Chapter Five

“Miss Morn.” Karenna stopped and turned around, holding her hands behind her to hide the napkin-wrapped leftovers she had pinched from lunch. Headmaster Tavrinal approached her across the courtyard. He paused when he was a few feet away, waiting for the other students to file out of earshot before speaking. “Miss Morn,” he said again.

“Headmaster?” she replied.

“I am not one to avoid the obvious, so let me just say that your behavior last night impressed me, as did certain…reports concerning your journey here. I should like to have you officially registered as a Possible Wizard Class 3.”

Karenna felt the panic rising. She dropped her gaze, trying to act indifferent. “Why ask me first, then?”

“Because of your eyes,” he said bluntly.

She started, and raised her head to stare at him.

His gaze was steady. “I know it can’t have been easy for you, growing up with eyes like yours. To be honest, I don’t much care how you came by them. But we both know it would be difficult for you to avoid unpleasantness if you were officially classified and began taking courses in advanced magic. I have no desire to see you suffer, Miss Morn.”

She meant to say thank you. What came out was, “Why do you care?”

He blinked. For a moment, she saw his expression waver between a smile and a frown. It remained neutral. “Despite what you may think, Miss Morn, not all men like me, not all wizards or—dare I say—humans have a desire to see every person with Gypsie eyes beheaded, hung, or enslaved. Why even the king—”

“I’m not a Gypsie,” she said, not meeting his gaze.

“I’ve already said I don’t care,” he replied coolly. “But may I take your reaction as a ‘no’ to my proposal?”

Karenna forced herself to be calm. “You may.”

“Very well, then.” With that, he turned and left. She watched him for a long time, then shoved him from her mind and continued on her way.

* * *

Boom sat munching leaves at the edge of the Gypsies’ Forest. He hadn’t moved from the spot Karenna had led him to, but the day hadn’t been boring. Boom had a very hard time getting bored. He could watch the shadows move and lengthen; he could listen to the rustle of the wind in the leaves and the distant sounds of Gypsie movement; he could smell the sweet, vibrant scent of the leaf litter carpets that covered the ground; he could feel the activity of the tiny insect communities moving below and around him. Boom knew what the word “dull” meant, but he had never had occasion to use it.

Just as he reached for another fresh twig, Karenna pushed her way between two bushes and out into his little clearing. She looked tired and faintly annoyed, but she smiled at him all the same. “Hello, Boom.”

“Hello, Miss Morn.” He extended the leafy twig towards her. “Would you like some?”

Karenna looked at the twig. “You eat leaves?”

Boom smiled. “And bark, but leaves are better. Sometimes in winter I’ll eat the wood as well, or pine needles, but leaves are the best.”

“Um, why do you eat leaves at all?”

“The spell did more to me that make me grow,” he said. “I don’t eat or sleep like normal people, and I can see magic as a kind of glow.” He cocked his head. “Like the glow coming from your wand.”

Karenna snatched the wand from where it had been tucked into her belt beneath her tunic. Boom raised a massive hand dismissively. “No worries, Miss Morn.” The comfortable magic emanating from him calmed her. “So, do you want some?”

Karenna gave a weary smile and sat down next to him. “No, thank you, Boom. I brought some leftovers, though, if you like.”

He eyed the slightly squashed contents of the napkin she held out. It wouldn’t have even registered in his digestive system. “That’s all right.” She shrugged and tucked the napkin away, then leaned back against a nearby tree.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” she said. The fading sunlight and dancing leaves above sent vibrant shadows swirling across her face. She closed her eyes and exhaled. “It’s been very… tiring.”

Boom had noticed her tendency to pause before select words. He wasn’t sure if this was to draw attention to them or to make sure that they were the right ones. “Tiring?”

Karenna shook her head. “It’s nothing you need to worry about, Boom. I’m just glad to have the chance to rest.”

He glanced in the direction of the Academé. “Won’t they wonder where you are?”

“It’s our ‘free time’ now.”

“Oh.”

They sat in silence for a long time. Not an uncomfortable silence, but the silence that comes when two people have said all that is necessary for the moment. Boom listened to the trees grow for awhile and then said, “Do you know yet?”

Karenna’s eyes were still closed. She was breathing slowly, and probably almost asleep as she leaned against his trunk-like arm. “Know what, Boom?”

“If you’re a Gypsie or not?”

The two different-colored eyes opened. “What?”

“I said, ‘Do you know if you’re a Gypsie yet?” Boom repeated patiently.

She stared at him for a few long moments, until Boom began to worry that he had said the wrong thing. Finally, she said, “No, Boom.”

