Fireborn

by Toby Forward

  She couldn’t look at him. She knew now why he was all burned.

  “I know that,” said Mattie.

  “What happened?”

  “It came in a special box,” said Mattie, “with a piece of paper inside with instructions on it. We took the charm out of the box and followed the instructions.”

  Bee shook her head. She didn’t want to hear any more. Mattie carried on with his story.

  “We put the charm right into the heart of the fire, below the spit with a whole wild boar on it, ready to roast.”

  “Where was this?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  “No. Where?”

  “Oh. In the Palace of Boolat. That’s where I work.”

  Slowin gave Bee practice pieces to do. Exercises. Little spells and charms so that she could learn different ways of working magic. She didn’t like doing it. She knew that they probably wouldn’t work properly. She had to do them. She was his pupil. He took them away and she never saw them again. Now she knew why. He sold them. She had made the charm that had made Mattie like this. The ball of pain in her hand grew hotter. It took a lot of magic to stop it from hurting her.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “Well, it all went wrong. I was turning the spit and the fire jumped up onto the boar. It was like a mad dog. The boar came back to life, and it was alight, a blazing torch. It wriggled off the spit. I tried to move. It was too fast. It jumped on me and then I was alight.

  Bee made herself look at him.

  “Everyone ran over. They threw water on me. They wrapped me in wet cloths. They beat the flames out. The boar ran out of the kitchen chased by the mad dog fire, howling. We never saw them again. When they took the cloths off me I was like this.”

  He held out his hands. He lifted his burned face.

  “Why didn’t they look after you?”

  “Why? I wasn’t going to get better, was I? I couldn’t work in the kitchen any more. They said I’d die from the burns. It was either kill me then or throw me out. They let me choose.”

  The magic outside the circle had grown quiet, listening, while he told his tale, growling at them.

  “How did you get here?” asked Bee.

  “Crawled. Walked. Just kept going. Doing something made the pain less for a while. Then I couldn’t go any further. Or at least I couldn’t till you took the pain away. Will it come back?”

  Bee shook her head. She made a decision. She had already used magic outside the yard once today, she may as well carry on now.

  Bee thought back to the day she had made the charm that had burned Mattie. She remembered that she had used a stone, a smooth, green stone, to lock the magic up. She remembered the way she had worked the magic. Thinking hard, she tried to work out how she could turn it around. How could she make it as though Mattie had never been burned?

  She looked at the area they were in, inside the circle. Mattie was in his clump of bracken. Bee was on the grass. There were stones around. Just ordinary ones. Nothing like the deep green stone of the charm.

  “How long ago did this happen?” she asked.

  “A week. Two weeks. I don’t know.”

  The magic trail was old now. Bee had a feeling that if she tried to trace it back, to undo it at the place where it had gone wrong, she might take a wrong turn. She might even summon up the dog fire or the blazing boar, or both.

  No.

  Not that way.

  It would have to be new magic.

  New magic and a new stone.

  Bee found a pebble, almost white, almost round, black veins running through it.

  She held it in her hand. Gently. Not squeezing. Trying to get to know it. The stone was cold. Underneath, where it had been against the ground, earth clung to it, damp, dark. It was the right one.

  She rubbed the dirty side against her sleeve, then licked it clean of anything that had not rubbed off. The stone glistened under her spit, coming alive with a shine it had hidden.

  The magic saw what she was doing and it rose up, thrashing against the invisible walls of the circle.

  Mattie cowered down.

  “It’s all right,” said Bee. “It can’t get in.”

  In her left hand she held the cool pebble, in her right, the ball of pain and fire. She stood and balanced herself, keeping her hands far apart.

  “Mattie,” she said. “Are you frightened?”

  “Yes.”

  “What of?”

  Mattie hesitated. He started to say something then stopped.

  “Outside,” he said at last, “it’s magic, isn’t it? Trying to get to us?”

  “Yes, it is,” said Bee. “It can’t get in, though.”

  “It’s noisy.”

  “Yes.”

  She waited for him to say more.

  “What are you frightened of?” she asked again.

  “The magic. Out there.”

  “I’m not frightened of it,” she said. “Don’t be.”

  Mattie tried to smile.

  “Are you really not frightened?”

  Bee didn’t answer.

  “What are you really frightened of?” she asked.

  “You.”

  “Yes.”

  The magic crouched down and growled.

  “Are you more afraid of me than you are of the magic?”

  Mattie thought about this. Bee saw the answer come into his mind. Even with his face burned away it had enough expression for her to be able to read it. He stared at her, shook his head and stared again.

  “Well,” she asked, “which are you more afraid of, the magic, or me?”

  She wanted him to say it, so that she could see if she was right.

  “You are the magic,” he said.

  At once, the magic outside stopped. The silence was startling. Then in a flash, it redoubled its violence, reared up and lashed the walls of the circle.

  “Do you want to be better?” asked Bee.

  He nodded.

  “Are you brave?”

  He shook his head.

  Bee smiled.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll be brave for both of us.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t say you’re sorry again. Stand up.”

