CHAPTER 2
The Secret
The weirdest day of Ez’s life kept getting weirder. She and Wilburn watched in silent awe as Gramma Fark approached the hornet that lay sprawled against the overturned table and prodded it with the tip of her cane. It twitched. Wilburn and Ez both twitched themselves, but Gramma merely grunted. She stumped over to inspect the other hornet—the one that wasn’t squashed beneath the door—and, finding it sufficiently dead, she wrenched the axe free, stumped back to the first one and calmly beheaded it with a stroke.
“There,” she said. She flicked a glob of gore off her sleeve. Then she rounded on Wilburn. “So,” she said, planting both fists on her portly hips, “what’s your mother let you get up to this time?”
“I—beg your pardon?” Ez struggled to her feet, shaking as much from indignation as from shock. She fixed Gramma with a glare that could have pickled a rhinoceros. The older woman’s eyebrows arched in scorn, but when she spoke, her tone was simperingly girlish.
“I brought a pie,” she said. “Lemon meringue. It was Jack’s favorite you know. I just hope I haven’t underdone the crust.” It was the very falsest of false modesties, for Ez knew full well that Gramma’s pie, like everything she cooked, would be a masterpiece with which God Himself could not find fault, whose flavor could not be spoiled even by Ez’s bitterness. Any other evening, Ez would have dutifully paid Gramma the homage that she clearly felt entitled to; right then, however, Ez was in no mood for beating around the bush.
“I don’t want pie,” she spat. “I want to know what the hell just happened, what these things are and why they broke into our house and tried to kill us!”
“I want pie,” Wilburn piped up.
“Of course you do,” Gramma told him, rumpling his hair; she grimaced as her hand came away coated in green slime, “But we mustn't have dessert until we've eaten our supper. I’m sure your mother tried her best with it.”
Ez opened her mouth to say something she knew she would regret, but the fight suddenly went out of her and she dropped into a chair instead, overwhelmed by weariness. All that cleaning for nothing, she thought dully—as if that were her biggest concern. For a moment, it almost seemed a look of sympathy crossed Gramma’s face, but then it turned into her usual pursed-lipped expression of maternal disapproval.
“You go on and have a nice sit,” she said. “I know you modern women don’t lose sleep over a dirty house. Me, well, I suppose I’m too old-fashioned to loaf about when work needs doing. You won’t mind if I tidy up, will you?”
“Be my guest,” Ez said with a hollow chuckle. Tidy up indeed. The cottage was all but destroyed.
“I am your guest,” Gramma said reprovingly. But Ez, who’d run plumb out of damns to give, just shrugged. Gramma Fark clucked her tongue and shook her head. Then, clamping her cane under her armpit, she took hold of one of the decapitated hornet’s legs and made a show of trying to drag it toward the doorway. “Wilburn,” she said meekly, “would you please come give your grandmother a hand? These poor old bones ain’t got much strength left.” Wilburn eyed the corpse reluctantly, but Ez got to her feet. Gramma had won, just as she always did, and always would, for it was Gramma’s game. It didn’t matter if Ez didn’t want to play—the game would play her, one way or another.
With a sigh, Ez grabbed one of the dead bug’s legs; Wilburn followed her lead, and together the three of them hauled the creature outside, where night had fallen extra darkly. The low roof of cloud that had dimmed the sun’s light all day now blotted out the moon and any stars that might have shone. A chill wind whooshed around the trio as they dragged the hornet down the path away from the cottage. A shape suddenly moved in the darkness. If Gramma hadn’t been half-deaf already, Wilburn and Ez’s shrieks would certainly have made her so. Both of them bolted for the cottage.
“Come on back, you babies,” Gramma called. “It’s only Thoralf. There’s a good chap.” She reached out to pat the darkness where the ink-black stallion must be.
Thoralf nickered.
“Oh, thank God,” Ez breathed, clutching her chest. The way her heart was galloping felt like a horse was trapped inside her.
“Hi Thoralf,” Wilburn said. “Oof—” He’d bumped into the stallion’s hindquarters. Thoralf followed the three of them back and forth to the cottage as they dragged the second hornet out, then scraped up what they could of the squashed one and dumped it with the others.
“I’ll go fetch the shovel,” Ez said, choking back the bile rising in her gorge.