“Oh.”

A very different sort of silence filled the space between them this time. A third voice, cheerful and from high above, broke it, “Well, you two are certainly some of the most sparkling conversationalists I’ve ever encountered.” Tannar dropped languidly into the small clearing, grinning like a cat.

* * *

Karenna rose, a little unsteady on her feet. For a moment she allowed herself the luxury of a small, inward curse—the eavesdropping spell was taking its toll. She knew better than to use untried magic that long. But she forced herself to turn what energy she had on the intruder. “What are you doing here?”

To his credit, Tannar sobered quickly. “I know you snuck off last night,” he said. “I didn’t follow you because…well, I really don’t know. But I had the feeling you’d do the same thing today. So here I am.” With that, he sat down cross-legged on the carpet of leaves and looked up at her expectantly.

Her anger slipped away. She didn’t let it go—it wriggled out of her grasp and sidled off before she could catch it again. She snorted, just for show, and then plopped down on the leaf litter. “What do you want with me, Tannar?” she asked, running her fingers through her hair, snagging the tangles in her thick curls. “Why don’t you just go find someone else to bother?”

He didn’t say anything for a long time, just looked at her in that penetrating way he had. Again she sensed something almost inhuman behind his gaze. Finally he broke eye contact and scratched at his bronze bands. “No reason,” he whispered.

Boom, staring at Tannar with something like awe, whispered, “You’re an Elementar.”

Tannar bolted up and backed away; Karenna stared at him. “What are you talking about?” he said, trying to sound scornful and failing.

“You’re glowing,” said Boom, still fascinated. “I can see the magic just pouring off you, even more than it pours from Miss Morn’s wand. And I can see your real form, too, at first I thought it was just a trick of the light.”

Now Karenna stood as well and drew her wand. She saw Tannar flinch at the sight of it. That’s right, Elementars had always been afraid of wizards with a wands. Only magicians, with their power to capture and control the immortal spirits, could hurt them more than a wand could. Karenna knew she couldn’t put much energy behind a spell, not after her extended eavesdropping. Even if she could have, she knew few attack spells. But Tannar wouldn’t know that—the virtue of a wand was that you didn’t have to say the words aloud.

She pointed the fourteen inches of magic-charged wood at him and he froze. “Is it true?” she asked, surprised at her own calm.

He put his hands out, palms up. “Look, Karenna, I—”

“Is it true!”

He swallowed, lowered his hands. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes, it’s true.”

Panic gripped her, and she seemed to hear Obern and Shana’s conversation again in her mind. She seemed to hear Shana talking about what a threat an Elementar—or, more specifically, their magician—could be to a Gypsie in hiding. And Tavrinal, he had said he didn’t care whether she was a Gypsie or not. What wizard wouldn’t care? “Who is your master?” Karenna’s wand hand was shaking now, but she didn’t notice. She knew what happened to solitary Gypsies found in human territory. “Some politician in the capitol, some witch-hunter hoping for glory, who!”

Tannar scoffed. “Yes, right, some big noble at the palace sent a member of the most powerful race in the world to track down a single, Gypsie-looking student.”

“Who!” Fear found one of the spells in Karenna’s head and shot it out the tip of the wand. A bolt of blue light hit Tannar in the chest, knocking him to the ground. Smoke rose where the blast had burned a hole through his clothes, but the skin beneath it was undamaged. He half lifted himself and looked at her. “Karenna, listen…”

“Who!” Another blast connected, even weaker than the first. The use of magic and the fear drained her like no amount of physical labor could, but she knew that even in this state two attack spells like that should have had a normal human groaning in pain. “Who sent you!” Another blast, charged with all the energy left in her and the terror of discovery connected. This time Tannar let out a soft cry.

Tears were blurring Karenna’s vision and her hand was shaking violently. This wasn’t like with the Werewolves; she had never before used her magic to purposely hurt anyone. Only defend herself and others.

“This isn’t you,” said a voice. It took her a moment to realize it was Tannar’s. “This isn’t who you are, Karenna. This is the human-bred fear they’ve forced on you.” His eyes, dark and depthless, gazed up at her. He took the hand not holding the wand and drew her towards him. She went down on her knees by his side.

Almost tenderly, he placed her hand over one of the smoldering holes in his shirt and pressed it to the skin beyond.

There was a flash of darkness, of the nearby rumbling of thunder and the pounding rhythm of a thousand raindrops. “This is my birth,” said Tannar, a mere voice in her ear now. The storm was building around her, dark, cold, and windy. She was inside the thunderhead. “This is who I am.” The clouds grew darker, the sky beyond them black and starless. Below her, far below, she could see mountains rising from the swirling sable mists.