  They stood facing each other. Bee held out her hands and opened them, palm up. The white stone lay still in her left, the pain and fire glowed blue-white in the other. Mattie’s face was hot with the intensity of the fire. It hurt his eyes to look at it.

  “Take one,” she said.

  Mattie took the white pebble.

  Bee let her left arm fall to her side.

  “I think that’s the right one,” she said. “I hope so.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “No. The magic has its reasons. I’m not a proper wizard. I hope it’s right.”

  Mattie looked at his pebble.

  “What if it isn’t?”

  “If it isn’t, we’re about to make a big mistake.”

  Mattie stepped back, nearer to the edge of the circle. The magic made a huge lunge at him, almost breaking through.

  “Hush,” said Bee. The magic backed away. Mattie stared at her in fear.

  “I’m not the magic,” she said. “Not really. I don’t think so.”

  “You are,” said Mattie.

  “Perhaps you’re right. Now,” she lifted her right hand. “Do as I do.”

  Putting her hand to her face, she put the ball of pain in her mouth and swallowed it. Mattie did the same with his, very quickly, before he became too frightened to do it.

  She wasn’t sure whether a long time passed or whether it was all over in an instant. The pain was more than she had ever imagined could be possible. As a small window is to the vastness of the night sky, so was the pain she could think of to the pain she felt. It didn’t eat her up, it made her a thousand times herself, and made each new piece a perfect fire of pain.

  And then it stopped.

  Bee was lying on the ground, next to the clump of bracken.
>
  The circle had gone. The magic crouched, snarling, ready to attack, waiting for a command.

  Mattie stood over her.

  If it was Mattie.

  It felt like Mattie. Bee could tell that it was the same person. He looked so different.

  She tried to sit up, fearing it would hurt. It didn’t. She sat, holding her knees against her chest, ready for another attack of the pain.

  “Are you all right?”

  It was like Mattie’s voice, without the croaky sound.

  “Yes. I’m fine.”

  She tried to stand. It made her head dizzy so she stayed where she was.

  The magic was sniffing round Mattie’s ankles. He couldn’t hear it any more. Bee could. She could hear it, she could see it moving the grass, brushing the fronds of fern.

  “I don’t know your name,” he said.

  “It’s Bee.”

  He laughed, so she did as well.

  “Like a bee?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “I thought you were going to die.”

  “I was,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “I won’t die now.”

  “Not yet.”

  They were awkward, wanting to talk, not knowing what to say.

  “Look,” said Mattie. He held out his hands and arms. He put his hands to his face, stroked the smooth skin, opened his mouth wide, then grinned.

  “I’m back,” he said. “Like it never happened.”

  “But it did,” said Bee.

  “I’m just as I was.”

  “Nothing is ever just as it was.”

  She tried standing up again. It was all right this time.

  “What will you do now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. What will you do?”

  Bee pointed down the hill to Slowin’s Yard.

  “I’ll go back there. It’s where I live.”

  They looked at the high wall surrounding the group of squat, round towers, the cobbled yard, the lazy smoke.

  “The magic’s crackling down there,” said Mattie.

  “Can you see it?”

  “Not exactly, but you know it’s there, somehow. Active.”

  “Yes.”

  He bit his lip, looked at the magic fizzing in the yard.

  “Can I come with you?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” said Bee. “I’d like someone like you around. You just can’t.”

  Mattie looked in the other direction, to the Palace of Boolat.

  “I’ll go back there, then,” he said.

  “You don’t have to. You can go anywhere you like.”

  “Except there.”

  He pointed to the yard.

  “Anywhere except there,” she agreed.

  The awkward silence came back.

  “Then I’ll go,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No.”

  “Thank you for making me better.”

  Bee couldn’t answer. She knew she had made his pain in the first place. If it hadn’t been for her charm he would never have suffered. She couldn’t accept his thanks.

  “I’ll pay you back one day,” he promised.

  “There’s no need.”

  He still didn’t leave.

  “Did it hurt?” he said. “When you swallowed the thing?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt at all.”

  She watched him go. She wondered how many days it would take him to walk back to Boolat, wondered what they would say when they saw him well again, wondered whether they would take him back after he had been touched by magic, wondered what story he would tell, wondered if he would forget her the way he would forget his pain. So many questions. So much to think about.

  Her hands were shaking a little and she decided to sit for a while and watch him walk away before she made her way down the hill, back to Slowin and the yard. |

  Part Two

  FIRE ATTACK

  Flaxfield liked harvest time

  best of all.

  “Come on, Cabbage,” he said. “We’re off to work.”

  Cabbage was twelve and had never been to harvest before.

  “Shall I pack some food?” he asked.

  Flaxfield boxed his ears softly.

  “You and your food,” he said. “Go on, then. But only enough for one meal. We’ll be there by three o’ clock.”

  Cabbage grinned at him and pushed his hand through his hair, sweeping it back from his eyes where it had fallen from Flaxfield’s playful cuffing.

