“Magic,” the child breathed. He wandered away to sit in the window seat to study the new treasure cupped in both hands.
Amer let that distraction continue for a little while, and then put Jacob back to work on his school assignments. His daughter Amy came in with her lute, to practice scales and chords in the window seat. Samona and his younger son, Ahijah, joined them. Amy had improved markedly over the year she had been taking music instruction. Amer thought again about the treatise he was working on, which tied mathematics to music. He wondered if there was a possible connection to the laws of magic through music. It certainly seemed to have effects on man and animal which were difficult to explain.
He noticed abruptly that Jacob’s attention had wandered again. The boy was supposed to be concentrating on the slate on which his sums were written. Instead, he was staring off into space and humming along with his sister’s playing.
“Jacob!” he commanded. “Use your stone!”
“Yes, Father.” The boy stared into the spot for a long time, and then resumed his lessons.
Samona stared from her son to her husband with a look of outrage. “Surely you are not giving that child a thing of magic?” she demanded. She watched Jacob turn occasionally from the slate to the stone and back again.
“No, I’d never do that, my dear,” Amer assured her quickly. “It’s only a simple river stone, but it may help him in his lessons.”
Samona sighed. “Well, it would be magic if it can do that. I never knew such a cloud-minded boy could be born,” she said.
“He has notable intelligence,” his father responded complacently, “but he thinks of so many things at once, he’ll never grow fruit from any of the seeds. To take the metaphor to its logical conclusion, he must plant and nurture each in turn, not broadcast them for the crows to eat. His creativity must be mastered by him, not the other way around.”
* * *
An increase in concentration did help the boy to understand his studies. Jacob’s improvement in mathematics was noted by the austere Rock Harbor schoolmaster over the next week.
“Well, young Master Crafter, it would seem that I’ve not had to apply the cane to your fingers so often this day. Why is that?”
“Because I have learned my sums, sir?” Jacob asked tentatively, glancing up at the teacher. Master Poggins terrified him. Behind his back, several of the other children giggled.
The teacher looked down at Jacob with a vulpine eye, and decided the boy had not been attempting to be facetious. The position of a schoolmaster was a tentative one, and he dared not let the brats take the upper hand, or he should lose his place as one unable to keep control in the classroom. As a result, Master Poggins was as stern as the back of a ship. “You have learned these sums. We will see if your improvement continues.” He flicked his gaze around at the other students, who swiftly busied themselves at their own lessons lest they be caned for staring and inattentiveness. “The class is dismissed for the day.”
“Goshen, you were lucky,” said Octavius Winterbourne, as he and Jacob ran down the meadow together. Octavius was Jacob’s best friend almost since the two of them could first toddle. Octavius had a quick mind for schoolwork, and the schoolmaster was already encouraging Master Winterbourne to allow his son to attend a University when he came of age. Poggins was not at all subtle in his musings about why his star pupil and Jacob Crafter, the class dunce, should be such inseparable friends.
“Father helped me,” Jacob admitted to Octavius. “I’m learning to concentrate. It’s hard work.”
“Work! Don’t say work. I’ve still got my chores to do,” Octavius groaned.
“I’ll help you,” Jacob offered, “and then you’ll be done twice as fast. We can go off and play in the park until supper time.”
Octavius accepted the suggestion with alacrity. The boys chopped wood and pulled weeds for Goody Winterbourne, until she dismissed them with an apple apiece for thanks. Jacob thought his mother, with her wonderful black eyes and mass of black hair, was slimmer and prettier than Octavius’, but Goody Winterbourne was kind to him, and he didn’t mind helping out with chores if it earned his best friend an hour more of play.
“Octavius! Don’t be late home for supper, or I’ll skin you!” she called after them. Shouting with laughter, he and Jacob continued running.
The boys flung themselves onto the roots of a favorite oak tree and crunched the apples while Jacob displayed his treasure.
