Page 6 of The Mage on the Hill
REALLY, ISwaking up twice in a row in the same place too much to ask?Toby blinked carefully, trying to focus on his new surroundings. Not the neglected basement room with its leather-creak sofa, no doubts there. Sunlight threaded through filigree curtains that breathed gently in a soft breeze through an open garden window.
Toby turned his head in agonizingly slow increments so he wouldn’t wake the construction crews lurking in his head. Four-poster. Dresser. Nightstand. All matching, all carved and turned into elegant shapes, though each piece was probably too heavy for him to shift.
The ceiling even had a crystal light fixture with one of those round plaster decorative whatchamacallit thingies. Recall of fancy words would have to wait a bit.
Not a hospital, though, that was also certain. He’d probably scared the hell out of Darius, who had taken him to one of the guild-approved hospices. Not that he blamed the man. Gods, no. All that effort gone to waste, though, and his last hope finished circling the drain. He had nothing left to do now but die.
The thought weighed his limbs down, bleeding a poisoned lassitude inside. That was a fancy word. Lassitude. He supposed he could amuse himself with vocabulary while he waited.
Wait….
If this was a hospice room, why could he think with relative clarity? Where were the drugs that were supposed to keep him in a near-comatose state? With a frown of concentration, Toby rolled to the edge of the admittedly comfy bed and managed to sit up with the help of the headboard. From there, he snagged a corner of one of the curtains and tugged it open. He scooted forward but still couldn’t see much more than a tree directly outside. Finally, he used the windowsill to force his abused and shuddering muscles to allow him to stand.
A garden lay below, unkempt but cheerful enough with a weeping cherry shadowing a little pond. Bright shapes darted here and there in the dark water from one stone outcropping to another. Humming came from somewhere, a tune Toby couldn’t immediately identify, the notes deep and breathy.Whisper humming. It’s a thing. Rustling underlay the soft humming, at first a disembodied sound, but then the source became apparent as the branches of the weeping cherry trembled.
A pair of work boots peeked out from beneath the sweeping branches, more visible by the moment as the humming person pruned the branches back from the fishpond. A moment later, the mysterious gardener stepped into sight.
Darius.
No hospice, then. Darius hadn’t chucked him out and had upgraded Toby to an actual guest room. He couldn’t think about what that meant yet. His head was about to fall off his shoulders. Still he watched, unwilling to look away yet. Something about Darius’s hands, their sure competence even with the occasional tremor running through them—No, no, no. I can’t start skipping down that thought road. I’m lonely and sick and he’s the first person to offer anything besides death. That’s what I’m reacting to. He’s old. He’s half-crazy. He’s so not my type.
But it was hard not to think about how gentle those gaunt, chapped hands were with the cherry branches. Toby crawled back into bed, not quite up to hoping yet, not quite drifting back into despair. Both of those things took energy that he didn’t have. The attack of wild magic had probably happened because he’d pushed himself too fast, too hard. Better to just rest and carefully not think.
A SHARPrapping accompanied by the scent of bacon woke him later.Why is bacon knocking on the door?
The door shoved open and Toby blinked in muzzy confusion. The large blob in the doorway wasn’t bacon, of course, but Darius, apparentlywithbacon. He struggled to sit up, unnerved by the glare from that single blue eye. Was it just a default setting, being angry around other people? Or was it Toby specifically?
Oooh, that bed tray had more than bacon on it. Eggs with the bacon, a bagel, cream cheese, orange juice…. “Did you go shopping?” Toby cringed even as he blurted it out. One of these days, he’d figure out that whole mouth-brain connection.
“Delivery,” Darius muttered as he placed the tray across Toby’s lap.
“Thank you. Wow. This is—” Toby stopped himself from sayingtoo muchas that one eye narrowed. “Great. This is really great.”
Darius pointed emphatically to the tray. Only that before he turned and shuffled out. At least he left the door open behind him.
The comfy bed, the wonderful smells of breakfast, the soft breeze teasing at the sheers—this was heaven or as close to heaven as he was likely to get right now. But whatwasall this? Obviously he hadn’t killed Darius or destroyed the house with his last wild magic fit, so the exiled mage must have had a way to contain the blast. He had a fuzzy memory of Darius roaring at him to get down, some odd rumbling from the ground underneath him, but not much more than that.
Was this his alternative to hospice? If it was, Toby supposed he couldn’t complain. Or was Darius actually offering to try toteachhim? Seemed a long shot, but why else keep him there?Awful lot of trouble to go to if he’s just waiting for someone to come get me.
“Guess I better assume I’m a student and do what sensei says,” Toby told the eggs as he dug in. The eggs made no protest, and the food really was great after too long on institutional meals. He managed a little bit of everything—half the bagel, a piece of bacon, most of the eggs—before he had to stop. He hoped Darius didn’t think it was too pitiful a showing, but it was more than he’d eaten in weeks.
He was dozing when Darius came back. That single blue eye roved over the remains of breakfast, though Darius’s only comment was a soft huff, which could’ve been good or bad. Who knew? Toby was debating whether he should get out of bed—for a shower at least if not to ask what he should do next—when Darius returned a second time. On this visit he brought a canvas bag and an oversized lap desk with a fabric beanbag underside, the cheery yellow ducky pattern completely at odds with Darius’s glower.
He plopped the absurd lap desk atop Toby’s legs and set the bag beside him on the bed.
“Web.”
Well, that’s all cheery and instructive. Toby opened the bag and peered inside, hoping the contents would make things clear before he had to ask annoying questions. All sorts of unrelated objects filled the bag—a matchbox, a little plastic bag of dirt, a miniature bottle of water, and a number of other things he couldn’t make out yet.
He chanced a quizzical glance toward Darius, who pointed to the bag, then the lap desk and repeated, “Web.”
Dirt… water… fire?“Oh. Um. Really? You want me to build an arcana web. Like they use to teach little kids?”
His possibly new mentor leaned against one of the posts at the foot of the bed, crossed his arms over his chest, and glared, which might have been more intimidating if he hadn’t been wearing a ratty cardigan with shiny elbow patches.
Okay. Right. Building a web. It wasn’t like the webs for kids, really. Those boards had a web already drawn with little indentations where each major and minor arcanum symbol was supposed to fit. The symbol markers were usually plastic, though the ones at his parents’ house had been colored stones. The lap desk in front of him didn’t have any web lines or spots for markers, and the items he pulled from the bag appeared to be random household bits and pieces.
From Darius’s imitation of a perpetually irritated statue, Toby concluded he wouldn’t get any help regarding what item represented what arcanum location.