  Bag packed. Boots fastened. Hat on. Just lock the door and they’re ready to go.

  Flaxfield used a key. He liked simple ways whenever possible. As the key turned in the lock it grew hot and Flaxfield pulled his hand away.

  “That’s odd,” he said.

  “What?”

  Flaxfield looked at his hand. A small red mark where the key had burned it.

  “I didn’t put a locking spell on the door,” said Flaxfield. “So it shouldn’t get hot like that.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Cabbage.

  Flaxfield tried the key. It was cool now. He turned it in the lock and dropped it into the bag at his waist.

  “I think so,” said Flaxfield. “I suppose I could have done it without thinking.”

  “Is it locked now?”

  He rattled the handle.

  “Tight as a bowstring.”

  “Let’s go then,” said Cabbage.

  “Have you got your notebook?”

  Cabbage patted the bag slung over his left shoulder. “And what was left of that beef. Some bread. I buttered it already. Apples, cheese and a couple of bottles of water.”

  Flaxfield strode along, Cabbage half-walking, half-trotting to keep up.

  “If you ever give up being a wizard you can open an inn,” he said.

  “I’d like that,” said Cabbage.

  He didn’t see the quick look of disapproval on Flaxfield’s face, and carried on talking. “But I’d want to do both.”

  The disapproving look gave way to a smile.

  “Both?” said Flaxfield.

  “You know. I’ll never not want to be a wizard. But wouldn’t it be good to be a wizard with an inn?”

  “What about the customers who don’t pay?”

  “Turn them into frogs.”

  “The chef who steals the food?”

  “Fill him with air like a pig’s bladder. Put him on a stick outside as a warning to others.”

  Flaxfield grinned.

  “He’d blow away in the wind. You’d be arrested for murder.”

  “Oh, he’d blow back. Thieves always do.”

  Flaxfield stopped and looked at Cabbage.

  “Where do you get these ideas from?” he said. “Have you ever met a thief?”

  Cabbage shrugged.

  “Don’t know. Just think of them.”

  They started walking again. Flaxfield had slowed down and it was more comfortable for Cabbage.

  “They just pop into my head,” said the boy. “Thoughts.”

  “You’d do well to let them pop out again,” said Flaxfield.

  “What I’d do,” said Cabbage, “is, I’d charge people for their rooms according to what their clothes were like. The same for their food.”

  “How would you do that?”

  “Well, say someone came in and was wearing jewels and furs and expensive clothes. I’d make them pay a lot for their food and rooms. And if someone came in wearing worn-out old boots, they could have a meal for a penny and bed for tuppence.”

  “Do you think you can tell what people are like by looking at them?” asked Flaxfield.

  Cabbage thought about this.

  “You’d have an inn full of beggars,” said Flaxfield. “And what rich person would want to eat there and pay for them all? You’d be out of business in half a year.”

&n
bsp; Cabbage slid his hand under the strap of his bag and adjusted it so it wouldn’t rub into his shoulder so much. He walked alongside the tall wizard in silence for a while. Flaxfield let him think it through.

  “What’s harvest like?” asked Cabbage.

  “Hard work.”

  Cabbage frowned.

  “Magic work?” he asked.

  “Hard work. Lifting. Cutting. Stacking. Tying. Dragging.”

  “Not for wizards,” said Cabbage.

  Flaxfield laughed and put his arm on Cabbage’s shoulder for a moment.

  “What would you do all day, at this inn of yours?” he asked.

  “I’d welcome the guests. And I’d sit and talk with them, find out where they came from, where they’re going, what their business is.”

  “Do you think they’d tell you their business?”

  Cabbage leaned down and plucked a lamb’s tail grass, pushed the seeds off between his finger and thumb, and put the stalk in his mouth, enjoying the sweet juice.

  “I could give them a special magic drink that would make them tell me,” said Cabbage.

  “Could you, indeed? Is that why I’m teaching you to be a wizard, so you can trick people and learn what they don’t want to tell you?”

  Cabbage blushed.

  “What will I do for the harvest?” he asked Flaxfield.

  The wizard worked out the time by looking at how far the sun had travelled across the late summer sky.

  “Are you hungry yet?”

  Cabbage was always hungry, so they sat in the shade of a horse chestnut and started to eat their lunch. The bread was crusty and the beef was pink.

  Cabbage spread out a blue-and-white checked cloth and arranged all the food and the two bottles of water, as though they were receiving guests at home.

  Flaxfield smiled. He bit into an apple and popped a piece of cheese into his mouth so he could eat them together.

  “Perhaps you should have an inn, after all. You like to spread a feast.”

  Cabbage grinned at him.

  “Just because we’re in a field is no reason why we shouldn’t do things properly,” he said. Then he added a hurried afterthought. “But I’m not going to. I’m going to be a wizard.”

  Flaxfield tore off a piece of bread.

  “Doing things properly is wizard’s work, as well,” he said.

  “Look at that,” said Cabbage, pointing to his left. “It’s memmonts, isn’t it?”