INCIDENTAL POETRY
Wendealyon herself escorted Leksand Loggerson to the hold lord’s closed door. “I feel the same,” the hold daughter said abruptly. “How can that be?”
“We aren’t what’s changed.” People will want answers, Maleonarial had said before their ways parted. Tell them what we witnessed and were told. Share the truth we know. So Leksand paused politely. “I’ve told you what happened. Tiler’s was never abandoned to the Eaters. The Lady came as my mother to save you.”
Her eyes filled with grief. “But . . . The Lady is gone.”
No, his mother was. The Lady had never existed beyond a construct of smaller awestruck minds and that was a terrible truth.
Yet not the only one. “Listen for Her. Do you not feel Her Presence? Her Words?”
Grief faded. “I—do. I think I do. Yes,” with sudden confidence. Then a flicker of confusion. “She’s not the same.”
No, She was again Herself, Tananen, the greatest gossamer of them all and the living fount of magic in the world, and the marvel? Wasn’t any of those things, Maleonarial had said, and Leksand believed.
It was that She had a heart, one that valued and encompassed all that lived within Her realm.
As for Her Gift?
It might not comfort Wendealyon in this moment that some were born connected to magic, able to hear it speak, but from now on, Maleonarial believed, all would be.
Leksand put his hand on the door. “If I may, Hold Daughter?” He lowered his voice. “I have experience in such matters.” And hadn’t he tasted saltwater, as the Eater abandoned its host to join its kind? Hadn’t he known its source?
The lungs of a man, almost drowned.
Wendealyon’s grief returned. “You’re as kind as your mother, Leksand, but there’s nothing to be done for him. We’ve tried. We must choose the next hold lord. As you said, much has changed.”
Her Veil being no longer a guarantee of death for those from outside, though the attention of newly bold gossamers was a filter of itself. The Snarlen Sea was no longer a barrier to those of Tananen who sought a wider world.
Or, just perhaps, to magic.
The change, Leksand thought, was just beginning. “Allow me to try, please,” he told Wendealyon, and bowed.
To his embarrassment, she bowed back. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” And walked away.
Leksand opened the door, greeted by the smell of sickness. Missed the pot, his Momma’d say as she’d wipe up the mess or have him do it, for somehow they’d be the ones helping whoever had the croup or worse.
A fire burned in the grate. Lamps burned in every corner of what was a grand room, an explorer’s room, full of globes and books. Maps hung on the walls and one had been worked into a bedcover, as though the form supine beneath needed to know where he was.
Or had forgotten.
Leksand walked to the bed and sat in the chair left beside it. Insom stared up, eyes seeing what wasn’t there, his face writ in lines of anguish and despair.
Leksand found the hold lord’s hand and held it tight. “I know, m’lord, that you can hear me,” he said quietly. “I’ve been in the dark well and almost lost hope, but I didn’t and you mustn’t for we’ve won.
“The Eaters have been defeated. They’re gone, perished in flame.
“Pylor knew you fought the Eater. More than anything, she wanted to save you.”
A blink. A tear.
Leksand leaned closer. “I’m here to help you, m’lord. Follow my voice and climb out. It won’t be easy.
“But I’ll stay till you do.”
Tambler’s Inn in Alden Hold had a narrow raised stage for musicians, but few noticed, busy imbibing and embroiled in typically raucous conversation. Tonight, though, mugs remained midair and you’d have heard a pin drop, for on the stage, floating from side to side, was a singer the likes of which hadn’t been heard since before the days of ice and fire.
When the last echo of song sank warm into hearts, the singer laughed and flew away through the ceiling.
Harn let out a blissful sigh. “See? That’s singing.” Then blushed, having written the gossamer, and looked helplessly around the table. “I can’t go up now.”
“You’d better,” Dom told him with a mock scowl. “I put good coin down with Tambler to get you an audition. Go on.”
Maleonarial joined the chorus urging Harn to the stage. When the former student broke into the first tentative line of a seaside ditty, the barge crew and dockworkers in the inn let out a roar of approval, mugs swinging in time. Relieved, Harn launched into the earthy refrain with vigor.
“Why?” Affarealyon pointed at the mage’s head.
“It’s lighter.” Maleonarial combed his fingers through curly stubble, enjoying the sensation and its meaning. “I’m free. We all are.” Mostly black his hair, with gray over the ears, as his body was mostly hale and strong, but mature. The knee complained of the approach of winter.
A season he’d live to see, and many more. Magic no longer had that ultimate, personal cost. No longer had that seductive pull stronger than food or love, though rewarding? Maleonarial smiled into his beer. Wait till the existing masters learned that magic had a mind of Her own and what they could now create?
Might serve a purpose, if interested. Or not.
More likely would giggle in their face.
