Wizard of Jatte by Rowan Erlking (librera reader txt) 📕

The river water rose over him like a giant hand pulling most of the water so that the bottom had only small puddles between limp river plants with wigging tadpoles left. The frog had hopped out from the top of that wave onto the rock then perched to watch the water crash right on top of Migdrin, pressing him down into the river bottom.

Dalance froze.

Kinnerlin heaved up from the river bottom as if pushed out, perhaps dredged out by the same wave, coughing and sputtering mouthfuls of water back into the river as Theissen rushed over. The eight-year-old reached out to pull him onto the riverbank. Only a few seconds later Midgrin clawed his way out, choking and gasping.

“Kinnerlin!” Tolbetan dropped the feedbags he had been carrying and ran down the hill to the river edge to where Theissen managed to get his older brother to shore. “Are you okay?”

Lonse Shoemakerson stood on the hill next to where Tolbetan had been, just staring.

“Are you all right?” Theissen asked, patting Kinnerlin on the back as soon as Tolbetan heaved him up under his arms. Theissen then reached to his brother’s mouth and pulled from it what looked like a stream of water.

Kinnerlin hacked and then breathed in a long breath, watching the water snake back into the river. He looked over at little brother, his heart pounding fast, breathing in deep and slow, and looked around himself, then nodded. “I’m fine.”

The carpenter’s sons helped their brother onto the bank, though Dalance crossed through the river to Migdrin.

Staggering like a drunken man, Migdrin barely got onto his feet as the small river rolled back down over the rounded rocks as if nothing had happened. He whipped around with a glare towards the shore. His friend was right behind him. Dalance shoved him back in the river.

“What did you do that for?” Migdrin shouted, scrambling once more to his feet after landing deep into the river rocks.

Dalance jerked away from him. “You nearly drowned my brother! What do you think?”

The shoemaker’s son narrowed his eyes. “I was only teasing.”

“He could have died!” Dalance turned his back on him, sloshing back to the bank. His other brothers had Kinnerlin resting on a rock just breathing in and out to prove he was fine.

“Get real! I could have died!” Migdrin stomped after him, slapping his wet hand to his chest. He kept a fair distance from Theissen, though, when he made it to shore. That boy was still casting eye daggers at him. “Your kid brother the thief nearly drowned me!”

Dalance whipped around where he was. “What did you say? Did you say something bad about Theissen?”

Migdrin drew back. There was something in Dalance’s eyes that said he would drown his friend himself if Migdrin said another word about his little brother.

Turning once more with a set jaw, Dalance reached down to help his nearly drowned brother onto his feet along with Tolbetan and Theissen. “Let’s go home.”

“You mean I carried those feedbags here all the way for nothing?” Tolbetan whined, slumping his shoulders.

Theissen smirked, reaching out a hand. “I’ll carry one back.”

“I’ll take the other,” Dalance said, also propping Kinnerlin up.

They climbed up the hill, passing Lonse who had not budged from where he stopped. They collected both bags and horses. The boy watched Theissen and only Theissen as they walked by. The carpenter’s son had not noticed, too busy reaching out to Kinnerlin’s clothes, pulling off the water that soaked him through as if they were nothing but cornhusks. In seconds, Kinnerlin’s clothes were perfectly dry though his hair was still wet.

“Now Mom won’t be mad,” Lonse heard Theissen say.

Kinnerlin gave his brother an appreciative grin, wrapping his arm around his shoulder. “You sure are handy to have around.”

Both boys laughed, though Theissen blushed.

Dalance did not spend much time with Migdrin after that, but then he had been busy with the last preparations for his adulthood ceremony so no one could tell they had a falling out. Usually he worked in the carpentry shop alongside his father from sunrise to sunset. They had several small orders that still needed to be filled. And though Kinnerlin was skilled enough to do most of the work with them, their father relied mostly on his eldest to put them ahead of schedule so that when he was gone they would not feel the loss of good hands as much.

In the few off-hours Dalance had, he often spent them with Theissen helping him out with his woodwork. Theissen was learning how to piece simple furniture together. He had only just barely made his first stool.

“It’s not bad,” Dalance said, turning it around in his hands before setting it on the ground.

Theissen peered at it with some discouragement. “It is hard to make the legs even. And I couldn’t bore the holes right. It’s not good at all.”

Snorting, Dalance shook his head, squatting down so that he could sit on the stool. “It is fine. Look. It holds my weight. It is balanced. Besides, you’re only eight. I didn’t make a stool like this until I was nine.”

“Liar.” But Theissen was smiling, giving his brother a shove as if to knock him off. However, it really was sturdy. “I heard Dad brag to the shoemaker that you were making stools at seven.”

“Lopsided ones,” Dalance retorted. He got up. “Yours are just as good as mine when I was your age. You’ll do fine when you get to be as old as me.”

That only encouraged a sigh. Theissen pulled his stool over and sat on it. “You really are going away soon, aren’t you?”

Dalance nodded. He rested himself on the sawhorse.

“I’ll miss you.”

Dalance rubbed his brother’s hair so that it stuck up in all directions. “I’ll miss you too, but I’ve got to do it.”

