Thirty-Sixth Beginning: Daffith's Egg

Daffith dropped himself down into the leaf litter, under the trees, exhausted.  He sniffed twice, wetly, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and sniffed again.  Such sniffs were as close as the boy would come to crying since his parents had died, nearly a season ago.

But Daffith wasn't thinking about that, refused to think about that ever again.  Instead, Daffith ran his hands over an egg too large for him to lift one-handed, worried that the jolt of his collapse might have cracked it.  Once reassured that the egg was whole, he worried that he wasn't far enough into the woods to be hidden, or that someone had seen him running from the fields.  As time passed and nothing moved nearby but insects and small birds, he worried . . . but there were too many worries waiting for their turn, so he worried about the egg again.  Was it too cool?

Daffith scooped needleleaf litter around the egg, flicking a hand every time one of the newer needles pricked him.  Shiff--scoop--flick--sniff.  He couldn't sit on the egg or even lie across it.  He was too afraid of breaking it.  So he curled awkwardly over the mound, trying to keep his weight off of it.

This wasn't a dragonman egg.  Everyone knew that dragonmen came from dragon eggs and dragon eggs had to be bigger than this, didn't they?  And he wasn't a vile and wicked boy to be wasting good time trying to hatch a dragonman like the one that had killed his parents, even if they were fools.  He wasn't.  Uncle Ures was wrong.  Uncle Ures had to be wrong.  Anyone who could call DAffith's solid farmer parents fools was likely to be wrong about anything.

Daffith's sniffles stilled.  His old farm-knowledge whispered to him.  There was a time before a duck or hen was ready to set when she just laid eggs, one a day, and left them hidden, unwarmed.  During that time the eggs didn't die, they just waited.  That way, when the hen or duck decided to stop laying and set, the six or ten or twelve eggs would all hatch out on the same day, as one brood.

Daffith screwed his eyes closed and tried to remember the nest.  It had been a bloody mess of scattered twigs and splintered oak branches.  There had been three eggs.  One had been splattered against the ruins of the tree trunk, another had cracked and leaked itself over the roots.  Only one egg, his egg, had survived.  He had concentrated his attention on the good egg, at the time.  Ig was hard, now, to remember the others clearly.

A stray thought of what was left of the tree finally brought the memory back.  There had been huge claw marks gouged into the trunk.  Dripping through the gouges, egg yolk had been drying in masses against the bark.

The egg probably hadn't started to grow yet, then.  Daffith flipped over onto his back.  He probed gently through the rips of his sleeves.  From the damp and the sting, his elbows had obviously been skinned badly in that last fall. He had protected the egg, though. It hadn't been easy, running with an egg that heavy.

Further exploration revealed that Daffith's knees weren't skinned, only a little bruised, that one pants knee was a bit ripped, and that his stomach was beginning to remember that this whole thing had started before breakfast. Daffith sat up and brushed needleleaves out of his hair. "First things first," Mother used to say. The egg could go without warmth for a week or more. But he was hungry now and his elbows needed washing out or the field dirt might cause an infection -- maybe even red-thread. Aunt Weaver would be worried about him and Uncle Ures would be furious, but there was nothing he could do about that, not 'til the egg was safe.

But there should be a stream nearby, if he remembered right. That would solve at least the washing problem. Daffith looked at the egg. Was it hidden well enough to be safe? Well, it would have to do. He was too tired to lug it around in search of half-remembered streams. But still . . Daffith decided to drape a couple of dead branches over the egg to discourage passing beasts from stepping on it.

The stream had no fish in it. But it had flint pebbles on its banks, which meant that Daffith could start a fire. As the fire burned itself into usable coals, Daffith scrounged about the stream for edibles. There was plenty of plowman's lettuce, a low growing leafy plant that came up early in the spring and was good for stopping the bleeding gums that sometimes came from being reduced to eating nothing but bread in the last of the winter. Daffith chewed it as he collected island-leaf roots and wolftail roots and stems. Among the wolftails he found a nest with four covered eggs in it. He took tow. That would do for a late breakfast. Even without fish, the stream had provided.

A bit later, Daffith was laying back by his egg with a full belly, watching the needleleaf branches sway over his head. He was almost feeling pleased with himself. He knew he was being disobedient, though, which made him feel bad. And he knew that he was no nearer to being able to save and hatch out his egg, which made him feel worse. But he had managed to buy himself thinking time. And not only had he known how to find himself food, he had thought to use the hollows in the island-leaf roots as containers for baking the eggs. He had never heard of anyone doing that before and it had worked out well. Even when you poked a hole in the large end of an egg, it could explode baking in camp coals.

Somehow, living with Aunt Weaver and Uncle Ures left him feeling useless. Aunt and her daughters, all of them older than Daffith and his sisters, wove brightly patterned blankets out of woolen yarn that they dyed themselves. Uncle Ures sold the blankets. He called it marketing, but Daffith couldn't understand what the difference was, except that Uncle Ures spent more of his time in the local inns than in their small shop. And while Junibeth and Mareet had fit themselves into the business from the start, one loving to mix the dyes and the other loving to keep shop and shop records, Daffith had not seemed to fit. Daffith didn't want to think about that, though. Instead he thought of the egg.

Thinking about the egg made Daffith think about his parents' farm on the outskirts of Flotsam. An egg was a farm kind of thing. Uncle Ures had sold the farm after the deaths of his wife's sister and her husband. Daffith missed it. It didn't do to mention that around Uncle Ures, though. Uncle Ures had done the best thing and it was ungrateful for certain young boys to criticize his elders. Certain young boys would be better off listening to his uncle and learning how to do business.

Daffith didn't understand doing business, either. If felt good to be out of the city and back in the woods and fields. Maybe he could get a job as a farm hand and hatch the egg on that farm, somehow. But Uncle Ures was sure to look for him. And he'd do it like marketing, talking in the taverns about his runaway nephew, making sure all the local farmers knew to look for him. Drat!

Maybe he could somehow go far away to a farm that wasn't anywhere near the city of Hawesbeck. But he didn't know how to do that safely. And he sure didn't know how to do it safely and keep the egg hidden or how to explain the egg. The egg worried people. And the journey would take longer than a week. Heck, if he didn't even know how to hatch an egg this big on a farm, he couldn't possibly hatch it in . . . in whatever he'd have to be in to be traveling.

So think of a way to hatch the egg first. Maybe think about getting food to eat while thinking, too. The stream wouldn't feed him for much more that another meal. Then he'd have to follow it deeper into the woods or find other woodsfood. Or steal from the fields. He wouldn't like to steal from farmers, though.

