1 Malcolm

The heavens emptied. The earth shook. The rushing air whirled loam and leaf into swirling columns. Rain pelted rooftops with the din of a thousand drumming fingers. Lightening lit the sky and struck the earth with a deafening boom. Families huddled behind closed doors, wrapped in woolen blankets, beside blazing hearths. And no one slept.

“I’m scared,” a plaintive voice cried after a blaze of lightening lit up the sky.

“It’s only a storm, child,” said the boy’s grandfather, comfortingly, as the following thunder swallowed sound.

“Quit bothering your grandfather with foolish notions, Malcolm. Afraid of a storm!” The boy’s mother said after the rumble subsided. She gave him a skeptical squint of brow and shook her head.

“You be too old for such foolishness. I’ll not have it said my boy fears a little boom and clap and, certainly, not from his own lips.”

The boy’s head drooped in shame, while the quick glance exchanged over his dark mop of hair belied her harsh tone.

A blast of wind struck the cottage like a blow to the gut. The eaves and rafters shifted. The front door swung wide to slam against the wall with a Crack!

Even startled, Sarah was quick from her seat to push the door against the pummeling wind and rain that rushed through and caught ash and ember up in a swirl. As she neared, a large silhouette, darker than the night, stepped through and lashed the door shut against the battering winds.

“The sheep are scattered between here and the Four Provinces, probably to the School itself. The sows took their brood into the forest, and the rest of the livestock are lost to the night. There’s nothing left.”

He peeled the oilskin slicker form his long, limber frame and hung it on a peg beside the door. Something wasn’t right he thought. The air had a bitter taste and smelled . . . wrong, and the bitter chill lodged in his bones portended something ill.

A presence lurked, fueling the storm. The others felt it too. It was in their uneasy, furtive eyes. Kevin wondered, as young Malcolm rushed toward him, what tangle of emotion he sensed out there in the night, beyond the door.

He was a gangly boy, all arms and legs which dangled as he was clasped in the powerful, yet gentle, arms of his father. The warm breath to cold, wet ear, the throb of heart felt through cloth, and the tight clasp on Kevin’s neck dispelled the icy dread that rimmed his heart. Tension drained from them both like some lone, forgotten thought.

Setting the boy to his feet, he ruffled his hair. “It is time for you to be getting to bed.” The boy’s face flattened from a smile to disappointment. “The storm is passing, and its strength is wasting,” Kevin said, softening the timbre of his voice. “There’s no need to worry.”

Not quite reassured, Malcolm made no protest as he was led away to the backroom he shared with his grandfather.

Father and grandfather settled themselves into the two chairs by the hearth. Over the deep bite into the red flesh of an apple, Kevin studied his father, taking in his weathered, lined profile of face, pipe dangling from clinched lips. His father’s thoughts mirrored the flame—snapping, leaping, drifting into smoke.

Grandfather took pipe from his lips and gave the face of the bowl a few rough blows to palm and cast the loosened char into the fireplace. Scooping blue tobac from his pouch, he rolled it into a ball, for it was still sticky enough to hold together, and stuffed wad into bowl with his thumb. Only after he had completed the ritual did he meet his son’s gaze.

“A strange storm,” he said. He reached out to catch afire a dry twig and raised it to the bowl of pipe. Two long, deep puffs, flamed purple smoke that mingled with the shadows of the rafters.

“It ended sooner than expected,” he said after exhausting pungent smoke from his lungs.

“It burnt itself out; the energy it fed off wasted. At least, that is what I hope,” Kevin replied.

“There was nothing you could have done.” It was both a question and statement.  

“It came unexpectedly. No forewarning. I was aware of nothing until it was upon us. There was no way to prepare. That in and of itself is strange. Sometimes, I can feel it in my head,” Kevin tapped his temple. “That recognition, that awareness of things just beyond my ken, that but for the training, I could turn that awareness to action with my ki.

The next words were bitterly spoken. “If not for the lack of training, maybe I could have done something.” Weary resignation replaced bitterness when next he spoke. “I will not have my son afflicted by such frustrations.”

His father’s gaze drifted from his son back to the flame. Pursing lips over the pipestem, he worried the tip with his teeth. It was an old, fretful manner roused now by the stab of guilt at his son’s words. He was responsible for that bitter regret and hurt, the frustration in his son’s voice.  Those feelings turned his vision from flame into memory.

