Fireborn

by Toby Forward

  The woman, Vella, kept apologizing to him.

  “It’s all right,” said Cabbage. “I’m all right.”

  He couldn’t remember anything about the fire. He wasn’t burned at all. He didn’t even have a cough after breathing in all the smoke.

  Perry was most interested in the cat, but nobody cared about what Perry was interested in.

  The men of the village watched him but they kept their distance. Cabbage could tell that he would have to talk to them sometime.

  “Where did the cat go?” asked Perry.

  In the end it was Flaxfold who sorted them out. She took Cabbage to a small room at the side of the inn. There was room for Pellion and Vella as well. Flaxfield sat near the window, looking out into the night, listening but not speaking. Perry kept close to Cabbage. The men went back into the inn parlour, grumbling, knowing they would get their chance later, probably tomorrow. Dorwin stood near to Flaxfield.

  “Is this inn where you went, when you left us?” Cabbage asked Flaxfold.

  She finished checking him for signs of injuries. She looked behind his ears, as though the flames would have burned him there and nowhere else, and he remembered that she had looked there years ago, when he was little, to makes sure he had washed properly. He was fairly sure that she’d find it was clean there. He liked the feeling of her hands on his face and neck. It reminded him of when she had looked after him before.

  “Are you sure he’s all right?” asked Vella, again.

  Flaxfold took her hands and smiled at her.

  “There’s nothing wrong with him,” she said. “And even if there had been it wouldn’t have been your fault. What’s done is done.”

  “Can I go to bed now?” he said.

  Flaxfield laughed. Dorwin smacked his arm and said, “Behave, Flaxfield. Can’t you see he’s embarrassed. He wants to get rid of us all.”

  Flaxfield didn’t seem to mind that Dorwin had treated him as though he were more Cabbage’s age than an old wizard. Cabbage decided that people were very odd. But he was glad that Dorwin had taken his side. He didn’t really want to go to bed. He wanted to know what was happening.

  “All right,” said Flaxfield. “We’ll deal with the boy later. Flaxfold, what’s going on with your visitors? Why have your brought them here? What do they know?”

  Everyone turned their attention away from the apprentice and looked at Pellion and Vella. Cabbage was pleased to see how suddenly shy the two adults looked. He wasn’t the only one embarrassed by attention. Once again, someone came to their aid. This time it was Flaxfold.

  “I found them,” she said.

  “Were you looking?” asked Flaxfield.

  She glared at him.

  “I found them,” she repeated, “when I was on my way back here from a journey.”

  “Where had you been?” asked Flaxfield. “Looking for someone?”

  This time Flaxfold didn’t even bother glaring at the wizard. Cabbage smiled. He was used to Flaxfield’s tricks, and it seemed she was as well.

  “They’re looking for their daughter,” said Flaxfold.

  “Did she run away?”

  Everyone shushed Perry and he went red. Cabbage moved closer to him and they sat side by side and listened.

  “Her name is Bee,” said Flaxfold. “She has very powerful magic.”

  Cabbage understood straight away. This Bee girl hadn’t run away. She had been taken away. Like him. To be an apprentice. He stared at her parents. Was this was how his parents looked? Were they still missing him? Would they ever set off and look for him? No. Of course not. When you gave your child to be apprenticed that was it. You never saw them again. It was hard. But it was the only way. It was a privilege. For everyone. The child as well as the parents. The parents as well as the child.

  But not for these two. These had not forgotten this Bee girl. They had gone looking for her. He tried to concentrate on what Flaxfold was saying when Perry interrupted again.

  “Why did you let her go?” he said. It wasn’t a challenge, just a simple question. “If you didn’t want her to, why did you do it?”

  “Hush,” said Cabbage.

  “No,” said Vella. “He’s right. It’s a good question.”

  Perry looked triumphant for a moment, until he saw that the woman was crying silently.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Cabbage watched him go red again as she put her arm around Perry and drew him close to her.