Daffith considered. It was mid-spring and time to thin some crops. Sometimes farmers would let a helper thin for a day or two just for the thinnings. A thinner could come away with sacks of baby lettuce or cabbage or turnips or beets or carrots. He was too close to the old farm now, though, and folks would recognize him.

But if he walked a score or so miles, he'd probably be able to find a couple of days work before word spread. He'd travel tonight and ask for work early in the morning. It was easy to think while thinning. After a bit, your hands and arms, back and legs, just fell into the continuous motion, leaving your mind to its own business.

If he planned to travel tonight and work all tomorrow, he'd better rest now. Daffith yawned. It had been a stressful morning. It would be good to rest. There were plenty of roasted wolftail roots for dinner. They were stringier and chewier than roast carrots, but sweeter, too, and definitely filling. It would be good to be on a farm again. Good to feel the familiar motions, see the familiar sights. Daffith yawned again and curled down into the dry needles, thinking of farms. The sounds of farms were good sounds. Daffith began to hear them as he fell asleep.

Daffith woke with a start. His fingers and toes tingled, as if he'd been struck with an illusionist's lightning bolt. He felt a strong half-awake sense of urgency. There was something he had to do, had to start now. But he didn't know what it was.

The egg. He needed to hatch the egg. But that wasn't urgent. That could wait. The boy ran his fingers through his hair to straighten it a bit. He must have been dreaming. This urgency must be left over from the end of the dream. Sometimes that happened if you woke up too fast, especially if you woke up before the dream was finished with you. Maybe he had been running from something.

No, not running. He remembered now. He had dreamed about the farm, about the farm in the early morning, just the way he would be seeing a farm tomorrow. Daffith looked around. It was just beginning to get dark. The air had that thick, golden color it sometimes showed just before sunset. There was plenty of time. Daffith laid back and began chewing on a cooked root.

It felt good to lay back and remember the dream. It had been of an Autumn morning. The tree and bush leaves were bright with frostburn. There were twinklings of dew ice from every surface. The goats and the mule in the barn were making their usual readiness noises -- not impatient, mind you, just wanting to remind, to be sure that the housefolk remembered that critters needed breakfast, too. Steam was rising in gossamer wisps from the compost pile. Chickens were pecking around the edges of it, seeking worms as an appetizer.

Daffith felt the tingle again. Chickens pecking around . . . Suddenly Daffith was up and running. That was the reason for the urgency. There was a way to hatch the egg, but it would take time to set it up. He had to start now to be sure that he'd be ready in time.

It was long past sunset when Daffith arrived back at his uncle's house. He went around back, past the main dye sheds to a little, leaning shed on the side. He unlatched it and peered into the dark of it. It took a minute or two to work up his nerve and go into that dark. It was a dark thing , stealing was, and it put a little darkness on you that gave the dark a bit of a claim on you.

"I'm just taking my own things," he whispered to the dark, so it would know. "Things Uncle Ures didn't want to keep anyways. The boy-sized rake and shovel and wheelbarrow that he couldn't say went with the farm. My things. And maybe some of the crop sacks from the farm, too. If those aren't mine and they want them back, I'll give them back. So it's just borrowing."

He paused for a moment, trying to think of anything he'd left out. No. Nothing he could think of. He wiped his hands down his front and slid into the darkness slowly, as if it were cold water. Even though he knew exactly where the things he wanted were, finding them took some time. Things were hard to recognize by feel with darkness pressing against him. But he found the things, one by one, and took them out into the starlight and the pinkish moonlight. He didn't look up, for fear he'd see a moon better left unseen, since Uncle would think it was stealing no matter what the technicalities were. When everything was packed into the wheelbarrow, he relatched the door and started the long walk back to get the egg. He had some thinking to do on the way.

[Continued here.]

Sent to David 11/18/1991.

Note in handwriting: I haven't changed anything yet. I'll finish the whole thing first before I start revising. I'm saving your comments 'til then.

Mom

PS Those are neat shoes.

Eighteenth Beginning: Houseboat on the Styx

The river is grey and thick.  The sky is also grey.  If the eyes of the fisherman ever sought the horizon, the odds of his eyes distinguishing a distant difference between river and shy would be slim.  Perhaps it is good that he does not look.

He knows that the rim of a boat is spelled gunwale and pronounced gunnel.  He knows that there is a black beetle, with a butt fat, like a stinkbug, pushing something round and grey around it.  The beetle walks backward, tickling the irregular, rocking mass ahead of it (behind it?) with black needle feet.  Somehow, it is always pushing its burden uphill.  Whether this is a trick of the tide or a trick of the geometry of the boat or some deeper mystery is unknown.  The fisherman ignores it.  That's the safest way.

Once, for about a year, or for what felt like about a year, the fisherman couldn't look at the beetle without remembering a time, once, when he was alive, when he saw a beetle cross a road.  It was a narrow, twisting rural pavement.  It was not familiar to him, and he was therefore driving particularly slow.  He had his window down and his arm resting out of it.

There were no cars in sight beside his own, so he assumed that the beetle made it safely across.  But he had thought about it, the rest of his life - not continually, but at odd moments.  He could remember remembering the beetle and feeling full of something unnamable, something related to the thought that the beetle probably could not see far enough ahead to see a car coming, could not carry the concept 'car' in a brain small enough to fit inside a chitinous cranium smaller than a pea, could not connect the concept 'road' to a sense of dread; perhaps could not produce dread at all, in any circumstance.  He could never fit words to what he felt when he thought of the beetle, but he had a sneaking suspicion that it was an understanding of his place in the universe.

Perspective is never a comfortable thing.  Now the fisherman ignores the beetle.  He also ignores the slope of the river and the thing he suspects about its geometry.  It's better that way.  Safer.  He remembers preferring safety, although he's forgotten a good deal else.  He remembers a good deal about fishing and the local fishing conditions.  Even as changeable as the river can be, he's been on it long enough to have a good idea of the bottom geometry, the flow patterns, and what is probably eating and being eaten in every reach. 

The trick of fishing is to find the place that something you want to eat is eating something else and to use the flow patterns to insinuate the right lure into the right place.  If nothing's eating, nothing's going to bite, no matter what's lurking there.  No death, no dinner. 

There is a bird hunched on the cabin roof, just over the doorway.  It's a black bird, most of the time, with ragged feathers that look as if they're blowing in the wind.  But that's just because several of them are broken and sticking out at odd angles.  The bird has never noticed the beetle, which is one indication that it wasn't born a bird but used to be human.  The other is that it can talk.  There are many things that can't talk that are as oblivious as humans to moving things in their near vicinity.  Clams, for instance.  A real bird would have taken a peck at the beetle.  A cat would have batted at it.  A dog would have sniffed it. 

