Quiet Magic (7 page)

Petrie shook her head, suddenly
remembering the burning curtains. She turned toward the
wagon.

"That's taken care of," a warm-taffy
voice spoke nearby. "A little damage, mostly to the curtains.
Nothing irreplaceable lost. My thanks to you, child."

She turned toward the Master, blinking
stupidly. They were alone. Her head felt heavy, and she put up a
hand to rub at the ache in her forehead.

"Authberk?" she asked.

The Master gestured. "On his way home.
Remembering nothing."

Petrie frowned. "He was
strong."

"So he was. But he had not the Will to
withstand even two of the winds I sent against him. He had no core
of strength on which to build." The Master paused, head bent,
considering the worn silver band.

"Only weakness relies on power from
without to accomplish its will," he said. He looked up and held out
a hand. Petrie slid her own into it.

"Let us go inside and sleep, child.
Tomorrow, we must travel."

First published in
Dragon Magazine
#84
, 1984

Candlelight

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

THE LUNCH BELL had been a hundred
years in ringing.

He'd been surprised when it did,
though he'd been anticipating its song for half the long morning.
It sounded no different than any of the other dozen bells that had
been ringing without purpose since he had entered the school
building that morning. It had been left to his more tenured
classmates to note the difference he did not hear, close their
arithmetic books as one, and, dragging brown paper bags from their
desks, line up at the door to the hallway.

He closed his own book, grabbed his
bag from under the chair and took his place in line behind Sally
Benrum, who stuck her tongue out at him. You went nowhere in this
school unless you went in a line, it seemed, and he stood as still
as he was able, chewing on his lip as Uncle Tulaine always chided
him for, until the teacher was satisfied that they were all each
behind the other, that there was silence, more or less, and
condescended to lead them to the cafeteria.

Now, red-and-white milk carton before
him on the table, he slowly uncurled the top of his lunch bag.
Carefully, he took out and unwrapped the sandwich made with
Father's good, dark bread and thick slices of Uncle Tulaine's
golden cheese. He sighed, resting a moment before reaching into the
bag--a small yellow-haired boy in a plaid shirt and blue jeans,
sitting just a little apart from the other children on the long
bench.

Dessert was a slice of Aunt Jessie's
butter cake and an apple from their own tree. His napkin was linen,
which he saw was an oddity among his classmates.

He reached into the bag once more and
brought out the final item; unwrapped it slowly from its parchment
twist.

Mint green it was, with a runnel of
blue toward the wick, hardly thicker than the boy's forefinger, yet
straight and shiny and smooth.

He smiled then, shoulders slumping as
the tension left them. They had given him one of Elmira's
candles.

He held it in his hands for a moment,
eyes half-closed. Elmira was his favorite among the aunts--a tall
young woman, flame straight, cool and nearly aloof, quiet with a
silence that invited words, should you need to speak
them.

He smiled again, pulled a lucifer from
his pocket, scraped it on the underside of the table and touched
the flame for an instant to the bottom of his luncheon candle, here
on this, his first day of school. He pushed the softened wax onto
the spread-out sandwich paper and moved to touch the flame to the
wick of Elmira's candle--

A hand snatched downward, wrestling
the match from his fingers, knocking the candle askew--above his
head was the sound of air being expelled--perhaps to extinguish a
flame--and then a pretty, strident voice:

"Jeffy Eljensen! Just what do you
think you're doing, lighting a match! Fire is much too dangerous
for little boys like you to play with!"

Jeffrey's hand shot out, covering
Elmira's candle; pulling it toward him. The teacher pounced,
capturing his wrist.

"What's that? More matches, you bad
boy?

He resisted her attempt to lift his
hand, Uncle Tulaine's voice coaching him from memory: "Strength is
like a river inside you, that may be diverted where you will. Has
someone grabbed your arm, tried to wrest away from you that which
you must keep? Well, divert your river of strength to that
arm--what matter the rest of the body in such a case?"

"Jeffrey Eljensen--" panted the
teacher, pulling ineffectively at his protecting hand. Jeffrey
gritted his teeth, squinted his eyes and concentrated on his river
of strength as a new voice broke over his head.

"Miss Lyle? What seems to be the
problem?" A man's voice this, growling deep. The teacher's plump
hand dropped away, her voice gobbling of fire and dangers and the
dire possibilities that dwelt in what lay hidden. Jeffrey closed
his eyes, anticipating the man's assault.

"Miss Lyle," said the man, softly for
so big a voice; "perhaps you could take the rest of your class
elsewhere."

There was startled silence; Jeffrey
was tempted into opening his eyes to slits. His teacher protested
that the other children had begun their lunches. The growling voice
replied that they could move to a table across the room.

After another hesitation, Miss Lyle
began giving orders. A little girl's voice rose clearly above the
hubbub:

"But why should we have to move when
it's the new boy who's bad?"

"Never mind, Sally," Miss Lyle
soothed, "Just pack up your things and we'll move..."

Jeffrey tipped his face a bit
sideways, his eyes nearly all the way open.

The man with the growling voice was
very tall--Jeffrey saw brown corduroy trousers, a battered black
leather belt and the beginnings of a white cotton shirt.

By the sounds, the rest of the class
had gotten themselves and their lunches in order to move. The table
vibrated and shifted as they stood and moved off, one by one, it
seemed to Jeffrey, and not in a line at all.

The man in the corduroy trousers
moved, too, bending at the waist to bring a dark unhandsome face
into the boy's view.

"Might I sit down?" he
growled.

Jeffrey licked his lips, managed a
curt nod and, a moment later, a croaky, "Please do."

