Days Past
Autumn set the Firewoods ablaze with color. The western border of the realm was swallowed by hundreds of acres of dense forest stretching up from the southern coast until the air turned cold and the dense leaves surrendered to the needles of the Timberlands. In summer, the trees were an endless sea of verdant green. Come winter, it would become a tangle of dormant branches. But for a few blissful weeks, the forest came alive, a final gasp of brilliant color before entering its annual rest.
Nestled beneath the canopy of amber and crimson, Keira crouched motionless on the bank of a seemingly inconsequential stream, waiting for the smallest ripple on the water’s surface. Fiery leaves were floating lazily along, over the smooth stones resting at the bottom. Though the creek was of little significance to any other, Keira visited it often. It was the best place for tadpoles in the spring or to cool her feet on hot summer days. But today she waited… Her patience was finally rewarded by a betraying bubble. She slid her hand into the water, barely disturbing its surface. It was freezing, the sudden sensation sending a shiver down her spine, but it was well worth it. A fat and warted toad came kicking from beneath a rock to land on her palm.
Keira smiled down at it in satisfaction. Her younger sister had always been jealous of how the animals liked her better. Itwas something Keira had never truly understood, why they were afraid of everyone else. Whereas she had never been bitten by a dog or stung by a bee, and just now the biggest toad in the whole creek had swum along to sit in her hand. It truly was a beautiful thing, squat and soft in her hands. Looking into its slow blinking eyes, it came into Keira’s mind to bring it to the house to show her mother.
Leaves and twigs snapped beneath her feet as Keira bounded through the brush, the toad secure in the pouch on her belt. As she reached the edge of the wood, she took the shoes she had hung from a low falling branch and slipped them back on. She had brought them on her mother’s insistence for fear she might tread on a thorn or the like. Yet they made it impossible to properly climb a tree or follow the path of a stream. Her footfalls were simply truer without them.
A rush of wicked giggles overcame her as she rushed up the hill toward home. Keira was always bringing her animals into the house, and it vexed her mother so. She would sayFor all the goodness, Keira, why is there a goose in my kitchen?and then she would get a broom and battle it off, whatever it was that day. Keira had never thought to tell her they would have left if she had only asked them to. It was too great of fun seeing her mother in a fluster like that. Then that night, her father would sit down with her, and she would hear again about how some animals belonged in the woods or the barn. Keira would nod, and her father would nod too and give her a kiss. Then off to bed it was, thinking about what creature she would seek out tomorrow. Perhaps she really was wicked to enjoy it all so much.
All these mischievous thoughts left her as she set foot on the pathway leading up to the house. There was a horse tied out front, but it wasn’t any of their horses, or their neighbors’. This wasn’t a farm horse at all, and she could always tell these things. Keira stopped, her heart thundering on as she lookedinstinctively around for her older brothers or sisters. But her sisters weren’t hanging the laundry or tending the chickens, and neither of her brothers was in the stables. All at once, what had been a fairly perfect autumn day seemed cold and wrong.
However silly it may have seemed, Keira was already in tears when she came through the front door. For years she would wonder how she had known that something terrible was about to happen before she had even opened the door, but there are no answers for questions like that. Sometimes even the youngest of us can feel the hand of Fate.
Fate came that day in the shape of an old man in a cloak of brilliant red. He had a short beard of black and grey. Beneath, his face was lined like an old saddle. His brows were as bushy as his beard, casting dark shadows over his eyes. He wore many rings kept in place by his large, gnarled knuckles. It was easily said that Keira had never seen such a person and couldn’t possibly explain why he was sitting at her kitchen table with her mother and father, or why they were all looking so particularly at her as if they had been waiting for her to show up. A feeling passed over her, a quiet sort of panic, like a doe frozen in place, deciding whether or not it would run. Though she had witnessed it many times, she had understood the feeling for herself, the innate tug of instinct warning her.
She didn’t listen.
Of what happened next, Keira remembered very little, even that night as she tried to recall every word that was said through her tears. However, a few indispensable details remained with her. The old man was a wizard named Ignatius, and he had come to take her away. Perhaps that is not what her father had said. Maybe he had said,You’ll be staying with him noworHe’s going to look after you. But that hardly mattered. The meaning was the same.
Her father told her to be a good girl. Her mother gave her a very wet kiss. Then she was seated on the back of the black horse (the first animal that had ever frightened her in her life) as the wizard climbed up behind her.
They rode away from her farm and her forest into sprawling hill country. She watched numbly as every landmark she knew disappeared only for them to ride heedlessly further into the unknown. They traveled south at times, at others east. She tried to follow their course, but the effort was soon abandoned as exhaustion overcame her. It was hours before Keira worked up the courage to ask the wizard to stop so that she could rest. He only replied, “Nearly there,” and they carried on.
Keira had fallen into an unsettled sort of sleep by the time their pace finally slowed. Her eyes opened blearily. The sky was fully veiled in darkness, but their way was lit. Her gaze shifted to the source of the light. It was not a torch, but three motes of fire suspended in the air. Their flames gave off no smoke as they drifted along with them. She watched them float with tired and wonder filled eyes, pondering if she were simply dreaming all of this business about being whisked away by a red wizard. Perhaps she had only fallen asleep outside again, and now it was time to wander home.
