The Last Wizard

by Jane M. R.

  Panic clashes in my chest and I inhale to shout for help but stop before I do. I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe it’s better if I pretend I am still unconscious.

  My pulse thumping in my throat, my thoughts spin back to the last thing I remember. A gypsy cart losing a wheel… a monkey… a muscled arm around my waist…

  Jesaro had me kidnapped!

  Why?

  I can’t fathom why, except to prove my mother right.

  But I’m scared and this is real despite that I pray and wish and demand it not be. I wrest with my tied hands but the rope binding them is sufficient. I’m thirsty and my pounding head makes me want to throw up. Looking down myself and shifting around as much as I can, I conclude that my dress has not been torn into. A feeble reassurance, however, my gloves have been stripped off my hands and my bonnet is gone.

  Are the parish constables looking for me? Given the diming light outside the red canvas walls of the tent, it says it’s been about an hour since I last remember. Surely my father looked up from his work on the gypsy cart and saw me missing?

  I retch into the dirt anyway, straining my head as far to the left as possible. The acrid taste in my mouth makes me spit five more times before I can tolerate to smell or move my tongue around.

  The tent flap flies open and I curl my knees into my chest. But it’s a woman. Her long black braided hair is strung through with enough beds to rival our glass bead curtain. I blearily remember her as the tambourine player in the town square who played with Jesaro.

  She comes into the tent and kneels next to me, holding a tin cup to my lips. I need water badly. Taking the risk that it might be drugged, I swish it around in my mouth first to rinse the taste of vomit before spitting it out and taking a drink.

  The woman stands and kicks around the dirt where remains the last of my dinner, deadening the smell.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  She doesn’t look at me.

  “What do you want with me?” I plead.

  She leaves the tent, pulling the tent flap shut behind her.

  I conclude that screaming will only guarantee being gagged, so I resort to crying softly instead. Voices murmur outside my tent. I pick up useless words like, “Money… carrots… privilege… Aklen…”

  No. They didn’t say Aklen. It was a word that sounded like Aklen.

  I’m too stressed to eat when the same woman brings me food. She still refuses to say anything.

  “I need to use the privy!” I say, partly because it’s true, mostly because I want to see what’s outside my tent, even though all I want to do is lay down so this headache will go away.

  She doesn’t say anything to that, either. She leaves the tent. Two minutes later she comes back inside in the company of two gypsy men I haven’t seen before, both with disorderly facial hair and shirts with no sleeves. The one has curly black hair which is spraying out beneath his black bowler.

  I never found any comfort in being tied into a dress until now, so now when I am returned to society – I will be returned to society – I cannot be accused of being tainted by these men.

  Bowler Hat unties my hands. A rush of fire reignites in my fingers as blood rushes into them. The men help me stand as if I am incapable of doing it myself, then realize it’s only to keep me in custody. They haul me out of the tent.

  I’m in a forest right next to the river and railroad tracks on the other side, though I can’t position where along the river I am. The mountains directly ahead of me declare I am still in Valemorren’s valley. A campfire has drawn seven more people around its circumference, a large pot dangling over the pit and someone stirring something inside of it. Likely the dinner I never ate.

  The men practically drag me along, though I am trying to show that I am being helpful even though my heeled shoes are giving me trouble. If I show that I am helpful they might let down their guard. It worked for the heroines in Durain’s stories, anyway.

  I’m taken far enough down the river that I am out of view of the gypsy camp. The two men release me and turn their backs. I look around and wonder what I’m supposed to do.

  “You’ve never used the river before?” asks the woman with braids. I shake my head. She mumbles something about “privilege” and then goes silent, watching me impatiently.

  I look at the river. It’s starting to get chilly with the sun having vanished beyond the horizon, but fearing they will get impatient with me if I don’t do it and take me back to the tent, I gather my dress in my arms and step into the river.

  Cold bits me and I hitch up my breath, tucking my other foot into the lazy slid of water. I look across the river. I don’t know how to swim. And even if it was shallow enough I could just walk through, my heavy dress would drag me down and they would catch up to me long before I made it to the other side.

  I stop when the water rushes against my thighs. My toes are already numb and the heels on my shoes threatened to break my ankles if I tip too far to one side on the slanting ground.

  The bloomers beneath the dress are sewn to the dress, though a rubber cup with a short hose affixed to the crotch allows for mid-day emergencies when not at home to untie the dress for such businesses.

  It takes me an irrevocable amount of time through the cold river, the unease of two men standing by, the woman watching me, and my distress over being a gypsy hostage for me to conclude my necessities and come out of the river, my legs so cold it takes me a stiff moment of stumbling around to gain the apex of the bank again.

  I’m taken back to the tent, only not shivering violently because of the thick hood of my skirt blocking the wind from hitting my wet legs.

  Despite my show of cooperation so far, they still tie me back to the pole.