Then suddenly there was a pain as if she were being ripped apart, as if every fiber of her being had been grabbed and pulled in a thousand different directions.

Just as abruptly it stopped. She floated, motionless, only a few feet above the craggy mountainside. Rain poured down around her, soaking her through. Somewhere in the distance, she heard someone crying.

“You asked me about my master,” Tannar’s voice was barely audible over the thundering rain. The crying, more a sound of fear than sorrow, came closer, and Karenna could faintly see a shape in the gloom. The figure came closer, stumbling over the loose rocks and tripping with every other step. His hands flailed as if he were trying to keep his balance. Karenna could see him clearly now; he was only about twelve years old with long, streaming black hair and pale skin that almost glowed in the dark. The breath left her body. Avarn! She tried to cry out to him but no sound emerged. Avarn!

And suddenly she was back. In the Gypsies’ Forest, in her own body, in the present time. Tannar lay on his side below her, his eyes serious. She was breathing hard, her exhaustion forgotten in a rush of adrenaline. “What happened!” she screamed. “That was Avarn, that was my friend, what happened!”

Tannar was quiet for a moment. “I…I pitied him,” he whispered. “He had just been blinded, painfully, and I had compassion. I…joined to him. Willingly.”

Karenna stared, her panic forgotten. Never in the history of their world had an Elementar willingly submitted to a human. Magicians had to train for years until they could control even the weakest of Tannar’s race, and even then many died in their first attempt. “You’re the gull,” she whispered.

“What?” Tannar looked annoyed. “Just because I’m a being of air and water doesn’t mean you can go around name-calling.”

She sighed and shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. By Werenna, it’s been so long since I saw him…” her voice trailed off for a moment. “What happened to him?”

“You remember when his mother came for him, to train him as a magician. You remember she was married, to a man not Avarn’s father.”

Karenna nodded.

“It turned out that her husband was nearly insane, with plenty of arrogance to complement it. He tried to take control of an Elementar more powerful than he anticipated. It killed him and blinded Avarn before his mother could subdue it. He fled, and…well, you saw.”

She closed her eyes, fighting back tears. “I should have been there.”

“No offense, but what could you have done?”

Karenna glared at him.

He sighed. “Look, I’m sorry, all right. But even if I’d been there I probably couldn’t have stopped it. We’re talking about a seriously powerful being.”

For a moment, her face lost its accusatory look as she calculated in her head. “But, if I last saw him eight years ago and you found him when he was twelve, then you’d be only—”

“Six years old, yes, I know,” said Tannar, levering himself to a sitting position.

“Six years,” she murmured. “Why did he wait so long to send you to me?”

Tannar stared at her. “How do you know he wanted to send me?”

Again, she smiled her own, private little smile. “Something he said to me just before he left.”

The Elementar looked a little suspicious. “Well, to answer your question, he waited because if I’d left him too soon, he might have died. My joining to him gave him the strength to survive his burns and his fear, and because of the way we were joined I could act as his eyes as well. Once he was strong enough to survive on his own—that was a few years ago—by that time there were…other considerations.”

“Then why are you here now? My training isn’t done. And why wait in the first place?”

Tannar clamped his mouth shut and looked at her. “That’s for him to tell you, not me.”

Tired, overwhelmed, crashing from her adrenaline rush, Karenna sank back to a cross-legged position, her hands pressed to the ground behind her for balance. It was all too much, all at once. She glanced at Tannar. “So you’re only six years old?”

“It’s not that strange,” said Boom. Karenna started—she had forgotten he was there. “Look at me,” the giant continued. “I’m thirty-seven and I look like I’m eleven.” He grinned suddenly to himself and Karenna knew he was pleased with his accidental rhyme.

Tannar laughed and fell back again. “I like him,” he declared, fighting his way upright once more. “He’s almost as strange as me.”

Boom chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound that shook the earth. With one hand he reached out and lifted the Elementar by the scruff of his uniform, bringing him close to his face. “Friends?” said the giant.

“Friends,” said Tannar, dangling between the solid fingers.

Boom grinned, revealing large white baby teeth that could probably bite through bone. He put Tannar down carefully and turned to Karenna. “Friends?” he asked, holding out one huge hand palm up. She dragged herself into a sitting position on it and he brought her to his shoulder.

“Friends,” she whispered in his ear.

Tannar stood on the ground with his fists on his hips and looked up at her. “And is all forgiven?” he inquired.

She waved a hand in assent. “But not forgotten. I still have questions.”

He smiled a little. “But later.”

“Later.”