The sun sank lazily into the horizon, bathing the fields in a warm amber glow. I glanced down at the norolillies at my feet, sprouting from the banks of the stream at the edge of Avenholme, my hometown.
Most of the norolillies weren’t quite ready to be harvested—I could tell from the lack of yellow tinge at the edge of their leaves. Squatting down to pick the fully grown ones, a shimmer in the distance caught my eye.
It was faint and gone as soon as I focused on it, like ripples settling on still water.
Behind me, the laughter of children echoed off the hills. Further off, I could hear the faint call of a shepherd, corralling his flock. Avenholme was small, tucked away from the wider world, but it had a rhythm I’d grown used to. Comforting.
Still, my eyes flicked back to where the shimmer had been, further down the winding stream. On the other side of the clear, burbling water was the Sylris Glade, one of the dense forests surrounding Avenholme.
As if magnetized, my gaze drifted to the Glade. I glanced up at the sun. I only had to return home with these norolillies in tow to be done with my responsibilities for the day. Surely I had time for a quick detour.
Of course, one thing that Mom had beaten over my head was that I should not do exactly that.
Any child raised in Avenholme knew that walking into the Glade was a surefire way to get eaten by a Veilborn—if the bedtime stories were to be believed, anyway.
Yet, the thrumming from the Glade always pulled at me, like a heartbeat calling me home. In its shadowed depths, I felt more alive than anywhere else—a secret the rest of the village would never understand. The Glade drew me in in much the same way the boy’s display of magic did. I didn’t understand my unusual connection to these things, but they seemed to me to beat along with my own pulse.
The village elders were not too fond of this, and the rest of the villagers were indifferent towards me at best.
Some time in the Glade would clear my head, I decided—
Motion, further down the bank of the stream, drew my attention. A pillar of water danced for a brief moment above the stream, drawn up from the flow.
I was mesmerized for a moment, then stood to get a better view, even as the water fell to splash back down into the stream. Standing on the bank near where the water spout had occurred, there was a boy standing there, his neck-length, bright red hair fluttering in the weak wind. Eleven or twelve maybe. I was sure I’d seen him around the village before, but couldn’t put a name to him.
I couldn’t see his face, but somehow his posture told me his brows were furrowed in concentration. Ten seconds passed as I wondered at what he was up to, the basket hanging from my arm forgotten. Twenty.
I felt a rush. A pull. Something in the air, just beyond being visible, was swirling around the kid. The feel of it prickling my skin, even standing so many dozens of yards away, was intoxicating. I took a half-step forward without even realizing.
As my foot hit the ground, another spout of water burst up from the stream in front of the boy, a pillar of sparkling, clear liquid. This time, I got a good look at it. One of the fish that had been swimming downstream got caught in the phenomena.
Magic. And manipulating water? He must’ve gotten his hands on a Tempest Shard somehow.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen someone lose themselves in Shard magic, but it never failed to send a pang of longing—or maybe fear—through me. I shook it off. No use chasing what I didn’t have. One other thing Mom had beaten it over my head well enough was that little old me, from the pitifully unremarkable village of Avenholme, probably didn’t have the aptitude to be a mage anyway—and we certainly weren’t going to put out for the exorbitant testing fees to find out.
I felt a barbed twinge of envy that this boy had somehow discovered that little old him from Avenholm did in fact have the affinity to be a mage.
I recalled the sputtering water spout.
Maybe not a good mage, but—
I inhaled sharply, recalled to the moment, and glanced around to see if anyone else had seen what he’d done. Satisfied that there were no other spectators, I cupped my hands to project my voice towards him. “Hey! Don’t want the elders seeing that, do you?”
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If the elders saw him, there’d be no explaining it away. They didn’t care much for Shards, even less for the people who dared to use them. ‘Devil powers from the devil realm,’ they said. Even through my pang of envy, I didn’t want this young kid to get caught up in all that trouble.
His reaction stuttered through three distinct phases.
First, at the sound of my voice, he froze up. Moments passed, and he turned towards me, raising a hand to the back of his neck awkwardly as he registered my words. Then his eyes landed on me, and his eyes widened just enough to be perceptible, then narrowed, laser focused on me.
“And what do you know, weirdo?” he spat back, now walking towards me. I was too busy watching the water gurgle agitatedly in his wake to be exasperated—with each step he took, there was a faint disturbance in the stream, and that same sensation of the strange wind whipping around me.
