First Magic

by Jenny Schwartz

  “They have carrier pigeons,” Sabinka said.

  A flick of Sorcha’s hand acknowledged and dismissed the information. “But none have been released.”

  “Huh.” Sabinka subsided into thought.

  “They’ll be using pre-arranged signals,” Sorcha said. “They’ve altered the placement of their horses. The picket-line is now to the south rather than the north of the campsite. Humans have telescopes. They can observe the militia from a distance. At night in particular…a campfire can be an effective signal. What time they light it, or if they split into two groups and have two fires, when they douse it.” The werewolf shook her head, ending this sideline of speculation. “The key issue is learning what they intend to do.”

  With the meeting on the verge of breaking up, and Bataar already stomping to the door, I asked permission to visit with Sean.

  “Oh child.” Sabinka detoured in her exit. She touched my cheek. She smelled of herbs and unfamiliar concoctions, the strange scents clinging to her apothecary robe. “You are of us and your father welcome despite his attitude. For his safety and ours he is confined until we have unraveled the militia’s plot, but you may visit him freely. Family is important.” She smiled. “And Sorcha was clear when we spoke prior to your arrival that your father loves you. You do not become less a part of Justice because you return his love.”

  She patted my shoulder and departed.

  Istvan shook out his wings. A black feather fluttered to the floor. “I must return to Atlanta and resume the court circuit. Bataar will deal with the militia.” That was both a comment and, by the stern look he turned on Rory, an order. “Radka, are you ready?”

  I’d thought she might swap duties with Urwin. Atlanta held bad memories.

  But Radka took her senior clerk duties seriously. “Five minutes.” She disappeared through the door to the clerks’ room.

  “Amy, you can contact me at any time,” Istvan said. “I can’t envisage any circumstances that Rory cannot cope with, but you have my slate details. Urwin as well as Rory will update me twice daily, if you want to pass on a message.” His tail lashed.

  I appreciated his desire to offer comfort, and his discomfort in doing so. I kissed his beak. “Thank you for worrying. I’ll be fine.”

  “We’ll begin magic lessons via the slate,” Istvan said. “I’ve been promising you fledgling lessons and neglecting them.”

  Rory coughed. “Not even you can do everything, Istvan.”

  “Amy’s magic is important, and my responsibility.”

  Silence gripped us. Istvan, Rory and I—and the kraken—held a new secret about my, and all of humanity’s, magic. Beyond my oath bond to Istvan, by which I’d given my magic to his service and become his familiar, I’d given him responsibility for an ancient mystery of humanity’s forsaken magic.

  The rest of the Faerene had no idea of humanity’s lost magic.

  Radka walked in and raised her eyebrows. “Problem?”

  Urwin accompanied her.

  “Not one that we need to resolve now,” Istvan said.

  “We’ll add it to the watchlist, then,” Urwin responded cheerfully. “That is growing by leaps and bounds.”

  None of us volunteered the nature of our problem. Instead, Rory asked what had been added to the watchlist.

  Radka’s gaze narrowed, but Istvan was the boss and Rory his right wing. She’d have to have good reason to challenge their decision to remain silent.

  Urwin chatted about the watchlist as we walked as a group to the front steps.

  The watchlist updated in real-time and was displayed as a wall-hung slate in the clerks’ room. It wasn’t a list, as such. It was a map of the North American Territory with colored dots that showed reported issues and active investigations pertaining to magic.

  “The Frost Nomad Clan reported one of its members vanishing,” Urwin said. “I’ve requested the bunker locate him, as per procedure. The orcs don’t like to admit it, but not all of them enjoy clan life. He’s probably gone off for a bit of a break from them.”

  I recalled the Frost Nomad Clan’s travel range. “In Alaska, in winter?”

  Urwin shrugged. “That’s orcs for you.” He waited with us as Istvan and Radka stepped through the portal and it closed behind them. Then his whole body shivered, skin rippling over his back and rump. “I offered to swap with Radka, but she was too darned proud.” He turned in a tight circle and clip-clopped back to the office. His cheerfulness had been faked for his colleague.