The bird is miserable because it has no one to talk to but the fisherman.  Which effectively means it has no one to talk to.  It did it's best to talk, anyway, which is why several of its feathers are broken.  It is usually larger than a crow but smaller than a raven.  Sometimes the feathers on its legs are brown.  Sometimes there's a flick of white under its beak.  Obviously it was never an ornithologist. 

The bird does not remember why it ever believed that a person's soul would become a bird when he died.  It remembers watching a lot of television. 

Comments on Sixteenth Beginning

At the bottom of the last page of the Sixth Beginning are the following notes:

Kidnapped by a biker in the pay of a frog  that can cough up pearls.

Chosen for kidnapping because he is under a geas and assumed to be magical.

Geas is that he has to put a new roll of toilet paper on the spindle whenever the old one runs out.

No clue what the frog wants.

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Things I do not know:

Whether either of Andrew's brothers live nearby.

Whether the neighbors know that magic is being used next door.

Whether most people would be weirded out by Andrew's Mom using the Hold Button.

Whether the frog can talk.

What the biker looks like.

Why the biker is willing to kidnap for pearls.

Whether Andrew has any magic.

How angry Andrew is at his Mom, or how angry he will be if he ever gets any options.

Whether Andrew's Father is a jerk.

What Andrew's parents' names are.

Why Andrew's Mom took him off hold.

----------

What I had assumed:

That Andrew's Mom's family has a lot of middling important magic users in it, and that they've looked down on her.

That the biker will put Andrew in peril to try to activate his supposed latent magic.

That the brothers are still cordial to Mom.  They defer a bit and downplay the effect of the button on Andrew. 

That Mom will not notice the kidnapping for a good bit, and will contend that it's Andrew acting up when she finally notices.

Vaguely thinking that the frog needs a body, but wants a magic one. 

Vaguely thinking that Andrew needs to meet someone or something that he can talk to.  At this point, he has to believe that no one will listen to anything he says.  He's been so literally shut down. 

Putting a geas on anyone is risky.  Putting a geas on someone non-magical, as Andrew is supposed to be, is dangerous.  Putting a geas on someone who hasn't trespassed against you is rude.  Putting a geas on a child is irresponsible. 

His brothers know about the geas.  They also know that their own hold buttons have never been removed. 

Sixteenth Beginning: A Frog of Substance

Andrew blinked his eyes at the sudden light.

“We’re out of large zipper bags,” his mother said, then turned and stepped back into the kitchen.

Andrew looked around.  He was in the pantry again.  It was a proper pantry, now, with shelves on two sides and rows of canned and packaged food.  The shelves were only a hand’s length deep and the whole thing was only wide enough for the two shelves and an adult standing sort of sideways.

The last time Andrew had seen it, it had been more of a broom cupboard.  The back wall, where Andrew was standing, had no shelves.  That was where the brooms, poled dusters, mops and things were leaned.  And Andrew, of course.

He wandered out slowly, letting his eyes adjust.  “How long has it been this time,” he asked his Mother as he rubbed his head.

She was bustling around a huge pot boiling on the stove and didn’t seem to have heard him.  Her back was ample and her frizzed grey hair came only to her shoulders this time.  He didn’t expect her to turn around and look at him.

He rubbed some more.  His hair didn’t feel dusty.  Maybe she had thrown a sheet over him.  He had suggested, once, that she should make an Andrew Cozy, to slip over him when he was on hold.  It had made her angry.  One of his brothers had told him later that she took it as an insult to her organizational skills.  The question assumed that she planned to keep using the button, meaning that she didn’t have confidence in her abilities.

“But she installed the button.  Wasn’t that implying everything that could ever be implied?”

“That was when Dad left.  She had three preschool aged kids and no certification.  No one could blame her for being a bit disorganized then.”

Except all their relatives, Andrew had thought.  Except everyone who would point out that spacing children so closely in an unsteady marriage was a bad idea.  He hadn’t said that, though, back then.  He had only marveled that his brother could miss something so obvious.  Of course, that had been back when he and his brothers had been closer to the same age.

He dropped his hand from his head as soon as he noticed that he was doing it again.  He always rubbed his head when he came back online.  He couldn’t feel the button, of course, although he knew it was there.  He remembered the sight of it, red and blinking, when his Mother had installed it.  Like a little live cube.  She had been chanting lowly, a comfortable background sound.  Then she put it on his head and he’d felt the shock and the rising darkness.

There was a clatter as his mother dropped a big wooden spoon onto a copper spoon rest sitting on the new granite counter.  “Well?” she said.

He pressed his lips together in deliberate patience.  “How long has it been and what do I need to know?”

“It hasn’t been that long.”  She moved to the sink.  What he could see of the side of one cheek was bright pink.  Oh, good.  She was embarrassed. That meant she was going to be prickly.

Keep the questions simple. “Do I still go to Goodman’s and is the money still in the nightstand?”

“Of course the money’s not in the nightstand.”  Openly angry now, scowling.  Still not looking at him.  “Use your card.  And Goodman’s closed. . . “ she broke off, standing rigid while the water ran in the sink.

Uh-oh.  That sentence would have to end with some number of years ago.  She had just said that it hadn’t been long and in the next sentence was having to say it was years.  Would she decide that he had just called her a liar?  The fact that the words had been hers wouldn’t matter.  She was feeling shamed and it had been his question. 

Might as well poke the bear again.  “And what’s a zipper bag?”

“Argh,” she threw her hands in the air.  “I can see you’ll be useless.”

She bustled around, turning things off.  “I’ll go get them.  You . . “  one hand lifted and made a rolling gesture, “. . . go tidy your room.  Get acclimated.” 

She pulled off her apron, threw it on the counter, and strode out, never once turning towards him.  He heard a door open and shut.  Then he heard a car.  It started right up, so it must not be the car he remembered.

He turned around.  The kitchen had been redecorated and looked more expensive, more organized, and cleaner than the last time he’d seen it.  Well, she’d be gone for awhile and she’d expect him to be in this room when she got back.  No telling how little time he’d have to look around.  He’d better start with the front yard.  There would be no warning of her return if he was standing there.

The hall still had the fake marble tiles and the flocked gold-tone wallpaper.  The dry sink had been moved there and it was looking empty and decorative.  There was a throw rug just inside the door.  The door was still big, heavy, and made of foot-wide wooden panes, but it had been dusted and polished.  The knob had been changed to something that looked like wrought iron.  He turned it.

There were potted plants on the porch landing.  The ones by the door were tall and the ones along the edges of the concrete pathway were shorter.  A well mowed lawn spread to the right and a well-scrubbed driveway spread to the left.  It had always been big enough for two cars and now there was an additional concrete pad on the other side.  There was no sign of the oil drips that had been there.

