
Sam tried to follow him but he couldn’t find the way. The roffle hole was there still, but he needed a roffle to show him just exactly where.
He looked up at Starback and shook his head. ||
Sam stood in the kitchen doorway
looking in.
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked.
Starback crouched next to him, close against his legs for comfort. Sam fingered the metal weight that hung at his throat.
“No one knows,” said Flaxfold. “That’s the truth of it. No one ever knows.”<
br />
“Am I supposed to run off and look for Tamrin?”
“You could,” she said.
She sat at the table that Flaxfield had used. Her hair refused to stay tucked in her headband. Her fingers were stained with ink and dyes and burnt skin from experiments with spells.
“What about the wizard who Flaxfield locked up?” he asked. “Am I supposed to go and kill her?”
“Sealed,” said Flaxfold.
“What?”
“Sealed up. He didn’t lock her up, he sealed her up. It’s different. And he could only make the magic work for the two of them. She’s got armies of takkabakks that can come and go as they please.”
Sam shuddered. Takkabakks were things of nightmare and story. He hardly dared to think that these winter-tale horrors were real.
“They’ve always kept close to the Castle of Boolat, where she’s prisoner,” said Flaxfold. “But stories now are that they’re roaming further, attacking farms and villages.”
“How can they do that? Doesn’t the magic stop them?”
“It’s getting weaker,” she said. “Wearing thin. And there are new beetles. They change and grow over the years, you know. These are more like men. More dangerous. They plan and organize.”
“And she’s trying to escape as well,” he said. “Through the Finished World.”
Flaxfold scratched the side of her head with the end of her pen.
“Remember last year?” she said. “When you were very ill?”
Sam shook his head.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
“It’s time. You have to.”
His fingers found the leather cord round his neck. He tugged at it and enjoyed the tight pressure. It made him slow down.
Flaxfold waited for him to look at her.
“Last year, when you were ill almost to death, it was the one who was attacking you, attacking us all.”
“She’s locked in. She can’t.”
Flaxfold didn’t bother to correct him. She just waited. An embarrassed smile stole over his face.
“That was stupid,” he said. “I know you attack even when you’re locked up.”
“We made a contract,” said Flaxfold. “Not to talk about this until you were ready. Until you were better.”
“I’m not ready.”
“You’re my apprentice. I’ll decide when you’re ready. The great enemy who was brought under control by Flaxfield is breaking free. If we allow it to happen she’ll escape and ruin us all. The wild magic will slip loose. It will be worse than ever this time. Houses will just explode in flames. People will burn up in the streets. Cattle in the fields will be blazing torches. Nothing will stop it. We can’t allow it to happen.”