FIVE

  ROOTS

  Then

  The rabbit crept through the forest undergrowth.

  It nibbled here and there, at leaves and shoots. It hopped over small roots, it crept under branches. Its life was simple, with no higher thought. Weary of predators, aware it was prey, it listened with ears, watched out with eyes. It drank from small streams, it lived in the now.

  Something near it smelled simply wonderful. It seemed sickly sweet like fruit and sugar. Poking a head out of a bush, the rabbit saw it in the small forest clearing ahead. It was tucked underneath a flat rock.

  Always looking out for danger, the rabbit was careful. It hopped forward slowly, until it was close.

  It was a scene out of a painting. The forest was lush, full of life, so many shades of green. Rays of bright-gold sunlight found their way through the thick canopy of winding tree branches above. Fuzzy, verdant moss crept up tree trunks, atop fallen logs and moist stones. Mushrooms of all kinds could be found, yellow-orange plates on the sides of thick, elder trees, little white caps huddling in the shade, bulbous red atop old stumps and dead wood.

  The tasty thing that the rabbit had noticed was just in front. It had to bend down a bit, then lean in, sticking its head under the rock. Maybe the rabbit was a bit vulnerable, but it heard nothing else near it, no need to worry. The fruit was so close, it could almost touch it with their nose, the rabbit opened its mouth, leaning in just a bit more—

  — And then it was dead, neck broken in an instant.

  For a few long seconds, there was silence. Then there was movement, two people shuffling out of their hiding spots, the sound of twigs breaking, leaves crunching, so loud it was like shouting compared to the quiet before.

  The old man pointed at the rabbit with the end of his staff.

  “You can do it yourself this time. You know what to do.”

  The young boy walked over, knife by his side, slowly lifting the dead rabbit from the snare.

  “Make sure it is dead,” said the old man, “always make sure.”

  All it took was the quick press of the boy’s finger onto the furred torso. There was no heart-beat.

  “Yes, Master Rettig,” said the young boy, who began skinning the rabbit, making small precise cuts, then peeling back the skin.

  It was very easy to skin a rabbit once shown how, the boy thought, it was like pulling clothing off a small doll. It was not so easy to ignore the blood on his fingers, to blind himself to the glassy, dead eyes.

  “Tell me, boy,” said Rettig, “what mistake did the rabbit make? What did it do wrong?”

  The boy paused a bit, before continuing his work, guts now spilling out onto the forest floor.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it should have recognized the trap.”

  “Aye, but it couldn’t have, could it? It’s never seen one before. It can’t speak, can’t read or write, it could never learn this from another. It certainly can’t warn its friends now.”

  The boy nodded, slicing off the tail and feet.

  “It had to put its head in there, you see, to reach the bait. It had no way of seeing the branch whipping down,” continued the old man, “the branch was moving so fast it outpaced the sound it was making, that’s why we coil up so much speed in the snare, and to make sure it dies instantly. We knew where the rabbit had to be, where the head and neck would be, our little measuring so precise.”

  The boy was finished, all the separate bits and meat laid out before him. It had been an animal only a minute ago, now, he thought, it was just meat.

  “But I ask you this, boy, what about the triggering of the trap? Could the Rabbit have noticed that?”

  “No, Master Rettig,” said the boy, watching the small trails of heat leaving the corpse, “it could not. I used the song-hand to trigger it. It was silent, invisible, no smell.”

  “Yes Leihant,” grinned Rettig, “not even a trigger snare on the ground for the rabbit to see. Its death was made certain from over fifteen feet away. It never had a chance.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair.”

  “No, it is not fair at all. There was nothing it could have done different. It made no mistake, it did nothing wrong. But it died.”

  “Because I was there. Because I killed it.”

  “Yes. Because out here in the forest, you needed the meat. You may not be hungry now, but when your belly is growling and you smell it roasting over the fire, that will change.”

  Leihant remained silent.

  “It is not wrong to grieve for it,” said Rettig, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder, “it is not wrong to weep for the death you have brought into the world and the life you have removed. Remind yourself that this is the way of things. We will eat the meat, use the fur. The rest we leave here to the forest, where it will be devoured by all the little beasties and crawly-things that move beneath us all.”

  The boy stood up, carrying the rabbit and fur in his hands, walking into the woods towards their campsite.

  “I know that. I’ve killed plenty times before.”

  “Aye. You’ve killed animals before, tiny, small things,” declared Rettig, walking behind him, “But one day sooner than you think, you will be a Wizard like me. You may not want to, but you will have to kill again, and it will be bigger animals, of a sort.”

  “You’re…”, said the boy with some hesitation,“… you’re talking about people, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Down here in the forest, nature devours itself. Out there, in the civilized world, even in those great big so-called perfect cities of the Commonwealth, people hurt each other, they kill each other. Nature is blameless, people are not, but they do it all the same. And you will do it too, when you are a true Wizard and not just an apprentice.

  “That sounds awful,” said Leihant, making a short hop over a dead tree, vivid red mushrooms growing on its sides.

