The Native Star

by M. K. Hobson

  Emily contemplated the stone in her hand as Stanton continued.

  “When you touched those zombies they fell down instantly. The stone in your hand must have absorbed all the magical force animating them.”

  “That’s all well and good,” Pap said, “but none of it answers why the stone worked its way into Em’s palm in the first place.”

  “Or how to get it out,” Emily added.

  “That will require further research. Research which cannot be performed in Lost Pine.” Stanton closed the book. “Miss Edwards must consent to be examined by professionals.”

  “What?” Emily didn’t like the word “examined,” or even “professionals” for that matter.

  “I have no doubt that the professors at the Mirabilis Institute would be extremely eager to study this case,” Stanton said.

  “I most certainly am not a case!”

  “The Mirabilis Institute—that fancy institute you studied at?” Pap frowned. “You can’t mean she’d have to go all the way to New York?”

  “Not at all,” Stanton said. “There’s an extension office in San Francisco—that’s less than a week’s ride. The Institute would assume all expenses of the journey, of course—”

  “San Francisco?” Emily said. “Are you kidding? I can’t go to San Francisco!”

  “With that stone in your hand, you can’t do anything else.” Stanton looked at her. “You certainly can’t do magic.”

  He paused, absorbing Emily’s glare with equanimity.

  “Remember last night, when we were trying to light the dynamite?” Emily saw Pap’s eyebrows rise. She hadn’t mentioned the dynamite part to him. “I should have been able to light the fuse easily. Flamma.” He snapped, and a little tongue of flame dazzled at the point where his thumb and forefinger met. He spread his fingers and the flame disappeared. “But while you were holding it, the spell did not work. It did not work, in fact, until you threw the stick of dynamite to the ground.”

  “You said yourself that you’d just blown two dozen zombies into gold dust and were too drained to do anything else,” Emily countered.

  “I certainly wasn’t too drained to produce a tiny flame.” Stanton was scornful. “If I had been that incapacitated, I wouldn’t have been able to hold off the undead at the mouth of the mine so that you could throw the dynamite at them.”

  “You were throwing dynamite?” Pap’s eyes followed their voices back and forth.

  “Look, I didn’t want to put such a fine point on it, but you’ve left me no choice.” Stanton did not take his eyes off Emily as he spoke in Pap’s direction. “Mr. Edwards, you can still cast a levitation, can’t you?”

  Pap blinked, apparently still trying to get past the dynamite. Finally he nodded.

  “Haven’t done one in years. Ain’t much use in ’em when you’ve got two good strong arms. But I reckon I still can, if required.”

  “Will you do one for me now?”

  Pap rolled up his sleeves. “Em, get me my things.”

  Emily was turning to comply when Stanton got up quickly, reaching past her.

  “You’d better let me,” he said. He gathered Pap’s athame and charm cap from where they hung above the fireplace and placed them before the old man. Then he took down a green glass bottle from the windowsill and placed it on the table.

  “Miss Edwards, hold his hand while he attempts to levitate that bottle.”

  “Oh, honestly!” Emily sniffed, but she sat down next to Pap anyway, taking his light, dry hand in hers and giving it a squeeze.

  First, Pap took up his charm cap—a jaunty affair constructed of purple velvet, covered with glittering bric-a-brac, feathers, and small bird bones—and placed it on his white hair at a rakish angle. Then, using the tip of his athame, Pap traced a shaky circle around the bottle, clearly and carefully speaking the rhyme as he did this:

  “Air, mist, wind, sky,

  Lighter than all, fly, fly, fly!

  Breezes, breaths, fogs, skies,

  Rise up to join them, rise, rise, rise!”

  The bottle did not so much as wriggle.

  “That bottle must be to the ceiling by now.” Pap smiled, a pleased look on his face. “I feel the power working on it.”

  No, you feel the power going into the stone in my hand, Emily thought, for she, too, felt the tingling of power, threading around her hand like streams of warm water. But she didn’t want to give Stanton the satisfaction of hearing her say it. She let go of Pap’s hand and stood up from the table abruptly, moving to the other side of the room and crossing her arms.

