The Last Wizard

by Jane M. R.

  We wait on the porch as the stable hand saddles Crisy’s horse, which turns out to be the same color as her dress when he leads her out. Crisy sits so prettily in her side saddle, glowing in that dress who is likely the only person to look good in that color, with her tumble of golden curls spilling down her neck beneath her hat. Some small, smothered part of me is actually jealous.

  Just as I start to think of a way to pawn Jaicom off on Crisy, the fifteen-year-old girl pipes up, “Where would you like to go?”

  I force myself to take a minute to respond so it won’t appear that I’m too anxious. “I would like to see where your father works.”

  Crisy scrunches up her nose. “Really? It’s so dusty there. You sure?”

  “I think Uncle Brocen would like a spontaneous visit just to say hello. It lets him know we see how hard he works.”

  “I suppose so. But then I get to choose where we go after that.”

  The ride to the local fields is silent of conversation. At least for me, anyway. I might have added to the conversation Crisy was upholding on her own but I have nothing to pull from. I’ve always been aware of Crisy’s existence but had never cared to do anything more with the girl. In general, our personalities conflict. Crisy was excited when she finally reached the day where she could be tied into her dresses, looking forward to learning how to play music and paint and all the other feministic skills I think are mostly worthless. But looking through that conflicting barrier, it becomes clear how anxious Crisy is for friendships. Most of the middle-class girls living in Crisy’s neighborhood are married.

  “Did you know that six generations ago my grandfather owned the farming business here?”

  “Really?” I hope is an appropriate response, because I am only half listening.

  “Ya. But there was a draught that year so my grandfather had to drive the prices up to pay for the loss. People couldn’t afford it, and so grew their own food in underground bunkers. By spring my grandfather was broke and was forced to sell the farm. Someone bought it and there hasn’t been a draught since.”

  “That’s really unfortunate.”

  “It is. My father’s been working on a way to get the farm back for us though.”

  “Truly?” Now I’m interested. “How does he plan to do that?”

  Crisy purses her red lips and her response takes much too long. “Just… working hard and saving money.” She shrugs and changes the subject.

  The tree-lined road ends abruptly into a large area cleared of trees. Valemorren is far enough away from any larger city that this small town sustains itself.

  Clear air disproves Crisy’s worry about it being dusty as we turn onto a dirt path skirting the five hundred acre field. Men and very few women are scattered throughout, walking down designated pathways with bags gathered around them as they pull various food stuffs from the soil.

  “This is where he works. You’ve never been here before?”

  Yes. “No.”

  “You haven’t missed much. Are we ready to leave?”

  “I thought we were going to see you father?”

  “I saw him this morning,” she says with some effort to keep a measure of disdain out of her voice, but I catch it anyway.

  I’m starting to itch with anxiety. The importance of following Durian’s letter to find who his killer was trumps everything else. If only I could tell Crisy about it so she’d support me. I dismount. “It would be so rude to show up and not see him.”

  “He’s deep in the fields. He doesn’t even know we are here.”

  “Come on.” Without waiting for a reply, I tie my horse to the hitching post and begin walking.

  I walk slow enough so Crisy can catch up. It’s then I notice her choice of shoes are not ones she put on to prepare her to walk through a field. I hadn’t planned to walk through a field, either. I just wear boots on default, even to town if I can do it without my mother catching me. But Crisy is at the budding age that she hopes to have a wedding date set by the time she turns sixteen.

  After ten minutes of skirting the edge of the field, Crisy finally lets a little irritation slip. “This field is so big. I don’t even know what section he is working today.”

  “We’ll ask. Excuse me,” I catch the attention of the closest worker, “we are looking for Brocen.”

  The worker bows slightly. “Greeting, ladies. I am sorry to report that I do not know who that is.”

  It takes the fifth worker I ambush to point us to a forest of cornstalks. “Saw him over there twenty minutes ago.”

  Despite my broad hat, heat sneaks through my dress and moisture gathers under my arms. I feel irritation bubbling around Crisy like an extra layer of lace by the way her face looks carved of stone and her silence is like a black hole.

  “If he is not here, we’ll go back,” I assure.

  She nods once. “I’m thirsty.” She somehow manages to say that as if I am to blame.

  We enter the cornstalks. The path way cutting through is empty.

  “Uncle Brocen?” I call.

  “Hello?” The reply comes from my left.

  I turn so sharply that Crisy almost runs into me. I walk briskly through the stalks, parting them aside as if swimming.

  Brocen appears in front of me and I stop, looking him up and down as if expecting the secret to be dangling from around his neck. Then I catch his odd expression at my equally odd surveillance of his body and I look away so he won’t see me blush just as Crisy tumbles into me.

  “Hi father,” Crisy says without an apology to me. “Do you have water?”

  “Sure thing, sweety.” Brocen lifts the water canteen off his belt and hands it to her. She gulps thirstily. I try to look at him without being obvious about it.

  He always has it with him. This I know.

  Even hoping I have the right person.

  “To what pleasure do I have for being surprised by your company?” Brocen asks with a pleasant smile. His face is dark brown and leathery from working under the sun all day. Likely his skin would be black by now if it wasn’t for his broad hat. He wears his smile like he wears his hat, actually, like something useful he could put on and taken off without much thought.