Theissen was silent for a moment then sighed again. “I know.”

They said nothing for a while. Instead they listened to the doves that roosted in the rafters, cooing with contentment though later their father was sure to chase them off. Their droppings speckled their roosts, the remains of their old nests still crammed in the corners of the beams. The spring wind rustled the shop’s shingles, the glass windows also rattling somewhat. Something moved among the sawdust, the rustling of the wood chips and shavings stirring only slightly. Perhaps it was mice, though their cats seemed to keep those in check. There was something nice about just sitting in there, smelling the various odors of wood pitch and saps. Distantly they could detect the faint stink of wood stain from the barely dry furniture they had just been treating earlier that day. It was a smell they were well familiar with. It was the smell of home. All the sounds were of home too. And though Dalance knew he would hear and smell those kinds of things in other places, even in the shop he would some day set up, somehow he felt that any other shop would feel foreign to him. Of course, a great deal of that had to do with the various hand impressions left in the wooden walls that Theissen had made when he was barely walking, or the small collection of sawdust and wood curl molded dolls his father had saved on a high shelf. Indeed, nowhere else would he ever see that.

Glancing at his brother, Dalance tilted his head. Closing one eye, he said after peeking once beyond the open door, “I know Dad told me not to ask you this until you were much older, but since I might not be able to see you again for a long time, I have to know. Theissen, how do you do it?”

His little brother looked up with a blink. “Do what?”

“Magic,” Dalance said.

Theissen tilted his head like his brother, resting his hand on his cheek. “Magic? You mean the same stuff that Magician does? Move things?”

Dalance nodded.

Theissen just shrugged. “I ask it to.”

Dalance nearly choked, dropping his head as if suddenly too tired to move. “No. No. I mean, I can ask a chair to move, and it won’t go anywhere, but you—you made that river rise up. You can make anything move, even up hill. How do you do that? They don’t obey anyone else?”

“They obey the Magician,” Theissen said.

“Yes, but he knows special words to say. Spells.” Dalance crouched down next to him again on the sawdust. “You don’t say anything to make them move. I’ve watched you.”

Drawing his arms in to himself as if very uncomfortable with the conversation, Theissen frowned. “Well, it isn’t like water and things understand Jatten. It’s not like that.”

“And that frog?” Dalance moved in closer.

“Frogs don’t talk like people do,” Theissen started to sound annoyed. “I just, well, I sort of tugged and he came, like he was curious.”

“Tugged? Tugged on what?”

Theissen lowered his eyes. “I don’t think you can see it. Only I can.”

“See what?” Dalance asked “The magic?”

His little brother nodded then shrugged. “I guess.”

Feeling his heart beat with excitement, Dalance started to whisper. “What does it look like?”

Theissen looked up at him, his eyes flickering anxiously. “You don’t think I am strange, then?”

Shaking his head eagerly, Dalance scooted closer. “No. It sounds great. I wish I could see it. What is it like?”

Lifting his chin, Theissen suddenly smiled. “It is like that river. It is everywhere, flowing, going places, moving always.”

“What color is it?” Dalance asked.

Laughing, Theissen said, “It doesn’t really have a color. It is kind of like Mom’s sheer curtains. You can see through it, but you can also see it. And some of it can be very distracting, especially when the magician uses his words to change the flow.”

The magician. They didn’t often talk about him except to warn Theissen to stay out of his way. The man never looked kindly on the boy and the magician had become rather contentious toward the carpenter’s family since Theissen had been born. Despite this, Theissen was well aware and observant of the man. It was almost as if the very act of the magician using a spell drew the boy to him, and then to trouble.

“So magic flows like a river?” Dalance said, changing the topic somewhat.

Theissen nodded again. “Yes, though sometimes it stagnates and gets very smelly. When it knots up like that I really don’t like it.”

“Stagnates? Smelly? And what do you mean ‘knots up’?” Dalance leaned back against the sawhorse again. All the smells he could breathe in that room were pleasant.

There was a rested smile on Theissen’s face. He looked relieved that he could talk about these things, almost as if he had been worried that he was doing something wrong by using magic.

“Well, the flow is also like strings of yarn. If you leave it alone it stays in order, but if meddled with, it knots up, kind of like tangles of a rat’s nest. And it smells like, I don’t know, old stinky rotten something.” He picked up a scrap of wood off the floor. “If you change a thing different from what it really is, it gets like that. You know, like making a piece of wood a diamond or a gold coin.”

“You can do that?” Dalance’s face had frozen with increased surprise.

“I did it once. What I got was awful, and I changed them back,” Theissen said.

“But why?” Dalance was already imagining all the gold and jewels they could make from just common wood scraps. “We’d be rich!”

Theissen only shrugged. “No. They weren’t real. Something was wrong with them. The flow stopped and the stuff I made smelled funny. And when I touched them, they made me feel funny. I had to change them back. I was afraid they might hurt somebody.”

What he was describing connected in Dalance’s mind. He had heard of these things from his uncles who lived near the forest Brakirs Town where there were demons. Some magic, he knew, was dangerous. The reasons for why had always