“Nah, burying’s no use.” The light from the doorless doorway caught Gramma’s hair, forming a glowing ring around her face, which was a mask of shadow. “We’ve got to burn these,” she went on, “unless you want more turning up. Vexpids are attracted by the smell of their own dead.”
There was a pause. “Vexpids?” Ez asked. Gramma grunted.
There was a longer pause. The silence stretched uncomfortably before Ez said, very quietly, “You know what’s going on—don’t you, Nyreen?” She had never used Gramma’s first name before. It had always been Ms. Fark, until Wilburn had come along. Then it was Gramma ever since. And she did not do so now out of friendliness. “Don’t you?” Ez said again, cold fury in her voice.
Gramma stood stock-still, seeming to consider. Then she said, “Step back a smidgen, both of you.” Then she said something else: a word that resonated as if a bell had been struck. Ez heard it distinctly, but she couldn’t have repeated it a moment later—not one syllable. The word passed straight through her mind without sticking. But she felt it—a great wheel turning, a machine of uncountable pieces clicking into place; the sync, the power. It was everywhere, everything, infinite—yet intimate: closer than her own heart.
The heap of hornets burst afire. One second: pitch darkness. Next second: blinding light as flames roared high into the air. The flames were green—green as the summer grass in sunshine. Ez staggered. Wilburn whooped. The fire devoured the hornets in a blink and dwindled away to nothing. A few emerald embers floated on the wind. Then all was dark.
“Explain,” Ez snarled, seizing Gramma by the collar of her jacket.
“I’ll try,” Gramma said cooly, “after supper.” She shook Ez off and trudged back to the cottage, which remained a disaster. Gone were the monstrous insects, but gallons of gore still caked the walls and floorboards, across which shattered tableware and pieces of the ceiling mingled. Gramma planted herself in the center of the mayhem and began to pivot slowly in a circle, waving her cane and muttering. Ez felt it again: the power, the sync. The hornet slime began to slither bit by bit toward the fireplace, where green flames shot up from the sodden embers, licking the underside of the cauldron, which still hung from the pot crane and, by luck, had kept its lid on.
Ez and Wilburn stood transfixed. When every last trace of the monsters had been burnt away, Gramma turned her attention to the ceiling. She drew a complicated pattern in the air with the tip of her cane, and as she did so, broken planks flew up and patched over the hole. But it was a most unsightly fix. If Ez hadn’t known better, she would have taken it for the work of a severely drunken carpenter.
Gramma clucked her tongue and shook her head, leaning heavily on her cane as she surveyed the repair. “Well,” she said, “it’ll keep the rain off.” She sounded exhausted. And despite what she’d said earlier, she went and sat down in a chair while Ez and Wilburn did the rest of the work. It took them the better part of an hour to sweep up the smashed dishes, right the table and rehang the door, whose hinges had been badly twisted by whatever force had ripped it from its frame. Ez got the thing to latch again, but it wouldn’t swing smoothly anymore, nor quietly. By the time she’d finished, the fire was back to burning its regular color and the soup was once more vigorously gurgling. In fact, looking around, it was hard to believe the place had ever been attacked by giant insects.
Gramma refused to say a word about the miracles she had performed, claiming she could not explain properly on an empty stomach. And since none of them could muster up the energy for small talk, they ate silently, except when Gramma said, “Needs salt,” upon first tasting Ez's soup. Coming from her, this was almost a compliment. Ez had to admit the soup had turned out pretty well—better than she could have hoped. In fact, it might've been the best thing she had ever cooked. Everyone scraped their bowls clean. The moment Gramma set her spoon down, Ez snatched up the dishes and returned bearing the tea set.
“Haven’t you got something stronger?” Gramma asked, wrinkling her nose as Ez poured tea for her.
“Nothing but cooking sherry,” Ez said.
Gramma snorted. She glared at her tea, muttered a word, twiddled her fingers—the sync. The pale yellow liquid became dark as blood.
“There,” Ez said furiously, pointing at the cup. “What you just did. I want to know. You’ve had your supper, now explain.”
“I turned the tea to wine,” Gramma said.
“I see that,” Ez said. “How?”
“Magic.”
“But it’s... real.”
Gramma tapped her nose. “To be precise, magic is only real for some people. And you’re one of them now, because of Wilburn: because he’s a wizard.” Gramma turned to him, “What did you do, boy? Out with it.”