  Crisy finishes her drinking rampage with a satisfied exhaust of air, wiping her lips. “Miss Frondaren thought you’d like to be surprised.”

  “And so I am.” He pulls Crisy in for a hug and kisses the top of her hat. “Thank you for the brief visit. I’ll walk back with you since Crisandra drank all my water.” He grins at us and leads the way out of the corn stalks. I follow directly behind him.

  Continuing to look him up and down, I’m trying to decide if the small bulges of clothing are hiding something beneath. But all the way to the water barrels I see nothing. Of course there are plenty of places against the skin that would not show outwardly. However, if I do find the secret on him then that will directly accuse Not Uncle Brocen of murder. I’m not a detective but I believe that is how they would piece that together.

  And what exactly was that thing I found, anyway? Where did Durain find the first one? There were three of them?

  Crisy turns the spigot on the water barrel and fills a cup. She drinks and fills another.

  I’ll read the letter again. Maybe I misunderstood something. Brocen fills his canteen and exchanges small pleasantries with his daughter before waving to us both as he walks back into the field. I watch him until he disappears.

  “I suppose that was nice,” Crisy admits as we walk the hard packed road back to our horses. “I should have worn boots. My feet are killing me.”

  My head is so muddled with questions no one knows the answers to that I don’t immediately register what Crisy said. If I hadn’t found what I had on The Boulder I would have abandoned this matter altogether to savor my last days of freedom before imminent marriage. But I’m reminded of Crisy beside me who I had just dragged across ten acres of dirt in high heels.

  “You could walk barefoot,” I offer.

  She gasps. �
��What will people think?”

  I remember to whose company I share and I rescind my offer. No matter. My feet aren’t the ones hurting me.

  She’s limping by the time we reach our horses. I think it’s only because she is trying to solidify our friendship that she doesn’t push the blame of her sore feet on me.

  “You ready for lunch?” I ask.

  “Yes. And it is my turn to choose where we go next.” She shoots me a look as if waiting for me to challenge, then slaps the reins and takes lead.

  I follow her into a gully where a stream bleeding off from the river cuts through, bursting lustily with dark green vegetation and leaves spinning overhead. Showers of gold sunlight splash onto bobbing gnats across the bridge and I temporarily forget about the dilemma in my heart. I am right at home.

  I look about for the mythical Fae children entertain themselves to believe appear at the apex of a beautiful day or night.

  The Fae are real.

  Ya. Sure. Just like the wizard Merlin is real, too.

  Of course every child has seen a Fae. A girl in school said she saw one that appeared to her in the form of a badger. A boy testified his Fae was a human shaped thing with branches for arms and legs. I’ve even claimed to have heard a Fae. It sang to me out of Durain’s flute under a full moon.

  I conclude in that moment that if I find the second piece on Brocen, then I will believe everything else in the letter. We dismount and walk across the bridge. Crisy sits and dangles her legs over the side. The stream slides languidly benath, a dragonfly resting on a floating branch.

  I produced sandwiches from my bag and hand her one.

  “You are lucky to be courted by Jaicom,” she says as she unfolds the two slices of bread out of the cloth wrapper.

  Of course the small minded hamlet would know already. They probably had an article in the newspaper about it. I swallow a bit of sandwich and force a half chuckle to numb the sudden awkwardness. “You think so?”

  Crisy sighs, as if irritated that she has to explain the obvious. “He is handsome and a very hard worker. He’ll eventually live in a big house like his father and have lots of horses and plenty of servants.”

  Of course Crisy would point those out. Not Uncle Brocen earns just enough to afford a small one level wooden house, a macramist, two horses, and a stable hand. And since Crisy’s mother’s death five years ago, speculation made people wonder if she didn’t serve another purpose to Brocen, too. There is always that rumor-fueled saying, Who’s going tie the macramist’s dress?

  “Then you can have him.”

  Crisy snorts as if I had just told a joke, and watching Crisy as she munches on her sandwich I realize she actually likes Jaicom. Well, every girl my age and younger does. I must be the odd one.

  “Why not?” I egg her.

  “Because your father has greater status than mine.”

  “So? Plenty of girls in town have higher status than me. To include the other two owners of the silver mine.” Those girls are prettier, too, with a larger dowry.”

  I sense Crisy has more to say but doesn’t. She fills her mouth with sandwich. “Durain was fine,” she says, munching around the bread, “but he never really established a potential job for himself. And my father hated him besides –”

  “Wait… what?” I look sharply at my Not Cousin. I heard wrong. “I’m sorry. I somehow got the impression that Durain had courted you.”

  She drinks some water from the canteen I pass her. “I wouldn’t call it exactly that. Just one day he showed up at my house to call on me and when I accepted his call, he goes on to ask all these questions about my father’s work and said he was thinking of becoming a farmer himself. Which I thought was…”

  I’m still trying to filter the shock through the stone in my chest and so I miss the rest of what she says. Durain courted Crisy? What else did I not know about my best friend I’ve known my entire life? What other secrets has he kept?

