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“Not that one, Mother. The blue.”
Following her daughter’s orders, Ferris obediently caused the blue dress to pop back into view. Now there were three—blue, red, and green—hovering in the air at the center of the workroom.
“See?” said the child. “The blue has nicer sleeves.”
“Can we at least get rid of the red?” asked Ferris.
“Yes,” echoed Giserre. “Hubley, the red is much too brazen for a child your age. You are not even ten.”
“I will be the month after Wellin’s and Brizen’s ball. Can’t I wear it then?”
“That would mean getting two new dresses.”
“Please, Mother? Please, please, please?”
Giserre held up her hands. “Do not look at me, Ferris. I already think she is too spoiled. The blue and green, perhaps—”
The door to the workroom burst open and Plum, the youngest of Ferris’s and Reiffen’s apprentices, rushed in.
“They’re here!” he shouted, breathless from the long dash up the tower stair. “Tar’s had her kittens!”
Hubley, who had been waiting days for this to happen, raced for the door. Remembering to ask permission at the last second, she skidded to a stop on the landing outside.
“Can I go, Mother? You said I could have one.”
“What about the dresses?”
“You decide. But I really, really, like the blue and red best.”
Hoping Queen Wellin would give her the other if her mother wouldn’t let her have both, Hubley bounded away. Plum, several years her senior, caught up quickly.
“Where?” she demanded.
“The stable. I haven’t seen them myself. Soon as the grooms told me it happened, I came looking for you.”
Charging out of the Magicians’ Tower, they dashed down the polished marble of the main gallery and onto the central stair. Shafts of morning sunlight reached out after them from the high windows on either side. Too old to climb much anymore, Sandy joined them when they reached the front hall, his paws clacking on the cobblestones outside.
They discovered a much larger crowd in the stable than they’d expected. Nearly a dozen people had gathered inside one of the stalls. Hubley pushed at everyone’s backs in her haste to get through.
“Mother said I could have one, so I get first pick!”
The crowd parted. Sandy settled in the straw by the door as his mistress strained forward. Seeing Hubley coming, Trier flipped a blanket over the manger to hide what was underneath.
She was surprised to find Trier standing guard. Of all her parents’ apprentices, Trier had always been the least interested in anything that didn’t help her magic. Even Ahne, who had been senior apprentice until he’d gone out on his own two years before, had been known to enjoy a song and a glass of beer. Trier, however, spent all her time studying, or scolding the juniors for not following her example. What use could she have for kittens?
Hands on hips, Hubley raised her voice insistently. “Why can’t I see them?” she demanded.
“Because I said so.” Her father’s voice jabbed like a pitchfork from the front of the stall. “Please, everyone. Step aside. I wish to see what has happened.”
Hubley saw that her father’s eyes were puffy as he joined them. Thin beard sprinkled his chin too, another sign of another long night spent in the workshops.
“Is it what we expected?” he asked.
Trier nodded. Hubley couldn’t read a thing from the senior apprentice’s face, but her father’s eyes gleamed.
He waved a commanding arm. Hubley and Plum leaned forward as Trier reached for a corner of the blanket.
“Reiffen! What is going on here? Do you really think this is appropriate?”
With great impatience, the crowd stepped back once more. Ferris joined her husband and daughter beside the manger. Though Hubley knew perfectly well that both her parents had swallowed Living Stones, she was always struck by the way they looked no older than Trier.
Reiffen met his wife’s glare with the gleam in his own eyes still intact. “Another such chance might never come again,” he answered. “Do you really wish to deprive Hubley of this opportunity?”
The sides of Ferris’s mouth curled down. “You’ll just horrify her. What can possibly be the benefit?”
“There may be many benefits, if my suspicions are correct. The White Wizard used to breed such creatures to use in spells. We should be thankful such a rare occurrence has come our way naturally. Hubley and the apprentices will be able to learn a great deal about binding, which I otherwise might not have been able to teach them.”
Ferris seemed about to say something more, then decided against it. On some things she stood firm but, if this really was a rare event, she was likely to make an exception. Especially if it had to do with magic.
“All right.” Ferris nodded to Trier. “Let’s take a look at what Tar’s brought into the world.”
