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k_a_webbCalix studied Tuula. He wasn’t certain he trusted her, because she could easily be weaving a story for them all, but he didn’t think she was. There was something about her eyes that made him believe that she was telling the truth about everything. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d heard of a child putting on an act for their parent, to make said parent think that they were following that parent’s rules, even though they didn’t agree with them at all. She must have felt his eyes on her because she looked at him. As their eyes met she smiled, a true smile for what he thought was the first time since she’d moved in with them, and nodded.
“I know,” she said, as though she knew what he was thinking. “Cal, my life hasn’t been easy and I know I haven’t made your lives easier by being here or by acting the way I was, but now…” Tuula sighed. “I’m not certain if your brothers were hoping the same thing I was, Felicia, although I have a feeling they were, because everything would be much easier if you hadn’t bloomed. Now we have to make sure that you’re safe.”
“Why am I so important?” Felicia asked, sounding exasperated. “Cal hasn’t left and he’s in more danger than I am right now.”
“It will destroy Father if he has to hurt you.” Calix squeezed Felicia’s hand. “With me it’s different.” He ran his tongue over his bottom lip as he tried to work out how to explain it to her. “There was no hope for me, Fliss. I’d bloomed before we knew that the people in the other kingdoms were beginning to believe that magic was dangerous, no matter who wielded it, so no matter I was in danger. You we had a chance with, because there was no guarantee that you’d bloom and I was hoping the same thing as Tuula – I wanted you to be safe here.” He shook his head. “Now, sweetheart, you aren’t and if someone finds out what you are it’s not just going to affect Father. Someone could accuse Vance of knowing, which would almost entirely destroy our family.”
“Having Cal here is bad enough.” Tuula bit her lip. “Fortunately both Vance and your father have realised that they can’t been seen to rely on him, even though they did before, because that would affect the way the other kingdoms have reacted to him still being alive. At the moment they accept that Cal is family and killing family isn’t easy, no matter how you feel about what abilities they have, and, as I keep telling Father, they need time to come to terms with what the next step is. Even though they know what the next step should be it doesn’t make actually taking it any easier.” She shrugged. “However I don’t think we have much longer before he starts pushing for something to happen and if anyone finds out that another family member has bloomed…”
“Will put Tuula’s baby in danger.” Calix looked at Tuula’s still flat stomach. “It’s not as though one of her children isn’t already in danger, because it’s a well known fact that the second child born to the Crown Prince will always bloom. Maybe if we knew why that happened we’d be able to change that, but we don’t. We just have records going back to the time when Sauin was the Crown Prince.” He ran a hand though his hair. “The real problem we have is that Sauin was never meant to be the Crown Prince. His brother died, of some illness I think, when Sauin was young, so he unexpectedly became the next in line to the throne, which might have had an effect on things.”
Vance nodded. “If Sauin hadn’t eventually taken the throne the second born son would be the child of the second born son, and then, I think, might not have had as much of an effect on the Royal Family as it’s having now. As it is it’s now always the second born son of the Crown Prince.”
“The problem with magic is that it’s inconsistent.” Tuula smiled. “Your family is the only one known to have that consistency within it in, as far as I know, the entire known world. No one else has any idea if they’re children are going to bloom or not and even for you it isn’t as simple as it could be, although the Crown Prince is always magicless… unless, of course, the Crown Prince’s wife has a miscarriage or loses a baby in some other way. Any third child, like you, Felicia, might bloom or they might not.”
“Is there any way to tell if a child will bloom before their eighteenth birthday?” Felicia asked.
“A few people, like Tuula, have the ability to tell if someone will bloom, but it seems different for all of them.” Calix had known three people who could feel is someone was blooming and he’d heard rumours that the protectors of the underground in Konir could as well. “Some can feel it from as long as year before the person in question blooms, although that’s very rare, and some feel it from around two months before.”
“Unfortunately it’s an ability we have to keep hidden, because those who hate magic would use us to hunt out anyone about to bloom before it happened or they would kill us for having it.” Tuula sighed. “Father had heard rumours of it existing and he went hunting for someone he could use to rid of the world of magic users, which was why I kept it hidden from him, although I know that there are others like me who were killed. A couple were with newly bloomed magic users, but the rest were executed to protect the rest of the world from magic – even though I don’t think that my ability is magic. I had it long before I turned eighteen and I was using it to help Mother find magic users from the time I was six.
