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TALK reached Maude all over the town, about the man who had showed up in White Wind. He was said to have wrestled bears in the enchanted forests that wound throughout the land. He was said to have battled dragons single-handedly and survived. He was said to have swum the Violet Sea, the very place where so many of the men of White Wind had disappeared on a voyage that had become legendary in their history. Maude did not know how much of it was true. He seemed a bit small for all that.
Arthur made his home at the local inn, which charged a mere penny for every night of stay. Her father, she knew, paid him ten pennies a week, which left him ample money to feed himself, but still Maude brought him bread and porridge and, on occasion, a roast leg of lamb, when her father permitted it at their own table.
Every morning Arthur showed up at her door with a handful of yellow roses and the wink of an eye, and then her father would walk him out to the workshop behind their cottage. Arthur would work all day. Sometimes she would watch him. Sometimes she caught him watching her. She was a beautiful young lady, after all. Perhaps he wondered why she was not yet married, as most of the young ladies her age were. His wondering, however, did not stop his pursuit for her heart.
It did not take much to convince Maude to lose her heart. For many days, as she watched young Arthur whittle his furniture, she could see the magic dripping from his fingers, smoothing an edge here, extending a curl there, widening a leg in the most efficient manner. He had only to touch the wood. She wondered, at first, how this worked, for she had always supposed that magic came from the magician’s staff. But when she ventured closer, she noticed the staff propped on his right foot while he worked.
So he had magic enough to use it when the staff did not touch the object he was transforming. It must be powerful magic indeed.
When her father entered the workshop, which was not so often anymore, for he had no need to dirty his own hands with the work (Arthur was not only a skilled craftsman but a quicker woodworker than any had ever seen), Arthur shoved the staff into the shadows. Maude did not think it mattered so much, for her father was not an observant man, and had he noticed the staff, he would have likely thought it was nothing more than a walking stick. That is what it appeared to be, after all. There were no ornate markings. It looked as if, on his travels, Arthur had plucked a branch from a tree and commandeered it into his service. It was curved in the slightest, with a large knobby bump near the top. Old men used sticks such as these to hold their backs straight. Though he was a young man, it was an inconspicuous prop.
Maude watched Arthur and waited for her opportunity.
And one day it came.
Her father had traveled up the village road to visit the king, who had heard of the new woodworker’s elaborate furniture and asked about a new bedpost for his son. Her father was negotiating the sale. Arthur worked alone. The king would keep her father for a time, she knew, for theirs was a kind king who served his guests dinner and wine and desserts she had not the capacity to even imagine.
She stood silently in the doorway of her father’s workshop for a time, watching Arthur, for she did not want to startle him. What did magic do when it was startled? Arthur turned a table over and worked on a leg. He put it right-side up and bent eye-level with it to make sure it did not lean. When he faced the doorway, as if sensing someone was there, Maude spoke.
“I want you to teach me,” she said.
Arthur smiled, that lopsided grin that turned his eyes smaller. “You want to make furniture?”
She shook her head. “Not furniture. Magic.”
He stared at her for a time. He could not possibly think she did not know about his secret. He had, after all, turned the air into a rose at their first meeting. She supposed it could not have been air. There was no magic powerful enough to turn air into something you could touch. She held up her staff. “I have magic, too,” she said.
“No one must know I have magic,” Arthur said, turning back to his table.
“No one would know,” Maude said.
“Hush,” Arthur said. “It would be far too dangerous.”
“A man like you? Frightened of danger?” Maude said. She did not know quite what to think. A man who had, by the villagers’ account, braved bears and dragons and the Violet Sea, afraid of magic?
“You do not know what kings will do to eliminate a magic man from the pages of history,” he said.
Yes. Perhaps this was something she did not know. But she knew a place they could go. “I know a place,” she said. He looked at her. “No one would know.”
“Where is this place?” he said.
“I will show you,” she said. “This eve.”
He dipped his head. “As you wish,” he said.
“And you will teach me?” she said, for he had not yet agreed. Arthur shook his head.
“First, I must see this place for myself,” he said. “And then we will make our plan.” She knew him, then, to be a man of caution. She admired that about him, but her longing to practice magic did not diminish in light of danger. She would find a way. She must.
“Meet me behind the inn after my father is done with you,” she said, and she turned to leave. His voice stopped her in the doorway.
“Tell me,” he said. “Why is it that you have never learned magic yourself?”
Maude’s skirts shifted as she faced him again. “My mother died when I was a babe,” she said. “And my father...” She glanced behind her, as if her father had magically appeared. She lowered her voice. “My father forbade the practice of magic in his house.”
“Why?” Arthur said.
Maude shook her head. “I do not know.”
“Very well then,” Arthur said. “This eve.”
Maude returned to the cottage and tried her best to wait patiently for the sun to set, though we know that when one is waiting for something for which one longs, it is not always particularly easy to exercise patience. But Maude set to work on supper, knowing she would likely eat alone, for when her father returned from his castle trips, the wine in his belly always sent him into a deep sleep that would be her gift this night.