Minor Mage

by T. Kingfisher

There is something about a group of people that is less than the sum of its parts.

The funny thing—not amusing, exactly, but funny nonetheless—was that he’d been entirely willing to risk his life for the village, and now here they were, demanding that he do something he’d been planning to do anyway, and apparently willing to throw him out on his ear if he didn’t. He’d be lying if he said that this hadn’t soured his enthusiasm a bit.

What had come over everyone? One day they’d been his neighbors, the people he grew up with, and then this morning they’d been… He groped for a word inside his head. Strange. Irrational. Scary.

Well, on the bright side, at least if Mom thinks they forced me to leave, she’ll be mad at Harold and not me. This was a very cheering thought. He was a bit frightened of the journey and (if he was being honest) more than a little frightened of what might lie at the journey’s end, but both these things paled in comparison to fear of his mother’s wrath.

A real wizard wouldn’t be huddled in a ditch wishing for his mother. (In this, at least, Oliver was dead wrong—many wizards over the ages, some of them very major mages indeed, have found themselves curled in ditches and wishing desperately for their mothers. But they tend not to mention these things in their memoirs.)

Well, that was the thing with humans. They liked to be around each other and cram themselves three or four in a den if they could, then cram their dens in together as close as house martin nests. Leave a human alone for too long and it would get weird and sad.

It turned out that there was a worse fate than being sent off on a suicide mission by a bunch of grown-ups. It was being sent off on a suicide mission by a bunch of grown-ups and not having other grown-ups believe you.

“Oh, herbs,” said the bandit, in the dismissive tone used by people who don’t know anything about herbs. (This is generally not a very wise thing to say, because people who do know about herbs may take offense, and you will then find your socks stuffed full of stinging nettles and your tea full of cascara, which is no less potent a laxative for being tree bark.)

Moonrise took a long time. Oliver actually dozed off, which astonished him when he woke up. (The armadillo was less astonished. Humans, his mother had told him, laugh or cry or rage when they get pushed too far, and then they usually fall asleep. The armadillo’s mother had been a clear-eyed observer of humanity, even if her eyes were only a few inches off the ground.)

When kindness came from murdered ghosts and lost pigs, and the adults that were supposed to help you were monsters that walked like men… What was he supposed to do? It wasn’t right. He wanted the world to be different.

“That is the price your village paid. You will never love them with your whole heart again. The shadow of what they did in their fear will lie between you forever. But they will be alive, nonetheless, and learning to bridge that shadow—or decide not to—is the work of adulthood.”

“Armadillo?” he asked. “Can you talk to him?” “I have been,” said the armadillo. “It’s mostly swearing. He’s got a remarkable vocabulary, for a sheep.” Gregor made a noise suspiciously like a laugh. The Rain Wife did laugh, thumping her cane on the ground.