The apprentice lifted the blanket. Ferris and Reiffen stooped, but Hubley went down on her hands and knees for a closer look. Tar stared back at her, yellow eyes bright in the shadow beneath the manger. Two of the tiny piles of fur lying in the straw beside the cat moved, their heads nuzzling up against their mother to nurse. The other lumps stayed still.
“Only two?” she asked in dismay.
“Look more closely,” said her father.
The child pushed forward. Tar raised a forepaw as if to fend her off, which gave Hubley a clearer look at the cat’s belly. With a shock, she saw the two nursing kittens shared a single body between them.
“Oh, that’s gross,” said Plum, squatting back on the straw beside her.
Hubley agreed. Then she noticed her stomach wasn’t flip-flopping, and her breakfast needed no help staying down. The two-headed cat might be gross, but it was also fascinating.
The gardener muttered in disgust. “Not a good sign, that. Nothin’ right can come of somethin’ that unnatural.”
“Actually,” said Reiffen, “it is a wonderful sign. Even monsters have their purpose. There are many things a mage can do with a creature such as this.”
The gardener touched his hand to his forehead. “No disrespect, your honor, but I wouldn’t want to be the dam o’ no such thing as that. Nor sire, neither.”
“No one asked you, Snaps.” Ferris’s sharp glance cut across the others lingering in the stall. “That goes for the rest of you, as well. If none of you have anything better to do, I’m sure I can think of something. Plum, aren’t you supposed to be helping Lorennin sort snails?”
The stall emptied. Sandy lifted his head to watch them leave, then decided he was more comfortable where he was.
Hubley moved a cautious hand toward the kittens. “Can I touch them?”
“Of course,” said Reiffen.
Ferris consented reluctantly. “Don’t pick it up though,” she warned. “The poor thing’s heads don’t fit at all. Picking it up might break their necks.”
With one careful finger, Hubley caressed the back of the crippled kitten. A shiver creased its soft fur. One head stopped its sucking for a moment, gasping for breath as it lifted its blind eyes, but the other nursed on. Hubley hadn’t been sure at first whether they were one cat with two heads, or two cats sharing a single body. Seeing them respond separately, she decided they were two.
“You said I could have one, Mother. This is the only one there is, so I guess I get to have it. Right?”
Ferris’s frown deepened. “This is hardly what I had in mind.”
“You said.”
“If you’re just going to be stubborn about it, I’ll change my mind. Do you think you can take care of them?”
“Yes.” With middle and forefinger, Hubley scratched both heads again. The kittens’ necks wobbled weakly, but the one on the right purred. The other wheezed. “Oh please can I have them, Mother? Please?”
Ferris studied her daughter’s face uncomfortably. “This is no regular kitten, sweetheart. It’s not going to be up and about in a couple of weeks. It might not even last the day. And if it does, I doubt it’ll ever be able to walk on its own. Those two will be dependent on you for everything. You’ll have to clean their box every time they go to the bathroom, and feed them, and brush their fur. Which is more than Tar will do for them after a month. And they won’t live very long, either, no matter how hard you try to keep them alive. Will you be ready for that, when the time comes?”
Though she was a little scared of all the work involved, Hubley nodded. If anyone could keep the kittens from dying, it would be her. “I can do it, Mother,” she said confidently, cupping her hands around the tiny body.
“Don’t get your hopes up. For them to have been born at all is miracle enough. There’s a lot more wrong with them than just the heads. Do you hear the way the one on the left pants all the time?”
“Uh-huh. I’m going to name her Pant. The other I’ll call Purr because she purrs when I scratch her.”
Thin lines ruffled Ferris’s forehead.
“I would have suggested waiting a while before you named them,” said Reiffen.
“Too late for that.” Ferris glanced curtly at her husband and turned back to her daughter. “Listen, darling, Pant is the way she is because she can’t get enough air. See how there’s no shoulder on her side, but there is on Purr’s? That means Purr is the stronger of the two. I think, the more they grow, the worse it’s going to get. Pant’s neck and windpipe will be pinched by Purr’s. Purr seems healthy enough, but if anything happens to her sister, Purr will die too. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Can’t you use magic?” asked Hubley. “You fixed that poor Grangore girl’s harelip. Can’t you do something for Pant too?”
“My magic isn’t strong enough for that, dear. And there’s no way to save Purr without hurting Pant. You wouldn’t want me to do that, would you?”
