The Accidental Apprentice, page 4
“Look at the size of it! I’m surprised a twig like you can carry it.” Falk took a menacing step forward, as did his two backups. “Think you’re better than all of us, reading books like that? You think you’re so smart, but if you were smart, you wouldn’t be a lousy mushroom farmer, would you?”
Barclay was used to these insults, and he knew—no matter what he carried—Falk and his gang would find any excuse to torment him if they saw him walking past.
So he took a careful step back and said, “I’m just going home. I don’t want to fight you.”
“I bet you don’t. You hate that I’m better than you at it.”
Barclay was good at a lot of things, but only because he had to be. Dullshire would hardly tolerate a rule-breaking orphan if he weren’t. But that was also why Falk hated him, since Falk’s strength was his one and only skill. A fact which Barclay, admittedly, often reminded him of.
“That’s n-not true!” Barclay stammered, then he prepared to do something to Falk that he’d never done before: compliment him. “You’re better at loads of things than me, and I don’t mind. Like, well, eating things that I can’t.” He’d once switched Falk’s lunch with Gustav’s pig food, and Falk had eaten it all. He hadn’t even gotten a stomachache. “It’s a bit remarkable, actually.”
Falk narrowed his eyes, and Barclay immediately caught his mistake. “Remarkable” was a big word to Falk, and Barclay usually used those to tease him.
Falk nodded, and Poldi lunged forward, blocking Barclay’s path to escape. Behind him, Marco shoved him in the back. Barclay dropped The Extensive History with a thud.
“Bet that thing weighs more than you, huh?” Falk shot him a toothy, threatening smile.
Barclay swallowed and reached down to pick it up, but before he could, Marco grabbed a fistful of his coat. Soon Barclay was trapped, with both arms locked behind his back.
“Get off!” He jerked in Marco’s grip, but it didn’t do any good. It never did.
Falk reached down and picked up The Extensive History.
“Give it back,” Barclay snapped.
“You want it back? Well…”
As he spoke, Marco pushed Barclay down to the ground, his cheek pressed against dirt and stone. Poldi pinned him there.
Falk held The Extensive History over him.
“I wonder what would happen if I dropped this on your face? I’ll drop it, and you can have it back.”
Barclay considered yelling for help, but doing so had only earned him extra kicks and punches in the past. Besides, Falk never got punished because Barclay had no parents to demand it. Master Pilzmann was too oblivious for such squabbles.
All Barclay could do was squeeze his eyes shut and brace himself for a broken nose, his heart hammering in terror.
But when Falk did drop the book, a sudden wind tore across the street, so strong that all the shutters around them swung and smacked against their frames and walls.
Barclay heard a loud thump, then a groan. And when Marco let him go so that he could sit up, he saw Falk lying flat on his back, clutching his face. A bit of blood dribbled down his cheek.
“What happened?” Marco asked.
“The wind blew it at him!” Poldi answered.
“I don’t believe—”
“I saw it—”
“Arghhhhh,” Falk groaned.
While the others were distracted, Barclay scrambled to his feet. He regretfully abandoned The Extensive History and took off into a run, shouts of “No you don’t!” and “Where do you think you’re going?” echoing behind him.
And last, just as Barclay plunged into the crowd of the festival, he heard Falk holler “Barclay Thorne just did magic!”
FIVE
As Barclay ducked behind a fried food stall to hide, he tripped over a loose cobblestone and barreled into a sack of potatoes. The freshly dug-up vegetables tumbled out over Barclay’s clothes, covering his hands and clothes in dirt.
But Barclay had more important worries on his mind than Dullshire’s rule about cleanliness.
Once he had checked to make sure he was safely out of sight of the festivalgoers, he wrenched down his collar to look at his shoulder, where the Mark writhed, as golden as ever.
Sudden winds didn’t just pick up history books and throw them at bullies.
Barclay’s stomach turned, thinking of what Falk had shouted. Barclay Thorne just did magic! Falk wasn’t bright, but he had quickly guessed the truth—and made even quicker work of spreading it. Already, anyone who was listening was probably horrified. Magic? In Dullshire?