There were three newspapers in the driveway.  He picked through them to find the most recent date.  What had the date been?  He couldn’t remember.  That didn’t feel odd.  He tried repeating the date to memorize it, but when that didn’t feel like it was working, he tore off a dated corner and stuck it in his pocket.

As he turned to go back in, he notices a small sign where the lawn met a front flower bed.  It said Walker Landscaping and Maintenance.  Well, that explained that.  She obviously had money, now.  Had she re-married?  She had always had a talent for magic.  Maybe things had finally turned out the way she wanted.

Andrew stepped over a thick rubber doormat with Morgan on it in deeply set white rubber letters and walked back into the house.  After cruising around various downstairs rooms, he wandered toward the staircase.  He had been dreading the staircase.  On the wall of the staircase would be the most recent family photos. 

Andrew watched his feet for the first few steps on the carpeted stairs.  Most people, he thought, would think that a person in my situation would look for a calendar.  But the calendar couldn’t deliver the impact that the photos would.  A calendar could only tell how much time had passed.  Putting him on hold wouldn’t matter so much if she put all her sons on hold about the same amount of time.  But she didn’t.  Not ever.

Andrew looked up.  He was shocked.  There were three photos with thick wooden frames and numerous others with thin metal ones.  They crawled up the wall, in line with the steps.  The wooden frames were for the three sons. 

Willy’s photo was highest up, since he was oldest.  Andrew’s own was lowest.  Eddie’s was in the middle.  Only Willy’s photo wasn’t of Willy, it was of his family.  It was hard to see how many because Mother had shoved a snapshot of Willy’s face into the upper left corner of the frame.  Willy and a boy that looked to be about six still showed.  Two sets of bare legs showed under the snapshot, so a wife and a daughter and the wife might be holding a baby.

“Damn.”  Andrew said it out loud.  In the snapshot, Willy’s cheeks were getting chunky and his hair was getting thin.  He dragged his eyes to Eddy’s photo.  It was a graduation photo.  It was hard to guess if it was high school or college.  Andrew’s eyes flicked back and forth between his brother’s photos, sizing them up.  Eddy was lagged by a few more years than last time.  At Eddy’s age, what would have caused that?  Mother always told him it was because he was so young that he needed to be looked after.  Couldn’t someone in high school look after himself?  A chill ran down Andrew’s spine.

The rest of the photos would be aunts, uncles and cousins.  Best not to think about them.  Andrew ran for his room.  Thankfully, it looked pretty much the way he had left it.  He didn’t know what he would have done if it hadn’t.  What he next, he did because it was what he always did when he was newly back on line.  He threw himself on his bed and slept.

Being on hold wasn’t anything like sleep.  You were in one place and time and then you were in another place and time and feeling dragged and groggy.  There was no sense of time passing at all.  Sleep reached up and folded you in and held you.  You felt time go by as you slept, could slow it even, so that a half hour asleep felt like several hours gone by.

Andrew usually didn’t dream during his first post-hold nap, but this time he did.  He was floating.  Most of the time he was face up, watching the sky with clouds and tree branches gliding past.  Sometimes he was face down, watching sunbeams dance through greenish water.  At those times old toys and the floating bodies of his brothers at different ages swam past.  They bobbed on the currents.

His first bicycle, a hand-me-down, floated past, laying almost exactly on its side.  An orange crab walked along the frets of the front wheel in an endless circle.

But mostly it was the sky.  He had a feeling he knew which river he was floating down, but it was not one he’d ever been to, outside of sleep.  They had only ever driven by it, bridging from one side of it to the other, on the way to visit Grandma. 

He woke.  There was no way to tell how much time had passed.  Sometimes the first nap was less than half an hour.  He could remember things better now. 

The walls of his room were the same familiar light reddish orange that his Mother called apricot and his brothers called pink.  The sheets were white and the blankets were old army blankets.  The saying was that boys liked army things, but basically they had been left behind by his Father who had got them from his Father who had been in the army and you didn’t throw away things that could still be used.

There were two white dressers, one upright and one long and low.  There was a white closet door.  There would be a jumble of things in the closet, most of them not his.  His clothes would be in the dressers.  He could see stacks of clothes on the low dresser.  Some were in their wrappers, others hadn’t had wrappers, but had been cocooned in plastic wrap.  He supposed they would be of different styles.  Probably the clothes he was wearing were out of date.  He wondered if they were odd enough looking to get him beat up.

He sat up and listened.  There were sounds in the kitchen.  She was back and working again.  Odds were she didn’t want to see him particularly.  She would wait.  He was supposed to act like things were normal.  Like there was nothing to discuss.  It was going to be hard.  But that was later.  For now, she wouldn’t come looking for him.  He had some time alone in his room.

His spread was a set of camouflage sheets sized for a full sized bed, not the twin that they covered.  He twitched one corner up over the mattress.  The jack was still there.  He lifted the handle from under the bed, slotted it in and pumped. 

Eddy had helped him set it up.  Eddy was clever with physical things.  The frame of the bed was set too low to slide much under, but with the linked hydraulic jacks, it could be pumped more than a foot higher.  You could hide under it.  You could hide things up inside the box springs.  But Eddy had graduated and probably didn’t live here anymore.  Andrew pumped. 

Soon he was sitting on top of the bed and looking at his stash.  The blankets had been turned down so that he could twitch them over his things to hide them if he heard his Mother coming.  She probably wouldn’t, but it was best to be sure.

There were several calendars and a stack of blank calendar pages. 

. . . .

(Yes, I know I haven't gotten to the frog, yet.) 

Thirteenth Beginning: Should Auld Apprentices Be Forgot

The Puzzlebark Inn did a brisker business than you would expect for an inn with no sign and no door.  Catering, as it did, to sorcerers, wizards, and other magic users, the lack of both advertising and point of ingress was no deterrent to custom.  In fact, it served to preserve the safety and exclusivity of the clientele.

There were many rooms in the Puzzlebark Inn, though how many was a subject of speculation.  There was a dining room with a magic harp for quiet enjoyment and a dining room without one for lively debate.  There was a library for study and meeting rooms for conclaves and a feast hall that couldn’t be found unless the proper deposit had been paid.  There was even a bar for boasting and carousing and meeting other wizards.

But the heart of the Puzzlebark Inn was the taproom.  The taproom was for reminiscence.  This was not enforced by either the owner or the guests.  It just seemed to be an effect of the room.

The night was a warm spring night and only the western hearth was lit, washing the room with deep blue flickers.  The tap, hanging firmly in midair in the center of the room, had been liberally employed throughout the evening and tales of past magic were well underway.  Old sea magic had been explored for awhile, but, as often happened when the denizens of the taproom were of the older sort, the subject had turned to the shortcomings of past apprentices.