  The moment she did, the bottle rocked, lifting into the air with a zipping whoosh and coming to a twisting dangle in midair.

  “There certainly seems to be a distance correlation,” Stanton said. His fingers looked as if they itched to write down the finding. Having neither paper nor pen, he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked at Emily.

  “I take it you are convinced?” Stanton said. “So, as long as you stay well away from your pap, avoid handling any of his magical objects, and allow him to do all the charm work—including deliveries, for you won’t be able to touch anything magical that he produces—well, then I suppose you’ll be fine.”

  “So what?” Emily was seized by a sudden defiance. “There’s plenty of things I can do that don’t have anything to do with magic. Gathering herbs, making poultices …” She picked up the poultice that Stanton had laid aside and threw it at him. Obviously he was expecting something of the sort, for he caught it easily.

  “All things that any woman can do,” Stanton said, as he replaced the cloth over his eye. “They are not magic.”

  “People pay us for the things they can’t do, Em,” Pap said soberly. “They pay us for the charms and potions. The herbs they take because they’re our neighbors.”

  Emily sank into her chair, her thumb caressing her palm.

  “The stone in your hand is exceptionally valuable.” Stanton spoke slowly, as if trying to impress something important on a willful child. “It is my duty and responsibility to escort you to a place of research where the stone can be removed and preserved for study. You want the stone removed, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do,” Emily said.

  “And there is no organization better suited to help accomplish that goal than the Mirabilis Institute of the Credomantic Arts.” Stanton paused thoughtfully. “You know, the Institute is extremely well funded. I’m sure it would pay awfully well to secure such a rare and unique specimen.”

  Emily narrowed her eyes at him. “How much?”

  “A hundred dollars. That’ll more than defray Pap’s cost of losing you while you travel to San Francisco.” Stanton frowned at one of Pap’s scruffy cats as it leapt onto his lap; he removed the offending animal and made a great show of brushing his trousers. “And let’s say another hundred at the end, for your return to Lost Pine.”

  Two hundred dollars! Emily bit the inside of her lip to keep from blurting out her astonishment. It was a vast sum. Two hundred dollars was more cash-money than they’d ever made for anything …

  “The trip won’t take more than a week, maybe two,” Stanton continued. “I can assure you, there will be no greater claim upon your time than is strictly necessary.”

  “What do you think?” Emily murmured to Pap.

  “I don’t like the thought of you going so far from home,” Pap murmured back, “but I’ll manage. And I don’t know what else we can do.”

  “Well?” Stanton removed the poultice from his eye. The swelling had gone down substantially. She could still do something right, at least. “All your expenses will be paid, of course. And I should be surprised if you didn’t find yourself—however briefly—the toast of the San Francisco magical community. I would think that might appeal to a girl of your station.”

  Emily opened her mouth, about to use some words that were even more appropriate to the station in which Dreadnought Stanton imagined her, when someone rushed in the front door. It was
one of the boys from the timber camp, a young jobber named Nate.

  “Miss Emily! Thank goodness you’re here. You have to hurry! There’s trouble in town. It’s Mr. Hansen. He’s … Miss Emily, hurry!”

  “He says he’s done with it!” young Nate said, as he and Emily raced down Moody Ridge toward Lost Pine. “He says he’s done with it all! Damn the tracks, damn the lumber, damn it all … pardoning my French, Miss Emily.”

  Emily didn’t give a damn about Nate’s French. Her skin crawled with foreboding. The icy unpleasant feeling only became stronger when she and Nate finally arrived in Lost Pine about a half hour later and found a small crowd of worried onlookers gathered to watch Dag Hansen. He was working furiously on his timber shed—but he was not adding to it. He was using a hammer to methodically knock it apart, board by board.

  “Dag?” Emily pushed her way through to him. “Dag, what are you doing?”

  “I won’t have it.” His voice was carefully restrained—the kind of restraint that hinted at fury smoldering beneath. “I won’t have anything on my land that reminds me of you.”

