Minor Mage

by T. Kingfisher

Oliver nodded. I may be a very minor mage, but at least I’m quicker on the uptake than the pig.

But he’d much rather have been able to turn invisible or throw lightning around. Something impressive that didn’t leave people hugging you and crying.

“In that case,” said the armadillo, stepping on Oliver’s foot, “I think we’d be happy to have you travel with us as far as the Rainblades. We can watch each other’s backs.” “Sounds delightful,” said Trebastion, picking up his pack. The armadillo strode confidently off into the underbrush, with the teenage musician in his wake, and left Oliver trying to catch up, wondering what exactly had just happened.

“Well, they’re just cows, you know. They’re important to the people who own them, but they’re just… cows. But then you get a whole bunch together and sometimes they’ll panic and stampede and run you down. They don’t mean to hurt you, they’re just scared. But they’re still important to the people who own them. You don’t just give up on cows all together.”

“Well… he used to say that if your fly is open, you’re better off buttoning it up than spending ten minutes arguing you meant to leave it open.”

Vision wasn’t the armadillo’s keenest sense, but they looked less human than they had at the farm. Perhaps without the trappings of humanity, the chairs and tables to sit in and beds to sleep in, they had slid further away from their roots. The armadillo had always vaguely suspected that humans acted the way they did because they had so much furniture cluttering up their lives.

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.

“Is that your solution? Just be happy with what I can do and never try to do any better? Be content to spend the rest of my life as a minor mage?” His voice rose as he talked, and he realized it and clamped down so that the last words came out in a harsh squeak. The armadillo simply looked at him. Black pebble eyes caught a gleam of stray light from the stars. “How many beatings does Trebastion have to take for your personal growth?” he asked quietly.

“So, she decided to help people who needed it.” Trebastion nodded. “There’s a lot of songs about people who go the other way and start trying to punish everybody who didn’t help them.” “Which probably proves that ghosts are like everyone else,” said the armadillo.

“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.”