  “It is. But it is the world we live in.”

  “But can’t it be changed? Do I just have to accept it?”

  “Hah! Now you’re thinking like a Wizard. Of course you can change it, if you try hard enough and have the power. When you’re a grumpy old Wizard like me, with fire in my heart and lightning in my thoughts, you can choose what to accept.”

  Suddenly, Leihant was pulled backwards by Rettig. The boy nearly dropped the meat he was carrying.

  “Look,” said the old man, pointing at the ground in front of him.

  It was a flat patch of dirt, unremarkable except for the sprinkled dots of blue across it.

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  “Do you know what this is?” asked Rettig, pointing to the blue speckles with the butt of his staff, “this is called Sayrellus Maw by the learned Magi, Blue-Mud by the peasants. It is a kind of plant-thing with thin, tendril roots and a spark of earth magic running through it, not enough to grant intelligence, just enough for singing to the dirt. It is much like quicksand, but only tries to swallow up big things, heavy enough animals or slow people. It only turns from solid earth into liquid-trickling-mud when it knows a big enough meal is above. Its little magic makes mud where there should not be, makes it deep to fully enclose the prey.”

  “It could have killed me?”

  “Possibly. Depends on how deep it goes, most are too shallow. Adults can try their luck and wait until they stop sinking, then climb out. Struggling too fast makes you sink faster, you must be patient and slow. Sayrellus Maw doesn’t really kill directly, the mud does, by drowning the prey, the tendril roots just feed on the corpse for years.”

  “How can I avoid it for next time?”

  “Watch where you step!” laughed Rettig, “and if you are fast enough, try this!”

  The old man burst into motion, running across the dirt, never letting his feet touch the ground for more than a heartbeat. A few seconds later, Leihant mirrored his actions, following him across while still clutching his kill.

  “I am glad you didn’t drop that,” said Rettig, “I remember a recipe for rabbit stew that uses bits of herbs and roots from forests like these. I can taste it already.”

  “Master Rettig,” asked Leihant, looking back at the flecks of blue in the dirt, “should we do something about it? Destroy it?”

  “Why? Because it kills? Because it has magic in it? The whole world has whispers of magic across it, even in nature.”

  Rettig continued walking ahead, using his staff as a walking stick.

  “Remember this Leihant. Animals walk into traps and are faultless, for they had no way of recognizing the death that was lying in wait. We are different. We do not have to experience something ourselves to learn how dangerous it is. We can read what others have written, we can listen when others speak. Memories are perhaps the greatest tool a person has, but for Wizards it is our most powerful weapon, our strongest defense. Separate a Wizard from their memories and they are nothing.”

  * * *

  Now

  The snare was triggered, the trap was sprung.

  The rabbit was squealing, the loudest, most horrible sound it could make.

  There was no real complexity to this trap. It was a simple string noose, hung just over half a foot from the forest floor to a strong stick. Branches, leaves and rocks were piled so the unaware rabbit had no easy way around it. The animal was caught mid-hop, front body fitting through but back legs catching on the string, everyday foraging along the same trail it used all the time, turned into the most terrifying final moments of its life. Pulling against the noose just made it tighter, where it coiled around the rabbit’s midsection.

  Clambering down from the tree branches above, the man returned to the trap he had set. He had not been waiting long. As he stepped closer, the rabbit began flailing as best it could, the squealing more desperate.

  Reaching down, Leihant snapped its neck, and it lived no more.

  * * *

  This was the third day he had spent in the forest and the second rabbit he had caught in that time.

  It was so much more difficult to skin the animal with sharp rocks instead of a true blade, but he applied the lessons learned from the previous rabbit he had caught the day before. In only a few minutes, he had a dead rabbit before him, skinned and separated into categories, sizes and uses, laid out on flat strips of bark.

  Several minutes later, his rabbit meat was cooking above the campfire, spiced with some herbs he could identify from his limited memories. Sitting down beside the fire, he considered his situation.

  He was still in the small cave, which he had designated as his base camp, but it was feeling a bit more like a home every day. The entrance was blocked off with the biggest sheets of bark he could find, along with thick branches and a cover of leaves. There were different spots in the cave he had designated as temporary storage areas for specific things, such as his pile of string, pile of furs, pile of big leaves, pile of bones, collection of interesting rocks. It was not much at all, but it was his. This man’s trash was also his treasure, he thought.

  Speaking of fur, he didn’t have much at all. His latest acquisition of a mostly intact rabbit fur was his largest item in that category, so far. The furs from the first rabbit were all but ruined in his attempts to skin it without a knife. There were a few squirrel skins left there to dry, along with the hard-won fur-skin of a rat who had woken him up by nipping at his nose, only to be struck down in a fit of disgusted, righteous vengeance. To be fair to his vanquished enemy, Leihant had been very cold that night and did resemble a corpse, which even he might have been tempted by if he was in a similar, hungry situation.

