Doubleborn (7 page)

“No. I want to go.”

“It’s dark out,” said Smith. “You’ll get lost. It’s dangerous at night.”

Tamrin tested for a sealing spell on the door. She couldn’t find one. She made a spell of her own to spring it open. It stayed firmly shut.

“I can’t open the door,” she said.

Smith stood up and came towards her.

“Smiths make good locks,” he said. ||

since Flaxfield had died. They should have eaten trout but Sam couldn’t face it. He went down to the river to look at the fish, brown swirls in the water, heads to the current, tails rippling.

Starback nuzzled against his legs.

Sam let his fingers play with a thin leather cord round his neck, an odd-shaped weight hanging from it.

“I’ll make an omelette,” said Sam. “Let the trout swim in peace.”

He looked downriver, in the direction that Flaxfield’s body had floated off. Sam had cut the willow wands to plait the basket they had laid him in. His memory could smell the sweet herbs around the old wizard’s face.

“He shouldn’t have left us,” he said. “Not like that. Not yet. We weren’t ready.”

He climbed the path back to the house and found the kitchen empty. He poured water into a basin, washed his hands carefully and then his face. He was scrupulous in his determination to keep clean. He remembered last year, when he had discovered that other people found him dirty. Smelly.

Starback chased a bee around the kitchen. His claws clattered and scratched on the floor. The bee drifted higher, bumped on the ceiling. Starback sprang up, spread his wings and chased it round. Sam frowned and Starback swooped back to earth.

“Are you hungry?” asked Sam. “Of course I am,” he answered.

He fetched eggs from the pantry, and butter and cheese.

“No trout?”

Sam had not heard Flaxfold come in. She moved quietly.

“Do you mind?” he asked. “We can eat omelettes.”

Flaxfold pushed a strand of grey hair back from her face and tucked it into her scarf.

“Cheese in mine, please,” she said. “And I’ll cut some ham to go with it. Would you like some?”

“No thanks.”

“I’ll give it to Starback.”

She was old and stout, yet Sam had never heard her short of breath and she moved swiftly and lightly on small feet. The ham was a joint she had cured herself, hanging from a hook in the ceiling of the pantry. Her knife was sharp enough to cut thin slices like pages of a book.

Sam beat the eggs and dropped butter into the pan. It sizzled against the hot iron. He poured the beaten eggs in before the butter could burn and he moved it around with the back of a fork.

“There’s a Finishing tomorrow,” said Flaxfold. “Will you come with me?”

“Is it far?”

“We’ll need to set off before it’s light. But we’ll be home the same day.”

“I’ll come with you,” he said.

He slid her omelette on to her plate and scooped another gout of butter into the pan.

Flaxfold dropped some ham without looking. Starback swept past her and snapped at it, catching it before it hit the floor. She smiled and tossed him another piece. The rest she put on her plate.

“It’s a year today since Flaxfield died,” he said.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Though Friday seems the better day to remember.”

She touched his cheek.

“Did you think I’d forgotten?” she asked.

Sam was up before dawn, though the sun had begun to interrupt the darkness and the stars had gone.

He stood in the garden by the ash tree under the study window. He looked up at the slate-grey sky.

Another part of him soared overhead. Starback and Sam were one. Dragon and boy at one time. He was still not really used to it. No one had warned him that it would happen. He had thought he was ill. He was ill. He had thought he was dying. He was close to dying. He had looked through the door into the Finished World and had nearly stepped through it.

He hadn’t died. He had changed. Starback had changed. He was Sam and he was Starback. He could stand on the earth and he could fly overhead, both at the same time. He didn’t know how he did it. He didn’t know sometimes whether he was boy or dragon or both or neither.

He talked to Flaxfold about it. No one else. He tried to explain it to her. She never asked questions. She just listened.

“Breakfast?” she asked.

Sam turned and smiled.

“I never hear you coming,” he said.

“You’re always somewhere else. Are you hungry?”

The dragon landed close to her with a flourish and folded dry wings.

“You’re always hungry,” said Flaxfold. Starback nuzzled against her.

They ate in silence and Flaxfold packed more food for the journey.

“There’ll be food after the Finishing,” she said. “But it’s always sensible to take something just in case. It’s a long journey.”

It was a dead girl. She had drowned. Twelve years old. Short hair and strong face. When Sam saw her he thought it was Tamrin and he stepped back and looked away.

A second look told him that he’d been tricked by the size and likeness of the girl. And the suddenness. He hadn’t been expecting a young person. Most Finishings are for the old, though accidents and violence are everywhere and the young die, too.

He took control of himself and made preparations. While Flaxfold made ready to carry out the Finishing he assembled the herbs and flowers they had gathered on the journey. He examined the instruments the family had laid out ready for the ritual. They’d chosen a book, scuffed and worn, one that had been read by others before it came to her, and a bracelet made of small, square stones, multi-coloured and linked with silver, a cup, perhaps the special one that only she used. Sam picked it up and turned it over in his hands. Rough clay, with a band of glaze about the rim to please the lips, a simple line-drawn pattern round the side, impressed before firing.

“Are you ready?” asked Flaxfold.

It was a gentle rebuke to tell him to hurry up. She wouldn’t embarrass him in front of these strangers by telling him to get a move on.

