Gift of the Unmage (13 page)

Thea spared a thought to wonder why she had almost forgotten about the Pass medallion since she’d stepped out of the Alphiri Portal and into Cheveyo’s hands, but the light was fading and she had no time to meditate on the matter. It was a Pass—her father had neglected to mention exactly
how
it worked, but it was supposed to take her home.

She fished it out of her tunic, untangled the chain from around the thong on which the feathers hung, slipped it over her head and held it in the cupped palm of her hand. One side of it was smooth and rounded, like a polished river pebble. The other side bore an engraving, so stylized that she could not really tell what it was supposed to represent, but there in the center of the medallion disk was a symbol she recognized.

Each of the trading polities—the Faele, the Alphiri, the Dwarrowim, and a number of smaller partners—had their own sigil, a symbol of their people, which was used as a seal for their trade agreements and contracts. The humans had one, too—a human form within a circle, adapted from a classical drawing by Leonardo daVinci, one of the best-known creative mages of human history. It was this that was carved on Thea’s medallion.

It suddenly seemed obvious what she should do. She touched the relief image with her finger as the last of the sunset began to dim from the western sky. Then she waited.

The Portal approached just as it had done once before, a distant glow of light coming closer, becoming larger, taking shape and form and solidity until it finally rose before her, the gateway home. It halted, shimmering, a few paces away from the Road, as though its presence would not be sanctioned on that holy ground. The Portal’s Guardian took a step out of the gateway. Thea wondered briefly if it could have been the same Alphiri who had brought her here, perhaps even the one who had been so furious at having lost his prize in the woods behind Thea’s home. She never could tell them apart; they all looked alike to her, aloof and soulless and coldly beautiful.

“Galathea Winthrop, we come as agreed,” the Alphiri Guardian said. “The bargain is concluded—are you ready to depart?”

Thea took one last look around her, at the mesas now brooding in shadows, at the high desert sky with a scattering of glittering stars, and then stepped carefully over the edge of the
Road into the tumbled rocks beside it. She did not turn, did not see, but knew as surely as if she had watched it happen that behind her the Road had vanished as if it had never been, gone as soon as her feet had left it.

She wondered if the Alphiri had even known it was there.

“I am ready,” she said, closing her hand around the Pass. “Take me home.”

1.

I
T HAD BEEN COLD
dark February when Thea and her father had boarded the airplane to New Mexico, bound for Cheveyo’s country, but the air was scented with late summer as the Alphiri Portal deposited Thea near her home and winked out of existence behind her. Dark green leaves of the big-leaf maple trees and the fernlike fronds of cedars nodded in the slight breeze as she made her way from the woods. A squirrel chittered at her from a cedar branch, and something unseen, a bird or a small animal, rustled in the underbrush before falling silent.

A raven, sitting on a log sprouting a thicket of new growth, stayed put for a long time as Thea approached, keeping its beady eyes on her. Then it cawed loudly in a manner Thea could swear
had been dripping with resentment, as though the bird had something against her personally, and took flight.

Thea suddenly remembered the raven that had escaped the Alphiri lying in wait for her in the woods, the ones into whose clutches she had sent Corey the Trickster, and followed the raven with her eyes until it disappeared into the trees. She felt uncomfortable, awkward, could not seem to shake the unpleasant sensation of being watched—could not wipe the image of the fury on the face of the thwarted Alphiri. She knew that she had played by the rules, that the bargain had been closed, perfectly concluded with every nuance of the contract fulfilled. That didn’t help. She saw glowing Alphiri eyes peering greedily at her from every shadow.

Her family was out in the backyard. Thea could hear the gabble of voices as she approached, and a whiff of barbecue smoke drifted toward her. They were too busy at first to notice her as she rounded the corner of the house, and she stood for a moment observing them, realizing with a sudden pang just how much she had missed them all.

It was full summer, and all Thea’s brothers
were at home at the same time. Anthony, the oldest and the one most conscious of his dignity, was lounging back in a green plastic Adirondack chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. He looked on with benign indifference at Doug and Eddie sitting cross-legged on the grass, devouring hot dogs and baked potatoes dripping with butter. Ben was reading by himself in a corner, as usual, his round glasses perched on the end of his nose. And Charlie was poking fun at Frankie, who appeared to be trying to turn a pinecone into a lizard. He had only partly succeeded, because the pinecone had four legs and a long swishing tail but no head (and hence no eyes) and was therefore capable of escaping Frankie’s clutches but not of seeing where it was going. The lizard-cone was skittering all over the lawn, bouncing off people’s feet and lawn furniture, with Frankie chasing after it in hot pursuit.

Thea’s father, sporting a long green chef’s apron, was manning the barbecue itself, ignoring the ruckus until the fleeing cone skidded against his own bare foot. It must still have had prickly edges, because he jerked his foot away quickly, making a small gesture with his free hand in the
cone’s direction. Its feet instantly disappeared, its tail flicked frantically a couple of times before vanishing in midair, and the pinecone was finally still on the ground, inanimate once more.