"Thank you." The bench groaned as he
seated himself, back to the table, elbows resting on the top, hands
hanging loosely at chest height. His shirt was open at the top
button, his tie-knot loose and askew. The brown eyes were friendly
enough, thought Jeffrey. And at least this person looked at him
rather than around him as Miss Lyle and his classmates had done all
morning.

"Jeffy Eljensen, is it?" the man
offered, by way of opening the conversation, as Great-aunt Phyllis
would say.

The boy stiffened. "Jeffrey," he said,
hearing himself snap. " I told her Jeffrey."

"Ah," The man beside him nodded. "But
she really doesn't listen, you know. She does mean
well."

There was no sensible answer to that.
Jeffrey sat quiet, feeling Elmira's candle cool beneath a sweaty
palm.

"My name," the man continued before
the silence could grow uncomfortable, "is Rob Davis. Though there
are," he sighed hugely here and Jeffrey felt his mouth twitch in a
smile he refused to let the man have, "people who call me Robert.
My own mother. She means well, too."

"All my family calls me Jeffrey," the
boy said, still snapping. And he added after a moment, in an effort
to be fair, "Except Uncle Tulaine'll call me Spider sometimes,
'cause he says I'm always spinning yarns."

"Is that okay, your uncle calling you
Spider?" asked the man.

"I don't mind. It's not like he's
naming me that. It's oh, I don't know, like Aunt Jessie calling
everybody from Father on down to the yard sparrows ‘sugar.' It's
just a love-name, not a real name."

The man nodded again. "Miss Lyle said
you were playing with fire, Jeffrey."

"I wasn't playing with fire," and the
snap was back in his voice. "I was striking a match so that I could
light my candle and eat my lunch."

"Ah." The silence stretched longer
this time, the man sitting with his brown eyes fixed on some point
beyond the tips of his outstretched shoes. Aunt Elmira sometimes
looked this way when she considered what you'd said, or what might
be added to the painting that she was working on. Though he'd said
nothing that really needed considering, Jeffrey respected the mood
and waited.

The man came back to himself with a
small start, focused on the boy at his side. "Is today your
birthday?"

The winged brows pulled down and the
mouth tightened. "No."

"Oh. It was silly of me, I guess. I
just thought that today might have been your birthday and that's
why you wanted to have a candle with your lunch."

The boy shook his head sharply. "We
always have a candle with our meals. Even if we're not at
home."

The man blinked. "Oh." Then he
grinned. "I should probably apologize for my conversation. I'm
usually quite the wit, I assure you."

This time Jeffrey did smile; the
phrase was so like dapper Uncle Tulaine, uttered in that growling
voice, coming out of that ugly face. The man smiled
back.

"So tell me," he offered, "since I'm
dense: Why is it, Jeffrey, that your family always has candles with
meals?" He waved a large hand in a gesture that must have comforted
him, for he repeated it. "Is it religious? You know, a belief of
some kind? Or is it just nice to have a candle when you eat--a
little bit of home when you're not at home?"

Jeffrey sighed. This was getting very
tiring. He was hungry, and there was still the afternoon with its
additional dozen bells--all sounding exactly alike and all
signifying something utterly different--to be got through. Still,
the man did seem harmless, and questions were for
answers...

"It's one of the ways we are a
family," he explained, trying not to snap again. "Everybody in the
family makes candles. And everybody in the family uses candles at
every meal. That way, we remember and feel close and stay--" he
waved his own hand in unconscious imitation of his father, "and
stay a family. Stay belonging. We've got candles that
Great-great-grandfather made, and candles from Jason, who went to
Alaska. And Jason's got candles from me and from Phoenix and Elmira
and everybody." He stopped suddenly, embarrassed at having shown so
much to this large and probably heedless stranger.

But the big man was nodding again, and
smiling easily. "So everybody in the family makes
candles--everybody has a different style? They'd have to, wouldn't
they?" He answered his own question with a grin. "So you'd be able
to tell whose candle you're using?"

Jeffrey nodded, then sat very still,
considering. Slowly he raised his protecting hand, lifted the
candle and brought it round so the man could see.

"This is the candle Aunt Jessie picked
for my lunch today," he said, speaking slowly, choosing his words
with even more than his usual care. "Aunt Elmira made it. Her
candles are mostly minty green or blue--sometimes a kind of frosty
pink color. Nobody else in the family makes candles like hers. For
one thing, nobody else can get those exact colors. For another,
other people like other colors, other styles." He paused; the man
beside him made a hand gesture for continuance.

Jeffrey drew a deep breath. "Uncle
Tulaine's candles are yellow like his cheeses, and thick. They burn
bright and long. Father's are multicolored, layer on layer of
different colors. Phoenix sculpts hers..."

"And yours?"

"Mine?" Jeffrey shook himself, laid
Elmira's candle carefully back on the wax paper next to his
sandwich. "It depends. Sometimes I just make blocks of wax and
carve them. I'm not very good at tapers. They never come out right
for me." He smiled at the man, feeling very hungry now. "Aunt
Elmira says it's because I'm not firm enough when I roll them.
Uncle Tulaine says it's because I never know how I want things to
turn out."

Rob Davis sighed. "Thank you," he
said, though Jeffrey did not understand what for.

"It's been nice talking with you," he
told the man politely, "But I'm hungry and would like to eat my
lunch."

"Certainly," said the man, getting to
his feet and sketching what seemed to be a bow. Jeffrey grinned
again at the parody of Uncle Tulaine; turned to his
sandwich--recalled.

"Mr. Davis."

"Rob," the man corrected.

"Jeffrey nodded. "Rob. Can you lend me
a match, please?"

"A match?" the man repeated. "To light
your candle, Jeffrey?"

The boy held onto his temper. Really,
these people at school were too dense. Hadn't he just explained
--