“Certainly not.” Reiffen caught his daughter’s gaze. “These two kittens came into the world together. Unless you want to choose one over the other, they will have to go out the same way.”
Hubley nodded. “It wouldn’t be fair to pick just one,” she agreed.
Their fate decided, the kittens and their mother were moved to the nursery. Over the next few days Hubley did the best she could to make the poor creatures comfortable, but it was a hopeless task. Her father helped, but, as long as the kittens put on weight, he didn’t seem to mind their growing worse every other way. They never learned to walk a single step, their heavy heads tipping them over onto their faces whenever they weren’t propped up on pillows. When they were awake they never played; if Hubley left them alone, they mewled piteously for her to return. Once she dropped a ball of yarn into their basket to see if that would amuse them while she went off to help her mother with a potion. When she came back, both kittens were close to strangling, the yarn looped around their weak necks while they tugged feebly at the strings with teeth and claws.
By the time Tar lost interest in them, Hubley knew they weren’t going to last much longer. Purr was able to eat scraps from the child’s finger, but Pant was declining swiftly. As Ferris had foreseen, the larger they grew, the more trouble Pant had breathing. On the last day, Hubley spent an entire morning trying to get the weaker kitten to suck a few drops of milk from a rag. Pant did her best, but she had to stop and gasp for air so often that Hubley knew it wasn’t working. So she scratched the back of the kitten’s head instead, which made Purr purr. Pant lay on the pillow and gulped for air while her healthier sister licked their paws.
The late-afternoon sun had sifted through the rose leaves on the wall outside her window when Hubley realized Pant was no longer breathing. Looking down, she saw the two kittens side by side on their pillow. All four legs still moved, but only Purr’s head responded when Hubley touched it. And now Purr was having a problem lifting her own neck, the weight of her dead sister anchoring her down.
The next morning Purr was gone as well. Tears streaming down her face, Hubley carried the basket to her parents’ bedroom. Her mother was the only one there, and hugged Hubley tight against her robe as the child sobbed.
“But can’t you do something, Mother?” she cried. “What good’s magic if you can’t do anything about it when someone dies?”
Her father and Giserre joined them, and Hubley clung to each of them in turn. Later, when her heartache had eased, she told them she wanted to bury the kittens under the roses in the garden. Gently Ferris explained that Sandy would dig them up before noon if she did.
“Can’t we put them in a box?” Hubley pleaded. “I’m sure Snaps would make one if I ask.”
Reaching over her head, her father picked up the basket. Both kittens now lay with their heads against the pillow, the life drained from their eyes.
“I am sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “But Pant and Purr are too valuable for planting in the ground.”
“Really, Reiffen.” Giserre wrapped an arm around her granddaughter’s shoulders. “I think Hubley deserves more consideration than that.”
“This is not about the child, Mother. I made it clear from the start the kittens would be useful. Now we will see if I am right. Everything necessary for the spell is downstairs. I have only been waiting for the poor things to pass.”
“You’re going to use Pant and Purr for magic?” The quaver dropped from Hubley’s voice as she realized her father’s intent.
“I am.” Reiffen spoke sternly. “I told you before, the White Wizard used to breed such creatures for their power.”
“You can’t! I won’t let you!” Shrugging free of her grandmother’s arm, Hubley snatched the basket out of her father’s hands and clutched it to her chest.
Reiffen’s eyebrows rose. “I thought you wanted to be a magician, Hubley. Being a magician requires hard choices.”
“There’s no need to rub her nose in it,” said her mother. “Can’t we let her be a child a little longer?”
“Normally, I would agree with you, dear. But we shall not get a chance like this again any time soon.”
“No?” Ferris accused. “Tar reeked of magic for weeks before those poor kittens were born.”
Reiffen’s face pinched. “I did help the unfortunate creatures, yes. They would have been stillborn had I not interfered. The rest of the litter was in the way. But I did not cause them to be what they were.”
Giserre steered the conversation back to her granddaughter. “Hubley has grown quite fond of the kittens, my son. Must you really use them?”
“Do you see any other two-headed creatures about the castle, Mother?”
“There is no need to be unpleasant. The subject is distasteful enough.”
“Would it be as distasteful had it been a piglet? Or a snake?”