He looked at them. Her family and neighbours, gathered to Finish her. He nodded.

Flaxfold began the words. Sam handed her the herbs and instruments at the proper time. He ignored the tears, the silent grief, the set faces, the averted eyes. This would be done well and then they would go.

At the right moment he nodded to the group. It was not for him to choose. That was their part.

“Are you ready?” he asked. “It’s time.”

The girl’s father stepped from the others, holding the hand of a smaller girl, the little sister.

The father carried the book and the bracelet, the little girl brought the cup. They laid them by the body and the little girl said the words.

Sam felt proud of her. She kept her back straight, her voice steady, her eyes on her sister. She was nervous, of course, but she did it well, as well as anyone could. She would be a comfort to her family when they had gone.

As soon as the last words were said the door to the Finished World opened for the dead girl to go through. Only Sam and Flaxfold saw it. To the others it was like a slant of sunlight or the dazzle of glare from water. Flaxfold let go of the girl’s hand. She brushed away the lock of hair from her face, tucking it in. Sam felt the different air brush his cheek, saw the shimmer of light by the girl, heard the slightest murmur from the place beyond.

He stood between Flaxfold and the door. As the girl slipped through and disappeared the door shifted. The room tilted. People staggered and grabbed for something to hold on to. Like the deck of a ship in high seas the floor lifted to one side. Sam slipped and put his hands out for support, skittering towards the door.

“Sam,” Flaxfold called.

He turned his head and saw confusion on her face and something that in a less reliable person he would have thought was panic.

“Come back,” she shouted.

He leaned away from the door, knees bent. His flailing arms tried to restore his balance. One of them plunged into the space where the door still stood open. The others in the room saw only his right arm disappear as far as the elbow.

A hand seized his arm and drew him in. He pulled back. By pulling he helped the one the other side to step through.

A woman appeared in the doorway, slender and tall, face half-hidden, more than half, by the folds of a grey hooded gown.

The tugging had stopped. Sam wasn’t being dragged into the Finished World, he was helping one out of it.

No one should ever come from the Finished World. No one ever tried. No one ever could. This woman was crossing that barrier. And Sam recognized her. The cord round his neck tightened and hurt. The metal weight grew hot, burning his throat.

He tried to free his arm. The harder he pulled the more she emerged through the door. She was stuck, struggling. The Finished World didn’t want to let her go.

Sam tugged to free himself. She pulled back. Each time she came a little further out, freed herself a little more. Sam knew he couldn’t let her. Couldn’t allow her to come through. If she did, he would have brought a plague into the world, a bringer of death.

“You’ll stay there,” he said. “I’ll come to you.”

He stopped struggling and relaxed. The Finished World breathed in and the woman was sucked back, Sam drawn in with her. His head approached the door. He gave up the fight.

“No you don’t.”

Flaxfold’s voice pierced his submission. His arm froze and the woman released it with a shriek of pain. Flaxfold seized his other hand and jerked him to her. The door slammed, with the woman still the other side. Sam gasped. He looked at Flaxfold. By a trick of the light she was taller, no longer stout but upright and angry. No, not angry. Prepared for any fight. Fierce. His arm was dead with cold.

She stepped between him and the shocked assembly.

The room was level now, restored. The faces of the family were clothed with anger and disappointment.

Flaxfold, small and stout again, smiled at them.

“You’re very lucky,” she said.

The girl’s father began to protest and complain that the Finishing had been badly done, spoiled. Sam flexed his fingers to bring life and warmth back to them.

“Hush,” said Flaxfold, taking the father’s arm and sitting him down. “Hush. It’s all right. It’s good. Sometimes, with a young one, with a special child, the Finished World is as glad to receive her as we are sad to lose her. The depth of your sorrow is balanced by the surplus of their joy. When that happens…” She shrugged. “Well, you saw how it was.”

Sam knew they had seen nothing, of course. People never did. Just shadows and flashes.

Flaxfold stayed longer than she would have done, creating confidence, rebuilding the family for each other. She heard their memories, encouraged plans, shared their food and helped them to be ready for the next day, and the next.

Sam was impatient to leave, to talk, to explain and to ask questions. He had to wait. He ate a little and went outdoors and looked up at Starback, circling the sky. The dragon had been unsettled by the event. Sam closed his eyes and circled with him, looking down at the house until Flaxfold waved goodbye.

Rejoining her he waited until they were on the road.

“I thought it was Tamrin,” he said. “Dead, I mean.”

“Yes. I saw that. You were upset.”

“And then the woman. What happened?”

“Something,” said Flaxfold, “that changes everything. There’s dangerous work ahead. Now. For all of us. But mostly for you.”

“Tell me,” said Sam.

“It’s like this,” she began. “Your old master, Flaxfield, died because he was wounded. Long ago. His magic was tested and torn.”

Sam trudged along next to her. The day was closing and they still had a long way to go.

“A weak, greedy wizard tried to steal magic from a young girl, his apprentice,” she said. “It went wrong and magic was distorted, infected. The wizard changed, grew younger and stronger, and new magic ripped through into the world. Flaxfield was the only one who could tame it.”

She looked at the darkening sky. Starback flew overhead, leading the way, effortlessly riding the air. Sam waited for her to continue. He knew stories took their own time. They’re not dogs to call to heel.