Wilburn quailed under her stern gaze. “I was flying a little,” he mumbled.
“Mm-hm,” Gramma said, as if she’d been expecting such an answer. “Let me guess: you flew until you passed out in midair and nearly broke your neck.”
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Wilburn’s jaw dropped. “How did you know?”
“Because,” Gramma said. Then, quite unexpectedly, she burst into tears. Wilburn and Ez stared in astonishment. Gramma Fark didn’t cry. Not at Jack’s funeral, nor at her husband Loy’s. She was a creature of stone, dry as the Skhohazidak desert. Yet there the tears were, streaming down her face. “Sorry,” Gramma gasped, wiping her nose roughly on a napkin, “but Jack, your father, did the exact same thing when he became a wizard. And he was exactly your age too... Oh, Wilburn!” She whipped off her glasses and clamped a hand over her eyes, her mouth contorting.
The blood drained from Ez’s face. “You don’t mean,” she said in a choked voice. “You don’t mean Jack was... all along...?” Gramma nodded, sobbing into her palm.
Ez felt like she was falling through the floor. The notion that Jack would have lied to her for all those years, that he would have kept such a profound secret from her... It was the greatest of betrayals.
Gramma sniffed violently and shoved her glasses on again before raising her eyes to meet Ez’s. “Sorry,” she repeated, “I know this isn’t what you want to hear.”
“I want the truth,” Ez said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “If... I mean, if Jack was a wizard… why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because magic is more than a secret,” Gramma said. “It’s the Secret: unknowable to everyone except magicians and our immediate kin. Most people can’t observe magic or learn of it by any means, no matter how hard you try to enlighten them. Jack tried, Ez. Believe me, he never stopped trying. It’s impossible. Test it sometime, now that you’re in on it. Try explaining magic to an outsider. The words will turn to scrambled egg in your mouth.”
Relief washed over Ez. If Jack had really had no choice, if he had tried his best to tell her... he was blameless. There was nothing to forgive. The sacred trust that had existed between them remained unbroken. But a new worry nagged at her. That phrase... immediate kin... “Are spouses let in on the Secret?” she asked, staring fixedly into the table’s woodgrain. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gramma give a curt nod.
“That’s why Jack pushed so hard...” Ez said, “for us to marry. I didn’t think the ceremony mattered.”
“Ritual magic,” Gramma said quietly. “Unfortunately, love alone won’t cut it, no matter how true it might’ve been...”
Tears burned in Ez’s eyes. “I’m such a fool,” she said.
Gramma did not correct her.
“Can you do gin?” Ez gestured at her cup. Gramma reached over, and when she withdrew her hand, the tea had turned as clear as water. Ez gulped it in one. The gin burned bracingly on its way to her stomach, dampening the ruckus of her emotions.
Gramma drank deeply from her own cup. Both women understood what subject must be broached next, and neither one wanted to face it. Wilburn, sensing this tension, looked back and forth between them in concern. Finally, Ez drew in a deep breath, and asked, “How did Jack really die?”
It had been seven years since that hot summer day when Gramma Fark had turned up unannounced, bearing the news that had broken Ez’s heart: Jack had been murdered by a gang of outlaws on the road to Redcherries, where he and his woodwind quintet were scheduled to perform. That was the story, anyway, which Ez had believed for seven years. Now she was sure it was a lie. She waited for Gramma to speak, but when she did, it was directed toward Wilburn.
“Your father was a good man,” Gramma said. “Brave, and generous, and honorable. But...” her shoulders slumped, “he was a criminal. It wasn’t evil what he did —not really. He was a good man. It was the people he did business with...” she shook her head forlornly. “Jack was part of a, well, I suppose you’d have to call it a cartel. A sort of network of individuals with ties to the Islorian Guild. He didn’t talk about it much. Didn’t want Loy and me to be complicit if he ever got caught. Told us he was a courier of rare imports. Well, we could read between the lines. He was a smuggler, and no mere tariff ducker either. Banned materials is what I figure, magical narcotics like ibibjib or galaforite—stuff that makes whiskey look like mother’s milk. Of course Jack never told us what he brought across the border, or what happened to it afterward. He hinted that the Guild was the supplier, that he was one in a series of middle-men. Whatever it was, the product must have been extremely valuable, probably made in Isloria and trafficked through New Trapoban, then handed off to Jack in the Skhohazidak so he could sneak it into Argylon. A scheme like that was bound to backfire eventually. Jack swam with sharks, but he was never really one of them. And in the end, they turned on him.” Gramma stared glumly down into her cup, “I told it true, Ez. He was murdered by outlaws. I just left out the part about him being one of them.”