“Frankie,
try
and control your…,” Paul Winthrop began, and then looked up and saw Thea standing there.

He threw down the barbecue fork and ran toward his prodigal daughter, wiping his hands on the apron.

“Thea! Oh, my God! They said they would let me know when you—They were going to call me—When did you get here? How did I not sense anything?”

Thea had to wait to reply, swept into his fierce bear hug. By that time her mother had arrived, and had to have her own chance at a hug, laughing and crying all at once. Thea got the distinct and uncomfortable impression that there was a great deal of relief mixed into the simple joy at her homecoming, as though Ysabeau had had her doubts that Thea would
ever
return.

Her brothers had clustered around her, too, chattering excitedly, with Eddie pawing at her with greasy, buttery fingers and great affection. All of them except Anthony, who had remained in his
chair, content to smile languidly and wave in Thea’s direction as though he were visiting royalty.

“What
are
you wearing?” Eddie said through a mouthful of baked potato.

“I…,” Thea began, fending him off, but she was given no chance to reply.

“I saved a coyote claw for you!” Frankie said happily. “They shot one up in the hills. I saw it when they brought it down, and I asked if I could have a claw for you.”

“Thank you,” Thea said with a grimace. She had an unexpected and wholly unwelcome vision of trying to explain to Corey just what she was doing with the knucklebone of his kin.

“Bobbo disappeared for a week or so after you left,” Doug said, suddenly reminded of that event as a stately black-and-white cat appeared from the bushes at the far side of the lawn and sat twitching its tail and narrowing its emerald green eyes in Thea’s direction. “Mom was really worried. I think he just missed you and tried to go looking…”

In the middle of the melee the back door opened to reveal Thea’s Aunt Zoë, closely followed by two freshly baked apple pies floating serenely in midair.

“Welcome home!” Zoë called out, flicking out a hand and expertly sending the pies to a resting place on the picnic table before hurrying over to the chattering throng around Thea.

“Are you hungry?” Ysabeau said. “I think the burgers are just about ready.”

“If you put them out first,” said Doug laconically, glancing back at the barbecue where something was beginning to smoke ominously.

Paul Winthrop shot a quick look over in that direction, and uttered a sharp monosyllable. The smoking stopped.

“Come on over here and tell us everything,” Eddie said, having finally swallowed the last of his potato and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving both far greasier than either had been before. “Where
were
you, anyway? All Dad would say was that you were in a kind of school camp. It’s all very mysterious.”

“You missed such a great summer!” Frankie said. He was clutching his pinecone, and Thea was careful to avoid any close contact with the object—being Frankie, he might try again just to show off, and this time give it nothing but a set of sharp teeth.

“Later,” Ysabeau said. “Doug, you’d better
get another hot dog. I think somebody stepped on yours.”

“That was me,” Eddie said brightly.

Doug cuffed him, but not hard, since he would get another hot dog out of the deal.

They milled back to the barbecue, everyone talking at once. Zoë had slipped an arm around Thea’s waist and now she leaned down and planted a quick kiss on Thea’s hair.

“Tell your brothers nothing until you’ve talked to your folks,” she whispered into Thea’s ear, and then lifted her face, wearing a broad smile of genuine delight. “I knew you were back,” she said confidently out loud. “The sun was singing.”

“Oh, Zoë,” Ysabeau said with an indulgent smile.

“What was its voice like?” Thea asked, looking up.

“Rich and gold,” Zoë said complacently. “And strong. And gentle.”

Thea smiled, remembering the voice in which Tawaha had spoken to her back in the First World.

“Oh, yes,” she said with feeling.

Both her parents looked up sharply—exchanging a swift glance with each other—but
neither chose to pick up on it, not here in front of Thea’s brothers.

Luckily Frankie had a few exploits he simply could not wait to tell Thea about.

“I figured it out!” he said happily as Thea was being plied with picnic food: Paul flipping a hamburger onto a paper plate, Ysabeau adding potatoes and salad, Zoë fussing with her apple pies. “I figured
everything
out, and wait till I get back to school and show them how it’s done!”

“Don’t take the pinecone with you,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, they’d never believe you,” leered Doug.

“It was an accident,” Frankie said hotly. “I’d like to see
you
do better!”

“There will be,” Paul said calmly, “no further messing around with pinecones. Thank you.”

Frankie turned back to Thea. “But I have to show you,” he said. “I have it in my room. The thing—you know, the
thing
—the thing that you…” He remembered belatedly what the “thing” he was talking about had meant to Thea herself, and paused for a moment, swallowing. And then decided it didn’t matter anymore. “The assignment, remember? The steel ball?”

“Yeah,” Thea said carefully.

“I did it—I figured it out! I have to show you later.”

“I made a cockatrice,” Eddie said smugly.

