Chosen Sister (13 page)

“Yeah, I don’t think the Gold Wizard reads so well.” Reina moved her sword back and forth in the light, looking at the symbols. “Maybe after we defeat the Red Wizard, you can find someone else to teach you.”

“That would be nice,” he whispered and snuggled deeper into the blanket. “Tell me a story.”

And so she did.

Austyn’s recovery proceeded slowly. The Gold Wizard tried to insist that he practice magic, but Eleia refused to let him. “He needs rest, Dwayne, and I won’t let you jeopardize his health for your foolhardy crusade.”

“But isn’t the Red Wizard really bad? It’s important to defeat him.” Reina didn’t like her carefree attitude about their mission.

“Of course, it is, sweetie. But it would be pointless to let your dear-heart of a brother get hurt because you were in a hurry, wouldn’t it?”

Reina nodded. “I know, but I just thought you ought to take the mission more seriously.”

Eleia put a hand on her shoulder. “When you’re as old as me, and have seen as many young heroes as I have, you’ll understand, sweetie. Now, come help me milk the goats and let your brother sleep.”

Reina liked Eleia’s company as much as the Gold Wizard seemed not to and enjoyed doing chores with her. Eleia talked constantly about the animals, nature, and how the whole world worked together.

“Magic’s just a part of everything else,” she said as they weeded. “It’s the power inside you to see the world changing, to see something that isn’t there yet, and to make it so. Not so different from growing a garden or weaving a basket, or raising a child.”

“It’s so hard for Austyn to do.” Reina sighed. “He doesn’t seem to try much. I wish so bad that I had magic; I would work so hard at using it if I did. Why can’t he see what a huge gift it is?”

Eleia chuckled. “Who says you don’t have magic, sweetie?” Reina made a sour expression, and Eleia laughed louder. “Don’t you mind Dwayne and his silly ideas about what’s appropriate for whom. You’ve got a different gift than your brother, but you’ve got it all the same. You wouldn’t have that sword if you didn’t.”

“But I don’t feel any magic unless I’m near Austyn when he’s using it.”

Eleia gave her a sympathetic smile. “We all have our crutches, sweetie, and you’re holding onto your brother as much as he’s holding onto you. When both of you can stand apart, that’s when your gifts will shine. But you have to let go of him.”

Reina frowned. “He’s so young. What if he got hurt … or killed?” She whispered the last part, not even wanting to say her deepest fear out loud. “He’s not ready to be on his own.”

“It’s like a mother bird pushing her little ones out,” Eleia explained. “They can’t fly until you let them go.” She gathered up the weeds they had pulled and walked over to the compost pile, leaving Reina sitting by the garden.

Reina looked down at her hands. Somewhere in there was magic? But if she had to let Austyn go, send him out on his own to find it, was it worth it? She sighed. Part of her wanted magic, to become a hero and win glory and honor, more than anything. But she knew she’d feel terrible if anything ever happened to Austyn.

“Why?” she whispered. “Why did he have to be the Child Warrior?” If he wasn’t, she could have…. Reina pushed the thoughts away. Austyn was her brother; she loved him. So what if that meant waiting longer to follow her own dreams? She had promised to look after him—it was her duty as a sister.

Reina got up and poked her head into the cottage. Eleia sat by Austyn’s head, coaxing some medicine into him and talking to him in a low voice. Reina smiled. This place was peaceful and beautiful. A new longing filled her—a longing to let Austyn stay here in the safety of this little valley forever and be a normal boy. It just didn’t seem fair! He didn’t want to be the Child Warrior. He shouldn’t have needed to endure their mad race to safety or been ripped to shreds by harpies like that.

Determination swelled in Reina. He’d bravely endured it all so far; she would keep doing the same. She would set aside her dreams and longings and see this through to the end. She’d have time enough to become a hero in her own right after she helped him defeat the Red Wizard.

She went back outside so as not to disturb them. The Gold Wizard paced up and down across the little footbridge in the middle of the valley. She shook her head. He had way too much energy. Even being a woman with a cross tongue and twinkling eyes, Eleia came closer to Reina’s long-ago idea of what a wizard should be. Eleia was patient and wise—two things the Gold Wizard wasn’t. But he looked so worried and restless, Reina decided to distract him.