 "The sloppy ones can be watched," a balding court mage named Durstan stated firmly.  "It's the angry, vengeful sort that are dangerous.  Why, I had a South Sloper, once, who became convinced that I was jealous and trying to poison him.  Before I knew it he'd turned my cook into wood.  My Cook!"

"Piffle."  An ore dowser named Roswyn flipped a graying braid over her shoulder.  "Angry apprentices are dead easy to handle.  Slap a mood geas on them or pop them into the Labyrinth of Mind.  Then if they don't learn to control their emotions, they can't do magic.  The sloppy ones are always doing something so slightly wrong that you don't notice until it's too late." 

"At least they are usually more of a danger to themselves than to others, Ros."

"Only if they live in a cave on a mountain.  Even then, watch for innocents caught in avalanches.

I had an apprentice named Opal, once.  Auspicious name for cave work, you'd think.  But, no.  Things were always going wrong about her.  We were crawling through an old 'tween hole one day and disturbed a troll.  I got out the copper blade smart enough and she knew to scramble for the jar of salt. 

But when she opened it, the salt was one solid mass stuck in the jar and no good at all for tossing on troll wounds.  She'd not fastened the jar lid tight enough and the salt had pulled moisture out of the cave air and locked itself up.  The troll kept healing and coming at us and healing and coming at us.  It was clear that we would both be troll food as soon as my arm tired.

Fortunately, before that happened, she lost control of her torch.  I assume she hadn't soaked it in lime and lichen long enough.  Suddenly it was a real, burning flame instead of seaflame, like in the hearth, yonder.  With all the sulfur in it, it nearly took her eyebrows off when it went.

She dropped it, of course.  But I only had to curse her a little to get her to cauterizing troll with it.  Once the troll was burning well, I doused the torch.  She yipped about the dark for a bit before she remembered why it had to go.  We crawled back to the surface in the dark with troll soot in our lungs.  I hope none of you ever gets a lungful of burning troll in a confined space." 

"For the benefit of us light-lovers, Ros, why did the torch have to go?"

"Why, the phlogiston, man!  Living beings and true flames both release phlogiston into the air.  When the air gets saturated with it, then the flame or being smothers.  Caves are enclosed and can't release phlogiston into the wider air with any rapidity.  It's easy to smother yourself in a cave."

"What did you do with your girl?"

"Not a thing.  She was silent and chastened the whole way home.  Concentrated on her work better than I'd ever seen.  I thought maybe this had been the shock she needed.  But, no. 

She quietly packed our gear and quietly hiked home.  She quietly stowed all the equipment and quietly cleaned herself up.  Fixing dinner that night she didn't drop a dish or add a salt measure of pepper or any of the small missteps she usually made.  She quietly ate and quietly tidied after.  Then she went to her room and quietly packed all her things.  Nothing I said could convince her to stay. 

What did you do with your South Sloper?"

"Shifted the spell onto him, of course.  As I explained to him at the time, if I could have been sure of lifting the spell properly, I would have done so and let the incident drop.  Fits of temper and all that.  But wood to flesh is trickier than flesh to wood.  There are simply more kinds of flesh than of wood.  Fiddly to get the typing done properly and deadly to miss.  Better to do a reverse curse with full correspondence.  I also explained that, while talented apprentices are easy to find, good cooks willing to work for a mage are not.

I told him that if the cook died or left me, I'd shift him back."

"As if the cook won't outlive you!"

"Ah!  Fixed that with the Mayor.  If I die, then our wooden boy goes up for auction to any magic user willing to turn him back.  In fact, he's in the Mayor's office as we speak, just in case."

"Why would anyone pay for the opportunity to cast wood to flesh?"  Roswyn was puzzled.

"Not wood to flesh, it would be another reverse with full.  Much easier than wood to flesh.  Any good hedger could do it."

"Again, why?"

"As a means of execution, of course.  There aren't many Princes in my section of the Worldshore, at least not many worth mentioning.  But we have a lot of Mayors and Constables and so forth who have occasional need of a showy execution.  A retransfer of the curse would leave a body for permanent display and preserve the hope, for any followers or relatives of the deceased, that the focus of their interest might be revived at a later time.

There may be any number of political reasons why such an execution would be handy.  Yes, the resale could be quite profitable under the right circumstances.  My cook is willing to take the resale value as his inheritance."

"Bah!  Sometimes I don't see how you court mages can stomach it."

Durstan chuckled over his mug of red beer.  "You slog through muck and dark and breathe the occasional burning or salting troll and you ask how I can stomach a little social maneuvering!  Honestly Roswyn, I sometimes wonder if you. . ."

It was not a large sound that stopped Durstan's speech, that, indeed, halted all conversation in the taproom.  It was merely the shifting of the blankets tucked about the shoulders of the eldest mage in the room.  But though the sound was small, it was unexpected, for the eldest mage seldom moved or spoke.  And since magic users habitually attend to the unexpected, when the eldest spoke, the entire room was already listening.

He spoke in a soft, lifeless voice, and cleared his throat several times at the beginning.  "I never had any trouble with either sloppy or angry apprentices." he intoned.

"But beware an apprentice with an uncontrollable sense of humor.  Especially beware the apprentice who cannot forgo the opportunity to form that perversion of speech known as a pun.  Puns  and spells do not mix. 

Ignore the affability and charm of the aspirant.  Inveterate punsters are invariably affable and charming.  It is a defense they adopt to prevent them from being bludgeoned to death.  Ignore their nimbleness of mind.  Sadly, a certain nimbleness of mind is required for punning.  But once a person's mental agility has been harnessed to such an engine of perversion, it cannot easily be unhitched.  No.  Avoid the apprentice with an uncontrollable sense of humor."

Here the eldest mage seemed to be content to mumble himself back into quiet.  But the curiosity of the taproom had been aroused.  Standing folk gathered about the eldest and seated folk leaned in.  A general murmur of interest sounded and faded.  When that was insufficient, Durstan spoke.

"Venerable one.  Pardon my curiosity, but can you give us an example?  Can you speak of a time when spells and puns brought disaster?”

"I can easily name an embarrassing incident.  But the true disaster is painful to relate.  Durstan, have you ever been called upon to form a nimbus of light about a princeling setting forth to parade before his people?  You will understand how seriously they take it and how angry they become when the spell is ill cast. 

The particular prince in this incident was a preening example of his kind.  He decided that not only he, but also his horse should glow.  He spouted some rot about symbology and loyalty.  If the horse could glow by association with his greatness, then the peasants and merchants and petty nobles must flock to greatness by association or . . .  some such.