  “… took me on a few rides and eventually asked if he could have a formal overnight stay.”

  I choke on my water I was in the midst of swallowing. Crisy doesn’t appear to notice.

  “My father was angry that Durain would ask because my father absolutely did not like him. But he had to let Durain do it because there was nothing morally or socially wrong with Durain courting me and it did look like Durain was eventually going to ask me to marry him.”

  I fix my gaze on the leaves sliding beneath the bridge, hoping Crisy doesn’t see the rapid pulse beating out of my neck as if I had swallowed a frantic bird.

  Formal overnight stays are something I hope to God Jaicom never asks me to do. I shudder just thinking about it. Queen Victoria had blessed off on it – so long as the father of the daughter is also in the house – because it is a priority for some men to know how a woman sleeps so they could know firsthand if they could tolerate her night habits for the rest of their lives. Both members remained clothed, of course, because intercourse before marriage is one of the worst sins the church and Queen Victoria preaches. That is not a problem for me, because I can’t even tolerate the thought of an overnight stay.

  “So he stayed and he was the one with terrible night habits. He would get up, go to the privy and I was so tired I never knew when he came back.”

  He always keeps it on him. This I know.

  Keep it where?

  “It was about a month after that he had that heart attack. I was a little sad about it but I could never really emotionally connect with him anyway and I didn’t want to be a farmer’s wife after being a farmer’s daughter, but I knew even at that time I couldn’t be picky. So you are double lucky that your father likes Jaicom and he is already a lumberer.”

  Was Crisy so dense she didn’t realize the connection? But how could she when I am the only one who knows that Brocen is carrying an apparent deadly secret on him and is likely aware Durain was looking for it? Did Brocen kill him?

  “Speaking of sleep overs, would you like to have one?” she asks.

  This catches me off guard but I recover quickly because it will give me another chance to investigate Brocen. “Sure. When?”

  “Tonight, if you like.”

  “Okay.”

  I hide my anxious thoughts in the last bite of my sandwich, just now realizing what measures I’ll have to go through to discover what Brocen is hiding… and worried to what measures Durain had gone to know Brocen had it.

  OOO

  Back at the house, the stable hand takes my horse back. My father stops me as I’m about to open the door to my room.

  “Jaicom came to call on you earlier,” he says, and a shudder starts in my shoulders because I’m certain it was because Jaicom wants a formal overnight stay. “The Whaerins have invited us to Varrica’s debutante.”

  “That’s great.” I’m still suffering from the terror the thought of a formal overnight stay left me so I keep my words curt so he can’t hear the shake in my voice. “When is it?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Okay. Can I go to Crisy’s tonight? She invited me for a sleep over.”

  A large smile broadens his thick lips. “Wonderful! Glad to see you making friends again. Have fun.”

  I try to mimic his smile because I can’t remember how to make one of my own, and I close the door to my room.

  I pull the key bracelet off my wrist and unlock the small wooden box I pulled from under the bed. Some gracious man once believed a woman without some secrets is as uninteresting as a rock on a shelf.

  I open the lid and look at the copper metal piece I christen as the “Thorn” in that moment and inspect it for any hidden maps before picking up the white cube to see if they connected in anyway. They don’t.

  I read the letter over again, memorizing every word. Given what Crisy said about Durain’s formal overnight stay and in the letter he referenced “not her uncle” points directly to Brocen. I have to believe Durain is going off of only what I could possibly know.

  Re-reading the letter re
minds me of that weird orange flying dog thing I still need to look for in a book so I can prove it was a real animal I saw and not some freaky thing conjured from a gypsy magician. But of course it was a real animal. That’s easy to believe as long as I can ignore the fact I thought I saw hooves on it as it thrashed the tree top above me. Paintings of demons I’ve seen often show the demons with hooves –

  Okay, now that I’ve totally freaked myself out, I concentrate on packing my bag and go outside to ride to Crisy’s house before it gets dark on me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BRINELLA

  I never understood the appeal of sitting in someone’s drawing room and talking about everything except politics and other sensitive subjects. But, with those two topics gone there never is anything to talk about, because everything is a sensitive topic. In general, I never knew a conversation that wasn’t maintained by someone complaining about something. But Crisy has been at this for fifteen years and I’ve been at it for about a month if you collect all those random smatterings of social visits my parents dragged me to, to include my debutante which would have granted me marriage right about now if I hadn’t put trousers on as soon as we got back from showing me off to the Queen in London. I owe it to my father for calming my mother down after that. I sometimes think my father might be the wizard Merlin for the spells he puts on her so she won’t explode while he explains how badly I needed my freedom from society for just a little longer.

  Hold on… I was going somewhere with this thought… Right. So Crisy has been at this for fifteen years so she is able to keep a constant hum of conversation between us while we sip our tea. She somehow ropes me into comparing her house to the Whaerin’s. Crisy has a fine house for low middle-class standards by any reasonable expectations, even despite her attempt to make it sound horrible compared to the Whaerin’s house who had monopolized the logging business in Valemorren. A logger! Small town politics where a logger is compared to a banker in larger cities.