“Now you’re quiet?”
I snapped back to the moment as he came within spitting distance of me. At the same time, the aberrations in the water’s flow ceased, the stream returning to its tranquil state, save for the agitated motions of some fish.
“Look,” I said, giving a placid smile. I hoped it wad placid, anyway, and didn’t betray my annoyance at this pipsqueak thinking even he could bully me around. “I was just trying to warn you that if the elders—“
“The elders?” he said incredulously. “What do you care about the elders? They hate you,” he said, a self-satisfied smirk on his face.
My eyebrow twitched. Feigning nonchalance, I crossed my arms, craning my neck to look pointedly over at where he’s been casting magic just moments ago. “Pretty sure they’d have some choice words about you, too, if they saw you using magic.” Then, my curiosity winning out even as he turned red, “where’d you get a Shard anyway? And a Tempest?”
His increasingly petulant expression told me he had no intention of answering me. He just stood there for a long moment, stewing, until I raised an eyebrow at him. A base provocation, I will admit.
The flush on his face grew. His hand flew up, an accusing finger pointed up at me. “You know what? They’d still hate you more!” He stomped his foot in a way not quite fitting of his age, and I felt very much all at once like I was the one doing the bullying. “My mom said—“
“Leave my brother alone!”
The boy faltered, his gaze drawn to the side, up the hill leading towards the village.
I turned as well, to find my little sister, Lucinia, standing at the crest of the hill at my back, trying, and failing, to look imposing, her hands on her hips and her cheeks puffed out in what I’m sure she thought was a cowing display of anger, her purple eyes narrowed.
Her hair was a lighter shade of brown than my own. Reminiscent of our father, who had vanished two years prior, soon after the birth of our younger brother.
I still sometimes would catch Mom staring out the window of our small home with a wistful look on her face. Waiting for Dad to come home after a day of logging.
To his merit, the boy was nothing if not quick to recover. His head whipped back to me, the smirk returned to his face. Lucinia did not take kindly to being ignored, and began sauntering down the hill even as the boy went on. “And you always make your little sister stand up for you! I’d never show my face again if Redela had to defend me every day.”
Lucinia had reached us now, and unceremoniously took the boy by his ear. I chuckled at the sight of my sister treating this kid, two or three years her senior, like she was his mom.
“Ow, ow, ow—“ he protested. “Let me go—“
Lucinia did not, in fact, let go. “Your mom told you to stop being mean to people, Frif,” she scolded, as if she and Frif’s mom were good friends.
“Yeah, Frif. Stop being mean to people.” I should have acted my age, but I really couldn’t resist.
Frif’s eyes turned back to me. “You—“ he started, words seeming to fail to fully express the world shattering hatred he bore for me in that moment.
To my surprise, I felt the prickling of the strange wind again, and the humor fell from my face. Lucinia must have sensed the shift, because she started looking back and forth between the two of us quizzically.
“Wait” I started, holding my hands up in a placating gesture.
If his earlier display was any indication, his magic probably couldn’t do much harm to anyone, but better safe than sorry. Perhaps more importantly, the Wardens might come take this kid if he started throwing magic around at people, no matter how half-baked, and neither he nor the village needed that kind of attention.
“I didn’t mean to upset you.” I realized as his brows lowered even further that those were probably the worst words I could have possibly chosen. “You could get in a lot of trouble if you start—“
“Shut up!” he yelled, cutting me off. Lucinia went back from glancing between us to staring at Frif.
Man, this kid had a temper on him.
What happened next went so quickly I hardly had time to process it.
I felt the strange wind whipping itself into a frenzy, and for a moment I wondered what sad display of magic Frif would put on for us. Only for a moment though. For the briefest of intervals, I could’ve sworn I could see the currents of the force making my skin tingle. From Frif’s outstretched finger, it coiled towards me, then swirled around my body. The stream gave the faintest of burbles, then a bubble popped on the surface.
The wind felt like razors—but with the flat of the blade pressed to my skin, posing no threat. It buzzed, and I felt it turn sharp, but only after it lifted from me, turning on Frif like a dog growling at a stranger. I saw the faintest flicker of my own confusion mirrored on his face before the wind rushed at him, and his eyes rolled back.
With my own legs frozen to the spot, and Lucinia unable to do anything to keep the older boy from falling to the ground, Frif crumpled, his legs folding under his body like a puppet cut from its strings.