  “We didn’t want her to go,” said Pellion. “But we had to. It was the only way.”

  Flaxfield moved away from the window and stood in front of Pellion. All at once everything in the room was about the old wizard. Nothing else mattered. It was as though a dragon or a lion had appeared. No one could take their eyes from him. No one could think of anything else. Cabbage knew then, before Flaxfield spoke, that the only thing he wanted was to be Flaxfield’s apprentice. This was what he was made for. So when the wizard spoke, Cabbage agreed, before the words had left his mouth.

  “You are right,” said Flaxfield. “It is the only way. For a child who has real magic, lasting magic, an apprenticeship is the only way. You had to let her go. She would never have been happy otherwise.”

  Flaxfold’s voice was soft, insistent.

  “But it needs to be the right master,” she added.

  Flaxfield looked at her and nodded.

  “And that is right, too,” he agreed.

  “It was the only way,” said Pellion. He looked at Perry, who had asked the question. “You should have seen what it was like.”

  Flaxfold tried to calm him.

  “No one blames you,” she said.

  Pellion shook his head. “But we are to blame,” he insisted. “It’s all gone wrong, hasn’t it?” His eyes searched the room for someone to support him. “Listen,” he said, “it was like this.”

  And he told them the story of why he and Vella had let Bee go, why they had to, before she hurt herself. |

  Pellion and Vella’s Story

  “We always knew it was fire that would betray her,” said Vella.

  It was one of those hot days that seem to be the real meaning of summer.

  Bee looked out over the fields. The air shimmered just above the stubble from the cut wheat. Swallows dipped and looped in the air, skimming for insects. Bees dangled their legs over the stocks and the honeysuckle, black and gold against pink and green. A single, small cloud hung in the sky. White on blue. Flour-soft on china-hard.

  Pellion was coppicing, half a mile away. Bee, five now, was thirsty. She went inside, stood on a stool and poured herself a beaker of water from the jug in the pantry.

  “Are you all right in there?” called Vella.

  “Where’s daddy?”

  “In the coppice.”

  “What’s the coppice?”

  “You know, that clump of trees, where we saw the badgers.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Cutting back trees.”

  Bee carried her drink into the kitchen and watched her mother edging the hem of a nightdress.

  “Why?”

  “To make room for new ones to grow.”

  “Is he thirsty?”

  Vella looked out at the heat through the open door.

  “I expect he is. Shall we take him a drink?”

  Pellion didn’t hear them coming until they were right on top of him. The coppice was set on a slope, to the east side of the large field that had been planted with barley this year. Hardly bigger than a manor house garden, it gave a supply of firewood, logs for charcoal, saplings for hurdles, beech mast for pigs.

  “Does it hurt the trees when you cut them?” asked Bee.

  Pellion took the jug of cool water and drank from the neck. Not too much. Not too quickly.

  “No. It doesn’t hurt.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You should finish soon,” said Vella. “You’ve been all day.”

  “It won’t look after itself,” he sa
id.

  “But how do you know it doesn’t hurt them?” Bee persisted.

  “Because they don’t feel like us. They’re trees, not people.”

  “They’ve got faces,” she said.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Vella. She wiped the lip of the jug with a swift, hard hand. “You mustn’t say things like that.”

  “Is it part of the secret?” asked Bee.

  “No, it’s just silly. How long are you going to be?” She changed the subject.

  “Less than an hour.”

  “Can we stay?” asked Bee. “We can walk back with you.”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “All right,” said Vella.

  “Can I go and play and look for the badgers?”

  “All right. But don’t leave the coppice.”

  “I’ll find you some faces,” said Bee.

  Vella spread her skirts out and sat with her back to a beech tree. Pellion picked up his axe and started to hack at the small shoots that would choke the vigorous growth of the new trees.

  “It hasn’t gone away,” said Vella.

  Pellion swung the axe. His shoulders flexed with the effort.

  “What do you know of magic?” he asked. “We’re doing all right with her.” He flicked away a wasp that floated by his ear.