“See the way the colors are banded into circular ripples all surrounding one spot? It helps me to think hard when I look into the spot,” Jacob said. Octavius examined the stone closely.
“It isn’t a thing . . . against God, is it?” he asked cautiously.
“No, it’s as God made it,” Jacob said, taking the rock back and tossing it up and down in his hand. “Father found it in the riverbed.”
“Well, you know, you hear rumors,” Octavius admitted. “They say your father does black magic, and communes with devils.” He looked around hastily to see if anyone had heard him.
Jacob looked scornful. He’d learned long ago not to try explaining alchemy to outsiders, lest they fail to understand that it was pure science. Octavius understood about the Crafters, but he had sworn a mighty oath with Jacob never to talk to anyone about them.
“Communes with devils!” Jacob scoffed. “My father wouldn’t speak to a devil if he saw it on the street.”
“Well, anything that can keep you from being rapped over the knuckles by Master Poggins is probably magic of some kind,” Octavius reasoned mischievously. He jumped up. “Look at the sun! I’ve got to go. See you tomorrow!” he called, waving as he ran.
* * *
“Supper is ready,” Samona said, coming into the study where Jacob and Amer were reading. “Please come and sit down before it gets cold.”
“Do you hear that, Jacob?” Amer said jovially, rising. “It smells delicious,” he told his wife appreciatively. “Though I would have gone on perfectly well eating my own cooking, I couldn’t go back to such a state now.”
“Thank you for the compliment,” Samona said, nodding prettily. “Jacob?”
The boy still sat with his head bent over the book. “He’s concentrating,” Amer said, with a trace of amusement in his voice. “From the will-o’-the-wisp who couldn’t light for more than a moment in one place—”
“Ahem!” exclaimed Willow, from her beaker on Amer’s desk.
“I do beg your pardon, Willow,” Amer said apologetically, then continued, “—he’s become as concentrated a student as you could ever wish for. I think I’ve created a monster. When I said I wanted him to study until supper, I thought he’d realize when it was ready. He’s so far away, I don’t think he even smells it.”
“Please bring him back,” Samona said, alarmed. “He can’t stay that way.”
“He won’t,” Amer assured her. A tap might distract the boy too much, causing him to lose his grip on whatever he was reading so intently. Instead, Amer used a moment of mind-talk to break through. Jacob, he projected to the boy’s mind. Hear me. Dinner is ready.
Jacob’s head came up like a spring, and he dropped his pen. “I cannot only hear, Father, but see!” he exclaimed. “I see you! As though you and Mother were standing in front of me.” He spun around, wide-eyed. “Yes, that’s exactly how you looked. The stone made me see you!”
Amer blinked down at him. “It would seem that through the mere act of concentration, Jacob has bypassed the need for a far-sight potion. He’s inherited both of our talents, Samona. I must study this further.”
“Is his soul in danger?” Samona demanded, kneeling and wrapping her arms protectively around her son. Amer shook his head.
“Not at all, not at all. What he’s gained is a natural skill, which may be of great use in his lifetime. I’d say he’s paid for this knowledge with many years of being chided for
inattentiveness.” He patted Jacob on the head. “It isn’t the lesson I hoped you’d learn this day, but well done, my boy. Now, come and eat.”
* * *
The next afternoon, Jacob finished with his schoolwork so quickly that he was through long before his sister Amy had even finished unpacking the books from her satchel. Snatching up his rock, he dashed out, ignoring his mother’s cry from the kitchen to come and carry wood. She was baking, and if he stopped to help her, he’d be doing nothing else all day. Amy could carry wood, for a change.
Jacob wandered down the streets, occasionally looking deep into his stone’s heart, and smiling. It was honey season, and the nectar which Father had extracted from the hives in the forest was draining into crocks in the storeroom. The family tradition was to use up all the last year’s remaining store before the next year’s was touched.
