Whisper of a Mouse
A.K.A.
The Very, Very Detailed, Long-Winded Account and Character Study of My Amell Mage, More or Less
Chapter 1: Scarecrows
Callie sat trembling in a hard wooden chair in the First enchanter's private office, her bare feet dangling down without touching the floor. She clutched the sleeves of her nightgown in her fingers, holding her wrist to her chest and rubbing it where it hurt from the templar's grip. Her face felt terribly hot and her lip kept trembling, but she was trying very hard not to cry.
She didn't know who she was supposed to look at, so she looked around between everyone. There was the first enchanter, sitting behind his desk. He had a big, bushy beard and so many wrinkles that it made any change in his expression easy to notice, though he wasn't usually very expressive. His eyes always looked warm, if tired, like now. Callie wanted to look at him, but even when he looked back, he seemed like he didn't care to do anything other than sit there and watch what happened. There was a templar standing by his desk, the knight-commander, whom she hadn't seen since her first day at the Circle and who wore fancier armor than the other templars. He wasn't as hairy or wrinkled as the first enchanter, but his face always looked tight and stern. Callie didn't want to look at him, because she didn't want him to look at her, but the templar guard was talking to him like he was the one who would handle everything.
The templar guard...he was one of the guards for the children's dormitory, and Callie liked it best when he wasn't on duty. From what she heard, he was new to the Circle too, and he didn't seem to like the children anymore than she and the others liked having him there. He was always angry for some reason she didn't understand, and he was always taking it out on them, watching them like a hawk for any troublemaking.
He was hard not to look at, because he was very large and very tall, and he was looming over her chair so closely that she had to crane her neck to see his face. She shrank toward the armrest opposite him when he made wide gestures, waving around what he'd taken from her and showing it to the other two men with a sneer. He was talking, but she didn't really listen to what he was saying because she was tired, and scared of getting in trouble, and looking at the men's faces for any sign of what that trouble would be.
Finally, the first enchanter raised a hand, halting the guard's words. A precious beat of quiet followed, one where no one looked or sounded like they were about to start fighting. Then the first enchanter looked across the desk at her.
"Serah Calise Amell, I believe?" he asked kindly. No one interrupted, and Callie knew the other men were watching her as well. She nodded slowly.
"Y-Yes, ser," she murmured, her voice quavering around the lump in her throat. He seemed to sag a little, just very slightly, like his wrinkles had suddenly gotten heavier.
"Can you tell us, child, how you came by this object?" He gestured his hand toward the item almost completely obscured by the guard's giant fingers.
"I m-made it, s-ser." Her heart hammered in her chest. Her thoughts flew quickly as she tried to figure out what she'd done so wrong.
"Made it?" He sounded surprised. "How?"
"C-Cornhusks, ser." It was getting harder to hold down the lump in her throat the more she talked. Her eyes felt very hot. "A-And some of the girls s-said their ribbons are t-too old to use, so I used th-those ones for ties." She looked at the First enchanter desperately. "Th-They said I could have them! I promise."
It hadn't been hard at all to make the little cornhusk doll. The children all got daily chore duties, sometimes in the kitchen. Just the morning before, she'd been given the job of peeling corn for luncheon. It didn't seem the cook planned to do anything with the husks, merely have them taken out with the rest of the scraps, so she took a few. After dinner, she'd woven together a tiny doll that looked like a very lanky person with its arms held out wide, and made it colorful with a few frayed and tattered ribbons. She used one of her own ribbons to hang it from the ceiling of her bunk and had felt quite proud of her work at the time. In the morning, she took the doll down to carry it with her in her skirt pocket. Then, only a short time ago, after the children had all changed for sleep and she tried to hang it up again, the angry guard had appeared at her bedside out of nowhere. He'd torn the doll away from her, yelled at her, and roughly dragged her from the dormitory up to the second floor, to the first enchanter's office.
She didn't know how long they'd waited for the first enchanter and knight-commander to arrive, only that it had been terrible to be alone in the same room with the man who towered over her.
"What is it? Why did you make it?" The knight-commander asked, puzzled, looking not at her but at the little doll.
"She was tryin' ta secret some magic on it, Ser, like a charm," the guard answered grimly.
"I was not!" Callie looked at him with wide eyes. Her words slurred a little with how hard her lip trembled, and came out thickly around the lump in her throat. "I-It's a scarecrow!"
"A scarecrow?" the first enchanter asked curiously, encouraging her to say more. Callie nodded and sniffled, feeling very small and alone.
"E-Everyone says that demons c-come in our sleep, so I made the scarecrow to s-scare them away and keep me safe."
There was a long silence, but Callie couldn't see what was happening because she couldn't keep from crying anymore, and hot tears made the whole room blur around her. She hiccuped and bit her lip.