Ez frowned. This revelation didn’t shock her as much as Gramma seemed to expect. Ez had been well-acquainted with Jack’s disdain for authority, his willingness, perhaps even eagerness, to break laws if he considered them unjust. In truth, she’d always found his swashbuckling ways rather attractive. Jack had hinted, all but outright confessed, that his woodwind quintet earned extra money via petty—and Ez had to assume victimless—crimes. Jack Fark an outlaw? It made perfect sense. Killed by his comrades though? Something was missing from that story. Ez narrowed her eyes at Gramma, who responded by jutting her chin subtly at Wilburn, as if to say, Not in front of the boy.
Ez returned the tiniest of nods. She would force the details out of Gramma later, after Wilburn went to bed. For now, probably best not to fill his brain with further tales of his father’s crimes, given how badly Wilburn wanted to be like him. Gramma seemed to be thinking along the same lines, for she said, “Your father screwed up, Wilburn. He would want you to learn from his mistake, not copy it. I’m sure if he were here he’d tell you not to break the law; he’d tell you to choose better friends than he did.”
“Okay,” Wilburn said. “Can we have pie now?”
Gramma blinked at him.
Ez had to hide her smile. She got up and set the pie in front of Wilburn on the table, saying, “Your dad was a fanatic about Gramma’s cooking, especially her pies, and especially her lemon meringue pies. He always insisted that he be the one to cut it; it was sort of a tradition. Here.” She offered him the handle of her hunting-knife, which had been given a promotion following the snapping of the kitchen knife. Wilburn took it from her solemnly and sliced into the pie with the air of a surgeon. While he worked, Ez said to Gramma, “Vexpids, did you call them?”
Gramma started. She seemed to have been lost in thought. “Yeah, vexpids... What the heck those three were doing this far north beats me. You mostly find them in the desert.”
“They obviously came because of Wilburn’s magic,” Ez said. “Don’t tell me it was a coincidence. They turned up within hours. And they aren’t natural insects, clearly. The physics wouldn’t work; they wouldn’t be able to stand under their own weight, much less fly.”
“It wasn’t a coincidence,” Gramma agreed. “I’d wager vexpids have some way to sense kineturgic activity. It’s never been documented, but then, not much is known about them, even amongst vivopaths like myself. That explains why they were drawn to Wilburn—”
“No it doesn’t,” Ez interrupted. “What’s kin—”
“Kineturgy is locomotion magic,” Gramma interrupted back. “It’s what Wilburn was doing earlier. That must be why the vexpids were drawn to him. But you said it yourself, Ez: they turned up within hours. Closest hive I’ve ever heard of is clear down by Gratwohl, would’ve taken days to get here, or nights, really, because vexpids don’t fly when the sun’s out. So those three must have departed long before Wilburn became a wizard, and there’s no way that they could have known ahead of time...”
“So they were in the area already for some unrelated reason,” Ez said, catching Gramma’s drift.
“Exactly. What that reason might’ve been I’ve no idea. But I doubt vexpids will bother us again. Just to be safe, Wilburn, let’s not do more kineturgy tonight. I’ll send a report to the Vivopathy Department in the morning. Maybe they can sort it out.” Catching Ez’s eye, Gramma added, “vivopathy is life-force magic—plants and animals and so forth. It’s my knack.”
“Your...?”
“Knack, yeah. Every magician has an innate aptitude for one of the five arts of magic; the first spell usually reveals it. Kineturgy is Wilburn’s. That knack runs strong in the Farks. Jack had it, and Grampa Loy... You should have seen the games they used to play together... Ah, Wilburn, it’s not fair that you never got to know them. They would be so proud of you—” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat, before continuing in a businesslike tone, “But you need to be more careful from now on. You came this close to killing yourself earlier: kineturgic exhaustion. You used up all your energy and your body started to shut down. Be grateful the enchantment broke when you lost consciousness, because if you had managed to keep flying another minute or two...” Gramma slid a finger across her throat. “I’d better never catch you doing that again, boy, or so help me I will whip your heinie raw.”