  Emily’s brow knit, but she made her voice calm and reasonable. “This shed is for your timber. For your business. For the town. It’s not—”

  “I built this all for you!” He shouted, waving his muscular arm in a gesture that encompassed all of Lost Pine. “All of it was supposed to be for you. The rail line, everything! But I don’t want any of it anymore.”

  “Dag, it wasn’t for me,” Emily said. At least it wasn’t before last night.

  “Why would I care about growing this town unless it was to make it a better place for my wife? For the family I wanted to have?”

  She started to say something, but then he looked at her, and she couldn’t remember what she was going to say. She couldn’t remember what words were at all for a moment. His eyes were belligerent, pleading, furious. In them, hatred and love tumbled, slippery and shining, like oil and rainwater shaken in a jar.

  “You made a fool of me last night, Emily.” His voice was low and brutal. “To think that I was strutting around, telling everyone that you and I—” He stopped short, closing his eyes and opening them again, as if that might make the world look right again. “I wanted you to be my wife. I wanted to … give you things. Mahogany furniture and … I would have made you the queen of Lost Pine. But you snuck off last night with that … that …”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Fear made heat creep into her voice. “We only went to the mine, and the only reason he came was because Besim said the zombies had gotten loose. And they were loose, and if he hadn’t been there—”

  “Stop it!” Dag roared, throwing down the hammer with a shed-rattling crash. “I don’t want to hear another word about how wonderful your Warlock is. I don’t care if zombies stampeded through Sacramento! We would have had our walk!”

  Emily let out a long, tremulous breath. Stanton said she’d made the love spell too strong, but she was sure she hadn’t made it this strong. How could the spell have miscarried so completely?

  This was not love. This was misery and anguish and despair. And it would rankle Dag until there was nothing left of him—nothing but bitter, unalloyed hate. If the hatred were directed at her and her alone, she deserved that. But it would pollute him, poison his life, his business, the town …

  She had to get the love spell off him. No one else could. She had bound him, and she had to release him. And it wouldn’t be hard. A little backpedaling under a full moon, some rhymes of regret and dismissal …

  … but she couldn’t do even that.

  With the stone in her hand, she couldn’t do magic at all.

  But the stone could draw off magic. It had with the miners, anyway. Moving closer to him, she raised a desperate hand to touch his face, to touch the stone against his cheek …

  Dag saw her movement, grabbed her wrist, wrenched it painfully aside. He thrust his face close to hers.

  “If that’s all I wanted,” he growled, “I would have gotten myself a whore.”

  She swallowed hard, willing herself not to tremble.

  “Let go of my hand, Dag,” she whispered.

  Dag clenched his teeth, and squeezed harder. Emily gasped in pain, wondering if he would break the bone. Fear gave way to real anger and she bared her teeth in a fierce snarl.

  “I said, let go!”

  The words were like a slap; Dag pulled back, blinking surprise. The edge of murder in his eyes dulled. He released her then, shoving her backward. She fell, landing hard on the sawdust-strewn ground.

  “Get out of my sight.” Dag turned away from her. Bending to pick up his hammer, he clenched it in a white-knuckled fist. “This is my town. You’re not welcome in it.”

  Emily climbed to her feet slowly, cradling her aching wrist against her chest. All around her, men and women crowded, frowning. She was surrounded by small angry noises, terse unflattering words … Shoving her way through the muttering mob, she launched into a flat run for home, her head spinning with shame.

  Oh, Dag, what have I done?

  She ran until she was well away from the town. When she came to the Hanging Oak she collapsed against it, pounding her stone-hand against the rough bark, screaming frustration at the top of her lungs. This did nothing but make her hand ache and her throat sore. Finally, she stopped. She wiped tears from her eyes, raked wisps of hair from her face, and took a deep breath.

  She would go to San Francisco. If the professors at Stanton’s institute couldn’t figure out how to remove it, she’d cut the damn thing out herself. Then she could return to Lost Pine and fix everything.