It was a suitable spell for this apprentice, whose name I will not speak.  In light of his unfortunate tendencies, I required him to write out the amended version of the spell he would cast.  It contained an unfortunate repeating phrase:  '. . .and the horse you ride", an obvious allusion to the common curse.  But the prince would never hear the words as the magic would distort them, and it was a mild enough aberration.

Unfortunately, when he actually recited the spell, he could not prevent himself from punning.  The change in pronunciation was slight enough that I did not notice it.  I was merely surprised when the horse failed to glow.  The apprentice looked appalled and ran, which was the proper course when things went badly about this prince.  So I thought nothing of it.  I stayed to apologize and almost lost my head."

You see, I only knew that the horse wasn't glowing.  I didn't know that other things were.  During the parade, several well known ladies of the evening were noticed to be glowing in the nooks where they watched the parade.  Once it was noticed, it was chuckled at.  The prince had made such a fuss about his horse not glowing that many courtiers understood the switch that had been made.  And they only glowed if the prince was nearby.  It was a good bit of gossip.

Unfortunately, that gossip had spread by the time the main festivities started.  At the ball that night, any young lady who had both mated with the prince and accepted a gift from him glowed if she was in the same room.  Dabbling in street merchandise was worthy of a chuckle, but collecting the favors of the daughters and wives of his sworn men was an entirely different matter.  To say nothing of the state those women got into when they discovered they were part of such a crowd.

The prince had to call his guard to clear the party.  He needed his army to hold the manor in the weeks that followed.  Eventually, an advisor got to him and he married a princess from one of the northern isles.  There was a great deal of publicity given to the magical backing that their vows of fidelity were to be given.  If he had gotten his hands on me while he lived, he would have attempted to execute me."

"How dreadful!"  Duran was appalled, though appreciative snickers peppered the room.  "And you consider that to be merely an embarrassment?  Pray what would you consider to be dire if that was not?"

"As many Princes as there are in the Worldshore’s main reach, and as short as each one’s reach is?  No, it was only an embarrassment for me.  I popped somewhere safe.  I left the punster to find his own way which, unfortunately, he did." 

The eldest emitted a sigh like a slowly deflating buffoon's bladder.  Everyone leaned in again, encouragingly.  Another dry sound wheezed from the eldest.  Upon repetition it was discovered to be a chuckle. 

"And I made a few coins from the situation.  Finder's fees.  I spread the word to other mages that there might be those attending the wedding who would be interested in an expert opinion on the strength and validity of the magic performed.  Likely every fifth attendee at the solemn occasion was there as a consultant.  Very remunerative.

Now I suppose you want to hear about the disaster.  It's a painful thing to remember, let alone to relate."

Durstan found the eldest's glass and filled it from the tap.  Everyone waited patiently as the eldest fumbled a few small sips of support.

"I had decided that the southern isles would be the safest place for us for awhile.  And the southern isles means boating.  As you know, all the southern isles are small, most supporting less than a dozen inhabitants.  To do any sort of business at all requires a boat or boats.  The sort of magic most in demand is the sort that deals with boats:  bits of wind to puff your sail one way without pulling all the other boats along, woodwarp to seal cracks, lightness to increase cargoes, that sort of thing.

After his difficulty, my jolly apprentice had been chastened for awhile, rather like Roswyn's Opal, and he was affable enough to easily attract customers.  All was well until the Pizan fleet arrived.  The Pizans come from a land beyond the Worldshore, where most of the land is surrounded by other land.  But they had come to trade and had been generous enough with their goods to find great welcome.  The south islanders invited them to sail their seas freely, giving them maps to guide their deep-keeled ships away from shallow waters.  They also hired us to bless the ships of the fleet.

Blessing a boat or a ship is a simple enough thing.  It does little more than bring the craft a bit of extra luck, which might be handy for strangers with deep-keeled boats tootling around islands, but which would be impossible to measure.  No one would ever know if the spell failed, you see.  So it was a guaranteed success.  Blessings are complicated, though, with much naming of boatly parts.  My unfortunate apprentice had been spending time drinking with islanders and knew well all the parts.  Unfortunately, he had also learned all of the local phrases of color and his infirmity was still with him, though hiding.

Still, the disaster might have passed us by, had not one of his drinking companions gone aboard the main ship of the fleet.  There we were, on our little boat, floating among the ships and there he was, watching us. . . listening to us . . . an audience for my apprentice's perversion.  Again, I was unaware of the danger.

And I was not as familiar, either with the names of the parts of boats or with the local insults.  I did not notice as my apprentice's chanting of hulls and masts and spars and rigging, of booms and gaffs and jibs, slipped sideways somewhat.  I did, however, notice with sinking heart, as his friend slapped his thigh and doubled over with laughter.  I glared, but did not dare interrupt.  Then I heard him add a cantrip.  As a final jibe at his laughing companion, he recited an untying spell, meant, I am sure, for his friend’s pant string. 

But it was recited too close to the other, mangled spell.  With horror I watched as each and every connection in the fleet disconnected.  Board parted from board and rope parted from sail.  The cargo of the Pizan fleet plunged through the separating pieces of their ruined ships.  I fled immediately, teleporting to safety.  He was too stunned to move, and was taken captive, though he bartered his way to freedom quickly enough.  From that day to this I have avoided humorous apprentices."

Magic users are a cunning and subtle lot.  So the horrified hush that fell over the taproom had nothing to do with thoughts of maritime economic setbacks.  For every wizard and witch could piece the rest of the story together quickly enough.  The name that the eldest had refused to speak was known to them all; was, indeed, know to all the peoples of the Worldshore:  Narnemvar the Great, the mage who discovered the shipblast spell upon which the peace and safety of the Worldshore now depended.

Heads nodded about the taproom as all there agreed with the thing that the eldest had left unsaid.  The apprentice who surpassed his master so completely that his name became a part of history while his master’s name crumbled slowly to dust - - that was the apprentice to be avoided.  That was the worst apprentice of all.

Twelfth Beginning (Island California)

"In the oldest legends, there is a continent attached to the Island of California.  The continent is vast and varied, stretching from the Arctic to the Antarctic, with all the known languages and geographies and weathers of the world laid out upon it.  Other stories say that this continent sank without a trace because of an incredibly powerful earthquake. "

Island California

1A -

The electricity failed first, though not all at once.  At first it was just breakers snapping and fuses blowing.  Then the television and radio reception became unreliable.  Newspapers ran articles about the power dropping, as if it were leaking out of the wires instead of powering the broadcast towers. 

Then the computers went and people began to drift and congregate and talk.  It was as if they couldn't stand the quiet and the disconnection and so sought out other people to fill the sound and information void.  People would gather in drifts on street corners or in shops or on the lawns in front of schools and libraries.  Stories passed from lips to ears, some of them foolish and unreasonable; but all of them welcome.  And how could there be an explanation for electricity just not working.