“Gramma!” Ez said sharply.
“Oh, hush. I just want to make sure he understands. Magic is dangerous. Too many young magicians wind up dead because they treat it like a toy. It isn’t. Magic is like fire. It’s useful when it’s under your control, but if it’s not, it can destroy everything, including you.”
“Point taken,” Ez said. “Now I want to make sure you understand: it’s not your place to punish my son, or to threaten him. Ever.”
The two women glared at one another. Finally, Gramma said, “How come you haven’t touched your pie?”
Surprised, Ez looked down and discovered it was so. She quickly took a bite. It was, of course, utterly perfect: the crust crisp, the meringue foamy, the filling gelatinously yellow, bursting with citrus tang mellowed by sweetness and a delicate, buttery breadiness.
“God Himself couldn’t find fault with this,” Ez admitted grudgingly. She cut another bite, then paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Hang on...” she said. “Did you make this with... magic?”
Gramma winked at her.
“That’s cheating,” Ez said, outraged.
Gramma chuckled smugly. “It’s not a competition, Ezzie. You’ve got meringue on your lip, by the way.”
It was so a competition, Ez thought, as she dabbed her lip indignantly, but she couldn’t pursue the subject further without making herself look pathetic. Gramma had outmaneuvered her with a chess master’s skill, and they both knew it. Ez scowled at her slice of pie. For a moment, she considered not eating the rest of it in silent protest against the older woman’s cheating. Then she ate the rest of it.
A while later, after tucking Wilburn snugly into bed with his stuffed toucan, Toukie, nestled in his arms as always, Ez climbed down from the loft and went outside to join Gramma, who she found leaning on the garden fence, smoking a stubby wooden pipe. Ez said nothing at first. She pulled a carrot from her pocket and offered it to the patch of extra-dense darkness which she took to be Thoralf. A shiver ran through her as the carrot was tugged gently from her hand and crunching noises issued from the darkness. She was glad the horse’s night vision was better than her own, or else that crunching might have been one of her fingers. Ez could barely see Gramma’s face in the soft orange glow cast by the ember of her pipe.
The air was cold, but not unpleasantly so. Now that the wind had settled down, the chilly stillness was invigorating. “So, what happens next?” Ez asked, propping an elbow on a fencepost.
Gramma took a deep drag on her pipe before replying, “Wilburn needs an education. And the only place for him to get one is Frogswallow’s College of Metaphysical Arts. It’s where I went to school, and Loy, and Jack. The fall semester starts next month, so we’ve got about a fortnight before we need to leave— What are you snickering at?”
“Sorry,” Ez said. “It’s just... Frogswallow’s? Who came up with that?”
Gramma harrumphed. “The school’s named after its founder,” she said irritably, “Mortemir Frogswallow. He was a great wizard.”
“Okay,” Ez said, trying to stifle her amusement; she was feeling a bit slap-happy after the circus of a day she’d had. So many questions were bouncing through her mind that it was difficult to choose which to prioritize. She wanted to learn more about Jack’s life as a magician, about his death as an outlaw, but right now, what mattered most was her son’s future, not his father’s past. Before she could marshal her thoughts, however, Gramma said, “I’m bushed,” and began tapping out her pipe.
Feeling a little disappointed, Ez fed Thoralf the last carrot in her pocket and turned to follow Gramma to the cottage. Then she stopped, “I’ve just remembered something.”
“Mm?” Gramma’s voice said out of the darkness.
“When those vexpids landed on our roof, Wilburn said, She’s here, as if he was expecting someone, but I never got to find out what he meant. Right after he said it, they attacked, and I forgot until just now.”
“I doubt it’s important,” Gramma said. “He was recovering from kineturgic exhaustion. He was probably just confused.” The pair stood silent for some time.
Then Gramma said, “Unless...”
But Ez suddenly shushed her. “Do you hear that?” she whispered.
They listened.
From the darkness came a sound, as yet still faint and far away, hardly perceptible at first, but growing louder with each passing second, a sound to make Ez’s blood run cold: it was the low, thrumming buzz of wings.