Nedsom shook his head. “What I want to know is why you want us to rebuild the school. With magic itself awake and aware, and it’s everywhere, by the way, even here. A gossamer swam in a bucket of mortar this morning. Mixed it well, but added—” He raised his hand, showing bronze glitter stuck to the palm. “With magic doing whatever it pleases, what’s the point of more?”
A sensible question. The true answer, that She who was magic wished for the world to return to what it was before ice and fire and the Eaters, thus there must be more gossamers created to replace those lost, many more, was, Maleonarial decided, something for each person to discover on their own. The world would change. For people to have a place in it, they’d best hope gossamers continue to “like” them.
“The point of magic?” He formed an intention then wrote Her Words in the air. Small but intense the spark that followed.
Small but brilliant, the gossamer that appeared. It stretched like a little panther, rubbed around Nedsom’s mug of beer, then disappeared with the flick of a tail, leaving behind the scent of baking.
And a generous heap of steaming battered fish.
“Help yourselves,” he said, blithely taking a strip and plopping it in his mouth. Delicious, hot and spiced exactly as he remembered from a visit to Nor Hold’s market, when he’d stopped for a meal at one of the vendors by the dock. “We need a school to teach a new kind of intention. How to give life to our fantasies without fear, and accept the result.”
Affar sampled the fish. Her eyebrows rose in approval, then lowered to frown. “Not all fantasies are benign.”
He’d made a promise to Nim, one no longer his alone to keep. “I believe nothing we create will cause harm to the land or its life. She won’t allow it.” He shrugged. “What we do to ourselves or each other—that may depend on the gossamers as much as us. They do have a sense of humor.”
“We rebuild the mage school, then.”
“A school for everyone who hears Her Words and wishes to create gossamers,” he corrected. “Including daughters. Our ancestors, I’m told on the best authority, made one choice. We can make our own.”
Their ancestors not having had the chance to see, as he had and would forever remember, the sky become wings and the sun an eye of dazzling topaz.
Maleonarial leaned forward. “What’s your fantasy, Affar?”
And watched her face light with the astonished hope of a child.
Winter dressed the pines with white fluffy shawls and caps. Stilled the brooks and creeks, for a time. Nipped noses and rosied cheeks and Leksand Loggerson pulled his scarf close around his neck after he left Pincel’s sled to walk the path home.
And there it was, snug in the clearing. Smoke curled from the chimney, tinged with the scent of curing sausage. Laundry hung, frozen stiff as boards. Someone didn’t know to hang clothes indoors. Nim, helping his great-uncle.
Leksand slowed, then stopped. He was home.
But he wasn’t, was he? He’d no home, now. Choices, yes. Insom the Second, recovered and understanding as no one else the wounds he carried, had urged him to stay, even offered the chance to sail the seas together and explore.
Maleonarial had sent word of a new school, for anyone who’d do magic. He was welcome, always.
He’d had enough magic for a lifetime. Didn’t want, yet, to travel. As for what he did want?
Leksand shook his head wearily. Peace. Time—
“What’s wrong, laddie?”
Because he’d always answered with the truth, as best he could, Leksand replied, “It’s not home, Momma,” before remembering he was alone and she was gone.
Then who’d spoken, in her voice?
A breeze, warm as spring, caressed his cheek. “Why not?”
“Because you’re—m’Mom’s dead. I don’t blame you,” for now he knew who spoke. The woman of the woods.
The world.
“She gave her life willingly,” he told the air, told himself too. “I don’t blame you. I’m just—it’s not home, without her. Not anymore.” He wiped a foolish tear from his cheek before it froze.
“I’d not be so sure, laddie.” Snow lifted, became a shape, one his heart knew before his eyes. Color raced to cheeks and lips, swept over what was now a warm wool cloak, her favorite, and made a familiar pattern on sensible knitted mittens.
“Gossamer,” he accused.
“Aie.” A mittened hand gave his chest a familiar pat. “But also Kait Alder, who kept me safe inside her and saved us. All she asked in return was I care for you as she would.”
He caught up the hand. Held it as he searched the face that couldn’t be, but was, hers. Saw the gentle little smile bloom he knew best of all. “Momma?”
“For as long as you need me, laddie,” she promised. “Now, let’s get ye home.”
For it came to pass the goddess named deathless did die, praise to the great Maleonarial. Mage scribes from that day forward no longer gave life for Her magic—
Sayshun, late of Lithua, looked up from the page. “Mage scribes? Really? I can’t believe this is still required reading.”
“Consider it informed metaphor.” Her new friend and classmate didn’t stop writing, tongue sticking out sideways in concentration, wings neatly folded.
“If magic agrees with your intent, you create with it. If it doesn’t, you create in other ways. Everyone knows that.”
With a laugh that smelled like roses, her friend put down her pen and gave her full attention. “You left one out. If you are magic,” the gossamer said, “you share a name.”
Sayshun shook her head. “That again? You can’t all be Tananen.”
Topaz eyes sparkled. “Don’t be so sure.”