With the leftover honey, Mother was making a cake for Sunday. Jacob could see with his far-sight that she had had enough batter left over to make cakelets. As they came out of the oven, steam rose in a faint white cloud, so real in his mind he could almost smell it. He counted the patties as they came off the pan. There were ten, eleven, twelve! Enough for two each for the family, if you didn’t count baby Margarethe, who was still suckling, and that left two over besides.
As he turned the corner into the street where Octavius lived, Jacob watched the image of his mother pile the small cakes on a platter. Well, she couldn’t be leaving them out. There wouldn’t be any left for him if Amy saw them first. No, Mother was putting the honey cakes away, but not in the big wooden breadbox. The wall opened up above the box, and the platter slid inside without leaving a trace. So that was the hiding place whence good things came. There had been a cake on his last birthday whose existence he hadn’t so much as imagined until it appeared. Probably it had been kept in there. Well, now. Twelve honey cakes divided by five Crafters went twice, with two odd ones left over. Perhaps he should abstract those two and eat them later with Octavius. He grinned. It was a naughty plan, but so long as Mother still believed her secret was secure, he wouldn’t be suspected when the loss was discovered.
“Honey cakes!” he breathed.
So intent was he on his spying that he never saw the foot that tripped him, nor the hands that shoved him to the street. He landed on his face, and the stone flew out of his hands.
Standing over him were five boys, all bigger than he was.
At their head was Laban Thomas, the biggest bully in school. He was nearly of apprentice age, so he wouldn’t be in Rock Harbor school much longer, but while he was there he ran things. Jacob picked himself up from the cobblestones and glared. Small as he was, he refused to knuckle under to bullies. His father wouldn’t, and he would rather be damned and eaten by demons before he would.
“Yah, you don’t look where you’re going,” Laban sneered.
“I thought warlocks’ children flew through the air. They don’t crawl in the dust.”
“My father’s not a warlock,” Jacob said, stoutly holding his ground, even though the five boys towered over him. “He’s an alchemist and a good Christian.”
“That’s just another name for it,” one of the other boys taunted him. “You’re going to burn when you die.” He shoved Jacob into one of the others. “You’ll burn!”
“You’ll burn!” echoed the next one. They kept on pushing him and chanting until Jacob ducked under their arms and ran away, with the echo of their voices in his ears. The stone lay forgotten on the cobbles behind him.
Laban laughed as Jacob hurtled down the street. “What a rabbit,” he said, scornfully.
“Is his father really a warlock?” one of the boys asked.
“Well, they came from Salem. Practically everyone there was burned or hanged for witchcraft,” Laban said vaguely. “Stands to reason they’re witches, too.”
The other boy stooped to pick up the stone Jacob had dropped, and turned it speculatively in his hand. “He was smiling down at this rock when he came up the street. Doesn’t look like there’s anything special about it.”
“Nab,” Laban agreed. “He said ‘honey cakes’ to it. Was he asking a devil to turn it into honey cakes for him? Or summoning honey cakes with it?”
Laban took the stone to his father, who was the church sexton. “It’s a witching thing,” the boy said. “Jacob Crafter was talking to it. It’s an evil amulet! The Crafters are magicians!”
John Thomas took the stone from his son and studied it. It had been a difficult thing, raising the boy by himself since his mother had died, and not another female relative alive to take the boy in charge. “I feel no taint of hellfire over this thing. If it’s evil, it is a subtle spell. How did you obtain it?” He eyed his son suspiciously.
Laban felt it was better to equivocate. “From Jacob Crafter.”
“And did he give it you? Did he?” Thomas, a big man strong enough to turn a shovel in the graveyard even in the depths of winter, loomed over his son.
The boy shrank away from him. “No, sir.”
Thomas grabbed one of Laban’s shoulders and shook him. “Then you have stolen it. Evil must not be compounded by evil, on your soul be it. If there’s anything to it. I will go talk to Goodman Crafter tonight.”
* * *
“We’ll have something to go with the apples today,” Jacob promised, as the boys left the Winterbourne house. “My mother made honey cakes.”
