Bast leaned forward, lowering his voice. “The charm is so much more than just the parts,” he said. “Most folk don’t know it truly starts only when you understand your heart of hearts.” Bast tapped the boy’s chest lightly with two fingers.

  “A true charm puts down roots in your desire,” Bast continued, dancing back and forth between the truth and what folk thought was true. Making sure the boy would swallow it down smooth. “When you decided what you wanted, that’s where it began. You’ve gone and gathered pieces proper as you can. Now we put a pin through it, so the whole thing sticks.”

  Bast made a gesture as if throwing something away. “Charms made any other way are naught but silly tricks.” He nodded then, rather pleased with himself. This boy was nowhere near as sharp as Kostrel, but even so, he might stop to wonder why the “soon” he’d begged and bargained for seemed to begin before he’d actually made the charm itself.

  The boy brought his hand back to his chest and eyed the stone. “What do you mean it only works for one person?”

  That was what the boy was focused on? Bast fought the urge to sigh. So much of what he wrought was wasted here. “It’s the way of charms,” Bast lied. “They only work for one person at a time.” Seeing the boy’s confusion plain on his face, Bast sighed. “You know how folk make come-hither charms when they want to catch someone’s eye?”

  Rike nodded, blushing a little.

  “This is the opposite,” Bast said. “It’s a go-thither charm. You’re going to prick your finger, get a drop of your blood on it, and that will seal it. It will make things go away.”

  Rike looked down at the stone. “What sort of things?” he said.

  “Anything that wants to hurt you,” Bast extemporized. “You can just keep it in your pocket, or you can get a piece of cord—”

  “But it will make my da leave?” Rike interrupted, his brow furrowing a bit in concern.

  “Well, yes…” Bast said, his patience fraying at the interruptions. “That’s what I said. You’re his blood. So it will push him away more strongly than anything else. You’ll probably want to hang it around your neck so—”

  “What about a bear?” Rike asked, looking at the stone thoughtfully. “Would it make a bear leave me alone?”

  Bast paused at that, realizing the last thing he needed was for this already rash and semi-feral child to think that he was safe from bears. “Wild things are different,” he said. “They’re possessed of pure desire. They don’t want to hurt you. They usually want food, or safety. A bear would—”

  “Can I give it to my mum?” Rike interrupted again, looking up at Bast. His dark eyes serious.

  “— want to protect its terr…What?” Bast stumbled to a halt.

  “My mum should have it,” Rike said with sudden certainty. “What if I was off away with the charm and my da came back?”

  “He’s going farther away than that,” Bast said, his voice heavy with certainty. “It’s not like he’ll be hiding around the corner at the smithy….”

  Rike’s face was set now, his pug nose making him seem all the more stubborn. He shook his head. “My ma should have it. She’s important. She has to take care of Tess and little Bip.”

  Bast waved a hand. “It will work just fi—”

  “It’s got to be for HER!” Rike shouted, suddenly furious, his hand making a fist around the stone. “You said it was for one person, so you make it be for her!”

  Bast scowled at the boy. “I don’t like your tone,” he said grimly. “You asked me to make your da go away, and that’s what I’m doing….”

  “But what if it’s not enough?” Rike’s voice was quieter, but his face was red.

  “It will be,” Bast said. He absentmindedly rubbed a thumb across the torn knuckles of his hand. “He’ll go far away, and soon. You have my word—”

  “NO!” Rike said, his face going red and angry. “What if sending him en’t enough? What if I grow up like my da? I get so…” His voice choked off, and his eyes started to leak tears. “I’m not good. I know it. I know better than anyone. Like you said. I got his blood in me. She needs to be safe. From me. If I grow up all twisted, she needs the charm to…she needs something to make me go a—”

  Rike clenched his teeth, unable to continue.

  Bast reached out and took hold of the boy’s shoulder. He was stiff and rigid as a plank of wood. Slowly Bast gathered him in, and gently put his arms around his shoulders. They stood there for a long moment, Rike stiff as a bowstring, trembling like a sail tight against the wind.