Barclay struggled to his feet, stumbling over more potatoes. He needed to think fast if he was going to fix this.
But what if he didn’t deserve to? He hadn’t just accidentally used magic—he’d accidentally used magic to hurt someone. It didn’t matter if Falk was due a broken nose. Barclay had been so worried about the Beast escaping its Mark that he hadn’t considered that he was just as dangerous.
Maybe he should leave. He could run into the Woods and never come back, but that meant leaving everything behind. Barclay’s everything wasn’t much—it was no friends, one apprenticeship, and two graves.
But it was still his home.
Barclay took a deep breath and emerged from behind the fried food stall, only to come face-to-face with Poldi.
“Here he is!” Poldi shouted, and Barclay froze like a startled deer. Then Poldi lunged for him, and Barclay darted away. Maybe he was imagining it, but he swore he was running as fast as he had in the Woods. His feet barely even seemed to scrape the ground, and he had no control over his balance. He raced through the festival, tripping over fallen streamers, slamming into dancers, knocking over barrels of beer and apple juice.
“Oi! B-boy!” stammered Mrs. Kraus as onions and carrots toppled from her produce stand.
“There’s no running in town!” blustered Mr. Jager, a lawmaker who had been awarding another father the second-place ham.
“Barclay Thorne!” called out the baker.
But Barclay was too busy fleeing Poldi to pay any of them attention. Until Barclay skidded around a game of hammer throwing—ducking so as not to be clocked in the head—and collided with Marco. The two of them crashed into a bale of hay.
Barclay recovered first. He stood and held his hands up to Marco in front of him and Poldi behind him. “I can explain,” he choked out.
“You can’t trick us,” Marco snarled. “We saw it!”
As the two of them took menacing steps forward, two more winds tore across the square. Marco and Poldi were swept off their feet and thrown back ten feet through the air.
Suddenly the music of the festival screeched to a raucous halt. Many of those around them gasped. Mrs. Kraus even screamed, her hands flying up to cover her mouth.
“Did you see that?” someone whispered in the crowds.
“He didn’t touch them,” Mrs. Kraus moaned, now fanning herself.
“It looked like magic,” a person behind her called.
Soon every pair of eyes in Dullshire turned to Barclay in a communal, suspicious glare.
Barclay’s face flushed as he desperately tried to come up with a lie. But he couldn’t. His throat seized up, and he backed away, scared of his secret, scared worse of these powers he couldn’t control.
“I didn’t…,” he managed hoarsely. “I didn’t mean…”
The winds from earlier picked up again, gusting alongside the fearful swooping of his stomach, making the fallen streamers and stalks of hay swirl around Barclay’s feet.
“No,” Barclay whispered, trying to make it stop. But the magic was wild, and it didn’t listen to him.
The baker, a burly man with dark brown skin and a flour-coated apron, stepped forward and tightly grasped Barclay’s shoulder. Barclay sprung backward from the pain of his wound—and the fear of revealing his Mark.
The winds reacted, growing stronger until they formed a vortex, and Barclay stood scarecrow-still at the center. Many around him screamed. Some even raced away. The banners with the flags of Humdrum and Diddlystadt were torn down. Loose potatoes and fallen apple chips soared in the air. Mr. Jager shrieked as his impressive, curly wig was ripped from his head and launched into the sky like a tawny owl.
If that had not all been terrible enough, there was a loud, mechanical groan. Barclay whipped around, squinting through the dusty, high-speed winds, and watched in horror as the already crooked face of Dullshire’s clock toppled off the tower and fell to the ground with a sickening crack! The wooden disk splintered in two.
Only then did the winds die down, exposing the ruins of the town’s festival square and Barclay at its center. He crouched, his arms braced over his head, and he trembled all over.
Marco was the first to move. He launched himself forward, grabbed a fistful of Barclay’s coat, and yanked the smaller boy to his feet. “I caught him!” Marco announced proudly.
“Don’t touch him!” Falk called, appearing behind them. He looked a mess—blood smeared all over his nose and chin. “He’s dangerous!”