Octavius’ eyes lit up. “And she’ll give us some?”
“Well,” Jacob said, with a grain of truth, “she didn’t say I may not have any.”
He left Octavius sitting on the roots of the oak tree, and ran back to the house. Samona was behind the cottage with Jacob’s older sister, Amy, hanging up clothes. He crept inside, and went to the place near the stove where he’d seen Samona hiding the small cakes. It was a nearly invisible square in the wallpaper, just above the place where Father had installed a breadbox to keep the daily baking fresh. It was a good hiding place, for the wall was only a hand-span thick. No one would think to seek anything there.
“Open,” he bid the square, as he had seen his mother do, in the stone. The panel opened to reveal a deep cabinet fitted with two shelves. Jacob recognized the style of storage his father made to contain some of his more delicate and dangerous philosophical apparatus. The inside of the chamber was in a different dimension from the room where the door to it lay. Jacob guessed that the magical link led to one of the sealed wooden boxes that lined the cellar. He took two of the sticky cakes from the plate on the top shelf, carefully rearranging the rest so it looked like none were missing. With his treasures in hand, he ran out to rejoin Octavius in the woods. His mouth was already watering.
Master Thomas came to the house after dinner that night.
He seemed uneasy when he greeted Amer, looking surreptitiously at his hand after Amer had grasped it. Samona seated the two men cozily near the fire. Amy, Jacob, and Ahijah sat on the floor not far away. Jacob glanced up once from their game, and recognized Goodman Thomas, but didn’t seem interested in their conversation.
“I have a serious matter to discuss with you, Crafter,” he said at once.
Amer steeled himself. It had been some time since he had faced an accusation of witchcraft, but he recognized the solemn expression on Thomas’ face as one his Salem neighbors wore when delivering tidings of that sort. “And what is that, Goodman Thomas?”
Thomas himself was not that comfortable voicing an accusation of such magnitude. “You’re a good churchgoer and I’ve always thought you a God-fearing man, Crafter. My boy brought me a tale today, said your son was talking to this here stone.” Thomas produced a bundle of kerchiefs from deep in his pocket. He undid several layers of cloth, finally exposing the small rock. “Laban said your boy was talking to it, like it was a very soul. Now, what I want to know is, does this have anything to do with black magic?”
&n
bsp; “Do you mean, did my son expect the stone to answer him back?” Amer asked, smiling at Goodman Thomas. It was clear the sexton didn’t want his fears confirmed, and in this case it was easy to dispel them. “Not at all. The stone is only a stone. A pretty one, wouldn’t you say? If your son has taken a fancy to it, he may have it if my son says he may.” He drew Jacob near, and asked his leave.
“Of course, Father,” the boy said, only a little reluctantly, looking at the stone in the other man’s hand.
Thomas shook his head. “Nay, if it is a thing of magic, I want it not.” He turned up the bundle of kerchiefs and deposited its contents in Jacob’s hands.
“It is but a stone, I assure you,” Amer said. “Well, if he doesn’t want it, and Jacob’s given up his claim, we will throw it away. Surely I would never do that with an item of enchantment, would I?”
“You imperil your soul. It isn’t funny,” Thomas said, with. real distress. “There are those who wouldn’t question a boy twice to learn the truth. Do not talk of such things!”
“Then let us talk of more pleasant things, Goodman,” Samona said, entering with a platter on which were piled small, fragrant cakes. As soon as the treat appeared, Jacob’s big sister and small brother clamored for some. “May I offer you something from today’s bake?” Samona said cordially to Thomas. The neighbor didn’t need very much persuading.
“Ah,” he said, relieved to have the uncomfortable subject shelved. “Thank you very much, Goody Crafter. You have a true skill for baking.” He took the topmost cake, which Jacob remembered longingly was the largest one left.
“Take two,” Samona urged the neighbor, clearly much pleased. “They’re small.”
The Crafters Book One Page 10