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I put my laptop on the coffee table, my feet in Auris’s lap, and settled in to listen.

8

~Auris

Tove had not lied to Owain, nor had he made false promises. To remind you, the time was not such that either might have been a given. That Owain agreed—and agreed so easily—spoke of his very adult desperation on one hand and childish hope on the other.

Well, I shouldn’t call anyone’s hopes childish. Hope can be magic. But then, Owain hoped the way a child might hope when he hides under the stairs on Christmas Eve in a bid to see Santa come down the chimney. It was unrealistic.

And yet, not so with Tove. Although, there was a sort of test for Owain. We had to get back to the island, of course, and Tove was in no mood to make us travel by foot or cart.

When we had finished the bread in the marketplace, Tove decided we should leave the village and start the way along a well-traveled road.

“Is your castle that way?” Owain asked. He had turned Tove into some sort of fairy-tale lord, me into the noble heir.

“It is in that general direction, as the crow flies,” Tove replied. He fixed me with a hard silver stare. “You do not approve.”

I lowered my eyes and shook my head. “It’s not my place to approve or to tell you what to do.”

“Perhaps not, but you’re old enough and experienced enough to have an opinion that isn’t just gilded in fancies and follies. Speak your mind, and I will judge the merit of its contents.”

That was a very typical Tove thing to say. He had lived through the golden age of natural philosophy, and whenever he told stories of Athens, his eyes got a faraway look that made me wish I could see back into the past through them.

Owain glanced up at us, but he kept quiet. When he wasn’t looking, I jerked my chin his way.

Tove gave me the look of a displeased teacher. “Have I not taught you that words are like wind and music? They can fill any crack, and they can carry invisible meanings like pollen or a story caught in a melody.”

I cleared my throat. “Of course. I just kept thinking about that baker. I imagined what he would do if he found rats feasting on his grain, those sharp-toothed creatures people say are vile and evil. What if someone told the baker there lived a rat in his grain?”

“He’d get a mouser, for sure,” Owain said. “There’s not a baker who doesn’t at least have one.”

Tove smiled at Owain’s innocent comment. “You are very right, young Owain. He would get a mouser. They have sharper teeth than rats, and good mousers are rare. Even a whole nest of chatty rats wouldn’t stand a chance against one, don’t you agree, Owain?”

“Yes, sire,” Owain said, the honorific coming off his lips a little wobbly. “You can always get a second if there’s really a rat plague.”

At this, Tove looked properly amused. “Do you hear, Auris? You can get a second.”

It was quite clear that Tove disagreed with my reservations. But as I said, when the sun started its descent, Owain’s first real test came.

By then, the road was empty and we were alone. I knew Tove would have known if humans had been near enough to see us, so I wasn’t worried about that. I was worried Owain would start screaming once he was in Tove’s arms, that the boy would fight Tove’s hold, drop to his death… I did not like the idea of that at all.

Tove knelt in front of Owain. Night had fully fallen, and we could see but outlines—“we” meaning Owain and myself. Vampires see quite clearly at night.

“Young Owain,” Tove said, “I will share the first secret that you are to keep now. Do you promise to keep it, as my ward’s servant?”

Owain seemed confused from the way he swayed on his feet and bumped into me, and I was certain that he had no idea what a ward was.

“Yes,” he said in the end, his voice like a summer flower coming up to bloom a season too soon.

“Good. What I have not yet told you is that I’m a magician. Not the kind you see in the village sometimes, with their cheap charms that will offer you Thor’s protection or Frey’s. I can do real magic.”

“You can?” Owain sounded eager. “Are you like Mother Hulda, then? Do you have an apple tree that tells you when its apples are ripe? And a magic oven that always bakes fresh bread?”

Tove hmm-ed. “There are apple trees on my island, but I don’t think they speak, nor does the kitchen hearth as far as I’m aware. So no. But I have to use magic to take us back home, to my castle. Do you understand, Owain?”

“We don’t have to walk there?”

“No, we do not. But for the spell not to fail, you must keep your eyes shut. It’s important, Owain.”