Steady talkers and gossips, the kind who could simply not stay quiet, were welcomed, now, rather than avoided.  Some of them started walking regular rounds, accepting coffee and soda and sandwiches and soup, accepting sweaters and Tupperware and batteries.  For batteries kept working for awhile, while large appliances began to slow.

People gathered and they were scared.  How do you live a decent life with no refrigeration?  A person can live without television, can live without a dishwasher.  But how can we manage when even the stores can't keep meat fresh?  Tragic things happened in areas where the stories that spread were about treason and attack. 

Among the disconnected towns, a small town named Davenport invited herds of sheep and their keepers into town, to graze in any front lawn or median or park or lot.  People began keeping rabbits and chickens and planting beans for drying.  With the sheep came several old women, who talked to the women as they traveled through the town.

"What will happen when the drug factories have no electricity?  Will birth control be a priority?  Do you know what the world is like when womenandchildren is one word?  Are you making plans?"

Then the batteries began to fail and the first oddities began to appear.  One oddity was that cars and vans began to fail in their operation.  Even when they were rolled to start, leaving the battery out of consideration, they still limped slower and slower until finally they would not work at all.  Pickup trucks, however, worked even when the batteries were taken out of them.

It wasn't the birth control pills that were gone first, though.  It was the pills for arthritis and the second kind of diabetes.  Seemed like everyone was taking those and once they were labeled non-critical, they ran out fast.  But that was all right.  By then the prayers of certain folk had started to ease pains, sugar was becoming hard to come by, and flour was only cheap if you milled it yourself.  Most folks had more greens than meat and more than enough exercise to keep their blood sugar low.

Government was limping along on borrowed typewriters and bicycle messengers and traveling coordinators.  Mail had to be hand sorted.  Property taxes were suspended for the duration of the emergency.  Banking froze.  Bartering swelled.

In the parks of Davenport, women met and prayed, telling their families they were learning to spin.  Enough spinning was done to keep it from being a lie.  This seemed like a harmless, if possibly useless, endeavor until the spinning and the praying combined into prophecy and the prophecy frightened them all.  When the words had died and the spindles dropped, the women looked at each other, looking to see if any of them would panic or crack. 

But each woman met the eyes of women who had wrung the necks of live chickens to feed her family, met the eyes of women whose fingers bled from weeding and hoeing and grinding.  Those eyes were steady. 

So.  The land was going to fail in two weeks.  They were going to fail with it if it couldn't be stopped.  The best remedy for that would be to find a way to stop it.  The prophecy would have to be explored.  The men couldn't help with that, though they could help with the children and the chores.  The men couldn't help because the prophecy came with prayer and spinning and menstruation.

It would be best if the men didn't know.  The men weren't dealing well with not being able to fix the problems of the land.  Best to tell them that they had found a bit of magic that might keep meat, if they could just work on it for two weeks with no interruptions. 

________________

1B -

Daphne walked down the dirt shoulder of an old road.  Once, she had heard, asphalt had been black and smooth.  But every road she had ever seen had been like this one: grey and cracked.  Alligatored, they called it.  She didn't know why.  If anything, it looked dappled to her.  Perhaps that was because she had never seen an alligator, but had seen several dappled horses, both grey ones and buff ones. 

She wasn't thinking about much except obeying her mother's order to walk and lead the curse away from her sister.  It was something she was willing to do.  Her mother couldn't understand that, though, and so she had cursed Daphne into the walking.  Daphne didn't think of it as a curse.  It felt more like a reminder.  Daphne loved her sister, Chara, and her nephew, Rennar.  Her mother hadn't been expecting that and therefore couldn’t see it.

So Daphne walked, and enemies followed her.  That was one of the problems with being a lineage witch.  Competition lead traditional witch families to feud with one another.  Daphne's family had been cursed four generations back.  Or was it five?  Did you count the generation you were in, when you counted it out?

The family that had cursed hers had paid for it and found the payment hard.  They had decided not to leave her kin to their curse, but to end them completely, forestalling any further retribution.  So Daphne, twice cursed, now, led them away from Ellay Town and her family.  That was her mother's wish.  Daphne had another wish, as well, one that was hers alone.  Rennar was a sickly child.  Daphne wanted to find something to heal him and make him whole.

She could never go home again, but she could send a cure, if she found one.  Chara would help, for Chara knew that she and her son were loved.  Chara also loved Daphne, and pitied her.  There had been arguments before Daphne left.

Daphne had no idea what was wrong with her nephew.  Come to that, she didn't know the people tracking her, either.  She could feel them, though.  She wasn't a witch, though they didn't know that.  But she had magic of her own, magic that wasn't witch magic.  She could fool them with it.  She could lead them along.

She had walked through mountain vinyards.  She had walked through orchards of avocadoes and oranges.  She had walked through orchards of pears and almonds.  Fields of cotton and alfalfa were behind her.  She was walking along a road running through grain fields when she felt the barrier. 

She probably shouldn't have taken the time to fiddle with it, but it was odd.  Most barriers were continuous and of a definite size.  This one was, well, no magic barrier could be called solid.  Continuous was the word used.  This one was not.  It was wavery, being here and there and otherwhere.  The size of the area inside it was large and small and non-existent.

Daphne had been unable not to stop and consider it.  It was a bad idea to stop.  The others were only a few days behind and they had been burning magic to catch up.  But this was a puzzle, and the grain had ceased to be interesting, at least passing through it had lost her interest.  So she stopped and thought.  A few minutes thinking did no good at all, though.  The mystery remained.

Hmm.

Daphne tried touching the water in the soil outside of the barrier.  Odd.  The size of the barrier couldn't be felt, but the size of the land just outside it was immediately clear.  Perhaps. . .

Daphne considered any possible water within the barrier, and found herself suddenly inside.  Her feet were still on the road shoulder, with the dust and the occasional lupine or golden poppy.  But now she was definitely inside the barrier.  She could feel it.  From the inside, it had a definite shape and size.  It felt like maybe ten square miles. 

She could feel an increase in the energy of the spell used to track her.  They were having trouble feeling her, while she was in here.  Well, maybe if they couldn't get in, they'd overshoot her.  Maybe she could rest for a bit.  Get herself fattened back up.

Mother wouldn't mind annoying them.  She could hold back her mother's curse for long enough for them to travel a week or so north.  Then she could jog east to the mountains or west to the ocean.  For now she would keep walking north and see what was in the center of this thing. 

From out of nowhere a pickup truck passed her.  Its wheels kicked up the dust in a choking cloud.  Daphne just walked without breathing until it was convenient to do so again. 

