Page 20 of A Tale of Mirth & Magic

“I’m sorry.” But his eyes glinted with laughter. “You’ll be fine, I swear. Here.” He pulled something from a saddlebag near my leg and held it out.

“What, a sugar cube for me too? I promise I’ll be good.” I fluttered my eyelashes. He snorted.

“A snack,” he said, and I took the dried jerky he held out.

“Yummm, thanks.”

Barra started walking along the path again, and Pebble followed without my prompting. I took advantage of my added height and watched him. He moved with grace, comfortable on this quiet forest path in a way he hadn’t been in the tavern.

“So, what about you?” he said.

I started. “What about me?”

He threw a glance over his shoulder at me. “You grilled me about my whole life, my family, everything—tell me more about yourself.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Well. There isn’t that much to tell.”

Barra stayed silent. He was right. I’d convinced him to open up to me. I could share a bit. Even if everything in me wanted to distract him with a joke or well-timed flirtation. Turn the conversation back to him. Or maybe just bolt into the forest…

Come on, girl. Sharing time. You can do this. I swallowed hard. “My mother is a sun elf. My father is a moon elf. I… happened. Accidentally. They didn’t get along, and I didn’t quite… fit. With either of them. Neither of them really wanted a child.”

“I’m sorry, Elikki. That sounds very difficult.”

I took a large bite of jerky. Deliciously smoky, it tasted of citrus and maple. When I’d finished chewing, I took a long swig of water. Barra kept walking silently by my side.

“I left home when I was pretty young. And I’ve been on the road, for the most part, ever since. After learning my jewelry craft from a master many years ago, I became a member of the Artisans Guild, so there are workshops for me to use in most towns and cities across Kurriel.”

I took another ferocious bite, chewing and avoiding Barra’s gaze.

“How young?” he asked after a few moments of silence.

“Fifteen.”

He didn’t reply, and I shifted uncomfortably in the saddle.

“You don’t need to feel sorry for me. I’m happy with my life now,” I said.

“I don’t feel sorry for you,” he said. “I’m just sorry that happened to you. Every child deserves to be raised with love and security.”

My stomach twisted. It was probably the jerky. “Maybe I didn’t have it easy growing up, but who does? At least I found a craft that I love, and I’m good at it. The metal calls to me. It’s enough that I found my own way, in my own time.”

Barra looked at me. “Is it?”

“Yes.”

Silence again, and this time I couldn’t stand it. He pitied me. I should never have shared so much. I felt that familiar rush of anger course through me. It washed over my chest, down my arms, and through my stomach. It burned in the tips of my toes.

I reached for metal around me—the gold bands on my fingers and the silver of my hairstick flowed to my grasp, liquid and pliant. I held one in each hand, reins forgotten in my lap. When I held them in the full grip of my mind, I wrapped silver and gold around my fists in thin loops. Spinning rapidly, shining in the sun. I opened my palms and sent the metal skyward in streaking drips of upward rain.

They fell back to the earth and I scooped them up before they landed, pulling them close to me again. I sent them soaring—silver and gold, gold and silver—through the air around Barra, spinning in an ever-tightening spiral. I almost couldn’t see him through the blurring movement of a hundred tiny shards.

When he began to look alarmed, I tried calling them back to my hands. Shards ricocheted around us. Suddenly, I could feel them slipping from my magical grasp and scrambled to maintain control. Sweat dripped down the back of my neck. Metal pieces began to fling from the spiral into the air, lightly pinging into trees, the grass, far into the distance. No no no.

Desperately, I tried tightening my hold. The fiery anger inside turned to panic as more and more of the metal escaped. In a last-ditch effort, I called the remaining pieces toward me, slowing and soothing them into simple mounds of metal once again. I barely had half left. The others were gone, lost. Scattered across the forest floor. Frustration bit bitterly at me, and I cursed my powers for the thousandth time in my life.

Barra watched me steadily. We had stopped on the path. I was breathing hard, power tingling through my fingers.

My long hair, now let loose, fell around me in waves. Barra stepped closer. He gently pried open each hand where they clutched the small clumps of metal. Gold. Silver. They were warm in my palms.