The Mage had come not long after his wife’s death, offering to have Kevin trained in the ways of the Magi. How he had tightly clasped his son to his breast in that rush of panic—fear of a lonely man desiring to keep what was left of his family beside him. And he somehow knew the Mage understood all this as he looked not unkindly upon him.

Shamed, he spoke harshly, sent the Mage way, never once thinking of the boy’s hopes or dreams, the boy’s needs, only his own.

“Only one course, then,” grandfather said.

Kevin’s brooding gaze turned to one of perplexity.

“The School,” grandfather said he noted his son’s confused gaze.

“What brought that on?” Kevin said, shifting in his seat as the heat from the fire further settled his bones.

“I was thinking of regret and the Source, of what spoke to you of possibilities at your fingertips but unable to touch.”

“Ah, yes. Sometimes, I can feel it rushing through my son, that whisper of power growing. If he sensed what I felt out there in the night, the storm . . . and still managed to control his fear?” He shook his head with amazement, and pride. “There is not only power in the boy but strength and a discipline that must be tempered.”

“You talk as if he has no choice,” Sarah said, returning from the back room.

“Safely settled?’

“Worn from anxiety, he was fast asleep.” Sarah stood over her husband, hands on hips, a tight smile on her freckled face. He looked up at her appealingly, but neither smile nor resolution wavered. 

He opened himself so that she could settle into his lap.

“He is but a child,” his grandfather said.

She snuggled deeper, arranging a pocket where she could find the most comfort. Laying her head against the dry shirt he had changed into, his chin settled on crown of her head. With that vantage came the battered, demented profile of the older Malcolm, dominated by his wide flat nose.

“But he is also afraid. Afraid of the power he feels within and without.”

“Unveiled emotions are more a danger,” Kevin interjected.

“Only if he can transmute without training.”

Kevin said nothing, and silence supplied its own answer, and grandfather’s profile shifted, displaying a range of emotions.

“That is but a myth!”

Silence again, made the more uncomfortable from the weight of the portent burdening the room.

“You believe he can!” she said with some incredulity.

“A corruption of ki,” grandfather whispered. “If for no other reason, he must go to keep his wits.”

“What harrows you so that you should broach this issue at this time?” she said, caressing her husband’s smooth cheek with the tips of her fingers.

“Fear and guilt.”

“Of what?” Kevin asked, reaching his fingers up to intertwine with hers, while his gaze never left from studying the fire.

The reply, softly spoken, barely audible, was burdened by the weight of years. “Of myself, of what I have made you. I came here, to this land, to this place to settle my family. I wanted to put behind me—not have you know—the check of place and station. I chose a path to free myself from others’ control, but I never gave you that choice.” He inhaled deeply of his pipe, blowing the pungent, purple smoke through his nostrils.

“It’s not your blame to accept. No shadow stands between us,” Kevin firmly replied.

His wife turned in his lap and laid a caressing hand on his chest, playing with the laces of his shirt. “Life shapes itself to its own design. The past cannot be made anew, and I would not change anything that has brought me to where I am now, the seat I now bestride. Or the seat that bestrides me,” he said, smiling to lighten the tenor of his words.

It was the first time his father had ever spoken of the ghost of pain, the condemnation that swathed his heart. Kevin knew it was there, knew why, but his father had remained silent—until now.

Kevin barely remembered their travel over the Barrier Mountains or the death of his mother. They had traveled to what was at that time the farthest reaches of this New Land and found a place to settle. And from his father’s toil, and, later, with his own hands, they had built this homestead.

“You cannot know or understand what the Old World was like; the great City States and Baronies possessed all the land and exploited the tillers of the earth; the Guilds controlled the trades and ruthlessly suppressed any opposition to their influence. There was little hope, little opportunity unless one was connected by blood or influence.

“I wanted more.” He clenched his fist. “My son would have more than toiling for another man’s bread.” He took another puff, and loosened his clenched fist that held nothing but pain.

“Then there were the Magi, sporting power as a privilege, arrogant and conceited. They are not like those from the School, tempered and forged to a different mettle. How was I to know that, then, know that they offered another path. My blind, foolish fear closed doors to you that were not my right to close.”