“The child has not loved piglets and snakes the way she has these kittens.”
“No? Then what about dogs? Even Sandy was used for magic once.”
“He was?” Hubley regarded her father suspiciously, her hands still covering the basket.
“Who do you think the three-legged puppy was that Fornoch gave us to escape the fall of Ussene?”
Hubley’s anger weakened. “Sandy? You did that to Sandy?”
“Fornoch did it. But, as you can see, Sandy has been fine ever since. As a result, your mother and I, and your Grandmother, are still alive. Not to mention Avender and Redburr.” The magician wiggled the little finger of his right hand in the air. Its iron cap reflected the light no better than the dead kittens’ eyes. “It is just another part of magic, like my thimbles. It hurts for a while, but there are no lasting ill-effects. Pant and Purr are dead. They cannot be harmed further.”
“It’s still different.”
“Then you will have to decide whether you really want to be a magician, Hubley. Magicians have to do this sort of thing all the time. But I will let the choice of what to do with the kitten be yours. Not for the world would I force magic on my child. It is a heavy burden, after all. But it is only fair you know that, for a real mage, there is only one possible decision.”
“I thought you wanted to let the child make up her own mind,” said Giserre.
“What I want, Mother, is to be certain Hubley understands exactly what being a magician means.”
Hubley knew what her answer would be before she even spoke. She had been four when she learned her first spell, and magic was already too much a part of her life to be turned away from now. She had heard the way the grooms and undercooks talked about her parents, especially her father. They loved Ferris and Reiffen, and would defend them against anyone, but they still gave the magic as wide a berth as they could. Once Snaps had come back from an evening in Grangore with his eye as purple as one of his best tulips. The story Hubley heard was that a blacksmith had called her father “Wizard”. Now she saw why some people could say such horrible things about her parents, and why even the people who loved them could still be afraid of them.
But she was very much her parents’ child. If a butcher could slaughter animals, and a tanner use their hides, why not a magician use them for other things as well? The kittens were already dead. If Sandy could do his part, then Pant and Purr could do theirs too.
“All right, Father. You can have them. But only if I get to watch you do the spell.”
Giserre sniffed, as if she had known it would come to this all along. Reiffen beamed.
“I suppose you’re going to want to get to work right away,” sighed Ferris. “I have that session on beetles with the juniors to attend to, or I’d join you.”
“I do need to get to work while the body remains fresh,” said Reiffen. “Trier can handle the preserving. All I need now is the blood.”
Giserre stood up abruptly, her distaste evident. “Reiffen, please.”
“My apologies, Mother.”
“Just be careful,” Ferris added as Reiffen and their daughter got up to leave. “You know Hubley soaks up spells like a sponge. Don’t let her see anything she might be able to understand.”
“I already told you, most of the spell is already prepared.”
“Just make sure there’s nothing you do she can figure out.” Ferris trained a gimlet eye on her young daughter. “And if I ever catch you playing with dead things, you’ll be twenty before I teach you another spell. You know the rules. Learning magic is a reward, not a right.”
Hubley rolled her eyes. That threat she had heard more than once before.
Still carrying the kittens’ basket, she went with her father directly to the basement workshops. Below the house, Nolo and the Dwarves had carved almost as many chambers out of the mountain as they had built in the castle upstairs. Ferris’s workroom was in the Magicians’ Tower, but Reiffen preferred his investigations, which were often more dangerous than the Dwarves’, to be undertaken underground, where no one else could be hurt.
“Would you care to cast the light spell, sweetheart?” he asked as they descended the stair.
Always eager to show off, Hubley raised a theatrical hand.
“Light the dark so I can see
The walls on either side of me.”
A thin ball of luminescence sprang up before them, hovering just above Hubley’s head. The light spell was the first spell her parents had ever taught her, and she was proud of the way she could make brightness hang like a hummingbird in the air. Among the apprentices, only Trier could do the same, though Ahne had been able to do it too before he left. Hevves, Plum, and Lorennin all needed a stick or lantern on which to cast the spell.
They followed the glowing ball down the corridor. Hubley had been on the other side of most of the doors they passed, but not all of them. She felt a certain thrill at the thought they might be going to one of the workrooms she had never visited, or maybe even one that could only be reached by magic, but her excitement fell when her father stopped at a door she had been through many times before.
