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IT has been said that all good things, alas, speed toward their endings. And because this, the learning of magic, the practicing of magic, the love between a teacher and his pupil, was, indeed, a very good thing, one might suppose that it is only natural for this good thing to end (though no one likes an ending, dear reader. Perhaps endings are unappreciated because they bring with them the unknown, as is certainly the case in our story.).
Maude’s father came home one evening, so angry she could see the sweat forming on his brow and above his lip, even through the splatter of black hair growing there. She had seen this anger before. Sometimes, you see, the wine was too great for her father. He walked in through the door and promptly stumbled and fell. Maude caught him. “You,” he said. That one word was so full of contempt and revulsion that Maude nearly dropped him. She had never heard her father speak in such a way, but, as they say, there is a first time for everything. (Beginnings and endings are very much the same, are they not? Bringing with them a great unknown.)
“Father,” she said, for whatever her father had done in the past (and he was, for the most part, an honorable man), she could not bear to be the brunt of his anger.
“You!” he roared again, and he pushed her away. “Get your hands off me.” She stumbled, her head smacking against the dining table. He pointed a finger at her, a fat finger that she had not noticed had even gotten fat. Had she been so consumed with Arthur and magic that she had not noticed how her father’s bulk had changed? “You dare soil our name?”
What was he saying? What did he know?
“Father?” she said. “I do not understand.”
She tried to see her father in her father, but she could not. She could see only a great, hulking mass standing before her and the door. For the first time in all her nineteen years, she felt afraid of him.
“You and that boy,” he said. His voice broke in the middle of it. His words slurred together, one into another. “Bringing a curse on me and your mother!” His face had turned purple in his effort to form the words.
“It is not what you think, Father,” she said. Her mind whirled. How did the villagers know? What was it they had told him? Where was Arthur?
The thought of Arthur squeezed her throat. Was he safe? Was he waiting? Could she summon him?
“Not what I think,” her father said. His voice shook the walls. Everyone in the village could likely hear him, shouting as he was. Her insides burned. She must get away. She must get away now. And then he said the very words she dreaded hearing all along. “I know more than you think.” His eyes gleamed in the firelight. “Magic.” He growled the word, as if there was something evil in magic, as if her mother had not carried magic before she was born, as if he had never loved a person with the gift. The thought of it stole Maude’s breath and blurred her eyes. Her father. He was her father, you see. A daughter longs for nearly nothing as she longs for a father’s love.
“No,” Maude said. “No, you are wrong.” But her voice was weak, jagged, too unconvincing.
“He shall die!” her father shouted. “He shall be executed!” He leaned in, and she could smell the sour wine on his breath, even at this distance.
“No,” she said. “Father, please!” She could not bear it any longer. She moved toward the door, but her father threw her back. This time her head cracked a wall, and she saw black for a moment but grasped desperately at the light. By the time her vision cleared, her father loomed right above her. She rolled away quickly, upsetting his balance, and he stumbled just enough for her to reach the door. She slipped out silently, racing up the lane. She could see people gathered in the streets, their torches blazing. She could not let them reach Arthur first. She headed the back way to his rooms, but the people spotted her. They set chase.
She was sure they would catch her, but fear makes feet fast, and when she reached the doors of the inn, Arthur came bursting out. They fell into each other’s arms, but he moved aside, too quickly, roughly grasping her hand. He drew her into the shadows and held her close for a moment more.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I will have to leave.”
“Take me with you,” she said against his chest. “Please.”
He pulled away so he could look into her eyes. He shook his head, and she could not bear it. She looked away. “No,” he said. “No, I cannot. The wandering life I live is not fit for a woman as fine as you.”
“A woman as fine as me,” she said. “Look at me! I am no fine woman.” And it was true that her skirts were torn in the escape from her drunken father, and her face held smudges of dirt from the fall to the floor. Her hair was sticky with what she supposed was blood.
“I must go,” Arthur said. “If I want to live.”
“They will kill me as well,” Maude said. “When you are gone. You must take me with you.”
“You will be safe,” he said. “They would not dare hurt a woman.”
“I would not live anyway,” Maude said, but she said nothing more, for she did not want to tell him what was truly in her heart. But Arthur knew. He drew back and looked in her eyes so tenderly her nose burned with tears.
“My dear Maude,” he said. “I must go.”
“Please,” she said. “Please. I will not be a burden.”
His eyes softened again. “You would never be a burden,” he said. “It is your safety I am concerned for.”
“Then let me go!” she said. “My father is not well. The people...” She let the words hang between them. He pulled her to him again. She felt his gasp of a breath, the tightening of his arms.
“As you wish,” he said, so softly she could hardly hear. “We will go together. But you must do everything I say.”
He released her then, and she could see his face as he looked behind her. It flickered as if there were a light. She knew what she would find before she even turned around. The townspeople stood before them with torches turning their faces into grotesque masks, as if the night had brought out the worst monsters of all. And perhaps it had, for there is no more disturbing sight than man killing man. These men were out for blood.
Maude closed her eyes. They were too late. She had killed this man she loved. And perhaps they would let her live but she would not, in fact, live. Not without Arthur. When she opened her eyes, the people were still there, though she had, in truth, hoped they would not be. There were so many of them. So few of her and Arthur. They would not be able to explain.
“Magic man,” one of the men said. He jabbed a torch in Arthur’s direction. “This is why you have come.”
Arthur did not say anything. He merely squeezed Maude’s hand. “Magic,” he said, and then the whole world shimmered before her. Flames leapt in the air and at their feet and all around them, dancing to a song they could not hear, touching no one. The people turned to one another, confused, unsure how the flames they had held moments ago now danced upon the air or before them on the ground and not one of them, nothing, in fact, burned, though the answer, of course, could be found in the very word Arthur said. The village men stared and turned and tried to catch their lights, bring them back where they belonged so the world made sense again, but no one could figure out how. They turned to Arthur, but there was no Arthur.
In all the confusion, Maude and Arthur had slipped away.
They waited to laugh until they had reached the deepest center of the forest, where no one dared venture in the dead of night. That was the very place Arthur turned Maude toward him and kissed her for the first time.