Falk and his cronies had barely regarded Barclay as more than an ant before, but now Marco let go of Barclay as though he’d been burned.
“Boys, what is going on?” Mr. Jager asked, aghast, his bald head gleaming in the afternoon sun. His gaze roamed over Falk’s broken nose, over the baker’s now tattered apron, then to Barclay, whose hair was tangled, his skin smattered with dirt, his clothes covered in hay. Lastly, he looked to the clocktower, even more broken than when Gravaldor had attacked.
“Barclay is a Lore Keeper, sir!” Falk announced.
“What do you have to say for yourself, Barclay?” Mr. Jager asked him.
Barclay had gone red all the way to his ears. “I…” He searched the crowds for a friendly face, but Selby and his family were gone.
Then Mrs. Havener stepped forward, looking disheveled and missing a few mittens from the winds. “There must be some kind of mistake. Barclay is just a boy.”
“But look at him,” Mrs. Kraus said uneasily, her hand clutched to her heart. “Doesn’t he look a bit… wild?”
An uproar ensued over whether he was innocent or guilty, and as much as Barclay wanted to lie and claim it had all been a misunderstanding, he couldn’t. They were all right to be afraid of him. He was dangerous and wild and out of control.
“We should throw him in the river!” someone suggested. “Lore Keepers don’t float!”
“If the boy had any parents…,” Mrs. Kraus mumbled.
“You can’t honestly believe this is true,” Mrs. Havener growled.
“It is true!” a voice bellowed, and everyone turned to see the mayor arrive, Selby and his parents close behind him. The mayor, a serious-looking man barely taller than Barclay, marched to the center of the crowd, dragging Selby by the wrist. “This boy told me everything! Barclay has bonded with a Beast from the Woods!”
Selby let out a high-pitched wail.
Selby told his parents, Barclay realized. It was no wonder Selby had looked so nervous this morning. He’d broken his promise.
Barclay wasn’t angry, though. Even if Selby hadn’t spilled Barclay’s secret, Barclay had already managed to ruin his life entirely on his own.
“By the power vested in me, and by the tenants of Dullshire’s principle rule,” the mayor declared, “I pronounce you, Barclay Thorne, guilty of—”
But Barclay didn’t stay to hear his punishment. It was too much—the destruction, the stares, the horror. Breaking yet another rule, he sprinted away, too fast for anyone to catch him. And he didn’t stop until he had thrown open the door to Master Pilzmann’s house.
“I need your help,” Barclay rasped, nearly in tears. “I ran after Selby into the Woods, and something happened, and now I’m a Lore Keeper, and…”
His voice vanished when he saw Master Pilzmann standing beside Gustav with a grave expression on his face. He held a traveler’s bag. It looked full.
“I already know, my boy. The mayor and Selby’s family were just here.” He thrust the bag into Barclay’s arms. “You need to leave, and you can never come back.”
SIX
L-leave?” Barclay sputtered. The traveler’s bag dropped from his hands, sending clothes and canisters spilling across the floor. “It was an accident! Isn’t there… There must be a way to reverse the magic!”
“I don’t know how to reverse it, and we don’t allow magic here. That is a rule, and there are no exceptions.”
Although Master Pilzmann’s voice wasn’t unkind, Barclay wasn’t prepared for such harsh words from him. Dullshire was his home, and Master Pilzmann was the closest thing to a parent he’d had in a long time.
But Barclay didn’t have parents. No exceptions.
“Don’t make me leave,” Barclay pleaded as Master Pilzmann picked up Barclay’s possessions and shoved them back into the bag. “I didn’t mean to hurt Falk. And the clocktower, it can be fixed, can’t it?”
“What happened to the clocktower?” asked Master Pilzmann sharply.
With a fresh wave of shame, Barclay explained the events of the festival.
Master Pilzmann shook his head. “If Selby had come straight to me, I could have…” A shadow swept over his face. “Well, I don’t know what I could have done, but I certainly can’t do anything now. After Selby’s parents reported you, the mayor came straight here. And if his mind wasn’t made up before, I’m quite sure it is now. The laws about magic… They’re very strict, I’m afraid.”