"Scare tha demons," the guard finally responded, skeptically. "More like invite them. I saw you talkin' ta this thing!"
Callie strained so hard to speak clearly that her voice came out almost in a squeak. "I w-was saying goodnight."
There was another long silence, one where she couldn't even hear anyone move, nothing but her own trembling breaths and hiccups that she tried to stifle. She wiped furiously at her eyes with her overlarge sleeves, but it didn't help when she wouldn't stop crying.
"Greagoir..." The way the first enchanter said that one word made it sound like it meant something significant.
"Maker's breath," the knight-commander sighed in a bone-weary way she'd never heard from him before or since. "She can keep the doll. Doyle, get her back to bed, then have Strat relieve you of duty and return to the barracks. I will deal with you in the morning."
"Ah, knight-commander." The first enchanter's chair scraped against the ground. He must have gotten up. "If you don't mind, I will escort Serah Amell back to her dormitory myself."
"Of course. Yes." There was a pause and the clank of shifting armor. "Templar!" the knight-commander snapped.
Callie was still rubbing her eyes when she felt the brush of dry, veiny leaf edges on her elbow – the feet of her little scarecrow. She nervously lowered her arms and felt the doll shift, being pressed toward her hand through her damp sleeve. She gingerly clasped her fingers around him and, feeling no resistance, pulled him close and hugged him to her chest, tucking her shaking chin over him. The presence by her side moved and then was gone, and she listened to the heavy sound of his armor retreat from the room. The knight-commander soon followed, though he stopped by the door.
"I...am sorry, Irving." There was a pause. Then he was gone as well, and the door closed behind him with a click.
The first enchanter released a raspy sigh. Callie heard him step around the desk, his robes swishing in a way that was more pleasant than the armor the templars wore. She tensed and huddled closer around her scarecrow when he stopped in front of her chair and knelt down.
"I am sorry too, my dear," he murmured sadly, though what he had to be sad about, she didn't know. He gently laid a weathered hand, as wrinkled as his face, on her arm. "I know that was not fair of them."
He slowly wrapped her in a hug of his own, and for a moment she held her breath in fear, wondering if this would also bring her trouble. Then one of his hands rubbed her back, and the other stroked her hair, like her mama used to. Callie crumpled into his shoulder and sobbed. She sobbed for a long time and let him muffle her cries and got his robe terribly wet, but he didn't say a word. At some point she ran out of tears, her throat was too raw to keep whimpering, and all the tension had been exhausted from her little body. Only then did the first enchanter pull away. He pulled a handkerchief from one of his pockets and patted her puffy cheeks and eyes dry.
"There you are. Now, then, I believe you have had enough excitement for one night." He stood up and offered her a hand, which she took as she slid off the chair.
She stood patiently while he extinguished the candles in the tidy room. It looked like a small combination of the tower library and laboratory more than anything, filled with tall wooden bookshelves, stacks of papers, and tables full of strange objects and equipment she couldn't name. When he was done, leaving only one lantern to carry with them, he returned to her and again reached out a hand in offer. That was how he led her from his office, with her soft little fingers curled in his warm, veined ones, while her other hand clutched her scarecrow to her chest, and he didn't let go when they reached the corridor. She was glad of that, because she hated the corridors at night – how the flat, gray stonework looked somehow harder, and stretched up to a ceiling so high that it disappeared in pitch dark shadow. How the templars themselves looked like menacing statues at their posts, not real people.
If the first enchanter thought the same, he didn't seem scared at all. He simply walked with her, ignoring the guards stationed around them, and moved slowly enough that she didn't have to run to keep up like she had when the guard first took her upstairs. When they reached the first floor, however, he turned in the opposite direction of the children's dorm. Callie faltered in her step and looked up at him. He looked back at her, his beard prickling up around a smile.
"I think, this one time, it would not go amiss to take a detour to the kitchen, hm?" he whispered conspiratorially, his voice crackling around the words like dry paper. Callie just followed obediently and silently, not wanting to catch the attention of the templar statues standing at various doors.
When they reached the kitchen, he first led her to a table and brought her a cup of water that she eagerly drank down, then a second. It was strange to be in there without the fireplace sputtering sparks from its logs, a pot bubbling on the mount above them, the cook walking around and issuing orders while Tranquil and children chatted, chopped, kneaded, and mixed. Callie noticed that the first enchanter didn't have to search hard at all for a jar he took from one of the cupboards and a pot from the clean dishes; he must have known the kitchen well, though she never saw him in there. He filled the pot with milk, grabbed its sides near the bottom, and mumbled something under his breath. To Callie's astonishment, steam and the scent of warm cream started to rise from inside. She leaned forward with wide eyes for a better look, and his own crinkled in a smile.