  “I like the people here,” I said to Rory. It didn’t matter to the Faerene that colleagues were from different species. Yes, there was prejudice, but there was also friendship and respect. Or at least in what I’d seen of Faerene interactions in Justice.

  I’d been told at the human familiar trials that werewolves had a bad reputation on Elysium: being fiercely loyal to their pack and ferocious in its defense to the point of feral attacks, but more commonly, being willing to lie and cheat outsiders. On Earth, the packs were determined to establish a different dynamic. Rory’s Hope Fang Pack was the most open, but all of them were trying to demonstrate their reputations as honest to all.

  The question was how much prejudice from Elysium the Faerene of the Migration had brought with them. Urwin’s offhand comment, “That’s orcs for you”, had me wondering what lurked in people’s subconscious, and might surface to shape our society.

  It confirmed for me that my desire to research and write a book on the Faerene from a human perspective was important and did warrant my attention and energy even with everything else happening. This Is The Faerene wasn’t a vanity project. My knowledge of the Faerene was limited, distorted and inadequate, but understanding had to begin somewhere. The book was my beginning. Humans needed to understand the Faerene, and the Faerene would benefit from learning how others saw them.

  An hour later, I was carrying two plates of venison stew, so Rory opened the door to Sean’s room in the guard quarters for me, and left with a quick pat to my butt in passing. I’d asked to eat dinner with Dad alone.

  Sean sat on his bed.

  There was a chair at the desk under the window. I put Dad’s plate and fork on the desk, ignored the chair, and sat on the floor with my back against the wall beside the door.

  Sean stared at me for a minute. When I concentrated on my dinner, he got up and sat at the desk. “The elf told me about what he called the Migration and your unexpected role in it. Human familiar. Am I to meet your griffin owner?”

  I grimaced at the slur against me, Istvan and our relationship. “Istvan’s duties as a magistrate have recalled him to Atlanta.”

  “And I didn’t get to meet him first, this creature who has enslaved my daughter.”

  My hand tightened around my fork. “I thought I was Rory’s slave.”

  Sean swore. “Don’t test me, Amy. I’m damn angry about all of that.” He gestured at the door and beyond.

  I tried to be understanding. “We’ve dumped a lot of information on you.”

  “'We’,” he mocked me sourly.

  “You know, my family,” I used the word deliberately. “The people in Apfall Hill who rode out the apocalypse with me, they’ve accepted the Faerene.”

  “They. You.” Sean pointed his fork at me. Neither of us were eating much of Peggy’s excellent stew. “You hid away in your tiny town. You didn’t wade through the nightmares. You didn’t watch the world burn.”

  I thought of how hard I’d worked with Dr. Fayed through the summer epidemics, and how many townsfolk we’d lost.

  “You claim that the Faerene saved us. You take their word for it,” Sean said icily. It was his courtroom voice. I’d been judged and condemned. “Just accept it and move on. That’s what you want me to do. Like you.” He dropped his fork onto his plate. “They have to face what they did to us.”

  I scrambled to my feet. “They saved us. The cost was cataclysmic, but they saved us.”

  “They should have told us about the Kstvm,” he roared.
“We would have fought the bastards.”

  “And failed and died. No, worse than death. Dad, you talk about me being enslaved—which I’m not—but the Kstvm would have bred us as cattle. Those stories of alien eggs being implanted in a person and the hatchling eating its way out, that would have been humanity’s fate until Earth was a wasteland. Hell itself.”

  “Get out.”

  I slammed out of the room. I ran headlong across the yard, through the kitchen and up to Rory’s and my room.

  He was waiting for me there, busy at the desk, with paperwork spread out in front of him. He didn’t argue, ask questions or resist when I dragged him to the bed. But he tamed the frenzy of my lovemaking to a genuine search for and gift of connection.

  I relaxed in his arms and kissed the skin beneath his ear. “I’m sorry to be so much trouble.”

  “My heart, I hope as long as we live, you always run to me with your troubles.”