  “Rike,” Bast said softly. “You’re a good boy. Do you know that?”

  The boy bent then, sagged against Bast and seemed like he would break himself apart with sobbing. His face was pressed into Bast’s stomach and he said something, but it was muffled and disjointed. Bast made a soft crooning sound of the sort you’d use to calm a horse or soothe a hive of restless bees.

  The storm passed and Rike stepped away, scrubbing roughly at his face with his sleeve. The red sunset had spread, streaking the entire sky with shreds of pink and crimson.

  “Right,” Bast said, looking up at the sky. “It’s time. We’ll make it for your mother.”

  * * *

  They went down to the bank of the stream where they could both have a drink, and Rike could wash his face and collect himself a bit. When the boy’s face was cleaner, Bast noted not all the smudginess was dirt. It was easy to make the mistake. The summer sun had tanned the boy a rich nut brown, and there had been no shortage of dirt. Even after he was clean, it was hard to tell they were the remains of bruises.

  But despite the rumors, Bast’s eyes were sharp. Even in the fading light he saw them, now that he was looking. Cheek and jaw. A darkness all around one skinny wrist. And when Rike bent to take a drink from the stream, Bast caught a glimpse of the boy’s back….

  Bast was uncharacteristically silent as he led the boy back to the greystone at the base of the hill. Rike followed wordlessly when Bast climbed up one side of the half-fallen stone. Both of them had plenty of space to stand on the stone’s broad back.

  Rike looked around anxiously, as if worried someone might see them. But they were the only ones there. It was the hinge of the day, the time when all the town’s children were running back to dinner, racing to make it home before night settled fully overhead.

  They faced each other standing on the great grey stone, the tall dark shape that looked very like a man. The small dark shape that looked quite like a boy.

  “There are some changes we’ll have to make so it will fit your mother,” Bast said without preamble. “You’ll have to give it to her. River stone works best if it’s given as a gift.”

  Rike nodded seriously, looking down at the stone in his hand. “What if she won’t wear it?” he asked quietly.

  Bast blinked, confused. “She’ll wear it because you gave it to her,” he said.

  “What if she doesn’t?” he asked.

  Bast opened his mouth, then hesitated and closed it again. He looked up just in time to see the first of twilight’s stars emerge. He looked down at the boy. He sighed. He wasn’t good at this.

  So much of this was easy. Hearts were easier to read than books. Glamour wasn’t that much more than making sure folk saw the thing they already had plans to see. And making fools of foolish folk was hardly cunning grammarie.

  But this? Convincing someone of the truth they were too twisted up to see? How could Bast begin to loosen such a knot?

  It was baffling. These creatures, fraught and frayed in their desire. A snake would never poison itself, but these folk made an art of it. They wrapped themselves in fears and wept at being blind. It was infuriating. It was enough to break a heart.

  So Bast took the easy way.

  “It’s part of the charm,” he lied. “When you give it to her, you have to tell her that you made it for her because you love her.”

  The boy looked uncomfortable, as if he were trying to swallow a stone.

  “It’s the only way for it to work properly,” Bast said firmly. “And if you want the magic to be strong, you need to tell her that you love her every day. Once in the morning and once at night.”

  The boy drew a deep breath, steeling himself before he nodded, a determined look on his face. “Okay. I can do that.”

  “Right then,” Bast said. “First, say your father’s name.”

  “Jessom Williams,” Rike said, looking like he’d rather spit.

  Bast nodded. “Sit down here. Prick your finger.”

  The two of them sat opposite each other, both cross-legged on the greystone. Bast put his handkerchief down, and Rike lay the dark river-stone on it before taking the needle and jabbing his finger.

  Picking up the stone again, Rike watched intently as a bead of blood welled, then fell onto the surface of the smooth dark stone.

  “Three drops,” Bast said, matter-of-factly.