"Magic need not always be grand," he revealed. "Sometimes, it is the finer touch that yields greater rewards. Speaking of which, you have earned one for being so good throughout that ordeal upstairs. Here we are, then."
He ladled hot milk into two mugs and dipped a spoon into the jar he'd brought out, dropping and stirring a dollop of honey into each cup. Callie gasped, because the cook always kept the honey carefully locked away where the children couldn't get to it. The first enchanter didn't share her unspoken concern, though he seemed to guess it easily. His chest rumbled with a chuckle.
"We'll keep this our little secret," he assured, patting her hand. She nodded solemnly and took her mug. The milk warmed her all through, and the texture of sweet cream lingered on her tongue with each mouthful. The enchanter sipped from his own mug as well, and for a time they sat comfortably together in the quiet. Eventually he lowered his mug back to the table with a sigh.
"Please try to understand, child, that the templars do mean well," he said suddenly. "We mages face many dangers, and present dangers to others. The templars take their duty to guard us very seriously...sometimes too seriously, as you saw. Because of that, it is important that we do all we can to show them they can trust us rather than fear us."
Callie didn't know how to respond. Even if she had known, she felt too tired to say anything. Being able to cry and getting a hug for the first time since she left home had been...good, but now the warmth of the milk was seeping into her bones and easing her muscles, making her feel the late hour and the strain of everything that had happened. So she simply nodded. That seemed to be enough.
"Come, now. Finish your milk. It is well past your bedtime, and there will be lessons in the morning. I'm sure your little friend will be welcome to attend if you wish him to. In fact..." He smiled again and stroked his beard in thought. "Hm. It should prove an interesting experiment, at any rate. I shall be most curious to know how he proves himself as a guard, if you wouldn't mind keeping me informed."
Callie nodded again, her eyes drooping, and quickly gulped down the rest of her milk. He placed the cups and pot aside, mumbling something to himself about coming back to wash them lest the cook find out. He once more held out his hand for her to take, and she did so, making sure to scoop her scarecrow from the table before hopping down to the floor. The walk back to the dorm was peaceful and short after that, though two templars had appeared on either side of the kitchen door to guard them, startling her. The first enchanter waited by the dormitory's door while she crept silently to her bed, for she had learned quickly after arriving how to keep her footfalls light on the hard stone floor to dampen any noise. Only when she climbed under her covers did his silhouette move away so the guard could close the door again, dousing the light from the corridor.
Callie didn't need light to find the ribbon hanging over her bunk, or to tie up her scarecrow so he could watch over her while she slept. Once he was secure, she pulled her blanket over her head and tried very hard not to think about what it felt like to be pulled out of bed. After a minute of fretful dozing, she felt something press against the side of her mattress. She didn't spook, because the movement was far too light and quiet to be from an adult. She merely moved over to make room so Jowan could clamber in next to her, and he promptly joined her in hiding under her blanket.
"I didn't realize you'd been gone so long," he whispered. "What happened?"
Callie opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again. At this point, she wasn't entirely sure herself what happened, or how to explain it. "He didn't like my scarecrow," was all she could think to say.
She felt Jowan nod against the pillow as though he understood perfectly. Maybe he did. He was a year older than her, and he'd been in the Circle longer than she had. He still remembered how scary it was and had quickly taken her under his wing after she arrived, making sure she was never alone with her fear. He always had something new to tell her about how things worked in the tower, and if she was ever uncertain whether something was against the rules or not, she knew she could go to him for an answer. He didn't say anything about her scarecrow when she showed it to him, though.
"They get like that sometimes," he explained. "Dumb templars. They're as scared as rabbits."
Callie hurriedly pushed a hand against his mouth and shushed him. One thing she knew from observation alone was that they were supposed to respect the templars at all times. Jowan shooed her hand off.
"Well, it's true." But he let the matter drop. "You know, one day, we're gonna be full mages, and then we'll get called out of the tower like they do whenever people need help. Then we'll help so many people with our magic that they won't be scared of us anymore."
"I think we'll have to help a lot of people," Callie replied sleepily, feeling much more relaxed with a friend next to her.
"So we will. We'll go on big adventures that other people are too scared to go on, and we'll keep people safe with everything we can do. They'll see, then." There was so much conviction and excitement in his words that Callie had no trouble believing him. Then, because the hour was so late and their little selves were so worn out, the two children fell quiet and promptly drifted off to sleep, to await a new day in the Circle.
Author's Note: For the most part, this story follows the telling of DA:O, though there will be some unique aspects and original content throughout. It is written in true NaNoWriMo style, leaving no detail untold, and will update weekly. Thank you for reading, and please feel free to leave a review letting me know what you think.