__________________

2A –

Several miles up the road, a desert tortoise was contemplating crossing the road.  At least it was at the side of the road, pointing toward it, and it was resting with the flat of it's belly against the flat of the shoulder.  It's difficult to tell by looking if a tortoise is contemplating or just sitting there.  The same can be said for some people.

The tortoise had a long, domed armored shell with a frill and no hinges.  It’s stubby rear legs tucked up neatly into into the shell at the rear, and its longer front legs bent to the sides in front, almost like a sea turtle’s flippers, snuggling under the fringe.  The pebbly hide on the outside of the front legs protected its head and neck as it huddled back under its fringe.  Only the tip of its nose could be seen peeking out in the dark between the knees of its folded legs.

Slowly, the tortoise unclenched and rose, lifting it’s shell off of the ground.  The longer front legs canted its front up higher than its rear, making it look eager to catch sight of the other side of the road.  Its first steps were slow and cautious, but controlled and strong. 

Perhaps its caution was due to vibrations in the road, for while it was still at the side a pickup truck sped by, kicking up dust.  The tortoise ducked back into its shell.  Also kicked up with the dust, a seed landed on the turtles neck, just near its shoulder.  When it pulled into the shell, the seed was pulled into a fold of its skin and came along, to hide in the shell.

Some little time later, the tortoise again unfurled its leathery self, but more cautiously, crouching slightly lower.  The seed stayed pressed against its shoulder, held by the unextended fold of skin.  It began to cross the road with a will, legs moving, not one at a time, but in pairs, like a horse’s trot.  It made pretty good time for a turtle.

When it reached the other side, it relaxed, stretching out its legs and neck further.  The seed, released from the pressure of the now extended fold, should have fallen.  Would have fallen, if the land had held less magic.  Unfortunately for the tortoise, it did not.  By the time the tortoise had reached the other side, the seed had sent roots down into its neck.  By the time it had reached the high grass beyond the shoulder, a tendril was snaking up out of its shell and unfolding two long, slim, and bright pink leaves. 

Soon the tortoise was lost to sight in the tall grass at the back of the road shoulder.  A bit after that, darkening pink leaves could be seen over the top of the grass, moving parallel to the road and growing noticeably as they traveled.   But its progress was slowing and by the time the leaves had filled out into a small bush and darkened into a common leaf green, it was not moving at all. 

2B –

By the time Daphne passed the tortoise bush, it had grown pendulous, round white fruit.  As she passed it, the words ‘ping pong ball’ popped into her head.  She paused.  She remembered this happening before and remembered hating it.  It was Great Grandma Daphne’s memories seeping in, sorting their way into her own memory.  Mother had thought the information would help her on the road and had included it into the curse. 

It didn’t seem so bad this time, possibly because it wasn’t interfering with anything interesting.  She considered the bush, walking slightly off of the shoulder to get a good look.  Mother had hoped that the memories would provide guidance, but they never did.  All that came through were random facts.  No value judgments or personal preferences were ever attached.   Daphne’s head was filled with the swish and the tock of paddles hitting paper-weight balls.  She reached out her hand to touch the fruit, to compare its feel with the memory-feel of a ping pong ball in her hand.

“Wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”

The man was leaning against a nearby Valley Oak, his well-worn brown jeans and khaki shirt blending him into the shadows around the trunk.  Like Daphne, he had a pack, although his was an old green army pack on the ground, at his feet, while hers was a cloak wrapped in a bundle and tied with rope, hanging from her shoulders. 

“It grew up all in a few minutes, so it’s likely magic.  I’ve never seen that kind of bush afore, so I’d be wary of it.”

Daphne squinted at it.  “Yes,” she said.  “Transforming magic.  Riding magic.  Would that be bad?”

“Depends on how likely it is to ride and transform a hand that touched it.  And on how well you like your hand as it is, a’ course.”  He picked up his pack, slung it over one shoulder and ambled over.  There was no other way to describe it.  It was an unhurried, friendly sort of amble.  He looked like J. Random Laborer walking up, or would have looked that way if Daphne had been older and more experienced. 

“I suppose it might be a bother.”

“Might be a bother?  That would be one way of putting it.  May I ask an impertinent question?”

Daphne just cocked her head and looked up at him as he finished up next to her.

“Want a smoke,” he asked, offering a battered pack.  She shook her head.  He took a little time about taking one, himself, going slowly through the business of settling it in his lips, striking a match, introducing the flame to the tip, then moving through the choreography of the first, unhurried inhale and satisfied exhale. 

“Would you happen to be a witch?”

Daphne’s head remained cocked, like a child avoiding talking to strangers.

“I only ask because in the town up ahead, they don’t like witches too awful much.  It might be best if you didn’t mention that you could see magic, or that you could deal with magic going off in your hands.  Folks around here are a mite afraid of one-person magic, and all folks prefer folks who are afraid of the same things they’re afraid of. “

Daphne tried to listen, to see if there was a memory that would support the man’s statements.  Maybe it wasn’t a concrete enough fact to have carried over.  Actions and behaviors only came in attached to the memories of solid objects.  Pity.  It would be a good thing to know for sure.

“I’ll be careful.  Is there a place to sleep there?”

“Not really.  Not unless you know someone.  They’re kinda clannish.  Keep to their own.  Some of the outer farms, outside of the town, might could use a hand.  You’d need to say you’re lost, though.  That you were home and got turned around and now you’re lost and need to earn some grub to get you back on your way back to your own people.”

Daphne’s head shifted to cock the other direction.  She twisted a toe in the dirt.

“How about. . . . how about just sleeping in a field?”

“Field would be a bad idea.  They could feel you there and it would seem like you was avoidin’ folks.  Stick with being home then somehow lost.  It happens to folks from time to time.”

“I suppose its mostly true.”

“Close enough to keep you safe.  Tell them that you just walked through that barrier of theirs and you’d get a really hot reception.”

“Hot would be bad?”

“Very bad.  Other than not liking any magic that they don’t control and being touchy about their barrier, they’re nice enough folks, I guess.  It’s a closed shop, but they treat the workers they have well enough, or at least as well as they can.”

“All right,” she said, and “Thank you.”  Then she shifted her pack and walked on. The man stood and watched her go.  From the back, the blue cotton gingham dress she wore showed a passable woman’s figure.  It’s sleeves and collar were navy blue and positioned to cover the maximum amount of neck and wrist.  It’s hem came down almost to the high tops of the work boots she wore. 

The man was an expert at judging work boots.  The ones she wore were dirty and scuffed from the trail, but he knew that they had never been worked in, only walked in.  And they were fairly new, their soles and leather laces still showing plenty of wear left. 

He watched her for a minute, then hefted his pack and walked back to lean against the tree.  He faded into the shifting leaf-shadow and was lost to casual sight.