  The boy let two more fall, then rubbed it in. In the fading light, the stone’s dark color didn’t change at all.

  Bast picked up the handkerchief, but when he looked back up to hand it to the boy, he froze at what he saw.

  Standing stark against the vibrant twilight sky, just over the boy’s shoulder, stood the black-tipped finger of the lightning tree. Rising just above Rike’s head, the crescent moon. It hung there like a sickle blade. A bowl.

  It hung above the boy’s head, bright as iron. It rested like a crown, like horns. Of course.

  Bast laughed then, it burst from him, wild and delighted. He laughed again, it sounded like children playing in the water, like bells and birds, like someone breaking chains.

  He grinned at Rike, and though he did not know it, in that moment Bast looked every bit the demon.

  Bast held out his hand, his smile wide and white, the mad laughter bubbling up around the edges of his voice. “Good!” he said, a note of triumph ringing there. “Give me the needle!”

  Rike hesitated. “You said it just needed—”

  Bast laughed again. He knew he shouldn’t, but there were times when it was either laugh or break wide open because he was too full. It would have been like holding back a sneeze. Sometimes the world was so perfectly revealed to be a joke, a picture, and a puzzle all at once. Laughter was the true applause you offered to the world for being beautiful.

  And if there was some small applause still left for him, then that was only fair. It wasn’t nothing, managing to find your way into alignment with the perfect seam of everything. But if you had the craft to see that’s where you were? Well then you pick. You rip the seam or sew. That’s when you learned the sort of artist that you truly were.

  “Don’t tell me what I said.” But while Bast’s voice was high and wild, it was not sharp or hard. He glanced up at the sky. It was purpling into twilight. “Hold the stone flat so that the hole faces up.”

  Rike did.

  “And the needle.”

  Rike held it out. Bast took hold of it with terrible deliberate care, as if he gripped a nettle. As if his thumb and finger held a snake.

  He closed his eyes and listened to Rike’s breath, the breeze. His place. He heard the slow roll of the stream that circled deasil round the bottom of the hill. He felt it flowing in his bones, turning to the making way.

  Grinning, Bast opened his eyes again. “Hold it steady.”

  In the fading light, Rike stared at him. Bast’s eyes were dark as dark. He smiled like a child who knew that he was clever, quick, and wild enough to steal the moon.

  Bast drove the needle hard into his thumb. A bead of blood swelled up. He turned his hand so it moved oddly in the air. The black drop hung a moment before falling through the center of the charm to strike the greystone underneath.

  There was no sound. No stirring in the air. No distant thunder. The most that could be said is that the night was somewhat still.

  “Is that it?” Rike asked after a moment, clearly expecting something more.

  “That’s well begun,” Bast said, licking the blood from his thumb. Then he worked his mouth a little and spat out the beeswax he’d been chewing. He rolled it round between his fingers and handed it to Rike. “Rub this into the stone, then you need to go sit by the lightning tree.”

  Rike peered up toward the final bit of sunset in the sky. “I…my ma will wonder where I am.”

  Bast nodded approvingly. “You’re right to think on that. But we still have the rest to do.” He pointed up toward the tree. “You know what a vigil is?”

  Rike nodded numbly, seeming less certain than before.

  “This is the second part. You need to sit a vigil with your charm,” Bast said. “You hold your charm, and wait for me. Think on who you are, and who you want to be. And when you’ve thought on that, you think on how you love your ma.” Bast looked up again. “The third part will come after, when the moon is higher in the sky.”

  Rike pushed himself to his feet, and started walking up the hill.

  Bast leapt lightly from the greystone and was quickly lost among the trees.

  TWILIGHT: CARROTS

  Bast was halfway back to the Waystone Inn when he realized he had no idea where his carrots were.

  NIGHT: DEMONS

  When Bast came through the back door of the inn, he was greeted with the smell of baking bread, dark beer, and pepper in the simmering stew. Looking around the kitchen he saw crumbs on the breadboard and the lid off the kettle. Dinner had already been served.

