Jo Clayton - Wild Magic

The pain was small in the beginning, but it grew and grew until she was sick to her stomach.

Pain changed to heat.

Translucent fire danced along her arms.

“No,” she cried, “no no NO! You’re a liar.” The pale flamelets yearned toward him. “Liar. Liar! LIAR!”

He shrank back, his mouth dropping open.

She gasped and went running from the room.

The fire faded as she fled through the halls and out into the yard, but she didn’t notice.

She plunged into Verakay Lane and ran along it, head down, breath sobbing between her teeth, half-blinded by tears of pain and anger. And terror.

Desperately, she willed friends and strangers alike not to notice her, not to stop her or question her-and they didn’t; they moved out of her way in an absentminded shuffle and went on with what they were doing.

The River drew her, that slow deep flow of thick brown water. She wriggled unnoticed through the trotting porters, ducked under the noses of plodding saisai and ran down a levee workpath into the quiet and shadow beneath the Mas-Koa gatt, a small wharf busy with up-country shipping, near the west end of the Gatt Road.

A Spring flood some decades back had hollowed out the levee below Mas-Koa and the Shindagatt had replaced the earth with an eclectic mix of mussel shells, broken bricks, clay jars and discarded paving stones, covered this mass with dirt, then scattered grass seed thickly over it. Near the end of the next rainy season an old rowboat lodged against the patch and stayed there when the water went down.

Faan dropped onto hands and knees, scooted up the matted grass, flung herself on a broken paving stone and sobbed until her throat burned and her head ached. A small warm body pressed against hers, wriggled up under her arms until a cold nose was pressed against her face. “Ohhh, my Liki,” she crooned hoarsely, “ohh, my Aili, people are so aw-ful.”

Feet thudded back and forth above her as the porters worked to empty the barge tied up at the gatt; hand-trucks rumbled by over her head; these noises mixed with the shouts and laughter of the sailors and the porters; it was a kind of sound quilt, vaguely comforting.

A voice like a mosquito hum cut through the quilt. “So, what’s all this?”

Startled she shifted around on the stone, sat up, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. The mahsar flowed around her, curling up in her lap.

Perched on the bow of the stove-in boat was an absurd little figure, ancient and bearded and brown, no bigger than her fist, with shaggy green fur like seaweed on his back and around his loins.

“What are you?” Her voice was hoarse; she coughed, swallowed.

He scratched the weedy fur around his belly, found a water flea, popped it between his wee thumbnails and flung it onto the mud. “Riverman,” he said. “What do they,” he jerked a thumb at the planks over his head, “call you?”

Nervously shestroked Ailiki’s fur, uncertain what she ought to do-but she’d been taught courtesy to elders even oddities like this little man; besides, friendliness and interest flowed sweetly from him like the incense the Kassian Tai burned for Abeyhamal. “Faan, heshim Riverman.”

“Why you grievin’, Faan?”

She chewed her lip, stared down at the dusty toes of her halfboots. “My mother does THINGS. For money,” she burst out, the Head’s hurting words tumbling in her head. She couldn’t bear to say them.

“So?” Riverman kicked his feet against the rotting planks of the boat, his shiny black eyes fixed on her.

“Ugly things…” Her voice trailed off as she looked past him and saw a head poking out of the river, features sculpted in liquid crystal, delicate mouth opening and closing soundlessly, great lambent eyes staring at her. “What’s that?”

Riverman twisted round, waved his tiny hand at the creature, got a silent laugh from it as it sank gradually into the thick brown water. “Water Elemental,” he said. “Come to have a look at you.”

“Me? Why?”

Riverman shrugged. “Your Ma, he’s Salagaum, uh?”

“Diyo. The Head…” She swallowed, pressed both hands hard on her middle. “He told me…”

“Likes to hurt y’, uh?”

She nodded, the two braids Reyna plaited for her every morning bouncing against her shoulders. “Y’ Ma hurt you? Hurt anyone?”

“Nayo!”

“Vema, tell me. Who’s handsome, who’s ugly?”

“But it’s awful, what he does. Reyna, I mean. Makes me sick when I think about it. How can I go home and look at him? How can I look at my friends. If they know…”

“Of course they know. Did it matter before?”

“Ma’teesee… I don’t think ANYTHING would bother her… there’s not much she doesn’t know… Dossan, she’s never said…” She pressed her hands to her eyes and began feeling better. A little. She was still sick and cold. She couldn’t think about Reyna.

Others came. Tiny people, soap-bubble people, smaller than her thumb. They sang to her, eerie sounds like a wet finger rubbed round the rim of a glass. Bubbles with eyes she couldn’t quite see but knew were looking at her foamed up out of the ground, bobbed in the air about her, shimmering with rainbow ripples over a transparent silver base. They danced along her arms where the flames had been, cool touches that comforted her, eased the terror that took hold of her each time she remembered how close she’d been to burning up herself and everything around her.

Then Riverman sang a skein of hissing popping sounds and the bubble people went sliding away to sink into the levee, taking their light with them, leaving her in sun-striped shadow.

“Wild Magic,” Riverman said. “They like you.”

She slid her palm down her arm, feeling small tingles as if the bubble people had left something of themselves behind. “My teachers say there’s no such thing.”

Riverman grinned at her. After a minute she grinned back.

He scratched and waited, his unhurry as soothing as the everyday sounds coming down through the planks as the porters finished the unloading. “So,” he said after a long silence, “called fire, did y’?”

“Dee-yo!” She wrapped her arms about her knees, shivered.

“Scared y’self, uh?”

She blinked at him; what she mostly felt was numb, but a nebulous queasiness stirred in her. After a minute, she nodded.

“You need a teacher, ‘little Faan. Someone who’ll show you how to manage those things.”

“I’m not going back to that school. Not ev-er. I don’t care what Reyna says. Or Tai. Or any of them.”

“Verna, vema, Sorcerie. Sibyl, that’s who you need go see. Friend of mine. I’ll send word and you go find her, uh?”

She blinked. “Sorcerie?”

“Sorceror in the egg. Hasn’t hatched yet.” He stood up, gave a hitch to the weed-fur about his middle. “Best get home, little one, there’s trouble waiting.” He screwed up his little round face into a clown-grimace, relaxed into a•grin. “Come see me again, uh?”

Faan stopped at the mouth of the wynd, smoothed her hands over her hair and took a last scrub.at her face, then she stepped out onto the board walkway of Verakay Lane, Ailiki trotting beside her.

“Fa ,. Wait for us.”

Dossan and Ma’teesee were running toward her, weaving through the crowd on the street, their school sacks bumping against their backs. She felt like vomiting and for a moment she thought of running away, but she straightened her shoulders and turned to face them.

“Oooo eeee, Fa.” Ma’teesee swung into place at her right side and Dossan settled more quietly by her left elbow. “The mess you left!”

Dossan giggled. “Head looked like he going t’ explode like a too-hot tatee, Fa. He was yelling at the teachers, ‘specially Quiambo Tanish, something about Shinda and… uh. I think witches,” she pinched Faan’s arm, “he was gobbling so fast I couldn’t really catch what he was saying.”