“For you it hasn’t been that long since opinion changed against all magic users, but in my kingdom we’ve been executing all magic users since before I was born, and Mother didn’t like that, at all. So she did her best to protect them, by sending them to the mountains or to Konir, depending on what was best for them, although neither journey was safe. In order to make it easier she made the journeys herself, setting up way stations, normally in the homes of magic users who had no interest in running, and it’s something I know was passed from magic user to magic user, so others did the same thing in other kingdoms, protecting anyone they could from persecution. The only kingdom I know of that hasn’t is Ialaera.”
“Ialaera is different.” Calix sighed. “It’s been home to the thieves for centuries and they had a sanctuary there that often becomes home to magic users who have nowhere else to go. Unfortunately we don’t know much about the thieves or why they exist, but I’m certain that the first one didn’t make the choice out of selfish reasons – they were trying to protect someone.”
“Why do you say that?” Felicia looked at him, confusion in her eyes. “I thought the only way to help someone whose bloom was going wrong was to feed them poison berries.”
“The only safe way, Fliss, but there is another much more dangerous method that often kills both the person helping and the bloomer. You can take their magic.” Calix sighed. “It’s something I’ve heard of happening that I would never try myself as I’ve heard it become addictive. Someone might do it the first time to help someone, but then they find it becoming a way of life. My theory is that the first of the thieves had a sibling or cousin who wasn’t blooming right, so they did what they could to help, and for some reason taking their magic made more sense than killing them.” He glanced at Felicia, understanding why they might have made the choice. “However by doing it they changed themselves, they found themselves wanting more magic…
“Maybe it fades. When you take someone else’s magic there’s this time when you feel it, but then it goes away and you want to feel it again.” He shrugged. “So he decided to take another person’s magic, probably went out looking for someone whose bloom was going wrong, although it is hard to find someone like that when you’re wandering the streets. Finding another magic user would be much simpler and because of this urge he had to feel that boost again he decided to simply take someone else’s magic. It didn’t matter who. Once that happened it would be easier to do it again and again.”
“According to rumour there are auctions,” Vance said, “where these thieves, and other magic users, can go to in order to gain certain abilities that they want. Some say they need them, but no one actually needs magic. It’s greed, pure and simple, created by someone who might have tried to do a good deed and found that they’d changed themselves by doing it, although I’m not certain that I agree with Calix’s theory. It does make more sense, because it can, as Calix said, kill the magic user taking the magic, but that doesn’t mean someone didn’t simply walk past someone who wasn’t blooming correctly and take their magic, to see what happened.
“In the early years everyone was experimenting because no one knew what abilities they had. The journals that I’ve read, because we have them in the library still, at least until Calix takes them to the mountains, have all been about how they were learning to use their abilities, how they were sharing information with other magic users that they found, in order to work out why they had magic and what they could do. From them it seems that every magic user’s abilities is different, depending on the very day that they were born, but we don’t know as much as we did before. We’ve lost a lot, from times before when magic was seen as dangerous, although people have obviously done what they can to save some of what might have been destroyed.
“Now we’re learning again and learning more, I think, even though it’s much more dangerous now. By going to the mountains, Flick, you’re going to be able to experiment much more with what you can do, and I do think it’s your best option.” Vance bit his lip. “It’s our best option as well, to protect Atecia, so please, I know you don’t want to go, but go to make things easier for Father. Calix was right with what he said – having to execute you would destroy him and I can’t let that happen.”
“We can’t let that happen.” Tuula sighed. “Vance isn’t ready to be a King yet and I’m hoping now I’ll have a chance to teach him what I know about the other kingdoms, so we can do our best to show that we’re working with them while working against them. If you stay, though, I might not have that time, I might not have the time to raise my son as a prince rather than the Crown Prince, as it would be a much heavier weight on his shoulders, and we wouldn’t have someone there to send people to. Mother always had a contact in the mountains, who she told me about before she died, and I made certain to keep that link. Here I don’t have the same thing.”
“What will you say?” Calix asked.
“Between us we’ll work something out, Cal. I promise you that we won’t say that Felicia bloomed, although we might be forced to paint you as someone you really aren’t.”
“I know.” Calix smiled at Tuula. “A friend told me that I would be the man who made a mistake.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.