She found two sticks and walked up to him. He turned and looked at her, apparently a bit cross, even though he obviously wasn’t doing anything else.

“While we’re waiting, you should help me practice my sword fighting,” she told him. “Who knows what else we might run into on the way to get the sword. And keeping busy will help you think better.” Or at least that’s what Papa had always said.

The Gold Wizard sighed. “I suppose. I’m certainly not coming up with any good ideas on my own.”

He took the stick. “Okay, so you hold it at this angle and focus on your opponent’s shoulders. By watching how the shoulders shift, you’ll know when he’s turning.”

Reina had only thought to distract him from pacing and herself from worrying, but she found the Gold Wizard actually knew what he was doing when it came to sword fighting. If she ever had to fight without the Unicorn Sword, his lessons could save her life.

“Of course, magic is better than wasting time sword fighting,” he said. “With magic, you can defeat many more people with smaller losses.”

Reina almost asked him to teach her magic, but she didn’t want to press her luck and have him remember that even sword fighting wasn’t a proper occupation for a young girl. She thought about it, though, and came up with a plan. That evening, sitting by the fire, she asked him to explain more about magic.

“Austyn can’t practice yet, but you can tell us about how it works.” Reina sat on the couch, with Austyn laying his head in her lap. He seemed to be getting better.

The Gold Wizard leaned back in his chair and smiled at them. His eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. “As I think I told you, there are two kinds of magic. The kind every wizard has, and the personal magic that is unique only to that wizard.”

Reina leaned forward, eager to hear more. Austyn closed his eyes and smiled.

“The magic that everyone carries takes focus. First you feel the power of the magic within you, gather it up, and tell it what you’d like it to do. You have to focus in your mind on what you want to happen and ignore everything else. It helps to use words to do so, but sometimes it’s better to use words from the ancient language, because they are more precise.”

“What’s that mean?” Austyn asked, his eyes still closed.

“Well, for example, we have one word for snow. Well, there are five in the ancient language, and each one is slightly different. It can affect what sort of snow you might create. If you have a vague picture in your head, who knows what you might get! Precise words and good focus help, or otherwise things go wrong.” The Gold Wizard blushed. “With practice, as your focus sharpens, your control of magic should also improve. Mostly the only limits on it are your imagination and your concentration.”

“What about the other kind, the kind that’s unique to each person?” Reina asked.

“Well, every person sees the world in a different way, so wizards think that individual magic is part of that. Because you see things in a manner that no one else does and can, you are able to change them like no one else. At some point, a wizard finds himself doing things that only he can do and realizes this is his personal form of magic.”

Reina’s mind filled with questions. He had described Austyn’s special power—resisting the Red Wizard’s death magic—although she was unsure how he could know. She also wondered what sort of individual magic she might have, or if she even had any. “So, what’s yours?”

“Erm, um…. “The Gold Wizard turned bright red. “Look, your brother’s asleep! We’ll finish this discussion later.”

He got up and walked out the door. Reina stared after him, annoyed.

“He always stops short of telling me anything real,” she complained, glancing at Eleia, who sat knitting. “Is it a bad thing to ask a wizard what sort of special magic he has?”

“No, sweetie,” Eleia said, “but Dwayne has his own personal challenges, and sometimes it’s hard for people to talk about their struggles.”

Reina wrinkled her nose. She didn’t understand what Eleia meant. “So, then, what kind of special magic do you have?”

Eleia looked up from her knitting. “I can see people’s struggles, know what paths they are called to walk, the paths they long to walk, their hopes and dreams. Mostly, all I can do is offer them a little help in finding their paths.” She reached out and touched Reina’s hair. “It’s a small thing, a few words to comfort a struggling soul, and sometimes people don’t want to find the path that’s meant for them. They want things that aren’t on their road. In those cases, people tend to find my words a burden and a challenge. That’s the trouble with magic. It does so little, really.”

Reina shook her head. “Magic seems so big and powerful. How can you say it does only a little? Look at what the Red Wizard has done to our whole country!”

Eleia’s expression was sad. “He is one who rejected good paths for the one that brings the most grief. People have a way of doing that, but telling them so only makes it worse.”