  “It will eat her up,” said Vella.

  “She’s managing it. She’s all right.”

  “We can’t help her, though. She’ll need guidance.”

  Pellion stacked the severed shoots.

  “You’ve heard stories,” said Vella. “Of magic gone wrong. We all have.”

  “They’re just stories.”

  “We can’t let that happen to her. We need to find someone who can help us. Help her.”

  Pellion glared at her. He grabbed the axe and gripped it till his hands hurt.

  “Which is it?” he said. “Which do you want? Help us or help her?”

  “Us. Both. All of us.”

  “Then it’s to stay a secret. Anyone who comes to help her will take her away.”

  “It doesn’t have to be like that.”

  “It’s always like that. Remember your stories.”

  Bee could hear their voices as she left them behind. The trees looked down on her. They all had faces, of course. Bee knew that. It was silly of her mummy and daddy to pretend they didn’t. Some of them were big faces, made up of burrs or bent branches that stared straight out at you. Some of them grinned. Some of them smiled. Some of them were so sad that Bee wanted to cry. Some of the trees kept their faces turned away. They looked up to the sky, or they looked in towards their own hearts. Bee couldn’t see these faces, but she knew they were there. After all, if you saw someone standing with his back to you, you didn’t think he had no face because you couldn’t see it, did you?

  One tree had two faces. It had its own face, which was kind and a little puzzled. And it had another face, a blank, grey face with very faint features, smoother than bark, but scaly. It was a wasps’ nest, fixed in a forked branch. Bee could just hear the noise like someone sawing wood.

  The voices were angry. They were arguing. Bee didn’t mind. She was used to it. They argued a lot now.

  It was only a few minutes before she reached the end of the trees and looked over the barley field again. She turned back, wondering if she could remember where she had seen the badgers.

  She had never seen a stoat before. She didn’t know what it was. The first thing that brought her to it was the sound of the thrush. Bee saw the bird, thrashing crookedly, dragging a broken wing. The stoat was running down a tree trunk towards it. The thrush flapped its good wing and screeched louder. The stoat’s fur was beautiful. Its body moved with a swift grace that made Bee want to pick it up and cuddle it, play with it and toss it a ball of wool. The stoat’s eyes turned to her and she felt a stab of fear. The stoat opened its mouth and Bee saw teeth that could snap through a rabbit’s neck. It seemed to smile at her, then she was forgotten and it darted towards the terrified thrush.

  Bee ran towards the bird. She scooped her hand down to pick it up. The stoat jabbed its head forward, digging its teeth into her finger. She dropped the bird, screamed. The stoat released her, grabbed the thrush by the neck, shook it. The bird was dead instantly.

  Bee sucked her finger, more angry than afraid, more in fear than in rage. Wasps, excited by the movement and the blood, hovered near to the kill.

  Bee pointed at the stoat. A hundred points of flame swirled round the stoat. The wasps flared up, unhurt. They swooped down on the stoat. It reared up, like a snake. It snapped at the attacking swarm. They were quick, darting down to sting and burn, then jabbing away. The stoat dropped the dead thrush, swerved, span and spat, escaping and attacking at the same time. It was a hopeless contest. The wasps stung and burned. The stoat screamed. Its fur was singed. Its skin scorched. When it managed to snap a wasp with its sharp mouth it was worse than missing it. The fire from the wasp burned the stoat’s tongue. The sting sank into the soft flesh of the animal’s mouth. It tried to spit out the wasp, making it sting again and again.

  The little creature darted, blind with pain and panic. It tried to find shelter in the mounds of dead leaves and twigs. The wasps pursued it, jabbing and wounding.

  Bee stared at the terrified stoat. The thrush had died swiftly. This animal was being tortured to death. She shook her head.

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said. “No. Stop it.”

  Tinder around the stoat was starting to catch fire.

  “Please stop,” she said. She pointed her finger at the wasps. “Stop.”