  Thankfully, Leihant had found enough food to save him the indignity of eating any of those nasty parts of a rabbit or nibbling at any carrion found in his limited exploration.

  He was still very lacking in pants, which was bad, but he had made himself a kind of replacement, a skirt of tree bark strung together with some large and maybe impressive looking leaves. Along with the shirt and underwear he still wore, he felt warm enough in his cave.

  He had even experimented a bit, combining a grey puff-ball mushroom that exploded into vapor when touched, ash from his fire, and a bit of blue material from a Sayrellus Maw he had encountered nearby. Put together, wrapped into a furry sphere made from the botched remains of his first rabbit, then hung from his makeshift belt, he felt a bit more like a real Wizard.

  But this was all wrong.

  It was easy, but it was wrong.

  He should have left the cave, explored more, found a better site to live in, or even move on over the horizon.

  He should have gone for larger game, like a deer and skinned that, but he only had memory of hunting a rabbit. He even struggled to find squirrels.

  His pathetic clothing was only warm because he had enclosed himself in a sealed cave with a lit fire.

  But he didn’t want to think about any of that. He didn’t want to acknowledge just how scared he was. Only a few nights ago he had nearly been killed by a group of people who hated him, they had bashed in his face, branded his forehead, and he had no idea why.

  He knew they hated him because he was a Wizard, but that didn’t give any real answers.

  He felt lost, in so many ways.

  He felt like he was always in danger, that at any time a bear would come barreling through the woods at him, or the villagers would break down his feeble barrier and drag him out of his cave.

  All he really knew was his name, memories trickling back in so slowly. It was like living in a nightmare. He had no idea where safety was, or what it would even look like.

  When he had looked down into a still pool of water, he didn’t recognize the face he saw. There were scars across his body he had no idea the origin of. The skin on his left hand was slightly different from the right, hairless and unscarred, as if it had been sliced off and regrown. Judging from how the newer skin ended at an exact dividing line around his wrist, he suspected this was exactly what happened.

  Why was he being subjected to this ordeal? Was he guilty of some crime, was this his punishment? Where was he? Who was he, really? Were his memories really gone forever, or would they return with time?

  To all his questions, he had no answers.

  Clutching his head in his hands, he cried, just a bit.

  That’s when his friend returned to cheer him up.

  Well, in truth, the cat wasn’t there to cheer him up at all, but he felt happy to see it all the same, as it pushed its way through the little flap he had left in his cave door, strutting up between him and the fire.

  It sat down, looked him in the eyes, and meowed.

  “Alright, don’t worry, I have your share over here,” said Leihant, laughter in his voice.

  He lifted over a piece of bark, then dropped the rabbit guts, head, and all the other bits he didn’t want to eat. The cat waited for him to retreat a bit, watching him with suspicious amber eyes, before it set to eating, tearing into its meal.

  “I thought you would like that,” said Leihant as if in casual conversation, “this rabbit looked all plump and healthy, plenty of nice tasty bits for you.”

  The cat continued eating as if it was a race.

  “You know, it’s good that you’re eating so much. You could use a bit of plumping up yourself!”

  The cat gave out a firm meow, as if offended, then dove back into its meal.

  “I don’t mean anything by it, don’t worry. You already look much better than you did when we first found each other.”

  It was true, the cat was healthier, now only slightly mangy, slightly thin and still angry.

  “You know, maybe I can just stay here. I can hide away from the rest of the world, they can forget about me. Maybe I’ll start building my Wizard’s tower on top of the hill this cave is in, you know? It seems like a good enough location, nice foundations. I’ll make sure there’s room for you in it as well.”

  The cat was finished now, having gulped down everything as fast as it could. It lay on its side, looking more than a bit proud of itself in the capacity for gastronomic consumption.

  “I got something else for you,” said Leihant, reaching behind himself, “it’s the ears and tail of that rabbit, joined up with a bit of string. Let’s see how playful you are.”

  The cat was immediately enthralled as he jangled and shook it. Then as he threw it in the air, the cat leapt up to meet it.

  Leihant ate his meal like this, smiling as he watched the cat play, batting around ears, biting a tail, reveling in make believe carnage. For himself, the rabbit tasted good, the fire was warm.

  In that moment, he was content.

  Maybe he could live like this, just staying here in the wilderness, waiting for his memories to return, figure out how to get his magic back and do Wizard things, even build a real Wizard’s tower. He remember the tower thing, that felt like something Wizards did. He would go out an hunt a deer, soon, maybe the day after tomorrow, with some preparation.

  He didn’t need to be anywhere fast.

  He could live slowly.

  Leihant was still thinking this when the cat suddenly reared back and hissed, eyes locked onto the makeshift cave barrier.

  A big, armored hand reached through, smashing aside branches and bark. Leihant immediately tried to scramble away, but his foot was grabbed, he was pulled out of the cave.

  He was flung through the air, slamming face-first into the dirt. A heavy, steel boot pressed onto his back, a cold, stoic voice reached his ears.

  “Leihant von Geissler, Wizard fugitive. I have come for you.”