“Yeah, and got detention for it,” Doug said. “The teachers usually don’t like critters bent on mischief running loose around the school.”

“Well, they might as well keep both of
you
home, then,” said Ben mildly, fussing with his glasses.

“Oh, please,” said Anthony. “Kids’ games.”

“You were one, too, once,” Ysabeau said. “There was the time that you—”

“Uh. Over and done with.” Anthony stood up rather faster than the Adirondack chair allowed and almost lost his balance before gaining his footing. Doug and Eddie looked up at him, smirking. “I think,” Anthony said, “I want some lemonade.”

“We finished it,” Zoë said.

“I’ll make some more,” Anthony said, starting toward the kitchen.

Ysabeau gave her firstborn a long hard look. “
You?
Volunteering? Who are you and what have you done with my son?”

“No spells,” Paul said without lifting his eyes
from the grill. “You always make it too sour when you make it that way. Either squeeze the lemons or do without until someone makes more.”

Anthony looked as though he wanted to reply, but then thought better of it and stalked off toward the house with his chin held high in a manner that was almost theatrical.

Behind him, one of the younger brothers giggled.

Thea’s absence had been explained away in mundane terms to her brothers. They had all been sent to summer camps over the years. Two of them, Doug and Eddie, had been to one that same year, and assumed that Thea’s stories would be identical to their own—hiking, swimming, and such—only more boring because hers would be “girly.” Still, she’d been away for a while—and she had been missed.

There were questions, of course, but Thea managed to come up with replies bland enough to nip in the bud any blossoming of dangerous curiosity. There was only one bad moment—when Anthony, having got over his huff and succumbed to the much stronger pull of his curiosity, had asked, in his usual languidly sar
donic manner, whether Thea’s magical talents had improved any over the summer.

“Well,” Thea said after a moment of silence, “I couldn’t bring that cone of Frankie’s back to life.”

“
Frankie
couldn’t bring that cone of Frankie’s back to life,” said Eddie, smirking.

“I could so!” Frankie said, rousing in defense of his new talents. “I showed you before, with the slug.”

Thea winced, despite herself. “What did you do to the slug, Frankie?”

Frankie shot her a wounded look, as though he had believed that she would be on his side. “I turned it into a banana,” he said.

“Frankie, it was a banana slug to begin with,” said Eddie.

“I should have put it under your pillow. And then turned it back into a slug.”

Zoë grimaced. “Please,” she said plaintively, “I’m eating.”

It was a signal for a contest between Frankie and Eddie as to who could think of the most disgusting things, both with and without the aid of magic, to be done with one of the Pacific Northwest’s huge yellow banana slugs. Zoë
finally heaved a deep sigh and pushed away her plate.

“Come on, Thea,” Zoë said at last, getting up and stretching, “I’ll help you get unpacked before I go home.”

“But I don’t…,” Thea began, and then caught a conspiratorial glance.

“Anything for the laundry?” Ysabeau said, looking slantwise at her husband and receiving a tiny nod. “The entire bag, if you’re anything like the boys. They came home and just poured their luggage into the washer.”

“Mom,” said Eddie reproachfully.

Frankie snickered; Eddie picked up the abandoned pinecone, which had been lying close to his feet, and threw it at Frankie, who ducked and ran. Anthony leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, as if the whole thing was juvenile and undignified and beneath him. Paul distracted the others by returning functioning legs to the cone, which chased the two boys.

In the resulting mayhem, Thea, Ysabeau, and Zoë slipped quietly into the house.

Thea’s room was much as she had left it. It was a perfectly ordinary room—a single bed, neatly made with a bright quilt on top; a desk
still piled with all the things that had been occupying her mind before she had left home; even a few pieces of clothing neatly draped over the chair in the corner. On the wall was the magi-poster she had received for her twelfth birthday, in which a landscape went through a cycle of delicately changing seasons. It was summerish now, apparently following the seasons in the world outside; a faint scent of apricots came from it, and there was a distant lazy buzzing of bees in the background. But there were already hints in the corners that another season was coming, with one or two leaves shading into gold as you gazed into the image. It all seemed breathlessly luxurious to Thea now, compared to the house hewn from living rock in which she had been living for the past couple of months. Ysabeau closed the door behind them, and then spelled a magical barrier line across it. Anyone simply eavesdropping would hear a murmur of voices and intermittent laughter. Anyone trying to enter without an invitation to do so would find the room apparently empty.

“Are you all right?” Ysabeau asked, reaching out to brush Thea’s cheek gently.

“I’m fine, Mom. I’m better than fine.”

Ysabeau sat down rather suddenly on Thea’s bed. “I was afraid,” she said very simply.

“Did it work?” asked Zoë, more pragmatically. “Don’t be silly, Ys, Paul must have known that she’d be okay. He wouldn’t have handed his child over to just anyone. I’m not certain of where you went, Thea, but we all know
why
—did it work?”