  The flames from the twigs grew higher. The red at the heart of the black deepened and glowed. It spread out and up, eating more wood around it, growing stronger. The wasps ignored it and carried on their attack on the stoat.

  Bee held out her hands with the palms towards the blaze. “All stop, now. No fire. Stop.”

  Vella heard her first. She rose to her feet and grabbed Pellion’s arm.

  “Listen.”

  They ran towards the screams.

  Bee stood, not moving, tears running down her face. Vella hugged her.

  “I can’t stop it,” she said.

  The screams of the stoat rose above the crackle of the flames, the buzz of the wasps.

  “I hurt it,” she sobbed. “I hurt it.”

  Pellion strode across and swung his axe down on the stoat, killing it with a single blow. The wasps, robbed of their purpose, hung over the body, the flames flickered, then died. The wasps drifted away, back up to the blank face of their nest.

  Pellion kicked at the fire, scattering the wood and leaves. He swung his axe into the coppice floor, loosening the earth. He kicked the damp soil over the flames, stamped on them, loosened more earth and repeated it again and again.

  Vella hugged Bee and sang to her. A song without words, soft and slow. The child pushed her face against her mother and wept.

  “I hurt it,” she said.

  “It’s over now. We’ll go home.”

  They left Pellion covering the fire. He would not cut more wood today. He filled buckets with water and made five journeys to the coppice, pouring it over the black scar where the flames had licked.

  “Fire looks as though it’s dead,” he told Vella, “but it can still flare up, hours later. Unless you deal with it properly.”

  “I know.”

  “Why couldn’t I stop it?” asked Bee.

  “Shush. It’s all right.”

  They watched Pellion plod across the stubble, the leather buckets heavy in his hands. A small feather of smoke rose from the coppice.

  “The next week,” said Pellion, “he arrived.”

  She had stopped crying quite soon after her husband had begun the story. Half way through she had taken her arm away from Perry and taken his hand in hers. When Pellion paused she picked up the story for a while and then gave it back to him.

  No one interrupted. When it was finished silence c
overed the room.

  The telling restored Pellion and Vella. Their faces were composed. The tears had ended. She squeezed Perry’s hand then let it go. He did not move away, enjoying the sense of her arm against his.

  At last Cabbage asked the question that they had all been waiting to hear.

  “Who was it?” he said. “The visitor.”

  “It was the wizard who was to be her apprentice master,” said Vella.

  “Of course,” said Flaxfield. “But who?”

  “His name is Slowin,” said Pellion.

  “No,” said Flaxfield. “Oh, no.”

  “Is she bound to him yet?” asked Flaxfold.

  Pellion and Vella looked at each other.

  “Is she? Quickly,” said Flaxfield. “If she’s not it may not be too late to save her.”

  “It’s her birthday tomorrow,” said Vella. “She’ll be twelve.” |

  Part Three

  FIRE STORM

  Bee’s first thought was of Mattie

  and what had happened to him.

  He had swallowed the stone and she had swallowed the fire. Then she remembered what day it was.

  Her birthday.

  Bee didn’t feel any different. No, that’s wrong. She didn’t feel any older, but she did feel different.

  Slowin said they had something to sort out today. Because it was her birthday.

  She decided there was something she wanted to sort out with him as well. She thought about it as she dressed. She wouldn’t tell him about Mattie. She didn’t want Slowin to know about the boy. She knew Slowin well enough to know that he would be angry with her for talking to someone else. But she would tell Slowin that she wasn’t going to make any more spells for him.

  She picked up her brush and started to run it through her hair. She had a small looking glass, no bigger than the palm of her hand. She spoke to her reflection.

  “I’ve read books,” she said. “I know what I should do and what I shouldn’t do. I know more than you tell me, old Slowin.”

  She grinned and pulled a Slowin face. He disapproved.

  She knew stories about other wizards, other places, other spells. She knew that magic was not supposed to be wasted or sold. Not proper magic. You could trade in village magic, but not real magic.