  Evening darkens outside. It becomes so dark I can barely see the yellow pin stripes on the tent. I want to cry again as horrible “what ifs” attack my imagination, but crying won’t free me. I’ve been rubbing at the ropes around my wrists for half an hour now but so far the only thing I’ve managed to free is more despair because I haven’t gotten anywhere. It heaves out of my chest in a strangled choke and I curl my knees into my body.

  A hand over my mouth from behind me almost beckons a scream if it wasn’t for a calming, “Ssshh!” close in my ear. “I’m rescuing you.” It’s a female voice but it doesn’t sound like Braids from earlier. She’s breathing heavy, speaking in chunks. “I need you to not speak at all. Make as little noise as possible. And do exactly what I say. When I say it without question. Or hesitation. Nod if you understand.”

  I don’t care who this girl is. I nod.

  “The train is going to be here in ten minutes. They mean to sell you to the Peaky Blinders. If you don’t leave with me.”

  I’m not going to Birmingham to be sold into a gang. But I don’t have to tell her that. She is already cutting through the ropes around my wrists.

  The ropes fall free and I stand and turn around. It’s really dark in the tent but I can see the black clothed female wearing a black mask beckoning me to the back of the tent. Sliding on her stomach, she lifts the tent and peeks out. After five seconds she pulls her head back inside.

  “You will run straight back from the tent,” she says with dangerous ferocity. I can hear her own heart throbbing in her voice. “Keep running until you can’t see the campfire anymore. When you can’t see the fire anymore, hid behind a tree or bush or anything and crouch down and make yourself as small as possible. And try to hide the bright colors on your dress. Understand?”

  Keeping true to her instructions, I nod, even though it is dark. She peaks her head out one more time, then pulls it in. “Run.” She lifts the bottom of the tent.

  I gather my dress in my arms and duck to fit through the opening, running on my toes through the dark and the trees without looking behind me, without looking to either side. I run and run and I don’t even know if I am far enough from the camp fire yet but I keep running.

  Footsteps pound up from behind me and I whirl aro
und to kick at the man between his legs but it is only the black garbed thief from the newspaper I read about.

  She runs past me and I follow her. We keep running until we reach a dry creek bed. She slides down the embankment and stops, resting her back against the dirt. I slid in beside her, holding my breath so I can hear if anyone is approaching but it is hard because my heart is beating so hard.

  “The… news… paper said… you…were a…man,” I gasp, failing to catch my breath in a dignified manner.

  “Good,” she says with much more breath than I have.

  My heart is not calming. I just bloody escaped from being sold to a gang and taken to Birmingham. I’m still shivering with the near-fatal glance of an alternate future. “Thank you… for rescuing me.”

  “I don’t work for free,” she says. “Give me your necklace.”

  I’m suddenly bitter, even though I am wearing the necklace for the sole reason to bait the thief. But at least she’s not selling me to the Peaky Blinders. I unclasp my mother’s silver necklace and hand it over. “I need to hire… you.”

  “What?” She turns her masked face to me. I can see her eyes poking out of the dark slits in the fabric.

  “Hire… you.” I inhale deeply. I don’t remember the last time I had to run so fast for so long. Let’s see…

  Never.

  “You want to hire me?” She digresses a little from her tone of dangerous ferocity and replaces it with a betrayal of curiosity.

  I compose my quivering heart, accepting all the sins I’m about to commit. “Yes. And you will be paid for… your efforts.” I look at the girl for acknowledgment but she does not respond, so I continue. “I am desiring an item which is locked inside a vault. The vault belongs to the Whaerin family. In this vault is –”

  “One third of the key.”

  I blink. “Excuse me?”

  She looks away from me and rests the back of her head against the dirt embankment, popping one knee up. “You knew Durain, right?”

  Oh. My. Bloody. Priest.

  My heart beats four anxious times and it’s not from running. “How do you know Durain?”

  An anxious silence thickens between us, as if wondering how our secrets could be used against the other. Nightingales warble in the background, somewhere deeper in the darkness.

  But because the thief clearly has more patience than I do, I answer the question first. “He was my first cousin.” My voice falters at the end as I finally realize I never knew Durain half as well as I thought. Betrayal bubbles thick inside me. “And my best friend.”

  “I robbed the dress shop over a month ago,” she’s saying, and it takes me a moment to realize through the haze of Durain’s dark secrets and the headache I’ve maintained for me to realize she’s answering the question herself. “I didn’t take anything because there was nothing of value I could have used. Just after I did, Durain located me and asked if I saw a copper device with a thorn-shaped ruby on one end during my theft. I told him I had. I knew he took it shortly after that because the whole town was going on about how Corrana had her ‘heirloom’ stolen. And then Durain died.”

  My heart is pounding in my throat. Questions grab hands with my headache and they dance together in a dizzying spin.

  “So now I must ask,” the thief muses, “why you are looking for the remaining two pieces of key? Are you even aware that you are meddling in things bigger than this world?”

  “I… I don’t know why I’m looking for them,” I admit, my known world falling apart around me. “I was best friends with him. After he died, he left me a note and one of the pieces of what you are calling the key, asking me if I could collect the rest and told me where I could.” Then like a surge, questions spill out of me. “What is this key? Who killed Durain and why did he risk his life for it? Why are you calling it the key? Do you know what it is?” and on and on until she lifts her hand to stop the verbal flood.