Then Barclay realized that Master Pilzmann wasn’t trying to evict him.
He was trying to save him.
“This is not your fault,” Master Pilzmann told him gently.
“Then why do they want me to leave?” Barclay’s voice rose to a shout. He would normally never shout at Master Pilzmann, and now he had done it twice in two days. Hopelessness seeped into him as the reality of his situation set in.
“I’m supposed to stay here,” Barclay whispered. “And when I have children, they’ll live here too. Just like my parents and my grandparents and my—”
“You were never supposed to stay here, Barclay.” Master Pilzmann closed the drawstrings of his bag and slipped its straps over Barclay’s trembling shoulders. “Do you want to know the real reason I kept turning you away when you asked to be my apprentice?”
“Because I’m an orphan who’s always breaking the rules?”
Master Pilzmann’s face softened. “I turned you away because you aren’t meant for this. You think staying in Dullshire is the life you were supposed to have if your parents had never died. There are other ways to honor their memories than following the same path they did. They’re proud of you, I’m sure, but they’d rather you find a path of your own.”
As if in response, a breeze wafted through the window, and it smelled like earth and pine—like the Woods. It made the hair on the back of Barclay’s neck stand on end.
“What happens if they catch me?” he asked, turning to the window that faced back toward the center of town.
Master Pilzmann paled. “You mustn’t think about that.”
“But I don’t even know where to go.” The next town down the road was no different from Dullshire, nor was the next or the next or the next. That only left one place for him.
The Woods.
“If you let them, your feet will put you on the right path.” Master Pilzmann ushered him toward the door. “Now it’s time to leave. You must leave, or—”
He was cut off when Barclay threw his arms around him and squeezed tightly. “I’ll miss you,” he choked out.
“As will I, my boy,” Master Pilzmann said with a quaver.
After Barclay reluctantly let go, he opened the front door. To his shock, a mob of men and women was already marching down the street toward their home. They were faces he recognized—the mayor, Mr. Jager, the other farmers.
The torches they carried left a trail of black smoke.
“Run,” Master Pilzmann urged him.
Barclay didn’t have time for one last look goodbye. He took off.
Even with a wounded shoulder, even carrying a heavy bag, Barclay ran as fast as he could through the town. The wind picked up behind him, pushing him along like it had in the Woods. He ran down the main street, across the bridge over the creek, and through the fields of cabbage and sheep. In a matter of minutes, he was merely a small figure in the distance, Dullshire a smudge of black across the gray, Wintery landscape behind him.
This time, when he ran into the Woods, the trees bent low to embrace him. Their branches uncurled and thickened like a shroud, allowing Barclay to disappear completely.
Within moments, he lost sight of the edge.
And only then, when he was surrounded by dark, twisted trunks and that same eerie mist, did he slump against a tree and put his head in his hands.
His entire life was gone.
He sat there for a long while. He ate a few of the mushrooms and nuts that Master Pilzmann had packed for him. He cried a little—something he hadn’t done in a long time, not since he was younger than Selby. Then he reached into his bag for his notebook and drew a map of what little he knew of the world. It had Dullshire, a few dots for other towns in Diddlystadt, an X at the bottom to represent the capital of Humdrum, and black covering almost everything else—the Woods.
A whole world of places, but none for him.
“Are you back foraging for mushrooms?” a voice asked, and Barclay looked up to find the girl from yesterday standing in front of him, Mitzi once again perched on her shoulder.
“Does it look like I’m foraging for mushrooms? Go away. I don’t want to talk to you. All of this is your fault.”
She examined his traveler’s bag with sympathy. “What happened?”
“What do you think happened?” He clenched his fists, causing the map to crinkle. “The Beast made me do magic, and it went out of control! Because I…” He swallowed. “Because I’m dangerous.”
“It’s normal to experience a burst of power like that, when your bond is so new. But don’t worry—it shouldn’t happen again. Though it seems like the damage is already done.” She sighed. “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t tried to stop me.”