  I focused on him in the dark room. “Will you do the same?” He was so much stronger than me, physically and magically, and innately protective.

  He kissed me tenderly. “I just did. I admitted that I need you to need me.”

  “Lots of people need you. You’re the pack leader, the head of the guards, the—”

  “Everyone else needs the roles I perform. You need me.” Soul-deep satisfaction sounded in his final three words.

  I considered them, and agreed. “I do.”

  He caressed me lingeringly. “And I need you the same way. Not for your magic or your allies or your incisive determination. I need you because you’re my heart.”

  Ours wasn’t a conventional honeymoon, but it was achingly real; a sharing of souls as well as bodies.

  In the morning, we woke before dawn.

  Peggy and her kitchen team still beat us. They’d laid out a huge breakfast for the hall staff and the people Oscar had assembled to transport my family and their belongings to Lajos’s house and Tineke’s small farm lot. The crowd spilled out of the kitchen and into the yard. Many of the movers were goblins from Peggy’s extended family, but there were also werewolves from our pack, a trio of orcs, a centaur and a number of elves and nymphs.

  “I had a lot of volunteers.” Oscar ate with the quick efficiency of a former soldier. Rory had gotten caught up in a conversation with two of the magisterial guards. “People are interested to observe a human household.”

  I couldn’t blame them for their curiosity, and they wouldn’t be alone in it. That thought made me grin. “Jarod will ask them innumerable intrusive questions.”

  Oscar snorted. “Serve them right.”

  “Who is this Jarod?” an eavesdropping elf asked.

  “My adopted brother.”

  “Introduce him to me. I am Hew.” He looked younger than Nils and Lajos, his jawline less pronounced, but most of all, his brown eyes less weary.

  “I’m Amy. I will, and thanks.”

  Oscar rose. “Listen up!” His army quartermaster’s voice silenced the crowd. “We’re moving out. Those who know where Lajos’s house is across the river, lead the way.”

  The babble of voices resumed, along with final gulps of coffee and mugs banging down empty. People snatched up muffins and toast. Benches and chairs scraped.

  I caught Peggy’s watchful gaze and mouthed, “Thank you.”

  She nodded vigorously. “We’ll bring lunch,” she shouted.

  I gave her a thumbs up as Rory and I joined the mob streaming out of the hall. The pace was brisk with some people chatting happily, while others, presumably non-morning people, merely grunted if a response was required of them.

  As we crossed the bridge, the wind swept over us with a biting chill. I snuggled closer to Rory. He put an arm around me without breaking his discussion with a man from the Snarling Heavens Pack. The man had five packmates with him, undoubtedly at their alphas’ urging. The alpha pair, Kieran and Josephine, had been enthusiastic guests at our wedding. They wanted a strong alliance between our packs.

  Tineke met us at the end of the street leading to her cottage and Lajos’s newly raised house. A trio of elves smothered her in a group hug, before dragging her along with their demand to see “that cute Lajos’s new house”. Tineke looked at us over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. Dark circles under them suggested it had been a tiring night of house raising.

  However, Lajos, standing on the street in front of his house, was smiling. He had reason to.

  “Lajos, it’s gorgeous!” I hugged him, drawing back suddenly as elves in the crowd hissed in a breath.

  He kept an arm around me, ignoring whatever opinion the others had. “Rory, if you open the portal there where the lumber pile used to be…”

  Tineke wriggled through the crowd to us. She smiled at Lajos. “Look at you, making friends.”

  Our audience of avidly curious elves surged forward at her teasing.

  Rory opened the portal to Stella’s farm, placing it between the house and barn.

  I pulled Lajos and Tineke through.

  Jarod was watching for us from the house. Well, they were all watching for us. But he raced forward first. His impetuous arrival signaled the beginning of organized chaos.

  Oscar shouted orders before his team could fall into distraction and conversation.

  Peggy’s family obeyed instantly. I could imagine the lecture she’d given them on ensuring the well-being of her friend, Stella, and to respect Stella’s status as an elder. They certainly did. Each bowed their head to her before following Niamh, who was in charge of indicating which belongings were coming with them and what would stay in the house.