Her pale light reflected from a hundred mirrors as they entered. Reaching over the long table in the middle of the room, her father inserted a Dwarf lamp into a small reflecting box in the ceiling. Hubley allowed her own light to die as the brighter illumination of the glowing gem filled the chamber. On either side, a wide hearth and a set of shelves occupied the only space not covered by reflections of the mage and his daughter. Pots and jars packed the shelves. A large tub stood in a corner away from the door. Though its top was sealed, Hubley knew the container was filled with silver paint.
Trier appeared. Reiffen instructed Hubley to hand over the basket, then light a fire. Hubley insisted on one last look at the body before the apprentice took the kittens away forever. They looked smaller, somehow, than they had when they were alive, which made it easier to let them go.
Sighing, she turned to the hearth. For some reason the firespell was one of the many her parents thought too dangerous for a nine year old, so she was left to start the fire with a dwarfstick. The small blaze caught the black firestone quickly, yellow tongues of flame growing more and more orange as they lengthened. Knowing her father probably wanted a cold pot for his brewing, she swung the iron arm of the pot holder out into the room and away from the fire.
Climbing onto a stool, she watched him sort through the mirrors. Finally he settled on an unframed pane as wide as his palm and twice as long. This wasn’t the first time they had made mirrors together. Merchants in Malmoret or Mremmen were always willing to pay for the ability to talk instantly with the captains of their trading ships no matter how far away they’d sailed, and King Brannis and the barons had a never-ending interest as well.
Next Reiffen selected a heavy iron bowl for crushing herbs. Blumet for Dwarves, he liked to say, and iron for magicians. In the bowl he mixed a small handful of crumbled aspen leaves and another of fine hairs from the same tree’s roots. Hubley had helped him gather both in a high meadow above the castle near Uhle’s Gate, where they had trimmed the roots with a pair of silver shears. Using a mortar, the magician ground both ingredients into coarse powder in the iron bowl, his thimbles clicking on the metal, then added pared lichen, the beards of a dozen dandelions, the usual seven drops of frog sweat, and a small vial of vitriol which caused the mixture to hiss and foam.
When the hissing subsided, Reiffen added a gallon jug of pure mist he had collected from the top of the Magicians’ Tower to the cauldron Hubley had swung away from the fire. As he poured, her father chanted something Hubley didn’t quite hear, then passed his hand over the rim. She peered forward, but saw only her own reflection in the still surface. The heavy odors of iron and water clung to the back of her nose.
“Swing that back over the fire,” he said.
Carefully, so as not to slosh any liquid over the sides, Hubley pushed the pot into place. Flames grazed the bottom. She waited for a moment to see if her father had cast a spell to quicken the boiling, but, if he had, it hadn’t been by much.
Looking back, she saw him standing over the iron bowl. He held his silver knife in one hand, the one he used when he needed to draw blood. Pricking the end of his finger with the sharp point, he squeezed a drop into the mixture. A fresh hissing sputtered up and died.
Trier returned then, with a small jar. The thick red liquid within swirled so darkly as to almost look black. Hubley swallowed hard, more affected by the sight of the kittens’ blood than she had been by her last glimpse of them. What had been Pant and Purr was completely gone now, melted away like spring snow.
Unscrewing the jar’s cap, her father poured a short stream into his potion. The blood reddened as it fell, catching the light in a thin ribbon. Crossing to the hearth, he added a handful of fresh violets to the now boiling water. “So it won’t smell so bad,” he said, and followed by pouring in the potion. The brown glop sank quickly to the bottom of the pot, where it swirled heavily, refusing to mix. But, with the pot boiling, it was only a matter of time before everything blended together. Hubley watched as closely as she could, the heat beating at her face and the smell of violets tickling her nose. Gradually the mixture filled the bowl, lightening as it spread. When the liquid looked to be the same color as silt in a flooding river, Reiffen slowly dipped the mirror he had chosen into the roiling mass. For a moment Hubley thought he was going to burn his fingers, but the glass scraped the bottom of the pot with the top of the mirror less than a finger’s breadth above the potion’s surface. Gently Reiffen lowered the pane to one side, covering it completely.