“Wake up, girl,” the wizard said with a gravelly whisper.
Keira sat up straight. No, this was not a dream at all.
By the light of the magical fires, she saw the silhouette of a single tower before them. As they grew closer, the red wizard dismounted before helping her down from the horse’s back. Her body was heavy with fatigue and ached from the ride. Yet, as eager as she was for a rest, the pull of her curiosity was greater. How far had he taken her? And to where? Was this his home? Would it be hers now as well?
Though such questions flurried within her mind, Ignatius did not provide answers to any of them as he led the way toward thetower without a word. As she climbed the steps, Keira saw the horse wandering toward the back of the tower. Her eyes could just barely see the shadow of a barn, but it was too dark to make out details.
The wizard’s hand on her back guided her inside. A warm fire was already crackling in the hearth, illuminating the rounded living space. It was a home, though unlike her own, or any she had seen. There were chairs by the fire and on the other side of the room, a table surrounded by cabinetry. But there were also shelves upon shelves of books and glimmering stones, dried herbs and strange tokens. As much as her eyes wished to drink in every curio, Ignatius led her up the steep, winding steps. The first door led to a small room with a bed and a trunk. On the nightstand was a tiny vase with a sprig of blue meadow flowers. “Get some sleep,” he said as he shut the door.
Keira stood for a moment, looking from the quilt on the bed to the small slit of a window. She had never had a room of her own. The stillness was a stranger to her. At home, she slept in a bed sandwiched between two of her sisters, huddling together during the winter months and fighting for space come summer. As she prepared for bed, she removed her belt, surprising herself with the weight of it. Keira set it down at once and opened the pouch, releasing its occupant. She had forgotten about the toad entirely, and for a moment feared for its well being. Yet the toad hopped lazily from inside, unharmed. Its bulbous eyes looked up at her as if it had witnessed everything, as if it understood. Keira placed it on her pillow and lay down beside it. Her fingers moved over its bumpy soft skin as her mind reeled, wondering for thefirst night of so many what had happened that day and how it could have happened so fast.
Life in the tower turned out to be nothing like home at all. She didn’t have chores, at least not like she used to, no washing or sweeping. There were no gardens for her to tend nor eggs to gather. Yet there was always food to eat and clean clothes to wear. The tower remained tidy, if not pristine, with little intervention from its occupants. There was no mystery to it though. It was magic. Magic, which the red wizard told her had always been a part of her, had now become her whole life.
Every morning as Keira finished her breakfast, Ignatius would set a book down before her, and she would read with his assistance. Her early hours were spent deciphering words or practicing arthomancy sums. He would have her copy entire pages from old dusty books to improve her penmanship which was, in his words, abysmal. When he was satisfied with her progress each day, he would disappear upstairs to his study at the top of the tower, not to be seen until dinner presented itself on the table each evening.
Even though when she had come she hadn’t known a single letter, within a year Keira could read by herself. Then it was a book after breakfast, and she’d be left to pour over the pages alone. She learned spellcraft and theory as well as history, geography, and all manner of sciences. Every evening after their meal, Ignatius would sit in his chair by the fire, smoking his pipe, and ask her questions about her studies or to demonstrate whatever magic she had been tasked with that day.Call the mice to your feet.Grow this sprout into a flower.Fill this cup with water.Turn this molded bread fresh again.
And though he seemed pleased with her progress and saw to her care in every regard, the wizard still called hergirl. Keira was not even sure that he knew her name. Every night, loneliness would blossom in her heart as she pictured her family, their faces, how it had felt when they hugged her good night. She considered how strange it was to feel so dissatisfied when, for the first time in her life, there was always enough food to eat and very nice clothes to wear (always various shades of green). She was receiving an education greater than anyone in her family ever had, she was sure. Under her guardian’s teachings, she had learned how to control her natural talents as well as develop her skill in the arcane arts. Her affinity for the natural world had grown. She could more than set animals at ease with her presence; she could influence their behaviors. Her magics could help plants take root, divine the weather, even reshape her own body if she desired.
This was surely the reason they had sent her away, to secure for her the best possible future. And so, Keira worked as hard as she could so that when she did see them again, they would be proud of her. Yet a year turned into two, and they had still not written to her since she arrived nor come to see her. Nothing at all.
Her parents would never have given her away if they thought it was forever, not if they’d had a choice. It was a simple conclusion she had come to on those many nights lying awake. Keira was beginning to suspect that the red wizard was keeping her from them, burning their letters perhaps. Or maybe he had forced them somehow to give her up, threatened them in some way. It was the only explanation.
It was three days after her tenth birthday when Ignatius came down the steps wearing his travelling clothes.
Keira looked up from the book she’d been reading, a dense tome on the fundamentals of conjuration, her brows pinched.He’d just taken her into the village to pick a gift for her birthday (for which she’d chosen a small belt knife with a handsome leather sheath). It was unlike him to make two trips in so short a time.
“I am going for the day, girl,” he explained brusquely. “Mind your studies. I’ll be back by morning.”
Keira stared up at him. He had never done any such thing. “Okay,” she said.