  Stepping softly, he peered through the door into the common room. The usual folk sat hunched at the bar. There was Old Cob and Graham, scraping their bowls. The smith’s prentice was running bread along the inside of his bowl, stuffing it into his mouth a piece at a time. Jake spread butter on the last slice of bread, and Shep knocked his empty mug politely against the bar, the hollow sound a question in itself.

  Bast bustled through the doorway with a fresh bowl of stew for the smith’s prentice as the innkeeper poured Shep more beer. Collecting the empty bowl, Bast disappeared back into the kitchen, then he came back with another loaf of bread half-sliced and steaming.

  “Guess what I caught wind of today?” Old Cob said with the smug grin of a man who knew he had the best news at the table.

  “What’s that?” the smith’s prentice asked around half a mouthful of stew.

  Old Cob reached out and took the heel of the bread, a right he claimed as the oldest person there, despite the fact that he wasn’t actually the oldest, and the fact that no one else much liked the heel. Bast suspected he took it because he was proud he still had so many teeth left.

  Cob grinned. “Guess,” he said to the boy, then slathered his bread with butter and took a bite.

  “I reckon it’s something about Jessom Williams,” Jake said blithely.

  Old Cob glared at him, his mouth full of bread and butter.

  “What I heard,” Jake drawled slowly, smiling as Old Cob tried furiously to chew his mouth clear. “Was that Jessom was out running his trap lines and he got jumped by a cougar. Then while he was legging it away, he lost track of hisself and ran straight over Littlecliff. Busted himself up something fierce.”

  Old Cob finally managed to swallow, “You’re thick as a post, Jacob Walker. Who said it was a cougar?”

  Jake paused a bit too long before saying, “It just makes sense—”

  “I don’t know what it is with you and cougars,” Old Cob said, scowling at him. “Jessom was just drunk off his feet is what I heard. That’s the only sense of it. Cause Littlecliff en’t nowhere near his trap line. Unless you think a cougar chased him almost two whole miles…”

  Old Cob sat back in his chair then, smug as a judge.

  Jake glared venomously at Old Cob, but before he could make some further argument for cougars, Graham chimed in. “A couple kids found him while they were playing by the falls. They thought he was dead and ran to fetch the constable. But turns out he was just head-struck and drunk as a lord. The little girl said he smelled like drink, and he was cut up from some broken glass there, too.”

  Old Cob threw his hands up in the air. “Well ain’t that wonderful!” he said, scowling back and forth between Graham and Jake. “Any other parts of my story you’d like to tell afore I’m finished?”

  Graham looked taken aback. “I thought you were—”

  “I wasn’t finished,” Cob said, as if talking to a simpleton. “I was reelin it out slow. Tehlu anyway. What you folk don’t know about tellin stories would fit into a book.”

  A tense silence settled among the friends.

  “I got some news too,” the smith’s prentice said almost shyly. He sat slightly hunched at the bar, as if embarrassed at being a head taller than everyone else and twice as broad across the shoulders. “If’n nobody else has heard it, that is.”

  Shep spoke up. “Go on, Boy. You don’t have to ask. Those two just been gnawing on each other for years. They don’t mean anything by it.”

  The smith’s prentice nodded, not blinking at being called ‘boy’ despite the fact that he did the lion’s share of the town’s smithing these days, and had been drinking with the other men for two years.

  “Well I was doing shoes,” the smith’s prentice said. “When Crazy Martin came in.” The boy shook his head in amazement and took a long drink of beer. “I ain’t only seen him but a few times in town, and I forgot how big he is. I don’t hardly have to look up to see him, but I still think he’s biggern me. And today he was spittin nails. I swear. He looked like someone had tied two angry bulls together and made them wear a shirt!” The boy laughed the easy, too-large laughter of someone who’s had a little more beer than they’re used to.

 

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