“The only thing I ever wanted, father, was knowledge to control what was growing within me,” Kevin said, gently.    

Prejudgments and hopelessness, two things he had hoped would never shape his son’s future, but which he had unwittingly allowed to infiltrate and taint the very hopes and dreams he had wanted to give to his son. He had not truly escaped the Old World, had brought those lessons here with him and cut his son off from the opportunity to learn and use his gifts and abilities from the Source. Now they would forever remain dormant within him like some fallow seed never to sprout, never to grow. There was only a small window when the Talent began to manifest, when those abilities had to be nurtured and developed to reach their full potential. If not nurtured properly that opportunity would be lost, leaving some small ability to manipulate ki: the ability to heal, to touch a wick to flame, to sense the patterns and flow of the winds, or to sense the stirrings of Talent within others.

“It is my shame, denying you that knowledge.”

Kevin was a little surprised. His father rarely spoke of remorse and displayed it even less.

 “Do not pain yourself with old grief. I wanted to go, father, wanted to explore those abilities I felt hidden within me, but I also loved you,” he said simply. “I do not have any regrets, and I believe,” here he gave a smile and a loving kiss to his wife’s cheek, “those choices led wisely. And the School being nothing like the Academe, young Malcolm will never be nurtured on the teat of arrogance.”

            “I hope not!” Sarah said.

His father puffed away lost in silent musings, and Kevin wondered what other ambiguities twisted his father’s thoughts down silent, dark paths.

           

Later all was silent except for the hiss and spark from new logs added to the fire. The storm had ceased and the two men sat in companionable silence. A stream of smoke still rose from his father’s pipe, and Sarah lay asleep in her husband’s arms. Kevin did not know what suddenly caused his breath to mist before his lips, the chill that touched bone, or the misgiving that tightened his chest. Scarcely hearing the whisper of his name, or from whose lips it came, his only thoughts were to flee as he rose from his chair clutching his wife as if his embrace were enough to protect her from what was rushing toward them.

             A banshee wail of agony preceded the swath of destruction through the forest. The fabric which bound water, earth and air to their form was rent asunder and caused the wail of despair. Trees splintered, some uprooted whole and sent careening to shatter on sturdier boughs. Those trees closest to the heart of the conflagration flared to incandescence. Trees that had seen the span of centuries disappeared with only a few golden motes of light streaming to the ground and wisps of smoke to mark that here they had once stood.

            Dissipated from its passage through the forest, it was only a fraction of its original force when it struck the house. Pushing his wife and desperately pulling his father, Kevin tried to reach his son when the concussive force of the maelstrom hit. The house seemed to shrink then expand from within as it exploded.  Wood, shingles, stone, everything was sent flying; splinters of wood became missiles striking deep into tender flesh; stone shattered bone.

A lone scream was briefly heard before it was snuffed out and as if a signal, the heavens opened again to pour down upon the wounds made against earth and flesh.

The next day the heat of the newly risen sun scattered the mist roused from damp and drying earth. Emerging from their enforced siege, people opened shuttered windows and unlatched doors to venture uncertainly forward to meet the new day. Greeting friends and neighbors with relief, they found the cloister of the village had fared well. Most of the damage was to roofs and shutters, from rain rushing in to pool on floors and stain walls—all easily fixed. For those not protected by the clustered homes and stone wall that had been a buffer against the storm and winds, what was their fate many of the villagers wondered? So a company of men was organized to check on those who lived in the surrounding countryside.

The second homestead they came to was Kevin’s. The once ripe field was now a small pond of silt and dirt. Shoots of maize, bent, crossed, leaning, rose from the gray surface of the water. The pen and barn had been leveled by the storm. The only thing left of the house was its foundation and the small boy who knelt among the rubble.

Frail and exhausted from scrambling among the wreckage, his body was bent from the weight of crippling emotion. Blood covered splinter-riddled hands resting on thighs. He could cry no more, search no more. He had found his answers and offered no resistance when they gathered him up.

His story would be passed along until it became fixed, permanent as the forest, the river, thought. Not because of the carnage or sorrow of the boy’s suffering. It was what Malcolm would become later: Power born in ruin and desecration. They had witnessed his baptism and because Malcolm was of them, they would be protected and honored when he came into the fullness of his legacy; but all that was to come later.