They played concentration games while waiting for the spell to end. Taking turns, they made up long lists of things to pack in one of Mims’s traveling trunks, trying to remember everything in order. Since neither of them had forgotten anything by the time the mirror had finished cooking, they declared the contest a tie. Reiffen retrieved the mirror with a pair of cloth-covered tongs and laid it dripping on the table. Carefully he dried the glass with a fresh towel. From his pocket he pulled a small jeweled ring and, slipping it over the middle finger of his right hand, used it to cut a straight line down the middle of the glass’s width. Lining the cut up on the edge of the stone table, with a towel beneath it to prevent scratching, he snapped the mirror in two.
“Perfect,” he said. He examined the twin sections in either hand, then gave them to his daughter to polish on a small grindstone. Hubley liked that part best because it made her feel as if she had really assisted in the casting. Plus she got to wear a pair of batskin goggles to protect her eyes. She worked diligently at her task until the edges were smooth, her feet pumping away at the treadle. Then she helped her father set both mirrors into a pair of wooden frames he had fashioned while she was busy with the grindstone. Each frame was made with wood cut from the same tree.
“Now we need a mouse,” he said.
Finding mice was never a problem in the workshops. The apprentices liked having something to munch on while they worked, and the mice made a good living scooping up the crumbs. Hubley didn’t know the spell, but she knew what her father was doing when he looked intently at a small crack at the back of the shelves and chanted,
“Come out, mouse.
The rent is due on your snug house.”
Small claws skittered on the stone. Eyes shiny as black beads blinked in the lamplight. When Reiffen bent down beside the wall, the mouse leapt into his hands as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Feeling a bit ashamed, Hubley realized the mouse’s lot was no different from the kittens’, but she hadn’t objected to what was going to happen to the mouse at all.
Slipping the animal into his pocket, Reiffen arranged the mirrors at opposite ends of the stone table. Glass side up, they reflected the stone ceiling and the edge of the lamp above. Shadows flickered across them every time Hubley and her father moved.
Young though she was, she still understood that a linkage of some sort had been established between the paired glasses. Pant’s and Purr’s blood had made the binding stronger, but how different this was from the connection needed for a set of talking mirrors, she had no idea.
The mouse’s small legs wiggled as her father dangled it by the tail a few inches above the closest mirror.
“Shift,” he said.
The mouse arched its back. A screen of smoke rolled across the glass. Hubley looked up, but no smoke drifted across the ceiling. Looking down, she saw the surface of the mirror nearest her clear; the reflection of the ceiling returned. Only now the lamp was reflected on the wrong side of the glass, the image in the mirror nearest her father now showing in both glasses.
The magician dropped the mouse. Claws clicked as it landed. Legs splayed, the mouse clung to the glass, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible.
“Did it work?” asked Hubley.
“No.”
Her father frowned and rubbed his chin. The mouse scrabbled toward the edge of the table. The magician scooped it up while thinking of other things.
“Perhaps...”
Reiffen looked back and forth between the mirrors as if noticing something new. Hubley had no idea what he was seeing.
“Hubley,” he said. “Please pick up the mirror closest to you. Yes, that’s it. Now, hold it upside down over the table. No, not that high. A hand’s breadth should be sufficient. That’s it. We wouldn’t want the mouse to be hurt in the fall, would we?”
Plucking it up by the tail once more, he held the creature out over his mirror a second time. Now Hubley’s glass reflected the top of the stone table, rather than the ceiling above.
“Shift,” he repeated.
This time there was no sound as the mouse hit the glass. In fact, it never hit the glass, but vanished straight through it. At the same time the mirror in Hubley’s hand shattered with a terrific crack. Sharp shards splashed across the table and skittered to the floor. Dropping the empty frame, Hubley jumped back from the table in surprise.
The mouse crouched inside the empty square of wood, its body tensed in terror.
“It worked!” Reiffen declared, his eyes gleaming.
“It did?” Confused, Hubley brushed bits of glass off the sleeves of her dress.
The magician pointed at the mouse. “How else do you think it got all the way over there? Sleight-of-hand? Of course I still have to work on the mirrors’ strength. We can’t have them falling apart every time someone passes through, otherwise we’ll be making traveling mirrors for the rest of our lives. But it did work.”
Caught up in her father’s excitement, Hubley found herself hoping Tar would have another two-headed kitten again soon.
The mouse, much luckier than Pant and Purr, slipped away.