Reina’s eyelids grew heavy, and Austyn’s warmth next to her lulled her towards sleep. But still questions tugged at her mind. “What about me? What’s my path?”

“Child, if I tried to tell it to you, you wouldn’t be ready to hear it. It is better if you find it on your own. That is always better.”

Reina wanted to object, to say she would rather know now if she’d become a warrior or not, but she felt too tired. Behind her heavy eyelids, a vision grew: a unicorn. Its kind eyes fixed on her, trying to tell her something—but she couldn’t quite figure out what.

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The days blurred, one into the next. Reina wasn’t sure how long they spent in Eleia’s valley. Austyn recovered and became his usual lively self. He tried to practice with the Gold Wizard, but when he could, he snuck away to sit with Eleia and talk to her. She explained what herbs did what, where their names came from, and the origins of various other words and how their runes depicted them. While Reina didn’t mind such things, she didn’t see how they would work towards the defeat of the Red Wizard, and so she usually wandered off to practice the stances the Gold Wizard had taught her with the Unicorn Sword until Austyn felt up to practicing magic again.

Slowly, he improved, making light or fire or wind. Often Reina felt the magic rushing around him, and it excited her. If she could feel Austyn’s magic, then perhaps Eleia was right, and hiding somewhere deep inside her was the magic she longed for. Yet when she sat by herself and tried to copy what he had done, nothing happened. She didn’t see how not going with Austyn would help her find her own magic—whatever Eleia had said about “giving him up.”

The Gold Wizard, however, seemed ecstatic. With each new magical success in practice, he grew more and more animated.

“I have it!” he cried one evening, startling Austyn so much he dropped his spoon into his soup and splashed it over the table.

“I’ve been doing some extra reading.” The Gold Wizard pulled out the prophecy paper and put it on the table. “I thought ‘with heart’ meant something slightly different, but after looking at this other reference…. “He waved a book from Eleia’s bookshelf. “I think it means the Red Wizard has used a spell to take his own heart out and protect it, so no one can kill him.”

“What?” Reina frowned at him. The prophecy had been a bit obscure before, but what the Gold Wizard said now made even less sense.

“Austyn must use the medallion and the sword to magically open the chest where the Red Wizard keeps his heart and destroy it, and that will end him! See, it’s even easier than we first thought. Austyn doesn’t have to fight him—he just has to have the special magic to open the case and destroy the heart…. So, we’ll get the sword, then sneak into the Red Wizard’s castle and work the spell, open the case, and destroy the heart. Nothing easier!”

Reina’s frown deepened. It didn’t make much sense, and it certainly didn’t sound any easier. What, did the Gold Wizard think that they could march right up to the Red Wizard’s heart and destroy it before he noticed them? In a way, it sounded harder than just fighting him and killing him. But, before saying so, she glanced at Austyn. He stared at the Gold Wizard, his eyes wide and his mouth open in a little round “oh.” She didn’t want to discourage him.

“Sure, sounds like it’ll be easy,” she said, stuffing her fears deep inside her. “Hey, Austyn, isn’t that good news? You don’t have to actually fight him. We can have, um, something else happening to distract him while you do it too.”

“Brilliant! A diversion. Just what we need!” The Gold Wizard stabbed his hand up in the air. “We’ll set out tomorrow morning, first thing.”

While eager to get on with their quest and see the Red Wizard destroyed and get home to Mama and Papa, Reina felt a pang of sorrow the next day saying goodbye to Eleia. The old woman hugged her.

“Be yourself, Reina, and you’ll see it all through to the end. You have more in there than you know.”

Reina giggled. Eleia’s words made her sound like she was stuffed full of strange items she couldn’t see. She gathered the bag of food Eleia had given her, slung it over her shoulder, and joined the Gold Wizard.

Austyn buried his head in Eleia’s skirts, his body shaking with silent tears. That made Reina feel uncomfortable for several reasons—not just because he was upset, but because he clung to Eleia, not her. She sighed and walked away to avoid the mess of feelings inside of her, turning back to see Eleia talking into Austyn’s ear. He wiped his eyes, nodded, and finally came to join them.

“Well then, off we go!” The Gold Wizard sounded downright cheery.