  It was the only way.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Flight of the Guilty

  When Emily returned to the cabin, Stanton had already gone, leaving word that he would return that afternoon for her answer. Emily swore under her breath—even someone as nettlesome as Dreadnought Stanton deserved to be warned of the prevailing mood in town.

  Well, he’s the great Warlock, Emily thought bitterly. He’ll just have to take care of himself.

  She began to worry, however, as warm afternoon mellowed into blue evening and the Warlock did not return. No one came to call, not even Mrs. Lyman, and there was no news to be had. Emily slept fitfully, dreaming of nooses and hammers and the eyes of a man eating himself from within in great ravenous bites.

  It was not until early the next morning that Stanton rode into the clearing, whistling casually, his second horse saddled and in tow.

  Emily dropped the breakfast dishes and ran to watch him ride up. One glance at his saddlebags told her that he was packed and ready to leave. Her relief at seeing him unharmed and seemingly cheerful filled her with the perverse urge to tell him to go straight to the devil. She’d had entirely enough of everything to do with eastern Warlocks, and his whistling made her want to slap him down from atop his prancing black horse. She stalked out of the cabin and looked up at him, planting her hands on her hips.

  “Well, I suppose you can guess my answer. I’ll go to San Francisco with you if it means I can get this rotten thing out of my hand.”

  “I’m afraid neither of us has a choice about leaving now,” Stanton said. “But I suppose it’s nicer to pretend that it’s of our own volition, as opposed to being chased out of town.”

  Emily’s throat tightened.

  “As bad as that?” she asked.

  Stanton nodded, sliding down from the saddle. “I had a rather unsettled time of it last night. Two dozen of Hansen’s timbermen, in varying stages of inebriation, were brandishing torches and discussing various means of stringing me up.” He hitched his horses to a tree, lashing leather over leather with a fierce movement. “I save their town from zombies, and they want to lynch me. Provincials.”

  “So how did you get away?”

  “A few of them—representing, I am sure, the cream of Lost Pine’s intelligentsia—realized that the joy of burning down the boarding house with me in it would also have deprived poor
Mrs. Bargett of her livelihood. I settled my bill before dawn—with a generous gratuity—and snuck out while they were still sleeping it off.” He looked at Emily. “If we get going right away, we’ll be in Dutch Flat by nightfall, and to San Francisco that much quicker. Are you ready?”

  Emily said nothing for a moment, but eyed the huge black horses warily.

  “I don’t know how to ride,” she said.

  Stanton blinked. “What do you mean, you don’t know how to ride? We’re in the middle of California! Everyone knows how to ride.”

  “Do you see any horses around here?” Emily gestured broadly. “Unlike some people, we can’t afford one horse, let alone two. I have ridden Mrs. Lyman’s burro once or twice, for a lark.” But Stanton’s beasts were a darn sight larger and livelier than that stubby little animal. “I don’t suppose it’s the same.”

  “Not quite.” Stanton looked ruefully at his horse, as if to offer it a silent apology. “Well, nothing like being thrown into the water to learn how to swim.”

  Emily didn’t like the sound of that at all.

  “Go get your things. I’d like to be well away from Lost Pine before Hansen’s men start waking up. I hardly think the mood of last night will be improved by their hangovers.”

  Emily went into the house and up to her loft. Taking out her canvas traveling bag, she threw it onto the bed. She’d already thought out in detail what she would take. She’d started to pack half a dozen times, and had stopped herself every time, dizzy with a mix of apprehension, resignation, and—though she hardly wanted to admit it to herself—excitement. She had to go. The stone had to be removed from her hand, and as quickly as possible. But the rational comprehension of this fact did nothing to calm her nerves. Everything was tumbling around her so unexpectedly. Packing for a hasty trip to San Francisco, as good as run out of town … She thought she had problems before. If only she could trade them back for the ones she had now!

  She pressed her hands to her hot cheeks and breathed in deeply. Pap’s words echoed: Three times what thou givest returns to thee. She let the breath out slowly and began stuffing the traveling bag. Then she turned her attention to the clothes she was wearing.