  Mike had that role in the barn and outside.

  Meantime, Stella wrapped up warmly in a coat and scarf, and accompanied by Digger and hampered by Jarod’s enthusiasm, greeted Lajos and Tineke and stepped through the portal with them to come face to face with her new home. “Oh my.” Her eyes went wide. “It’s beautiful and so big.”

  Lajos’s newly raised house smelled of freshly sawn lumber and whatever plant-derived oil he’d stained it a rich mahogany with. The verandas were wide, the windows tall, and the building probably double the size of Stella’s farmhouse. What made it magnificent was the generous elegance of its proportions and craftsmanship.

  “It’s a mansion,” Stella said.

  Digger kept a steadying hand under her elbow. “A house of dreams.”

  The poetic nature of his comment surprised me.

  I glanced at him and saw him watching Lajos watch Tineke.

  Digger, my adopted dad, was a very astute man. No wonder he and Nils got along so well.

  “Can we go in?” Jarod danced from foot to foot. “Should I take off my boots?”

  Tineke laughed. “Not on moving day. Dirt is expected.”

  “This is Jarod?” The elf, Hew, was one of the first movers to venture back through the portal. He pushed a trolley loaded with kitchen paraphernalia.

  “Don’t stop!” a goblin shouted when Hew would have halted.

  “The kitchen door is around the back,” Lajos said.

  Jarod jumped to help steer the trolley. “I’ll show him.” He gave Hew a brilliant smile. “I’m Jarod.”

  The rest of our group went up the porch steps and entered by the front door. Inside, the walls were plastered a neutral cream color and the ceiling a crisp white. The floorboards were polished oak. A large fireplace in the front parlor drew Stella’s admiration.

  She touched the carved sandstone mantel. “I can’t believe you’re letting us live here.”

  “You are very welcome,” Lajos said.

  She looked at him doubtfully, then her face relaxed into a smile. “My furniture will look very shabby in your beautiful house, but we will make it a home, and you are always welcome in it.”

  Digger cleared his throat. “Stella and Niamh raised the question of where you’ll be living, especially through winter. If you don’t mind sharing with humans—”

  Lajos laughed. “No, I’m not laughing at you.
Your concern is appreciated. I’m amused because Amy warned us that you’d worry for my wellbeing if I continued to live in my tent.”

  “Land sakes!” Stella exclaimed. “You can’t stay in a tent.”

  He smiled at Tineke. “Tineke has opened her home to me. I will be living next door.”

  Tineke flushed. “As to that…moving days are tiring. Stella, would you like to sit with me next door? I would like the company, and I’m tired after raising the house.” The latter admission would subtly guilt Stella into agreeing.

  My shoulders sagged with relief. Stella looked frail after what had undoubtedly been a busy and emotional night. I’d been wondering where she could sit and be comfortable. With the doors all open for people to enter by, even lighting a fire in the hearth wouldn’t help to warm things much. “Stella, you go. I can boss people around and tell them where to put stuff.”

  “And I’m here.” Jarod stuck his head in.

  Digger pulled Jarod out of the doorway and out of the way of the four people attempting to carry an armoire past him down the hallway. “Everything will go if not where you want, then near enough that we can shuffle things around later.”

  “Unless you’d like to go back through the portal to…see…your house?” I faltered as Jarod made urgent cutting motions.

  “No, my dear. And I can guess at your pantomime, Jarod.” Stella didn’t turn to look at him. “I have said my goodbyes. Tineke, do you have coffee, or I packed some in a jar?” She patted her oversized handbag.

  “I have coffee, tea and herbal blends.” Tineke hooked her arm with Stella’s and led her away.

  The movers shuffled to the side for them.

  “A model of courage,” Lajos said in approval.

  I changed the subject because thinking of Stella sacrificing her home made me teary. “I’ll sort out bedrooms. Has anyone expressed any preferences?” I asked Digger.

  He grinned. “Young legs get the most stairs.”

  Jarod groaned.