  “For your protection, I will not tell you. No one has yet connected my real name to my face so I am safe from those who hide the key. But I can tell you might become reckless for answers, despite my warnings, so I dare to tell you this much: the key is made to separate into three pieces so the three ancient families can protect the secret which they are trying to lock away. Durain, as you’ve probably now guessed, is trying to unlock the secret. And he died. And you still want to finish what he started?”

  “Tell me what they have locked away and maybe I won’t think it to be worth my efforts.” Anxious energy floods my limbs and I want to stand and walk around to expel it. Now that my heart has calmed down, I’m feeling chilled from my still wet bloomers and the sweat beneath my corset from my dash through the forest.

  “I won’t tell you. I’ve only heard from my grandmother rumors of things – ancient things – so even I cannot verify what the ancient families are trying to lock away. Likewise, for your protection, it is for mine as well. There are those select few who will and have killed to hide this thing. I’ve lived this long because I haven’t told anyone. You strike me as someone who would go straight to the Chief Constable and tell him the atrocities that these families are doing, and that would get you killed by those families, get your family killed, and the Chief Constable killed. They’d even kill the Queen if she ever found out. These families learned quickly that dead people don’t talk.”

  More questions. What families? In Valemorren? This atrociously small minded hamlet where everyone’s business is everyone’s business?

  “But then I don’t know if I should continue this or not.” I thrust out my chin as if to threaten the thief into answering my question.

  The thief picks up a stick, swirling the tip into the dirt. “If what I know is true… yes. Unlock the secret.”

  “So why are you cautioning me not to?”

  “Because it is dangerous. And if you are successful, you will be in greater danger, danger that will never go away the rest of your life.”

  “So…”

  “So you should unlock the secret.”

  I shake my head. I’m done with this dumb riddle. “Okay… so in order for me to do so… I need your help to acquire the other two pieces of the key.”

  “And I get paid?”

  “Yes. With the money from the Whaerin vault.” That I will inherit if Jaicom marries me. I groan inwardly. The thief drums fingers across her knee. “To show you I am serious about this, I am being courted by Jaicom Whaerin, so if he marries me, that vault will eventually belong to me.”

  “Giving me permission to rob your vault to unlock the secret the Whaerin’s have kept secret for over three hundred years? What is wrong with you? I’m a thief and this appalls me.”

  “You told me the secret would be worth it.”

  “It might… but then are you prepared to unhinge history?”

  “What?”

  She shakes her masked head. “If one piece is in the vault, where are the others?”

  “No, tell me what you said about unhinging history.”

  “I asked you where the other pieces of the key are!”

  I bunch my fists. Hard. “I have the one Durain st-stole. The other is in the vanity drawer belonging to Crisandra Garfair. At least, that is where I saw it last.”

  “Then I will rob the vault first so if the third piece is not in that drawer, I still get paid. I should caution you… these families know that Durain took the first piece. If the other two go missing… there’s no telling what they will do. You still do not comprehend the magnitude of what these people are hiding. They’ve kept it hidden for three hundred twenty-four years.”

  “Then tell me what this secret is, please!” I’m starving for that one answer. The thief shakes her head.

  “For your protection, you will have to trust me.”

  “Trust a thief?”

  She shrugs, like it doesn’t matter either way. “It will take me some time to make convincing duplicates, so I will need to see the piece you have so I can get a good measure and weight to dupl
icate it. Of course if they spend any amount of time with it after I make the switch, they will know. But it will buy you time. I hope. Also, we will be sure to time my theft while you are with the person of whom I am stealing from so you cannot be blamed.”

  “Wow. You are thorough.”

  The black mask shifts. “You are paying me.”

  I try not to think about that. “You seem rather endeavored yourself in this.”

  It was a casual statement I thought was merely a false observation but she silences and I feel the mood shift to something brittle and sharp.

  “These three families have hurt me badly.” She becomes so still she almost looks like a log canted into the creek bed. She points ahead of us. “Straight forward two miles is the town. There is a good chance you will run into the constables’ dogs. They started the search for you just before I left to track you down.” She jumps up and scrambles over the embankment so quickly I can’t call out to her without shouting.

  With no more reason to hide in the creek bed, I stand on shaking legs and stumble toward town.

  OOO

  I clutched my arms, tucking them tightly under my breasts to cage in warmth against the chill. The dark trees give birth to a light swinging side to side. I stop, waiting for the dog and its constable to see me before I move again.

  “Miss Frondaren!”

  Two constables rush forward with their dogs, feeling the need to touch me as if to make sure I am real.

  “Where did you come from?” one of them asked. “Where are they?”

  I point behind me. “Almost straight back beside the river. They were waiting for the train.”

  Three constables with their dogs take off running that way. I’m left in the care of two others who ask me another litany of questions which I answer with a brisk, “I need to see my father,” because I’m only going to get asked these questions all over again once I get to the station.