Wild Magic

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Reyna climbed to his room, stripped and washed himself, everything wiped from his head but Faan and what he was going to do about her. He shrugged into a worn fleecy robe, pulled the belt tight, and sat in a chair staring at his door and trying to think.

It’d all gone wrong when she quit school and went to study with the Sibyl. If he asked Faan about those sessions, she got angry and accused him of spying on her. If he didn’t ask, she accused him of being tired of her, bored with her.

For a time she was obsessed with her mother; she pestered him and Tai-the Sibyl, too, for all he knew-for everything they knew about her, where she’d come from. After a while, though, she dropped it. There just weren’t any answers available.

Abey’s Curse on the Sibyl for teaching her how to open locks. No keeping her inside after that.

Abeyhamal’s Curse? Was that it? Wouldn’t let the baby alone, gave her that Talent… a Sorceror… couldn’t let her be a witch or something more natural… a Sorceror… it was going to get her killed…

Where did the baby go? Reyna pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes as if that would push the pain back. The baby who loved me without question, who followed me everywhere. Where did she go?

Quarrels. Every time they talked. Anything he said. He hadn’t lost the memory of how he’d been when he was that age, but he was terrified for her, he wanted to protect her from all the horrors he’d had to face when his father threw him out. He hadn’t forgotten, no, but nothing he did was right and he’d about run out of ideas.

At least she still came home.

And she still called him Mamay when she didn’t stop to think.

He sat for almost an hour without moving, then he sighed, got wearily to his feet and walked down the hall to the small room Faan had taken for her own, opened the door and went inside.

Faan dragged herself out of bed before the sun was up.

She scrubbed her face with angry violence, ignoring the stings as soap hit broken pimples and patches of rash from the face paint. When she was finished, she stared into the small cracked mirror, grimaced at the pale pinched face with angry oozing red spots scattered across it. Then she shrugged and began dealing with her hair, dragging a rake through the waxed spikes, combing out the plaited tress and rebraiding it. She fixed the bee-clasp on the end, shook her head, smiling grimly as the braid flipped about, the spikes shivered. The paint was flaking off the colored patches, but that didn’t matter, not this morning.

She rooted through the shirt drawer until she located a faded black pullover that Reyna kept trying to throw away and she kept rescuing from the ragbag, dug out an ancient black skirt that used to belong to Areia One-eye. She dressed and left the room, carrying her sandals, her feet silent on the grass drugget that ran down the hall.

She stopped in the kitchen a moment for Riverman’s treat, then left by the back door. He had a ferocious sweet tooth and made a sound like bubbles popping when she gave him honeycomb and pastry-lace and taffys from the Beehouse. HE’d listen to her without scolding her, the Wild Magic would go fizzing around her, playing their obscure games and making her laugh.

She loved it when water elementals came by, thrust-

ing their heads into the streaked and dappled air beneath the gatt so they could look at her. They couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to her, but that didn’t matter; she enjoyed watching them change shape, pulsing like the water lapping against the piles, and sometimes they brought her small gifts, shells and bits of coral, pearls and oddities off drowned ships.

And there was a bitty beast like a mix of mouse and boy who came and went as he chose and never spoke to her. Riverman told her one day that the mouseboy was a god, Sessa, Finder of Lost Rifles. That made her laugh, then cry-for wasn’t she a lost trifle herself? And neither Riverman or Sessa could or would tell her anything about who she was. So it didn’t matter they were gods or whatever, magic. They DID listen to her, though. At least there was that.